CLOSE TO HOME: Today Latinos march, tomorrow we vote: By Francisco H. Vázquez

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090509/OPINION/905089894?Title=CLOSE-TO-HOME-Today-Latinos-march-tomorrow-we-vote

CLOSE TO HOME: Today Latinos march, tomorrow we vote

By Francisco H. Vázquez

Published: Saturday, May 9, 2009 at 3:00 a..m.
Last Modified: Friday, May 8, 2009 at 6:18 p.m.

''Hoy marchamos, mañana votamos! Today we march, tomorrow we vote!"

This is one of the chants during the Cinco de Mayo yearly marches in Santa Rosa. To what extent is this promise of civic engagement becoming a reality? Latino political representation in Sonoma County became a reality in the Nov. 4, 2008 election. There are now four elected Latino officials: Efren Carrillo, county supervisor for the 5th District, Ernesto Olivares, Santa Rosa City Council member, Laura Gonzalez, Santa Rosa School Board and George Valenzuela, Windsor School Board.

To delve into this question, it is pertinent to review the findings from 554 surveys conducted in five precincts in Roseland prior to the election as part of the Voter Education and Registration Project, Su Voto Es Su Voz. This project was initiated by the Coalition for Latino Civic Engagement (CLACE) and supported by the Community Foundation Sonoma County-Schultz Fund and Roseland Development Fund, Community Action Partnership, and the Hutchins Institute for Public Policy Studies.

These are some of the highlights from the report on the project:

*A significant finding is that 22.96 percent of the total registered voters in the targeted five precincts are Latinos. On the one hand, since Latinos in Sonoma County make up 21.9 percent of the population, this means that Latinos do indeed participate in the voting process well in proportion to their population and proportionally, even slightly higher than their numbers.

*On the other hand, when the focus is on specific precincts, it seems that registered Latinos are not voting as much as non-Latinos. This is evident from the fact that the precincts with the highest turnout (5008, 5118, 5101) do not correspond to those with the highest Latino registered voters.

*Public officials should be concerned that both Latinos and non-Latinos in Roseland rank a forum with them as their last choice. This is not necessarily a negative reaction against politicians, it may also point to the need for increased knowledge on how to interact with elected officials.

*What is contrary to the common public perception is their desire for civic engagement. This is evident in their ranking voter education workshops as number three, above forums on immigration and education.

*When asked for "other" suggestions to help residents get more involved in their community, there were 80 separate requests from Latinos for more community information.

This represents 40 percent of all the suggestions in this second question of the survey. The need for a better understanding of how the political system works is, in effect, the glaring discovery that emerges from the entire survey.

*While it is understandable that immigration is the number three issue affecting their community, for Latinos, it is surprising that it ranks number seven for non-Latinos, since this is supposed to be a hot issue for the general public.

*It is somewhat reassuring to note that "racism and discrimination" comes in eighth (out of 15 issues) place. Optimistically, this could mean that discrimination is lower in the Latino agenda than it's commonly believed. Conversely, it could mean that they are too busy struggling for social and economic survival to think about discrimination.

There is a clear and obvious need for channels of communication to distribute the requested information to all Roseland residents who are thirsting for opportunities to get involved in the community.

In these times of economic crises and the graying of America, we (Latinos and non-Latinos) ignore the pleas for inclusion and information at our own peril. These are cries for transparency in public affairs from the people who will be the backbone of our workforce in the extremely near future.

Francisco H. Vázquez is director of the Hutchins Institute for Public Policy Studies and Community Action at Sonoma State University.

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Education for Liberation!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka: Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-anaheim-latinos9-2009may09,0,5124639.story

In Disneyland's shadow, a rising new demographic

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Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times

Crowds gather to watch a popular Lucha Libre wrestling match at Anaheim Marketplace. Anaheim's Latino population has more than tripled since 1980 and now stands at 186,000.

Latinos are now the majority in Anaheim, long known as the quintessential Orange County suburb..

By Tony Barboza
May 9, 2009

A brick wall separated Julio Perez's childhood home from Disneyland, where his father worked in the laundry room.

On that side was the Anaheim that America knew, the quintessential Orange County suburb where expanses of orange groves gave way to rows of 1950s tract homes and a signature theme park.

 

• 

  A new majority

On his side was the neighborhood where Perez, 30, spent his 1980s childhood: a dense, vibrant, heavily Latino island where parks filled with soccer players and families grilled carne asada. Today, his side of the wall has become the new face of Anaheim.

Anaheim's Latino population has more than tripled since 1980 and now stands at 186,000, making Orange County's second-largest city the latest to become majority Latino -- at 54.5% -- according to new census estimates.

But unlike Southern California's impoverished gateways for Latino immigration -- such as Los Angeles' Pico-Union neighborhood or Santa Ana, one of the nation's most heavily Latino large cities, whose proportion of foreign-born residents has been ranked second only to Miami's -- Anaheim is pointed toward a future as a middle-class Latino community like Whittier and Downey, demographers say.

Some, like Perez, point to the emergence of a new social order, one in which a full spectrum of Latinos can find a place, from the recent immigrant to the newly minted middle-class family.

"So maybe there's been an exodus of middle-class people from other backgrounds," said Perez, a political director for a union. "But now there's larger diversity for Latinos . . . there's more access socially."

The population shift puts Anaheim, a city of 342,000, ahead of Los Angeles and Riverside in percentage of Latino residents.

Anaheim today is a sprawling community that stretches from the upscale neighborhoods of Anaheim Hills on the east side to the cramped apartments and aging 1950s-era houses on the west. It's a place where the manicured resort district and bustling sports arenas are for tourists and the bustling flea markets and Sunday afternoon lucha libre wrestling matches are increasingly for the locals.

Jesus Cortez, 28, a Cal State Fullerton student and landscaper who has lived in west Anaheim since he was 9, recalled the neighborhood's transition as white families moved out and Latinos settled in, buying up even the nicest houses.

"It tended to be half and half, then it became the majority," he said. "Now you see more carnicerias, more taquerias."

Councilwoman Lorri Galloway attributes her reelection last fall to campaigning among Latinos in central and western Anaheim, a community she said typically has been ignored while mostly white politicians courted loyal voters in the upper-class neighborhoods in the city's east side. That won't be the case much longer, she suggests.

Anaheim's transition from a mostly white suburb to a majority Latino city parallels the dramatic changes Southern California cities have experienced as immigration surged and communities diversified.

Now, as immigration slows, demographers envision places like Anaheim emerging as stable settling grounds for Latinos rather than depots for immigrants.

In Anaheim, fewer than half of Latinos are now foreign-born. Though housing figures are not broken down by ethnicity, about half the residents own their own homes and the median annual income is a healthy $58,000.

"It's the dream of having a single-family house and a white picket fence and a dog," said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at USC.

An increase in home ownership probably was one factor propelling the rise of Latinos in Anaheim. During the housing boom earlier this decade, upwardly mobile Latinos bought homes in record numbers, freeing up space for more recent immigrants in apartments.

"Now it's a heterogenous mix," said Louis DeSipio, a professor of political science and Chicano/Latino studies at UC Irvine.

"It's two things: Latinos moving in and non-Latinos moving out."

Leading the way for change was the lure of jobs in manufacturing, service and technology, which gave the city the second-highest job growth in Orange County over the last 15 years, just behind Irvine, according to a report by the Orange County Business Council..

Unlike Santa Ana, Maywood or Huntington Park, which have all-Latino city councils, the new majority in Anaheim has made few political gains.

"We don't have the juice up there in the City Council," said Amin David, leader of Los Amigos, an Orange County Latino advocacy group that meets in Anaheim once a week for breakfast. "We don't even have an entree. For anything to happen, of course, it takes three votes, and we don't get much progress."

David said it may be time for Latino representation to be boosted by carving the city into council districts. Currently, all five council seats are elected at large.

Latinos have not always felt entirely at home in Anaheim, which was founded as a colony of German farmers in 1857 and has a history of racial tension. In the 1920s, four Ku Klux Klan members were elected to the City Council and briefly took control of the government, earning the city an uncomfortable nickname: "Klanaheim." Decades later, in 1978, strife between the Latino community and police erupted in a riot at Little People's Park, where charges of police brutality led to reforms in the Anaheim Police Department.

You'd never know that now looking at the Anaheim Marketplace, a spacious indoor swap meet where droves of mostly Spanish-speaking families browse hundreds of stalls, shopping for jewelry, clothing and pets, and show up in force for beauty pageants, quinceañeras, weddings and carnivals.

For many of them, Anaheim is feeling more like home. A place to move up, open a business and buy a first home.

But even for entrepreneurs like Jose Luis Quintana, 41, who moved here from Guerrero, Mexico, 20 years ago and owns a gift shop in a stall named "Joseph's Place," progress is measured.

Anaheim today, he reflected, is a more comfortable place than decades ago, when he worked painting cars and was one of the few Mexicans in his apartment building. But there are growing pains.

"It's a suburb that's developing into a city," he said, sitting behind the counter, listening to a radio. "We're a bigger population now. We're more crowded and there's less space."

tony.barboza@latimes.com

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Comment: Hell... I ain't never been to Disneyland anyways~!!!

Education for Liberation!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka: Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Yahoo Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com

http://anhglobal.ning.com/group/humanerightsagenda
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
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Concern over Latino evangelical leader's call to boycott U.S. census + Comment

http://www.pe.com/localnews/immigration/stories/PE_News_Local_S_census10.23eebb7.html

Concern over Latino evangelical leader's call to boycott U.S. census

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0:00 PM PDT on Saturday, May 9, 2009

By DAVID OLSON
The Press-Enterprise

As immigrant and Latino organizations gear up to urge illegal immigrants to participate in the 2010 census, a Latino evangelical leader is telling them to boycott the count unless comprehensive immigration reform is enacted.

The Rev. Miguel Rivera, chairman of the Washington-based National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, appears to be alone among national Latino leaders in promoting a boycott.

But his call worries immigration-rights advocates, who say it could lead to fewer services in immigrant communities and hurt efforts to increase Latino political influence. Census population counts are used to shape congressional districts and help determine where federal funding goes.

Local immigration activists are planning outreach campaigns to encourage census participation. The Census Bureau is working with community groups across the country to promote the benefits of filling out the census.

"Unfortunately the comments and posture taken by (the coalition) may very well have a negative impact and cause more trepidation in a community that was already naturally hesitant to participate in the census," said the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the Sacramento-based National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, an evangelical group that supports a full census count.

Rodriguez said even if a few hundred thousand of the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants do not participate, it could mean millions of dollars in lost funding.

The U.S. Census Bureau will begin mailing forms in March 2010. The U.S. Constitution requires the census to count everyone, whether they are legal residents or not. The census does not ask immigration status.

Many illegal immigrants fear answering an official government survey like the census or talking with a government employee, believing it could lead to deportation, said Laura Barrera, deputy director for the Census for the Los Angeles-based National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. The boycott taps into those fears, she said.

The 2000 census undercounted the Hispanic population by about 3 percent, Barrera said. The Census Bureau estimates the 2000 Hispanic undercount was less than 1 percent, down from an undercount of about 5 percent in 1990, said Raul Cisneros, a census spokesman.

Barrera's group is launching a Spanish-language media campaign in October to reassure immigrants and others that census answers are not shared with other government agencies. Census employees face fines or jail for disclosing information.

The group is also setting up a hotline to address census concerns, said Barrera, who called Rivera "irresponsible" for threatening a boycott.

Rivera said he is not convinced the census information will remain confidential, despite the law. And he believes that population data from the census can be combined with voter statistics to determine which areas have the largest illegal-immigrant populations, which could lead to harsh anti-illegal-immigrant laws and Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdowns.

Rivera said he hopes the boycott threat helps lead to a push for legalization of millions of illegal immigrants.

"If governors want to have that funding in their states, and if mayors want to have that funding in their cities, they need to stop looking the other way and roll up their sleeves and put pressure on Congress to bring about comprehensive immigration reform," he said.

Population data from the census help determine how about $300 billion in federal funding each year is distributed. A smaller population for a city, county or state leads to less funding.

Census data also is used to form congressional districts, which are created based upon total population, including illegal immigrants.

For the first time this year, census forms will be mailed to about 13 million households -- about half of all Latino homes -- in English and Spanish, Cisneros said.

Armando Navarro, a professor of ethnic studies at UC Riverside and coordinator of the Riverside-based National Alliance for Human Rights, said an undercount of illegal immigrants would lead to less political power for immigrants and Latinos by underestimating their numerical clout.

Navarro said he and other activists are planning Inland town-hall meetings to encourage immigrants to participate in the census. The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino is planning its own outreach campaign, said diocesan spokesman John Andrews.

Emilio Amaya, executive director of the San Bernardino Community Service Center, which will distribute pro-census leaflets in immigrant communities, predicted Rivera's boycott call will be outweighed by campaigns by local community groups to encourage participation in the census.

Navarro said illegal immigrants, who cannot vote, do not have the political leverage to force immigration reform through a boycott threat. Instead, the boycott call may backfire, causing more anti-immigrant sentiment, he said.

"This says one thing to me: That in the absence of any organized strategy, they come up with something so desperate that they don't think of the cost-benefit and the cause and effect," Navarro said.

Reach David Olson at 951-368-9462 or dolson@PE.com

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Comment: Rev. Rivera should stick to his pulpit and passing the basket as he shears the sheep. He is patently demented when it comes to connected realities of working with the upcoming 2010 Census. I can relate to his call for a new for real comprehension immigration reform, but the idea of non participating in the U.S. Census is counter-productive.

If it was up to the reactionary-racist right wing elements in society they would be glad if none of us Latinos-Chicanos-Raza people were counted!

I agree with Professor Navarro. We are always under-counted anyways. I have lived in Sacramento, California almost all my life ~ other than when I lived in Phoenix and myself participated in the U.S. Census as a census poller. I myself have never been contacted by the local U.S. Census Bureau. We need to find out where our local U.S. Census officials are at wnat what they are doing to GET OUT THE CENSUS COUNT! We already are routinely and systematically undercounted by the U.S. in the millions of us!!!

Education for Liberation!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka: Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Yahoo Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com

http://anhglobal.ning.com/group/humanerightsagenda
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
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White House Cheat Sheet: Obama's Latino Courtship: Wash Post

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/cheat-sheet/050809white-house-cheat-sheet.html?wprss=thefix

White House Cheat Sheet: Obama's Latino Courtship

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is one of the leaders of the Obama Administration's aggressive outreach to Hispanics. Photo by John Gress of Reuters.

Today's Spanish-language town hall meeting hosted by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is the latest evidence of the White House's active courtship of Latinos -- the nation's largest minority group and a (still) sleeping giant in electoral politics.

The town hall, which will be anchored by Univision's Edna Schmidt and will focus on the swine flu outbreak, is being billed by the White House as "an unprecedented effort to engage our nation's largest minority group."

Luis Miranda, director of Hispanic media for the White House, said outreach to Latinos has been a "priority" for Obama.

The town hall comes several weeks after Obama traveled to Trinidad & Tobago to attend the Summit of the Americas -- a major geopolitical event in the Spanish speaking world -- and staged the first bilingual press briefing in White House history. Obama has also granted one-on-one interviews to Univision anchors Maria Elena Salinas and Jorge Ramos in the days since being elected president.

The biggest test of Obama's commitment to the Latino community, however, may well come over the next few months as he chooses the next Supreme Court justice and decides how hard to push a comprehensive immigration reform proposal -- both issues of critical importance to the Hispanic community.

"So far so good, said Gil Meneses, a Democratic consultant, of the Obama administration's effort at Latino outreach. "All eyes on immigration reform and of course, [Supreme Court] nominee. That will be a milestone for Latino community"

Already a number of Latino legal groups have been making the case for Obama to make history by naming the first Hispanic American to the Supreme Court, filling an opening caused by Justice David Souter's retirement from the bench.

"I can think of no better moment for him to nominate the Supreme Court's first Hispanic and someone who will uphold our Constitution's promise of equal justice and freedom for all," said Henry Solano, president and general counsel of the Mexican America Legal Defense & Education Fund (MALDEF).

Several Hispanics appear to be under active consideration including 2nd District Court of Appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor who isregarded by many as the current frontrunner for the nomination.

As for immigration reform, there are conflicting reports of how high a priority it is for the president.

The New York Times reported in April that Obama was ready to put his political capital behind efforts to overhaul the immigration system but White House aides cautioned that nothing had changed from the president's initial stance that immigration reform was one of a handful of priorities for the administration.

Immigration reform is a dicey political issue as it is of tremendous importance to the Latino community but is viewed far more skeptically by non-Hispanic voters -- particularly those living in Rust Belt states where the loss of blue-collar jobs is blamed -- broadly -- on America's immigration policies. (The Post's E.J. Dionne wrote a terrific column on the political perils of immigration reform earlier this week.)

What is beyond dispute is that the Latino vote is a critical piece of both parties' electoral math in future national elections.

In 2004 then President George W. Bush stunned the political world by winning 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, repeating the successes he had demonstrated in courting this community as the governor of Texas.

Four years later, however, President Obama crushed Sen. John McCain among Hispanics -- 67 percent to 31 percent -- despite the fact that Obama had struggled to win over Latino voters during his prolonged primary fight against then Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Obama is working to consolidate his demonstrated strength in the Hispanic community in advance of his 2012 reelection race. But, how he handles his Supreme Court nominee and immigration reform will do much to inform how he -- and Democrats more generally -- are perceived in Latino circles in coming years......

 

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Education for Liberation!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka: Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Yahoo Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com
http://anhglobal.ning.com/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
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