The State of the State for Washington Latinos

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t think our nation needs some serious economic work.  The recent $8 billion dollar stimulus package is an attempt to inject federal dollars into the veins of society.  In general, the resonse to the stimulus package has been positive.  The average American stands to gain, especially if the average American happens to be a first time home owner or car buyer.

Part of the stimuls package includes expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit to offset the economic burden for those suffering the most from this crisis: the low income-earning families.

This is great.  Our state should follow this tactic.  By instating a state wide EITC and making the federal EITC more accessible to Washington’s workers, we have a chance to pull out of the economic crisis.

One of my friends once told me that he didn’t think there was any point to being an activist at Whitman. He explained that he was here to learn and that he didn’t want anything interfering with that. He also doubted that anything he did in Walla Walla would have any sort of national or statewide impact.

Last week I saw this friend and told him that together with my fellow researchers, I had spent an hour in the Washington Secretary of State’s office informing the Secretary’s staff on how they could do better outreach to Latinos. They were asking us questions, looking to us, undergraduate students, as experts.

My research in Walla Walla was defied my expectations. I had always thought of research as a process of reading a ton of information and then compiling that information into a report. While “researching” strategies to engaging Latinos in the Walla Walla community, I attended visited different homes, attended neighborhood meetings and developed strong relationships with the people I was “researching.”

I was nervous while writing my forty-page report, but my anxiety didn’t stem from the grade I would receive but rather from an urgent desire to do justice to the people I was writing about and present their issue in the best manner possible. The true test of my research came when I communicated that research first to the community and then to policy-makers.

I have learned more from my community-based research that I could have possibly learned in any class. I met incredible people I never would have known otherwise and discovered abilities I never thought I had.

Social change doesn’t require a degree. As college students, we are uniquely positioned with resources and freedom that we can use to make change.

Washington’s giant budget deficit means cutting a lot of programs, and therefore eliminating many services that people have come to rely on. Another option, which my research in Quincy, WA identified specifically with educational programs and civic engagement, is the way that a community-based organization made to fill one purpose can often serve double duty because it is already positioned to provide other programs. This is especially important for minority communities, such Latinos.

This seems like an easy ‘Yes’ choice across the board, because the more liberal thinkers love the wealth of program options it offers, while the more conservative thinkers hone in on the economic efficiency.

What I found in Olympia, though, was interesting. Many people have difficulty seeing the crucial partnership aspect of having community-based organizations either support or take over previously government run services. While legislators are happy to pass the responsibility for these projects to local organizations, they tend to not want to pass even a small portion of the funding already earmarked for those projects, saying that the state really can’t afford to be funding any more programs (it is left unstated how these small programs can expect to finance their newfound responsibilities).

If you can spend half as much to support an organization that provides not just the one, but multiple services, isn’t that actually funding fewer programs while providing more resources?

One thing which stuck strongly with me from the trip to Olympia is how important it is for legislators look not just at cost-cutting changes, but rather at truly cost-saving options when working to tackle the looming budget dilemma.