The State of the State for Washington Latinos

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.

As my colleague Alisa Larsen-Xu pointed out in her post To Cut or Not to Cut, in this time of severe economic crisis it is incredibly important that we figure out which programs are most crucial for government funding. I would add that it is also crucial that we find ways government can influence policy without spending money.

Alisa noted that there is a neighborhood organization in Walla Walla called Commitment to Community (C2C) that has had great success in engaging Latinos in the greater community. I also worked with C2C but took a different approach, analyzing their strategies of engagement to figure out why they have had such success.

I found that the C2C strategy can be divided into three categories: trust, empowerment and a sense of common group identity. C2C builds trusting relationships in the neighborhoods by literally going door to door and talking to people about their needs. They find out what people want and then help them to make it happen; such as painting murals over graffiti. By bringing the neighborhood together to fix problems they all face (such as crime) they create a sense of common group identity.

So what happens if we apply these strategies to government?

One of the things we asked legislators in Olympia to do was to encourage more Latino political participation through the provision of voter education materials in Spanish. The representatives were quick to tell us that they couldn’t help us because of a lack of funds.

What if instead of asking them for funds, we asked them for leadership? And not just any type of leadership but a type that utilizes the above mentioned strategies, trust, empowerment and common group identity.

What if those legislators all went back to their home districts and made a real effort to get to know their Latino constituents? What if they had a town hall in Spanish where they responded to their constituents questions? What if they worked with the community to set up volunteer booths where Spanish-speakers could go to have their ballots translated, thereby avoiding printing costs? What if they did outreach to their non-Latino constituents and told them that  problems the Latino community faces are problems that we all face, thereby creating a sense of common group identity?

It is clear that something needs to change. Perhaps we need to stop looking at our representatives as mere piggy banks and start looking to them to provide the type of leadership that they were elected for.

voter education programs are sorely needed

If there is one thing that the many meetings we went to as a group from Seattle to Olympia taught me is that there are already laws in place to empower communities, but very little enforcement. In these laws, one finds great potential for minority empowerment, but without enforcement, they seem great, but fail to materialize. Take for instance RCW 28B which is already in the books, a section of this law requires state funded institutions of higher education to conduct voter outreach and provide voter education programs. Many institutions shirk at the requirement and fulfill it by merely placing a link on their website.

The research conducted by Tim Shadix and myself on Latino accessibility to the vote shows that vote education programs are key to increasing voter turnout. The problem is urgent: in Walla Walla Latinos are roughly 20% of the population but are only 2.5% of those who turnout on Election Day. In Pasco the figure is even more startling, though Latinos make up 56% of the city’s population, they are only 5% of those who turn out to vote. For instance, the gross Latino disenfranchisement in Franklin County could be greatly reduced if Columbia Basin College were to do more outreach.

Colleges have a tremendous potential of doing voter education program. In fact the office of the Secretary of State even has a campus outreach program in effect. However, it’s only been in place at one college campus. The problem is the person in charge of the campus outreach program already has many other, essential, responsibilities on her plate. Colleges need to take more initiative, and the state needs to be more proactive in prodding them to truly enforce the law.

Our projects:
• Raising the standard of living (income, housing, education)
• Voting rights
• Civic engagement
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