Politics

The Montgomery County Board of Elections' Multicultural Recruitment and Voter Education Committee extends to you all an invitation to attend our next working session, Wednesday, December 3, 2003, at the Board located at 751 Twinbrook Parkway, Rockville, Maryland. To facilitate your participation and attendance, the committee will meet at two different times during the same day; 3PM or 7PM.
Multicultural Recruitment and Voter Education Committee has been created to raise awareness, increase multicultural voter participation and recruitment of bilingual poll workers through voter education, prior to the 2004 Presidential Elections. Please RSVP as soon as possible to prepare packets for distribution.
Your participation, attendance and expertise are much sought after. I hope you can fit the following community effort into your overextended schedule. Thank you once again and much luck in all of your present endeavors.

Regards, Dr. Gilberto A. Zelaya II; Multicultural Outreach Liaison; Montgomery County Board of Elections; (Office) 240.777.8532; (Cellular) 240.271.5298; (Fax) 240.777-8505

With the participation of many Maryland elected officials, Dean supporters gave him a fundraiser at the Wyndham hotel, downtown Baltimore, on November 17th. Exhuberant feelings filled the hotel and a park across from it when the candidate showed up. More than $100,000 were raised in two hours.

As supporters cheered the victories of candidates such as County Councilman Thomas E. Perez (D-Dist. 5) of Takoma Park, school board member Gabriel Romero (Dist. 1) of Montgomery Village and Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez (D-Dist. 18) of Chevy Chase, others watched the scene with a wary eye, concerned that as the campaign posters came down, so would the sense of enthusiasm and empowerment that had mobilized the voting group. Would elected officials and community leaders be able to keep the momentum going, or would Latino voters become disillusioned with failed initiatives and broken promises?

Today, many of those skeptics say they are more than pleased with the first-year performance of elected officials and with gains made on the initiatives and issues that brought people to the polls last year.

Citing the strides made toward driver's licenses and in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants, property impact taxes to alleviate overcrowding in schools, and other issues of concern to Latino voters, many political observers say the sense of empowerment is anything but waning. And organizers and activists at the most local levels say there is still much work to be done.

Remembering their roots

"We (the advocate grass root community activist) have every intention of reminding them (yes, that means you Ana, Tomas and Gabriel) of where they came from and who they are," wrote Pilar Torres and Nancy Navarro, executive co-directors of the child advocacy nonprofit Centro Familia, in a December 2002 letter to The Gazette exhorting Latino leaders to remember their commitment to the community that helped to elect them.

A year later, Torres said those leaders had met her expectations.

"If I had to give [Perez] a report card, I'd give him an A," she said.

Torres also said that Gutierrez had taken a "tremendous risk" by fighting for the in-state tuition and driver's license bills at a time when national security concerns have many politicians skittish to talk about immigrant issues.

"Not too many people are willing to speak out on behalf of immigrant communities right now," Torres said. "It's considered unpatriotic."

Political watchers cited the progress made on issues of importance to working-class and immigrant groups as proof that the results of last year's elections are more than just skin-deep.

At the state level, a bill that would have allowed the Motor Vehicle Administration to accept foreign documents such as passports and consular identifications from driver's license applicants passed both the House and the Senate. So did a bill that would grant in-state tuition rates to graduates of Maryland high schools regardless of immigration status. (Both were vetoed by the governor.) Bills requiring language interpreters at state agencies and courts and more money for adult education and ESOL programs also passed.

Latino voters "are becoming a very strong force to reckon with, and that has not always been there," said former County Councilwoman Gail Ewing, who represented Potomac from 1990 to 1998.

Versions of many of these initiatives had been floated long before last year's elections. But having a set of elected representatives willing to push those issues to the forefront of the discussion has made a substantial difference, activists said.

"It's an absolute advantage to have people on the inside," said Kim Propeack, advocacy director of Casa of Maryland, an organization that works for immigrants' rights. "It's just been a sea change to go down [to Annapolis] and have an office that we consider our own."

The mass turnout of Latino voters at last year's elections, and their effect on some close races -- Gutierrez won by just 134 votes -- has made other politicians take notice.

"The degree to which the non-Latino politicians are catering to that voting bloc is a leading indicator ... that Latino political clout is growing," said Blair Lee, a Silver Spring businessman and political commentator who writes a column for The Gazette. "They wouldn't be paying attention to it if it wasn't powerful, or at least potentially powerful."

Luis Chiliquinga, a construction worker who lives in Germantown and works with the Maryland Latino Coalition for Justice, said he had "absolutely" noticed an increase in communications from elected officials in the past year.

"Some of them have even sent me e-mails!" he said through a translator.

Casa of Maryland also has been contacted in the past year by state delegates looking to step up their involvement in the Latino and immigrant communities, said Executive Director Gustavo Torres.

Del. Sheila Ellis Hixson (D-Dist. 20) of Silver Spring and County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) have actively supported issues on Casa's agenda for years, he said. But officials elected last year, including Del. Victor R. Ramirez (D-Dist. 47) of Mount Rainier and U.S. Rep. Christopher Van Hollen Jr. (D-Dist. 8) of Kensington, have headed the drive to push those issues forward in their respective governing bodies, he said.

"For years and years, we were never at the table. Now we have Ana Sol and Tom Perez to bring Latino issues to the table," Torres said.

Keeping the people
connected

At least as much work is going on outside Annapolis and Rockville. Last month, about a hundred people filled the Langley Park Community Center for the annual meeting, board elections and award luncheon of the Maryland Latino Coalition for Justice.

One of the coalition's goals is to reach out more to other immigrant groups.

The county Board of Elections is recruiting multilingual residents as election judges, and is trying to boost civic engagement among new citizens outside the election season.

"If we have an individual who's voting for the first time since El Salvador, Guatemala or China, and they're voting for the first time in 2004 and there's a familiar face, that helps to form the bond between county government" and the citizens, said Gilberto Zelaya, the board's multicultural outreach liaison.

The coalition is looking to address the drivers' license and in-state tuition issues during next year's legislative sessions, and lawmakers are struggling to keep services for working-class families intact in a tough budget year.

Maintaining political organization among such a diverse constituency will also be a challenge.

"The Latinos' ability to participate [as a voting bloc] is still a question mark in my mind," Lee said. "It's a newly arrived group, it's a group that has the problems of people being so focused on just survival that they don't have the luxury of playing the political game yet."

The issues are the same

A July 2002 report by the National Council of La Raza states that Latino voters tend to identify with candidates more strongly on issues than on ethnicity. Already, the buzzwords of "Latino issues" or "Latino candidates" seem outdated to many.

Participants in town hall meetings are often surprised to learn that the issues affecting their immigrant neighbor are not all that different from their own, Perez said, and even those that seem to apply only to new residents have an impact on the community at large.

"People recognize that, 'This is my community, these are economic development issues that affect my community,'" Perez said. "If you can't get into college, you can't get as good a job, you can't make as much money and that affects a lot of things."

At Centro Familia, Pilar Torres said the gap between Latino and non-Latino voters is closing.

"Latino issues are the same issues everyone else cares about. We care about health, we care about the economy, we care about jobs," she said. "There's no difference, maybe there's just some particular dimensions that nobody had thought about before and we needed someone to put them on the table."

Maryland Hispanics for Dean

Hispanic Momentum in Maryland by Jerome Wiley Segovia

Business leaders, elected officials, hispanic activists and other empowered citizens stood up for Howard Dean Sunday, by meeting at the official launch of Maryland Hispanics For Dean, and beginning to plan an ambitious strategy to help deliver Maryland delegates to the DNC Convention in Boston next year.

The Maryland strategy will include, among other action items: a drive to educate hispanic voters about the importance of registering with a specific party, such as the Democratic party, so that they can participate in the Primary elections on March 2. A preponderance of registered hispanic voters in Montgomery County for example, are currently in the Independent column.

The meeting was MC'd by Gilberto de Jesus, while the keynote speaker was Ana Sol Gutierrez, the first elected hispanic state delegate from Maryland. Gutierrez emphasized how impressed she was when at a NALEO conference earlier in the year Governor Dean spoke very authoritatively and eloquently about his proposals regarding immigration, in response to a participant's question.

She has been on board ever since, and announced Sunday that she would commit a significant effort to helping the Dean campaign effort in Montgomery County through Maryland Hispanics for Dean.

Diego Gomez, National Activities Coordinator with Latinos For Dean, was also graciously ceded some time to speak before the assembled group, and related a trip to Iowa he had just completed hours earlier (stay tuned for Blog Entry about that trip). He asked the group to please consider participating in the upcoming National Policy Call, and to please reach out and invite at least one or two additional participants to take part in the call. See also: latinosfordean website and Dean for America website