Voces de Wisconsin
Voces de wisconsin
Photo by Michelle Navarro
Latinx voters organize ahead of 2020 election
Larissa’s dedication to political advocacy in the Latinx community took on new urgency in 2010, when she was only 15.
“All I remember was that my dad opened the door, and they were looking for someone that we didn’t even know — so they took him,” says Larissa, who has asked that her last name not be used. “My dad has no criminal record, no anything … Me and my brother were there, so it was not a good situation to go through.”
Larissa’s experience allowed her to recognize the lack of resources and support for Latinx individuals in her community. She realized that she was one of many children who witnessed their parents be taken away by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
President Donald Trump’s focus on immigration policy in 2016, such as increasing the presence of ICE and rhetoric toward immigrants, calling them “rapists” and “killers,” was and still remains a center of concern for Latinx immigrant communities. Many organizations began to realize the importance of getting more Latinx individuals who are eligible to vote to the polls for the 2018 midterm and the upcoming 2020 presidential election.
According to the Pew Research Center, in September 2016, Wisconsin had the 25th largest Hispanic population in the nation with approximately 370,000 Hispanics residing in Wisconsin. About 42 percent of Hispanics in Wisconsin are eligible to vote, compared to 80 percent of the state’s white population.
Despite the large number of Hispanic people in the state, a lack of representation for Latinx issues and policies persists. Throughout Wisconsin, communities of color have faced racial disparities, according to a WalletHub study that ranked Wisconsin the lowest for racial progress in most categories.
Centro Hispano is an organization that offers resources and services for Dane County’s Latinx community. It’s also the meeting place for Voces de la Frontera Action.
Community organizing to mobilize the Latinx vote has also had impacts on past elections. According to Benjamin Marquez, a political science professor at UW-Madison, the Mexican-American movement in the 1960s, known as the Chicano Movement, was very active in the election of President John F. Kennedy. The largest and oldest Hispanic organization in the country, the League of United Latin American Citizens, has also historically encouraged Latinx people to register and vote.
Larissa believed that her community was in need and wanted to become more politically active to organize for change in the next decade.
The experience with her father was “really, really traumatizing,” Larissa says. “And the only people that were there for us to support in any way was Voces de la Frontera.”
When this community organization opened its doors and supported Larissa and her family, she was motivated to volunteer and fight against the issues that her community was facing. She, like many others, decided to support efforts to empower the Wisconsin Latinx voice through political advocacy work in community-based organizations.
Spanish for “Voices from the Border,” Voces de la Frontera was originally a newspaper from Austin, Texas, that was brought to Wisconsin by co-founder Christine Neumann-Ortiz. Inspired by advocacy work that was being done in the community, Voces de la Frontera became a membership-based community organization, powered by “low-wage workers, immigrants and youth whose mission is to protect and expand civil rights and workers’ rights through leadership development, community organizing and empowerment,” according to the organization’s mission statement. Electoral work in the organization falls under Voces de la Frontera Action, the advocacy arm of Voces de la Frontera.
Behind these organizations are people who recognize the power that the Latinx vote has in Wisconsin. Eloisa Gomez was first politically active when she was 16 years old, and after Trump was elected, she knew it was her time to start organizing again in Milwaukee.
Gomez, now in her 60s, reached out to the Wisconsin League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan organization that works on issues that concern its members and the overall public. The League of Women Voters of the United States specifically works to encourage active participation in government by informing voters on current issues. Gomez saw potential and reached out to former colleagues who were involved with the league for a chance to create a new initiative that would focus primarily on the Latinx community in areas that needed the most support.
Centro Hispano is decorated with posters from elections, campaigns and demonstrations important to the Latinx community in Madison.
“The highest number of Latinx residents in the state of Wisconsin is on the south side of Milwaukee, and I wanted to focus on that,” Gomez says.
The Comité por el Voto Latino/Latinx Voter Outreach Team was created. Its purpose is to increase the number of Milwaukee Latinx voters by primarily targeting Milwaukee’s south side through utilizing the League of Women Voters-Milwaukee County’s resources, volunteers and team members’ own connections and resources, according to the Latinx Voter Outreach Team 2019 Action Plan Summary.
A main issue that Gomez and the Latinx Voter Outreach identified was the lack of bilingual resources, leaving out eligible voters who only spoke Spanish.
“There was hardly any bilingual literature available, not only in Milwaukee, which was surprising completely, but several of us went onto the California and Texas websites to look for literature in Spanish on their websites. And we hardly found anything,” Gomez says.
The Latinx Voter Outreach team took on the task and began translating register information themselves. They created a 2018 plan of action for the election and committed to translating, printing and distributing the now-bilingual resources on voter registration and education to parishes and community organizations of Milwaukee’s south side. Their hope was to enable the Latinx communities to register and vote in the 2018 governor’s election.
Voces de la Frontera and Voces de la Frontera Action also made large strides in time for the 2018 election. According to a statement from Voces de la Frontera Action, they developed a relationship-driven voter engagement strategy for the 2018 election cycle, and it successfully mobilized hard-to-reach communities.
Fabi Maldonado, statewide political director at Voces de la Frontera Action, describes the relational voter program as a tool that allows them to build personal relationships with people using relationships the volunteers and members already have.
“These people, essentially, who are part of our community, have these personal relationships with people already,” Maldonado says. “So like their brothers or sisters or aunts or moms, uncles, and we’re going to be texting each other … letting them know this is when the April election is going on.”
In under six weeks, Voces de la Frontera Action organized 410 of their members to create a network of 5,600 Latinx voters, 67 percent of whom were new voters, unlikely to be engaged by political parties and candidates, according to a statement from Voces de la Frontera Action. The group organized the largest Latinx relational voter program in the state and second largest in the country. This work contributed to the increase in Latinx voter turnout by 33 percent, compared to the midterm elections in 2014.
Exit poll data has also suggested that the Latinx and black vote of Milwaukee made the difference for those working to defeat former Gov. Scott Walker. During his time as governor, Wisconsin had one of the largest racial achievement gaps in the nation. In the 2018 governor’s election, Walker’s campaign advertisements highlighted now-Gov. Tony Evers’ support for giving undocumented immigrants the ability to qualify for driver’s licenses and in-state tutition, two significant issues that Voces de la Frontera Action is also addressing for the upcoming presidental election.
The increase in Latinx turnout for Evers’ victory showed residents such as Larissa that change is possible — and possibly near — for the 2020 presidential election.
Marquez says political parties are the ones mobilizing voters, especially on a national level. “There hasn’t been enough of an appeal to Latino voters in terms of their interests and not just — not just a nod, you know, speaking Spanish, [and] saying, ‘I speak Spanish, too,’” he says.
Voces de la Frontera and the Latinx Voter Outreach Team in the League of Women Voters have made an impact in the turnout, but Marquez believes that for 2020, it is fundamental that candidates and their campaigns effectively reach out to organizations to continue mobilizing the Latinx vote.
As for now, the Latinx Voter Outreach team plans to continue increasing the turnout in 2020. Gomez and the women behind the team have identified about 20 nonprofit agencies in their targeted areas. They hope to continue sharing bilingual voting information and registration materials, as well as build stronger community ties to encourage people who can to vote.
At Voces de la Frontera Action, Maldonado plans to continue expanding its relational voter program. “What we’re going to be doing for the 2020 election is building 23,000 border blocks — which was [President Donald Trump’s] margin of victory — of people of color, the young people of color, with a Latinx focus for pro-immigrant, rural Wisconsinites,” Maldonado says.
Larissa helps lead the Voces de la Frontera meeting on Oct. 19.
Larissa reflects on the growth that Voces de la Frontera has made since she first started and is prepared to continue the fight with Voces de la Frontera Action for yet another increase on voter turnouts in Latinx communities.
“It was a group of six, 10, maybe 20 people at the most knocking on doors, going up to churches going outside El Rey, which is a big Mexican store in Milwaukee,” Larissa says. “We will go and stand out there and start talking about it with people, and people will be interested … You have to start from somewhere. If you don’t, then we’re never gonna accomplish anything. So it’s really, really important to stay active.”
Meet Gilberto Osuna-Leon
In 2017, President Trump ordered to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA. This put approximately 800,000 recipients of DACA, often referred to as ‘Dreamers’, at risk of deportation. Lawsuits were filed against the termination of DACA and it will be discussed in the Supreme Court in Nov. 2019. I spoke with DACA recipient Gilberto Osuna-Leon to learn more about DACA and what it means to be a ‘Dreamer’
Gilberto Osuna-Leon: My name is Gilberto Osuna-Leon. I am a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying political science and on the pre-med track and I identify as a Dreamer.
Navarro: For those who are listening and maybe not understand what a dreamer is, could you explain, you know, how do you define a dreamer what is a dreamer?
Osuna-Leon: In technical terms, a dreamer would be someone who receive the benefits of being documented. And that’s applying through a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. And essentially, this grant some social security number, the ability to get a driver’s license to be able to work in the United States, and many other benefits. And the idea with dreamers is that they’re able to matriculate, or at least more likely be able to admit tricky late into college, receive jobs and just have a better future, especially since it wasn’t their initial decision to come to the United States in the first place. And since they’re facing a huge disparity, this program, like hopes to satisfy what Whatever it takes for them to achieve their dreams. Everyone refers to recipients of DACA as dreamers. But in my opinion, anyone who is undocumented can be a dreamer.
Navarro: What issues as a dreamer do you see you face whether that is you know, overall in your daily life?
Osuna-Leon: Yeah, you know, so it didn’t become readily apparent until I became older. So I immigrated to United States when I was three years old and we went to Los Angeles, everything was fine. We can honestly find any stable life in Los Angeles and my parents struggled to find a nice sort of stable income. So we went to Madison, Wisconsin, where life was a little bit more quiet, immigration wasn’t as intense. And also we were able to find jobs like on the low key here that didn’t require any sort of like documentation or proof that we are allowed to be here that we are allowed to work here. So we found stability in Madison, Wisconsin. And so I grew up in the education system in Madison, and I didn’t notice that I required anything or I knew that I was on. I knew that I was undocumented. But I did not need any documentation to be able to work when I was in kindergarten, for example, I didn’t need to prove anything. But come High School. My friends all started to work and they all started to apply to internship scholarships, they all started to apply to colleges. And then I got on a computer, I started to do the same thing. And they were all asking me for all sorts of documentation that I had no idea about. So I went up to my parents, I went up to my family and ask them for these things. And they said that we don’t have them. So once it came to applying to these things, I just couldn’t and I wasn’t able to receive any type of benefit. And now that I’m in college, I’m also noticing that there is especially since like the Trump Trump administration was elected into office, there’s a huge Zena phobic and like anti immigrant dialogue has been started and it’s just terrifying. To live a life where you feel like you are at risk. DACA entitles me to being protected from deportation, but it doesn’t feel that way.
Navarro: Aside from thinking about your status, you also have to think about your parents. What does that entail about having to also worry about your family members?
Osuna-Leon: Yeah, like I mentioned before, I have DACA so I have certain benefits that allow me to have certain things like a driver’s license. I have to worry about my parents who are undocumented because they don’t they don’t have The ability to work legal legal, quote unquote, legally here. And they also don’t have a driver’s license. There was an instance where we went up to bear boo, Wisconsin, we went to Devil’s Lake and my dad was driving. We had a good time we spent the entire day there. But when we left, we got pulled over and he was in the driver’s seat. And obviously, he didn’t have a license. I was in the backseat. And I was in about to like, jump right in front of the in front of my dad and like, take the driver’s seat, right, because I did have a license at the time, but he was driving, and I was sleeping in the back. But we were pulled over and the officer asked him for his license or whatever documentation he had. And since my dad doesn’t even speak English in the first place, he just like did not know what to say. And I was in the backseat, just like, I didn’t know what to say either. Because my dad obviously did not have a driver’s license. We didn’t have anything about proved that he does have anything at home. So I was just sitting there frozen. And my dad was trying to spit out whatever English words he knew. And so the officer just went back to his car and then he looked at my dad’s license plate. And he noticed that my dad had been pulled over like, one time before. So he came back and he obviously gave us a ticket for not having our license, but we are for not having license and he not threatened but he kind of like stated that if we were pulled over one more time, my dad could be incarcerated. So he made a switch, because I had to license my dad went in the backseat. But as I started driving, I just like could not, like handle my emotions, like we had to pull over and dislike. Yeah, I started bawling. goes, Yeah, it’s not a pleasant experience.
Navarro: What do you wish more people knew about people like you? What do you wish people knew more about dreamers?
Osuna-Leon: I guess I just want to say that, for dreamers, everyone has their own unique experience. My experience does not. It’s not a general realization of what everyone experiences. With everyone experiences with being undocumented, you know, I had the privilege of having a sort of stable income here in Madison, I had the privilege of attending UW Madison, I had the privilege of just having a quality education, honestly. And not a lot of people have that. And people have to drop out of college just like being able to have a stable life. So I’m very privileged in the sense that I get to be a student and I don’t have to intensely just work all the time. I can actually focus on my studies on my aspirations and just be human like, have fun with my friends and go to a party or like do normal things. So in a sense, I have that privilege.
Navarro: How is this experience shaped what you want to do in life like your actual dreams?
Osuna-Leon: Yeah, so my status has been a huge part of why I chose to pursue this path, and why I want to go into a college education in the first place. My entire k 12 experience I’ve always said that. I don’t need a college education. I’m just going to go back to Mexico I I don’t need to live this life. Here, but my parents came here for a reason right to be able to give me this opportunity. And so I once I received, it kind of propelled me in a certain direction. And so like, before my freshman year of college, I received a scholarship called Latino united college education scholarships. And it told me to, obviously an award but also, they invited me to a gala, and other professionals in the community in the Madison community came out to the gala. And they basically wanted to see like all of the recipients I got the scholarship. Keep in mind that this is like one of the only scholarships I could qualify for at the time that I saw. And so when I got it, I went to the gala and at the gala, I spoke about my dreams of maybe becoming like something within like the healthcare community. I didn’t necessarily know that I wanted to become a physician that I didn’t wanted to do medicine at all. But I just knew that I cared about helping people and I grew up with a family that was uninsured for a very long time. So I know that kind of disparity is very impactful in immigrant family especially so I kind of said my aspirations at the gala and someone in the in the gala their name was Dr but received a good run and she approached me after I said all of that and she offered to mentor me so we met up like about a month later and keep in mind that she is like very I don’t know if I’m allowed to say but like badass in the community like she everyone calls her like the doctor like lava Dora Islamic but I get my son. And she does a lot of dope work. Surrounding like immigrant communities and even just like Latino community in general, like LGBTQ rights and all of that stuff. So she mentored me I shadow Her in the clinic I’ve been shadowing her in the clinic for the past three years, I’ve been working with her like on public health events in Madison, like educating adolescents on basic contraception, education integration, helping women who aren’t aware of like breast cancer, how to prevent that. And once I saw that helping the community was kind of like something that I wanted to do. I wanted to become like her. So I started to do this whole pre med thing and decided that becoming a physician was my dream.
Navarro: What are your future hopes for DACA students in general, what do you hope to see, that happens?
Osuna-Leon: Although it might be very far of my, like the optimal like scenario that I could think of is that there will be a pathway to citizenship for all undocumented individuals. They don’t have to be dark dreamers, TPS, they don’t have to be anything. They just have the right to be able to apply for citizenship and not quote, unquote, do it the right way, but just be able to have the opportunity to do so. And hopefully in a timely, efficient manner, not one that takes years and years when they already don’t have a stable life.
Navarro: What’s what’s keeping you going and why is it worth it?
Osuna-Leon: I find everything that I’m going through, were there and now just because my parents made that decision, and I completely trust them, but also because there’s a community of people just like me who are facing the same institutional barriers that I’ve faced and I need to essentially overcome them to be able to pull my community up with me. And I think that in itself is what’s keeping me going. And it’s very difficult it’s, it honestly seems impossible sometimes but we’re doing the best we can and I believe I can get there eventually.
Michelle Navarro | Engagement Editor
Senior majoring in Journalism with Digital Studies, Chican@ & Latin@ Studies certificates
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By Sam Jones