Political movement looks to Latina Voting Power as the guiding light for progressive politics
By Andy Furillo
In the heat of another presidential election year, Communities for a New California (CNC) is leaning heavily on Latinas to frame the stakes for rural and working-class voters when they go to the polls in November.
Whether it’s the cost of housing, the quality of water, reproductive freedom, decent wages for honest work, or many other issues, women—and especially Latinas, as the CEOs of their own families—wield the power to determine the outcomes of the many state, local, and federal races on the ballot.
Such has been CNC’s thinking since it launched the “Lúcete Latina” campaign three years ago, based on growing numbers that have made Latinas the single largest and perhaps most influential demographic voting group in California.
“As mothers, as daughters, as tias, we carry a lot of responsibility in our families, and I think we need to understand civic engagement as a part of taking care of our families. We can’t afford to sit on the sidelines.”
Araceli García Muñoz, Former organizer at Communities for a New California, student McGeorge School of Law
“I’m grateful that there are people working in organizations like CNC who recognize the value of engaging Latinas,” says Aracelí Garcia Muñoz, a former CNC staffer and lifelong resident of California’s Central Valley who is currently pursuing a Juris doctor degree at the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento. “As mothers, as daughters, as tias, we carry a lot of responsibility in our families, and I think we need to understand civic engagement as a part of taking care of our families. We can’t afford to sit on the sidelines.”
Latinas now account for 3.2 million of the state’s 22.1 million voters or one out of every six California voters. This has propelled Latinos as a whole to majority status in 16 of the state’s congressional districts, including in two with hotly contested seats in the San Joaquin Valley—the 13th District that includes San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, and Madera Counties, and the 22nd District which included Kings, Tulare, and Kern Counties—that could determine control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
CNC organizers have launched major door-to-door canvassing and phone banking operations to ensure voters in these and other California districts understand the issues at stake.
For Imelda Ramírez, no issue is more important than the fundamental necessity of life—water.
Growing up in Hanford, Ramirez’s family knew the water at home was unfit for drinking. They would never have thought it was the same at her elementary school until tests showed that its water was also contaminated, forcing families to pay for their own bottled water to supply their children for the school day.
hometown of Hanford was so
contaminated that it was undrinkable;
now, with the Community Water
Center Action Fund, she advocates for
safe, affordable drinking water for all.
Photo courtesy of Imelda Ramirez
These days, Ramírez is asking questions, and if she doesn’t like the answers, she’s doing something about it as the field director of the Community Water Center Action Fund in Visalia.
“We make sure families have the information they need on water issues,” Ramírez says. “My role is to endorse and elect what we’re calling the water champions who will push water policy at the state, federal, and local levels and make sure that we elect the right people who know that water is for communities and not just for agriculture.”
The Lúcete Latina campaign is moving to the forefront to provide voters with a deeper understanding of the crucial issues that families face, and the different positions taken by different candidates.
Who supports a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body? Who favors raising the state’s minimum wage to $18 an hour? Who wants the state to create an apprenticeship program to prepare young people for quality jobs at good pay? Who will fight to oppose exclusionary zoning laws that restrict home ownership opportunities for working families? Who will protect tenants? Who supports the aspirations of immigrants? Who will curb corporate polluters? Who believes that federal infrastructure funds should help protect our neighborhoods from climate change? Who will defend the Affordable Care Act?
To sort out the issues, Communities for a New California is determined through Lúcete Latina to build authentic relationships with Latina voters, listen to their needs, and earn their votes to ensure the future for their neighborhoods is clean, safe, just and free.
“All those issues, they are all really abstract ideas,” says Muñoz. “But they are extremely personal to our day-to-day lives, and they are things that we can have an impact on simply by voting.”
For more information on the Lucete Latina campaign, go to www.anewcalifornia.org/l_cete_latina.
