They are coming for Trump

She's lost more than enough to Trump - Culinary Union canvasser getting out the vote.

Tim Alberta of Politico reports a series of interviews with Latinx voters in Phoenix. He is trying to uncover how it can be that eligible Latinx citizens have for so long cast a far smaller proportion of the total vote than their numbers would suggest they might. So he talked with some voters. 

The phenomenon of low Latinx voter turnout has been part of the work of my life, beginning with mobilizing against California's anti-immigrant Prop. 187 in 1994 and continuing in various venues through the present campaign. Lots of what's written about this topic seems to me either oblivious to how I see Latinx communities really living or designed to promote particular individuals or organizations as offering a magic solution to low turnout. Alberta's observations seem to go to the heart of why some Arizonans are newly voting this time and ring true to me.

Too many outside activists fail to understand that, especially in Mexican American communities, immigration status is not a binary thing -- either "legal" or "undocumented." That's not how people's lives work.

“Latinos are afraid to vote, man. Trust me. I was born here, I’ve been voting for 50 years, and I’m still afraid to vote,” said Miguel Saldiva, a 70-year-old landscaper who stopped for groceries at the Food City marketplace.

Why? What makes an American citizen afraid to vote? 

“It doesn’t matter if you have papers or don’t have papers,” Saldiva explained, referring to immigration status. “Because even if you have papers, maybe you live with someone in your house who doesn’t have papers, and you’re worried about registering with the government. You know what I mean?”

He continued, “I have a lot of friends—friends with papers—who don’t vote. They get mad, they get frustrated, but they don’t vote. They don’t want any trouble. Plus, they hear too much crap on the television that confuses them. They are good people, and they don’t want to be taken advantage of by the politicians.”

Trying to activate people with these feelings has to go beyond just getting them registered. If registering is easy enough, they'll sign up. But the mechanics, the very processes of voting, are intimidating. New voters don't want to feel stupid or ashamed by not knowing what to do. If you aim to raise voting in Latinx communities, maybe you need to put on skits (role plays or sociodramas) that show infrequent voters how to get through the mechanics. Nobody wants to feel like a dope. And nobody wants to bring down ICE on their tio. There has to be lots of reassurance from trusted sources.

According to Phoenix voter Greg Morales, the combination of Trump and a new generation of Latinx activists may just get his community out this time. 

“It’s Trump,” he cried, slapping the back of his right hand into his left palm. “He gave us the jump-start we needed. And now that we got the jump-start, there’s no shutting us down. And you know why? This new generation of Latinos. These kids, man. They’re not playing games. They’re voting whether anyone likes it or not.”

Miguel Nunez, an ex-Marine who voted for Trump in 2016, but soured on the President's failures of integrity, thinks he sees a change in his community this time around.

“I don’t think it’s political, actually. It’s the ownership we have now in our communities. Growing up here, this is day and night from when I was a kid. I never saw a Hispanic lawyer’s face on a billboard. That would have been crazy. But they’re everywhere now,” Nunez said. “So, that’s cool for my son—he’s 19—for him to see that every day. But I don’t know what that ownership means in terms of politics. ...”

For all his doubts, Nunez was moved enough to vote on the first day he could. 

So did one hundred and eighty-five other Latinx Arizonans at this obscure polling place. Alberta interviewed 15 of them -- every one of them was motivated to vote against Trump. He wonders if he has seen the rise of the sleeping Latinx giant.

This longform article is very much worth a full reading.