By Yadira Gonzalez
Armando Alvarez, 20, a resident of Phoenix’s heavily Latino neighborhood of Maryvale, said his political awakening came not because of the turmoil surrounding the 2020 presidential election, but because of a local initiative that directly impacted his life.
Alvarez said that it was only after Arizona voters passed Proposition 208 in 2020 that he learned it taxed those with an income exceeding $250,000, raising money towards teachers’ salaries and school initiatives and benefiting his own public school.
“I didn’t know about that and that was literally something we voted on in 2020,” Alvarez said. (A superior court judge struck down the proposition as unconstitutional in March 2022.)
“One of the biggest things is letting the community and most importantly letting the younger people know voting is something that affects every one of us,” he added.
Alvarez credits his political education to the Maryvale YMCA, a supportive center for its largely Latino community, offering the area’s youth jobs and services. During high school, Alvarez interned for the YMCA’s Community Action Team, a group of young individuals promoting social justice and civic engagement in Maryvale.
During a recent evening at the Y, Alvarez and other young people involved in the Community Action Team said they have come to realize the importance of voting and to see a role for themselves in encouraging more civic engagement in their community.
“If you empower these young people with knowledge, you give them the space to ask questions,” said Brenda Guerrero, the staff coordinator of the Maryvale Y’s Community Action Team. “That’s the only way that these young people, these Latino families, Black families, any kind of POC family is going to fully understand what they hold.”
With the help of CAT and Guerrero, Alvarez obtained a job with Central Arizonans for a Sustainable Economy, an organization working towards economic and social justice for immigrants and refugees in Arizona. Alvarez said his experiences at CAT and CASE showed him the link between civic engagement and change within his own neighborhood.
“Finding this other job and seeing how voting is a huge, huge, huge, huge thing that affects our communities,” Alvarez said. “It opened my eyes to stuff like with political or civil liberties.”
The CAT program at the Maryvale YMCA is one of a number of efforts to engage Latinos in politics as the 2022 midterm elections approach. Others include Chicanos Por La Causa, which invested $10 million, in April, to get out the Latino vote in Arizona, as well as the work of the nonpartisan Get Out The Vote campaign.
During the 2020 presidential election, Latino communities played a crucial role in Joe Biden’s win in Arizona and across the country, according to an analysis from UCLA. In 2020, Latino voter turnout surged 31 percent nationally over 2016. In Arizona, 71 percent of Latinos voted for Biden during the 2020 presidential election. In precincts with a high density of Latinos, Biden received 74 percent of the votes compared to 46 percent in precincts with a lower density of Latinos.
Prof. Lisa Magaña from the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University said that, in past elections, grassroots organizations have effectively mobilized Latino voters simply by involving them in political discourse. Magaña predicts this will continue.
“Grassroots groups are going to target first time ever people to vote… People that had never, ever been thought of themselves as politically engaged, politically active,” Magaña said.
However, members of the GOP have made several attempts to counteract the work of grassroots organizations by passing legislation that may stymie the members of the new electorate, such as naturalized immigrants. Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona recently signed into legislation a proof-of-citizenship law which could preclude thousands of individuals from voting in federal elections.
According to Prof. Eileen Diaz McConnell, a demographics expert from ASU’s School of Transborder Studies, laws like this may cause unnecessary trouble for those who may not know where their documentation is.
Yet, McConnell also said that the knowledge of these laws often spurs those who are foreign-born to become even more politically engaged.
“More anti-immigrant laws actually lead more immigrants who are naturalized to register to vote because they’re responding to the fact that they don’t have any rights,” McConnell said.
Ulises Ruiz, a CAT intern at the Maryvale Y, said he feels motivated to vote in the upcoming election to improve college opportunities for his loved ones who are DACA recipients. A November 2022 ballot measure will ask Arizona voters to approve in-state tuition at state-run universities to DACA students. Currently, they pay out-of-state tuition.
“I see a lot of family and friends just graduate from high school and not pursue any further education because they believe they’re restricted in terms of what grants they can get and what scholarships they can get,” Ruiz said.
Latinos of all ages are investing their time and energy in their own communities in hopes of improving representation for the group as a whole. Children are relaying information to their parents who historically may not have been provided with as many resources.
“We, the young people, are able to educate ourselves and then also educate our parents, then that makes a big difference,” Alvarez said.
According to Guerrero, raising awareness among Latinos about the impact they can have in political systems, especially at a young age, may lead to a realization of their political strength.
“Whatever you want, educate yourself and vote on it,” Guerrero said.
Measures like Proposition 208 are a great example of issues worth learning more about, according to Alvarez. Through his work at CASE, he continues to educate those in his community on ballot-proposals that would directly impact them.
In April, Alvarez worked with his team to collect signatures for a referendum on a $1.8 billion development project called the South Pier in Tempe Town Lake. The Tempe City Council authorized the project in February and gave the developers a tax break lasting eight years. Alvarez and those at CASE wanted to educate the people of the community and have them play a greater role in its fate.
“Literally none of us know how it’s going to benefit us,” Alvarez said. “What we’re doing is letting them know and letting them decide.”
Whether the referendum will be added to the ballot has not been decided yet, but the seeds of political knowledge and empowerment have been planted.