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‘Lifelong voters’: Organizers seek to engage young people of color in Harris County

‘Lifelong voters’: Organizers seek to engage young people of color in Harris County
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‘Lifelong voters’: Organizers seek to engage young people of color in Harris County

On Election Day, Edgar Euceda, 18, split his time between setting up the polling site at the Vietnamese Community Center in Alief, checking in voters and manning curbside voting. The 14-hour-day as a poll worker was a celebration of sorts as his first year as an active voter. 

“It was very exciting,” Euceda said. “I was nervous, because while you are being part of the voting process you are also expecting results. So every second that I could I was checking the numbers. It was very nerve-wrecking.”

Euceda is one of nearly 250,000 young people who cast a ballot this November in Harris County. For voters under 30 years old, he’s in the minority.

Overall, more than half of registered voters in Harris County voted on election day at 59 percent. However, Euceda’s age group — those between the ages of 18 and 29 — saw a turnout of only 44 percent.

Most voting precincts in Harris County had turnout rates less than 50 percent among Euceda’s age group. Meanwhile, areas in the outer bounds of the county and the “arrow” saw higher voter turnout.

Euceda started his civic involvement through AliefVotes, a nonprofit led by local youth that promotes civic engagement. Euceda began attending its workshops and learning how to advocate for issues at the age of 16. 

Erika Barrera wears a necklace that says “have faith,” as she prepares to canvas to talk with registered voters in the Latino community in the Briarwood area, Friday, Oct. 4, 2024, in Houston. (Houston Landing file photo / Lexi Parra)

His participation in AliefVotes also introduced him to Mi Familia en Acción, a nonprofit and nonpartisan civic engagement organization that helps Latinos become involved in the voting process, among other issues. This year he worked as a youth ambassador with this organization, getting paid for his engagement work ahead of the election. 

Organizations such as Alief Votes and Mi Familia en Acción have focused some or all of their efforts in capturing young potential voters like Euceda, especially in communities of color with low voter turnout.

“It’s been proven that the earlier that students get civically engaged and become voters, they become lifelong voters,” said Dayana Iza, Texas state director of Mi Familia En Acción, formerly known as Mi Famila Vota. 

“They are usually going to be the ones that are going to be active and they are going to become organizers, in a sense, themselves.” 

Mi Familia En Acción also seeks to buck the perception that Latinos just don’t vote and instead focuses on the many issues discouraging voters, such as lack of knowledge and understanding of the democratic process.  

This year, 49 percent of Latinos in Texas polled by UnidosUS, a nonpartisan Latino civil rights and advocacy organization, reported not being contacted at all by any entity – including political parties, candidates or an organization. 

Although Mi Familia en Acción focuses on Latinos, when it comes to youth organizing, having young people engaging their peers translates into a widely diverse effort, Iza said. 

“This happens very organically,” Iza said. “The areas that we organize in, happen to be very diverse. The students that get plugged into our programs are not just Latinos, they happen to be from different backgrounds…the fight that we’re fighting is the fight of everyone.” 

The makeup of young voters

Latinos were expected to account for over 36 million of all eligible voters across the country in 2024, according to a report by the Pew Research Center. This represents about 15 percent of the U.S. eligible voter population, more than doubling from 7 percent in 2000. 

In Harris County, eligible voters – those that are U.S. citizens and of age to vote – are becoming less white and increasingly more Latino. According to census data, Latinos accounted for almost one-third of eligible voters across the county in 2022, up from a quarter 10 years prior. 

Even though white county residents still represent the largest share of voters in Harris County, this share of voters has decreased over the last decade, from 45 percent in 2012 to 36 percent in 2022.

These changes are fueled in large part by a growing number of Latinos born in the U.S. whose families might have not been eligible to vote in the past. The most recent census data shows that nearly half of Latino adults in Harris County are U.S.-born residents — an almost 10 percentage point increase from 2010.

Daniel Potter, director of the Houston Population Research Center at the Kinder Institute, called the lack of engagement among Latinos and young voters “an unfortunate position” considering the local and national trends. 

“There's so much power in those two populations,” Potter said. “If you could get [them] motivated to vote, it would demand a change in our representatives, it would demand attention in an ongoing way.”

Euceda is a first-generation Houstonian whose parents migrated to the U.S. from México and El Salvador. The family eventually settled in Alief, a community located in Houston’s southwest side with a minority-majority population. About 46 percent of Alief residents identify as Latino or Hispanic, 26 percent Black and 20 percent Asian, according to City of Houston planning and development records.

Even though advocacy and civic engagement was not part of their daily conversation, Euceda’s parents encouraged his enthusiasm for learning about these topics, he said. They also began learning through him, as did his younger siblings.

“As most first-generation families, (my parents) mostly focused on working, providing for their family.They don’t really pay attention to the advocacy level, or which people are in charge of creating the solutions that affect them,” Euceda said. 

Tommy Wan, co-founder and program director AliefVotes, said this is common for many immigrant families, including his own. The 20-year-old was raised in Alief by parents who migrated to the U.S. from China, and as a high school student in 2022, he helped create the organization to increase civic participation. 

“We specifically saw a lack of youth civic engagement in the area in the high schools,” Wan said. “We are a diverse community, over 93 languages spoken, majority minority, and the students here really represent that cultural currency of the city.”

Voting is just one aspect of civic engagement, Wan said. Every year, the organization hosts a fall fellowship program where 25 Alief ISD high school students get mentorship from other  students and alumni on how to become active. They attend workshops, community events and eventually lead an initiative centered on an issue of their choice.

The organization has engaged about 2,500 Alief middle and high school students through workshops, events and the fellowship program, Wan said. It also has about 5,000 students, educators and others who have signed up to receive information. 

“We are seeing an increase in civic engagement,” Wan said. “We are seeing more dialogue on what it means to be a community member … I truly believe that if we can get it right in Alief, we can get it right in the city of Houston, we can get it right in the state of Texas.”

‘In reflection mode’

Across the city in Denver Harbor, Ryan Martinez, 24, also worked at a local polling station on Election Day. The lifelong Denver Harbor resident left his home to attend Yale University and returned in 2023 with a degree in political science. He also returned with a renewed excitement to serve his neighborhood. 

Shortly after graduating, he helped launch Denver Harbor Cares, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that seeks to engage community residents, especially those identified as low-propensity voters. For the organization, Martinez analyzes data, helps come up with engagement strategies, works phone banks, block walks and more. 

Martinez worries that the outcome of this presidential election and that exhaustion that some people expressed feeling post-election could damper the enthusiasm that has been building among young voters. 

Amatullah Contractor, the head of Emgageaction, a group that empowers Muslim and Arab voters, canvasses in a Southwest suburb, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, in Houston. (Houston Landing file photo / Lexi Parra)

“One interesting fact is that out of our 18-to-24 year olds who voted this year (in Denver Harbor), about 51 percent of them were first-time voters,” Martinez said. “So how do we make sure that this election results don’t disillusion them to the point that they don’t come back?”

When asked what answers have come out of this question, Martinez said not many yet. After an intense year of organizing, he is taking a moment to gather his thoughts. 

“I think we are still in reflection mode,” he said. “Personally, my own thoughts have been looking at ways to have honest conversations about not just what the problems are, but what can we do locally, as citizens and community members about these problems.”

Learning new ways to engage new generations of voters is a pressing challenge, Iza said. An obvious resource is through schools and colleges, but she fears that current programs leave some of these potential voters out of the loop.

“A lot of our young voters are not going to third spaces. Outside of school and work, where do you find them?” Iza said. “We need to start getting creative with organizing our youth.”

Weeks after the election Euceda admits he fell into some sort of “post-election depression,” and wanted to disassociate from politics for a while. But he didn’t let himself fall too deep into that. 

“I feel like I was very excited, very motivated, very determined during this whole semester. And now I'm just questioning what comes next,” Euceda said. “But for us to get the outcome that we want, it isn’t a one-day, a one-month or even a one-year of work… So I think that I’m still ready to continue.” 

The post ‘Lifelong voters’: Organizers seek to engage young people of color in Harris County appeared first on Houston Landing.



This article was originally published by Danya Pérez at Houston Landing - You can read this article and more at (https://houstonlanding.org/lifelong-voters-organizers-seek-to-engage-young-people-of-color-in-harris-county/).

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