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LATINOS ARE CHANGING THE POLITICS OF ... NEBRASKA!
If the winds of political change are starting to blow in Nebraska, the center of the storm is a third-floor office on 24th Street in South Omaha. There, huge maps of eight targeted precincts in Ward 4 line the walls of the Heartland Workers Center (HWC), covered in red dots for all the people organizers have spoken with over the past six months. Little stickers highlight the key issues in each neighborhood. Every afternoon on weekdays, and all day on weekends, a row of reconditioned iPhones sits on a table next to clipboards holding signup lists and Spanish-language voter-education brochures. Rain or shine, young Latino organizers climb the stairs to pick up their packets and then fan out into the streets. Zambrano came into the workers center after helping win a battle against Nebraska’s former governor, Dave Heineman. Three years ago, Heineman ordered the state’s Motor Vehicles Department to deny drivers’ licenses to young people who gained temporary legal immigration status under President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. As Zambrano senses, Latinos in Nebraska-many of them drawn to the area by the jobs in meatpacking plants-have the potential to shift the balance of political power. South Omaha’s Latino community expanded as a result of this flow of migrant labor into the state. Today, foreign-born Latino immigrants make up a third of the total population of 32,362 in HWC’s eight targeted precincts. About 10,261 people in the precincts are foreign-born Latinos, while more than 15,000 people speak Spanish at home, meaning that many Latino families now include children born here. The voter engagement project has registered about 1,500 people in Ward 4, and voter turnout here increased by 26 percent between 2010 and 2014. “Twenty or thirty years ago, when people first began arriving, they thought of home as their hometown in Mexico or Central America,” says Sergio Sosa, HWC’s executive director. “As they’ve had children, and as those children have grown, many people now see they’re not going to return. Home for them now is here. That gives them a big motivation to become citizens and participate. Children born here are also getting old enough to vote now, so the voting population is growing.” SERGIO SOSA’S OBSERVATIONS APPLY to himself as well. Sosa was a church activist in Huehuetenango in Guatemala, a believer in liberation theology, at a time when radical priests organized movements for social change during that country’s counterinsurgency war. He fell in love with a woman from Nebraska who worked in church programs in Guatemala, and together they eventually decided to come to the United States. “People here aren’t really immigrants anymore,” he says, “and their children certainly aren’t. Our purpose, therefore, is to try to open their eyes about their rights, and urge them to look out for their own needs. If you think you’re going back home, you have no interest in the things that affect you here. But we’re in Schuyler now, and not going back. So what we’re looking for is equality, to integrate our people into the community, and make people respect us. We want to feel like we belong.” Part of that equation is voting. When the Comite began in 2013, the town had 900 Latinos eligible to vote, but only 14 actually voted. Within one election cycle, they got the number up to 136. Now, there are two Latino candidates running this November, one for city council and one, Mynor Hernandez, for the Colfax County School Board. Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy has scared Schuyler’s (and Nebraska’s) Latinos, particularly because of his threat to deport all undocumented immigrants. Many meatpacking workers still have no legal immigration status. “People are still afraid here,” Lopez cautions. “They feel uncertain about what will happen to them. They don’t buy a house or a car, and sometimes don’t even go to school, because they have to give information and feel vulnerable. They drive because they have to get to work, but can’t get a license and are terrified they’ll be stopped. Our plan is to try to help get people legal status where we can, and support reform legislation.”
Isidro Rojas Garcia, an immigrant construction worker from Mexico, registers to vote for the first time after having been a U.S. citizen for 16 years. Helping him is Abby Kretz, senior organizer from the Heartland Workers Center.
Sergio Sosa, the executive director of the Heartland Workers Center, and Lucia Pedroza, HWC senior organizer
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