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Posts Marcados ‘elections’

The Long Road to Voting Rights

Lunes, Septiembre 13th, 2010

The Board of Elections would use missing tests, elusive test hours, and discriminatory practices to stop many Latinos from voting in El Barrio, the Bronx, and Brooklyn.

by Juan Cartagena

In New York City and elsewhere, access to bilingual voter ballots is a right—and the law. But that right did not come easy, and it’s not one we should take for granted.

Consider the long road to empower Latino and other voters:

–New York did not fully allow men of color to vote until after the 1870s.

–Soon afterwards, New York debated whether the immigrants of that time were intellectually capable of participating in democracy. By 1921 English literacy tests were required for voting in order to keep Southern and Eastern European immigrants from voting and gaining power.

–By the 1940s and 1950s, with the Latino population increasing, the English literacy test requirement prevented many Spanish literate citizens from voting, largely Puerto Ricans then. The Board of Elections would use missing tests, elusive test hours, and discriminatory practices to stop many Latinos from voting in El Barrio, the Bronx, and Brooklyn.

–Congress responded to this discrimination by exempting many Puerto Ricans from an English-only literacy test in 1965. Years later, federal courts concluded what every Puerto Rican and Latino immigrant knew: that you cannot fully participate in the political process unless you fully understand the written ballot. Thus, bilingual elections started in New York City and spread throughout the country to reach all Latino voters and voters of other language minority groups.

Additional barriers existed. Laws that cancelled voter registration if voters failed to vote in four years were outlawed in 1993 after lawyers proved that Latinos and blacks were three times more likely to be cancelled than whites. In the 1990s Congress finally required government agencies to offer voter registration after the United States fell well behind other Western democracies in voter participation.

Today additional barriers still remain:
–aggressive and discriminatory criminal justice policies have created historically high prisoner rates in the country with more Latinos losing their vote than whites under laws that prohibit prisoners and parolees from voting;
–unnecessary delays in processing naturalization applications result in less political power for Latinos;
–and anti-immigrant sentiment targets emerging Latino populations that become subject to intimidation practices at polling sites.

On Election Day, New York City has 30,000 poll workers and 7,000 machines in over 6,000 election districts. Only a handful of voting rights activists and lawyers monitor compliance with the laws that so many Latinos fought to establish. Voting is, therefore, more than just a local contest between deserving individuals. It is an affirmation of our community’s struggle for inclusion in the political world. It acknowledges our past and affirms that our future will continue to eliminate every barrier to full participation.

Juan Cartagena is the General Counsel & Vice President for Advocacy for the Community Service Society.

Tags: elections, Juan Cartagena, Voting rights, Your morning cafe
Publicado en Around the country, New York/Nueva York | 7 Comments »

Another candidate for Queens assembly district

Viernes, Febrero 19th, 2010

Bryan Pu-Folkes

UPDATED: Now that a judge has backed the New York State Senate’s expulsion of Hiram Monserrate, a special election in his district will take place. There remains a possibility that Monserrate could still run to win back his seat. It is unclear whether the New York State Senate’s expulsion of disgraced senator Hiram Monserrate will be overturned. But this is not stopping candidates from tossing their hats into the electoral races that could be triggered with Monserrate’s ouster.

Last week, several elected officials announced their endorsement of Assemblyman Jose Peralta in his bid to replace Monserrate. And earlier this month, Francisco Moya, a former staffer to Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, declared that he would run for Peralta’s seat, should it become available.

Now, longtime grassroots activist Bryan Pu-Folkes is expected to announce next week that he will also seek to represent to the 39th Assembly District, which could mean a real electoral race for the Queens area.

An immigration attorney who says his clients are mostly low-income families, Pu-Folkes founded the nonprofit organization New Immigrant Communities for Empowerment (NICE) 10 years ago.

“We need new leadership in Albany that will help promote working class issues in particular,” Pu-Folkes told El Diario-La Prensa yesterday. Among the issues he has worked on and wants to focus on are wage theft, enforcement of labor laws and closing loopholes that leave some workers vulnerable to abuse by employers.

Pu-Folkes unsuccessfully ran for a City Council seat in 2005. He says he lacked some political sophistication that he has gained since then.

Moya, who in the past worked for the State Senate, is Ecuadorian—a background that is certain to have appeal in a district with a growing Ecuadorian community yearning for political representation.

While he understands this appeal, Pu-Folkes, whose wife is Latina, says he believes voters will go with the candidate who has delivered the most to immigrant families. “I have been encouraged to run mostly by Latinos in the district…I am humbled by that.”

Pu-Folkes said his parents, who are from Burma and Jamaica, confronted cultural and language barriers when they arrived in New York in 1959. “I grew up in an environment learning how to speak up for rights,” he said.
-E. Gonzalez

Tags: elections, politics, Queens
Publicado en New York/Nueva York, Política/Politics, Queens | 2 Comments »

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Posts Marcados ‘elections’

The Long Road to Voting Rights

The Board of Elections would use missing tests, elusive test hours, and discriminatory practices to stop many Latinos from voting in El Barrio, the Bronx, and Brooklyn.

Another candidate for Queens assembly district

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The Long Road to Voting Rights

The Board of Elections would use missing tests, elusive test hours, and discriminatory practices to stop many Latinos from voting in El Barrio, the Bronx, and Brooklyn.

Another candidate for Queens assembly district

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