“Quite frankly, it’s the best thing that can happen to us as community leaders to convince people that not participating in civic life has consequences,” said Ben Monterroso, the executive director of Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, one of several organizations that are mounting an ambitious effort to get Latinos to vote in 2016. “They’re challenging the Latino community to see if we’re going to be able to defend ourselves at the ballot box.”…
“When you’re attacked, belittled, characterized as being unworthy and subhuman, it has an effect of unifying and leading to collective action,” said Cristóbal Alex, president of the Latino Victory Project, one of the leading national groups seeking to increase Latino political clout. “It has folks angry, and our job is to take that anger and turn it into action.”
What is unfolding nationally is reminiscent of the 1994 initiative championed by Pete Wilson, a Republican who was then governor of California, that sought to bar undocumented immigrants from attending public schools and seeking medical care.
The measure, which passed but was never carried out, drove Latino immigrants to become naturalized in droves and register to vote. Largely as a result, California became a solidly Democratic state, where running on an anti-immigrant platform is today broadly regarded as political suicide.
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