Latino Activists Organizing for Suburban Political Clout

Pungent smoke spiraled from the burning sage being passed around a circle of 30 new friends celebrating both the herb’s traditional symbol of strength and the newfound power they hope will transform the culture and politics of Long Beach.

They belong to the Long Beach Latino Leadership Council, one of several new suburban movements in Los Angeles County energized by a growing interest in local issues and growing numbers of Latino voters.

“People are finally realizing that we are here and have to maximize the power we have as citizens,” said Rafael Gonzalez, director of civic education for the National Assn. of Latino Elected Officials. “It was a long time coming, but it is finally happening.”

During the past few months, other Latino groups have emerged in Santa Monica, Walnut Park, Paramount and the San Fernando Valley. Designated as a nonprofit organization only last month, the Long Beach Latino Leadership Council is one of the most ambitious.

Its membership of about 60 mostly second-generation Mexican Americans is seeking to influence this city of 426,000 residents, now roughly one-third Latino. The group is made up of university students, city employees and business professionals. Some hail from the “Chicano Power” movement of the 1960s and ‘70s. Others are newcomers to local politics.

“We have an opportunity to set a new precedent of activity in our city,” said Robert Perez, a Cal State Long Beach senior studying public policy.

The group meets every other week in restaurants, homes and the Long Beach Museum of Latin American Art. Members are targeting the middle class and the poor of the city’s burgeoning Latino community through an agenda that includes recruiting City Council and school board candidates, advising Latino business owners and creating youth programs.

Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic group in Long Beach. Yet their historic lack of influence has made many feel powerless.

“We have always been reacting too late to issues that affect our community,” said Aurelio Agundez, a mental health clinic administrator and member of the new council. He sees the group as a lobbying mechanism for Latinos.

“We are realizing now we have to develop a permanent agenda,” he said. “We have to be more proactive than reactive.”

The group plans seminars for prospective political candidates and wants to campaign for more Latin American-inspired architecture in Long Beach. Members want to sponsor a mountain retreat for high school students to develop leadership skills.

At a meeting last week, the group began forming a list of state commission seats and local elective offices open to candidates from Long Beach.

“Long Beach has a fast-changing demographic profile,” said City Councilwoman Jenny Oropeza, a group co-founder and the city’s first and only Latino elected official. “There is a critical mass of Latinos manifesting itself at all economic levels: middle class, poor and affluent. Yet we have not been in the mainstream of business or politics or youth development and education. That is where we want to put ourselves.”

Campaign Spreads to Santa Monica

Such sentiments are also growing in Santa Monica, a city of 87,000 residents, now about 15% Latino. Young and older activists are planning a campaign to forge new council districts, as well as educational reform. City Council seats are at-large in Santa Monica.

Latino activists are hoping to introduce a ballot measure in 2000 that would divide the city into council districts. The group contends that the predominantly Latino neighborhood near the Santa Monica Freeway has long been neglected. Santa Monica has had only one Latino councilman--Tony Vazquez--who served during the early 1990s.

Vazquez is part of that new group, which, like the one in Long Beach, is made up of business owners, professionals and college students who have moved back to their hometown after graduation.

Though their fight will be uphill, “it’s very important for us to get Latino representation in our city,” said Josefina Santiago, a recent UCLA graduate. In 1993, the 27-year-old youth employment counselor helped orchestrate a hunger strike at UCLA that led to a new Chicano studies department there.

Now, she and several other young second-generation Mexican Americans who grew up in Santa Monica hope to start a renaissance in a blighted neighborhood near Pico Boulevard and the Santa Monica Freeway.

“The community is plagued with poverty and unemployment,” she said. “It has been historically underserved. We need to work on how we can make our school curriculum more relevant to Latinos . . . and to make housing more affordable for younger adults who have lived here all their lives with their parents and have to move away because they can’t afford to live in Santa Monica.”

Smaller groups seeking influence in their cities and schools have also sprouted in Walnut Park, Paramount and the San Fernando Valley.

A group of Latino residents in Walnut Park has set such goals as getting the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to improve its response time to their unincorporated neighborhood, which borders Huntington Park.

In Paramount, about 30 parents plan to petition their schools to reinstate bilingual education programs eliminated under Proposition 227.

“Many of the people here lack the information and support” to understand that even under Proposition 227 they can request that their child receive bilingual instruction, said Norma Montana, one of the group’s organizers.

“We all want a good bilingual education program back,” she said.

In the predominantly Latino northeast San Fernando Valley, union construction workers seeking better labor representation are recruiting new voters and coordinating community forums. They are focusing on the April 13 Los Angeles City Council election to replace Richard Alarcon, who was elected to the state Assembly.

“We have a large constituency in that area,” said Richard Quevedo, a political director for the International Laborers Union, which also campaigns for union member Raul Godinez, a civil engineer who is among the six candidates in the 7th District race.

Quevedo, also co-chairman of the Southwest Voter Registration Project, boasts of registering roughly 7,000 new Latino voters in the San Fernando Valley during recent months.

Staying Power Is Open to Question

Whether the new groups can sustain their energy beyond their immediate goals is another matter.

In the past, groups oftenunified around one purpose, then crumbled once their cause lost its urgency.

Roberto Uranga, a Chicano activist during the 1970s before he became a police recruiter in Long Beach, has seen several organizations lose steam after promising starts. He currently heads the Latino Leadership Council.

In the early 1990s, another group of Long Beach Latino leaders that formed to lobby for the creation of what is now Oropeza’s council district collapsed from internal conflicts, he said.

“Sometimes it’s difficult to get a bunch of people together in one room to talk about one vision,” Uranga said.

The difference today, he said, is that passage of state initiatives aimed at limiting assistance to immigrants and ending affirmative action “hit us where it hurts us most: our youth. People are coming together and saying: ‘Why are we letting this happen?’ They’re reacting more strongly than ever.”