Liliana Renteria, of the START Center in San Benito, and Beatriz Rivera, a colonia resident from Brownsville, say they will work to get a good census count. (Photo: RGG/Steve Taylor)

BROWNSVILLE, Jan. 26 - The coordinator of Equal Voice for America’s Families in the Rio Grande Valley is confident of a strong census count this year in part because local residents love to gossip.

“A great communication device down here is gossip,” said Mike Seifert. “It is one of the great resources we have. The Valley has a natural sense of community. People do talk to their neighbors. They greet each other. We need to just get people talking about the census, saying, you know what, this is a great thing to do, we need to do it.”

Seifert was critical of the approach the U.S. Census took in 2000. The Valley was flooded with census workers from outside the region who did not know the area or the people. Consequently, the region suffered a massive “undercount.” This meant the Valley lost tens of millions of dollars in federal and state funding because the criteria used to allocate the money is based upon population.

Census Day is April 1, 2010. The U.S. Census Bureau will send out its census forms to every household in the nation in mid-March. There are ten questions on the forms and all information provided will be safeguarded. By law, the information cannot be shared with Border Patrol or ICE.

Seifert said he is more confident of a strong census count this year. “I do not remember the census being talked about a lot in 2000. This year the media is talking about it. Also, it seems the local people from the Census department are doing a really good job at reaching out,” Seifert said.

The Equal Voice for America’s Families network has become a growing force in the Valley over the past two years. Financed in part by the Marguerite Casey Foundation, the network seeks to build support for a national family-issues platform created and advanced by working families.

The network came to prominence in the Valley with a massive town hall meeting at the LUPE headquarters in San Juan in January, 2008. More than 600 people attended to discuss the issues that mattered most to them in a presidential election year. Participants ranked the issues – headed by health care, housing, education, jobs, and comprehensive immigration reform - and refined them at similar Equal Voice events later that year in Rio Grande City, McAllen, Edinburg and Brownsville.

Among the groups participating in the Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice network are La Unión del Pueblo Entero, Proyecto Azteca, Proyecto Juan Diego, ARISE, the START Center, SCAN, Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, the Brownsville Community Health Center, and the Southwest Workers’ Union.

Seifert, who is dubbed the “network weaver” for the group, said the Valley groups within the Equal Voice network identified the census early on as an issue to get heavily involved in.

“We made this an issue because we were undercounted badly in 2000 and the needs in the Valley are so dramatic. We felt this could be a home run for us because we are organized, we are in the hard to count areas and folks mostly understand the need for it,” Seifert said.

The “huge barrier” to a successful and strong census count, Seifert said, acknowledged is fear. “It is the fear that this personal information will be shared by people who might not have our best interests at hand. So, we have a lot of work to do to quiet that down,” he said.

Seifert said a crucial role will be played by the huge network of promotoras who work in the Valley’s hundreds of colonias.

“We have in place a whole series of promotoras, of lay leaders. We plan on using this large network,” he said. “It is a matter of explaining to your neighbors, no, this is a census, you may not have papers but you live here and you pay taxes just like the rest of us do and your children need to have books, to have instruments to play in the band.”

Seifert said that while much of the focus will naturally be on the tens of thousands of people who live in colonias, this is not the only “hard to count” population in the Valley. “We cite the colonias often as being hard to count areas but there are also people in the cities and towns in the Valley who were not counted. I am hoping that gets addressed,” he said.

Another thing to “bang on,” Seifert said, is quelling the notion that the Valley is “lining up for a handout.” He said the federal and state resources made available due to population numbers are the Valley’s resources to start with.

“We need the funding but it is our funding. It is our taxes and so to get a fair return on our tax dollars we need to be counted. The funded is needed by the most vulnerable people in the community, the children, the elderly, the sick, the unemployed, and the under-educated. If we can get these resources in we can turn things around,” he said.

Seifert has worked with underprivileged communities in other parts of the country. The good thing about the Valley, he said, is that it does not take a major investment to make a difference. “I think people here just pick here and go with it. For the minimal investment of resources, things really can turn around,” he said.

On Saturday, the Equal Voice network held a town hall meeting at St. Joseph’s Church in Brownsville. As with a similar event the week before in Pharr, organizers made sure Census 2010 was front and center of the deliberations. About 100 colonia residents were present.

“We need to get ourselves counted, to make an impact so that resources can go through federal and state government to help this area and help our families, the families that need the money the most,” Liliana Renteria, administrative assistant at the START Center in San Benito, told the Guardian, immediately after making a presentation at the town hall meeting.

“The census is important because the federal government has no idea how many people are down here and we really need assistance with education, health, housing, work, jobs,” Renteria said.

Asked what her group is doing to promote the census, Renteria said: “We are educating the community. We are trying to engage our students so they can participate in the community, so they can go out into the community and make a positive impact. The census is really important. The taxes we pay the government should come back to us.”

Juan Ríos is a legal advocate with Casa de Proyecta Libertad in Harlingen. Much of the group’s work centers on educating the immigrant community on its legal rights.

“We are telling everyone in our community that the census forms will not affect their immigration status. It is a secure way to be counted. It will not put people at risk so do not be afraid to share personal information,” said Ríos, who also spoke at the town hall meeting.

“If we get a good census count we will be able to get the money we need to have a better standard of living. It will be used in our community.”

Asked what his group is doing to promote the census, Ríos said: “We are telling everyone that comes to the office to share information about the census with their family, friends and neighbors. If we are not counted we will not get federal funds into our communities. These resources are ours, they are designed to come here but they are not because we are not counted. I hope that we have a great response from the community.”

Write Steve Taylor

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