March 15, 2022 • 28 mins
Throughout history and around the world, women have not only led the fight for women’s rights, they have played a vital role in nearly every movement for social change.
This week, Chelsea is sitting down with Maria Teresa Kumar, founding president of Voto Latino, the leading Latinx voter registration and advocacy organization in the U.S., to look at women in activism – the progress we’ve made toward equality, representation, and what needs to happen next.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Chelsea Clinton. And this season on in Fact,
we're celebrating Women's History Month. I'll be talking with trailblazing
women at the top of their fields about their personal journeys,
the progress we've made, and how far we still have
to go. Today we're talking about representation and activism with
(00:24):
Maria Teresa Kumar, the founding president of Voto Latino, the
leading Latin X voter registration and advocacy organization in the country.
It's no surprise that throughout our history women have led
the fight for women's rights. Women have also played a
vital role in pretty much every social movement. So Journal
Truth and Lucretia Mott were abolitionists and self regists. Rosa
(00:47):
Parks and Dorothy Height where civil rights movement leaders to
Laura's Wuerta led the fight to improve conditions for farm workers,
and she's still on the front lines. Brenda Howard, also
known as the Mother of Pride, is credited with creating
the first Pride parade. Candy Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving,
and Shannon Watts forged Mom's Demand Action for gun violence prevention.
(01:10):
And those are just a few of the women who
have refused to accept the status quo and fought for
expanded rights, protections and opportunities for women, but also for everyone.
Any time change is needed, odds are there have been brave, strong,
and gutsy women at the forefront. My guest today is
certainly a brave, strong and gutsy woman who I have
(01:32):
long admired and been lucky to know. Maria Tracy Kumar
co founded Vote Latino in two thousand four. She's an
Emmy nominated contributor to MSNBC. Fast Company named her one
of the one hundred most creative business minds in the country,
and l named her one of the ten most influential
women in Washington, d C. Maria Treca Kumar, thank you
(01:58):
so much for joining me today to talk about voting
rights and activism and so much more. Thank you so much, Chelsea.
You know, I thought we could start at the beginning
of your story. You came to this country, the United States,
from Columbia when you were four, and I wondered if
you could just share how you think those early experiences
(02:19):
of of being an immigrant and then being a new
American shaped you. So when I came to this country,
one of the reasons we came was that my adopted
father had fallen ill in Columbia and so you needed
to convalesce, and so my mom and I ended up
in the tiny little town called Geyserville, California that in
(02:39):
the last census had less than people. And where is Geyserville, California.
It's in Sonoma County. And so my mother went from Bogota, Columbia,
which is very much like New York City, to teeny
tiny town. Were the expectations from my grandparents because they
were grape growers, was that while my ad convalesce, she
(03:01):
had to go work in the field. And Chelsea, I
have to tell you that my mother was such a
good support. Was I don't think she'd ever seen a
plant in her life, and the next thing you know,
she is picking grapes. And it was such a formative
moment because I also knew the opportunities that this country
afforded me. We're going to be vastly different than growing
up in Colombia. My mother is after Latina, and by
(03:24):
that the deck was already stacked against her. She had
little education, and I had the opportunity to probably go
to school, but more than likely would not have and
understanding I had the opportunity to go to school, I
fell in love with the United States, and I will
never forget going to San Francisco City Hall when I
was nine years old and raising my right hand and
(03:46):
pledging allegiance to United States and becoming a US citizen.
And if you ask why the work that I do
a Voldo Latino is so significant, is that I remember
that nine year old with these aspirations and thinking big
and recognizing that the world opened up before me the
moment I became a US citizen. And it breaks my
heart to know that there's millions of undocumented youth here
(04:08):
in this country that have those exact same dreams, but
because our laws changed from the moment I came to
this country to today, that their future is different. And
the more that we can get people to recognize that
we're leaving great minds behind because they can't self realize,
is what are the motive fitting factors of the work
that I do. So I want to go back to
that moment, you know, when you were a nine year
(04:30):
old and you felt this enormous promise and potential and
yet it also sounds like real activation. Did you always
know that you would work in activism and advocacy. You know,
it's so interesting that you ask. So. I loved the
idea of the American promise that I could be anything
(04:50):
now that I was US citizen. And literally two years later,
I remember coming home and I'm crying and my dad
was like, well, what's going on, honey, I said, I said, Dad,
I can't be president. And my Dad's like, what are
you talking about? I said, well, you know, in America,
you promised. You know, I was promised I could be anything,
(05:11):
and it wasn't that I wanted to be, but this
idea that you could unity was limited, right. Uh. But
I always knew that I liked helping people. I always
knew that. And the reason again when my mother came first,
and then she brought my aunts and my uncle and
my grandmother, I found myself navigating the country for my
(05:31):
family at a very young age. The racial profiling and
the policing that was happening in Sonoma when I was
growing up was very real. I love Sonoma. It gave
me an incredible experience and informed who I was. But
Sonoma was very segregated, and they sadly tracked our young
men in particular at a very early age, the men
were struggling, and you would think that they had grown
(05:54):
up in the worst part of New York City instead
of a very rural, aggressive Sonoma. And it was at
the same time the backdrop of when Pete Wilson's Proposition passed,
and so we were Sonoma and California was on fire
with racial tension, and my family for the very first
time felt not only differentiated, but in danger unsafe, and
(06:19):
it broke my heart because this was the country that
I loved. This is the country that said we welcome
you and let yourself realize and they were we were
going against our own creed as I had understood it
when I was growing up. And so if you ask
what are the factors that motivated me? Was very much
the dynamics between my dad's family, who were farmers, and
my mom's family, but then also the institutions that were
(06:41):
raising us with the backdrop of a very hostile governor,
and it basically baked me. Can you please tell our
listeners what was prop so proposition was the original show
me your Paper laws which identified anti immigration language in California,
(07:03):
and Pete Wilson promoted it. It was a ballot initiative
that Californians, my neighbors voted for, and it was heartbreaking
because it was the very first time I had to
have a conversation with my family that they were in
danger and they needed to become a citizens. Why then
voting rights? You had this sense of injustice that was
affecting your family, your community. It wasn't kind of what
(07:28):
you believed America should be. And there probably are many
different areas where you could have directed your time, energy, talents.
Why voting rights? I had the opportunity to work in
Capitol Hill right after college for vic Fasio. He was
chairman of the Democratic Caucus, and I was able to
see up close who influenced policy and how. And one
(07:49):
of the things that I learned where that the people
oftentimes advising our members didn't come from the community they
were trying to serve. So there was a huge gap
in intention and policy outcome. And so while I was
at the Kennedy School, I had kind of a light
bulb moment of there are millions of young Latinos behind
(08:11):
me that have the potential to define this country so
that those policy outcomes are actually met with intention and purpose.
And if we start mobilizing them, we could actually leap
frog a lot of the static that we see in
policy making. In two thousand three, let you know, technically
became the second largest group of Americans in this country.
(08:34):
And Volta Latino we started in two thousand four, and
the two thousand ten cents said, sure enough of the
growth in this country was due to the Latino population.
And this is what folks didn't realize is that they
were American born children. So while let you know, we're
technically the second largest population in America in two thousand three,
they were mostly the majority under eighteen years old, and
(08:55):
it wasn't until two thousand eighteen that they became the
second largest voting block. So vota you know, it's this
seeing the future from the perspective of I know what
it means to grow up under the backdrop of a
really bad governor. And so where did volto Latino go?
We went to Colorado when tank Creato was on the rise.
We went to Arizona when we saw the rise of
anti immigration laws, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas. Places people
(09:20):
told us that we were wasting our time, and people
said that Latino's youth didn't care. Like that's all I heard,
and I was like, that's none of my experience. And so, now,
almost twenty years after the founding of Vote Latino, in
which you have more than proven that young Latinos will
registered to vote, will turn out to vote, will continue
(09:42):
to vote, what stories do you share to help personalize
the statistics that you just articulated. We expected Latinos to
become the second largest voting block, not until and in
fact it happened. And when they hit that marker of
being the second largest, we were able to flip Arizona,
(10:07):
and the year before we had flipped Virginia, and two
years before we had been able to basically make both
Nevada and Colorado a battleground state. And so we just
saw this progression. And so when people say, well, the
Latino vote didn't make a difference, I said, well, now
let's go to Georgia. In Georgia, Latinos represented four percent
of the electoral base. With our brothers and sisters in
(10:29):
the African American community and with Asian Americans, it becomes formidable.
Four percent makes all the difference. Both. Let you know,
we registered twenty three thousand folks in Georgia, ten thousand
of them Chelsea were first time voters. Biden won by
eleven thousand votes. We did it in Georgia, we did
it in Arizona, we did in Nevada, in Pennsylvania. It's
by no coincidence that we were able to help bring
(10:51):
in not just the White House, but the set in Congress.
When you have bad actors, because Georgia has terrible actors,
Arizona has had terrible actors, and you have a rising
Latino youth population that has grown up in households where
they're trying to navigate the country for their families and
see their parents working themselves to the bone for a
(11:12):
country that doesn't always even see them. The only thing
that we have to fight for is at the ballot box.
That's for the most eighteen year olds, that's the only
recourse of voice. And if we tap into that energy
and make them believe that change happens, then we have
a country that is truly fulfilling its promise. And in
(11:34):
two thousand and eighteen, it was no coincidence that a
multicultural America came out in the largest numbers in a
mid term and changed Congress not only with the most women,
but the most people of color, the most veterans, the
youngest generation of members. And that shows that when we
participate equally, we have access, We'll be right back stay
(11:58):
with us. The work of changing the electorate to actually
match who we are as a country and then ensuring
that people are able to vote and then do vote
(12:20):
is long haul work. You talk about vote Latino starting
and four, and then you talk about the work that
you were able to build toward ten fifteen years later.
Are there people in your life who have really inspired,
mentors you, and also supported you kind of in this
necessarily persistent, gritty work. I have to say that I've
(12:45):
been fortunate enough that throughout my walks of life of this,
I've had many mentors. But I would say that the
first one was my mom. I was living in New
York City. I packed my bags and I went back
home to Cinoma, California, with this idea of Latino. Right.
So she has a boomerang, you know, for someone who's
on the eve of the thirtieth birthday, who had been
(13:07):
helping her pay rent and you know, pay your mortgage,
and saying, Mom, I want to start this and I'm
going to do it on my credit card, which folks
listening don't ever do that. It's terrible, terryll terrible advice.
But when I was down and when people telling we're
telling me, you're you know, Latinos don't care. Latino youth
in particular, young people don't care. Why are you wasting
(13:29):
your career? When those times came, my mother was the
one that said, no, that you have seen it from
the front lines, you have lived it, and this is
a story you need to tell. And then I had
the opportunity to meet women in Silicon Valley who understood
what I was trying to achieve. And it was the
unlikely allies that came into my life that really believed
(13:50):
in this idea that we had to forge a different
type of America. And through it, I've had incredible mentors,
whether it has been Kamala when she was d that's
when I first met her. Gavin gave me a lot
of counsel. But then, you know, through the journey, Pelosi
was one of the first people to take my phone
call and said, yes, I will meet with you. And
then I've had, believe it or not, a lot of
(14:11):
volunteers along the way. We have a power summit every
year at Modadino, and the idea is trying to get
young people to think about running for office, how to
balance their check book, how to think in a different space.
And I will never forget. We were in Las Vegas
and I ran into this young man. I said, oh,
my gosh, you suited up because I had remembered him
from the last conference. He's like, yeah, I bought this
(14:33):
suit for this and I brought three friends and his
parents were farm workers and Chelsea. When he said that,
I felt like tears coming to my eyes because I
realized that we had communicated what we wanted, that he
belongs in all the spaces, and I knew how hard
he must have worked to buy himself that suit, and
that he believed enough this enough that he brought his
friends with him. And we're starting to see more young
(14:54):
people run for office right now. We have Greg Cassar,
who we trained back in two thousands routine. He ran
for office and became the youngest city councilman in Austin.
He fought for fair wages there and now he's running
for Congress. And that's what we're about. We're about changing
that paradigm. I'm curious, especially given your response to who
(15:17):
of your mentor has been and so many have been women,
not not all of them, but so many of them
have been women. How do you think being a woman
has shaped your leadership, your vision for Vote Latino, and
the work of Vote to Latino, both in the organization
and with your partners. I think that I've been fortunate
(15:39):
that I was. I was raised in a matriarchy, so
and as a result, I have always been given I think,
the tools and the understanding of walking into a room
and recognizing the way someone else may carry and also understanding,
like I shared, my father was very ill for a
(16:00):
very long time. My mom has come to this country
with very little education and didn't know English, and the
next thing we know, she has become a head of household.
She was going to school, getting her a degree, putting
me through school, bringing her family, and just becoming such
a passionate warrior for her family and doing it with
(16:21):
grace in the face of every racist and sexist comment
you could poblsibly have imagined. And it taught me how again,
walking into these spaces that the collaboration and the amount
of all you need has to be done with friends,
and it has to be done in partnership. And if
we are to have a healthy family, if we are
(16:44):
to have a healthy community, healthy country, it has to
start with women. And it has to start with women
because we are making the decisions of how to nurture
and care for our families, to how to actually provide
a different type of perspective of what work means in
order to be able to balance. But I have to
share with you I've been fortunate enough that I also
(17:05):
have a partner that celebrates the work and that allows
the space for me to say, well, I'm not going
to be able to do X y Z that our
traditional roles. I don't want to have traditional roles in
our house. Yesterday, kelsay, I think you'll appreciate my son.
My husband was taught, was saying a quote about how
all men were queer equal, and my son said, all
men and women amen. Amen to your son. And I
(17:29):
imagine many people come and ask you for advice, imagine
especially women and women of color. And as someone who
has been profoundly successful in your work, what advice do
you give when especially young people come and ask for
career guidance or just life guidance. I think one is
(17:51):
enjoy the moment that you're in and learn as much
as you can from whatever moment you are because you
never know when you're going to need those skills. I
started working when I was an eleven eleven years old.
Working at a cash register taught me customer service. Working
in congress taught me how to politic and understand policy
and the mechanics. I worked for a healthcare or firm,
(18:14):
selling research and stuff, and I didn't like it, but
I learned how to be poised and sell it ideas
and when they were all came together, everything taught me
how to be able to promote and grow Voto Latino,
from the accounting to the management, to the execution of
strategy and creating it. Had you told me that every
(18:38):
single thing that I started doing when I was eleven
was going to serve me in my future role, I
wouldn't have been so sure. But one of the things
that I've always appreciated from again my mom, is the
zeal of always doing whatever you're doing to the best
of your ability and your capacity. We're taking a quick break.
(18:59):
Stay with us. I want to go back to voting
rights for a moment, because we are in a different
place today then we were when you started a Vote
(19:20):
to Latino in two thou and four, both in that
we have made progress in some areas and also have
significantly more challenges in others. And so I wonder if
you could just kind of lay out where you think
we are as relates to voting rights in this country
and where you think we need to go. When we
(19:42):
started with Latino, I always had an urgency to build
it fast, and that urgency came with an understanding that
someone like the former twice and peach president was going
to come about just from my experience of seeing it
at the local level. When we started Vote Latino, the
job was very easy. Registered to vote, convinced them to
go cast a ballot. After the gutting of the Voting
(20:02):
Rights Act, we came into the business of starting to
sue states depending on what state they're in. The same
vote that many of your listeners was able to cast
in two thousand twenty after a verified, certified election of
all fifty Secretary of States Republican Democrat, that same vote
now is vulnerable because of the all the laws that
(20:24):
they did in two thousand twenty one where that same
person who cast the ballot may not be able to
cast in Can you explain kind of why that why
that is because I don't think a lot of people
understand on existential level what has happened very quickly to
the sacred right to vote in our country. So in
two thousand twenty, as a reminder, every state said, yes,
(20:46):
this is a fair, certified election. There was no voter fraud.
We stand by it, whether the Secretary of State was
Republican or Democrat. Since then, there has been what we
call atlt. Latino a bill in a box. It is
a bill coming out of disproportionate out of the Heritage
Action Fund from the Heritage Foundation in Washington, and they
are literally going state by state and selling the exact
(21:09):
same package of legislation to restrict the access to the
voting booth. It's the same strategy that they used to
create anti abortion legislation. It's the same type of tactic
that they've used for anti immigrant laws. None of this
is coming from the ground swell of the states. It's
very much coming from an extreme group of folks, and
it's because they read the tea leaves of who did vote,
(21:32):
and it was a multicultural America. It's not who they
want to vote now because we see a very different
world vision. We actually believe in climate change, we believe
in women's choice, we believe in women's agency, and we
believe that immigrants should have rights and be treated humanely.
And the list goes on. And so I'll give you
an example of one of ways people are trying to
(21:55):
restrict the vote in Texas. I don't know how you
registered to vote when you were eight teen, but registered
to vote on my college campus. The very first person
I ever voted for, I was proud to say, was
your father. I was so excited and I still have
a stub. Yeah. I also I registered to vote in
Palelato because I was at Stanford. But yeah, my first
votes absolutely were based on where I was going to school.
(22:16):
I believe it or not. We're suing right now Texas
because they passed the piece of legislation last year saying
that you needed residency requirement now to register on your
college campus. The challenge is that we know that just
between two thousand and twenty and by the time Greg
Abbott is going to be on the ballot this year,
a quarter million Latino youth are going to turn eighteen
(22:37):
in Texas alone, So all these restrictions are by design.
And if I was a young person today, I would
be so angry and so upset and offended that you
have a whole bunch of older people trying to disenfranchise
your vote, generally older white people, older white people trying
to disenfranchise your vote, and they are not aligned with
your values. While it is proportionately falls along color lines,
(23:01):
it disproportionately falls generationally along young people. They're the ones
most impacted by the Shenanigans. So when I say that
we're building towards the future, it means literally it's towards
the future. But how do we create policy and access
to a community that for the most part, still can't vote,
yet can't fully self realize themselves just because their kids well,
(23:24):
And how do we have sufficient civic education in schools
and in other places where children spend time so that
young people grow up expecting the right to vote and
expecting themselves and their friends to vote. That's exactly right.
How do we create that culture? And I think you
know what folk, most folks don't realize is that in
(23:46):
the nineties seventies, Uh, they actually took civic education out
of schools, and right now we only have eight states
at a fifty eight states that provide civic education for
a whole year. That's nothing, yes, because we should be
having age appropriate civic education at least kind of in
every tranche of school elementary, middle, and high school and
(24:07):
ideally embedded in every year of school. And yet we don't,
or at least we don't yet, not yet, not yet.
That could be another project. So where do you think
will be in a decade if you were to look
in your crystal ball. Well, right now we are in
a work on the road. We can fight like hell.
(24:28):
Elections are going to be for us some of the
most consequential and I know people hear this every single time,
but we are right now in the eye of the storm.
We need a functioning Congress and if we don't participate
in the midterm elections, then the challenges is that Republicans
will come into office and then we have to ask
ourselves next presidential election, when the Democrat wins, will this
(24:50):
same Congress of Republicans certify a fair, free election. People
always say, well, how did we get to this point?
I said, well, many of us stopped nurturing our democracy,
we stopped participating, we stopped loving it. And my hope
is that people recognize that our country is worth fighting for,
and the liberties of our young people are worth fighting for.
(25:10):
And we have a generation waiting to take the reins
of leadership, but we have to make sure that we
are responsible not just responsible leaders. But I always say,
you know, oftentimes people talk about ancestors like we are
the living ancestors of our children right now, and are
we ancestoring properly so that they have a shot of
being self realized to their best version of themselves? And
if we think of it through, how are we ancestoring
(25:32):
our democracy, living, breathing it? And I think it allows
people to recognize the responsibility that we have not just
to each other, but really to our kin into our families.
When readers that just the last question we've we have already,
you know, spoken about so many statistics that motivate you,
inspire you, I think, also anger you. I do wonder, though,
(25:54):
if there is sort of one statistic or fact that
you'd like to leave our listeners with that is particularly
important to you, whether it's inspiring or enraging I'm on
the board of Emily's List. Emily's List is we believe
in helping women run for office who are pro choice,
democratic women and trying to recruit women in the before times, Chelsea,
(26:18):
I like to say it was really hard. There was
always a litney list of why they couldn't run. And
so in two thousand and sixteen, to give you an example,
six d women collectively sent an email saying that they
were interested in running for office at Emily's List. And
Emily's List is a huge organization. After the election of
the former president that twice impeached, over forty two women
(26:40):
contacted Emily's List within seventeen months saying that they wanted
to run for office. And we see a bench now
of incredibly talented women. It wasn't by chance that for
the first time in Congress in two thousand, eighteen hundred
and twenty six women filled the chamber of the U. S.
House of Representatives. It's because we were able to field candidates.
(27:01):
Nina Hidalgo at twenty seven years old, she is one
of someone to watch. In Texas, we see Jessicas and scenarios.
Also in Texas we saw who had run like we
see a whole group of young women with a different
type of fortitude of saying, the only way we change
our country is I become involved, and that shyness has dissipated,
(27:22):
and that is what gives me hope claiming space and
then using their platforms to help actually advance opportunity and equity.
Well rich, you certainly inspire many people as well, and
I count myself among them, and I am incredibly thankful
for your time today. This is fun. Thanks so much, Chelsee.
(27:45):
You can learn more about Voto Latino at Voto Latino
dot org and you can find Maria Theresa on Twitter
at Maria Theresa. In Fact is brought to you by
iHeart Radio. We are produced by a mighty group of
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(28:11):
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Hi, I'm Chelsea Clinton. And this season on in Fact,
we're celebrating Women's History Month. I'll be talking with trailblazing
women at the top of their fields about their personal journeys,
the progress we've made, and how far we still have
to go. Today we're talking about representation and activism with
(00:24):
Maria Teresa Kumar, the founding president of Voto Latino, the
leading Latin X voter registration and advocacy organization in the country.
It's no surprise that throughout our history women have led
the fight for women's rights. Women have also played a
vital role in pretty much every social movement. So Journal
Truth and Lucretia Mott were abolitionists and self regists. Rosa
(00:47):
Parks and Dorothy Height where civil rights movement leaders to
Laura's Wuerta led the fight to improve conditions for farm workers,
and she's still on the front lines. Brenda Howard, also
known as the Mother of Pride, is credited with creating
the first Pride parade. Candy Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving,
and Shannon Watts forged Mom's Demand Action for gun violence prevention.
(01:10):
And those are just a few of the women who
have refused to accept the status quo and fought for
expanded rights, protections and opportunities for women, but also for everyone.
Any time change is needed, odds are there have been brave, strong,
and gutsy women at the forefront. My guest today is
certainly a brave, strong and gutsy woman who I have
(01:32):
long admired and been lucky to know. Maria Tracy Kumar
co founded Vote Latino in two thousand four. She's an
Emmy nominated contributor to MSNBC. Fast Company named her one
of the one hundred most creative business minds in the country,
and l named her one of the ten most influential
women in Washington, d C. Maria Treca Kumar, thank you
(01:58):
so much for joining me today to talk about voting
rights and activism and so much more. Thank you so much, Chelsea.
You know, I thought we could start at the beginning
of your story. You came to this country, the United States,
from Columbia when you were four, and I wondered if
you could just share how you think those early experiences
(02:19):
of of being an immigrant and then being a new
American shaped you. So when I came to this country,
one of the reasons we came was that my adopted
father had fallen ill in Columbia and so you needed
to convalesce, and so my mom and I ended up
in the tiny little town called Geyserville, California that in
(02:39):
the last census had less than people. And where is Geyserville, California.
It's in Sonoma County. And so my mother went from Bogota, Columbia,
which is very much like New York City, to teeny
tiny town. Were the expectations from my grandparents because they
were grape growers, was that while my ad convalesce, she
(03:01):
had to go work in the field. And Chelsea, I
have to tell you that my mother was such a
good support. Was I don't think she'd ever seen a
plant in her life, and the next thing you know,
she is picking grapes. And it was such a formative
moment because I also knew the opportunities that this country
afforded me. We're going to be vastly different than growing
up in Colombia. My mother is after Latina, and by
(03:24):
that the deck was already stacked against her. She had
little education, and I had the opportunity to probably go
to school, but more than likely would not have and
understanding I had the opportunity to go to school, I
fell in love with the United States, and I will
never forget going to San Francisco City Hall when I
was nine years old and raising my right hand and
(03:46):
pledging allegiance to United States and becoming a US citizen.
And if you ask why the work that I do
a Voldo Latino is so significant, is that I remember
that nine year old with these aspirations and thinking big
and recognizing that the world opened up before me the
moment I became a US citizen. And it breaks my
heart to know that there's millions of undocumented youth here
(04:08):
in this country that have those exact same dreams, but
because our laws changed from the moment I came to
this country to today, that their future is different. And
the more that we can get people to recognize that
we're leaving great minds behind because they can't self realize,
is what are the motive fitting factors of the work
that I do. So I want to go back to
that moment, you know, when you were a nine year
(04:30):
old and you felt this enormous promise and potential and
yet it also sounds like real activation. Did you always
know that you would work in activism and advocacy. You know,
it's so interesting that you ask. So. I loved the
idea of the American promise that I could be anything
(04:50):
now that I was US citizen. And literally two years later,
I remember coming home and I'm crying and my dad
was like, well, what's going on, honey, I said, I said, Dad,
I can't be president. And my Dad's like, what are
you talking about? I said, well, you know, in America,
you promised. You know, I was promised I could be anything,
(05:11):
and it wasn't that I wanted to be, but this
idea that you could unity was limited, right. Uh. But
I always knew that I liked helping people. I always
knew that. And the reason again when my mother came first,
and then she brought my aunts and my uncle and
my grandmother, I found myself navigating the country for my
(05:31):
family at a very young age. The racial profiling and
the policing that was happening in Sonoma when I was
growing up was very real. I love Sonoma. It gave
me an incredible experience and informed who I was. But
Sonoma was very segregated, and they sadly tracked our young
men in particular at a very early age, the men
were struggling, and you would think that they had grown
(05:54):
up in the worst part of New York City instead
of a very rural, aggressive Sonoma. And it was at
the same time the backdrop of when Pete Wilson's Proposition passed,
and so we were Sonoma and California was on fire
with racial tension, and my family for the very first
time felt not only differentiated, but in danger unsafe, and
(06:19):
it broke my heart because this was the country that
I loved. This is the country that said we welcome
you and let yourself realize and they were we were
going against our own creed as I had understood it
when I was growing up. And so if you ask
what are the factors that motivated me? Was very much
the dynamics between my dad's family, who were farmers, and
my mom's family, but then also the institutions that were
(06:41):
raising us with the backdrop of a very hostile governor,
and it basically baked me. Can you please tell our
listeners what was prop so proposition was the original show
me your Paper laws which identified anti immigration language in California,
(07:03):
and Pete Wilson promoted it. It was a ballot initiative
that Californians, my neighbors voted for, and it was heartbreaking
because it was the very first time I had to
have a conversation with my family that they were in
danger and they needed to become a citizens. Why then
voting rights? You had this sense of injustice that was
affecting your family, your community. It wasn't kind of what
(07:28):
you believed America should be. And there probably are many
different areas where you could have directed your time, energy, talents.
Why voting rights? I had the opportunity to work in
Capitol Hill right after college for vic Fasio. He was
chairman of the Democratic Caucus, and I was able to
see up close who influenced policy and how. And one
(07:49):
of the things that I learned where that the people
oftentimes advising our members didn't come from the community they
were trying to serve. So there was a huge gap
in intention and policy outcome. And so while I was
at the Kennedy School, I had kind of a light
bulb moment of there are millions of young Latinos behind
(08:11):
me that have the potential to define this country so
that those policy outcomes are actually met with intention and purpose.
And if we start mobilizing them, we could actually leap
frog a lot of the static that we see in
policy making. In two thousand three, let you know, technically
became the second largest group of Americans in this country.
(08:34):
And Volta Latino we started in two thousand four, and
the two thousand ten cents said, sure enough of the
growth in this country was due to the Latino population.
And this is what folks didn't realize is that they
were American born children. So while let you know, we're
technically the second largest population in America in two thousand three,
they were mostly the majority under eighteen years old, and
(08:55):
it wasn't until two thousand eighteen that they became the
second largest voting block. So vota you know, it's this
seeing the future from the perspective of I know what
it means to grow up under the backdrop of a
really bad governor. And so where did volto Latino go?
We went to Colorado when tank Creato was on the rise.
We went to Arizona when we saw the rise of
anti immigration laws, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas. Places people
(09:20):
told us that we were wasting our time, and people
said that Latino's youth didn't care. Like that's all I heard,
and I was like, that's none of my experience. And so, now,
almost twenty years after the founding of Vote Latino, in
which you have more than proven that young Latinos will
registered to vote, will turn out to vote, will continue
(09:42):
to vote, what stories do you share to help personalize
the statistics that you just articulated. We expected Latinos to
become the second largest voting block, not until and in
fact it happened. And when they hit that marker of
being the second largest, we were able to flip Arizona,
(10:07):
and the year before we had flipped Virginia, and two
years before we had been able to basically make both
Nevada and Colorado a battleground state. And so we just
saw this progression. And so when people say, well, the
Latino vote didn't make a difference, I said, well, now
let's go to Georgia. In Georgia, Latinos represented four percent
of the electoral base. With our brothers and sisters in
(10:29):
the African American community and with Asian Americans, it becomes formidable.
Four percent makes all the difference. Both. Let you know,
we registered twenty three thousand folks in Georgia, ten thousand
of them Chelsea were first time voters. Biden won by
eleven thousand votes. We did it in Georgia, we did
it in Arizona, we did in Nevada, in Pennsylvania. It's
by no coincidence that we were able to help bring
(10:51):
in not just the White House, but the set in Congress.
When you have bad actors, because Georgia has terrible actors,
Arizona has had terrible actors, and you have a rising
Latino youth population that has grown up in households where
they're trying to navigate the country for their families and
see their parents working themselves to the bone for a
(11:12):
country that doesn't always even see them. The only thing
that we have to fight for is at the ballot box.
That's for the most eighteen year olds, that's the only
recourse of voice. And if we tap into that energy
and make them believe that change happens, then we have
a country that is truly fulfilling its promise. And in
(11:34):
two thousand and eighteen, it was no coincidence that a
multicultural America came out in the largest numbers in a
mid term and changed Congress not only with the most women,
but the most people of color, the most veterans, the
youngest generation of members. And that shows that when we
participate equally, we have access, We'll be right back stay
(11:58):
with us. The work of changing the electorate to actually
match who we are as a country and then ensuring
that people are able to vote and then do vote
(12:20):
is long haul work. You talk about vote Latino starting
and four, and then you talk about the work that
you were able to build toward ten fifteen years later.
Are there people in your life who have really inspired,
mentors you, and also supported you kind of in this
necessarily persistent, gritty work. I have to say that I've
(12:45):
been fortunate enough that throughout my walks of life of this,
I've had many mentors. But I would say that the
first one was my mom. I was living in New
York City. I packed my bags and I went back
home to Cinoma, California, with this idea of Latino. Right.
So she has a boomerang, you know, for someone who's
on the eve of the thirtieth birthday, who had been
(13:07):
helping her pay rent and you know, pay your mortgage,
and saying, Mom, I want to start this and I'm
going to do it on my credit card, which folks
listening don't ever do that. It's terrible, terryll terrible advice.
But when I was down and when people telling we're
telling me, you're you know, Latinos don't care. Latino youth
in particular, young people don't care. Why are you wasting
(13:29):
your career? When those times came, my mother was the
one that said, no, that you have seen it from
the front lines, you have lived it, and this is
a story you need to tell. And then I had
the opportunity to meet women in Silicon Valley who understood
what I was trying to achieve. And it was the
unlikely allies that came into my life that really believed
(13:50):
in this idea that we had to forge a different
type of America. And through it, I've had incredible mentors,
whether it has been Kamala when she was d that's
when I first met her. Gavin gave me a lot
of counsel. But then, you know, through the journey, Pelosi
was one of the first people to take my phone
call and said, yes, I will meet with you. And
then I've had, believe it or not, a lot of
(14:11):
volunteers along the way. We have a power summit every
year at Modadino, and the idea is trying to get
young people to think about running for office, how to
balance their check book, how to think in a different space.
And I will never forget. We were in Las Vegas
and I ran into this young man. I said, oh,
my gosh, you suited up because I had remembered him
from the last conference. He's like, yeah, I bought this
(14:33):
suit for this and I brought three friends and his
parents were farm workers and Chelsea. When he said that,
I felt like tears coming to my eyes because I
realized that we had communicated what we wanted, that he
belongs in all the spaces, and I knew how hard
he must have worked to buy himself that suit, and
that he believed enough this enough that he brought his
friends with him. And we're starting to see more young
(14:54):
people run for office right now. We have Greg Cassar,
who we trained back in two thousands routine. He ran
for office and became the youngest city councilman in Austin.
He fought for fair wages there and now he's running
for Congress. And that's what we're about. We're about changing
that paradigm. I'm curious, especially given your response to who
(15:17):
of your mentor has been and so many have been women,
not not all of them, but so many of them
have been women. How do you think being a woman
has shaped your leadership, your vision for Vote Latino, and
the work of Vote to Latino, both in the organization
and with your partners. I think that I've been fortunate
(15:39):
that I was. I was raised in a matriarchy, so
and as a result, I have always been given I think,
the tools and the understanding of walking into a room
and recognizing the way someone else may carry and also understanding,
like I shared, my father was very ill for a
(16:00):
very long time. My mom has come to this country
with very little education and didn't know English, and the
next thing we know, she has become a head of household.
She was going to school, getting her a degree, putting
me through school, bringing her family, and just becoming such
a passionate warrior for her family and doing it with
(16:21):
grace in the face of every racist and sexist comment
you could poblsibly have imagined. And it taught me how again,
walking into these spaces that the collaboration and the amount
of all you need has to be done with friends,
and it has to be done in partnership. And if
we are to have a healthy family, if we are
(16:44):
to have a healthy community, healthy country, it has to
start with women. And it has to start with women
because we are making the decisions of how to nurture
and care for our families, to how to actually provide
a different type of perspective of what work means in
order to be able to balance. But I have to
share with you I've been fortunate enough that I also
(17:05):
have a partner that celebrates the work and that allows
the space for me to say, well, I'm not going
to be able to do X y Z that our
traditional roles. I don't want to have traditional roles in
our house. Yesterday, kelsay, I think you'll appreciate my son.
My husband was taught, was saying a quote about how
all men were queer equal, and my son said, all
men and women amen. Amen to your son. And I
(17:29):
imagine many people come and ask you for advice, imagine
especially women and women of color. And as someone who
has been profoundly successful in your work, what advice do
you give when especially young people come and ask for
career guidance or just life guidance. I think one is
(17:51):
enjoy the moment that you're in and learn as much
as you can from whatever moment you are because you
never know when you're going to need those skills. I
started working when I was an eleven eleven years old.
Working at a cash register taught me customer service. Working
in congress taught me how to politic and understand policy
and the mechanics. I worked for a healthcare or firm,
(18:14):
selling research and stuff, and I didn't like it, but
I learned how to be poised and sell it ideas
and when they were all came together, everything taught me
how to be able to promote and grow Voto Latino,
from the accounting to the management, to the execution of
strategy and creating it. Had you told me that every
(18:38):
single thing that I started doing when I was eleven
was going to serve me in my future role, I
wouldn't have been so sure. But one of the things
that I've always appreciated from again my mom, is the
zeal of always doing whatever you're doing to the best
of your ability and your capacity. We're taking a quick break.
(18:59):
Stay with us. I want to go back to voting
rights for a moment, because we are in a different
place today then we were when you started a Vote
(19:20):
to Latino in two thou and four, both in that
we have made progress in some areas and also have
significantly more challenges in others. And so I wonder if
you could just kind of lay out where you think
we are as relates to voting rights in this country
and where you think we need to go. When we
(19:42):
started with Latino, I always had an urgency to build
it fast, and that urgency came with an understanding that
someone like the former twice and peach president was going
to come about just from my experience of seeing it
at the local level. When we started Vote Latino, the
job was very easy. Registered to vote, convinced them to
go cast a ballot. After the gutting of the Voting
(20:02):
Rights Act, we came into the business of starting to
sue states depending on what state they're in. The same
vote that many of your listeners was able to cast
in two thousand twenty after a verified, certified election of
all fifty Secretary of States Republican Democrat, that same vote
now is vulnerable because of the all the laws that
(20:24):
they did in two thousand twenty one where that same
person who cast the ballot may not be able to
cast in Can you explain kind of why that why
that is because I don't think a lot of people
understand on existential level what has happened very quickly to
the sacred right to vote in our country. So in
two thousand twenty, as a reminder, every state said, yes,
(20:46):
this is a fair, certified election. There was no voter fraud.
We stand by it, whether the Secretary of State was
Republican or Democrat. Since then, there has been what we
call atlt. Latino a bill in a box. It is
a bill coming out of disproportionate out of the Heritage
Action Fund from the Heritage Foundation in Washington, and they
are literally going state by state and selling the exact
(21:09):
same package of legislation to restrict the access to the
voting booth. It's the same strategy that they used to
create anti abortion legislation. It's the same type of tactic
that they've used for anti immigrant laws. None of this
is coming from the ground swell of the states. It's
very much coming from an extreme group of folks, and
it's because they read the tea leaves of who did vote,
(21:32):
and it was a multicultural America. It's not who they
want to vote now because we see a very different
world vision. We actually believe in climate change, we believe
in women's choice, we believe in women's agency, and we
believe that immigrants should have rights and be treated humanely.
And the list goes on. And so I'll give you
an example of one of ways people are trying to
(21:55):
restrict the vote in Texas. I don't know how you
registered to vote when you were eight teen, but registered
to vote on my college campus. The very first person
I ever voted for, I was proud to say, was
your father. I was so excited and I still have
a stub. Yeah. I also I registered to vote in
Palelato because I was at Stanford. But yeah, my first
votes absolutely were based on where I was going to school.
(22:16):
I believe it or not. We're suing right now Texas
because they passed the piece of legislation last year saying
that you needed residency requirement now to register on your
college campus. The challenge is that we know that just
between two thousand and twenty and by the time Greg
Abbott is going to be on the ballot this year,
a quarter million Latino youth are going to turn eighteen
(22:37):
in Texas alone, So all these restrictions are by design.
And if I was a young person today, I would
be so angry and so upset and offended that you
have a whole bunch of older people trying to disenfranchise
your vote, generally older white people, older white people trying
to disenfranchise your vote, and they are not aligned with
your values. While it is proportionately falls along color lines,
(23:01):
it disproportionately falls generationally along young people. They're the ones
most impacted by the Shenanigans. So when I say that
we're building towards the future, it means literally it's towards
the future. But how do we create policy and access
to a community that for the most part, still can't vote,
yet can't fully self realize themselves just because their kids well,
(23:24):
And how do we have sufficient civic education in schools
and in other places where children spend time so that
young people grow up expecting the right to vote and
expecting themselves and their friends to vote. That's exactly right.
How do we create that culture? And I think you
know what folk, most folks don't realize is that in
(23:46):
the nineties seventies, Uh, they actually took civic education out
of schools, and right now we only have eight states
at a fifty eight states that provide civic education for
a whole year. That's nothing, yes, because we should be
having age appropriate civic education at least kind of in
every tranche of school elementary, middle, and high school and
(24:07):
ideally embedded in every year of school. And yet we don't,
or at least we don't yet, not yet, not yet.
That could be another project. So where do you think
will be in a decade if you were to look
in your crystal ball. Well, right now we are in
a work on the road. We can fight like hell.
(24:28):
Elections are going to be for us some of the
most consequential and I know people hear this every single time,
but we are right now in the eye of the storm.
We need a functioning Congress and if we don't participate
in the midterm elections, then the challenges is that Republicans
will come into office and then we have to ask
ourselves next presidential election, when the Democrat wins, will this
(24:50):
same Congress of Republicans certify a fair, free election. People
always say, well, how did we get to this point?
I said, well, many of us stopped nurturing our democracy,
we stopped participating, we stopped loving it. And my hope
is that people recognize that our country is worth fighting for,
and the liberties of our young people are worth fighting for.
(25:10):
And we have a generation waiting to take the reins
of leadership, but we have to make sure that we
are responsible not just responsible leaders. But I always say,
you know, oftentimes people talk about ancestors like we are
the living ancestors of our children right now, and are
we ancestoring properly so that they have a shot of
being self realized to their best version of themselves? And
if we think of it through, how are we ancestoring
(25:32):
our democracy, living, breathing it? And I think it allows
people to recognize the responsibility that we have not just
to each other, but really to our kin into our families.
When readers that just the last question we've we have already,
you know, spoken about so many statistics that motivate you,
inspire you, I think, also anger you. I do wonder, though,
(25:54):
if there is sort of one statistic or fact that
you'd like to leave our listeners with that is particularly
important to you, whether it's inspiring or enraging I'm on
the board of Emily's List. Emily's List is we believe
in helping women run for office who are pro choice,
democratic women and trying to recruit women in the before times, Chelsea,
(26:18):
I like to say it was really hard. There was
always a litney list of why they couldn't run. And
so in two thousand and sixteen, to give you an example,
six d women collectively sent an email saying that they
were interested in running for office at Emily's List. And
Emily's List is a huge organization. After the election of
the former president that twice impeached, over forty two women
(26:40):
contacted Emily's List within seventeen months saying that they wanted
to run for office. And we see a bench now
of incredibly talented women. It wasn't by chance that for
the first time in Congress in two thousand, eighteen hundred
and twenty six women filled the chamber of the U. S.
House of Representatives. It's because we were able to field candidates.
(27:01):
Nina Hidalgo at twenty seven years old, she is one
of someone to watch. In Texas, we see Jessicas and scenarios.
Also in Texas we saw who had run like we
see a whole group of young women with a different
type of fortitude of saying, the only way we change
our country is I become involved, and that shyness has dissipated,
(27:22):
and that is what gives me hope claiming space and
then using their platforms to help actually advance opportunity and equity.
Well rich, you certainly inspire many people as well, and
I count myself among them, and I am incredibly thankful
for your time today. This is fun. Thanks so much, Chelsee.
(27:45):
You can learn more about Voto Latino at Voto Latino
dot org and you can find Maria Theresa on Twitter
at Maria Theresa. In Fact is brought to you by
iHeart Radio. We are produced by a mighty group of
women and one amazing man, Erica Goodmudson, mart Harr, Sarah Horrowitz,
(28:11):
Jessmin Molly, and Justin Wright, with help from Lindsay Hoffman,
Barry Laurie Joyce, Kuban, Julie Subran, Mike Taylor, and Emily Young.
Original music is by Justin Wright. If you like this
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