Latinos in Arizona Pay Homage to MLK Through Voter Registration
In keeping with Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights legacy, a number of leaders of Arizona's Latino population decided to give voter registration a boost Monday through a one-day summit in Phoenix.
One Arizona, an alliance of nonprofits geared towards promoting voter engagement, specifically among Latinos, marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a gathering that offered trainings, workshops and talks in relation to the advocacy.
The participants, who were predominantly high school and college students, later went on a door-to-door campaign on the same day in an effort to get more people to exercise their vote.
According to Mi Familia Vota's Arizona director, as told to NBC News, Raquel Teran, the best way for them to honor MLK is launching the voter registration drive, to ensure "Latinos and other minorities are engaged in the decision making process."
"We know that we can organize marches and rallies-we're going to do that too-but we also want to make sure we're building political power," she also said.
This is not the first time that such an activity was organized. In 2014, Mi Familia Vota Educational Fund and National Council of La Raza engaged in a drive to get more than 250,000 voters to register. This was in response to the fact that only less than half of adult Latinos in the U.S. voted in the 2012 presidential elections, as per The Huffington Post.
However, the voter registration advocates recognized that getting Latino citizens to register is not the ultimate end for the group. Rather, it's just "one piece of the puzzle," according to NCLR's immigration and civic engagement campaign head Clarissa Martinez De Castro.
Currently, Arizona has the fifth largest number - 902,000 -- of eligible Hispanic voters statewide, based on the Pew Research Center data.
Further, in December 2015, it was noted that Latinos are pushing Arizona to becoming a "presidential 'swing' or 'purple' state," according to another piece in The Huffington Post.
As stated by the online publication, "If resources are mobilized to deepen the current Latino voter momentum, Arizona will become the fifth state with a million Latino voters joining California, Texas, Florida and New York."
"Such a change would spur Latino statewide candidacies and make Arizona yet another state where Latinos hold the key to victory."
Considering the heat surrounding Latino immigration issues, in addition to voter registration advocacies, the upcoming elections may also expect a higher, more robust Hispanic vote.
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