In The Community
After a contentious U.S. presidential election, voters sent a message that they no longer welcomed President Donald Trump in the White House. With an estimated 71% of Latina support, former Vice President Joe Biden will become the country’s 46th president. His running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris, will become the first woman, Black woman, and Indian-American woman to serve as vice president of the United States. Despite the spread of conspiracy theories, voter suppression, and decades of being ignored, Latino voters proved to be the deciding factor including turning Arizona blue.
I\u2019ve been telling people this the whole year. In Arizona we\u2019ve been fighting racists and mobilizing against white supremacy for the past 10+ years. It\u2019s not a swing state because of chance. We\u2019ve been working our asses off and it\u2019s paying off. https://twitter.com/leedsgarcia/status/1323361590373097472\u00a0\u2026— Erika Andiola (@Erika Andiola) 1604377441
“Trump’s presidency has been defined by racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and lawlessness, and Latinas have borne the brunt of the pain,” Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy told Luz Collective. “From beginning his campaign by demeaning Mexicans to his disastrous handling of the Covid-19 crisis, which disproportionately affected Latinas and our families, the last four years under Trump have wreaked havoc on our communities.”
Biden will have a lot of work to do to repair the harm that the Trump administration has caused across the country, including in the Latinx community. Recently, Latinas marked Latina Equal Pay Day on October 29, bringing visibility to statistics that show Latinas, on average, earn just 55 cents to every dollar a white man earns. Electing Biden, who has promised to help close the gender pay gap for Latinas, and all women, is just one step toward better economic opportunities for Latinas. Holding him and Congress accountable to the promises made is the second step. Here are three ways that the Biden administration could financially uplift Latinas:
Passage of the HEROES Act Bill
Latinxs are disproportionately affected by job loss and housing insecurity in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. This includes many Latina business owners who have been challenged in accessing programs, such as the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. An UnidosUS report found that “the threat of depleting one’s savings in order to avoid eviction is exacerbated by barriers that have kept some workers from accessing unemployment insurance or governmental economic stimulus.” On the campaign trail, Biden supported the HEROEs Act, which the Democratic-led House of Representatives passed more than three months ago. If progressed by the Senate, where it has been stalled, Biden would surely sign the bill into law. The stimulus package would allocate $175 billion in rent and mortgage assistance as well as provide resources to navigate the PPP programs and housing counseling services – all of which could positively impact Latinas, including some undocumented immigrants, who weren’t eligible to receive aid through the CARES Act back in March.
Protection for Latina Domestic Workers
The Biden administration plans to enact legislation that would mirror the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, a handful of policies that would extend federal labor protections to domestic workers. Domestic workers, many of them Latinas, are vulnerable to wage theft and sexual assault. The Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights would include guaranteed paid time off and other protections that stand to benefit Latinas.
Latina domestic workers like Antonia care for our homes and families. The pandemic has shown us how essential their work is. It\u2019s time to value their work by ending the Latina Pay Gap and including them in pandemic relief! #LatinaEqualPaypic.twitter.com/87VdKVwdUO— Domestic Workers (@Domestic Workers) 1603998060
Overtime Payment and Minimum Wage
With the Biden administration also comes an opportunity to address the economic concerns of Latinas who earn low wages. Specifically, Biden promises to undo Trump’s overtime payment policies, which currently keeps 1.3 million Latinx workers from earning the overtime pay they deserve. Additionally, Biden promises to increase the minimum wage, which would help millions of Latinas who are overrepresented in low-wage jobs.
We love reliable and unbiased data and this is especially true with the 2020 Presidential Election only days away! This is why we’re excited to welcome back to Tamarindo Stacie de Armas, SVP, Diverse Consumer Insights and Initiatives at Nielsen —a global measurement and data analytics company that provides the most complete and trusted view available of consumers and markets worldwide—to discuss their 2020 Election Hub. The hub is where you can find the most up-to-date data on this year’s biggest election events. Like Nielsen, we want to highlight the importance of voting and the importance of educating yourself prior to voting. So, please visit the 2020 Election Hub today for accurate information.
Stacie breaks down the data on Latinos and voting and also gives us a lot to be hopeful about the power that we hold as a community.
From the Southwest to South Beach, Latinos seem to have gotten the message on their untapped power, with populations that make up even larger percentages of the electorate in key Swing States. Since the Midterm Elections, places like Florida and North Carolina have seen substantial increases in registrations among Latino voters.
We also talk about Latina Equal Pay Day which is on October 29th, 2020. This is the date that the typical Latina’s wages catch up to what the typical wage was for white men in 2019. That’s right, it takes nearly two years to catch up! Despite this grim fact, Latinas are a force to be reckoned with and we continue to enroll in high education, open businesses and continue to flex our economic muscle. Tune in to hear Stacie distill the data behind what Latina Equal Day means.
Note: Brenda mentions that in the state of California, voters can register to vote even on election day. To be specific, you can register to vote in person at your county elections office, polling place, or voter center during early voting or on Election day in California. Find information for your state here: https://www.usa.gov/how-to-vote
Tamarindo podcast, part of Luz Collective, is the Latinx show where hosts discuss politics, pop culture, and how to balance it all con calma, hosted by Brenda González and Ana Sheila Victorino, and edited by Michelle Andrade.
The Data-Backed Power of the Latinx Community - Tamarindo Podcast - Omny.fm
Like many rucas, I’ve found comfort in the videos of quasi-midwestern cholo Nathan Apodaca, aka @doggface208. As Los Angeles Times staff writer Esmeralda Bermudez has noted, “It’s like he has a video that perfectly captures every mood.” The one that went hardcore viral, stoking much adulation, features Apodaca skating through a flatly serene anywheresville, sippin’ cranberry juice from the bottle, enjoying the wind on his bald head as Stevie Nicks serenades: “Now here you go again. You say you want your freedom…”
We love this!https://twitter.com/DrewFrogger/status/1309531633545089024\u00a0\u2026— Fleetwood Mac (@Fleetwood Mac) 1601139564
Many of us admire that vibe.
We envy it too since an ugly but largely unspoken fear hangs in the air. An unanswerable question provokes this fear.
What will happen in November?
Some people, white male Democrats in particular, answer this question cavalierly. They argue that to suggest that the current head of state might refuse to leave office in spite of an electoral loss is a sin against our hallowed Constitution. The United States of America is an exceptional empire with a founding document crafted by Providence herself. Americans always, well, mostly, submit to rule of law and this election will not deviate from historical precedent! Any attempt to persuade these voters otherwise results in figurative fingers inserted into figurative ears.
A different set of Democrats concedes that the head of state might not surrender his position. When one asks these Democrats what ought to happen under such circumstances, their faces broadcast the same blank fear expressed by animals before they become roadkill. After a few seconds of distraught silence, these Democrats giggle and answer, “I don’t know! I guess someone will have to drag him out by the hair!” These fools, or, as doggface would say, foos, conflate a federal coup with a real-estate eviction.
I will vote and I do hope that Joe Biden wins. I also understand that as we approach November 3, we sail toward dangerous territory.
Our current head of state is both a tyrant and a Tyrant. Most women have a great deal of experience enduring tyrants. Many tyrants are romantic terrorists and the tactics they use are similar and often identical to the tactics used by Tyrants. These similarities are why so many women, abuse survivors, and minoritized people correctly perceived the threat posed by Donald Trump in advance of pretty much everyone else. As Anand Giridharadas put it, “Being on the wrong end of certain power equations perhaps trains you to be an early-warning system for tyranny.”
Every man can’t be a dictatorial head of state. But every man can be a dictator at home. Trump is both. His first wife, Ivana Trump stated in her divorce deposition that her husband raped her. That is what batterers, tyrants with a little t, do. They dominate using all available strategies, sexual violence being an extremely common and easy-to-use tool. Why? Because the better a woman knows the person who rapes her, the less credibility she is afforded, particularly by the police. In fact, there are many people who believe that marital rape is an impossiblity. A man may employ his possessions as he sees fit.
With the assistance of several queers, I liberated myself from a domestic tyrant. This cisgendered straight man had trapped me in a controlling relationship steeped in domestic violence, humiliation, and surveillance. He regularly raped and strangled me. He led me to believe that if I left him, if I sought freedom, he would find me, kill me, and make my body disappear into rural California.
This reality is why it’s callous and cruel to tell battered women to leave. Domestic tyrants don’t kill their victims for staying. They kill us for leaving. They kill us for our perceived fugitivity. They execute us to preserve their masucline honor. 75% of domestic abuse murders happen after the woman has fled and the danger faced by women who leave batterers is so common that it even has a name, post-separation violence. When a woman is leaving a batterer who has made threats to kill or harm her as punishment for liberation, she needs a survival plan. She needs a map to safety. She needs supporters and nurturers. She needs shelter. She needs succor. In other words, she needs a community willing to love her and fight for her.
Liberating ourselves from the forces currently in control of White House and beyond will likely lead to political separation violence and post-separation violence. Rafia Zakaria understands this dynamic, writing that “[i]f Trump cannot have America…there will not be any America left to be had.” The night I finally fled from the man who battered me for three years, he pursued me by car and then by foot. He attempted to negotiate his way into the home that had given me refuge and when sweet talking failed, he loudly and threateningly protested that it was his right to continue his pursuit of me.
I could hear him screaming outside the house. I sat on a bedroom floor trembling, uninvited memories of his hands squeezing my throat assailing me. The last time I had attempted to leave him, he had raped and strangled me and then forced me to eat breakfast with him.
Sometimes, it’s the small indignities that really smart.
Impending separation, fear of violence, and highly controlling behaviors are all indicators of domestic abuse lethality. Our current national reality is marked by the possibility of impending separation, fear of violence and highly controlling behaviors exhibited by state agencies that perform violence. If we’re going to successfully separate from the forces that currently dominate, we need a safety plan.
