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Opportunities

Town Hall pushes Mesa Latinos to run for office, pursue change

A changing community was the theme for a recent Town Hall in Mesa. Joining Horizonte host Jose Cárdenas to talk about the Town Hall is David Luna of the Mesa Association of Hispanic Citizens and co-chairman of the event.

CÁRDENAS: David, tell us a little bit about the background of the Mesa Association of Hispanic Citizens.
DAVID LUNA: The Mesa Association of Hispanic Citizens has been an organization since 1988. It started as a grassroots effort for  area Latinos to begin to look at opportunities in leadership and education. The whole notion of the group is to try to motivate Latinos within the community to seek those kinds of roles.

CÁRDENAS: So it`s been in existence since '88, but this is only the fourth annual Town Hall. What was the genesis for the first one?
LUNA: The reason why we decided to have a Town Hall is because in District 4 (which is predominantly Latino), there were no viable candidates running for office who represented a large majority of Latinos in that area. So we had local chancellors and leaders (and) a group of local Latinos to talk about why there werenÕt viable candidates running for office. As a result, they decided to create this group. Out of that group emerged four issues: neighborhoods, leadership, education, and economic development.

CÁRDENAS: This is what came out the first Town Hall?
LUNA: This is what came out of the first Town Hall. We continued on with that process. We felt those were major issues that needed to be discussed in the city of Mesa.

CÁRDENAS: What about Town Halls two and three, what did you see coming out of those?
LUNA: We felt those were (continuing) issues that we needed to discuss. And what changed were the neighborhoods. We decided not to continue on with the neighborhoods, but to look at youth, because we feel that (they are) the future of Latinos in the city of Mesa. So we decided to focus on areas specifically designed for youth.

CÁRDENAS: Changing Community was the theme of this year's Town Hall. What are you getting at when you say that?
LUNA: We want to illustrate to our Latino leaders and also to the city that Mesa is a changing community. We see the demographics that are
changing. There have been articles in the East Valley Tribune talking about a community in transition. And that's a real interesting concept if you look at Mesa. It's evolving, it's dynamic, and it really represents whatÕs happening in Mesa.

CÁRDENAS: Some would say thatÕs not necessarily good thing. Right or wrong, you get comments like Rep. (Russell) PearceÕs that Mesa now
looks like a Third World country, (which) seems to be a reference to more of an immigrant population.
LUNA: Well, one of the things that we need to understand as we look at Mesa is, itÕs a large community. There are 450,000 people that live in the city. It includes a variety of diversity. They all bring a richness into the community. We (talked about diversity and) economic development. We want to encourage more Latino development and more economic and business development within the city. We also want to encourage leadership.

CÁRDENAS: One of the things thatÕs been (covered) in the newspaper article series we talked about in the last segment was maybe some tension between Mexican families have that lived in the Valley for long time, and the newer immigrants. Is that an issue that was discussed?
LUNA: What we (wanted) to really focus on was trying to bring parents aboard in terms of their educational opportunities. We want to be able to bridge whatÕs going on in the communities with the schools. We want to expand opportunities available for business development with the city. We also want to encourage Latinos that have lived in Mesa for quite a number of years to participate - joining city councils and boards and commissions around the state as well.

CÁRDENAS: The last set of elections in Mesa was kind of disappointing, at least in terms of the Hispanic candidates. You had a very well-
qualified person in Teresa Brice-Heames, soundly beaten by the incumbent mayor. You had one Latina running for a school board who also lost by a significant number. Discouraged, encouraged, what do you say about that?
LUNA: We certainly are not discouraged. We want to continue to press forward because we believe that there is great leadership within the Latino community. We are going to move forward and press on and continue until we can get some adequate Latino representation in the City of Mesa.

CÁRDENAS: Is there anything else going on in terms of grooming Latino candidates for political office in Mesa?
LUNA: One of the things that we did this summer through the leadership track is that we actually had a candidate workshop where we discussed
strategies for those individuals that want to run for office. So we did offer that workshop and that was really interesting, and we had great participation.

Horizonte interviews are used with permission and  are a regular monthly feature in Latino Perspectives. The show airs Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. on KAET-TV Channel 8. This transcript is edited; for a full version visit www.azpbs.org/horizonte.