Civics 4/2

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

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Carlos Zavala, elections associate at the Gwinnett Voter Registrations and Elections in Lawrenceville, Georgia, greets a passerby as he mans a table outside the elections building to recruit poll workers, help people with voter registration and absentee ballots, and promote the county’s language assistance program. Photo by Bita Honarvar for palabra.

Voting in English y en español: Part of Carlos Zavala's job is translating voting materials for the thousands of eligible voters in Gwinnett County, Georgia, who speak Spanish as their primary language. A once largely white area, Gwinnett County is now the second most populous county in one of the nation’s fastest-growing states, where one in five residents is Latino. It is also the only county in Georgia required to translate all of its voting materials into Spanish, under a provision of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, known as Section 203, which was implemented in 2016. 

But advocates who spoke with palabra., including Jerry González, executive director of the nonpartisan Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, said his group faced resistance when it tried to convince county election officials to prepare for the federal translation requirements. “They were really hostile towards providing language access,” González said. 

He shared that the county's reluctant implementation of Section 203 still lingers, especially in light of anti-immigrant legislation in Atlanta and Washington, D.C. fueled by the arrest of a Venezuelan migrant who was recently charged with the murder of a nursing student in Athens, Georgia. Read more about language accessibility efforts in Gwinnett County, Georgia, here.

Federal agencies will now gather more detailed data on race and ethnicity: For the first time in decades, the federal government is disaggregating data for how federal agencies collect, maintain and report data on race and ethnicity. AsAmNews reports the federal government has updated data collection guidelines for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities, also adding Middle Eastern and North African categories and removing outdated terms like "Oriental," “Far East” and “Indian Subcontinent.” 

According to a press release from the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF), those terms were inaccurate “... and also contributed to a narrative of Asian Americans being perpetual foreigners in the United States." See the list of additional categories beyond "Asian" and “Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander” here.

New York's Bangladeshis organize after “unjustifiable” NYPD killing of teen: New York City's Bangladeshi community is reeling from the tragic shooting of Win Rozario in his Queens home last week, according to national and local outlets. The 19-year-old was in mental distress when he called 911. Rozario’s family insists that he posed no immediate threat to the responding NYPD officers, even as the department claims that he had threatened them with scissors. Local reports say the young man's brother, who was present at the shooting, contradicts NYPD's account of what happened, saying his mother was restraining her son at the time of the shooting. As the community mourns Rozario's untimely death, just ten years after the family moved to New York from Bangladesh, Epicenter-NYC has identified culturally relevant services for the community and more. More: Questions remain about NYPD shooting of Bangladeshi teen (AsAmNews)

Muslims demand apology over Ramadan denial request: At a city council meeting in San Bruno, California, just days after Ramadan started, a group of Muslims advocated for the city to call for a ceasefire in the ongoing attacks on Gaza. AsAmNews reports the group was interrupted by the police while breaking their fast in the lobby — with food they brought to the building where the meeting was held — and told to leave. The group is now demanding an apology from the city and San Bruno Mayor Rico Medina. Read more here.

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