Santa Paula, Historically Underrepresented Make Efforts to Increase Participation in the 2020 Census
Historically, Santa Paula has been identified as an undercounted community, in order to get a more accurate count of statistics in the community, and get the proper funding, Regional Coordinator for Census 2020 initiative, Gabino Aguirre has been working on this outreach campaign with Dolores Huerta.
Aguirre says if people don’t participate it can greatly affect funding for the community, more than $20,000 are at stake per person. He says part of the reason is because most people don’t know about the Census since it only happens every 10 years and there is a large fear factor within the Latino community.
Aguirre also said that the Census is confidential only to Census Bureau, and not to other government agencies such as ICE. He mentioned the importance of building trust through the “vecinos”, or “neighbor” concept after fear of information being shared to other agencies has been a common fear throughout the community.
In Santa Paula the foreign born population is 28.5%, and of that percentage, the majority which is 95% come from Latin America. Hence some of the stakes being fear, or misinformed, or not having access to the technology needed.
According to a story by the VC Star, “Residents of certain neighborhoods in Oxnard and Santa Paula lack the computer technology that will allow them to respond to the census online.”
Community leaders and programs supporting these efforts include the following organizations.
Since these efforts have started some residents whom have never heard of the census previously, are starting to hear about the Census now and the importance of participating. There have been calls sent home to inform the community about the census and give information for the upcoming census meetings.
In Santa Paula there will be a Census 2020 Presentation & Theater Event on March 9th from 10:00am-12:00pm at Casa del Mexicano and a Census 2020 Kickoff Party all day at Las Piedras Park on March 15th.
