Valley Voices Meets the Community Where They Are
We are highlighting the second of our three organizations, Valley Voices, in this newsletter. If you missed our feature article from the last newsletter where we spoke to Valley Forward’s Dillon Savory, you can check it out at this link. We look forward to hearing from the Dolores Huerta Foundation next time!
On a typical week, you’ll find the Valley Voices (VV) team at the “Remate” swap meet in Hanford, CA, a major gathering place for Latino residents in Kings County. It’s here that they connect with their neighbors while they are shopping or working. At the heart of Valley Voices’ work is this philosophy of community organizing. As Ruth López, executive director says, “We’re meeting people where they are, by being at the swap meet, by being at church on Sunday.” Valley Voices uses this approach to empower underrepresented communities in Kings County “to be counted, to vote, and have their voices heard.”
Valley Voices, founded as a grassroots organization in 2020, focuses on Kings County’s Latino residents, helping them understand the value of registering to vote and turning out in future elections. Recognizing that the COVID-19 pandemic was hitting the community hard, the group added COVID-19 outreach to their work at the swap meet and elsewhere in the county.
Early in the pandemic, Valley Voices heard that some employers were requiring face masks but weren’t providing basic personal protective equipment (PPE). The organization gained a reputation for providing free face masks, hand sanitizer, COVID-19 testing, and help with scheduling a COVID-19 vaccination appointment at their swap meet table. With VV’s assistance, they can get help staying safe — and get information on how to have a voice ensuring their community isn’t left behind in the future by registering to vote and accessing other community resources.
Building trust
Like many other effective grassroots organizations, Valley Voices has developed their own version of relational organizing to reach out to voters in their community. At its core, relational organizing leverages community members’ personal networks to encourage friends and family to engage in their community, to vote and to turn out in elections. It’s been shown to be one of the most effective ways to make connections that build trust in civic and political processes.
By offering COVID-19 information and help, and, more recently, pop-up clinics for COVID vaccinations, Valley Voices has become a trusted messenger to the low-income, Latino communities.
Organizing in a crisis
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, López recognized it would hit her community hard. She also knew it would be hard to talk about voter registration when people feared for their jobs and their lives. Without access to the resources they need to ensure they are safe and healthy, Kings County residents couldn’t be expected to focus on who is running for Congress or city council. Kings County has one of the highest Latino immigrant death rates from COVID-19 of all counties in California, López said. As of September, Kings County also had the third lowest rate of COVID-19 vaccinations, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
The pandemic further worsened inequities found within the community. Many people already had trouble accessing social and other services that required language help or technology skills. Many of the essential workers who were designated high priority for vaccination often didn’t know how to get an appointment.
“There’s a digital divide,” López said. “Although many low-income essential workers may have a smartphone, many don’t know where to go and make an appointment. We took it upon ourselves to help them navigate the services available as infrastructures were being built.”
At first, Valley Voices helped people at its swap-meet table to make vaccination appointments or get tests. A lot of people came to their table to get free face masks, and stayed for more.
Recovering from the pandemic
As Valley Voices connected people to vaccination sites in Kings County, it became clear some sites were turning away people if they didn’t have insurance. López found a provider who was willing to partner with Valley Voices to hold pop-up clinics that served them. VV also worked with the nearby city of Avenal on the clinics.
“Given the population in Avenal, which is largely a farmworker low-income community, they needed this service. We helped them get connected to the provider we’ve been working with, who doesn’t ask for insurance, who doesn’t ask for documentation.”
Valley Voices started the pop-up clinics this past summer. By the second or third clinic, they were providing one-third of the entire county’s vaccinations that week. Now, they do pop-up clinics on some Sundays at a Catholic church in Hanford. Just like PPE, access to the vaccine was a crucial aspect of addressing the inequities that were barriers to civic engagement.
Building power with redistricting
López and Valley Voices have also been active in community efforts to redraw map boundaries for congressional, state assembly and senate districts as well as the Kings County Board of Supervisors that better represent the Latino community. The 2020 census shows Kings County is 57% Latino, up from 50.9% 10 years ago when the maps should have been redrawn to reflect that majority.
The census data shows that 20 years of Latino population growth hasn’t been factored into the districts in the Central Valley. Elected officials in Kings County and neighboring counties aren’t representative of the communities they serve. To address this, Valley Voices has also been partnering with other grassroots groups in nearby counties to advocate for more representative districts for congressional, state assembly and state senate elections. Kings County has been one of the most overlooked in the past.
“Valley Voices is committed to fighting for an equitable map that offers better representation, based on the data that came out through the census,” she said. “If we don’t ensure that these lines are adequately drawn, we won’t be able to elect a candidate that reflects the demographics of our community for the next 10 years.”
As 2022 midterm elections get closer, Valley Voices plans to pivot to do more canvassing and voter registration. “We already have banners that say, ‘Register to Vote’ in English and Spanish,” López said.
She envisions Valley Voices placing two tables side by side at the weekly swap meet – one for getting out the vote, and one for COVID-19 information. They will also do nonpartisan information canvassing and voter registration.
“For so long, we were seen as ‘Kings County doesn’t matter.’ When, in reality, we are the battleground for a lot of this work,” López said. “We’re providing them the resources that they need now. So that when we need them to come out and vote, they’ll trust us.”
Leveraging Central Valley Matters’ support
Through all this, CVM’s support has been crucial in enabling Valley Voices to continue its work on voter outreach, redistricting and COVID-19. Valley Voices has been able to expand to 12 staffers, all trained to work on all these issues.
“[CVM] is providing a lot of the funding to ensure I can keep my staff on board, honestly,” López said. Retaining staff members year-round is an important element of building the trust between VV and the community.
Apart from official recognition for its COVID-related work, Valley Voices has also earned the respect of the Latino community it serves.
“We’re helping people, whether it’s to make their vaccine appointment … or just answer questions about their booster,” López said. “At the same time, we get questions like ‘I hear there’s an election going on, can you tell me more about that?”
“That tells me the community is paying attention, is wanting to engage, but still isn’t too sure how to. They still need support and guidance in engaging.”
The trust that Valley Voices has earned from its COVID-19 outreach will help pave the way for VV’s other work. López hasn’t forgotten that the group’s first goal is voter education and engagement.
“That’s our mission, isn’t it?” she said. “We’re not losing sight of that.”