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Miami's Newest Voters
"I really want people to notice us...they just, you know, leave us out."
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By Gaby Arvizu
As the Democratic candidates turn their attention to Florida for the March
9th Democratic primary, they’re likely to appeal to the groups that supposedly
swing elections there, like retirees, Cuban exiles, and African American voters.
But in the three years that have passed since the 2000 election controversy,
thousands of Florida teenagers have become eligible to vote for the first time.
If the race is close again this year, their vote could be decisive. Youth Radio’s
Gaby Arvizu brings us this story from two different Miami communities where
teenagers are thinking about voting and their role in the upcoming elections.
At Edison Senior High in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood, you can hear both
English and Kreyol echoing in the hallways. Little Haiti is one of the places
where large numbers of ballots were disqualified during the 2000 Florida recount.
Many young people there associate politics- and political passion- with the
ongoing turmoil in their parents’ native Haiti. For the most part, they don’t
think too highly of President Bush. But that hasn’t translated into support
for any Democratic candidate in particular. According to Bianca de Vilme, a
senior at Miami Central High, most politicians just don’t care about Little
Haiti.
“I really want people to notice us…I mean, it’s like people don’t even see us.
Many people don’t even see that the Haitian Americans have an opinion, they
just, you know, leave us out.”
But Little Haiti doesn’t get overlooked by the U.S. Military, and recruiters
visit the high schools there often. Eighteen year-old Jerry Destinobles’ older
brother hasn’t been the same since he’s returned from Iraq, and Jerry blames
the current administration for that.
“He said he shot somebody, and it hurt him to shoot someone. He went into the
service in order to get an education and not to go around killing people, but
since he was serving his country he was obligated to go through what the country
demanded. He says he’s gotta throw it in the back of his mind, it’ll be a long
time before he actually leave it alone. It ain’t good to see your brother sad.
That’s why I’m mad at Bush. All this beef, man, all this blowing up things,
man, why can’t things be quiet like it was?”
Further south, at Miami Senior High in Little Havana, President Bush seems to
be far more popular. This was Bush territory in 2000, and the area has traditionally
backed Republican candidates with hard-line positions on Cuba. But today, the
neighborhood is growing more diverse, and many students who attend Miami Senior
are not Cuban. Their families are from Central and South America instead. Just
as in Little Haiti, politics and the military often go together for young people
in Little Havana.
Some students who are turning 18, like senior and ROTC member Elizabeth Maru,
will be the first in their families to vote in the United States. Her parents
are from Nicaragua and Honduras, and she says she plans to vote for President
Bush. But she’s still concerned that the White House won’t go far enough to
protect her family:
“My mother, she’s an immigrant, and she doesn’t have her papers, and she has
four children, and sometimes she gets worried that she might be deported back
to her country. And it worries my father too, because he works, and they take
money out of his taxes. But all that work, for what? My parents have friends
that have children that are in the Army and they themselves may not be citizens
of the United States, yet they’re fighting for this country and representing
them and that worries them as well. They die…for what?”
For many students, their parents’ political views were the most important factor
influencing who they would vote for. But other students, like 17 year-old Carlos
Mana, said they’ll decide using a formula that would probably make their high
school government teacher’s hair stand on end.
“I’ll guess I’ll watch MTV, whoever’s on MTV, I’ll vote for them”.
We asked young people in both neighborhoods what they wanted to know from this
year’s presidential candidates, and two questions kept coming up. The first
was “what can you do for me?”, and the second, “when are you coming to my neighborhood”?
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