Lowell rally urges local minorities, youths, low-income residents to make votes count

MICHAEL LAFLEUR - Sun Staff
The Lowell Sun - October 9, 2002

LOWELL - If young people would only exercise their right to vote in greater numbers, they would have a loud and distinct voice in city politics. So says Masada Jones, a 15-year-old student at Lowell High School and a volunteer with Lowell's United Teen Equality Center. "If we can get our vote out there, we can make a difference," Jones said.

She was one of nearly 150 people at JFK Plaza yesterday afternoon for the first-ever Campaign for Voter Vitality rally. The event, sponsored by the ONE Lowell Coalition and the Non-Profit Alliance of Greater Lowell, focused on increasing the participation of Lowell's immigrant community, youths and low-income residents in the political process.

Volunteers passed out voter registration forms and voter information in four languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese and Khmer.

"We live in a society where there is government by the people and for the people," said Bowa George Tucker, project director of the GEAR UP program at UMass Lowell's Center for Family, Work and Community and a speaker at the rally.

"If people want to get their voices heard, then it makes sense to get involved in the process and identify candidates that are associated with the issues that are important to them," said Tucker, whose program prepares teens to be college undergraduates.

Community activists estimate Lowell is home to nearly 30,000 Cambodians almost three times the number listed in the 2000 Census several thousand Laotians and more than 15,000 Latinos. Yet, only one of the nine City Councilors is Southeast Asian, and no School Committee members are minorities.

Victoria Fahlberg, director of the ONE Lowell Coalition, wants to see a change in those numbers.

"We are going to have a lot of new voters and we are going to change the city of Lowell," she said.

A stumbling block is the fact that many of Lowell's immigrant residents have a green card but are not yet naturalized citizens and do not have the right to vote. Many also come from countries where voting for their leaders was not an option, so they are not familiar with the practice.

On the front lines of the effort to overcome those obstacles is Bunsong Suo, the 24-year-old president of Family Unity of Lowell, a group that offers assistance to local Cambodian-American youths.

He said younger Southeast Asians, especially college students, are a burgeoning political force that has yet to be tapped.

"There's 30,000 Cambodians here," Bunsong said. "If we all voted, we could do anything."

Family Unity is working with the Washington, D.C.-based Southeast Asian Resource Action Center on a national study of the number of Southeast Asian-Americans who vote in November's elections. Family Unity volunteers will be conducting exit polling here as part of that effort.

"Most of our population has been here approximately 15 years," said Chuck Sart, a state social worker and a volunteer with the Cambodian-American Voter League. "Now, most of the population is more established in the city of Lowell. Gradually, the Southeast Asian voters are increasing every year."

Michael Lafleur's e-mail address is mlafleur@lowellsun.com .