Who Decides?
Lately, Puentes has sat at a great deal of meetings where lots of well-meaning folks are planning a variety of different events, projects, initiatives, and so on in the hope of improving the community. We do our own fair share of this, as well. Despite being a very young organization, we have no shortage of ideas, of dreams and visions. All of this has got me thinking about this question about who decides what our community looks like? Or maybe the right question is, who decides what a community looks like that we eventually end up living in, regardless of our own visions and dreams? What I mean by re-phrasing the question is to ask; why is it that we so often decide upon (if we can truly say that we had much of a decision, to begin with) where we will live or how we will live without truly doing anything about it if we aren’t exactly happy about it? We so often just take what’s given to us–isn’t that so?
Somehow, somewhere, we accepted that our best interest is in the hands of someone smarter, or more powerful, or more in control, or more rich, etc. But is it truly? That’s what’s bothering me right now, as I think about the many times in our community that plans are made without giving a true chance to the voice of the community. What happens often is that if there is little to no involvement, the community’s concerns are taken as either addressed (when they very well might not be) or non-existent (as believed by planners because no one spoke up). This topic reminds me of this exercise in which I participated in during a recent training with a group of people who were role-playing two sides; the powerful and the powerless. One of the potential outcomes that could have come from the exercise was to have a potentially winnable solution. However, along the way, the instructor, out of the blue, asked one of the members of the group to leave the room. The request was abrupt and seemingly without reason. Everyone looked at each other with the same expression; what happened? did that person say something wrong? Within three minutes, or less, everyone who appeared to be concerned about the situation moved on with the exercise–though they all appeared to continue to be concerned. After the exercise, many admitted that they wanted to say something to the instructor, maybe in defense of the person who was kicked out, or maybe in question as to the reason for the person being kicked out–but in the end, no one did and the matter was shoved under the rug, so to speak. I think that in life we do the same all the time. Of course, we have to, because it would probably be detrimental to our health if we lived our lives constantly in vigilant, battle mode about everything that happens in this world either to us or around us. At the same time, I think we could do better as members of this community to be a bit more active in our concern, to watch and pay attention to decisions that are being made without our approval, or at the very least, without our concerns being observed.
So, who decides? Well, if we continue to remain as quiet observers, as the group did in my example, then we will swallow our discomfort and accept the bad that comes our way. We do this already and it results in what we get. Do we deserve it? No. But at the same time, we must own responsibility for own lack of participation. As an individual member of this community, I certainly own up to that. Now, as the director of Puentes, I am busy trying to put my foot in as many doors as possible just so that the folks behind those doors know that there are Latinos wanting to have a say about the decisions being made–because believe it or not, we do have the opportunity (more often than we might think) to be a part of the voice (or voices) that decides what will happen in our community. Just think about it; for example, if government planners are sitting at a table deciding how to spend education dollars and no one from the Latino community is present reminding these decision makers that funding is needed for adult education ESL, then no money is committed to a much-needed program. The result? Little to no money for adult education ESL in the public school system, leaving families and children with parents who have limited English proficiency without this needed support resource. Would it be different if more of us showed up at these public planning meetings? Possibly. Will it remain the same if we don’t show up? Absolutely?
So, who decides? I think that no matter how imperfect government systems are around us, at least we have the opportunity to help them become better, become more effective and more efficient. We are given the opportunity in this country to exercise our right to quality, equitable services. The more of us that engage in decisions that are being made on our behalf all the time, the better we will all be, as a result. After all, improving our community means improving it for everyone and not just a selected few, right? Believing this means that government services and systems need to do a better job of serving all of us, regardless of our color, our mother’s tongues, or anything else. Unfortunately, we are not all accounted for when decisions about who gets what in what community and how, and so it falls on us to understand that if we don’t sit at the table, we have little to complain about.
Tags: hispanic community, hispanic louisiana, hispanic voice, latina, latino, latino community, latino louisiana, latino voice, latinola