Young Latino Leaders Urge Students to Vote in Election

This time, the politicians walked on stage and 19-year-old Arisbey Espinoza felt a tug of familiarity.

This time, they talked about what it was like to be first in their families to make it to college. If they grew up poor, it didn’t weigh them down like a shameful anchor. Instead, they grabbed hold of opportunity and just refused to let go.

“You don’t expect that,” said Espinoza, the second in her Van Nuys family to attend college. “You think poor people will always stay that way.”

Part pep rally, part campaign to get out the young vote, Wednesday’s Latino Vote 2000 Symposium at Los Angeles Valley College delivered a clear message simply with the faces of its messengers: young, Latino leaders who are making a difference.

Flanked by leaders in their 20s, state Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), 47, joked that he was old enough to be a father to one: Cindy Montanez, who at 25 is the youngest person elected to the San Fernando City Council.

Villaraigosa, mayoral candidate and former Assembly speaker, implored the audience of 250, mostly students, to vote in next month’s presidential election.

“These elections are important because there are some people who want to keep this country closed,” he said.

Montanez, a UCLA graduate who became a councilwoman last year, recalled her immigrant parents scraping up enough cash so that she and her siblings could take part in school and sports activities.

Not until she was a teenager did the family get its first television, a castoff from a neighbor. Their first home, she said, was the “ugliest in San Fernando.”

Education, she said, is the path to empowerment. And merely electing Latino leaders is not enough, she warned. “Look at their track record,” she urged, saying that is the litmus test for how they will help communities.

“Su voto es su voz,” added Francisco Martinez, 23, a field deputy for Los Angeles Councilman Alex Padilla, who at 26 was elected to represent the northeast Valley’s 7th Council District. “Your vote is your voice.”

In recent months, the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project has signed up about 2,500 voters through events in Canoga Park and Pacoima.

Wednesday’s symposium was co-sponsored by several departments of Valley College, the Associated Student Union and the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund.

Giancarlo Azurdia, a Valley College freshman, said the speakers seemed to genuinely care about Latino issues “and what’s important to us.”

Before rushing off to class, the 18-year-old from Studio City, studs decorating one eyebrow, said he was shocked to see peers his age in politics, especially Montanez. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said.