How Can 30+ Million Minority Women Be Invisible?

On Friday, Oct. 17 the Women’s Media Center http://www.womensmediacenter.com posted this exclusive article I wrote for them. I hope you enjoy it and forward it to any friends or organizations you think would benefit from it.  As a member of the Women’s Media Center’s Progressive Women’s Voices program, I will be publishing articles and providing interviews to media outlets about the importance and impact of women of color to our society.  Mable

How Can 30+ Million Women Be Invisible?   by Mable F. Yee

October 17, 2008

At great consequence to our nation, appallingly high numbers of women of color have not felt compelled to go to the polls in the past. The author set out to find out why and what to do about it.

This election cycle, media pundits and analysts have blanketed the coverage ad nausea with discussions of the black versus the white vote. They occasionally address the brown vote. But the conversation remains largely superficial: What happened to the women?

How come no one ever hears about the Asian American women and other women of color who happen to number over 30 million registered voters in the United States today?   Perhaps it’s the startling revelation that in the 2004 elections 70 percent of Asian Americans, 69 percent of Latinas and 40 percent of African American registered women voters FAILED to vote.

Think back about the 2000 elections and how the United States Supreme Court stopped the recount and declared Bush the winner by 537 votes.  What kind of impact could these women of color have had on our 2000 elections if even 2 percent more women turned out to vote?

After learning about the high percentage of women of color who failed to turn out to vote, I spent nine months exploring the complex reasons why this large portion of our population doesn’t vote.  After many interviews, we were able to produce a documentary called “Engage Her.”  The reasons we discovered are complex and fall into three distinct areas: cultural, social and political.

We found cultural constrains among women emigrating from countries where there was no democracy, where they lived under dictatorial leadership or tyrannical despots that seized political power by force.  They learned to distrust the government and never developed a sense of civic engagement or individual power exercised through voting.

On the social level, many women traditionally didn’t vote in their homeland countries or even when they emigrated to the United States. Their parents may never have voted and therefore didn’t reinforce the civic duty to vote.

Beyond the immigrant community, political habits and gender politics also affect women. They told us their husbands oftentimes discouraged them from voting by saying that their votes wouldn’t count and that they shouldn’t even try.

For each of these categories, there are far more reasons to be explored. But for some women whom we learned about in our interviews, the reason was amazingly simple: no one asked them to vote.

In order to engage this electorate, the most important thing to recognize is that women of color and ethnicities are not monolithic cultures.  Take the Latinas for example. Latinos or Hispanic is a convenient label the government puts on people who grow up with a Spanish heritage.  Yet Puerto Ricans differ greatly from Peruvians or Mexicans. While they may speak Spanish as a common denominator, their cultural differences can be quite vast.  Asian American/Pacific Islanders is an even more complex group of cultures.  We’re talking upwards of 26 different ethnic cultures including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Laotian, and Malaysian and so forth.  Unlike Latinos, they don’t even share the same language in any unifying fashion.   Is it any wonder that the AAPI communities are so diverse and difficult to coordinate as a large voting bloc?

Why is this important and why should we care?  In most families, women are the caretakers, nurturers and the major decision maker in the household.  If the women vote, they will influence their husbands, children, sisters and communities—and future generations as well.  More often than not, women of color occupy the lower half of the socio economic scale, so issues of survival, putting food on the table, educating their children and finding adequate housing is uppermost in their minds. They are also concerned with the environment and such social justice issues as immigration and reproductive rights.

But when politicians and media commentators talk about the “$700 billion bailout for Wall Street” or the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, how relevant is the presentation of such issues to helping these women solve their everyday concerns?  Do they care more about whether Sarah Palin shoots moose from helicopters or making sure their children get adequate education from the failing public school system?

We continue to ignore or fail to engage this large population of voters and household decision makers at great risk to our democracy.  In the U.S. population today, minorities represent 34 percent, but that will grow to a majority within a few generations. By 2042, Latinos are projected to account for 30 percent overall, African Americans 14 percent and Asian American/Pacific Islanders more than 9 percent.

Still, when the mainstream media do get around to the issue of women’s needs they generally survey non-minority women. They rarely talk about women of color unless it is a report that is specifically focused on them.  Because most of the traditional media just “doesn’t get it,” women of color become further marginalized and disenfranchised.

We women of color need to be “Invisible No More” and work together with all women to demand that attention be paid to the issues that are of paramount concern to our families, children and communities.  That means identifying key concerns, seeking solutions to our problems within our communities and compelling the media and politicians to take notice.  Our influence in terms of consumer buying power, increasing representation in the work force and demand for services will only escalate in the decades ahead.  We need to be “at the table” to demand our fair share of both government investment and media attention.

Read Full Post »

Chinese version of Engage Her

Exciting news! We are having our film broadcast on a widely watched Mandarin news channel program called Dialogue 360  hosted and produced by Jay Stone Shih tomorrow night. On Thursday and Friday, October 16 & 17 our entire documentary will be broadcast in two segments. This is historic to be able to have a full documentary screened on a half hour news channel. Dialogue 360 is watched by a huge audience of Chinese Mandarin speakers and our film will be shown with subtitles.

There’s a story behind the making of the translation. It was a global project where we found a Chinese woman, Wu Nan who helped us quickly translate our document into Mandarin. I found her through a personal friend and famous blogger, Xiao Qiang who is the editor of China Digital Times one of the most widely read news portals on China related events. Xiao is also an Adjunct Professor at UC Berkeley so he recommended his former journalism student Wu Nan who returned to Beijing and we made the connection.

After the show is broadcast in English with mandarin subtitles, you will still be able to view it on their website archives.  Tell any friends who speak Chinese/Mandarin to watch.  Mable

Here’s the press release about this important broadcast and hope you tune in.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Engage Her Announces Broadcast of Documentary in Mandarin

Publicly Acclaimed Documentary Motivates Women & Minorities to Take Political Action

October 14, 2008 (Berkeley, CA) – “Engage Her: Getting Minority Women to Lead and Vote”, a 48-minute documentary produced to inspire women minorities to participate in the political process, will be broadcast on the Dialogue 360 show in Mandarin. Jay Stone Shih is the producer and news anchor of this highly regarded program. The half-hour news show is carried on cable to millions of Mandarin-speaking viewers. The documentary will be broadcast in two segments, on October 16, and October 17, 2008 from 10:30-11:00 p.m. It is broadcast on Channel 38 or Comcast Channel 21 in Northern California.

Mable F. Yee, CEO & co-founder of the social action start-up EngageHer.org , hailed the broadcast as an historic outreach to the huge population of Chinese-speaking voters. The Chinese is the largest single community in the national Asian American Pacific Islander population. The film, co-produced by Yee and Director Maria Victoria Ponce, interviews leading minority women, including Germaine Wong, Chairperson of Chinese for Affirmative Action; Janis Hirohama, League of Women Voters California President; Lillian Galedo, Executive Director of Filipinos for Affirmative Action; Dr. Gwendolyn Mok, Associate Professor at San Jose State University; Margaret Ouye, Internment camp detainee; Congresswoman Barbara Lee; social activist Dolores Huerta and non-voters. The film shares their personal stories and explores the complex reasons why nearly 70 percent of Asian Americans and Latinas, and 40 percent of African American women, failed to vote in the 2004 elections. The movie trailer is available at www.engageher.org.

Getting the 30+ million minority women in the U.S. engaged in voting and leadership spurred Yee and Mina Wilson, a community activist and education consultant, to form EngageHer.org.

Yee says the organization was born out of the need to bring a voice to minority women, who are invisible in the media and lack adequate representation in our government, “These are the women whose children and families are most impacted by our inadequate education, health, and work policies, and yet our issues and concerns are not addressed. It’s as if we don’t exist.”

“We will use Engage Her as a platform to educate and activate women, minorities and communities to step up and influence our nation’s policies. Without our involvement, we lack a real democracy and our issues continue to be ignored,” Yee adds. “By creating a film that shows women discussing the cultural, social and political barriers that prevent or influence their voting behavior, is crucial to accelerating the process of engaging this huge block of voters and future leaders. To have our film translated with Chinese subtitles allows us to engage this population of voters in their own language so that they can better understand the reasons and need to participate in the voting and political process.”

In addition to the documentary, Engage Her is partnering with scores of national and regional minority, women and leadership organizations, including Mobilize Immigrant Voters, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Filipinos for Affirmative Action, Votolatino.org, Colorofchange.org, Momsrising.org, League of Women Voters, The White House Project, Women’s Media Center, Democracy for America and more. They will be collaborating to develop new initiatives to address their key issues of concern: Education, Health, the Economy, the Environment and Social Justice.

“We’ve had enough of candidates coming every four years to solicit our vote, and then disappearing until the next election without addressing the real issues that exist within our communities” says Mina Wilson, Vice President.

By bringing minority women’s voices to the table, EngageHer.org plans to achieve political representation and hold elected officials accountable for their actions. The nonprofit organization is harnessing the speed, scale, and reach of the Internet to rapidly engage members and leverage its members to demand change.

Read Full Post »

Felicia Curtis…No memories of my mother

When Felicia Curtis was four years old, she was placed into foster care along with her older sister and brother.  Her mother decided that she no longer wanted the responsibility of raising them and her father was incarcerated in prison.  Fortunately for Felicia, her family was kept together in the foster care system.

She remembers a succession of foster placements that took place, but always took comfort in the fact that the three of them were brought up as a family unit. Growing up in a community with different ethnicities and races, she recalls getting into a lot of fights and always being sent to the principal.  Felicia got to the point that she didn’t want to go to school.  When asked if she had any early memories of her mother, she answered “No”. Since she was raised in foster care system since four, she said it was like a blank sheet of paper when she thought about her mother. 

Her family to this day remains very close and she sees her brother on a weekly basis. She now has two boys of her own and feels as a mother that it makes you think differently. She is very protective of her sons and makes sure that they are well taken care of.

We asked whether she exercised her right to vote as an act of caring for her children. She said that she voted in the 2000 elections but felt “let down” when the Supreme Court handed the Presidency to George Bush.  She remembered all the controversy with African American voters and people’s votes that weren’t counted. She said that a lot of African American voters felt that their votes didn’t count.

It turned her off to voting and in 2004 when Bush ran for re-election, she decided not to vote. Her feelings were that they were going to do whatever they wanted to and that her vote wouldn’t count, so why bother.

Now in 2008 with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigning to become the Democratic presidential candidate, we asked her how she felt about re-engaging and voting in this election.

She said that she would vote in this election cycle. However, she said “I think it would have been fair if Al Gore had won”.  There seems to be a lot of confusion about whether votes are counted.  “I personally think it’s a joke if people feel that our votes are truly counted”.  While she would like to feel optimistic about the elections, she’s practical about the harsh realities and the outcomes of our political system.

Today as a mother and an African American, she serves as  a Commissioner on her County’s Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention Commission. When we asked her what were the most important things to her, she honestly said “My sanity”.  She feels that she has to keep everything in perspective so that she can be there for her family and community.

When I hear Felicia’s story and think about all the hardships she’s had to overcome in her life, I can’t help but reflect upon my own family and childhood. I’m thankful that I have memories of strong and protective parents and growing up in a large family. My parents provided me with a great education, support and caring that helped me to become who I am. For all the parents in the world like Felicia who care for her own family and the foster care kids in the world, we salute and admire your strength and fortitude. Thank you for being such great role models.  Mable

Read Full Post »

Maria Teresa Peterson….Latino Cultural Ambassadors

As Executive Director Voto Latino.org, Maria Teresa Peterson has learned a lot about how young Latinos are using New media technologies to communicate, share and network with one another. Her organization is one of the leading sites that targets young Latinos under age 30 to educate, encourage and help them register to vote. Started a few years ago as a non-profit that aired Public Service Announcements (PSA) over the air, it has developed into a big powerhouse organization.
She’s heard many stories about how Latinos and Latinas have turned to the Internet, text messaging and other media and mobile technologies to connect and engage with other young people who share the same issues.
While there seems to be a myth out there in the media that Latinos aren’t using technologies at the same rates as other groups, she’s seen statistics that show that Latinos are using text messaging at incredibly high rates, that Latino/Latina bloggers represent one of the highest populations and that they are turning to these new technologies to help them make decisions.
Voto Latino has also launched one of the first text-messaging voter registration campaigns in American history, where young Latinos could register to vote by sending a text message from their mobile phone. On Election Day 2006, those participating received Get-Out-The Vote text message reminders and it helped to increase Latino participation in the polls by 9%.
By listening to their members they’ve initiated creative and innovative ways to capture interest and drive more member sign ups and involvement. They’ve gone out and recruited Latino artists who help to promote voter registration and encourage voter turnout. A new program they’re piloting is to work with local DJs and celebrities to promote voting through programs that encourage the young Latino population to get involved. They are also employing Google ads, Facebook, and viral marketing on websites to reach out to their powerful constituents.
Maria Teresa shared that the young Latinos are what they term the “cultural ambassadors” in their households. That means in many households where parents may not be as familiar with English or the commercial products to purchase, they will turn to their children who will dictate what products and services to choose or that are deemed “cool”. So their children may state that they have to have high speed DSL or cable modem access so they can conduct research online to complete their homework at home. Parents would then ask which brand and where they can find the products. Their buying and consumer influence covers all categories of products including food, electronics, clothing, cars, services, etc. That’s why many savvy consumer brands are courting the Latino youth as a key influencer for making household buying decisions and recommendations.
In terms of voting, Maria Teresa also says that there are many missed opportunities to engage the Latino communities. She said that many candidates, consultants and organizations assume that the Latinos are consuming their media in Spanish only outlets. Citing a recent poll conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center, over 79% of all American Latino eligible voters consumed electoral news in English. Additionally, over 50,000 young Latinos turn 18 every month and 93% of them are eligible to vote. So reaching out to this segment of the population requires targeted marketing and savvy outreach with specific messages.
She also said that some of the biggest issues Latinas are concerned about include Health i.e. Obesity, diabetes, cardiac disease, sex education for women and AIDS information, Education and Immigration issues.
She said the issues facing young Latinos are different from the ones that their parents dealt with when they first emigrated from their native countries. Our future will depend heavily upon how we reach out and engage this next generation of Latino voters who will heavily influence the future outcome of our nation. Thank you Maria Teresa for the incredibly important and creative work your organization is performing to engage the young Latino voters. Mable

Read Full Post »

Janis Hirohama “You look like Yoko Ono”

Janis Hirohama was born in Japan on an U.S. Army base as a third generation Sansei. She spent most of her time growing up in Hawthorne, California . A working class neighborhood where many families were employed by the local Aerospace industry. Her neighborhood was mixed with second to fourth generation Latinos, a handful of African Americans and Whites. She grew up in a traditional Japanese American household where their family projected their cultural values on her: study hard and get a good education, uphold the family honor, never dishonor your family, be accountable to your community and always behave honorably. Her mother used to tell her “Comb your hair, you look like Yoko Ono” and there was nothing worse than being married to a hippie. Janis had to go to Japanese school to learn Japanese in Gardena, a nearby city where many Japanese Americans lived. Janis’ family shopped, bought their food, and went to all the local service providers in their community.

Her parents voted and encouraged her to vote. They didn’t make a big deal of it. However, she remembers when she was young and watching the Watergate hearings on TV. Senator Daniel Inouye was a prominent figure during those proceedings and it was a point of pride for her that a U.S. Senator was a Japanese American. However, she remembered John Ehrlichmann calling him “You little Jap” at one point of the proceedings and how it awakened her political consciousness that he would be subjected to outright bigotry. She clipped and saved an article detailing the event as it made a significant impact upon her.

During World War II, her mother, two sisters and older brother lost all their possessions and were put into the internment camp with all the other Japanese Americans in Poston, Utah. This experience had a major impact for her mother and she never alluded to the experience except to say obliquely “When we were in camp….”. She never explicitly talked to them about the experience. For years, Janis thought her mother was referring to a “summer camp”. Janis shared with us a saying “There’s a 100 ways to tell you’re a Japanese American….one of them is that camp doesn’t refer to summer camp”.

Janis remembered her first time seeing the film “Farewell to Manzanar” in 1993. It clearly articulated her feelngs about incarceration in camp. How people were so traumatized and ashamed to be put into a concentration camp. How they suffered unjustifiable burdens of shame. She remembers her mother who liked to write poetry and stories and that was the only subject she wrote about. The Japanese Americans were not open to talking about their experience and it created major impacts on their lives and their families. It taught them as Japanese Americans to keep a low profile, stick to their own communities, trust only people in your community. They didn’t want to leave their small communities and have to worry about being discriminated against. Janis was raised to be quiet, trust only your own kind and that it could happen again. Janis said that there was self consciousness being in groups of Japanese Americans. They felt that if White people saw you together, then you must be “up to something”.

Janis had no women mentors nor strong role models. When she graduated from college and became a litigator in the 1980’s for a Wall Street firm, it was very unusual to see an Asian American in that role. In fact, she was oftentimes mixed up by people in the firm with the other Asian American woman who happened to be a Chinese woman.

One of the reasons why Janis became involved with voting and eventually became the President of the California Chapter of the League of Women Voters California League of Women Voters is because her grandparents were barred from voting. They did not earn the right to vote until years later and then voted in every election. She saw what happened when minorities didn’t vote. She learned that the Japanese Americans were easy to target. Many of them were too young to vote and nobody called the community to tell them about their rights to vote. So they were powerless. She saw how it was important that we all use the right to vote as a way to change things.

Janis got involved with the League of Women Voters because their primary efforts are to inform and encourage active participation in government. Through their educational efforts, advocacy and empowerment of women to vote, they can teach them how to lobby within their own communities.
However, the League of Women Voters is not a diverse organization. It is largely a White and older group. It is important to reach economic and racially diverse communities to build and expand the organizations.

Janis said that there are numerous reasons why minorities do not vote in higher percentages:
-They come from a culture of non-voting
-Immigrants mistrust the government
-There is no confidence that their votes will be counted
-Lack of information and a language barrier
-Initiative system is confusing and doesn’t provide enough information
-Lack of creation and culture of voting and civic engagement in minority communities

She goes on to say that the Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI) are a very diverse group of cultures. Many people do not speak English. While most people try to put all AAPIs into one bucket, it isn’t about “one size fits all”. The Japanese Americans had to fight hard for citizenship and many Japanese Americans died to get the right to vote. More recent immigrants did not face the same exposure and hardships and their issues are different.

We want to thank Janis for all her hard work and efforts to getting more women and minorities to vote and be engaged. She is setting a very strong role model for the rest of us in the years ahead. Congratulations on being the first woman of color President for the League of Women Voters in California. Mable

Read Full Post »

Announcing at the Women’s Caucus…

Imagine standing in front of an overflow crowd of several hundred people at the California Democratic Party’s State Convention in San Jose, CA recently. Thanks to Lynn Shaw Hilfenhaus, Chair of the Women’s Caucus and Elmy Bermejo, our Director of Latina Affairs, I had the wonderful opportunity to announce our Engage Her documentary to this esteemed crowd. As I looked throughout the audience I saw an amazing collection of women and men of all ethnicities, races and ages holding up signs to support their candidates. I had a few minutes to describe our project and to let them know that our documentary was due out in mid June for national distribution. I could tell when I explained that there were 26 million or more minority women who could’ve vote in the 2004 elections that they were surprised the number was so huge. Letting them know that only 60% of African American women voted, while Asian American Pacific Islanders dropped down to 40% and Latinas were only 38% was eye opening. I mentioned briefly some of the amazing women that we are interviewing and that the documentary would conclude with solutions and calls to action. We now have national organizations and partners such as Momsrising.org, DemocracyforAmerica.com, League Of Women Voters who are interested in helping screen and host house parties for our documentary when it is released.

Afterwards, I was approached by a number of different organizations and individuals who are interested in hearing more about our documentary and the movement we are creating including Emerge California, National Women’s Political Caucus of California among others. It was exciting and gratifying to see such a strong response and interest in our project. Maria Victoria Ponce, our Filmmaker, Annie Masullo, our Director of Operations and Elmy Bermejo were there filming and networking with people as we handed out postcards announcing our documentary and blog. Women were very interested in hearing more about our project and I would hear feedback like “It’s about time”. A number of people kept telling us that we needed to get the documentary onto PBS for national screening since it is such an educational project and resonates with so many people.

It was an exciting moment to announce our documentary publicly and to see that it resonated so deeply with a very diverse audience. Everybody’s pushing us to get the documentary out as quickly as possible and we’re moving at break neck speed. Stay tuned for more individual interviews and videoclips. Mable

Read Full Post »