November 2nd is the most important day of 2010. This is the day Californians will elect a new governor and decide on multiple propositions. It’s important every Californian votes in this election. The future of education, immigration, sustainability and even our states nearly impossible two thirds majority rule to pass a budget will all be affected by this election.
LA City College Associated Students Organization in partnership with the campus club Education Connection have registered over 150 voters in the last two weeks. This is a big accomplishment on a campus that has a large immigrant student population who cannot vote. We have tabled for two weeks: playing music, asking students to share their dance or song at the mic, holding drawings daily for I heart LACC t-shirts and giving out red eco bags, flags and fruit. We have been doing class raps every day; this isn’t producing as many registration forms but it is spreading the word and there are voter registration forms for them to take home. We have made VOTER FEVER fans to hand out to the students (the air conditioners at our school don’t always work and LA gets hot with so much asphalt). The students can also pick up an I HEART GUYS or GIRLS WHO VOTE sticker at the table or from one of the students walking around with clipboards registering people. There are flyers hanging all over campus with the October 18th registration postmark deadline and the Election date Nov. 2nd. Finally we made some cardboard thermometers; each week we post them up at our table so students, faculty, staff and administrators can see how many people we have registered.
In the coming weeks we hope to have the League of Women Voters and a few other voter awareness non-profits to our campus to help get the word out to students. One of our Associated Students Organization goals for this year is to partner with local non-profits to make a stronger impact on our campus community. Last year the League of Women Voters came out for 3 days and registered people in our main quad and it was a big success. We are looking to repeat that and build on it.
Gesselly Maroquin and myself came up with a game called Whose Vote is it Anyway? The purpose of this game is to educate students on the basic details in each proposition. We have found most of our students are unaware of anything other than our favorite anti-hero “blondie” Meg Whitman. We hope to change this on our campus by the time the election comes. Since UCSB is so close this year we are trying to get a whole group of students to go to the Convergence. This will be very important because every student from our district that has attended a CSSC Convergence has come back changed. WE NEED THEIR VOICES!
Please if you are not registered-DO IT TODAY! It can be done online. If you are registered educate your yourself on the propositions. A good place to go is www.powervote.org. Be sure you talk to everyone you know about voting. Really we should be encouraging everyone to vote! Neighbors, classmates, family, friends, club members and even people we see on the street. Voting is a privilege and we have taken it for granted.
Let’s take our government back this November!
Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets. -Abraham Lincoln
PEACE!
Scott Clapson
Senator Environmental Affairs LA City College
CSSC LA Regional Connector and Facebook Outreach
