General fear and anxiety among immigrant and refugee communities: The xenophobic general philosophies and horrifying, cruel policies embraced by this current administration and its supporters have been as demoralizing as they are destructive. Many people—immigrants, refugees, Muslims—are rightly fearful of the government and will want to keep a low-profile.
Cut in funding to Census will result in less education and outreach: According to this article, “The U.S. Census Bureau has faced a $200 million shortfall since 2012.” This means thousands of Census employees have to be cut, including outreach workers and those who may have the language and cultural skills to reach many communities.
We who care about social justice need to get fired up. According to my colleague Perla Ni of Great Nonprofits/CommunityConnect Labs:

“Most immigrants pay federal taxes, but if they aren’t counted in the Census, their communities don’t get much Federal funding. Each person NOT counted is about a loss of 11K federal funding to the State of Washington — primarily in Healthcare and education funding. Education funding gets distributed to local schools and nonprofits in the form of Early Childhood Education grants. [Loss of funding will vary by state to state, but it is substantial per person not counted].

“Census data is used for voting rights, redistricting for State house & senate districts, city council districts, and local school board districts. As a result of the 2010 Census, redistricting created about 58 minority opportunity districts in Texas overall, up from 49 previously; and a new House seat was added to the primarily Latino Rio Grande valley. Also, Census data is frequently used by immigrant rights groups to litigate against intentional gerrymandering by race. For instance, using Census data, MALDEF sued Texas for trying to gerrymander El Paso seats to ensure that Latinos would constitute an ineffective minority of voters.

“Census data is used to determine voting assistance. If the Census determine that there is ‘more than 10,000 or over 5 percent of the total voting age citizens’ in an area who are minorities who don’t speak English well, the local Elections board MUST provide voter registration, voter information, the ballot, in additional languages. This can make a big difference in elections. For instance, when voting info and ballots in Spanish were provided to Latino voters who had limited English skills, voter turn-out increased by 11%.”
mobilized for funding, and as a result the State has allocated $3M for coordination and outreach; here’s the letter they wrote detailing specific actions states and nonprofits can collaborate on. Here’s another letter supporting the request for the $3M. And just last week, California announced $40.3million for 2018-2019 budget for census outreach.
They’re doing cool stuff with this funding. Local nonprofits in California, for example, are conducting address canvassing to collect location information for “unconventional” housing for their cities. Five local nonprofits partnered with the City of San Jose on a pilot and submitted several hundred addresses. Remember, if these addresses are not on the Census mailing list, people won’t even be asked to fill out the survey.
Talk to other nonprofits in the area. Bring this up during meetings with public officials. Start pushing city, county, and state government for funding for outreach, education, and support. Use the letters above as templates, and California as an example of states allocating funding and actively mobilizing around this.
Talk to other funders. Establish local Complete Count Committees. Pool funds. Give significant amounts for outreach starting now and over the next two years. Use your influence to convince elected officials that this is critical and that they need to support outreach funding. We need your leadership.
The Census is important. Ensuring that the most marginalized members of our community feel like they count, like they matter, is at the heart of our work. This time, it is literal. Let’s work together to ensure everyone is counted.
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