Friday, September 30, 2022

Feel Good Friday - Mi Familia Vota

We’re in the middle of National Hispanic American Heritage Month and there are only 40 days left until the midterm elections. Sounds like a great time to highlight the work of Mi Familia Vota.

Established in 2000, Mi Familia Vota (MFV) is “a national civic engagement non-profit organization that unites Latino, immigrant, and allied communities to promote social and economic justice through citizenship workshops, voter registration, and voter participation.”


These programs operate in seven states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and Texas. The web pages for each state show you registration and early voting deadlines as well as contact information for the local office in your chosen state.


To increase voter registration and participation within these states, MFV partners with Spanish language media, schools, and community, faith-based and labor organizations to provide non-partisan information to Latino voters. While voter registration efforts are in high gear now, they also take place year round. In the 2020 election cycle MFV contacted 7 million voters through phone calls, text messages and door knocks and got 550,000 people registered!


MFV also mobilizes the Latino, immigrant and allied communities to lead both local and national coalitions in the fight for voting rights, healthcare and access to COVID-19 vaccinations, environmental issues, education, reproductive rights, workers’ rights and immigration reform with a path to citizenship. Their political work includes a campaign highlighting the ways Governor Greg Abbott has failed the Latino community in Texas, which you can learn about in this short video: ¡Basta Abbott!


Finally, MFV has a year-long Youth Development Program that provides high school students with unique real-world experiences and training exercises that teach them how to influence change in their communities and understand the importance of building political power.


If you’d like to support the work of Mi Familia Vota, you can become a volunteer, make a donation and amplify their message on social media. Follow them on Facebook at this link, on Twitter @MiFamiliaVota and Instagram @mifamiliavota.


Bonus note for all of us in California: the deadline to register to vote online is October 24th (in person November 8th) and early voting begins October 10th. De nada.

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