Negocios Now

www.negociosnow.com 22 Agosto 2022 'Power is now within the community' By David Steinkraus O n Aug. 18, the Uni- ted States Hispanic Leadership Institu- te celebrated an anniver- sary. It's been 40 years sin- ce the organization set out to empower Hispanics by registering voters. "To be perfectly honest, I wasn't sure I would be alive in 40 years, but I'm glad we're both still here," said Juan Andrade Jr., the organization's president and co-founder. Andrade learned about civic engagement as the Texas state coordinator for John Lewis, who led the Voter Education Project in Atlanta and later served in Congress. Lewis' project was intended to register African Americans. "At the time there was no such organization yet for Hispanics," Andrade said. "So my friends in Texas went to Atlanta and met with John Lewis, and said, why don't you expand to Texas so we can register Mexican Ame- ricans and Blacks? He liked the idea and told them, find me a coordinator, and I'll get him or her on board. So they called me up and said, we want you to come home and take this position. That was like offering a prime rib steak to a starving man." USHLI was born from that experience as the Midwest Voter Registration Education Project. Its name changed as it expanded into other states and areas of work. PROGRESS IN CHICAGO Hispanics have come a long way, Andrade said. Forty years ago, Chicago had three Hispa- nic elected officials, all slated by the Chicago Democratic machine. They were good people, but they were behol- den to the machine, he said. As he investigated this, he found that 82,000 Hispanics were registered to vote in Chicago. From 1976 to 1980, when there were five election cycles for people to register, net Hispanic registrations increased by just 17. He lear- ned that voter registration rosters were regularly purged by workers who supposedly knocked on every door of every house. But he doubted that this voter canvass was thorough in the depth of win- ter before a spring election. With money from a foun- dation, he commissioned a University of Chicago elec- tion expert to conduct scien- tific research on the accuracy of the canvass. With that evi- dence in hand, he sued with the help of the Mexican Ame- rican Legal Defense and Edu- cation Fund. A judge found Chicago's voting process to be in error and ordered several changes proposed by Andrade. In the 2020 election, more than 300,000 Hispa- nics were registered to vote in Chicago, which now has 30 Hispanic elected officials. An unexpected achieve- ment for USHLI has been nurturing Hispanic talent, Andrade said. Young people come as college interns or as a first job after college. They develop skills and deci- de where to go next, perhaps to graduate school or into a corporate or nonprofit job with one of the organiza- tions that look to USHLI for talent, he said. "My management style was more macro than micro. I gave them the space to assert themsel- ves, to think for them- selves and come up with ideas on their own," he said. FINDING THE POWER H i s p a n i c s have come a long way, and they have a ways to go, he said, although not as far as they have come. With about one- fifth of the U.S. population, the Hispanic gross domes- tic product is the third-fas- test growing in the world, he said, behind only China and India. People think Hispa- nics take services, he said, but in truth more than 80% of the jobs created in the last decade, jobs for everyo- ne, were created by Hispa- nics. "We have further to go, but I think we have found our way. Why? Because we have empowered the com- munity to where it can drive itself, an empower- ment never allowed by the Democratic machine" Andrade said. The challenge now, he said, is for the community to learn how to harness all of the power that lies within it. DR. JUAN ANDRADE

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