Q&A with Texas Rising’s Ofelia Alonso: "Young people in Texas have immense collective power."

In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, Ofelia Alonso, Director of Texas Rising, spoke with VoteRiders’ Digital Communications Coordinator about her organization’s commitment to empowering young Latino communities through civic engagement. Texas Rising works closely with partners like VoteRiders to ensure young Latino voters register and have the information and support they need to overcome barriers to voting. Ofelia discusses the unique challenges Latino voters face in Texas, the importance of representation in civic spaces, and how the collaboration between Texas Rising and VoteRiders equips the next generation of Latino leaders with the tools and confidence to shape their communities. — OCTOBER 9, 2024.

“Young people in Texas have immense collective power. We can sway what our state looks like, but we have to be able to exercise our right to vote to do that.“ – Ofelia Alonso, Texas Rising. 

Tell me about yourself and your role at Texas Freedom Network/Texas Rising

My name is Ofelia Alonso. I am currently the Texas Rising Program Director. Texas Rising is a program of the Texas Freedom Network. I started with Texas Rising in 2015 as a Student Leader and since then I’ve had every job possible within the program. I’m really excited to be a Director now. This was my first full year as Director and it’s been awesome to support our Organizers on the ground with all the youth-led initiatives they organize monthly to connect with the young electorate. In my current role, I focus on training Organizers, creating resources and tools for our state chapters, and supporting the projects our staff leads across the state. 

What is your organization’s mission and what are some of your key initiatives for the rest of 2024? 

Our mission is to mobilize and build a foundation of young leaders across Texas. We focus on working with young people ages 18 to 35 which includes high school students, college students, non-traditional students, and community members. One of our key initiatives to build this foundation is through voter registration. We do this work year-round, which is why our program is so special. Even when no elections are happening, we’re still doing leadership development work with our state chapter bases to make sure they have all of the resources they need to advocate for the changes they want to see across the state. We believe civic engagement is a year-long process and there are so many ways to do civic engagement — voting is just one of those ways. 

Voting is the first step. For many people, voting is only one of the steps, but for others, that step may not be accessible. We always consider voting to be a right, but it’s also not a right that everyone has, unfortunately. But, those folks can still be civically engaged, and we want to create avenues for them to do so. One of those ways is by advocating for voter access expansion and voter protection. A lot of folks who are not able to vote do see the importance of voting. Even for folks who do have a right to vote, that vote is constantly being legislated against. There are so many obstacles and barriers to voting, especially in Texas. 

Another way we create avenues for civic engagement is by providing voting information on campuses — including voting requirements, election dates, what’s on the ballot, and what all of these political roles do. This last one is especially important on a local level.

It’s hard to have all of that information on hand, so we really do try to figure out ways to make that information as accessible and digestible as possible for people who maybe don’t have three or four hours to get all the facts. We also emphasize that these races are all important and they all affect our lives in very tangible ways. 

We also have an avenue in which we can do advocacy work through Texas County Elections Administrators — like advocating for county-wide polling, which we just won in Cameron County. We also push for polling locations on campuses and on a state-wide level as well. 

We also do advocacy work focused on social justice issues around immigration, reproductive justice, and climate justice. A lot of our chapters engage with social justice work and advocate on campuses and through their elected officials to pass policies that will make our lives materially better. But our voter registration work is strictly C3 and we don’t talk about any issue work — we just focus on civic education, voting rights, and having those resources available for everybody. 

Texas is home to a large Latino population and October is Hispanic Heritage Month. How is your organization celebrating?

We are a Latina-led organization — which is really exciting — and we do a lot of work with Hispanic Serving Institutions — which are public or private not-for-profit colleges or universities where at least 25% of its full-time undergraduate population is Hispanic — which is really cool. We try to take direction from our chapter leaders on how to best celebrate Latinx Heritage Month. One of our chapters in the Rio Grande Valley celebrated by hosting a special Queer Space Alliance meeting that highlighted what this month means to them. They had the opportunity to play Loteria and bring in tacos for the attendees while also holding that safe space for queer people on campus, which is important because we know that a lot of these identities intersect. It’s important to have dedicated spaces that are safe for Latinos and for queer people who are trying to be civically engaged. We’re anticipating more events as the month continues including some social media campaigns. 

How has being Latina influenced your work at the statewide level?

Being Latina really has given me a unique perspective on the challenges and barriers our communities face. I’m from the Rio Grande Valley which is often one of the places where you see a lot of battles happen in real-time before they reach the rest of the state because we’re within 100 miles from the border. It’s really important for me to keep this in mind when I’m doing civic engagement work because language justice is very relevant. When I’m creating content, resources, or campaigns, it’s really important for me to advocate for inclusive policies — not just for young Latinos but Latinos in general. I think about my parents and how difficult it is for them to get information on local elected officials because there’s no information in Spanish. And how difficult it is for them to find reliable information online because the folks who are creating Spanish content don’t always have the best intentions and spread dis or misinformation around voting. 

How much electoral power do young Latino voters have in the state of Texas? 

We are the second-fastest growing voting demographic in the country and that has a huge effect in Texas, where 6.5 million of us became eligible to vote this election cycle. So for Texas Rising, the question is: How can we multiply that effort? When I think about the electoral power that young Latino voters have, I also think about how young Latino voters do relational organizing within their families and communities to create a culture of voting, which many of us didn’t have in our lives. 

In terms of myself and my family unit, none of us came from a culture of voting — either because we had family that didn’t have the right to vote or even if they did, they didn’t have the time or the resources to do it. I’ve seen across the state how young Latino voters are doing that relational work — they’re bringing in their families to be part of this culture shift with them. And that is so powerful. That’s an organizing effort that maybe isn’t always visible, but it is so, so powerful. I think that is what will ultimately shift what Texas looks like in the next 10 years. 

What are some of the key issues (national & local) driving voters in your community to the polls this year?

More and more we hear from new, young voters how important it is for them to have elected officials who understand how difficult it is for students right now to go to school, to work multiple jobs, to meet their basic needs, to pay off their student debt. There’s also a lack of infrastructure in the communities they live in and the impending climate crisis happening around them. We’re hearing from everybody that young people want a better quality of life, and we know in our program that this is possible. A fair, just, and equitable Texas is within reach. 

One of the first steps we can take to achieve this is to vote. Like I said initially, voting is only part of the equation and we want to continue holding elected officials accountable, watching what policies move through legislative bodies, and be really clear about what we need to thrive. 

We also need to fight against voter disenfranchisement — that’s a really important issue for a lot of young people. For a lot of folks, 2020 was their first year voting and they saw what was possible. They saw 24-hour voting and pop-up drive-through voting locations — they saw how much easier it could be to vote. Seeing this accessibility deteriorate in the past couple of years has been very impactful. To know that was possible and then for those voting options to be stripped away year by year is really hard.

From our research, we know that voter ID laws disproportionately impact voters of color, who are almost 4x less likely to have a current government-issued photo ID compared to white voters. Our research also found that young Americans are the least likely demographic to have a driver’s license with their current name and/or address. More specifically, our research reveals that only 15% of Latino adults have a driver’s license at all. What are some of the other ballot box barriers that young Latinx voters typically face in Texas?

The lack of online voter registration is a really big obstacle. We live in a world, especially for young people, where we’re expected to do anything and everything virtually — but Texas still does not have online voter registration as an option. So, people are required to request their voter registration either through the DMV or their county elections office, which isn’t always the most accessible place either because of lack of transportation, the very limited hours these offices are open, or just the amount of time you have to commit to waiting in line or driving for what can be hours depending on where you live in Texas. 

Also, the passage of SB1 limits voter assistance to only reading and marking ballots, so it doesn’t allow a voter to ask clarifying questions or get help navigating a polling site. These previous protections were part of the Federal Voting Rights Act so for our Texas law to overwrite that is clear disenfranchisement. 

At VoteRiders, our staff and trained volunteers provide free, direct help to voters who need an ID to cast a ballot. How is Texas Rising working with VoteRiders to make sure folks have what they need to vote?

We see that across the state, people of color and Latinos have a hard time acquiring state-issued identification due to lack of time, transportation, language-appropriate resources, and financial ability — so we value that VoteRiders is a resource that we have in the state because it’s very much needed. Our collaboration is strong, year-round, and very present in the work that we do.

Through our statewide voter registration efforts, we are constantly asking people if they have an ID to vote or if they need ID assistance. If they say yes, we send their information over to VoteRiders. When we’re out doing fieldwork, we do see a lot of people who need help getting an ID — beyond just for voting. An ID is such a valuable document to have, it helps with so many aspects of daily life. 

We’re also very well connected to VoteRiders’ Texas State Coordinator, Vicente. Vicente has conducted presentations on Texas voter ID requirements, vote-by-mail information, and tabling support with VoteRiders’ bi-lingual Texas Voter ID Information Cards which tell people what kinds of IDs they can use to vote in Texas and what number to call if they need help getting one. VoteRiders even comes through with voter ID information in a variety of languages relevant to the communities they serve which is extremely valuable and something I hope we see more from our counties, our elections, and our candidates as well.

What have you said/would you say to someone who told you they feel like their vote doesn’t matter?  

I always say, “If it didn’t matter, there wouldn’t be so many constant attacks on our right to vote.” That’s a big one. 

I definitely understand where people are coming from when they say they feel like their vote doesn’t matter because maybe they’re looking at it on a presidential level. But when I was doing voter registration in schools, I told my senior class that as a group, their votes could probably decide the city Mayor because in most of these local elections, especially in small towns, the margin is so small that a senior class could decide the race. When I said that I saw the little light bulb turn on in their head. They were like, “Wow, that is true,” because we see the election results — which can be a margin of 50, 60, 200 votes sometimes.

Young people in Texas have immense collective power. We can sway what our state looks like, but we have to be able to exercise our right to vote to do that. 

We know millions of Americans need help with voter ID – but most organizations don’t have the resources to answer questions or provide personal assistance. VoteRiders wants to be your partner in filling that gap. Learn more about how we can work together at VoteRiders.org/partner.