Grind -N- Bone
ᒪᕮGᕮᑎᗪᗩᖇY ᔕᑌᑭᕮᖇ TᕼᑌG
Latinos find little room in majority black county
By Rachel Chason
Today at 7:00 a.m. EDT
Joseline A. Peña-Melnyk (D-Prince George’s). “If you are not in the room, you are an afterthought.”
It’s an old friction in Prince George’s that was felt anew as the pandemic underscored inequities faced by Black and Latino communities nationwide, with both historically marginalized groups struggling for resources. Alsobrooks detailed the systemic reasons why Prince George’s, where she was raised, was vulnerable to covid-19 as she pressed Gov. Larry Hogan (R) for more help. But in interviews with more than a dozen Latino leaders and community members, people said their communities sometimes seemed a blind spot for her administration.
In Langley Park, where 70 percent of adults are not U.S. citizens and many are undocumented, business owner Dendry Aguilar saw so little assistance coming from the government in the early days of the pandemic that she started personally delivering groceries to apartment complexes.
“I don’t think they do it on purpose,” Aguilar said of the government’s disconnect with the community, “it’s just the fact that they don’t understand the culture.”
[An immigrant community faces a ‘catastrophic’ pandemic without help]
Alsobrooks declined an interview for this story but issued a statement acknowledging more could be done to ensure Latino representation in government, saying the issue extends beyond her administration and county lines.
“We value inclusion and diversity, and the County government has made efforts to ensure that Latino community has a seat at the table as decisions are made,” she said, through a spokeswoman.
for the Black middle class, a jurisdiction where average wealth increased as White working-class residents moved out in the 1980s and African African residents moved in.
An initial wave of Latino immigrants fleeing civil war in El Salvador also arrived in the 1980s, and would grow in the decades that followed, with a surge since 2010 fueled by emigration from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
As neighborhoods changed, tensions sometimes flared — at points echoing the strain felt in the county’s previous demographic transition. When Alsobrooks’s predecessor, Rushern L. Baker III, pushed to open two international schools for immigrants, it sparked outrage, with the county’s NAACP arguing it would take resources from Black students whose schools have been historically underfunded.
Baker, who is African American, personally attended the heated parent teacher association meetings to explain his position.
“People would say, ‘This is a Black county,’” Baker said, “and I would say, ‘No. This is a diverse county.’”
criticism over a lack of Latino representation in government during his first term. It prompted him to take action — including supporting Latino candidates, elevating several Latinos within the government and creating a Latino liaison position that he insisted report directly to his chief of staff and be stationed near his office.
The key, said Baker, who by his second term won an award from a national group for elevating Latinos in government, was having people around to push him and ask: “Have you thought about this?”
Adam Ortiz, the director of the Department of Environment under Baker, left a month into Alsobrooks’s administration. Hector Velez, the highest-ranking Latino in the police department, retired last year after Alsobrooks passed him over for chief. There have been three Latino liaisons under Alsobrooks in three years, and the position has moved twice, most recently to under the new Office of Multicultural Affairs. Alsobrooks tapped an African immigrant to lead that office.
Even though Maryland was the most diverse state on the East Coast, according to the 2020 Census, there are no Latinos in its congressional delegation and the state Senate has not had a Latino member since Victor Ramirez left in 2018. In the 141 member House of Delegates, Peña-Melnyk is one of four Latinos. In Prince George’s and across the nation, Latinos are underrepresented in voter registration, with the more than 60,0000 estimated undocumented Latino immigrants in the county not eligible to cast ballots.
Ramirez, who used to talk about these issues with Baker on their regular jogs, is currently running to replace Deni Taveras (D-District 2), the only Latina on the county council. Ramirez said there needs to be a countywide conversation about the underrepresentation that’s evident in Alsobrooks’s administration — and extends far beyond it.
Still, Ramirez said his attitude is similar to what he tell the kids he coaches on the soccer team at his alma mater Northwestern High School, many of whom are first-generation immigrants.
“You can’t dwell on what we don’t have,” he says. “You have to push through with what you do have.”
the highest in the region.
But the needs of residents shifted as covid-19 and its consequences hit communities differently. While the overwhelming majority of county residents without enough to eat before the pandemic was Black, Black residents accounted for 21 percent of the newly hungry in 2020. Hispanic residents accounted for 28 percent, a food security task force found.
Most food distribution the county initially launched were far from Latino strongholds. Council District 2, which has the highest poverty rate in Prince George’s and is predominantly Latino, received two sites. District 7, with the third-highest poverty rate, received six. Many distributions were located in parking lots of large Black churches not easily accessible via public transportation.
That format left residents without cars — including many in Latino communities — with few options, said Sydney Daigle, Prince George’s County Food Equity Council director, who frequently received reports about multiple households carpooling as the virus was rapidly spreading.
The setup also left Latino leaders to fill the gaps.
Alsobrooks’s then-Latino liaison, Katina Rojas Nazario-Joy secured a partnership in April 2020 with World Central Kitchen, which operated primarily in areas with large Latino populations in the county’s north. Alsobrooks’ spokeswoman, Gina Ford, said that partnership allowed the administration to focus its resources elsewhere. As World Central Kitchen began closing its sites in Summer 2020, the administration tried to backfill them, including opening two additional sites in District 2, said deputy chief of staff John Erzen. He also also noted that the county had three initial sites outside District 2 that served mostly Latino populations.
The disconnect between need and services also played out when it came to testing and, later, to vaccines, Latino leaders said, with the initial sites at FedEx Field, the county’s health department, Six Flags and the county’s sports and learning center difficult to access for Latino residents.
“The crisis within the crisis,” Taveras called the situation in an op-ed to The Washington Post, noting that the 20783 Zip code, which includes Langley Park, had more coronavirus cases in May 2020 than any other in Maryland, Virginia or D.C.
Taveras and other Latino leaders balanced pushing the administration to do more behind the scenes with worry about criticizing a government whose help they needed.
They said they leaned on a reluctant county health department to bring vaccines to people who weren’t yet registered for shots. The county’s pilot program in Langley Park, launched in May 2021, saw 200 people vaccinated on the first day and was rapidly expanded. Today, the Latino population has the highest vaccination rates of any demographic in the county.
Taveras, Peña-Melnyk and others were grateful for the results but wished more had been done sooner. Frustrated with how few people were there to raise such issues and how little progress Alsobrooks had made recruiting Latinos, they decided to speak out this past fall.
“We do not expect mathematical perfection in appointed positions from Ms. Alsobrooks,” read their letter to the county executive “We do however expect a number greater than zero.”
a Latina to the school board. Gustavo Torres, the executive director of CASA, said that after not meeting with the influential group during her first year in office, Alsobrooks at a recent meeting privately promised to do better.
Alsobrooks’s chief of staff, Joy Russell, said the administration often does not receive Latino applicants, noting their absence among 96 applicants for a new police accountability board. The administration has asked community groups and leaders for Latinos to reach out to, she said. But it has not publicly detailed plans to improve representation. The county’s office of human rights said a diversity audit sought by Latino leaders was outside its purview.
Peña-Melnyk, a longtime supporter of Alsobrooks, said she wrestled with publicly criticizing the county executive. As a Black Latina who emigrated from the Dominican Republic as a child, she felt a measure of pride as she watched Alsobrooks elevate Black women to cabinet positions including fire chief, schools chief and chief of staff, agreeing with their oft-repeated mantra: “You can’t be what you can’t see.”
But she also saw clearly who was missing.
former mayor Malinda Miles conducts on her front porch, to get food to people in need. On a recent rainy Thursday as Benitez handed out boxes, 500 were snapped up in just over an hour.
By Rachel Chason
Today at 7:00 a.m. EDT
Joseline A. Peña-Melnyk (D-Prince George’s). “If you are not in the room, you are an afterthought.”
It’s an old friction in Prince George’s that was felt anew as the pandemic underscored inequities faced by Black and Latino communities nationwide, with both historically marginalized groups struggling for resources. Alsobrooks detailed the systemic reasons why Prince George’s, where she was raised, was vulnerable to covid-19 as she pressed Gov. Larry Hogan (R) for more help. But in interviews with more than a dozen Latino leaders and community members, people said their communities sometimes seemed a blind spot for her administration.
In Langley Park, where 70 percent of adults are not U.S. citizens and many are undocumented, business owner Dendry Aguilar saw so little assistance coming from the government in the early days of the pandemic that she started personally delivering groceries to apartment complexes.
“I don’t think they do it on purpose,” Aguilar said of the government’s disconnect with the community, “it’s just the fact that they don’t understand the culture.”
[An immigrant community faces a ‘catastrophic’ pandemic without help]
Alsobrooks declined an interview for this story but issued a statement acknowledging more could be done to ensure Latino representation in government, saying the issue extends beyond her administration and county lines.
“We value inclusion and diversity, and the County government has made efforts to ensure that Latino community has a seat at the table as decisions are made,” she said, through a spokeswoman.
for the Black middle class, a jurisdiction where average wealth increased as White working-class residents moved out in the 1980s and African African residents moved in.
An initial wave of Latino immigrants fleeing civil war in El Salvador also arrived in the 1980s, and would grow in the decades that followed, with a surge since 2010 fueled by emigration from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
As neighborhoods changed, tensions sometimes flared — at points echoing the strain felt in the county’s previous demographic transition. When Alsobrooks’s predecessor, Rushern L. Baker III, pushed to open two international schools for immigrants, it sparked outrage, with the county’s NAACP arguing it would take resources from Black students whose schools have been historically underfunded.
Baker, who is African American, personally attended the heated parent teacher association meetings to explain his position.
“People would say, ‘This is a Black county,’” Baker said, “and I would say, ‘No. This is a diverse county.’”
criticism over a lack of Latino representation in government during his first term. It prompted him to take action — including supporting Latino candidates, elevating several Latinos within the government and creating a Latino liaison position that he insisted report directly to his chief of staff and be stationed near his office.
The key, said Baker, who by his second term won an award from a national group for elevating Latinos in government, was having people around to push him and ask: “Have you thought about this?”
Adam Ortiz, the director of the Department of Environment under Baker, left a month into Alsobrooks’s administration. Hector Velez, the highest-ranking Latino in the police department, retired last year after Alsobrooks passed him over for chief. There have been three Latino liaisons under Alsobrooks in three years, and the position has moved twice, most recently to under the new Office of Multicultural Affairs. Alsobrooks tapped an African immigrant to lead that office.
Even though Maryland was the most diverse state on the East Coast, according to the 2020 Census, there are no Latinos in its congressional delegation and the state Senate has not had a Latino member since Victor Ramirez left in 2018. In the 141 member House of Delegates, Peña-Melnyk is one of four Latinos. In Prince George’s and across the nation, Latinos are underrepresented in voter registration, with the more than 60,0000 estimated undocumented Latino immigrants in the county not eligible to cast ballots.
Ramirez, who used to talk about these issues with Baker on their regular jogs, is currently running to replace Deni Taveras (D-District 2), the only Latina on the county council. Ramirez said there needs to be a countywide conversation about the underrepresentation that’s evident in Alsobrooks’s administration — and extends far beyond it.
Still, Ramirez said his attitude is similar to what he tell the kids he coaches on the soccer team at his alma mater Northwestern High School, many of whom are first-generation immigrants.
“You can’t dwell on what we don’t have,” he says. “You have to push through with what you do have.”
the highest in the region.
But the needs of residents shifted as covid-19 and its consequences hit communities differently. While the overwhelming majority of county residents without enough to eat before the pandemic was Black, Black residents accounted for 21 percent of the newly hungry in 2020. Hispanic residents accounted for 28 percent, a food security task force found.
Most food distribution the county initially launched were far from Latino strongholds. Council District 2, which has the highest poverty rate in Prince George’s and is predominantly Latino, received two sites. District 7, with the third-highest poverty rate, received six. Many distributions were located in parking lots of large Black churches not easily accessible via public transportation.
That format left residents without cars — including many in Latino communities — with few options, said Sydney Daigle, Prince George’s County Food Equity Council director, who frequently received reports about multiple households carpooling as the virus was rapidly spreading.
The setup also left Latino leaders to fill the gaps.
Alsobrooks’s then-Latino liaison, Katina Rojas Nazario-Joy secured a partnership in April 2020 with World Central Kitchen, which operated primarily in areas with large Latino populations in the county’s north. Alsobrooks’ spokeswoman, Gina Ford, said that partnership allowed the administration to focus its resources elsewhere. As World Central Kitchen began closing its sites in Summer 2020, the administration tried to backfill them, including opening two additional sites in District 2, said deputy chief of staff John Erzen. He also also noted that the county had three initial sites outside District 2 that served mostly Latino populations.
The disconnect between need and services also played out when it came to testing and, later, to vaccines, Latino leaders said, with the initial sites at FedEx Field, the county’s health department, Six Flags and the county’s sports and learning center difficult to access for Latino residents.
“The crisis within the crisis,” Taveras called the situation in an op-ed to The Washington Post, noting that the 20783 Zip code, which includes Langley Park, had more coronavirus cases in May 2020 than any other in Maryland, Virginia or D.C.
Taveras and other Latino leaders balanced pushing the administration to do more behind the scenes with worry about criticizing a government whose help they needed.
They said they leaned on a reluctant county health department to bring vaccines to people who weren’t yet registered for shots. The county’s pilot program in Langley Park, launched in May 2021, saw 200 people vaccinated on the first day and was rapidly expanded. Today, the Latino population has the highest vaccination rates of any demographic in the county.
Taveras, Peña-Melnyk and others were grateful for the results but wished more had been done sooner. Frustrated with how few people were there to raise such issues and how little progress Alsobrooks had made recruiting Latinos, they decided to speak out this past fall.
“We do not expect mathematical perfection in appointed positions from Ms. Alsobrooks,” read their letter to the county executive “We do however expect a number greater than zero.”
a Latina to the school board. Gustavo Torres, the executive director of CASA, said that after not meeting with the influential group during her first year in office, Alsobrooks at a recent meeting privately promised to do better.
Alsobrooks’s chief of staff, Joy Russell, said the administration often does not receive Latino applicants, noting their absence among 96 applicants for a new police accountability board. The administration has asked community groups and leaders for Latinos to reach out to, she said. But it has not publicly detailed plans to improve representation. The county’s office of human rights said a diversity audit sought by Latino leaders was outside its purview.
Peña-Melnyk, a longtime supporter of Alsobrooks, said she wrestled with publicly criticizing the county executive. As a Black Latina who emigrated from the Dominican Republic as a child, she felt a measure of pride as she watched Alsobrooks elevate Black women to cabinet positions including fire chief, schools chief and chief of staff, agreeing with their oft-repeated mantra: “You can’t be what you can’t see.”
But she also saw clearly who was missing.
former mayor Malinda Miles conducts on her front porch, to get food to people in need. On a recent rainy Thursday as Benitez handed out boxes, 500 were snapped up in just over an hour.
Matter of fact, a significant majority of the Latinos here ain’t even naturalized citizens nor can they drive for shyt!
Y’all better keep your boot on these old nikkas and “Black & Brown/Minority Coalition” ass nikkas and their kumbaya “We Are The World” bullshyt before that madness continues to do even more damage to us.
Now they get to blame AA for their condition ...evil cacs
