COVID-19 crisis shows exactly why census participation is important<\/p>\n
By Mark Hedin, Ethnic Media Services<\/p>\n
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic this year, grass-roots efforts to encourage full 2020 Census inclusion have had to make drastic adjustments to their strategies.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, April 14, Congressman Jimmy Gomez, who represents California\u2019s 34th District, joined a host of community Asian American, Pacific Islander and Native Hawaiian representatives, all working from the safe shelter of their homes, in a press teleconference briefing to discuss the challenges the pandemic has presented to getting their communities counted in the 2020 Census.<\/p>\n
The conversation, hosted by the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, extended to what new strategies they\u2019ve implemented to meet those challenges and how the pandemic has highlighted the importance of census participation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe census benefits all of us,\u201d A3PCON\u2019s Manjusha Kulkarni said in opening the meeting. \u201cWe are heavily reliant on doing outreach face-to-face. It\u2019s clear that the pandemic has had a negative effect.\u201d<\/p>\n
She then introduced Gomez, whose work in Congress includes a seat on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Part of that committee\u2019s purview includes overseeing census operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn accurate census impacts nearly every aspect of our lives,\u201d Gomez said, and cited needs the pandemic has highlighted such as for emergency response, hospitals and sufficient hospital beds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re feeling the remnants of the last census,\u201d he said. \u201cDo we have enough resources for the people that are here? If we\u2019d had a more accurate count \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
With a response rate in the high-40% range, the nation as a whole is about 10% behind where it was at this point in the process in 2010. California is slightly ahead of the national rate, but the response rate in its primarily Hispanic communities is 10% lower.<\/p>\n
Worse, Gomez said, in his own congressional district, which is more than 65% Asian, census participation so far is only at 32%.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to up our game,\u201d he emphasized. \u201cWe want to continue to push the self-response rate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Usually in the once-every-10-years census, responses are collected through July. Already this year that time has been extended to Aug. 14, and now the plan is to continue that work through October, which risks making the data, intended to provide a snapshot of the country as of April 1 this year, less accurate.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must make sure that an extension does not compromise the quality of the data,\u201d Kulkarni said as she introduced Kawen T. Young from the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Alliance.<\/p>\n
Young, noting that the current population is \u201cstanding on the broad shoulders\u201d of its predecessors, emphasized the importance of census participation \u201cto shape the future for the next 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of COVID-19, we are pretty together, but of course we have to work extra hard.\u201d His organization\u2019s efforts include in-language PSAs (public service announcements), social messaging, and \u201ceven TikTok with the younger generations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tracy Zhao, from API Equality \u2013 Los Angeles, noted how the census, as currently designed, gives short shrift to LGBTQ people.<\/p>\n
Except for the opportunity to identify a co-habitant as a same-sex spouse, \u201cwe are excluded.\u201d For example, there is no way for a person to indicate being transgender, non-binary, intersex or LGBTQ unmarried.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that this is an incomplete picture,\u201d she said. \u201cLGBTQ people exist within all populations,\u201d but nonetheless, \u201cdespite these shortcomings, we are still encouraging people to fill out the census the best we can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her organization has turned to producing videos and phone banking including video calls to encourage participation.<\/p>\n
Linda Huynh from API Forward Movement said that in her work as a Chinatown nutritionist, as part of the food deliveries she oversees are in-language flyers describing the importance of census participation and information on census hotlines.<\/p>\n
API Forward Movement, she said, can no longer hold events in conjunction with the Alhambra Unified School District or faith-based organizations, but has intensified its work through online papers such as Alhambra Source, including producing animations emphasizing how the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the urgency of being counted in the census.<\/p>\n
She noted that posts including photos of \u201cpeople that look like us\u201d or are \u201cin-language\u201d get far more user views, sometimes many times more, than those that don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Amy Hom from Khmer Girls in Action said that in their work emphasizing the importance of the census and how the political landscape impacts lives, Instagram is preferred for reaching the youngest members of the community, Facebook for elders and Twitter for news and media.<\/p>\n
Jose Roberto Hernandez, of the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance, described how his organization began the year doing census outreach in person, canvassing block-by-block and reaching 51,000 people by early March. KIWA also coordinated with the South Korean, Mexican, El Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalan consulates, who provided space for them to set up tables and \u201cvery successfully\u201d do other forms of outreach.<\/p>\n
But because of the pandemic, KIWA has had to shift its focus to phone banking and sending text messages, which its volunteers are doing by the thousands \u2014 15,000 and 60,000 respectively, he said.<\/p>\n
Gomez had also mentioned census help hotlines in multiple languages, starting with English: (844) 330-2020; Korean: (844) 392-3030; Vietnamese: (844) 461-2020; Mandarin: (844) 391-2020; and Cantonese: (844) 398-2020, along with the census\u2019 website,\u00a02020census.gov<\/a>, for self-responding.<\/p>\n Aquilina Soriano Versoza, of the Pilipino Workers Center, gave her comments entirely in Tagalog.<\/p>\n In the words of Empowering Pacific Islander Communities\u2019 Tavae Samuelu: \u201cBeing counted is our tautua, our kuleana, our duty to those who came before us and those who will follow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" COVID-19 crisis shows exactly why census...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ca-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23769,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23768\/revisions\/23769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}