Salvador Ontiveros is the president and CEO of Southside Oklahoma City’s main Latino community center, and he made a call to action to his fellow Latino Oklahomans ahead of the General Election.
“It's time to get involved, guys,” Ontiveros said. “It's our time.”
“If not us, then who? If not now, then when? We’ve got to be the ones to show up at the polls,” he said. “And you know what? We need to not just show up on November 5, but all of our local elections.”
Interrupted by the applause of about 60 people in the audience, Ontiveros made sure to finish his point.
City councils, county commissioner boards and the state legislature have a greater and immediate impact on the daily lives of everyday Oklahomans than the president, he said.
Other panelists included Rep. Arturo Alonso-Sandoval, D-Oklahoma City, Senate District 46 Democratic candidate Sam Wargin Grimaldo, activists Lesly Fraire and Angelica Villalobos and venture capitalist Erika Lucas.
The event was a collaboration between The Oklahoman, Telemundo and Tango Public Relations.
Clytie Bunyan is the managing editor for opinion and community engagement at The Oklahoman. She said the event aimed to include Latinos in conversations about politics, the election, and their role in the civic process.
Bunyan said the idea came to her because she noticed there hadn’t been any commentary from Latinos in The Oklahoman’s opinion section, Viewpoints. That’s where Telemundo and Tango PR came in to help get the word out, organize and assist in production.
A conversation about politics, growth and sacrifice
The discussion began with a piece of context, a history each panelist shared as they introduced themselves one by one: they grew up entirely, or in part, in the Southside of Oklahoma City as the children of migrant parents or as migrants themselves.
A set-up they used to jumpstart a conversation around why Latinos should be civically engaged in the first place.
One resonant theme was that Latinos, migrants or not, are essential contributors to Oklahoma’s economy, whether through new enterprise or a steady labor force, not to mention taxes, and increased economic influence tends to mean more political clout.
Erika Lucas is a businesswoman and venture capitalist in Oklahoma City. She said Latinos need to start having more dinner table talks about politics — and politics’ marriage to money.
“I think that we need to move on from this notion of, ‘oh, let's not talk about politics,’ because everything is political,” Lucas said.
“The way money flows is political,” she said. “And if you follow the money, there’s a lot of disproportion, so the question we should be asking ourselves is, “why aren’t we getting politically involved?”
The Latino population in Oklahoma grew 42% from 2010 to 2020, according to the decennial U.S. census numbers. The Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce website shows more than 20,000 Latino-owned businesses in the state.
And yet, Lucas said, Latinos nationwide get less than 2% of venture capital.
Angelica Villalobos, a social justice advocate, Dreamer, and mother of five U.S.-born children, backed Lucas up on her point about economic and political influence. She said the recent economic growth within the Oklahoma community is indicative of the sacrifices Latinos make when they choose to leave their homes and migrate to the U.S.
In most cases, those sacrifices are ongoing, Villalobos said, which she recognizes is a complication for many in the community when it comes to civic involvement.
“I often talk about sacrifices because there've been times when I've been politically engaged and done a lot of advocacy and sacrificed time for work, as well as time to be with my children because I haven't been able to,” she said. “I can't do both, right? And I think that we can see that within the community when we ask them to show up,” she said.
Lesly Faire is a freshman at Oklahoma Community College, majoring in Diversified Studies. She said growing up in OKC’s Southside meant witnessing clear disparities in resources at school and throughout her community compared to areas north of the river dividing downtown.
But it was this year, when she was still a senior at Santa Fe South High School, that her social justice engine ignited. The fuel and spark were state lawmakers’ passing House Bill 4156 into law, a measure criminalizing anyone in the state without federal permission to be in the country.
“It hit me when we were hit with HB 4156,” Fraire said. “That’s when I started getting committed with clubs in school, like HSA and other organizations that help promote civic engagement because just the idea of having a better Oklahoma for Hispanics is what really motivates me now.”
That’s also around when immigrant Oklahomans gathered at the Oklahoma State Capitol by the hundreds to protest the measure. Fraire gave a speech calling her peers to action, along with her fellow panelists Alonso-Sandoval and Grimaldo.
One attendee had mixed feelings about the whole event, calling it an echo chamber, resounding affirmations steeped in left-leaning identity politics.
Eduardo Martinez, 27, is a software engineer and a south Oklahoma City resident. He said that while he’s mostly moderate in his views, he leans toward the Republican Party.
“The reason why I came here was just to see how they are directing their focus and resources,” Martinez said. “I’ve kind of gone to these things sporadically, and what I got was a cookie cutter, you know, echo chamber.”
Only three of the six panelists indicated how they might vote or what party they represent: Alonso-Sandoval, who is a Democratic lawmaker and was part of Oklahoma’s Democratic National Convention delegation, Grimaldo, who ran for Senate District 46 as a Democrat hoping to replace Sen. Kay Floyd, and Lucas, who at one point called herself an independent who will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris on Election Day.
Bunyan, The Oklahoman’s opinion editor, said in an email to KOSU that she agrees with Martinez’s echo chamber comment. She said, however, that the result wasn’t due to a lack of trying; it just didn’t work out in time for the people she invited, who were meant to balance the discussion better.
The conversation was too important to cancel just because some folks couldn’t make it, Bunyan said.
