Essential to Democracy: Engaging the Latino Immigrant Community in Democracy-Building Work In Their Own Words

This project investigates how Latino immigrants experience and interpret civic participation in the United States, with particular attention to the roles of identity, culture, and political movement.

Essential to Democracy offers general lessons and ten concrete recommendations for movement builders, practitioners, and political educators. These include developing civic fluency ladders, creating explicit intergenerational programs, protecting participants from extractive storytelling practices, and anchoring organizing efforts in joy, learning and familiar community gathering approaches. Ultimately, the research challenges prevailing assumptions about Latino political behavior and calls to build on what affiliates of the Popular Democracy network have been championing: approaches to civic engagement that are trauma informed, rooted in history, and built through relational trust.

The project acts as an offering for deeper provocation grounded in love and respect for our affiliates’ work, and also going beyond broad organizing practices to one that is specific, catered, and emotionally intentional. What participants shared makes clear that current engagement cannot be separated from earlier experiences of political instability, loss, or repression. For organizers, this means recognizing that trust-building requires understanding those histories and the conditions people face now.

The study was conducted across six community-based organizations in the Popular Democracy  network: Make the Road New York (MRNY), Florida Rising, Churches United for Fair Housing (CUFFH), Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), Make the Road Nevada (MRNV), and Communities Organizing Latine Power and Action (COPAL).