Participating in the Census Is Like Voting For Yourself
By Jean Melesaine

I remember the last time the Census form came to my house. It was ten years ago, and I was 14-years-old. My mother and father, both immigrants from Samoa and living in our low income American neighborhood, were focused more on shopping for bottled water, flashlights and survival kits. The Y2K scare was more popular in my house then any survey could ever be. That is what the Census was them, just another survey to be thrown out.

And now, a decade later, as a 24-year-old adult, that survey is my way to re-write history for myself and my community. What my parents didn’t realize, is how the Census defines all the things we cared about but felt we had no control over -- how many elected officials we needed, what programs and services we needed funded, the buses routes we used.

My generation, 16-24-year-olds, particularly minorities, are one of the hardest to count populations for the Census. As a result, our issues, concerns, voices remain excluded when people imagine the larger vision of America.

But for me, a Pacific Islander convicted felon living in a housing project, 2010 will be the first time someone in my family voted, and voted for ourselves at that. Because that’s what the Census is, it's like voting for yourself, to be counted in a country that sometimes makes you feel like you don’t matter if you are young, low-income, or have a record.

For youth, immigrants, felons – the Census is our way to participate in a political process that we watch decide our fates in things like elections every four years. Even in the last presidential election that voted in Barack Obama, which many of us applauded, we did so from the sidelines. To be disenfranchised is to not be fully American, but the Census includes us as well, and puts us in the game.

Growing up, the government was only the embodiment of “the man” – the one responsible for all the opportunity, equality, and security that I felt my family and I were denied. And as a young poor woman of color, nothing can get worse then when your disdain for that “man” can coax you to be convicted of a felony, as it did with me. And with that conviction, sometimes you can no longer vote. A lot of my family is this same boat, and even the ones who can vote, elections seem distant from our lives, rather then the immediacy of what the Census promises. Want a hospital your Auntie can go to? Want money for schools for your cousins? This is the chance to be heard about all these aspects of our lives.

Currently I am working through New America Media and Silicon Valley De-Bug to change youth of color like my peers from the least counted, to the loudest advocates for the Census. Through doing workshops at schools and community colleges, we are getting youth to write letters home to their parents as to why the Census is important.

And this time around when the Census arrives to my parents home, it will be familiar. For the first time in history, the Census is being translated into Samoan, the language my family. In my household, and similar families across the country, the translations of the forms will give comfort to people who never quite understood how to count in a country when they barely could understand the language. And just as important, it will be their children who will translate its significance.