“I’ve always wanted to vote and help pick the president,” says Alex Salas, an 18-year-old senior at Golden Valley High School in Merced. “It means a lot to me and I’m excited to be able to pick the person that I believe should run our country.”
Salas is a member of the city’s Youth Council, a youth counterpart to the Merced City Council. He says that while he’s disappointed with the Republican win, he still believes in the importance of exercising his right to vote.
Part of the problem is indifference, said 16-year-old Cheng Vang, a student at Buhach Colony High School in Atwater. While this election cycle has been full of turmoil and drama, many of his friends and classmates don’t regularly follow politics and therefore don’t feel a personal connection to any of the issues on the ballot.
If the voting age were lowered to 16, however, Vang said youth would be more likely to pay attention and start forming consistent voting habits.
I am trying to bring an annual Nut Festival to Merced, to really make us a destination place while creating jobs for our citizens including a summer youth employment program for ages 16-19. I want to bring all the communities together to focus on how to move Merced together in a positive way that will include UC Merced students and fostering an atmosphere where they can use the skills they have acquired, creating new tech companies and expanding our health care while giving back to the community through helping with students in our city schools. This will help elevate ALL areas of our community creating jobs, which promotes public safety by lowering the crime level.
Growing up in the Valley shaped me. It made me who I am and the problems I’m passionate to solve. Merced is home, and it’s desperately in need of help. Our crime rate is among the nation's highest. Over a third of our people [live] below the poverty line, and our children suffer from epidemics of chronic disease. But we also have world-class resources and, if we do things right, a chance to really reinvent Merced and transform the region that raised me.
I like to bring forth a stronger investment in our youth. One idea I have is to work with Downtown businesses to create a summer youth internship program with the city. Often our youth have nothing to do in the summer; and I want to make sure we are investing in them and keeping them off the street especially from those members of our community who are looking to recruit them into gangs.
I seek to raise the morale of Merced by bringing good deeds and kind acts to all segments of our population. I seek to change the way new parents see this city as a place to raise a family I seek to change the way our youth see this town as an area of ineptitude and misery. Instead, I want the youth to know that the city is not only here for them, but depends on them to become strong men and women of character who must take up the charge of leading Merced into fruition.
I have supported invest in youth campaign several times during city council meetings . Where i have voiced my displeasure with the city officials in investing in the incarceration of the youth not their futures.
Renteria has been working with Students Advocating Law and Education (SALE), a UC Merced group comprised of undocumented students and allies that has been promoting voter registration on campus this fall. A week of registration and voter education events are planned for Oct. 18 through 21, in the lead up to California's deadline on Oct. 24.
“Many of the students I talk to know there are undocumented people, but they just don’t know there are undocumented students,” she says. “Once you find a way to relate it to them though, it’s easier for them to understand the importance [of the issue] and pay attention.”
“It’s really important that the communities who are disenfranchised and have been ignored for so long, turn out and vote. They have power and they can help make a change,” said Brenda Gutierrez, organizing director of Associated Students of University of California, Merced (ASUCM).
The 20-year-old university student spent a majority of her summer going door-to-door in Merced County to help spread the word about several ballot measures and campaigns this year. Her work was part of the ASUCM external office “We Vote” program, a statewide initiative across the UC campuses aimed at getting students more involved in elections.
Translate
