By Pedro Hernadez, Ivanhoe Sol
On October 7, nearly 1,000 residents from throughout Tulare, Kern, Kings, and Fresno County gathered to attend GenteFest at Visalia’s Fox Theater. This free concert was hosted by various organizations including Loud For Tomorrow and the Dolores Huerta Foundation.
GenteFest featured performances from well-known Latino artists Sno Tha Product, Las Cafeteras, and Fuego.
According to event organizer and co-founder of Loud For Tomorrow, Jose Orellana, “We have a large majority of Latino voters but we are not turning out to vote. We wanted to think about the activities and outreach methods that talk to Latinos: like music, free food, and just having a good time. Our community deserves something like this.”
The goal of the event was to raise awareness for the November Election. Orellana says voter engagement efforts “connect us to the people who have the power in our community to change things. It connects us to school boards, to city councils, and county supervisors. The people in power have the resources to clean our streets, build more affordable housing, to make sure every family has clean water and clean air. It helps us keep those people accountable and so when they don’t align with our values we can tell them we don’t want them to represent us anymore.”
Juntos Por El Valle Tour
According to Orellana, GenteFest was the first event in a larger effort to create community events to spread awareness in Tulare County.
The “Juntos Por El Valle Pop Up Tour” tour is currently underway where small communities all over Tulare County will be sites for events. There will be free food, music, wellness activities, and prizes available to attendees.
The vision for this tour was to create “a miniature version of GenteFest where we’ll be going to communities and we specifically chose these towns where campaigns have traditionally missed – the focus on big cities that have the majority of the votes. We want to focus on those areas and give them the love and attention they deserve. This is a symbol of connecting us together as tulare and kings county and bridge our culture across the vast San Joaquin Valley landscape.”
The tour has already begun and event organizers say that the first event in Porterville engaged over 400 people.
In conclusion, Orellana wants the residents of Ivanhoe to know that “Latinos belong in Tulare and Kings County, we bring a lot of valuable culture, knowledge, and economic power. And we want to be represented in politics, in media, in all forms of culture in society and it begins with flexing our civic power and making sure we elect people who align with us.”
Comments are closed.