Real-life civics makes activists of immigrants

These immigrants are learning how important and powerful it is to become a citizen and vote for what they want changed in their community. DP

By Susan Ferriss, McClatchy Newspapers

Sanluisobispo.com: WILLIAMS, Calif. - On a recent balmy afternoon, a group of women at a park in this small northern California town celebrated the imminent birth of a baby with tamales and gallons of horchata, a Mexican cinnamon punch made with rice.

Talk in Spanish turned to the flavor of the punch - which had been prepared with bottled water - and then to the flavor of the water that flows in people's homes here, which the women described as foul sometimes as rotten eggs.

Griselda Gonzalez, a local hotel maid, suggested that if immigrants such as themselves want to do something about the water, there's something they must consider: Those who can, must become U.S. citizens and use their vote.

"If those of us who can become citizens don't do it, we have only ourselves to blame for putting ourselves on the sidelines," said Gonzalez, 49, who is proud to have ascended from undocumented farmworker to homeowner, mother of a U.S. Navy veteran and, as of 2005, American citizen.
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