Ram Vishwanathan
Saturday’s event on the Green.
Demetrius Hyman had been eager to register for the Census ever since he changed his address, but had never quite had the chance to in the past. Saturday he was in luck: at a little past noon he hit one of many tents set up on the New Haven Green and completed the task with an ease that relieved and impressed him.
At an adjacent booth, Monica Cloud-Rogers, a volunteer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was similarly buoyant: her group had enjoyed an excellent day so far, registering what she estimated to be around 25 new voters by the midway point of the event.
The NAACP was one of multiple civic organizations that joined hands on this brisk mid-September afternoon to pursue a double quest: to register voters in time for the 2020 election, and to make sure every last resident is counted in the 2020 census.
Booths run by Census 2020 and the Registrar of Voters held center stage. An impressive list of participants at the event included the New Haven Free Public Library, Caregiver Homes, the League of Women Voters of CT, the Kennedy Center, Project MORE, Witnesses to Hunger, the Urban League of Southern Connecticut and the Community Action Agency of New Haven.
Addie Kimbrough (pictured), a volunteer for New Haven’s Complete Count Committee and the co-organizer of the event, remarked that the partnership was a natural one. “Voting and the census go hand in hand,” she said, stressing the importance of increased civic engagement in all its forms.
For Kimbrough, the city’s low completion rate of the Census in its past iterations has cost New Haven. “Ten years ago, we lost a state representative because our percentage was so low,” Kimbrough said. “This year, we’ve been working vigorously to correct that,” she continued. Kimbrough has been volunteering for the Complete Count Committee since February 2019; she spent more than a month planning Saturday’s event.
For Kimbrough, every incremental effort brought very tangible rewards. For example, every additional individual registered in the Census count would stand to bring the city an additional $29,000 in funding over the next decade, resources that she argued are sorely needed in schools and hospitals, and for the poor and homeless.
Event co-organizer Shannel Evans (pictured), New Haven’s Democratic registrar of voters, cited similar challenges in getting citizens to vote. Even residents who do vote often “don’t have knowledge of the candidate or of the positions they hold,” she said, raising her voice above the DJ system that partners UglyRadio had set up alternating between popular pop music and rap songs that chorused to the line, “Don’t let them count you out.”
Passersby were also offered free tacos and ice cream on the condition that they received stickers from at least ten of the booths present.
Rosa Melendez Ibarra, an employee with the 2020 Census, guiding a resident through the registration process.
Even in the midst of a challenging year topped off by the Covid-19 pandemic, Evans saw “so many people who want to be good citizens” participating on Saturday. Evans stated that she had earlier contacted Yale University and helped identify and register Yale students in advance. With the partnership with Project MORE, an organization that seeks to reintegrate ex-offenders into their local communities, meanwhile, Evans hoped that the needs of individuals navigating the criminal justice system could also be met.
New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker (above) kicked off a series of speeches that opened up the event, emphasizing the importance of registering for Census 2020: “Now more than ever, people filling out the census is vital — for funding, for representation in Congress, and to make sure every person counts.”
When asked for comment on New Haven’s historically low response rates, Elicker stated that his office was aware of the issue, and had identified a few key reasons for this phenomenon, from the city’s large undocumented population to the transitory nature of many of its residents. Like Evans, Elicker also remarked that these issues have the potential to be self-perpetuating: low response rates denied the community important resources it needed, creating a sense of marginalization that fostered mistrust in government. “So often, we don’t have the voice — we see it in the outcry against systemic racism, and when seeing a low amount of economic resources allocated to support communities,” Elicker said.
State Sen. Gary Winfield stressed that the need to register for the Census was made doubly urgent by the redistricting that is to take place next year. Civic participation ensures that “the right voices are representing the community,” he said.
Tyisha Walker-Myers, the President of the Board of Alders of New Haven, and Caprice Taylor-Mendez, a program manager of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, delivered passionate speeches that located the importance of registering for the Census and to vote in the politics of the moment.
“Something’s going on,” Taylor-Mendez said, imploring the crowd to vote. “Every year before 2020 has come and manifest itself into 2020. You can complain on November 4th, or on January 20th. But on November 3rd, we can’t complain — we have to go out and vote.”
The 2020 Census can be completed online here until Sept. 30. State residents can register to vote online here.