The Power of Being Counted, The Hurt Of Being Forgotten

Councilmember Deni Taveras Is Making Full Participation In The 2020 Census Count Her Mission

By Raoul Dennis

“Whatever it takes,” says County Councilmember Deni Taveras (D-Dist. 2). “I may sound like a broken record but if that’s what it takes that’s what I’m going to do to get people to participate in the 2020 Census this year.”

She’d just returned home from her workout at the gym and even though the council was out of session for winter break, Taveras came onto the interview with The Suite. She will need her strength as she’s preparing to host 40 events to promote 2020 Census participation in her district.

The six year councilmember knows that she and her colleagues on the council and throughout the county’s leadership ranks are facing an uphill battle.

It’s a three-tiered fight.

First, the current political climate has created an environment that strikes fear in immigrant communities. Many are afraid to share morning greetings with strangers let alone announce their family status and membership for fear of a deportation knock at the door.

Second, there’s a drastic literacy vacuum when it comes to the census. According to local and national leaders, many people don’t understand the importance of participation and the direct relation it has to garnering resources for neighborhoods. “We have to educate people at the same time that we have to earn their trust,” Taveras says.

Third, the county is underfunded and understaffed for 2020 Census taking, according to Taveras. Prince George’s County has not been allocated a census office, for example, to cover the county’s nearly 1 million residents despite the fact that the county represents some 30 countries and over 50 languages (in addition to English including Yoruba, Twi, Mam, Igbo, French, Cajun and, of course, Spanish).  Some 22 percent of the county’s current total population comes from another country.

After losing $363 million in government funding for resources in the 2010 Census due to undercounting, Taveras declared that she will do all she can to assure 2020 will yield better returns for the 324-year-old jurisdiction.

“We have the largest amount of money lost compared to anyone else in the state of Maryland,” Councilmember Taveras said at a December 2019 press briefing (see “The Countdown To Be Counted: The Next County Council Set To Make Hard 2020 Census Push,” click here).



The Numbers Don’t Try

Maryland’s allocation to the 2020 Census is $5 million. According to the Taveras office, $250,000 has been directed toward Prince George’s County.

The councilmember says that’s too little in a jurisdiction of the size of Prince George’s County.

“We barely have any money to get anything done,” Taveras says. “The major census offices are not located in the population centers of the state. They’re located in Towson, Hagerstown, Harford and outside Baltimore. Census offices are nowhere to be found in major population centers like Prince George’s, Montgomery County or inside the city of Baltimore. That’s where the people are. How are you going to put an office in Hagerstown [for example, but not put an office in] a county with [almost] a million people?”

The county has some 334,000 housing units and 308,000 households. Although the state will hire workers to aid in gathering information, county leaders will have to rely heavily on volunteers and efficient strategic planning to make it work. The budget and the resources applied are simply not enough on their own.

Taveras and The Census: Since She Was 8 Years Old

But if councilmember has to be the David to the 2020 Census’ Goliath, she has a weapon to work with: she has done this before working against the odds.

“I filled out the census for my family when I was a kid,” Taveras says.  Growing up in New York City, her grandmother, a Spanish-speaking woman who was raising the young Taveras, wasn’t fully cognizant of the meaning of the census. But Deni knew exactly what it was. “I understood because we talked about it in school. I knew how important it was in order to make sure that we got the resources we were due,” she explains. “We were a hard-working family but my family happened to be poor. We were receiving government assistance so I was keenly aware that we needed to let them know that we existed.”

Young Deni, at age 8, filled out the forms and returned them. And she encouraged others in her neighborhood to do the same.

The Plan

The District 2 leader says she will host 40 Census events of the next three months to meet the Census’ primary April 2020 deadline.

“We will go to churches, schools, libraries, laundromats and more to talk to people about the Census to get ambassadors in each neighborhood to help us reach people,” Taveras says.

She says that attracting volunteers, faith leaders, school principals, and other community and family-based leaders are her first and most important line of offense when it comes to getting people to trust Census organizers enough to participate in the count.

And then there’s the census literacy. In many cases, even reading the narrative is a challenge as speaking and writing English are often part of the problem.

The highest priority comes down to trust. It can be one of the best tools for getting greater numbers of responses.

“Trust is very important,” Taveras says of the road ahead that will require at least 90 contacts per person. “It’s important that people are comfortable with the process and in order to do that they need to be comfortable with whoever is talking to them. But we’re going to keep trying for as long as it takes. We can’t let people be forgotten.”