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Where's The Arab Vote? Arab-Americans Rally To Turn Out

Tasbeeh Herwees |
November 5, 2012 | 11:45 p.m. PST

Senior Staff Reporter

Rash Al-Dabbagh dressed up as a voter registration form for Halloween.
Rash Al-Dabbagh dressed up as a voter registration form for Halloween.
Most Americans register to vote by grabbing a form at the DMV or library. This year, California even added an online option. But 22-year-old Rahma Farahat took an unlikely route: encountering a form at a friend’s birthday party in Anaheim Hills. 

“I ran into Rashad Al-Dabbagh and he's been very active about getting people to vote ,” Farahat said. “When he found out I wasn't registered to vote, he pulled out a voter registration form and had me fill it out right there at the party.”

Al-Dabbagh admits freely that he drives around with a stack of voter registration forms in his car trunk. The Saudi-American activist has his hands in several civic responsibility projects in Orange County’s Arab-American community. Several local and national organizations have ramped up efforts to galvanize a growing Arab-American immigrant community in Southern California -- the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Arab American Institute are only a few. 

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Al-Dabbagh works with all of three, “wearing different hats” to rally potential voters young and old with the Arab American Institute’s pithy campaign slogan, “Yalla! Vote”, which means, “Let’s go vote!” in colloquial Arabic. 

He managed to reel in three new voters at the same birthday party one month ago -- Farahat and her sister, both newly minted citizens of the U.S., were among them. 

“It's funny because after that she was like, you should be a voter registration form for Halloween,” said Al-Dabbagh, laughing, “And I was.”

Much has been said about attaining the prized “Latino Vote” these past few months, but the “Arab Vote” is not yet a target for either campaign. Though California has the largest Arab-American population in the U.S. -- just over 272,000 -- their numbers remain inconsequential, though they’re growing in influence. In the U.S. overall, there are 1.9 million Arabs. 

But many of them don’t vote. Like many immigrant communities, the U.S. Arab population is handicapped by a language barrier, as well as the sentiment that their vote doesn’t count for anything, said Al-Dabbagh. 

“When we're talking about the presidential race, it's really difficult to see how one vote will change that, especially when you're living in California,” he said. “That's when I start talking to them about the the issues, the ones that are more relevant and affect their lives directly.”

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Many immigrants also feel their concerns and the issues they care about are marginalized. The Arab-American community is largely concerned with civil rights and foreign policy issues, especially in light of recent turmoil in the Middle East. Neither the Obama or Romney campaigns have felt overly concerned with foreign policy, instead focusing on domestic issues. When the two candidates staged a debate on foreign policy, the conversation often returned to jobs and the economy. 

The Arab-American community, however, has been consumed by the civil war in Syria. Syrian-American Hamad Al Hassen, a 19-year-old Cal Poly Pomona student who will be voting for the first time, says his views on Syria do inform his political views -- he’ll be voting for Gary Johnson. 

“I wouldn’t want the U.S. to get involved in Syria,” Al Hassen said. “Because it’s another way of them to take advantage of it and the power they want from my home country.”

Like Al-Hassen, many Arab-Americans are discontented with both party lines on Syria -- there are Arab-Americans like Al-Hassen who fear U.S. involvement in Syria and there are others who don’t believe the U.S. has done enough. A recent study by the Arab American institute found that though Arab-American voters "lean left", they're disappointed by the Obama administration's policies overall. Support for Obama in Arab-American communities dropped 15 percent from 2008, and the Romnney has only impressed 28 percent of those surveyed.

“Most people don't see how either candidate will make any changes over there,” Al-Dabbagh said.  

Part of the problem, says Al Dabbagh, is that there is no real data on Arab-Americans. In the wake of the Patriot Act, many Arabs and Muslims living in America are wary of government surveillance. Additionally, Census forms group Arabs under the White category, erasing any significance in numbers they may have. 

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“It's not about collecting information to target them or hang them up,” he said. “It's because we want to strengthen our non-profits... With that data, we can apply for grants. With accurate data, you can get federal funding for Arab-American groups.”

As a Census worker, Al Dabbagh was involved in another project  -- “Check it right, you ain’t White!” was the slogan for a campaign that urged Arab-Americans to check the “Other” box instead of the “White” box when questioned for their race. The community needs numbers, said Al Dabbagh, so they can apply to grants and receive funding for social services, like other minority communities. And with the right data, they can leverage the political power they need to get the issues they care about on the table. 

“We can have correct data to tell our elected officials, this is the number of Arab-Americans in this specific district, and that's why you should care about what they think and that's why you should reach out to them,” said Al-Dabbagh.

 

Reach Senior Staff Reporter Tasbeeh Herwees here. 



 

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