In the Season 1 finale of the new audio + video series Green Tide Rising, hosts Asha Dahya and Monica Morales-Garcia head to the U.S./Mexico border to talk with guests and reproductive health and rights leaders about how the Green Wave movement is making its way from the Global South to the Global North.
ICYMI, Green Tide Rising is a bilingual audio & video series spotlighting Latin America’s Green Wave and what those of us fighting for abortion access and reproductive freedom in the U.S. can learn from this iconic, feminist movement.
In the season 1 finale, the show focuses on how we can implement some of the most impactful and successful Green Wave strategies closer to home, and how activists and leaders in the United States are already working in tandem with leaders from across Latin America to make this happen.
The powerhouse guests include Verónica Cruz Sánchez, founder of Las Libres, an organization that helps women all over the globe have medication abortion; Dr. Roopan Gill, OBGYN and CEO and co-founder of Vitala Global, whose new app Aya Contigo – created with the help from the feminist movement in Latin America – provides resources for obtaining and using abortion pill; Nancy Cárdenas Peña, campaign director for Abortion On Our Own Terms, a national campaign advocating to make safe, effective, self-managed abortion accessible to all; Lourdes Rivera, the president of Pregnancy Justice, a national legal organization that advocates for and defends the rights of pregnant people in the U.S; Maria Consuelo Mejia, a devout Catholic who co-founded and became the Executive Director of Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir México; and Maria de Franco Quiñonez, Research Director and Nery Espinosa, Senior VP or Communications from Equis, a set of organizations that work to engage Latino voters in the U.S.
The most insightful message from this episode, that all political candidates should be paying attention to, is the power of the Latino vote.
Speaking with Maria and Nery about Latino voting trends, we learned the following:
- Latinos are the fastest growing voter demographic today in the United States;
- Abortion rights were the #2 issue for Latino voters back in 2022, after the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v Wade;
- Over 60% of Latino voters rejected the Dobbs decision
- The Latino voting demo is very young, majority are aged 50 and under
- Latina women are the driving force of the Latino electorate
As Maria says in the episode when discussion what happened in the 2020 presidential election where Joe Biden became the first Democrat to win the state since Bill Clinton in 1996, “The power of the Latino vote in critical states like Arizona that are the pathway to the presidency is impossible to overstate when we’re talking about razor thin margins. Nobody has the privilege to overlook the power of the Latino vote.”
As we await the results of the 2024 election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, we are excited to see how the Green Wave is going to impact abortion rights across America, and how Latino voters are continuing to play a pivotal role in securing reproductive freedom both now and in the future.
Listen to Episode 8 of Green Tide Rising on your fave podcast platform, and watch and subscribe to the accompanying video series ENTONCES on Youtube.
