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Low Income Earners Use Politics As A Tool To Improve Lives In Las Cruces

  Continuing with NPR and KRWG’s coverage on the anxious voting public… the cause of most of that anxiety- economic status.   

A recent study from the Pew Research Center found that only 20% of the least financially secure people were considered “likely voters.”

But here in Las Cruces, one of the most discussed political decisions in recent years was fueled by those who are part of the least financially secure- minimum wage workers.

Samantha Sonner sat down with an organizer who began political work on CAFé’s minimum wage campaign, and has turned it into a new career.

Leslie Belt became inspired to join the minimum wage petition efforts in Las Cruces after experiencing a personal tragedy- making the decision to pull her mother off life support.

“It cost, when I did the math,” Belt said. “It cost a month’s salary for me to take my mother off life-support, and then I went back to the office where I worked for minimum wage, and the guy goes, we’re going to have to have an obituary to put in your file, and it just infuriated me, do you think I’m lying about my mother, and it just cost me the amount that I make in a month. You know, so then this effort was going on, and so I was really happy to throw my lot in with them, cause I was mad. I was really mad.”

Belt channeled her anger to collecting signatures to raise the minimum wage, listening to stories about what the wage increase would mean to low-income earners.

“Even though the step up we fought so hard for wasn’t a great deal,” Belt said. “You know if you’re buying your food at the dollar store, $40 extra dollars is a lot of food.”

Belt says the movement helped show many in the community that one voice, and one signature did matter.

“What was so exciting to me,” Belt said. “In my experience, is that when people began to share their stories, and also began to see how this little movement was growing was that there was a little glimmer of hope, well what if it can make a difference.”

When the increase in minimum wage was passed by the city council, Belt says it showed those in the low- income community they could make a difference in their own lives.

“I felt like I had power,” Belt said. “You know that ground down feeling was replaced with “I’m making a difference, and so is she, and so is he. And so I was filling my life with I’m making a difference, we’re making a difference.”

After the minimum wage fight, she started working to register voters, and eventually began doing communications for Kasandra Gandara’s successful city council run, and is now working on Angelica Rubio’s campaign for the state house of representatives.

She says starting with the minimum wage effort has led to a rewarding career in politics.

“It’s really a wonderful challenge to be able to communicate to people you matter,” Belt said. “Not a challenge, it’s exciting, because sometimes when I feel that I’ve hit it, I feel like I’m making a huge difference. That’s the whole point you matter and your vote really matters.”

Belt says this experience has led to trust and respect in government, and the idea that one person can make a difference.

“You can’t say to me that this work doesn’t make a difference,” Belt says. “You know I see it making a difference like left and right, which is thrilling, I’m not discouraged, I am deeply encouraged.”

Belt says she hopes that low-income earners, and those considered less likely to vote look at what was accomplished with a petition in Las Cruces.

“Don’t let anybody tell you that your citizenship, your power doesn’t matter,” Belt said. “You know don’t do the work for them and say it doesn’t matter, nothing I do matters, it does matter.”
 

Samantha Sonner was a multimedia reporter for KRWG- TV/FM.