Escondido is my home town, found in north county San Diego. It is called such because it is hidden in a valley, and perfectly geographically placed. 20 minutes to the west and you’ll be at the beach. Go east and you’ll find casinos and snow capped mountains. South and you’ll be in sunny San Diego and north you can find beautiful wineries and avocado groves. Did I mention the climate is roughly in the 70’s year-round? It sounds like a great place to live, except Escondido has one problem. It is the most racist city in Southern California.
Escondido is known by its nickname “little Arizona” because of how terrible it is towards immigrants. Buzzfeed wrote an article on why people nicknamed Escondido “little Arizona.” But having lived there my whole life, I can just tell you some of the things I have witnessed and lived through in Escondido. The first thing that comes to mind is the fact that Escondido is the only city in California to have randomized, unannounced DUI checkpoints. This is because these DUI checkpoints are not intended to catch drunk drivers, in fact, several reports have come out to show that these checkpoints result in 0 drunk drivers being arrested. The police department is required to report how many DUI’s are given out. What they aren’t required to report is how many undocumented drivers are caught at these checkpoints. Funny that all of these checkpoints also have ICE trucks posted around the corner. Which, by the way, it is illegal for ICE and local police departments to work together to systematically detain undocumented immigrants but Escondido somehow gets away with it.
Another example of how terrible Escondido is would be a city ordinance that punishes landlords for renting to undocumented workers. Furthermore, Escondido has continuously voted against having sanctuaries for refugee immigrants even though all other cities in San Diego have them. I remember this one time when 40 something refugee children showed up to Escondido’s city center in order to plead for a place to stay. Escondido had the resources to help these kids and it even benefited the city yet we turned them away. I also remember one of my high school teachers saying when they went to high school in the late 80’s Escondido still had a curfew for people of color. I could go on and on but I haven’t even reached my main point for writing this blog. Don’t worry it ends on a positive note.
The point is that Escondido gets away with being so racist because there is a high Latinx population that doesn’t vote. Latinxs take up about 65% of Escondido, yet the white people control all the political power. This is due to some gerrymandering and systematic ways of making it difficult for latinxs to vote.
However, the last election in Escondido took everyone by surprise. Due to an unusually high latinx turn out, the long time mayor and Trump enthusiast, Sam Abed, lost his spot. A democrat along with a latina woman were elected into the council and the swing vote in Escondido is now a democrat. A historically deep red city turned blue in just one election. The city council of five that used to have four republicans now has three democrats.
The point of the story is that we have to vote. Even when it seems like we are voting in vain, because Sam Abed lost by a very small margin.
