In Your Community
Listening Tour: Building Power in Community
UnidosUS has been on a nationwide listening tour to better understand the barriers that our communities are facing. Latinos are deeply frustrated that their priorities are being ignored by elected leaders in Washington, DC, and so, throughout the fall, UnidosUS visited five cities to meet with members of the community.
As we listened, several common themes emerged: the harmful impacts of federal policy on Latinos’ livelihoods and their daily lives; local- and state-level elevated unemployment rates; lack of affordable housing; and chronic fear and anxiety due to indiscriminate immigration raids.
For example, in Minnesota, we heard that rampant immigration enforcement — compounded by misinformation, divisive rhetoric and safety concerns — gravely impacted the economy of the areas in and around St. Paul.
And Latinos in Philadelphia, PA reported experiencing higher unemployment rates than other groups (7.3% compared to the national rate of 5.3%). Latinos in Pennsylvania are also confronting an “opportunity gap” in the state’s uneven distribution of educational resources: only 20% of Latinos hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, despite the rapidly growing population.
In Rochester, NY, families discussed the deleterious impact of the city’s 3.1% inflation rate, higher than the national average of 2.7%, and the struggle to secure well-paying jobs in a state with a higher-than-average unemployment rate (5.5%).
Affiliates, like Congreso de Latinos Unidos, hosted these conversations in most of the cities we visited; this collective work would not have been possible without the vital partnership of our Affiliate Network.
Similarly, thanks to support from dedicated donors like you, we can undertake efforts, like this tour, that are integral to building power in our community and holding decision makers accountable. These conversations will help shape UnidosUS’s economic agenda for prosperity in 2026.
