By Jonathan Arkin
M.A. Specialized Journalism '10

USC Annenberg graduate student Wendy Carrillo (M.A. Specialized Journalism '09) proved you can return from Las Vegas a winner.

Carrillo recently swept through the city known for gambling and financial heartbreak by ensuring unregistered voters could register and then vote in the 2008 presidential election. With her focus at Annenberg on Latinos and their voting patterns in the current presidential election, predictably, she spent her time in Vegas not by playing the slot machines, but by rocking the vote.

“I recruit, engage and train young Latino volunteers to get out the vote,” said Carrillo upon returning from her busy trip to Nevada. “Latinos make up 24% of the population, yet only 12% are registered to vote - we are changing this. We have also been doing massive phone banking to Nevada from the East LA office, and the Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights volunteer centers for several weeks now.”

Carrillo, a master’s degree candidate in the inaugural Specialized Journalism program at USC Annenberg, just completed a stint with Alma Marquez, director of the CA Latina Vote who is also in charge of Latino voter turnout for Nevada. Having already helped open up that East L.A. office with Marquez, Carrillo worked as a board member with the Los Angeles County Young Democrats in Nevada. While there, Carrillo also worked with Marquez to help run the Latinos for Obama efforts via weekend voter targeting trips called Obamanos! Caravanas for Obama.

“While in Nevada, we targeted young voters of all ethnicities, and we walked precincts in low income communities and communities of color,” Carrillo said. “What I found was, that in some areas, there is equal opportunity poverty…people from all ethnicities are under-served and under-represented. Because Las Vegas is such a commuter city, we found that a lot of housing is week by week - residents move, a lot, especially in the communities I mentioned, which in turn means that most people have not re-registered to vote, nor do they know where to vote.”

In her spare time, Carrillo, who was once mentored in broadcast journalism by CNN anchor Rick Sanchez, hosts two public affairs radio programs in Los Angeles – one for Power 106 and a show called “Movin’ Minds” for Movin’ 93.9. She said that her radio work, while enlightening and enjoyable, is overshadowed by her work in the field.

“I talked to an African American woman in her mid 50s who was living paycheck to paycheck, had just moved from Louisiana and wanted to vote so badly, but did not have the money to go get a new state identification to register to vote in Nevada,” she said. “These are the stories that break my heart, but are very real to the situation that many people are living in.”

But the biggest coup of the year for Carrillo was getting the chance to represent her Latina culture in a very visible way: earlier this year, Carrillo was one of two reporters – out of an applicant pool of more than 200 hopefuls – chosen to “crash” the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver as a political correspondent for SiTV and Votolatino.org. She said that experience helped to foster the next generation of Latina/o leaders by giving her a crucial voice in the all-important voting process facing the nation this year and that her all-expenses-paid participation at the Convention gave her visibility beyond her wildest expectations. Still, she finds an opportunity to inject some humor into the heaviness of the campaign.

“Now that I am the political go-to gal for SiTV and Voto Latino, I think I may ask Barack Obama if he likes flour or corn tortillas... or tapatio or tabasco?” Carrillo on her official blog. She inserts an ellipsis. “NOT!”

But a thorough perusal of her blog will make it clear to readers that Carrillo is not a person who is not solely interested in static demographics as she is in the human stories that she encounters in her traveling research. One person who remains prominent in Carrillo’s consciousness is the woman in Nevada who did not have the money to buy an ID card to enable her to vote.

“Personally, to see a woman in her situation, so proud of Barack Obama and so excited in doing whatever she could to be able to vote, is a realization that our country is desperately in need of inspirational leadership,” she said. “If it weren’t for the fact that I’m in grad school, I would be working in Nevada or Colorado full time.”

Carrillo sighs and disappears into her specialized journalism class, prepared for another spirited debate with her professor.

Wendy's blog
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