Part 1: Why Showing Up Matters More Than Ever
When you look around Central Florida, you don’t just see theme parks and highways — you see our families. You see abuelas waiting for the bus in Kissimmee, young parents working two jobs in Poinciana, and students in Orlando classrooms translating for their parents because English doesn’t come easy yet. You see us Latinos holding up entire communities with our labor, our traditions, and our spirit.
And yet, for all of our presence, we are still left with the short end of the stick when it comes to services, representation, and resources. That should outrage us. But outrage without action dies quickly. It’s time we take that frustration and turn it into resolution — into power.
Now, let me be clear: I’m not here to give you a lecture, I’m here to give you an invitation. If you’ve ever felt ignored, if you’ve ever been in a waiting room for hours because your clinic was underfunded, or if you’ve watched new developments rise while your rent climbed higher than your paycheck — then you already know why this matters. The truth is, our silence costs us. And our presence, our voices, our stories — they can’t be ignored when we show up where decisions are being made.
Here in Central Florida, that means being present at town halls, commission meetings, and school board discussions. Osceola, Orange, and Polk counties hold meetings every month where issues that directly affect us, transportation, housing, education, public safety — are decided. The seats are open to the public, but too often, they are filled with the same faces, while ours are missing.
That has to change.
Let me give you some examples. In Osceola County, the Board of Commissioners meets every first and third Monday at 1:30 p.m. in Kissimmee. Do you know what they discuss there? Road expansions that affect your commute. Zoning changes that determine if your neighborhood stays affordable or gets bought up by investors. Public safety resources that can change whether your streetlights get fixed or left broken.
In Orange County, the School Board holds meetings where decisions are made about bilingual programs, funding for overcrowded schools, and the future of our kids’ education. Those meetings are public. We have every right to be there, to ask questions, to tell our stories.
And in Polk County, town halls are where residents have stood up against unfair development projects and pushed for community investment. Our people live there too and our people need to be part of those conversations.
Showing up doesn’t mean you have to be an expert. It means you walk in as you are, with your experience, your accent, your truth. It means you say, “I live here, and I deserve to be heard.”
Because if we don’t show up, others will decide for us. And history has shown us, time and again, that when decisions are made without us in the room, we lose.
So, mi gente, this is where the change begins. Not just in protest, not just on election day, but in the everyday rooms where policy is shaped. I implore you — start with one meeting. Mark your calendar, take a friend, or even just listen quietly your first time. The power comes from presence, and once we get into the habit of showing up, we’ll begin to see what we’ve been missing: influence.
This is Part 1 of our journey — naming the problem and understanding where the solutions are born. In the next piece, we’ll go deeper into how we can unite across nationalities Puerto Rican, Dominican, Mexican, Colombian, Cuban, and more to make our voices not just heard, but impossible to ignore.
Because from outrage to resolution, it starts with us. And it starts now.
Crystal Negron’s article is the kind of thoughtful, data-driven advocacy that The Orlando Voice exists to amplify—voices that understand that real change happens when communities move from the margins to the center of political discourse.