Back from the national stage, El Paso’s Julian Kalel is busy, grateful and looking ahead<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cBy corporatism and these tech giants being able to manipulate factors in their favor,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I just want to make sure that people power is heard, and if I can help with that and add to that, it\u2019s really important to me and it makes me feel accomplished.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sanchez said he founded the El Paso Youth Alliance and considers himself its acting president because he is currently the only person who publicly communicates about it. <\/p>\n
He said the group\u2019s immediate goal is to make it easier for young people and families to participate in civic processes, including signing up to speak at public meetings.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want to step up on that podium, there are lots of hoops and loops that you have to jump through to actually sign up,\u201d Sanchez said. <\/p>\n
He said the alliance aims to help by providing links and information and by making parents comfortable bringing their children to participate.<\/p>\n
Looking ahead, Sanchez said he wants the group to grow into a \u201cpowerful voter force\u201d and eventually have a seat in higher-level discussions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe long-term future goal of EPYA would be to be able to have our own roundtable meetings, be enough of a powerful voter force that in the future, that we\u2019ll be able actually sit in with our representatives at executive session meetings, with roundtable meetings, like the ones we saw with Metta,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sanchez pointed to an example he said he wants to build on, referencing \u201cMrs. Carvajal from Sembrando Esperanza, a political action group,\u201d who he said was able to participate in those discussions.<\/p>\n
Asked what example he hopes to set for other young people, Sanchez said he wants to encourage youth involvement by being an early participant others can follow.<\/p>\n
\u201cHumans don\u2019t really like to get involved until they see other people doing the same thing,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd if I\u2019m able to become that first domino to bleed onto years and years of active youth community involvement, that is my final goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sign up <\/a>to receive the top interesting stories from in and around our community once daily in your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14\/CBS4) \u2014 El Paso\u2019s agreement with tech giant Meta has drawn growing public pushback in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-358847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}