{"id":5084128,"date":"2020-10-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ctlatinonews.com\/i-am-dominican-and-today-i-am-american\/"},"modified":"2020-10-21T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-10-21T04:00:00","slug":"i-am-dominican-and-today-i-am-american","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/2020\/10\/21\/i-am-dominican-and-today-i-am-american\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI am Dominican and today I am American.”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After waiting for more than a decade, Pablo Liriano is voting for the first time in November\u2019s election.<\/p>\n\n\n

The urban gardener got his citizenship in 2018, and he then registered to vote at Hartford’s Park Street Library.<\/p>\n\n\n

\u201cI am Dominican and today I am American. I came here legally on July 10, 1999, and I\u2019ve been here for almost 22 years,\u201d Liriano told <\/a>Connecticut Public Radio in Spanish.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

CTLN first met Liriano, a retired police officer from the Dominican Republic last year when he shared how he provides locally-grown food through a program sponsored by\u00a0Forge City Works.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\n\n

SUGGESTION: Latino Urban Farmer Provides Fresh, Ethnic Produce In Community At Risk Of Food Insecurity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n

Liriano says voting in the Dominican Republic is also far more festive — political parties and their supporters drive through the island in caravans encouraging voters to participate. Nevertheless, he never had a chance to cast a ballot.<\/p>\n\n\n

\u201cI was a police officer and I couldn\u2019t vote in my country, I wasn\u2019t allowed to,\u201d he recalled. <\/p>\n\n\n

\u201cMy desire was to come to this great country … America, to enjoy the great privilege you have here,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I thank this country because it has had the freedom that man deserves here, it\u2019s a country that everybody wants to come to.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

Liriano first moved with family in New York City before moving to Hartford three years ago. He was able to apply for citizenship because he was both over 55 and had been in this country for at least 15 years. <\/p>\n\n\n

A record 32 million Hispanics – Latinos are projected to be eligible to vote (13.3% of all eligible voters) the largest,\u00a0nonwhite racial or ethnic electorate<\/a>\u00a0in the 2020 elections.<\/p>\n\n\n

In\u00a0Connecticut,\u00a012.3%\u00a0of the eligible voter population is Latino,\u00a0according\u00a0<\/a>to the Pew Research Center.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

85-year-old Pablo Liriano on voting for the first time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","ghostkit_customizer_options":"","ghostkit_custom_css":"","ghostkit_custom_js_head":"","ghostkit_custom_js_foot":"","ghostkit_typography":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[682],"tags":[1719],"ppma_author":[565],"class_list":["post-5084128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2020election","tag-2020-electionpablo-liriano"],"acf":[],"mb":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Jermaine Smith","author_link":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/author\/jay\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"85-year-old Pablo Liriano on voting for the first time","authors":[{"term_id":565,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"news-editor","display_name":"News Editor","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"mfb_rest_fields":["title","uagb_featured_image_src","uagb_author_info","uagb_comment_info","uagb_excerpt","authors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5084128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5084128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5084128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5084128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5084128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5084128"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=5084128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}