Professor Hanna empowers Langley Park immigrants
U.S. Census awareness, sector plan are main concerns
By Erin Borg
Special to La Voz
He doesn’t need an introduction, but gives one anyway.
Bill Hanna, an urban studies and planning professor at the university and longtime community activist, starts every Action Langley Park meeting the same way every week.
His organization, Action Langley Park, a nonprofit organization that has worked to improve the lives of Langley Park immigrants and its surrounding areas and be the “voice” of a multilingual community.
As the founder, director and coordinator of ALP, Hanna has brought together members of the community, including residents, business people, workers, and social service personnel.
ALP meets about once every two months at the Langley Park Community Center to discuss any problems it faces and brainstorm possible solutions.
The Feb. 18 meeting focused on how to convince Langley Park residents to participate in the census.
“If [the community] is under-represented, it will not receive the resources it needs,” said Penelope Mendoza, public affairs specialist for the Prince George’s County Planning Department.
The meeting adjourned after about two hours and as around 20 attendees filed out of the room, they passed a poster with a quote by American writer Wilferd Peterson: ‘Big thinking precedes great achievement.’
“The residents didn’t trust me at first,” Hanna said. “I’m sure they were thinking ‘Who’s this middle-class white guy running around our neighborhood?’”
According to Hanna, after about a month of petitioning, the community began to respond to his efforts.
Founded in 1998, ALP has advocated on behalf of the residents of Langley Park, an immigrant working-class suburb located just minutes outside the university’s campus.
According to the city’s data, almost 65 percent of the residents are Latino, and many of them are not proficient in English.
“The reason I started [ALP] was to make sure somebody is there to represent the needs of those in and around the area. Those who can’t represent themselves,” Hanna said.
Hanna and the ALP team work hard to do just that. The project sponsors community events, including the annual Langley Park Day, which will take place this year on May 2.
The event is geared toward supplying the neighborhood with education and health information along with entertaining elements, such as performers and face painting.
The project also advocates for positive public sector action involving immigrant welfare.
“The goal is to inform and pressure officials in the public sector to make decisions that support a good quality of life in Langley Park,” Hanna said.
ALP publishes the Barrio de Langley Park, an online, biweekly newsletter that Hanna describes as “partly informational updates and partly an advocacy publication.” The bulletin reaches around 700 community members online and is published in both English and Spanish.
Gerson Elias, 19, is a junior accounting major at the university and a resident of Langley Park. He has attended the last two Action Langley Park meetings after hearing about them in one of Hanna’s urban studies classes.
“I really respect him and what he has done for the community,” Elias said.
The feelings are mutual. “I fell in love with the people in Langley Park,” Hanna said. “I’m happy to help them out in any way that I can.”
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