Youth-led Brentwood Votes works to increase turnout in hamlet with 'a lot of voting power'

The Brentwood High School graduate behind a youth advisory board for Islip Town's District 1, which focuses on issues affecting the communities, has started a new group to improve voter turnout and registration in the hamlet.

In the first three weeks after forming Brentwood Votes in early December, founder Ahmad Perez said, the group of 15 volunteers has engaged with more than 3,500 people in the community through initiatives such as a podcast series featuring local legislators and a partnership with local artists to elevate Brentwood voices. 

“In the past election … [Brentwood] had some of the lowest turnout rates. There were even some areas where no folks came out and turned out for voting,” said Perez, 22, who recently moved to Washington, D.C., for a job with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

Perez, who graduated from Boston University in May with a degree in business administration, founded a youth advisory board in 2022 for the town’s District 1, which includes Brentwood, North Bay Shore and part of Central Islip. Designed to help students engage in the civic process, the group has been politically active, especially in advocating for climate justice. 

Perez has since left the advisory board to focus on his career in D.C., but he hasn't forgotten his hometown. The youth-led Brentwood Votes group, he said, will help inform Brentwood residents about how to register to vote and why their vote matters.

“I think [people] get fatigued by the candidates, paved roads, et cetera, but this is paved roads. This is walkable communities, this is funding for after-school activities," he said.

Out of the more than 62,000 Brentwood residents counted in the 2020 Census, just under 26,000, or nearly 42%, were registered voters in 2023, according to data from the Suffolk County Board of Elections. Data on voter turnout by hamlet was not immediately available. 

In the 2023 election for Suffolk County executive, about a quarter of registered voters hit the polls — less than half the number of county voters who turned out to vote for the New York governor's race in 2022.

Tamara Pierre, 20, of Brentwood, community adviser for the group and a junior at the University at Albany, said the goal is to register 15,000 new voters, bringing the total registered voters in the hamlet to nearly 66%, by 2025. 

“People call [Brentwood] a sleeping giant, just because we do have a lot of voting power, but the minority population of Brentwood doesn't really vote,” she said. 

Nearly 73% of the Brentwood population identifies as Hispanic or Latino, and 15.8% identify as Black or African American, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Larry Levy, a politics expert and executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, said the reasons behind low voter turnout in Brentwood are "complex," but it's "emblematic of a lot of places where people might feel disenfranchised, or there are cultural or language barriers."

Long Island is diverse, but segregated, he said, and people are sometimes "detached, intentionally or not, from political systems and civic institutions."

"It's something that hurts the communities themselves, because it's very easy for the powers that be to say, 'Well, these folks don't care,' " he said. "It's a convenient narrative to deny services, or other resources" to communities with low voter turnout.

The group’s bimonthly podcast on Spotify, called Voices of Brentwood, aims to provide a platform for “young voices, community leaders, activists [and] artists” to tell their stories, and explain the importance of voting, Perez said. Guests so far have included Islip Councilman Jorge Guadrón and special education advocate Sheree Sibilly-Simmons. 

An art series called “Imagining Brentwood” is also in the works, Perez said, with a local artist painting pieces that portray the Brentwood community. Volunteers with Brentwood Votes plan to canvas the community on a monthly basis with flyers on how to register to vote. 

Suffolk County Legis. Sam Gonzalez (D-Brentwood) said one reason behind the low turnout could be that residents have lost faith in the candidates.

Plus, “people want to vote in major elections that get tons of airplay,” he said. “But they don’t understand that the things that occur locally, in local government and local politics, affect their pockets a lot faster.”

Local government has a direct impact on resource allocation, with municipalities taking responsibility for parks and recreation services, police and fire departments, housing services, emergency medical services, municipal courts, public transportation and public works.

Guadrón, who represents Brentwood at the town level, said the initiative to recruit new voters is needed in the community.

“Minority community members are reluctant to participate in the electoral process, especially when it comes to local elections,” he said. “Being an immigrant myself, we come from different countries where the political process is not transparent … that thought carries over wherever you go.”

He said he’s met people with “strong views against” voting during his campaigns in Brentwood, which is a majority-minority community. 

“And they tell me clearly, that’s because the view that they have of politicians is that we are corrupt, we are not transparent at all, and we do nothing for the community,” Guadrón said. “We need to change that perspective for minority residents, and I think having this group doing this type of work will change that perspective by informing them as to why local elections” are important.

A federal voting rights lawsuit against Islip Town settled in 2020 resulted in the creation of four council districts, including one representing majority Hispanic communities Brentwood, North Bay Shore and part of Central Islip. 

Hispanic residents had argued that the town's at-large voting system made it virtually impossible for them to win townwide elections. Before Guadrón, the last minority to win an Islip Town election was Republican Town Clerk Joan Johnson, a Black woman who served from 1991 to 2007.

Perez similarly emphasized the value of voting in local elections, highlighting the impact that municipalities have on daily life.

“Brentwood is our home," he said. "When we turn out and we vote, we are given the keys to our community."

By Brianne Ledda

brianne.ledda@newsday.com

Brianne Ledda covers the Town of Islip for Newsday. She previously covered Southold and Greenport for The Suffolk Times and is a graduate of Stony Brook University.