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A Concert for Democracy – Los Super Seven and More! – Wednesday, June 8, 2022
June 8, 2022 @ 7:30 pm - 10:30 pm
SUPERGROUP LOS SUPER SEVEN REUNITES IN LOS ANGELES ON JUNE 8 TO SAVE DEMOCRACY!
Legendary Latino, Tex-Mex And Tejano Artists Join Forces to Benefit Registration in Texas
LOS ANGELES — In a special one-night June 8 benefit event in Los Angeles, Tex-Mex supergroup Los Super Sevenwill headline a concert with friends and fellow Grammy winners Los Texmaniacs and vocalist La Marisoul of La Santa Cecilia, plus special surprise guests, to benefit organizations serving democratic initiatives at home and abroad.
The historic Ukrainian Culture Center (4315 Melrose Ave.), a cornerstone of the city’s Ukrainian community for 98 years, will be the site of the concert benefiting the Texas Turnout coalition, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group of nine organizations dedicated to removing all obstacles between eligible voters and the ballot box in the Texas Rio Grande Valley. Additionally, a portion of funds raised will benefit the Ukrainian Culture Center’s war relief efforts.
Doors will open at 7 PM and showtime is 7:30 PM. Ticket prices range from $50 for general admission to $250 for VIP seating. Food, alcohol and non-alcoholic drinks will be served. There is ample free parking, and valet service is available. Donations are tax deductible. To make a donation and attend, visit http://Bit.ly/lossuper7.
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Los Super Seven, the rotating collective of top-flight Latino musicians, will perform together for the first time in over four years. Their last live show was at the South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin in 2018. Members reuniting for this very special event include David Hidalgo and Steve Berlin of Los Lobos, country music star Rick Treviño, Tejano legend Ruben Ramos and Tex-Mex stars Los Texmaniacs — Max and Josh Baca, Lorenzo Martinez and Noel Hernandez. Ramos and Treviño have appeared in every iteration of the band.
Since the group’s inception in 1998, Los Super Seven has pushed artistic boundaries and blended musical genres from Tejano, Tex-Mex and mariachi to rhythm and blues, country and rock. The band’s floating lineup has included members of Los Lobos, Texas Tornados, Calexico, the Mavericks, Ozomatli, the Flatlanders and others. In 1999, the band won a Grammy Award for its self-titled debut album, which was produced by Berlin and featured Hidalgo, Treviño, Ramos and Max Baca.
On June 8, La Marisoul — Marisol Hernandez, the powerhouse lead vocalist of the Los Angeles band La Santa Cecilia — will perform with Los Texmaniacs. Both groups have won their own Grammys for their visionary fusions of Latin music styles.
The Texas Turnout campaign is designed to engage would-be voters with a comprehensive, multifaceted, localized approach based on the fundamental concept of community-based organizing.
After a very successful, unconventional relational organizing campaign (Georgia Rising) to get out the vote in several Georgia counties in 2020-21, The Good Deed Corps, the lead organization of the Texas Turnout coalition, set its sights on increasing voter registration and voter turnout in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, where voter turnout rarely exceeds 50%.
“Our simple mission in Texas is to help turn out record numbers of voters,” said Don Foster, director of The Good Deed Corps. “Because the higher the voter turnout, the better the chance that the electorate reflects the actual demographic diversity of the state. Then, and only then, will true representative democracy be possible.”
Sophia DeLoretto-Chudy, chair of the Texas Turnout coalition, added, “We chose the Texas Rio Grande Valley because voter registration and voter turnout numbers lag behind most other regions in a state that lags behind most of the nation. And we believe that with a little creativity and a lot of hard work, that can change. We don’t see Texas as a red state or a blue state, but as a voter suppressed state. The new state voting regulations passed into law this year have finally brought that fact to the national consciousness.”
According to Foster, would-be voters in the Texas Rio Grande Valley, especially young and low-income Hispanics, will be among the most affected by the new voting regulations. The communities of the Rio Grande Valley are particularly under-represented and under-resourced precisely because their voter registration and turnout numbers are traditionally low. “There’s a vicious cycle in the RGV of political neglect fueling political distrust and apathy and that then compounds the neglect… and on it goes,” he said.
Rebecca Ninburg, president of the Good Deed Corps, said, “We’re aware that other voter engagement groups (partisan and nonpartisan alike) traditionally concentrate their resources on the four or five most populous counties in the state, often entirely forgetting the Rio Grande Valley, which is almost five hours south of the nearest large city. So there’s no doubt that it’s the place to be. And we plan to be there through 2024 and beyond.”
“Our compassionate, persistent and joyous one-to-one relational organizing is already making a significant impact,” added Heather Masterton, board member of the Good Deed Corps.
The Texas Turnout coalition of nonpartisan, nonprofit civic engagement organizations also includes Rideshare2Vote Aware, League of Women Voters RGV, VoteRiders, Futuro RGV, AACT Now, Texas Rising, NextGen-Texas and Black Voters Matter.
Each group brings a piece of the puzzle necessary to find eligible voters, register them, provide them with the material necessary to be informed voters, help them get voter IDs, provide rides to the polls, recruit volunteer deputy registrars, stay engaged and culturally fluent and ultimately export the model to other parts of the state.
Texas Turnout has already helped register thousands of young Hispanic voters in three counties in the Texas Rio Grande Valley and made sure they’re informed and able to get to the polls. The work has just begun, but the harder the State of Texas makes it to vote, the easier it is for the coalition to find allies, partners, and volunteers. More information about Texas Turnout is available here: https://texasturnout.org
The Good Deeds Corps is a 501c3 nonpartisan organization formed to promote voter registration with the goal of ensuring an inclusive and diverse electorate. It advances a strong, engaged civil society that embodies a diversity of voice and perspective through acts of compassion and generosity. All contributions are tax deductible. For more information, visit TheGoodDeedCorps.org.
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For more information about Los Super Seven, please contact:
Brian O’Neal • (310) 702-8844 • brianoneal@gmail.com