On Friday October 12 HFCC and the League of Women Voters of Dearborn-Dearborn Heights hosted the annual voting convention in the Andrew A. Mazzara Administrative Services & Conference Center. The convention hosted a board of featured speakers including State Senators and politicians, the League of Women Voters, faculty and staff, and numerous politically active HFCC students. The convention included workshops on major political issues, lunch sponsored by the HFCC café, a voting caucus, and door prizes.
The issue workshops ran simultaneously, each including speakers on several individual voting topics. The topics were: Health care, Social Media, Unemployment: Structural Challenges, Public Transportation and Mass Transit, The Future of Higher Education in Michigan, Women and Islam, Gay Marriage, US Foreign Policy and the Approaches to the Arab Spring: Special considerations to Syria, and many more.

Healthcare
The healthcare workshop was run by Oakland community college student activities President Trish King. King’s views are from a “grassroots” perspective on the healthcare reform. She discussed insurance companies along with Medicaid, Medicare, and medical bills.
Gears shifted toward the end of the workshop to “Obama Care.” The free healthcare program eligibility requires an individual make under $15,000 per year and a couple makes less than $31,000. States willing to participate are eligible (Michigan senate is in approval). The program wouldn’t kick in until January 14, 2014 because of the provisions and approval steps needed to make it active.

Unemployment: Challenges
Jared Boyd’s workshop focused on unemployment of college graduates. The presentation began with numbers and figures of unemployment at different educations levels. Workshop participants were shocked when he said there are three job seekers for every one opening (on a college graduate level).
“Changes in technology are displacing jobs,” Boyd said.

Social Media
Detroit’s social media National Network of Arab American Communities spokeswoman Ameerah Gillespis demonstrated new ways to get involved and take a stand. Representing for ACCESS (Arab Community Center for Economic & Social Services), she used social media to network and spread information. She closed the presentation with explanations on why the candidates running for election are asking for money, but also listed four major questions to ask when getting help and promoting organizations. These questions are: What change do we want? What do they want? What resources do we have that they want or need? Who has the resources to make a change?
The workshop’s participants voted on major issues together and the results were placed on the display screen in the auditorium. More votes and ideas were combined in a mass vote on each issue to come up with the top 10. They are as follows:

Health Care

Unemployment

Gay marriage and adoption

Economy and poverty

Higer education and higer education cost and transparency

Educational/financial aid
Infrastructure

K-12 education

Freeze tuition cost

Equal rights for gays

Senator Morris Hood said, “[The presidential election] is the most important vote of our century.”
Other officials went on with details regarding the Bridge to Canada and answered questions. HFCC turned out a good number of students, all of which gained important knowledge. Many students are voting for their first time this upcoming election.
A first time student and voter said, “I had a really good time. I met so many people today.”