After almost 30 years in the United States, Garcia, 65, is only a resident, not a citizen, and is therefore ineligible to vote. Nevertheless she is one of several hundred non-citizens who are participating in the election with the Oakland Community Organizations, a coalition of neighborhood, church and school groups.

"It's satisfying to help," said Garcia, five feet tall and full of enthusiasm.

"[The city] doesn't pay much attention to this area," said organizer Jesus Rodriguez referring to East Oakland. "We want to improve our numbers so people can take control of their community." That means those eligible to vote and ineligible residents alike.

Rodriguez said more than 300 people, mostly non-citizens, showed up to the organization's last meeting to offer their help. Like Garcia, he said, others, including undocumented immigrants, are doing what they can to support campaigns, get out the vote or register new voters.

In Garcia's largely Latino and African-American census tract, there are over 1,200 people who are residents but not citizens, almost a quarter of the area's population. Five million non-citizen residents live in California according to the U.S. Census, of which some 68,000 live in Oakland.

For Larisa Casillas, an organizer with the Mobilize the Immigrant Vote Campaign 2004, these numbers represent a wealth of power.

"We believe that everyone has role to play when it comes to political participation," she said. "We believe that voting is only one way that we can exert our power. There are a lot of other ways. We do not need to be citizens to be politically active."

Nonetheless, both Rodriguez and Casillas recognize the need to help residents become citizens. According to Rodriguez, his organization helped start a citizenship class at the church Garcia and her husband attend. This past Wednesday, 55 people showed up to the class. Within the next couple of months, Rodriguez expects 25 people to graduate.

Garcia and her husband said they plan to attend classes. They were in citizenship classes until seven years ago, when they experienced what they call "el accidente" — the murder of their grandson. Garcia said they dropped out because they were so distraught. She said they also became disillusioned with the idea of being a citizen.

"Why would we want to be citizens if we were going to die," she said.

Eventually, she said they recovered enough to think about classes again. She's become politically active because she wants to stop the violence that led to her grandson's death.

Garcia's confident she will eventually get the right to vote. When she does, she not only wants to tackle issues of violence but is also concerned with homelessness, services for seniors and children, and poverty.

"We want to vote because we want to help," she said.

Casillas, from the Immigrant Vote campaign, said she hopes more people develop a similar attitude, especially those who already have the right to vote. She points to the low turnout among immigrant and minority voters as one reason why the issues most important to their communities are often ignored or overlooked in Sacramento and Washington, D.C.

"There is a huge disparity between the people who vote and those who live here. People of color make up 52 percent [of the population] yet we do not even make up a third of the voters," she said.

"Clearly the minority is making decisions that are affecting the majority of us," she said.

In Garcia's Council District 7, only 9,035 of the 22,245 registered voters cast ballots during the March 2004 election, according to the Oakland city clerk.