The Engine Of Change

Butler is African American, a 1984 graduate of the high school, who thinks he can name practically all the few Latinos in his graduating class. A former social studies teacher, he used to try to engage his students in presidential politics. Then, they were apathetic. Not now.

"I've never seen the kids as jacked up" about politics, Butler says. He credits Obama, "the message of hope that he's been able to send to the kids."

Seizing the teachable moment, Butler gave his blessing to a voter registration drive initiated by students with the help of the nonpartisan national group Democracia U.S.A., which focuses on getting out the Latino vote. Some 250 students registered, and Butler supported an unprecedented plan to bus eligible student voters to the polls today. To top it off, Obama visited the school Sunday.

"Hillary is trying to get all the older votes," says Ariel Araujo, who will turn 18 in time for the general election. "Obama is reaching out to us."

"It's got to be some sort of change," says Erlina Ortiz, 18, who was still making up her mind between Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Ortiz and Araujo were born in the Dominican Republic. Families like theirs saw in Reading the precise whereabouts of the American Dream, after having sampled more obvious, crowded and expensive destinations such as New York City. The Dominicans followed the Puerto Ricans to Reading, and now the Mexicans are coming. Reading is getting so famous in Latin America that now many immigrant families skip the sojourn in New York and head directly to the city of the pagoda.

They are adding another touch to Reading's self-portrait, which never seems to be complete, like America itself: Immigrants (some illegal) filling the schools to bursting, dedicated laborers serving the new lower-paying economy, bilingual professionals joining the social scene, a new class of poor swelling welfare rolls and in some cases committing crimes, and, of course, most visible the length and breadth of Reading, generations remaking rowhouse porch culture with a sprawling family-picnic-style flair that makes square Pennsylvania Dutch descendants draw the shades.

Araujo's uncle is a mechanic, his father a welder, his mother a baker, and he works at Burger King after school. Ortiz, the daughter of a cook and an accountant, is starring in the school play, "South Pacific," before heading to Temple University in the fall. She wants a president who will take care of places like Reading, because she plans to be back. She likes the idea of being part of a place where generations can build a family tradition. Reading has been a city of immigrants putting down roots since the coal cars started rolling and the train whistles started blowing through the valley in 1833.

"I like the roots connection," Ortiz says. But "we need things for kids to do. We need all these abandoned buildings to be made into something."

The students were registered to vote by Gabrielina "Gabby" Polanco and her colleagues at Democracia U.S.A., which has registered about 5,000 Latinos in Reading in the last 18 months. Polanco knows Latinos won't gain a say over Reading's future until they join the political process with the same gusto as the Germans, Poles and Irish before them. Democracia's white-smocked canvassers have been out every day urging the registered to go to the polls.

Polanco's face lights up when you get her talking about the first time she laid eyes on Reading.

Born in the Dominican Republic, she moved to Queens in 1986 when she was 24. Then the family heard of a place called Reading. They dispatched Polanco to check it out.