Roberto Lovato on Dreaming Beyond the Walls of “Civilization”
With many of us still reeling and wondering about ABC’s unprecedented and simply devastating display of dumbed down politics during last week’s Democratic debate, this hilarious video from last year says it better than anything , anyone else. Thanks to the Onion for peeling back the layers covering over the Truth about our political system.
In a visit designed to gently quell concerns about cover-ups of child molestation, sexual abuse and other crimes in the Catholic church, Pope Benedict was greeted with gun-wielding troops, big Catholic crowds and much presidential pomp. And he arrived with a clear mission to appeal to the group that will determine the future of the Catholic Church in the U.S.: Latinos.
With the Pew Hispanic Center telling us that Latinos now comprise 1 of every 3 U.S. Catholics, the Pope’s message must of necessity include an unprecedented Latino PR component. And as Catholic fortunes continue their decline here, the importance of the Latino church grows. In the words of Susan Jacoby in the Washington Post,
Without Hispanic immigration, the situation of the American Catholic Church would be even more dire.
But, Jacoby says, even among the Latino faithful, the fate of the church looks Apocalyptic in a not-so-beneficial way,
But the majority of Hispanic children do not attend the declining number of Catholic schools, and, if the history of immigration is any guide, the attachment of Hispanics to the church of their parents and grandparents — a critical part of immigrant survival — will diminish in direct proportion to their assimilation into American life.
Still, the Pope’s visit provides yet another example of how Latinos will play an definitive role in shaping the policies and public statements of the powerful and corrupt. While Benedict’s visit is supposed “open the path of healing and reconciliation”" before the most devastating scandal in U.S. Catholic history, it’s not likely to succeed. The Pope has repeatedly declined to take one of the most fundamental steps to healing: meet the victims-including the many Latinos- of abuse cara a cara.
Such non-action makes clear that there are ulterior motives behind Benedict’s “healing” tour.
For example, how the flag of immigrant rights provides powerful interests a cover for their crminial acts was vividly displayed today as Benedict began his trip by previewing his “concern” for the undocumented. According to the L.A. Times,
Benedict, who will visit Washington and New York in the trip that ends Sunday, said he will raise immigration issues during his stay. He said he was especially concerned by what he called the grave problem of families that are separated by immigration policies and by border violence.
So, as you watch English and Spanish language propaganda…..I mean coverage of the Pope’s visit, don’t let any God be the sole judge of Benedict and his motives.
Our friends at Brave New Films -the intrepid folks who brought you “Outfoxed”, “Iraq for Sale” and other muckracking videos- have just released “A Dream Deferred”, a shorter, but no-less-moving video that includes the voices of those least heard in the “immigration debate”: immigrant students who want passage of the DREAM act. The DREAM Act would help more than 60,000 students pursue their dreams of higher education by helping them regulate their status.
In conjunction with immigrant rights groups, Robert Greenwald and Co. provide us with plenty of reason to support current efforts to sign a petition asking the 3 presidential candidates, all whom were co-sponsors of the federal DREAM Act, to make the DREAM a reality in their first 100 days of office.
Check it out and, if you feel so moved, sign the petition.
This clip by Oilwellian provides a video complement to some of the things mentioned in my previous post:
This coming Wednesday, March 5th, yours truly will be joining a stellar panel of thinkers- and doers- in the netroots. Sponsored by the Nation Magazine and Moveon, “Left out in the Open” will explore how the netroots is transforming -for good and for bad- the left. I will try to hold my own in such smart, capable company. You are cordially invited to come to:
City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, Proshansky Auditorium, 365 Fifth Avenue (near 34th Street). The event starts at 6:30 and sounds like it’s going to fill up. Some come early, come all as many different colored beans we can cram in there.
See you there!
Left Out in the Open — The Netroots & Progressive Politics
This Nation event will convene progressive leaders and writers for a lively discussion of how the netroots are changing progressive politics. Participants will include Katrina vanden Heuvel, publisher and editor of The Nation; Zephyr Teachout, assistant professor of law, Duke University, and an architect of Howard Dean’s Internet strategy; Matt Stoller, a founding blogger of OpenLeft and President of BlogPAC; Roberto Lovato, a writer at New America Media and blogger for Of América; and Ari Melber, a correspondent for The Nation and a contributing editor at Personal Democracy Forum. The event is free of charge. Please arrive early. Takes place at CUNY Graduate Center, Proshansky Auditorium, 365 Fifth Avenue. The event starts at 6:30.
For more information, call (212) 209-5400 or click here or here.
This story in La Opinion is bizarre in a uniquely L.A. way.
It describes how, “for a moment” anti-immigrant Minutemen joined pro-immigrant Mexican opposition groups (as in opposed to Calderon and Minutemen they consider racist) to loudly protest the visit of Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
According to the story written (translated por mi) by La Opinion’s Isaías Alvarado,
“The Los Angeles visit of Mexican President Felipe Calderon has, paradoxically, united groups traditionally antagonistic to each other.
As if in unison, protesters marching in front of the Omni Hotel shouted slogans like “¡Sin maíz, no hay país!” (”Without corn, there
is no country”) slogan of the sympathizers of the Party of the Democratic Revolution and ” ¡Pre-si-den-t Cal-de-rón go fix
.Mé-xi-co!” slogan of members of the Minuteman project. There were no violent incidents, including between people who engaged in previous disputes.”
In light of this bilingually bi-national bizarre moment, let me say that I actually believe that, at some point (not yet), those of us defending immigrants ravaged by globalization must make at least some peace with those other victims of globalization, white racists. Yes, I do believe that we need to build a big, unprecedented tent that allows us all to burn down the bigger tent of the corporate interests that unite Calderon, Bush and most other heads of state. Of course, we have to find a way to delete the racism before that happens and that’s a lot of work.
Or are we supposed to support that other election-stealer, Calderon, because he’s Mexican?
Para Nada. Despite his flowery calls to defend Mexican and other immigrants, he, his devastating policies are what turns a Mexicana(o) into an “inmigrante”.
Beware of the nation-state and the false consciousness of nationalism.
As part of its “Stop the Hate” campaign, the National Council of La Raza recently led production of the video below, which talks about the links between organized hate groups and anti-immigrant spokespeople -Minutemen Jim Gilchrist & Chris Simcox, FAIR’s Dan Stein and others - featured on mainstream newscasts.
The video and campaign come as welcome news from NCLR, which lost much credibility for its enthusiastic support of the nomination (and then silence about the numerous scandals) of disgraced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
But another video in the “Stop the Hate” series is not as welcome. Prominently featured in the “Code Words of Hate” video is a spokesperson for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a group that has a history of aiding and abetting police spying on African American, progressive, Latino and other groups. Some of us, for example, recall how the ADL presented “human rights” awards to such questionable figures as former Salvadoran President Calderon Sol, who had to wipe the blood from his hands before receiving the ADL award and giving a grandiloquent speech about the ethereal beauty of human rights.
Still, the NCLR campaign is an important one that takes on issues -racial code words, media, hate groups, language, etc.-we’ve discussed here at great length. So, we should support the campaign.
R
And now for something that deviates from but is directly related to the election mania gripping the country.
This speech given at the Brecht Forum captures well some recent thoughts about the relationship between immigrants and the national security state. Basic idea is that immigrants provide the state with another excuse to put more people with guns in our midst, especially in times of crisis.
The speech goes against the traditional logic around immigration, which tells us that raids, repressive laws, etc. are solely about elections or about controlling low wage undocumented workers needed for corporate and private profits.
While winning elections and keeping a surplus of low wage labor are a part of the immigration equation, these explanations hardly capture the cavernous motives beneath the current immigrant zeitgeist. Stuff in the speech also runs contrary to the rather tired argument that what’s happening around immigration is just about immigrants. It’s also about controlling people like many of you and me, citizens.
To vary on a theme that defined the Clinton era, “It’s the national security state, stupid.”
Lurking beneath the stale arguments of pro and anti-immigrant forces is a nation state, an elite that’s preparing for the social unrest due to the death of the American Dream (if it ever actually existed).
I shared a 2 minute clip of the speech previously, but this link features the speech in its entirety (14 minutes).Hope you like it. I actually think it’s one of the better talks I’ve given in some time. Please do email me or comment if you listen to this as these ideas are a work in progress and I value your thoughts and opinions about it.
And thanks to the Brecht Forum and the folks at Law and Disorder Radio for the opportunity to share these thoughts.
New exit polls conducted by the nonpartisan William C. Velazquez Institute (WCVI) in Los Angeles reveal that, contrary to media reports of overwhelming support Hillary Clinton, Latinos exhibited great diversity in last Tuesday’s primary.
“Upon examination, while Latinos nationally supported Senator Clinton in the Democratic Presidential Primary, their support varied from state to state,” said Antonio Gonzalez, President of the Los Angeles-based William C. Velazquez Institute. “Latinos in California, New York and New Jersey showed stronger support for Senator Clinton, compared to other states like Arizona, Illinois, New Mexico and Connecticut.
Clinton appears to have done better in the larger, more urbanized states with the exception of Obama’s home state of Illinois. Obama , meanwhile, did better in smaller states.
Another interesting finding of the WCVI analysis is that, while Hillary Clinton did in fact win a majority of Latino votes, Barack Obama made significant inroads in the final days of the campaign. Even in California, where he suffered major defeats in the Latino electorate, polls show Obama decreasing Clinton’s lead in the final days of the campaign. As recently as January 26th, Field and other polls show Clinton maintaining a 3 to 1 (59%-19%) advantage among Latinos. Polls taken in California Tuesday show Obama reducing her lead by 10% (69%-29%).
After burning the 3am oil trying to get a grasp on the ultimately ineffable workings of the body politic, I got up at 5:30 am (can you hear the roosters?) to join Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman and guests Bill Fletcher and Frances Fox for an out-of-the-corporate-media box discussion about race, empire and the primaries. Thanks to Amy and fellow panelists, this really turned out to be as probing a discussion about the elections as I’ve had the pleasure of participating in. Check it out!
Those of you without audio setup can read the transcript here (just delete the “Uh”’s)
Would that we lived in a world with more journalists like Farai Chideya, the consequential host of NPR’s News and Notes. Guest Earl Ofari Hutchison, Congresswoman Maxine Waters and yours truly joined Farai in this brief, but quite cool deconstruction of the categories “Latino” and “Black/Latino divide”.
Something to think about while we await the results of the most racialized election in U.S. history, an election in which historic Latino participation heralds the beginning of the end of the “Black/white electorate”.
After hearing about Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama, my father, Ramon, says it made him think twice about his support for Hillary Clinton. “That (endorsement) matters” he said as he watched Spanish language Obama ads squeezed in between Univision news reports of the Kennedy endorsement, “They (the Kennedy’s) have a lot of history with us”.
That Ramon, who was defensive the last time I asked him about who he’d vote for, is now rethinking his previous support for Clinton previews what may be a big Super Duper Tuesday surprise: Obama cutting into Clinton’s lead among the more than 10 million Latinos eligible to vote this week.
National polls like the recent USA Today poll show Obama either drastically or completely reducing Clinton’s lead across the country. But other developments indicate that what pundits and media outlets have been calling Clinton’s Latino “firewall” may also be falling. A case in point is Arizona, where Obama actually leads Clinton among Latinos by 53-37 percent, according to a recent poll conducted by McClatchy newspapers.
Conventional wisdom tells us that history, political patronage and the much-coveted endorsements from members of most the Latino politirati are driving Latinos voters like Ramon towards Clinton. But Arizona tells us that history may still be in the making-and remaking. While the Kennedy endorsements do bring a new glow to the hallowed velvet pictures of JFK adorning homes and apartments of many older Latinos, Obama’s Arizona advantage can hardly be explained solely in terms of the spirits of our Latino political past.
Obama is also speaking to the present and to the future. Whether or not Obama can cut Clinton’s Latino advantage by Tuesday, his gains in Arizona provide valuable object lessons with regard to Latino politics, object lessons that take us far beyond the now ridiculous ideas about Latinos’ racist refusal to vote for a black person. Principal among the lessons of Arizona is the strategic priority placed on new Latino voters.
“It’s not rocket science” says Cuauhtémoc “Temo” Figueroa, the former union organizer who is the Obama campaign’s National Field Director. “We can’t win without new voters. We need young people, immigrants and other voters traditionally left out of the elections” said Figueroa from the very loud Obama campaign office in Fresno, California adding “New voters were key to victory in Iowa and new voters are key to winning the Latino vote.”
Central to dropping Clinton’s advantage are Obama’s appeals to the more than 2 million immigrants and first and second generation Latinos added to the rolls of eligible voters since 2004. In Arizona, unions like the SEIU and nonprofits like the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project have undertaken massive voter registration campaigns. Such intense focus on new Latino voters comes atop political soil prepared by what huge majorities of these Latinos consider the fertilizer of anti-immigrant politics.
Obama’s efforts in Arizona and across the Latino U.S. are yielding fruit in no small part because he, more than Hillary Clinton, has intensified his organizing around and his stands on immigration, the definitive issue of Latino politics. Though many polls show the economy, education the Iraq war are the top issues for Latino and other voters this election year, massive marches, polls and common sense tell us that immigration is shaping the political consciousness of an entire generation of new voters. Clinton, who has both avoided or flip-flopped around the issue, is counting on history, name recognition and the endorsements she received from the majority of old-line Latino political leaders like Raul Yzaguirre, the former head of the National Council of La Raza or United Farmworkers leader, Dolores Huerta.
To counterbalance pull of the Latino political past, Obama has started more aggressively deploying a browner, more pro-immigrant variant of the future-oriented message that fueled his victories in the largely black and white states of Iowa and South Carolina. Obama’s unswerving support for driver’s licenses for the undocumented and his commitment to deal with immigration reform early in his tenure are being noticed in Latino voter’s homes as well as in editorial offices of newspapers like of the Los Angeles-based La Opinion, which recently endorsed him. Editors at the country’s largest Spanish language newspaper said they were “disappointed with her (Clinton’s) calculated opposition to driver’s licenses for the undocumented, which contrasts markedly from the forceful argument in support made by Obama.”
Endorsements from Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano and Congressman Raul Grijalva have, no doubt, helped the Illinois senator as well. But Obama’s lead in Latino Arizona, one of the centers of anti-immigrant movement in the United States, comes in no small part because his message is accompanied by more serious organizing and investments in the Latino electorate. At the same time, a more nuanced understanding of the Latino electorate as a segmented electorate makes targeted messaging more effective, especially in the younger and newly naturalized segments of the electorate. Many of these voters either don’t know or could care less that my friends Dolores Huerta and former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros are backing Hillary Clinton.
Beyond the simplistic storyline of Latino unwillingness to support a black candidate, explanations of Obama’s recent Latino surge must include the former failures of the black and white leaders of the Obama campaign. Sources close to the Obama camp tell me that the campaign has started shortening a Latino learning curve made steeper by, for example, an operation in which key Obama staffers charged with securing the Latino vote did not, until recently, have direct access to campaign leaders like David Axelrod.
Whether or not the Obama campaign is successful in dropping the Clinton tally among Latinos like my father, Ramon, Super Duper Tuesday will provide more than a few of the object lessons that political strategists and pundits will study long after the general election in November.
Despite (or perhaps because of) the economic meltdown, Of América’s stocks appear to be rising. At least that’s what our 2nd (count 2, segundo) appearance in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) , official voice of big capital, would indicate. This WSJ story about Latino bloggers and Super Tuesday mentions our esteemed site’s recent post about the double-talking bilingual antics of Mitt Romney and the now politically defunct Rotting Rudy Giuliani (Gracias a Nuestra Senora de la Justicia Social).
Given that we’re entering awards season, I’d like to take this opportunity thank the Academy and all of you who visit this barbarian haven for reading, commenting and passing the gas……….uhhh hot air…..I mean .. passing the word that makes such recognition possible.
Actually, mention in the WSJ would not have been possible without the increasingly irrefutable fact of Latino power in the life of América, a fact we try to mirror here. So see yourselves and smile 
Gracias,
R
It’s both scary and exciting to watch the media and political frenzy building around the Latino vote next Super Duper Tuesday and beyond. Scary because never have so many known so little about so large a population as Latinos. Yet, this hasn’t hastened the exponential growth of the cottage porn industry of Latino vote expertise being displayed in all its perverse glory this election year. It’s also exciting to watch the new Latino watchers because we as a society will only benefit from the growth in genuine information and knowledge mixed in with the dross of many news reports and campaign statements.
My favorite from among the numerous and stunningly simplistic explanations for why, for example, Latino voters appear to be heavily inclined towards Border Wall supporter and driver’s license flip-flopper, Hillary Clinton, actually comes from an elected official - a Latino elected official no less.
As the world watched and waited to see how Latinos would vote in Nevada last week, widely-quoted Nevada Assemblyman Ruben Kihuen used the global spotlight to unveil for the first time his Mama’s Chi-chi Theory of Latino Political Participation, and he did so in no less a venue than the New York Times, the nation’s newspaper of record:
“The Hispanic community is very family oriented, and we respect our mothers,” said Ruben Kihuen, an influential Democratic assemblyman from Las Vegas who supported Mrs. Clinton. “A lot of middle-aged women see her as a mother, a head of the household, and they can identify with this. Especially when they see her daughter, Chelsea, with her.”
Though not as pernicious as the now thoroughly discredited “anti-black-Latinos-are-the- rearguard-of-white-racism” theory of the Clinton vote, Kihuen’s Chi-chi theory does reflect the unprecedented -and often prurient- interest in Latino politics.
Despite being left out of the mainstream discussion of the Latino vote, many, more thoughtful Latinos in the blogosphere, alternative and other media and in the body politic generally have seized the political moment to offer insights that anticipate the eventual demise of the Mama’s Chi-chi Theory and other, less-absurd media constructs.
And the collective and relatively new interest of news organizations, pollsters, bloggers, politicos and other interested parties from across the political and geographic spectrum also previews the future sophistication about things Latino. Over the past several months, I have, for example, spoken with and become aware of numerous national and international (and not just Latin American) media outlets planning or actually doing more in-depth reporting on the U.S. Latino vote.
For all its frustrating simplicity, the coverage of and interest in the Latino electorate may well be remembered as one of the most important new developments of this year in media and politics.
We will, for the time being, have to suffer the flatulence and bad taste of the burrito logic informing Kihuen’s Chi-chi Theory. Still, some of the current attention and reporting found in some Spanish language and English language media and other outlets does give one cause for optimism about the new national conversation around Latino and U.S. politics.
check out this interview I did with Laura Flanders on Radio Nation. It goes 20,000 leagues deeper than the silliness that current passes for race reporting in the U.S. Guest Amy Alexander and I take a more serious look at this part of the most racialized election in recent memory. Hope you like it:
This article from the New York Times reminds me of another issue you won’t see or hear during the primaries and general election: police brutality and murder. Despite the continued abuse and even murder committed by police across the country, you won’t be hearing much about cases like that of Sean Bell on the campaign trail anytime soon. Bell was shot 50 times on his wedding day by NYPD cops who now want to bypass a jury and go straight to a judge, according to the NYT piece.
I interviewed friends of Bell along with witnesses who described how the cops who killed him had been drinking the night of the incident. I took the pic above at the makeshift memorial friends, family and community members built just after the shooting on 25th of November, 2006. The picture is of a piece of a larger list of young, mostly black, mostly male victims, who, like Bell were shot by NYPD.
Whatever the outcome of the trial, the case provides a good measure of the kinds of things the electoral and political system (and the privately-funded echo chamber, the MSM) either hides or ignores. I may be wrong, but my research does not seem to indicate that Sen. Clinton has made any comments about the high profile case involving victims and killers -the cops- from her home state of New York.
And, for his part, Barack Obama made at least one rather tepid reference to the case according to the New York Times:
Later, in questions from reporters, Senator Obama also weighed in on the fatal shooting of Sean Bell, noting that the matter was still under investigation but saying that 50 shots seemed “excessive.” Most of the time, police officers act with restraint, he said, but “This may be one of the times when they didn’t.”
Both candidates appear to spend time in South Carolina besotted by Martin Luther King, a black man shot many years ago, all the while saying little to nothing about another black man shot and killed by men in uniform a little over a year ago.
I’m waiting to see who will step up and bring “change” to the reality behind that painfully long list in the pic.
Everyone’s an Expert on the Latino Vote, Except Latinos
New America Media, Commentary, Roberto Lovato, Posted: Jan 22, 2008
Editor’s Note: The newly minted experts on the Latino vote are using the old paradigms to explain the Nevada vote results says NAM writer Roberto Lovato.
NEW YORK – The most interesting development out of this weekend’s Nevada caucus votes had little to do with Hillary Clinton winning a large percentage of the Latino vote – that was predictable. More fascinating was the sudden and exponential surge in the number of experts in Latino politics.
It was tragicomic to watch non-Spanish speaking pundits explain the ‘reality’ of the Nevada vote while standing in the artificial light of the casinos during one of the first caucus meetings held entirely in Spanish. Reporters had to wait for translators to tell them what campaign workers were saying before they could report it to us. Understanding the electoral needs of casino, hotel, restaurant and other workers who labor in a new economy – and require new hours for voting – proved very difficult for many in the media to understand.
It was no less difficult having to watch the white, and some African American, political commentators on MSNBC, CNN and other networks tell us that the Latino vote for Clinton reflected “Black-Latino tensions.” The New York Times newspaper had earlier echoed these observations in a story that caused frustration in the Latino blogosphere. In a recent issue of The New Yorker, a publication that has no Latino editorial staff and publishes very few stories a year about the country’s 46 million Latinos, the magazine showed off its newfound expertise in a story which detailed how Latinos are Clinton’s electoral “firewall,” thanks to the “lingering tensions between the Hispanic and black communities.” It’s hard to know how they know this when only one serious polling organization in the country conducts polls in a language other than English.
Yet everybody, it seems, has something to say about Latino politics. Everybody that is, except Latinos.
The awkwardness and simplicity seen and heard in the coverage of the Latino electorate illustrates how ill-equipped the news organizations, the political parties and the society as a whole are to understand and deal with the historic political shift previewed in Nevada: the death of the black-white electorate. Simplistic talk about the Latino vote provides another example of how we live when the ‘experts’ and their organizations are increasingly out of touch with the dynamism and complexity of the electorate and the general populace.
As a result, the growth of the very diverse Latino electorate will likely force the revelation of more inconvenient truths. Principle among them is the media’s conclusion that anti-black racism among Latinos explains why they voted Clinton and not Obama in Nevada. Story after story tries to fit the Latino vote into the procrustean bed of old-school, black v. white politics.
Typical of these conclusions are statements by the liberal New Republic’s John Judis. He explained Latino support for Clinton this way: “Latino immigrants hold negative stereotypical views of blacks and feel that they have more in common with whites than with blacks.” Judis backed his claims with a modicum of academic seriousness as he quoted “experts” like Duke University political scientist Paula D. McClain. McClain told me in an interview that she neither speaks Spanish nor watches the primary source of Latino news and political information, saying: “I don’t watch Univision.” Quoting her makes little practical sense.
It only makes sense when we consider how ever-expanding Latino power in Nevada and across the country is pushing up against people’s fraying sense of nationhood and citizenship. Latino citizens and voters, not undocumented immigrants, are the targets of many liberals. These liberals long for the simpler days of a black-white electorate, a less-globalized country. Like Clinton, Obama and all Republican candidates, they support the political and racial equivalents of the anti-immigrant, anti-Latino border wall.
So instead of considering that Latinos reflect the new complexities of our political age, we should, experts tell us, simply swallow the black-white political logic of the previous era, like the half-moon cookies our grandmothers made. Ignore whatever you think of the Clintons - they have more than 15 years of relationships, name-recognition and history in the Latino electorate. Outside of Chicago, Obama has less than two years. Never mind that Latinos may still be wondering about why Obama did not, until recently, secure the support of most black voters. Never mind about the political amnesia about how the country’s last black candidate of national stature – Jesse Jackson- defied the prevailing racial logic during the Presidential primaries of 1988, when his Rainbow Coalition secured almost 50 percent of the Latino vote in Latino-heavy New Mexico counties like Santa Fe and San Miguel and 36 percent of the Latino vote in the largest Latino state in the country: California.
The Latino experience of the right-of-center Clintons and the left-of-center Jackson, who the Illinois senator did not ask to campaign for him, raises questions about Mr. Obama’s political operation and his political agenda. Time will tell us what was behind the Latino support for Clinton in Nevada. And who knows, maybe the experts telling us about Obama, Clinton and other candidates’ fortunes in upcoming primaries will do so without the black and white lens that has proven obsolete in the face of a new country.
As they prepare for what will surely be a highly contested primary in Florida, some Republican GOP candidates have produced and released Spanish language TV ads that should raise more than a few eyebrows and questions.
For example, how is it that the Mitt Romney whose English language ads are chock-full of immigration agents and tough talk against “illegal aliens” in this ad:
is the same Mitt Romney who approved this ad featuring his Spanish-speaking lauding his father as someone who shares the values held by Latinos:
Watching both ads makes one want to bilingually barf because the high dosage of hypocrisy contained in the ads far surpasses the tolerance levels suggested by the Surgeon General’s office.
And, for those of you adventurous types - the ones who like to flirt with deadly levels of toxicity and other dangers-, check out this Florida ad (think Cubano vote) by Rudolfo Giuliani, who invokes none other than the ever-cheery Gipper, Ronald Reagan, the genial President recently lauded by Barack Obama and who is responsible for more death, destruction and suffering in Latin America than any U.S. president in recent memory,
Missing from any of these bizarre commercials is any understanding that most Latinos watch television in both English and Spanish. This means that, unless the GOP-influencing, racist hate groups like FAIR are right about how Latinos are genetically predisposed to crime, illiteracy and parisitism, then these same Latino voters will likely see and hear the different messages coming out of the English and Spanish language sides of the candidate’s mouths.
Soy Roberto Lovato y yo apruebo este anuncio: Coman mucha mierda hipocritas, racistas hijos de su p……… (ad infinitum)
Presidential Candidates Take the ‘Social’ Out of ‘Change’
New America Media, Commentary, Roberto Lovato, Posted: Jan 16, 2008
Editor’s Note: Presidential candidates now clamor for change, and many invoke Martin Luther King, Jr. for their own political benefit, but lost in the debate is the social movement of change, notes NAM contributing editor Roberto Lovato.
The spirit of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. still seems to stir serious controversy among politicians. But, as we’re witnessing with the latest racial politics pushing the primary process, the King icon is also being used to build the fortunes and legacies of these politicians, especially those who would be president.
Despite a racial controversy involving a newsletter bearing Ron Paul’s name that called King a “world-class adulterer” and “pro-communist philanderer,” the Republican candidate plans to launch a new and likely record-breaking multimillion dollar “super Tuesday” fundraising campaign on Jan. 21, Martin Luther King, Jr., day; Mitt Romney mentioned seeing King only to later “clarify” that he never actually saw him; Rudy Giuliani regularly makes references to King in speeches, books and security consulting engagements that earned the former New York mayor the millions of dollars that were, until recently, paying for his campaign. And Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are in the midst of a fierce battle over the MLK legacy to see who deserves to win the black vote.
Lost in the bickering over and celebrations of King as an individual is any notion of the social movement that defined King and an entire generation. Similarly, the mind-numbing mantra of “change” mouthed ad infinitum by all of today’s presidential candidates would have us believe that they, not we, are the arbiters of change. The King anniversary appears to provide candidates an opportunity to remind us that they have a monopoly on “change.”
The most recent electoral banter around King takes place within the collective amnesia about his views, especially his later views focusing on issues dogging us to this day: racism and poverty, prisoners and war. To the detriment of our political process, we forget that King’s views came about at least in part as a response to a black political milieu defined not just by white racism, but by the wealth of spirited action and the intellectual perspective provided by millions of people, thousands of organizations and other, less-requited political stars – Angela Davis, the Black Panthers and their combination of service and calls to militancy; Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam and their own brand of self-determination; Stokely Carmichael and the more militant students of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. These and many others influenced and pressured King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1960s.
As the harried run toward this year’s King celebrations and the South Carolina primary continues, the practically propagandistic repetitions and variations of words and phrases like “change,” “hope,” “content of character”, “I have a dream” and other King-isms are coded and distributed for mass consumption like Coca-Cola. Coke is, in fact, the main corporate sponsor of a gigantic new civil rights museum located just a shout from Ebenezer Baptist Church and King’s birthplace in Atlanta.
Nowhere is this denial of the “social” in “change” better exemplified than in statements made by Hillary Clinton, who said last week, “Dr King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.” Few among the pundits noted how Clinton’s framing of the issue deleted the social component of change. Instead, the media, pundits and even community leaders are engaged in a heated discussion about what the candidates believe: whether it was King, the individual, or Johnson, the individual, who “realized” the dream.
This climate has benefited Barack Obama, who speaks more skillfully than any other candidate to a still mostly white electorate that is largely unwilling to deal collectively with issues of race and racism beyond the platitudes one hears during official celebrations of King. Obama’s King-like cadences and charisma give us that semi-religious feeling that goes with being part of a social change movement -only without a social change movement.
In critical ways, the lack of the “social” in our discussions of “change” allows us to gloss over crucial differences between Obama the candidate and King, the leader of the Poor People’s Campaign. When asked how he would like to be remembered after his death, King said, “I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison.”
Like his competitors, Obama spends most of his time making speeches packed with calls for tax cuts and other proposals targeting the crumbling bastion of individualism: the “middle class.” He spends little to no time at rallies dealing with those most devastated by the lack of change: working class people, especially young people like those fueling the Jena Six movement. As he and the other candidates vie to be the inheritors of the King legacy, those who would be King say not a word about forcing “change” in a prison industry that predicts the value of its stock based on the future school performance of black and Latino third graders.
As we decide, during these times of continued crisis, on whom to vote for and what to do beyond the ballot box once they get elected, we might do well to recall the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., social change agent: “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering,
and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”
Not one dedicated individual, but many.
Tonight’s Democratic debate on MSNBC was sold by organizers as the “first” debate focused on Latinos and issues of race (actually, it was the Univision debate that did so). Though we heard many a promise to end the war, strengthen the “middle class” and so on, by the end of the 2 hours it was clear that Clinton, Obama and Edwards have little more than the waste at Yucca Mountain to offer voters out West
Debate questions and responses centered on the economy and the war - both top issues for Latinos - the substance was, as expected lacking, severely so.
Most despicable to me were responses to Tim Russert’s question about the Solomon Amendment, a Federal statute requiring univiersities to provide military recruiters access to detailed personal information - telephone, address, grades, etc- of students. Universities not implementing this politically parasitic law get their federal funds cut. ALL 3 candidates said they’d “vigorously enforce” a law many of us have seen keep poor, unknowing students and their families vulnerable to the biggest predators on earth-the Pentagon.Brian Williams did his part to slant the debate towards non-Latino interests by asking why English “should not” be adopted as the official U.S. language. Russert then quoted an uinformed, stupid and article in the New Yorker, which repeated unproven statements that Latinos would be unwilling to support a black candidate. To his credit, Obama dispelled it by talking about his huge support among Latinos in Illinois, a seriously Latino state.
And nuclear bomb-maker General Electric’s MSNBC network denied succeeded in denying serious and fiery anti-war candidate Dennis Kucinich.
A BIG BRONX CHEER AND BOOOOOO TO MSNBC FOR FAILING LATINOS AND ALL OF US.
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