Sean Bell Verdict Complicates Things for Obama

Today’s acquittal of the 3 police officers accused of killing Sean Bell in November of 2006 will complicate Barack Obama’s efforts to win the presidency in November 2008. His candidacy already mired in the racial machinations of his opponents, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Obama will find himself having to maneuver between the need to speak out on the most egregious, high profile example of institutional racism and police brutality since the Rodney King Incident and the need to deflect Clinton and McCain’s racialized attacks aimed at fomenting white fear of blacks and other non-whites.

While it has helped him win white votes, Obama’s approach to dealing with such racism by pointing to the black and white pictures of the civil rights past will not help him with his base in the black community and other communities. With the 16th anniversary of the Rodney King incident looming on the horizon this August 29th, none of us will be in any mood to hear calls to “hope” or “change” without similar calls to “justice”.

Unfortunately for Obama’s presidential bid, calls to justice from African American and other groups often trigger fear among some (not all) white voters. The platechtonic political shifts brought on by the Republican party’s Southern Strategy were premised on precisely these racial and political calculations. With the help of political strategist Kevin Phillips, Richard Nixon pointed to black anger as a way to persuade to white southern voters that the Republican Party could best represent their interests.

At a time when blatant racial codes have given way to the subtler racism of a post-Southern Strategy era, Obama finds his historic presidential bid bogged down by the new racial codes being engineered by the Clinton and McCain campaigns-and the mainstream media. Responses to the Sean Bell verdict will surely provide new codes, more political and racial fodder to those who won’t let the Jeremiah Wright scandal rest; those who seem to make racialized remarks involving Obama right before big primary votes; those who appeal to white fear among voters by linking Obama to fabricated images of black anger.

Obama’s attempts to speak about real black anger during his Philadelphia speech appear to have been not well received if the media’s ongoing obsession with Jeremiah Wright is any indicator.Failure to use his rhetorical gifts to speak forcefully to and about real black and non-black anger about the Sean Bell verdict may re-animate doubts about commitment to that part of his base that is not white middle and working class.

Beyond Obama, all of us need to raise our voices and point at the abyss of our country’s institutional racism as was painfully and transparently reflected in today’s verdict. We might want to start by pushing Obama, Clinton and McCain-and the mainstream media- to speak honestly and continually about what the 50 bullets in Sean Bell say about justice in the 50 states of our tattered and bloodied union.

New York Event: Left Out in the Open — The Netroots & Progressive Politics

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.

New Poll: Latinos Showed Great Diversity, Not Clintonmania in Vote

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%).

Super Duper Surg(e)imiento: How Obama Is Cutting Into Clinton’s Latino Advantage

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.

Sean Bell Murder Case: What Obama and Clinton Should Speak to in S.C. and all 50 States

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.

WBAI Interview About Obama and “Progressivism”

This just in from New York’s own WBAI. Check out this interview on Wakeup Call. Host Mario Murillo queries historian Gerald Horne, political scientist Valeria Sinclair-Chapman and yours truly about how “progressives” should deal with Barack Obama. Together, I think we brought a broader context to discussion about Obama, “change” and “hope”; We talked about such things as the historical context for Obamania, gender and Obama/Clinton and the geopolitical and economic context for the rise of populist, liberal pols like Obama, Clinton and Edwards.

Hope you like it!

Obama-Clinton Battle, McCain’s N.H. Surge Greeted by Merrill Lynch With News that Recession “has arrived”

While the rest of the world was being put to sleep…ooooops….. I mean “mesmerized” by electoral developments in New Hampshire, David Rosenberg was busy writing the next President’s script. Rosenberg, the widely respected chief national economist at Merrill Lynch, is the author of a report announcing that a recession “has arrived”.

And though our worsening economic woes are hardly news to even the most brain dead among us , it should give greater urgency to whomever comes out of New Hampshire with an eye on the hot seat of empire this November. This is, in no small part, because they will likely have to take immediate, urgent measures to deal with the cloud of recession descending on the U.S. This BBC story highlights a report by financial giant Merrill Lynch, which states that a recession “has arrived”.

Instead of waiting for slothfully slow and arcane body known as the National Bureau of Economic Research to officialize this predictably bad economic news, Merrill fired off a warning that has global markets scurrying for cover.

Meanwhile, the rest of we humans remain vulnerable to the showers of acid economic rain: rising oil prices, the sub-prime mortgage crisis and a flaccid dollar (On the D train yesterday, I sat next to some shopping bag-bearing Brits I jealously watched as they gabbed about the jumbo jet-fulls of goods just purchased here in the new Tijuana of the Hudson, NYC).

After Iowa and New Hampshire, I’m pretty charisma’d hoped and change’d out and am instead staring at the tea leaves and tatters of Wall Street in search of what the future holds.

BBC
Recession in the US ‘has arrived’

The feared recession in the US economy has already arrived, according to a report from Merrill Lynch. It said that Friday’s employment report, which sent shares tumbling worldwide, confirmed that the US is in the first month of a recession.Its view is controversial, with banks such as Lehman Brothers disagreeing.

But a reserve member of the committee that sets US rates warned that it could do little about the below-trend growth expected in the next six months.

“I am concerned that developments on the inflation front will make the Fed’s policy decisions more difficult in 2008,” Charles Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said.He was referring to the problems faced by the US Federal Reserve, which might want to cut interest rates to avoid a recession, but is worried about inflationary factors such as $100-a-barrel oil. ‘Significant decline’ An official ruling on whether the US is in recession is made by the National Bureau of Economic Research, but this decision may not come for two years.The NBER defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months”.It bases its assessment on final figures on employment, personal income, industrial production and sales activity in the manufacturing and retail sectors.Merrill Lynch said that the figures showing the jobless rate hitting 5% in December were the final piece in that puzzle.”According to our analysis, this isn’t even a forecast any more but is a present day reality,” the report said. ‘Actual downturn’ But NBER president Martin Feldstein denied Merrill’s claims.”I think we’re not in a recession now,” he told CNBC.”But I think there is a serious risk that it could get worse and we could see an actual downturn,” he added.Merrill said that the current consensus view on Wall Street that there is a good chance of avoiding a recession is “in denial”.

It also objected to the use of euphemistic terms for the state of the economy.

“To say that the backdrop is ‘recession like’ is akin to an obstetrician telling a woman that she is ’sort of pregnant’,” the report said.

Housing figures

There were further signs of the housing slowdown that has sparked off the problems in the US economy in home sale figures.

Pending sales of existing homes fell 2.6%, according to the National Association of Realtors, which saw its pending sales index drop to 87.6 in November, 19.2% below the point it was at a year ago.

The figures were better than expected, however, because October’s index reading was revised upwards from 87.2 to 89.9.

U.S. Boricuas Poised to Debate P.R.’s Colonial Status as Congress Re-visits Issue

 

 

 

Check out this month’s issue of NACLA Report on the Americas, where you will find several solid stories analyzing the ongoing debate around ending the colonial status of Puerto Rico. Included in the issue is the article below, written by my friend, longtime Boricua and Latino thinker and activist, Angelo Falcon of the National Latino Policy Institute.

Angelo places the various positions adopted by the almost 4 million Boricuas in the states within the context of U.S.-Puerto Rican relations (like the Vieques revindication) , immigration history and the growth of a unique political culture shaped by numerous influences. And like any good NACLA article, the piece includes plenty of footnotes that can you followup and delve deeper into the issues discussed.

Enjoy.

 

R

Note: As the debate over the future political status of Puerto Rico begins to be debated in the United States Congress, the role of the close to 4 million Puerto Ricans stateside (outside of Puerto Rico) starts to emerge as an issue. In the current issue of the magazine, the NACLA Report on the Americas (see full article below), Angelo Falcón, President of the National Institute for Latino Policy, analyzes this “diaspora factor.”

The Diaspora Factor:

Stateside Boricuas and the Future of Puerto Rico

by Angelo Falcón

NACLA Report on the Americas (November/December 2007)

The debate over the future political status of Puerto Rico has appeared once again in the U.S. Congress, raising the question of what role the nearly 4 million Puerto Ricans living stateside will play in this debate. Two competing House bills, both proposed by Puerto Rican representatives, call for Puerto Ricans to express their preference for statehood, commonwealth, independence, or even for an associated republic in a new plebiscite. The Puerto Rico Democracy Act, proposed in February by Representative José Serrano (D-NY), calls for a two-stage referendum in which voters would first be asked whether they prefer to maintain Puerto Rico’s current commonwealth status or pursue a permanent solution. If the status quo option prevailed, the plebiscite would be repeated every eight years until a permanent option was chosen. If a permanent solution won, a second plebiscite would ask them to choose between statehood and independence.

 

The bill mirrors the recommendations of a report released in December 2005 by the White House Task Force on the Status of Puerto Rico, commissioned by President Clinton and continued by the Bush administration, to reach a permanent solution following the results of the last plebiscite in 1998. A majority of voters in that vote, 50.3%, chose “none of the above,” a result of a boycott of the vote by the pro-Commonwealth party, the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), which objected to how their status option was defined in the ballot.

 

Meanwhile, Representative Nydia Velázquez (D-NY), who criticized the presidential task force for failing to include Puerto Ricans, introduced the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act, which calls for the formation of a constitutional convention to elect local representatives who would themselves draft the plebiscite to vote among statehood, independence, and a new “enhanced commonwealth” option. The outcome of that plebiscite would then be presented to Congress for approval.

 

Both bills are viewed by opposing island political parties as biased—Serrano’s toward statehood and Velásquez’s toward a commonwealth victory. This perceived difference in perspective between two Puerto Rican politicians from the same party and the same state highlights new complications in the island’s diaspora with regard to the status question, complications that make forging a common agenda difficult. Indeed, the stateside Puerto Rican population has always had a problematic relationship with Puerto Rico. Especially since the post–World War II great migration, this has been a movement of people tied to the failure of Puerto Rico’s economy, symbolizing a colonial dilemma magnified by its concentration in the world city of New York for so many decades in the 20th century.[1]

The diaspora has always been a bit of a mystery in terms of its attitudes toward its homeland. Because they were now participants in the world’s most advanced economy, were they now supporters of statehood for Puerto Rico? Because they came during the long-term regime of the pro-Commonwealth political party, did they support the status quo? Or did their racialization in the United States make them support independence?[2] And, in the end, does this matter to the future of Puerto Rico?

* * *

One of the most striking recent developments in the Puerto Rican experience was the realization that in 2003 the size of the stateside Puerto Rican community exceeded that of the island for the first time.[3] The latest census figures estimate that in 2005 there were about 3,780,000 Puerto Ricans living in the States compared to about 3,670,000 in Puerto Rico.[4] This has generated considerable discussion in Puerto Rico and in the diaspora, signaling that the stateside Puerto Rican community may now in a position to redefine its relationship to the island.

While there have always been strong connections between Puerto Rico and the stateside Puerto Rican community through family ties and migration, it wasn’t until the 1990s that this relationship took on an increasingly political nature. It was then that the stateside Puerto Rican community increased its representation in the U.S. House of Representatives from one to three—two from New York and one from Chicago, all Democrats. This resulted from the growth of the Puerto Rican population and its ability to more effectively use the federal Voting Rights Act in redistricting. Puerto Rico, on the other hand, continues to elect only one nonvoting resident commissioner to Congress (currently Luis Fortuño, a Republican).

During this period, political elites and activists in Puerto Rico increasingly turned to the stateside Puerto Rican leadership for support on local issues. Whether it was getting favorable U.S. federal policies toward Puerto Rico in terms of tax policy or social welfare expenditures, or the campaign to get the U.S. Navy out of Vieques, the three stateside Puerto Rican congressional representatives became invaluable, reliable allies, along with many Puerto Rican officials at the state and local levels.

Supporting this relationship was the strong nationalist identity of many stateside Puerto Ricans. Manifesting itself in myriad parades, festivals, and cultural events throughout the United States, culminating in early June every year with the massive National Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City, Puerto Rican nationalism and interest in Puerto Rico remains high. This was buttressed by the “Latin music explosion” starting at the end of the 1990s in which Puerto Rican entertainers played a major role. The successful campaigns to free Puerto Rican political prisoners, which led to pardons and clemency under presidents Carter and Clinton, demonstrated a level of nationalism that many in the United States found confounding.

But new socioeconomic and political developments both stateside and in Puerto Rico have complicated this relationship in ways that make building a common agenda difficult. The model for some is the powerful U.S. Israeli lobby, but this has proved hard to emulate in the Puerto Rican case. First, as mentioned above, the stateside Puerto Rican congressional delegation doesn’t always agree on central issues, especially as their seniority increases and their ties to different political sectors in Puerto Rico deepen.

Second, while historically concentrated in the Northeast, especially New York City, and the Midwest, the U.S. Puerto Rican population has not only increased but has become more dispersed during the last two decades.[5] In the 1990s the Puerto Rican population in Florida dramatically increased, making it the state with the second-largest concentration. Puerto Rican populations are also growing fast in other parts of the South, in smaller cities, and in suburban and ex-urban areas where a Puerto Rican presence is new. This new spatial distribution was accompanied by new patterns of migration from Puerto Rico and new professional and middle classes moving to these new areas, raising the potential for a new north-south economic polarization whose political implications are yet to be fully clear. This raises challenges to the more traditional stateside Puerto Rican political and economic narratives as a Northeast urban population loyal to the Democratic Party and New Deal policies.

Third, in Puerto Rico the traditional status-based colonial political party system has become increasingly difficult to manage, with political deadlock among the parties and the loss of the tax incentives that formerly attracted U.S. capital, along with ineffective economic management and multiple corruption scandals. With the U.S. Congress now considering proposals for resolving Puerto Rico’s status in the midst of a presidential election, this polarization will only intensify.

* * *

Although Puerto Ricans have been migrating to the United States since the mid-1800s, it wasn’t until after World War II that the size of this migration became enormous and subject to efforts to manage it from both the colony and the metropolis. The out-migration from Puerto Rico as an integral part of its economic development planning, which was based on neo-Malthusian principles, led in 1948 to the establishment of New York City’s Migration Division of Puerto Rico’s Department of Labor. This became the mechanism by which the government of Puerto Rico tried to steer Puerto Rican labor flows and negotiate on workers’ behalf with U.S. local, state, and federal authorities. In 1986, this division, which now had offices in several states, was seen as a way to create a U.S. Israeli lobby–type operation, and the then pro-commonwealth governor elevated it to the status of the cabinet-level Department of Puerto Rican Affairs in the United States. This was short-lived when the statehood party candidate was elected to the governorship in 1992, which resulted in the new department being replaced by a lobbying operation called the Puerto Rican Federal Affairs Administration (PRFAA).[6]

Depending on which political party was in power, this new office’s relationship to the stateside Puerto Rican community changed in dramatic ways. Generally similar in function to foreign consulates, PRFAA differs in technically being a part of the U.S. government and in representing people who are all already U.S. citizens. Under the commonwealth party, this office collaborated closely with the stateside Puerto Rican political leadership, but under the statehood party the relationship was less friendly and often hostile. With the current divided government, the pro-commonwealth governor, Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, has turned the office into a Washington, D.C.–focused lobbying and public relations operation that has made its relationship to the stateside Puerto Rican community focused on narrowly partisan concerns. Pressure to change the mission of this agency in this way came in large part because the divided government in Puerto Rico replicated itself in Washington, D.C., where Resident Commissioner Fortuño is a pro-statehood Republican, while the governor is pro-commonwealth and identified with the Democratic Party.

One reason for this uncertainty about how Puerto Rico political elites related to the stateside Puerto Rican community was the lack of information about the political status preferences of the diaspora. This became a practical political problem for these colonial politicians as the stateside population grew larger and more politically engaged and began in the mid-1960s to demand a voice in determining Puerto Rico’s future status. After a 1967 plebiscite held on the island, the stateside community demanded, with increasing intensity, the right to participate in these votes. Today, the major bills before Congress make some provisions for the participation of the stateside Puerto Rican community to directly participate in this status-definition process.

But knowledge on how stateside Puerto Ricans would vote on the future political status of Puerto Rico remains a problem because they have not been recently polled on this issue, despite extensive polling on this status issue in Puerto Rico. The most reliable survey conducted on the subject was the Latino National Political Survey (LNPS), conducted in 1989–90.[7] It found that more than two thirds (69%) of stateside Puerto Ricans supported commonwealth status. But since then there have been major changes in the social, geographic, and political composition of this community, it is not at all clear what its status preferences are today. One further complication is that most stateside Puerto Rican leaders and activists support independence. In a national Web survey conducted of this elite group in 2006, it was found that 45% supported independence, while in the 1989–90 LNPS, less than 4% of stateside Puerto Rican adults did.[8] It is doubtful that there has been a large pro-independence surge in the stateside community since then and more likely that pro-statehood sentiment has grown, as has been the case in Puerto Rico. The status preferences of the stateside community may now be similar to those of Puerto Rico, but this is only speculation.

The pro-independence preference of a plurality of the stateside leadership and activists has complicated the process in interesting ways. This has made the stateside Puerto Rican more open to controversial issues like freeing the Puerto Rican political prisoners and supporting the ouster of the U.S. Navy from Vieques. It has also made it easier for the pro-commonwealth party to deal politically with them, while the pro-statehood party finds itself at odds with this large sector of the stateside Puerto Rican political leadership. This is a characteristic of the politics of the diaspora community’s experience that has been little studied or understood, but which continues to have a major impact on its relationship to the politics of its homeland.

The role of the stateside Puerto Rican community in determining the future political status of Puerto Rico becomes further complicated by new socioeconomic changes and the changing narrative of race in the United States. Stateside Puerto Ricans, once the poster children for the urban underclass, have developed a more layered economic reality over the last couple of decades. Whereas once the major policy agenda for the stateside leadership was the issue of persistent poverty, there are now more voices joining the U.S. left in focusing the political agenda on the plight of the middle class. But while the community’s poverty rate has dropped significantly over the last 30 years, in 2005 it stood at 23%, compared with 8% for non-Latino whites (for further comparison, in 2006, the poverty rate in Puerto Rico stood at an appalling 45%).[9]

* * *

While experiencing a persistent high poverty rate, the stateside Puerto Rican community finds itself challenged to reframe its agenda in ways that may undermine its economic base. Poverty remains a serious problem in the stateside communities of the Northeast and Midwest, but less of a problem in the newer ones in the South and Southwest. How can the stateside Puerto Rican community recast its policy priorities as it also experiences such a potential economic polarization along regional lines? And how will this affect its relationship to the politics of Puerto Rico and the status question?

The stateside Puerto Rican community has been formally a part of the United States since the annexation of Puerto Rico in 1898 and as U.S. citizens since the 1917 Jones Act, and has even had a presence within the states well before then. But along with second- and later-generation Latinos, Puerto Rican issues have been made less visible by the growing attention to the controversial problem of immigration. Although Puerto Ricans have been negatively impacted by the racist backlash from this immigration debate, policy makers at all levels of government and in the private sector have difficulty focusing on the specificities of the Puerto Rican condition and how it differs from those of new immigrants and noncitizens.

With its policy and political agendas at one of those messy crossroads, it is not particularly clear which road the stateside Puerto Rican community will be taking, now that the issue of its formal participation in resolving the status issue is no longer a matter of debate. But whether the diaspora will come down on the side of statehood, commonwealth, or associated republic is not at all clear. Independence? Well, that’s another story about the failure of a movement and the power of the United States’ new imperialism.

Angelo Falcón, a political scientist, is president and founder of the National Institute for Latino Policy (www.latinopolicy.org), based in New York City. He teaches at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs.

 

ENDNOTES

 

1 Gabriel Haslip-Viera, Angelo Falcón, and Felix Matos-Rodríguez, eds., Boricuas in Gotham: Puerto Ricans in the Making of Modern New York City (Markus Wiener Publishers, 2004).

2 Ramón Grosfoguel, Colonial Subjects: Puerto Ricans in a Global Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

3 Carmen Teresa Whalen and Víctor Vázquez-Hernández, eds., The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Historical Perspectives (Temple University Press, 2005).

4 Jorge Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2002), chapter 7.

5 Rodolfo O. de la Garza, DeSipio, F. Chris Garcia, John Garcia, and Angelo Falcón, eds., Latino Voices: Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban Perspectives on Americans Politics (Westview Press, 1992), p. 104.

6 Angelo Falcón, Stateside Puerto Rican Activist Findings (unpublished manuscript, National Institute for Latino Policy, August 2006).

7 Edna Acosta-Belén and Carlos E. Santiago, eds., Puerto Ricans in the United States: A Contemporary Portrait (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006), chapter 5.

Gabriel Haslip-Viera, Angelo Falcón, and Felix Matos-Rodríguez, eds., Boricuas in Gotham: Puerto Ricans in the Making of Modern New York City (Markus Wiener Publishers, 2004).

[2] Ramón Grosfoguel, Colonial Subjects: Puerto Ricans in a Global Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

[3] Angelo Falcón, Atlas of Stateside Puerto Ricans (Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration, 2004). The figure for Puerto Rico indicates the number of residents who identified as Puerto Rican in the census’s so-called Hispanic question.

[4] U.S. Bureau of the Census, American Community Survey, 2005.

[5] Carmen Teresa Whalen and Víctor Vázquez-Hernández, eds., The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Historical Perspectives (Temple University Press, 2005).

[6] Jorge Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2002), chapter 7.

[7][7] Rodolfo O. de la Garza, DeSipio, F. Chris Garcia, John Garcia, and Angelo Falcón, eds., Latino Voices: Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban Perspectives on Americans Politics (Westview Press, 1992), p. 104.

[8] Angelo Falcón, Stateside Puerto Rican Activist Findings (unpublished manuscript, National Institute for Latino Policy, August 2006).

[9] Edna Acosta-Belén and Carlos E. Santiago, eds., Puerto Ricans in the United States: A Contemporary Portrait (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006), chapter 5.

American Slavers: New York Immigrants Respond to Verdict in Slavery Case

 

American Slavers

NY Case Uncovers Rampant Abuse of Immigrant Workers

New America Media, News Analysis, Roberto Lovato, Posted: Dec 18, 2007

Editor’s Note: The case against the wealthy Long Island, N.Y. couple who were abusing their domestic servants made international news this week, with shocking headlines decrying the American slavery that was going on in the suburbs. But if you talk to immigrants on the streets of New York City, you’ll find that they weren’t too surprised by the mistreatment, writes New America Media writer Roberto Lovato.

NEW YORK — News of the guilty verdict against Mahender and Varsha Sabhnani, the multimillionaire Long Island couple accused of imprisoning and torturing two Indonesian maids, stunned most – but not all- New Yorkers this week.

The Big Apple’s immigrant residents were not so shocked at the revelations of torture, starvation and other depravities that took place behind the gates and walls of the homes of the fabulously wealthy.

While clearly angered and dismayed, documented and undocumented immigrants interviewed along the cold corridors of the Empire State provide a little-heard perspective on the case, a perspective that’s closest to that of the enslaved women in terms of their position on the social and economic ladder.

Standing outside the “C” train station, just a block from the neo-classical building that housed the New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War exhibit on the Upper West Side, domestic worker Lourdes Rivera reflected on today’s slavery.

“I’m not so surprised. You just listen to the women talking on the train, some are not paid, some are beaten like those women, some talk about being asked to have sex. Many are not treated well,” said the 31 year-old mother of two from Lima, Peru.

Like many immigrants interviewed, Rivera, who has lived without legal documents since arriving to New York three years ago, believes that the Long Island incident comes as a result of the extreme vulnerability she and other immigrants feel: “This happens because we’re immigrants. People know we’re immigrants and can’t talk. They shouldn’t treat us that way, but the government, nobody protects us.”

Michelle White, a Jamaican immigrant, agreed with Rivera’s assessment and wondered whether the slavery incident indicated the United States had entered a time when law mattered less.

“I thought slavery was abolished years ago,” she wondered, while standing on a Lower East Side corner facing towards the Statue of Liberty, “How can they let this happen? Why does this happen? Because we come from countries where people are desperate, that’s why. When somebody promises you a job, tells you you’re going to get paid well, you come here with stars in your eyes,” said the 34 year-old caregiver, adding, “but when you get here, you realize there are people that believe they have dominion over you. You realize you have to work twice as hard and some come here to be enslaved. Those poor (enslaved) women probably thought they were coming to streets lined with gold. It shouldn’t happen, but it does.”

As an employer, smoke and cigar shop owner Joseph Massih, feels shame that some of his fellow employers see opportunity in the lack of protection of his fellow immigrants. “It’s a disgrace that these people took advantage of people that are desperate,” said the Lebanese immigrant who has lived here for over 22 years. “I’m glad they caught [the accused slaveholders] and I hope they go to jail for life. I hire people, but don’t treat them like that.”

For his part, 29 year-old bike messenger Juan Flores looks at the headlines in his Spanish language newspaper about immigration raids and sees some of the reasons for the slavery story he’d read about on another page.

“As long as they don’t resolve the situation of those of us without papeles (papers), we’re going to keep hearing about these kinds of abuses,” says Flores. “I’m not surprised.” Flores immigrated from Tlaxcala, Mexico, where he says there are also people living under slave-like conditions in rural and urban areas.

“We left this kind of treatment in our countries. It makes me feel angry. I know people here in New York who are in similar situations. They don’t know what to do, they don’t know who they can call.” Flores says he is not confident that immigrants in the U.S. will secure legalization and other solutions to the problems that gave rise to the Long Island incident. Instead, he said, immigrants will have to look to themselves, “We’re the only ones who care enough to solve these kinds of problems. We’re isolated and need come out to the light. That’s the only way.”

NYT Columnist (also) Slams NPR’s Role in Immigrant “Witch Hunt”

Looks like to the logic of Of América may not be so barbarian after all.

This Bob Herbert column in yesterday’s New York Times excoriates NPR’s Steve Inskeep for “asking the Democratic candidates whether American citizens have an obligation to turn in people they suspect are illegal immigrants.”

Herbert does defend the media’s right to ask questions but also says that “…the last thing in the world that the United States needs is a signal from presidential wannabes that it’s a good idea to turn ordinary American citizens into immigrant-hunting busybodies.”

Most of you may have first heard this critique of NPR here. It’s good to know that we Of América are not alone in out thinking about the politics of media and migration.

December 8, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

Spies Like You and Me

By BOB HERBERT

Let the witch hunt begin. Are you now or have you ever been an illegal immigrant?

Are any of your friends illegal? Relatives?

The last place you’d expect to encounter a chilling moment is at a presidential debate sponsored by National Public Radio. But on Tuesday, there was the NPR moderator, Steve Inskeep, asking the Democratic candidates whether American citizens have an obligation to turn in people they suspect are illegal immigrants.

It was not just a question asked in passing. Mr. Inskeep pressed the issue. He asked Senator Chris Dodd, for example, about the hypothetical situation of a “citizen” interviewing for a nanny.

“You interview a number of applicants,” Mr. Inskeep said. “They all seem very nice. They seem like they would take care of the kids. But it would appear that their documents may not be in order. What would you want an American to do?”

Their documents may not be in order.

Mr. Inskeep didn’t make clear what should trigger the suspicions of such oh-so-solidly American parents, causing them to scrutinize an applicant’s papers with a thoroughness worthy of Sherlock Holmes. Might it be a skin tone darker than Paris Hilton’s? Or maybe an accent, like that of my Aunt Lottie, who came here from Barbados?

You wouldn’t have wanted to face my family if you were some rat who tried to turn in my Aunt Lottie.

I have no idea how Mr. Inskeep feels about this issue. He was just asking questions. But the last thing in the world that the United States needs is a signal from presidential wannabes that it’s a good idea to turn ordinary American citizens into immigrant-hunting busybodies.

The Democrats did not rise to the bait. Senator Hillary Clinton was especially good. Mr. Inskeep said to her, “If a citizen witnessed some other kind of crime, wouldn’t you want them to report it?”

Senator Clinton replied: “It’s a very clever question, Steve, but I think it really begs the question, because what we’re looking at here is 12 to 14 million people. They live in our neighborhoods, they take care of our elderly parents, they probably made the beds in the hotels that some of us stayed in last night. They are embedded in our society.”

She warned that listening to the “demagogues and the calls for us to begin to try to round up people and turn every American into a suspicious vigilante” would do grave harm “to the fabric of our nation.”

She couldn’t have been more correct. Enlisting ordinary Americans in a nationwide hunt for so-called illegals is a recipe for violence and hysteria, a guarantee of tragedy.

We’ve already got radio-active talk show hosts spewing anti-immigrant venom from one coast to another. Media Matters for America, a monitoring group, has noted that Michael Savage, who has the third-most-listened-to show in the nation, said the following on his July 2 broadcast:

“When I see a woman walking around with a burqa, I see a Nazi. That’s what I see. How do you like that? A hateful Nazi who would like to cut your throat and kill your children.”

When a woman wears a burqa, said Mr. Savage, “She’s doing it to spit in your face. She’s saying, ‘You white moron, you, I’m going to kill you if I can.’”

That’s what’s already out there. We don’t need national leaders adding fuel to the fires of bigotry by calling for recruits to join in a national dragnet for people who look or sound a certain way.

That kind of insidious leadership helps drive people to irrational fury over neighbors speaking Spanish at a barbecue, or a Muslim co-worker competing for a coveted promotion, or a schoolteacher with a Hispanic surname who gives a failing grade to little Sally.

This country needs to cool it on the immigration front. Solutions to immigration problems need to come from rationally thought-out and compassionate government policies, not a witch hunt by all and sundry.

It was beyond ironic to listen Thursday to Mitt Romney as he went on national television to ask Americans to view his candidacy with a sense of tolerance. “We believe that every single human being is a child of God,” he said. “We are all part of the human family.”

At the same time, Mr. Romney’s political operatives were distributing campaign material (some of it inaccurate) beating up on his opponents for being insufficiently intolerant on the immigration issue.

The U.S. has a chance in this presidential campaign to emulate the best in its history, not the worst. I have a recommendation for anyone who thinks a witch hunt for undocumented immigrants is a good idea:

Don’t go there.

ALERTA: NEW YORK PROSECUTOR, JURY LEAD WAY TOWARD ALQAEDA-IZATION OF LATINO IDENTITY

In another sign that Latinos have become the anti-civilizational Other of choice, a young Bronx man was sentenced yesterday under statutes designed to punish international terrorists. According to this story from the NY Times, a Bronx jury found Edgar Morales, a recreational soccer player and gang member, guilty of manslaughter in the killing of a little girl during a christening party in 2000. Morales, 25, was sentenced under anti-terrorist legislation signed by former NY Governor George Pataki right after 9-11.

The Times reporter stated that,

“..the State Supreme Court in the Bronx, jurors for the first time found a defendant guilty under New York’s statute, and he did not fit the stereotype of a terrorist.”

while Timothy Lynch, director of the Project on Criminal Justice at the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, stated

“Lawmakers were told after Sept. 11th that we needed new laws, and it’s become kind of a bait-and-switch, because lo and behold, they are not being used against Al Qaeda, they’re being used against ordinary street crime,”

This case, first brought to the attention of many in 2005 by former Washington Post reporter, Michelle Garcia, represents another major step towards what I’ve been calling the “Alqaeda-ization” of Latino identity, the media & legal framing of Latino subgroups - immigrants, youth, etc.- as an internal threat requiring (and justifying) a multi-billion dollar militarization within the borders of the U.S.

Viewed from the optic of the national security elite, Latinos were the logical and predictable successor to the demographically tiny South Asian population as the next anti-civilizational Other, an Other justifying massive expenditures for new prisons, multi-billion-dollar “security” systems at the border, national guard deployments and other components of the industrial, anti-immigrant behemoth that daily grows.

Cases like this one make obvious that national (in)security takes us far beyond the simplistic logic echoed in beliefs like “they’re (anti-immigrantistas) racists”, “this will pass like other anti-immigrant waves in history” or “Let’s work to get a Democrat elected and then get back to the business of immigration reform”. Such notions are overridden by the business (think Halliburton prisons, CNN advertisers and Republican/Democrat political donors) of anti-migrant hate. Dealing with this and with the unprecedented levels of “White Fear” and the stunning decline of the US power are as much or more part of the immigration problematic as winning white and black votes and crafting legislation. Failure to consider these macro political and economic factors in designing pro-immigrant movement strategy leaves the movement subject to the whims of other political interests, especially those of “Hispanic vote”-hungry Democrats.

But the relentless equating of Latinos with “invaders”, “lawbreakers” and now “terrorists” now has proponents among both Republicans and Democrats, including those who supported the Kennedy, Gutierrez and other bills that made “trade-offs.” In the best of all possible “immigration reform” worlds, some of these “trade-offs” -denial of due process for immigrant detainees and the right to Habeas Corpus, not to mention the swelling of populations held in immigrant detention centers- did nothing to attack the Alqaeda-ization of Latino immigrants. Edgar Morales was convicted as a “terrorist” by a culture, a society, a global power in decline - and other Latinos are sure to follow him if more imaginative approaches to migration politics are not found.

The cheapening of Latino, especially Latino immigrant, life is inversely proportional to the inability to make others - corporations, ICE, Democrats, Republicans - pay heavily for their politics of fear.

Given this alarming situation, any future proposals for “immigration reform” should reject out of hand any talk of “necessary compromises” and “killing the worst parts of the legislation in (Congressional) committee”. Further legitimating this new mix of national security and immigration politics should never have been on any to-do list for migrant rights.

And we really should ween ourselves of the addiction to Democrats and electoral politics as stand-alone solutions. The problem is profoundly cultural and economic at its core. That Bronx jury that convicted Morales, the Lou Dobbs base, the armies of anti-immigrant activists and others are part of a culture of decline, a very violent civilization in desperate need of clashes foreign and domestic.

Indigenous and other leaders in Latin America have taught us that one of the best ways to deal with such toxic cultures is by building social movements first - and then dealing with the superficial swamp of electoral politics.

And like our families and friends in América Latina, we here in the North will rise out of this darkness to, again, inspire the planet.

Forget that and you will, like Morales and countless others, become a prisoner -in your heart.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EVO MORALES

NEW YORK — “Why are you going to go listen to that idiot? That racist indio (Indian) can’t even talk during interviews,” snarled my blonde-haired, green eyed Cuban friend when I told him I’d be covering the visit of Bolivian President Evo Morales. He was clearly unhappy with the friendship between Morales and Fidel Castro. My friend was not alone.

Here in the North, the Bush administration regularly denies visas to indigenous, mestizo (mixed Spanish and Indian), and even white members of Morales’ cabinet. In the South, meanwhile, right-wing Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa recently published an article about Morales titled, “A New Racism Approaches the Region: Indians Against Whites.”

“To put the Latin American problem in racial terms as do some demagogues is senseless and irresponsible,” said Vargas Llosa.

Indian power ruffles feathers in the modern world.

The first time I saw Morales during his visit to New York for the United Nations General Assembly meeting this week, he was suited up as a midfielder in a soccer match on the Lower East Side. Though impressed by some of what I’d heard about the very smart reform agenda of the first indigenous head of state in Bolivia — a majority indigenous country — in 500 years, the journalist in me in was skeptical about political theater, even if it took the form of soccer, the only sport I really like.

Yet, even from a distance, he looked very much at ease, undistracted from his game despite the blaring cacharpaya (traditional Andean music) or the throngs of Bolivianos screaming “Evo!” at his slightest pass or shot. I asked Mathilde Lazcano, a Bolivian psychologist and social worker who has met Morales and who worked among indigenous populations for more than 20 years, why people were so effusive about Evo. “For most of our lives, the indigenas, the poor of our country could not express ourselves. I’m here because he (and) his movement brought to life my work,” she said, adding, “He’s the real thing.”

After the match, which his team won despite the presidente’s missing a penalty kick, he was whisked by his soccer-uniformed security crew through the crowd. He stopped for a moment and stood right near me. I studied his lanky frame, his straight hair and aquiline nose. Most striking were his intense, but warm brown eyes. He looked like a more genial version of the Geronimo pictures I grew up with. He looked “integro” or “integral” as some of my most respected Salvadoran revolutionary friends called those personifying the highest political — and personal — ideals. But my biggest surprise was when I saw how tall he was. Most Bolivianos I grew up with were short mestizos like the Chavez brothers who played on a soccer team my not-so-PC brothers in San Francisco’s Mission district named the “Conquistadores” or (Spanish) “Conquerors.” Like them, it was easier for me to identify with the Spanish and nationalist side of the mestizo equation than with the indigenous side.

The 5-foot-10-inch Evo came, it seems, to turn over the tortilla of our consciousness about Indians, race and power — and about our selves.

When I saw him on stage during a speech he gave the next day at the historic Great Hall of the Cooper Union, he started looking even taller. He nervously began by telling us that he was honored to stand at a podium where the likes of honest Abe Lincoln (another lanky president) have stood. But unlike Lincoln, he located himself in relation to not just the “intellectual and professional” and “western” tradition of power but also to the 2,000-year-old collective political tradition of the Aymara people he descended from. “For 500 years,” said Morales, “we have had patience.”

“It’s amazing how he’s able to weave and connect so many issues while connecting them back to his base,” said my friend, a highly respected former Latin American diplomat in the audience.

Evo Morales also said things Lincoln or any other U.S. president could or would never say, things like, “Capitalism is the worst enemy of humanity” or “We need to decolonize internally and externally.” I’ve never heard a head of state, certainly not inside the United States, interrogate and point out the cultural similarities between both rightists and leftists of the “West.”

Morales strikes a 180 degree difference from other indigenous South American heads of state. Peru’s Alejandro Toledo, the Stanford-trained Ph.D. and former president, championed U.S. free trade agreements and drug enforcement policies rejected by Morales. Strongly supported by the U.S. State Department and Vargas Llosa, Toledo ranked among the least popular presidents in Latin America, with 23 percent approval in polls taken by the respected Mitofsky International last year. The same polls ranked Morales among the most popular by margins of 81 percent.

It’s not just that he’s indigenous, but that he communicates honesty and centeredness, even on TV as he did during his smash-hit (raucous audience applause sounded like the fans at the soccer field in the Lower East Side) appearance on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show.

By the time I met and spoke with him on the third and final day of my time tracking him, I, like the growing number of those nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize, believed him when he looked at you and said things like, “We do not have a vengeful mentality” or “We must build a culture of life”; and I also understood why my white Cuban friend, the U.S. State Department, Vargas Llosa and a slew of others criticize Morales with such intensity: fear.

They fear him not only because he is indigenous, not only because he is a leftist in the presidential palace with a massive base of support across the entire insurgent continent; they fear him because his public and private persona, his gentle charisma and ethical approach forces them — and us — to look at the long history of violence and hate buried in our individual and collective subconscious, our top-down notions of political — and personal — modernity. He forces us all to look at the inner Conquistador — and the inner Indio.

We are ill-prepared to deal with someone who can say without blinking, “I think that indigenous people are the moral reserve of humanity.”

Though he uses state bureaucracy and other instruments of modernity, he also wields them with an unprecedented difference. He has, for example, established in Bolivia something like a Department of “Decolonization” designed to help those wanting to deal with the ravages of modernity.

As he crisscrosses, like a skilled soccer player, New York City between TV studios, skyscrapers, freeways, the 9-11 memorial and other symbols of New York life, I hope he leaves the blueprint for such a department for us to study and apply here.

EVO MORALES ON THE DAILY SHOW!

This interview with Bolivian President Evo Morales on Jon Stewart inspires as much as it makes us laugh:

Besides Evo’s inducement to save the planet, my favorite part is when he says, “Please don’t consider me part of the axis of evil.”

Univision’s monopoly on these kinds of interviews by their sometimes right-leaning hosts appears to be crumbling. I tried to do my part too.

“We Have Great Patience”: Evo Morales Speaks of & to América

I had the privilege and honor of having breakfast with Bolivian President Evo Morales this morning. He met with a small group of journalists and discussed a number of issues including the Bolivian economy, US foreign policy (better known as intervencion), the need to extradite former Bolivian President Sanchez de Lozada so he can face genocide charges, indigenous rights and constitutional reform to name a few (more detailed report after his speech at the UN manana).

Most fascinating to me is the way in which, in word, deed and by his very breath, Evo distorts the “truths” of western domination; how he and the indigenous, labor and other movements he represents short circuit the legal, cultural, economic, religious white-mestizo matrix of colonization that is the history Of América. “We’ve been subjugated for 500 years” he told us in response to a question about the obstacles to his political and economic reform program put up by the US-backed “neoliberal” opposition, adding with a smile “We have great patience.”

To hear a head of state firmly, but gently discuss the “descolonización” of the political, economic and cultural systems of the his country and the entire hemisphere -including the “intellectual” and “professional” left- is to understand why the US is trying to put up walls between us and the insurgent continent Of América. But, as he and the indigenous people of the hemisphere and planet are teaching us to act before the walls of empire, “We Have Great Patience.”

Much more on this soon.