Presidential Candidates on the Mini-Latino Voter Tour

Candidates Obama and McCain are gearing up to do what the mainstream media is touting as a “mini-Latino voter tour” that includes speeches at the LULAC Convention today and speeches at the National Council of La Raza’s (NCLR) convention in San Diego next week.

For discussion’s sake, let’s do as the mainstream media does and forget that the voice of LULAC is but one very well-funded voice in a cacophony made up of more than 40 million Latino voices and thousands of Latino organizations in the U.S. And, in the name of being part of this often inane (as in anybody seen that political Chupacabra - the widely-reported Latino unwillingness to vote for a black candidat e- lately?) conversation labeled “Latino politics”, let’s also ignore that lurking beneath that brown blob of a media construct called “Hispanics” in headlines and sound bites are inconvenient truths; Inconvenient truths like the fact that organizations like LULAC do not always speak for many, if not most, of us, when, for example, leaders like NCLR’s Janet Murguia or LULAC’s Ray Velarde gushed with support for disgraced former Attorney General and war criminal Alberto Gonzales.”*

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