News (Noticias) Tagged ‘Roberto Lovato’

This interview with Uprising Radio’s Sonali Kolhatkar touches upon the untouchable issues of the Latino politic: corporate and Pentagon underwriting of Latino events like the Presidential forums, the candidates’ silence on immigrant death and detention, the Pentagon’s desperate need to recruit Latino kids and other issues. Fellow guest, Nativo Lopez of MAPA and I dissect the many fictions that make up this idea of the “Latino vote” and do, I believe a decent, even good job. So, check it out here:

Uprising Radio Interview“*

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.”*

Superstar actress and singer Jennifer Lopez (J-Lo) was seen “slipping” into Barack Obama’s Senate office for what the Hill called a “mysterious meeting”. Asked by reporters about the purpose of her visit to the presumptive Democratic nominee, Lopez answered “I’m not ready to do any press yet”.

Should she decide to back Obama, Lopez would be the latest — and most famous — among the throng of Latino celebrities that have already come out in support of the Illinois Senator. Among the other Latino artists already backing Obama are the more than 20 Latin music and film stars who recently released a Spanish-language video in support of the Democratic presidential candidate.”*

“Unfortunately, the history of the United States as popularized on TV or classrooms seems like it was made by Disney,” explains journalist Roberto Lovato, who’s written on the subject for diverse publications like The Nation, Los Angeles Times and more, and also served as executive director of the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), one of America’s largest immigrant rights organizations. “It’s not real. We talk a lot about the Holocaust, but we don’t talk about Native Americans. There’s no Holocaust museum for them. We don’t have an Ellis Island for the black slaves. Most of the slaves came through Sullivan’s Island, and it should be a monument, but it’s not. A sense of history is profoundly and institutionally lacking, and so you’re going to have a population that looks at this treatment of immigrants as natural.”

Such a permissive attitude toward criminalization has led to everything from the boom in the immigrant security complex, which has turned into a billion-dollar bonanza, to the tacit endorsement of militias like The Minuteman Project, whose border patrols and presence at immigrant rights protests and rallies has caused no shortage of damage and controversy.

But for every so-called Minuteman who has showed up to inflate patriotism or disrupt undocumented day laborers at work, it seems there have been many more immigration rights supporters, including groups such as The Center for Community Change, The Coalition For Humane Immigrant Rights, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, International ANSWER, Brown Berets, and many more. That imbalance mirrors the national battle over immigration criminalization; indeed, most election-year polls have shown that the public doesn’t rate immigration as a higher priority for candidates than other topics, such as the economy or the Iraq war.”*

Editor’s Note: Electronic programs to verify employment eligibility are meant to detect those working in the United States illegally. But an unlikely coalition of unions, business organizations and conservatives fear that error-filled databases might end up impacting citizens as well. NAM editor Roberto Lovato is a writer based in New York.

Two hours after starting his new job at a food processing plant in 2006, Fernando Tinoco got fired. “I went to work, felt really good to have a new job and started going to it,” says Tinoco, a 53-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Chicago. “And then they called me into the office and told me that my Social Security number was fake,” he adds, “And then they fired me.” Apparently, Tyson Foods Inc., Tinoco’s former employer, was one of the more than 52,000 companies voluntarily participating in “E-Verify”, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program designed to identify undocumented workers by electronically verifying their employment eligibility. After the Kafkaesque experience of being hired, fired and trying to maneuver through the famously overstretched bureaucracy of the Social Security Administration to re-confirm status, Citizen Tinoco has become an outspoken critic of U.S. immigration laws’ impact on citizens. “I think that citizens need to be as careful of these new immigration laws,” says Tinoco, who now works at a school, adding, “they can ruin our lives too.” Tinoco found his concerns echoed by Jim Harper of the conservative Cato Institute, who recently wrote that “If E-Verify goes national, get used to hearing that Orwellian term: ‘non-confirmation.’””*

*From: http://news.ncmonline.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

Editor’s Note: One of every five votes in Texas was cast by a Latina, helping to sway the state toward Clinton, writes NAM contributor Roberto Lovato.

In one of the tightest races in memory, the Texas primary brought Latinos to the polls in record numbers – and many of these were women. One of every five votes in Texas was cast by a Latina; Latino men constituted only 14 percent of those who voted.

The feminization of the Latino vote in Texas benefited Clinton. As in other segments of the electorate, Clinton’s pull among women earned her 66 percent of Latina votes, compared to the 58 percent she received among Latino men.”*

*From: http://news.ncmonline.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

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.”*

*From: http://news.ncmonline.com
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

Several of the candidates smiled at the ground as if in shame. Their tense postures and nervous facial expressions made them look like undocumented immigrants being interrogated about driver’s licenses. And, when asked about the thorny issue of immigration during the first-ever Spanish language Republican Presidential debate on Univision television last night, all of the candidates took the same tack: loudly lauding “legal” immigrants while softly decrying “illegals”.”*

Contrary to what the Times tells us, such a line of questioning is not just “provocative”, but is, in fact, more like DANGEROUS. In a political environment that already lends itself to countless forms of racial profiling (and to smashing the distinction between federal and local law enforcement under the guise of immigration policy), such a line of questioning only serves to further legitimate another formerly wacky idea, an idea one could, until recently, only find in the netherworld of white supremacist websites. Even those who constantly ask me, “What don’t you understand about the word ‘illegal’?” should recognize the inherent danger in NPR’s approach.

Yesterday’s questioning of the Democratic presidential candidates around immigration seems to indicate that NPR is willing to use public airwaves to provide broader forum for formerly fringe ideas. Public airing of such questions will only exacerbate racial tensions against Latino and other migrants that even the FBI tells us are the object of a disturbing increase in hate crimes (and that’s just the tiny minority of anti-immigrant hate crimes that are even reported).”*

Late night funny man Conan O’Brien recently tickled his studio audience as he touched on immigration, a hot button topic heard with growing frequency on late night talk shows: “A man in Mexico weighing 1,200 pounds has lost almost half that weight and might enter the Guinness Book of World Records for most weight lost. The Mexican man lost the weight when the family inside him moved to America.” Then at the Emmys on September 16, O’Brien, who won an award, provided a clip of his writing team depicted as Latino day-laborers.

During a “New Rules” segment of his show broadcast in late August, liberal late nighter Bill Maher went to the well of immigrant humor: “New Rule: No more produce-scented shampoo: avocado, cucumber, watermelon. Gee, your hair smells like a migrant worker.”

Jay Leno, who has gone out of his way to tell people, “I’m not a conservative,” has also joined in. During a show in mid-September, he joked, “Well, police across the country now say they’re arresting more and more illegals who are prostitutes. But proponents say, ‘No, no. They’re just doing guys American hookers will not do.’”"*

“The National Latino Congreso draws Latino leaders from across the United States to discuss policy and electoral strategy. But the presence of representatives of Latin American governments alongside the U.S.-based Latino groups and community based organizations at the meeting raises intriguing questions about Latino and Latin American identity. NAM Contributing Editor Roberto Lovato spoke with Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez Herrera at the National Latino Congreso in Los Angeles.”*