TUESDAY, President Obama announced Sonia Sotomayor as his pick to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Sotomayor could be the first Latina appointed to the Supreme Court. Predictably, attacks and slurs from the Right are already flying.
THE NATIVIST LOBBY HAS INSINUATED ITSELF into the media dialogue on immigration to all our detriment. They create a false boogeyman of danger and parasitism, and promote the impression that the only response is a harsh, punitive one doled out in cuffs or a cell. The results of the February Bellingham raids are in, and put the lie to this screech of extremist thought.
LABOR GIANTS SEIU AND A.F.L.C.I.O have come to an accord on the fight for immigration reform and today proudly told the press of the unified effort, one which will seek, “finally, a principled public dialogue” and one, according to SEIU, that “does justice to our heritage as a nation of immigrants.” Get the link to the Nezua-notated liveblog of the call in this post.
THOUGH WORKING TO CLOSE Guantánamo, peppering his speech with talk of law and order, and restoring US image to the world abroad, Obama still risks muddying up his accomplishments with a blatant hypocrisy: we cannot lead the way on liberty or justice when investing in detention systems from Arizona to Iraq.
THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION seems quite capable of centrist positioning on many issues, including immigration reform. While some argue centrist position allows Obama to effectively reach consensus, immigration reform is an issue that he cannot play sides with.
THE TELESCREENS WORK ONLY IN ONE DIRECTION. The conversations are filtered, edited, neutered for your own protection. Even when we discuss such pivotal and worldshaking events as this economic malfunction we are rarely talking without misdirection. So much dialogue spat out in the service of maintaining so much division. It’s time to look to the building blocks of these quaking towers and reconfigure the entire equation.
THE NATION’S EYES are fixed upon a trembling economy. It affects our ability to survive, to thrive, and even think rationally. This crisis impacts the lives of immigrants on multiple levels, be it through provisions to the economic stimulus bill, individual lawmen exceeding the bounds of their office, or a scrambling Pentagon viewing immigrants as easy fodder for the war machine.
WE ALL LOOK TO THE NEW SEASON of politics with hope and with relief and many of us, joy. But as much as we want to simply admire the new bloom and leaf and ray of sun, let us remember (and Never Forget) that you do not plant a garden in active rot if you want a healthy harvest.
IF WE WANT TO UNITE, it cannot be by overlooking differences that stab at people and stick in their throats and veins and bellies. This unity must come about by connecting ourselves through struggle; by working together to fight the iniquities that pit most of us against each other, and all so that one or two types of persons can ascend, unfettered, to the top of the heap.
ALEXIS PAULINE GUMBS: I understand why looking at that family and imagining them in the White House makes us imagine we might finally be at home. But I have to resist that feeling. If I pretend that home is something that the state can give me in the form of a good-looking “first family” without stopping its economic, invasive, nativist violence, then I deny us all the home in the making that I believe in today and every day.
KEVIN: The Cross Road has been on my mind lately. Not because I feel that our President-Elect, Barack Obama, is at The Cross Road in the sense of selling his soul to become President, or that he is “out alone after dark” in his new role as leader of the United States. Both possibilities are there, to be sure, but that is not what concerns me now…
CARMEN D: In 2004, President George Bush garnered 44% of the Latino vote and pundits everywhere declared that “Hispanics” were conservative, and might provide a growing base of support for the Republican party going forward. It was a reasonable hypothesis, I guess…
ELLE, PHD: I expected to cry if Barack Obama won the election—everyone who knows me expected me to cry. I even had friends who called and said, “Are you crying yet?” Admittedly, I dashed away a few tears, but I didn’t really cry. The joy I felt was overshadowed by worry. And why am I letting it get to me?
MATTTBASTARD: Does it make me feel proud to see someone who reflects my biracial identity at the helm of the world’s most powerful nation? Sure—but what Barack Obama’s victory most represents to me is “an opportunity.” The margins of ‘possible’ and ‘impossible’ have been redefined. This ain’t about the man—never was.
DEAR MISTER PRESIDENT ELECT: You are too smart to pretend you don’t see all this. So I say if you do not act on it and soon, you are nodding along with this scourge that threatens both our peoples and the whole nation as a consequence. And I know I don’t need to be overly direct about this, but I will anyway:
House of Nezua
the XOLAGRAFIK theater!
