Thread: Latino political clout grows

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... e=politics

Latino political clout grows
Convention a step toward creating national movement
- Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, September 10, 2006


(09-10) 04:00 PDT Los Angeles -- Tapping the passion that drew millions of Latinos to immigrant rights marches last spring, leaders from numerous national Hispanic organizations culminated a four-day conference Saturday with agreement on a broad political platform.

Participants called it an important step in building a unified, national Latino political movement.

"It's critical that we have unity, that our civic organizations unite to make us more powerful in our struggles," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told the roughly 1,200 participants in the National Latino Congreso. "We have more in common than the differences we may have."

Organizers said it was the first time since a 1977 Latino "congress" that so many groups had made a coordinated push to strengthen Latino political clout.

The event brought together a high-profile roster of Latino leaders, ranging from United Farm Workers Union co-founder Dolores Huerta to Villaraigosa, who was mobbed with admirers after his Friday luncheon speech, to members of Congress such as Loretta Sanchez, D-Garden Grove (Orange County), and Xavier Becerra, D-Los Angeles.

"Thirty years ago you could bring together people from five states and you could effectively say you were representing the Latino community," said John Trasviña, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Today it's more difficult to bridge the sometimes-conflicting approaches of political organizations representing diverse segments of the nation's 43 million-strong Latino population.

Indeed, Latinos make up almost 14 percent of the nation's population, but the gathering included many more southern Californians than people from other parts of the country.

The Latino electorate has grown in recent years, with a record 7.6 million Latinos casting ballots nationally in November 2004 and accounting for an estimated 6 percent of all voters.

A common refrain at last spring's rallies in Los Angeles and in Chicago, Dallas, Washington, D.C. and other cities was "Today we march, tomorrow we vote." But some observers have wondered whether activist energy would transform into a political movement, especially when many of the marchers were not U.S. citizens.

This gathering of seasoned activists, many with roots going back to the Chicano movement of the 1960s and beyond, began to take the effort a step further.

"We've seen the largest mobilizations in American history around immigration; it's the new civil rights movement," said Emma Lozano, a community organizer from Chicago. "Now we need to transform that into political power so we can change these immigration laws."

Talking with colleagues at a conference was not enough, said California State Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles.

"It's about organizing and doing the hard work," he exhorted the crowd Saturday morning. "When we leave this congress, we should plan to spend the next 60 days putting voter registration applications in people's hands."

But the conference was about more than electoral power, said Antonio Gonzalez, director of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project and a key organizer of the event.

The most burning issue on the conference agenda was to push Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform that offers illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, but the delegates also passed resolutions backing a broad range of issues, including:

-- Electoral reforms, including abolishing the electoral college and allowing for instant-runoff voting;

-- Universal health care;

-- Environmental protection, including reducing global warming and strengthening clean air and clean water laws; and

-- A national holiday to honor United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez.

Though some of these issues are not traditionally thought of as Latino concerns, they affect that community, said Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Los Angeles.

"The environment has been a concern and a lonely battle that Latinos have fought for a long time," she said. Whether we're talking about asthma or unwanted manufacturing projects that pollute, we've been in that battle for a long time."

One of the most significant challenges to Latino unity is in bridging the gap between newly arrived migrants, the majority of them undocumented Mexicans, and long-established Hispanic Americans, including some who are not sympathetic to the concerns of illegal immigrants.

But those groups seem to be converging. In a number of recent elections, including the 2005 mayor's race in Los Angeles, labor unions and other groups mobilized hundreds of immigrants, many not citizens, to go door to door and help turn out Latino citizen voters. Dolores Huerta lauded the tactic as a time-honored way to bring new immigrants into the political process.

The other challenge is bridging the divide between the Latino "street," the passionate grassroots activists who have been uncompromising on demanding full rights for all undocumented immigrants, and the longtime political activists facing the harsh realities for a pro-immigrant agenda in a Republican-dominated Congress.

With 43 million Latinos in the nation, the political agenda must be a multifaceted one, said Gonzalez. As for getting everyone on the same page?

"The goal is harmony, not unanimity," said Trasviña.

E-mail Tyche Hendricks thendricks@sfchronicle.com.

A national holiday to honor United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez

What a joke!! These people have no limits to arrogance!

This has been the case in Florida for a long time. Even in today's Miami Herald they had an article discussing who Hispanics voted for in the governor race. My university class was even told by a Hispanic lawyer who taught the Judical Policy Making class that if you are not Hispanic do not even consider running for judge in Dade County. I was furious over this comment.
Many Hispanics are uneducated and therefore only vote for another Hispanic without even knowing what the candidates stand for.

They want to make a national holiday dedicated to Cesar Chavez

Didn't I hear Chavez was against illegal immigration?

Originally Posted by jean

Didn't I hear Chavez was against illegal immigration?

Here was an article posted earlier you might want to read about Cesar Chavez.

http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=F ... ic&t=17915