This article is about the candidate who wants to replace IL Congressional Rep. Luis Gutierrez. Luis recently made news because of his outrageous comments about the Postville raids. Julie Myers chastised him. I don't think I want either one of these candidates?!!! Omar was one of the organizers for the Chicago May marches. I don't much hear that he has American's interests in mind... (pray for Illinois...)


Despite conflict between environmentalists and the immigrants’ rights movement, congressional candidate Omar Lopez thinks the Greens could supplant the Democrats as Latinos’ party of choice.


The Browning of the Greens

By Kari Lydersen

August 14, 2008

The most impressive thing about the Green Party’s national nominating convention, held at Symphony Center July 10-13, might’ve been how multiracial it was. In the crowd, black nationalists and young activists of all colors mingled with white hippies. Fiery former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who’s African-American, was named the Greens’ presidential candidate, and Rosa Clemente, a Latina hip-hop activist and journalist from New York, was slated for vice president.

But when keynote speaker Omar Lopez took the podium, it became clear that there’s more to the browning of the Green Party than just putting nonwhite candidates up for office. There’s a move, especially in Chicago, to incorporate immigration rights as a central issue for progressive Greens, whose focus on environmentalism has sometimes pitted them directly against immigrants.

Lopez, a Mexican-American and longtime immigrants’ rights organizer, is running for the Fourth District congressional seat against incumbent representative Luis Gutierrez, who has represented the mostly Latino district for almost 16 years and is known for his own advocacy of immigrants’ rights. A leader of the March 10 Movement, Lopez was part of the coalition that staged the massive downtown immigrants’ rights marches in 2006 and smaller May Day marches in 2007 and 2008. He’s run unsuccessfully for political office twice as a Democrat—both times against Gutierrez.

Lopez and his supporters say Gutierrez isn’t doing enough for the cause, and they’re calling on Latinos to make the Green Party their route to change. (It might be easier to do that now than ever before: Since Green gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney got more than 10 percent of the vote in the 2006 election, the party now qualifies as “establishedâ€