Yesterday I had the opportunity to be on a press call regarding health care reform and immigrants. What I heard gave me disturbing background on how undocumented immigrants were thrown out of the debate by fellow Latinos from the get because of politics as usual and how now Obama is showing himself all too willing to sacrifice immigrants (browned as Latino) as pawns in negotiations, instead of as humans. Read more…
I wonder if this woman understands…um, YOU’RE TALKING TO A JEWISH MAN!!!! Somebody who either has survivors of *real* Nazi policies in his family and/or KNOWS survivors.
While it’s a top priority for the president’s first term, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro says “the president has consistently said that he wants to start the discussion later this year because our immigration system is broken … but the economy comes first.”
The White House insisted that Thursday’s New York Times story reporting that President Obama would start addressing immigration “isn’t news.” Administration officials say the president previously told members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce that he’s always planned to start discussions on immigration reform this year.
“There are a lot of things on his plate and a lot of pressing issues relating to the economy. I don’t think he expects that it will be done this year,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday.
On the one hand, this is really irritating. I’m sick and tired of immigration reform always being cast aside, especially when horrible things like ICE raids keep happening and community members continue to live in fear.
But at the same time, in many ways, I also don’t understand the huge rush to get things done that many immigration rights groups engage in. It often feels to me like they are pushing to get things “done” so quickly that they are actually willing to concede far more than what anybody is asking for in the name of “quick.” For example, during the last immigration rounds, I know many immigration rights groups were really pushing for the proposed legislation, even though the legislation came with heavy fines nobody that I know of could actually afford to pay.
So it may actually be a mixed blessing that this legislation is going to take a while to come to fruition. It gives on the ground workers more time to mobilize and pull people/organizations together. I just hope that organizations look at this delay in the same way and take it as an opportunity to get behind the scenes work done!
A couple months after saying that he “stinks like Bush”, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is once again striking out against U.S. President Barack Obama. He’s spittin’ mad for comments allegedly made by the U.S. leader and calls Obama “pobre ignorante” (”poor ignoramous”) on his TV show Aló Presidente (video above):
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama was at best an “ignoramus” for saying the socialist leader exported terrorism and obstructed progress in Latin America.
“He goes and accuses me of exporting terrorism: the least I can say is that he’s a poor ignoramus; he should read and study a little to understand reality,” said Chavez, who heads a group of left-wing Latin American leaders opposed to the U.S. influence in the region.
Did Obama really say this? I can’t seem to find the citation anywhere, and it seems strange to me that someone who said he would sit down with Castro and Chavezand is reaching out to Iran would dare rock the boat with Venezuela, a country with which the U.S. already has a tenuous relationship. Does anyone know if this statement was actually made?
If it is true, it has absolutely zero basis in my eyes. Venezuela export terrorism? You can love or hate Chavez, but that statement is just not factual and wreaks of exaggeration and Republican scare tactics.
If you all remember during the elections, healthcare got quite a bit of air time. Every candidate was called on to offer his/her own ways to fix the healthcare crisis in the U.S., and at the time, the only ones that I thought had good solutions were the Green party and Dennis Kucinich.
Well, Obama’s gonna give healthcare a go now, he’s put together a summit in which at least 120 participants will participate in small group talk and testifying in the name of people they represent…I’m anxiously waiting to see what comes of it.
Post-racial my Rican culo. It’s disturbing enough that the only time we have heard the Obama administration speak of immigration reform it has been in the Spanish language media, where it is perceived that English speaking eyes aren’t watching or in reaction to an ICE raid. Then the Obama administration announces that it is boycotting the second World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.
The Administration will boycott the conference to protest what it deems the unfair equation of Zionism with racism in the outcome documents of the first conference held in Durban, South Africa, and now the second conference, also known as “Durban II, as well .” Other concerns cited by Administration officials, some of whom recently attended preparatory meetings in Geneva,in their justification of the boycott include a proposal to place restrictions on the defamation of religions and any language calling for reparations for slavery.
Looking at it from the perspective of a Latina whose community has seen an increase of hate crimes, I want to ask Obama, where is the change? As more and more communities of color live in dire economic conditions, not just because of the current economic crisis but because of pre-existing conditions of inequality built into the economic system, where the hell is the change? While the Department of Homeland Security is all too willing to send more militarized police to the U.S. Mexico border to help fight a drug war that the U.S. helped to create and whose enforcement is racist (not to mention imperialist) the U.S. is not going to talk about race?
Rather than join the rest of the world in Durban and in condemning the killing and discrimination on the part of the Israeli and other governments-including our own-, Obama’s boycott reflects his choice to pursue the more dangerous path to dealing with race, racism and discrimination: symbolism at the expense of real changes to very devastating policies. Such are the perils of our increasingly post-racial presidency in a racially-troubled world.
Political choices like the Durban decision or the blind eye turned to the indiscriminate killing of and discrimination against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank make one wonder if the Obama Administration has also chosen to become the black face of empire.
Now does this so called expert not really know what fisting really is? I mean, que se yo of the first couple’s sex life and it’s none of my business, pero I bet the gringa was talking about this and not this.
By now, everyone knows that Barack Obama has picked the Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.
So what’s the big deal? Evangelical pastors have been opening inaugurations for years. Look at Billy Graham. Pero, for the President-elect, with change as his motto, to choose the author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” to start up the next four years feels, well, like something we would expect from a Bush, or a McCain, or a Palin, even.
The decision to have Warren, pastor of a megachurch in Orange County, California, is supposed to be read as an act of peacemaking and bridge building, but what is Obama working towards by including someone who doesn’t believe in evolution, is an outspoken opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage? Warren equates same-sex marriage with incest.Certainly not the type of person I am interested in making peace with.
Colorado Senator Ken Salazar has reportedly agreed to be Obama’s pick for Secretary of the Interior. All that’s left for the former director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources is to pass a background check.
Pero the question always remains: Is having a Latino in the cabinet more important than having a progressive in there?
VivirLatino is a daily publication published by 2 Mujeres Media, dedicated to featuring all the latest politics, culture, entertainment of interest to the diverse and influential Latino and Latina community in the U.S.
President Obama’s original health care reform proposal was bad enough, but now the Democratic party is bowing to racist rhetoric and immigrant bashing by creating more barriers to access for immigrant families, even the “legal” ones with the Senate Finance Committee’s draft legislation. 
Colorado Senator Ken Salazar has reportedly agreed to be Obama’s pick for Secretary of the Interior. All that’s left for the former director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources is to pass a background check. 
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