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As most mainstream US media, particularly TV but also newspapers, have pushed the Honduras story to the back burner (wait, it was never in the front burner to begin with, oh well), and the story is HUGE in Latin America and constitutes the first real challenge for Obama in confronting the recent violent/interventionist/coup sponsoring past of the United States, i was thankful to find that, once again, SOMEBODY was crossing the T´s and doting the i`s in the US media. And it was, of course, none other than Jon Stewart, from Comedy Central, who also did an outstanding job (his program did) giving a different and more normal human perspective on Irán`s crisis.

This time, again, Stewart hits it right in the head, provind that fake news can make you laugh and be more serious than regular news at the same time. How does he do that?  I don;t know, but I LOVE HIM because he actually believes his audience is smart.

Watch it here

Jon Stewart on the Honduras coup

The latino vote was the one thing that LA Mayor A. Villaraigosa and his advisors thought was going to deliver to him his party’s nomination for governor of California. They calculated that he would get the lion share of that vote, -supposedly around 25% – and with a variety of other support he could easily win the primary.
It’s hard to know if that was going to happen but now it won’t for sure, and the big question is who of the other declared candidates could get most of that vote? And are there other potential candidates, even latinos, who could take this chance to run?
André Pineda, who polled for Barack Obama in the general election last year, did some polling of latino primary voters in California –he’s not affiliated with any of the gubernatorial campaigns- but he tells me that, at this point, it looks WIDE OPEN with latinos.
“Only 23 percent of Latino voters felt very positive or very negative about Jerry Brown. Only 11 percent felt very positive or very negative about Gavin Newsom. In other words, very few Latino primary voters have strong feelings about either of the current Democratic candidates for governor”, said Pineda after I elicited his opinion on the issue.
Latino voters care about the economy and health care, added Pineda (not surprisingly, and probably very similar to other groups).
It’s hard to know whether Brown, who is now CA attorney general o Newsom, the young progressive mayor of San Francisco will be attractive to latinos. Brown has a long history, period. But he also has a long history with latinos: he was governor when the farm worker’s UFW, worked with Cesar Chavez and promulgated the UFW’s backed Agricultural Labor Relations Act, the first in the country. He also nominated judge Cruz Reynoso to the CA supreme court, the first latino in that position.
But Newsom also has some track record. As San Francisco mayor he has been sensitive to diversity and has started progressive policies such as including immigrants in his universal health care and giving i.d. cards to the undocumented. Newsom seems eager to get some of that vote, and specially getting A.Villaraigosa’s support, given the fact that immediately after LA’s mayor said he would not run for gov, he sent out a press release saying very nice things about him and put the above shown picture of the two of them on his website front page. Just something nice to do.

Shawna Forde, an anti immigrant activist tied to a Minuteman group has been accused of participating in the home invasion robbery of a man and his 9 year old daughter in a small town 10 miles north of the mexican border in Arizona. The motivation appears to have been the need to raise cash for the group, which claims to want to take care of controling the borders or at least hating mexicans as much as they can. And now, apparently, hating has led to killing. Here you can find more details.
Not much coverage of this killing has been seen on television or mainstream news in general so far. According to the paper, she is a truly dangerous individual that has been involved in previous violent crimes and has publicly threatened to do more violence on “defending her cause” which is, again, hating mexicans and immigrants in general. Brisenia Flores, 9, and her father, Raul Junior Flores, 29, were killed in the May 30 attack. Where is the outrage and the wall to wall TV coverage?
Sad and disgusting.

It seems to me that some hate crimes attract more media attention than others. For example: today’s attack at the Holocaust Museum it’s all over the place, the internet, twitter, on television, it’s BIG news. And rightfully so. What is sad is that other hate crimes don’t seem to attract the same share of media attention, at least in the mainstream media. I’ve been writing for weeks about the case of Luis Ramirez, en egregious case of hate where a mexican immigrant was beaten to death by a number of local “boys” in the Pennsylvania town of Shenandoah. Witnesses heard them scream hateful insults about “mexicans” needing to get out of town, they were initially defended in the media by local authorities and even though 2 of them were charged of several crimes, they were only convicted of simple assault. Other 2 participants have either plead guilty (in one case, guilty to a federal charge of violating the victim’s civil rights) and another one is being processed as a minor.
Thousands of people have signed a petition to request the Department of Justice charge this 2 “boys” with a federal civil rights crime. Even the governor of Pennsylvania is requesting that. But ask most TV viewers out there if they ever heard of that case. Unless they are watching spanish news, they probably haven’t. Coverage on mainstream media has been sketchy and fleeting. And that is shame, because as the Southern Poverty Center has reported, anti immigrant rethoric going on for years on talk radio and even mainstream tv (Lou Dobbs, anyone?) has been attracting the attention of “traditional” hate groups like KKK and others, who have been organizing around the issue. Here’s the report . There’s also been short blurbs on other maintream media but no real follow up. See this story.
So, i wish mainstream media would treat all hate crimes the same. If it had, most americans would know about Luis Ramirez. But they don’t.

Different groups are fighting to be the public voice for latino evangelicals, a group that is gaining in numbers and importance in the United States. It’s estimated that there are about 15 million latinos of christian or evangelical denominations, and that about a third of latino voters are evangelical.
They have their religion and values in common with the white evangelicals, but politically, they act quite different. First, they have parted ways with their white counter parts in supporting immigration reform and the election of Barack Obama -even as they strongly supported George W. Bush back in previous elections- and many are troubled by the anti immigrant rethoric as much as any decision over abortion.
But now, there are at least 2 groups vying for the leadership position of the hispanic evangelicals, and both have parted again with their white counterparts. Polls show that white evangelicals, who are mostly republican -though many young ones did not aprove of Bush as you can see here-, are not in support of confirming Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court but 2 latino groups who claim to represent evangelical latinos came out in support of her nomination.

First, see what CONLAMIC (The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders ) says in this press release distributed yesterday to the press:

THE NATIONAL COALITION OF LATINO CLERGY AND CHRISTIAN LEADERS (CONLAMIC)
ENDORSE THE NOMINATION OF JUDGE SOTOMAYOR TO THE U.S. SUPREME COURT

Judge Sotomayor is a measured jurist with bedrock family values and highly qualified for the United States Supreme Court
The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders (CONLAMIC), the largest Latino Christian advocacy organization in the United States representing over 20 thousand churches in 34 states, supports the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, currently Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, to the Supreme Court of the United States.

notice they call themselves, the “largest Christian advocacy organization in the US”. Recently Miguel Rivera, its president, told me that they represent 20,000 churches, mostly small ones. This group wants to be seen as pretty radical, calling for a boycot of the Census by undocumented immigrants to create pressure for immigration reform, which many other latino groups disagree with and consider a misguided an ineffective strategy.

The other group, The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, led by Rev Samuel Rodriguez, sent a news release today, saying this:

Hispanic Evangelicals React to Sotomayor Nomination, Republicans must walk cautiously

(Washington, D.C., Hispanic Christian Newswire) America’s largest Hispanic Christian Organization, The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC), The Hispanic National Association of Evangelicals, formally responded to the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to serve on the Supreme Court. .

“We are Hispanic and Evangelicals. First, as a Hispanic American, we celebrate her nomination. Her journey is our collective journey. Sotomayor stands as a model to all our Hispanic young people throughout America that faith, family and education can overcome the most difficult of environments and economic circumstances”, said Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, NHCLC President. “Republicans must be careful on how they oppose her. They may add to the wedge already in existence as a result of immigration reform between the party and a naturally conservative independent community.”

When you get a chance to talk to this groups, you get the feeling they don’t like each other very much. A christian scholar, Juan Martinez, from Fuller Theological Seminary recently told me that “when 2 christian latinos get together, you have 3 churches”, quoting another saying about political parties.

Seems to me he’s not too wrong.

When that whole affair about Mirthala Salinas and our Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa occurred, i personally was against making a big deal of the story. I wasn’t interested in getting that story or in La Opinion becoming too involved in it. There were rumours for a while. Eventually, the Daily News broke it and the LA Times made it bigger. I personally think that who a polititian is dating is none of my business. I don’t care about his or her personal life as long as it’s not criminal or it doesn’t impede in some way his or her job. It’s my opinion that being unfaithful doesn’t make somebody unfit for office -imagine, who could ever be fit- and, on the other hand, being faithful, doesn’t make you fit either (”W” Bush, where are thou?).
But covering this affair made our newspapers look like tabloids of the heart (revistas del corazon, in spanish). When they broke up, it was big news in the respectable LA Times. Then there was an article on their divorce, TV and everybody else followed, etc etc.
I still don’t care, frankly. But I do care about something: what was this woman thinking? Read more

Weekly Address: President Obama on Judge Sotomayor’s Experience from White House on Vimeo.

The president talks about his Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. He says he “wants to avoid the political posturing” on confirmation hearings. Good luck. He’ll get a few more white hairs. By the way, he has a lot more than when he started, doesn’t he?

Otra foto del baúl del recuerdo. Esto debe ser por 2000 o 2001, en la ultima oportunidad en que entreviste al entonces alcalde de Los Ángeles Richard Riordan. Riordan fue alcalde durante dos periodos durante buena parte de los anos noventa luego del emblemático TOM Bradley, el primer y hasta ahora único alcalde negro de Los Ángeles.
Riordan, un empresario millonario y RINO, Republican In Name Only porque de republicano tenia solo el lado de consumado negociante, era un tipo accesible y simpático con el que era fácil conversar, aunque a veces se le iba el santo al cielo y decía cosas impublicables. O al menos, que a su gente de prensa les producía dolores de cabeza.
Riordan se llevaba de la patada con el concejo municipal pero logro avanzar la reformas del Departamento de Policía, que entonces estaba en transición de aquel departamento racista de los anos “infames” del LAPD a la fuerza mas moderna que es hoy. También convoco un comité que reformo la constitución de Los Ángeles, creo los concilios vecinales e hizo lo posible porque el siguiente alcalde James Hahn, no lo fuera, porque decía que era un incompetente.
El DIA de la entrevista, al despedirnos, le pedí posar para una foto de despedida y me dijo que solo si lo dejaba hacer lo que quería desde hace tiempo. Y de ahí viene la foto.

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