LA VOZ DE KERN

Meeting an older guy who looked like me

2011-06-19T08:10:00.000-07:00

By LEONEL MARTINEZ

LA VOZ DE KERN

I was almost 40 when my father came to visit from Texas. It was the first time I’d seen him face to face.

When I reached out to shake his hand, I braced myself for whatever emotion might seize me as I met one of the people who gave me life.

But I didn’t feel much of anything.

He was just some older guy who looked a lot like me.

Much has been made of the plight of children born to single-parent families. Studies show they are more at risk for everything from teen pregnancy to drug abuse. Obviously, every child should have a stable family. And good fathers are indispensable.

But one point can’t be emphasized enough: Being raised by a single mother does not automatically mean being doomed to a life of failure, poverty and hopelessness.

I know that children with absent fathers can succeed because I am one.

An only child, I was raised by my grandmother, grandfather and mother with my uncles and aunts pitching in as big brothers and sisters. My grandfather, an oak of a man with thick, calloused hands, became my father. And this team effort must have worked a little because I’m not dead or in jail, I have a college degree, and people give me money when I write.

That doesn’t mean it was easy growing up as a fatherless son. I always ached to go to those father-son banquets at school. And I hated those get-acquainted sessions at the beginning of the year, when the teacher would stand in front of the class and ask the inevitable question: “What does your father do?”

Alone in bed at night, I would pray for my father to come back and wonder why a God who was also a Father wouldn’t grant me just that one favor.

In my teens and 20s, I confided to my close friends about how I really felt, and I raged about my father. I couldn’t understand how anyone who called himself a man could abandon his firstborn son to a life that could be so harsh.

But in my 30s, when I got married and started a family of my own, things changed. Although we say we raise our kids, in a way they raise us.

When I sneaked into my kids’ room at night to kiss them on the cheek as they slept, their pudgy chests rising and falling, I realized that my father lost much more than I ever did.

And he could never get those years back.

I pondered these things when I first met my father more than 10 years ago.

I don’t remember all that we talked about, but the conversation was clumsy. At one point, I finally took him aside and told him that I did not resent him for not being around. Time had turned the rage into acceptance, then contentment.

I like where I am in life and I have a great family of my own. How could I hate the path that led me here, however crooked?

He glanced at the ground and told me that he tried to do right all those years ago. We talked some more, and afterward, we both felt better.

He was a pleasant enough guy, and my kids really liked him, but it doesn’t feel like he’s my father.

Maybe it never will.

Although the father-son bond may never be there, I'd like to think that one day I could be friends with the older guy from Texas who has my face.

Is Obama Using Latinos on Immigration?

2011-05-29T06:28:00.000-07:00

Syndicated columnist Ruben Navarrette has been doing it for months, but now more Latino political leaders are criticizing President Obama for failure to act on immigration.

Their reasoning is this: Obama has emphasized the need for comprehensive immigration reform many times, but this is just political posturing initiated to galvanize Hispanic support. The president pledged to pass a measure that includes tighter security at the border and a path to legalization for the nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in his first year in office, but that hasn't happened.

The counterargument, of course, is that Obama can't do anything without backing from an unruly Congress.

But it turns out that may not be the case.

In a column posted Saturday, Andres Oppenheimer of the Miami Herald argues that Obama could actually take several steps toward changing immigration policy without congressional approval. These include stopping deportation of undocumented students and delaying deportation of illegal immigrant parents who have U.S.-born children.

It's a persuasive argument, and you can read the entire column here:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/28/2240616/obama-is-deceiving-hispanics-on.html

Schwarzenegger a Poor Choice for Governor

2011-05-25T17:49:00.000-07:00

Note: Sorting through some of my old columns, I ran across this one that I wrote in 2004, when a politically inexperienced bodybuilder and action movie hero named Arnold Schwarzenegger was considering a run for governor. So don't blame me for what happened. -- LM

By LEONEL MARTINEZ
LA VOZ DE KERN

I love it when immigrants succeed. That’s what America is all about, which is one reason I’ve been a big Arnold Schwarzenegger fan for more than 20 years.

I saw the film “Pumping Iron.” I devoured the Austria native’s autobiography. I watched all his movies from the little-known “Hercules in New York” to “Collateral Damage,” and I plan to catch “Terminator 3.”

As much as I’d love to see someone with 20-inch biceps and an accent become governor, I’m perplexed about all the excitement over the possibility of Schwarzenegger running for that office. At the moment, there are conflicting reports about whether Schwarzenegger will decide to run, but he’s seriously mulling the idea.

And he could succeed. In some polls, Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has done as well as more seasoned candidates. But the state is enveloped in political chaos and facing serious, perhaps unprecedented problems. In this environment, voters can’t afford to elect someone who has little political experience, no matter how likeable he comes across on camera. If he decides to run, Schwarzenegger would be one of the least qualified candidates in recent years.

So why did so many people want him to run? California’s infatuation with Schwarzenegger seems to be the latest evidence that during tough times, voters seem all too willing to confuse a carefully crafted public-relations image with a flesh-and-blood human being.

As nearly as I can determine, Schwarzenegger’s major qualifications for governor are:

A. He’s pretty buffed.

B. He stars in some cool movies where he shoots a lot of people and blows up a lot of things.

C. He’s not Gray Davis.

OK, to be fair, Schwarzenegger, 55, is an inspiring success story. Through sheer will and self discipline, he rose from obscurity in Austria to uncontested status as the world’s top bodybuilder.

As a bodybuilder, Schwarzenegger won the Mr. Olympia contest – the Super Bowl of bodybuilding – a record seven times, the last time after a five-year layoff and only a month of training. He retired from bodybuilding to start an acting career that many thought was doomed to failure, yet he became one of the world’s top action movie stars. Along the way, he became an American citizen and successful businessman.

Stories like that make most people want to stand up and cheer.

And we should.

But let’s not confuse economic success and celebrity with political savvy and extensive knowledge of the issues. Schwarzenegger may be handy with his fists, machine guns and rocket launchers on screen, but in the real world of partisan politics, you can’t simply remove the opposition with the threat of force. Congressman Bill Thomas tried it at the federal level, and it didn’t work.

Take a closer look at his politics, and Schwarzenegger seems the most unlikely of Republican candidates. He reportedly supports gun control, abortion rights and gay rights. He’s an immigrant in a party that is still viewed by many as anti-immigrant. And he’s married to, of all things, a member of the Kennedy family, television reporter Maria Shriver.

Family values? Schwarzenegger has killed more than 300 people on screen, once posed for nude photos and admits that he’s smoked pot. He once compared weight-lifting to sex, and he missed his father’s funeral in Austria because he had a bodybuilding competition.

Values aside, Schwarzenegger’s only major political success came when he spearheaded the successful effort to pass Proposition 49, which funds after-school programs. That may be an admirable accomplishment, but it doesn’t earn him the office of governor of a state with the seventh largest economy in the world.

So if Davis gets booted in the recall, which seems more and more likely, who should be governor?

Let me put it this way. I was at a political gathering in Visalia a few years ago, and they keynoter was Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante. In the middle of his speech, Bustamante happened to use the word, “Governor.”

Then he paused for a few seconds, as if pondering the meaning of the word.

“Governor,” he repeated. “I like the sound of that.”

Me too, Cruz, me too.

Guadalupe, the Pretty Lady of December 12

2010-12-11T09:43:00.000-08:00

By LEONEL MARTINEZ

LA VOZ DE KERN

It was the pretty lady that got my attention.

I was perhaps three or four years old and fidgeting at Mass with my grandmother. As the story goes, I kept turning around toward the rear of the church and smiling. When my grandma turned to see what was going on, she saw that I was looking at a young girl sitting in the pew behind us. But it wasn’t the young girl I was interested in.

Instead, my attention was riveted to the girl’s hand, where she held a holy card with the image of the pretty lady that caught my eye, the Virgin of Guadalupe.

“Do you want it?” the girl finally asked. I smiled and nodded yes, so the girl gave it to me.

I was a toddler who should have been more interested in building blocks than religion, but my mother tells me I took the holy card and kept it for years.

What is it about the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe that fascinates even Latinos like me, who are three and four generations removed from Mexico, where she is said to have miraculously appeared more than 470 years ago?

The fascination runs deep. A statue of Guadalupe watches over Cesar Chavez’s grave in Keene. Her image appears on murals throughout east Bakersfield. She adorns calendars, clocks and T-shirts at barrio stores and is even etched on people’s bodies in tattoos. Virtually every Mexican-American has a relative – male or female and on the U.S. or Mexico side of the border or both – named “Guadalupe.”

My grandmother, although raised Protestant, is buried beneath a grave marker etched with Guadalupe’s image. A wooden image of “La Virgen Morena” stands guard over my bedroom in east Bakersfield. And when I asked a reporter from Mexico City once why, although he claimed to be agnostic, he still revered the Virgin, he responded, “Well, that’s a different story.”

For centuries, the Guadalupe story was communicated primarily through symbols and oral tradition. Every Mexican church has at least one statue of La Virgen as do most homes. Like other Mexican-Americans, I heard the Guadalupe story frequently as child and believed it wholeheartedly, like everything else my parents told me about faith and religion. But when I got to my teens, the story began to fade in importance. It became a cute yarn from long ago and far away that held little meaning for me.

Now 50 years of age, I am a die-hard Guadalupano who see the Guadalupe story as a historical, cultural and spiritual event that holds profound meaning for Mexican-Americans in the United States as well as our relatives south of the border.

But I came to that conclusion gradually. Because the U.S., where I was born, isn’t immersed in the story of Guadalupe like Mexico, I’ve embarked for the last three decades on a journey of rediscovering the symbol and its power for Latinos.

The bare-bones Guadalupe story is this: Between December 9 and 12, 1531, the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to a 57-year-old Aztec Indian named Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin on Tepeyac Hill, a poor area near Mexico City. The Virgin told Diego she wanted a church built on that site, healed his uncle of a disease and left a miraculous image of herself emblazoned on Diego’s cloak. The cloak is displayed at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe to this day, a brown-skinned woman with hands folded as if in prayer and surrounded by golden rays of light.

First, let’s get the obvious question out of the way. Did the Guadalupe story with its apparitions, healings and miraculous image really happen? I believe it did. Various books and other publications that discuss scientific studies of Juan Diego’s cloak – called a “tilma” -- are available for those who want to do their own research.

But I also believe that a more important question is this: What does the Guadalupe story mean?

"But I also believe that a more important question is this: What does the Guadalupe story mean?"

When I was a teen-ager, the stern Augustinian priests at St. Augustine Church in Lamont emphasized the importance of believing the story as a matter of faith without necessarily knowing and appreciating its significance. As a result, it seemed to have little connection to everyday life. To learn its meaning, I had to turn to a man who has made Guadalupe his life’s work.

Theologian and Guadalupe scholar Father Virgil Elizondo is perhaps the premier American expert on the event. In various books, classes and lectures over the years, Elizondo has argued that the Virgin of Guadalupe is more than a pretty picture to be used for personal piety. A closer look at the icon reveals that it symbolizes the unlikely spiritual and ethnic synthesis of Europeans and Indians that occurred after the conquest of Mexico.

“In Latin American Catholicism today, (the Virgin of Guadalupe) is both the feminine aspect of the face and heart of God, which was absent from the Christianity of that period, and the Mother of Jesus in the Americas; the mother of the new man or woman of the Americas,” Elizondo wrote in the Harper Collins Encyclopedia of Catholicism.

The conquest of Mexico was clash between two violent and powerful cultures that saw the world in vastly different ways. Each group had its own language, religion, set of values and mythologies. While the Spanish, for example, were horrified that the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice as part of their religion, the Indians were puzzled that the Spanish would gladly kill not for their deity, but for property and riches.

In the end, the Spanish’s superior technology helped them practically level Aztec civilization, and the Indians were expected to abandon a way of life their ancestors had followed for centuries. In that historical context, the Catholic missionaries’ attempts at religious conversion were doomed to failure, and fail they did.

Until Guadalupe.

In the years after the apparition to Juan Diego, millions of Indians were baptized into the new faith. How did a simple image that appears on the humble cloak of a poor and uneducated Indian change history? Because, Elizondo maintains, it communicated a message of unity and compassion in a language that would have been understood by both the Aztecs and their conquerors.

Interpretations of the various different aspects of the Guadalupe story would fill a library, but here is a brief summary of the most important points as I see them:

• Her physical appearance is both European and Indian. Her brown-skinned face, for example, appears to be a combination of both ethnicities, which would make her mestiza, a person of mixed race. Like most Latinos today.

• Her clothing is European, but many of the related symbols are Indian. Much has been made, for example, of the fact that the Virgin of Guadalupe appears to be pregnant. And tied around her waist is the traditional Aztec symbol of motherhood, a black band. The Spanish-language word for pregnancy, “encinta” – literally “on the band” – reportedly originated with that tradition.

• The Virgin appeared on a mountain that was already known as the dwelling place of the mother goddess Tonantzin and spoke the native language of the Indians. While the Spanish told the Indians that virtually everything about them was inferior, especially their religion, the Virgin spoke to Juan Diego on their holy site and in their language. In fact, one theory has it that the name of “Guadalupe” itself is a corruption of the Aztecs’ language for “She who crushed the serpent’s head.”

• The earliest written account of the Guadalupe story, called the Nican Mopohua, mentions several times that Juan Diego was a macehual, a low-class laborer. Because he would have been considered a nobody, it’s significant that the Virgin of Guadalupe chose to appear to him instead of to someone with wealth and/or political power.

• Despite the Spaniards’ insistence that only they possessed religious truth, and the Indians’ religion was false, the Virgin instructs Juan Diego, an Indian, to convey her message to Bishop Juan de Zumarraga, a Spaniard. This is a complete reversal of the typical approach to evangelization.

"How did a simple image that appears on the humble cloak of a poor and uneducated Indian change history?"

All this may be fun to discuss and debate at parties, but discovering the depth of meaning behind the Guadalupe story eventually prompted me to ask some uncomfortable questions about its ramifications for today.

Who are the macehuales, the nobodies, of modern society? Illegal immigrants? The aging? Farm workers? How are they treated, and what can I do to make things better?

What are the cultural, ethnic and religious clashes occurring right now in my own city? Blacks and Hispanics? Christians and those of other faiths? Latinos and non-Latinos? What can I do to promote acceptance and discussion instead of intolerance and animosity?

In what areas am I so certain that I posses the only truth that I refuse to listen to any truth I might receive from others? Politics? Family life? Religion?

It seems that Guadalupe is just as good at afflicting the comfortable as she is at comforting the afflicted.

Yet the image retains its power.

When my wife and I married 22 years ago at San Clemente Mission in east Bakersfield, we chose to place the traditional bridal bouquet not before another statue of the Virgin Mary, but before a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Many years later, when I delivered a speech on the meaning of Guadalupe, my children dressed in full costume and acted as living representations of La Morenita and Juan Diego. They were only playing roles, of course, but in truth, I see La Virgencita in their brown faces every day.

And now in the chubby face of my 19-month-old granddaughter.

For La Morenita will always hold a special place in the hearts of Latinos, no matter which side of the border they may call home.

And I still gaze every day upon the image of the pretty lady that captivated me as a toddler. My fascination with her has grown stronger every year.

Only now, she is more beautiful than ever.

Latinos View Huerta as Among the Most Recognized Hispanic Leaders in the Nation

2010-11-15T18:37:00.000-08:00

Bakersfield's Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers union, is among most recognized Latino leaders in the nation.

That was among the findings of a new survey released on Monday that concluded, among other things, that the overwhelming majority of U.S. Hispanics believe they lack a national leader like they had in the days of the UFW's other founder, Cesar Chavez.

When asked which person they viewed as "the most important Latino leader in the country today," nearly two-thirds of Hispanics surveyed said they did not know, and another 10 percent said no one.

Among the names mentioned by others who took the survey was Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, with 7% of respondents saying she is the most important Latino leader in the country. Also named were U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) of Chicago, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Noticiero Univision anchor Jorge Ramos.

However, when presented - in a separate question - with the names of eight prominent Latinos, 28 percent said they recognized Huerta, who heads the Dolores Huerta Foundation. Other names and the percentage of those who said they were familiar with them were:

Sotomayor - 67%
Ramos - 59%
Villaraigosa - 44%
Gutierrez - 38%
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson - 35%
U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) of Tucson, Arizona - 13%
Janet Murguía, president and chief executive officer of the National Council of La Raza - 8%

The findings come from the 2010 National Survey of Latinos, a bilingual set of questions posed to 1,375 Hispanic adults conducted before this month's mid-term elections by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

The complete survey can be viewed here: http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=131

A biography of Huerta is available here: http://dhuerta.hostcentric.com/dh_bio.htm

Latino City Council Candidate Rudy Salas May Be Poised to Make Bakersfield History

2010-10-30T18:55:00.000-07:00

BY RAY GONZALES
SPECIAL TO LA VOZ DE KERN

Television reporter Jose Gaspar noted in a recent article published in the Bakersfield Californian that history could be made in Bakersfield in the November 2 elections. He notes that the first Latino may be elected to the city council. Rudy Salas appears to have the best shot of winning the First Ward seat being vacated by long-time Council member Irma Carson. Since the 1950s, this has been a seat traditionally held by blacks. Well-known holders of the seat like Vernon Strong, Gabe Solomon, James Childs, Lynn Edwards and currently, Irma Carson have made sure that the black community had a voice on the council.

With only an 8.4 percent of the city’s population, the black community has nevertheless worked hard over the years to retain the seat. Latinos, on the other hand, with 42.2 percent of the city’s total population, have never held a city council seat. Historically, city officials have always deferred to the interest of the black community over the needs of the large Latino population. One reason for this may be that in the past, blacks have been more active politically and to a degree, more militant in seeking representation. History certainly justifies some aggressiveness on the part of the black community.

Latinos, on the other hand, with 42.2 percent of the city’s total population, have never held a city council seat.

Initially, the first black to represent the First Ward was Dell Rucker, a local mortician appointed to the seat to fill a vacancy by the city council. Since his appointment in the 1950s the seat has always been held by a member of the black community, despite it’s having a majority Latino population. This is to the credit of the black community that took advantage of the political process while many Latinos in the ward were either noncitizens or not registered to vote. For its part, the city of Bakersfield, lead by the council members, has seen to it that the Latino community has been divided up so as to dilute its potential political strength. How else can one explain the fact that with 42 percent of the city’s population there has never been a Latino elected to the city council?

After the 1990 census, the Latino Redistricting Committee, which had much success in creating the present Kern County 5th supervisorial district, and the assembly and senate districts that have been held by Latinos, also attempted to draw a favorable Latino ward for the city. The committee even went so far as to sue the city of Bakersfield. The idea was to get then black councilman Lynn Edwards of the First Ward and Pat DeMond, a Democrat of the Second Ward, to agree to ward boundaries that would allow for a favorable Latino ward. The idea was to attempt to protect Edwards in his seat while also carving out a Latino-heavy ward. The committee efforts failed as Edwards refused to cooperate, as did Pat DeMond and the Democratic Central Committee of the county. The suit was dropped for a number of reasons and the First Ward continued to be controlled by the black community.

This year, hopes are high for a victory by Salas in the First Ward. First of all, there are four blacks running, a fact that has the potential of splitting up the black community vote. Secondly, Latinos in recent elections have been participating more aggressively in the election process. And third, to his credit, Senator Dean Florez has done much to groom young Latinos for eventual political runs. Supervisor Mike Rubio was a staffer for Dean as is Rudy Salas. This not only has given these young men a sound education in the political process, but has also aided them in the fundraising necessary to run a viable campaign these days. Salas has out-raised his opponents in the city council race by almost four to one. He is a collage graduate with a wholesome background and keen understanding of the issues necessary to represent all of the citizens of the ward, not just Latinos.

If Salas wins on Nov. 2, it will certainly be historic for the city of Bakersfield. In fact, this election may prove to be one of the most historical political events the Latino community of Kern County has seen in a very long time. Potentially, Mike Rubio has a good chance of winning his state senate race; Fran Florez will likely win her assembly race; newcomer Andrae Gonzales is favored to win a Bakersfield City School District board seat.

And if Rudy Salas wins his city council race, it will truly be historic.

The last time anything so dramatic happened was in 1972, when a portly Ph.D. from Bakersfield shocked the state by becoming the first Latino to win a legislative seat in the San Joaquin Valley.

Former State Assemblyman Ray Gonzales, of Bakersfield, is an occasional contributor to La Voz de Kern. In 1972, he became the first Latino to win a legislative seat in the San Joaquin Valley.

Whitman: Deport My Former Housekeeper

2010-10-29T07:06:00.000-07:00

GOP candidate Meg Whitman said her former housekeeper - whom she once described as a member of the family - should be deported because she is an illegal immigrant.

"Well, the answer is: It breaks my heart, but she should be deported, because she forged documents and she lied about her immigration status," she said on Fox News as published in Friday's Los Angeles Times.

Whitman is 10 percentage points behind Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown in the latest poll, and her blunt comments could sway some voters one way or the other.

The candidate has insisted that she didn't know her nine-year employee, Nicandra Diaz Santillan was in the U.S. illegally until the housekeeper admitted it last year. When Whitman found out, she fired Diaz Santillan.

But Whitman took that stance a step further Wednesday when she said the former employee should be booted back to her home country.

"The law is the law, and we live in the rule of law." said Whitman. "It's important."

Will voters interpret her latest statement on Diaz Santillan as a lack of compassion, or a commitment to enforcing the law?

I think most people will see it as a lack of compassion, and Whitman will lose votes. Here's why.

As a reporter for 15 years and a columnist for five, I found that readers could take a tough stance on illegal immigration in the abstract. When I wrote about legislation that sought to legalize the undocumented, for example, the barrage of e-mails, letters and voice mails was almost immediate.

Deport them all. Prosecute them as criminals. Even shoot them in the streets. These were some of the comments I often received.

But when I once wrote an column on the plight of an illegal immigrant family with names, faces, and the usual emotional trials, opinions softened. One reader who typically ranted against illegal immigration argued that this particular family should be allowed to stay in the U.S. because "They are invested in America."

People respond to human stories. Painting these immigrants as human beings instead of mere statistics seemed to touch readers' hearts.

With that in mind, it's difficult to see how Whitman can benefit politically from her latest statement on Diaz Santillan. We know the former housekeeper's story in detail from media coverage.

Latino voters, who tend to get riled enough to go to the polls when immigration is an issue, already back Brown over her by two to one. Whitman's remarks will only solidify their opposition to Whitman.

But I think the rest of the voters will recoil, too.

And the statement will cost cost her valuable support.

You can read more about Whitman's comments here:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-campaign-20101029,0,5645135.story

Can U.S. Catholics Support Pro-Choice Candidates in the Coming Elections?

2010-10-23T12:04:00.000-07:00

If you listen to some church leaders, U.S. Catholics cannot vote for a Democrat without risking the fires of hell.

That's because - this line of reasoning explains - to do so would be to support the Democratic party's more permissive stance on issues such as abortion and gay marriage. And this goes against official Catholic teaching.

Some Catholic bishops have gone so far as to say that Catholics who cast their ballots for a pro-choice politician - and that's almost always a Democrat - should not present themselves for Communion at Mass. Others have insisted they would refuse to give Communion to Catholic candidates that support abortion rights.

With the November election only two weeks away, that theme is likely to reemerge in the sermons delivered at many U.S. dioceses for the next two Sundays, causing anger and confusion among those in the pews.

But that puts Latinos in a particularly difficult spot.

While almost seven of 10 Hispanics in the U.S. are Catholic, two-thirds of Latino registered voters say they plan to support the Democratic candidate in their local congressional district, according to a survey released recently by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center.

So what's a good Latino Catholic boy or girl to do?

For one, read the excellent analysis of this issue published recently in the Jesuit magazine America. Written by M. Cathleen Kaveny, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, the article is an excruciatingly detailed and nuanced dissection of whether Catholics can morally vote for pro-choice candidates.

The article can be found here: http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=12531

Newt Gingrich Reaches Out to Latino Voters

2010-10-18T08:51:00.000-07:00

He supports comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to legalization for the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

He is making concerted efforts to reach out to Latino voters.

He may run for president.

His name: Newt Gingrich.

That is perhaps not the name most people associate with any of these positions, but Gingrich just completed a wide-ranging interview with Univision's Jorge Ramos. Covered were subject such as the Hispanic vote, the DREAM Act, President Obama's performance, the role of Catholicism in the public square - Gingrich is a recent convert - and Cuba.

In all, Gingrich came off as more moderate certainly than his fellow GOP members who belong to the Tea Party. But is that because he plans to challenge Obama in the next presidential election?

"...by March I think we'll make a decision."

Gingrich was noncommital.

"Well, I think we've both discussed it, and we want to get through this election," he said. "We want to do everything we can to help elect Republicans in the next month. Then we're going to look at it, and by March I think we'll make a decision."

Read a transcript of the entire interview here:

http://www.mexidata.info/id2837.html

Meg Whitman's Former Housekeeper Could Become a Potent Symbol for Latino Voters

2010-10-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

So what if Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman hired illegal immigrant Nicandra Santillan Diaz as her housekeeper years ago?

Whether Whitman knew about her immigration status or not, why is that single issue so important?

One reason is that it shines a light on an economic system that officially discourages illegal immigration, but actually depends on the cheap labor undocumented workers are more than willing to provide.

"(Diaz) is becoming a national symbol."

"Diaz is becoming a national symbol," Dolores Huerta, co-founder with Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers, told the San Franscisco Chronicle. Huerta also heads the Dolores Huerta Foundation, based in Kern County.

Contrary to the stereotype, Hispanics don't consider immigration the only issue or even the most important one. Like most Americans, they ranked education, jobs and health more important in a recent survey conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center.

But here's the twist: The issue could motivate them to go to the polls, where Hispanics historically have supported the Democrats. The Pew survey also found that Latinos who discussed immigration with others were more motivated to vote than those who didn’t.

And that means that if the housekeeper issue resonates emotionally with Hispanic voters, it could have a major impact on the state gubernatorial election in November. According to data cited by the Chronicle, if Whitman does not capture at least 35 percent of the Latinos, she would lose.

Read more about the symbolic significance of this issue in a front-page Chronicle article available here:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/10/MN161FQC2U.DTL&ao=2

News Flash: Latinos Still Don't Like GOP

2010-10-06T18:35:00.000-07:00

Latinos don't like Republicans.

You can always start a fight in a Bakersfield bar by saying something like that. Some of the nastiest e-mails and phone calls I got in my five years as a newspaper columnist came after I discussed that topic.

When they weren't brimming with colorful metaphors and epithets, these messages tried to convince me that Hispanics should be Republicans because they ostensibly are social conservatives on issues like abortion and gay rights.

All preaching aside, the problem is that whatever they should be, it's true and provable that at present, Latinos don't like Republicans.

Hispanics have allied themselves with the Democrats since the Kennedy administration. And although they flirted with the GOP under President George W. Bush - who courted them with a sensible approach to immigration reform that his own party wouldn't support - they came running back to the Democrats to support President Barack Obama.

That despite the predictions of some pundits that Latinos wouldn't support an African-American. Please.

Now comes more evidence that this historical alliance is stronger than ever.

Two of three Latino registered voters indicate they plan to back the Democratic candidate in their local congressional district, according to a study released this week by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center. Slightly less than one of four intended to support the Republican candidate.

In fact, if Hispanics cast their votes today, the Democrats would win almost as soundly as they did in the last presidential election, when Latinos supported Obama for president over John McCain by 67% to 31%.

I'm not making this up, so don't call me.

The problem, of course, will be actually getting them to the polls. Hispanic registered voters who are Democrats are apparently much less motivated than their Republican counterparts to vote.

Will an emotional issue like immigration animate them?

You can view the entire Pew Survey here:

http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/127.pdf

Farmworkers to Meg Whitman: I Am Nicky

2010-10-04T18:53:00.001-07:00

Don't use us and dump us.

That's the message dozens of farmworkers plan to deliver to Republican California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman on Tuesday at a protest scheduled to take place at Whitman's Los Angles and Cupertino headquarters.

Whitman supports a guest-worker program to temporarily import hundreds of workers to work on the nation's farms, but opposes a measure that would allow them to remain in the U.S. legally.

Whitman's critics say that's tantamount to legal slavery.

Many of the workers will carry signs that say "I am Nicky." The slogan alludes to Whitman's former housekeeper, Nicky Diaz Santillan. Santillan alleges Whitman knowingly hired her even though she was an illegal immigrant, refused to pay some of her wages, and summarily fired her to prevent political damage.

The issue threatens to siphon valuable Latino votes from the Republican candidate. Although Whitman has spent millions wooing Hispanics in the Spanish-language media, the fact remains that her immigration stance is much less forgiving of illegal immigrants. And that issue resonates with Latinos, many of whom have relatives, friends, or neighbors who are undocumented, according to surveys.

According to the Keene-based United Farm Workers, the union founded by labor leader Cesar Chavez, many of the newly imported agricultural guest workers under Whitman's plan would not return home after their legal employment finished. That was the case with many workers during the 1942-1964 bracero program and under the existing H2A agricultural guest worker program.

Former state Governor Jerry Brown, who supported Chavez and the UFW since the 1970s, skewered Whitman's plan in a Fresno debate last week.

“You don't just bring in semiserfs and say do our dirty work, and then [tell them] we're finished with you like an orange and just throw it away,” he said. “That's after you've squeezed it. That's not right!”

Brown supports the bipartisan Ag JOBS bill, negotiated by the UFW and the nation’s growers, which would give farm workers the opportunity to earn legalization by continuing to work in agriculture for a certain amount of time.

Information about the UFW is available here:

http://www.ufw.org

Issue of Whitman's Housekeeper is Typical of Attitudes Concerning Illegal Immigration

2010-09-30T05:52:00.000-07:00

Whether California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman knew her housekeeper was an illegal immigrant or not, the issue exemplifies many Americans' attitude toward illegal immigration.

Celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred trotted out a tearful Nicky Diaz-Santillan at a Los Angeles press conference on Wednesday. Diaz, who spent nine years working for Whitman, claims she was fired in 2009 after asking Whitman and her husband, Griffith Harsh, for help to earn legal status.

Allred claims Whitman knew about Diaz being undocumented years earlier, but did nothing. Whitman insists she didn't know about her housekeeper's immigration problems.

If Allred's allegations are true, which is far from certain, they could cost Whitman valuable support among voters in what is shaping up to be a tight race. A recent Los Angeles Times/USC poll showed Brown ahead among voters by five percent, but other surveys have found the gap between the two to be much narrower.

Add to that a heaping measure of irony. Whitman has taken a tough stance on illegal immigration, saying in a debate with Democratic opponent Jerry Brown this week that she opposes comprehensive reform that includes a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants. Brown supports such a plan. And Whitman has sunk millions of dollars into advertisements in the Spanish-language media.

Unless someone comes up with written documents to prove Diaz's claims, the issue threatens to become a political knot that's almost impossible to untangle.

But whether Whitman knew about Diaz or not, the development typifies Americans' schizophrenic behavior toward illegal immigration. We think it's a bad thing that should stop ... as long as we get to keep our poorly paid maids, nannies, groundskeepers and farm workers.

Read more about Whitman's housekeeper problems here:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-us-california-governor-housekeeper,0,975174.story

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/09/29/whitman.allegations/index.html?iref=allsearch

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/29/brown-responds-to-whitman-allegations/?iref=allsearch

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/30/MNHK1FLKLF.DTL

Will Latinos Still Embrace Jerry Brown?

2010-09-27T06:36:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, as part of the entrance procession before a Catholic Mass at the United Farm Workers union headquarters in Keene, I noticed a trim, graying gentleman beside me also waiting to proceed to the altar and holding a copy of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act. This is the groundbreaking legislation that gave farm workers the right to unionize and provided state oversight of agribusiness.

When he turned, I noticed it was former California Governor Jerry Brown.

That was a fitting gesture.

Brown signed that historic legislation into law in 1975, but it was only one of several actions he took supporting Latinos. He is perhaps best known for marching with UFW founder Cesar Chavez. But Brown also put Cruz Reynoso on the California Supreme Court, the first Hispanic to hold that position, and appointed Mario Obledo as secretary of wealth and welfare, the first Latino a modern state cabinet

It's safe to say that in the mid-1970s, his support among Latino voters was unparalleled. Forty years later, Hispanic votes are more crucial than ever in his campaign against Republican opponent and former eBay executive Meg Whitman.

But do Latinos still remember Jerry Brown? It depends on who you ask.

A Field Poll released this week showed that Brown was only three points ahead of Whitman among Latino voters, 43 to 40 percent, in the state gubernatorial race. But a Los Angeles Times/USC poll released only days later shows Brown with an almost 20-point lead among Hispanic voters.

Why the big difference? I have no idea.

But I'll be interested to hear the experts explain it in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, you can read the Field Poll results here:

http://www.field.com/fieldpollonline/subscribers/Rls2353.pdf

You can also learn more about the Los Angeles Times/USC poll here:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0927-poll-20100927,0,5308121.story

Serious Issues Behind Colbert's Chuckles

2010-09-23T17:47:00.000-07:00

By now, most people know that comedian Stephen Colbert and United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez testified before a House subcommittee on Friday about the plight of migrant workers.

It would be easy to laugh off that part of the hearing - dubbed "Protecting American's Harvest" - as a publicity stunt for "The Colbert Report," which airs on Comedy Central.

It clearly is partly that, but behind the chuckles, there are some serious issues. Among them:

According to the National Agricultural Workers Survey, conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor, the average farm worker earned between $10,000 and $12,499 a year in 2000 and 2001. That means slightly less than a third of these laborers lived in poverty.

Slightly more than half were illegal immigrants although organizations such as the UFW say that percentage is actually much higher.

Eighty-one percent spoke Spanish as their native language, and on average, the highest grade reached was the seventh.

Yet the path to legalization as well as educational and economic success has been blocked for illegal immigrant field laborers.

Congress has rejected the UFW-backed AgJOBS bill, which would give those already in the U.S. the right to earn legal status by continuing to work in agriculture. And let's not forget that Gov. Schwarzenegger recently vetoed state legislation that would have provided field laborers with the same overtime as other workers.

Thankfully, the U.S. has no taste for mass deportations. Illegal immigration slowed in the last few years with the sputtering economy, but it will not vanish as long as jobs are available.

It was not without difficulties, but in the end, the nation has always benefited from its waves of immigrants. If we refuse to allow these foreign laborers to move into the mainstream, the U.S. will be all the poorer.

Read more about Colbert's appearance here:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sc-dc-0925-colbert-congress-20100924,0,735678.story

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/09/24/colbert.house.immigration/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

DREAM Act Hopes Dashed in U.S. Senate

2010-09-21T18:49:00.001-07:00

On Independence Day two years ago, I attended a rally at east Bakersfield's Heritage Park in support of the DREAM Act, or “Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act.”

The legislation would have allowed illegal immigrant high-school graduates to become temporary legal residents – qualifying for in-state tuition and financial aid – if they spent two years in college or the military.

One of the first things I heard was one of my favorite Catholic priests, Father John Schmoll of St. Augustine Church in Lamont, emphasize in Spanish that "No human being is illegal."

In God's eyes perhaps, but not in the eyes of his less-forgiving creatures.

The latest version of the DREAM Act died Tuesday when Republicans blocked a defense bill in the Senate. Democrats could not obtain the single Republican vote they needed to move forward on the defense bill, attaching the DREAM Act as an amendment.

The vote was 56 for and 43 against, and they needed 60 in favor.

Many of the kids that would have been affected have lived in the U.S. since they were infants. They are as American as I am, and I was born at Bakersfield's Kern Medical Center when it was still known as Kern County General Hospital.

They are paying for the sins - if they can even be called that - of their parents who made the decision to come to the U.S. illegally, sometimes many decades ago.

They are invested in America. America should invest in them.

How can denying them a brighter future be justice for anyone?

Read more about the rejection of the DREAM Act here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/21/AR2010092106095.html

Number of Illegal Immigrants Plummets

2010-09-17T19:52:00.001-07:00

Why do illegal immigrants come to the U.S.?

To have babies, obtain social benefits, and live off the American taxpayer, according to one school of thought. In fact, that idea is so prevalent, legislation has been introduced before Congress ending automatic U.S. citizenship for so-called "anchor babies," those born to illegal immigrants on American soil.

But a study recently released by the respected Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization that seeks to improve understanding of the U.S. Hispanic population, suggests differently.

The study shows that the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. has actually decreased with the country's ailing economy. In fact, that number has fallen by eight percent to 11.1 million in March 2009 from a peak of 12 million in March 2007, according to the estimates.

The decrease represents the first significant reversal in the growth of that population over the past two decades. Is it a coincidence that as the economy ground to a halt, and the number of jobs dwindled, illegal immigrants left the country?

I don't think so.

The lesson: Illegal immigrants come to work. And when jobs aren't available, they'll stay home or go somewhere else.

Read about the study or download the entire document here:

http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=126

Muslim Experience Mirrors That of Catholics

2010-09-15T15:48:00.000-07:00

They have a funny foreign religion with funny rituals and funny houses of worship.

So they can't be trusted to be loyal to America.

Accusations against Muslims in 2010?

No, criticisms of Catholics at the turn of the last century.

With the recent furor over plans to build a religious center and mosque near Ground Zero in New York, anti-immigrant fervor has erupted once again. But it's nothing new to American history.

Catholics have felt the sting of nativism in the past, and I'm glad a few reporters and writers are starting to make the connection with those who profess Islam.

Armed with such a historical perspective - something many opponents seem to lack - protesting the construction of the mosque becomes much more difficult.

Some examples:

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/aug/27/catholics-muslims-mosque-controversy/

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1003399.htm

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA PROCLAIMS MARCH 31, 2010 AS CESAR CHAVEZ DAY

2010-03-31T19:45:00.000-07:00

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, A PROCLAMATION

The rights and benefits working Americans enjoy today were not easily gained; they had to be won. It took generations of courageous men and women, fighting to secure decent working conditions, organizing to demand fair pay, and sometimes risking their lives. Some, like Cesar Estrada Chavez, made it the cause of their lives. Today, on what would have been his 83rd birthday, we celebrate Cesar's legacy and the progress achieved by all who stood alongside him.

Raised by a family of migrant farm workers, Cesar Chavez spent his youth moving across the American Southwest, working in fields and vineyards, and experiencing firsthand the hardships he would later crusade to abolish. At the time, farm workers were deeply impoverished and frequently exploited, exposed to very hazardous working conditions, and often denied clean drinking water, toilets, and other basic necessities. The union Cesar later founded with Dolores Huerta, the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), still addresses these issues today.

After serving in the United States Navy, Cesar Chavez became a community organizer and began his lifelong campaign for civil rights and social justice. Applying the principles of nonviolence, he empowered countless laborers, building a movement that grew into the UFW. He led workers in marches, strikes, and boycotts, focusing our Nation's attention on their plight and using the power of picket lines to win union contracts.

"The love for justice that is in us is not only the best part of our being, but it is also the most true to our nature," Cesar Chavez once said. Since our Nation's earliest days of independence, we have struggled to perfect the ideals of equal justice and opportunity enshrined in our founding documents. As Cesar suggests, justice may be true to our nature, but as history teaches us, it will not prevail unless we defend its cause.

Few Americans have led this charge so tirelessly, and for so many, as Cesar Chavez. To this day, his rallying cry -- "Sí, se puede," or "Yes, we can," -- inspires hope and a spirit of possibility in people around the world. His movement strengthened our country, and his vision lives on in the organizers and social entrepreneurs who still empower their neighbors to improve their communities.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2010, as Cesar Chavez Day. I call upon all Americans to observe this day with appropriate service, community, and education programs to honor Cesar Chavez's enduring legacy.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of March, in the year of our Lord two thousand ten, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fourth.

BARACK OBAMA

United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez and Paul F. Chavez, Cesar Chavez’s middle son and president of the Cesar Chavez Foundation, issued these statements following a meeting at the White House with President Obama and members of the Chavez family plus Rodriguez and UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta on what would have been the farm labor and civil rights leader’s 83rd birthday.

From Arturo S. Rodriguez, President, United Farm Workers of America:

We thank President Obama for honoring Cesar Chavez on this important day for millions of Americans. We thank the President for his concern for the farm workers who feed our nation every day, and for his strong support of immigration reform. No other change is more urgently needed, and would be more lasting. We will share with President Obama 10 letters written to him by farm workers from across the country, telling him about the realities and challenges of their lives.

Cesar Chavez has been honored in hundreds of communities across the nation. His birthday is an official holiday in 11 states. But the best way to honor Cesar is by helping the farm workers to whom he dedicated his life, and by using our lives to serve others less fortunate than us.

From Paul F. Chavez, President, Cesar Chavez Foundation:

We thank President Obama for having the Chavez family and farm worker movement join him today. We recognize how his dedication to community and public service parallels my father’s. Cesar Chavez’s message was not just for farm workers or Latinos; it was universal: By helping ordinary people do extraordinary things, he inspired farm workers and millions of others from all walks of life who never worked on a farm to believe in themselves, to do things they would never have thought possible.

It was epitomized by the words from my father’s 1972 fast in Arizona, “Si Se Puede!” (“Yes We Can”), which have been adopted by activists worldwide.

But my dad was also convinced we have a moral duty to give ourselves selflessly for others in a cause that’s bigger than we are. He said, “Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and our own.”

That’s how a man with an eighth grade education who adopted a life of self-imposed poverty nonviolently challenged, and overcame, one of the richest industries in California and in the process inspired millions to social and political activism.

EVANGELICAL LEADER RIPS FOX NEWS POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AS BULLY

2010-03-21T17:57:00.000-07:00

BY LEONEL MARTÍNEZ

LA VOZ DE KERN

ANAHEIM - Evangelical leader Jim Wallis labeled Fox News commentator Glenn Beck one of the "media bullies" and insisted that social justice remains an important part of the teachings of Jesus despite Beck's criticism of churches that emphasize political activism.

"Whatever the media bullies do to us, we just try to respond like Jesus would do to them, but we must say that social justice is integral to the gospel," said Wallis, drawing strong applause.

Wallis added that within the last several days, he received several calls from pastors saying that they started preaching more about social justice in their churches "because Glenn Beck told them not to."

Wallis - a nationally renowned columnist, theologian, activist and author - spoke at the annual, Religious Education Congress sponsored by the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese Friday through Sunday at the Anaheim Convention Center. The annual event bills itself as the largest of its kind in the world, hosting more than 300 talks and drawing about 40,000 participants.

He was responding to Beck's suggestion on his show that viewers should abandon churches that focus on social or economic justice because they are code words for "communism and Nazism."

That statement prompted a media scuffle between the two. Wallis responded by calling for a boycott of Beck's show and inviting the TV show host to a cordial discussion, while Beck blasted Wallis as a Marxist and vowed to broadcast a weeklong exposé of the Protestant clergyman.

But Wallis, dressed in his trademark dark suit with no necktie, sounded immovable Saturday afternoon as he delivered a speech titled "When Did the Market Became God" to a primarily Catholic audience. It was a receptive group. The Catholic Church has a tradition of social-justice teaching that stretches back to at least 1891, when Pope Leo XIII issued a document affirming the dignity of work, the right to private property, and the right to form labor unions.

Joking that he is a “convert to Catholic social teaching,” Wallis diagnosed the nation's recent economic crisis as primarily spiritual and insisted that economic problems cannot be permanently eradicated if they don't deal with deeper issues like consumerism, materialism and plain greed.

The nation's banks, for example, responded to a financial bailout by handing out about $150 billion in bonuses to top executives, an amount that could have erased the California budget crisis or provided health insurance to 30 million Americans, Wallis said.

"This is an issue not just of politics, but an issue of worship," he said. "It's a spiritual issue...the worship of the market has become very ecumenical, and we have all worshiped at the altar of the golden calf."

The mottos that led to the crisis, said Wallis, were those such as “greed is good," "it's all about me," and "I want it now," while the remedy is the application of traditional American principles like "enough is enough," "we're in this together," and making decisions based on how they will affect future generations.

Wallis also outlined what he called the two principles of God's economy: There are enough resources if people share them, and it's crucial to care for the poor.

In fact, he said, archeological digs have shown that when the gap between rich and poor grew wide in the nation of Israel during Old Testament times, God raised prophets to tell Israel it was going astray.

“God gets angry at the disparity,” he said. “This crisis needs the values embedded in our traditions.”

WILL PARRA-FLOREZ ASSEMBLY RACE TURN INTO THE FAMILY FEUD PART II?

2010-02-15T08:22:00.000-08:00

BY RAY GONZALES

LA VOZ DE KERN

The 30th Assembly District is a typically gerrymandered legislative district. It is heavily Democratic and was expected to be a safe district for a Democrat, especially a Latino/a Democrat. This was the case since Dean Florez, and then Nicole Parra held the seat after it was redrawn following the 1990 and 2000 census. But in 2008, the long-simmering dispute between the Florez family and Parra clan led to the election of Republican Danny Gilmore. Ms. Parra, the incumbent refused to endorse the Democrat, Fran Florez, Dean’s mother, and instead endorsed the Republican. For this, Parra received a lucrative state appointment from Gov. Schwarzenegger. The origin of the dispute goes back to the rivalry between Dean Florez and then Kern County Supervisor Pete Parra. The ultimate rupture between the feuding families culminated when Florez’ administrative assistant, Mike Rubio, defeated Parra for the supervisorial position. Things have never cooled off in the Latino version of the family feud.
Now, in the 2010 Assembly primary, we may be treated to another round of smack-down raw politics thanks to the Parras and the Florezes. This is truly unfortunate to say the least. It is embarrassing enough that the two most prominent Latino political families in Kern County will put on display the worst version of electoral politics the region has seen in a long time; but beyond that, it is a tragedy for the Latino community and all the voters in the 30th Assembly District. The recent publication in the Bakersfield Californian of the financial contributors list for both Pete Parra and Fran Florez demonstrates that the political family feud that we will all witness will be paid for mostly with political money from outside the-district. Both campaigns are being funded heavily by special interest political funds that hardly reflect grassroots support for either candidate.
In the 2008 election, Fran Florez and Danny Gilmore together spent well over $5 million in the race. The vast majority of the money came from out of the district. The notion that “all politics are local” could hardly be said of the campaigns in the 30th over the last two decades. The result of these high-dollar campaigns being waged by both parties means that whoever wins the seat is more answerable to lobbyists and special interest than to the citizens of the district. This is a tragedy for all of the citizens of the district, but more significantly for the Latinos.
After the 1990 census, the Kern County Latino Redistricting Committee prevailed upon the California Supreme Court to approve 30th Assembly District’s design so that a Latino could win that seat. As a result, it was filled by a Hispanic until 2008. With most of east Bakersfield and cities like Arvin, Lamont, Delano, Shafter, Wasco, McFarland in the district, the population in the district is both heavily Latino and Democratic. Kern County is 47.1 percent Latino, a plurality in the county. But as Dianne Hardisty recently pointed out in an article on Latino political participation for MAS magazine, Latinos represent less than 17% of likely voters while white, non-Latinos represent 68% of those likely to vote. Certainly, no district in the state is the property of any group, ethnic or otherwise, but it is a political reality that legislative districts have been designed to favor Republicans, or Democrats, minorities or otherwise, over the years.
The tragedy of the continuing Florez-Parra dispute is that the candidates spend more time raising money than politically educating the electorate. Clearly, the 30th Assembly District needs dramatic voter registration drives, citizenship efforts and political education in the broadest sense. The candidates should have a sense of missionary zeal, which would lead them to hit the streets in efforts to get people, especially the many Latinos in the area, to become registered voters so that they can determine their own political destinies.
The candidates should articulate for the potential voters what they intend to do to improve education opportunity for the children of the district, what they plan to do to improve job opportunities, to reduce gang violence and improve neighborhood safety. They should speak to the issues of political reform such as curbing the influence of lobbyist and special interest in the political process. They should pledge to refuse money from outside the district for their campaigns. Finally, they should present themselves to the electorate as local citizens determined to respond to the needs of the citizens of the district, not to the wishes of the party bosses in Sacramento and financial fat cats who too often determine the outcome of our local elections. Giving the citizens a good reason to vote is the best way to get citizens to participate. Taking sides in a family feud is not a good motivating factor.
Former State Assemblyman Ray Gonzales, of Bakersfield, is an occasional contributor to La Voz de Kern. In 1972, he became the first Latino to win a legislative seat in the San Joaquin Valley.

REPORT: OBSTACLES FACED BY LATINO YOUTH DEFY WIDESPREAD STEREOTYPES

2009-12-28T14:07:00.000-08:00

BY LEONEL MARTÍNEZ

LA VOZ DE KERN

Young Latinos in the U.S. face several daunting problems, but many of these obstacles defy commonly believed stereotypes.

That’s the conclusion I drew from a report issued this month by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan think tank that seeks to improve understanding of the U.S. Latinos and their impact on the nation.

As the veteran of countless verbal cage fights with readers who are certain that I’m Che Guevara with a PC, I can tell you that the nastiest of these adversaries almost invariably have one thing in common: A lack of facts. So they usually substitute emotionalism, believing victory belongs to those who yell the loudest. Well, this isn’t right-wing radio.

The Pew people provided some meaty data for sober debate when they polled more than 2,000 Hispanics ages 16 to 25 for the 162-page “Between Two Words: How Latinos Come of Age in America.” Some of the troubling findings:

Young Latinos are much more likely than other American youths to drop out of school and to become teenage parents. In fact, young Hispanic females have the highest rates of teen parenthood of any major racial or ethnic group in the country.
Hispanic youth are more likely than white and Asian youths to live in poverty.
They have high levels of exposure to gangs.

I can hear the friends of the Federation for American Immigration Reform now. (These are the immigration restrictionists -- often quoted by news outlets -- that are classified as a hate group by the civil rights group the Southern Poverty Law Center.) Of course, Latinos face these problems, they’ll say, because the group is made up primarily of those backward, criminal, disease-carrying immigrants.

I’ll ignore the immigrant stereotypes for now and say that since two-thirds of Hispanic youngsters were born in the U.S., they’re not immigrants. The rapid growth of this demographic group is especially obvious when you realize that in 1995, only about half was composed of immigrants.

What’s more, U.S.-born Latino youth actually do worse than their immigrant counterparts in a number of areas. Some examples:

In the past year, native-born Latino youths were about twice as likely as the foreign born to have links with a gang, get into a fight, or carry a weapon.
U.S.-born Latinos were more likely to wind up in prison. That should give a nervous rash to those convinced that American prisons are filled mostly with immigrants, illegal and otherwise.

So where does that leave the blame-it-on-the-immigrants crowd?

The news isn’t all bad for those of us born north of the U.S.-Mexico border. U.S.-born Latino youths are much more proficient in English than the foreigners and are less likely to drop out of high school, live in poverty and become teen parents, for example.

The report also indicates that American Hispanic youths as a whole are satisfied with their lives, optimistic about their futures and place a high value on education, hard work and career success.

I don’t pretend to have any answers to the problems faced by Latinos in the U.S. But I know that solutions start with facts not stereotypes. And the Pew report is a good place to start.

The entire report can be viewed at:

http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=117

STUDY DISPUTES MYTH OF INSTANT ASSIMILATION AMONG IMMIGRANTS

2009-10-22T18:57:00.000-07:00

BY LEONEL MARTÍNEZ

LA VOZ DE KERN

Sometimes, I’d like to be a time-traveling sociologist.

That way, I could go back to the turn-of-the-century U.S. and research the type of claim I hear from people all the time: My grandfather came to the U.S. from Europe in 1901, immediately shed his immigrant culture, learned flawless English in five minutes and became a professor of Shakespearian literature at Princeton.

OK, that’s a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea. And these claims usually end with the question “Why can’t Hispanics do that?”

In other words, “Why don’t Latinos assimilate?”

Countless hard drives brimming with data from the U.S. Census Bureau and dozens of well respected think tanks say otherwise, but why let actual facts and data change your mind?

Those who pose these questions usually believe that in some ideal past, European immigrants assimilated almost instantaneously. But they argue that their Hispanic counterparts resist assimilation because they are spoiled by bilingual education in the schools, the prevalence of Spanish-language media, and the increasing number of businesses that cater to Spanish speakers.

Did past immigrants assimilate quickly? Fewer people crunched numbers back then, and it’s hard to reconstruct the habits immigrant groups that existed more than a century ago. How can we verify any of this without boarding a time machine to the past?

A Wisconsin college professor did the next best thing. He plowed through census data, newspapers, books, court records and other materials from 1839 to the 1930s, focusing on the characteristics of German immigrants in his state.

And guess what he found? Many German newcomers took their time learning English or never learned it at all and lived in communities that spoke only German. In fact, many thrived for decades while speaking only the mother tongue.

So much for instant assimilation.

University of Wisconsin-Madison instructor Joseph Salmons and recent UW-Madison German Ph.D. graduate Miranda Wilkerson published their findings last year in the academic journal “American Speech.” They found that German remained the primary language of business, education and religion in parts of Wisconsin well into the early 20th century. Amazingly, some second- and third-generation German adult immigrants born in Wisconsin still spoke only German.

More amazingly, they did it without being stalked by CNN’s xenophobic commentator Lou Dobbs.

Sorting through numbers from the 1910 Census, the researchers also discovered that in many Wisconsin communities, approximately one of four residents spoke only German. In fact, after 50 or more years in the U.S. many of these immigrants were still monolingual.

A few of the study’s other findings:

People who complain that too many people speak a foreign language in the U.S. workforce should hear this: Things weren’t much different at the turn of the century. In fact, speaking only German in Wisconsin didn’t prevent most people from getting and keeping a job. That’s because many teachers, clergymen, retail merchants, blacksmiths, tailors, yard foremen, surveyors, farmers and laborers also knew only German.

Folks who wring their hands over the number of grade-school students who don’t speak English should realize that in the 1890s, some correspondence from Wisconsin school districts to the office of the state school superintendent was still entirely in German. And this is after the passage of an 1889 law that required schools to teach in English.

Those who gripe about the increasing number of Spanish-language television and radio stations and newspapers should know that Wisconsin had more than 500 German newspapers throughout its history, including many that published through the 1940s.

Professor Salmons deserves a hearty “danke schön” to for digging out these facts. While they won’t settle the assimilation debate, they at least show that assimilation in the past was more complex and time-consuming than we were often led to believe.

As for Latino immigrants, they will continue to assimilate despite the horror stories circulated by Dobbs and his buddies. They know that English is the language of success in America.

They only need what their European counterparts had at the turn of the last century: Time.

LATINOS ARE REALLY TAKING OVER! (AT LEAST IN NOVEL "AMERICA LIBRE")

2009-09-15T19:01:00.001-07:00

BY LEONEL MARTÍNEZ

LA VOZ DE KERN

Texas police shoot an innocent Latina in a drug raid. Rioting sweeps across the Southwest, and cities throughout the nation erupt in flames.

Vigilante groups respond by launching drive-by shootings in the barrios, and gang members retaliate with their own firepower. Finally, one congressman succeeds in passing legislation that erects large walls around inner-city barrios, transforming them into quarantine zones like the Japanese internment camps of World War II.

But the violence escalates until the truth is inescapable: The United States is in an all-out Civil War against Latino insurgents.

That’s the plot of the novel “America Libre” by Cuban-born author Raul Ramos y Sanchez. And Ramos is scheduled to appear in Bakersfield on Wednesday for a panel discussion of the social issues raised in the book.

The event, which will be held at 6 p.m. at China Palace, 4142 California Ave., is sponsored in part by the Heritage of America Educational and Cultural Foundation, a nonprofit organization that coordinates educational and cultural programs. The discussion, which is part of a Southern California book tour, occurs on Mexican Independence Day, September 16, and at the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month, September 15 to October 15.

“I’ve had Latinos say that my book is subversive,” said Ramos in a telephone interview with La Voz de Kern. “But from the Latino community, it’s been almost universally accepted.”

Calling his book a “cautionary tale,” he explained that it focuses on the dangers of extremism whether from the right or the left. But that doesn’t mean armed insurrection couldn’t happen if extremism isn’t held in check.

“When everybody’s afraid, they do some pretty awful things,” Lopez said. “Little girls shouldn’t go walking in the woods at night because there are big, bad wolves out there.”

Jess Nieto, founder and director of Heritage of America, agreed, saying that the increasing amount of violence against Hispanics makes the issues raised in Lopez’s book timely. Groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, renowned for its legal battles against the Ku Klux Klan, say hate crimes against Latinos have surged in many areas of the country.

“I think the initial premise (Lopez) started out with is not that far from reality,” said Nieto.

And Ramos, the author, knows about extremism.

The graphic designer and advertising writer was born in Cuba under dictator Gen. Fulgencio Batista. His parents divorced, and his mother brought her son to the U.S. in 1957, while his father stayed behind to battle the Batista regime.

Ramos began his project a few years ago as the script for a television movie called “Two Americas” that received the input of scholars from Latin America, Spain, and the United States. But when the funding dried up, he began to write a book instead.

“The book turned out to be completely different than the movie,” he said.

After five months as a self-published edition, America Libre, was acquired by Grand Central Publishing, which was formerly Warner Books and features thriller writers such as David Baldacci and James Patterson.

The publishers also acquired the sequel, El Nuevo Alamo, scheduled for release in 2010. The final installment of what is planned as a trilogy has yet to be named. "America Libre" won the International Latino Book Award for best novel.

Although some may be unnerved by book's plot, it is not biblical prophecy, but an extended parable about what could happen if the nation is seized by xenophobia because of the growing Hispanic population.

Set about 10 years in the future, the 373-page paperback sounds many believable themes. English is declared the nation’s official language, and government no longer conducts business in any other language. All immigrants – whether in the U.S. legally or illegally – are deported. Hispanics and their spouses are classified as “Class H” and tossed into internment camps.

Through it all, the main character, Manolo “Mano” Suarez, an unemployed mechanic and military veteran, finds himself questioning his assumptions about what it means to be a patriot and to defend your culture. Finally, he is drawn into the insurgency.

The panel discussion scheduled to discuss the issues raised in “America Libre” is free of charge and open to the public. Those who plan to attend are asked to RSVP at 325-5098.

THE UNITED FARM WORKERS OF AMERICA: WHY WE LOVED SENATOR TED KENNEDY

2009-08-26T20:44:00.000-07:00

By UFW President Arturo S. Rodriguez and

Paul F. Chavez, President Cesar E Chavez Foundation

Since Sen. Edward M. Kennedy championed the cause of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement after picking up the mantle from Sen. Robert F. Kennedy following his assassination in 1968, no national political leader has more effectively and selflessly embraced the farm workers’ cause.

Year after year, Sen. Kennedy stood shoulder to shoulder with the farm workers in good times and bad during marches and rallies, political campaigns and legislative battles from the halls of the United States Senate to the dusty farm fields of California.

As United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta once said, Robert and Ted Kennedy “didn’t come to us and tell us what was good for us. All they said was, ‘What do you want? And how can I help?’ That’s why we love them.”

From helping convince Congress to end the infamous Bracero Program in 1964 to becoming the driving force in recent years behind the United Farm Workers’ historic AgJobs immigration reform bill in the U.S. Senate, Sen. Kennedy never failed to respond to the farm workers’ call for help.

In the last several years, Sen. Kennedy was a leading author of the landmark AgJobs bill, negotiated by the UFW and the nation’s agricultural industry to allow undocumented farm workers in this country to earn the permanent legal right to stay by continuing to work in agriculture.

The best way to honor Sen. Kennedy’s commitment and selflessness is to continue advancing the farm workers’ cause he unequivocally supported.

Comment by UFW Co-Founder Dolores Huerta

This is a great loss for the Latino community because Senator Kennedy was such a steadfast advocate and supporter of the the Latino community and farm workers specifically.

We should honor his memory by joining in the fight for universal health care and immigration reform.

Viva Ted Kennedy!

DAILY NEWSPAPERS LOSING CREDIBILITY IN BATTLE TO SURVIVE IN DIGITAL AGE

2009-08-11T15:24:00.000-07:00

If someone asked me who taught me the most about writing and reporting in my 15 years as a professional journalist, the answer would be easy: Mike Trihey.

Trihey is a former reporter, assistant city editor and city editor for the Bakersfield Californian who switched to television news after being fired from the newspaper in 1994. He is also the most savvy newsman in Bakersfield. So with daily newspapers shrinking, cutting and folding all over the nation, I asked Trihey for his thoughts on the subject.

His response: “Deadline??”

The following is Trihey’s personal perspective on the plight of daily newspapers and is accompanied, at right, by a response from Californian Chief Executive Officer Richard Beene.

-- Leonel Martinez

BY MIKE TRIHEY

SPECIAL TO LA VOZ DE KERN

Newspaper journalism in Kern County will take another big hit next week: The Bakersfield Californian will shrivel to tabloid size. That means the size of each page will be about half what it once was.

It’s the local angle on the withering of the newspaper industry as a whole. This sort of thing is happening everywhere. American newspaper readership is shrinking almost as fast as the front page of The Californian.

The current recession is described as the worst since the Great Depression. It has hammered all kinds of businesses, but these are especially tough times for newspapers. Some of our nation's holiest institutions are gone or in danger of folding and the best and the brightest in the business seem unable to stop the slide.

Maybe it’s just a prayer, but I think not even the stupidity of modern publishers can kill off such a necessary institution. Someone is going to figure a way to make Internet advertising profitable. Newspapers will survive if they have a commodity to sell when this happens.

That product is their credibility, and right now they’re losing it quickly.

Readership started to decline decades ago and fell off a cliff in the ‘90’s. But subscriptions don't support newspapers. Advertising does. And that's where the Internet really hurt papers. On top of that, big retailers are eating little ones. Every merger or acquisition or bankruptcy means less advertising.

This is the worst recession since the Great Depression. But lots of papers survived even the Depression. And, yeah, the Internet is a huge challenge to newspapers. But papers survived the introduction of radio and then television.

One national study found last year that, of those surveyed, only 39 percent said they “read a newspaper yesterday.” That was down 4 percent from two years earlier. Here’s the thing: That includes online readership.

It’s not that readers are leaving print newspapers for online editions because the Internet is easier or even because it’s free. Readers, young and old, are abandoning newspapers in all forms.

And why shouldn’t they? Some modern newspapers, faced with competition from the Internet in general and social networking sites in particular, are turning their sites and even their printed pages over to ragtag collections of press releases and mindless blogs that seem to abandon all the old rules of responsible journalism. If readers want to read that sort of thing – and many, including me, do – they can go to something like Facebook to read the mindless blogs of people they know.

The Bakersfield Californian has a proud tradition of challenging authority in this town, of holding officials to account for the conduct of public business.

That was then. This is now. Now, the only coverage some events get is the verbatim publication of news releases written by officials the paper used to scrutinize. Now, press releases by public relations professionals are posted and sometimes printed as articles by “contributing writers.’’

And there’s apparently more to come.

In his blog announcing the change to tabloid size five days a week, Californian President Richard Beene said, in answer to a reader’s question, ‘’We still have terrific writers and reporters who will continue to do excellent journalism, and while that is hugely important, it is no longer the end game. There is a world of relevant local content out there that exists outside of every newsroom. Yes, some of it comes in the form of local blogs, or local writers, or sister publications or many new forms of user generated content that exist outside the traditional newsroom.’’

He’s right that the newspaper still has excellent journalists. Lois Henry is the best columnist The Californian has ever had -- bar none -- at least in the 30 years I’ve been a subscriber. Gretchen Wenner and Steve Swenson, among others, do honor to the profession.

But Beene is wrong, real wrong, when he says staff reporters doing excellent journalism is ‘’no longer the end game.’’

Credibility and independence are, and always will be, the end game.

‘’Relevant local content’’ not produced by staffers appeals to many readers. Beene is right: It’s an important part of the newspaper of the 21st Century. Just like the comics and the horoscope.

But the bread and butter of all news media of any century, the end game of the profession, must be reporting produced under the exacting standards of ethical journalists and scrutinized by independent editors. Citizens in a participatory government need the dependable, impartial information they get from professionals – not just from each other.

There needs to be a bright line between this kind of journalism and the user-generated content we see in print and online newspapers. There isn’t. As publishers try to make less look like more, they blur the distinction between the two.

Readers understand the rules that govern traditional staff reports. But what standards are imposed on blogs or stories by ‘’contributing writers?’’ Is there any kind of impartiality expected? Even more confusing, what are the rules for a staff blog? Is a blogging staffer required to get both sides of a story, as he would if he were writing a more traditional article? Readers don’t know the answers to these questions, and that erodes the credibility of papers.

Internet publications around the world are experimenting with online advertising. Micro payments, subscriptions, penny-page-views – there are a hundred theories. Someday one of them, or a combination of them, will prove successful.

Newspapers that have kept their credibility when that day comes will survive.

LA CUCARACHA CARTOONIST MAKES LIVING PUTTING SARCASM ON PAPER

2009-07-29T18:38:00.000-07:00

BY LEONEL MARTÍNEZ

LA VOZ DE KERN

When Lalo Alcaraz gets mad, people laugh.

Or at least, that’s how it frequently turns out.

Alcaraz, a nationally syndicated cartoonist, got ticked when pundits predicted Latinos wouldn’t support then-presidential candidate Barack Obama because he is black. So he drew a cartoon of Obama dressed as legendary Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, complete with sombrero and rifle.

He got upset that Republican senators grilled U.S. Supreme Court candidate Judge Sonia Sotomayor about her racial views. So he inked a little something showing one of the GOP members wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood.

He almost lost it when the New Yorker magazine featured on its cover a cartoon image of President Obama as a stereotypical terrorist, fist-bumping his wife, Michelle. So he parodied the cover, renaming the publication “The Red Necker.”

For a guy that makes a living by being funny, Alcaraz gets pretty miffed at the world.

“I’m just chronically pissed off, and I like to amuse myself,” said Alcaraz in a telephone interview from his Los Angeles home. “I get pissed off when people aren’t pissed off.”

If that’s the case, he better stay peeved. For Alcaraz, putting sarcasm on paper has brought national recognition.

Over the last 15 years, his work has been published in the The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Variety, Hispanic Magazine, Latina Magazine, Mexico’s La Jornada, and several other publications. Alcaraz’s books include “Latino USA: A Cartoon History,” “Migra Mouse: Political Cartoons on Immigration,” and a collection of his daily comic strip, “La Cucaracha.”

He is perhaps best known for the syndicated comic strip La Cucaracha, which provides a satirical view of the world, often through the eyes of a goateed, Chicano militant cockroach who dresses in the khaki pants and the Pendleton wool shirt of a cholo.

What subjects does he prefer? Those that needle conservatives.

In one La Cucaracha installment, for example, Alcaraz portrays members of the Minuteman vigilante group spewing terms like “frijole fondlers,” “tortilla tossers,” and “welfare suckin’ border monkeys” while swearing they’re not racist.

In another, he laments the commercialization and trivialization of Hispanic Heritage Month by depicting a street fiesta where a Klux Klansman peddles “Karne Asada” tacos, and the Anti-Immigration League hosts mariachi music.

Yet another strip published around Halloween 2008 shows people with eyes wide, running in horror from the scariest thing they have ever seen: A trick-or-treater costumed like former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as president.

Stunts like that have earned Alcaraz stacks of hate mail, some racist. But he said he doesn’t take it too seriously since even his friend, Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez, catches anti-Mexican flak despite the fact that his roots are in Italy and Spain.

As if the written abuse from La Cucaracha isn’t enough, Alcaraz also does cartoons that center on political and social issues or current events. One of his latest focuses on the feet of singer Michael Jackson as he dances on his tiptoes. But Jackson, who died recently, isn’t on a lighted stage. He is surrounded by clouds.

Alcaraz’s favorite works over the years? Perhaps those on Migra Mouse, a rodent U.S. Border Patrol agent born during the uproar over California Proposition 187, which sought to deny many benefits to illegal immigrants. He also loved another cartoon entitled “How to Spot a Mexican Dad” that listed typical characteristics such as “big ol’ bigote,” “tattoo he won’t talk about,” and “Tres Flores brilliantine in his hair.”

“People would tell me, ‘Oh my God. I love the cartoon, but when did you meet my dad?’” Alcaraz laughed. “It’s basically my dad.”

Alcaraz, 45, is the son of Mexican immigrants and grew up in San Diego, straddling the cultures of Mexico and the U.S. In 1987, he earned a bachelor’s degree in art and environmental design from the San Diego State University.

In 1991, he graduated with a master’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley, but not before helping launch the satirical Pocho magazine. It was sign of what was to come.

Alcaraz started La Cucaracha in 1992 as an occasional feature in the LA Weekly newspaper. It was born as the “L.A. Cucaracha,” but when Alcaraz got a chance to draw a daily strip with regular characters, he dropped the periods, and the strip took off. At its peak, La Cucaracha was carried by more than 60 newspapers.

In recent years, that number dropped as the recession hit, some newspapers folded, and others had less room for cartoons. In 2007, the Los Angeles Times decided to dump La Cucaracha, but furious readers inundated the newspaper with complaints, Alcaraz said. After only 36 hours without the militant cockroach in its pages, the Times relented.

Alcaraz is also the co-host of the popular satirical talk show, “The Pocho Hour of Power,” broadcast Fridays at 4 p.m. at KPFK-FM 90.7 in Los Angeles and co-founded the political satire comedy group Chicano Secret Service.

How long will he wield the wicked pen? Alcaraz isn’t sure, but he’s not interested in doing anything else. In fact, he’s trying to animate La Cucaracha. Despite the bad economy, he’s pretty passionate about it.

One might even say a bit irked.

“At this point,” he said, “I don’t care if it just shows up on gas station pumps.”

NEW HEAD WANTS TO REANIMATE KERN COUNTY HUMAN RELATIONS COMMISSION

2009-07-13T17:13:00.001-07:00

BY LEONEL MARTÍNEZ

LA VOZ DE KERN

The new president of the Kern County Human Relations Commission has started an effort to reanimate the 11-member agency so that it plays a more active role in fighting discrimination and promoting equal rights.

Bakersfield insurance agent Ed Herrera, who took over as head of the commission this month, said the group receives limited support from the Board of Supervisors, and four of its commissioner positions are vacant.

Many people don’t even know the body exists.

“The support is kind of tepid,” said Herrera, who has served on the commission about six years. “We deal with some hard issues, and sometimes, it seems like the county doesn’t want to deal with law enforcement and excessive use of force.”

Herrera, who also heads the commission’s law enforcement committee, has more than 30 years’ experience in human relations and civil rights issues in Los Angeles and Bakersfield. That included working with the Los Angeles Police Department after the beating of motorist Rodney King in 1992. He said he supports law enforcement, but wants to ensure police are accountable for their actions.

"He's fully competent, he's aggressive, and I think he'll do an excellent job," said Kern County Sheriff's Lt. J.R. Rodriguez, who worked with Herrera when he headed the Kern County Hispanic Advisory Council to Law Enforcement.

"He tried to bridge the gap between the minority community and that of law enforcement in the recruitment process."

The effort had some success, Rodriguez said.

The Board of Supervisors established the Human Relations Commission as an advisory body in late 1990 to combat prejudice and discrimination, safeguard equal rights in employment and education, and promote social and economic justice. Supervisors appoint commissioners.

The commission's efforts target racial and ethnic problems as well as those involving sexual orientation, Herrera said. Sometimes, commissioners act as intermediaries, negotiating problems between Kern residents and other county agencies. The commission lacks enforcement authority, but tackles problems by bringing them to light or contacting the responsible agency.

“They put a spotlight on it,” said Herrera.

Last year, for example, medical marijuana advocates sought the commission’s help in protecting pot dispensaries that were shut down by federal authorities. The commission set up a meeting between advocates, the Kern County Sheriff’s Department and the Bakersfield Police Department.

Law enforcement officials explained that their policy is to follow federal marijuana laws instead of more lenient state laws. Therefore, any change would have to occur at the federal level.

The commission also sponsors an annual essay contest for middle-school students focusing on diversity. Herrera wants to maintain these efforts while incorporating new ideas such as holding some meetings in outlying communities like Wasco, Taft and Delano.

Another idea is to take on the recent series of verbal and physical attacks on Hispanics at Harte Park. Two Oildale men went to state prison as a result of one attack. Herrera said the attacks were violations of civil rights laws, and any future assailants should face federal penalties.

“I have some pretty provocative commissioners that want to make sure things are level for everybody,” said Herrera.

The commission meets at 5:30 p.m. on the second Tuesday of each month at the Kern County Administrative Center, 1115 Truxtun Avenue. Meetings are in the third-floor multipurpose room. They can be reached at (661) 868-3480.

IMMIGRATION REFORM MUST CONSIDER NEW REALITIES OF LAST FEW DECADES

2009-07-06T18:43:00.001-07:00

BY LEONEL MARTÍNEZ

LA VOZ DE KERN

Will President Obama and the U.S. Congress strap on their political flak jackets and take on immigration reform this year?

They seem to send different signals every week.

But whatever happens, one thing is certain: Any new immigration legislation will have to consider newer realities that did not exist during the passage of the last major immigration reform package – the Immigration Reform and Control Act – in 1986. These realities specifically relate to illegal immigrants.

That’s a conclusion I drew after reading a new report, “A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States,” released by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center in April. Basing its estimates on data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, the 51-page document provides a detailed picture of the nation’s 12 million illegal immigrants.

A little confession: I’ve been criticized for my frequent use of studies and data. But without hard numbers and facts, how can people develop informed opinions?

Personal biases? Overheated emotions? The various phases of the moon?

No thanks. I’ve had enough of right-wing talk radio.

Many of the Pew study’s findings are interesting because they defy the simplistic reasoning, scapegoating and stereotypes that have poisoned the immigration debate for decades.

For example:

• Most children of illegal immigrants are not illegal immigrants. In estimating the costs of illegal immigration, anti-immigrant organizations pad their numbers by counting the expenses incurred by the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

Those would be called “American citizens.”

In fact in 2008, about three of four children of unauthorized residents were born in the U.S, up from 63 percent only four years ago, according to Pew report. Immigration hardliners believe all these residents should be deported, but aren’t these the first folks who shout about family values? Any reasonable policy should not fracture families.

• Illegal immigration isn’t isolated to a few southwestern states like California, Texas and New Mexico. In their never-ending quest for jobs, these newcomers are spreading throughout the U.S. California, for example, was home to 42 percent of the nation’s illegal immigrants in 1990, according to the Pew report. That percentage dropped to 22 in 2008.

Yet the percentage of illegal immigrants is increasing in states like Georgia, Colorado, Nevada and South Carolina that had relatively few immigrants a few years ago.

Can anyone say “y’all” in Spanish?

• Children in illegal immigrant households are more likely to be in two-parent families (47 percent) than children in legal immigrant households (35 percent), the Pew study found. That should make immigration restrictionists like CNN commentator Lou Dobbs – who frequently screams about an illegal immigrant “invasion” -- break out in a nervous rash.

Oh my gosh. We’re being invaded by stable families.

Congress will have to set aside the myths and stereotypes to consider these facts as well as hundreds of others in drafting any immigration reform package that stands a hope of being effective.

Let’s hope legislators set aside the emotionalism and listen.

The Pew report, “A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States,” can be viewed in its entirety at http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=107

HUERTA SPEECH, XMAS TREE INCIDENT EXPOSED THE SAME UGLY REALITY

2009-06-22T18:29:00.000-07:00

BY ROSARIO ORTIZ

LA VOZ DE KERN

As I read about the controversy caused by Dolores Huerta’s graduation speech at Cal State Bakersfield last Saturday, I remembered another incident that “offended” some of our more intolerant community members.

Years ago, some furiously protested when former Kern County 5th District Supervisor Pete Parra erected a Christmas tree fully decorated with Mexican-style ornaments in the rotunda of Kern County’s Administrative Building. The tree had been donated by the supervisor, and it was decorated professionally by someone he personally hired to do so.

Being Mexican, of course I thought the tree was beautiful. But some thought it was horrible and even racist. Had the tree been decorated with German candles, would anyone have even raised an eyebrow?

I wonder if the dozens of miniature piñatas hanging from the tree reminded some of the Mexican/Latino children that "threaten" to populate their cities and counties, and even grow up to take over leadership positions? Whatever the reason, a group of “Grinch” followers inundated Parra’s voice mail with hate-filled and racist messages. They also fired off dozens of complaints to the Bakersfield Californian, which published a short story.

Despite the gripes, the tree remained in the rotunda for the remainder of the holiday season. And the incident is now part of the newspaper archives.

I believe the issue with Huerta’s speech is similar to that Christmas tree incident because it prompted a similar overreaction. Why was it so controversial to have an adult activist, highly politically motivated woman -- a leader in her own right -- talk before a group of presumably mature college graduates?

While Huerta’s speech may not have been perfect, adequate, or “inspiring,” calling it offensive and racist goes too far. Some complainers in the Californian’s politics blog also blamed the university saying “that CSUB let it go on so long, says little for the university.” At one point, some audience members even went so far as to laugh at Huerta's comment that we’re all “homo sapiens.”

But in a recent encounter I had with Huerta, she explained that she was merely emphasizing that races ultimately are not important since “we’re all homo sapiens.”

What's so controversial about that?

Cal-State’s image should not be tarnished for inviting an outspoken activist like Huerta to speak before the students.

Aren’t universities places where freedom of expression is embraced? Shouldn’t our universities be allowed to serve as forums for those who wish to instill real-life political, economical, and social consciousness among students?

Or maybe -- just like the Christmas tree incident -- Huerta’s speech exposed realities and issues many would rather not see.

DOLORES HUERTA WAS ONLY BEING DOLORES HUERTA AT GRADUATION

2009-06-16T20:21:00.000-07:00

BY LEONEL MARTÍNEZ

LA VOZ DE KERN

When Bakersfield political activist Dolores Huerta speaks, she speaks as Dolores Huerta.

This is the woman who went toe-to-toe with agribusiness after co-founding the United Farm Workers union, survived a brutal attack by San Francisco police that almost killed her at age 58, and was once described by iconic UFW co-founder Cesar Chavez as “absolutely fearless.”

That means Huerta, who is still scrappy at 78 years of age, is not going to give a bubbly speech about how wonderful the world is. She’s going to deliver a provocative talk about our responsibilities in working for social justice and equality. Expecting her not to do this would have been like asking the late black activist Malcolm X to give a nice speech that wouldn’t offend anybody. It’s not going to happen.

But in a politically conservative city like Bakersfield, messages like those delivered by Huerta sometimes are not welcome.

Social justice and equality are exactly what Huerta focused on after being invited to give a graduation speech before California State University Bakersfield’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences on Saturday. In a jerky, 10-minute video posted on YouTube, Huerta talks about the importance of promoting education, supporting farm workers and labor unions, backing gay marriage and getting information from progressive sources instead of conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh.

“We talked about an economic bailout for banks and investors, well I think we need an economic bailout at this point for education, don’t you?” Huerta said in the video to polite applause.

It’s the type of moderately liberal speech that would have been warmly received – even if some didn’t agree with it -- almost anywhere else. In fact, another YouTube video -- this one of Huerta speaking at this year’s UCLA graduation where she was honored with a medal – shows her receiving strong applause.

Not in Bakersfield, where letters, e-mails and angry blog posts quickly began streaming into the offices of my old employers, the Bakersfield Californian, according to the Bakersfield.com Web site. The complaints I’ve seen so far can be summed up like this: Strong political opinions like Huerta’s have no place at a college graduation.

But Bakersfield is a city where thousands embraced the Tea Party protests, which were essentially rallies against the Obama presidency. It’s not a stretch to guess that most of these complaints had less to do with the fact that Huerta expresses strong opinions and more to do with the opinions themselves.

Unions, gay marriage and higher pay for farm workers are not popular in Bakersfield. It’s OK to oppose them, but Huerta shouldn’t be banned from speaking at a college—where different opinions theoretically are welcome—just because she disagrees

If a moderate Republican like Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) would have touted his politics in a graduation speech, would there have been so many complaints?

I don’t think so.

I first heard Huerta speak as a student at Cal-State Bakersfield in the early 1980s, and I didn’t agree with everything she said. But I knew even that college was a place where students heard, absorbed and evaluated varying opinions without going into attack mode.

Because you have to do that in real life.

Those who complained about Huerta should remember that.

WHAT'S ALL THE RUCKUS ABOUT LA RAZA?

2009-06-10T18:37:00.000-07:00

BY LEONEL MARTÍNEZ

LA VOZ DE KERN

When I was a fidgety, little kid, my grandma used to scare me into submission by promising that if I didn’t settle down, I’d be snatched by the “cucuy,” the bogeyman.

I thought those days were long gone, but if you listen carefully, some people conjure up frightening images of El Cucuy all the time. Hispanics are the largest minority group in the U.S.? El Cucuy is coming. Jobs require applicants to be bilingual in Spanish? El Cucuy is closer. The Obama administration is appointing Latinos to high office? El Cucuy is here.

They do this, of course, to scare people into believing Latinos are taking over. Some people call it fear of cultural displacement. I call it the Cucuy Complex. And it’s based on phony assumptions, just like the bogeyman.

The latest evidence of this is former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo – who is always good for an easy column – appearing on CNN to call Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor a racist.

The reason, in part, is Sotomayor’s membership in the National Council for La Raza. According to Tancredo, the group is “the KKK without the hoods or the nooses.”

“She’s a member, she’s a member of the La Raza,” Tancredo screamed at CNN host Rick Sanchez, who probably stifled a few giggles.

I guess we should forget about the fact that the council is the largest national Hispanic civil rights organization in the US, runs charter schools and health clinics, and operates programs for low-income families to purchase their first homes. Sounds like subversive activity to me.

Oh, and you also have to overlook that former President George W. Bush, GOP strategist Karl Rove and former presidential candidate John McCain have appeared at meetings of the allegedly racist council. Those radical Republicans.

History also shows that – unlike the Ku Klux Klan -- the council has never promoted racial hatred, advocated violence or hanged anybody. But let’s not get into minor details.

Tens minutes’ worth of research on credible Web sites would have taught Tancredo what Spanish speakers who know a little Mexican history like me have realized for decades. The phrase that causes the former congressman to have severe digestive problems has nothing to do with racism.

The term “la raza cosmica,” later shortened to “la raza,” was coined by Mexican scholar José Vasconcelos at the turn of the 20th Century and refers to “the people,” or “the Latino people of the New World.” Vasconcelos used to term to convey that the people of Latin America are a mixture of many of the world’s races, cultures, and religions.

Isn’t that ironic?

While Vasconcelos used the term to point out that most Latinos are a racial stew, right-wing talk show hosts bellow that it promotes racial purity, as if such a thing were possible or desirable.

Like so many others, the cucuy or bogeyman of brown supremacy invoked by people like Tancredo just isn’t real.

I sometimes long for the day these racial debates will be pointless because everyone will be a combination of several races, cultures and ethnicities. As a Latina who grew up in the Bronx but has roots in Puerto Rico, I think Judge Sotomayor would understand that.

So would another person of mixed heritage, the guy who nominated her.

And he sits in the Oval Office at the White House.

ON MY GRANDDAUGHTER AND THE NOMINATION OF JUDGE SOTOMAYOR

2009-06-03T11:10:00.000-07:00

BY LEONEL MARTÍNEZ

LA VOZ DE KERN

You can argue about Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy, but one of the most important reasons she should be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice came blinking and squirming into a harsh world at 2:51 p.m. Saturday.

My first grandchild, Joelene Bret Martinez Garcia – weighing six pounds and 12 ounces and sporting a head of thick, dark hair – was born to my 17-year-old daughter, Ramona, two days after she graduated from high school.

When Ramona told us she was pregnant, my wife, Ester, and I went through the usual emotions. We were shocked, then angry followed by sadness and a strong desire to crawl under the bed and stay there for a few months. But as the months rolled by, we began to focus on what was important: Helping and protecting our daughter and unborn grandchild.

When Joelene took her first few breaths, the world grew brighter.

But I also began to ponder darker things.

Women face major obstacles in life, Hispanic women even more. A survey released a few weeks ago by the National Council to prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, for example, found that more than half of Latinas get pregnant by their 20th birthday, about twice the national average.

Teen parents of all racial and ethnic background are more likely to live in poverty and pass it on to their children. Almost three of four Latina teen mothers never finish high school, and only two percent of all teens who have a baby before age 18 ever graduate from college, according to data cited in the survey.

It’s a sobering picture. But a Latina on the Supreme Court would be a shimmering symbol for my daughter and granddaughter that strong Hispanic women can overcome even the steepest of obstacles.

Sotomayor did.

Born to a Puerto Rican family, she grew up in the South Bronx projects. Her father, a factory worker with a third-grade education, died when Sotomayor was nine years old.

Her mother, a nurse, became a single parent, raising Sotomayor and her younger brother, Juan, who is now a doctor. After her father’s death, Sotomayor immersed herself in books. It was her love of Nancy Drew that ultimately led her to the law as a career.

But there was another hurdle to leap. Sotomayor was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes and had to learn to manage it. Still, she excelled in school, graduating as valedictorian of her class at her Catholic high school, graduating summa cum laude from Princeton, and earning her law degree from Yale Law School.

Am I holding up a racist as a role model? Please.

In context, her much-criticized comments about the wisdom of Latinas only meant that our racial and ethnic backgrounds always affect our decisions. There’s no such thing as a completely unbiased decision because there’s no such thing as a completely unbiased human being.

The best we can do is own up to our biases and use them to our advantage. Was I a better columnist and reporter, for example, because I am Latino? I was better at covering certain issues such as language and ethnicity because I educated myself on them, but also lived them. I think Sotomayor would say something similar about being a judge.

Sometimes, I like to tiptoe into my granddaughter’s room and watch her little chest rising and falling as she sleeps. During those times, I worry about what the future might hold for my tiny Joelene.

But with an African-American in the White House and a Latina on the Supreme Court, I hope she grows up knowing that despite all the obstacles she is bound to face, the possibilities are endless.

REPORTERS PAINTED A DISTORTED PICTURE OF EASTSIDE'S PIONEER PARK

2009-05-26T05:34:00.000-07:00

BY LEONEL MARTÍNEZ

LA VOZ DE KERN

When I was a reporter, we used to joke about the journalists who were like parachutists.

These were members of the media who would land in an unfamiliar neighborhood after a major crime, write an article or shoot a video saying residents were living in fear, and fly away, forgetting for the rest of the year that that part of town even existed.

Folks justifiably resent that because it implies that the only newsworthy event that ever happens in their neighborhood is a crime.

But these days, it seems that “parachute coverage” is the standard approach.

Witness the recent media coverage of a fight involving 50 to 60 people at east Bakersfield’s Pioneer Park on Easter. Law enforcement officers from the Kern County Sheriff’s Department, Bakersfield Police Department and California Highway Patrol rushed to the scene, clearing the park and arresting three Bakersfield men.

A scuffle involving that many people, some with knives and baseball bats, is obviously newsworthy even though none of the resulting injuries was life-threatening. No one can fault the media for doing its job by covering the melee.

But if you checked out the news coverage for the next few days, it painted a clear picture of Pioneer Park and the neighborhood as a godforsaken, gang- and drug-infested area where no sane person would live.

If that picture of the park were accurate, I’d be depressed.

But it’s not.

For the last few decades I’ve lived just a few blocks away, close enough to hear the squad cars scream by on Easter. My kids and I went there all the time when they were growing up.

On a typical weekend at Pioneer Park., here’s what happens: Kids laugh on swings, families picnic in the shade, and athletes play soccer in the nearby water sump that doubles as a sports field. Couples hold hands on wooden benches, toddlers build mountains of dirt in the sandbox, and the taco truck does brisk business in the parking lot.

I taught my daughter, Ramona, how to do a handspring at Pioneer Park. As I sat watching, she flipped over and over on the moist grass until she got it right. Then she beamed all the way home.

Ramona and my son, Francisco, learned the basics of basketball on the park’s cement court, playing games like horse and around the world for hours until they were so sweaty and bushed, they were ready to go home and drop into bed.

That’s the Pioneer Park I know.

Did my kids and I ever have any problems? Sure. Problems that you’d probably encounter at most other parks in Kern County.

When she was about two years old, my daughter decided to bloody her cousin’s nose there in a scuffle over a toy pelican. I had to take her home. I walked into the men’s bathroom once, and there was a guy inside smoking a joint. Another time, a gentleman swayed, slurred and stammered as he told me the story of divorcing his wife and not being able to see his daughter.

That’s about it.

In the more than 20 years that we’ve been going to the park, no one ever attacked us, offered to sell us narcotics or pulled a gun, knife or baseball bat in our presence. These things may happen, but I never saw them.

I’m not denying that the park has problems, but it’s not the gigantic drug swap meet and gang war zone depicted in many media accounts. If reporters would think beyond their preconceptions and visit the area when squad cars weren’t responding to a call, they would know that.

My kids are teen-agers now, but we still go to Pioneer Park every once in a while. Despite the recent news coverage, I see no reason to stop.

In fact, one day, I look forward to taking some other children there: My grandkids.

HISPANICS COUNTING ON PRESIDENT OBAMA TO SOLVE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM

2009-05-22T11:47:00.001-07:00

BY LEONEL MARTÍNEZ
LA VOZ DE KERN

"I told you Latinos would embrace Obama!"

That was the headline for the last column I wrote before being unexpectedly and unceremoniously dismissed from the Bakersfield Californian almost a year ago. The reasons they gave me were as credible as Dick Cheney on torture, but that's another column.

When it comes to Hispanics and Obama, it turns out I was wrong.

Or rather, I grossly understated the case.

Almost a half year after Obama took office, it's becoming clear that Latinos don't just just embrace the president. They love him, idolize him, probably want him to come over for tacos de carne asada and a couple of icy Coronas on Sunday afternoon.

At least when it comes to the issue of immigration.

This after television pundits, nationally syndicated columnists and others who should be smarter swore just a few short months ago that Hispanics would never support an African-American candidate.

Does anybody remember that?

Those who predicted a black-brown fracture were wrong. Here's proof: A new poll of Hispanics in 13 key states found that an overwhelming majority of Latinos put their trust in Obama to fix our broken immigration system. What's more, they believe that despite the faltering economy and host of the other problems the nation faces, the president will tackle this divisive issue in his first year in office.

The survey, conducted by Miami-based polling and consulting firm Bendixen and Associates, interviewed 800 Hispanic voters from April 28 to May 5, 2009. It found that about three of four of those questioned believe Obama will keep his campaign promise and move a comprehensive immigration reform bill by the end of the year.

"Even though support for immigration reform has always been high among Hispanic voters, the poll clearly indicates that we now have a much higher 'intensity of support level' for the issue within this electorate," said Sergio Bendixen, president and founder of the polling firm.

"The divisive tone and demagogic rhetoric of the anti-immigrant movement in America continues to politicize Hispanic Americans and to unite them in favor of a new immigration policy."

Isn't that deliciously ironic?

The anti-immigrant crowd continues to paint apocalyptic scenarios about immigration in general and illegal immigrants in particular. Let's not forget that right-wing radio and television commentators blamed the spread of the Swine Flu in the U.S. on illegal immigrants. Does anybody remember the Swine Flu?

But those xenophobic tirades only serve to galvanize Latino constituents -- who form an increasingly important part of the voting public -- in favor of comprehensive immigration reform.

And let's be clear. That reform means something that is probably blasphemous to Bakersfield City Councilman David Couch and all the Lou Dobbs fans out there: Earned legalization for some of the 12 million illegal immigrants who live in the U.S.

Treating illegal immigrants humanely? What's next, closing Guantanamo Bay?

Here are a few other tasty tidbits from the Bendixen survey:

About four of five respondents trust Obama to do the right thing on immigration, but only about one of four feel the same way about Congressional Republicans.

About four of five Latinos consider the immigration issue "personally important," and 69 percent said they have a friend, acquaintance or family member who is an illegal immigrant.

Almost nine of 10 Hispanics said they would not consider voting for a Congressional candidate who supports forcing most illegal immigrants to leave the country.

Only a few years ago, the Republican party claimed every Latino was in essence a closet Republican because Hispanics tend to be more conservative on social issues like abortion and gay marriage.

If that was ever true, it's not now.

Seven of 10 Latinos believe the Democrats best represent the opinion of the Latinos, but only one of 10 feels the same way about the GOP.

Reams of newsprint have been expended to say that the Republican party is increasingly unpopular with voters. That's true, but it's even more pronounced among Hispanics.

And the Bendixen survey is only one more piece of evidence to support that.

LATINOS FIGHT FOR MORE POLITICAL POWER IN SOUTHLAND CITY OF COMPTON

2009-05-19T05:49:00.000-07:00

It was a practical problem in the most impractical of situations.

I was on the Grapevine on my way to cover the Los Angeles Riots for the Bakersfield Californian more than 15 years ago with friend and photographer Henry Barrios.

I had volunteered for the assignment. But I was afraid.

Listening to radio accounts of the looting, burning and rioting, I heard that many innocent people had been assaulted, and reporters had been beaten. And that made me jittery.

Because South Central Los Angeles' population was overwhelmingly black -- or so I thought -- and Barrios and I weren't, how the heck were we going to be able to pull this off without immediately drawing suspicion?

I've never been so relieved to be wrong in my life.

When we got there, we immediately noticed something completely unexpected. Many of the looters, residents and bystanders were Latino. I still remember interviewing some Salvadoran suspected looters as they sat in a parking lot under arrest wearing plastic handcuffs.

The presence of so many Hispanics meant I could go about my job of interviewing people without immediately drawing the attention of some of the more angry members of the crowd who might not be too excited about having reporters around.

We made it home alive, and my coverage eventually won a Kern Press Club Award for spot news reporting. But the fact remains that contrary to some perceptions, the majority of residents in South Central Los Angeles is Hispanic.

That's caused some political friction in cities like Compton, where African-Americans and Latinos struggle for political power. The Los Angeles Times has an interesting opinion piece on that situation here:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-mcclave19-2009may19,0,723236.story

KERN PRESS CLUBS HONORS LA VOZ DE KERN BLOGGER FOR BEST SINGLE COLUMN

2009-05-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

La Voz de Kern blogger Leonel Martinez received the award for best single column from the Kern Press Club Friday night.

Martinez won for a first-person account of the spirituality of labor leader and United Farm Workers co-founder Cesar Chavez. The column was published in Mas magazine, where Martinez worked as as free-lance writer.

"Chavez was a man of action, but he was also a man of spirit," he wrote. "He was a pragmatic social activist, but he also infused spirituality into almost every aspect of his life...The spiritual facet of his life is often overlooked or underemphasized."

Martinez, who met Chavez and covered his funeral, also worked five years as a free-lance columnist for the Bakersfield Californian and nine years as full-time staff member for that newspaper. The newspaper discontinued his column several months ago, prompting an outcry from many Latino leaders.

The awards; which honor professionals from newspapers, television, radio, and public relations; were held at T.J. Maxwell's restaurant in downtown Bakersfield.

A complete list of Press Club winners:

Kern Press Club Journalism Awards 2009

PRINT

Editorial/Commentary

Lois Henry, The Bakersfield Californian

Light Feature

Shellie Branco, The Bakersfield Californian

News Feature

Lois Henry, The Bakersfield Californian

General Excellence Magazine

Bakersfield Life Magazine

General Excellence Small Circulation Newspaper

The Daily Independent, Ridgecrest, California

Spot News

The Daily Independent Staff

Single Column

Leonel Martinez, MAS magazine

Page Design/Layout

Michael Batelaan, Kern River Courier

Sports Feature

Kevin Eubanks, Bakersfield Life Magazine

General Reporting Series Multiple Authors

The Daily Independent Staff

Headlines

Michael Batelaan, Kern River Courier

STILL PHOTO

Single Feature Photo

Mike Devich, Kern River Courier

Feature Photo

Michael Batelaan, Kern River Courier

Single Sports Photo

Cheeto Barrera, The Daily Independent

PUBLIC RELATIONS/PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Corporate Newsletter

Kaiser Permanente Public Affairs

Campaign

Heise Media Group/HIRE Committee Mayor’s Luncheon

Press Release

Jason Gutierrez, Kaiser Permanente Public Affairs

Public Service Announcement

KGOV

RADIO

Newscast

Mark Howell, KUZZ-AM/FM

Spot News

Mark Howell, KUZZ-AM/FM

Hard News

Mark Howell, KUZZ-AM/FM

Use of Sound

Suzanne Grant, KUZZ-AM/FM

Feature

Peter Samore, KUZZ-AM/FM

TELEVISION

Spot News Photography

Grant Simpson, KGET-TV

Newscast One Hour

Megan Moore, KGET-TV

Light Feature

Karla Leal, KKEY

Anchor Team

Jim Scott & Robin Mangarin, KGET-TV

Reporting Series

Kurt Rivera, 29 Eyewitness News

Editing

KGOV

Feature Photography

Tamara A. Christian, 29 Eyewitness News

Serious Feature

Tim Calahan, KGET-TV

Special Programming

29 Eyewitness News Team

Weathercast

Kevin Charette, KGET-TV

Best Reporting

Sergio Flores, KGET/KKEY

STUDENT

Sports Photo

John Ornelas, The Rip, Bakersfield College

Feature Photo

John Ornelas, The Rip, Bakersfield College

News Photo

John Ornelas, The Rip, Bakersfield College

Column

John Ornelas, The Rip, Bakersfield College

Martinez's award-winning column:

http://www.masbakersfield.com/home/ViewPost/52580

LEGISLATORS TO TAKE ANOTHER SHOT AT LEGALIZING ILLEGAL FARM WORKERS

2009-05-13T18:11:00.001-07:00

A bill that would legalize some of the thousands of Kern County farm workers who are in the U.S. illegally was expected to be revived in Congress on Thursday after similar legislation perished in 2007 with the collapse of immigration reform.

Having worked in the fields, as well as written about immigration for more than 10 years, I know the legislation has been sorely needed for decades.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, Congressman Howard L. Berman, D-CA, and Congressman Adam Putnam, R-Florida, were expected on Thursday morning to introduce the AgJobs bill in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The legislation was negotiated by the United Farm Workers – headquartered in Keene -- and the nation’s agricultural industry.

With 60 Democratic senators and a popular Democrat in the White House, the legislation stands a greater chance of passage than before, according to UFW President Arturo Rodriguez.

"I'm very optimistic," Rodriguez told me via cellular phone as he rushed to Keene to pack for a trip to Los Angeles, where he expected to do several media interviews on the bill. "The ingredients, the environment are so much different than they have been in the past."

AgJobs -- which stands for the Agricultural Jobs, Opportunity, Benefits, and Security Act -- is a practical solution to two problems. It would create a guest worker program to ensure a stable labor supply for agribusiness and allow millions of undocumented farm workers already living in the country to legalize their status. These workers could eventually earn American citizenship.

These are not drug smugglers, rapists or murderers. These are mostly decent people with jobs who want nothing more than a chance to live and work in the U.S. in peace. We need their labor. They need to become part of mainstream society.

It’s the bargain that most immigrants have struck with America throughout its history, including my grandfather, who first came to the U.S as part of the “bracero” or guest worker program that lasted from 1942 through 1964.

“Undocumented farm workers possess essential skills needed to maintain the viability of the agricultural industry,” said Rodriguez.

“By allowing them to work here ... we can ensure growers have a legal and available work force, and prevent unscrupulous employers from abusing the workers. For that to happen, they need to be able to speak up and report abuses, organize and come to the bargaining table without fearing deportation.”

A report issued last month by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center estimates that one in four farm workers is in the U.S. illegally, but Rodriguez said that could be as much as 70 percent. The U.S. is home to about 12 million illegal immigrants who make up 10% or more of the labor force in California, according to the study.

The UFW estimates that the typical U.S. farm worker makes just $13,000 a year, and that amount has not increased for about three decades. Many lack health care and sick leave and live in ramshackle housing.

Right-wing commentators call for a simple solution: Deport illegal immigrants back to their home country. Slightly more than half are from Mexico, according to the Pew study.

But those of us who are reasonably sane know mass deportation is all but impossible.

Even if we forget the humane issues, conservative syndicated columnist George Will has estimated it would take a line of buses stretching from the U.S.-Mexico border to Alaska to accomplish this heartless task. And if it happened, mass deportation would probably deal a severe blow to the economy, especially agribusiness.

"In reality, nobody is going to take those jobs if it's not immigrant workers," said Rodriguez.

The UFW worked with the agricultural industry for 10 years to come up with a bipartisan approach that would ensure a legal work force for U.S. agriculture.

“The United States depends on these farm workers for food. AgJobs secures America's food supply and is the most practical and equitable solution in addressing grower concerns about labor shortages and the insecurity that makes farm workers so vulnerable to abuse,” Rodriguez added.

But legalization wouldn't be automatic.

The older version of AgJobs would have allowed illegal immigrant farm workers to earn temporary legal status if they could prove they worked in U.S. agriculture for at least 150 work days during the previous two years. These workers would also have been required to work on the nation’s farms for at least an additional three years before becoming eligible to apply for a green card to become permanent legal residents.

Rodriguez also said he plans to work with Congressman Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois, to push for a comprehensive immigration reform package.

-- Leonel Martinez

PRESSURE INTENSIFIES FOR OBAMA TO CHOOSE LATINA FOR U.S. SUPREME COURT

2009-05-12T19:38:00.000-07:00

The pressure is intensifying for President Obama to put a Latino on the U.S. Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice David Souter.

Obama has obtained input from Latino members of Congress on making the appropriate choice. And members of the Hispanic Congressional Caucus have been pretty blunt about what they want, saying that "appointing our nation's first Hispanic justice would undoubtedly be welcomed by our community and bring greater diversity of thought, perspective and experience to the nation's legal system."

It's a delicate political dance, with Latino groups trying to avoid the perception that they are making demands on the new president, who won the vast majority of Hispanic voters in the last presidential election.

Despite some predictions that Latinos would refuse to support an African-American candidate -- most backed Sen. Hillary Clinton in the primaries -- about two of three Hispanic voters cast their ballots for him in the general election. Among other things, nominating a Latino Supreme Court Justice would be a major sign that the president recognizes the growing importance of his Hispanic constituency.

"I can think of no better moment for him to nominate the Supreme Court's first Hispanic and someone who will uphold our Constitution's promise of equal justice and freedom for all," Henry Solano, president and general counsel of the Mexican America Legal Defense & Education Fund (MALDEF), told the Washington Post

The Post recently published a pretty comprehensive look at the issue here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/11/AR2009051103503.html?hpid=topnews

RELIGIOUS RUMINATIONS ON THE POPE, PENTECOSTALS AND POULTRY

2009-05-10T07:22:00.000-07:00

I was a skinny kid with thick glasses finishing third grade at Lamont School when my class got a stern tongue-lashing from our teacher, Mrs. Crow.

The cafeteria served oven-fried chicken that day, and when the kids returned their trays after lunch, they brimmed with uneaten drumsticks, wings and thighs.

"I think the bigger sin is wasting food," Mrs. Crow scolded during the next school period as the class grew silent.

Public school teachers could talk about religion in those days. It was the same Mrs. Crow -- sporting a beehive hairdo and bright red lipstick -- who had us hold hands and pray when presidential candidate Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

But the reason for the poultry problem was obvious: The day of the uneaten chickens was a Friday. It was Lent. Little Mexican-American Catholic boys and girls did not eat bird on Fridays during Lent. The stern Augustinian priests at the church had a rule about that: If it did not swim in the sea, you could not eat it.

Chickens, cows and pigs do not swim in the sea.

The ironically named Mrs. Crow was well meaning, but wrong. You would not force a Jehovah's Witness kid to salute the flag. Why should Catholic kids be brow-beaten into violating their Lenten traditions?

Our parents were strict about this kind of thing. You might as well ask a rabbi to chow down on a slab of ham because when it came to Mexican kids and meat during Lent, it was just not going to happen.

And that prompted a lot of wasted chicken because Lamont School was predominantly Hispanic. Almost all my Latino friends, like me, respected men in cassocks, prayed before images of the Virgin of Guadalupe and lighted candles with the pictures of saints on them when someone got sick or died.

My friends and I munched tuna fish sandwiches on Fridays, crossed ourselves when passing in front of the church and revered the strict but funny Sister Ann Theresa at St. Augustine Church. In her immaculate brown habit, Sister was the first teacher who told us we could believe in evolution and remain good Catholics. The class was aghast.

I was also shocked in grammar school when I found out one of my white buddies was Catholic. I thought all Catholics were Hispanic. Only one or two Latino friends were Protestant, and they were considered an oddity.

Those days are gone.

Recent data shows about one of four American Hispanics are Protestant, and an increasing number are switching to one of several Pentecostal denominations such as the Assemblies of God.

The attraction is strong. Many Pentecostal congregations are smaller and more intimate than the typically huge Catholic parish, quickly involve newcomers in ministry, boast Latino pastors and adapt themselves to the cultural needs of Hispanics. All this tends to draw more Hispanic adherents.

I've been a Catholic religious education teacher for almost 30 years, and I was not overjoyed a few years ago when I found out one of my former confirmation students left the Catholic Church to join a Pentecostal congregation.

But I was not surprised.

The days of wasted chicken at heavily Latino schools may be drawing to a close.

As a practicing Catholic, I may not like it, but Mrs. Crow would be happy.

-- Leonel Martinez

The Tri-City Herald in Washington state has an excellent article about Latinos turning to Pentecostalism here:

http://www.tri-cityherald.com/lifestyles/religion/story/572929.html

The Pew study upon which the article is based is here:

http://pewforum.org/surveys/hispanic/

SUPREME COURT SPECULATION RAISES ISSUE OF HISPANICS AND ABORTION

2009-05-07T16:59:00.000-07:00

Online newspapers around the country are buzzing with speculation about whether President Obama will pick a Hispanic to replace outgoing Supreme Court Justice David Souter.

If he does, the front-runner seems to be 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor, a summa cum laude Princeton graduate of Puerto Rican descent who grew up in a Bronx public housing project.

But before Sotomayor takes the bench -- if Obama selects her -- the Senate will hold hearings to determine whether to confirm her nomination. And that means she'll face a barrage of carefully worded questions designed to gauge her position on the most emotional issue of our time: Abortion.

I know what you're thinking. Most Hispanics are Catholics who oppose abortion rights, so don't we know her probable stance on the issue already?

Not so fast.

The available data paints a more complex picture of the political beliefs of Latinos on abortion. In a recent fact sheet issued by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, for example, most of the state's Hispanic's supported abortion rights although many favored restrictions.

The complete fact sheet is available here:

http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/jtf/JTF_LatinosViewsJTF.pdf

NEW INTERNET VIDEO SHOWS SHEEN ON DEAN

2009-05-06T17:00:00.000-07:00

We know the political ambition of State Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, knows no bounds.

After all, the Shafter native is the senate majority leader, recently started a campaign for lieutenant governor, and makes no secret of the fact that one day, he'll shoot for the spot now occupied by a guy named Arnold.

But this week, his efforts for safer food received the endorsement of the president.

Barack Obama? No, President Josiah "Jed" Bartlett, the character played by veteran actor Martin Sheen in the defunct television series "West Wing." Backers of Florez, who chairs the Senate Food and Agriculture Committee, this week released a 41-second Internet video that stars Sheen and touts Florez's legislative efforts for safer food.

"We think it's the largest single interest group out there," Florez told me on his cellular phone Wednesday as he drove to San Francisco. "I mean the people that eat food every day. There is no bigger group than that."

Florez said the video has been warmly received, but he has no plans to release it as a television commercial because he wants to take advantage of newer media like the Internet. The project was essentially completed at no labor cost, with everyone including Sheen volunteering.

Florez believes interest in the video can only increase since nobody wants to eat unsafe food. That's also the reason he wants to make the Senate Food and Agriculture Committee more responsive to the needs of consumers and not just agribusiness.

Ever confident, Florez also believes he is the early front-runner for lieutenant governor. And when he wins that, there's that bigger office down the hall.

"My overall impression of lieutenant governor," Florez said, "is that you run for lieutenant governor to be governor."

-- Leonel Martinez

NEW U.S. COIN USES SPANISH -- DIOS MIO!

2009-05-05T19:54:00.000-07:00

Why don't those people speak English?

Latino immigrants? No, the federal workers at the U.S. Mint.

Several weeks ago, the government issued the first U.S. coins inscribed with a Spanish-language phrase. The Puerto Rico quarter -- which was part of the 2009 DC and US Territories Quarter Program -- has an inscription that reads, "Puerto Rico, Isla del Encanto" or "Puerto Rico, Isle of Enchantment."

That's right, the U.S. territory's motto is ... gasp... in the language of Cervantes, not the language of Shakespeare. Will this blatant lack of patriotism never end?

It was only a few years ago that Latino musicians released a Spanish-language version of the American national anthem called "Nuestro Himno." Talk radio commentators spewed swimming pools full of venom, and newspapers were inundated with letters to editor complaining that anyone would dare use anything but English in a patriotic song.

And when I was a Bakersfield newspaper columnist, some of the most hateful e-mails I received were from readers who feared Spanish would somehow overtake English as the national language. This despite the fact that most reputable studies say Latino immigrants are learning English in much the same way as their European counterparts at the turn of the century.

Where are all those angry folks now?

I guess there is a solution for those that still recoil at the thought of anything but English being used in a symbol of American prosperity.

Don't look at your money as you're spending it to buy, say, vegetables picked by farm workers who probably spoke the same language used on the quarters.

But make sure to skip the national motto included on most U.S. currency, which is "E Pluribus Unum."

And that's in Latin.

-- Leonel Martinez

UFW LEADER RODRIGUEZ CELEBRATES CINCO DE MAYO WITH PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

2009-05-04T18:40:00.000-07:00

As Kern County readied for Cinco de Mayo, United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez celebrated the Mexican holiday in a unique way: By hanging out at the White House with President Barack Obama.

I caught up with Rodriguez -- who took over as head of the UFW in 1993 after the death of his father-in-law, labor leader Cesar Chavez -- via cellular phone Monday night as he left a presidential Cinco de Mayo dinner that featured mariachis and drew Latinos from all over the country. The UFW headquarters and National Chavez Center are in Keene.

"I've been here to the White House more after Barack Obama got elected than I have in my whole life," mused Rodriguez.

In fact, Rodriguez kept count. He was invited to the White House once when Democratic President Bill Clinton was in office and never during the eight-year Republican administration of former President George W. Bush. It's no surprise considering Republicans aren't exactly best friends with organized labor.

Even though Obama took the oath of office only in January, Rodriguez has been invited to visit him in Washington D. C. three times.

"I think it means he recognizes the importance of farm workers in this country and the contribution they make to our nation," said Rodriguez, who actually exchanged a few words with the president.

What did Rodriguez say?

He congratulated the commander-in-chief on marking his first 100 days in office, then took the opportunity to emphasize the importance of immigration reform as well as other issues important to many Latinos. Although many suspected immigration was too volatile a topic for Obama to take on in his first year in office, he re-emphasized his commitment to it last week.

Reform that includes earned legalization for some of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. is long overdue.

But will it happen soon?

Said Rodriguez, "We're working extremely hard on it."

-- Leonel Martinez

WILL PRESIDENT OBAMA PICK A LATINA TO REPLACE SOUTER ON SUPREME COURT?

2009-05-04T05:48:00.000-07:00

We know there are some excellent legal minds among Latinos such as Kern County Superior Court Judge Robert Tafoya (altough I'm taking a wild guess that Kern County District Attorney Ed Jagels would disagree). So will President Obama pick a Hispanic to fill the spot of retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter? It's a real possibility.

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/47352,news,sonia-sotomayor-looks-good-to-take-david-souters-seat-in-supreme-court

WILL OBAMA TACKLE IMMIGRATION REFORM?

2009-05-03T07:06:00.000-07:00

Reaching agreement on the volatile issue of immigration reform -- perhaps including earned legalization for some of the nation's 12 million illegal immigrants -- would be a major achievement for the Obama administration. As a major study recently showed, the portrait of illegal immigrants has changed over the years. About three-fourths of the children of these immigrants, for example, were born in the U.S. What will happen to these kids if their parents are forced to leave the country? Read the report here:

http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=107

IMMIGRATION FOES AMP UP HYSTERIA

2009-05-02T17:56:00.000-07:00

The xenophobic, hysterical, Swine Flu nonsense continues, leading to reported incidents of discrimination or profiling of Hispanics. Would Lou Dobbs shake my hand?

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i6uznnRhWOO5NRv2ReilOzjyZsRgD97U8R503

RIGHT-WING RADIO HOST BOOTED FOR REMARKS ON IMMIGRANTS, SWINE FLU

2009-05-02T05:54:00.000-07:00

Apparently, the Swine Flu's symptoms include acute racism that causes right-wing radio talk-show hosts to spew anti-immigrant remarks. But Boston's Jay Severin received the most effective treatment: He got booted from his station. Kind of makes you wish that would happen here in Kern County. Here's the story from UPI...

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/05/01/Right-wing-Boston-radio-talker-suspended/UPI-43261241234370/

KERN CATHOLIC CHURCH DRAFTS REGULATIONS ON "GRIPE PORCINA"

2009-05-01T19:56:00.000-07:00

Since about 70 percent of American Latinos are Catholic -- probably many more in Kern County with its high population of first-generation immigrants -- how does the Catholic Church respond to the Swine Flu or the "Gripe Porcina" as it is known in Spanish? With some strict guidelines that are likely to jar more traditional believers. Read the regulations from the Fresno Diocese -- including barring the reception of communion in the mouth and the use of sacramental wine and holy water -- here:

http://dioceseoffresno.org/departments/liturgy.php

PEW REPORT: LATINOS HELPED OBAMA WIN

2009-05-01T15:11:00.000-07:00

Why did President Obama win? In part because minorities overwhelmingly voted for him, according to a new study by the Pew Hispanic Center. I'm sure some people hate that, but facts are pesky things ...

The electorate in last year's presidential election was the most racially and ethnically diverse in U.S. history, with nearly one-in-four votes cast by non-whites, according to a new analysis of Census Bureau data by the Pew Research Center. The nation's three biggest minority groups--blacks, Hispanics and Asians--each accounted for unprecedented shares of the presidential vote in 2008. Here's the report:

http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=108

SWINE FLU CAUSES SWINELIKE BEHAVIOR AMONG RIGHT-WING TALK-SHOW HOSTS

2009-05-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

I guess it's no surprise, unfortunately, but here's an unwelcome side effect of the Swine Flu reported on MSNBC...

“No contact anywhere with an illegal alien!” conservative talk show host Michael Savage advised his U.S. listeners this week on how to avoid the swine flu. “And that starts in the restaurants" where he said, you “don’t know if they wipe their behinds with their hands!”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30467300/