Latinos and the Fracturing Democratic Party Coalition

By Rodolfo F. Acuña / 21 November 2016

Protesters greet Hillary Clinton at East Los Angeles College, May 2016.

The 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections saw old alliances and loyalties shattered by the fall of the Democratic Party and the rise of con man Donald Trump into so many pieces that they, like Humpty Dumpty, can never be put together again. Politics as we know them are beyond repair.

Although Latinos formed a vital piece of this makeup, the non-Latino American public made little effort to learn anything about them. The political pundits reduced them to numbers and stereotypes. Absent were Mexican American newscasters or political players; to the media, every brown-skinned person was an immigrant. Latinos — Hispanics in polite society — looked and thought alike.

The lack of intelligent an analysis failed to counter the fake news Trump and his supporters spread via social media and the networks. Truth be told, Latin American nationalities share colonial history but that is far as it often goes. They are racially and culturally different. Not all Latinos, for example, enjoy or eat spicy foods, and they do not all live in the same places.

Defeat Trump: The Latino Vote

By Dolores Delgado Campbell and Duane Campbell

Immigration issues along with the changing composition of the U.S. electorate will shape the 2016 Presidential and Congressional races, as well as many state races.

While working class non-union white voters in the upper Midwest appear to be abandoning the Clinton-led Democratic Party in response to immigration and neo- liberal trade policies, Latino voters are putting some traditional Republican and swing states in play, noticeably Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Texas.  In these states with a close electoral contest, the Latino vote may make the decisive victory.

The U.S. electorate in 2016 will be the country’s most racially and ethnically diverse ever. Nearly one in three eligible voters  (31%) will be Latino, African American, Asian or another racial or ethnic minority, up from 29% in 2012.  Much of this change is due to strong growth among Latino voters, in particular U.S.-born youth. Latinos will constitute an estimated 11.9% of the total electorate.

According to Pew Research, the projected number of eligible voters will be:

White – 69%; African American  12%; Latino 12%; Asian 4%.

(For a detailed description of the various national  groups within the Hispanic category  see  http://www.dsausa.org/dl_hispanic_heritage_month)

Latino millennials will account for nearly half (44%) of the record 27.3 million Hispanic eligible voters projected for 2016. (Pew, 2016)

Donald Trump began his campaign for the Republican nomination with an assault on Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the U.S. This was his strategic choice.  He has expanded his assault to encompass additional immigrant groups including Muslims and other Latino immigrants (but not Cubans).

Deportation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans

 Teach  About Unconstitutional Deportation of Mexican and Mexican Americans in the 1930s
 Feb. 28, 2016    11am-2pm

  *   Learn about the unconstitutional deportation of over 1.5 million Mexican and Mexican Americans in the 1930s for teaching your students in elementary, middle school and high school.
  *   Immediately implement lessons about this mass forced expulsion of American born children and their parents as part of the 2016 California State History and Social Studies Framework.
  *   Be a teacher leader incorporating this injustice into your social studies, history and language arts lessons as part of Common Core implementation.
  *   Learn how Bell Gardens Elementary School 5th graders researched this injustice and were moved to lead a successful campaign for inclusion of this topic in our California curriculum (AB 146, 2016)
  *   Take home successful lessons and resources that facilitate implementation of AB 146 “which may include study of the unconstitutional deportation to Mexico during the Great Depression of citizens and lawful permanent residents of the United States…“encourages the incorporation of survivor,  rescuer, liberator, and witness oral testimony into the teaching of human rights, the unconstitutional deportation to Mexico during the Great Depression of citizens and lawful permanent residents of the United States…”
  *    Learn how beginning in 1929, state/local municipalities and private business forcibly expelled over 1.5 million people of Mexican descent from the United States
  *    Meet expelled survivors and family members
  *    Visit the related exhibit and Apology Memorial (SB 670, 2005) at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes to learn more and plan field trips for your students.
  *    Engage in meaningful conversations and experiences related to the historical immigration, social and racial issues related to this mass expulsion with concrete connections to the present
  *    Receive free related successful lessons and resources

Place: LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, 501 North Main Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012.

Trump Is a Fascist and Remains Dangerous

Trump Remains Dangerous.

Along with others we applaud the many statements of support for the Muslim community in response to Donald Trump’s outrageous and tactical statements. Even major media and the Sacramento Bee made clear repudiation a part of their statements.

It is interesting to note that in the media fury in response to Trump’s statements there are numerous references to the Japanese Incarceration and the more limited incarceration of Italian and German suspected war spies.

The media fury does not mention the deportation of millions of Mexicans and US citizens of Mexican descent.

These deportations were described in our Sept. 1 post, Trump is Dangerous and are well known in the Mexican and Spanish speaking communities.

http://antiracismdsa.blogspot.com/2015/09/trump-is-dangerous.html

And in our July post asking why the GOP is reluctant to denounce Trump.

http://antiracismdsa.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-gop-is-hesitant-to-denounce-trumps.html

We told you Trump was dangerous.   

Steps toward an inclusive history of California

The Chicano/Mexican American Digital History project has completed stage one of the effort to amend the History/Social Science Framework for California Public Schools  with the submission of over 35 letters from academics and community activists demanding that Mexican Americans be included in the history courses.

Mexican American/ Chicano history is substantially absent from public school textbooks and curriculum in California- and it has been since  1986.  Latino student political non participation  and disconnectedness is significantly caused by Latino absence from the K-12 textbooks and curriculum.  http://antiracismdsa.blogspot.com/2015/03/write-chicano-history-into-california.html

We thank all of those who have participated in this effort.  On May 8, 2015, the  Instructional Quality Commission (formerly the Curriculum Commission) will meet in Sacramento to adopt a change in their schedule.

The proposed new schedule would be:

When Americans Lynched Mexicans and Mexican Americans

When Americans Lynched Mexicans

By WILLIAM D. CARRIGAN and CLIVE WEBB • FEB. 20, 2015

Photo Credit Rachel Levit

THE recent release of a landmark report on the history of lynching in the United States is a welcome contribution to the struggle over American collective memory. Few groups have suffered more systematic mistreatment, abuse and murder than African-Americans, the focus of the report.

One dimension of mob violence that is often overlooked, however, is that lynchers targeted many other racial and ethnic minorities in the United States, including Native Americans, Italians, Chinese and, especially, Mexicans.
Americans are largely unaware that Mexicans were frequently the targets of lynch mobs, from the mid-19th century until well into the 20th century, second only to African-Americans in the scale and scope of the crimes. One case, largely overlooked or ignored by American journalists but not by the Mexican government, was that of seven Mexican shepherds hanged by white vigilantes near Corpus Christi, Tex., in late November 1873. The mob was probably trying to intimidate the shepherds’ employer into selling his land. None of the killers were arrested.
From 1848 to 1928, mobs murdered thousands of Mexicans, though surviving records allowed us to clearly document only about 547 cases. These lynchings occurred not only in the southwestern states of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, but also in states far from the border, like Nebraska and Wyoming.

The Failure of National Latino/Mexican American Organizations

Rodolfo F. Acuña

With all of the hype around Latinos these days, how could Arizona have happened? I thought we had power. One-third of Arizona is Latino and its neighbor California is the land of milk and honey – the favorite destination of politicos of all colors. Over fifty percent of Los Angeles is Latino; its mayor is Mexican American as is the mayor of San Antonio, Texas.

Arizona’s war on Mexican Americans does not make sense, especially in the light of the growth of the Latino population that now numbers 50 million. This nightmare seems out of place.  Alabama maybe, but Arizona?

It is time that we try to find answers and admit our weaknesses. The most obvious flaw is that Arizona has exposed a weakness in Latino and Mexican American organizational infrastructure.

A partial answer as to why Latinos are so ineffective is that the Latino population is having growing pains. It has grown dramatically in the past fifty years, going from a regional to a national phenomenon. This transformation has out stripped the capacity of traditional organizations such as the League of United Latin American Citizens and the American GI Forum to  deal with this change.   

Presently there are only two organizations that could be called national and they came about in 1968 with the founding of the Southwest Council of La Raza and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.