What has happened to our people in Cali...

[lacoctel]

Dear Foristas:

I check in and post here when I can as a months long effort to stay up on things on the east coast and in Vieques w/a community with a similar historic presence and similar issues as Latinos/Mexicanos here on the west coast.

I don't know how many of you pay attention to the national Spanish news, but you may or may not know today is the mayoral election in Los Angeles. Our front runner after the first round has been a Chicano candidate, UCLA grad and former speaker of the assembly Antonio Villaraigosa.

He has had some multicultural support, yes. In fact quite a bit in this large city. He has been endorsed by labor and environmentalists, perhaps why some don't like him is he's not soft on clear cases of police abuse or police corruption, but it is always hard for civilians to go against aspects of a police state.

But, the thing is there definitely are segments of LA society, mainly white racist segments but not all white, some naive envious or otherwise racist or confused about history and identity type Asians and/or black Americans that don't see the benefits in having another person of color like themselves be elected as mayor. Especially the type who is a true coalition builder like Antonio.

And their are aspects hate to see of Korean society in Los Angeles that is highly racist against other people of color and they walk around thinking everyone else are beneath them with a clear cut superiority almost naziesque attitude. Think back to the LA civil disturbances of the earlyh 90s and why so many got their businesses busted up. Clearly not all deserved it, but some of the bad apples helped cause the feelings of frustration that lead to those unfortunate mob actions against them. I am being specific here because I don't see this in the other Asians too much.

Finally, and getting to the point, the other democrat running has truly shown that dirty politics and smear based on fear etc is not exclusive to republicans at all and it is about the individual politician to be or not to be decent and stick to the issues.

Do any of you know James Hahn has run like ten times an hour a graphic and HIGHLY IRRESPONSIBLE OVERLY THEATRICAL AND WAY OVER THE TOP commercial about a pardon letter allegedly written by candidate Villaraigosa on behalf of a parent of a young person who he at the time was given much facts suggesting they were wrongly convicted of a drug crime. He at the time was only trying to help a devastated parent and constituent who had some very convincing facts.
This is done all the time. So now Villaraigosa's face is shown on the commercial with a superimposed images of a lit up crack pipe and all kinds of drug paraphanalia including white powdery cocaine like substances and then it says 'we can't trust him.' It is clear, they are trying to almost call him the drug user or whatever and associate Latinos with drug use. It is so racist. Yet blacks continue to back Hahn. They know damn well if such an outrageous attack was made on a black candidate the naacp and every black organizations would be all over the news and press confereces everywhere. Yet they are ok with these tactics being used against Latinos. And the Asians mentioned above they are just off the list if you ask me and pay back is a ***** is all I can say and I will NEVER SUPPORT ANY KOREAN-AMERICAN CANDIDATES for a long time. We need to LET IT BE KNOWN IN POLITICS THERE IS A PRICE TO PAY FOR WHAT YOU HAVE SUPPORTED. THEY WILL GET LA VENGANZA SOON ENOUGH.

After this, being that L.A. is majority Latino at this point, the forces behind this racist fear based attack will have a lot of work to do in terms of healing this city. There is a trust that has been broken, etc. And again getting back to decency and ethics that even transcend politics, the republican outgoing mayor has not ever smeared an opponent on a level so outrageous and he has been supporting the Latino mayoral candidate and done much work. I suppose some republicans might really be 'uniters not dividers.'

This race has been painful, but through the pain you learn things too.




p.s. may nyc or jersey some day soon have a strong boricua mayoral candidate and hopefully mayor. i know the time is coming! i would send a small check of support to his or her campaign.

gotta go vote now,

pa lante

Amira

[MinFaluMuhammad]

As Salaam Alaykum,
Dear brother, that is why it is time for us to mobilize and unite. Not, just as Puerto Ricans, not just as Latinos, but as people of color against a mass movement to exterminate our existence. Here is some ammunition from our leader, teacher, and guide, The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. I plan to represent him in the Spanish speaking countries of the world. May Allah continue to bless you and keep your eyes open. There is more to come.

your brother and servant,

Min. Hector Falu-Muhammad




UNITY: KEY TO SURVIVAL
by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan

[Editor's note: The following text is excerpted from a speech delivered by Minister Louis
Farrakhan on November 19, 1978 at the National Conference of Black Lawyers in
Chicago, IL. The entire speech was printed in Vol. 1, No. 1 of the Final Call.]



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful

These are the three tests that God has given to each of us as proof of our worthiness to face and overcome all the struggles of life: 1) a hostile environment; 2) overcoming overwhelming odds; 3) pulling up against the force of gravity.

No person or people become great having an easy time. Most of you think that if God loves you, you are supposed to have life on a silver platter. God, and life, does not work that way. We must get away from that old, ignorant way of thinking. God has ordained struggle for all living things. Man has struggled to conquer the hostile environment of the jungle, and he has. Man has struggled to conquer the hostile environment of the desert, and he has. Man has struggled to conquer the oceans and its depths, struggled to conquer mountains, and he has. Man struggled to conquer the hostile environment of space. Nothing remains in the path of man who is resolved or determined to succeed. If we conquered the most hostile of environments of life before we had a developed intelligence, what should we be able to do now that we are developing a higher degree of intelligence?

Our fathers came across the Atlantic Ocean in the holds of ships during slavery. This journey was called "the Middle Passage." Many of our fathers and mothers were lost in the ocean. Some scholars give very conservative estimates of 100 million lives lost in the Middle Passage. But who made it to the shores of the West Indies and the shores of America? Only the strongest of the strong. No wonder the scriptures teach us that the race is not to the swift, but to that one who can endure to the end.

And that is what the real challenge represents. It represents the furthest point beyond which we can go. It represents contest; it represents struggle. However, if you jump into that struggle, know that you can survive. To survive means to outlast, to outlive, to go beyond. It means to stress one’s power to endure as in overcoming difficulty. If we want to survive, there is a way. I know that the enemy has plans. We should consider his plans. Yes, his plans are deadly, his might is great, but the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said the unity of the Black man would give us a weapon more powerful than any hydrogen or atomic bomb.

We Must Unite

If Black people came together anywhere in America, there is nothing that we could not have if we wanted it. The unity of 30 million of us in America would guarantee our survival. In fact, the unity of one million of us in America would guarantee survival for all of our people. To achieve survival, however, there are things that each of us must sacrifice. There is no way to survive unless we come into unity, and there is no way to have unity unless we give up the things that keep us from having unity. Survival starts with you and me. Don’t look to big government plans. Look to yourself and ask yourself, am I as an individual willing to struggle, to exert myself to the fullest to ensure that I outlast what is coming upon this world? If you make the commitment and say yes, then there is a job that you have to do right now as an individual.

Don’t tell me you want to survive and you are smoking a cigarette. If you don’t have the will to stop smoking a cigarette that contains 19 deadly poisons, stifling your lungs, poisoning your bloodstream, interfering with your ability to think and see clearly, then let’s not talk about the greater problem because we have already failed the test on the simple problem. How can we talk about survival and engage in that which kills self?

You may say, "I thought you were getting us ready to deal with white folk!" If we deal effectively with ourselves, we have already dealt with them. There is no way that they can come against us except through the weakness of self. So if we make the effort to clean up and correct our internal weaknesses, then our enemies have no door through which to come to weaken our effort to survive. The greater our desire for survival, the greater should be our will to strengthen ourselves.

We must also understand that eating the wrong foods, and even eating too much of the best foods, is not good for our health if we want to survive. During the plague in Europe, the Jews survived. And many of the ignorant, seeing the Jews surviving the plague, began to kill the Jews, thinking that they had brought the plague about. But they later found out that what caused the Jews to survive was their diet: they were eating day-old bread or bread that had molded, and in that mold was penicillin and that penicillin caused them to survive that plague.

Some of you will go and light up your marijuanas, or get a little cocaine. How can we talk about the survival of the Black man yet engage in the Black man’s extinction? Some of you are so greedy for money that you left religion and went to selling dope. Some so-called "Muslims" are doing this. Some Moorish Scientists are doing this. Some so-called "Christians" and "Hebrews" are doing this. If we want to survive, we must stop doing the things that contribute to our destruction. If we want to survive, we must stop promoting banners or ideologies and denying the principles that support those banners or ideologies.

Principles for Survival

If we want to survive, we have got to give up stealing. If we want to survive, we have to give up lying. For anytime we lie, we undermine our own character development. No matter how bad the situation seems, if we tell the truth, we begin building our character, and when we build character, we create trust in each other, we build confidence in each other. How can any institution that we build survive if we don’t have any trust or confidence in one another? And none of us can have confidence in a liar.

We must strive to make our word our bond. That is a principle of survival. Can we have unity if we are gossiping about each other? Can we create brotherhood spying on one another, back-biting one another? Once we are prone to gossip, and doing dirty things behind each other’s backs, the enemy of our unity sees this. He has his electronic devices on us night and day. And once he finds us weak in character, he uses this to destroy our organizations and discredit us. So each one of us has to police ourselves. The program of survival starts with you and me. If we would just stop doing the negative things that we do to each other, we would be 50 percent on the road to survival.

Every leader, every preacher, every teacher, every scholar must recognize that we must stop being hirelings and start being good shepherds. A hireling is one who does what he does for money. If we only lead for money, teach for money, guide for money, prestige and vain glory, soon we will lose those who once looked to us for guidance. We must challenge injustice wherever it is and the people will walk with us. But we have to be willing to make the sacrifice ourselves.

Black intellectuals and Black bourgeoisie: We need you! Your brainpower has got to stop thinking all day and night for ITT and IBM and the big corporations and banks of America. You must give some of your energy and expertise to the liberation struggle of your people. You must learn that no one man can rise above the condition of his people. You must learn that your people are depending upon you. You must learn that you need your people because the white man is cutting you out little by little. If you don’t quickly recognize that you need your people as your people need you, then as the economy falls, and the white man’s problems intensify, he is most assuredly going to increase his misuse of you and then throw you back in the laps of your people. You must come home to self!

The Ultimate Challenge

If we would today begin to think that our differences are minor, and our internal enemies are major, and work to scrutinize and uproot those internal contradictions, then we will have faced the ultimate challenge.

For the ultimate challenge is not the white man. The ultimate challenge is ourselves. The ultimate challenge is not the United States government. The ultimate challenge is the foolish and weak government that rules our brains. The ultimate challenge is to root out and destroy the negative forces within ourselves. Once we can root out those negative forces within ourselves and recognize that the hostile environment within ourselves and in the society is what we need to flex the muscles of our will against; and once we recognize that even though the odds are great and seem overwhelming, that they are not odds that we can not overcome; and once we realize that we must pull up against the gravity of our vain and personal desires that keep us self divided, then we will survive.

[conciencia]

Lacoctel,

Me parece (no estoy seguro) que la oportunidad un Hispano hace historia no pudo ser, pero no se mucho de el. De todos modos lo siento mucho por su perdida.

[lacoctel]

Originally posted by conciencia
Lacoctel,

Me parece (no estoy seguro) que la oportunidad un Hispano hace historia no pudo ser, pero no se mucho de el. De todos modos lo siento mucho por su perdida.

Gracias Conciencia!

I was hoping you'd check in on this post. Thanks and you've helped cheer me up. Messages like this help us here on the west coast know some of you on the east coast 'got our backs.' Thanks.

Hey maybe we can come up with a 'bicoastal alliance for Latino candidates,' especially at the local level. Mainly to raise funds and then raise awareness. As mentioned, I'd be interested in knowing about big important local races where there are conscious Boricuas involved wanting to serve su gente.

Yea this made me think of us, in terms of Chicanos/Latinos and a clear clear majority in LA not only that, but with a real connection to the land, that it was about ACCESS DENIED. The whiteys together with their nonwhite lackeys did everything they could to deny access to the mayor's office. Antonio was clearly the better candidate, not just a Latino thing. That is why plain fair-minded whites,blacks and others from different political parties, as well as labor and more traditional lefttists all supported Antonio.

But the fact is, there were MORE racists and ignorant people than fair, bright or progressive people.

The news was encouraged to report a 40 percent or so turn out in the Latino vote. That did not enthuse me at all. We should have had at least, call me exigente if you want, AT LEAST a 75 percent turn out! That may have made a difference or at least caused A RECOUNT!!!

I don't know what else to say. Maybe though, this was a good dress rehearsal that we needed. We can learn by our mistakes and get more creative, etc. Tony ran a clean campaign and he has to be proud, and we gotta be proud of him! And no matter what, he is still the MAN WITH MAS CORAZON, Y EL MAS GUAPO -- EN ESO EL ES EL GANADOR, SIEMPRE!

VIVA MI GENTE
VIVA EL HOMBRE LATINO

Echa pa 'lante

Amira

[conciencia]

Lacoctel,

Yes we are doing are part, The Jersey City race was won for the first time by a African American with have of his people Hispanic (puertorrican). A Puertorrican also won the Mayors Race for the city of Patterson and now we may have a a New York mayor too, so lets see.

[Leticia_g]

Amira,

My family is pretty involved in politics. The best thing to do is start from the bottom up. By this I mean is to try to have people (hispanics) involved in local positions for instance, committeeman, Board of Ed, Councilpeople etc, then have these people go out and seek the Latino vote. It doesn't matter how many Latinos you have if you can't gain their confidence and make them realize that it will benefit them to vote for a certain candidate then it will be fruitless. It works in our local area, we always get our candidates in.

In our local area we have a hispanic as principle in all the schools, head of most departments, committee person and head of the Board of Education etc, etc.

I hope this helps.

Regards!

[PhiDaWg61]

Conciencia,

You live in Jersey City??? Give me an email, man. phiman61@hotmail.com.