Mimiteo Kitchen
Chara Dagres
Latinos filling more high-level government jobs
By Richard S. Dunham, Hearst Newspapers
San Francisco Chronicle (June 14, 2009)
Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court has focused national attention on her Latino heritage and the history-making nature of her selection.
But the bright spotlight on Sotomayor has obscured a highly significant shift in the ways of Washington: President Obama has selected far more Hispanics for his administration than any previous president in American history.
Latinos comprise 11 percent of the new president's first 300 nominees for senior administration positions requiring Senate confirmation, according to the White House.
That shatters the 5.5 percent mark set by former President George W. Bush during the first 18 months of his presidency, according to Office of Management and Budget statistics. Bush had broken the previous record held by his predecessor, Bill Clinton, who filled 4.5 percent of his confirmable positions with Hispanic nominees.
In addition to 33 positions requiring Senate confirmation, Obama has chosen 26 Latinos for White House staff jobs -more than any of his predecessors.
Obama's Latino wave is a stark reminder of the increasing clout of the nation's fast-growing and largest minority group. But it also reflects a Hispanic power shift from Texas to California. Of the top Latinos in the Obama administration, 21 have connections to the Golden State, while 14 boast Texas ties - a reversal from Bush and Clinton days.
Civil rights advocates hail the rapid increase in Latino employment in the West Wing and beyond.
Reflecting reality
"This is a new America," said Simon Rosenberg, CEO of the Democratic group NDN, which specializes in demographic and technological change. "America is going through one of the most profound demographic transformations in all of its history. The Obama administration is simply reflecting the emerging reality of America in the early 21st century."
But the record-setting pace of appointments reflects more than simple demographics. It also reflects the complexity of a president who proudly calls himself an American "mutt" - a biracial president, the son of an immigrant, a person who has experienced racism and benefited from affirmative action. And it demonstrates the growing political clout of a coveted and pivotal voting bloc that has trended strongly Democratic in the past two national elections.
"Very deliberately, they set out to pull in a very diverse administration," said Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens.
But the administration remains sensitive to charges from some conservative commentators that it has elevated diversity over competence.
"None of these people have been chosen for their positions for any reason other than that they were the best person available for that position," said Luis Miranda, a senior White House aide.
Many of Bush's top Hispanic aides had worked for him during his six years as Texas governor, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza and Assistant Commerce Secretary Israel Hernandez.
Clinton's Latino network included a group of Mexican Americans who worked with him in Texas during the 1972 George McGovern presidential campaign and others who assisted him in his rise to national prominence in neighboring Arkansas.
California shift
But Obama did not have a similar relationship with Texas. As a result, California - a state with 13.2 million Latinos - has become the state with the largest number of Hispanic appointees.
The president's personnel picks were the survivors of an arduous staffing process that began in the early days of the transition. Former Clinton Cabinet member Federico Pena, a Texas native who later became Denver mayor, and Frank Sanchez, who landed a top job at the Commerce Department, reached out to Latino groups and elected officials to seek candidates for administration positions.
But Obama made clear at a meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that he wasn't looking for political hacks.
"He said, 'I'm looking for excellence and I'm looking for diversity,' " said Rep. Charles Gonzalez, D-Texas, vice chairman of the Hispanic Caucus. "He didn't want just 'qualified' people. He wanted people who had distinguished themselves."
Some Latino groups say they will keep pushing until the entire federal workforce mirrors the national population.
"This is only the beginning," said Rafael Fantauzzi, president of the National Puerto Rican Coalition Inc.
"Here's our goal: 15 percent of the population of the U.S. is Hispanic. We want our federal agencies to be 15 percent Hispanic.
"We are not yet satisfied."
Source: National Institute for Latino Policy
angelo...@national-institute-for-latino-policy.ccsend.com
Sent by Juan Marinez mari...@anr.msu.edu
Remembering Cesar Chavez and His Legacy By Carlos Muoz, Jr.
I had the privilege of knowing Cesar Chavez and speaking truth to power on the same platform with him several times during his lifetime. My first contact with Cesar occurred when I was president of the United Mexican American Students at California State University in Los Angeles in 1968. We had organized a nonviolent protest against segregation and racism in the barrio high schools of East Los Angeles. Over 10,000 students marched in that historic protest. I was later indicted and imprisoned for "conspiracy to disturb the peace and quite of the neighborhoods" along with 12 other student and community civil rights activists. We each faced 66 years in prison if convicted. After two years, the California Appellate Court found us innocent, thanks to the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Cesar was extremely busy dealing with his union's historic Delano Grape Strike at the time of our imprisonment, but he took time out to publicly defend us and send us a telegram expressing solidarity for our cause.
Cesar, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., inspired members of my generation and me to organize the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's. We called it the Chicano Movement.
Cesar rose from humble beginnings to become one of the world's best-known labor organizers and spokesman for the poor. He was born Cesar Estrada Chavez in 1927 in an adobe house in Arizona to poor Mexican American parents. At age 10, Cesar and his family moved to California to look for migrant work after the family lost their small farm. By the 8th grade, Cesar had to stop his schooling to work in the field's full time. Child labor was commonplace during those years. Prior to his emergence as the founder of the United Farm workers of America in the1960s, not a single Mexican American leader had achieved national recognition. In fact, Mexicans and other Latinos did not exist in the nation's mind. We were the "invisible minority." I remember feeling proud when his portrait appeared on the front page of Time magazine's 1969 Fourth of July issue. The caption read "The Grapes of Wrath, 1969 -- Mexican Americans on the march." I was elated that our struggles for social justice, civil rights, and peace, were finally being discovered by the nation -- and, remarkably, on the Fourth of July.
I wrote him a letter congratulating him for being the first Latino ever to achieve the honor Time magazine had bestowed on him. He responded a couple of weeks later and thanked me, but he went on to say that the men and women on the picket lines, and not he, deserved to be on the front cover of Time magazine. That was the kind of man he was. A man who, like the workers he led, was from the salt of the earth.
Now, decades later, we have a Cesar Chavez Holiday in several states of the union. But the struggle to make it a national holiday continues today. The U.S. Congress has consistently resisted all our efforts over the years to pass the necessary legislation to establish it. The Republicans have consistently led the opposition against it and a substantial number of Democrats have also opposed it in the past. I am pleased that Senator Barack Obama called for a national holiday to honor Cesar during his presidential campaign. Hopefully, as President, he will keep his word to make it happen.
Cesar once said that the "truest act of courage is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice." In 1974, Cesar became the first recipient of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Award. Andrew Young, one of Dr. King's right hand Lt.'s and the mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, at the time, called Cesar the "nonviolence heir to Dr. King".
Cesar was one of the most modest and humble Latino leaders I have known. It was extremely awkward for him to accept the well-deserved recognition he received during his lifetime. He did not consider himself the great man that he was. In his mind, he was only the President of his union, with a self imposed salary of $5 a week, whose job it was to put bread and butter on the table of the farm workers.
The work for farm workers' rights continues today. The health, safety and well-being of many farm workers and immigrant workers are once again under attack by the corporate interests that Chavez fought during his lifetime.
While many of the farm workers may have won the same rights other American workers were granted by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 -- such as the freedom to form a union and the power of collective bargaining -- many continue to be exposed to pesticides and other unhealthy working conditions as they toil to bring food to our table.
Chavez was a labor leader who shunned the spotlight and remained dedicated to the rank and file of his union until his death in 1993. Many Latinos consider Cesar to be their hero. It is true that the farm worker movement he led was largely a Mexican American labor struggle. But in point of fact, it included Asian, White, and African Americans, and other workers of other racial and ethnic groups. The UFW represented and continues to represent, workers of diverse religious backgrounds: Catholics, Protestants, Baptists, Jews, and Muslims. The first member of the UFW to be killed during a strike in Delano, California, was 60-year-old Mexican American Catholic by the name of Juan De La Cruz. The second one was a 24-year-old Arab-American Muslim by the name of NAGI DAIFFULAH, It is important for us to reflect and remember what Cesar Chavez stood for, as he himself stated it: "We do not belittle or underestimate our adversaries, for they are the rich and powerful and possess the land. We know that our cause is just, that history is a story of social revolution and that the poor shall inherit the land." Cesar Chavez was a hero to all Americans!
National History Day, California winner is Marcos Diaz
Why the Census Matters
Although the U.S. is spending $14 billion on the 2010 census, many people will ignore the survey when they receive it. Only 67% of Americans completed and returned their data in 2000; the Census Bureau used methods such as sending workers to knock on doors to tally the rest. Nonetheless, undercounting and over-counting inevitably occur. For example, the bureau estimates that 1.84% of the country's African-Americans were left out of the 2000 count. State and local officials already are mobilizing residents to fill out the 2010 census. At stake is more than $300 billion a year in federal and state funds for schools, public transportation, hospitals, roads, and other services, all of which is allocated according to census figures.
"The census also determines how many Congressional seats a state has," says William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan. think tank. More representatives in Congress means greater influence for a state. The 2010 numbers will be used to redraw Congressional and local legislative district lines for the 2012 elections. The changes can be significant. After the 2000 census, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Texas got two new House seats each; both New York and Pennsylvania gave up two. Florida, Texas, and Oregon are some of the states expected to gain seats from the 2010 count, while Michigan, Illinois, and Louisiana are among the predicted losers.
Another effect of the upcoming tally: More than 1.4 million workers will be hired by the Census Bureau, temporarily making it one of the nation's biggest employers. Recently, the bureau has dealt with public gaffes and con-troversies ranging from a failed attempt to use electronic-counting devices to charges from Republicans that the White House wants to use the census for political gain. Still, the bureau's acting director, Thomas Mesenbourg, says, "We are poised to meet the enormous challenges in front of us."
Hispanic population boom fuels rising U.S. diversity