June 17, 2006

Two excerpts from “A Puerto Rican in New York and Other Sketches” by acclaimed author, newspaperman, activist, and communist Jesús Colón (1901-1974).

“No question,” President Bush said June 14, “Guantanamo sends, you know, a signal to some of our friends — provides an excuse, for example, to say, ‘The United States is not upholding the values that they’re trying to encourage other countries to adhere to.’”

No kidding.

“The question isn’t whether we can afford to have universal, single-payer health care; the question is, can we afford not to?” reads the first resolution passed by the United Auto Workers convention this week.

Please deliver a story
Status of DREAM Act
Web site soapbox
Expose Bush’s theocracy
Impeachment, I agree
Free trade fuels immigration

There is a lull in dramatic congressional debates and spectacular mass marches, but important things are happening on immigration reform, and the movement for immigrant rights cannot rest.

Now that corporations, “legal persons,” have far exceeded the legal and political powers of other people, and now that they have extended their reach all over the globe, it may come as no surprise that a simple generalization covers a great deal of all political developments: Corporations are using their control over governments to turn all forms of human activity into profit centers for themselves.

As the struggle for immigrant equality and justice is waged in the streets and heated debate fills Congress, a wave of hate crime has been unleashed upon the Mexican/Chicano community in the Southwest, a violent wave not without precedent in U.S. history.