by Carlos Guerra ~ Special to DosCentavos.net
The antics of Joe Arpaio, Arizona’s runaway sheriff didn’t start last month. But that state’s authorization of a racial profiling law — which everyone knows will be used almost exclusively against darker-skinned “suspects” — was our wake-up call. It was followed by Arizona’s banning of ethnic-studies programs and Texas’ wholesale revision of text books.
How can these things happen, you ask?
They are doing these things to us because they can — and they can get away with it with impunity because racists and xenophobes know that Latinos won’t do much other than grumble because we vote in such pathetically low numbers.
Instead, prominent Latino organizations will hold news conferences and pass condemnatory resolutions before getting to their real interests: bickering, electing officers and throwing lavish corporately funded socials and conventions before going home meekly to continue their lives as second-class citizens.
If any major Latino “civil rights group” were accused of turning a significant election, there would be no evidence to convict.
Raza, we can no longer wait until MALDEF fights this fight for us again.
It is time for all of us to arise in serious grassroots actions and each of us takes matters into our own hands. It happened before, after Proposition 187 became law in California. It must happen again, on a national scale.
Let’s start by registering everyone we know. And in November, let’s assure that every Latino votes.
We must take our rightful role in this nation by exercising every citizen’s only real power, the right to vote.
doscentavos.net 