Real American Patriotism

For a couple of weeks, I've started to write about the current immigration battle being waged in Congress and, more importantly, on the streets. Each time, I've come up against a wall of cliché that has stymied my efforts. What can I say, as a liberal, white man, that hasn't already been said? The world doesn't need another rambling treatise on how America is a nation of immigrants, blah, blah, blah.

Still, H.R. 4437, the spark that ignited these protests, is an obvious and reprehensible piece of race baiting in an election year and perhaps the worst piece of political calculation that the Republican Party has made in years.



In the 2004 election, the Bush/Cheney ticket received forty-four percent of the Latino vote, an increase of nine percent from their totals in 2000. The reasons behind the swing away from Democrats are complex and could be the subject of a long post, but a quick look at the streets is enough to show that those gains--and then some--are marching right out of the Republican column. Of course, the Democratic Party establishment, long used to African American and (to a lesser extent) Latino voters toeing the party line, needs to pull its head out of its rectum and actually create policy initiatives that are in line with the values and the rhetoric of the Party.

Because here's what I'm seeing:











I'm seeing a group of people, too long marginalized by the power structures in this country, gaining a sense of their own power, seeing the strength of their numbers. I'm seeing faces that are barely into adolescence beside faces that have weathered a lifetime of discrimination. I'm seeing anger, yes, but also pride and hope and determination.

Most importantly, I'm seeing a generation of new voters, these high school and middle school students, leaving their schools en masse and making their voices heard. How many of these teenagers will turn 18 before the 2008 election? How many of them will remain energized and active? I'd wager it will be a fair number. Because this isn't just politics. This is personal. It is about their friends and their families, their mothers and their fathers, their aunts and uncles and cousins and brothers and sisters. It is a movement that is starting to coalesce into something this country hasn't seen in thirty years.

It's a movement still searching for a leader, for a face, for its Dr. King or its Malcolm X, but H.R. 4437 has pried the lid off and it's not going back on.