Puerto Rico...Obama Island?

Being that Senators Obama and Clinton are spending their Memorial day weekend on the island, I felt it appropriate to post something on the primary and Puerto Rico. Actually, I want to refer you all to a great article a read on the topic. Click on the link below.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/21/75834/3293/165/519524

"HisPanic," Geraldo, and some Latino Muslim Tidbits

By, Khalil Al-Puerto Rikani

I would like to fully endorse Geraldo Rivera's new book His Panic: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S. Even though we saw a surge of conservatism on his part in regards to his position on security and war after 9-11, he is going all out for Latinos now. This book is a book dealing with the way Latino are feared in this country. The outragous comments about immigrants and Latinos (His-panics) in this day is rampant. Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly, Michael (Weiner) Savage, and other media pundits seem to have a deeply-rooted hatred against Latinos. It in interesting that see that why the demographics of the country keep changing, and it is starting to look more like the rest of the world, there is this sea of resistance on the part of many from White folks. We can see this in the way Muslims are vilofied in the media. We can see this in White support for Clinton. It is interesting to see what will be the outcome of it all. While Islam is the fastest growing religion, Latinos are the fastest growing "racial" group. Will Latinos not see the many similarities between Islam and Latinos. Will there be more of those like myself in the future (ie, Latino Muslims), or am I dying breed. I am just a dinosaur. Allah know best how this will all wind up. As Allah says "You do not guide those who you love, but Allah guide whom He wills." Guidance is from Allah. I cannot make any Muslim. What will the fact the Hispanic peoples have a connection to Islam through Islamic Spain (which lastest for 800 years) have upon the consiousness of young Latinos. Will not those oppressed realized that they have more to gain and more in common with Islam than Christianity which was imposed upon them by White Europeans. While young White realize that they too were forced to become Christians. Either way, whatever ethnic or racial group one mya come from Allah is, was, and will alway be One. He created us without any partners. He alone deserves to be worship. As Allah says, "There is nothing worthy of worship except Him." Islam is not a religion of oppress. Rather it is one of liberation. It is free from worship anyone or anything except Allah. Let us change our own destiny. As Allah says, "Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is inside themselves."

Peace.

Notes on the Nuyoricans

By Soledad Santiago
February 19, 1979

The Village Voice

http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/0542,50th7685,69268,31.html

Reprinted October 18th, 2005 12:00 AM in The Village Voice in the article

"Coming of Age 1976–1985: Punk to Pomo, Basquiat to Breakdancing."

It's 15 minutes to airtime at NewsCenter 4 on a Saturday night. Felipe Luciano, Emmy-award-winning journalist and former head of the Young Lord's Party, is weekend co-anchor. Around him at least six clocks tick simultaneously, making tangible the rush of time as news pours in from around the world.

"Ten seconds . . . 10 seconds to the real thing," says the stage manager, starting the countdown. Then Luciano begins. Twenty-seven monitors and two cameras are going at once.

Luciano is projected into living rooms around New York City every weekend. He is among the most visible of young Latinos who herald the arrival of a new breed—the Nuyorican. Technically Nuyoricans are second generation Puerto Ricans who have made New York their home. But to me, Nuyoricans cannot be defined by age or date of arrival. Nuyorican is a state of mind.

Many Latinos remember with pride the splash the Young Lords made across the front pages of the nation's newspapers in the late '60s. They remember Luciano as a brilliant public speaker who exhorted the young to rise up against the system. He once told a graduating class at East Harlem's Ben Franklin High School: "You are not going to get it by getting people elected to Congress, by a good education, or by praying. The only way you are going to get it is by ripping it up. Seize the schools, seize the courts, seize the prisons where three quarters of our people are." . . .

The successful Nuyorican is often cut off from his roots by the very nature of success, suspended in the time warp of a culture in transition, a culture of synthesis which is defining and asserting its values, attempting to allow tradition to survive assimilation. The dilemma of Nuyorican identity is not a racial but a class one. In the uncomfortable limbo between black and white, rich and poor, the Nuyorican pioneers a new identity.

The Nuyoricans walk a tightrope between yesterday and tomorrow, cherishing the positive in Puerto Rican culture while wrestling with its ingrained restraints that have no place in their new life; attracted by the personal freedom of an anonymous urban society yet repulsed by its indifference; aspiring to middle-class accoutrements yet shackled by the code of machismo which presupposes that the male in the family be the only wage earner.

Not all New York Puerto Ricans are Nuyoricans. Many stay in enclaves, never learning English and never touching the mainstream of New York life. The Nuyorican identity has emerged as the result of a series of choices, an individuality born of historical necessity.

Why Hillary Lost My Daughter and Me

By, Mona Gable

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mona-gable/why-hillary-lost-my-daugh_b_101567.html

This morning I asked my 15-year-old daughter what she didn't like about Hillary Clinton.

"I mean at the beginning, before she started going negative and attacking Barack Obama," I said, trying to rewind history.

My daughter was sitting at the kitchen table, where thousands of impassioned conversations in America have taken place last year about the historic possibility of the first female president. She didn't have much trouble answering. Not simply because she's a thoughtful young woman, an unabashed feminist, who relishes a good political argument as much as her mother.

Compared with that other historic candidate, for her there was no contest. "I didn't find her inspirational at all," she said flatly of Clinton.

As for Barack Obama, she heard in his soothing voice, his brilliant speeches, his very demeanor, the language of her generation. The language of inclusion and hope. "He talks about change, and I believe him," my daughter said, her face lighting up.

We've heard a lot about the power of inspiration during this long heated race. From the beginning Hillary was roundly dismissive of such talk. Oh, those naïve young people! she condescended. Those starry-eyed kids drinking the Obama punch! Maybe if she had been less tone-deaf, less a political weathervane changing her message and her campaign staff (remember Clinton loyalist Patti Solis Doyle?) almost as often as her suits, Hillary might not have caused such angst and handwringing among feminists. Even as older women and feminists icons like Gloria Steinem rallied to her, many young women found her stuffy, rigid, imperious -- a throwback to establishment politics.

As Obama supporter Courtney Martin wrote on Glamour magazine's blog last month about part of her discomfort with Hillary: "She reminds me of being scolded by my mother."

Obama's ability to inspire young people is precisely what has energized my daughter, whose enduring memory of the presidency has been the nightmarish Bush years. She doesn't feel conflicted in the least. And it's hard for me to blame her. This is why the daughters of Caroline Kennedy and Claire McCaskill -- hardly feminist "traitors" as Hillary defectors have been so absurdly called -- were able to persuade their politically savvy mothers to come out for Obama. His promise of change.

Unlike my daughter, part of me feels sad for Clinton as her campaign sputters to an end. Part of me wanted her to succeed. Not because I believed her to be "ready on Day One" to use her embarrassingly hackneyed claim. Or because of her tireless efforts to reform health care, another tragic failure of the Bush years. Or because she embodied for me all the times I had seen women earn less for doing the same job as men. A reality that continues to afflict working women in this country with little progress in sight. My reasons are purely emotional. I have friends who believed in Hillary. I understand their disappointment.

If only she had been the right woman at the right time. And this is what it comes down to, not only for my daughter but for millions of young, middle-aged and older women in America. They placed their faith in Clinton's candidacy, only to find her wanting. Perhaps it was partly our fault. We saw in her defeat in Iowa, in her victories in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, and now tonight surely in West Virginia, a symbol of what women had fought for - -the right to not just sit at the table but to actually lead.

But mostly I feel sad for her female supporters, the ones I saw last night standing behind her at a rally in West Virginia. The elderly women gamely waving their Hillary signs before the TV cameras cut away. Trying to put on a good front. Knowing that their dream is about to die.

What's up World?

What's up world? I have not had much to say lately. I do not know how longer I will continue this blog. Is anyone benefitting from? Let me know what you all are thinking? What do you like and dislike about my blog? Also please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Khalil Al-Puerto Rikani