Miercolicos (Hump Day Hi-jinx)

Confessional pena: I registered as media at the Congreso Latino and never even went by to pick up the badge. I did, however, make the Sunday night dinner at the downtown Sheraton and heard U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (Newark, NJ) stump for Hillary Clinton. Antonio González stoked the crowd, thinned somewhat by the opening night red carpet pachanga hald as part of the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival launch at the ArcLight Theater in Hollywood, as best he could. Antonio, an earstwhile childhood friend of LA's golden boy mayor, delivered a treatise on the strategy of joining evangélicos and environmentalists, a brilliant way to engage immigrants and tree huggers politically with a constructive, what can we do together to save God's earth agenda. Pretty amazing, and heady stuff.
Missing the always interesting Latino film festival opening night festivities are we now? Sorry Mr. Olmos and Marlene, but sometimes ya' just need to be reminded, just need to hang where raza is still more interested in resolutions and action committees composed of delegates who traveled to Los Angeles from across the country to participate in a downtown discussion that was actually even protested by Minutemen.

California State Senate Majority leader Gloria Romero spoke spiritedly on behalf of Barak Obama. Chicanos with an ounce of self-repect and any semblance of molecular memory vis-a-vis the movimiento and what it stood for would do well to quit frontin' and get behind the man who opposed the debacle in Iraq from the get go. Working within constraints, you have to applaud the gente behind the Congreso Latino for opening up a forum for serious dicussion of immigration and the changing complexion of the nation. Gloria Romero gives East LA a good name.

Unfortunately, I missed out on most of the townhall-style discourse, but from the little that I saw, it obviously reflects a shift, an honest-to-goodness political shift. The fact that there were Minutemen a hundred deep outside the Macy's downtown is ample evidence that Chicano-Latino agendas led and driven by emerging and increasingly successful political operatives from our side of the river are resonating across the board.