As we start the New Year we take this opportunity for our annual Year End Review where we go back over some those stories that impacted our community, talked about our people, and highlighted the accomplishments, and some of the low lights, of individuals within the Hispanic community.
Several stories or themes weaved in and out throughout the year which included the Presidential election, immigration, the anti-Hispanic thread that ran through Arizona, the Dream Act, and local elections.
There is an old truism that goes like this: the more things change, the more they stay the same! This truism is a great way to start the year end review. In January the South Bay community was rocked with the news of school board members and a Superintendent being indicted with “pay to play” charges, one of the largest known cases at the time, the case won’t come to trial until January 2013 and, as it will turn out, have a minimal affect on the re-election of the sitting board members.
As we end this year this corruption case continues to expand with three new individuals being charged at the end of December, last week, with corruption charges, the more things change….
It seems like a long ago time now, but in January the Occupy America Movement was going strong, along with the Occupy San Diego Movement which had found a staging place on the plaza at City Hall. The movement had hit a chord with middle class America and with those facing foreclosure. The movement represented the 99% of society that was controlled by the wealthiest 1% in America.
The thread of middle class America, versus the wealthy of America was to be played out throughout the Presidential campaign during the year.
Also in January the Supreme Court heard a Texas redistricting case that could have impacted the Voting Right Act. The basics of the case was, who would re-draw the district boundaries in Texas, the Republican controlled House which favored Republican elected officials, or a non-partisan group that would uphold the principals of the Voting Rights Act which empowered minority voters. The Republicans lost this case, but minority voters’ rights continued to be challenged throughout the year as Republicans continued to challenge and change voter’s rights.
While he US Presidential campaigning was well underway, Mexico’s Presidential campaign was also underway. There were similarities between the two countries and central themes: the drug war, Occupy Mexico had taken hold, and for Mexico the youth movement fueled by the social media would have an impact.
As far as court cases go, this one probably would not be considered monumental but did demonstrate the tenacity and affect when acting in the best interest of the community. Josie Hamada, a retired San Ysidro school teacher, and her husband Steve, are challenging the use of pesticides on school grounds. Josie and her husband had spent the past 12 years planting and growing a Cherry Tree garden for the school, only watch as the trees were slowly killed off and the garden destroyed with the use of pesticides.
The Cherry trees were the catalyst but the issue was the use of pesticides on school grounds without proper notice. The case is pending but it demonstrated the tenacity of Josie which would become evident throughout the year as she threw her energies behind the campaign of Antonio Martínez for San Ysidro School Board.
Education is always an important story each year and 2012 was no different. While school scores continued to rise across the board one disturbing trend continued, the achievement gap with Hispanic and Blacks fell to a 30 year low.
Saving Ethnic Studies in Tucson Arizona was to be a year long effort and Ernie McCray continued to ring the bell against the oppression of education in Tucson. Couple this with the fight against SB 1070 and their infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and anti-Hispanic Governor Jan Brewer and Arizona was at the forefront as the most anti-Hispanic state in the nation.
The issues we covered in the first two months of the year all contained ideas and themes that would continue throughout the year.
Our beloved Auxiliary Bishop Gilberto Chavez had retired from the catholic diocese a couple of years ago and there had been no replacement named until January 2012. The new Auxiliary Bishop was Cirilo Flores. What made this news exceptional was that the current Bishop for San Diego, Robert Brom had announced his retirement in 2013 and Auxiliary Bishop Flores is now in line to replace Bishop Brom, this would make Flores the first Hispanic Bishop in San Diego.
Arizona was the first state to pass harsh anti-Hispanic legislation which was soon followed by Alabama, which was followed by other states, all claiming the US government was too slow to act on the immigration issue so they where taking control of the issue. All these states were lead by Republican governors who jumped on the anti-Hispanic bandwagon during a presidential election year.
The federal government would end up challenging these state laws based on the fact that immigration is a federal issue not a state issue. The federal government would prevail more or less. Most of the laws were struck down, but for example Arizona, bits and pieces were left in tact, such as the police’s ability to check suspects for their immigration status.
In March the drumbeat had started in earnest for the Hispanic vote by the GOP, while rank and file talked about the need to reach Hispanic voters, the Republican candidates in debate after debate, and there were a lot of debates, keep highlighting their strong anti-immigrant stance to solidify their right wing base. Romney who was a middle of the road Republican had the furthest road to travel in confirming his conservative credentials, but he got there when he said he would reverse President Obama’s executive order allowing for differed action on students.
Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, it turns out, would have to face several charges against him, including ethical misconduct against his immigrant prisoners Arpaio fostered his reputation as the toughest Sheriff in town and made his own rules as he went. To carry this out bullying tactics he had a gang of lawyers to carry out his intimidation tactics. The lawyers themselves came under review with two of them losing their license to practice and another having her license suspended for six months. Later in the year Arpaio himself would have to defend himself in court.
In May Latino activists in Arizona lauded the news that the Department of Justice was filing a federal lawsuit against the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office for alleged civil rights violations.
The suit, filed Thursday in federal court, is the latest chapter in a four-year-long investigation that began after Sheriff Joe Arpaio started conducting immigration sweeps in Latino communities, raising allegations of racial profiling and discrimination.
The war on drugs has been a dismal failure on both sides of the border, in Mexico the state is held hostage by the drug cartels and in America drug usage has not dropped one bit, it has instead increased. Despite this we continue on with the war on drugs. One person trying to make a difference is Javier Sicilla who lost his son when he was killed by members of a drug cartel for talking too loudly about the drug-fueled violence in their country. Since the start of Mexico’s war on drugs, during the six year span of President Calderon’s war drugs, 60,000 people have died and 110,000 have disappeared.
Sicilla has been marching across the country of Mexcio trying to pressure the politicians there for change and in August he continued with his march across America, leaving San Diego for Washington.
When asked what he hopes to accomplish? Sicilla responded: “I am convinced that change will come from the bottom up of society, not from the top. If we the citizens don’t voice our concerns and pressure the politicians, nothing is going to happen.”
We are getting closer to election day and Mitt Romney has seized control as presumptive Presidential candidate for the Republican Party, so the focus shifted to whom would be his running mate. This is where relatively unknown Florida Senator Marco Rubio came to the forefront. Rubio was Hispanic and a favorite of the Tea Party who helped him get elected, but outside of Florida nobody knew much about him, until now. With talk about Rubio being the perfect person to help shore up the Hispanic vote Rubio fell under the scope of the national media, small and large, and before long we new everything there was to know about him.
Unfortunately Rubio did not do well under the spotlight, and flubbed a couple of national appearances and he slowly faded out the scene. Despite this many still have high hopes for Rubio in the national political picture, could he become the first Hispanic Presidential candidate?
The attack by the Republican Party on voters’ rights continued, particularly in the Southwest where Republicans tried desperately to strip the Democratic Party of its base, the minority voter. Some states started requiring voters to show government-issued photo identification. Other states have cut back on early voting. Still others made it much more difficult for citizens to register to vote, a prerequisite for voting. These new restrictions fall most heavily on young, minority, elderly, and low-income voters, as well as on voters with disabilities. Then there was the Voter Purge with Florida doing a state-wide voter purge that is alarming everyone from the League of Women Voters to the Justice Department. The reasoning behind most of the laws was that there was huge voter fraud taking place, the only problem was, they could not prove their claim and in fact it was found that very little fraud actually took place. Many of these laws would later be struck down prior to the election.
President Obama while favored by Hispanics in the upcoming election still had issues with this voting bloc. His in-action on immigration and the fact that deportations had risen under his watch had many immigrant activitist upset and wanting answers. President Obama passed an Executive Order that would defer the deportation of students in the United States. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program would allow work permits and defers deportation for immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally prior to age 16 and who meet a number of other criteria. This in a sense was seen as a victory for DREAMers, students wanting to go to college and/or stay in school. And for Obama this gave him a reprieve from the immigration issue.
In September a good two months before the Presidential election the beginning of the end for the Romney for President campaign started with release of a video that was secretly taped at a private campaign fundraiser where Romney expresses disdain for “the 47 percent” of Americans who, according to him, don’t pay federal income taxes.
“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what … there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it …
These are people who pay no income tax,” Romney said. “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
This video clearly defined Romney as the candidate for the rich, that and with his vice-president hopefully Paul Ryan who was architect of a budget plan that cut out all most all social service programs, eliminating the safety net for the poor and un-employed, all but doomed this campaign.
President Obama won re-election and much of the credit went to the Hispanic vote. This voting bloc will be discussed and analyzed to this day, not by the Democrats but by the Republicans as how they can reach these voters. Without Hispanics voting for Republicans they will never win another national race. The White voter bloc which Republicans had enjoyed overwhelming support is shrinking and the Hispanic voting numbers are growing. The November elections hit the Republicans smack in the face and now they have to face reality.
While December started out with much hope for the future, Obama was President, immigration reform was on the front burner, the economy was slowly turning around and unemployment numbers were down, yet the nation was sent into a state of shock with the senseless killing of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
With this we ended the year 2012 much like we started the year with Sweetwater School Board members being charged with corruption, this time Bertha Lopez and Jim Cartmill, along with San Ysidro Superintendent Manuel Paul.
The stories mentioned here are only a sampling of the many front page stories printed in La Prensa San Diego but they were stories that we followed throughout the year such as the Presidential race where we published dozens of stories from different perspectives.