De Leon: La Raza Calls Off Arizona Boycott – What Next?
The economic boycott of Arizona after the state passed SB 1070, a draconian immigration law, has cost the state billions. The law still stands–so why did La Raza reverse its position?
Tag: National Council of La Raza
Stories
Advocates Slam Poll Claiming Minorities Want to See Immigrants Deported
Advocacy groups accuse the Center of Immigration Studies of “cooking the books” in attempt to show minority support for deportations.
Organizations Launch National Campaign to Push For Immigration Reform
Some 200 activist groups from across the country have announced a nationwide campaign to push for immigration reform.
The Reform Immigration For America campaign was launched Monday at events in over 40 cities, according to organizers. A national launch in Washington D.C. is scheduled for Wednesday at the National Press Club, according to a press release. The coalition is also bringing 700 activists from at least 35 states to the national capital for a national summit between Wednesday and Friday that will include a “National Town Hall” on Thursday.
According to the announcement,
This groundbreaking, momentum-building effort organizes supporters of immigration reform into a stronger, more effective, and politically savvy national campaign that will help support President Obama and ensure that his promises of comprehensive immigration reform become legislative reality.
Stories
A Leading Activist Goes From Pressing for Hispanic Appointments to Becoming One
By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor
Three weeks ago, as a senior vice president of the National Council of La Raza, Cecilia Muñoz was part of the Hispanic lobby pressing the incoming Obama administration for significant Latino representation in the new cabinet.
A few days after the presidential election, in a story by Politico, Muñoz said Latinos expected to be prominent in the Obama administration. “It’s a foregone conclusion that we should be at the table for policy debates and in a position of authority,” she said.
Wednesday, Muñoz was given a seat at that table, when the Obama transition team announced she will join the White House staff as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs.
Cecilia Muñoz
Muñoz was born in Detroit in 1962 to immigrant parents from La Paz, Bolivia. According to The Detroit Free Press, her father was an automotive engineer who moved there to attend the University of Michigan.
Muñoz obtained degrees from the University of Michigan and Berkeley. “While studying at the University of Michigan, she tutored Hispanic Americans incarcerated at the state prison in Jackson,” the Free Press reported.
Muñoz started her pro-immigrant activism in California after college. She later joined NCLR, where she has worked for over twenty years. In 2000, she received a MacArthur Foundation $500,000 “genius grant” for her work on immigration and civil rights, The Washington Post said.
In a 2005 essay for NPR‘s Morning Edition, Muñoz said her activism was born of the outrage she felt at injustice leveled at Hispanics. She remembered a conversation with a friend of her family:
He told me that he thought the U.S. might someday go to war somewhere in Latin America. He looked me in the eye and told me that if it happens, he believes my parents belong in an internment camp just like the Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Latinos and the Future of American Electoral Politics: Studies Point to Key Role in Future Years
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Photo: LBJ Library)
It is often said that, when he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson also signed the South away to the Republican Party for a generation.
Today, LBJ seems vindicated. And another minority that for some is in a struggle similar to the civil rights movement finds itself in a new, powerful role.
The longtime sleeping giant of American politics — Latino voters — has finally awakened with the potential to give the Democrats an electoral majority that could last for a generation. That was the conclusion Hispanic and pro-immigrant advocates drew yesterday at a press conference in Washington D.C.
“My advice to Republicans is to make their peace with the fastest growing portion of the American electorate,” Simon Rosenberg, the president of progressive think tank NDN, said at the America’s Voice event. “The Republican Party is giving away the Southwest and Florida to the Democrats for a generation.”