How to dress your children for tomorrow's NYC Puerto Rican Day Parade in NYC -- or the one in your hometown.

Cómo vestir a los nenes para La Parada #PRparade by Marixsa of MamáBoricua en Brooklyn bog. 

SOULFRITO! -- Celebrating Urban Latino Culture

SOULFRITO ARTS FOUNDATION - Soulfrito Arts is a non-for-profit cultural organization dedicated to the advancement and promotion of the Urban Latino culture in America today, through music, fashion, film, theatre, literary and visual arts.

Obama's Joshua Generation: Engaging Young People of Faith

David Reports of CBN News reports that the Obama Camapaign will soon launch The Joshua Generation, an outreach to young people of faith--especially young Evangelicals and Catholics.

Obama spoke about the "Joshua Generation" in his Selma Speech (March of 2007). Here's are excerpts:

- I'm here because somebody marched. I'm here because you all sacrificed for me. I stand on the shoulders of giants.

- I thank the Moses generation; but we've got to remember, now, that Joshua still had a job to do.

- As great as Moses was, despite all that he did, leading a people out of bondage, he didn't cross over the river to see the Promised Land. God told him your job is done.

- We're going to leave it to the Joshua generation to make sure it happens. There are still battles that need to be fought; some rivers that need to be crossed.

- The previous generation, the Moses generation, pointed the way. They took us 90% of the way there. We still got that 10% in order to cross over to the other side.

- So the question, I guess, that I have today is what's called of us in this Joshua generation? What do we do in order to fulfill that legacy; to fulfill the obligations and the debt that we owe to those who allowed us to be here today?

Related:

Obama Campaign will Launch 'Joshua Generation Project'
Evangelicals for Obama?
Obama's Speech at Ebenezer Bapitist Church: The Great Need of the Hour
Obama's Selma Speech
Obama's Selma Blessing
Don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Alabama. I stand on the shoulders of giants.

Young Latino Voters on the Rise

Over a year ago, I wrote that the new primary schedule would give America's growing Latino voting population a potentially decisive voting bloc. We've seen evidence of this trend in California, Nevada, New York and elsewhere, but it's in Texas, and especially among younger Latinos, that is proving most significant.

Young Latino Voters on the Rise is an article in today's press by AP which examines this timely issue. Here's an excerpt:

The power of that fast-growing slice of the Latino vote may soon be put to the test in Texas, where Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are competing fiercely for the support of Hispanic voters in the state's March 4 Democratic primary.

About 20 percent, of 2.6 million, registered voters in Texas have Hispanic surnames, and about a third of the state's eligible Hispanic voters are 18 to 29.

''If they turn out in bigger numbers than they have in the past, it could be a real turning point. It's this very large and growing untapped pool,'' said Roberto Suro, a founder of the Pew Hispanic Center and a journalism professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication.

Full Article Si, Se Puede!

Young Latinos for Obama or Nada

Barack Obama may be attracting many young Latino first-time voters – but if he doesn’t win his party’s nomination, they may not vote a second time.

More than four out of five Latino first-time voters under the age of 30 who voted for Barack Obama on Super Tuesday say that if the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton, they will not vote at all in the presidential election in November.

“It’s like rooting for your team during the playoffs,” said one 20-something first-time voter, a New York Puerto Rican male. “If my team doesn’t make it to the Super Bowl, yeah, I’ll watch the game, but my heart’s not in it.”

For the majority of urban Latino youth, if Obama doesn’t make it to the November election, they’ll watch the returns on television that night, but they won’t bother to vote.

The week after Super Tuesday, my company, Hispanic Economics, was hired by the Obama campaign to conduct surveys of 655 Latino voters under the age of 30 who supported Obama in New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Arizona. Rather than asking whom they would vote for in a hypothetical race between Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama and John McCain, voters were asked, “If Obama is not nominated, and in November it is Hillary Clinton versus John McCain, are you likely to bother to vote at all?”

When phrased this way, more than 80 percent of Latino first-time voters under the age of 30 who support Obama said, “No.”

This bodes well for the Republicans, since the nomination of Hillary Clinton, described by some of these Latino males under 30is “unappealing,”
“establishment,” “prehistoric,” and “bigoted,” could compel the much-vaunted “youth” vote to stay home on Nov. 8.

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Related: Age, Not Race, Splits Latinos' Democratic Vote (or as I see it, New Media Latinos for Obama vs. Telenovela Latinos for Hill & Bill reruns) Listen now

Katie: An American in Scotland Misses Puerto Rico

Katie (aka, Long Aye-lander in Glasgow) is an American living in Scotland and missing Puerto Rico. Here's her latest post entitled: From Manhattan to Maricao: a Puerto Rican Odyssey.

I love visiting Puerto Rico. It’s relaxed yet alive, urban yet natural, American yet Latin American. If I wasn’t so set on going to Scotland, I could easily picture myself living in a little casita with a palm tree in the back garden.

Adrian is fond of pointing out the similarities between Scotland and Puerto Rico. He sites their shared love of fried food (and resulting obesity problems), extreme national pride, friendliness and political situations. As a semi-autonomous territory of the United States, Puerto Rico’s relationship with America is similar to Scotland’s relationship with England. And, just like in Scotland, people make a lot of noise about independence but nothing ever gets done about it.

Of course, Scotland and Puerto Rico are probably more different than they are similar. Scotland is wet, cold and miserable 80% of the time; Puerto Rico is warm and sunny 80% of the time. Puerto Rico is seriously overcrowded – 4 million people squashed into 3,515 sq mi – while Scotland only has 5 million people on its 30,414 sq mi of land. Scottish people may sound like they’re speaking another language, but Puerto Ricans ARE speaking another language. Most Puerto Ricans are naturally fabulous dancers; Scottish people…well, not so much. Adrian is perplexed by what he calls “white people dancing.” His attempts to imitate “white people dancing” are usually ridiculous but not all that far off the mark. Observe:

Ah, Puerto Rico - land of palm trees, beautiful beaches, insane traffic, reggaeton and Ricky Martin.

I miss you already.

A Third of Hall County (GA) Students Latino

Dominating the student population in Gainesville city schools, Latinos are also quickly becoming the predominant group in Hall County schools as well. October enrollment numbers released by the Georgia Department of Education show that Latinos now make up nearly 34% of Hall's overall enrollment of 25,585 students.

Hall County is situated 35 miles Northeast of Atlanta. The Hall area was Cherokee and Creek land until their forced removal in 1838 in The Trail of Tears.

As is the case in many other communities with fast growing Latino populations, there are no Latinos serving on either the Gainsville Board of Education or the Hall Board of Commissioners.

Related:

Hispanics now one-third of Hall students
For the Love of Immigrants
Latino Grits
Latino housekeepers in Savannah arrested for taking the garbage
The ‘New South’ -- an Immigrant-Friendly Place
Southern States -- Immigration's New Battlefield

Turning off Younger Voters, Too

Latinos will not vote Republican next year.

But neither will African Americans, Gays, a majority of women, political independents, people against a wretched U.S. foreign policy, people concerned about climate change, people concerned about a shinking middle class, most political moderates, and religious people fed-up with "values" politicians that are frauds.

However, the group of voters likely to make the longest lasting and loudest impact on next year's presidential elections are young, independent-minded Americans. That is, eligible voters under 40. Many of whom are fed-up with a baby boom generation of political and business leaders--Republican and Democrat--that has screwed up so much of what it has touched.

Younger voters are tired of the lies, deception and plain stupidity which characterizes so much of today's politics. They're tired of Clintonites as well as the Bushies, the Limbaughs and the Olbermans, the Chairman of Halliburton and the Chairman of the the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They're tired of them all.

With some 90 million srong, representing almost one third of all Americans, Americans 18-40 will shape national politics for years to come.

Here's what one young voter, a person whose online moniker is Shadow and calls himself an independent, wrote in response to Expect less Mr. Nice Guy, an article by Roger Simon on today's Politico:

Most of the progressive blogosphere is against Hillary; they prefer candidates like Obama and Edwards, and think Hillary's cackle is ridiculous.

Rush Limbaugh caused his own problem by opening his mouth and saying something way more offensive than what moveon said; over 70% of the troops gave to an anti-war candidate in the second quarter, so Rush called the vast majority of our armed forces phonies, as opposed to one person.

The fact that the people who went on and on about moveon's ad aren't bothered by Rush shows an incredible hypocrisy to most voters.

Maybe you guys don't realize what you sound like to younger independents like myself. Your entire vocabulary seems to be based on saying words like lefty, socialist, and libs; it seems like you guys can't even carry a conversation without those words, and the posts are ALL the same. That might seem normal to you guys who ingest a regular cycle of far right-wing media where these terms are repeated constantly, but to the other 70% of America, you guys sound NUTS, and you can't honestly think you're winning anyone new over with that language.

The problem seems to be that you guys are stuck in the 60's and 70's, when a Democratic President started an ill-advised war; however, now it's 2007, and we have an ill-fated war started by a Republican President, the biggest national debt in world history, the biggest government in world history, and a foreign policy that increases terrorist recruitment and decreases national security.

All the issues that Republicans are supposed to be useful on - fiscal responsibility, small government, national defense - have come under assault by the modern GOP like they never have since our nation's inception.

So to anyone under 40, relying your arguments entirely words like libs, left wing, and socialist just makes you sound like fringe nutballs; all you're doing is preaching to an increasingly shrinking choir, which will die of old age within a couple generations if no new voters come into the tent.

While I don't know how the nation will fare under the influence of younger voters, one things is clear: They can hardly do worse.

Draft College Republicans

Max Blumenthal documents the hypocrisy of young college Republicans that are staunchly pro-war but refuse to fight in Iraq. Blumenthal refers to them as Chicken Hawks or Cheney Republicans.

Legalize Undocumented College Students: Why Not?

Illegal Students Await Immigration Plan (by Nancy Zuckerman, AP - 6.3.07)

WASHINGTON (AP) - At 23, Mariana should be carefree. She is finishing up her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has been accepted to a master's program at Harvard University's education school.

But life is not so simple for Mariana, who insisted that only her first name be published because she is illegally in the United States and worries she could be deported to Guatemala, where she was born.

"I'm even afraid of eating an apple in the library because I'm afraid of getting caught," she said.

Mariana also worries about how she will pay her tuition and what kind of work she will get after she completes school. "What happens next? Without a work permit, how do you exercise your degree?" she said during a recent interview.

Mariana is among an estimated 50,000 undocumented students in U.S. colleges today. These students would be among the people who would benefit from a part of an immigration bill that the Senate plans to resume work on this week.

Children born in the United States to undocumented parents are granted citizenship automatically. A section of the new legislation deals with illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. They would gain temporary legal status when they graduate from high school as long as they agreed to enroll in college or enlist in the military.

They would be put on a fast, three-year path toward getting their permanent resident status and their green cards. While waiting for that, the students would be eligible for federal student loans and could work legally - options not available to them now.

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Imprisoned Immigrant Children Denied Education

Attorney Scott Medlock of the Austin-based Texas Civil Rights Project sent this letter to Taylor school Superintendent Bruce Scott, Williamson County Judge Dan A. Gattis and the T. Don Hutto Residential Center warden demanding that the children held at the "center" be given the seven hours of daily instruction as required by the Texas Education Code.

"As you know, state and federal law requires undocumented immigrant children be provided with educational opportunities equivalent to programs provided to other children," Medlock's letter states, citing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Plyler v. Doe.

Schools Superintendent Scott and officials from the Williamson County referred questions to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. A spokeswoman for that agency said that they were investigating and had no comment.

The T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas is a for-profit facility owned by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a Nashville based company. CCA has a major contract with the federal government to operate Don Hutto as a prison (or modern day concentration camp) for immigrant families. The 512 bed facility, which some refer to as a concentration camp, has been the target of a numerous protests against the practice of incarcerating children. Williamson County receives a "kick-back" for each person imprisoned at Don Hutto.

Local residents and members of Texans United for Families, a coalition of community, civil rights and immigrant rights groups, have expressed outrage about the detention of families and children, saying it is immoral.

Speaking as a mother and as an ACLU attorney, Rebecca Bernhardt, said:

“It horrifies me as a mother to think of what it's like to not be able to watch your kids play outside when they want to or not watch your kids go to school and learn,” she said. “Not only is this a grave human rights violation it is also an incredible waste of taxpayer resources. There are alternative, cheaper ways of handling immigration that have been proven to work just fine as far as getting people to their court hearing.”