by Jorge Mariscal

Strolling across the convention center with her granddaughter, Dolores Huerta, who made history with César Chávez over 40 years ago, received an occasional greeting from those who recognized her. But most of the Latino and Latina 20- and 30-somethings hurried past her on their way to salsa lessons sponsored by Ford or free beer provided by Miller Lite.

Like the dozens of recently arrived immigrants and long-time permanent residents on their way to the free workshops on citizenship, they had no idea that they had just rubbed elbows with one of the major figures of U.S. labor and civil rights history.

If Barack Obama symbolizes “post-civil rights” politics, the Latino Expo at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) conference held in San Diego this month was the embodiment of a post-Chicano Movement universe in which unions, mass mobilizations, and radical critique are relics of a long-gone era.

The NCLR Expo was a corporate-funded orgy of mainstream Hispanic identity and culture. Outside the convention center, misguided Minutemen and others angry about the immigration mess clung to the deluded belief that NCLR is a “leftist” or “separatist” organization. Inside the building, representatives of every branch of the military, the CIA, and the Department of Homeland Security belied the right-wing paranoia.

With virtually no remaining links to the Chicano and Puerto Rican militancy of the Vietnam War era that typified its founding fathers Hermán Gallegos, Ernesto Galarza, and Julián Samora, the NCLR today is the brainchild of former director Raúl Yzaguirre and the top-down corporate vision he imposed on the organization in the late 1970s. Part of that vision was for NCLR to work closely with the Pentagon in order to tailor its recruiting sales pitch to Latino youth.

On the floor of the convention center, those with the flashiest displays received the greatest attention. Dozens of Latino and Latina youth crowded around the U.S. Army pavilion where soldiers clad in fatigues printed out personalized dog tags in exchange for the young person’s personal contact information. Army personnel roamed the aisles of the Expo engaging young people in conversation.

Across from the Army display, Latino Marines in dress blues invited children from 8 to 18 to do pull-ups on two improvised bars. An attractive Latina Marine barked “Aguanta, aguanta” as she encouraged a young girl to do one more pull-up. A tall NCO handed out tiny Marine backpacks to eager middle-school children.

At the far end of the hall were the booths for those minimally funded volunteer organizations that quietly do their work day after day in real communities. Noticeably absent were displays devoted to education. Book vendors were nowhere to be found and only one or two colleges were represented.

An enterprising group of college students with a sense that the military was preying on its sisters and brothers gathered handfuls of brochures from a health organization dedicated to issues of spinal trauma. Positioning themselves near the Army and Marine displays, they distributed the brochure “Paralysis and Brain Injury in Active Duty Military” to each young person with a dog tag or a backpack. The students were quickly dispersed by convention center security.

Two young couples in formal wear danced stylized waltzes near the Wal-Mart display as the PA system announced more free beer at the Heineken booth. Recent arrivals mingled with careerist Hispanics three or four generations removed from the immigrant experience. Somewhere in the bowels of the convention center, actual community workshops were taking place. But the public face of the conference was all pan y circos (bread and circuses).

Not far from this carnival of 21st-century Hispanic consumer capitalism, presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain made their fi nal stop in the month-long tour of mainstream Hispanic advocacy organizations. By the time they arrived in San Diego, both had already visited the annual meetings of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Offi cials (NALEO) and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).

The notion that any of these groups represent the hopes and aspirations of the majority of working class Latinos is laughable although the lobbying clout of all three within the Washington, D.C. beltway is undeniable.

The Obama campaign’s outreach to the Latino grassroots has been sporadic at best.

Anxious appeals for Spanish-speaking volunteers from non-Latino field directors working in swing states like New Mexico and Nevada suggest that the campaign is still far from establishing an effective infrastructure.

Apparently, California is considered a sure win. The latest national polls show Obama capturing the Latino vote over McCain by almost 40 percentage points.

Many disappointed conferencegoers complained that whereas McCain spent several minutes after his speech responding to questions from the public (even handing his microphone over to local immigrant rights activist Enrique Morones), Obama left immediately and refused to dialogue with the audience. Instead, staffers in his campaign held a three-hour information session for selected NCLR members.

Many Latinos in California are beginning to feel frustrated and somewhat taken for granted. In San Diego, Latinos hoping to volunteer for Obama are hard-pressed to find an office or even a contact person.

Cuauhtémoc Figueroa, Obama’s national director for Latino outreach, promises to ramp up efforts very soon. But the danger for the Obama camp is that because of its lingering neglect of key regions Latino support could soften and turnout in November might decline.

Although the mainstream media has yet to grasp the fact, the so-called Hispanic vote is as fractured a conglomeration of interests and values as the nation itself.

The NCLR convention reflected the most powerful segment of the Latino community, one that is at home in a world controlled by the corporations and their handmaiden the co-opted two-party system. But unless that system is challenged from below nothing will change for the majority of Latinos no matter who the system’s latest charismatic front man might be.

Obama’s vote for the border wall, his recent lurch to the right on several issues, and the fact that in his NCLR speech he neglected to mention the occupation of Iraq, the targeting of Latino youth by military and Border Patrol recruiters, or the prison system that is devouring black and brown children probably will not affect his huge lead with the Latino electorate.

The question for progressive Latinos (some of whom still call themselves Chicana, Chicano or Boricua) continues to be how best to pressure Obama and the Democrats from outside the seductive corporate vision promoted at the NCLR’s annual conference. Hispanic Link.

(Jorge Mariscal is a professor of history and literature at the University of California, San Diego. Contact him at gmariscal@ucsd.edu). ©2008­

by Dr. Ellen Brown

Global Research, July 25, 2008 webofdebt.com. (Part 1 of a two-parts article).

In a July 19 Wall Street Journal article titled “Why No Outrage?”, James Grant quoted Mary Lease, a 19th century Populist who urged farmers to “raise less corn and more hell.” Grant notes that financial behavior that would have been met with outrage in the 19th century is now met with near-silence from a too-tolerant populace.

For decades after the Civil War, monetary reform was a chief political issue, one around which whole political parties formed. Why is it hardly mentioned today? Grant suggests that the lack of outrage may be because the old 19th century Populists actually won.

“This is their financial system. They had demanded paper money, federally insured bank deposits and a heavy governmental hand in the distribution of credit, and now they have them.

The Populist Party might have lost the elections in the hard times of the 1890s. But it won the future. . . . They got their government-controlled money (the Federal Reserve opened for business in 1914), and their government-directed credit [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac]. In 1971, they got their pure paper dollar. So today, the Fed can print all the dollars it deems expedient and the unwell federal mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, combine [to] dominate the business of mortgage origination . . . .”

Mr. Grant may have answered his own question, in another way than he intended. Most people, evidently including Mr. Grant, actually think that the Federal Reserve is a federal agency; and that paper dollars are issued by the government; and that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are federal mortgage giants. The American people are silent because they have been duped into believing they have gotten what they wanted. In fact, what the people got was not at all what the Populists fought for, or what their leader William Jennings Bryan thought he was approving when he voted for the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. In the stirring speech that won him the Democratic nomination for President in 1896, Bryan expressed the Populist position like this: “We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government. . . . Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson . . . and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business. . . .

When we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other necessary reforms will be possible, and . . . until that is done there is no reform that can be accomplished.”

Bryan lost in 1896 and again in 1900, but he went on to lead the opposition in Congress. A major bank panic in 1907 led to a bill called the Aldrich Plan, which would have delivered control of the banking system to the Wall Street bankers.

However, the alert Ilopposition, led by Bryan, saw through it and soundly defeated it. Bryan said he would not support any bill that resulted in private money being issued by private banks. Federal Reserve Notes must be Treasury currency, issued and guaranteed by the government; and the governing body must be appointed by the President and approved by the Senate.

To get their bill past the opposition in Congress, the Wall Street faction changed its name to the Federal Reserve Act and brought it three days before Christmas, when Congress was preoccupied with departure for the holidays. The bill was so obscurely worded that no one really understood its provisions. Its backers knew it would not pass without Bryan’s support, so in a spirit of apparent compromise, they made a show of acquiescing to his demands. Bryan said happily, “The right of the government to issue money is not surrendered to the banks; the control over the money so issued is not relinquished by the government . . . .”

That was what he thought; but while the national money supply would be printed by the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, it would be issued as an obligation or debt of the government to a private central bank. The Federal Reserve is wholly owned by a consortium of private banks; it is controlled by bankers; and it protects their interests. It issues Federal Reserve Notes (dollar bills) for the cost of printing them (or, more often, for the cost of entering numbers on a computer screen). This privately-issued money is then lent to the government, and it is owed back to the private Federal Reserve with interest. The interest is eventually refunded to the government, but only after the Fed deducts its operating expenses and a 6 percent guaranteed return for its bank shareholders.

Congress and the President have some input in appointing the Federal Reserve Board, but the Board works behind closed doors with the regional bankers, without Congressional oversight or control. Bank CEOs actually sit on the boards of the Fed’s twelve branches. As just one recent example of the private control of public monies, in March of this year the New York Federal Reserve agreed in private weekend negotiations to advance $55 billion of the people’s money so that JPMorgan Chase could buy Bear Stearns at the bargain basement price of $2 a share, down from a high of $156 a share. It was a hostile takeover, not approved by the Bear Stearns shareholders or the American voters. JPMorgan Chase is the bank founded by John Pierpont Morgan, who sponsored the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. Jamie Dimon, the current CEO of JPMorgan Chase, sits on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which dominates the twelve Federal Reserve Banks; and he has huge stock holdings in JPMorgan Chase. His participation in the decision to give his bank $55 billion in Federal Reserve loans is the sort of conflict of interest that federal statute makes a criminal offense; but there is no one to prosecute the statute, because the banking lobby is too powerful to be denied. The banking lobby is powerful because private bankers, not the government, create our money and control who gets it.

(See Ellen Brown, “The Secret Bailout of JPMorgan,” May 13, 2008, www.webofdebt.com/articles; and “What’s the Difference Between Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns?”, June 14, 2008, ibid). Next week: Part 2: “The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was a major coup for the international bankers.

“Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgment to select those in whose hands it will be effective; and the cunning to spread the truth among such persons. These are formidable problems for writers living under Fascism, but they exist also for those writers who have fled or been exiled; they exist even for writers working in countries where civil liberty prevails.” Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956).