by Rigo Hernandez

El Fantasmita, Teatro Nahual photo courtesy Teatro Nahual

Renowned Theater, “Teatro Nahual” will feature El Fatasmita Pluft, a children’s play in Spanish, directed by veronica Meza and written by Clara Machado.

The play will feature live music by Jesús Magaña along with fi ctional and real characters designed to captive its audience. The play is about a pirate who kidnaps a captain’s granddaughter in hopes of finding treasure, but is confronted by a family of ghost led by Pluft, the mother ghost, who inspires kids to follow their dreams.

The play will be performed on March 15, 16, and 22 at 2.:00 p.m. at the Tatro Nahual at 510 S. First St, San Jose, CA 95113. Tickets are $18 for adults and $9 for children, for more info call (650)-669-2949.

Women’s Night of live art at the Mission Cultural Center

Poetry, dance, videos, and songs will be featured at, Luna Negra: a Night of Women’s Live Art, at the Mission cultural Center for Latino Arts (MCCLA).

Highlights of the show include, poets Nina Serrano and Mamacoatl, Jackeline Rago will present a fusion of jazz and Venezuelan , ALJIBE Flamenco dance company directed by La Tania, and OJALA, six women percussionists performing Afro-Cuban folkloric rhythms, song and dance.

The event will be at MCCLA at 2868 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110 on March 26 starting at 6:30 p.m. until 9:30 p.m. General admission is seven dollars and fi ve dollars for students and seniors. For more info call, (415) 821-1155.

Literary Corner at SF Public Library

Chelis López, journalist and newscaster of shows such as Pájaro Latinoamericano and Andanzas at San Francisco’s KPOO FM 89.5 will be the moderator for El Rincón Literario or the literary corner.

The book discussion will center of El Olvido Que Seremos by Héctor Abad Faciolince, a novel which tells the history of Colombia and their struggle against those who wish to violently silence those who wish for a different Colombia.

The book discussion will on Wednesday, March 26, third fl oor of the Main San Francisco Library at 6:00 p.m. For more info call Álvaro Sanabria at (415) 557-4430.

Artist events in Oakland

The Corazon Del Pueblo in Oakland will feature Painted impressions of the Anza Expedition by David Rickman. The exhibition will run from March 2 to March the 30.

The reception will be on the last day from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. with the Calicanto Singers and the Maidu-Miwok Dancers; the Corazon del pueblo is located at 4814 International Blvd. For more info call 510-532-9142 or email info@peraltahacienda.org.

Also in Oakland, University of California, Davis Prof. Vladimir Guerrero author of The Anza Trail will talk about the Cultural Assimilation and Racial Make-up of Spanish California. The event will be on March 29, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the Lakeview branch of the Oakland Public Lirbrary at 550 El Embarcadero. For more info call 510-238-7344.

Guerrero will also hold a talk about The Anza Expedition and the Settling of California. This event will be on March 31 at 7:00 p.m. at the Hayward Area Historical Society 22701 Main St. Hayward.

To learn more about the Anza Expedition, Garate, Anza re-enactor and author of Juan Bautista de Anza will speak about it at the San Leandro History Museum and Gallery at 320 W. Estudillo Ave. in sanSan Leandro. For more info call 510-577-3990.

by Janet Murguía

Much has changed for Hispanic Americans since 1968. Forty years ago, Hispanics made up less than four percent of the U.S. population. Today, that number has reached 15 percent and is growing.

Back then, we were largely invisible outside of the Southwest and a few other pockets around the country. Today, Latinos comprise the nation’s largest ethnic minority and the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. electorate.

Forty years ago, upwards of 80 percent of Hispanics dropped out of school, perhaps a quarter owned their own homes, and there were just a handful of Latino elected officials nationwide.

Since then, the dropout rate has been cut in half, nearly 50 percent of Latino families are homeowners, and there are more than 5,000 Hispanic elected officials.

In 1968, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) was created with one goal: to strengthen the United States by promoting the advancement of Latino families. Forty years later, we have much to be proud of: The NonProfit Times recognized NCLR’s leadership with its coveted “Power and Influence Top 50” award, honoring the top 50 leaders shaping the nonprofit world. NCLR is also featured alongside Habitat for Humanity and the Heritage Foundation in Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, a book that analyzes the practices of 12 “high-impact” nonprofit organizations that have successfully made social change.

NCLR has received this recognition because, in partnership with the nearly 300 community-based organizations in our Affi liate Network, we continue to try to level the playing field in many areas, including:

• ­Education – NCLR supports 100 community-based schools, serving nearly 25,000 students annually.
• Homeownership – Since 1997, the NCLR Homeownership Network has provided counseling to nearly 145,000 families and has helped more than 23,000 Latino families buy their own homes.
• Head Start – NCLR has long championed making this valuable preschool program more accessible to Hispanic children, who after decades of under-enrollment have now reached parity in attendance with their peers. In 2005, Congress increased Head Start funding by $35 million to expand access for children of farmworkers.
• Health Care – NCLR has helped build health clinics and train lay health educators; in 2006, these clinics and educators provided care and disease prevention to nearly 100,000 people.
• Citizenship – Our affi liates work to help Hispanic immigrants integrate fully into U.S. society by providing English-language and civics classes and assistance with naturalization and voter registration.

While we have made much progress as a community, and as a nation, in the last 40 years, we still have work to do to realize our vision of a country where everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve the American Dream. While NCLR’s founders had to fight to get attention four decades ago, Latinos often receive the wrong kind of attention today.

For example, although Hispanic Americans have proudly served our country throughout our history and are fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan today, some question our loyalty, and others call us a threat.

But we will not let these negative forces derail us from working to improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans. Simply put, if Latino students do not succeed in school, then our educational system cannot succeed. If Latino families do not secure a comfortable level of fi nancial stability and savings, then neither will our country prosper economically. And if Hispanics are not fully integrated into the mainstream, our nation will not achieve the social cohesion required of the world’s greatest multiracial democracy.

Looking toward the next 40 years, one thing is clear: the Latino community’s future is this nation’s future. Let’s work to make that future a bright one for all of us.

(Janet Murguía, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s largest civil rights and advocacy organization, writes a monthly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. Reach her at opi@nclr.org). (c)2008

by José de la Isla

José de la Isla

HOUSTON – Once the Democrats decide what to do about the Michigan and Florida kafuffle, who wins the Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico primaries, how the super delegates weigh in and whether or not the issue goes to a brokered convention, they will have a nominee.

In other words, the race has turned into a good political brawl, one we richly deserve. How else do you see the content of character, agility on their feet, the ability to stare down bullies, and even what handlers do in the background? How else do we see a person’s idealism morph into toughness?

Take for instance the Obama adviser telling the Canadian consul not to take the NAFTA criticism all that seriously. Or the operative who called Clinton a “monster.” Both offenders are now gone.

Why? Because they stand to sabotage the Obama campaign.

But what could or should John McCain do about the Senate Republicans who are sabotaging his campaign?

Like a surreal page straight from the Joan Miró school of public policy, 15 bills were introduced at the same time John McCain was meeting with President Bush to get his endorsement. The president and McCain were having hot dogs for lunch, while their Senate “allies” were pumping out pure baloney.

The bills reintroduce past failed measures to criminalize unauthorized immigrants. The senators in their bills include proposals to make English the official language, complete a 700-mile fence along the southern border with Mexico, discourage states from issuing driver’s licenses to unauthorized migrants, and disallow Mexican-government ID used to open bank accounts — and they want to facilitate the National Guard and local law officers to participate in federal immigration-law enforcement.

The senators seem more intent on catching John McCain than they are in snatching unauthorized people. They seem more worried their tough-guy image could shrink them into looking like Mr. Peepers again, as did the 2006 mid-term election. They wanna get buff.

McCain, for his part, has already backtracked on his earlier enlightened immigration reform bill, co-sponsored with Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). He now stands for a brawny “secure our borders” position. Yet, who doesn’t?

We just have to remember what happen in 2006 after H.R. 4437, the draconian bill sponsored by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), passed in the House but not in the Senate. In response, a million people in all the major cities took to the streets. Public opinion reached 75 percent in favor of a path to legalization for immigrants.

Later, that year, 70 per2cent of Latino voters sided in the mid-term elections, with Democrats. In 2000, they had sided with Republican Bush by 35 percent and in 2004 by 40 percent. If Republican-led, thinly-disguised xenophobia continues into this year, the GOP candidate may be lucky to get the 21 percent that Bob Dole drew in 1996. I suggest the bills introduced in the Senate should be lumped together and go by the name “The End of the Republican Party Because It Does Not, Will Not Mature” Act. Antics like those by the 11 senators are the kind that led to the defeat of the 31 House and two Senate members, including some of the Sensenbrenner bill’s staunchest supporters in the 2006 mid-term elections.

The senators’ ploy is perhaps the greatest expression of disrespect and disdain for expanding the Republican Party, perhaps ever. Party advisors Leslie Sánchez (“Los Republicanos”) and Michael J. Gerson (“Heroic Conservatism”) in their books have warned Republicans to stop acting like such dopes.

But they didn’t and don’t listen. They seem to have forgotten they went down to defeat in 2006 and lost the House and Senate leaderships because of the Iraq war and their immigration reform failures.’

Now add the economy to the list.

This time next year we just may be wondering who shot the sheriff? Why wasn’t McCain able to bring law and order and common sense to the Republican Party? Why did Republicans implode as a national party?

[José de la Isla, author of “The Rise of Hispanic Political Power” (Archer Books, 2003), writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. E-mail joseisla3@yahoo.com]. ©2008

­by Marvin J Ramirez

Marvin J. Ramirez

Just recently, San Francisco Mayor Newsom proposed what he called, a Nightclub Reform Legislation to address “the recent spate of violence outside nightclubs.

These are the three proposed ordinances the mayor would like to put in effect:

• The first ordinance would require promoters to obtain a permit before holding two or more events per calendar year, thus enabling the Police Department and other regulator agencies to know who is directly responsible for an event and hold them accountable for a security plan and any violations of health or safety rules.
• The second ordinance amends existing law to tighten the permitting process, and grants emergency powers to the Director of Entertainment Commission to suspend permits for a variety of safety and noise .
• The third ordinance clarifies the application requirements for Extended-Hours Premises Permits (premises which are open between 2-6 a.m.), requiring these premises to create security plans, which the Executive Director of the Commission must approve.

The final ordinance makes it illegal to loiter within 10 feet of a club for more than 3 minutes. It only applies between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. and does not apply to people waiting for a bus or other activity. A person must be warned before they can be cited.

The mayor thinks that extending more police control over private promoters, loitering and violence is going to end. Mr. Mayor, can you have proof that the cause of the violence and loitering you are talking about is caused by nightclub promoters?

Yes, there is violence sometimes at nightclubs that sell alcohol, but you can’t or anyone law enforcement officer could testify under oath, that promoters are the cause of any of the charges you try to insinuate.

A promoter should not be responsible for what goes on outside a nightclub, neither should the city penalize a person who promotes one night every week at a nightclub.

To my opinion, this is just another intent to shorten people civil liberties of assembly. It imposes police control over civilians who otherwise don’t have a legal obligation to submit their private information to the police, and in this case on people who don’t hold the responsibility to run the nightclub. It’s just a way to of using an excuse to enter into people’s lives as in a police state.

This is no different from what the Bush administration has done to the people in the United States after the Sept. 11, – with the excuse of “protecting” the homeland – he has eroded the fundamentals of liberty and the right of individuals to privacy with the infamous Patriot Act.

The Board of Supervisors should think it twice before going this far in voting for this ordinances.

The promotership is a private contract between the owner of the nightclub and a private citizen. The state should be out of private contracts, since the owner already has a contract with the state and the police via their operating licenses.

The nightclub owner is the one responsible for running the club and keeping the necessary security to protect the patrons. With promoter or no promoter, the club has to meet the security needs in the establishment where alcohol is served, as required by state laws and local ordinances.

If this is the type of governorship you’re proposing if you become governor, thanks but no thanks. We don’t need a governor who is doing to expand the existing police powers over civilians.