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City College offers adult education, community wellness and more

by Juliet Blalack

City College is now accepting new student applications for Spring 2008 semester and has added programs for high school students and working adults.­

The Mission campus has added 150 credit courses, ranging from Gay and Lesbian Issues in the Workforce to Music of Latin America and the Carribean.

The Weekend College is geared toward 11th and 12th grade students who want to earn college credit as well as working adults. The college offers distance learning and a program to help working adults earn their AA degree faster.

A new community wellness will open this semester at 50 Phelan Ave. to encourage all to exercise. Credit students pay $20 per unit and a health fee of $16 for the entire semester. Noncredit courses are free of tuition. Financial aid is available for eligible credit and noncredit students. For  more information, contact the Admissions Office is 415-239-3285 or visit www.ccsf.edu.

Monterey Bay Aquarium children’s explorer contest

Children between ages 10-13 can apply to be a Monterey Bay Aquarium explorer until Dec. 28. Explorers get a free year membership, exclusive behind-the-scenes tours of the aquarium, free tickets for their entire class, a chance to shadow an aquarium employee, and other benefi ts. Bilingual children are strongly encouraged to apply. To apply, children must submit an application with a letter of recommendation from a teacher and a 250 essay showing their commitment to conservation. The application is online at http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/vi/vi_events/vi_events_officialexplorer.asp.

­Roccapulco New Year’s Party

Roccapulco will host a New Year’s Party with dinner, a champagne toast, party favors, and music.

Two live bands are scheduled to play salsa, cumbia, merenge, and bachata. The upstairs room will feature a DJ playing club hits, disco, and reggaeton. Dinner includes an appetizer, a choice of three entrees, and an ice cream dessert. The tickets are $35 for just the party, $50 with dinner, and $95 for couples. To make a reservation call 415-821-3563.

Peace and justice New Year’s party

Global Exchange and CodePink are hosting a peace-themed New Year’s party at the Wax Museum at Fisherman’s Wharf. San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano, State Assemblyperson Mark Leno, San Francisco School Board President Mark Sanchez, and Medea Benjamin, cofounder of CODEPINK plan on attending. HYIM and the Fat Foakland Orchestra, The Average Dyke Band, and Tony Mayfi eld are scheduled to play music. To fi nd out more contact Nancy Mancias, 415-342.6409 or nancy@globalexchange.org.

Arithmetickles arrives at schools Arithmetickles is a show that uses puppets, stand-up comedy, and audience participation to teach elementary and middle school children math. Shows are scheduled throughout January in San Jose, Pacifi ca, Burlingame, Milpitas, and Berkeley. To view a schedule visit http://www.arithmetickles.com/calendar/USA_Ctc.php#CA or call 800-341-3585.

Golden Globe nominees likely contenders for next year’s Academy Awards

by Antonio Mejías-Rentas

Javier BardemJavier Bardem

OSCAR BOUND: Three Latino filmmakers nominated last week for a Golden Globe award are likely contender’s for next year’s Academy Awards.

Nominees in the acting categories include Spanish actor Javier Bardem, who is up for a possible Golden Globe for his supporting role in No Country For Old Men. Bardem is a past Oscar nominee who is considered a frontrunner in the same category for the industry’s major award, whose nominees are to be announced Jan, 22. Bardem has already picked up acting awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review.

The other two Latino fi lm nominees are in musical categories. Last year’s Academy Award-nominated composer Alberto Iglesias is up for the score of The Kite Runner and Colombian singer Shakira grabbed a nomination for Despedida, a song she composed for the fi lm Love in the Time of Cholera.

Last week, Shakira’s song was included in a list released by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, with songs that qualify for the Oscar nomination. It is the only Spanish-language song to qualify this year; Jorge Drexler’s Al otro lado del río, from Diarios de motocicleta, won the Oscar in 2005.

A fourth Latino nominee was listed among Tv categories. América Ferrera is again nominated for best actress in a comedy, the award she won earlier this year for Ugly 13etty.

Given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the Golden Globes will be handed out in Los Angeles on Jan. 13 in a ceremony to be broadcast by NBC.

ShakiraShakira

LABEL SUED: Last week’s announcement of nominations for the Premios lo Nuestro, organized by the Univisi6n network, coincided with published reports that its affiliated record label was facing three lawsuits, including two related to payola.

The Miami Herald reported that the president of Univision Music Group has sued Untvist­n Communications, claiming the parent company hurt the label’s revenues to lessen the value of his equity stake in the company.

The suit was filed by José Behar last month in Los Angeles Superior Court.

His company, Diara, owns 10 percent of Univision Music. It claims damages of $33 million.

Univision is in the fi nal stages of an auction of the music division, which it put up for sale in July.

The other two lawsuits allege Univision Music bribed radio stations to play its songs and retaliated against executives who complained about the practice.

Hispanic Link.

Latina named first woman president of Chabot College

by Juliet Blalack

Dra. Cecilia BarberenaDra. Cecilia Barberena

Dr. Cecilia Barberena was appointed president of Chabot College after a unanimous vote by the Chabot-Las Positas Community College District Board of Trustees on Dec.11th.

“Dr. Barberena has a wealth of e­xperience in the California Community College ­system. She is passionate about our mission and the students we serve,” said Dr. Joel Kinnamon, District Chancellor.

At her previous jobs, Barberena established grants for college preparation in public schools, increased bilingual options, chaired a committee that founded a campus childcare center, and helped create a GED program. She also taught Spanish and lectured on Latin American social issues.

Bush signs education bill that will benefit Latino children

President Bush renewed the Head Start program and added more teacher training and parental communication to it.

Almost a third of the children in the Head Start pre-school program are Latino.

Under the new program, The Department of Health and Human Services will evaluate how effective current services for children with limited English are. Also, teachers will be trained for working with these children.

Mayor Newsom proposes rigorous green building requirements Newsom proposed a city ordinance that would make new San Francisco buildings the most environmentally-friendly in the nation.

About 50 percent of San Francisco’s greenhouse gas emissions are from energy used in buildings and homes, according to research by the city’s Climate Action Plan.

According to legislators, if the ordinance is properly enforced, by 2012 San Franciscans will stop 60,000 tons of carbon emissions, save 220,000 megawatt hours of power, reduce waste and storm water by 90 million gallons, and increase alternative energy generation by 37,000 megawatt hours.

City Signs a location for new Community Justice Center

In the next step for creating a center to address quality-of-life crimes, Mayor Newsom announced a location for the Community Justice Center.

The court will provide services that address substance abuse, homelessness, and mental illness, according to the mayor’s office. Offenders will meet with a public offender, a judge will review their cases, and then the court will quickly assign services and sentencing.

The Board of Supervisors set aside $500,000 for the new court, and Newsom said he plans to use it for building two holding cells and improving the new site. The city signed a letter of intent with the landlord at 555 Polk Street, and the mayor’s office said the city will sign the lease in spring 2008.

­Bay view-Hunter’s Point art and social justice high school approved

The school board sanctioned the creation of an alternative public high school in Bayview-Hunter’s Point last week.

Bayview Essential School of Music, Art, and Social Justice (BES) will be the first school created under the city’s Small Schools by Design policy.

Faculty and Administrators will teach students filmmaking and graphic arts while emphasizing scholarship and social justice, according to a school district press release.

The Small Schools by Design Program was passed in February, and gives small public schools more power to tailor their curriculums to community needs, reads the press release.

Life Sentence

by Javier Sierra

Javier SerraJavier Serra

The brush of destiny painted a very bad stroke on Olga Argüelles’s town. One hundred years of toxic bombardment have devastated Anapra, New Mexico, with a life sentence of an endless source of inmates for the state’s prisons.

“All of my 18-year-old son’s friends have been in prison,” says Argüelles. “Almost every single family in Anapra has had problems with the law. And it has been like this for generations.”

Also, the level education level of Anapra’s children is one of the country’s lowest. Argüelles says that there have been years when not one single high school student has graduated, and that sometimes a decade has gone by without any students getting their high school diplomas.

“Here we have three buses to take our children to elementary school,” she says. “But there is only one to take our high school students.”

What is going on in Anapra? Where did that brush stroke come from? Where did these one hundred years of solitude originate?

The answer lies just on the other side of the Rio Grande, in El Paso, Texas. There, for more than a century, the ASARCO smelter spewed hundreds of tons of some of the most toxic metals in existence, including lead. Because of the area’s prevailing winds, Anapra received an enormous portion of this toxic brush stroke, which left the land barren and Anaprans in a vicious circle of lead poisoning.

Lead is a toxin of great potency. Children —because of their natural inclination to put objects in their mouths— are most exposed and vulnerable to lead’s terrible effects, including irreparable brain damage, mental retardation and aggressive behavior.

“My son has a very high IQ,” says Argüelles. “But he has cognitive problems and his aggressiveness is incontrollable.”

This relationship between lead and aggressive, criminal behavior has been well documented by many studies in recent years. The conclusions of the most recent one, whose author is investigator Rick Nevin, are as stunning as they are persuasive.

Nevin looked into the crime rates in relation to lead levels in the environment in nine countries. And in all of them, up to 90% of the variation in violent crime was explained by lead.

In the U.S., for example, Nevin observed that there have been two sharp increases of lead poisoning in the 20th Century, one at the turn of the century, caused by the content of lead in paint; and the other after World War II, due to the addition of lead in gasoline. Some 20 years after those two historical circumstances, crime levels skyrocketed.

Nevin also observed that 20 years after the elimination of lead in paint and gasoline, crime levels dropped dramatically.

Lead, however, is not the only factor that influences crime levels. These future criminals, in most cases, grow up in places where guns, poverty and drugs are abundant.

“I would say that the inner-city environment provides the weapon, and lead pulls the trigger,” says Dr. Kim Dietrich, a researcher at the University of Cincinnati.

Lead arrived in Anapra in a different way, but the consequences are the same.

“Here, generation after generation, we are the children of lead,” says Argüelles. “It won’t let us learn, it makes us aggressive, it won’t leave us in peace.”

After decades of negligence by New Mexico officials, Argüelles and the rest of Anapra’s residents are demanding that the federal government investigate this situation and that a reopening permit be denied to the smelter that sentenced them to life in toxic conditions.

Learn more at ­www.sierraclub.org/lead. (Javier Sierra is a Sierra Club columnist).

Peace be onto all of you

­by Marvin J. Ramirez

Marvin RamirezMarvin Ramirez

Whether you are a traditional Christian or not, it’s so pleasant to tell and hear back the familiar ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Happy Holidays’ when you are not a Christian, but rather a Muslim, a Jew or something else.

­The spirit of the Christmas season has become the holiday of most people. Many things change when the season arrives. The weather gets cold, but enjoyable; the sky gets clear and filled with stars; the color red of Santa Claus is in most parts of our towns and homes – and on the people.

The large stores release their best deals before and after Christmas to attract the most possible customers, prompting those hard-save dollars to leave the shoppers’ wallets to get the many presents for their loved one on their wish-list.

Even in time of war, people want to participate shopping and spending those hard-earned dollars.

Santa greets the children at many malls, having photos taken with them to fill their hearts with joy. And whether or not you are a Christian, the Christmas season is no longer a religious ritual, but rather a ritual for love and peace.

Peace be onto all of you.

(This updated artical was published on Christmas 2004 and 2006)

Workers protest sudden firing

by Juliet Blalack

Trabajadores tirados al frío antes de Navidad: Trabajadores sindicales y simpatizantes protestan depido frente al edificio federal en la calle séptima (photo by Marvin J. Ramirez)Workers thrown out in the cold before Xmas Union workers and sympathizers protest firing at the federal building on 7th Street (photo by Marvin J. Ramirez)

In the latest push to get the first janitors who worked at the new federal building their jobs back, about 35 people protested in front the building on Dec. 13th.­

Many of the janitors have been picketing the new federal building at Mission and Seventh streets for the past two months, read a press release.  They lost their jobs on Sept. 28th.

­”It will affect my whole family’s economy,” said Luis Alvarez, speaking in Spanish.  Alvarez said he worked for federal buildings for 18 years before he was fired with only a day’s notice.

General Services Administration (GSA), a company that manages government buildings, told a group of about 20 janitors to reapply for their jobs when their contracts ended, according to a press release.

Instead, GSA hired the non-union company Exemplar Enterprises to oversee custodial work.

“The new company doesn’t want to negotiate with the union,” said Deresa Navarro, also one of the janitors.  Navarro said the new company has less benefits, pays less money, and hires fewer people.

Gene Gibson, a spokeswoman from GSA, said that the contract with the original janitors, members of the Service Employees International Union Local 87, only lasted until Sept. 28.

GSA was obligated by federal law to select the company with the best price and not give priority to union companies, she said.  Although GSA did not select a union company for this contract, the company does have other contracts with unions, she said.

“All these purchases are done above the board and according to law,” said Gibson.

Organizers from Poor Magazine said Martha Lutt might be employed by GSA while owning Exemplar, which would be a conflict of interest.

Gibson said Exemplar hired a former employee of GSA, but only after GSA signed the contract with Exemplar.  She said she did not know if the employee described was Lutt or someone else.

Supervisors Chris Daly, Geraldo Sandoval, Tom Ammiano, and Ross Mirkarimi presented a resolution urging Exemplar and GSA to hire the union janitors at the building and requesting Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to also put pressure on Exemplar and GSA to do so.

The board passed the resolution on December 11th, and the mayor signed it on Dec. 18th, according to board clerk Sunny Wong.

Since the federal government oversees the building, this resolution by local government is not legally compelling.

 

Fidel may not run for ‘election’ in January

by the El Reportero news services

Fidel CastroFidel Castro

The ailing Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, gave further hints on 17 December that he may not run for a seat in congress in January. If Fidel really decides not to run, he will be stepping down as Cuban leader.

What is clear now is that the transition of power from Fidel to his brother, Raúl, has been almost flawlessly managed by the ruling party. The first phase was Fidel’s surrendering of power.

The second phase is now underway and involves Raúl taking power. Raúl is now clearly in charge and setting the policy agenda. Fidel, not seen in public for the past 16 months, has already become just a figure-head.

Nicaragua told to free Nashville man

Court overturns his murder conviction Joy gave way to worry hours after the Eric Volz  family heard the 28-year-old had been freed from a Nicaraguan prison but remained in the country, where radio broadcasters called for vigilante justice against the American accused of killing his former girlfriend.

A Nicaraguan appeals court on Monday overturned Volz’s conviction and 30-year prison sentence and ordered his release.

The Associated Press reported that Volz, of Nashville, had been freed from prison in the town of Granada, some 25 miles east of Managua, but the news service said his whereabouts were unknown.

By the end of the day, the Volz family was reeling again, worried about what would happen to him while his life remained in the ­hands of the Nicaraguan justice system. A family spokeswoman and an offi cial in Washington said Volz had not been released.

The trial court did not sign release papers for Volz, who is currently in a prison hospital, where he’s been for nearly two months, the e-mail said. The family is getting information from a lawyer in Nicaragua. (At press time, his freedom was in process).

In Colombia, hostage’s letter hits home

BOGOTA, Colombia – It was a godsend, the 12-page letter that Ingrid Betancourt sent her mother. It confi rmed that the best-known hostage in Colombia, one of hundreds, was alive, deep in a guerrilla encampment.

But the letter rang with such profound pain and despair that Betancourt’s mother, Yolanda Pulecio, has still not stopped crying. In meticulous prose, Betancourt told her mother that she was “tired, tired of suffering” and that she sometimes thinks death would be a “sweet option.”

“These almost six years of captivity have shown me that I’m not as resistant, nor as brave, nor as intelligent, nor as strong as I had thought,” Betancourt, a prominent French-Colombian politician, wrote. “I have fought many battles, I have tried to escape on several opportunities, I have tried to maintain hope, as one does keeping head above water. But mamita, I have been defeated.”

Southern Poverty Law Center adds FAIR to ‘hate group list

by Adolfo Flores

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a national civil rights organization founded in 1971, has branded the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a national organization that supports immigration reduction, as a hate group for alleged connections with white supremacist and hate groups.

The Center claimed in a teleconference and in its quarterly “Intelligence Report’’ on Dec. 11 that FAIR 5has accepted $1.2 million between 1985 and 1994 from the Pioneer Fund, a foundation which has supported ­and funded studies that attempt to prove a connection between race and IQ.

“What we are hoping very much to accomplish is to marginalize FAIR,” said Mark Potok, the Center’s director of the intelligence project. “We don’t think they should be a part of the mainstream media.”

In 2006 SPLC counted 844 hate groups in the United States.

Clarissa Martínez, campaign manager for the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, told Weekly Report, “It is unacceptable for members of Congress and the media to legitimize a hate group bent on manipulating Americans’ concerns over our broken immigration system to advance its own goals and derail real solutions to this issue.”

Since 2000 FAIR officials have been asked to testify on immigration by Congress 30 times. This year, FAIR has been quoted in mainstream media nearly 500 times and been on CN N’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight” at least 12 times in the same period.

“I think (the SPLC’s) statements are fraudulent and misleading,” said FAIR President Dan Stein’ who has been working for the organization as its executive director since 1988. “I think they owe us an apology.”

Stein told Weekly Report that at the moment they were not planning any legal action, but were expecting a retraction.

FAIR, claims the SPLC, was grounded on racism since its beginnings in 1979. Its founder’ John Tanton, runs The Social Contract Press’ another group listed by the center as racist for white supremacist end anti-Latino writings. Tanton is currently a member of FAIR’s board.

The article, “The Teflon Nativist,” also claims that several key FAIR members have ties to white supremacist groups’ like Western field representative Joseph Turner’ who created Save Our State’ a nativist hate group, according to the SPLC. It was in one of the Save Our State electronic forums that Turner wrote, “l can make the argument that just because one believes in white separatism that that does not make them a racist.”

According to the SPLC, Turner’s predecesson Rick Oltman, was part of the hate group Council of Conservative Citizens, a direct descendent from the segregationist White Citizens Council.

“Nobody working for FAIR has ever been a member of the CCC that I’m aware of end they certainly haven’t been people in key positions,” claimed Stein.

FAIR’s Eastern regional coordinator, Jim Stadenraus participated in an anti-immigrant conference in September 2002 with Jared Taylor, a CCC member and founder of American Renaissance, a racist eugenics publication, the article claims.

“Our charitable mission is education. We go where we’re invited,” Stein said.

“Does that mean you can impute to the FAIR staffers an agreement with all the principles of the organization we’re on a panel of?”

The report claims Stein held a meeting with members of Vlaams Belang, a Belgian political party’ to “seek advice” in February.

The group was renamed after it was banned as a racist political body by the Belgium Supreme Court.

Stein denied he met with the group, stating he had never heard of it.

“(The SPLC’s) assertions about a meeting with Belgium activists are fraudulent, their assertions about the staff are fraudulent’ their assertions about ­virtually everything else are fraudulent,” Stein said.

However FAIR’s Director of Special Projects’ John Martin, said he himself met with the group, but that it was Vleams Belang that was seeking advice because of the current “civil war” in Belgium due to immigration. Martin said he regularly briefs foreign visitors.

“They insisted when I asked specifically about that’ they did not have a racist policy~~ Martin said.

Having been e member of an organization that is attacked as being racist, which I know isn’t true’ I’m willing to believe people when they say that is not true in their case “Potok wrote in a blog that identifying FAIR as a hate group is important because more than any other group it has contributed to the nasty turn the immigration debate has taken.

“(FAIR) is en organization that clearly has an agenda’” said Cristina López, deputy executive director of the Center for Community Change. “There’s no difference between putting a member of FAIR on TV to talk about immigration and putting a member of the Ku Klux Klan to talk about race relations.”

FOES RENEW EFFORTS TO SHUT DOWN ‘SCHOOL OF AMERICAS’

por­ Andrés Caballero

­­

Hispanic­ Link News Service

Los opositores a una escuela del Departamento de Defensa de los EE.UU. que entrena a soldados latinoamericanos han dicho que continuarán presionando a que se apruebe legislación destinada a cerrar el instituto en el 2008.

La legislación que eliminará la financiación del llamado Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, antes nombrado y mejor conocido como la Escuela de las Américas, sufrió una reciente derrota, 214 a 203 votos, en junio en la Cámara de Representantes de los Estados Unidos.

Críticos alegan que el Instituto ha promovido violaciones a los derechos humanos.  Señalan a varios de sus egresados que han participado en prácticas abusivas en América Latina durante los años.

Ex presidente de Panamá, Manuel Noriega, ex director de inteligencia del Perú, Vladimiro Montesinos, y general colombiano Mario Montoya son sólo algunos de los individuos de alta visibilidad quienes han asistido al instituto, y cuyos nombres han sido tachados por la controversia.

La organización a la cabeza del esfuerzo por cerrar el instituto, el School of the Americas Watch, piensa continuar cabildeando a favor de la legislación pendiente, H.R. 1707, y seguir con la concientización de la gente a nivel de base sobre los temas de envergadura en el esfuerzo.

El proyecto de ley “suspendería la autoridad” del instituto e iniciaría investigaciones sobre violaciones de derechos humanos que hubiera podido haber fomentado la escuela.

La legislación la auspició el representante demócrata por Massachusetts, James McGovern, en colaboración con 117 legisladores más, entre ellos los representantes Raúl Grijalva y Ed Pastor (demócratas por Arizona), Hilda Solís (demócrata por California), Nydia Velázquez (demócrata por Nueva York), Luis Gutiérrez (demócrata por Illinois), Linda Sánchez (demócrata por California) y José Serrano (demócrata por Nueva York).

En cuanto a los esfuerzos de concientización, se encontraban presentes organizaciones de derechos humanos durante la vigilia de tres días que comenzó el 16 de noviembre, mediante talleres de información que ofrecieron a los interesados en presionar el Congreso con los temas de derechos humanos que enfrentan las sociedades latinoamericanas.

La organización School of the Americas Watch la fundó el Padre Roy Bourgeois en el 1990, después del asesinato de seis sacerdotes jesuitas en El Salvador el año anterior.

La organización cuenta con filiales en Venezuela y en Chile.

En los 59 años de operación, la Escuela de las Américas ha entrenado a más de 60.000 soldados latinoamericanos en técnicas de contrainsurgencia, de francotirador, de guerra de comando y psicológica, de inteligencia militar y tácticas de interrogación.

“Los egresados han implementado consistentemente sus destrezas en hacer la guerra contra su propio pueblo”, asevera el sitio Web del School of the Americas Watch.

El instituto, que por año dicta cursos a unas 700 a 1.000 personas, principalmente en español, mantiene que sus objetivos “incluyen explícitamente el fortalecimiento de la democracia, el inculcar el respeto al orden y la ley y el honrar los derechos humanos”.

Agrega que entrena a los participantes a luchar contra el terrorismo, el comercio ilegal de narcóticos, y otros crímenes organizados, a dar asistencia de alivio y a participar en otros esfuerzos.

El instituto afirma que evalúa de manera rigurosa a sus postulantes, pero añade la estipulación:

“Como cualquier instituto de educación superior o universidad no puede garantizar que algunos de sus estudiante algún día no cometerán delitos, tampoco lo podemos hacer nosotros. No podemos garantizar que toda la instrucción se llevará a cabo de acuerdo a la ley, la doctrina y las políticas de los EE.UU.”

Los países en América Latina que no envían a sus ciudadanos al instituto incluyen a Venezuela, Argentina y Uruguay.

Costa Rica y Bolivia han anunciado que dejarán de enviar personal militar al instituto.

(Andrés Caballero, de Argentina, es estudiante de último año en periodismo en la Universidad Notre Dame de Namur en San Mateo, California. Como internado de Hispanic Link, cubrió la protesta de Fort Benning para el servicio de noticias. Comuníquese con él a: andres_c_arg@yahoo.com­).© 2007 FIN

How Hillary deserted Hispanics

by Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo

I don’t usually worry much about party politics until the general election. The many debates and a good deal of the media attention try to reduce serious issues to controversies. The focus is on “the horse race” and not on the role of government.

But I have to react against how Senator Hi­llary Clinton has rolled the dice against Latinos and Latinas.  She did it at the televised debate in Las Vegas, possibly betting we wouldn’t notice.

Just a few days before then, she had “stumbled” (word from the blogs) when asked if she supported New York Gov. Elliott Spitzer’s decision to issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. In case you didn’t catch it, she first said she “supported the action,” then changed that to say only that she “understood the reason for the licenses.

Then came a third version – that she hadn’t really taken a stand.

The three statements were made within the period of two minutes, something her rivals, Senators Dodd, Edwards and Obama considered confusing at the very least.

The next few days, according to those in the know, her staff worked furiously to get the governor to retract his initiative – which had been approved by Homeland Security and is already the law in several states including California, the largest in the nation, and in Illinois, the home state of Barack Obama.

Days later, her derriere now covered with behind-the-scene maneuvers, Hillary answered the question about licenses for the undocumented in Las Vegas with an unequivocal, “No.”

I would not be alone in considering this change of position to be a reaction to the polls and a typical politician’s effort to say “whatever is necessary to get elected.”

Frankly, I’m disappointed. I’m not sure if the error is big enough to get me to vote against the senator should she face off against a Republican like Mitt Romney, but it certainly dampens my enthusiasm for her.

Despite compiling a good record for the people of New York, support to end the bombing of Vieques, Puerto Rico, and a generally progressive stance on social welfare initiatives, there is very little on the positive side that distinguishes Senator Clinton from any generic-brand Democrat. Certainly not so the issue of licenses.

The Republicans give every sign of tripping over each other to be the most anti-Latino-immigrant candidate for 2008. Spreading hate for Latinos and Latinas, it would seem, is an easier path to power than supporting the war in Iraq and a national debt over 9 trillion dollars.

The impetus to crack down hard on “illegals” feeds its spawn of racist nationalism and fear-mongering.

Senator Clinton’s cowardice – grudgingly, that is what I would have to call it -sends a signal that we Latinos and Latinas are expendable in her pursuit of the presidency.

While her position is virtually the same as that of Chris Dodd of Connecticut, at least he was clear and forthright on his reasons. Not representing a border state is also part of the background for his stance.

I will now seek to support another Democrat for president in 2008, although I was looking forward to see the gender ceiling broken. Defense of our Latino rights and our freedom is too precious to surrender to a merely symbolic victory for women. Hispanic Link.

(Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo is Professor Emeritus of Puerto Rican & Latino Studies at Brooklyn College.  Author and scholar, he serves as member of the Pennsylvania State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission of Civil Rights. E-mail him at stevensa@pld.com). ©­ 2007 ­

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