If you have been following the news about the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, you are probably aware that AT&T will control nearly half of the cellphone market if the proposed merger goes through. And you know that less choice is just wonderful for the consumer, right? If you don’t like AT&T, you would just be left with Verizon and Sprint as alternatives.

According to Reuters:

“Now holding 27 percent market share, AT&T would gain a 44-percent foothold if the T-Mobile merger is approved by the Federal Trade Commission.

At present, only four companies control 90 percent of the U.S. cellphone market. With a takeover of T-Mobile, AT&T would face off against Verizon and Sprint for dominance, perhaps even triggering a further consolidation of the remaining two smaller players. Would this be good for cell and broadband users?

There’s no guarantee that economies of scale would trickle down to consumers. After all, T-Mobile’s aggressive pricing forced AT&T to offer better plans. Without a strong competitor, prices rarely drop, although that’s not how AT&T is pitching the deal.”

The fearless Latino organizational leaders have come out in support of the merger including the National Council of La Raza and LULAC. And this largely has to do with the amount of “support” NCLR and LULAC receive from AT&T.

However, there are some smaller organizations pushing back against this merger, and one of them includes the National Hispanic Media Coalition. You can read the NHMC’s statement on the merger here. But I just want to highlight this part about costs:

“Latinos pay more for mobile service than any other demographic group. Latinos, on average pay $102 a month on T-Mobile, compared to $120 a month on AT&T, $117 on Sprint and $115 on Verizon. 25% of T-Mobile customers are Latino, and many of them choose T-Mobile because of its affordability, flexibility and excellent customer service.”

You can contact the FCC and your congressional representative to express your support or concern about this proposed merger. But share your thoughts here as well. Do you think that Latino organizations have more to gain in telecommunications consolidation? Or do the benefits that the organizations receive outweigh the possible added costs to the individual consumer?

“Administration officials expected to attend the meeting include:

Attorney General Eric Holder

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano

Valerie Jarrett, Assistant to the President & Senior Advisor

Nancy Ann DeParle, Assistant to the President & Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy

Melody Barnes, Assistant to the President & Director of Domestic Policy Council

Gene Sperling, Assistant to the President for Economic Policy & Director of National Economic Council

Austan Goolsbee, Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers

Cecilia Munoz, Deputy Assistant to the President & Director of Intergovernmental Affairs

Heidi Avery, Deputy Assistant to the President for Homeland Security

Stakeholders expected to attend the meeting include:

Leith Anderson, President, National Association of Evangelicals

Hon. Michael Bloomberg, City of New York

Bill Bratton, Former Police Chief, City of Los Angeles and City of New York

Hon. Julian Castro, Mayor, City of San Antonio

Secretary Michael Chertoff, Former Secretary Homeland Security

Governor John Engler, President and CEO, Business Roundtable

Hon. Eric Garcetti, City Council, President City of Los Angeles

Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, Former Secretary of Commerce

Raymond Kelly, Commissioner, New York City Police Department

Senator Mel Martinez, Former United States Senator/Chairman, Florida, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean JP Morgan Chase

Greg Page, Chairman & CEO, Cargill

Secretary Federico Pena, Former Secretary of Transportation and Secretary of Energy

John Podesta, CEO, Center for American Progress

Charles Ramsey, Chief of Police, City of Philadelphia/President, Major City Chiefs

Al  Sharpton, President, National Action Network

Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Former California Governor

Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO

John C. Wester, Bishop, Archdiocese of Salt Lake City”

Notice the absence of NCLR, LULAC and even some of the local immigrant rights organizations like CHIRLA or even CASA de Maryland, which is actually in closer proximity to DC.

The President asked these leaders and stakeholders to help him “change the debate” on immigration, but it seems that the biggest change can come from the President in terms of offering administrative relief to DREAMers who have been requesting it.

United We DREAM, a group of activist undocumented young adults, sent out a press release today titled “President Obama: Yes, you can!” asking the President to exercise his discretion in providing relief to DREAM eligible young people, who would have been legalized had the DREAM Act passed. President George W. Bush actually did defer the departure of a class of people back in 2007. So it seems that President Obama does have the power to act.

I’m not so convinced that much will come from this meeting, as no Congressional members were present either. Congress is actually on recess this week.

“This weekend’s vote on the DREAM Act was a disappointment. Republicans voted against a measure to give folks who are American in everything but their legal status an opportunity through military service or education.

I’ll be blunt: this vote failed because a group of Republicans stood with their party, instead of their principles.

Senator John McCain cosponsored the DREAM Act in 2003, 2005, and 2007. But this weekend, he voted against it.

Senator Chuck Grassley cosponsored the DREAM Act in 2003 — and voted against it this weekend.

Neither of them were alone — there are five Republican senators who have voted for the DREAM Act in the past decade, but failed to support it on Saturday.

We need to send a clear message to the Republicans that none of us are going away — that we will continue to fight. That’s why we’re asking people who support the DREAM Act to call the GOP leaders and express their disappointment — and to tell them to stop playing politics with immigration reform.

Call Representative Boehner at (202) 225-6205 and Senator McConnell at (202) 224-2541 today.

When President Obama was in the Senate, he was a cosponsor of the DREAM Act. It remains a major priority for him today.

And OFA supporters like you — along with advocates across the country — have done the important organizing work in our communities to build support for this crucial measure.

But the fight ahead of us will be difficult.

Prominent Republicans have come out against birthright citizenship, fought for English-only laws, and generally moved their party toward greater levels of extremism.

With the House under Republican control in the next Congress, we need to make it clear that we will stand strong for an America built on hard work, fairness, and equality — not one ruled by xenophobia and fear.

This fight isn’t over — and when it comes up in the next Congress, we need to be on the record saying that Republicans can’t hold reform hostage to political games.

Let’s start by telling that to the Republican leaders today. Will you call Representative Boehner at (202) 225-6205 and Senator McConnell at (202) 224-2541?

Thanks for fighting,

Mitch

Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America”

Obviously, these paid hacks are pointing fingers directly at the GOP Senators, but let’s remember that three Republicans voted in favor of DREAM, while five Democrats voted against it. Those five Democratic senators, had they voted in the affirmative, would have given the DREAM Act the 60 votes needed to proceed to debate. So the blame can go to both parties, but it is especially stinging for the Democrats since so much has been made about the possibility of comprehensive immigration reform happening in the current administration.

I sense that beyond sending e-mails to the Democratic Party faithful that the Democrats start doing some soul searching. It’s one thing to call Representative Boehner and Senator McConnell and beg that they keep immigration reform on the radar in the next congress, but it’s another matter entirely to take stock of the Democratic Party and identify where some of its members have acted in an obstructionist fashion as well.

And beyond the two party system, Latinos need to start examining their issue organization leadership. Are we best represented by NCLR or LULAC and its leaders? Could they have been more vocal in speaking out about the immigration conundrum and/or could they have offered more support to the DREAMers? Unless strategies change or evolve, it is going to look like these organizations are disconnected from the masses they purport to represent, especially if they don’t deliver a victory at some point on the immigration issue.

So while Democratic establishment and many beltway organizations will point fingers at the Republicans, DREAM Activists will keep it real. Check out this audio from NPR’s Talk of the Nation from Today with Flavia de la Fuente. Hat tip to Gustavo Arellano of the OC Weekly.

With a new holiday season kicking in and facing a last push to get a vote on the DREAM Act, the November 2^nd midterm elections seems like a distant memory. The results show the growing influence of Latino voters in swing states like Florida and New Mexico. They also secured key races for governor and the U.S. Senate in California for the Democratic Party by repelling GOP advances in the state with most Latinos in the nation. Most notably, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) retained his seat by winning over Tea Party favorite Sharon Angle thanks to  “her inability to stop saying crazy things” like advising young rape victims to make “lemons into lemonade.”

Despite these important milestones, campaigns from grassroots organizations like the National Association of Latino elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) among others, left the aftertaste of being too little too late. They were effective, no doubt about it; however, they failed to motivate Latinos voters to achieve their true electoral potential. According with the Pew Hispanic Center, Latinos represented the same eight percent of all voters in 2010 as they did in 2006. However, the number of eligible Latinos to vote this year grew to approximately 19.2 million voters from an estimated 18 million in 2006.

As the national Spanish-speaking media started to turn up the volume and “banging the drum of [the] ‘you have to go vote, you have to go vote,’” the enthusiasm among voters picked up traction starting only until the first week of October, Latino Decisions reported. Once the campaigns were in full swing, social media also played a key role on reaching wider audiences. On November 28, Latinos in Social Media (LATISM) invited Univision’s Martin Berlanga to participate in a Twitter party on the importance of voting for Latinos. The tweetchat achieved an impressive 8.1 million impressions in one night, according to LATISM’s Vice-Chair Elianne Ramos.

(For the not social media savvy, impressions means how many times people saw tweets about the party’s hashtag.)

They all seem like successfully calculated efforts given the positive election results against the most radical anti-immigrant candidates. However, imagine what they could have accomplished if the media heavyweights had devoted their full resources to these campaigns way earlier in the game. This fast-and-furious approach didn’t spark enough interest among many freshmen citizens who may suffer psychological roadblocks thanks to years of discrimination and disenfranchisement. Let’s not forget that the naturalization process is long, hard, and expensive plus many have to deal with their own negative preconceptions on civic participation. Also, the high educational gap between Latinos and Whites remains disadvantageous against the former.

For the 2012 presidential elections, we should expect that the traditional political parties will diligently work to enfranchise Latinos. However, neither party seems to have even a remote idea on how to tally our votes. Right now, they are busy putting down their own fires rather than making a sincere effort to reach out. Democrats have lost their luster with the electorate and face an uphill battle to reelect President Barack Obama on 2012. On the flip side, Republicans remain overconfident between their trepid loses and surprising gains thanks to a new lot of conservative Latino politicians. For illustration, read the opinion from Representative (TX-R) Lamar Smith and a counter argument from columnist Edward Schumacher-Matos on the Washingtonpost.com.

So what to do next? As NCLR’s Director for Immigration Clarissa Martinez-De-Castro writes, a “meaningful outreach is essential.” For sure, both parties will make their best effort to win the Latino vote; at the same time, grassroots leadership must capitalize on their media partners’ increasing clout. Univision is already the number five national network in the nation and seem poised to “surpass the Anglo networks in seven years, even without the boost provided by growth in the Hispanic population,” AdWeek reports. What a better opportunity to rev up their campaigns starting today and entice every able Latino to go out and vote.

Carlos Macías is a writer for Being Latino.

“The idea, born of frustration over the party’s inaction on immigration reform and fears that as a voting bloc they’re a political afterthought, Latino leaders have discussed the idea among themselves locally and in conference calls with colleagues across the country.

The unlikely model for the movement they would like to launch is the Tea Party — not in substance, of course, but in its grass-roots organizational style. Acknowledging the source of their inspiration, Latino leaders have dubbed the proposed movement the “Tequila Party.”

These Hispanic leaders have noticed that while the Tea Party has had spotty electoral success, it has called attention to its concerns and values and put the establishment on notice.”

The idea of a third party to help push issues beyond where the Democratic and Republican Parties stand, especially in regards to immigration, is a valid one. However, I’m not so keen on the “tequila party” label, which carries with it many of the existing stereotypes and feelings about our community and its relationship to the alcohol industry. So I would consider another name for this movement.

The notion that the current two party system isn’t working well for Latinos has been explored before on this blog. Most recently, Pablo Manriquez covered it in his piece, Latinos Vilified by Republicans and Ignored by Democrats. And of course, in some states like California, nearly two-thirds of Latino likely registered voters identify as Democrats, but they are pretty evenly split in terms of identifying themselves as liberals, middle of the road, or conservatives. So even in Nevada’s neighboring state, there might be some room on the political landscape for such a third party to better represent our community’s needs.

My inclination is to make the grassroots third party group more of a competitor with the traditional issue organizations such as the National Council of La Raza and LULAC. This could be a starting point to really challenge the existing groups and leadership that we have. The Latino issue organizations are largely funded by corporate monies, and recent studies show that many in the community don’t even know who leads them. Furthermore, this could allow the independent grassroots group to play both parties in more local races, meaning if there is a GOPer who is more moderate or amenable to the community’s needs, the grassroots group could funnel resources there. I sense that right now the third party group would more likely be pushing Democrats though given that so many in the GOP have switched to more hard-line positions on immigration (see Senator McCain for example).

What are your thoughts on the “tequila party” idea?

As 2011 approaches, let us take a moment to review 2000-2010 through a lens of Latino disempowerment. During this decade, our community has weathered firestorms ranging from anti-immigrant rhetoric, to financial extortion, to exclusion from the American educational system. Make no mistake, when politicians refuse to provide access to higher education for our community’s children, refuse to prevent mortgage lender usury, and refuse to fix a broken immigration system, they are disempowering Latinos. Through these instances, we have seen some leaders and politicians stand up on our behalf to advocate for reform. But as this Pew Hispanic Center study states we can’t even name them. This begs the questions: Who is our Cesar Chavez? Who is our Dolores Huerta?

At the height of the civil rights movement, Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez banded together to do the unthinkable. Protesting on behalf of migrant workers who contended with workplace conditions we cannot begin to fathom, they caused a national boycott of grapes and threatened the entire California agricultural industry. Risking their lives and abilities to provide for their families, they made sacrifices that caused actual change. These civil rights icons embraced the role of David and crushed Goliath in a way our community has not seen since. And as we move forward, they are the type of leaders we desperately need but do not have.

Simply stated, our community lacks national figureheads to spearhead reform efforts. While we rely on leaders such as NCLR’s Janet Murguía to beat the drums of change, she is restricted by the 501(c)(3) status of the National Council of La Raza. Murguía has been fighting for Latino rights for years and has done remarkable work. But she can only do so much when only bipartisan or even nonpartisan stances are requirements of her job description. Thus, all she and the NCLR can do is offer their resources and talents to policy discussions and court cases, and hope to empower their affiliates to create a grassroots level change like that of Chavez and Huerta.

Now, this is not to say the Latino community has no activists, because we do. One need look no further than LULAC, NCLR, and NALEO conferences to see leaders from across the country come together each year to speak on the issues we face and how we’re fighting them. But we need more than conference workshops and networking events. While noble, they are just not enough. We need a Dolores Huerta and a Cesar Chavez because they would have protested and called for wide-scale economic boycotts of Arizona that a) actually would have worked and b) forced the repeal of the racist legislation the Arizona legislature continues to promulgate. They would have challenged Goliath, and they would have won.

Unfortunately, we live in reality. And the reality is Gov. Jan Brewer was reelected. The reality is the DREAM Act remains a dream. The reality is immigration reform has not happened. And the reality is the Latino electorate, comprising the nation’s largest and fastest growing minority demographic, remains a sleeping giant. The status quo does not need to exist, but it lives on because we lack national advocates who are not afraid to, for lack of a better term, “throw down”. If this were the African-American community, leaders such as the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would inundate the airwaves with an onslaught of calls for reform that would force people to listen. Leaders in academia such as Dr. Cornell West and Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry would join in the debate, calling for change and garnering attention to their cause. While they join us in our struggle, we cannot ask them to fight this fight for us. We need our Cesar Chavez and our Dolores Huerta, and we need them now.

Matthew Stieglitz received his BA in Communication from the University of Delaware. He is currently a 2011 Master of Public Administration candidate at Cornell University concentrating in Government, Politics, & Policy Studies. After receiving his MPA Matthew will attend law school in order to merge his public affairs background with a legal education to most effectively advocate for Latinos.

Photo Credit: Cesar Chavez at the Delano UFW rally, June 1974 by Joel Levine.

Barack Obama is trying my patience. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe he inherited a mess from George Bush and is doing the best he can to turn the ship of state around.  However allowing his Attorney General Eric Holder to come out against California’s Prop 19 is not only “not change”, it is an endorsement of the racist enforcement of our nation’s drug laws.

RACIAL INJUSTICE IN THE DRUG WAR

While roughly 12% Anglos and 11% of Blacks and Hispanics are consumers of illicit drugs, criminal justice statistics dramatically demonstrate an over-representation of Blacks and Hispanics arrested for the use of illicit drugs and in those who go to trial and who are ultimately sentenced to jail. It is no accident that Prop 19 is endorsed by the NAACP and California’s LULAC.  They are joined by LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition), SEIU ( Service Employees International Union), DPA (Drug Policy Alliance), NORML (National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws) who all say YES on Proposition 19.

CURRENT DRUG POLICY AN ABYSMAL FAILURE

In the almost 40 years since President Nixon declared a war on drugs, tens of millions of Americans have been arrested and hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent. Yet drugs are just as available now as they were then. And the impact has been felt most strongly amongst Hispanics, Blacks, and the poor.

There are many good reasons to support proposition 19.  The most obvious is because we have a failed drug policy. Cannabis has been illegal since 1911. Not only is cannabis still widely used and available, but our present failed drug policy is racist.  It’s costly.  It is undermining the Constitution.  It decreases respect for the police.  It fuels gangs and gang violence and U.S. drug policy is responsible for 8,000-20,000 deaths per year in Mexico.

MARIJUANA LAWS DEMONIZE AND TARGET MINORITIES

The NAACP and the LULAC of California both recognize how U.S. drug laws are used to marginalize discriminated against minorities. The adverse affects are detailed in Michelle Alexander’s new book, The New Jim Crow. In it, she points out that a drug conviction automatically makes a person a second-class citizen who can be legally discriminated against in housing and employment, denied school loans, and barred for life from serving on juries, accessing public benefits and even voting.

While African Americans make up only about 13 percent of the U.S. population and about 15 percent of drug users, they make up about 38 percent of those arrested for drug law violations and a mind-boggling 59 percent of those convicted for drug law violations. With Hispanics, the numbers are not quite as dramatic but are still appalling. We now have 7,000,000 Americans, one out of every thirty two American adults, incarcerated, on probation or on parole, and they are disproportionately young Hispanic and Black males.

The League of United Latin American Citizens of California (LULAC) endorsed Prop. 19.  State director Argentina Dávila-Luévano said, “The current prohibition laws are not working for Latinos, nor for society as a whole. Far too many of our brothers and sisters are getting caught in the cross-fire of gang wars here in California and the cartel wars south of our border,” she says. “It’s time to end prohibition, put violent, organized criminals out of business and bring marijuana under the control of the law.”

Historically, Mexican-Americans have been demonized by associating the Hispanic population with marijuana use. This effort becomes more intense in economic hard times. This trend started shortly after the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century when large numbers of Mexican workers came across the border.

As the economy deteriorated, local prosecutors and editors publicly decried the “loco weed.” One critic associated marijuana (called “marihuana” at the time) — not only with Mexicans but “Negroes, prostitutes, pimps, and a criminal class of whites.” States began outlawing the drug, one Texas senator asserting “All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff is what makes them crazy.”

Mexican-Americans were used as a whipping boy to generate anti-marijuana hysteria. In the 1930s Harry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, led the propaganda campaign to make marijuana possession a federal crime. He was an avowed racist as evidenced by this quote about marijuana (which at the time was commonly known as  cannabis), “its effect on the degenerate races.” He was referring to “Mexicans, Negroes, Puerto Ricans, jazz musicians and other social undesirables,” as he described those he said used marijuana.

Anslinger quoted Floyd Baskett, the publisher of the Alamosa, Colorado newspaper (Alamosa is 18 miles from my wife’s hometown by the way), who wrote “I wish I could show you what a small marijuana cigarette can do to one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents. That’s why our problem is so great; the greatest percentage of our population is composed of Spanish-speaking persons, most of who are low mentality, because of social and racial conditions.”

A decade earlier earlier in 1927, a Montana state legislator was quoted in the Butte Montana Standard, “When some beet field peon takes a few traces of this stuff…he thinks he’ has just been elected President of Mexico, so he starts to execute all his political enemies.”

The anti-Mexican, anti-Hispanic rhetoric continues to this day.  Voting YES on Proposition 19 will be another big step to defeating this kind of racism. Right now among California’s likely voters, 63% of Latinos are likely supporters of Prop 19. The recent support of the California LULAC and a brief refresher on the odious history of marijuana prohibition should  be enough to continue that momentum toward cannabis decriminalization.

CURRENT DRUG LAWS ARE GOOD FOR CRIMINALS AND BAD FOR LAW ABIDING PEOPLE

Just as alcohol prohibition did, marijuana prohibition is enriching organized crime. Instead of regulating marijuana to control who can access it, policymakers have ceded control of the $400-billion-a-year global drug market to crime syndicates and thugs.

In Mexico, parts of the country are like Chicago on steroids under Al Capone. 28,000 people have died from drug war violence since President Calderon launched a war three years ago against well-armed, well-funded drug trafficking organizations. The U.S. government doesn’t report its prohibition-related deaths, but law enforcement officers, drug offenders and civilians die every day in our country’s war on drugs too.

OUR LEADERS USE MARIJUANA WITHOUT LEGAL CONSEQUENCES

Use of marijuana or other illegal drugs is rampant amongst our elected officials, yet few suffer any adverse legal or social consequences. President Obama used drugs. Former President George W. Bush was an admitted alcoholic and credible rumors say he regularly used cocaine.  Then there’s Bill Clinton, who famously said he smoked pot but didn’t inhale. Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg, former and current governors Jesse Ventura (I-MN),Gary Johnson (R-NM), Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA), and Sarah Palin (R-AK) all admit that they consumed cannabis.

CURRENT DRUG LAW CAUSES LOTS OF PROBLEMS

The war on drugs hasn’t just failed; it’s created problems of its own. The drug war is a good way to waste money. It has cost billions. In the last 30 years in California, we’ve built 22 new prisons and 4 new colleges.   20-30% of third strikes are for minor drug violations and taxpayers spend $40,000/year to incarcerate these folks.  Laws restricting the availability of sterile syringes have increased the spread of AIDS and hepatitis C.  The war on drugs, or more accurately the people who use drugs we’ve demonized, has weakened the 1^st, 4^th, 5^th, 9^th and 10^th Amendments of the Constitution.

WATCH OUT FOR THE BOOGEYMAN

The opposition is grasping at straws.  A recent article in L.A. Times was about a presumed marijuana addict, whatever that is. She spent $5,000/year on cannabis. At current rate of roughly $400/ounce, that is slightly more than an ounce/month, or one .9 gm joint per day.  This is just 10% of the amount of marijuana that the federal government provides to a person on the federal IND program. Most likely this person was self-medicating for her anxiety.

Another boogeyman of the Prohibitionists is that legalizing marijuana will increase use amongst teens. Most likely, the passage of Prop 19 will decrease the number of teens using it. Compare Holland 13% to the U.S. 19%. The Dutch Minister of Health stated “We have succeeded in making pot boring.” When Prop 215 was on the ballot, the prohibitionists said pot use would go up. It hasn’t. It has gone down.

BENEFITS OF YES ON 19

Legalization would be beneficial in key aspects of the war on terror. Afghanistan is the world leader in opium production, and this trade is highly lucrative because U.S.-led prohibition drives the market underground. The Taliban then earns substantial income by protecting opium farmers and traffickers from law enforcement in exchange for a share of the profits.  U.S. eradication of opium fields also drives the hearts and minds of Afghan farmers away from the U.S. and toward the Taliban.

Legalization could also aid the war on terror by freeing immigration and other border control resources to target terrorists and WMDs rather than the illegal drug trade. Under prohibition, moreover, terrorists piggyback on the smuggling networks established by drug lords and more easily hide in a sea of underground, cross-border trafficking.

We’ve heard cannabis is dangerous. Yet experts say it’s less harmful than coffee.  Henningfield & Benowitz compared 6 commonly used recreational drugs – alcohol, tobacco, heroin, cocaine, coffee and cannabis. Which one was the least harmful? Cannabis. Even so there are some who do develop a dependency on marijuana. Legalizing cannabis would aid in treatment. Jail is not treatment. Prop 19 encourages those also might need help to get it legally.

We have heard that passage of Prop 19 will increase the number of users.  This seems unlikely because of the  current ease in acquiring marijuana.  Illicit sales are encouraged because of the money to be made on the black market. The alcohol model of tax regulate would make cannabis harder to obtain.  The late conservative pundit William F. Buckley, founder of the National Review and for 33 years moderator of public television’s Firing Line, said it was easier for an eighth grader to get marijuana than alcohol. Why? Because alcohol is taxed and regulated and marijuana is not. The liquor store owner has an investment to protect, the illicit seller of marijuana does not.

We have examples in Portugal and Holland of what happens when you legalize drugs. Not much except there is less crime, less fear of the police, less money wasted and a reordering of police priorities. As the attorney who fought the case that legalized marijuana in Alaska in 1982 said after a 5-2 vote of the Alaskan Supreme Court ruling that the Alaska Constitution protected the private use of marijuana: “Do you know what happened the next morning?  The sun came up and life went on.”

It is time for life to go on in California. Vote YES on PROPOSITION 19!

David Bearman, M.D. is the Vice President of the American Academy of Cannabinoid Medicine and author of Demons, Discrimination and Dollars: A Brief History Of The Origins of American Drug Policy.

Webmaster’s note: There seems to be a rift between the Washington, D.C. LULAC and the California LULAC mentioned in this blog post. Please read this for more clarification.

Last week a new coalition, Latinos for Internet Freedom “LIF”, was formed to fight for internet freedom and to support the concept of net neutrality. Over 40 local and national groups comprise this coalition from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists to more local groups like the New Mexico Media Literacy Project and CARECEN. These groups realize that our livelihood depends on an open and free internet that allows us to communicate, organize, and challenge the traditional propaganda machines.

If you notice, some of our community’s most prominent or noted civil rights organizations have not joined the newly formed LIF coalition. Notably absent are NCLR, MALDEF, and LULAC. However, this should not be a big surprise since big telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon tend to be high level donors to these organizations. But since many of the grassroots organizations do work that fits in line with and supports the stated goals of the larger Latino organizations, I would hope that they (the holy trinity of NCLR, MALDEF, and LULAC) will eventually join this fight.

I was able to ask Roberto Lovato of Presente.org about the absence of some of these larger Latino civil rights organizations from the net neutrality fight, and he offered this:

“The response to our launch of the Latinos for Internet Freedom coalition has been overwhelming. Latinos and non-Latinos from across the country have stepped to say they want to keep the internet as open and free from the excessive greed and control of extremely powerful corporations. These same corporations that have, over the past 10 years, spent hundreds of millions of dollars to influence “opinion leaders” and “civil rights” organizations. That so many leaders and organizations have joined our fight despite the attempts to buy Latino opinion speaks well of these leaders and organizations- and of our cause. Other leaders “brillan por su ausencia”, they shine for their absence against the dark cloud of corporate control looming over the internet. The conspicuous silence of some “civil rights leaders” around network neutrality, an issue at the core of the civil and human rights struggles of the present and future, provides, I believe, an opportunity for the courage and conviction of the brave new leaders of the Latino community to shine forth. Digital age activists like LIF members  Amalia Deloney of the Center for Media Justice, Andrea Quijada of the Media Literacy Project and Steven Renderos of the Main Street Project stand to inherit and redefine what were the civil rights struggle of the industrial age civil rights organizations. They are at the heart of Latinos for Internet Freedom.

To my knowledge, Janet Murguia and the Natonal Council of La Raza have remained neutral about network neutrality.”

If you want to preserve the free and open internet that allows you to go where you want to when you get online, please take action here and consider voicing your concern to Latino oriented organizations who are not yet taking a stand in the net neutrality fight.

The soft drink industry spent $18 million in lobbying and millions more in direct campaign contributions to put a halt to any sort of federal level tax on sugary drinks in the last year. This doesn’t even count the money contributed to issue organizations and other charities. Next time you are in your state capitol or in DC and attend an event, note if there are any logos from Coca Cola or Pepsi on the schwag that is handed out.

The part that caught my eye in the LA Times piece was this:

“When California Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez (D-Shafter) introduced his soda tax bill, he said one penny of tax per teaspoon of added sugar in any sweetened beverage would generate as much as $1.5 billion each year. That money would pay for parks, recreation and school health programs, Florez said.”

and this:

“In California, the state affiliate of the League of United Latin American Citizens this weekend will consider a resolution urging its national assembly to leave the coalition that opposes the tax.”

At a time when states are already cutting dental and health programs for the poor that could have broader public health implications for the society at large, I still maintain that it is worth examining and even having a trial run on a soda tax. A recent poll in New York found that over three quarters of those surveyed backed a soda tax. It even appeals to blacks and Hispanics and tax-shy Republicans:

“A Quinnipiac survey found 76 percent of voters back a tax on soft drinks.

Support for the so-called soda tax to close budget gaps was strong among black, white and Hispanic voters in every borough.”

I’m hopeful that LULAC and some of the other Latino organizations that opposed a soft drink and junk food tax will reconsider, especially if it is popular. There is already a sense in the blogosphere and in the larger Latino community that our issue organizations are out of touch. Coke and Pepsi are laughing all the way to the banks, while our communities continue down an unhealthy path toward obesity and diabetes. Imagine what kind of battles we will be facing now that we are in a post-Citizens United era where corporations like Coke, Pepsi, and McDonalds can throw even more cash to our candidates. If you want to contact LULAC to voice your opinion about the organization’s stance on the soda tax, you can reach the organization via this link.

I think that if more Latinos in the community realized that their civil rights organizations were to heavily tied to the corporate entities that produce sugar and junk food and perpetuate racial stereotypes like Disney has had a history of doing (of course, let’s not forget Disney’s labor history in regards to its hotel workers, which this blog has covered before back in the Summer of 2008), then there would be some sort of outrage about who exactly these associations serve. I have met one of the previous presidents of the Orange County Hispanic Bar Association, and I thought that she was approachable and even receptive to criticism and questions, similar to how I felt about Brent Wilkes of LULAC willingness to answer my own questions. Perhaps people in the community need to start asking the questions that Gustavo and I have been raising on the blogs. These organizations aren’t going to sever ties or consider other sponsors without more people questioning their relationships. Currently, the Walt Disney Company is listed as a sponsor of the Orange County Hispanic Bar Association.

Disney wants its hotel workers who earn around $11 per hour to enroll in a health plan with costly premiums. Currently, 2,150 hotel workers are in a plan where they only pay co-payments for doctor’s visits and prescriptions. Plainly, these hotel workers are in an income bracket where they will have to make a choice between rent and health care or perhaps forgo coverage altogether. It is my hope that the Orange County Hispanic Bar Association reconsiders celebrating at the Disney Grand Californian Hotel in a display of solidarity with the workers who are fighting to keep more affordable health benefits. To add to the irony, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis is going to be the keynote speaker at this event. I wonder if Secretary Solis would bestow the “corporate citizen award” upon Disney given its latest labor disputes. Hopefully, Secretary Solis and her people are keeping an eye on the Disney labor dispute and will consider the message that being a keynote speaker at this hotel may send to the workers who have been striking.

To read more about the Disney labor disputes, please check out this link.