"Tomorrow we vote" but today we're going to impact your election

¡ Adiós Los Angeles!

Thanks to Sandy Close, Roberto Lovato and the people of New American Media, I was able to witness and participate in their "Tomorrow We Vote" summit. I have spent the last 48 hours in la ciudad de Los Ángeles with people from the advocacy organizations and ethnic media outlets who were responsible for the mass mobilizations that culminated in the immigrations of this last Spring. As one of the presenters there said, the meeting was about distinguishing the movement from the mobilizations and about shattering the perception that movement was somehow dead.

Some of the organizations represented in this meeting were :

CHIRLA (Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, LA)
Border Action Network
Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
NALEO Education Fund
Center for Community Change
Boat People S. O. S.
Asian Pacific Legal Center
Chinese for Affirmative Action
National Immigration Project
Detention Watch Network
Arizona Coalition for Migrant Rights
VotoLatino
Esperanza Peace and Justice Center
Coalition for African, Asian, European and Latino Immigrants of Illinois
Desis Rising Up
Mira Coaliton (Boston)

The list could go on and on because there were many more organizations in this summit --and I have not included all the ethnic media outlets that were present there as well.

I was there to learn about how they made the mobilizations happen and how they will be moving forward. Of course, I ended up in a panel (against my will!) and gave people a glimpse of the kind of strategies and practices they need to have in place to use the internet as an alternative media and broadcasting platform. They were definitely interested in learning more about how to bypass, disrupt and penetrate the mainstream media using digital and internet technologies.

I suspect my travelling will double in the next year.

I have soOooOoOo much more to write about. I just wanted to tie my being here with the Harlem meeting debacle. Christy Hardin Smith of Firedog Lake gave the following rationalization for not trying harder to bring people of color into that event :

liberal bloggers were invited to meet with the former President of the United States to talk about policy initiatives and the Democratic party and politics going into the November elections.

People of color vote. So do New Americans.

Historically, minorities have voted for Democrats in droves. Yet if there is anything Democrats ought to have learned from the last two presidential elections is that the real "values voters" of the Republican Party were not just white bible belters but New Americans. Many of those swing voters were Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese, Dominicans, Central and South Americans, Eastern Europeans and interestingly enough, Mexicans.

The Democratic Party needs to pour millions of dollars into get out the vote initiatives now, not come October of next year. They need to focus on not just registering people but getting them to the polls through political education, social networking and plain old civic action.

At the local level it looks like Republicans will be losing seats on the matter of immigration. On the national level though, Democrats chances of winning will be severely compromised if they continue ignoring the immigrant vote.

YES. I am talking about immigrants as a voting block.

Many immigrant activists are creating their own GOTV intiatives for getting New Americans to the polls. It is no secret immigrants and New Americans have been great donors to both political parties but now there's even talk about creating a PAC to fund pro-immigration Republican candidates in districts where a Democrat might not be able to win.

I will be posting more about this because, as usual, Sergio Bendixen brought the sexy back to polling and statistics. The numbers he were throwing were just awe inspiring. They ought to freak out any candidate or incumbent that has no staff, no strategy and no clue on how to deal with this new political force.

Which is why I give a word of caution to the liberals of the Democratic Party :

If liberal is a code word for 'white people who vote Democrat', you are going to be in for a rude awakening come 2008. Colored people, both citizens and immigrants, are giving you a ghetto pass this November. There's a lot of MoFos that need to get booted out of Congress and the Senate and many are happy to oblige.

Don't be so sure come November 2008.

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