On the discourse between latinos, hispanos, chicanos, or whatever you have chosen to call us, and the rest of the people in the United States of America.

First of all, let me explain to you that America is not a country. This is a fight that I have been engaged in since I first came to the US and was told by a racist parent in my elementary school in Florida, that America didn't want me here, and that I should go back to my country. I explained to her as politely as I could that I had been born in America, as Cuba was a part of the American continent, and she promptly spit on my face. It was not a wonderful beginning to my residence here. In my next year I won the school spelling bee, but the week before I had been told by my homeroom teacher that I would never succeed because a) I spoke a second-rate language and b) I came from a third-rate culture. These two experiences, the first of many, made me decide that I would never lose my original language and culture. So when I taught Spanish at the elementary, high school and college level, when I shared my knowledge of history and geography with my students, when I practiced law and represented clients, whether Spanish-speaking or Haitians or people who spoke other languages, I always provided translations. There were no automatic translators in those days, and although I acknowledge that they serve as a tool, as a professional translator and interpreter I find their use by companies and government agencies as the sole means to address my people to be lazy and offensive. We speak a beautiful language, as all languages are beautiful; don't relegate it to an automatic robotic construct for the sake of expediency. Yes, you are the current seat of Empire, but all things, good and bad, come to an end. In my work as an advocate in the courts helping immigrants and people of color and all of the voiceless in this country, including homeless brothers and sisters and the elderly (and I suppose, having turned 67 last month, I could start adding myself to that group), I have always insisted on what Flaubert called 'le mot juste,' the exact, appropriate, perfect word. My paternal Sephardic grandfather, who spoke eight languages perfectly, always told me to keep studying languages because I would find the word I needed to express a feeling or concept, 'le mot juste,' in one of those languages. He was completely correct. We are engaged in a terrible fight to the death in these current elections that constantly bring back to me the words of Abraham Lincoln in his address at Gettysburg. "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war." These elections are, to me, a great civil war. The discourse among us all is harsh and divisive, except for one candidate, who has refused and continues to refuse to engage in the low tactics of his adversaries. I don't know that we will be able to endure; as we have seen with candidate Trump's casual rhetoric of violence, violence only begets more violence; only love trumps violence. And that brings me back to my point: the general attitude in these United States, or US America for short, that the only opinions that matter are those of white, English-speaking people. That those of us (latinos, hispanic, chicanos) who will soon constitute a majority in the United States are not worthy of equal representation. That the language we speak, and the cultures we bring to the pot, are less important. I say all cultures are important, and the first nations here did not speak English, were not white, and had to undergo genocide, depredation, violence and abuse that continue to the present time; their languages and cultures are important and worthy of equal representation. That the original languages and cultures of the African slave ancestors, who also continue to experience rape, state and individual violence, are important and worthy of equal representation. All of us bring our special flavors and cultures to the pot; we are all important and worthy of equal representation. I am using the word America during my work to elect Bernie Sanders because it would take too long to change your understanding of how offensive your use of that word is to the rest of us, the Guatemalans and Bolivians, the Canadians and the Mexicans, the Cubans and Puerto Ricans and Dominicans and Colombians and Salvadoreans and Honduras, to name just a few of us Americans. But when the electoral process is over, I will continue to demand of all people of good will, and my experience has been that there are many of you out there, willing to learn, willing to take back this nation from the hands of those who would destroy it, that they give up the appellation of America and American, unless you mean to include the rest of us in the discourse, by proper respect and equal representation.

God bless the whole world, no exceptions.

The School of the Américas Watch

On November 17th I traveled to Georgia to participate in this year's vigil, and came back disturbed by the repressive over-presence of the police and soldier apparatus, the obvious 'overkill' as in the arrest of passersby and the dubious harsh treatment of these individuals by the local judge and authorities, but every year I travel there I also come back renewed by the bravery and courage of so many of our 'victims' who come here to witness to the struggle, taking a chance that when they return they will be detained, tortured, murdered... sometimes with their families at risk as well. I remember particularly the brave Honduras lawyer who has been working in resistance of the US sponsored coup, and who has been getting phone calls about his family, and his family as well getting phone calls about his own safety... the brave young man from Honduras who told us about the death of students for the simple act of speaking out against repression... This year I got to spend time with a priest from my beloved República Dominicana, which I've always considered my second homeland (I have many... there are Puerto Rico and México too), who is now working with Haitian victims of the many terrible events, of which the presence of the UN's MINUSTAH and US soldiers is not the least of these events. He told me about the wonderful work Cuban's doctors, hand-in-hand with Venezuela, have been doing there, even before the first earthquake...

I have always said that loyalty is one of the highest virtues, but I have written songs and poems about solidarity, solidaridad, and the SOAW and meeting people such as the tireless fighters for a new world are about solidaridad, which is the first virtue, because all it means is love, love and the willingness to put your body in front of your ideals.

Father Louis Vitale again crossed the gates and pleaded nolo contendere, for which he was once again sentenced to six months in jail... He is an inspiration, and I hope I have his strength when I become a prisoner of conscience.

Here in his own words, an excerpt of a letter he wrote when he was sentenced to jail from October 2007 to March 2008 for prayerfully and nonviolently protesting torture training at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona.

The cell door clangs shut. Now I am alone. But instead of trying to escape this solitude, I enter it deeply: This is where I am. Here in this empty cell I have begun to experience prison in the way James W. Douglass in Resistance and Contemplation describes it: not as “an interlude in a white middle class existence, but as a stage of the way redefining the nature of my life.” (James W. Douglass, Resistance and Contemplation: The Way of Liberation, p. 172). I have sensed this transformation, little by little. These days are a journey into a new freedom and a slow transformation of being and identity: an invitation to enter one’s truest self, and to follow the road of prayer and nonviolent witness wherever it will lead.

I am in this little hermitage in the presence of God, in the presence of the Christ who gave his life for the healing and well-being of all. I am also in the presence of the vast cloud of witnesses, some of whom are represented in the icons that have multiplied in this cell, gifts sent to me from people everywhere: Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Steven Biko, the martyrs of El Salvador, John XXIII. All those who have given their lives to fashion a more human world. At the same time I experience a deep connection with my fellow prisoners and with those outside these prison walls, including those who have sent me many letters and expressions of prayer and support.

In my little, empty cell, I experience a growing awareness of the communion of saints — and of the possibility of a world where the vast chasm of violence and injustice enforced by torture and war is bridged and transformed.

It's the economy, stupid...

I am having a hard time believing that one-twelfth of 2010 is almost gone... Just before Christmas I bought a used leather couch from someone who was moving, actually, a loveseat, in good condition, and I had an old, once wonderful couch that my two cats had shredded (not the couch per se but the arm rests) so I was trying to figure out how I would get the old couch out, and get rid of it. The landlord wants these broken up with an ax so they can fit into the garbage container... otherwise he gets charged for removal. Anyway, a young friend who heard me talking about it said he had a neighbor with a bunch of children and others living in her apartment, because people have been losing their jobs and moving in together, and he thought she could use the couch!

I felt good and bad about my couch going to someone else, because even though it had been a very good couch, the arm rests looked terrible, but within a half hour someone from the woman's apartment came over and they loaded the couch away, and were very happy because the people who were sleeping on the floor would now have a comfortable couch to sleep in! One woman's castoffs is another woman's treasure, particularly in this economy...

Now today a neighbor visited; I have been helping her with a problem with Bank of America (one of their new ways of stealing money from their depositors... they 'sell' life insurance to people who would never buy it, and deduct outrageous monthly fees directly from their depositors' accounts... no policy is ever sent to the depositor, and it's an automatic deduction so people don't always realize for a while that their money is being taken...) This particular woman earns a pittance, and when she found out that she had been paying for $100,000 in life insurance... she joked that had she known this she might have killed him for the insurance!. Today she wanted to know if I could help her file her tax return; she has a 7 month-old baby who was happily gurgling away while she explained the situation, and a 14 year-old, and last year her common-law husband and she made, between the two of them, before taxes, $19,000. So I wondered if any of the people I hear talking about the economy and complaining about Obama's 'outrageous' 'socialist' measures could survive, a whole family of four or five (there is another daughter also...) on $19,000 before taxes...

We are doing health care rallies to get health care reform approved, and I don't understand how anyone can argue about this! I haven't had health care since 1995. I go to a dentist in Mexico, and although I use mostly alternative health care (chiropractors and acupuncturists, juicing and vitamins and meditation) it's a bit of a time bomb, were something to happen...

Health care is a fundamental human right, no different from the right to food and shelter and speech. And we are the only industrialized nation that has no health care policy covering all its citizens.