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Time to Leave Gracefully, President Obama

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Time to Leave Gracefully, President Obama

President Obama finally found his muscle on Israel, dispatching the US Ambassador to the United Nations to draw a line against the expansion of Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands. Then Secretary of State John Kerry explained why the US cannot support Israel’s own version of the American Manifest Destiny.

On Syria, Obama’s empty bravado about a “red line” that would trigger the U.S. to act against President Assad if he used chemical weapons resulted in the line being swept into oblivion by a sandstorm of empty promises and five million Syrians becoming refugees and almost half a million dead.

Obama nya-nyaed Russia’s President Vladimir Putin for the presidential campaign hacking against the Democrats by declaring a bunch of Russian diplomats as personas non grata who must leave the U.S.

In 2008, when Obama was the rock star candidate, he sent a love letter to Puerto Rico. It was dated Feb. 12, but it wasn’t the proximity of Valentine’s Day that inspired him. It was a $100,000 fundraiser and the upcoming Democratic primaries. Hillary pounced him 2-1 that time despite his Sanderesque promises.

“As President I will work closely with the Puerto Rican government, its civil society and with Congress to create a genuinely transparent process for self-determination that will be true to the best traditions of democracy. As President I will actively engage Congress and the Puerto Rican people in promoting this deliberative, open and unbiased process, that may include a constitutional convention, or a plebiscite, and my Administration will adhere to a policy of strict neutrality on Puerto Rican status matters. My Administration will recognize all valid options to resolve the question of Puerto Rico’s status, including commonwealth, statehood, and independence.”

None of that happened. Instead, in his last year as president, Obama spearheaded the effort to appoint a collection agency comprised of statehood-seeking Republicans to oversee the island’s finances.

Then there’s Oscar López Rivera, once a young man who dreamed of a free Puerto Rico and joined a small resistance group.

Puerto Ricans in the U.S. and the island have signed petitions, written letters, made phone calls and personal pleas for Obama to pardon López, 73, who was sent to prison on charges of seditious conspiracy in 1981. President Bill Clinton offered him conditional clemency in 1999, but López rejected the conditions.

Just four months ago, U.S. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, D-Ill., spoke in favor of López’s release. “He was not convicted of committing a violent crime, rather he was convicted of seditious conspiracy – espousing the belief that that the Puerto Rican people are capable of, entitled to, and have an inalienable right to self-determination. He harbors no nefarious plot to harm anyone.”

As a candidate Obama was a favorite everywhere – magazines that put him on the cover sold out; the click rate on online stories about him inspired even more stories about him, even if only about his love of shaved ice while vacationing in Hawaii.

Youtube videos with him and about him went viral. He’s the subject of 29 books at last count, discounting the two he wrote about himself.

Except for Fox News, mass media was in love. And in Berlin, more than 100,000 people showed up to a rally – when he was still a candidate. Shortly after winning the presidency, he also won the Noble Peace Prize.

In liberal circles, Obama remains a star for many good reasons, and a heart-breaking disappointment for many other good reasons.

Obama’s election in 2008 demonstrated – for eight years at least – that a thoughtful candidate with a massive war chest could win the White House. This past November, we learned that making heinous statements was acceptable.

As he leaves later this month, Wall Street remains supreme ruler, unions have been weakened, Obamacare is expensive for many, and the self-aggrandizing speeches about a 5 percent unemployment rate is vinegar on a wound.

Millions of Americans still do not have comparable jobs nor pay since President W. tanked the economy in 2008. They still don’t have a home of their own, health insurance that covers them without bankrupting them. They still haven’t recovered their sense of accomplishments and pride.

While Obama wraps himself in glory and tees off on his final Hawaii vacation on the American taxpayer’s dime – unseemly, given he is a millionaire who could wait until after leaving office – millions remain hurting.

They’re frustrated with pollsters, politicians and the media for having become a chorus that did not sing to them, much less about them.

Recently, Obama suffered from trumpitis, declaring he could win a third term because he alone knew how to get out the vote.

Time to leave gracefully, Mr. President. That is your touchstone.

Addendum: Watch President Obama’s farewell speech here.

This column appeared originally in The Daily Hampshire Gazette on Jan. 10, 2017

Dear Bernie: What Happened to You?

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Dear Bernie: What Happened to You?

 

You divided liberals and made a cottage industry of it: social media bots and trolls, fake news, now a book about how you and your angry followers can ignite a revolution, Part 2.

Clouded by mean ambition, you traded in your admirable principles for denigrating Hillary Clinton, a longtime public servant with a public record, books and Senate votes that shows a stateswoman at work.

Most of your “revolutionaries” settled lazily on being spoon fed lies and distortions that national media pop stars served up irresponsibly.

You’re still trying to sell Marxism to a country that barely accepts public schools.

You proclaimed the Democratic Party primaries as rigged, Hillary as unworthy, and her supporters as confused by “identity politics.” Sen. Sanders, 4 million more voted for her over you because she is smarter than you, more compassionate and really nice.

You only look forward when it’s convenient. You certainly didn’t want to look at 1994, when you voted in the House for the crime bill that led to mass incarceration.

Your stubborn ignorance of identity politics keeps you stewing in attack mode and confusion.

If this were not a country where your identity influences so much about your opportunities, there would not have ever been the Abolitionist Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Rights Movement, Affirmative Action, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, the American Civil Liberties Union and many other advocacy agencies, movements and laws.

As you promote yourself as the savior of Democratic Party – the party you loathe – you show up on celebrity talk shows and online, like a once great Hollywood superstar selling dubious remedies.

In your world, economic justice alone should dissipate racism when a black man or woman tries to hail a cab; people of color only need opportunity to get a strong grip on the economic ladder. You acknowledge -isms and -phobias but only on superficial sexist and racist levels.

After your followers exploded in violence at the Nevada Democratic Party convention, you said: “Our campaign has held giant rallies across this country, including in high-crime areas, and there have been zero reports of violence.”

When Hillary triumphed over you in the South, strengthening a multicultural voting bloc, you belittled it, saying: “I think that having so many Southern states go first kind of distorts reality.” But when you won caucuses with majority white votes, you had no problem with that limited, foreboding support.

Days after the election, you disparage Hillary again, with the same old contempt.

You smile wistfully when a TV host repeats early polls in which you were ahead of the Electoral College winner.

Yeah, except that the GOP would have destroyed you. For the first time in your blessed life, you would have felt the lingering sting of being roundly bullied and ridiculed. You wouldn’t have withstood well a year of what Hillary has endured with grace for 30.

They would have attacked your honeymoon in the former USSR, your meeting and flattery of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, your friends and acquaintances and your votes from the time you became mayor of a hippie town 30 years ago to your long career in the House and Senate.

Once again, you are a snake oil salesman promising what you can’t deliver, intent on breaking up the Democratic Party along class lines. You don’t see that race and class are two roads that sometimes intersect and others run parallel to each other, depending on whether you’re selling single cigarettes on Staten Island or are the first African American president of the United States. Either way, the consequences are vicious to varying degrees.

You think you’re chipping away at economic injustice, but it is your once respectable and thrilling candidacy that is falling apart.

You still don’t understand the fault lines that torment this country that Hillary ran to bridge.

You still go after the woman who, against unimaginable odds to you, lifted the hopes of 65 million voters (at last count) who believed that with her in the White House we could continue threading the American story. It is a complicated story, scarred by unspeakable crimes even to this day. And it is also a story of hope and the hard work of forming a more perfect union. She generously represented what is best in us, what unites us.

But once again you’re a muckraker, robbing yourself of prestige by hitting Hillary with malice and lies.

This is the only link with your name on it that I would read: “Sanders Apologizes to Hillary.”

But that won’t happen. You are as tragically full of yourself as the other guy.

Natalia Muñoz is host of “Vaya con Muñoz’’ on WHMP 1400 AM.
This column appeared originally in the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

 

Hillary Clinton Makes America Great Again; Bernie Sanders Agitates

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Hillary Clinton Makes America Great Again; Bernie Sanders Agitates

Hillary Rodham Clinton is now blamed by pundits and Bernie Sanders because a lot of white people left  the Democratic Party, installing Republican Party majority wins in the House, the Senate and the White House.

Sanders, who is not a member of the Democratic Party, wants to bring them back into the tent, but I say, Good riddance. And you, too, Bernie. Start your own party. Leave the Democrats alone; you’ve done enough harm to last many lifetimes. And no, you would never have won the presidency, and you weren’t part of Hillary’s ticket because you didn’t want second place, so stop with the embarrassing hypocrisy.

Had 4 million+ more voted for you in the primaries, by the time the GOP finished with you for your support of communist Cuba, your honeymoon in Russia and your lack of working full time until well into your 30s, I’m guessing you would have lost by the widest margin in history of any country. I personally don’t care about this, but the GOP would.

To imply that the Democratic Party failed the white working class is to discard the lessons of  history.

A similar white flight happened when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The party lost the South.

That migration was based on race. This time, add gender, and race again.

In a way, the Democratic Party’s 2016 Platform, introduced at the convention last July, begins, “In 2016, Democrats meet in Philadelphia with the same basic belief that animated the Continental Congress when they gathered here 240 years ago: Out of many, we are one” and ends some 50 pages later with the most pro-worker and anti-Wall Street running wild set of proposals ever, is a continuation of the Civil Rights Act.

It is written like we learn to write compositions in middle school. Noun, subject, verb.

It could have been read at home, talked about at the dinner table.

It is clear and concise.

It carries the authority of the American flag itself.

You snap to attention, it is so passionate and unflinching about right and wrong.

It is the country’s conscience, the party’s constitution, an echo of the U.S. Constitution. It booms the heartbeats of all us, regardless of political ideologies.

Its pledges include “Raising Workers’ Wages,” “Support Our Troops and Keep Faith with Our Veterans,” “Expanding Access to Affordable Housing and Homeownership,” “Reining in Wall Street and Fixing Our Financial System” and “Ending Systemic Racism,” “Honoring Indigenous Tribal Nations” and “Fostering a Manufacturing Renaissance.”

You and your concerns and your grief and grievances were there, in black and white. Your struggles, your despair to make ends meet, to care for your loved ones, your hopes to retire without financial worries, your dreams for your children and grandchildren to have more opportunities than you did, were all right there, so plain and simple, like the essays we read in school. You are seen, you are heard. You are cherished.

Veterans, sacred citizens, are promised more and better services:

  • “That is why we will push for more educational benefits and job training, end chronic homelessness and combat suicide, and protect and preserve the post-9/11 GI Bill for future generations.”

Companies with their eyes on cheap labor overseas were put on notice:

  • “Democrats will claw back tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas, eliminate tax breaks for big oil and gas companies, and crack down on inversions and other methods companies use to dodge their tax responsibilities.”
    Hillary crisscrossed the country dozens of times on these and other promises, raising millions of dollars to also help pay for the congressional campaigns of other Democrats. There are two more Democrats in the Senate and 9 more in the House now.

She tried to get her message through the prickly thicket of non-scandals and non-stories that the real yet lost media served up, and the fake news sites invented to fuel insidious Hillary hate on social media.

She tried to be heard over the growling of Bernie’s band of bros, CNN and MSNBC’s favorite cast of click-baiting characters with the endless stream of allegations that punctured her reputation. The lies and distortions became truths and disillusioned Democrats stayed home or voted against her.

This woman who has spent her adult life in public service, who has raised millions of dollars for the Clinton Foundation that directly works to increase opportunities for girls and women, reduce childhood obesity, promote economic development and health, was demonized by the media and liberals for the blood sport of it. You, Bernie, are part of this disgrace.

I’m so mad, and without a church, I turn to pop culture’s voice of God, Morgan Freeman, narrator of the stirring video about Hillary presented at the convention.

“Here is a woman,” his commanding baritone intones. “What does she dream of? When does she feel proud? How many times will she leave her mark? How many times will she light up the world?”

At last count, 65 million times, nearly 3 million more than the man who will take over the White House in January.

America is already greater again.

Who Voted This Era of Hate into the White House?

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I am at the gas station and wonder about the cashier, who sincerely wishes me a great day. Did you vote for him?

Did you vote for the man who wants to ban Muslims from entering the United States? The same one who mocked Mr. and Mrs. Khan, the Gold Star parents whose son died in Iraq protecting his fellow soldiers?

At the market, I scan the people ahead and behind me in line and wonder, Did any of you vote for the man who puts Tics Tacs in his mouth so he can proceed to kiss a woman uninvited? That’s sexual assault – as is his professed ability to “grab them by their p_ _ _ _” without their consent. Are you OK with that?

He says he loves to ogle naked teenage beauty contestants in their dressing rooms. You can overlook that, too?

At a stop light, I look at the driver in the next lane and think, Are you capable of having voted for a man who mocked someone with a disability? The same man who characterized Mexican immigrants as rapists. A man who doesn’t pay small business owners who do work for his billion-dollar businesses. Who declares bankruptcy over and over to avoid paying his debts. Who spews hate, racism, and sexism, and who chose a running mate who decided women who’ve suffered through abortions should then have to suffer more, through a funeral for the fetus.

This is how Wednesday was for me, contemplating strangers’ faces to try to divine who is against someone like me, a liberal Puerto Rican woman, like my beloved family and friends, of different ethnicities, LGBTQ communities and faiths.

I guess about who voted for a man who reveals his deep insecurities by bullying anyone who offends him, no matter how vulnerable. I need to know, to be prepared.

Because he espouses hate and encourages violence; because at rallies, his supporters often spat upon and beat up anyone who questioned him. He has used vulgar language against protesters and journalists. He said he could shoot someone right in the middle of New York City and get away with it. He suggested that Second Amendment supporters could do something about Hillary Clinton. He blames the vulnerable for whatever’s wrong with this great country.

Experts theorize that mostly angry white men who felt that much had been taken away from them ushered in this new era of hate.

Many of his supporters have good reason to be angry – they’ve watched companies go broke or move overseas, and lost their jobs, the comforts and support that come with a decent income.

But they are misdirecting their anger when they violently oppose anyone who disagrees with them, and anyone who is different from them. It was not people of color, Latinos, LGBTQ people, or a black president who took their jobs.

The causes are complex, but they arise from economic trends launched by elites in corporate offices and Wall Street – and most of those elites are white men. The causes are exacerbated by lax government regulation that let these men run wild, nearly destroying the economy, ruining companies and eliminating millions of jobs.

If they’re mad because Washington is gridlocked, they just rewarded the party that invented legislative gridlock.

I drive around town, run errands, sit in my car with the radio off, at the stoplight I look around. I know that not all his supporters are violent people, but I still wonder: How could you affirm this role model of the worst characteristics for a leader?

Because you’re angry? We’re all angry for one reason or another.

Think about this:

–Native Americans, whose lands were taken from them.

–African Americans, enslaved for centuries, now their lives at risk in communities across the country just for driving while black.

–Mexicans, whose country once included most of the West, from the current border into Oregon until just over 160 years ago. Now many are immigrants in their former homeland, doing the work Americans won’t. They pay taxes but will not qualify for Social Security.
Many people never had the things that the angry white men believe they are losing. But lashing to elect a massively unqualified, emotionally unfit billionaire who revels unconsciously in his white male privilege was not the remedy.

It seems self-evident, but there are many angry people who didn’t vote for him.

Why? Because we’re used to unspeakable pain over many generations of stolen lives and stolen lands and have learned to look for the light instead of caving in to hate.

One day it was 2016, and on Nov. 9 it was 1900.

I feel my heart, broken.

Natalia Muñoz is the host of “Vaya con Muñoz” on WHMP Talk Radio 1400 AM

 

Cowardly Congress Aided by Silent Democrats

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Cowardly Congress Aided by Silent Democrats

If the 20 children and seven teachers of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, killed in 2012, do not convince Republicans governors and lawmakers nationwide to make buying weapons a bureaucratic nightmare, then dozens of LGBTQ Latinos killed this week won’t, either.
Killing people in their houses of worship, in schools, at the movies, at restaurants, workplaces and the streets has not swayed this cowardly Congress toward courage.
But what will?
Voting and following up with our elected officials.
It’s not enough that Sen. Elizabeth Warren is such a enthralling attack dog this presidential electoral season on behalf of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. And though most of us clearly are in the adoration section for Congressman Jim McGovern – and with good reasons, that is not enough, either.
Congressman Richard Neal, Sen. Ed Markey, and all the rest of the Democratic delegation have to stop pointing to their respective voting records on gun control with pride and do something more.
It’s past time for our federal lawmakers to circle the bullies and neutralize their power.
Malcolm X had it right: Desperate times call for desperate measures.
In the face of extremism in Congress that allows hate mongers to buy guns, our delegation needs to stop enjoying their colleagues from across the aisle as if nothing catastrophic has happened again and again.
They tweet their damn prayers and issue vacuous press releases calling for gun control and then have lunch with their Republican colleagues who vote against gun control.
Worlds extinguished because armed boys and men have these cowards on their side.
Here’s what the party that is representative of the the United States need to do: freeze out the GOP.
No afternoons playing racquetball, no lunches, no co-sponsoring, no golfing, no hardy har hars after hours. No nothing.
These members of the GOP who vote against gun control are aiding and abetting the enemy: the killers.
Put another way, stop playing nice with them because you guys manage to agree on some things.
Bring the GOP to its knees. Hold steady.
Hold the line. Do not let one more law pass until the gun control bill that ends easy access to guns is passed.
We are all mourning because of your sorry excuses. The GOP is in the majority. We can’t do anything. Our hands are tied. Blab la bla Ginger.
Be the leaders you were elected to be, not apologists for the dead.
If this rattles you, which it should, imagine how the loved ones of the children still feel. Imagine how the survivors of Orlando feel because you complain about the GOP instead of doing something.
Natalia Muñoz is host of “Vaya con Muñoz” on WHMP talk radio 96.9 FM

That Burning Sensation is Sexism

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That Burning Sensation is Sexism

The small but loud Hillary Haters Club has grown even more spiteful.

Maybe they know the truth already. That even as Sen. Bernie Sanders wins, he will not be the Democratic nominee because he lags far behind in delegates. And winning in mostly white communities is of concern, BTW.

Now some complain that their candidate didn’t get appropriately magnanimous and celebratory headlines when he won in Michigan this week.

I saw headlines like “Sanders Wins Big with Michigan Muslims” and “Sanders Massively Outperforms Expectations.” Were there supposed to be parades and horns blaring triumphant music as well?

Some of Sanders’ supporters are as crabby as their cantankerous windmill leader, as Samantha Bee rightly satires him.

Sanders rails against Wall Street.

Donald Trump pushes for a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

Secretary Hillary Clinton for the second time is trying to break through a wall of sexism.

To my ears, the decimals levels of whininess from some in the Sanders camp makes the same painful screeching sound of those behind Trump. Noise bundled into insults against people who have other views.

Both camps look pretty much the same, if you don’t look at the Fords vs Volvos parked at the rallies. Both are populated with very, very angry people. On one side, many Sanders supporters who hate Wall Street as much as he does self-righteously attack Hillary for making speeches –_-– and charging a fee!!! (how dare she make money?)– to Wall Street firms. Yet, do these same people who review their pension funds with growing delight ever question how their money keeps growing? Wall Street!

There are raging bulls on the right as well. The Trump people are mad that they don’t have the kind of good-paying jobs that Americans deserve to have. After all, we live in an empire; the pay should be commensurate with the empire lifestyle. Trump’s a businessman with a personal empire so he must know how to unravel the complexities of running a government so that people get paid well. And his diplomatic panache is unrivaled, except by the other three guys in the GOP.

And here I am, in the middle, with her. With Hillary, wondering: Why the sexism?

You say she’s Gordon Gekko’s double from Wall Street. You know this because you did your homework and read about the Senate bills she’s supported, right? It can’t be because you heard it from…the Sanders campaign, could it?

She’s a war monger? Take it up with President Obama, and while you’re at it, donate the balance from $7 you would have paid for gas after you’ve paid $1.75 a gallon to any one of the homeless people in downtown Northampton. Because if you lived in Europe, one of your favorite vacation destinations (mine, too! We have so much in common!), that’s what you would pay for gas.

She is blamed for her husband’s failings. But gets no credit for how well you got on in the 1990s. ¿Por qué, por qué?

To me, Hillary is resilient, she has spunk, she is ever growing. In her youth she was a moderate Republican, then became a liberal Democrat fighting for better health and education for all, including, intentionally, people from communities of color.

She knows that being black doesn’t mean that you were raised in a ghetto, as Sanders said he believes. She knows that from a long time ago, before any campaign was in the picture.

She also knows the names and character of leaders worldwide, and how to play hardball in DC. No other candidate has her depth and breadth of experience and character. She’s been attacked viciously from the right and the left on fake and real issues for 25 years and she marches on amid the sexist abuse because she believes that she can make a difference. She does.

I say this as someone who needs binoculars to see Sanders – to my right; that’s how left I am. But being pragmatic is a life-or-death thing.

Listen to Vaya con Muñoz on WHMP 1400 AM Sundays at 10 am.

 

 

Puerto Rico and the United States 101

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Puerto Rico and the United States 101

In 1898, the exhausted Spanish empire illegally gave away Puerto Rico to the United States at the end of the Spanish-America War.
Gen. Nelson Miles, an architect of the massacre of indigenous peoples in the 19th century in this country, then invaded Puerto Rico and established a military outpost that led to the banishment of the Spanish language from the schools and a long list of other heinous crimes, some which have been corrected and others that have gone unchanged.

Now Congress debates whether to address the mammoth $72 billion debt Puerto Rico holds due to its own corrupt officials starting in the 1990s, the greed of hedge fund managers who lent the island money in return for usurious fees, and Congress itself.

“The fact is that the Congress of the United States retains plenary powers over everything in Puerto Rico,” said Congressman Luis Gutiérrez, D-Ill., recently at a congressional hearing about the debt: “Let’s restructure this debt.”

Yes, let’s.

Because we don’t control our shores nor sky – the U.S. military does.

We don’t control our commerce – the U.S. manages that also.

Everything we buy arrives on U.S.-flagged ships, making everything more expensive because we can’t buy directly wholesale from any business.
In fact, big business points to the U.S. Constitution to avoid paying an increase in taxes.

Wal-Mart filed a lawsuit in December against the government of Puerto Rico, saying it was violating the U.S. Constitution. The Puerto Rico government wants to raise businesses taxes by between .5 to 4.5 percent.

With the swagger of a conqueror, Wal-Mart, which makes $3 billion a year in sales there, threatens to leave Puerto Rico and close its 55 stores (Including Sam’s Clubs and Amigo supermarkets) that employ about 15,000 people if the court does not rule in its favor.

We have a representative in Congress who does not have a vote, only the power of vocal persuasion. We have a Wal-Mart empire bullying Puerto Rico.

We have been sent to wars by presidents we could not vote for, we pay federal taxes that are hidden in the price of imported goods.

In this country, we look at statues from the Spanish-American War in Greenfield and Easthampton and elsewhere honoring the American soldiers whose sacrifices led to our being taken over by the U.S. and we have hollow parades to spur pride even as we remain impoverished and marginalized.

Creditors who bought municipal bonds in Puerto Rico at .30 to .50 cents on the dollar want to get a complete dollar back plus interest. That’s why they’re called vultures.

From a story by Salon contributing reporter David Dayen: “Jeffrey Gundlach of DoubleLine recently called Puerto Rican debt his “best idea” for investors.”

Against this backdrop of greed and colonization, Gutiérrez implores his colleagues: “Can’t we provide the people of Puerto Rico the incentives to create jobs, jobs, jobs? Economic activity instead of expansion of more welfare programs in Puerto Rico? What we need is jobs so that the people of Puerto Rico can use their intelligence, because when the people of Puerto Rico leave and vanish from that island to come to the United States of America, guess what they do? They come here to work.”

Miles was from Westminster, about 60 miles east of here.

Connections bind us through centuries, geographies and personal histories.

My grandmother was a 29-year-old public school teacher in Puerto Rico, 1937, when she testified before an ACLU commission. She told them that forcing students to learn all their subjects in English marred their opportunities to succeed.

She was fired within hours.

She wrote to then First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, asking for help: “It is hard for us to believe that a policy of economic sanctions against public servants for their opinions and beliefs would have the approval of the highest authority.”

The first lady replied: “I can see that you would feel the necessity to express your convictions, but I do not see how it would be possible for you to remain in the public school system holding those convictions, for if you think the children should study primarily in Spanish and that Porto (sic) Rico should be free, you would naturally find it difficult to teach in English and to point out the advantage of being part of the United States. With deep regret that I cannot be of any assistance…”

Spanish was restored as the language for learning in 1949.

By that time, my grandfather, who met my grandmother at that ACLU hearing, had been elected governor of Puerto Rico. He issued an executive order.

When my abuela died, an elementary school teacher and her students threw flower petals at abuela’s funeral car as it rounded a curve in the mountains of Puerto Rico, where she was buried next to her husband in tiny Barranquitas. They yelled, “Adiós, maestra!”

We lose some. We win some.

What’s next is up to Congress.

Listen to the Vaya con Muñoz segment on The Bill Newman Show on Wednesdays 9:30 am and Saturdays at 10 am on WHMP 1400 AM. 

A version of this column originally appeared in the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

 

 

 

Sexism By The Sanders Hillary Haters Club

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Sexism By The Sanders Hillary Haters Club

What’s With The Hillary Haters?

My social media is awash with hard-charging conversations between Sen. Bernie Sanders supporters and me, a Loud & Proud Hillary Girl. The back-and-forths on former Sen. and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton go something like this:

In an opinion column from Salon, the writer stated: “I still refuse to vote for Hillary, even if it costs the Democrats the presidency in 2016.”

Me: “Wow, with ‘progressives’ like him, who needs Trump?”

The responses go something like this:

“She represents Wall Street.”

“She’s a war monger.”

Me: “Y tu mamá también.”

In this war zone where strains of “Kumbaya” mashes up with the misogynous routines of Andrew “Dice” Clay, the professed progressives, blinded by their hate toward Hillary, do not see how much she, Bernie and President Obama have in common. The willingness of some to enable the GOP to win the White House strikes me as unintended punishment for people who cannot afford to have a bigoted president in the White House.

The bullying and more-leftist-than-thou snide remarks masked as tempered opinions about public policy is wrong. Like when what white people say is reasonable, and what the rest of us say is rooted in rage.

The double standard is public for all to see.

As the senator for Delaware, Joe Biden was a puppet to credit card companies and helped them impose usurious double-digit fees on consumers (abusive practices that now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren helped end when she was an advisor for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.)

Biden voted repeatedly, against a women’s right to choose.

As chairman of the Senate Judicial Committee in 1991, he initially did not believe Anita Hill  when she said that then-Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her.

President Obama appointed Larry Summers as his top economic advisor. He’s the guy who mused that the reason women did not hold top positions in science is because there may be “issues of intrinsic aptitude.”

Obama also appointed Timothy Geitner as Treasury secretary.

Talk about caving in to Wall Street.

The increased use of drones, this escalation of war, raises not an eyebrow from the Sanders Hillary Haters Club.

On LGBT rights, Obama himself admitted that he had “evolved.” When Hillary evolved, though, she was accused of changing for “political expediency.”

Obama has deported more undocumented immigrants – excluding his aunt – than any other president.

Leftists insist they are not sexist. They say that calling out Hillary on the 2001 vote for war, or her stint as a member of the board for the odious Wal-Mart empire, or the hordes of funding she receives from Wall Street, are all about policy.

Well, what a bunch of sexist wonks, then.

I support Hillary because she has worked with the GOP when necessary, has been in the toughest fights and emerged more resilient. Because she has been working for racial justice decades before running for president.

Because of her standing in the world, women feel hopeful.

At a tribute to Hillary in 2013, Meryl Streep quoted several women from different countries who spoke about Hillary’s impact on their lives.

“I met her and my life changed,” said a woman from Guatemala. Others said, “I’m alive because she came to my village … put her arm around me and had a photograph taken together … I’m alive because she went on our local TV and talked about my work and now they’re afraid to kill me.”

So even though a really cool white dude is running for president, I prefer a Hillary presidency.

If a trans person was running with Hillary’s record, I would support them. Because those of us who have been marginalized – even those who forget what oppression feels like – need someone who knows in their skin what we know.

Hillary inspires girls to dream large and go big.

In 1992, she started the conversation on universal health care – in a room packed with wolves.

Like Obama, Hillary would probably hire odious people like Geitner, Summers and Biden.

Even the Hillary Haters have to admit that running the world takes all kinds of people and repellent policies in order to celebrate gas at $2 a gallon, single digit unemployment and a stable housing market.

BTW: Not one Wall Street guy is in prison for scheming ridiculous ways to make billions off the unemployment, homelessness and loss of health care of millions. Yeah, I hear you. It’s Hillary’s fault.

Listen to Vaya con Muñoz on WHMP 1400 AM Sundays at 10 am.

This column appeared in the Daily Hampshire Gazette Opinion Page on Jan. 12, 2015

Café con leche, mi amor

Muñoz
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Café con leche, mi amor

Where I come from, not far from here but a world away, getting a good cup of coffee, just the way I want it, takes under two seconds.

It’s a simple ask in Puerto Rico: Café con leche, por favor, and boom – I’ve got a perfect cup of espresso-infused hot milk with a light touch, not a gallon of watered-down coffee nor the glorious richness of two shots of straight espresso in a tiny cup, a pocillo, which rattles my disposition.

Here, even an English-language monolingual tongue rolls out “caffé macchiato” with supreme self-confidence as the barista juggles multiple variations of cappuccinos, including the wicked hot latte made with skim milk and a thick drizzle of caramel swirled into a happy face.

But say “café con leche,” and one hits a culinary border reinforced by the Starbucks marketing armada that has people speaking in tongues they do not understand – but not in the one tongue spoken most frequently in the U.S., after English.

In this caffeinated Tower of Babel we call Hampden and Hampshire counties, there are 80,000 Puerto Ricans plus Dominicans and others from the Caribbean, and 500+ restaurants, coffee shops and cafés, many with fancy espresso makers with shiny silver spigots to steam milk into a hot frothiness of soothing pleasure that tickles your upper lip.

But except for a few Caribbean restaurants in Hampden County, some of us still must spell out exactly how we want our coffee – and it’s not spelled c-a-f-e c-o-n l-e-c-h-e because that just brings blank looks.

Why isn’t café con leche among the myriad of other options? Fun fact: Some of the best coffee in the world is grown and roasted in Puerto Rico. We probably wouldn’t raise a fuss if all we had to choose from here was Folger’s or Maxwell House; then we’d all be in the same predicament: a long way from a good cup of coffee.

But coffee comes in hundreds of varieties, from all over the world, from cat-poop coffee (look it up) of Indonesia to the myth of Juan Valdés from Colombia. Not to mention French roast and French vanilla coffee, which recall that country’s empire in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, rather than the origins of the coffee or the vanilla, in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. A horrifying history to mull over a cup of joe.

Americans spend about $20 a week on prepared coffee. It’s a $30 billion industry in the United States.

And yet, a simple thing is out of reach. Café con leche is just hot milk with one shot or half a shot of espresso. In a regular-sized cup. But when you ask for it, what comes back is a cappuccino instead – and in a ginormous cup.

But it’s not only that café con leche is missing from the menu. Puerto Rican coffee, of which there are more than two dozen varieties, is not even on the radar in any of the Hampshire County markets.
This indifference is more than a slight to a people who, like every immigrant group, endure pejorative stereotypes promulgated by individual bigots and careless mass media. It’s pretty tiring – a good café con leche would go a long way.

It’s also a lost opportunity for local merchants to sell something that’s good, and that most of about 80,000 people want to buy, if not many thousands of others.

With the exception of the Paulo Freire School of Social Justice in Holyoke, our history is not taught for more than a few days of the year, usually during Hispanic Heritage Month. It’s not even an actual month; it’s half of September and half of October. You say one month, I say four lousy weeks, let’s call the whole thing off. News coverage about our country is scarce and mostly comes from the newswires, written by people who are not Puerto Rican nor have a deep understanding of our country. Our language is represented by one line in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1991 Terminator 2: Judgment Day: “No problemo, baby.”

The correct word is problema, and actually, it is a problema, baby, that Pioneer Valley coffee shops don’t offer café con leche and markets don’t sell Café Altura nor Café Crema or Café del Patio or Café Rico or Café Bello or Café Yaucono nor any one of the other brands. It’s a problema because we are a big and ever-growing community, and not selling our products is another way of keeping us outside the mainstream. And it’s depriving everyone of a really great cup of coffee.

Listen to the Vaya con Muñoz segment on The Bill Newman Show on Wednesdays 9:30 am on WHMP 1400 AM. 

This opinion column appeared originally in The Daily Hampshire Gazette.

 

 

 

 

Democracy is Boring

Muñoz
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Democracy is Boring

The Nov. 3 elections in Northampton tell a story of privilege, complacency and amnesia. The vast majority of registered voters didn’t show up because they 1) are happy with the way things are; 2) don’t care to participate in democracy because of the What-Difference-Does-It-Make dodge; 3) forgot why those Yankees threw tea into the harbor; or 4) our local candidates didn’t hurl bigoted insults at each other nor whine to the media about the quality of the questions.

Though—and it fills me with remorse to say so—I agreed with Sen. Ted  Cruz when he characterized the moderators at CNBC’s recent so-called debate as silly.

“The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” Cruz said. He continued his admonishment with crowd-pleasing cadence, content and context. Damn!

He reminded CNBC debate panelists John Harwood, Carl Quintanilla and Becky Quick:

“This is not a cage match. And you look at the questions – Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain? (If only, then he wouldn’t be a presidential candidate); Ben Carson, can you do math? (Yes, but his words still don’t add up); John Kasich, will you insult two people over here? (Over here, over there, over where? Everywhere!); Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign? (OK, this is legit); Jeb Bush, why are your numbers falling? (Maybe he doesn’t care because he believes that the Supreme Court will anoint him the next president—erroneously, because now we have a thrilling new version of The Supremes: Ruth, Sonia and Elena on the pro-democracy side.)

Cruz’s crescendo landed with the most credible question of the evening: “How about talking about the substantive issues people care about?”

Substantive issues people care about include health care for everyone; innovative educational systems that allow teachers to do their noble jobs; police departments that protect and serve all people every day; wars that don’t start nor are expanded because of failed diplomacy; and jobs that pay enough to lift people out of poverty.

That is why democracy matters, even if C-SPAN has lulled many into thinking that voting for city councilors and library trustees is sleep-inducing and the gang at CNBC doesn’t know journalism 101.

National politicians are not the only ones talking about these and other issues. Local politicians also debate ideas, and giving them a free pass on election day now can have significant consequences down the road.

Most national politicians started their careers in local government, in small cities just like Northampton. Some kept getting re-elected and ended up in Congress. Some are great and some are for shame.

The Staten Island DA who couldn’t convict a bee if he saw it sting him, also couldn’t convict Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer filmed choking Eric Garner to death. That DA, Daniel Donovan Jr., is now a member of Congress. He’s a lawmaker.

How? Because not enough people voted.

The Washington Post reported a few days ago that 50 national sports teams divided $53 million paid by the Defense Department to showcase wasteful displays of paid-for patriotism – Air Force jets, humongous flags – at their games.

Because, you know, major sports leagues are in dire need of more money.

And this happened because few people stray from their selfie-absorbed lives to read real news stories, substantive stories, and even fewer go out to vote for the people who control the purse strings.

Just about 16 percent of those registered voted in Northampton last week. Is it because City Councilors Bill Dwight, Jesse Adams, Maureen Carney, Paul Spector, Ryan O’Donnell, Gina-Louise Sciarra, David Murphy, Marianne LaBarge and Alisa Klein are awesome?

They are, but shouldn’t most voters be telling them that, or something else, on Election Day?

Where I come from, Puerto Rico, voter turnout is typically close to 80 percent. Whether we are impoverished or wealthy, formally educated or self-taught, brilliant or not the brightest bulb, whatever our situation, we vote in droves and are proud to stand in line at the polls, and even more resolved when we are surrounded by people who are voting for the other guy.

In our very young democracy – we’re just 67 – we have made our own colossal mistakes on top of those made by the U.S., which resulted in a $72 billion debt and triggered recent massive migrations from Puerto Rico to the U.S.

But none of our mistakes has been to take democracy for granted; any country that has suffered through dictatorships, be it 68 years ago or 239 years ago, should remember that hard lesson.

Natalia Muñoz is a freelance journalist and multicultural marketing consultant. Listen to Vaya con Muñoz on WHMP 1400 AM Wednesdays at 9:30 am.

This article appeared originally in The Daily Hampshire Gazette.

 

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