An excerpt from Chasing Romney: How Mitt Romney is Losing the Latino Vote

Photo: Stephen Spillane / Flickr

I walked into a room that was filled with some unusual characters.  I saw Marla, a young girl I met when we were both crashing at Caesar’s and an Arizona protest.  Eric was there too, and also Danny, a familiar face from some Arizona protests.  There were around twenty other people in rows of seats in a small box of a room with one purple wall.  Against the purple wall was a table with five speakers and a small eraser board with every imaginable undocumented, gay and Latino slur written on it from faggot to wetback to beaner.  I never did quite get the story behind that board.

We made our way into seats, and I sat next to a girl with a crew cut and very nervous, energetic disposition, sitting curled up on her seat.  She rocked with pent up energy and seemed a little sensitive.  Considering the accepting environment, her squirrely ways were pretty easy to overlook.  In front of us was a man in partial drag, his clothing being androgynous, while her earrings were clearly feminine, as was what appeared to be a little bit of makeup.  In front of me sat a couple with a deep-fried southern accent, covered head to toe in exotic Japanese tattoos, their tattoo artist being an associate of  Horiyoshi III, whose tattoo museum blew me away in Yokohama.

When the guys behind the table started talking, they began with their coming out stories.  Some confessed how they promised themselves every year they would come out on their birthday, but every birthday was passed in a closet.  Others recalled how their religious parents didn’t accept it, saying things like God wouldn’t make a gay person, why do you choose to be gay?

It was a charged room, with many members fighting back tears the entire time as they heard stories similar to their own most traumatic experiences.  They shared how, even within the DREAMer movement, a group of guys who know what it’s like to be slandered ruthlessly, they’ve experienced trouble finding acceptance.  They have often had to “tone down the gay” after they noticed uncomfortable jokes and laughter around other DREAMers who came from conservative homes.  Considering how a common gesture in the room was an attitude-alluding finger snap followed up immediately with a hand on a hip, this was a pretty damn gay group, and I understood how a guy not used to gay people could feel uncomfortable.  It must have been refreshing for them to be able to gay it up so much in that moment.

“Undocumented immigration has slowed, however, the human rights situation has only gotten worse at the border as mom and pop coyotes are replaced by drug cartels looking to expand into new markets as the drug trade becomes more dangerous or less profitable” said the Mexican diplomat.  He continued on to talk about how the DREAMers were a loss to his country, because they took their talent from Mexico to stay in the U.S.  He did, however, endorse the DREAM Act, along with every other speaker at the venue.

We were in a small room in Charlotte, North Carolina, where an immigration group had put together a meeting.  Senator Dick Durbin was there to talk about how Senator Orrin Hatch, who joined Durbin for the DREAM Act because he had his own similar legislation in the works, no longer even votes for it.  Several mayors and a few DREAMers had also come out to share their opinion on immigration in a surprisingly small venue considering the speakers.

Meanwhile, across town, Michelle Obama was speaking at the Hispanic Caucus.  Later, Eva Longoria, Senator Durbin and President Obama spoke about undocumented immigrants at the podium, and there was a DREAMer on the stage to speak for herself.  The Keynote Speaker was Julian Castro, the Mayor of San Antonio.  Dolores Huerta was honored at a dinner as a recipient of the Medal of Freedom, and seemed to turn up absolutely everywhere.  For the first time, there were over 800 Latino delegates.  Clearly, the Democratic National Convention has a strong Latino theme this year.

Outside of the Democrat Party official happenings, Voto Latino held a panel with speakers such as Lawrence O’Donnell, Rosario Dawson, Jose Antonio Vargas, Maria Theresa Kumar and Cecile Richards.  Though they spoke on women’s issues, voting rights and other progressive themes, the subject that had the most discussion was undocumented immigrants.

Jose Antonio talked about the trauma of finding out that he didn’t have citizenship as a teenager applying for a driver’s license and the kindness of the woman at the DMV that warned him to never use his green card again.  If he had shown it to the wrong person, instead of going on to be a part of a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist team, he may have been deported to the Philippines.  After he had become an accomplished writer, a man approached him with an underlined copy of his article, asking him why he thought he could just go get a license despite his status in accusing tones.  Jose calmly explained that he didn’t do it to spite him, it was because he needed to pick up groceries and get to work.  After that, the man just said “oh” and walked off.

When Cesar, Erika and I had left the panel, we stumbled onto the Undocubus.  They were kneeling in the middle of a four-way intersection on a canvas, holding signs reading “UNDOCUMENTED” over their heads.   Along the top of the canvas was painted “Sin Papeles, Sin Miedo,” with a monarch butterfly painted in the middle.  The group embraced the monarch butterfly with its great intergenerational migration to Mexico as their symbol.  On the sidewalk were protestors, lined up and chanting, some of them with a bullhorn.  They chanted “Education not deportation,” refusing to leave until those kneeling in the street were arrested.  The police struggled to push media, rubbernecks and protestors back from the intersection as a dozen cameras were elevated above the crowd’s head.

Jose Antonio had come out to see the demonstration when word made its way back to the Voto Latino crowd, and Rosario was hugging a tearful protestor.  The police pulled up those demonstrating in the street to bring them to a van and ultimately hold them in a cell overnight.  “We really need to have better representation, and that’s why we continue to have to keep seeing soldiers of the battle keep going down one by one until finally there is a critical mass to make a difference,” Rosario told nearby reporters as demonstrators were being handcuffed and pulled into police vans.  “That’s what it takes,” she said. “For all of you who just got arrested, I want to commend your bravery. Things will change. We are here with you.”

The Latino vote is why Arizona is showing a shade of purple and Texas is predicted to be a swing state as soon as 2016 (an important factor in the potential of Julian Castro).  Looking forward to 2016, it may very well be battling Latino candidates, both from Latino-heavy swing states.  Mitt Romney is absolutely committed to being to the right of the already-right-wing immigration stance of his party, claiming that Rick Perry had no brain because he offered undocumented children an education.  This will hurt them now, and for years to come.

There are many things that Latinos, as well as every other group, will forget between elections.  Considering the horrible human rights abuses taking place on the border, waving goodbye to a loved one being sent back to a country filled with poverty and violence they desperately crossed a desert to escape isn’t one of them.  This may be an extreme example, but the Latino community is filled with stories of escape and desperate survival.  To them, one party extends an olive branch to it’s most sympathetic community members, fragile as it may be; the other, the middle finger of an angry, xenophobic white man frightened of change.

“Education not deportation!  Education not deportation!” was the chant escaping from the protestors and megaphones.  There were protestors in the middle of a four-way intersection, kneeling on a large mural they laid down painted by Fabiana Rodriguez, holding spray-painted signs above their heads that read “undocumented.”  The mural read read “Sin Papeles, Sin Miedo” with a large monarch butterfly, whose intergenerational migration the Undocubus has embraced as a symbol of their own, painted in the center.  The police were pushing media and onlookers backward by the time Jose Antonio Vargas, Cesar Vargas, Erika Andiola and myself made it to the scene.  “Let me know when you’ve got something up” Jose said as he walked around the crowd to get a better look.

The Undocubus is aptly named: it’s a bus driven across the U.S. to pick up undocumented immigrants along its way to the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Charlotte.  Aboard was Gabby Pacheco from United We Dream, artist Julio Salgado and dozens of other activists.  They issued a statement online, saying “We came out because we are tired of the mistreatment.  We are tired of waiting for change and we know that it never comes without risk or without sacrifice.”

Although undocumented immigrants, as well as Latinos in general, strongly prefer the Democrats to Republicans, the comparatively comforting rhetoric hasn’t helped to slow down the deportations.  When they went to the DNC to protest, they knelt down in the street, obstructing traffic and chanting.  The police tried to dissuade them, but they refused to listen, chanting away.

Nearby there was a Voto Latino panel where Jose Antonio had finished telling his story about when he went to the DMV to get a driver’s license, only to find out that his green card was a fake and he was undocumented.  “After I was published in TIME Magazine, somebody came to a panel I was talking at and he had my article underlined with him, so I was like ‘oh great, now I know he’s read it and wants to talk about it.’”  When the man approached him asking “Why do you think you can just go ahead and get a driver’s license” accusingly, he told him that he didn’t do it to spite him; he did it because he has to get groceries and drive to work.  His questioner just said “oh” and wandered off after.

Rosario Dawson, Maria Theresa Kumar, Cecile Richards and Chris Matthews were there as well, all adding their voice to a discussion that went from immigration to women’s rights to voting rights.  When Matthews finished speaking, we all went outside, and soon walked into the spectacle unfolding in the street.  On the other side of the police and crowd, Fabiana was passing out flags with butterflies that she had painted on bamboo poles.  Next to her were a dozen protestors chanting, one of them into a bullhorn.

The police addressed the demonstrators, pushing the crowd back, trying to disperse them to no avail.  They cited the law that they violated by demonstrating there and pressed them with the threat of arrest.  It was about this time that Rosario Dawson showed up, hugging a protestor in tears as the police put handcuffs on the demonstrators in the street.  “We really need to have better representation, and that’s why we continue to have to keep seeing soldiers of the battle keep going down one by one until finally there is a critical mass to make a difference,” Rosario told nearby reporters as demonstrators were being handcuffed and pulled into police vans.  “That’s what it takes,” she said. “For all of you who just got arrested, I want to commend your bravery. Things will change. We are here with you.”

Florida has had a rough election that hasn’t even started yet, especially for Latino voters. There have already been several overreaches which have been pulled back in Florida, either by the justice system for illegality or by Republicans for marketing purposes to bury the public outrage in the news cycle. This does not, however, indicate that the voter suppression efforts have stopped, or even slowed down.

Image: Donkey Hotey / Flickr

Jim Greer, former Chair of the Florida Republican Party, went on Al Sharpton’s show to boldly cast the nearly transparent curtain aside from the ugly face of the Wizard of Florida. In Florida, as in other states, it’s not the Democrats’ imaginations that are creating voter suppression issues; rather, it’s the systemic and predictable way in which Republicans are trying to discourage people likely to vote Democrat. They do this by creating arbitrary and unevenly enforced laws to create confusion and ultimately discourage the other side’s voters.

After an electoral spanking last cycle that was largely the backlash to neoconservative overreaches in the Bush Jr. years, Republicans were reflecting on how to deal with the surge of new and minority voters. “I sat in on many meetings where it was discussed how to make sure what happened in 2008, when Obama brought out the college-aged voters, the minority voters, never happened again” said Jim Greer.

Greer talked about how he was invited into many discussions as the head of the GOP in Florida, so he knows where some particularly rotten bodies are buried. There were discussions that early voting was going against Republicans, and so they should shorten it to prevent African American churches from organizing to bring out the vote for early voting. Greer had even given sworn deposition that there were discussions on suppression, but never once in his 3 1/2 years as GOP Chair of Florida had he seen a meeting on voter fraud; he went so far as to call it a “marketing tool of radical Republicans” in state government.

Florida has a rather ugly history of voter suppression, and so is covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, requiring pre-clearance to any new laws which might throw it back to its much more openly racist past. Florida made 80 changes to its voting laws in 2011, and received pre-clearance for all but four. Which ones didn’t get pre-clearance? The ones with the strongest racial overtones that they tried to slip by quietly.

“USA!!! USA!!!” they chanted at us to drown out our own chants of “DREAM ACT AND FULL EQUALITY!”  The gay priest was at the front of our little group, and a balding man with a red face and sunglasses got within a few inches of his face to scream.  Balding Guy, a member of Gay Priest’s former congregation, grabbed the priest and pushed him back violently.  The next thing I knew, a man in a cowboy hat and large, crooked, cigarette-stained teeth that he was baring bulled his way into our priest.  Erika was behind him, and took a misfired punch in the face as Cigarette Teeth barreled forward, cursing, swinging and pushing.  A few people were sent back into me, and for a minute there he stood in front of me in the open.  I wasn’t sure if I should take a swing or not to slow the guy down for my friends.  Erika was stumbling backwards into Felipe and Mayra.  Mayra was tiny, so Felipe grabbed her as the crowd was isolating her from the group.  Both Balding Guy and Cigarette Teeth ultimately ignored the neatly dressed redhead with the camera while he and a few other self-appointed redneck peacekeepers pushed them past me while I trailed behind.

“You see, Obama was an organizer, and organizers have no experience creating jobs.  They’re just agitators, looking to force a few corporations to make concessions, which a few of the weak ones do” she told me.  She was a 52-year-old woman standing next to me in a blue Romney shirt.  Sweating alongside her while someone 20 feet to our left hit the ground from heat exhaustion was a white haired friend.  They both wore blue Romney shirts and a rhinestone elephant pin.  I told them that I was an undecided Independent just here to cover the RNC, and they instantly became hardcore evangelists, asking me if I liked taxation and big government, clapping their hands and then saying “then you know who to vote for” after I answered.  Traveling across the country, you learn that EVERYONE lives in some sort of bubble, though for these Floridians it seemed far stronger than normal.

“Of course corporations are supposed to be greedy, every decision maker has a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders.  I want someone who can navigate the laws and get the most they can without breaking the rules like that” I offered the group, tasting bile rise up in my throat as I did.  With their rants about big government and regulations, it seemed that they wanted neither community organizers, nor government, to protect them from corporations and industry when they found it profitable to crush them.  They’re living in denial that the only reason we don’t still have children working in factories, like many other countries still do, is because of the progressive movement they hate so much.  I wondered if they realized the implications of their own argument, but decided to only nod along since I didn’t want to bring unwanted attention before the big show.

My new companions told me about the recent polling that put Romney ahead of Obama in Florida, encouraged me to watch a documentary on Obama called “2016” and that they were confident he’d win.  Talking around with the crowd, it was more of the same: Liberals and the media are misinformed scum, we’re the only ones who understand the facts and Romney is going to crush Obama.

The opening speakers on the stage were the usual variety, that is, local politicians.  Aside from a joke about everyone’s personal sphere of influence being more powerful than Clint Eastwood, they went through the usual routine that anyone who goes to these events is familiar with: Obamacare sucks, Romney will create jobs and lower taxes and Obama, nice guy that he is, tried BUT failed.  The biggest difference now was that they were talking about Paul Ryan’s mother instead of how Obama robbed Medicare.  The man behind me, who would engage in some of the shoving later, agreed loudly with every assertion made, giving a “YEA!” or “AMEN!”  When Romney came out, they cheered as fervently as I’d seen them at least a dozen other times before at any Romney rally, despite the fact that the delegates were putting up a fight for Santorum and Ron Paul right up ‘til the bitter end.  Romney dropped a few of the same lines we’re all used to, like a Broadway actor faking his own death and kissing the same girl for the first time twice every night, before passing the microphone to his wife.

It always strikes me how friendly everyone is until they figure us out, usually when we start chanting.  Once the chants started and I began filming, the women took a step back in shock and offense.  This quickly led to the mild beating and berating.  After the chaos in the cowboy hat, the crowd parted nicely when the group was shoved through and quickly closed behind them, strongly encouraging us towards the exit that the police hurried us through. On the way out, some horrible woman with shriveled skin that looked like drooping, scorched earth, sort of a browner Jan Brewer, leaned over the barricade as far as she could with her equally horrible husband, screaming at us accusingly in tongues as she stuck a finger in my face.  She was nearly completely hysterical in her fit of blind rage and, as I flipped them off over my shoulder while I walked away, I vaguely heard someone scream “nice.”

All in all, other than Erika and our priest’s bruises, not a bad demonstration.

Catch the video for the demonstration at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpMYQgNn1bo&feature=player_embedded

There have been many groups that have felt the sting of Republican rhetoric and policy, from the “lazy people” that get hardworking patriot’s money in the form of welfare, to the “parasitic” teacher’s, police and firemen unions, to the women who feel that Republicans are insensitive to rape victims and domestic abuse victims because they fought against reproductive rights and the Violence against Women Act, called Sandra Fluke a “slut” and feel that the Republican party has outright ran an entire campaign against women’s liberation this year. The Latino community has been affected as drastically as any, and will be showing up to the Republican National Convention en masse.

The majority of Americans agree with the DREAM Act and deferred action, which is why Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals has a 64% approval rating according to a recent Bloomberg poll. This is ignored by Romney, as he chooses to stick to his “self-deportation” immigration strategy, pushes SB 1070 as a “model” for the nation and surrounds himself with advisors like Kris Kobach, co-author of SB 1070. The rank and file of the Republican Party hasn’t been much kinder, with the divide on immigration issues between the parties being made crystal clear when Republican Governors like Jan Brewer block driver’s licenses offered by the Obama Administration and pal around with Joe Arpaio.

Beyond just the policies, the rhetoric on undocumented immigration has been harsh enough to completely turn off the Latino community. They often feel that they could very easily be in the same situation as their cousins, stuck rotting in a deportation center. No matter how many times Mitt Romney tried to work the words “legal immigration” into a speech or interview, anyone familiar with immigration issues knows he was referencing DREAMers. His deportation policy was even rightly pointed out by Newt Gingrich (who called Spanish the “language of the ghetto”) as having no empathy. Whenever he says “legal immigration,” whether it’s to Jorge Ramos or a large crowd, Latinos know that he’s just tiptoeing around an issue, what to do with undocumented students and young professionals, that he can’t possibly win on.

All of this has not gone unnoticed by organizers, however. In response to the policies and rhetoric, local organizations like the Arizona DREAM Act Coalition have organized DREAMers and come out hard at events like the final GOP primary debate in Arizona, where Dolores Huerta spoke through the megaphone to a large crowd of Latino demonstrators and cameras. There are dozens of large, local organizations like this up to nearby Romney rallies, in addition to national organizations.

Having travelled from state to state, New Hampshire to New York, California to Arizona, Florida to Alabama and many more, the DREAMers are the only group I’ve never failed to see, and are the only organization that I have consistently seen since Occupy weakened and Ron Paul’s demonstrators gave up. Nationally, groups like DRM Capitol Group and United We Dream have come into focus in the media, sharing DREAMer stories and helping to organize the large number of people who wish to voice their discontent with the U.S. immigration policy.

Busses organized by DRM were driven through Alabama and Florida, picking up passengers as they made their way to Tampa for the Republican National Convention. Another bus run by United We Dream walked its way across the country to the Democratic National Convention. The busses hold DREAMer stories, as well as the undeniable proof that Republicans have been deaf to the pleas of a sympathetic, politically influential group.

It is unfortunate that this is what the country offers journalists at the moment, but this is the first of a series of articles dedicated to voter suppression efforts, each focusing on a different swing state.  Pennsylvania is an interesting case, with suppression efforts largely focusing on a stringent new voter ID law.  The laws are felt across the Democrats’ base, however, it is the Latino community that may be hit hardest.

Despite the fact that Pennsylvania has a Republican governor and legislature, Pennsylvania has gone blue for the last 20 years in close contests.  The Republican legislature then passed a measure signed into law by their Republican governor which Michael Turzai, Pennsylvania house leader, credited with handing Romney the state: a tough new voter ID law that has old black people recalling a time of overt racism when the government wouldn’t let them vote.

One of these black seniors, however, decided that a couple of creaky joints wasn’t an excuse to stop kicking ass.  This Miss Applewhite, the<a href=”http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2012/0711/In-Pennsylvania-the-Rosa-Parks-of-voter-ID-faces-down-GOP-voter-suppression” target=”_hplink”> 93 year old plaintiff</a> in the case Applewhite v. PA, has never owned a driver’s license.  She feels deeply wronged by the prospect of losing the vote, and openly speaks about how it seems like people are trying to strip the black community of the vote again.  Several plaintiffs in her case testified that they were too physically infirm to go to the DMV, and this is overlooking the other factors like transportation, time and scheduling it takes to get down to the DMV between shifts.

The judge in the Applewhite case, a partisan hack named Robert Simpson unfit to beat with my rolled-up Juris Doctorate degree, declined to delay the enforcement of the ID law until after the election.  His reasoning for this was that the voters would all be able to register in time.  The judge’s theory overlooks two important things: 1) not everyone who wants to will have an opportunity to get to the DMV (such as the elderly and enfeebled), and 2) Pennsylvania has the <a href=”http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf/story/pa-voter-id-law-gets-approval-of/c1c2c4f13870d949ca233df3317313da” target=”_hplink”>lowest percentage of government workers in the nation</a>, making a trip to their DMV worse than in any other state, with the least chance of succeeding in getting the ID they need.

What will happen when an <a href=”http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57467195-503544/stringent-voter-id-law-in-pa-could-prevent-750000-from-voting/” target=”_hplink”>estimated 750,000</a> people are disenfranchised, which is <a href=”http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/in-pa-voter-id-law-already-changing-the-electoral-landscape.php?m=1″ target=”_hplink”>larger than the Obama’s margin of victory </a>in the state in 2008?  What happens when they come flooding into a relatively low-staffed DMV in Philadelphia that is hardly ever open?  Republicans know that this hurts the cities far more than it hurts their rust belt, chipping away a large portion, if not all, of the margin for Obama.

To top it all off, in perhaps the most transparent overreach in a series of transparent overreaches, the job of explaining the new voter ID rules was given to a firm owned by a major Romney donor’s lobbying firm.  Republican lobbyist and former state GOP executive director Chris Bravacos, <a href=”http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/pennsylvania_voter_id_chris_bravacos_bravo_group_romney_ad.php” target=”_hplink”>who has donated $30,000 to Romney so far</a>, received a <a href=”http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/pennsylvania_voter_id_chris_bravacos_bravo_group_romney_ad.php” target=”_hplink”>$249,660</a> contract from Republican Gov. Tom Corbett to explain the new law in a process <a href=”http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/pennsylvania_voter_id_chris_bravacos_bravo_group_romney_ad.php” target=”_hplink”>reminiscent of the no bid contracts</a> Dick Cheney was so famous for.  Since then, there have been complaints that employees of this firm haven’t been given the correct training, the instructions on voter ID they’re giving are often confusing and contradictory and overall it has been an incompetent (if not willingly bad) job.  I wonder if the profit margins from this government contract that this firm was assigned, the very money saved by not properly training employees to help people get the correct ID, didn’t partially find their way into Romney’s campaign fund or SuperPAC?

Who does this law hurt the worst?  Unsurprisingly it’s Democrat voters mostly, however, somewhat surprisingly, it’s Puerto Ricans in particular.  In 2010, Puerto Rico decided that <a href=”http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/08/16/pennsylvania-voter-id-ruling-may-hurt-puerto-ricans-most” target=”_hplink”>all birth certificates issued before 2010 were invalid</a>, and so many Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania do not own a valid birth certificate.  With new laws coming into effect compounding the ID problem, it becomes a serious issue.  “…if you are trying to get a birth certificate just to get a photo ID but you don’t have a photo ID to get it, then you’re in a typical Catch-22 situation” <a href=”http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/08/16/pennsylvania-voter-id-ruling-may-hurt-puerto-ricans-most” target=”_hplink”>says Marian Schneider of the Advancement Project</a>.  With this new voter ID law being a recent development, many Puerto Ricans are scrambling to find some way to get a voter ID, though many of them will not be able to in time.

For Romney, Latino voters are a threat as <a href=”http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-08-16/republican-hispanic-outreach/57102498/1?csp=34news” target=”_hplink”>he still trails at 22 percent to Obama’s 70 percent</a> in a recent Latino Decisions poll.  These measures will harm a lot of Democrat-leaning demographics, the poor and minorities being good examples, however, nowhere will it be felt more acutely than the Latino community.  Appeals are already being filed in the Applewhite case and the Justice Department is investigating, but there’s no denying that Republicans will get at least some new rules through.  Now it’s only a question of whether or not the most egregious, controversial, transparent overreaches will be rolled back in time for the election.

originally posted on: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-campell/voter-suppression-pennsylvania_b_1829319.html