Hispanics show growing clout in environmental debate

Maria Valdez didn't consider herself an environmentalist when she pressed this city east of Los Angeles to buy land ringed with factories and railroad tracks for a new neighborhood park.

The trash lot is now on its way to becoming a green oasis with a butterfly sanctuary and community garden and Valdez is undergoing a transformation of her own. Next month she will be sworn in as president of the El Monte chapter of Mujeres de la Tierra, a two-year-old environmental group that caters to Hispanic immigrants and translates as "Women of the Earth."

"When you get involved and you know that you could make it happen, it feels good," said Valdez, a stay-at-home mother of six. "I'm interested in the water, the air for our kids."

Spurred by high rates of asthma and lead poisoning among their children, Hispanic immigrants such as Valdez, a U.S. citizen who left Mexico as a child, are embracing green values like never before on their own terms.

Hispanic activists and politicians talk openly about building a unique green movement that distances itself from mainstream environmental groups, even as those organizations hope to tap into newfound Hispanic political clout.

Those involved in the nascent movement cite a gap between the priorities of traditional environmentalists, who may focus on saving endangered species and preserving roadless areas, and the practical concerns of many Hispanic immigrants, who confront thick smog and lead-laced water every day in inner-city neighborhoods. Many also are wary of groups like the Sierra Club, which has debated whether to make U.S. immigration control part of its platform.

"If you ask a Latino, `Are you an environmentalist?' they'll say `No' because it boxes you in," said Irma Munoz, founder of Mujeres de la Tierra. "Environmentalists blame Latinos for all the problems."

Last month, more than 1,200 Hispanic community leaders, activists and politicians gathered in Los Angeles for the first meeting of its kind in decades. Participants in the National Latino Congreso drafted resolutions on issues ranging from emissions reductions to mercury pollution, hoping Hispanic voters will use those as a litmus test for candidates in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, co-sponsored a groundbreaking law that makes California the first state to put a cap on greenhouse gas emissions, including those from industrial plants. He said his interest grew partly out of his concern for the effect that poor air quality has on Hispanic children.

"For a long time, the image of an environmentalist in California was a stereotypical, brie-eating, chardonnay-sipping, Volvo-driving Marin County-ite," Nunez said at a speech at the Los Angeles gathering. "But there were other issues that affected people who wouldn't commonly be known as environmentalists."

In the heavily Hispanic cities of Maywood and Bell Gardens, also just outside Los Angeles, local politicians got elected last year by focusing on industrial pollution, lingering Superfund sites and water contamination.

A 2004 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that nearly 70 percent of Hispanics live in areas that violate federal air quality standards and Hispanic children are twice as likely as non-Hispanic white children to have lead in their blood.

Traditional environmental groups have catered to the Hispanic green movement by hiring Spanish-speaking outreach coordinators, starting Spanish-language Web sites and running ads on Spanish TV and radio. Some, such as the Earth Day Network and Sierra Club, helped sponsor the National Latino Congreso and work with activists on local projects.

Oliver Bernstein, deputy press secretary for Sierra Club's diversity programs, said his organization has been doing environmental justice work with grassroots Hispanic groups since 1992. At the Latino Congreso, Bernstein said many Hispanic leaders were "pleased that Sierra Club was working hand in hand with them."

For Hispanic immigrants, environmentalism can mean building a park, getting rid of a smoke-belching factory or persuading railroads to run freight trains less often not protecting an endangered species hundreds of miles from their homes.

"We're not the tree-huggers," said Laura Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. "We have to deal with high numbers of asthma patients and Superfund sites and how it affects communities."

Mainstream environmental groups recognize that they are shadowed by past mistakes but say they are ready to move forward.

Adrianna Quintero, the director of Latino advocacy and outreach at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the organization created her position to reach out to local activists. The group's work with Hispanic environmentalists on Nunez's emissions cap bill was a watershed moment for both sides, Quintero said.

"From now on, going forward, we hope that everything will be like that," she said. "The reality of it is that we have so much in common. Our goals are the same, which is to make a better planet for everyone."

The trash lot is now on its way to becoming a green oasis with a butterfly sanctuary and community garden

Be still my beating heart.

A "green oasis" and a "butterfly sanctuary."

El Monte chapter of Mujeres de la Tierra, a two-year-old environmental group that caters to Hispanic immigrants and translates as "Women of the Earth."

Guess there are not enough Hispanic Immigrants who can read, write or speak English to us the English term "Women of The Earth, so they had to use the "Hispanic" translation.

How Quaint. How "multicultural." How understanding and a another example of how diversity is working.

It almost more than I can take. (Swoon)

And to think this is all being accomplished by some of our newest "citizens." Oh thank you Lord.

/sarc. Enough BS for one day.

Now, back to the game and another Bud!!!

I wonder how Hispanic "clout" differs from Caucasian "clout" or Asian “clout” or African-American “clout.” Must be a liberal thing.

Nope. It's a "new American" thing.

THE "NEW AMERICAN".....

.....<

We are now one of the largest Spanish-speaking nations in the world. We're a major source of Latin music, journalism and culture.

Just go to Miami, or San Antonio, Los Angeles, Chicago or West New York, New Jersey ... and close your eyes and listen. You could just as easily be in Santo Domingo or Santiago, or San Miguel de Allende.

For years our nation has debated this change -- some have praised it and others have resented it. By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America.

As I speak, we are celebrating the success of democracy in Mexico.

George Bush from a campaign speech in Miami, August 2000.

You can read the speech here.

Here is an excerpt of a good critique of that speech:

In equating our intimate historic bonds to our mother country and to Canada with our ties to Mexico, W. shows a staggering ignorance of the civilizational facts of life. The reason we are so close to Britain and Canada is that we share with them a common historical culture, language, literature, and legal system, as well as similar standards of behavior, expectations of public officials, and so on. My Bush Epiphany By Lawrence Auster

The Path to National Suicide by Lawrence Auster (1990)

An essay on multi-culturalism and immigration.

Click the Pic!!!!

How can we account for this remarkable silence? The answer, as I will try to show, is that when the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 was being considered in Congress, the demographic impact of the bill was misunderstood and downplayed by its sponsors. As a result, the subject of population change was never seriously examined. The lawmakers’ stated intention was that the Act should not radically transform America’s ethnic character; indeed, it was taken for granted by liberals such as Robert Kennedy that it was in the nation’s interest to avoid such a change. But the dramatic ethnic transformation that has actually occurred as a result of the 1965 Act has insensibly led to acceptance of that transformation in the form of a new, multicultural vision of American society. Dominating the media and the schools, ritualistically echoed by every politician, enforced in every public institution, this orthodoxy now forbids public criticism of the new path the country has taken. “We are a nation of immigrants,” we tell ourselves— and the subject is closed. The consequences of this code of silence are bizarre. One can listen to statesmen and philosophers agonize over the multitudinous causes of our decline, and not hear a single word about the massive immigration from the Third World and the resulting social divisions. Opponents of population growth, whose crusade began in the 1960s out of a concern about the growth rate among resident Americans and its effects on the environment and the quality of life, now studiously ignore the question of immigration, which accounts for fully half of our population growth.

This curious inhibition stems, of course, from a paralyzing fear of the charge of “racism.” The very manner in which the issue is framed—as a matter of equal rights and the blessings of diversity on one side, versus “racism” on the other—tends to cut off all rational discourse on the subject. One can only wonder what would happen if the proponents of open immigration allowed the issue to be discussed, not as a moralistic dichotomy, but in terms of its real consequences. Instead of saying: “We believe in the equal and unlimited right of all people to immigrate to the U.S. and enrich our land with their diversity,” what if they said: “We believe in an immigration policy which must result in a staggering increase in our population, a revolution in our culture and way of life, and the gradual submergence of our current population by Hispanic and Caribbean and Asian peoples.” Such frankness would open up an honest debate between those who favor a radical change in America’s ethnic and cultural identity and those who think this nation should preserve its way of life and its predominant, European-American character. That is the actual choice—as distinct from the theoretical choice between “equality” and “racism”—that our nation faces. But the tyranny of silence has prevented the American people from freely making that choice.

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