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Arizona English-fluency case may have wide repercussions
Los Angeles Times ^ | February 5, 2012 | Ricardo Lopez

Posted on 02/06/2012 8:57:41 PM PST by moonshinner_09

A ruling that an activist's language skills are insufficient for a City Council seat unsettles border towns where Spanish is used in day-to-day life. An appeal is before the state Supreme Court. Reporting from San Luis, Ariz.— For almost a decade, Alejandrina Cabrera has had no trouble speaking her mind in this dusty Arizona border town.

She's gone door to door campaigning for City Council candidates. She's addressed the City Council. She's even led two recall petitions against the mayor.

But when she decided to run for San Luis City Council, she hit a surprising roadblock: her language.

Like virtually everyone else in town, Cabrera conducts her life in Spanish.

Late last month, Yuma County Superior Court Judge John Nelson ruled that Cabrera's command of English was insufficient for her to hold public office. She appealed, and the Arizona Supreme Court is expected to rule on her candidacy as early as Monday.

This case is less about English versus Spanish than about small-town politics, but it has potentially wide-reaching implications for border towns where Spanish is spoken at home, at work and just about everywhere else.

Cabrera, a self-described housewife who was born in Yuma but raised in Mexico, speaks shaky English with a heavy accent. She argues that she can read and understand English better than she speaks it, and that her limited ability should not matter.

"I'm not running for senator or the White House," she said in Spanish. "I'm running in San Luis."

(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Arizona
KEYWORDS: aliens; az; borderwars; english; immigration
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To: Havisham

“They just speak a language IN ADDITION to English.”

Except for the woman in the article, who doesn’t speak English well enough to answer questions.

“Judge Nelson’s ruling was based on tests administered by a sociolinguistics expert, as well as her inability to respond to questions posed to her in English at last week’s hearing in Yuma.”

The questions were tough, like, “Where did you go to school?”

As the city attorney points out:

“We are completely redoing our zoning code, the drafts have been circulated, there have been public hearings, and council will be adopting law within the next 60 days. That’s 125 pages of intricate material, you need to be able to read it, write it, understand it to be able to talk about it and be able to make decisions concerning it,’ says Mr Gimbut.”

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2094361/Arizona-council-candidate-Alejandrina-Cabrera-fighting-serve-term-rivals-say-isnt-fluent-English.html#ixzz1lhVhY6iQ


21 posted on 02/07/2012 5:17:31 AM PST by Mr Rogers ("they found themselves made strangers in their own country")
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To: moonshinner_09
"I'm not running for senator or the White House," she said in Spanish. "I'm running in San Luis."

So long as San Luis is in America, speak English.

22 posted on 02/07/2012 6:08:28 AM PST by FormerLib (Sacrificing our land and our blood cannot buy protection from jihad.-Bishop Artemije of Kosovo)
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To: Ernie Kaputnik

Ebonics isn’t even a language.

It’s bad grammar.


23 posted on 02/07/2012 11:24:47 AM PST by POWERSBOOTHEFAN (Future Meteorologist.)
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To: dalereed

Amen!


24 posted on 02/07/2012 11:25:42 AM PST by POWERSBOOTHEFAN (Future Meteorologist.)
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25 posted on 02/07/2012 1:15:24 PM PST by TheOldLady (FReepmail me to get ON or OFF the ZOT LIGHTNING ping list)
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To: Mr Rogers; All

My comments are really aimed at Kaputnik. He/She posted a vile spew with the word ‘wh***e that needed resisting.


26 posted on 02/08/2012 8:30:16 AM PST by Havisham
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To: Liz; All

That’s idiotic Liz. Spanish settlement predates other settlement in the Southwest by centuries. We’re not trying to take over— we’re natives.


27 posted on 02/08/2012 8:42:33 AM PST by Havisham
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To: Havisham
Natives? ROTFL......that IS funny.

Raza Studies does not even try to sugar-coat its anti-America agenda and its bloodthirsty plans to kill us off:

One Raza Studies textbook titled “Occupied America,” by Rodolfo Acuña, includes a violent and blood- curdling speech given by university professor Jose Angel Gutierrez: “We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him,” (pg. 323).

This is taken directly from Occupied America (pg. 167): “Supporters would execute all white males over age 16,” (this is AKA the Plan of San Diego).

America-hating Raza Studies teach violence and undermining US ntl security----and preaches the need for Mexico to "re-take seven states in the Southwest...in order to make the SW a Chicano nation.

Course, if you oppose this, you are "heartless"....../s.

Adelita Grijalva is the woman on the Arizona school board pimping La Raza/LULAC/Mecha/MALDEF indoctrination programs in Tuscon schools.

Adelita is all up in arms about Raza Studies getting tossed via the AZ state legislature's action...she is the daughter of Raul Grijalva (D-AZ-7) who was just narrowly re-elected to our US Congress.

Raul Grijalva is one of Mexico’s most productive and loyal representatives in our Congress....aiding and abetting building a Third World on US soil.

28 posted on 02/08/2012 9:34:17 AM PST by Liz
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To: Liz; All

The Raza movement was cooked up in urban California. Grouping Spanish speaking Americans with them is completely unjustified.


29 posted on 02/08/2012 10:23:23 AM PST by Havisham
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To: Havisham; AuntB; Tennessee Nana; Clintonfatigued; La Lydia; rintense; PAConservative1; thouworm; ..
Separatist Third World voting blocs on US soil don’t feel they need to learn English; US schools actually turn out "graduates" who are loyal only to their homelands---and prefer to carry out their lives in the language of their parents.

Having a two-track system where some people are never encouraged or forced to learn/speak English is completely wrong, reinforced by forcing the issuance of ballots, drivers license exams, etc, in foreign languages

=======================================

SEPARATIST HYPHENATES RIDING THE US GRAVY TRAIN---"just here for a better life"

Argentine Americans Bolivian Americans

Chilean Americans

Colombian Americans

Costa Rican Americans

Cuban Americans

Dominican Americans

Ecuadorian Americans

Guatemalan Americans

Honduran Americans

Mexican Americans

Nicaraguan Americans

Panamanian Americans

Paraguayan Americans

Peruvian Americans

Puerto Ricans (stateside)

Salvadoran Americans

Spanish Americans

Uruguayan Americans

Venezuelan Americans

SEPARATIST THIRD WORLD PRESSURE GROUPS---all eyeing the US Treasury

National Hispanic Institute

NALEO ·RNHA

Congressional Hispanic Caucus

Congressional Hispanic Conference

LULAC ·MALDEF · NALFO ·SHPE

National Council of La Raza

Association of Hispanic Arts · MEChA ·UFW

30 posted on 02/08/2012 12:20:56 PM PST by Liz
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To: Havisham; AuntB; Tennessee Nana; Clintonfatigued; rintense; TADSLOS
FReeper posted: "The Raza movement was cooked up in urban California. Grouping Spanish speaking Americans with them is completely unjustified."

O-o-o-o-o-o. This poster better tell Pres Obama pronto---vote-crazed Obama's depending on La Raza to get him votes.

==============================================

REFERENCE La Raza's Lobbyist in the White House
Townhall.com ^ | Jan 21| Virgil Goode
FR Posted January 21, 2012 by Kaslin

When Barack Obama campaigned for president, he claimed "I am running to tell the lobbyists in Washington that their days of setting the agenda are over. They have not funded my campaign. They won't work in my White House."

Despite this promise, Obama hired over 50 lobbyists in his administration.

Among the lobbyists Obama hired was Cecilia Munoz, previously vice president and lobbyist for the National Council of La Raza, as his Director of Intergovernmental Affairs. Despite breaking this promise, in the 2010 State of the Union, Obama said, "We've excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs." This lie has become even larger, with Obama giving La Munoz the top policymaking job in the administration as the head of his Domestic Policy Council.

By (hiring Munoz), Obama and his allies are portraying the National Council of La Raza as such a great organization that they are willing to sacrifice their own standards to allow people like Munoz to influence this nation’s policy. This policy invites Americans ask just who the National Council of La Raza and what they lobby for.

The National Council of La Raza translates to "National Council of the Race," meaning the Hispanic race. It goes without saying what would happen if a conservative was a member of a group called the National Council of the White Race. In recent years, La Raza has denied that La Raza actually means race. According to their website.

The term La Raza was coined by Mexican scholar José Vasconcelos to reflect the fact that the people of Latin America are a mixture of many of the world’s races, cultures, and religions. Mistranslating “La Raza” to mean “the race” implies that it is a term meant to exclude others.

In fact, the full term coined by Vasconcelos, “La Raza Cósmica,” meaning the “cosmic people,” was developed to reflect not purity but the mixture inherent in the Hispanic people.

Translating La Raza Cosmica....reference is to “the Cosmic Race” not “The Cosmic People” and far from calling for Hispanics sharing a shared heritage and destiny with the world, La Raza is focused on the struggle against the “Saxons”, used to describe the English speaking people.

According to Vasconcelos, “The struggle of Latinity against Saxonism has come to be, continues to be in our time, a clash of institutions, objectives, and ideals” and calls “the Saxon, our rival for possession of the continent.”

Their name aside, La Raza has lobbied for amnesty, Obama Care, increases in welfare spending, driver’s licenses and in state tuition for illegal aliens, against making English the official language, and against securing the border.

La Raza has not just lobbied for their anti-American policies; they have also lobbied to receive government money. In 2010 alone, they received $11 million dollars ( that they admit to)from the federal government

With Obama and his advisors like Munoz at control, we can expect billions US tax dollars going to La Raza....in exchange for votes.

31 posted on 02/08/2012 12:44:17 PM PST by Liz
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Comment #32 Removed by Moderator

To: Liz; All

Liz, you’re anti-Hispanic and think you can win a racially motivated war against Spanish speaking Americans with ancestral roots here that predate the Treaty of Guadeloupe- Hidalgo. Good luck.


33 posted on 02/08/2012 12:46:47 PM PST by Havisham
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To: Havisham

Hope I didn’t “burden you” with too many facts, amigo.

And I do hope you’re having “a better life.”

BTW—I’m not “anti” anything-—I’m dedicatedly pro-American.

You should try it someday.


34 posted on 02/08/2012 12:56:23 PM PST by Liz
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