The DREAM Act And The Coming Latino Revolution

Some Latinos Democrats have had enough of their party’s post-poning and tabling of immigration reform and the DREAM Act. Chicago’s Luis Gutiérrez is about to get mad! At least, that’s what he told The Daily Beast here:

Gutiérrez is one of several Hispanic leaders who have found themselves politically estranged from the president. Moreover, they are numbed by the legislative process that denied them a vote on immigration reform, much less a victory, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. ‘If we couldn’t do it when Democrats were nearly 260 in the House and 59 in the Senate, how do we propose to tell people we can do it now?’ Gutiérrez tells me. ‘The opportunity to have gotten it done is gone’ … He’s finished waiting for the mythical 60th vote to materialize in the Senate. No, when the lame duck ends, Gutiérrez and his movement allies will ask for a divorce—from the Democratic Party, from the entire lawmaking process.

To hear Gutiérrez tell it, Hispanic leaders are about to stage a full-tilt campaign of direct action, like the African-American civil-rights movement of the 1960s. There will be protests, marches, sit-ins—what César Chávez might have called going rogue. The movement will operate autonomously, no longer beholden to wavering Democrats, filibustering Republicans, and—perhaps most tantalizingly—no longer beholden to Barack Obama

¡Hijole hasta un divorcio! The truth is, Gutiérrez is putting into words what a lot of us have already been thinking. Remember when then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said immigration wouldn’t happen ’til President Obama’s second term? That’s hardly the type of thing you say about a constituency whose needs you take seriously.

Pero, órale, if Gutiérrez wants to fight, NewsTaco will be waiting to join in!