Question: Is there a Latino - African-american alliance?
During Reverend Jesse Jackson's speech at the 34th Annual Rainbow/PUSH Convention on June 15, 2005 in Chicago, Illinois he addressed the issue of a Latino - African-American alliance. Below are excerpts from his speech. To read the entire speech, visit the Rainbow PUSH website.
Answer: The Rainbow/PUSH Coalition is forging an African American/Latino political, cultural, economic and religious alliance. Our alliance can greatly determine the destiny of our hemisphere. For too long we have had shared interests, but we have not effectively built this strategic alliance. Now we must build a world-class bridge.
Dr. King and Cesar Chavez working together in the Poor People's Campaign established the need and the framework. We all obtained the right to vote in 1965, with Section 203 prohibiting discrimination based on language, and Section 5 enabling us to forge winning electoral districts and prohibiting changes in voting procedures without first getting pre-clearance from the Department of Justice.
The Voting Rights Act created an historic rise in African American and Latino elected officials all around the nation.
That progress is now threatened because the same forces in both parties that opposed the Voting Rights Act in 1965 are rearing their ugly heads again today...
When President Bush was asked directly to support Reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, he refused to make a commitment to extend the Voting Rights Act. We cannot expect any leadership from the Bush administration to protect voting rights.
Thus we will march together with Latinos, labor, women, peace, religious, and youth leaders on August 6, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of President Johnson's signing of the Act, and lighting the fire to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act before it expires in 2007.
African Americans and Latinos combined make up more than a majority of the populations in the country's largest 75 cities. When we work together we can finish the unfinished business of our movement: the constitutional right to vote; the constitutional rights to health care and education, the right to organize and breathe free...
We are the most likely to be profiled and suspected by police. We face the same racial inequities on a daily basis. Our profile is that we work harder and get paid less; we pay more for less; we live under stress and don't live as long. We must reassess our relationship and have a summit and build on our common goals and needs, as we work on a shared destiny:
1. We must learn each other’s language, and teach our children to be bilingual.
2. We must teach our children nonviolence and to avoid gang warfare.
3. We must conduct trade missions.
4. We must conduct cultural exchanges.
5. We must have a conference with our religious leaders.
6. We must merge our quests to join corporate boards and upper levels of management.
7. We must pursue inclusion together. Our labor and consumer patterns drive the companies; but we are denied inclusion.
8. We must fight for affirmative action laws and strong enforcement by the EEOC and OFCCP (contract compliance).
9. We must fight for comprehensive immigration reform.
We must work for comprehensive immigration reform, and the McCain–Kennedy bill, and actively work together to expand the road to opportunity in our nation, and build peace between our nations.