Monthly Archives: February 2016

In the past few months, the GOP delegation in the Wisconsin state Assembly, in the hopes to support Governor Walker’s agenda of destroying the state, have been trying to pass anti-family and immoral legislation. They have already succeeded in making easier for big developers to contaminate our waters. We all know that they were pretty successful in stripping workers from their rights, preventing heads of households from securing a future for their children and other dependents. More recently, they have been trying to put students’ lives in danger by proposing to allow criminals to openly carry handguns and other firearms around university campuses and even into classrooms. Now, they are also coming after whole families: immigrants, people of color, and other groups that do not conform to the wealthy, white, WASP majority. Two proposed bills are now before the Assembly, to criminalize brown people just for being brown. The legislators swear is to “protect” the communities, but this is just code talking to say that brown peoples are not to be trusted and we must be controlled just as the police has been encouraged to control black people by threatening their lives.

Yesterday, February 18^th, the Latinx comunidad from around the state came together in an unprecedented way to say ¡BASTA! People from all over the state came to Madison as the Assembly debated two pieces of anti-family legislation, to let the government and the larger Wisconsin community that our lives matter, that we will not stand idle as they try to destroy our families, and that we not a comunidad and a voz to be dismissed.

Politicians, especially Republican politicians, think that they can play with our lives as they wish. They have stood up against every single moral issue that prevents our lives from being taken from us. In fact, it has been their lack of moral character what has killed so many of us – on the fields, at the hands of police, on the farms and factories, in jail and in immigration detention centers… Their hands are tainted with the blood of thousand Latinxs, yet they keep thirsting for more. It is not enough for them to see our children suffer, our parents mourn, our youth are anxious… They are not satisfied with seeing our suffering, they also want us to completely disappear, just as we bring them water, and tea, and their meals; just as we clean their homes and cultivate their fields or milk their cows; just as we tend to their wounds, and teach their children, and run their businesses… It is not enough. Never enough! Brown bodies are to be disposed of as if we are trash. To this, our comunidad says ¡BASTA!

As I stood at the Capitol square with thousands and thousands of my hermanas y hermanos Latinxs and allies, I could not do anything else but be hopeful. I know that the fight is going to be long and arduous, but we are not going to keep silent. La raza es fuerte. Moreover, we are not as divided as they want others to believe. Yesterday, there were flags from all over Latin America because we know that this “divide and conquer” strategy is not going to work. We are ONE, and as such we will fight. As Calle 13 sings: “cuando más te confías las hormigas / te engañan atacan en equipo como las pirañas / aunque sean pequeñas gracias a la unión / todas juntas se convierten en camión.” We will rise and call out our ancestors, our guiding spirits and the power of the women and men who taught us how to fight and win.

To be there, in the presence of such a beautiful cloud of witnesses was a real blessing for me. It filled me with hope, knowing that I am not just one Puerto Rican fighting alone; I am a part of the great América, and we will stand together to reclaim what is rightly ours. La comunidad came together yesterday in Wisconsin, and we will stand and fight because it is the right thing to do.