Jonathan Adams

Alberto Gonzales Knows What Latinos Want?

We planned to write on this yesterday, but Roberto Lovato sums it up nicely at Of América

Alberto Gonzales Taking Latino Pundit Route to Political Redemption
By Roberto Lovato

If you read closely, the subtext of this story from the L.A. Times is pretty clear: Alberto Gonzales is a legitimate spokesperson for Latinos. For those of us that care, what he says is less important than that he’s again positioning himself to speak-at our expense. His attempts to reinvent himself following a lengthy and very recent legacy of disgrace should be attacked roundly and widely; He threatens to further degenerate a Latino condition already being crushed under foot of anti-immigrant attacks as intense and sustained as those faced by any group in the United States.

Alerta: if we allow Gonzales’ political fortunes rise, those of the Latino community fall, especially in a society that repudiates the criminal, inhuman wrong he made legal.

If we lived in a more just society, Alberto Gonzales would not get any accolades or Op-ed columns; He’d be locked up for life or on some elite death row for his crimes against humanity. That we allow someone who legally enabled the death and torture of Abu Ghraib, someone who called the Geneva Conventions “quaint”, to speak publicly for and about “civil rights” speaks volumes about the abysmal depths of our leaderless -and extremely vulnerable - political condition.

We should all do what we can to prevent him from slithering out from under the rock of illegitimacy and barbarism that he won for himself. By taking the Latino, “Si se puede” route to political redemption, he further devalues and deforms the Latino political enterprise. We allow him to do so at our own expense.

Posted at 7:13 AM, Jul 03, 2008 in Criminal Justice | Permalink | View Comments