Rinku Sen

Party For The Vote

My day of Latinos ended at the Voto Latino party in Denver’s Vinyl Lounge. This wasn’t an easy party to get into. Even Latino luminaries told me they had to work hard to score tickets, and I definitely wasn’t on the list. Luckily, Roberto Lovato made me his plus one and before I knew it, I was drinking cosmopolitans among the early crowd. Roberto had one too, even though it’s a girly drink. Rosario Dawson was the big draw, but our first celeb sighting was Jennifer Lopez, looking super blond and yes, ok, gorgeous. Roberto pledged to abandon me if he could get her attention, but we never saw her again.

The most interesting people there were the women. I ran into my friend Julissa Reynoso, a brilliant New York based lawyer, who has been representing Latin American countries in their struggles to protect themselves from investment treaties they signed with American corporations in the 90’s and more recently, which basically take away all their sovereign rights in exchange for foreign investment. Julissa said that basically, any dude with a lawyer can sue (and did) the country of Argentina for trying to protect its resources, workers, or ability to make it’s own economic decisions. Since the advent of CAFTA this phenomenon has hit a crisis point. Definitely look for more on this as I start touring for The Accidental American and arguing that we need both an expanded immigration system and a fair globalization.

These progressive Latinas had largely worked for Clinton. They thought she was brilliant, had learned to campaign very effectively, and had done a good job bringing the party together through her convention speech and through the roll call. When she lost the candidacy, they grieved for two weeks, wiped their faces and started working their butts off for Obama. Ten weeks to go, and they are ready to turn it out.

I’m not a good partier – left at 10:30. But not before I caught a glimpse of Rosario. Roberto, of course, actually stood next to her and had the photo to prove it.

Posted at 11:51 AM, Aug 28, 2008 in At The Scene | Elections | Permalink | View Comments