Quinn wants the Latino vote come November. Who will he honor to get it?

I’m starting to wonder if Gov. Pat Quinn is mistaking March for Hispanic Heritage Month.

Searching for voters at the theater?

Either he is, or maybe he’s just that eager to have Latino voters think he’s aware of us to the point that we’ll contemplate giving him our votes come the Nov. 4 election for Illinois governor.

IT WAS JUST over a week ago that Quinn went so far as to declare the day Benito Juarez Day across Illinois. For the one-time president of Mexico who helped ensure that the nation remain an independent entity and U.S. ally – rather than a French colony that would have given aid and comfort to those forces that wanted to split the United States in two back in the mid-19^th Century.

Now, he’s made the declaration that makes Monday officially Cesar Chavez Day across the Land of Lincoln.

We’re not alone. This is actually the anniversary of the birth of the founder of the United Farm Workers labor union. He’d be 87 now, if he hadn’t have died at age 66 back in 1993. Many places with significant Latino populations (particularly in the southwestern U.S.) have made the same declaration.

Although it should be noted that Quinn made his declaration on Friday with a public appearance to add his praise to Chavez – who back in his own time would have had those who wanted to view him as a radical (just like Martin Luther King, Jr.). All because he touted the cause of people the establishment would have preferred to ignore.

BUT WHO NOW are much less venomous in their rhetoric – also just like King. Because they see now how ridiculous their rants were.

Of course, by doing his thing on Friday, Quinn got to get himself a plug on the same day that actor/director Diego Luna’s new film about the life of Chavez came out in movie theaters across the nation. It’s becoming his new tactic, just as he used to be the “Sunday press conference” man to ensure he’d get covered.

Which may mean all the people who felt compelled to see the film when it came out this weekend might be more inclined to think favorably upon the “Mighty Quinn.”

He wants to win

“Cesar Chavez organized the United Farm Workers to fight for fair wages, humane living conditions and basic dignity for some of the most oppressed workers on earth,” Quinn said, while also reminding us of the time he got to meet Chavez back in 1974 – back in the days when he was a low-level staffer in the administration of then-Gov. Dan Walker.

“HIS MESSAGE OF juntos podemos (together, we can) has stayed with me to this day,” said Quinn. Is he trying to be like Barack Obama's 2008 usurping of "Yes, We Can?" Or just different from Republican challenger Bruce Rauner -- whose minority vote strategy seems to be discouraging African-American voters from bothering to vote at all!

It’s not often that a governor is able to use a major motion picture release to try to gain himself some public attention. I don’t even recall him trying to use the Steven Spielberg film “Lincoln” to get himself support.

Then again, that film came out during a presidential election year cycle, and not a gubernatorial one..

Now I suspect that much of the audience for this particular film is going to be an ethnic-inspired crowd. I couldn’t help but notice that the one movie theater near I live that is actually showing the film is making a point of devoting two screens to it – one for showings of the film proper, and another for showings of the film dubbed into Spanish.

I KNOW SOME people are going to think it odd that a film about a Mexican-American (he was born here, and served in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War) needs to be dubbed into Spanish, as though it were one of those tacky Japanese films about Godzilla or Mothra.

Will Quinn seek support here too?

But this will be one of those films that will attract a larger-than-usual Latino film-goers crowd just because it will be one of the few films that depicts a Latino as something other than a drug-dealer or maid.

So Quinn trying to reach out to voters by giving days to people of Latin American ethnic origins could be part of the political strategy.

I’m just wondering if he has a list of possible people already prepared. If he turns out to be a big-enough bat for the Chicago White Sox, will we get Jose Abreu Day sometime between Monday’s Opening Day and season’s end?

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I haven’t gone to see the Cesar Chavez film yet, just as I will not be at U.S. Cellular Field on Monday. I suspect if I wait a few days, I can catch the film with a smaller crowd on hand. Just as the White Sox will play 80 more home games following the opener for 2014.

Who came up with, “Yes, We Can?”

I have always wondered if one of the consequences of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is going to be a cheapening of the historic legacy of United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez.

One of the lesser things that remain from his movement to fight for better working conditions for migrant farm workers was a catchphrase.

“SI SE PUEDE.” It translates roughly to “Yes, We Can,” or “Yes, You Can,” depending on how one wants to conjugate the verb in their mind.

It was meant to be a reminder to those migrant farm workers, many of whom had their ethnic ties to Mexico or other Latin American countries, that they were people just as much as anyone else. In force, they could work together to accomplish what they wanted.

Now, it is the rally cry of Obama.

We all have heard the chant echoing on those occasions when we watch snippets of an Obama speech on television. For those of you who have attended Obama campaign events, you may very well have joined in the chant, because you didn’t want to feel left out.

IN SHORT, “YES, We Can” is going to be the catchphrase remembered by people years from now when they think back to what they were doing in life when Obama tried to capture the hearts and minds of a nation to get them to elect him president.

In fact, I have no doubt that people will eventually come to think Obama created the phrase. When they are told that Chavez was using it some four decades earlier (around the time that Obama was a child living in Hawaii), they may get resentful that anyone would try to “take credit” for Obama’s thoughts.

It’s just an example of how short-lived many of our memories are. We don’t want to have to think back too far into history.

It is particularly odd that the Obama campaign would use the old United Farm Workers slogan, since one of Chavez’ co-founders of the labor union for farm workers was Dolores Huerta.

NOT ONLY IS she still alive and working and active in political causes, she was actually one of Hillary R. Clinton’s loudest Latina supporters during the Democratic primary season. Her support for Hillary was strong enough that she went to the Democratic convention in Denver, and was the one who officially nominated Clinton for president – before Hillary herself took a pass and officially asked everybody to support the Obama campaign.

The only thing I have ever heard Huerta say about the issue is to remind people that the foundation that tries to keep alive the memory of Chavez’ work actually trade-marked the phrase, which means they have to get a share of any money made from commercial use of the phrase.

I don’t know if that means the Obama campaign is writing out regular checks to somebody, or if some deal has been reached.

But I actually think it would be a positive if people gave a thought to Chavez and his work whenever they started chanting their support for Barack. After all, he is more than just the Arizona-born man who gained national attention when, in 1968, he fasted to draw attention to the decrepit working conditions experienced by people who worked the fields where the nation’s food was grown.

AND IT CERTAINLY would be better than having a certain segment of our older population remember Chavez as the man who inspired them to eat more lettuce and grapes to protest the boycotts that the United Farm Workers used to call for as a protest against those same harsh working conditions.

That actually is the fear of letting “Yes, We Can” become something that exists only for Obama. It trivializes its meaning, while also allowing Chavez’ ideological critics to more harshly establish a legacy for him.

Think I’m kidding?

Earlier this year, conservative pundit Patrick Buchanan was on MSNBC when he started talking about Obama’s campaign slogan and its Spanish translation.

“YES, WE CAN. Si, se puede. That’s Hispanic. That’s the cause of the illegal immigration movement and the amnesty movement,” Buchanan said, while being interviewed by Chris Matthews.

Now such a thought, particularly the ridiculous concept that people speak a language called “Hispanic” instead of Spanish, doesn’t shock me coming from Buchanan. But his attempt to turn a phrase of self-empowerment into a negative one of un-people trying to assert themselves is wrong.

I’m sure it is his way of letting us know Obama as a president would be sympathetic to the concerns of the growing Latino population, which is ironic in that many people in the Latino voter bloc continue to have their doubts about Obama and are only reluctantly voting for him – largely because they don’t like the people that a President John McCain would be indebted to politically.

It also is odd because Chavez himself had his problems with the idea of people from other countries coming to the United States to take jobs, largely because he saw that Anglo employers would be more than willing to use them to exploit the labor situation and get cheaper workers from people forced to live in society’s shadows.

WHAT IS A distortion is when people try to claim Chavez’ view on the issue is evidence of the need to crack down on immigration and impose more restrictive laws. What he primarily fought for was the personal dignity of those migrant workers of Latino ethnic background (perhaps I should stay in character and use the preferred phrase of the 1970s, Chicanos) – many of whom are the same people the conservatives seriously believe ought not to have citizenship in this country.

In short, I don’t have a problem with Obama’s use of the phrase, if it could help spread the meaning of where it originated. There are lessons that could be learned by all of us, regardless of ethnic or economic background.

Then, at the very least, we’d be able to appreciate the humor of Stan Hochman’s column on Tuesday in the Philadelphia Daily News. He recalled that the baseball clubs fielded by the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1970s used the phrase “Yes, We Can” to inspire themselves, and that the phrase made it into use in various ads for the team.

He notes one-time second baseman Dave Cash claims never to have gotten a penny for the phrase (which Cash claims to have started), but now jokingly gives Obama “permission” to use the Phillies phrase.

I’D HATE TO think anyone would take this piece seriously, only because that reduces the phrase and its meaning to a line of trivial dreck, no better than the Chicago White Sox of 2005 – which took that old song by the band Journey and made a motivational cry out of “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

I don’t want to see Chavez/Obama reduced to the same level, because I still want to wretch every time I think of the White Sox’ use of the song. It ruined an otherwise perfect World Series.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Is the phrase “Yes, We Can” truly associated with the Philadelphia (http://www.philly.com/dailynews/sports/20080909_Stan_Hochman__Former_Phillie_Dave_Cash__Yes__Obama_can_use_my_slogan.html) Phillies’ ball clubs of the 1970s?

The phrase turned by Barack Obama into a national slogan is also the name of a San Francisco (http://www.communityhealthworks.org/yeswecan/) health clinic.

For conservative pundit Pat Buchanan, the Spanish translation “Si Se Puede” is what is wrong (http://mediamatters.org/items/200801160010) with this country today. It must be the sight of all those Latinos (http://www.alternet.org/story/34387/) refusing to be stepped all over.

More about the man (http://clnet.ucla.edu/research/chavez/) who originally came up with the phrase “Si Se Puede.” For better information, read a book, “Sal Si Puedes,” by Peter Matthiessen (http://www.amazon.com/Sal-Puedes-Escape-You-Can/dp/0520225848).

CAMPAIGN NOTES: Obama doesn’t need no stinkin’ federal money

The only thing that would have made Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s rejection of funds from the public campaign finance system more perfect would have been if a Barack Backer had done his best impersonation from the film “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” in saying, “we don’t need your stinkin’ money.”

That is the case for the Obama campaign, which earlier this week became the first presidential nominee to turn down the federal funds that in theory put all presidential campaigns on an even level.

I SAY BECAUSE in theory, it doesn’t work that way. Republicans and their big bucks donors always manage to come up with support groups that take on some of the costs related to supporting their presidential nominees – which means the GOP candidates always are better funded than their Democratic challengers.

So when a candidate like Barack Obama, who has managed to capture the imagination of a segment of the U.S. population so highly that they are donating large amounts of money to his campaign, he can afford to take a pass.

Accepting the federal funds would require the Obama campaign to comply with various restrictions. And while some will argue that the Democratic Party and its followers could do the same tricks that their Republican counterparts do to help Barack, the reality is they are not as well structured in that area.

Obama sees a case where he can gain a great financial advantage over Republican challenger John McCain by taking a pass on the federal cash.

NOW I UNDERSTAND McCain wants to make a campaign issue out of this, although I don’t think he’s going to get much traction on this issue from the general public. Most people are going to hear that Obama wants to pay for this thing himself, and has a campaign that is capable of raising the needed money by itself.

So the average Jose on the street is going to be relieved that taxpayer dollars aren’t paying for the various cheap shot campaign ads that Obama invariably will use against McCain during the next few months.

If anything, the more straightforward-thinking people who don’t follow all the nuances of politics will probably wonder why McCain doesn’t pay for his own campaign.

People who do follow the nuances of politics are going to realize the reason McCain and Republicans are upset about this situation is because they are used to being the ones who have the financial advantage, and they resent being on the short end of available campaign cash.

WHILE I REALIZE the whole concept of public financing of campaigns is meant to give each nominee an equal financial chance of winning, the reality is that it doesn’t work. I have to respect Obama just a bit for being willing to take a pass on about $80 million. The easy thing for him would have been to just take the cash and maintain the status quo.

And I am not convinced that any amount of talks between Obama and McCain would have created any reforms in public financing that would have made it worth accepting the money. This is a case where Obama is literally putting his (campaign) money where his mouth is.

Should we really let McCain and his followers get away with trying to turn this into a campaign issue? Petty jealousy about money is about as non- an issue as this campaign can dig up.

So what other tidbits are worthy of note as the presidential campaign hits what should be the summer doldrums?

DUELING AUTHORS?: Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., may have been in Chicago only to promote his new book, but there’s something about the conservative with a solid record of military support that seems like a natural to be Obama’s vice presidential running mate.

He’s just the kind of guy who could be trotted out to those places in rural Pennsylvania and Michigan (and Southern Illinois, to be honest) who might be able to credibly tell non-urban types that Obama is willing to listen to their concerns – mainly because he would use his influence to force Barack to pay attention.

While a part of me thinks New Mexico Gov. (and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations) Bill Richardson would offer a lot, I have always figured Obama was going to have to pick a running mate who fits the extremely conventional mode of electoral politics. He will need a kind of Democrat who has people wonderingwhy they are not a Republican.

Not Hillary. Not any woman. And definitely not anyone who could be labeled by McCain followers as “a liberal.”

It would be interesting if an Obama/Webb ticket were to win on Election Day. Considering that Obama has two published books (and technically is contractually obligated to produce a third), what would happen if the American public were to decide it preferred Webb’s literary work?

“VERO POSSUMUS” IS “SI SE PUEDE?”: The Obama campaign has come up with a new logo, and some people think it looks a bit too much like the official insignia of the president of the United States.

To my mindset, the only difference is that the eagle in the Obama logo bears a shield consisting of the old Obama logo (the great big “O” that doubles as a rising sun).

What caught my attention was the Latin slogan that Obama types say translates into “Yes, We Can.” In Spanish, that has always been a slogan of Latino empowerment dating back to United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez.

What I want to know is, how long will it be until the phrase becomes (in the mindset of an unknowing public) the intellectual property of Obama, and people start thinking that the Latinos are stealing it from Barack?

AND ON A FINAL NOTE: I’m not sure what the tackiest moment of the week was – although I’m sure it was an Obama-related moment.

Hearing that his aides were dumb enough to want to get Arab women out of the background at one of their campaign events was ridiculous enough, but then having to watch a television spot (put together by Obama supporters, not the candidate himself) where a beautiful blond woman clings to her baby and tells McCain he can’t have her son as part of his “100-year-long” war in Iraq – that is just low class.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The one-time “American Paper for Americans” thinks the system for public financing (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/chi-0620edit1jun20,0,2973543.story) of campaigns ought to be scrapped, while the most conservative of the national news magazines thinks Obama should have taken (http://www.usnews.com/blogs/mashek/2008/6/20/barack-obamas-bad-decision-on-public-financing.html) the money.

“A Time to Fight,” published as part of the Union League Club’s “author’s group series (http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/06/jim_webb_stays_cage_on_vp_pros.html), probably will not sell as well as “Dreams from My Father” or “The Audacity of Hope.”

Scholars of Latin say Obama’s translation of “Yes, We Can” isn’t exact, but it is close (http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/06/obama-goes-loca.html) enough.

For those of you so culturally deprived that you have never seen “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqomZQMZQCQ), here is that film’s most quotable moment.