Meeting Chicago's Mexican population just as important for Calderon as UN or "Arnold"

When this week is over, Mexico President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa is bound to have some unique memories of his first official visit to the United States.

He’s going to be able to have seen Harvard Yard and the United Nations. Calderón will have met with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (one of this country’s highest-ranking Hispanic politicos), and he’s also going to be able to get his picture taken with Hollywood celebrity-turned-“governator” Arnold Schwarzenegger.

AS FAR AS the public perception is concerned, his Chicago stopover scheduled for Tuesday has the potential to be the weak end of the Calderón U.S. tour.

To me at least, a meeting with Gov. Rod Blagojevich pales by comparison to the other pseudo-celebrities he will be meeting. You’d think we could at least dig up Oprah Winfrey to add some Chicago glamour to an official state visit.

Yet the Chicago appearance, if not as politically sexy as the other stops on his five-day visit, also has the potential to be the most important. Mexico President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa participated in ceremonies Sunday allowing the Mexican Air Force to show off its strength, just before leaving for a five-day tour of the United States where Calderon hopes to show off his political strength on behalf of Mexican citizens now living in the United States. Photograph provided by Mexico President's office.

Calderón is going to get a chance to meet face to face here with that unique breed of Chicago’s ethnic soup – the Mexican-American, who accounts for roughly one of every six Chicagoans. (It is when combined with Puerto Ricans and other Latino ethnicities that Hispanics account for 26 percent of the city’s population).

THE PRESIDENT OF Mexico is going to attend a rally at Lawndale High School that officials expect to be attended by about 700 people, many of whom are the children of immigrants who make up the population of the Little Village neighborhood on the near Southwest Side.

Officially, Calderón says he is coming here this week to remind U.S. government officials that Mexican citizens who have emigrated to the United States have rights as human beings – rights which he believes are sometimes neglected by federal officials who cite national security as a reason to single out Mexican people.

Yet if that were his only concern, Calderón would have had his flight go directly from Mexico’s Federal District to the District of Columbia. He could have spent his time trying to influence the D.C. politicos and perhaps get a state dinner in his honor at the White House.

Instead, Calderón is bypassing Washington to see the actual countryside for his first official U.S. visit. By escaping the D.C. “Beltway,” he’ll get to meet up with people of Mexican descent scattered across the country.

WHEN ONE CONSIDERS that Chicago has had a sizable Mexican population since the end of World War I, there would be no way he could skip over, “La Ciudad Segunda” on his U.S. tour.

To those people who attend the rally, the event has a chance to be a life-long memory. Regardless of what one thinks of the government of Mexico, common decency implies that you show a certain amount of respect for a nation’s leader – similar to how some people think it is absolutely disrespectful to the United States of America to be overly critical of George W. Bush.

And to someone of Mexican descent who is struggling to comprehend a strange new language and customs while also working a crummy-paying job (or two), the notion that your motherland’s leader has not forgotten your plight can be a boost.

It is even an event of significance to people like myself who were born in Chicago and have to go back a couple of generations to find the immigrant presence in our family trees.

ALL TOO OFTEN in the past, there was an attitude among the Mexican population remaining in Mexico (usually the upper classes whose lives were so financially secure they had no reason to think of leaving) that the people fleeing to the United States were disloyal to their country.

While I see my two grandfathers as being courageous for leaving behind everything they ever knew in life to try to build a new life in a foreign land (the farthest I have ever strayed from Chicago was a five-month stint living in the District of Columbia), Mexicans of a certain generation would lambaste them as cowardly.

Hearing firsthand from Mexico’s leadership that we have not been forgotten is reassuring. It is nice to know that another piece of past ignorance is being put aside.

Personally, I want to hear what Calderón has to say, in part because I am enough of a government junkie to find the inner workings of Mexico’s version of Democracy to be intriguing. Calderón’s 2006 election was as controversial to Mexican citizens as George W. Bush’s 2000 election was to U.S. citizens.

BUT I ALSO am interested in seeing how U.S. officials respond to having Calderón rub the plight of Mexicans in the U.S. “in their faces,” so to speak. Will he get openly hostile reactions from some social conservatives who, “don’t want no Mexican” telling them what to do?

Will he get polite applause, then have his words forgotten once his return flight slips south of the Rio Bravo del Norte/Rio Grande? Or will someone heed his words and actually try to do something of significance toward immigration reform – other than building a concrete barrier along the southwestern U.S. border that will come to be graffiti-ed to the point that it will resemble the Berlin Wall of old.

There is one part of the Calderón U.S. tour that I wish I could be present for – the finale in Sacramento, Calif., where he will meet with Schwarzenegger at the governor’s California Statehouse office.

SCHWARZENEGGER, HIMSELF AN immigrant from Austria, is on record as favoring the U.S./Mexico border barrier along with tougher restrictions on Mexican emigration. Will he try to justify his views with Calderón? Or will the California first lady (Kennedy cousin Maria Shriver, an ‘Obama girl’ of sorts who disagrees with his choice of John McCain for president) manage to get Arnold to hold his tongue?

It is particularly interesting that Schwarzenegger is such a high-profile governor that he can get a foreign president to come to him, rather than having to link up with Calderón when the Mexico president visits Los Angeles.

I can’t imagine a Mexican president making a similar trip to Springfield, Ill., where the last Mexican official to visit the Illinois capital city was former Agriculture Secretary Francisco Labastida – and that was 10 years ago.

EVEN WITH BLAGOJEVICH’S bloated sense of self-importance, I can’t imagine our governor having the nerve to demand that foreign leaders come to his turf.

Of course, since Gov. Rod does not put in much time at his offices at the Statehouse in Springfield, Ill., or at the Thompson Center in Chicago, Calderón would have to make a trip to the Blagojevich residence in the Lincoln Square neighborhood.

You have to admit, watching a presidential motorcade try to wend its way through the streets of the one-time German ethnic enclave (which is slowly going upscale) in search of the gubernatorial bungalow would be an unforgettable site.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Mexico President Felipe Calderón’s U.S. visit (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/nation/stories/DN-calderon_09int.ART.North.Edition1.450f3b1.html) is meant to promote (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/world/americas/09mexico.html?ref=americas) good relations between the United States and Mexico.

Calderón says his government is trying to crack down on drug trafficking taking place (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-mexico-president-interview-feb07,1,3288667.story) between the two countries.

Mexican presidents traditionally visit the United States during their first year in office. But Calderón's U.S. tour was delayed due to floods that struck Mexico. You may not (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071210/nino-martinez) have paid much attention, but it was as devastating to the morale of Mexico as Hurricane Katrina was to the U.S.

Calderón will use this site (http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/en/) to promote his visit, and other initiatives.

"Reverend" brings ghoulish, foolish funeral protest act to Chicago's southern suburbs

If past protests are any indication, there will be picket signs similar to these outside two funeral homes in the Chicago suburbs. And the people wielding them won't be the least bit bashful. Photograph provided by Westboro Baptist Church.

I want to start off by wishing my condolences to the families and other loved ones of Connie Woolfork and Sarah Szafranski.

Not only did each family lose a beloved relative in a gruesome, nationally publicized quintuple murder at a suburban Chicago shopping center, but on Saturday they are going to have to endure a ridiculously public ordeal that will cause them additional grief and shame.

Specifically, funeral services are being held today for both women, and the Rev. Fred Phelps is bringing his batch of Kansas goofballs affiliated with his Westboro Baptist Church to the Chicago suburbs to conduct their demented protest activities.

PHELPS IS ONE of those types of people who really are what is wrong with the United States of America these days – he thinks religion condones bigotry, and he has been put in a position of authority that gives him a reason to think he is morally superior and has the “God-given right” to treat others like dirt.

That is why in recent years he has gone out of his way to organize pickets at the funeral services of people who died in publicly prominent ways. Most of the picketed events are the funerals of soldiers killed in combat in Iraq. But now, Phelps will use the Woolfork and Szafranski services to try to gain more attention for his “holy war.”

Not that Phelps has given up on picketing deceased U.S. soldiers. He plans to protest at the Monday funeral service in Blue Island of Lt. David Schultz, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division who died last week in Iraq. Only then will Phelps and his followers leave the Chicago area.

What is his cause?

PHELPS WANTS TO believe the reason that people are dying is some sort of cosmic punishment. God does not like a multi-cultural society of tolerance that he sees as sympathetic to people he wants to demonize. So he’s allowing “Americans” to be killed as the country’s punishment

Phelps is the perfect example of a person who complains about “political correctness” because he can’t use words like “f----t” without appearing to be a bigot. He wants to go back to the days when a “f----t” was a “f----t” and those people just needed to take the abuse.

The reverend thinks that he is arousing the anger of people against gays. Actually, he’s just arousing the family members who will have their sad moment turned into a public spectacle by a publicity-seeking buffoon who is trying to cloak his bigotry in holy robes.

I don’t hesitate to call Phelps a bigot because a check of his primary web-site that lambastes homosexuality also has “sister” sites that tell us God also hates Canada, Ireland, Mexico and Sweden, in addition to Catholics.

IT IS GOOD that Illinois lawmakers a few years ago, largely in response to Phelps’ protests across the nation, imposed laws requiring protesters to keep their activities a set distance from the actual event.

They cannot legally interfere with the funeral services or peoples’ ability to get into and out of the event. Perhaps if they are lucky, the Woolfork and Szafranski families will be able to get through their funeral services without having to pay much attention to the Rev. Fred.

At the time the law was enacted, Phelps backers complained their right to express their views (no matter how ridiculous) were being interfered with. Actually, all that is being interfered with is Phelps’ ability to stop other people from saying how ridiculous a figure he truly is.

Phelps is really nothing more than a throwback to the past.

LET’S NOT FORGET that the segregationists of old used to cloak their racist views against African-American people by claiming that their ideas were “God’s word.” They were able to quote biblical passages that they interpreted as evidence that, “the Lord God himself” wanted the races to be kept separate.

Now, only the most buffoonish of white supremacists make that claim (try reading their diatribes about “mud people” who were God’s “mistaken creation”).

But before one thinks I am trying to lambast organized religion of the past as blatantly racist, I’m not. I’ve seen too many old civil rights protests of the 1960s where priests and nuns joined the marches to show their solidarity for the concept of integration. I’ve also heard enough religious people talk sincerely about racial equality to know that religion itself is not the problem.

It is the sorry way in which some people allow their twisted views about life to interpret religion in a blatantly un-Christian way.

THE ONLY DIFFERENCE between Phelps and some southern preachers of the past is that Phelps replaces African-American people with gay people. The 21st Century, in his mind, gives us a different group to wrongly demonize.

If I wanted, I could easily go see the Phelps protests, which are taking place near funeral homes in the suburbs of Oak Forest and Country Club Hills. (My parents actually live in a neighboring town, and I could combine reportorial duty with a family visit). But I think I’m going to skip it, and not just because my funeral clothes are in need of a dry cleaning.

I have already heard the rhetoric that Phelps likely will spew forth on Saturday.

I still remember a wintry January in 1994 in Springfield, Ill. A “preacher” walked up to a podium set up on the east steps of the Illinois capitol (the main entrance) and he proceeded to give his “sermon.” It is a spiel I will never forget.

THE CLERGYMAN THAT day asked God to, “strike the Earth with a plague to wipe out all the n-----s, f-----s and other perverts who take up space, so as to leave this planet and its natural resources free and available for decent, Christian people.”

That clergyman then put his hood on and took part along with his colleagues in a Ku Klux Klan rally that was meant to denounce the fact that people in this country these days honor the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. with a government-sanctioned holiday, rather than denounce him as some sort of “Communist agitator” and “pervert” like they used to.

The only difference between that clergyman’s sermon (I forget exactly what the Klan calls its clergy, other than to know – like everything else in Klan-speak – it starts with a “K”) and the Phelps talk is that Phelps doesn’t hide under a white hood.

He’ll just wear those ridiculous sunglasses, even on cloudy, overcast Midwest winter days.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church (which Baptist officials say is not really Baptist) is the subject of these studies (http://www.baptistwatch.org/fredphelps.html) as to how un-Christian (http://www.adl.org/special_reports/wbc/default.asp) his beliefs truly are.

Some journalists also have done their work in seriously digging up information (http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1999/03/lauerman.html) about the Rev. Fred Phelps.

For those who want to believe that these resources are biased, check out this crude statement (http://www.godhatesfags.com/written/fliers/20080207_illinois-mall-shooting.pdf) released by Phelps to justify his actions on Saturday.

A note about style on slurs

I usually am a believer in the notion that every word (no matter how hateful or offensive) has a time and place when it is appropriate to use.

My former employer, United Press International, publishes a stylebook that says writers should, “not use racially derogatory terms unless they are part of a quotation that is essential to the story.” A part of me thinks the quote from a Klan preacher (which I didn’t use when I wrote straight news stories about the Statehouse rally back in 1994) qualifies.

But I ultimately decided to not spell out the slurs. I figure readers are intelligent enough to figure out what I am writing about. While I try to write and edit the Chicago Argus in accordance with UPI style guidelines, I actually decided to follow the lead of the Chicago Defender on this issue.

THE BLACK NEWSPAPER that once circulated across the segregated South (not just the South Side) had a hard and fast rule. The crude slur for Negroes, when used at all, was spelled “n-----s.” Note they not only blanked the word out, they made sure to lower-case it as well.

Out of a sense of fairness, I have applied the same standard to “f-----s.” To spell out one while blanking out the other strikes me as ridiculous. Use both or neither. I elected to go with neither.

Besides, I’ll get a dose of pleasure from knowing that somewhere out there, some bigot who always complains about “political correctness” will read this and become infuriated.

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No GOP "light" at the end of the political tunnel

The Illinois Republican Party is nowhere near the significance it held back when it was literally the "Party of Abraham Lincoln." Heck, it's not even the same party that it was back in the days of Jim Edgar. Illustrations provided by Library of Congress collection (above) and State of Illinois.

One of my favorite pieces of political memorabilia is a photograph of the capitol building in Springfield, Ill. Taken in the final decade of the 19th century (Second and Capital streets were still unpaved dirt roads), the photograph hangs on the wall over my desk as I write this.

What makes the item unique is that the photograph is in a frame with a mat that is autographed by the six government officials who were Illinois’ elected constitutional officers.

“Jim Edgar,” “Bob Kustra,” “George H. Ryan,” “Jim Ryan,” “Loleta Didrickson” and “Judy Baar Topinka.” All Republicans. I picked up this particular item back in 1995 when the Republican Party in Illinois was at a peak and controlled just about everything in Illinois state government.

NOW, WE LOOK to the present.

Republicans in Illinois this week chose a candidate to run for U.S. Senate who is, at most, a fringe dreamer who on his first day of general election campaigning had to stoop to the level of dredging up illegal immigration as an issue. They are on the verge of nominating a presidential candidate who irritates a prominent portion of the GOP voter base, which will hurt the chances of Republican candidates running for lower-level offices.

The Republicans’ best bet of winning an office of significance this year may very well be the Cook County state’s attorney’s race – and then only if anti-Hispanic prejudice overcomes the common sense of Democratic voters who will be asked to vote for a two-decade prosecutorial professional to be the county’s chief attorney instead of a trash-talking politico who lost two years ago to county board President Todd Stroger.

It is sad when you think about it. It took only a dozen years for Republicans from the “Land of Lincoln” to decline from being the party that dominated the state’s politics to being the party that has wet dreams about taking a county-level state’s attorney’s post.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Many political observers would look to another piece of memorabilia hanging over my desk (a framed photograph of myself interviewing then-Illinois Secretary of State George Ryan at the Illinois State Fairgrounds) and say he’s the man to blame.

But I have always believed that George Ryan and his corruption trial is NOT the reason the Republican Party declined in Illinois. He is merely the evidence of how far it had already fallen, and the party’s inability to get beyond Ryan is the proof that Republicans are not going to be enjoying a resurgence in Illinois anytime soon.

The population trends in Illinois that saw the suburbs of Chicago become the dominant region of the state (about 45 percent of Illinois’ population lives in a suburb of Chicago, compared to about 23 percent in the city proper and the remaining third in rural Illinois) initially benefited the GOP.

REPUBLICANS HISTORICALLY HAD controlled the political organizations that existed in the suburban areas, and during the mid-1990s they converted the growing suburban population into GOP votes.

The 1994 general elections that saw Newt Gingrich rise to power in Congress also saw the Illinois GOP take control of the entire General Assembly and all six state constitutional offices. For a two-year period, Republicans ran everything and forced their own partisan agenda down the throats of Chicago and Democrats. During that era, the most prominent Democrat in state politics was former Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic, who was in the midst of a two-year stint as chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court.

It was the first time since 1956 that Republicans (then in the midst of the Eisenhower era) controlled everything in Illinois politics.

But in what must be a historic coincidence, both Republican stints lasted eight years. Democrats made political resurgences in both 1964 and 2002.

THE FORMER CASE was hurt by the candidacy of Barry Goldwater for president, which scared off many would-be GOP voters and gave Democrat candidates a boost. In the more recent case, the population shifts that initially helped Republicans eventually came to favor the Democrats.

Many of those new suburban residents came from Chicago or from other urban areas around the country, and they were not wedded to Illinois politicos. Many considered themselves urban in nature, and ultimately came to identify themselves as being residents of the Chicago area, rather than Illinois. The long-time Republican bastion of DuPage County, Ill., on Tuesday saw 54 percent of primary election voters choose “Democrat” ballots instead of “Republican” ones.

This shift has caused remaining Republicans to identify more strongly with the rural regions of the state that lie beyond Chicago and its suburbs. Population trends show that region is (at is most) a third of the state’s population, and particularly when one gets into Southern Illinois, it is shrinking.

That is what differentiates Illinois from a place like Indiana, where Indianapolis is nowhere near as dominant over the state as Chicago is here. It also makes Illinois different from southern states with a distinct rural flavor where candidates who make appeals to a rural mentality are solidly in the majority.

FOR WHAT IT is worth, the Illinois Republican Party of today is a political party that favors rural interests in an urban state. George Ryan didn’t kill the Republican Party. Rural residents who want to live their lives in isolation from Chicago and other urban areas are doing their damage. The fact that they have solid control of the party’s apparatus is what prevents there from being any sign of light at the end of the tunnel.

How else could a political party nominate somebody like Steve Sauerberg to run for a U.S. Senate seat against a high-ranking Senate incumbent like Richard Durbin? Sauerberg’s first day of campaigning after the primary elections focused on illegal immigration and claims that Durbin’s policies were allowing dangerous people to slip into the country undetected.

That despite the fact that urban residents either are sympathetic to the concerns of the people who are in this country without papers, or are more preoccupied with issues such as the declining economy or bringing a satisfactory end to the U.S. military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Only somebody who’s completely oriented toward rural Illinois could think this is the first attack he ought to be making at his opponent with the well-funded campaign. At this rate, Durbin is well on his way to achieving what Charles Percy and Alan Dixon failed to gain and what Paul Simon didn’t even try for – a third six-year term in the United States Senate.

BETWEEN SAUERBERG AND John McCain (whose presidential candidacy can’t even unite the factions of the GOP), I can easily see the top two Republicans on the ballot dragging down their party’s candidates up and down the ticket.

That will hurt what otherwise could be the respectable chance that Cook County Board commissioner Tony Peraica could succeed in his bid to be the first Republican state’s attorney in Chicago since Jack O’Malley lost his re-election bid in 1996.

Peraica ran unopposed, so he didn’t have to expend money or energy on a primary campaign, compared to his Democratic opponent, Anita Alvarez, who had to beat off five men to gain the nomination for the Nov. 4 election.

Because there were five other candidates, Alvarez won with only 26 percent support from those people who took a Democrat ballot on Election Day this week. Three of every four Democrats wanted somebody else – and her margin of victory over second place finishers Tom Allen (a Chicago alderman) was not quite 10,000 votes.

SHE DOESN’T HAVE a mandate of support from the people, and we know from experience Peraica is not the bashful type when it comes to using forceful campaigning to try to take down an opponent (remember his ‘sore loser’ behavior in the days after the 2006 Cook County president election?). He could exploit her lack of solid support to win in November.

What makes this Illinois Republican decline pathetic (aside from the fact that it takes place in the state that produced Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan) is that it comes at a time when Democrats are hurting themselves.

Federal investigations into Antoin Rezko’s lobbyist activities are more likely to hurt Gov. Rod Blagojevich than Barack Obama, and the schizophrenic political activities that have occurred at the Statehouse in Springfield (particularly the lengthy delays in resolving a mass transit funding problem) have a lot of people looking everywhere else for an alternative to Democratic control of state government.

THE REPUBLICANS IN our state are incapable of providing that alternative.

Ultimately, the solution to the problem is going to have to be a political party that tries to moderate itself on the social issues to bring itself more in line with typical Illinoisans.

The current Illinois Republican Party is in line with the thoughts of people who live in places like Quincy, Effingham or Peoria. What plays in the latter city, however, is not what plays in places like Naperville or Orland Park – which are the modern-day residences of the typical Illinoisan. It’s no wonder a candidate like Mike Huckabee is irrelevant (only 16 percent of Tuesday’s GOP vote) in Illinois.

And one of these days, the party is just going to have to do something about establishing a relevant branch in the city of Chicago proper.

THE PARTY BOOSTED its number of voters in Chicago Tuesday, compared to the presidential primary four years ago, by nearly 50 percent (49.79 percent, to be exact). But even then, there were only 41,535 people in Chicago who chose to vote for candidates of the “Party of Lincoln.”

The days when it was cute that the Illinois Republican Party could hold its state convention at Assembly Hall in Urbana and pack the place, while reserving just a half-dozen seats in an isolated corner of the arena for the Chicago Republican Party (which really happened in 1996), just don’t cut it anymore.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The face (http://www.sauerbergforussenate.com/default.aspx) of the Illinois Republicans for this year belongs to a family physician from Lombard who takes pride in never having held political office before. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether he offers a better face than 2004’s top-of-the-Illinois ticket in Alan Keyes.

The Illinois Republican Party may not have any officials in state government these days, but they do put together an entertaining attack (http://www.b3site.org/) on Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

On April 18, 1927, William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson gave this inaugural address (http://www.chipublib.org/004chicago/mayors/speeches/thompson27.html) to start off his term as mayor of Chicago. That is the last time, to date, that a Republican has given such a speech.

Licey Tigers win Latin American 'beisbol' championship with Chicago help

Regardless of how their careers as professional baseball players turn out, two Chicago ballplayers will have the memories of what it is like to play for a champion.

Too bad it didn’t happen here in Chicago. The Licey Tigers of the Dominican League won bragging rights as champions of Latin American baseball when they won the Caribbean Series Thursday. Photograph provided by SeriedelCaribe.com.

The Caribbean Series, the annual tourney between the champions of the Dominican and Venezuelan leagues and the Pacific League in Mexico, ended Thursday night when the Licey Tigers beat the Cibao City Eagles 8-2.

Licey finished the weeklong tournament with a 5-1 record, compared to the Cibao City record of 3-3. The Aragua Tigers of Venezuela and the Obregon City Yaquis of Mexico both finished behind the Dominican Republic teams in the tourney, with identical records of 2-4.

Two of the Licey pitchers have Chicago ties during the summer months. Oneli Pérez pitched last year for the Birmingham Barons of the Southern League (a Chicago White Sox affiliate), while his teammate, Carlos Marmol, was with the Iowa Cubs and has hopes of pitching some time this season with the Chicago version.

Here’s hoping Pérez can take the mindset of playing for a champion and apply it to his time in the White Sox organization. And if Marmol ever turns out to be a champion in the U.S., it will be with another team.

I ought to be thankful that the Yaquis (the team I was sort of pulling for in the tourney) didn’t totally humiliate themselves. After losing their first four games (by a combined score of 24-8), they managed to salvage their reputation by winning their final two games.

And on a final point, there is a significant reason baseball fans in the United States ought to be interested in the Caribbean Series. The end of the Latin American tournament means that the beginning of spring training for U.S. professional teams is only eight days away.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: More details of the “Serie del Caribe” can be found here. (http://www.seriedelcaribe.com/)

Latinos choosing Hillary over Obama by default

Hillary R. Clinton may get a majority of Hispanic people to vote for her in this year’s presidential primary elections, but that is not evidence she has some natural affinity with those people whose ethnic roots tie them to a Latin American country.

The simple fact is that neither of the remaining Democrats who dream of being president is doing much to reach out for the support of Latinos. Hillary Clinton is the default choice for a group of people whose primary concerns focus around trying to assimilate into the political culture of the United States of America.

For those of the various ethnicities who comprise Hispanic people (or Latinos, if you prefer – I consider the two terms interchangeable), being able to vote is a sign that they have arrived in this country; that they truly belong.

THE LARGE NUMBERS of Hispanic/Latino people who are still immigrants cannot register to vote, so they are not a factor on Election Day. Until the percentage of Hispanics who can vote becomes more in line with their overall population Latinos are not going to lead any reforms of this country’s political set-up.

The reason more Hispanic people do not consider themselves Republican (59 percent identify themselves as Democrat, according to the Pew Hispanic Center) is that GOP officials are too quick to pander to xenophobic elements of society. So Latinos are becoming Democrats by default. But since Hispanics in a position to vote are largely people desiring to be a part of the establishment, they will back the establishment candidate. Hillary Clinton's presidential bid is more like a default vote for many Hispanic people. Photograph provided by Hillary Clinton for President.

That niche this time around is filled by Hillary Clinton, and that is why the roughly 9 percent of the overall electorate who are Hispanic (16 percent in Illinois) is giving a majority of its support to the former Arkansas and U.S. first lady.

You didn’t seriously think Latino people sincerely liked Hillary or her positions on the issues, did you?

THE DOMINANT FACTOR in this year’s presidential primary elections is the generation gap.

If Barack Obama is to win, it will be because he gets a groundswell of support from the youth of America – who largely think Hillary is a ‘60’s Child and the wave of the past, while Barack is here and now and what is really happening.

The older generation (generally, mid-30s and up) charitably sees Obama as a youthful politico who should wait his turn to run for the highest office in the land, while Clinton has the benefits of age and experience.

FOR HISPANIC PEOPLE, it is different.

Regardless of age, gender or education levels, Clinton is favored by those people with ethnic ties to places where “hablamos Español.” It applies for both those who have made it all the way through the immigration process to become citizens, and those actually born in the United States.

Hispanic people do NOT want to get caught on the losing side of an election. They want to be in support of the winner.

Many view the Obama campaign talk of change and reform as the political equivalent of childish babbling, particularly since they many are willing to believe the basic premise of political professionals – young people don’t vote.

SINCE THEY DON’T vote in significant numbers, many Latinos just do not believe Obama can win.

Even if they think he has a chance, many would still be more comfortable with an establishment Democrat like Clinton. Change (which is how they perceive Obama’s talk of government reform) is not their top priority – gaining a share of the spoils of politics is what matters. To people with this mindset, the Obama campaign is about esoteric concepts that don’t particularly interest them.

It is similar to the old Chicago political mindset that the late Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko mocked when he said the Chicago city motto should be changed from “Urbs in Horto” (“City in a Garden”) to “Ubi est Mea” (Latin for, “Where’s Mine?”), except for Hispanic people, it would be “¿Donde esta mio?”

It also doesn’t help Obama with Hispanic people that he was unknown outside of Illinois until 2004, and remained largely anonymous to the national public until last year.

PEOPLE WHO WANT to become a part of the establishment are not really interested in meeting anybody new. They want to know how to get an introduction to who controls power now. That is how they perceive Hillary Clinton – a candidate who along with her former president husband has a history of not being hostile (like some Republicans) to their interests.

For Obama to gain ground with these people, he’s going to have to push himself on them. He’s almost going to have to ram his ideas down their throats.

It is not a mistake that the only one of the two dozen states where elections took place Tuesday where Obama won a majority of the Hispanic population was his home state of Illinois. Exit polls showed Obama took 52 percent of the Hispanic vote in Illinois – much less than his 64 percent of the overall vote and 94 percent among African-Americans.

In Illinois, Obama is the incumbent U.S. senator who has been a very visible part of the government establishment that Hispanic people want to be a part of. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., was correct in telling WBBM-TV that the reason Illinois Hispanic people differed from their counterparts in other states is because, “we know Obama.”

IF OBAMA IS to get the same majority Hispanic support in remaining states with primary elections (Texas’ significant Latino population will vote March 4), he’s going to have to reach out to Hispanic people and make them feel as though they were a focal part of his vision.

Thus far, he hasn’t done that.

Admittedly, it’s not his fault. No one candidate can ever truly appeal to everybody. But in trying to gain the support of the Youth of America, the country’s more intellectual elements and bolster his support among African-American people (where Hillary Clinton once held a commanding edge), the Latino/Hispanic vote seems to be squeezed out.

The Obama camp’s liberal vision is flexible enough that it can be expanded to include Latinos, but that inclusion does not seem to be Barack’s priority. There are times when it seems his only outreach to Latinos is to provide a Spanish-language option for people who check out his website.

MANY HISPANIC PEOPLE figure they’re not going to make much of an effort to learn more about him, if he doesn’t seem to be reaching out to them.

Obama’s effort to increase his African-American support grates at some Hispanic people, particularly when they compare it to the lukewarm efforts the candidate has made to get the Latino vote. They feel like Barack has chosen someone else instead of them.

Now I know Latinos who have racial hang-ups (some are even my relatives). But it would be a mistake to let this devolve into an “us versus them” situation, which is what some people are trying to do.

Such talk plays into the hands of those people (mostly conservatives who want to view the world in terms of “us” and “them” – and generally think of all non-Anglo people as “them”) who want the Democratic primary elections to turn into a race war, of sorts, between the United States’ Latino and African-American populations.

WE NEED TO question the motivation of the people who bring this issue up.

Many of them want to label Hispanic people as some form of racists as a way of fracturing the Democratic party’s constituency, with the resulting strife giving a boost to the Nov. 4 election chances of whichever Republican wins the primary.

In reality, it is not African-American candidates whom Latino voters are opposed to. Our priority these days when we are in a voting booth is to cast ballots against the people who appear to be hostile toward our existence.

Even if the presidential bid of Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., had not collapsed early on (he quit campaigning weeks ago, but his name remained on the GOP primary ballot used in Tuesday’s Illinois elections), there would have been a serious effort to ensure that everybody with even the slightest touch of Latino blood in them would have voted for, “Anybody but Tom.”

LIKEWISE, IF DAIRY magnate (and now, Republican congressional nominee) James Oberweis ever follows through on the rumors that he will run for Illinois governor as a Republican after a term or two in Congress, he will get the “hostile” treatment if he ever tries to campaign in places like the South Chicago, Pilsen or Humboldt Park neighborhoods.

Latinos still remember how he pandered during his past campaigns (and even did a little in his most recent bid for the U.S. House seat being abandoned by retiring Rep. J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.) to the elements of our society who want to turn illegal immigration into some sort of problem caused by Hispanic people.

Hispanic people know who their political enemies really are.

Our “enemigo” is not Barack Obama. He just hasn’t done a good enough job of explaining that he really is our “amigo.”

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Moments like this 2007 on-air appearance on a Los Angeles radio station (http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2007/08/10/sot.obama.singing.cnn) have the potential to make Obama look ridiculous for Hispanic voters, if he’s not careful.

A comparison of the Obama (http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/espanol) and Clinton (http://www.hillaryclinton.com/es/) Internet presences “en Español” can be made by checking out the sites.

Some people might think of Barack Obama as the latest version of "the Greatest," but he's got a ways to go before Latino voters think of him that way.

"Eerie address" duo is now a trio

TINLEY PARK, Ill. – I took my first trip Tuesday out to the Brookside Marketplace shopping center and it hit me while driving through the center’s enormous parking lots – I now have another “eerie address” to add to my life story.

For those of you living in a cave these past four days, the shopping center was the site of a mass shooting at a Lane Bryant store that resulted in five women killed, and a sixth injured and being kept in protective custody – just on the off chance that someone might want her “taken out” to eliminate a quintuple murder witness.

“Eerie addresses” are what I call sites of vicious crimes that are in areas connected to my life. They are places I have passed many dozens, if not hundreds, of times in my life. No physical evidence remains of what happened there. But in my mind, the crime is on an endless loop.

BROOKSIDE MARKETPLACE IS a still-under-construction shopping center in the southwest suburb that has grown so much in the past decade that it has spilled over from Cook into Will county, including the mall.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart probably breathed a sigh of relief that this crime did not happen on his territory. Literally, though, had it happened on the east side of Harlem Avenue, or just to the north of the shopping center, it would have been a Cook County crime.
This aerial shot shows the proximity of the Brookside Marketplace (the red mark) to Interstate 80 and Harlem Avenue. The suspected gunman -- who remained at-large late Tuesday -- likely had no problem quickly escaping the Chicago area and spending Saturday night in Toledo, Ohio or Des Moines, Iowa, or anywhere else in the United States. Illustration provided by Yahoo Maps.

How does this affect me?

My mother lives in Tinley Park, just off of Harlem. She is exactly 20 blocks from the shopping center, and there have been times that I have taken her shopping there because it is only a five-minute drive (at most) from where she lives. There also have been times when my brother and I did Christmas shopping there.

I HAVE NEVER been in the particular Lane Bryant store where the Saturday shootings took place. But I knew exactly where it was, sitting all by its lonesome on the east edge of the shopping center. Most of the big stores, such as a Super Target and a newly-opened Kohl’s Department Store are on the west end.

In fact, I was physically in Tinley Park on Saturday at the time the shooting took place. I was spending time with my mother when I learned of the incident, and I saw some of the paranoia that overtook local residents.

A police officer literally parked his car at the west end of my mother’s block (the point where her street intersected with Harlem Avenue) and was giving a cursory check to everybody who tried to drive down the street.

I didn’t get harassed too much (maybe I just had an innocent look about me that day). But I heard the helicopters repeatedly flying overhead, as local officials were hopeful they might see something from above that would tip them off to the gunmen.

SHOPPING THERE WAS already a strange experience because the center (which has repeatedly been referred to in news coverage as a strip mall, but is way larger than the usual convenience and video store combinations that usually comprise mini-malls) is still under construction.

The Target has been up and running for about two years, but the Kohls and a Best Buy opened just a few months ago, and some stores are still being built.

Instead of being able to look forward to the day when the store is a fully-mature shopping experience, Brookside Marketplace will now always have an aura of creepiness to it, unless the mall’s owners are willing to adopt a go-with-the-flow attitude and allow the true-crime gawkers to take over the place.

So the 19000 block of Harlem Avenue in Tinley Park goes into my “eerie address” book, along with the 2300 east block of 100th Street in Chicago, and the 300 block of Yates Avenue in Calumet City.

THE FORMER WAS the site of one of the most notorious (and attention-grabbing) crimes in Chicago history when, in 1966, a merchant marine from Dallas named Richard Speck broke into a townhouse where nine student nurses at nearby South Chicago Community Hospital were living.

Eight of them were killed (one was brutally raped), and the only reason the ninth was able to survive was that she had the sense to hide under a bed. Speck, who apparently lost count of the women, left without doing anything to her.

Both sides of my family come from the South Chicago neighborhood. My parents were raised there and I was born there. I still have some relatives who live there.

There was once a time when going to grandma’s house meant driving along 100th street and passing “the Speck house.” It was a building whose sight I never will forget, along with the public park that was across the street.

I REMEMBER WHEN I first dug up the newspaper clippings about the crime as part of research for a school project (I was not quite one year old when the crime happened), what caught my attention was the note that police interviewed people in that park. In fact, had Cora Amurao not had the sense to hide under the bed, Speck likely would have gotten away with his crime – instead of spending the rest of his life in prison as the star of bootleg pornographic films.

Every time I drove by the eerie address after that, I could picture in my mind the police becoming extremely frustrated by their efforts because, “nobody saw nothin’.”

Even though the structure itself has since been torn down, I still know where it stood, and can picture it in my mind’s eye – even without driving east on 103rd street.

Then, there is Yates Avenue. I lived there when I was in high school, and my mother lived there for several more years before finally moving further away from Chicago proper.

I LIVED IN the middle of the block, and my mind can still picture the apartment building on the corner where on a late night in December 1987, the Calumet City police made Barney Fife look like a professional lawman.

On that night, a man who was seriously wasted on drugs (the kind that gave him way too much nervous energy, rather than put him to sleep) broke into an apartment unit, deciding he needed to have sexual contact with someone.

The woman who lived there ran out of the apartment screaming, and a neighbor called police. The woman’s 12-year-old daughter wound up suffering the brunt of the man’s sexual anger.

When police arrived, they had the mother telling them what was happening inside. They could hear screams from inside the building. Yet two rounds of police officers were hesitant to break in, out of fear they would be accused of over-reacting to the situation.

IT WASN’T UNTIL a third round of officers arrived at the scene that police entered the apartment, where they eventually had to use their clubs to beat the man off the girl.

I learned most of this detail two years later when the man was on trial in Cook County court in Markham. I was a reporter for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago at the time, and I covered the trial for the wire service.

At the time, my mother still lived on Yates Avenue. It creeped me out more than any other story I ever wrote about (and I was a reporter walking the streets of Winnetka trying to get information the day in 1988 that Laurie Dann broke into an elementary school with a pistol and began shooting students and a teacher, before finally shooting herself) because of its proximity.

But I can’t say I’m going to be packing up my mother’s belongings and moving her away from Brookside Marketplace. One of the things I learned from being a reporter is that there really are no safe places.

PEOPLE LIKE TO think they can find a neighborhood in Chicago or community elsewhere that is so secluded that no one can ever reach out to hurt them. Such places do not exist.

Something even happened when I lived in Springfield, Ill. One of my neighbors in the apartment complex where I lived became so enraged when he learned his wife was planning a trip to Las Vegas with another man that he went and got his gun, then refused to let her go.

The “hostage situation” in my apartment lasted about four hours, and I had to stand around outside waiting for police to let me back into my unit.

BUT THE 700 block of Bruns lane in Springfield doesn’t count as an “eerie address” for me because there were some tawdry details that made the story more pathetic, than chilling. Plus, no one got shot.

The bottom line is that bad things can happen anywhere. They are not restricted to the Englewood neighborhood, or some other place where “bad” people live (‘bad’ in this instance meaning, ‘not like me’).

They even happen in “extremely ordinary and dull” places like the Chicago suburbs.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Focusing attention on Tinley Park in the search for a gunman like local police are doing (http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/776717,CST-NWS-shoot05.article) could be a mistake. Brookside Marketplace is located on Harlem Avenue literally where the street intersects with Interstate 80.

Tinley Park Mayor Ed Zabrocki tries to calm the population (http://www.tinleypark.org/) of his village by telling them the obvious; evil can happen anywhere. But it is interesting to know that flags in the suburban village will remain at half-staff until Friday as a tribute to the dead.

For those of you who enjoy reading law enforcement attempts at writing in legalese, here (http://www.tinleyparkpolice.org/pdf/Lane%20Bryant%20update.pdf) is the latest update on the quintuple murders issued by the Tinley Park police department.