Why Latinos Want to Dump Bush (art by Victor Velez)

Why Latinos Want to Dump Bush

In this issue...

• Why Latinos Want to Dump Bush

• No Where Else to Go: Latino Youth and the Poverty Draft

• Finding Freedom: The Struggle for Puerto Rican Independence

• Hip Hop Roots: Interview with Raquel Rivera

• Union on Demand

• Letters

• Nobody Asked Me, But...

• Marxist Quiz

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As the November 2 election comes closer it is clear that Latino voters will be a critical element of the growing forces opposing the Bush administration and Republican control of Congress. At the beginning of 2004 anti-Bush forces were worried about the Latino vote because of support for Bush reported by opinion polls in the wake of 9/11.

Military recruiters are well aware that the economic situation for Latino youth is relatively bleak and have targeted Latino communities as one of the primary objectives for their efforts in coming decades. The targeting of Latino youth for military recruitment was initiated by former Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera who once declared that "Hispanics have a natural inclination for military service."

Raquel Rivera’s groundbreaking book New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone is of the first works that seriously studies the impact of Latinos on hip hop music and culture and conversely of hip hop on Latinos. She is currently working with writer and visual artist Tanya Torres on a collection of essays inspired by New York Puerto Rican artists and cultural workers, tentatively titled De un Pájaro Las Dos Patas y Otros Ensayos or Two Feet of the Same Bird and Other Essays.

The struggle to get rid of the US Navy in Vieques gripped the Puerto Rican communities in the US as well as in Puerto Rico like no other issue has in recent times.This struggle showed the connections of the Puerto Rican communities in the United States with the Puerto Rican nation in Puerto Rico.

The right of workers to organize into unions is a cornerstone of modern democracy. In the United States the fight for this basic right has been a central thread of class and democratic struggles for well over a hundred years. It has also been a constant struggle.