Governor Sarah Palin's denunciations of Senator Barack Obama's alleged links to former Weather Underground member and self-identified -- but never convicted -- bomber, William Ayers, make Cuban-American exile Max Lesnik's 76 year-old body shiver in anger. Palin's claim that Obama "pals around with terrorists" reminds him, he says, of the...

New York, NY -- Arun Gupta stood between the throngs of tourists and the small army of activists squeezing onto the narrow concrete island occupied largely by the 7,000 pound bronze Wall Street Bull and declared. "We're here to say no to the bailout."

Gupta, an editor at the New...

NEW YORK -- Sarah Palin's repetition (5 times) of the word "Alaska," her home state, during her acceptance speech last night may actually have sounded to some Latinos like "Aztlan," the mythical homeland of the Aztecs. If Lou Dobbs and other political prognosticators are right, Latinos' interpretation of the...

DENVER, Colo. - On the eve of the official nomination of presidential candidate Barack Obama, the son of an immigrant, some of the leading voices shaping the Democratic Party's immigration reform platform reveal a mix of reserved optimism and pragmatism.

While the Blue Dog Democrats -- a group of 47...

Recent debates around a possible and likely military build-up in Afghanistan have created some divisions and tensions within the movement to stop the war in Iraq. Though it is urgent and necessary to debate the pros and cons of exposing the Afghan people to more U.S. militarism, we should, with...

Just a week before Barack Obama's highly anticipated first tour of Europe and the Middle East as presidential candidate, CNN's Fareed Zakaria asked the Senator about the kinds of experiences that will inform his ability to occupy the most powerful foreign policy position on earth.

"...what is your first memory...

Recent reports about the protests and other activities planned for next month's Democratic National Convention (DNC) make me want to throw on a tie dye, smoke some sin semilla and blare the the song, Times They Are NOT a-Changin'.

My point is that, rather than frame the protests as a...

In the jubilation around the sensational release of Ingrid Betancourt and the other hostages from the FARC guerillas in Colombia, it's easy to ignore Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba. But with her reddened brown eyes bubbling with tears she tries to contain, Cordoba provides a unique view into the effects of...

Imran Ahmad (a pseudonym), a 29 year-old Pakistani computer scientist who can see the Statue of Liberty from his studio apartment in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood, says he no longer believes in the symbol of freedom cast in copper. "Freedom is relative. It depends on things like where you're from...

A recent story by Maribel Hastings of La Opinión newspaper provides the most comprehensive analysis yet of the similarities and differences between John McCain and Barack Obama around immigration policy. According to Hastings, "Both candidates support construction of a wall at the southern U.S. border. But the most important...

Superstar actress and singer Jennifer Lopez (J-Lo) was seen "slipping" into Barack Obama's Senate office for what the Hill called a "mysterious meeting". Asked by reporters about the purpose of her visit to the presumptive Democratic nominee, Lopez answered "I'm not ready to do any press yet".

Should she decide...

Another in what smells like the latest media-enabled Bush administration escalation of tensions with its perceived enemies, in this case the Venezuelan government and Hugo Chavez. The government of U.S. ally Alvaro Uribe, the bloodiest leader in the hemisphere thanks to more than $4 billion in U.S. military aid,...

Immigrants held in immigration detention facilities are not just suffering and dying because of the bad management documented so thoroughly in recent stories by the New York Times, the Washington Post and on 60 Minutes; they're suffering and dying because the situation of undocumented in the U.S. bears more than...

The battle for immigrant rights rages daily in the heart, mind and lanky 10 year-old frame of Chelsea resident and May Day marcher, Norma Canela. Norma's mother Olivia illegally crossed the borders of Guatemala, Mexico and the U.S. almost eleven years ago from Honduras. Born shortly after her mom came...

Today's acquittal of the 3 police officers accused of killing Sean Bell in November of 2006 will complicate Barack Obama's efforts to win the presidency in November 2008. His candidacy already mired in the racial machinations of his opponents, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Obama will find himself having...

At the center of today's "Three Amigos" Summit in New Orleans between George W. Bush and his homologues, Mexico's Felipe Calderon and Stephen Harper of Canada, is the sovereignty-swallowing nexus between trade, migration and military policy.As mentioned in the Times Picayune, Bush and Calderon held bilateral talks today in...

Two hours after starting his new job at a food processing plant in 2006, Fernando Tinoco got fired. "I went to work, felt really good to have a new job and started going to it," says Tinoco, a 53-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Chicago. "And then they called...

"He [King George] has erected a multitude of new offices and set hither swarms of officers to harass out people and eat out their subsistence." The Declaration of Independence, 1776

I. Building Up the Domestic Security Apparatus

Most explanations of the relentless pursuit of undocumented immigrants since...

Barack Obama's speech in Philadelphia eloquently displayed how the Obama and Clinton campaigns are divided by race idealism versus race realism.

Combining the statesman's calm cadences with the reverend's passion, Obama delivered what was arguably the crispest, most important delineation of U.S. race relations by a presidential candidate since Abraham...

In their harried pursuit of Latino votes in previous and in upcoming primaries like that in Texas, candidates Obama and Clinton have added another to the still-growing string of records broken this election year: number of times the phrase "Si se puede" has been used in a U.S. presidential election