SI! SE! PUEDE!!

As Chris was saying tonight, we have no idea what America will be like in two years, a simultaneously terrifying and uplifting thought. But the immigration rights movement will have a profound and glorious impact on the landscape–yesterday I descended on Union Square to one of the most overwhelming experiences I’ve had maybe ever– thousands of people boycotting work, waving flags–Mexico, Puerto Rico, USA, Haiti, Trinidad, everywhere–a critical mass chanting “SI SE PUEDE!” I couldn’t help but cry, not weep publicly as I am wont to do but full-on guttural barf-cries, and everyone was so emotional it didn’t even feel out of place, and I had just heard the “Nuestro Himno,” and was listening to different versions of “Cielito Lindo” all day, trying to find the prettiest and saddest one, cuz I miss and love my grandma and she sang that to me as I slept when I was little, and she would have been so happy and proud to have witnessed today. “Immigrants Built America” and it’s true, my grandpa worked something like 430 days straight, sometimes double-shifts, on the Union Pacific Railroad until he died in the ’40s, i believe, and my grandma slang tortillas off her front stoop to keep all the kids fed, even up to after I was born, selling packages of torts for i think $2 a dozen, collecting on grandpa’s ss money, living in a now sadly-demolished house purchased by my uncle’s WWII pay, my uncle btw who had to change his name to O’Day (after Anita O’Day!) because he couldn’t be Mexican and a fighter pilot.
Now I am rambling and I have many things to do but SI SE PUEDE. A big F to the Mexican gov’t and to GW Bush and love to immigrants everywhere and I will do what I can. More to come.
Also-if anyone actually read my pitchfork column–i forgot you should definitely listen to La Rumeur, too, re: French hip-hop that i recently dug the shit out of. Saian Supa Crew put out a good album too last year but I liked the others better because they were more electronic, i am a snob and i can’t speak french that well. but La Rumeur are basically the dead prez of Paris, to make a lazy ass comparison, although their political lyrics are a little more nuanced when you figure that shit out, like put it in a translator. They are fierce.