LA VERGÜENZA DE NO SER MEXICANO

Mientras aquí en México las buenas conciencias se rasgan las
vestiduras por las acciones de resistencia civil pacífica que llevan
a cabo en todo el territorio nacional simpatizantes de Andrés Manuel
López Obrador y las consideran una auténtica vergüenza, un peligro
que pudiera generar nerviosismo internacional y la consecuente falta
de inversiones, algunos analistas tienen una visión muy diferente
del clima postelectoral que se vive en México después del 2 de
julio.
David Swanson, reconocido periodista norteamericano, publicó el
pasado 2 de agosto uno de las más inteligentes reflexiones sobre las
acciones de defensa del voto que se están llevando a cabo en México
después de las serias dudas que arrojó la elección presidencial.
Lo tituló "La vergüenza de no ser mexicano" (http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=12026)
y en él, Swanson se lamenta de la falta de movilización ciudadana
del pueblo norteamericano después de la fraudulenta elección que
llevó a George W Busch a ocupar la presidencia de los Estados Unidos
y las consecuencias que para ese país y para el resto del mundo tuvo
el hecho de que los electores ahí no hayan tenido el valor para
salir a las calles a defender el sentido de su voto.
A continuación le traduzco la parte central de las reflexiones de
Swanson:

"En los Estados Unidos ninguno de los dos grandes partidos ha
nombrado jamás un candidato de, para, o por los pobres".
"Sin embargo hemos establecido un patrón de elecciones robadas y NO
hemos tomado nuestra capital para demandar justicia".
"Este sólo hecho me hace ahora mismo avergonzarme de no ser
mexicano".
"Los mexicanos están haciendo lo único sensato que pueden hacer para
prevenir un deslizamiento a peligros más serios".
"Aquí en Estados Unidos, sin embargo, no sólo tenemos elecciones
robadas. La Casa Blanca ha eliminado al Congreso y a la Suprema
Corte de cualquier actuación seria en nuestro gobierno, sin
mencionar que el Congreso se ha dado la vuelta y no quiere ejercer
resistencia".
"Nuestro no-electo presidente ha revertido 800 leyes del Congreso,
acabado con la mitad del Acta de Derechos, lanzado una guerra basada
en mentiras, facilitado otra, encarcelado a gente sin ningún cargo
ni proceso y la ha torturado, y ha lanzado operaciones masivas de
espionaje fuera de la ley".
"Y no hemos llenado las calles".

Sí, la defensa del voto que lleva a cabo la izquierda mexicana y que
las buenas conciencias consideran como prácticas antidemocráticas,
arcaicas y salvajes, son ponderadas por quienes se han formado en
sistemas democráticos que son considerados como mucho más avanzados
y estables que la incipiente democracia mexicana.
Por eso, la intención panista de convertir a la sociedad mexicana en
pasiva e indiferente ante lo que considera injusto, es propia de
aquellos regímenes totalitarios incapaces de entender que la
expresión libre de la inconformidad es un signo inequívoco de
madurez social.
¿Será un adelanto del sello particular del próximo gobierno?

Aqui la version completa "in inglich"



The Shame of Not Being Mexican
David Swanson


David Swanson is a co-founder of After Downing Street, a writer and
activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. He is a
board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and serves on the
Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild,
TNG-CWA.


David Swanson
August 2, 2006

I'll grant you that in the United States our two big political
parties never nominate a candidate of, by, or for poor people.
Nonetheless, we have now established a pattern of stolen elections,
and we have NOT taken over our nation's capital to demand justice.
This fact alone would make me ashamed right now not to be a Mexican.
The Mexicans are doing the only sensible thing they can, the only
thing that can prevent a slide into far more serious dangers.

Here in the United States, however, we don't just have stolen
elections. Our nation's capital is home to a White House that has
eliminated the Congress and the Supreme Court from any serious role
in our government, not to mention a Congress that has rolled over
and refused to resist. Our unelected president has reversed 800 acts
of Congress, torn up half the Bill of Rights, launched an illegal
war based on lies, facilitated another one, locked people up without
charge or trial and tortured them, and launched massive spying
operations outside the rule of law. And, yet, we do not fill the
streets.

This Sunday, the truly dedicated will take up residence anew at Camp
Casey in Crawford, Texas. On September 5, Camp Casey will move to
the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and expand into Camp
Democracy – an attempt to force fundamental change. One of the
groups that will play a lead role in Camp Democracy is immigrants
and activists for immigrants' rights. Some immigrants' rights groups
will also hold a rally and march in DC on September 7. In recent
months, the ability of immigrants to turn out and march in the
United States has shamed all native-born agitators for justice.

Not only do we all need to learn from the immigrants' rights
movement. We all need to get behind it and support it. The anti-war
movement, in particular, should be backing the cause of immigrants'
rights with everything we've got. And when non-immigrants lobby
their elected representatives on any other issue, they should always
raise the cause of immigrants' rights as well. Because their cause
is our cause. Americans' willingness to abuse Iraqis is not separate
from our willingness to discriminate against Muslim Americans and
Americans of Arab or Mexican descent. This time it's not "first they
came for the communists, then they came for the Jews." This time,
it's "first they came for the immigrants."

And that is the point at which to stop it.

Halliburton is building detention camps for "immigration
emergencies." But what are those? An expansion of NAFTA? A surge in
global warming? Or are they the sort of emergencies in which
segments of our population become guilty until proven innocent?

My Congressman, Republican Bush-follower Virgil Goode, recently put
out a statement arguing for allowing the minimum wage to continue to
decrease because restoring any of its value would attract immigrants
to this country. Goode can't seriously imagine that anyone doesn't
realize that non-immigrants, too, are affected by the minimum wage.
It's just that we've reached the point at which fear of immigrants
is expected to persuade us to abuse ourselves, to pick up the chains
and voluntarily slip them on. Bush's new proposal for detaining
people without charge or probable cause or access to an attorney
targets citizens, not just immigrants. We are all in this together,
including the Iraqis and the Lebanese and the Palestinians. Only a
people that has been trained to fear and abuse others could tolerate
what our government is doing to those peoples. Recent immigrants
know this better than the rest of us, and we should be recruiting
them into the peace movement.

(And, by the way, has anyone nationally noticed that progressive
pro-peace Democratic candidate Al Weed is rapidly closing in on
Goode in the polls?)

Last week an angry Muslim attacked a Jewish institution in Seattle. >The Council on American Islamic Relations released a statement
urging us not to bring the war home. But the war is, from the start,
home. The war is in the heart of every American not camped out in
our nation's capital demanding an end to the insanity and a
restoration of the rule of law.

Did you know that many immigrants join the U.S. military as a step
toward citizenship (or death)? Did you know that when people become
citizens, they must answer whether they've ever been a communist or
a homosexual? Did you know that they still can never become
president… because then we would have needed to ask whether they'd
ever slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Arabs or lied to Congress
or tortured innocent prisoners.

Did you know that this nation is almost entirely one of immigrants
and the descendants of slaves, that recent immigrants do not drain
our economy -- the war does; that the criminals are in DC, not on
the border; and that the "Immigration Problem" is a problem of
discrimination and fear mongering, not criminality. If we didn't
want Mexicans to come north, why did we NAFTA them? Even Ross Perot
has to have understood that giant sucking sounds are heard on both
sides of a border erased by corporate greed, even if rebuilt by the
corporate military.

As my friend Travis Morales points out, the current debate in
Congress and the media is over how to make things worse. The polls
focus on how sad we should be if no immigration bill is passed
during this Congress. But, as long as all the bills take us back to
a formal system of apartheid, to a legalized second-class status,
should we be sorry not to see them pass?

If we are going to change the debate, we are going to have to join
forces and recognize that this is all one movement. Immigrants
should not be afraid of opposing the war – opposing the war is
majority opinion, and the stronger it grows, the more minds are
moved away from xenophobia and racism. Peace activists should not be
afraid of immigrants' rights, and should never expect to win respect
for distant unseen Iraqis if we cannot win it for present refugees
from NAFTA.

Nor should any of us back away from "raising" the minimum wage,
which CBS says has 85% support. That's the same percentage of
Americans who back single-payer health care, the solution still
feared by the man who had his election stolen in 2004.

Halting global warming, reforming elections and the media, restoring
the right to organize a union, beginning impeachment investigations
– these are all majority positions led by campaigns that sometimes
fail to take on each other's causes for fear of alienating
supporters. This fear is self-defeating.

It is all one movement and will succeed as one movement at
www.campdemocracy.org