NCLR President and CEO, Janet Murguía's Speech at the 2010 NCLR Capital Awards

Full Text

2010 Capital Awards Speech

As Hispanic Americans, we have so much to be proud of, so much to be thankful for and so much to look forward to.

We are rich in culture, strong in family, faith and service, and passionate in our dream to live the American dream.

I am proud to live in a country where that dream is not only possible but is the expectation of every American.

As a community, we've come a long way.

We naturalized, we registered, we got out the vote, and I'm proud to say....

Ten million Latinos voted in 2008...a stunning 32 percent increase over the last presidential contest.

Latinos reshaped the electoral map to the presidency... and had a profound effect on state and local elections across the country.

And this year we'll have a greater impact by being fully counted in the Census.

I am happy to say that our vote gave us a seat at the table where American policy is made.

We are making progress slowly but surely -- like on the Chip program that provided hundreds of thousands of children with health insurance last year -- and with a record number of Latino political appointees, culminating in the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor as the country's first Latina Supreme Court Justice.

That being said, we have much left to do.

At a time when large numbers of Americans are struggling to keep their homes, we are stymied by politics as usual.

At a time when millions of Americans are out of work, Washington is gridlocked.

At a time when hundreds of thousands are sick or dying because they lack access to health care, Congress is stuck in a two-year game of status quo.

Robert Kennedy once quoted an ancient Chinese curse that says in part, "May you live in interesting times." Lately, I feel like he was referring specifically to us.

Inaction is simply not acceptable.
Not for our community.
Not for our country.

No is not an option. Not when so many of our people survive at the margins of our economic system.

If the economy is hurting -- our communities are hurting even more. If healthcare is inaccessible -- it evades our people more.

If the housing market is in crisis -- you can bet our community is on the knife's edge of foreclosure.

In fact, the U.S. unemployment rate now stands at 10 percent.

For Latinos, it is nearly 13.
For African Americans, it is 16 percent.

One third of all Latinos have no health insurance and in the last decade, nearly one million African Americans died from the lack of heath care.

Over the next four years, 1.3 million Latino families will lose their homes through foreclosure.

We know a house is more than bricks and mortar. Our research shows that foreclosure takes a toll on our families in many ways.

Think back to the first house you lived in and what it meant to your childhood. How important was that structure to you, however small it was.

A home is security, stability.
It is shelter.
It is a foundation for our families.

Families break apart from the fallout of foreclosure.

And when families are destabilized, whole neighborhoods and communities are put in peril.

The failure to act means real people get hurt.

That is the cost of inaction.

That is what we pay for the politics of gridlock and obstruction.

That is what we pay for the politics of no.

And yes, that goes for immigration too.

I’m often asked how can we keep pressing for comprehensive immigration reform in such a divisive political climate?

How can we push when so many things on our country's agenda are left undone?

My answer is: How can we not?

How can we ignore the plight of families whose lives are in limbo?

How can we turn our backs on thousands of promising young students who just want the chance to go to college?

Just because it's politically tough?

Just because it's hard?

I don't think so.

Congress' inaction on immigration, resulted in people better left on the fringe of American political debate -- hate groups and those with ties to white supremacy -- appearing suddenly on cable television news and within the political mainstream.

Fueled by the extreme and hateful rhetoric that has infected the immigration debate, harsh local anti-immigrant measures were pushed by politicians and media all too willing to whip up public anger to jack up their poll numbers or pump up their ratings.

In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, the first Conference of the Tea Party Movement chose former Congressman Tom Tancredo to be its opening speaker.

Tancredo not only openly mocked Latino and African-American voters, he advocated restoring the historic barriers that kept our African American brothers and sisters from the ballot.

He called for the reinstitution of literacy tests for voting.

It should give everyone pause to see growing movements in this country embrace the politics of hate.

Because when political leaders and the news media demonize immigrants as a threat to our way of life, when they tell us falsely that immigrants bring disease and crime to our communities, when they tell us the fiction that immigrants are subversive and a threat to the sovereignty of the United States, it should be no surprise that people take matters into their own hands.

Over the past five years, hate crimes against Latinos have spiked.

Hate groups targeting Latinos have flourished.

The failure to act has created a climate of fear where anyone who is Hispanic is threatened whether they are citizens of this country or not.

Last year, Marcelo Lucero a resident of Patch-ogue, NY was stabbed to death by a group of young teenagers, shouting ethnic slurs.

Suffolk County police said that the defendants told them they just wanted to beat up someone who looked Hispanic.

The Lucero case is not unique. Hate crimes like this are playing out in communities across America... like the horrific death of Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania.

These incidents should serve as a wakeup call for America.

And some of it hits very close to home.

A New Jersey man known online as Devilfish 579 was recently indicted for threatening the lives of key leaders of Latino Civil Rights organizations including LULAC, MALDEF and NCLR.

I want to thank Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez, for pursuing this case and for reopening the case in Shenandoah.

Every day we fail to act on immigration, our people and our organizations get hurt. That is why we will continue to fight for immigration reform.

It is a moral imperative; it is the right thing to do.

We are a better country than is reflected by our political discourse.

The irony is that most Americans are on our side.

Americans want access to healthcare. They want jobs. They want to fix our broken immigration system.

Step outside Washington and you will find that most people want less politics and more solutions.

They voted for change; they deserve more from Washington.

As a nation, we cannot sit idly by and watch as communities flounder beneath the political tides.

We cannot shrug our shoulders and say, well, that's just the way Washington works.

We need to bring the message home that the politics of no, is no longer acceptable.

America deserves better than this.

Our values as Americans compel us to make sure that families are not torn apart, that workers are not harassed or exploited for simply wanting to work and that people are not hurt or killed just because of where they come from or what they look like.

Those values unite us as Americans and keep us working towards solutions.

And when we unite, we make a difference.

Over the last several years, Lou Dobbs' nightly assault on Hispanics and immigration provoked outrage from across America. We turned that outrage into action.

Thousands signed petitions.

Viewers expressed their frustration during a series of CNN promotional events.

And NCLR and others went to advertisers and asked them to disassociate their brands from a show that regularly disparaged their best customers.

Dozens of corporations quietly withdrew their ads.

And, on November 11, 2009, Lou Dobbs broadcast his last show on CNN.

Lou Dobbs no longer has a platform on CNN to attack Latinos because we came together, because we were united, and because we used our political and economic clout to make our case.

So let's stay together.

Let's stay united to combat the politics of NO.

We will march again.

We will engage.

We will represent.

We will advocate.

We will register.

We will be counted.

We will vote.

And we will not give up!

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