I am Pablo

A film by YTC students at Youth Connections Leadership Academy. They participated YTC’s After School Matter’s film program - they were challenged to come up with a topic, to film and then edit. What you see below is the fruit of their labor!

I finally figured out how to get videos recorded by Media Center onto my Zune! ZuneTVWatcher did the trick! So I loaded up the Zune with the last 3 weeks worth of Colbert Report and The Daily Show. I was watching this one on the way in to work today - was literally laughing out loud! 401-Que? Brilliant!

I wanted to congratulate Mila for becoming a US citizen! Ready to vote in the next election!?

Glad I could be there for the ceremony, it was a memorable experience! By the way - I can’t remember the last time I stated the pledge of allegiance!

Chicago Immigration March - May 1, 2007

Click Above for Album

Crowd estimated at 150,000 in Chicago -CNN

The first picture of the album shows the view from my office, the amount of people was staggering! Of course, getting down into the crowd was even more overwhelming! At the same time it was peaceful - families, friends, neighbors… American flags everywhere! As I walked back to my office, first up Congress then up Michigan - both streets closed off for the march - I realized how lucky I am to live in this city! These are interesting times!

Click here for Live ABC Coverage!

Its been one year since last year’s march - hard to believe! The chopper is taking live shots of the throngs of people crossing 90/94 on Washington as I write this! I’m planning on heading over myself in about 15 min to see and take part in what is going on!

The immigrant community has united again to march for:

• legalization and a path to earned citizenship for the undocumented.
• reunification of families divided by broken immigration laws
• a moratorium on the immigration raids separating families
• condemn President Bush’s anti-family “Z-visas”

ICIRR.org

Katty’s first live studio interview on Telemundo Chicago the day after mid-term elections!

Another pre-taped interview on Univision

She will probably kill me for posting these but I just had to as I’m so proud of her for everything that she has done since she started at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights - she did a fantastic job in both of these interviews and I couldn’t be more thrilled for her! Congratulations Katty!

As far as a transcript of said interviews - I think I’ll wait until Google Labs comes up with a live audio translation program!

I received a disturbing phone call from Katty this morning. Apparently Immigration and Customs Enforcement (aka ICE) detained a number of undocumented immigrants last night. The news itself was disturbing in light of the highly political climate just weeks before mid-term elections. But even more disturbing was the manner in which the suspects were detained. ICE officers entered a Chicago bound train car - at random - and started asking those who looked Latino and African for documentation. Those who were not able to provide documentation were detained until they could provide said information. This is wrong on so many levels I don’t even know where to begin! Who of us brings our passport everywhere they go? If the ICE officers thought that I looked Latino - I would have been detained! Since when can a federal US agency get away with such blatant discrimination!? How far are we from the point that all immigrants and visitors to our country will be required to wear some sort of identifying patch?!

ARRGH!! Am I the only one so incredible frustrated with the direction this country seems to be going?!

They just announced that the people marching today for Immigration reform in Chicago have exceeded 600,000!! We are making history in Chicago!! I just took this picture of the people arriving, and that isn’t even the larger group of people who should be arriving to Grant Park in ~10 minutes! I’ll be posting more pictures as more people arrive!

Here is a shot of my “workstation” from behind the press line. The monstrous speakers are behind us,.so I’ll probably be deaf by the time this is all said and done! (I know, not much of a change from the norm!)