I am Pablo

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

…do they make a sound? A similar question is if today’s media giants decide not to cover somebody - will that person make the news?

It was only meant to be a weeklong ban — not the boldest of journalistic initiatives, and one, we realized, that might seem hypocritical once it ended. And it wasn’t based on a view of what the public should be focusing on — the war in Iraq, for example, or the upcoming election of the next leader of the free world, as opposed to the doings of a partygoing celebrity heiress/reality TV star most famous for a grainy sex video.

No, editors just wanted to see what would happen if we didn’t cover this media phenomenon, this creature of the Internet gossip age, for a full week. After that, we’d take it day by day. Would anyone care? Would anyone notice? And would that tell us something interesting? CNN.com

Though this is an interesting experiment, in the end, a week long ban is just that - a week long. I don’t think it will really change the news in any big way. Sure, I didn’t hear about her birthday party in Vegas or Beverly Hills… but, as her life doesn’t interest me at all, I’m sure I wouldn’t have read about it anyway. Maybe it wasn’t thrown out in all of the magazines or newspapers for the world to see, but does anybody really care?

I decided to do a Technorati search to see if there has been less blog “coverage” during the ban:

Posts that contain “Paris Hilton “ per day for the last 30 days.

Ok, so maybe there was a bit of a lull - bloggers posting less than 1000 entries per day during that week - it’ll be interesting to see how that changes over time.

Does this show that the media creates these monsters? Does it show that the world only cares about what the media feeds us? An interesting experiment… but wouldn’t we be much better served if they just stopped covering her all together?

If a celebrity falls in the forest… I don’t really care!

As Valentine’s Day is upon us, I saw this article on CNN.com and just had to post it!

When you fall in love, “exactly the same system becomes active as when you take cocaine. You can feel intense elation when you’re in love. You can feel intense elation when you’re high on cocaine.”…
…The scientists found that women in love had more activity than men in the areas of the brain that govern memories. Dr. Fisher theorizes that this is a “female mechanism for mate choice.” There are no visual clues for whether a man is fertile, but if a woman really studies a man and remembers things about his behavior, she can try to determine whether he’d make a reliable mate and father.

Thus, if it sometimes seems like a woman remembers everything — good and bad — about a man, “it’s not just her being picky. It’s an old Darwinian evolutionary strategy.” CNN.com

Damn you Evolution! ;)

Happy Valentine’s day to all!

Mr. Colbert giving the dreaded “double wag” of his fingers to the iPhone. Saw this last night and just had to post it. Hilarious!

As far as collective wood goes - Technorati reveals 14,235 blog posts on the iPhone. It is currently the number 1 search and number 5 tag. Though initially quite erect the chart below demonstrates flaccidity over time:

# of iPhone blog posts by day

Godspeed: a wish for a prosperous journey, success, and good fortune.

While paging through the usual drivel in the RedEye on my way to work this morning, I stumbled through an article about Bush and his plans for Iraq. Suddenly I saw something that made this war more real to me than ever before..

Under Bush’s plan, thousands of troops will be alerted that they may be needed in Iraq - including units already there whose service would be extended, or others that could be sent earlier than initially scheduled, said one official.

Moving first into Iraq would be the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, which is now in Kuwait and poised to head quickly into the country, the defense official said. The Brigade, numbering about 3,500 troops, is based at Ft. Bragg, N.C.

One of those 3,500 troops is my friend, Liam. I had received word of his deployment late one night in December. I had returned late from a party and I immediately tried to call him, with no regard to what time it was or how drunk I sounded. I left him a voicemail and we had been playing phone tag ever since. I had no idea his deployment was coming up so quickly. On January 2nd I received a phone call from his wife Danielle who filled me in on his deployment and also told me that he wished he could have spoken to me before leaving. I too wish that could have happened. Instead I had a wonderful conversation with her, with his new baby boy cooing in the background - united their family is stronger, no matter the distance.

It has been far too easy for me to disassociate myself from what is going on in Iraq. Now that this has happened, I feel a new conviction to support those who have gone to fight for our country, regardless of how I feel about the choices that this administration has made. For every one of the 3,500 troops from the 82nd Airborne division, there is a family… there is a story… there is strength. The same can be said about the hundreds of thousands of troops already in Iraq.

Please join me in wishing Liam, as well as the rest of the troops Godspeed.
We are there with you in heart and spirit. When you return your family and friends will be waiting with open arms, and the bar will be waiting with two Gin and Tonics for us both.

It is a shame we didn’t get to speak before you left - but I am there with you now and will be here upon your return. Godspeed, my friend.

Technorati Tags: iraq, war, troops, deployment, godspeed

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!

Voter #84 in my district. They were the paper ballots where you fill in the arrow. Go out and vote!

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?!

I just happened upon Lou Dobbs’ commentary on CNN:

But there is additional uncertainty about the outcome of our elections that is intolerable and inexcusable, and which could make the contested 2000 presidential election look orderly by comparison. As of right now, there is little assurance your vote will count. As we’ve been reporting almost nightly on my broadcast for more than a year, electronic voting machines are placing our democracy at risk.

Across the nation, eight out of every 10 voters will be casting their ballots this November on electronic voting machines. And these machines time and again have been demonstrated to be extremely vulnerable to tampering and error, and many of them have no voter-verified paper trail.

There is simply no way in which election officials and their staffs of thousands of volunteers with limited experience and often poor training can possibly carry out reliable recounts.

…When voters lose confidence in our elected representatives, we can vote the bums out. But what is the recourse if American voters lose confidence in our electoral system?

Voting at risk? I should say so! Not that this is new news, but it is worth noting. What can we do about it? I’m not really sure. I’m still trying to figure out if Illinois has moved to electronic voting. For now I’m going to register to vote (as I just moved) and hope for the best.

A few links of interest:
Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine - Princeton University
Cracking a Diebold in 4 min with 12 dollars

For those video lovers out there!