Bilingual Ranting Live In DC—"Million Immigrant March"
09/07/2006
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Jamie Contreras is making a bilingual speech now on C-Span.[Watch it live.] This is a boring process where he says everything twice. Once in English, and once in Spanish.

If this catches on, it's going to cause a lot of pain for those of who have to listen to political speeches. A similar procedure has been in place in Canada for years, and drives people nuts.(Contreras is a union leader who came to the US illegally from El Salvador, when he was a teenager.)

He's part of the National Capital Immigration Coalition, who doing some kind of "Million Immigrant March " today.

Contreras just made a point that Steve Sailer has made about the Hispanic vote; that six million people who are naturalized citizens didn't bother to vote. Bruce Gordon of the NAACP is making a speech, (aargh) his Spanish resembles John Wayne's or Johnny Cash's.

He said "They want to pit black against brown."

The female translator translated this phrase as "Negros contra Latinos."Perhaps she thought some of the audience might not appreciate being called "brown."

Now the speaker is Eliseo Medina, who's talking about the march he led on Dennis Hastert's office in Chicago.

He wants more Hispanic voters, too. (See Electing A New People)

Congressman Luis Gutierrez is on now.

Congressman Mike Honda is speaking, (he's Japanese-American) and he speaks excellent Spanish, especially compared to the NAACP speakers.

There was a slip where he said "Africanos" and immediately corrected himself, saying "Africanos-Americanos."

Sheila Jackson Lee is up now—she can't say "Si se puede" very well.

John Wilhelm, a white labor leader, who says that they can't open the doors of hotels without immigrant workers. He refrains from attempting Spanish, but brings up a couple of UNITE-HERE members to speak it for him.

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