“Long lines of illegal immigrants…stretched for blocks in cities around the country on Wednesday as they sought to apply for a new federal initiative. Thousands waited at Navy Pier in Chicago.” (Photo courtesy NYTimes, Nathan Weber)
Growing up in Texas, being a product of the Texas public school system, I don’t know many people who didn’t know a DREAMer. They are our neighbors and our classmates, and none of us really had a second thought about it because they aren’t alien. They aren’t gum that America needs to scrape off its shoes. They’re people, who go to the same classes you did, drive the same roads, eat the same food, and pledge allegiance to the same flag.
I know a lot of people have said, and heard, that the last four years haven’t brought the hope and change they were promised. Maybe for those people the Bush Administration was just a nuisance for 8 years. For me, it was my adolescence. In 6th grades classmates yelled at me, threatened to beat me up, said I wasn’t a “real Texan” because my dad voted for Al Gore. Shortly after I’d come out to my family, in the heat of the 2004 reelection campaign, the President from my home state said he’d support a constitutional amendment discriminating against what’s in a person’s heart, including mine. In the last four years, change has come. Men and women can serve their country without feeling shame for what’s in their heart, and without fear of the people whose lives they put their trust into finding out. For the first time in history, I have a true blue ally in the White House. I have a President who has the guts to say I’m just like you and you can’t dictate how I live.
Yesterday, I got to see change happening for another community, a community of people I’ve been personally connected to that I wholly support and welcome to America. I guess my point is, latino guys are really cute and God bless America.
To register to vote and find out what you need to bring to the voting booth in Nov., visit GottaVote.org now.
