In this episode [Dan Bongino] address the disturbing role of the CIA in the plot to spy on Donald Trump. I also address the latest moves on the Canadian truckers.
On Friday, Special Counsel John Durham filed a motion relating to a defense firm’s potential conflict of interest in the Michael Sussmann case. The conflict itself is certainly intriguing, with Sussmann’s lawyers at Latham & Watkins LLP (Latham) having represented potential witnesses in the case, including Perkins Coie, former Perkins Coie (and Clinton Campaign general counsel) Marc Elias, the Hillary Clinton Campaign, and Hillary for America.
The issue that made more noise, however, was Durham’s disclosure that Rodney Joffe – a contractor with deep ties to the Clintons, and what appears to be a deep hatred for Trump – had exploited Executive Office of the President of the United States data he obtained from a “sensitive arrangement” with the U.S. Government to damage President Trump. Here is our initial post on the topic…….
After all, we know that the Hillary Clinton Campaign paid for the Steele dossiers and the work by Fusion GPS. This was arranged through their attorneys (and the DNC attorneys) at Perkins Coie – notably Mark Elias and Michael Sussmann. Elias left the firm this summer. Sussmann was indicted in September 2021 by Special Counsel Durham for giving false statements to the FBI as he was pushing them to investigate the Alfa Bank/Trump hoax.
It is highly likely that the Clinton Campaign was receiving updates on the Fusion GPS/Christopher Steele work once they were hired by Perkins Coie in the spring of 2016. This is work the client – the Clinton Campaign – paid for. (The sharing of this info would be consistent with the Clinton Campaign – notably Jake Sullivan – receiving backchannel updates on the Alfa Bank hoax.)
If the Clinton Campaign was being informed of the work by Fusion GPS, what of the likelihood that the Clinton Campaign was informing the work of Fusion GPS? It was Clintons’ idea to link Trump and Russia in the first place. To develop that theory, associates of the Clinton Campaign (Sidney Blumenthal) were working to corroborate parts of the dossier.
With that in mind, I offer you this bit of information provided by the New York Times in September (emphasis added) suggesting the complicity of the Clinton Campaign:
Some of the questions that Mr. Durham’s team has been asking in recent months — including of witnesses it subpoenaed before a grand jury, according to people familiar with some of the sessions — suggest he has been pursuing a theory that the Clinton campaign used Perkins Coie to submit dubious information to the F.B.I. about Russia and Mr. Trump in an effort to gin up investigative activity to hurt his 2016 campaign. (Emphasis added.)
Most of the actual Democratic National Convention events take place during daytime hours. And if you saw what they were saying during the day, you might flee the country.
A panelist at the Democratic National Convention says: “We’re talking about abolishing the police…ICE…prisons.” From a virtual panel at the Democratic National Convention on 8/18/2020.
Democratic National Convention panelist Ashley McCray explains how she wants to use the Green New Deal to further the “destruction” of capitalism. During a meeting of the Youth Council of the Democratic National Committee on 8/17/2020.
(Another “God Damn America!” speech) A pastor at the DNC convention said that America “may well go to hell” if we don’t have open borders, when he appeared at the DNC virtual convention on 8/17/2020.
At the Democratic National Convention, Democratic- Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders bragged that his “radical” ideas are now “mainstream” in Joe Biden’s Democrat party, when he spoke at the DNC on 8/17/2020.
Most of the actual Democratic National Convention events take place during daytime hours. And if you saw what they were saying during the day, you might flee the country.
Mark Levin slams the choice by Tom Perez to sue the Trump admin. This opens up soo much legalities (counter lawsuits, discovery, depositions, and the like) that will allow the Republicans and the Trump administration to focus on the Clinton Foundation, the Steele Dossier, and all the other avenues that Democrats used to try and stop Trump from being nominated (and their attempts to impeach him) — even Bernie Sanders.
Because the Democrats are soo reactionary and trying to please their base…. this action was not thought through well. Which is a political plus for our side.
The original video is now an official PragerU video. Watch Ami play a game with liberals to see if they can tell the difference between the Democratic Party platform and the communist manifesto!
Watch Hillary Lie! You can tell from her body language she is in deep shit:
For months prior she said she had no idea or connection to the dossier. No wshe admits she is connected and paid for it…. straight faced:
“I mean, he has to know. We’ll find out what he knew and how involved he was, but he had to know that people were making outreach to Russians to the highest levels of the Kremlin, in order to help him, to hurt me, but more importantly to sow this divisiveness,” Hillary said.
(Side Note) Interestingly Hillary says Russia is a huge threat, yet her State Department signed off on handing over 20% of America’s Uranium reserves to a Russian nuclear firm (as $145 million flowed to the Clinton Foundation).
What the Hell!! She admitted two seconds earlier that SHE paid for the dossier! So let me rewrite her statement:
“I mean, Trump had to know that I was reaching out to the Russians, to the highest levels of the Kremlin, in order to hurt him, to help me, but more importantly to sow this divisiveness,” Hillary should have said.
According to a BOMBSHELL book (see POLITICO MAG) by interim DNC Chair, Donna Brazile, she says that the Hillary Campaign took over completely the finances of the DNC.
So when you hear that both the Hillary Campaign AND the DNC paid for the dossier… it really means Hillary paid for the dossier. Here is the part via the “Other Republican Client“
Former acting head of the Democratic National Committee Donna Brazile alleges in an upcoming book that the DNC conspired with Hillary Clinton to effectively hand her control of the national party during the 2016 primaries.
Politico Magazinepublished an excerpt of Brazile’s book on Thursday with the headline, “Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC.”
Brazile writes that when she took over the DNC following the Democratic National Convention last year, she promised Clinton’s primary challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), that she would “get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process.”
“By September 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart,” she writes.
Brazile claims that when she took over, she discovered that the DNC was badly in debt. As a result, her predecessor, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.), had struck a deal with the Clinton campaign allowing them to oversee DNC spending in return for Clinton fundraising for the DNC.
“The campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearing house,” Brazile says.
[….]
Brazile writes that she finally discovered a copy of the agreement between the DNC and Clinton’s team, which specified:
In exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.
The agreement was signed by Amy Dacey, former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, in August 2015, a full six months before the first primary and a year before Clinton was formally the party’s nominee….
Here is the complete first hour (30-minutes without ads) of Rush Limbaugh’s show from November 2nd — must listen!
Don’t believe Rush! How bout the opposite on the political spectrum?
The Young Turks: “Donna Brazile is airing out some dirty DNC laundry. Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, discuss.” (I can’t believe I am posting TYTs on my site. But truth is truth.)
Here is the e-mail via POWERLINE(click to enlarge):
The sentence reads: “I personally would prefer that you not forward to cisgender straight white males, since they’re already in the majority.”
So much for being an “equal opportunity employer” I guess. Just curious: what’s it like to be a straight, cis-gendered white male working at the DNC? Do you have to begin every day genuflecting outside the office of the diversity coordinator, and apologizing for your “white privilege”? Do you have to go to regular de-tox sessions to shed your “toxic masculinity”?
If this email is valid, Leader was engaging in flagrant discrimination at least in trying to avoid white male applicants. Such practices violate state and federal laws. She should be fired. However, there is also the concern that Leader simply made express what may be a practice at the DNC in discriminating against some applicants or employees on the basis of their race or gender.
….The conspiracy theorists were correct. Now we have the proof that the Hillary Clinton campaign has sent up to 500 at a time to infiltrate Trump rallies in order to illicit responses from the less stable people In the crowds that is supporting Trump.The chaos that has been caused has resulted in the injuries of many people including police officers. Veritas released the proof of the Violation of Federal campaign coordination laws.By using consultant groups as she was able to direct the Clinton campaign to commit illegal acts with plausible deniability.
The activists that the DNC and the Clinton campaign sent to the Trump rallies were actually trained for weeks .They were trained in how to ask questions, and where to stand in the audience to get their questions answered. They were also coached in how to start confrontations with Trump supporters.
Scott Foval the National Field Director at Americans United for Change was Bob Creamer’s attack dog. Foval and his people trained the agitators to go on Trump rallies.
“ The thing that we have to watch is making sure there’s double blind between the actual campaign and the actual DNC and what were doing.There is double blind there. So they can plausibly deny that they knew anything about it. “
“ There’s a script, there’s a script of engagement. Sometimes the crazies bite and sometimes the crazies don’t bite.”
– Scott Foval
The tenacity that the DNC and the Clinton campaign have shown to get Hillary Clinton elected, has been revealed to be over the top and beyond that which is legally acceptable. The future of the United States lies within our hands and these evidences reveals the situation of the war that we are getting into.
Aaron Black, the deputy rapid response director for the DNC is caught on camera bragging about his involvement with the Chicago Trump protest that turned violent in March. In this video he schemes about getting men to bully women at a Trump rally, saying “That is what I’m going to do. That is the hit.”
As one learns to do after a political event such as the excellent speech and patriotic swelling up during the speech of Khizr Khan at the 2016 Democratic National Convention… wait.
By-the-by, if you have not watched Mr. Khan’s speech, I suggest doing so (HERE). COL. ALLEN WEST simply responds to it by saying, “Yes sir, Mr. Khan, I’ve read our Constitution[!]…”
Col West continues:
…and firmly recognize the preeminent responsibility of our federal government is to “provide for the common defense.” I also comprehend the relationship between the three branches of government…you know separation of powers, checks and balances, coequal branches of government.
I would offer a simple recommendation to Mr. Khan. Perhaps you should have asked President Barack Obama if he had read the Constitution — undoubtedly you would agree we have witnessed a few unconstitutional actions from him.
And while you were at it, Mr. Khan, perhaps you could have asked Hillary Clinton about handling classified information — since I’m quite sure your son, Captain Khan, had at a minimum a secret clearance.
I don’t think your son would have been able to, well, have his “careless” mishandling of classified materials and information simply excused. Perhaps Mr. Khan, you could have addressed the necessity for high standards of honor, integrity, and character in a commander in chief.Also, I found it interesting Mr. Khan, that you and your wife, an American Gold Star family, would take the stage to support a sitting president and one desiring to be president, who had abandoned Americans in a combat zone and lied about it…
However, this simple response aside, and Trump’s atrocious response as compared to John McCaine’s response ALSO set side… AS WELL AS MIKE PENCE’S excellent response… I see much more information like the below coming out in droves. In other words, this is only the beginning.
Typically, just like in wartime theaters, the first reports are wrong. And more vital information gets added. We see this starting to happen, and I knew it would when the Khan’s asked to be out of the political limelight… as they made another appearance in the media.
The DAILY CALLER notes Khan is a proponant of Islamic Sharia Law, and promotes this in a way antithetical to U.S. interests in my minds eye. Robert Spencer connects some dots that the Clinton Cashdocumentary has alerted us to:
…Khizr Khan, and the Clinton campaign, have extensive ties to the Saudis – far more extensive than any possible connection that Donald Trump’s campaign may have had to Russia’s alleged involvement in the leak of emails that revealed that the entire Democratic Party presidential nominating process was rigged from the start. Not that the mainstream media will pause from speculating about Trump and the Russians long enough to tell you any facts about Khizr Khan, Hillary and the Saudis.
Intelius records that Khizr Khan has worked at Hogan Lovells Llp. According to the Washington Free Beacon, “Hogan Lovells LLP, another U.S. firm hired by the Saudis, is registered to work for the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia through 2016, disclosures show. Robert Kyle, a lobbyist from the firm, has bundled $50,850 for Clinton’s campaign.”
The Free Beacon added that the Saudi government has “supplied the Clinton Foundation with millions. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has given between $10 and $25 million to the foundation while Friends of Saudi Arabia has contributed between $1 and $5 million.”
And so we were treated to the spectacle of an employee of a firm that is registered to work for the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia lambasting Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention, and then (lo and behold!) becoming a media darling as he excoriates Trump for his “black soul.”
In another JIHAD WATCH (JW) post it is mentioned that mentioned that “Khan specializes in visa programs accused of selling U.S. citizenship.” This is a controversial programme to say the least, JW continues via the Washington Examiner:
The father of a Muslim-American soldier killed in Iraq who is caught up in a war of words with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is an immigration lawyerwho specializes in a highly controversial program accused of letting immigrants buy their way into the U.S.
Khizr M. Khan’s website notes that he works to help clients with the E-2 and EB-5 programs that let overseas investors buy into U.S. companies and also provides green cards for family members.
It also said that he helps in the purchase of U.S. real estate and businesses. The website lists his ability to practice in New York, though it gives a Washington phone number for the lawyer who lives in Virginia. A man who answered the phone said the website was correct, though he would not identify himself.
“The E-2 and EB-5 are two of the most notoriously abused visa categories that essentially allow wealthy foreigners to buy their way to U.S. residency, and possibly citizenship, with a relatively modest investment,” said Jessica Vaughan, the policy director for the Center for Immigration Studies.
The EB-5 program has been caught up in multiple scandals and critics are pressing Congress to kill it.
“The EB-5 is literally a ‘citizenship for sale’ program in which a visa for a whole family can be bought for as little $500,000,” Vaughan told Secrets. “It is literally a ‘citizenship for sale’ program, and it’s an amazing deal. Compared to other countries, America is the Walmart of investor visa programs,” she added.
At the bottom of the page, Kahn [sic] shows his appreciation for an icon of the Muslim Brotherhood: “The contribution to this article of S. Ramadan’s writing is greatly acknowledged.” S. Ramadan is Said Ramadan, head of the Islamic Center in Geneva and a major icon of the Muslim Brotherhood.
...Other Boss?
The declassified “28 Pages” released by Congress Friday afternoon concerning 9/11, terror funding, and Saudi Arabia contains a bombshell piece of information: The World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) is specifically named as having connections to terror funding and support for a number of worldwide terror groups…. (Breitbart)
[….]
On September 11, 2001 Huma Abedin — Hillary Clinton’s aide for twenty years and co-chair of her current Presidential run — was working for an organization located in the offices of Saudi Arabia’s Muslim World League.
That’s a Wahhabist Islamic group that Breitbart News recently reported was going to be put on a list of terror funders by U.S. government but was removed, reportedly under pressure from Saudi Arabia…. (Breitbart)
Ramadan was a writer who wrote material for the Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia, an organization that has been promoting Islamic revivalism and indoctrination to recruit young people in Malaysia to jihadism. It is actually a Malaysian branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Ramadan wrote a book called, Islamic Law: Its Scope and Equity, and a version of it was published for the Malaysian Muslim Youth Movement (a branch of WAMY)…
[….]
World Association of Muslim Youth (WAMY) was created through the collaboration of the Wahhabist and Muslim Brotherhood led by Said Ramadan who was the son-in-law of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood including Ahmad Bahefzallah, the boss of Huma Abedin (Hillary Clinton’s aid) and her parents Mahmoud and Saleha Abedin. It was also financed by the wealthy Abdullah Omar Naseef, another boss of the Abedin family.
Said Ramadan, Kahn’s [sic] source for his writing, was major leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, according to the Islamic scholar, Kemal A. Faruki.
[….]
According to a recent report, Khan moved from Pakistan to the United Arab Emirates, a hotbed for the Muslim Brotherhood.
Kahn [sic] currently runs a law firm in New York City called KM Kahn Law Office. According to the website, the the law firm specializes in “immigration services.” Most likely Kahn [sic] was working to bring Muslims into the country.
WOW! And these people are gonna be in charge of the number one spot! So it seems that many people close to Hillary Clinton are Wahhabist influenced with direct ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Of course this does not matter to a Democrat… because what Khan offered in his moving speech about his son, who is an American hero, is the emotive basis for all this to be ignored. They can never separate the son from the father. Because U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan is a hero, ergo, so to is his father… and no amount of ties to the same ideology that has influenced 29,000 terrorist attacks since 9/11 will change their minds.
I want to preface this letter by stating that I respect your son’s sacrifice for this great nation. By all accounts, he is a true hero that sacrificed himself in service to our country. For that I am thankful.
As a veteran, I watched your comments at the Democratic National Convention with a mixture of sadness, and anger. The United States has a military comprised of volunteers. Every single member has made the conscious choice to join the military and serve. There is not a single service member who has been forced into service. It is important for all service members (and apparently, their families) to understand that service to this great nation does not imbue one with special privileges or rights. I found your comments troubling when you said: “Have you ever been to Arlington cemetery? Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”
Does it matter whether Mr. Trump has sacrificed “…nothing and no one?”…has Ms. Clinton “..sacrificed” for this nation? How about Mr. Obama? Your comment stating that Mr. Trump “…has sacrifice no one” is alarming. Are you intimating that YOU sacrificed? Sir, your son willingly sacrificed himself. As a father I cannot imagine the pain you must feel but his sacrifice is his own. He was not forced to serve.
I am troubled that you would allow a party that has little more than contempt for the US Service Member to parade you into the DNC to denounce Donald Trump. Did you watch when protesters at the DNC booed and heckled Medal of Honor recipient Capt. Florent Groberg? Did you notice your party interrupting the moment of silence for slain police officers? Your own hypocrisy in not denouncing these acts and instead using the DNC as a platform to make a political point is disgraceful. The simple fact is that whether one served or sacrificed does not give greater power to their statements. One vote is as valuable as another. That sir, is why our Country is great. Your condemnation of one person for a statement while standing idly as your party disparages veterans and police officers is the height of hypocrisy.
To conflate the need to prevent potential terrorists from entering our country with the belief that ‘all Muslims’ should be banned is simply wrong and disingenuous. As a reminder, Mr. Trump said: ” “Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life,” The irony of your son’s own death at the hands of these very people in Iraq should not be ignored. I have little doubt that your son would have recognized the need to protect our country from these very people. In fact, he held is own troops back so that he could check on a suspicious car. Your son understood sacrifice and how to protect “his people”…’his soldiers’….’his fellow Americans’…
As you continue to make the media circuit and bask in the glow of affection cast upon you by a party that has little regard for your son’s own sacrifice, and veterans in general, I would ask you to consider your comments and your position more closely.
Respectfully,
Chris Mark
US Marine and Navy Veteran.
OF COURSE the typical reaction by the Left’s use of SIXHIRB (sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted) came into play about the above veteran’s viewpoint. You see, the only viewpoint allowed as genuine and reflexively caring is the Left’s position on all matters.
I want to share some of the comments from Hillary Clinton supporters [take note that Chris Mark had cleaned up the cuss words… I put them back to the original]:
The Republican Party is a terrorist group
Go FUCK Yourself
You are a Fucking racist
You are a Faggot
You are Uneducated
You believe Gays shouldn’t have any rights and everyone should carry an AR 15 to work
Do I really have to guess what you look like you inbred sister fucking hillbilly
You piece of garbage, trash, facist, racist, zenophobe
When did we become a nation of redneck hillbillies?
Trump and his supporters, the fact that they are a bunch of racist and bigots
You would not have made that comment if the Khans had been White and Christians
You all need to stop clinging to your God and guns
Please tell me where to meet you so I can spit in your face
I want to slap you
You are a traitor
You are retarded
The list goes on and on…these (including the physical threats) are from the ‘Tolerant left’ in response to the fact that I said I would vote for Donald Trumpover Hillary Clinton. With regard to the White and Christian comment I pointed out that I had written a blistering piece on Sarah Palin who is both White and Christian. This did not seem to matter. The coup de grace however is this gem:
“You are a fucking racist Chris.”
I responded politely asking the reader to query everything I have written and find where I was racist. Her reply?
“Just because your posts and other comments are not racist does not excuse you from being a racist.” (emphasis added)
So simply by virtue of supporting someone that this person does not agree with paints one as a racist. In short you are guilty of racism with zero evidence until they “excuse you” from that label? This is the height of intolerance from the tolerant Hillary Supporters.
I think Hillary Clinton’s campaign should consider adopting the 1980’s Rush song SubDivisions. One of the lyrics says:
….Behind the respectable front of the National Council of La Raza lies the real agenda of the La Raza movement, the agenda that led to those thousands of illegal immigrants in the streets of American cities, waving Mexican flags, brazenly defying our laws, and demanding concessions.
Key among the secondary organizations is the radical racist group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA), one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West.
One of America’s greatest strengths has always been taking in immigrants from cultures around the world, and assimilating them into our country as Americans. By being citizens of the U.S. we are Americans first, and only, in our national loyalties.
This is totally opposed by MEChA for the hordes of illegal immigrants pouring across our borders, to whom they say:
“Chicano is our identity; it defines who we are as people. It rejects the notion that we…should assimilate into the Anglo-American melting pot…Aztlan was the legendary homeland of the Aztecas … It became synonymous with the vast territories of the Southwest, brutally stolen from a Mexican people marginalized and betrayed by the hostile custodians of the Manifest Destiny.” (Statement on University of Oregon MEChA Website, Jan. 3, 2006)
MEChA isn’t at all shy about their goals, or their views of other races. Their founding principles are contained in these words in “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan” (The Spiritual Plan for Aztlan):
“In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal gringo invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlan from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny. … Aztlan belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans. … We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlan. For La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.”
That closing two-sentence motto is chilling to everyone who values equal rights for all. It says: “For The Race everything. Outside The Race, nothing.”
Whatever happened to the days of people like Caesar Chavez, founder of the UFW, who saw these movements now fully integrated into the Democratic Party, as the racist organizations they are:
“I hear more and more Mexicans talking about la raza—to build up their pride, you know,” Chavez told Peter Matthiessen, the co-founder of the Paris Review, for a profile piece in The New Yorker in 1969. “Some people don’t look at it as racism, but when you say ‘la raza,’ you are saying an anti-gringo thing, and it won’t stop there.”… ~ CHAVEZ
A Professor preaches his la Raza Hate/racism in Los Angeles… he has many students learning this hatred, funded by tax payers:
It is amazing to me that Democrats would support a movement called “The Race.” It solidifies the idea that Democrats are not against racism, but against “Americanism.” Dana Loesch has an article that points to Julian Castro’s radical positions:
Also among these legacy children: San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro and brother, Joaquín, sons of Rosie Castro, who was also there at the beginning of La Raza Unida. Joaquín Castro is a state House rep and a congressional candidate.
“When I grew up I learned that the ‘heroes’ of the Alamo were a bunch of drunks and crooks and slaveholding imperialists who conquered land that didn’t belong to them. But as a little girl I got the message — we were losers. I can truly say that I hate that place and everything it stands for.”…
…“[My mother] sees political activism as an opportunity to change people’s lives for the better. Perhaps that is because of her outspoken nature or because Chicanos in the early 1970s (and, of course, for many years before) had no other option. To make themselves heard Chicanos needed the opportunity that the political system provided. In any event, my mother’s fervor for activism affected the first years of my life, as it touches it today.
Castro wrote fondly of those early days and basked in the slogans of the day. “‘Viva La Raza!’ ‘Black and Brown United!’ ‘Accept me for who I am—Chicano.’ These and many other powerful slogans rang in my ears like war cries.” These war cries, Castro believes, advanced the interests of their political community. He sees her rabble-rousing as the cause for Latino successes, not the individual successes of those hard-working men and women who persevered despite some wrinkles in the American meritocracy.
[My mother] insisted that things were changing because of political activism, participation in the system. Maria del Rosario Castro has never held a political office. Her name is seldom mentioned in a San Antonio newspaper. However, today, years later, I read the newspapers, and I see that more Valdezes are sitting on school boards, that a greater number of Garcias are now doctors, lawyers, engineers, and, of course, teachers. And I look around me and see a few other brown faces in the crowd at [Stanford]. I also see in me a product of my mother’s diligence and her friends’ hard work. Twenty years ago I would not have been here…. My opportunities are not the gift of the majority; they are the result of a lifetime of struggle and commitment by adetermined minority. My mother is one of these persons. And each year I realize more and more how much easier my life has been made by the toil of past generations. I wonder what form my service will take, since I am expected by those who know my mother to continue the family tradition. [Emphasis Castro’s]
****
Rosie named her first son, Julian, for his father whom she never married, and her second, who arrived a minute later, for the character in the 1967 Chicano anti-gringo movement poem, “I Am Joaquin.” She is particularly proud that they were born on Mexico’s Independence Day. And she was a fan of the Aztlan aspirations of La Raza Unida. Those aspirations were deeply radical. “As far as we got was simply to take over control in those [Texas] communities where we were the majority,” one of its founders, Jose Angel Gutierrez, told the Toronto paper. “We did think of carving out a geographic territory where we could have our own weight, and our own leverage could then be felt nation-wide.”
Removing all doubt, Gutierrez repeated himself often. “What we hoped to do back then was to create a nation within a nation,” he told the Denver Post in 2001. Gutierrez bemoaned the loss of that separatist vision among activists, but predicted that Latinos will “soon take over politically.” (“Brothers in Chicano Movement to Reunite,” Denver Post, August 16, 2001).
Gutierrez made clear his hatred for “the gringo” when he led the Mexican-American Youth Organization, the precursor to La Raza Unida. According to the Houston Chronicle, he “was denounced by many elected officials as militant and un-American.” And anti-American he was. “We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to worst, we have got to kill him,” Gutierrez told a San Antonio audience in 1969. At around that time, Rosie Castro eagerly joined his cause, becoming the first chairwoman of the Bexar County Raza Unida Party. There’s no evidence of her distancing herself from Gutierrez’s comments, even today. Gutierrez even dedicated a chapter in one of his books to Ms. Castro.
