When I say that I am a Chilean, I mean that I am a Chilean-American. I didn't have the pleasure of knowing Chile because I was born in the US after my parents went into exile, but I will admit that my mother's side of the family is on the fascist side, while my fathers was communist. My mother never bought into the racism that her classist, racist, and fascist family tried to sell her and she was punished for that by losing her homeland, and some of the friends she loved.

You say that the trouble began with communism? Because I think the problem started with starvation and oppression in the poblaciones for a half century of foreign control of capital. ITT and United Fruit and the like have been using their political and financial power to force Latin America to do its bidding for the better part of a century now, and when I look at the worker's plight I see nothing more than a demand to see their fair share of the fruits of their labor. Before communism in Chile there was the Massacre at Santa Maria de Iquique in 1907. When workers who try to address their grievances peacefully are killed in cold blood, I consider that a major problem with due process and that incident in Chile's history predates the formation of a communist party by 11 years. In Chile, the great copper and nitrate mines of the north have been owned by ITT and foreign interest since then. THAT is where the problem starts for me. Not with communism. If Chileans one day came to the US and bought up all the Oil in Texas and then paid the workers in this country in foodstamps, then killed them and their families when they tried to unionize you might also end up with a lot of angry American workers. Some of them might lose all faith in democratic organizations to protect them, and I guarantee that you would create something like a communist movement.

Besides, Allende never did anything to challenge democratic rule of law. He wasn't a communist, and he did everything in his power to keep the communists in his coalition at bay. They demanded that he arm the workers, and he didn't. He sent the police to break up the forcible takeover of some factories. He drew the ire of many in his coalition for this. Blame the communists, but they were right: The landed aristocracy was cold blooded enough to commit genocide and to be an apologist for that kind of craven greed, brutality and disruption of democracy is not acceptable. Blaming it all on communism seems to me to be the largest historical misrepresentation possible.

I wish that the film were more available for the public to view, but you should make it a point to watch the documentary La Batalla de Chile by Guzman. It is hard to find, but it has to be one of the best documents of history I have ever seen. It is 5 or so hours that chronicles every significant turn of events leading up to the Coup and demonstrates with primary documentation how desperation, poverty of morals, and capital interests led the Military and its landed aristocracy to commit what is quite possibly the greatest crime against democracy that this hemisphere will ever know.

It is a good lesson to learn now that we proceed into a new administration in the US that may face some of the similar racist and classist hatred that the Allende regime faced while it attempts to fold back the march of fascist reforms. We have a government now that has effectively held the banks hostage and demanded a ransom of almost a trillion dollars. They have enforced torture with legal action and widened political powers of surveillance to monitor the populace without judicial review. They have started wars of preemption and stoked the fears of difference and the other. They have attempted to limit women's access to birth control and abortion rights.

What faces an Obama campaign looms large when put in the context of the Allende experience in Chile. Allende attempted in his own right to nationalize services and industry much the same way that Obama will be required to with Health care and the Energy sector. He has promised to broaden freedoms in ways that extremists in the US respond to with death threats, vandalism and terrorism. Not understanding these threats from the fringes activated by the interests of the capitalist power brokers in high places also bodes ill for our new president-elect's cause. Blaming the violence of these people on our own agenda as you would blame the coup in Chile on "communism" or on the radicalization of poor and oppressed people who continue to suffer in Louisiana, Ohio, Michigan, or anywhere else where US workers are hurting is pure and utter folly.

I was just checking up on how the propositions are doing and it is clear to me that bigotry is alive and well in the United States of America. Alive and well.

We've elected Obama to be president. It is a monumental achievement, and we should be proud, but I can't ignore the tenor of homophobia in our nation. There are a few reasons to feel this way. Here they are:

Arkansas Initiative 1: Ban on Gay couples adopting children seems like its going to pass, and I'm not surprised, but I can't help but think that this is the most embarrassing result of the election. Not because we didn't expect it, but because it has to be the most hate-inspired of the Bans... and it hurts kids who might have found a very loving home. Instead of helping poor kids find parents who love them, it keeps kids in limbo. Terrible.

Ok, maybe it's not as embarrassing as 8 passing in California, which seems to be the projected result as we steam forward in the tally. Come on California. Don't be ridiculous. 8 shouldn't have passed here. You know it.

And Arizona's Proposition 102. Well, I saw the crowd at the Biltmore, and I've eaten there... I know how hetero that crowd is, and heterosexual panic is a powerful thing.

And Florida's Prop 2. We all know that Florida is rabidly conservative on social issues, but really, are Floridians that dumb?

And the answer is "Yes, I grew up there. There are a lot of stupid Floridians, and I was smart enough to leave"

But in all seriousness people. What are you afraid of? I ask this of my fellow Californians, my fellow Floridians, and the Martian Arizonans and Arkansans... Why does your religious definition of marriage have to fuck with my secular one, and the one that the courts see as fair and equal?

I had a coworker tell me "Gay people just want to get married because of the tax benefits." I'm happy that I responded "Is that the only reason you married your wife? Because if it is, than you have a twisted impression of what it is to be married." I've had people argue to me "Gay people shouldn't be allowed to be married because studies have shown... " don't you love when people start with that... "...that Gay men are the most promiscuous demographic" Which I find hilarious. If you thought Gay people were too promiscuous, why not encourage a social model like marriage that values commitment and also bestows equal rights and the dignity and pride that equal rights awaken in people. Remember people. Married heterosexuals don't have a corner on the market for loyal and monogamous relationships either. Married people get divorced and they abandon their teenage children at the hospital so why do heterosexuals get to corner the market on moral

In truth, this is the great civil rights issue of our time, and it is up to democrats who hold civil rights as an issue to fight tooth and nail for the rights of gay and lesbian citizens to marry their partners. We have to march in the streets for this starting now. We need to call for an amendment to the US constitution that protects everyone's right to marry Gay, Straight.. everyone. It is that important.

So today, my wife and I lament with our gay friends that they only had the right for a fleeting moment in California to marry and experience what it is to be our equals in the law: to have the rights that straight Americans have. The bigots may have won this one, but I'm not backing down. They won with bigotry and hatred, and we have to respond with twice doubled determination and love for our Gay and Lesbian brothers and sisters. This one is more important now than ever.

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So Pat Buchanan in his infinite wisdom, on March 21st chose to help the Reverend Wright make some of the arguments he's been making. Take a look and see what you think:

"First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.
Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

"Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America’s fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent? Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

"As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse? We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago”

-Pat Buchanan

Wow... He ignores the Jim Crow legislation that kept Black people from having the same jobs and opportunities as white people clear through the 70s... And he ignores the fact that Kerner commission recommendations that should have helped black people to rise up and succeed were ignored by the LBJ and subsequent administrations.

How insulting it is that a man like Reverend Wright, with a history like his in speaking truth to power, has to be demonized by the media and accused of the very thing that he is trying to point out. Certainly Wright has been inflammatory in the past. His statement about Romans and Italians while a bit metaphorical is very badly put and this is one example among quite a few that seems at least inappropriate. But nothing could be so offensive as this response by Pat Buchanan. The condescension and the gall it takes to tell Black people how they should feel about Slavery, and to be happy that they were introduced to a Christian God. How insulting!

The answer to Buchanan's second paragraph of questions is a resounding YES! White people are to blame for the way that Jim Crow laws killed the dreams of millions of black people across this nation. YES! White people who neglected the recommendations of the Kerner Commission are to blame for the poverty that Jim Crow laws made systemic and debilitating. If he can't see that and can't understand that the sort of racism that resulted in the lynching of thousands of Black Americans, than he is exactly the racism that Jeremiah Wright is so justifiably angry about.