From the AP
In his first briefing since the July 2 election, Ruben Aguilar said Fox spoke with ruling-party candidate Felipe Calderon after electoral officials gave him a slight lead in the official vote tally. But he said Fox would stay out of the contest until a president-elect is named.
sígame…
Aguilar said he was confident that a campaign launched by Calderon’s rival, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, to overturn Calderon’s lead would be peaceful. And he dismissed the idea that the country, torn between the two candidates, would come to a standstill.
The Mexican people have not had confidence in their electoral system in a very long time. Decades of fraud and corruption involving centralized power, bribes for votes, secretive counting, etc. have done their number on the country’s democratic system. Sound familiar? It does to this United States citizen’s ears as I watched the horrors of 2000 and 2004 unfold.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Democratic Revolution Party’s candidate, is moving forward with the challenge of last week’s election. With a vote margin of 244,000 out of 41 million cast (a little over .5%), and widespread accounts of shadiness at polling places, he is making a simple demand.
As the United States media continues to do a hatchet job on AMLO the “leftist” candidate in the mold of that evil Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, remember this dear reader: the talking heads are continuing to lull you into a mental coma that spits in the face of democracy. They are the voices of the corporate board rooms who are basking in the sunlight of secure pension plans while the rest of us figure out whether we’re going to scrape up enough money to pay for groceries or the electric bill this month (as an example of the effects of the U.S. Minimum Wage which hasn’t been raised since 1997). But I digress.
The streets of Mexico were filled over the weekend with hundreds of thousands of people to demand a defibrillator for democracy. I don’t know about you, but I’m hoping the shockwave sent out by their grassroots movement makes its way past the lines of Minutemen and various military forces across la frontera. Piolin y El Cucuy agree
Los Angeles disc jockeys Piolin (Tweetybird) and El Cucuy (the Bogeyman) said they will work with the National Council of La Raza and other organizations to push Latino immigrants living in the United States to become U.S. citizens and register to vote in time to cast ballots in 2008.
Crossposted at The Left End of the Dial and my humble blog
that is organizing the voter mobilization:
Click the image for info
Paz
point out that if you attend one of the community organizing meetings or rallies, you’ll quickly learn that the “We Are America” is not an exclusionary slogan. It is about empowerment of the electorate. While there is a concerted effort to get the Latino community off its duff to vote and engage, this is also a bunch of labor activists like the SEIU and groups like the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), which describes itself like this:
I’d also like to mention that my experience has been that most of the immigrant groups I’ve had contact with are very welcoming of help and support from open-minded members of the Anglo community…
I think that’s why I added the above comment, I woke up and say the image I had put there and thought, “hmm, that could be interpreted as We Are America (not you)”, which is soooo not the case. There really is a human rights coalition forming and for now, it looks like the immigration advocacy network is leading the charge. paz
I haven’t read the article yet for tomorrow’s edition, but it seem that obrador has a photo of someone puting several ballots in the box! I will read it tomorrow and let you know.
any updates are highly appreciated.
Not only was Ginger Thompson using the NED-funded “AP reporter” Regine Alexandre as a stringer for her NYT Haiti articles, she has also been criticized for distorted & misleading reports on the political situation & elections in Haiti. Her piece today on Mexico’s election doesn’t seem particularly offensive, though she gets doubts in quickly on the video’s credibility:
Note that drum up, which slyly implies that this challenge might not be wholly legitimate. As if there weren’t hundreds of thousands of people in the Zocalo Saturday (the Times only reported 100,000). As if AMLO needed a drum to “gather support.” Or is Ginger drawing on old racist imagery, conflating black with brown, obliquely referencing those drums the overseers feared & tried to banish, those that would call to rebellion?
She has more on AMLO’s challenge:
More “reasonable, balanced” reporting of doubt. Who’s sowing what? Who’s spinning whom? Notice that even with the factually correct phrase, “an attempt by the government to disqualify him from the election,” that the reader doesn’t understand what happened & is left with the impression that AMLO is somehow not acting on the up & up, not that the gov’t tried a wholly illegitimate tactic to keep him off the ballot. I’ll grant that she does close with:
Drum skin whip
lash, master sun’s cutting edge of
heat, taut
surfaces of things
I sing
I shout
I groan
I dream
about
—http://core.ecu.edu/engl/deenas/caribbean/brathwaite.htm>Edward Kamau Braithwaite
Sorry all.I had a terrible day so far and haven’t been able to post that .photo To see the Photo click on the link. (Sorry but I can’t post photos for some reason!!
Actually it is a video showing someone inserting more than one ballot, and how in some tables, the presidential votes doubled the amount of senators and reps (diputados).
The video provides sufficient proof so as to go to the electoral justice so it will review its decision to not go for a total recount.
The origin of the video is not clear, and its the justice’s job to determine its authenticity.According to Obrador, it was provided by an anonymous citizen.
Apparently the is more than one tape, one was from Guanajuato,where Calderon won by a big margin, and another from Queretaro, where the number of votes is greater than the voters
hope the day gets better for you.
Thanks Manee, it already did . Woke up with a nasty, nasty head ache, then there was a power outage, then we did not know it my sister in law was in the derailed train here. Now all is good. 🙂
At Mexican’s will take to the streets when their elections have been rigged. I think that sends a much better signal for democracy there, that our own kind of lame response when our elections are seemingly stolen.
Thanks for the news Manny.
On BOTH sides of the border.
AG
network of grassroots agencies that span the country specifically working with the immigrant communities, many times they’re just obscure little offices with maybe one or two staff members, but they are starting to learn about the power they yield to get people engaged in civic responsibility.
The spanish language media is only one piece of the empowerment puzzle that is obviously catering to the Latino population, but there are many other groups that we can assist to grow some hope (and a bigger voter base for a human rights agenda). The ‘We are America’ Coalition is a good starting point for learning about ways to get plugged in.
Thanks for taking the time to share these updates – very interesting stuff, Manny! (and, btw, it wasn’t me who “clicked to quickly” on your comment this time ;^)
So…is Jimmy Carter’s voting oversight organization involved in any way? (If that has been mentioned, and I missed it, so sorry)
Good day!
Ack…I must admit it was me. Glad I checked back into the diary and noticed!
I am really interested in how all this will turn out and appreciated the diary.
I figured if you had a problem with something I wrote, you would’ve gladly told me 😉 Thanks for reading, as always.
to scour the Mexican media, but the indy sites here are doing a decent job at calling out the propaganda against AMLO. They have a unique situation down in Mexico because until Vicente Fox, there was a 70+ year stranglehold of power by the more lefty party. To see one term from a corporate conservative yield little for the people has made for an interesting dynamic as the very popular Mexico City Mayor (AMLO) leads the charge for reform from the same party that was engaging in the corruption for so long. Very curious situation, but I think it’s a Good Thing™ that the streets are filling up with engaged citizens. As I wrote above, we could use more of that on all sides of the border.
I haven’t looked elsewhere, but Amy Goodman included the bally-stuffing video in their Headlines today:
I’m confused by this though:
as the very popular Mexico City Mayor (AMLO) leads the charge for reform from the same party that was engaging in the corruption for so long
Did AMLO recently switch from PRI to PRD? I know that he’s been criticized by some on the left for taking some ex-PRI advisors who jumped ship as PRI started to tank; did he do so fairly recently as well? Or has he been in the party for a while? I was under the impression that his PRD was the party whose victory was stolen in 1988, when PAN agreed with the ruling PRI to burn the ballots.
Stephen Lendman has a good overview/summary here.
you’re absolutely right, I think I spun myself around last night reading so much spanish and trying to decipher the nuances and dichos in the text from media sources down there. Thx for the Goodman and InfoClearinghouse links.
Trust that you’ll post/translate anything interesting you come across for us monolinguals. John Ross has agood wrap-up (didn’t see anythign new in it) piece at the The Nation. He was also on Flashpoints Radio again last night talking about the situation. & dammit, I screwed up & missed a line-break in that Braithwaite snippet! 🙁 someday I’ll learn to proof on-screen. . .
the problem I’m having, I’m not seeing anything new. Most of the Mexican media when discussing the election are united in the fact that 1) the U.S. media is working to demonize AMLO by tying him with Chavez (and Castro), and 2) the video is pretty convincing but it’s a ‘wait and see’ kinda deal as new evidence emerges.
Here’s some more info on the time frame for the lurkers out there, courtesy of the Miami Herald and the McClatchy News Service
It’s not the voting… it’s the counting of each vote. I read that somewhere… I like it.
Thank you Manito!
in this case, it’s about restoring some hope and trust in the electoral process, which has been full of corruption over the decades. We’ll see what happens…
and again I have faith that they care more about elections and rights probably than we do here. As seen with their ability to form marches and peaceful protests. it was amazing to see all those white shirts… 🙂
This should be an inspiration to millions of Americans, but no, they’re probably far too busy studying those first photos of Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt.
Thanks for the post, Manny.
Bravo Boran2!!!
I can’t find the diary you did a while back or maybe it was XicanPower’s diary(?) about the humanitarian aid for the people in the desert. You had an address to mail care packages/money to. Next week I’m going to Costco and can send some bandaids and such.
Sorry, I meant to do it sooner. Eme the info at azulism at yahoo dot com or here. Thanks
here’s the linkage to the diary with the info on care packages. The group I referenced was No More Deaths but they are a part of an umbrella coalition called the Border Action Network that is currently doing a summer fundraising campaign. They have $5500 out of $65000 collected so any assistance you can give with either money or supplies will be most appreciated. Paz
Far out! Thanks!
Ummm so if I send them stuff… this means I’m a “terrorist” huh? 😀
It’s okay… I have a library card which already means I’m an “enemy” to Bush.
I also have a brain which is a big no-no nowadays.
((((Manito))))))
Well, there go all our excuses…the excuses of the Norteaméricanos as to why WE can’t take to the streets:
Street demonstrations have no effect.
It does no good to fight fraudulent elections–nobody likes a whingeing “loser”.
There’s too much to risk.
Sound familiar?
These poor peasants, our brothers and sisters south of the border, show that one does not need wealth nor education to fight back against electoral fraud and economic oppression.
One only needs courage, or as they say in Spanish, valor.
Notice, too, that the move to the left in Latin America (Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina) is not the Communist left, but rather the populist left. The parties rising to power are working class parties whose supporters have been screwed by NAFTA, by the World Bank, by the International Monetary Fund, by globalization in general.
And it’s ironic that if and when the Norteaméricanos fight back, immigrants from the Suraméricano nations–people who are unwanted here by many–will be on the frontlines, helping rescue democracy.
it all rings true to this U.S. citizen. The populism they are embracing is an expansive ideal, and as I’ve written over the past couple of days it is a movement that must be nurtured and grown. There are coalitions being built everyday in this country by the groups I referenced at the top of this thread, there’s no reason for any of us to miss out.
an email from the Mexico Solidarity Network that throws a whole different perspective on things down south