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Speaker 1: Alright, let me tell you my talk.
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Speaker 2: Here we go.
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Speaker 3: I said he living life as a gringo. Where you question where you fit in every time you mingle.
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Speaker 1: They say you do this with not enough that. My rapping is really bad. This life as a gringo.
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Speaker 3: Yes, hello and welcome to another episode of Life as a Gringo.
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Speaker 1: I am Dramos, of course.
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Speaker 3: It is Thursday, so that means it's time for our Thursday Trends episode. And my guest this week is my guy. He is a former congressional candidate for the state of New Jersey. He is also an anti-money laundering specialist. Hector Oseguera, how you feeling, bro?
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Speaker 2: Feeling great, bro. Salutes to you, man. Thank you for having me.
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Speaker 1: Of course, of course, man.
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Speaker 3: And And I talk about loving having you here on this particular day with the particular headlines that we've all been kind of dealing with and uncovering because... A, you have experience as a congressional candidate, right, on the political side of things. You're also an attorney. So there's a few different things that we're going to touch on, I feel like, from, man, the nonsense that's happening in our country right now. And with that in mind, if it's cool with you, man, I want to just start hopping.
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Speaker 1: Into some of these stories.
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Speaker 2: Let's do it.
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Speaker 1: Perfect, man.
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Speaker 3: Well, listen, today we're obviously going to talk about Roe v. Wade being overturned, the end of abortion as we know it in many states in this country. We'll also get into what's going on with the January 6th hearings, you know, the insurrection. There's been a lot of crazy updates happening this last week. We'll dive into that. And we'll also, man, touch on this really sad, sad story where you had Fifty one migrants found dead inside of a truck in Texas. So we'll touch on that. And man, just immigration as a whole and what needs to be done. And then for our segment, man, I want to I want to try to find some positivity. And I'm going to lean on you, Hector, for that as we try and find some light in the darkness.
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Speaker 1: I want to hear.
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Speaker 3: Something positive that you've been working on that might give the people some hope in a time where, man, we could all use some right now. And then, of course, we'll also have our Ask a Gringo segment where I will ask y'all a question. I want y'all to chime in on one of the topics that we're covering. Have your voice heard as well. But first, man, let's just dive into some of the more serious topics that we've been seeing from this last week. In a segment, we call for the people in the back.
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Speaker 2: All right, man.
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Speaker 1: So let's first and foremost start with the overturning of Roe v.
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Speaker 2: Wade.
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Speaker 3: I know you went to law school. You have studied the case of Roe v. Wade and why it made sense and the idea of privacy, right? And the right to privacy and all that led up to this landmark case.
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Speaker 1: And seeing the Supreme.
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Speaker 3: Court throw all of that away and then their explanation just doesn't make sense from a legal standpoint. And then now the implications that it could lead to other things. I mean, first and foremost, when you saw this news break, when it officially happened, I mean, give me your reaction.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, man, I was devastated. You know, we had seen the leak come out a little while before. And so I think that that prepared people. And I think that whoever leaked that decision, honestly, is a hero. Because if that decision would have hit without people knowing it was coming, we might have seen real riots in the streets, you know, to know that people's rights are being rolled back 50 years. You know, from the layperson's perspective, not everybody is an attorney. They don't all know the legal implications of this stuff. But I knew right away that this is not just one decision. This is not just women's reproductive rights. This has implications for other decisions down the line coming up that we could see a rolling back of people's rights in a whole bunch of other contexts. So I was very devastated. I think it's probably... This decision is going to go down in history with some of the ugliest decisions that come out of the Supreme Court, like Plessy v. Ferguson, like Korematsu, things that in hindsight, 50 years from now, people will look back on this decision and say this was a very ugly decision and we hope to leave that era in the past. Right.
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Speaker 3: I mean, did you ever think that you would come to a point in time in your lifetime that the Supreme Court's credibility would be in question?
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Speaker 2: Not like this, honestly. And when I was in law school, that's one of the exercises that you go through is you try to read these decisions and you're trying to find a logical reasoning behind the decisions that they come to. It's It's a concept called stare decisis, which means that we respect precedent. That means if a decision was made in the past, your future decisions have to in some way incorporate those older rulings. It's very rare when you get an instance where the court overrules entirely a precedent like they did here. And so honestly, this is 50 years of Republicans trying to push for this specific decision. This is what you see when people, a small minority is very, very dedicated to getting a specific outcome. And that's exactly what we have here.
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Speaker 1: Right, right.
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Speaker 3: And you touched on the implications that it could have for other things outside of just women's reproductive rights, which by itself is an atrocity that somebody thinks they have the right to tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her body. But then This opens up the doors for for other things. I mean, we've already seen, you know, some opinions about LGBTQ plus rights. I mean, you've seen I can't remember the guy's name, but some one of these idiots in Congress tweeted about the idea of, you know, segregation being revisited.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 1: And and, you know, even, you know.
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Speaker 3: I personally have not have gone through law school. My girlfriend has. And I've heard cases that she's mentioned to me. But, you know, you even have ones that are connected to this when it comes to privacy, what you do behind closed doors. Right.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely.
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Speaker 3: A landmark case where I believe two men were arrested for what they were doing behind closed doors sexually.
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Speaker 2: Right. Absolutely.
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Speaker 3: That's that's what people don't realize is your right to do what you want to do in the sanctity of your own home is at risk. This goes beyond the idea of whether you believe a fetus is a human life. This this has implications for what you're allowed to do behind closed doors.
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Speaker 1: And if anybody, the.
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Speaker 3: Republican Party who wants less government, right, Republicans want less, less hands, you know, coming into their homes. I don't understand how this even makes sense for them.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's sort of like an excuse that they use because really it ties into the whole religious thing, which is the evangelicals who are a big base of the Republicans. And honestly, you're right. This doesn't make sense if you're talking about less government. But people have to understand that this is basically about what you are allowed to do in the privacy of your own home. That's the right that is at risk. You mentioned the case Lawrence v. Texas. What basically you're talking about is two individual men who were doing what they do behind closed doors. There are certain states in this country that have what are called sodomy laws. This goes back hundreds of years of like, if you're not just a man and a woman, it's against the law. And that could come back into play because of this. Clarence Thomas, he wrote in a concurring opinion. So this is not officially part of the decision, but it touches into it. He said, you have to rethink gay marriage. You have to rethink the right to contraception, which is the right for a woman to even get an IUD or even use birth control at all. These fundamental rights of, are you allowed to do what you want to do in the privacy of your own home? That's what's at stake in this whole decision. And that's why You know, I was devastated. I know many people are devastated. And it's something that we really cannot ignore because we're watching your rights, your rights, no matter who you are, come into jeopardy. Right. Right.
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Speaker 3: And then moving on to actionable steps here, you know, you you had someone like AOC talking about, you know, different things that could or couldn't be done. Right. She she mentioned the the idea of it wouldn't be the first time that a president has visited the idea of expanding the Supreme Court. Right.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely.
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Speaker 3: And talked about that. the elimination of the filibuster being a necessary thing in order for us to begin to actually allow policies to start passing, you know, and to actually have these conversations and to not just be stalling for the sake of stalling, you know? I mean, I probably already know the answer to this question, but do you think Biden is doing enough?
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Speaker 1: And if not, what should he be doing? And Democrats as a whole, I guess you could say.
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Speaker 2: No, and I would give Joe Biden, the Democrats as a whole, an F minus on this because I'll tell you the secret about this is that the Democrats have liked having this as something to scare the voters and say, oh, you got to vote for us because if you don't vote for us, the Republicans are going to overturn Roe v. Wade.
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Speaker 1: Right, right.
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Speaker 2: To them is more valuable as an issue to scare people and to say, oh, now you need to vote for us. But the fact of the matter is that they should... allow abortion services on federal land. That's something they could do today, right now, and it would effectively, not legally, but effectively overturn this decision because then any woman could go to a federal location and seek those abortion services. They should expand the core. Let me tell you this. When the Supreme Court was first created, There was one Supreme Court justice for every circuit, every court of appeals circuit. That stopped after a certain point. But at this point, if we were to reinstate that rule, there are currently 13 circuit courts. So you can make an argument that the Supreme Court is less than it should have. And you can actually add up to 13 justices. I think that that would be the right thing to do. And the filibuster, they should do that just because it's the right thing to do. They didn't have to wait for this moment. You know, now you have a crisis issue that a lot of people are really motivated about it, but they should have expanded the Supreme Court before. They should have gotten rid of the filibuster before. Now that you have this crisis point, they absolutely should do it. But the Democrats as a whole, you know, the Democrats really have a branding problem and an ER problem. they don't know how to sell their message to people. They're better off telling people, well, you better vote for us because those guys will hurt you real bad. Now that they've hurt you real bad already, what is their argument so you should vote for us? Because they've been scaring people for all these years, like, oh, if you don't vote for Democrats, they'll overturn Roe v. Wade. And now they overturn Roe v. Wade while the Democrats were in presidency, while the Democrats have a majority in Congress. And so what is their argument? I think it's people like AOC and Elizabeth Warren are actually proposing solutions that should be in charge of what's going on now.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's such a great point that is not talked about enough is that all of this is a part of the dream selling season that happens every political campaign, right? And I mean, you see this all like in Puerto Rico, they have the way that their parties are structured. It's not Republican Democrats per se, it's statehood independence and status quo, right? And there's a lot of people who would always argue that the pro statehood people actually don't want statehood because then they would no longer have a party to report to essentially.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 3: So it's all just meant to have some sort of brand, some sort of identity for your voters to come and vote for you. And this is far too serious of a crisis for for that to be the reason why things don't get done.
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Speaker 1: Right. To have these.
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Speaker 3: These games continuing to happen and this, this inaction happening. And, and, you know, speaking of, of inaction, I mean, moving on to one of the other bombshell, you know, stories that we've been following is the, the hearings that are happening around January 6th.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 3: And again, inaction, which we'll get to in a second. But I mean, the the recent one that everybody's talking about right now from this week was that you had a former White House aide testifying that Trump demanded to be taken to the Capitol and tried to grab the steering wheel, apparently, while his Secret Service was driving, then apparently lunged at one of them when they wouldn't allow him to to go to the Capitol. You you had him being made aware that there were people in the crowd with weapons and he was OK with that. He said they're not here to hurt me. So he just cared about himself and wanted to get rid of metal detectors, if I'm not mistaken. I mean, you're you're seeing that the hearings I'm sure you've been following. I mean, this week was particularly damning when it comes to Donald Trump. I mean, let me let me hear your reactions to all that you've been seeing thus far.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and my reaction is that it's totally believable. Everything that that woman said, there's no doubt in my mind that it's very possible that that's true. And, you know, it's very sad because you have so many people that to this day are misled by this guy. And they still believe that the election was stolen, this, that, and the third, all this craziness. So to me, while I think that those revelations are damning, I think there's no worse opinion that I could have of Donald Trump. So that's the unfortunate part is like the people that you need to reach They're the ones who are tuned out. They don't they don't want to hear it. They're rather, you know, they'll rather look at something else. They'd rather care about whatever else. Joe Biden falling off a bike or something. Right.
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Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 2: On the fact that Donald Trump throws his plates, that he tried to attack his own Secret Service. that he knew that those people were armed and that he didn't care because he knew that they weren't going to hurt him, that he wanted them to hang his vice president, all this crazy, you know, if it was not, we live in a country where if you are a wealthy white man, you get all the privilege and all the benefit of the doubt in the world. Because if Barack Obama had told black people, I'm not leaving office, I'm not, I'm staying here forever. I'm attacking my... You know, we can't even say what they would have did to him. You know what I'm saying? If on January 6th, it was Black Lives Matter carrying guns into the Capitol, we can't even say what they would have did to them. And so... The unfortunate part is that we live in a country where it seems like a third of the people don't care about democracy, don't care if they win or lose an election. They don't care about the truth. They care. Do I win or do I lose? And those, you know, the unfortunate thing is like, those are the people we need to reach out to the most because they're the ones who are going to either make or break this whole situation. Yeah.
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Speaker 3: And that's a really a really scary thought, you know, that that they have that much power and that much control merely for the fact that there are white men in this country. Right. Man, I'm loving the conversation and your perspective. I think now is a good time to take a quick little pause, a break.
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Speaker 1: And then we'll be right back. All right, we are back.
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Speaker 3: And to your point, you have on video Republican lawmakers giving questionable tours of the Capitol ahead of January 6th after they initially denied that. And then we're caught on camera and now have to backpedal. You know, you have, man, all types of testimony proving that there were all types of illegal attempts to overthrow the election. And then to me, the more frustrating part, and I would love for you to speak this from the law side. I mean, you have the DOJ not charging certain people when when they're not complying with congressional subpoenas.
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Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
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Speaker 3: Like I can't imagine being subpoenaed and not showing up and nothing happens to me.
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Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
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Speaker 3: I remember the police showed up at my mom's doorstep because she was $ 5 short on a parking ticket that she had paid one time, right? Right. And so to think that these people can just ignore the fact that they're being subpoenaed, that they have implications against them, Donald Trump included, and that we don't have any faith that the Department of Justice is going to take action on this.
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Speaker 1: I mean... Can you make sense of it at all from your perspective?
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Speaker 2: Well, I can, and it's a real unfortunate answer because when you have these sorts of attacks on countries, when you have the rise of fascism, what those people try to do is that they use the system to break the system itself, right? And so this is how I can explain it to you. The Department of Justice historically- has a precedent where you don't go after political enemies, because that's what happens in so-called third world nations, that a new president comes in and they'll investigate the last president. When the next president comes in, they'll investigate you. And so there's this, you could say a precedent or a tradition that you don't investigate the last administration, almost no matter what they do. And so when Obama came in, people said, will you investigate the Bushes? They said, no, I'm not going to do it. And Now that you have... The only person who probably would have broken that tradition is Donald Trump himself, who would have loved to have them investigate Hillary Clinton and the Obamas, but they didn't do that. Again, following the tradition, they didn't do it. Now that you have Joe Biden in office, they're probably going to... be very, very cautious and tread against indicting the former administration, even though they've done things that if it were anybody else, almost would very certainly be in prison at this point. You just got to think about a lot of those congressmen, they were asking Donald Trump for a pardon, right? I don't know about you, right? But innocent people don't really ask to be pardoned. You don't need a pardon if you didn't break the law, right?
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Speaker 1: Absolutely.
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Speaker 2: So these people even themselves know that they were breaking the law. But when you have the rise of fascism attempts to destroy democracy, they're going to use the sort of the spaces in the system to break the system itself so that they can get into power once again. And so That's the best way that I could explain to you why there have not been higher level indictments and why, in my opinion, there probably will not be. If there are, it's got to be that they found Donald Trump's handprints on a gun. That's what it was. Other than that, I'm very skeptical, unfortunately, that we will see justice related to January 6th, even though, in my opinion, it's something certainly that should be done. prosecuted and if it was you and me bro we would have been we'd we wouldn't even see daylight again for the next hundred years.
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Speaker 3: Right right and and then you but you think to yourself i and tradition i get it it makes sense but then it's like where does this stop right because like it's if if people see all of this evidence and even on Fox News, there was a clip of them dumbfounded, not knowing how to respond to what was being said. Even them, they are amazing storytellers, didn't know what the hell to say to this. They couldn't find a way to spin it in a way that made them look in a positive way, the Republican Party, that is, or Donald Trump. But It then the scary thing is, where does this end? Because you've just shown people.
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Speaker 1: That now there is there are no repercussions.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 3: I mean, think about all the openly racist people that are running for office right now.
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Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 3: The openly violent people that are running for office. We have set a precedent that you no longer have to hide your hate.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 3: You no longer have to be crafty about the way that you. you know, suppress others. Right.
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Speaker 1: You're allowed to put.
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Speaker 3: It out there in the open. And actually, when you do it, it makes you that much more popular. That's what's scary as hell.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we're going back 100 years, certainly. And it was always bubbling under the surface. But what I'll give Donald Trump the credit for is that he brought it out. You used to have to kind of hide what you meant to say. They would talk about welfare. They would talk about other issues.
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Speaker 1: Violence and drugs.
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Speaker 2: And urban communities and all that stuff. But now I think I saw a clip of a woman next to Donald Trump Talking about Roe v. Wade, talking about how they preserved white life. Yes, I saw that one as well. So the mask is off now. And honestly, it's like, where does it end? Unfortunately, history tells us that it doesn't end somewhere nice. That's why I do think that it's better for people to organize in their communities and really get a hold of what's going on right now. Because it didn't have to be a crisis. And you know, I've been up to this stuff for quite some time. And it's hard to sell people in non... political times, but it's, it's for the political times that we need your support because now, now what are we doing now? We're playing catch up. Right.
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Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 3: Well then right to that point, I mean, what do you say? I mean, this primary is happening right now, you know, we're, we're going to be entering another election cycle, you know, before we know it. You know, I mean, what do you you tell people? I mean, especially, you know, you look at black and brown voters, black voters in particular, who Joe Biden himself say, you know, gave him the election. But many, many feel like they didn't get what was promised to them.
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Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 3: And these record numbers that we saw of voters, many of whom were first time voters.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 3: That's why it was record numbers. How do you convince them to go back out to the poll? You know, the polls, again, when none of the things that they have have been promised, you know, have have come through.
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Speaker 1: And in fact, we're actually in a worse situation.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, by far, by far, by far. And, you know, the really simple answers that they have to deliver, they have to do things that are going to tell those voters, you know, I'm here and I feel and I see your pain and I'm going to do something about it. You know, just just in case Joe Biden's listening right now, you know, He 100 percent should cancel student loan debt. That's something that I think would recharge the economy, because the biggest thing that people really care about right now is inflation. Right. Gas prices are through the roof. If he were to put money back in people's pockets, you know, a large chunk of student loan debt is our generation. People who went to college and couldn't pay for it at the back end, him to cancel that debt would absolutely, you know, recharge the economy and would tell voters, wow, he's going to do something. You know, they should be more aggressive on Roe v. Wade. They've been very, very, I would say, very... tone deaf on this whole issue. They should open up abortion on federal lands. They should be really aggressive about codifying Roe v. Wade. There's so much that they could do. They just have to be able to deliver for the people and to say, that's what I'll say to Donald Trump. When he was running, his voters believed that he was delivering for them. If you can't create that sense in your voters- You know, it's going to you're always going to fall back to, well, you better vote for us because those other people are going to get you. They're going to hurt you. So you better vote for us. And that's not good enough anymore. So I would say deliver on policy, make people feel like you care about their issues and just straight up do something, do something. Don't don't just fall back into the, you know, mainstream political dialogue of, oh, we need bipartisanship and all that stuff, because because that is an era that has ended and the politicians have to realize that. Right, right.
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Speaker 3: I think that's a great point. I mean, and then on the flip side of that, what do you say to the voter, you know, who is disenfranchised? I mean, I know you're big on the local level, community organizing and things like that. I mean, is that kind of where you see the answer? And obviously, that's more of a long-term solution than it is, you know, in the short term, at least for some of these bigger issues that we're talking about.
00:24:41
Speaker 1: But what do you say to that voter?
00:24:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, to that person who feels like it doesn't matter, what I'll say to them is that nothing makes the establishment happier than for you to check out of the system and to say you're not going to participate. Because if you don't participate, what you're saying is that other people are going to decide for you, basically. People think if I don't vote, at least I'm not giving credibility to the system. I'm not participating. I don't have no responsibility. But the fact of the matter is, Every time you do not participate, you're basically saying whatever everybody else decides is good enough for me. If what everybody else has decided is not good enough for you, you need to get involved. You know, you need to... Vote regularly. Anytime there's an election, you need to organize your community, get your friends and neighbors to vote as well. You know, honestly, and it is not a short term solution. What I'm telling to people is not a short term solution. It's going to take a long time. But look at what the Republicans did on not a short term solution. Overturning Roe v. Wade has been decades in the works.
00:25:40
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:25:41
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, for us to get back, it might be decades of work and it's not going to be easy solutions. You know, we live in a generation that it's all instant gratification. You swipe left to swipe right and get what you want. That's not what this is like. Unfortunately, politics is not like that. It's going to take two, four, eight, 10, 12 years before you see something tangible. But the work along the way should give you some sense that you're getting closer. You know, as you build community with people, you come to find that there's small time problems that we thought were out of our control, that if we as a community work towards it, we can get it done ourselves. From there, you build up. So yeah, I know it's not the glamorous, sexy thing to say. I could tell everybody to pick up a torch and go burn something down, but at the end of the day, that's not going to solve your problems. What is going to solve your problems is to organize with the people in your community, go to the politicians and say, if you don't do what we say, we're going to withhold our support from you and we're going to put somebody in power who will do what we want. And that's what's going to get the results that you want. Politicians only care about two things, money and power. If you're not threatening their money or their power, they do not care about you.
00:26:49
Speaker 3: Right.
00:26:49
Speaker 2: Right.
00:26:49
Speaker 1: Those are all great points.
00:26:51
Speaker 3: I mean, and even you look at the blueprint that Donald Trump has has set.
00:26:55
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
00:26:56
Speaker 3: He's basically, you know, changed the face of the Republican Party and basically said either you old heads are going to come along with the new the new plan I have in place or I'm going to get somebody new to run against you. I'm going to support them and they're going to get you voted out of office.
00:27:11
Speaker 2: Right.
00:27:11
Speaker 3: Right. And that's kind of what the Democrats have to do. You know, there are a lot of these old Democrats that are sitting around that are, you know, on TV saying all the right things, but don't really care about anything. You know, they're having dinner with the same scumbags that are doing shady things, you know, across the aisle. And that's what needs to happen. You know, I mean, you took it into your own hands as well. You ran against a fellow Democrat, right? And that's what things like that, you know, if you are blessed enough that that's happening in your local election, you better get out the house, you know, or even somewhere like Texas, where you have somebody like Beto O'Rourke, who is a credible candidate, You know, and Texas being such the sender of so much of what we're seeing from man gun reform to Roe v. Wade, you know, understand if you live in Texas, this is incredibly important. You actually do have the ability to make great change. You have to do what you can and get behind the people who are challenging the status quo.
00:28:04
Speaker 2: 100 percent. Yeah, Texas is a big one. Texas is a big one. I would say that we really need because it could be like Georgia that for so long people thought it was a red state that couldn't be flipped. And, you know, with the right person, maybe with a better Aurora, you can flip a red state blue. And with all the votes that come from a state like Texas, it would be very important.
00:28:23
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
00:28:24
Speaker 3: And Georgia is another one, you know, if Stacey Abrams there as well. I mean, you know, you have to pay attention to what's going on, you know, locally and see what you can do to your point. Now, last bit of bad news I want to talk about, man. I know this is something that is near and dear to us. It affects our community.
00:28:40
Speaker 1: It's our people.
00:28:42
Speaker 3: You had this terrible situation where, you know, 51 people were found dead in Texas inside of a truck, an abandoned truck. They were many of whom were Mexican. You know, obviously, these are people coming across the border in search of a better life.
00:28:58
Speaker 1: And and.
00:29:00
Speaker 3: The fact that they are willing to put their lives at risk in that way just goes to show you what they are escaping from, right? What they're trying to get away from.
00:29:09
Speaker 1: And man, in.
00:29:11
Speaker 3: A country that seems like it doesn't have much empathy for people, let's be honest, people of color, you know, and particularly the notion of somebody who's Mexican, right? That's like this racial slur in this country, you know? And on the other hand, the irony of seeing us sending billions of dollars to the Ukraine is, and not addressing a problem right here. And not to say that those people aren't suffering, but it just goes to show you the mindset here. I mean, obviously this is, is something that you follow closely. It's near and dear to your heart. I mean, talk to me about when you see it, your thoughts and what is the solution that is not being seen or happening right now?
00:29:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, man.
00:29:53
Speaker 2: And when I saw that story, it absolutely broke my heart because you're seeing the confluence of so many different things. This is US policy on an international level that people are impoverished to the extent that they will risk their lives and the lives of their children to try to get somewhere where they think that there's going to be more opportunities, right? And again, we're talking about Texas, which is a place that benefits so much from the influx of immigrants who come in and are willing to work for low wages. They, you know, we are the people that keep this country running, but are always looked down upon as if we're a burden. You know, those Donald Trump type Republicans who look at every Hispanic is a Mexican to them. Yeah. And we're all lazy and we don't work. Yep.
00:30:43
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:30:43
Speaker 2: Somehow we were getting secret benefits from the government or taking over everything. No. So it's like, It's such a sad, sad place that there's so little empathy for people who are coming looking for the story of America. I came with $ 2 in my pocket and I just wanted to work and make my own way and be left alone and not have to run from the cartels. And there are people who are willing to exploit those people. Coyotes, you know, the cartels themselves. And it's really sad. And there's no easy solution. You know, I'm kind of like a radical. So to me, these lines don't mean anything. You could just let people back and forth and nobody will get hurt, you know, as long as you know, you have some sort of system that, that, you know, the person's cool, you know, to me, let everybody in, let anybody come in. Everybody's looking for the same thing. Everybody just wants an opportunity at the basic level. We're all human beings. These lines really don't mean anything. You know, if I'm here in New Jersey and I cross the river and I'm in New York artificially, or, or you go somewhere else and you're now you're in a different state, you know, these lines were drawn by people. They can be erased by people. And we don't really, when it's causing all this death and destruction, I don't think it's worth it. I think that we could have a system where anybody who wants to come in could come in. And at the end of the day, that's how it should be. We should be a just, humane country. And we should be willing to extend the same empathy and the same freedom that we gave to prior generations to the next generations. You know, I do believe in that poem at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. You know, come, come, give us your poor, your tired, whoever. That's the kind of country I was raised to believe in. You know, it's sad that it seems some people were not brought up to think that that's what America is. But, you know, I was lucky enough to be told that this was a country of opportunity. And if you wanted to come and work hard, you're welcome. And to me, in my honest opinion, that's how it should be. And it breaks my heart, completely breaks my heart that people died, you know, looking for that, looking for that life and trying to escape a very desperate system.
00:32:54
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:32:55
Speaker 3: And also, I mean, when you think about, you know, you had touched on this at the beginning of what your response was, but.
00:33:03
Speaker 1: We've caused some of the turmoil in these countries, right?
00:33:06
Speaker 2: 100%.
00:33:08
Speaker 3: We bear the blame for much of the instability for these countries in Central and South America, right?
00:33:14
Speaker 1: And it's only right that we do our part to fix that, right? I mean, especially if.
00:33:22
Speaker 3: You are somebody who believes in stricter borders and doesn't want people coming over here, the solution for you then would be invest in those countries so that those people don't have to flee the place that they grew up in, right? I mean, I don't think Anybody would want to flee their home place, you know, to go somewhere where they don't speak the language, where, you know, they have to rely on others to for basic needs to be met. You know, I don't think anybody would want to do that willingly if they had opportunity where they came from.
00:33:55
Speaker 2: Right.
00:33:56
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
00:33:57
Speaker 3: In those countries, you're going to you're going to create more and more opportunity for people to actually want to stay where they are from.
00:34:05
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And you could trace the waves of immigration to U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. You know, we invade a country and the people from that country start coming up. You know, what a coincidence. And then it's sad that, you know. You talk to the higher ups in government like Kamala Harris went to South America, she said, don't come, do not come. You know, that's why people don't have faith in the Democratic Party, because, you know, before before Joe Biden, Barack Obama was called the deporter in chief. Because he basically had a wall on the southern border. And he had the lowest border crossings ever. So, you know, I think it's very unfortunate for us to go into any country, destabilize the country. The people from that country flee because their country's been destabilized. And then we have the audacity to tell those people, don't come here. That's very cruel. And I think it really is something that we need to reverse.
00:34:59
Speaker 1: At 100%.
00:34:59
Speaker 3: And the last thing I'll say is also, why don't we make it a little bit easier to become a citizen for people, right? Like, you have people, and I interviewed an artist who, she fled, I believe it was Nicaragua. She had been kidnapped and fled, came here, and she.
00:35:19
Speaker 1: Pays taxes, right?
00:35:20
Speaker 3: And does everything like an American citizen would, but she's been here for like 10 years and still can't get her green card, you know?
00:35:27
Speaker 1: And that just makes no sense at all, right? We're making things... far more.
00:35:32
Speaker 3: Difficult when we've seen in other situations, we saw, you know, the Ukrainians are being welcomed with open arms, right?
00:35:39
Speaker 1: When Cuba with Castro, right?
00:35:40
Speaker 3: You know, there was politics involved in that and Cubans were fast track to citizens within a year, right? You know, so it shows you these things are possible when the politics and agendas align with what the powers that be want, you know what I mean? And that's the sad thing. You are playing with people's lives based upon your own particular political policy.
00:36:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, man. The secret of America is that it's based off cheap labor, right? So if you bring all these people in and you deny them certain rights, you create an underclass of people. And then the system is invested in keeping that underclass nourished so that they can continue to profit off of them. And that's unfortunately what you see in a lot of these instances. And that's why this country doesn't want... New York City recently tried to give non-citizens the right to vote and it was overturned, right? So... You know, this country has a vested interest in having a permanent underclass. And unfortunately, Latinos, people of color generally, have been relegated to that underclass.
00:36:39
Speaker 3: Right, right.
00:36:40
Speaker 2: Exactly.
00:36:40
Speaker 1: That's 100%.
00:36:41
Speaker 3: Unless we fit into their box in that particular moment, then they're willing to make a concession, right?
00:36:45
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:36:46
Speaker 3: Now, I know we've been talking about a lot of heavy stuff today. So, man, let's lighten it up and let's try and find some positivity in things that are going on in this world right now. And we'll do that in our Mi Gente segment. But first, let's take a quick break and then we'll be right back.
00:37:10
Speaker 2: Mi Gente.
00:37:10
Speaker 1: Mi Gente.
00:37:15
Speaker 3: Now, we've talked about a lot of heavy, heavy stuff, man. Let's let's try and end on some positivity here.
00:37:22
Speaker 1: I mean, you are active. You're in the community.
00:37:25
Speaker 3: You're still very much active in a lot of the local elections like we've talked about that are happening. I mean, You have your own thoughts and ideas. You're well-read in all that's happening. I mean, what positive things have you been seeing that you feel like people should know, you know, to keep some optimism, you know, for, man, the sake of our democracy? Because that truly is what is at stake right now.
00:37:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I would agree with you. We are at a crisis of democracy. And, you know, it's not a surprise to you that I think that the local is the much more fertile ground for people like us to invest in. And so I'm going to bring your viewers in. You know, a very positive story that happened to me personally is that, like you said, like you shared, I had run a campaign against Democrats because here in New Jersey, everybody's a Democrat. There's nothing but elected Democrats. But unfortunately, those are the type of Democrats, those Joe Biden Democrats that don't really respond to the needs of the people. And for a long time, a group of my friends and my activist organizers, we were fighting against ICE that had contracts with the county jail here in Hudson County. And last December, I was arrested. Me and a bunch of other activists were arrested, and we had a restraining order put on us by the county executive of Hudson County saying that we could not protest outside of his house. We were fortunate enough to get the ACLU to represent us, and just a couple weeks ago, our case was, you know, our arrest was dismissed, and the restraining order was deemed unconstitutional. Thanks to our organizing, we were able to get the Ice County contract kicked out of Hudson County, so ICE no longer detains undocumented immigrants in Hudson County Jail, number one. Number two, the county executive illegally violated our First Amendment rights to protest and our arrest was illegal based on that restraining order. So I think this is a good story that your viewers can take to show that local organizing really does work and you really can get the results that you want out of your government if you and your community are willing to get together and speak in a loud and very distinct voice and tell the people in power what you want. Anybody who's interested, just Google ACLU Hudson County. I'm sure it'll pop up on your Googles and you'll see. Look, we took it. We went up against a Democrat. We have people telling us, oh, why are you protesting him? Why are you doing this? These are Democrats. But we had to fight for what's right. And so we did. We were arrested. Not a comfortable experience for anybody who's been arrested. Not what we were looking for. But we persevered and now we've gotten a very important victory for the immigrant community in Hudson County and a precedent to say that we cannot have our right to protest, you know, unconstitutionally infringed upon. So, you know, that's my positive story. And I think that it shows how good organizing can really accomplish certain goals.
00:40:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's beautiful, man.
00:40:20
Speaker 3: And if you just think to yourself, what if groups like yours were popping up all over the country and taking on various issues that are affecting those communities? Think about the massive change that would happen, right? It would be monumental. The politicians would have to pay attention at that point. Because like you said, yours might be one little victory here in a county in New Jersey. But again, that's the power in organizing. And again, if that was happening in every county in the United States where there was something happening, the country would be in a far different place, right? And that's the beauty of a story like that, man. I commend you for, man, not stopping doing the work, you know, after the campaign run and continuing on true to your word and your values, man. So I appreciate you, bro. Always good to catch up with you. Where can people follow you? They can stay in touch with all that you're doing. You want to give away your social links.
00:41:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. Anybody who wants to connect, I'm heavy on Twitter. It's my last name, Oseguera2020. I'm on Twitter, IG, Facebook, the whole nine. Same thing, Oseguera, my last name, 2020. I'm very responsive. Anybody who wants to talk about local issues or organizing, I'm more than happy to chat it up and help you out. Dope.
00:41:33
Speaker 1: My guy, Hector Oseguera. I appreciate you, bro.
00:41:36
Speaker 2: Always a pleasure, man. Thank you.
00:41:38
Speaker 1: Man, big shout out to my.
00:41:39
Speaker 3: Guy, Hector Oseguera, for hopping on today's I always love hearing his perspective, so I'm sure we'll have him on the show a bunch as time goes on. But, man, perfect guest for helping break down all that we've been seeing.
00:41:55
Speaker 1: Now, with that in.
00:41:56
Speaker 3: Mind, I want to get y'all's opinion on one of these topics, and we'll do that in our Ask a Gringo segment.
00:42:05
Speaker 2: Ask a Gringo!
00:42:11
Speaker 3: All right, so this week, man, I just wanted to give you all the opportunity to vent. And at DJDramas on Instagram, I do this for each and every episode, I'll have a question that I want to get y'all's perspective on.
00:42:26
Speaker 1: And obviously, there's been a lot of talk over Roe v.
00:42:30
Speaker 3: Wade being overturned, a lot of emotions, you know, and rightfully so. And I just wanted to kind of open up the platform to to y'all to let you vent about how you're feeling. I just wanted to give people the opportunity to have their voice heard. So we'll read a couple different responses I got. I just asked people, vent about what you're feeling when it comes to Roe v.
00:42:53
Speaker 1: Wade being overturned.
00:42:54
Speaker 3: So I mean, it's no surprise a lot of really strong feelings here. I'm going to read a couple that we we got a few that we got here at just to be there. That underscore says, first off, life's not that great. So way to dodge a bullet, possibly from a school shooting. I'm assuming he's.
00:43:12
Speaker 1: Talking about the abortion.
00:43:15
Speaker 3: The potential child is is dodging a a bullet, which very scary kind of sarcasm, but but also true. And then he says, secondly, people are mad because it's taking a life and that's God's way? Most of y'all are going to hell. So just let women do what the fuck they want with their bodies. And obviously a lot of anger, a lot of emotion here justifiably. So, I mean, yeah, I think you bring up a great point. I wouldn't say life isn't great, but you bring up something like a school shooting incident. And that's just one of the many things that potentially are incredibly scary for anybody bringing a child into this world. You talk about all the madness that is happening and all of the potential scary things that this country just tends to allow to happen because of its inaction, right? And violence is one of those things. The fact that we're more concerned with what a person does is doing with their body than.
00:44:25
Speaker 1: Coming up with ways to make it harder for people to hurt one another with guns. It's crazy to me.
00:44:31
Speaker 3: I mean, I've seen the memes, I'm sure many of you have as well, that it's scary that a gun seems to have more rights in this country than a woman. But even beyond that, talking about the safety of a potential child coming into this world, we live in a country where there is no universal healthcare, right? There is no universal childcare. There is no paid family and medical leave guaranteed.
00:44:53
Speaker 1: For your job.
00:44:54
Speaker 3: We have a country that has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality among rich nations.
00:45:02
Speaker 1: So when you talk about.
00:45:04
Speaker 3: This idea of the other side caring so much about a child's life that they have to make abortions illegal, their actions also show they don't care you know, what happens to that child. It's like, OK, they want to fight for the child to be born, but then lose all interest in making sure that the child is safe. And also the mother is safe and it just makes no sense. You know, this isn't about being pro-life, as they say. This is all about just being in control at the end of the day. Let's see, at Nicolosa underscore Vegas says angry, which I know is a cover up emotion for sadness.
00:45:44
Speaker 1: I've just been trying to be vocal. I found myself.
00:45:47
Speaker 3: Unfollowing a lot of big influencers who have ignored the issue, which has been really disheartening. I know it sounds radical, but do you ever feel like leaving this country? SCOTUS decision just set a precedent and it feels like things are going to get worse. Sorry to sound defeatist, I'm just at a loss. And I get it, you know. It's funny because I was just, you know, sitting in my house over the weekend and, you know, throughout this week, and it just doesn't feel real. Watching it on TV, there's just something surreal about it. It just feels like a bad dream, and not to sound cliche, but it just doesn't feel like this is the real world that we're living in, like it really happened. And then the responses that you're seeing, and we talked about this with Hector, and how this just seems like it's just the beginning, and to your point, it's just incredibly scary to think that this is just the start, you know, this is so terrible as it is, you know, and that it potentially is only going to get worse from here. And I get what you're saying, you know, when it comes to people that you follow and not being vocal, you know, I think that this isn't a time for inaction.
00:46:58
Speaker 1: You know, we all have to use our voice.
00:47:00
Speaker 3: And I understand that just sounds silly that it's an Instagram post and this or that. But The reality is, you know, we have to express our anger in any way that we're able to, you know, in a healthy way, I should say, and in a legal way. This isn't right. And I think also, especially as men, you know, it's important for someone like myself and others to let women know that we stand by them, you know, that just because this doesn't directly affect my body, you know, doesn't mean that I don't recognize How scary this is for women and how how much of a infringement this is on a woman's God given right to to have, you know, choice over what happens with her own body. And so your question about, you know, do you ever feel like leaving this country? Yeah, it's funny. I think to myself, you know, when when all this is going on, you know, man, I wonder if one day it'll come to a point that things get so bad here that I feel like I have no choice.
00:48:03
Speaker 1: But to leave, to go somewhere else, you know.
00:48:06
Speaker 3: And that's a really scary thought, that that might be a real option, you know. And I don't want to, you know, leave the States full time. I love my life here, you know. But that is a real question in my head, you know, is if things like this continue to happen and the inmates continue to run the asylum and only become more and more powerful, you know, Do I even really have a choice at that point? You know, and that's a really, man, scary, scary kind of thought to think about. Last one we have time for at Rebecca underscore DLM says, I have a high risk pregnancy and I'm scared if I have to have an abortion.
00:48:47
Speaker 1: Due to complications, I could die.
00:48:49
Speaker 3: I would leave my daughter motherless in a country where she doesn't have rights either. And yeah, that that that's an incredibly scary thought.
00:48:58
Speaker 1: And I empathize with you. My heart goes out to you.
00:49:00
Speaker 3: You know, we've already seen, I know there's a story going around that is being shared about a woman who's already going through this, you know, in a state that abortion already became illegal or incredibly restricted. And that's so fucking scary, right? We talk about this idea again of people being quote unquote prostitutes. but they don't give a fuck about the life of the mother, right? And that just shows the hypocrisy and that this is all, you know, just a part of a greater scheme. And it's not really about, you know, protecting people's lives, you know. it's just about fitting your own politics, your own religious beliefs, whatever, whatever the case may be at the expense of, of the safety of others. You know, there's plenty of cases where, you know, a birth complication happens. And the only way to save the mother is for an abortion to, to happen, you know, and that's already a God awful situation. But, you know, to then think that because a woman can't get this procedure done, she might lose her life.
00:50:04
Speaker 2: Right.
00:50:06
Speaker 3: It's just incredibly scary. And again, my heart goes out, you know, to women everywhere who are sharing in this fear, again, in a country that the maternal death rate is incredibly high, right? The idea that women are dying from giving birth in this country, you know, it's a really scary, scary idea and thought and to think that they don't have the ability to protect themselves if they want to.
00:50:31
Speaker 1: It, It's terrible, man. And hopefully.
00:50:37
Speaker 3: Man, hopefully the Democrats have to get their shit together and find a way around this because it's really just an atrocity. There's no other way to put it, man. I'm sorry for anybody who is out there living with this type of fear right now. It really is just a terrible and angry time to be in this country. It's just really sad.
00:51:01
Speaker 1: Now, with that said.
00:51:02
Speaker 3: Man, let's tie everything we talked about today in a neat little bow in a segment we call Conclusion Stew. Time for Conclusion Stew. All right.
00:51:16
Speaker 1: So, I mean, I know today's show was incredibly heavy.
00:51:20
Speaker 3: I do feel like we kind of really dove into a lot of stuff and broke it down in great detail. So big shout out to my guest today, Hector Oseguera, for that. I love the work that he's doing, man. I just think it's incredible. And I always love hearing his perspective. So, I mean, when it comes to Roe v. Wade, we know it's terrible and it's heartbreaking. But again, it's only the beginning. If you think they're going to stop, you know, with just a woman's reproductive rights, you know, you're sadly mistaken. They are going to enact every extremist view that they have that that violates all of our rights to privacy. And we all have to be fighting when it comes to using our voices and using the vote and and all those different resources that.
00:52:05
Speaker 1: We have for our very freedoms are at risk. Right.
00:52:10
Speaker 3: And it's ironic to say that in the land of the free, it seems like many of our freedoms are being taken away and and you look at the opinions of the people, you know, Clarence Thomas is already writing things about, you know, like like Hector brought up LGBTQ plus rights being in question and things of that nature. They're showing us, you know, this really is only the beginning. And the Democrats have to fucking, you know, step up and get aggressive, you know, and Biden has to get aggressive. Just like Hector said, there are multiple things that they could be doing in order to, you know, Save us, essentially.
00:52:48
Speaker 1: Right. So we have to keep that pressure on them.
00:52:51
Speaker 3: And as disheartening as it as it may seem, you know, we can't allow this to make us feel so disenfranchised that we no longer participate in the democracy of our country, because at the end of the day, that's what they want. They want us to stop showing up at the polls and they want, you know, us to be so disenfranchised that we just give up fighting and just give in and we just can't allow ourselves to do so. And I think that that sentiment kind of resonates when you talk about January 6th and shows you the importance of voting. You know, I mean, maybe Biden obviously is is not the greatest president in the world. And I don't think he's the greatest president for this time period right now. We need somebody who is a bit more radical and and and not trying to, you know, fit into the old system. But think about what the what would have happened if we didn't come out to the polls.
00:53:40
Speaker 1: You know, Trump.
00:53:41
Speaker 3: Would have continued on building this sort of dictatorship that he obviously wanted, where we had a president who was unafraid to break the law and was unafraid to abuse his power. And it's scary to think how much damage he's done.
00:54:00
Speaker 1: We look at the Supreme Court in just four.
00:54:02
Speaker 3: Years, but imagine if we ended up getting another four years of that just because you know, people decided not to come out and vote as they did. You know, I mean, shit, he may have never left office at that point. You know, when you see just how far he was willing to go to retain power. And then when we talk about that, that heartbreaking story of the 51 migrants who were found dead in Texas, you know, there's nothing that I could say that would make that story hurt any less or make the pain that I'm sure their families are feeling, you know, any worse.
00:54:36
Speaker 1: Any less.
00:54:37
Speaker 3: And it's just, again, something that needs to be dealt with in this country. You know, people aren't risking their lives in such extreme ways because it's fun, you know, because they want a free ride, right? You know, those are people who are desperate, whose situations are so bad that it's worth them piling into a, a truck and, and, and dealing with like the, the coyotes and, and dealing with all that, that they are dealing with just to, just to come over here, you know? And, And America, like we said, caused a lot of those issues, the instabilities in those countries. And while we are having no problem funding the Ukraine, and of course, again, tragedy is happening over there, but we're ignoring what's going on at our very border and in our very country, for that matter. And it's obvious because these are brown people, these are people of color, it's far easier for our country to ignore. And it's just incredibly sad. you know, a lot more needs to be done and a lot more pressure needs to be put on our elected officials to do something. And then lastly, that story that Hector told, thank God he had something positive for us because, man, it was a dark day. You know, I think that was so powerful. You know, he shows, you know, the power of organizing, right? And him being able to have that ICE contract, you know, get broken through the power of them protesting. It just shows, you know, again, if we're able to do that, recreate that blueprint that he's doing in his area, you know, in New Jersey, recreate that around the country, you know, we could enact so much change, you know, and that's why it's so important to be involved, to be, you know, using your voice and using whatever platform you have and to be using your time and, you know, be it even just donating to some of these organizations so that they can do the boots on the ground work if that's not for you. All of that is important we all have to to do our part and again imagine if that was happening in every state around this country that would enact huge huge change that you know the politicians wouldn't be able to deny you know we'd be taking the power into our own hands at that point so just just something to keep in mind a bit of light at the end of this dark tunnel and actually last thing i want to touch on when it comes to something positive a little bonus because we need it right now we had um in in Harvard, actually, you had Carlos Gonzalez Sierra making history as the first Latino president of the Harvard Graduate Council. So I want to give a big shout out to him just because of the precedent that it sets when you think about somebody like Pedro Albizu Campos, who was actually the valedictorian of his graduating class at Harvard Law, but was not able to speak at his commencement ceremony at his graduation because, in fact, he was a person of color. So it's beautiful to see how far we've gotten. You want to be able to kind of shout these things out as they happen. So I want to kind of give us a positive bonus right there from a positive story that I saw from We Are Me Too that I thought needed to be shared. Now with that said, thank y'all so much for tuning into this week's episode. Head over to Dramos.com if you want to pick up some merch. I have some Gringo hats left. I have a few of the Dramos Tribe hats left.
00:58:03
Speaker 1: I really love these.
00:58:04
Speaker 3: They are based off of a Taino warrior, which is the indigenous people of Puerto Rico. And we made basically myself into a Taino warrior. And you can see that and you can be a part of the tribe. I appreciate you. Leave us a review anywhere you're listening. If you haven't yet, I would greatly appreciate that. And with that said, have an amazing weekend and I'll catch y'all on Tuesday with a brand new episode.
00:58:28
Speaker 1: Stay safe.
00:58:29
Speaker 2: Peace.
00:58:32
Speaker 3: Life as a Gringo is a production of iHeart's My Cultura Podcast Network.
Speaker 1: Alright, let me tell you my talk.
00:00:07
Speaker 2: Here we go.
00:00:10
Speaker 3: I said he living life as a gringo. Where you question where you fit in every time you mingle.
00:00:15
Speaker 1: They say you do this with not enough that. My rapping is really bad. This life as a gringo.
00:00:21
Speaker 3: Yes, hello and welcome to another episode of Life as a Gringo.
00:00:25
Speaker 1: I am Dramos, of course.
00:00:28
Speaker 3: It is Thursday, so that means it's time for our Thursday Trends episode. And my guest this week is my guy. He is a former congressional candidate for the state of New Jersey. He is also an anti-money laundering specialist. Hector Oseguera, how you feeling, bro?
00:00:48
Speaker 2: Feeling great, bro. Salutes to you, man. Thank you for having me.
00:00:51
Speaker 1: Of course, of course, man.
00:00:52
Speaker 3: And And I talk about loving having you here on this particular day with the particular headlines that we've all been kind of dealing with and uncovering because... A, you have experience as a congressional candidate, right, on the political side of things. You're also an attorney. So there's a few different things that we're going to touch on, I feel like, from, man, the nonsense that's happening in our country right now. And with that in mind, if it's cool with you, man, I want to just start hopping.
00:01:24
Speaker 1: Into some of these stories.
00:01:26
Speaker 2: Let's do it.
00:01:27
Speaker 1: Perfect, man.
00:01:28
Speaker 3: Well, listen, today we're obviously going to talk about Roe v. Wade being overturned, the end of abortion as we know it in many states in this country. We'll also get into what's going on with the January 6th hearings, you know, the insurrection. There's been a lot of crazy updates happening this last week. We'll dive into that. And we'll also, man, touch on this really sad, sad story where you had Fifty one migrants found dead inside of a truck in Texas. So we'll touch on that. And man, just immigration as a whole and what needs to be done. And then for our segment, man, I want to I want to try to find some positivity. And I'm going to lean on you, Hector, for that as we try and find some light in the darkness.
00:02:22
Speaker 1: I want to hear.
00:02:23
Speaker 3: Something positive that you've been working on that might give the people some hope in a time where, man, we could all use some right now. And then, of course, we'll also have our Ask a Gringo segment where I will ask y'all a question. I want y'all to chime in on one of the topics that we're covering. Have your voice heard as well. But first, man, let's just dive into some of the more serious topics that we've been seeing from this last week. In a segment, we call for the people in the back.
00:02:51
Speaker 2: All right, man.
00:02:52
Speaker 1: So let's first and foremost start with the overturning of Roe v.
00:03:00
Speaker 2: Wade.
00:03:16
Speaker 3: I know you went to law school. You have studied the case of Roe v. Wade and why it made sense and the idea of privacy, right? And the right to privacy and all that led up to this landmark case.
00:03:31
Speaker 1: And seeing the Supreme.
00:03:33
Speaker 3: Court throw all of that away and then their explanation just doesn't make sense from a legal standpoint. And then now the implications that it could lead to other things. I mean, first and foremost, when you saw this news break, when it officially happened, I mean, give me your reaction.
00:03:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, I was devastated. You know, we had seen the leak come out a little while before. And so I think that that prepared people. And I think that whoever leaked that decision, honestly, is a hero. Because if that decision would have hit without people knowing it was coming, we might have seen real riots in the streets, you know, to know that people's rights are being rolled back 50 years. You know, from the layperson's perspective, not everybody is an attorney. They don't all know the legal implications of this stuff. But I knew right away that this is not just one decision. This is not just women's reproductive rights. This has implications for other decisions down the line coming up that we could see a rolling back of people's rights in a whole bunch of other contexts. So I was very devastated. I think it's probably... This decision is going to go down in history with some of the ugliest decisions that come out of the Supreme Court, like Plessy v. Ferguson, like Korematsu, things that in hindsight, 50 years from now, people will look back on this decision and say this was a very ugly decision and we hope to leave that era in the past. Right.
00:05:02
Speaker 3: I mean, did you ever think that you would come to a point in time in your lifetime that the Supreme Court's credibility would be in question?
00:05:12
Speaker 2: Not like this, honestly. And when I was in law school, that's one of the exercises that you go through is you try to read these decisions and you're trying to find a logical reasoning behind the decisions that they come to. It's It's a concept called stare decisis, which means that we respect precedent. That means if a decision was made in the past, your future decisions have to in some way incorporate those older rulings. It's very rare when you get an instance where the court overrules entirely a precedent like they did here. And so honestly, this is 50 years of Republicans trying to push for this specific decision. This is what you see when people, a small minority is very, very dedicated to getting a specific outcome. And that's exactly what we have here.
00:06:01
Speaker 1: Right, right.
00:06:01
Speaker 3: And you touched on the implications that it could have for other things outside of just women's reproductive rights, which by itself is an atrocity that somebody thinks they have the right to tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her body. But then This opens up the doors for for other things. I mean, we've already seen, you know, some opinions about LGBTQ plus rights. I mean, you've seen I can't remember the guy's name, but some one of these idiots in Congress tweeted about the idea of, you know, segregation being revisited.
00:06:30
Speaker 2: Right.
00:06:31
Speaker 1: And and, you know, even, you know.
00:06:35
Speaker 3: I personally have not have gone through law school. My girlfriend has. And I've heard cases that she's mentioned to me. But, you know, you even have ones that are connected to this when it comes to privacy, what you do behind closed doors. Right.
00:06:45
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
00:06:46
Speaker 3: A landmark case where I believe two men were arrested for what they were doing behind closed doors sexually.
00:06:51
Speaker 2: Right. Absolutely.
00:06:52
Speaker 3: That's that's what people don't realize is your right to do what you want to do in the sanctity of your own home is at risk. This goes beyond the idea of whether you believe a fetus is a human life. This this has implications for what you're allowed to do behind closed doors.
00:07:10
Speaker 1: And if anybody, the.
00:07:11
Speaker 3: Republican Party who wants less government, right, Republicans want less, less hands, you know, coming into their homes. I don't understand how this even makes sense for them.
00:07:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's sort of like an excuse that they use because really it ties into the whole religious thing, which is the evangelicals who are a big base of the Republicans. And honestly, you're right. This doesn't make sense if you're talking about less government. But people have to understand that this is basically about what you are allowed to do in the privacy of your own home. That's the right that is at risk. You mentioned the case Lawrence v. Texas. What basically you're talking about is two individual men who were doing what they do behind closed doors. There are certain states in this country that have what are called sodomy laws. This goes back hundreds of years of like, if you're not just a man and a woman, it's against the law. And that could come back into play because of this. Clarence Thomas, he wrote in a concurring opinion. So this is not officially part of the decision, but it touches into it. He said, you have to rethink gay marriage. You have to rethink the right to contraception, which is the right for a woman to even get an IUD or even use birth control at all. These fundamental rights of, are you allowed to do what you want to do in the privacy of your own home? That's what's at stake in this whole decision. And that's why You know, I was devastated. I know many people are devastated. And it's something that we really cannot ignore because we're watching your rights, your rights, no matter who you are, come into jeopardy. Right. Right.
00:08:48
Speaker 3: And then moving on to actionable steps here, you know, you you had someone like AOC talking about, you know, different things that could or couldn't be done. Right. She she mentioned the the idea of it wouldn't be the first time that a president has visited the idea of expanding the Supreme Court. Right.
00:09:07
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
00:09:09
Speaker 3: And talked about that. the elimination of the filibuster being a necessary thing in order for us to begin to actually allow policies to start passing, you know, and to actually have these conversations and to not just be stalling for the sake of stalling, you know? I mean, I probably already know the answer to this question, but do you think Biden is doing enough?
00:09:30
Speaker 1: And if not, what should he be doing? And Democrats as a whole, I guess you could say.
00:09:34
Speaker 2: No, and I would give Joe Biden, the Democrats as a whole, an F minus on this because I'll tell you the secret about this is that the Democrats have liked having this as something to scare the voters and say, oh, you got to vote for us because if you don't vote for us, the Republicans are going to overturn Roe v. Wade.
00:09:50
Speaker 1: Right, right.
00:09:51
Speaker 2: To them is more valuable as an issue to scare people and to say, oh, now you need to vote for us. But the fact of the matter is that they should... allow abortion services on federal land. That's something they could do today, right now, and it would effectively, not legally, but effectively overturn this decision because then any woman could go to a federal location and seek those abortion services. They should expand the core. Let me tell you this. When the Supreme Court was first created, There was one Supreme Court justice for every circuit, every court of appeals circuit. That stopped after a certain point. But at this point, if we were to reinstate that rule, there are currently 13 circuit courts. So you can make an argument that the Supreme Court is less than it should have. And you can actually add up to 13 justices. I think that that would be the right thing to do. And the filibuster, they should do that just because it's the right thing to do. They didn't have to wait for this moment. You know, now you have a crisis issue that a lot of people are really motivated about it, but they should have expanded the Supreme Court before. They should have gotten rid of the filibuster before. Now that you have this crisis point, they absolutely should do it. But the Democrats as a whole, you know, the Democrats really have a branding problem and an ER problem. they don't know how to sell their message to people. They're better off telling people, well, you better vote for us because those guys will hurt you real bad. Now that they've hurt you real bad already, what is their argument so you should vote for us? Because they've been scaring people for all these years, like, oh, if you don't vote for Democrats, they'll overturn Roe v. Wade. And now they overturn Roe v. Wade while the Democrats were in presidency, while the Democrats have a majority in Congress. And so what is their argument? I think it's people like AOC and Elizabeth Warren are actually proposing solutions that should be in charge of what's going on now.
00:11:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's such a great point that is not talked about enough is that all of this is a part of the dream selling season that happens every political campaign, right? And I mean, you see this all like in Puerto Rico, they have the way that their parties are structured. It's not Republican Democrats per se, it's statehood independence and status quo, right? And there's a lot of people who would always argue that the pro statehood people actually don't want statehood because then they would no longer have a party to report to essentially.
00:12:15
Speaker 2: Right.
00:12:15
Speaker 3: So it's all just meant to have some sort of brand, some sort of identity for your voters to come and vote for you. And this is far too serious of a crisis for for that to be the reason why things don't get done.
00:12:31
Speaker 1: Right. To have these.
00:12:32
Speaker 3: These games continuing to happen and this, this inaction happening. And, and, you know, speaking of, of inaction, I mean, moving on to one of the other bombshell, you know, stories that we've been following is the, the hearings that are happening around January 6th.
00:12:46
Speaker 2: Right.
00:12:47
Speaker 3: And again, inaction, which we'll get to in a second. But I mean, the the recent one that everybody's talking about right now from this week was that you had a former White House aide testifying that Trump demanded to be taken to the Capitol and tried to grab the steering wheel, apparently, while his Secret Service was driving, then apparently lunged at one of them when they wouldn't allow him to to go to the Capitol. You you had him being made aware that there were people in the crowd with weapons and he was OK with that. He said they're not here to hurt me. So he just cared about himself and wanted to get rid of metal detectors, if I'm not mistaken. I mean, you're you're seeing that the hearings I'm sure you've been following. I mean, this week was particularly damning when it comes to Donald Trump. I mean, let me let me hear your reactions to all that you've been seeing thus far.
00:13:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, and my reaction is that it's totally believable. Everything that that woman said, there's no doubt in my mind that it's very possible that that's true. And, you know, it's very sad because you have so many people that to this day are misled by this guy. And they still believe that the election was stolen, this, that, and the third, all this craziness. So to me, while I think that those revelations are damning, I think there's no worse opinion that I could have of Donald Trump. So that's the unfortunate part is like the people that you need to reach They're the ones who are tuned out. They don't they don't want to hear it. They're rather, you know, they'll rather look at something else. They'd rather care about whatever else. Joe Biden falling off a bike or something. Right.
00:14:20
Speaker 1: Right.
00:14:21
Speaker 2: On the fact that Donald Trump throws his plates, that he tried to attack his own Secret Service. that he knew that those people were armed and that he didn't care because he knew that they weren't going to hurt him, that he wanted them to hang his vice president, all this crazy, you know, if it was not, we live in a country where if you are a wealthy white man, you get all the privilege and all the benefit of the doubt in the world. Because if Barack Obama had told black people, I'm not leaving office, I'm not, I'm staying here forever. I'm attacking my... You know, we can't even say what they would have did to him. You know what I'm saying? If on January 6th, it was Black Lives Matter carrying guns into the Capitol, we can't even say what they would have did to them. And so... The unfortunate part is that we live in a country where it seems like a third of the people don't care about democracy, don't care if they win or lose an election. They don't care about the truth. They care. Do I win or do I lose? And those, you know, the unfortunate thing is like, those are the people we need to reach out to the most because they're the ones who are going to either make or break this whole situation. Yeah.
00:15:40
Speaker 3: And that's a really a really scary thought, you know, that that they have that much power and that much control merely for the fact that there are white men in this country. Right. Man, I'm loving the conversation and your perspective. I think now is a good time to take a quick little pause, a break.
00:15:58
Speaker 1: And then we'll be right back. All right, we are back.
00:16:03
Speaker 3: And to your point, you have on video Republican lawmakers giving questionable tours of the Capitol ahead of January 6th after they initially denied that. And then we're caught on camera and now have to backpedal. You know, you have, man, all types of testimony proving that there were all types of illegal attempts to overthrow the election. And then to me, the more frustrating part, and I would love for you to speak this from the law side. I mean, you have the DOJ not charging certain people when when they're not complying with congressional subpoenas.
00:16:39
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
00:16:39
Speaker 3: Like I can't imagine being subpoenaed and not showing up and nothing happens to me.
00:16:46
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
00:16:47
Speaker 3: I remember the police showed up at my mom's doorstep because she was $ 5 short on a parking ticket that she had paid one time, right? Right. And so to think that these people can just ignore the fact that they're being subpoenaed, that they have implications against them, Donald Trump included, and that we don't have any faith that the Department of Justice is going to take action on this.
00:17:08
Speaker 1: I mean... Can you make sense of it at all from your perspective?
00:17:13
Speaker 2: Well, I can, and it's a real unfortunate answer because when you have these sorts of attacks on countries, when you have the rise of fascism, what those people try to do is that they use the system to break the system itself, right? And so this is how I can explain it to you. The Department of Justice historically- has a precedent where you don't go after political enemies, because that's what happens in so-called third world nations, that a new president comes in and they'll investigate the last president. When the next president comes in, they'll investigate you. And so there's this, you could say a precedent or a tradition that you don't investigate the last administration, almost no matter what they do. And so when Obama came in, people said, will you investigate the Bushes? They said, no, I'm not going to do it. And Now that you have... The only person who probably would have broken that tradition is Donald Trump himself, who would have loved to have them investigate Hillary Clinton and the Obamas, but they didn't do that. Again, following the tradition, they didn't do it. Now that you have Joe Biden in office, they're probably going to... be very, very cautious and tread against indicting the former administration, even though they've done things that if it were anybody else, almost would very certainly be in prison at this point. You just got to think about a lot of those congressmen, they were asking Donald Trump for a pardon, right? I don't know about you, right? But innocent people don't really ask to be pardoned. You don't need a pardon if you didn't break the law, right?
00:18:41
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
00:18:42
Speaker 2: So these people even themselves know that they were breaking the law. But when you have the rise of fascism attempts to destroy democracy, they're going to use the sort of the spaces in the system to break the system itself so that they can get into power once again. And so That's the best way that I could explain to you why there have not been higher level indictments and why, in my opinion, there probably will not be. If there are, it's got to be that they found Donald Trump's handprints on a gun. That's what it was. Other than that, I'm very skeptical, unfortunately, that we will see justice related to January 6th, even though, in my opinion, it's something certainly that should be done. prosecuted and if it was you and me bro we would have been we'd we wouldn't even see daylight again for the next hundred years.
00:19:33
Speaker 3: Right right and and then you but you think to yourself i and tradition i get it it makes sense but then it's like where does this stop right because like it's if if people see all of this evidence and even on Fox News, there was a clip of them dumbfounded, not knowing how to respond to what was being said. Even them, they are amazing storytellers, didn't know what the hell to say to this. They couldn't find a way to spin it in a way that made them look in a positive way, the Republican Party, that is, or Donald Trump. But It then the scary thing is, where does this end? Because you've just shown people.
00:20:11
Speaker 1: That now there is there are no repercussions.
00:20:13
Speaker 2: Right.
00:20:14
Speaker 3: I mean, think about all the openly racist people that are running for office right now.
00:20:18
Speaker 1: Right.
00:20:18
Speaker 3: The openly violent people that are running for office. We have set a precedent that you no longer have to hide your hate.
00:20:25
Speaker 2: Right.
00:20:26
Speaker 3: You no longer have to be crafty about the way that you. you know, suppress others. Right.
00:20:31
Speaker 1: You're allowed to put.
00:20:32
Speaker 3: It out there in the open. And actually, when you do it, it makes you that much more popular. That's what's scary as hell.
00:20:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we're going back 100 years, certainly. And it was always bubbling under the surface. But what I'll give Donald Trump the credit for is that he brought it out. You used to have to kind of hide what you meant to say. They would talk about welfare. They would talk about other issues.
00:20:56
Speaker 1: Violence and drugs.
00:20:59
Speaker 2: And urban communities and all that stuff. But now I think I saw a clip of a woman next to Donald Trump Talking about Roe v. Wade, talking about how they preserved white life. Yes, I saw that one as well. So the mask is off now. And honestly, it's like, where does it end? Unfortunately, history tells us that it doesn't end somewhere nice. That's why I do think that it's better for people to organize in their communities and really get a hold of what's going on right now. Because it didn't have to be a crisis. And you know, I've been up to this stuff for quite some time. And it's hard to sell people in non... political times, but it's, it's for the political times that we need your support because now, now what are we doing now? We're playing catch up. Right.
00:21:45
Speaker 1: Right.
00:21:45
Speaker 3: Well then right to that point, I mean, what do you say? I mean, this primary is happening right now, you know, we're, we're going to be entering another election cycle, you know, before we know it. You know, I mean, what do you you tell people? I mean, especially, you know, you look at black and brown voters, black voters in particular, who Joe Biden himself say, you know, gave him the election. But many, many feel like they didn't get what was promised to them.
00:22:11
Speaker 1: Right.
00:22:12
Speaker 3: And these record numbers that we saw of voters, many of whom were first time voters.
00:22:18
Speaker 2: Right.
00:22:18
Speaker 3: That's why it was record numbers. How do you convince them to go back out to the poll? You know, the polls, again, when none of the things that they have have been promised, you know, have have come through.
00:22:28
Speaker 1: And in fact, we're actually in a worse situation.
00:22:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, by far, by far, by far. And, you know, the really simple answers that they have to deliver, they have to do things that are going to tell those voters, you know, I'm here and I feel and I see your pain and I'm going to do something about it. You know, just just in case Joe Biden's listening right now, you know, He 100 percent should cancel student loan debt. That's something that I think would recharge the economy, because the biggest thing that people really care about right now is inflation. Right. Gas prices are through the roof. If he were to put money back in people's pockets, you know, a large chunk of student loan debt is our generation. People who went to college and couldn't pay for it at the back end, him to cancel that debt would absolutely, you know, recharge the economy and would tell voters, wow, he's going to do something. You know, they should be more aggressive on Roe v. Wade. They've been very, very, I would say, very... tone deaf on this whole issue. They should open up abortion on federal lands. They should be really aggressive about codifying Roe v. Wade. There's so much that they could do. They just have to be able to deliver for the people and to say, that's what I'll say to Donald Trump. When he was running, his voters believed that he was delivering for them. If you can't create that sense in your voters- You know, it's going to you're always going to fall back to, well, you better vote for us because those other people are going to get you. They're going to hurt you. So you better vote for us. And that's not good enough anymore. So I would say deliver on policy, make people feel like you care about their issues and just straight up do something, do something. Don't don't just fall back into the, you know, mainstream political dialogue of, oh, we need bipartisanship and all that stuff, because because that is an era that has ended and the politicians have to realize that. Right, right.
00:24:17
Speaker 3: I think that's a great point. I mean, and then on the flip side of that, what do you say to the voter, you know, who is disenfranchised? I mean, I know you're big on the local level, community organizing and things like that. I mean, is that kind of where you see the answer? And obviously, that's more of a long-term solution than it is, you know, in the short term, at least for some of these bigger issues that we're talking about.
00:24:41
Speaker 1: But what do you say to that voter?
00:24:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, to that person who feels like it doesn't matter, what I'll say to them is that nothing makes the establishment happier than for you to check out of the system and to say you're not going to participate. Because if you don't participate, what you're saying is that other people are going to decide for you, basically. People think if I don't vote, at least I'm not giving credibility to the system. I'm not participating. I don't have no responsibility. But the fact of the matter is, Every time you do not participate, you're basically saying whatever everybody else decides is good enough for me. If what everybody else has decided is not good enough for you, you need to get involved. You know, you need to... Vote regularly. Anytime there's an election, you need to organize your community, get your friends and neighbors to vote as well. You know, honestly, and it is not a short term solution. What I'm telling to people is not a short term solution. It's going to take a long time. But look at what the Republicans did on not a short term solution. Overturning Roe v. Wade has been decades in the works.
00:25:40
Speaker 3: Yes.
00:25:41
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, for us to get back, it might be decades of work and it's not going to be easy solutions. You know, we live in a generation that it's all instant gratification. You swipe left to swipe right and get what you want. That's not what this is like. Unfortunately, politics is not like that. It's going to take two, four, eight, 10, 12 years before you see something tangible. But the work along the way should give you some sense that you're getting closer. You know, as you build community with people, you come to find that there's small time problems that we thought were out of our control, that if we as a community work towards it, we can get it done ourselves. From there, you build up. So yeah, I know it's not the glamorous, sexy thing to say. I could tell everybody to pick up a torch and go burn something down, but at the end of the day, that's not going to solve your problems. What is going to solve your problems is to organize with the people in your community, go to the politicians and say, if you don't do what we say, we're going to withhold our support from you and we're going to put somebody in power who will do what we want. And that's what's going to get the results that you want. Politicians only care about two things, money and power. If you're not threatening their money or their power, they do not care about you.
00:26:49
Speaker 3: Right.
00:26:49
Speaker 2: Right.
00:26:49
Speaker 1: Those are all great points.
00:26:51
Speaker 3: I mean, and even you look at the blueprint that Donald Trump has has set.
00:26:55
Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
00:26:56
Speaker 3: He's basically, you know, changed the face of the Republican Party and basically said either you old heads are going to come along with the new the new plan I have in place or I'm going to get somebody new to run against you. I'm going to support them and they're going to get you voted out of office.
00:27:11
Speaker 2: Right.
00:27:11
Speaker 3: Right. And that's kind of what the Democrats have to do. You know, there are a lot of these old Democrats that are sitting around that are, you know, on TV saying all the right things, but don't really care about anything. You know, they're having dinner with the same scumbags that are doing shady things, you know, across the aisle. And that's what needs to happen. You know, I mean, you took it into your own hands as well. You ran against a fellow Democrat, right? And that's what things like that, you know, if you are blessed enough that that's happening in your local election, you better get out the house, you know, or even somewhere like Texas, where you have somebody like Beto O'Rourke, who is a credible candidate, You know, and Texas being such the sender of so much of what we're seeing from man gun reform to Roe v. Wade, you know, understand if you live in Texas, this is incredibly important. You actually do have the ability to make great change. You have to do what you can and get behind the people who are challenging the status quo.
00:28:04
Speaker 2: 100 percent. Yeah, Texas is a big one. Texas is a big one. I would say that we really need because it could be like Georgia that for so long people thought it was a red state that couldn't be flipped. And, you know, with the right person, maybe with a better Aurora, you can flip a red state blue. And with all the votes that come from a state like Texas, it would be very important.
00:28:23
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
00:28:24
Speaker 3: And Georgia is another one, you know, if Stacey Abrams there as well. I mean, you know, you have to pay attention to what's going on, you know, locally and see what you can do to your point. Now, last bit of bad news I want to talk about, man. I know this is something that is near and dear to us. It affects our community.
00:28:40
Speaker 1: It's our people.
00:28:42
Speaker 3: You had this terrible situation where, you know, 51 people were found dead in Texas inside of a truck, an abandoned truck. They were many of whom were Mexican. You know, obviously, these are people coming across the border in search of a better life.
00:28:58
Speaker 1: And and.
00:29:00
Speaker 3: The fact that they are willing to put their lives at risk in that way just goes to show you what they are escaping from, right? What they're trying to get away from.
00:29:09
Speaker 1: And man, in.
00:29:11
Speaker 3: A country that seems like it doesn't have much empathy for people, let's be honest, people of color, you know, and particularly the notion of somebody who's Mexican, right? That's like this racial slur in this country, you know? And on the other hand, the irony of seeing us sending billions of dollars to the Ukraine is, and not addressing a problem right here. And not to say that those people aren't suffering, but it just goes to show you the mindset here. I mean, obviously this is, is something that you follow closely. It's near and dear to your heart. I mean, talk to me about when you see it, your thoughts and what is the solution that is not being seen or happening right now?
00:29:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, man.
00:29:53
Speaker 2: And when I saw that story, it absolutely broke my heart because you're seeing the confluence of so many different things. This is US policy on an international level that people are impoverished to the extent that they will risk their lives and the lives of their children to try to get somewhere where they think that there's going to be more opportunities, right? And again, we're talking about Texas, which is a place that benefits so much from the influx of immigrants who come in and are willing to work for low wages. They, you know, we are the people that keep this country running, but are always looked down upon as if we're a burden. You know, those Donald Trump type Republicans who look at every Hispanic is a Mexican to them. Yeah. And we're all lazy and we don't work. Yep.
00:30:43
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:30:43
Speaker 2: Somehow we were getting secret benefits from the government or taking over everything. No. So it's like, It's such a sad, sad place that there's so little empathy for people who are coming looking for the story of America. I came with $ 2 in my pocket and I just wanted to work and make my own way and be left alone and not have to run from the cartels. And there are people who are willing to exploit those people. Coyotes, you know, the cartels themselves. And it's really sad. And there's no easy solution. You know, I'm kind of like a radical. So to me, these lines don't mean anything. You could just let people back and forth and nobody will get hurt, you know, as long as you know, you have some sort of system that, that, you know, the person's cool, you know, to me, let everybody in, let anybody come in. Everybody's looking for the same thing. Everybody just wants an opportunity at the basic level. We're all human beings. These lines really don't mean anything. You know, if I'm here in New Jersey and I cross the river and I'm in New York artificially, or, or you go somewhere else and you're now you're in a different state, you know, these lines were drawn by people. They can be erased by people. And we don't really, when it's causing all this death and destruction, I don't think it's worth it. I think that we could have a system where anybody who wants to come in could come in. And at the end of the day, that's how it should be. We should be a just, humane country. And we should be willing to extend the same empathy and the same freedom that we gave to prior generations to the next generations. You know, I do believe in that poem at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. You know, come, come, give us your poor, your tired, whoever. That's the kind of country I was raised to believe in. You know, it's sad that it seems some people were not brought up to think that that's what America is. But, you know, I was lucky enough to be told that this was a country of opportunity. And if you wanted to come and work hard, you're welcome. And to me, in my honest opinion, that's how it should be. And it breaks my heart, completely breaks my heart that people died, you know, looking for that, looking for that life and trying to escape a very desperate system.
00:32:54
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:32:55
Speaker 3: And also, I mean, when you think about, you know, you had touched on this at the beginning of what your response was, but.
00:33:03
Speaker 1: We've caused some of the turmoil in these countries, right?
00:33:06
Speaker 2: 100%.
00:33:08
Speaker 3: We bear the blame for much of the instability for these countries in Central and South America, right?
00:33:14
Speaker 1: And it's only right that we do our part to fix that, right? I mean, especially if.
00:33:22
Speaker 3: You are somebody who believes in stricter borders and doesn't want people coming over here, the solution for you then would be invest in those countries so that those people don't have to flee the place that they grew up in, right? I mean, I don't think Anybody would want to flee their home place, you know, to go somewhere where they don't speak the language, where, you know, they have to rely on others to for basic needs to be met. You know, I don't think anybody would want to do that willingly if they had opportunity where they came from.
00:33:55
Speaker 2: Right.
00:33:56
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
00:33:57
Speaker 3: In those countries, you're going to you're going to create more and more opportunity for people to actually want to stay where they are from.
00:34:05
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And you could trace the waves of immigration to U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. You know, we invade a country and the people from that country start coming up. You know, what a coincidence. And then it's sad that, you know. You talk to the higher ups in government like Kamala Harris went to South America, she said, don't come, do not come. You know, that's why people don't have faith in the Democratic Party, because, you know, before before Joe Biden, Barack Obama was called the deporter in chief. Because he basically had a wall on the southern border. And he had the lowest border crossings ever. So, you know, I think it's very unfortunate for us to go into any country, destabilize the country. The people from that country flee because their country's been destabilized. And then we have the audacity to tell those people, don't come here. That's very cruel. And I think it really is something that we need to reverse.
00:34:59
Speaker 1: At 100%.
00:34:59
Speaker 3: And the last thing I'll say is also, why don't we make it a little bit easier to become a citizen for people, right? Like, you have people, and I interviewed an artist who, she fled, I believe it was Nicaragua. She had been kidnapped and fled, came here, and she.
00:35:19
Speaker 1: Pays taxes, right?
00:35:20
Speaker 3: And does everything like an American citizen would, but she's been here for like 10 years and still can't get her green card, you know?
00:35:27
Speaker 1: And that just makes no sense at all, right? We're making things... far more.
00:35:32
Speaker 3: Difficult when we've seen in other situations, we saw, you know, the Ukrainians are being welcomed with open arms, right?
00:35:39
Speaker 1: When Cuba with Castro, right?
00:35:40
Speaker 3: You know, there was politics involved in that and Cubans were fast track to citizens within a year, right? You know, so it shows you these things are possible when the politics and agendas align with what the powers that be want, you know what I mean? And that's the sad thing. You are playing with people's lives based upon your own particular political policy.
00:36:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, man. The secret of America is that it's based off cheap labor, right? So if you bring all these people in and you deny them certain rights, you create an underclass of people. And then the system is invested in keeping that underclass nourished so that they can continue to profit off of them. And that's unfortunately what you see in a lot of these instances. And that's why this country doesn't want... New York City recently tried to give non-citizens the right to vote and it was overturned, right? So... You know, this country has a vested interest in having a permanent underclass. And unfortunately, Latinos, people of color generally, have been relegated to that underclass.
00:36:39
Speaker 3: Right, right.
00:36:40
Speaker 2: Exactly.
00:36:40
Speaker 1: That's 100%.
00:36:41
Speaker 3: Unless we fit into their box in that particular moment, then they're willing to make a concession, right?
00:36:45
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:36:46
Speaker 3: Now, I know we've been talking about a lot of heavy stuff today. So, man, let's lighten it up and let's try and find some positivity in things that are going on in this world right now. And we'll do that in our Mi Gente segment. But first, let's take a quick break and then we'll be right back.
00:37:10
Speaker 2: Mi Gente.
00:37:10
Speaker 1: Mi Gente.
00:37:15
Speaker 3: Now, we've talked about a lot of heavy, heavy stuff, man. Let's let's try and end on some positivity here.
00:37:22
Speaker 1: I mean, you are active. You're in the community.
00:37:25
Speaker 3: You're still very much active in a lot of the local elections like we've talked about that are happening. I mean, You have your own thoughts and ideas. You're well-read in all that's happening. I mean, what positive things have you been seeing that you feel like people should know, you know, to keep some optimism, you know, for, man, the sake of our democracy? Because that truly is what is at stake right now.
00:37:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I would agree with you. We are at a crisis of democracy. And, you know, it's not a surprise to you that I think that the local is the much more fertile ground for people like us to invest in. And so I'm going to bring your viewers in. You know, a very positive story that happened to me personally is that, like you said, like you shared, I had run a campaign against Democrats because here in New Jersey, everybody's a Democrat. There's nothing but elected Democrats. But unfortunately, those are the type of Democrats, those Joe Biden Democrats that don't really respond to the needs of the people. And for a long time, a group of my friends and my activist organizers, we were fighting against ICE that had contracts with the county jail here in Hudson County. And last December, I was arrested. Me and a bunch of other activists were arrested, and we had a restraining order put on us by the county executive of Hudson County saying that we could not protest outside of his house. We were fortunate enough to get the ACLU to represent us, and just a couple weeks ago, our case was, you know, our arrest was dismissed, and the restraining order was deemed unconstitutional. Thanks to our organizing, we were able to get the Ice County contract kicked out of Hudson County, so ICE no longer detains undocumented immigrants in Hudson County Jail, number one. Number two, the county executive illegally violated our First Amendment rights to protest and our arrest was illegal based on that restraining order. So I think this is a good story that your viewers can take to show that local organizing really does work and you really can get the results that you want out of your government if you and your community are willing to get together and speak in a loud and very distinct voice and tell the people in power what you want. Anybody who's interested, just Google ACLU Hudson County. I'm sure it'll pop up on your Googles and you'll see. Look, we took it. We went up against a Democrat. We have people telling us, oh, why are you protesting him? Why are you doing this? These are Democrats. But we had to fight for what's right. And so we did. We were arrested. Not a comfortable experience for anybody who's been arrested. Not what we were looking for. But we persevered and now we've gotten a very important victory for the immigrant community in Hudson County and a precedent to say that we cannot have our right to protest, you know, unconstitutionally infringed upon. So, you know, that's my positive story. And I think that it shows how good organizing can really accomplish certain goals.
00:40:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's beautiful, man.
00:40:20
Speaker 3: And if you just think to yourself, what if groups like yours were popping up all over the country and taking on various issues that are affecting those communities? Think about the massive change that would happen, right? It would be monumental. The politicians would have to pay attention at that point. Because like you said, yours might be one little victory here in a county in New Jersey. But again, that's the power in organizing. And again, if that was happening in every county in the United States where there was something happening, the country would be in a far different place, right? And that's the beauty of a story like that, man. I commend you for, man, not stopping doing the work, you know, after the campaign run and continuing on true to your word and your values, man. So I appreciate you, bro. Always good to catch up with you. Where can people follow you? They can stay in touch with all that you're doing. You want to give away your social links.
00:41:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. Anybody who wants to connect, I'm heavy on Twitter. It's my last name, Oseguera2020. I'm on Twitter, IG, Facebook, the whole nine. Same thing, Oseguera, my last name, 2020. I'm very responsive. Anybody who wants to talk about local issues or organizing, I'm more than happy to chat it up and help you out. Dope.
00:41:33
Speaker 1: My guy, Hector Oseguera. I appreciate you, bro.
00:41:36
Speaker 2: Always a pleasure, man. Thank you.
00:41:38
Speaker 1: Man, big shout out to my.
00:41:39
Speaker 3: Guy, Hector Oseguera, for hopping on today's I always love hearing his perspective, so I'm sure we'll have him on the show a bunch as time goes on. But, man, perfect guest for helping break down all that we've been seeing.
00:41:55
Speaker 1: Now, with that in.
00:41:56
Speaker 3: Mind, I want to get y'all's opinion on one of these topics, and we'll do that in our Ask a Gringo segment.
00:42:05
Speaker 2: Ask a Gringo!
00:42:11
Speaker 3: All right, so this week, man, I just wanted to give you all the opportunity to vent. And at DJDramas on Instagram, I do this for each and every episode, I'll have a question that I want to get y'all's perspective on.
00:42:26
Speaker 1: And obviously, there's been a lot of talk over Roe v.
00:42:30
Speaker 3: Wade being overturned, a lot of emotions, you know, and rightfully so. And I just wanted to kind of open up the platform to to y'all to let you vent about how you're feeling. I just wanted to give people the opportunity to have their voice heard. So we'll read a couple different responses I got. I just asked people, vent about what you're feeling when it comes to Roe v.
00:42:53
Speaker 1: Wade being overturned.
00:42:54
Speaker 3: So I mean, it's no surprise a lot of really strong feelings here. I'm going to read a couple that we we got a few that we got here at just to be there. That underscore says, first off, life's not that great. So way to dodge a bullet, possibly from a school shooting. I'm assuming he's.
00:43:12
Speaker 1: Talking about the abortion.
00:43:15
Speaker 3: The potential child is is dodging a a bullet, which very scary kind of sarcasm, but but also true. And then he says, secondly, people are mad because it's taking a life and that's God's way? Most of y'all are going to hell. So just let women do what the fuck they want with their bodies. And obviously a lot of anger, a lot of emotion here justifiably. So, I mean, yeah, I think you bring up a great point. I wouldn't say life isn't great, but you bring up something like a school shooting incident. And that's just one of the many things that potentially are incredibly scary for anybody bringing a child into this world. You talk about all the madness that is happening and all of the potential scary things that this country just tends to allow to happen because of its inaction, right? And violence is one of those things. The fact that we're more concerned with what a person does is doing with their body than.
00:44:25
Speaker 1: Coming up with ways to make it harder for people to hurt one another with guns. It's crazy to me.
00:44:31
Speaker 3: I mean, I've seen the memes, I'm sure many of you have as well, that it's scary that a gun seems to have more rights in this country than a woman. But even beyond that, talking about the safety of a potential child coming into this world, we live in a country where there is no universal healthcare, right? There is no universal childcare. There is no paid family and medical leave guaranteed.
00:44:53
Speaker 1: For your job.
00:44:54
Speaker 3: We have a country that has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality among rich nations.
00:45:02
Speaker 1: So when you talk about.
00:45:04
Speaker 3: This idea of the other side caring so much about a child's life that they have to make abortions illegal, their actions also show they don't care you know, what happens to that child. It's like, OK, they want to fight for the child to be born, but then lose all interest in making sure that the child is safe. And also the mother is safe and it just makes no sense. You know, this isn't about being pro-life, as they say. This is all about just being in control at the end of the day. Let's see, at Nicolosa underscore Vegas says angry, which I know is a cover up emotion for sadness.
00:45:44
Speaker 1: I've just been trying to be vocal. I found myself.
00:45:47
Speaker 3: Unfollowing a lot of big influencers who have ignored the issue, which has been really disheartening. I know it sounds radical, but do you ever feel like leaving this country? SCOTUS decision just set a precedent and it feels like things are going to get worse. Sorry to sound defeatist, I'm just at a loss. And I get it, you know. It's funny because I was just, you know, sitting in my house over the weekend and, you know, throughout this week, and it just doesn't feel real. Watching it on TV, there's just something surreal about it. It just feels like a bad dream, and not to sound cliche, but it just doesn't feel like this is the real world that we're living in, like it really happened. And then the responses that you're seeing, and we talked about this with Hector, and how this just seems like it's just the beginning, and to your point, it's just incredibly scary to think that this is just the start, you know, this is so terrible as it is, you know, and that it potentially is only going to get worse from here. And I get what you're saying, you know, when it comes to people that you follow and not being vocal, you know, I think that this isn't a time for inaction.
00:46:58
Speaker 1: You know, we all have to use our voice.
00:47:00
Speaker 3: And I understand that just sounds silly that it's an Instagram post and this or that. But The reality is, you know, we have to express our anger in any way that we're able to, you know, in a healthy way, I should say, and in a legal way. This isn't right. And I think also, especially as men, you know, it's important for someone like myself and others to let women know that we stand by them, you know, that just because this doesn't directly affect my body, you know, doesn't mean that I don't recognize How scary this is for women and how how much of a infringement this is on a woman's God given right to to have, you know, choice over what happens with her own body. And so your question about, you know, do you ever feel like leaving this country? Yeah, it's funny. I think to myself, you know, when when all this is going on, you know, man, I wonder if one day it'll come to a point that things get so bad here that I feel like I have no choice.
00:48:03
Speaker 1: But to leave, to go somewhere else, you know.
00:48:06
Speaker 3: And that's a really scary thought, that that might be a real option, you know. And I don't want to, you know, leave the States full time. I love my life here, you know. But that is a real question in my head, you know, is if things like this continue to happen and the inmates continue to run the asylum and only become more and more powerful, you know, Do I even really have a choice at that point? You know, and that's a really, man, scary, scary kind of thought to think about. Last one we have time for at Rebecca underscore DLM says, I have a high risk pregnancy and I'm scared if I have to have an abortion.
00:48:47
Speaker 1: Due to complications, I could die.
00:48:49
Speaker 3: I would leave my daughter motherless in a country where she doesn't have rights either. And yeah, that that that's an incredibly scary thought.
00:48:58
Speaker 1: And I empathize with you. My heart goes out to you.
00:49:00
Speaker 3: You know, we've already seen, I know there's a story going around that is being shared about a woman who's already going through this, you know, in a state that abortion already became illegal or incredibly restricted. And that's so fucking scary, right? We talk about this idea again of people being quote unquote prostitutes. but they don't give a fuck about the life of the mother, right? And that just shows the hypocrisy and that this is all, you know, just a part of a greater scheme. And it's not really about, you know, protecting people's lives, you know. it's just about fitting your own politics, your own religious beliefs, whatever, whatever the case may be at the expense of, of the safety of others. You know, there's plenty of cases where, you know, a birth complication happens. And the only way to save the mother is for an abortion to, to happen, you know, and that's already a God awful situation. But, you know, to then think that because a woman can't get this procedure done, she might lose her life.
00:50:04
Speaker 2: Right.
00:50:06
Speaker 3: It's just incredibly scary. And again, my heart goes out, you know, to women everywhere who are sharing in this fear, again, in a country that the maternal death rate is incredibly high, right? The idea that women are dying from giving birth in this country, you know, it's a really scary, scary idea and thought and to think that they don't have the ability to protect themselves if they want to.
00:50:31
Speaker 1: It, It's terrible, man. And hopefully.
00:50:37
Speaker 3: Man, hopefully the Democrats have to get their shit together and find a way around this because it's really just an atrocity. There's no other way to put it, man. I'm sorry for anybody who is out there living with this type of fear right now. It really is just a terrible and angry time to be in this country. It's just really sad.
00:51:01
Speaker 1: Now, with that said.
00:51:02
Speaker 3: Man, let's tie everything we talked about today in a neat little bow in a segment we call Conclusion Stew. Time for Conclusion Stew. All right.
00:51:16
Speaker 1: So, I mean, I know today's show was incredibly heavy.
00:51:20
Speaker 3: I do feel like we kind of really dove into a lot of stuff and broke it down in great detail. So big shout out to my guest today, Hector Oseguera, for that. I love the work that he's doing, man. I just think it's incredible. And I always love hearing his perspective. So, I mean, when it comes to Roe v. Wade, we know it's terrible and it's heartbreaking. But again, it's only the beginning. If you think they're going to stop, you know, with just a woman's reproductive rights, you know, you're sadly mistaken. They are going to enact every extremist view that they have that that violates all of our rights to privacy. And we all have to be fighting when it comes to using our voices and using the vote and and all those different resources that.
00:52:05
Speaker 1: We have for our very freedoms are at risk. Right.
00:52:10
Speaker 3: And it's ironic to say that in the land of the free, it seems like many of our freedoms are being taken away and and you look at the opinions of the people, you know, Clarence Thomas is already writing things about, you know, like like Hector brought up LGBTQ plus rights being in question and things of that nature. They're showing us, you know, this really is only the beginning. And the Democrats have to fucking, you know, step up and get aggressive, you know, and Biden has to get aggressive. Just like Hector said, there are multiple things that they could be doing in order to, you know, Save us, essentially.
00:52:48
Speaker 1: Right. So we have to keep that pressure on them.
00:52:51
Speaker 3: And as disheartening as it as it may seem, you know, we can't allow this to make us feel so disenfranchised that we no longer participate in the democracy of our country, because at the end of the day, that's what they want. They want us to stop showing up at the polls and they want, you know, us to be so disenfranchised that we just give up fighting and just give in and we just can't allow ourselves to do so. And I think that that sentiment kind of resonates when you talk about January 6th and shows you the importance of voting. You know, I mean, maybe Biden obviously is is not the greatest president in the world. And I don't think he's the greatest president for this time period right now. We need somebody who is a bit more radical and and and not trying to, you know, fit into the old system. But think about what the what would have happened if we didn't come out to the polls.
00:53:40
Speaker 1: You know, Trump.
00:53:41
Speaker 3: Would have continued on building this sort of dictatorship that he obviously wanted, where we had a president who was unafraid to break the law and was unafraid to abuse his power. And it's scary to think how much damage he's done.
00:54:00
Speaker 1: We look at the Supreme Court in just four.
00:54:02
Speaker 3: Years, but imagine if we ended up getting another four years of that just because you know, people decided not to come out and vote as they did. You know, I mean, shit, he may have never left office at that point. You know, when you see just how far he was willing to go to retain power. And then when we talk about that, that heartbreaking story of the 51 migrants who were found dead in Texas, you know, there's nothing that I could say that would make that story hurt any less or make the pain that I'm sure their families are feeling, you know, any worse.
00:54:36
Speaker 1: Any less.
00:54:37
Speaker 3: And it's just, again, something that needs to be dealt with in this country. You know, people aren't risking their lives in such extreme ways because it's fun, you know, because they want a free ride, right? You know, those are people who are desperate, whose situations are so bad that it's worth them piling into a, a truck and, and, and dealing with like the, the coyotes and, and dealing with all that, that they are dealing with just to, just to come over here, you know? And, And America, like we said, caused a lot of those issues, the instabilities in those countries. And while we are having no problem funding the Ukraine, and of course, again, tragedy is happening over there, but we're ignoring what's going on at our very border and in our very country, for that matter. And it's obvious because these are brown people, these are people of color, it's far easier for our country to ignore. And it's just incredibly sad. you know, a lot more needs to be done and a lot more pressure needs to be put on our elected officials to do something. And then lastly, that story that Hector told, thank God he had something positive for us because, man, it was a dark day. You know, I think that was so powerful. You know, he shows, you know, the power of organizing, right? And him being able to have that ICE contract, you know, get broken through the power of them protesting. It just shows, you know, again, if we're able to do that, recreate that blueprint that he's doing in his area, you know, in New Jersey, recreate that around the country, you know, we could enact so much change, you know, and that's why it's so important to be involved, to be, you know, using your voice and using whatever platform you have and to be using your time and, you know, be it even just donating to some of these organizations so that they can do the boots on the ground work if that's not for you. All of that is important we all have to to do our part and again imagine if that was happening in every state around this country that would enact huge huge change that you know the politicians wouldn't be able to deny you know we'd be taking the power into our own hands at that point so just just something to keep in mind a bit of light at the end of this dark tunnel and actually last thing i want to touch on when it comes to something positive a little bonus because we need it right now we had um in in Harvard, actually, you had Carlos Gonzalez Sierra making history as the first Latino president of the Harvard Graduate Council. So I want to give a big shout out to him just because of the precedent that it sets when you think about somebody like Pedro Albizu Campos, who was actually the valedictorian of his graduating class at Harvard Law, but was not able to speak at his commencement ceremony at his graduation because, in fact, he was a person of color. So it's beautiful to see how far we've gotten. You want to be able to kind of shout these things out as they happen. So I want to kind of give us a positive bonus right there from a positive story that I saw from We Are Me Too that I thought needed to be shared. Now with that said, thank y'all so much for tuning into this week's episode. Head over to Dramos.com if you want to pick up some merch. I have some Gringo hats left. I have a few of the Dramos Tribe hats left.
00:58:03
Speaker 1: I really love these.
00:58:04
Speaker 3: They are based off of a Taino warrior, which is the indigenous people of Puerto Rico. And we made basically myself into a Taino warrior. And you can see that and you can be a part of the tribe. I appreciate you. Leave us a review anywhere you're listening. If you haven't yet, I would greatly appreciate that. And with that said, have an amazing weekend and I'll catch y'all on Tuesday with a brand new episode.
00:58:28
Speaker 1: Stay safe.
00:58:29
Speaker 2: Peace.
00:58:32
Speaker 3: Life as a Gringo is a production of iHeart's My Cultura Podcast Network.
