UNDOCUMENTED YOUTH AND THE HISPANIC COMMUNITY OF NYC JOINED OCCUPY WALL STREET TO PROTEST ROMNEY

On Wednesday, scores of undocumented youth and advocacy groups, including Occupy Wall Street, rallied in front of the Waldorf Hotel on Park Avenue where GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney was scheduled to host a fundraiser lunch.  Although Mitt Romney seems to be the inevitable nominee for the Republican Party, he still has grave problems courting certain demographics of voters.  Two that stand out are Latinos and independents.

Yajaira Saavedra, 23, an undocumented student and co-founder of Dream Scholars, was one of the speakers in the rally. As usual, Occupy Wall Street used their mic check to convey their message, and so did Yajaira. People from different backgrounds in the audience repeated her statements: “Romney, this is my home. I will not self-deport” she said.

Mitt Romney has promised to veto the DREAM Act, a bill that would grant undocumented youth a path to legal status. This has brought him a lot of criticism, and he has made it worse by accepting endorsements from Kris Kobach, who wrote SB 1070 (Arizona’s notorious racial profiling law).  He has also publicly embraced Jan Brewer, who signed SB 1070 into law. Arpaio was his Arizona campaign chair in 2008, and has been called “the face of racism in America” by Jorge Ramos, Univision’s top reporter.

 The American public, in general, is supportive of the DREAM Act, and a recent Univision poll, one which was put at about the same time as the “Yo Decido” cover of TIME, puts Latino support at over 90%.

In addition, Mitt Romney has claimed to be all about job creation, but a closer look at his “vulture capitalism” days reveal him to be closer to his Wall Street buddies, who have profited from detention facilities.  This is exactly the climate that Occupy Wall Street has been organizing against.  In the end, Romney firing an undocumented immigrant that mowed his lawn because he was running for public office is the perfect snapshot for Mitt Romney. He’s Mr. 1%, the rich guy who is completely disconnected from the suffering of the masses, throwing workers and immigrants under the bus in order to get ahead.

By: Cesar Vargas