It all started when Donald Trump announced his campaign for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination on June 16, 2015. “[Mexican immigrants] are bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists and some, I assume, are good people, but I speak to border guards and they’re telling us what we’re getting,” said Mr. Trump during his candidacy speech.
For the past 8 months, Latino politicians, activists, citizens, and celebrities have constantly expressed their concern regarding Trump’s comments. A few days ago, Aubrey Plaza, America Ferrera, George Lopez, Zoe Saldana, Benjamin Bratt, Ivonne Coll and Carlos Santana, to name a few, joined forces with the group People For the American Way and released an open letter calling on Latino communities to stand up to the anti-immigrant fear mongering of the 2016 GOP presidential candidates.
“It’s critical that all Americans, and especially American Latinos, stand up to the misrepresentation of our communities coming from Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and any other candidate running on a platform of xenophobia and fear-mongering,” reads America Ferrera’s statement on the PFAW website. “The way to do that is to show up on Election Day. And that means young Latinos have to register and vote. We have the numbers and potential to make a difference.”
In a recent video posted on mitú’s YouTube channel, other Latino celebrities such as, Diego Boneta, Cristela and Michael Treviño, get together to encourage millennials to vote in the upcoming Presidential elections. According to statistics provided in the clip, Latino millennials make up the largest number of millennial voters and have the power to produce the change and leadership we want to see.
Read People For the American Way’s (PFWA) full letter below and don’t forget to register to vote. Every vote counts.
An Open Letter to the Latino Community:
In this year’s 2016 Republican presidential primary, the candidates crossed a line. In trying to win the nomination, every one of the leading candidates dug themselves into a deep hole pandering to the anti-immigrant base of the Republican Party that idolizes Donald Trump.
There’s no coming back from this. We’ve seen clearly that all the leading Republican candidates have sided with the far-right at the expense of the Latino community. They’re capitalizing on negative stereotypes and inaccurate information about our community in order to win votes from the GOP base.
Of course, this downward spiral began with Trump. From accusing Mexicans of being rapists to kicking Jorge Ramos out of his press conference, Trump has spent the entirety of his presidential bid stoking unfounded anti-immigrant fears and deeply offending our communities.
We must not, though, let Trump’s xenophobia overshadow the extreme policies being pushed by every single one of the GOP’s leading presidential candidates. Latinos should understand that Donald Trump embodies the true face of the entire Republican Party. Sadly, he speaks for the GOP’s anti-immigrant, anti-Latino agenda.
Candidates – including supposed “moderates” like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio – used dangerous, divisive rhetoric and proposed harmful policies in their efforts to win over Trump’s radical supporters. Jeb Bush’s unapologetic use of the term “anchor babies” aligns with his belief that undocumented immigrants here in the U.S. should not have a path to citizenship. His statement that “we should not have a multicultural society” is indefensible. Marco Rubio said that “we must secure our border, the physical border, with a wall, absolutely.” He’s ruled out any path to citizenship or legal status during his term(s) as president if elected. Chris Christie suggested that immigrants should be tracked like FedEx packages.
The candidates cannot come back from these hardline stances. Trump is certainly an outlier for his racist remarks. But the rest of the Republican presidential candidates went off the deep end with him.
Our communities have the power to decide who wins in the 2016 election. We hope that power is used to vote for candidates who support our community, share our values, and will fight for working families. Neither Trump nor any of his fellow Republican candidates meet that standard.
Even if the eventual Republican nominee backtracks on his or her anti-immigrant sentiments, we must not forget that we’ve now seen that in the face of bigotry, the Republican candidates have chosen to turn their backs on our community. The current slate of GOP candidates has proven to us that they’ve joined and embraced the party of Trump.
Signed,
Yancey Arias
Esteban Benito
Benjamin Bratt
Peter Bratt
Raúl Castillo
Ivonne Coll
Wilson Cruz
Giselle Fernandez
America Ferrera
Mike Gomez
Lisa Guerrero
Dolores Huerta
Eva LaRue
George Lopez
Rick Najera
José-Luis Orozco
Aubrey Plaza
Steven Michael Quezada
Judy Reyes
Zoe Saldana
Miguel Sandoval
Carlos Santana
Lauren Vélez
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