Elizabeth Kucinich Campaigns At National Latino Congreso

Presidential candidate addresses group this morning

October 07, 2007 -- LOS ANGELES -- While members of the anti-immigration Minuteman Project picketed outside, delegates at the National Latino Congreso in Los Angeles Saturday unanimously approved a resolution sponsored by representatives of the Kucinich for President campaign that denounced the Minutemen Project as one that “promotes violence, hatred, racism and discrimination, which are not representative traits of the honorable and just American society that has a rich legacy of immigration and inclusiveness.”

It was the second Kucinich-sponsored resolution in as many days to win unanimous support from the Congreso. On Friday, delegates passed a measure calling for the Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff’s Department to shut down a telephone hotline set up to encourage people to report the whereabouts and activities of persons the callers suspect of being in the country illegally.

Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich will deliver a major address at the Congresso this morning. Yesterday, while he campaigned in Iowa, his wife, Elizabeth, addressed a luncheon audience of 800 people from 20 different states and spoke of the effects of the Iraq war and globalization on the Latino community. She told the delegates her husband has introduced a bill in Congress, HR 1234, designed to bring U.S. troops and contractors home in three months while a multi-national peace-keeping force works to assist the Iraqi people.

Referring to the Minuteman Project protesters outside the hotel, Mrs. Kucinich said they were “victims of an administration that has squandered billions of dollars of American resources on an illegal war, while the scarcity of health care and quality education has made minorities the scapegoats of people who are angry about the direction of America.”

She discussed her husband’s plan to reinvest in America by cutting the Pentagon budget 15 percent and using that money to fund pre-K education and free undergraduate tuition at public colleges.

Mrs. Kucinich also noted that NAFTA has devalued the peso, damaged both the American and the Mexican economies, and “creating a situation where millions of people try to get into the United States to find jobs because of the poor employment situation in Mexico.” She said her husband’s first act in office will be to cancel NAFTA.

Following her speech to the Congreso, Mrs. Kucinich had a private meeting with the Mexican American Political Association. She told the 150 delegates at the session that she, also, is an immigrant, having moved to AmericaU.K., and that she had had a hard time getting her green card, even though she was married to a United States Congressman. from the

“I can’t imagine the difficulty some of you are having,” she said, adding “in a Kucinich administration, you will have a sister in the White House.”

Mrs. Kucinich then traveled to the intersection of Florence St. and Normandie Ave. in South Central Los Angeles, the flashpoint of the 1992 Los AngelesDixon was a student at Howard University at the time, but was home because he had broken his prosthetic leg. He had gone out to get the mail and was gunned down in an act of random violence. After his death his mother Ilsie, started a foundation in his name to provide prosthetic limbs to people without health care coverage. riots. There she lent her support to a fund raiser for the Jr. Dixon Foundation, named after Burley L. Dixon Jr. who was murdered in 2005 in a street gang initiation.

Mrs. Kucinich next went to Long Beach to lend support to another fund raiser, this one a vegan dinner to benefit an animal shelter specializing in caring for mistreated animals taken from farms.In addressing the 200 attendees, Mrs. Kucinich recalled the story of one of her first political actions, when she hand wrote letters to 600 members of Parliament to inform them of the mistreatment of veal calves. Rather than mail the letters, she said, she stood outside of Parliament and handed the letters to members as they entered the building.

Later in the evening Saturday, Rep. Kucinich joined his wife after arriving from Iowa, and the couple attended a Peace Concert at the site of the five-day Congreso.

Source: Dennis Kucinich campaign

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