There's Something Happening Here

By John D. Karam
for Random Ammo


In a 1966 song by Buffalo Springfield titled “For What It’s Worth”, writer Stephen stills notices:

“There's something happening here, What it is ain't exactly clear.”

Arizona residents might wonder how, in 2011, Arizona State Senate President and author of Arizona Senate Bill 1070, Russell Pearce, was decisively defeated in a recall election by an unknown named Jerry Lewis?  And how is it that Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Flake might actually lose to their Democratic rivals in Arizona - a Republican state? Is there something happening here?

Ve Y Vota

Totos A Votar

Mi Familia Vota

Ya es Hora

It’s happening on radio and television stations that most Americans never tune in to - in a language that most Americans don’t speak or understand.  It’s happening in church meetings and family gatherings held in neighborhoods that most Americans never frequent.

All across America, Latinos are assembling in a massive but peaceful assertion of a new hierarchical position for themselves in The United States of America.  It is a movement that has been lying dormant for hundreds of years, and it is unfolding at the feet of a generation of non-Latino Americans that is so preoccupied with its own position of wealth and opportunity as to be unaware of its existence.

 Latinos are united behind a common tenet that can be summed up in a simple two-word phrase, “Somos America” which translates as “We Are America”. 

Bolstered by their increasing population in America (due to “illegal” immigration, and a Hispanic population boom), Latinos and Native Americans alike are gaining the strength needed to express their version of the history of the United States.  For them, Columbus was not a hero, and the faces carved out of Mount Rushmore are not leaders, but rather invaders who stole their land.

But casting themselves as vanquished innocents who were felled by heartless invaders from Europe does not absolve them of their own violent history of taking from others.  The story of Pre-Columbian America is the story of tribal wars, genocide, murder, and slavery – not too much different than the history of humanity in general.

What is different this time, is that this group of energetic and cause-driven people is taking what they want through peaceful means - and they are taking it in compliance with the very laws and political mechanisms that were imposed upon them by those who displaced them hundreds of years ago. 

As they continue to gain in numerical and political strength, the phrase “Somos America” may be translated with a different emphasis in the future,  “WE are America”.