by George Kocan, Communications Director, TAPROOT (WESTMONT, IL)
An energetic proponent of immigration reform challenged conservatives to form positive relationships with local representatives. Rosanna Pulido said that she saw little hope for any reforms at the federal level. Part of her talk appears on YouTube: http://caosblog.com/8457. She addressed the crowd at TAPROOT’s annual picnic in Westmont, last Sunday, August 17.
Chairman Dave Diersen started the formal segment of the proceedings with some commentary about DuPage Republican politics. Before that, picnickers enjoyed snacks and bar-b-que entries along with animated political conversation with old friends and new-comers.
Diersen decried the lack of openness at the State Central Committee meetings. Ron Smith, who represented the 6th Congressional District on the Committee for 30 years suddenly resigned. (Peter Roskam now represents the district in the U.S. Congress.) Chris Kachiroubas, Circuit Clerk Court in DuPage Co., replaced him. “There was no announcement, no notice—from the most senior to the most junior,” Diersen complained.
Evaluating the recently passed Illinois GOP platform, he said it was reasonably conservative, “ a major victory.” Before introducing the irrepressible Rosanna Pulido, he asked the activists to save December 7 for TAPROOT’s exciting and unpredictable annual Christmas Party.
Pulido, the State Director of the Illinois Minuteman Project, began by relating a conversation she recently had with Phillis Schlafly, the matriarch of conservative politics in Illinois. She reassured the young woman, “We’ve been low before,” referring the numerous setbacks conservatives have experienced in recent years. “Thank you,” Pulido exclaimed. That was what she, and conservatives in general, needed to hear.
Among the setbacks she mentioned a “militant Mexican school” to which Illinois senators and representatives want to give $17 million. This does not include another $65,000 to improve the gym. The school is part of a network of Hispanic charter schools known as UNO.
Your reporter did a little research on the internet (www.uno-online.org; www.unocharterschools.org; www.uno-online.org/cgi-bin/sponsors.pl) to find that UNO stands for United Neighborhood Organization. Its main stated purpose is to serve Hispanic children and raise their academic performance. At least one commentator at the NewsMax organization has noted rather that UNO has produced poor results. Nevertheless, over its 20 years or so of existence UNO has succeeded in creating local school councils, where parents have a say over their childrens’ education. UNO has received strong support from Mayor Richard M. Daley.
Perhaps the most remarkable fact about UNO is its historical tie to Saul Alinsky. The webpage describes it as an Alinsky organization, Alinsky being a community organizer with a Marxist outlook and a mentor to both Democrat contenders for the Presidency, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barak Hussein Obama.
So, while the website gives the appearance of non-partisanship, UNO functions as an arm of the Democrat Party. Both UNO and another Alinsky organization, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), cooperated in a voter registration project.
Some of the major sponsors of UNO include prominent American corporations that are not usually associated in the public mind with Marxist politics: Anheuser-Busch, Boeing Co., LaSalle Bank, MidAmerica Bank, Peoples Energy, Union Pacific Rail Road, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Waste Management.
Pulido went on to explain that illegal aliens cost the people of Illinois $3.5 billion in services. These include free medical care and free education as for example provided by UNO charter schools. One of these schools actually has an INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) on its premises to facilitate UNO’s aggressive policy of naturalization.
The situation in Illinois has become so bad in protecting illegal aliens from prosecution that it is now widely recognized that Illinois is a “model state for how to treat illegals.” One consequence is that people are moving out of Naperville because it has become a sanctuary city, where illegals are protected, she added.
Her solution to the immigration crisis is to do what the illegals themselves do. They show up at meetings of local government officials and exert pressure. That appears to be the only way, since representatives at the federal level refuse to act.
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