I started off as a young lawyer working against discrimination against African-American children in schools and in the criminal justice system. I worked to make sure that kids with disabilities could get a public education, something that I care very much about. I have worked with Latinos - one of my first jobs in politics was down in south Texas registering Latino citizens to be able to vote. So I have a deep devotion to making sure that an every American feels like he or she has a place in our country.
Something is fundamentally amiss when you refer to a person as illegal. Bottom line. That's why we so easily talk about this like we're talking about plants or crops. These illegals. My God, man, it's so tragic to me traveling around this country, this country that is getting more and more Latino, and you hear people use the words "illegal" and "Mexican" interchangeably. Interchangeably. Without blinking an eye.
This movie [Everybody Loves Somebody] is as much for the general market as it is for Latino audiences. That's a really exciting prospect.
I have always been actively involved in my community, belonging to organizations that promote the interests of Latinos. But I also know that the issues we confront are the same issues, in many respects, as the larger community. So what we do helps not just us but everybody.
I'm a mongrel in the sense that I'm Spanish, English, Latino, Jewish, north, south - all these things are mixed in me.
I mean, I grew up in the Valley. All my friends were white Jewish kids. So the Latino kids thought I was this white girl.
We have more people in jail than any other country in Earth, disproportionately Latino and African-American.
They're keeping friction going between people from the East and the West. One thing we all got in common is your color, which is Black and Latino, which is our family.
I'd been taught from an early age that I was in the other category on the standardized tests. You know, I had to go down the checklist - Caucasian, African-American, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, and then, you know, at the bottom is other. So, you know, very early on I was taught, in a way, that I was somehow this anomaly.
Being Latino means being from everywhere, and that is exactly what America is supposed to be about.
One of the challenges, especially since, like, something like 40 percent of the Latino population is foreign born, is - and one of the new issues is how do we integrate all these immigrants, right?
The Latino community, they're some of the most loyal fans on the planet.
I love L. A. - don't get me wrong. But I miss everything about New York. I don't eat cheese, but I miss the smell of pizza in the city. I'm a really big fan of Latino food. I want to go back home and have some good arroz con pollo.
I want to be known as a funny comic not just a funny Latino comic. I want to be able to go everywhere and anywhere.
There are many Latino writers as talented as I am, but because we are published through small presses, our books don't count. We are still the illegal aliens of the literary world.
When I was growing up, I lived in a neighborhood that was largely Latino and I thought I was Latino!
I had many reasons for writing memoir but among them was the hope that every Latino child and adult would find something familiar in it.
For instance, we have the largest Polish population of any city except for Warsaw, and the largest Lithuanian population outside Lithuania. More Italians, Greeks, Irish, Latinos, Serbians, and Croatians than you can shake a stick at. Chicago has it all, I don't know why I'd ever leave.
I wanted to get away from the Mexican vernacular and do more 'nuevo Latino. ' Americans are starting to understand regionality in Mexican food. It is very regional in terms of ingredients.
In restaurants across America we see Latino workers in the kitchen who are being paid substandard wages. The saddest thing to me is that if we think about these workers, these are the people with the least access to good food. Yet they're often suffering from the highest rates of obesity and diet-related illnesses.