With hate-spewing Donald Trump closer than ever to the Republican nomination for President, it’s time to get real about a Basta Trump campaign.
Leaders among the more than 50 million U.S. Latinos recently announced an unprecedented voter registration drive geared toward the November election. The giant Univision Spanish-language network unveiled plans to use all of its radio and television stations to register 3 million new voters.
As Jorge Ramos, the popular Univision anchor who was roughly ejected from a Trump press conference in August, said: “The Republican Party has had an incredible opportunity to reach Latino voters, and they failed. You cannot say, ‘Vote for me, but I want to deport your mother or your brother.’”
But television advertising won’t be enough for the Basta Trump campaign. Basta means “enough already” in Spanish.
For such a campaign to succeed, thousands of Latino college and high school students will need to volunteer to register millennial Latinos in something akin to the “Freedom Summer” voter registration drives of the civil rights movement.
And no one is angrier at Trump right now than young Latinos. They are the ones who most feel the damage from his months of anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican rhetoric.
© Ben Brewer / Reuters/REUTERS
Jorge Ramos (l.) was roughly ejected from a Trump press conference in August.
They’ve witnessed bigots like the KKK’s David Duke and Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, heartily endorse Trump’s candidacy.
In high schools from Iowa to Indiana, groups of white students recently took to taunting fellow Latino students with chants of “Trump, Trump” and “Build a wall.”
“I was in the car with my 15-year-old daughter a few weeks ago when she suddenly blurted out, ‘Dad, if Trump becomes President, I want to move to England,’ ” said Mike Nieves, a longtime Bronx Democratic Party operative.
Trump’s outrageous claim that Mexico is sending its criminals and rapists across the border has deeply injured Mexican Americans, the largest Latino group.
They have not forgotten that 10 years ago this month, massive immigrant rights protests rocked the nation. Back then, more than 3 million people poured into the downtown areas of 150 cities clamoring for an end to immigrant-bashing and for reform of immigration laws.
ELECTION 2016: LIVE SUPER TUESDAY VOTING RESULTS