THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A27
BY ABEL GUERRAS
ept. 15 was the start of Hispan-
ic Heritage Month — a time
that celebrates a community
built on faith, family and a
strong work ethic. We are teachers,
doctors, lawyers, judges, members of
the military, police officers and even
astronauts. All contribute greatly to
the United States.
The feeling is not reciprocated by
today’s Republican Party. It is no
place for Latinos. We don’t feel wel-
come in a party t hat condones racism
and looks away while the president
degrades our community and de-
stroys America. The once-proud par-
ty of Lincoln, established to abolish
slavery, has been transformed into a
comatose crew brainwashed by white
identity politics and narrow-minded
nationalist nostalgia.
I know a little about this. I am a
Republican. I worked in the George
W. B ush White House. And I say to my
fellow Latinos: I’m not asking you to
become a Democrat. But I am asking
you to vote President Trump out of
office.
Some of us have already left the
GOP, of course, disgusted by Trump
and his accomplices. Others among
us remain alienated and aloof, wait-
ing out the Trump tornado.
But the wait-him-out approach is
no longer viable. Republicans have
lost control of the monster they
helped create. Trump hasn’t
changed. From day one, Trump
spewed his white-supremacist views,
promising to halt the invasion of
immigrants and spurring a rhetoric
of resentment and retaliation
against the “other.” No matter our
background, we have been vilified as
invaders, marked as illegal and de-
graded as subhuman. The silence
from prominent Republicans is deaf-
ening. They have allowed Trump to
normalize bigotry and use it as a
winning strategy for their benefit.
They enabled him to turn racist
rhetoric into racial conflict, dividing
our nation.
In a postmortem after Mitt Rom-
ney’s failed 2012 campaign, GOP
leaders concluded: “A merica is
changing demographically.... If we
want ethnic minority voters to sup-
port Republicans, we have to engage
them and show our sincerity.”Less than seven years later, while
Trump fixes Latinos in his crosshairs,
GOP leaders stick their heads in the
sand, complicit by their cowardice.
Worse than saying nothing or tolerat-
ing his tantrums, some even protect
Trump, colluding with the devil for
fear of political demise.
And now, they have blood on their
hands. The Walmart shooting in
El Paso on Aug. 3 was the inevitable
outcome of 30 straight months of
hate speech coming from the White
House. Fueled by the president’s vit-
riol, a killer sought out immigrants to
slaughter. The shooting isn’t just a
tragedy; it’s a massacre, a direct hit
against our community. D o not imag-
ine we do not all feel the consequenc-
es. I have a friend who lives in Austin.
She says she no longer feels comfort-
able going to a store to purchase
diapers for her child.
Republicans will pay a price for
this situation and for their silence. By
the 2020 election, Hispanics will be
the largest racial or ethnic minority
group in the electorate — 3 2 million
will be eligible to vote. At the same
time, 1 in 10 eligible voters will be
Generation Z, those between the ages
18 and 23, who are socially liberal and
more racially and ethnically diverse.
As Hispanics, we need to get more
voters registered and to the polls. We
need to understand that our votes
matters, more than ever. A vote
against Trump is a stand for human
freedom and a future where America
is again known for its ideals and not
ignorance.
Republicans need to dust off their
moral compass and remember what
they stand for — and what they stand
against. If they do not, they will lose
Latinos forever and relegate them-
selves once more to minority status,
likely unable to regain control of
Congress or the White House again. If
countering racism is not motivation
enough for the GOP to act, perhaps
its looming political demise will be.
The United States is a great coun-
try. Hispanic Heritage Month honors
the contributions the community has
made — and will keep making — to
keep it that way. And without Trump,
the United States will be even better.The writer was associate director of
public liaison in the George W. Bush
White House from 2001 to 2004.A Latino’s plea
to vote Tr ump out
hong kong
L
ee Cheuk-yan, unlike most
Americans, remembers and re-
veres Lane Kirkland, a hero of
the first Cold War. During
16 years as leader of the AFL-CIO
(1979-1995), Kirkland gave crucial
support, both material and moral, to
Lech Walesa and the Solidarity move-
ment in Poland, where it was an early
tremor in the political earthquake
that ended European communism.
Here, in this island city at the other
end of the Eurasian landmass, a city
that has become a flash point in Cold
War 2.0, Lee is lending support to a
fluid, shape-shifting protest move-
ment that has no Walesa.
This lack is a strength and a
weakness. The movement has no
leader with whom the local govern-
ment, which is an appendage of
Beijing — and, hence, of the Chinese
Communist Party — might negotiate.
Fortunately, however, a movement
without a head cannot be easily
decapitated, which otherwise prob-
ably would be Beijing’s default
position.
This thought experiment became
the premise of a 2018 novel (Chloe
Benjamin’s “The Immortalists”): If
you knew when you were going to die,
how would this change how you
choose to live? Hong Kong’s young
people, from whom come most of the
demonstrations’ participants and en-
ergy, know that the clock is ticking for
their city. It is 22 years into what was
supposed to be a 50-year grace period.
In 1997, Britain ended 156 years of
responsibility for Hong Kong, trans-
ferring it to China.
So, just eight years after the Tianan-
men massacre, there began what was
supposed to be half a century of Hong
Kong’s exceptionalism preserved, af-
ter which the city might be gracefully
melded with a mellowed mainland.
Just 22 years later, this hope has been
as refuted as the 1989 hope that the
massacre would be followed by a less
authoritarian, because more secure,
Beijing regime.
Lee was in a hotel overlooking
Tiananmen Square when the tanks
rolled in. He later organized Hong
Kong’s memorial museum, which is
overseen by the same organization
that facilitates commemorations ev-
ery June 4. As a human bridge be-
tween the first Cold War and the next
one, he knows that this city today is
not like East Berlin in 1953, or Buda-
pest in 1956, or Prague in 1968. In
those places, people who were in
despotism’s firm grip rebelled and
quickly learned how firm the grip w as.
Hong Kong is spectacularly vibrant
and prosperous because it perennially
— since 1970 — holds the top position
in the Economic Freedom of the
World Index rankings.
When demonstrators here have
waved colonial-era flags and shouted,
“Reclaim Hong Kong,” they were not
nostalgic for colonial restoration.
Rather, this was largely a cry for the
status quo.
Largely, until now. Now, however,
less and less. As a young woman from
Hong Kong studying in Boston recent-
ly wrote in her college newspaper, “I
am from a city owned by a country
that I don’t belong to.” Residents of
this city, especially young residents,
are decreasingly likely to think of
themselves as Chinese rather than as
Hong Kongers. In 1997, 47 percent of
residents were “proud to be a citizen
of China.” Now only 38 percent are.
Among those ages 18 to 29, 55 percent
have a negative opinion of the Beijing
regime, which has sown discord and is
reaping disaffection.
The U.S.-Hong Kong Policy Act of
1992 commits the United States, as the
State Department notes, to “promote
Hong Kong’s prosperity, autonomy,
and way of life.” Its “way of life” i s a
multifaceted condition that rests on
freedom and universal suffrage. A
recent Hong Kong demonstration
called for passage b y the U. S. Congress
of legislation that would impose sanc-
tions on mainland Chinese or Hong
Kong officials who abridge the city’s
freedoms, and it would require a nnual
review of the special economic privi-
leges Hong Kong gets from the United
States. This would make U.S. relations
with Hong Kong more like those with
Ta iwan, which receives substantial
U.S. military and other assistance to
buttress its independence, even as
U.S. policy adheres to the prudential
fiction that Ta iwan is something it
currently is not and probably won’t
ever be (part of “one China”).
But Hong Kong could become yet
another casualty of the 2003 U.S. in-
vasion of Iraq, which made many
Americans comprehensively skeptical
of U.S. attempts, in the words of
President John F. K ennedy’s i naugural
address, “to assure the survival and
the success of liberty” around the
world. Hong Kong, however, unlike
Iraq, has a vibrant democratic culture
and civil society. What is required of
U.S. policy is not “nation building” but
sustaining the reality of a polity that,
without claiming or seeking nation-
hood, simply refuses to be absorbed
into the domain of an increasingly
nasty regime.
[email protected]GEORGE F. WILLHong Kong’s
protests don’t
need a leader
T
here is no more perilous — or
important — political activity
than moving the “Overton win-
dow” of what constitutes an
acceptable policy proposal. Sen. Bernie
Sanders did just that by championing
Medicare-for-all, and now his plan to
nationalize health care has gone from
the progressive fringe of the Democratic
Party to the mainstream. So did Donald
Trump by championing an “A merica
First” foreign policy, and now he has
made isolationism and protectionism
mainstream in the Republican Party for
the first time since the 1930s.
Democratic presidential candidate
Beto O ’Rourke is trying to shift the terms
of debate on gun control by calling for a
mandatory buyback of assault rifles. In
last week’s Democratic debate, he re-
counted the devastating impact of a
“high-velocity round” fired by one of
these weapons (“when it hits your body,
[it] shreds everything inside”) and then
proclaimed, “Hell yes, we’re going to take
your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going
to allow it to be used against our fellow
Americans anymore.”
Republicans immediately pounced.
“The American people deserve to know
this president, this vice president and
these House Republicans will always
stand for the Second Amendment right
to keep and bear arms,” Vice President
Pence thundered. A Republican state
representative from the Houston area
named Briscoe Cain even appeared to
threaten O’Rourke by tweeting, “My
AR is ready for you Robert Francis.”
While Republicans were predictably
apoplectic, mainstream Democrats were
nervous. Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-
Del.) warned, “That clip will be played
for years at Second Amendment rallies
with organizations that try to scare
people by saying, ‘Democrats are coming
for your guns.’ ” Presidential candidate
Pete Buttigieg endorsed Coons’s criti-
cism, suggesting reasonably enough that
Democrats should focus on background
checks, “red flag” l aws and banning the
sale of high-capacity magazines and new
assault weapons — rather than trying to
take away existing assault weapons.
O’Rourke was unrepentant. “Leaving
millions o f weapons of war on the streets
because Trump and McConnell are ‘at
least pretending to be open to reforms’?”
he replied. “That calculation and fear is
what got us here in the first place. Let’s
have the courage to say what we believe
and fight for it.”
O’Rourke has certainly shown cour-
age on this issue. As a U.S. Senate
candidate in Te xas — Texas! — he
advocated a ban on selling assault
weapons. Now, following the massacre
in his hometown, El Paso, he has beenradicalized to go further. He is not,
however, on a political kamikaze mis-
sion. Nearly 75 percent of Democrats
support an assault-weapons buyback —
and an even greater number support a
ban on their sale. In a recent Post-ABC
News poll, as my Post colleague Philip
Bump points out, a buyback program
was even backed by 31 percent of
Republicans and 37 percent of people
who live in households that have guns.
By proposing a gun buyback, O’Rourke i s
breathing fresh life into his once-
stagnant campaign.
That doesn’t negate the political risk
of what O’Rourke is doing. His plan has
the potential to mobilize gun owners
and cost Democrats in the general
election. But if so many people support a
buyback even when so few political
figures are advocating it (Democratic
Rep. Eric Swalwell, of California, has
been one of the few exceptions), imagine
how popular opinion could shift if more
leading Democrats got behind the idea.
It is certainly important to consider
whether a policy idea is politically
feasible at the moment — and that is a
calculation that should be uppermost in
the minds of legislative leaders. But it is
even more important to consider what
makes sense on the merits. And a
mandatory gun buyback clearly does
make sense. That’s exactly what Aus-
tralia and New Zealand did after horrific
mass shootings i n their countries. In j ust
six weeks, gun owners in New Zealand
turned in 15,000 newly banned guns. In
Australia, about 650,000 guns were
turned in as part a mandatory buyback
in 1996-1997. The result was a 42 percent
decline in the rate of firearms homicides
and a 57 percent decline in firearms
suicides.
Buybacks are much more effective in
reducing gun violence than simply a
ban on sales of assault weapons of the
kind that Congress instituted between
1994 and 2 004. Millions of assault
weapons have been sold since that law
expired. To reduce the risk of mass
shootings, it is imperative to reduce the
number of weapons available for de-
ranged individuals.
Second Amendment absolutists will
scream that Americans have a right to
own guns. That’s true — but there are
limits. You can’t bring home a functional
tank, a rocket-propelled grenade or a
machine gun (at least not without a
federal license). Yo u shouldn’t be al-
lowed to own a military-style assault
rifle, either. It’s a weapon of war that has
no place in civilian hands, and for all the
political risks inherent in O’Rourke’s
stance, I am glad to see a mandatory gun
buyback entering the Overton window.
Twitter: @MaxBootMAX BOOTYe s, we should debate
an assault-weapon buyback
D
uring the debate over whether
the federal government should
save the U.S. auto industry in
late 2008, a driver rammed into
my old Saturn in a late-night accident
while it was parked in front of my house.
Fortunately, no one was hurt, but I
needed a new car.
I strongly supported the rescue effort,
so I felt an obligation to look to a
Detroit-based car company organized by
the United Auto Workers union for a
replacement. I got a Chevy Malibu — my
kids called it “Dad’s Boo” — and remain
happy that I did.
In organizing what critics called the
“bailout” of General Motors and
Chrysler, President Barack Obama was
defying popular sentiment. Ye t what was
in many ways the most radical step he
took to revive a U.S. economy in free fall
turned out to be one of his most political-
ly beneficial initiatives.
The effort was far closer to what could
be called “socialism” than anything in
Obama’s health-care plan, although he
was, in fact, trying to keep the auto
companies under private ownership. But
socialism or not, the rescue was key to his
success in 2012 in carrying Michigan and
Ohio, states that would elude Hillary
Clinton in 2016.
And it worked — witness GM’s $35 bil-
lion in North American profits over the
past three years. The taxpayers got most
of their money back and, by certain
measures, even turned a modest profit
off the government’s investment. Either
way, a catastrophe was averted. It wasn’t
just two big companies that were saved.
So were suppliers whose collapse would
have devastated the Midwest.
My support for the bailout was rooted
in practical economic concerns: Our
economy was teetering and could not
afford the damage an auto-sector implo-
sion would inflict. But my passion for it
came from a concern for the lives of the
workers involved and a lifelong respect
for the UAW.
Unions get knocked for being uncon-
cerned about the health of the companies
they organize. The UAW showed how
untrue this is. It made sweeping conces-
sions to management to persuade federal
officials to undertake the investment of
public money — and to keep the compa-
nies alive.
Among the gripes of UAW workers
who struck GM this week is the tieredwage system that Neal Boudette de-
scribed well in the New York Times:
“Workers hired before 2007 make about
$31 an hour, and can retire with a lifelong
pension. Those hired after them (now
more than a third of the work force) start
at about $17 an hour and can work their
way up to about $29 an hour over eight
years. They also have to rely on 401(k)
retirement accounts instead of pensions.
In addition, G.M. uses temporary work-
ers (about 7 percent of the staff) who
earn about $15 an hour, and do not have
vision or dental benefits.”
The rank and file don’t like the idea of
people doing the same labor at radically
different pay levels. And then there are
the plant closures that have slashed
about 14,000 North American jobs, as
well as the announcement that the Chevy
Blazer would be built in Mexico.
Symbolically and substantively, the
closure this year of the legendary GM
plant in Lordstown, Ohio, that had
produced Chevy Cruzes was an especially
heavy blow — and it flew in the face of
President Trump’s promise in a
2017 speech in nearby Youngstown that
factory jobs are “all coming back. They’re
all coming back.” So confident was
Trump that he told his supporters not to
sell their homes.
The bottom line is that the strikers are
fighting not only for greater fairness and
a larger share of the company’s success
but also for work itself. To o late to avert
the strike, GM finally put an offer on the
table to begin addressing some of these
issues. But the rank and file are restive
for more, and for good reason. Those of
us who supported keeping GM alive a
decade ago — and put our wallets where
our mouths, pens and votes were —
didn’t d o so to make it easier for manage-
ment to outsource jobs or hold down pay
and benefits forever. Every Democratic
candidate for president should be joining
the UAW’s picket lines to drive that point
home.
The cliche is singularly appropriate in
this case: The struggle for employment,
pay and benefits in the auto industry is
where the rubber meets the road in our
too often very abstract discussion of the
challenges facing U.S. wage earners in an
economy undergoing rapid transforma-
tion. The battle at GM is a fight that
unions and workers cannot afford to
lose.
Twitter: @EJDionneE.J. DIONNE JR.Striking workers remind us
that they saved GM
JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
President Trump on the South Lawn of the White House on Monday.KAREN TUMULTYExcerpted from washingtonpost.com/people/karen-tumultyThe greatest skill
Cokie Roberts taught meBack in 1990, Spy magazine ran a full-page
cartoon under the headline “Cokie Roberts
— Moderately Well Known Broadcast
Journalist or Center of the Universe?”
It was a diagram with Cokie’s name in
the middle and a web of lines connecting
her to — well, pretty much everyone. The
Kennedy and Rockefeller families. Movie
stars. Diplomats. Presidents. Rock singers.
Media luminaries.
This was, I suppose, a commentary on
celebrity. In those pre-Internet days, we
had a different concept of what it meant to
be an “ influencer.”
But for people such as me who were
fortunate enough to have felt Cokie’s
influence as we learned to navigate
Washington, she represented something
else. S he t aught m e by her e xample that the
greatest skill that any reporter can have is
an ability to remain grounded.
She won plenty of prizes for her work
and blazed a path for others, particularly
women. But what distinguished her
journalism was not sensational scoops, or
the k ind of thing that goes viral today and i s
gone tomorrow. It was consistency and
common sense.
When I was starting out as a reporter on
Capitol Hill, we would often have lunch
to gether at a table set aside for the press in
the House restaurant. I loved to hear her
talk. She knew all the back stories of
Washington, had a deep understanding of
its institutions and was generous in
sharing her insights with those of us stilltrying to figure out how t he place worked.
No doubt part of that was built into her
DNA as the daughter of two members of
Congress. But somehow, she never became
jaded or lost her ability to appreciate big
things and small ones. Once, as we were
trudging down the stairwell that leads
from the lobby off the House Chamber, she
paused and called my attention to the tiny
cherub statues embedded in the cast-iron
railings — something I had passed
hundreds of times and never noticed.
“Look at their little bottoms,” she said.
“A ren’t they adorable?” I never walked that
way again without thinking o f Cokie.
The humanity that her viewers and
listeners sensed in Cokie was genuine. As
her close friend Nina To tenberg wrote: “To
know Cokie was to see the personification
of human decency. There is a reason she
was asked to speak at so many funerals.
People felt such a deep connection to her
because she t ouched their lives.”
Cokie was also hilarious. When I was
recuperating from cancer surgery in 1988,
Cokie arrived in my hospital room at the
National Institutes of Health Clinical
Center with the t wo things I needed m ost at
that moment: fresh reading material and
fresh gossip. She stayed for hours, perched
at the foot of my bed. I don’t remember
much of what we talked about that
afternoon, but I will n ever forget h ow m uch
we laughed.
My name would never have ranked
among t hose i n that magazine c artoon. B ut
at a time when the center of my universe
seemed dark and scary, I was happy that
Cokie Roberts was there to make it bright
again.UPLOADED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws