Earl Watson was honored with the Roberto Clemente Award by UnidosUS last month at their annual convention. Watson, whose mother is Mexican, is the head coach of the Phoenix Suns and the first Latino head coach in NBA history. The evening he was honored, I tweeted about him and mentioned that my son plays for his AAU team during the summer. A few minutes after my tweet, I received a notice that @Earl_Watson was now following me on Twitter. A couple of weeks later I was with my NAHREP colleagues, Armando Tam and Daisy Lopez-Cid, and we discussed that we should invite Coach Watson to our national convention in Dallas. Rather than send him a formal letter, I thought that since we’re now Twitter friends, I should direct message him. Coach Watson responded the next day with a couple of questions about our event and asked me to send him an email. A couple of days later, I received a call on my cell phone from Earl Watson himself asking me to explain the history of NAHREP and the theme of our convention. He was very interested in the work we are doing and not only committed to being our luncheon speaker, he asked if he could come early and hang out at our event to get a sense of the people and the energy. I was blown away. In one conversation, I couldn’t have been more impressed with Coach Watson and can’t wait to meet him in person.
The large majority of undocumented immigrants are decent, hard-working people desperate for a better life in America. However, there are also some bad apples, violent criminals that not only terrorize our communities but also damage the image of Latinos in America. Trump promised to prioritize criminals in his deportation plans. In the first few weeks in office, the data shows that...
When the government tries to tackle a specific issue with a policy, it often causes new variations of the problem to emerge in different areas. In other words, "any action has an equal and opposite reaction." When taxes and regulations are reduced, as is expected in 2025, two things tend to happen: those at the bottom economically have it tougher because there are fewer safety nets and protections. Those at the top make a killing.
Next week, I will be speaking at a Hispanic Leadership Summit at the United Nations. I was asked to speak on the topic of Unity. The following is a preview of my speech.