Can't wait to show this picture to my Dad of me posing with Congressman Gutierrez!

I’ve been having a great time at Netroots Nation.  So far the highlight of the event for me was when I heard U.S. House of Representative Luis Gutierrez speak live for the first time in my life.  Wow did he inspire me!  He basically articulated my exact feelings about how I feel towards President Obama right now that I had previously not been able to put together in a coherent manner: how we Latinos still consider Obama as family-yes, we still love him … but as a member of our family, we need to let him know that what he’s doing with our people in terms of his administration’s escalated ICE raids that have been targetting women and children and good people while at the same time continuing to refuse to grant adminstrative relief to DREAM’ers is just plain wrong.   As family, it is our duty to hold him accountable for that!

I also had the privilege of talking to another one of my heros: Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos, and had the opportunity to let him know that I really appreciated his book “Crashing the Gates”, as it was the book that inspired me to be an activist in the first place.  He blew me away from the very first time I heard him talk in L.A. back when he was doing that tour for that book.  For me, it came full circle to this year’s Netroots Nation conference because never did I imagine I’d be in the position I am in now in the middle of actually being physicall present at NN2011!  

By the way, in case you missed the Beyond Environmental Justice panel I spoke at on Tursday, June 16, here’s the video: