Editing by Carolyn Bennett
Still Dreaming
“‘A candid, savvy, inspiring, and often hilarious memoir’” painting
a picture of hard work and perseverance, a political trajectory, a commentary on
key moments in U.S. political history are words describing U.S. Congressman
Luis V. Gutierrez’s Still Dreaming: My
Journey from the Barrio to Capitol Hill. In the book, Congressman Gutierrez
recounts his life between two worlds: his birthplace, the United States where
he is too Puerto Rican and urged
to ‘go back to where you came from’; and in the Puerto Rican birthplace of
his parents where he is too American and ridiculed as a “gringo”
who couldn’t speak Spanish.
Arson at home
“I try to get along
with people [but] I have my limits,” Gutierrez says in Still Dreaming.
“The policeman assigned to the fire that night was about as
interested in figuring out what caused it as he was in running the Chicago
marathon. … I resisted the urge to call him the names that were on the tip of
my tongue; instead I explained to him why I didn’t think it was the TV or the
boiler or the wiring that had caused the fire. [The police officer] looked up at me for the first time
and said, ‘Board it up and call your insurance company.’ And he drove off.…
|
“My
house had burned
|
and the police weren’t exactly being helpful. … Just as the
last flames from my house were crackling out and the smoke was starting to
drift away, two younger and more interested investigators from the bomb and
arson squad showed up. … I told them what happened: the crash, the weird cone
of flame.… We talked while the water dripped off the front of my now-exposed
living room and the house started to cool down. The younger investigator said
we should go in and look around. The younger investigator said we should go in
and look around. It looked dangerous to me but I was eager to see what I could
salvage. The glow of his flashlight illuminated what was left. The fire
department had put the fire out quickly, and the back of the house was still in
decent shape. … As the investigator and I carefully walked through what used to
be my living room, he stopped. It was hot. He sniffed and looked at me. ‘Electrical
fire, huh?’ I wasn’t sure if he was making fun of me or the other cop. His
flashlight scanned the floor then stopped. ‘You collect bricks, Mr. Gutierrez?’
He shined his light on a brick smoldering in the debris, just a few feet away
from where I had been sleeping on the couch.
“No sir, I don’t collect bricks. ‘You ever seen that brick
before?’ He moved his light over the area around the brick and then looked back
at me.
|
“‘Have
you been drinking, Mr. Gutierrez?’ I wasn’t quite sure whether to be mad or
amused. No, I haven’t been drinking. And I hadn’t. My only liquid vice is
drinking Coca-Cola for breakfast.
|
“‘Well, that sure looks like the bottom of a big jug of wine
to me,’ he said. He was right. Near the brick was the still-intact bottom of a
Gallo or Paul Masson wine jug. It looked like a green Frisbee made out of
glass. Then he leaned down and found the handle and the top of the jug, with
part of a rag still sticking out of the hole. He held it up. He was smiling. He
pushed the rag up toward me.
“‘Take a look at this and smell the house. What do you smell?’
I hadn’t thought too much about the smell—it just smelled like fire and smoke.
It smelled like it was going to cost me a lot of time and money. But once I
really sniffed, the smell was unmistakable, the same thing you smelled every
time you pulled into the Mobile station. It smelled like gasoline. I was still
confused: Why the brick?|
“‘
|
They threw the brick through the window. That was probably
your crash. Then they threw the jug filled with gasoline through the hole where
your window used to be. The jug filled with gasoline won’t break the window. It
would just break and catch on fire when it hits the window. That just gives you
an exterior fire, and they wanted to make sure they got the gasoline inside the
house.’ But why, I asked, still not
quite convinced.
“He looked at me like I was a little slow. ‘Because they
wanted to hurt you’, he said”
|
A
|
book review at Repeating Islands says that a look at much
of Luis Gutierrez’s early life would suggest that he would have been the last
person to rise to national prominence. Yet his tremendous will and resilience
shaped his varied experiences—from picking coffee beans to driving a taxi—into
one of the most surprising careers in U.S. politics.
He campaigned for Chicago’s first
black mayor, Harold Washington.
Someone threw a Molotov cocktail
through the window of his house and he grew more committed to reform.
Tested in the crucible of the
notoriously tough Chicago City Council, Gutiérrez earned the nickname ‘El
Gallito’, little fighting rooster.
L
|
uis V. Gutierrez is a member of the U.S. House of
Representatives representing Illinois’s Fourth District (Chicago) elected as a
Democrat to the One Hundred Third and to ten succeeding Congresses (January 3,
1993-present). In the 110th and 111th Congresses Gutierrez held a seat on the
Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law
Subcommittee. He has been a senior Member of the Financial Services Committee
(20 years’ service) and Ranking Democratic Member on the Subcommittee on
Insurance, Housing, and Community Opportunity during the 112th Congress.
In 2011, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California appointed Rep. Gutierrez to
the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Through the 113th
Congress, the Congressman served on the Subcommittee on Terrorism, HUMINT,
Analysis, and Counterintelligence.
 |
| Immigrants back-breaking labor |
In interview with
the Democracy Now program Gutierrez appraises Immigration
Reform and the Obama Government
|
“
|
We missed a
wonderful opportunity, the grand opportunity. We had a majority in the Senate,
a majority in the House of Representatives and a freshly minted new president
of the United States. I challenged [U.S. President] Barack Obama at that time,
because, as you recall, when he campaigned in 2008, he said he would make it a
signature issue.
“He said he’d get
it done and sign the bill [during his] first year as president of the United
States. And yet he did little or nothing to promote it. We gave up our majority
in the House and weakened it the Senate; and two more years went by.”
Legacy of a U.S. “leader”
“President Barack
Obama’s history, his tenure as president of the United States, is going to be
marked by one of two things:
…being the president of the United States that’s deported more people than
anyone else—… he will deport over three-and-a-half million people. Pretty soon
the banner headline is going be somewhere ─ that he has reached the two-million
goal.
|
“
|
I want a
president of the United States,” Gutierrez says, “who signs a comprehensive
immigration bill for two reasons: it stops the deportation and brings justice,
fairness, and equity to the immigrant community”; and it means Barack Obama becomes
“known as the president who led us to 11 million people reaching freedom in
this country.”
Sources and notes
At Democracy Now October 20, 2013 [lead into today’s
interview with Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) on Immigration Reform and His New Book Still Dreaming] Excerpt from Still Dreaming: My Journey from the Barrio
to Capitol Hill by Luis Gutiérrez with Doug Scofield. Copyright © 2013 by
Luis Gutiérrez and Doug Scofield. With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton
& Company, Inc.
New Book and Presentation: Luis V. Gutiérrez’s Still
Dreaming—My Journey from the Barrio to Capitol Hill At Repeating Islands: News
and commentary on Caribbean culture, literature, and the arts, October 12,
2013,
http://repeatingislands.com/2013/10/12/new-book-and-presentation-luis-v-gutierrezs-still-dreaming-my-journey-from-the-barrio-to-capitol-hill/
U.S. Representative Gutierrez
Luis V. Gutierrez is a member of the U.S. House of
Representatives representing Illinois’s Fourth District (Chicago) elected as a
Democrat to the One Hundred Third and to the ten succeeding Congresses (January
3, 1993-present). In the 110th and 111th Congresses Gutierrez held a seat on
the Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law
Subcommittee. He has been a senior Member of the Financial Services Committee,
having served on the Committee for over 20 years, and served as Ranking
Democratic Member on the Subcommittee on Insurance, Housing, and Community
Opportunity during the 112th Congress. In 2011, Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi of California appointed Rep. Gutierrez to the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence. Through the 113th Congress the Congressman served on
the Subcommittee on Terrorism, HUMINT, Analysis, and Counterintelligence.
Before coming to the U.S. Congress, Luis V. Gutierrez was a
teacher, social worker, cab driver, community activist, and city official. In
1986, he was elected Alderman from the city’s 26th ward; on the Chicago City
Council, “he led the fight for affordable housing, tougher ethics rules, and a
law to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and was a key lieutenant
in the progressive multi-ethnic coalition of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington.”
Gutiérrez was born in Chicago (December 10, 1953), later
moved to Puerto Rico (birthplace of his parents), then returned for his college
years to Chicago. He graduated from Northeastern Illinois University (B.A.,
1977) with a degree in English. As a U.S. member of Congress, Gutiérrez has
made a reputation for “tireless leadership championing causes of Latino and immigrant
communities.”
http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=G000535
U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Luis V. Gutiérrez,
http://gutierrez.house.gov/about-me/full-biography
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