Fancy Times

As it turns out, my parents, back when they were energetic and idealistic young people in Washington D.C., were some serious hot shots.  My dad was a legal staffer working on education policy for Ted Kennedy, and my mom worked for National Council of La Raza doing work on bilingual education and other education policy for Latinos.  Somewhere in their D.C. careers, they met, probably hated each other, somehow fell in love, and close to 30 years later, they're now living in LA with my 17-year-old musician younger brother and Skyping with me across the country while I'm in college at Tufts.

But just because it's 30 years later doesn't mean they're not still pretty well connected. 

My dad came out this weekend to visit DC, partly because I'm here, partly because it's kickoff week for Hispanic Heritage month, and partly because he just missed this city.  Kind of like when my mom was here though, I've been really occupied with school and work and hanging out in my room, so it's been hard to see my dad as much as I'd like to have.  BUT, we have managed to spend a fair amount of time together, and he managed to get me a lot of really amazing opportunities to go to these fancy-pants events, the big time in Latino politics.

So on Tuesday, I slid out of work early, ran across the street to Union Station to buy a dress (it's black and only borderline too short) and my dad picked me up to this event at the Mayflower Hotel for the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts.  So we walk in, immediately my dad starts shmoozing with some guy (because he a gift for being gregarious that I so innately lack), so I tag along and try to intrigue the guy with my "ambitious young person" shtick.  My dad leaves us alone to get a drink, and we struggle trying to find conversation topics, so he's asking me how I like school, what I'm studying blah blah.  It gets so bad that he asks me if I have a boyfriend.  Obviously, this creates some discomfort, but I convince myself that I need to start being honest about myself to other people or it'll always be awkward, so I tell him I'm gay.  Turns out, so was he, and he'd just gotten married in Provincetown, come out after being married for 20 years, and we had a beautiful bonding moment over our mutual gayness.

And so began my career in the art of shmooze.  Between my dad and my godmother (who was also there), there was seriously nobody in that room that I didn't have some kind of access to, it was bizarre.  I met a bunch of people working for Hilda Solis (who's the Secretary of Labor), a dude working for Sonia Sotomayor, a guy who does commentary for Fox News and looked like Duncan Kane (he said he liked my dress, so impressive!), the dad from Ugly Betty (Chelsea, if you're reading by chance, that was the most star struck I've ever been, it was ridiculous), Jimmy Smits, Eric Balderas (the Harvard student who's being threatened with deportation), Esai Morales, and Janet Murguía (the president of NCLR).  So, so so cool.

But BUT, it gets better.  The VERY NEXT DAY, my dad manages to swing tickets for another shmancy event, but this one is huge.  While the other one was in a hotel event room, like where normal people have weddings or dinners, this was a HUGE hall in the Convention Center.  This was half of the room:

The event was held for Congressional Hispanic Caucus's Award ceremony.  The event was hosted by CNN's Soledad O'Brien, who did "Latino in America" and "Gary and Tony Have a Baby" and is actually one of my favorite broadcast journalists, but she was SUCH an obnoxious host.  She'd shush the audience so we could keep moving, and yell when we were talking. But she did get us through the event pretty quickly, and I was exhausted, so that was kind of nice.  Any congressperson with a Hispanic surname or Hispanic constituency was there (Freeman's First Law, anyone?), and I actually got to meet Xavier Becerra (because apparently, he was at my parents' wedding??), but he totally grip'n'grinned me and brushed me off.  I actually didn't get to meet anyone really cool here, but being in close proximity to all these awesome politicians and famous people was incredible.

Nancy Pelosi (Speaker of the House) spoke.  She was excellent, but she kept pronouncing Nydia Velasquez's last name Ve-LAS-kuez, which definitely didn't score her Latino brownie points.  Kind of reminded me of when my friend Noelle's parents got married, and the minister pronounced them Mr. and Mrs. RAHM-i-raz instead of Ramirez.

And Eva Longoria got this award for doing good things for Latinos (and obviously, for being super hot).  Turns out Gabrielle Solis is actually kind of a hardcore activist, and has actually done a lot of really important things for the community.  In fact, lately my Facebook ads have been her face superimposed on the Capitol building urging me to support construction of an American Latino Museum in Washington. 

             

And then, the coolest thing that's ever happened to me:

Unreal.  Best week ever.  He spoke for a good 20 minutes about Immigration Reform and the DREAM Act.  I swear, if he only ever gave speeches, President Obama's approval ratings would be 110% instead of 41% (my roommate, however, points out that this would probably have been true of Hitler as well though).  In his speech though, Obama said a lot of things that probably sound like just politician rhetoric, but they really reaffirmed my faith in him as a president. He talked about the divide in this country, how everyone has been talking about how "they" are ruining "our" country.  You know, "them," Latinos (illegal immigrants), gays (sinners against God), black people (criminals), the poor (drug addicts and welfare sucks). You mean me.  Anyway, so Obama says this among a lot of other similar comments: "There is no us and them, there is only us." Warmed my heart. 

It's one of the reasons I think having a black president really is different than having a white one (disagree with this if you want).  But I do believe in his domestic policy as a president, I do believe that in most places, our country is moving in the right direction, so Tea Party, go suck a d, because I will fight you to keep this guy in office.

-------- EDITS ----------

My conclusion to this post is lame, and I'd fix it, but I'd run into the same problem that I did when writing it, which is that I don't know how.

Here are some corrections from my mother:

1. Much easier to be energetic when we weren't working full time AND raising kids!

2. I left DC in 1986 -- don't need any extra years added there, thank you very much!

3.  I think we're still pretty idealistic -- we just made a tough choice to leave DC and stay in CA while raising kids and to be around our aging parents.  There are so many different seasons in life and after about mid-39s, it was time to try to make some money so we could raise kids and send them to college and hopefully not live in a trailer park when we retire.  I don't think I ever made more than $35,000 a year while working for NCLR (and that was a fairly senior position!).  

4.  Interesting to see you begin to see us beyond just the roles of Mom and Dad.  Just as we have the chance to see you develop as such a lovely and interesting young woman in your own right.

Love you kiddo, 

Mom

Sorry, meant no offense!  I know you guys are still fundamentally the people you were when you were here, and I've always known that, I just meant to say exactly that, that while I was growing up, you were Mom and Dad, and it's been really great to see more sides to you guys as I get older.