Obama

Last week, this guy was selling patriotic tchotchkes outside the middle school where Barack Obama led his Los Angeles town hall meeting. His name is Fermin Rosas and he moved to Los Angeles from Mexico about a decade ago. Business was slow. He'd only sold a dollar's worth of vinyl American flags, USA strips, and Statue of Liberty tiaras. He was down with the gente, the people, and to prove it, he had a sign with the word migra, or Border Patrol, crossed out in red. A couple of hundred people had gathered on this corner of Lucas and Thirds Streets that morning, with a norteño conjunto, signs, and noisemakers. I'm here to do a little business and support legalization, he said. Obama gave his word during his campaign, he added, that he'd begin the legalization process for the undocumented during his first one hundred days in office. And in Fermin's words, "Si es hombrecito que la cumpla." In other words, using a macho, condescending taunt, if he's a man, he'll keep his word. Why should he, I asked. Because if he doesn't, he won't get another four years in office, Fermin said.

A couple of feet away some of the people mobilized by labor unions and pro-immigrant groups shouted loudly for themselves, the television cameras, and maybe even in hopes they'd reach the ears of the President as he was getting ready for the show inside the Miguel Contreras Learning Center.

Kerin Claros, a senior at nearby Belmont High School skipped class in the middle of the day to hold a banner calling on Obama to legalize the undocumented. Raids by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, she said, are tearing families apart and the President should order them stopped. She knows about family separation. She was one year-old when her mother came to the U.S. from Honduras. Her father's still there and her brother's detained in San Diego, she said, struggling to get political asylum, like she's done already.

Meanwhile, across the street on the school sidewalk next to one of the check in tables, Muhammad Mubarak - a middle aged African American man in a dark suit - watched all the commotion. He was there to show off his large scale oil on canvas painting of President Obama in shirtsleeves. Some of his paintings, he said, are in Compton City Hall. He didn't know exactly what to make of the protests. He'd heard about the town hall after film producers working on a film about the Obama victory asked him to bring the painting to a wrap party. He was puzzled about the commotion across the street, "You've got two groups over here. One is saying, what sounds like to me, 'Obama puto,' or something like that. And the other one is saying something else. So I don't know what position they've got."

The p-word's the worst Spanish language insult against a man or a woman if you add a feminine ending. That's some serious stuff, if said by the pro-immigrant group. The chasm separating Muhammad and the protestors remained wide that day. Inside, minutes later, Barack Obama took the stage in front of more than a thousand people. It was an ethnically mixed crowd and most were united in their fawning praise of the President.