ears and noses will be the trophies of the day

In early America, the question of whether or not displaced immigrants were true citizens was settled with swords and axes. Today, it’s settled with words and excuses that are equally painful but entertaining nonetheless.

bill the butcher

Immigration has been a political red herring since Native Americans were called Indians and tea tasted better in harbors. Little has changed today.

Let’s see, according to FAIR, Federation for American Immigration Reform, illegal immigration is responsible for: urban sprawl, unemployment, wage depression, inefficiency, housing problems, health-care woes and…crime.

I wish the cure to all of these social ailments was one tangible thing like illegal immigration, but we all know video games are responsible for crime and unemployment was created by the NFL.

Illegal immigration presents problems, but it’s not this doom day scenario that most make it to be. Here’s the real challenge, instead of polarizing the issue and dividing the country, why don’t try to find some middle ground?

Immigrants helped the North gain victory in the civil war and today the sons and daughters of immigrants have enlisted in droves to fight America’s last two wars (or conflicts…whatever the preferred nomenclature). Yet, immigration is still seen as a threat to the American way of life?  Bill the Butcher, the American anti-immigration hero offers a very interesting perspective:

A real native is someone who is willing to die fighting for his country. There’s nothing more to it.

by the people – an hbo documentary

At Adrenalina we strive to be the voice for the new America. As a result, we recently started to study – internally – the lives of transformative figures such as Ghandi, John F. Kennedy and President Obama. This list could go on…

So, it should come as no surprise that a new documentary by HBO title “By The People: The Election of Barack Obama” has caught our attention.

by the people - an hbo documentary

The message President Obama projects is simple. It’s one of unification and hope, something many in this country may not want to hear.

So we would like to charge you…or rather ask you to look deep within your soul and ponder not just about the path of this country but the direction of humanity if all its citizens failed to come together and were succumbed to a hopeless state.

We live in a world where we don’t know our neighbors anymore; we don’t volunteer or get involved in community activities. We’ve become apathetic and separate from each other, afraid to cross an unknown street or even reach across a table to open ourselves up to new experiences.  But all this is not the fault of the American or Corporate political system – even though they’ve had their share.

Yet it’s understandable. Most of us are weary of politics, politicians, old school business models and corrupt businessmen. They’ve used divisive plots and spin machines to separate us down the lines of gender, race and religion, but we have a chance, at this moment, to put all of this behind us. We are on the brink of a historic break through in America where one man has gathered a coalition of people together of all race, gender and class to tell the world that we can be strong again. This is what makes President Obama so special and unique.

He inspires us to care about each other and to hold each other up in the face of tragedy, insurmountable hurdles and a country that is literally broken.

Do we dare to care about each other again?

Do we dare to dream that we could all be proud of ONE AMERICA?

Barack Obama challenges us to believe again, “that there is not a liberal America or a conservative America, but the UNITED STATES of AMERICA”, that “there is not a white America, a brown America or a black America, there is the United States of America.”

You can certainly turn a deaf ear to this, but I wonder why anyone would?

Today we challenge you to…Listen, Hope, Believe and keep changing the status quo.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for . . . Yes We Can!”

If you haven’t seen the previews we encourage you to take a look.

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/bythepeople/video/index.html

Premiers on HBO, November 3 at 9 pm – check your local listing.