Is it tougher to be gay or undocumented? This is what Jorge Gutierrez—who is young, gay, Latino and undocumented— discusses in the 4th video of Cuentame’s “An Honest Conversation” series, which focuses on LGBTQ issues in the Latino community.

Gutierrez offers up his inspiring story of breaking through numerous barriers through activism, and how he is now unafraid to open up and give people his honest opinions on all these topics. Through this video you see one young man breaking taboos, challenging conventions and shifting paradigms within and outside of the Latino community. Brave, courageous and up front, Jorge’s “honest conversation” will surprise and inspire you.

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Website: mycuentame.org
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Read Jorge’s full story

Watch more “An Honest Conversation” videos
Gay Latinos Break Their Silence
Gay Latinos Speak: Bianca
Gay Latinos Speak: Army Vet Ronnie

Read more at Gay.net.

Con su esposa Magdalena, Arturo de Los Santos ha estando luchando por largos meses para conserver la casa en Riverside, California, en donde criaron a sus cuatro hijos y en donde tejieron sus sueños y esperanzas.

Pero a menos que ocurra un milagro de ultimo momento, el sheriff del condado de Riverside podría en cualquier momento evacuar a la familia de la casa que ya reocuparon una vez después de haber sido expulsados anteriormente.

De Los Santos dice que no se van a ninguna parte, que se quedan hasta que negocien con ellos.
Toda vez que a diferencia de muchos dueños de casa que simplemente abandonaron sus propiedades porque no los podían pagar, ellos sí pueden. Solamente que el banco no está dispuesto a recibir su dinero.

“Si tanto quiere [el banco] vender la casa, ¿por qué no la vendió durante los seis meses en que estuvo desocupada completamente?”, pregunta Peter Kuhns, organizador del grupo ACCE, que asiste a De Los Santos en su lucha.

Read more at AOL Latino.

LOS ANGELES — Arturo De Los Santos and his wife Magdalena have been fighting to keep the home in Riverside, California, where they raised their four children and on which they have pinned their hopes and dreams.

Barring a last-minute miracle, the sheriff is set to evict them Tuesday morning. But De Los Santos and his family say they are not going anywhere.

Chase’s foreclosure department put the house, located at 3270 Layton Court, up for sale, even as the bank’s own loan modification department was finalizing an agreement that would have allowed the family to stay put.

“They have a department of loan modification and a department of foreclosure, which is stronger,” Arturo De Los Santos told The Huffington Post this weekend, switching back and forth between English and Spanish. He says he is both upset and disgusted because two weeks after receiving an eviction notice, his request for a loan modification was approved, but by then, he was unable to get his house back.

The De Los Santos family epitomizes the growing number of people who work hard, follow the rules and achieve the American Dream, only to see it crumble into a nightmare. After reaching an agreement to make reduced payments on a trial basis until a final settlement was defined, and making three payments in accordance to that agreement, “the loan modification department didn’t accept my money. They said, we are not accepting more payments,” said De Los Santos.

Read more about Arturo De Los Santos at Huffington Post.

Even in an Occupy world, most Americans don’t know exactly how the 1 percent does what it does. The money media haven’t explained it, and the 1 percent likes things that way.

That’s how Robert Greenwald explained why he and the Brave New Foundation created a new video series. Each short video—one minute apiece—lays out the truth about a different one-percenter. They let their audience choose the subjects. They solicited suggestions on nominees, narrowed them down to thirty, and let their audience vote. The new videos represent five of the top vote-getters, with more videos on the way.

Read more at The Nation.

Jorge Gutiérrez, 27, was addressing a hall packed with almost 200 young people in Memphis, Tennessee.

Like him, they were brought to the United States as children. Like him, they grew up as Americans. Although they were bilingual, English was their first language.

Their parents came illegally, so they too, are undocumented.

Then, he told them that he is not only undocumented, but also gay. He asked the pro-immigrant organizations represented there to be inclusive. If there were others who, like him, were undocumented and LGBT, he asked them to stand up and come down to the front.

One by one, more than 20 activists stood up and approached. Some of them were revealing their sexual identity for the first time. Some were well known activists in the DREAMers movement.

Gutiérrez, currently lives in Santa Ana, California. At the age of 10, he arrived illegally from El Cora, Nayarit, Mexico, with his mother, two brothers and two sisters. In 2008 he graduated from Cal State University – Fullerton with a BA in English.

He is undocumented and queer, one of many.

“Some of the most recognized leaders of the DREAMer movement, who never talked about it, are now out of the closet, and are calling on others to do the same,” he told The Huffington Post in a series of phone calls.

Read the full story at Huffington Post’s Latino Voices.

Bianca Molina es una joven y entusiasta latina llena de sueños y expectativas, que se prepara para ingresar a la universidad en el otoño y que ya está lista para hacerse cargo de los desafíos que le deparará la vida.

Pero hasta hace poco, sus objetivos no eran tan claros, y su existencia giraba en torno a una sola pregunta: “¿soy o no soy gay?”

A las dudas, confusión y remordimientos que llenaban su vida, cuenta Bianca, se agregaron largas noches de lágrimas y desesperación, todo en el más completo de los secretos.
Hasta que llegó el punto de ruptura.

“Yo tenía dieciséis años y estaba muy deprimida. Vivía escondiendo mi identidad, en el closet. Yo sabía que algo estaba mal, sentía que estaba mal, porque estuve por tantos años en una escuela católica, donde predicaban con mucho énfasis contra la homosexualidad y todo eso estaba en mi cabeza y yo no era capaz de aceptarme a mí misma tal como era”.

“Pero entonces a mi madre le diagnosticaron cáncer. Esa fue la gota que rebasó el vaso. Sentí que Dios me estaba castigando por tener esas emociones, por pensar como pensaba, por sentir lo que yo sentía, y que me culpaba por todo lo que significaba perder a mi madre. Decidí quitarme la vida.

Read the full story at AOL Latino.

For years now, millionaire lobbyist Rick Berman has been polluting the airwaves with his own particular brand of toxic waste, using front groups with benevolent-sounding names like the Center for Consumer Freedom and the Center for Union Facts to attack unions, the minimum wage – even Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Berman was richly rewarded by corporations such as Philip Morris to protect their interests, which apparently requires misleading the public.

But if anything, Berman’s latest effort – aired during the Super Bowl – seems to be the desperate act of a demagogue past his prime. While it wasn’t exactly a shock to see Berman’s Center for Union Facts spew its venomous fiction on the air, it did come as a surprise to see the once-slick, Washington insider cast himself as a union member, in a performance so fraudulent he didn’t even bother to lose the gold watch or rumple his shirt.

Read more at AFSCME.

If you happened to watch the Super Bowl in Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia or Maryland, you may have seen an anti-union ad. It was paid for by a nasty little front group called “The Center for Union Facts,” which, as you can guess, lies about unions.

This video exposes the ‘union’ worker as Richard Berman, head of the Center for Union Facts. Here’s what you need to know about him: His own son calls him a despicable person.

Read more at Teamster Nation.