Voices/Dr. Jean Daniels Alberto: Love song for the less courageous
	Gonzales! Alberto? Did you mother ever tell you what happens when you play in dirt? Didn't she ever tell you how she looked at you, new born, and called you "precious," her "special" baby?       Alberto! You did not need King George to befriend you! Someone like King George can't remind you to remember how you were already privileged to have your parents, your family, heritage, and cultural values long before he beamed his darkness upon you and drew you inside his shadowy sphere and renaming you Fredo! Fredo?       Didn't anyone ever tell you that Latino/as and Blacks are likely to be kicked aside and tramped whenever the likes of those like King George begin to stink?       But you Alberto did the dirty work for the dirt. Your torture memo, your involvement with the firing of those nine federal judges    and your scene at the hospital beside Ashcroft's bed was too much, showed you were too far gone. You  walking like King George's chief thug-in-charge-of-dirt! Can you see that, Alberto? Can you see how far down you have fallen?       Alberto, on Monday, August 27, 2007, in your resignation speech, you spoke disparagingly about the struggle and sacrifice of your father. Your blood father, Alberto! You stood proudly talking about the privilege of holding the position of U.S. Attorney      General, of being "profoundly grateful to President Bush for his friendship" and opportunities -- What privilege, what      opportunities, Alberto?       If your father, your blood father, was not so privileged, if your worst days as Attorney General have been better than your "ather's best days," what does that mean, Alberto? Have you been looking down at the life and sacrifices of this man, your  blood father, from your always tenuous perch in the darkness, along side King George?       And Alberto -- if you have felt this way about your father, that he did not have "opportunities" and could not live "the American dream," why didn't you address this issue once you reached the ears of King George and the men and women you worked with in Texas and Washington, D.C.? Once you had access to them, these friends, why didn't you speak up about the struggles of your father  struggling as a migrant farmer in this rich country? Why didn't you make his story and yours within it more than a feel-good-narrative for your friends, Alberto?       Is it because your friends would have frowned on you? They wouldn't have wanted you to complain or whine. They would      have wanted you to accept the edicts of their cultural narrative of rugged individualism, uh? "Accept the poor and the working class as the foundation  on which our wealth rest, but don't get too close, don't get emotionally involved ," is that what they taught you, Alberto? Did they indoctrinate you with an "American Dream" for the already privileged and moneyed folks?       Somewhere, Alberto, they took your life, your spirit and usurped it with lies. They de-valued your father and you, in turn, echoed their ideological distortions. A country committed to communities remaining safe, as you put it Alberto, means safe for Whites and unsafe for Latino/as and Blacks who are locked up in prisons like the one at Guantanamo where you help King George lock up Muslims and Arabs. Many like your father still struggle as migrant workers to feed, clothe, educate, and secure safety for their children, Alberto?       Your friends have done to you what you allowed to happen to Padilla. You had a hand in your own demise, your own loss of life because I can't imagine your family raising you, their precious boy to perjure himself, saying over and over again what they told you, an educated man, to say: "I can't remember. I can't recall. I can't remember recalling ..." to save someone like King George!       But, then, Alberto, you can't remember, can you? No, you can't. Gone is the courageous and conviction you inherited from your family.       If only you could have imagined like some of us an alternative world where you could have served as the first Latino U.S. Attorney General with honor! If only you could have been free. If only we could be free, Alberto. We could have swept the dirt aside rather than have to die in order to exist in dirt. Alberto, the dream of life, of freedom is "deeply rooted" in the American Dream, remember? The American Dream of wealth and privilege is but the shell. If only we could live out the true meaning of this deeply      rooted creed -- what good things you could have done for the fathers,  and mothers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, for America!       Maybe next time -- Someone more courageous, uh, Alberto?
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