Americas

With the midterm vote tallies so close in Georgia, Ohio, Texas, and Florida, Republican efforts to suppress and purge left-leaning voters are once again in the spotlight. “Voter suppression isn’t only about blocking the vote,” Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said. “It is also about creating an atmosphere of fear, making people worry that their votes won’t count.”

This election provides more evidence that a majority of the U.S. population supports positions that progressives advocate.

While US President Donald Trump and other like-minded political and economic leaders are building walls, migrant activists say they are building bridges. Some 2,000 activists and academics from over 60 countries gathered in Mexico City over the weekend for the 8th World Social Forum on Migrations. The gathering aimed to create a new vision of migration and bring the various movements and organizations together.

“We will not accept this kind of government. The women are not going back to the kitchen. The gays are not going back into the closet,” said Mariana Mitic, a Rio de Janeiro University Fine Arts student. “We are not going back. We are not bowing down. We will fight.”

While Hondurans have been fleeing to the U.S. in record numbers since 2009, the migrant experience has so far been one of isolation, invisibility, and powerlessness. In the thousands and out in the open, their migration has become a spectacle of vulnerability that is impossible to ignore.

The slain Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero was declared a Saint by the Catholic Church on October 14. But for many people in Latin America, Romero was already a saint.