There are border crossings and hyphenations. Dominican, but not. Haitian, but not. Black Latino. Father. Poet. One of the fiercest writers...One of the most tender. Back-and-forth between Spanish and English. Rakim name-dropped alongside Ravitch. Some references cited and explained—Paolo Freire, for example – but the hip hop lyrics aren’t; it’s up to the reader to decode, not to Vilson to translate. That flips the rules of power and culture and literacy...

Among local residents of Haitian and Dominican descents, there have protests, including one earlier this month in Boston outside the Dominican consulate in Park Plaza...Estimated at 36,000—with some officials saying it could be as high as 90,000—Massachusetts’ Haitian-American population is among the highest in the country. Massachusetts Representatives Michael Capuano, Joe Kennedy, Niki Tsongas, and James McGovern joined several other members of Congress in a letter of protest to the Dominican government. But some feel only economic pressure will work. There’s talk of a boycott, but, so far, not enough pressure has been exerted to reverse the decision. The United States, overall, has been docile about the controversy.

Carlos Menchaca's City Council victory gives new political presence...to a group that's one of [NYC's] fastest growing and the third-largest Hispanic community behind the more well-established Puerto Rican and Dominican...

...portraits of diverse ethnic populations, revealing the surprising new realities of immigrant life in twenty-first-century New York City...essays focus on the Chinese, Dominicans, Jamaicans, Koreans, Liberians, Mexicans, and Jews from the former Soviet Union now present in the city and fueling its population growth. They discuss both the large numbers of...Mexicans living in legal limbo and the new, flourishing community organizations offering them opportunities for advancement. They recount the experiences of Liberians fleeing a war torn country and their creation of a vibrant neighborhood on Staten Island’s North Shore...

Elian Herrera came to Arizona to work...He was born in the Dominican Republic. He has dark skin, and though he speaks English, he does so deliberately, in a way that reveals that his first language in Spanish. In Los Angeles, Herrera is a backup outfielder with the Dodgers. Here at spring training, he's the type of guy who could arouse "reasonable suspicion." A person who's "reasonably suspicious," according to Arizona's immigration law, is one who looks like he or she might be in the United States illegally...The Arizona law, known as SB 1070, went into effect in September. Six months later, half the players in baseball have reported to the greater Phoenix area. More than one-quarter of those players are Latino...Talk to Latino players in Arizona and you find them constantly patting their pockets for licenses, green cards, passports. "I carry them all the time," says Martin Prado, a Venezuelan-born third baseman with the Diamondbacks. "Just in case. You never know."

Elian Herrera...leaps over a sliding Shane Robinson...of the St. Louis Cardinals as he...completes a double play...May 2012, Los Angeles, California.

This fall the Latino, Asian, African-­American, and multiracial share of the Democratic-primary vote [in New York City] should be about 58 percent—up from 49 percent in 2001. The slices of the pie are shifting too: The black vote, long about 25 percent of the total, is slowly declining. The Latino vote will likely crack 20 percent for the first time—while growing more varied, as the number of Dominican voters catches up to Puerto Ricans, with Mexicans and Central Americans also registering in significant quantities. “No one or even two groups can elect a mayor anymore,” Democratic strategist Bruce Gyory says, “which puts a premium on coalition-building skills. And you have to knit a much broader coalition than before.” All the [mayoral] candidates are trying to figure out the new landscape. They’re emphasizing affinities: Bill de Blasio highlights his African-American wife and biracial kids. John Liu plays up his Taiwanese-immigrant roots and his stick-it-to-the-man attitude. But the stakes, and the opportunities, are highest for Bill Thompson.

...with archival footage and John Leguizamo's narration, the docu concisely establishes the well-known facts—not just the importance of baseball to Dominicans as a ticket out of poverty, but also the importance of Dominicans to baseball; they rep 20% of all professional players in the U.S.

The symbolism of delivering a crushing defeat to the Rangers, with Bush Jr. slumped in the front row with his chin in his fist, inspired legions of San Franciscans. At the ceremony awarding the Giants the key to the city, Republican Governor Schwarzenegger spoke over hundreds of thousands of people booing for the duration of his remarks…In the midst of all the vocal opposition to the right, there was one thing that almost no one was talking about: how much people categorized as immigrants had contributed to the unprecedented success. The players and coaches we showered with cheers and ticker tape hail from Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Curaçao, France, Panama. Their families came from the Philippines, Mexico and Japan.