Baca Quotes & Sayings

Head Start's ability to improve the educational skills and opportunities of Latino children will be an important component of America's future success. — Joe Baca

It is an honor to be awarded with such a high rating from an organization as well respected as the NAACP. I am pleased that the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the nation, has recognized my voting record. — Joe Baca

I consider it top priority to improve water quality and increase water quantity in my community. — Joe Baca

Caring for our children and making sure they do not get addicted to drugs is all of our responsibility. — Joe Baca

We cannot neglect the unemployed, underemployed and dislocated workers of America who need ample and widespread funding for federal job training services. — Joe Baca

And so I pray I am today as honest
with myself, with life all around me and below and above me,
with all who I encounter. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

Latinos have fought in all of America's wars, beginning with the Revolutionary War. Many Latinos are fighting and dying for our country today in Iraq, just as several of their ancestors fought for freedom in Mexico over a century ago. — Joe Baca

Understanding is the key to everything. To rage, fear, love. If you understand a situation, it's going to make you mad. Or it's going to make you feel fearful. If any of us even had a clue as to what Bush and those people were up to, we'd be running stark crazy mad out of fear. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

When bad things happen to men we say it's terrible, but when bad things happen to women we say that's just a cultural practice, says Lou de Baca, U.S. Ambassador at Large, Office to Combat and Monitor Human Trafficking. — Nita Belles

I sat back in my wooden chair as they signed the paperwork and stared down at the arm rests, studying the various layers of paint, the chips and cracks. How many hands had gripped them? I wondered. What lives were attached to those hands, what dreams were shattered, what sorrows were they trying to squeeze out of their souls? — Jimmy Santiago Baca

Our immigration system is a broken system that needs to be fixed. We need reform that provides hardworking people of good character with a real path towards citizenship. — Joe Baca

Make this day a tree
leaning over the river eternity
and fuss about in its branches. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

How much truth can we bear? Our tolerance for carrying the truth is not very high. I mean, the slightest discomfort about truth and we run to our refuge of our jobs and our schools and our friends who keep supporting our blindness. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

Americans would have a right to go to war with the Iraqis if we could name one author from Iraq. It disturbs me that we're going to war with somebody we know absolutely nothing about. Name one Iraqi poet, one Iraqi woman activist, one Iraqi singer. Name one Iraqi novelist. You can't. And how can you go kill someone you don't know anything about? — Jimmy Santiago Baca

Products made in China are cheap through the exploitation of the workforce. Every time we shop, we are driving the nail further into the coffin of American manufacturing jobs. — Joe Baca

We're all self-destructive when we're young. We all rebel. If we don't, there's something wrong. But when a Chicano kid's in a rebellious state, he has nowhere to go but to put himself in jeopardy with the police. When a kid who has some class privilege rebels, he's in a beautiful room and he can buy these horrible CDs and drugs. He's buffered from being a criminal. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

Every year thousands of Americans mistakenly refer to Cinco de Mayo as Mexico's Independence Day. — Joe Baca

I believe it's our responsibility as citizens to get in there and not accept the constant failure of prisons to deal with racism, lack of privilege, and impoverishment - not accept any of that. Just get in there! — Jimmy Santiago Baca

Instead of creating new jobs, Republicans gave tax cuts to companies that send jobs overseas. — Joe Baca

Head Start is especially important to Latino children. Latino children make up more than one-third, 34 percent, of all those eligible for the program. — Joe Baca

I am learning to look at myself differently, to see the scattered remnants of hope and dreams and collect them again. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

The whole thing is this: If you don't use just basic grammar, if you don't get the language down, you're not going to have access to a tool that people use as a weapon against you. The only reason I was never taught to read and write was because it was easier for them to lead me. But the second I learned to read and write, I began to lead myself. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

Break the mold! Have the biggest vision you can! If you can't dream it, it cannot occur! — Judy Baca

I am a face in a trance, evoking duende. My face imbues breath and stuns you with star-spirit. I am grove-face, story-teller face, and dawn-bringer face. A face as common as carrots and celery, called upon as a father to be cook, waiter, servant, and maid. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

Catholic school graduates exhibit a wide variety of qualities that will not only help them in their careers but also in their family and community lives. — Joe Baca

The Postal Service needs tools to modernize and compete. That is why today I am a cosponsor of H.R. 22, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. — Joe Baca

In fact, allowing immigrants to have licenses actually improves homeland security by allowing our government to track who is in our borders. — Joe Baca

Who is the public now that it has changed color? — Judy Baca

With a growing population, there is a growing need for more water delivery and storage. — Joe Baca

People say what distinguishes us from the animals is that we think. Well, then why the hell don't we extend some compassion to those under tremendous duress? There's this whole idea that you work really hard so you can deaden your soul to the universe and enjoy yourself only in ways the Sierra Club will let you. But what about enjoying yourself by getting into the whole melee of poverty and racism and violence and murder and drug addiction? Get in there, roll up your sleeves, and do something! Nobody does it. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

One thing America truly does stand for is a million different ways of living. But while we enjoy the lives we have, we're so privileged. We live in a world that's so far from what the Palestinian children are going through, it's unbelievable. Yet if we dare to get close to that atrocity and name it, it would shock us so badly we couldn't live in our privileged comfort zone. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

All of our children have so much potential. All of our children deserve a chance at life. — Joe Baca

Catholic schools in our Nation's education have been paramount in teaching the values that we as parents seek to instill in our children. — Joe Baca

The Postal Service's unmatched ability to reach every household and business in America six days a week is a vital part of the nation's infrastructure. — Joe Baca

I can't stand the comfort zone. So many people I know, their parents give them their homes, and they get married and have children, or whatever. That's it. They don't ever go beyond that. That's not what life is. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

Head Start graduates are more likely to graduate from high school and less likely to need special education, repeat a grade, or commit crimes in adolescence. — Joe Baca

Cinco de Mayo has come to represent a celebration of the contributions that Mexican Americans and all Hispanics have made to America. — Joe Baca

I really don't want to produce artwork that does not have meaning beyond simple decorative values. I want to use public space to create a public voice, and a public consciousness about the presence of people who are, in fact, the majority of the population but who are not represented in any visual way. By telling their stories we are giving voice to the voiceless and visualizing the whole of the American story. — Judy Baca

The Republican majority will stop at nothing to prevent access to the legal system for those who are hurt. — Joe Baca

Pearl Harbor caused our Nation to wholeheartedly commit to winning World War II, changing the course of our Nation's history and the world's future. — Joe Baca

Every poem is an infant labored into birth and I am drenched with sweating effort, tired from the pain and hurt of being a man, in the poem I transform myself into a woman. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

You've got to invite Native Americans to the table, and Asians, and Chicanos. You cannot keep us in the back room anymore and give us notations on paper saying this is what you deserve. You have to invite us to the table because America is ours, too. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

I emerged from the black oil pools in the forgotten house of dreams in the wild backcountry of the heart. I am heir to the sun, child of Mother Earth and the Mayan galaxy. All the mountain cures and healing waters and winds and junipers run deep in my bloodstream. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

The American people depend on these federal employees to process, investigate, and adjudicate applications for immigration rights and benefits in a timely and thorough manner. — Joe Baca

The Postal Service delivers mail six days a week to nearly 140 million addresses. Every year this number increases by 2 million. — Joe Baca

American families be warned, if the White House doesn't send your jobs overseas, they'll send your kids. — Joe Baca

As a proud Catholic, I know the impact that faith-based education can have in our society and have witnessed it first hand in my district. — Joe Baca

As costly as it was in the lives of our men and women in uniform, in military assets, and in esteem and pride, Pearl Harbor was a watershed moment for America. — Joe Baca

Many of us are alarmed at the skyrocketing cost of medical care, including patients, who are the consumers. However, medical malpractice is not the reason for these increasing costs. — Joe Baca

It is crucial that members of Congress cast votes that are supportive of the values upon which our nation was founded: equality, freedom, and opportunity for all people. — Joe Baca

The School Energy Crisis Relief Act authorizes the Secretary of Energy to issue energy assistance grants to help the poorest school districts across the Nation offset these unexpected and challenging costs. — Joe Baca

Being a human being without forgiveness is like being a guitarist without fingers or being the diva without a tongue. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

I culled poetry from odors, sounds, faces, and ordinary events occurring around me. Breezes bulged me as if I were cloth; sounds nicked their marks on my nerves; objects made impressions on my sight as if in clay. There, in the soft language, life centered and ground itself in me and I was flowing with the grain of the universe. Language placed my life experiences in a new context, freeing me for the moment to become with air as air, with clouds as clouds, from which new associations arose to engage me in present life in a more purposeful way. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

The goal of the Head Start program is to give at-risk children all across our Nation a fair chance at succeeding in the educational system. — Joe Baca

We learned in World War II that no single nation holds a monopoly on wisdom, morality or right to power, but that we must fight for the weak and promote democracy. — Joe Baca

Literacy is freedom, and everyone has something significant to say, — Jimmy Santiago Baca

To help U.S. workers, farmers and businesses, and America's long-term economic security, Congress should take decisive action to bring about fair trade with China, instead of squandering this opportunity on a weak Republican bill. — Joe Baca

The Republicans would like to take us back to a darker time, when corporations ruled and the underserved had no rights. — Joe Baca

It's the process of making-do,
of the life I've lived between
breakdowns and break-ups, that has made life
worth living.
I could not bear a life
with everything perfect. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

I do know that if you can name certain things and understand them, it allows you to make better choices. Unfortunately, there's so much misinformation that towers over a person's head, it's really difficult to make the right decisions. Consequently, we just go along because it's way too hard to sift through the information. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

Native Americans are the original inhabitants of the land that now constitutes the United States. They have helped develop the fundamental principles of freedom of speech and separation of powers that form the foundation of the United States Government. — Joe Baca

Let's get one thing out of the way: Mexican immigration is an oxymoron. Mexicans are indigenous. So, in a strange way, I'm pleased that the racist folks of Arizona have
officially declared, in banning me alongside Urrea, Baca, and Castillo, that their anti-immigration laws are also anti-Indian. I'm also strangely pleased that the folks of Arizona
have officially announced their fear of an educated underclass. You give those brown kids some books about brown folks and what happens? Those brown kids change the world. In the effort to vanish our books, Arizona has actually given them enormous power. Arizona has made our books sacred documents now. — Sherman Alexie