As a humanitarian, environmental advocate, social justice activist and a leader for women’s and Latino rights, Eva Longoria is a voice we can’t afford to silence.
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Long before and throughout her acting career, the Desperate Housewives star worked to change our society and in the process, has become nationally respected for her endless resume of activism. She’s fought for a vast range of issues that include advancing children’s labor rights, protecting farm workers, the environment, and education reform in the Latino community. She courageously stands on the political forefront for America’s most vulnerable citizens—children, the working class, the disabled and immigrants. More than just a pretty face or Hollywood starlet, she speaks for the voiceless and uses her money, time, effort and celebrity to fight for issues that we face collectively.
That’s why I was terribly disheartened to learn that people are calling for Eva to step down from her position as the co-chair of the Obama campaign due to a controversial re-tweet. On October 16, she retweeted a derogatory statement about Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
Eva made claims that her account may have been hacked, because it was oddly retweeting random tweets. She later apologized for the offensive RT as well.
Nonetheless, conservatives, like pundit Michelle Malkin and some liberals, are saying that the RT is irreconcilable and calling for the actress to step down as co-chair of the Obama campaign.
Eva has been using her political power to push for women’s issues and Latino rights in a highly contested race that will decide the fate of our country over the next four years. She speaks for our generation and should not be muzzled because of a RT that doesn’t represent who she is nor who she’s proven to be.
Even if she did re-tweet the statement before considering the consequences, calling someone “racist” isn’t a far stretch for somebody who joked that being a Latino would help him win the election, stated that “self-deportation” is a solution for immigration reform, and pushed the blame for street violence on unwed parents, when statistics prove that Black women overwhelmingly dominated the population of single parents. Likewise, someone who has the audacity to overturn the Supreme Court case that would take away a woman’s right to choose and leave the choice to be made by a predominantly all-white male bureaucracy can also fit in the category of a misogynist.
But, I digress.
Eva, like everyone else, is entitled to freedom of speech. That means that Mitt Romney is allowed to call 47 percent of the nation “victims” who don’t “take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” It allows him to say that women should not be in control of their uterus and that he’s “not concerned about the very poor.”
So before we put a woman on blast who is working hard for women’s and immigrant rights,–something that Romney has failed miserably on doing–maybe we should first consider all of the baseless, offensive remarks that Romney made.
On top of that, Romney has yet to call out one of the leading voices in his party, Donald Trump, who launched a witch hunt for the President’s birth certificate, thus propelling the momentum for the Birther Movement, which has used racially suggestive language to claim that Obama is not a citizen.
I’m not saying that we should shift the blame, I’m just saying, where’s the Right’s outrage when their party redefines rape?
Eva Longoria’s work is not done. She has been on the frontlines of justice for years, now it’s time for us to fight for her!
