Pan Dulce with the Obama Staff

This past Saturday, I had the privilege of driving over the hill to San Jose for what was dubbed the . The event was at once a genuine opportunity for local officials and community members to gain greater policy insights and build relationships with White House officials as well as a government financed campaign bonanza where the White House could flex their grassroots credentials and highlight their social media mastery. I would have to say that their impressive offering of pan dulce upon pan dulce and personal laptops for all participants definitely made the Latino elite e’like.

Present were White House representatives from such departments as the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Labor, and White House Office of Public Education. Each official gave a five-minute spiel about their job duties with some commentary on congressional obstacles and/or their great passion for their duties. The rest of the day was by and large a series of breakout sessions where participants’ input was documented for future policymaking considerations to go alongside input given via their laplaza.net online community forum. Of course, a lot of venting and networking was also had.

Several spirited conversations carried us through the day. Amongst the most interesting were around Health Care and officials’ passionate advocacy of the Affordable Care Act which included proclamations access to health care never before seen for persons of color come 2014. Talk of greater investment in Pell Grants and loan forgiveness programs were also a hit with the crowd.

While some officials around Labor, Health or even Education largely received free passes, the Department of Homeland Security officials received the greatest dissent from the more feisty participants who reveled in the cathartic opportunity of chewing out high end officials and/or watching them squirm. People were particularly angry about the Secure Communities program breaching its original promise of only deporting serious and violent criminals. They were angry that a record number of immigrants have been deported under President Obama, a number that is approaching half a million individuals per year.

As a blogger for the Watsonville Patch, I was able to attain a media pass and in my head illegally immigrate into the semi-exclusive press conference given. Officials were eloquent, fully informed, and above all else nimble as they avoided any and all dark corners of the President’s more controversial policies. They never quite fully appeased any single questioner, occasionally deferring blame to congressional gridlock, and instead promised reason for optimism moving forward, the promise of “Winning the Future,” that moniker we’ve heard here and there and should expect to hear a whole lot more of.

Listening to them, I truly believe the White House officials want more in the way of progressive reform and policy-making. They probably want more in the way of education spending and job creation as well but the fact of the matter is that we are most certainly strapped for cash and new spending is a tough sell.

With the increased immigration detentions around Secure Communities, however, the White House has in part shifted the burden of spending to local jurisdictions that are expected to detain individuals at their own expense, individuals that often have families and an honest name. I personally believe that the increase in deportations is a safe assumption that the “Hispanic” vote is in the bag for Obama and if done properly can both slip under the radar of hard-working Latinos and fly within the radar of hard-working Iowans.

Though the weight of the world is on the man’s shoulders, I also believe President Obama had a 2008 mandate to be a trust-busting, New Deal promoting Roosevelt if you will. Three years later, we’re still watching him give soft and gentle Eskimo kisses to the Banks of America, Citigroups, and Merril Lynches of the world. Instead of embracing Glass-Steagall or calling for greater capital-gains taxes, he continues to pardon banks from accounting for their foreclosure sins and hedge-fund gambling. As a Mexican-American, I find this the most offensive of all the President’s policies.

I would say a good chunk of the people at the Summit were overwhelmed and delighted by the White House’s full-court press and revamping of their user-friendly PR machine. Still more were pleased that their thoughts and concerns would be communicated to White House decision makers. But there was definitely a contingency of people who came pre-deflated and who wouldn’t or couldn’t be wooed by the mobile and flexible adjectives of hope, belief or faith, those open-ended signifiers whose capital was cashed out sometime between the Health Care debate and limp noodle Dodd-Frank banking regulation.

President Obama pledged to transcend party lines, and I believe he has tried his best to do so. Unfortunately, neither Democrats nor Republicans believe in such transcendence. If he is elected for a second term, I sincerely wish that he would aggressively pursue policies from the front of the pack. Beyond hosting Summits, being a leader who unabashedly presents real solutions of his own making to such problems as banking and immigration is the best thing that the President could possibly do to better the lives of Latinos.

Yes We Can, Obama will continue to say. But for some reason, "Yes We Can" isn’t quite translating into "Sí Se Puede" so well. As income inequality continues to worsen and families continue to be torn apart, it feels like the pride and richness of those words are being deported and bankrupted. I hope that the great input given by Bay Area leaders and community members won’t go unacknowledged by the President and his staff as hope, belief and faith will again be up for election.