BOURBON BAYOU OG Then I came across Francisco P. Ramirez, who in 1855 at the age of 17 owned and published his own newspaper, El Clamor Público (The Public Outcry). Imagine, 165 years ago, there was a Latino using his words as his power, to bring attention to issues affecting Mexican Americans in California. He pushed against the status quo and critically examined what freedom meant in America. In July 1855, he wrote an editorial where he questioned liberty in the United States. He called it ‘truly curious’ that some people had no liberty at all. ‘It is denied by the courts,’ he wrote. ‘But there is the great liberty of any white man to buy a human being in order to arbitrarily hand him or burn him alive,’ he strongly stated. He called slavery the ‘vilest despotism.’ He knew in 1856 what many of us still don’t: ‘We have enough votes among ourselves to control the election in this country and we have the power to elect candidates who will work for our interest,’ he wrote. He was a writer, publisher, act...