New Haven Independent

John Lugo: We’re having a march on March 18 against the war and against the administration.

Jose Natal: I’m there. I don’t blame you guys. This is my bulletin board [shows several anti-Bush cartoons].

JL: The mayor and police don’t want us to march on Grand Avenue… so we’re asking people in this neighborhood to sign a petition…

JN: I’ll sign it. I don’t have a problem with that.

JL: So, how do you feel about the war?

JN: Lousy, we shouldn’t be fuckin’— there. We got no business in Iraq. Let the Iraqi people solve their own fuckin’ problems. It’s worse now than when Saddam was there. They are talking about fuckin’ liberties and democracy. Some of these guys don’t believe in democracy. You can’t force democracy on everyone.

JL: We’re on the same page.

JN: No money for education, for fuckin’ this, for fuckin’ that and billions of dollars for the fuckin’ stupid war, and people getting killed every day.

JL: You know, one of the things we’re asking for with this march is to support immigrant rights, because right now the government wants to blame the immigrants…

JN: Yeah, immigrants, but let me tell you something I feel about the immigrants. There’s too many fuckin’ immigrants already as it is. There’s a lot of them over here too. This country was made with immigrants and shit like that. But you can only absorb so much, you get so many immigrants in New Haven and it draws on our taxes to pay for this or that. [But] also, a lot of them work, and pay their taxes and they do contribute. It’s kind of a little shaky point. It’s not an easy point to address.

JL: What immigrants are facing right now is the same thing Puerto Ricans faced when they first came here…

JN: Yeah, but we were never immigrants. When we came here we were citizens.

JL: I know, but they were blaming…

JN: Citizenship, that was, by the way, forced on us. As far as I’m concerned, the U.S. can get the fuck out of Puerto Rico too.