The annual Cinco de Mayo celebration falls on a Saturday this year, making it possible that more people will be participating in non-organized activities than have in recent years, particularly cruising along Federal Blvd.

Reconfigured medians along Federal, street closures, restricted exits from I-25, and other law enforcement crackdowns, like curfews, may explain the decreased Cinco-de-Mayo activities in the last few years. So the day of the week on which May 5 falls may not matter.

Efforts at collaborative peace keeping and ‘witnessing’ efforts organized by Nita Gonzalez, President of Escuela Tlaltelolco, may have decreased skirmishes and resultant visibility of cruising as well. Gonzales promoted safe cruising and respectful law enforcement.

Still, increased traffic problems and revelry, if they emerge this year, will likely attract media coverage, and so I thought I’d offer a few pro-active suggestions on how to encourage fairness in reporting on an event with a history of inflammatory coverage and divisive reactions within our community.

• Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day, which is actually Sept. 16. Cinco de Mayo, which marks an historic victory by the Mexican Army at Puebla, Mexico, in 1862, is a celebration of Latin culture and freedom generally. The weaker and smaller Mexican farmers defeated the French.
• The organized Cinco de Mayo activities will take place at Civic Center Park May 5 and 6 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.  This is one of the largest Cinco de Mayo celebrations in the country, drawing hundreds of thousands of people in the past. It’s a fundraising event organized by NEWSED Community Development Corporation and Santa Fe Drive Redevelopment Corporation. Booth space is sold to vendors and exhibitors of many types. Music, dancing, food, and more will be offered.
• The cruising that typically occurs on Cinco de Mayo weekend is not an organized activity. It occurs spontaneously, often concentrating along Federal. In the past, police have restricted cruising to specific parts of Federal and curfews have been enforced.
• Cruising is legal, and it’s a popular and peaceful activity among Mexican-Americans. Maintaining lowriders and converted vehicles is a hobby no different from other hobbies people take up.
• The intention of cruisers is obviously not to tie up traffic or prevent people from driving across Federal Blvd. (It could be helpful to have some pre-emptive coverage of traffic detours and closures and suggestions for avoiding the traffic tie-ups, if any.)
• Flag waving has been a highly visible part of Cindo-de-Mayo activities in the past. It’s misleading to attribute the flag-waving to Mexican nationals. It’s more a symbol of cultural and ethnic identity and origin,  and relatively unrelated to expressions of geo-politics or sovereignty or the like.

I have to preface this blog post by telling you I’m a critic of the American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC. I don’t like the legislation that the outfit promotes (for example, discouraging registered voters from voting, encouraging people to fire guns at innocent people).

I also don’t like the way ALEC teams up in secret with conservative legislators and big corporations to draft anti-consumer laws.

I signed a petition as a hopeless gesture to get giant businesses to abandon ALEC, and I was floored when Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, MacDonald’s, and Proctor & Gamble dropped their sponsorship of ALEC in recent weeks, after it came to light that ALEC pushed legislation that may have led to the Trayvon Martin shooting.

My problems with ALEC may sound innocent enough to you, even pathetic given the power of big corporations, but to ALEC co-director Jonathan Williams, my views of ALEC and my actions against ALEC make me a Marxist. On Denver’s KLZ radio April 26, he said:

“You know,” Williams told KLZ, “at the end of the day though, companies should realize that capitalists are the folks who buy their products. The Marxists that are coming after us and coming after them are the folks who want to see them gone anyways.”

I had no idea I was a Marxist. I spent a lot of time studying Marxism in college, hoping I could be a Marxist someday, but I never could bring myself to agreeing with it.

But did Grassroots Radio Colorado hosts Ken Clark and Jason Worley object at all to Williams’ accusation? Nope.

Maybe that’s because you hear the Marxist card thrown around so much these days on conservative talk radio that it’s become standard fare?

Just this morning, KOA’s Mike Rosen pointed out on Facebook that President Obama’s new campaign slogan “forward” has “very well-established links to Marxism and Socialism.”

Forward? I thought it had roots in the old hippie slogan, “Never go straight. Go Forward.”

So, with Obama, I’m in good company as a not-yet-self-actualized Marxist.

Still, I consider myself fringe, but Williams doesn’t see the Marxists behind the anti-ALEC campaign as a rag-tag group. He didn’t mention Obama as being in the Marxist fold, but Williams sees real, serious power in the hands of American Marxists these days as they go after ALEC:

“There is a very coordinated intimidation campaign against some of our corporate sponsors and against many of our legislators across the country by folks who disagree with free-enterprise policy,” ALEC’s Williams told KLZ. “And they try to use extortionist techniques to intimidate the corporate members from getting involved.  It’s been a really sad state of affairs that we’ve been seeing over the last few weeks and some of the companies crumbling under these intimidation tactics.”

 Extortion? Intimidation?

I wish the KLZ talk-show hosts had delved into those bad things more. I thought the backlash against ALEC was an anomalous case study of successful citizen activism, with organizations like the Center for Media and Democracy creating an informative website, ALEC Exposed, and state groups like ProgressNow pushing out information about local legislative ties with ALEC.

And what about Williams saying ALEC’s corporate sponsors were “crumbling?”

I almost started to feel sorry for him, for his disappointment, but then I remembered I’m a Marxist, and I realized the weakening of ALEC, with corporations crumbling,  is the first step toward the proletarian revolution I’ve been waiting for since college.

Listen here to ALEC’s Jonathan Williams say that critics of ALEC are “Marxists”

Follow Jason Salzman on Twitter @bigmediablog