Emmy Award-winning actor John Leguizamo is in Charlotte this week for the Democratic National Convention to promote the Creative Coalition, a non-profit organization advocating for public funding for the arts as an economic development resource.

“It’s always the first to go and the arts are actually what keeps us cutting edge against China and India,” Leguizamo tells Soledad O’Brien. “It’s been proven that for every dollar spent, you get seven dollars back that’s taxable from the arts. The iPod was created for what? For music.”

The Colombian American actor also weighs in on the DNC’s first Latino keynote speaker, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, and on the Republican attempt to court Hispanic Americans.    

“[Julian Castro’s] going to be our president,” Leguizamo says. “That’s how you felt last night being a Latin man, just, wow, we’ve come a long way and we’re going to have our Obama, a Latin Obama.”  

“Latin people for Republicans are like roaches for raid,” he adds. “It doesn’t make sense. [Republicans are] not for us. You’re not for my values. We’re working class people mostly and blue collar. We’re your cops, we’re your firemen, we’re your carpenters and the things we need – we need to protect our unions, we need to protect our Medicare, we need to protect the working class person.”