Bad Apples in a Decaying Orchard
WHEN CONSIDERING THE MURDER OF BRISENIA FLORES, it does not help us find any valuable truth or approach any larger societal problem to isolate the event and wall it off from the larger context of anti-immigrant and thus anti-Latino hate and hostility in this nation. We have a larger problem on our hands.
WHEN LUIS RAMIREZ WAS BEAT TO DEATH in the street for simply being Mexican While in Public, the Founding Editors of (award winning site!) The Sanctuary penned this piece. We did it carefully and over a few days, because we had a point we wanted to make very clear; one we did not see being underlined in the media. A point crucial to understanding the Ramirez killing as well as the killing of Marcelo Lucero and Wilter Sanchez and Jose Sucuhañay…and so many other vicious attitudes and assaults against the Latino comunidad.
The point was that this was not A Killing, not even simply A Hate Killing. (Hell, the all-white jury decided Ramirez’s cracked-open-skull-n-brains wasn’t even worth a murder charge, but only a Simple Assault!) The point is, this most-decidedly hateful Hate Crime was but one “data point” (if you like phrases like this) in a larger quotient. As such, all these killings are.
That is, it does not help us see any valuable truth or approach any larger societal problem to isolate the event and wall it off from the larger context of anti-immigrant and thus anti-Latino hate and hostility in this nation. The pandering anti-immigrant politicians (mostly on the Right tho not all by any means); the Lou Dobbs/BilloReilly/Glen Beck/Rush Limbaugh/Sheriff Arpaio (and I include this creaky bigot with this crew because he fancies himself a TV star now)/Jon Justice entertainerhaterz; the stall on humane immigration legislation combined with the ICE movement/detention industry which paints immigrants/latinos as criminals; and the thinly-disguised hate groups like FAIR and the Minutemen and NumbersUSA and ALIPAC—all these factors collude to create an intense soup of racist hate that is marking Latinos/as fair game for violence and for the dehumanization that makes it possible to view this violence as nothing more than “isolated incidents” as well as let hate-motivated murderers off with a “Simple Assault” charge.
Obviously, we—The Sanctuary editors—were on target with our message, as the Ramirez piece has been picked up by La Voz de Esperanza, a publication of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center in San Antonio, Texas, to be printed in their June 2009 issue. They told me they feel it best contextualizes the event as well as the climate in our nation today that leads to such hate crimes. This was a great satisfaction to us, but obviously getting even the right message into print will not stop the hate or the violence. That will take all of us. Though to get there, we do need to be having the right conversation. That’s hard to do when even people who condemn the killing equate murdering children with “extremists” on the other “side.” As if pro-migrant groups could ever be compared with such vile actions!
I agree that it is important to delve into and discover the other criminal associations and deeds of Shawna Forde and Eugene Bush and all the Minutemen who are murderers, thieves, rapists, etc. Dig it all up and put it in the light. Of course we must and should. Sadly, though, the effect of all this digging, unfortunately seems to be coupled with the message that so many hate groups would also want to broadcast, a message not unlike the one that says Conservatism can never failed, only be failed by poor actors. It is “these were lone wackos not acting in line withour movement.” This would be an utterly deceitful line to offer, as it’s well-known that Forde was not an unknown outsider within the anti-immigrant (and… more to the point… anti-Mexican) movement, as amigo Richard puts it.
The truth is, it really doesn’t matter how wacked out Eugene Bush or Lou Dobbs or Shawna Forde are, or if Forde was crazy or planning to overthrow the US. What matters is how well she fit into the FAIR/Minutemen/CIS/NumbersUSA/ALIPAC crowd, how on-point and on-message Bush and Forde were, and how indicative their attitudes and messaging is of the current anti-immigrant “Nativist Lobby” that the Southern Poverty Law Center reports on.
Media Matters is holding a panel on this topic, and drawing the frame around on consequences of growing culture of violent rhetoric in right-wing media. And that’s good. But that’s not the bullseye, to my way of aiming.
No matter what legislation passes, no matter what pundits are censured, no matter what mealy-mouth backpedaling any politicians do when they sense the sway and national mood is not with anti-Latino hate, no matter how high in number the hate crimes against my people grow, what WILL continue, I’m afraid, is the detention industry’s growth. As Amnesty International reports, “[t]ens of thousands of people languish in U.S. immigration detention facilities every year — including a number of U.S. citizens — without receiving a hearing to determine whether their detention is warranted.”
ICE projects 400,000 more arrests this year. And these ain’t hotels they are sticking people in.
And why is this business so untouchable? Why is this business kept out of the spotlight? Because the US Prison Industrial Complex needs it’s cashola.
It is not just “Right Wing” “violent rhetoric” that poses danger to Latin@s, though that is no small thing to be dismissed or overlooked. But this violence and this view on migrants, Mexicans and brown people in general is part and parcel of our entire national lust for incarceration. And the stats will tell you who beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is non-whites being locked up in greater numbers. Sadly, even the US military is doing its part.
The Liberal blogosphere and Left wing groups can stand apart and aside from the Wackiest of Loners and point at them if it makes them feel better. But the wise would lift their eyes and see the larger picture unfolding before us all. It is not pretty. After all, when you send a message to the nation in many ways—large, small, loud and quiet—that brown people are criminals and the way to deal with their growing numbers and power is to break down their doors with weaponry and jail them…why do you imagine humans will not learn the lesson and join in? They will, as we see from incident after “isolated” incident. And now, a dour and fearful miasma surrounds us all. The nation—in the form of pundits, radio hosts, politicians, ICE, and “anti-immigrant groups”—is terrorizing Latin@s.
And that stink? It is not a bushel of rotten apples we can toss in a box. It is an orchard full of trees, and many of them drooping with insidious rot.
Tags: ALIPAC, CIS, Eugene Bush, FAIR, Minutemen, NumbersUSA, Shawna Forde
Posted in Borders, Criminal Justice System, Cultura, Culture of Criminality, Economy, Hate Groups, ICE, Immigration, Latinos, Prison for Profit, Raza, U.S.A., United States Politics, White Supremacy
“ICE projects 400,000 more arrests this year. And these ain’t hotels they are sticking people in.
And why is this business so untouchable? Why is this business kept out of the spotlight? Because the US Prison Industrial Complex needs it’s cashola.”
GET RID OF ICE!
i’ll be back to finish this read. i have been out for awhile, and i gotta go now, but…. the above caught my eye, as the story of LUIS RAMIREZ catches my heart and so just want you to know that i am still around with the others of like mind and heart to facilitate the needed change to raise the bar of humanitarian standards in this country. again nez…thank you for your perseverance.
peace, one love, connect it and pass it on.
hi i’m back. my first thought is the one bad apple that ruins the bunch. i don’t know why, but another thought came to me given to me by — Eugene Deb, “As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I’m of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
i agree there is a collective need to counter what is seen as isolated efforts of these individuals. the toxins from these people/groups do puddle up to make a pool of poison creating a typhoid that destroys all of us.
this is bigger than just about the hate of a group of people towards another group, but it is about all of us and what we all do, think, and feel, (and gratitude) to exist with each other and the world given us… at all times. what a hurtful waste and a personal shame hate is, (no matter it’s orgins), for all of us in this time given to us in this place.
peace, one love, connect it and pass it on.
oh yeah, and get rid of ice
One of the big anti-illegal immigration groups, ALIPAC, was warning people about Shawna starting back in January. Just because someone claims to be a leader in a grassroots movement doesn’t mean that everybody they claim to be working with them actually is. Shawna’s organization was actually very small, and she’d been kicked out of others so she formed her own. Jim Gilchrist deserves a lot of the blame for enhancing the credibiity of this unstable woman when others were saying, ‘wait a minute.’ The vast majority of Minutemen and other immigration activists are ordinary people who pose no threat to anyone.
Ah yes, ALIPAC, another site that foments hate. It was just today I dropped by and saw the members on the discussion board laughing about what a great idea it would be to create a “Dishwashing Superhighway,” at which one member remarks “Very cute, and it will save our water usage a lot, but will probably drive up the cost of meals so restaurants can pay insurances for food-borne (or plate-borne) illnesses.”
This sentiment is ubiquitious at ALIPAC, as is the swarming and drooling over every crime, especially sexual assault, that involves an immigrant in any way (ala Bill O’Reilly’s fascination with perversity and conflation and projection, even.) ALIPAC spends much energy presenting immigrants from Latin America much as Pat Buchanan and the haters of old do: as vermin, as a danger, as a pollutant, as a drain. At the same time belittling Mexicans with jokes like the one quoted above. It’s an odd mix of fear and derision. But this is classic methodology of racists and eugenicists alike, who dehumanize by association and outright lies and repetition.
ALIPAC is another group that inarguably contributes to the cesspool that is our non-dialogue on immigration, another hand tossing volatile ingredients into the mix, another group that must own some blame for the killings and assaults against the Latin@ community that are growing every day.
Interesting. An ALIPAC’r comes calling. It is kind of like proverbial “rats on a sinking ship”. Now that one of the leaders of their movement kills a 9 yr old child, they want nothing to do with ‘em. The white supremecy, racism and hatred of Latinos that infests the people who belong to these anti-immigrant groups is more than ever very evident.
Yes, they used to be able to hide it a bit more, but they are losing their subtlety. It’s embarrassing, not to mention disgusting.
This website IS AMAZING I LOVE IT SO MUCH AS A LATINO I CAN COME AND READ YOUR ARTICLES FOR COMFORT…but i am not only mexican but i am half black as a half and half im constantly suffering from the racsism and torment from both sides of my people…HELP PLEEASSSE…WHAT DO I DO
sincerely,
La frijolera morena
Thank you so much. You are on a hard path, I understand. I am multi-racial as well. Find support, that is all I can tell you. Find others who understand, because when people do not, they mostly offer you confusion, if not outright hurt and trauma. Some people who visit and comment here are very good friends in this way. Search online, check my blog roll, join in the conversations. I wish you well, and anything I can do in my limited time managing this blog or otherwise, I will. Peace.
For a mentor in this path, or one possible means of connection, at least, I suggest a good friend of mine who is also Blatina, her name is Liza, she publishes Culturekitchen.com, tell her I sent you. She is busy, so don’t make her or any one person your salvation. But she would understand your feelings in many cases, I’m betting. She is on twitter, her username is “blogdiva.”