SB 1070, The Latest Volley in the Long War

BACK IN MY FIERY TAKE-NO-PRISONERS DAYS of writing this blog, I began referring to the “Long War” on the indigenous of this continent. It is a war of weapons, of lies, of law, of land, and a billion micro-aggressions against both the idea and the reality that this land—if land can really be said to belong to anyone—belongs to and has been nurtured and nourished and tended by peoples who have been systematically hindered, harassed, hounded and hunted by outside forces and their descendants. Those who know what I mean, know what I mean. Those who do not will not, for they have been brainwashed by the poison that the televisionation spews out daily to maintain an illusion that exacts a cost of blood, bad dreams, and the pain of millions. We call it The American Dream. And yeah, today I’m a bit angry. Today, we see not yet another micro-aggression through our oversensitive racial lens but a very tangible, very dangerous bill (Senate Bill 1070)  signed into Arizona law by Governor Jan Brewer.

In February of this year, I tried to communicate my feelings and thoughts on this bill.

This bill makes the racists happy. Just dig the comment threads on any videos on this topic. Sweet lord, these vile, selfish, thoughtless creeps who cluster to threads on immigration oughtta be shipped out to their very own island as far as I’m concerned. Judging by 90% of the noise they make, they simply are not fit to share a community or society with other people. They should be airlifted to an island and stuck there with a library of history books and made to work their own land and wait on their own damn tables and watch their own kids and chop up their own steers and otherwise bootstrap their asses to their own private, ridiculous destiny and leave the rest of us out.

SB1070 makes nativist groups like FAIR happy. It makes proven racists like Mark Krikorian happy. It does not make those who must enforce this new law happy. It makes millions of the rest of us very unhappy. For very good reasons.

[Cardinal] Mahony, a nationally influential figure who heads the nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese with 4.3 million members, lambasted Pearce’s bill on his blog this week, likening it to “German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques” that compelled people to turn each other in.

“The Arizona Legislature just passed the country’s most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law,” the cardinal wrote on his blog. “The tragedy of the law is its totally false reasoning: that immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder, and consume public resources. That is not only false, the premise is nonsense.”

—source

“First and foremost, we are concerned with public safety, and we don’t know that this will be of benefit to public safety.”

“This is a federal issue, that obviously needs some addressing on the federal level.”

– Josh Copley, deputy chief, Arizona Flagstaff police department

“Unfortunately, the governor is afraid to stand left of the radical politics of (Arizona Rep.) Russell Pearce. The issue has divided Arizona and divided the nation, and only in Arizona have we chosen to embarrass ourselves in proclaiming some sort of radical resolution to this issue when there isn’t an easy solution at all.”

“The real solution belongs in comprehensive immigration reform that John McCain outlined three years ago when he was running for president. Until we get that, and this law repealed, we’re simply going to have community division and chaos within the command of police departments.”

– Tom Chabin, AZ state representative, D-Flagstaff

“I believe that it’s bad legislation … I have a concern about putting my officers in a position to have them profile people based on the color of their skin and the language they speak.”

– Bill Pribil, Arizona Coconino County sheriff

“This really is a massive expansion of police power, promoted by a Legislature that claims to be in favor of small government.”

– Joel Olson, NAU political science professor [source]

Aside from driving a vicious wedge between the police and most of the community, there are the myriad legal problems that occur when you let fringey racist elements start trying to flesh their murky animosity into standing and practicable law:

Imagine the following scenario:

A Tucson police officer pulls over a white person driving alone for a cracked windshield. By what standard or metric will the officer use to determine “reasonable suspicion” that the white person in the vehicle is in the country illegally?

You can’t tell by just looking. Right? So there must be some other behavior that an officer must cue on in order to develop a reasonable suspicion. What would that be? Nervousness? Most people are nervous when they’re pulled over? Not in possession of driver’s license? Thousands of citizens are stopped every year and cited for driving without a license.

There is no way to determine citizenship status by just looking at someone. So the officer must ask. And, in order not to run afoul of the equal protection clause, police will have to ask everyone.

So now what if our white driver, who does not speak with a foreign accent, refuses to answer the question? What will the officer do? The law says an Arizona’s driver’s license or state-issued ID card suffice as proof of citizenship. But what if the driver doesn’t have a driver’s license in his or her possession?

Can you imagine any scenario in which the officer would develop a “reasonable suspicion” that the white driver is in the country illegally? I can’t (if this was Vermont, I could).

Now change the white driver to a Hispanic driver. Is refusing to answer the question “reasonable suspicion?” Or is failure to have a driver’s license?

In a state with several hundred thousand illegal immigrants entering it every year, and several hundred thousand more living here, a reasonable person would have to argue that it is “reasonable suspicion.” But it’s reasonable suspicion based on race and that’s just not Constitutionally viable.

If the officer arrests the unlicensed Hispanic driver based on that failure to answer the citizenship question and being unlicensed (which is a civil offense that doesn’t require arrest as long as the person signs a promise to appear) under this law the city, county or state could conceivably hold that person until citizenship or legal immigrant status is proved. That flies in the face of presumption of innocence.

I can’t see how this portion of the law can possibly be equitably enforced. As I’ve stated, it has enormous 4^th, 5^th and 14^th Amendment problems, as well as a near repudiation of presumption of innocence, which has been part of English and American common law for at least 200 years.

The only way to make it equitable is to ask everyone their citizenship status. But citizens are under no obligation to tell the police anything or to carry any proof of their citizenship.

The police can be sued if they fail to enforce the law but if they start rounding up citizens who refuse to provide proof of their citizenship, they’ll get sued for that too (though the law protects officers who wrongly arrest citizens or those in the country legally).

—Key part of SB 1070 not likely to be a law for long

And then for some of us, this move has horrific resonances to it.

What can we do?

• Post about it. Talk about it. Tweet about it, yes. All these things. Keep this alive in the dialogue. This move is WAY too big to let it be subsumed into the everchurning news trash compost heap. Yes, it is part of the small but powerful and noisy faction of the populace that shrieks against change, fears a black president, fears a brown nation, changes textbooks to reflect right wing fantasy, elevates scumbags like rush limbaugh and glenn beck. But the uproar is massive—and plenty of it from white folks—because they understand that this is, ahem, beyond the pale. This law will creep like infection and twist the nation into a very chaotic, destructive, and divided state.

What else can you do?

• Join this Facebook group.

• Boycott Arizona. Make them feel the pain of taking our country “back” to our uglier eras. These lawyers are.

• Raise hell.

• Sign this petition to the governor. Or contact her yourself directly.

The Honorable Jan Brewer
Governor of Arizona
1700 West Washington
Phoenix, Arizona 85007

Telephone (602) 542-4331
Toll Free 1-(800) 253-0883
Fax (602) 542-1381

• See these sites for further resources.

I know there are other actions planned and things to do, groups to join, numbers to call. I don’t have anymore time today to hunt those down. But please do add your thoughts and info in the comments. And hang tuff, gente. Good will prevail. But it will be stank and bloody in the meantime, for the hard climb. That’s just life.

See you on May 1.