WE BEGIN, but do not end, with the sensational incident where the Obama White House, under Trumpian pressure, produced for public inspection the President’s “long form” birth certificate.

I do not know how successful I will be in my attempts to navigate the journey, but I think it’s important to move from an immediate feeling of hurt or anger to a broader view of the very thing that moves behind this event and is so upsetting about it. This is what I will try to do.

__

Why can’t we roam this open country?
Oh, why can’t we be what we wanna be?
We want to be free.

–Bob Marley, 3 o’Clock Roadblock

ROADBLOCK

What a frenzy.

What a storm of feelings, thoughts, tweets, and emotions were exploded into view with that one event, where the President of the United States of America—a man of color—answered the insincere jeering of a single white citizen by producing his identity papers for inspection. As if our duly elected President was but a teen at a police checkpoint, wearing baggy pants and with his hands up against the hood. As if he were a young man standing on a corner looking Mexicano, immediately suspect and thus beholden to the law man to prove he was not up to criminal acts. What a shaking of the timbers of racial history were felt up and down the blogosphere in this one simple happening.

And rightly so. What a harsh reality we trade in; that it will take far more time than our grandparents’, parents’, or our own lifetimes to evolve past the sickly, sadistic, inhuman history we Americans share on matters of race. In matters of history—look to Mexico, or China, or Egypt—this country is in an infantile stage. And the things that were done to African Americans, and Indians (indigenous peoples from el Norte as well as from south of the “border”); to Chinese and Japanese and Chileans and so on…. these ghosts will not fade fast.

Donald Trump is one of those ghosts, his ailing caricature of a human form cavorting to and fro, swaying recklessly but cleverly. Almost as if animated by an actual soul, he bellows nearly-intelligible sounds, and the media flocks to absorb the spittle. His expression remains forever puckered like a lemon-shocked anus-mouth, his mind alight with tired stereotypes and bursts of fart-static. A clown who doesn’t have the decency to laugh at himself.

And Donald is so easy to hate, isn’t he? Because he is a hateful man. And because he enlists the powers of hate, hate long rooted in American soil. Hate that long ago drew blood and tossed ropes and smiled for the picture as the body cooled to a dusk-like temperature. Hate that raided Native American villages to murder sleeping children. Hate that buffed its boots before demanding that black men duck their eyes, and go drink from some other fountain. Hate that considers women, and Blacks and Cubans and Haitians and Iraqis and Afghanis and Mexican and Chinese and Vietnamese and Puerto Rican as less than human. Hate today that spends Joe Arpaio’s paycheck, props up his decaying frame, and parades his prisoners in pink. Hate yesterday that reneged on treaties, and swallowed up gold, and burned codices.

Donald Trump is animated by the very same hate that is used to divide so many people today, and strives to obscure the roots of our liberation as it obscures the hands that lock the cuffs on us. It is a disease of the mind and soul called White Supremacy. And in the land wherein this virus thrives, certain kinds of men, with their ballooned minds and feverish egos, get to demand certain concessions from other people: that you surrender your papers; that you not harbor anger in your eye or your tone lest it be beaten out of you; that law shall endorse such beatings; that you prone out on the ground with a gun in your back at a moment’s notice; that you swallow a bullet if the bully feels sexy while perched up there and straddled around your spine. It is a land where you apologize for a role you never asked for but is ascribed to you by thieves and liars; where They will always have the right to tell you to pull over and prove yourself, and where You will always comply and perhaps be allowed to live with just humiliation if you are lucky enough to walk away with your life.

And so the target of so much history, for a day, becomes Donald “I am the Patriarchy” Trump. And many hearts seethe for his being so cruel as to remind us of our history, and to imply that even when you gain The Most Powerful Office In The World, it means nothing next to the anger of a White Man. It was the same reminder Republican Senator Joe “YOU LIE” Wilson gave us when he shouted down the President of the United States in the middle of an address that was adorned with all the pomp and decorum as we see fit to afford our nation’s executive leader. That shout, that demand to show papers, that insistence that you duck your eyes, it hisses You can even become President, but you still are not White. Which means you are not really the President. Don’t go dreaming that somehow you are now more powerful than me, darkie.

And as an immediate and visceral (and predictable) reaction, what did so many of us people of color need to see the President do? We needed him to scoff at the implication that such assertions could be true. We needed him to refute that reality. To deny it exists. To stand up and stand proud. To destroy that reality with a new action.

Was coughing up the papers but then roasting Trump at a gala dinner in front of the Press enough? Was ordering the home invasion and murder of a wanted man of color in Pakistan enough to erase that reality? Perhaps for our empathy with Obama being humiliated, it was. Perhaps now the unpleasant memory of watching the national daddy figure bow to a carnival barker has been mitigated for most. Maybe now that feeling, as if we watched the POTUS hand over his lunch money to bullies, has been nullified, gunsmoke wafting about our heads like purifying incense smoke.

And I suppose it is best to take the man at his word: he saw the Birtherism (also known as “Racism”) wasn’t going to go away and wanted to squash it and force the GOP ravers into a corner by removing what he saw as their last leg in what was left of the Birther argument.

But I do not think it does the larger issue any service to forget it when the feelings fade, or to imagine it resolved because the President has shown his papers, is in the clear, and we are feeling tough again because, damn son—he’s got that killer instinct. Just as Rosa Parks’ challenge was not to one bus driver, but to an entire system of inequality, this matter is much broader and deeper than the pageantry that recently unfolded between two rich men on TV.

Yes, the dynamic where we identify culturally or ethnically in some way with President Obama (and as a man of color, I do) leads us to watch the disgusting Trump claim victory for making the President skip on command, and we fume with empathy. We gnash our teeth and swear our allegiance all over again to Barack, this poor besieged man who has to endure the barbs and slings of Age Old Racism. This intelligent, thoughtful scholar, statesman, gentleman, father and husband. This President who bears up nobly in conditions potentially humiliating, conditions asked of no other President has been before him. We spit on the ground and growl Trump’s name. We swear to show up in the voting booth for the Democrats…as if that in any measurable way addresses the larger issue of Them Who Shall Be Asked For Papers.

CONQUER AND DIVIDE

I should probably clearly state the obvious in case it is not as obvious as I’d hope: the American Black experience is deep, unique, and I highly respect it. I would never claim to see it in all its parts or stand within it. I am not pretending to have any stake or voice therein. At the same time, I have my own experiences as a Xicano, and there is some degree of overlap between the experiences of all people of color in this nation. This I know from years of activism and friendships and conversations with people of different ethnicities.

Also—quite important to suss out and account for—there are (exploitable) gaps between our experiences. It is in those gaps that divide and conquer wedges are introduced by the ruling class.

Strategically, it is in marginalized peoples’ great interest to discover these gaps ourselves so they cannot be exploited casually. It is in our great interest to find them, examine them, and prepare for the attacks that will be launched; attacks that would seek to exploit the latent weaknesses that could threaten our unity as people marginalized and exploited by the oppressive, racist hand of law. Black and Brown alike suffer behind the racist criminal justice system, for starters. Statistics for both Latinos as well as Blacks are disproportionately high for the actual number of crimes that run rampant through all communities, when compared. This is so because the law continues old power differentials and is implemented by human beings who have been conditioned by the same society .

And because law begins as idea, and only becomes strapped with force when enough people agree on that idea.

One of the ways that unfortunate ideas become commonly accepted is by the use of emotional triggers to mislead thought and obscure the true machinations of state or corporate power.

It is necessary to deny the apparent binaries here.

This is not just a black/white issue. Take it from Chuck D. And for all of us who care, there is a way to channel the need to see justice done in the wake of this ugly moment. There are other peoples and communities who would greatly benefit from our consideration in the current context. People who would suffer in continued indignities and abuse were we to avoid using that lens in a broader sense. Other communities that are having their own dignity denied, with not just social pressure demanding they suborn themselves and produce papers for how they look (not white), but laws. Laws and actions, I’m sorry to say, that are supported very much by President Obama. Laws being snuck under the radar that increase the reach of the surveillance state. as well as that feed into the growing prison and detention industry in the U.S. Like the actions of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

I will be more specific on these both in a moment. But I wanted to prepare the soil of your imagination for this turn of thought. I invite you to explore these ideas:

• The President, seemingly the unwilling subject of this degrading and dehumanizing shape of act before our eyes—being forced to show papers in the course of his day, with no reason but for the fact that he is not a pale man called Smith—supports that very idea being implemented for others who Appear Foreign, and is directly involved with making this a reality across America.

• If it bothers me that he, as one person (and a very powerful one on the continuum considered) is subject to this, how can I engage the larger fight where millions are subjected to this? Millions of very vulnerable people. Not graduates of Ivy League schools; not powerful politicians with millions of dollars at their disposal, and millions of people clamoring to back them up.

2. This is not a struggle between Barack H. Obama and Donald Whatever Trump. Nor one between their persons or personalities. Sure, let us consider their power and from where their power derives, and what they use it for. Let us give context to the scene and the players. But we really don’t need to make either of them a demon or a hero for us to successfully engage this important fight. In fact, doing so will dilute our powers of observation and thought.

3. The battle is not between the Evil, Rich, Racist Ole GOP and the Beleaguered, Liberal, Bullied, Righteous Democrats. If I may presume to know and say so, the battle at the heart of this outrage and hurt here, is for principles. For human dignity, and human rights. The battle is for integrity. The battle is against racist hate shaped into popular opinion and finally, given the force of the masses’ will—be it in the shape of social pressure, law, violence, or all three.

Going forward, we must recognize the possible faultline that divides certain viewpoints rooted in the Black American experience from certain viewpoints in the Mexican American community, as well as in the Pro-Migrant community. Especially when exploited by the powers that be. We must dwell in our connectedness. It’s not hard. I know I don’t just care for Mexicanos. I care for all people who suffer behind the racist machinations afoot in the nation today.

4. It’s not citizens vs. immigrants. Human rights, dignity, fairness: these are not things we should let legal terms determine. These are things we want human beings to have. Don’t let the squirming exploiters and vampires at the top whisper to us the nightmarish myth of scarcity. Things only seem scarce when a small group of people need to capitalize on many people’s energies and resources, and this profit-making pyramid shape enforces an artificial scarcity.

When we feel we cannot even take care of “our own,” it’s easy to let a feeling of solidarity slip away. It makes me sad when I see people of color who should understand and join in the struggle that Mexicanos and other immigrants face today, but who veer away from that struggle imagining that immigrants represent a threat to their own community. This is the voice of White Supremacy, and it’s a bullhorn turned on all day and night in this land, so I understand. But when in all important ways our struggle is the same, “our own” can be an expansive thing—and these larger numbers will render us more powerful to fight those exploiters at the top, already unfairly given advantage.

Many of today’s most important issues deal with power differentials between the very rich, and the rest of us. Immigration is one of the most important area for us to mind. Many issues come together here. Drug war. Commerce, and the Economy. Lines of ownership; lines that signify an US and THEM, borders that we end up believing need small army units and millions of dollars of technology in guns, drones, and surveillance equipment to maintain their reality; their solidity.

In the issue of immigration and corporate abuse of borders and employees is revealed the secret of how towns and communities become economically destroyed by corporate powers being above the law, and exploiting the worker. In the selling of the idea that the only people affected are Criminal Illegal Alien Invader Types, the elite continue to exploit our vulnerable brothers and sisters.

In Immigration politics, we see the manipulative hand of Economics, and the fallout of Capitalism and Neoliberalism. Domestically as well as Internationally. Within this struggle are handholds to engage the struggle for working class rights, women’s rights, family rights, culture, reproduction, human rights, our national ethics.

As more and more strife becomes about resources and mobility, more conquer and divide tactics will be put to work in this area of Immigration.

We must remember first and foremost (and again at the end), that the forces that benefit from our being divided will seek to exploit all these key areas. A simple lens adjustment would make that impossible. We must come to realize how many of us share this same struggle; fighting that power that reared it’s ugly naked head recently under the glow of sunlight bouncing off skyscraper windows, and hissed at the President with breath as old and rancid as years of gallows sweat.

TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY

There are so many discussions about the Arc of Obama in the eye of popular opinion as of yet. We’ve all had an intense experience of some sort from election day until now, though our specific experiences may vary, and our current feelings vary just as much. Some have offered arguable reasons for becoming disenchanted with his administration. I will avoid the political laundry list, some or all of with which you may or may not agree with. That’s not the conversation(s) I am here for. I don’t want to get sidetracked. I don’t want to exploit or even risk the potential differences and faultlines in our unity just for a moment. And when I say “our unity,” I mean working class people. I mean the 99% of income earners in the nation. I mean many many Black, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, Guatemalan, Dominican, Chinese, Korean or otherwise golden brown beautiful red black people. I mean white people. Here, I talk to all those people marginalized in some way by the powers and status quo that men like Donald Trump act in the service of.

I propose that what we have in common here is the idea of how wrong it is to deny the full dignity and rights to the Other in the name of safety and legal procedure. I suggest that this fight and furious sense of injustice cannot and should not end with the humiliating press conference, nor with the empowering roast of Trump at a dinner you and I had no means nor invitation to attend.

PROMISES, PROMISES

Candidate and President Barack Obama made some very specific promises to crowds of Latinos, in speeches to NCLR and to the immigrant community. He decried the ICE raids that tore parents away from their children, he called the system broken. In passioned speech, he told desperate immigrant families that he had their back. That he understood their pain. That he was determined to make a difference for them. He said he was an ally to Latinos and to Immigrants and that we could count on him.

He then turns around and continues the raids, but in other shapes. He deports more people than George W. Bush does, insuring that many, many children are torn from their parents, after all. He does this in the name of Papers, not in the name of human rights or dignity.

President Obama and Janet Napolitano brag to the Republicans that they are deporting record numbers of undocumented immigrants. He turns his back on his own disabled aunt when the cold eye of ICE falls upon her. He sends troops to the US’ Southern border, when the economic refugees flee conditions in Mexico that have been greatly caused by NAFTA policies (A Democratic accomplishment under Bill Clinton). Those people risking rape, murder, starvation, and poverty to cross the border to find a chance at life don’t need bullets in their heads, they need help accessing resources so they don’t need to flee their homes and families.

Obama’s Department of Homeland Security offers a program called “Secure Communities” (S-Comm) that ties in the FBI and ICE to local police so that anyone apprehended by local police has all their info shared with these other agencies, even if a person is not convicted of anything. We’ve seen how successful Arizona’s SB 1070 has been in disrupting society, and at driving a wedge between local police and many communities where people fear either being detained or simply being hassled based on ethnic signifiers. Many police have protested the implementation of S-Comm, understanding right away how it would harm their relationship with the immediate community and lend a hand to the proliferation of many crimes that would exploit this wedge. A few cities attempted to opt out of S-Comm, but voila! The cloak came off and Obama’s DHS suddenly informed these cities that the program was not, after all, voluntary. Whoops.

Immigrant communities understand that they are being targeted when they are just trying to feed their kids and make a living, often exploited by workplaces that know they live without protection from law or society. But to console the rest who don’t know this, Obama’s White House claims it is only deporting serious criminals. The most cursory examination of reality shows this to be a complete falsehood.

One easy example of this is shown quite blatantly by how the White House is going after activist, friend, and law school student Prerna Lal. Prerna is a positive role model, an engaged, passionate person and organizer. Hardly a serious criminal. (Please sign the petition to help Prerna fight deportation. Her crime? The creation and success of DreamActivist.org. Prerna was simply too successful in organizing students behind the DREAM Act, which—unlike these sly and disingenuous actions by the Department of Homeland Security—does exist in the service of human rights. We don’t need to be frozen in the sixties to aid those fighting for communities before it becomes common sense to do so. We can look Prerna’s way.

The stats tell the same story. The Obama administration is not deporting scores of dangerous criminals but people who have an old offense, or minor offenses, or who get caught up in the widening and growing web of “immigration enforcement,” or who are simply students and children of immigrants and dared to make a valedictorian speech at their school, or reach out to help other people in the same plight. Sometimes they are simply driving home from work, and get pulled over by an old, white, sheriff who might as well be Donald Trump. They get asked for their birth certificate because their name sounds…un-American.

COME TOGETHER

It’s so easy for us to stay firm in our personal experience and all the ways it feeds our own heart. One of the major premises in this article (or ramble depending on how you look at it) is that we proceed deeper and deeper into times when it will be important to not let ourselves be divided in the wrong ways. The Earth, mother of all, is increasingly poisoned and robbed…and those plunderers conspire to keep us misinformed about her condition. As she sickens in different ways; as our reckless, imbalanced, capitalist society veers drunkenly to and fro; as the divides grow starker and the ultra rich more intoxicated by desperation, the powers that be will work harder and harder to keep us at each other’s throats; to offer us others who we can throw to the curb in order to keep our own apparently threatened freedom.

We can feel empathy, kinship, or even an affection for the person named Barack Obama; for the challenges he faces navigating a system so strongly interwoven with racist currents, yet simultaneously see how today’s policies enacted by the creepily-named Department of Homeland Security exist to grow the racist prison syste<[/a>, and aid racist behaviors and values through the normalization of certain laws.

Final notes: Thanks to friend (and immigration lawyer) Dave Bennion for help with resources.

Crossposted at Shakesville

SOME POSTS begin as a reaction. A reaction to ugly events involving hate crime, or discrimination, or persecutory legislation, or some other spur that launches anger, protectiveness, or an instinct to fight. These are necessary when they arise organically. And so is outrage in the social body.

I remember as a child being so amazed that so many (everyone, insisted my immature mind) took everything in stride. I mention this now and then: the sensation I had that the world was upside down and burning and everyone in the world (i.e., school, stores, etc) was happy go lucky and not talking about it. (I am sure this had something to do with the conversations and teachings in my early home and community.)

So, I grew to feel out of touch with society’s reactions and evaluations of life as presented in larger settings, TV, newspapers, general social dialogue. And I suppose that is part of the age. These are normal conflicts we have to evaluate at a certain age.

In too many cases we simply have to accept untruths or mechanisms that confuse the mind. We read the real thinkers in college, and then we pretend it was just for a course. We accept that when X is really going on, the TV will frame it as Y. We accept that advertisements, essentially, lie. We learn to restrain, perform, operate in society. We are taught not to be ourselves, as it does not pay. We are sent on job interviews to offer a well-groomed doppelganger which may have little basis on truth, but have more  to do with how you can appear a valuable commodity to a corporate mechanism. The media helps sell wars that feed the fatally wealthy, and focuses on celebrity nose jobs while the public is robbed blind on the backside by the bankers.

You know how this goes, top to bottom. Same as it ever was.

But did it jam at you in your adolescence? Did the first sweeping vista of disappointment make you weep? Did that initial understanding of how little we expected of ourselves make you angry? Did it nearly topple your mind to gaze out at the wasteland of hypocrisy? Did the wrongness matter? Did it touch your inspired soul, your feeling soul, your uncallused soul and provoke a reaction?

There was too much pretend-truth and too much noise and too many lies in the world, and too much apathy. When I was young, it chewed at me. It would not let me be. I could not imagine why there were not armies of citizens banding together to fix every ailment facing the People.

I was a little naive.

But to me, this is adolescence in US society as I’ve seen it, in more than a couple cities and states. Children, those vast stores of human possibility, reach the end of the playground grass. They must grapple with letting the reality of our sickened culture overwhelm the childheart with one, long, coal-tinged static-studded sigh.

We at least make a decision about how we as people fit in and engage when truth is a disrespected and nearly non-existent entity in a thriving system, when greed and fear are leveraged and fed, when misdirection and manipulation drives the media in most cases.

And with this body and mind…with this amazing system meant to rebel against untruth and to wade toward joy, we must force non-sense and illogic and ignorance into our own tubes. You are required to Get Over It and Learn How to Manage. It makes us ill.

Get on a few stomach drugs, some head drugs, have the doc say its cool, grind out the salary. Protest virtually. Do what you can and have time for which is mostly go mad or be distracted.

The American Dream?

Too cynical?

As I grew up, those times when someone was inflamed about injustice and saying “HELL NO, THIS IS NOT RIGHT AND WE WILL NOT ACCEPT THIS!” I felt my spirit respond in kind. The scales, as they say, fall off of my eyes. I could feel that truth ringing sharply right behind my breastbone, a massive silver bullhorn calling to me. And I loved them for that. For taking that on. I thanked the universe for whatever it was that compelled that person to speak, at that very moment, from a place that was truthful and outraged at whatever entity or action was trying to establish itself in our world.

That voice belongs to nobody, it belongs to all of us. We access it when it is time, when the moment calls for it. There will always be that moment in this very flawed world!

There is another voice, too. One that rises in the absence of reaction, maybe. One that needs a bit of stillness to emerge. One that listens, and hears those things being said, and lets them melt into the moment. And finds where they don’t quite nourish. Finds where they fail to adhere to a true shape. And seeks not to batter, deflect, crush, or challenge…but only to question. Only to probe and discover what may be overlooked.

If you listen to the dialogue on immigration, you hear so many voices rising up from fear. From fear of being diluted, to fear of being killed. You hear fears given voice every decade or less or more. You hear so much about—and from “both” “sides”—Securing the Border. Building the Danged Fence. Securing Our Borders. The Insecure Border. Lasers Every 500 Feet and Surveillance on The Border. More Troops to the Border. Nothing Can Happen Until We First Secure the Border.

We might rebut with the rational. With statistics about how crime generally (and now) goes down as immigration goes up. Or how there is no increase of violence that Leaps Over the Border. Take El Paso, Texas for one obvious example. El Paso, across the border from the very violent Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. El Paso is immediately accessible to non-supervised entry. El Paso is known as one of the safest cities in the USA.

Or I may sketch less specific and talk about how until we take on Mexico’s problems as our own; until we be fair to their economy and their chances of opportunity and stop acting like some rich cat on the Upper East Side calling the cops on a lone hungry figure in the street; until we see our economies intertwined, amassing violence and troops on the border is a super-destructive non-effective stopgap to the cold wind rushing into so many fearful minds.

But in the general, when I hear this shaming, persecutory, prison-preaching talk, what occurs to me underneath those thoughts or before them, is that these people talking about immigration in the public lens are very insecure. And that they may need to secure their own borders. To feel out their own perimeters, find where the air gets thin, and the feet scramble for purchase. Peer into their shadows to dispel the figures they imagine.

And I think until that happens, we can and will have no real progress.

After all, how can  you approach an issue that is so important and affecting so many people, and involves so many areas (Economics, Environment, Migration, Culture, Race, History and so on) if you have not yet first secured your mind? And your heart? If you do not do those things, you cannot honestly evaluate these dynamics.

To one of these politicians obsessed with force and armies and walls…I ask you: How will it feel (in you, personally, in your body and belly and throat and mind) to imagine millions of workers in today’s workforce being celebrated for helping to run this mighty engine? To see millions of unauthorized workers simply swept into the bosom of our workforce and economy? Legitimized?

Does your lip curl?

I’m not talking about reparations, just a shift in lens and consequent behavior, regard, and legislation.

I’m not talking about some abstract past workforce, or one that creates goods the rest of us never actually handle or purchase or use. I’m talking about the workforce out there right now. Many today, this moment. Many more will report tomorrow, on Monday. Those ones, those humans who are working. (Yes, for a moment I’m simply going to talk about workers.) The ones who accept not being paid when the boss feels like sticking them. The humans with no benefits, and who work long hours and for substandard pay. The ones who are on edge lately and ready to drop everything and run if ICE shows up.  Those ones. I ask you how would it feel, Mr. Politician, Mrs. Politician, for you to ponder their being given protections that insure they work a happy and safe workday and enjoy a fair paycheck? And instead of being vilified were suddenly welcomed and celebrated as part of the large, always changing, colorful, and strong American community? No shame, no criminal record, no more pummeling around people trying to hang on with one hand. Can you even possibly house that imagination in your body without any serious instinctive gag reflex?

Or do you feel a need—before connecting empathetically to another human who may be in slightly different circumstances for the moment—to first punish and shame them for not signing in at the door? Do watch them slink to the magical Back of the magical Line? To admit complicity. And error. And wrongness? All while ignoring the rest of the chain of consequence, which of course leads back to our own nation and government and even our own home.

Does this punitive projection soothe you?

With this litany of demands that unauthorized/undocumented immigrants admit wrong, be charged with a crime, pay thousands, take a walk of shame, and so on, it does occur to me that some people are certainly trying to secure something. But it’s not a border.

And I ask you, the People: Can those politicians evaluate what might be an honest and fair approach to these fluctuations in our population and workforce if they harbor gross ideas about Mexicans? Or if they see borders as a way to legitimately express socially-unacceptable race-based or white nationalist-related ideas? Obviously not.

If we want to pretend life is very simple, we might point only to the GOP. But many on the “Left” are certainly chomping at the bit to punish immigrants (aka Mexicans.) If you’ve read the concept paper drawn up for the possible forthcoming immigration bill, it involves much more ICE, much more money for them, more surveillance technology, body armor, and so on and so on and so on. Fact is, the forces that desire a police state are using the public’s general apathy toward immigrants and Mexicans to institute measures that would never, ever fly coast to coast, were the perceived target to be Regular Americans. That’s on top of scapegoating Mexicans, which is always in American Style.

Would that these mentally and spiritually and emotionally lacking political and punditry players would disqualify themselves from the dialogue, but that’s not how things work. However, if your mind is self-deceiving in this way, you cannot hope to fairly render an opinion about issues so large concerning so many. Period.

Political gamers, humanity is in dire shape.

This challenge comes to us in many forms right now. Wars over petroleum. Poisoned oceans with petroleum. Police state pre-pubescent and gangly. Class divisions becoming untenable. Economy severely unstable. Political dialogue false. Media turning to sheer propaganda stations. Banks taken over our economy. Corporations taken over the courts and both wreaking massive havoc on our national security.

It is an age old reaction to blame the powerless when we panic. We are better than this. California already apologized in the 1930s for panicking and shipping Mexicans to Mexico—many who had never been there in their lives! The focus now on Mexicans does not feel so different to me.

Our society is, in the next few decades, going to undergo some drastic changes. We must secure our own hearts and minds and be ready to deal with these changes in a way that is reasoned, loving, progressive, broadminded, flexible, and kind. We must first secure our own consciousness in a grounded, positive place before we can pretend to represent millions of human beings.

THE FRIENDS I KEEP NOWADAYS are involved in the struggle.

Meaning, they are engaged in standing, speaking, or working for social justice. It’s not as pretentious as it sounds. After all, they are Xicano writers, or Boricua thinkers, or queer lawyers, or Black entrepreneurs or Asian auteurs, or Gender-Breaker System Shakers, or disabled poets, or feminists or Feminists, or some overlap of all these things! So all it means to say they are involved in social justice in some way is that they love themselves and are self actualizing, and support others who travel a similar road.

They are sane; they do not listen to paid contortionist leeches like Glenn Beck who take a phrase like “Social Justice” and try to make it into something strange. They know what it means. (Most, if not all, don’t even listen to the Rupert Mindfuchs Station. They love themselves that much.) They are kind and wise beings; while faulted, they never imagine they have the right to take, stomp, or siphon simply because they have the opportunity, or because a law happens to allow it. They are broadminded and intelligent; they get that imbalance is a dangerous scenario to nurture, and that helping ourselves does not have to hurt others, nor should it.

I don’t really want to waste time with people, otherwise. It’s just a drain, and a battle in the wrong place to get hung up on an individual who is not “there” with you.

Of course it is no utopia, even in activist/advocate circles. We all have our interests, and they do not perfectly align. But again, with the wise lens of interconnectedness, we work together to understand how each our particular “causes” are bound up in the same struggle. Because they are.

I am not blind to reality. I understand members of each community have members who do not recognize this. There are always class issues that can divide any community. There are members of the Latino/Mexican/Puerto Rican/Cuban, etc communities who have homophobic issues without realizing they harm the many queer Latinos with such attitudes. There are still members of the Feminist community who are oblivious to the staggering amount of issues women immigrants face. There are members of the Black community that support SB 1070, without realizing how siding with lawmen like Arpaio or politicians like Russell Pearce who are bringing laws made possible by extremist groups like FAIR puts them on the side of their very own persecutors and killers. And thought I know all won’t agree, I would hope that most Asians are already aware of today’s Yellow Peril-like glare, and that Jews shiver to watch authorities randomly requesting people’s papers—

Because we need to recognize these overlaps in social angst and persecution. And not only in retrospect!

I, too, tire of the poem about who “They” first came for…because the poem serves nowadays as a sweet Facebook status or Twitch of wisdom and then we move on. I tire of it because the point of that poem was to warn the human race of our own tendencies to side with the oppressors, even when by all means, we are of the same cloth and in the same loom.

It is an old, and beautiful piece of writing. It sprang from another time, and sadly it applies today. But let’s step out of distant sorrowful gazes; let’s leave the library and the history class for a moment.

Now Is the Time!

Because Now is the time to stand up. Now is the time to say “I’m not waiting for Them to come for me. I’m educated. I’m fluent in English. I’m a citizen. I’m middle class. And I believe in what is Right, not in What is Currently Legal. I believe that what I do is a part of What the USA Is.”

Now is the time to get your hands dirty and fight. The most vicious elements of bigotry and racism are not takin’ it easy. They are ramping up and have infiltrated politics and media and prowl the streets at night, as well. Your heart is needed, brother. Your strength is needed, sister. Arm yourself with knowledge, and enlist that wild, thriving heart.

And don’t fall for the ILLEGULL-SCREECHERS venomous and self-righteous screeds.

A LEGAL lens is not the Equivalent nor the Determinant of Truth

Law does not equal truth. Law is but a clumsy attempt that the human being wields in order to reach into the murky and layered realities of our huddled mass of culture and times and fish out Truth. And justice. And thus, this high-power but sometimes clumsy crane arm must always be closely scrutinized, because that steel contains no nerve endings. And if our aim is off, it reaches into people’s lives, grabs them by the hair and plunges them to the bottom of a lake where they will be suffocated and perhaps never emerge from the clutch of human passion gone wrong.

So to screech THEY’RE ILLEEEGAL really just makes you look like…a pod person. Like a YouTube commenter. And a bigot, in truth. An unsophisticated one, is all.

But some of the most effective bigots are not unsophisticated. They know not to use all capitals. They know not to screech “ILLEEEEGUL.”

They know how to affect the veneer of the respectable. But they are still acting in the name of bigotry.

I grew up poor. We made our way to American Mediocrity and with our own VCR and new car by the time I left the house at 15. But before that, for a while, we had less than nothing; we had the road. We had a bucket for a toilet and three stumps for front steps. I don’t give fuckall about veneer. It means nothing to me. I hardly see it. I know what a spendy and fancy coat bestows on the wearer. And I know you can snatch that coat off and the same miserable, stinking, stick-figure will be there underneath it. I judge not by the coat, but the stride and the shape inside.

A Wallet Sized Snapshot is No Substitute for A Big Picture

So I was saddened to read this post supporting SB 1070 on the Huffington Enquirer by an African American named Clarence Jones, hailing from—of all places—the Martin Luther King, Jr. Institute at Stanford University.

The article brandishes an impressive thread count, and the buttons are handcrafted by the most worthy of workers; the history of the cut and the fashion is well documented and highly regarded. But the figure within clamors with ignorant angles, stumbles in the darkness inside. The coat is simply too large for its occupant.

While claiming a grasp on the “big picture,” the writer seems ignorant to what the big picture is, instead offering us phrases that eerily echo some of the most vile anti-immigrant voices out there before finishing up.

As an African-American who lived through and before the Civil Rights Movement, I’m no fan of assessing people based on their skin color. But holding a struggling State’s feet to the fire on tactics is missing the point . Why are protests not being directed to our national government and the government of Mexico? Why aren’t these groups demanding that our porous border with Mexico be closed, once and for all? It’s not impossible. We have the most sophisticated surveillance and monitoring technology in history, the most formidable military in the world, yet we are unable to stop the daily intrusion of illegal immigrants from Mexico into the United States? This is a failure of policy, not one of capability.

The author is African American, has lived through the Civil Rights era and is “no fan” of racial profiling. Which is good. Because Facebook’s rules won’t even let a group that stands for Racial Profiling have a fan page. No dilemma for him.

But not fanning a Racist Facebook Group’s page doth not a humane or thorough thinker make. Standing under the banner of one of social justice’s greatest icons and leaders—MLK jr—Jones is baffled as to why we are not using our “formidable military” and surveillance technology to “stop the daily intrusion of illegal immigrants.” And thinks this is “the big picture.”

Here is a quote from a Utah Minuteman site that today linked to my site as a “Race Monger” blog:

The Utah Minuteman Project, is a grassroots effort of likeminded citizens and legal residents of Utah whose goal is to defend Utah and America from the scourge of illegal aliens from around the world who have invaded us, plundered our public treasuries, killed our citizens, stolen our jobs, and aggrandized their demands against the common weal.  Similar to patriotic movements across the Nation, the UMP is dedicated to securing our borders, recovering our sovereignty, and re-establishing the Rule of Law in Utah and Washington D.C.  Just as important as these imperatives, our efforts are intended to educate the ignorant and motivate the apathetic to understand who we are as a people and what binds us together as Americans.  Truly, if we do not know for what we stand, we cannot know for what we struggle.

With an editor’s quick touch, the Utah Minutemen could be sophisticated bigots. They are not quite there. But really, their words and sentiment seem not too distant from Mister Jones’ overall message.

Even while congressmen get themselves arrested in acts of civil disobedience, and Anti-Immigrant politicians like Tom Tancredo submit that this law requires racial profiling and is wrong…Scholar and writer at the Martin Luther King Jr institute, Clarence Jones maintains that targeting SB 1070 is wrong.

I wonder what MLK would say.

Why Target Arizona?

Why target Arizona? It’s simple!

Or it would become simple if you did research into who is helping to get these laws brought to the table, who the lawmakers are, what groups are supporting them. The ties to Neo-Nazis and white supremacists, the eugenics movement and their thinking, and white nationalists are well-documented by now.

Are these the people you feel aligned with, Mister Jones? Do no bells go off simply knowing about these many ties and affiliations? Or…are those sorts of details a part of the picture not big enough for you?

Arizona is a petri dish for these types of laws. They begin there, and spread. Seven other states are now considering laws like SB 1070. These efforts are aided by the extremist nativist anti-immigrant group FAIR.

That is why we target SB 1070. Now, while there is time.

Do you stand with these efforts? Or with those of FAIR? Perhaps—Mister Jones—you should donate to FAIR? Because I’m sure all the efforts expended to turn our nation into one that does their bidding and resonates with their own neo-nazi flavored philosophies have drained their coffers.

The writer continues with his “big picture”:

Any version of amnesty for illegal immigrants and efforts to organize a boycott of Arizona will detract from the number one priority affecting substantial segment of the American people: unemployment.

Ah. “Amnesty.” So this is perhaps a Conservative writer. I see. That explains some things.

Well, you are wrong, Mister Jones. And I feel sorry for you if  you think words like “Amnesty” help project a wider understanding of a Big Picture. It is a loaded term as you well know; it is a Right Wing talking point meant to infuse a disgust in people that they ought feel kindly about letting Mexican criminals off the hook for invading/overwhelming/outsmarting/outnumbering Real Americans.

And anyone who thinks Arizona is only after legal things, then I ask them to explain the culture-eradicating elements of their recent legal moves removing teachers with accents from teaching English, or Mexican American studies.

Hm? it’s about bein’ legal? Sure.

A ludicrous question or two:

Why don’t the pro-amnesty undocumented immigrant leaders join forces with the “anti-illegal immigration” leaders and bring the Government of Mexico to the table?

Because the human rights activists cannot “join forces” with people like FAIR, nor would they! That would be like a human being “joining forces” with a hungry crocodile. Yum! Your suggestion that people who would rally to the same causes that  MLK jr has—seeking justice and humanity for the downtrodden and vulnerable poor—should sit down and join forces with people who sometimes wear hoods or congregate with those who do shows you have no clue what you are talking about, and further, are despoiling the name and legacy of Martin Luther King, jr.

The annual cost of maintaining and providing services to illegal or “undocumented” citizens should be tabulated, assumed and paid by the Government of Mexico or credited against the annual cost of oil we import from them until such time as immigrants from their country become U.S. citizens.

Okay. Fair enough.

Before that, let’s return all the illegal social services contributions that were taken from many undocumented workers’ paychecks. I bet that lump sum would be no paltry pile, and could cover most if not all of that. So let’s keep going, and return any taxes that were taken at all from their pay, and while we’re at it, let’s return all the illegal goods that were produced by their “illegal” labor, and all the affiliate profits that were leveraged on the doings of those businesses by various agents.

Right after that, let’s tabulate the costs of NAFTA to Mexican campesinos and the Mexican corn market and larger economy. Let’s—while we’re at it—tabulate the costs of human lives, suffering, destruction of historical items and the looting of museums and buildings that the USA has wrought in Iraq. And let’s keep tabulating the damage our own nation is doing around the world. Let’s tabulate the costs of funding Mexico’s Mérida Initiative, which gives cash and police weaponry/surveillance gear to enable Felipe Calderón to bring about more torture and murder of its own citizens in his disastrous Drug War.

Or…is getting to the Big Picture done by only focusing on one small area that supports your argument?

I’ll come back to your cost argument in a moment. First I want to finish quoting you by dropping your last sentence in here.

Let’s face it: right or wrong, the Arizona legislation is treating the symptoms of an international disease that needs much stronger medicine.

And there, I am almost with you. Almost.

Yes, immigration needs to be taken up on a federal level. Though certainly not with the backward lens you propose! That is not taking up immigration; that is militarizing our nation. It rhymes, but will have very different consequences.

As far as blaming the non-movement of legislation for Arizona’s very special hostility toward Mexicans, you are wrong. And unsurprisingly by now, you are the one missing the big picture.

The Long War on the Indigenous

SB 1070 is not some new phenomenon cooked up by Arizona lawmakers just this year because Obama’s White House has not acted on Weeding Out the Illegals™! Arizona is acting out a long-running battle against inevitability. I touched on a bit of this the other day, but a more thorough and academic explanation can be found here:

“Looking Hispanic” has always been a misnomer; what it really means is those who are dark and short and who look the “most Indigenous.” Truthfully, here in Arpaio Country, that profiling that everyone fears is already here with us. And to dispel illusions, the darkest amongst us have always been subjected to racial profiling by the “migra” and by law enforcement agencies everywhere in the country. This is true whether we’ve been here for a few days or for thousands of years. And to dispel further illusions, this civilizational clash alluded to is national in scope; witness the many hundreds of anti-immigrant bills nationwide since 2006. Only its epicenter is here. [...]

SB 1070 brings us to a moral precipice. After World War II, a consensus developed here that it had been wrong to have incarcerated the Japanese in internment camps because such action was morally wrong. Virtually no one had the courage to assert this while it was happening. Law enforcement has that chance today, to refuse to obey SB 1070 that is both, morally repugnant and outside of the U.S. Constitution.

Regarding the larger civilizational struggle, the context is akin to when Europeans first came to this continent. The conquistadors came for gold, land and bodies (slaves). The friars, on the other hand, came for souls. Similarly, the migra and extremist legislators want bodies deported; the state school superintendent, Tom Horne, wants souls.

Bodies and Souls. I have long called it “The Long War.” Meaning the war on the indigenous and their resources by outsiders who have had a few generations of offspring by now, who have in turn absorbed enough of the new dogma to forget whom they owe for what, and who they are in the entire big picture. It rolls on, in many shapes. SB 1070 is the latest.

The Big Picture

Like you, Mister Jones, I want us to discuss, the Big Picture. Or, I should not be snide: unlike you. Because despite your open-minded subhed, you are not offering Big Picture fixins. Just more oppressor snackybits.

Here’s my final point. And it goes back to your tabulation masturbation; it goes back to who costs whom what.

I get that we are a nation long encouraged not to think for ourselves, and not to think with our heart or mind’s eye. We are a people long conditioned to powermongers who do all they can to shore up their power, weaken ours, and tell us how to think. And I get that we’ve been told to fear so so so much in the past ten years. Trust me. I feel it weigh at times on my spirit…then I remember who I am. I am an energy and consciousness allowed space and time on this earth for a short time; I am not beholden to adopt any other person’s idea, fear, or hope. I am free of that.

But it’s out there. And I get it. Fear the Arabs, fear the blacks, fear the mexicans, fear the poor, fear the crazy, fear the ugly. Fear anything that throws a shadow on your beautiful castle with it’s lush Green Zone and moat.

I also get that this immigration furor that has been cooked up is simply theater. And many players stand to benefit.

Big business, which wants (ideally) a million people working for a penny a day so those Goldman-Sachs types at the top can have a hundred wardrobes and twenty planes.

ICE, this new police/military/federal force that surely costs billions, needs justification to continue. Cities and towns now count the enforcement measures as ways of propping up their economies.

Racists and white nationalists see a way to reshape the populace by lies and violence.

Humbler goals are harbored by most of these undocumented people. Families want to stay together, want to be Americans, want a chance to live in success or at least not in misery. Workers want to earn 8 times more by simply moving to another area; just as Jersey residents might travel to NYC to work every day, and just like people fudge their own insurance to pretend to drive in one state while living in another.  Except in Mexico, it’s not about a slightly lower insurance rate. Families simply cannot survive. Parents abandon their kids simply to be able to work and send them money so the rest of the family can live.

To see what is going on, and then to sneer about law and call for the military? Wow. It sure is one way to respond, no doubt. No doubt. But if I were doing that, I’d not have the nerve to then attach Martin Luther King Jr’s name to anything I wrote. Honestly.

But back to my thread. There are a lot of actors in the game who make honest accounting of the issue difficult.

But this enforcement mania is theater.

If there were a way to remove all ten or eleven or twelve million undocumented people at once, and place them back in Canada, Ireland, France, Germany, Poland, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Venezuela, China, Chile, Mexico and wherever else they come from—I’d say okay. Do it. Do it so you can see how the US way of life collapses entirely. Just falls to the ground. The difference would be cataclysmic, the results echoing out everywhere. You want to talk depression? Economic trouble? Class warfare? The rich or moderately well-off would need walls around their own yards, screw the border.

Can you imagine the number of businesses that would collapse? Cease to exist? Neighborhoods empty and vacant and crime filled? How many Postvilles would play out across the country?

If you had some conceivable way of sweeping every undocumented person out of the nation, I’d say do it because the outcome would cripple America, all that labor and family and energy going back to where it could do good and be recognized for the good it does. And then we might learn.

But there is no way to do that. Nobody really wants to do that. No honest actor in all of this thinks we can do that or actually wants that to happen.

So…what do they want?

Those who work to persecute the undocumented today want to keep this ongoing terror theater going for a couple reasons.

Politicians want to manipulate the vulnerable and to keep as much labor as they need to keep the American Economy wheels turning. Turning with fear. Turning because those working the gears have no choice and are just holding on to get by. Which is a sort of slavery by other means. Serfdom by other names. It’s abuse and exploitation.

The anti-immigrant factions that attempt to turn the hostile lens of criminal law on their own counties simply don’t want to see Mescans in their damn ‘hood. That’s what SB 1070 is about. Get out of our nice, pristine, fake-ass neighborhood. But that’s as far as they want it to go. They, too, need all the wheels to keep turning. They don’t want factories and businesses and crops and restaurants and communities around the nation to fall apart.

So it’s terror theater and economical rewards and its an abuse of human beings and a spit in the face to our purported abilities to think and feel and act reasonably as a society.

By These Deeds We Shall Be Known

In fact, the way we approach or fail the Immigration issue today contains the key to all our current societal and cultural and moral dilemmas. It is what will determine how far forward we want to go in this era. What are humans in this land capable of? Are we still bound by greed? Are we still defenseless against our more primal inclinations? Racism. Equality. Feminism. Individual greed vs the collective good. Questions of property and what it is used for, what land means. How connected we want to be to the humanity that helps us set our tables, to mother earth, and those who feed us.

As I see it, we are being called to step up in a very particular way. It is a unique time. The conversations are all shifting, rapidly evolving, almost too fast for the belly to keep up with. How will we do? Will we rise to the occassion? Or meander along in mediocrity, still sowing great pain and propping up imbalance and bigotry justified by bad law and force?

Walls in the mind, walls in the desert. Rituals and roles. Bodies and souls. You can contain another’s with a show of force, but it will be at the cost of imprisoning your own.

THE USA WHITE SOUTH has always been a bit…collectively delusional. But you can’t blame that on the South. It’s long been the American way (as well as the way of a number of other countries and peoples throughout time) to blaze into an area, steal land through legitimized war, law, or other displays of naked aggression and then imagine it can be remade and the history and rights of those who lived there, forgotten.

I can’t quite agree with the characterization of the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote—I don’t see Mexican/Mexican culture as a negative, nor bemoan the fact that nature and reality tend to assert themselves despite humankinds’ persistent fantasies to the contrary—but I do appreciate, even as he was a member of the growing Empire, his grasp of the future:

“The United States will conquer Mexico, but it will be as the man swallows the arsenic, which brings him down in turn. Mexico will poison us.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 
prior to the American Invasion of México

He’s kind of saying…you can’t fool Mother Nature. Or…truth will out.

Either way, in this day and age and cultural mood, this sounds terribly dramatic and fearsome, but of course, coming from a member of an imperialist , colonizing nation the view makes sense. It is, albeit with some insight, and I’d like to imagine a dollop of moral foreboding—the very same lens that most the lawmakers in Arizona are seeing through. All while they and the GOP croak-soothy and tell us these sorts of bills are attempting to Protect America or some weird racist shit like that.

But the mask slips in this Age of Obama and the Terrifying® notion of a shrinking white population. And the mask finally, I think, is falling.

The Arizona Department of Education recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English. [...]

“This is just one more indication of the incredible anti-immigrant sentiment in the state,” said Bruce Merrill, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University who conducts public-opinion research. [...]

Adding insult to injury, the Arizona legislature passed a bill yesterday outlawing ethnic studies programs:

HB 2281 would make it illegal for a school district to have any courses or classes that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity “instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

It also would ban classes that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people.”

The measure is directed at the Tuscon Unified School District’s popular Mexican-American studies department …

It’s cute how they tie “overthrowing the government” with “ethnic studies.” But we know, of course, it is not Chican@s who are talking about overthrowing this corrupt government. It’s white people, today. Patriots. Joe Stack types. Oathkeepers and Oklahoma Bomber types.

I will make clear that I am not interested in a culture war that pits “white culture” vs remembering my roots and family and the history of the US and Mexico. Firstly, I don’t know what “white culture” is. It seems to me a phrase trying to pose an object by naming a non-entity, as “whiteness” is really a implied negation posing as an entity in the first place. White Culture, as it were, doesn’t exist. It can only reasonably be identified when no other cultural signifier exists. It’s an ideological vacuum. That’s why when Glenn Doofus Beck was asked what white culture actually was, he thought IT WAS A TRICK QUESTION. Let that soak in for a second: Glenn Beck admits that his own beliefs are tricks played on him by others. And yet, he lacks any self reflection of the fact that he has been brainwashed into a type of young senility. All while thinking, somehow, that he has anything of worth to say to anyone about anything—especially culture and identity!!

Secondly, I don’t see a problem with me remembering my history, familia, and the history of the US invasion into Mexico and related realities. I just don’t see this as competition with what old, white people in Arizona want to do with their day.

So Arizona is really losing it’s cool. And I am very glad the mask is dropping.

ICE, Arpaio, FAIR, AZ’s always harsh and hostile posture toward immigrants (ahem, Mexicans) Culture-Murder/Intellectual Ethnic Cleansing agendas, as shown in this latest move….

The most frustrating and crazymaking part of focusing on, eradicating, or exposing racist movements is that since they are movements based on fear and ignorance, they slither; they do not stand in truth. They are afraid to admit their real intent. (Because even those harmful humans do have a heart and conscience and working mind, tho slathered under the sediment of self-deception, and so do have shame for their actions on a deep, dark, quiet and subverbal level.) They live in confusion, in other words. So they sow confusion in others in order to carry out their work.

Without that public ignorance cloak to shield them, the gig falls apart with enough people walking away from that energy and agenda. Which is what is happening today in the USA. That’s why Dan Stein of FAIR on Maddow the other day was so furious. (Ew, he has such an ugly energy!) That’s why all he cared about was how what Rachel was doing was sowing “division” between FAIR and “Hispanics.” If FAIR loses its fake-ass image of being One With the People and ONLY against ILLEGULZ, they’ve got nada.

AZ, in losing its cool, is blowing the lid off all that cover. It’s a scary, ugly, beautiful thing.

From the Restore Fairness Blog:

Courage comes in many different forms. For Esmeralda, a transgender asylum seeker from Mexico, who faced horrific circumstances in immigration detention, it came in the form of seeking justice. Kept in a segregated cell with other transgender detainees, Esmeralda never realized that her experience in detention would match the trauma of discrimination she had faced back home. But her story is also one of hope for change.

A NEW WEB-EXCLUSIVE SERIES ON THE EFFECTS OF DEPORTATION on families (of color) and the people who make up those families here in our nation and in the nations to where they are deported is called Torn Apart, by Colorlines. It’s pretty strong stuff.

I like it because it draws clearly and plainly the effects of deportation and you begin to peek around the corner, or I should say, over the border. To these lands utterly foreign, overall, to the people being flown and dumped there. You see how their families miss them here, how often the phone calls home begin to grow less and less…over there struggling for survival, over here, ending up in homeless shelters. Deportees criminalized in two lands, daily errands to take out trash and go to work shattered by exile. No second chance, no appeal. Not even for 20 years.

Again, for what? How does it make a nation safer, you wonder. To multiply pain. It’s just bad math, let alone the morality of it all….

IT’S ALWAYS NICE, when you’ve been following an issue for a while—the twists and turns of its conception and effect leading a good portion of your news day by the nose—to sniff changes in the wind that you perceive as positive. That’s how I feel about Sheriff Joe Arpaio lately. The NYTimes may not know how to keep its host country informed about the war machinations of its government (and no, I’ll never let this one go, sorry) but they are puttin’ the hammer down on The Sleazy Sheriff and I hope the White House is paying attention.

All last week the people of Phoenix witnessed public outbursts by their sheriff, Joe Arpaio, as he railed against the Department of Homeland Security for supposedly trying to limit his ability to enforce federal immigration laws. He vowed to keep scouring Maricopa County for people whose clothing, accents and behavior betrayed them as likely illegal immigrants. He said he had already nabbed more than 32,000 people that way, and announced his next immigrant sweep for Oct. 16.

The spectacle raises two critical questions that the Obama administration is in danger of getting wrong.

—Wrong Paths to Immigration Reform

The article sums up, quite neatly, what is wrong with DHS’ current enforcement-only approach, and the lens in general on the US’s modern day post-traumatic stress disorder as manifested in immigration policy and how it disproportionately affects the Latino comunidad.

THE PROBLEM with instituting a terror program such as the Department of Homeland Security’s ICE has done—wherein violence, raids, SWAT team-like tactics or routine demands for “Your Papers” are normalized—is that it not only models gross behavior as a moral compass for the rest of the nation, but it also sends a message to Latinos and immigrants that they should expect and submit to this type of behavior whenever it comes their way.

And then sickos like Shawna Forde and Eugene Bush of the Minuteman Defense corps or whatever they call themselves bust into a home pretending to be Immigration officials conducting a raid and bring murder into a family’s bosom.

Or you get something like this latest piece of heartrending news:

An AMBER alert remains in effect for a 4-day-old infant who was abducted in Nashville by a woman posing to be an immigration worker. …

The boy has not been found, police said, and the alert for him remains active.

On Tuesday, the child’s mother, Maria Gurrolla, 30, told police she allowed the kidnapper into her East Ridge home in south Nashville after she asked to see her immigration papers. Once inside, the mother was stabbed eight times and her child was taken, police said.

Also see the follow up article here:

Wheelchair-bound and bandaged, Maria Gurrolla, the mother of kidnapped newborn Yair Anthony Carillo, spoke Wednesday afternoon to reporters at Vanderbilt Medical Center about the traumatic events that have set off a national search for the missing child.

After the press conference Metro Police said it was searching for the driver of a dark colored Kia Spectra that appeared to follow Gurrolla as she left a Walmart store on Nolensville Road Tuesday.

“All that I can tell you is I was attacked in my home,” Gurrolla told reporters in Spanish. A cousin, Norma Rodriguez, acted as an interpreter.

Visibly bruised from yesterday’s ordeal, Gurrolla recounted how the unknown robust white woman knocked on her door and identified herself as an immigration officer.

“The only thing that she said was that she was going to arrest her,” Rodriguez said.

Gurrolla and the assailant became involved in the physical struggle. The victim told reporters the woman was not armed when she came into the house, but during the struggle found a small knife already in the residence and turned it on the mother. Gurrolla was stabbed nine times.

The sooner they find these people, the better. The better chance for the baby’s health, and the faster he can be back where he belongs. What an entrance into this world. Four days old.

UPDATE:

Yair has been found! (Thanks for the link, Aunt B.) Oddly, the page states the charges pending are “kidnapping and assault charges.” But if stabbing someone 9 times is not Attempted Murder, then what is??

UPDATE 2: I cover this and further developments of the story in the October 5 News With Nezua.

Berkeley, CA—September 16, 2009… A Hispanic community in a small southern city that lived in fear of police after a spike in arrests now has evidence that it was unjustly targeted to enforce federal immigration laws. A new analysis of arrest data shows that police in Irving, Texas arrested Hispanics in far greater numbers for petty offenses as part of a federal Criminal Alien Program (CAP) to deport serious offenders. During the most aggressive period, when police had round-the-clock access to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, the number of Hispanic arrests for minor crimes increased by nearly 150 percent.

The new report, “The CAP Effect: Racial Profiling in the ICE Criminal Alien Program,” was released today by the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity (Warren Institute) at UC Berkeley School of Law (Berkeley Law).

“It was clearly a fishing expedition. Police cast a wide net to arrest anyone who looked Hispanic for any minor violation,” said report co-author Aarti Kohli, immigration policy expert at Berkeley Law’s Warren Institute. “The Hispanic community suspected racial profiling as the root cause of the increase in arrests. Our report backs that up.”

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to spend more than $1 billion to expand efforts nationwide to deport criminal aliens through CAP and its related programs, including Secure Communities and Fugitive Operations.

“What we see in Irving is representative of the complaints we hear from communities nationwide,” said Janet Murguia, president and CEO of National Council of La Raza. “Instead of removing dangerous criminals from communities, such practices seem to engender a disturbing pattern of arresting as many Hispanics as possible,” she said.

The CAP Effect identifies three phases of the local-federal CAP partnership. It analyzes police data of arrests, detention, and immigration referrals during a 23-month period (January 2006—November 2007) before and after Irving adopted the Criminal Alien Program.

During the first phase, from September 2006 to March 2007, immigration officials began to visit the Irving jail up to five times per week to review arrests and to make final custody and deportation decisions.

During the second phase, from April to September 2007, the criminal program shifted from periodic, in-person consultation with federal immigration enforcement officers to 24-7 availability via phone and video teleconference. Racial profiling was most aggressive at this time, according to the report. Irving police arrested Hispanics for misdemeanors in significantly higher numbers compared with Whites and African-Americans. In April 2007, 102 Hispanics were arrested for petty offenses, but in September 2007, 246 Hispanics were arrested—a nearly 150 percent increase.

The jump in Hispanic arrests was especially steep for minor traffic offenses, where police officers have a lot of discretion in determining whether someone should be arrested. The data show that Hispanic traffic arrests stood at 48 in April of 2007. In July, just three months later, police arrested 155 Hispanics for traffic offenses—a 223 percent increase.

The report reveals that the majority of Hispanics arrested after the implementation of the CAP program were lawfully present in the United States.

By November of 2007, Irving CAP was scaled back as complaints of racial profiling of Hispanics intensified. Local community groups complained that Irving police stopped and arrested Hispanic residents for Class-C misdemeanor offenses, such as public intoxication and minor traffic violations, and alleged that these charges served as a pretext, allowing officers to probe citizenship and immigration status. However, on January 20, 2008, ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok admitted to a Dallas newspaper that ICE was still processing petty offenders for deportation and would continue to do so indefinitely.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas obtained the police data through a public records request that included Hispanic, White, and African-American arrest records. The data offers the first-ever opportunity to assess the impact of local police participation in immigration enforcement—historically the role of the federal government.

The goal of the Criminal Alien Program is to improve community safety by targeting serious criminals for deportation, according to ICE, but the police data show that only two percent of those detained by immigration authorities in a fourteen-month time period received felony charges. In sum, the data show that CAP is not only failing to target serious criminal offenders, but it’s also tacitly encouraging local police to arrest Hispanic residents for petty offenses.

“We are expanding federal immigration programs that without proper supervision lead to harassment and civil rights violations,” said Maria Blanco, executive director of Berkeley Law’s Warren Institute. “Given the administration’s continued expansion of federal and local law enforcement partnerships, we need to be even more vigilant in protecting citizens’ rights and preventing racial profiling.”

The report’s authors recommend a number of steps for Congress to take before implementing the Criminal Alien Program nationwide, which include:

• investigating the impact of local partnerships with immigration enforcement before allocating additional funds to expand the program;
• prohibiting criminal alien screenings for individuals arrested for petty offenses;
• mandating that local police who partner with federal immigration authorities record arrest data by race, ethnicity, and level of offense.

For more details about the study, contact Aarti Kohli, immigration policy director, Warren Institute, 510.642.0383 akohli@law.berkeley.edu.

To read a copy of the report, go to: http://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/policybrief_irving_FINAL.pdf

AN ARTICLE QUOTING CIS YANKED ME OFF MY TRACK, as  I am mid-composition of another post, as well as juggling a few other things. But reading it sickened me just a bit, and writing an email to the editor didn’t satisfy my feelings of unease, well…disgust, I should say—for the machinations and slant of the piece, and so I resort to the mighty blog again.

Granted, I should be, or might be expected to be, immune by now to the horrible way in which immigrants and Mexicans alike are treated in most articles on…well, anything. But for one thing, no, I never seem to get wholly inured, and two, once in a while the article is just so artless (or nastily artful) that I have to speak on it.

It’s a Pro-ICE, Pro-Raid, Divide and Conquer (a popular genre, increasingly so lately given all the cultural shifting in the US) article that uses various methods in an attempt to slash at some of the strongest points that immigration advocates and human rights activists wield in the fight to bring fair treatment to so many humans and workers amongst us—that raids disrupt communities, harm local economies, and shatter worker unity/efficiency, among others. The article attempts to convince us that hordes of citizens seek these jobs, and to sell all these pionts, the author relies on ridiculously controversial data to grasp at the whip-ring.

__________________________________________________________

Immigration raids yield jobs for legal workers

Updated 5h 43m ago | Comment | Recommend E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions |

By Alan Gomez, USA TODAY

Firstly, you have to love that it’s written by a GOMEZ, which of course makes anything he says against Mexicans or Latinos VALID in the eyes of the mainstream thinker and that’s how the system uses brown people in its inertia and purposes, which is to continue a power imbalance and a system of exploitation. Blacks in the civil rights era had names for pawns like this. And what’s that you say? This isn’t about Mexicans? Just immigrants? Okay. Well, ride with me for a while, at least to the end of this article. Let’s see how it shapes up.

When federal agents descended on six meatpacking plants owned by Swift & Co. in December 2006, they rounded up nearly 1,300 suspected illegal immigrants that made up about 10% of the labor force at the plants.
But the raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents did not cripple the company or the plants.

Gomez begins right away by trying to undercut a truth of these raids: they disrupt communities, economies, and thrash the social spirit with an aura of fear and state control. I mean, he can’t even wait to get there. He just leaps right in with a blunt assertion that ICE agents did not, in fact, “cripple the company.” As if the standing accusation—tho unnamed—was hanging over Gomez’ head even before he hit the keyboard. As if he hopes to reference an argument without having to actually engage any stats, facts, articles, or otherwise, actual material from that argument—just present his own.

But wait. The stats and info he uses to write this article are not his own. But we’ll get to CIS in a moment.

On top of this, the writer makes sure you understand that ferreting out these ALIENZ doesn’t gut the workforce, after all it’s only a measly 10%. Well…in this case, that is. The ones Gomez/CIS chooses to include. But is that figure indicative of all factories/plants, and all raids?

We know for one thing, that American Apparel just let go 25% of their massive workforce due to a Federal probe. That’s no small beans. Especially for a company like AA.

Additionally, while Mister Gomez breathes a literary sigh of relief that the company is not harmed, he seems to care nada for how the families and workers are affected. Which is sad. I assume Gomez hails from Latin America. How far your writing and role seem to have come from where your roots began, my friend—where worker and family solidarity are crucial and celebrated. Ouch.

In fact, they were back up and running at full staff within months by replacing those removed with a significant number of native-born Americans, according to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

Doozy. First of all, let’s get real about CIS. Anyone quoting this group—one whose origins and slant were incubated in white supremacy—does themSELVES a disservice and SNAP renders their entire argument moot. It’s like…quoting eugenicists in an article that seeks to convince people the gene-sniffing intrusion that is yanking Caster Semenya’s glory from her only to replace it with public trauma has been fair.

Gomez quotes NCLR in a separate but related moment (health injuries on the job and pay) and I suppose that is fair, after all. Balanced. NCLR is named in the article as a Civil Rights group, so if you buy that, then it makes sense that CIS ought be posed as the opposite. It seems fair to classify CIS as an anti-civil-rights group.

And really, I oughtta stop right here. But I’ll keep on. But should we touch on this “Native-born” worker thing? Where to begin? Oh, right, with our collective brains in our ass and our forehead on the ground as we kneel to an invisible line that was drawn with blood and lies in the sand. Okay. I suppose it is the bounteous beneficence of the Border God that allows one to overlook any harm done to humans or families as long as ICE is making cash and the detention industry is ballooning. And speaking of military type outfits like ICE, perhaps it is of note (and perhaps not, I’ll leave that up to you) that Mister Gomez writes for USA Today…which is owned by Gannett. Gannett also happens to own the Army Times, Navy Times, Navy Times Marine Corps, Air Force Times, Federal Times, Defense Times, and Military Market. No lean toward legalized gang action there! Also perhaps of note, Gannett is quite the lil corporate borderhopper, with a portfolio including 16 newspapers in the UK.

Anyway.

That was the most extreme example of what has become an increasingly common result of the raids: “They were very beneficial to American workers,” according to Vanderbilt University professor Carol Swain.

Ah, sweet. So we DON’T have to feel bad about these raids! Whew. All those photos of crying mothers and scared children and stories of heartbreak and lives uprooted and shuffled into jails was getting a bit oogy. But these raids are  GOOD for “American Workers.”

Don't let her sorrow bother you. She's not actually a Real American!

“Whenever there’s an immigration raid, you find white, black and legal immigrant labor lining up to do those jobs that Americans will supposedly not do,” said Swain, who teaches law and political science.

Mmmm. Yummy Conquer -N- Dividettes. They come in all flavors and have zero calories! (And zero nutrition.)

Exactly who is filling the jobs has varied, depending on the populations surrounding the plants:

• Out West, one of the Swift plants raided by ICE, had a workforce that was about 90% Hispanic — both legal and illegal — before the raids. The lost workers were replaced mostly with white Americans and U.S.-born Hispanics, according to the CIS.

• In the South, a House of Raeford Farms plant in North Carolina that was more than 80% Hispanic before a federal investigation is now about 70% African-American, according to a report by TheCharlotte Observer.

Sure you don’t want any more of these Yummy Candies that corrode the social cohesion of our People? Swear, you’ll love ‘em. They’ll flush out the spics and bring in the War Between Races! Mmmmm!

T. Willard Fair, president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Miami, said it has taken the greatest recession in a generation for poor Americans to line up to work in fields and factories.

“We’ll take anything now,” Fair said. “We’re willing to be exploited for a while.”

Ugh. I don’t know where to begin with this comment. The idea, Mister T Willard, is not that exploitation of workers is so cool that now its legal people’s turn, or that the “exploitation” is just an unfavorable condition that any person would voluntarily accept in order to work, or even if so that it would be acceptable or RIGHT to exploit those who are in a position to need to “take anything,” you schlemiel. The idea is that even desperate people should not be exploited. But nice job, sending those messages.

After ICE agents descend

…like the witch’s flying monkeys

on poultry-processing plants, pork factories and meatpacking facilities across the USA, in some cases plant owners are forced to raise wages to get Americans to sign up, Swain said.

and what conclusion ought we draw from that factoid, Gomez? Gomez? Bueller? ANYONE? Hmm. Silence. Okay. Moving on.

New leverage for workers

As the face of factory workers changes, so do the issues that workers and employers must tackle.

Cashen said her union had to negotiate with plant managers in Nebraska and Colorado to allow employees to properly observe the Islamic holiday of Ramadan.

This month, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that the Colorado plant was wrong to fire more than 100 Muslim workers who walked out during Ramadan last year in a dispute over prayer breaks.

“Ten years ago, we were negotiating to provide for Cinco de Mayo,” Cashen said, referring to the Mexican holiday. “If you walk in the doors of a plant, you’re going to see … the United Nations.”

Nice way to end. Rely on a little trusty anti-Mexican feeling to close out. Whew…no more Cinco de Mayo (very much a US holiday, actually!) Now it’s all “United Nations.” United once more. A mix of everyone, and thank god that this group is no longer dominated by one group—Mexicans.

Well, we let Gomez use his tainted Tanton stats. Let’s now open the door to reality and get a blast of fresh, though damp, air in here.

On July 13, The New York Times editorialized on “The Shame of Postville, Iowa” in a rare show of outrage against abusive police state tactics. It referred to “abusing and terrorizing undocumented workers,” described their shameful treatment, and deplored the the sending of “desperate breadwinners to prison” and driving their families into deeper poverty and despair. It cited Spanish-language court interpreter and Florida International University professor Erik Camayd-Freizas’ “Personal Account” titled: “Interpreting after the Largest ICE Raid in US History.”

Below is his account in which he said nothing could have prepared him for the prospect of helping government officials imprison hundreds of “innocent people.” He went public to expose it and began with the 10AM May 12 raid involving 900 agents at the Postville, Iowa plant. At the same time, 26 federally certified interpreters headed to neighboring Waterloo with no idea why they were sent. Camayd-Freizas was one of them.

He was taken to the National Cattle Congress (NCC) and arrived early for work. It’s a 60-acre “cattle fairground” that was transformed into a “concentration camp or detention center.” Echoing his own thoughts, another interpreter said: “When I saw what (this) was, my heart sank.” Then began “the saddest procession (he ever) witnessed,” suppressed from public view, because “cameras were not allowed past the perimeter of the compound,” and only a few journalists came to court the next day.

Camayd-Freizas explained: “Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the (plant) workers were brought in for arraignment, sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before marching out again to be bused to different country jails, only to make room for the next row of 10.”

They were mostly “illiterate Guatemalan (Spanish-speaking) peasants with Mayan last names….some in tears, others with faces of worry, fear, and embarrassment.” They stood out “in stark racial contrast (to) the rest of us as they started their slow penguin march across the makeshift court.” They all “waived their right to be indicted….hoping to be quickly deported since they had families to support back home.” Instead, they were “criminally charged with ‘aggravated identity theft’ and Social Security fraud – charges they did not understand” and neither did Camayd-Freizas.

He sought more information, and here’s what he learned. Of Agriprocessor’s 968 employees, about 75% were apparently undocumented. Nearly 700 warrants were issued but only about 400 were arrested, including 76 women. Some were released on humanitarian grounds – 56 mothers with unattended children, a few for medical reasons, and 12 juveniles temporarily with ankle monitors or directly turned over for deportation. Over 300 were held for prosecution. Five alone had prior criminal records, and 270, in fact, were charged.

The raid devastated Postville (population 2273). Businesses were empty, and concerns grew that it might shutter the town. Besides those arrested, many fled in fear. It affected American parents as well who complained that “their children were traumatized by the sudden disappearance of so many of their friends.” The school principal reported the same reaction in classrooms saying that “for children it was as if ten of their classmates suddenly died.” Counselors were enlisted because they had nightmares that their parents might be seized like the workers. Even the school superintendent reacted saying “This literally blew our town away,” and its future is unclear.

As for workers, here’s what happened. In some cases, husbands and wives were arrested leaving small children unattended for up to 72 hours. Some mothers were then released on humanitarian grounds with ankle GPS monitors, pending prosecution and deportation, while husbands were swiftly imprisoned. The situation was desperate. Mothers had no incomes and no means of support. Sometimes one parent was documented, the other wasn’t, and in many cases children were US citizens. In all cases, hundreds of families were torn apart, and the Postville economic impact was devastating.

There was more. Scattered news reports and blogs contained bigotry and racial epithets – “poorly disguised beneath an empty rhetoric of misguided patriotism (as well as) insults to anyone (showing) compassion…safely (hidden) behind cowardly nickname(s). One could feel the moral fabric of society coming apart” as a result.

—The Largest Ever ICE Terror Raid

The Divide and Conquer is of course an age-old genre, but black, brown, red, gold, peach: we all have to be on the lookout for this. It is stepping up a lot lately as the Becks and Wilsons and Limbaughs of the world begin to feel their world get slippy slidey sloppy, like the oily fearfarts that grease their well-padded chairs.

Regarding Gomez’s USA Today article, I quote: To report corrections and clarifications, contact Reader Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification.