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

AND SO IT FALLS ON US here at UMX—as well as at other blogs and independent news sites—to spread the word; to remember the name and smile of Brisenia Flores; to make clear that this killing is no isolated event perpetrated by a couple “crazies,” but is woven tightly to the anti-Mexican/anti-immigrant/anti-Latin@ sentiment that festers in so many layers of popular US culture.

From the fearful, punitive talk about immigrants espoused by Republican and Democratic politicians alike, to the video games that posit Mexicans as criminal invaders, to the movies that only present Latinos as gangbangers or cocaine kingpins or street thieves or knife wielding degenerates, to the movements in states like Arizona to wipe out Chican@ culture and history and aim to have us living in fear, to the judicial brutality and disproportionate police punishments meted out to the brownskinned, signals are continually broadcast to the public at large that mark us as less than human and offer us as viable targets for derision, fear, and violence.

Uncovering that—clearly—is far too big a story for any station today to break.

This episode of News With Nezua throws a pointed jeer at the contortions these mainstream news sites must adopt in order to justify turning away from this particular story and stories like this.

This episode of News With Nezua is brought to you by Center for New Community.

Apologies to my deaf friends; I will do my best to find time very soon to make another edit and manually add subtitles, at which point I’ll substitute a link for this apology. YouTube version here.

Past episodes of News With Nezua are archived here.

IF EVER THERE WERE A STARK EXAMPLE of the cruelty and inhumanity that powers so much of the white supremacist/anti-immigrant/neo-nazi movement, it is the manner in which a sweet little nine year old girl was shot dead in her own home, in the middle of the night.

Shawna Forde and her lackies pulled the trigger in this case, in June of last year. Many of us relate to and deeply feel for the Flores familia—whether it be because we are all humans; because nobody wants to be shot in their own bed; because we agree that children must be spared the spiritual sicknesses that adults trade back and forth like baubles; or because we are Mexicano or otherwise under the crosshairs these days. Those of us who do fit into one or more of these categories are often frustrated beyond belief that while the antics of boys in balloons or Ladies Gaga or Sad Sack Gibsons prove to be prime-time material, home invasions and murders tied to the current anti-Latino hostilities in the USA aren’t worth even two minutes on our major news channels.

This is institutionalized racism. As is the fact that nothing good or benevolent is ever reported about Mexicans or Mexicanos. Only a constant spew of criminality and demonization. Some might not care. And then, others might drown in their own blood in their own bed because so many don’t care. As our dear Brisenia did.

Does this institutionalized racism reach into the FBI? Or was it simply lackadaisical sloppiness that inspired them not act to either closely monitor or apprehend Forde and her ilk, even when warned ahead of time about the murderous plans of the Minuteman Defense League?

This is the news that just broke:

The FBI was told that Shawna Forde was planning a home invasion in the Arivaca area weeks before a man and his 9-year-old daughter were shot to death there.

According to documents filed this week in Pima County Superior Court, two confidential informants for the FBI say they told agents in April 2009 that Forde was recruiting people to raid a house she believed was filled with illicit drugs, money and guns. …

In a phone conversation taped by the FBI, Forde tells one of the informants that future jobs would be something of a test for a new recruit, saying: “Our hands are already dirty. We’ve got to know he can pull the trigger.”

Earlier this week, Forde’s defense attorney, Eric Larsen, filed a motion asking Judge John Leonardo to force prosecutors to hand over all FBI documents pertaining to the two confidential informants. The documents indicate neither was paid for his information, nor were they cooperating to avoid prosecution in any unrelated cases.

The documents include transcripts of separate interviews conducted by Pima County sheriff’s Sgt. Jill Murphy and by defense attorneys. Also included are nonconfidential FBI reports summing up what the informants told agents.

While the men say they told the FBI about Forde’s plans before the slayings, the FBI reports don’t reflect when it received the information.

Dave Joly, a spokesman for the FBI’s Denver division, said the bureau received the information “after the fact.” He declined to comment further because the case has not yet gone to trial.

So the informants claim they told the FBI, and now the FBI is covering its ass and saying “Hunh??”

Ass-covering is a human response. The problem is that this ass-covering that the FBI is doing will damage the prosecution’s case against Brisenia’s killers. So it’s a failure to protect on top of a failure to protect.

Larsen said that, assuming the FBI actually was aware of the alleged plot, he wants to know what the FBI thought about the information because, he said, if the agency chose not to act on the men’s information, that damages their credibility.

“If the FBI didn’t believe (the informants), why should the jury?” Larsen said.

Indeed. And why should the news cycle care at all about any of this?

Echoes of Noam Chomsky in my mind…about how terrorism is defined by the directions in which the guns point.

News With Nezua vids first appear Monday mornings at La Frontera Times. Wednesdays they show up at UMX, as well as in a dim setting at The XOLAGRAFIK Theater. Link to YouTube version: Part One and Part Two.

IT’S HARD TO KNOW WHAT TO SAY anymore on Arizona. The pus-ridden boil on the back of the USA’s purported ideals of justice for all. The exploded sore that reveals the ugly fragments and fibers of truth that typically weave so skillfully behind all our polite society lies.

Some say just as well; let this fight be on. It has always been here, skulking. And then sometimes, we fear what that fight will bring. Do we really want to see things go down this way? Can this not, finally, be avoided?

Pundits, bloggers, thinkers, people reach here and there, fix on this or that aspect, comment on what we can. But mostly, we watch in slow motion as reason and kindness crumble and a gross, vile, vindictive, dishonest, persecutory agenda dusts off its bone-spurred wings and launches into the Arizona sky. Who will bring this beast to bay? What cost by then?

And do we now see a sad mutation of our once-beautiful América? Or do the scales fall from our eyes to reveal the true, gleeful, unabashed visage of the monster we’ve been riding so many years, so high over these here crimson waves of grain?

NAM EthnoBlog, by Sandip Roy, Jun 14, 2010

Where is Nina Simone when you need her? Arizona needs her.

First there was Sheriff Joe Arpaio, shackling the undocumented, and marching them to camps down the baking streets of Phoenix.

Then came SB 1070 which requires the police to stop anyone who “looks” like they might be illegal and demand papers.

Then came word that ethnic studies programs were being targeted for being divisive. HB 2281 banned classes for particular ethnic groups or any courses that promoted ethnic solidarity instead of treating people as individuals.

If that wasn’t enough teachers with heavy accents were singled out. The Department of Education wants to reassign teachers whose accents are too heavy. The goal, apparently is to make sure there are no teachers with “faulty English” in Arizona. Let’s hope former President George W. Bush never goes looking for a teaching job in that state.

And now Sen. Russell Pearce, the man behind SB 1070 is revealing his true aim – the Fourteenth Amendment. A story in Time Magazine says buoyed by poll numbers for his illegal immigration crackdown Pearce wants to deny birth certificates to children born in Arizona of parents are here illegally.

Pearce says democracy supports him – 58% of Americans polled by Rasmussen think that children of illegal immigrants should not receive citizenship.

Friends say is the Grand Canyon state going off the deep end?

When four young black girls were killed in the Baptist church bombing in 1963, the story goes Nina Simone locked herself in her room and said she wanted to build her own gun.

In her book I Got Thunder – Lashonda Barnett who interviewed Simone, says her then husband dissuaded Simone telling her “Music is your weapon.” Four hours later she emerged with Mississippi Goddamn.

No church has been bombed in Arizona. And Gov. Jan Brewer assures the public that SB 1070 will be implemented without racial profiling. How? Don’t worry everyone is getting training. Hopefully. That will make former Arizona Governor Raul Castro, a Mexican American, relieved. He has been picked up by the police when he was a superior court judge and asked for his papers. He didn’t have them on him and they almost took him into custody. What he was doing was that most suspicious of activities, the “illegal dead giveaway” – painting a fence. (Oh, Tom Sawyer, where are you now?)

Constitutional experts say that if Arizona really goes after “anchor babies”, the courts will quickly strike it down.

But that’s not the point. The point is, Arizona will have moved the needle so far to the extreme on the issue of immigration SB1070 will start looking fair and balanced. Activists and politicians will think they have scored a victory because they beat back the attack on the Fourteenth Amendment, while SB 1070 remains in place.

Already in post-SB 1070 days, you hear less about all those other agreements already existing between sheriffs departments and ICE, where sheriff deputies can act as ICE agents. At least they are just checking once they pick up someone for some crime, we think, they aren’t just demanding papers because you look illegal.

It’s just like how John Ashcroft suddenly became a portrayed as a brave hospital-bed defender of our civil liberties, once Antonio Gonzalez came on Attorney General the scene.

As Arizona turns up the heat, pushing the rhetoric to even more ludicrous heights, SB 1070 will start sounding more mainstream.

Can’t you see it
Can’t you feel it
It’s all in the air

Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don’t belong here
I don’t belong there
I’ve even stopped believing in prayer

Arizona Goddam.

THE ARIZONA BOYCOTT situation is an interesting one. I’d warn against thinking this is gonna fade away. There is a reason that progressive alliances, black leadership and organizations and others are referencing civil rights struggles. There is a reason today that aspiring conservative politicians like Rand Paul and pundits like Glenn Beck are openly arguing against the Civil Rights Era’s gains. This is one of those moments in time.

This is much bigger than one law in Arizona, and these times require our energy and hands, should we have them to lend.

Around the nation, the signs are encouraging. The boycott against SB 1070 grows stronger every day. So stay strong, gente. Many people refused to ride the bus that would not permit Rosa Parks  to sit where she wanted. They did it in solidarity, not because they needed a jog; not because they wanted the inconvenience; not because they did not want a ride! Many others rallied around Rosa Parks—and all others throughout time who stood against injustice—because they knew the sacrifice was worth fighting for what is right.

The Diamondbacks games continues to function as a bullhorn for the boycott:

Politics and sports came together Monday evening when several hundred demonstrators used the opener of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ three-game series against the Arizona Diamondbacks to protest that state’s new immigration bill.

Holding placards that read, among other things, “Arizona Shame on You” and chanting “Boycott Arizona!” demonstrators marched up Elysian Park Avenue toward Stadium Way and assembled on the four corners outside the entrance to the stadium, walking back and forth across the streets. …

“We’re not going to stop them from attending the game,” said John Morales, one of the organizers of the protest. “They’ve already bought their tickets. We’re trying to make a connection between sports and politics…. The Diamondback team is not just from Arizona; the ownership has contributed to the Republican Party that has spearheaded the legislation.”

The Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada may soon come on board:

Several cities around the country are already boycotting Arizona in response to the law. Now, the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, or PLAN, wants city councils in Reno and Las Vegas to do the same. “We want to send a message to Arizona that this type of police state tactic is not welcome in our country,” said PLAN’s Communications Director Launce Rake. “Let’s not do business with Arizona businesses and let’s definitely not send any government people there to conventions.”

Pablo Alvarado, President of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network joined thousands of protestors and concerned humans in Phoenix on Saturday to protest SB 1070. He talks about how there will soon be a way to keep supporting companies who are oppose SB 1070, and leave the others in the cold:

Alvarado said the National Day Laborer Organizing Network — who organized the rally and march along with Puente Arizona, a human rights organization spear-heading the anti-SB 1070 movement — is working on a method for companies that oppose the immigration law to be identified by shoppers who participate in the boycott.

“We are creating a ‘human rights zone,’ and all of those [sympathetic] businesses are going to be hit in the next few weeks,” Alvarado said. “And those businesses are going to have a sticker that says … ‘This is a human rights zone, come and sponsor this business.’”

Kanye West, Zach de la Rocha, Cypress Hill, and other musicians are on board with the boycott:

“Fans of our music, our stories, our films and our words can be pulled over and harassed every day because they are brown or black, or for the way they speak, or for the music that they listen to,” said de la Rocha, who has been outspoken about the law since2 the bill was first introduced earlier this year. “We are asking artists the world over to stand with us, and now allow our collective economic power to be used to aid and abet civil and human rights violations that will be caused by Arizona’s odious law.”

The Los Angeles Unified School District and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors may soon join the Los Angeles City Council in boycotting Arizona:

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will consider adding their opposition to the law. The school district is considering a resolution condemning the law and exploring ways of curtailing support for Arizona and companies based there.

The resolution, proposed by board President Monica Garcia and members Nury Martinez and Yolie Flores, would call for LAUSD civics and history classes to include a discussion of the Arizona law “in the context of unity, diversity and equal protection for all.” …

Last month, the Los Angeles City Council approved an economic boycott of Arizona.

Minnesota Native Americans and others gathered this past weekend to support the boycott:

May 29, Forth Snelling, Minnesota. Minnesotans of many ethnicities gathered to support the Arizona Boycott in protest of new immigration law (SB170) and to prevent introduction of similar laws here.

Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., America’s oldest African American college fraternity, has decided to move their national convention from Phoenix, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in solidarity with the boycott against Arizona, and in opposition to the recent passage of SB 1070. The decision is “an expensive one,” according to The Root:

The decision to boycott Arizona is not without a cost for Alpha Phi Alpha. Breaking contracts with Phoenix area hotels, catering, and meeting rooms means the fraternity is now in litigation with contractors. And while Mason can’t give an exact amount on how much the boycott will cost the fraternity, he estimates that Alpha is looking at over $300,000 in penalties. That doesn’t include over 3,000 Alphas who will have to change their flight and hotel reservations as soon as possible.

“I’m ecstatic that our dear fraternity took a hard-line stance with a state known for attempting to block our Brother Martin Luther King Jr.’s national holiday,” said Terry Calhoun, a financial planner and Alpha Phi Alpha member from Illinois. Calhoun purchased his discount airline tickets to Phoenix months ago, and will now be paying extra for the trip to Las Vegas. But he’s fine with it.

“I would be willing to go to a campfire to hold the national convention as opposed to going to the oppressive state of Arizona,” Calhoun said.

Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey and chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is urging major league baseball players to boycott the 2011 All-Star game, which is scheduled to take place in Phoenix, to protest SB 1070:

In every century and generation, immigrants have contributed to the progress, prosperity and vitality of this nation. This law undermines that shared history by promoting discrimination against one group of people. As someone who has and continues to fight for comprehensive immigration reform, I believe the Arizona law is a call to action for reform of our nation’s broken immigration system. However, while I understand the frustration about the failures of our current system, states should not be permitted to enact their own discriminatory immigration laws while the federal government works to reform our laws. The Arizona law is an embarrassment to our country and a call to action to our communities to stand up against injustice.

For these reasons, I ask that you consider boycotting the All-Star Game in Arizona until SB1070 is repealed or the League decides to move the game to an alternate location.

Of course, as FOX news and others love to broadcast whenever possible, a MSNBC/TELEMUNDO poll taken at one point showed that a majority of whites support SB 1070, even while a majority of Latinos did not. (Do you think this is accurate, or being used by media branches to divide us? If it is a real divide, do you wonder why this might be? Why racial profiling consequences intensifying does not affect whites’ peace of mind?) And you can easily find many op-eds, articles, pundits and even politicians who run the gamut from baffled as to why the boycott even exists and keeps growing, to enraged that it does. There are people doing their best, even, to organize spending sprees in Arizona! They seem to love the idea of SB 1070 that much. As if they personally need there to be increased scrutiny and policing and Your-Papers-Please checkpoints in the nation.

The faultlines between whites and non-whites in perceptions, feelings, realities of jail, social repercussions of state violence—it all becomes clear, now. Of course that faultline has been there all along, though we’ve all become zoned out, used to dealing, adapted in our own ways. Either blinded by comfort and privilege, or just dealing with the imbalances wherever they exist. Or some mix of both?

Either way, something has happened in America. Something inexorable, no doubt. We are living in important times, just as every other person on Earth did. And here we live through an unveiling. Of our own natures. How we deal with that will define us, no doubt. In my wildest dreams I hope we all come together. I don’t see that we are there yet, as a People. Those in power are mostly holding on tighter. Which means status quo, more suffering, worse division, more racism, more prisons, more death, more poor people, more disease, more environmental disaster, more war. Those are all kindred to increased racial profiling, greater numbers of people in prison, more divided families, greater police powers, greater state power, further persecution of people of color as well as vulnerable families, men, women, and children.

This is much bigger than one law in Arizona.

But the big battle is the little battle, too. Which is why when I see factions of people or people baffled at the boycott, or in support of SB 1070; when I see them clamp down harder on views that support the corrupt status quo, I see there is a lot of fighting left to do.

Last week, Ohio radio station WTVN-AM (owned by Clear Channel, the station quick to act against errant curse words or bared breasts) actually had a nifty little contest in support of SB 1070:

610 WTVN would like to send you where Americans are proud and illegals are scared, sunny Phoenix, Arizona! You’ll spend a weekend chasing aliens and spending cash in the desert, just make sure you’ve got your green card! Win round trip airfare to Phoenix, hotel accommodations, and a few pesos in spending cash – just register below!”

This weird (not-racist) contest was a reaction to Columbus mayor Michael Coleman’s decision to join the boycott and ban city employees from visiting Arizona in any official capacity (they are of course free to go on their own time and dollar if they like). You’ll note that article has Mister Coleman’s somber and poignant and personal thoughts on the Civil Rights struggle that affected his family. His great-great-great Grandmother was a slave, and she lived to 105. And he was infused with her memory and her experience when he made the decision he did.

And what was Clear Channel’s little radio station Dj’s response to this? To give away a weekend trip “chasing aliens”; where “illegals are scared” and as the winner of the contest, you are free to sun and hunt, and spend cash.

This is much bigger than one law in Arizona.

NCLR’s Janet Murguia reacted to the station’s contest:

“The passage of SB 1070 has provoked a lot of reprehensible anti-Latino and anti-immigrant rhetoric but a radio station bankrolling someone to ‘hunt’ human beings for sport represents a new low,” stated Janet Murguía, NCLR President and CEO.  “The owners and directors of WTVN might think that this is all in good fun but what is happening to Latinos – citizen, legal, and undocumented alike – in Arizona is no joke.  We are asking for an immediate and unequivocal apology from the station and its parent company.”

Noting that the station’s contest has triggered considerable outrage in Latino communities in Ohio, Arizona, and nationwide, Murguia concluded, “It is important to keep in mind that the American people own the airwaves over which WTVN broadcasts.  As such, we will ask FCC Commissioners to ensure that threats against American citizens — such as the one encouraged and promoted by WTVN  – are not taken lightly and dealt with in an appropriate manner as soon as possible.”

(By the way, if you feel that contest was an unacceptable use of OUR airwaves, voice your feelings about that contest directly:)

WTVN Mailing Address:
2323 W. Fifth Ave.
Suite 200
Columbus, OH 43204

Telephone:
Main Office: 614-486-6101
Main Fax: 614-487-2559

Mike Elliott:
Executive Producer – Program Director

mikeelliott@wtvn.com

So we fight on.

You cannot help but look over to the White House every now and then to see if the Bipartisan Bubble that shields the DOJ and the Oval Office from further Fierce Urgency of Nows being afflicted upon them has weakened, or lifted. But whether it’s lukewarm statements on flotillas, hazy afternoon beer summits, or impassioned (but later rescinded or ignored) bankster-scoldings or denunciations of ICE and in favor  of swift immigration reform, the Obama administration has made clear its shape and method. This is no fire in the belly leadership. This is a loud sound, stall-em-off, change the subject, do-just-enough-to-quell-the-outcry, make no fast or dramatic moves administration.

That means we really do have to push our “representatives” hard. Even harder. And keep waking up the nation. More writing, more talking. More calls. More art, more videos. More letters. More boycott actions, more people, more towns. We must make the chronically comfortable feel that the situation for others is exactly as uncomfortable, untenable, and unlivable as the rest of us know it to be already.

Keep on, and we can make change. Think back to all those who sacrificed to bring us where we are today. True, there have always been sneery, bloated defenders of the status quo like Glenn Beck, but social change that changes the lives of many for the better began not with millionaire puppets with vapo-rub under the eyes and book tours under the arm, but with regular people. Every day people. Who made a stand. That’s what we can do. We don’t have the Beck bullhorn or the Rupert riches, but we are many more, and we stand on the shoulders of many regular people who discovered they could be giants, given the right cause.

This is the right cause. This is much bigger than just one law in Arizona.

A LETTER TO THE EDITOR about immigration, in the online New York Times:

To the Editor:

I am sick and tired of being called a racist. America looks at me and sees a middle-class white man who wants something done about illegal immigration and assumes that it must be about race.

What I am actually concerned about is the socioeconomic effects of the high-density immigration. I am concerned with the complete disregard to the concept of assimilation and the complete lack of respect being shown toward what my friends and family have fought and died to protect.

Laws are fair only if all people, despite race, color or creed, are held to them. The fact that the majority of the people who are in our country illegally are of color means nothing to me.

This is not a race issue. It is a legal issue, a financial issue, a respect issue and an issue of pride. Please look beyond my white skin, stop assuming that I’m racist, and see that this is an issue about immigration, not race.

James Stewart
Mount Vernon, Wash., May 22, 2010

I’ll never stop being puzzled by people who preemptively defend against being racist. James says he is sick and tired of being called a racist, which is a perfect moment to gain sympathy with an anecdote or two of how he has suffered such a terrible experience. But the writer offers no concrete example. We learn immediately that what he is sick and tired of, in actuality, are the odd machinations of his own mind. “Being called a racist” for James Stewart of Mount Vernon, Washington comes down to an idea in his own head that “America” “looks at him” and his feelings on immigration and then “America” assumes James has a race problem. Wow! No wonder he is unsettled.

James, if you are not an orangutan, how often do you work that into conversations? Just curious. Maybe it would go something like this:

“Listen, Zookeeper. I think a larger meal allotment would benefit these animals. And I’m not an Orangutan, in case you were wondering about my bias. Nor am I a Chimpanzee! I am just a concerned citizen who can’t stop thinking about the socioenvironmental impact of these animals in our zoo.”

That would be normal.

James, why do you assume you are a racist to others? What is it about your thinking that tips you off?

What I am actually concerned about is the socioeconomic effects of the high-density immigration.

Sweet word cluster. Clearly you are not an Orangutan.

I am concerned with the complete disregard to the concept of assimilation and the complete lack of respect being shown toward what my friends and family have fought and died to protect.

Hmm. So is it really “socioeconomic” effects you oppose? Here you are bravely defending ‘concepts’ but to me, it sounds like your problem is cultural. You and your buddies feel disrespected by new neighbors who don’t have a Pacific Northwest accent? I mean, in what way can you ascertain disrespect for a concept? Have you listened in on their weekly Concept-Busting meetings?

Despite the loud noises coming from various quadrants, in the end, it seems the economic impact of immigrants is not so dramatic; positive in some places, and negative in others. In other words, immigrants are just like everyone else. And yet, you are not railing against anyone else. Was that a clue that tipped you off?

James, do you feel your views on immigration are somewhat racist in nature because your idea of the nation (“friends and family have fought and died” to dominate) begins with white people dying and killing for land that was not theirs? After all, how do you think the tribes that have been bisected by the artificial border feel about “respect” and “assimilation”? Do their “friends and families” not matter quite as much? This is not ancient history I’m flippantly bringing up. This is a current struggle in the borderlands.

Your thoughts on these peoples’ struggle?

Laws are fair only if all people, despite race, color or creed, are held to them. The fact that the majority of the people who are in our country illegally are of color means nothing to me.

Oh, right. The sanctity of LAW. Well. Laws that are brought about by force, and that are intended to normalize the aggressor’s rule and values can’t really be said to be “fair” to anyone but the aggressor! Let’s be realistic. I don’t really think you are after “fairness,” more so that you want to have your pretty lawn and be left alone on it. Understandable! (I’d add a pool to really top it off nicely.) I am sure it is inviting to run up under that umbrella of protection wielded by the aggressor and call it justice, but really it’s just a dry patch for you and yours. That’s not “fair,” that’s force. You’re an outraged squatter, no biggie. (PS: the fact that you are not of color means nothing to me.)

This is not a race issue. It is a legal issue, a financial issue, a respect issue and an issue of pride.

It’s a race issue for you, and the notion of “law” but a tool in your trickbag. You believe that the “majority of people who are in our country illegally are of color” and you want to use the law to benefit your race; you want to use legalisms to bolster your hold on finance, you consider opposition to that agenda ‘disrespect,’ and you lose your sense of pride when it is stymied. Quite simple.

Please look beyond my white skin, stop assuming that I’m racist, and see that this is an issue about immigration, not race.

Funny, James, I can’t see your skin! And you can’t see inside my head. Or inside “America’s” head. All the rest of us have are your words. They show us enough, I think.

Tam Ngoc Tran and Cinthya Natahlie Felix were hard workers, deep thinkers, and big hearted people who left the Earth suddenly on Saturday when a truck crossed over into their lane and crashed into them.

Tam and Cinthya were accomplished students, both well-loved and well-known warriors in the undocumented civil rights struggle of today, and advocates for the DREAM act—which only decent and moral politicians support.

These two humans dedicated so many hours of their lives and energy from their hearts to speak for a greater awareness of these challenges, as well as to try and make the DREAM Act a reality…I am confident they would want this part of their lives to aid the same fight.

So, for the ones still living and forced into a limbo none of us would want for ourselves; and in honor of Tam and Cinthya, we must pass the DREAM Act. These are not “issues.” These are people’s lives we are talking about.

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.