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.

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.

Detail from Page 71 of the Codex Borgia

RECENTLY, I wrote about Arizona tipping its hand as to what its cultural and legal agenda is about—and it ain’t making sure people have VISAs or green cards. It’s about minimizing if not wholly eradicating the power and presence and legacy of the people and culture of Mexico—a legacy and culture that are integral elements of Arizona. Arizona’s flurry of laws over time (not just the  last month) spell this agenda out pretty clearly.

Recently I wrote to a list-serv what these moves conjure up in my mind…a deranged soul clawing at their own face, trying to tear away the mask that obscures their purity…all the while not seeing that they are destroying themselves in the process. Arizona separated from Mexican culture and people is…nothing but a hot spread of sand treaded by delusional white power-grabbers. A haunted land, indeed.

While there are, indeed, a few ways to look at this latest move, none of them are pretty.

Firstly, we really have to pause to appreciate the snug fit of the White Lens that clouds out the big picture so vehemently and with an assumed air of righteousness that is born of nothing more than a slurry-slush of ignorance, violence, and fear. We simply MUST giggle a bit at the notion of white lawmakers being outraged that Latinos dare to think “the white man is oppressing them” and then, to prove how wrong we are…those white lawmakers summarily outlaw us from telling our histories.

+/-»

Wow! That’ll teach you to think you’re being singled out as a group and oppressed!

Tom Horne is happy!

If such a contradiction escapes their reasoning, their is no intellectual meat to be had in that stew.

Montenegro—who admits the target is Chicano Studies specifically—and others, are putting the legal torch to the spinning of time-honored stories. This is what conquerors do when they fear the people maintaining their own legacy, their own gods, their own allegiances, and patching up, decorating, and honoring the fabric that has kept them together and which threatens to dull the blade of the new reign. Yup, even in a land of Free Speech™.

There are few extant Aztec codices created before the conquest and these are largely ritual texts. Post-conquest codices, like Codex Mendoza or Codex Ríos, were painted by Aztec tlacuilos (codex creators), but under the control of Spanish authorities. The possibility of Spanish influence poses potential problems for those studying the post-conquest codices. Itzcoatl had the oldest hieroglyphics destroyed for political-religious reasons and Bishop Zumarraga of Mexico (1528–48) had all available texts burned for missionary reasons.^[29]

Joe Arpaio, a big respecter of other races and classes of people

But I guess this current attempt to quash the teachings of those descended from the indigenous of the continent is easy to understand.

The heavy and incessant indoctrination of White Ethnic Studies is, truth be told, still not very strong. Even while taught in every school in the nation while simultaneously reinforced on our televisions and movie screens, the illusion of white and European supremacy over all things indigenous or otherwise Brown™ is a fragile one and must be protected from even the challenge of one single schoolroom; is under dire threat from the possession of even one book that argues to the contrary.

Montenegro (R-Ariz) feels that banning Mexican American studies is righteous, because “[p]arents send their children, students, to public schools to learn reading, writing and arithmetic skills, not to be taught to, you know, hate or have resentment toward other races, not to be taught that they are victims or educated to be victims.”

Which of course is what Arizona authorities like Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Governor Jan Brewer are all about! Not resenting or hating other races or classes of people.

Dios mio. The depth of their delusion is impressive.

Jan Brewer Signs SB 1070

But do parents send their children to school to be taught to view foreign invaders and greed-inspired killers from another continent (Europeans of yesteryear) as benign “settlers”? Do all parents of all color and background pay taxes so that the public school can teach us lies about our own backgrounds and beginnings? Or separate our history from how it affects today’s reality?

Montenegro would say yes. Montenegro would say just as Dubya is a hero and savior of America, so was the greedy President James Polk. And yet we pay taxes so our kids can learn those “truths.”

Montenegro would prefer that people of color are the ones with self-loathing in our bellies. Anything that avoids the old white folks feeling any discomfort in their own!

Montenegro and Brewer, no doubt, would prefer us not to learn about and apply the lessons from our nation’s living through the Chinese Exclusion Act; the raping and killing of indigenous families justified by divine white right; the endless exploitation of Mexican labor, the dehumanization and continued oppression of our black brothers and sisters, or how the legal burning of books that tell our tales in Arizona today are but an extension of the Spanish conquistadores torching the idols and codices of the Maya. Most of all, those connections to today must be severed.

Above all, oppressors need you to have no memory, no books, no lessons, no language—no power.

Make no mistake—those who aren’t in the position to know different—this tripe offered by Montegnegro to justify this law is not about what is said in Chicano Studies classes. It’s not about anyone being told to “kill the white man” as Montenegro ridiculously asserts. (What is this, 1969?) We need no new law to prevent lessons about professors advocating murder. I’m pretttttty sure the standing laws cover that!

These claims on what is going on behind sneaky Chican@ doors are but projections of white fear. And it’s that white fear that is powering these moves; moves to prevent us from being self-educated, to stop us from being Uppity. These moves are about us daring to think we can rearrange or even simply augment the many lied-up lessons that are ubiquitous in US nationalistic messaging.

I mean, one thing we can be sure of is that Arizona’s new law is not about avoiding positive depictions or messaging about violent overthrow (as they claim). After all, our very first lessons on US patriotism revere terrorism! They celebrate a violence completely unrelated to Mexicans. What else was the Boston Tea Party? What message is sent there but that violent overthrow of the standing government is, or at least can be, righteous!

Yup. This is taught and nobody flinches. Those merry bands of brothers are “patriots,” like the violent “patriots” of today: Joe Stack. Oathkeepers. Tim McVeigh. Those white boys all learned their lessons well. And even the MSM of today vibes with them, understanding that the True Enemy is always darker in hue, despite the acts or ideology eschewed.

People of color have to sit in school for years upon years and hear a carefully arranged platter of propaganda that is designed to disempower us, confuse us, derail our strength, confuse our arc, and once we are grown, befuddle our children. This is today’s schooling, this is today’s White Ethnic Studies that dominate the land and the mind. People of color have to sit through countless movies where our people are painted as fools, criminals, the rot of society, the dregs of US culture, the despoilers, the thieves, the ruiners, the background to all your shining glorious heroic and imaginative deeds. This is today’s widespread White Ethnic Studies assault upon our minds and hearts and souls.

Rituals and Roles. Bodies and Souls. Possession or Negation, your choice. Their goal.

But Arizona, in its anti-brown panic, fumbles again.

Nobody need teach anyone to be “a victim.” That’s not what we do! Poor confused minds.

No. All that needs be told is the truth. After all, reality tends to have a radical bias. And all that needs be told about yesterday (as well as today) is the truth of goldthirst. The truth of divinely-rationalized mass murder. The holocaust of the indigenous. Legal papers that pretend to justify unwarranted invasion. Lessons about theft. Lessons about imperialism. Instances—like today—of attempted culture-murder. After all, Montenegro, you hardly prove such charges false! You actually reinforce those lessons and make our point for us.

Further, we do not need your school to tell our tales. Look at me. I never took a single Chicano Studies class. No, what I know has been passed down in my family or gleaned by me from reading books and knowing other Xican@s. This is what we do, you do know that? And here I am today, still telling our stories.

And we have been telling our stories from before the first stone was set in Tenochtitlán. We will tell them long after you are dead and gone, Montenegro. Brewer. Arpaio. You age and in your age, you fear.

We, on the other hand are only growing in number and political power. And we are hardly simply dishwashers, gardeners, and meatpackers. We are poets. We are teachers. We are artists. We are journalists. We are taxpayers. We are drivers. We are software designers. We are tech entrepreneurs. We are musicians. We are actors. We are legislators.

And have many, many young ones. And more each day. You can fear…but that is an imposition you insist on. We are not here to fear or cause fear. Only to say, no, you won’t shove us backward on this last tiny piece of dirt. No, you won’t make us eat your sugared, high-priced dirt. To say, yes, you can try. And you will try, you’ll try.

But like piñata confetti, or the sand on temple stone, we rise.

We rise.

WE RISE.

Though, apparently, you don’t need to be Xican@ to access a larger picture on these issues:

Short of an all-out fascist state, the flow of Latinos into the country will not ebb. And frankly, I’m not sure what we expected, given decades of imperialism and interference throughout Central and South America. We crushed regional social movements and turned vast areas into low-wage zones for global capital, a bi-partisan production of our ruling parties. Turn the region into an economic basket-case, create conditions that fuel the drug trade (while supplying countless consumers north of the border), and you better fucking believe that people are going to migrate, “legality” be damned.

But then, our invasions of their native turf are not seen as a problem. As with so much else, we tend to rail against the ends while overlooking or justifying the means. [...]

In a sense, we’re all migrants renting our daily lives from private power. To them, we’re no more citizens than those crossing the southern border. I don’t know what Arizona thinks it’s protecting, but it sure as hell isn’t democracy. You needn’t wander the desert to see that.

—Keep Moving, dennisperrin.blogspot.com

Montenegro, Brewer, Pearce, Arpaio: You have burned no book, you have stopped no truth today. You have only written a note in the margin that says “We grasp, we gasp, we fear, we fail.”

Truth, as in the past, shall tomorrow still prevail.

Axé.

—

update friday 1:27 pm PST: notes on montenegro added.

SURPRISE, a cop is caught beating a Mexicano who lies on the ground while shouting slurs at him.

Obviously, the cop is racist. Worse, he is a fifteen year veteran on the force. This is not the first time he has done this. Were it not for the ubiquity of video in the hands of everyday citizens, these incidents would still be happening without witnesses or being reported.

The anchor on the television clip at FOX doesn’t play the police officer’s entire statement, so I don’t know if he apologizes to the innocent victim of his hateful brutality directly. Which is weird, but then again, not. I hear him express regret at bringing dishonor to the force, embarrassing his colleagues, and acting not in a “professional manner” before he finally gets around to apologizing to the Latino Community because he says he knows his “words cut deep.”

What??? Your words? Ay. Save your tears, dude. Sheesh. You and Glenn Beck.

The anchors say Officer Racista was responding to a tip called in where a man claimed four Mexicans with a machete robbed him. I say anonymous tipsters work hand in hand with William Gheen and FAIR and CIS and NumbersUSA and Stormfront and random teenagers in Long Island and Arizona and New York and California and Patchogue and Russell Pearce and Joe Arpaio and random gurgling cesspits of latent police racism—maybe without knowing it, all tapped into the same dank vein, the same gross vibe, all wanting to eradicate my people and our legacy on this continent, all handmaidens in the long war on the indigenous.

I note it here so I have a post to link to later when I speak (once again) about how the law in this land, and the prison system in this land are arms that work together with many other factors to bring sanctioned destruction on gente.

Mala at VivirLatino offers an important political reminder that many of us constantly have to remind DC folk:

The point is that laws like SB1070 and the current Comprehensive Immigration Reform framework put out there by Senator biometric Chuck Schumer works from the default position that immigrants, painted broadly as Latinos, painted broadly as Mexicans are criminals. It works from the framework that we need to prove ourselves worthy of humane treatment via speaking proper English, paying fines disguised as taxes, getting to the back of the line. Resistance to this, asking for legalization and/or basic human rights is seen as ungrateful and as an unwillingness to play the political game we asked to swallow in the name of political efficiency.

I am happy to see the boycotts and the civil disobedience in response to SB1070 just as I am happy to stand on a corner of my hood with my hija just talking to my vecinos about what this means for ALL of us. Pero I am bothered by the treatment of what happened to this man in Seattle, the disrespect towards the lives of our hermanos andhijas, and the accolades paid to Democrats for moving forward on a CIR plan that takes its lead from Arpaio. I am bothered that too many being credited with leading the movement talk about all of these things as if they are separate. As if one monster isn’t feeding the others and are all being led by the same master.

Kai Wright at Racewire agrees, and points out who bankrolls that monster as well as where the slime trail leads:

The officer’s obnoxious language can easily overshadow a deeper concern the video betrays: a casual and capricious use of police violence when confronting “gang” suspects. The fact that the offending officers are from a special gang unit is significant; the presumably elite special forces that federal dollars have supported in police departments around the country have long been criticized as acting with too little oversight as they militarize communities of color. As I’ve written previously, incidents like these exist along a spectrum of police violence that ends with the high-profile suspect-shootings that draw national outrage.

It’s horrible. And it’s the reality on the ground. Every day and for years. Any bets on the verdict of any investigation launched to determine his guilt?

Rituals and roles. Bodies and Souls.

the feedback loop of positive resistance and support

This is what needs to be understood by anyone warning me off of linking to (admittedly reactionary) trailers like Machete. Or the tone of my writing. This is what needs to be understood by online typists who muse that the Arizona Boycott will “surely backfire.” Cuéntame, in our interview a couple months ago, even asked me (among many other questions) if I thought I was making things worse with my strong stances! O, Cuéntame. I hardly knew ye. (But welcome to Facebook.) Only if you consider years of email responses from raza (and others) thanking me for stirring their fires and helping keep them going “making things worse.” Look, people. Indian-killing sentiment and brutality ain’t new! I call it the Long War for a reason. And guess what? It won’t get better by those being targeted and hunted stooping even lower and being even quieter. It will end when you stop asking those standing up to shhhhhh and start opening your mouth and standing with us. And loudly.

This is why black and brown and gold and red unite in so many cases to push back on white supremacy and racist currents and actions in our society. I welcome as many gente to join us as want to. We already understand what is at stake, and how long it has been at stake. We understand this danger. We all know it always awaits. We all  know the law forgives the violence in this direction. We know the TV stations don’t care much about violence in this direction. We know how it all ties together, in law, legislation, and media saturation. We know we are stronger standing together.

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. At YouTube Here: Part One, and Part Two.

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.

MY FIRST THOUGHTS when I read about the boycott on Arizona as a reaction to their passing SB 1070 were, yeah! Let’s do it. Make them feel the pain. Nobody pays too much attention to anyone or anything in this nation unless it either costs a lot or makes a lot of cash.

But then I thought about how POC are always going to suffer more when an economy dips…and that the boycott might be a sort of double punishment on those already suffering greatly in AZ.

And then I thought some more, and a Twitter amigo added the thought that it’s gonna be rough on gente in AZ no matter what. That made sense. And not just now. After all, this is the state that fought against an MLK holiday!

So I think AZ should feel the pain from the rest of the Union. Because this state has decided that it wants to return to an era that the rest of the Union—the other states in the US—has left behind. A boycott by the rest of the states, or as many as possible, says “Okay. You want to go in a whole different direction than the country? Then do without the rest of the country’s support for a while. Think that over.”

Arizona needs to think this over. And a whole lot of us say so.

—

update: and counting…
update2: ouch.
update3: whoa.

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

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

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

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

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

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

—source

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

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

– Josh Copley, deputy chief, Arizona Flagstaff police department

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

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

– Tom Chabin, AZ state representative, D-Flagstaff

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

– Bill Pribil, Arizona Coconino County sheriff

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

– Joel Olson, NAU political science professor [source]

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

Imagine the following scenario:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What can we do?

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

What else can you do?

• Join this Facebook group.

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

• Raise hell.

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

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

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

• See these sites for further resources.

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

See you on May 1.

YO SOY JOAQUIN is a poem that means a whole lot to a lot of gente, and I am one of them. My father gave me the book in my late teens, and honestly, I didn’t look hard at it for another fifteen years or so. But when I needed it, it was there. Corky Gonzales‘ words were there for me when I reached for the strength I’d need to crawl out from under the cloak of shame that mainstream US culture reserves for the Mexicano, and embrace my proud, indian roots; my winding and intertangled—if not sometimes troubled—Mestizo roots; my enduring and strong Mexican roots. Señor Gonzales reminded us we are not historical drug dealers, knife-wielders, or dish-washers…and even when we are, we are something else, too. We belong to a legacy, we are tied to this land, we are descended from fierce warriors, and Indian kings, and beautiful culture and traditions that cannot be washed or stolen away by the dominant culture. We are something new, a combination of those things, and the unknown New that we forge here in an often-hostile environment.

Very empowering and proud ideas for the Indian still hunted on the land his ancestors once called home, a land he/her and his/her kin still call home. A land strewn with tangled paths, that disconnected from that understanding, can lead one to wander too far, and become lost.

Yo Soy Joaquín is un grito of solidarity and collective self-love and when it was brought forth in the late 60s, Chicanos gathered around this and waved it forth like a shining banner. My old man explained the impact of Corky’s poem like this:

“Here, finally, was our collective song, and it arrived like thunder crashing down from the heavens. Every little barrio newspaper from Albuquerque to Berkeley published it. People slapped mimeographed copies up on walls and telephone poles.”

—Juan Felipe Herrera

And not just on telephone poles! When I was born before the decade flipped, Jefito named me after this very poem. This is one small way that my fate and purposes and awareness were sown long before I knew that to be the case.

But one day in 2005, I walked up a hill with my back straight and with the light of ten suns in my eyes because I could carry a feeling of self-love and self-respect and a belonging to something much more beautiful and larger than myself…and it was the day I opened up this poem again and really took my time with it. Shortly after, I began this blog.

So thank you, Mister Gonzales. Once again.

On Friday, March 19th at the Denver, Colorado Auraria Campus Gym, there will be a symposium held to honor Señor Gonzales and his work. To register and find out more, call (303) 964-8993 or email char1551@comcast.net.