NO MATTER WHAT your position on immigration law happens to be; no matter how many generations your family has been rooted in this soil, these kinds of abuses are unacceptable. Treating our fellow humans in these ways simply is not, as they say, American.
ALL OVER THE NATION, communities are clamoring to be heard. In this worsening economic landscape, migrant communities are being terrorized by violent raids, families are destabilized, wage earners are jailed or detained, and xenophobic pundits continue to fuel a rising wave of hate crimes against Latinos. The stakes could not be any higher.
I CAN’T THINK of a more uplifting message than this: Put your time, energy, and heart into something and the energy will return. It will grow, it will propagate, it will continue. And this lesson can be found in events both small and large.
IT IS OBVIOUS that an arm of the State or behavior of the State that the citizenry would normally recoil from—something like anti-constitutional raids, profit-driven prisons, cruel conditions of mass-detainment, or simply denial of rights sown by a machine made of corrupted legal processes—will first be enacted upon the Other. What’s next? Reality TV, of course!
FLAGSTAFF, AZ: At approximately 10AM on Thursday December 4th, Flagstaff Immigrant Rights Enforcement (FIRE) confronted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a daring raid, serving a notice of deportation to ICE representatives at an ICE Management meeting.
DEAR MISTER PRESIDENT ELECT: You are too smart to pretend you don’t see all this. So I say if you do not act on it and soon, you are nodding along with this scourge that threatens both our peoples and the whole nation as a consequence. And I know I don’t need to be overly direct about this, but I will anyway:
MY HOPE IS THAT WE CARRY THIS FORWARD. This energy now rising. That we all carry on with this decision to work for a new day and a new way of seeing. A way out of the hate and the fear and the small-minded paradigms that keep us running in circles as we try to spiral up to the Top of the Shining Heap and step on other hands to get there. That we continue to open our minds and our hearts and become this change we want so much to believe in.
AS SADDENED AND CYNICAL as I have become about humankind in my life, I still nurture a belief in the human heart and the sense of Right. I still feel that in most cases of wrong being done, all it takes is thinking, feeling people getting the real facts of a situation. And the facts of this situation are shocking and revolting to a thinking mind and feeling heart.
OH…SENATOR? Can I interrupt your well-managed, well-lit, well-scripted campaign for un momento? I really, really, really dig your handsome biography photo and the poignant life story thing. But I have just a tiny little question. I know you don’t want your fancy friends to hear this, but…do you care about women starving to death?
WHILE OUR ORIGINAL INTENT was to present a meaningful side-by-side comparison of both Senator Obama’s and Senator McCain’s answers to our survey in order to better inform voters, Senator McCain’s unwillingness to answer questions or go on the record with his positions on the specific details covered in the questionnaire has made this impossible.
There are simple ways to end so many conflicts today. We could stop seeking punitive measures in addressing human and natural reaction to economic imbalance and hardship. We could change our fearful, reactive, greedy, other-ing philosophies. We could focus on helping, giving, healing, growing—not bombing, fearing, hoarding, killing. Sadly, though, the powers that be do not want such a world.
The GOP actually needs an army now, to make itself evident and dare celebrate anything in public. They have lied, killed, they laugh while we suffer with health problems or bemoan the loss of life and humanity. They bring their army to protect them from the voice of the People they supposedly serve.
House of Nezua
the XOLAGRAFIK theater!
