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.

THERE WILL BE NO MEANINGFUL IMMIGRATION REFORM. Not this year, and not next year. If it lurches up to the starting gate in any form, it will be in a cruel, misshapen, bruised, and weeping condition.

The Much-Vaunted LATINO VOTE

No, the question is how will those of us who took hope in hearing Obama’s campaign-trail passion on the issue react to this news, once it manifests? The immigration-talk theater being put on now between Democrats and Republicans boils down, as I see it, to a theatrical piece where the players joust to show their base who defeated/championed a legislative effort at all. Because they translate that piece of fantasy into votes for or against them when nothing passes.

The purpose of the charade is, too (and equally important), to let us down very gently in order to dull a wave of reaction that might hurt them at the voting booth. As was done with the Public Option popping in and out and in and out of play during the Health Care talks, until our nerves were greatly numbed to the idea of either outcome. These politicians are nearly sociopathic in their ability to read and manipulate large masses of people. That’s their job, they do it well, and they learn all the wrong lessons. But one they stick close to is blunt the edge of any potential progressive populist anger. That anger, after all, is not pro-corporation.

They tell us that our power lies in our votes. But does it?

The Democratic party assumes that Liberals and Latinos alike won’t defect, in the end. Even if they punt on the immigration issue. “After all,” they imagine us saying, as they play puppet games in the library whilst drinking outlandishly expensive cognac, “Democrats fought for health care! And what is the GOP today anyway, except a festering, miserable, fearful, warlike, racist contingent of the rich and the wanna-be rich? Surely no place for us there!”

Or…we stay home and do not vote. Or…we vote third party just to say fuck you, you cynical, cowardly, well-funded, well-fed, well-powdered power brokers. All of you.

The People

I attended the march and rally for immigration reform on Sunday, March 21, in Washington DC. I shot a video of it for my weekly news/commentary video series, News With Nezua. This week’s piece—“200,000 Strong”—is featured at La Frontera Times.

Here’s an article at the American Prospect covering the same event:

Last Sunday, 200,000 immigrant-rights protesters shared the National Mall with a Tea Party crowd that shouted racial epithets and spat at members of Congress. Unsurprisingly, the media focused on the histrionics of the Tea Partiers, but Sunday’s immigration demonstration was an important manifestation of the movement’s building impatience. In its enthusiasm and optics — legal and undocumented immigrants chanting “Sí se puede,” singing folk songs, and waving both American and Mexican flags — the demonstration was reminiscent of the immigration protests in 2006.

Yes, you are right that it is “unsurprising” that “the media” focused on the histrionics of the relatively miniscule opposition. It is unsurprising in a context where an article writer like yourself poses the two as comparative entities in the first line of your essay! Ay.

Let me tell you something. The Teabaggers, and the NumbersUSA crowd were SO SMALL in the overall reality of that day that I never once bumped into them. I actually set out to find them, and could not. So that article (while not a bad one at all) begins disingenuously. Not malevolently, I just think the writer desired a certain entrance.

Further compounding the sense of unreliability in the text is the line equivocating the waving of “both American and Mexican flags.” Writer is stretching hard, here, to justify the mirroring that they propose between 2006 and now.

I shot photos all day. I took audio. I shot video–on both my camcorder as well as my iPhone. I interviewed the young and the old. I traversed the grounds from riser and Press tent to the street and the dirty dusty danced-up soil of the National Mall until my entire body hurt and I could barely walk anymore. I squatted, ran, walked, and even hung from one arm on a tree to get a good shot. There were maybe…three Mexican flags that I saw amidst the thousands I laid eyes on. And one was tiny and hanging from my own back pocket. You go ahead and peruse the images and video you find online. And if you discover any kind of ratio that would justify that article’s imagining of an equivalency between flag-waving, come back and tell me! (Incidentally, though a bit irrelevant perhaps nonetheless, I did see a handful of El Salvadorean flags, but RIFA went to a lot of trouble to avoid a replay of the 2006 march, where the sight of Mexican flags in the street caused many, many palpitations on the Right side of the aisle.)

What IS IT with reporters today? There is so much drama and passion and honesty and fight and meaning out there. You don’t need to make things up!

No, the message transmitted by the rally and march was strongly contained and crafted and directed. That much is clear. It was a good show. RIFA did a great job. White clothes (Mexican tradition as far as I know regarding marches and protest) for a positive, clean feeling; chants of “USA! USA!” to sooth the fragile trembling tissues of the Buchananites, who toss and turn nightly over visions of Indians leaping fences to plant flags bright with writhing cobras and hungry eagles in pure pristine AMERICAN soil; big showing of proudly self-identifying Christians for immigration reform….and so on. I don’t mind, I don’t think it’s anything but smart. You would have to take control of this message in particular if you were hosting an event that large, sure.

Anyway, human rights advocates understand (one hopes!) that being involved in a pro-migrant cause requires one to push back against many nation-deep memes that feed on Indian blood, a nation that overall prefers its darkies in cells and chains or at least busing tables.

And this is a show, after all! Politics is not about truth, and even when it is, Politics has two arms. One is draped in diamonds and silks and shows up on TV, and one holds a gun and leans its elbow into the dry sand of foreign nations as it clambers ever closer to the dizzying scents of petroleum and blood. The fine line between entertainment and war, says Rage Against the Machine.

So put on the show.

My video was not celebrating the chances of reform passing. I appreciate that La Frontera Times tweeted today that I “captured a celebration of hope.” That’s just what I felt was my imperative to do on the scene, once I was there and had walked around a bit.

As a…Journalartist or…an Artivist… (or someword that combines Journalism, activism, politics, and art), my job at these events is to capture and translate the mood and feel of the happening. To tell the truth as a journalist would—by showing you who was there and what was happening—and to send it flying with the power embedded in the poetic passport only an artist may employ to launch a truth into your heartspace. The “activism” part (if it must be called something, this will do) is simply in the fact that we all know, and it is not hidden in the video, that I do not pretend to be showing some middle-of the road, “neutral” piece, but am certainly there vibing with the people I am presenting. Nonetheless, I was not there to push any political entities’ agenda, nor to lie about what I see—and finally, not to claim that what I see is all there is, either. (Though I deny an equivalent number of Mexican and US Flags!)

Fact is, if it felt different in DC on that day, the video would have come out different. I soaked it all up, and I give it back. The day felt utterly positive, true, real, and beautiful. And that was not due to the speeches (which is why my video has hardly more than one line of those in it), but to the heart and soul and bodies and voices and needs of the people.

The very people who are being lied to and used by more powerful forces in a bid for continued power.

O, the People. Who is left to fight for the People? Many who won’t show up on TV. And if they weren’t out there doing their thing, we’d all suffer a lot more than we do. But as far as politicians and well-paid pundits? For the most part they are welded to the beast, to the iron tumbling beast that will soon find the bottom of the ocean. They shout into microphones, extolling the beautiful landscape along the way.

Indian Killers Vs. The Safe and Sanitized Left

The GOP grapples with a number of problems. But at the core, their main problem is their philosophy. It is not real. It relies on a reshaping of the Real which requires endless violence and delusion, rather than meeting the Real to see how we can learn from and nourish the human race’s organic arc. By their ideological nature, they cannot progress (“Conservativism” embraces stasis, tradition, a reductive approach, an exclusivity that stunts, withdraws, retracts, rejects; this philosophy cannot sustain itself) and so we see them tearing at themselves now. It’s ugly. It’s painful. There is no cure. The ideology has a fatal flaw that only grows more egregious and destructive as the rest of the world changes.

At heart, you can trace so many Right-Wing objections to the naturally-shifting ethnic demographics of the USA back to German philosophers like Johann Gottleib Fichte, with their notions of Romantic Nationalism. Undiscussed by the paid-for propaganda stations on your TV are how the very same notions of a cultural and national supremacy beset by invaders from within resulted in movements like Nazi Germany.

Surely nothing (aside from rounding up people and shuffling them en masse into concentration camps) is more Hitleresque than enacting laws and social norms and mainstreaming violent language that targets the spoilers of the Pure. (I make these comparisons very carefully, but know that half my family came here fleeing Anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe about 3 generations ago and I for one do see a disturbing overlap in this revulsed, persecutory, culturally superior aggression against Mexican immigrants today.)

And that is what the US Right Wing response is to today’s immigration issue, health care reform (which they imagine is a handout to people of color), and Obama’s presidency boils down to. From the laws creeping forth like chokeweed in Arizona, to guns and sleazy assassination talk as rejoinders to Democratic (centric and corporatist!) legislation.

SOSHALIST! FOREIGN AGENT! FASCIST PRESIDENT! ILLEGAL INVADERS! MEXICAN FLAGS! WELFARE QUEENS! AFFIRMATIVE ACTION! I WANT MY COUNTRY BAAAAAAAAAACK

The deepening fracture in the GOP echoes that which took down the 19th century Whigs—centering, as it does, around racism. The GOP cannot move into the future. It is, at heart, built to comfort and sustain the lives and ideas of elite whites, and mostly elite white property-owning men. And that is not today’s real world. As it was, the notion has always had to be brought to bear behind the barrel of a gun in the first place. That is another reason the GOP is dying. You cannot sustain a culture without respecting and revering women. And you cannot sustain a political party on a room full of old white men…and a living pinup. That’s for other types of partying…I suppose.

When the Right embraces a woman, it has to be a person who is racist herself, devoid of intellectual integrity, and crammed full of hypocrisy, condescension, and power lust [Palin]. When it embraces (and I use the word embrace purely functionally, not emotionally!) a black man (Michael “Bling is My Thing” Steele) it is a cynical and insincere motion used only to counter a larger political or cultural force (the election of Barack Obama). When the Right elevates a Latino/Hispanic like Alberto Gonzales, he by needs must abdicate his own family roots (lie about how they got here, disowning story and allegiance and pride and truth in the process) and aid the US war machine in killing hundreds of thousands of brown humans in Iraq. When the Right  has an Asian American hero, such as in the case with John Yoo, he would of course have to be a cold-blooded advocate of testicle-crushing, torture-wheeling, bomb-dropping aggressions in the Middle East.

These Indian-killers in the GOP (and when I use that term I reference the illegal Irish immigrant Phillip Sheridan who wreaked holy historical hell on the American Indigenous during his tenure in the US military) cannot change their stripes. They can only fracture within as some members attempt even the tiniest departure from a reflexive racist stance, or die out, sputtering, hissing, contorting, and shrieking all the way.

I say “indian killers” because there is nothing more rational at the root of so much of their ideology—be it opposing non-white immigration, denigrating the civil rights era, or fearing a black president’s every move—than what was behind General Sheridan’s imperative to genocide-by proxy the American Indian by slaughtering every bison on the land, when not directly killing indians. It’s built into their DNA by now; To these sorts (despite what they say out loud, and they say plenty out loud!) people of color stand for all the evils in the world, and these types have a guilt that has perverted itself over the many sins leveled against the Other and projected itself skewedwise upon us, just as the notorious Gang of Perverts (GOP) is well-known for introducing punitive anti-gay legislation all while secretly engaging in meth-fueled, scuba-geared, rest stop stall-centric homosexual hijinks on the down low. To these spoilers and stealers, it is people of color who stand for crime, for corrosion of culture, for the faltering of White Empire.

The Right simply cannot abdicate that position, because to renegotiate these ideas would be to admit their stores of wealth and (relative) sanity are but founded upon falsity and evil.

The latest shape in which the GOP offers up its ubiquitous racial animosity and white supremacy is one choice vehicle to truly draw forth their ire and bile: the immigration issue. The white liberal faction of activism and punditry claims the GOP attacks the idea of immigration due for the most part to their fear of instilling a mass of future Democrat voters. Not really. Not unless the Dems are employing their own code language here.

It’s just what it sounds like. It’s not far from the thirst for racial purity that we associate with some very creepy chapters of world history. And it’s just as dangerous an impulse. And it’s dangerous, too, not to name it. Because how will we face and defeat this ugly, ancient impulse if we pretend it’s about voting booths? Anyway, voting booths are just about power, and the power the GOP wants to maintain and propagate is one that—again—would erase the Civil Rights gains, suppress your wage, declare your teeth and health a luxury that you cannot afford, and while you sweat in the sun mowing their grass so pretty, invade your ancestors’ land to steal more fuel to power your mower.

How is the GOP and the “conservative” mind attempting to enforce racial purity in today’s world? In so many ways. From the loop that the Criminal Justice system sets up to pack the prisons with black and brown, to the banks’ targeting customers of color and immigrants to exploit with higher rates and scams, to the erasure or minimizing in Texas’ textbooks of the achievements of people of color, to the ENTIRE IDEA of IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT which by now seems to be discussed as an item of faith, as if it is not a trumped up WAR ON TERROR part two. Yes, other things come into it, such as the State making money for policing and incarcerating this new population. Our war economy is failing us. And our nation knows no better way to make cash than go to war on yet another population. At this point states are blatantly justifying 287g programs and such because new prisons and detention centers are springing up in their towns.

And many Democrats are championing those same programs, and the same “heavy enforcement” talk, telling me that they need to do all this to convince the American people that these word games indicate the right approach to “our broken immigration system.” But you know what? Social justice is not a word game. It is a bloody fight and if your hands are clean, you may be on the dodgeball court, but you ain’t in the struggle.

A Progressive Lens

This war on people of color and on the indigenous of this continent (because oh yes, the CIA has its hands deep in Latin America, too, and has for yearrrrrs) rolls on. This must be seen and championed by “Progressives” or they’ve got nothing. There is no Progressive movement without that lens. Nothing at all at the heart. And nothing for the future of the movement but running around the exhaust pipes of the GOP for the rest of their own doomed existence. True justice lies in employing a fearless lens upon the birth and the current fractures of this nation and how this plays out in our international policies and wars and thus, our current state. And it has to do with Imperialism and white supremacy and exploitation of the Other. Way more than most liberals are comfortable examining, aside from a snarky line or two in a blog post. These truths of our imbalances maintained must become part of our national dialogue. We must accept nothing less from the Democratic politicians. You cannot blame the US for being a “soundbyte nation” if you are validating and employing and not fighting that tendency! Run from the GOP and their accusations of “Blame America First”? Retreat behind flag pins? Join them in talk about locking up and deriding immigrants? This is the way down. This validates the very party and ideology the Left ought lock horns with and do fierce battle.

In my opinion, confronting that comfort is the path forward. And maintaining that comfort simply makes you a meek aide to the Republican machine; less than they. For at least they know their cause and they stand behind it unapologetically.

Not that there is any shortage of opportunities to engage. And the immigration issue certainly presents a giant opportunity. And by all means, join in. It’s not for Mexicans that anyone ought do it, really. It’s because unless the People take up the cause of all the People, then the People will fail, divided by the professional manipulators who have everything at stake in keeping us apart.

One of President Obama’s great hopes for Republican bipartisanship on the immigration issue is Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer is most recently known in immigration advocacy circles for his turn to the right when it comes to talking about immigrants. He wanted harsher talk. He pooh-poohed the idea that we ought refer to them as anything but “illegal” immigrants or aliens. He laughed at the idea that “undocumented” was sufficient. This is a strangely hostile position for a “liberal” to take, considering the connections between how we are talking about these populations (and I include MY population, being of Mexican descent and Hispanic name) and the violence that finds us. Schumer is not a champion of progressive thought, nor my friend, nor my ally. For what that is worth. But I won’t take it personally.

Another of Obama’s hopes is Republican Senator Lindsay Graham. Recently, Graham was the one to come forth and say that immigration is dead this year. And because Obama had to go and push the Health Care thing. That’s Graham’s story and he’s sticking with it. You don’t need me to tell you he’s full of shit. The GOP must try to destroy Obama and all he does. And anything he does. This, too, is tied to their belief system. This is why they went crazy when Obama spoke in schools. For children to see a black man as President destroys a space in the mind that Republicans would use to plant their ideologies about racial superiority. Just that sight—of an articulate, handsome, well-spoken, kind and powerful black man—could alter the lives of those children in a fractal sense. One new image that provides a foundation for a series of other thoughts and beliefs, that very possibly do not lead to a worldview supported by Conservatism. So the GOP cannot rescind Obama’s electoral tidal wave, but their next best hope is that the nation feels the first black President was a failure. That—now that—could be worked into their ideologies. “Sure,” they’d say to their deluded children, “it was White Guilt and Black Racism that elected Obama. And maybe a bit his pretty speechifyin’. But mostly the first two, just like I tell you all the time about Affirmative Action. So he caught a boost into the Oval Office. He got to play dress-up for a while. But of course he failed in the end, Ruthy! He’s….well. He tried hard, you gotta give him that. And he sure could play some mean b-ball, eh kids?”

So let’s just get that straight and know that Lindsay Graham would never have helped Obama secure anything he believes could be successful for Obama, Democrats, or people of color. I mean, didn’t we just learn from watching the GOP tantrumize the entire Health Care debate how willing they are to work with the Dems? Lindsay, pleeeeease.

Nevermind that this immigration issue affects Irish immigrants, as well. Don’t even bother with that. This issue is about Mexicans. Period. That’s all we are talking about with fences and “invaders” and “culture changing.” Shit. Nobody is concerned about one more Irish fella at the pub on March 17! Pat Buchanan is not terrified that O’Malley’s will run out of bar seats under another wave of Irish immigration. This is about Mexicans. You know, cockroaches. Etc.

Lindsay Graham did say a bit more to the Spanish Speaking press in an interview with La Opinión. [Google-translated page]

WASHINGTON, D.C.— El senador Lindsey Graham (R-SC) la figura clave del Partido Republicano en las negociaciones sobre reforma migratoria en la Cámara Alta, aseguró a La Opinión que los indocumentados tendrían que “declararse culpables de un delito menor para obtener su legalización”. A su vez, el legislador enfatizó que la reforma migratoria no tiene posibilidades este año en la Cámara Alta.

La semana pasada, el presidente del Subcomité de Inmigración, Chuck Schumer (D-NY) y Graham presentaron juntos una columna de opinión en The Washington Post, donde aseguraron que los indocumentados tendrían que admitir que violaron la ley.

“Para los 11 millones de inmigrantes que ya están ilegalmente en este país, teníamos que ofrecer un camino duro pero justo. Se les exigiría admitir que violaron la ley y el pago de su deuda a la sociedad mediante la realización de servicio comunitario y el pago de multas e impuestos atrasados. Estas personas estarían obligadas a pasar controles de antecedentes y ser competentes en inglés antes de ir a la parte de atrás de la fila y ganar la oportunidad de trabajar hacia la residencia legal permanente”, dice la columna.

Consultado por La Opinión respecto a “¿qué significa admitir que se violó la ley”, Graham aseguró “la parte que se refiere a la solución de la inmigración ilegal, es que van a tener que admitir que cometieron un crimen, declararte culpable de un misdemeanor o delito menor, pagar una multa y realizar servicio comunitario”.

Un delito menor es una ofensa criminal que resulta en un récord. Tiene un grado menor de severidad que las felonías, pero mayor que las infracciones civiles. En general, se le considera un crimen que se paga a través de prisión, libertad bajo palabra y multas.

It goes on. He is essentially saying that a) Immigration Reform is dead this year and b) his terms for signing a bill in any case involve the usual terms offered by the GOP such as learning English, but the novel and disturbing proposition that the undocumented community, before becoming proud and naturalized US citizens, admit to criminality and carry a misdemeanor crime on their record evermore. In addition, the newly-shamed and minted criminal class will do community service and pay a fine.

The Eternal Servant-Criminal Class

I am not surprised at these types of ideas coming from a Republican. From an old white Conservative man. Never mind that currently being undocumented is not even a criminal offense but a civil one! (ICE has got around this by charging people with document fraud, thus shuttling the cases into criminal court where immigrants often don’t have adequate representation and sign whatever they are told to, ending up in—yup, you guessed it—a detention center where the taxpayers support their imprisonment, rather than benefit from their working and adding to the local economy and workforce.)

Do you know that law officers already generally assume you are a criminal or have an arrest record if you are a person of color? Or at least that you were up to something recently! Or perhaps that your shirt smells like Marijuana. It’s true! That is why people of color get stopped for driving for no reason, get tailed in stores (hate this one, it’s very distracting) get harassed by cops in the first place. It is part of the Prison loop. See you as criminal, create you as criminal. Target you more, prosecute you further, assume guilt, search ’til they find some. Punish. Repeat.

Republicans like Graham and Sessions and so on are essentially incapable of viewing an abstract Mexican or group of Mexicans as ANYthing but something deviant, shameful, criminal, and destructive. Of course he wants ten million brown people to have a police record! In his mind it’s already one and the same, he aches to flesh his bias into life. As Joe Arpaio does by criminalizing those he feels are already criminal by nature.

And a police record will lead to further trouble with the law. It’s bad enough getting harassed more because of a name or physical traits, but to be harassed and then found to have a record already? As I said, these things compound each other, and sometimes, very fast. Punishments increase in severity, less lenience is given, you feel more uptight about further trouble, which might make you act funny around cops who are already looking at you funny…see? It’s a loop. And that’s the point of it.

So Lindsay Graham (R) is basically saying “Okay. I will agree to let millions more Mexicans into this culture, but they must play the roles in which I see them. This preserves my white supremacist culture, after all. I don’t want you here, but if you have to be here and you are already, then you are criminals. That fits the script.”

And Arizona is all over this, too. As I covered in the latter part of News With Nezua | Whoa Canada! (the specific Arizona segment is here on YouTube), a mesh of laws are being enacted in that state that turn the presence of any undocumented person into a violator of criminal laws, as well as anyone who transports them to work, or to look for work, or home from work. These laws (primarily enshrined in SB 1070) empower police and government workers anywhere in the state to stop anyone they think may be undocumented for any reason and require proof of citizenship…or be swept into ICEville. Yup. Bad, bad news. Bad, bad move. (Did you know the massive marches of 2006 were mostly in reaction to the Sensenbrenner bill which proposed the very same thing?)

That is essentially the ground that Graham is preparing for the entire nation.

You think cops harassing people of color is bad now? Just imagine. Watch that segment on the new Arizona laws, and imagine how that could play out on an entire nation where people of color or who have accents are already under fire or derision; already being scapegoated for the economic destruction wrought by greedy blue-eyed bankers. These laws that empower local police to increasingly view and treat the undocumented—and by extension, Latinos—as criminal suspects who owe obeisance at any moment (Your papers??!) serve as a very, very poor response to the shifting cultural face of the nation. In fact, it’s safe to say that this creeping violence and force is the last gasp of Whiteness, meaning to do by gun and prison what it cannot maintain by propaganda and illusion.

In today’s civilized and progressive era, everything will be by law and decree and politically viable and sound and acceptable. And yet, the jails continue to grow. And grow too small. And be it in Haiti or Iraq or Mexico, it is still a certain kind of dweller on this planet doing the plundering. The Marines and police are still sent in to secure the Imperialist hustle in every market on the planet.

And the Democrats are often the ones tearily waving them goodbye as they embark on their patriotic journeys.

And Ye Shall Reap What Ye Sow

Bill Clinton recently admitted to what many have been saying for many years: that creating conditions that flood a foreign nation/entity with imports from the US while disabling that locations ability to farm and produce food for themselves wreaks destruction on an area. This is actually a pretty important statement for him to make. (Must be why after the first day, the article is buried and took me a while to track down!) Because the US does this…as a pattern. And when you stop and think about it, there is no more confusion about my level of emotion on how my own birth-nation treats humans around the world, known here as “immigrants” or as “illegals” or “illegal immigrants” by all the GOP and some members of the Democratic party. Because it’s a very nasty and disgusting and immoral and deceptive way to act. And I expect better from this world, in this time.

You cripple a nation’s agricultural market so that THE USA MAY BENEFIT from this NATION OF BROWN PEOPLE. This destroys the market in Haiti, as it did in Chile, as it did in Mexico. It’s not an accident. It’s not that Clinton is just realizing it. This is how the US stays strong and economically viable. China makes a lot of things we use! I would be lost without all my gear imported from China. China has a leg up exporting because they make SO. MUCH. STUFF. The US exports by creating famine conditions and then conveniently being around when people are hungry. In essence. I’m being a bit dramatic, but good, because it all ends up the same. It’s like locusts. We strip them down so that we can fly. It’s vile. But that’s not the end of it.

When these people flee, and come here—the much-trumpted LAND OF OPPORTUNITY and LAND OF PLENTY—from those lands that are economically stunted or crippled, we consider them criminals. We say they have to admit what wrong they did. Even Democrats insist that they be punished, this low person on the ladder! Dems and GOP insist they be shamed! It sickens my gut. Where is the discussion of what the US has done wrong in this? Better yet, a way forward where we can do right by what went wrong? An intelligent cause and effect talk? This is tyranny of the strong, to punish these tiny humans scattering about in the wake of imperial boots that tear through towns collecting our bounty.

Bill Clinton has made it clear that he understands this. And if this tiny piece of truth could make its way into our national dialogue on economy, foreign policy, and immigration? It would upset and rearrange the entire trajectory. Or it would have the potential, at least. We know it wouldn’t have a chance in the murky, corrosive depths of US political discourse.

And then people even on the “left” want to talk about a “soundbyte culture.”

The Democrats are now talking about sending in guns, or having some special type of arrangement with Mexico so our Marines can go in and join his drug war that has spiraled out of control and is eating human beings every day. It’s not like they can run through the desert to escape the war. I suppose soon our troops will be waiting for them there, and our bullets firing upon them from Mexican rifles.

Bill Clinton’s tears mean about as much to me as Glenn Becks’.

Siphon

The Democrats are doing their job. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, and recently wrote about journalists: it’s not that they aren’t doing what they were elected to do, it’s that people are confused about their purpose. And the Democrats’ purpose is to siphon off genuine populist outrage on the Left side of the spectrum. To give us the Good Cop to the GOP’s Bad Cop. That results in our being “trapped” into a Two Party mindset. The dynamic is a powerful one, because it taps into a couple things personally (nevermind the practical chances/difficulty in electing a third party candidate). One, most people who are scared of outcomes or of being in a scary situation (or perhaps I should call it “uncertainty”) will choose the easiest way out. For another thing, The Good Cop/Bad Cop routine presupposes you don’t have enough personal strength to offer yourself a third option in what currently presents as a binary, and a pressing one. These are generally sound assumptions to make with most people, at most times. And of course, there are other reasons that are systemic.

But however you shake it out, the current Democratic party is a pretty inadequate choice for people truly interested in social justice; in a sound, healthy, vibrant society that respects human rights and has the confidence and joy at heart that a thriving culture would. No, the American voting public is, sometimes, like beaten children ready to take what we are given because our imaginations and hope has been kicked in until it cannot expand any further.

Given: The way the GOP is veering downward and righty-right-righto-right as of late draws the distinction between them and the Democrats a valuable one, admittedly. Also, while the insurance reform bill that was just passed does enshrine the worst parts of the capitalist system, as I think Taibbi said, and is a giveaway to the corporate moguls, the current GOP was really rubbing its Class War Club quite unabashedly and certainly is off on an irrational trajectory that ends in abject class war. Beck telling us our teeth are not a Constitutional right. Oh, I’ve got a few things to tell Mr. Beck and people like him about teeth! But that’s for another time.

That said, even with the historic healthcare legislation achievement, the Dems will continue to fund the utter destruction of our neighbors in the world. Be it in Afghanistan, where the CIA now operates as if another branch of the military; in Pakistan where drones drop down death on the daily; in Iraq or wherever the US Pentagon decides we go next without needing to call it “war” and thus launch it legally. And people will continue to flee these nations (if they live through it) and many will make their way here. The US—both Left and Right—will continue to speak of these migrations as violations of our law and border, a law and border that are like one-way doors for bullets, bombs, and people and through their precise functioning undermine any and all we say about opportunity, fairness, and liberty. The US will continue to lock people up in the already overburdened and ridiculously blooming prison system. Movies like Blindside will continue to win Oscars and make white America feel it’s a good place, at heart. And once in a while, the Democrats will make a big show of passing a center-left piece of legislation.

Meanwhile, no branch of our government is doing much to help heal the world at large, or at least slow the destruction and degradation of our global community and its future.

It can be a scary thought if you dwell on it. Dancing helps.

Fear Felt Up High

And so the Democratic Party is now feeling a bit of anxiety over the immigration issue. I know because I am contacted sometimes by Democratic aides in DC. The Washington-Blogger relationship is new, and I’m sure they are not quite sure what to do with it, but I credit them for approaching and making contact with me and making an effort to…well. I guess that is the question. What are they after? How do they see a blogger? We know the protocol for the Press and the White House…but I am not quite that. All these areas are new. I am open to how they flesh out. But I am certainly not here to simply pass on messaging. I am not a tri-corder, or whatever Colbert called the MSM. No, Jim, I’m a blogger. And that means I’ll not just pass on what was said, but how I perceive that statement, or various statements. I’ll report on it, but I’ll report on it, and I’ll report on me, too! REPORTING ON IT! It’s like frakken Gonzo Ummagumma up in here.

After my multiple talks, I began to feel such a desire on their part to have me carry out certain actions and spread specific messages that I replied that they should find a way to pay me! This of course sent them off running for the moment. Not to mention it would ultimately be a unethical. That remark was my way of hinting that I don’t do specific jobs that other entities benefit solely from unless I’m paid or want to.

But I’ll pass on their words in case you do want to, or in case they are valuable. In that sense, sure. I’m happy to help. And they said to pressure Graham. Activists should be “outraged” about Graham’s proposal to criminalize immigrants. We should pressure the GOP so that they come on board to Obama’s side (bill?) and feel the heat.

But what bill? What leadership? Are they really asking bloggers, now, to fulfill Obama’s promise to the community?

Oye, if the nation can see or hear or yawn at what’s been going on so far with the immigrant community, well. As I said, we are pushing back against some deeply entrenched imaginations of what brown people are and so on. It’s a tough economy (I know, it’s hitting me hard) and it’s easy to begin hoarding and fearing. Especially when the government feeds that impulse! As I said to to both of them in so many words, how do you expect the grassroots to get excited and work for you? You are out there saying all these things about immigrants! Helping to spread fear and a punitive outlook! I laid out my thoughts as I’ve done here to them, to one of them. I brought up the larger global picture of what is going on in immigration. He said, true, “but this is a soundbyte nation.” And I said that I don’t want to treat my country like it is stupid. Why are the Democrats not educating people on this? Why do they bow to the Right with the talk of criminality and punishment? I talked about blaming the weakest link in the chain and about the Tyranny of the strong. And I said I had to take serious disagreement with the idea that making the People comfortable involves playing into the criminalization of Mexicans and immigrants. Nope. Not buying it.

I didn’t really know what they could do with everything I said. Maybe they passed it on, maybe they just wondered why they called The Angry Mexican in the first place and left it at that.

But I had to speak on why I had no passion really to run errands for the Democrats’ capitulatory, cowardly asses. “You need 60 votes for anything” one said, over and over. Which is fine. But who is leading the charge? Not Obama. Not the tiniest bit. And who made beautiful speeches to la comunidad via NCLR events and so on? Wait for it…yup. That was Obama.

After speaking to both an aide to a major Democratic player in  Congress and their Hispanic Outreach person, I can tell that they are sweating our reaction. New Media, activists, advocacy groups, the People. Why? Probably because they don’t plan on moving anything. President Obama tells the GOP that they have to offer up a bill, or that he said he was open, but he needs more of them on board. Reid’s office states it will introduce something by the end of the year if nothing happens. Schumer and Graham are out having beers and swatting at piñatas or something as they talk about how to extract the most shame from one square mile of tomato skins.

President Obama won’t be leading this charge. I love the man, no doubt. But look, son. He wouldn’t even come out swinging for his old disabled aunt. You think he’s gonna risk his ass over ten million Mexicans? No, I know stall talk when I hear it, and he won’t be championing the issue. He’d already be out there.

Today and Tomorrow

Which is why I began this piece with the question how do we react to this? Now? Let’s think and plan and know now, so that by the time it’s made inarguably clear through the ole up/down/up/down Public Option style desensitization method, we already know our plan. Do away with the doubt and hope so we can get practical. In what way? I don’t know. I guess that depends. It might be a purely personal plan, having to do with voting, or lifestyle or living area, brand of pop-tarts you buy…I can’t imagine. But despite our own personal reactions, we have to understand that this is not a tiny let down or broken promise, nor should it be. I can’t call it for you. But I think it’s safe to say despite the excuse-making, we were had.

That the Democrats will continue deporting Latin Americans at an astonishing rate (1,000 a day now?), enacting laws that devastate communities and punish individuals for what is really a larger issue (next we can punish the seals for drowning as our industries melt their icebergs) and our charming, sweet, and eloquent President will most certainly not use that enlivening tenor to educate the US masses on what they really need: to understand exactly what is going on that ties the health care issue together with the economy, our international policy, and immigration. The GOP will continue to react as if despoilers of the Pure need to be fought within her borders and across oceans, and never will the entire picture or truthful dialogue be presented to the People so that something—some real thing—might change in this whole setup.

Finally, as expected, the Democrats will stall on immigration and offer feints and tuff-guy soundbytes, but they will not come through, nor will they break it all down and get real with the People.

They can’t. The Good Cop, no matter how comforting, still needs you to fear the cell for his shtick to work.

Crystal Dillman, the fiancee of Luis Ramirez, is moved to tears as members of Latina show their support for the couple outside the Schuylkill County Courthouse, in Pottsville, Pa. , Monday, Aug. 18, 2008. A preliminary hearing was held for three suspects charged in the beating death of Luis Ramirez, a 25-year-old Mexican immigrant who was severely beaten on July 12, in Shenandoah, Pa. Foto from RBB.

…BUT JUSTICE MAY TURN THEM OUT.

In July of 2008, Luis Ramirez was kicked to death in the street until he died by a group of whites who had been out drinking all night. Their screams and slurs while they beat him into the concrete made clear why they did what they did. Nobody was in doubt, and that’s the kind of town it is. A town where even the police collude to hide the murder of Mexicans, because it might besmirch the reputations of high school football stars if people knew they were cold blooded murderers. A town where the all-white jury finds the killers guilty of nothing more than aggravated assault.

But today we see a little justice.

Washington (CNN) — Five people, including three police officers, have been indicted in the fatal race-related beating of a Latino man in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, the Justice Department said Tuesday. …

In June, an all-white Pennsylvania jury convicted Donchak and Piekarsky, then 19 and 17, of misdemeanor simple assault in Ramirez’s death and acquitted them of felony counts including aggravated assault, ethnic intimidation and hindering apprehension. The two were sentenced to up to 23 months in the county jail. The incident divided the small, rural mining town of Shenandoah into camps for and against the youths and became a flash point for racial tensions nationwide.

Jurors found Piekarsky not guilty of third-degree murder. Prosecutors alleged he delivered a fatal kick to Ramirez’s head after Ramirez was knocked to the ground in the alcohol-fueled brawl on a residential Shenandoah street.

After the verdict, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recommending the Justice Department pursue civil rights charges.

“The evidence suggests that Mr. Ramirez was targeted, beaten and killed because he was Mexican,” Rendell wrote. “Such lawlessness and violence hurts not only the victim of the attack, but also our towns and communities that are torn apart by such bigotry and intolerance.”

—CNN.com, 3 police officers among 5 people indicted in race-related beating

And we really should thank Mr. Rendell for doing so. Granted, he is probably as crooked as any other politician when it comes to raising funds and securing office, but he has helped bring about some justice in this case, and its an important one, I think.

A federal grand jury returned an indictment last week that charged Shenandoah Police Chief Matthew Nestor, Lt. William Moyer and Officer Jason Hayes with conspiring to obstruct justice during the federal probe of Ramirez’s beating. The indictment, unsealed today, also charges Moyer with witness and evidence tampering, and with lying to the FBI. If convicted, the officers face 20 years in prison on each of the obstruction charges, plus five years for conspiring to obstruct justice. Moyer also faces five years for making false statements to the FBI.

In a second indictment, Piekarsky and Donchak are charged with a federal hate crime that carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. Donchak also is charged in three additional counts with conspiring to obstruct justice and related offenses. Each of the conspiracy charges carries a maximum sentence of 20 years, while the other offenses each bring a five-year maximum sentence.

The murder of Luis Ramirez was the first to be nationally spotlighted by many human rights groups as an example of the violence that a burgeoning anti-immigrant movement has produced.

—splc, Pennsylvania Police Officers Indicted in Cover-Up of Immigrant’s Killing

IN THIS WEEK’S News With Nezua, I touch on Mexican president Felipe Calderón’s latest move of cutting off half a million peoples’ power (and thus their wells and water) due to the municipality being delinquent on bills. This story winds down deep into the fabric of Mexican politics and power struggles.

Pobre México is fighting to stay solvent, as the economic downturn of course, has a passport, and crosses the border all day, both ways. And with FeCal at the helm, well. His idea of change was an onslaught of failed drug war (an estimated 16,500 corpses stacked up at FeCal’s door now) that the USA is still helping to fund via the Mérida Initiative that Bush brokered. Ugh.

Pobre México. Tan lejos de dios, y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos.

—Porfirio Díaz

Here is, at first glance, a fleeting fragment of news from October, wherein FeCal opted not to close Luz y Fuerza, México’s second-largest power utility.

• Mexico Ministry Rules Out Creating New State Power Company

“Mexico decided it won’t create a new state power company to replace Luz y Fuerza del Centro, the Energy Ministry said. … President Felipe Calderon ordered on Oct. 11 the liquidation of Luz y Fuerza, the nation’s second-largest power supplier, firing more than 40,000 electricity workers. The decree was because the company’s finances were “unsustainable” amid mounting losses, he said.”

The thing is, in the US when we read news in English language on typical US news sites (like above) we almost always get FeCal’s desired spin, or I should say the government’s point of view only. And FeCal and his crew are not El Voz de la Gente, bleeve that.

Note that in this article, it claims FeCal was going to close Luz y Fuerza for rather dry reasons. “Unsustainable” and all that. Sure. Just fire FORTY THOUSAND WORKERS, another day in the life, move along. There’s more to this story, have no doubt.

If you have been following Mexican news at all, FeCal (a not so nice name for Felipe Calderón) was—to oversimplify a bit, as I am here overall—their George W. Bush. In fact, Felipe Calderón stole the presidential election with the help of some of the same players who helped Bush. I know all this should have links, but if you go to El Grito (I’m running around this morning, have errands, tiny break in video production schedule) and search for these people and you will find it all. Many hours spent on those stories back then.

Manuel Lopez Obradór was running as (and I do think he is far more of this camp than FeCal) Mister Downtrodden, Mister Para la Gente. Mister Left. While FeCal was and is Mister “Let’s Be Like the USA,” working with the Bush admin. He is Mister “Let’s Do All They Want Us To, Let’s Militarize This Joint, Let’s Wiretap, Let’s Bring on a Drug War.” And of course, that’s why he was given the presidency, and why the US GOP GOV would surely cheer it on. (Although Obama is fully committed to funding Mérida, even past its expiration date which really, really, really angers me with his adminstration.)

It’s unfortunate to me that the US is so very in the dark on all Mexico’s politics…because truth is, we better know this stuff. It’s all affecting us, all the time. And the relationship between the US and MX has so much history. And the media and governments actually use the language barrier and the apathy that dwells north of the Rio Bravo to the advantage of the elites and to the people’s detriment.

Anyway. I hope to help bridge this gap a tiny bit myself, and my plans are to become far more effective at it in time. It will take time, and it will take many of us. For now, I can offer you the bare outline of  some of these shapes, and if you like you can research and find out more.

Mexican Electrical Workers Union members protest the summary firing of 44,000 members. Photo: La Jornada

There’s history and politics, of course, behind what is going on with the power plants in Mexico. And in general, North and South of the border, you and I need to keep an eye on the plight of workers and the unions. That (and the media) is where the people’s power lies. And that’s where oppressive power cracks down hard. (Peep the body count that journalism produces in war zones.)

Things aren’t as cut and dry with the Luz y Fuerza story as bloomberg.com would have you believe. As one could learn in the Narcosphere:

In the middle of the night last Saturday, President Felipe Calderon sent six thousand soldiers and militarized Federal Police to take over state power company Luz y Fuerza installations in Mexico City and the states of Mexico, Puebla, Morelos, and Hidalgo.  Immediately following the takeover, Calderon issued an executive order closing Luz y Fuerza.  Because no law or decree can go into effect until it is published in the federal government’s Official Diary of the Federation, the government published the executive order in a special edition of the Official Diary of the Federation to coincide with the military and police raids that closed Luz y Fuerza.

Federal Police occupy a Luz y Fuerza building. Photo: La Jornada

Mexican legal experts have criticized Calderon’s action as illegal, unconstitutional, and “an excessive and abusive use of power” because he by-passed Congress when he decided to close Luz y Fuerza and deploy the military and police against workers.

The government’s official justification for closing Luz y Fuerza is that the company’s operating expenses exceed those of other state-owned companies.  It claims its use of the military and militarized federal police was a pre-emptive strike: it wanted to prevent workers from striking, taking control of the facilities, and cutting off power in protest of the closing of Luz y Fuerza.  However, a week prior to the police and military takeover, the union specifically stated in a press release that it had no intentions of striking nor cutting off power to electricity customers.

Jose Hernandez, a leader of the Mexican Union of Electricity workers (SME)

As little as I know about Mexican politics and media, once you find one spot of corruption, you will find more. And they all magically seem to connect the more you read. Even these recent events, and the arc of Mexican right wing politics since FeCal stole the office.

…[I]n Mexico, we have an ultra-right national government. Formally its considered Christian democratic, but its lead by the extreme right group, el Yunque. This group is anti-communist and well linked to the right wing groups of the Catholic Church. They’re committed to the privatisation of the energy sector, of electricity and oil and last year they wanted to pass reforms to privatise the oil, but they didn’t achieve it because of a large national mobilisation.”

“These mobilisations were lead by Manuel Obrador, who’s a leader of the PRD (Revolutionary Democratic Party) and from the most nationalist and progressive section of this party. He also ran in the 2006 elections, in which all most all studies say there was fraud. Calderon won by 0.56%. Despite large mobilisations we couldn’t overturn the fraud.”

“So this right wing government aims to deepen what they call the structural reforms, reform the work law to allow for flexibility of the working day, for unstable work, for sub-contracted labour, and the biggest obstacle to be able to pass these reforms is the SME.”

—Jose Hernandez, a leader of the Mexican Union of Electricity workers (SME)

The Mexican Union of Electricity Workers (SME) is almost 100 years old, known for being very independent of the MX government, and democratic in nature. This is a rarity in México, as most unions are corrupt and inextricably linked with the government. SME  won the right to retirement for workers in 1936 through strikes, which was a huge strengthening of the working class. And most importantly, SME works out of Luz y Fuerza. As we can see, like Lopez Obradór, SME is aligned with the People, and not with Big Business or Iron-Fisted Gobierno, and thus is an enemy to the FeCal administration.

And so Felipe Calderón and his forces have been doing all they can to destroy Luz y Fuerza, and take down SME with it. But this predates even FeCal, and is a long running motion recognizable in many nations, when the richest and most powerful suck upon the necks of the  poorest and most vulnerable.

“The government has been trying to destroy the SME for 20 years, they’ve been investing in the CFE, in modernising it, and not in Luces y Fuerzas. So now Luces y Fuerzas seems like an inefficient company and its equipment is ancient and it needs a lot of maintenance to work. The government effectively took away its ability to generate electricity, and now it’s buying 98% of it its electricity from CFE.”

“And the government designed a system of accounting to make it seem like Luces y Fuerzas was going bankrupt.” …

And of course, this isn’t just about electricity, though the power utilities are surely a massive force to control. The government of Mexico is looking ahead. This is yet one more strike against the people—and we are mostly talking the indigenous in México, the poor, because this won’t hurt most of the expats or the ones cashing in—and a strike for the illusion that Mexico can become a “first world country” if it just keeps erecting hotels, strengthening the military, and crushing the poor.

“Another reason why the government wants to privatise Luces y Fuerzas and destroy our union is because of the possibility of further profit. With the new technology the power lines and cables can also be used to transmit images, voice, and information- that is, television, internet and phone. It’s a bigger business than electricity. The union has proposed that Luces y Fuerzas provide those services, without any concessions to private companies, which is what the government wants.”

“It shows the irrationality of capitalism, these things could be provided free to society, but they want to privatise it all to make money.”

So you see, it wasn’t just that the Mexican President decided, oh, that finances weren’t quite working out so they laid off a few people. This isn’t about a steward of the nation making wise decisions about safeguarding the People’s interest, no not at all! This is about greed, corporate and state hunger, and the People’s needs aren’t even in the picture.

Police occupy Luz Y Fuerza. Photo: El Pais

And that’s why it’s so important to keep our eyes on the unions and the strikes and the workers.

“The first thing we did in response was to mobilise; on 16 October there were nearly 500,000 people; unionists from various unions, students, Obrador’s movement, farmers- that is, the people mobilised, and despite the huge media campaign attacking the SME, saying we are corrupt, we’re lazy.”

“And in the legal terrain, we’ve been fighting as well, seeking legal protection before the actions of the government.”

And that’s one thing Mexicanos sure are good at. Standing up for their rights. Let’s hope they prevail, because for such injustices to sweep down and grab la gente by the neck and so close to us and without our help is a failure of activism and people power. If borders did not wall off humanity to sections of our brain, the People would have all the rights and powers that would help the world thrive. I’ll type that one more time because it’s so important.

If we did not use “the border” concept to separate in our imagination who is a friend, who is an enemy, who is “US” who is “THEM,” who is a resource, and who is in need, there would be no state power or army that could continue to make us toil and die for the continued power and wealth of the very few who are on top of this global pyramid.

It begins in the mind. Those who would rail against migration, against natural flow of river and human, who would deprive fellow humans of healing and medicine when they need it, who would insist on fences and walls and guns and prisons for those ousted by economic needs…when it is those very pieces of machinery that we are being penned into suffering with…today’s “immigration restrictionists” are members or affiliates of hate, they are distracted, they are simply tools of the same forces who delight in having us at each others’ necks while we are all exploited and robbed.

Here in the US, we see more and more laws being instituted that penalize the poor, that oust the homeless, that ticket those who feed them. And in México, half a million people in Ecatepec have had their wells shut off.

Where is our real fight? With people of different skin tones? With people who use different word sounds to express their dreams, their pain, their hope, their hunger?

Or with those who move hugely and cloaked over with flag and legal document, drawing blood worldwide and siphoning away oil, monies, and the very water that we need to live?

EUGENE, OREGON CONTINUES ITS WOEFUL TASER TRIALS, fumbling with this new electric torture device that has cops in a tizzy from coast to coast.

I covered the very first use of Tasers in Eugene, Oregon while working for MTV’s Street Team in 2008. I also covered the fifth use of tasers here in Eugene, when demonstrating college student Ian Van Ornum was tazed to the ground until he had seizures (video here, and embedded below; article here). +/-»

Well, now we have another incident of Taser abuse in Eugene, Oregon (sombrero tip to Angry Asian Man) and believe it or not, it’s by the same cop who tazed Van Ornum. This time, he sent 50,000 volts into the body of a human being for Sleeping While Chinese.

The same Eugene police officer who used a Taser to subdue a protester last year in downtown Eugene is at the center of another high-profile stun gun incident — this one involving a Chinese, non-English-speaking college student whom the officer shocked during an ill-fated confrontation last month in west Eugene. …

This isn’t the first time Warden has faced Taser-related criticism. In May 2008, he used the weapon to control anti-pesticide protester Ian Van Ornum at a downtown rally while another officer struggled to handcuff the University of Oregon student.

Several witnesses charged that Warden unjustly used the Taser on Van Ornum, who was later convicted of resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

Van Ornum filed a formal complaint with the city against Warden and other officers involved in his arrest, which prompted a city investigation into their actions.

That’s about the connection to Van Ornum. Here’s the recent result of our new Electric Sadism Machines:

An investigation is under way to determine whether a Eugene police officer overreacted when he used a Taser stun gun to subdue a foreign college student who the officer mistakenly believed was trespassing in a west Eugene apartment.

The male student is a resident of an Asian country who does not speak English. He is involved in a University of Oregon program, but it is unclear whether he is an enrolled student, city Police Auditor Mark Gissiner said.

The incident unfolded the evening of Sept. 22 when a prospective tenant of an apartment on West 11th Avenue saw a man sleeping inside and reported it to police.

The property’s landlord, Timothy Breen of Eugene, said police called him about the initial report. Breen — who said transients had caused trouble at the complex before — met officers at the apartment complex and told them that he believed the unit should have been vacant.

A few minutes later, Breen said, he overheard the sound of a stun gun being deployed. Officers then came outside and spoke to Breen.

It was then that the landlord realized that the two Asian men inside the apartment had picked up keys for the unit from his office about three hours earlier.

The last time Officer Judd Warden was accused of discharging his Taser in an inappropriate way, the Lane County District Attorney pulled some sneaky stuff. Before Cristina Beamud finished auditing the situation to determine if Warden should be disciplined in any way, the DA decided to jump up before she was done and instead charge Van Ornum with crimes. (See second letter for one Eugene resident’s feelings on this—they were not alone, many felt this way because it was a plainly dishonest maneuver.)

The cop was declared righteous, the student deemed criminal, the electricity that laid him to the ground in spasm, validated and just. And so the law and the law’s thugs work hand in hand to prevent a larger sense of justice from playing out, while a young man concerned with toxins in the environment learns a harsh lesson in college. Fighting the power means you are in a serious underdog position and that sooner or later, they will come for you with violence sanctioned by law.

This time, the Officer Judd Warden and the landlord, and probably the state will excuse this as “Well, Jeez. I meant to blast the shit out of a sleeping transient! Not a person who rents an apartment!” and I hope it’s immediately clear how amoral this type of thinking is.

And why is it that the cops—these supposed badasses with jingly guns, darts, masks, cuffs, and training in submission holds—are always blasting homeless people, sleeping people, wheelchair users, shackled people…?????

You really want the nation to fear and hate cops even more than so many do now? Keep at this. Keep zapping people. Keep electrocuting people for “attitude problems” or “fast moves” (like turning away from you), or for sleeping in the wrong place; keep making it clear that being law-abiding isnt good enough anymore. Keep creating a collective mental image of bulletproofed goons shocking vulnerable or already incapacitated people, and handicapped, and pregnant, and elderly, and mentally confused, and homeless people.

Enough of that and one day you’ll need to hire your own protection from those you are ostensibly here to protect!

[This is the video I made while the auditing process—of what was deemed a "test case" by the Oregon Emerald for Taser use in the city—was still playing out.]

WHEN DEALING WITH LAW, always remember that police train in intimidating people and they lie as a matter of their everyday behavior. They not only know that ignorance of the law does not entitle you to break it, but they feel that your ignorance of the law paves the way for them to personally fool you about what the law is and then use state power to punish you for falling into their trap. When I was first told of police as a young boy (in school), I briefly made an erroneous link in my mind between “justice” in the sense of hired law vs actual Justice. At that age, too, my own family countered that message with other ones which were far more accurate and finally at 17 I was disabused of the notion completely by an intense experience that shunted me into the system.

Make no mistake: Police are state-employed gun and electric torture-device wielders who, in most cases (enough that it’s safest to assume it of all of them), believe that they have the moral and legal right to lie to you and treat you however they want, even tasering and consequently killing you if they feel like it. (While we are here, I will remind you if you are innocent (and obviously even if not) to never speak to police in any instance and to be smart about transporting your mota.) [Insert favorite disclaimer here about Police Also Save Lives, Rescue Kittens, etc.]

So as you can see, I have no bias. That said, a compa (Carlos Galindo) sent me this video of our friends over at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (whom I talk about in this video short on 287(g)) getting a bit uptight as they hassle Latino vendors at El Gran Mercado. And why wouldn’t they? In case it’s been lost in all the shuffle, it’s not only morally wrong to racially profile, it is against the law.

Note first how they speak quite authoritatively, telling Carlos what to do and what the law is. They lie. If he were to have believed them, it would have ended after the first question. But he knows his rights here (mostly, some he had to learn after or through the experience, which is always a great teacher!) and he refuses to give up his camera. Note the cop backs off.

Later it gets fun when the nasty bully strips away the veneer and makes it clear how he sees the world.

Here’s what Carlos wrote to me:

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office took my camera and deleted all the files even though I identified myself as a member of the media trying to record in a public place. They violated my first amendment rights. Dan Barr a Phoenix Constitutional rights attorney saw the video listed below and says my first amendment rights were violated. They also violated my 4th amendment right in failing to have probable cause for search and seizure, nor did they execute a sworn warrant to take my camera.

Unbeknownst to the lying bullies with badges, you can recover your data with software.

Also unbeknownst to the MCSO, a second camera was (not aimed at much but the ground) but was recording the aftermath. Note what sounds like small bursts of electricity from some device (Tazer gun?) as things unwind.

“Don’t argue with me about your civil rights.”
—Cop

You know what is more powerful than racist and renegade law? All of us. With our cameras. And knowing our rights.

Keep on. Carlos, you are doing a service to the community. You are part of the Real Media—one that works in service of the People. What a refreshing change.

[For those new to UMX, The Weekly Immigration Wire is my weekly (paid) article I write for The Media Consortium. It is a column that runs on a few other sites (see end of post).]

by Nezua, TMC MediaWire Blogger • [this post originally titled Weekly Immigration Wire: Why Are Hate Crimes on the Rise?]

On May 30, 29-year-old Raul Flores and his 9-year-old daughter Brisenia Flores were shot to death, purportedly by a group of far-right anti-immigrant activists who broke into the Flores home by posing as police officers. On Friday, Shawna Forde, anti-immigrant activist and Executive Director of the Minutemen American Defense, (MAD) along with accomplices Jason Eugene Bush and Albert Robert Gaxiola were arrested on two counts of first-degree murder and burglary charges related to the Flores murders.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo notes that the MAD website denounces the murders, but wryly adds that the distancing is “a tad belied by headlines down the page,” like “Subhuman Mexicans (God’s Children?) Prey on Countrymen.” The Flores murders are part of a palpable political and social climate of hostility and revulsion toward Latin American immigrants that is running amok in our nation.

As Democracy Now reports, the FBI has noted a rise in hate crimes against Latinos, which isn’t difficult to verify anecdotally. And, according to Laura Flanders at GritTV, “economics, racial panic, immigration, [and] right wing rhetoric” all play a crucial role in this rise. If our government continues to spend resources that help portray people as both predatory and “subhuman,” it will continue to foster a perception that violence against this class can be committed in good conscience.

This national, anti-immigrant fervor has resulted in a courts system in which “countless immigrants are subjected to harassing or denigrating treatment” and “have no assistance in navigating the byzantine court process,” writes Mary Giovagnoli at AlterNet. She reports that “misguided deportation-only strategies have led to a breakdown in our immigration court system.” The system is overloaded, backlogged, and not operating effectively or humanely.

The U.S. immigration process is in disrepair due to neglect and improper stopgap measures (like agreement 287(g)), just as broken bones will fuse in any manner if not set correctly. We are mired in an interim period and tensions will continue rising until we take on the challenge as a nation. In any part of the process, from application to arrest to detention to deportation, there are glaring problems. RaceWire touches briefly on the lack of accountability in the detention system.

Is the increasing absorption of virulently racist mentalities into mainstream groups a terrible confluence of unrelated factors, or a predictable reaction to the “browning” of this country? At the same time the U.S. military has relaxed its rules on accepting recruits with ties to white supremacist movements, so have circumstances allowed for “a new crop of anti-immigrant groups to enter the mainstream dialogue, even though many have ties to hate groups with violent records,” as Miriam Zoila Pérez writes for Feministing.

The video above depicts Shawna Forde as a spokesman for one of these hate groups, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). FAIR made news on Tuesday for disingenuously presenting statistics that demonize immigrants as a strain to the economy. At AlterNet, Walter Ewing exposes the tortured logic FAIR employs and makes the case that “once … inconvenient truths are taken into account, FAIR’s ‘cost’ evaporates.”

It wasn’t long ago that we reported on how many anti-immigrant pundits were using the Swine Flu to create a toxic  anti-immigrant/anti-Latino climate. And sadly, none of those people understand how hate speech leads directly to violence. Talking Points Memo makes the alleged murderers’ ties to the anti-immigration movement clear.

When the government build walls to stave off fears, it is, ironically, reinforcing that same emotion of fear. When hostile and punitive legislation is enacted, fear of the Other is mixed with aggression. When a fearful and aggressively rigid mindset is applied to social fluctuations that require flexibility and change, the result is an increase in the return of that negative energy.

And yet, hope will live on. And sometimes that hope will lead to historic change. Which is why we must keep writing and talking, keep pushing, and keep challenging all the injustice we find.

————————————

Also featured at The Sanctuary, Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, Open Salon, DailyKos, MyDD, Open Left, FDL, Rabble, Applied Research Center, Progressive Book Club, America’s Voice….

WHEN LUIS RAMIREZ WAS BEAT TO DEATH in the street for simply being Mexican While in Public, the Founding Editors of (award winning site!) The Sanctuary penned this piece. We did it carefully and over a few days, because we had a point we wanted to make very clear; one we did not see being underlined in the media. A point crucial to understanding the Ramirez killing as well as the killing of Marcelo Lucero and Wilter Sanchez and Jose Sucuhañay…and so many other vicious attitudes and assaults against the Latino comunidad.

The point was that this was not A Killing, not even simply A Hate Killing. (Hell, the all-white jury decided Ramirez’s cracked-open-skull-n-brains wasn’t even worth a murder charge, but only a Simple Assault!) The point is, this most-decidedly hateful Hate Crime was but one “data point” (if you like phrases like this) in a larger quotient. As such, all these killings are.

That is, it does not help us see any valuable truth or approach any larger societal problem to isolate the event and wall it off from the larger context of anti-immigrant and thus anti-Latino hate and hostility in this nation. The pandering anti-immigrant politicians (mostly on the Right tho not all by any means); the Lou Dobbs/BilloReilly/Glen Beck/Rush Limbaugh/Sheriff Arpaio (and I include this creaky bigot with this crew because he fancies himself a TV star now)/Jon Justice entertainerhaterz; the stall on humane immigration legislation combined with the ICE movement/detention industry which paints immigrants/latinos as criminals; and the thinly-disguised hate groups like FAIR and the Minutemen and NumbersUSA and ALIPAC—all these factors collude to create an intense soup of racist hate that is marking Latinos/as fair game for violence and for the dehumanization that makes it possible to view this violence as nothing more than “isolated incidents” as well as let hate-motivated murderers off with a “Simple Assault” charge.

Obviously, we—The Sanctuary editors—were on target with our message, as the Ramirez piece has been picked up by La Voz de Esperanza, a publication of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center in San Antonio, Texas, to be printed in their June 2009 issue. They told me they feel it best contextualizes the event as well as the climate in our nation today that leads to such hate crimes. This was a great satisfaction to us, but obviously getting even the right message into print will not stop the hate or the violence. That will take all of us. Though to get there, we do need to be having the right conversation. That’s hard to do when even people who condemn the killing equate murdering children with “extremists” on the other “side.” As if pro-migrant groups could ever be compared with such vile actions!

I agree that it is important to delve into and discover the other criminal associations and deeds of Shawna Forde and Eugene Bush and all the Minutemen who are murderers, thieves, rapists, etc. Dig it all up and put it in the light. Of course we must and should. Sadly, though, the effect of all this digging, unfortunately seems to be coupled with the message that so many hate groups would also want to broadcast, a message not unlike the one that says Conservatism can never failed, only be failed by poor actors. It is “these were lone wackos not acting in line withour movement.” This would be an utterly deceitful line to offer, as it’s well-known that Forde was not an unknown outsider within the anti-immigrant (and… more to the point… anti-Mexican) movement, as amigo Richard puts it.

The truth is, it really doesn’t matter how wacked out Eugene Bush or Lou Dobbs or Shawna Forde are, or if Forde was crazy or planning to overthrow the US. What matters is how well she fit into the FAIR/Minutemen/CIS/NumbersUSA/ALIPAC crowd, how on-point and on-message Bush and Forde were, and how indicative their attitudes and messaging is of the current anti-immigrant “Nativist Lobby” that the Southern Poverty Law Center reports on.

Media Matters is holding a panel on this topic, and drawing the frame around on consequences of growing culture of violent rhetoric in right-wing media. And that’s good. But that’s not the bullseye, to my way of aiming.

No matter what legislation passes, no matter what pundits are censured, no matter what mealy-mouth backpedaling any politicians do when they sense the sway and national mood is not with anti-Latino hate, no matter how high in number the hate crimes against my people grow, what WILL continue, I’m afraid, is the detention industry’s growth. As Amnesty International reports, “[t]ens of thousands of people languish in U.S. immigration detention facilities every year — including a number of U.S. citizens — without receiving a hearing to determine whether their detention is warranted.”

ICE projects 400,000 more arrests this year. And these ain’t hotels they are sticking people in.

And why is this business so untouchable? Why is this business kept out of the spotlight? Because the US Prison Industrial Complex needs it’s cashola.

It is not just “Right Wing” “violent rhetoric” that poses danger to Latin@s, though that is no small thing to be dismissed or overlooked. But this violence and this view on migrants, Mexicans and brown people in general is part and parcel of our entire national lust for incarceration. And the stats will tell you who beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is non-whites being locked up in greater numbers. Sadly, even the US military is doing its part.

The Liberal blogosphere and Left wing groups can stand apart and aside from the Wackiest of Loners and point at them if it makes them feel better. But the wise would lift their eyes and see the larger picture unfolding before us all. It is not pretty. After all, when you send a message to the nation in many ways—large, small, loud and quiet—that brown people are criminals and the way to deal with their growing numbers and power is to break down their doors with weaponry and jail them…why do you imagine humans will not learn the lesson and join in? They will, as we see from incident after “isolated” incident. And now, a dour and fearful miasma surrounds us all. The nation—in the form of pundits, radio hosts, politicians, ICE, and “anti-immigrant groups”—is terrorizing Latin@s.

And that stink? It is not a bushel of rotten apples we can toss in a box. It is an orchard full of trees, and many of them drooping with insidious rot.

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I’M VERY SORRY TO SAY that Brisenia Flores and her father Raul are dead. That’s Brisenia on the left. The Flores familia was sleeping when anti-immigrant crusaders busted down their door and invaded their home, ICE-style, before shooting the father and daughter to death.

A real class act, these anti-immigrant Minuteman types. Whether it’s being thieves and deceiving those they work with as well as whom they raise money from, or kicking down doors and shooting little girls and their families in bed, they are hard at work defending their diseased sense of reality from the world.

An outspoken anti-immigration activist who was at the center of a series of violent crimes in Everett earlier this year now stands accused of the home-invasion killings of an Arizona man and his 9-year-old daughter.

Hyper-Tanned Anti-Immigrant Minuteman Leader Shawna Forde Charged With Murder

Shawna Forde, 41, and two associates in her Minuteman American Defense group are charged with two counts of first-degree murder, one count of first-degree burglary and one count of aggravated assault, according to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department in Arizona.

Eugene Bush

The May 30 killings were believed to be premeditated and part of a plan to steal money and drugs to finance the Minuteman group she leads. Forde’s own family said that the woman weeks ago had discussed using robberies to raise money for her cause.

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik told the Green Valley News and Sun that Forde was trying right up until her arrest Friday “to get together a large amount of money to further sophisticate the type of operation she’s interested in.”

—[Anti-Immigrant] Activist Shawna Forde charged in double slaying

Salud, Raul y Brisenia. I can only imagine the pain your wife/mother has to live with, now. May she find some relief and healing as soon as possible. And may justice come swiftly for those who have gouged so much amor y sangre from her life, and taken you all away from each other for a while.

THE SANCTUARY EDITORS (who successfully solicited Presidential Candidate Obama to clearly outline his position on immigration policy while running for president) have issued a position paper on the Luis Ramirez Murder.

We’ve taken our time with it, writing it over a few days. We have been very disappointed overall with how this story is being framed. This is not just another “hate crime.” This is not a disparate event to be mingled and mixed with every biased attack. As La Mala puts it over at VivirLatino:

Seems li[k]e every org and their mother want to take the recent injustice in the Luis Ramirez murder case and use it for toned down cries for justice separated from the multiple places that breed the kind of hate and disrespect that led to the crossroads we as a community find ourselves at now.

This is not just a tool to be used to leverage the current hate crime bill before the House and then call it even. This crime and subsequent unjust court ruling is a call to look over an entire system which has built a permission into our culture, an imperative and a directive to harm that is now being taken up all over and resulting in killings like that of Luis Ramirez.

Below is the full post.

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THREE THINGS immediately shock the conscious soul upon learning about the murder of Luis Ramirez. The simple manner in which he died is the first of those.

Ramirez, a father of three, was beaten to death in the streets of Pennsylvania by as many as seven young men who were at the end of a night of drinking. The motive? Judging by the slurs heaped upon him along with the many blows to his body: apparently nothing more than being out at night while Mexican. The teens who ganged up on Ramirez came upon him walking with a young woman, reportedly his girlfriend’s sister. Obviously bringing threat, they asked him what he was doing out at that time of day. Then they set upon him. In the end it was a final hard kick to the skull which left the 25-year-old father convulsing on the concrete with fatal brain damage.

The police arrived shortly after the attack but rather than jump into hot pursuit of the white criminals, they chose instead to search Latino eyewitnesses for weapons, claiming that following the guilty parties simply wasn’t their “priority.”Ramirez’s attackers weren’t arrested for another two weeks, even though eyewitnesses at the scene knew who they were without a doubt.

The second stomach-churner is the jury’s decision to exonerate Ramirez’s killers from the charges of third-degree murder, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and ethnic intimidation, leaving to stand only the reduced charge of simple assault. This, despite the testimony of Eileen Burke, a retired police officer at the scene. Burke testified that at the end, the murderers yelled to Ramirez’ girlfriend “You effin bitch, tell your effin Mexican friends get the eff out of Shenandoah or you’re gonna be laying effin next to him.” This, despite two of the accused men themselves admitting to yelling “go home you Mexican [expletive]” at the scene of the crime.

Yet somehow, in the face of these facts, the all-white jury ruled there was no evidence of “ethnic intimidation.” According to a CNN report, town residents were quick to explain and downplay the actions of this violent group of “star students and football players” as “just an alcohol-fueled confrontation among kids.” They furthered their argument by reciting “a litany of attacks allegedly perpetrated by Latinos against Anglos.” Perhaps they could have saved time and breath by saying The spics had it coming.

The third, overarching, shocking reality thrown into sharp relief by the murder of Luis Ramirez is how easily an environment of violently xenophobic rhetoric and targeted hate has normalized a modern-day lynching to the point that it is absorbed and diluted with barely a blip into the everyday news cycle and into public consciousness. How effortlessly a subhuman category of being is constructed and subsequently reviled. How a verdict has been passed on just how to deal with this synthesized Creature, and how effective that virulent messaging has been evidenced in a death like this one and in a pattern that plays out in various towns, cities, and states across the country. Seemingly unconnected cells of hatred hammer the dominant culture’s sentence down upon a targeted group, and the system nods and winks when all is done.

______

The process of defining a subhuman class and institutionalizing discrimination and violence against that group is not new. How quickly and conveniently some of us allow our collective memory to cover its own tracks. Parasite, diseased, leeching, dangerous, over-breeding, vermin. These terms and this imagery have been deployed for ages, on various groups of people, on various pieces of land, in the service of various endeavors; and always to bring about the same ends. To demonize and dehumanize a group of people so that other people come to understand that the social compact with the demonized group is broken; that discrimination and violence against the dehumanized class now carries no moral consequence. That is the meaning of this latest ruling by an all-white jury in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. Racial murder of a Mexican carries the same consequence as walking up to a white person and punching them in the belly: simple assault.

The notion of a categorically subhuman class of persons who exists below the rules and obligations the rest of humanity warrants is as simple as it is ugly. Ugly like the prison at Guantánamo, where unfortunate bodies from the Middle East are deprived of anything resembling the law, ideals, or morality most Americans feel they deserve by mere existence. Ugly like Abu Ghraib. Ugly like the prisons in Baghdad and Bagram, where atrocities appear to be the norm. Even as our government promised that it was “fighting Them There” in order to prevent “Them” from coming “Here”, an ideology of dehumanizing terror was propagating and swelling in our own ranks and within our own borders; an ideology which devalues “Hajis” in the same way that it foists hatred upon Mexicans and all others who sound or appear somehow Latin American.

The murder of Luis Ramirez-like the murders of Marcelo Lucero and Wilter Sanchez and Jose Sucuhañay-are but logical steps in the process of defining a subhuman class of ALIEN and inciting anti-Latino violence, which will continue unless marked changes are made in our society. Changes in the immigration dialogue. Changes in the way pundits frame and discuss the issue. Perhaps even more importantly, changes to the fashion in which both Republicans and Democrats pitch and move legislation. The entire “Enforcement Agenda” that directly links immigration status (and thus all Latinos) to criminality, discussed coolly by seemingly rational voices on both Right and Left, is but the socially and politically acceptable umbrella which shields crimes like the murder of Luis Ramirez. The ubiquitous message resonating from coast to coast of this continent, across which peoples of Latin American descent have been migrating back and forth for thousands of years, is that we are in the crosshairs. And that we deserve to be in those hair-trigger sights.

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Though it is necessary and a good thing, it is not enough to pass H.S. 1913, the current Hate Crimes bill that has cleared the Senate and is now headed for the House. Nor is it adequate to simply pass the D.R.E.A.M Act (though, again necessary, so please sign), and/or to legalize the immigrants who are working and raising families in the US, and be done with it. These things must be done, and soon. But we must not rest there.

First, we must demand a satisfactory accounting find its way to this unresolved injustice. (Please sign the petitionto add your voice.) Next, we must be honest about what has happened here in our nation; about how this gathering animosity has manifested in various ways to result in a targeting of one class of people; about how segments of our current culture and business world stand to profit from maintaining the status quo, despite the harm. We must think of how we can personally lend a hand in changing this in our own communities and social circles. Finally, we must change on a much larger scale, very particular and practical elements of this manifestation.

Continuing to reinforce and advocate for the image of a permanent criminal and essentially subhuman class of people by maintaining Immigrations Customs and Enforcement (ICE) in its current form; the raids that rake psychological gashes into entire communities, the booming detention center industry, stopgap measures like 287g, virulently anti-Spanish language and anti-Mexican rhetoric blasted out over acceptable media outlets, as well as continuing to build up a heavily militarized border-this can end in nothing but more violence against and deaths of Latinos/as in the US, and on a growing scale.

There are those who turn away from trying to alter the course of something seemingly so large, or who simply grow more cynical and bitter with each new injustice. They would have you believe the US will never learn, that this government and this culture are incapable of remembering or acting on the very important lessons from which we bear national scars already; lessons that would prevent us from repeating yet another harm against yet another group of people of color; but in new ways and in a new year.

The Sanctuary Editors reject such a view in favor of self-empowered, self-organized social change. We know it will not be easy to turn this tide. But we must. Such a change is incumbent upon all of us and we will all pay a price if we do not succeed, with both a further loss of life, and our own humanity. We must pass humane legislation, and demand that true justice play out in our courts. We must insure that civil rights be protected. We must loudly expose and forcefully challenge any pundits or politicians who are constructing a subhuman class with their words and actions, and as bloggers and activists who fight for human rights, we must hold our fellow activists equally accountable to take a strong stand on the right side of the bright line drawn by this tragedy. Luis Ramirez will never come back to his family. Let us ensure that his life was not lost in vain.