THE WHITE HOUSE understands the value of the press conference and the press release and the public statement. Many positive things have been said about what will be done on immigration legislation. What is getting less notice are some of the actual moves being made in realtime—like the expansion of the disastrous 287(g) program.
THE INSIDIOUS AND DEPRAVED AND VAMPIRIC NATURE of the detention industry is a topic I cover here regularly. Latino convicts are now the largest ethnic population in the federal prison system, and all due to the criminalization of immigration that Bush brought upon us and that Obama, so far, has yet to dismantle or substantially reshape.
THEY BESEECH THE WISE LATINA TO SOOTHE THEIR TREMBLING AND WOUNDED EGOS. Like petulant babies they repeatedly, almost to the point of absurdity, demand she confess her irrational temperament. And throughout it all cannot see the irony.
SO YESTERDAY AND TODAY have been the SCOTUS hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court. I have no doubt that she’ll shatter the small stereotype some of these ailing senators like Scat-mouth Sessions hold in their brittle minds, and it may hurt. I also have no doubt she will rock the process in general, and we shall see her on the Supreme Court before long.
TODAY IS THE DAY of México’s midterm elections. While Felipe Calderón is not on the ballot, his policies are under scrutiny. Support for or against PAN, FeCal’s party, will be interpreted as approval or disapproval for his violence-heavy policies. Of course, that’s assuming the vote tallies are legit.
WHO WILL GIVE THE DEMOCRATS A TOUGH TALK? Who will tell them that in order to rise above the well-entrenched practices of the Right, they will need to be daring, intelligent, and original? Who will assure them they possess the ability to be both honest and victorious?
SOMETHING MUST CHANGE. When US citizens already suffering from a terrible loss are attacked by other citizens en masse, and for nothing more than having Spanish names, it makes me feel like the past has reared up; days of Civil Rights era struggle, days of anti-Greaser hate, days of Los Vatos Locos and the dangerous fabled Pachuco. La Lucha Sigue.
A DEPARTMENT LIKE ICE has no conscience, of course. Just directives (like “make 400,000 arrests this year”) and a great concern for its public image. If that’s the case, however, I can’t imagine why they’d think chilling out on train platforms and plucking young Latinas out of the crowd would go over well.
WELCOME TO ANOTHER SORDID CHAPTER in the Sherrif Joe Arpaio Freak Show. I know my regulars are all too aware of this sad, aging, dinocreptastic remnant of an era screeching into our past and not gracefully and with guns—but if you are not, here is a treat for you, a YouTube vid dealing with his latest daring act of wackery.
WHEN A 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 a drastic increase of that negative energy.
IT’S TRUE THAT IMMIGRATION ACTIVISTS have been feeling that changes in immigration law were imminent; certainly it’s been a hope. I’ve gotta say, though…I don’t think this is the change people have been anticipating!
WHEN CONSIDERING THE MURDER OF BRISENIA FLORES, it does not help us find 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. We have a larger problem on our hands.
TUESDAY, President Obama announced Sonia Sotomayor as his pick to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Sotomayor could be the first Latina appointed to the Supreme Court. Predictably, attacks and slurs from the Right are already flying.
YOU KNOW what everyone is talking about! Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor! It is clearly a move intended to appease the aliens now hovering over the US, having breezed in from PuertoRico Planet—okay that’s not true but sometimes the lunacy in “political dialogue” makes me want to take a trip off-planet…
The Latin@ community has had ample reason to hope that President Obama would take on immigration reform in a humane manner. While he is undeniably centrist in his political approach and has long been fond of language stressing punitive solutions to the immigration issue, he has also said that “America is changing and we can’t be threatened by it.” But enforcement policies are becoming a threat, not only to immigrants, but the country at large.
House of Nezua
the XOLAGRAFIK theater!
