WE BEGIN, but do not end, with the sensational incident where the Obama White House, under Trumpian pressure, produced for public inspection the President’s “long form” birth certificate.

I do not know how successful I will be in my attempts to navigate the journey, but I think it’s important to move from an immediate feeling of hurt or anger to a broader view of the very thing that moves behind this event and is so upsetting about it. This is what I will try to do.

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Why can’t we roam this open country?
Oh, why can’t we be what we wanna be?
We want to be free.

–Bob Marley, 3 o’Clock Roadblock

ROADBLOCK

What a frenzy.

What a storm of feelings, thoughts, tweets, and emotions were exploded into view with that one event, where the President of the United States of America—a man of color—answered the insincere jeering of a single white citizen by producing his identity papers for inspection. As if our duly elected President was but a teen at a police checkpoint, wearing baggy pants and with his hands up against the hood. As if he were a young man standing on a corner looking Mexicano, immediately suspect and thus beholden to the law man to prove he was not up to criminal acts. What a shaking of the timbers of racial history were felt up and down the blogosphere in this one simple happening.

And rightly so. What a harsh reality we trade in; that it will take far more time than our grandparents’, parents’, or our own lifetimes to evolve past the sickly, sadistic, inhuman history we Americans share on matters of race. In matters of history—look to Mexico, or China, or Egypt—this country is in an infantile stage. And the things that were done to African Americans, and Indians (indigenous peoples from el Norte as well as from south of the “border”); to Chinese and Japanese and Chileans and so on…. these ghosts will not fade fast.

Donald Trump is one of those ghosts, his ailing caricature of a human form cavorting to and fro, swaying recklessly but cleverly. Almost as if animated by an actual soul, he bellows nearly-intelligible sounds, and the media flocks to absorb the spittle. His expression remains forever puckered like a lemon-shocked anus-mouth, his mind alight with tired stereotypes and bursts of fart-static. A clown who doesn’t have the decency to laugh at himself.

And Donald is so easy to hate, isn’t he? Because he is a hateful man. And because he enlists the powers of hate, hate long rooted in American soil. Hate that long ago drew blood and tossed ropes and smiled for the picture as the body cooled to a dusk-like temperature. Hate that raided Native American villages to murder sleeping children. Hate that buffed its boots before demanding that black men duck their eyes, and go drink from some other fountain. Hate that considers women, and Blacks and Cubans and Haitians and Iraqis and Afghanis and Mexican and Chinese and Vietnamese and Puerto Rican as less than human. Hate today that spends Joe Arpaio’s paycheck, props up his decaying frame, and parades his prisoners in pink. Hate yesterday that reneged on treaties, and swallowed up gold, and burned codices.

Donald Trump is animated by the very same hate that is used to divide so many people today, and strives to obscure the roots of our liberation as it obscures the hands that lock the cuffs on us. It is a disease of the mind and soul called White Supremacy. And in the land wherein this virus thrives, certain kinds of men, with their ballooned minds and feverish egos, get to demand certain concessions from other people: that you surrender your papers; that you not harbor anger in your eye or your tone lest it be beaten out of you; that law shall endorse such beatings; that you prone out on the ground with a gun in your back at a moment’s notice; that you swallow a bullet if the bully feels sexy while perched up there and straddled around your spine. It is a land where you apologize for a role you never asked for but is ascribed to you by thieves and liars; where They will always have the right to tell you to pull over and prove yourself, and where You will always comply and perhaps be allowed to live with just humiliation if you are lucky enough to walk away with your life.

And so the target of so much history, for a day, becomes Donald “I am the Patriarchy” Trump. And many hearts seethe for his being so cruel as to remind us of our history, and to imply that even when you gain The Most Powerful Office In The World, it means nothing next to the anger of a White Man. It was the same reminder Republican Senator Joe “YOU LIE” Wilson gave us when he shouted down the President of the United States in the middle of an address that was adorned with all the pomp and decorum as we see fit to afford our nation’s executive leader. That shout, that demand to show papers, that insistence that you duck your eyes, it hisses You can even become President, but you still are not White. Which means you are not really the President. Don’t go dreaming that somehow you are now more powerful than me, darkie.

And as an immediate and visceral (and predictable) reaction, what did so many of us people of color need to see the President do? We needed him to scoff at the implication that such assertions could be true. We needed him to refute that reality. To deny it exists. To stand up and stand proud. To destroy that reality with a new action.

Was coughing up the papers but then roasting Trump at a gala dinner in front of the Press enough? Was ordering the home invasion and murder of a wanted man of color in Pakistan enough to erase that reality? Perhaps for our empathy with Obama being humiliated, it was. Perhaps now the unpleasant memory of watching the national daddy figure bow to a carnival barker has been mitigated for most. Maybe now that feeling, as if we watched the POTUS hand over his lunch money to bullies, has been nullified, gunsmoke wafting about our heads like purifying incense smoke.

And I suppose it is best to take the man at his word: he saw the Birtherism (also known as “Racism”) wasn’t going to go away and wanted to squash it and force the GOP ravers into a corner by removing what he saw as their last leg in what was left of the Birther argument.

But I do not think it does the larger issue any service to forget it when the feelings fade, or to imagine it resolved because the President has shown his papers, is in the clear, and we are feeling tough again because, damn son—he’s got that killer instinct. Just as Rosa Parks’ challenge was not to one bus driver, but to an entire system of inequality, this matter is much broader and deeper than the pageantry that recently unfolded between two rich men on TV.

Yes, the dynamic where we identify culturally or ethnically in some way with President Obama (and as a man of color, I do) leads us to watch the disgusting Trump claim victory for making the President skip on command, and we fume with empathy. We gnash our teeth and swear our allegiance all over again to Barack, this poor besieged man who has to endure the barbs and slings of Age Old Racism. This intelligent, thoughtful scholar, statesman, gentleman, father and husband. This President who bears up nobly in conditions potentially humiliating, conditions asked of no other President has been before him. We spit on the ground and growl Trump’s name. We swear to show up in the voting booth for the Democrats…as if that in any measurable way addresses the larger issue of Them Who Shall Be Asked For Papers.

CONQUER AND DIVIDE

I should probably clearly state the obvious in case it is not as obvious as I’d hope: the American Black experience is deep, unique, and I highly respect it. I would never claim to see it in all its parts or stand within it. I am not pretending to have any stake or voice therein. At the same time, I have my own experiences as a Xicano, and there is some degree of overlap between the experiences of all people of color in this nation. This I know from years of activism and friendships and conversations with people of different ethnicities.

Also—quite important to suss out and account for—there are (exploitable) gaps between our experiences. It is in those gaps that divide and conquer wedges are introduced by the ruling class.

Strategically, it is in marginalized peoples’ great interest to discover these gaps ourselves so they cannot be exploited casually. It is in our great interest to find them, examine them, and prepare for the attacks that will be launched; attacks that would seek to exploit the latent weaknesses that could threaten our unity as people marginalized and exploited by the oppressive, racist hand of law. Black and Brown alike suffer behind the racist criminal justice system, for starters. Statistics for both Latinos as well as Blacks are disproportionately high for the actual number of crimes that run rampant through all communities, when compared. This is so because the law continues old power differentials and is implemented by human beings who have been conditioned by the same society .

And because law begins as idea, and only becomes strapped with force when enough people agree on that idea.

One of the ways that unfortunate ideas become commonly accepted is by the use of emotional triggers to mislead thought and obscure the true machinations of state or corporate power.

It is necessary to deny the apparent binaries here.

This is not just a black/white issue. Take it from Chuck D. And for all of us who care, there is a way to channel the need to see justice done in the wake of this ugly moment. There are other peoples and communities who would greatly benefit from our consideration in the current context. People who would suffer in continued indignities and abuse were we to avoid using that lens in a broader sense. Other communities that are having their own dignity denied, with not just social pressure demanding they suborn themselves and produce papers for how they look (not white), but laws. Laws and actions, I’m sorry to say, that are supported very much by President Obama. Laws being snuck under the radar that increase the reach of the surveillance state. as well as that feed into the growing prison and detention industry in the U.S. Like the actions of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

I will be more specific on these both in a moment. But I wanted to prepare the soil of your imagination for this turn of thought. I invite you to explore these ideas:

• The President, seemingly the unwilling subject of this degrading and dehumanizing shape of act before our eyes—being forced to show papers in the course of his day, with no reason but for the fact that he is not a pale man called Smith—supports that very idea being implemented for others who Appear Foreign, and is directly involved with making this a reality across America.

• If it bothers me that he, as one person (and a very powerful one on the continuum considered) is subject to this, how can I engage the larger fight where millions are subjected to this? Millions of very vulnerable people. Not graduates of Ivy League schools; not powerful politicians with millions of dollars at their disposal, and millions of people clamoring to back them up.

2. This is not a struggle between Barack H. Obama and Donald Whatever Trump. Nor one between their persons or personalities. Sure, let us consider their power and from where their power derives, and what they use it for. Let us give context to the scene and the players. But we really don’t need to make either of them a demon or a hero for us to successfully engage this important fight. In fact, doing so will dilute our powers of observation and thought.

3. The battle is not between the Evil, Rich, Racist Ole GOP and the Beleaguered, Liberal, Bullied, Righteous Democrats. If I may presume to know and say so, the battle at the heart of this outrage and hurt here, is for principles. For human dignity, and human rights. The battle is for integrity. The battle is against racist hate shaped into popular opinion and finally, given the force of the masses’ will—be it in the shape of social pressure, law, violence, or all three.

Going forward, we must recognize the possible faultline that divides certain viewpoints rooted in the Black American experience from certain viewpoints in the Mexican American community, as well as in the Pro-Migrant community. Especially when exploited by the powers that be. We must dwell in our connectedness. It’s not hard. I know I don’t just care for Mexicanos. I care for all people who suffer behind the racist machinations afoot in the nation today.

4. It’s not citizens vs. immigrants. Human rights, dignity, fairness: these are not things we should let legal terms determine. These are things we want human beings to have. Don’t let the squirming exploiters and vampires at the top whisper to us the nightmarish myth of scarcity. Things only seem scarce when a small group of people need to capitalize on many people’s energies and resources, and this profit-making pyramid shape enforces an artificial scarcity.

When we feel we cannot even take care of “our own,” it’s easy to let a feeling of solidarity slip away. It makes me sad when I see people of color who should understand and join in the struggle that Mexicanos and other immigrants face today, but who veer away from that struggle imagining that immigrants represent a threat to their own community. This is the voice of White Supremacy, and it’s a bullhorn turned on all day and night in this land, so I understand. But when in all important ways our struggle is the same, “our own” can be an expansive thing—and these larger numbers will render us more powerful to fight those exploiters at the top, already unfairly given advantage.

Many of today’s most important issues deal with power differentials between the very rich, and the rest of us. Immigration is one of the most important area for us to mind. Many issues come together here. Drug war. Commerce, and the Economy. Lines of ownership; lines that signify an US and THEM, borders that we end up believing need small army units and millions of dollars of technology in guns, drones, and surveillance equipment to maintain their reality; their solidity.

In the issue of immigration and corporate abuse of borders and employees is revealed the secret of how towns and communities become economically destroyed by corporate powers being above the law, and exploiting the worker. In the selling of the idea that the only people affected are Criminal Illegal Alien Invader Types, the elite continue to exploit our vulnerable brothers and sisters.

In Immigration politics, we see the manipulative hand of Economics, and the fallout of Capitalism and Neoliberalism. Domestically as well as Internationally. Within this struggle are handholds to engage the struggle for working class rights, women’s rights, family rights, culture, reproduction, human rights, our national ethics.

As more and more strife becomes about resources and mobility, more conquer and divide tactics will be put to work in this area of Immigration.

We must remember first and foremost (and again at the end), that the forces that benefit from our being divided will seek to exploit all these key areas. A simple lens adjustment would make that impossible. We must come to realize how many of us share this same struggle; fighting that power that reared it’s ugly naked head recently under the glow of sunlight bouncing off skyscraper windows, and hissed at the President with breath as old and rancid as years of gallows sweat.

TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY

There are so many discussions about the Arc of Obama in the eye of popular opinion as of yet. We’ve all had an intense experience of some sort from election day until now, though our specific experiences may vary, and our current feelings vary just as much. Some have offered arguable reasons for becoming disenchanted with his administration. I will avoid the political laundry list, some or all of with which you may or may not agree with. That’s not the conversation(s) I am here for. I don’t want to get sidetracked. I don’t want to exploit or even risk the potential differences and faultlines in our unity just for a moment. And when I say “our unity,” I mean working class people. I mean the 99% of income earners in the nation. I mean many many Black, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, Guatemalan, Dominican, Chinese, Korean or otherwise golden brown beautiful red black people. I mean white people. Here, I talk to all those people marginalized in some way by the powers and status quo that men like Donald Trump act in the service of.

I propose that what we have in common here is the idea of how wrong it is to deny the full dignity and rights to the Other in the name of safety and legal procedure. I suggest that this fight and furious sense of injustice cannot and should not end with the humiliating press conference, nor with the empowering roast of Trump at a dinner you and I had no means nor invitation to attend.

PROMISES, PROMISES

Candidate and President Barack Obama made some very specific promises to crowds of Latinos, in speeches to NCLR and to the immigrant community. He decried the ICE raids that tore parents away from their children, he called the system broken. In passioned speech, he told desperate immigrant families that he had their back. That he understood their pain. That he was determined to make a difference for them. He said he was an ally to Latinos and to Immigrants and that we could count on him.

He then turns around and continues the raids, but in other shapes. He deports more people than George W. Bush does, insuring that many, many children are torn from their parents, after all. He does this in the name of Papers, not in the name of human rights or dignity.

President Obama and Janet Napolitano brag to the Republicans that they are deporting record numbers of undocumented immigrants. He turns his back on his own disabled aunt when the cold eye of ICE falls upon her. He sends troops to the US’ Southern border, when the economic refugees flee conditions in Mexico that have been greatly caused by NAFTA policies (A Democratic accomplishment under Bill Clinton). Those people risking rape, murder, starvation, and poverty to cross the border to find a chance at life don’t need bullets in their heads, they need help accessing resources so they don’t need to flee their homes and families.

Obama’s Department of Homeland Security offers a program called “Secure Communities” (S-Comm) that ties in the FBI and ICE to local police so that anyone apprehended by local police has all their info shared with these other agencies, even if a person is not convicted of anything. We’ve seen how successful Arizona’s SB 1070 has been in disrupting society, and at driving a wedge between local police and many communities where people fear either being detained or simply being hassled based on ethnic signifiers. Many police have protested the implementation of S-Comm, understanding right away how it would harm their relationship with the immediate community and lend a hand to the proliferation of many crimes that would exploit this wedge. A few cities attempted to opt out of S-Comm, but voila! The cloak came off and Obama’s DHS suddenly informed these cities that the program was not, after all, voluntary. Whoops.

Immigrant communities understand that they are being targeted when they are just trying to feed their kids and make a living, often exploited by workplaces that know they live without protection from law or society. But to console the rest who don’t know this, Obama’s White House claims it is only deporting serious criminals. The most cursory examination of reality shows this to be a complete falsehood.

One easy example of this is shown quite blatantly by how the White House is going after activist, friend, and law school student Prerna Lal. Prerna is a positive role model, an engaged, passionate person and organizer. Hardly a serious criminal. (Please sign the petition to help Prerna fight deportation. Her crime? The creation and success of DreamActivist.org. Prerna was simply too successful in organizing students behind the DREAM Act, which—unlike these sly and disingenuous actions by the Department of Homeland Security—does exist in the service of human rights. We don’t need to be frozen in the sixties to aid those fighting for communities before it becomes common sense to do so. We can look Prerna’s way.

The stats tell the same story. The Obama administration is not deporting scores of dangerous criminals but people who have an old offense, or minor offenses, or who get caught up in the widening and growing web of “immigration enforcement,” or who are simply students and children of immigrants and dared to make a valedictorian speech at their school, or reach out to help other people in the same plight. Sometimes they are simply driving home from work, and get pulled over by an old, white, sheriff who might as well be Donald Trump. They get asked for their birth certificate because their name sounds…un-American.

COME TOGETHER

It’s so easy for us to stay firm in our personal experience and all the ways it feeds our own heart. One of the major premises in this article (or ramble depending on how you look at it) is that we proceed deeper and deeper into times when it will be important to not let ourselves be divided in the wrong ways. The Earth, mother of all, is increasingly poisoned and robbed…and those plunderers conspire to keep us misinformed about her condition. As she sickens in different ways; as our reckless, imbalanced, capitalist society veers drunkenly to and fro; as the divides grow starker and the ultra rich more intoxicated by desperation, the powers that be will work harder and harder to keep us at each other’s throats; to offer us others who we can throw to the curb in order to keep our own apparently threatened freedom.

We can feel empathy, kinship, or even an affection for the person named Barack Obama; for the challenges he faces navigating a system so strongly interwoven with racist currents, yet simultaneously see how today’s policies enacted by the creepily-named Department of Homeland Security exist to grow the racist prison syste<[/a>, and aid racist behaviors and values through the normalization of certain laws.

Final notes: Thanks to friend (and immigration lawyer) Dave Bennion for help with resources.

Crossposted at Shakesville

This episode of News With Nezua is brought to you by Center for New Community. YouTube version here. Past episodes are archived here.

YESTERDAY’S SICK WARMONGERING SCION OF AMERICA, George W. Bush, once appeared on television and sternly scolded the People for taking television too seriously.

That is, this pampered rich boy who had every thing stolen for him in his life, swaggered up on his pulpit and berated the entire nation, warning us not to have too many emotions and thoughts due to all the televised news about death in Iraq; about suicide bombings in Iraq; about the Empire spasms that lashed out taking lives, maiming babies, weeping spent uranium. “The explosions on your TV.”

And I think that little irony there says it all about today’s media, about today’s “News” channels. We are supposed to take them seriously, even as they tell us not to do so. An inverted knot of suppressed and sublimated emotion and mangled thought process is how they’d have us. A busted open container they can pour poison into. But before that, like a vampire, suck up the energies and spirit of so many, and from all sides of the political spectrum. Inside this beast’s festering jaws are clenched a fabricated world brightly and wretchedly illuminated as if by 100,000 limbs set alight by white phosphorus.

Inside that box, the Iraq disaster is done with. Inside that box, it makes sense to keep bleeding billions into the Afghanistan sands. Inside that box, no important questions matter. Inside that box, your own heart and mind can’t fit. What would (does) our world look like outside of that box?

Today’s Right wing is not worth listening to any more than it makes sense to stick your arm into a spinning garbage disposal. What of those those who watch these hell-hearted plasticmen and seethe? Or mock them on a blog? Or debunk TV arguments every day of the year? A massive amount of energy and time is spent doing this. It’s sort of weird. Who do they watch for? Not for me. Some will claim it is a service. Do they do it for you? They deplete their own energies, and accomplish what? What is accomplished each day by doing this?

In truth, I’m sure it is a service for a few. Is it the most valuable service? Perhaps not. What of pooling all that time, pooling any monies, and creating a new station. Or perhaps a new network via radios. Yes, radio. This tool that many more people can use, and even carry mobile. A tool that many of lesser means can broadcast with, no less.

And to do what? Simply reporting the state of the world as it truly is. Sowing the airwaves with hope, with positivity, with history lessons. With plans, with campaigns, with community. Completely tuning out the false narrative as you would tune out  a sick individual on a corner, ranting about death, devils, and disaster. Would you follow that person around, reinterpreting all their madness for the crowd? Would you shout side by side and call it a service?

This motion is not so much popular, though. The shape of thought that would completely swerve away and build something new in the place of something unsightly, unsafe, or unsound. Is that a revolutionary act? It is, by definition. Reform seeks to take something broken and reshape it. Redundancy says do it over and over even when it does nothing much. Revolution says that Thing is not worth reshaping, nor is it worth your energies and time. Revolutionary thought says you have the power and means and ability to make something new, in place of the old. But today’s Left is not revolutionary, of course.

Lately I hear a lot about how while so many are misguidedly blaming ALL muslims for 9/11, it was only a small cadre of radical extremist muslims who attacked us on 9/11.

Is that true?

Do you even know–as a person–who attacked us on 9/11? I don’t. How am I to know? How are we to know? I still have the newspaper where some foggy screen caps of a Fake Osama Bin Laden were shown supposedly crowing about the WTC attacks. For a tape that would be the hardest evidence in USA possession of who made the biggest hit on our country in its entire history, it faded out of existence very fast, eh? But then, I already said it’s fake.

Do you know it was the Taliban? Really? Why? Because your TV told you? Because the lying, corrupt government told you? That same government that was making deals with the Taliban in August of 2001? The same government that has been trying to sink its derricks into Central Asian oil fields for years? Why? Because they claimed 19 passports floated out of the completely exploded plane down onto the street and somehow stuck out in all that clutter, debris, ash, and litter?

What evidence do we have that the WTC were taken down by the people our government claims? What evidence personally? What trials brought to light the guilty? What process made this clear? What oracle pronounced this truth? The very same TV that our own government’s head of state told us not to take seriously? What forces forbade you to question this? The Right, and yes, the Left, too. From Bill Maher to DailyKos—earnest questions about this catastrophe that changed everything in our nation, from law to war to monies spent in congress, to school lessons—were verboten. Despite the shabbiest case ever built against any major crime. And those who insisted we examine it were demonized by those same Liberal forces, as we are today. Just as it has been the Liberals overwhelmingly leading the charge to sneer at those of us who still believe in protest, rallies, and boycotts.

That is your (Professional) Left.

Obviously, in 2010, what is ancient is again new. The empire is well into its recycling phase. We see conquer and divide. Hucksters and snake oil salesmen. Blatant class war. PSYOPS and a host of control mechanisms to provide a manufactured reality that keeps the People scattered, confused, scared, angry, and mostly, full of fake information. We were attacked and traumatized a decade ago, lied to about it by those who are supposed to protect us and be of us, and this rending of the truth helped destroy us as a confident and sane people.

We tried again to hope and believe in truth when Obama was elected, but as much as some “progressives” still cling to their ideology and party, it’s clear on a gut level that we were had and that the strongest forces in our nation today are those of war, greed, and deception.

And now, nobody believes in much of anything anymore as a result. And we are fast unraveling. Truth means nothing and TV pays it not even the tribute of a gesture. Racism is part of everyday speech, political campaigns, and dialogue. Hate groups are hand in hand with government. White supremacists roam the border and carry badges and guns, too. Laws that let police be even more racist in their operations than before are being launched left and right.

Even those who fight every day to maintain belief know, in their belly, that the game is rotten to the core. This is driving us mad, it is wrecking national sanity. Or causing people to simply turn away.

It’s not just because Obama is black that the nation is flipping out. It’s also because all the illusions of national identity and ideology that we were given as children have fallen apart. Now naked power rules, and shows itself in gross class war and cooked up news shows, court rulings, and police actions that make clear who will be okay tomorrow, and who will not. Those of us with little money or position understand we will soon be living in mildewed tents on the outskirts, while those with money or power will continue to enjoy tax breaks, ballrooms, and well-buttered toast smothered with imported jams.

Dreams of justice and fairness have been toppled.

Once that sinks in fully, things will become very ugly indeed. But many of us are in denial, in shock, or yet to see the final foundation buckling. Still listening to the siren song of TV.

Were there someone or some ones capable of organizing even a fraction of us—they’d need lots of money, and yet not to be beholden to the ideology of the Right—we might have a chance against our enemies. Our enemies are greed and disinformation. And a state out of control. It is those same illusions given us as children. It is the inertia that shoves us cliffward. It is the voice of the Television. It is today’s Liberal brain, brain like a slave, stooped over with the load of delusion, but weary and with no place to go to get away from it. The Left is a zombie holding a flag, with all its sly use of the Right’s most drastic weapons, with its reinforcing at key moments, what harms the People, with no real plan or courage to enact something better, something revolutionary. At every juncture where the Left might make a real stand and make a difference, it suddenly caves in. Just when the People might again hope or benefit. But it must. Because, you see, even the “left” politicians on the national stage know the deal. They hold no hope for justice or truth, either. But LIBERAL is their brand and they are stuck with it.

The GOP? The GOP is but the blood-flecked ID expanding like a rogue universe of wicked cells, the diseased and disintegrating lobe of the human condition. The freaked out, frantic, midnight acid-head mind that whips and coils like a half-smashed snake in the sand.

I’m not better than anyone else in all of this. I soothe myself with TV, too. I dive deeply into illusion. I simply happen to turn to it for storytelling, for movies. Otherwise, I’ll be out in nature. Give me the sun, the wind, the water, and the touch of someone close to me. And give me stories. Stories of clear-eyed humans, of paths lined with golden wheat that sways in the sun, trod by brave souls undertaking important journeys. Give me stories of unpolluted hearts, and simple, wise, and humble humans. Give me stories of the past, of over there, of a day faraway. A day when this looming tower of babbling bullshit has finally collapsed and lain itself upon the ground to bake and bleach under an aging sun, before long to be but a skeleton for tomorrow’s mountains.

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

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

PROFESSIONAL VITRIOL-SPEWER Lou Dobbs claims that shots were fired at his house, and that this violence is due to his views on immigration. Implied in his words are the connection between focused ire and public violence.

They’ve created an atmosphere and they’ve been unrelenting in their propaganda,” Dobbs said in reference to pro-immigration groups.

—Shots Fired at NJ Home of Lou Dobbs

Get that? It’s the people fighting for the rights and humane treatment of immigrants who are creating a violent atmosphere. Yeah. Nothing like a little projection to help a ghoul live with itself.

Also chiming in is William Gheen, anti-immigrant president of ALIPAC, who tellingly admits in a newsletter that when you create an atmosphere of revulsion and loathing around people, this leads to violence: [my emphasis]

Friends of ALIPAC,

We have just learned that someone has fired a gun at the home of Lou Dobbs, with his wife just a few feet away from the incident. The gunfire followed a series of threatening phone calls.

Lou Dobbs is being targeted by the pro-illegal alien groups and pundits who feel that Dobbs is stopping Amnesty from passing.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti Defamation League, the National Council of La Raza, Media Matters, and Geraldo Rivera of Fox News are using false information to foment hatred towards Lou Dobbs or any American who speaks out against Amnesty or illegal immigration.

They have pushed for Lou Dobbs to be fired and since CNN has refused to do that some people are now turning to violence to try and achieve their goals.

The lies and hate coming from these radical pro-illegal alien groups is now manifesting in the form of gunfire fired into the occupied home of an innocent multi-racial family.

What conclusions can we draw from their only now admitting this connection many of us have been trying to underline for so long?

1. Lou Dobbs and William Gheen understand that what they do normally leads to the violence that continues to bring death and fear to our communities

thus

2. They enjoy causing that violence.

But now, ALLEGEDLY, shots are fired near Lou’s house, and they are up in arms talking about this dangerous environment. It is to laugh.

Lou, for the first time in his skanky life, is being held to account by organized groups online and off for the negativity and hostility and vile things he puts out into the air all year. And all he can come up with is calling people “fleas” as a response, go back to his daily demonization routine, and then whine about a violent environment from which he is normally cushioned due to his station, class, and situation.

Live by the sword, Lou?

(PS: Well, hardly a sword. And hardly a bullet, apparently! After all, if the projectile “struck the siding and then fell to the ground,” I’m guessing it was a slow moving BB, perhaps. Which means Lou’s well-layered makeup would have stopped it cold.)

For the past week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office has been looking for a Republican co-sponsor for an utterly non-controversial resolution honoring the legacy and role of Hispanic media.

None came, his office confirms. On Tuesday, Reid introduced and passed a resolution designating October 25 through October 31, 2009, the “National Hispanic Media Week” in honor of the Latino Media of America.

The Nevada Democrat was joined by Sens. Robert Menendez (New Jersey), Mark Udall (Colorado) and Kirsten Gillibrand (New York) — all of whom are Democrats.

—Huffington Post, Reid Gets No GOP Support For Resolution Honoring Hispanic Media

I’M TRYING TO IMAGINE what the GOP strategy is anymore when it comes to our nation of many peoples. Do they cling so tightly to some 1950s vision of reality that they simply won’t budge, won’t open the lids, won’t peep the new day? Are they of the Ken Burns philosophy: that as long as we recognize whites publicly for achievements, that’s a “universal” statement about everyone?

I’m guessing that by having a black man front the party and use lots of fake street cred noise (like Michael Steele’s throwing in a “bling” there and a “pahty peeple” here, or his blog “What Up” or “Wut B Tha DL” or “Slick Steele” or whatever it’s called today) in addition to their pattern of demonizing Latinos, Mexicans, people of color, and now this move to NOT recognize the growing power of the Latino/Hispanic voice in media, which as they article notes, should not be a controversial one—

I think the elephant as an icon for the GOP has run its course. Here’s my offering:

IT’S FUNNY. In the middle of June of this year—when Brisenia and Raul Flores were murdered by Shawna Forde and Eugene Bush and nobody was covering it—CNN got a lil bold, via Rick Sanchez, who can be cool on the situation when he wants to be. And by bold, I mean that someone repping his show got in touch with me and asked if I’d agree to being on a shortlist of people to speak/give opinion etc on immigration related matters, or at least this incident specifically. The cat from CNN repping Rick Sanchez’ slot mentioned that they wanted some voices/opinions unlike Lou Dobbs...which made me laugh and in my immediate honest reaction I forgot that CNN was the same station that did both shows and started riffin’ about how that was a pretty low bar and so on and basically was just real about how most people I know think Lou Dobbs is a crazy ass relic etc and only later it hit me that I said this to a CNN person…not that I regret it, I’m glad I got the chance to offer my feelings on good ole lou. But it made me laugh to realize a little later that it was the same channel.

My point is, clearly CNN sees the writing on the wall. And surely they know it’s only a matter of time until Dinosaur Lou ambles off into the acrid back pages of history; that this nation is way different a demographic than Lou imagines, that as fondly we all remember the Cleavers and the Hollies, this is the age of the Obamas and the Garcias! The smart move? CNN really oughtta go balls out for the “We are down with Latinos”; with “We are of this new day,” and just ice Lou, just get with the inevitable and pose like they are ahead of the curve. Because that would gain them a lot of cred, I’d guess, to the Latinos paying attention right now. CNN should just take the cash from the Ad buy that America’s Voice offered them to place this slick lil spot below during their Latino in America special.

But they turned it down. Ouch!

But, but, but what about…what about our shared journey and your sincere desire to “explore the diverse experiences and challenging issues facing Latinos in America”? I’m not feeling the love, yanno?

CNNito! Showing yourself to be in solidarity with the old, old, oldschool-white supremacist’s crew (Arpaio, Rush, Beck, Lou, Buchanan, O’Reilly, Imus, the list goes on, but not for too much longer) soon to exit Cultural Scene Right? and right before your much hyped Latino special? Not a good look, mi gente. Not at all. And you, as TV people, oughtta know this.

But then again, you are making it clear, eh? You don’t really care too much about what it’s like to be Latino in America.

A LONG TIME NEMESIS OF THIS BLOG (evident by the inclusion of his name in the UMX header since day one in May of 2006) is under attack! Lou Dobbs comes under more and more scrutiny as the nation tires of his personal vendetta and obvious mental imbalance that skews toward the vile and the hateful. Soon, CNN will be blaring their Latino in America special at us, as if they don’t contribute to the animosity and eventual murder that finds its way to our communities. I don’t watch them anyway, but I do think they need to make up their mind. You can’t have it both ways, CNN. Or rather, you can, and do and have been (like every other corporation in this world) until the People hold you to account. I think that’s what’s happening. So take note.

[PS, this video is pretty tight and that's cuz one skilled vato produced it.]

WHEN IT COMES TO THE IMMIGRATION ISSUE, or even the ways in which the GOP versus the Dems operate, I have long been frustrated. As you know. I’ve been frustrated by a couple things. One, the way the Dems primary shape of political engagement seems to be reaction. Or a sort of bowed-head, hand-wringing shame that weakens the legs of any idea they trot out. Any idea they DO trot out, when predictably smacked hard by the GOP, never seems to have much conviction in itself. Or perhaps it is those who present it who do not.

Not enough proactive action, not enough strength, and certainly not enough moral conviction. Mostly my thoughts on this involve the compromises the Dems have made.

The GOP’s philosophies allow for greed and for taking bucketloads of cash from lobbyists or corporations; their philosophies of Bootstrap and Bootneck seek to justify destroying the environment, hurting the poor, punishing people of color for reacting and suffering under punishments already systemically leveled at them. So even when the GOP engages in their selfish and amoral actions, they do not appear to be hypocritical. When they do act hypocritically it is in supporting what their radical base does, after condemning the same actions when undertaken by the Left. But that hypocrisy, of course, does not demoralize their base. Or not most of it. Because it is another smack at the Left, which their base is happy to support as long as the planks of the overall GOP platform is adhered to, and all the poor and people of color are targeted, while their own taxes are guarded.

On the other hand, the Democrats OSTENSIBLY are for the People. For the poor, for the whole, for the health of the land, etc. Their philosophies do NOT allow for raking in cash from corrupt sources or in making capitulations to corporate greed and so on. So when they take the cash they inevitably do from these sources; when they capitulate to entrenched forces that harm the people, they not only look as if their entire platform is a lie, they themselves cannot defend it. So they appear mushy, unconvinced, and they do not sway anyone. The answer is, of course, to move closer toward what they profess to be. The Democrats simply need to be more radical—meaning be more of what they pretend to be. If so, they could stand in truth and summon all the power that comes from doing so. As long as they sniff over to the Right, they lose. They can never excuse doing this to the people they seek to represent. Further, rather than using their own radical faction for fuel as the GOP does, the Dems marginalize their own “radical” elements which not only demoralizes us, but pushes that oft-touted “Overton Window” to the Right and again, positions the Democratic party as primping and posing to gain a seat at a table of politicians and pundits who despise them anyway.