Arizona Bites Again

I read today of a measure pending in AZ that would allow official inspection of a private kennel upon a written complaint. I sent the article around to a local dog list and received this bit of enlightened genius (in part) in response:

It is clear, though, that there is continuing pressure every year in every legislative session to tighten animal control regulations and there are legislators who are cheerfully carrying the water for the activists that want them. For this, we may thank our friends at HSUS and PETA for their political activism and we may also thank our population of Latin Americans (mostly the illegals) who share a third world view of domestic animal treatment and who provide a continuing stream of animal abuses for law enforcement and the media to fawn over. A near-perfect storm.

This is what passes for thought in Arizona.

OK, one, who knew Latin Americans have a monopoly on cruelty to animals! Dang! It wasn't Ernesto Vick who got busted for vicious cruelty to pit bulls.

Two, who knew that it's "mostly the illegals" who pressure our legislators to carry the water for PETA and HSUS! I guess that must be just after they crawl out of the arroyo into the voting booth, huh. Right in front of Shurf Joe, even! Shee-it, man, they've got 'nads, don't they?

Three, I personally rescued a Doberman a couple of months ago who had been shot in the testicles by some white-boy brain-dead bubbas up in Flagstaff. I call that "animal cruelty," don't you?

It's not surprising to get this kind of trash. What's surprising is that it has become commonplace. This is the face of backlash stoked by the Republican religious Right.

The thing is, a country can't stoke these flames without getting very badly burned.

No justice, no peace.

Church Outlaws?

Interesting discussion going on here. Seems that the Methodist Church of Great Britain is banning members of the British National Party (BNP), which is a whites-only political party, from joining the denomination.

So this raises again the question, what is the proper role of a Christian denomination when it is confronted with the fact of an officially racist or antisemitic party? (This one won two seats in Parliament.)

Warning: You are embarking on a stream-of-consciousness exploration of this headache. It ain't no place for sissies.

If it is proper for a denomination to ban racists and antisemites, what about pornographers? Homosexuals? Women who have abortions? Bank robbers? You see the problem.

On the other hand, if a denomination espouses certain values, shouldn't it stand up for them? If it has, say, ten commandments, shouldn't its members be made to abide by them? After all, they're not the ten suggestions.

We all know that some Catholic clergy have insinuated themselves into the voting booth on the matter of Democrats' support for a woman's right to abortion. Do we think that's kosher (you should pardon the expression)? Are we in favor of that?

And if not, shouldn't we dislike banning racists from our denomination just as much? What's the dif?

That's what I was wondering.

If there's a problem in the British Methodists' or the American archbishops' approach, where does it reside? Is it in the nature of the behavior that's indicted? Is there something inherently different between racism and having an abortion that makes banning adherents of one OK but not banning adherents of the other? And can we apply that difference--if any--axiomatically, to help us decide which behaviors to ban and which to ignore? For instance: Since everybody knows racism is terrible and so is adultery, therefore a denomination is right to ban racists and people who commit adultery. Right?

Not comfortable with that? Me, either.

So maybe the problem doesn't reside in the nature of the indicted behavior. Maybe the problem resides in the nature of the establishment--in this case, in the nature of a Christian denomination. In the nature of the Church.

By nature, I mean its authentic mission.

I haven't reached the end of my ruminations and I'm no expert on church order and discipline. I'm still thinking about this. but for now, I suspect it's not in the authentic mission, or role, of a Jesus church to attempt to impose morality by force--which is what punitive action comes down to.

Well, but what about excommunication. And defrocking.

Did you know that excommunication is construed to be the act of removing oneself from "communion with God," and not as the imposition by the church hierarchy of punishment for one's misbehavior? I didn't.

As for defrocking,, or laicization, this is a hierarchichal judgment of a priest or ordained minister's grave misbehavior. Laicization--returning the cleric to the status of lay person--can apply only to clery, by definition. Accordingly, it should be seen as a means of enforcing the church's authority over its priests--with whom it has a particular and special relationship.

OK, then, what about the fact that some established, mainline denominations do impose punishments on lay members for behaviors seen as grave sins?

Some do. But apparently not many do, and I don't think that's an accident. Cults, on the other hand, appear to do so fairly regularly. Maybe the reason cults do and most mainline denominations don't is because such punishment is a means of enforcing authority, not morality.

I don't think morality can be enforced. And that's why I don't think withholding membership in the denomination of British Methodism is an appropriate response to members of the BNP.

Who should deal with racism, then?

I think it's the role of religious denominations to teach and inculcate values, and the role of the criminal justice system is to enforce the law.

All the jaw-flapping on the Right about "Christian nations," Western laws just aren't exact embodiments of Christian values. I don't think I've seen a law against hating thy brother. If you want an exact correspondence, I give you Sharia. I don't think we want to go there, do we?

Given that law is secular and religious values are, well, religious, it follows that the role of political parties is to advocate for principles of law and government, not for religious do's and don'ts. Not for scriptural values per se, but for the good order of a society. It also follows that the role of religions is to advocate for religious principles, nearly always grounded in some holy writ.

I've seen what confounding church and state can do. That's why I recommend that we keep our churches well clear of the business of politics and government, and our political parties well clear of the business of churches.

Let the political parties denounce and abjure racism, homophobia, antisemitism, and the like. Let them advocate for and enact the laws that punish these behaviors. But let the churches preach against them, attempting to influence the values of the citizens who will select the ruling party and thus determine the nation's laws and penalties. Keep the churches out of intervention in the democratic process, and the parties out of the business of the churches.

Where's That Mason-Dixon Line Again?

Wonder if the throngs in the habit of assuring (and congratulating) themselves that racism is exclusively a southern thing have noticed that the goons cheering nastily for McCain/Palin don't all have southern accents. Last time I looked, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Nevada, and Colorado aren't south of the Mason-Dixon line. Neither is Alaska.

Wonder if anybody recalls that the entire country has been up to its eyeballs in racism long before McCain/Palin. It was -- and continues to be -- directed at Latinos and Latinas.

One of those "blind spots" we're always hearing about, I guess. Just sayin'.

Where Clinton Went Wrong

Earlier I wrote that HRC's tack to the Right was one reason she lost. And I'm not sad that she lost. She made me furious too many times to regret that she won't be in my face to make me furious regularly any more.

Later I was surfing the web and came across this explanation of why being sad about Clinton's losing could be an affront to women of color.

"You said,

'Those of us who care about institutional misogyny (and, again, I don’t think these are mutually exclusive groups) don’t have that consolation, as regards a barrier being broken with regard to misogyny. There was no transcendence; only a loss.'

"I feel your loss, I understand why it hurts to see a woman lose, probably (I disagree, but I am willing to see your point) because of sexism."

"But some of us who care about institutional misogyny don’t feel a loss at Clinton not being elected. There would have been no barrier broken if she were elected. I personally don’t look at Clinton and think–geez, look at all she accomplished–now I can do the same thing–I think–geez–she supported the militarization of the Mexican/U.S. border. There are women now being raped, arrested, imprisoned, and ripped from their children because she actively supports increased militarization at the border."

Read the whole post. It is an education.

It isn't OK to tack to the Right. There are consequences.

Can't Evacuate Unless You've Got Your Papers

If the nation hasn't already bottomed out on vicious stupidity, surely we're getting close.

This from the Rio Grande Guardian via Latina Lista over on Sanctuary:

McALLEN, May 14 - If a hurricane hits the Rio Grande Valley this season, residents evacuated via school buses will be prescreened for citizenship by Customs and Border Patrol.

Hurricane season starts June 1. In the event of a hurricane in the region, emergency officials predict more than 130,000 evacuees will leave the Valley by school bus. They will be checked for identification and citizenship before they can board.

Anyone who is not a citizen or is not a legal resident will be held in specially designed areas in the Valley that are “made to withstand hurricanes,” said Dan Doty, a Border Patrol spokesperson for the Valley sector.

Those specially designed areas include the Border Patrol facilities in Edinburg and Harlingen, Doty said.

Officials are so proud of this policy that news photographers were banned from shooting a drill:

Border Patrol agents could be seen checking the identification and citizenship of the mock evacuees, many of whom were senior citizens from the Las Palmas Community Center. After Guardian reporter started taking pictures of this part of the exercise, he was asked to stop and leave the area.

Some random thoughts occur.

Now that everybody knows that ICE will detain anybody (brown and black) who lacks proof of citizenship or required immigration papers, we also know that (brown and black) men, women, children, and babies lured across the border by corrupt agribusinesses (etc.) will try to ride out the storms in their brand-new hurricane-proof residences. Or maybe down at the Piggly Wiggly.

We saw what happened when residents in New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast tried. (CNN is casing Edinburg for potential good angles even as we speak.)

We know humans and CEOs delay evacuation as long as possible, in denial and to preserve as much capital of the $$$ kind as possible. So we know that these school buses won't be loading three days ahead of squall lines. They'll wait til the last second.

We know from our local hyenas here in Arizona that wingnuts aren't actually satisfied with drivers' licenses or Mexican consul documents. They prefer verified, validated proof of citizenship and immigration status, whatever that may mean. Then. To that particular ICE agent. There. If they've decided.

And since it's not easy for people with low incomes to get passports and birth certificates and notary stamps and whatnot, we know a lot of folks who live in the Rio Grande Valley legally will also be denied access to evacuation.

Mini-Tutorial for the Middle+ Classes: People on way low incomes don't have any money to spend on family photos. They also don't have Internet access so they aren't always right up to speed on regulatory changes, and most crash, exhausted, before they can read the paper they don't subscribe to or turn on the TV they can't afford.

Many don't even have cars and if they do, gas costs what, an hour's wages a gallon? What's a round-trip to the nearest approved vendor of verified ID going to cost? Passports aren't available in just every little bug-tussle town, you know. And only God knows where to get verified, validated ID.

Immigrant agriculture workers -- or OK, 99.5% of them -- just weren't born in Middleclassville where conventional wisdom is breathed in with the baby powder for generations, and where people just come up knowing how to get official stuff taken care of. It's not like that for poor people. It's especially not like that for the people doing the hard work at the Del Monte subcontractor's Pik and Pak Paradise.

The bureaucracy is even confusing and intimidating for Tom Tancredo and Russell Pearce, so we know it's not a matter of native wit.

Now get this:

Officials are shooting for a tentative 30-minute window from arrival at an emergency holding post, through processing, and to final evacuation by bus. Each bus would carry about 50 to 60 people, according to Health Department officials.

“The initial questions are to determine whether the people can handle a five to 12 hour bus ride or vehicle ride of some type, and if they can handle that then the military will evacuate them on school buses to make sure they follow through with that,” said Hidalgo County Health Director Eddie Olivarez.

“If a person is not able to handle a five to 12 hour vehicle ride, then the military personnel will asses them medically, and then will assign ambulance or specially designed buses.” [Emphasis added throughout]

Yeah. Right.

I don't have the second sight, but I'm not stupid.

Just stop a sec and think how this will pan out. Thirty minutes from arrival to departure? That doesn't happen at your local high school on a sunny day.

I'm seeing logjams and screaming families in all colors, rain slashing on paperwork and wind snatching green cards, and folks in wheelchairs and folks not quite up to speed in English, and everybody one semi-second from all-out panic. And that's not even counting the angry and frustrated Border guards.

And now remember the cluster-duck that was mandatory evacuation from Houston and Galveston, where everybody sat on the INTERSTATE until their cars overheated or ran out of gas. But:

Highway 281 is the designated hurricane evacuation route and the Border Patrol checkpoint for the highway is at Falfurrias, in Brooks County.

Just how many school buses and "vehicles" does it take to haul 130,000 people? At 60 per, I get 2,166. These aren't interstates and there's a border patrol checkpoint up the road?

A 5 to 12-hour ride? On whose Bat Mobile?

Surely this is a leak intended to drive (brown and black) people out of the Rio Grande Valley from sheer revulsion well ahead of any hurricanes. Surely it isn't serious public policy.

Surely we haven't sunk to this level of depravity. For this is a racist, class war recipe for extermination-by-nature. And where oh where have we seen that before.

Just think of all the real estate that will be ready for GOP developers! There's a link beside the story on the Rio Grande Guardian touting the growth in McAllen, TX. If you don't think this could happen, read The Shock Doctrine.

Where It's At

It doesn't get clearer than this comment I received from Brad today:

"Roy Beck hasn't said anything that isn't true and numbers USA has a posting saying not to immigrant bash. Me, I just plan [sic] don't like Hispanics and I wish they would all get the fuck out of America."

Find the original in the comments here.

Hey Brad, I'm guessing the feeling is mutual.

Anti-Immigrant Organizations

This from PublicEye.org, the website of Political Research Associates. Keep it handy, especially when you watch YouTube videos like Roy Beck's "Immigration Gumball," now being much blogged.

AZ's Annual Mecham Memorial March of the Morons

Led by such towering giants of wisdom and statecraft as Mesa Representative Karen Johnson and (former) Parker Representative Babara Blewster, Arizona's Republican legislature is queuing up again to show the world just exactly what "a bubble shy of plumb" looks like.

Johnson, known for her bill to arm school students, and Blewster, who once expressed amazement that a House colleague is Jewish because she lacks a "big hook nose," have done more than all other American women combined to prove the proposition that women really ought to stay barefoot and pregnant.

In grateful recognition of her contributions to gender equality, Blewster's GOP colleagues have nominated her observation that "even African-Americans are more advanced than Native Americans" be engraved in tasteful 106-point red, white, and blue type over their cloakroom door.

Blewster joins Johnson to lead their Republican colleagues in periodic competitions for the coveted "Bacon Award." (Note: Long-time Zonies believe that the prize was originally meant to have been called the Beacon Award, but the GOP proofreader preferred the subtle pork allusion.) The Bacon Award goes to the Republican with the highest score on the Slackjawed Stupid Index, the SSI, a measure of Arizona GOP legislators' intellectual capacity that is administered quarterly. (It doesn't take long.)

However, keen GOP-watchers know that springtime really brings out AZ Republicans' primordial urge to pee in the gene pool. For it is in late April that they conduct their annual Edwin Mecham Memorial March of the Morons. Mecham, you may recall, graced the state as governor until he was impeached for various things. But not before inviting a national boycott of Arizona for his decision to prevent the state from celebrating Martin Luther King Day.

This year's Grand Marshall, of course, is GOP Sen. Russell Pearce. Pearce made national headlines recently when he introduced the fondly-titled "employer sanctions" measure, which actually turned out to be the "bankrupt Arizona" bill. It penalizes employers who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants to do hideous things like pick crops, bus tables, and make beds. . Consequently, these workers are fleeing our state, taking their wallets with them. The result? Many AZ agricultural, service, entertainment, mining, construction, and landscaping businesses are filing for bankruptcy< This has the effect of shutting off the entire downstream flow of their tax dollars. In all, Pearce has given us home foreclosures, lagging rentals, closed businesses, swelling unemployment rolls, gutted school budgets, stalled highway repairs, and even more crumbling overpasses. His brilliance is surpassed only by his emulation of Jesus.

Pearce has more genius in store for us, no doubt, but he may soon be eclipsed by Scottsdale's GOP Rep. John Kavanagh. Kavanagh's newest brainchild would bar state public university and community college students from organizing groups based on race--you know, like the Black Business Students' Association and the Cinco De Mayo Festival planning committee. Kavanagh, whom we assume is illiterate, certainly hasn't read that a major corporation is cooling on Oklahoma. The reason? It's anti-diversity, homophobic climate, which is being carefully nurtured by GOP state Rep. Sally Kern. Nor has he read the Constitution, which, I'm pretty sure, guarantees freedom of association.

Not to be outdone, the heavily "Christian" and Republican Center for AZ Policy, and that darling Cathi Harrod, its main stone-thrower, are showcasing their sagacity again this year by pushing still yet again one more time for an anti-gay amendment, SCR 1042.

As you know, even though McCain supported them (of course) the sane among us kicked their asses last year by making Arizona the only state in the nation to defeat their nasty little marriage proposition. Of course it wasn't just anti-marriage and it wasn't just anti-gay. In its infinite wisdom, the Center pushed for language that also would have outlawed any cohabiting couple from receiving the privileges and benefits of marriage. I suppose we can expect them to sharpen their focus this year just to queers.

Gee, Zonies who aren't straight, white, fascist, and phobic have a lot to look forward to. Time to haul out the shit-kickers.

But wait! What's that giant sucking sound?

Oh. That's just bottom-feeding. The AZ Republican caucus is over at the neo Salt River having breakfast with GOP presidential contender and Rev. Rightwing Racist Homophobe Hagee courtier, John McCain. Oh, you heard the part about his calling Cindy the "c" word. Nice crowd.

Misogyny in America

As night follows day, any rise in homophobia is paralleled by a rise in woman-hating. So it shouldn’t surprise anybody that, after two decades of virulent gay-hating from the Right, we are seeing a proud and public form of misogyny in America we haven’t seen since, oh, George Gobel.

I’m not suggesting a cause-effect relationship here. I’m saying that homophobia is fundamentally also an expression of misogyny. When a gay man is bashed, he’s being savaged because he isn’t conforming to his assigned male supremacist role. He is stepping OUT of that role defiantly because—regardless of the actual acrobatics—he is perceived to be willfully assuming the role of a woman. He is being punished for breaking ranks but despised for (symbolically) behaving like a girl.

Hillary Clinton is just the most obvious lightening rod for the woman-hating tribes. She, too, is stepping OUT of the assigned role and defiantly competing with men as an equal.

The symbolism is inescapable and the consequences predictable and the punishment swift and ceaseless. She can’t easily be attacked physically. (Oh, it could happen and it might still happen, but it can’t be done easily. She has Secret Service protection.)

But she can be subjected to incessant ridicule and subversion from the mainstream corporate media. It is a given that she would be. The corporation, that playpen of male domination into which frustrated gladiatorial violence is sublimated in glass ceilings and the myth of masculine commentatorial “gravitas.” The media, the collective mouthpiece of male-supremacist culture which speaks, as misogyny always does, out of the mouths of both men and women; otherwise the game would be too, too obvious.

After Fox, the most visible (but by no means the only) culprit from our vantage lately, anyway, is MSNBC: Chris Matthews, Tucker Carlson, David Shuster. I’ve already commented on Matthews and Carlson. Their buy-in to male supremacy is as deep and unexamined as the color of their eyes. Carlson, especially, exudes contempt for women and people of color unless they know their proper places: cheerleaders for the Right. It’s just as incessant but more subtle, oily and oblique, the gentleman's country-club idiom. The "vaginal-American" exchange comes to mind, a coinage that somehow managed to demean everybody all at once. While Carlson didn't utter it, he didn't rebuke it either. He used it for all the yukkety-yuk value he could get.

Matthews’ misogyny is much more obvious. He’s a brawler, like McCain. (Remember when McCain joked--joked, please--"that the reason Chelsea is so ugly is that Janet Reno is her father"? There's something core frightening about any adult male who will attack any girl, let alone publically and by means of a classically misogynistic/homophobic formula. It's of a piece with McCain's violent, racist joke "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," and it makes me wonder what goes on behind his closed doors.)

What else would we expect? Matthews' fixation with Hillary Clinton is legendary, and the depths of his misogyny as expressed in his incessant trivializing commentary about her is profoundly shocking as much for what he says as for his utter cluelessness about it. He breathes misogyny in and out, in and out, like oxygen, and is no less oblivious to it. It’s his natural element, taken for granted.

And that is what tripped up Shuster. Apart from the stunning contrast between how goons like McCain and Matthews ignore the Bush twins and pillory Chelsea, and the nastiness of the whore metaphor, I was offended because it never even once occurred to Shuster NOT to use that metaphor for someone's daughter. It was just so natural because it is just so natural. Just so Don Imus.

Women in America are waking up. Hillary and Chelsea are all of us, and we are seeing a play we don't like very much. In fact, we are enraged.

More on this subject anon.

Like I Said, Pearce Has Shot AZ 's Economy in the Head

It's rare for racism's effects on the economy to show up this clearly, but as I've been warning for some time, Russell Pearce and his racist anti-immigrant thugs' employer sanctions law are only hurting Arizonans. With friends like Republicans, who needs enemies?

This from Latino Politico:

by Man Eegee
The percentage of apartment vacancies is going up.

No one knows for sure how many immigrants are leaving Arizona because of the sanctions law. But apartment complexes with affordable rents in areas with large numbers of immigrants are being hit hardest by the departures.

The departures are coming at a bad time for landlords. The slow economy is making it hard for some apartment dwellers to cover their rent. And others are renting houses instead of apartments as those rents have fallen because of the housing-market collapse.

"It's a pretty soft (apartment) market to begin with," said Terry Feinberg, president of the Arizona Multihousing Association.

The state's apartment-vacancy rate hit 10.1 percent during the third quarter of 2007, up from 7.7 percent during the third quarter the year before, he said.

Data for the fourth quarter won't be out until next week, but Jodi Bart, co-owner of MEB Management Services, expects Arizona's apartment-vacancy rate to hit 15 percent for the first time in years. Her company manages 60 apartment complexes in Arizona, totaling about 15,000 units.

"Hating on Obama"? I Think Not.

The African American Political Pundit is taking the position that the liberal white blogosphere is "hatin' on Obama." He writes:

Now we learn Markos Moulitsas, has joined the haters group. Yes the founder of the Daily Kos, Jerome Amstrong of MyDD, Jame Hamsher of Firedoglake and Matt Stoller of OpenLeft, are all hating on Obama.

I guess its true, as the Washington post points out, Obama's rise has sidelined left wing bloggers. And the whitosphere is pissed. Check this out, the Washington Post article notes that: Last week, Markos Moulitsas, founder of the popular liberal blog Daily Kos, accused Obama of embracing a "right-wing talking point" as he campaigned and said, "I don't want to go into the next election starting off with half the country already not wanting to vote for Democrats. We've done that in 2004, 2000." In a blog post headlined "Obama slams Gore," Moulitsas wrote: "Psst, Barack, slamming John Kerry and Al Gore is what Republicans do. Last time I checked, Gore won his election. And really, is Obama going to argue now that the nation was divided because of the Democrats' fault? Is that the latest right-wing talking point he wants to peddle?"

The Washington Post also reports: "his relationships with big-name bloggers, such as Jerome Amstrong of MyDD, Jame Hamsher of Firedoglake and Matt Stoller of OpenLeft, has been strained. "What Obama did in Iowa, getting all those young people to vote, was really inspirational. It was a miraculous achievement," Hamsher said. "But the idea that you can reach out to Republicans and they'll work with you isn't so convincing to people who have watched the Republicans in Congress. There are those who are worried that it's a false hope he's giving. . . .

PS: Lets not forget My Left Wing who says: The Irony in '08: John Edwards, White Man, Is the Best Candidate.

AAPP: Hey Afrospear (Afrosphere), the attack of the white liberal blogger has begun against Obama. Hey whiteosphere "Stop Hating."

OK, I gotta say this is totally lame. (I'm speaking as a white Southern queer woman who dropped out of the debutante scene 40 years ago and became a radical activist for civil, women's, and GLBT rights. I'm a white progressive--not a liberal--and I'm not--yet--part of the influential "whiteosphere.")

AAPP: I don't want to debate you if you are unwilling to discuss our differences from the perspective of issues and strategy. If you're going to write me off as a white "liberal" and accuse me of "hating," then I'm going to write you off as a demagogue and ignore you.

That said, what part of "he's leading off with a Rightward tilt" and "you can't appease the rabid Right" don't you understand, AAPP? And why are those charges not legitimate critiques of Obama's policy and position? You don't think that he can't legitimately be challenged, do you?

Kos gave you one example, and Jane Hampsher gave you another. Let me give you a better one still. Obama made the free-will decision to campaign in South Carolina with an out-and-out homophobe at his side. This was the deliberate use of bigotry to pimp to conservative Christian African Americans who haven't figured out that bigotry is bigotry no matter how much you "believe" it.

That's the point at which he lost me.

That's not about Black and white. If you happen to be a Queer, as I am, it's immediately clear that we ought to wonder exactly WTF Obama means when he says he wants to unify this nation. That we all count. If you don't happen to be Queer but do happen to be Black or Brown or Yellow or Red, you know you can't unify this nation if we don't all count, if you're willing to throw the most controversial among us to the wolves in order to fetch a few electoral votes. That's no different from running on Jim Crow. If all aren't free, nobody's free.

Yet that despicable appeasement was his choice. And although all the Democrats are whores on this issue, only one--Obama--has taken it so far as to campaign with a professional homophobe. That crosses the line. that he's Black makes no difference whatsoever. It suggests to me that there is a crack in his ethics that I ought not overlook. Contrasted with John Edwards, who says straight out that he has a hard time with gay marriage, Obama's position is, well, no different from Lester Maddox. I don't dig it, OK? And I don't dig sacrificing immigrants or African Americans or Queers or women or anybody else, and I am frankly infuriated when a Black Democrat does that kind of thing. Does that resonate with you as a fair attack on the issues and the campaign stragegy vis a vis the rhetoric, or does it strike you as a racist attack? If the latter, I'd certainly appreciate knowing why.

To deconstruct AAPP:

(1) Not that my opinion matters, but FWIW, I don't "hate" Obama. I like him a lot but I don't trust him. This isn't personal. It's about his campaign in SC with a professional homophobe, and it's about his promised huggy-kissyfest with the anti-constitution, anti-color, anti-woman, anti-environment, anti-regulatory, anti-truth, pro-white, pro-rich, anti-poor, and xenophobic conservative juggernaut that has pretty nearly plowed this nation. At best I can say that I hope to God that he's not showing anger openly because he's too smart, as a Black male, to think he can be openly angry and win anything but a jail term. The problem is, it's not possible to tell, and his Rightward tendencies leave me seriously in doubt about what kind of pig is in this poke. Then too, his voting record has been actually as centrist as Hillary's. This leaves me thinking that I don't have any way of knowing what he will actually do if and when he's President. It's a crap shoot. I want better information.

(2) The reason I support Edwards is because Edwards supports working America and has done so his whole adult life. I trust him, not because he's white, but because he's pissed off and running on righteous anger. I don't see the zeal to take on and take out corporate crooks on the Obama side. But to be fair, there is that anger thing. I know Obama and Hillary cannot show anger as Edwards can, because they are Black and female, respectively. Anger doesn't play well when it comes from those quarters. I also know that Obama's best bet for winning the nomination is to do exactly what he's doing now. He's channelling John Kennedy (not Bobby), and he is speaking to our best selves. The problem is that Obama is to the Right of the "white blogosphere," not that Obama is an Africa American candidate.

Now that we as a nation are grown up enough to take a Black man seriously for President in the numbers we're seeing now, surely it's time for old-school African Americans political pundits to drop the knee-jerk analysis that any criticism of any African American is based ultimately on race. When it is, it is. When it's not, it's not, and this time, it's not.

It's time for AAPP to speak to the issues, to go to his own ostensible "progressive" core and critique Obama for those things that deserve critique. He can't ask for a pass. It doesn't work to wrap Obama in Teflon and ask the rest of us to support him because he's Black. It's time for a 21st C dialog across race and ethnic lines about issues and positions.

The African American community has a lot of reason to be suspicious of white liberals. Well don't we all. Liberals weren't called "rotten rock" in the 70s for nothing. But to project blanket distrust of white liberals--never mind progressive whites--to the exclusion of giving serious thought to what they're saying, here and now, in context, about the candidates, strikes me as dated, easy, and lazy. I want to spar with people who are talking about issues, not dodge cheap shots about racism. If you have something to say that can inform me about my racism or ours, that's another matter.

But don't you dare accuse me of mere, base racism when my critique is on the substance, and on a substance that needs to see daylight among African Americans and among Anglos and Hispanics and everyone else, for that matter.

MIA? Part II

My last post on progressive immigration policy, MIA?, began thus:

Have progressives have lost our way on the immigration issue? We don’t seem to have articulated, let alone stood as one in support of enlightened immigration law reform. We don’t even seem to have effectively exposed the myriad misconceptions that are currently running this dog and pony show, or to have begun to educate our base on the issues.

Nope, we seem either to have been smashed to aspic or thoroughly co-opted by the brilliant way in which Luntz, Rove, Tanton and the rest of the corporatist, xenophobic, nationalist, anti-Hispanic Far Right have framed the issue. (Have I heard this complaint before?)

By “smashed to aspic” I mean “silenced,” which, paradoxically, shows up as not showing up, as avoidance of or as skirting the issue. By “completely co-opted,” I mean “constrained to discussing immigration (a) within the rubrics established by the Right, (b) on terms designed to appease the Right, and (c) under the safer heading of partisan political strategy as contrasted with principled or enlightened policymaking.”

This is a continuation of that conversation. Here, I’m discussing what I perceive to be the characteristics of the progressive blogosphere’s immigration law reform debate.

1. Avoidance. It’s a relative term, so my perception is that, relative to the emphasis the Far Right gives to immigration and the intensity with which it is being editorialized and op-editorialized in the MSM, the issue has seen little more than a sprinkling of commentary from leading progressive blogs.

It’s reasonable to ask why, since immigration reform packages a whole big chunk of our traditional turf: anti-racism, justice, fair labor practice, fair trade, women, children, health care, social safety nets, multiculturalism, etc. One would expect a strong, virtually unified progressive voice on this issue, but it’s not there, leaving a giant black hole on the Left and a giant opportunity for the Far Right to frame, brand, and own the immigration issue--a coordinated effort begun in the 1980s by Tanton, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) , et al. (Note: Wittingly or not, CNN's Jack Cafferty just tonight quoted a CIS report as if it were, like, true.)

Perhaps one reason for our silence is that we progressives have been gaslighted. First, we too are side-tracked, misled, and derailed by Tanton, Buchanon, Dodd, Tancredo, et al. (It's out there. It doesn't matter if it's true or not.) Alas, this means that we haven't even done our own homework.

And we've been confounded. The word “illegal” has performed as expected. It has been a phenomenally effective wedge in our neighborhood, and a phenomenally effective mobilizing device on the Right and in the center. (There’s nothing people like more than feeling morally superior.)

But to be fair, the complexity of immigration law, the perceived clash of low-skilled immigrant workers’ and native-born workers’ interests, the huge discrepancies in the methodologies and assumptions used to study immigration, complex and hard-to-measure economic impact—all these things and more have given us pause. Way too much pause.

In this respect it’s as simple as the classic dilemma: The Right isn’t hampered by a fealty to truth and accuracy. Plus, it is tooled up to churn out sound bites like Fox pumps BS. Meanwhile, we go beyond concern for truth and accuracy. We agonize over nuance. We just don’t do soundbites, and when it takes weeks to research an issue thoroughly, we may issue drive-by opinions but not in-depth analysis. Besides, blogs don’t lend themselves to depth all that well.

2. Political strategy: We’ve pretty much limited our analysis to immigration as partisan strategy. From time to time, a flurry of posts appears on Firedoglake, Kos, Digby, or another influential blog, triggered mainly by a specific piece of legislation, a leaked or controversial political strategy, or a particularly egregious anti-immigrant action. Hence outraged reaction, the disclosure of Luntz’s proposal for framing immigration for the GOP, and a thoughtful diary about the “temporary worker program” that was included in Bush’s (defeated) “comprehensive immigration reform” bill this summer. As there and here, occasionally someone touches on a principle that could form the core of an alternative policy, or elucidates a Far Right shill's statistical distortions.

However important they are, these takes don’t adequately indicate what we stand for and why. Unless we say that, we can hardly expect America to take our view into account. What I’m asking for is something deeper than episodic outrage and political strategy analysis. I’m looking for serious dicussion of policy substance and its supporting rationale, something along the lines of this policy sketch.

Where in all this is the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party? And where is the Martin Luther King, Jr. wing of the African American community? We are talking about race-based economic fundamentals and about who will control America's future. The choice is between us and the corporatist plutocrats. To the extent that they divide us, they win.

3. Co-optation: Our conversation tends to be reactive, not proactive; defensive, and constrained by the Right’s talking points. For instance, the conversation on the blogosphere picked up a little bit recently on account of the convergence of four recent events: (1) party consultants’ thoroughly co-opted advice to the Democrats to go nativist on immigration law reform;(2) the ensuing thoroughly co-opted, abysmally stoopid, craven, and all but treasonous Democratic support for the SAVE Act of 2007, a nasty and dangerous piece of (privatized) border militarization, privatization, domestic policing powers and apparatus posing as immigration reform; and (3) the flap about NY Governor Spitzer’s proposal to give driver’s licenses to unauthorized immigrants.

As Digby and others point out, it's a mystery why the Democratic Party go nativist when the GOP strategy to use immigration as this cycle’s wedge bait, just bombed in VA? Why go that route when poll after poll after poll shows that the American people actually do not want a mean immigration policy? When reputable study after reputable study shows that the Far Right's spin on immigration is, well, bullshit.

Because the Democratic Party is co-opted. Behind its face is a looming corrupt and unprecedentedly greedy Corporate America. No big news. Our Democratic Party in Congress has been co-opted about everything. But there’s no reason why our blogs have to be.

So far, when we’re not avoiding the issue, our responses are formulated within the Far Right’s rhetorical box: illegal; amnesty; undercut wages; driver’s licenses. Surprising that we've fallen for that old trick, but here's a news flash: We won’t make a dent until we step out of that frame and discuss this on our own terms, in a distinctly American, not utterly reactionary (white European) way.

Immigration of low-skilled Mexican and Central American workers is about economic refugees. It is rooted in US, Mexican, and Central American plutocracies, in their and our tax policies, in colonialism and neo-colonialism (aka “free trade”), in Monsanto’s genetically engineered agriculture, in water privatization, in desperate poverty, equivalent need, and a Janus-headed US policy inviting with one hand and slamming back with the other. It is about the great realignment of wealth in the USA, turning us from the New Deal to the Screw Deal, and it is fundamentally about who we are and who we intend to be five, ten, thirty years from now.

Here’s the deal: We are not all Christians, or conservatives, or progressives, or Native Americans, or, or heterosexuals, or Republicans, or Democrats, but by virtue of one construct, we are all Americans. Our core values are specifically defined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. As FDR did, we ought to let these principles govern how we analyze the immigration data, the needs, the competing interests, the objectives. That’s the only way we’ll make it possible for everyone to pull together in one positive direction.

What does that mean? For instance, it means that we would propose wage and workplace safeguards to ensure that corporatist profiteers don’t exploit immigrants and use their labor to undercut wages, and we won’t allow “deregulation” or tax policies or fear to pit native-born American workers against immigrant would-be American workers.

You see where I’m going with this? Can I get a witness? Better yet, will the people who know this issue propose progressive policy specifics on the leading progressive blogs--white, African-American, and Hispanic, and all?

Comments welcomed.

(*I'll be back to add links.)
(**Links added.)

Sean Taylor

I don't follow pro football, haven't fooled with the 'Skins for twenty years or more, and wouldn't have known Sean Taylor if I had walked into him. Still, I'm moved by his senseless murder and feel his loss. I send my sympathies to Sean's wife, daughter, and larger family, to those who knew and cared for him, to the 'Skins, and to all of us.

The little I know of Sean Taylor comes from one clip of him and three televised interviews with men who knew him well.

What struck me was a jarring deconstruction in all three interviews. First, the interviewer posited Taylor's evolution from some sort of difficult youth to a man matured by the birth of his daughter. Then the interviewee expressed mystification and insisted that that the story didn't fit the man they knew at all. Rather, they said, they didn't know of a troubled past, and said that he was shy, gentle, focused on his work, brilliantly talented, unassuming, and devoted to his family.

Somebody clearly got the story wrong. But what's odd is that though it was not accurate, still it was lodged firmly in the files of the sportscasters. I don't get that. Is this a measure of the quality of sports reporting?

Hmmmmmm. Now that I think about it, I seem to recall hearing just this mythic oddyssey applied to other famous African American athletes. If I followed pro sports maybe I could give examples. Since I don't, I can't, but I'm sure I'm not making this up.

In a way, it's standard fare. All men have rebellious youths. Boys will be boys and then they grow up.

But what in my experience plays as charmingly picaresque for young white men plays differently (among Anglos) for young African American, Hispanic, and Native American men. I so hope it's different for them in their own worlds. I hope they're cut the same amount of slack we cut for our (middle class) boys' testosterone factor, because in my world, we don't cut slack at all for young men of color. Nuh-uh. What we first trivialize and then assume a young white man has left permanently behind, we convert to living sinister potential in a young man of color: There's just no telling when he'll revert "to type," we think, but thank God somebody's civilized him. For now.

Sean Taylor is iconic. His murder is the tragedy of wasted talent, potential lost to us all, forever, and I don't mean only his football skills. There was a whole man there. Taylor's early success speaks of his focus, his priorities, his discipline, his remarkable ability even as a kid to pursue a dream that you know didn't always seem to be within easy reach. And yet he didn't limit his life to football. In the one clip I saw, he himself alluded to his life off the field in ways that made it clear he knew pretty well which was his life and which was his job.

Sean Talor is iconic. How many other brilliantly talented, gentle, focused, shy, unassuming, and devoted young African American, Native American, and Hispanic family men are boxed inside that myth, and what happens when they aren't pro football stars of massive talent? Where do they end up?

Oh wait, don't tell me.

At yearend 2005 there were 3,145 black male sentenced prison inmates per 100,000 black males in the United States, compared to 1,244 Hispanic male inmates per 100,000 Hispanic males and 471 white male inmates per 100,000 white males.

Whoop!!!

I totally love Alas, A Blog, almost as much as I totally love The Angry Black Woman which, in happy serendipity, links to Alas, A Blog for "How Not to Be Insane When Accused of Racism (A Guide for White People)."

I found that title irresistible, and wasn't disappointed at the "Guide" or the rich collection of comments that it attracted. I recommend the lot.

Once in a while in the midst of serious (and edifying) commentary, something really funny pops up. That happened here, and at the risk of possibly pissing somebody off, I stole this from one Daran's comments on "How Not to be Insane When Accused of Racism" because it made me laugh out loud--too rare in my world. I hope it has a similar effect on you:

Axiom 3: If you are conservative, and something is said which has the remotest chance of changing your world-view, you can switch [off] your brain by uttering the word ‘liberal’. It’s sort of a self-inflicted Vulcan nerve-pinch.

On Sampling "the" African American Blogosphere

This morning I bumped into "the" Black blogosphere again.

(I should warn you now that the snarky tone you might pick up on is me making fun of my own apparently bottomless pit of blissful oblivion. Repeat: All snark herein contained is directed by moi at moi.)

I had not actually thought of "the" African American blogosphere as such until now. Why is that, you may ask? Because I live in a bottomless pit of blissful oblivion? Partly.

For instance, I've been so busy being wowed by Kos's unmatched blogofeat that it never dawned on me to consider that Daily Kos might be seriously skewed whiteward. Especially since the death of Steve Gilliard.

I can think of all kinds of things to say about that. The whole blogosphere is? Doubtful if by "whole" we mean "global." But we're here, not there. Or, the whole US blogosphere is? I guess. I don't know for sure, but that sounds right for all kinds of reasons. Or, that's one of those automatically self-replicating indictments: The more it is offered up, read, and taken seriously, the fewer the exceptions to the rule will be. Or, how many of us on the white side make a point of linking to blogs authored by black and brown people?

But to cut to the chase, what makes me want to kick myself in the rear, again, is that I rarely stop to evaluate a post or a blog from the perspective of the author's race or ethnicity unless (1) I know what it is, which I don't unless the author makes a point of defining his/her blog in those terms, or (2) race is the subject, and then I wonder, or (3) there's content there that I recognize as racist. And the operative word here is "recognize." That's the problem, for obvious reasons.

How many times do I have to learn this lesson about all the things I take for granted?

Oh, right: The reason I put "the" in quotes above is because the notion of "the Black blogosphere" strikes me as awfully ethnocentric on the part of us white folks. We don't speak of "the white blogosphere" any more than we speak of "the straight lifestyle." Put that way, we can see at once that the notion is absurd. Clearly there's no such thing as one straight lifestyle or one white blogosphere. So the notion that there's one black blogosphere is absurd, too. Unless all African American bloggers astral plane nightly to the Pleiades to plan the next day's agenda, there's no more a unifying perspective in African American-ness than there is in Galesbitrans-ness.

Except when there is.

As, for instance, on details such as, oh, the presidential debate, the perspective and content of the MSM, the YearlyKos conference, economics, healthcare, missing persons, and other stuff like that.

I don't mean that all African Americans reach the same conclusions, or that all galesbitrans people reach the same conclusions. Of course not. I mean that standing outside the big house, whether the big house of race or the big house of heterosexuality, is itself a distinct and different perspective from the governing point of view. After that, what we actually have to say depends on who we are as unique individuals. Anyway. . . .

So it is today that, for me, reading the opinions of some of the African American bloggers is once more climbing out of my pit. Doing so, I am reminded, still yet again one more time, that I live an insulated life owing to skin, class, biological sex, and gender. (Why do I STILL have to be reminded about that? Don't we all/yes/and some more than others/that would be you Trent Lott/Grover Norquist/George Bush.)

I'm also reminded that it's the rare white male who would think to write a sentence admitting that skin, sex, gender, and class actually do limit his viewpoint and experience.

I am reminded that the popular criticism of the Democratic Party--which I heard Tom Brokaw express as "fratricide"--namely, that it blew itself apart in the 60s by allowing too much emphasis on "identity" groups--is just another way of saying that we were all just stoopid. Stoopid to think that owning and discussing our differences openly might eventually lead to some kind of better way forward together than the rigid and violently enforced skin/class/sex/gender hierarchy had so far produced.

Oh, it's been messy over on the Left, all right, but I have to believe it has been worth it. This evaluation of course depends on point of view. Don't they all.

If the perspective is power and partisan primacy, then I guess the criticism is a reasonable strategic assessment, and whether our emphasis on "identity" been worth it is up for grabs. I'd say no if that emphasis has meant that while our attention was elsewhere, the GOP has been able to seize and hold power long enough to pull of a permanent coup d'etat. I'd also point out that the GOP's rise to power has been about a lot more than that, including voter fraud, caging, vote suppression, race baiting, flat-out lying. . . Maybe we should talk more about that?

But if the perspective is longer-term, if it's about a genuine attempt at authenticity, a genuine effort to lift up the rocks and see what's living there; if it was at all about learning how to climb out from under each others' power trips and mind fucks, as we used to say, then I guess the verdict is promising but still out. It depends what we as individuals and as discrete populations do with what we've learned. Forty years isn't long enough to decide that. The night is young and there's still a bit of mayhem abroad.

But I digress. I just wanted to say that I've discovered again for the billionth time that it's fun and important and informative and educational and challenging to venture outside my usual stomping ground.

I'm going back now to read more of "the" African American point of view. Join me at The Angry Black Woman, The Field Negro, African American Opinion, African American Political Pundit, Jack and Jill Politics. . . . and Electronic Village's list of the top ten Black bloggers, including Prometheus6

A Day Without a Mexican

That giant sucking sound was the brains of 42 Democrats vanishing into lala land. That's how many (so far) who have sponsored H.R. 4088, the "Save America with Verification and Enforcement Act" (SAVE), introduced by Heath Shuler (D-NC) and Brian Bilbray (R-CA).

"SAVE" would sanction employers who hire undocumented migrant workers, require them to verify hires using the controversial E-Verify program, add 8,000 new border patrol agents, and expand the investigation capabilities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, among other things. (New rule: No more BS legislation titles.)

If Kos is correct, almost as bad is word that "centrist" Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Rahm Emmanuel (D-IL) is quietly pushing House Democrats to sign on to this darling of uber-nativists Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and Duncan Hunter (R-CA).

One, as Kos has been commenting all week, Republicans found out in Virginia's election outcomes on Tuesday that hard-line anti-immigrant posturing isn't turning out to be the magic bullet they thought it would be. Why, then, would Democrats now decide to drape themselves with the white sheet? I guess because we have an unmatched genius for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Two, this big brother of Arizona's Employer Sanctions law, due to take effect in January 2008, suffers from many of the same "circle the wagons and fire" notions of our home-grown measure. The main one is that nobody knows exactly what percent of the GDP is contributed by undocumented workers, but study after study tells us that they give more to local economies than they take from them. If that's the case, removing them from employer payrolls is going to bring bad things to life, starting with crippling the employers who presently engage them. How is that helpful? If the assumption is that all those middle managers, programmers, and technical support personnel whose jobs have gone to India are going to become busboys, construction workers, dishwashers, and fruit pickers, well, HELL-BLOODY-O????

Three, let's pause a moment in reverent gratitude for all who understand the velocity of money theory. It notes that each dollar dropped into a local economy circulates through it many times. See, that's why cities love it when conventions come to town. It's not just the hotel fees and restaurant patronage. It's not just rental cars and the parking lots and the gasoline and the taxi services and the night club and entertainment tabs and, oh, the liquor, or the souvenirs and T-shirts and the airport traffic. It's all that AND this: Every one of THOSE dollars cycles back through consumer world, generating ever more sales taxes and ever more capacity for local folk to buy or rent houses, remodel, get new clothes for the kiddies, get groceries, have clothes cleaned, grab a Tecate, have the carpets cleaned. . . .

So why would any Democrat, especially in this market, intentionally grow the ranks of the unemployed? Why would anybody voluntarily subtract X dollars from the national economy? Why would anybody shut down viable businesses, add X million people to the detention/deportation rolls, fracture their families, do physical violence to them, ensure lasting psychological damage among them, give legs to racist impulses, and, oh yeah, alienate their votes? Have we had a collective breakdown here?

Four, and by the way, the E-Verify program is full of errors, and word here is that our Employer Sanctions law, at least, will probably be found unconstitutional. Could that be a clue?

Five, supporters believe that Latinos will self-deport in anticipation of the law's taking effect. That's begun to happen here in Maricopa County, and one result is that public schools are seeing their operating budgets tank in tandem with enrollment declines. Oh Yah-hoodley-hoo! Great public policy! (Unless, of course, you subscribe to the shock doctrine school of shakedown government, in which case you think it really is great public policy.)

Six, employers aren't thrilled. We know that because the US Chamber tells us so, and because here in Phoenix, it's a small big cowtown where people talk with each other.

See, if I were running the DCCC, I would look upon that fact as offering an opportunity to make alliance with employers in order to push for safeguards against exploitation and abuse, in order to begin the long-term effort to instill a commitment to a healthy workplace ecology--meaning equitable treatment of workers and owners. But I'm not.

Seven, measures like these are racist, mean, ugly, and a form of terrorism. If you think not, put yourself in the place of an immigrant who's been here for 9 years, with family and a hopeful life, working hard and paying federal and state taxes and FICA. It disgusts me that my country is capable of this kind of law-making, and appalls me that my party is complicit. Complicit in this just as in condoning the use of torture. I'm one hair away from becoming an Independent. It doesn't seem to do any good to write, call, fax, and otherwise express my outrage to the numbskulls and chair warmers that presume to "represent" me in Congress. I am beyond furious.

I just called the DCCC at 202-863-1500. You're asked for the extension of the person you're calling. I punched in 100 just for the heck of it, and got Charlie Rangel's voice mail. I wish I could say that the message I left him was eloquent and coherent, and so will he, I'm sure, but I think he got the gist that I'm really unhappy at the racist, stupid, moribund turns my party persists in taking.

Give 'em a buzz and let them know your feelings, too.

Race Hate and Violence in Rightwing Immigration Rhetoric

Every night, Lou Dobbs intones that anti-immigration people are not racists. No?
Here's a smattering of what our kids are hearing from the Right. Warning: If you have any decency, it will make you sick.


For Immediate Release
June 20, 2007

Center for New Community Releases "Indecent Proposals: Top 10 Most Offensive Quotes" from Anti-Immigrant Groups and Supporters

Members of Congress Urged to Disavow Virulent Rhetoric from Extremist Groups As Reform Effort Nears Homestretch

Chicago - Today, the Center for New Community, a faith-based human rights group that tracks anti-immigrant activity, released "Indecent Proposals: Top 10 Most Offensive Quotes from Anti-Immigrant Leaders." The list captures some of the most offensive rhetoric being propagated and endorsed by anti-immigrant groups and their supporters on talk radio.

1.) "We need the National Guard to clean out all our cities and round them up...They have no problem slitting your throat and taking your money or selling drugs to your kids or raping your daughters, and they are evil people."[1]

Chris Simcox, co-founder of the Minuteman Project and president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. As quoted in the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report magazine, Summer 2005.


2.) "Mexican men have a reputation for leering and worse at little girls, which shouldn't surprise us, since sex with children is socially acceptable in Mexico."[2] Brenda Walker, California anti-immigrant leader and publisher. From VDARE.com article titled "Top Ten Reasons Why the US Should Not Marry Mexico," January 1, 2007.


3.) "My message to them is, not in two weeks, not in two months, not in two years, never! We must be clear that we will not surrender America and we will not turn the United States over to the invaders from south of the border."[3]
Rep. Virgil Goode (R- VA), at the March for America, Washington, DC, June 18, 2007.


4.) "I don't care if Mexicans pile up against that fence ... just run a couple of taco trucks up and down the line..."[4]

Neal Boortz, anti-immigrant talk radio host on WSB-AM in Atlanta on June 18, 2007.


5.) "Terrorists are also walking in unopposed; our southwestern border is littered with Arabic papers and Islamic prayer rugs."[5]

Jim Gilchrist, founder of Minutemen Project. From a press release announcing the forthcoming publication of a new book co-authored with Jerome R. Corsi, February 2006.


6.) "The brown toxic cloud strangling Los Angeles never lifts and grows thicker with every immigrant added. One can't help appreciate the streets of Paris will soon become the streets of LA. However, Paris' streets erupted while LA's shall sink into a Third World quagmire much like Bombay or Calcutta, India. When you import that much crime, illiteracy, multiple languages and disease-Americans pick up stakes and move away."[6]
Frosty Wooldridge, anti-immigrant author and activist. Summarizing an address by a KABC-AM talk radio host to the Federation for American Immigration Reform director's meeting, Fall 2005.


7.) "What we'll do is randomly pick one night every week where we will kill whoever crosses the border...step over there and you die. You get to decide whether it's your lucky night or not. I think that would be more fun."[7]
Brian James, anti-immigrant talk radio host with KFYI-AM in Phoenix. Suggesting a solution to the immigration problem in Arizona while filling in for the regular host, March 2006.


8.) "Shoot him."[8]
Phil Valentine, anti-immigration talk radio host, WWTN in Nashville. Advising Border Patrol agents to shoot undocumented immigrants during an anti-immigrant rally in Franklin, Tennessee, April 27, 2006.


9.) "We've got to make it in this country so (immigrants) can't exist here...We've got to rattle their teeth and put their feet to the fire!"[9] Terry Anderson, anti-immigrant talk radio host with KRLA in Los Angeles. Speaking at a "Hold Their Feet to the Fire" anti-immigrant rally organized by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, April 22, 2007.


10.) "Our enemies are bloodied and beaten. We cannot relent. Our boot is on their throat and we must have the willingness to crush their ‘throat' so that we can put our enemy down for good. The sovereignty of our nation and the future of our culture and civilization is at stake. The United States is a beacon of salvation unto the rest of the world. Our freedoms, our culture is mans salvation. If we perish, man perishes."[10]

Joseph Turner, Save Our State (S.O.S), now a staff member with the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Message sent to Save Our State supporters on October 7, 2006.

Thinking About Racism, Again

I'd say most white Americans are sick of hearing about racism.

Unfortunately, those who fall into this category probably don't associate the word where it belongs--with broad and deeply entrenched social and economic systems that divert resources and opportunities from poor communities of color. Instead, they associate it with Tawana Brawley and Al Sharpton--whom I choose to function here as tags for other controversial claimants and spokespersons as well.

Whether she was raped and he was right to defend her, and whether how the case came to function was itself a matter of racism and sexism is not my subject now. The issue for me at this writing is what the Brawley case became, how it functioned to taint everyone it touched, and how it serves now to distract us from fundamental inequities that shame and hurt us all.

To many, this case was the moment Sharpton jumped the shark, and thus it was also the moment that the claim of racism as the cause of a police or judicial injustice to one or more individuals became an "oh for Pete's sake" moment for a lot of white Americans. Today, it's the claim by some that Michael Vick is being railroaded because he's African American that is adding to the inventory of incredible claims of race-based discrimination.

This has a price that I think some in the community's leadership may not have sufficiently considered. Given that as some folks are being turned off by these charges, other folks are being turned on to fight like hell for the alleged victim, energies and focus that are going to controversial individual situations--minor in the great scheme of things--are not going toward remedying expansive and very well-fed systemic travesties. That's too high a price for leaping to defend a dog brutalizer like Michael Vick. There are way more important matters, such as the aftermath of breached levees in New Orleans, and endemic job, credit, income, housing, mortgage, and school inequities that shackle too many decent, working people of color and too many decent, working white people in poverty.

I'm talking partly about how movement emphasesnecessarily lose viability over decades. I'm talking about how words get plumb worn out, and how images and slogans have to be re-charged, re-inspired from time to time. But mostly I'm talking about choosing priorities wisely, and about finding ways to make achieving those priorities "newsworthy" PR events.

The media have a role in putting the emPHAsis on the wrong syLAble, of course. It serves the status quo for our energies to be diverted in this way, just as it serves the status quo for our energies to be diverted from criminal conduct in the executive branch to an endless stream of cases concerning the abduction of pretty white girls or the sexual pecadillos of US senators.

Wouldn't it be better, now, here, in the year 2007, for African American cultural and political leaders, and for the rest of us who believe in equality and justice for all, to concert all these energies and organize all available human and material resources toward publicizing, educating about, and dismantling this instead of defending Michael Vick?

Michael Vick

Within three years, tops, Vick will be playing again for the NFL. Between then and now, he will go to a lovely retreat in the desert where he'll emerge rehabbed as a member of PETA's board of directors, marry a nice lady veterinarian, and take up dog rescue as a community service. He will appear on Larry King and blabber about his misguided youth and the racists that declared him guilty before his trial, and his new-found sensitivity, and he won't be sporting dreds.

In the meantime, it appears that our rush to judgment was right, after all. People reached the only sane conclusion possible, based on the evidence in the media. What made our conclusion not a collective racist spasm was the deed and the videos, duh.

Georgia's NAACP would do well to issue a revised statement on the Vick sitch, because, excuse me, rote defense--let me repeat that: rote defense--of any popular, wealthy African American athlete regardless of circumstance and evidence (does the name O.J. ring a bell?) does diddly squat to enhance our collective sensibilities about justice, diversity, and personal integrity. It stinks of special pleading, undermines the credibility of the NAACP when it does confront genuine racism, and adds to what I fear is a building store of resentment among many white Americans about an overplayed card.

If he should be diagnosed as a bona fide sociopath--and it's not out of the question--Vick's actions would be more comprehensible but not excusable. He has no excuses. He knows what cruelty means, but he chose to make it a business proposition just the same. His macho quotient evidently insufficiently demonstrated on the football field, he chose to torment dogs to prove how tough he really is.

Vick sure isn't the first guy to equate abuse with manliness, and that's the rest of the discussion we should be having about this matter. Yes, I'm encouraged that it has shed some light on the truth about dog fighting and "pit bulls"--vicious dogs are made by vicious people, not born with a breed imprint--but I hope that, in addition to a special on the spectacular nastiness of dog fighting, we will soon see a CNN special on the connections between men who abuse their dogs and men who abuse their wifes and lovers, because it's unquestionably there. Such a documentary would add significantly to the good that could come out of this hideous episode, but no, I'm not holding my breath.

One last thing: Dog fighting isn't a southern disease, and I'm sick of hearing that it is, so siddown, shuddup, and get a clue. It exists worldwide, and it exists in every US quadrant, social milieu, and demographic. But it's illegal, so it's hidden. Like bootlegging, usually the poor people do it and the rich people get the thrills. (In this case, the rich man did it and got the thrills.) Stop with the specious projections, please, and look at the facts. Recently it was reported that one in five of every Chicago school kids has witnessed dog fighting. Google on Chicago dog fighting. If you think it's a southern thing, you'll definitely be surprised.

Let's put this virulent regional chauvinism out with the rest of the trash.