Congratulations Sal, Patrick, Liz, Paul, and Lane. This is a tremendous thing you are doing, celebrating the history of the struggle. Those who do not know history I doomed to repeat it. We can't go back to the way things were in the 1960s no matter how hard these racist repuglikkkans try to make us. That is why we fight so viciously for ethnic studies, against racial profiling, and for the liberation and equality of our people. The white power structure fears the growing latino population and what they might do as a political majority. But instead of organizing they have sought to destroy us through unjust, immoral, and indefensible laws. They will never stop us or our struggle. Congratulations again and thank you for your activism!! Thanks to the Weekly for reporting this.
TX, W Corvi, Bob, No Guey, Unbug, and Bilbur, did you read what I wrote? I didn't make any racist remarks, I pointed out facts to you. Apparently you do not know how to comprehend facts, especially those that disagree with your point of view. The fact that the majority of undocumented immigrants came through legal channels and overstayed their visas means this law will do NOTHING to stop all of them from coming in the first place. Overstaying your visa or crossing the border through the desert is a violation of CIVIL law, not CRIMINAL law! Do you understand the difference? Thus someone is not a criminal when they violate civil law. I ask how many of your ancestors came here legally?
You do not understand the history of this country, this region, or our government's historically racist policies towards all chicanos/latino/mexicanos. Like I said before, if the people coming across were white, none of these laws would be passed, and none of you would be hiding behind your computers supporting these racist policies. In the late 1800s and early 1900s this country even had racist policies towards Europeans. The quota immigration system was slanted to except more northern and western European immigrants (because they are "whiter") then southern and eastern European immigrants. In the 1880s this country passed its first racially biased laws, the Chinese Exclusionary Acts.
But none of this will mean anything to you because you do not understand facts anyway. Here's one thing you can count on from me, I am going to counteract and call out every anti-latino/chicano law, policy, statement, and politician from now on. I will not be silent any longer and I will not see my state and my country where my family has lived for five generations turn into a fascist regime. SB 1070 is based on the presumption of guilt rather than the presumption of innoncence which turns the entire base of our legal system on its head. We are fast becoming a nation of despots and tyranny rather than a nation of laws. We torture our enemies, we deny rights to our own citizens, we create kangaroo courts and do not charge people with crimes and hold them indefinitely. We spy on our own citizens. The repuglican party wants to rule the world and keep all "minorities" in their place. They are on a runaway train towards fascism. Every single policy they create they try to justify by using or saying 9/11.
SB 1070 is a racist law, plain and simple. HB 2281 is a further example of this state legislature targeting latinos. Fascism starts by targeting a group of people and blaming them for all of our society's ills. You cry about drugs, who demands and uses the drugs? You cry about violence, who manufactures, sells, and does not properly regulate the automatic weapons that are used to commit the violence? You cry about immigrants being a drain on our economy, they contribute $4.4 billion to the AZ economy every year, they pay $2.4 billion in taxes to AZ every year, they provide the labor for thousands of low wage jobs that Americans don't do every year.
This is a country of immigrants and it always will be. "Send me your tired, your weak, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, those homeless, the tempest tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
First of all you are wrong about the term racist. It is white people who created the term Hispanic, and it is white people that have treated chicanos/latinos/mexicans as a seperate race from the inception of this country. I do not identify as white nor do I identify as native american, I identify myself as chicano or mestizo. I would never be mistaken for white therefore I could never be called a part of the white race. If you really want to be scientific about this then you would say there are no races, not just not a Mexican race, however racism does exist just the same. The Census is a perfect example of this as there were Guamanian, Samoan and Hawaiian races, and several other small islands races, however Mexicans were not included, thus I chose other and wrote in mestizo. The fact that islands with less than 1 million people could somehow be there own "race" but Mexicans with hundreds of millions of people throughout the Americas could not is, in fact, racist.
The people that support this law are not all racist. However the people that wrote the law ARE! Russell Pearce has ties to neo-nazi and other hate groups all over this state and country. He even let that slip in 2006 when he forwarded a hate group email to his supporters then tried to cover up. Kris Kobach, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) affiliated attorney who wrote the law and is running for Sec. of State in Kansas is a racist. IRLI is the legal arm of Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which was labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center a few years ago. FAIR's founder John Tanton has many ties to hate groups and has written many articles for hate publications over the past 25 years. If that does not make someone a racist I don't know what does. And white people, like Beck, O'Reilly, Dobbs, and Horne use the term racist far more than any minorities do nowadays. According to Beck Obama is racist. Remember that a majority of people in this country supported the Jim Crow laws, and were against the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, 1965, and 1968.
I ask you if Mexicans are a part of the white race, how were 1 million U.S. citizens deported during the 1920s and 1930s in reaction to the Mexican Revolution and the Great Depression? If Mexicans were white how was Operation Wetback allowed to go into affect in the 1950s to deport the immigrant workers that were brought in during the Bracero Program? The fact is we call it racism because we have always been considered a different race by white people.
You're also wrong about the use of "anti-immigrant" terminology, because this all is anti-immigrant. The majority of the 10 million undocumented immigrants living in this country came through legal channels and simply overstayed their visas. The very fact that we call immigrants aliens or illegals is incorrect and offensive terminology. Alien is used to make it seem like these people are from out of this world. Illegal is also mis-used, a person cannot be illegal, their actions are illegal, but they themselves are not illegal.
This law was not foisted on us by this state, it is part of a national effort by the repuglican party to demonize all immigrants for all of our society's ills. They won't even allow for it to come up for a vote in the Senate, what kind of a democracy is this?
I'm also tired of white people calling out minorities for using the word racist. When something is racist, as sb 1070 and hb 2281 are, it deserves to be called out. You will never be mistaken for an immigrant and therefore you cannot even be empathetic with the situation chicanos/latinos/mexicanos are facing in this state. Have you ever been pulled over for being brown? Ever been the first one questioned at a gathering of people? Ever been pulled out of your car, handcuffed, or followed for no reason? Ever been asked if you have contraband in your car at a routine traffic stop? My guess is no.
Open your eyes and realize that we're calling out racism. If the people coming across the border were pale-skinned, blond-haired, and blue-eyed, there would be none of these laws, we wouldn't be having this discussion. This is not about safety or security, it is about blatant racism and the white people in this state and country fearing their loss of political power. This is the last power grab of a dying system. We will turn Arizona into what California has become since the passage of prop 187 there in 1994.
And MSNBC is not a liberal faux news. They have Pat Buchanon and Joe Scaraborough and several other conservatives on their network. Where are their equivalents at faux news? They do not call themselves fair and balanced at every turn when they are being blatantly partisan. They do not fail to tell their audience that a commentator has a personal or monetary stake in an issue and try to play them off as being an objective observer. They also call out Obama on several issues and decision he makes, whereas faux never did so against George Bush. You have much homework to do. Just read the signs or hear out the obscene chants of the counter-protestors at all of these rallies, they are clearly ignorant, bigoted, xenophobic, and racist!
Recent Comments
You do not understand the history of this country, this region, or our government's historically racist policies towards all chicanos/latino/mexicanos. Like I said before, if the people coming across were white, none of these laws would be passed, and none of you would be hiding behind your computers supporting these racist policies. In the late 1800s and early 1900s this country even had racist policies towards Europeans. The quota immigration system was slanted to except more northern and western European immigrants (because they are "whiter") then southern and eastern European immigrants. In the 1880s this country passed its first racially biased laws, the Chinese Exclusionary Acts.
But none of this will mean anything to you because you do not understand facts anyway. Here's one thing you can count on from me, I am going to counteract and call out every anti-latino/chicano law, policy, statement, and politician from now on. I will not be silent any longer and I will not see my state and my country where my family has lived for five generations turn into a fascist regime. SB 1070 is based on the presumption of guilt rather than the presumption of innoncence which turns the entire base of our legal system on its head. We are fast becoming a nation of despots and tyranny rather than a nation of laws. We torture our enemies, we deny rights to our own citizens, we create kangaroo courts and do not charge people with crimes and hold them indefinitely. We spy on our own citizens. The repuglican party wants to rule the world and keep all "minorities" in their place. They are on a runaway train towards fascism. Every single policy they create they try to justify by using or saying 9/11.
SB 1070 is a racist law, plain and simple. HB 2281 is a further example of this state legislature targeting latinos. Fascism starts by targeting a group of people and blaming them for all of our society's ills. You cry about drugs, who demands and uses the drugs? You cry about violence, who manufactures, sells, and does not properly regulate the automatic weapons that are used to commit the violence? You cry about immigrants being a drain on our economy, they contribute $4.4 billion to the AZ economy every year, they pay $2.4 billion in taxes to AZ every year, they provide the labor for thousands of low wage jobs that Americans don't do every year.
This is a country of immigrants and it always will be. "Send me your tired, your weak, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, those homeless, the tempest tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
The people that support this law are not all racist. However the people that wrote the law ARE! Russell Pearce has ties to neo-nazi and other hate groups all over this state and country. He even let that slip in 2006 when he forwarded a hate group email to his supporters then tried to cover up. Kris Kobach, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) affiliated attorney who wrote the law and is running for Sec. of State in Kansas is a racist. IRLI is the legal arm of Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which was labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center a few years ago. FAIR's founder John Tanton has many ties to hate groups and has written many articles for hate publications over the past 25 years. If that does not make someone a racist I don't know what does. And white people, like Beck, O'Reilly, Dobbs, and Horne use the term racist far more than any minorities do nowadays. According to Beck Obama is racist. Remember that a majority of people in this country supported the Jim Crow laws, and were against the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, 1965, and 1968.
I ask you if Mexicans are a part of the white race, how were 1 million U.S. citizens deported during the 1920s and 1930s in reaction to the Mexican Revolution and the Great Depression? If Mexicans were white how was Operation Wetback allowed to go into affect in the 1950s to deport the immigrant workers that were brought in during the Bracero Program? The fact is we call it racism because we have always been considered a different race by white people.
You're also wrong about the use of "anti-immigrant" terminology, because this all is anti-immigrant. The majority of the 10 million undocumented immigrants living in this country came through legal channels and simply overstayed their visas. The very fact that we call immigrants aliens or illegals is incorrect and offensive terminology. Alien is used to make it seem like these people are from out of this world. Illegal is also mis-used, a person cannot be illegal, their actions are illegal, but they themselves are not illegal.
This law was not foisted on us by this state, it is part of a national effort by the repuglican party to demonize all immigrants for all of our society's ills. They won't even allow for it to come up for a vote in the Senate, what kind of a democracy is this?
I'm also tired of white people calling out minorities for using the word racist. When something is racist, as sb 1070 and hb 2281 are, it deserves to be called out. You will never be mistaken for an immigrant and therefore you cannot even be empathetic with the situation chicanos/latinos/mexicanos are facing in this state. Have you ever been pulled over for being brown? Ever been the first one questioned at a gathering of people? Ever been pulled out of your car, handcuffed, or followed for no reason? Ever been asked if you have contraband in your car at a routine traffic stop? My guess is no.
Open your eyes and realize that we're calling out racism. If the people coming across the border were pale-skinned, blond-haired, and blue-eyed, there would be none of these laws, we wouldn't be having this discussion. This is not about safety or security, it is about blatant racism and the white people in this state and country fearing their loss of political power. This is the last power grab of a dying system. We will turn Arizona into what California has become since the passage of prop 187 there in 1994.
And MSNBC is not a liberal faux news. They have Pat Buchanon and Joe Scaraborough and several other conservatives on their network. Where are their equivalents at faux news? They do not call themselves fair and balanced at every turn when they are being blatantly partisan. They do not fail to tell their audience that a commentator has a personal or monetary stake in an issue and try to play them off as being an objective observer. They also call out Obama on several issues and decision he makes, whereas faux never did so against George Bush. You have much homework to do. Just read the signs or hear out the obscene chants of the counter-protestors at all of these rallies, they are clearly ignorant, bigoted, xenophobic, and racist!