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Silently Complicit No More

The following article is one of a series of accounts from students who recently returned  from Arizona. They were part of a delegation that spent a week touring the state amid  the enactment of controversial law SB 1070. The Center for New Community, a national civil rights organization based in Chicago, sponsored the trip, which included nine students from Washington D.C., New York, Chicago and Colorado.

By Nina Masters

I came to Arizona knowing the immorality and injustice of SB 1070. I left understanding the individual lives torn apart by this law, the children living in fear of men in uniform dragging their parents, uncles, or grandmothers away from them before their very eyes. This trip cemented my conviction that those in this country without documents are human beings. They are simply trying to make a better life for themselves and their children.

Pursuing the American Dream, the promise of hope, they are not criminals and do not deserve to be criminalized as part of a white nationalist agenda. Hearing the heart-wrenching accounts of children my age who have been through more fear, injustice, and suffering than anyone should endure makes me ashamed of the country that I live in. I have realized that by not actively helping these humans—humans who are treated like animals – I am complicit in the racist actions of Sheriff Arpaio, Russell  Pearce, and all of the men and women like them. Read more

Amidst Hot Winds

Our neighbors to the south are caught in a whirlwind of despair while drug lords continue to set the country ablaze with gunfire. The stories coming through the pipeline depict a nation overrun by vicious animals with political agendas. It strikes me odd that this chaos has all but erased the fact that a great chunk of Mexico was recently left in ruins in the wake of Hurricane Alex.

I find it further disturbing that much of America feels it in our best interest to cage the animals and let them sort it out on their own turf. The same cult would have us go knocking door-to-door throwing every “illegal looking” soul over the fence, right into the mouths of the starving jackals. Read more

Population Control Alarmist Attacks Discovery Channel Headquarters

Today’s hostage situation at a Discovery Channel building in Silver Spring, Maryland indicates an alarming re-emergence of racially-tinged population control arguments. The scene played out violently when a man stormed the Discovery Channel offices and took three hostages. Early news reports indicate that the attacker was killed when he was shot by law enforcement which caused an explosive device on his body to detonate.

A list of demands for the Discovery Channel was posted on the website SaveThePlanetProtest.com, which were reportedly written by the alleged attacker James Jay Lee. In the irate statement, Lee refers to human beings as “filth” and demands that the Discovery Channel “stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants.”

Demand number five states:

“Immigration: Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it. Call for people in the world to develop solutions to stop it completely and permanently. Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek jobs and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies. FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH!”

Demand number seven on his list orders the Discovery Channel to:

“Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people’s brains until they get it!!” Read more

Beck-oning God: Piety, Politics, and Power in White

From the time Europeans stepped foot on these shores the culture of “Manifest Destiny”—the notion that God mandated their journey, settlement, and power—has imbued white America. It drove the displacement of native peoples; provided Biblical justification for slavery; nurtured Jim Crow and horrific racial violence; and cultivated nativism, religious bigotry, and white, Christian nationalism—all in the name of “God.”

The thick piety and self-righteousness, the assumed privilege and power of that culture was once again on public display in D.C. Saturday as hundreds of thousands of “disaffected” and “aggrieved” whites and their proclaimed leaders sought to re-stake their inherent claim to God’s blessings in a nation allegedly subsumed by “darkness.”  “Darkness.”  They would never understand just how revealing were their own racially-tinged words.  They would never comprehend how deeply offensive was their rancid attempt to hijack the mantle of Dr. King and a movement grounded so deeply in faithfulness grown out of suffering and death. Read more

‘Dreams in Arizona Have Been Swept Away’

The following article is one of a series of accounts from students who recently returned  from Arizona. They were part of a delegation that spent a week touring the state amid  the enactment of controversial law SB 1070. The Center for New Community, a national civil rights organization based in Chicago, sponsored the trip, which included nine students from Washington D.C., New York, Chicago and Colorado.

By Taisha Hawkins

“ Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become action. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become your character. Watch your character, for IT becomes your destiny. ” -Unknown

Imagine if an imagination was all you needed: to begin, to finish, to follow through.
What if all your tomorrow consisted of was your development in thought from today?

That’s where dreams come from…
You think it in your head, you see it through your eyes, then show others through your action.
And just like that, history repeats itself.

Today is a good day to dream. If you don’t agree, try asking someone who can’t. Read more

What’s Whale Wars Got To Do With Saving the Planet?

Animal Planet’s reality show, Whale Wars, featuring a ragtag group of activists trying to save the planet by attacking Japanese whalers, has as much credibility with environmentalists as Jon & Kate have with parenting experts. It’s the green community’s version of Jersey Shore if you will; so preposterous it’s hard to look away.

Paul Watson is the doughy captain and star of the show. To most viewers he’s nothing more than an eccentric animal rights activist. Most people probably consider him harmless (unless you’re hunting whales of course). But there’s a lot more lurking under the façade of this wacky eco-activist.

Watson is severely at odds with environmentalists striving for inclusive solutions to environmental problems.

The outlandish tactics exhibited on the show extend to Watson’s involvement in the environmental movement. As the chair of the Sierra Club from 2003-2006 and founder and president of the Sea Sheppard Conservation Society, Watson has wielded tremendous influence as an environmental leader. Read more

Fear Resonates in the Eyes of Arizona’s Latino Residents

The following article is one of a series of accounts from students who recently returned  from Arizona. They were part of a delegation that spent a week touring the state amid  the enactment of controversial law SB 1070. The Center for New Community, a national civil rights organization based in Chicago, sponsored the trip, which included nine students from Washington D.C., New York, Chicago and Colorado.

By Brendan Francis

During the week of August 9, 2010 along with 12 other people, I traveled to Arizona to learn more about the immigration movement from all sides and what I could do to help counter hatred towards immigrants. We traveled to Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona to meet with different individuals and hear their views on the immigration debate.

We had a lot of experiences in this short week but what stood out to me the most was the fear that resonated in the eyes of most of the Latinos immigrants we met.

The immigrants I met with were overall very peaceful and hard working people who simply live for their families.  Those qualities helped me identify and relate to them better.  When we traveled to a community where many undocumented immigrants resided, I was able to understand half the things they said and I could hear the passion in their voices when they described why they were here, as well as the fear in their voices over the potential deportation of their family members.  I was really able to feel for them. Read more

Hope in the Making, Somali Americans Run for School Board

The most recent primary election was quite extraordinary for a new group of Americans who live in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. For the last 10 or so years, school issues have been a big topic of discussion for the Somali and minority communities in Saint Cloud. Students who are refugees or are the children of refugees face unique challenges. Somali parents have had a frustrating time trying to get school officials and board members to understand those challenges, and help their children flourish in the school system.

Unfortunately, the response by school officials made it clear that they were not ready to acknowledge the demographic changes in this small city of 68,000 with minorities making up a third of the population. Sticking to the status quo has become the practice of the school district leaders. Read more

Mockingbirds, Truth and Justice

My favorite novel is Harper Lee’s brilliant To Kill A Mockingbird, set in small town Alabama in the 1930’s.  The narrator recalls the events that happened when she, Jean Louise Finch (nicknamed Scout) was seven and her lawyer father Atticus defended a black man falsely accused of raping a white girl.  Columnist Carla Carlisle is the same age as I am, so we were both the age of Scout when the U. S. Supreme Court passed Brown v Board of Education.  Carla now lives in rural Suffolk County in East Anglia in England, but she grew up in rural Pike County on the southern end of Mississippi.  Here is how Carla Carlisle remembers racism and reform in the South:

“The festivities around the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird set me thinking about that glassy, hot world. I feel more proprietorial about that book than most because it’s set in the 1930s in a small Alabama town called Maycomb and I grew up in a small Mississippi town called McComb. A few things separated the 1930s from the 1950s. Most of the white men and some of the ‘colored’ men had fought in the Second World War, so they’d had their horizons stretched. Dirt roads were being paved and supermarket chains such as Piggly Wiggly and A&P were appearing on the sides of courthouse squares.

In 1954, when I was the same age as Scout, a case called Brown v Board of Education of Topeka appeared before the Supreme Court. Overnight, segregation in public schools was declared unequal and thus unconstitutional. Southern whites went crazy. A year later, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat on a bus, triggering a bus boycott by Negro riders. Read more

Cross-Post: Christian Action Network Mounts Comeback on Islamophobic Agenda

By Bill Berkowitz.

Originally published on Buzzflash on Wed, 08/25/2010

The Christian Action Network, a long-time anti-gay/National Endowment for the Arts organization is back on the scene with ‘Islam Rising,’ a film, it claims, ’exposes the dangers of radical Islam to the Western world.’

Months before the current controversy over the building of an Islamic community center a few blocks from Ground Zero brought a host of professional anti-Muslim bigots out of the woodwork, a small group, long associated with a bevy of Religious Right causes, was marketing its own brand of Islamophobia. Welcome to the world of the Christian Action Network.

Throughout the past two decades, the Christian Action Network CAN), founded in 1990 by Martin Mawyer, has been a relatively marginal, yet occasionally effective, Religious Right enterprise. During the early-nineties’ epic congressional battles fought over the conservative movement’s efforts to de-fund the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the CAN received a fair amount of notoriety. These days, the Christian Action Network is involved in what they would probably describe as an even more epic battle: The fight against the Islamization of the Western World. Read more

ProEnglish Advisory Board Member Compares Undocumented Immigration to Rape

Eddie Garcia moved to the United States as a child years ago and has since become a naturalized citizen.  Now that Eddie is all grown up, he has a lot to say about immigration and America.

He loves to tell anyone who will listen that he and his parents came to America as legal immigrants. He also loves to promote the English language and bash undocumented immigrants. Eddie lives in Tennessee and has been very involved with trying to get English-only legislation passed in the state, most notably pushing legislation that would make English the only language available for people who take a drivers license test.  In March of this year, Garcia testified in favor of the English-only bill.

Garcia is also an advisory board member of ProEnglish, a group formed by white nationalist John Tanton who still sits on the group’s board for directors. Tanton is the father of the modern day anti-immigrant movement. He has warned of a “Latin onslaught” and has also stated, “I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.” Read more

Low Wage Workers Fired for Injuries on the Job

Day after day, I converse with workers and hear about issues that affect their health and safety, which include injuries and accidents in the workplace.  There have been several workers, especially immigrants, who have told me their personal stories. Today though, I am only going to focus on one of the issues that plague them.

The well-being of many immigrant workers is largely affected because they are expected to do the most dangerous jobs and are the most disadvantaged when claiming their rights. In most cases of course, fear is present. The fear of reprisals from employers or even fear of the government.  There are several cases I have heard about in which workers are fired after a few days of being injured even though they have worked for the company for several years.  Most of the accidents in the workplace are not being reported to OSHA and other government agencies.  With injuries going unreported, companies proudly show zero accidents for a month in which they probably had several.

I have heard on several occasions about safety team workers or management that pressure workers not to report any information about workplace injuries. Read more

‘This Trip Has Hit Me in My Heart’

The following article is one of a series of accounts from students who recently returned  from Arizona. They were part of a delegation that spent a week touring the state amid  the enactment of controversial law SB 1070. The Center for New Community, a national civil rights organization based in Chicago, sponsored the trip, which included nine students from Washington D.C., New York, Chicago and Colorado.

By Efrain Ramirez

I never thought that I had enough water in me to be able to cry everyday. It really felt like I was mourning the death of someone. This trip to Arizona hasn’t been an educational experience; it’s been an emotional rollercoaster that took a heavy toll on me. It was one of the hardest experiences of my life. This trip really started years before, even before I was born.

My mom is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. She crossed the border 20 years ago. Before that, she had a baby girl who died a few days after birth and from that point my mom knew she didn’t want to have any children in Mexico. She wanted a better future for children – children who hadn’t been conceived yet. She has crossed the border three times in her life. The last time she crossed was in 2001. We went to Mexico to see her family for the first time in 10 years and since then she hadn’t seen her family until two months ago via Skype. Read more

The Green War on Immigrants

Bigotry. That isn’t the first word that comes to mind when one thinks about environmentalism, but green bigotry is real and growing. A web of individuals, groups and funders who identify themselves as environmentalists are dividing the environmental movement and moving it away from solutions that are inclusive of diverse communities.

The good news is we can take a stand against the greening of hate. Read more

Faux Environmental Group Hosts Discussion on Immigration

Anti-immigrant group Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) is hosting an event today, August 25 called, ‘Where have all the orange trees gone? A discussion on Population, Biodiversity and Immigration,’ that will feature special guest Michael Tobias. According to CAPS’ newsletter, American Bigfoot, Dr. Tobias is also the newest addition to its advisory board.

This may sound like a good occasion to get versed on the immigration issue, but it’s quite the opposite.

CAPS is listed as a state contact on Federation for American Immigration Reform’s (FAIR) website, where it is misleadingly described as “an environmental activist organization that views immigration control as a key element of population stabilization.” Read more

“The Other:” Barack Obama and the Fight for American Identity

A scant nineteen months into office, Barack Obama has become the lightning rod for the unfolding fight for American identity—a fight that will last far into the twenty-first century as the country becomes minority white and dramatically more pluralistic.

That some twenty percent of the population (a significant increase since January 2009) think the President is a Muslim is but one indicator of the breadth of this fight and the success of those waging it.  Religion, race, birth status, and the “legitimacy of citizenship” are at the very heart of the recent surge in attacks on Obama, and are at the core of the battle not only on immigration, but also on the “status” of all peoples of color.  Making the President “The Other”—the One unlike the “us” of the dominant white Christian population—makes it so much easier to make “The Other” of all peoples of color and of all those of differing religious beliefs.  Welcome to 1840 America. Read more

Misperceptions about President Obama’s Religion Fueled by Racism

Despite President Obama clearly stating that he is a Christian, nearly one in five Americans incorrectly believes he is Muslim. The nonpartisan group Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life conducted a poll (between July 21 and August 5) and found of those surveyed, 18% identified Obama as Muslim.

What’s disconcerting about this isn’t the growing, media-perpetuated confusion about the President’s faith, but the negative connotations  asserted in this poll. Of those 18% who believe Obama is Muslim nearly all disapprove of the job the President is doing. With the debate over the proposed mosque in lower Manhattan and the protests that went on over the weekend it’s clear the anti-Muslim sentiment is on the rise. Muslims are being demonized and this perception of Obama as a Muslim is shroud both in racism and religious intolerance. The wide racial divide can clearly be seen with the number of whites whose perception of a Muslim Obama rose from 11% to 21% in just over a year, yet there was virtually no change in blacks’ views on the President’s religion or faith. Read more

Cross-Post: The Roma in France

Originally Published in The Irish Times:

ONE MEMBER of his own UMP party has compared President Sarkozy’s crackdown on illegal Roma camps to “rafles”, the roundups of Jews in Nazi-occupied France. Romania’s Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi has cautioned against stigmatising an entire ethnic group and fomenting xenophobia, while a spokesman for the European Commission has warned that group expulsions may well be illegal.

Following July riots sparked by the deaths of itinerant youths, Mr Sarkozy ordered the dismantling of 300 illegal Traveller and Roma camps as part of a broader campaign against crime. But the move has all the hallmarks of electoral grandstanding in the face of plummeting ratings. To date 51 camps have been dismantled, and Thursday saw the first charter flights taking 79 Roma back to Romania on a voluntary repatriation scheme. Some 700 of France’s estimated 15,000 Roma are to be expelled by the end of the month. Read more

A ‘habitual offender’ unleashes nearly half a billion salmonella-tainted eggs

Originally published on Grist.org by Tom Philpott – 19 Aug 2010.

As a jaded observer of  the livestock industry, I just sighed when I learned the scale of the current salmonella-tainted egg recall: 380 million eggs, distributed under 10 different brands in 17 different states, all from a single producer — Iowa-based Wright County Farms. Another day, another industrial-ag gaffe imperiling the health of millions.

USA Today reports that as many as 1,300 people have already been sickened by the tainted eggs. According to a recent GAO report, companies recover only about 36 percent of targeted products in a typical recall. That means that literally millions of people stand just an undercooked egg or an unwashed hand away from a nasty case of salmonella. Read more

US/Mexico Border Fence: Bad News from All Sides

As part of the Secure Fence Act of 2006, the government started building a 700 mile fence along the 2000 mile southern border of the United States. Supposedly this will halt unauthorized immigration from the South.

The 640 miles of fence that have been built to date took four years, an average of $4.5 million per mile of taxpayer money, and have not proven an effective form of border security. On the contrary, this fence has caused more problems than it has solved.

For starters, immigration has not stopped. The only thing this fence has done is force the foot traffic through the more dangerous parts of the desert, causing a staggering number of deaths – 150 so far this year. In the Arizona desert alone, 59 bodies were recovered in July 2010, the highest number since July 2005. Read more

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