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Super Bowl Commercials Throw Women to the Wolves

There is an old folk tale about a noble lord and his coach driver who threw the lord’s new bride to the wolves chasing them in order to survive. The lord and driver reasoned that the bride was less valuable. Madison Avenue, with the permission of CBS, did something similar to women last Sunday.

On Sunday evening about thirty minutes before the Super Bowl game began I decided to place a message in my Facebook update status. The message was simple. “Super Bowl Sunday is the day with the highest incidences of domestic violence against women.” I urged my friends to “check themselves” and break the cycle. My friend Ken D. pointed out that increased violence on Super Bowl Sunday is a myth and that women face domestic violence at a higher rate on Christmas and Thanksgiving days. We both reiterated that Super Sunday was still an important day to speak up and speak out. Read more

Sheriff Arpaio Joins Forces with Anti-immigrant Attorney

Joe Arpaio has found a new friend who is just as controversial as the sheriff himself. Kris Kobach and Arpaio appeared together at a press conference yesterday afternoon to unveil a new program that trains officers to target immigrants. Kobach, a GOP candidate for Secretary of State in Kansas, works for the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI). According IRLI’s website, it is the “public interest law affiliate of the Federation for American Immigration Reform” aka FAIR, designated as a hate group by the civil rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center.

Before detailing FAIR’s controversial relationships with white nationalists, let’s first examine Kobach’s colleague at IRLI, Mike Hethmon. Hethmon has worked with John Tanton (the founder of FAIR) for nearly nine years. Just last fall he attended Tanton’s annual Writers Workshop. In fact, Hethmon began his “legal overview” presentation by personally thanking “Dr. Tanton for hosting and sustaining what is now I believe 33 years of the Writers Workshop.” Hethmon also added that he has “had the privilege of attending for several years.” Read more

Rooney Rule Opens Door for Great Coaches

As many of you may remember from a previous blog, ‘The Oakland Raiders: Misfits, Rebels and Progressives’, I am a Raider fan. Yesterday’s game was another reminder that my team has fallen on hard times; not only did we not make it to the Super Bowl, we couldn’t even dream of making the playoffs.

What a game it was yesterday, there is nothing like a good Super Bowl to begin the week and end a season. Especially with a Cinderella ending like it was for the Saints. The two best NFL teams this year put on quite a display for football fans and non-fans alike. I would bet that most of the people watching the game were not thinking about the opportunities the NFL has opened up for historically overlooked people. And with that comes the of another NFL season. Read more

Cross-post: Immigrants and the LGBT Community Should Support Each Other

Prerna Lal posted this article to Change.org’s immigrant rights blog. Heartening to see that even as immigration reform suffers, there are a few bright spots on the horizon. Kudos to the LGBT and immigrant communities for having the courage to speak up for one another.

In a show of solidarity between the immigrant rights movement and the LGBT community, MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund) President Thomas Saenz, delivered a keynote speech advocating for comprehensive and inclusive immigration reform at the largest conference for LGBT equality, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Creating Change conference in Dallas, Texas. Read more

Palin’s 100k Speech Fails to Unite Teabaggers

Question: Was Sarah Palin paid $100,000 to rehash a speech from her 2008 vice-presidential campaign?

Answer: You betcha!

On the final night of the National Tea Party Convention, Sarah Palin wooed the audience with some of her trademark one-liners but failed to give the audience anything of substance to take home. Her speech, which was hurried and directionless, did manage to articulate a conservative message which carried across Tea Party and Republican lines.

Sarah hammered on time-worn issues such as upholding the constitution, fiscal responsibility, and reducing taxes. She stayed away from social issues like immigration and preserving Judeo-Christian culture and values. She did this to the chagrin of the die-hard teabaggers who had spent the last two days pushing anti-immigrant rhetoric and praying to God to help them defeat their enemies. Read more

No Doubt About It, Glenn Beck is Racist

Remember the time Glenn Beck suggested that President Obama was burning down the country by trying to repair the immigration system? When he pretended to be the President in a skit in which he doused an actor with make-believe gasoline and lit a match? Or the time he called President Obama racist? That was idiotic and insulting. But what he did Thursday was worse. Because this time he didn’t just insult the President, he insulted all of America.

Many of us know already what an obnoxious bigot Beck is, but somehow he has managed to keep his FOX network TV show and nationally syndicated hate radio platform. What he said a few days ago should leave no doubt about it, Beck is racist.

BECK: He chose to use his name, Barack, for a reason. To identify, not with America — you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical? Really? Searching for something to give him any kind of meaning, just as he was searching later in life for religion. Read more

Tea Party Convention Loses Steam

Day two of the tea party convention can be summed up in two words: confusion and disunity.

The day began at 8:00am when the continental breakfast quickly ran out of coffee – much to the dismay of many sleepy tea partiers. One of the first speakers of the day was the founder of the Memphis Tea Party, Mark Skoda. Skoda’s speech was passionate and rousing, a badly needed pick-me-up after the dreary end to the previous night. Instead of the day continuing on an energizing note, however, it turned to bickering and confusion. The rest of the day was broken into five sets of breakout sessions. The first session I attended was conducted by the Leadership Institute. The session didn’t have an official title but I would call it “facebook and twitter for dummies.”

After that snooze-fest I moved on to “5 easy fixes to the high cost of mass immigration” put on by anti-immigrant group, NumbersUSA. Roy Beck and Tom Tancredo. The presentation about the “dangers of mass immigration” was well received by the crowd, but the Q&A session altered the mood significantly. When someone asked if Roy Beck and NumbersUSA were pro-abortion and sterilization the mood of the crowd changed to nervous murmurs about NumbersUSA’s pro-choice stance. Read more

Tancredo Kicks Off Tea Party Convention with Racist Comments

The much anticipated Tea Party National Convention kicked off yesterday in Nashville, Tennessee. The event is taking place at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel just outside of downtown. Security was tight, with event coordinators not wishing to allow any chance for disruption. The registration for the event took place between 3 and 6pm when attendees received a gift bag stuffed with freebies and information about the events sponsors.

The registration room was an open hallway lined with media on one side and sponsors’ booths on the other. Sponsors included Judicial Watch, Jensen Apparel, Leadership Institute, and Surge USA. At 7:00pm attendees were ushered inside the grand ballroom, which had about 30 small tables for four and 400 seats surrounding an elaborate stage. Before taking seats, the masses were treated to hors’dourves of coconut shrimp and pulled pork canapé while the event’s organizer, Judson Phillips, took to the stage. Forgetting his notes didn’t help him remember the long list of sponsors he was supposed to thank, and after several awkward flubs Phillips collected himself enough to introduce former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo to the stage to a standing ovation. Tancredo stood smiling at the crowd and waving before starting off his speech with “I’m Tom Tancredo and I drive a Harley!” He quickly moved on from the topic of motorcycles, however, to get to his main target: immigrants. Read more

Anti-Immigrant ‘Progressives’ Embrace Hate

Back in 1963, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream where . . . “little black boys and black girls” would “be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.” I’m fairly sure Dr. King wasn’t envisioning Leah Durant, executive director of Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR) joining group shots with prominent leaders tied to the American white nationalist movement.

For nearly a year Leah Durant has been working overtime in an attempt to convince the public that PFIR is a legitimate progressive organization concerned about the issue of immigration. Recently in a discussion on AlterNet Durant argued that the fact that she was African American should be proof enough of PFIR’s progressive bona fides. Ironically Durant makes this statement after arguing that her organization was not “concerned with race.” Read more

Vanity Fair Cover Symptom of Larger Problem

The March 2010 issue of Vanity Fair is causing quite a controversy. The cover and its corresponding article features nine starlets dubbed “the fresh faces of 2010”. Not controversial in and of itself unless you notice the lack of diversity on the cover, which it would be hard not to. It snaps the waif Caucasian nicely and the accompanying article has Vanity Fair writer Evgenia Peretz stating what she considers some of the best attributes of those featured: “downy-soft cheeks,” “button nose,” “patrician looks and celebrated pedigree,” “dewy, wide-eyed loveliness,” “Ivory-soap-girl features”. How very Victorian.

Ah Hollywood, it manages to continuously operate under the idyllic, somewhat delusional stance that art imitates life. It also spends a good deal of time giving itself congratulatory pats-on-the-back for exposing its version of societal ills while simultaneously marginalizing and capitalizing on them. Read more

Haiti Also Needs Psychological First Aid

The earthquake in Haiti this past month is reportedly the region’s worst in over 200 years. In the immediate aftermath, Haiti’s President René Préval called the devastation “unimaginable” with the quake destroying the country’s infrastructure and claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. An early estimate by the Haitian government puts the death toll at 150,000. Sadly, the number of lives lost may never be known because many Haitians were forced to bury their own family members and some bodies may never be recovered from the rubble.

In disaster relief missions of this magnitude, the first response is to provide immediate relief to the region. This includes medical care, food, water, and shelter. It is important to note that those involved with this effort are doing a heroic job providing these absolute necessities. They help to create stability and safety while reducing the ultimate death toll. However, some in the mental health community are concerned that not enough will be done to take care of the emotional needs of the Haitian people. Many of whom are in acute distress and run the risk of long-term trauma-related illness if adequate crisis care is not provided. Read more

Monthly Racism Round-up

It’s common to encounter subtle bigotry from all types of people in every community in America, even in unexpected places. A sad reality of our progress as a nation is that we are not even close to overcoming racial divisions. But sometimes things are said or events take place that are so outrageously overt, they deserve special condemnation. This is a recent round-up of insidious items that went down just in the first month of 2010.

First up is Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies with this thoughtful quote, “My guess is that Haiti’s so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.” He goes on to say that French colonizers didn’t do a good enough job suppressing paganism. He is referring to Haiti becoming the first Black-led republic in the world when it fought for and won independence from France in 1804. It’s akin to saying that America should have been ruled by the British longer or slavery ended too soon. It’s blatantly racist and insults our most cherished American value: freedom. Center for Immigration Studies is trying hard to secure mainstream respectability, but with spokespersons like Krikorian, it can’t help stepping in racist doo-doo time and again. Read more

White Nationalist Rhetoric Prevalent in Mainstream Discourse

The term “illegal alien” or “illegal immigrant” is not acceptable in mainstream rhetoric. Not from anti-immigrant advocates and especially not from immigrant rights supporters. I sometimes hear conversations that allude to using the term “illegal” to gain support for immigration reform from people in the ‘middle’. While the argument sounds logical, the term “illegal” was inserted into the mainstream by anti-immigrant groups, and every time we use it, beyond criminalizing people, we perpetuate a racist framework.

The term “illegal alien” is fairly new. When the 14th amendment was ratified in the 1800s, the term did not exist. After 1965, when the Immigration and Nationality Act was passed, which redressed previous laws that favored immigrants from Europe, terms like “illegal Immigrant” or “illegal alien” were inserted into mainstream discourse by white nationalists. Those that saw this country as a homeland for white people – not only to be controlled economically and politically by whites, but to look white – were disturbed by the influx of people from the global south after the 1965 Act. Read more

Angry Voters, Right-Wing Populism, & Racial Violence: People of Faith Can Help Break the Linkages

This article was written by Chip Berlet and originally published at religion dispatches on January 26, 2010.

We are in the midst of one of the most significant right-wing populist rebellions in US history as illustrated by the Tea Party and Patriot movements. Will religious and progressive activists provide a voice and outlet for populist fear and anger or will these dispossessed voices find a home among the potentially violent elements of the far right?

Eric Ward is nervous. He’s seen it before—the angry right-wing populist crowds, the strident calls to “Restore America” and “Take it Back.” In the mid 1990s, Ward was a community organizer for a human rights group in the Pacific Northwest. As a burly young black man with a loud voice and strange hair, Ward stood out when he addressed the predominantly white audiences of folks concerned about rising prejudice and bigotry. After April 19, 1995, people began to take Ward more seriously, as bodies were removed from the Oklahoma City Federal Building, collapsed by a truck bomb delivered by a domestic terrorist seeking to shift the right-wing populists into an armed insurrection. Timothy McVeigh failed to achieve his goal, but 168 people died in the process. Read more

The President’s State of the Union: Missed Opportunities on the Push for Immigration and Health Care Reform

An insightful post from VivirLatino blogger Maegan la Mamita Mala. Worth reading to the last word.

After President Obama’s State of the Union address last night, I needed to get out of Casa Mala. I knew what was coming, the analysis, the discussion, and the disagreements about what needed to done and what tone to use in doing it. But I needed a drink, I need to sing and dance a little as an act of mourning because in all of these discussions, which I am now engaged in, there was little mention of actual people.

While I was preparing mentally for the State of the Union address, I saw on the Spanish language news about an immigrant mujer, Alexandra Nunez, who died from massive bleeding during an abortion in a clinic walking distance from Casa Mala. A single mother, like me, made a decision about her body and life within the limits placed on her because of law and who she is. Read more

Tanton Memo of the Month – Center for Immigration Studies

Every month, the Center for New Community releases one of John Tanton’s personal letters and/or memos, illustrating John Tanton’s close relationships with white nationalists and the formation of today’s anti-immigrant movement. The letters and memos are a public collection at the Bentley Historical Library.

As discussions on immigration reform fill airwaves and blogs in the coming months, anti-immigrant and immigrant rights organizations will debate if immigration financially benefits American society. Currently, the John Tanton Network, a web of over two dozen organizations, is attempting to represent the interests of American workers, particularly organizations like Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), NumbersUSA and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Almost every month, the Center for Immigration Studies claims that immigrants drain the economy, are responsible for high unemployment and decrease wages for American workers. At the same time, John Tanton’s controversial history sings a different tune. His history suggests that the Tanton Network is more concerned with dividing American workers rather than increasing monthly wages. Read more

Republic Broadcasting Network: Safe Haven for Hate

When I came across Republic Broadcasting Network, billed as “The most provocative programming on the internet”, I immediately thought it was going to be another conservative talk network like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. But after digging deeper and finding the list of shows and hosts, I came to the conclusion that Republic Broadcasting Network was not just “provocative” but rather extreme.

The network features a whole slew of extreme right characters, not to mention its weekly ad in the anti-Semitic newspaper, American Free Press. Two current American Free Press employees, Michael Collins Piper and Mark Anderson have their own radio shows on Republic Broadcasting Network. Both men have strong connections to anti-Semites. Piper and Anderson both spoke at a recent 1st amendment conference that featured famous anti-Semites David Duke and Texe Marrs as keynote speakers. Anderson is also spearheading the anti immigrant segment of American Free Press. Its August 10, 2009 issue, Anderson reported from the border in south Texas, spending a day in the company of the South Texas Minutemen Project. Michael Collins Piper, like many of his American Free Press colleagues has a long history of anti-Semitism. One of his many racist books, “The New Jerusalem: Zionist Power in America,” was on sale at the now famous Holocaust Conference in Iran in 2006. Read more

No Fans for All-white Basketball League

Former wrestling promoter Don “Moose” Lewis last week announced he was launching a basketball league for white, American-born players only. A press release from Lewis reported by the Augusta Chronicle said that “Only players that are natural born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league”.

He went on to claim that his league was not racist: “There’s nothing hatred about what we’re doing,” he said. “I don’t hate anyone of color. But people of white, American-born citizens are in the minority now. Here’s a league for white players to play fundamental basketball, which they like.” Read more

State of the Union: By No Means a Tea Party

After a year of abysmal sleepwalking, Congressional and Administration leaders are finally waking up to the growing restlessness—and yes, anger—across the Potomac. While the state of the union could be summed up in one word—disarray—it will not likely persuade the political class to start acting like grown-ups and settling in to address the nation’s fundamental challenges. We are in for a very perilous ride.

While both parties clamber to get in front of the restlessness and anger—and the President himself finally speaks of “fighting back” against entrenched interests—the rumbles of an incipient “tea party” movement lure politicos and pundits alike to the siren song of disaffected whites who “want their country back.” Record levels of Black unemployment; rising poverty, hunger, and homelessness; the exploitation of low-wage workers; and the rise of sheer destitution take backseat to the status quo as the ruling and writing classes rush to appease the so-called “populists.” Meanwhile, capital has its way—amassing, holding, wielding at will, and content to observe the disarray from afar. Progressives who thought winning the White House and Congress would suddenly, magically yield the change they believed in are slowly waking up to the need for continuing, relentless organizing far from the Potomac and its hallowed halls. Read more

Eating with a Conscience

Ever since I moved to the US I have really enjoyed going out to eat with my family and friends. I’ve been to many unique, fine and also hole-in-the-wall restaurants. In the past year however I cut down on how much I eat out and I’m becoming more conscience of my food purchases. It’s really hard since I live in a small town and my choices are limited. When I travel and have more options, I try to look for locally owned establishments or places that are recommended to me. Often, I make an effort to ask the wait staff if they know where the food comes from. If I know that the meat comes from a place that mistreats worker, then I do not order meat. As my friend says, “it’s hard to eat when you have a conscience.”

Just last week I was in New York at a gathering of food industry organizers and workers, including representatives and workers from the meat industry. Meat packing jobs are mostly held by immigrant, refugees and workers of color, who still face many challenges such as discrimination and low wages. The same issues are faced by restaurant and field workers across America who pick our fruits and vegetables. The goal in bringing together workers from all across the food chain was to protect and promote worker place safety, fair wages and promote justice, so that we can continue to improve the safety and quality of our food. Read more

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