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Cross-Post: Legal Observer Arrested by Arpaio Deputies During AZ Protests

Posted by Joshua Holland, July 30, 2010 on Alternet.org.

Did you hear about this act of alleged terrorism in France?

Two employees of the U.S. embassy in France have left hospital following medical tests in Paris after they handled a “suspicious” envelope.

Both employees “are fine and have left the hospital” Paul Patin, a U.S. embassy spokesman, said in a telephone interview. They were exposed to tear-gas fumes, according to Associated Press report, citing French police officials.

Tear gas. I’ve been subjected to this kind of terror perpetrated by rioting police time and time again while peacefully protesting the international “trade” regime — and a few times while covering such protests as a member of the media.

One thing I’ve come to fear during these melees — something that I learned observing the infamous “Miami model” first-hand — is when they target the legal observers. It’s a very clear sign that law enforcement is not interested in upholding the law, but rather in violating it. And they don’t want expert witnesses around.

Continue reading at alternet.org. Read more

Neo-Nazi Leader Is a Secret Porn Star

One of the nation’s largest neo-Nazi organizations, the National Socialist Movement (NSM), suffered a humiliating blow today when one of its prominent leaders was revealed as a porn actor.

In a statement released on the website Portland Indymedia, the anti-fascist group Portland Anti-Racist Action detailed the appearance of Oregon NSM leader Corinna Luray Burt on several hardcore pornographic DVDs and websites. This revelation is expected to cause internal strife for the NSM, a white supremacist organization that has recently been engaged in high-publicity armed patrols along the Arizona border. Border vigilante groups, which have historically included the minutemen, now include neo-Nazis like National Socialist Movement members. Read more

Food Companies Put Profit First, People Last

The working class is being oppressed by employers that only want to grow wealth regardless of the sacrifices or conditions for their workers. The primary and only goal for this type of employer is to make more money.  Few of these employers care to be fair to employees.

In a recent regional meeting, immigrant and refugee workers gathered again to address health and safety issues in meat processing plants. It was very clear from their discussions that plant owners, the people they work for, are more worried about an increase in profits than the workers’ lives. The high speed of work lines and the lack of attention to dangerous plant conditions are just two of several reasons why workers get hurt on the job. Plant managers continue to increase the speed of work lines while reducing the work force to produce more for less money – putting the workers at a higher risk of injury.

Often when workers are injured the companies just have them fired.  As with other industries, there are too many health issues and injustices being ignored. Read more

Is Nothing Sacred? (Sacred Oppression)

Faith-filled people bestow a level of practical reverence to the offices of pastor, deacon, lay minister, etc.  In addition to word and sacrament, protocols instruct believers and followers to concern themselves with justice, civil and human rights, community outreach and advocacy, which extends well beyond the physical walls of the church.  Those who’ve shared regarding their faith experiences, speak of a relationship with the minister (and or chaplain) that is purposeful, confidential, dictates mutual respect, and offers an anticipatory sense of hope and prophetic relief.

In what some would define as an act of blasphemy, a program initiated by a global leader in food processing offers spiritual support and edification to its oppressed and abused immigrant and low income workforce.  Tyson Foods, a company that posted 2008 revenues of nearly 27 billion dollars, and employs approximately 107,000 (an average salary of the majority of the plant workers at only $27,000USD annually), has initiated a Chaplain Services program.  This program involves some 120 part-time chaplains serving the approximately 250 Tyson plants in the U.S., Mexico and Canada.  John W. Tyson, former president and CEO of Tyson Foods, speaks highly of the work of his “faith friendly” company and its Chaplain Services program, giving it stellar accolades.  Interesting, huh? Read more

NY Doctor Injects Steroids in Fetuses to “Cure” Homosexuality

Dr. Marie New of Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City is experimenting with steroid injections in fetuses that will “make girls ‘more feminine’ and reduce odds they turn out gay,” according to an article in the Oregonian.

Back in mid-June, Time magazine wrote on article entitled, “A Prenatal Treatment Raises Questions of Medical Ethics,” which focused on Marie New and a controversy concerning “cures” for a condition they refer to as CAH, short for congenital adrenal hyperplasia. The condition has to do with the adrenal gland, but in many cases results in ambiguous genetalia in females.  Apparently 1 in every 16,000 babies is born with this condition.  In many cases doctors in the past have made executive decisions to do reconstructive surgery on babies – most often times resulting in a traditionally “female” baby.

According to research, the medical establishment has long recognized that gay and lesbian people are not inherently diseased. Obviously, Dr. New and her collaborators didn’t get that memo back in 1973. Read more

Imagine 2050 Releases Special Green Issue

Imagine 2050’s second anniversary magazine was released today with an entire issue devoted to ecology, politics, and national identity. The issue is available for download here and on Center for New Community’s website.

For two years the writers at Imagine 2050 have visited and revisited issues related to migration, race, and the environment. The newest issue of the magazine compiles our favorite “green” articles from the past year. The magazine includes in-depth commentary on topics such as the controversial activities of anti-immigrant groups from within the environmental movement, and the interconnectedness of climate change and structural racism.
Read more

Post-Racial America Still Just a Dream

As this is a milestone blog for me, I was hoping to write about any number of things.  I thought maybe since NFL training camps are underway another blog about the chances of my beloved Raiders was in order. Or I could blog about the recently leaked documents regarding the Afghan War and draw the parallel to the Pentagon Papers and how they brought a quicker end to the Vietnam War.  Or maybe even the joys of summers in Colorado when my daughter comes to visit us.

However, race kept coming up and I feel the need to talk about the issue again.  As we know race is the one issue in America that is so much a part of our society that we refuse to have a national dialogue about it. As with air, race and racism surround us completely and permeate our everyday lives. Read more

Anti-Immigrant “Progressives” Defended On White Nationalist Website

Last week we reported that the anti-immigrant group Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR) had its column on Huffington Post cancelled after the group’s connections to white nationalists were exposed. Apparently this was news to PFIR’s executive director, Leah Durant, who only found out about the cancellation after reading about it on Imagine 2050.

Durant sent a letter to Stuart Whatley, the Associate Blog Editor at the Huffington Post. Below is an excerpt from Durant’s letter:

About a week ago, our staff was confronted with a piece by Stephen Piggott, a writer at Imagine 2050. The piece announced that PFIR’s postings on Huffington had been “pulled” due to PFIR’s alleged “connections to white nationalists…”

In my opinion, if this is in fact the case, it is not only unethical for Huffington Post to pull our commentary based on the accusations of a single interest group like Imagine 2050, it is also highly disappointing that no one at the Huffington Post had the decency to inform us that our commentary would be pulled, or to provide us with an explanation.

She continued:

As for Imagine 2050’s central allegation of PFIR’s having ties to white nationalists, not only are these charges patently false, they are almost certainly actionable. Read more

Senate hosts tea party: Black Farmers, Native Americans, Shirley Sherrod Not Invited

Even  as Shirley Sherrod captured the attention of the nation last week, Senate Republicans torpedoed appropriations due tens of thousands of Black farmers and Native Americans after years of litigation aimed at rectifying  federal discrimination and mismanagement.  Stripping the appropriations from a bill to fund the war—with the final bill passing by unanimous consent—the Senate tea party marked a new low in the chamber that fails consistently to address the persistent legacy of racism in America.

As a result, some sixty thousand Black farmers were denied $1.2 billion in settlement funds emerging from litigation with the Department of Agriculture; Native Americans were denied $3.4 billion appropriated to settle litigation with the Department of Interior, which long ago deemed them incompetent to own land and then took their money and squandered it in the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  Decades of discrimination and racism met head-on in the courts and redressed to some degree were, in minutes, rekindled by an all-white Senate concerned about deficit spending only when it applies to our neighbors of color, to our families and friends who are unemployed, or to those among us who are most destitute.

This, in short, is the agenda of tea partiers, who thread racial anxiety into the fabric of political discourse and whose primary aim is reduced government and maintenance of the dominant culture.  Senators seem to be in love with them. Read more

New Report Exposes Nativists, Environmentalism & the Hypocrisy of Hate

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a new report today titled, Greenwash: Nativists, Environmentalism & the Hypocrisy of Hate.

The report details decades-old attempts by anti-immigrant groups – all part of the John Tanton Network – to lure environmentalists and environmental groups into adopting their anti-immigrant agenda.

The SPLC report comes less than a week after a report released by the Center for New Community showed how anti-immigrant forces have corrupted the dialogue on population and the environment, called Apply The Brakes: Anti-immigrant Co-optation of the Environmental Movement.

At the heart of both reports is the Tanton Network and its efforts to avoid accusations of racism by cloaking its anti-immigrant agenda in environmental groups that are deemed “progressive.” This strategy was instigated by John Tanton, a Michigan ophthalmologist who is widely considered to be the founder of the modern-day anti-immigrant movement. Tanton believed that once his organizations and individuals under his guidance were imbedded into progressive organizations like the Sierra Club, they could implement an anti-immigrant agenda without coming under attack. Read more

Bigots in Suits – Anti-immigrant Lawyer Running For Office

Yesterday was a day of discoveries. I discovered that my hair was an inch longer than the last time I checked, I discovered that one of my best friends decided to ditch her first name and go with her middle name instead. And I discovered that the good people of Maryland District 27A are about to get a good dose of bigotry when Mike Hethmon runs for district delegate.

Mike Hethmon is the General Counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute [IRLI], the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. FAIR was founded by white nationalist John Tanton, and received funds from the Pioneer Fund, a foundation which furthers research for racial eugenics. Racial eugenics was very influential during the early twentieth century – used to justify the atrocities of Nazi Germany and slavery in the United States, but was rejected by the American public and legitimate scientific communities after WWII.

Maryland District 27A residents should know that Mike Hethmon has worked with John Tanton for close to nine years now. He attended and spoke at a Writers Workshop for The Social Contract, a white nationalist journal published by Tanton. Read more

Community Members Protest Weeden Foundation in New York

Community members in the Bronx are fed up with anti-immigrant bigotry. And today they are exposing a powerful New York foundation for funding the anti-immigrant movement.

The Weeden Foundation was confronted by over 100 community members in front of its Manhattan headquarters in a protest organized by the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC) and Sistas and Brothas United (SBU). According to the group’s press statement, members “protest the Weeden Foundation’s funding groups that scapegoat immigrants for ecological problems. Weeden has a history of attempting to inject anti-immigrant agendas into the environmental movement, and also supporting anti-immigrant hate groups…As representatives of diverse immigrant communities, Northwest Bronx community members instead call for an immigration reform that provides all immigrants with full civil rights and a humane pathway to legalization, and an end to racial profiling, raids, mass detentions, deportations, and government programs that criminalize immigrants.”

The Weeden Foundation was featured in a report released by the Center for New Community just last week. The report outlined how anti-immigrant groups have corrupted the dialogue on population and the environment over the last 14 years. Read more

Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric At Home With Gun Rights Advocates

by Brian Schultz

The major intersection of the gun rights and immigration reform debates is, unsurprisingly, that of security: current immigration policies put you at risk, so you had better own a gun to offset it. From the broader threat of unmonitored domestic terrorists to the isolated violence of street gangs, conservative groups like the NRA claim that illegal immigrants are fomenting crises in your backyard, and the only preparation is armament. But it hasn’t always had such a morose agenda; the NRA was first and foremost a conservative lobby with a fairly diverse ideological makeup—one that generally focused on the right to own a gun over the need to. So why all the doom and gloom as of late?

Recent events have begun to polarize the U.S. population on the issue of immigration reform, and it seems appropriate that one of the largest conservative lobbies would stake its place. But this is a more pervasive phenomenon than appraisals of S.B. 1070 and the Tea Partiers. In 2008, then NRA vice-president Wayne Lapierre issued a statement and survey accusing immigrants of violent crime, and argued the need to repatriate undocumented immigrants and the necessity of firearms to defend oneself against them. Read more

Dream Now Letters: Yahaira Carrillo

Originally posted on Citizen Orange on July 21, 2010:

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign created to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!

Dear Mr. President,

My name is Yahaira Carrillo and I’m undocumented.  As I write this, over 20 undocumented youth are risking arrest and deportation to demand that Congress take action for the DREAM Act.  Just over two months ago, I, along with two others, became one of the first undocumented immigrants in U.S. history to do the same.  Like Mohammad Abdollahi, who wrote you a letter on Monday, I too am queer.  I risk being deported to a machista country, Mexico, where killings related to homophobia are rising. Read more

Fox News & Tea Party Went On Despicable Witch Hunt

As Keith Olbermann said “by trying to be everyone’s President you are being no one’s President” Mr. Olberman, you hit the proverbial nail on the head. The White House should not be the student when it comes to issues of race. Nor should it be completely without a position or a backbone.

The lack of said backbone became crushingly clear this week as Shirley Sherrod was forced to resign from her position with the USDA. The request for her resignation was prompted by a heavily edited video clip put into circulation by Andrew Breitbart, a right-wing blogger. In the 38 second clip, taken from a 43 minute speech, features Sherrod sharing an experience of what was, if viewed in context, actually a story of enlightenment in regards to the plight of farmers of all races suffering through the 1980s farm crisis. Read more

A Real Turn-Off: Population, Borders, and Hidden Agendas

Population growth is a tricky topic in many a political sphere. Perhaps no more so than for progressives concerned about climate change. I myself have wrestled with how to reconcile a commitment to racial justice and civil rights and a desire to protect the planet from human inflicted havoc. A balanced, unbiased and, most importantly, effective approach to environmentalism is no easy feat. There are a few things I believe should be upheld in any movement I choose to support: equality for all, human dignity, and a commitment to oppose bigotry. However, some aspects of the environmental movement run afoul in these areas and create conflicts for like-minded individuals who genuinely wish to engage more deeply on environmental fronts.

In the environmental movement, agendas abound and many groups either avoid completely or run smack into the issue of explosive population growth. It’s easy to become alarmed by the sheer number of humans inhabiting the planet and just how quickly we’ve multiplied over the last three centuries. So easy in fact that some environmental groups devote themselves entirely to the topic. And while addressing the issue is necessary, it has, for decades, been plagued by sensational, often flawed claims about how population growth affects the ecosystem. Read more

Tea Party Exhibits Racism, House Gives It a Caucus

According to Vice President Joe Biden, neither he nor the Obama administration believes the Tea Party to be a racist organization. This past Sunday on ABC’s This Week, Vice-President Joe Biden said, “I don’t believe—the president doesn’t believe—that the Tea Party is a racist organization,” Biden said on ABC’s This Week. “Very conservative, very different views on government…but it is not a racist organization.”

Additionally, the Tea Party Express was expelled from the Tea Party Federation after one of its top leaders, Mark Williams (the author of “Taking Back America – One Tea Party at a Time”), wrote an abhorrent and racist blog on his website. In the supposedly satirical piece the Tea Party leader used words like “massa” and “coloreds” while he depicted African Americans as lazy. He implied that given the choice, the black community would choose slavery over being “productive members of society.”

When reading his blog one gets the sense that Mark Williams was really proud of his use of nearly every stereotype about black people seen throughout American history – his self-importance just sort of drips off the page. Read more

Negative Population Growth Plants Anti-immigrant Advertisement in Washington Times

July brought another advertisement in the Washington Times by anti-immigrant group Negative Population Growth (NPG).  NPG attacks immigrants in order to tap into the urgency of the environmental movement around the BP oil spill. This is just one more attempt to further the manipulative demand for U.S. Population Stabilization by white nationalists and anti-immigration groups.

NPG’s advertisement reads,

THE CRISIS IN THE GULF OF MEXICO IS ONLY THE BEGINNING…Without a national population policy America will face future environmental disasters on a regular basis!

The problem with NPG’s message is not that it’s concerned with the population growth of our planet; the main problem is who is behind this group, who they are connected to and why they link national immigration to world population. Read more

“Apply the Brakes:” Nativists and Naturalists Corrupt the Environment-Population Dialogue

Who would have thought that the renowned Lester Brown of Worldwatch Institute or Roderick Nash of the classic Wilderness and the American Mind would involve themselves in a portion of the environmental movement that dallies with nativists and white nationalists?  Or that the Weeden Foundation, a mainstay funder of numerous environmental groups, might “steer the environmental movement toward a course fueled by bigotry and racism?”

With the release today of “Apply the Brakes: Anti-Immigrant Co-optation of the Environmental Movement,” the Center for New Community has laid these unseemly realities bare, and exposed yet another effort by anti-immigrant forces to corrupt the dialogue on the relationship of immigration to population growth to environmental degradation.  As well, the report maps the ties between anti-immigrant interests and environmental groups nationwide.

Apply the Brakes (ATB) s a rather innocuous gathering of “long-time conservationists” committed to stopping “unsustainable U.S. population growth.”  Having met in 2006 “to discuss the decade-long retreat of U.S. environmental organizations from addressing domestic population growth as a key issue in both domestic and global sustainability,“ the group determined to fill the population gap left by traditional environmental organizations.  Flying low over the environment-population-immigration landscape ever since, Apply the Brakes is perhaps the most stealthy of anti-immigrant configurations, with long roots in The John Tanton Network and the contemporary nativist movement in the U.S. Read more

Hyatt Hotel Workers Fed Up, Ready to Protest

Thousands of workers are gearing up to protest Hyatt and its billionaire owners—Chicago’s own Pritzker family—on Thursday, July 22.

Workers in Chicago, Honolulu, San Francisco, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Monterey, Boston, Vancouver, Toronto, Miami, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, San Antonio, Santa Clara and San Diego are prepared to take part in non-violent civil disobedience actions with thousands of witnesses as part of a 15-city coordinated day of action.

According to UNITE HERE, whose members include dishwashers, housekeepers, bellmen and cooks, “Hotel workers across North America have endured staff cuts, reduced hours, and excessive injury rates. Hyatt wants to take more away and lock workers into recession contracts even as the economy rebounds.” Read more

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