Thursday, May 6, 2010

A swift response to racism:

Immigration reform now!
An editorial

Arizona has just become an American-style racist police state, where failure to carry immigration documents is a crime, and where a brown skin can get you jailed.

“Racial profiling will be the law” in Arizona, writes William Finnegan in The New Yorker. “Whites will be all right, just as they were in the Jim Crow South. God help everyone else.”

In response to the new law, hundreds of protests and vigils have taken place in Arizona and around the country. A movement is under way to boycott Arizona products and to deny the state its lucrative convention and tourist income.

Meanwhile, in “liberal” Seattle, white supremacists, in a sneak dead-of-night attack, vandalized the offices of the Washington Community Action Network.

The vicious attack broke office windows, slashed tires of vehicles, plugged vehicle exhaust pipes and sprayed racist graffiti outside the office, including “RaHoWa,” which stands for “Racial Holy War,” and the number “88,” a symbol for “Heil Hitler.”

Washington CAN is a statewide grassroots community organization working for social, economic and racial justice. It is a leading participant in the current immigrant rights campaign and in the campaign for universal health care.

Racist ugliness is and spreading in our beloved country, and we who cherish basic rights must find effective ways to expose, challenge, combat and defeat it.

Foremost on the national agenda is the urgency of comprehensive immigration reform. Immediate congressional action has been demanded in Seattle and across the country in May 1 rallies and marches.

The immigrant rights movement is calling (1) for the immediate introduction of legislation that will force Republicans in Congress to vote “yes” or “no,” and (2) for executive action from President Obama that will prohibit harsh enforcement and deportations while reform is being enacted.

The Puget Sound Alliance for Retired Americans condemns all racist and xenophobic acts and supports unconditionally the swift enactment of comprehensive immigration reform. This would afford an essential measure of justice to immigrants, documented and undocumented, and at the same time would represent a powerful statutory rejection of racist ideology.


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1 comment:

  1. I saw Jay Leno at Correspondent Dinner his best line was; “That was my favorite story (this year) Republicans and a Lesbian bondage club. It’s ironic, Republicans don’t want lesbian getting married but they do like watching them “tie the knot”. So I thought that was interesting.”

    You can say the same about Tea Party (they are haters not debaters or as others have dubbed them screamers not dreamers), they say they respect the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence but they do not mind passing laws, through weak Governors (no one voted for this crazy) who only care about getting reelected on the backs of undocumented workers, that will not pass Constitution muster, just like Arizona’s House Bill 2779 from two years ago and your MLK Day ban, keep passing them Arizona and the rest of us will continue to challenged them in a court of law and you will fail again (and yes we will Boycott Arizona). Their phony patriotism is sickening; they are just racists going by another name. We all know you are just itching to put a sheet on their head? Let’s face it the Republicans had eight years to deal with health care, immigration, climate change and financial oversight and governance and they failed. It appears that the Republican Party is only good at starting wars (two in eight years, with fat contracts to friends of Cheney/Bush) but not at winning wars as seen by the continuing line of body bags that keep coming home. The Republicans party will continue turned inward to their old fashion obstructionist party (and their Confederacy appreciation roots) because they continue to allow a small portions (but very loud portion) of their party of “birthers, baggers and blowhards” to rule their party. I will admit that this fringe is very good at playing “Follow the Leader” by listening to their dullard leaders, Beck, Hedgecock, Hannity, O’Reilly, Rush, Savage, Sarah Bailin, Orly Taitz, Victoria Jackson, Michele Bachmann and the rest of the Blowhards and acting as ill programmed robots (they have already acted against doctors that perform abortions). The Birthers and the Tea party crowd think they can scare, intimidate and force others to go along with them by comments like “This time we came unarmed”, let me tell you something not all ex-military join the fringe militia crazies who don’t pay taxes and run around with face paint in the parks playing commando, the majority are mature and understand that the world is more complicated and grey than the black and white that these simpleton make it out to be and that my friend is the point. The world is complicated and people like Hamilton, Lincoln, and Roosevelt believed that we should use government a little to increase social mobility, now it’s about dancing around the claim of government is the problem. The sainted Reagan passed the biggest tax increase in American history and as a result federal employment increased, but facts are lost when mired in mysticism and superstition. For a party that gave us Abraham Lincoln, it is tragic that the ranks are filled with too many empty suits and the crazy Birthers who have not learned that the way our courts work is that you get a competent lawyer, verifiable facts and present them to a judge, if the facts are real and not half baked internet lies, then, and only then, do you proceed to trial. The Birthers seem to be having a problem with their so called “facts”. Let’s face it no one will take the Birthers seriously until they win a case, but until then, you will continue to appear dumb, crazy or racist, or maybe all three. I heard that Orly Taitz now wants to investigate the “Republican 2009 Summer of Love” list: Assemblyman, Michael D. Duvall (CA), Senator John Ensign (NV), Senator Paul Stanley (TN), Governor Mark Stanford (SC), Board of Ed Chair, and Kristin Maguire AKA Bridget Keeney (SC), she wants to re-establish a family values party, that’s like saying that the Catholic Church cares about the welling being of children in their care, too late for that. Yee Haw!

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