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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