Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
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Anti-immigrant Leader Admits Using Climate Change for Political Gain
01 year ago
by Guest Blogger
in Center for Immigration Studies, Climate Change, Conservative Political Action Conference, Ecopolitics, global warming, Heritage Foundation, Immigration, Immigration Policy, Immigration Reform, James Russell, John Tanton Network, Mark Krikorian, Numbersusa, Progressives for Immigration Reform, Steve King, Wayne Lutton
by Rebecca Poswolsky and Dave M.
The anti-immigrant movement has long capitalized on environmental concerns to attack America’s immigrant communities. This tactic was on full display at the Conservative Political Action Conference this past weekend in Washington D.C.
While most people were listening to Newt Gingrich speak on Saturday, about 75 people assembled in one of the smaller rooms to hear a discussion entitled “Immigration: The Defining Issue for the Republican Party,” sponsored by American Council for Immigration Reform. The panel’s four speakers included: Robert E. Rector, Senior Research Fellow, The Heritage Foundation; Mark Krikorian, Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies (CIS); James G. Gimpel, Professor of Government, University of Maryland; and Rep. Steve King from Iowa. Each speaker had 20 minutes to speak, followed by a question and answer session. The audience boasted a whole host of anti-immigrant individuals including Chad McDonald from NumbersUSA; Wayne Lutton, editor of The Social Contract; Howard Wooldridge, younger brother of anti-immigrant activist Frosty Wooldridge; and James Russell of Catholics for a Moral Immigration Policy.
A number of alarming comments were made by the panelists throughout the session. Rep. Steve King stated that he “sympathized” with the man who crashed his plane into the IRS building in Texas this past weekend. When asked later in the Q&A session about his comments, King did not take them back and instead launched into a rant against the IRS for targeting him in his pre-political days.
Mark Krikorian, a man known for his outlandish comments, stated that immigrants are “19th century rural peasant workers” who are coming to 21st century America.
The discussion’s most alarming comment came during the Q&A session when a young man asked Mark Krikorian why CIS published articles that supported the theory of global warming on its website. The man also asked Krikorian to explain his and CIS’s connections to John Tanton whom he referred to as a man that “favors population control.”
Krikorian nonchalantly answered the first question by stating that CIS publishes articles that are in favor of global warming to force a wedge between different people on the Left. Krikorian argued that people on the Left cannot be in favor of both open borders and taking care of the environment.
Assertions such as Krikorian’s – that non-draconian border policy is a prominent cause of eco-ruin – have little stock with serious environmental thinkers, which of course does not prevent Center for Immigration Studies from producing slanted reports on the topic. What is surprising is Krikorian’s candor about his organization’s true goal – to strategically deploy pseudo-environmental rhetoric to split its opposition.
His comments at the Conservative Political Action Conference also suggest that Krikorian’s veneer of environmental concern is so thin, that common work with global warming deniers and anti-environmentalists is not beneath him. Maybe this is unsurprising for someone whose career involves promoting white nationalist ideas while adamantly claiming that he is not a racist – a phenomenon we’ve also seen with Roy Beck of NumbersUSA, who co-authored a 2003 report for CIS. Both NumbersUSA and Center for Immigration Studies were established by John Tanton as front groups for his anti-immigrant network.
Aiding in Krikorian’s enviro-wedging strategy are characters such as Phillip Cafaro, of the misnamed “Progressives for Immigration Reform” (PFIR, which is also part the Tanton Network.) Cafaro and PFIR exist as an element of the “wedging” strategy explained by Krikorian at last week’s conservative gathering. Phil Cafaro also participates in the Weeden Foundation-funded “Apply the Brakes” project, which gives an anti-immigrant spin to concerns about human population levels. Cafaro’s level of commitment to “progressive” causes was recently demonstrated by his linking, on January 12 of this year, from the PFIR blog that he maintains to the white nationalist Social Contract Press website.
Coincidentally, Social Contract’s editor, Wayne Lutton, was at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington D.C. this past Friday to cheer on his anti-immigrant associates. In addition to releasing racist publications, Lutton is also active with the overtly racist magazine American Renaissance and the flagship publication of the Council of Conservative Citizens. The Council of Conservative Citizens is the reconstituted, segregationist White Citizens’ Councils.
It is clear that Krikorian and the rest of the Tanton Network don’t care one bit about the environment. They only use climate change concerns to widen an anti-immigrant platform.
287(g) in Charlotte: Sexual Assault & Deportation
01 year ago
by Glenn Hutchinson
On December 29, a man sees his girlfriend being sexually assaulted by a police officer in a parking lot. He calls 911 for help. The officer arrests him.
Since then, that officer (Marcus Jackson) has been suspended and six other women have reported that he had attacked them too. But what about the boyfriend? The one who reported it to 911? That man who tried to help his girlfriend?
Well, since he is undocumented, he may be deported. Even though he tried to stop the officer from fondling his girlfriend, the police went ahead and did an immigration check because he was arrested. So, he’s likely to be kicked out of the country for trying to protect someone from a sexually assaulting policeman.
All of this happened where I live, the New South: Charlotte (CLT). We’re a banking town. We’re the home of the Panthers and the Bobcats. And we’re also a place where 287(g) is enforced. You know 287(g)? That’s the policy that enables local law enforcement to enforce immigration laws. Translation: if you get stopped for any reason–even for running a stop sign–the police will check your immigration status.
In the last 3 years, approximately 120,000 people in our country have been arrested and deported under this law according to John Morton, Assistant Secretary for Immigration. 287(g) is originally part of the 1996 Immigration and Nationality Act. InMecklenburg County, Sheriff Jim Pendergraph started enforcing it in 2006. Some people refer to him as the “founding father of 287(g)” in North Carolina. He even took a position at ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) but later resigned.
But this incident with Officer Jackson in December shows the problems with the 287(g) program. Sure, on one hand, if someone is here illegally, then why wouldn’t the police report it to immigration? However, it is more complex than that.
This policy makes people more distrustful of the police and undocumented residents will be less likely to report a serious crime or contact the police at all. And in the case of Marcus Jackson, where is the justice there?
And think about the young woman who was assaulted. According to newspaper accounts, she is undocumented as well. Will she be deported too? After being assaulted by a police officer?
Also, it has been discovered that Officer Jackson has a history of possible domestic abuse. Questions have been raised about the hiring practices for police officers under our new police chief; however, the city council refuses to release his personnel file.
And the former Sheriff Pendergraph? The one who put 287(g) in action in my fair city? The one who has gotten national recognition for it? Guess what? He’s running for office this year. He wants to be our next county commissioner.
All of these events point to the need for immigration reform. We need to tell our elected representatives that we need to find a way for the millions of undocumented people already here to apply for citizenship–many of whom have been working and contributing to our communities for years.
For more information:
Ortiz, Patricia. “Presumen que 287g promovió presunto abuso policial.” Mi Gente. 18 Jan. 2010. http://www.migenteweb.com/news.php?nid=7263&clave=a%3A1%3A%7Bi%3A0%3Bs%3A14%3A%22marcus+jackson%22%3B%7D
Portillo, Ely and Gary Wright. “Ex-officer had past reports of violence.” Charlotte Observer. 1 Jan. 2010.
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/597/story/1152421.html
Rosario, Mariela. “Immigrant Who Stopped Cop From Fondling Girlfriend May be Deported.” 11 Jan. 2010.
http://www.latina.com/lifestyle/news-politics/immigrant-who-stopped-cop-fondling-girlfriend-may-be-deported
Exhibit Provides Opportunity to Understand Race
02 years ago
By Katie Irwin
A few months ago I came across an exhibit about race by the American Anthropological Association and the Science Museum of Minnesota. It explains the realities and myths surrounding race, and how the concept has evolved through time. The Association is encouraging people across America to discuss and examine their thoughts on race. The What is Race? exhibit shows how the concept of race has changed and is still changing, and it uses biology, culture and history to educate the public. From the exhibit’s website it states:
“Racial and ethnic categories, which have changed over time, are human-made. We now know that human beings are more alike genetically than any other living species. Scientifically, no one gene, or any set of genes, can support the idea of race.”
As an anthropology student, I discussed these issues regularly. Every week my peers and I would talk about the articles or books we were reading and our own experiences we had regarding racial issues. Hearing, talking and discussing events that my friends or I have witnessed and been involved in has been beneficial in understanding this ongoing issue. My professor would say that these conversations don’t happen in the real world, and generally they don’t. This exhibit can help change that.
Unfortunately, there are extreme groups that do not want discussions about race to happen and have attacked the exhibit. The Council for Conservative Citizens (CofCC), a known white supremacist organization posted the exhibit’s introductory video on its website and labeled it biased and pseudoscience.
What these extreme groups ignore is that anthropologists try hard not to let the values and normality of their upbringing interfere with their research; what is normal for one culture might be considered strange in another culture, so we spend years learning to minimize bias. I think their attacks come from a place of hatred, and wanting to uphold racial divisions in this country.
In fact, this exhibit is helping dispel the myths of past scientists, philosophers, explorers, etc. who were influenced by their Euro-centric backgrounds which have led to some of the most biased and false science and propaganda about the “inferiority” of non-white “races.” One of the best books I read on this subject was “Mismeasure of Man” by Stephen J. Gould; he writes about the theories devised in the 18th century, when Europeans used science to try and justify slavery, and did the experiments himself to prove the biased nature of them.
This exhibit is a wonderful start in learning about the issues, and I believe we should be discussing this subject to truly understand that race is a social, political, and historic concept.
A New Vision for American Radicalism
02 years ago
By Joel Olson
I’m a member of the Repeal Coalition, a group building a grassroots campaign to repeal all anti-immigration laws in Arizona. In the process, we are trying to build an alternative politics of immigration. Rather than the nativists’ attempt to hate, harass, and blame all undocumented people and their allies for all of Arizona’s woes (and we’ve got a lot of woes right now), we insist on the right for all people to live, love, and work anywhere you please, regardless of documentation.
To the Minutemen, Teabaggers, Sheriff Joe Arpaio supporters, and other nativists, our politics are un-American. “America needs to defend its borders from the illegal alien invasion!” they practically spit at us. “If you don’t love this country, then leave it!” (The hypocrisy of their position is that they are trying to make many undocumented migrants who do love the U.S. leave it. Such a strange patriotism!)
I used to have a knee-jerk reaction against this patriotism. “If these people represent what it means to be an American, then I don’t want anything to do with America,” I would grumble. But the more I think about it, the more I’ve come to believe that nativists don’t represent what it means to be an American.
It’s true that, as Frederick Douglass said in his famous 1852 “Fourth of July” speech, the United States is guilty of “gross injustice and cruelty.” Douglass is right to blast, “your national greatness [is] swelling vanity; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery.”
But as Douglass himself recognized, this is only part of the story. Slaves, for example, believed in the American principles of liberty, equality, and democracy more than the citizen. Aren’t they more “American,” then? Undocumented people often believe in these principles more than the nativist, too. Nativists tend to see freedom as a privilege for some, to be denied to others. But those who have been excluded from American democracy, from slaves to indigenous peoples to the undocumented, see it in a much more expansive and radical light. They are not afraid to follow these principles to their logical conclusion—such as the right for all people to live, love, and work where they please.
The political theorist C.L.R. James (1901-1989) has influenced my thinking on this. James was Black, Latin American (he was born in Trinidad) and himself an “illegal alien” (he moved to the U.S. in 1938, stayed after his visa expired, and was deported in 1953 during the Red Scare). He was also a radical who loved America. He opposed elitist distinctions between “art” and “popular culture,” “intellectuals” and “the people,” and “politics” and “everyday life.” In the U.S. he saw these things brought together by a creative, hardworking, freedom-loving working class and a culture that truly believed in the intelligence and capacity of ordinary people.
But James also feared there were dark forces “making for totalitarianism in modern American life.” These forces—racial discrimination, capitalism, and an increasingly powerful federal government—produced isolation and alienation and a loss of freedom among Americans. If they became too strong, James predicted, they could undermine the democratic ethos of America. Supporters of civil and immigrant rights today can easily see similar forces at work today.
James didn’t hate the U.S. because of this tension between freedom and totalitarianism, nor was he a blind patriot. Rather, he believed that the working class needed to recognize this contradiction in order to defeat the dark forces. In other words, we need to redefine the U.S., not reject it.
This is a difficult lesson for radicals today, who see the U.S. exclusively as an imperialist, racist, sexist force. They believe that the only way to build a free society is to reject America. But the U.S. is also native resistance, abolitionism, radical Reconstruction, the Wobblies, SNCC, Black power, the Brown Berets, feminism, Stonewall, and May 1, 2006. These are every bit as American as Sheriff Joe or Abu Ghraib.
In the U.S., liberty has come with slavery, equality has come with racial and gender tyranny, democracy has come with the lynch mob. We beckon other nations to “bring us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” while demonizing people as “illegals” for taking us up on the offer. But this contradiction is an opportunity to transform the U.S., not an excuse to reject it. It’s an opportunity to see undocumented migrants, waving American and Mexican flags alike, as expressing a new vision of freedom, one that goes beyond the narrow confines of the nation state. Like others before them, these folks are struggling to transcend the very meaning of “American.” It’s a struggle I want to be part of.
Joel Olson is the author of The Abolition of White Democracy (2004) and a member of the Repeal Coalition.
American Law Enforcement Must Demand the Removal of Sheriff Arpaio from Duty
02 years ago
By Detective Alix Olson, Madison Police Department, Wisconsin
In my 29-year career as a police officer and detective with the Madison Police Department, in Madison, Wisconsin, I have witnessed and experienced many instances of hatred, violence and racism. In most cases, those negative things were not initiated by law enforcement; sometimes, unfortunately, they were. The 95% of us who sincerely strive to “serve and protect” are tarnished by the 5% of us who intentionally “disserve and destroy.” Nowhere is this more apparent in current American law enforcement than in Maricopa County, Arizona, where Sheriff Joe Arpaio has taken the law into his own hands, at the expense of the Constitution, professional ethics, and proper police conduct. Earlier this year, the mayor of Phoenix wrote a letter to the U.S. attorney general’s office, asking the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division to investigate Arpaio’s aggressive illegal immigration crackdowns. Mayor Phil Brown wrote that Arpaio’s sweeps show “a pattern and practice of conduct that includes discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches and arrests.”
Using local law enforcement to enforce Federal immigration laws, as Sheriff Arpaio is doing, weakens the very community links local police and sheriffs’ departments work so hard daily to maintain and build upon. Having community members who are afraid of local police should not be the goal of a department; instead, a far more wide-reaching and positive effect is gained by police-community trust, interaction and collaboration. This might sound too much like social work to Sheriff Arpaio, whose top-down, dictatorial methods favor humiliation, degradation, prisoner abuse, racial profiling, terrorizing Latino residents, and cavorting with local neo-Nazi groups. And according to a 2008 policy report on effective law enforcement by the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian-leaning watchdog group based in Phoenix, Sheriff Arpaio’s department “falls seriously short of fulfilling its mission.” The report found that Maricopa County has “diverted resources away from basic law-enforcement functions to highly publicized immigration sweeps, which are ineffective in policing illegal immigration.”
As we all know, police need the community’s trust to help solve crime and make our country stronger and safer for everyone living here, regardless of immigration status. I’m sure Sheriff Arpaio’s department is having a terrible time finding Latino witnesses and victims of crimes willing to report incidents or testify, but that supposes that he cares about them enough to take reports or help develop their cases for court in the first place. Dehumanizing is another strategy used by Sheriff Arpaio, parading inmates through the streets in funky clothes, “sheltering” them in sweltering desert tents, treating them like vermin, forgetting that he is as bound to them by a universal bond of humanity as much as he is bent on eradicating them.
When chief executives of local law enforcement agencies effectively target subgroups of persons who are not committing crimes, they not only alienate the community, they make it much harder for their agencies to recruit high caliber persons with integrity who reflect the faces of the community to take on the very hard job of policing. A sheriff like Joe Arpaio must have the hardest of times making those hires, and the more the world hears about him, the harder it is for more grounded, public spirited police agencies to hire the best of the best.
American law enforcement must demand the removal of Sheriff Arpaio from duty. He is truly a menace to the residents of Arizona, and our country. Simply stated, Sheriff Arpaio has marred the reputation of law enforcement for generations to come.
His warped sense of “justice” has no place in our society, unless we support Japanese internment camps, the ghetto-ization of African-Americans, and the deaths of countless Latinos attempting to survive their own countries’ destruction at the hands of US foreign and economic policies by struggling to come here to live, work and protect their families. I call upon the International Association of Chiefs of Police, as well as the US Department of Justice, to work diligently to remove him from the office he has squandered with racism and hate. Those of us in law enforcement working hard to build bridges of respect and trust with our communities don’t need anotherTheophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor erasing our progress.
A Day at a North Carolina Tea Party
02 years ago
By Deborah Austin and Cloee Cooper
As a mother, activist and community member from Durham, North Carolina of Mexican, Native American decent, I can personally attest to the racist behavior and remarks at the Tea Parties Against Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants on November 14, 2009. Why is this an important story to share months later? Among many people I know, the white nationalist agenda of today’s anti-immigrant movement is hard to understand. Not surprising considering the debate we see unfolding in our media surrounding immigration.
I have been following our nation’s debate closely with the immigration reform bill that Gutierrez recently introduced and the upcoming bill that Schumer intends to introduce. But honestly, how can we have a debate on immigration without noting the bigotry, violence and outright racism of our nation’s leading anti-immigrant groups? I attended the Tea Party on November 14 in Raleigh, NC. I hope that my experience might speak to the doubts that currently clout perhaps the most important debate regarding race in the 21st century.
I woke up early that morning, gathered my notebook, pen and map, and hopped in my car. It was drizzling outside, so I was wondering if the event was still going to happen. When I got in the car for the one-hour drive, “Such a perfect day, I’m glad I spent it with you” was on the radio. Ironic, huh?
As I approached Raleigh, I started looking for the cross streets, and a crowd that I suspected would be holding confederate flags. I didn’t have to look hard; about 40 people were gathered at the town square. Microphones were set up and people were already mounting signs reading “Illegals Out!”
I found a place to park and entered the crowd. Eyes darted at me. I was one of three people of color in the crowd. I kept my notebook close and tried to blend in. Soon the first speaker approached the microphone. “Good afternoon everyone… Glad to see so many people came out on a rainy day. It is people like you who make this country worth living in – people like you who make me proud to be an American. As you all know, we are facing a grim problem today – people who intend to invade our country and have no intention of becoming ‘American’ – the ‘Illegals’”.
I stood in the crowd while others cheered. As William Gheen, president of ALIPAC, stirred up the crowd, eyes again darted at me. I clearly fit the description – with my bronze skin color, dark eyes and dark hair. C’mon, my grandparents were born in Mexico, I must be illegal!
I listened carefully as he continued to say, “Illegals are taking our jobs. They are destroying the infrastructure of this country. They are destroying our environment…” These are things I have heard on the radio or television. This time, however, I was amidst a crowd of supporters – a crowd of people who really believed all of his arguments, and who of course looked at me as if I were to blame.
Not only was he spewing anti-immigrant arguments, he was directly attacking Mexican/Latino culture – and frankly, any person with a skin darker then a girl in a Cover Girl advertisement. He said, “Aren’t you tired of seeing George Lopez’s mug on every billboard in Raleigh?” My thought was, ‘George Lopez is American’. Then William Gheen went on to say “and you know who came in through the back door and is now serving on the Supreme Court.” Again, eyes darted at me. I thought, ‘Sonja Sotomayor is an American citizen, and was born an American citizen’. Then Ron Woodard, Director of NC Listen, who stated in the past that he “improved his public-speaking skills in courses sponsored by FAIR”, took to the stage. I realized in that moment that the Tea Party Against Amnesty for Illegal Immigration was really the front for white nationalist propaganda.
It was I that walked away with more ammunition than them. I was sad to see that people listened to such an ignorant man who knows nothing about the history of this country. Mr. Gheen is a man that spews hate toward a group of people who put food on his table. The information they provided me with was fuel to submit an article in our local newspaper, outing all the local politicians with ties to the white nationalist political extremists such as William Gheen who sponsored the event. Cheers to another day in November of exposing political extremists who attempt to uproot our nation’s values – the values that I hold dear as an American citizen.
Deborah Austin is a social justice advocate and mother from Raleigh, North Carolina.