Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Imagine 2050 Editors
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Kobach Faces More Skeptics Over Controversial History
01 year ago
An interesting article popped up from the Sand Mountain Reporter. It seems a journalist in Albertville, Alabama has been suspicious of our old friend Kris Kobach ever since he conveniently appeared “to help” the town with immigration issues. Ben Shurett’s suspicions are proving to be true as he outlines in his column below:
Tuesday afternoon brought an interesting e-mail from Carol Dingman, a former city council member in Farmers Branch, Texas.
Farmers Branch, you may recall, is one of the cities receiving legal representation from Kris Kobach, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a legal authority on illegal immigration.
The City of Albertville is considering hiring Kobach as legal council. He was invited by Mayor Lindsey Lyons and councilman Chuck Ellis to provide insight into remedies dealing with illegal immigration.
Last week in this space, I gave my opinion that “Kobach had not passed my smell test, not yet,” and I still have the same concern. I am pleased that the Albertville Council decided to take more time on this issue before retaining Kobach, if they do at all.
Emotions on that column are strong, both for and against. Both Ellis and Kobach were given space to respond to my opinion on Tuesday.
You may be interested in Ms. Dingman’s opinion, as well. She served three terms on the Farmers Branch City Council, leaving office in 1987. She is the first woman ever elected to that council, has lived in Farmers Branch since 1970 and has been a leader on a number of local committees.
Ms. Dingman wrote, “I live in Farmers Branch, Texas. As a former city council person, I have closely followed our city’s anti-immigration fight since the beginning.
“I have researched Kris Kobach, who was mentioned the first time this issue came up. Our mayor said he was an expert in immigration law who would help the city on a pro bono basis. I have requested copies of all the legal bills the city has accrued since the start of litigation in 2007. We will have paid almost $4 million in legal fees at the end of this fiscal year (Sept 30, 2010).
“Mr. Kobach was paid $100,000 of that. So much for pro bono. Kobach is closely connected with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), whose agenda is to use cities and states to test out their immigration legislation to see if it is constitutional.
“Both of our city’s ordinances were written by Kobach and both were ruled unconstitutional. I believe our city’s taxpayers are being asked to foot the bill for the benefit of a national organization that is never mentioned in any discussion of the issue.”
Read the entire article here.
Bad Week for Nativist Attorney Kris Kobach
01 year ago
Following up on widespread claims that anti-immigrant attorney Kris Kobach was being paid large sums by the Maricopa County Sheriff’’s Office, Stephen Lemons of Feathered Bastard got a hold of the official contract between MCSO and Kobach.
Kris Kobach, the far right-wing nativist attorney Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s hired to train the MCSO in immigration matters, is receiving $300 per hour, plus expenses, including airline tickets to and from Arizona.
Though Arpaio’s Chief Deputy David Hendershott surmised in his recent deposition in the civil rights lawsuit Melendres vs. Arpaio that Kobach was making anywhere from $250-$300 per hour, to be paid from the MCSO’s RICO slush fund, I just got the official contract with Kobach from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
Read the entire article here.
Another blog exposed Kobach’s nativist-for-hire racket and losing tendencies this week. Krazykriskobach.com is dedicated to ensuring “that Kris Kobach does not ever hold an elected office again. We are not a group of Republicans, nor are we partisan Democrats. We’re simply a group of attentive Kansans literally sickened by the thought of Mr. Kobach ever collecting another dime of salary from Kansas taxpayers.”
The last few months have been less than ideal for Kris Kobach, Kansas’ Kraziest politico. First, news surfaced that Kobach’s tenure at the Kansas GOP was marred by serious mismanagement that may eventually result in some hefty fines for the new Administration.
Shortly after that, Kobach’s quest to enrich his personal finances by suing state governments suffered another embarrassing defeat when he lost a major ruling in Idaho. This week brought a fresh blow to Kris’ personal tax-payer funded bank account, when a City Council in Albertville, Alabama decided to pass on Kobach’s legal services.
Why? Because he is too damn pricey, and his track record is awful. One City Council member describes him as being only “46 percent accurate”. That’s like flipping a coin except you have to pay $300,000 to hire a lawyer employed by a hate group and your odds are worse.
The Albertville City Council determined that Kobach’s inexplicably expensive legal services were not worth it to the taxpayers. Which isn’t surprising, because he’s running a racket.
In a post last month, krazykriskobach.com wrote:
Kris Kobach has turned his anti-immigration platform into a quest for personal profit. By way of examples, he was paid more than $100,000 for a failed lawsuit in Pennsylvania, and up to $275,000 for his role in a Missouri lawsuit.
If that sounds like a racket, keep in mind that it costs the taxpayers a lot more to defend against his legal antics. Kansas taxpayers personally had to foot a $175,000 tab to defend against another one of his lawsuits in 2004 (he lost this one too).
Yikes! Looks like the public is starting to put the pieces together on Kobach. The big picture seems to be that of a scummy politician making gobs of money off hate.
Anti-Immigration Group Calls Immigrants ‘Third-World Gold Diggers’
01 year ago
This post by Erin Rosa at Campus Progress describes the agenda of anti-immigrant groups that are attempting to disparage civil rights organizations.
Embattled by numerous reports of its ties to white nationalists, The Center For Immigration Studies (CIS), a Washington D.C.-based think thank that strongly opposes immigration reform, lashed out today against advocacy groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the National Council of La Raza for participating in “smear” attacks and “manipulating the press” on the immigration issue.
But in the end, it was CIS executive director Mark Krikorian who justified his own smears, defending his groups’ labeling of immigrants as “third-world gold diggers” by calling such rhetoric “colorful language that was too colorful.”
The CIS event, held this morning in Washington, was organized to premiere CIS’s newest report, “Immigration and the SPLC,” a quasi-investigative look at the watchdog group’s research and financial records.
It’s no secret why CIS had dedicated a 27-page report to disparage the SPLC and other entities like the NCLR, a Latino advocacy organization. Both of the targeted organizations have been steadfastly producing research that ties the Center and other anti-immigration groups to white nationalism and racist rhetoric.
But rather than actually responding to anything said about CIS, the report focuses on times when SPLC allegedly took quotes from other anti-immigration groups out of context. The report also blames the media for being too “cooperative” when citing SPLC, and questions the objectivity of the watchdog group for working with pro-immigration groups like the NCLR.
In an effort to get to the bottom of some of these claims, I asked Krikorian a question, about an instance, cited by SPLC, where one of CIS’s reports (no longer on the Web site) referred to immigrants as “third-world gold diggers.”
To read the article in its entirety, click here.
Anti-Immigration Group Calls Immigrants ‘Third-World Gold Diggers’
01 year ago
This post by Erin Rosa at Campus Progress describes the agenda of anti-immigrant groups that are attempting to disparage civil rights organizations.
Embattled by numerous reports of its ties to white nationalists, The Center For Immigration Studies (CIS), a Washington D.C.-based think thank that strongly opposes immigration reform, lashed out today against advocacy groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the National Council of La Raza for participating in “smear” attacks and “manipulating the press” on the immigration issue.
But in the end, it was CIS executive director Mark Krikorian who justified his own smears, defending his groups’ labeling of immigrants as “third-world gold diggers” by calling such rhetoric “colorful language that was too colorful.”
The CIS event, held this morning in Washington, was organized to premiere CIS’s newest report, “Immigration and the SPLC,” a quasi-investigative look at the watchdog group’s research and financial records.
It’s no secret why CIS had dedicated a 27-page report to disparage the SPLC and other entities like the NCLR, a Latino advocacy organization. Both of the targeted organizations have been steadfastly producing research that ties the Center and other anti-immigration groups to white nationalism and racist rhetoric.
But rather than actually responding to anything said about CIS, the report focuses on times when SPLC allegedly took quotes from other anti-immigration groups out of context. The report also blames the media for being too “cooperative” when citing SPLC, and questions the objectivity of the watchdog group for working with pro-immigration groups like the NCLR.
In an effort to get to the bottom of some of these claims, I asked Krikorian a question, about an instance, cited by SPLC, where one of CIS’s reports (no longer on the Web site) referred to immigrants as “third-world gold diggers.”
To read the article in its entirety, click here.
Trailblazer of Civil Rights Dies Forgotten
01 year ago
A sad reminder of how easily the individuals who inspired generations and paved the way for expanded freedom slip into obscurity. Tragically ironic that this comes amid a vicious backslide on the civil rights won by individuals like Juanita Goggins.
The New York Times’ Robbie Brown wrote:
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Neighbors were chagrined last week when the police here found the body of a 75-year-old woman who had frozen to death, alone in her house, during unexpectedly frigid weather. Last year, part of Highway 5 in Rock Hill, S.C., was renamed for her.
But they were shocked this week when they learned that the woman, Juanita W. Goggins, had been a civil rights trailblazer who in 1974 became the first black woman elected to the South Carolina legislature.
Now residents of this normally neighborly Southern capital say they are feeling regretful, and slightly guilty, for allowing one of its most revered figures to disappear into a sleepy ranch house with little company. Possibly mentally ill, living without running water or heat, Ms. Goggins is believed to have died on Feb. 20 — when temperatures dropped below freezing — but her body was not discovered for 11 days.
Several neighbors in her elderly, mostly black community in downtown Columbia said they had learned the full scope of Ms. Goggins’s accomplishments only from her obituaries. At the peak of her political career, in the 1970s, she twice visited President Jimmy Carter at the White House and was the first black woman appointed to the United States Civil Rights Commission.
In the legislature, where she represented Rock Hill, on the northern border of the state, for three terms in the 1970s, Ms. Goggins, a Democrat, helped pass key legislation for improving elementary school education and public health. Last year, a stretch of Highway 5 was renamed in her honor.
To read more about Juanita Goggins, click here. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/us/12frozen.html
Crosspost: Gut Check for GOP on Immigration
01 year ago
by Imagine 2050 Editors
in Border Enforcement, Chuck Schumer, Democratic Majority, Demographic Group, Government Pass, Gut Check, Immigration, Immigration Reform, Immigration System, Legal Immigration, Lindsey Graham, Partisan Effort, Partisan Support, Politics, Quiet Battle, Robert Creamer, Senate Majority Leader, Senate Majority Leader Harry, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senator Chuck Schumer, Senator Lindsey Graham, Unfair Labor Practices
Robert Creamer from Huffington Post talks bi-partisan support and the choice before the GOP when it comes to immigration.
There is a quiet battle underway within the Republican Party that may soon break out into the open — and it will heavily impact whether the GOP can continue as a national political party in the decades ahead.
The conflict is over how the Party will position itself with respect to the question of immigration reform — and just as importantly — the fastest-growing demographic group in country: Hispanic Americans.
President Obama has made it clear that he is intent on fixing the broken immigration system by passing immigration reform. He would do it with a package that combines smart and effective border enforcement with a crackdown on illegal hiring and unfair labor practices, and by modernizing the legal immigration system and requiring those who are undocumented to register with the government, pass background checks, study English, pay taxes, and get in line to work towards citizenship.
That would make sure that those who are here, are in the system legally; that all workers and employers are paying their fair share of taxes; and that those immigrants who come in the future do so legally.
But, more than with most any other issue, passing immigration reform requires bipartisan support — both as a question of legislative math and politics.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has been deputized by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) — himself a strong advocate of reform — to be point man on this issue for the Democratic Majority. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has worked with Schumer for months to hammer out the specifics of a bi-partisan bill.
Most of the substantive issues appear to be close to resolution. The major outstanding problem is entirely political: will other Republicans be willing to join Graham and provide support for a truly bi-partisan effort?
Read more here.
Thousands Die in the Desert as a Result of U.S. Border Policy
01 year ago
Stephen Lemmons chronicles the activists who are fighting back in this Phoenix New Times feature article.
Gene Lefebvre remembers the day in late August 2008 when 20 to 25 Border Patrol agents, half of them on horseback, raided the Arivaca, Arizona campsite of No More Deaths, a group dedicated to providing humanitarian assistance to migrants in the desert.
“They said they had tracked 10 migrants into our camp,” says Lefebvre, a retired Presbyterian minister who helped co-found the organization in 2004. “There weren’t 10 migrants, and there weren’t the tracks.”
No More Deaths did have a couple of migrants in the camp’s medical tent, but there was nothing unusual about that. Migrants often showed up at the camp seeking first aid or water or food, sometimes getting directed there by local ranchers. The Border Patrol was and is aware of how NMD operates.
But though the migrants were later taken into custody, the Border Patrol seemed to be about something else that day: intimidation.
Lefebvre, in his 70s, was detained as the Border Patrol searched the five-acre site, called Byrd Camp, which is about an hour and a half southwest of Tucson. The site is named in honor of Arizona children’s book author Byrd Baylor, who allows the hundreds of volunteers who come to the location each year to use her property as a base for their patrols, in which they leave water and food along the migrant trails that snake throughout the area.
Read the entire article here.
Cross-post: Republican Bill Seeks to Deprive American-Born of Citizenship
01 year ago
Alex DiBranco highlights an ongoing threat, not just to the children of immigrants, but to any American whose ability to prove birthright is compromised.
A proposed bill sponsored by Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA) wants people born in the U.S.A. to no longer receive automatic birthright citizenship.
The 14th Amendment, definitely one of the more awesome amendments in that it determined people born in the U.S. are all citizens, not slaves, states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Miller wants a federal law that says that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” bit excludes children born in the U.S. to two undocumented parents.
And what is that jurisdiction bit actually used for? The only babies born in the U.S. who are not automatic citizens are the children of diplomats. Diplomatic immunity means that they are, in fact, not subject to the jurisdiction of U.S. laws, and cannot be prosecuted under our legal system. Undocumented immigrants, however, are in violation of a civil law, and most definitely subject to the jurisdiction of the United States — they can be prosecuted, sentenced, and imprisoned if they commit a crime. The children of undocumented immigrants certainly don’t have immunity from U.S. law either (I assume Miller is not saying that they should?); they are subject to the same laws as every other resident of the United States.
Read the entire article here.
Racism, Anti-immigrant Sentiment, White Nationalism and Islamophobia, is this the GOP’s future?
01 year ago
The 37th annual Conservative Political Action Conference kicked off today in Washington DC. This year’s event is featuring big players in the conservative movement, but more concerning, the extreme right are also prominent. During my first eight hours at the event I heard examples of Islamophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, anti-Semitism and some flat out racist and extremist comments coming from both speakers and attendees.
The first session I attended was entitled “Student Activist Workshop” was sponsored by the Leadership Institute and the Alliance Defense Fund, a group that defends students freedom on college campuses. The discussion centered around students’ concerns about religious and conservative groups being targeted on college campuses. As the discussion came to an end, the main speaker, Jordan Lorence of the Alliance Defense Fund, finished his remarks with a bizarre Islamophobic rant – warning students that if they aren’t careful the United States will be taken over by Muslims like Western Europe has. While still trying to wrap my head around Lorence ’s bizarre statements, I headed to “They Want Us to Shut Up: Saving Freedom and the First Amendment,” a discussion featuring Dr. Kevin Roberts, Ronald Kessier, J.D. Hayworth and Doug Giles. Giles’s remarks during his part of the discussion were the most disturbing. He boasted about his two children and praised daughter Hannah Giles, who collaborated with James O’Keefe’s attacks on ACORN.
After praising his daughter, he turned his attention to Keith Olbermann, telling the crowd that Olbermann was a “bachelor for life” while using his fingers to make quotation marks, which brought loud cheers and fits of laughter from the crowd. Before ending his speech, Giles again implied that Olbermann is a homosexual by repeating his “bachelor for life” comment which brought even more laughter from the crowd. Instead of using his allotted time to rant about immigrants, J.D. Hayworth instead attacked his opponent in the upcoming Senate race, John McCain. Hayworth did bring up immigration at the end of the panel discussion when Chad McDonald, Director of Social Media Marketing for the anti-immigrant organization NumbersUSA asked a question directly to Hayworth about the border. Hayworth said something to the affect of “our borders are about as secure as we are close to finding another galaxy.”
I headed over to the main ballroom to see a very interesting speech by house minority leader John Boehner. After speaking about jobs and attacking Obama, Boehner moved onto a very interesting subject, the tea partiers. He urged his listeners in the room to listen to the tea partiers, embrace them and to stand amongst them. This call to stand with the tea partiers comes one day after the Huffington Post reported on a tea party event in Washington where one speaker called for the hanging of Sen. Patty Murray. After leaving this event I ran into Hannah Giles and the now infamous James O’Keefe, who was arrested recently for attempting to wiretap Sen. Landrieu’s phone. After his arrest, reports surfaced about O’Keefe attending a white nationalist forum in 2006, featuring Jared Taylor, the head of white nationalist organization American Renaissance. After brushing past O’Keefe and Giles, I headed back to the main ballroom to listen to a speech by Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the NRA. LaPierre, who has previously been published in the anti-Semitic newspaper American Free Press used his speech to attack Bill Clinton and boast about the ever increasing number of NRA members throughout the country.
The final workshop of the evening I attended was perhaps the most disturbing. It was a screening of the film Border War which looks at immigration on the southern United Sates border. J.D. Hayworth introduced the film in which he plays a major role before promptly leaving as the movie started. About 5 minutes in the film showed some undocumented immigrants attempting to cross the border. As this scene went on, a man sitting to my left said “shoot them” loud enough for the people around him to hear. Instead of eliciting condemnation or shock, the other attendees merely continued to watch the film. If this had happened just once I would have given the other attendees the benefit of the doubt of not hearing him, but the man went on to say it two more times during the film!
As someone who has come to the Conservative Political Action Conference to observe the current and possible trends of the conservative moment, I am extremely alarmed by what I witnessed on day one. It seems as if the right is moving closer and closer to the extreme right, something that clearly doesn’t seem to bother the Republican leadership or rank-and-file conservatives.
Cross-post: Going to the Chapel Gay Marriage, Immigration
01 year ago
Faren D’Abell writes in Windy City Times about the ongoing struggle of LBGT people for equal marriages and the added complication of the flawed immigration system that doesn’t allow same-sex couples to sponsor one another for residency.
In Roman times, the story goes, when military enrollment was down, ‘Claudius the Cruel’ cancelled all weddings and engagements. The Christian priest Saint Valentine secretly married couples, and for this he was murdered.
This week, on Valentine’s Day, thousands of gay couples in committed relationships will again ask their local county clerks for marriage licenses. Groups like Lambda Legal, the National Organization for Women, and Human Rights Campaign have, for years, pushed the idea that equal rights for all includes the rights of GLBT people to marry.
While the city of Chicago has been seen by many as a progressive force for GLBT people, residents like Robert Castillo feel slighted by a seeming runaround when it comes to recognition of same-sex couples. Castillo and his committed partner of 12 years, WCT’s John Pennycuff, say Chicago discriminates when it co-sponsors the Fox News Chicago Valentine’s Day Wedding on Ice promotion.
In its ninth year, Wedding on Ice searches for ‘one lucky bride and groom to marry.’ Fox viewers choose one couple from a group of three who have been pre -selected based on essays. Castillo says the requirement of a marriage certificate to participate in the contest is discriminatory. He brought his concerns to both Fox News in the Morning executive producer Neil Woulfe and James Law from the city’s office of special events. With the program this year being transferred to the Chicago Park District, Castillo says he’s had to start all over.
Outside of city publicity stunts, Castillo says he and others lose financial benefits even from groups that would otherwise be supportive of gay partnerships. ‘John and I are basically responsible for each other—responsible emotionally, physically, and financially. I don’t see that as any different from heterosexual married couples. I actually tried to have John added as a family member atBally’s . They wouldn’t do it unless John had the same last name as I did or unless we had some sort of domestic-partnership registration and the city doesn’t have one,’ he said.
The group that championed the fight in Vermont for civil unions says that domestic partnerships and civil unions are progress, but that the country needs equal marriages for gays and lesbians. ‘Marriage, in the regime we live in, is the only true equality. Civil union was a wonderful breakthrough, but nonetheless in our minds, because it sets up a separate but equal system that makes no sense, it doesn’t work,’ said Gary Buscek , executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD). He said the ’separate but equal’ stance Vermont took highlights the holes left in equality when the state recognizes a union but does not call it a marriage.
One of the holes is in immigration rights. Federal law allows American citizens, in most cases, to sponsor their spouse for immediate residency in the United States. That’s not true for gays and lesbians whose same-sex partners are not American citizens.
Continue reading by clicking here.