Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Rev. David L. Ostendorf
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Posts by Rev. David L. Ostendorf
The Enduring Power of Hate in Suffolk County
01 year ago
There is perhaps no other locale in the nation where anti-immigrant hatred has sunk roots as deep as those in Suffolk County, New York, where the powerful County Executive has built a career on it and where the judiciary is challenged to empanel a jury for the murder trial of a man accused of immigrant-killing for sport.
Almost a decade ago Newsday reporter Bart Jones aptly labeled Suffolk County “ground zero” of the anti-immigrant movement. As day laborers were brought in to provide low-wage labor for many of the upscale residents of the Long Island enclave, opposition to their presence began to build. The bellicose and belligerent “Sachem Quality of Life” crowd that sought to drum immigrants out of the County was subsumed by the Federation for American Immigration (FAIR)’s successful efforts to “mainstream” anti-immigrant bigotry, in spite of courageous efforts by community, religious, civic, labor, civil, and immigrant rights organizations. A decade later, the enduring power of FAIR-inspired anti-immigrant hatred is still manifest.
The New York Times reported last week that the task of empanelling an impartial Suffolk County jury for the first trial in the murder of Marcelo Lucero had become “a struggle to find tolerance.” Mr. Lucero was stabbed to death in the fall of 2008 when a group of seven teenagers out for an evening of “beaner hopping”—the “sport” of assaulting Latinos—killed him. Of 130 potential jurors interviewed over three days, only 5 were selected; the pall of anti-immigrant feeling ran deep and explicit, though subdued, among the pool of potential jurors. FAIR must have exulted—its work had, indeed, sunk deep roots.
The fact that teenagers even engaged in such “sport” is testament to the enduring power of anti-immigrant fervor in Suffolk County. Those who attacked Marcelo Lucero grew up in their formative years in an atmosphere rife with bigotry and hate that seeped into the lives of children and youth, as well as adults who, in 2010, could not serve as impartial jurors in the trial of those raised in their midst.
As the trial itself unfolds, reporter Bart Jones will likely not be writing about it for Newsday. After years of covering the anti-immigrant movement and its impact in Suffolk County, Jones has been reassigned by the newspaper, possibly under pressure from the powerful, anti-immigrant County Executive Steve Levy. Joe Strupp of Media Matters suggested last week that Levy may, indeed, have had his way at last, after complaining publicly for years about Jones’ thorough coverage of anti-immigrant activity and Levy’s own role in it. Jones helped break the 206 story that Levy was in the thick of the FAIR-inspired front group, “Mayors and Executives for Immigration Reform,” and he never let up reporting on Levy’s nefarious anti-immigrant politics. As much as the teenagers involved in the Lucero murder, Levy is testament to the enduring power of hate in Suffolk County; indeed, he is the embodiment of the political power birthed by such hatred.
In 2001 I saw the impact of this hatred when I first journeyed to Suffolk County to work with local organizations and religious leaders to counter it. Even in those early days of “ground zero,” hatred had taken deep root. As FAIR advanced its agenda in the County it became clear that it was playing a dual, pivotal role: mainstreaming its anti-immigrant mantra and, simultaneously, keeping the embers of hate glowing by ignoring the flames they would yield. In the early days neo-Nazis attracted to the County assaulted and intended to kill several immigrants. Immigrants were burned out of their residences. Hatred followed bigotry. Violence followed hatred. Murder followed violence. An immigrant died at the hands of youth raised in such an environment. An elected County Executive, a Democrat, fanned the embers, and when flames erupted he acted as if there were no heat.
Such is the enduring power of hate in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. Unchecked, this is where anti-immigrant fervor goes, burning through neighborhoods, counties, and—as in Europe—countries as well; consuming the lives and spirits of youth and of those struggling for livelihoods and families; and making pawns of alleged leaders who smell only political opportunity in the deadly smoke of its flames.
Great White Hopes: Race and the Right
01 year ago
by Rev. David L. Ostendorf
in American Identity, Congressional Leaders, Conservative Political Action Conference, Governor Tim Pawlenty, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Jim Crow Era, Literacy Tests, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, Politics, Racism, Tea Party, Tim Pawlenty, Tom Tancredo, White America, White Nation
One of the high privileges of being white in America is to be able to speak of race in coded terms and language—or by allusion to “broader” political issues, critiques, and concerns—and then profess innocence (“plausible deniability”) when called out for one’s racism.
Recent gatherings of the Tea Party and the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) provide a case in point, as do almost daily sound bites from so-called Congressional leaders determined to prevent the Obama Administration from moving forward on any agenda. Tea partier and former Congressman Tom Tancredo called for a return to Jim Crow-era voter literacy tests, declaring the President was elected by “people who could not even spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English.” CPACers Mitt Romney declared that “President Obama fails to understand America,” while Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty suggested taking a nine iron to the “window of big government,” as Tiger Woods’ wife had done to his vehicle. House Minority Leader John Boehner told CPAC that, “Voters thought they were electing a commander in chief; instead they got a finger-wagging professor.”
While Tancredo’s remarks were over the top, as usual, those of Romney, Pawlenty, and Boehner are considered “run of the mill” political jibes. Unpacked, they are—to the contrary—racially laden to the core. Romney may just as well as have said what he really meant: that Obama “fails to understand OUR America,” the white America he and the CPACers want back in their hands. Pawlenty may just as well have said, “It’s time to take a golf club to this African American President who has cheated OUR white nation.” And Boehner—well, he may just as well said, “No African American can be either the commander in chief or a professor who thinks he’s better than WE are.” He may have just as well used the “uppity” epithet often attributed to African American men.
To grow up white in the U.S. is to be immersed in racially-charged language from childhood, to know the “code words” implicitly. Those attempting to coalesce the political right are becoming ever-more adept at coding this racism—“OUR country” comes to mind here—in their critiques of and attacks on this President. Language is power. It is the means by which we describe and define, demean and diminish, categorize and characterize. Racially coded, it is another means by which dominance is maintained, advanced, sought, or secured.
Bararck Obama is by no means above criticism. The President and the Democratic Congress have not delivered. In the face of entrenched and unwielding opposition and the rise of race on the right the task has not been easy. No one said it would be.
But amidst all the analysis by the political and pundit classes, one seldom reads or hears about the role of race in the current state of disarray in Washington. No one really wants to touch that rail, even though the political right is riding it all the way to November and beyond.
When Black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson ruled the boxing ring in the early twentieth century, white fans yearned openly for “the great white hope,” “their own” boxer who would take Johnson down for the count. Republicans now speak openly of Obama’s “failed Presidency.” When U.S. Representative Lynn Jenkins (R-KS) spoke of “a great white hope” for the GOP at a conservative gathering in her District just last August, her “slip” barely raised a political eyebrow. Oops. Didn’t know, didn’t mean, didn’t intend… anything by it.
Such “slips” are rather unusual, actually. After all, the racial code suffices quite nicely when speaking of this President (recall “You lie!”?), and most white politicians are smart enough to avoid such blatant missteps. But put your ear to the ground and listen to what is really being said by the Tancredos, the Romneys, the Pawlentys, the Boehners, the countless other who know full well how to use the code to their advantage.
Listen carefully—what you’ll hear is that race and the right go hand in glove, like the one that today’s “great white hopes” are using to win back “their country.”
FAIR and Lyndon LaRouche: Of Soul Mates and Front Groups
01 year ago
LaRouche
When it comes to creating bogus front groups, few organizations in the U.S. today can match the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
Its most recent incarnation—“Progressives for Immigration Reform”—is all dressed up in a caringly liberal-like web site, professing its commitment to protect American workers and the environment, and to “improve the lives of people worldwide.” One has to wonder if someone at FAIR got schooled in its front groups strategy by Lyndon LaRouche, the wacky, right wing demagogue and political operative and whose capacity to create political confusion through his fronts is the gold standard to which FAIR may aspire.
LaRouche’s National Caucus of Labor Committees launched his lifetime of facades. The Caucus had little to do with labor. He later operated under the guise of the National Anti-Drug Coalition and the Fusion Energy Foundation. Along the way he spun off the Schiller Institute to provide pseudo-intellectual cover to his operations. He topped himself in 1980 by establishing the National Democratic Policy Committee, which spread confusion nationwide as a perceived arm of the Democratic Party. In 1986, LaRouche minions actually won the Illinois primary for Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State, prompting Democrat Adlai Stevenson to run independently as a candidate for Governor with the Party’s support—a campaign he lost. Indomitable, LaRouche and his cult persist to this day, the latter hawking Obama-as-Hitler flyers reflecting their leader’s warped views on the President.
While FAIR has a long way to go to match LaRouche, its front groups eerily mirror the master. FAIR’s “Coalition for the Future American Worker” has for years run brazen anti-immigrant ads, the most infamous of which were labeled “borderline racist” by a Des Moines, Iowa network station. Its “Choose Black America” (now defunct after it was “unwelcomed” in Chicago) and “You Don’t Speak for Me” fronts attempt(ed) to place African American and Latino/a leaders, respectively, in the fight against immigrants. In 1985 John Tanton and FAIR spun off its own pseudo-research Center for Immigration Studies to provide cover for anti-immigrant policies. Its ill-named “America’s Leadership Team for Long Range Population- Immigration- and Resource Planning” ran “environmental” ads in the New York Times and other national publications long before Progressives for Immigration Reform emerged.
One wonders just what FAIR has to hide. In this respect, FAIR and LaRouche share a common façade, a penchant to confuse, obfuscate, mislead, and misdirect. Like LaRouche, FAIR has a handful of persons of color to cover its racism (one of whom is photographed with known white nationalists), and just enough so-called Democrats to lend its anti-immigrant agenda a touch of nonpartisan credence. But the more the FAIR onion is unpeeled the more it smells like the group took a page from Lydon LaRouche—Front Group Master, con artist, and bloviator-at-large, FAIR soul mate in creating and hiding behind front groups.
Take a look. And give a warm (un)welcome to FAIR’s more aptly-named “Regressives for Immigration Reform,” coming soon to a “progressive” meeting in a white community near you.
2020 Vision
02 years ago
Hard to believe that as millions gathered worldwide ten years ago to usher in the new millennium the biggest worry was whether the computers would work after midnight.
This year millions worldwide simply wonder if they will ever work again; it has been a hellacious decade.
This is the week of reflection on the gasping 00’s, a ten year stretch that cannot end soon enough. The decade-long litany of socioeconomic and political disasters is filling chattering class columns ad nauseum, reminding us why, once again, most Americans believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction. The bloom is off the rose of the new Administration, and the grim reality of a very long-term recovery is settling in on the body politic.
In spite of that grim reality, we really ought to be looking forward, toward the coming decade, and considering what must be done to rekindle an audacious vision that once drove peoples to dream dreams, and to give their lives to making those dreams real not simply for themselves, but for others as well. Social movements for the greater good are but distant memory, fading in the frenzied, August-like heat of white, middle class anger over threats to long-standing entitlements. Progressives have become sated and satisfied, quenched by the kool-aid of perceived Potomac power won at last. And all the while, desperate and destitute families struggle, as always, to stay afloat. An audacious vision? Where, exactly?
On the ground. Where it has always been. Among the people. With the people. By the people. At kitchen tables. At coffee shop conversations. In meeting halls and basements. In welfare and unemployment offices. At food pantries. In workplaces. On the streets. In the neighborhoods. On the campuses. Listening. Hearing. And always, organizing, bringing people together to act effectively to address the most pressing, shared issues and concerns.
Not the organizing of the past, out of the past. Organizing for a new day, a new decade, a nation ahead that will be majority peoples of color. Organizing with and among those who have always been “left behind” as the white, metropolitan majority advanced itself at virtually any cost to “others,” or who sought to effect “change” only in the annals of policy reform or public office. Organizing that is rooted in and builds on a fundamental, foundational, and operational understanding of the framework of race and racism that has shaped and driven this country, and that must ever be confronted if we are to become a truly democratic and equitable nation.
The coming decade is going to be difficult, to put it mildly. Hardship is likely to spread, and a core of the disillusioned, restless, entitlement-driven, dominant population is likely to become even more strident and dangerous. Peoples historically left behind will be put at even more risk. Racism will—as always—be the ace card played by those of the dominant population most fearful of the emerging majority of color.
They cannot, will not triumph. 2020 vision can and must trump all—audacious vision, that is. 2020 vision grounded in, with, and among those on the margins, the peripheries, the edges. 2020 vision grounded in the distant memory of new possibilities and in the sightline of new community. 2020 vision grounded in courageous, nation-building, justice-seeking, life-giving acts of imaginative action, undaunted by obstacles and relentlessly pulled forward by unquenchable hope.
Make such a vision real. Make it happen.