http://aztlannet-news-blog.blogspot.com/2006/10/domingo-octubre-22-2006-aztlannetnews.html
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http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Arizona-House-Race.html
October 23, 2006 Filed at 1:03 a.m. ET
GOP Shuns Immigration Hardliner in Ariz.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- Randy Graf is a tough-on-immigration Republican in a district that is fed up with people pouring illegally across the border and hasn't elected a Democrat to the House in two decades. Yet Graf's national party is turning its back on him, the retiring Republican congressman he wants to succeed has disavowed his candidacy and he's finding trouble getting traction beyond the most secure GOP voters -- and a border militia that's backing him.
Voters such as Sue Malusa, a mother of four from Tucson, think Graf and his supporters go too far. Graf is backed by the Minutemen, self-appointed border-watchers. Malusa will vote for a candidate who supports ''a humane and fair way of controlling the border,'' she said. ''That's important.''
Arizona's 8th District, which stretches from Tucson to the Mexican border, has returned moderate Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe to office for 22 years, faithfully backing him even after he revealed in 1996 that he was gay.
Now a rift in the Republican Party over immigration is playing to the benefit of the Democratic candidate, former state Sen. Gabrielle Giffords, 36. Giffords, like Kolbe, backs more enforcement on the border but also wants a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in the country.
Graf made waves last week defending a state lawmaker who endorsed reinstatement of a 1950s federal deportation program called ''Operation Wetback'' and sent supporters information from a white separatist group. In a candidates' debate, Graf said the lawmaker, state Rep. Russell Pearce, is a friend and they agree on how to control the border.
Arizona is the nation's busiest entryway for illegal immigration, with thousands making it across each year. Many border residents live uneasily with the migrants, sometimes seeing their livestock disturbed or killed, their homes broken into and piles of trash left behind from the illegal flight. City residents complain about the strain on schools and other government services.
Last year, Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano declared an emergency on the border because of the costs of fighting crime and dealing with immigration. She has maintained that securing the border is the federal government's job.
That climate helped establish Graf's career. A golf pro-turned state legislator, Graf became one of the Tucson area's best-known politicians as part of a group of conservatives pushing for an immediate crackdown on immigration. He won a five-way Republican primary focused on that issue.
He hopes to appeal to voters such as Earl Fernelius, a retired real estate appraiser in Tucson fed up with illegal immigrants. ''I guess they should be jailed as far as I'm concerned,'' Fernelius said.
Yet Graf and others are butting heads with moderate Republicans and Democrats on the issue. Kolbe has gone so far as to call him unelectable, and refused to endorse him. Shortly after Graf's primary victory, the National Republican Congressional Committee canceled political ads it had planned for Graf. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee followed suit, a sign that party leaders believed Giffords no longer needed their help to win.
Arizona still is a conservative state, and most candidates for federal office advocate tough border enforcement.
After Graf won, several Republicans stepped up their talk about the need to control the border. They included Sen. Jon Kyl, who faces a tough race for re-election. But John A. Garcia, a political scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, said people seem to realize tough restrictions alone will not solve the problem. He cited polls suggesting voters statewide support allowing some illegal immigrants citizenship.
Napolitano, for example, is still popular despite rejecting several GOP-sponsored bills from the legislature restricting government services for illegal immigrants and making their presence a crime.
Although she faces a challenger who accuses her of neglecting illegal immigration, she is expected to win handily.
Among Republicans, Kolbe, Sen. John McCain and Rep. Jeff Flake have argued for a guest worker program and a way for illegal immigrants to earn legal status.
In the Phoenix suburbs, where voters are reliably Republican, Democratic challengers have gained traction in part by attacking the conservative Republican incumbents' positions on immigration.
Rep. J.D. Hayworth, of Scottsdale, is in a tough race against former Tempe Mayor Harry Mitchell, who has accused Hayworth of failing to fix the immigration problem. Hayworth backs strong immigration restrictions and has written a book, ''Whatever it Takes,'' advocating tougher security at the border. Although Hayworth is favored to win, some believe his immigration stance might be too stringent even in his district.
Sally Ring, a receptionist in Scottsdale, says she can't support a plan that would force immigrants to return home.
''They have families here, they have established a new home,'' she said. ''I just can't imagine that we would send people away.''
+++++
Staff writer Terry Tang contributed from Scottsdale. Talhelm reported from Washington, D.C.
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http://elpasotimes.com/news/ci_4531301
10/22/2006
El Pasoans still ponder whom to pick for governor
By Brandi Grissom / Austin Bureau
Email= bgrissom@elpasotimes.com ; (512) 479-6606.
AUSTIN -- While El Paso Republicans seem to have decided to stick with GOP Gov. Rick Perry, many El Paso Democrats and independents are still weighing who will get their vote Nov. 7 in the gubernatorial race, an El Paso Times Poll shows.
"I think that there's probably still a lot of people out there who are just confused with this whole arrangement of there being multiple candidates," said Russell Autry, chief of operations at The Reuel Group, which conducted the El Paso Times Poll.
This gubernatorial race is one of the most unusual in recent history -- four high-profile candidates fighting to lead Texas. The top vote-getter will win, as this race does not allow a runoff.
According to the Times poll, more El Pasoans have decided to vote for Perry than any other candidate, but even more than that have not chosen a candidate yet.
The El Paso Times Poll asked 357 likely voters, in telephone interviews during Oct. 10-14 whom they intended to vote for Nov. 7 in the governor race. The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 5 percentage points. Presented with a list of the five candidates, 34.7 percent did not choose any of the names given.
"It shows that minds aren't made up yet, and there's still a ways to go, especially in a field this large with a number of prominent candidates," said University of Texas at El Paso political science Professor Gregory Rocha.
Following the trend of most statewide polls, the El Paso poll showed Perry receiving more responses than any other candidate, 27.7 percent.
"Every other poll suggests the governor's got a base vote that is unshakable," said Harvey Kronberg, editor of the online political journal Quorum Report.
Like other statewide polls, the El Paso one showed independent candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn, with 17.4 percent, and Democrat Chris Bell, at 13.7 percent, in a close fight for second.
"It's the Democrats and the independents who are stilling weighing in their minds who they're going to vote for," Rocha said.
While Perry is expected to take the race statewide, experts said they expected Democrat Bell to pull ahead in El Paso County, generally considered one of the few Democratic strongholds remaining in Texas, where straight-ticket voting dominates at the ballot box.
"The most powerful indicator of how someone votes is their partisanship," Rocha said.
In 2002, Perry received 33.85 percent of the local vote, compared with 62 percent for Democrat Tony Sanchez. Rocha said he expected Democrats who may not yet be familiar with the candidates to follow the local pattern of straight-party voting.
"My sense is it's going to be pretty close between Perry and Bell, with Bell just coming out a little ahead" in El Paso County, Rocha said. "It's not going to be the blowout for the Democrats that we're all accustomed to."
Bell spokeswoman Heather Guntert said the poll results show El Pasoans haven't yet heard about the candidate. Only last week Bell got a cash infusion from a wealthy trial lawyer, allowing the campaign to aggressively advertise on television.
"The more they learn about us, the more they like us," she said.
El Paso County Democratic Party Chairman Danny Anchondo said the county party is putting out Bell signs and spearheading a campaign to encourage Democrats to continue their straight-party ballot habits. If that works, he said, he expects Bell to win locally.
Perry spokesman Robert Black said he was heartened by the poll outcome, but the governor has not yet "counted his chickens."
"He's going to work hard for next 18 days" to win El Pasoans' votes, Black said.
El Paso County GOP Chairman Michael Moore said he thinks Perry could win El Paso, a Republican feat that hasn't happened since then-Gov. George Bush ran for re-election in 1998.
Strayhorn campaign manager Brad McClellan said the results show that many El Pasoans, like other Texans, are ready for a break from bickering partisans.
"To have people rejecting the major candidates from the two major parties and seriously looking at an independent candidate bodes well for us in El Paso and the rest of the state," McClellan said.
Just 5.9 percent of those polled said they intended to vote for independent candidate Kinky Friedman, and less than 1 percent chose Libertarian candidate James Werner.
Friedman spokeswoman Laura Stromberg said the candidate pays little mind to polls of frequent voters because he is counting on new voters to drive the campaign to victory.
"The only way we will win is if new voters, people who don't usually show up at polls actually make it to polling stations on November 7," Stromberg said.
Early voting will start Monday and last until Nov. 3.
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http://cbs5.com/localwire/localfsnews/bcn/2006/10/22/n/HeadlineNews/ELECTIONS-PREPARATION/resources_bcn_html
10/22/06 4:50 PDT
CITY, COMMUNITIES PREPARE FOR ELECTION DAY
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)
With a longer-than-average ballot on tap this Nov. 7, San Francisco is working to ensure that language assistance for the city's diverse population will be available in the days leading up to the vote.
San Francisco ballots are presented to voters in three different language translations -- English, Spanish and Chinese -- to ensure that residents can cast their ballots accurately.
On Wednesday, Chinese for Affirmative Action/Center for Asian American Advocacy announced that it plans to lead a coalition of community advocates in an effort to monitor more than 100 polling places throughout San Francisco on Election Day.
"This is a systematic effort to ensure the San Francisco Department of Elections is meeting its legal duty to provide access at the polls,'' Chinese for Affirmative Action Policy Advocate Christina Wong said in a statement.
Language minority provisions of the Voting Rights Act declare that all election information available in English must also be available in the minority language of an area so that all citizens have an effective opportunity to register, learn the details of the elections and cast a free and effective ballot.
According to Wong, the San Francisco Equal Access to Services Ordinance requires departments to be able to communicate with clients in any primary language spoken by limited English proficient persons who make up at least five percent of the population served by the department or at least 10,000 residents citywide.
An election official at the San Francisco Department of Elections reported that if three percent of voters assigned to a precinct request translated election materials, a bilingual poll worker is also stationed at the precinct to assist with questions concerning the election in the days leading up the vote and on Election Day at polling places.
The official reported that the most commonly requested translations other than Chinese and Spanish are Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog and Russian.
Limited English proficient voters can ask for language assistance at their polling places, where a bilingual staff will be available in precincts where they have been requested. If a bilingual staff is not stationed at any particular polling location, telephones will be available to contact translators at the Department of Elections.
Chinese for Affirmative Action's coalition team of advocates includes the Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area and the Partnership for Immigrant Leadership and Action.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/socal/la-me-tan23oct23,0,1266174.story?coll=la-home-headlines
9:42 PM PDT, October 22, 2006
O.C. candidate defends letter scaring immigrants
Tan Nguyen, a Republican seeking to unseat Rep. Sanchez, says he won't quit the race despite mounting pressure.
By Garrett Therolf, Times Staff Writer
Email= garrett.therolf@latimes.com
At a chaotic sidewalk news conference Sunday, Orange County congressional candidate Tan Nguyen defended a letter his campaign sent to 14,000 registered voters that warned in Spanish that immigrants could be jailed or deported for voting.
"There has been no crime committed, so why is there a criminal investigation three weeks prior to a very important election?" asked Nguyen outside his campaign office in Garden Grove. It was his first public appearance since the controversy erupted last week. "What is going on? Who is fueling this investigation?"
Nguyen, a Republican challenging Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez in the 47th District, said that he would stay in the race despite the national uproar over the letter and calls by Orange County Republican leaders for him to drop out.
"I am innocent, and there is no way in hell that I am going to withdraw," Nguyen said. "I am not going to quit this race, and I am going to win this race."
His speech was punctuated by outbursts from a crowd of roughly 50, who angrily demanded more information about the letter's authorship. Nguyen maintained that the letter was sent without his knowledge. But he added that, after firing the staffer he said was responsible for it, he was asking her to return because he believes the mailer was fair.
In the letter, registered voters with Latino surnames in Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Anaheim were warned "that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time...."
The mailer has sparked state and federal investigations over possible voting rights violations. On Friday, Nguyen's campaign headquarters, his home and a staffer's residence were searched by California Department of Justice investigators.
A spokesman for Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said Sunday that the investigators were continuing to review the evidence and movement in the case could come this week.
Orange County officials said they would decide this week whether to send a second letter to the affected voters making it clear that naturalized citizens have the right to vote.
Former U.S. Atty. William Braniff, a lawyer for Nguyen's campaign, said Sunday that the controversy was caused by the news media and others who inferred that the word emigrado, or immigrant, included U.S. citizens. In fact, Braniff said, emigrado in the letter merely referred to U.S. immigrants who have legal status but not citizenship — and thus do not have the right to vote.
Braniff declined, however, to say why the campaign had used letterhead closely resembling that of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform without the group's permission and why it was signed by a fictional "Sergio Ramirez."
"These are fair questions and could be answered if they were being asked if this was a purely political forum, but there is an investigation going on," Braniff said.
He also declined to comment on accounts by sources familiar with the investigation who said an LAPD officer had paid for the $4,000 mailing of the letter .
Nguyen lambasted his opponent, Sanchez, saying she was "fueling this hysteria," and said investigators were "terrorizing my family and volunteers" and violating his right to free speech.
The candidate said his campaign had been crippled by the government's seizure of his mailing lists and other material.
No representative of the Sanchez campaign was immediately available for comment.
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4277205.html
Oct. 22, 2006, 11:16AM
The new face of Appalachia
As Latino immigration, legal and illegal, reaches the rural Southeast, passions, jobs, politics and pulpits are changing in towns such as Morristown, Tenn.
By KIM COBB
Email= kim.cobb@chron.com
MORRISTOWN, TENN. - She sits toward the back of the storefront church, her silver hair and aquarium-blue eyes shining in the low light. Elaine Solomon likes the way the place makes her feel. She likes the families swaying, clapping and singing with raised hands to a ranchera-style praise band.
"Su santo espiritu ha llegado, oh dulce espiritu de Dios," they sing. Your holy Spirit has arrived, oh sweet Spirit of God.
There are plenty of places to find God in Morristown but few places for a 70-year-old woman to learn Spanish. So there she is, week after week at a Latino Baptist church, learning the language of the newcomers, the people some of her neighbors call "the invasion."
"Somebody needs to learn to talk to these people," she said.
Latino immigration has been changing the face of the United States for decades. Immigrants follow certain jobs, and the fastest-growing Latino communities these days are in Southeastern states such as Tennessee. But no one in Morristown expected it to come here. Framed by the Appalachian Mountains and an insular culture of mostly white residents, much of east Tennessee is an old, familiar photo in a worn frame: winding roads, clapboard houses and mile after mile of farm-furrowed green.
Even in thoroughly modern Morristown, tied to the rest of the world through manufacturing, the arrival of "these people" is quickly changing a region that has clung to a shared cultural and ethnic identity since the 1700s. This kind of change can feel threatening, all mixed up in knotty questions about legal and illegal, assimilation, job loss and fear. At the very least, people are conflicted.
There's also been a lot of sign-waving and harsh words aimed in the past year at illegal immigrants here. Morristown's police chief is uneasy about the potential for violence, thanks to gut-stirring visits from the Tennessee Volunteer Minutemen and the Ku Klux Klan.
'Little Mexico'
Hamblen County's resident Latino population jumped from a few hundred to as many as 10,000 in the past decade, and the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that more than half the immigrants arriving in southeastern communities are illegal. Cumberland Avenue on the town's south side has been transformed into a commercial strip dominated by Latino restaurants, specialty stores and used-car lots.
"I mean, right here, where our church is, is Little Mexico," said the Rev. William Burton of Iglesia Bautista La Gran Comision, or The Great Commission Baptist Church.
The pastor is an exuberant, round-faced white man who speaks the Spanish he learned as a missionary in Venezuela with a decidedly Tennessee accent. His congregation began as a Bible study group at another Southern Baptist church. The study group grew, and Burton eventually began offering an early service on Sunday mornings in Spanish. But, the young minister said, his devotion to the newcomers created resentment among some of the church's established members. It was never put into words, but Burton felt the challenge to choose "between us and them."
"Of course, my heart was with 'them,' " he said.
Burton quit and took his new flock with him. Six years down the road, La Gran Comision is flourishing in a salmon-colored stucco building that used to be a grocery store. And Solomon, whose roots in Appalachia run deep, is soaking up Spanish.
A retired practical nurse, Solomon works part time at a pregnancy-support center with a growing list of Spanish-speaking Latina clients. She lowers her voice and adds quickly, "We're anti-abortion."
Solomon is among the half-dozen whites who attend Burton's church services. Yes, Solomon agrees, Morristown is insular. But she also sees similarities between the Latinos and the region's historically Scots-Irish and German population that some might not see in themselves.
"I guess in a way they are like Appalachians," Solomon said. "I never considered myself Appalachian until I read a book called 40 Acres and No Mule, and I discovered I am Appalachian. You have a feeling for the land and an attachment to the, you know, between families. We're clannish — and I see the same thing in these people."
Perception vs. reality
There are plenty of people here who feel as if they're being run over at the intersection of demographic and economic change.
"I don't want my grandson to have to learn Spanish — he's an American," fumed Judy Mitchell, whose family has lived here for more than 200 years.
Morristown does not fit the Appalachian stereotype of quaint villages and hillbilly shacks. It's a factory town with the usual Ameri-bland assortment of burger joints, drugstores, a Wal-Mart. For generations, the spectacular mountain greenery visible from the highest points in town was a wall between Morristown and change. But change has come. Now, when residents say they don't like to travel the area along South Cumberland Avenue after dark, they mean they fear the newest arrivals who frequent the Latino businesses there.
That fear may be overblown. Roger Overholt, the chief of police, said the crime rate among Latinos is not much different from that of their neighbors. Cases of public intoxication and cars being abandoned after accidents increased with the arrival of Latinos, he said. But an education campaign about American law reduced the problem.
Morristown averages one homicide a year. There were five in 2002, which Overholt called "probably our worst year." None involved Latinos killing whites. Still, the perception of danger is strong.
"I came out of South Florida ... because I couldn't speak the (Spanish) language and I had to carry a gun," property manager Ronald Barwick said. "This was not Florida. People worked on a handshake and spoke English. (Now) the illegals have really taken over this county."
Settling in, sort of
The immigrants rub shoulders with the whites in jobs and stores and schools. But life is what happens at home and in church.
You can't marry in Hamblen County without a Social Security number — an obvious hurdle for the many immigrants who don't have one. So on a Saturday afternoon in June, as he frequently does, the Rev. Burton journeyed to nearby Granger County, where there is no such restriction, to marry two young members of his congregation.
It was an outdoor ceremony held under a spreading magnolia tree — what Burton called "a real Southern wedding" except for the Mexican tradition of wrapping a lasso around the couple as a symbol of their union.
Some Latino residents said Morristown is becoming more comfortable. Even with the occasional protests mounted against illegal immigrants, they can shop, dine and worship in places where Spanish is spoken. And there is work.
Juan Madrigal, his wife, Erica, and baby daughter Zuri are regulars at Burton's Thursday night services, basking in the sense of family they find in the congregation. Public protests against illegal immigrants do not concern them.
"We're not afraid because if they deport us, they'll deport us to our country," Madrigal said.
It's hard to think about whether they prefer life here to their old home. Madrigal was only 17 when he left Mexico.
"We're happy here," Madrigal said. "You get used to a community and a house and a way of life, and if we go back to Mexico we're going to miss this place."
But in the white community, it's hard for some people to separate uneasiness about the new population from resentment over the slow demise of the old way of life.
Global give-and-take
In recent years, Hamblen County learned what globalism meant by watching its biggest factories shut down and many good-paying jobs move to cheap-labor countries — such as Mexico. But free trade in Morristown cuts both ways.
Many Mexican farming communities suffered financially when forced to compete with American agricultural products. The stream of immigrants to the United States from farm states such as Michoacan and Oaxaca grew in the mid-1990s as word spread about low-skill factory and agriculture jobs in east Tennessee.
So here's what it looks like from some corners of Morristown: The jobs went to Mexico, then Mexico came to Morristown. Residents of Southwest border states have long been immersed in the debate over illegal crossings. Texas has had a large Latino population for more than a century, most of it legal and destined to become the majority by 2040. Morristown, by contrast, is mired in culture shock.
"You know, I thought our community was doing well," Burton said. "And then our county commissioner, Tom Lowe, started all that nonsense about wanting to charge the federal government for so many illegals."
About 85 percent of the Hamblen County budget is spent on the local school district. Lowe started asking pointed questions about how much it costs to educate students who cannot speak English. Lowe, a flush-faced pharmacist with curly, strawberry-blonde hair, has plenty of critics. But the town's "fence-sitters" began openly supporting his calls for enforcement of immigration law, Lowe said, after they saw Latinos waving Mexican flags at pro-immigrant rallies.
"I think America is in great distress over this," he said.
Effects of extremism
Turmoil in Morristown started when a group calling itself the Tennessee Volunteer Minutemen began organizing against the illegal population. At least, that is the view of Lisa Barba, a regional organizer for the Tennessee Immigration and Refugee Rights Coalition.
Lowe is tired of hearing allegations from city leaders that the Klan is involved in the anti-illegal-immigrant movement here. It's a smear, he thinks, to paint everyone concerned about illegal immigration as racist.
Burton thinks the white community is learning to bend with the changes, but he expects real acceptance of the newcomers may be slow in coming.
"We are a closed culture," the clergyman said. "I mean, our mountains have separated us culturally from the rest of the U.S. It's not necessarily just Latinos — it's anybody from, you know, the north or any place else that is not from here."
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http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--immigrationrally1021oct21,0,2912545.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork
October 21, 2006, 9:51 PM EDT
Hundreds rally in NYC for immigrant rights
NEW YORK (AP) _ Hundreds of immigrants and activists marched through Manhattan to Times Square on Saturday to demand an end to the detention and deportation of people in the country illegally.
The rally, organized by dozens of pro-immigration groups, began in Manhattan's Union Square and culminated in a march up Sixth Avenue.
The procession was smaller than some of the huge rallies and marches for immigration policy reform held in the city last summer, but the protesters said their cause was no less urgent.
Congress has recently passed legislation authorizing the construction of a huge, multibillion dollar fence along the U.S.-Mexico borer and appropriated money for detention centers and an additional 1,500 border agents.
At the same time, other immigrant-friendly proposals stalled in Washington, including one that would give millions of illegal immigrants already in the U.S. a chance to become a citizen.
The marchers headed into Times Square on Saturday carrying signs reading "We are not criminals" and "Stop detentions."
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http://www.narconews.com/Issue43/article2200.html
October 21, 2006
Marcos Details the Next Stages of the Other Campaign
Two Indigenous Comandantes Will Travel to Live in Each State; Later, “We Will Travel To Every Part of the United States and Canada”
By Simon Fitzgerald
The Other Journalism with the Other Campaign in Baja California
October 21, 2006
On the night of Thursday, October 19, at the end of two days of meetings, rallies, and events with the Other Tijuana and the Other Campaign on the Other Side, Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos explained in more detail how the Other Campaign will function after the current tour around the country ends in Mexico City on November 30.
Marcos spray-paints the words ‘Kapital is hazardous to your health’ outside the MultiKulti Theatre =Photo: D.R. 2006 Simon Fitz
In the MultiKulti Theatre in downtown Tijuana, Marcos clarified that his trip around the country was to make first contact with adherents to the Other Campaign, “to see who is getting close to us just for the photo-op and who is really working in their communities.” Afterwords, larger delegations of indigenous comandantes – with at least one man and one woman from the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee – would spread out across the country. Each of these delegations would move to a single region of Mexico, meeting with adherents for private conversations “with more time and without the pressure” of the current tour, which has traveled across four states in under two weeks since the reinitiation on October 8.
The first piece of work that Marcos has asked adherent individuals and organizations to carry out is to define what aspects of the struggle they think are essential to the Other Campaign. Marcos gave the example, “if violence or marginalization of women is tolerated, or if differences in sexuality like homosexuality are not respected in The Other Campaign, then I am out.”
The comandantes would also ensure that adherent individuals and organizations in each part of the country travel out to the most marginalized segments of the population, to speak with the people who might be interested in a non-electoral anti-capitalist movement but do not have the resources to attend meetings or use a web page. The comandantes and the adherents would work these communities to create a national plan of struggle from the perspective of each community. For example “the national plan of struggle for the indigenous farm laborers of the San Quintin Valley will be different from the national plan of struggle for maquiladora workers in Tijuana,” even though they are in the same state of Baja California.
In laying out these duties of the comandantes as delegates of the Other Campaign and of the adherents, Marcos specified how The Other Campaign plans to carry out “a new form of politics.” In addition, by using the military structure of the EZLN to carry out nationwide community organizing, the Zapatistas are challenging the definition of an “army of national liberation.”
This process will also be a long one that may see many different electoral campaigns come and go. Illustrating this point, Marcos also offered some clues as to how the Other Campaign would be internationalized. “If we would have said ten years ago that we would travel into every small corner of Mexico, people would have said ‘You´re crazy!’ Maybe I will sound crazy now, but I am going to say here, we will travel to every part of the United States and Canada to speak with the Mexican compañeros there.”
It remains to be seen if a movement in North America will be ready a year from now or even ten years from now to receive the Zaptistas or to change the continent, from below and to the left.
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http://www.luisjrodriguez.com/blog/2006/10/indigenous-is-strong-in-mexico.html
Friday, October 20, 2006
The Indigenous is Strong in Mexico
Despite years of genocide (in some cases, 95 percent of indigenous people perished within 50 years of the Spanish conquest), the indigenous values, traditions, tongues, and people are strong and growing stronger in Mexico.
Mexico has more traditional, full-blooded indigenous people than any other country in the Americas. While there are more indigenous people percentage wise in countries like Guatemala and Bolivia, the sheer numbers of reportedly traditional indigenous people in Mexico outnumber the numbers of natives in those countries. In Mexico, it's between 10 to 20 million people. This is about 10 to 20 percent of the 100 million people who populate the country. Yet, I contend that most Mexicans are still indigenous.
While it's true that mestizaje occurred in the more then 500 years since Cortez first entered Mexico, this has largely occurred in the major cities. Most Mexicans still have the brown faces, eyes, and hair of their indigenous ancestors.
Here's an interesting statistic -- reportedly there were 60 percent full-blooded indigenous people at the start of Mexico's struggle for independence from Spain (1810-1821). Many Spanish stopped coming in large numbers after that. But by the 1910 Mexican Revolution, there were 40 percent indigenous people -- even with no more major Spanish populations to draw from. Today it's estimated to be 10 percent indigenous people.
The fact of the matter is, most mestizaje happened between native peoples from various tribes. It was more about the process of becoming Mexicanos, not so much mestizos.
Yes, it's true that there are many people of all races in Mexico -- whites not only from Spain but from Ireland, Germany, France, and the US. There were also Arabs, particularly after the break up of the Ottoman Empire, as well as Filipinos and Malaysians who came in the tens of thousands (especially when Spain controlled those areas). Japanese and Chinese also emigrated here. And there were apparently more African slaves brought into Mexico than there were Spanish settlers (around 300,000 to 150,000 at the height of their numbers).
I understand there has been a long history of mixing of races and cultures.
But none of this obliterated or even involved the majority of indigenous people. The de-Indianization of Mexico is mostly due to the removal of people from their lands, their traditions, and languages (which can be called mexicanization). Still, today there are some 240 languages and their variants spoken in Mexico.
The indigenous is still strong -- and deep -- whether one claims to be native or not.
When I was in Mexico from October 7 to 12 for Mexico City's Sixth Book Fair (Feria del Libro) this was most evident in the people in the main plaza or zocalo. Native people shared their wares on most corners, some in native dress. Many Mexicans have been learning the Mexika (Aztec) dances, held every day and evening in the zocalo since 1978.
I was also there when 10,000 mostly indigenous people from Oaxaca (Mixtecos, Zapotecas, and other tribes) marched into the capital in protest of voter fraud and extreme repression from the PAN-PRI united government in this southern state -- one of the most indigenous in all of Mexico.
I was also able to visit the Templo Mayor, discovered in 1978 during the burrowing for the Metro subway system. This and other ruins have been found beneath parts of the central city. The Spanish conquerors had destroyed almost all remnants of the Mexika/Aztec culture, even using stone bricks from their temples to build the Cathedral and other buildings. Many colonial homes and structures were built on top of the old Mexika temples and other structures.
Now many of these ruins are being excavated.
Just a week or two before I arrived, Mexican archaelogists discovered one of the largest Mexika monoliths ever, next to the Templo Mayor. Found on October 2, the rectagular monolith measures 13 feet on its largest side (the renowned circular Mexika Calendar monolith, found in 1790, has a diameter of 12 feet).
The Secretary of Culture of the Federal District of Mexico City, Raquel Sosa, invited me and other Feria del Libro participants, to a special tour of the Templo Mayor, with talks from the main Templo engineer and the director of the Templo Mayor museum. We were able to actually stand on the temple floor, something tourists and other guest don't get to do (there is a catwalk that goes around the temple floor where they can view the remaining walls and artifacts).
They also took us to the excavation area of the most recently discovered monolith, although we couldn't see it since it was covered as protection from the humidity, rain, and debris as they continued to carefully remove it from its resting place.
It was an extreme honor for me to witness this.
The indigenous is important for me because of my own indigenous roots from Mexico.
I also have strong ties to Mexika/Mayan and other indigenous groups in the US, as well, of course, with Native Americans. Every year for around ten years, my wife Trini and I (often with my two youngest boys, my daughter, granddaughter, and members of our sweat lodge circle in the San Fernando Valley ) go to the Navajo Reservation near the Chuskas mountains in a small rez town called Lukachukai. Our family was adopted by Medicine man and elder Anthony Lee and his family. We go for ceremonies and to visit our adopted brothers and sisters as well as Anthony and his wife, Delores. We made this visit again this past September.
This has become a renewing source for me, there with the Navajos, who call themselves the Dine. But, as Anthony has always told us, this was not meant to make "Navajos" out of us. It has, however, helped us get closer to our own indigenous roots and traditions from Mexico. We are all related, as the Lakota say. Especially since migrations between North American natives, Mexican natives, and South American natives had been going on for tens of thousands of years.
Borders came along (most through conquests) and have divided us. We go into Navajoland as people without borders, who recognize our ancestral roots and ties, and still find a spiritual connection to these ancient people and ancient lands.
So for me, Mexico is going back to the motherland. Being born in the US and having US citizenship doesn't change that. It doesn't mean divided allegences -- that's the fears of the narrow minded and unimaginative. I have ties to these lands, both in the US and Mexico, as long as anyone's. That doesn't make me better than anyone else. Nor does this give me any special privileges. It does mean that I belong here. I'm no stranger. No "foreigner." No "illegal." I'm home.
posted by Luis J. Rodriguez at 1:53 PM
<< href="http://www.luisjrodriguez.com">www.luisjrodriguez.com
Web log author, Luis J. Rodriguez ©
I'm Luis J. Rodriguez, the author of Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. and several other books in short fiction, children's literature, nonfiction, and poetry. On my web log I'll be posting all the latest news concerning my work as a writer, along with news and opinions on the many political, social, spiritual and cultural activities that I find interesting.
"Art is the heart's explosion on the world. Music. Dance. Poetry. Art on cars, on walls, on our skins. There is probably no more powerful force for change in this uncertain and crisis-ridden world than young people and their art. It is the consciousness of the world breaking away from the strangle grip of an archaic social order." ~ Luis J. Rodriguez.
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http://www.workers.org/2006/us/immigrant-1026/
Published Oct 19, 2006 1:56 AM
Which way for the immigrant struggle?
Email: ww@workers.org
Teresa Gutierrez: ‘Repressive laws will be repealed in the streets’
The week before the March and Rally for Immigrant Rights set for Oct. 21 in New York City, sponsored by the newly formed New York United for Immigrant Rights, Workers World talked to Teresa Gutierrez, a leading organizer of the May 1st Coalition. The May 1st Coalition is a member of NYUIR.
WW: The Oct. 21 demonstration comes about six months after the huge protest marches that swept the country last spring. Looking back on those protests half a year later, how would you characterize them?
Gutierrez: The massive demonstrations of immigrants last spring were a phenomenal step forward for the class struggle in this country. The spring mobilizations were a welcome development not least because there has been such a longstanding period of reaction. It had appeared that the capitalist ruling class and its representatives in the U.S. government had the upper hand completely, and that the mass struggle was dormant.
But then came the demonstrations of March, April and May. This development shook the ruling class. It frightened and deeply worried them. It gave a glimpse, even in the midst of periods of reaction, of the vast, crucial struggles that are on the horizon. This is the meaning of the actions carried out last spring by a vital and previously unheard-from section of the working class: that everyone who witnessed them knew that they were a glimpse of the future.
Why haven’t these huge numbers been seen again in the months since?
Massive demonstrations of millions of people, especially demonstrations as thoroughly working-class in character as those last spring, made up as they were of some of the most oppressed strata of our class, are difficult to sustain. There are practical considerations. For example, many who attended the demonstrations missed work and lost a day’s pay. How many times can a worker do that in a given period?
It would be at a different phase in the struggle that we would see millions continue to come out month after month, week after week. Sustained protests in the streets of that size and character would be a revolutionary or near-revolutionary development. We are not in such a period yet.
And it’s not just the immigrant-rights movement where you see this. The anti-war movement is at nowhere near the level of struggle that we wish, the level that would be commensurate with the atrocities being carried out by U.S. imperialism in Iraq and elsewhere. There should be outrage at the racist, gross way the media is treating North Korea right now, but the U.S. has been very successful in demonizing North Korea. The reality is that none of the progressive movements are currently able to sustain an ongoing high level of mobilization and mass struggle.
How did the bourgeois media view the immigrant-rights protests?
Bourgeois pundits in the mainstream media paid and are still paying close attention to the state of the immigrant-rights movement. They are deeply interested. After all, when millions of workers demonstrate, and one of those demonstrations is on a weekday, May Day no less, and workers stay out of work to take to the streets, you can be sure they are monitoring the situation closely.
When the demonstrations that many groups called in September turned out to be nowhere near as big as those last spring, the bourgeois commentators declared that the movement was dead.
But it isn’t?
Not at all. It’s true that organizers around the country report a tepid mood now among immigrants. But this is not because they’ve lost interest or hope. And it doesn’t at all mean that the struggle won’t flare up again. But the reality is that, although the mass demonstrations had a huge impact, and succeeded in getting the repressive Sensenbrenner bill defeated in Congress, the reactionary anti-immigrant offensive is rolling forward. And it has a chilling effect.
Can you detail some of the specifics of this offensive?
The Senate voted to allocate $6 billion to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. This is one of the worst outrages.
At the same time, massive raids are being carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security. In cities across the country, ICE is trying to push immigrant workers further underground and terrorize them away from organizing and fighting for their rights. These ICE sweeps are similar to the Palmer Raids of the 1920s.
According to the Detention Watch Network, from April through September of this year, 3,704 immigrants were picked up in these raids. News accounts report that as a result, some neighborhoods are turning into ghost towns. These numbers, by the way, could be a conservative count since most of the statistics come from ICE news releases which could be underreporting the scope of the raids.
In addition to the border wall and the ICE raids, local and state governments, most notably in Pennsylvania and Arizona but also elsewhere, have been passing vicious anti-immigrant legislation. So all in all, there is a calculated attempt to create a thoroughly intimidating and threatening climate for immigrant workers, especially the undocumented. A friend and comrade just sent me an email from Philadelphia where a local pizza shop, Geno’s, had a huge sign on its front door: “If you are legal, come in, if you are illegal, go home.”
This is all a result of the immigrant-bashing sweeping the country. Lou Dobbs, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, the Minutemen—the diatribes from these forces create the conditions for these kinds of hateful racist acts.
But the ruling class doesn’t really want to get rid of immigrant workers, does it?
Without immigrant labor, the economy would collapse. So why the witch hunt? To drive immigrants further underground. To further manipulate this reserve army of labor.
This is also deeply connected to the economic crisis workers face in this country. The Million Worker March Movement wrote in a piece directed to the immigrant-rights struggle that “the corporations want to super-exploit immigrant workers. They just don’t want to be responsible for paying them the value of their labor or to provide social services and basic democratic rights. They are using the anti-immigrant legislation to mask the truth about the massive unemployment and the crisis facing U.S. workers and the huge financial debt of the government.” The MWMM said the bosses are “trying to make immigrants the scapegoats for the crisis. This criminalization is also aimed at creating a xenophobic hate of foreigners against the rising tide of change developing throughout Latin and South America that challenges U.S. global policies.”
This perspective focuses on immigrant workers as part and parcel of the class struggle in this country. And this is right on, and a real contribution to the debate. It says that attacks against immigrants must be seen as attacks on all workers. Otherwise the ruling class can pit immigrants and U.S.-born workers against each other to the detriment of all except the bosses.
The immigrant-rights movement has to do its part as well, reaching out to the African-American community, building unity. Links should especially be made to the survivors of Katrina and the activists who are fighting on their behalf. It would be a powerful movement if these two struggles genuinely linked up and marched forward hand in hand.
The ruling class goes out of its way to foster divisions between the Latin@ and Black communities, because the bosses know that if the Black and Latin@ communities unite they are a powerful force, a mighty force, one that can unite the struggle of all the immigrants from Asia, the Pacific, Africa and all over the world.
We must also be passionately working to win over U.S.-born workers of all nationalities to come out in solidarity with immigrants. We need to call on the labor movement to step forward. We need anti-war forces to join up with us, progressive clergy, other social forces—we have to make this a movement in which the immigrants are not on their own, but are buttressed on all sides by allies who stand with them and refuse to be divided.
So you see this as key to moving forward?
Absolutely. We need unity, a multinational united force, to build on the gains made from the demonstrations last spring and reignite the momentum that we saw was so powerful.
We need to boost immigrant workers and show them that they are not alone. We need to build confidence and raise consciousness among immigrants, including those without documents, pointing toward the great outpourings of last spring and also toward current developments in Mexico, the Philippines and elsewhere, where workers are in motion.
The Oct. 21 demonstration will be an important step in this direction. It will show that the immigrant-rights movement is still very much in motion, developing, building, growing. No matter the size of the demonstration on the 21st, what is important that the momentum continues.
It’s really important to be clear that the movement is ongoing, that it’s heading forward, that mobilizing has already begun for a massive national demonstration for immigrant rights on May 1, 2007, so that those immigrant workers who may have a wait-and-see attitude at this point can see that there is a basis for coming out into the streets again.
At the same time, we have to understand that this is a dynamic struggle. It ebbs and flows. Not every demonstration will draw a million people—but every demonstration, every meeting, every action will be a blow against the racist anti-immigrant forces, and I’m confident that step by step, day by day, this movement will grow. The government can pass anti-immigrant laws but those laws will be repealed in the streets, I fully believe.
When immigrants in this country, whether documented or undocumented, again enter the class struggle in the United States, they can change everything in this country. It was the struggle of immigrants in the U.S. that led to the historic International Women’s Day as well as May Day. Immigrants will make that kind of history again. That page is just around the corner.
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http://www.loyno.edu/newsandcalendars/release.php?id=1115
October 18, 2006
LSCE panel on Immigrant Labor
(New Orleans)—Loyola University New Orleans’ Society for Civic Engagement (LSCE) is hosting a panel discussion on the theme of Immigrant Labor on Wednesday, October 25, 2006. The event will be held at 7 p.m. in Nunemaker Auditorium, on the third floor of Monroe Hall. A coffee and cookie reception will follow.
The panel will be a talk show format with four panelists and Jennifer Bearden, LSCE’s director of communications, serving as moderator. The four panelists will be Dan Griswold, Kathleen Gasparian, Pablo Alvarado, and Temple Black.
Daniel T. Griswold is director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies. Since joining Cato in 1997, he has authored or coauthored major studies on globalization, the World Trade Organization, the U.S. trade deficit, trade and democracy, immigration and other subjects. Griswold's October 2002 paper Willing Workers: Fixing the Problem of Illegal Mexican Migration to the United States was used in the Flake-Kolbe-McCain immigration bill in 2003, which President Bush drew upon in early 2004 as the basis for his guest worker program. Griswold has testified before congressional committees and federal agencies on immigration, the trade deficit, steel trade, and the costs of protectionism. Earlier in his career, he served as a congressional press secretary and the editorial page editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette. Griswold has been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, and other publications, and has appeared on C-SPAN, CNN, PBS, BBC, and Fox News Channel. He holds a master of science degree in the politics of the world economy from the London School of Economics.
Kathleen Gasparian earned her juris doctor degree in 2002 from Loyola University New Orleans and previously served as a Judicial Law Clerk for the U.S. Department of Justice, Executive Office of Immigration Review. She is currently an associate with David Ware & Associates and specializes in Immigration and Nationality Law. She is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and the Mid-South Chapter Ambassador for the American Immigration Law Foundation.
Pablo Alvarado currently serves as the National Coordinator of the National Day Labor Organizing Network. His responsibilities include leading day labor organizations in their pursuit to represent the day labor community in various forums and giving day laborers a public voice. He is the recipient of the Next Generation Leadership Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, which recognizes entrepreneurial, risk-taking and fair leaders who seek to develop solutions to major challenges of democracy, including issues of race, changing demographics, the digital divide, and massive globalization. In 2004, Alvarado was recognized by the Ford Foundation's Leadership for a Changing World program. Alvarado worked with the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles as the Lead Coordinator of their Day Labor Project. Under his leadership, CHIRLA’s Day Labor Project received recognition from the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission during the year 2000. He brings an extensive background of working with day laborers and community organizing to the Day Labor Rights Project. In August 2005, TIME Magazine named Alvarado among the 25 most influential hispanics in the US.
Temple H. Black is director of public affairs for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement within the Department of Homeland Security, located in New Orleans, Louisiana. The district covers a five-state area including Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee.
Lieutenant Colonel Black retired from active duty with the United States Air Force in December 1998. In October 2000, he joined the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in Washington as a senior spokesman. In November 2001, he transferred back home to New Orleans.
Colonel Black has extensive public affairs experience in developing and managing communications programs. After a five-year stint at the Pentagon as Chief of Special Events, he was assigned to Andrews Air Force Base, the home of Air Force One. There he orchestrated numerous national and international press-events including many with former presidents Bush and Clinton. He was responsible for innumerable national media events including "CBS Salutes the Troops"…President Bush’s welcome-home to American POWs. From there, he was assigned to Langley Air Force Base, as Chief of Media for Air Combat Command. The following year, he was selected by then Secretary of State, Madeline Albright to serve a 15-month assignment to Serbia, as Senior American Military Advisor to then U.S. Ambassador Jacques Klein. During his Air Force career, he devised public affairs strategies for the United Nations; created a process to airlift the Department of Defense media-pool to worldwide crises on short notice; and opened the NATO public information program in Turkey. He also led many of the national and international press activities associated with the opening ceremonies of the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans.
Loyola University New Orleans is a Jesuit-Catholic institution with a total student enrollment of 4,724 including 800 law students.
For more information, please contact Roger White at 865-3530.
Live Links at websource=
http://www.loyno.edu/newsandcalendars/release.php?id=1115
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http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/462965p-389560c.html
Originally published on October 19, 2006
Immigration activists rally on Saturday
Immigration, it is no secret, has become a human rights scandal of major proportions.
Every year the number of desperately poor people who perish at the borders increases, as does the number of hardworking families ripped apart by the repressive policies that pass for immigration reform these days.
But don't be fooled: Those who die in the Arizona desert and those fathers and mothers who are summarily deported have nothing to do with terrorism or with U.S. security.
The failure of Congress to act on a comprehensive and fair reform has been largely responsible for turning the immigration crisis into the far-reaching human tragedy it is today.
"Instead, Homeland Security has stepped up its campaign of fear and disappearances through workplace raids and deportations," said a statement from New York United for Immigrant Rights, an umbrella organization of more than 60 New York groups.
To demand the end of repression and to ask for Congress to recognize and address the systemic failures of 20 years of immigration policy, New York United is holding a march and rally on Saturday under this slogan: No deal: full legalization now!
"We don't need walls, we need bridges. We don't need repression, we need a real solution to the immigration problem," said Joel Magallán, a Jesuit brother who is the executive director of Asociación Tepeyac, a Mexican community organization and one of the rally organizers.
Instead of the desperately needed comprehensive reform, the country is getting a shameful border wall and merciless raids and deportations.
"We want real immigration reform, and this is what it means: Stop mandatory detention and deportations, not guest worker programs but full legalization," said Aarti Shahani of Families for Freedom, a multiethnic network that fights deportation.
Shahani is actually articulating two of the demands New York United wants to stress with Saturday's march. The group also is asking for an immediate end to the deaths at the border, which in 2005 reached 460, almost 40% more than in 2004 and the highest number since the Border Patrol began counting in 1998.
The New York United leadership says the bill authorizing the $6 million wall at the border, passed by both Houses last month and quickly signed by President Bush, is "a new low in the attack on workers' rights and immigrants' rights."
The wall "is certain to add to the death toll of 4,000-plus children, women, and men in the desert," they said.
The marchers on Saturday will have their own response to the Wall of Shame in the form of a symbolic Wall of Remembrance and Resistance.
"It will be symbolic, with the names and pictures of those who have died crossing and of those who have been taken from their families and jobs to be deported," said Walter Sinche of Pachamama, an Ecuadoran organization in Queens. "They are human beings, and even if they have no papers, they have human rights."
DRUM - Desis Rising Up and Moving - a group that organizes low-income South Asian immigrants, mainly from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, is also part of New York United.
"South Asians make up the fastest-growing ethnic community and second-largest Asian immigrant community in the city," said DRUM's founder, Monami Maulik. "And after 9/11, we have been targeted and racially profiled. South Asians, especially the young, are routinely asked for their immigration papers by police and by city agencies in New York, despite Executive Order 41. We want this to stop."
"This is a time for unity and for keeping up hope," Magallán said. "We invite all New Yorkers to join us on Saturday at 1 p.m. at Union Square Park."
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http://www.send2press.com/newswire/2006-10-1019-003.shtml
Published: Thu, 19 Oct 2006
MyImmigrationStory: Lets Immigrants Tell Their Own Stories
DAYTON, Ohio - Oct. 19 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) -- A website launched by Cuban-born author and marketing executive, Raul Ramos y Sanchez, www.MyImmigrationStory.com, enables U.S. immigrants from all nations to share their immigration stories in their own words.
"The site's goal is to show the human side of immigration. I think the time is ripe," says Ramos.
The home page of the site features this mission statement: Statistics do not tell the story of immigration. People do. Since its inception, this nation has been continually infused with the energy of newcomers. Yet their assimilation has seldom been smooth. The challenges we face today are not new. Only the stories are.
*(Photo Caption: Author Raul Ramos y Sanchez.)
"By showcasing the stories of individual immigrants, MyImmigrationStory.com can help bridge the rapidly growing chasm in the heated national debate over immigration," says Ramos. "We need more grassroots efforts at reconciliation in this brewing crisis. It's time to look beyond the stereotypes and recognize our common humanity."
Online since late April, the site features the stories of immigrants from Cuba, Cyprus, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, Poland and Sweden. Visitor comments to the stories enrich the dialog. In addition, the site has received endorsements from a wide spectrum of organizations including the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, the Human Rights Initiative of North Texas, the National Society for Hispanic Professionals, and the Future of Freedom Foundation.
Ramos is reaching out to the media, civic groups, professional associations, and immigrant organizations to spread the word about the site and encourage immigrants from every nation to participate.
For more information visit:
www.MyImmigrationStory.com
NEWS SOURCE: Raul Ramos y Sanchez
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http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=672&printable=1
Intelligence Report= Fall 2006
Smokescreen
Activists say a black anti-immigration movement is gathering steam. But it seems to be largely the creation of white people.
by Brentin Mock
LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- Terry Anderson is on stage in Vegas, telling a fable about a donkey on a bridge.
"Everybody's doing everything they can to coax [the donkey] with sugar and carrots, but they can't get him to move. Some guy walks up and says, 'You've got to use kindness.' The other guy says, 'Show me.' So the [first] guy picks up a two-by-four and busts the donkey in the head. The donkey gets up and walks off. The other guy says, 'But you said use kindness.' The guy says, 'Yeah, but you got to get his attention.'"
In Anderson's mind, the bridge is America, and the donkey represents the millions of Mexicans who need to be whacked in the head, not offered the sugar and carrots of guest worker programs and earned paths to citizenship. Fuming about congressmen who support such programs, he says, "Not one of those people has ever had his wife walk by a construction site and get heckled by some Mexican grabbing his crotch, and usually a small crotch."
It's the second day of the second annual "Unite to Fight" conference, a Memorial Day weekend gathering of anti-immigration hard-liners. Earlier, as speaker after speaker railed off venomous rants about Mexican invaders, Reconquista and Aztlan (conspiracy theories about alleged Mexican plans to reconquer the southwestern United States), Anderson sat with his wife in the shadows of the back row of the Cashman Center auditorium. But now that it's his turn on the mic, the roly-poly, bow-tied orator is lighting up his audience of 200 or so mostly middle-aged and elderly white guys, who clap harder, stand longer, and whistle louder for Anderson than for anyone else on the agenda. This might have something to do with the fact that Anderson is one of only a tiny handful of African-Americans at this predominately white conference -- and the only black speaker. The implied message of his presence and enthusiastic reception is crystal clear: "How can we be racist? Our beloved keynote speaker is black."
In recent months, Anderson and a smattering of other African-American anti-immigration activists, most notably longtime Los Angeles homeless activist Ted Hayes (see interviews with both men), have become the front men for a campaign orchestrated and funded by white anti-immigration leaders. The campaign aims to convert black Americans to their cause, and simultaneously to provide groups like the Minuteman Project and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) with cover against accusations of racism.
Beyond putting a black face in the spotlight as often as possible at rallies and conventions like Unite to Fight, this effort also consists of the new FAIR front group, Choose Black America -- a supposedly nationwide coalition of black business and community leaders spreading the message that "mass illegal immigration has been the single greatest impediment to black advancement in this country over the past 25 years."
"The danger here is [black activists] being co-opted by a group who may not have the African-American community's best interests in mind," says Shayla Nunnally, a black professor at the University of Connecticut and co-author of a Duke University study on Latino immigrants' attitudes towards blacks. "It goes back to minorities fighting minorities, while fighting the overall oppression isn't being addressed."
Strange Bedfellows
Terry Anderson comes off like a true believer in the old Arab proverb, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" -- even if that friend looks a lot like a white supremacist.
In Vegas, Anderson shares the lectern with Rick Oltman, who in addition to being the western states regional coordinator for FAIR has spoken at several major events put on by the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) and who was described by the CCC as a member in 1998. During his speech, Oltman drops the name of Brenda Walker, a regular contributor to the racist website VDARE.com who, among other things, has described Hmong refugees living in the United States as "drug-addicted polygamists."
Oltman's comments are tame in comparison to Anderson's diatribe, a rant in which he rages about public schools being "infected with illegal alien children, who are dumb and stupid in two languages." Anderson also presides over a posthumous tribute to Madeleine Cosman, an attorney who was a popular figure on the immigrant-bashing lecture circuit until her death last March. At the Las Vegas summit, Anderson praises Cosman's legacy, then introduces a screening of the pseudo-documentary "Illegal Aliens & America's Medicine," which features Cosman's alarmist claim that Mexican immigrants are spreading dengue fever, Kawasaki disease, and various sexually transmitted diseases, especially to their many alleged rape victims. Speaking from beyond the grave, Cosman says, "Most of these bastards molest girls under 12, though some specialize in boys, and some in nuns."
Four months before she died, Cosman was a guest on the "The Terry Anderson Show," the weekly Sunday night radio pulpit from which Anderson preaches the need for black Americans to get angry about illegal immigration, to listen to white "experts" like Cosman, and to join forces with groups like the Minuteman Project and FAIR. Essentially, Anderson wants to shut down the border while tearing down the walls between urban, working-class blacks and far-right whites, at least until the country is cleansed of illegal immigrants, who both he and Ted Hayes argue present a far greater threat to blacks in America than racist whites.
The way Anderson tells it, black Americans simply do not have a choice: "If we don't fix this and put other problems to the side, then, man, we gone," he says in an interview with the Intelligence Report.
While Anderson's stated aim is to amass a black following, he wasn't known to most blacks outside California, where he lives in South Central Los Angeles, until he affiliated with the white leaders of the Minuteman Project. By his own description, most of his radio show's nationwide listening audience is white. He reaches more blacks with his frequent appearances on "Urban Policy Roundtable," a weekly TV program in California hosted by African-American columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson, than he does with his own show.
"I'm the only one that's really given Terry a platform to come in and talk about these issues with a black audience," says Hutchinson. "So, he can't go anywhere else, except with white folks."
It's white folks who have paraded Anderson all over the country in the past year, financing his appearances at the Unite to Fight convention in Las Vegas, a Minuteman Project summit in Arlington Heights, Ill., and a Capitol Hill rally where Anderson warmed up the crowd for anti-immigration hard-liner and U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), among other events. When officials at white-dominated FAIR needed black figureheads for their front group, they knew Anderson was their man. He signed on as a founding member of Choose Black America (CBA), along with 10 other activists, academics, clergymen, and entrepreneurs.
The formation of CBA was announced at a FAIR-sponsored press conference last May at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. To date, that press conference is the only verifiable action CBA has taken. It otherwise seems to exist only as a website and a public relations gambit.
"The African Americans they brought there were just to put a black face on their position," says Hutchinson, who, unlike Anderson and Hayes, declined an offer to join CBA. "These blacks had no other further use. [FAIR] got what they wanted, so why would they have meetings [of the CBA]? Why would they create an organization? These individuals are so loosely affiliated, what kind of organization are you going to form out of that?"
FAIR Trade
CBA is billed as a "coalition of business, academic and community leaders" who believe that "Blacks, in particular, have lost economic opportunities, seen their kids' schools flooded with non-English speaking students, and felt the socio-economic damage of illegal immigration more acutely than any other group." It's portrayed as a grassroots organization, but it hardly sprang from the community. Tiny type at the bottom of CBA's home page reads, "A project of FAIR."
That is not a new tactic for the best-known anti-immigration organization in the United States. Other, similar front groups set up by FAIR include the Coalition for the Future of the American Worker, which claims to be a coalition of blue-collar groups, and You Don't Speak for Me ("American Latino Voices Speaking Out Against Illegal Immigration"), the Hispanic version of CBA.
Though he's critical of CBA, Earl Ofari Hutchinson is no open-borders advocate. Several times this year in his Pasadena Weekly column, Hutchinson has written about black frustration with illegal immigration and has even warned of the potential dangers Latino immigration presents to black Americans. "The leap in Latino voting strength and the likely prospect that Democrats and Republicans can bag even more voters from the rising number of legal and illegal immigrants comes at a bad time for black politicians," Hutchinson wrote last April, about a month before the CBA press conference.
Hutchinson tells the Intelligence Report that not long after that column came out, FAIR offered to fly him to D.C. and put him up in a nice hotel if he would join their press conference, pose for a photo, and agree to be identified as a founding member of CBA. Hutchinson said no. "They assumed that essentially I was on their team, and I would be an effective advocate for their point of view as an African-American spokesperson," Hutchinson says. He rejected the offer, he says, because of FAIR's ties to white supremacist groups and because he didn't want to be associated with the anti-multiculturalism attitudes of FAIR founder John Tanton, who wrote of non-white immigration in 1986: "Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? ... As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion?"
Terry Anderson has no such qualms about Tanton. In fact, records show that Anderson has received upwards of $10,000 from Tanton's U.S. Inc. to fund his radio show. "I know John Tanton. I've met him on many occasions," Anderson tells the Intelligence Report. "What somebody does in front of you and what they do behind you is always going to be two different things. I just know that he has founded an organization that is at the forefront of this problem and without them we would be a lot worse off. ... If Tanton is a racist and he says illegal immigration is wrong for this country, does that make his statement wrong? No."
Coalition of the Willing
Five of the 11 founding members of CBA were interviewed for this article. All but one said they had no idea who the other individuals in their "coalition" were before they arrived in D.C. for the press conference. James Clingman, a Cincinnati columnist and businessman, said that if he had known, he would have never shown up. "Choose Black America was just the banner under which we had a press conference," says Clingman, who writes on economics. "There are people involved [in CBA] who I am just diametrically opposed to, like [far-right Christian evangelical] Jesse Lee Peterson and those other neo-conservative, black so-called leaders."
Clingman says that with the exception of his personal friend, Claud Anderson, he has had no contact with any of the other CBA founders or with FAIR since the press conference. According to the rest of the CBA founders interviewed, there have been no meetings, no phone calls, and no other organizational advances since May.
The chairperson of CBA is identified in press materials as Frank Morris — the same longtime FAIR member who in 2004 ran for the board of directors of the Sierra Club as part of a well-organized but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to convert the environmental powerhouse into an anti-immigration organization. Morris did not return three phone calls seeking comment for this story.
A primary FAIR aim in creating the CBA has been to convince black Americans that Latino immigrants will take their jobs or significantly depress their wages, despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary. Even a study by Harvard economist George Borjas, widely considered an ally by anti-immigration forces, only showed a wage-lowering effect (and a modest one at that) on the least skilled and poorest educated workers, and many other scholars dispute that finding. A new study by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center found "no apparent relationship between the growth of foreign workers with less education and the employment outcome of native workers with the same low level of education."
Such research doesn't sway the opinion of CBA founding member Claud Anderson. The president of PowerNomics, an inner-city development corporation, concedes that he went to the press conference knowing nothing about FAIR, but he says he came away a fervent FAIR supporter. The group, he says, is pushing the right agenda. "You got silly naïve black leadership who don't understand that those people [Latino immigrants] are not coming here to get along with black folks. They are coming here to compete with black folks."
Asked what the government should do about the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants now living in the U.S., Claud Anderson told the Intelligence Report: "Put their asses on the boat and send them back."
'You're Not Black'
FAIR isn't the only organization trying to put a black face on the anti-immigration movement. The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (see Ruckus on the Right), an offshoot of the original "citizens border patrol" Minuteman Project, is now identified as "a project of the Declaration Alliance," a right-wing consortium led by African-American ultraconservative Alan Keyes, best known for his many failed runs on the Republican ticket for U.S. Senate and president. Keyes now speaks at Minuteman Civil Defense Corps events wearing a black cowboy hat.
Also, when Minuteman Project co-founder Jim Gilchrist kicked off his group's cross-country caravan to Washington, D.C., last May 3, he picked Leimert Park, a mostly black Los Angeles neighborhood, as the caravan's rallying point. Gilchrist brought out the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, African-American head of the right-wing, Christian fundamentalist Brotherhood Organization for a New Destiny, along with Ted Hayes, the black homeless advocate, to back him up.
The rally was supposed to be an invitation to Minuteman discipleship, but it didn't end in benediction. Faced by dozens of African-Americans calling Gilchrist a racist and labeling his black associates as "Sambos," Gilchrist dropped the friendly face. "Minutemen, stand your ground," he barked. Then, referring to a man leading chants against his followers, Gilchrist added, "If it's war he wants, then let it begin here," according to the Los Angeles Times.
"We confronted them and chased them out of our community with that racist nonsense," says Najee Ali, president of the Islamic H.O.P.E. civil rights organization in Los Angeles. "We wanted to let them know that they are not welcome in our community and we were offended they chose that as their departure point."
Ali's May confrontation with the Minutemen was neither his first nor his last. Throughout the summer Ali hosted a number of forums on black and Latino community relationships. They were sponsored in part by the Latino and African American Leadership Alliance, which lists as co-chairs Ali, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Christine Chavez, granddaughter of union activist César Chavez. Minutemen, both black and white, showed up to heckle panel members -- including California state assemblymen and Los Angeles City Council members -- and to intimidate the audience.
"At first I didn't get why they were there," says Anike Tourse, a panelist at one of Ali's forums representing the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. "The panel wasn't about immigration, it was about relationships between blacks and Latinos. But they made sure it [immigration] came up."
During her presentation, Tourse said Minutemen sat in the front rows making distracting noises and "a big scene."
One of the black Minutemen, adds panelist Xiomara Corpeno, "went up at Ali and said, "You sold out your people. You don't represent black people. You're not black."
Hard evidence shows it is the black Minutemen, however, who don't represent mainstream black thought on the topic of immigration. Several major polls show that most African Americans favor the U.S. Senate's Kennedy-McCain bill, which would allow many undocumented workers to stay in America and eventually earn citizenship. Most mainstream civil rights groups, including the NAACP and the Urban League, have come out in support of Latino immigrants. Historically black colleges and universities have aggressively begun recruiting Latinos, who have an 86% high school graduation rate, according to a recent Pew Hispanic Center study.
Sheila Jackson Lee, an African-American congresswoman from Texas, has called the immigrant rights movement "the civil rights issue of our time."
But for Ted Hayes, it's not that. It's "the greatest threat to U.S. black citizens since slavery."
Pawns in Their Game
Tall and gangly, Hayes dresses in robes and wears a mane of dreadlocks underneath an African kufi. Around his neck hangs a Black Hebrew Israelite pentagram. Hayes was a black-power advocate in the early 1980s, before he became an activist for the homeless, and you won't hear him endorsing white supremacist websites. But he considers himself a Minuteman, and has named his own anti-immigration spinoff group the Crispus Attucks Brigade, after a black man who was first person killed in the Boston Massacre carried out by colonial Britain.
And that led to his showing up at a recent rally and marching side-by-side with a woman named Barbara Coe, founder and leader of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform. Coe, Hayes enthuses, is "a great lady."
Coe is also a self-described member and repeat guest speaker of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a white supremacist group that has described blacks as "a retrograde species of humanity" and once compared pop singer Michael Jackson to a chimpanzee.
"That just shows Ted's ignorance," says Najee Ali, adding that Hayes has "no constituency" in the black community. "He aligned himself to be used as a pawn."
Adds Hutchinson: "Ted and Terry -- other than immigration, they don't have any following. They have none. They are considered, out here in Los Angeles, a joke."
But in the world of the national anti-immigration movement, Anderson and Hayes are major players. The vitriol they spit out about Mexicans has the same incendiary tone as the rhetoric that some black nationalists and Nation of Islam leaders have in the past directed at whites. Now, black activists like Anderson and Hayes are using that same provocative, indicting tone to pick on someone their own size: Latinos, who according to the last census have just edged out blacks as the largest minority in the United States. They say it's Hispanics who are now oppressing black communities -- by depressing wages, taking jobs and killing blacks in the streets, schools and prisons. Explains Terry Anderson, "The 'white man' we're fighting is the Mexicans."
On stage in Vegas, Anderson pardons the entire white race on behalf of the four other blacks in the audience. "White folks weren't always fair to my people. But we forgive and forget." He then calls Latinos "the most racist people I have ever seen in my life," and goes on to mock the idea that "Mexicans do jobs Americans won't do," reeling off a litany of blue-collar jobs he would gladly do: drywalling, roofing, washing cars. "I will even pick cotton," he says. Then he pauses a beat, as if realizing what he's just said. "Nah, I ain't pickin no cotton!"
The audience laughs in approval of Anderson's jolly oratory. He ends with the popular call-and-response catchphrase, delivered in the dialect of South Central Los Angeles, that marks his radio show: "If you ain't mad..."
The audience, well-schooled in following this black man, shouts back as one: "Then you ain't payin' attention!"
Anderson exits the stage to a standing, cheering ovation and makes his way up the aisle, giving high fives as he goes. He spots his wife, still sitting in the dark in the far back row, and resumes his place in the shadows.
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http://www.somosprimos.com/sp2006/spoct06/spoct06.htm
Somos Primos Newsletter= October 2006
Editor: Mimi Lozano
Dedicated to Hispanic Heritage and Diversity Issues
Society of Hispanic Historical and Ancestral Research
Celebrating 20th Anniversary 1986-2006
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