If you look for the meat in what amounts to a vast bullshit-sandwich of Republican blather about immigration, you eventually come down to mass deportation of millions of illegal immigrants.
But of course it’s always nothing definite with the major American political parties, and we citizens just have to guess at their hidden agendas on the basis of whatever stinking con-game has been calculated to deliver the most votes right now.
So which is it, Republicans and Democrats?
Mass deportation of millions of our hard-working friends and neighbors, or open borders, and de facto American citizenship for everybody in the Western Hemisphere, and beyond?
What a beautiful choice!
Or is it more like an inevitable dilemma, that all of us chose and keep choosing every time we elect yet another NAFTA-lovin’ con-man like Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama?
State Senator Russell Pearce of Arizona wrote and sponsored the anti Latino/Hispanic racial profiling law that demands law enforcement in his state act as proxies for Federal agents for deporting non residents, which was signed into law last week by Arizona’s Republican governor Jan Drinkwine Brewer. https://www.docudharma.com/diar…
I am placing the 2nd of the videos first, which shows Russell Pearce and JT Ready obviously working together at an event, then the video below, it will be easier to see the same JT Ready at the Neo Nazi rally last year at the state capitol.
The videos are well captioned.
This one is from August 2008.
Russell Pearce, part 2
Begins with photo of (State Senator) Russell Pearce and JT Ready.
caption begins: JT Ready was exposed as a neo Nazi by the ADL and the press at an open legislative hearing in March 2007. In June of 2007, Pearce and Ready worked a crowd at an anti immigration rally together.
Neo Nazi JT Ready at the podium, speaking-
“We’re not going to ask anymore, we’re going to start yanking people out by their collars…. we’ve been treasoned by people that we trusted, I won’t mention any names, Kyle – McCain – Flake ” Russell Pearce (in strange looking shirt half dark blue, half red and white stripes) applauds him, and JT Ready calls him a “great statesmen” and says he has a message for “we’re going to yank you out by your collars, too, and say, you’re done, we’re going to put patriots back in office.
Later a man walks up to Senator Pearce and asks if “JT Ready is your friend?” he denies it and says that he just showed up at a rally with me and JD Hayworth and New Times, the great fiction it is, tried to find a picture they could use. It’s an old story, it’s fiction, they made it up. Caption after that is about Pearce’s statement in Dec 2007 at a Sheriff Joe Arpaio Roast in Sun City, AZ
“I don’t think JT’s a bad guy, I think his association with these groups is wrong.”
Pearce has Buffalo Rick Galeener’s endorsement on his website. United for a Sovereign America.
Another man (looks like Galeener ?) is saying to the camera, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. God is going to put you over his knee and spank your butt. isn’t it unfortunate that when you walk thru the Pearly Gates, God’s going to say, you get to go thru the other gates here to hell. ”
Anna Gaines also listed as an endorsement
(Recall Mayor Gordon.) Pearce refers to her as his “only Hispanic friend.”
Chris Simcox, Minutemen Founder and Pearce Campaign Committee member. Simcox known for embezzling thousands of dollars from supporters to build a “border fence,” the Minutemen PACs still solicit money for this activity but send the money to a company in Texas that does voter caging. (that’s not on the video, that’s my prior research. The Minutemen campaigned with Tom McClintock in CA 04 in 2008, and did a rally with him in Sacramento on the state capitol steps. He called for mass deportations and all federal funding to be cut off to the city of San Francisco. ) The videographer for McClintock that year, which did the swiftboating videos against the Democrat Charlie Brown, orchestrated by the Republican PR firm of Russo Marsh & Rogers and Move America Forward, was an ex Minuteman member. Now Russo Marsh/MAF do Tea Party rallies for McClintock, besides bus tours for Sarah Palin. How do you like that coincidence ?
This is an extensively researched diary I did at Calitics in October of 2008 on McClintock and the Minutemen, re the KKK Konnection.
http://www.calitics.com/diary/… Photobucket removed my screen capture of a racist picture a McClintock supporter was posting in the local paper’s blogs, but the rest of the diary is intact. It is based on what I observed, heard, and photographed, as well as what I found by researching. I had proof that there was a Minutemen and racist component to the campaign, which was ignored by the MSM. McClintock literally rolled down the street in Lincoln on July 4th, in a Minuteman and Mormon Battalion Mexican War themed float with a Christian flag flying over it.
I was just gobsmacked that this Republican candidate is parading down the street in a float that has General Winfield Scott on it, who forced the Cherokee from Georgia to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears, and the Latino people who were watching it were just gobsmacked that it’s got the Minutemen and the Mexican American War symbols on it, and they’re speaking Spanish in front of me because I have a camera, and I look, frankly, like I’m too blonde that day.
(September, Sacramento)
Just like in the July parade, Tom McClintock wanted to be provocative when he stood there on the State Capitol steps early last month (Sept 2) during the “Minutemen” rally and called for the Federal government to cut off funding for San Francisco. And for the Federal government to deport millions of people. There was a giant sign parked down on the road which says “Build the Wall, Deport them All,” the loudspeakers are playing some sort of dreadful screed about how people of Native American Indigenous ancestry have to perform a blood sacrifice when they reach adulthood, and are secretly plotting to turn California and the American southwest back into the Aztec state, “Aztlan” (this is the same stuff I’ve seen on the Council of Concerned Citizens site ) and then the group of teenaged kids in white dress shirts and dress pants and some sort of red satin sashes show up with the big “Save Traditonal Marriage” Sign on the sidewalk. They hopped in a van and drove off when they realized they were being recorded for posterity.
It was pretty surrealistic.
Just another day at the California State Capitol, campaign 2008, McClintock version.
Numbers USA, Barbara Coe, Council of Concerned Citizens, John Tanton, Richard Mellon Scaife (Oil $) Astroturf
The Southern Poverty Law Center said in 2002, that most of the anti immigration “movement” is the result of work by John H Tanton, who founded, served on the boards, and funded many of them. http://www.splcenter.org/intel…
If you are going to read just one link in my post, read this one from the Southern Poverty Law Center, from summer 2002 Note the remarks from Brian Bilbray, who was to run again in 2006 in the San Diego area and narrowly win election to the current Congress. The article says that this network of anti immigration groups is not so much grassroots as astroturfing being done by John Tanton and Numbers USA. Richard Mellon Scaife family foundations has been funding these groups, along with the McConnell Foundation, the Shea Foundation, the Weeden, Salisbury, Smith Richardson, Blair, and Sikes foundations.
4 page story
The Puppeteer
The organized anti-immigration ‘movement,’ increasingly in bed with racist hate groups, is dominated by one man, John Tanton.
I see there is some skepticism about the link between McClintock and these extremist groups concerning a “guilt by association” of an old endorsement by the KKK. Some people do not think this is relevant, others think it a distraction. So I’m posting my observations on this relationship, reluctantly, because I don’t want to give Karl Rove the satisfaction of driving the dialogue here . But this subtext of forced removals of the “others,” based on their supposed cultural inferiority, as being justified by a Higher Power, and therefore the Republican candidate is the “Right One” has been running all thru McClintock’s campaign for CA- 04.
Mercifully, I see a lot of people in this district are finally starting to reject the use of these wedge issues. I would hope the national level Republican campaign, based on what I’m seeing at McCain’s events, could come to grips with the fear issues and stop trying to scare people into voting for them.
But I also want to emphasize that we here in the district not imagining things when we say we see a relationship between the creed of the KKK and the campaign theme being used by McClintock. This side of the aisle is rejecting the use of fear to divide us and ostracize us from each other.
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This is what I wrote in 2008.
The Republicans, like the Cylons on Battlestar Gallactica, had a plan. Here’s our local Congressperson at that rally.
Tom McClintock September 6, 2008, Sacramento, CA rally with the Minutemen – Law enforcement should deport aliens, federal funds should be cut off to San Francisco. McClintock was born in New York, and did not have legal residence in the district he was running for office, while living in yet another district while representing a third one in Southern CA. McClintock still refuses to live in the district he now uses for campaign donations and his livelihood as a neocon Republican career politician who has never held a private job.
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November 7, 2009. Neo Nazi protest against immigration in Arizona.
Russell Pearce, neo Nazis and Anarchists at the Arizona State Capitol, 11/7/2009
video is well captioned.
Neo Nazi speaker RT Ready calls Russell Pearce “a great statesmen.”
The protesters line up with a lot of flags and actually chant “Sieg hail” and salute and then walk down the street in Phoenix.
There are counter protestors with signs with slash marks thru the swastikas chanting “Nazis go home” during the part where the police are lined up between the two groups. Sign “Mexicans and Central Americans, we are the indigenous people of the continent, this is our land, we are not immigrants” is held up.
Man with red swastika flag yells “WHITE POWER!” Some man in a tan shirt/pants saying “if God wanted all of us to be the same, he would have made us the same. ” Countersigns “Fight fascism” and “not here, not anywhere, you cowards” near where cops are on horses.
Neo Nazis displaying sign, National Socialist Movement Detroit Michigan
RT Ready shows up again in a black Tyrolean hat with a little feather, standing behind Jeff Schoep the NSM National Socialist Movement Commander who is yelling “This is not your country, this is our country.”
Counter protesters in black hoods.
RT Ready in black hat with feather standing in front of Swastika flag “we are prepared.”
To the Democratic Party: note the dates on these stories and videos, and quit acting surprised. They are prepared. We assume you remember how many millions died in WWII when people wouldn’t stand up for what is right, when they turned the other way, when they didn’t see, when they deny, when they said it can’t happen here. What the hell have you been doing ? Do you have a quota of suffering before you might think it worth your while to act ?
Arizona has apparently decided to use its police force as an instrument to oppress and harass Mexican appearing people within its borders. And, as you might expect from a police state, it is doing so at the expense of protecting citizens and diverting law enforcement from its traditional functions, enforcing the penal laws.
Linda Greenhouse, who usually writes about the Supreme Court for the New York Times, had an op-ed yesterday, “Breathing While Undocumented,” that captures Arizona as the emerging police state it truly is:
What would Arizona’s revered libertarian icon, Barry Goldwater, say about a law that requires the police to demand proof of legal residency from any person with whom they have made “any lawful contact” and about whom they have “reasonable suspicion” that “the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States?” Wasn’t the system of internal passports one of the most distasteful features of life in the Soviet Union and apartheid-era South Africa?
And in case the phrase “lawful contact” makes it appear as if the police are authorized to act only if they observe an undocumented-looking person actually committing a crime, another section strips the statute of even that fig leaf of reassurance. “A person is guilty of trespassing,” the law provides, by being “present on any public or private land in this state” while lacking authorization to be in the United States – a new crime of breathing while undocumented. The intent, according to the State Legislature, is “attrition through enforcement.”
The rest of the op-ed is definitely worth reading. But there’s another point that deserves to be made about the Arizona statute.
Please add the following update to your travel guides about visiting Arizona. It may be of assistance in avoiding unwanted, undesirable discussions with Arizona law enforcement, arrest and detention, and police harassment. If you already live in Arizona, something I wish on no one today, you already know everything I am about to write. I am writing this so that others may reflect on your situation.
This is a bus stop in Tucson, Arizona. I know it doesn’t look like a bus stop in New York, or Chicago, or New Orleans. This is an Arizona bus stop:
There are some things that are very important if you are waiting for the bus at such a stop in Arizona.
Senator Lindsey Graham(R, SC) has dutifully assumed his cloak and dagger as the Village Villain du Jour, thrown a last minute hissyfit on the Saturday before Sen. John Kerry was to reveal the long anticipated Climate and Energy Bill on Monday, and is holding his breath and threatening to turn beet red unless the Senate ignores the immigration issue this year. http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wi…
The support of Graham was sought because it was assumed that of Senators Ben Nelson(D, Mutual of Omaha) and Blanche Lincoln(D, Walmart of Bentonville) would not automatically be forthcoming, after their performances during the health insurance bailout bill which was passed earlier this spring.
One man called the congressman’s Tucson office twice and said he would “blow everyone’s brains out,” spokesman Adam Sarvana told The Hill.
Opponents of the bill, who include Grijalva, say that the bill is discriminatory.
Thousands of people concerned that the bill violates the U.S. Constitution have gathered outside the state capitol of Phoenix in protest since the bill cleared the legislature on Monday. The bill makes it a crime to be in this country illegally, and it requires any Arizona police officers to question people about the status of their citizenship and immigration status if there is any reason to suspect that they are undocumented workers, also known as “illegal aliens.” They must be able to show proof of citizenship upon request, merely based upon suspicion. The bill also makes it illegal to hire undocumented immigrants for day labor, to transport them, and allows lawsuits against government agencies that Arizona feels are hindering enforcement of immigration laws.
What an unbelievably ignorant and oppressive and probably illegal “immigration” law Arizona has just passed. In its efforts to oppress the Mexican American and immigrant population within its borders, and anyone who might appear to be in that group (some Native Americans?) Arizona has enacted a law that facilitates prejudicial law enforcement and a blatant police state. Put simply, this law is an outrage passed by and for the radical right, and it’s designed to make life for brown people and those who aren’t very white even more difficult.
The basic provisions of the law:
The law, which opponents and critics alike said was the broadest and strictest immigration measure in the country in generations, would make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime. It would also give the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. Opponents have decried it as an open invitation for harassment and discrimination against Hispanics regardless of their citizenship status.
The Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles called the authorities’ ability to demand documents Nazism. While police demands of documents are common on subways, highways and in public places in some countries, including France, Arizona is the first state to demand that immigrants meet federal requirements to carry identity documents legitimizing their presence on American soil.
And President Obama isn’t exactly thrilled either:
Even before …the bill [was signed], President Obama strongly criticized it.
Speaking at a naturalization ceremony for 24 active-duty service members in the Rose Garden, he called for a federal overhaul of immigration laws – an overhaul that Congressional leaders signaled they were preparing to take up soon.
Saying the failure of officials in Washington to act on immigration would open the door to “irresponsibility by others,” he said the Arizona bill threatened “to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and our communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”
And the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF} notes:
“Governor Brewer caved to the radical fringe,” said a statement by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, predicting that the law would create “a spiral of pervasive fear, community distrust, increased crime and costly litigation, with nationwide repercussions.”
When is the last time you saw a new state law greeted with such an outcry? Probably never. This law is that bad and deserves all of this and more.
In case you missed it, the Associated Press recently covered our request for a meeting with Senator Scott Brown (R-Mass.). We are asking Sen. Brown to meet with us before April 17.
Harvard College Act on a Dream has been trying to meet with Sen. Brown since he was first elected at the beginning of the semester. We were told that his office was a mess the first couple of months, but we were finally asked to fax our meeting request to his office. We sent the fax on March 5, 2010.
After not getting a commitment to a meeting for over a month, we were forced to take our meeting request public. We
joined forces with the Student
Immigrant Movement to set up an
online petition which already has over 100 signatures (please sign
it if you haven’t done so, yet). The online petition resulted in
coverage from the AP, and now our request is all over the web. We were
happy to hear through the AP that his office has received our meeting
request and will shortly ask for more information from us.
Still, it’s going to take a lot more than an AP article and a hundred petition signatures to secure a meeting with Brown. Here are some things you can do to help:
SIGN the petition at change.org and ask all of your friends and family to do the same, especially if they are Massachusetts residents.
CALL Brown’s D.C. office (202-224-4543) and his local office (617-565-3170) to ask whether or not Brown will meet with us before April 17.
JOIN the Facebook group and ask your Facebook friends to do the same
HELP us fight any misinformation or nativism that you see online regarding our meeting request.
Listen to the classic “Canción Mixteca,” sung in Spanish by the Mexican supergroup Los Tigres del Norte, accompanied by [Irish] accordion, bajo sexto, tin whistle and uilleann pipes.
“How far I am from the land where I was born! Immense longing invades my thoughts, and when I see myself as alone and sad as a leaf in the wind, I want to cry. I want to die of sorrow.”
This is going to be an action packed weekend in DC and around the nation. On Friday, there will be protests of Yoo. On Saturday, there will be a massive antiwar demonstration (there will also be demonstrations in Philly, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and South Dakota, among other places). On Sunday, there will be a large march for immigration reform. And there will be other related events around the country, along with the small protests and events that happen all the time.
So join me below the fold to see how you can effect change this weekend.
I don’t need anyone to tell me that injustice is immoral.
I don’t need to hear that intangibles like justice and morality are nice when you have the time for them but during this political season it isn’t pragmatic to use those intangibles to deal with present problems.
I don’t have to organize a community or canvass a neighborhood or contribute money to candidates or even be politically savvy to know this and to act upon it.
I am a citizen. As one individual, I am as powerful as I allow myself to be.
Justice and morality – without being mindful of those intangibles we will simply continue to go on as we have been going, pessimistic, angry, watching others suffer and seeing no change in that suffering while those persons of privilege continue to enjoy their good fortune.
I am happy for those folks who enjoy their good fortune. I do not believe their good fortune takes anything at all from me. I’m funny that way.
But I don’t consider it good fortune to see other human beings, my brothers and sisters on this planet, suffer – and to turn away is equally as painful because in order to do that I have to block off my own heart. That is not good fortune either.
Beck: “This guy (President Obama), is, I believe, a racist.”
Dobbs: “And there’s Van Jones saying, “Well, you know, you said something I don’t like, so what are we gonna do? We’ll just attack your sponsors.” That didn’t work out so shiny for him, did it? So, by the way, I gotta say hats off to Glenn Beck for having the guts to stand up to this.”
More commentary, a transcript, and my civil rights friendly boot up Lou Dobbs keister below the fold.
Originally posted on 