I had a strange, dissonant experience this morning – that led to a thought, a discovery and a question.
I’m on the U.S. west coast, so by the time my day begins the rest of the nation and the world has gotten quite a head start on murder, mayhem and natural disasters. Consequently, I try to avoid watching the news first thing when I get up, as too often I’m staring bleary-eyed at some horrific scene, sipping coffee and trauma and trying to get my sleep fogged brain to absorb whatever it is that is happening on the screen. Much easier to do after second cup of coffee, so even though my old mom already has the network news on in the living room when I wake up, I’ve been pretty successful at just sitting in the kitchen and tuning it out until I am ready.
This morning, however, as I wandered into the kitchen to get my first cup, out of the corner of my eye I caught the scene on the TV… people being rounded up and herded into buses. My stomach immediately dropped and I moved closer, trying to figure out what was going on. I heard only snippets – “… illegal immigrants… thousands… arrested… managers charged… ” because my mom, who was thoroughly appalled, was at the same time trying to tell me what was happening – “It’s going on all over the country! They are arresting them!”. Oh jeeze, I thought, what fresh hell, etc?
(there’s more on the flip)
The segment ended and I still had no clear idea of what was going on, so I did what any self respecting news junkie would do… I got online and went immediately to the news and blog sites, sure that it would be the talk of the town. NY Times first. Nothing. Washington Post. Nothing. Of course the LA Times would have something… nope. Tried a few blogs… nothing. Hmmm… so okay, either what I saw wasn’t what I thought I saw… or… well I wasn’t really awake enough to think of an or.
Finally I went to google news, put in “immigrants”, and found out about the raids at the IFCO plants, a Netherlands based firm, carried out by the DHS across the country. Quite obviously a political ploy (that has very real consequences for the people affected) in an attempt to raise Bush’s very dismal poll numbers. So… bad, but not nearly as bad as I thought.
You realize, of course, what I was thinking? Exactly. I’ve been haunted by these articles by Duke and Jeanne since reading them. (I wondered at the time if they were going to start with visibly Asian people as a sort of testing of the waters, considering the past). I also realized, when I was watching that segment that not only do I believe that it’s not a matter of if, but when… and that when the if happens… I don’t have a plan. I am not even sure what a plan would consist of, and this worries me.
I recently discovered that the fair grounds in my area had been used as a sort of holding station/way station for those on their way to the actual concentration camps. Like so much of US history, it’s been been covered over with flags and laughter and happy thoughts…but the ghosts remain. It’s all very well to declare “This can’t happen here again”, and to point to the apologies to the Americans of Japanese descent, and the acknowledgement of the injustices visited on them by our government and to a supposedly enlightened and changed populace, but… well, I just don’t buy it. And I’ve noticed that in many cases, all you have to do is change the target (preferably after constant demonizing and dehumanization), and many tend to fall right into line because this is not that… this is something different. Find the right hook and even some who consider themselves staunch liberals get dragged over to find “common cause, just for this”.
So… I live in California. We have something like 3 million unpapered Americans here, of various nationalities. Quite likely some of them are my neighbors. Or their families. And I really don’t have a clue what to do if some government agency starts disappearing them into “internment camps”, because they are “illegals”, and we must “protect our borders” and follow “the rule of law”. Oh, and “respect authority”.
At some point we’re all going to be required to make a stand, one way or another, and while I know I’ll stand on the side of the oppressed… I don’t know exactly what it is I will do, what will be the most effective.
I wasn’t alive at the time of the internment of the Japanese, and even if I had been I would have been a non-person myself, and so not had much power to change things. I am alive now, however, and while still not all that powerful I do have a voice and a vote and no doubt other resources that I’ve not thought of. I just don’t have a plan.
What is your plan?
crossposted at Human Beams – Stalking Sunlight blog
I just got back from our local Drinking Liberally chapter and had a lively discussion about this. Many of them were cheering on the fact that “FINALLY, something is being done.” Needless to say, I gave them all an earful.
A simple statement from one of my city members at the April 10th rally has stayed with me – “We are all being taken advantage of by the corporate masters. Our legal status doesn’t matter, we are united in that fact” (paraphrased, of course)
Greed is driving everything. The economic policies of the United States has destroyed the economies of Mexico and many Latin American countries, driving their people to our land for work, because “our economy remains strong”.
Yet, the human effect is that all of us are being screwed financially by the corporate overlords who 1) refuse to pay a living wage, 2) refuse to provide healthcare for their works 3) drive their decisions based upon the bottom line on their financial statements rather than the real effects on workers.
It’s easy to blame immigration, it’s the easy path. The real problem is failed economic policies on a macro- and micro-level.
It’s all about greed.
My heart weeps for the workers who are testing out the Halliburton treatment provided by the U.S.
This is such a simple truth Manny, that it is the greed of business driving this whole mess and all the wrong people are getting blamed and scapegoated for the sins of business. I also just happened to be reading today how the investigation into business who hire immigrants and the subsequent arresting of these business has dropped off dramatically in the last several years. For instance here in California where we have one of the highest percentage of immigrant workers I believe something like only one business owner was arrested or fined during the whole of last year-what a joke. Of course what they should be arrested for-all of them is paying slave wages.
My sister has listened to me rant about that for over ten years now and every time I hear sometime say anything about ‘illegals’-and god how I hate that term and refuse to ever use it-taking jobs they usually get an earful from me. Just so stupid and illogical if they stopped to think about it for more than two seconds.
Or especially our damn Nafta free trade agreement that has caused so much incredible damage to people in Mexico especially the farmers there. Isn’t it something like almost 3 million Mexican farmers that have been squeezed out of their small farms due to the whole Nafta deal and our big agribusiness taking over there or importing food at cut rate prices-which is almost illegal in itself. Guess where many of those farmers out of family farm and job and money went.
Or the big business that went to Mexico and opened up factories and don’t have to pay any kind of property tax making the towns have no income benefit and pay the workers in those factories 5 goddamn dollars a fucken DAY.
Think it was Janet who has said ‘humans are not illegal’..human beings are never illegal nor alien unless you maybe happen to be from Mars then whose to say if they would be alien anyway, maybe they be just like us. Using that term illegal aliens is inflammatory and extremely pejorative and just plain sucks. It’s stupid, racist and automatically and wrongly demotes a real human being to a criminal and almost inhuman status.
I just got back from our local Drinking Liberally chapter and had a lively discussion about this. Many of them were cheering on the fact that “FINALLY, something is being done.”
That is just so sad… I don’t understand it, really. Well, I guess I do… playing on people’s fears, prejudices, and whatever else can be used as a wedge is a staple of politics for a reason… it works.
Overall, though, I agree that it’s really about greed. And pitting those who have the least against each other in the (not unlikely) belief that they will then not notice the bandit running away with everyone’s wages.
who just before you left, wrote another diary, asking, Where will they stand?
And then went to your gathering and found out where your own countrymen stand.
They stand against you, against me, against anyone who does not have the option of choosing a side. They stand with the guards who tonight sneer at a young mother, her wrists bleeding from an afternoon of sharp plastic cuffs.
They stand with him as he taunts her, as she cries for her babies.
We don’t have any way of knowing what happened to those babies. Maybe some kind neighbor or friend will care for them, if she planned ahead. But she didn’t expect this, maybe didn’t make any plans, and whoever watches them while she works will make the call.
Call the state? Care for them? Leave them somewhere?
The mother will not tell the gunmen she has children. Not after the way they have treated her. She does not want them to be in prison, she thinks as citizens they cannot be deported, but what will happen to them?
The guard tires of her sobbing, and tells her to shut up, goes to the break room for some coffee, and says to his colleague, About time something is getting done. That’s his stand.
Like the folks at the gathering, he gets to choose sides, and he did.
We are covered in our stand, in our side.
I think there will also be many people who will be maybe more surprised, more horrified to learn this.
Affluent people, who live in places like SoCal and have seldom traveled into the heartland, there are people in their twenties with beige and brown skin who have not really ever understood what that means in the US.
Just as 911 stripped away a veneer, another layer, a very thick one, is now peeling off, and the wood beneath is of an even poorer quality than many suspected. Some will question whether it is even wood at all.
I remember the gist of one story last year where just that happened… men and women working in some plant were rounded up and carted off, not allowed to get word to anyone, and their children were left behind. If I remember correctly, some of the people watching the children went to the media and it didn’t turn into a positive story for whichever government agency had picked them up… but that doesn’t stop it from happening again.
I am hoping against hope that under the poor quality wood that there is yet another layer of some much stronger and durable material, that just needs a little shining up.
And so it is beginning. Is anyone willing to be a citizen reporter and find out where these people are being taken? What are they being charged with? What is going to happen to them?
We fight this by addressing the event before us, loudly and clearly.
glad to see your comments around here again, I’ve missed your voice.
The workers will most likely be charged with violation of immigration laws, and provided that they don’t have a criminal record will be placed on one of those shiny planes that take them back to their home country. Anderson Cooper even sexed up the process tonight on his program.
Most of them are being released, it appears. For now:
That’s one reason why I wasn’t quite as worried when I realized it was just a political ploy. They seem to do things like this periodically… round a bunch of people up, terrify their families, threaten them, slap the businesses with a small fine and bask in the kudos from the right wing and anti immigrant forces. Then, release the individuals to start all over again.
It’s just part of our national schizophrenia on this topic. In CA a couple of years ago, there was some sort of big immigration debate going on, lots of back and forth and recriminations and racist stuff and so on… then one day a van carrying migrant (mostly undocumented) workers crashed, killing 13 of them. Everything stopped, and within a week (a miracle, if you know CA lege) a bill was passed requiring farm/ag owners to adopt safety measures for the vehicles transporting the workers and other stuff. Then everyone went back to arguing again.
I actually got the above information (about the releases) from a right wing blog (might as well let them do the tracking work..)… they are, of course, up in arms at the releases, but also not surprised. And not being quiet about it… which leads to my next worry… one of these days it will be for real (on a large scale).
Thank God most of them, at least, were freed. I hope they will find their children safe.
but it does seem like a springtime thing, I have noticed it in other years, and have always assumed it was related to budget reviews, though this year it definitely has more of a terror flavor…
Oh, I never thought of that, but you’re right… this does often seem to happen in spring. It’s the feds, but I suppose even with some of them, if you don’t use up such and such this year, next year you get less money.
I hope the children were safe as well.
I also heard that many were released because the jails or where ever they took them too did not have enough beds…halliburton detention camps anyone?
Oh gee, chocolate… I didn’t even think of that. But you are no doubt right – and the fury some feel at the release of the people can (and probably will) be used to help justify and support the bringing online of those camps.
I feel deep in my gut that this is only the beginning. Like Nanette says a dress rehearsal. What is to stop the government from rounding up dissenters next? How long will it be before they start making us carry our “papers”? Where are the children? Who do we call? WHo do we write to? Why is this not front page on every GD major newspaper? I saw a quick clip yesterday morning and nothing more last night.
thing of themselves at one time. They didn’t have a clue, they didn’t have a plan.
But something, call it God, call it the Big Bang, call it whatever you will, gave them a clue, gave them a plan, and when History whispered, when Conscience rang bell, Courage answered the door, answered the question, and not maybe not suddenly, maybe little by little, maybe slowly but surely, Miss Miep Gies and Miss Harriet Tubman knew just what they had to do.