Author: XicanoPwr

Since 9/11, protecting the American imperial “homeland” has become an essential priority for the Bush administration. The creation and cultivation of fear is one of the pillars of empire within the “homeland.” Threats of terrorism and twelve million “illegal” immigrants are being used to maintain the government’s threat of discipline, punishment, and violence here in the US. Under the guise of the war on terror the Bush administration has allowed the Department of Homeland Security to coordinated mass immigrant raids, big brother spy blimps, expanded detention centers, repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act, and suspension of habeas corpus have all been recently implemented and are ready to use against anyone in the US. By depriving people’s liberties, the acts help advance the process of militarization.

Every state uses violence to enforce its rule against its enemies, but we must recognize that a major change has occurred. At the heart of today’s repression has to do with America’s addiction of mass incarceration, especially young African-American men. In today’s age of globalization, the basis for mass out-migration is clear. Since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the US, Mexico and Canada, Mexico has been flooded with cheap subsidized US agricultural products that displaced millions of Mexican farmers. Between 2000 and 2005, Mexico lost 900,000 rural jobs and 700,000 industrial jobs, resulting in serious unemployment throughout the country. Desperate poverty has forced millions of Mexican workers to look for jobs elsewhere in order to feed their families.
The existence of the American Gulag – the mass caging of people of color – took place through a cultivation of fear with the goal of destroying the Constitution through Bush’s bogus War on Terror. If there was ever a clear indication Alberto Gonzales was in it for himself to acquire power and prestige rather than improving the Latino community, it was his first act as Attorney General. Soon after Gonzales’ confirmation by the Senate, his first act as Attorney General was to carry out a massive clandestine dragnet operation with fellow Mexican-American Ben Reyna, former US Marshal Direction. Under the code-name Operation FALCON (Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally), Falcon Operation FALCON is a nationwide fugitive apprehension operation involving hundreds of state, federal and local law-enforcement agencies. Between April 2005 and October 2006, Operation Falcon carried out three unprecedented federally coordinated mass arrests. More than 30,000 fugitives, including immigrants, were arrested in the largest dragnets in the nation’s history and, according to US Marshall chief Ben Reyna. That is just the beginning; just recently, Gonzales announced he was going to increase similar type operations at the Washington headquarters of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Through the Violent Crime Impact Team, or VCIT, initiative, ATF uses innovative technology, and an integrated federal, state, and local strategy to identify, investigate, arrest and prosecute the most violent criminals in the 25 cities where we have VCIT teams. This program has been tremendously successful, thanks in part to the support of your local law enforcement partners, and your federal partners in the DEA, FBI and the Marshals Service – and we’re going to be expanding it to more cities soon. … They are: Orlando, Florida; Mesa, Arizona; San Bernardino, California; and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

And as an important step in making sure that we have the tools needed to get the job done, we are sending to Congress comprehensive crime legislation. … First, it will improve a number of existing criminal laws to close gaps and strengthen the penalties and tools we have already. That means extending the statute of limitations for violent crimes and establishing enhanced penalties for violent crimes committed by illegal aliens.

The groundwork has been laid with newly predictable identified “threats” which are now firmly embedded in the collective unconscious of America. Fear attempts to silence dissenters from speaking out about the truth regarding the subjugation of a power-crazed, dictatorial administration whose control continues to expand exponentially with each passing rumor of imminent peril.

Creating An Immigration Human Zoo
The binding force of society, largely, is a web of symbols that enables individuals to control and make sense out of experience in patterned ways. Here in the US, we are are the pioneers of the public relations industry. The the whole purpose of the PR industry is to aggressively shape a consumer desire and create value in commodities by imbuing them with the power to transform the consumer into a more desirable person. Symbols instill beliefs and shape attitudes that underpin social structures. Today’s menacing symbol that is dominating our newspapers, flood broadcast channels, and fuel political campaigns – the barbarian Brown hordes threatening to crash the gates and destroy the foundations of civilization – are the undocumented immigrants. What hard to escape are concentration camp-like images of “caging” practices: people behind fences, hands clutching wires, guards.

With an ever-increasing racist and repressive system, the restriction of our freedom of movement with detention centers serving as an immigration human zoo. The primary use of these detention centers serves as the symbolic taming of the “ethnic other,” which only reinforces a sense of “Anglo superiority” that is based on a Western binary opposition that considers all non-conforming forces as almost non-existent, and if existent then it is branded as evil and must be destroyed. The history of colonial extermination in the process of territorial and political domination is evidence of this behavior.

One can even make the argument that detention camps can be compared to the relationship between pets and farm animals to humans according to Ghassan Hage in his book White Nation. The only difference between a farm animal and pet is that a farm animal is still too wild to be able to wander freely in the home. Now just substitute “nation” for “home” and “ethnic other” for “animal” it is hard to escape the fact that this is the exact thing that is occurring here in the US. “Guest workers” are considered to be somewhere between a trusted pet and a wild beast who needs to be tamed in order to wander freely.

What is Anglo superiority? According to Samuel Huntington, author of Clash of Civilizations and The Hispanic Challenge, in his latest article, Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite he writes:

America’s Anglo-Protestant culture has combined political and social institutions and practices inherited from England, including most notably the English language, together with the concepts and values of dissenting Protestantism, which faded in England but which the settlers brought with them and which took on new life on the new continent.

For Huntington, America is thus the battleground for the heart and soul of Western civilization. Anyone who wants to become successful and wealthy in America must conform to Anglo-American cultural values and take English as their language. To which Huntington, Latinos pose as a threat to liberal democracy. In other words, Latinos are not willing to be tamed and should be locked up.

The current detention population is in response to a backlash against undocumented immigration that actually began in the mid-1990s and that is now out of control since 9/11. According to Detention Watch Network, a D.C.-based advocacy group, in 1994, the number of detained immigrants by the federal government on any given day was 7,444. Currently, the government is able detain 22,000 immigrants on any given day. This year, President Bush intends to provide new funding for another 6,700 beds, which would make the gain since 1994 virtually fourfold. The number of removals every year from the U. – whether formal or “voluntary” – is even greater. In 2004, they totaled 1,238,319, according to the Office of Immigration Statistics.

Rising inequality can result in an increase in racial bias for scapegoating or advancing xenophobic and nationalistic tendencies. By this fall, the ICE will already have already spent an estimated $1 billion per year to detain over 27,500 immigrants in eight ICE operated Service Processing Centers (SPCs) and seven contract detention facilities. In addition to those facilities, detainees are also being held in local jails and privately run prisons across the US. According to ICE, the average time a detainee spends in one of America’s concentration camp is approximately one month, although some detainees have reported that have been held for several years.

As the “New World Order” marches on, one’s outlook in life will continue to look not so bright and cheerful as most people would have planned, or hoped, it to be. What is not often told in the corporate media are the American families who are broken up because of our ineffective system. As US lawmakers grapple with a long awaited immigration bill, families are being separated by the many mistakes in the exceedingly complicated process to obtain visas and permanent residency which leads to life-changing consequences for foreign spouses of American citizens and their family members. The number of people barred from the United States under this draconian policy is increasing. Since 2000, 21,500 have been prevented from returning for a decade. In 2006, the annual tally nearly doubled over the year before to 13,209. Many American nuclear families are shattered because families are forced to make one of the hardest decisions of their lives – remain estranged from their spouses and minor children or leave the US and become an American exile.

The brutal immigration human zoos throughout this country US – the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, TX, the Willacy County Detention Center in Raymondville and the numerous deportation prisons – represents nothing more than reminder of the empty promises of liberty, justice and democracy made by the neo-colonial power that brought them here. In truth, their abused and hollow meanings behind their supposed help and goodwill continue to be unmasked and being replaced by terror, hunger and injustice! No matter how much they seek to live a modest life, fend for their families, enjoy a decent education or even struggle for the right to live, they are demonized, imprisoned and sent to their deaths through hunger and repression brought on by the very same societies that benefit from their devastation and misery. It is bureaucratic machine of oppression that works tirelessly to strip them of their human rights and to keep them faceless so they can simply remain as objects to be stared at and talked about – just as it was envisioned by P.T. Barnum with his own personal human zoo.

To reflect on these realities could help us to better understand the tragedy. We have a crisis that is threatening our existence. Nevertheless, that does not mean that we have to accept this inept government, which allows this to happen. We can do something about it instead of being forced to decide to either leave this country or accept the authoritarianism that has developed. A true democracy should not consist only of secret police and domestic espionage operations and generals and admirals with their approach to justice – meaning, they will let you know what justice is. When it come to the issue of humanity as opposed to power – I have chosen humanity. A free society owes it existence to the tenets of freedom. People of color have never had a breath of freedom in this suffocating society.

Today, in America, too much emphasis is given to secrecy and not enough emphasis is given to the question of justice and to the question of humanity. These dignified deceptions will not suffice. We have had enough of power without truth. I intend to fight for the truth. I suggest that not only is this not un-American, but it is the most American thing we can do – because if the truth does not endure, then our country will not endure.

With the 2008 election approaching fast, the fact is, if we do not wake up quick, we can hope for little substantive change in the next administration if we don’t pressure any of the current Democratic Party candidates for justice. The current “GOP Lite” formula that the Democratic Party is adhering to is a bankrupt centrist ideology with no principles, and which inspires far too few to go out and vote the decadent neocon murderers out of office.

In our country the worst of all crimes occurs when the government murders truth. If it can murder truth, it can murder freedom. Once this occurs, they can do away with anybody if they should dare to fight for freedom.

I call on every refugees, migrant and anti-racist progressive-minded people to come together in order to demonstrate that another world is possible and that solidarity, justice, brother- sisterhood and liberty are more than empty words. Now is the time not to back down. We are fighting for our lives!

After breaking ranks with broke with other civil rights organizations two years ago, it looks like Latino civil rights groups have finally swallowed their pride and admitted that their beloved Al “Torture Guy” Gonzales is not the person who they thought he was, according to a New York Times article.

Two years ago, major Hispanic groups broke with other civil rights organizations and supported Alberto R. Gonzales’s nomination for attorney general, primarily because he would become the highest-ranking Latino ever in a presidential Cabinet.
…
“I have to say we were in error when we supported him to begin with,” said Brent Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens. Gonzales, Wilkes said, has not aggressively pursued hate crimes and cases of police profiling of Hispanics. “We hoped for better. Instead it looks like he’s done the bidding of the White House.”

Janet Murguia, president and chief executive of the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s largest Hispanic rights group, called Gonzales “a follower, not a leader.” In the Hispanic community, she said, “people are conflicted. They are excited that a Latino had a chance to serve as the attorney general.” But, she added, “I think we’ve been disappointed with his record so far.”<!–more–>
…
A few rights organizations that once backed Gonzales now refuse to talk about him. Gilbert Moreno, president of the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans, said, “We’re not really in a position to comment.” Gonzales once sat on his organization’s board.

The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, which offered enthusiastic support for Gonzales, also declined to discuss him. William Ramos, director of the organization’s Washington office, said, “We provided a support letter, yes,” then hung up.

… The U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the National Latino Peace Officers Association, the Latino Coalition and the Hispanic Alliance for Progress Institute all wrote letters supporting Gonzales when he became embroiled in the scandal over the prosecutor firings.

Promoted by Steven D.
The most depressing feature during the Gonzales nomination hearings was neither the faux support by the Republicans nor the spineless silences of the Democrats – both reveal the predictable inability of most white politicians to talk candidly about race. Rather, what most disturbed me was the high level of automatic acceptance among Latinas/os. So the question is, when did the light go off for LULAC and NCLR? According to the Times, it was when Gonzalez decided to snub them. I am terribly disappointed at this excuse; it is no reason to stop supporting him. It totally negates everything Gonzales has done to this country, and sounds more as if they are “taking their marbles and going home” because their homeboy Al snubbed them.

How could they not see he was a peón blindly following his patrón. Gonzales has time and time again, demonstrated both before and during his current tenure, that he is President’s Bush’s in-house and in-court “yes” man. His only role as peón is to seek out the loopholes in the law to uphold, for political or moral reasons, what his boss has already decided to do no matter what. When he was up for nomination, which still boggles my mind, is how these organizations could consider his two-year stink on the Texas Supreme Court as experience to be AG? The true purpose of affirmative action is to make sure that everyone has the equal opportunity to enjoy America’s wealth by eliminating all barriers. It was not intended to hire some random unqualified minority just because they happen to be minority. The reason affirmative action is being dismantled is because of LULAC and NCLR who abuse for there own gain. And look what just happened, the person who they strongly advocated for decided to turn his back on them. So who will suffer from this blunder? We, the Latino community. Now, we are forced to work twice as hard and prove ourselves in order to erase the damage our creditability.

Even if we were to consider him qualified because of his time spent as Justice as experience, it still is a mystery to me as how they still could overlook the draconian policies he has help put into place.

Through his career as a peón, he:

• gave then-Gov. Bush the legal advice to violate constitutional law and the Vienna Convention;
• allowed the government to violate the Vienna Convention by allowing torture to be conducted;
• suspended the writ of habeas corpus;
• allowed the use of illegal rendition;
• supported the use of warrantless domestic surveillance on American citizens; and
• helped expand and centralize Bush’s presidential power

With all of this, we should not be surprise of this recent scandal involving Gonzales, the writing was on the proverbial wall for all the world to see. The Times article also mentions that activists have criticized La Raza and LULAC for backing Gonzales. They are damn precise in their assessment. As I mentioned before, it is one thing to be committed and supportive of the Latino community and communities of color, it is another to do it just because he is Brown. The truth is, Gonzales’ interest is confined solely to himself rather than to larger Latino communities. Gonzales’ conservative Republican politics does not promote a closing-ranks mentality; instead, his claim to being Latino is for the purpose of self-promotion, to gain power and prestige. All his professional life he has championed individual achievement and race-free standards. Now that he is seeing his ship sink, it is not a surprise to he see him whip out the race card of Latino victimization and Latino solidarity.

There were only a few of us who had the courage to publicly say that his appointment was nothing more but an act of cynical tokenism concealed by outright lies about Gonzales being the most qualified candidate regardless of race. The fact is Gonzales was simply unqualified for the position of Attorney General. The very fact that no Latino leader could utter publicly that a Latino appointee for Attorney General was unqualified shows how captive they are to white-racist stereotypes about Latino intellectual talent. There were a few who privately admitted his mediocrity, but they were also quick to point out the mediocrity of his processor, John Ashcroft – as if white mediocrity is a justification for Latina/o mediocrity. No double standards here, this argument goes, if a Latino is unqualified, one can defend and excuse him by appealing to other unqualified white appointees. This chimes well with a cynical tokenism of the lowest common denominator – with little concern about shattering the racist stereotype or furthering the public interest in the nation.

Gonzales proved his usefulness by playing the role that was assigned to him, Bush’s token Latino. It was nothing more but an illusion, a ploy to win over the Latino vote and these organizations took the bait – hook, line and sinker. Why did so many of them capitulate to Bush’s cynical strategy? The answer is simple. Most Latina/o leaders got caught in a vulgar form of racial reasoning: Latino solidarity. Rarely did we have a Latina/o leader highlight the moral content of a mature Latino identity and the need for a coalition strategy in the struggle for justice, especially after going through four-years of the Bush Administration.

As long as this racial reasoning continues to regulate our action as a community, the Alberto Gonzaleses of the world will continue to haunt the Latino community – as Bush and his ilk sit back, watch, and prosper. It does not help the Latino cause if people are willing compromise their principles by jumping on every façade bandwagon just because a person can say “Soy Latino/a. So how does one go about undermining the framework of racial reasoning? By dismantling each pillar slowly and systematically with the aim of replacing racial reasoning with moral reasoning. The Latina/o struggle not skin color or having a Spanish surname but rather as a matter of ethical principles and wise politics. If it means passing up at the chance to have first Latino (fill in the blank), so be it. It would be better have someone we would be proud of to have as a great role model for our community rather than some fake Latino we will no longer mention – like Henry Cisneros, Federico Peña, Lauro Cavazos, and Henry Bonilla and we can now add Alberto Gonzales to this list.

The continuing silence of these organization, with the exception of Hispanic Alliance for Progress Institute, is to refuse to undermine and dismantle the framework of racial reasoning. As long as our leaders remain caught in a framework of racial reasoning, they will not rise above the manipulative language of Bush and Gonzales. Where there is no vision, the people perish; where there is no framework of oral reasoning, the people close ranks in a war of all against all.

Gonzales has to go for the sake of the nation. It is about time, our Latino civil rights groups have finally seen the light, but there is much more that must be done if Americans are to survive with any moral sense.

x-posted on Para Justicia and Libertad and on Scholars and Rogues

Promoted by Steven D.

In nearly every category that measures social well-being, the conditions of racially oppressed people have worsened. In the communities of the African American, Latino, Asian American, Native American, and other nationally and racially oppressed peoples the situation is at crisis levels. Adding another blow, the xenophobic resident of Farmers Branch, TX has approved by a 68% – 32% vote an ordinance that would fine landlords and property managers $500.00 for renting to the undocumented. However, what occurred in Farmers Branch is not unusual – it is one of America’s best guarded secrets. Towns such as Farmers Branch are often called “sundown towns” – where communities systematically exclude people of color – mainly African Americans – from living in it.

A practice that began in the South in 1864 and later adopted by thousands of towns across the US in the late 1890s and continuing until 1968, where whites across the US conducted a series of racial expulsions, driving thousands of blacks from their homes to make communities lily-white. Some towns went as far as putting signs outside the city limits that normally said “N***r, Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on You in __,” according to James Loewen in Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. But sometimes, the signs never came out expressing their hatred and tried to be a bit clever in their messages such as, “If You Can Read … You’d Better Run … If You Can’t Read … You’d Better Run Anyway.” The signs are gone now but they are a part of America’s racist past, signs that could be found along the highway outside the city limits or county line. Just because the signs are gone, does not mean these practices do not exist today.

x-posted on ¡Para Justicia y Libertad!
When one mentions Jim Crow, one often thinks of segregation and a problem that only occurred in South, with the exclusion of African Americans from private and public institutions in the Southeastern US. The truth is, the Southwest was produced through the practices of Jim Crow, which did not only rely race, but also on language and culture inextricably linked to race. The history of Mexican Americans and Jim Crow in the Southwest demonstrates how state officials used discriminatory practices in terms of language and culture for most of the twentieth century, even when they were engaging in explicit racial discrimination.

In California, Mexican Americans as well as Asian Americans, Indians, and blacks were prohibited from white schools. Although, Loewen’s book chronicled the history of thousands of all-white “sundown” towns and suburbs across the West and North, a reader might get the impression that these towns only kept out African Americans, however, this is not true, many of these towns also kept out Asian Americans and Mexican Americans. Loewen wrote:

Other towns passed ordinances barring African Americans after dark or prohibiting them from owning or renting property; still others established such policies by informal means, harassing and even killing those who violated the rule. Some sundown towns similarly kept out Jews, Chinese, Mexicans, Native Americans, or other groups.

In Texas in the 1930s and 1940s, as in much of the Southwest and California, most Mexican-American children attended, separate schools; by 1930, 90% of South Texas schools were segregated. In agricultural areas, many Mexican-Americans lived in “company towns” like Taft Ranch and the King Ranch. In northern and southern Colorado, companies created “company towns” where the “Others” could be hidden from view. Those who lived in these towns included poor working class whites, African Americans, and Latinos, along with immigrants from Asia and central and Eastern Europe.

In Texas, Mexicans were regarded as subhuman, lower than dogs or worse. On cattle drives to the railroad loading points, there was a clear “racial” hierarchy where Mexicans and Anglos were engaged together; the former were the workers, the latter, the bosses. What is often lost because of the legendary kineños fairy tale, is that not all ranches and “company towns” provided the same living conditions like the King Ranch. It was very typical to find deplorable living conditions on Texas ranches where both Mexican and “white” laborers were employed, the Mexican workers were paid one-third less than “any white man.”

Mexican-Americans were also discriminated against in jury selection and in voting and were often shut out of public accommodations like swimming pools, theaters, pharmacies, restaurants, shops, banks and schools together with African Americans. At Anglo cafes, Mexicans could not stay in the premises and were required leave with their purchases. School segregation was established, reflecting the established general pattern of racial discrimination. Not only were Mexicans forced into segregated inferior schools, few of them were admitted to high schools.

According to historian David Montejano, in Texas, the general tendency for racial segregation against Mexican Americans was to use ethnicity and national prejudice as a basis for separation and control the same way the segregationists in the South used it against African Americans during the same period. Thus, Mexican-Americans suffered many of the same Jim Crow practices as African Americans.

Because most people today equate Jim Crow with racial discrimination, it has now allowed towns like Farmers Branch to defend cultural discrimination and distinguish it from discrimination on the basis of race. The history of the twentieth-century Southwest shows why we cannot prohibit racial discrimination while allowing cultural discrimination. Because racism has expressed itself in cultural terms, race and culture cannot be disaggregated without ignoring the way cultural discrimination reinforces racial hierarchy.

William Shakespeare once wrote, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” What’s in a name? Plenty, when the lives of millions of immigrants of color are at stake. Here, Shakespeare and subjects like love are not applicable. Here, the name game attains far greater importance than in besotted Romeo’s speeches.

Endgame is a term used in chess; it is the last stage of the game after a series of moves and are ready to use your remaining primary pieces to take advantage of the weaknesses that you created in your opponent’s defense. The new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that are paralyzing immigrant communities of color across the US are part of Operation Endgame, the massive immigration enforcement operation launched by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003. The obvious question, what does chess have to do with immigration? The appropriate response to this question, a lot.
Image making is one of the new weapons of modern warfare; it used to construct the governments rationalization for their military practices. Since the first Gulf War, major US operations have been nicknamed with an eye toward shaping domestic and international perceptions about the copious undertakings they describe. When it comes to the game of chess, there is more to mere game than meets the eye. For those who do not play chess, it may seem like a standard game; pieces moving back and forth on a square checkered chessboard with the aim to checkmate the opponent’s king; but to the strategist it is all about intimidating their opponent by toying with fears and illusions that eerily mirrors the outside world of the human condition. In chess, the pieces are limited in their movement on the board. Worse, as in the real world, the white pieces have the upper hand because it always has the first opening moves of a game, in essence, the goal is to create a dynamic imbalance between the two sides by continuing and increasing the advantage conferred by moving first. And like the real world, there are times when the black pieces has an opportunity to be in control, however, the white pieces will eventually have no other alternative but to respond to the situation.

If major US operations are nicknamed to reveal the logic behind their strategic goals, then it safe to assume that the current named operations being used under Endgame was meant to dehumanize and criminalize undocumented migrants working in the US. The same goes for the ongoing Operation “Return to Sender,” the purpose of this operation does nothing but dehumanize them, so it can remove their likeness to us, our ability of identify with them. As history repeats itself, there are now instances in this country where the majority are now desensitized, void of humanity, and are now using derogatory words towards minority groups to perpetuate the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance (“coons,” “wetbacks,” “ragheads,” “chinks”). And like George Orwell’s Oceania, new words are created to debase or dehumanize the enemy (“gooks,” “japs,” “krauts,” “pinkos”) enabling a speedy transition to bypass the instinctive moral apprehension to do harm against another. This is a comment left here by one of today’s compassionate patriotic American.

Proud Anglo | angloandproudofit[dot]*.com | Nov 25, 8:54 PM

Spanish yet ANOTHER reason to hate the Beaners

Patriotic Americans can rattle off any number of reasons to demonstrate how our Spic! oh sorry, “Latino” infestation is the worst plague our country’s had since AIDS. Here’s another one! Beaners have truly the worst, stupidest, lamest, laziest, most incompetent, ugliest, most useless f**ed-up language ever made. Spanish is a cultural abbomination that only the Spics could love.

And in Spanish, what do the Beaners have to match up to English? They’ve got, oh, uh, lemme see here! oh yeah, that’s right, Julio Iglesias. Since they have such a brilliant-o great-o singer like Julio, this clearly goes to show the great artistic heights of Spanish and Spic culture. NOT.

I can think of nothing better than to dedicate myslef to eradicating this verbal diarrhea known as Spanish from the US, as should any patriotic Gringo. The sooner we can rid ourselves of Hispanic stench in all its forms, the better off we’ll all be. Have a nice day and don’t choke on your tacos, Beaners.

Funny how such terms to describe foreigners have not evolved so much over the years. Part of the reason has to do with our mainstream media. Journalists know how imagery plays a crucial role in what deeply affect people’s emotions and subsequent actions/reactions (just ask CNN, MTV, psychiatrists, etc.). In today’s “age of imagery,” Latinas ARE dehumanized as they are defined in to two categories: the virginal señorita or the hot tempered and oversexed unhinged Latina spitfire; while Latinos are often portrayed as “Latin lovers” or your typical janitor, drug lord and gang banger. It’s incredulous that people like Lou Dobbs are unaware of such nuances and effect that their words they use to “editorialize” their “immigration news.”

At this time Operation “Return to Sender” has resulted in the indiscriminate roundup of over 18,000 immigrants, which over one-third of them were not even the people being targeted. According to the figures reported by a Lawton, OK news station, KSWO, since the time ICE’s “Operation Return to Sender” began in May 06, roughly “37% of the cases were ‘collateral’ captives – people who happened to be present when agents arrived.”

Couched in pro-worker terms, Endgame is just a piece that is part of a neo-liberal strategy to exploit mainly millions of Mexican and Central American laborers as transient servants through a national guest worker program. Endgame began in 2003 and is scheduled for completion by 2012. Their is an ongoing debate to pass legislation for a national guest worker program. The project clearly establishes proof of the developing the strategy to exploit Latin American labor. Endgame is an expanded version of “Operation Wetback.” The economic goals of both operations is the same – exploit the desirable workers in servitude and mass removal of undocumented Latin American migrants from the US. The scope of Endgame, however, includes the short-term deportation project of 1954:

The DRO strategic plan sets in motion a cohesive enforcement program with a ten-year time horizon that will build the capacity to “remove all removable aliens,” eliminate the backlog of unexecuted final order removal cases, and realize its vision.

DRO VISION

“Within ten years, the Detention and Removal Program will be able to meet all of our commitments to and mandates from the President, Congress, and the American people.”

The Detention and Removal Operation (DRO) facilities operated by ICE under DHS is the infrastructure needed to monitor and enforce the national guest worker program in the US will eventually be the largest mass deportation in world history. To strategy behind the “remove all removable aliens” logic is designed to locate, arrest, detain, and deport an excess of twelve million people. The expansion of these facilities that will be needed to detain and remove tens of millions of undocumented migrants is already in place or under development. In short, Endgame is the widespread assault on established communities of undocumented migrants already living and working in the US.

One of the arguments sycophant nativists accuses undocumented workers of doing is crossing the border and stealing jobs from hard-working Americans. However, the order of events is demonstrably the reverse. Politics by definition is about compromises and tactical alliances, and one such alliance involves Corporate America. Something is clearly not right when unions, progressives, and liberals are in bed with Corporate America.

At a time of growing concern about the economic, environmental, and social costs of immigration, as well as new concerns about threats to national security, their arguments is that is that immigrants are good for the economy because they expand the domestic consumer market, increase business productivity, and keep the US economy competitive in the worldwide market. The relentless demand for cheap labor by transnational corporations is the root of our problem. The innocuous term, “guest worker,” obscures the true nature of transient servitude. The term “guest”� suggests a person to whom hospitality is extended, but this labor program will offer no kindness or generosity to workers caught in the trap.

According to Richard D. Vogel, the program will be conducted primarily by private corporations that are only interested in the bottom line of profits for their stockholders and huge salaries and bonuses for their managers and executives, and it will be enforced by the unprecedented power of the US government.

However, more troubling is when we have our own “leaders” urging us, begging us, to entrust the very people who are exploiting the millions of Mexican and Central American laborers. Arguing for a National “guest worker” program will not eliminate the “immigration problem,” it will only further undercut the value of all labor in the US. By failing to distinguish the difference between immigration reform motivated by a desire for cheap labor and immigration reform advocated to attain a just society does not help our cause.

The Gutierrez-Flake bill being proposed is similar to the old Bracero Program. The Bracero Program was an indentured servitude program which allowed for the temporary migration of Mexican agricultural workers to the United States from 1942 to 1964. is important because of its impact on the lives of millions of Mexican workers.

The bracero contracts were controlled by independent farmers associations and the “Farm Bureau.” The contracts were in English and the braceros would sign them without understanding their full rights and the conditions of employment. When the contracts expired, the braceros were required to turn in their permits and return to Mexico. The braceros could return to their native lands in case of an emergency, only with written permission from their boss.

Ultimately, over 4.6 million Mexican citizens entered the United States under the Bracero Agreement, providing an abundant supply of cheap workers for US agriculture as long as it was needed. Though the program provided desperately needed jobs to Mexican workers, the bracero experience was characterized by poverty wages, substandard working conditions, social discrimination, and lack of even the most basic social services for braceros and their families. Calling the Bracero Program by another name – Gutierrez-Flake bill – does not make it different.

That reality is, we are living in a post-industrial society where our corporate and government leaders have abandoned US-based production in field after field, including civilian shipbuilding, railways, computers, and other capital goods, as well as apparel, consumer electronics, and myriad other consumer goods. The expectant quest for “opportunity” has retreated to an angry claim to “entitlement.” America has become the Land of Entitlement. Now that we have fallen on hard economic times and looking to see the root cause of this problem. It is not surprising to find most Americans who selfishly believe that they have the right to maintain living in a lifestyle rich in material comforts, and to do so, many want to displace other families not just for their pursuit of happiness, but its guarantee to continue in their illusion.

We are living in one of the most ideological epochs in the history of humankind. Few people in America genuinely believe, despite the astute observations of millions of individuals around the world, is that we are living in an empire, and we are no longer living in a democracy. Every last semblance of democracy in our country that, in our desperate denial, we leave our claw marks on, is vanishing with each tick of the clock. Despite the clamor in Congress from both conservatives and liberals for a national guest worker program, it is a reactionary policy with catastrophic economic, social, and political ramifications.

Deporting all those without residency papers and walling the US in just to retain the present standard of living would only isolate us from the rest of the world by creating a Fortress America. Doing this would create an ironic consequence, the economy would not only crash by turn itself into type of third world country that is so despised by the nativists.

In the nation’s response to the tragedy that occurred in 9/11 attacks, the border acquired new significant importance in the “war on terror.” Among the most relevant of the changes that transpired, the immigration issue is now assigned to the Department of Homeland Security. Although Mexico has no significant Islamic population and houses no known terrorist cells, the border has once again been depicted in terms of “national security.” Given that border security means stopping undocumented immigration, unfortunately, US border policies have had very real negative consequences.

In Texas, there is an expression we like to say, “everything is big in Texas.” Within the continental United States, Texas is the biggest state by area, and the second biggest among the 50 states, only Alaska is bigger. The people of this state take pride in their bigness, from number of big oil companies to our prison system. Texas has the largest number of “immigration prisons” in the US to house the undocumented immigrants once they have been rounded up (here, here, and here); and Texas can proudly claim to the largest concentration camp in the US federal system’s archipelago of immigration prisons.

In June 2006, Willacy County commissioners entered into a two-year contract with the US Department of Homeland Security to build a futuristic cluster of tent-like domes in the Rio Grande Valley. Like a thief in the night, the prisons were quietly built in the rural town of Raymondville. The Willacy County Detention Center is one of a host of new or expanded prisons, both public and private, that ICE has commissioned for an expected rush of illegal immigrant detainees. According to the Washington Post, about 2,000 undocumented immigrants are housed within the 10 giant tent city home for weeks, months and perhaps years before they are deported back to their home countries.
As the government invokes national security to sweep up and jail an unprecedented number of immigrants, the private-prison industry is booming. The $65 million camp build by Utah-based Management and Training Corporation (MTC), is a sprawling squat of inflatable domes plopped down on top of massive concrete slabs. The facility was quietly built last summer between a federal prison and a county jail where,

…illegal immigrants are confined 23 hours a day in windowless tents made of a Kevlar-like material, often with insufficient food, clothing, medical care and access to telephones. Many are transferred from the East Coast, 1,500 miles from relatives and lawyers, virtually cutting off access to counsel.

Marc J. Moore, field officer for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Detention and Removal Operation, told the Brownsville Herald that the Willacy County Detention Center will be set up with 10 huge circus-like tents, surrounded by “14-foot-tall razor wire fences stand around each dome” with “two rows of razor wire fences” surrounding the 200,000-square foot prison site. The new prisons are made out of Tedlar, a “nylon material,” which they are stretched over “metal studs,” comparable to the structures that are used by the US military in Baghdad and made by Sprung Instant Structures, a company with offices in Utah. The Sprung’s structures will house about 200 beds in each tent and each tent will be divided into four 3,700-foot sections. It’s no surprise that “similar temporary buildings were used for troop recreational facilities in Iraq,” the article points out. According to OMB Watch’s searchable database of federal government spending, Strung has already won $16,864,710 in military contracts since 2000.

With an increase in stricter immigration laws and Washington’s push for tighter enforcement, these are signs to come of rural American sprawl of inflatable detentions. As Eric Schlosser mentions in his 1998 article, “The Prison-Industrial Complex” in The Atlantic Monthly:

The prison-industrial complex is not a conspiracy, guiding the nation’s criminal-justice policy behind closed doors. It is a confluence of special interests that has given prison construction in the United States a seemingly unstoppable momentum. It is composed of politicians, both liberal and conservative, who have used the fear of crime to gain votes; impoverished rural areas where prisons have become a cornerstone of economic development; private companies that regard the roughly $35 billion spent each year on corrections not as a burden on American taxpayers but as a lucrative market; and government officials whose fiefdoms have expanded along with the inmate population.

This contemporary push to privatize corrections takes place against a socioeconomic background of serious and seemingly difficult crisis. By the fall of 2007, the administration expects that about 27,500 immigrants will be in detention each night, a gain of 6,700 over the current number in custody, according to a 2006 New York Times article. Who is going to cash in on this, and who is ultimately going to pay the price? Under the push of Bushes social Darwinism, with its “toughness” on “illegals” as its battle cry, the war profiteers in this home front is the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the Geo Group (formerly the Wackenhut Corrections Corporation) – the two biggest prison operators – and now Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton (the makers of Guantanamo Bay Detention Center) are enjoying the spoils of war. Analysts state, profit margins are higher at detention centers than prisons. According the NY Times article mentioned above:

… the Correction Corp.’s revenue from holding immigrants jumped 21 percent, to $95 million from $70 million in 2004. Geo, the second largest prison operator, received $30.6 million last year, about the same as the year before. … Wall Street analysts said that detention centers produce profit margins of more than 20 percent.

Just recently, Williamson County’s T. Don Hutto Correctional Residential Center, come under review when people found out they were housing 200 children. Hutto is operated for the government by the CCA and according to the New York Times, is “under a $2.8-million-a-month contract with Williamson County.” The Hutto Residential Center is one of two family detention centers in this country; the other is the Berks Family Shelter Care Facility in Leesport, PA.

Ever since the Hutto facility has under intense scrutiny for having a reputation as a prison that locks up children, officials invited the media to tour the place (video of tour).

In a 72-page report, “Locking Up Family Values: The Detention of Immigrant Families,” released last month by two refugee advocacy organizations, Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS), concluded that the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Center and the Berks Family Shelter Care Facility were modeled on the criminal justice system “where residents are deprived of the right to live as a family unit, denied adequate medical and mental health care, and face overly harsh disciplinary tactics.” It went to say

“Every woman we talked to in these facilities cried,” said Michelle Brané, Director, Detention and Asylum at the Women’s Commission. “Many of the children were clearly sad and depressed. Some feared separation from their parents, a common threat used to ensure that children behaved according to facility rules. Alternatives exist that are not punitive and that keep families together while also addressing the enforcement concerns of the government.”

But this is not surprising, last month, NPR reported on the findings of a new study from the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security. According to NPR

Some non-U.S. citizens detained by the government for violating immigration laws are kept in rat-infested, cramped detention centers, fed noxious food and denied basic hygiene items such as clean socks and underpants.

Investigators found that two jails were infested with rats and roaches. The supposedly hot meals at one detention center were served cold. Detainees got food poisoning. The ventilation system didn’t work.

Some detention centers were so crowded that detainees were stacked up high, on triple bunk beds. They had to clamber up and down without ladders, because the jails refused to buy them. The inspector general reported that some detainees were injured because they fell off those bunks. And some facilities didn’t provide immigrants with clean socks and underpants, the way they are supposed to.

Don’t be misled into thinking this will end any time soon? Just recently, more than 300 immigrants were seized in a Massachusetts immigration raid. Federal immigration authorities carried out a massive raid on a New Bedford, Massachusetts, plant Tuesday morning, detaining 300 to 350 immigrant workers and charging the company’s owner and three managers with knowingly hiring undocumented workers.

Everything is going as planned with Bush’s Endgame, where jackbooted thugs of America’s ruthlessly capturing and hauling off 400,000 Latinos “absconders” to immigration prisons. History continues repeating itself, while the capital elites enjoy the spoils of a trumped up war. Yet we continue to be a society of sleepwalkers, not wanting to care or get involved. People have to remember that violence is prompted by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as individuals and not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the “rejects of life.” How do people come to such a pass that they can commit such atrocities against each other? Where has our empathy and kindness gone? If we cannot even show an ounce of care for them, then what has become of our humanity? So look at that little girl who is currently in the Hutto facility who is forced to wear prison garb and who will only receive one hour of fun a day and tell her that she resigned to a life of life of humiliation and wretchedness. Tell her that she is less than human and will be doomed of a life of misery, while some shut their surrounding just to continue living in their comfortable place. Tell her you would rather see her dead because her parents came her looking for a better life, if you makes you happy.

We are living in a very fractionalized and disjointed America due to the policies of our administration, but in reality we have families being broken up. I am saddened because there are children crying because they have lost their parents; there are people suffering from nativist that are hell bent on making their idea of what America should be. How many more atrocities must be committed before any of this madness is brought to an end? More importantly: How can we see another’s woe and not be in sorrow too? How can we see another’s grief and not seek ease their pain? How can we see a falling tear, and not feel for their sorrow?

“Crossposted from the front page of My Left Wing”

In today’s society there are powerful elements seeking to gain as much ground as they can in an attempt to pass steps like the Sensenbrenner bill in the new future. We cannot allow the system free reign to reinforce racist stereotypes against our people at any level, much less to carry out them against us at the point of the gun called law, however “comprehensive” their aim.

Our enemies will take advantage of anything that advances developments in the direction of a publicly fascist state that targets and scapegoats the Other. One of the least discussed in the immigration debate is the link of anti-immigration groups to anti-life beliefs. Many of these “experts” on immigration reform have obtained funds or have other connections to organizations and people that advocate anti-life measures, such as population control, sterilization, abortion and euthanasia.

Not long ago I received an e-mail from John Seager, President of Population Connection informing me that I was wrong in assuming that his group had anything to do with eugenics in a recent post I did, Texas The Anti-Brown State.
In his e-mail, Mr. Seager wrote:

I hope you’ll take a closer look at Population Connection (formerly Zero Population Growth). We are not now, nor have we ever been, a eugenics group, by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve provided below the text of an op ed we distributed last year that should give you some sense of our perspective.

I’m sure you want to make sure, as we do, that the information you put forward is as accurate as possible.

I understand Seager’s concern about his organization being considered as a eugenics group. When one mentions “eugenics” to many Americans, they associate it with racial purification policies used by Hitler and Nazi Germany, which included implementing practices of racial hygiene, human experimentation, and the extermination of undesired population groups. Therefore, just mentioning “eugenics” such notions as racial purity, racial superiority, and the heritability of information, virtue, or vice comes to mind. But before we get on to politics, lets follow the theory of eugenics as it developed into the idea of population control, creating a frightening snowball effect throughout the world.

Although eugenics is associated with Hitler, but the truth is, eugenic thinking has been part of Western intellectual history since the 1860’s. Francis Galton, one of Darwin’s disciples and cousin, used his cousin’s work to create Eugenics, a term that he coined which means, “the cultivation of race.” Galton believed that the ruling classes ought to take it upon themselves to guide the development of the human genetic heritage by thinning out the weaknesses in a species, since nature couldn’t do it. Galton said:

I do not see why any insolence of caste should prevent the gifted class, when they had the power, from treating their compatriots with all kindness, so long as they maintained celibacy. But if these continued to procreate children inferior in moral, intellectual and physical qualities, it is easy to believe the time may come when such persons would be considered as enemies to the State, and to have forfeited all claims to kindness.

Under the philosophies of Galton, Eugenists began building their cause. By the turn of the 20th century, such ideas were commonplace. In fact, in the US, the American Breeders Association (ABA) devoted itself to exploring issues that would have interested Sir Francis Galton. With a committee focusing on the presumed hereditary differences between human races, the ABA popularized the themes of selective breeding of superior stock, the biological menace of “inferior types,” and the need for recording and controlling human heredity. At one time, 33 states had a domestic policy of eugenics, sterilizing over 60,000 citizens who were considered unfit to reproduce. A bitter pill must be swallowed; despite all the admiration Margaret Sanger has received for establishing the American birth control movement and being the founder of the American Birth Control League (which eventually became Planned Parenthood Federation of America). The truth is, she was a member of both the American Eugenics Society and the English Eugenics Society and a proponent of eugenics, which she pushed the idea of “race hygiene” through “negative eugenics.” Even though the current Planned Parenthood Federation of America does recognize this view unacceptable and outmoded, it is hard to argue against historical fact. In her book The Pivot of Civilization, Sanger wrote:

There is but one practical and feasible program in handling the great problem of the feeble-minded. That is, as the best authorities are agreed, to prevent the birth of those who would transmit imbecility to their descendants. Feeble-mindedness as investigations and statistics from every country indicate, is invariably associated with an abnormally high rate of fertility. Modern conditions of civilization, as we are continually being reminded, furnish the most favorable breeding-ground for the mental defective, the moron, the imbecile.
…
The emergency problem of segregation and sterilization must be faced immediately. Every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive period. Otherwise, she is almost certain to bear imbecile children, who in turn are just as certain to breed other defectives. The male defectives are no less dangerous. Segregation carried out for one or two generations would give us only partial control of the problem. Moreover, when we realize that each feeble-minded person is a potential source of an endless progeny of defect, we prefer the policy of immediate sterilization, of making sure that parenthood is absolutely prohibited to the feeble-minded.

It is clear that Sanger advocated the mandatory sterilization of the “insane” and “feeble-minded.” Ultimately, Sanger concluded that: “only 13,500,000 will ever show superior intelligence.” Thus, only 13.5% of the population would be allowed to reproduce. Meanwhile, the rest would be incarcerated for orderly disposal.

After the discoveries of the Nazi atrocities shortly after World War II, Planned Parenthood acted as a conduit for the entry of the eugenics movement into the post-war world. Sanger toned down her racist rhetoric from “race betterment” to “family planning” for the benefit of the poor and racial minorities, the organization’s prime goal of controlling population growth rate among “undesirables” never really changed.

Planned Parenthood would contend that this would be an effort to discredit the family planning movement because Sanger was not perfect mode. True, this should NOT diminish her legacy as the central force in the birth control movement; however, it does raise some questions. Given the facts of many American icons, how do we judge historical figures? And, how do we separate their personal views and action to their contributions to American society?

From Eugenics to Environmentalism
Population control has always been historically connected to the eugenics movement. Margaret Sanger’s eugenically tradition continued and maintained late into the twentieth century. Either John Seager is not aware of his organization’s history or he is trying to revise his organization’s own history. After the war, eugenicists instituted various strategies to cover up the continued joint development of the German, American, and English eugenic agendas. Therefore, the principal vehicle for Malthusian fears became, instead, the threat of environmental catastrophe. This new shift culminated in 1968.

In 1968, one of the most powerful ventures that marked this new line of outlook was Garrett Hardin’s essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Hardin argued that if people are granted to right to reproduce freely, their children would all be given equal rights to a limited commons, the world would be locked “into a tragic course of action” leading to environmental destruction. Hardin believed that only private ownership of vital resources and an inegalitarian distribution of the right to reproduce could avoid the “tragedy” which he predicted was the inevitable result of a democratic and egalitarian society. Hardin also argued that projects as the welfare state and land reform in developing countries were pointless because the problem with what Hardin called “a commons in breeding” was that the impoverished had too many children and made excessive claims on public resources:

If each human family were dependent only on its own resources; if the children of improvident parents starved to death; if, thus, overbreeding brought its own ‘punishment’ to the germ line – then there would be no public interest in controlling the breeding of families.

It is this article that embodies the way in which post-war environmentalism became a vehicle not only for the more ideological aspects of Malthusian thinking, but also for eugenic convictions. The central point in “The Tragedy of the Commons” was that only private property could protect the environment against over-population, a claim that has become a cardinal view of contemporary neo-liberal dogma. The passion with which this conviction has been accepted by conservative policy institutes and multinational corporations is evidence that this ideology is not the fundamental reason to conserve nature or control population growth, but their loophole to legitimize an unrelenting process of privatization and enclosure.

In the same year, Zero Population Growth was founded in 1968 by Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, which was commissioned and published by the Sierra Club. It was not until 2002 when ZPG changed their name to Population Connection. In 1968, in his book, Ehrlich predicted:

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines-hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…

To counter this plague of global starvation, Ehrlich advises overtly authoritarian measures: “We must have population control at home, hopefully through a system of incentives and penalties, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail.” By 1978, an eminent biologist was claiming that “ecology’s first social law should be written: ‘All poverty is caused by the continued growth of population.'” Whether or not Ehrlich actually believed the overpopulation fables that he peddled, they still provided the ruling class with an immediately exploitable threat.

Although Ehrlich’s inaccurate predictions should have qualified the man as a certifiable phony, his claims were still given credence by certain factions of the elite and government think tanks. In George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin noted that during George H. W. Bush’s congressional career, Bush founded and chaired the Republican Task Force on Earth Resources and Population. Bush’s task force subscribed to a neo-Malthusian view about population control and provided Ehrlich with an audience.

Comprised of over 20 Republican Congressman, Bush’s task force was a kind of Malthusian vanguard organization, which heard testimony from assorted “race scientists,” sponsored legislation, and otherwise propagandized the zero-growth outlook. In its 50-odd hearings during these years, the task force provided a public forum to nearly every well-known zero-growth fanatic, from Paul Ehrlich, founder of Zero Population Growth (ZPG), to race scientist William Shockley, to the key zero-growth advocates infesting the federal bureaucracy.

Thomas Robert Malthus is the 19th century cleric and professor of political economy who believed a population time bomb threatened the existence of the human race. He viewed social problems such as poverty, deprivation and hunger as evidence of this “population crisis.” Malthus believed that charity and other forms of benevolence only exacerbated the problems. His answer was to restrict population growth of certain groups of people. His theories of population growth and economic stability became the basis for national and international social policy.

Ehrlich suggested a “tough foreign policy,” which comprised of terminating food aid to “starving nations” who declined to comply. Ehrlich further suggested that domestic population control include “the addition of … mass sterilization agents” to America’s water and food supplies. Such ideas were given serious credence, which is not surprising, considering the make-up of Bush’s committee.

One of Ehrlich’s fellow traveler is William Shockley, who already had created a substantial amount of controversy by endorsing his already refuted thesis that black people were mentally and cognitively inferior to white people. In the same year that the GOP task force provided him with a congressional platform, Shockley wrote:

“Our nobly intended welfare programs may be encouraging dysgenics – retrogressive evolution through disproportionate reproduction of the genetically disadvantaged…. We fear that ‘fatuous beliefs’ in the power of welfare money, unaided by eugenic foresight, may contribute to a decline of human quality for all segments of society.”

Just because ZPG has changed its name, this does not allow John Seager to revise the organizations eugenic past. Mr. Seager, by just saying it doesn’t make it so.

It is in this environmental language that most Malthusian or dysgenic fears about immigration are now being expressed. Former member of ZPG and founder of the anti-immigration organization, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), John Tanton, is claiming that the degradation of our environmental resources can be blamed either to the reproductive pressures in the Third World or to the reproductive tendencies of immigrants and their descendants. What makes Tanton dangerous, he is a “self-described progressive, ex-Sierra Club member, Planned Parenthood supporter and harsh critic of neoclassical economists.”

In Tanton’s view, society would have to reconstitute itself to promote conservation over growth.

As early as the ’50s, he avidly read reports from the Population Reference Bureau, and by the time Ehrlich’s book was published, he and Mary Lou had already started work on the first Northern Michigan chapter of Planned Parenthood. “I believed in the multiplication tables,” says Tanton. “Since I was a physician and could do something about birth control, it struck me that this was where I could make my contribution to the conservation movement.”

It seems Mr. Seager also has a memory lapse regarding his predecessors because Tanton was not just one of ZPG’s most active members, he also was the organization’s president in 1975.

Even though, John Seager talks about applying a “global approach” when it comes to immigration by supporting female literacy, access to birth control and family-planning services in the developing world, their Mission Statement on addressing the immigration issue is very reflective of a neo-Malthusian ideology with the new rhetoric of “sustainable development.”

We, therefore, call on the United States to focus its foreign aid on population, environmental, social, education, and sustainable development programs. Changing political conditions present opportunities to work cooperatively with other nations to address the root causes of international migration.

The “Sustainable Development” Facade
When the environmental wing of the anti-immigrant forces emerged from the zero-population movement of the 1960s and 1970s, sustainable development became a term that was designed to sound like something everyone wants. Sustainable development, as defined from the Our Common Future report (known as the Brundtland Report), is development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The promises was to defuse the longstanding tensions between environmental protection and economic growth; and during the ’90s, nearly everyone favors it, including individuals, firms, national and local governments, militaries, and the range of non-state actors. However, sustainable development has been stripped of its critical content and has been transformed and reconfigured for compatibility with the larger priorities of the post-Cold War era.

Sustainable development appeals to those preoccupied with the tendencies of capitalist development to lay waste to the world in its haste to convert anything and everything into commodities, which could be sold for a profit. Advocates of sustainable development seemed to reason within Western traditions that see humans as stewards of Nature, with responsibility for its protection. Competitive capitalism has long required explanations for why people are impoverished and expendable and through sustainable development. However, whenever a global environmental crisis emerges, Third World poverty or world hunger instantly becomes an issue to economists, demographers, planners, corporate financiers, and political pundits.

Today, population activists do realize the value of poverty reduction; however, their center is on the value of family planning. As population growth rates fall around the world, demography is focusing once again on ‘quality’ concerns such as the differential fertility of competing ethnic groups and the problems surrounding an aging population. While eugenic ideologies and practices have changed over time, they have hardly gone away.

Little has been done to challenge the problematic assumptions, language and perceptions that make American environmentalism particularly susceptible to eugenic influences. Notions of natural and cultural purity blended together reinforce make racism and ethnic prejudice more acceptable in the process and are leading to a resurgence of nativism.

Biological Determinism
Biological determinism is much in current these days as the media bombards us with ideas that we are, in the end, mainly a function of our genes or hormones. Gender and sexuality are being re-centered in the body rather than in social relations. The fact that we as a society are obsessed on our body’s aesthetics in hopes of achieving physical perfection is a manifestation of the idea of finding the ideal body type that took place in the heyday of eugenics in the 1930s.

According to Betsy Hartman, aesthetic is taking a variety of forms – from paying blond, blue-eyed Ivy League women to be egg donors to the pages of fashion magazines. One of the most forms is the growing prevalence of eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia among young women searching for an elusive physical perfection, sense of control and in some cases hyperathletic physical efficiency. Hartman writes:

Although eating disorders have complex causes, we should not underestimate the legacy of eugenics in breeding the psychological monster of perfectionism that terrorizes so many women. The current mass marketing of hormonal birth control pills like Seasonale that have the ‘liberating’ side effect of stopping your periods also plays on the eugenic aesthetic of a clean, efficient female body.

Through neoliberal ideologies and policies, complementary eugenics is closely tied to the shrinking of the welfare state that casts more and more people as drains on the economy and the state – not just the poor and people of color, but also elderly people and people with disabilities. Therefore, it is not surprising then that one can recognize signs of negative eugenics in population control measures and technologies aimed at impoverished women. Even though complementary eugenics can be found in neoliberal ideologies, conservative ideologues have manipulated the fears of scarcity in order to cast impoverished people as burdens and to foment racist assaults on immigrants and people of color.

This climate helps foster and legitimize eugenic thinking. According to conservative population growth lies at the heart of most environmental problems such as energy use, the depletion of natural resources, and deforestation. The prevailing notion of carrying capacity claims that population growth naturally entails increased resource consumption. This prepares the groundwork for blaming the poor for the destruction carried out by big landowners, transnational companies, and mega-projects financed by multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, whose purpose is to export natural resources to feed consumption and production in the US.

Organizations like Population Connection take the political, economic and social dynamics out of the equation, which govern the relationships between human beings and nature. Blaming powerless women from countries such as Mexico will not stop the negative impacts of unsustainable patterns of production and spending that feed the dominant economic development model. John Seager may not fit into the typical mold of an anti-immigrationist like Tanton, but the goal he is trying achieve is same just the message is reframed.

Stereotypes and labels prevent understanding of the intensifying immigration debate in the US. The debate is sharply divided into two sides. On one side, there are those who believe that immigration should be controlled but at levels that reflect the reality of both emigration pressures outside the country and labor needs within it. On the other side of the immigration debate, there are those who believe that immigration flows should be dramatically restricted. These groups are commonly described as being immigration restrictionists.

Although immigration restrictionists share a common agenda, they do not operate as a unified political bloc. Anti-immigration forces comprise of partisans both political parties as well as supporters of parties and movements on the political left and right that fall outside mainstream political thinking.

Contrary to popular belief, thanks to the media, many restrictionist groups are really not espousing the rhetoric that is often heard from citizen militias, white supremacists, and more nationalist institutes, which is explicitly dedicated to “preserving our common heritage as Americans.” Many of them are framing their views in the policy language of environmental protection, access to jobs, anti-corporate sentiment, and population control.

True most immigration restrictionists are found within the political right, but there are some who can be found within the political left. Because much of the argument is dominated by xenophobic rhetoric and calls for draconian border controls and legislation, there is a common belief that anything else should be viewed as liberal ideology, such as ideas about population control, environmentalism, and labor issues.

John Seager’s views are in line with a neoliberal ideology, so it is not surprising that Seager is taking great pains to refrain rhetoric that sound xenophobic and racist, which is being voiced by groups like FAIR and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). In Seager’s recent article, he has provided both the religious- and pro-life right reactionaries with additional reasons for groups like them to continue kicking up bogus hysteria that every liberal in the US are hysterical screeds that have little regard for the sanctity of life.

Globally, at least 350 million couples lack family planning services. Here in the United States, one-third of all births are unplanned. And the Bush administration’s family-planning failures, from its global gag rule against abortion to ideologically driven abstinence-only programs, contribute directly to millions of unwanted and unplanned births. If we could cut in half the number of unwanted births in the U.S. alone, we’d have about 5 million fewer births over 20 years.

It’s vital to focus on thorny technical issues such as tax credits, energy alternatives and emissions trading programs. These efforts are especially important here in the United States, where less than 5 percent of the world’s population produces about one-quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.

So it is not surprising to hear pro-life reactionaries within the anti-immigration camp – paleoconservatives, traditionalists and social conservatives – criticize Seager for espousing secular and liberal ideas. But if one were to look closely where he really stands, his views are not much different from the strongest proponents of immigration who are found within the ranks of the Republican Party.

John Seager is endorsing market-based corporatist approaches to environmental and social policy. Emissions trading to reduce their production of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions amounts to an elaborate shell game that threatens to undercut the goal of stemming global warming. Living here in Texas, I have witnessed the failure of this environmental policy that was put in place by then-Gov Bush. Emissions trading does little to solve pollution problems and only proves that buying and selling carbon dioxide credits will deliver only illusory emission reductions, invite fraud and result in disproportionate health and economic impacts on poor communities. The only thing being sustained are the profit margins for big landowners, transnational companies, and mega-projects financed by multilateral institutions.

The problem we are currently having is the perception of “neoliberalism” – a term that’s particularly confusing to people in the US who associate liberalism with socially progressive policies. The theory of neoliberalism:

…the view that individual liberty and freedom are the high point of civilization and then goes on to argue that individual liberty and freedom can best be protected and achieved by an institutional structure, made up of strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade: a world in which individual initiative can flourish. The implication of that is that the state should not be involved in the economy too much, but it should use its power to preserve private property rights and the institutions of the market and promote those on the global stage if necessary.

As policies of “free trade,” open capital markets, and unrestricted and unregulated investment are enforced, the inconsistencies of capitalist development become more intense. The recent rhetoric of “sustainable development” and “globalization” cannot entirely obscure how the new economic regime is exacerbating, rather than resolving, social and environmental problems in the Latin America, while accelerating economic and ideological polarization.

The reason families are migrating more now as never before is due to commercial development that continues to withhold and deprive people secure access to fundamental productive resources. These resources increasingly are being exploited by transnational corporations for the use and profit of developed nations. The Malthusian argument that migration must be curbed in the interest of maintaining the lifestyles of the affluent ignores the realism that both migration movement and sustaining our lifestyles share a single origin. The alternative is structural change. Only in a society in which resources are more equitably apportioned will we be able to go beyond Malthusian politics of “population control” to a true consideration of human reproductive rights and needs.

One of the key issues in the current debate over immigration reform here in the United States has to deal with who may be considered an American. The anti-immigrant activists here in Texas are arguing that American citizenship has nothing to do about where you were born, but who gave birth to you. By extension, they believe–the 14th amendment notwithstanding–that the government must limit the reproductive capacities of immigrant women. Since the 14th Amendment grants automatic citizenship to persons born on US soil, which grants them equal standing as citizens. Thus, immigrant women of childbearing age are central targets of unjust immigration reform policies. (h/t to Manny)
Lawmakers here in Texas have filed several bills based on that argument.

• HB127: Requires state agencies to ask customers whether they are legal U.S. residents and report the cost of services provided to illegal residents.
• HB38: Requires proof of legal residency in the U.S. to obtain professional licenses.
• HB40: Applicants for medical assistance must prove their legal status.
• HBs578, 691, 1377: Applicants for a marriage license must swear they are not marrying as a way to circumvent immigration laws.
• HB28: U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants would be ineligible for state services and state jobs.
• HBs104, 141, 159, 39: Eliminates undocumented immigrant students’ ability to receive in-state tuition rates.
• HBs858, 905, 907 1012, 1256: Allows state and/or local police to enforce federal immigration laws.
• HB904: Prohibits cities from setting up day labor centers.
• HBs931, 932: Requires proof of legal status for a driver’s license and a citizenship label on driver’s licenses.
• HB29: Imposes a fee on money undocumented immigrants send to Central and South America.
• HCR11: Resolution calling on the Texas attorney general to pursue lawsuits to collect money from the federal government to repay the state for the cost of undocumented immigrants.

Currently, the bills are in State Affairs Committee, which is lead by state Rep. David Swinford, R-Dumas. Understanding how much of a hot potato this issue is, Swinford plans to get the attorney general’s, Greg Abbott, advice about whether the bills are constitutional before sending the bill forward.

“If they’re unconstitutional and we go through this whole process and they get taken to court and thrown out, well, that’s kind of a waste of time and energy,” he said.

It is clear who is behind this measure. Groups, such as the Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR), who has two goals: (1) “To end illegal immigration” and (2) “to set legal immigration at the lowest feasible levels consistent with the demographic, economic, social, and environmental realities.” They believe immigrant women of childbearing age are a significant source of the country’s so-called “illegal immigration crisis.” Texas House Bill (HB) 28, sponsored by Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, is very interesting because if Berman gets his way, it will be considered the test case before the US Supreme Court that would eventually establishes if the “and the jurisdiction thereof” clause of the 14th amendment applies to children born in the US who do not have a parent who is a citizen or resident alien.

In an AP article written in December, Berman said, “Texas can no longer afford to lure illegal immigrants to give birth on U.S. soil by promising citizenship and access to lucrative public benefits.” This explains why HB28 is loaded with vicious, mean spirited goodies that make the KKK look mainstream. Should the bill become law it would: deny employment to American born children of undocumented parents, deny services such as primary education, secondary education and higher education and, of course, deny any sort of public assistance such as health care. All withheld to American born children.

Berman and others like him in the Texas legislator assert that immigrant women are risking their lives just to enter the US to give birth, who can then sponsor other relatives before they reach the age of 21; hence the term “anchor babies.” They also contend that “anchor babies” and their families create a strain on the country’s social service programs. The irrational stance of anti-immigrant advocates echoes that of 1990’s welfare reformers. Both assume that childbearing by immigrants or poor women of color creates a cycle of poverty and dependence on the government. Immigrant women and women on welfare are depicted as irresponsible mothers and fraudulent freeloaders.

This. of course, is a false assumption. Back in December, a report was published by the Texas Comptrollers Office, “Undocumented Immigrants In Texas: A Financial Analysis of the Impact to the State Budget and Economy,” which found that undocumented immigrants contributed $17.7 billion to that states economy and that state revenues collected from undocumented immigrants exceeded what was spent on services for them by $424.7 million.

The Comptroller’s report estimates that undocumented immigrants in Texas generate more taxes and other revenue than the state spends on them. This finding is contrary to two recent reports, FAIR’s, “The Cost of Illegal Immigration to Texans” and the Bell Policy Center’s “Costs of Federally Mandated Services to Undocumented Immigrants in Colorado”, both of which identified costs exceeding revenue.
…
The Comptroller’s office estimates the absence of the estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in Texas in fiscal 2005 would have been a loss to our Gross State Product of $17.7 billion. Also, the Comptroller’s office estimates that state revenues collected from undocumented immigrants exceed what the state spent on services, with the difference being $424.7 million….

The largest cost factor was education, followed by incarceration and healthcare. Consumption taxes and fees, the largest of which is the sales tax, were the largest revenue generators from undocumented immigrants.

It is interesting that Berman is still moving forward despite the finds of the Texas Comptrollers Office. It just goes to show nativists will stop at nothing to rid this country and state of anything Brown, regardless is there are numerous research that contradicts their argument.

Today’s immigration debate extends beyond the aim of restricting the rights and humanity of immigrants: it’s mission is ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing defined by the conservative think tank the Council on Foreign Relations is:

[E]thnic cleansing nonetheless defies easy definition. At one end it is virtually indistinguishable from forced emigration and population exchange while at the other it merges with deportation and genocide. At the most general level, however, ethnic cleansing can be understood as the expulsion of an “undesirable” population from a given territory due to religious or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic or ideological considerations, or a combination of these.

Under this definition, then, the slow dispersal and annihilation of North America’s indigenous population was indeed ethnic cleansing. In their efforts to gain and secure the frontier, American settlers “cleansed” most Indians from their lands, even though the process was slow and, until the nineteenth century, carried out mainly under private initiative….

Ethnic cleansing has taken many forms. The forced resettlement of a “politically unreliable” population-one conquered and incorporated into an empire yet still likely to rebel-dates from the eighth century bc. (emphasis mine)

Although many people associate the term with violence, it is hard to argue against the appropriateness when it comes to the current immigration debate given the groups who are lobbing for these bills.

Over the last decade, the population-immigration argument has been forcefully and deliberately made as part of a bigger agenda by anti-immigration, it has become a focus of population control advocates such as Population-Environmental Balance (PEB) and The Social Contract Press. FAIR has a very interesting history, it was created after John Tanton split with the eugenics group known as Zero Population Growth, better known today as Population Connection. Worse, the anti-immigrant groups have been masquerading themselves as environmentalists so they can penetrate liberal environmental groups like the Sierra Club. They have used Orwellian names such as Carrying Capacity Network and Population-Environment Balance. This is not some conspiracy theory.

Historically, immigrants have been targets of environmentalists, some of whom linked with the eugenics movement of the early 20th century, Immigration Restriction League, to advocate for immigration controls. The eugenics movement considered undocumented immigrants and people of other non-white races to be biologically inferior to whites.

The “Hispanic Paradox” is that the country’s political culture cannot function without scapegoating migrant laborers either. America’s fear of immigrants is not new. In the 1920s, Congress passed Immigration Act of 1924, which placed immigration quotas that barred Asians, Italians, Greeks, and Jews. These quota laws, passed after lobbying by the Ku Klux Klan, Immigration Restriction League and others, codified the eugenics theories of Madison Grant, whose work focused on the supposedly inferior skull sizes of Jews and other immigrants.

The reason that overpopulation is primary threat to the finite resources of the planet was made popular through Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s book “The Population Bomb” that was published in 1968. The book predicted that disaster for humanity would happen “in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death” due to overpopulation and the “population explosion.” Now, the nativists are using this theory to distort the public conscious in order to push their anti-immigration agenda.

Before Garrett Hardin died in 2003, he was the significant link between the population and environment groups and the anti-immigration movement. He wrote many books and popularized the term “Tragedy of the Commons.” Hardin was a peculiar figure among members of the Republican party who supported Planned Parenthood and an environmentalist who believed in population control.

Fear of overpopulation is a warped lens, which views the lives of the poor as faceless numbers by creating artificial boundaries among people. It breeds racism and sexism, denies history, and reinforces Western parochialism about countries outside the US. In a 2003 issue of the Social Contract Press, Wayne Lutton wrote:

Overseas screening of visitors, immigrants, and refugees is likewise inadequate. In a system rife with fraud, prospective entrants to the U.S. submit certification of health. Inspections by visa officials and at U. S. ports of entry are cursory, often taking less than 5 seconds. These procedures are rarely able to detect foreigners carrying contagious diseases and parasitic infections, nor identify persons with other personal problems, such as mental illness, mental retardation, alcohol and drug addiction, and many other major health problems, including heart and kidney disease, diabetes, and cancer.
…
Exposure to imported illnesses not only endangers Americans’ physical well-being, it costs taxpayers billions of dollars. Additionally, funds diverted to cover the medical expenses of foreigners, are leading to severe cutbacks in services available to U. S. citizens in areas enduring especially high rates of immigration.

Is this really any different from what occurred in 1920s? None, absolutely none. Mexican immigration was numerically insignificant from 1900 to 1909 and those who were here primarily took agricultural jobs in the Southwest. Despite the anti-immigrant lobby, growers and industrialists — who extracted super-profits from the Mexicans’ cheap, unskilled labor–testified before Congress of the value of Mexican workers, successfully stalling restrictive legislation. In part due to this capitalist lobby, the 1924 Immigration Act did not set quotas for immigrants from the Western Hemisphere. As World War I ended, the 1921 recession exacerbated a competition between white and nonwhite workers.

The Sins of the Past Repeats Itself
It was at this time, the press and politicians began to whip up anti-Mexican sentiments. Congress put the “Mexican problem” on the agenda. Every year from 1926 to 1930, Congressmen proposed bills expanding the quotas to the nations of the Western Hemisphere, clearly with Mexico in mind. Both the anti-immigration and capitalist pro-immigration lobby employed similar racist stereotypes to make their arguments. Both considered Mexicans a biologically inferior race, with natural tendencies towards docility and ignorance.

The anti-immigration lobby argued that these biological characteristics made Mexicans unfit for U.S. citizenship. Racist sectors of the labor movement claimed these supposed traits were “ruinous” to the U.S. standard of labor. The pro-immigration lobby argued that these very characteristics made Mexican immigrants “harmless” to US society. Furthermore, they argued, Mexicans “did jobs that no one else would take.” Do those arguments sound any different from the current arguments being made today. No!

The US government began to use the newly formed Border Patrol to discourage legal Mexican immigration. The informal, fluid migration that characterized the earlier period was replaced by one in which Mexicans not only took literacy tests and paid a head tax, but also were subjected to humiliating public medical examinations, which included bathing and hair removal. Such procedures were banned with European immigrants.

In California, state officials and local health authorities participated actively in efforts to restrict Mexican immigration throughout the 1920s and to expel both Mexicans and Filipinos during the 1930s. With the outcry from nativist groups, who argued that Mexicans created overwhelming social problems, took jobs away from Whites, and represented an undesirable racial group, public health officials helped to craft the anti-Mexican discourse and at the same time led efforts to segregate, exclude, and repatriate Mexican immigrants. Kenneth L. Roberts wrote in the Saturday Evening Post:

“…and see endless streets crowded with the shacks of illiterate, diseased, pauperized Mexicans, taking no interest whatever in the community, living constantly on the ragged edge of starvation, bringing countless numbers of American citizens into the world with the reckless prodigality of rabbits.”

In 1927, Grizzly Bear wrote in the journal of the Order of the Native Sons of the Golden West:

“It is evident that, unless an end is put to the influx of Mexicans, this country will have merely substituted a low-grade Westerner for a European immigrant, with a new race problem thrown in. … The effect of this Mexican influx on the already over-burdened taxpayer should be considered. Los Angeles County … is the dumping ground for poverty-stricken Mexicans.”

During a Congressional hearing on the “Mexican Problem,” Rep John C. Box of Texas said:

“Unless the tubercular and venereal Mexican is cared for through the public health department he is likely to become a public health problem of sufficient size to affect the general public health.”

The bills filed in the current Texas legislature are filled with the same xenophobic racism that was written in the early 20th century. If the bills pass, like the Minutemen, Texas will be in the business of mainstreaming hate.

Since the 1920s, capitalist politicians have attempted to manipulate the immigration pool, in particular from Mexico, in order to meet the imperialist system’s economic and political needs. They use the tactic of deportation to terrorize the Latino community and strip it of political and labor rights, and whip up racism to stigmatize Latinos as an “illegal” people.

Think it is made up? Think the US will only deport the “illegals”? Think again vato! It is time to wake up learn your history, ignorance is not a bliss. Use the Internet while it is still accessible to you and me to do your historical research. Still don’t believe it, then explain why in 2005, the state of California passed the Apology Act for the 1930s Mexican Repatriation Program, which officially recognized the “unconstitutional removal and coerced emigration of United States citizens and legal residents of Mexican descent” and apologized to residents of California “for the fundamental violations of their basic civil liberties and constitutional rights committed during the period of illegal deportation and coerced emigration.”

What will it take for Texans and the rest of the country to realize that our government is defaulting on its promissory note to us. When will we realize we have been given a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds. Now is the time to make real on the promises of democracy! Now is the time to make justice a reality!

The sins of our past, are repeating itself and people are still wondering around in a haze. IT IS TIME TO WAKE UP!!!

[promoted by BooMan. I love the video.]

Update [2007-2-23 11:1:54 by BooMan]: Returned to diaries for better exposure.

During the football season, the one commercial I kept see of was John Mellencamp’s song “Our Country.” I will admit, I was not impressed with it. I not impressed that Mellencamp and Chevy co-opted together to sell one of Chevy’s gas guzzling pickup trucks by using the images of Rosa Parks, MLK, the Vietnam War, the Katrina disaster, and 9/11. I guess I was not the only one who felt this way. In fact, some went so far to call him a sellout.

After seeing the commercial for the un-teenth time, I was going to make my own version of the music video. Funny thing, I had no earthly idea how I was going to do it. So, I put it off for a couple of months, until recently. With all this racism and anti-Brown people talk, I just got inspired and I was on a mission do it.

I realized I did not need any fancy software do it;  all I needed were some photos and the song and that I had. I also researched the lyrics to make sure everything would make sense. When I did this, I found this blog, DownWithTyranny! which actually wrote about the song before it was released. It seemed that the song had another purpose than being a flag waving song, like Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA.

The blogger writes:

It’s the kind of song that will help bind together that which has been so violently torn asunder by Bush, Cheney, Rove and the vicious partisan and self-serving brutes that make up the bandit Regime that has gotten its hands– through hook and crook– on the levers of power in America.

With that in mind, here is my version of John Mellencamp‘s “Our Country.”

The first three verses of the song:
I can stand beside
Things I think are right
And I can stand beside
The idea of stand and fight
And I do believe
There’s a dream for everyone
This is our country
From the east coast
To the west coast
Down the Dixie Highway
Back home
This is our country

There’s room enough here
For science to live
And there’s room enough here
For religion to forgive
And try to understand
The other people of this world
This is our country
From the east coast
To the west coast
Down the Dixie Highway
Back home
This is our country

That poverty could be
Just another ugly thing
And bigotry could be
Seen only as obscene
And the ones that run this land
Will help the poor and common man
This is our country
From the east coast
To the west coast
Down the Dixie Highway
Back home
This is our country

Hoped you enjoyed it.

Fostering diversity at institutes of higher education has long been the goal of many institutions and thus has been at the forefront of policy making decisions. Those who support the aims and principles of diversity, as well as those who decry them, agree that campuses face a variety of challenges in their efforts to make education a truly inclusive option. However, inequality in America has permeated into too many avenues of life. Most obvious is financial inequality: wages, worker benefits, median salaries of average workers vs. CEO’s and here in Texas, educational inequality is setting the stage for intellectual segregation and genocide. Why? Because not being able to afford a college education is vastly different from not being able to excel at one.

Last month, the new Democratically lead Congress provide relief to current and future college students when the House by a vote of 356 to 71, with all Democrats and 124 Republicans, passed H.R. 5, the College Student Relief Act of 2007, the bill that would cut the interest rates on student loans.

However, when it comes to higher education here in Texas, Gov Rick Perry marches to a different beat. Earlier this week, he proposed to increase the education gap where rich white kids will continue go to college un-phased and reap the aids of a degree, while poor minorities can’t.
According to the Houston Chronicle, Gov Perry is looking to overhaul of the state’s financial aid programs, by forcing students to graduate faster. Under his new plan, all higher education grants, which typically don’t have to be repaid, would automatically become zero-interest loans for those who do not graduate within the specified time of their certificate or degree program. The policy Gov Perry just sign would penalize students who take longer to obtain a degree. In other words, college students had better not change their majors here in Texas.

Perry also proposes to merge Texas Grant, Texas Educational Opportunity Grant and Tuition Equalizations Grant programs into the “Tuition Assistance Grant.” He also proposed to allocate federal funds intended to go higher education grant programs to the 4-year old Texas B-On-Time Loan program, a program that is to give eligible Texas students no-interest loans to attend colleges and universities in Texas. But there is a catch, the student must have a “3.0 grade point average in high school and maintain a 3.0 grade point average, up from 2.5” to qualify, according to LubbockOnline. Other parts of the program a student must complete 24 credit hours a year to remain in the program. In short, a student must be enrolled full-time. To put it another way, students who are part-time are not qualified.

Given that the cost of a college education is continually increasing and attaining a higher education degree is more important than ever, Latino student participation in financial aid is critical. According to Dr. Amaury Nora, professor at the University of Houston, studies have shown that low-income groups are “more sensitive to changes in tuition than are upper-income groups.” The problem is it has already been found that Latinos drop out or take extra years to graduate from college is because of financial reasons more than for academic reasons. When federal aid cuts have occurred, they have disproportionally affected Latino students. When it comes to financing a college education, there are four main ways: grants, loans, work-study, and personal contributions. Although the percentage of Latino students receiving financial aid for college is at an all-time high, Latinos still receive the least financial aid ($5,999) of any ethnic group, according to the the Hispanic Scholarship Fund Institute (HSF). Other frightening findings are:

• Sector: Latinos received the least federal aid ($4,644) and the least non-federal aid ($3,328) of any ethnic group.
• Grants: Latinos received the smallest grant awards ($3,486) for their education of any ethnic group. Latinos received the smallest federal grants ($2,113) of any ethnic group, except whites, and received by far the smallest non-federal grants ($3,017) of any ethnic group.
• Loans: Latinos received larger loans ($4,168) than African Americans ($4,070) or Asian/Pacific Islanders ($4,073).
• Work-Study: Latinos received the lowest work-study awards ($1,152) of any ethnic group.
• “Other aid”: Latinos received higher awards ($4,527) than African Americans ($4,147), but less than whites ($5,070) or Asian/Pacific Islanders ($5,364). This disparity is consistent in “other” federal aid ($6,047) and non-federal aid ($3,475).

With Gov. Perry’s plan, he will make sure Latinos continue to be the lowest group to receive financial aid.

Deborah Santiago, vice president for policy and research for Excelencia in Education, a nonprofit located in Washington, D.C., reports that Latinos are less likely to take out loans than whites, blacks and undergraduates in general. The percentage of Asians seeking loans is even less than among Latinos – 24.8% compared with 29.8% – but their need for loans is somewhat diminished because they tend to receive more scholarships and financial aid than other groups. In other words, not only are Latinos less likely to take out a loan, they tend to receive larger loans.

It is bad enough American consumers owe over a trillion dollars in consumer debt, Perry’s plan will only add to the financial and emotional toll excessive debt can create for low- and middle-income families, especially minorities if college students are not able to finish college in four years. One does have to wonder if the financial industry is really behind this plan knowing that they will have consumers for life, now that there is a conscience effort to lower personal debits. Last year, The NewStandard reported that predatory lenders and their practices have been misleading consumers into loans with unfair terms and are currently growing in size and sophistication.

Community groups are reporting that that historically underserved consumers like immigrants, the elderly and women continue are the one who are being hit the hardest by predatory lenders. Although, Latino are the lest likely to apply for college loans, according the Houston Chronicle, Perry sees this as a chance to look like the benevolent leader since state population projections predict that the vast majority of people entering college will be Latino, since in a few years, Texas will soon be a minority majority state. Put it another way, Texas will soon be called Tejas.

During a time that offers an uncertainty to advance the Latino cause having access into Texas colleges and universities, this new program will only make thing more complicated. Since Latino have an aversion for apply for loans, will Latinos no longer apply for financial aid if Perry’s devious financial aid plan were to pass in the Texas Legislation this year? It is already known that Texas college are overcrowded as enrollments are on the rise, is this a way to drive away students and those who do stay and are not rich take a gamble with Perry’s draconian financial aid plan?

According to a latest progress report by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the state is nowhere close in closing the gap when it comes to higher education. Latino enrollment is only at 3.9 percent a dropped compared to the enrollment rate African Americans at 5.2 percent and whites at 5.6 percent. Currently Texas has bragging right as it ranks last among the six largest states in the amount of student financial aid and grants that are available.

It is not uncommon for the oppressed to take on the characteristics of their oppressors as they adopt strategies to escape their own oppression. Such is the case with Raymund Paredes, Texas’ Commissioner of Higher Education who has made it his mission to make wishful thinking the basis for Texas’ education policy which is intended to maintain white privilege and subjugation of the poor.

As the mouthpiece for the Higher Education Coordinating Board, he functions as the post-affirmative action poster token whose blindness has very pre-affirmative action effects on the poor and the brown children of Texas. Dr. Paredes is pushing to Perry’s plan which will only maintain the same historical power structures that are similar to those who are now destroyed our urban schools, which turned them into mindless and emotionless test-preparation camps.

Here in Tejas, we can expect the worse. The state’s top demographer, Steve Murdock, predicts a sad picture.

Imagine a Texas with declining household incomes, tax revenues that can’t keep up with demands for services and children growing up worse off than their parents.

That’s what Texans can expect unless government does a better job educating the growing Hispanic population, which could become the state’s majority by 2025.

Gringos claim that the Southwest is becoming a Third World because it has to has to do with the over population of Latinos. The truth, it is the gringos who are to blame, with their policies to keep us down. University of Texas at San Antonio Professor Ruben Martinez said it best,

“We’re living in a time of great fear, and during times of fear, people are very reluctant to engage in change, and they are very reluctant to take some risk because they are fearful.”

Dr. Martinez is correct, when he says it has to do with fear. Fear of the a Brown Planet.

On the day where every other blogger was blogging about the controversies over Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan and their resigning, I too was about to do the same until something similar happened to me.

The most striking thing about our national debate over immigration is the utter lack of attention to the moral dimensions of the injustice and human tragedy that is unfolding before our eyes. So imagine my surprise and horror I got when a request by email came my way by the name of GayPatriot who wanted to “confirm” if Daniel Maldonado, Editor and Publisher of Aztlan Electronic News was the same Daniel Maldonado (aka Daniel Aljughaifi) who was recently arrested for training with Al-Qaeda to become a terrorist bomber. I do not think there are any words in English or in Spanish that can describe exactly how I felt. Being called an asshole or a fucker is no where near as having someone imply that you are a terrorist due to guilt by association and with the goal of publishing it all over the Internet.

Just knowing that some non-thinking mindless fool will willingly scour the Internet to found a way to tie their demons together and act on the notion they are doing a “public service” can make any person panic striken. Because of this a tiny piece of me now knows what it means and how people felt during the McCarthy era…except then, the Boogeyman was not Brown. If fear of being harmed was the primary factor for Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan to resign, I do empathize. It is a fear I wish upon no one. For those who shoulder on fighting for their cause despite it being unpopular, just know this, I have your back because we are all in this together. Devils will rage and burn every page, but the truth lives deep in the hands of the wind.

After exchanging several emails with Daniel over at Aztlan Electronic News, I advised him to address the issue head on; so he issued a “For the Record” statement. The “For the Record” was not about proving that GayPatriot was barking up the tree, or about his personal safety, it’s about millions of Latinos who are easily targeted by righteous individuals who feel their actions are for the “public good” because in our current guilty until proven innocent society we live in today, implications are all the same to them.
There comes a point where turning away from violence and not standing up to it, is worse than appeasement: It’s active encouragement. So it is time to take off the kid gloves and roll up your sleeves and break through the collective delusion mentality that embraces (some might say constitutes) the far Right.

I am tired of the relentless lies and meanness of special pleading right-wingers whose cloying candy coating can hardly conceal the poison pill inside; and unfortunately, there are too many people who uncritically accept any sort of mental dandruff people shake off their heads. Soon after I got over my shock, the first thing that entered my mind was –

Well, la de friken da, give this man a prize. Did he actually think that every Tomas, Pablo, and Enrique he saw and heard on the news were all the same? Just because he is able to do a simple Google search, that gave him the right to say “Gotcha!

This only shows that people like him and his ilk, the Lou Dobbs, the Pat Buchanans, the Bill O’Reillys, the Michele Malkins have only one intent towards Latinos and that is to harm anybody who is Brown.

Whenever I see this kind of attitude, I often feel George Carlin was correct when he said “If You’re Brown, You’re Goin Down! … You got some brown people in your country? Tell ’em to watch the fuck out, or we’ll goddamn bomb them!” But in this case, we’ll deport your ass.

In order for the right wing to sustain their collective delusion, it seems, they must make shit up. For people who disliked the former Soviet Union, they really do enjoy using old Stalinistic tactics to get rid of their perceived enemies by tarring every opponent with broad accusation all for the “public good.” What do Latino immigrants have to do with Al-Qaeda? The answer is nothing at all! However, this is the same mental crap that is being peddled by the right-wing talking heads.

However, this is not new. These are the same tactics that have been used by John Tanton, of US English and Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), who planted the seed for English only movement that began in the 1980s; and Glenn Spencer, of the American Patrol, who planted the seed for  the Reconquista fable – the alleged plot to turn several American states into a Mexican state or some kind of puppet government controlled by Mexico – that started in the 1990s.

The gist of the anti-immigrant sentiment is that the newcomers are up to no good, they just want a handout, they have too many babies and they are hell-bent on contaminating our precious bodily fluids and, besides, you wouldn’t want your daughter to date one. In fact, the whole anti-immigrant sentiment is starting to turn out to be anti-Brown, where some state are creatively coming up with “anybody but Brown folk” laws.

Their sole argument is based on a Nationalistic pride, which they beat their chest on the mountain top proclaiming, “This is Amerikkka! Secure the borders from the Brown menace!!” That is why it is imperative for them to construct their right-wing boogeyman through a shell game that allows them to find anything “INTERESTING,” no matter how obscure it is to connect “the Latino Boogieman” and the Aztlán movement to Al-Qaeda. Michele Malkin has repeatedly TRIED to link migrant farmers or starving family members to the people who flew the planes on 9/11. There isn’t any sinister back channel conspiracy taking place, the true villains are “ethnic bosses” who keep their people in bondage.

Despite all the discussion about civility, the right wing relies on forms of violence, whether verbal, implied or actual. For many people this appears to be the appeal: a way for the otherwise inadequate to act like solid guys, their violence safely done at a distance and by proxy. One of the right-wings favorite tactics is manufacturing plots, which serves them well as a weapon to attack its “enemies.” This is done so they can avoid having to debate the issues and incite fear in their audiences.

One can find a laundry list of right wing militarists who have adopted this type of tough talk attitude, however, they are the least willing to accept the consequences for it, much less place themselves at risk. The leading targets of such rhetoric have been undocumented immigrants from pundits as Michele Malkin,  Pat Buchanan and Bill O’Reilly to name a few.

Even the most marginal member of the right-wing echo chamber does their part by not only selling the lies, but also by making a hash of American politics, the rule of law and the expression of simple decency. Therefore, it is not a surprise to find on the net the use of eliminationist rhetoric among right-wing bloggers, such as GayPatriot.

Back in 2005, GayPatriot embarrassed himself by beginning to believe his own fantasy of right-wing shit-talking strength. Within the confines of his own site, he can do and say whatever he pleases. Apparently, GayPatriot tried to engage in some form of thuggish behavior by labeling two activists and bloggers, Mike Rogers (BlogActive) and John Aravosis (Americablog), as “Gay Terrorists.” On a post entitled “WANTED: GAY TERRORISTS,” with photos of Rogers and Aravosis, GayPatriot wrote:

Wanted for crimes against the gay community. Wanted for repeatedly conducting outing witch hunts against gays who do not believe in radical liberal anti-American ideals. For repeated violations of privacy of gay Americans. For conducting systematic civil liberties attacks on gay Americans.

WANTED! Let’s do something about these gay terrorists who have infected our community with their hatred and self-loathing bigotry of gay Americans who wish to live their lives in peace.

It was all fun and games until Michael Rogers called GayPatriot’s place of employment immediately following the post and spoke to GayPatriot’s secretary and boss. Rogers said he asked GayPatriot to remove the post and replace it with a post about non-violence or he would launch a national boycott of GayPatriot’s corporate employer and pursue all avenues necessary to protect himself. Rogers call to GayPatriot’s employer put an end to that nonsense, the post was removed and GayPatriot temporarily stepped away from the blogosphere.

However, that does not mean he stopped engaging in thuggish intimidation. It really is not a surprise to find more eliminationism rhetoric on GayPatriot’s site, this time targeting Maldanado*.

They should put this guy in front of a firing squad at Ground Zero in NYC.

My point of mention this does not have to do what occurred two years ago. The point I am making is that right wing bloggers, like Michele Malkin do have a nasty habit of advocating violence and not taking responsibility for it.

So when GayPatriot replied back to me on my blog to tell me I was “all wrong” on my facts about the whole GayPatriot-Rogers incident, I knew exactly what he meant because to them its all a game on how far can they go without being caught.

They have a habit of hiding behind the First Amendment, but are they willing to take the consequences after their message has been delivered? Of course not, because they wash your hands by claiming we must have read too much in to it; it was never meant to advocated violence; or they are not their brother’s/sister’s keeper, they take no responsibility on how their readers interpret what they wrote. All of this to absolve themselves from responsibility, so they can sleep better at night.

Its people like these who expect us to say “Si, Señor” while licking their boots, and not speak unless spoken to! But the minute we stand up for ourselves, we are demonized, slandered, libeled, in the same way the Iraqis were right before going to war, all to make themselves look like the “good guys,” the true American Patriot, in fact, they are nothing but a wolf under the a fine suit, with a bag of tricks. They want us to believe we should be GRATEFUL to be living here in Amerikkka, and how we should feel GOOD about licking the boots of our masters. That is why xenophobic jackbooted racist repeat the same Republican meme on how America has given us everything, yet when some Latinos are willing to go back home, they are forced to go back home penniless because it is the Republicans who won’t blink twice as they strip everything they earned.

As much as I have little patience for right wing eliminationist, I certainly will not blindly give left wing authoritarians a free pass either. Left-wing positions should be rational and defensible, not just mirror images of right-wing excesses. No one is such an über-progressive that they get to lie, intimidate and basically play the same realpolitik games they accuse the Bush administration of playing. The rules we apply to others we really have to follow ourselves. We can’t cop an attitude of ethical superiority and then do as what we loathe does at our convenience.

Unfortunately for the left, there’s always going to be people like this who are all too happy to step forward and appoint themselves as spokesman, leader and authority. Even when they aren’t the real thing. It is time for a reality check for those who truly believe in progressives values and for those who really are interested in justice, fairness and tolerance, blindly accepting them as our leaders is our poison.

Many seem to be more “anti-conservative” than actually progressive and original thought among them is lacking. This administration has done enough damage that it may take generations to undo. We can’t let left wing authoritarians and the powerless power worshippers take the lead. Nor can we let some Johnny-come-lately who suddenly discovered they are a democrat dictate to us life long Democrats their version of democrat values.

Are we really that desperate to win to rationalize our ethical superiority to deservedly stomp the right wing for their lies and hypocrisy while at the same time not police our own because they are coming from “our camp” or fall for the inevitable line used by these people that we have to excuse their scummy behavior because, like George W. Bush says, we are “either with them or against them?”

Sabes que, sorry but that is wrong, many of you know it. Lying and self-serving bullshit isn’t putting food in anyone’s mouth, it isn’t comforting the afflicted, it isn’t the path to righteousness. It’s just more of the same. To use a historical example, if you’re a member of the Polish intelligentsia, for example, it doesn’t make much of a difference if you are shot in the back of the head by a Nazi or a Soviet.

I am not some “Si, Señor” ideologue who will blindly follow somebody who slaps a “progressive” label and can babble about “The Movement.” And I am certainly not some “Si, Señor Spic” for some racist prick to kick around either. I have contributed as much blood, sweat, and tears, and money, as any person, only to see clever and greedy bastards squander it away in Dudya’s murderous wars.

It is time to demand justice NOW! It is time to demand impeachment proceeding NOW! And it is high time to say NO to poverty, to substandard schools and housing, to inferior wages and shit jobs, to old and new-fashioned discrimination of driving while Black, Mexican, or Puerto Rican. NO to apocalyptic fantasies of political demagogues and the depraved appeals of right-wing pundits, white supremacists and bigots, even if it’s found wearing a “progressive” disguise, who seek to inflame racial passions.

The gloves are off, are yours!

The guy does not deserve anymore traffic, all links to his site are located on the original post, “The Gloves are Off” on my blog.