When I was a kid, my mother provoked a controversy in our neighborhood by demanding more funding for local schools. She even got in the mayor’s face about it during a public hearing.
Our neighbors, as well as the people who went to our church, were scandalized. It wasn’t that anyone disagreed with her about the pathetic state of the schools. No, what caused them to whisper among themselves was the fact that she had spoken up about it.
I once took a freelance gig editing a book about conspiracy theories. It was an encyclopedia of crazy shit like Mkultra and the Bavarian Illuminati and Area 51.
The book was a highly entertaining read, but it didn’t exactly keep me up at night. I just don’t believe humans are competent enough to pull off fake moon landings and shadow governments and the like. So I’m not prone to yelling, “Conspiracy!” and attributing sinister motives to shadowy figures.
But it’s not a conspiracy to say that Hispanics and African Americans have long been played off one another. And the reason for this is clear: It maintains the status quo.
After all, if America’s two largest ethnic minorities are busy fighting each other, they have little energy to combat the power structures that hinder their mutual growth.
You can’t be too careful out there. Nobody knows this better than Joe Arpaio, the self-described “toughest sheriff in America.”’ Arpaio, renowned for his obsessive focus on illegal immigration, recently sprung into action to protect his Arizona community.
Acting on a tip that dangerous criminals lurked in the Phoenix suburbs, Arpaio recently deployed a tank. Yes, he called in an armor-platted, cannon-thrusting behemoth.
He also brought in the SWAT team, got a bomb robot, and organized a convoy of armored vehicles. He then rolled this caravan of firepower into a residential neighborhood, surprising people in the sleepy enclave who no doubt had been unaware of the booming crime wave in their midst.
Was Arpaio bringing down a massive drug-running operation? Was he busting lethal gang members who murder and rape at will? Could he have been targeting a domestic terrorism plot, or arresting scores of heavily armed desperadoes?
Well, actually, he was after one guy. And that guy’s crime was… cockfighting.
Yes, “in a massive show of force [Arpaio] executed a search warrant and arrested the homeowner, Jesus Llovera, on charges of suspected cockfighting. Llovera was alone in the house at the time of the arrest, and he was unarmed.”
Now some might say that it’s a bit of overkill to conduct a militaristic operation that “cost tens of thousands of dollars” to arrest one unarmed guy. But you would be missing the point.
This is about being tough on crime, and in any case, the sheriff’s office says, they “err on the side of caution. We’re going to make sure that we have the appropriate amount of force in case we do run into anything.”
One presumes that “anything” includes several highly agitated chickens.
Many residents of the suburb were understandably alarmed to see a tank rolling down their placid streets. Their surprise must have been compounded when they discovered that washed-up action star Steven Seagal was riding in the tank. It was all part of an upcoming episode of Seagal’s new reality-television show “Lawman.” For filming purposes, Seagal has ”carte blanche to go along with the sheriff as he arrests people.”
And what an episode that will be! Arpaio and Seagal, busting down a wall with a tank, blowing out the windows on the suspect’s home, and sending in the SWAT team in full gear to bring down the cowering cockfighter. One can only imagine the scene when the cops busted in and bellowed, “Drop the chicken!”
You can’t tell me that isn’t entertainment.
As it turned out, the cops confiscated 115 chickens and euthanized them. Allow me an aside to say that I once knew a Latino guy who claimed that it was ok to raise fighting roosters because “It’s our culture.” I guess that excuses torturing animals. But that’s another post altogether.
The point is that Arpaio has once again proven that he is not to be fucked with. If he uses a tank to arrest one guy, imagine what he’ll do to undocumented immigrants… Well, maybe we don’t want to visualize that.
Anyway, let’s hope the cameras keep rolling on Arpaio. With luck, some Arizona teenager will shoplift beer from a 7-11, and Arpaio and Chuck Norris will give chase in a helicopter outfitted with rockets.
Cool!
A nine-year-old girl in Arizona is brutally shot down by a psychopath who may also be a right-wing nut.
No, this is not the story of Christina Green, the little girl born on 9/11 who was killed in the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson. As heartbreaking and appalling as her death was, it has not lacked for media attention.
This is the story of Brisenia Flores, whose murder has simply not touched America in the same way that Green’s death has. In fact, her killing has received surprisingly little attention.
Thanks to Lucifurry and Ankhesen Mie for their recent comments on my posts.
Perhaps they were as surprised as I was to find out that, in 2011, gay soldiers are less controversial than undocumented immigrants.
Yes, in a final burst of lame-duck progressivism, the U.S. Congress rightfully eliminated the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy at the end of 2010. As happy as I am for gay-rights activists, I feel a twinge of jealousy that about five minutes before the Senate decided to give the homophobia a break, these same people said, “But those brown-skinned kids still have to go.
Even though they were willing to deal with President Obama on just about every other piece of last-minute legislation, Republicans squashed the Dream Act as if it were a pesky mosquito.
Clearly, getting tough on illegals is still a resonant theme for the GOP. This is despite the fact that it is long-term political suicide to piss off the fastest-growing demographic in America.
The approach also ignores the fact that “Americans are more inclined to support than oppose legislation similar to the Dream Act.”
So even popular appeal is not enough to pass this most modest of reforms, which “was originally designed to be the first in a sequence of measures to resolve the status of the nation’s illegal immigrants.”
Rather than a starting point, however, the Dream Act became a flash point, proving that “in the age of stalemate, immigration may have a special place in the firmament.”
Indeed, could anyone have predicted, a decade ago, that Republicans would be more willing to say nice things about homosexuals than they are to pass immigration reform that’s actually beneficial to their big-business overlords?
And the miniscule progress that has been made will soon be wiped out, because “when Republican lawmakers take over the House and gain strength in the Senate … a decade-long drive to overhaul the immigration system and legalize some of the estimated 11 million undocumented migrants seems all but certain to come to a halt.”
The optimists among us insist that change is still possible. In fact, President Obama recently told Congressional Hispanic Caucus members that “he’ll renew his push for comprehensive immigration reform in 2011 — even though such an effort would face even longer odds in a Congress where Republicans control the House.”
But quixotic efforts aside, no one expects the issue to be resolved in time for, say, the 2012 elections. That means it will once again be open season on the undocumented (and by extension, Latinos) during the presidential campaign.
If only we were as popular and universally beloved as gay people are… yes that’s sarcasm.
First off, let me thank Festina, Kerstein, and Robin for their comments.
Second, let me backtrack a little by retelling the story of Cousin #6. As you may recall, he came to America when he was a toddler. When he turned eighteen and joined the Army, he assumed his application for citizenship would be fast-tracked. However, even after filling out all the paperwork and following every rule, years later he found himself on the phone talking to an INS official who insisted that he come to the office for an interview.
“But I’m on active duty,” my cousin said. “In Bagdad.”
“That’s not an excuse,” the INS official said.
Yes, Cousin #6 had entered the immigration maze.
The Dream Act may not be dead. But it is most certainly on hold, and no one is sure for how long.
The U.S. Senate did not directly kill the bill. Rather, Senate Republicans filibustered the defense authorization bill. The reason was that the Dream Act, as well as the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal, were amendments to the legislation. These two bits of conservative wolfbane were too much for Republicans to stomach. So they voted, en masse and without exception, to deny the bill’s passage.
Here’s a quick thanks to Emma, Ankhesen, and Chris for their recent comments on my posts.
I was hoping to unleash a fiery broadside today, about twenty-four hours after SB 1070 took effect in Arizona. However, some federal judge has stolen my thunder by putting the anti-immigrant law on hold.
Yes, Judge Susan Bolton has granted a preliminary injunction that blocked the most odious parts of the law. That means the really good stuff — like stopping Latinos on the street and demanding to see their papers — simply isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
Still, protests against the law went on as planned. And a whole mess of people got arrested in nonviolent demonstrations.
As expected, the law’s supporters are appealing, and the whole thing will probably end up in the Supreme Court. Conservatives predict that once it hits there, their heroes (Scalia, Thomas, etc) will come to their rescue and proclaim the law to be the most extra-special really neato constitutionally wonderful thing, like, ever.
We’ll see about that. In any case, it may be years before SB 1070 is either enacted or put out of its misery.
And by then, the country may be mostly Hispanic anyway. Now wouldn’t that be funny?
Apparently, Little Brother is watching you.
I know we were supposed to be afraid of the surveillance powers of an out-of-control government. However, it seems that our fellow citizens have taken it upon themselves to create paranoia and fear among the populace.
