(Considering how many people are affected, this is anything but a side-story. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
The federal trial of three Pennsylvania police officers accused of covering up the murder of an undocumented Mexican immigrant opened last week-reigniting critical discussion about the recent rise of anti-immigrant hate crimes. The officers-former Shenandoah Police Chief Matthew Nestor, Lt. William Moyer and Patrolman Jason Hayes-allegedly attempted to conceal the racially motivated nature of the 2008 murder of 25-year-old Luis Ramirez, who was brutally beaten to death in a park by a group of teenagers spouting racial slurs. At the time, Ramirez's murder underscored a growing trend of anti-Hispanic violence in the U.S., which some attribute to increasingly anti-immigrant political rhetoric.
As in Tunisia, so in Arizona. In Arizona, they say that shooting a congresswoman and killing federal judge--as well as her staffers and constituents--is not a political act. "It is the act of a madman"--as if the two were clearly and cleanly mutually exclusive. But saying that does not make it so. Saying that is itself a political act--one that calls out to be contested.
In Tunisia, a young unemployed university graduate, Mohamed Bouazizi, has his unlicensed vegetable and fruit stand confiscated by authorities. It is unclear how many times this has happened to him, but it has happened more than once. And it has happened to many more people than him, many more times than anyone can count. Surely, this is not a political matter, not a political act. It is just the way of the world. It is an administrative police matter, a code violation, nothing more. Complete routine. Unexectional. It is like a traffic stop in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles on August 11, 1965: nothing political at all.
The protests were triggered by a young unemployed university graduate, Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself aflame after his unlicensed vegetable and fruit stand was confiscated by authorities in the city of Sidi Bouzid, in central Tunisia. Bouazizi's fate resembled that of many Tunisian youths, educated but with few job opportunities before them. The dramatic and tragic image of a young man aflame shattered the myth of the 'Tunisian economic miracle' and in its own way, what little legitimacy Zine Ben Ali's rule seemed to enjoy both domestically and internationally.
The rule of the tyrants decline
The year, 1979
From Uganda to Nicaragua
It's bombs and bullets all the time
So they corrupt, so they vile
So it's coup after coup all the while
Human rights they violate
They thought they were too great
So in disgrace now they live in exile
Gairy is a wanted man
Idi Amin is a wanted man
Shah of Iran fighting hard to survive
He too was wanted dead or alive
Strikes, demonstrations & wars
Injustice is always the cause
Politicians turn too soon from
poor people into tycoons
Corruption must bring horrors
South African Vorster resign in disgrace
Muzurewa take away Ian Smith place
The Uganda devil was easily cat straddled
Beaten up and chased, what a waste.
Gairy is a wanted man
Patrick John is a wanted Man
The Shah of Iran fighting hard to survive
He too is wanted dead or alive
The Shah have a short time to live
Because the Ayatollah don't forgive
When you see church ruling state
With pure vengeance and hate
Situation must be explosive
General Somoza from Nicaragua
Thought it was easy with the Sandanista
With the help of Venezuela, Panama and Cuba
They kick him straight to America
Gairy is a wanted man
Bokassa is a wanted man
Ali Bhutto tried so hard to survive
He too was wanted dead or alive.
Grenadian Mongoose was bad and so brave
They send the old Bishop straight to his grave
After that, well Gairy skip town
With his diary and him obeah gown
No more people to enslave
Trinidad neighbours all expecting mayhem
Anytime anything could happen to them
Eric Williams taking a back seat to avoid banana
but everyone know he 'fraid Carl
Gairy is a wanted man
Park Chung Hee was a wanted man
Achempong tried so hard to survive
He too was wanted dead or alive.
But it only happened because--starting with one man, Mohamed Bouazizi--the people of Tunisia questioned the handed-down definition of what was political and what was not. The very essence of democracy is that we all get to define what is political, and what, if anything, is not.
If we do not define it for ourselves, then others will define it for us.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was shot in the head at a constituent outreach event in a supermarket parking lot in Tucson on Saturday. In all, the gunman shot 18 people, killing 6, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl.
Jamelle Bouie of TAPPED urges President Obama to take up the issue of mental health care in his upcoming speech on the mass shooting. Several people who knew the alleged shooter came forward with stories of bizarre behavior and run-ins with campus police at his community college. College administrators ordered him to seek treatment before he returned to school, but he does not appear to have done so.
H. Clarke Romans of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Southern Arizona explained to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that mental health services in Arizona have been devastated by budget cuts.
In 2008 the state eliminated support services for all non-Medicaid behavioral health patients and stopped covering most brand-name psychiatric drugs. At least 28,000 Arizonans were affected. Arizonans with mental illnesses can expect even more cuts in the future as the state slashes spending in an attempt to address its budget shortfall.
In AlterNet, Adele Stan, argues that, while we don't yet know the gunman's motives, the right wing's intensifying campaign of anti-government hysteria and violent rhetoric may have emboldened an already disturbed person:
Had the vitriolic rhetoric that today shapes Arizona's political landscape (and, indeed, our national landscape) never come to call, Loughner may have found a different reason to go on a killing spree. But that vitriol does exist as a powerful prompt to the paranoid, and those who publicly deem war on the federal government a patriot's duty should today be doing some soul-searching.
I don't have too much to add to the Giffords debate, but in case these points haven't been made (probably unlikely) or haven't been made prominently enough, let me raise three issues about the Arizona massacre:
Implicit versus explicit eliminationist rhetoric. There has been much justifiable focus on various forms of explicit, or even slightly veiled but still militant/aggressive rhetoric in the political discourse. I think more attention needs to go the implicit calls for violence, usually in the form of portraying adversaries as the extremes of evil, and even direct equation with history's greatest monsters like Stalin, Mao and of course, that Austrian painter who went on to a bad end. The thing about calling Obama Hitler, or Stalin is, you don't fight Stalin by organizing a petition drive, or a peaceful protest. He liquidates his enemies. You fight him tooth and nail in every alley and from every dark corner. By making such comparisons you foment in your supporters a romantic fantasy of being the French Résistance (perhaps the only time right wingers have anything good to say about France). After all, right wingers have spent a lot of effort comparing anyone who wants to negotiate with anyone considered "bad" to Chamberlain giving away Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. So if the enemy is Hitler, what else is there but violence to stop him? He cannot be appeased, it is either total victory for freedom or totalitarianism.
This debate should have happened years ago. While I support this issue being a major debate as the extremity of the crime certainly warrants the attention, I'm not alone in noting that there have been a frightening number of incidents of politically motivated violence, including numerous murders in recent years. While more people died and were injured this time than at some of the others, I fear that the real distinction here as far as Very Serious People are concerned is that actual Villagers or people the Villagers know were hurt and killed. Why didn't this debate erupt say when Dr. Tiller was murdered, or when 2 were murdered at the Knoxville church for being too liberal by the guy who wanted to get everyone in Bernie Goldberg's book? If in six months another madman kills even more people for political reasons but none of them are "important" people as far as Versailles is concerned, will a similar major discussion happen? I hope so but I think not.
Does the right have any actual policy to handle this? Lest the debate careen off into oblivion, some attempt to suggest any serious ideas for how to prevent this sort of thing from happening should occur. As it's clear the right is not going to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness for their rhetorical extremism, they should be challenged to suggest some actual laws that might have stopped this or the other incidents of political violence. It not enough to provide guards to members of Congress at public events; can the government guard every "liberal" Church or IRS office? There's far too many targets for lone lunatics to go after, so what is the right going to suggest we do about that? My suspicion is that they have no ideas for this. The right wing cupboard is bare. As for the left, it's true that the right has succeeded in making all gun control politically toxic, at least liberalism has ideas that might have either prevented this (such as making it easier to bar the mentally unfit from gun possession) to reducing the harm done (restore restrictions on magazine sizes that lapsed in the AWB) to even helping the mentally unsound before they become violent (say by a program that makes it easier to get people into free psychological help). At the very least, forcing the right to say (in effect) "We have no ideas, so America will just have to live with people going on killing sprees every six months..." is important in exposing the limits of their vision for life and society.
And to the inevitable and highly cynical right wing responses to any policy suggestions to this tragedy, let us only heap scorn. We who survive such tragedies have a responsibility to the living to prevent their recurrence. If that requires "politicizing a tragedy" or a "power grab" then I say politicize and grab while asking the critics "so what are you going to say to the next group of bereaved people to explain what you did to prevent this from taking away someone they love from a known threat?" I think people expect a little more inspiration from the political class than "shit happens, carry a gun."
Below is a piece I wrote for The Huffington Post not long ago, which sums up the situation we knew we were dealing with after a deranged man tried to kill members of a Panama City, Florida School Board (and really well before that).
Clearly, there's a lot of anger in America right now.
Much of it justified, as some can afford shower curtain rings that would dwarf others' weekly wages (and the latter are the ones who are lucky enough to have jobs). When you take this fact, combine it with the Orwellian "Newspeak" so pervasive in our media (which David Neiwert has written so articulately about), and multiply that by the NRA's mission to fight for the rights of criminals, the mentally ill and even terrorists to have access to guns, you have a toxic stew, ready to erupt.
And that does not even begin to discuss the lack of mental health services we provide, which has only gotten worse since the onset of The Great Recession
Scene: Panama City, Florida. A school board meeting is interrupted by a man with a criminal record of assault (with a gun) waving a gun, and furious that his wife lost her job, his benefits have run out and the board members were unwilling to raise sales taxes so she and others like her wouldn't be fired (it should be noted that reports are still sketchy, so not all of what he says about his wife and himself during the five minutes when the board members try and talk him down can be confirmed yet).
Apparently, to make an omelette, you have to shoot a few eggs.
So the gun lobby marches on: Much harm, no foul.
The NRA has spent years trying to destroy and delegitimize the ATF, such that nobody has been leading this important law enforcement agency for the past 4 years. Why? Because they try and track where guns come from when they kill people. Crazy. right?
And of course we know that we are creating our very own Bonus Army, as millions are filled with despair and anxiety as we give them a pittance while extending tax cuts for people who make Richie Rich look like Oliver Twist.
So is this our future? Videos of killers wielding illegal guns and holding innocent people hostage -- or worse. Reality TV, gone very, very wrong.
Unless/until we decide that gun safety, economic equality, and preventing pundits from inciting riot/slandering whole groups of people on air are reforms worth fighting for. Stay tuned on this one. In the meantime, sadly, I can promise you one thing: Many mini-revolutions such as this will be televised.
And it will be ugly.
One more prediction after yesterday's' evil occurrence. There will be more, sadly, much more, unless we address these issues. A whole lot of mentally unstable & criminal minds just got a new idea from yesterday..
Note: First an appearance on Lawrence O'Donnell's The Last Word on this topic, below my weekly column at AJE
What does he want? Revenge. For what? Being born.
This is the way famous gunslinger Doc Holliday answers equally famous lawman and good friend Wyatt Earp's inquiry - in their depiction in the movie Tombstone - into why their sworn enemy, Johnny Ringo, is such a misanthrope.
Sadly, this description would be equally accurate in explaining the actions of another Arizona transplant filled with endless rage: Senator John McCain.
I first encountered the seething side of McCain when I was writing my 2008 book, The Real McCain, which was critical of him while pointing out a then-controversial fact, one no longer in dispute among those who lionised him back then. Namely, that the Led Zeppelin-groupie relationship he then enjoyed with many in the media was based on a faulty premise.
John McCain was not a maverick (which he has since admitted after long identifying with the title), but a man driven by a need to fight. To fight for his own redemption, to fight with those who dared disagree with him, and most particularly, to fight with anyone who had delivered him a perceived humiliation of any sort. Think Yosemite Sam on a bender, or Vladamir Putin in those half-naked martial arts pictures.
Sure, McCain was also motivated by the very same political expediency which drives too many politicos, as well as coveting an appearance on the Sunday morning talk circuit the way a twenty-something blonde does meeting Edward Pattinson, or marrying Hugh Hefner.
But the driving force for McCain has been pure vitriol and spite. When I first pointed out this inconvenient truth in my book, that many Republicans, including some willing to go on the record, were sure McCain was motivated by demons and not decency, I was criticised or dismissed in many quarters. Yet, it was obvious to me back then that his battles with fellow Republicans and Democrats had become personal, crusades for the eternally perturbed Abe Simpson stand-in.
I broke two stories in my book that spoke to McCain's temperament, that he had physically assaulted a member of his own party after taunting him (Republican Representative Rick Renzi) and had called his wife a very not-safe-for-work term of non-endearment. In perhaps an emblematic McCain moment, during a policy meeting with a fellow Republican, McCain "called the guy a 'sh-head.' The senator demanded an apology. McCain stood up and said, 'I apologise, but you're still a sh-head.'"
There's a reason the dude was nicknamed "McNasty" in high school.
by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
After commanding the world's attention in 2010 with its cavalier stance on immigration, the Arizona state legislature is threatening-once again-to dominate national immigration discourse and policy.
by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
The Senate failed to pass the DREAM Act Saturday, as Democrats fell five votes short of the 60 needed to advance the bill. The final vote was 55-41. While a Republican filibuster diminished the bill's chances of success, five Democrats sealed the measure's fate. Max Baucus (D-MT), Kay Hagan (D-NC), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Jon Tester (D-MT) crossed party lines to vote against the bill that would have created a conditional path to legalization for immigrant youth who attend college or serve in the military.
A notoriously restrictive voter registration law was struck down in Arizona today after the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued its long-awaited decision in Gonzales v. Arizona. And it was worth the wait.
By a 2-1 vote (the majority included retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor), the court struck down Arizona's documentary proof of citizenship requirement for all new voter registrants because it is superseded by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA). Project Vote is a plaintiff in this case.
Earlier this year, the League of Women Voters and Project Vote teamed up to find that, despite intervention from the Justice Department in 2008, the state Department of Economic Security (DES) was still not doing everything it should to follow the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). In response to our findings, we gathered a coalition of support in hopes of urging the state to continue taking the necessary steps to increase their levels of compliance with a law that has helped many underrepresented, low-income Arizonan communities cast their vote of Election Day.
by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
It's no secret that anti-immigrant activists have a penchant for targeting youth, the most vulnerable of the undocumented set. But the Senate defeat of the popular DREAM Act confirmed the obvious. The war on immigrants is being waged not only along our borders, but within our classrooms as well.
This is the eighteenth article in a continuing series by the NRDC Action Fund on the environmental stances of candidates in key races around the country.
Tucson, Arizona has quite an environmental legacy. For 40 years it was the political base of the Udall brothers -- Stewart, a U.S. Representative in the 1950s and Interior Secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and Morris, a U.S. Representative for 30 years and a pioneering environmentalist. Most of Tucson, along with Arizona's southeastern desert, make up the state's 8th Congressional District. Politically this district leans Republican, but only slightly. John McCain carried the district in the 2008 election, and for more than 20 years moderate Republican Jim Kolbe represented the district in the U.S. House. Since Kolbe's retirement in 2007, the 8th district has been represented by Tucson native and former state Senator Gabrielle Giffords (D). This November, Giffords is being challenged by Republican Jesse Kelly, an Iraq War veteran and "Tea Party" favorite, who won the August 24 primary in an upset victory over former State Senator Jonathan Paton.
Giffords has built on the Udall brothers' environmental legacy, making solar energy one of her top legislative priorities, saying that she wants Arizona to be "the Silicon Valley of solar energy." During her first three years in Congress, Giffords has voted the right way on just about every environmental issue, earning a career rating of over 90% from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV). Last June, she supported the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), our nation's first climate bill and an important step forward in creating green jobs. Her vote for ACES was supported by many Arizona community and business leaders. In a statement following the vote, Giffords said that ACES will "help jumpstart our economy. We've seen that right here in Arizona, where a small but vibrant solar energy industry is taking root. Arizona can be a world leader in solar energy production and use. The American Clean Energy and Security Act will help us achieve this goal."
Kelly's position on clean energy and climate couldn't be further from Giffords. He believes we should "toss cap and trade," which he calls a "massive tax increase & jobs killer." The truth, according to according to collaborative research by the University of Illinois, Yale University and the University of California, is that ACES could lead to as many as 1.9 new jobs nationally; 24,000 in Arizona alone. And according to experts at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the bill would cost the average household $175 a year, or less than 50 cents a day.
Kelly doesn't just stop at attacking ACES, he also takes issue with the overwhelming evidence of global warming, calling it "junk-science." The experts at the National Academy of Sciences, our most authoritative scientific body, strongly disagree with Kelly's claims, saying, "Some scientific conclusions or theories have been so thoroughly examined and tested, and supported by so many independent observations and results, that their likelihood of subsequently being found to be wrong is vanishingly small. Such conclusions and theories are then regarded as settled facts. This is the case for the conclusions that the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities."
Kelly's stance on climate is unsurprising given that he has signed Americans for Prosperity's "No Climate Tax Pledge." Americans for Prosperity is the big oil funded think tank behind the tea party movementwhose campaign is being supported by ultra-conservative Koch Industries.
The NRDC Action Fund believes that it is important for the public in general, and the voters of specific Congressional districts, be aware of this information as they weigh their choices for November.
Please welcome Brian Tashman at People For the American Way Action Fund. PFAW Action Fund is sponsoring OpenLeft and will be doing a series highlighting young progressive candidates through the November election.
While young people in this country are far more likely to hold progressive ideals and vote for progressive candidates, right-wing organizations have led the way in training students and young politicians to promote conservative beliefs and policies. Groups like Young Americans for Freedom, the Young America Foundation, the Collegiate Network, the Leadership Institute, and Eagle Forum Collegians, created an infrastructure based on educating, motivating, and guiding conservative campus leaders and elected officials around the country. Even Tea Party groups have launched schools to instruct activists on their distorted views of the Constitution and political organizing strategies. As Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition said, the Religious Right’s main battles were fought in “neighborhoods, school boards, city councils and state legislatures” before coming to the national stage.
Young progressives across the country are leading the fights for reproductive justice, immigrant rights, marriage equality, and serious campaign finance reform. The state and local leaders of today are the national leaders of tomorrow, and progressive champions like Russ Feingold, Sherrod Brown, Steve Cohen, and Tammy Baldwin were all first elected to state and local offices at a young age before coming to Congress.
That’s why the People For the American Way Action Fund is working to identify, promote and assist young progressive leaders and we want your help. Between now and Election Day, we’ll be highlighting some of the extraordinary young people running for office. We hope you’ll visit their websites, chip in a few dollars, and volunteer for progressive candidates in your area.
Many of the Action Fund’s candidates are running in states such as Arizona, Oklahoma, and Georgia, where state legislatures have endorsed some of the most stringent, anti-women, anti-immigrant, and anti-LGBT laws in the country. Others are running in places such as New York, Illinois, and Maryland, where progressive legislation such as marriage equality has a real chance of passing in the next few years.
The PFAW Action Fund will be launching a new site featuring our candidates and ways to help them win elections, promote progressive principles and combat the Far-Right.
Please join me in the extended entry to meet the first of the progressive candidates we’re featuring.
Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is known for housing inmates in tent cities in the desert and making them wear pink clothes as humiliation, but also for allegations of racial profiling and abusive treatment of Latinos, inside and outside of his jailhouse.
On September 2, 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Office, challenging Arpaio’s refusal to demonstrate that his office is complying with federal civil rights laws. Specifically, the suit alleges that the Sheriff’s Office has violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race or ethnicity by institutions, like the Sheriff’s Office, that receive federal funds, and requires them to document their compliance.
The recent signing of Arizona's harsh anti-immigrant bill reminded me of another law passed a while ago. Commonly called the Bennett law, it aimed to make the teaching of English mandatory in all public and private schools. Like Arizona's law, it constituted a response to large immigration, ignited by nativist sentiment.
The Bennett law reacted to similar anti-immigration feelings as those present in Arizona today. To many Americans, immigrants were unwanted foreigners taking away American jobs. They spoke a foreign language and came from a foreign land. They did not speak English and were accused of refusing to do so. They had a different culture and stayed together amongst themselves; assimilation did not seem to work with them. They seemed less loyal to the United States and more loyal to their homeland. At core, they seemed "un-American."
I am speaking, of course, about German immigrants in Wisconsin.
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