Senate Bill 1070, Arizona's notorious anti-immigrant law, is set to go into effect on July 29. With days left to go, Organizers are in a race against the clock to minimize the bill's impact on immigrant communities. Meanwhile, legal experts are examining the strategy behind a federal Department of Justice suit recently lobbed against the Arizona law, and other immigrant rights supporters continue to pressure the state via boycott. All of these acts are contributing to a tumultuous fight that's escalating by the day.
Only two people know what actually went down between Professor Henry Louis Gates and Sergeant James Crowley last week, and even they disagree—apparently in good faith—about what transpired. So as the two prepare to have a beer with President Obama later this week, let’s move on to a more productive conversation about race and law enforcement.
Whatever happened at Gates’s Cambridge home, Americans correctly see disparate law enforcement based on race as a serious problem that needs remedying. In a 2007 national poll commissioned by The Opportunity Agenda, 84% of Americans agreed that “when the police stop and search people solely based on their race or ethnicity they are violating their human rights.”
As many explained in subsequent focus groups, this treatment, when it occurs, is also a violation of American values. As a Caucasian participant in Columbus, OH, explained, “Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. You’re restricting people’s ability to be happy in their life… that’s a violation of their human rights.”
Many also noted that unwarranted police stops are frequently accompanied by disrespectful treatment. As an African-American woman in Houston asserted, “the majority of the time they [police officers] mistreat them when they pull them over, they talk bad to them or hit them or disrespect them. They don’t just say, ‘May I see your driver’s license?’ They say, ‘Whatchya doing boy, why are you here? You don’t have any business over here, do you live here?’”
And we heard from many Latino participants that officers increasingly, and inappropriately, link their race and ethnicity to stereotypes about immigration status: “They should not pull you over just to ask for your papers because when you are getting pulled over they are supposed to have just cause. They need to have a reason for why they are pulling you over. They can’t just say, ‘Oh, he’s Mexican, let’s pull him over and find out if he is from here or not.’ I am Hispanic, but I was born here and that doesn’t give you the right to just pull me over for no reason at all and ask me if I am here legally. That is a violation of my rights.”
(I'll be writing some more about this on the weekend. But at this point, the voter suppression front needs daily attention. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
It happened in 2004 and 2006, and it may be happening in 2008
In the 2008 election Americans may once again be seeing law enforcement turned into a tool of voter suppression.
It is illegal for law enforcement agents to use their authority to attempt to intimidate or suppress the vote. Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 states that no person “whether acting under color of law or otherwise,” shall intimidate, threaten, or coerce any individual forvoting or attempting to vote, or for attempting to assist others to vote. Section 12 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993provides for criminal penalties against any person who intimidates or attempts to intimidate any person for registering to vote, voting, or attempting to register or vote.
In the past few weeks, however, partisan forces have manufactured hysteria around the myth of “voter fraud” that they have used to help goad law-enforcement into intimidation and politically motivated investigations into eligible voters. As the election approaches Project Vote and other voting rights organizations are seeing law enforcement officials inserting themselves into election administration, and partisan pressure to coerce law enforcement agents into overreaching investigations into the eligibility of legal voters.
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