Public opinion on comprehensive immigration reform is quite clear, Americans want workable solutions in order for us to move forward as a nation. Polls by major news stations, both national and local, show that the American public supports providing a way for illegal immigrants already living in the United States to stay here and apply to legally remain in this country, provided they have a job and pay back taxes.
The White House is calling the maneuver "a multi-layered effort to target illicit networks trafficking in people, drugs, illegal weapons and money.” But in practice, beefing up border enforcement under existing federal programs has only drained our government resources, has put into serious jeopardy our commitment to due process under the law, and has presented serious human rights implications.
For example, Operation Streamline, an existing Department of Homeland Security program, was instituted in 2005, and mandates the federal criminal prosecution and imprisonment of all people who cross the U.S.-Mexico border unlawfully.
According to a 2007 poll, Americans define human rights as the rights to equal opportunity, freedom from discrimination, a fair criminal justice system, and freedom from torture or abuse by law enforcement. Despite the current political wrangling over how to reform it, a majority of Americans even believe that access to health care is a human right.
There was a time when America’s leaders echoed those sentiments. President Franklin D. Roosevelt embraced them when he told Congress, “Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.” And in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Civil Rights Act, forming the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The Commission was intended to conduct critical reviews of social needs and public policy – in essence, to be the conscience of the nation. Regardless of circumstances or leadership, the body was to operate as an independent voice for the broad range of civil rights issues facing the country.
Here at The Opportunity Agenda, we talk a lot about values, and the importance of building communications around them. In fact, we built a whole organization around six core values that drive our work and the way we talk about it. We do this, of course, because these values matter to us. Seeing them realized and supported are central to our goals. But as NPR explained recently, leading with values is also a savvy communications strategy. In a story on people's beliefs about climate change, reporter Christopher Joyce describes findings from Yale's Cultural Cognition Project that people form their views about climate change, among other things, based more on their existing worldview - and values - than on the facts presented to them.
The economic collapse and ensuing high unemployment rates have reminded us that no one is immune to the vagaries of the 21st century economy. While there has been significant disagreement about how to jumpstart the economy, motivated as often as not by partisanship, most people in Congress understand that, at least in the short-term, basic human decency demands that our social safety net remain accessible to the millions enduring hardship because of the extended recession. For one Senator, though, it is simply too expensive to provide even modest support to those among us who are have been hit hardest.
(This is very brief, but very good diary for driving home some important messages that are being made on cable, as well as online. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
Last week, Alan Jenkins, Executive Director of The Opportunity Agenda, co-hosted an episode of MSNBC Live. With the regular host, Carlos Watson, Alan took the opportunity to inject values into the current health care debate.
He told Carlos, "I'm surprised that Obama hasn't been telling the big story rooted in values. He was so good at that during the campaign. Candidate Obama could tie those wonky details, like the public option, to a big values based story that we could all relate to. And he really has failed to do that in this case."
Also on the show, Alan and Carlos spoke with Maya Wiley, Executive Director of the Center for Social Inclusion.
She spoke of the continued needs and disparities in New Orleans, particularly in health care, four years after Hurricane Katrina. The situation offers a concrete example of how stimulus dollars are critical for expanding opportunity.
Much has been made of the vitality that President Obama brings to the White House. To be sure, this is in part the story of his relative youth—only Clinton, Grant, Kennedy, and Theodore Roosevelt were younger when assuming the office—but it’s also a function of his ability to convince the millennial generation (or vocalize the millennial generation’s belief) that their voices matter. Given the size and scope of the challenges facing our nation, we need young people to see the stake that they have in their communities.
Our communities are more than just the physical spaces, or indeed even the relationships, that constitute them. Rather, our communities are a reflection of the countless individual times when each and every one of us has looked beyond our parochial interests to invest time, energy, and resources into something bigger than ourselves. Bringing food and comfort to an ailing neighbor, organizing a block party, or even stopping to pick up a single piece of litter; these are the actions that build a community.
The role of ideology keeps coming up again and again, often with people only barely recognizing it. And this seemed to be a moment crying out for some clarification. I'd like to start with a comment I wrote in response to comment by metamars. I wrote:
I Agree With Everything You Say Here
except for your bizarre insistence that "this has nothing to do with ideology":
I personally am not very ideological, so I don't look at this so much as "pushing Obama to the left". Rather, I look at this as saving the country from financial armegeddon, which will directly relate to the ability of the United States to lead the world to a greener, planet-saving future.
We can't afford to waste yet another 8 years, which could be well spent moving the planet to a sustainable future. To me, this has nothing to do with ideology. If the sea level is rising, water resources are getting stressed, arable farm land is being lost, and we are still hooked on burning hydrocarbons, 8 years from now, your ideology isn't going to make a fig of difference when it inevitably becomes your turn to suffer drought, lung cancer, hunger, and poverty.
The essence of ideology is how one parses the world--not just the physical world, but the moral and conceptual world as well. So the connections you make in this passage are your ideology made manifest.
This is a crucial point, deeply obscured by our history, and repeated mischaracterizations of ideology (typified by the trope, "I have ideas, you have an ideology!").
One of the themes President Obama spoke about in his speech the other night was returning to the America we grew up knowing--returning to the America which we believe in. In addressing the nation, President Obama reminded us that "living our values doesn't make us weaker. It makes us safer, and it makes us stronger."
With this message resonating in our ears, it's difficult to hear about what a Sheriff in Arizona has been doing recently. Relying heavily on racial profiling, Sheriff Jeff Arpaio has been pulling over "Latino-looking" drivers have been pulled over for minor violations and asked to produce Social Security cards. He's focused his efforts on sidewalk "crime sweeps" in low-crime neighborhoods--detaining those who cannot prove their citizenship status on spot, while ignoring the real issues our communities face.
Finally, earlier this month Sheriff Arpaio was getting ready to round up immigrant men and women and march them off to separate "tent cities" surrounded by electric fences.
Our friend's at America's Voice have a made a video detailing some of these affronts on basic human dignity. You may view and sign a petition being sent to the Attorney General demanding an investigation of Sheriff Arpaio here.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about my experience at the BlogWorldExpo political panels, and noted the alarming moral degeneracy among the conservative attendees. I was helped in this by the notes taken by K T Cat. He made my point for me by condensing several examples of this government's behavior (warrantless wiretapping, shredding the Constitution, going to war on lies, etc.) that I find more offensive than words for sex and body parts into the dismissive phrase "Bush administration policies," then promptly declaring that sexual attitudes should be the top priority of society.
Right. Because when your fellow citizens are being made homeless by the perfidy of our banks and financial institutions or remaining homeless because the Bush administration abandoned the poor of the Gulf Coast, or are living in debt peonage, or when police violence and impunity continues to escalate across the nation, or while the country is being bled dry to feed Halliburton, Bechtel, CH2M, Lockheed Martin and Blackwater, that's the time to rail against the horrors of one of our species' most basic biological urges. Unless it's time to rail against the horror of knowing that you helped pay for a kid's bone marrow transplant, which ought to make you mad, for some reason.
Which is no better than the ignorance displayed by someone in the audience at a Friday panel at Blog World, from the near unnavigable site Democast, who insisted that the Tamil Tigers were just another example of a dangerous Muslim group bringing fascism to the world, after I mentioned that they were the original suicide bombers. But as I'd said, the Tamil Tigers are a nationalist movement, spurred by the racist policies of a Sinhalese government instead of religion, and they happen also to be Hindu. Not Muslim. Not Arab. Tamil Hindus. Kind of puts a damper on blaming all the ills of the world on the Scary Islamic Jihadis.
Wingnuts. They'd almost be cute if their leaders hadn't seized control of the government by means of vote fraud and a corrupt court. Also, if they weren't so racist. Really dampens the charisma potential.
Thanksgiving is the most American of holidays. It is rooted in our founding myths, in the struggle of European immigrants to understand and survive in a new land. In the triumph of perseverance and neighborly virtue over the harshness of the world we find ourselves in. We gather together with family and friends and eat new world foods to celebrate the survival of our founding settlers and the most beautiful time of the year for much of our country.
This is my third Thanksgiving in America since spending the prior five Thanksgivings in England. Living there gave me a much greater appreciation of what it means to be an American, to have rights, and to fight for those rights. I am immensely thankful that I am an American and that we have rights for me to defend.
Pure and simple all the policy ideas in the world don't matter if I don't trust you to do what you say, don't think you have the leadership abilities to do what you plan, or think that you have the backbone to follow through when you are challenged. I know that many people here will choose their candidate based purely on positions, but I don't think that is true of most of the electorate nor do I think it should be.
We are electing candidates based on what we think they will do in the future, and how they will affect the future of our nation. Past performance is usually a good indicator of how they will perform in the future, but so is our own judgement of what they really plan to do and why they plan to do it. We also need to be confident that they have the intelligence and judgement to make good decisions about problems that have yet to arise. For all of these reasons we need to choose a candidate who has both integrity and ability.
The immediate reason for this diary is hutsu's diary concerning Obama's use of Donnie McClurkin in his campaign. I've read a few posts on it - from Chuck Currie to Matt Stoller - and I have a few thoughts on the matter.
The first is that it reminds me quite a bit of the John Edwards blogger non-scandal. First, everyone is entitled to their opinion - even if it is offensive to some part of society (and what comment isn't offensive to some part of society?). Second, it is, on the surface, a rather silly issue upon which to derail a campaign.
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