Meandering Thoughts From An Edumacated Vato Loco

Racism & Fascism (Excerpt from a speech by Toni Morrison)

2011-11-03T17:44:00.000-07:00

Excerpt of a speech Toni Morrison delivered at Howard University

Racism and Fascism (“The Nation,” May 29 1995, p. 60)

Let us be reminded that before there is a final solution, there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third. The move toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then another, then another. Something, perhaps like this:

1. Construct an internal enemy, as both focus and diversion.
2. Isolate and demonize that enemy by unleashing and protecting the utterance of overt and coded name-calling and verbal abuse. Employ ad hominem attacks as legitimate charges against that enemy.
3. Enlist and create sources and distributors of information who are willing to reinforce the demonizing process because it is profitable, because it grants power and because it works.
4. Palisade all art forms; monitor, discredit or expel those that challenge or destabilize processes of demonization and deification.
5. Subvert and malign all representatives of and sympathizers with the constructed enemy.
6. Solicit, from among the enemy, collaborators who agree with and can sanitize the dispossession process.
7. Pathologize the enemy in scholarly and popular mediums; recycle, for example, scientific racism and myths of racial superiority in order to naturalize the pathology.
8. Criminalize the enemy. Then prepare, budget for and rationalize the building of holding arenas for the enemy—especially its males and absolutely its children.
9. Reward mindlessness and apathy with monumentalized entertainments and with little pleasures, tiny seductions: a few minutes on television, a few lines in the press; a little pseudo-success; the illusion of power and influence; a little fun, a little style, a little consequence.
10. Maintain, at all costs, silence.

In 1995 racism may wear a new dress, buy a new pair of boots, but neither it nor its succubus twin fascism is new or can make anything new. It can only reproduce the environment that supports its own health: fear, denial and an atmosphere in which its victims have lost the will to fight.

The forces interested in fascist solutions to national problems are not to be found in one political party or another, or in one or another wing of any single political party. Democrats have no unsullied history of egalitarianism. Nor are liberals free of domination agendas. Republicans have housed abolitionists and white supremacists. Conservative, moderate, liberal; right, left, hard left, far rights; religious, secular, socialist—we must not be blindsided by these Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola labels because the genius of fascism is that any political structure can host the virus and virtually any developed country can become a suitable home. Fascism talks ideology, but it is really just marketing—marketing for power.

It is recognizable by its need to purge and by its terror of truly democratic agendas. It is recognizable by its determination to convert all public services to private entrepreneurship; all nonprofit organizations to profit-making ones—so that the narrow but protective chasm between governance and business disappears. It changes citizens into taxpayers—so individuals become angry at even the notion of the public good. It changes neighbors into consumers—so the measure of our value as humans is not our humanity or our compassion or out generosity but what we own. It changes parenting into panicking—so that we vote against the interests of our own children; against their health care, their education, their safety from weapons. And in effecting these changes it produces the perfect capitalist, one who is willing to kill a human being for a product—a pair of sneakers, a jacket, a car—or kill generations for control of products—oil, drugs, fruit, gold.

When our fears have all been serialized, our creativity censured, our ideas “marketplaced,” our rights sold, our intelligence sloganized, our strength downsized, our privacy auctioned; when the theatricality, the entertainment value, the marketing of life is complete, we will find ourselves living not in a nation but in a consortium of industries, and wholly unintelligible to ourselves except for what we see as through a screen darkly.

2011-06-05T21:08:00.000-07:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Truth Universal Music

Site: http://truthuniversal.com

Email: press@truthuniversal.com

Phone: 504.481.5959

Press Contact: Akoben Ologun

June 02, 2011

“Immigrant” Video::Truth Universal featuring Bocafloja–Hip Hop addressing U.S. Immigration Policy

As immigrants across the U.S. continue to have their human rights compromised, with HB 411(LA), SB 1070(AZ), HB 87(GA), and other copycat legislation, Hip Hop artist Truth Universal responds with “Immigrant” – the lead single from his latest project “Resistance Vol. 2: Polygraph.” Himself a Trinidad born immigrant, raised in New Orleans, LA, Truth strives to address the plight of the U.S. immigrant, cite the commonality of immigrant struggle regardless of the land of origin, and challenge the contradictions of U.S. immigration enforcement policy. Amidst the sonic backdrop crafted by DJ Black Panther, Mexican born MC, Bocafloja, assists Truth in his commentary on the subject.

The video was shot in both Mexico City, Mexico and New Orleans, LA, as the two emcees were touring.

“Immigrant” can be viewed/downloaded here:

YouTube ==> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQN8lR6Qtus

http://truthuniversal.com/vids/Truth_Universal_Immigrant.mp4

The radio edited single–”Immigrant”–can be heard/downloaded here:

http://trutuniversal.com/music/Truth_Universal_Immigrant_Clean.mp3

High Resolution photos for press may be found here:

http://truthuniversal.com/press/Truth_Universal1_highres.jpg

http://truthuniversal.com/press/Truth_Universal2_highres.jpg

http://truthuniversal.com/press/Truth_Universal3_highres.jpg
v/r

Alabama Bill Sacrifices Citizens' Safety, Perpetuates Bigotry (Courtesy of the SPL Center)

2011-06-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

06/03/2011

Alabama Bill Sacrifices Citizens' Safety, Perpetuates Bigotry

By Sam Brooke

Yesterday, the Alabama Legislature fell into the same costly trap as neighboring Georgia by following the ill-fated footsteps of Arizona and passing harsh anti-immigrant legislation. The bill, H.B. 56, will not only set back years of progress on civil rights in the state but will also add considerably to Alabama's existing budget crisis.

If Gov. Bentley signs H.B. 56 into law, Alabama, already struggling financially, will waste hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of taxpayer dollars to defend this racist law in court.

We joined a number of other civil rights organizations in a lawsuit challenging the Georgia lawbecause it is unconstitutional. The courts have already blocked the notorious Arizona law, which served as a model to Georgia and Alabama, and the courts also blocked a copycat law in Utah last month. These laws have been consistently declared illegal and unconstitutional by the courts.

This cost will threaten the safety and security of all Alabamians by diverting already limited resources away from law enforcement's primary responsibility – protecting and promoting public safety. It will also result in an increase in crime if undocumented immigrants who are crime victims are afraid to contact local police.

But there's an even greater cost to consider. This ill-advised bill undermines our core American values of fairness and equality. By perpetuating the hate rhetoric that has become commonplace among many elected officials, this bill threatens the rights of citizens and non-citizens alike. H.B. 56 attacks workers trying to make a better life for their families, divides communities, and places Alabama, once again, on the wrong side of history.

The Southern Poverty Law Center will continue to fight against laws that create a climate of fear for immigrants. If the governor does not veto H. B. 56, the SPLC will challenge the law in court. Illegal and harmful bills like this will not go unchallenged.

Justice Department to investigate Seattle Police civil-rights practices (Courtesy of the Seattle Times)

2011-04-01T12:35:00.000-07:00

Justice Department to investigate Seattle Police civil-rights practices

The U.S. Department of Justice has decided to investigate the Seattle Police Department to determine whether its officers have engaged in a pattern of unnecessary force, particularly against minorities.

By Mike Carter

Seattle Times staff reporter

COURTNEY BLETHEN RIFFKIN / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Police Chief Diaz comments on Justice Department investigation

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Seattle Police Chief John Diaz said he welcomes the Department of Justice's announcement Thursday that it will investigate whether his officers have engaged in a pattern of unnecessary force and biased policing.

The department has fully cooperated with the inquiry so far, Diaz said, and will continue to do so.

"We have nothing to hide," he said. "We've been open and transparent with the Department of Justice, which makes for a good working relationship."

Diaz, attending a previously scheduled appearance with The Seattle Times editorial board, said he had received a call from the DOJ hours earlier alerting him to the decision. He said he had expected the investigation, which he likened to a "free audit from the Department of Justice."

The DOJ also confirmed Thursday it is conducting a separate criminal investigation into the August shooting death of First Nations woodcarver John T. Williams by a Seattle police officer. The officer, Ian Birk, resigned from the force after prosecutors said they could not build a case against him. (See accompanying story.)

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez, who oversees the DOJ's Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C., announced the departmentwide "patterns and practices" investigation in a conference call with U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan, whose office's civil division will oversee it.

Both Perez and Durkan stressed that the investigation is civil — not criminal — in nature. Its goal, Perez said, is to determine whether there are "systemic violations of the Constitution or federal law by officers of the SPD" and to correct them if they're found.

Should problems be found, the Justice Department will work with the department to fix them, Perez said.

Legal action

If it meets resistance, however, it could sue the department in federal court to force the changes.

The downtown King County Jail underwent a similar investigation in 2007 and was required by the DOJ to make significant changes in its care of inmates under threat of a lawsuit.

"Our goal with this investigation ... is simple: to ensure that the community has an effective, accountable police department that controls crimes, ensures respect for the Constitution and earns the trust of the public it is charged with protecting," Perez said.

That trust has been shaken, Diaz acknowledged, by publicized incidents involving violent arrests or confrontations by Seattle officers. Several of those incidents were cited in a December letter calling for a federal investigation. The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington sent the letter, which was signed by 34 community groups.

The letter outlined several disturbing incidents, including one last year where an officer used a racial slur and threatened to beat a robbery suspect, and the shooting of Williams, which the department's Firearms Review Board found was unjustified.

Two other officers are under state criminal investigation for incidents involving use of force.

Other cities

The Justice Department has looked at similar issues involving state and local law-enforcement agencies in New York, New Orleans, Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California and the District of Columbia.

It has been conducting a preliminary review of the department for several months — even before the December letter.

Durkan said no single incident triggered the inquiry, and neither she nor Perez would go into details about the circumstances or incidents that led to conclude that a full-blown investigation was warranted. Durkan promised a "comprehensive investigation regarding the use of force" or discriminatory policing by Seattle officers.

"We do not prejudge our investigations," Perez said. If violations are found to have occurred, "we will work with the city and police department to develop a plan to remedy them."

The investigation will involve reviews of the department's policies and practices, records and observation of officers in the field. The office will also reach out to community groups and set up a hotline for citizen comments and tips.

Perez and Durkan said the department, the city and the police officers' guild have been cooperative.

"That gives us some real optimism that we can complete the investigation phase in a productive way and get at the truth, wherever it leads us, and get at solutions," Perez said.

The ACLU praised the announcement.

"With its expertise and experience, the Department of Justice should be able to provide some useful recommendations for curtailing the troubling uses of force we've seen," said ACLU of Washington Executive Director Kathleen Taylor.

"We appreciate that city of Seattle and police leaders have taken a cooperative attitude toward the DOJ and expect something good to come from its involvement with Seattle."

Mayor Mike McGinn, through a spokesman, promised to "continue our practice of working openly with the Department of Justice on addressing the issues that they are investigating. They have our full cooperation."

Sgt. Rich O'Neill, president of the Seattle Police Officers' Guild, said he's confident the investigation will not turn up any systemic problems with force or biased policing in the SPD.

"In a way, I'm looking forward to this," O'Neill said. "There's no doubt in my mind they will not uncover any systemic problems.

"They may come up with suggestions in ways we could do better in both areas. Great," O'Neill said.

Durkan has been involved in use-of-force issues with the Police Department for nearly a decade, including a stint as the nonvoting civilian member of the Firearms Review Board.

She was a member of two task forces that have examined the department and its discipline issues and resulted in the creation of the civilian-run Office of Professional Accountability.

She said she will remain "actively engaged" in the investigation.

The request by the ACLU and community groups came after highly publicized incidents in which officers have resorted to force, often against people of color. In their request, the ACLU and other organizations asserted that some Seattle officers appear to "inflict injury out of anger" at suspects rather than to protect public safety.

"Distrust of the police by communities of color grows as a result, and it becomes harder for the Seattle Police Department to do its job of keeping all Seattle residents safe," said the letter, which was sent to Durkan and Perez.

In addition to the Williams shooting, the confrontations include an officer kicking and threatening to beat the "Mexican piss" out of a prone Latino man in April; the repeated kicking of an African-American teen during an arrest inside a convenience store in October; and the pummeling of an African-American man in a police lobby in June 2009, in which officers were cleared of wrongdoing.

Seattle Times staff reporters Jack Broom and Susan Gilmore contributed to this report.

Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com.

Feds investigating officer's shooting of woodcarver (Courtesy of the Seattle Times)

2011-04-01T12:30:00.000-07:00

Feds investigating officer's shooting of woodcarver

The Department of Justice Civil Rights Division is reviewing the August 2010 shooting death of First Nations woodcarver John T. Williams by Ian Birk, who was a Seattle police officer, to determine whether federal civil-rights laws were broken.

By Mike Carter

Seattle Times staff reporter

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SEATTLE POLICE DEPARTMENT

This video still from a police dashboard camera shows the scene after the fatal shooting of woodcarver John T. Williams by Officer Ian Birk. Birk resigned after prosecutors said they did not have enough evidence to charge him in Williams' death.

The U.S. Department of Justice is reviewing whether to file federal criminal charges in the August shooting death of First Nations woodcarver John T. Williams by a Seattle police officer.

The investigation will examine whether former Officer Ian Birk violated Williams' civil rights when he shot and killed him on a downtown city sidewalk. Williams failed to respond to repeated commands that he drop a pocket knife.

"The Department was previously monitoring the local investigation and now that their review is complete, we will conduct an independent review of the facts to determine if the evidence indicates a prosecutable violation of federal criminal civil-rights laws," said Xochitl Hinojosa, a spokeswoman for Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, in a prepared statement Thursday.

The investigation is separate from the civil investigation of the Seattle Police Department announced earlier Thursday. That federal investigation will look at the "patterns and practices" of the department with respect to use-of-force and discriminatory policing.

Birk, who had been a Seattle officer for two years at the time of the shooting, resigned in February after state prosecutors announced they did not have enough evidence to charge him with Williams' death. State law gives considerable deference to police officers who use deadly force, recognizing they often have to make split-second decisions.

His attorney, Ted Buck, said the Justice Department is wasting its time and resources looking to prosecute an officer who followed his training and shot because he feared for his life.

"They're going to find nothing, because they are looking for something that doesn't exist," Buck said.

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg announced in February that the state could not charge Birk because the law required prosecutors to show the officer acted with malice and without good faith.

Federal prosecutors would face a similar burden. They would have to show that Birk, acting under the authority granted him as a police officer, willfully and intentionally deprived Williams of a protected civil right.

Legal experts have said that language provides a difficult burden for prosecutors and it's rare that the government obtains a conviction. Assistant U.S. Attorney Bruce Miyake, a senior criminal prosecutor, sat through the county inquest into Williams' death.

Retired Saint Louis University professor Steven Puro, who has conducted research on the role of federal civil-rights prosecutions in local police accountability, has said those cases have proved hard to bring and even harder to win because it is difficult to prove an officer willfully intended to violate someone's rights.

It's particularly problematic in shooting cases, which often involve split-second decisions, he said.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle lost the only such criminal prosecution brought in the Western District of Washington when, in 2008, a federal jury acquitted a former King County sheriff's deputy accused of kicking a woman during a 2005 arrest.

The Williams shooting outraged many in the community, and his family and their attorneys have demanded justice. Williams was a well-known public inebriate who had numerous nonviolent contacts with police before the shooting.

Tim Ford, the attorney for the Williams family, said Thursday he was encouraged by the Justice Department's decision.

"We would like to have this investigated as impartially as possible," he said. "The federal government would be the most logical candidate remaining. That sounds like a positive development."

Ford said he would continue to pursue his petition asking the King County Superior Court judges to convene a citizen grand jury to determine whether criminal charges should be brought against Birk.

Ford filed the petition March 16 after Satterberg said state law precluded him from charging Birk with a crime.

Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com

The Year In Nativism, 2010 (Courtesy of the SPL Center)

2011-03-11T12:55:00.000-08:00

Intelligence Report, Spring 2011, Issue Number: 141

The Year in Nativism, 2010

'Nativist Extremist' Groups 2010

A state-by-state tally of the 319 groups that the SPLC lists as nativist extremist groups.

By Heidi Beirich

Two major trends were evident last year in the hard-line anti-immigration movement. Most worryingly, a cadre of racial extremists began patrolling Arizona for undocumented border-crossers. Led by neo-Nazi J.T. Ready, they scour the deserts while armed with semi-automatic rifles and clad in fatigues, military-style helmets and Kevlar vests. Pictures of their exploits show terrified migrants forced to the ground by gun-toting captors.

At the same time, many nativist activists expanded their alliances with other far-right political movements, a trend that first began to take shape in 2009. In the past year, major nativist leaders have allied their organizations with antigovernment “Patriot” groups or fringe Tea Party factions. In some cases, they have created new far-right hybrid entities of their own.

Nativists received a burst of energy with the signing last April of Arizona’s S.B. 1070, a harsh anti-immigration ordinance that makes the failure of non-citizens to carry immigration documents a crime and obligates police to check immigration status when there is “reasonable suspicion” that someone is undocumented. Anti-immigrant groups were highly active in pushing for the law, which is currently held up in federal court. Legislators in several states are set to introduce copycats, which may further inflame anti-immigrant sentiment. Even so, the movement is no longer growing at the rapid pace of prior years.

Neo-Nazi J.T. Ready suits up for a patrol. As hard-line nativism has gone mainstream, the growth of anti-immigrant groups patrolling the border for crossing migrants has slowed.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) latest count, the number of what the SPLC characterizes as“nativist extremist” groups — organizations that do not limit themselves to pushing for legislative change or more border patrols, but rather target suspected undocumented immigrants at work sites or when they cross the border — is up slightly, rising to 319 last year from 309 groups in 2009. Still, it is noteworthy that the movement’s rate of growth slowed considerably, with the three largest groups — theMinuteman Civil Defense Corps, the Minuteman Project, and the Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement (FIRE) Coalition — staying about the same size as last year. In fact, without the activism surrounding S.B. 1070, the movement might well have shrunk in 2010.

The slowed growth of the movement is a big change. Between 2008 and 2009, the groups skyrocketed nearly 80%, rising to 309 from 173. A year earlier, the number of groups went up 20%, from 144 to 173. This slower growth is partly attributable to leadership battles that have drained the energy of some groups. It also reflects the relocation of some nativists into other sectors of the far right that have concerns beyond immigration.

Toil and Trouble
As neo-Nazis like one-time National Socialist Movement member J.T. Ready became more prominent on the nativist scene this past year, one of the major early nativist leaders exited the scene ignominiously. In June, allegations surfaced in court documents that Chris Simcox — arguably the highest profile individual in the movement, a man who co-founded of the Minuteman Project in 2005 and, later, founded the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC) — had threatened to kill his wife and family in a 2009 domestic dispute. It turned out that a restraining order had been issuedagainst Simcox in April, when his third wife, Alena, filed for divorce. This was not the first time that Simcox had been accused of violent behavior by a spouse. His second wife told the Intelligence Report in 2005 that she filed for full custody of their teenage son because she feared Simcox had suffered a mental breakdown, was sometimes violent and seemed dangerous.

In early July, after a short period when Simcox disappeared from public view (prompting one bounty hunter working for his wife to issue a “Wanted” poster), he released an E-newsletter, “The Simcox Report,” that defended his actions. In it, Simcox accused his wife of having been involved in an adulterous relationship with Stacy O’Connell, a former member of MCDC with whom Simcox had feuded for years (O’Connell and Alena Simcox denied the allegations). The soap opera intensified when it emerged that O’Connell ran the bounty hunting service that put up the “Wanted” poster for Simcox.

Meanwhile, MCDC’s leadership spent 2010 in complete disarray. When Simcox announced in April 2009 that he would run for the Arizona Senate seat held by John McCain, MCDC was left in the hands of his long-time lieutenant, Carmen Mercer. Mercer shut the organization down in March 2010, after being accused by Arizona’s attorney general of involvement in a property scam.

In a March 22 E-mail to supporters announcing the shutdown, Mercer nevertheless encouraged former MCDC members to continue their work independently. “I predict Americans, on their own, will lock, load and do what the feckless cowards in Washington refuse to do — and frankly I hope Americans do take up arms to defend this great nation,” she wrote in her “urgent alert.”

This missive came after Mercer sent a hot-blooded E-mail out the week before urging supporters to bring their long arms to the border and to “forcefully engage” the “criminals” who try to cross without documentation.

Despite having claimed MCDC was no more, Mercer within a few months was again posting on MCDC’s website as though nothing had happened.

Long an Arizona entity, MCDC now lists Herndon, Va., as its headquarters address and sends those wishing to contact it by mail to the far-right advocacy group, Declaration Alliance, that is headed by conservative activist Alan Keyes. The alliance had long helped raise money for MCDC. But earlier this year, Mercer reported that MCDC was going broke after breaking off relations with the group. Apparently, they have now mended their rift.

The turmoil had little effect on the size of the group, which had 77 chapters in 30 states in 2010. That’s up by two chapters from last year.

Building Bridges
Certain nativist extremists are gaining political muscle by building bridges to other kinds of far-right groups, with many nativists morphing into Tea Party activists or redefining themselves more broadly as opposed to the federal government’s authority in general.

This trend began in 2009, when nativist extremist groups first began to find common cause with the antigovernment Patriot movement, which includes militias and similar groups. That the two movements dovetail in many ways is not entirely surprising. Both cotton to Revolutionary War rhetoric and imagery, and the first major nativist extremist group, the Minuteman Project, branded itself intentionally with a name right out of the American Revolution.

The Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition (FIRE), which is the largest nativist extremist group with 136 chapters in 35 states (up one chapter from 2009), took up the antigovernment flag in 2009 when it launched The Patriot Coalition. FIRE is best known for a website that allows individuals to inform on employers of undocumented workers and for aggressive protests aimed at the undocumented.

In August, the group went one step further down the Patriot road, co-sponsoring a national conference in Pennsylvania that brought together a motley crew of far-right activists, conspiracy-minded groups like the John Birch Society and an array of other opponents of the Obama Administration. Patriot hero Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff who believes that county sheriffs are the highest authority and can ignore demands from the federal government, spoke to the conference. The event’s core theme — “demand [states’] sovereignty from the tyranny of the Federal government”— sounded more like a paean to the Confederacy and “states’ rights” than a complaint about immigration.

FIRE National Director Jeff Lewis is active in several antigovernment groups, three of which he heads. Billing himself as “a direct descendant of the original American Revolutionaries,” Lewis is listed as a delegate on the website of We the People (WTP), a federal government-hating outfit led by prominent tax protester Bob Schulz; he also participated in WTP’s 2009 “Continental Congress” and is listed as a leader in the North Carolina chapter. (The congress issued documents warning that any infringement on the people’s liberty as laid out in the Constitution is “an act of WAR” that “the People and their Militias have the Right and Duty to repel.”)

Another example of a nativist-turned-patriot is Al Garza, who was vice president of MCDC until he quit the group in August 2009. Garza went on to form The Patriots Coalition, not to be confused with FIRE’s Patriot Coalition, another group that merges the ideas of the nativist movement with those of the Patriots. Its website is filled with images of Revolutionary War troops and the Constitution and laments, “God and country are being taken away each day.” Garza was helped in this effort by Joanne Daley, his local Tea Party coordinator, according to The Nation. Daley, who led protests against Obama’s health care plan in Arizona and ran a Cochise County chapter of Glenn Beck’s 9.12 Project, is on the group’s board.

Arguably the most obnoxious nativist extremist, Jeff Schwilk, became a full-time antigovernment activist in 2010. Schwilk, founder of the San Diego Minutemen, has subsumed his anti-immigrant activities into a larger cause and now concentrates more on his Southern California Patriot Coalition, or SoCal Patriots. Instead of harassing migrant camps and pro-immigrant activists, Schwilk now focuses on gun rights and antigovernment issues. “Our fight is all political now,” Schwilk told The Nation in October. “Our fight is in our cities, county and state, and federal governments.”

Sipping With the Tea Parties
The Tea Party movement, too, has become home to many nativist extremists. These groups saw their interests first align during the healthcare debate, as medical coverage for undocumented immigrants became a flashpoint issue. The lines between the movements have become increasingly blurred, with leaders making official appearances at each other’s events.

S.B. 1070, the Arizona law that requires police to ask for proof of legal residency from people they believe could be undocumented immigrants, helped to deepen this relationship. Tea Party activists gathered thousands of signatures in favor of the law and the Tea Party Nation, one of several Tea Party factions, co-sponsored a rally in support of the law in Phoenix on June 5.

Jim Gilchrist, who co-founded the Minuteman Project with Simcox in 2005 and now runs his own outfit of the same name, glommed on to the Tea Party movement in the last year. In late November, Gilchrist attended a “Minuteman Tea Party” event in Texas that his website claims had more than 2,000 attendees. Gilchrist hasn’t been to the border in quite some time, preferring to work the right-wing circuit and post anti-immigration material on his website. Reaching out to the right has helped Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project (MMP). It had 38 chapters in 2010, up from 35 the year before.

MMP Executive Director Stephen Eichler joined his colleague Gilchrist in the Tea Party movement. Eichler is now listed as the executive director (and “general trouble maker”) on TeaParty.org. That Tea Party faction is led by Dale Robertson, who gained some notoriety for displaying arguably racist signs during protests of Obama’s health care proposals. The anti-immigrant influence at TeaParty.org is clear. The site lists as part of its “non-negotiable core beliefs” that “Illegal Aliens Are Here illegally.” The group also has issued E-mail alerts that blame an “illegal alien putsch” and “invasion” for “the pestilence of National Socialism” that it claims is on the rise in America.

At the Extremes
This January, Shawna Forde, formerly of the Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project and then the leader of her own Minuteman American Defense (MAD) group, was scheduled to go on trial in Arizona for themurder of a Latino man and his 9-year-old daughter. Forde’s case is a reminder of how anti-immigrant fervor can explode into extreme violence. Pima County authorities allege that Forde and two accomplices, one of whom had ties to the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations, invaded their victims’ home in search of drugs and cash to fund MAD border activities.

That tragic and horrifying incident makes the appearance of neo-Nazi J.T. Ready and his immigrant-hunting pals all the more worrisome. Until recently a member of the National Socialist Movement (NSM), Ready and his U.S. Border Rangers, an armed group largely peopled by other NSM members, have detained a number of migrants. Last July, Ready called a press conference in Pinal County’s Vekol Valley, known as a drug trafficking and illegal immigration route, where he paraded his heavily armed group for the news cameras. “This is the Minuteman Project on steroids. We’ve got people with assault weapons. … We will use lawful, deadly force when appropriate,” Ready told a TV reporter.

One NSM member and avid patroller, Harry Hughes, posted to the Web plenty of photos of the migrants the group said it stopped. Hughes really doesn’t like Mexicans, citing approvingly on his blog an article that says: “Mexican illegal aliens are revolting. And they know it. It is their purpose to disrupt us, interfere with us and give us diseases that we haven’t had in this country for 100 years.” Hughes’ anger, by his own account, sometimes spills over into action. In July 2007, Hughes posted on a racist forum that he had shot a Mexican family’s dog. Hughes said the charges were later dropped and “the Mexicans [sic] home mysteriously burned down.” The NSM border outings are slated to continue.

Here is a state-by-state tally of the 319 groups that the SPLC lists as nativist extremist groups. In the case of the three major formations — the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, the Minuteman Project and the Federation Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition — acronyms have been added to help identify their affiliated chapters.

Year In Hate (Courtesy of the SPL Center)

2011-03-11T12:50:00.000-08:00

Intelligence Report, Spring 2011, Issue Number: 141

The Year in Hate & Extremism, 2010

Hate Groups Map

1,002 active hate groups in the United States of America.

Active ‘Patriot’ Groups in the United States in 2010

The Intelligence Project identified 824 anti-government “Patriot” groups that were active in 2010.

'Nativist Extremist' Groups 2010

A state-by-state tally of the 319 groups that the SPLC lists as nativist extremist groups.

By Mark Potok
Illustration by Sean McCabe

For the second year in a row, the radical right in America expanded explosively in 2010, driven by resentment over the changing racial demographics of the country, frustration over the government’s handling of the economy, and the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and other demonizing propaganda aimed at various minorities. For many on the radical right, anger is focusing on President Obama, who is seen as embodying everything that’s wrong with the country.

Hate groups topped 1,000 for the first time since the Southern Poverty Law Center began counting such groups in the 1980s. Anti-immigrant vigilante groups, despite having some of the political wind taken out of their sails by the adoption of hard-line anti-immigration laws around the country, continued to rise slowly. But by far the most dramatic growth came in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement — conspiracy-minded organizations that see the federal government as their primary enemy — which gained more than 300 new groups, a jump of over 60%.

Taken together, these three strands of the radical right — the hatemongers, the nativists and the antigovernment zealots — increased from 1,753 groups in 2009 to 2,145 in 2010, a 22% rise. That followed a 2008-2009 increase of 40%.

What may be most remarkable is that this growth of right-wing extremism came even as politicians around the country, blown by gusts from the Tea Parties and other conservative formations, tacked hard to the right, co-opting many of the issues important to extremists. Last April, for instance, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed S.B. 1070, the harshest anti-immigrant law in memory, setting off a tsunami of proposals for similar laws across the country. Continuing growth of the radical right could be curtailed as a result of this shift, especially since Republicans, many of them highly conservative, recaptured the U.S. House last fall.

But despite those historic Republican gains, the early signs suggest that even as the more mainstream political right strengthens, the radical right has remained highly energized. In an 11-day period this January, a neo-Nazi was arrested headed for the Arizona border with a dozen homemade grenades; a terrorist bomb attack on a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane, Wash., was averted after police dismantled a sophisticated anti-personnel weapon; and a man who officials said had a long history of antigovernment activities was arrested outside a packed mosque in Dearborn, Mich., and charged with possessing explosives with unlawful intent. That’s in addition, the same month, to the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, anattack that left six dead and may have had a political dimension.

It’s also clear that other kinds of radical activity are on the rise. Since the murder last May 20 of two West Memphis, Ark., police officers by two members of the so-called “sovereign citizens” movement, police from around the country have contacted the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to report what one detective in Kentucky described as a “dramatic increase” in sovereign activity. Sovereign citizens, who, like militias, are part of the larger Patriot movement, believe that the federal government has no right to tax or regulate them and, as a result, often come into conflict with police and tax authorities. Another sign of their increased activity came early this year, when the Treasury Department, in a report assessing what the IRS faces in 2011, said its biggest challenge will be the “attacks and threats against IRS employees and facilities [that] have risen steadily in recent years.”

Extremist ideas have not been limited to the radical right; already this year, state legislators have offered up a raft of proposals influenced by such ideas. In Arizona, the author of the S.B. 1070 law — a man who just became Senate president on the basis of his harshly nativist rhetoric — proposed a law this January that would allow his state to refuse to obey any federal law or regulation it cared to. In Virginia, a state legislator wants to pass a law aimed at creating an alternative currency “in the event of the destruction of the Federal Reserve System’s currency” — a longstanding fear of right-wing extremists. And in Montana, a state senator is working to pass a statute called the “Sheriffs First Act” that would require federal law enforcement to ask local sheriffs’ permission to act in their counties or face jail. All three laws are almost certainly unconstitutional, legal experts say, and they all originate in ideas that first came from ideologues of the radical right.

There also are new attempts by nativist forces to roll back birthright citizenship, which makes all children born in the U.S. citizens. Such laws have been introduced this year in Congress, and a coalition of state legislators is promising to do the same in their states. And then there’s Oklahoma, where 70% of voters last November approved a measure to forbid judges to consider Islamic law in the state’s courtrooms — a completely groundless fear, but one pushed nonetheless by Islamophobes. Since then, lawmakers have promised to pass similar laws in Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah.

After the Giffords assassination attempt, a kind of national dialogue began about the political vitriol that increasingly passes for “mainstream” political debate. But it didn’t seem to get very far. Four days after the shooting, a campaign called the Civility Project — a two-year effort led by an evangelical conservative tied to top Republicans — said it was shutting down because of a lack of interest and furious opposition. “The worst E-mails I received about the Civility Project were from conservatives with just unbelievable language about communists and some words I wouldn’t use in this phone call,” director Mark DeMoss told The New York Times. “This political divide has become so sharp that everything is black and white, and too many conservatives can see no redeeming value in any” opponent.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll this January captured the atmosphere well. It found that 82% of Americans saw their country’s political discourse as “negative.” Even more remarkably, the poll determined that 49% thought that negative tone could or already had encouraged political violence.

Last year’s rise in hate groups was the latest in a trend stretching all the way back to the year 2000, when the SPLC counted 602 such groups. Since then, they have risen steadily, mainly on the basis of exploiting the issue of undocumented immigration from Mexico and Central America. Last year, the number of hate groups rose to 1,002 from 932, a 7.5% increase over the previous year and a 66% rise since 2000.

At the same time, what the SPLC defines as “nativist extremist” groups — organizations that go beyond mere advocacy of restrictive immigration policy to actually confront or harass suspected immigrants or their employers — rose slightly, despite the fact that most of their key issues had been taken up by mainstream politicians. There were 319 such groups in 2010, up 3% from 309 in 2009.

But like the year before, it was the antigovernment Patriot groups that grew most dramatically, at least partly on the basis of furious rhetoric from the right aimed at the nation’s first black president — a man who has come to represent to at least some Americans ongoing changes in the racial makeup of the country. The Patriot groups, which had risen and fallen once before during the militia movement of the 1990s, first came roaring back in 2009, when they rose 244% to 512 from 149 a year earlier. In 2010, they rose again sharply, adding 312 new groups to reach 824, a 61% increase. The highest prior count of Patriot groups came in 1996, when the SPLC found 858 (see also chart, above).

It’s hard to predict where this volatile situation will lead. Conservatives last November made great gains and some of them are championing a surprising number of the issues pushed by the radical right — a fact that could help deflate some of the even more extreme political forces. But those GOP electoral advances also left the Congress divided and increasingly lined up against the Democratic president, which is likely to paralyze the country on such key issues as immigration reform.

What seems certain is that President Obama will continue to serve as a lightning rod for many on the political right, a man who represents both the federal government and the fact that the racial make-up of the United States is changing, something that upsets a significant number of white Americans. And that suggests that the polarized politics of this country could get worse before they get better.

Immigrant Women, Backbone of U.S. Food Industry, Targets for Wage Theft, Sexual Harassment and Other Abuses, New SPLC Report Finds

2010-12-22T21:24:00.000-08:00

[COURTESY OF SPLCENTER.ORG]

11/16/2010

In This Section

En la industria alimentaria las mujeres inmigrantes en los Estados Unidos con frecuencia son el blanco de robo de salarios, acoso sexual y otros abusos, encuentra SPLC en un reporte nuevo

Undocumented women who are feeding the country with their labor routinely endure sexual harassment, wage theft and other abuses, according to a new report released today by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The report — Injustice on Our Plates: Immigrant Women in the U.S. Food Industry — documents the workplace experiences of immigrant women who have come to the United States to escape crushing poverty. It describes how the laws that are in place to protect them from exploitation are grossly inadequate and how they are typically powerless to protect themselves.

The report's release coincides with the 50th anniversary of Edward R. Murrow’s documentary “Harvest of Shame,” which chronicled the plight of migrant farmworkers. CBS broadcast the documentary on Thanksgiving in 1960.

“These women are the backbone of the food industry but are exploited and abused in ways that most of us can’t imagine and that none of us should tolerate,” said SPLC Legal Director Mary Bauer, co-author of the report. “Fear keeps these women silent, so their suffering is invisible to all of us who benefit from their labor every time we sit down at the dinner table.”

The report is based on extensive interviews with 150 immigrant women from Mexico, Guatemala, and other Latin American countries. They live and work in states across the country. All have worked in the fields or factories that produce food for America.

Many of the women interviewed for the report said the threat of deportation and the possible destruction of their families keeps them from reporting workplace abuses — even when it means enduring sexual harassment and other indignities.

“It’s because of fear [that] we have to tolerate more,” said one 26-year-old Florida farmworker interviewed for the report. “Sometimes they take advantage because we don’t have papers. They mistreat us, and what can we do? Where would we go?”

Many workers described keeping track of the wages they had earned only to discover a far smaller amount in their paychecks. Some said they were not paid at all for work they performed. Sexual harassment and even brutal sexual assaults by male co-workers and supervisors were also a constant threat for many of these women. Some saw it as a danger that simply must be tolerated for a day’s pay. Many are reluctant to report sexual assaults and other crimes to police for fear of being deported.

The women also reported working in dangerous conditions without adequate safety precautions. Field workers reported frequent exposure to chemicals and pesticides.

Farmworkers remain the least protected workers in America. They were intentionally excluded from nearly all major federal labor laws passed during the New Deal era. Though some laws have been amended since then, many exemptions remain. They are not entitled to overtime pay under federal law, for example. On smaller farms and in short harvest seasons, they are not even entitled to the federal minimum wage. In addition, farmworkers are not covered by workers’ compensation laws in many states and are excluded from many state health and safety laws.

The report concludes that wholesale reforms at the federal level are needed to protect these workers. These reforms include a path to citizenship for the undocumented workers who are feeding the country with their labor. Reforms also must include stronger worker protections — for all workers, whether they labor in the field or in the factory, and whether they have legal status or not.

“For these women, workplace exploitation is the rule — not the exception,” said Mónica Ramírez, coauthor of the report and director for Esperanza: The Immigrant Women’s Legal Initiative of the SPLC. “Virtually every American relies on their labor. It is our responsibility to stop their abuse.”

Facts About Immigrant Women Working in the U.S. Food Industry

Undocumented women are among the most vulnerable workers in our society today. They fill the lowest paying jobs in our economy and provided the backbreaking labor that helps bring food to our tables. Yet they are routinely cheated out of wages and subjected to an array of other abuses in the workplace. They are generally powerless to enforce their rights or protect themselves. The following are facts from the SPLC report Injustice on Our Plates.

Undocumented Immigrants

There are an estimated 4.1 million undocumented women in the U.S. today. In addition, 4 million U.S.-born children — citizens by birthright — live in a household with at least one undocumented parent.¹
Undocumented women typically earn minimum wage or less, get no sick or vacation days, and receive no health insurance.
Legalizing undocumented workers would raise the U.S. gross domestic product by $1.5 trillion over a decade. On the other hand, if the government were to deport all 10.8 million undocumented immigrants living on U.S. soil, our economy would decline by $2.6 trillion over a decade, not including the massive cost of such an endeavor.²
Each year, undocumented immigrants contribute as much as $1.5 billion to the Medicare system and $7 billion to the Social Security system, even though they will never be able to collect benefits upon retirement.³

Farmworkers

There are an estimated 3 million migrant and seasonal farmworkers employed in the United States.⁴ The federal government estimates that 60 percent of farmworkers are undocumented immigrants; farmworker advocates say the percentage is far higher.
The National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) published by the Department of Labor reports that about 22% of the farmworker population is female. Thus, there are an estimated 630,000 women engaged in farm work in the United States.⁵
The average personal income of female crop workers is $11,250, compared to $16,250 for male crop workers.⁶
A mere 8 percent of farmworkers report being covered by employer-provided health insurance, a rate that dropped to 5 percent for farmworkers who are employed seasonally and not year-round.⁷
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, farmworkers suffer from higher rates of toxic chemical injuries and skin disorders than any other workers in the country.⁸ The children of migrant farmworkers, also, have higher rates of pesticide exposure than the general public.⁹
Each year, there are an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 cases of physician-diagnosed pesticide poisoning among U.S. farmworkers, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.¹⁰
Farmworkers are not covered by workers’ compensation laws in many states. They are not entitled to overtime pay under federal law. On smaller farms and in short harvest seasons, they are not entitled to the federal minimum wage.¹¹ They are excluded from many state health and safety laws.¹²
Because of special exemptions for agriculture, children as young as 10 may work in the fields. Also, many states exempt farmworker children from compulsory education laws.

Poultry Workers

Almost a quarter of the workers who butcher and process meat, poultry and fish are undocumented.¹³
At least half of the 250,000¹⁴ laborers in 174 of the major U.S. chicken factories are Latino and more than half are women.¹⁵
Working in a chicken factory is one of the most dangerous occupations in America. Line workers endure a frigid and wet work environment, without adequate bathroom breaks, while being exposed to numerous hazards handling chicken on hangers that whiz by a rate of hundreds per minute. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has not enacted any regulation to limit the speed at which poultry and meat processing lines operate — despite the appallingly high rates of injury directly attributable to the line speed. In the decade ending in 2008, 100 poultry workers died in the U.S., and 300,000 were injured, many suffering the loss of a limb or debilitating repetitive motion injuries.¹⁶
The U.S. Department of Labor surveyed 51 poultry processing plants and found 100% had violated labor laws by not paying employees for all hours worked. Also, one-third took impermissible deductions from workers’ pay.¹⁷

Sexual Abuse On the Job

In a recent study of 150 women of Mexican descent working in the fields in California’s Central Valley, 80% said they had experienced sexual harassment.¹⁸ That compares to roughly half of all women in the U.S. workforce who say they have experienced at least one incident.
While investigating the sexual harassment of California farmworker women in the mid-1990s, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that “hundreds, if not thousands, of women had to have sex with supervisors to get or keep jobs and/or put up with a constant barrage of grabbing and touching and propositions for sex by supervisors.”¹⁹
A 1989 article in Florida indicates that sexual harassment against farmworker women was so pervasive that women referred to the fields as the “green motel.”²⁰ Similarly, the EEOC reports that women in California refer to the fields as “fil de calzon,” or the fields of panties, because sexual harassment is so widespread.²¹
Due to the many obstacles that confront farmworker women — including fear, shame, lack of information about their rights, lack of available resources to help them, poverty, cultural and/or social pressures, language access and, for some, their status as undocumented immigrants — few farmworker women ever come forward to seek justice for the sexual harassment and assault that they have suffered.²²
In interviews for this report, virtually all women reported that sexual violence in the workplace is a serious problem.

1 Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn, “A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States,” Pew Hispanic Center, April 14, 2009.

2 Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, “Raising the Floor for American Workers,” Center for American Progress and Immigration Policy Center, American Immigration Council, January 2010.

3 Eduardo Porter, “Illegal Immigrants Are Bolstering Social Security with Billions,” The New York Times, April 5, 2005.

4 National Center for Farmworker Health, “Facts About Farmworkers,” Found at http://www.ncfh.org/docs/fs-Facts%20about%20Farmworkers.pdf. Last visited Nov. 12, 2010.

5 U.S. Department of Labor, “National Agricultural Worker Survey,” Published March 2005, Found athttp://www.doleta.gov/agworker/report9/naws_rpt9.pdf, 9. Last visited March 15, 2007.

6 Analysis of public access data from the National Agricultural Workers Survey for FY 2004-2006, Office of Policy Development and Research, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor.

7 National Center for Farmworker Health, Inc., “Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker Demographics,” 2009, at 3.

8 The National Agricultural Workers Survey, United States Department of Labor, 2005.www.doleta.gov/agworker/naws.cfm.

9 Maternal & Child Health Fact Sheet, National Center for Farm Worker Health, 2009, www.ncfh.org/docs/fs-MATERNAL%20FACT%20SHEET.pdf.

10 J. Routt Reigart and James R. Roberts, “Recognition and Management of Pesticide Poisonings,” Office of Pesticide Programs, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Fifth Edition, 1999.

11 Also, in most Southern states, either there is no state minimum wage or farmworkers are expressly excluded from coverage.

12 See, e.g., Ala. Code § 25-1-1; Ark. Code Ann. § 11-2-101; O.C.G.A. (Georgia) §§ 34-2-2, 34-2-10; La. R.S. § 23.13.

13 Jeffrey S. Passel, “Unauthorized Migrants: Numbers and Characteristics,” Pew Hispanic Center, June 14, 2005, and Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn “A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States,” Pew Hispanic Center, April 14, 2009.

14 William G. Whittaker, “Labor Practices in the Meat Packing and Poultry Processing Industry: An Overview,” Congressional Research Service, July 20, 2005, www.nationalaglawcenter.org/assets/crs/RL33002.pdf, accessed October 5, 2010, citing Industrial Safety & Hygiene News, July 2002, 14.

15 “Injury and Injustice — America’s Poultry Industry,” United Food and Commercial Workers International Union,www.ufcw.org/press_room/fact_sheets_and_ backgrounder/ poultryindustry_.cfm, accessed October 5, 2010.

16 “Hazards and Disorders of Poultry Processing, U.S. Occupational and Safety Health Administration presentation,”www.osha.gov/SLTC/ergonomics/powerpoint/chicken/index.html.

17 “U.S. Department of Labor Poultry Processing Compliance Survey Fact Sheet,” U.S. Department of Labor, January 2001, http://www.ufcw.org/docUploads/ Usdept~1.pdf?CFID=5119829&CFTOKEN=98920065.

18 Irma Morales Waugh, “Examining the Sexual Harassment Experiences of Mexican Immigrant Farmworking Women,”Violence Against Women, January 2010, 11.

19 Maria Ontiveros. “Lessons From the Fields: Female Farmworkers and the Law,” 55 ME. L. Rev. 157, 169. (2003).

20 Margo Harakas. “Tales of the Green Motel.” The Sun-Sentinel, February 12, 1989.

21 Rebecca Clarren. “The Green Motel,” Ms., Summer 2005, at 42; See also Ontiveros at 169.

22 Mónica Ramírez and Mike Meuter. The Holistic Representation Model: A Best Practices Manual for Representing Farmworker Women Who Have Been Sexually Harassed, Southern Poverty Law Center, 2nd Edition Published November 2008.

First Snow Storm of 2010 or Seattle Shuts Down For a Day (photo essay)

2010-11-26T21:57:00.000-08:00

Woodcarver was shot four times in his side by officer, autopsy shows (Seattle Times)

2010-10-06T12:51:00.000-07:00

Intersection where the Seattle Police shot Mr. Williams.

Woodcarver was shot four times in his side by officer, autopsy shows

John T. Williams, the First Nations woodcarver fatally shot by a Seattle police officer Aug. 30, was struck by four bullets on the right side of his body, indicating he was not facing the officer at the time the shots were fired, the attorney representing the Williams family said Tuesday.

John T. Williams

Woodcarver was shot four times in his side by officer, autopsy shows

By Steve Miletich

Seattle Times staff reporter

John T. Williams, the woodcarver fatally shot by a Seattle police officer Aug. 30, was struck by four bullets on the right side of his body, indicating he was not facing the officer at the time the shots were fired, the attorney representing the Williams family said Tuesday.

"There's nothing looking like he was facing toward him," Seattle attorney Tim Ford said of Williams' position as the officer fired. "It was all right side."

Ford, in an interview with The Seattle Times, provided a portion of an autopsy report prepared by the King County Medical Examiner's Office relating to the gunshot wounds.

Ford questioned whether the officer needed to shoot if Williams wasn't directly facing him. "... Where is the threat?" he said.

Seattle police have previously said that Officer Ian Birk fired four rounds from a distance of nine to 10 feet. But police officials have not disclosed where Williams was struck, how many times or the precise positions of Birk and Williams.

Sgt. Sean Whitcomb, the department's chief spokesman, said he couldn't comment on autopsy results because of confidentiality rules governing the investigation.

Sgt. Rich O'Neill, the president of the Seattle Police Officers' Guild, said Tuesday that he could not comment on the shooting investigation. But O'Neill said, in general, an armed person who is standing sideways to an officer can still pose a threat.

Birk, 27, shot Williams at Boren Avenue and Howell Street after he stopped his patrol car at a red light and saw Williams carrying a small knife that turned out to be used for carving.

Williams, 50, who was a member of Nuu-Chah-Nulth First Nations in British Columbia, ignored three commands to drop the knife, police officials said. The department originally said Williams advanced on Birk, but later retreated on that statement.

Video from a camera in Birk's patrol car, which hasn't been made public, shows Williams crossing the street in front of Birk and, moments later, the officer crossing in front of his car to the northwest corner of Boren and Howell, Deputy Police Chief Nick Metz said at an Aug. 31 news briefing.

The camera did not capture video of the shooting, but Birk can be heard on an audio recording ordering Williams three times to drop the knife, Metz said at the briefing.

Williams collapsed on the sidewalk along Howell Street, where he was pronounced dead.

Williams had been standing and facing north when he was struck by the shots, Ford said, citing witness accounts. Birk had approached Williams from the side, in an east-to-west direction, stopping just to the east of Williams, Ford said.

Williams was shot once in the right chest, with an exit wound in his left armpit, according to the autopsy report. A second shot entered the right side of Williams' chin, with an exit wound on the left side of his chin, the report said.

Williams was shot a third time in his upper right arm, the report said. The round exited the arm and then entered and exited his chest, according to the report.

A fourth shot struck Williams' right forearm, exiting through the upper arm, the report said.

Ford said that the autopsy didn't show in which order the shots were fired, but that ballistics experts might be able to determine that.

It has not been disclosed in which hand Williams was carrying the legal, 3-inch folding knife recovered by police at the scene.

The autopsy report also noted that a pair of headphones attached to an AM-FM radio were found with Williams' body, Ford said. The report didn't specify where the headphones were retrieved, Ford said.

Williams' family has said he probably didn't even hear the officer command him to drop the knife because he was deaf in one ear and wearing headphones.

Whitcomb, the police spokesman, said autopsy results were available to the department's Firearms Review Board, which completed a confidential inquiry into the shooting during a one-day proceeding that ended Monday evening.

The board was to determine if the shooting was justified, not justified or accidental and submit its preliminary findings to Police Chief John Diaz.

Diaz was to make his own preliminary confidential finding, pending an expected King County court inquest that could bring out more information.

In a written statement released Tuesday, the department said, the confidential preliminary findings have been submitted to Diaz. "Per Department Policy â€” and to support the integrity of the upcoming King County Inquest â€” the Department will not comment on any findings or recommendations," the statement said.

The Firearms Review Board will reconvene after the evaluation of criminal liability by the inquest jury and King County prosecutor, the statement said.

Birk, who joined the department about two years ago, will remain on routine paid administrative leave.

Information from Seattle Times archives is included in this report.

Steve Miletich: 206-464-3302 or smiletich@seattletimes.com

Found Poem: Panel at K&L Gates LLP

2010-09-23T20:02:00.000-07:00

The following found poem is based on notes and personal observations I wrote down at an immigration panel entitled "Is Arizona the future of America?" Needless to say, I was already quite skeptical of the event given that the event took place at the offices of downtown Seattle Law Firm, "K&L Gates, LLP." In effect, policy heads, and lawyers were speaking on these matters far from where those who are most impacted by immigration policy are situated. This was a glaring contradiction with what the program entailed (I opted to omit the names of these organizations so as to not call them out directly). At any rate, that's the background of the poem below, lost for some time in my notebook until I rediscovered it yesterday.
..........................................

Found Poem: Panel at K&L Gates LLP

Allusion to Reagan
lack of brown people
few visible non-professionals
"talk to the middle"
political reasoning is
at root of policy,
fight as far as maintaining
monopoly over enforce-
ment. U.S. v. Arizona
lawsuit. Focus in on
federal litigation.
Allusion to class-oriented
appearance in deter-
mining who does, does not
"belong." "what is our
counter-narrative?"
privileged white lady
talks about her epiphany
that there is a war
zone at the border,
however, conservative
bigots are still "good
people." lack of analysis
of sociological roots
of xenophobia. "No right
to counsel" in immigration
proceedings. "Where is
the middle?" Getting ICE'd
"speak to people we
don't speak to.

Oscar Rosales Castañeda, C/S
8 July 2010

John T. Williams March to Seattle City Hall

2010-09-15T19:38:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, there will be a march to commemorate the life of John T. Williams, who was recently taken away from the community by institutional neglect, through the firearm of a Seattle Police Officer. The preliminary details can be found on the flyer posted below. Another entry will follow as time allows.

Presenting to the City Council Meeting: Sept. 15, 2010

2010-09-15T19:29:00.000-07:00

Earlier this afternoon, the "Energy, Technology, and Civil Rights Committee" with the City of Seattle convened at the city council chambers at Seattle City Hall. A brief, preliminary order of business that addressed energy and technology took a small portion, soon thereafter, giving way to the more contested order of business for the day. In wake of the shooting death of John T. Williams at the hands of a 2-Year Seattle Police veteran, a contingent of community members filled the room to capacity, urging the city to address the situation. The discourse was oriented around testimony given by a brief list of speakers, followed by further dialogue with representatives of Native advocacy organizations at the local and state level. There was common language amongst all entities, as well as allies in the crowd. However, from initial analysis, it appears that more is needed. As one speaker proclaimed, it is almost useless to have police firearm subcommittees when the sole voting members are law enforcement officials, leaving the remaining (non-voting) board positions open to the public. In effect, the question was "who polices the police?" When all accountability mechanisms are mired in bureaucratic entities that give sole enforcement capabilities to police internal investigators, it further illuminates the previous points made. Little can be accomplished with transparency being a word with relatively little value as "investigators" hoard all documentation, including structural documents that show how these procedures take place to begin with. Despite these contradictions, the community presence at the meeting made it known that this is a battle in its infancy, with the cauldron slowly nearing boiling point.

The Green War On Immigrants (Video)

2010-09-10T12:58:00.000-07:00

Photo Essay: Vigil and Press Conference in Response to Seattle Police Murder of John T. Williams.

2010-09-08T16:54:00.000-07:00

Posted Below is a brief photo essay of the community response to the shooting of John T. Williams at the hands of the Seattle Police Department. This tragedy took place within a week of an internal investigation clearing Seattle Police officers of a hate crime based on a police brutality incident in which an officer kicked a Latino man while on the ground, threating him with the words: "I'm going to beat the fucking Mexican piss out of you homey! You feel me?" Needless to say, there is much to be done to ensure we break this cycle of systemic violence aimed at communities of color in the Seattle area, and elsewhere. The author's thoughts are with the family of Mr. Williams and the Native community in Seattle whom have lost an elder to senseless police violence.
.........................
for more on this, see the following links:
[http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/09/03/native-american-leaders-deliver-demands-to-spd-after-shooting-death-of-carver]

[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012769201_copshooting01m.html]

[http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/09/seattle_demands_answers_after_cop_shoots_native_american_man.html]
..........................

Jan Brewer: Private Prisons and Lobbyists (Video)

2010-09-08T16:20:00.000-07:00

"Space Needle at Sunset"

2010-08-24T13:28:00.000-07:00

So, just to switch it up a little, I will intend to produce more photo essays for this blog. This first image was taken in downtown Seattle, near Westlake Center. The image of sun setting, lighting the sky with vivid orange hues reminded me of many moments spent with a certain special someone. I'll try to add more photos as time permits

After a Mini-Break...

2010-08-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

So, it feels like I've been away from this blog a little longer than usual. A combination of different things kept me pretty busy the last few weeks. In any case, a brief update since I last posted (besides the poem of course). I celebrated my birthday, albeit in a much more laid back fashion. The farther I travel in life, the more I learn to appreciate peace and tranquility. As such, it didn't feel necessary to do something big for my birthday. In part, because I did hang out with a certain someone I really enjoy sharing these moments with.

On the writing end, I'm about to finish a newsletter I've been working on for way too long. Also, related to that project, I also activated a separate blog and wrote most of the content for it (hence my not updating this one). The blog can be found at the following location: http://elcomitewa.wordpress.com/

And last, but certainly not least, we planned and coordinated a "welcome committee" for President Obama's first trip to Seattle since his candidacy. This consumed us for the better part of three weeks as we hashed out the details, logistics, probably outcomes in case either Seattle P.D. or the Tea Bagger were belligerents, and so forth. Likewise, the message framing was critical as we needed to clarify that we're not against Obama (as the ultra-right wing Tea Bag Party), but rather, we disagree with enforcement-only immigration policy and made it known that we will keep him and the functionaries in his party accountable to the promises they made us (for more, see: http://elcomitewa.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/over-300-immigrant-rights-activists-take-to-the-streets-in-conjunction-with-president-obama’s-visit-to-seattle/).

Needless to say, we have much to do still. More updates to follow.

Summer Poetry

2010-08-13T17:22:00.000-07:00

Summer Evening (Draft)

Slow soft waves,
splash serene Puget sound,
salty scented air,
arid dry thought desert,
completely barren imagery,
mind toxin fluid finally broke,
out of the basin holding it in,
in as much time as it,
took to finally let it flood,
it evaporates every which way,
whisked away by a calm sea breeze,
slow breath breathing in,
the essence long since forgotten,
forever it seems for the mind,
lost in forested foggy fields,
of perpetual self-loathing,
looking back losing that fear,
a brief glance into your eyes,
gravitating toward your voice,
calm cadence clearing my thoughts,
sharing a story I wanted to forget,
for a moment not knowing,
what your thoughts were,
but knowing I needed to move on,
finding a sympathetic ear,
easily forgetting all that was,
drowning me in a sea of self-doubt,
soft mesmerizing waves wind,
whipping off the sound,
chilly August evening event,
holding you close,
losing all sense of time and space,
serene salty Puget sound scent.

Nativists and Environmentalists: A Timeline (Courtesy of the Southern Poverty Law Center)

2010-07-27T13:21:00.000-07:00

Nativists and Environmentalists: A Timeline

Nativists in America have been working to enlist environmentalists as allies since the late 1960s. This is partly due to the fact that many leaders of the contemporary anti-immigration movement first came to immigration issues from the left, typically as a result of their interest in environmentalism and, more precisely, the effect of swelling population on the environment. It is also a function of the fact that leading nativists, many of whom are bigots, have sought to shield themselves from charges of racism by finding allies on the left who are also immigration restrictionists — "greenwashing," as the practice is sometimes known. A good example is John Tanton, who largely founded the modern nativist movement. Starting out as a Sierra Club activist in the 1960s, Tanton increasingly grew concerned about the growth of the population of the United States and became head of the Sierra Club's Population Committee in the early 1970s. Over time, Tanton came to see immigration and burgeoning population as the root cause of most environmental degradation — at the same time that he began to characterize Latino and other non-white immigrants as having a degenerative effect on American culture and society. What follows is a timeline that summarizes the efforts of Tanton, his allies and others to convert "progressive" environmentalists to their cause despite the white nationalism that is at the core of the worldview of many of them. In order to save space, individuals' and organizations' full names are used only on first reference; full individual names and brief biographies, along with group acronyms, are listed in Appendix A.

1968
The environmentalist Sierra Club (SC) publishes The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich, who was encouraged to undertake the project by David Brower, a longtime SC executive director. The book, defining population as an environmental issue and suggesting coercion be used in underdeveloped countries to depress fertility, surpasses Rachel Carson's landmark 1962 work Silent Spring to become the best-selling ecology book of the 1960s. Also published in 1968 is ecologist Garrett Hardin's famous Malthusian essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons." Hardin is a believer in eugenics (the "science" of selective breeding aimed at producing better humans) whose research is backed by the racist grant-maker Pioneer Fund (PF). The essay concludes, "Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all."

April 22, 1970
The first Earth Day, organized by Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson, is celebrated. "Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make," Erhlich says on the occasion. "The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next 10 years."

June 1970
Michigan environmentalist John Tanton attends the First National Congress on Optimum Population and the Environment in Chicago, where he meets population-control activists including Ehrlich and Hardin.

1971
Tanton becomes chairman of the SC's National Population Committee, where he will serve until 1975. Also in the early 1970s, Tanton is active in his hometown Petoskey, Mich., chapter of the SC and other environmental groups.

1973
Tanton joins Zero Population Growth (ZPG). In 1975, he will become ZPG president, a position he holds until 1977. The movement will falter in the late 1970s as population concerns ease because U.S. fertility rates are falling sharply.

1974
Population-Environment Balance (PEB), initially named The Environmental Fund, is founded to stabilize U.S. population in order to protect the environment. PEB pushes for a moratorium on immigration.

1977
Tanton quits ZPG after the group moves away from treating immigration as a major cause of population growth.

May 5-6, 1978
The SC urges the federal government to examine the impact of immigration policies on population trends and environmental resources. It argues that each region of the world must achieve a balance between population and resources.

1979
Tanton founds the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) with the help of other former ZPG members angered by ZPG's lack of interest in immigration restriction.

1980
SC officials testify to the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Reform that it is "obvious that the numbers of immigrants the United States accepts affects our population size" and adds that it is an "important question how many immigrants the United States wants to accept."

1984
Tanton holds the first of a series of private, biannual policy retreats, calling them WITANS meetings after the Witenagemot councils convened by 15th-century English kings to discuss affairs of state. Participants include leaders from FAIR and other groups created by or tied to Tanton. Tanton chooses the sessions' topics, supplies background reading material, and writes a memo for the discussions.

1986
Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) is founded by former members of the California chapter of ZPG. Unlike ZPG, CAPS blames high immigration levels for ravaging California's environment. On its board are Otis Graham, a close Tanton friend, and UCLA astronomy professor Ben Zuckerman. An emeritus board member is David Brower, the SC's first executive director. In later years, CAPS will accept funding from the PF, which supports studies linking race and intelligence.

Oct. 10, 1986
Tanton distributes a set of private documents, later known as the "WITAN memos," to colleagues at FAIR and elsewhere (the memos will be leaked two years later). In them, among other things, he suggests a campaign to convince the SC and other environmental groups to see immigration as a threat. "The Sierra Club may not want to touch the immigration issue," he writes, "but the immigration issue is going to touch the Sierra Club! (To mention just one group.)"

March 30, 1988
Tanton writes Gregory Curtis of the far-right Cordelia Scaife May Foundation regarding immigrants' purported lack of environmental values. "What will happen when [the white population] goes into minority status, and the groups that comprise the new coalition majorities don't share the same [environmental] values?" Tanton wonders. "Will all the gains be lost in the twenty-first century, when there is no longer a majority to defend them in the legislature?"

September 1988
Tanton's 1986 WITAN memos are leaked to The Arizona Republic in the midst of a battle in Arizona over a law that would mandate that all government documents be written in English. At the time, Tanton is head of U.S. English (USE), which is backing the proposal. The memos warn of a coming "Latin onslaught" and fret that high Latino birth rates will lead "the present majority to hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile." Tanton also asks if Latinos will "bring with them the tradition of the mordida [bribe], the lack of involvement in public affairs." Arnold Schwarzenegger and Walter Cronkite both quit the USE board over the memos' racially inflammatory language, as does executive director Linda Chavez, a conservative commentator. Tanton resigns from USE.

Spring 1989
The SC issues its strongest immigration-restriction policy statement to date, saying, "Immigration to the United States should be no greater than that which will permit achievement of population stabilization in the United States." It adds: "Sierra Club statements on immigration will always make the connection between immigration, population increase in the U.S., and the environmental consequences thereof." But the SC says it is interested only in the numbers of immigrants, not who they are.

January 1992
CAPS, FAIR and PEB join together to form a new coalition, the California Coalition to Stabilize Population (CCSP).

March 1993
The SC's Population Committee proposes a policy to the club's board that states, in part, that "net immigration to the United States and Canada (immigration minus emigration) should be reduced so that their levels are consistent with the U.S. and Canadian population policies." But the SC's Ethnic and Cultural Diversity Task Force denounces the proposal, saying: "Many Club members and leaders believe that the policy is ill-conceived, insensitive and racist and will greatly damage the Club's ability to become a more diverse and inclusive organization."

1994
The Izaak Walton League of America (IWLA), a conservation organization founded by sportsmen, issues a statement saying "international migration must be addressed as part of a comprehensive strategy to manage U.S. population size."

Feb. 17, 1994
During the debate over California's harshly anti-immigrant Proposition 187, Tanton writes to FAIR Executive Director Dan Stein and the FAIR board to complain that the SC is moving away from the anti-immigration cause. "No population group (save Population/Environment Balance and NPG [Negative Population Growth]) will say that immigration is a U.S. population problem; nor will any of the environmental groups," he frets. "We're on our own."

March 1994
The National Audubon Society (NAS) board debates a draft policy calling for no net increase in immigration, one of many considered in a year-long debate. Ultimately, the NAS will describe immigration as driving population growth that the group says is responsible for sprawl, traffic and overconsumption of scarce goods.

October 1994
The SC comes out officially against California's Prop 187, which would deny children of undocumented workers the ability to attend school, among other things. SC Executive Director Carl Pope calls the ballot measure "wrong," "stupid" and "counterproductive," and adds, "The last thing we need is more sick Californians, more children without inoculations, more patients in crisis in our emergency rooms." For its part, FAIR supports the measure. A senior FAIR official, western regional representative Rick Oltman, chairs the Yes on 187 Campaign.

December 1994
How Many Americans: Population, Immigration and the Environment is co-published by Sierra Club Books and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a nativist think tank conceived of by Tanton and initially a part of FAIR. The book, which advocates aggressive deportation and other measures meant to prevent undocumented immigration, is apparently the final immigration publication issued by the SC. It is by Leon Bouvier, who works with CIS and NumbersUSA (NUSA), another Tanton-connected group, and Lindsey Grant, who later becomes a supporter of Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization (SUSPS). (Some 15 years later, Grant will be on the masthead of Tanton's The Social Contract, a journal that has published racially charged articles on such topics as "Europhobia.")

Feb. 22, 1996
The Wilderness Society (WS) approves a policy statement calling for slower population growth in the U.S. "One-half to two-thirds of U.S. population growth results from domestic births and longer life spans," WS says. "One-third to one-half is due to immigration. To bring population levels to ecologically sustainable levels, both birth rates and immigration rates need to be reduced."

Feb. 24, 1996
The SC board abandons its restrictionist 1989 policy, opting to "take no position on immigration levels or on policies governing immigration into the United States," and forbidding anyone speaking in the club's name to call for immigration reduction as a way to reach U.S. population stabilization. The board refuses a straight up-or-down vote on the resolution, instead adding to that year's internal SC ballot a proposal affirming the statement and calling for action against the "root causes of global population problems." That decision spawns a countermovement by SC members who propose a resolution that calls for a "reduction in net immigration."

Late February 1996
Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization (later renamed by its SUSPS acronym alone) is formed by Zuckerman, the CAPS board member and UCLA astronomy professor, and Alan Kuper, a FAIR board of advisors member and physics professor at Case Western Reserve, in order to lobby the SC to oppose immigration.

Early 1997
Carrying Capacity Network (CCN) and the especially hard-line anti-immigration group Americans for Immigration Control (AIC) sponsor two conferences that bring together environmentalists and anti-immigration activists. After one, Eric Draper, a senior vice president at NAS, says he "was uncomfortable" with the tone of a FAIR speaker and tells a reporter that "I think the attempt to marry the environment with immigration is a very hard sell and I don't think most people will buy it."

Feb. 2, 1997
Tanton offers to financially support SUSPS's efforts to change the SC's stance to an anti-immigration position, writing to SUSPS' Kuper: "I should be able to provide you with several thousand dollars of help for the campaign. Think expansively. How much could you put to good use?"

April 22, 1997
ZPG board member and Tanton ally Joyce Tarnow writes to fellow board members to say ZPG's position on legal immigration levels is "terribly inadequate" and to urge a dialogue with anti-immigration organizations. Later in the year, after 27 years in leadership positions with the group, Tarnow resigns, citing ZPG's "unwillingness to take a rational position on legal immigration reform."

August 1997
Representatives of 40 smaller environmental organizations — groups like LA Earth First! and Friends of the Sea Otter — reportedly gather in Estes Park, Colo., along with openly bigoted groups like the California Coalition for Immigration Reform (CCIR) and Voice of Citizens Together (both of which are later listed as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC). Together, the groups form the Alliance for Stabilizing America's Population, or ASAP! The event, organized by PEB, features speeches by former Sen. Gaylord Nelson, University of Colorado emeritus physics professor Albert Bartlett, and syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer, all close Tanton friends. ASAP! calls for a five-year ceiling on immigration at 100,000 a year and alleges, contrary to well-settled law, that the 14th Amendment does not guarantee citizenship to children born to undocumented workers.

October 1997
The Detroit Free Press reports that Tanton and SC board member Dave Foreman, co-founder of EarthFirst!, are introducing a proposed SC anti-immigration policy for a direct vote by the entire membership. Anne Ehrlich, whose husband Paul wrote The Population Bomb, officially sponsors the measure. In the next year, advocates will gather enough signatures to get it on the SC's internal ballot.

Dec. 3, 1997
The SC's Pope tells the Lewiston [Idaho] Morning Tribune that the Ehrlich proposal "is not America at its best. It's America at its worst. And for the Sierra Club to be dragged into this kind of cesspool is very unfortunate."

1998
NUSA releases a video, "Immigration by the Numbers: An Environmental Choice," that is narrated by Monique Miller of Wild Earth (a group that later disappears). In the film, Miller blames sprawl on immigrants.

February 1998
The SC's 550,000 members receive ballots asking them if they support "Alternative A," requiring the SC to advocate ending population growth, in part by restricting immigration, or "Alternative B," which reaffirms the SC's 1996 policy of neutrality on immigration. Alternative A, which also calls for no more than 200,000 immigrants to be admitted annually, is supported by Kuper, Foreman, Nelson, Paul Erhlich, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society leader Paul Watson, Rainforest Action leader Randy Hayes and Worldwatch Institute leader Lester Brown.

April 25, 1998
After a heated campaign featuring charges of "the greening of hate," the SC announces its members have voted 60%-40% against changing the club's neutral stance on immigration (although just 13% of SC members voted), a position also supported by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the NAS and Friends of the Earth. Still, nearly 30,000 people vote for the anti-immigration position. SC Executive Director Pope says "overpopulation is, without question, a fundamental cause of the world's ills," but that a vote in favor of Alternative A would mean that the SC "would be perceived as assisting people whose motivations are racist."

Oct. 28, 1998
Tanton writes in a file memo that he discussed the SC vote with Alan Weeden, president of the Weeden Foundation and a long-time funder of FAIR, where Weeden is a board member. Tanton says Weeden's foundation put $90,000 into mailings about the SC vote but that Weeden, while disappointed in the outcome, still "feels it helped move the issue forward." Tanton also reports "low-key talks that are now going on in the Club, perhaps leading to another vote."

Late April 1999
SUSPS changes tactics and fields its first candidates for the SC board of directors, Kuper and Watson, in elections to be held in April 2000.

May 1999
Brower, the former SC executive director, fails in an attempt to replace Chuck McGrady as SC president. Brower wanted the SC to oppose immigration.

Dec. 23, 1999
In a letter to Tanton employee Roy Beck, who heads NUSA, Tanton says the SC board must be convinced that "the grassroots out there agree with the proposed stance on immigration [backed by Tanton and Beck]. What we need to do is apply pressure to convince them, not try to talk them into taking some action that they feel — rightly or wrongly — would bring down the wrath of the membership on them."

2000
Kuper founds Comprehensive U.S. Sustainable Population, which distributes a scorecard of legislative voting records. Kuper combines anti-immigration grades and environmental grades assigned by other organizations to create a composite "environmental grade."

Jan. 1, 2000
The Journal of Policy History publishes "The Environmental Movement's Retreat from Advocating U.S. Population Stabilization," by Beck and Leon Kolankiewicz of CCN.

February 2000
PEB sends an alert to its members announcing that Kuper, "long time Sierra Club member and population stabilization advocate," will run for the SC board in April. Highlighting Kuper's role in founding SUSPS, PEB's alert urges its readers, "If you're a Sierra Club member, be sure to vote!"

Late April 2000
SUSPS-backed SC board candidates Kuper and Watson are defeated. In protest, Brower resigns from the board, saying, "Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of that problem."

March 2001
CIS publishes "Forsaking Fundamentals: The Environmental Establishment Abandons U.S. Population Stabilization," an article by Beck and Kolankiewicz, who writes regularly for CIS.

April 2001
Changing tactics again, SUSPS gets a statement on the annual SC ballot that blames sprawl on population growth, which for SUSPS is mostly driven by immigration. At the same time, Zuckerman, backed by SUSPS, runs for the board. Both Zuckerman and the ballot proposal are defeated.

August 2001
SUSPS Chairman Bill Elder testifies to the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims, blaming an "immigration boom" for damaging the environment. Also testifying in the same vein are Frank Morris, a FAIR board member and former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and David Pimentel, a Cornell professor of entomology who is also on the board of CCN.

April 2002
After dropping his earlier ballot statement opposing immigration, Zuckerman finally wins election to the SC board on a platform of making the SC more visible on college campuses and finding more money for conservation.

April 2003
SUSPS-endorsed candidates Watson and Doug LaFollette, Wisconsin's secretary of state, are elected to the SC board, where they form the beginning of an anti-immigration voting bloc with Zuckerman.

Fall 2003
SUSPS announces a major push to win an SC board majority opposed to immigration. The group endorses Robert van de Hoek, three-time Colorado governor Richard Lamm (who joined the SC earlier in the year), Kim McCoy, Morris and Pimentel. Lamm and Morris both serve on the board of FAIR, while Pimentel is on the CCN board. Pimentel is interviewed by Tanton's The Social Contract.

September 2003
Nativist groups start alerting backers about the upcoming SC elections. The Social Contract urges supporters to join the SC in time vote for those concerned with "endless U.S. population growth." The National Immigration Alert List urges followers to vote for directors "who are concerned about the environmental consequences of our immigration-driven U.S. population growth."

Oct. 21, 2003
Citing notices in the nativist press, the SPLC's Mark Potok writes to SC President Larry Fahn to warn of a "hostile takeover attempt" by anti-immigration forces.

November 2003
Watson openly boasts about an attempt to take over the club at the SC's annual meeting in San Francisco. Earlier, he publicly said that the "heartening thing" was that only 8% of SC members had voted in the prior election, meaning that a small number of new members could sway the entire group's agenda.

Late 2003
Severing their longstanding ties with Tanton, Paul and Anne Ehrlich quit the FAIR board. Their ZPG, having already become a relative moderate on the nativist scene, renames itself the Population Connection and embraces the idea that ending poverty — not deporting immigrants — is the key to reducing population.

January 2004
Zuckerman sends fellow SC board members an article from the virulently anti-immigrant VDARE.com website that claims Latinos are spreading disease and crime in the U.S., and that "Hispandering politicians" are allowing this to happen. During the same month, Barbara Coe encourages members of her CCIR, listed by the SPLC as a hate group, to join the SC. (In 1998, Coe made a similar effort, later claiming that 6,500 of her members joined the SC and voted for "Alternative A," the proposed nativist policy, even though she then told a reporter she was no "tree-hugger.")

Jan. 8, 2004
SC member and virulent nativist Brenda Walker, a contributor to Tanton's The Social Contract, asks VDARE.com readers to "join the Sierra Club NOW and have your vote influence this debate." She adds, "The prize is enormous."

Jan. 14, 2004
Groundswell Sierra, a group formed within the SC to oppose the nativist slate, debuts its website and announces plans to resist the attempted SC board takeover. That same day, SPLC co-founder Morris Dees announces he will run for the SC board — not to win, but to use the ballot statement afforded to every candidate to urge SC members to vote against the nativist slate.

Jan. 15, 2004
Ten former SC presidents write an open letter warning of an "organized effort" by nativists. Three other past presidents sign the letter later, meaning that all living former SC presidents are on record against the takeover attempt.

Feb. 9, 2004
SC board candidates Lamm, Morris and Pimentel sue the Sierra Club, demanding that "fake candidates" who aren't really seeking election be forced out. One of their targets is Dees.

Feb. 11, 2004
After a review of new SC membership applications, an SC spokeswoman says about 20 racist groups and websites have urged followers to join the SC in order to vote for the nativists. They include VDARE.com, the neo-Nazi website Overthrow.com, and the National Coalition of White Writers.

Feb. 18, 2004
Lamm, Morris and Pimentel unexpectedly drop their lawsuit over "fake candidates."

March 28, 2004
In an interview showing his immigration concerns are not limited to the environment, Lamm tells The Denver Post: "What we're saying is, culture matters. I think one of the most important questions facing Americans is, how do they preserve their culture with this onslaught of new people and new cultures diluting what we are and who we are?"

April 21, 2004
Concluding a long campaign, SC officials announce that the SUSPS-supported SC board candidates have all been defeated by about 10-to-1 margins.

April 26, 2005
SC members reject another proposed policy change to their group's stance on immigration, with votes running 5-to-1 in opposition.

April 25, 2006
Wayne Lutton — a member of several white nationalist hate groups, a long-time Tanton employee and confidante, and editor of The Social Contract — is cited in a newspaper article claiming to be a "right-wing green."

Spring 2006
A handful of environmentalists gather in Western Oregon to discuss "the decade-long retreat of U.S. environmental organizations from addressing domestic population growth as a key issue in both domestic and global sustainability." The meeting eventually results in the formation of Apply The Brakes (ATB), a group that calls for immigration restrictions. Among the founders of the group is Bill Elder of SUSPS.

2007
The Sprawl City website goes up, focusing on "how uncontrolled immigration levels threaten America's environmental stability." In particular, immigrants are blamed for creating sprawl. Registered to NUSA, the site says it relies on research by NUSA leader Beck and Kolankiewicz.

2008
The ATB website is inaugurated. Don Weeden, brother of Alan Weeden and another principal of the family foundation that bankrolls both major nativist groups and environmental organizations, tells a CIS panel that the ATB will take on the population consequences of immigration to the U.S. environment. The ATB website is run by Elder. Another ATB member is Colorado State University philosophy professor Philip Cafaro.

June 2008
Full-page ads appear in The New York Times, The Nation, Harper's Magazine and other publications seen as liberal, signed by a new group calling itself America's Leadership Team for Long Range Population-Immigration-Resource Planning (ALT). The group is a coalition of five existing organizations — CAPS, NUSA, FAIR, TSC and AICF (the last three are listed as hate groups by the SPLC, and all five have received funding from Tanton). "We're the nation's leading experts on population and immigration trends and growth," boasts one of the ads. Pitched to environmentalists, the ads claim that an immigration-fueled population boom will dramatically worsen traffic congestion and destroy pristine land. One shows a highway clogged with vehicles above the caption, "One of America's Most Popular Pastimes." The other depicts a bulldozer clearing forest above the words, "One of America's Best Selling Vehicles." They are designed by Davis & Co., which FAIR pays $983,802 in 2008 and $348,442 in 2007, according to its tax returns.

June 2008
According to the pro-immigrant Center for New Community, NUSA's Beck circulates a letter seeking an executive director for a new organization to be named Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR).

January 2009
Marking a major new nativist effort to reach environmentalists, PFIR is founded with a board of directors and board of advisors largely staffed by people with long histories in Tanton's organizations. Among the board members are three men — Morris, Lamm and Pimentel — who led the attempted 2004 takeover of the SC. PFIR Executive Director Leah Durant is a lawyer who earlier worked for FAIR's legal arm, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI).

April 14, 2009
To considerable press attention, PFIR releases a poll supposedly showing that "liberals are concerned about the current levels of immigration into the United States and the harmful effect that current immigration policies are having on U.S. population growth, the environment, and the availability of jobs."

April 28, 2009
In a visit to the Washington, D.C., offices of PFIR, Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) details his plans to introduce legislation increasing border security and requiring verification of employees' legal status. PFIR's Durant tells a reporter: "There is a lot of concern about the impact mass immigration will have on the environment. In fact, there is a natural marriage here between immigration reform and environmental preservation."

Summer 2009
Tanton's The Social Contract features Durant on its cover and runs a six-page article on PFIR inside. Incredibly, given that Durant is black and portrays herself as a "progressive," the article and a question-and-answer interview with Durant are written by Peter Gemma, a longtime official of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a hate group that opposes racial intermarriage and has described black people as "a retrograde species of humanity."

June 2009
CIS publishes "The Environmental Argument for Reducing Immigration to the United States," blaming immigrants for sprawl, water shortages and other environmental ills. It is written by Winthrop Staples and ATB's Cafaro, who has also joined PFIR's board of advisors.

June 3, 2009
NUSA's Beck testifies to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on immigration and the environment, claiming that drastically reducing the number of immigrants is "a matter of profound environmental importance for posterity."

June 23, 2009
PFIR's Durant appears on CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" to discuss the group's April poll claiming that liberals are concerned about immigration levels.

July 1, 2009
FAIR releases a report, "Immigration, Energy and the Environment," that blames immigrants for the rise in greenhouses gases.

Aug. 25, 2009
CIS sponsors a panel at the National Press Club on "Immigration, Population, and the Environment: Experts to Debate Impact of Current Policies." The panel includes PFIR's Cafaro, Don Weeden of the Weeden Foundation, and Steven Camarota, director of research for CIS.

October 2009
CIS publishes "Strategic Negligence: How the Sierra Club's Distortions on Border and Immigration Policy Are Undermining its Environmental Legacy," a report that attacks the SC and claims it has "undermined its environmental legacy."

October 2009
Negative Population Growth, which receives funding from FAIR, runs an ad in E-The Environmental Magazine warning of a "population crisis" that may "destroy our future."

Oct. 4, 2009
PFIR's Durant attends Tanton's 33rd Annual Writers Workshop. She is photographed there alongside Lutton, who has been active in several white supremacist groups and published in a Holocaust denial journal, and Gemma, the CCC official.

Late October 2009
CAPS runs radio ads in California warning that "the real 'inconvenient truth'" is "the fact that population growth and environmental degradation are related" and "people drive cars, create sprawl, destroy forests and pollute." The ads suggest that "mass immigration" is driving population growth and thus destroying "natural treasures" through overpopulation.

January 2010
Starlight Media, which is funded by Tanton's foundation U.S. Inc., announces it is nearly finished with a film, "Tomorrow's America." Featuring many leaders of Tanton-linked nativist groups, it focuses on "population growth and immigration" and is meant to "help citizens better understand the history of immigration in the U.S., the mythology that surrounds that history and the roots of current immigration policy in the immigration law of 1965 that led to the new 'great wave' of legal immigration in the 1990s." That narrative echoes Tanton ally Otis Graham, the CIS board member who has long argued that a "mythistory" was created during the civil rights movement that falsely depicted America as a "nation of immigrants."

Jan. 21, 2010
NUSA's Beck, who describes himself as an environmentalist, speaks on a panel, "Perverse Incentives, Subsidies, and Tax Code Impediments to a Sustainable Economy," at The New Green Economy conference sponsored by the National Council for Science and the Environment.

Feb. 26, 2010
Mixing environmental with "cultural" concerns, FAIR issues a revealing statement: "Immigration policy must be limited to conserve our environment, open space, and natural resources. It should enhance our national culture, not radically alter or Balkanize it."

March 2010
PFIR releases "From Big to Bigger: How Mass Immigration and Population Growth Have Exacerbated America's Ecological Footprint," by Kolankiewicz, who now serves on PFIR's board of advisors. Kolankiewicz argues that "immigration is increasing America's Ecological Footprint, pushing our country deeper into ecological deficit," and laments environmentalists' scant interest in the issue. He writes that "the Environmental Establishment dropped its advocacy and retreated into uncomfortable silence and abject denial on U.S. population."

April 1, 2010
Jerry Kammer, a former journalist now with CIS, presents an updated version of the CIS paper, "Strategic Negligence: How the Sierra Club's Distortion on Border and Immigration Policy Are Undermining Its Environmental Legacy," at the "Breaking Down the Walls" conference at Arizona State University.

June 2010
FAIR issues an update of a 1999 report, "The Environmentalist's Guide to a Sensible Immigration Policy." The report, which is dated April 2010 despite its actual release date, claims that the "principal cause" of urban sprawl is "immigration-related population growth."

June 23, 2010
Leah Durant of PFIR puts up her first blog post on the popular progressive website, Huffingtonpost.com. PFIR says it intends to post twice weekly on the site.

New Report Exposes Nativists, Environmentalism & the Hypocrisy of Hate | IMAGINE 2050

2010-07-27T13:03:00.000-07:00

New Report Exposes Nativists, Environmentalism & the Hypocrisy of Hate | IMAGINE 2050

UNTITLED

2010-07-26T19:42:00.001-07:00

UNTITLED

Dark Rum early morning
haze in rainy city rivers
of thoughtless stares,
fatigue from the night
before. Before the sun
came up in the east,
before I came back,
crashed out in the living
room. Discussions on
history, literature, guerrilla
teatro trips to dramatize
the struggle. Visual meta-
lenguaje metaphors.
Revisiting a discussion we
originated in 2006 when
I was clueless, if only about
where I was going and
what I was writing. A
distant lifetime ago it seems.
Rainier beer random dialogue,
decidedly wiser, somewhat,
return to the original thought.
Sharing knowledge, conversing
with Frank about “El Movimiento”
UFW militant prose across the
Cascadian divide fusing rural
activist ethos with urban
Chicana/o student movement.
Back in the day of Brown Berets
barrio activity shadow-activist
presence, in solidarity with
Black Panther discourse. Need
for collecting the lost voices
of the moment. Porque we are
still ignored in the south y
historically marginalized en
el norte. Noting the words,
images I didn’t capture as a
young mocoso escritor, a
generation removed from the
original incarnation of ‘la causa.’
Sippin’ on some wine and
Tecate that Gonzo found on
the porch, his face lit up as
though he had discovered the
secrets of life. Chillaxed,
guitar strumming Frank singing
a movimiento song from the
early dias. Victor Jara and Inti
Illimani, embracing the complex
Inner vato loco-activist-intellectual-
nerd. Missing these discussions,
surprised that a project I wrote for
influenced others. Philosophically-
inclined, watching daylight turn
the sky brighter. Dark Rum
sleepless signs of a new day.

5 June 2009
O. Rosales Castañeda, C/S

Astro-Turf Right-Wing Fringe And Connections to Immigration Policy

2010-07-04T17:39:00.000-07:00

As I noted in previous blogs, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has long been the face of the right-wing immigration control lobby. Similarly, we see offshoot organizations in Washington State that have paired with conservative groups to sponsor anti-immigrant state initiatives every year since at least 2005 (failing to gather the necessary signatures each year).

In Arizona, SB 1070 and SB 2281 (anti-Ethnic Studies Legislation) are two of the more recent concrete examples of draconian legislation at the state level that seeks to question nationality based on one's outward appearance (in other words, racial profiling). Likewise, both were promoted and backed by FAIR-organized sub-groups.

To get a better idea of FAIR's relevance and it's history, one need only look at the organization's founder, John Tanton and the subsequent anti-immigrant empire he's built since the late 1970s. Below are two videos that give a visual narrative of Tanton and FAIR.

Below is yet another video, courtesy of the Rachel Maddow Show.

"Frontiers of Racism" Video

2010-07-04T16:59:00.000-07:00

As a change of pace (and to make the blog a little more user friendly) I will post a link to a video that makes the connection between institutional racism and hyper-nativism. More to come as time allows.

Comida For Thought

2010-06-22T16:58:00.000-07:00

Lately, it's been quite the challenge keeping the blog active. Perhaps one reason could be in how as writer-organizers, we tend to come unhinged in one way or another as one component of who we are takes more time. This said, upon reflecting to the last post in March of 2009, now, more than a year later, we see conditions largely the same (albeit more drastic in Arizona).

In sum, over the last year we've seen the dissolution of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and the evolution of right-wing formations such as the tea party and "patriot" movements. Likewise, we also see state governments pandering to said constituencies, thus promoting legislation such as HB 1070 in Arizona which by and large uses visual and cultural distinction to interrogate one's nationality.

Needless to say, there is also a strong push back in communities nation-wide as far as organizing and directly confronting xenophobia and crude nationalist sentiment. Especially so with mobilization nation-wide that echoed the rumblings of the 2006 Strikes and Boycotts.

As always, it is a visual binary metaphor that reflects the present state of the movement.

Top-down as opposed to bottom-up, local, as opposed to national, students, as opposed to workers, compromise packages, as opposed to just legislation. The question we must ask is what will work best.

The backlash in late 2006 in wake of the movement demonstrated that we are still at a crossroads.

Is it worthwhile to posit electoral politics into the mix considering that mass raids and continued repression ensued even after electoral victories by the Democrats in 2006 and 2008? To what extent is it viable to favor legislation as opposed to local organizing?

When all is said and done, it's a question of what comes first. Sadly, we see the enforcement component trumping the humanitarian component (which also has economics firmly enmeshed within).

The struggle continues.

'Nativist Extremist' Group List (Produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center)

2009-03-27T14:38:00.000-07:00

What follows is a state-by-state list of the 173 groups that constitute the nativist extremist movement, as fissured as it may be. In the case of three major groups — the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, the Minuteman Project, and the Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition — acronyms have been added to help identify affiliated chapters that use other names. Groups marked by an asterisk (*) are also listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups.

ALABAMA (5)
Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition (FIRE)
Birmingham
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Arab
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Blountsville
River Region Minutemen (MCDC)
Millbrook
Tennessee Valley Minutemen (MCDC)
Rogersville

ALASKA (1)
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps of Alaska (MCDC)
Homer

ARIZONA (17)
American Border Patrol (*)
Sierra Vista
American Freedom Riders
Phoenix
Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition (FIRE)
Phoenix
Maricopa Patriots (MMP)
Maricopa County
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Cochise County
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Green Valley
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Lake Havasu City
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
La Paz County
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Phoenix
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Prescott
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Tucson
Mohave County Minutemen
Kingman
Patriots' Border Alliance
Phoenix
Riders Against Illegal Aliens
Phoenix
United for a Sovereign America
Phoenix
Warden Burns Mexican Flags
Tucson
Yuma Patriots
Yuma

CALIFORNIA (31)
Antelope Valley Minutemen
Antelope Valley
California Coalition for Immigration Reform (*)
Huntington Beach
Campo Minutemen
Campo
Carlsbad Citizens Brigade
Carlsbad
Central Coast Minutemen
Salinas
Crispus Attucks Brigade
Los Angeles
Desert Cities Minutemen (MCDC)
Palm Desert
East Bay Minutemen (MCDC)
Walnut Creek
Escondido Minutemen Brigade
Escondido
Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition (FIRE)
Orange County
Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition (FIRE)
San Diego
Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition (FIRE)
San Juan Capistrano
Friends of the Border Patrol
Covina
Kern County Minutemen (MMP)
Bakersfield
Los Angeles Minutemen (MCDC)
Los Angeles
MCDC Camp Vigilance Field HQ (MCDC)
Boulevard
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
San Diego
Minuteman Project (MMP)
Ontario
Minuteman Project (MMP)
San Clemente
Mountain Minutemen
Jacumba
No Invaders
Running Springs
Northern California Minutemen (MCDC)
Napa
Oceanside Citizens Brigade
Oceanside
Rancho Bernardo Citizens Brigade
Poway
Sacramento Region Minutemen (MCDC)
Sacramento
San Diego Minutemen
San Diego
Save Our State (*)
Sacramento
Save Our State (*)
San Bernardino
Sonoma County Minutemen (MCDC)
Sonoma
Ventura County Minutemen (MMP)
Thousand Oaks
Vista Citizens Brigade
Vista

COLORADO (6)
Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition (FIRE)
Loveland
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Denver
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Grand Valley
Minuteman Project (MMP)
Byers
Patriots' Border Alliance
Colorado Springs
Rescue Without Borders (*)
Boulder

CONNECTICUT (1)
Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition (FIRE)
New Haven

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA (1)
Defend DC
Washington, D.C.

FLORIDA (7)
Central Florida Minutemen (MCDC)
Orlando
Dixie County Minutemen (MMP)
Old Town
Floridians for Immigration Enforcement
Palm Beach
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Haines City
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Miami
Report Illegals
Pompano Beach
Space Coast Minutemen (MCDC)
Melbourne

GEORGIA (10)
Cherokee Minutemen (MCDC)
Canton
Dustin Inman Society
Marietta
Gainesville Minutemen (MCDC)
Gainesville
Middle Georgia Minutemen (MCDC)
Macon
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Athens
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Atlanta
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Augusta
Minuteman Project (MMP)
Atlanta
Northwest Georgia Minutemen (MCDC)
Dalton
Southwest Georgia Minutemen (MCDC)
Albany

ILLINOIS (3)
Chicago Minuteman Project (MMP)
Lindenhurst
Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition (FIRE)
Elgin
Minutemen Midwest
Harvard

INDIANA (2)
Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition (FIRE)
Valpraiso
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Southern Indiana

IOWA (11)
Cherokee County Minutemen (MCDC)
Cherokee
Des Moines Minutemen (MCDC)
Des Moines
Harrison County Minutemen (MCDC)
Logan
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Council Bluffs
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Denison
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Griswold
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Iowa City
Riders Against Illegal Aliens
Ottumwa
Shelby County Minutemen (MCDC)
Shelby
Taylor County Minutemen (MCDC)
Taylor County
Woodbury County Minutemen (MCDC)
Woodbury County

KANSAS (5)
Burlington Minutemen (MCDC)
Burlington
Heart of America Minutemen (MCDC)
Kansas City
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Emporia
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Topeka
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Wichita

KENTUCKY (1)
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Lexington

LOUISIANA (1)
MCDC of Louisiana (MCDC)
Leesville

MAINE (1)
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Hanover

MARYLAND (1)
Help Save Maryland
Rockville

MASSACHUSETTS (1)
Concerned Citizens for Immigration Law Enforcement (*)
Framingham

MINNESOTA (1)
Minnesota Minutemen (MCDC)
Mound

MISSOURI (3)
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Joplin
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Kansas City
Springfield Minutemen (MCDC)
Springfield

MONTANA (2)
Eastern Montana Minutemen (MCDC)
Ryegate
MCDC of Montana (MCDC)
Missoula

NEBRASKA (3)
Lincoln Minutemen (MCDC)
Lincoln
MCDC of Nebraska (MCDC)
Omaha
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Grand Island

NEVADA (4)
Americans4America
Las Vegas
Emigration Party of Nevada (*)
Henderson
Nevada Action Coalition
Las Vegas
Pahrump Minutemen
Pahrump

NEW JERSEY (5)
MCDC of New Jersey (MCDC)
Bound Brook
Minuteman Project (MMP)
Bergen County
Minuteman Project (MMP)
Trenton
New Jersey Citizens for Immigration Control
Carlstadt
United Patriots of America
Linden

NEW MEXICO (1)
Patriots' Border Alliance
Alamogordo

NEW YORK (3)
MCDC of New York (MCDC)
Freeport
Minuteman Project (MMP)
New York
N.Y. ICE (FIRE)
New York

NORTH CAROLINA (3)
Americans for Legal Immigration
Raleigh
Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition (FIRE)
Raleigh
Triangle Minutemen Patriots (MMP)
Pittsboro

OHIO (3)
MCDC of Ohio (MCDC)
Cincinnati
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Cleveland
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Columbus

OKLAHOMA (2)
Minuteman Project (MMP)
Tulsa
Oklahoma Minutemen (MCDC)
Oklahoma City

OREGON (4)
Coos County Citizen Caucus
Coos Bay
MCDC of Oregon (MCDC)
Salem
Oregonians for Immigration Reform
McMinville
Oregon Minuteman Patriots Border Alliance
Salem

PENNSYLVANIA (4)
Great Lakes Minuteman Project (MMP)
Union City
Pennsylvania Minutemen
Quakertown
Pennsylvania Minutemen
Reading
Pennsylvanians for Immigration Control
Warminster

RHODE ISLAND (1)
Rhode Island Minutemen (MCDC)
Providence

SOUTH CAROLINA (3)
Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition (FIRE)
Rock Hill
Horry County Minutemen (MCDC)
Surfside Beach
Low Country Minutemen (MCDC)
Charleston

TEXAS (7)
Border Guardians (*)
Livingston
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Austin
Minuteman Project (MMP)
Arlington
Minuteman Project (MMP)
Lone Star
Texans for Immigration Reform
Houston
Texas Border Volunteers
Conroe
U.S. Border Watch
Spring

UTAH (3)
Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition (FIRE)
Salt Lake City
Southern Utah Minutemen (MCDC)
St. George
Utah Minutemen Project (MMP)
Salt Lake City

VIRGINIA (8)
Centreville Citizens Coalition
Centerville
Help Save Fairfax
Fairfax
Help Save Hampton Roads
Hampton Roads
Help Save Loudon
Loudon
Help Save Old Dominion
Old Dominion
Help Save Stafford
Stafford
Help Save Virginia
Herndon
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC)
Herndon

WASHINGTON (3)
Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition (FIRE)
Yakima
MCDC of Washington (MCDC)
Yakima
Minutemen American Defense
Seattle

WISCONSIN (1)
MCDC of Wisconsin (MCDC)
Oconto Falls

WYOMING (3)
Evanston Minutemen
Evanston
MCDC of Wyoming (MCDC)
Casper
Newcastle Minutemen
Newcastle

Intelligence Report
Spring 2009

'Sinister Intentions' Hard Core of Nativist Movement Growing By David Holthouse

2009-03-27T14:26:00.000-07:00

Intelligence Report
Spring 2009

Midway through last year, Jim Gilchrist, one of the principal architects of the modern nativist movement, sounded like a man burdened with regret.

"In retrospect, had I seen this, had I had a crystal ball to see what is going to happen… . Am I happy? No," Gilchrist told the Orange County Register last June 25. "Am I happy at the outcome of this whole movement? I am very, very sad, very disappointed."

Little more than three years had passed since Gilchrist and Chris Simcox, a kindergarten teacher-turned-Wild West gunfight reenactor, had co-organized the Minuteman Project, a month-long border "civilian border patrol" operation in April 2005. It mustered a few hundred volunteers, garnered international media hype, and inspired a slew of ragtag imitators whose militant rhetoric and confrontational methods rapidly exceeded Gilchrist's original vision of retirees in lawn chairs keeping a leisurely eye on the border.

"There's all kinds of organizations that have spawned from the Minuteman Project and I have to say, some of the people who have gotten into this movement have sinister intentions," Gilchrist said.

Armed members of nativist extremist groups are still patrolling parts of the U.S.-Mexican border.
Sandy Huffaker/AP Images

Jim Gilchrist was right. Even as the total number of anti-immigration groups has remained more or less the same in recent years, the number of extremist groups within the nativist movement has continued to climb. According to a count by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of "nativist extremist" groups in the U.S. rose from 144 in 2007 to 173 last year — a 20% increase.

Organizations identified by the Intelligence Report as nativist extremist are groups that go after people, not policy. Rather than limiting themselves to advocating within the mainstream political process for tighter border security, stricter immigration controls or tougher enforcement of immigration laws already on the books, these fringe outfits target and confront immigrants as individuals.

Some conduct armed "citizen border patrols." Others confront Latino immigrants congregated at day labor centers or informal roadside pick-up sites. Some conduct surveillance of apartment houses and private homes. Almost all of them disseminate vicious, immigrant-bashing propaganda.

Nativist extremist groups do not, however, present a unified front. Like other movements on the radical right, theirs is rife with infighting, ego clashes and allegations of fraud leveled by former allies. "I get more hate mail from members of my own movement, the so-called Minutemen, than from the open-border people," Gilchrist told The New Republic last August. He complained about "troublemakers with personality disorders and criminal propensities" hijacking the cause.

Gilchrist was embroiled in controversy and court battles last year after Minuteman Project board members accused him of misappropriating more than $400,000 in donations. His organization lost five chapters. Meanwhile, the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a spin-off group led by Simcox, more than doubled its number of chapters from 34 to 78, establishing itself as the largest and most geographically widespread Minuteman organization in the country. This rise occurred despite persistent allegations of fundraising improprieties leveled against Simcox by former MCDC national officers and state chapter leaders, along with a marked drop in actual border operations conducted by the MCDC.

Many other growing nativist extremist groups — most notably the Federal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Coalition, or FIRE, which increased from two chapters in 2007 to 14 last year — largely steered clear of the border in favor of confronting immigrants with aggressive protests at day labor sites, which are safer, closer to home, and don't require spending hot days or cold nights in the desert.

One exception to this trend was the die-hard nativists stationed in the badlands near Campo, Calif. Since late 2005, the Campo Minutemen and various like-minded groups have maintained a heavily armed, tightly organized presence in a human and drug smuggling hot zone roughly 60 miles southeast of San Diego. Whereas the original Minuteman Project and subsequent made-for-TV civilian border patrol operations were carried out in heavily traveled or populated areas the organizers knew to be shunned by coyotes and drug runners, the Minutemen outside Campo are dug into remote, secretive positions in dangerous territory. The Campo operation is a magnet for the movement's true believers, many of whom feel marginalized by the election of Barack Obama and the trouncing of anti-immigration candidates in last year's elections, perhaps making them more volatile than ever.

"I'd be wary of going down to the border myself these days," Gilchrist told The New Republic. "I'm worried about what [the Minutemen] would do with a sidearm."

Last year ended on a bizarre note for the nativist extremist movement when Shawna Forde, the leader of a small but ambitious group called Minuteman American Defense, reported she'd been the victim of a Dec. 29 home invasion carried out by a trio of Spanish-speaking men who ambushed her in her kitchen, beat her unconscious, sexually assaulted her, slashed the back of her neck with a knife, and then wrote "13" on her floor with a black felt marker. She said the 13 was apparently a reference to the ultra-violent, international Latino street gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.

Some rival group leaders didn't buy Forde's story, which was under police investigation at press time. First of all, her estranged husband was shot exactly one week earlier in the same home where the reported rape occurred. Then, on Jan. 15, Forde told police a man she couldn't describe had shot her in the arm in an alley two blocks from her home.

"The small scratches she reports via photos on her arms and neck look far too light for any knife attack, much less the work of MS-13," Americans for Legal Immigration head William Gheen wrote in a mass E-mail to his group's members. "Why would MS-13 switch from brutal murder and decapitations to bruises and light scratches that look like they were made with a paper clip? If this story is a hoax and some sort of attention grab, then it could prove highly embarrassing to our movement and cause."

Grassroots of Yakima Valley

2008-12-25T17:51:00.000-08:00

The author of this blog has finally found a working hyper-link to the site of "Grassroots of Yakima Valley," one of the more vocal anti-immigrant groups in Washington State. Again, I will observe what material is posted on their site and try to break down the hostile language and rhetoric in a more succinct way.

Granted of course, they are in their right to organize as they do. However, again what is key is understanding how rhetoric is transformed into hate speech and thus how it in turn influences discourse and action. Of note of course is the fact that hate crimes against Latinos has shot up throughout the country. In many respects, influenced primarily by the act of social dehumanization as perpetuated by fringe-right and nativist organizations.

I will update as soon as I can. In the meanwhile, I encourage readers to peruse the site on your own. As you can imagine, the struggle for human rights and social equity takes few breaks. Wish you all the best. Stay warm and take care of each other. Happy holidays and have a great New Year!

- Dec 2008, O. Rosales Castaneda, C/S.

GRASSROOTS OF YAKIMA VALLEY HOMEPAGE:
[http://grassrootsofyakimavalley.com/index.html]

2008-12-21T21:44:00.000-08:00

Untitled

Minutemen(sos) mienten
through forked double-speak
their words falling
on the sacrificial stone of logic
lowering one's IQ simply by
acknowledging their very presence
discourse denies coherent ideas
as of course
one simply looks at their hypocrisy
emblematic of nonsensical resonance
crude hyper-nationalist imagery
showcase a past
presenting itself as reality
brown sources of light
dimmed by an icy glare
one that seeps throughout
bringing instant death by night
xenophobic machination by day
denying the human right
to grow upward from the soil
hacia el sol arriba
false pretense for war comes to pass
once again in a cycle of dystopic
blind stares from the very navel
of de-humanized machinery
tierras forever partitioned
into nation-states that
slice open the very heart of our souls
once again history hiccups
a new reality
reflecting an already existent
lie that that sears through
the dormant essence of our collective past
like it or not
our humanity will not be denied
Minute mentes no ven realidad
that we have always been here
in solemn rememberance of 500 years
colonial scars dig deep
even into our own psyches
tricked to believe
we must die in the act
negate a part of our selves
homeland insecurity proves
even our celebration of life
is deemed an act of war
warranting right-wing pendejadas
disinterring our presence by way
of military operation
forced relocation
yet we all come back
to the place of origin
place of new beginnings
any place where the mind
connects to the soil
intermingling with la esencia del arbol
comforted by the ominiscent energia
of the four directions
children of the moon
offspring of the sun
imagining un hogar sin fronteras
a composite of all
who struggle for what is just.

O. Rosales Castaneda, C/S

13 August 2008

"La Lista"

2008-12-11T15:19:00.000-08:00

Reasoning for "La Lista"

The idea for this post (originally drafted in October) initially came from a bad experience I had at a taco shop in Yakima. Yet another source of inspiration came from watching a Simpson's episode (where Homer joins a secret society called the "Stonecutters"). Well, Simpsons and bland, overpriced tacos aside, I thought the 'list' should be more a critique of the right-wing and other elements that perpetuate repressive social norms. And on that note, here is the first entry in my list, which I will attempt to update at least once a month. Suggestions are most definitely welcome.

yours,

-El O
================

ANTI-IMMIGRANT GROUPS ADVOCATING FOR I-409

Where to begin on this one...first, a little background. According to the Washington Secretary of State's website, I-409 is an initiative that, if placed on the ballot and passed, "...would require state and local agencies to cooperate in enforcing federal immigration laws and would require verifying immigration status of persons seeking employment, receiving driver’s licenses, and receiving some public benefits." [for the full text see: http://www.secstate.wa.gov/elections/initiatives/legislature.aspx?y=2008]. Anti-Immigrant groups have attempted placing similar initiatives on the ballot every year since 2006 (months after the Minutemen Project started patrolling the Northern Border). And have failed...miserably.

Next, the organizations who prominently support the aforementioned proposed initiative are the following:

GrassRoots of Yakima [their website is down]. An organization in the Yakima Valley that came out roughly around spring of 2006. Most likely originated in the upper valley, can't see how they're from anywhere near eastside Yakima with all the smack they talk. That would no doubt earn you a shoe to the backside in that area.

RespectWashington [http://www.respectwashington.us/]. From the lack of information I found on their site, I gather that this is likely an umbrella organization. If anyone has additional info, let me know and I'll update this post.

Washingtonians for Immigration Reform or "WFIR" [http://wfir.org/]. Is a 'non-profit' organization based out of University Place (for my C. Washington folks, its located SW of Tacoma) that advocates 'reforming' (vaguely defined on their site) our immigration system. Furthermore they state, "Our membership includes Americans of multiple political persuasions, including both Democrats and Republicans. Our ethnic origins are as diverse as is our native population. We are not an arm of any political party or special interest group. Membership in our group is open to any American citizen without regard to race, color, creed or religion." (WFIR site). Yet oddly enough, they have a link to the American Patrol website, an organization listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Hmm...makes me wonder. "Open" group indeed...[for more info, see: http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/type.jsp?DT=27].

Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, Washington State Chapter [http://www.minuteman-wa.com/]
And last but certainly not least, a group that continues providing fodder for alot of my more recent writings on immigrant rights, the Minutemen(digos). The Washington State chapter originated in October of 2005 with the intent of patrolling the Canadian border, making it the dean of all 'major' anti-immigrant groups. Since, they've been harassing day laborers in Seattle, acting a fool in Yakima and spitting xenophobic, incoherent vitriol across the state. Minute(mentes)* in Washington merely echo talking points from groups in the southwest and when speaking on local matters, revert to blatantly ignorant, even racist, stereotypes of people of color.

IN MY WORDS

I agree that people have every single right to talk whatever they feel like expressing, intelligent discourse or otherwise. Words do inflict pain that seeps into the innermost regions of the soul. But, as I have seen, when we deprogram our minds and deconstruct, delegitimize, and decipher the most basic elements of these words, we dissolve and disempower the original meanings of these less-than flattering figures of speech.

However, I must add that when hate speech transcends the realm of language and becomes action we must act and confront it. The aforementioned groups feed and help perpetuate an already existent rise in xenophobia across the country. In the wake of said immigration argument, hate groups have swelled in numbers, and hate crimes against latin@s and other people of color has increased. The link between WFIR and American Patrol as well as the very much publicized links between the Minutemen and the Nationall Alliance and other white supremacist groups should serve as an indicator as to their true intentions.

That said, because of their continued effort to polarize the general populace and for their continued role in perpetuating backward stereotypes about people of Latin American descent (and yes, they often assume we are all 'illegals' and that we're a monolithic brown mass that originated in Mexico) and spreading politics of fear that lead to increased hate crimes...

...the 'Anti-Immigrant Groups of Washington State' earn the dubious distinction of being the first entry in "La Lista."

As such, consider the nomination to this list a figurative "patada en las nalgas"* on my behalf.

OCT 2008, O. Rosales Castaneda, C/S

*Spanish for "minds." Throughout this series of notes I will incorporate bilingual wordplay. A more recent development in my own writing style.

*Spanish for "kick in the ass."

State GOP: No Birthright Citizenship to kids of Undocumented Immigrants

2008-12-11T14:56:00.000-08:00

State GOP: No automatic citizenship for kids born in U.S. to illegal immigrants

[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2004450665_gop01m.html]

By Andrew Garber

Seattle Times staff reporter

SPOKANE — The state Republican Party adopted a platform Saturday that includes a provision aimed at opposing automatic citizenship for babies born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants.

The state party approved a similar platform plank at its 2006 convention that proved controversial. The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution recognizes citizenship for all persons born in the United States.

"Immigration is an issue that a lot of our party activists feel strongly about," state Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser said. "And it's certainly a very defensible position. It's not at all something that's based on race concerns. It's a matter of what is citizenship going to be based on."

State Attorney General Rob McKenna, one of the state's most prominent Republicans, said he doesn't support banning automatic citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants.

We have more than 200 years of history in which children born in the U.S. are deemed U.S. citizens," said McKenna, before reading the platform language. "What matters is where the children are born."

Not all delegates attending the convention support the position, either.

"The Constitution says that if you're born in the United States you're a U.S. citizen," said Scott Workman, of Sequim. "I'm not willing to change the Constitution. If we're going to let them in and they're going to have babies here, then they're U.S. citizens."

The plank containing the provision was adopted without discussion. It's part of a much broader party platform approved at the state GOP convention Saturday stating positions on issues ranging from national defense to health care and education.

The plank covering immigration and homeland security says, "We welcome those who wish to build a new and better life in America and Washington state and to recognize that the only price of such opportunity is their willingness to embrace our language, culture and legal system, beginning at our national borders."

The provision goes on to say that legal immigration "can best be facilitated by a transparent, traceable and enforceable guest-worker program that does not include amnesty or birthright citizenship and sanctuary cities."

Mathew Manweller, chairman of the platform committee, said the language in the provision is intended to oppose automatic citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants.

"We have no problem with them becoming citizens if they go through [the legal process] but not simply by virtue of birth," Manweller said.

Esser said the issue of birthright citizenship is broader than just illegal immigration. For example, he said, "I think if you ask the average person, 'Should a couple vacationing in the United States who are citizens of another country have a child on U.S. soil, should that child be a U.S. citizen?', that doesn't sound reasonable."

Esser noted that prohibiting citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants could "require a change in the U.S. Supreme Court interpretation of the 14th Amendment, so, obviously, if that's the case it will be difficult to ever accomplish."

McKenna said he doubts the citizenship provision of the party platform will have much impact.

"I think the attention span of the public on party platforms is very brief. I don't think platforms help you or hurt you very much," he said. "Voters look at the candidates."

Also at the convention, the state GOP assigned its 40 delegates to the national convention, with presumptive nominee John McCain ending up with the bulk of them. The state party's delegates are awarded through a complex system of caucuses and primaries.

Although there was a strong showing by Ron Paul supporters at the convention, McCain received a total of 33 delegates, Paul got four and Mike Huckabee three.

Andrew Garber: 360-943-9882 or agarber@seattletimes.com

Public History Projects II: Online Archival Material

2008-12-11T01:21:00.000-08:00

In addition to physical image and document collections, there are also archives found online that range from labor history to visual art movements in Washington’s Chicana/o and Latina/o community. One such source is the Chicano/Latino Archive hosted by The Evergreen State College Library. This research and teaching collection focuses on Chicano and Latino art in the Pacific Northwest, activity mostly during the 1970s and 1980s which ran parallel to literary and performance art movements and helped incorporate visual arts as a tool for expressing the goals of the Chicana/o Movement. Included in the archive is a guide to the original “Chicano/Latino Artists in the Pacific Northwest” exhibit (1984-86), an article from the UW-produced “Metamorfosis” journal on the state of the art movement, and an exhibit catalog, among others.

Another archive in Western Washington south of Seattle are the Columbia River Basin Ethnic History Archives at Washington State University, Vancouver Campus. The project itself is done in collaboration with the Idaho, Oregon and Washington State Historical Societies, as well as with the WSU-Pullman. The project focus is to highlight the presence of the oft ignored ethnic minority groups in the tri-state Columbia River Basin region (Western and Southwestern Idaho, Northern Oregon, Southern and South-Central Washington).

The University of Washington also houses two research units associated with Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies. Created in 2004, the United Farm Workers in Washington State History Project documents the formation and evolution of farm labor history in the Yakima Valley from the late 1960s to the present (the unit is also undergoing an expansion). Of note are transcripts of interviews, a photo essay history of the UFW as seen through images donated by long time labor activist, Tomas Villanueva, as well as a page with external links to sites of interest.

The other of these two archives is the Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project. Within the archive is the “Chicana/o Movement in Washington State History Project” which was initiated in 2005 with the aid of a group of undergraduate researchers connected to MEChA de UW. The section includes a history timeline, a collection of oral histories, a page containing photo collections donated, a slide show, a historical narrative, a list of digitized newspaper articles and a special documents collection from MEChA de UW’s archive.

The last archive listed is the An Oral History Of The Crewport Farm Labor Camp project produced for the Center for Columbia River History, a unit produced in collaboration between Washington State University and Yakima Valley Community College. The Crewport archive includes a historical narrative created by then YVCC Professor, Mario C. Compean, a list of oral history interviews, a photo essay as well as a set of documents.

In addition to the aforementioned archives, yet another valuable resource is Dr. Jose Alamillo's Chicanos in the Northwest Project. Alamillo, formerly an Associate Professor in Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University-Pullman, produced a brief narrative on Chicanos in the Northwest and published it on his own website. He also provides a bibliographic list of sources relevant to the regional study of Chicanos and Latinos in the Northwest.

Chicano/Latino Archive. <http://www.evergreen.edu/library/chicanolatino/>. The Evergreen State College. Accessed 11/15/08.

Columbia River Basin Ethnic History Archives. <http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/crbeha/>. Washington State University, Vancouver Campus. Accessed 11/15/08.

Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project. <http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/index.htm>. University of Washington. Accessed 11/15/08.

United Farm Workers in Washington State Project, <http://depts.washington.edu/pcls/ufw>. Accessed 11/15/08.

An Oral History Of The Crewport Farm Labor Camp, Center for Columbia River History, <http://ccrh.org/comm/crewport/index.html> Yakima Valley Community College and Washington State University, Accessed 11/15/08.

Chicanos in the Northwest Project, Washington State University, Accessed 11/15/08

2008-12-11T01:05:00.000-08:00

After a prolonged absence, due to a multiplicity of different things ranging from work, writing, and dealing with personal loss, I've decided to come back and update this blog. Granted, a lot has transpired since October of 2007, but I figure this will at least keep me busy. Here's to a new start in a new city.

Public History Projects I: Articles Found In HistorLink.org the Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History.

2007-10-21T22:35:00.000-07:00

Feel free to check out some of these articles posted on historylink.org. Granted of course, these articles are about Raza history in Washington State. I'm currently in the process of updating a bibliography I've been working on for the last two and a half years. However, it occured to me that I never tried doing a few searches on the site. Pues, as always I'm trying to continually gather much of this information. This should be an interesting intro into our history via the 'Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History.'

O. Rosales Castaneda, C/S

*These are the articles that came up when I searched using the following terms (Mexican, Chicano, Latino and Hispanic).

*For this specific blog, I've decided not to include the articles on exploration into the region in the 1770s. If you'd like the links, let me know.

*The articles I wrote for them are in red text. I haven't included any new ones as they haven't been posted yet (hay si cabron, muy chingon, muy chingon. 'I'm a Northwest Xicano Scholar...' and so on...).

.............................................................
Adams County -- Thumbnail History
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7835

Chicano/Latino Activism in Seattle, 1960s-1970s
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=8013

Franklin County -- Thumbnail History
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7452

Latino History of Washington State
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7901

Mexican American Women in Washington
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=5629

Muralist Art and Activism in Washington's Latino Community
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7879

Wapato -- Its History and Hispanic Heritage
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7937

Yakima County -- Thumbnail History
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7651

Chicano Movement in Washington: Political Activism in the Puget Sound and Yakima Valley Regions, 1960s-1980s
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7922

timeline articles

Mexican nationals arrive in Washington state under the Bracero Program beginning on October 5, 1942.
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7952

Chicano students at University of Washington establish United Mexican American Students (later MEChA) on October 1, 1968.
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7951

Some 2,000 students protest university hiring practices in front of the University of Washington Administration Building on May 13 and 14, 1975.
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=8301

University of Washington begins Grape Boycott on January 16, 1969.
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=1141

University of Washington discontinues grape boycott on January 27, 1969.
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=1177

State Supreme Court, on May 24, 1973, dismisses charges against attorney and labor organizer convicted of trespass for entering migrant worker camp
...> --> --> --> --> -->D(["mb","..nhttp://historylink.org/essays..u003cWBR..>/output.cfm?file_id..u003d5201..u003c/a..>..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..> ..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003cstrong..>Radio KDNA goes on the air in the Yakima Valley in December 1979...u003c/strong..>..u003c/span..>..u003cbr..>..u003ca href..u003d.."http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id..u003d8014.." target..u003d.."_blank.." onclick..u003d.."return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this).."..>http://historylink.org/essays..u003cWBR..>/output.cfm?file_id..u003d8014..n..u003c/a..>..u003cbr clear..u003d.."all.."..>..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003cstrong..>KMO-AM ..u003ci..>Radio Sol..u003c/i..> launches Seattle's first all Spanish-language radio programming on January 14, 2002...u003c/strong..>..u003c/span..>..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003c/span..>..u003ca href..u003d.."http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id..u003d3671.." target..u003d.."_blank.." onclick..u003d.."return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this).."..>http://historylink.org/essays..u003cWBR..>/output.cfm?file_id..u003d3671..u003c/a..>..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..> ..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003cstrong..>Thousands march streets of Seattle and Yakima in support of immigrants' rights on May 1, 2006...u003c/strong..>..u003c/span..>..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003c/span..>..u003ca href..u003d.."http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id..u003d7980.." target..u003d.."_blank.." onclick..u003d.."return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this).."..>http://historylink.org/essays..u003cWBR..>/output.cfm?file_id..u003d7980..u003c/a..>..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..> ..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cfont color..u003d.."000000.." size..u003d.."4.."..>..u003cstrong..>Chicano:..u003c/strong..>..u003c/font..>..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cstrong..>..u003cfont size..u003d.."4.."..>..u003c/font..>..u003c/strong..> ..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003cstrong..>Chicano activists occupy abandoned school that becomes El Centro on October 11, 1972...u003c/strong..>..u003c/span..>..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003ca href..u003d.."http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id..u003d2588.." target..u003d.."_blank.." onclick..u003d.."return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this).."..>http://historylink.org/essays..u003cWBR..>/output.cfm?file_id..u003d2588..u003c/a..>..u003c/span..>..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003c/span..> ..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003cstrong..>..u003cfont size..u003d.."4.."..>Latino:..u003c/font..>..u003c/strong..>..u003c/span..>..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003c/span..> ..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003cspan..>..u003cstrong..>Some 15,000 Latinos and others march in Seattle to protest House Bill 4437 on April 10, 2006...u003c/strong..>..u003c/span..>..u003c/span..>..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003cspan..>..u003ca href..u003d.."http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id..u003d7950.." target..u003d.."_blank.." onclick..u003d.."return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this).."..>",1]);//-->..> http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=5201

Radio KDNA goes on the air in the Yakima Valley in December 1979.
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=8014

KMO-AM Radio Sol launches Seattle's first all Spanish-language radio programming on January 14, 2002.
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=3671

Thousands march streets of Seattle and Yakima in support of immigrants' rights on May 1, 2006.
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7980

Chicano activists occupy abandoned school that becomes El Centro on October 11, 1972.
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=2588

Metamorfosis: The Journal of Northwest Chicano Art and Culture appears for the first time on May 13, 1977.
http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=8294

Some 15,000 Latinos and others march in Seattle to protest House Bill 4437 on April 10, 2006.
..> --> --> --> --> -->D(["mb","http://historylink.org/essays..u003cWBR..>/output.cfm?file_id..u003d7950..u003c/a..>..u003c/span..>..u003c/span..>..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003cspan..>..u003c/span..>..u003c/span..> ..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003cspan..>..u003cstrong..>..u003cfont size..u003d.."4.."..>Hispanic:..u003c/font..>..u003c/strong..>..u003c/span..>..u003c/span..>..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003cspan..>..u003c/span..>..u003c/span..> ..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003cspan..>..u003cspan..>..u003cstrong..>Spanish Exploration: Ignacio Arteaga and Bodega y Quadra's 1779 Expedition..u003c/strong..>..u003c/span..>..u003cbr..>..u003ca href..u003d.."http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id..u003d5689.." target..u003d.."_blank.." onclick..u003d.."return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this).."..>..nhttp://historylink.org/essays..u003cWBR..>/output.cfm?file_id..u003d5689..u003c/a..>..u003c/span..>..u003c/span..>..u003c/div..>",1]);D(["mb","..u003cspan class..u003dsg..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003cspan..>..u003c/span..>..u003c/span..> ..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003cspan..>..u003c/span..>..u003c/span..> ..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cspan..>..u003cstrong..>..u003c/strong..>..u003c/span..> ..u003c/div..>..n..u003cdiv..>..u003cbr..>-- ..u003cbr..>______________________________..u003cWBR..>____________..u003cbr..>..u003cbr..>Oscar Rosales Castaneda..u003cbr..>..u003cbr..>..u003cbr..>"Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric." - Bertrand Russell ..n..u003c/div..>..n..u003c/span..>",0]);//-->..> http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7950

Introduction

2007-10-21T22:08:00.000-07:00

Not much to say, really. This blog is an effort to collect my thoughts and articulate my own interpretation of the collective human condition here in Yakima. Granted of course, much of my writing is rooted in my own conceptualization of reality, as perceived through the multiple lenses I must utilize to make sense of reality. As such, I intend to note down my thoughts as a person of Mexican descent, from the Northwest. In a few short lines, that's about the extent of it. Though it'll be primarily a fusion of politics, prose, and random thoughts, I'll still make an effort to include the occassional light-hearted blog. That's it for now...until later.