The Enduring Power of Hate in Suffolk County

There is perhaps no other locale in the nation where anti-immigrant hatred has sunk roots as deep as those in Suffolk County, New York, where the powerful County Executive has built a career on it and where the judiciary is challenged to empanel a jury for the murder trial of a man accused of immigrant-killing for sport.

Almost a decade ago Newsday reporter Bart Jones aptly labeled Suffolk County “ground zero†of the anti-immigrant movement. As day laborers were brought in to provide low-wage labor for many of the upscale residents of the Long Island enclave, opposition to their presence began to build. The bellicose and belligerent “Sachem Quality of Life†crowd that sought to drum immigrants out of the County was subsumed by the Federation for American Immigration (FAIR)’s successful efforts to “mainstream†anti-immigrant bigotry, in spite of courageous efforts by community, religious, civic, labor, civil, and immigrant rights organizations. A decade later, the enduring power of FAIR-inspired anti-immigrant hatred is still manifest. Read more

Trailblazer of Civil Rights Dies Forgotten

A sad reminder of how easily the individuals who inspired generations and paved the way for expanded freedom slip into obscurity. Tragically ironic that this comes amid a vicious backslide on the civil rights won by individuals like Juanita Goggins.

The New York Times’ Robbie Brown wrote:

Neo-Nazi Activities Target Immigrants

When I first heard about the National Policy Institute’s “Boycott the Glenn Beck Boycott,†I was a little surprised, but just a little. Due to Beck’s racially charged reporting, Color of Change launched a boycott targeting companies financially supporting Beck’s television show.

The National Policy Institute (NPI), a white nationalist organization, believes that in order for “The European identity of the United States and its people [to] be maintained, Federal decentralization and territorial separation should be recognized as legitimate and humane means of preventing and resolving divisive social, ethnic, and racial conflicts.†Read more

Congressman Trent Franks: Good Time to Pick Up Foot, Insert in Mouth

Rep. Franks, a virulent anti-abortion activist and extreme right-wing conservative from Arizona, suggested in an interview with blogger Mike Stark that the Black community was better off under slavery than it is today.

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English-only Policies Threaten Civil Rights

Tomorrow marks the 42nd anniversary of the Chicano Student walkout from LA high schools in 1968.

Bold Chicano students organized high school students across east LA to demand the right to speak their language without institutionally sanctioned abuse in their high schools. Students were forbidden from speaking Spanish in class or from using the restrooms during lunchtime.

While nearly 70% of the high school students in east LA originated from a Spanish speaking country, the teachers were mandated to physically abuse and humiliate students in front of the rest of the class who spoke Spanish. The common drill: a young person slipped and responded to a question in Spanish. The teacher calls the student to the front of the room demanding that they place their hands out for the class to see, and proceeds to use a baton against their hands until blood is drawn. Read more

Great White Hopes: Race and the Right

One of the high privileges of being white in America is to be able to speak of race in coded terms and language—or by allusion to “broader†political issues, critiques, and concerns—and then profess innocence (“plausible deniabilityâ€) when called out for one’s racism.

Recent gatherings of the Tea Party and the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) provide a case in point, as do almost daily sound bites from so-called Congressional leaders determined to prevent the Obama Administration from moving forward on any agenda. Tea partier and former Congressman Tom Tancredo called for a return to Jim Crow-era voter literacy tests, declaring the President was elected by “people who could not even spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English.†CPACers Mitt Romney declared that “President Obama fails to understand America,†while Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty suggested taking a nine iron to the “window of big government,†as Tiger Woods’ wife had done to his vehicle. House Minority Leader John Boehner told CPAC that, “Voters thought they were electing a commander in chief; instead they got a finger-wagging professor.†Read more

Racism Exists in Saint Cloud

An act of hate was recently perpetrated by a resident in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. A packet of hateful, deragogatory depictions of Prophet Mohamed engaged in bestiality was posted to a telephone pole in front of a Somali store. This was a calculated move meant to cause embarrassment, and create an environment of hostility in this community of 68,000 – a third of whose population are black, Muslim, and Somali refugees

What was more frustrating was the decision by both county attorneys, Stearns and Benton, not to file criminal charges against the person responsible.

Actually this was not the first time the community has faced racism. In the conservative heartland of central Minnesota there is always the feeling by refugee communities that race plays into their daily interactions, but the hope is always that it will change for the better. Read more

Cross-post: Republican Bill Seeks to Deprive American-Born of Citizenship

Alex DiBranco highlights an ongoing threat, not just to the children of immigrants, but to any American whose ability to prove birthright is compromised.

Middle American Radicals Come of Age in Texas Attack

Over the next several days our nation’s political leaders and media pundits will spend countless hours dissecting the actions of American suicide bomber Joseph Stack. On Thursday Stack deliberately flew a small aircraft into an office building housing federal offices killing one person and wounding over a dozen individuals.

The media spectacle will go something like this. Conservative leaders, who have, since the election of the first Black president, stoked the flames of political paranoia, have all but abandoned a semblance of civil society will be quick to explain Stack’s crime as the act of a “lone lunaticâ€.

Tea Party factions will quickly distance themselves from the action at the same time attempting to justify this act of domestic terrorism as proof of an “out of control†Federal Government. Tea Party leaders will work overtime to claim that Stack’s suicide note proves that he was a “rabid left winger.†They will point to Stacks’ quoting of communist philosopher Karl Marx in his suicide note as proof. Read more

The Names Will be Changed

When my very Norwegian mother was selling ads for the Chicago Daily News in the 1930’s, the company assigned her the name “Miss Kelly.†This was so that irate or flirtatious customers could not track her to her home address. How different from today when people will tell 350 million total strangers every bit of their so-called private lives on their Facebook pages!

Obviously there are sound commercial reasons for changing a name. Would you flaunt a polo shirt from Lifshitz? Fraydl and Frank Lifshitz were immigrants from Belarus and named their son Ralph Ruben Lifshitz. But he changed his name to Ralph Lauren to sell his wildly successful ultra-preppie clothing line emblazoned with polo ponies. According to Forbes, Ralph “Lauren†is the 224th richest man in the world worth $2.8 billion (tied with Georgio Armani, after Steven Spielberg and before Oprah Winfrey), so it was a very smart move. Read more

Just a Chip Off the Old Block

Last week Fox News commentator Glenn Beck went on a rant against Barack Obama simply because his mother and father chose to name their baby after his father. He has been named Barack for 49 years, and managed to do very well in school, work, and civic affairs. But media buffoon Beck thinks that he can determine how “American†someone is just by the sound of his name.

Glenn Beck said of President Obama: “He chose to use his name, Barack, for a reason. To identify, not with America — you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical? Really? Searching for something to give him any kind of meaning, just as he was searching later in life for religion.” Read more

FAIR and Lyndon LaRouche: Of Soul Mates and Front Groups

When it comes to creating bogus front groups, few organizations in the U.S. today can match the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

Its most recent incarnation—“Progressives for Immigration Reformâ€â€”is all dressed up in a caringly liberal-like web site, professing its commitment to protect American workers and the environment, and to “improve the lives of people worldwide.†One has to wonder if someone at FAIR got schooled in its front groups strategy by Lyndon LaRouche, the wacky, right wing demagogue and political operative and whose capacity to create political confusion through his fronts is the gold standard to which FAIR may aspire. Read more

No Doubt About It, Glenn Beck is Racist

Remember the time Glenn Beck suggested that President Obama was burning down the country by trying to repair the immigration system? When he pretended to be the President in a skit in which he doused an actor with make-believe gasoline and lit a match? Or the time he called President Obama racist? That was idiotic and insulting. But what he did Thursday was worse. Because this time he didn’t just insult the President, he insulted all of America.

Many of us know already what an obnoxious bigot Beck is, but somehow he has managed to keep his FOX network TV show and nationally syndicated hate radio platform. What he said a few days ago should leave no doubt about it, Beck is racist.

Monthly Racism Round-up

It’s common to encounter subtle bigotry from all types of people in every community in America, even in unexpected places. A sad reality of our progress as a nation is that we are not even close to overcoming racial divisions. But sometimes things are said or events take place that are so outrageously overt, they deserve special condemnation. This is a recent round-up of insidious items that went down just in the first month of 2010.

First up is Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies with this thoughtful quote, “My guess is that Haiti’s so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.” He goes on to say that French colonizers didn’t do a good enough job suppressing paganism. He is referring to Haiti becoming the first Black-led republic in the world when it fought for and won independence from France in 1804. It’s akin to saying that America should have been ruled by the British longer or slavery ended too soon. It’s blatantly racist and insults our most cherished American value: freedom. Center for Immigration Studies is trying hard to secure mainstream respectability, but with spokespersons like Krikorian, it can’t help stepping in racist doo-doo time and again. Read more

Angry Voters, Right-Wing Populism, & Racial Violence: People of Faith Can Help Break the Linkages

This article was written by Chip Berlet and originally published at religion dispatches on January 26, 2010.

Tanton Memo of the Month – Center for Immigration Studies

Every month, the Center for New Community releases one of John Tanton’s personal letters and/or memos, illustrating John Tanton’s close relationships with white nationalists and the formation of today’s anti-immigrant movement. The letters and memos are a public collection at the Bentley Historical Library.

As discussions on immigration reform fill airwaves and blogs in the coming months, anti-immigrant and immigrant rights organizations will debate if immigration financially benefits American society. Currently, the John Tanton Network, a web of over two dozen organizations, is attempting to represent the interests of American workers, particularly organizations like Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), NumbersUSA and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Almost every month, the Center for Immigration Studies claims that immigrants drain the economy, are responsible for high unemployment and decrease wages for American workers. At the same time, John Tanton’s controversial history sings a different tune. His history suggests that the Tanton Network is more concerned with dividing American workers rather than increasing monthly wages. Read more

Ding Dong Democracy is Dead

Altenet posted this article, The Bush-Packed Supreme Court Thinks Corporations Are People Too, describing how very un-human corporations are. Even better is the video posted below of Keith Olbermann sounding off about the Supreme Court’s stupidity. It’s brilliant.

Exhibit Provides Opportunity to Understand Race

www.understandingrace.org

By Katie Irwin

A few months ago I came across an exhibit about race by the American Anthropological Association and the Science Museum of Minnesota. It explains the realities and myths surrounding race, and how the concept has evolved through time. The Association is encouraging people across America to discuss and examine their thoughts on race. The What is Race? exhibit shows how the concept of race has changed and is still changing, and it uses biology, culture and history to educate the public. From the exhibit’s website it states:

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A New Vision for American Radicalism

By Joel Olson

I’m a member of the Repeal Coalition, a group building a grassroots campaign to repeal all anti-immigration laws in Arizona. In the process, we are trying to build an alternative politics of immigration. Rather than the nativists’ attempt to hate, harass, and blame all undocumented people and their allies for all of Arizona’s woes (and we’ve got a lot of woes right now), we insist on the right for all people to live, love, and work anywhere you please, regardless of documentation. Read more

Sixty Black Leaders Condemn Sheriff Arpaio

Blacks in the United States have long been a guiding conscience in our nation. Unlike many social movements which focus on narrow policy goals, the social gains that Blacks struggle for tend to be broad-minded and expansive. The 1960s Civil Rights Movement for instance lifted many Americans of various races, ethnicities and nationalities up out of poverty and stifling segregation. It was this very Civil Rights Movement that strengthened, at least for a time, the social safety net that provided publicly funded pre-school and breakfast programs for our most vulnerable youth.

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