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Below is the letter sent from American Border Patrol's Melissa Jaramillo to ALIPAC founder William Gheen:
First - this email is from me and me alone. I am using my personal email
address to send it as I am NOT writing on behalf of any organization. No one
asked me to write this email. We are in America and we still have Freedom of
Speech. Know that Freedom of Speech does not include libel and slander.
This week, The New York Times (NYT) delved into the Minutemen Project and Shawna Forde, former head of the Minutemen American Defense. Forde was recently arrested for the murder of nine-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father Raul. The murder happened during an inconceivable attempt to steal money for the development of an underground militia targeting undocumented immigrants.
NYT quoted former Minutemen American Defense member Merrill Metzger saying, "I had to take an oath, and part of the oath was that I couldn't eat Mexican food. That's when red flags went up all over for me. That seemed like prejudice."
Another former member, Chuck Stonex, said Forde had talked about buying a ranch near Arivaca, AZ and building a compound. According to NYT, Stonex said that he took an excursion in October into the desert with Forde, where, wearing camouflage and carrying handguns and rifles, they searched for illegal immigrants.
After postponing twice, President Obama finally met with a bipartisan group of lawmakers on June 25 to discuss moving immigration reform legislation forward. The meeting was applauded by activists and advocates for immigration reform, as the issue seemed to have stalled, and the acrimonious tone of the debate has proven deadly.
I WAS ON a White House debriefing conference call on Friday (on immigration reform) and actually did much tweeting on it. (Talk about sentences you never thought you'd write....). I'll post some of those as well as talk about my own thoughts, hopes, and fears on the matter tomorrow (over here).
For now I'll crosspost the New America Media (NAM) op ed I was sent by NAM and asked to publish. And I'll also say that I'm definitely more in line with NAM's op ed than I am with the strategerizing from some of these cats that were on the phone call or even with Chuck Schumer and his whole Sound Meaner When Talking About Immigrants line. (Not that he doesn't deserve support for what he's doing to advance this issue in the first place (Yay Chuck!) but I'm really hoping he's not doing it for strokery but because he knows he is representing the ideals of the US, the wishes of his constituents, and more importantly, doing what is humane and right among humans.)
Today is Torture Accountabilty Day. There will be events across the country, American citizens making the case that those who committed the moral crime against humanity of torture be held accountable for their actions.
Holding those in the highest positions of power to the law, what a notion. We know the politics that prevents this, the powers who want these crimes once again swept under the rug.
We heard on Monday from the Supreme Court that Valerie Plame's suit against Cheney, et al., will not be allowed to go forward. Scooter Libby was found guilty of obstruction of justice. Mister Bush commuted his sentence. And surprise, surprise, there now is no case, even as we all know what happened. There is no accountability.
SHOULD I BOTHER LINKING to any of the posts where we talk about how the energy of stalled immigration combined with lunatics like Michael Savage combined with the hateful energy of groups like the Minutemen combined with the Democrats' obsessions with appearing vicious in order to get love from GOP have all resulted in a toxic brew of anti-Latin@ hate in this nation with very drastic consequences? I mean why? You, being a regular reader, already know all about it and read it almost every day. Then again, maybe someone new needs to find out about all this. I don't know.
Something needs to change, when US citizens already suffering from a terrible loss are attacked by other citizens en masse, and for what? For having Spanish names! Wow. I feel like the past has reared up, the days of Civil Rights era struggle, the days of anti-Greaser hate, the days of Los Vatos Locos and the dangerous fabled Pachuco. We are still fighting. La Lucha Sigue.
In an astonishing display of insensitivity, a number of callers paid their respects to the family of a victim in Monday's tragic WMATA train collision, not with condolences, but with hate. Callers harassed the family of the late Ana Fernandez, mother of six, seizing onto her Hispanic surname and reports that she had emigrated from El Salvador as an excuse to intimidate her children and relatives.
The recent collision of two metro cars in Washington, D.C. was center-stage in the news recently. There were several fatalities, many more casualties, and the investigation is ongoing as to the cause of the wreck.
That wasn't the only thing the train collided into, however; add the familia Fernandez to the mix. The hate has flowed heavily in their direction after the matriarch of their family died in the accident:
HYATTSVILLE, Md. - As people's hearts continue to go out to the family of victims killed in Monday's tragic Metro crash, some grieving family members say they're being harassed.
Forty-year-old Ana Fernandez, an immigrant from El Salvador, was on her way to her cleaning job when she was killed in Monday's Metro collision. On Wednesday, her family and friends gathered outside their home where her daughter said they need help but are upset with prank phone calls they have received.
"And I'm serious if you're going to call and leave messages like that, don't call at all," Evelyn Fernandez, the victim's daughter
The immigration system is one thing that needs to be overhauled, the other is the country's corazón. There's too much hate, and too much ignoring of it by our political leaders.
President Obama has often stated that immigration reform cannot be approached in a piecemeal fashion, and that his administration would tackle the issue in 2009. This week, Obama will be meeting with members of Congress to kick off a bi-partisan approach to reform. These meetings don't guarantee any legislative action will take place this year, but are at least an encouraging sign. In the meantime, the deportation industry shows no sign of slowing, hate crimes are rising and hate groups are being main streamed. As a result, the polarization between reform advocates and foes is getting worse.
Supreme Court nominations get political, even with nominees as qualified as Judge Sonia Sotomayor. However, that does not mean that politicians get a free pass to attack nominees solely on the basis of race, ethnicity or gender. Such outbursts are reprehensible not only to Hispanics and communities of color, but to all Americans. More than 4,000 people have stood up to the nonsense and signed NCLR's (National Council of La Raza) petition asking the Republican leadership to restore the debate on Judge Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination to a more civil level of discourse.
NCLR will be presenting the petition to Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Please join us in asking these Republican leaders to denounce this smear campaign and keep the nomination process civil, respectful and constructive. If you haven't already done so, please sign NCLR's petition today. If you have, forward it on to your family and friends. Let's make sure that this petition has 5,000 supporters by the time it lands on Michael Steele's desk.
IS ICE ASHAMED of its tactics? No. A Department like ICE has no conscience, of course. Just directives (like "make 400,000 arrests this year") and a great concern for its public image. After all, ICE needs to keep functioning to funnel cash to the Corrections Corporation of America. That is why, obviously, they are so tight lipped, issuing only steel-plated machine-stamped public statements stinking of the PR room or flat, faceless (and sometimes false) phrases like "We did everything by the book."
Is it "by the book," I wonder, to hang out on train platforms or stations and interrogate brown high school girls? Ask for their papers and when they cannot produce any, to solicit confessions about legal status, have them sign a paper "agreeing to voluntarily return to Mexico without seeing an immigration judge" and then ship across the border?
Is that really "the book" the Obama/Napolitano administration is using?
Quick. Choose. The house is burning and you have to choose. Your mother or your child? Who do you save?
The current framing of the immigration reform movement and the immigrants it claims to represents takes place against a backdrop of human lives. And in our house, the United States of America, is aflame. The framing of the current immigration reform movement however, the good vs. bad immigrant narrative that we have written about and discussed extensively, forces advocates and the media into a corner. Choose. The idea is that we can't have it all when it comes to immigration reform. That we need to make compromises, find workable solutions to borrow an often heard phrase from the Reform Immigration for America Summit. That means choosing between your mother or your child.
It's a story that has been told time and time again. It has been written in poems. It has been captured in photos. It has been screened in videos.
If you're on the Internet and you haven't heard of the DREAM Act, you're not doing it right. Seriously, just throw your computer out the window right now. Keeping your computer is not worth your money or your time...
If you're still here, I'll let you get away with watching this video:
On this day in 1982, Chinese American immigrant Vincent Chin was beaten to death with a baseball bat, at his own bachelor party, by racist white auto workers in Detroit who blamed Japan for layoffs in the US auto industry. The murderers, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, were convicted of manslaughter. They served no jail time, were given three years probation, fined $3,000 and ordered to pay $780 in court costs. Wayne County Circuit Judge Charles Kaufman said, "These weren't the kind of men you send to jail."
On July 14, 2008, Mexican immigrant Luis Ramirez was beaten to death by racist white teens shouting anti-Mexican epithets, in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. The murderers, Brandon Piekarsky and Derrick Donchak, were convicted of simple assault. Two days ago, they were respectively sentenced to 6 and 7 months in county jail. Piekarsky's lawyer Frederick Fanelli said, "You would be proud to have any of these kids in your classroom, and any of them as your children."
On May 30, 29-year-old Raul Flores and his 9-year-old daughter Brisenia Flores were shot to death, purportedly by a group of far-right anti-immigrant activists who broke into the Flores home by posing as police officers. On Friday, Shawna Forde, anti-immigrant activist and Executive Director of the Minutemen American Defense, (MAD) along with accomplices Jason Eugene Bush and Albert Robert Gaxiola were arrested on two counts of first-degree murder and burglary charges related to the Flores murders.
WHEN LUIS RAMIREZ WAS BEAT TO DEATH in the street for simply being Mexican While in Public, the Founding Editors of (award winning site!) The Sanctuary penned this piece. We did it carefully and over a few days, because we had a point we wanted to make very clear; one we did not see being underlined in the media. A point crucial to understanding the Ramirez killing as well as the killing of Marcelo Lucero and Wilter Sanchez and Jose Sucuhañay...and so many other vicious attitudes and assaults against the Latino comunidad.
I think I have had to write this over and over many times, every time there is a hate crime against a Latino pero it is worthy of repeating.
Defining what makes a hate crime is a political act. The reason I write this is that I am reading many media reports and blogs that keep referring to the shooting at the Holocaust Museum as a hate crime but not that many referring to the murders of Brisenia Flores and her father as a hate crime. On a legislative level, states each have their own hate crime statutes that aren't consistent with each other so what may be a hate crime in one state may not be in another. Often the definition of a hate crime is hinged on the use of an epithet or slur, not the history of the community where it happened. This is why some advocates have been pushing for Federal hate crimes legislation, that would create one standard that would be followed across state lines and these moves make people feel good, offer a sense of protection, except they are only good once there is a victim.
U.S. Reps. Nydia M. Velázquez (D-NY), Steve Israel (D-NY) and José E. Serrano (D-NY) announced the introduction of the National Hate Crimes Hotline Act of 2009. "Far too many victims silently bear the burden of the crimes committed against them, which is why we are taking steps to provide a place for them to be heard. A National Hate Crimes Hotline would allow New Yorkers and victims across the country to safely report to the police and find vital assistance. In addition, accurate reporting will improve local responsiveness, increase prevention efforts and help bring an end to these heinous acts," said Rep. Velázquez.
I'M VERY SORRY TO SAY that Brisenia Flores and her father Raul are dead. That's her on the left. The Flores familia was sleeping when anti-immigrant crusaders busted down their door and invaded their home, ICE-style, before shooting the father and daughter to death.
Despite DC orgs bringing hundreds to the Capitol to chant "Si Se Puede" in unision and in a variety of languages while assuring everyone that the first White House postponement of a bipartisan meeting on Comprehensive Immigration Reform was a positive thing because it gave more time to organize, Obama has done it again. He's indefinitely postponed a meeting that was supposed to be a big push in making immigration reform happen this year.
The budget nightmare unfolding in Arizona is taking the back seat to several pieces of nasty legislation that could only come from Russell Pearce's National Alliance-influenced brain. Senate Bill 1280 would make it a crime to even be in the presence of an undocumented worker while SB1175 strips local governments of the ability to keep immigration enforcement where it belongs - a federal issue.
Border Action Network has been all over this lately with action alerts to put political pressure on Arizona State Legislators. Those efforts have received a shot of adrenaline with SEIU joining the fight against these overreaching and, yes, anti-latino bills:
For Arizona and America to be a land of opportunity for everyone who lives here, our policies must recognize that we're all in it together, with common human rights and responsibilities.
Right now, anti-immigrant extremists are trying to distract us from addressing Arizona's real challenges like the budget shortfall, education, health care and employment and scape goat immigrants.
Tell your State Senator that anti-immigrant legislation has go to go!
If one group can be exploited, underpaid and prevented from becoming part of our society, none of us will enjoy the opportunity and rights that Arizona and America stands for.
Tell your Arizona State Senator to vote NO on Anti-Immigrant Bills SB 1162
THE 
I WAS ON a White House debriefing conference call on Friday (on immigration reform) and actually did much tweeting on it. (Talk about sentences you never thought you'd write....). I'll post some of those as well as talk about my own thoughts, hopes, and fears on the matter tomorrow (over 
SHOULD I BOTHER LINKING to any of the posts where we talk about how the energy of stalled immigration combined with lunatics like Michael Savage combined with the hateful energy of groups like the 
IS ICE ASHAMED of its tactics? No. A Department like ICE has no conscience, of course. Just directives (like "make 400,000 arrests this year") and a great concern for its public image. After all, ICE needs to keep functioning to funnel cash to the 
WHEN 
