 I CAN'T EVEN REMEMBER how many times I've written on hate crimes against Latinos, or how the MSM spins the news and what it features to perpetuate fear and loathing and tired roleplaying of Brown/Black/Golden as Other/Evil/Contagion/Alien, or the advertisements that do the same, and the putos and haterz and abettors of the growing violence against mi gente. Some claim their virulent resistance to those from South of the "border" is all about "law" when clearly it is about culture and resistance to change at best, and naked racism at worst. (Some sound advice on how to take the shifting culture with perhaps some humor, rather than abject fear.)
The Clotty Red Stopper should not be yanked from its bottle so casually, as both Sarah Palin and John McCain ought to know by now. Demons claw at the cork all night. They gain legs in the silences left by the Left and are called forth from many foaming mouths on the Right.
Marcello Lucero was killed late Saturday night near the commuter railroad station in Patchogue, N.Y., a middle-class village in central Long Island. He was beaten and stabbed. The friend who crouched beside him in a parking lot as he lay dying, soaked in blood, said Mr. Lucero, who was 37, had come to the United States 16 years ago from Ecuador.
The police arrested seven teenage boys, who they said had driven into the village from out of town looking for Latinos to beat up. The police said the mob cornered Mr. Lucero and another man, who escaped and later identified the suspects to the police. A prosecutor at the arraignment on Monday quoted the young men as having said: "Let's go find some Mexicans."
-A Death in Patchogue |
And it is now time, with the rise and fall of Palin Politics, to move in a new direction. A direction that does not demonize the undocumented or their families and that does not feed the heinous undercurrents of hate in this nation, one that does not whisper to ghosts through lips bloodstained and withering. It is time to look honestly at the hate speech that travels under the name of "Right Wing Radio" and undergirds too much of the GOP's politics. Because just as so many finally took notice, through the campaign of John McCain, these ideas lead directly to hateful energy and violent intent.
A possible lynching in a New York suburb should be more than enough to force this country to acknowledge the bitter chill that has overcome Latinos in these days of rage against illegal immigration.
The atmosphere began to darken when Republican politicians decided a few years ago to exploit immigration as a wedge issue. They drafted harsh legislation to criminalize the undocumented. They cheered as vigilantes streamed to the border to confront the concocted crisis of Spanish-speaking workers sneaking in to steal jobs and spread diseases. Cable personalities and radio talk-show hosts latched on to the issue. Years of effort in Congress to assemble a responsible overhaul of the immigration system failed repeatedly. Its opponents wanted only to demonize and punish the Latino workers on which the country had come to depend.
A campaign of raids and deportations, led by federal agents with help from state and local posses, has become so pervasive that nearly 1 in 10 Latinos, including citizens and legal immigrants, have told of being stopped and asked about their immigration status, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Now that the economy is in free fall, the possibility of scapegoating is deepening Hispanic anxiety.
-A Death in Patchogue
As I wrote the night before the election
Will Obama rise to the challenge? Because as happy as I am with so much that is coming undone, and coming together, still the conversation about immigrants in this "nation of immigrants" remains woefully untouched and relegated to areas where nobody has to look at it or do much about it, and as a whole only profit from the entire system.
And people keep dying. In this atmosphere that so many with power in this system have created, guns are being bought up at record rates, nooses appear with alarming frequency, hate groups are stacking up new members, and people are being hunted and killed. For looking or sounding like the Invading Other that the Right Wing has sneered at, dripped bile at, offered threats to, and piled hate on.
Dear Mr. President Elect: You are too smart to pretend you don't see all this. So I say if you do not act on it and soon-given the time frame available of course-you are doing worse than ignoring these crimes and this desperate situation. You would be nodding along with this scourge that threatens both our peoples, and the entire nation as a consequence. And I know I don't need to be overly direct about this, but I will anyway: I certainly know that my people will hold your party responsible at the voting booth if the Republicans successfully take up this challenge I now lay down-
Republicans, want to win many of us Latinos back? Forge your new Resurrection plan and fashion at its core a new view on (im)migrants. Create an immigration reform proposal that stops the raids right away and creates a path to citizenship and lays off of the punitive and hostile vibe that looms over so many Americans and is just goddamn reasonable, for crying out loud. And if you beat the Democrats to it, I will start praising you on this blog. Regularly. And wholly independent of my own efforts, you will gain a whole lot of votes.
So I'm talking about action from all of us to properly frame and denounce the hateful rhetoric that any sensible person knows holds the hand of violent sentiment and violence itself. And I'm talking about legislative action to bring about humane immigration reform and stop the ICE raids immediately.
Oye: I find all these people nowadays telling Obama what he needs to do annoying, too. But this ain't simply about favored policies or my personal idea of how "center-right/left" the nation should be or who I fancy for a particular cabinet position. This is simply about lives. About nights at the movies that end in blood, and banging on the door that ends in the destruction of the family. This is about many lives lost and hearts broken, and many many people suffering even as I write this. And as I said, it doesn't need to be Obama or the Democrats who offer the first attempt at reform.
The Sleeping Giant is wide awake and watching. |
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