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learn more Working for Justice in Our Communities Since 1929
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.
The point was that this was not A Killing, not even simply A Hate Killing. (Hell, the all-white jury decided Ramirez's cracked-open-skull-n-brains wasn't even worth a murder charge, but only a Simple Assault!) The point is, this most-decidedly hateful Hate Crime was but one "data point" (if you like phrases like this) in a larger quotient. As such, all these killings are.
That is, it does not help us see any valuable truth or approach any larger societal problem to isolate the event and wall it off from the larger context of anti-immigrant and thus anti-Latino hate and hostility in this nation. The pandering anti-immigrant politicians (mostly on the Right tho not all by any means); the Lou Dobbs/BilloReilly/Glen Beck/Rush Limbaugh/Sheriff Arpaio (and I include this creaky bigot with this crew because he fancies himself a TV star now)/Jon Justice entertainerhaterz; the stall on humane immigration legislation combined with the ICE movement/detention industry which paints immigrants/latinos as criminals; and the thinly-disguised hate groups like FAIR and the Minutemen and NumbersUSA and ALIPAC-all these factors collude to create an intense soup of racist hate that is marking Latinos/as fair game for violence and for the dehumanization that makes it possible to view this violence as nothing more than "isolated incidents" as well as let hate-motivated murderers off with a "Simple Assault" charge.
Obviously, we-The Sanctuary editors-were on target with our message, as the Ramirez piece has been picked up byLa Voz de Esperanza, a publication of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center in San Antonio, Texas, to be printed in their June 2009 issue. They told me they feel it best contextualizes the event as well as the climate in our nation today that leads to such hate crimes. This was a great satisfaction to us, but obviously getting even the right message into print will not stop the hate or the violence. That will take all of us. Though to get there, we do need to be having the right conversation. That's hard to do when even people who condemn the killing equate murdering children with "extremists" on the other "side." As if pro-migrant groups could ever be compared with such vile actions!
I agree that it is important to delve into and discover the other criminal associations and deeds of Shawna Forde and Eugene Bush and all the Minutemen who are murderers, thieves, rapists, etc. Dig it all up and put it in the light. Of course we must and should. Sadly, though, the effect of all this digging, unfortunately seems to be coupled with the message that so many hate groups would also want to broadcast, a message not unlike the one that says Conservatism can never failed, only be failed by poor actors. It is "these were lone wackos not acting in line withour movement." This would be an utterly deceitful line to offer, as it's well-known that Forde was not an unknown outsider within the anti-immigrant (and... more to the point... anti-Mexican) movement, as amigo Richard puts it.
The truth is, it really doesn't matter how wacked out Eugene Bush or Lou Dobbs or Shawna Forde are, or if Forde was crazy or planning to overthrow the US. What matters is how well she fit into the FAIR/Minutemen/CIS/NumbersUSA/ALIPAC crowd, how on-point and on-message Bush and Forde were, and how indicative their attitudes and messaging is of the current anti-immigrant "Nativist Lobby" that the Southern Poverty Law Center reports on.
Media Matters is holding a panel on this topic, and drawing the frame around on consequences of growing culture of violent rhetoric in right-wing media. And that's good. But that's not the bullseye, to my way of aiming.
No matter what legislation passes, no matter what pundits are censured, no matter what mealy-mouth backpedaling any politicians do when they sense the sway and national mood is not with anti-Latino hate, no matter how high in number the hate crimes against my people grow, what WILL continue, I'm afraid, is the detention industry's growth. As Amnesty International reports, "[t]ens of thousands of people languish in U.S. immigration detention facilities every year - including a number of U.S. citizens - without receiving a hearing to determine whether their detention is warranted."
ICE projects 400,000 more arrests this year. And these ain't hotels they are sticking people in.
It is not just "Right Wing" "violent rhetoric" that poses danger to Latin@s, though that is no small thing to be dismissed or overlooked. But this violence and this view on migrants, Mexicans and brown people in general is part and parcel of our entire national lust for incarceration. And the stats will tell you who beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is non-whites being locked up in greater numbers. Sadly, even the US military is doing its part.
The Liberal blogosphere and Left wing groups can stand apart and aside from the Wackiest of Loners and point at them if it makes them feel better. But the wise would lift their eyes and see the larger picture unfolding before us all. It is not pretty. After all, when you send a message to the nation in many ways-large, small, loud and quiet-that brown people are criminals and the way to deal with their growing numbers and power is to break down their doors with weaponry and jail them...why do you imagine humans will not learn the lesson and join in? They will, as we see from incident after "isolated" incident. And now, a dour and fearful miasma surrounds us all. The nation-in the form of pundits, radio hosts, politicians, ICE, and "anti-immigrant groups"-is terrorizing Latin@s.
And that stink? It is not a bushel of rotten apples we can toss in a box. It is an orchard full of trees, and many of them drooping with insidious rot.
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