¡Alto Arizona!

Demonizing Mexican-American studies is unjust

by Roberto Rodriguez - May. 27, 2012 | Source: AZCentral.com

I pick up the phone at my office at the University of Arizona and learn that I have three recorded messages waiting for me. The first one begins with the caller claiming to be half White and half Native American, addressing me as an "(expletive) Mexican" and a "Raza (expletive)." This while injecting a .357 Magnum into his rant.

The second and third calls are similar. The vitriol is inexplicable and virtually incomprehensible, except for the threats of extreme violence.

As a lifelong writer, receiving vicious hate mail is not new to me, including receiving a registered letter to my house from the Ku Klux Klan. But receiving death threats as a professor -- this is new.

Just the week before those calls, a video was placed on YouTube by right-wing elements, accusing me of being the ringleader of the movement to defend Mexican-American Studies (MAS) from being eliminated by the state, via House Bill 2281. In reality, that six-year effort has primarily been a student-led movement.

Bennett Backs Off Birther Threat, Apologizes To Arizona

By: Nick R. Martin | May 22, 2012 | Source: TalkingPointsMemo.com

After days of ridicule for launching a conspiracy theory-fueled investigation into Barack Obama’s birth certificate, Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett on Tuesday backed off his threat to keep the president off the ballot in November and apologized to his state.

“If I embarrassed the state, I apologize, but that certainly wasn’t my intent,” Bennett said in an interview with Phoenix radio station KTAR. “He’ll be on the ballot as long as he fills out the same paperwork and does the same things that everybody else has.”

Memorandum to the US Department of Justice

Source: Comités de Defensa del Barrio/Tonatierra Blogspot.com
(http://cdb-tonatierra.blogspot.com/2012/02/memorandum-to-us-department-of-justice.html)

Attorney General Eric Holder
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

Dear Sir:

It has come to our attention via reports in the media today that the department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will be opening up an office of community ombudsman to address issues of concern by the public relevant to the scope of law enforcement policies and operations of the agency.

We were also informed this morning that officials of the Justice Department are meeting with community leaders and organizations to discuss the current status of the US Justice Department Letter of Findings regarding the investigation of the office of the Maricopa County Sheriff, J. Arpaio.

The long march in defense of civil rights for All Peoples which began with the dismantling of discriminatory racial profiling practices that benefit the European American "white" constituencies with ethnic preferences in electoral, educational, economic, and legal systems has many chapters, but it begins with the basic recognition of universal Human Dignity and compassion.

The crossing of the Edmund Pettus bridge and the anguish of Bloody Sunday on March 7, 1965 are significant mileposts in this journey, and must be recalled now to contextualize the actions of yet another Sheriff in yet another state, for as Martin Luther King said after Selma in 1967 and before his assassination in 1968: "We have emerged from the era of Civil Rights to the Era of Human Rights."

DOJ suit against Arpaio prompts swift reaction

Reaction to the U.S. Department of Justice racial-profiling lawsuit against the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office:

"We applaud the Department of Justice and Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez for pressing forward with their investigation of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. For too long, rather than fairly enforcing the law, Arpaio has been living above the law ... The Justice Department has gone the extra mile in seeking agreement with Arpaio's department over training procedures, data collection methods, and an outreach to Arizona's Latino community. The sheriff's flat refusal to cooperate with the Department of Justice makes clear he places his ego over the interests of the residents of Maricopa County. Arpaio's tenure in office has been an embarrassment to Arizona, to the country, and to the rule of law. We hope that this lawsuit will ultimately lead to his removal from office."

--Angela M. Kelley, vice president for immigration policy and advocacy at the Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

"It is very clear a dispute has broken out between the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, and it's forcing a dilemma for the White House. The DOJ is arriving late to a civil rights crime scene caused in large part by the Department of Homeland Security. Janet Napolitano got Arpaio his immigration badge when she was governor, and rather than correct her mistake as Secretary of DHS, she chose to create more Arpaios by expanding the dangerous 'Secure Communities' (SCOMM) program throughout the country. The case of Joe Arpaio demonstrates Secretary Napolitano's decision to make police 'force multipliers' in the immigration context has multiplied the force of civil rights violations. The DOJ action today will heighten demands on the White House to intervene and suspend Secure Communities."

--Chris Newman, legal director, National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

"We all owe a great deal of gratitude to the civil rights workers of Arizona who have raised their crisis to the fore. Sheriff Arpaio is the best argument against the immigration status quo. His continued stay in office is warning to all of us facing the Arizonification of our towns and an urgent call for federal action. The president's legacy on immigration thus far has been defined by DHS's criminalizing immigrants instead of legalizing them. We hope his stance evolves."

--Pablo Alvarado, executive director, National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

(Video) Feds: Ariz. Sheriff Caused Crisis Of Confidence

Source: The Associated Press

Federal authorities sued America's self-proclaimed toughest sheriff Thursday, a rare step after months of negotiations failed to yield an agreement to settle allegations that his department racially profiled Latinos in his immigration patrols.

The Lower Floor

By LINDA GREENHOUSE,  May 2, 2012 | Source: NYTimes.com

I found last week’s Supreme Court argument in the Arizona immigration case utterly depressing, and I’ve spent the intervening week puzzling over my reaction. It’s not simply that the federal government seems poised to lose: unlike the appeals court, the justices appear likely to find the heart of Arizona’s mean-spirited “attrition through enforcement” statute, S.B. 1070, permissible under federal law.

Poring over the argument transcript and the briefs, what finally came through as most deeply troubling was this: the failure of any participant in the argument, justice or advocate for either side, to affirm the simple humanity of Arizona’s several hundred thousand undocumented residents.

Both facts and logic tell us that this is a varied population. Different reasons, different routes and different times brought these individuals to Arizona. Half the adults among them hold jobs. Many are parents of American-born citizens of the United States. An untold number, while not possessing the right papers, are also not now deportable under our byzantine immigration laws. But whoever they are and whatever their stories, all are now likely to become what Arizona intended them to be when it enacted the law two years ago: hunted.

SB1070 Author Shares Fears About America Becoming a “Minority, Majority” Nation

The law's proponents say race has nothing to do with it, but in a moment of candor one of the architects of the law admitted it does.

By Wendy Sefsaf | April 27, 2012 |  

Source: Alternet.org

Editor's note: that America is becoming a "minority-majority nation" is an erroneous, if commonly held, belief, as AlterNet's Joshua Holland explained here.

On the same day the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Arizona v. United States the Washington Postpublished an article featuring Michael Hethmon, general counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute. Hethmon is the lesser-known legal mind behind SB1070, and a variety of other anti-immigrant measures. His legal counterpart, Kris Kobach tends to get the spotlight; however Hethmon didn’t shy away from theWashington Post this week and was frank about his views on the real issues underlying SB1070.

First, Hethmon shared his concerns about demographic shifts taking place in America:

“Immigration is “on track to change the demographic makeup of the entire country. You know, what they call ‘minority-majority,” said Hethmon. ”How many countries have gone through a transition like that — peacefully, carefully? It’s theoretically possible, but we don’t have any examples.”

He then explains how a Supreme Court victory in SB1070 will pave the way for similar laws to be passed in additional states, particularly in the ones where “nativist sentiment” runs high:

“copycat legislation will explode,” Hethmon said. “This is the classic environment for, if you will, sort of nativist-type sentiment. . . . It should explode at the states or — even better — [Congress] will be provoked to take action.”

Like It or Not, Arizona's SB 1070 Is About Racial Profiling

By Bill Ong Hing, Professor of Law, University of San Francisco | Source: HuffingtonPost.com

In the Obama administration's challenge to Arizona's anti-immigrant SB 1070, Department of Justice lawyers avoided arguing that any of the law's provisions, including the requirement that state police check the documents of suspected undocumented immigrants, invite racial profiling. In fact, at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts began the case by greeting the Solicitor General Donald Verrilli (and the rest of the country) with: "No part of your argument has to do with racial or ethnic profiling, does it?" To which the lawyer responded, "We're not making any allegation about racial or ethnic profiling in this case." Later when Verrilli tried to make a point about Arizona Latinos who would be affected by the law, he backed away from the point after Justice Antonin Scalia complained that it sounded like racial profiling.

The technocrat lawyer in me might understand this strategy, reasoning that it's too soon to know if Latinos will be targeted by SB 1070 (although there's plenty of evidence already). The cynic in me believes that the Obama administration stayed away from racial profiling allegations because that claim falls too close to home. The framework for SB 1070 mirrors the federal immigration enforcement laws and guess what, ICE engages in racial profiling every day. The immigration historian in me, however, understands that SB 1070 is in fact all about racial profiling given the institutionalized racism under which the law and its copycat statutes across the country have emerged.