PCWC: JT READY IS DEAD: FASCISM AND THE ANARCHIST RESPONSE IN ARIZONA, 2005-2012

JT READY IS DEAD: FASCISM AND THE ANARCHIST RESPONSE IN ARIZONA, 2005-2012 ~ Fires never extinguished: A blog of the Phoenix Class War Council

JT Ready is dead.  And by his own hand.  It took a while, but in the end JT took the free advice of his many anarchist adversaries and followed his leader into oblivion.  Though in the end he opted for the Goebbels style over that of his boy Hitler.  That's the thing with JT: despite being a consistent white supremacist, he could sometimes surprise you.  Not with something entirely new.  No.  But with variations on a theme.  Most of us figured he would blow up somewhere, at some point, and given the history of white supremacists with regard to child and spousal abuse, we are not surprised that his end mimicked his political practice perfectly: violence mostly aimed down the social hierarchy. Consider the death of National Socialist Movement leader Jeff Hall as another case in point.

According to the cops, on Wednesday, May 2, JT, a former president of the Mesa Community College Republican Club and Maricopa County Republican precinct committeeman, stormed the house of his much-abused and terrified girlfriend in Gilbert wearing full combat gear and then proceeded to open fire on everyone in the place.  The dead included Lisa Mederos, her daughter Amber (JT's former treasurer for his run for Pinal County Sheriff), as well as her fiance, Jim Hiott, who was a fellow militia member.  In a truly cowardly act, JT also killed Amber's 15 month-old baby.  Only Lisa's younger daughter survived, hiding under the bed in her upstairs room.

We in PCWC first began running into JT during the early parts of the immigration movement, around 2005, before there was a formal PCWC, really.  As many probably know, JT had a rather chaotic political career, but in those days he was allied with State Senator Russell Pearce and local car dealer Rusty Childress.  Even then political violence had already begun to rear its ugly head in the anti-immigrant scene.  It might be valuable to review some of what had happened in Arizona in the several years preceding JT's final bloody rampage, and it certainly would be worthwhile to consider the ways that anarchists in Phoenix and Arizona organized against him, his politics and his political allies (and enemies) over the last half decade or more.  While liberals advocated for his free speech, anarchists opposed him every step of the way.

Read more: http://firesneverextinguished.blogspot.com/2012/06/jt-ready-is-dead-fascism-and-anarchist.html

Designed to Kill: Border Policy and How to Change it (Crimethinc)

This article is from the Crimethinc. reading library. I imagine it'll be printed in Rolling Thunder. It is definitely worth a read, really well written, and covers so much ground regarding the issues. If this piece of writing had existed 5 years ago, i probably wouldn't have felt so compelled to start my own writing on such subjects.

There are a few things I would've said differently, but one thing i especially wish it would've addressed more was the way the border impacts indigenous communities on the border. I think this is such an important piece of the puzzle, especially when so many anarchists and other anti-authoritarians support others' fight for Comprehensive Immigration Reform which would only contribute to more border militarization.

Designed to Kill: Border Policy and How to Change it

For a number of years now I’ve worked in the desert on the Mexican-American border with a group that provides humanitarian aid to migrants who are attempting to enter the United States—a journey that claims hundreds of lives every year. We’ve spent years mapping the trails that cross this desert. We walk the trails, find places to leave food and water along them, look for people in distress, and provide medical care when we run into someone who needs it. If the situation is bad enough, we can get an ambulance or helicopter to bring people to the hospital. We strive to act in accordance with the migrants’ wishes at all times, and we never call the Border Patrol on people who don’t want to turn themselves in.
During this time I’ve been a part of many extraordinary situations and I’ve heard about many more. Some of the things I’ve seen have been truly heartwarming, and some of them have been deeply sad and wrong. I’ve seen people who were too weak to stand, too sick to hold down water, hurt too badly to continue, too scared to sleep, too sad for words, hopelessly lost, desperately hungry, literally dying of thirst, never going to be able to see their children again, vomiting blood, penniless in torn shoes two thousand miles from home, suffering from heat stroke, kidney damage, terrible blisters, wounds, hypothermia, post-traumatic stress, and just about every other tribulation you could possibly think of. I’ve been to places where people were robbed and raped and murdered; my friends have found bodies. In addition to bearing witness to others’ suffering, I myself have fallen off of cliffs, torn my face open on barbed wire, run out of water, had guns pointed at me, been charged by bulls and circled by vultures, jumped over rattlesnakes, pulled pieces of cactus out of many different parts of my body with pliers, had to tear off my pants because they were full of fire ants, gotten gray hairs, and in general poured no small amount of my own sweat, blood, and tears into the thirsty desert. Read more...

Invasion by Birth Canal? The fourteenth amendment and its opponents’ motivations

(for zine version click here)

Invasion by Birth Canal? 
The fourteenth amendment and its opponents’ motivations
by stacy/sallydarity

Russell Pearce, the Arizona Senator who pushed the “Support Our Law Enforcement” immigration bill (known in Arizona as SB 1070), complains about the automatically-given U.S. citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants.  “This is an orchestrated effort by [illegal aliens] to come here and have children to gain access to the great welfare state we’ve created,” he huffed.[1]

Doesn’t Pearce’s comment sound eerily similar to that of this Southern legislator, pre-civil rights movement? “In 1958, Mississippi state representative David H. Glass introduced a bill mandating sterilization for any unmarried mother who gave birth to another illegitimate child.  Glass explained that his objective was to reduce the number of Black children on welfare: …‘The negro woman, because of child welfare assistance, [is] making it a business, in some cases of giving birth to illegitimate children.’”[2]

Pearce, probably feeling empowered by SB 1070’s semi-success (or at least its public support), is working on a controversial plan to “push for an Arizona bill that would refuse to accept or issue a birth certificate that recognizes citizenship to those born to illegal aliens, unless one parent is a citizen”[3].  Perhaps also inspired by the anti-immigrant fervor, Senators John Kyl and Lindsey Graham are proposing that the U.S. Senate review the Citizenship Clause of the 14th amendment. The idea of withholding citizenship to children born of undocumented parents goes back to 1991 when Elton Gallegly proposed the idea to the California congress, followed by several other unsuccessful attempts.[4]

Birthright citizenship is said to reward illegality and encourage procreation for the purpose of accessing the privileges the U.S. has to offer, such as welfare.  The underlying attitudes follow an ongoing pattern of attacks on the reproductive freedom of women of color.  This is all part of an effort to contain, exclude, and criminalize undocumented immigrants--specifically women due to their reproductive potential.  Appealing to Americans’ sense of being cheated, the topic of welfare has been used politically with hidden racial motives.  People of color and immigrants have been criminalized even though immigrants’ draw on public services is insubstantial.  The topic of overpopulation draws on white Americans’ fear of being outnumbered or overpowered and has been used to control women’s fertility, especially restricting the reproductive freedom of women of color in the U.S and internationally.  The problems of poverty and environment are said to necessitate the containment of certain populations, while in actuality the major perpetrators of these problems seek to limit the self-determination of targeted populations to continue to profit off them and their resources.

Birthright citizenship takes on the issue of who belongs—no matter their contribution, and no matter how their country of origin has been impacted, to the benefit of the United States .  “Attacks on legal and illegal immigrants’ rights to public services…are all targeted at immigrant women’s ability to have and raise children.  As Dorothy Roberts notes, ‘The value we place on individuals determines whether we see them as entitled to perpetuate themselves in their children.  Denying someone the right to bear children—or punishing her for exercising that right—deprives her of a basic part of her humanity.  When this denial is based on race, it also functions to preserve a racial hierarchy.’”[5]


Race and Welfare

Pearce claims that the use of welfare by undocumented immigrants and their children is a reason for limiting access to citizenship for children born in the U.S. despite the fact that “Many studies have found no significant causal relationship between welfare benefits and childbearing.[6]  Although there are various reasons more migrants settle in the U.S. now compared to the more seasonal coming and going of the past, increased border security has been a main reason for the difficulty to cross, causing many to just stay and have their families join them.  “Immigrant women of color and their children are targeted because of white anxieties about a racially pluralized society.  Whereas Mexican immigrant men have been perceived as temporary laborers, the presence of Mexican women and children suggests permanence…”[7]

Another Mississippi representative in the time period of David H. Glass quoted in the introduction, said of the motivations to withhold welfare from Black people, “When the cutting starts, they’ll head for Chicago .”[8]  It is interesting how this parallels with the objective of FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) and collaborators like Russell Pearce to implement “attrition through enforcement”, which, significantly, was written into the Support Our Law Enforcement Act (SB1070) as the purpose of the law.  Attrition entails making it so difficult to live here (the U.S. or Arizona specifically) that the targeted population “chooses” to leave.  This has been an increasingly common tactic given that physically deporting all the undocumented would be extremely difficult, while causing migrants to self-deport would perhaps go more smoothly and in the meantime the police state can be strengthened.  Attrition through enforcement involves increasing the powers of police to ask about immigration status, thereby increasing the number of arrests and deportations and the fear that spreads to others at risk for deportation, causing them to leave (which has been somewhat successful in Arizona ).

This is nothing very new.  Earlier laws like California ’s Prop 187 and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act were designed to restrict access to basic needs provided by welfare in order to cause migrants to leave.  This, in addition to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996 reveal that in fact there isn’t much of a welfare state in the first place.[9]

Welfare is a hot-button issue; useful in rallying citizens who feel cheated out of their tax dollars.  In fact, it is likely that the dubious statistics given by Elton Gallegly in 1991 related to his anti-birthright citizenship crusade largely contributed to the fact that, “By the time California’s Proposition 187 appeared on the 1994 ballot, arguments about immigrants’ use of public services were commonplace.”[10] Because of the media and political forces, to many, especially white people, welfare conjures images of lazy people of color undeservingly benefiting from handouts, even though most people on welfare are white.

Russell Pearce loves to repeat the incoherent phrase, “Illegal is not a race, it is a crime,”[11] in response to accusations of racism.  While it’s not worth scrutinizing “Illegal…is a crime”, “illegal” does imply race.  Likewise, “‘Welfare’ has become a code word for ‘race.’  People can avoid the charge of racism by directing their vitriol at the welfare system instead of explicitly assailing Black people,”[12] or in the case of border states in the last couple decades, immigrants from south of the border as well.  I argue, as others have, that the connection between crime (or ‘illegal’) and race goes back to slavery era, but ironically the end of slavery in particular.  The 13th amendment reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States …” (my emphasis) which gave incentives to Southern businesses to have Black people convicted of crimes such as vagrancy.

As can be seen from these examples and examples below, the treatment received by immigrants, particularly from south of the border, is similar to the treatment seen by Black people.  Although Latino/Hispanic people are often categorized as white, the way people are treated (criminalized and/or deemed parasites) has more to do with race than a clearly-defined racial or ethnic boundary (race is not biologically based, but socially constructed).  Pearce denies that his concerns about so-called “anchor babies” have anything to do with race, yet “anchor baby” is as racially charged as “illegitimate child” or “crack baby”, especially in relation to language around welfare.

Dorothy Roberts wrote that the welfare system “was never intended to end poverty, let alone provide adequate subsistence for the poor.”[13]  Mimi Abramovitz added, “Enacted in 1935, when capital accumulation, patriarchal authority, and reproduction of the labor force, as well as the overall social peace, were threatened by the collapse of the economy, the rise of working class militancy, and destabilization of the family system, the Social Security Act institutionalized the role of the state in maintaining families, the labor force, and the general welfare of society.[14]  While this is important, the way the story about welfare is told versus the way it plays out is more telling about the motivations of the story-tellers who are interested in excluding and containing migrant populations.

In recent decades, women of color have been associated with welfare and continuously attacked for their alleged abuse of it.  However, their vulnerability to exploitation renders them cheap labor.  Mothers who are considered worthy can either afford to stay at home or to have their household duties such as childcare taken care of by migrant women, whom are considered unworthy mothers (unworthy also, of a living wage, as white women’s unwillingness to organize with nannies and maids illustrates[15]).  In Disposable Domestics, Grace Chang writes, “[Immigrant women workers’] labor—caring for the young, elderly, sick, and disabled—makes possible the maintenance and reproduction of the American labor force at virtually no cost to the US government.  At the same time, this labor is extracted in such a way as to make immigrant women’s sustenance of their own families nearly impossible.”[16]  The cost she is referring to is very specific, but we must not overlook the cost to the US government (rather, the taxpayers) where it involves the criminalization of migrants to maintain this economic and social structure.  I argue that the attacks on birthright citizenship are part of this effort.

Criminalized migrants can be coerced into working in intolerable conditions and for low wages due to the threat of arrest and/or deportation.  This criminalization of migrants (which costs billions of dollars throughout each branch of government) is, in effect, welfare, hand-outs, or subsidization for the wealthier classes so they can make even more money and be better consumers.   This is aside from the other subsidies, tax breaks, etc., which accounts for more than four times the amount spent on welfare for the poor, much less for undocumented immigrants.[17]

Because certain wealthy individuals and businesses—particularly in the service industry which cannot be outsourced—don't want a total absence of migrants, here lies an interesting clash between the racists and those who employ migrants (not that the two are mutually exclusive).  As somewhat of a compromise, criminalization is more likely intended to maintain a permanent underclass, though perhaps at a smaller number (a guest-worker program is another desired arrangement to accomplish this).  Racism, and the more nuanced nativism that perhaps better describes the attitudes about undocumented immigrants, benefit businesses who wish to exploit all workers, by keeping people from uniting.  Racists/nativists like Pearce may be conscious actors in this scheme, but more likely just a product of it, so he probably won't back off until Arizona is truly free of undocumented immigrants and their kids.  Nevertheless, in the meantime the criminalization of migrants continues to benefit capitalism overall.

Since the reality is that the cost of social services to immigrants is insubstantial, clearly those who complain about undocumented immigrants on welfare aren’t interested so much in saving money or withholding incentives for migration and reproduction.  But yet their version of the story about welfare functions well to rouse popular (white) support for the criminalization and exclusion of people of color.[18]  Raising the welfare issue in relation to birthright citizenship serves to justify these true intentions.


“Race Suicide”, Population, and Reproductive Choice

With the white birthrate in the early 1900’s rapidly declining, president Roosevelt warned (white) Americans of “race suicide” (echoed by Nixon later) and actually called white women who were unwilling to procreate “race criminals”.[19]

It is likely that this sort of anxiety played a role in fueling the “pro-life” movement and anti-gay sentiment, which resonates with religious fundamentalists in a politically useful way.  Hours after California’s Proposition 8 banning gay marriage was declared unconstitutional, Michael Savage went on a brief tirade on his radio show about the lower birthrates of nations that allow gay marriage .[20]

The desire to control women’s sexuality and reproduction harkens back at least to the era of the witch hunts, when capitalism’s beginning in Europe demanded more workers (partly due to population crisis as a result of disease), which led to the construction of monogamous heterosexual marriage as natural through the forced dependence of women on men, and criminalization of sexual acts that were not for the purpose of reproduction.[21]

An already-existing gender hierarchy led to the reining in of women’s bodies, but the development of capitalism, then the desire to protect the white race later on, and then the ongoing attempt to keep women in their place continually prompted control over women’s bodies and roles.  Putting significance on the biological and social differences between men and women benefits capitalism in much the same way as the divisions between races continue to benefit capitalism and the state, by keeping people from uniting and rebelling.  The lines drawn between people by nativist, nationalist, and white supremacist notions fuel fears of being outnumbered by outsiders.  Women are targeted because of their reproductive potential, but their treatment is different depending on their race.

We can see within the anti-immigrant movement the concern over women’s reproductive freedom and its relationship to race.  In an article called “Aborting and Importing—Is Immigration the Replacement for Native Born Population?” the Arizona-based author writes, “Unlike any culture in history, we are aborting our children.  Have we bought into the Self-Hate so much that we are committing a protracted national and cultural suicide? ...Consider once again that we are aborting our native born population and importing their replacements…  Unchecked immigration is no substitute for a healthy birthrate.”[22]

While many oppose abortion because it leads to the death of what they call “our culture”, some promote abortion as part of the population control movement. This movement attempts to solve overpopulation, often justifying it as a necessary effort to save the environment, but focuses on populations of color without saying so.  We can see right through John Tanton, who says he specifically got involved several decades ago with Planned Parenthood to make his “contribution to the conservation movement” (although he apparently felt it didn’t go far enough).[23]  The propaganda campaign against undocumented immigrants has been a decades-long effort that can all be tied to Tanton.  According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “[Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Center for Immigration Studies (CIS)], and Numbers USA are all part of a network of restrictionist organizations conceived and created by John Tanton, the ‘puppeteer’ of the nativist movement and a man with deep racist roots… He has met with leading white supremacists, promoted anti-Semitic ideas, and associated closely with the leaders of a eugenicist foundation…  He has made a series of racist statements about Latinos and worried that they were outbreeding whites.  At one point, he wrote candidly that to maintain American culture, ‘a European-American majority’ is required.[24]  He and his organizations have influenced and financially supported various individuals and initiatives, including Russell Pearce and SB 1070.

It came to someone’s attention not so long ago that a few US-based doctors were advertising in Mexico about their obstetrics services.  In an article about it, Steven Camarota, research director at CIS (founded by John Tanton), “said authorities should crack down on these doctors who are putting greed ahead of the best interests of their own country.  Just publishing the names of the doctors would likely bring the practice to a halt, he said.”  There were various comments on the online article that exemplified the hysteria about Mexicans having children in the US, such as this one in which the commenter posted a doctor’s address and wrote, “We need to hold a mass rally and PROTEST this situation!! This is as bad as actually INVITING a foreign pregnant national to come to the USA for childbirth and therfore [sic] securing US Citizenship for that baby which will lead to more Mexicans coming in...And so on and so forth!!”[25]

Glaring are the similarities between the attitudes shown here and of those who protest abortion clinics.  Clearly a contradiction arises in the anti-immigrant movement in relation to abortion.  While Tanton and other racists have in the past promoted abortion and birth control as a solution to “population problems”, many of their anti-immigrant allies unconditionally oppose freedom to choose abortion.  In “Greening the Swastika,” Rajani Bhatia explains why the “population-environment right” might de-emphasize birth control and abortion. “For the anti-immigrant, population-environment lobby, birth control can only marginally affect population growth rates.  Therefore, their main response to population and environmental problems is to prevent ‘the highly fertile’ from entering United States borders,”[26] which is something the attack on birthright citizenship is meant to accomplish. This is a useful position considering the desire to both maintain/form alliances with conservatives while also courting the Left through environmental endeavors.  Despite border security having more emphasis than birth control, there is still an ongoing attack on the fertility of populations of color throughout the world, because there are other interests that consider brown populations as threats.

Some feminists, concerned about the power of the pro-life movement, have made a troublesome alliance with organizations interested in population control in the Global South because they promote family planning.  Betsy Hartmann asks, “Yes, but what kind of family planning, and for what purposes?”[27]  This predicament might remind one of Margaret Sanger, the “pioneer” of birth control, who allied with the eugenics movement (which influenced John Tanton and other promoters of population control) in order to promote access to birth control.  Unfortunately it has led to major assaults on the reproductive freedom of women of color, which the mainstream pro-choice movement has been largely blind to even though various women of color have pointed it out.

Opposition to abortion is clearly not incompatible with desires to control the population of peoples of color.  Loretta Ross, in “The Color of Choice” explains, “The only logic that explains this apparent moral inconsistency is one that examines precisely who is subjected to which treatment and who is affected by which reproductive policy at which time in history.  Women of color have little trouble distinguishing between those who are encouraged to have more children and those who are not, and understanding which social, political, and economic forces influence these determinations.”[28]

Angela Davis points out that despite the lack of access to abortion for many poor women, “they may be sterilized with the full financial support of the government.”[29]  We can see the effects of reproductive policy in the not too distant past, much of which was influenced by eugenics, or simply the racism of the day.  “During the 1970’s it is estimated that up to 60,000 Native American women and some men were sterilized… Puerto Rican women were also sterilized at astronomical rates by U.S. tax dollars.  During the same time, several Mexican American women were sterilized at a County hospital without much explanation or information.  A national fertility study conducted by Princeton University found that 20 percent of all married African-American women had been sterilized by 1970.”[30]

The attack on birthright citizenship is used as another weapon against the reproductive freedom of women of color, though perhaps not so objectionable a way as mass-sterilization.  Still, the brutal attacks on women’s choice did not end decades ago.  The coercive promotion of long-acting contraceptives Norplant and Depo Provera is a more recent example of the lack of concern for the reproductive freedom and health of women on welfare.  Norplant was developed by the Population Council (started by John D Rockefeller III[31] and linked to the eugenics movement) that promotes family planning in the Global South.  In the early 1990s, Norplant was marketed to poor women and made available through Medicaid and state-funded clinics, costing states $34 million even while other social services were cut. Despite a number of side effects, some of which are very serious, healthcare workers had the prerogative to refuse to remove the device, some were not trained how, and the removal procedure is more difficult than the implantation.[32]   

One purported reason for women’s fertility becoming a target is that if poor women bred less, there would be less poverty.  If we were to ask what poverty is and what it is caused by, the answer would lead us to systematic deprivation imposed through discrimination, the law, and through force particularly in the United States .  Internationally and nationally, we see the consequences of resource/labor extraction as part of colonialism, capitalism, and neo-liberalism, such as the increase in the growth of cash crops for export, the loss of land, the privatization of natural resources, etc.  The efforts to supposedly end poverty through population control (welfare could apply here too) is actually an attempt to decrease the threats that Black/Brown and poor people’s desires for freedom and equality (or even just survival) represent to these systems.  Native people in the US and communities all across the Global South continue to be an obstacle to resource extraction, and have been attacked more recently via their reproduction (mass-murder is now frowned upon, but ‘population control’ is mostly acceptable).

Appeals to environmental concerns make for an even more agreeable campaign for population control.  However, Andrea Smith breaks it down: “As the U.S. extracts resources from the Global South, people naturally follow these resources to the U.S.  Yet, some mainstream environmentalists complain that the U.S. is now ‘overpopulated’ by immigrants...  But the impact of an immigrant family living in a one-bedroom apartment and taking mass transit pales in comparison to that of a wealthy family living in a single family home with a swimming pool and two cars. Much of the environmental decline in this country has nothing to do with population growth or individual consumer choices.”[33]  Clearly women in the Global South make an even smaller impact on the environment.

Smith continues, “Rather than being caused by overpopulation, significant environmental damage is actually caused by the environmentally destructive Western development projects, such as hydroelectric dams, uranium development, militarism, and livestock production. These projects ultimately benefit the wealthy living in industrialized countries, which are responsible for producing over 75 percent of the world's pollution.  Development projects also cause unparalleled environmental damage, such as damming programs that flood entire biosystems or projects that rely on massive deforestation…Any damage done by indigenous people, peasants, and Global South farmers cannot compare to the damage done by multinationals and the World Bank, so the claim that stopping the ‘overpopulation’ of peasants and indigenous peoples in Global South countries will ‘save the environment’ is baseless.”

Because of the fear that “countries with large youth bulges were roughly two and a half times more likely to experience an outbreak of civil conflict than countries below this benchmark… many on the Right and on the Left want to restrict the growth of developing world populations, and in this context, ‘family planning’ becomes a tool to fight terrorism and civil unrest.”[34]  Dangerous birth control methods were largely pushed on women throughout the Global South (many were tested on, before the contraceptives were approved by the FDA) like they were to women on welfare in the United States.

When populations are contained (in size and/or activity) it is easier for those (institutions, investors, neo-liberal projects) who wish to impose their will on these populations or the land on which they reside.  It is and has been the “systematically developed” strategy of institutions such as the Rockefeller Foundation, U.S. State Department, and the World Bank to put “the blame for poverty and hunger in the colonized countries on the poor themselves…  The World Bank put pressure on governments asking for loans to take specific social and economic action to reduce fertility and to raise the status of women, socially, economically and politically.  ‘Raising the status of women’, however, when spelled out in concrete policy measures, amounts mainly to educating women in order to increase their productivity, and to increasing their knowledge of contraceptives and their readiness to accept birth control measures.” [42] This ‘raising the status of women’ is an insult due to the fact that one of the results of colonization is that women lost most of their knowledge of natural birth control and abortion methods which had existed for centuries, thereby removing their true choices and replacing them with the hand-picked so-called choices[35] (not to mention that the conditions inflicted on these populations, including higher infant mortality rates, have led populations to reproduce more out of necessity[36]).  

The rhetoric around raising the status of women and increasing their knowledge and choice parallels capitalists’ calls for limited government, which is meant only to remove controls on the free market, yet is usually accompanied by increases in police, military and other controls over the people who are targeted for containment (we can see this nationally and internationally).  “[The] emphasis on individual choice… obscures the social context in which individuals make choices, and discounts the ways in which the state regulates populations, disciplines individual bodies, and exercises control over sexuality, gender, and reproduction.”[37]  This calls not for the regulation of the free market, but the removal of the power and protection provided by the state.

There are other weapons of the free market and the state as well.  Chang argues “that the First World agencies deliberately engineer the destruction of the Third World social services via [structural adjustment policies (SAPs)] to render Third World debtor countries ultimately vulnerable to their First World creditors.  This facilitates the commodification of the Third World women for labor export as it becomes impossible for women to sustain their families at home under the devastation of SAPs and they are forced to migrate, often to work as domestic servants in the First World .”[38]  Migrants are then scape-goated for the problems that are in fact caused by Capitalists and neo-liberal projects like NAFTA.

We can see an overlap between population control and the denial of welfare in their functions to limit the population of people of color.  Whether or not these campaigns are effective to limit the growth of those populations, the campaign also functions to shift or secure the blame on poor people of color while the true culprits go un-opposed by anyone besides the targeted populations.  The “overpopulated” people and those on welfare are blamed for poverty, justifying their criminalization and constraints on their reproduction.  Central to the desire to change the 14th amendment are these attacks on the reproductive freedom of women of color, no matter how the politicians attempt to legitimize it.


A Loop Hole for Criminals?

Russell Pearce and others believe that the 14th amendment was not intended to provide citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants.  But no matter how objectionable their reasons, I tend to suspect that if the authors of the Citizenship Clause could have foreseen the issue of large amounts of unauthorized people coming from south of the border, they might very well have taken a different position.  Indeed, Senator Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania objected to the Citizenship Clause.  He stated, “[I]s it proposed that the people of California are to remain quiescent while they are overrun by a flood of immigration of the Mongol race [sic]? Are they to be immigrated [sic] out of house and home by Chinese?”[39]  Fortunately he was outnumbered.  At the time, in 1868 there was hardly the concept of an “illegal alien” and no numerical limitations on immigration.  People did not have to obtain a visa to enter the U.S.—they would simply show up and be inspected and hardly anyone would be turned away.  Additionally, there were no controls at the border and for quite a while immigration from Mexico was ignored or encouraged.  The first “illegal immigrants” were those barred by the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.  Of course it is more convenient to believe that the European ancestors of U.S. citizens living here did it the “right way” even though there really wasn’t a wrong way to do it unless they lied about their health or their political beliefs.

No matter how noble some would like to think the authors of the constitution are (most owned slaves and sanctioned it), and the amendments (some hated the Chinese), if the authors of the 14th amendment could see into the future, it is likely they would’ve re-worded the amendment.  Of course I am not arguing here that the children of undocumented immigrants should not have citizenship, I’m just being real.  That said, I also suspect that if Russell Pearce had been in government after the civil war, he would’ve opposed providing citizenship to the children of freed slaves.  He writes, “American citizenship is a privilege, not a right”.[40]

The concept of citizenship and the rights it entails deserve examination.  For example, why is it rarely questioned that settlers get to determine who belongs and who doesn’t?  How does citizenship and immigration law discriminate against those who are not part of heterosexual families?  Although I do not delve into these subject as much as I’d like to, the attitudes about worthiness regarding who gets to reproduce and what the consequences are for those who migrate speaks much about the ideas about citizenship.  In many ways, especially as the efforts to change the amendment are concerned, citizenship currently provides legal status for those born here—and for most others, not just exclusion, but automatic criminalization.  The question of who deserves citizenship rights or that such a thing should exist in the first place is more complex when considering the impact U.S. interests have had here (genocide, slavery, sexism), and in many of the countries that people migrate from.  Take for example the way the Mexican government was coerced into changing their constitution (Article 27) in the interest in joining NAFTA, or how NAFTA, in combination with U.S. corn subsidies, has put thousands of Mexican corn farmers out of business, leading to their necessary migration to survive.  I argue also, that the border is illegitimate based on the fact that migration is natural and that the ruling class desires borders and laws only to protect the wealth they have stolen from others.

The anti-immigrant movement has had little or no qualms about using extremist tactics which change the debate in their favor.  Shifting attention onto defending those who are already considered legal makes more difficult the defense of those who are “illegal”.  This is similar to the division created in the fight for the Dream Act in which some migrants are seen as worthy while others are marginalized.

This discussion and potential change of the Citizenship Clause may considerably change the way Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) would look, if it were to pass in the next few years.  Would the government legalize some immigrants while making the others’ children illegal?  It is especially troubling that Lindsey Graham, who has been pushing CIR, is one of the men moving this birthright citizenship question forward in congress.  Considering also that the Immigration reform in 1986 made it harder for women to become legal than men, we will likely see more of the same, especially with the spotlight on this “invasion by birth canal”.[41] 

How possible is it that birthright citizenship could change?  Could it lead to retroactive enforcement?  What will the opposition look like?  Romantic oratory about the sanctity of the constitution, or something that takes into account the points I bring up here?  And if they fail in changing the amendment, will they still have succeeded at shifting the debate in their favor?



[1] hoguenews.com/?p=10680

[2] Roberts, Dorothy.  Killing the Black Body. 213-214

[3] “Author of Arizona immigration law wants to end birthright citizenship” http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100521/pl_ynews/ynews_pl2192

[4] Lindsley, Syd.  “The Gendered Assault on Immigrants”.  Policing the National Body.

[5] Lindsley, Syd.  “The Gendered Assault on Immigrants”.  Policing the National Body. 191-192

[6] Roberts 219

[7] Lindsley, Syd.  “The Gendered Assault on Immigrants”.  Policing the National Body.

[8] Roberts 214

[9] Chang, Grace.  Disposable Domestics. 8-12

[10] Lindsley, Syd.  “The Gendered Assault on Immigrants”.  Policing the National Body.

[11] http://www.russellpearce.com/text/immigration.htm

[12] Roberts, Dorothy.  Killing the Black Body. 111-112

[13] Roberts 203

[14] Abramovitz, Mimi.  Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present. 1996.  216

[15] Chang

[16] Chang 13
In the book Disposable Domestics, Grace Chang provides a picture of the theories behind welfare’s role in stratifying women’s roles.  “Abramovitz proposes that the welfare state mediates the conflicting demands of capitalism for women to provide two functions: to remain in the home to reproduce and maintain the labor force, and to undertake traditionally ‘female’ low-wage work in the paid labor force.  Abramovitz argues that the state resolves this conflict by encouraging and subsidizing some women to remain home and nurture the current and future workforce while forcing others into low-wage work.  This division is achieved through patriarchal poverty policies or practices predicated on racist assumptions that some women (that is, white women) are fit to be mothers and homemakers and thus ‘deserve’ subsidies allowing them to remain in the home.  Other women (that is, women of color and immigrant women) are deemed ‘unfit’ nurturers—indeed, are thought to be undesirable reproducers—and thus are viewed as better suited to fulfill the demands for certain kinds of market labor… [Evelyn Nakano] Glenn argues that women of color have historically relieved privileged white women of much of the burden of reproductive labor by performing both private household and institutional service work.  Moreover, she argues, women of color’s performance of reproductive labor for others frees dominant-group women to pursue leisure or employment, thus making possible the privilege and ‘liberation’ of white women” and as Chang adds, “to preserve the traditional nuclear family”.[16]
Chang also discusses how white women have been unwilling to organize with women of color for fair wages for household workers (maids, nannies, etc.), because if they did, those in their demographic would have a harder time being able to afford their own help so they can continue to be liberated working women.  Such are the limitations of mainstream feminism.[16]

[17] Zepezauer, Mark.  Take the Rich Off Welfare.  South End Press, 2004

[18] As Martha Escobar explains, “During the 1990s the unworthiness of immigrants, voiced within the language of public charge produced around Black motherhood, carried over the connotation of ‘criminal,’ an identity crystallized by their assumed ‘illegal’ entrance into the U.S., rendering immigrant brown bodies as perpetual criminals…  Migrant women’s criminalization is multifaceted, but two large contributing factors are their ‘illegal’ border-crossing, automatically criminalizing them, and their imagined reproduction of future ‘criminals’”. Escobar, Martha “No One is Criminal”  Abolition Now! p61

Another example of the criminalization of women of color being clearly linked to their ability to reproduce lies in this quote taken from a webpage on birthright citizenship linked directly from Russell Pearce’s website: “Research shows that one of the biggest challenges immigrant-receiving countries face is the assimilation of the children of immigrants…” said [Steven] Camarota.  “With immigrants accounting for such a large, and growing, share of births, America is headed into uncharted territory.  We simply don’t know how these children will assimilate—but it is clear that the stakes for America are enormous.” http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/back805release.html

The policies for dealing with poverty and other poverty-related problems are not meant to solve the problems, but to criminalize those cast as a nuisance for those in power (just look at the disproportionate number of people in US jails and prisons).  The discontinuity between the stated morality-related motivation behind concern over women’s reproduction and the resulting criminalization is exemplified in the treatment over “crack babies”. Dorothy Roberts writes, “The prosecutions are better understood as a way of punishing Black women for having babies rather than as a way of protecting Black fetuses.”  She goes on to say that the sad images “that induced pity for the helpless victim were eclipsed by the predictions of the tremendous burdens that crack babies were destined to impose on law-abiding taxpayers.”  She points out however that one can’t tell if a crack baby will suffer any adverse effects and that proper health care and nutrition for drug-dependent mothers could minimize or prevent harm for the babies, which clearly isn’t a priority for the state as criminalizing the mothers.

Often these mothers end up in jail, allegedly to keep them from taking drugs, yet “women in prison often live in filthy and overcrowded spaces, eat poorly, are exposed to contagious diseases and violence, get little or no prenatal care, and have easy access to drugs—hardly a protective environment for a developing fetus.”  To top things off, the state often takes the children away from their mothers which is often more harmful.  The state is clearly not interested in treatment or dealing with underlying causes of drug-use.  They would rather put women (women of color at higher rates) in jail.  All this, despite the fact that the rate of substance abuse was slightly higher for white women than for Black women, and Black women were ten times more likely than whites to be reported to the authorities, not to mention that crack is racialized compared with other drugs, including cigarette smoking which arguably is more harmful in pregnancy.  Roberts, Dorothy.  Killing the Black Body 154-161

[19] Cline, Wendy. Building a Better Race:Gender Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom, 2001.  11

[20] Savage Nation radio show.  August 4, 2010

[21] Federici, Sylvia.  “Caliban and the Witch”.

[22] “Aborting and Importing—Is Immigration the Replacement for Native Born Population?”

[23] "Eugenics, Population Control and Racism- Inside Numbers USA , Roy Beck, FAIR, John Tanton, Pioneer Fund, and Planned Parenthood" http://saynsumthn.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/eugenics-population-control-and-racism-inside-numbers-usa-roy-beck-fair-john-tanton-pioneer-fund-and-planned-parenthood/

[24] "Eugenics, Population Control and Racism- Inside Numbers USA , Roy Beck, FAIR, John Tanton, Pioneer Fund, and Planned Parenthood"  http://saynsumthn.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/eugenics-population-control-and-racism-inside-numbers-usa-roy-beck-fair-john-tanton-pioneer-fund-and-planned-parenthood/

[25] http://www.azstarnet.com/business/319358

[26] Bhatia, Rajani. “Greening the Swastika” Policing the National Body

[27] Hartmann, Betsy.  “The Changing Faces of Population Control” Policing the National Bod.y 283

[28] Ross, Loretta.  "The Color of Choice"  The Color of Violence

[29] Davis, Angela.  Angela Y. Davis Reader. 217.

[30] Puck, "Strong Hearts and Poisoned Waters: The Exclusion of Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement in the U.S." http://www.anarcha.org/sallydarity/strongheartspoinsonedwaters.html  2004

[31] Hartmann, Betsy.  Reproductive Rights and Wrongs.

[32] Roberts, Dorothy.  Killing the Black Body 108-131

[33] Smith, Andrea. Conquest

[34] Ross, Loretta.  “The Color of Choice” The Color of Violence

[35] “The power neo-liberalism is willing to give to poor women is the power to make the ‘right’ choices: to have fewer children, to become mini-entrepreneurs or low-wage workers, to buy more consumer goods.”  Hartmann, Betsy.  “The Changing Faces of Population Control” Policing the National Body. 264

[36] Hartmann, Betsy.  Reproductive Rights and Wrongs.

[37] Silliman, Jael.  “Policing the National Body: Sex, Race, and Criminalization” (Introduction). Policing the National Body. xi

[38] Chang 16

[39] “WSJ lets AZ state senator rewrite history in attack on birthright citizenship.”  Media Matters
July 31, 2010 http://mediamatters.org/research/201007310005

[40] Pearce, Russell.  “The Question of Birthright Citizenship” http://frontpagemag.com/2010/06/24/the-question-of-birthright-citizenship/

[41] This phrase is attributed to Barbara Coe, who has also been seeking to limit birthright citizenship.  http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jul/13/local/me-illegal-immigration13

[42] Mies, Maria. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale. 1986  https://www.scribd.com/doc/189571693/Maria-Mies-Patriarchy-and-Accumulation-on-a-World-Scale-Women-in-the-International-Division-of-Labour-Zed-Books-1999

Welfare for the Rich: Criminalized Migrants

I'm interested in this birth right issue: the anti-immigrant folks want to change the interpretation of the 14th amendment to keep children of undocumented immigrants from becoming citizens.  There are some interesting parallels and overlaps with the rallying cries around overpopulation and welfare abuse.  Much attention is put on immigrants' reproduction and the "jackpot" they would receive.  (While reading Russell Pearce's website, I learned that another derogatory name for those called "anchor babies" is "jackpot babies").

While I don't believe that as many people are taking advantage of welfare as many claim are, I believe it is currently necessary to people's survival.  That said, I don't believe it is the answer to the root problems (and was designed to avoid dealing with root problems), and so I look to other answers other than to fight for access to welfare, especially since, if I understand correctly, welfare isn't intended for or available to undocumented immigrants even if the democrats had more sway.

In the course of my reading and thinking about this issue- the counter-argument to the anti-immigrant folks' that welfare is an incentive for migrants to have children in this country, I realized that the criminalization of migrants (which costs money in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches) is, in effect, welfare, hand-outs, or subsidization for the wealthier classes so they can make even more money.  Criminalized migrants (those who automatically break the law by not being in the country through the mostly unattainable official/legal channels) are immensely exploitable.  Because of the threat of arrest and/or deportation, they can be coerced into working in dangerous, low-paying jobs, with long hours and limited breaks, no overtime pay, kept from organizing for better conditions and wages, and in many cases, even held against their will to labor.

While racists are crying that too many women of color are having babies and living off welfare, many mostly-white upper middle class and rich women have undocumented women taking care of their kids for them, at very low costs.  In the book Disposable Domestics, Grace Chang discusses how white women have been unwilling to organize with others for fair wages for household workers (maids, nannies, etc.), because if they did, they and their constituents would have a harder time being able to afford their own help so they can continue to be liberated working women.  Such are the limitations of mainstream feminism.

In effect, the government subsidizes reproductive labor (other than actual childbirth) for the wealthier classes, while withholding it from many women of color (despite what many say, in reality even citizens have a hard time getting adequate welfare), especially undocumented women.  This subsidy, which could be called welfare, applies to nearly any situation in which an undocumented migrant is working, since they are rarely paid and treated adequately.  It is a little silly to call it "welfare" because these folks don't have to worry about their personal welfare, but because of the rhetoric surrounding welfare as hand-outs, as socialism in some ways, the rich certainly get welfare in different forms.  For example, the book Take the Rich Off Welfare, sites a number of subsidies, tax breaks, and more.  As far as I recall, the book does not discuss criminalized migrants as welfare, although I think it covers prison labor, which is very much related, as is the slave labor of the past.

Criminalizing migrants is tricky, since the consequence to the migrants is supposed to be that they would be arrested, deported, and/or they would choose to leave- thereby leaving no exploitable labor for the businesses.  The businesses (as well as private entities) don't like that!  This is an interesting clash between the racists and those who employ migrants (not that the two are mutually exclusive).  I believe that SB1070, although motivated by racism, is not totally meant to render Arizona free of undocumented workers.  Overall, criminalization functions to render them exploitable, not absent.  Remember the Sensenbrenner bill?  I don't know where Sensenbrenner stood as far as his personal dislike for undocumented immigrants, but he was behind a very harsh federal immigration reform and it turns out he profits off the criminalization of migrants.  Russell Pearce, the legislator who pushed the bill, and Kris Kobach, the lawyer who actually wrote the bill, seem to mostly be motivated by racism.

I believe that racism is spread in the interest of keeping workers divided so that businesses can continue to exploit them all (some more so).  I don't think racists like Pearce are conscious actors in this scheme, so he probably won't give up until Arizona is truly free of undocumented immigrants (and their kids).  Nevertheless, in the meantime (and hopefully he won't be successful), the criminalization of migrants continues to benefit businesses overall.  Let's keep in mind here too, that we as average people also benefit from the cheap labor that keeps the cost down on most of the items we buy.  If those items are imported, it's usually cheaper again because the labor has somehow been coerced through criminalization or threat of criminalization.

Billions of dollars are being spent on immigration enforcement.  The border wall alone will cost billions.  Locally SB1070 will cost so much money, yet somehow it is justified too keep down the cost that immigrants supposedly have on society.  While many of us understand that this is just a way to maintain the US as a mostly white country that can exploit the labor of all workers (white or not) by dividing and criminalizing many of them, it does not occur even to most of us that this criminalization is not just an act of hate or politics, but is subsidizing US business.

No Borders or Prison Walls: Beyond Immigrants' Rights to Ending Criminalization of All People of Color

UPDATE: see this video which is expands on some of the content of this article: Private Prisons in a Wider Context: Video



How bad do things have to be for a group of people to be afraid to leave their houses because la migra might pick them up and place their family members in separate detention centers to eventually deport them? Or that people crossing the border not only have to be concerned about the environmental dangers, but also the more recent upsurge of people who kidnap migrants, steal from them, assault them, and hold them for ransom. The police or ICE commit similar atrocities, but masquerading as heroes; “saving” the immigrants from the drop houses. Many citizens believe undocumented immigrants deserve the harm or misfortune inflicted upon them because they are here “illegally”.

Nearly any debate about “illegal” immigration comes down to one thing: the law is the law. They say illegal people have no legitimate claims in “our” country. Despite the many illegal actions that people take everyday without feeling an ounce of guilt (speeding, downloading music), being in the country “illegally” is seen as a crime against the citizens. Despite the fact that many of us see this law, like so many others, as illegitimate and hypocritical based on its historical roots and the context in which it is enforced, as a means to maintain an exploitable class, as enforcement of the color line, and as a tool of government to control people and quash dissent; we seem quite silent about what we think about it.

What is largely missing from the debate on immigration is this perspective on the law. We find it difficult to convince others of these ideas who value and feel protected by the exalted law and order, and so we may not even try. What kinds of changes can we hope for if we are not willing to challenge people on their attitudes about the legitimacy of immigration law, and beyond?

The common attitudes, promoted by special interest groups and the media serve to justify the horrible treatment of undocumented immigrants and allow people to dismiss the actions of law enforcement or vigilantes as warranted. Most people know about the reasons that immigrants have to come here “illegally”, yet many would even say they deserve the worst of the terrorism they face here.

What we need to talk about is the criminalization of people- the politically/racially/economically motivated practice that has led to a vast increase in the prison industrial complex and immigration detention centers in the last several years, as well as the increased collaboration between the police and the federal government. Even though in most cases, undocumented immigrants have only committed a civil offense and not technically a crime, it is just as easily considered a crime. Of course, in addition to this, immigrants are purposefully associated with other crimes, and new laws continue to be created to further criminalize them. The war against “illegal” immigration is just one part of institutional racism, except this is an example that makes it all the more clear that crimes have been made out of the actions of people because of who they are. It is clear that the law has been used purposefully to render people powerless and exploitable.

Because so many people are not willing to touch this, it has to be us. This may only be part of the struggle, but it is necessary to challenge the way criminalization not only affects the people it criminalizes, but everyone who is treated unfairly because of their association with criminals, and everyone else in their attitudes about those people. This criminalization maintains a racism which can easily be denied- because “it’s not about race. It’s about the law.”

The focus on the law is employed so that a person’s opposition to “illegal” immigration seems to just be about the law; not about race. Those of us who are citizens, and especially those of us who are white have a responsibility to fight the racism within our communities (even the communities that we don’t feel are ours). No matter how many solidarity demos or actions against the wall or ICE, if we let the racism within the citizenry fester and increase, we can not hope to succeed. Many white people are ripe for recruitment in fascist groups. For decades, people of color have been advising white folks to organize within their own communities. Although this is a challenge, it must occur. People of color have also informed most of the concepts below, and it is important that white people take their words seriously.


The limits of current strategies

In our fight for immigrants’ rights, freedom of movement, and/or no borders, we have many challenges. The minutemen and associated groups and politicians, while not achieving as much as they had hoped in terms of law enforcement and border security, have in fact influenced many people’s thinking (with the help of well-funded FAIR and other such groups, and of course the media). Newly passed laws or even attempts at passing laws, as well as stepped up enforcement by ICE and the police have shaped people’s view of immigrants as criminals.

Despite a multitude of efforts, the minutemen still seem somewhat sensible in the eyes of many; immigrants still face the dangers of crossing the border; hate crimes, ICE raids, police sweeps, harassment and racial profiling still happen; people’s rights (the few that they have) are still violated; and the detention centers still exist. This is not to say that the organizing that’s done is pointless, but that in conjunction with these activities, we need to challenge the ideas that perpetuate this situation. There have been few efforts to challenge the legitimacy of the law. Many of the efforts attempted have not made a point of relating the racism against recent undocumented immigrants to the current and historical racism against black people and other people of color.

Immigrants’ rights advocates often accuse the anti-immigrant movement of being racist, but nothing gets the opposition to admit that race has anything to do with it (additionally, it is often about personal racism and not systemic racism). Many efforts have been made on the part of the anti-immigrant movement to maintain a non-racist appearance for the sake of appealing to the mainstream, due to racism being so taboo. Examining the comments to any online Arizona-based newspaper article on immigration will provide one with a view of this repetition about the law and a veiled, or not so veiled, hatred for outsiders (specifically Mexicans). The rule of law rhetoric creates a smokescreen over the reality of intertwined racial, economic, and political motivations behind the laws.

In the context of immigration, understanding racism is crucial but complicated. Race is a social construct, so the fact that undocumented immigrants are a diverse group of people does not matter as much in terms of how white supremacy functions. More than anything, the stereotypes about undocumented immigrants inform anti-immigrant rhetoric, policies, and enforcement (exemplified by the emphasis on the U.S./Mexican border rather than that of Canada). People’s concepts about race are complicated, mainly because race is only real in how it affects people. Class also plays a role in this context since foreigners with more wealth are not treated as a burden, and because citizenship is not available to most people, especially the poor. Undocumented immigrants, at least the ones that somewhat fit the stereotypes, are thought of and treated as inferior. It is considered acceptable that they have little access to safety, health, and dignity. A useful definition of white supremacy is from Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez: “White Supremacy is an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations, and peoples of color by white peoples and nations of the European continent, for the purpose of maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power, and privilege.” Police in particular are said to enforce the color line by treating non-white people as criminals.

The attitudes people have about undocumented immigrants need to be challenged. Although they may partly be based on feeling threatened (they’re taking over), they are also based on a racism that is “justified” and shaped by the idea that the unwelcome people are criminals. These attitudes often effectively override compassion for the misfortunate. A starting point would be to engage people who are compassionate and identify as anti-racist, but build upon that to figure out how to change other peoples’ minds. An analysis of the purposeful construction of laws to criminalize undocumented immigrants would have two objectives: an end to the attitudes described above, and an end to institutionalized racism. This effort obviously applies to the criminalization of people of color in general in the United States. We cannot fight white supremacy if we do not consider the bigger picture of what has been taking place in this country.

The emphasis on the legality of people should not be confused with legalizing people exactly, but to bring attention to the politically motivated criminalization of people and to change it. Legalizing immigrants (though not very likely to happen in an acceptable way if at all) does not address many of the economic and race issues that currently exist.

Assimilation and therefore whiteness being historically accessible to Mexican-Americans especially, we should consider the ways in which the struggle should avoid the trend of maintaining a hierarchy with black people on the bottom. Martha Escobar, in “No One is Criminal” printed in Abolition Now! addresses efforts at legalization but mostly the rhetoric about immigrants not being criminals. “Thus when we claim that immigrants are not criminals, the fundamental message is that immigrants are not Black, or at least, that immigrants will not be ‘another Black problem.’ Tracing the construction of criminality in relationship to Blackness and how it is re-mapped onto brown bodies through the notion of “illegality” gives witness to the ways that criminality allows a reconfiguration of racial boundaries along Blackness and whiteness. In other words, criminalizing immigrants serves to discipline them into whiteness.” Explaining that immigrants are not criminals (via studies on crime rates, etc.) and complaining about the police or the government not putting the real criminals in jail in some ways is counterproductive.

It is also important to be concerned that most of the immigrants’ rights efforts do not address the fact that we are on stolen ground in the first place. Existing land struggles are not addressed by legalization efforts. We also tend to fail to address the relationship between the war on immigrants and the war on terror. A myopic focus on legalizing immigrants would contribute to the continuing abandonment of the past and current effects of the criminalization of people of color and cannot hope to abolish whiteness.


Suggestions

The attitudes people have are fueled by and feed the criminalization of people. We need to find ways to change people’s attitudes to undermine the racism that exists. A number of things need to be articulated in a way that is accessible to a variety of people. We especially have to be able to explain these concepts to people who don’t feel they have any interest in considering them, much less changing anything. On the other hand, there are many people who would benefit from changes and a new analysis of the function of criminalization would empower them. Either way, those of us who are in this fight need to understand the complex aspects of the immigration/criminalization issues. Below is my attempt to start to construct an analysis specifically regarding the law from which talking points can emerge.


“In order to figure out why people get locked up and under what circumstances, we need to look at what are sometimes called ‘root causes.’ This strategy requires looking at the competing priorities of the systems in which we live and understanding why they work well for some and horribly for others. The systems of race, class, gender, and sexuality, for instance, are commonly understood as privileging some people’s needs and ideals over others. By exploring why and how those systems work for some and not for others, we can begin to develop a better understanding of how to include concrete steps in our work that deal with the negative effects of these systems on the people who are most often put in cages.” –Critical Resistance

Economic Motives

We need to talk about the economic motives behind the criminalization of people and therefore the illegitimacy of the laws involved. Of particular interest are the immigration laws because immigrants are currently a huge target and because, as I mentioned above, it can perhaps be shown more easily that there is intentional politically-motivated criminalization of people. The exploitation of labor is the primary motive. This is accomplished by keeping the laboring class from uniting (divide people by race and by immigration status) and from keeping certain individuals from having the power to organize for a better situation (undocumented workers who organize in their work places are often threatened with deportation). We must also discuss the fact that undocumented workers are largely from regions that have been affected negatively by neo-liberal economic projects. These forces have led to the loss of land and other resources and an intentional lack of employment options which leaves them more exploitable. Of course there is money to also be made in the prisons and detention centers, at least for those run privately. The businesses that have relationships with these facilities (food providers, prison-related products manufacturers, investors, etc.) also profit. Homeland Security has some good deals for border security technology with companies like Halliburton and Boeing that also profit from the war in Iraq. Included also in the war against undocumented people are the funds that go into transporting immigrants by land and air. Criminalizing people of color is a lucrative business, and we are well aware that when profits are the motive, human rights are scarce.

The hope is that revealing the economic motives of certain actions would destabilize the appearance of those actions as legitimate.


The Reality of Criminalization and Immigration Detention

Many people remain ignorant about the reality of immigration detention. It would be useful to share information about the extent to which detention centers have increased in the past few years, and the fact that many are privately owned (many by corporations that also own private prisons). We should be aware of the plan devised by the Department of Homeland Security called Endgame, which seeks to remove “all removable aliens” by 2011, using new relationships between police and ICE such as 287g. With about 27,500 people in immigration detention on any given day and triple the number of detainees than just nine years ago, many immigrants in private detention, without proper care, legal assistance, and adequate understanding of their rights and recourses, we have an astounding crisis on our hands.

Immigrants are not only ending up in detention centers, but also in jails and prisons. Increasingly, yet another tactic of attrition, in order to discourage them from coming back is to imprison immigrants instead of just sending them back to where they came from. Many immigrants sign guilty pleas for crimes like identity theft, without even understanding that often the authorities have no evidence. Charging them with additional crimes also increases the consequences for coming back.

What are the forces at work? In the context of immigration, there are two manifestations of white supremacy that feed off of each other and are interconnected. One is personal prejudices, attitudes, and resulting discrimination. The second is the racism within the various institutions (such as law enforcement) that play out these previous manifestations in a less visible way. The institutional racism in turn shapes peoples’ attitudes about race. Two forces behind these manifestations of racism are the anti-immigrant movement and the business interests that employ immigrants. Because business interests enjoy the labor provided by penetrable borders, they would seem to oppose those who are interested in border security. In fact, undocumented immigrants have been used as a weapon against organized workers. While those in favor of heightened border security and internal enforcement subscribe to a more blatant racism (keep the outsiders out), the business interests also benefit from the continued and increased anti-immigrant efforts because they can profit from an exploitable, expendable (made so by the war against immigration) labor force allowed by the seemingly unconquerable stream of migration. Although these two forces have different desired means and ends, the results are the same: criminalized migrants.

Examining the history of immigration law reveals its racist history. Of course many will explain it away and insist that we have changed our regretful ways. A possible effective strategy might include showing how the U.S. concept of who belongs (white people) and who doesn’t has been shaped by immigration laws (as well as laws criminalizing Black and Native American people). The ways in which the racism and stereotyping of the Chinese led to and fed off of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 mirrors the anti-Mexican sentiment in a lot of ways today. Many groups and individuals have been excluded or deported because they were seen as political threats to the country. In 1924, the National Origins Quota passed, which was due to WWI-related fears of foreign people. It strictly limited immigration from eastern and southern Europe. Later in 1952, quotas for immigration from Asian countries were severely limited. The national origins quota was abolished during the civil rights era, but is still biased in many ways. Shortly after September 11, 2001, the federal government broke its own laws holding various immigrants from mostly Middle-Eastern countries in custody for too long without deporting them or charging them with any crime.

Prior to the last few decades, only pockets of the population had any concern over “illegal aliens”. During the 80’s and 90’s the wide-ranging anti-immigrant rhetoric was similar to that of today, but was largely unpopular. Due to September 11, 2001 and the recession around that time, just like other times of economic hardship and other turmoil, immigrants became scapegoats. Mexicans especially became targeted because they were coming in at higher rates after the 1994 launch of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Especially in 2003 when the Minuteman Project started, the media and various politicians (both directly or indirectly influenced by business interests and/or nativists) stepped up the anti-immigrant message. The state is primarily responsible for constructing the idea of “illegal aliens”. It is now mostly socially acceptable to hate on immigrants. But the intolerance for undocumented immigrants cannot be separated from the history of American racism.


Race & Criminalization

“Crime is thus one of the masquerades behind which ‘race,’ with all its menacing ideological complexity, mobilizes public fears and creates new ones.
-Angela Davis, Prisons, Repression, and Resistance

We need to connect this reality with an analysis of the system of criminalization of people of color, historically and currently. History shows many examples of the law being used for racist ends, whether it be the blatant racism of the slavery era, or the veiled racism of the reconstruction era when black men were accused of a number of crimes such as vagrancy and subsequently sent to work as punishment. In effect, business interests were able to continue to profit from the labor produced by repression: convict leasing, or “Slavery by Another Name” as it was called by author Douglas A. Blackmon. Although it may be difficult to convince someone that the laws that are currently on the books are racist, certainly we can talk about how the law is easily manipulated to be racist, including the constitution. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,” says the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

As it gradually became socially unacceptable to kill or enslave people, the moral way to deal with them was to treat them as criminals, such as placing American Indian children in prison-like Indian schools. People who are considered of lesser value and who can be contrived as “other” can easily be used for the benefit of those in power.

Not so long ago, Richard Nixon said, “You have to face the fact that whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to...” In a letter to Dwight Eisenhower, he wrote, “I have found great audience response to this [law and order] theme in all parts of the country, including areas like New Hampshire where there is virtually no race problem and relatively little crime.” With blatant racism being frowned upon, there have been many examples of ways people of color have been especially painted as being more likely to commit crime, even though there are many examples of worse crimes that rich white men commit that are not considered worthy of our attention. Much of people’s racism is manufactured by the idea that people of color tend more often to be criminals. Examining the increase in the prison industrial complex and the drug war can provide us with various insights into specifically politically-motivated measures taken up against people of color.

Institutionalized racism in the form of law and order results in complex effects on people of color. One effect is that people of color disproportionately get caught up in the criminal “justice” system. Although this has happened because of its historical roots, today it “justifies” the treatment of most people of color as criminals. This means that even someone who has not committed a crime can be killed, brutalized, or harassed by the police because of their association with criminals due to their darker skin. Sexual assault or harassment against women of color is allowable in the context in which they are associated with criminality.

Sylvanna Falcón in “’National Security’ and the Violation of Women: Militarized Border Rape at the US-Mexico Border” printed in The Color of Violence examines how this effects immigrant women. “The cases of militarized border rape… can be categorized as a form of “national security rape”… [T]he absence of legal documents positions undocumented women as ‘illegal’ and as having committed a crime... the existence of undocumented women causes national insecurity, and they are so criminalized that their bodily integrity does not matter to the state…”

We can see that “national security” most certainly does not refer to the health, safety, and dignity of the nation’s residents, but instead protects the state.

The media plays a large role in perpetuating ideas about who to feel threatened by, which in turn affects peoples’ attitudes about and behavior towards others and themselves. Although nearly every person of color is in some way touched by the criminal “justice” system, there are efforts made to maintain an image of non-racism, in which the elite allows people of color certain privileges and access to status. This produces the idea of the criminal people of color vs. the non-criminal person of color, thereby maintaining the legitimacy of the criminal “justice” system.

The U.S. prison population is the highest in the world. One out of every 133 U.S. residents is behind bars. “Compared to the estimated numbers of black, white, and Hispanic males in the U.S. resident population, black males (6 times) and Hispanic males (a little more than 2 times) were more likely to be held in custody than white males. At midyear 2007 the estimated incarceration rate of white males was 773 per 100,000… At midyear 2007, the incarceration rate of black women held in custody (prison or jail) was 348 per 100,000 U.S. residents compared to 146 Hispanic women and 95 white women” (drugwarfacts.org). Women have been entering prisons at higher rates than men. Even when women of color are not directly criminalized, they are treated as reproducers of criminals, while prisons function as an attack on their reproductive freedom and their ability to maintain healthy family structures.

We should also look at the ways in which this benefits the government and the social order. Many efforts have been made by the poor and people of color to change or overthrow the government and economic system. Dividing the working class by race has been a wise strategy to weaken the power of the people. In addition, imprisoning dissidents of various sorts under the guise of law enforcement (remember, we don’t have any political prisoners) is also a tactic against successes of various liberation movements, especially the Black and American Indian movements.

We can also see that putting people in prison instead of solving problems such as poverty and drug abuse is the chosen course of action by the state, because the idea is not to resolve these problems in the first place but to appear to do so while at the same time dealing with the issues in the most useful way to those in power. The government obviously has inextricable ties to business, so maintaining a good relationship is a large factor in the law enforcement that takes place. Those in the government also have a lot to gain from an increase in wealth secured through exploitation of a criminal class. And finally, the government has a lot to gain from an image of control, which can be achieved through Homeland Security and law enforcement.

Many examples exist of ways in which crime-fighting is not, in fact, intended to end the activities which are considered crimes. The government has no interest in ending crime unless it is targeted towards the government itself, the rich or their property. One could list a number of crimes committed by people who get away with it everyday, and a number of acts that should be crimes because they hurt people, other beings, and/or the planet, yet they are not crimes because it is not in the interest of the government to control those actions. Crimes against people who are seen as less valuable are not important to enforce unless it benefits the system in another way. Black on black violence, for example is acceptable to the criminal “justice” system and is even encouraged. Crimes committed by government, government agents, businesses, are treated differently, with the perpetrators facing much less harsh punishment than their civilian counter-parts face, if any. Often crimes are enabled by involvement with the government such as the drug trafficking done with government vehicles and physical and sexual abuse by police, border patrol, and prison officials, yet the criminals in these cases are treated as a few bad apples.

Much of the history of illegalization of drugs is linked directly to racism. Marijuana was associated with Mexicans and Black people, opium with the Chinese. The drug war has created many new criminals. More than half of people in federal prison are in for drug offenses. We also see how the use of crack, associated with Black people, is disproportionately punished compared to that of cocaine, more associated with white users. Some interesting parallels exist between the drug war and the war against “illegal” immigration, which deserve further examination elsewhere. A notable parallel lies in the fact that the criminalization of the respective activities has created underground markets and added crooked criminal activity.

The illegalization of certain underground activities (drugs, immigration, prostitution) relegates the participants (willing or unwilling) to having little access to the “justice” system or community support, and in fact makes those without the means to escape, vulnerable to violence and exploitation. Often more money is to be made when access to something (such as free movement) is restricted and desperation is higher. The result is that some are terrorized by others and it is of no concern to the citizens who implore that the laws be enforced. The work of the coyotes has been increasingly carried out by elements of organized crime such as the drug cartels. The violence of the Mexican drug cartels is touching the U.S. more and more. Immigrants get kidnapped and held for ransom, people are sexually assaulted or worse. Communities along the border, especially non-white communities like the O’odham are terrorized by those in the drug trade as well as those “fighting” the drug traffickers. This cannot be viewed in a simplistic fashion. We cannot ignore that the criminalization is what has created these situations.

“It is important to recognize how violence--not only in Ciudad Juarez, but also in Mexico City--is not simply a problem for the state but is in fact endemic to it, a ‘state of exception’ produced by an authoritarian government that has cultivated extreme forms of violence, corruption, and yes, even death, in order to cripple people’s capacity to resist, to smother effective counterdiscourse and over-power the revitalized democratic opposition... We should consider femicide in Ciudad Juarez as part of the scenario of state-sponsored terrorism...”

Regarding Rosa Linda Fregoso’s quote from “The Complexities of ‘Feminicide’ on the Border” (from The Color of Violence), it is impossible to separate the actions (and inactions) of the Mexican government from the influence of the governmental and economic forces based in the United States. The impacts of colonialism and neoliberalism and the resulting poverty, corruption and anti-resistance efforts have profound consequences.

It is worth noting that the drug war, just like the war against immigrants, is not intended to actually stop the flow. The U.S. government is spending over one billion dollars “helping” the Mexican government deal with the drug cartels through the new Plan Mexico or Merida Initiative. They could instead be decriminalizing drugs or curtailing demand by increasing what has been proven to be effective: treatment. Let us also not ignore the many cases in which government officials (U.S. and Mexican) are directly or indirectly involved in the drug trade.

Law enforcement officials act like they are heroes when they save the captives of human traffickers, or when they rescue perishing immigrants crossing the harsh desert; even though they enforce the laws that produce these conditions in the first place.


Conclusion

Is it not a bigger crime that people are afraid to leave their houses? White supremacy means some lives are more valuable than others and what results is danger, repression, and punishment for those who are not considered white.

What do we do about all of this? Institutional racism and individual white supremacy feed off of each other. We should consider ways to struggle against instituational racism, although many disagree on how. At the very least we can keep white people from joining white supremacist militias, and ideally get those people to act on behalf of immigrants and other people of color.

In our efforts, whatever those look like, we need to understand the issues discussed above and be able to explain them to other people. Art, posters, fliers, press releases, articles, demonstrations, one-on-one debates, etc., need to reach a variety of people so they can gain a better perspective on the whole picture. We need to influence the various movements in favor of ending oppression overall, not just a single group of people, and not in a superficial way.

It is hopeful to see many people mobilized against detention centers. The general feeling tends to be that the people do not deserve to be imprisoned because they haven’t done anything to justify that. Hope resides in people’s realization that the government would imprison innocent people- that the law isn’t legitimate. The relationship between the detention centers and the prison industrial complex as a whole needs to be highlighted so that people can see that the immigration detention centers are not the only unmerited manifestation of imprisonment of people. It is also vital that the people see a common cause in dealing with these issues in a larger context.

As far as dealing with institutional racism, organizations such as Critical Resistance, INCITE!, and copwatch groups have been developing responses to institutional racism in the form of law enforcement and the prison industrial complex. While many immigrants’ rights strategies are myopic, these groups tend to have a more inclusive perspective. The most powerful efforts to bringing justice to undocumented immigrants must involve uniting people who are affected by the criminal “justice” system and coming up with alternatives to dealing with social problems using that system. Supporting the efforts that existing groups like these are doing may be a good place to start.

Solving the “immigration problem” will not mean securing the border, nor the legalization of immigrants, nor will it mean shifting around a few things so we can again easily ignore immigrants and allow them to remain exploited. Radical changes will have to occur- things that are very threatening to the status quo and would therefore likely encounter the criminal “justice” system as well. It is also not okay if somehow immigrants are given justice; there is already a system of oppression against people of color that will not be resolved unless we connect these issues. Small successes are good, but if we do not demand the fullest extent of what needs to change, we cannot have any hope of gaining it. Angela Davis’s quote below can be related to today’s struggle.

“If convict leasing and the accompanying disproportionality with which black people were made to inhabit jails and prisons during the post-Emancipation period had been taken up with the same intensity and seriousness as- and in connection with- the campaign against lynching, then the contemporary radical call for prison abolition might not sound so implausible today.” Angela Davis: From the Prison of Slavery to the Slavery of Prison