ALEC protest Wednesday

Check out http://azresistsalec.wordpress.com for more info.

Wednesday is November 30, which is the 12th anniversary of the WTO protests in Seattle.  It's also the first main day of the ALEC States and Nation's Summit in Snottsdale.  This is the Summit at which two years ago they agreed upon SB1070 becoming one of their many pieces of model legislation, which corporations and legislators collude on propagating across the country.  In the case of SB1070 and legislature before it (three strikes laws, mandatory minimums, etc.), the three largest private prison companies in the country were involved in the discussions.  It also turns out that various companies involved in resource extraction are also involved.

I haven't spent much time on the details about ALEC because ALEC is just an example of what happens on a large scale, everyday and with a long history.  There are many horrible things about ALEC, but they didn't create the border wall, they didn't build the prisons.  Sheriff Joe's jail is as bad or worse than any private prison or detention center, with the temps reaching 117 in tent city this summer.  When I first learned about ALEC last fall, i wrote What came first: the Racism or the Profit Motive? which i would write a bit differently today, but has some important questions within.   Now i would answer that question by describing it as an intricate combination of the two. I do believe that people will try to profit off something that is already happening, as in the case of private prisons, and that they do try to shape how we see different populations so as to justify criminalization (not to mention the ways that other interests seek to justify exploitation- and this is justified partly through criminalization). But i also think that there is a history of racism that this concept of privatized prisons is built upon. Yet at the same time, as i discussed, this racism is built on a desire for stability for the rich and has ultimately resulted in a divided working class that could not rebel in unity, and therefore could not successfully rebel.

Based on this, i was motivated to create this video, which is explained further at this link: Private Prisons in a Wider Context (maybe you watched part one, but did you watch part two?). It brings the focus more towards a historical arc that incorporates colonization, the criminalization of slaves then ex-slaves, and the continuation of criminalization of people of color. This doesn't have to be directly for profit as in the case of private prisons.

Anyway, hope to see you out at the ALEC protest events (there's more going on than just wednesday by the way).

Tucson Uprising for Ethnic Studies

In case you haven't already seen footage of the lockdown at the TUSD (Tucson) meeting by a group of students calling themselves UNIDOS, here is a video of the action.  The ethnic studies program has been under attack recently.



From my distanced position, it has seemed that the movement to defend ethnic studies has shied away from outright accusing standard education as racist.  Even as a white person, I feel that my education was indoctrination into this white supremacist, colonialist, sexist capitalist society by telling us blatant lies or half-truths and lots of omissions.  Why didn't I learn about Malcolm X or any number of important figures who represent a threat to the mentality that the education system is meant to maintain? 

You might also listen to Tim Wise on this video in which he makes some interesting points about white people not wanting brown students to know their real history or they might hate white people.

I imagine that what is taught in the ethnic studies classes are much closer to the truth than other classes.  But because proponents of ethnic studies are accused of reverse racism and promoting hate of the US government, people are going to tend to avoid giving anyone any more evidence to back up these accusations.  Reverse racism is a crock, and I hope Nonetheless, I would also like to add that someone (I'm pretty sure it was Linda Paloma Allen) made the point in an indigenous panel recently that often the book "Occupied America: A History of Chicanos" is used in these ethnic studies classes, and while this book has a lot of valuable information, it marginalizes the local indigenous folks (like the O'odham).  Although they are not Chicanos, if you're going to write a book called "Occupied America", do a little bit better job of representing those who were occupied in America (and by Mexico previously).  I read the book a few years ago, and hadn't quite noticed this, but as I re-read parts of it when I was working on writing something about the "Baja Arizona" idea (which also had a proposed name of "Gadsden" which is lacking in any consideration of context), and did notice quite an omission.  Of course it is believable that a lot of information is readily available, but something tells me it could've been included.  And given that some folks find it so easy disregard the local struggles of indigenous people, if anyone is going to teach or read the book they should find some supplemental materials.

Focus on Bigger Picture in Shadow of Victory

Yes, it's encouraging in some ways that Arizona Senate rejects 5 illegal-immigration bills, yet of course this is no reversal of SB 1070 or anything before it.  As my partner noted to me, it's likely that it was more the pressure from the businesses than the people that made an impact this round, though I'd like to think that protesters are at least an annoyance if not worse to the politicians deciding the fate of so many.

I would like to point out, as I have in previous posts though perhaps buried within my writing, that the overarching goal of anti-immigrant legislation is not to remove all immigrants.  It is to criminalize them so as to make them more exploitable and controllable.  As many of you understand, migrants provide cheap labor.  They would to some extent, even if they were not "illegal", as they have been in the past.  But criminalizing them more and more keeps them in the precarious position that makes them easily exploited.  Of course what makes them "illegal" is their presence in this country, which implies that the law makers want them out--and some probably do.  But where blatant racists and business owners' interests come together is the interest in criminalizing a permanent underclass.

Let us not forget, however, that the prison industrial complex, the private prison industry in particular, directly profits from the criminalization of migrants.  This is a more direct and observable player in this game, especially where it connects with those in government like Russell Pearce and Jan Brewer as I discussed in What came first: the Racism or the Profit Motive? On Private Prisons' push for SB1070.  Then on a larger scale, with more funds and power, are the defense contractors who have been pushing for securing the border with walls and a variety of technological equipment.

 As I wrote in Ending criminalization of people of color must be priority,

Tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants, like those whose faces I could barely see, are held in detention centers and jails.  SB 1070 has not yet gone into effect.  This has been going on for so long and will only continue to do so as long as activists only insist upon ending racial profiling and stopping SB 1070 or even all racist bills/laws if it stops before calling for an end to the border and criminalization of people of color.  There are so many undocumented immigrants who are living in our cities whose voices are overpowered by those who want to maintain the status quo.  There are so many indigenous people near the border or even throughout this state whose voices are not heard, who are also impacted by the border and will also be impacted by SB1070 and so much more.

We must not buy the rhetoric that if it weren't for this right-wing attack on immigrants, things would be just fine.  Even before so many people were worried they'd be deported at any moment, they still had to work shitty jobs for low wages.  Even before so many border patrol agents or national guard invaded O'odham land, there were still many problems faced by people in the border regions, or just with brown skin in general.  Let's address the reasons so many are forced here in the first place and why so many people of color are in prisons, who profits, how settlers can decide who does or doesn't belong, and how does it all come crumbling down?

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

SB1070: Will Be Stopped, but Worse Will Come from Feds

Here's my prediction about SB1070. It may or may not go into effect on July 29th, but I think it will be stopped in some way, probably by the federal government. Then the federal government will come up with some Comprehensive Immigration Reform that is as bad or worse than SB1070, but not as blatantly horrible. It will provide a few crumbs for certain folks- perhaps to buy off the some of ones with the most capacity to build resistance, but it will involve more border security and attrition through enforcement (with a new gentler formula). We are also possibly going to see a guest worker program and perhaps some sort of id that involves biometrics.

After Prop 187 in California passed it was found to be unconstitutional. Yet it was important historically because it set things in motion. In particular, the federal government passed welfare reform that instituted restrictions on welfare to immigrants that mirrored some of prop 187.

The excerpts at the end of this post, from Border lines blog discuss the reasons the federal approach to immigration is not likely to be much different from AZ's.

This is why I say This is bigger than SB1070. We have people coming to Arizona from out of town, doing this Arizona Freedom Summer (beware the RCP) and thirty actions in thirty days sorts of things, but need to be clear that SB 1070 is not the main issue here. People keep voting for Sheriff Joe and racist legislation- there need to be some efforts to change minds and/or undermine the strength of racism here. As I've mentioned before, if we don't look beyond the pieces of legislation and the bad sheriffs and the raids, the economic situation that so many face is overlooked. We also have a criminal "justice" system that seeks to criminalize people they see as a problem- particularly people of color, whether immigrants or not. In seeking to move immigration reform along, some folks think it's okay to further militarize the border even when it already harms the communities such as the O'odham down at the border.

For more reading on these topics (especially if you're new to these issues in AZ), see This is Bigger than SB 1070. Whether or not my prediction comes true, this is still bigger than the latest law. It was too big before.


From Border Lines blog:

It’s likely that SB 1070 will be judged, in whole or in part, as unconstitutional and will never be fully implemented. Even so the Arizona law marks another step forward in the consolidation of the attrition through enforcement strategy, just as its Legal Workers Act of 2008, which the courts have upheld, signaled the deepening dimensions of immigration law enforcement...

The Arizona law highlights a deepening conundrum for the federal government. By no means is DHS opposed on principle to having local law enforcement join in immigration enforcement. But it does insist that such cooperation be on the terms it sets. Having opened the door to federal-local cooperation, DHS is finding it hard to control the eagerness of localities to join in the immigrant crackdown...

With its Support Local Law Enforcement Act, Arizona not only adopted the “attrition through enforcement’ framework of the restrictionist institutes. It also adapted parts of the federal playbook for immigration enforcement: identifying new ways to increase what DHS calls “law enforcement partnerships” and extending the federal government’s own focus on the expanding category of “criminal aliens.”

Rather than waiting for DHS to reach out and expand its own federal-local collaborative programs, Arizona politicians have asserted the state’s right to enforce existing federal immigration laws. In the view of the supporters of the new law, the main problem they are attempting to address is not some inadequacy in federal immigration law. Rather it’s the failure of the federal agencies to adequately enforce the law...

The federal government has not explicitly endorsed ["attrition through enforcement"], but its actions are closely attuned with this restrictionist agenda.

Even as the White House and DHS continued to insist that only a CIR strategy will fix the broken immigration system, it has systematically moved to make it increasingly difficult for unauthorized immigrants (illegal border crossers and those overstaying their visas) and for legal immigrants who have violated criminal laws (mostly drug use) to live and work in the country. At the same time, DHS has steadily strengthened border control through increased checkpoints, increased agents, and increased border-control infrastructure...

The Obama administration has also proved an ardent advocate of increased federal-local cooperation in immigration enforcement. Among other things, it has strongly supported collaborative programs initiated by the Bush administration such as Operation Community Shield, Criminal Alien Program, Fugitive Operation Teams, Operation Stonegarden, Border Enforcement Security Taskforces (BEST), and the 287(g) program – all of which involve local police and sheriff deputies in the enforcement of immigration law.

In addition, the Obama administration has consolidated and promoted the Secure Communities program, which was developed under DHS Secretary Chertoff as a pilot project to encourage and facilitate the checking of the immigration status of all those arrested by local law enforcement. Secure Communities is advancing rapidly under Secretary Napolitano, who has prioritized the detention and removal of all those DHS and the Justice Department identity as “criminal aliens.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the DHS agency responsible for immigration investigations and interior enforcement, has a special program to promote what its calls “law enforcement partnerships.” ICE Access (Agreements of Cooperation in Communities to Enhance Safety and Security) “provides local law enforcement agencies an opportunity to team up with ICE to combat specific challenges in their communities.”

Established in 2007, ICE Access underscores the increasing outreach of DHS to local law enforcement officials in immigration and other homeland security matters. The program supports “a multi-agency/multi/authority approach that encompasses federal, state, and local resources, skills, and expertise.”

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.

Civil Disobedience and Walk-Outs Oppose Racist Bill

This week is an intense one, as Russell Pearce's bill SB1070 sits on the desk of the governor signed, vetoed, or let to pass. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, 9 students got arrested after chaining themselves to the doors of one of the capitol buildings. They were really stealth about it, and had a great statement they read during the action, which happened at the same time as the press conference at which various politicians spoke. I fully support them taking their action when they did even if it disturbed the order of things at the press conference- this was far bigger news. The students called for more non-violent civil disobedience because they've tried all the usual tactics like calling their legislators. If anything, many years ago was a time to escalate tactics because now we are at desperate times.


Today I got to witness hundreds of high-school students march to the capitol. They apparently had a walk-out. I'm reading accounts of thousands having marched there, but when I was there, many had left, but there were more on their way! These actions are quite inspiring and will hopefully inspire more actions, even if they don't stop this bill.

This is all reminiscent of the powerful time of the walk-outs and marches during the threat of the federal Sensenbrenner-sponsored immigration reform bill in 2006 and 2007. I am glad to know that this large-scale resistance is not dead. Yes, the Arpaio marches were big, but the walk-outs signify something different.

It will be interesting to see what happens next since the bill is likely to pass. I imagine that many migrants will feel the brunt of it, even if the bill gets caught up with lawsuits and issues with constitutionality. However, although it's difficult for many of us who live in the Phoenix area to imagine what's going on down at the border, we also must be aware of the increasing militarization that is looming. The governor and McCain and others are trying to get more troops down to the border. In addition, as comprehensive immigration reform comes closer to being seriously talked about in the US legislature, there will hopefully be more resistance to guest-worker programs, biometrics, increasing militarization of the border, etc.

See also: Civil Disobedience in Protest of SB1070

Senator Pearce's "Illegal is not a Race" is about Racism

“Illegal is not a race, it is a crime,” Senator Russell Pearce has been repeating lately. He’s defending himself against the frequent accusation of racism.

Illegal, meaning illegal immigrant, or illegal alien (it never means illegal driver under the influence or illegal shoplifter, so pardon us for seeing it as derogatory), and here in Arizona usually means Mexican, since we’re so close to Mexico and since the rates of migration across the border with Mexico is so high (due to NAFTA). But Mexican is not a race either, yet it makes sense to use the term racism (would he prefer white supremacy?)—even if he hates only a portion whom are so desperate to risk their lives to get a job in the U.S. This especially makes sense since we’re talking about the guy who “accidentally” forwarded out an email from a white supremacist group and uses statistics about the crimes of “illegals” he sourced from an organization (FAIR) that has connections to eugenicists. But that’s sort of beside the point.

I know there’s at least a handful of racists who know they’re racist but they know they should deny it. Most of the anti-immigrant folks, however, feel absolved from accusations of racism because maybe they have a few Black friends or a Hispanic wife or something. Please note: you don’t have to hate all people of color to be racist, and you don’t even have to hate a single one of them to be racist. If you feel entitled to privileges because you have white skin, if you participate in racist discrimination or are complacent with the violence brought against people of color by believing and maybe repeating false information about them, that’s racism too.

But let’s look at this again. “Illegal is not a race, it is a crime.” They could’ve said the same thing in the days when the police—oops, I mean the slave patrols—were checking for the “free papers” of every dark-skinned person they came upon who wasn’t enslaved. “It’s not racist to check to make sure the slave hadn’t illegally escaped her slavery,” they might’ve insisted, except that was long before racism was deemed dishonorable.

You see, what Russell Pearce doesn’t get (if he does I’ve under-estimated his intelligence and malevolence) is that race is so tied up with crime, his argument is circular. Race has so much to do with crime and illegality. You see, race was invented through criminalizing Africans. We weren’t taught in school (it wouldn’t be patriotic) that in the seventeenth century the rich European elites of Virginia were compelled, out of fear of rebellions of European indentured servants who joined with African slaves, to create new laws that made crimes of certain activities of Africans (owning property, testifying in court, defending themselves in physical confrontations, and much more). This created, and solidified, the divisions between people based on perceived physical differences so that they could create a clear hierarchy and an alliance between poor whites and rich whites against Africans. Race is not a biological or genetic reality. It is only based on certain physical cues that now have much more social and political significance than they had many centuries ago. In creating these divisions, alliances between races are undermined and poor whites would willingly maintain the hierarchy (even when that meant they’d stay poor) if they were allotted a few privileges and legal liberties. The rich whites won because they prevented the rebellions of the poor and continue to this day to make money off of most people's labor. Extra exploitation of people of color is justified by their alleged criminality.

Even after slavery was abolished, many Black people were charged with such things as vagrancy so they could be imprisoned and made to work for free. But it wasn’t racism since they had committed a crime, right Mr. Pearce? But they say we’ve progressed since then (we just have a much higher rate of people of color in prison than white people and many other examples of institutional racism to point to).

The point is that people are “illegal” because they’ve been made illegal. Clearly since race is not physically real, it exists mainly in the way people are treated. If people are criminalized and treated as criminals because of who they are (as in where they’re from, what they look like), that can clearly be called racism. This is the case, especially when anyone with brown skin can feel the effects of the targeting of immigrants. But let’s consider why Pearce might want to clarify that illegal is not a race. He is denying racism because most people understand racism to be about discriminating against people for no other reason but because of who they are, not what they’ve done. So even if we don’t use the term race, most people would agree that this attitude is wrong. The reason his bill includes criminalizing day laborers is because day laborers are mostly undocumented. The activities of day laborers are targeted because this is a way to catch people because of who they are, not because day laborer activity is harmful to the community. Pearce is contributing to social division between people by also criminalizing the people who transport or harbor undocumented migrants (will renting to them be illegal?).

The criminalization of poor people from south of the border—said to be unwilling to assimilate (why should they?)—is partly justified because of some idea of protecting “our culture”. What culture is this that the anti-immigrant folks claim they are destroying? Our hallowed culture of watching hours of TV and playing facebook games, meaningless jobs and prescription drugs, calling the police on loud neighbors instead of asking them to turn it down? What are they actually trying to protect? Could it be that white people feel entitled to a land that was stolen and built on the backs of slaves? They’re certainly not trying to protect native sovereignty (look at the check points on the Tohono O’odham Reservation).

But let’s look a little bit closer. The media and the politicians have been spending a lot of time and energy on shoving fear down the throats of U.S. citizens. They repeat the horror stories over and over again, and they make a lot of it up. Pearce likes to read off the names of police officers killed by immigrants—how about we read off the names of all the people the police have killed and those who have died in Joe’s jail (too bad so many of their names aren’t even reported)? Pearce likes to talk about “illegals” like they are all the same—even though studies show that a smaller percentage of migrants commit serious crimes compared to citizens, any of them could be a murderer, so we need to get rid of them all (and this makes as much sense as putting all men in jail because most violent crimes are committed by men)! Yes, it takes a lot to convince the average American to hate someone for stepping over an arbitrarily-drawn line in the dirt, and it should.

So why all the effort? There’s a lot to be gained financially from maintaining a class of people who can be treated in such a way—with little legal recourse to obtain unpaid wages, to get at least minimum wage and overtime pay to begin with, to have safe and reasonable working conditions. Some folks are also making a lot of money off of imprisoning hundreds of thousands of migrants in detention centers, building security equipment, the border wall, etc. There are some people, and perhaps Pearce is one of them, who are not motivated by greed, just hate or vengeance—I mean, he and his son, as police officers, have been shot by Latino youth and a Mexican undocumented immigrant, respectively. Pearce claims that to stop the crimes that are committed by those who commit them, all undocumented immigrants must be targeted. Using a war term, he pushes “attrition by enforcement”.

Criminalizing people justifies their exploitation, imprisonment, separation from family or their removal. What makes people “illegal” immigrants is the legal and economic significance of the border. Rich people and goods can cross the border freely. The U.S. doesn’t want to take any responsibility for the economic impact of the neo-liberal projects like NAFTA which prevent people from being able to subsist in the country they were born in. The border wall isn’t even a band-aid approach to the issue—it’s like putting superglue in the wound. Pearce is not interested in real solutions. He is not only interested in the federal immigration law being enforced, but he wants people put in jail because of who they are.

Update on "Save our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Act"

This is probably more important to oppose than Arpaio right now. We need to be prepared for these bills to likely pass, especially if they get on the ballot.


Excerpt of newsletter from Russell Pearce from Prison Abolitionist (see this link for sponsors of this bill)

"SUPPORT OUR LAW ENFORCEMENT AND SAFE NEIGHBORHOOD ACT"

1. Illegal Sanctuary Policies: Eliminate ALL sanctuary cities in this state and allow legal citizens the right to sue their government for violating this law.

2. Trespass: Makes entering or remaining in Arizona in violation of federal law a state crime and "allows" law enforcement to arrest them on trespass violation or just call ICE to take them and deport them. (law enforcement's choice). This allows them to hold those that are being investigated for serious crimes and not have deported before the investigation is completed.

3. Day Laborer Enforcement: Makes it illegal for an illegal alien to solicit work (day laborers) and makes a misdemeanor for anyone with a license to do business in Arizona to pick up any day laborer without filling out a employment application. Makes it a state crime to aid, harbor, conceal transport or attempt to aid, harbor, conceal or transport an illegal alien for work with a mandatory impoundment of their vehicle under 28-3511 for 30 days. Also adds a mandatory $1000 fine per illegal alien being transported.

Closing our borders is a must; however it must be coupled with interior enforcement. Attrition by enforcement. Strict enforcement. It is time to renew our efforts to end ALL sanctuary policies in our states and our nation: Require officials to fully enforce federal immigration laws of the United States. NO MORE TAXPAYER BENEFITS OF ANY KIND, No Amnesty, No retreat, No surrender. We will take back America one state at a time. It starts here!!!!!

• 8 USC Sec. 1325: (ILLEGAL ENTRY)
• 8 USC Sec. 1324: (Hiring an ILLEGAL)
• 8 USC Sec. 1644: ("No local ordinance, rule, or measure shall stop law enforcement officers from enforcement of this section")
"Any person who knowingly hires/harbors/transports any illegal alien is guilty of a felony punishable by:
• 10 years in prison
• $2000 fine per illegal alien
• Forfeiture of the vehicle or property used to commit the crime."

"All officers whose duty it is to enforce criminal laws shall have authority to make arrests for a violation of any provision of this section" (affirmed US v Perez-Gonzalez 2002 Fed App 0360, 6th Circ.).

"We Don't Need No 'Stinkin' 287g;” Local Law Enforcements Has Inherent Authority to Enforce Immigration Law:

Today we will take the "political handcuffs off from our law enforcement officers;" the only reasons our immigration laws are not enforced are Political, not a lack of Authority.

This Citizens Initiative will pass by 70% to 80% by the voters. The last four (4) Propositions I placed on the ballot in '06 passed by an average of 75%.

In accordance with the Unanimous endorsement of a Resolution by the State Republican Party and the Maricopa County Republican Party at their annual organizational meetings with over 800 PC's present at each meeting, and in order to support our citizens Constitutional right to have our laws enforced and recognizing the damage in cost in crime and dollars to Arizona citizens and taxpayers; We demand the end to all "Catch and Release" policies in the state of Arizona and further we will be filing a Citizens Initiative to remove/end all sanctuary policies in the state of Arizona. No more Catch & Release. We the legal and lawful citizens demand the enforcement of our laws.

I will introduce this legislation and hope to get it out of the legislature within the first two weeks of Session: I believe I have the commitments from legislators and the Governor to make this happen. I will need everyone's help. We need to contact every single legislator and encourage them to support this legislation. You can use www.LifeLibertyFreedom.com to contact all the Legislators at once.

If the legislature will not support our law enforcement and citizens we will file The Citizens Initiative, to make sure the people have the last say. So let us put most of our energy in this effort in getting the bill passed out of the legislature and signed by the Governor. This is critical legislation for Arizona and the nation as we lead the nation in our efforts and over 30 states are modeling legislation after us. Let's Take Back America One State at a Time!!!!!

The burden of blind-eye police department policies and open-border philosophies were paid for with the lives of not only our police officers throughout our state. The danger clearly spread beyond law enforcement into our communities with more lives being lost. The quality of life in our state is being sacrificed for political correctness.

Russell

The Civil Rights Movement's Lessons for Anti-Arpaio March

"Not since the days of Bull Connor has this country seen a public official abuse his authority in order to terrorize and intimidate communities based on the color of their skin," states a call for the big January 16th march in Phoenix against Arpaio. Sheriff Joe Arpaio is often compared to Bull Connor, the police official in Birmingham who fought civil rights activists with attack dogs, and strong water hoses back in the 1960's. He acted above the law, although some could argue that his actions were not contrary to the general orientation of the rule of law then or even today. He was more blatant about abusing protesters and disregarding federal law than most law enforcement officials, which is why Arpaio is compared to him.

During the civil rights movement, there were no marches against Bull Connor, but there were efforts to produce situations in which he would show the world what he was willing to do to fight integration. The horrible treatment of marchers drew the attention of the nation and encouraged John F. Kennedy to initiate the Civil Rights Act of 1964. To some, the Civil Rights Act was a victory, and the story somewhat ends there. This perspective makes it seem that Bull Connor was an important catalyst and therefore target (although he wasn't quite a target in the way Arpaio is today). Yet if this was the case, why do stories that focus on a wider black liberation movement rather than focus on aspects of what's called the civil rights movement that often center on the federal government's benevolence or Martin Luther King's heroism not really mention Bull Connor at all?

If one were to argue that strategically it makes sense to go after Arpaio because of the significance of Bull Connor's role in getting the Civil Rights Act passed, I would say, Arpaio is our big villain, but just as Bull Connor was but a piece of the entire picture, Arpaio should not be the central focus of the current movement. According to The numbers don’t match Arpaio’s hype, Arpaio, despite having spent much more money and time and having wider jurisdiction and more media attention, arrested less people than city police departments in the county. The many politicians and those who elected them, the police, and ICE- all those who are enemies to undocumented people- make it clear that Arpaio is but one figure, and that opposition to racist attitudes must address something bigger than a politician, in many ways a symbol, no matter how monstrous. Yet the focus on Arpaio remains, locally and nationally.

Shall we just have marches against Arpaio until we get a crappy Immigration Reform bill? And maybe even get rid of Arpaio? Will that solve all the problems of migrants and others caught up in the arrests, checkpoints, and militarization of the border? We can bet that these things, especially the militarization of the border, will still exist after reform. There will still be "illegal" people, and a permanent underclass.

A call to action for the March in Phoenix on January 16th says, "It is time, just like Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement took the streets of Montgomery Alabama that at that time was the epicenter of hate; we must do the same in Phoenix." The movement for immigrants’ rights is often compared with the civil rights movement, but we must ask whether the civil rights movement was even effective.

First, the civil rights/black liberation movement involved a lot of amazing work and the organizing by many people who are rarely credited for their contributions. Often their ideas about what should come of the movement are not recognized today. What is recognized are the agreeable aspects which the white mainstream chose to co-opt. It is not that the movement did not succeed exactly, but we are made to think that racism no longer exists because of the it. Yet we have the largest prison populations in the world and the relative majority of those in prison are non-white, and many are in for non-violent offenses. This is only one example of the way that racism has been disguised, yet still exists today.

Despite the fact that many people have been empowered by the amazing work by organizers of the civil rights and power movements, what happened is that while elements of the movement(s) were co-opted, others were effectively destroyed through the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). Briefly, COINTELPRO sought to eradicate dissidence, to destroy Martin Luther King Jr., the Black Panthers, and other radicals, and was, with the help of local police and the criminalization of people, the downfall of many liberation movements.

It is difficult to use the civil rights movement as a model for a movement of today for these reasons (and many others), primarily because what most people know of it is what they are encouraged to know, their education about history filtered for the purposes of maintaining the status quo.

If we were to see the Civil Rights Act as a success of the civil rights movement, it would make sense for us to seek something comparable from the immigrants' rights movement. Another call to action for the January 16th march says, "Join us and march against the injustices and separation of families caused by the 287(g) and Joe Arpaio. We will be demanding that the Obama administration take direct action on the issues affecting our communities." Some calls for the march, seemingly mostly or solely coming from the National Day Laborer Network, call for comprehensive immigration reform.

Something many people don't know about are two riders added to the Civil Rights Act of 1968, one which outlawed crossing state lines (which includes using a telephone or sending mail across state lines) with intent to "incite a riot" and the other making it a federal crime to "obstruct law enforcement officers or firemen doing their lawful duty in connection with a civil disorder which obstructs a federally-protected function". Both of these have been used against Black Panthers, the American Indian movement, and various other radicals. This is yet another example of the way the federal government criminalizes dissent, as well as an example of how laws that claim to solve problems (such as discrimination) actually perpetuate those problems by undermining the people's ability to rebel, and by contributing to the filling of the prisons. Oh, and get this: the Civil Rights Act of 1968 that was meant to prohibit violence against black people exempted from prosecution any law enforcement officers, member of the National Guard and Armed Forces who are engaging in suppressing a riot or civil disturbance.

The integrity of the Civil Rights Bills aside, it is important to make the point that the federal government was involved in crimes against the people (such as through COINTELPRO), and watched as racists such as the KKK and southern police committed crimes against black people. One example is that the federal government was providing information about the Freedom Riders to the Birmingham police, who in turn was providing that information to the KKK. The Klan used that information to attack civil rights activists, such as when the freedom riders arrived at a bus terminal and the KKK beat them while the police waited to show up until most of the Klan members had left. The police were actually providing a lot of information about local civil rights activities, but who they were providing it to was especially interesting. The information was being given to a KKK member who was actually an FBI agent who had infiltrated the Klan. So the FBI knew all along that the information was being provided to the KKK, and they also knew the details of the various acts of violence the Klan and the police were perpetrating against the black population and civil rights activists. Keep in mind that Birmingham was being called "Bombingham" because of all the bombings at the time. Yet neither the FBI, nor the federal government in general, did anything to stop the horrible violence that was occurring even though they did have the ability to do so (Source). This is the government that benevolently gave us the Civil Rights bills?

So it must be asked, were the Civil Rights laws a success? I would concede that laws do shape people's attitudes, that outlawing racial discrimination shaped the white consciousness. Yet, on the flip side of this, laws and law enforcement have played a stronger role in justifying racist attitudes. I would argue that the criminalization of people, which did not start with the civil rights movement, but at that time was intentionally shifted towards appearing unbiased, is the newer face of racism. Certainly things have changed due to the civil rights movement, but we must ask what was it that really changed and what has not changed? As mentioned above, dissent has been criminalized, as well as has been poverty, drug use, etc. The police enforce the color line by partaking in harassment, brutality, and arrests of people of color. Especially relevant to this discussion is that movement across borders has been limited and criminalized, constructing a whole mass of people as criminals. From this perspective, the rule of law is perfectly congruent with racism. So Connor and Arpaio are not aberrations except in the way that they flaunt their penchant for abusing people. While not as blatantly racist as Connor was, Arpaio can still terrorize migrants under the power of the law.

Another question to be asked: Were the Civil Rights Bills written because of a moral imperative of the federal government, perhaps with a push from leaders like Martin Luther King Jr.? Or were they an attempt to quash dissent? After all, protests and riots were a major concern. What better way to deal with it than to throw the people a bone while you further criminalize rioting?

Malcolm X said, "You’ll get freedom by letting your enemy know that you’ll do anything to get your freedom; then you’ll get it... when you stay radical long enough and get enough people to be like you, you’ll get your freedom." Additionally, a couple months after the big March on Washington, Malcolm X described in a speech how the March was co-opted by the federal government; that originally the marchers were talking about how they were going to march on the government buildings and bring them to a halt, and even that they would lay down on the runways of the airports and stop planes from landing. This frightened the government so much, that got Martin Luther King Jr and others together to undermine the organizing for these activities by making it a passive march instead. "They controlled it so tight, they told those Negroes what time to hit town, how to come, where to stop, what signs to carry, what song to sing, what speech they could make, and what speech they couldn't make; and then told them to get out town by sundown." Yes, the government has its ways to undermine true dissent, and obviously it's not always through force. Reform is used to undermine revolution.

This is why I believe that if anything with a positive façade is to come out of Comprehensive Immigration Reform, it is out of fear of the power of the people. After all, no moral imperative is preventing the federal government from running all the detention centers, from militarizing the border, from being involved in the corrupt drug war, etc. (On the flip side, I believe the federal government is also afraid of the racists who scapegoat migrants and other people of color for their problems but also are angry with the government for collaborating with businesses to make money off of cheap labor). Even if you believe that new opportunities come with Obama in power, the fact remains: the rule of law is intimately tied to racism. History may not repeat itself, but there are many lessons to be learned.

It is also worth mentioning that Malcolm X's story should be considered when movement leaders invite cops to meetings, when activists police the behavior of the people during protests, and when they try to control the message.

To conclude, Arpaio mustn't be the focus for the movement, and neither should reform. Knowing that Arpaio, like Bull Connor, was elected time and again by a mass of white folks who feel that people of color are somehow a threat, and that the rule of law, with the participation of the federal government, is inextricably racist, we have much to do. We need to challenge white people on their racism and no longer legitimize the federal government or other law enforcement by comparing Arpaio the "Sadistic Man" to those whose acts of repression are simply less visible. We need resistance, no compromise on freedom. Lives are at stake. Freedom not reform.

This is all not to say you shouldn't attend actions like the march against Arpaio. In fact you should, and you should bring your message and your passion for freedom.

Further reading:
No Borders or Prison Walls: Beyond Immigrants' Rights to Ending Criminalization of All People of Color
and
Freedom, Not Reform: On the New CIR-ASAP bill

News Articles on the New AZ Immigration Law

Prop 200, an law passed in 2004 and initiated by Protect Arizona Now, sought to enact some of the changes mentioned below. But due to various obstacles and constraints, including the issue about whether it was unconstitutional, many aspects of the law did not get enforced. More recently, some anti-immigrant legislation was snuck into a budget bill, and here we have it. These are some reports on the status of the new law.

Law requiring AZ workers to report entrants a travesty

Our view: Not only is public ill-served, the most vulnerable — kids — will be hurt
Arizona Daily Star
A new state law requiring public employees to demand immigration documentation before providing services — and to report applicants for services who are illegal migrants to authorities — is already taking hold.
It's going to be a bad deal for Arizona. Worse, it punishes some of the most vulnerable people — children — for government's inability to fix the country's poorly designed immigration system. (Source).

DES says it'll enforce ban on aid to illegal immigrants
By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services

PHOENIX — The Department of Economic Security issued a policy Thursday instructing its workers to enforce a new ban on providing welfare services to those not in this country legally, including a requirement to report illegal applicants to federal immigration officials.
DES spokesman Steve Meissner said the department was already asking for documents proving citizenship or legal residency, but the policy clarifies any ambiguity about what is required and specifies what documents are acceptable and what programs are covered. (Source).

High court won’t hear suit challenging new immigration law
By Christian Palmer

The Arizona Supreme Court announced on Dec. 2 it will not hear a lawsuit filed by local governments that sought to challenge legislation affecting land development and public benefits for immigrants. (Source).