Drive-by Planet

Showing posts with label Arizona. Show all posts

May 27, 2010

Sound Strike: musical boycott of Arizona

Top: Rage Against the Machine /Sonic Youth

Middle: Cypress Hill / Massive Attack
Bottom: Kanye West / Serj Tankian / Michael Moore

Arizona's bill SB1070, signed into law last month by governor Jan Brewer, has sparked a musical resistance in the form of a new organization Sound Strike. The Guardian reports that "Artists including Kanye West, Sonic Youth and Massive Attack have all pledged a musical boycott of the US state, refusing to tour there until the "odious" bill is repealed."

The Arizona law is a threat to civil liberties. Under the law cops can pull over and detain anyone they suspect is an illegal immigrant. Those not in possession of documentation will be arrested as criminals. The law is open season on people already in tough life situations, many of whom are working for American employers who take advantage of cheap immigrant labor.

The law is an invitation to racial profiling. Conservative pundits who tout provisions in the law that allegedly safeguard against profiling are only kidding themselves. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the strategies used by Sheriff Joe Arpaio would have to be terminally naive to imagine that in Arizona racial profiling won't figure into the crackdown on the undocumented.

Sound Strike is just up and running. Early supporters include Michael Moore, Cypress Hill, Joe Satriani, Serj Tankian, Spank Rock and Conor Oberst. All involved have pledged to give Arizona a miss on concert tours and to refuse to allow their "collective economic power to ... aid and abet civil and human rights violations".

Link to article in Guardian.

Apr 30, 2010

Duncan Hunter: 'deport children of illegals'

duncan hunter,immigration,illegal's kids

Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-CA) has high praise for the draconian Arizona immigration bill signed into law last week by Gov. Jan Brewer. Hunter calls it a " fantastic starting point."

At a tea party rally in Ramona the Republican congressman was asked if he backed deporting natural-born American citizens who are the children of illegal immigrants.

Hunter's reply: "I would have to say, yes."

He added: "And we're not being mean. We're just saying it takes more than walking across the border to become an American citizen... It's what's in our souls."

Not being mean? How about being against Constitutional provisions? The 14th amendment to the US Constitution guarantees citizenship to all persons born in the United States. It's instructive how US conservatives hold up the Constitution when it suits them but play down provisions that don't fit in with their agenda.

The number of undocumented workers in the US has a great deal to do with the willingness, even eagerness of a percentage of American employers to find employees willing to do work the average American won't touch. Many of the undocumented take personal risks to seek greater opportunity and spend their lives in the shadow while contributing to the American economy.

Since the rally Hunter has attempted to moderate what he said, by putting a slightly different spin on it.

AP:

Hunter's spokesman Joe Kasper said Thursday that the congressman's position is that U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants should stay with their parents unless there is a legal guardian who could take care of them.

Hunter's tea party comments are in line with his overall position on this issue. He supports a House Bill that calls for the elimination of automatic birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented parents.

Link also to MSNBC - LA Times blog/with video

Apr 28, 2010

Arizona: 'a police state'

Pulitzer winning NYT reporter Linda Greenhouse announced in a recent column on the Arizona immigration law... "I’m not going back to Arizona as long as it remains a police state, which is what the appalling anti-immigrant bill that Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law last week has turned it into."

President Obama was quick to challenge the Arizona law. He called it misguided, irresponsible and a threat to civil liberties.

The immigration law that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law last week has been compared by some pundits to policies enacted in apartheid South Africa and the former Soviet Union. Colorado Democrat, Rep Jared Polis, said it evokes memories of Nazi Germany: “It is absolutely reminiscent of second class status of Jews in Germany prior to World War II when they had to have their papers with them at all times and were subject to routine inspections at the suspicion of being Jewish.”

In the United States illegal immigration is a federal crime. Arizona has now also made it a state crime. Police have been granted broad powers to detain anyone on the suspicion of being in the state illegally. The potential for abuse-of-power is enormous. As Maricopa county Sheriff Joe Arpaio has demonstrated many times in the past, give him an inch and he will take a mile.

Ironically enough Brewer has ordered the creation of a training course to instruct officers how to avoid racial profiling. This is bit like offering training to pitbulls on how to avoid going for the jugular. Arizona cops are hard-wired to profile. The state is majority white with about half a million Hispanics. In Arizona it's a case of "driving while brown." When it comes to the enforcement of state immigration law, racial profiling is a background reality no matter how many courses Governor Brewer comes up with.

Anyone who has followed law enforcement in Arizona will be well aware of the attitude Sheriff Arpaio brings to the job. Not long ago the House Judiciary Committee issued a damning statement about his activities:

Sheriff Arpaio has repeatedly demonstrated disregard for the rights of Hispanics in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Under the guise of immigration enforcement, his staff has conducted raids in residential neighborhoods in a manner condemned by the community as racial profiling.

It's not just the more liberal minded who have a problem with this law, Fox News regular Judge Andrew Napolitano calls it "a disaster for Arizona." During a Fox News appearance with Neil Cavuto, Napolitano said: "She's gonna bankrupt the Republican Party and the state of Arizona... Her budget will be paying the legal bills of the lawyers who sue on behalf of those that were stopped... This will be a disaster for Arizona to say nothing of the fact that it's so unconstitutional that I predict a federal judge will prevent Arizona from enforcing it as soon as they attempt to do so. That will probably be tomorrow."

For more on this story link to related articles... Economist: "Hysterical Nativism" - NYT "Breathing While Undocumented".

Link also to New York Times - Huffington Post