Sanders Hires Cesar Vargas, High-Profile DREAMer Activist, For Latino Outreach

Cesar Vargas in 2012: "An immigrant from Mexico who lived in the United States for most of his life without documentation will be allowed to practice law in New York, a Brooklyn appellate court ruled (source)."

by Gaius Publius

In another smart move, Bernie Sanders has hired Cesar Vargas, one of the highest-profile and best-respected DREAM activists, to engage with him in Latino outreach.

It's clear that whoever the Democratic nominee is, that person will have to win the Latino vote. It's also clear that the way the Republican party is performing on immigration, the Democratic nominee will do quite well in the general election.

But what about the primary contest? There's apparently a bit of a tussle among Latino activists about which candidate, Sanders or Clinton, is better for their community. Clinton, of course, has the implied or explicit endorsement of most of her party, including a number of prominent Latino politicians, like the Castro brothers — Julian Castro, former San Antonio mayor and current HUD Secretary, and Joaquín Castro, newly elected to the House of Representatives.

But Clinton has had her trouble, at least in the past (video at the link). She has since righted herself on the issue, staking out positions "to the left of President Obama." But I wouldn't count this part of the contest a foregone conclusion.

Cesar Vargas is one of the most prominent of the DREAM activists. Here's the announcement, along with an indication of why he joined with Sanders, from Huffington Post:

Prominent Dreamer Joins Bernie Sanders Campaign

The undocumented activist has been critical of Hillary Clinton.

Cesar Vargas, a leading undocumented activist, joined Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign on Thursday, Vargas' advocacy group announced -- another sign the senator's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination is ramping up its efforts on immigration and the Latino vote.

Vargas is a co-founder of the Dream Action Coalition, which is led by young undocumented immigrants, or Dreamers. The group has been heavily critical of Republicans on immigration, but has also chastised President Barack Obama over deportations and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, one of Sanders' opponents, over donations from private prison lobbyists

Dream Action Coalition has applauded Sanders for his efforts to ban government contracts for private prison companies, which also operate many immigrant detention centers.

As Huffington Post points out, Clinton has also hired an activist from United We Dream, and as noted above, her positions go beyond what Obama is doing. Still, the issue of lobbyist influence on other policies of concern to the Latino community is being raised, especially her support from (and of?) the prison-for-profit industry:

The organization did not endorse Sanders (I-Vt.) but praised him in statements Thursday. Dream Action Coalition co-director Carlos Vargas said Sanders "is a strong choice: he is great on immigration in general, stood with us on the border children and he wants to get the Corrections Corporation of America, GEO Group and other corporations out of politics," referring to two major private prison companies.

"At the same time that Bernie is trying to chase them out of DC, Hillary is accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from GEO and CCA's registered lobbyists," he continued. "[O]ne day they will call in several hundred thousand dollars worth of favors and skew the discussion on immigration reform to keep their detention facilities full."

The Clinton campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on those donations.

Keep questions about for prison-for-profit support in mind as this primary battle unfolds. Neither candidate looks to be going away soon, which gives them plenty of time to gain leverage on their issues.

Targeting Nevada

One of the earliest Democratic primaries is Nevada, Saturday, February 20, third in the nation and less than two weeks after the New Hampshire primary. With at best an iffy contest for both candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire, a strong showing in Nevada would help with momentum going into the Southern contests.

In addition, Nevada and the Southwest in general have large Latino communities, among whom a variety of issues, such as imprisonment, can be expected to be debated. Don't forget that the notorious "papers please" law that Arizona passed, SB 1070, was heavily financed by the prison-for-profit industry.

Cesar Vargas is expected to be working for Sanders in Nevada. BuzzFeed:

Bernie Sanders continues to grow his Latino outreach staff, adding Cesar Vargas, a high-profile DREAMer activist who has fought for undocumented youth to be able to serve in the military and advocated for Obama’s executive actions on immigration last year.

Vargas, who will initially focus on Nevada, joins the growing Hispanic outreach team led by Arturo Carmona, who recently left advocacy organization Presente to serve in the role as well as the southwest political director.

Vargas, 31, will work to mobilize young voters, particularly in the Southwest, where Nevada is the third state on the Democratic nominating calendar.

A source with knowledge said Sanders’s campaign said they are excited about the hire because of Vargas place at the heart of the DREAMer movement, which will help build a bridge to young Hispanics.

Vargas, who has tried to become the first undocumented lawyer to practice in New York, joins Javier Gonzalez, who was named the Nevada state field director. Gonzalez previously worked in labor for the SEIU, on organizing efforts like the million people “negra marchas” — marches for immigration efforts — in 2006.

Reached for comment, Carmona said Gonzalez hire will help Sanders in Nevada.

“It’s a huge deal. Javier Gonzalez comes from a line of organizing that has amassed a number of political victories organizing Latinos, immigrants, janitors and undocumented immigrants,” he said of his work in California where they worked together.

BuzzFeed notes that while there's a great deal of progressive enthusiasm, "Clinton’s operation in Nevada features experienced operatives who have been in place since April and were part of Obama’s successful 2012 efforts in the state."

Name Recognition

One of the problems Sanders faces is name recognition. This is from Huffington Post again:

Sanders has said he is trying to increase his Latino outreach. An August Gallup poll found that only 25 percent of Latino voters were familiar with him, compared to 75 percent who were familiar with Clinton. ...

"What we are trying very, very hard to do -- you are going to see us moving very aggressively in that area -- is introduce myself to the Latino community," Sanders said at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's annual Public Policy Conference on Oct. 7. "I will fight for every vote I can get in the Latino community."

I don't doubt that. This is turning into the most interesting political campaigns of most of our lifetimes.

(Blue America has endorsed Bernie Sanders in this contest. If you like, you can help Sanders here; adjust the split any way you wish at the link.)

GP

La Reforma Integral De La Inmigración

Gang of Eight

Early this morning, 1:30 this morning, the Gang of 8 formally filed their immigration reform bill. The Senate's Know Nothing caucus of unreconstructed bigots and anti-Latino hatemongers, led by Ted Cruz (R-TX), David "Diapers" Vitter (R-LA), Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (KKK-AL), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is coordinating with Steve King's House Bigotry Caucus and Kris Kobach, the Mitt Romney advisor who came up with the "self-deportation" strategy that helped the GOP lose last year's elections. Their strategy is to use delays and parliamentary maneuvers to kill it, offering “poison pill” amendments aimed at breaking apart the fragile bipartisan group that developed the plan.

The tactics, used successfully by opponents of an immigration bill during a 2007 debate in the Senate, are part of an effort to exploit public fissures over core components of the comprehensive legislation introduced Tuesday by eight lawmakers who spent months negotiating the details.

...Conservatives are taking aim, arguing that allowing undocumented workers to remain in the country amounts to “amnesty”; that the border control steps are not strong enough; that the guest-worker program will undercut Americans at a time of high unemployment; and that the bill will amount to trillions of dollars in new federal costs.

Those factors make immigration reform “a heavy lift,” said Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a lawyer who helped Arizona draft one of the nation’s strictest immigration laws in 2008. “Twenty million Americans are unemployed or under-employed. At any other normal time, no one would breathe about amnesty.”

When writing his book, The Fifteen Biggest Lies About the Economy, Joshua Holland closed his chapter on immigration with a story about how Kris Kobach's anti-immigrant law has hurt Arizona.

In April 2010, Arizona governor Jan Brewer... signed SB 1070 into law. To say the very least, the bill was controversial.

Despite the fact that the federal government has exclusive domain over regulating immigration, Arizona’s law made being in the country illegally a state crime (it was only a civil offense on the federal statutes). It made transporting an unauthorized immigrant a crime. And it empowered police to detain anyone they suspect of committing those crimes.

...[W]hen reactionary xenophobia and economic reality clash, the latter always wins.

Reaction to the bill was swift. Within weeks of the law’s passage, two of Arizona’s largest cities, Flagstaff and Tucson, announced that they were suing to block the law. A boycott of Arizona goods and services was called. The Boston, Los Angeles, and Oakland city councils stopped doing business in the state, and, as of this writing, New York and Washington, D.C., were considering following suit. San Francisco and Boulder, Colorado, suspended all official travel to the Copper State. According to the Arizona Hotel & Lodging Association, nineteen conferences were canceled just in the first week after the bill was signed.

According to an analysis by the Immigration Policy Center, “If significant numbers of immigrants and Latinos are actually persuaded to leave the state because of this new law, they will take their tax dollars, businesses, and purchasing power with them.”

The University of Arizona’s Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy estimates that the total economic output attributable to Arizona’s immigrant workers was $44 billion in 2004, which sustained roughly 400,000 full-time jobs. Furthermore, over 35,000 businesses in Arizona are Latino-owned and had sales and receipts of $4.3 billion and employed 39,363 people in 2002, the last year for which data is available. The Perryman Group estimates that if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Arizona, the state would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140,324 jobs, even accounting for adequate market adjustment time.

Again, the federal government has exclusive domain over regulating immigration to the United States, so Arizona’s law is unlikely to withstand legal challenges. But if it does, what follows would be utterly predictable: the state not only will lose out on tourism and international business travel, but a huge share of its workforce, both legal and otherwise, will also seek less nasty climes. Arizona will face enormous litigation costs, and local police agencies will start to complain that they don’t have the resources to enforce other laws. Brand Arizona will continue to take a pummeling, companies will face a whole new set of hiring challenges, and the state’s business community will start to complain. Eventually, the very same lawmakers who pushed the new law will admit that it didn’t work out as they’d intended.

I say this with the confidence born of past experience. In 2007, Arizona passed another tough “enforcement only” immigration law, which mandated the use of an (unreliable) electronic verification system and subjected employers to the loss of their business licenses for hiring the wrong people. It turned out to be a disaster that might rank up there with the Edsel or New Coke in the pantheon of boneheaded ideas.

The state had a very low unemployment rate when the law was passed-- it was, at least in part, a “solution” to a problem that Arizona didn’t have. Unemployment was at 4.1 percent when the law went into effect in early 2008 and had been at 3.7 percent when a judge upheld the measure a year earlier. By the middle of 2008, lawmakers were scrambling to undo the shock they’d inflicted on the state, as up to 8 percent of the population-- according to one estimate-- decided to hightail it out of Arizona en masse. The state faced new labor shortages, as well as a loss in demand from all of those worker-consumers. Eventually, the law was amended, in part due to pressure from Arizona businesses.

The people of Arizona learned the hard way that immigrants not only supply labor, but also demand goods and services in turn. In addition, they learned that newer immigrant communities have a mix of people with different legal statuses all jumbled together, and that when there’s a widespread perception that politicians (and citizens) are attacking immigrants, it doesn’t much matter that some people differentiate between those who are “legal” and “illegal”-- Arizona lost plenty of citizens and lawful permanent residents with that drop in population.

A University of Arizona study concluded that economic output in Arizona would drop 8.2 percent annually if foreign-born workers left the state’s labor force. “Getting rid of these workers means we are deciding as a matter of policy to shrink our economy,” Judith Gans, an immigration scholar at the university’s Udall Center, told the Wall Street Journal. “They’re filling vital gaps in our labor force.”

Arizona’s experience isn’t unique. In 2006, the town of Riverside, New Jersey, passed a strict immigration ordinance. A year later, the New York Times reported, “With the departure of so many people, the local economy suffered.

Hair salons, restaurants and corner shops that catered to the immigrants saw business plummet; several closed. Once-boarded-up storefronts downtown were boarded up again.” The town was also hit with serious legal bills defending against several lawsuits. According to the Times, “The legal battle forced the town to delay road paving projects, the purchase of a dump truck and repairs to town hall.” The law was repealed a little more than a year after it went into effect.

Hazelton, Pennsylvania’s ordnance was blocked before being implemented-- but not before the municipality had spent $2.4 million in court costs. The town’s insurance carrier refused to cover the costs.

When Oklahoma passed a draconian immigration law, the Chicago Tribune reported, “Construction companies that relied upon undocumented laborers are having trouble completing jobs... And business is down sharply at the stores, groceries and restaurants that serve a Hispanic clientele.” Republican state senator Harry Coates told the Trib: “You really have to work hard at it to destroy our state’s economy, but we found a way... We ran off the work force.”

Tuesday afternoon, Obama got a sneak-peak. He issued a statement of support. But then, his entire career has been based around compromise: "This afternoon, Senators Schumer and McCain briefed me on the bipartisan immigration reform bill that they have drafted with their colleagues in the Senate. This bill is clearly a compromise, and no one will get everything they wanted, including me. But it is largely consistent with the principles that I have repeatedly laid out for comprehensive reform. This bill would continue to strengthen security at our borders and hold employers more accountable if they knowingly hire undocumented workers. It would provide a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million individuals who are already in this country illegally.  And it would modernize our legal immigration system so that we’re able to reunite families and attract the highly-skilled entrepreneurs and engineers who will help create good paying jobs and grow our economy. These are all commonsense steps that the majority of Americans support. I urge the Senate to quickly move this bill forward and, as I told Senators Schumer and McCain, I stand willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that comprehensive immigration reform becomes a reality as soon as possible."

Anti-Immigrant Mormons Set To Save Romney's Ass In Arizona Mañana

Predictably, Arizona's accidental and very tragic governor, Jan Brewer, endorsed the GOP Establishment candidate for her party's presidential nomination. That what's she's programmed to do so it would have only had been news if she had endorsed one of the other lunatics. But in a state where Mormons vote in enough of a lockstep bloc to have disproportionate power inside the state GOP, there was never any question about what Brewer would do-- regardless of the noisy, embarrassing kerfuffle over Romney campaign co-chair, Sheriff Babeu, and his immigrant boyfriend, Jose.

Nor should it be news to anyone that what the polarizing cloddish Brewer is best known for one thing: her hysterical anti-immigrant mania. She's led her state into a shameful anti-Hispanic kind of ethnic cleansing that is reminiscent of the pre-gas chamber Nazis. Two weeks ago we talked about the shame of Alabama's anti-immigrant policies. The difference is that Alabama doesn't have many Hispanics. Arizona does-- and always has... long before there were non-Hispanics, in fact. But the Republican Party there-- like in Alabama-- wants to drive them out of the state.

I've been quoting Joshua Holland's book, The 15 Biggest Lies About The Economy, a lot and he has a whole chapter (i.e., the debunking of a whole web of lies, about the GOP anti-immigrant myths). Let me just focus on a brief summary in honor of tomorrow's primary ion that state and Romney's assertion that Arizona's policy of ethnic cleansing should be a model for the whole country:

Reaction to the bill was swift. Within weeks of the law’s passage, two of Arizona’s largest cities, Flagstaff and Tucson, announced that they were suing to block the law. A boycott of Arizona goods and services was called. The Boston, Los Angeles, and Oakland city councils stopped doing business in the state, and, as of this writing, New York and Washington, D.C., were considering following suit. San Francisco and Boulder, Colorado, suspended all official travel to the Copper State. According to the Arizona Hotel & Lodging Association, nineteen conferences were canceled just in the first week after the bill was signed.

According to an analysis by the Immigration Policy Center, “If significant numbers of immigrants and Latinos are actually persuaded to leave the state because of this new law, they will take their tax dollars, businesses, and purchasing power with them.”

The University of Arizona’s Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy estimates that the total economic output attributable to Arizona’s immigrant workers was $44 billion in 2004, which sustained roughly 400,000 full-time jobs. Furthermore, over 35,000 businesses in Arizona are Latino-owned and had sales and receipts of $4.3 billion and employed 39,363 people in 2002, the last year for which data is available. The Perryman Group estimates that if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Arizona, the state would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140,324 jobs, even accounting for adequate market adjustment time.

Again, the federal government has exclusive domain over regulating immigration to the United States, so Arizona’s law is unlikely to withstand legal challenges. But if it does, what follows would be utterly predictable: the state not only will lose out on tourism and international business travel, but a huge share of its workforce, both legal and otherwise, will also seek less nasty climes. Arizona will face enormous litigation costs, and local police agencies will start to complain that they don’t have the resources to enforce other laws. Brand Arizona will continue to take a pummeling, companies will face a whole new set of hiring challenges, and the state’s business community will start to complain. Eventually, the very same lawmakers who pushed the new law will admit that it didn’t work out as they’d intended.

I say this with the confidence born of past experience. In 2007, Arizona passed another tough “enforcement only” immigration law, which mandated the use of an (unreliable) electronic verification system and subjected employers to the loss of their business licenses for hiring the wrong people. It turned out to be a disaster that might rank up there with the Edsel or New Coke in the pantheon of bone-headed ideas.

The state had a very low unemployment rate when the law was passed-- it was, at least in part, a “solution” to a problem that Arizona didn’t have. Unemployment was at 4.1 percent when the law went into effect in early 2008 and had been at 3.7 percent when a judge upheld the measure a year earlier. By the middle of 2008, lawmakers were scrambling to undo the shock they’d inflicted on the state, as up to 8 percent of the population-- according to one estimate-- decided to hightail it out of Arizona en masse. The state faced new labor shortages, as well as a loss in demand from all of those worker-consumers. Eventually, the law was amended, in part due to pressure from Arizona businesses.

The people of Arizona learned the hard way that immigrants not only supply labor, but also demand goods and services in turn. In addition, they learned that newer immigrant communities have a mix of people with different legal statuses all jumbled together, and that when there’s a widespread perception that politicians (and citizens) are attacking immigrants, it doesn’t much matter that some people differentiate between those who are “legal” and “illegal”-- Arizona lost plenty of citizens and lawful permanent residents with that drop in population.

A University of Arizona study concluded that economic output in Arizona would drop 8.2 percent annually if foreign-born workers left the state’s labor force. “Getting rid of these workers means we are deciding as a matter of policy to shrink our economy,” Judith Gans, an immigration scholar at the university’s Udall Center, told the Wall Street Journal. “They’re filling vital gaps in our labor force.”

Gabby Giffords Trades A Pat On The Head From The Cattle Growers Association For Latino Voters

Yesterday we were poking around Arizona Blue Dog Gabrielle Giffords' unprecedented decision to deflect criticism from herself by trying to throw a principled Democrat, Raúl Grijalva, to the mob in the media market they share. Her excuse: "I'm fighting for my life." It's not worth sacrificing someone like Grijalva for that questionable goal. After I had written about how ethnic-cleansing fascists in Arizona-- following the precedent of ethnic-cleansing fascists in Germany-- were making it impossible for Latinos to teach in public schools, I watched a segment on CNN that made me think of Giffords and her shameless pandering to the far right.

The story was about 7 especially heroic Special Forces soldiers getting silver stars at Fort Bragg, NC. I'm no big fan of this indefensible and unwinnable war against Afghanistan but I can still feel a sense of pride at the individual achievements of the selfless men and women stuck fighting it. And that sense of shared pride in my countrymen is exactly what I was feeling as I watched Sgt. 1st Class Antonio Gonzalez, Sgt. 1st Class Mark Roland, Staff Sgt. Mario Pinilla, Staff Sgt. Daniel Gould, Master Sgt. Julio Bocanegra, Sgt. 1st Class Jonathan Clouse and Sgt. 1st Class David Nunez being singled out for their valor. It didn't even dawn on me that most of these guys had Hispanic names until I heard one, Mario Pinilla, pictured above, speaking.

Pinilla was born in Colombia. His Hispanic accent is heavy. The law in Arizona to prohibit people with accents-- I'm sure they didn't actually have Albert Einstein or Enrico Fermi in mind-- was meant to send a message to Latinos that they are unwelcome in the state of Arizona. Gabrielle Giffords had nothing to do with passing that law and I'll bet she's not a fan. But by coddling right-wing terrorists and refusing to stand up to them, she and her Blue Dog buddies validate them and enable them. There's no place in elective office for craven cowards like Giffords-- certainly not as Democrats.

Pinella lived in Colombia until he was 18 and the character and selflessness he showed in saving a wounded soldier on the battlefield-- thrusting his own body between the Taliban and his downed comrade (and yes, he was severely wounded in the process)-- was enough for him to get one of the highest decorations the Army gives out... but not enough for the bigots in Arizona who don't want "his type" teaching in their schools. Two weeks ago Time looked at the political situation in Arizona, well-before Giffords had decided to target Grijalva with her anti-Latino opportunism.

In her reelection bid in southeastern Arizona, Giffords is trying to frame the issue as one of border security. Arizonans are very aware that more than half of all illegal crossings over the U.S.-Mexico border happen in their state. Elected in 2006, Giffords likes to remind audiences that her first speech to Congress was on border security and that she pushed for a deployment of National Guard troops to her district and its 114-mile border with Mexico, where the rugged desert is a major crossing point for illegal immigrants. The President is deploying the National Guard at the border and they arrive Aug. 1. Giffords points out that Arizona will receive 524 of the 1,200 troops, more than any other state. Additional funding for border security ran aground in the Senate last Friday as deficit hawks, including Arizona Republican Senators McCain and Jon Kyl, voted down a request for $701 million in additional border security funding. Giffords, Krikpatrick and Mitchell supported the measure when it passed the House July 2.

The stance has paid some dividends. Last weekend, the Arizona Cattle Growers' Association presented Giffords with its public service award for her work to stop illegal crossings and target violent gangs smuggling drugs. In a Giffords television ad, one of the ranchers stares into the camera and says, "Gabrielle Giffords gets it" about border security.

"Security has to come first," Giffords said in a recent speech to Tucson community leaders. "Until we show serious improvement with border security, we won't have the political and bipartisan will necessary to fix our immigration laws." She said she opposes SB1070, saying the new law "does absolutely nothing to secure the border." At the same time, she cast the U.S. Department of Justice's decision to try to stop SB1070 in the courts as a "waste of resources." Echoing Mitchell, she says SB1070 is a cry for help and that President Obama needs to act.

Giffords' possible challenger is not impressed. Jonathan Paton, who must first win the Republican primary, voted for SB1070 in the Arizona Legislature. "Giffords has ignored the border and done nothing," says Paton campaign manager Daniel Scarpinto. He says that Paton will make illegal immigration and border security the number one issue of the fall campaign. If he does get to run against her in November, it will be a contest not just based on issues. When they were much younger, Paton and Gifford once dated. Now they are implacable political foes.

She's making a lot of enemies lately. Please help Raúl Grijalva fight her-- and her ex-boy friend's party-- off. When the angry Glenn Beck mobs come after the rest of us, we want a Grijalva at our backs-- not a cowering Blue Dog. Blue Dogs like Giffords know exactly how to get the money they need for their campaigns (see below); that's not Raúl's game. He needs us.



UPDATE

My old pal, Jorge Hernandez sent me this today. Take a look at what a world filled with Republicans like McCain and Democrats like Giffords leads to:

Albert Einstein Would Never Have Been Allowed To Teach School In Gabby Gifford's Arizona

Blue Dog Gabrielle Giffords says she's in a fight for her political life with right-wing sociopaths and classic xenophobes. Although that's questionable, her reaction has been detestable: attack the most prominent Latino and progressive political leader in the state of Arizona, throw him under the bus and scream to the enraged mob of Glenn Beck followers, "Go get him; he's much worse. Leave me alone; I'm with YOU!" And when called on her contemptible behavior she assumes the posture of a martyr and claims she's the victim of sexism. The word "cowardice" doesn't begin to describe this craven, shameless, opportunistic excuse for a Democrat.

Before Nazi Germany started tossing Jews into ovens they tried what Arizona is doing now: ethnic cleansing. One of my grandparents was lucky enough to have parents who took the hint and escaped that cesspool of hatred, bigotry and narrow-minded xenophobia. His family came to America and prospered. In 1921, long before right-wing fanatics had seized control of Germany, Albert Einstein, a brilliant Jewish scientist from Ulm in Germany, won the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1933 Germany barred Jews from, among other things, teaching in universities. That pushed the ethnic cleansing thing along nicely and one of the world's most brilliant men emigrated to the United States. To the right wing bigots it was just another unwanted Jew gone. America reaped the benefits. Among other German scientists forced to flee were fourteen Nobel laureates and twenty-six of the sixty professors of theoretical physics in the country. From Wikipedia: "Among the other scientists who left Germany, or the other countries it came to dominate, were Edward Teller, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Otto Stern, Victor Weisskopf, Hans Bethe, and Lise Meitner, many of whom made certain that the Allies would develop nuclear weapons first, before the Nazis."

Arizona's right wing bigots, which, of course, includes the Republican Party of the state which is frightened of losing power as they fail to represent the legitimate aspirations of Latino voters in the state, are desperate to get the ethnic cleansing thing going in a serious way. I keep hearing how badly it has hurt small businesses across the state as people flee the hostile environment for other states. The Republicans don't care, of course, and many Democrats are too cowardly-- too much like Giffords, Harry Mitchell and Ann Kirkpatrick-- to stand up and fight for them.

Recently I saw a news piece at CNN about a brilliant Brazilian professor who was being driven out of her job because of her accent. The same would have happened to Einstein or Fermi. They had accents too. Unfit to teach? Doug Kahn lives in Arizona and he covered the accent bigotry for us last May. It's worth clicking the link and going back to read what he had to say in light of what's transpired since.

I came across an interesting article by author Andrew Q Lam, In Arizona, Is My Accent A Crime? and I want to share it with you. Andrew cannot teach at any schools or universities in Arizona, so I guess he'll just have to stick to the Ivy League schools.

I know a thing or two about the English language. I have published two books in it and written a third. For eight years I was a regular commentator on NPR's "All Things Considered." As a journalist, my articles have appeared in dozens of newspapers and magazines and hundreds of websites. My short stories and essays are anthologized and taught widely. I went to Berkeley and Stanford. I've been a subject of a PBS documentary and lectured at Ivy League schools.

But I still have an accent.

That's because I came to the U.S. at the age of 11 at the end of the Vietnam War, and though I speak English fluently, I cannot fully shave my Vietnamese accent from my American tongue. Sometimes my "clue" can sound a bit like your "glue," and other times, when stressed, my "bitch" sounds like your "peach." Otherwise, I am as American as salsa and sweet-and-sour sauce.

I'm telling you this because despite my credentials, I may not qualify to teach English to immigrant kids-- kids like my younger self-- under current Arizona rules. Arizona has decided that it's unacceptable to have teachers whose spoken English is deemed to be heavily accented or ungrammatical, even though the latter has little to do with the former.

That prohibition led the great Andrei Codrescu, an author who taught English for 40 years but who came from Romania, to wonder out loud on NPR, "Did I land back behind the Iron Curtain half a century ago? My last 40 years of teaching would have never happened if the Arizona law had been the law of the land in 1966." Odd that 14 million listeners are fine with his accent, and for that matter mine, but that they would be thought problematic for a few students in Arizona.

The real problem, of course, is that Arizonian educational bureaucracy equated having an accent with lacking proficiency and fluency, which is sheer idiocy. Some of my South Asians colleagues are the most eloquent English speakers I know, and a few have spent their higher education at illustrious institutions like Oxford and Harvard. But they, too, most likely may not pass muster to teach English, lacking what one might call a "domestic" accent.

Worse, beyond the corridors of learning, under existing Arizona practice everyone who has a foreign accent is an automatic suspect. Eloquence does not matter, so it would seem, in Arizona. Experience and qualifications mean nothing. Have a foreign accent and you may be unemployable, and worse, automatically suspect.

The police state of Arizona could very well be the norm for many other states, with 55 percent of Americans recently polled supporting Arizona's drastic stance on immigration.

And despite the fact that U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton blocked the most controversial parts of Arizona's new immigration law SB1070, the McCarthy era of informants and suspicion has already existed long before it went into effect on Thursday. "Under Arizona law, even victims of domestic violence can't have access to state-funded English or GED classes if they are undocumented immigrants," reports New America Media's Valeria Fernandez. "Parents are questioned when applying for state health care benefits for their U.S. citizen children; if they volunteer information to a caseworker that indicates they are in the U.S. illegally, they are reported to ICE."

I shudder to think that not only might I not be qualified to teach in Arizona, I could be stopped and searched for having an accent. For under duress my tongue often becomes unruly and my accent thickens, giving my foreignness away and pronouncing me interminably alien.

Yet what is an accent, and who really doesn't have one? "You're American, aren't you?" I am often asked when I travel overseas, including to my homeland, Vietnam. My Vietnamese, wouldn't you know, has a distinctive Californian accent.

The American motto e pluribus unum-- out of many, one-- is currently put up for scrutiny. For when a society fails to celebrate and respect differences and goes to the opposite extreme, when it hides behind the apparatus of a draconian policy, one that has no check and balance, the only logical outcome is injustice and cruelty.

We expect this kind of thing from the far right. It's what they did in Germany. It's what they're doing in Arizona and other places here in the U.S. But don't we deserve more from Democrats like Gabby Giffords to at least NOT attack the Democrats who are battling this kind of fascism? Her attack-- the Blue Dog attack-- on Raúl Grijalva is not just unprincipled, it is destructive to the Democratic Party. It won't earn her any more votes or any fealty from the Glenn Beck Mobs. And it will-- and should-- make her repulsive in the eyes of real Democrats in her district. If you can, please help Grijalva, who, unlike Giffords, doesn't spend his time sucking up to big donors, defend himself from the Blue Dog onslaught.

Monday night Keith Olbermann gave a very moving Special Comment regarding the Islamophobia sweeping certain segments of the country right now-- also ginned up by right-wingers-- and that gave me a great deal of incite into what kind of a person Gabrielle Giffords actually is. Please take a look if you missed it:

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Unscrupulous Blue Dog Attack On Raúl Grijalva

Blue Dog Gabby Giffords represents Arizona's 8th congressional district, which includes much of Tucson, outside the largely Latino west side, which is part of on Raúl Grijalva's 7th CD. She won the seat in 2006, after openly gay, moderate Republican Jim Kolbe retired and a bitter Republican primary yielded up far right sociopath Randy Graf. She won with 54% of the vote and two years later increased her margin to 56% when the GOP ran state Senate president Tim Bee, a more mainstream candidate, even as John McCain won the district in the presidential race. Giffords joined both of the conservative Democratic caucuses when she entered the House, the Blue Dogs and the New Dems. Although not as far to the right as either Ann Kirkpatrick or Harry Mitchell, she is among the most consistent aisle crossers among Democrats with a worse voting record than even villains like Allen Boyd (Blue Dog-FL), Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN), Melissa Bean (IL) and new comers who have gone over to the Dark Side like Larry Kissell (NC) and Suzanne Kosmas (FL).

As of June 30, FEC records show she's raised $2,273,221 for the 2010 campaign. She's taken in more than twice as much from business PACs than from Labor and this morning's CQPolitics reports a tough, nasty race shaping up, although not for November but between two GOP kooks seeking their party's nomination to challenge her, Jonathan Paton, a relatively mainstream conservative, and Jesse Kelly, an out-and-out Glenn Beck teabagging imbecile who has been endorsed by a gaggle of far right congressional xenophobes like Trent Franks, Marsha Blackburn, and Duncan Hunter (father and son) as well as the Family Research Council and most of the tea party and militia groups operating in the area. Republican state Senator Frank Antenori sums up the primary like this: "Whichever one wins, they need to go after her. They can’t pussyfoot around her. Paton has more experience and because of that is more methodical. Kelly is just a brawler, and a lot of people just want to see him get through the primary so he can slap her around in the debate."

Make you want to rally to Giffords' banner? Not so fast. Take a look at the new video Giffords is running in Tucson, a media market she shares with on Raúl Grijalva, chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, someone who has always supported her politically despite her very conservative stance on issues.



Giffords is looking like the point of the Blue Dog spear being thrust into the House progressive infrastructure. As we pointed out over the weekend, despite Pelosi's efforts to tamp it down, the Blue Dogs are going on the warpath against progressive Democrats, using Henry Waxman's interview with The Hill as an excuse. One thing we can always be sure of inside the Democratic Caucus-- well, two, actually: Blue Dogs will always put self-preservation above the party’s principles, and the DCCC will do whatever it can to help them get re-elected.

Giffords is emblematic of the tragic turn the House Democratic Party has taken. Over the weekend she launched a $350,000 ad buy in the Tucson media market that slams the principled stand Grijalva took against SB1070-- throwing him directly under the bus in order to make herself look sufficiently xenophobic for the bloodthirsty Know Nothing mobs. As you can see in the ad, she makes a solemn vow to fight “these groups” who have protested this unjust law by boycotting the state. “These groups” include Latinos, liberals, and citizens across the country who know an injustice when they see one. She's directly targeting Grijalva, Arizona's most progressive leader and the Congressman who most consistently stands up for those who are hurt by the right wing’s agenda.

We hear that other campaigns, pollsters, donors and politicians joined Grijalva's staff in futile attempts to show Giffords the obvious-- Democrats using other Democrats as punching bags is bad news for everyone. And when DCCC leaders, such as Vice Chair Wasserman Schultz, were approached with the argument that Giffords should not run the ad for obvious reasons, the argument fell on deaf ears. (Instead, they’re rewarding her behavior with close to a million dollars in independent expenditures.) It’s bad enough when so-called Democrats habitually vote against our agenda to save their seats, often with DCCC prompting. Now they're spending Democratic money to hurt real Democrats to save their seats.

During her time in Congress, Giffords has had multiple opportunities to stand up for and move reform forward, but, fearing political attacks in an election year, she has chosen not to. She often tells her colleagues that she "had to vote against her principles" because she needed to position herself to get reelected. Funny, because when she ran in 2006 she indicated that comprehensive reform was a moral obligation.

Giffords actions involve an unspoken accommodation of SB1070. Her constant calls for more troops on the border are poor cover for her lack of political courage to push for deeper, meaningful improvements to our immigration system. Her silence does her no credit when politicians like Brewer, McCain and Pearce make outrageous statements about beheadings, border shootouts and constant kidnappings-- statements fabricated to appeal to people’s insecurities rather than to common sense and rational debate.

When Grijalva took a leadership role in speaking out against SB1070 and called for civic, political and religious organizations not to bring their conventions and conferences to Arizona, it was a defining and courageous political stand. Since then, he has said that economic consequences mean nothing to political ideologues, and he has been actively working with industries to bring business back to the state to help amplify his voice and effect change (www.vivaarizona.org is one such example). Giffords’ attack on his stand and on everyone who joined him in fighting for what is right obfuscates her failure to exhibit meaningful leadership in this fight, and hurts those who did.

Raúl needs help fighting back, and Blue America is asking supporters to donate to the OneAmerica page so he has the funds necessary to defend himself.

Minutes before publishing time I reached Raúl in Tucson and I was surprised to find him in such a determined mood. "I kind of feel like a character in the movie The Expendables, he told me. "In an effort to maintain their presence in Congress, Blue Dogs are throwing progressives under the bus. I find it disheartening and, quite frankly, I am embarrassed as a Democrat. In their effort to be Republicans, Blue Dogs often paint progressives as expendable. They're going to find out that we definitely are not."


UPDATE: Raúl Responds At Kos To Blue Dog Attack

Although Giffords is trying to portray herself as a victim and attempting to raise money for herself on this Grijalva wrote a diary at Daily Kos about the immigration situation in Arizona and how Giffords is using it against him.

I hope Texas Latinos Are Registering To Vote... Cause There Are Some Really Bigoted Republicans There Lookin' For Some Ethnic Cleansing

If you were asked to make a short list of the most radical extremists holding high political office in America (so not a crazed teabagger candidate running as a Republican like this guy or this guy, but someone who's already been elected), certainly Texas Governor Rick Perry would be on that list. With the help of the far right of Texas' GOP he just won renomination against a mainstream conservative, Kay Bailey Hutchison. So... it wouldn't be a crazy and wild supposition to figure that were you to read-- as you may have yesterday-- that Republicans fired their party chairwoman, Cathie Adams, and tried firing the state's House Speaker, both crazed kooks as far from the mainstream of American political thought as Perry, and bucked their own governor-- that said Republicans were moderates sickened by the extremism their party had drifted into. But you'd be wrong-- dead wrong.

The GOP activists at the state party convention in Dallas are even crazier than their leaders. The Fox website pointed out that "fired-up Republican activists in no mood for compromises threw out their party chairwoman Saturday, then bucked Texas Gov. Rick Perry by pushing for a crackdown on illegal immigration similar to Arizona's new law." They're convinced that everything that's wrong with their miserable, worthless lives is because of the dread... anchor babies. By the time the scripted convention was due to end in an anti-Democratic unity love-in, there was practically a civil war being fought between conservatives and teabaggers.

The immigration proposal, a hard-line approach that Perry has said isn't right for Texas, was one of several initiatives debated as delegates wrapped up the two-day convention. The Republican Party platform is a blueprint of the policies that GOP activists want elected officials to pursue.

Delegates voted to include a plank advocating for a state law that would bar illegal immigrants from "intentionally or knowingly" living in Texas. Similar to Arizona's strict law that has sparked nationwide debate, the proposal would require local police to verify U.S. residency when making arrests.
Perry has said the Arizona law, if adopted in Texas, would unduly burden police.

Another potentially controversial plank advocates an "open carry" law, which would allow residents to openly carry firearms in public without a concealed weapons permit.

Meanwhile, Texas is suing the EPA-- they don't need no stinking environmental protection-- over how the state regulates (very laxly-- kind of the way Ayn Rand or Rand Paul would-- emissions from oil refineries and other petrochemicals plants. And A gaggle of Republican congressmen, led by Big Oil's #1 House whore in the history of Congress, Joe Barton, are demanding President Obama get over his foolish idea of a moratorium on deep-sea drilling until it's safer. Joining Barton in this endeavor, which flies right in the face of what Americans want in an energy policy, are notorious Big Oil shills Ted Poe ($208,450), Michael Burgess ($195,246), Kevin Brady ($445,697), Michael Conaway ($651,718), John Culberson ($423,561), Ralph Hall ($529,468), Michael McCaul ($207,734), Randy Neugebauer ($440,772), and Pete Olson ($216,300). Together they represent a sizeable investment by Big Oil: $4,766,826-- not counting nearly as much in wining, dining and lobbing these friendly fellas!

Congressman Joe Barton of Ennis, who often backs oil and gas interests, says there may be a need for additional offshore inspections and safety requirements. But Barton says the moratorium goes too far.

Barton: I don't think anyone up here wants a white wash. I don't think anyone up here says this isn't a huge problem. But as has been pointed out we've drilled thousands of wells in the Gulf of Mexico, hundreds of wells in the deep Gulf. This is the first accident of any size in the history of the OCS.

The OCS is the outer continental shelf where the Deepwater Horizon is still gushing oil.

President Obama said the moratorium is needed until safety measures are in place to prevent another drilling tragedy.

Wouldn't it be better to just jettison all those old slave-holding states now and admit we were wrong to fight to keep them. If they want to drill, let them. If they want to abolish public education, let them. If they want to mine the borders, let them (in fact... maybe we should mine ours too-- with them).

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Most Musicians Are Canceling Arizona Concerts-- But Not Elton John

Oink

So, my impressionable friend Irwing is in college and one of his classes gets addressed by a La Raza activist who goes ape-shit on Arizona's racist anti-immigration law, SB-1070, and tells the kids how whitey will never accept them and all. Irwing, who is descended from Mexican immigrants, decides to rediscover some kind of heritage and asks me to come with him to the beautiful Getty Villa in Malibu to see a new exhibition, The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire. We did that yesterday. The Getty Villa is gorgeous-- almost worth the drive-- but the exhibition was kind of mediocre and Irwing didn't look that inspired. I was able to reinterpret the La Raza guy's rant for him in a more classic Marxist way about how the wealthy use the divide and conquer tactic to keep working people at each others' throats so as not to disturb a status quo that guarantees their own economic and social dominance. And we talked about practical steps we can take to undermine the racist politicians in Arizona who are behind SB-1070.

A couple weeks ago I was all excited because Los Lobos canceled their Arizona concert. John Amato at Crooks and Liars and I have been encouraging musicians to do that. The guys even made a statement about why they had made the decision: "We support the boycott of Arizona. The new law will inevitably lead to unfair racial profiling and possible abuse of people who just happen to look Latino. As a result, in good conscience, we could not see ourselves performing in Arizona. We regret the inconvenience this may have caused ... Talking Stick Resort and our fans, but we feel strongly that it is the right thing to do."

Other artists who have joined suit include Cypress Hill, Pitbull, Rage Against the Machine, Kanye West, Sonic Youth, Carlos Santana, Willie Nelson, Joe Satriani, Tenacious D, Shakira, Massive Attack and Hall & Oates (who were supposed to play at a July 2nd Diamondbacks game). Rage's Zack de la Rocha was organized an Arizona sound strike.

“Fans of our music, our stories, our films and our words can be pulled over and harassed every day because they are brown or black, or for the way they speak, or for the music they listen to,” de la Rocha said. “People who are poor like some of us used to be could be forced to live in a constant state of fear while just doing what they can to find work and survive. This law opens the door for them to be shaked down, or even worse, detained and deported while just trying to travel home from school, from home to work, or when they just roll out with their friends.”

The law-- SB 1070-- takes “racial profiling... to a whole new low,” the singer went on. “When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, they arrested her. As a result, people got together and said we are not going to ride the bus until they change the law... What if we got together, signed a collective letter saying, ‘We're not going to ride the bus,’ saying we are not going to comply. We are not going to play in Arizona.”

This week, when Hall and Oates announced the were canceling their show in Phoenix they made it clear they weren't boycotting the Diamondbacks... just Arizona-- and the team said they understood why the band had made the decision.

"In addition to our personal convictions, we are standing in solidarity with the music community in our boycott of performing in Arizona at this time. We would like to emphasize that this has nothing to do with the management of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who have been professional and cooperative throughout our dealings with them. This is our response to a very specific action of the state."

One artist unlikely to back out of a big payday is Elton John. Many have been urging him to do so but after the openly gay piano player took a million dollars from homophobic bridegroom Rush Limbaugh last week to play his wedding, no one seriously thought John would give up his show on July 21 at Tucson's Convention Center Arena.

Meanwhile, the Mormon chief of police in Salt Lake City joined other police chiefs in coming out strongly against racist laws like SB-1070, including Utah's similar SB-81.

Russell Pearce-- A Disgrace To The State Of Arizona

Mormon bigot Russell Pearce; not all Nazis wear swastikas all the time

Neo-nazi sympathizer, Mormon and Arizona state Senator, Russell Pearce (R), wants to undermine the U.S. Constitution again, this time by tearing up the 14th Amendment, which states that anyone born in the U.S.-- despite skin color or religion or ethnic background or gender or whatever is unpopular at the moment-- is born a citizen. Pearce, a vicious America-hater who disguises his contempt for our country by wearing American flags done up as outfits draped over himself like a freak, seems to want to ignore that our Constitution says that "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." And it says that right after declaring in words even a fascist slob like Pearce can understand that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

In fact, Pearce's plans to do away with the kids nativist, anti-immigration wackos call "anchor babies" has been stewing in his hateful noggin for some time. Back in 2008, when I dubbed Pearce "Mr. Ethnic Cleansing," he had a whole slew of Nuremberg-type laws he was trying to push through the legislature.

My pal Roland teaches in a public school in Compton and most of his students are Mexican-Americans. He loves his kids and tells me how eager their parents are for them to learn and to be Americans. They are always respectful, well-scrubbed, and curious about the world around them. He sent me these lyrics last night, a song he found that was written in 1915 by Margaret Rowe Clifford, 32 years before Pearce was born.

Come to this land of sunshine
To this land where life is young.
Where the wide, wide world is waiting,
The songs that will now be sung.
Where the golden sun is flaming
Into warm, white shining day,
And the sons of men are blazing
Their priceless right of way.

chorus

Come stand beside the rivers
Within our valley broad.
Stand here with heads uncovered,
In the presence of our God!
While all around, about us
The brave, unconquered band,
As guardians and landmarks
The giant mountains stand.

chorus

Not alone for gold and silver
Is Arizona great.
But with graves of heroes sleeping,
All the land is consecrate!
O, come and live beside us
However far ye roam
Come and help us build up temples
And name those temples "home."

chorus

Sing the song that's in your hearts
Sing of the great Southwest,
Thank God, for Arizona
In splendid sunshine dressed.
For thy beauty and thy grandeur,
For thy regal robes so sheen
We hail thee Arizona
Our Goddess and our queen.

It's the Arizona state song and it's very inviting. In fact, it was an open invitation for people to come-- a word used over and over in the song-- to live in Arizona. It was a different Arizona, a pre-Russell Pearce Arizona. But it's the Arizona that still exists, in the person, for example, of Arizona's most beloved Congressmember, Raul Grijalva:



Meanwhile, it's becoming clearer and clearer that the immigration law backfired and the state's economy is screwed. But the ethnic cleansing thing is working well. Businessmen there are turning on the GOP; and even Pearce-- that neo-Nazi guy-- thinks he may have made a mistake, at least in terms of not having enough workers to make Arizona function like part of the civilized world. Watch the short news clip at the hot link ("ethnic cleansing") above.

Will Arizona Secede? Have Arizona Republicans Already Done So?

As Austin joined San Francisco and Los Angeles in announcing a boycott of Arizona's new anti-Hispanic police state, tourist officials there are bracing for the worst. In Phoenix alone, David Krietor, a deputy city manager who is tracking the issue, said this week the city faces lost business worth about $90 million over the next five years. Debbie Johnson, president of the Arizona Hotel and Lodging Association, said a boycott might be disastrous for the state's more than 200,000 hospitality-industry workers. "We really don't need another hit," she added. As of April 30, the lodging association had identified 19 conventions canceled, worth an estimated 15,000 room nights, or $6 million. Tuesday, Arizona Republicans doubled down on their sociopathic jihad against Hispanic residents. This is getting more and more serious and it's time to really wake up here. Yesterday when I was reading Sebastian Doggart's wonderful post on unindicted war criminal Condoleeza Rice and his reference to Martin Niemöller's chilling 1940s-era poem, I couldn't help thinking about what the Republicans are doing to the state of Arizona. Original translation:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

Arizona is getting out of hand. And it isn't about controlling the borders or controlling crime. It's pure fucking racism and narrow-minded, self-righteous bigotry. The accidental governor signed another hate-filled bill to tell Hispanics they're not welcome in Arizona, another piece of the Republican ethnic cleansing push. Latest to be banned: "ethnic studies."

HB 2281 bans schools from teaching classes that are designed for students of a particular ethnic group, promote resentment or advocate ethnic solidarity over treating pupils as individuals. The bill also bans classes that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government.

The bill was written to target the Chicano, or Mexican American, studies program in the Tucson school system, said state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Horne.

School districts that don't comply with the new law could have as much as 10% of their state funds withheld each month. Districts have the right to appeal the mandate, which goes into effect Dec. 31.

Tucson Unified School District officials say the Chicano studies classes benefit students and promote critical thinking. "We don't teach all those ugly things they think we're teaching," said Judy Burns, the president of the district's governing board.

She has no intention of ending the program, which offers courses from elementary school through high school in topics such as literature, history and social justice, with an emphasis on Latino authors and history. About 3% of the district's 55,000 students are enrolled in such classes... Ethnic studies are taught at high schools and colleges nationwide, but the Tucson district officials say their 14-year-old program is unique because it's districtwide, offered to grades K-12, and can satisfy high school graduation requirements.

Yesterday the Los Angeles City Council, in a 13-1 vote (lunatic fringe nutcase Greig Smith from Simi Valley being the "1"), decided to ban travel and future contracts with Arizona over their anti-Hispanic policies.

During a morning-long debate on the resolution, council members compared Arizona’s action to Nazi Germany and the beginning of the Holocaust, as well as the internment and deportation of Japanese Americans during World War II. A new Arizona law, which will take effect July 23, will require police to determine whether people they stop are in the country illegally, which critics say will lead to racial profiling.

“Los Angeles the second-largest city in this country, an immigrant city, an international city. It needs to have its voice heard,’’ said Councilman Ed Reyes, one of the resolution’s sponsors.  “As an American, I cannot go to Arizona today without a passport. If I come across an officer who’s having a bad day and feels that the picture on my ID is not me, I can be … deported, no questions asked. That is not American.’’

Even national Republicans (though not McCain) are embarrassed by the out and out racism-- they usually prefer it carefully cover-up-- and yesterday it was announced that the heavy favorite for the 2012 GOP Convention, Phoenix (who "had it in the bag") was suddenly replaced with Tampa, a very open and multi-ethnic, all-American city. As disappointed as they are, beleaguered Arizona tourism officials aren't even a little surprised. Tourism, one of the state's most important industries-- first because of the violence and now because of the racism, is in the crapper.

Hispanic civil rights groups are boycotting Arizona and urging others to do the same. Officials at the National Council of La Raza, one of the groups driving the boycott, had privately asked the RNC not to meet in Phoenix.

The city risks losing as much as $90 million in hotel and convention business over the next five years because of the controversy, according to city estimates released Wednesday. The state's hotel and lodging association has counted 23 canceled meetings for a loss of between $6 and $10 million. On Wednesday, Los Angeles became the largest city to join the boycott.

...Arizona Republicans, including Gov. Jan Brewer, have stood more solidly behind their immigration law as a necessary tool for dealing with illegal immigration. She has also pushed back against the boycott, particularly the call for Major League Baseball to pull the 2011 All-Star game out of the state.

MLB owners, who have not commented on the boycott, begin a two-day quarterly meeting in New York this week. No major action items are on the agenda, but advocates of the boycott hope it will be discussed.

"You have a sport that the Latino community loves, whether you are a recent immigrant or native born, Latinos see baseball at their sport," said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, the director of immigration and national campaigns at NCLR. "The question is: As a sport where do they stand?"

The MLB Players Association has come out in opposition to the law, as have the Phoenix Suns. The team wore its "Los Suns" jerseys last week specifically to push back against the state's law. The decision came from team owner Robert Sarver, who suggested the players wear their Noche Latina alternates.

There's no chance I will go to Arizona while these Republicans are doing this kind of thing. Blue America is also urging everyone to support the only federal elected official in the state who is standing with the Hispanic community, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) at the One America page. Grijalva and his staff have been threatened-- with serious violence (one gunman has been arrested so far)-- and he has had to close down his constituent services offices in Tucson and Yuma. Arizona isn't behaving like its part of America. I bet we couldn't get the Mexicans to take it back though.

Meanwhile Faith in Public Life announced today that an “emergency delegation” of Bishops and prominent religious leaders from Arizona will fly to Washington tomorrow to ask Sen. John McCain and White House officials to set politics aside and take immediate action on comprehensive immigration reform.

These religious leaders-- who will also meet tomorrow with DOJ, DHS and other Members of Congress from Arizona-- are on the front lines of the immigration debate, as their state enacts Arizona SB-1070-- an extreme measure that will likely lead to increased discrimination and racial profiling, and penalizes families and faith communities already living in fear. This draconian legislation, which has been denounced by religious leaders from across the theological, political and ideological spectrum, demonstrates the urgent need for political leadership from Arizona’s Senators and the President to move on comprehensive immigration reform immediately-- before other states follow in Arizona’s footsteps.

"Think, Baby, Think!"- A Guest Post By Fred Johnson (D-MI)

One of the smartest candidates running for the House this year is Dr. Fred Johnson in western Michigan, for a seat being abandoned by the ever-ambitious twitterer Pete Hoekstra. Last month he did a great guest post at DWT on education and societal priorities and if you missed it, I recommend it strongly. Today he took a serious look at the tenor of American politics and gave me permission to share it. He also gave me something else-- a book he wrote with Tayannah Lee McQuillar, Tupac Shakur: The Life And Times Of An American Icon. I bet there aren't too many other members of Congress who could even tell you who Tupac was. In any case, this particular book he sent me is autographed and everyone who donates to Fred's campaign today (24 hours) will be entered into a drawing to win the book, complements of DWT. You can contribute here. Here's Fred's post:

Recently, while watching news about the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, followed by more reports from Arizona about one of the most radical, anti-person laws of the last 50 years, I wondered, “Where are the rational voices among the Republicans in Congress?” Rather than serious discussions about taking substantive measures to, once and for all, make America energy independent, protect the environment, and strengthen national security, the mantra persists: “Drill, baby, drill!”
 
That refrain, however, is far different from what voters-- Democrats and Republicans-- have been telling me over the last two weeks. Voters in Michigan’s 2nd Congressional District understand that the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the immigration debacle in Arizona have changed the calculus on energy and immigration policy. Many local leaders acknowledge that people see the oil spill, and the protests against Arizona's SB 1070, as pointing to an urgent need for practical reform. Here in West Michigan, folks from both parties are already pursuing wind power projects for energy independence and environmental sustainability. Even our farmers know that we need a fair immigration system, including rational rules for temporary workers, so that they can get their crops in from the fields and out to market. But Congress refuses to speed up the pace on energy and immigration reform. Why?
 
There are many answers, but certainly a chief obstacle is that pressure from the extreme right wing/Tea Party ideologues prevents any Republican from adopting a reasonable, rational position. Consider the once admirable career of John McCain. Previously the promoter of immigration reform, and someone who campaigned in the Michigan primary as a clean energy supporter, he has distanced himself from himself. His apprehensions concerning J.D. Hayworth's far right primary challenge have caused him to attempt to out-pander his opponent. This is the situation that rejects a reality in which the vast majority of voters see that America desperately needs a new and robust approach to resolving its challenges pertaining to energy and immigration. Instead, right wing ideologues prefer the path of expediency. The pattern repeats itself in primary after primary. Never mind the needs of the country.
 
It’s going to be up to the voters to, once more, call the bluff of those who prefer to distract with fear and simple slogans rather than courage, hope, and vision. Only then will the right wing ideologues understand that rather than “Drill, baby, drill!” the people want leaders who prefer to “Think, baby, think!”

Blue America Takes A Stand-- On Major League Baseball... And On Raúl Grijalva

Leadership is nothing new for Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a booming voice on behalf of working families on every issue that comes before Congress. He helped lead the fight against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, helped lead the fight against Wall Street predators and helped lead the fight for equitable health care.

He was also the first member of Congress-- and, significantly, the only member from Arizona-- to stand up and take a principled and passionate stand against SB 1070, the foundations of an apartheid police state. He first called on Arizona's governor to veto the patently unconstitutional anti-immigrant bill. After she enthusiastically embraced it, he sent a letter to President Obama urging him to exercise his "authority to limit [federal] cooperation with Arizona officials in their enforcement of SB 1070." Finally on April 29, he released the following statement:

“The governor and legislature are blind to what this bill will really do to citizens, law enforcement and the state economy. Tourists will not come to a state with discriminatory policies on the books. Businesses will not move here. Hispanic workers and taxpayers will leave. If state lawmakers don’t realize or don’t care how detrimental this will be, we need to make them understand somehow. We are calling on organizations not to schedule conventions or conferences in the state until it reverses this decision. This is a specifically targeted call for action, not a blanket rejection of the state economy. Conventions are a large source of visitors and revenue, and targeting them is the most effective way to make this point before it’s too late. Just as professional athletes refused to recognize Arizona until it recognized Martin Luther King Jr., we are calling on businesses and organizations not to bring their conventions to Arizona until it recognizes civil rights and the meaning of due process. We don’t want to sustain this effort any longer than necessary. It’s about sending a message.”

The response has been a barrage of death threats from neo-Nazi groups, both to the Congressman and to his staff. It became so bad that he was forced to temporarily close down his constituents services offices in Tucson and Yuma. (One man who threatened “to blow everyone’s head off," has been arrested. Watch Rep. Grijalva with Keith Olberman on Countdown:



Blue America was, in great part, moved by Rep Grijalva's courageous stand to join with a broad coalition of groups, assembled by our own John Amato to send the following letter to Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig:

Dear Commissioner Selig,

As you know, the Governor of Arizona recently signed a controversial new law that forces police to ask for the papers of any person who looks “reasonably suspicious” in the course of enforcing any law or city ordinance. The new law, SB 1070, has come under nationwide criticism for the threat it poses to the civil rights of Hispanics living in or visiting the state.

We are writing you today to ask that you denounce the new state law, cancel the 2011 Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game in Phoenix, and to pressure teams to relocate all Arizona winter and spring training games while this state law is in effect.

Under Arizona’s new law, any fan of Hispanic descent visiting Phoenix for the All-Star Game or a training game will be subject to unequal treatment, fines, and possibly jail time if they cannot prove their legal status on the spot. As 15-year Tucson police officer Martin Escobar said when he filed a lawsuit to stop the new Arizona law, there are no “race-neutral criteria or basis to suspect or identify who is lawfully in the United States.”

Already, the Major League Baseball Players Association has publicly denounced this unjust law, the government of Mexico has even issued travel warnings for those visiting the state, heads of state and foreign ministers from 12 South American nations have warned of potential violence towards minorities and America’s leading civil rights organizations have condemned it.

Major League Baseball has a strong history of supporting minorities and civil rights in America, which began when Jackie Robinson became the first African-American baseball player in 1947. As you are well aware, over a quarter of all Major League Baseball players are Latino, and almost 40% of your players are people of color. These players-- and baseball’s millions of Hispanic and immigrant fans-- deserve leaders in this moment of crisis with a loud and clear message that this law is not acceptable to the League.

We strongly urge you to relocate the 2011 All-Star Game from Phoenix and to pressure teams to pull all winter and spring training games from Arizona while this un-American law is in effect. We hope that Major League Baseball will once again prove to be an example of strength and courage to those who work so hard to be a part of this country we all love. We look forward to your response.

Sincerely Yours,

John Amato, Founder & President, CrooksandLiars.com
Clarissa Martinez, Director, Immigration & National Campaigns, National Council of La Raza (NCLR)
Roberto Lovato, Co-Founder, Presente.org
Doug Gordon, Co-Founder, MovetheGame.org, Vice President, Fenton Communications
Frank Sharry, Founder and Executive Director, America's Voice
Richard Trumka, President, AFL-CIO
Eliseo Medina, International Executive Vice President, Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
Markos Moulitsas Zúñiga, Founder and Publisher, Daily Kos
Julio Pabon, Publisher, LatinoSports.com
Pablo Alvarado, Executive Director, National Day Laborer Organizing Network
Joshua Hoyt, Executive Director, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
Chung-Wha Hong, Executive Director, New York Immigration Coalition
Michael Keegan, President, People For the American Way
Howie Klein, Founder and Treasurer, Blue America PAC
Digby, Founder and Publisher, Hullaballoo
Rick Jacobs, Founder and Chair, Courage Campaign
Inez Gonzalez, Executive Vice President, National Hispanic Media Coalition
Jennifer Allen, Executive Director, Border Action Network
The Rev. David L. Ostendorf, Founder & Executive Director, Center for New Community
Hector Sanchez, Director of Policy and Research, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement
Josh Norek, Deputy Director, Voto Latino
Jehmu Greene, President, Women's Media Center
Jorge Mursuli, President and CEO, Democracia USA

Please help us get Raúl's back by donating one dollar-- for ONE AMERICA-- to his re-election campaign at One America. (If you want to donate $1,001, that's fine too.)