DeConcini Not the Only CCA Board Member of Concern

The current prison divestment campaign in Arizona seems to be concentrating on Arizona Board of Regents member Dennis DeConcini's involvement on the board of CCA (Corrections Corporation of America).  What I find interesting is that many groups associated with the prison divestment campaign are funded by a group who has a board member who is also a CCA board member.  The following are emails I've sent to inform groups of this (which I never got responses to).  (I have more to say about a concentration on privatization of prisons, but the last post I was working on this summer got lost, but I'll likely pick it up again some day.)

to: fuerzatucson@gmail.com

Tuesday, July 31, 2012 2:02 PM

Hi there,
I recently came across your website and learned about your campaign regarding Deconcini on the CCA board.  I'm wondering if you know about Thurgood Marshall Jr.  He is also on the CCA board, but he's also on the Ford Foundation board.  A number of groups involved in the campaign(s) against private prisons or CCA in particular get funding from Ford Foundation.  I personally feel that a group that gets money from Ford Foundation must not be doing anything too threatening to the system in the first place, but it should be alarming to those groups that there is this relationship... (the rest is the same as the latter part of the following email)

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to: info@enlaceintl.org
Tuesday, July 31, 2012 2:37 PM

Hi there,
I am contacting you because of your prison divestment campaign, and some info you might not be aware of.
I'm wondering if you know about Thurgood Marshall Jr.  He is on the CCA board, but he's also on the Ford Foundation board.  A number of groups involved in the campaign(s) against private prisons or CCA in particular get funding from Ford Foundation. It should be alarming to the groups that there is this relationship.  Some groups that get Ford funding: Enlace though perhaps indirectly, Detention Watch Network via Tides Center, The Sentencing Project, National Day Laborer Organizing Network, etc. (see more below).
I'm wondering what you think of this issue.  The Fuerza Tucson campaign is seeking to get DeConcini to resign from the CCA board.  I wouldn't guess that groups who get funded by Ford would have any influence on the foundation but instead are concerned with maintaining that funding.  It is possible that Marshall Jr. is just on these boards on paper and Ford or CCA may not ever realize the seeming conflict that arises.
I have my own ideas, which are part of this essay that i wrote last year: http://chaparralrespectsnoborders.blogspot.com/2011/07/beware-funders-of-immigrants-rights.html
I'd be interested in hearing what you all think about this.


You can search the grants database here: http://www.fordfoundation.org/grants/search
more groups:
(Alto Arizona via NDLON)
Brave New Foundation
Border Network for Human Rights
Center for New Community
(Cuentame via Brave New Foundation)
Enlace Institute/Communities United for People
Grassroots Leadership
Interfaith Worker Justice
Institute for Transnational Social Change
National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON)
National Immigration Law Center
National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild
(Puente Movement, via NDLON/Alto Arizona, Tonatierra)
Resource Generation
Seventh Generation Fund
(Tonatierra via Seventh Generation Fund and NDLON)

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to: info@enlaceintl.org 

Thursday, August 2, 2012 6:53 PM

Hi there,
Not sure if you've seen my last email yet, but i was looking at your website again today and noticed the most recent article posted about Wells Fargo, at least the first few paragraphs (see below) could apply to Ford Foundation in only a slightly different way.  I am genuinely interested in how you feel about this issue.  We don't know what Ford Foundation invests in.  For all we know they have stock in CCA or Geo or Wells Fargo, but having a board member on CCA is adequate for me to be a bit alarmed.
anyway, here's an article from today that you might like:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2012/08/02/20120802immigrants-prove-big-business-prison-companies.html

Janus-Faced Banking: How Wells Fargo Profits on Communities of Color

By Christopher Petrella
Social geographer, David Harvey, is famous for having noted that economic crises often “reveal the rationality of fundamentally irrational systems.” For Harvey, a crisis discloses the “irrational rationalizers” of our contradictory capitalist arrangement. Philanthro-capitalism, or the popular practice of applying business strategies to social challenges, represents the very core of this contradiction. Firms participating in philanthro-capitalist (ad)ventures privately support the very oppressive systems—white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, to name a few —that they publicly denounce.
Enter Wells Fargo, the nation’s fourth largest bank and the principal mortgage originator in the United States.
Earlier this summer Wells Fargo announced its historic $3.395 million grant in support of theHispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF).  The grant represents the single largest corporate contribution to HSF, “the nation’s premier not-for-profit organization supporting Hispanic higher education.” Founded in 1975, “HSF provides American families with the financial and educational resources they need to achieve a college education.”  To date, HSF has awarded over $360 million in scholarships and has supported a broad range of outreach and education programs to assist students and their families navigate collegiate life, from gaining admission and securing financial aid to finding employment after graduation.
HSF’s strategic vision includes “build[ing] a coalition of corporate and philanthropic partners committed to increasing Hispanic degree attainment.”
But Wells Fargo’s largess is as generous as it is ironic. Generous because $3.395 million is a large chunk of change, but ironic because of Wells Fargo’s simultaneously antagonistic relationship with the “Latin community.”
According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)—the federal agency responsible for protecting investors and maintaining fair markets—Wells Fargo currently holds somewhere between 4,400,000-4,700,000  shares in the GEO Group, the nation’s largest private detention  owner and operator. With over 4 million shares of the GEO Group valued at close to $90 million, Wells Fargo owns nearly 8 percent of the company.

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The following is the portion of my essay which discusses my thoughts on this situation.

Opposition to Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)—which runs private detention centers and has influenced legislation like SB1070 (through the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC) so they may continue to profit—is at odds with the interests of Thurgood Marshall Jr, a board member of both Ford Foundation and CCA. Whether or not there is some awareness of this seeming contradiction on the part of CCA or Marshall Jr., it may be more useful for Ford to fund legal, non-militant opposition in contrast to the much more militant targeting of businesses that invest in private prison companies (like Wells Fargo who invests in GEO Group, another large private prison company) such as the actions by anarchists that have been happening in various cities across the US. In addition, it seems as though focusing on private prisons as an aberration of the criminal “justice” system, deflecting attention away from the state and towards private entities, would be more in the interest of the Ford Foundation since they seem to be more generally allied with the state than any one corporation. To them it would be more important to have activists worrying solely about the privatization of prisons while leaving mass incarceration intact.

Raúl Alcaraz Ochoa: Beyond the BS1070 Supreme Court Ruling

Beyond the BS1070 Supreme Court Ruling:
“Not even the highest court can turn back a determined people!”

By Raúl Alcaraz Ochoa / 25 June 2012

This can’t be said any other way. Our migrant/Latino community is getting crushed. In fact, we are getting stomped on and beaten like a colorful piñata. The piñata is electoral and the more they hit, the more political points are scored—at our expense.

On the surface, the political class wants to make us think they are at war with each other over immigration. When in reality we have a US Supreme Court ruling over BS1070 that is in complete alignment with Republican and Democrat immigration policies of exclusion, exploitation, and police and ICE collaborations.

In the wake of the US Supreme Court ruling, injustice and oppression are upheld once again. The “papers please” section of BS1070 has been upheld. In effect standing in the tradition of white supremacist historical Supreme Court decisions such as Dred Scott v. Sanford of 1857 in which the court ruled that slaves and their descendants were not protected by the Constitution and were not US citizens...

Read more...

"The New Jim Crow" speech relates to immigration

I'm very interested in the parallels between the criminalization of black people and the criminalization of migrants, and the parallels between the drug war in general and the criminalization of migrants, as I've written about at No Borders or Prison Walls. I recommend checking out this speech by the author of "The New Jim Crow".  She doesn't talk about immigration, but you can see how what she talks about relates to it.

I'm also interested in looking at the roles the private prison corporations might have played in any legislation relating to the drug war, as they have with the criminalization of migrants with SB1070 both through ALEC/Russell Pearce and through Governer Jan Brewer.  I intend to look further into that.  I'm also interested, though, in why it the privatization of prisons isn't the problem per se.  There have been economic and political reasons for people to be imprisoned before prisons were privatized.  I discuss that a bit in What came first: the Racism or the Profit Motive?  You can expect more on this in the future.

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?

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.

Ending criminalization of people of color must be priority

Three separate times, tears welled up as, on the corner of Swan and Golf Links outside the Border Patrol headquarters in Tucson, a Wackenhut bus full of undocumented detainees drove by.  The protest on this corner corresponded to the lockdown of 6 people in the BP office to protest militarization of the border.

The protesters who locked down said that as they were being booked, they saw the people standing, waiting in the "cage" to be processed and then sent off to a detention center or possibly deported, transported on these very buses we saw.  A powerful moment was after the protesters had been released and had joined us on the corner, when a bus drove by and we all raised our fists, gave peace signs, and/or waved, knowing to some extent the fate of the prisoners, and wanting to show our solidarity, though limited by gestures.

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.

While racial profiling seems to be discussed in the media and by certain so-called spokespeople as a problem because it catches innocent/"legal" people up in it, it will be a problem because not only will SB 1070 make it easier and more justifiable to catch undocumented immigrants, it also allows the police to do what they have been doing for so long: treating all people of color as criminals.  What tends to be overlooked is that people of color have been criminalized, in different ways in different contexts.  The criminalization, whose enforcement is steadily increasing in the case of migrants, is used to paint people as law-breakers and justify their imprisonment and/or disenfranchisement (and here I don't just mean voting, but also any sort of means to make changes in their lives).  Not only are certain acts of people of color criminalized or treated as worse crimes (such as the treatment of crack users vs. cocaine users), but the police are given a special position to deem people criminals even if they haven't done anything wrong.

Whiteness has made room for certain people of color to be model citizens (even cops or border patrol agents) to blur the line, but it is clear where the line is.  If we don't question this criminalization, there will always be hundreds of thousands of people of color imprisoned in this country, or in constant fear of being ripped from their everyday life, if not even murdered by the state on occasion (even once is far too often).  Racial profiling is part of this racial criminalization, and to be clear, perhaps we should use the latter term, unless we buy into this idea that those who have been convicted of crimes or those who we know have crossed the border illegally are being justifyably punished.  When you hear or read the arguments for deporting or imprisoning undocumented immigrants it all comes down to the law for them, even though their racism often comes clearly through.  There's no effort to examine the purpose of the (immigration) law among those who seem to have convinced themselves that race plays no part. 

This criminalization not only puts people in jail but attempts to make it more justifiable to treat people of color inhumanely.  The press release for yesterday's Border Patrol protest states, "Indigenous people along the border have been forced by border patrol to carry and provide proof of tribal membership when moving across their traditional lands that have been bisected by this imposed border; a border that has been extremely damaging to the cultural and spiritual practices of these communities. Many people are not able to journey to sacred sites because the communities where people live are on the opposite side of the border from these sites. Since the creation of the current U.S./Mexico border, 45 O’odham villages on or near the border have been completely depopulated."  In addition, they state, "The impacts of border militarization are constantly made invisible in the media, the popular culture of this country and even the mainstream immigrants rights movement which has often pushed for 'reform' that means further militarization of the border, which means increased suffering for our communities."

It is important that we carefully remain critical of the elements of any social movement that are are more embraced by the mainstream media and politicians.  The folks who did this protest did it in such a way as to risk federal charges to get national media attention, which they hardly got.  In the meantime, messages about Comprehensive Immigration Reform and against racial profiling are more successful even when no arrests are involved.  Of course calls to end criminalization of people and to stop border militarization are going to be marginalized!  This is why they must at least be demarginalized within the social justice movements. 

A friend of mine told me that her mother cried when listening to Al Sharpton speak against SB1070.  I wonder if what he's been saying in the media is different from what he said at the public event (see First They Came for the "Illegals" but I only care about Racial Profiling).   Either way, I will remain weary of anyone marginalizes undocumented immigrants to oppose laws that target them.


See also No Borders or Prison Walls for a longer essay on some of these issues.

No Borders or Prison Walls: as it relates to racial profiling focus

I started writing something that ended up being very similar to what I had written about a year ago, so I figured I'd re-post it since it is still very relevant.

I've written a number of posts criticizing the focus on racial profiling, since when it is discussed, particularly by various politicians, it implies that the profiling catches innocent people up in it, while the true criminals deserve to be caught. Yet, racial profiling is certainly an important issue and has been occurring since race has existed. In fact in many ways law enforcement is what has shaped race in the first place. I discuss this further in this article.

What I feel is important to bring into the racial profiling discussion is that most people seem to agree that it is wrong--in fact I believe it is technically illegal. But what has been happening is something that perhaps can be called racial criminalization. The intentional criminalization of people because they are not white. This is exemplified in immigration law where undocumented immigrants (mostly poc) are criminalized because of their situation as migrants who cannot attain legal status. But it's not only that they are automatically "illegal" when they cross the border or when their visa expires, etc., but that people place a significance on that particular crime vs. many other much more serious crimes. Additionally, as we can see with Arizona bill SB1070, the criminalization of these migrants is compounded with more laws that make them criminals- the trespassing part of the bill and the part that criminalizes day laborers. Read on.

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

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

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

Read more...

First They Came for the "Illegals" But I Only Care about Racial Profiling

You know that poem that starts off with "THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist." Well, I had always interpreted it as meaning that you should care not because one day it will be you they go after, but you should care because it is happening to someone else who could easily be you. What does it mean if those who make themselves out to be spokespeople for a movement are not fully behind the ones most affected?

It's inspiring that so many different kinds of people are coming out against Arizona's SB1070 immigration bill, due to go into effect in a few months. However, it may not be obvious to all, but there are major discrepancies between politicians and so-called leadership, and the people. For example, while you have undocumented immigrants and their allies at these demonstrations wearing things like t-shirts or signs that say "I'm an illegal", others are focused on racial profiling. This is particularly telling:

“This is not about immigrants taken out of the streets. This is about who is next,” said Phoenix City Council Member Michael Johnson. The former police officer recently alleged he was the victim of racial profiling. (Source)(My emphasis).

Michael Johnson has openly supported Arpaio and his law enforcement efforts against undocumented immigrants. How many people coming out against this bill feel this way is unclear, though as I mentioned, Phil Gordon (Phil Gordon: Foe to Undocumented Immigrants) and Kirsten Sinema (Racial Profiling Focus is Still a Distraction) have said that they oppose the racial profiling part of the bill but have not openly opposed the targeting of undocumented immigrants by law enforcement (particularly federal).

The quote above is from an article about Al Sharpton coming to town to participate in a church service and a march to the capitol. From the same article, this quote exemplifies the presence and position of some undocumented immigrants,

Despite the increased fear caused by the new law several undocumented immigrants decided to join the march. Among them was Catalina Vargas, 67, a former farm worker.

“I’m going to fight as much as I can for legalization,” said Vargas, who marched out front holding an American flag.

About a year ago, Al Sharpton appeared on Lou Dobb's show regarding racial profiling and Arpaio's sweeps, and I discussed his emphasis on racial profiling in Racial Profiling Discussion Undermines Solidarity with Immigrants. Yesterday he made similar statements:

"There is no way this law could be enforced," said Sharpton, "without profiling people based on whether they are Latino or appear to be Mexican...You can amend it. You can bend it. You can do everything you want to with it.

"To say that based on reasonable suspicion, state law enforcement can go after people based on Mexican immigration is to say that it is reasonable to look at anyone that appears Latino and subject them to a harassment and a scrutiny that other citizens in Arizona would not be subjected to."

If you read how right-wingers have vilified Al Sharpton, you might tend to think he's on the correct path. I would argue, however, that his focus on racial profiling is the wrong way to go.

For example, here is a common argument:

"Nowhere in the bill does it say (police can stop or question people about their immigration status) because of race. It just says illegal immigrants," said Whitney Pew, 20. (Source).

Russell Pearce himself has repeated that "Illegal is not a race, it is a crime" (discussed further here). Sharpton, Gordon, Michael Johnson, etc. could easily be saying the same goddamn thing, just in different words. "Illegal is not a race, which is why we're going after illegals but finding every way possible to do it besides based on their race." So many people keep saying that it is the job of the federal government, not local police to enforce immigration. To not oppose the criminalization itself, rather than just the racial consequences of law enforcement of this crime, is no way to be an ally to undocumented immigrants, and perhaps this is the point. Perhaps some folks want to continue to support the rule of law and only oppose what they understand to be racism, instead of seeing how the rule of law in many ways is intertwined with racism.

This is why so many of us have to pick this up where they leave off. Push the debate further by opposing the criminalization of people. How do we take this resistance to racial profiling which is so popular right now and expand it to address criminalization?

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.

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

Race and the Rule of Law in Maricopa County

So many people are thinking it: Arpaio and his collaborators are putting the law into question, especially with the latest lawsuits and the disproportionate ways in which the laws have been enforced. After the stories on the singing protest of Arpaio that caused him to walk out on an interview, a news search for Arpaio will give you these stories: Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas are suing several judges and other county officials, and an MCSO officer recently got jail time for contempt of court for not apologizing for stealing files from a defense lawyers folder (and the resulting chaos involving a walk-out and a bomb threat, and the likelihood that the officer is in Arpaio's fancy jail for his allies).

When you hear statement after statement from the sheriff and county attorney and others that they're enforcing the law- that undocumented people are stopped/jailed because they're breaking the law, and then on top of that they all seem confused about what is actually legal or illegal and law-breaking cops get different treatment, you can't help but find that they are amazingly hypocritical.

What I'm getting at certainly isn't that we should be concerned that the sheriff and county attorney and others are making a mockery of law enforcement or the rule of law in general. The purpose of bringing these things up in relation to immigration is to point out that the rule of law is and always has been used to work in certain people's favor- those in power and with money, and to work against anyone who is a threat to holding onto that power and money. It's not quite as simple as that when you have a local sheriff giving a big middle finger to the federal and local governments- certainly they don't all work together.

Arpaio consistently says he's enforcing the law. Yet, he apparently doesn't even know what law he's talking about, and belongs to the camp that is looking for new ways to change the law to further criminalize migrants. At the same time he says things like, "This is yet another example of my continued promise to enforce all the illegal immigration laws in Maricopa County regardless of the ever changing policies emanating from Washington D.C."

And what about the latest shenanigans with the MCSO officer?

On Wednesday, the morning after a sheriff's detention officer reported to jail to serve a contempt of court sentence, 20 of his colleagues called in sick for work at the Maricopa County Superior Court Buildings in Phoenix.

Those same buildings were evacuated for three hours Wednesday morning when a bomb threat was called in targeting public defenders, the Arizona Republic reported. (Source).

(Gee, they wouldn't have called in a threat to prove a point, would they?)
Arpaio says he's an equal opportunity enforcer of the law. How can you not see the inconsistency?

It's not inconsistent, however, with the way law enforcement has been used to enforce the color line. We can see this with their origins in the slave patrols, the relationship between the klan and the police, to, for example, the death of Fred Hampton forty years ago, other efforts against groups that empower their communities, as well as the drug war, racial profiling, and now the anti-immigrant efforts. As I state in No Borders or Prison Walls,

The war against “illegal” immigration is just one part of institutional racism, except this is an example that makes it all the more clear that crimes have been made out of the actions of people because of who they are. It is clear that the law has been used purposefully to render people powerless and exploitable.

Although the lawsuits against other county officials don't quite fit into this whole concept, it is allowed to happen because the other activities of the MCSO are congruent with the larger purpose of government control (see also, Federal Government will not be Maricopa County's Savior).

In Our Enemies in Blue, Kristian Williams expands on the fact that sometimes the police and the government are at odds, and why this is still acceptable. Talking mainly about police brutality, he says,

The police may violate the law, as long as they do so in the pursuit of ends that people with power generally endorse, and from which such people profit. This idea may become clear if we consider police brutality and other illegal tactics in relations to lawful policing: When the police enforce the law, they do unevenly, in ways that give disproportionate attention to the activities of poor people, people of color and others near the bottom of the social pyramid. And when the police violate the law, these same people are their most frequent victims. This is a coincidence too large to overlook. If we put aside, for the moment, all questions of legality, it must become quite clear that the object of police attention, and the target of police violence, is overwhelmingly the portion of the population that lacks real power. And this is precisely the point: police activities, legal or illegal, violent or non-violent, tend to keep people who currently stand at the bottom of the social hierarchy in their place, where they belong- at the bottom.

I've heard some say that Arpaio isn't racist, he's just a in it for the media and the power. Yet Arpaio (and Andrew Thomas, and Russell Pearce, and ICE, etc.) is participating in the criminalization and the incarceration and terrorization of people of color. Institutionalized racism benefits those in power. Whether or not they are bigoted or not, they participate in it, and they gain from it, at the expense of people's lives and dignity. And if they are okay with that and even celebrate it, how can you not call them racist?

Yet, they maintain that it's all about the law. The law, or the importance of enforcing it, often comes down to what undocumented immigrants are allegedly costing us as citizens (for an example, see Russell Pearce's latest). Yet, how much are all these lawsuits costing us? How about Andrew Thomas’ Battle Against Spanish-Language DUI Probation Has Cost Us a Half-Million Dollars. But Who's Counting? And lawsuits against Arpaio have cost at least $41 million (Source). That's not even counting the cost of the lawsuits he's brought against others. And all the investigations into various opponents of his. And all the sweeps. And his expensive office in the Wells Fargo building costing $650,000 per year in rent when he already has an office in a county building.

We don't even need to ask why it's apparently okay with so many citizens that these officials are wasting our tax dollars but not okay for undocumented immigrants to allegedly cost us so much (which is actually quite doubtful). The money argument is illegitimate and the rule of law crap is bogus. We can see what is behind this. An eminent threat: too many brown people and an undermining of the oppressive order of things. This is why we must challenge white people on their racism. We need to point out the areas that are inconsistent and hypocritical. They themselves might not see it. It's up to us to understand it and to make them understand it. (For a recent discussion of this in context, see The NSM offers nothing for the white working class but more exploitation and misery.) I'll leave you with this quote from senator Russell Pearce.

There is currently a battle raging in this country that will determine whether our nation enforces its immigration laws and secures its borders or becomes victim of its enemies. We are a Nation built upon the “Rule of Law” and either we stand up for the principles that our Founding Fathers gave us to ensure lasting Liberty, enshrined in a Constitution that protects those liberties or we destroy all that is sacred and the end result will be a nation who commits suicide. Illegal immigration is the Trojan Horse and we must secure our borders and enforces our laws.

What Happens When Arpaio Serves The Warrants

Because Sheriff Arpaio has been targeting migrants who are just driving, waiting for work, or working, activists have reacted by pointing out that the sheriff has not been serving 40,000 open warrants. Now the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department is serving warrants... in Guadalupe.

As an example of the focus on warrants, a press release from no specific organization but about "Leaders from the civil rights and Latino communities" came out in March 2008 saying,

The people are entitled to have a true lawman for Sheriff, someone who goes after real criminals, not gardeners, cooks, nannies and pregnant mothers. America’s “toughest sheriff” must stop making mothers and fathers disappear in the middle of the night, callously leaving vulnerable, terrorized children at home alone. He can turn a new leaf and start protecting the public by serving the county’s 70,000 arrest warrants that he has allowed to remain outstanding.

If you went to a protest against Arpaio in 2008 or early 2009, you likely would've seen a reference to the warrants on some signs. Often they would be referenced by groups such as the Maricopa Citizens for Safety and Accountability. While the warrants have been discussed very little since the Senate hearing on the issue, you will occasionally still hear the warrants brought up.

What I don't understand is the assumption that these warrants are justified- that all the people who have warrants out for their arrest, or perhaps all the people with felony warrants, are hardened criminals who all deserve to go to Tent City. Do you really believe this? Do you think the criminal "justice" system is infallible? Are not undocumented migrants being further criminalized for political/racist/economic reasons? Isn't that fundamental to the criminal "justice" system? There is much evidence that the police are used to keep people in check and to maintain the social hierarchy. In many ways, the police actually perpetuate the crimes of those who do not have access to many of the opportunities that more privilege people have. And as I write in Chaparral: No Borders or Prison Walls:

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

And why does it not occur to folks that many of those warrants might be for gardeners, cooks, nannies and pregnant mothers who might disappear at night leaving their children terrorized?

And if you agree with nothing else I've said so far about the problems with the rule of law, please realize that you are basically saying that if the sheriff was serving all those warrants, then he would be doing a good job- Tent City, pink underwear, chain gangs, green baloney and all.

Indeed, I have brought up that Arpaio has in fact not been doing as efficient of a job at arresting migrants- other police departments have- yet they don't have this warrants issue hanging over their heads. In fact, they are mostly ignored and in some cases even seen as allies (phoenix pd officers are invited to activist meetings, ex-mesa police chief gascon was celebrated for standing up against arpaio) yet, as i've written in the past, If Phx and Mesa PD are arresting more immigrants, why is focus on Arpaio?

I would say that the myth of the infallibility of law and order is not questioned, for the most part, for to do so would make you vulnerable to attacks by the other side, accusing you of wanting chaos, or whatever else they associate with opposing arrests of so-called criminals. Too many immigrants' advocates are not willing to be outspoken about the racist nature of "criminal justice" and law enforcement, the border, and immigration law in general. The result, therefore, is that law enforcement that can appear reasonable alongside arpaio's media circuses are not to be questioned, but instead even applauded, even if their actual effect is worse than how arpaio's efforts appear.

This past week, the sheriff's department has been bringing a camera crew to stops all over Guadalupe to serve warrants. Guadalupe is a very small town next to Tempe, with a very high number of brown skinned people- mostly Yaquis and Mexican migrants. Arpaio has done a few sweeps there. It is one of a few places in the County that doesn't have it's own police department and pays the MCSO to handle problems. Instead, they've caused many problems. You can read all about it in Guadalupe made it clear that Joe Arpaio’s attacking anyone with brown skin, Joe Arpaio Returns to Guadalupe, with an Army of Deputies to Watch His Back, The MCSO Retaliates Against a Guadalupe Activist.

In fact, this might be retaliation for the copwatching going on in Guadalupe. Whatever the reason, people are being harassed and terrorized by Arpaio serving these warrants. Those who have demanded that the warrants be served are not to be blamed for those warrants being served in Guadalupe (or anywhere) necessarily, but it is necessary to keep all these things in perspective.

Satire for Russell Pearce

No more catch and release of the unwelcome male
(or, what if you took the extremist position of our anti-immigrant Arizona Senator Russell Pearce, and put it in a different context?)
by Senator Valerie Solanas Pearce

I sat ashen as I watched the news reports. Several chiefs of police stood at a press conference and publicly refused to enforce the law. Less than a month after the brutal murder of a police officer at the hands of a male, they snubbed the opportunity to make necessary changes and violated their oaths of office for the sake of political correctness. Meanwhile, people are killed, maimed and raped. Men cost citizens billions to educate, medicate and incarcerate, and they take jobs from women.

Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to prevent the potential crimes that men commit, by destroying or at least repressing the entire male class. I will not stand by and be a spectator to male-perpetrated violence because we refuse to enforce our laws and fail to put women first.

The courts have not identified any policy or humanitarian argument that would negate the fact that men in the United States are more likely to abuse others. The male is, by his very nature, a leech, an emotional parasite and, therefore, not ethically entitled to live, as no one has the right to life at someone else's expense.

Women have a constitutional right to expect the protection of federal laws that prohibit unauthorized activities by men, cluttering up the world with their ignominious presence, and are denied equal protection by law enforcement, police departments or magistrates that fail to enforce those laws.

This is the only law we put conditions on before a police officer can enforce it. Men as a social category are the only criminals we protect by policies. No other crime or criminal gets this protection by our elected officials. The sick, irrational men, those who attempt to defend themselves against their disgustingness, when they see us barreling down on them, will cling in terror to Big Mama with her Big Bouncy Boobies, but Boobies won't protect them against us; Big Mama will be clinging to Big Daddy, who will be in the corner shitting in his forceful, dynamic pants.

Studies and reports have cited alarming statistics: Men commit about 91% of all homicides, and they commit 98% of all sexual assaults. Gratuitous violence, besides 'proving' he's a 'Man', serves as an outlet for his hate and, in addition--the male being capable only of sexual responses and needing very strong stimuli to stimulate his half-dead self--provides him with a little sexual thrill.

Phoenix runs second in the world in kidnappings and third in the United States for violence. Arizona has become the home-invasion, carjacking, identity-theft capital of the nation. These are not statistics Arizona should be famous for.

The elimination of any male is, therefore, a righteous and good act, an act highly beneficial to women as well as an act of mercy. Enough is enough. The laws must be enforced.

I pledge that if we eliminate all men in this state, the result will be less crime and lower taxes. The costs of these crimes are far more than financial to our citizens, and HB 2280 will help make Arizona a safer place.

"What is this?" you must be asking. An op-ed piece taken from a sci-fi novel depicting a feminist semi-utopia? Well, it is a stretch to imagine women's livelihood and bodily integrity being considered valuable, much less a priority, but it is not sci-fi or fantasy. This is a hodgepodge of an editorial by Russell Pearce with some nouns and statistics altered, with some gems from Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto (SCUM stands for Society for Cutting Up Men).

While I disagree with most of Solanas's manifesto, it is an example of an extremist position. And though Russell Pearce, our dishonorable anti-immigrant senator, would be repulsed by the SCUM Manifesto, I insist that his position is equally unreasonable. He has been advocating for dealing with the crimes committed by some of a certain class of people by removing the whole class of people (undocumented immigrants), even though those crimes are also committed by others. He has praised Sheriff Arpaio for being the only one to do “preventive law enforcement”. What can be made of that other than he prefers to stop crime before it is even committed. What happened to “innocent until proven guilty”?

Of course, Pearce is saying that undocumented immigrants have already committed the crime inherent in being in the country illegally, though clearly he needs to defend this point ad nauseam because crossing a man-made line is just not something most people find important. The satirical piece is a bit of an exaggeration, as Pearce probably wouldn't publish such harsh words about immigrants as Solanas did about men. For one, he learned his lesson when he forwarded out an email from the National Alliance, a white supremacist organization. And two, it's just not politically useful. In addition, Pearce doesn't have to make insults--it is implicit in his position. He unflinchingly equates all undocumented immigrants with murderers and rapists.

The change in references to “illegals” to men in Pearce's op-ed were made so one can see that he is targeting a whole class of people to prevent the violent crimes that some of them commit. No doubt it seemed really extreme to the reader, particularly because men in general are not seen as the "other" like immigrants are. Despite the fact that the statistics about men committing such crimes are true and far worse than the statistics about undocumented immigrants, no one, aside from Valerie Solanas perhaps (tho she seemed less concerned about violence than men’s dullness and egocentricity), would propose that such pre-crime fighting should be exercised to thwart male-perpetrated violence.

What would seem absurd to most people, unfortunately, is to actually get at the root of the problem regarding violent crime. Mental health issues, poverty, social alienation; racist, heterosexist, capitalist patriarchy. But instead, undocumented immigrants are scapegoated for various problems including the crimes that a few commit, usually due to the fact that they must live a criminal, clandestine, and desperate lifestyle, one which is rewarded by exploiting others. Meanwhile there are worse criminals who don't have to be secretive because they are part of the establishment.


Russell Pearce's op-eds which ran with similar tho not exact text in two publications: http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/141045
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2009/06/24/20090624pearce25.html
The SCUM Manifesto: http://www.womynkind.org/scum.htm

Immigrants-as-Trespassers Law Closer to Passing

Seriously, this could be the most f-ed up thing that happens this year, as far as state legislation goes. A bill that Arizona Senator Russell Pearce wrote (SB1175) would make it so undocumented immigrants' existence in this state would be considered trespassing, and would also prevent any policy that restricts the police or other state agencies from enforcing federal immigration law. This bill just passed in the senate this week.

This means that undocumented immigrants' presence in the state would cause them to be breaking a state law. Although i think it's a stretch and might be unconstitutional, the idea is to override the federal immigration law, as far as enforcement goes. As long as police attempt to enforce federal law, they are on shaky ground, but they can much more easily enforce state law. This is what arpaio has been doing by enforcing the smuggling law, the employer sanctions law, and other such laws to go after undocumented immigrants). Although his actions are controversial and he does say that he is enforcing federal immigration law, his primary means of attacking the immigrant community is by enforcing (though many would say inappropriately) the state laws.

Pearce's bills aim to create more crimes out of the actions (or mere existence) of undocumented immigrants so they can more easily be arrested and removed. He wrote a bill (SB1337) that would make a class I misdemeanor out of not having a state-issued drivers' license (you have to be legal to get a legal one), which is in the legislature at the same time as various state police departments are discussing not recognizing the Matricula Consular, the ID issued by the Mexican government. Additionally, another bill (SB1177) would make it a crime to solicit for work.

The wider picture involves a new ICE program called "Secure Communities" which will target "criminal aliens" by linking up various law enforcement and immigration databases to be accessed when a person is in police custody. The new and existing laws and policies would give the police cause to arrest, detain, and check the databases on the suspect, and since undocumented immigrants would then have charges against them that they wouldn't otherwise have had, they will more likely be face the consequences of being labeled "criminal aliens".

Clearly "criminal alien" will mean nothing different from "illegal alien", or to us, "undocumented immigrant" because anyone without papers could be categorized as a "criminal alien". The criminal alien term will be used to make the general public feel that the right people are being deported. However, just as previous ICE raids have been purported to target dangerous criminals, they have in fact caught in their nets mostly people without criminal records. Now, creating more people with criminal records will justify various actions against the undocumented community.


*This article contains some text from a previous posted blog post. Apologies to anyone who were thinking, "haven't i already read this?".

If Phx and Mesa PD are arresting more immigrants, why is focus on Arpaio?

It's one thing after another hitting arpaio these days (such as this lawsuit). But today i came upon another example of why focusing on Arpaio is not the best strategy for immigrants' rights. This came in a guest column in the East Valley Tribune, by the title, The numbers don’t match Arpaio’s hype. The retired police officer who wrote the article blasts arpaio, but not exactly for the reasons you'd imagine. This is an excerpt:

Then the hearing turned into the usual good-old-boy, back-slapping, fanny-kissing festival with an endless stream of platitudes of how Arpaio is leading the charge against illegal immigration and crime...

Arpaio gratuitously thanked Pearce and the Legislature for the $1.6 million he was just given for his immigration sweeps. Arpaio has been given millions by the state for immigration operations, all while the state crime lab is cash strapped and performing poorly...

Even with our millions of dollars and 160 federally certified 287(g) immigration enforcement deputies, Arpaio doesn’t lead the county in immigration arrests. Phoenix police Chief Jack Harris does. Phoenix police arrested more than 7,300 illegal immigrants during 2008. Second place belongs to Mesa police Chief George Gascón, whose officers arrested more than 1,200 illegal immigrants and investigated 60 drop houses last year. Phoenix and Mesa made more than 8,500 immigration arrests during routine policing operations by following well-formulated city policies, state and federal laws, and without legislative meddling.

And Arpaio? According to the sheriff’s office, since April 2006, deputies have arrested a little more than 3,000 illegal immigrants...

So are we to applaud the Phoenix PD and the Mesa PD instead for their high numbers of arrests of immigrants? Not much of a surprise coming from a retired cop. Most Arpaio opposition actually applauds the PPD and MPD for not arresting a bunch of immigrants, so why the disparity?

I would say that the myth of the infallibility of law and order is not questioned, for the most part, for to do so would make you vulnerable to attacks by the other side, accusing you of wanting chaos, or whatever else they associate with opposing arrests of so-called criminals. Too many immigrants' advocates are not willing to be outspoken about the racist nature of "criminal justice" and law enforcement, the border, and immigration law in general. The result, therefore, is that law enforcement that can appear reasonable alongside arpaio's media circuses are not to be questioned, but instead even applauded, even if their actual effect is worse than how arpaio's efforts appear.

Sure, arpaio is feeding off of, but more importantly, feeding the anti-immigrant hysteria, which the other police departments do not seem to seek to do. His actions are highly politically-motivated and self-interested, rather than being the run of the mill everyday activities of police officials. But since we think it is wrong for him to go out and arrest undocumented immigrants, why is it okay that other police departments are doing the same thing (only "better")?

I am all to aware that a lot of immigrants rights advocates are not, in fact willing to outright oppose these arrests (i've commented on it a number of times). Instead it is made about the racial profiling: the sweeps might catch legal immigrants or citizens in its net (see this blog post). Or it is made about not going after "real criminals", nor serving warrants, despite the fact that most of us would acknowledge that the "criminal justice" system is inherently racist. The federal government is called on to save us from arpaio. I believe that if they do anything, it will only fit within its plans to focus on "criminal aliens" and streamlining its law enforcement abilities by introducing a program called "secure communities" (see this blog post and this older one).

The mindset that doesn't question these issues will only allow injustices to continue. Since most undocumented immigrants are too vulnerable to speak out, those of us who fight on their behalf must concern ourselves most with what's best for them. A friend of mine has said something to the effect of "they've spoken with their feet," in that they have made it clear what they think of the border and immigration laws. Those things are illegitimate and unjust, and should be treated as such.

I am concerned that when federal immigration reform comes up again, the compromise between liberal and conservative opinions will go unquestioned. Likely to benefit business but not people, and to appease a few, immigration reform will not involve solutions to the problems that bring people here in the first place, nor will it address the problems they face here.

There need to be strong voices that oppose anything less than true freedom- because how else are we going to get it?

See also: No Borders or Prison Walls: Beyond Immigrants' Rights to Ending Criminalization of All People of Color,
Release them all! Stop jailing migrants!,
Cop vs. Cop: Sheriff and Mesa Chief spar over sweeps
and The Immigrants Rights/Police Brutality Disconnect