This was on the front page of to-day’s OA News (front page, continued on p. 8A). The online copy is a bit longer than what appeared in print (there are a couple paragraphs at the end that the OA News cut from the printed edition). The U.S. Civil Rights Commission recently held a meeting in Birmingham to discuss SB 1070 and HB 56, the international apartheid police-state bills in Arizona and Alabama. Demonstrators showed up to inject some reality into the proceedings.

From the Associated Press.

Quarrelsome commission

Civil rights panel has first meeting to discuss laws

BIRMINGHAM — A quarrelsome U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held its first hearing on state laws that target illegal immigration, with Republican backers arguing Friday that the measures are vital to protecting American jobs and fighting crime.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who helped write similar immigration laws in Arizona and Alabama, said unemployment in Alabama has dropped three times faster than the national average since parts of the state's law took effect last fall — a change he credited at least in part to the act.

Attempting to head off claims that the laws lead to racial profiling by police, Kobach said the immigration enforcement specifically bars officers from making stops or arrests based on appearance.

As he spoke, four Hispanic women and a girl stood in the audience with their backs toward Kobach. Demonstrators, some speaking Spanish, stood up holding signs that said Undocumented and shouted at Kobach.

These laws are based on hate, said one man.

The meeting room quieted after officers escorted protesters away, but the commissioners still bickered among themselves. . . . Congressional appointee Todd Gaziano, legal director of the conservative Heritage Foundation, accused the demonstrators of hateful speech . . . . Gaziano and chairman Martin R. Castro, appointed by President Barack Obama, exchanged sharp words throughout the opening session. Members even disagreed over who should be allowed to testify, with organizations accusing each other of being hate groups.

The commission will issue a report within months on the findings of the hearing, which focused on whether the state laws foster discrimination and run counter to civil rights laws. But the panel doesn't have any enforcement power, and it can't make states alter their laws.

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down three parts of Arizona's law in June, but it upheld a section that requires police to check the status of people who might appear to be in the country illegally. The ruling was closely watched because Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Indiana and Utah have approved similar laws.

Courts have blocked all or parts of the laws in each state, and legal challenges are now moving forward since the justices ruled on the Arizona statute . . . .

Law opponent Tammy Besherse, an attorney with South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center, accused law officers of destroying immigrants' legal documents and of playing computer games in which participants kill Mexican immigrants.

GOP state Sen. Scott Beason, a key sponsor of Alabama's law, said opponents of the laws and the media place more value on the rights of illegal immigrants than the plight of legal U.S. citizens who can't find work because of people living in the country unlawfully.

We cannot solve the world's problems, but we can make sure we don't import some problems, Beason said. Responding to a question about a U.S. Chamber of Commerce that cast immigration in a positive light, Beason said the business organization is pretty slanted because some of its members employ illegal immigrants.^[1]

Castro said the Alabama hearing was the commission's first outside Washington, D.C., in years. The panel's first-ever was held in Birmingham in 1958, when state and local laws mandated racial segregation.

— Jay Reeves, Associated Press, Quarrelsome commission: Civil rights panel has first meeting to discuss laws. Opelika-Auburn News, 18 August 2012.

Source: Social Scientists on Immigration Policy.

The article goes to some effort to make it out that the fights amongst the panel members were signs of a clear divide between Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals. Of course the notion that the Democratic Party appointees maintain any divide, or have any quarrel, other than a purely rhetorical one, from the Republicans, is absurd. In 2008, presidential candidate Obama promised comprehensive immigration reform, paths out of the shadows for undocumented immigrants, and promised that immigration reform would be a top priority in my first year as President. In 2012, four years later, Liberal Democratic President Barack Obama has accomplished nothing at all towards comprehensive reform or towards paths to citizenship. The claim that it would be a top priority in his first year in office was a lie; he abandoned it as soon as he sat down in the Oval Office, concentrated on pushing stimulus bills and fighting wars and bailing out failed capitalists — and then he radically escalated the militarization of the border, and he presided over the largest mass deportations of peaceful immigrants in the history of the United States. Even his weakest, latest-coming promises have been lies, broken as soon as they were made. But there is a real divide here. It’s not a divide on the panel; it’s the divide between the panel, and the protesters who courageously stood up to challenge them. I am glad to see people calling out Kobach, and challenging this kind of political palavering over the lives and livelihoods of immigrant families. More power to them.

Also.

• GT 2012-08-06: Free Alfonso Perez
• GT 2011-10-24: Letter to the Editor of the Opelika-Auburn News, October 10, 2011
• GT 2011-10-22: Change You Can Believe In (Vol. III, No. 10)

1. ^[1][I-word and xenophobia sic. –RG.]↩

Remember back when Barack Obama made a big announcement that his Immigrations and Custom Enforcement agency wasn’t going to be detaining or deporting undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children? When he made the announcement, I was happy, but very cautiously so — as long as it holds up, that will at least help some people out. But I wondered whether the promise would last even a few months after election season, or whether it would promptly go the same way as his promises about Guantanamo and his promises about ending DEA raids on medical marijuana dispensaries. This was too optimistic of me. The answer is that it never even lasted through campaign season, and was broken within weeks.

This is appalling. From my friend Evelyn in Las Vegas:

Another DREAMer Detained! Alfonso Is Being Denied Shoes While In Detention. Let Him Free!

President Obama stated that, as of June 15, DREAMers^[1] will no longer be detained or deported. Alfonso was detained one month after the announcement and he has yet to be released! Why is DREAMer Alfonso still being detained?

On July 26 at 6 a.m., Alfonso was walking out of his apartment to head to work when ICE officials detained him. He has been held at Henderson Detention Center in Nevada ever since. Alfonso has a 14-month old baby and a fiancee who need him home! Please call and sign the petition so he can be released.

Make a Phone Call

1. Call ICE – John Morton (202.732.3000)

Sample Script: “I am calling to urge you to release DREAMer Alfonso Perez (A# 205-151-137) from Henderson Detention Center in Nevada and stop his deportation. Alfonso has been living in the U.S. for 20 years. **He has a 14-month old daughter and a fiancee who are suffering without him. Alfonso is a DREAM Act youth and, according to President Obama, should have never been detained. Release Alfonso from detention!”

Please help us raise funds with your contribution to help Alfonso and his family: Help Free DREAMer Alfonso Perez!

— Dream Activist.org: Alfonso Perez

Please:

• Share this story with your friends, family and compa?@c3;b1;er@s.
• Call ICE to demand Alfonso Perez’s release. Every call helps.
• Sign a petition to John Morton and Janet Napolitano at Dream Activist.org, also calling for his release.
• If you can, you can also make a donation to Alfonmso Perez’s legal defense at IndieGoGo.com.

Alfonso Perez was brought to the United States by his grandmother at four years of age (when his parents abandoned him in Mexico). After twenty years of living in this country, he was detained by I.C.E. on Thursday, July 26th, 2012 at 6:00 a.m. when he walked outside of his apartment to go to work.

He is currently detained at the Henderson Detention Center and has not been provided with shoes, nor has our family been allowed to provide any for him. We need your help to release him, reunite our family, apply for Obama's DREAM deferred action, and fulfill his dream of attending college.

His lifetime calling is to become a Registered Nurse and help heal his community. In fact, he has a track record of working with elderly and disabled people since the age of sixteen. He DREAMs of finishing college and dedicate his life to provide for his family and care for those people who are most in need.

Alfonso is a dedicated father to his fourteen month old baby and a loving partner to his fiancé. He is the sole financial provider for his family and works 10 hours a day, 6 days a week as a landscaper in Las Vegas, Nevada. His family is distraught by his incarceration and his baby misses him a lot.

— Help Free DREAMer Alfonso Perez @ IndieGoGo.com

1. ^[1][Undocumented immigrants who would have been eligible for a path to citizenship under the DREAM Act — i.e., people who were brought to the United States as children and have lived and gone to school within the U.S. –CJ.]↩

Allowing people into a nation who do not identify themselves as part of that nation–who do not speak the language, who do not observe the holidays, who do not know or care about the history and ideals and cultural icons–is simply suicidal.

— Timothy Sandefur Illegal Alienation, at Positive Liberty (30 March 2006)

Now I am sure that all of you properly assimilated Americans realized that June 14th is Flag Day — a national commemoration of the military colors of this bayonet-bordered Union, first recognized in 1916 by the rabid white supremacist xenophobe, warmongering political persecutor, and President of the United States Thomas Woodrow Wilson. And I do hope that you all have observed this civic holy-day in a manner befitting the solemnity of the occasion, and the importance of such cultural icons to the flourishing — indeed, the survival — of so great a nation.

So perish all compromises with tyranny! And let all the people say, Amen! —William Lloyd Garrison

Via Las Vegas May Day Coalition, via FW Kelly Patterson.

1º Mayo 2012 – Nos reuniremos a las 4:30pm en Commercial Center (entre Commercial Center Dr. y E. Sahara Ave.). La marcha empezará a las 5:30pm. Terminaremos en la Corte Federal.

Para más informaci?@c3;b3;n visite: Maydaylasvegas.blogspot.com.

May 1 2012 – Meet at 4:30pm at the Commercial Center (between Commercial Center Dr. and E. Sahara Ave.). March will begin at 5:30pm. Ending at the Federal Court House.

For more information visit: Maydaylasvegas.blogspot.com.

From the Institute for Critical Education Studies:

Abraham P. DeLeon, assistant professor in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Texas, San Antonio was refused entry to Canada today. He was scheduled to deliver a papers at the American Educational Research Association meeting and the pre-conference meeting of the Rouge Forum @ AERA, both which are being held in Vancouver, BC this weekend.

DeLeon, who holds a PhD from the University of Connecticut, does research in the areas of cultural studies, anarchist theory, post-colonialism, and animal studies in educational theory. His articles that have appeared in The Social Studies, The Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, Educational Studies, Equity & Excellence in Education, and Theory and Research in Social Education. He is associate editor of Critical Education, which is based at the University of British Columbia. He has also co-edited two books: Contemporary Anarchist Studies: An Introductory Anthology of Anarchy in the Academy (Routledge, 2009) and Critical Theories, Radical Pedagogies, and Social Education: Towards New Perspectives for Social Studies Education (Sense Publishers, 2010).

DeLeon was scheduled to deliver an AERA paper titled: "Lured by the Animal: Rethinking Nonhuman Animals in Educational Discourses" and he was also scheduled to speak at the pre-conference Rouge Forum @ AERA on "What might happen when teachers and other academics connect reason to power and power to resistance?"

Canada Border Services Agency refused to give a reasons for denying DeLeon entry to Canada. CBSA has also repeatedly denied entry to American educator Bill Ayers, a Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago. The CBSA's actions raise serious concerns for Canadians and Americans who value free speech, open debate and academic freedom.

— E. Wayne Ross, Anarchist scholar to speak at RF@AERA denied entry to Canada