Pretty Bird Woman House is a women’s shelter on the Standing Rock Lakota Sioux reservation in South Dakota. The refuge was opened in January 2006 against incredible odds and with almost no resources in one of the poorest places in the United States — 45% of Native American women in South Dakota live in poverty, and the unemployment rate on Standing Rock Reservation is 71%. But they stayed open continuously, thanks in part to creative outreach efforts for grassroots funding through the Internet. This year, with a staff of three women, the shelter answered nearly 400 crisis calls, helped 16 women get medical assistance, and gave emergency refuge to 188 women and 132 children. For these courageous and life-saving efforts, they have had to face down the hatred of some violent, controlling men. After two break-ins at the shelter house, the staff went back to using an old, unheated office space and transferring women to far-away shelters off the reservation. The day after they evacuated, the building was firebombed and burned down. They have been operating without an on-site house out of an unheated office in below-zero temperatures, while they reach out to find the money to build a new sanctuary from violence.

In order to rebuild, PBWH is trying to raise $70,000 by the end of next month. They have raised over $50,000 and you can help them reach their goal. Any donation will help immensely (most of what they have raised so far has come from small donations). To learn more about Pretty Bird Woman House, or to follow their progress, you can read more at their blog. Andy Ternay at Street Prophets has an in-depth history of Pretty Bird Woman House, an overview on the violence faced by women on Standing Rock Reservation, an explanation of the shelter’s immediate needs, and comments from the director, Georgia Little Shield.

You can make a contribution immediately online through PayPal:

Or you can send a check made out to Pretty Bird Woman House to:

Pretty Bird Woman House
P.O. Box 596
McLaughlin, SD 57642

All donations are tax-deductible. Please give whatever you can. And please use your blog, e-mail, or whatever means you have at your disposal to let your friends and contacts know about this effort. Pretty Bird Woman House must, and will, rise from the ashes, and together we can help make that happen as soon as possible.

According to the ruling elite and the rank-and-file of bellowing Know-Nothing busybodies, all the people of the world must be segregated according to their nationality. If they won’t stay in their place voluntarily, then the government had better make them stay there through paramilitary lockdowns at national borders and rigid enforcement of a state-imposed passbook (visa, passport) system to control where people can live and work, which is to say a system of government permission slips for existing, which provides a mechanism for the state to track and control those who go through official channels, and a mechanism for detecting, arresting, jailing, and exiling peaceful residents from the communities that they now call home when they cannot meet some presumptuous government official’s demand for Ihre Papiere, bitte. Those who stand up for this despicable system of coercion and control — some of whom embrace it whole-heartedly out of unapologetic race hatred or inquisitorial theo-nationalism, and some of whom do the same damage by making half-hearted Sensible Liberal excuses based on an illusory need for control or the chauvinistic ideal of assimilation — are all promoting a government-imposed system of discrimination and rigid segregation in housing, employment, education, and civic life, supported by government surveillance, enforced through government violence, all in the name of an illusory national unity or integrity that depends, at the bottom, on having the government presumptively treat outsiders (even those outsiders who have been living and working inside for years) as more dangerous, more likely to be criminal, more unsanitary, less deserving of security in their persons and effects, less worthy of a happy life, and less deserving of simply being left in peace than the native-born, solely on the basis of their nationality. That is to say, treating them as if their lives and homes and livelihoods were worth less than nothing–just so much foul-smelling garbage to be removed at the first opportunity.

It’s precisely this sort of immorality — the elevation of state control or belligerent nationalism over common decency towards peaceful people — that has been put on display recently in Roswell, New Mexico, with the arrest, jailing, expulsion and exile of Karina Acosta, a pregnant high schooler who was ready to graduate in the spring, because the immigration law, which is nothing but Jim Crow imposed at the level of nationality, forbids her from attending an Estadounidense school, and Student Resource Officer Charlie Corn, the pig-in-residence at Roswell High School, decided to take the opportunity of a minor traffic violation pull her out of class, arrest her, and then snitch on her to La Migra, so that they could jail her and force her out of her home, away from her family, and back into her place.

U.S. immigration officials deported a pregnant Roswell High School senior after she was pulled from class Wednesday by a local police officer regarding a traffic ticket issued days before.

According to Roswell Police Chief John Balderston, Karina Acosta, 18, was given several days to provide proper identification after being cited for a parking violation and driving without a license on Nov. 29 but failed to do so.

RHS Student Resource Officer Charlie Corn, a 10-year RPD veteran, removed Acosta from class Dec. 5 regarding the traffic violation and detained her at the school before notifying U.S. immigration officials of her illegal status, according to Balderston.

Acosta, who is five months pregnant, was transported to the Chaves County Detention Center, put on hold by the INS and later deported to Mexico, according to Balderston.

In the course of an investigation, if we determine that someone is not here legally, we will contact INS and tell them what their status is, he said.

Worried about the deportation of the girl and the future security of other illegal immigrant students at RHS, Acosta’s mother and nearly 50 members of the Hispanic community gathered at the RHS Little Theater, and later the Roswell Police Department, to voice their concerns.

The kids are scared now because this thing happened, so we need your help, said Maria Rodriguez to Balderston during a meeting in an RPD conference room Friday afternoon.

At the meeting, Balderston listened to complaints about Corn, including allegations he targets Hispanics. Balderston agreed to meet further with representatives from the Hispanic community and Corn in an effort to ease relations and eliminate any problems or misconceptions that might exist.

If you don’t trust us then we need to do some more work here, said Balderston, who will retire Jan. 4.

Roswell Independent School District Assistant Superintendent Mike Kakuska said the RISD has officially protested Acosta’s arrest with the INS and the Mexican Consulate.

We are very, very concerned as a public school as to what happened the other day, said Kakuska, addressing a group of about 50 parents who gathered at RHS Friday morning. The police officer, without our knowledge, had this young lady brought into his office here at school and the detain orders were issued through him, not the Roswell schools.

— Richard Jacques, Roswell Daily Record (2007-12-08): RHS senior deported; parents concerned

The good news is that Charlie Corn and all the other pigs-in-residence have been removed from Roswell city schools. The bad news is that Karina Acosta is still stuck in Mexico, away from her family, her home, and her school. And the Roswell cops will do it again, by God, just as soon as they get the chance:

In the lengthy open meeting that lasted more than one hour, Kakuska and other school officials, including RHS Principal Brian Shea, answered questions and notified those in attendance that Corn has been removed as an SRO.

The Roswell Independent School system did not support the decision of this officer to have this young lady arrested, said Kakuska.

In a joint decision by the RPD and RISD, all SROs have been removed from RISD schools. Both Balderston and Kakuska maintain that despite the incident, no contention exists between the RISD and the RPD.

We’re going to work through this and I wish I can say that it’s not going to happen again, but I can’t. The officers are going to enforce the law, said Balderston.

School officials said Acosta was on course to graduate in the spring.

— Richard Jacques, Roswell Daily Record (2007-12-08): RHS senior deported; parents concerned

Just remember: it doesn’t matter to these people how good a student you are, or how hard you’ve worked, or what a decent and productive member of your community you are, let alone — ha, ha — the mere fact that you are an individual, irreplaceable human being who has the right to expect a certain level of dignity, decent treatment, and basic humanity from your neighbors and from your brothers and sisters in other communities. What matters is The Law, and the coerced integrity of a segregated nation, and the power of the world’s governments to each keep their own herd properly corralled and branded. To hell with that idiot notion. Smash international apartheid, now and forever.

(Story thanks to brownfemipower 2007-12-11.)

On the LeftLibertarian2 listserv, there’s been some discussion of a pseudo-libertarian argument that’s popular with certain border creeps, to the effect that the government should strictly limit immigration because otherwise too many immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants who often work off the books and don’t pay income tax, will show up to mooch off of hard-working Estadounidenses through the welfare state. This argument has a lot of problems, some of which I’ve discussed before (1, 2). For one thing, it’s empirically bogus. By law, even officially approved immigrants are ineligible for most federal welfare benefits, while local government-funded services that immigrants can avail themselves of, such as E.R. care, government police and firefighters, government schools, government roads, etc. are mainly funded out of state or local taxes that immigrants do pay, whether or not they file with the IRS — sales taxes, excise taxes, gasoline taxes, property taxes, etc. Perhaps more importantly, as Sheldon Richman and Niccol?@c3;b2; Adami pointed out on the list, the argument persists among vulgar libertarians and small-government conservative types for reasons that have nothing really to do with libertarian principle. As Niccol?@c3;b2; said:

The use of the welfare argument, as I can see it is limited to use against other libertarians–like ourselves–who would otherwise look a little less kindly to the welfare state.

The truth is, however, that if you watch the Bill O’Reilly’s of the world, they’re all complaining about the lack of Americaness of the immigrants, not really about the tax evasion or the welfare.

As I mentioned on the list, the tax evasion argument ought to be a complete non-starter with genuine libertarians. The fact that many independent migrants don’t pay taxes to support Leviathan is a point in their favor, not a point against them. As for the welfare state, they are welcome to milk it dry, as far as I’m concerned. The sooner the damn thing is on the brink of collapse, the better. Besides which, receipt of government benefits is not ipso facto a violation of anyone’s rights — it’s the funding that’s the problem, but illegal immigrants aren’t complicit in the existence of taxation — and insofar as they are able to receive some minimal pay-outs from the State, that may as well count as partial restitution for the daily threats, terror, and violence that the state and federal governments routinely inflict against the property and liberty of all undocumented immigrants.

For what it’s worth, I think that the focus on welfare is not actually quite as opportunistic as Niccol?@c3;b2; claims it is. I suspect that it has less to do with rhetorical outreach to small-government types, and more to do with a felt emotional need to believe that immigrants are really a bunch of ungrateful layabouts. It’s the same basic racist dynamic that’s in play in the equivalent discussions by post-Jim Crow white conservatives about domestic welfare recipients.

This is a new online ad, recently released by the campaign team, to a chorus of praise from the membership of Know-Nothings for Tom Tancredo:

Oh, wait, my bad. Here’s the right one:

Just remember: they are not against immigrants. They’re just against illegal immigrants.

On a related note, I’d like to wish everyone a very happy Anti-Nationalism Day.

(Link via Migra Matters 2007-12-10.)

Here’s the rules:

1. Pick a quote of one or more paragraphs from something you’ve read, in print, over the course of the past week. (It should be something you’ve actually read, and not something that you’ve read a page of just in order to be able to post your favorite quote.)

2. Avoid commentary above and beyond a couple sentences, more as context-setting or a sort of caption for the text than as a discussion.

3. Quoting a passage doesn’t entail endorsement of what’s said in it. You may agree or you may not. Whether you do isn’t really the point of the exercise anyway.

Here’s the quote. This is from Yael Tamir’s essay, Siding with the Underdogs, in Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, an anthology based on the title essay by Susan Moller Okin.

Why do group rights serve best the interests of those members of society who are powerful and conservative? To begin with, the notion of group rights as it is often used in the current debate presupposes that the group is a unified agent. Rights are bestowed upon the group in order to preserve its tradition and defend its interests. Identifying the tradition and the interests of the group becomes a precondition for realizing these rights. Consequently, internal schisms and disagreements are perceived as a threat to the ability of the group to protect its rights. Group leaders are therefore motivated to foster unanimity, or at least an appearance of unanimity, even at the cost of internal oppression.

Attempts to achieve unanimity are particularly dangerous in those communities which lack formal, democratic decision-making processes. Under such circumstances it is the elderly of the tribe, members of councils of sages, who determine the groups’ norms and interests. Members of such bodies are commonly men, who endorse a rather orthodox point of view. Social norms and institutions place these individuals within a dominant position, and group rights consolidate this position even further. Granting nondemocratic communities group rights thus amounts to siding with the privileged and the powerful against those who are powerless, oppressed, and marginalized, with the traditionalists (often even the reactionary) against the nonconformists, the reformers, and the dissenters.

The conservative nature of group rights is reinforced by the justifications adduced in their defense. The group is granted rights in order to preserve its culture, language, tradition. These are described, by most defenders of group rights, in nostalgic, nonrealistic terms. They are depicted as authentic, unique, even natural. Those who attempt to consolidate the conservative way of doing things are therefore portrayed as loyal defenders of the group, those who strive for social transformation and cultural reformers are perceived as agents of assimilation who betray the group and its tradition. The former are depicted as virtuous individuals who dedicate themselves to the common good; the latter are suspected of being motivated by narrow self-interest–of giving priority to short-term preferences for personal comfort and prosperity over long-term commitments to the welfare of the community.

Agents of social and cultural change are portrayed as feeble-minded individuals who are tempted by the material affluence of the surrounding society, as those who sell their soul to an external devil in exchange for some glittering beads. It therefore seems legitimate to criticize, scorn, even persecute them. This is the fate of Reform Jews who are often portrayed by the Orthodox establishment as irresponsible, weak-minded, pleasure-seeking individuals who wish to escape the burden of Judaism in order to adopt a less demanding lifestyle. Reform Jews, Orthodox argue, are swayed by the external (and superficial) beauty of Christian architecture and ceremonies. The reforms they offer are seen as grounded in mimicry, as an attempt to be like the Gentiles rather than as a call to reevaluate Judaism and offer ways in which it can answer the needs and challenges of modernity. Reform Judaism is therefore portrayed as a threat to the survival of Judaism rather than as an attempt to save it.

The use of the term survival in the context of the debate over group rights is common, yet alarming. It misdescribes what is at stake, intensifying the cost of change and fostering the belief that any violation of social and religious norms, any reform of traditional institutions and the group’s customary ways of life, endangers its existence and must therefore be rejected.

Moreover, it intentionally obscures the distinction between two kinds of communal destruction: the first results from external pressures exhorted by nonmembers; the second, from the desire of members of the community. It is clear why we ought to protect a community and its members in cases of the first kind, but should we protect a community also against the preferences of its own members? Is it just, or desirable, to allow those who aspire to preserve the communal tradition–often members of the dominant and privileged elite–to force others who have grown indifferent or even hostile to this tradition to adhere to that tradition?

Obviously, defenders of group rights who use the term survival to denote cultural continuity tend to give priority to this end over and above individual rights. Charles Taylor’s discussion of the Canadian case demonstrates this order of priorities: It is axiomatic for the Quebec government that the survival and flourishing of French culture in Quebec is a good …. It is not just a matter of having the French language available for those who might choose it …. Policies aimed at survival actively seek to create members of the community, for instance, in their assuring that future generations continue to identify as French speakers.

It should be clear by now that in the Canadian case, as well as in the debate between Orthodox and Reform Judaism, the term survival refers not to the actual survival of the community or its members but to the survival of the traditional way of life. It is used to justify the taking of extreme measures, including disregard for individual rights and forceful suspension of internal criticism, for the sake of preventing change. But is there a reason to prevent a particular way of life from undergoing change? Should one protect a community against cultural revisions or reforms, even radical ones, if these are accepted by its members? The answer to the above question depends on the motivations one may have for protecting cultures or traditions.

An approach that is grounded in the right of individuals to pursue their lives the way they see fit must support individuals who wish to reform their tradition and change their lifestyle as much as it ought to support individuals who wish to retain their traditional way of life. It must be attentive to the kind of life plans individuals adopt and pursue, without prejuding in favor of conservative options. It should therefore defend individuals against pressures to conform and protect their choices to reform their tradition or even exit the community altogether. The opposite is true for an approach that is motivated by the desire to defend endangered cultures. Such an approach must favor conservative forces over reformist ones, even at the price of harming some individual interests. Obviously multiculturalism that is grounded in the former approach is friendly to feminism, while that which is grounded in the latter is not.

–Yael Tamir (1999), Siding with the Underdogs, in Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?