La Migra has started conducted large-scale immigration raids in over half a dozen states, and is alleged to be setting up Ihre Papiere, bitte checkpoints and lurking in or around schools to follow children.

From KVUE.com in Austin (Feb. 10, 2017):

AUSTIN – After a day of reports surrounding Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions at various locations throughout Austin, Congressman Joaquin Castro confirmed a targeted operation by ICE in South and Central Texas. The Mexican Consulate of Austin has since confirmed 44 Mexican immigrants were detained in the past 48 hours in Austin.

. . . As Friday morning continued to roll on, social media began to fill with posts from people reporting ICE raids and arrests throughout the community. KVUE began investigating the reports with law enforcement and Defender Tony Plohetski talked to law enforcement sources at the federal, state, and local levels and none reported any operations outside of their daily action.

Shared Article from KVUE

ICE detains 44 in Austin: What We Know | KVUE.com

After a day of reports surrounding Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions at various locations throughout Austin, Congressman Joaquin Castro conf…

kvue.com

From the Washington Post to-day (Feb. 11, 2017):

U.S. immigration authorities arrested hundreds of undocumented immigrants in at least a half-dozen states this week in a series of raids that marked the first large-scale enforcement of President Trump's Jan. 25 order to crack down on the estimated 11 million immigrants living here illegally.

Officials said the raids targeted known criminals, but they also netted some immigrants without criminal records, an apparent departure from similar enforcement waves during the Obama administration. Last month, Trump substantially broadened the scope of who the Department of Homeland Security can target to include those with minor offenses or no convictions at all.

Trump has pledged to deport as many as 3 million undocumented immigrants with criminal records.

Immigration officials confirmed that agents this week raided homes and workplaces in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, the Los Angeles area, North Carolina and South Carolina, netting hundreds of people. But Gillian Christensen, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said they were part of "routine" immigration enforcement actions. ICE dislikes the term "raids," and prefers to say authorities are conducting "targeted enforcement actions," she said.

. . . Immigration activists said the crackdown went beyond the six states DHS identified, and said they had also documented ICE raids of unusual intensity during the past two days in Florida, Kansas, Texas and Northern Virginia.

That undocumented immigrants with no criminal records were arrested and could potentially be deported sent a shock wave through immigrant communities nationwide amid concerns that the U.S. government could start going after law-abiding people.

. . . ICE agents in the Los Angeles area Thursday took a number of individuals into custody over the course of an hour, seizing them from their homes and on their way to work, activists said.

. . . Spanish language radio stations and the local NPR affiliate in Los Angeles have been running public service announcements regarding the hourly "Know Your Rights" seminars the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles scheduled for Friday and Saturday. By the time the 4 p.m. group began Friday, more than 100 others had gathered at the group's office in the Westlake neighborhood just outside downtown.

A video that circulated on social media Friday appeared to show ICE agents in Texas detaining people in an Austin shopping center parking lot. Immigration advocates also reported roadway checkpoints, where ICE appeared to be targeting immigrants for random ID checks, in North Carolina and in Austin. ICE officials denied that authorities used checkpoints during the operations.

. . . Immigrant rights groups said that they were planning protests in response to the raids, including one Friday evening in Federal Plaza in New York City and a vigil in Los Angeles.

"We cannot understate the level of panic and terror that is running through many immigrant communities," said Walter Barrientos of Make the Road New York in New York City, who spoke on a conference call with immigration advocates.

. . . Jeanette Vizguerra, 35, a Mexican house cleaner whose permit to stay in the country expired this week, said Friday during the conference call that she was newly apprehensive about her scheduled meeting with ICE next week.

Fearing deportation, Vizguerra, a Denver mother of four — including three who are U.S. citizens — said through an interpreter that she had called on activists and supporters to accompany her to the meeting.

"I know I need to mobilize my community, but I know my freedom is at risk here," Vizguerra said.

Shared Article from Washington Post

Federal agents conduct immigration enforcement raids in at leas…

The raids mark the first large-scale immigration action since President Trump's Jan. 25 order to crack down on the estimated 11 million immigra…

washingtonpost.com

It hardly needs adding here that this conduct is terrifying, and despicable. There is no nation on earth that is worth more than even a single innocent life, no border that is more important than a refugee, or a dream, or a family, or a plain old honest living. Nationalism is the most toxic idea in the world to individual liberty, to global justice, to fairness, to compassion or to simple human decency. Border controls are a form of population control, one of the most mean-spirited and practically most lethal in the world today. These raids are spreading fear; they are terrorizing a community and destroying families for a worthless political line. Halt these raids, stop deportation, tear down every wall and bury the rubble in the dirt.

There’s a number of interviews out recently that Gary and I have done for Markets Not Capitalism. I’m going to do a fuller post collecting them later this evening, but in the meantime we have to prepare our escape from Chicago. Before I do, however, I wanted to mention the most recent, and the upcoming broadcast.

Bursts O’Goodness from The Final Straw on AshevilleFM.org very generously invited m to an extended interview on Markets Not Capitalism in advance of my upcoming book talk at Firestorm Cafe & Books in Asheville. (From the show’s website: The Final Straw works to bring new music and new ideas to it’s audience. A mixed-format show, The Final Straw presents a dynamic mix of music from around the world alongside inteviews concerning radical political, social, economic and environmental issues. The host, Bursts O’Goodness, hopes to make radical content more accessible to a wider and wider audience.)

A selection of the conversation from yesterday will be airing today, Sunday, March 4 from 2:00pm-3:00pm EST (1:00pm-2:00pm Central) on http://www.ashevillefm.org/. I’m told that it will also be streaming about every 4 hours or so on Monday at http://www.kwtf.net/, and will be broadcast a few times on Tuesday at KXCF in Marin County, California. The show will be available for download at http://www.ashevillefm.org/the-final-straw from March 5 – March 12, and later at http://www.archive.org/. I’ll put up a link here when I have it — but if you can tune in today or later this week at ashevillefm.org, the hits for Bursts’s show will help support the show and let his network know how much we appreciate radical voices and in-depth conversations about freedom on community radio.

I’ve got to run. But more links soon. In the meantime, I note also that this is once again Shameless Self-promotion Sunday. So; I’ve been on holiday in Chicago the past week, done a few interviews, seen a few bookstores. And y’all? What have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.

So I’ve mentioned already that I did a book event a while back with Roderick back in Auburn, and that I am going to be in Austin, Texas this weekend to do a couple more book events for Markets Not Capitalism. What I’ve been working on, behind the scenes, but haven’t announced publicly yet is that these are just the first two legs in a seat-of-the-pants sort of book tour that I’ve been working to put together over the next few months. In addition to the events this weekend in Austin, there are also confirmed events in late February in and around Nashua, New Hampshire, and in mid-March in Asheville, North Carolina. As with all these events, I’ll be doing a brief talk, a reading, Q&A and book-signing. (In New Hampshire I’ll also be holding down tables at Liberty Forum and AltExpo with a wide selection of left-libertarian and market anarchist literature.)

Editor and contributor Charles Johnson will be here for a discussion of his new book, Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty (Autonomedia, Nov. 2011).

Individualist anarchists believe in mutual exchange, not economic privilege. They believe in freed markets, not capitalism. They defend a distinctive response to the challenges of global capitalism and social justice: eliminate the political privileges that prop up capitalists. The economic crisis needs fresh new responses, which emphasize the ways in which poverty and economic inequality have resulted from collusion between government and big business, which has enriched a few corporate giants at the expense of the rest of us. Rather than turning back to politics, the authors argue that working people must begin to free themselves of the mistakes of the past, and work together to take back control over their own lives and livelihoods through individual freedom, mutual exchange, human-scale markets and nonviolent grassroots social activism. Books for sale, books signed, discussion to be had, Q&A to follow. Come on down!

Charles Johnson (b. 1981) is a market anarchist writer from Auburn, Alabama. He is a member of Occupy Auburn and the Industrial Workers of the World, and a Research Associate at the Molinari Institute. He has published the Rad Geek People’s Daily weblog at radgeek.com since 2001, and is a frequent speaker and columnist on radical responses to the economic crises, stateless social activism, and the philosophy of anarchism.

Here are the dates we’ve got more-or-less confirmed so far:

• Austin, Tex. February 4 at Brave New Books and February 5 at MonkeyWrench Books

• Nashua, New Hampshire. February 23-26 at New Hampshire Liberty Forum and AltExpo #10. Local bookstore event(s) TBA.

• Asheville, North Carolina. March 15 at Firestorm Cafe & Books. Happy Tyrannicide Day, y’all!

Interested? I hope I’ll see you somewhere along the road! Come on down to one if you can; invite your friends; spread the word. I’m excited; these events are always a lot of fun, and vital to helping get the word out, and I’d like to do what I can to keep this market anarchist roadshow going as long as can be managed. If you’re interested and able, here’s a couple things that you can do to help keep it running.

1. Set it up! If you would like to get an event in your neighborhood, and you know a good space to get in touch with, contact me by e-mail or phone! Radical bookstores, infoshops and (A) community centers, and independent community bookstores are usually the best bet, but I’ll show up anywhere I’m invited to talk. I’m especially interested in dates that I might be able to connect with one of the existing appearances — I’m open for any stops along the way from Alabama to New Hampshire during the days before my appearances in Nashua; immediately after the appearance in Nashua, I’m going to be in Chicago, Ill. for other reasons (but if you’re interested in getting an event set up there, I’ll have the time; just let me know!). And I’m happy to add stops to the trip after Asheville in mid-March. (Or anywhere else, after the March 15th appearance.) I’m definitely willing to go just about anywhere east of the Continental Divide; for points West, get in touch with me anyway, as we might be able to hook something up with either me or Gary. Let me know what you think! Hopefully I’ll be adding more details and stops as they come in and get confirmed.

2. Chip in! If you want to support the progress of the rolling free-market anticapitalist caravan, you can help us out by tossing a few coins into the hat to help cover the costs of transportation and lodging. I’m working on as thin a shoestring as possible, by combining trips, packing a lunch and couch-surfing for crash spaces; with support from y’ALL, I can keep this going a lot longer and make the most of the opportunities to talk about market anarchism and free-market anticapitalism, make connections with local radicals, and put the good word out among our fellow Anarchists.

Here’s the shoestring so far, for reference. (Costs are estimated using AAA’s fuel cost calculator, etc. This budget may be revised as new events are added.) Donations go to the Molinari Institute; any proceeds above reimburseable expenses will go to support left-libertarian scholarship and market anarchist outreach.

Today Austin, tomorrow the world …

Appearing this month in The Freeman (60.7, September 2010):

Opposing the Civil Rights Act Means Opposing Civil Rights? It Just Ain’t So!

Charles Johnson, September 2010 / Volume: 60 / Issue: 7

Just after winning his Republican primary in May, Rand Paul got himself into a political pickle over his views on property rights and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Having reluctantly discussed concerns about antidiscrimination laws with the Louisville Courier-Journal and NPR, Paul made his now-notorious appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show, where Maddow grilled him for 15 minutes on whether he opposed government intervention to stop racial discrimination. After saying he favored overturning government-mandated discrimination, Paul finally admitted that he opposes Title II, which forbids private owners from discriminating in their own businesses.

As he told the Courier-Journal: I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners—I abhor racism; I think it’s a bad business decision to ever exclude anybody from your restaurant; but at the same time, I do believe in private ownership. . . .

Maddow responded: I think wanting to allow private businesses to discriminate on the basis of race, because of property rights, is an extreme view. Within a day Progressives were touting the interview as proof of a deep conflict between libertarian defenses of private property and struggles for racial equality. Meanwhile, compromising libertarians like Brink Lindsey reacted by discovering exceptions to libertarian principles—to make room, again, for federal antidiscrimination laws. The entire debate has played out as an argument over libertarianism and extremism, with Progressives and many nominal libertarians both condemning Rand Paul’s simplistic extremism about private property and libertarian rights.

I have little interest in defending Paul but it’s strange to treat him like some case study in the dangers of libertarian extremism. Rand Paul is a conservative, not a libertarian—let alone an extreme one. He’s said as much, in so many words, in repeated interviews. Now, you could simply say, He may be no libertarian, but never mind Rand Paul—what about the issue? Libertarianism opposes government control of private business decisions; taken to extremes, doesn’t that include laws against racist business practices—the civil rights movement’s crowning achievement?

Well, I do have something to say on behalf of extremism. Not on behalf of sacrificing the civil rights movement’s achievements to extreme stands on antistatist principle. Rather, extreme stands on antistatist principle show what the civil rights movement did right, and what it really achieved, without the aid of federal laws.

. . .

[I]f libertarianism has anything to teach about politics, it’s that politics goes beyond politicians; social problems demand social solutions. Discriminatory businesses should be free from legal retaliation—not insulated from the social and economic consequences of their bigotry. What consequences? Whatever consequences you want, so long as they’re peaceful—agitation, confrontation, boycotts, strikes, nonviolent protests.

So when Maddow asks, Should Woolworth’s lunch counters have been allowed to stay segregated? neither she nor Paul seemed to realize that her attempted coup de grace—invoking the sit-in movement’s student martyrs, facing down beatings to desegregate lunch counters—actually offers a perfect libertarian response to her own question.

Because, actually, Woolworth’s lunch counters weren’t desegregated by Title II. The sit-in movement did that. From the Montgomery Bus Boycott onward, the Freedom Movement had won victories, town by town, building movements, holding racist institutions socially and economically accountable. The sit-ins proved the real-world power of the strategy: In Greensboro, N.C., nonviolent sit-in protests drove Woolworth’s to abandon its whites-only policy by July 1960. The Nashville Student Movement, through three months of sit-ins and boycotts, convinced merchants to open all downtown lunch counters in May the same year. Creative protests and grassroots pressure campaigns across the South changed local cultures and dismantled private segregation without legal backing.

Should lunch counters have been allowed to stay segregated? No—but the question is how to disallow it. Bigoted businesses shouldn’t face threats of legal force for their racism. They should face a force much fiercer and more meaningful—the full force of voluntary social organization and a culture of equality. What’s to stop resegregation in a libertarian society? We are. Using the same social power that was dismantling Jim Crow years before legal desegregation.

I oppose civil rights acts because I support civil rights movements—because the forms of social protest they pioneered proved far more courageous, positive, and effective than the litigious quagmires and pale bureaucratic substitutes governments offer.

— Charles Johnson, The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty (September 2010): Opposing the Civil Rights Act Means Opposing Civil Rights? It Just Ain’t So!

You can read the whole thing at The Freeman Online, or in the forthcoming print issue.

Many thanks as always to Sheldon Richman and FEE.

See also:

• GT 2010-06-20: Ridiculous Strawman Watch (Part 4 of ???)
• GT 2010-06-18: In a freed market, with no government anti-discrimination laws, what will stop bigoted business owners from resegregating America?
• GT 2010-05-23: Shameless Self-promotion Sunday / on Rand Paul, Rachel Maddow, and grassroots social movements
• GT 2009-06-12: In a freed market, who will stop markets from running riot and doing crazy things? And who will stop the rich and powerful from running roughshod over everyone else?