Arizona migration law: BOO!

While Nicaragua was the only Central American government not to speak out immediately against the new AZ racist immigration law (SB 1070), which as you probably know essentially makes racial profiling official state policy, passage of the law made front page news here yesterday. This type of public policy is setting us back decades in the struggle for humane migrant rights. For any one with a dose of common sense, we know that as long as economic conditions of chronic poverty, unemployment, and inequality exist, people will migrate. No walls, border police, or racist policies will stop people from trying to provide for a better life for their children. Moreover, migrations are a part of human history, and certainly central to the history of the United States. What Arizona is doing will only separate families, stew racial tensions, and is BAD PUBLIC POLICY. The only hope many of us have is that this will spur the Obama Administration and democrats and republicans alike in Washington DC to move forward in a much more expedient way on humane immigration policy reform that many of us have been pushing for for many many years. in the meantime, I join many civil society groups in calling for a boycott of Arizona until this law is repealed! Let's treat our neighbors as neighbors rather than criminals. for more and to take action see:  http://presente.org/campaigns/shame/org/soaw

 

1 comentario

[Ana Paula - 01 de mayo de 2010 - 10:53]

I think that in some level most forms of protest are sponsored by a political party. It is our bias to think that everything related to party politics is negative and everything related to community organizations and social movements are good and altruistic. At least in my fieldwork here in Brazil, virtually all protests and participatory mechanisms that I encountered are interwoven with the agenda of political parties. I was first very disappointed until I started questioning why did I want to find "pure" political protest and community organizing. It is true that there is a lot of opportunistic behavior in political parties. Politicians want to gain power and receive nice salaries. But, parties also have some guidelines, some sort of ideology and programs that more or less direct people's actions and obligate them to assume a position within the social relations of power. I still have a hard time accepting the ways in which communities and activists engage with political parties and politicians. And, after five months of fieldwork I still do not fully understand how these relations are shaped. I am frustrated:)