Letters to the Editor
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Immigrant rights in the heartland
Business brought me from distant, depopulated, rural Kansas wheat farms to Wichita on April 10th. Taking advantage of that opportunity I joined a City Hall rally organized by Sunflower Community Action, accompanying 4,000 vocal but peaceful marchers past the offices of a typically unresponsive U.S. Senator Pat Roberts. Protesters displayed a broad Hispanic solidarity. It seemed the numbers of 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation Kansans gathered there were as large as those of their green card-holding and undocumented brothers and sisters. Marchers demanding respect and equity around the country are the harbingers of a new and welcome day in America.
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illegal yay!
We broke the law! We have zero respect for the law! And we're here to demand that you reward us for it!
I'm absolutely amazed that people truly support this sort of thing.
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A Force More Powerful
They are an example to this cynic that the beauty of people power isn't dead and given the proper impetus we freedom and tolerance lovers as a great people still possess a wealth of untapped power even as corporate hegemony toils to wear us down and divide us.
In the years to come we musn't forget the ties that bind us and the strength we can wield as a group against the forces of oppression everywhere.
Are we on the cusp of great changes in our wicked world? Millions march in America to assert the rights of immigrants. Tends of thousands march in Bangkok forcing a fascist thief of a Prime Minister to step down without a shot being fired. Silvio Berlusconi looks as if he may be getting the boot. French students and workers dig their heels in to secure their standards of living.
Perhaps there is a way to channel all of this momentum into bigger and more important victories. What's the next step?
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wonderful...
"Millions march in America to assert the rights of immigrants."
Millions of people who decide to simply ignore the law march to demand rewards for having broken the law and demand the ability to put poor, uneducated American black men out of what little work they have available to them.
"Tends of thousands march in Bangkok forcing a fascist thief of a Prime Minister to step down without a shot being fired."
Thaksin steps down and another member of his inner circle is likely to step in instead.
"Silvio Berlusconi looks as if he may be getting the boot."
Berlusconi is likely to win these elections, and even if he doesn't, he has the support of nearly half the country. The election is too close to call - hardly a landslide victory for the left.
"French students and workers dig their heels in to secure their standards of living."
French students march to reject laws that would reduce the 20% unemployment rate among young workers (as opposed to the 9% rate among the general population).
Yeah...quite a string of victories!
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Berlusconi
Liberal Avenger, the Italian election currently stands at 49.8% against 49.7% very slightly in favor of the left and still depending on more votes to be counted. I would hardly call that a harbinger of the new liberal world.
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Don't Miss the Point Here, Folks...
The big news here is that people with something to lose the world over are starting to stand up to the fascist corporate conspriators with voices too loud for even the co-opted MSM to ignore... it would have to start with them - the sheeple in their SUVs and Hummers won't feel the oppression until they can't afford some useless, demand-created trinket that currently decorates their consumerist lives... or their kids start to get drafted (note how the imperialists know better than to put the draft back on the table, despite the dangerously depleted state of our military - the only lesson they seem to remember from Vietnam).
Or as a wise student of history once said: "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
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bgrasso
bgrasso, your post makes no sense. Can you please be a little more clear as to what exactly you are talking about?
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Perhaps, someone will explain it to me....?
Why do the immigration "rights" of people who have the luxury of being geographically close to the United States trump the "rights" of people who live further away, like Asia, Europe, Africa, etc who MUST pay through the nose, jump through various hoops, and basically follow the law of the land in order to have the privilege of living in the United States? That's what those who keep spouting the inane "We're ALL immigrants" bullshit simply don't understand. It's not just about racist nativism; it's also about creating a two tier immigration system where some are forced to obey the law while others are "forgiven" because of America's insatiable need for slave labor. (Yes, that's EXACTLY what it is. Illegal immigrants would have more rights IF they became citizens legally than as undocumented workers OR guest workers.) So, I find myself in an unenviable position of being a daughter of a Japanese legal immigrants, who finds the mass rallies repulsive, not because I do not have sympathy for those immigrants who just want to make a better life for themselves as my parents did, but because of their apparently willing complicity in their own exploitation, and their inability to see how their status effectively short-circuits their ability to demand higher wages, which in turn, undermines the labor rights of native Americans who fought and died to succor a living wage. It's not so much that illegals will do the work that Americans WON'T do; it's that illegals will do the work for far less money than an American citizen can subsist on. It's far more interesting to me to see anti-globalization liberals stumble over the vastly more complicated consequences of globalization on our own shores than listen to all the canned PC bullshit spouted on the daily news. Let's all thumb through our Chomsky readers, shall we?
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What bgrasso May Have Been Saying...
I think, Anonymous, that the "point" bgrasso is trying to make (if you were seriously inquiring) is that there is now unrest present in the masses (as versus the "captains" of industry and other privileged classes) sufficient to generate actions that result in their coverage by the so-called mainstream media. Their other, corollary point here being that these same, self-satisfied Americans will be insufficiently motivated to demand change in our "present situation" unless their lives are sufficiently impacted.
In other words, bgrasso's point seemed to be to me that there is something bigger going on here than meets the eye. I remain unconvinced of this, at least in this particular instance, given that what is now worshipped in this country is MONEY and the endless pursuit of it, and not the liberty our founding father fought and died for. I believe these "protesters" are motivated primarily by economic reasons, as in, you've got yours--I want mine!