It's Time to Boycott Arizona

[Nat]

As a person who doesn't live in Arizona, SB1070 is concerning to me because

1. I live in Texas and if Arizona gets away with this sort of blatant, threatening and harmful discrimination, it's likely to spread.

2. I'm invested in this country's purported protection of civil rights, and Arizona's violation of those rights threatens the future of this country.

3. I am a human being and I care about human beings who are being violated, threatened and harmed by the government. It's not okay with me, and I don't know why it would be okay with anybody else either.

I understand why Latinos would be leaving Arizona, and I do hope Arizona suffers for the loss. I think I would leave too, because I would feel threatened, isolated, afraid and at risk.

To pick up and leave your home - it's a big deal. It's expensive, it's destabilizing. It means losing connections, support, friendships. For a person to feel the need to move, to uproot their family, to quit jobs in this terrible economy, in order to escape state-sanctioned racial discrimination - these people are making great sacrifices - not simply protesting something they disagree with. It's tragedy due to state-sponsored injustice, not simply protest.

If Texas experiences a mass exodus of Latinos due to a similar law, it won't be Texas anymore to me.

When people who have privilege stand by silently and shrug their shoulders when things like this happen to people with less privilege, they are lending their tacit agreement to these laws - which is all that's needed to turn this country into a much uglier place. I don't understand how any person could defend SB1070 or think it's okay that Latinos are leaving the state in droves because their safety is so threatened.

I think it's really ironic that the majority of Americans who talk about the threat of big government are largely the same people (mostly white people) who have no issues with government overstepping its bounds and violating the civil rights of people of color.

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By the way, today's a great day to call your senators and voice your support of the DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) act to help young people at risk of deportation obtain temporary residency and have a chance for conditional permanent residency if they complete two years in the military or two years at a four year institution of higher learning. *

Http://www.senate.gov/general/contac...nators_cfm.cfm

[BullDog]

I already posted this in another thread, but I will post it here because the connection is meaningful to me. Today is the 55th anniversary of the day that Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white person. I am 48 years old. That means people slightly older than me went through a time, particularly in the South, where people of color were supposed to sit in the back of the buses and be segregated on what they could do and where they could go based on race- there were laws on the books (Jim Crow) that supported some of those things. What is happening in Arizona (and elsewhere) reminds me of those times.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by BullDog

I already posted this in another thread, but I will post it here because the connection is meaningful to me. Today is the 55th anniversary of the day that Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white person. I am 48 years old. That means people slightly older than me went through a time, particularly in the South, where people of color were supposed to sit in the back of the buses and be segregated on what they could do and where they could go based on race- there were laws on the books (Jim Crow) that supported some of those things. What is happening in Arizona (and elsewhere) reminds me of those times.

Back when I lived in California, there was a ballot measure to eliminate affirmative action at both the level of state hiring, contracting and education. About a week before the vote, I was on the BART and listening to these two women going back and forth about how they couldn't understand why THEY had to be 'punished' because 'they never owned slaves' and all the other kinds of crap that white people feel justified to say when talking about civil rights and they're not talking about how much they admire Martin Luther King, Jr. When I could stand it no more I turned around, asked if they minded if I added some perspective and said the following:

"All of the following statements are true:

I am the first member of my immediate family to have never spent a day in segregated schooling.
I am the first member of my immediate family to have no memory of using a colored-only bathroom or water fountain (which doesn't mean I never did, just that I was too young to remember it ever happening).
I am the first member of my immediate family to have only lived in an integrated neighborhood.
I am the first member of my family to have never used a library or swimming pool on the 'coloreds-only' day.
I am not yet forty years old."

They were stopped in their tracks because I think they *genuinely* believed the picture of the history of black people in this country they were taught in high school which, more or less, goes like this:

1776 - America is founded. Black people are here but the less said about them the better. Except for Crispus Attucks.

Black people do nothing of much significance nor does anything of much significance happen to us until 1863.

1865 -- Slavery ends at the close of the Civil war
1865 - 1879 or so--Reconstruction. Not a whole lot of note happens here.

1955 -- For no adequately explored reason Rosa Parks refuses to move to the back of the bus.

1963 -- For no adequately explored reason, some preacher named King gives a speech on the Washington Mall. Every white person who will eventually run for public office after 1989 marches with him.

1964 -- Civil rights and voting rights acts pass. The reasons these laws are necessary is left somewhat vague leaving the impression that white people had simply failed to be nice to blacks.

1968 -- Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated.

One thing I'd love to change in this country is to reset our sense of history. I'm only half-joking when I say that for Americans history is like this:

History--anything that happened more than 48 hours ago.
Ancient history -- anything that happened more than a year ago
Antiquity -- anything that happened more than 5 years ago
Lost to the mists of time what no living person can remember -- anything that happened more than 10 years ago
The dinosaurs are the only witnesses -- Anything that happened 20 or more years ago.
You mean there was an Earth then? -- Anything that happened prior to 1970
You mean the Universe existed? -- Anything that happened prior to 1960
The Big Bang -- 1950


We act as if 1960 is a year no living person could remember but that's only 50 years ago.


Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

There were two more points I wanted to make on this subject.

1) A number of posters have suggested that anyone upset about SB 1070 should move to Arizona so that they can vote against the bill. There's only one problem: SB stands for Senate Bill. This was a bill passed by the Arizona legislature not by popular referendum. The critique several of us have leveled at the voters of Arizona has to do with them electing a governor and a number of state representatives who supported the bill and, in doing so, giving their explicit approval of that bill. Which leads to the core point: why on Earth should people not living in Arizona move there when 53.51% of Arizonans didn't bother to vote! The numbers I'm working with aren't something I pulled out of the thin air, those numbers are available on the web.

The numbers I used came from here: http://www.azprogress.org/content/vo...lowest-yuma-co

So it seems to me that the people who should be pushed to the polls aren't those of us who live outside of Arizona and have no interest in relocating but those who live INSIDE Arizona who were comfortable enough with the prospect of Ms Brewer being elected (she was appointed governor when Napolitano left for Washington) that they stayed home. Which is, as has been said a number of times now, a vote for whomever wins by default.

2) This idea that boycotts are bad. If you really believe that then you need to seriously question any reflexive admiration you might express for Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, Jr. The reason why you know the name of Parks is BECAUSE her action of asserting her dignity and being arrested for it, precipitated the Birmingham Bus Boycott. Was the Birmingham Bus Boycott an attempt, as one poster has characterized the Arizona boycott, an attempt to kill the families of Birmingham Bus company workers? Martin Luther King came to national prominence *because* of the boycott. As I said a few days ago, I'm sure that if you had polled the workers and families connected to the Birmingham bus company in 1955 you would have heard that they were opposed to the boycott even if they thought that blacks should be able to sit anywhere. They would have said that there must be some OTHER way to get the bus company to change policy (without actually saying what that might be) and if blacks were just a little more patient one day, in the full measure of time, justice would be had.

While we're on that subject, boycotts and strikes work because business owners want to keep making money. They will change unjust policies or, in this case, lobby the government to do so. If Nevada passes such a law (and I hope that the Nevada legislature will learn from the lesson of Arizona) let them. And let Nevada face a tourism boycott. Nevada's economy rises or falls on tourism and tourism alone. Suck the tourism out and you've sucked all of the oxygen out of the Nevada economy. I think that as hotels in Vegas and Reno saw their bookings dry up and particularly as conferences moved from Vegas to other cities in, say, California or Utah or Oregon that the chamber of commerce would make their displeasure known to the legislature in a heartbeat. The bill wouldn't survive the ink drying.

There is a reason why plutocrats hate strikes and boycotts--they can be *very* effective. I realize that after 40 years of labor being decimated in America, we no longer realize what the Europeans do--that striking is an effective way to get business to behave itself--but perhaps we need to relearn that lesson.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Good lord!!


Why would any Latina/o move to a state where being one makes you a TARGET???

I don't understand your logic on this, the boycott SHOULD put a pinch on a State that is and has been allowing it to happen. They are slowly trying to white wash AWAY our cultures with this bill, their ugly no ethnic studies people NADA!

No one has said:

"die Arizonians die"

Now, should they suffer some consequences? Yes, this law is one step closer to ethic cleansing. That's where the frustration lies for me, how you can not see this is odd to me.

[I'mOneToo]

Who decides the consequences? How severe? For whom?

I'm not saying anyone should suffer. In fact, I am saying no one should suffer. No one should have to feel targeted, or feel fear walking or driving or even being seen. Neither should anyone feel superior to anyone else.

I *do* see the frustration on everyone's part.

The most frustrating thing to me is, if all Latino/a's leave Arizona, and all the people of color leave... then that leaves a white only state. Isn't that ethnic cleansing too? Maybe I'm just seeing that completely wrong?

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

Good lord!!


Why would any Latina/o move to a state where being one makes you a TARGET???

I don't understand your logic on this, the boycott SHOULD put a pinch on a State that is and has been allowing it to happen. They are slowly trying to white wash AWAY our cultures with this bill, their ugly no ethnic studies people NADA!

No one has said:

"die Arizonians die"

Now, should they suffer some consequences? Yes, this law is one step closer to ethic cleansing. That's where the frustration lies for me, how you can not see this is odd to me.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Truth is until all the tentacles of systematic racism or any other ism are deeply embedded in white culture, oppressing POC will NEVER stop. So with that being the case this boycott is a voice, each protest is a voice keeping the fight for equality going.

Nothing when it comes to human and civil rights comes without some battle wounds be they economical or not.

Staying silent only kills us off faster.

[I'mOneToo]

Everything has a price, in the end. No one is advocating to kill anyone off faster than someone else, or to silence any one. At least, not me. I have to go for today, but thanks for your thoughts.

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

Truth is until all the tentacles of systematic racism or any other ism are deeply embedded in white culture, oppressing POC will NEVER stop. So with that being the case this boycott is a voice, each protest is a voice keeping the fight for equality going.

Nothing when it comes to human and civil rights comes without some battle wounds be they economical or not.

Staying silent only kills us off faster.