Monica Brown on Dehumanizing Language and the Immigration Debate

 

 

By MONICA BROWN

…Republican Representative Steve King referred to one of First Lady Michelle Obama’s guests as “a deportable.” He tweeted it.

 

When I heard this description of 21 year old Ana Zamora, a hardworking college student and DREAMer, it felt like a blow to the chest. When President Obama enacted his 2012 executive order on immigration, Ana Zamora wrote him a thank you letter. She said, “I am finally a person in the United States…”
Not according to Representative King. To him, she is deportable.

 

– Click through for more –

 

Source: blog.leeandlow.com

Judge awards half-million dollars to man shot by US border patrol agent

 

Border Patrol agents, an FBI investigator and rescue personnel from the Rio Rico Fire District gather along State Route 289 west of Nogales on Nov. 16, 2010, after Border Patrol Agent Abel Canales shot Jesus Castro Romo of Mexico in a nearby canyon area.

 

U.S. Judge James A. Soto has found that a former Border Patrol agent was not justified when he shot and seriously wounded an undocumented border-crosser west of Nogales in 2010, and awarded the victim nearly $500,000 in damages.
Source: www.nogalesinternational.com

 

#LatinoLivesMatter

 

Must See Tweets 2.9 #BLACKLIVESMATTER #NATIVELIVESMATTER

We carry golf clubs, and at least one stave. #WilliamWingate #Seattle pic.twitter.com/DrGPMq2gi8 — MaxWelp (@local_maxima) February 7, 2015

Watch: Little children apologize for terrorism http://t.co/JsNyTixfYT — Asma ™ (@asooma) February 7, 2015

“First Amendment Area” brought to u by #Ferguson PD coming to a town near u pic via @HyperboleJ pic.twitter.com/5Yw13EFTYk — Bassem Masri (@bassem_masri) …

– Click through for more –

Source: oppressionmonitor.us

Santa Barbara News-Press, Drop the I-Word!

 

Presente is joining efforts with Stop Biased and Irresponsible Journalism in SB and Chipsterlife to demand that the Santa Barbara News-Press apologize and eliminate the use of the “I-word.” We need to take a stand to let the Santa Barbara News-Press know that offensive and racist language has no place in California’s journalism.


Will you sign this petition demanding Santa Barbara News-Press publisher Wendy McCaw drop the I-word and apologize?

 

Source: act.presente.org

 

Also see Color Line’s Drop the i-Word campaign

 

Checkpoint Refusal Gone Horribly Wrong: Man Detained for 19 Days for Flexing His Rights [VIDEO]

 

You’ve probably seen them before: internal border checkpoint refusals, now a popular YouTube genre. Some are funny. Others are hostile. But for Greg Rosenberg, a naturalized U.S. citizen who speaks accented English, an encounter with South Texas border patrol resulted in weeks of jail time without a single charge being prosecuted.

 

– Click through for [VIDEO] –

 

Source: thefreethoughtproject.com

The Stories of Immigration to Chicago

Immigrants learned that to survive and prosper in a hostile urban environment of unleashed capital, they needed to stick together. Mutual aid societies and houses of worship provided support and kept their histories and languages alive. The strong communal bonds that could in effect relocate a European village to a single tenement are evident today in many of Chicago’s neighborhoods. While the points of origin may have changed over the years, Chicago continues to welcome a significant immigrant population.


Decades of Immigrants
Examine Chicago’s top immigrant groups decade by decade, in U.S. Census data from 1850 until 1990. Each year highlights a different country of origin from the top five immigrant groups of that year.

1850 (France)
1860 (Scotland)
1870 (Norway)
1880 (Ireland)
1890 (England)
1900 (Bohemia)
1910 (Austria)
1920 (Russia)
1930 (Germany)
1940 (Sweden)
1950 (Poland)
1960 (Italy)
1970 (Mexico)
1980 (Philippines)
1990 (Korea)




Source: www.pbs.org

The use of the word ‘lure‘ in the image above without mentioning that (im)migration is a such a big decision that to imply that a whole group (im)migrates because of only one reason seems troublesome. 

(im)migration involves both push and pull factors. People will often be prompted to leave their country because of a push factor (war, economy, environment), then they choose which country to go to for it’s pull factor (liberal immigration policy, availability of jobs and availability of freedoms). 

Although interesting, many of these synopses are so oversimplified as to be misleading. 

CNN calls dead refugee ‘illegal’

CNN has no heart.

This person who died while fleeing or (im)migrating, CNN calls him ‘illegal’.

  1. No human is illegal
  2. Is the action of fleeing as a refugee an illegal act? No.
  3. When Black or Latino people flee as refugees they are called ‘illegal
  4. When White people flee as refugees they are called pilgrims, settlers or immigrants.

Refugee

Photo from CNN 2014: The year in pictures

settler colonialism

 

Settler colonialism is the process where a country or people creates an offshoot of itself in a new land. Countries like the United States, Australia, Liberia and Israel were created by settler colonialism. Countries like Haiti, Nigeria and Iraq, on the other hand, were created by extractive colonialism.

Settler colonialism, says Andrea Smith, is one of the three pillars of White supremacy in the US, the other two being anti-Black racism and Orientalism.


In extractive colonialism
 there are two main parts:

  • metropole – the country that rules an empire;
  • periphery – the countries it has power over.

Metropolitans extract wealth from the native peoples and lands of the periphery. Wealth flows from the periphery to the metropole. Metropolitans may work for a time in the periphery – as soldiers, slave traders, priests or plantation owners, for example – but consider the metropole their homeland.


In settler colonialism
 a third element is added: settlers. They move from the metropole to the periphery to create a new homeland. The Pilgrims are a good example. In the long run they cause trouble for both natives and the metropole as they gain land, wealth and sovereignty.


Settlers and natives:
 Settlers are not mainly interested in ruling over natives or joining their society or even in making them slaves. They want their land and therefore want them to disappear by any means necessary, even genocide. To replace natives they bring in:


Cheap labour:
 Convicts, slaves, refugees, immigrants, contract labourers, etc. These people serve settler society, becoming part of it in time, sometimes a racialized part. Unlike settlers, they do not create homelands of their own. Sometimes they are forced out.

 

– Click through to read more –

 

Source: abagond.wordpress.com