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

Xicana Nican Tlaca Rising

 

I come from Texas. I am indigenous. I am Xicana. I am Nican Tlaca. We might not remember her indian names any more but Texas was and is holy land.

 

 

The version of American “history” that is socially programmed is one of the most powerful tools of colonialism that persists today. Labels like “immigrant” to describe indigenous peoples across Cemanahuac (the “Americas”) are a great example of the great wasichu crime against our humanity and connection to the earth.

 

– Click through to read more –

 

Source: xicanachronicles.com

nation of immigrants

 

President Obama

President Obama

His words do not apply to about 40% of the nation:

  • Not to Native Americans who were wiped out or driven west.
  • Nor to Black Americans who arrived in chains.
  • Nor to Chinese Americans who were killed or driven out of the western US in the late 1800s.
  • Nor to Mexican Americans deported in the 1930s.
  • Nor to the people whose lands the US took over: Native Americans,Northern Mexicans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, Puerto Ricans, Guamanians, Palauans, Eastern Samoans, Northern Mariana Islanders or Virgin Islanders.
  • Nor, given the perpetual foreigner stereotype, to Asian Americans.
  • Nor to most British or Dutch Americans, who were not immigrants (people who move to a foreign country) but colonists (people who create an offshoot of their mother country). Calling them “immigrants” would mean they joined Native American societies. They were conquerors and invaders, not “immigrants”.

 

– Click through to read more –

 

Source: abagond.wordpress.com

 

All this is why I study the changing policies if (im)migration law. In a country that preaches Freedom and Liberty, it has always been more freedom and more liberty for light skinned people.

 

You can easily see the racism and xenophobia that the U.S. is built on when examining Border politics.