Arizona anti-immigrant law spurs nationwide protests
2010George Shriver 2010-05Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 1 →
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VOL. 28, NO. 5, MAY 2010 WWW.SOCIALISTACTION.ORG U.S. / CANADA $1 TUCSON, Ariz.—A huge wave of protest has risen up against Arizona’s new anti-immigrant law, SB (Senate Bill) 1070, which in effect legalizes racial profiling. A number of cities, among them San Francisco and Los Angeles, are considering calls for boycotting Arizona. In Chicago, immigrant-rights groups picketed a major baseball park, Wrigley Field, where the Arizona Diamondbacks ball team was playing. Reports are coming in of students and researchers withdrawing from the University of Arizona.
Many Mexican businesses that engage in cross-border commerce say they will no longer do business with or in Arizona. The Mexican government condemned the law, and other Latin American and Caribbean governments can be expected to do likewise.
As many as 20,000 protesters attended a May 1 rally in Tucson against SB 1070. A number of Chicanos and Chicanas carried signs defying the threat of racial profiling, proclaiming themselves “Brown and Proud.” On the front of one woman’s T-shirt was emblazoned, “I am Mexican and I’m perfect as I am.”
Noted singer Linda Ronstadt, a Tucson native, told the rally that the Arizona state legislature has been hijacked by the extreme right wing. Some demonstrators carried signs likening Republican Governor Jan Brewer, who signed SB 1070 on April 23, to Hitler. One huge sign said, “What Next? The Final Solution?”
Many have drawn the parallel with events in the late 1980s, when an extreme rightist and racist who managed to become governor of Arizona canceled the Martin Luther King Day holiday. A nationwide boycott of Arizona at that time helped to reverse the governor’s action, and we have been celebrating Martin Luther King Day every year in Arizona since then.
Our demand now must be to rescind and abolish this racist law. Some belated attempts to tone down the law and conceal its racist essence are too little and too late. Obama backs Schumer “blueprint”
This Arizona law comes at a complex moment for the immigrant rights movement nationally. The Obama administration, on this issue as on others, is loyally seeking to carry out the agenda of the giant U.S. corporations and financial interests—which want to control workers and subject them to maximum exploimunities in Action (ICA) in a statement issued on April 27, with the following headline: “Arizona’s Law Should Not Be a Call for Schumer’s ‘Comprehensive Immigration Reform’ Blueprint.”
The ICA statement quoted Sen. Schumer, who said: “We believe our blueprint is even stronger than the Arizona senators’ proposal in stopping the flow of illegal immigrants because our plan both increases border security and prevents employers from hiring illegal immigrants.” So Schumer simply claims to “out-Arizona” Arizona.
Obama was subtler but in essence said the same thing. Within days after Arizona Gov. Brewer’s April 23 signTony Savino / Socialist Action (Above) Demonstrators at May 1 rally in New York City protest Arizona anti-immigrant law.
ing of the new police-state law, Obama was quoted as follows by the “Democracy Now” TV and radio news program (see www.democracynow.org): “Indeed our failure to act responsibly at the federal level will only open the door to irresponsibility by others. And that includes, for example, the recent efforts in Arizona, which threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness (continued on page 5, in “Debt crisis in Greece, Wall Street corruption rock capitalist markets”)
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Towards a ‘left-right’ antiwar coalition? See page 6.