Unclassified Media Project

Video courtesy of The Unclassified Media Project, via Crooks and Liars.

And don’t forget to visit these other great sites:

• atrios.blogspot.com
• commondreams.org
• crooksandliars.com
• dailykos.com
• firedoglake.com
• glenngreenwald.blogspot.com
• huffingtonpost.com
• mydd.com
• rawstory.com
• tompaine.com
• unclassifiedmedia.blogspot.com

Tying the Thread of American Social Progress

It’s incredibly moving and great to see how when one is cognizant of our nation’s history the thread of social progress is readily visible; thus, one can see how at different times, for various reasons, different communities have broadened our understanding of American citizenship and thereby expanded the universe of the phrase, “We the People.”

Van Jones, over that the HuffingtonPost.com, writes:

At this week’s "Dia Sin Inmigrantes/Day Without Immigrants" march in San Francisco, I saw a beautiful, exciting and hopeful vision of the future of this country.

I also caught a glimpse of a familiar past, fading away. And I shed a few tears for both.

From the moment I climbed aboard the BART subway cars Monday morning, I knew this May Day march and rally would differ from the Bay Area’s usual protest fare.
The trains headed into downtown San Francisco were filled with working-class Latinos, all wearing white; most had kids in tow.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF RALLY

There were few protest signs or banners. But the stars and stripes were everywhere. One tyke on my train kept trying to poke his cousin with a little American flag.

Some of the teeniest kids were wearing their older sibling’s white Tees – with their shirt hems hanging down past their knees. The children were all well-scrubbed and happy … and very proud.

So were their parents. They knew they were part of something new, and big, and promising.

The bright mood contrasted starkly with the dreary atmosphere that chokes most protests nowadays. On this march, I saw no resigned shuffling of already-defeated feet. No sea of scowls. No pierced tongues, screaming. Nor could I spy a single person dragging behind her the weighty conviction that resistance – though obligatory – was futile.

To the contrary. Beaming, brown-skinned families walked off those trains with their heads held high. Sure, they may have been poor, facing tough challenges in the near term. But they stepped like they were marching into a future of limitless promise and potential.

[...]

Deep inside, I was grieving for my own people. I wished that my beloved African-American community had managed – somehow – to retain our own sparkling sense of faith in a magnificent future. There was once a time when we, too, marched forward together – filled with utter confidence in the new day dawning. There was a time when we, too, believed that America’s tomorrow held something bright for us … and for our children.

[...]

By simply standing up for their own kids and grandparents – for their own dignity and futures – activist Latinos today are pulling the nation to a higher level of fairness and inclusion.

They are posing a simple and devastating question: should U.S. society continue to profit from the labor of 11 million people – many of whom pick our fruit, nurse our children, clean our workplaces – without embracing them fully, without honoring their work, without extending to them the same rights and respect we would want for ourselves?

Can we countenance or tolerate a Jim Crow system – in brown-face – with a shunned tier of second-class workers, enriching society but lacking legal status and protections?

Or are we willing to change our laws – and change our hearts – to embrace those upon whom our economy has come to rest? This is a simple moral challenge. The right answers are not easy, but they are obvious.

I know that there will be a backlash (there always is when people push for fairness), even coming from some Black folks. But I also know that the Latino-led struggle for justice and inclusion offers hope to all of us. A national conversation about the true meaning of dignity, equality, opportunity and fair play in the modern economy can ultimately benefit every American community.

I am confident that it will. Because during the two prior centuries, it was the African-American community that performed this service for the country. And we paid a high and awful cost in blood and martyrs. Unfortunately, we did not achieve all of our aims. But we did tear apartheid from the pages of U.S. law books.

And in the course of that struggle, we did improve the lot of all Americans – expanding social programs, democratic rights and social tolerance for all people. And our efforts opened the doors for today’s equality struggles. Our marching feet moved the whole nation forward.

The entire piece is incredibly moving, I urge you to read it and, if so inclined, leave note of appreciation over at the HuffingPost.com blog.

Immigration, Xenophobes and Conservative Reactionaries

This is what I love about America, that we’ve always been a nation in flux. One wave after another has come in to disrupt and unnerve the entrenched locals; thus, in each passing making us better, stronger, more diverse and the envy of the world. And this, this fact, that we’ve always been in flux, is often forgotten by the xenophobes and reactionaries of every generation that raise up in the way of progress. Just as the xenophobes of the past did, today’s xenophobic/conservative reactionaries are alarmed and shocked at how today’s immigrants are asserting their presence in our country.

Of course, these xenophobes and conservative reactionaries conveniently forget that its always been thus: a new wave of immigrants asserts their presence and petition for greater integration, the xenophobes get all flustered and demand that the "invaders" be turned back and that walls be erected. Many generations later, current xenophobes and conservative reactionaries marvel and praise the contribution of the immigrants of yesteryear, and can often be found savoring the fruits of earlier waves of immigrants. These same reactionaries take the influence of immigrants from years past for granted, not even questioning how Little Italy or China Town in New York City ended being part of the fabric of that great American city. And let’s not forget the influence of the Irish in Boston; the Scandinavians in the upper mid-west or the French in Louisiana.

As it has occurred many times in the past, a simple post on Billmon.org brilliantly put the above in clear relief in my mind:

Immigrants and their supporters were gathering in cities across the country today for demonstrations and an economic boycott intended to show the impact the workers have on the nation’s economy . . .The demonstrations took many forms and included people from a disparate number of countries, many of them in Latin America, but also from Asia and other parts of the world."
New York Times
Nationwide Immigrant Rallies Are Under Way
May 1, 2006

 

It was a wonderful strike, the most significant strike, the greatest strike that has ever been carried on in this country or any other country. And the most significant part of that strike was that it was a democracy. The strikers had a committee of 56, representing 27 different languages.
Big Bill Haywood
Description of the 1912
Lawrence millworkers strike

Washington Post Stenographers

Leave it to the miserable establishment media to predictably rely on their out-of-the-box, already-assembled "objective journalism" artifact as a tool of covering any story, that is: weighing opposing arguments as if they merited the same factual standing, and thereby failing to inform the public.

This Washington Post article presents just one more example of how, by resorting on the "he said, she said" story covering ploy, these so-called liberal media stenographers (posing as journalists) misinform and often provide cover to the conservative/republican frame of reference. Incredulously, the Washington Post stenographer (see Steven Colbert’s comment on the media, "He’s the decider, he announces the decisions, and you type them up and report") begins with:

While a series of marches focused much of the nation’s attention on the plight of illegal immigrants, scores of other Americans quietly seethed. Now, with the same full-throated cry expressed by those in the country illegally, they are shouting back.

Let’s read that second sentence again: [W]ith the same full-throated cry expressed by those in the country illegally, [opponents of undocumented immigrants] are shouting back. This sentence is laughable and deserving of my contempt. Seriously. Let’s consider what the pro-citizenship rallies that I and other American citizens, including documented and undocumented immigrants, looked like (from the LA Times, see here and here) and let us just imagine what it must have sounded like (click for more):

Yet, according to this Washington Post stenographer, the hundreds of thousands — if not millions — that marched all across America on May 1st, 2006, merit the same factual weight as the immigrant opponents that. The WP stenographer writes:

Congressional leaders in Washington have gotten bricks in the mail from a group that advocates building a border fence…

[...]

[S]trong sentiment was heard across the country, on a radio program in Los Angeles, where talk-show hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou encouraged listeners to participate in a "Great American Spend-a-Lot" to offset the effect of the boycott. They vowed to reimburse listeners picked in a drawing.

In the Washington area, African American radio listeners kept bringing up the immigration issue as Leila McDowell, a guest host on the Joe Madison show, tried to discuss abuse of black and Latino workers at a North Carolina meat-processing plant.

"I would say that the majority of comments were hostile, but it wasn’t an overwhelming majority," said McDowell.

So, some anecdotal evidence, where we don’t even know the number of bricks that were mailed to the congress person, nor the number of callers to the show, is somehow factually the same as hundreds of thousands of people petitioning to become full members of our society? How does that make any reasonable sense? Fuck if I know, but in the mind of these WP stenographers, am sure it does. And then there’s this gem:

[Anti-immigrant opponents were] particularly disturbed by Monday’s boycott and civil action, attended in large part by people who entered the country illegally and are now demanding rights enjoyed by U.S.-born citizens and immigrants who entered the country legally.

I simply can’t believe that am reading that on a so-called paper of record, such as the Washington Post. How in hell can these stenographers quantify that "in large part" the rallies across America were attended by people that "entered the country illegally." Did these poor excuses of so-called journalists, er, stenographers, take a poll? Did they conduct a random sample? How in hell can they make the claim that the rallies were attended in large part by people that entered the country illegally? Man, that is seriously shameful.

And, finally, there’s this:

In Kansas City, Mo., Joyce Mucci, the executive director of the Mid-America Immigration Reform Coalition, said she didn’t see much impact from the march in her city.

"Frankly I think they’re overplaying their hand," she said, adding, "I think people who may have been sitting on the fence are not sitting on the fence anymore. These marches are not helping the people they’re intending to help."

First, Joyce Mucci’s statement is clear speculation on her part; yet, the article treats her opinion as supporting evidence to make the case that the pro-citizenship rallies have somehow backfired and that they’ll have no impact on the immigration debate — this only a day after the marches, of course. Moreover, the WP stenographers fail to mention that Joyce Mucci’s organization supports the legislation that the pro-citizenship march organizers are rallying against — see this message board posting announcing an anti-immigration rally and this USA Today article that mentions Joyce Mucci.

If these WP stenographers were practicing something other than so-called journalism, they would’ve left themselves wide open to malpractice suits for failing to do their job.