Cinco de Mayo celebration. Photo: Creative Commons/vpickering.

Crossposted from Colorlines.com

by Roberto Lovato

Back in the late 70′s and 80′s, when most white people didn’t feel safe in predominantly Latino neighborhoods like San Francisco’s Mission district (or inner cities, for that matter), summer started with Cinco de Mayo. Tiny, hyper-local street fairs where Mexican restaurants, crowds of happy, loud brown people and lamb chop-sideburned Santana-wannabe garage bands filled the air with cultural and political electricity. It went largely unnoticed outside of the Latino neighborhood, what used to be called El Barrio.

Cinco de Mayo’s mix – live salsa, mariachi and rock Latino music; sometimes-inspired English and Spanish-language political speeches and volanteando (flyering) – provided the soft cultural cushion for generations of citizens and non-citizens dropped by the American Dream. And none but the cigarette smoking Marxista even knew or spoke about May Day, the International Workers Day rallies that filled cities around the country this past weekend.

Thirty years, millions of mobile devices and a massive wave of migration later, Latinos have largely forgotten the meaning of Cinco de Mayo. There’s still considerable color, music and even some inspiration among attendees at Cinco de Mayo events, but the electricity of the events has been heavily doused by beer promoters trying to capture Latina hearts and minds and by military recruiters desperate for young Latino bodies. With notable exceptions among the more thoughtful Cinco de Mayo organizers around the country, event organizers no longer tell us that we’re celebrating the victory of the badly-equipped, but inspired Mexican guerrilla army that fought and defeated the far better-equipped forces of Napoleon III’s decaying French Empire. Cinco de Mayo’s loss of electricity has itself become a Latino-”American” sign of imperial malaise.

Instead, our electricidad has migrated to Primero de Mayo (May Day). Born in the U.S., after immigrant and other workers protesting in Chicago’s Haymarket Square were killed by police in the late 19th century, Primero de Mayo was, until very recently, a largely forgotten commie affair. Today, Latino workers, specifically immigrant workers, march against the militarized immigration forces of President Obama, and these workers are powering May Day back to relevance in a decaying empire that tries to border itself off from the rest of the working world by celebrating “Labor Day” in September. The day connects us to people marching throughout the hemisphere and the entire world; it previews and makes palpable the bottom-up borderlessness that is the only salvation for this extremely troubled planet.

A Kansas politician has “joked” about gunning down “illegal immigrants” (read: Mexicans) like animals. The naked prejudice of such a quip and the irresponsibility of it issuing from the lips of an elected official are mind-boggling.

Kansas GOPer: Let’s Shoot Illegal Immigrants Like Pigs | TPMDC

Kansas State Rep. Virgil Peck (R) suggested Monday that the best way to deal with the illegal immigration problem may be the same way the state might deal with the problem of “feral hogs” — by shooting them from a helicopter. [MORE]

Not to distract us from the appalling anti-Mexican and anti-Latino racism of this odious pronouncement, but I have to say it: Imagine if a Muslim politician (say, Congressman Keith Ellison) said something this extreme about his own (in some cases quite “feral”) opponents.

Little Rock, 1959. Rally at state capitol, protesting the integration of Central High School.

In April, I was riding the DC Metro to the Capitol Mall, when several Tea Party demonstrators got on and sat a few seats away from me. The first, a young white man, wore red-and-white striped shoes with blue tops and other Uncle Sam garb; the young, white woman with him carried a hand-made sign on which was glued an old document titled “The Constitution” and the words, “Miss me yet?”

Their origins, judging by hair, clothes, accent, and where they got on seemed to be lower middle class church goers. Not rich. Not sophisticates. And not stupid. I wanted to ask the woman, “Which part of the Constitution do you see as lost?” Had she read it all the way through?

Who Are These People?

Who dresses up in red, white, and blue costumes, demonstrates, and now, votes for astonishingly extremist candidates in New York and Delaware? What motivates them?

We hear from investigative reports that the Tea Party is, by and large, a middle class group, including ironically people with jobs in the Department of Defense (never a waste of tax dollars), and nourished behind the scenes by wealthy conservatives like Dick Cheney and his daughter, but it has spread. Looking at those two, I caught a glimpse of a world they probably longed for, a world I grew up in, a place that we, as a country, have been before.

Immigration policy and the Hispanic vote have been a point of contention for Republicans since the beginning of the 21st century. President Bush, to his credit, attempted to pass an immigration policy that would have allowed a guest worker program (and incidentally, broadened the GOP tent), but was stymied by right wing elements in his own party. The strategy was inspired by shifting Congressional demographics and, had Bush succeeded, he might have delivered Republican control of Congress for decades.

Demagogues like Rush Limbaugh who rely on an openly racist base for ratings won the day. The party narrowed and took a sharp turn to the right.

Racial Profiling, by Gary Oliver (golliver@sbcglobal.net)

A judge agrees! “Judge Blocks Key Parts of Immigration Law in Arizona.” Judge Susan Bolton said:

“There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens,” she wrote. “By enforcing this statute, Arizona would impose a ‘distinct, unusual and extraordinary’ burden on legal resident aliens that only the federal government has the authority to impose.”

Also nice to get this email today:

On Eve of Anti-Immigrant Arizona Law Taking Effect, U.S. Faith Leaders Descend on State

Launch Coordinated Weekend of Protest

TODAY at 2 p.m. EDT, religious leaders from across the country, all of whom are in Arizona to protest SB-1070– the anti-immigrant law there, will hold a telephone press conference to denounce the law, which is scheduled to go into effect on Thursday, and unveil their weekend of coordinated action to stand against punitive laws that divide families and communities. These faith leaders will stand alongside hundreds of other people of faith who are leading events in several cities as part of the National Weekend of Prayer and Action for Immigrant Justice, coordinated by Interfaith Worker Justice July 29- August 1.

Baldies of the world, unite! We can now go to the People’s Republic of China, even from Taiwan.

Does "bald" equal "dangerous"?

Most men who are genetically “chrome domed” are concerned about how their natural tonsure will affect romantic prospects. It turns out that visa restrictions are a possibly more pressing problem.

Press service AFP reports that the People’s Republic of China has lifted its ban on visas for bald travelers from Taiwan:

The rule imposed by the southern Chinese city of Xiamen barred bald people from applying for one-year multiple-entry permits before it was cancelled earlier this year, according to Taiwan’s Travel Agent Association.

“It would probably have raised the question of discrimination if Chinese customs officials were to ask visitors to remove their wigs,” said Roger Hsu, a spokesman for the association.

This is good but strange news. Good that the cause of equality, non-discrimination, and acceptance of “hair pattern diversity” has been advanced. But strange that such a ban was in place at all. What gives?

Can you recall a time when American athletes have come out in solidarity to support a particular political viewpoint? Indeed, it’s rare when American politics becomes intertwined with sports, and when it does, those events are usually premeditated, oftentimes-brash actions by individuals. However, on May 5, the National Basketball Association’s Phoenix Suns banded together to protest Arizona’s new SB1070 bill in one of the most beautiful political statements in my recent memory, for it simultaneously spoke to immigrants’ rights, political news organizations who could care less about sports (and vice versa), and proponents of the idea of basketball as a “team game,” and perhaps, American government included in that idea.

The irony of the Arizona law (pdf here) outlawing “immigrating-while-poor-and-brown” is that Arizona has 22 federally recognized native American tribes — people who suffered the onslaught of European colonists in successive waves. From the point of view of the First Nations United, Arizona’s law is based on power “established by an immigrant and illegal settler colonialist government, which has consistently relied on the genocide and mistreatment of the original peoples of this continent.”

As the first peoples of this continent, we pose this question to Governor Brewer, Senator Russell Pearce, and law enforcement in the state of Arizona, “Who are you to check for documents?”

Who indeed? If Arizonans start pointing a finger at the new arrivals, they have three fingers pointing back at themselves.

Undocumented migrants have a right to work here because they deserve economic reparations for failed U.S. economic policies and disastrous military interventions.

Hundreds of thousands march for immigration rights in Chicago, May 1, 2006. Credit: Alana Price.

We hardly need another symptom of the spiritual and social bankruptcy of the system, but this new Arizona law targeting and criminalizing undocumented migrants is a good example. You might know that Gov. Jan Brewer signed last week a new law that broadens police power to stop anyone at anytime for virtually any reason simply for looking suspiciously like an undocumented immigrant. It is supposed to take effect in August, but this is unlikely since it is probably unconstitutional and will face a barrage of court challenges.

This Saturday, May Day, the traditional day for workers rights, more than 70 cities are planning protests against the law, and boycotts against Arizona are spontaneously spreading — as they should. Mexican taxi cab drivers are apparently refusing to pick up anyone from Arizona, and the Mexican government has issued a travel advisory warning Mexicans of the danger of traveling through Arizona. In California, pressure is growing to join the boycott.

In the midst of this uproar, few are asking one simple question: Why? Why do so many Mexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans enter the U.S. by the most dangerous and expensive route possible?

As I headed into what we hoped would be the last of a long series of hearings, to decide whether our friend would be granted asylum, I wondered what good, if any, our silent witness had been. At each hearing at least six of us sat in the back, listening to testimony, watching exhibits argued over by our friend’s attorney and the attorney for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)… Did it make any difference for us to be there, other than providing support for our friend?

Think back to the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign.

One of the issues that generated a lot of heat was the immigration debate. While the debate touched on several other issues, such as unemployment and national identity, at its heart the debate centered on this: the rights of those who were not U.S. citizens but live within its borders, or of those who do live outside its borders and are trying to get in. After all, borders are there to establish who’s in and who’s out, right?

Now, fast forward nearly almost one year. Now, in the last quarter of 2009, the immigration debate has taken back seat to another debate: the debate over the global economy and climate change. As a prime example, consider the G-20 summit which took place earlier this year in London, where world leaders tried to figure out how to prop up and even stimulate the global economy without doing further damage to our terrestrial habitat.

If we compare the global economy to the Titanic, the main question that world leaders seem to be asking is not, Who should be allowed to enter the boat?, but rather How can we keep this boat from sinking?

At The Immanent Frame, Richard Amesbury explores the role of denominationalism in the formation of religious identities and configurations of “civic belonging” in the United States:

[...] what is replacing the conception of the United States as a “Christian nation” is not a post-Durkheimian imaginary but an alternative “neo-Durkheimian” one, which portrays America as a religious nation, understood quasi-pluralistically. This difference between the United States and Europe is due not merely to the absence in the U.S. of an established church – a feature often cited by secularization theorists to explain certain religious dimensions of “American exceptionalism” – but to the presence of an alternative ecclesial structure.

“Advertising can be seen as a trope. Its multiple metaphors can sell you ecstasy, joy, something else besides the actual product.” –Beverly Naidus

Click on the picture to explore Beverly Naidus' series "What Kinda Name Is That?"

The work of artist Beverly Naidus takes many forms. She is an accomplished site-specific installation artist and painter. But it is her work in a medium referred to as “culture-jamming” that has brought her to our attention at Tikkun. Editor’s Note: to see more of Naidus’ work, visit Tikkun Daily’s art gallery, which is currently featuring Naidus’ series “What Kinda Name Is That?”

In Naidus’ words, “Culture Jamming is an aesthetic which transforms an image from popular culture, in this case an advertisement, so that it breaks the trance of the image; acts as an antidote to that trope.”

A trope is something akin to a metaphor. In Naidus’ view that is advertising’s essential nature. An advertisement is a thing that means another thing.

In her series “What kind of name is that?” Naidus manipulates mid-20^th Century advertising imagery by photo-altering the images then adding original text from a narrative she created from her own experience as the progeny of immigrants.

“One of the things that interested me in particular about the images in these advertisements was that they weren’t only about a particular product that a consumer might wish to purchase. They had to do with what being an American is.

Every time a journalist refers to “post-racial America” and our “post-racial age,” a wave of anger and sadness hits me. How can they say the United States has moved beyond race in this age of anti-immigrant violence, racial profiling, residential segregation, school funding disparities, and the mass incarceration of black and Latino men?

We aren’t going to make any progress in fighting racism if we aren’t able to acknowledge that it continues to exist on both the interpersonal level and the structural level.

Overt, interpersonal racism is on the decline in many places, but it’s far from dead. At a recent Netroots Nation panel on this topic, blogger Annabel Park shared the following video about anti-immigrant organizing in Manassas, Virginia. I’m worried that overtly hate-filled scenes like this may increasingly erupt across the country as demographics shift and white folks find themselves suddenly in the minority in certain areas. Please share this video with anyone who thinks this kind of racism never happens anymore:

Donna Schaper sent us this rumination on the way we liberals are dealing with right and wrong over the Gates Crowley affair, or Gatesgate as people are having fun with calling it on the web. Donna writes “When anti-racists figure out how to have less fun with this story, we could begin the business of opening doors.” She also says, in her self-deprecating and visionary way, “When I figure out how to stop hating Lou Dobbs for the hate he promulgates, we will have found our way through the door of the house we’d like to live in.” (Note: Valerie Elverton-Dixon also wrote on this here last week)

Opening Doors

by Rev. Donna Schaper

For many people, God is not still speaking. God is still spanking. Setting up too high a bar. Telling us we are bad. God is still sneering. You are bad. Racism…..needs a spanking. People don’t.

Finding a way beyond racism is a lot like standing on your own front porch trying to make the key turn in the lock. Someone must be to blame because the key isn’t working. Perhaps it is I? Others look on, wondering if you really belong in that home. Maybe you don’t. The beat of the mastering narrative goes on, owning us when really should own it. The master narrative: right and wrong. Me right, you wrong. You right, me wrong. This story is as spacious as any plantation. It also pays out the same wages in oppression, self-loathing, and planter power. Blame is its game and blame is its name.

When Henry Louis Gates, Jr., an African American Harvard professor, was arrested after pushing his way into his own house, small became large. The nation remembered racism.