Human Rights

Don't have much to add to this except I am also a straight man from a family of straight folks who support Marriage Equality and just don't get this whole homophobic anti-gay marriage movement:

What I don't understand is how two consenting adults loving each other threatens anyone else? My marriage isn't threatened if gays can marry!

Denying due process to people without US citizenship, residency papers, green cards or a visa is becoming a business racket for private prisons and private security (aka paramilitary) companies.

The more people are thrown into those jails, the more money the concentration camps make.

Welcome to the new American economy.

h/t American Humanity

ON JULY FIFTEEN OF 2008, Rhode Island Republican Governor Donald L. Carcieri signed an executive "Illegal Immigration Control Order" [pdf] into law. It begins with some storytelling.

WHEREAS, most Rhode Islanders and most Americans are descendants of immigrants from all regions of the world

Stop. Most are, true. And you know who aren't "descendants of immigrants from all regions of the world"?

Mexicans, for one. We are not "immigrants" on this land. We are Indians who have been invaded and occupied (just as Iraq has) by Imperialist Euro-forces, and who eventually blended with our greedy, self-justifying, resource-thirsting overlords by means of rape, occupation, an eventual perverse desire to blend and be like the rulers, and in time simply because we've all been living on the same land since then.

Not immigrants. Indians. People indigenous to the continent long before map lines were drawn by invading forces.

Farmers. Workers. Campesinos. For the longest time, we (this is how my nanita and abuelo made their living with my father) have been migrating farmers on this land, for thousands of years we have been quien lo trabajo esta tierra. And for all this time, we have been moving about with the seasons and the flow, just like rivers, just like pollen, just like water through the soil.

It was los perfumados with their WHEREAS clauses who blew in here with butchery and deception and greed and now want to tell stories about opportunity and ownership.

MMMM! DO YOU SMELL WHAT NEZUA'S COOKIN'? It's the flava of the voting week, and that flava is currently simmering and spiceh!!! It may fade in a few, but for now, that flavor is Obama and McCain's Concern for Latin@ Issues. It also means that the "Left Blogosphere" or the "Liberal Blogosphere" is alight with talk of Immigration! Of course too much of this talk is related to electoral possibilities bereft of a moral context, and on the part of the candidates is frankly quite vague or rearrangeable from moment to moment.

WASHINGTON -- In a new ad targeted at the battleground states of the West, John McCain presents himself as a champion of Latino immigrants, making particular effort to highlight his differences with other members of his party on the issue.

It is a message that threatens to disrupt the delicate balance McCain had sought on the issue by simultaneously defending of the contributions of illegal immigrants to American life while demanding secure borders to prevent the arrival of new ones.

"So let's from time to time remember that these are God's children. They must come into the country legally, but they have enriched our culture and our nation as every generation of immigrants before them," McCain says in a clip from a Republican-primary debate in June 2007 in which he celebrated the sacrifice of Latinos, including those not yet citizens, to the US military.

—McCain goes west with pro-immigration ad

It's rather moving, eh? Especially given how lately he has been pushing the security-laser-fence-raid-detainment-punishment aspect of the issue. But you know. "Maverix" are people who say, quite honestly and from the belly, whatever they think will increase their popularity.

And we know Obama cares, right?

The American people are a welcoming and generous people. But those who enter our country illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law. And because we live in an age where terrorists are challenging our borders, we simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked. Americans are right to demand better border security and better enforcement of the immigration laws.

—Floor Statement of Senator Barack Obama on Immigration Reform

Oh wait, wrong quote! Sorry. Here we go.

The time to fix our broken immigration system is now. It is critical that as we embark on this enormous venture to update our immigration system, it is fully reflective of the powerful tradition of immigration in this country and fully reflective of our values and ideals.”

—[Obama Statement in U.S. Senate, 5/23/07] (PDF)

Good.

This is why The Sanctuary has created a survey of very specific questions through which the candidates (and we don't mean just Democrats and Republicans) can flesh out just what these very noble phrases mean in the context of some issues that are pressing, not only to Latin@s, but to those concerned with Human Rights.

Barack Obama was there on 1 May 2006. Will you join in on 2008?

AfterDowningStreet.org has an amazing historical overview on why tomorrow there will be massive demonstrations and labor union strikes all across the country : 122 years of the 8 hour week and end of child labor, 5 years of "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, 3 years since the discovery of the Downing Street Minutes, 2 years since the nation-wide immigration rallies of 2006, almost 2 years ago when Nanci Pelosi and Democrats in Congress and the Senate took the impeachment of George Bush for misleading the country to war, "off the table". Yet in one of the most mindboggling examples of the Bush Administration's information war against Americans, May 1st has been declared Loyalty Day.

And here's the thing : You and I know that when it comes down to it, the war against immigrants is a war against labor which is part of a larger attack from the only people who benefit from the other kind of corporate-led violence like the occupation of Iraq.

As my friend Roberto Lovato said earlier, paraphrasing ActUP, "Silence = Death". If you are like me, you hate marches but you go to them because you know that as a symbol of solidarity in dissent you need to go.

So dust off your walking shoes and get your arse to the streets and square.

Iowa Rep. Steve King recently made news insulting blacks and Muslims in one little hate-filled speech.

But this isn't anything new. Steve King, a man who supports no-bid contracts for Halliburton but was one of only 11 Congressmen who voted AGAINST aid to Katrina victims, has a long record of intolerance and advocay of human rights abuse. Here's some footage of Steve King on the floor of Congress advocating...well, human rights abuses (thanks to Kingwatch.org):

According to King we should treat people like livestock. Just how far does he want to take that? How far does his confusion between humans and livestock go?

So these are Republican "values?" I say Feh!

Israel is often portrayed by its detractors as excessively dominated by its fundamentalist extremes. Of course this ignores the fact that most Israelis are more secular than most Americans. But it also ignores the fact that even among the more orthodox Jews, practical considerations can trump ideology. Some time back I wrote about a program on TLC called "Shalom in the Home," where an orthodox Rabbi, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, goes around the country doing family counseling, often with considerable success, even among the goyim (non-Jews).

One of the last episodes aired was a very daring one where the Rabbi counseled a lesbian couple in my own neighborhood (Park Slope). I reviewed that episode here. The couple had adopted a child and were having problems. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach used the program to advocate for tolerance, insisting that whatever his personal views were regarding gays, the family he was counseling WAS a family and deserved just as much consideration as a family whose lifestyle he might be more approving of. Love and the needs of the child were the primary concern, not ideology.

But that is one Rabbi and an American one at that. Yet Israel, despite the influence of ultra-Orthodox political parties, in many ways remains more secular than America has ever been.

Today the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that the Interior Ministry must recognise both members of a lesbian couple as the mothers of a baby.

The crackdown in Burma continues while Chevron continues to make huge profits and while much of the world quietly shakes its collective head and says, "tsk, tsk."

Everyone is waggling their finger at the Burmese dictators, but as democracy is ONCE AGAIN crushed by those who refused to allow Burma's properly elected president take control very little effective is being done.

Here is the latest from UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari (from BBC News):

UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari has described as "extremely disturbing" new arrests in Burma, calling on the ruling junta to stop detaining democracy activists.

Several prominent Burmese student leaders were arrested over the weekend.

Mr Gambari said the detentions ran "counter to the spirit of mutual engagement" between the UN and Burma...

According to the same article, the EU is progressively using their economic might to put pressure on Burma to end the crackdown. Unfortunately the impact is likely to be minor because 90% of Burma's exports go to other Asian nations. Nevertheless, the EU is taking an increasingly strong stand against Burma's dictators and their massacre of students and priests. This has, if nothing else, one major message. To paraphrase the (then) Bishop Desmond Tutu when I heard him during an anti-apartheid protest in my college days, it "backs the right horse," whether or not it is effective. And backing the right horse is sometimes the best you can do.