Amicus Brief by Earl Warren Center at U.C. Berkeley Boalt Law School on impact of anti-immigration laws on Latinos:

No. 07-3531

 

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

 

 

PEDRO LOZANO, et al.,

 

 Plaintiffs-Appellees,

 

v.

CITY OF HAZLETON,

 

Defendant-Appellant.

 

ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA

 

 

BRIEF OF THE CHIEF JUSTICE EARL WARREN INSTITUTE ON

RACE, ETHNICITY AND DIVERSITY AT UNIVERSITY OF

CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY LAW SCHOOL AS AMICUS CURIAE IN

SUPPORT OF THE PLAINTIFFS-APPELLEES, SUPPORTING

AFFIRMANCE

 

 

AARTI KOHLI CHARLES WEISSELBERG

MARÍA BLANCO PROFESSOR OF LAW

CHIEF JUSTICE EARL WARREN INST. BERKELEY LAW SCHOOL

BERKELEY LAW SCHOOL 688 SIMON HALL

BANCROFT RESEARCH CENTER BERKELEY, CA 94720

2440 BANCROFT WAY, SUITE 303 (510) 643-8159

BERKELEY, CA 94704

(510) 642-8568

Dated: April 18, 2008 Counsel for Amicus Curiae

 

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ................................................................................... ii

IDENTITY AND INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE............................................1

INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................2

ARGUMENT ............................................................................................................3

 

 

IIIRA IS IN CONFLICT WITH IRCA WHICH CONTAINS A

COMPREHENSIVE ANTI-DISCRIMINATION SCHEME ...........................3

 

A.

Social Science Studies Support the Theory that “Mexican

Appearance” is Equated with Illegal Status .........................................5

B.

Social Science Studies Have Documented the Harms to US

Citizens and Legal Residents of Profiling Latinos as

Undocumented Immigrants: Harassment, Fear and Alienation...........7

C.

Local Law Enforcement and Private Parties Are Not Experts in

the Complex Field of Immigration Document Verification and

Instead Rely on Stereotypes and Bias ................................................10

D.

Demographic Change and Anti-immigrant Sentiment Have Been

Accompanied By an Increase in Hate Crimes Against Latinos

Nationally…………………………………………………………....11

E.

State Laws that go Beyond Federal Law Deter Lawful Immigrants and

Even Citizens From Seeking Services for which They Are

Eligible…………………………………………………...………….15

CONCLUSION......................................................................................................18

 

 

i

 

 

 

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

 

 

Cases

 

Lozano v. City of Hazleton, 496 F.Supp. 2d 477, 484 (M.D. Pa. 2007)………...5, 9

 

Statutes and Regulations

 

Immigration Reform and Control Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1342b…………...…………. 3, 4

 

Other Authorities

 

Broder, Tanya, Most State Proposals to Restrict Benefits for Immigrants Failed in

2005: Measures Targeting Immigrants Promised for Next Year, available at

 

http://www.nilc.org/immspbs/sf_benefits/2005_antiimm_

proposals_article_112105.pdf................................................................. 15, 16

 

Cantú, Lionel. The Peripheralization of Rural America: A Case Study of Latino

Migrants in America’s Heartland, 38 Soc. Persp. 399 (1995)…………………..5, 7

 

Capps, Randolph, Rosa Maria Castañeda, Ajay Chaudry, Robert Santos. Paying

the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America's Children (October

2007), available at

http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411573_children_mental_care.pdf..............17

 

Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hate Crime Statistics 2006, available at:

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2006/index.html............................................................ 14

 

Fenton, Joshua J., Ralph Catalano, and William A. Hargreaves. Effect Of

Proposition 187 On Mental Health Service Use In California: A Case Study,

15 Health Aff. (1996)……………………………………………………………. 16

 

Fenton, Joshua J., N. Moss, H.G. Khalil, and S. Asch. Effect of California’s

Proposition 187 on the Use of Primary Care Clinics, 166 W.J.Med. (Jan. 1997).. 16

 

House of Representatives Report No. 682, pt. 1, 99th Cong., 2d Sess. 46, reprinted

in 1986 U.S.C.C.A.N 5649 (regarding P.L. 99-603)……………………………… 2

 

INS and Office of Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment

Practices Before the Subcomm. on Immigration and Claims of the H. Comm. on

the Judiciary, 107th Cong. 14-26 (2002) (statement of Juan Carlos Benitez, Special

Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices)………………... 4

 

Jiménez, Tomás, Mexican-Immigrant Replenishment and the Continuing

Significance Ethnicity and Race, 113 Am. J. Soc. (May 2008), manuscript at

www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/ewi/research_ImmigrationPolicy.html...............… 8

 

Johnson, Kevin R. The Case Against Race Profiling in Immigration Enforcement,

78 Wash. U. L.Q. 675 (2001)……………………………………………………. 10

 

Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Cause for Concern: Hate Crimes in

America (2007), available at: http://www.empowermentzone.com/hate_rpt.txt... 13

 

Margolis, Ellie. Beyond Brandeis: Exploring Uses of Non-Legal Materials in

Appellate Briefs, 34 U.S.F.L. Rev. 197 (2000)…………………………………… 2

 

Migration Policy Institute, 2006 American Community Survey and Census Data on

the Foreign Born by State, available at

http://www.migrationinformation.org/datahub/acscensus.cfm#............................ 18

 

Mock, Brentin. Immigration Backlash: Hate Crimes Against Latinos Flourish,

available at http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=845........... 13

 

Orfield, Gary, and Chungmei Lee. Historic Reversals, Accelerating Resegregation,

and the Need for New Integration Strategies (August 2007), available at

http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/deseg/reversals_reseg_need.pdf... 9

 

Pew Hispanic Center, Statistical Portrait of Hispanics in the United States, 2006

(January 2008), available at

http://pewhispanic.org/files/factsheets/hispanics2006/Table-1.pdf........................ 18

 

Ramakrishnan, Karthick, Kevin Esterling, David Lazer, and Mike Neblo. What do

you mean by “Immigrant”? Framing Effects and Attitudes Towards Immigration

in a Survey Experiment. Presented at Politics of Race, Immigration, and Ethnicity

Consortium conference (Riverside, CA, Feb. 2007)…………………………........ 6

 

Romero, Mary. Racial Profiling and Immigration Law Enforcement: Rounding Up

of Usual Suspects in the Latino Community, 32 Critical Soc. 447 (2006)…. 6, 9, 11

 

 

INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE

 

The Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity,

(Warren Institute) at the University of California, Berkeley Law School submits

this brief as amicus curiae in support of Appellees Pedro Lozano, et al. The

Warren Institute urges the Court to affirm the District Court’s ruling that the City

of Hazleton’s Illegal Immigration Relief Act Ordinance (“IIRA”) and the Tenant

Registration Ordinance (“RO”) are unconstitutional.

 

Founded in 2005, the Warren Institute is a nonprofit organization based at

the University of California, Berkeley Law School whose mission is to advance

research, policy and advocacy in pursuit of racial and ethnic justice. The Warren

Institute devotes significant attention to immigration issues, including access to

education for immigrant children, the economic and social impact of state and local

laws attempting to regulate immigration, and pathways to integration for

immigrant communities. A central focus of the Warren Institute’s research has

been the review and development of scholarship that provides insights into the

impact of state and local laws governing immigration. Because of its core mission

and its research and advocacy work in defense of civil rights, specifically in the

area of immigration, the Warren Institute has a direct stake in the outcome of this

case. However, the Warren Institute does not, in this brief or otherwise, represent

the official views of the University of California, Berkeley.

 

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

 

This case, like many others currently being litigated around the country,

results from local efforts to deter unauthorized immigrants from working and

residing within their territory. Congress has long been keenly aware of the

connection between measures targeted at undocumented immigrants, and race and

national origin discrimination; the efforts of Hazleton and other municipalities to

create new immigration regulations plainly would upset the careful balance struck

by Congress in federal law. See e.g., H.R. REP. NO. 682, pt. 1, 99th Cong., 2d

Sess. 46, reprinted in 1986 U.S.C.C.A.N 5649 (regarding P.L. 99-603).

 

Amicus submits this brief, in the tradition of “Brandeis briefs,” to inform the

Court of scholarly studies presenting legislative facts relative to the matters at

issue. See Ellie Margolis, Beyond Brandeis: Exploring Uses of Non-Legal

Materials in Appellate Briefs, 34 U.S.F. L. Rev. 197, 198 (2000) (asserting that

Courts may take into consideration history, social and psychological science,

empirical studies and current events when developing a rule of law; these sources

are known as legislative facts when considered for developing a rule of law).

Social science studies have documented the harms to lawful residents and U.S.

citizens, especially those of Latin American descent, when law enforcement and

private actors attempt to identify undocumented immigrants. The research shows

that notions of illegality are strongly correlated with a specific racial profile and

that this phenomenon is exacerbated within communities, like Hazleton, which

have experienced rapid demographic change with the arrival of Latinos. This

backlash against Latino populations has resulted in increased alienation amongst

U.S.-born and naturalized Latinos.1 Documented harms of immigration

enforcement and anti-immigrant rhetoric include a lack of trust in government

entities and a potential increase in hate crimes. In an increasingly diverse society,

ordinances such as Hazleton’s fuel racial divisions and create barriers to

integration for a large segment of the population. As such, they are not only

unlawful but bad public policy.

 

ARGUMENT

 

I.

IIRA IS IN CONFLICT WITH IRCA WHICH CONTAINS A

COMPREHENSIVE ANTI-DISCRIMINATION SCHEME

As the District Court noted, IRCA prohibits discrimination and creates a

new anti-discrimination system as a necessary counterweight to its employer

sanctions regime. 8 U.S.C. § 1342b. IIRA contains no such anti-discrimination

 

1 In this brief, the terms “Latino” and “Hispanic” are used to refer to “a Spanish-speaking person of Latin American

birth or descent who lives in the U.S." Webster’s New World Dictionary 2000.

 

protection. In its analysis of IIRA, the Court states, “it will affect every employer,

every employee who is charged as an illegal alien, and every prospective employee

especially those who look or act as if they are foreign . . . the Ordinance, unlike its

superior federal counterpart, contains no anti-discrimination provisions.”

IRCA created an Office of Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair

Employment Practices to enforce its anti-discrimination provisions. 8 U.S.C. §

1342b. The head of the Office of Special Counsel testified before Congress in

2002, “[e]ven today, 16 years after the law was passed, we see discriminatory

treatment of U.S. citizens and lawful immigrants based upon whether they appear

or sound foreign.” INS and Office of Special Counsel for Immigration Related

Unfair Employment Practices Before the Subcomm. on Immigration and Claims of

the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 107th Cong. 14-29 (2002) (statement of Juan Carlos

Benítez, Special Couns. for Immigr. Related Unfair Emp. Prac. at 16). The Special

Counsel further testified, “[w]e have a number of cases in which United States

citizens of Hispanic origin and lawful immigrants were denied employment

because their lawful documents were rejected by employers as ‘suspicious’ even

though a non-Hispanic U.S. citizen presented similar documents that were

accepted.” Id. at 18.

    Social science research supports the testimony of the Special Counsel noting

the connection between race and perceived immigration status and reveals that

laws like Hazleton’s will lead to discrimination in a variety of contexts.

 

A. Social Science Studies Support the Theory that “Mexican

Appearance” is Equated with Illegal Status

Numerous case studies and survey reports have found that people use the

word, “illegal” interchangeably with “Mexican” to refer generally to persons of

Latin American descent, regardless of their actual origin or immigration status.

For example, in his study of a small rural community in Iowa that experienced an

influx of Latino migrant workers, sociologist Lionel Cantú documents the

perceptions of the newcomers by the racially homogenous community of white

Euro-Americans. Lionel Cantú, The Peripheralization of Rural America: A Case

Study of Latino Migrants in America’s Heartland, 38 Soc. Persp. 399 (1995)

(“Peripheralization”); accord Lozano v. City of Hazleton, 496 F.Supp. 2d 477, 484

 (M.D. Pa. 2007) (finding that Hazleton’s population had increased sharply as a

result of an influx of Latino immigrants). Although many of the migrant workers

in Cantú’s study were U.S. citizens from Texas who had migrated north to take

jobs in the local food processing plants, Professor Cantú writes: “[i]n my

interviews with ‘Anglo’ residents of Midtown, many of these respondents assumed

Latinos in Midtown were ‘Mexicans,’ and ‘Mexican’ in this case . . . means

‘illegal outsider.’” Peripheralization at 407. Moreover, in a recent national

survey, when given no qualifier, many respondents interpreted the term

“immigrant” to mean illegal Mexican immigrants. See Karthick Ramakrishnan et.

al., What do you mean by “Immigrant”? Framing Effects and Attitudes Towards

Immigration in a Survey Experiment, presented at Politics of Race, Immigration,

and Ethnicity Consortium conference (Riverside, CA, Feb. 2007) (copy on file at

Warren Institute).

 

In another study, Professor Mary Romero analyzed a five day joint operation

between local police and Federal Agents to identify and deport undocumented

individuals in the town of Chandler, Arizona and found the dominant feature of

those questioned by law enforcement was that all were of Mexican ancestry or

Latino. Mary Romero, Racial Profiling and Immigration Law Enforcement:

Rounding Up of Usual Suspects in the Latino Community, 32 Critical Soc. 447,

455-461 (2006) (“Usual Suspects”). Data available for 42 complainants uncovered

that, “11 were U.S. citizens of Mexican ancestry, 15 were Latino legal residents . .

.there is no documentation in the reports or in the newspaper coverage of a white

person stopped during the raid.” Id. at 461.

 

If the IIRA and RO were to be implemented, landlords and employers

would be tasked with enforcing immigration laws and questioning prospective

employees and tenants about their status. The data, which strongly suggest that

Latino U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents are often misjudged to be

undocumented immigrants, demonstrate the importance of the anti-discrimination

protections of federal immigration law. As the District Court found, IIRA strikes

no balance between anti-discrimination and immigration enforcement; as such,

IIRA conflicts significantly with IRCA. The implementation of IIRA and RO

would further exacerbate a well-documented tendency towards profiling Latinos as

illegal immigrants, possibly leading to attendant harms.

 

B. Social Science Studies Document the Harms That Profiling Latinos

as Undocumented Immigrants Inflict on U.S. Citizens and Legal

Residents: Harassment, Fear and Alienation

In addition to the numerous injuries to the plaintiffs identified in Judge

Munley’s opinion, social science research demonstrates that Latino U.S. citizens

and authorized immigrants are disproportionately impacted by efforts to enforce

immigration laws. Law enforcement and private actors feel justified in questioning

the very presence of Latino residents as they engage in daily activities. Professor

Cantú documented many instances in which documented Mexican workers’ papers

were confiscated and even cases in which U.S. citizens were harassed by Iowa

Department of Transportation officials who issue drivers’ licenses.

Peripheralization at 408. One resident complained that “they were picking up our

birth certificates saying that they were fake and we were illegal aliens.” Id. Based

on this and other interviews, Cantú concludes that Latino U.S. citizens and lawful

permanent residents feel alienated and afraid of being questioned by law

enforcement, despite their awareness of their own lawful status. Id. at 410.

 

In a survey of second, third and fourth generation Mexican-Americans (by

definition all U.S. citizens) in Garden City, Kansas and Santa Maria, California,

sociologist Tomás Jiménez finds that residents of Mexican descent in Santa Maria

were deeply offended by the Mayor’s proclamation that the town had a “Mexican

problem”. Jiménez notes, “Many respondents still referred to this verbal attack on

Mexican immigrants in the interviews I conducted nearly twelve years after the

fact.” Tomás Jiménez, Mexican-Immigrant Replenishment and the Continuing

Significance Ethnicity and Race, 113 Am. J. Soc. (May 2008), manuscript

available at www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/ewi/research_ImmigrationPolicy.html

(“Mexican-Immigrant Replenishment”). In 123 in-depth interviews, Jiménez

discovers that almost all respondents report, “witnessing anti-Mexican nativism2

perpetrated by non-Mexican friends, peers, co-workers and strangers.” Id. at 21.

Professor Jiménez finds that these experiences of nativism hinder the integration of

later-generation Latinos. Id. at 22. Similarly, in a national survey, the Pew

Hispanic Center found that more than half of Latinos, “say discrimination is a

major problem that is keeping Latinos from succeeding in this country . . .” See

 

2 Jiménez defines nativism as, “an intense opposition to an internal minority on the ground of its foreign (i.e., ‘un-

American’) connections.” Mexican-Immigrant Replenishment at 20 (citing John Higham, Strangers in the Land:

Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (1963)) (internal citations omitted).  Pew Hispanic Center, 2007 National Survey of Latinos: As Illegal Immigration

Issue Heats Up, Hispanics Feel A Chill (December 2007). This research supports

Judge Munley’s finding that, “there may have been legal residents who did not

desire to live in a town that appeared (to them) to seek to exclude Spanish speaking

residents.” Lozano, 496 F.Supp. 2d at 489.

 

If local ordinances like the IIRA and RO proliferate, it is likely that

Latinos will seek to live in localities that do not foster nativist tendencies. As a

result, ordinances that appear to target Latino residents will also result in

increasing residential segregation of Latino residents. In fact, recent scholarship

on school segregation finds that, “Latino students have become, by some measures,

the most segregated group by both race and poverty and there are increasing

patterns of triple segregation—ethnicity, poverty and linguistic isolation.” Gary

Orfield and Chungmei Lee, Historic Reversals, Accelerating Resegregation, and

the Need for New Integration Strategies (August 2007) at 31, available at

http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/deseg/reversals_reseg_need.pdf

(last visited on April 15, 2008).

 

In the Chandler, Arizona sweeps described above, the stops occurred as

residents were participating in harmless activities such as driving, walking in their

neighborhood, riding bikes and shopping. Usual Suspects at 462. Romero

concludes, “The Chandler Roundup fits into a larger pattern of immigration law

 enforcement practices that . . . places Mexican Americans at risk before the law

and designates them as second-class citizens with inferior rights. . . During

immigration inspections, individuals stopped were demeaned, humiliated, and

embarrassed.” Id. at 468. Legal scholar Kevin Johnson asserts that, “although

stops and interrogations about citizenship may appear to be minimal intrusions to

people unlikely to be stopped and interrogated, such enforcement practices affect

the sense of belonging to U.S. society of Latino citizens and immigrants.” Kevin

 

R. Johnson, The Case Against Race Profiling in Immigration Enforcement, 78

Wash. U. L.Q. 675, 711 (2001).

Implementing the IIRA and RO will lead to further ethnic divisions within

Hazleton. As the literature above demonstrates, expressions of nativist tendencies

 

– whether through legislation or the words of political leaders – reinforce the

notion that Latinos are not full members of U.S. society. This lack of integration

has far-reaching consequences for the political and social incorporation of

authorized Latino immigrants and Latino citizens.

C. Local Law Enforcement and Private Parties Are Not Experts in the

Complex Field of Immigration Document Verification and Instead Rely

on Stereotypes and Bias

Under the Tenant Registration Ordinance (“RO”), a person seeking to rent

housing in Hazleton would need to file for an occupancy permit. In order to

receive an occupancy permit, a person would have to provide, “proper

 identification showing proof of legal citizenship and/or residency.” RO at 6.

Although the IIRA and RO do not directly require that law officers enforce the

ordinances, the RO authorizes the Hazleton Police Department, the Code

Enforcement Office, and other local agencies to examine the paperwork of those

seeking occupancy permits. The RO does not provide further guidance or training

for local agencies for their new role as immigration enforcement officers. Under

this procedure, social science suggests that Hazleton law enforcement and other

government agencies are likely to engage in discriminatory behavior when

screening for immigration status.

 

As Professor Romero explains, this discrimination follows from local law

enforcement agents who do not know how to ask for and verify citizenship status.

These “status” checks are particularly problematic for U.S. citizens of Latino

appearance who have never been asked to prove their citizenship before. In

Professor Romero’s case study of the Chandler, Arizona sweeps, the requests

ranged from the general – “papers”, “identification”, “cards” – to more specific

requests – “Social Security cards”, “green cards”, “drivers’ licenses”. Usual

Suspects at 463. Professor Romero notes that persons were detained, some for

long periods in the 100-degree-plus weather in July, until documentation was

produced. Id. at 462-3. These events highlight local and private actors’ difficulty

in enforcing immigration law due to their unfamiliarity with the various statuses

and documentation that lawful immigrants may carry and how it leads to overly

broad and even illegal requests, mainly directed at citizens of Latino appearance.

 

D.

Demographic Change and Anti-immigrant Sentiment Have Been

Accompanied by an Increase in Hate Crimes Against Latinos

Nationally

As noted in the District Court’s opinion, Hazleton’s population increase has

been attributed to a “recent influx of immigrants.” Empirical social science studies

analyzing demographic change have demonstrated the link between increases in

minority populations and parallel increases in hate crimes.3 In an analysis of

patterns of racially-motivated crime in New York City, political scientist Donald

Green finds that demographic change, not economic hardship or inequality,

predicts racially-motivated crime directed at minorities. Donald Green et al.,

Defended Neighborhoods, Integration, and Racially Motivated Crime, 104 Am. J.

Soc. 372 (1998). The study concludes, “(r)acially motivated crime appears to

coincide with patterns of demographic change, rising where non-whites move into

 

3 Studies have also demonstrated a relationship between demographic change and the enactment of anti-immigrant

ordinances nationwide. In analyzing the demographics of 104 localities, one study found that these initiatives are

correlated with a “rapid increase in the foreign-born or Latino share of the population, especially since 2000” and

that “almost three-quarters of these localities…have populations under 65,000.” Jill Esbenshade, Division and

Dislocation: Regulating Immigration through Local Housing Ordinances, Special Report, Immigration Policy Center

(Summer 2007) at 1. Another study analyzing local ordinances found that those localities that experienced more

“rapid influxes of immigrants were more likely to consider anti-immigrant ordinances,” and that it is the rate of

change and not the absolute number of Hispanic residents, that drives localities’ decisions to adopt these ordinances.

Daniel Hopkins, Threatening Changes: Explaining Where and When Immigrants Provoke Local Opposition,

Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University, available at

http://people.iq.harvard.edu/~dhopkins/immpapdjh.pdf (last visited April 16, 2008).

 

white strongholds and falling where nonwhites have long resided in significant

numbers.” Id. at 397.

 

Over the past two decades, Latinos have increasingly been the target of hate

crimes in the United States. In 1995, 63% of all hate crimes in the United States

were directed against Hispanics. Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Cause

for Concern: Hate Crimes in America (1997), available at

http://www.empowermentzone.com/hate_rpt.txt (last visited on April 1, 2008).

The rise in hate crimes appears to be correlated with an increase in anti-immigrant

initiatives and ordinances at the state and local level. Following the intense debate

over Proposition 187, hate crimes against Latinos increased dramatically in Los

Angeles, with the County Human Relations Commission reporting an 11.9%

increase in 1994 alone. See id.

 

As the issue of confronting illegal immigration continues to dominate

national political debates, as well as state and local politics, there has been a

dramatic increase in the number of hate crimes against Latinos nationwide.

According to hate crime statistics published annually by the FBI, anti-Latino hate

crimes rose by almost 35% between 2003 and 2006, the latest year for which

statistics are available. Brentin Mock, Immigration Backlash: Hate Crimes

Against Latinos Flourish, available at

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=845 (last visited on April

14, 2008) (“Immigration Backlash”). In California, the state with the highest

number of Latinos in the country, anti-Latino hate crimes almost doubled in the

same period. See id. In addition, according to 2006 FBI data, Hispanics

comprised 62.8% of victims of crimes motivated by a bias toward the victims'

ethnicity or national origin. In 2004, hate crimes against Latinos were 51.5% of

the total number of hate crimes.

 

Table 1: Hate Crimes Against Hispanics in the United States, 2003-20064

 

2006: 576 anti-Hispanic crimes against 819 victims

 

2005: 522 anti-Hispanic crimes against 722 victims

 

2004: 475 anti-Hispanic crimes against 646 victims

 

2003: 426 anti-Hispanic crimes against 595 victims

 

The rise in hate crime violence against Hispanics has coincided with the

dramatic increase in the consideration and enactment of anti-immigrant ordinances

at the local level and in racial profiling and discrimination against Hispanics based

on their ethnicity. The increase in anti-Hispanic hate crimes and racial profiling by

state and local officials highlights the danger of placing primary immigration

enforcement in the hands of such officers, particularly without the concurrent civil

rights protections provided for in federal law. This provides further support for

 

4 Data source for this table: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hate Crime Statistics 2006 (2007), available at

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2006/index.html; see also Immigration Backlash.

 upholding federal supremacy in immigration law and disallowing local efforts to

regulate this domain.

 

E. State Laws That Go Beyond Federal Law Deter Lawful Immigrants

and Even Citizens From Seeking Services For Which They Are Eligible

At the state level, initiatives targeting immigrants have negatively impacted

lawful immigrants’ propensity to access state resources. In Arizona, the passage of

Proposition 200, which requires individuals to produce proof of citizenship prior to

applying for public benefits or registering to vote, had a negative impact on both

legal and undocumented Latino residents of Arizona.

 

After the passage of Proposition 200, many immigrants and their U.S.-citizen

family members were deterred from seeking services for which they remained

eligible. The media reported drops in visits to health clinics and in participation in

literacy training, nutrition assistance, and health programs, as well as accounts of

domestic violence victims afraid to report abuse and parents confused about

whether to keep their children home from school. Tanya Broder, Most State

Proposals to Restrict Benefits for Immigrants Failed in 2005: Measures Targeting

Immigrants Promised for Next Year at 2, available at

http://www.nilc.org/immspbs/sf_benefits/2005_antiimm_

proposals_article_112105.pdf (last visited on April 14, 2008). An Arizona

state representative described the turmoil experienced by his constituents: “A fear

factor has set in. People tell me that they are legal immigrants and their children

are citizens, but they are afraid to apply for the Arizona Health Care Cost

Containment System.” He continued, “They ask me: ‘Should I go to court on a

traffic ticket?’ They say they have witnessed a crime and are afraid to report it.”

Id. (citing John Turner Gilliland, Anti-Immigration Initiative Takes Effect in

Arizona, CNS News (Dec. 24, 2004)).

 

The experience of Latinos in California after passage of that state’s

Proposition 187 demonstrates the deleterious impact of such legislation on Latinos.

Despite the fact that most of its provisions were invalidated by federal courts:

 

[T]he harm and political fallout stemming from the initiative

lingers today and contributes to the confusion and fear that prevent

families from securing services. After the initiative passed, there

was a documented rise in hate crimes, as well as harm resulting

from a reluctance [sic] by immigrants to approach government

agencies to report crimes, seek critical services, or otherwise

participate in protecting public health and safety.

 

Id. In addition, the passage of Proposition 187 affected Latino residents’ use of

mental health and primary care facilities. See Joshua J. Fenton et al., Effect Of

Proposition 187 On Mental Health Service Use In California: A Case Study, 15

Health Aff. (1996) (identifying a 26 percent decrease in the initiation of outpatient

mental health services by younger Latinos at service sites in San Francisco County

following passage of Proposition 187 in 1994); Joshua J. Fenton et al., The Effect

of California’s Proposition 187 on the Use of Primary Care Clinics, 166 W. J.

Med. (Jan. 1997) (reporting that half of clinic directors (51%) surveyed believed

clinic visits declined after the passage of Proposition 187 and many also believed

deterrent effects persisted for weeks to months).

 

Anti-immigrant raids and other police activity have led to discrimination

against authorized Latino immigrants and substantial harm to U.S.-citizen children,

as well. Sometimes conducted in conjunction with local law enforcement,

immigration raids have often occurred while children are away at school, “[e]ven if

the parent returned within a day or two [after a raid] or soon thereafter, the period

of separation remained current in the child’s memory and created ongoing anxiety

in many cases.” Randolph Capps et al., Paying the Price: The Impact of

Immigration Raids on America's Children (Oct. 2007) at 51, available at

http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411573_children_mental_care.pdf (last

visited on April 7, 2008) (documenting the harmful impact of the Immigration and

Customs Enforcement’s intensified immigration enforcement activities, in the form

of several large-scale worksite raids across the country through an in-depth study

of raids in three communities—Greeley, CO, Grand Island, NE and New Bedford,

MA). Stress manifested itself in loss of appetite, trouble falling asleep, and

increased displays of “acting out.” Id. This indicates that if the IIRA and RO are

implemented, it is likely that there will be a further erosion of trust between the

Latino community and government actors, especially law enforcement and medical

service providers.

 

CONCLUSION

 

There are over 26 million Latino U.S. citizens residing in the United States;

at least 408,000 of them live in Pennsylvania alone. Pew Hispanic Center,

Statistical Portrait of Hispanics in the United States, 2006 (January 2008),

available at http://pewhispanic.org/files/factsheets/hispanics2006/Table-1.pdf (last

visited April 16, 2008); Migration Policy Institute, 2006 American Community

Survey and Census Data on the Foreign Born by State, available at

http://www.migrationinformation.org/datahub/acscensus.cfm# (last visited April

16, 2008). Social science studies show that if the proliferation of local ordinances

such as Hazleton’s continues, these citizens and many other lawful permanent

residents will face increased discrimination, fear and alienation. In IRCA’s antidiscrimination

provisions, Congress recognized the potential harms of

employment-based immigration enforcement to U.S. citizens and authorized

immigrants. Nevertheless, Hazleton’s ordinances do not offer any protection

against discrimination; as social science research indicates, they are in fact likely to

harm Latino U.S. citizens and authorized immigrants. As a matter of law and

policy, the Warren Institute urges the Court to affirm the District Court’s ruling.

Respectfully Submitted,

s/ Charles D. Weisselberg__

Aarti Kohli, Esq.

María Blanco, Esq.

CHIEF JUSTICE EARL WARREN

INST. ON RACE, ETHNICITY &

DIVERSITY

Berkeley Law SchoolBerkeley, CA 94704

(510) 642-8568

Charles D. Weisselberg, Esq.

UNIVERSITY OF

CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

LAW SCHOOL

688 Simon Hall

Berkeley, CA 94720-7200

(510) 643-8159

Dated: April 18, 2008 Counsel for Amicus Curiae

 
 

 

 

Barak Obama on Race and Religion

March 18, 2008,

Text of Obama’s Speech: A More Perfect Union

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

 

 

 

New Orleans 2005

Twenty-five Questions about the Murder of the Big Easy
    By Mike Davis and Anthony Fontenot

 We recently spent a week in New Orleans and Southern Louisiana interviewing relief workers, community activists, urban planners,  artists, and neighborhood folks. Even as the latest flood waters from  Hurricane Rita recede, the city remains submerged in anger and frustration. Indeed, the most toxic debris in New Orleans isn't the sinister gray sludge that coats the streets of the historic Creole neighborhood of Treme or the Lower Ninth Ward, but all the unanswered questions that  have accumulated in the wake of so much official betrayal and hypocrisy. Where outsiders see simple "incompetence" or "failure of leadership," locals are more inclined to discern deliberate design and planned neglect -- the murder, not the accidental death, of a great city.

In almost random order, here are twenty-five of the urgent questions that deeply trouble the local people we spoke with. Until a grand jury
or congressional committee begins to uncover the answers, the moral (as opposed to simply physical) reconstruction of the New Orleans region
will remain impossible.
 

1. Why did the floodwalls along the 17th Street Canal only break on the
 New Orleans (majority Black) side and not on the Metairie (largely
 white) side? Was this the result of neglect and poor maintenance by New
 Orleans authorities?

2. Who owned the huge barge that was catapulted through the wall of the
 Industrial Canal, killing hundreds in the Lower Ninth Ward -- the most
 deadly hit-and-run accident in U.S. history?

3. All of New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish east of the Industrial
 Canal were drowned, except for the Almonaster-Michoud Industrial
 District along Chef Menteur Highway. Why was industrial land apparently
 protected by stronger levees than nearby residential neighborhoods?

4. Why did Mayor Ray Nagin, in defiance of his own official disaster
 plan, delay twelve to twenty-four hours in ordering a mandatory
 evacuation of the city?

5. Why did Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff not declare
 Katrina an "Incident of National Significance" until August 31 -- thus
 preventing the full deployment of urgently needed federal resources?

6. Why wasn't the nearby U.S.S. Bataan immediately sent to the aid of
 New Orleans? The huge amphibious-landing ship had a state-of-the-art,
 600-bed hospital, water and power plants, helicopters, food supplies,
 and 1,200 sailors eager to join the rescue effort.

7. Similarly, why wasn't the Baltimore-based hospital ship USS Comfort
 ordered to sea until August 31, or the 82nd Airborne Division deployed in New Orleans until September 5?

8. Why does Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld balk at making public
 his "severe weather execution order" that established the ground rules
 for the military response to Katrina? Did the Pentagon, as a recent
 report by the Congressional Research Service suggests, fail to take
 initiatives within already authorized powers, then attempt to transfer
 the blame to state and local governments?

9. Why were the more than 350 buses of the New Orleans Regional
 Transportation Authority -- eventually flooded where they were
 parked -- not mobilized to evacuate infirm, poor, and car-less
 residents?

10. What significance attaches to the fact that the chair of the
 Transportation Authority, appointed by Mayor Nagin, is Jimmy Reiss, the
 wealthy leader of the New Orleans Business Council which has long
 advocated a thorough redevelopment of (and cleanup of crime in) the
 city?

11. Under what authority did Mayor Nagin meet confidentially in Dallas
 with the "forty thieves" -- white business leaders led by Reiss --reportedly to discuss the triaging of poorer Black areas and a
corporate-led master plan for rebuilding the city?

12. Everyone knows about a famous train called "the City of New
 Orleans." Why was there no evacuation by rail? Was Amtrak part of the disaster planning? If not, why not?

13. Why were patients at private hospitals like Tulane evacuated by
 helicopter while their counterparts at the Charity Hospital were left to suffer and die?

14. Was the failure to adequately stock food, water, potable toilets,
 cots, and medicine at the Louisiana Superdome a deliberate decision --
 as many believe -- to force poorer residents to leave the city?

15. The French Quarter has one of the highest densities of restaurants
 in the nation. Once the acute shortages of food and water at the
 Superdome and the Convention Center were known, why didn't officials
 requisition supplies from hotels and restaurants located just a few
 blocks away? (As it happened, vast quantities of food were simply left
 to spoil.)

16. City Hall's emergency command center had to be abandoned early in
 the crisis because its generator supposedly ran out of diesel fuel.
 Likewise many critical-care patients died from heat or equipment
 failure after hospital backup generators failed. Why were supplies of
 diesel fuel so inadequate? Why were so many hospital generators located
 in basements that would obviously flood?

17. Why didn't the Navy or Coast Guard immediately airdrop life
 preservers and rubber rafts in flooded districts? Why wasn't such
 life-saving equipment stocked in schools and hospitals?

18. Why weren't evacuee centers established in Audubon Park and other
 unflooded parts of Uptown, where locals could be employed as cleanup
 crews?

19. Is the Justice Department investigating the Jim Crow-like response
 of the suburban Gretna police who turned back hundreds of desperate New
 Orleans citizens trying to walk across the Mississippi River bridge --  an image reminiscent of Selma in 1965? New Orleans, meanwhile, abounds
in eyewitness accounts of police looting and illegal shootings: Will
 any of this ever be investigated?

20. Who is responsible for the suspicious fires that have swept the
 city? Why have so many fires occurred in blue-collar areas that have
 long been targets of proposed gentrification, such as the Section 8
 homes on Constance Street in the Lower Garden District or the wharfs
 along the river in Bywater?


21. Where were FEMA's several dozen vaunted urban search-and-rescue
 teams? Aside from some courageous work by Coast Guard helicopter crews,
 the early rescue effort was largely mounted by volunteers who towed
 their own boats into the city after hearing an appeal on television.

22. We found a massive Red Cross presence in Baton Rouge but none in
 some of the smaller Louisiana towns that have mounted the most
 impressive relief efforts. The poor Cajun community of Ville Platte,
 for instance, has at one time or another fed and housed more than 5,000
 evacuees; but the Red Cross, along with FEMA, have refused almost daily
 appeals by local volunteers to send professional personnel and aid. Why
 then give money to the Red Cross?

23. Why isn't FEMA scrambling to create a central registry of everyone
 evacuated from the greater New Orleans region? Will evacuees recent

 absentee ballots and be allowed to vote in the crucial February
 municipal elections that will partly decide the fate of the city?

24. As politicians talk about "disaster czars" and elite-appointed
 reconstruction commissions, and as architects and developers advance
 utopian designs for an ethnically cleansed "new urbanism" in New
 Orleans, where is any plan for the substantive participation of the
 city's ordinary citizens in their own future?
 

25. Indeed, on the fortieth anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act,
 what has happened to democracy?

Mike Davis is the author of many books including City of Quartz, Dead Cities and Other Tales, and the just published Monster at our Door, The
Global Threat of Avian Flu (The New Press) as well as the forthcoming Planet of Slums (Verso).

Anthony Fontenot is a New Orleans architect and community-design activist, currently working at Princeton University.

Copyright 2005 Mike Davis and Anthony Fontenot
 

IRAQ: 2002

NELSON MANDELA:
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS A THREAT TO WORLD PEACE
Newsweek
September 10, 2002