Anti-Illegal Immigration Group's Forum Plan Foiled

AlphaCentauri

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Fri Aug-12-05 10:48 AM
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Anti-Illegal Immigration Group's Forum Plan Foiled

Concerns over racism thwart Save Our State's effort to find allies in the black community.

By Lisa Richardson, Times Staff Writer

Save Our State, the in-your-face anti-illegal immigration group, was thrilled. Its long-held desire to forge ties to the black community was at last to be realized.

Invited to speak to a black community forum in Leimert Park this month, SOS founder Joseph Turner was sure that by the time he finished expressing his outrage about the impact of illegal immigration on jobs, schools and neighborhoods, Save Our State would have new, equally outraged allies.

But it was not to be. Turner's invitation was rescinded shortly after it became public. The story of how and why that happened says much about how heated the debate over immigration policy has become in black communities in Southern California and how much the tone of that debate has discomfited many black leaders.

For Turner, the chance to speak at the Urban Policy Roundtable, a forum run by the political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson, would have been a coup on several fronts: Save Our State would expand its geographical reach into South-Central; an infusion of black activism around illegal immigration would force elected officials to take heed; and with blacks on board, SOS could, perhaps, rid itself of persistent allegations of racism.

But no sooner did Turner post a euphoric message online announcing the meeting than opposition mobilized against it.

Hutchinson's group has become an influential forum in South Los Angeles. Politicians and school officials make it a first stop when reaching out to blacks. Pro-immigration groups were outraged that Turner might gain such a well-known platform, and they were determined to stop him.

They vowed to protest. Hutchinson was bombarded with angry e-mail. A liberal advocacy group sent him a five-page letter of "concerns" outlining what it called Save Our State's "violent, hateful, racist actions." Hutchinson invited immigration advocates to present their side at the meeting, but none would share the podium with Turner.

Hutchinson, who said he had barely heard of SOS when Turner asked to come to the group, began to have second thoughts. He perused the SOS website and says he was repelled. He decided to withdraw the invitation.

One statement on the website, in particular, has stayed with him. It reads:

"Aren't you tired of watching your state turn into a Third World cesspool right before your eyes?"

"That is calling people of color scum and garbage," he said. "You essentially are calling me that, too. I think there is a racist tinge."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/state/la-me-sos12aug12,1,5856942.story?coll=la-news-state

...........

Bigots forget own immigrant roots

August 12, 2005

BY ANDREW GREELEY
Immigrants with dark skin play the same role in contemporary American life as Jews did in Germany in the 1930s and blacks did in this country in the same decade when, if they were uppity, they were lynched. The three pariah groups are different, of course, and the extent of harm imposed on them are different -- and the Holocaust is absolutely unique in its horror and its evil -- but the same underlying dynamisms are at work. Their enemies deprived them of their full humanity. They are not really human beings, they are vermin, the society is better off without them. They don't have the rights that other, fully human people have.

You can be viciously cruel to people only when you have dehumanized them. It's all right to push Jews into gas chambers, because they are not like the rest of us. It's all right to lynch a black person because he is not completely human, it's all right to hunt down immigrants and get rid of them, because they are really not Americans and do not have the human rights of other Americans. Once you have deprived the other of their full humanity then anything goes.

All right, we do not set up gas chambers of illegal immigrants. We arrest them in the middle of the night, we break up their families, sometimes permanently, we punish them arbitrarily without any regard for due processes. Moreover, when the feds do these things, there is little outcry from the American people because government agents are enforcing the law, are they not? Almost three quarters of Americans would like to gather up all the illegal immigrants and send them back where they came from.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel12.html