CNN Ride Along Image

CNN’s ‘Ride-Along’ with ICE is Not Journalism, its Anti-Immigrant Propaganda

CNN’s choice to do a ride-along with ICE is lamentable.The media should be independent of the politically and economically powerful so that the media can provide us, the people, with the information necessary to prevent or stop abuses of the powerful against the powerless. Unfortunately, CNN’s ride-along can betray its own role as an independent…

Carlos Danger

When disgraced ex-Congressman turned mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner needed an alias to carry on his explicit online chats, he needed something that said: OK, so I’m a cartoon…but I’m a bad boycartoon. And so was born, Carlos Danger.

Last week, Univision’s Satcho Pretto had the unrepentant Weiner on her Despierta América morning show. Ten minutes into the interview, she finally asked what her viewers really wanted to know. “You picked the pseudo name Carlos Danger,” she said. “Why did you pick a Hispanic name?”

Then, working hard to keep from laughing, Pretto continued, “…and how dangerous were you really?”

It’s a question that’s asked regularly of the U.S.-Mexico border. Just how dangerous is it really?

Fence, Camera, Drone.

Back in March, a few weeks before the Senate’s Gang of Eight filed their bill, Senator John McCain invited three of the other Senators to join him for a visit to the border. This sub-Gang of four was admiring the border fence separating Nogales, Arizona from Nogales, Sonora when a woman clamored over the top and made a run for it. Sen. McCain sent out a tweet about the exciting international event.

The reactions to the woman climbing up and over the 18-foot high galvanized steel fence varied. They were:

1. That danged fence isn’t high enough. We need to invest more money, on a double fence patrolled by megalodons.
2. See? Fences don’t work. Stop wasting money on a border fence that’s nothing more than a symbol.
3. I really need to get back to the gym.

The Immigrant Rights Movement: Advancing Media and Cultural Strategies

Mag-Net hosted a call on media and cultural strategies within the immigrant rights movement. Listen to the discussion:

May 1st marks May Day, also known as International Workers Day. On May 1st, 1886, nearly a half a million immigrants went on a general strike to fight for a 8-hour workday.  Over a hundred years later, starting in 2006, again millions of immigrant workers and supporters participated in May Day protests against H.R. 4437, a draconian anti-immigrant bill.   Even today, the majority of May Day protests are led by immigrants.

Operation Streamline

To understand Operation Streamline, it helps to visit the Judge Roy Bean Saloon & Museum, 60 miles north of Del Rio. This corner of Texas needed a local justice of the peace in the 1880s and Roy Bean took the job. Bean deemed his saloon a courthouse and dispensed what the state’s tourism department now describes as “his own brand of justice … with strange, but expedient decisions.”

Efficiency was king. Judge Bean had a saloon to run, after all. When he needed a jury, he called one from among his customers.  Whatever fines he imposed, he pocketed.

Once, when an Irishman killed a Chinese railroad worker and was sent to Judge Bean to be tried for manslaughter, a mob of 200 white people demanded the Irishman’s immediate release. Judge Bean set the Irishman free, holding that while homicide was the killing of a human being, there was no law against killing a Chinaman.

44,000 can’t wait for immigration reform in Congress

For the 44, 000 people expected to be expelled from the country during Congress’ August recess, here immigration reform won’t come soon enough and executive action is already overdue.

While the end result of the immigration debate in Congress is uncertain when in session, we know that nothing will move while legislators are on vacation. Nothing, that is, other than the gears on the deportation machine that has been assembled and placed on overdrive under the Obama administration.

The President’s Deportation Quota is More Offensive than Rep. Steve King’s Idiocy

When Barack Obama said he needed a “dance partner” in Congress to reform immigration law he might not have been thinking of Steve King but King has proven to be Obama’s best accomplice in what constitutes the perfect political crime.

With Republicans’ unmasked bigotry, the President can denounce them for their intolerance while implementing enforcement to cater to it.

Where Rep. King’s comments are a mouthpiece for prejudice, the President’s are a pretext for actual policy that has eviscerated our rights and devastated the lives of thousands of families. King’s Republican affiliation, however, makes him an appealing target while the Democratic President’s record and rhetoric make for an inconvenient truth.

Yet truth be told, the President has done more to criminalize migrants than what Rep. King could accomplish in his wildest dreams.