Some thoughts from last night

As you know, the ACLU is a non-partisan organization. Both Republicans and Democrats annoy us.

But something struck me last night while watching the election returns. John King of CNN made a comment that the Republicans cannot be a viable national party if the Democrats win 60-plus percent of the Latino vote.

Once again, it became clear that being anti-immigrant just doesn't fly with the electorate. Three different races from the last two election cycles prove it. In northeast PA, Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta lost in his effort to topple incumbent Rep. Paul Kanjorski, after Barletta made a national name for himself with his unconstitutional ordinance on immigration. In the state's attorney general race, Northampton County DA John Morganelli lost to incumbent Tom Corbett, after years of Morganelli stridently supporting anti-immigrant proposals. And, of course, two years ago, Rick Santorum had his hat handed to him by Bob Casey, despite Santorum's claim that Casey supported "amnesty".

Public officials from both parties can try to split hairs over what their anti-immigrant proposals mean. They claim they support immigration and oppose illegal immigration. But the fact is that Latinos see an attack on some of them as an attack on all of them. I know because my wife is Latina and we have numerous Latino friends, and they all feel the same way about what has been going down on immigration the last few years.

Before I knew about Barletta's loss, I thought this might be more of a statewide phenomenon and that candidates might be able to get away with it depending upon their district. But Barletta's defeat proves that may not even be true.

CNN's King also commented, in reference to suburban Philly, that the GOP will continue to lose if the Ds win the suburbs with 60-plus percent of the electorate. When he said that, my thoughts immediately turned to LGBT issues. When we deal with state LGBT initiatives, our swing votes always come from the Philly and Pittsburgh suburbs, and to a lesser extent the suburbs of a few other cities. Being anti-gay doesn't appear to fly either (see: Man-on-Dog Santorum).

Unfortunately, we did take some losses on LGBT rights in Arkansas, Florida, Arizona, and probably in California. These are all stinging defeats. While we know that in the long-term we continue to move closer and closer to LGBT equality, rolling back these constitutional amendments is going to be challenging and is going to require a lot of hardwork, sweat, and tears.

For a rundown on all of the state referendums on civil liberties issues, including victories on drug law reform and reproductive rights, visit national's blog.

Andy in Harrisburg

Language of violence

"Words can reduce a person to an object
Something more easy to hate than an animate entity
Completely disposable, no problem to obliterate."
--The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy

I've been mulling this post for weeks.

There are some around here who think immigration will be the great civil rights struggle for years to come. The Nation magazine has referred to the treatment of Latinos in Georgia as "Juan Crow".

Sadly, when times are tense in civil rights struggles, people die. Think four little girls in a Birmingham church. Think students registering people to vote in the deep South. Think Matthew Shepherd.

And, now, think Luis Ramirez.

Last month Luis Ramirez, an immigrant from Mexico, was beaten to death on a street in Shenandoah, PA. Witnesses claim that his attackers- allegedly a group of local teens- yelled racial slurs during the attack.

Ramirez is probably not the first immigrant to be attacked since the immigration debate heated up three years ago. He probably won't be the last. But his death hits close to home because it happened so close to home.

And it happened so close to Hazleton, which is just twenty miles away.

We all believe in free speech. Any dope can say any dopey thing he or she wants.

And we also know that words have power. Let there be no doubt that the rhetoric of the immigration debate played a role in the death of Luis Ramirez. Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, CNN's Lou Dobbs, cheese steak king Joey Vento, and others made racism cool again. Racism is once again socially acceptable.

Syndicated columnist and Bloomsburg U journalism professor Walter Brasch recognizes this:

Unindicted co-conspirators are millions of Americans and the far-right mass media.

It’s common for people in a nation that is in a Recession to complain. They’re frustrated with their lives, with bad working conditions, dead end jobs, and low incomes. They’re frustrated by skyrocketing prices, obscene corporate profits, and do-nothing legislators. The problem isn’t “us,” they believe, but “them.” Others. Outsiders who “invaded” America

A century ago in the coal region, good ole boy Americans complained about the Irish and Poles who took “our” jobs in the mines. For decades, Whites kept Blacks out of almost all but the most menial jobs, and then lynched those who they found to be too “uppity.” During the 1920s and 1930s, the masses of Germans, trying to rationalize their own economic distress, decided the problem was the Jews—and Americans went along with that ethnic racism. We blame Asians. Africans. Muslims. Anyone who’s different.

In today’s America, it’s the “Illegals,” the code-name for undocumented Mexicans.

(Full disclosure: Brasch is a member of the board of ACLU-PA's Central Susquehanna chapter.)

Barletta, for his part, fails to see the power of his words.

Barletta said he does not believe his campaign against illegal immigration in any way created an atmosphere that encouraged the killing of Luis Ramirez.

Illegals. Illegal aliens. Criminals. Invaders. Hordes. Mexcrement, as one visitor to SF said during the Hazleton trial. These are words used to de-humanize other human beings. And once they are dehumanized, it becomes much easier to dispose of them.

The Anti-Defamation League recognized this in its report Immigrants Targeted: Extremist Rhetoric Moves into the Mainstream, which was released last fall.

"The Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis were not the only ones who saw an opportunity in the national debate over immigration to sow the seeds of racism as a means to derail immigration reform," said (ADL national director Abraham H.) Foxman. "While reasonable people can disagree about border control and the appropriate parameters for immigration reform, the debate has been tainted by the virulent anti-immigrant message employed by a handful of groups. The real victims in this are Hispanic-Americans and other immigrants who are being unfairly targeted, demeaned and stereotyped."

Death is the silence in this language of violence.

(For more on the fallout in Shenandoah from the death of Luis Ramirez, check out this report from WITF-FM, the NPR affiliate in Harrisburg.)

Andy in Harrisburg

Invasion PA: Metcalfe revs the disinformation machine

Yesterday the people of Hazleton got a wake-up call about the benefits of their immigrant population, and it was Lou Barletta whose disinformation was exposed. Today, it's state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (Cranberry) who's been exposed trying to manipulate the public.

Metcalfe's report (available online for lovers of disaster fiction) compiles 120 apocryphal tales of Pennsylvanians "whose lives have been unnecessarily lost or irreparably damaged due to the federal government's outright refusal to honor the constitutional obligation of securing America's borders against foreign invaders."

What the report really consists of is Daryl Metcalfe's personal thoughts and feelings on stories he read in the newspaper. "Innocent until proven guilty" goes right out the window as he treats arrests and convictions the same. That's a safe practice in a state notorious for racial profiling, right?

According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, even John "foreign criminals" Morganelli, Northampton County district attorney and one of PA's most vocal immigration opponents, is giving Metcalfe's scary story a bad review:

"The report was, in my view, poorly constructed ... it was a compilation of opinions and inferences drawn from arrests that really did not support the conclusion that an 'invasion' is occurring in Pennsylvania. It also seemed to treat 'arrests' and 'convictions' as the same without noting the important distinction that an 'arrest' is only an allegation.

"Although I have noted arrests in public statements, it is important to note that an arrest is NOT (emphasis original) a conviction, and everyone arrested is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt."

Dimitri Vassilaros at the Trib offered Metcalfe the chance to defend his work, to which Metcalfe responded that he had no interest in fact-checking or follow through. "You have your spin on this story.... Obviously, you are trying to pick apart every word being used. I don't agree with you. I am done with ... your nitpicking."

A note to the people of Pennsylvania: YOU ARE BEING MANIPULATED.

No one's saying that 'illegal immigration' is just okey-dokey, but how can we come to a reasonable solution when our leaders are aligning themselves with racists and white supremacists and pumping out disinformation?

Thomas Jefferson believed that the most essential ingredient in a free country was a well-informed citizenry.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be... if we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed."

Herman Goering, Nazi leader, shared a similar belief, albeit expressed differently:

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Chris in Philly

Anti-immigrant strategy: Lie as much as possible

Woe, the Republic. We already knew that the anti-immigrant zealots are so successful because they are incredibly vocal. It's becoming increasingly clear that they are also successful because they lie.

There's no disputing it. Mayor Barletta rode stereotypes about immigrants and crime all the way to his ordinance, now to the 3rd Circuit of Appeals, and maybe even to a run for Congress. Of course, never mind that we blew up his crime argument in court by presenting- get this- the facts.

Now there's word that the anti-immigrant crowd is gearing up to use blatant nativism- factual inaccuracies be damned- to paint their political opponents. This today from the WaPo's Ruth Marcus:

Bashing Democrats on immigration -- accusing them of doing everything but carrying illegals' luggage across the border -- is a GOP mainstay. But the accusations that Republicans started to peddle last week reached a new low in dishonest nativism.

The first salvo involved the House version of the measure to extend the children's health insurance plan, SCHIP.

"What we do is take, at the cost of seniors who get . . . choices of their own health-care plans, we take it away," former speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) claimed during the House debate. "We wipe it out, and we give it to people who are illegal aliens."

"That bill, if it becomes law, would take $197 billion out of the Medicare trust fund, from our seniors, to give to illegal aliens," charged Rep. Ron Lewis (R-Ky.).

Leave aside the inflated numbers. Leave aside the scare talk about "our seniors." (AARP, the seniors' lobby, supports the bill.)

The provision at issue would repeal a 2006 requirement that everyone applying for Medicaid provide proof of citizenship -- passports or original birth certificates. That might sound sensible, but it has been a cumbersome, expensive solution to a non-problem.

In 2005, when he was overseeing the Medicaid program for the Bush administration, Mark McClellan noted that an inspector general's investigation did "not find particular problems regarding false allegations of citizenship, nor are we aware of any."

Because many Medicaid applicants don't have such papers easily at hand -- they're not the passport-carrying types -- the requirement has resulted in tens of thousands of eligible children being denied coverage or kicked off the rolls and has cost states millions of dollars to administer.

The ACLU, of course, has no position on SCHIP. But we do have a big problem with people using nativism, xenophobia, and racism- all neatly tied up into a package of lies- to advance their causes. It's wrong.

But I said, "Woe, the Republic," at the top because people will buy it. The nativists wouldn't use this line of attack if it didn't work. We and our allies have to answer the misinformation and answer it with fervor and strength.

Andy in Harrisburg

Charges dropped in infamous Hazleton murder

Although they were flawed in some ways (see: slavery, voting rights), our Framers were brilliant in a lot of ways. They were particularly visionary in the area of the judiciary. They believed that defendants deserved due process, a trial by a jury of their peers, the opportunity to see the evidence and hear the witnesses against them, and a presumption of innocence.

Sadly, our ability to carry out these ideals in practice has been mixed, at best. And that brings us to Friday's news that the Luzerne County District Attorney has dropped all charges against Joan Romero and Pedro Cabrera in the murder of Derek Kichline in Hazleton last year. The DA had shaky eyewitnesses and little physical evidence and deserves credit for doing what the law requires in not going forward with this case.

For more than a year now, we've been hearing from Hazleton Mayor Louis Barletta that Kichline's murder was the "straw that broke the camel's back" and pushed him and city council into passing the Illegal Immigration Relief Act. As if the ordinance- well, ordinances since there are eight (or is it nine?) different versions- didn't already show Barletta's disdain for the Constitution, he has been trying these two men in public for more than a year, before they ever saw the inside of a courtroom, saw the evidence against them, or had the opportunity to confront the witnesses against them. Barletta has made it clear that he is hostile to the American way of justice, and it is public officials like him who feed on Americans' fear of crime that debase the ideals our Founders put forth.

ACLU-PA's Vic Walczak responded to the latest development in the case:

"This dismissal of charges adds to the long list of discredited claims Barletta has made in the course of demonizing undocumented immigrants for allegedly destroying Hazleton," said attorney Witold "Vic" Walczak, of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups suing the city.

The city's own stats don't back up Barletta's claims that crime by illegal immigrants is destroying Hazleton, and now the anecdote that he has used over and over and over is gone.

Barletta responded:

Barletta called Walczak's statement repulsive.

"Derek Kichline's family and friends will never see justice for his death," Barletta said. "The fact that the ACLU celebrates this and turns it into a public relations spectacle is disgusting, and Mr. Walczak should be ashamed of himself."

To paraphrase Carl Weathers in Happy Gilmore, now that's spoken like a true demagogue. That is, a demagogue who is watching the very issue that rocketed him to fame fall apart right before his very eyes.

Andy in Harrisburg