THE ETHNIC STUDIES CRISIS IN ARIZONA, PART III: Jeff Biggers

Moderator’s note: Continuing with our series on the Ethnic Studies Crisis in Arizona, we present the award-winning author and blogger, Jeff Bigger. This is an interview with Curtis Acosta, one of the school teachers involved with the Mexican American Studies Program in the Tucson Unified School District that was just abolished by district officials in response to a ruling by the State Superintendent of Education. The interview was originally posted to AlterNet June 17 at 8:15am (ET).

 

“The Madness” of the Tucson Book Ban: Interview with Mexican American Studies Teacher Curtis Acosta on “The Tempest”

Returning to the classroom after the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, students and teachers will be greeted by a tremendous amount of confusion and potentially traumatizing fallout from last week’s extraordinary ban on books in the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD), as part of the suspension of the nationally acclaimed Ethnic Studies/Mexican American Studies program.

Nowhere has that confusion been greater than at Tucson High School, a historic battleground in the city’s long-time struggle to end discrimination and segregationist practices. Tucson’s largest school district, in fact, with over 60 percent of its students from Mexican American families, remains under an embarrassing federal desegregation order. 

With nearly two decades of teaching experience, Tucson High School teacher Curtis Acosta was praised on CNN for his critical role in bringing together students in the aftermath of the Giffords shooting in Tucson. In a similar fashion, Acosta has joined other teachers and community in numerous attempts to bring together Tucson’s faltering school administrators and board members in community forums and meetings. Featured in the acclaimed film documentary, Precious Knowledge, Acosta has been forced to defend wild accusations by the troublingly erratic TUSD school board president Mark Stegemen last summer that his use of literature and hand clapping, in the tradition of celebrated United Farm Work leader and native Arizona Cesar Chavez, was “cult-like.”

As I reported in the past, in an audit commissioned by Arizona’s state superintendent of public instruction, the MAS program was not only in full compliance with Arizona laws, but students in the MAS high school program “graduate in the very least at a rate of 5 percent more than their counterparts in 2005, and at the most, a rate of 11 percent more in 2010.” Scholars and educators from across the country have hailed Tucson’s MAS program as “the nation’s most innovative and successful academic and instructional program in Ethnic Studies at the secondary school level.

Here’s an interview with Acosta on the crisis in Tucson’s schools.

Jeff Biggers: What do MAS courses do you teach and how long have you been teaching?

Curtis Acosta: I designed the curriculum and pedagogy for both Latino Literature at the junior and senior levels at Tucson High Magnet School. I have taught both courses since their inception at our school. My first opportunity was to teach and design the junior class starting in 2003-04, followed closely by the senior level class which began in 2005-06. The senior component at Tucson High was granted due to the work of our students of the graduating class of 2006 who desperately wanted to continue the rigorous study in our classes because it reflected their lives and cultura, as well as serving as a window to the experiences of others. They embraced the human elements of the class we use as a foundation to academic study and petitioned the site based decision making committee, as well as a presentation focusing on the transformation that our classes had in their lives, their self-esteem, and scholarly goals.

This is my seventeenth year teaching for TUSD, all but two of those years at Tucson High. My colleagues and I have all been dedicated to our students in TUSD for years through innovation and hard work. We have quantitative academic results and brilliant graduates who are outstanding young people dedicated to their community. That is why the lack of support from our own district has been so frustrating and tragic. We have worked tirelessly for the students and families in the district for decades and the same cannot be said by the politicians and officials that ended our program on January 10th

JB: How did TUSD administrators prepare you in advance for any changes in your courses?

CA: We received absolutely no practical preparation for how our classes would be altered. My local site administrator at THS spoke to all our classes before the Governing Board meeting, but he had little insight pertaining to the Board’s intentions. He wanted to communicate to the students that changes may happen and walked them through a few possibilities. However, he really could not provide any details since he said he was not sure which direction the Board would choose to proceed.

JB: How did the school present the changes to the students, and assist in the transition?

CA: As of today, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, my students have yet to hear from their administration. My two MAS colleagues and I have had one 90-minute meeting last Wednesday the 11th, in which we were told that TUSD expects immediate changes. At that meeting, no one was certain what those changes included and the guidelines were non-existent for how to be sure we are in compliance with the law. What was clear is that our curriculum and pedagogy must be entirely overhauled. Which means the alterations are not only what we teach, but how we teach. No further support has been given to this point, and I believe my site administrators are equally confused about the vagueness of the direction and policy, which is why we have received little direction.

JB: Explain how you use “The Tempest” and why administrators objected?

CA: I am glad you asked this question since it gives me a chance to clear up many of the nuances that did not go viral. First and foremost, I believe our local site administrators at THS had my colleagues and my best interests at heart during our discussion of curriculum. This is a situation that was painful for everyone in our room at THS – administrators, department chairs, and teachers. This is all due to the direction of the Governing Board and the decision to comply with a bad law. It was clear that TUSD administrators gave little practical guidance to our site administrators. Thus, we were all trying to figure this out together.

I recorded the meeting with permission of all in the room, and listened to it again last night. What is very clear is that “The Tempest” is problematic for our administrators due to the content of the play and the pedagogical choices I have made. In other words, Shakespeare wrote a play that is clearly about colonization of “the new world” and there are strong themes of race, colonization, oppression, class and power that permeate the play, along with themes of love and redemption. We study this work by Shakespeare using the work of renowned historian Ronald Takaki and the chapter “The Tempest in the Wilderness” from his a book A Different Mirror where he uses the play to explore the early English settlements on this continent and English imperialism. From there, we immerse ourselves in the play and discuss the beauty of the language, Shakespeare’s multiple perspectives on colonization, and the brilliant and courageous attention he gives to such important issues.

However, TUSD is basing our compliance upon their appeal and Mr. Kowall’s ruling. Thus, I believe our administrators advised me properly when they said to avoid texts, units, or lessons with race and oppression as a central focus. If we are asked to follow a bad law than absurdities such as advising I stay away from teaching “The Tempest” not only seems prudent, but intelligent. We also have not received confirmation that the ideas, dialogue, and class work of our students will be protected. In clearer words, if I avoid discussing such themes in class, yet the students see the themes and decide to write, discuss or ask questions in class, we may also be found to be in violation. The stakes are far too high since a violation of the law could cost the district millions, our employment, and personal penalties from the state for breaking the law.

At the end of the meeting it became clear to all of us that I need to avoid such literature and it was directly stated. Due to the madness of this situation and our fragile positions as instructors who will be frequently observed for compliance, and be asked to produce examples of student work as proof of our compliance, I cannot disagree with their advice. Now we are in the position of having to rule out The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, etc. for the exact same reasons.

Jeff Biggers is the American Book Award-winning author of Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland (Nation/Basic Books), among other books. Visit his website: www.jeffbiggers.com

THE ETHNIC STUDIES CRISIS IN ARIZONA, PART II

Moderator’s Note: We are sharing this update prepared by our colleague Salomón Baldenegro on the situation in Arizona surrounding the struggle to reverse HB2281, the draconian law that bans Ethnic Studies in Arizona, in violation of a previous federal court desegregation order for the Tucson Unified School District.

Updates on the TUSD Board and Federal Judge Tashima’s Rulings

By

Salomón Baldenegro

Estimadas/os: 

On Tuesday, Jan. 10, our efforts to save Mexican American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District was dealt a double whammy. These items are already on the Web, so you may already be apprised of what I report below.

1. By a 4-1 vote, the TUSD Governing Board voted to dismantle the MAS curriculum-department, effective immediately (as in starting today). Only board member Adelita Grijalva opposed the motion and stood up for our community.

Several hundred people attended, and approximately 12 speakers spoke in favor of MAS, asking the board to appeal John Huppenthal’s decision that teaching Mexican American history and literature and reading books by Mexican American authors in TUSD schools is
illegal (the time allotted for public comment didn’t allow for more speakers).

Michael Hicks, the Tea Party board member read a prepared motion calling for the immediate dismantling of MAS.

Newly-appointed board member, Alexandre Sugiyama enthusiastically seconded the motion. This was not a total surprise, given that Sugiyama was sponsored for the board appointment by virulent racist Tea Party state senator Frank Antenori (Tucson’s wannabe Russell Pearce).

Board president Mark Stegeman, who has been trying to dismantle MAS for a year now, was the picture of smugness, knowing he finally had the votes to dismantle MAS.

The saddest, embarrassingly pathetic, and most disgraceful spectacle of the evening was when Mexican American board member Miguel Cuevas joined the Mexican haters and voted for the motion to dismantle MAS, using the same rhetoric to justify his vote as Hicks,
Sugiyama, and Stegeman.

Making the Cuevas vote even more pathetic is the fact that Hicks, Stegeman, and Sugiyama hate him as much as they hate us and our students.

Just two weeks ago, when Sugiyama was sworn in as a board member, Cuevas was the board president. Within a couple of minutes of Sugiyama’s being sworn in, he seconded a motion by Hicks to remove Cuevas as board president and replace him with Stegeman. It was a raw power move—the Mexican haters weren’t about to have no stinkin’ Meskin [sic] be the boss.

The depth of hate these people and their allies have for us, our community, and our students is truly mind boggling.

2. Earlier in the day, Federal Judge Atsushi Wallace Tashima, who is presiding over the “Save Ethnic Studies” lawsuit brought by the 11 MAS teachers and two students, issued a ruling regarding the motion by the SES plaintiffs in which they sought a Preliminary
Injunction that would halt the implementation of HB 2281 and any sanctions (e.g., loss of state funding for TUSD) associated with HB 2281.

Judge Tashima:

·      Refused to grant the Injunction.

·      Threw out the teachers from the lawsuit, saying that they had no standing to sue.

·      Ruled that the First Amendment issues the teachers raised were not valid.

Tashima did allow the lawsuit to proceed to trial with the two students as plaintiffs. While this is obviously a good thing in that Huppenthal had asked Tashima to dismiss the lawsuit, lawsuits move very slowly, so by the time the SES case goes to trial, the MAS curriculum will have been dismantled for a long time (years?).

Be that as it may, the SES movement—including having fundraisers to raise money to fund the lawsuit—will continue. We need to continue supporting the SES movement by contributing money to it, attending SES events (rallies, fundraisers, press conferences,
court hearings), etc.

This matter is not over. As I told the TUSD board, we are going to win. Every time in our history that the Mexican haters have sought to marginalize us or otherwise hurt our community and our people, we have stood tall and resisted—and we have won! Sometimes
it takes a while and we experience some setbacks along the way, but we always win.

The struggle has entered another phase, besides the upcoming legal battles. As strategies develop, I will inform you and ask you to—actively!!!—help us.

Here are links to three good articles on Tuesday’s meeting—one by Dylan Smith in the Tucson Sentinel that contains an array of photos that capture the dynamics at the meeting; another in the Huffington Post by award-winning journalist Jeff Biggers; and another by David Abie Morales, aka “The Three Sonorans.” Here are the links:

http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/011012_tusd_ethnic_studies/tusd-axes-ethnic-studies/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/tucson-mexican-american-studies_b_1199794.html

http://tucsoncitizen.com/three-sonorans/2012/01/11/update-on-mexican-american-studies-in-tusd-after-last-nights-vote /#comments

Salomón Baldenegro

THE ETHNIC STUDIES CRISIS IN ARIZONA, PART I - Rodolfo Acuña on Tucson's School Board

Moderator’s Note: This past week (January 10), the School Board of the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) voted to dismantle the district’s phenomenally successful Mexican American Studies Program in response to a decision by a conservative judge that the program violated Arizona's draconian and clearly unconstitutional law banning ethnic studies programs in the state's public schools. We are presenting an important series of blog contributions by various colleagues on the significance, context, and politics surrounding this tragic and misguided policy shift by public educators in Arizona. We will also shortly be posting our own analysis and critique of the unfolding struggle to defend ethnic studies in Arizona and beyond. This first post is prepared by our colleague, Rodolfo Acuña, Professor of Chicana/o Studies at Cal State-Northridge and one of the founders of this remarkable field of interdisciplinary study and research.

Tucson’s Sin of Scandal 

Failing Students

By

Rodolfo F. Acuña

What is missing in the media’s coverage of the elimination of the Tucson Unified School District Mexican American Studies program is that students were learning and they wanted to go to school.  I take this travesty as a personal matter.  One of the reasons I have stayed in education for over fifty-five years is that I wanted to do something about the dropout problem.  I always heeded John Dewey’s dicta that student failure was the consequence of teacher failure. If students drop out then there is something wrong with the educational system.

Arizona education has many problems: Taxpayers do not want to pay for schools and it is dead last in student per capita spending.  White parents don’t want their children going to school with Latinos and blacks as well as other working class people, so charter schools have multiplied to “balance” student ethnicity by making these schools more segregated with whites going to the privileged charter schools.

Arizona has blatantly avoided federal court orders to desegregate: More than fifty years after Brown v. the Board of Education (1954), the TUSD is still under a federal court mandate to “balance” the schools. The federal government, meanwhile, has poured millions of dollars into Arizona to help pay for integration purposes.

The truth be told, there has been no improvement: For Latina/os, the dropout rate remains at over fifty percent. As part of an effort to correct imbalances, the federal court in its desegregation plan, included the MAS program, which the federal government paid for.

Because I have been a highly successful educator, I have seen that building student identity ameliorates an inferiority complex ingrained by the educational process. Innumerable studies prove that an increased sense of self motivates students to improve their skills and allows them to succeed in school.

The reason that I want to improve education is personal.  I am not religious, but I always remember the nuns telling me when I saw a person less fortunate to say, “There for the grace of God go I.” 

Although I could not myself do it, I appreciate the work of Fr. Greg Boyle and Homeboy Industries.  It hurts me every time I see a gang kid because I realize that as a member of society I bear a responsibility for the outcome.  My vocation differs from Greg’s and I work with students by giving them an alternative to gangs when they are young. My view is that every student that goes to college does not end up in a gang.

The TUSD MAS program was contributing toward that end.  Despite the racist lies of Arizona politicos, the program is a model proven to motivate students.  And, despite the actions of the TUSD school board, other districts will emulate and study it.

My feelings about the people behind the destruction of the MAS program are that they will have no redemption.  They are no better than the members of the mafia who do not care about the outcome or hardships they cause as long as they make a profit. 

Democracy has been dealt a serious blow. The actions of these racists have contributed to disillusionment among many students, teachers, and parents.  These racist policies have brought about a loss of faith, which is always difficult whether it be in religion or politics.  This loss leads to a sense of emptiness and hopelessness.  For instance, I know people who as a result of the pedophile scandals in the Catholic Church have not returned to mass.

In ending the MAS program, the state of Arizona has been complicit in condemning many Latina/o students to failure.  Thomas de Aquinas defined scandal as a word or action that is intrinsically evil, and leads to the spiritual ruin of another person.  You don’t necessarily have to physically cause someone’s sin, but only be the moral cause of the sin.  The sin of scandal is not accidental but premeditated as in the case of the policies perpetrated by Arizona elites.  

From the top on down, Arizona officials know that their actions are causing many Latina/os to be stigmatized. They know that they are contributing to higher dropout rates and they don’t care.

Mark Stegeman, Michael Hicks, Miguel Cuevas and the newly appointed Alexandre Sugiyama all know it.  They are bought men who don’t care about the consequences as long as it fills their pockets. 

For them, education is business and it doesn’t much matter if Mexican Americans get an education. As long as white people hate Mexicans, it will be easier to cash-in on their lack of educational opportunity.

It is a well-known fact that the Tea Party is not a populist movement.  It is racist and driven by right- wing funding by elites that includes the Koch brothers, who Mitt Romney states are the “financial engine of the Tea Party.”

Most Arizonans know the role of ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council).  People for the American Way and Common Cause have published a report that documents the fact that ALEC has inspired and written most of the anti- Latina/o and anti-worker legislation in the state of Arizona.  ALEC is at the forefront of anti-labor, anti-healthcare and anti-environmental attacks and is behind the privatization of schools and prisons.

Major corporations including Coca-Cola, Kraft, ExxonMobil and GlaxoSmithKline are key players in Arizona politics.  Two dozen major corporations have seats on ALEC’s board which is insidiously called the “Private Enterprise Board.”

Well aware of the growing Latina/o population, it is to ALEC’s advantage to keep the state white and Mexicans disenfranchised.  Thus, it has sponsored voter suppression bills that potentially disenfranchise tens of thousands of Arizonans.

The report identifies fifty Arizona state legislators who are current ALEC members.  These sold-out politicos wrote and sponsored SB 1070, Arizona’s notorious anti-immigrant law. It is no accident that privatized prisons are flush with immigrant detainees.  Uneducated Mexican Americans also insure future inmate growth.  Aside from money to run the prisons, prison labor is competing with free labor.

In Tucson, the Southern Arizona Leadership Council is an ALEC mini-me; an all-white country club whose members overlap with other heavy hitters locally, regionally and statewide.  The TUSD superintendent of schools is a former SALC vice-president.

Recently, when Judy Burns, a supporter of the MAS program died, SALC engineered the appointment of Alexandre Sugiyama, a lecturer in Economics at the University of Arizona, to fill her seat.  It accomplished its ends by stacking the selection committee.

Sugiyama was obviously selected because he is half Brazilian and half Japanese.  He has no ties to the community; he is a lecturer with no publications, or knowledge or interest in education.

His student evaluations are low: “AVOID (reasons): 1. Resents his own job such that he’s consistently 15 mins late to 1hr class…” Another “if you choose to take this class with this teacher you are in for a real treat. TORTURE. Sugiyama is such a horrid teacher it is unreal. Do yourself a favor and just say NO.”

As soon as Sugiyama was appointed, he voted with Stegeman and Hicks to replace Cuevas as chair and then with a 4-1 majority abolished MAS. This is their scandalous version of democracy in action.

Thus far, what is lost in this conflict is that the Latino students are the ones who will suffer and no one making these decisions gives a damn.  The elitist and racist politicos do not care if our youth end up in gangs, as long as this makes more profit for establishment types and their corporations; that is what counts. The fear white parents have of their own children ending up in a class with a Mexican will generate more charter schools and more dropouts, which will insure larger Latina/o prison populations. Everyone in power gets to make more money.

The broad-based and growing disillusionment of our communities is not limited to disappointment with Arizona politicos but includes the federal government.  The federal courts have not enforced federal laws. The Obama administration acts like it is paralyzed, furthering the feeling of abandonment and encouraging the TUSD Tea Party Board member, Hicks, to go around saying that state law trumps federal law.

My mother would say about the gaggle in Tucson, no tienen madre. They are disrespectful; they don’t care about the law, or how many people are hurt by their actions. 

I am not as nice as my mother was. I feel much like the people in the Boyle Heights area when the Night Stalker, Richard Ramírez, was terrorizing Los Angeles. They put out signs daring him to come East of the River, and then took care of him when he did.

Hopefully the Tea Party will come to L.A. and the campaign to save ethnic studies in Arizona will prevail.

Guest Blog: Manuel de J. Hernández G. Update on HB2281

Moderator´s Note: We are posting this timely report from Professor Manuel de Jesus Hernández G. of Arizona State University on the December 27 decision issued by Judge Lewis Kowal in the Tucson Unified School District appeal on findings by the State of Arizona Superintendent of Education alleging that the Mexican American Studies Program at TUSD violates HB2281, the legislation seeking to ban the teaching of Chicana/o Studies and other Ethnic Studies programs in Arizona public schools.

Expected and Rigged Decision against TUSD´s Appeal in Defense of Ethnic Studies: Horne´s Invisible and Racially Prejudiced Hand Involved

 Dr. Manual de J. Hernández G.

Dec. 28, 2011 12:15 PMEquality and Justice Press  ©

            Yesterday´s decision against the Tucson Unified School District´s appeal on the findings issued in June by Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal, where he found Mexican American Studies in violation of HB 2281, was expected and rigged.

            Firstly, administrative judge Lewis Kowal is a Jan Brewer appointee.

 

Secondly, if Kowal had ruled in favor of TUSD, Huppenthal would have unilaterally over-ruled the decision. To an extent, the appointed judge was politically motivated and acting under the influence of Arizona´s current one-party rule, which has always been a destructive element in American politics.  Including Brewer, the top five elected positions in the state are held by extremists Republicans who rode an anti-immigrant wave and are Anti-Mexican, including those who are United States citizens. 

Ironically, such migration wave has now decreased by 40 per cent. Last year Mexico´s economy grew by two to three percent. Our U.S. economy did only around one percent.

Kowal´s Decision: Another Direct Attack against Americans of Mexican and Latino Descent

Unfortunately, as has been the case since the early 2000s, direct attacks against Americans of Mexican and Latino descent continue with judge Kowal´s decision.  Apparently, the judge has misread or, knowing that Huppenthal dislikes it, has not read the Cambium Report.

At this time, Save Ethnic Studies is reading and studying the politically influenced decision by judge Kowal.  In this written decision, one can identify the rhetorical discourse used by Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, who has, since the 1990s, a long history of putting obstacles on access to education for Mexican Americans and Latinos in Arizona. 

TUSD´s program in Mexican American Studies has an 80 per cent success rate in channeling students into college and the university.

Tom Horne: A Canadian Foreigner who Considers Mexican Americans Foreigners

Ironically, Horne was born in Canada, and he has demonstrated, time after time, that he considers Americans of Mexican descent foreigners in their own land and that their culture should be ignored by fellow Americans. He does so despite the fact that Mexican American soldiers fought in Europe during World War II to put an end to the Holocaust. 

In fact, in WW II, Mexican Americans were the ethnic group that received the most medals for valor, bravery, and self-sacrifice.  A visit to American Legion Post 41 in downtown Phoenix will attest to such citizenship heritage. 

By seeking to label TUSD´s Mexican American Studies program, radical Tom Horne is projecting and reapplying, as many argue, a historical racism identified in the 1990s as damaging against the welfare and citizen rights of the Arizona Latino community.

Please contribute to fund: http://saveethnicstudies.org/

Guest Blog: Farm workers, hunger, and anti-immigrant hysteria

Farm Workers: Fuel the U.S food system while going hungry

Teresa Bailey

The backbone of United States food production is the labor of immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America, many of whom are not U.S. citizens. The agricultural labor force is estimated to consist of 75 percent people born in Mexico; some estimates are that at least 53 percent of farm workers are undocumented.1 Undocumented and documented immigrants from Mexico are undoubtedly an integral part of the U.S. agricultural labor force.

When discussing immigration I must emphasize the structural violence perpetuated by the United States government that has devastated the Mexican economy, resulting in the high rates of immigration from Mexico. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) enabled the dumping of U.S. subsidized corn and other crops on the Mexican market and at the same time the Mexican government discontinued land subsidies for campesinos. Local farmers, unable to compete with U.S. subsidized imports, went out of business. Thus, many former farmers were left with few to no options other than to travel to the U.S in hopes of making a livelihood to support their families.

Increasing violence associated with the drug cartels also contributes to the migratory flow and the inability of many to return to Mexico. United States residents are the number one consumers of the illicit products of the Mexican drug industry; this is another way in which the U.S. creates the conditions, which force many people in Mexico to risk crossing the border into the U.S. Finally, the increased militarization of the border has put an end to the revolving door policy in which Mexicans could work in the U.S. and then return to their families seasonally. As border crossing becomes more costly and dangerous, immigrants increasingly must remain in the U.S once they have crossed, and thus many are separated from their families for longer periods than was traditionally the case.

Mexican farm workers are filling a labor need that Americans are unwilling to fill, and are thus vital contributors to the U.S. economy.  Despite this, as unemployment rates in America reach record highs, Mexican immigrants are scapegoated as villains stealing American jobs. Consequently, this has given rise to a wave of anti-immigrant legislation in many states across the U.S. The first being the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (SB1070), signed into law by the Governor of Arizona on April 23, 2010. The law requires immigrants to carry documentations at all times and allows law enforcement to ask for such documentation without a crime being committed. This is widely seen as racial profiling.

Many states have followed Arizona’s lead as extremist right wing groups in the country fuel anti-immigrant rhetoric and legislation including laws passed in Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina, and Alabama. In Alabama, HB 56 is the most extreme of this state-level anti-immigrant legislation to date; it was passed in June 2011. This law requires public schools to check for documentation of school children, electronic verification of citizenship status by employers, and legalized racial profiling of Latinos. The law has been devastating to Alabama’s agricultural economy, as farm workers have left the inhospitable state causing a huge shortage in agricultural labor and billion dollar losses in the sector. This situation in Alabama is just one example of how important undocumented farm workers are to food production in this country.

These states, with their overtly racist and anti-immigrant agenda, do not reflect the only strategy adopted ort pursued by state legislators to make their states inhospitable for immigrants. In Washington state the 2011 legislative session witnessed numerous legislative proposals that used budget cuts to target legal and undocumented immigrants. The budget cut proposals included eliminating the State Food Assistance Program and cutting 26,000 undocumented immigrant children from access to health care through reductions to Apple Health for Kids.2 As far as passing anti-immigrant laws in Washington State, numerous proposals have been introduced including efforts to ban undocumented immigrants from acquiring driver’s licenses. What we saw in Washington was a covert attack on the undocumented immigrant community. Washington state may not require immigrants to carry documentation at all times or legally condone the racial profiling of Latinos, however it will cut health care for immigrant children and get rid of food assistance for immigrant families.

The Washington State Food Assistance Program was created under the governorship of Garry Locke in response to the Congressional decision in 1997 to bar immigrants from the receiving federal food stamps until they can provide documentation of five years of legal residence. The State Food Assistance program perfectly mimics federal food stamps, yet directly fills the gap felt by the immigrant community.

However, during the 2011 legislative session Governor Gregoire, with a 2 billion dollar budget deficit, proposed to eliminate the program entirely. To be fair, cuts were being made to many different government services and departments, however a heavy burden was on social safety net programs. But to eliminate a program completely rather than reduce its funding is a drastic step because there is a very small chance of the program being re-instated. This would have had a devastating blow, with 31,000 people losing their food stamps.2 The legislature decided to save the program, but cut the funding in half.

As the 2012 Washington State legislative session is set to begin, the state faces a fourth year in a row with a major budget shortfall and Governor Gregoire is proposing an additional round of 2 billion dollars in cuts. What is left of the State Food Assistance program, saved last year, is once again on the chopping block for complete elimination.3

The audacity of barring people from food assistance because of their citizenship status is disgusting. The bitter irony of such a decision is intensified when considering that the very same farm workers who put the food on everyone’s table have extremely high rates of food insecurity. In Washington State and across the nation, farm workers go hungry at rates several times higher than the national average, estimates show that 86 percent of farm workers experience food insecurity.4 , 5

Farm workers have very low incomes, averaging $11,000 nationwide.1 The nation’s food security depends on Mexican farm workers, yet these same farm workers struggle to put food on their own tables because they are paid so poorly and are barred from food assistance programs that other people with the same low incomes have access to. The Governor should not be eliminating the last remnants of food assistance to immigrant families, but should instead expand the program by not requiring any identification so that undocumented immigrants will have the option to support themselves and their families with food assistance. There needs to be a shift in the rhetoric that recognizes the important role undocumented immigrants have in our community.

---

1 U.S. Department of Labor, National Agricultural Workers Survey (2005).

2 Children’s Alliance, The Facts about the State Food Assistance Program (2010).

3 Office of the Governor, State of Washington, Proposed 2012 Supplemental Budget (2011).

4 Washington State Department of Health, Hunger in Washington (2008)

5 Weigel M M, Armijos R X, Hall Y P, Ramirez Y, Orozco R. The household food insecurity and health outcomes of U.S.-Mexico border migrant and seasonal farmworkers. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health 9:157-69 (2007).

Guest Blog: Raúl Fernández on 'Free Trade'

Moderator's Note: We present this guest blog by Raúl Fernández, a Professor at the University of California-Irvine and a lifelong critic of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. This essay was originally prepared for Mingas-TLC and the Alianza Social Continental (Hemispheric Social Alliance).

This is What Free Trade Looks Like

Raúl Fernández

The great increase in immigration from Mexico, Central America and South America coincides with the imposition of “free trade” policies and agreements – a euphemism for what should be called investor rights agreements – beginning in the early 1990s. The U.S. government, banks, and corporations exerted pressure on pliable Latin American governments ruling over poor and heavily indebted countries.

These policies require the elimination of protective tariffs and measures in Latin America while the U.S. continues its protective policies, especially in agriculture. This so-called “free trade” has meant no restriction of goods entering into Mexico and now Central America and Peru.

NAFTA allowed the entry of US agricultural products into Mexico without tariffs or other kinds of barriers. The heavily protected US agro complex could do this while NAFTA required Mexico to dismantle agricultural supports and protection.

At the time of the passage of NAFTA, some economists predicted that millions of agricultural jobs would be lost in Mexico, as poor farmers could not compete with the heavily subsidized imports dumped into Mexico.

By 2006 Mexico had lost over two million agricultural jobs including as many as 1.7 million small farmers who were forced off their land and into the migratory stream. All because of cheap corn, milk, chicken, pork, beans, rice, all entering from the United States.  There are about 600 people leaving the Mexican countryside everyday.

There is little employment in local urban industry because there too, “free trade” means the import of cheap U.S. manufactured products. The choices are: working in maquilas on the border, already saturated and losing employment to even cheaper China, or migrating to the United States.

Before NAFTA Mexican wages were 23 percent of U.S. wages; now they are about 12 percent.

Of the millions of Mexican nationals currently living in the United States two-thirds came to the U.S. after the passage of NAFTA in 1994 seeking relief from the disastrous economic conditions in Mexico.

In 2005, at least 582,000 Mexican economic refugees immigrated north to the U.S.; the number was 559,000 in 2006. Among US responses to the increased migration: militarization of the border, chasing of undocumented workers as if they were criminals, and the rise of demagoguery a la Lou Dobbs.

At least 562 immigrants died trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in 2007. The average of the last ten years is one death per day. Deaths have increased as the militarization of the border has pushed economic refugees to cross over the more deserted and desolate areas.

Hundreds of thousands of people from other countries that have been enduring these free trade policies have also become displaced and migrated out of their countries. Tens of thousands have left Colombia, which “opened” its economy to “free trade” in 1991. In El Salvador hundreds of thousands have migrated, about one-third of the entire population, mostly to the United States.

Many Americans are angry at the presence of about 12 million Mexican, Central American, and South American undocumented migrants in the U.S. but they have only to blame policies like NAFTA and other US-backed “free trade” policies put into effect in Mexico and other Latin American countries beginning in the early 1990s.

Other treaties like CAFTA, the recently approved Free Trade Agreement with Peru, and the proposed Free Trade Agreement with Colombia will have similar results.  In the words of Teamsters President Hoffa: Subsistence farmers will be forced off their land because cheap U.S. food produced by agribusiness will undercut their prices. The same thing happened with the North American Free Trade Agreement which resulted in millions of poor Mexicans leaving their farms.”

The goal of the so-called “free trade” agreements is made crystal clear in a letter about the proposed Colombian Free Trade Agreement sent recently to Speaker Nancy Pelosi by the CEO’s of Citibank, Coca-Cola, General Motors, ExxonMobil, and others: The letter states right at the beginning: “The US-Colombia FTA will: eliminate barriers to U.S. farm products...it will provide new sales opportunities for American farmers and ranchers.” In other words: local agriculture will be destroyed, and peasants and rural workers forced to migrate.

These investor rights agreements and policies are intensifying the economic situation in the Latin American region where 200 million people, more than 40 percent of the population, is living below the poverty line, and there are more than 100 million indigents, with 40 million children living in the streets, and where the enormous inequality has become accelerated by these “free trade” policies that benefit multinationals and the local groups connected with the import business.

The beginning of a solution to the “immigration problem” begins with the reversal of the policies of a false “free trade” like NAFTA, CAFTA and other agreements.

Guest Blog: Rodolfo Acuña on Conviviality against Thought Control

Doublespeak

By Rodolfo F. Acuña

Stuart Chase’s The Tyranny of Words (1938) described an “anxiety culture” where the manipulation of word meanings was a device for control. Chase’s book encouraged the study of semantics (the science of word meaning). Within a decade George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) coined the notion of doublespeak, the act of disguising and distorting of words. 

What was then a conversation point has become the norm. Today, doublespeak is so common that euphemisms such as “downsizing” for layoffs or you’re fired and “take out” for destroy or murder are used without reflection. The intentional ambiguity has become part of the political stratagem. 

The intent of doublespeak is to deny or disguise the truth.  As propaganda it rivals Adolph Hitler’s Big Lie and is today so widespread that out of necessity the field of linguistics has grown to the point that there are numerable subfields. 

Doublespeak has led to the field of forensic linguistics to breakdown the meaning or intent of words to juries and judges alike. This has led to the development of the International Association of Forensic Linguists that publishes the Journal of Speech, Language, and the Law.

George Carlin had a whole routine on euphemisms such as he “passed away,” avoiding the reality of “he is dead.” The use of euphemisms is nothing new;  in the 18th century, Shakespeare in Hamlet used the euphemism “die” for “orgasm,” thus  Hamlet said "I die in your lap." The problem today is that the use of euphemistic words is so pervasive.

There are varying layers of euphemisms, which involve sophisticated metaphors.  They can be traced back to the Greeks and historically they have enriched poetry and dichos (aphorisms).  Euphemisms are so common that we often accept their literal meaning without reflection.

To protect oneself it is important to be cautious and develop a general knowledge of semantics. University of California Los Angeles professor Otto Santa Ana’s Brown Tide Rising: Metaphoric Representations of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse is especially informative in today's context of the demonization of Mexican-origin peoples.  Santa Ana gives the reader awareness and the tools to decipher propaganda. Particularly interesting is how the government uses metaphors such “desert storms” substituting it for the reality of the war or invasion of Iraq in the 1990s.

Just thinking about different meanings, how different is the use of “Manifest Destiny” from Deutschland über alles.  In U.S. history the so-called Western Expansion has been described as “The Winning of the West” as if the Indian Wars had been a ballgame.

In other instances, it is called the “Western Expansion,” the “Western Movement,” or the “re-annexation of Texas and the Southwest” (which again are all euphemisms for Manifest Destiny).  Are these expressions factual? Euphemisms obscure realities; they erase alternative histories and ways of being.

History is replete with examples of doublespeak. 

At the turn of the 19th century, industrialists and bankers such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan and Andrew Mellon built financial and industrial empires by opportunistically using the public treasury and grabbing land grants on the so-called public domain, which were really the enclosed indigenous home lands, so they could construct their railroad lines; they privatized the country's natural resources and exploited and assassinated workers in the so-called “Labor Wars.” Their behavior was so nefarious that historians and reformers dubbed them the Robber Barons.

Later, the foundations endowed by the robber barons funded historians such as Allan Nevins to rewrite history and rechristen them as the “Captains of Industry.”  The Texas-based King Ranch, which accumulated a million acres of land, much of it stolen from Mexican farmers, paid Historian Tom Lea to write a Horatio Alger-like eulogy to Richard King.

In recent times, countless other instances of doublespeak have crept into the American vernacular. Expressions such as “pulling oneself up by his or her bootstrap,” “equality,” “equal opportunity,” “free world” or the “democratic world” are misused. We refer to countries led by dictators as “democratic” simply because they support us. Western Civilization means the white world and along with the “free world” insidiously refer to countries that at one time had empires and profited from the sale of slaves.

As a student of urban history, words such as redevelopment and urban renewal bug me.  In Tucson I came across a group called the Southern Arizona Leadership Council whose members have made fortunes by buying government land at bargain prices and displacing homeowners. They have made millions by having the inside track to contracts and jobs.

In Los Angeles, we call “urban development” or “urban renewal,” people removers or bulldozed communities. People were displaced and others made huge profits because of this removal.

Lately, words like “class warfare” and “equality” have taken on distorted meanings.  In the present economic crisis Tea Partiers and other right-wing fundamentalists call the one percent who often pay minimal or zero taxes “job creators.” The rest of us are parasites. 

Are they really job creators when most have received huge federal bailouts but refuse to reinvest money in American jobs? For that matter are they patriotic because they wear flagpins? Is the ninety-nine percent waging class warfare by criticizing the privilege of the few?

For that matter, are the Koch brothers philanthropists because their foundations donate money to art galleries that bear their names? Should they be called philanthropists for funding groups to fight government regulation and disenfranchise voters with the aim of making higher business profits and paying lower taxes?

The tyranny of words becomes dangerous when translating foreign words. Recently my friend Arnaldo Cordova wrote an article in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada in which he referred to the rash of bombings in Mexico as being the byproduct of “delinquencia organizada,” which upon a hurried reading I translated as organized juvenile delinquency. Boy was I embarrassed.

But look at the idiots who translate the word la raza as strictly meaning race when it popularly refers to a people (with shared histories and ethnic traditions). 

Because of the gullibility or ignorance of others, the xenophobes continue to intentionally confuse communication, entering Hitler’s Big Lie twilight zone. Recent anti-immigrant campaigns have taken a similar bent. In 1994 the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 campaign that restricted public services for undocumented immigrants was insidiously called 187. In California Section 187 refers to the California Penal Code that defines the crime of murder.

This demonization has its roots in the term “illegal alien.” Illegal conjures the imagery of criminality; alien invokes the imagery of body snatchers from outer space.

This imagery plays on the American fears that recall 1980s and 90s movies of extraterrestrial invasions. They are popularized by people who still believe in the boogeyman and are afraid of the dark. Many white people in Arizona are afraid that they are losing their patrimony to the Mexican body snatchers, although most Mexicans have been in Arizona longer than the snowbirds.

Words have meaning; there are consequences in distorting them. Look no further than the phrase “weapons of mass destruction.” In the process, the truth becomes a casualty when it loses its sense of reality.  What is keeping this country afloat is scientific or critical thinking and we are losing this edge.  Doublespeak is the antithesis of science.

Thinking is not bad, it won’t kill you. Msgr. Ivan Illich in his book Tools for Conviviality (1975), laments the loss of convivial tools in our society:

I choose the term “conviviality” to designate the opposite of industrial productivity. I intend it to mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment. I consider conviviality to be individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. I believe that, in any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount of industrial productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society's members. 

Our anxiety culture today is in danger of losing its most basic convivial tool -- reasoned communication. Today, doublespeak has crossed over the line. People are captives of the political euphemisms of others who are purposely dishonest. In the end, this will lead to lethal consequences that may in many instances kill and in other occasions make us poorer and less free as the truth loses its sense of reality.

Alabama's State of Exception

CUT THE WATER OFF TO THOSE SONS OF....

Reports from Alabama indicate the extremist application of the new anti-immigrant law (HB56) signed by the governor in May of this year. At least one water utility has posted this sign, warning customers that without a valid drivers' license, the water supply will be shut-off to residences.

Apparently, the state of economic exception in Alabama is designed to force undocumented workers and their families -- both citizens or non-citizens -- out of the state by denying them access to water. This grotesque barbarism clearly qualifies the New South as the New Nazi Germany, and this is not hyperbole.

Jews were also routinely denied access to water and other public utilities as part of the disciplinary machine that hatefully continues to spew these sorts of poisonous and immoral laws designed to rob the working class of life. The tactics of this civil war against the rule of law should rightfully earn the USA infamy as a major gross violator of basic human rights. We must continue to work until laws that deny people access to food, water, shelter, education, and health care are abolished and our common wealth is restored.

Guest Blog: Dr. Cintli on Alabama & Arizona

Moderator's Note: We present the "Letter to Birmingham: From the anti-Mexican State of Arizona" by Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez. This is more than an update on the unjustly and erroneously affirmed Alabama anti-immigrant law (HB56), the one that the mainstream media, gloating, presents as "Arizona on Steroids". Roberto's beautiful letter speaks to a re-awakening of the collective deep memory people of color have of the segregationist days of Bull Connor and of the fact that Arizona's white power structure wants a return to the world of the segregationist South in the heart of the desert Southwest. We are re-posting this narrative of resistance from The Column of the Americas.

A letter to Birmingham...
From the anti-Mexican State of Arizona


Dear Birmingham…

I write this to you from Tucson, Arizona, from a state synonymous with dehumanization and racial profiling, from a land of fear and hate. Birmingham, I think you know what I speak of. But don’t think I am alluding to your past; also today.

HB 56, the bill that your state legislature recently passed and that your governor signed, is being touted as the toughest anti-immigrant bill in the country, one that was affirmed by a U.S. District judge this September. This measure requires school officials to act as immigration agents and permits police officers to detain people without bail, based merely on suspicion of being in the country illegally. That it has fomented hate and caused panic and fear was the point, wasn’t it?

You might be wondering why someone from Arizona would be writing to a Southern city? The answer is simple; Birmingham represents memory; it is etched into the psyche of the nation. It is also seared into Tucson’s memory, not just because many of us from the U.S. Southwest also lived through the civil rights era, but also because on May 3 of this year, one of our elders in our community was arrested for attempting to read the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” by Martin Luther King Jr. This occurred during a school board meeting, this in the midst of a hostile anti-Mexican, anti-Indigenous and anti-immigrant atmosphere in this state.

Here we have our own Bull Conner; Sheriff Joe Arpaio – the same Sheriff who unapologetically proclaimed on CNN that it was an honor to be compared with the KKK (11/12/07). Here, we also have Tom Horne, former state schools superintendent, who has long invoked the memory of MLK Jr., in his six-year effort to eliminate Ethnic Studies. He claims that doing so would constitute the fulfillment of MLK’s Dream. His successor, John Huppenthal, campaigned on the promise to “Stop ‘La Raza’. ” That is his dream. Against all evidence, he is conducting a modern-day Inquisition into Tucson’s Mexican American Studies K-12 department, attempting to prove its maize-based curriculum is anti-American.

In Tucson, our struggle is not simply about the right of our students to learn Mexican American history, language and culture, but even more so, our struggle here is about the right of everyone to be treated as full human beings. Indeed, this is something that you, Birmingham, know all too well. Last month signaled your grand return to the world stage of dehumanization; it’s as if you had been waiting some 50 years to breathe uninhibited, able once again to exhale the fumes of racial supremacy. This is something you haven’t been able to do since the courts and the civil rights movement forced you to cease your legalized discrimination against African Americans. But your fight is not really with brown people; it’s just about enforcing the law, right?

Please note that in Arizona, we don’t refer to dehumanizing measures that violate the rights of human beings as laws. Yet, this is beyond how we characterize this new bigotry; we are conscious that Mexicans in many parts of the country are viewed and treated as less than human. The following quote by Otto Santa Ana, in Brown Tide Rising, explains this bias: “Only humans have human rights.” I am certain that African Americans in the South understand this well.

Here, we have heard your governor, Robert Bentley, brag about the toughness of HB 56. Truthfully, there’s a bit of racial nostalgia and wistfulness communicated in his voice, projecting the sublime and whispered wish: “If we could only also apply these laws to our Black population too.” Am I mistaken, or is he not the same governor who in January proclaimed that only people who believe in Jesus Christ are his brothers and sisters.

As such, I don’t have to wonder what he thinks of Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Jews. But forgive me if this causes me to question whether he considers African Americans, American Indians, Arab Americans and Mexicans as his true brothers and sisters too. As long as they are “legal”?

Birmingham, is this how you wish to be known and remembered? As a place that in the 21st century openly and legally dehumanizes its brown populations?

Birmingham, do you think the world actually believes you when you say you have nothing against brown people, Mexicans or immigrants – that your only beef is with “illegal aliens?” Do you think your ability to discern is credible? Isn’t that like dehumanizing African Americans, but hiding behind “states rights.” Wasn’t slavery and segregation legal in your state, in this country?

So Birmingham, yes, please lecture us on “the rule of law.” And keep listening to your governor, because we here in Arizona are certainly paying close attention. Here are his words in reaction to the judge’s ruling: “…this fight is just beginning… I will continue to fight at every turn to defend this law against any and all challenges.”

Don’t know what you hear, but eerily, we hear echoes of George Wallace: “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

Birmingham, your state legislature and your governor have once again brought “disgrace upon your state.” We know the objective is to take HB 56 to the Supreme Court. And let’s not mince words; we know that ethnic cleansing is not an unintended consequence. Yet it doesn’t have to be that way. Here, we thank your civil and human rights organizations and your religious community. Please continue to fight. Our memory is long. Yes, we remember the 1950s and 1960s… but we also remember the Trail of Tears. Please do not permit a new one on your soil. After all, the brown men, women and children subject to this new draconian measure… they are our brothers and sisters… as they are yours.

Sincerely

Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez

'SWEET HOME ALABAMA'? THE GHOST OF EXCEPTED LABOR

Rotting food sans phantom workers

Reports from across the country over the past year continue to confirm the damaging economic effects of policies adopted by some twenty states (and counting) that have passed and adopted extremist anti-immigrant legislation (e.g., Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Oklahoma, Georgia, Alabama, etc.). Civil rights lawsuits and Justice Department actions against these "exceptional" laws also continue to unfold.

As predicted by this blog, and in numerous other sources including studies by academic organizations cited in the May 2010 NACCS Letter to Governor Brewer on SB1070, these unconstitutional state laws are "political play," but they have exacted fairly immediate economic damage on capitalist interests, especially in the agribusiness sector. Farmers and large growers are particularly vulnerable to the effects of laws that demonstrably interrupt or eliminate the availability of the largely undocumented workers that harvest our food crops.

The most recent reports of this damage come from Alabama, where rotting fields of squash and other labor-intensive crops are widespread. White growers are alarmed and protesting this state-level immigration law crackdown. 

Alabama's statute is currently considered the toughest (most criminalizing of the Other) among the dizzying variety of right-wing anti-immigration laws that have been passed in more than twenty states ever since Arizona “led” the way with its now largely court-neutered SB1070, which was signed into law in April 2010 and overturned by federal district and appeals courts later that summer (July 28, 2010). There are also dozens of cities and municipalities with similar laws seeking to restrict access to health care, housing, and education. 

This is the pure and violent (not just mean-spirited) politics of the "bare life" - a widening battle over the reproduction of specific kinds of human populations, and it is largely fueled by a eugenics-like obsession among Tea Party advocates who fear the looming transition that will make "whites" a demographic minority.

The Alabama law, which the media pundits have anointed as “Arizona on Steroids,” makes the statute passed in the Land of Citrus, Cows, Cotton, and Chicano labor seem downright “lite.” Alabama’s steroidal version of 1070 is the nation’s most restrictive, aggressive, and punitive of the state laws basically designed to force undocumented workers out the state’s labor markets. I say this with knowledge that Oklahoma's version allows the state to seize and sell the real estate property of an undocumented immigrant to pay for court, detention, and deportation costs plus penalties. The Republicans then smugly proclaim themselves the defenders of private property rights.

The ACLU has of course challenged the Alabama law and, again, we fully expect the courts will resolve the issue simply by re-asserting federal supremacy in the setting of immigration policy and law, as is specified under the U.S. Constitution.

Regardless, Governor Robert J. Bentley (R) signed the Alabama statute, known as HB56, this past summer on June 10, 2011. He and other Alabama Tea Party Republicans justified the law as a panacea for addressing the state’s 9-10 percent unemployment rate.

They also cited the statute as a law and order move. The Governor and his allies declared they designed the law to strengthen the state’s role in the national security apparatus. Here immigration and labor law reform and the War on Terror get conveniently conflated into one big bundle: Mexicans – alongside “Arab” and “Muslim” people – are the biggest internal security threat to a permanent state of economic exception (a new American apartheid?) to go along with the permanent state of emergency designed to forever wage an endless “War on Terror” but that actually serves as an attack on the very civil and constitutional rights that make it possible for the multitude to assert "constituent" power.

The pundits and policy-makers are of course debating what to do but they are largely oblivious to certain key trends: One is that even the most conservative ranchers and growers are now thinking twice about supporting the extremist bent so widespread among the Tea Party-dominated Republicans. It may even be that agribusiness interests will not likely to vote, or at least withdraw active support, for any more anti-immigrant candidates. 

Even members of the American Farm Bureau, an organization chartered across the fifty states that provides insurance and other related financial and business services to farm owners and operators, are taking exception to the Tea Party’s obsession with imposing a state of economic exception on Mexican workers in agriculture. This fact alone may lead to Congressional action on a “guest worker” program for the agribusiness corporate sector – even before the next election; even with the current radical and obstructionist GOP caucus in charge. Obama will surely oblige in the securing of a policy that blends militaristic control of the border, continued deportation of the "illegals," and a new Bracero Program for the "importation" of "temporary guest workers." These state sovereignty administration advocates should be careful what they wish for.

Both sides are “spooked.” The Tea Party wing is spooked by Mexican workers and the coming demographic transition to a majority of minorities. The agribusiness and corporate wing, especially in the agricultural but also construction and manufacturing sectors, are spooked by the “ghosts” of Mexican labor – the rotting fruits and vegetables in the fields; unfinished homes and office buildings; lack of kitchen help; and unassembled garments and furniture sets; all these are constant reminders of how restrictive anti-immigrant laws are creating “phantom” workers, the abstract labor that has disappeared for now. 

I see this disappearance is a form of resistance, a refusal by the undocumented transnational worker to be rendered as a mere Homo sacer; this is an escape not back to Mexico but to safer ground beyond a state intent on imposing economic exceptionality on a category of humans that have been stripped of their humanity, demonized, and denied the right to work or even just to live.

It is this last point that most of the punditocracy overlooks. The denial of a right to work, let alone live, is coded right into the language and intent of the Alabama statute: People are not just denied jobs no one else is taking; they are denied access to housing (even renting to "illegals" is now a crime that punishes both landlords and tenants); they are denied access to health care and education and pretty much anything related to our biological and social reproduction. These laws attack the very conditions that temper our ability to remain alive and healthy.


In this sense the phantom workers of the undocumented multitude are the "canaries in the mine." They are the "indicators" that ALL workers are endangered and threatened. When the most vulnerable among us, the undocumented workers that have in almost every case faced inter-generational historical trauma and structural violence; when the most "marginal" and excepted among us; when this multitude resists, then it is time to start listening. 

These are not acquiescent victims. These are agents of change; precursors of transformation; even perhaps protean forms of our own future as change agents? When we understand this as U.S. citizens, albeit as members of a social class that is always teetering on the verge of being stripped down to a state of abject rightlessness, will we finally understand the need to redefine exactly what citizenship is? Will we have the wisdom to understand how the undocumented present the fact of globalization from below and our future as a constituent power depends on how strongly we are able to connect to all workers, regardless of their place of birth?

This leads me to think: Sure, squash and pumpkin are rotting in Alabama's farm fields. But there is something else rotting in Alabama and the rest of this state of exception nation: Our souls, the very core of our sense of common humanity. And as a result, our prospects for democracy and a turn toward the exercise of our constituent power.