Actions Inspire in the Immigrant Rights Movement

I read this Los Angeles Times piece about a bold anti-deportation protest by young immigrant rights activists and couldn’t help but deeply admire their courage and give greater consideration to their message.  Three highly educated young people, brought to and raised in the United States without papers, flew back to Mexico and attempted to cross the border back to their American home.  They were detained, along with six other former Mexican emigres who joined them, at the Nogales border facility and sent to a holding center in Florence, A.Z.  Luis Leon, a compatriot of the trio, said “they are insane, but my respect is with them.  Nobody throws away 20 years of their lives for someone else.”  These young people did just that though – Lizbeth Mateo is set to begin law school at Santa Clara, Marco Saavedra is a Kenyon College grad and Lulu Martinez is a student at University of Illinois – to highlight the injustice they see in the U.S. immigration system.

They join a growing number of immigrant youth activist who have put their liberty on the line for their communities, risking banishment and exile to draw attention to their cause.  Activists like 27 year-old Claudia Munoz, who recently infiltrated a correctional facility in Michigan to document the stories of undocumented immigrant women thrown in with the general population.  Or Mohammad Abdollahi, a 24 year-old undocumented Iranian immigrant who joined two others in an occupation of Senator John McCain’s office hoping to pressure him to co-sponsor the DREAM Act.  Or organizer Carlos Garcia, who led four undocumented immigrants to reveal their status and protest outside a legal hearing for notorious anti-Latino Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

This is the type of political courage and determination that allows a small group of people to change the minds of millions.  There are a lot of policy issues involved here – citizenship by birth is in the Constitution, the U.S. needs better control of its borders etc… – but it’s viscerally and clearly wrong that these undocumented Americans, who are very much American, are constantly threatened with exile and separation from their family.  The bravery amongst these young people, standing up for their families and older members in their community, commands respect and demands that Americans consider what would drive them to such extremes.  I’m something of a moderate on immigration, but these are the types of action that will pull me and millions like me towards the position of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, Dream Activist, Puente Arizona and others fighting for immigrant rights.

Snowden’s Treatment by “Journalists” and “Progressives”

A lot has been said about the hostility shown by “journalists” and “progressives” toward whistleblower Ed Snowden, so I won’t rehash old battles here.  I did want to touch on a couple revealing incidents, though, that mostly flew under the radar.

I only see ideology when it undermines my ideology

On June 30th, New York Times pop culture and media writer David Carr published a piece titled “Journalism, Even When It’s Tilted” where he uses Glenn Greenwald as a muse to discuss the role of advocacy in journalism.  Although Carr tries to stand on (his self-defined) middle ground – saying Greenwald “is an activist who is deeply suspicious of government and the national security apparatus” but “also a journalist” – he ultimately reinforces the standard narrative that only pro-government, militarist, pro-corporate journalists can operate without ideologies. To Carr, Greenwald’s defense of whistle-blowing in the face of attacks by pro-government journalists “seems more like a campaign than a discussion of the story he covered” where his “primary objective remains winning the argument.” Meanwhile, “an economic incentive for information absent a political agenda,” (i.e. the corporate tv, newspapers etc..) allows an “independent press” which is now eroding as the decline of traditional media gives way to the proliferation of “digital enterprises” with “partisan agendas.”

The issue with this line of reasoning is obvious – where the fuck have Carr and all the other MSM journalists now screaming “advocacy” and “bias” been while their newspapers pushed us into wars, totally missed the looming housing crisis, vilified worker organizing, gave platforms to anti-teacher zealots et cetera, et cetera.  The only reason he’s writing this article is because Greenwald happened to challenge, rather than enforce, Carr’s own ideology.  The thousands of stories every day which fly across his laptop screen praising corporate America or parroting leaks from administration officials give him no pause because he’s so immersed in mainstream ideology he doesn’t even notice.

Stay down, sit down. Don’t stand up for your rights

In addition to the ridiculous awakening of mainstream journalists to the dangers of ideological biases (that challenge their own), the other point I wanted to touch on is how many “progressive” supporters of president Obama have revealed their tiny, tiny balls.  A great example is the Campaign for America’s Future’s Bill Scher, who displayed hummingbird sized lluevos in a Bloggingheads.tv conversation with the Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis when he said of Ed Snowden

“I feel sad about what’s going to happen to him. Because he has basically traded his personal freedom, he will probably be incarcerated eventually because of a political opinion he has… This poor guy [throws] away his entire adult life” by saying “I can’t abide by this it’s not worth living in this world if it’s like this therefore jail and speaking my mind is a better option, which I just find painfully sad and misguided.”

Wow, so this is what “progressives” have come to – a complete refutation of idealism in any form.  This type of technocratic pussiness is pervasive among Democrats (and mainstream Republicans), but it’s rare that someone will just come out with it.  I understand being too scared to stand up for your own beliefs, but your fear of shame should at least illicit a fucking head nod and muttered “right on” or something when you hear about someone else doing it.  Scher’s complete discounting of principled political actions is just another sign of the American Left’s drift away from any coherent ideology worth defending.

The pro-establishment bias of most journalists and many prominent liberals comes as no surprise, but it is being cast into stark relief by the NSA revelations.  There are about a thousand other NSA-related topics I’d also love to get into, but I’ll save that discussion until the next big Greenwald story drops.