The City of Athens, Alabama asserts extraterritorial jurisdiction. They believe that it is their business to regulate foreign policy by passing immigration legislation. Further, a rural resident with an Elkmont mailing address received a letter from the Athens Police Chief on official stationery saying that a letter in the Hunstville Times was over the top, and such statements are strongly discouraged around here. There are insinuations of a possible lawsuit for slander or libel against the Elkmont resident AFTER the Mayor of Athens denounced him in absentia as a foreign terrorist in a City Council meeting.
Is there anything that does not fall under the jursisdiction of the City of Athens? Is the Mayor trying to exalt his throne above the heavens?
Because free speech rights are severely restricted in today's Alabama, this diary will present the facts (and minimal commentary) about a campaign of peaceful, lawful civil rights activism that launched an investigation.
Here is the leaflet that caused the police to come to my door and question me:
A GROWING POPULATION IS A KING'S GLORY
A PRINCE WITHOUT SUBJECTS HAS NOTHING Proverbs 14:28
Have you paid your light bill in person lately? There are stable, two-parent African-American families moving to Athens from Chicago. If you wanted to slow the trend, you might propose a $10,000 or $5000 fee on new subdivision lots. If you really wanted to crack down on unlicensed drivers, you would pass a law requiring offenders to spend the night in jail. Confiscating $500 cars just gets the city into the used car business, which is unprofitable. Notice how every ordinance proposed by Quentin Anderson Sr. involves the confiscation of property.
Extreme nationalism + Socialism = National Socialism
There are quite a few empty apartments in the north Jefferson Street area. We have fewer taxpayers. While an immigrant with a green card does not pay into Social Security or Medicare, he does not collect these services, either. He pays sales tax, and indirectly pays property taxes through rent payments. Quentin Anderson is sounding the alarm over a fiscal crisis that he created when he appointed himself King of Athens. Keep listening to him, and Athens will be like a Midwestern "donut city" with all the growth and vitality around the city limits. Maybe Mr. Anderson will choose to take his ideas to their logical conclusion: call in soldiers to evacuate the hospital, and then the whole city. This program saved the City of Phnom Pen a lot of money in 1975.
When President Bush signed the bill creating Medicare Part D, conservative commentators howled over the impending geriatric state. Anti-immigrant paranoia, taken to its logical conclusion, will result in intergenerational warfare against senior citizens. Older Americans, conservatives will say, do nothing but gobble pills and government subsidies while playing bingo. Dry up the economic opportunities, and they will die off quicker to make room for high achievers.
What if conservatives succeeded in expelling all outlandish people from the South? What if we all suddenly went back north of the Ohio? Alabama will lose a Congressional seat after the 2010 census. Victims of ethnic cleansing will be represented in Washington by increasingly powerful liberal Yankee politicians. Y'all will learn to put up with us one way or another.
The conservative buzzword these days is "demographics." This means that Hispanics and other illegal people are having too many babies, which implies that some method of extermination should be devised. Would you rebuke God? Who is God to create all these illegal people without consulting Karl Rove?
African-Americans, Hispanics, and Northern-born white ethnics have survived the Republican onslaught. The GOP got slaughtered at the polls, and is safely contained as the Southern party. With an Illinois liberal about to occupy the White House, y'all have a very short time left to get rid of us. God still exists. Athens is hemorrhaging money and population.
North Alabama Heckle the Nazis Coalition a subsidiary of:
Kingdom of the Netherlands Ministry for World Reconquest, Rotterdam
[some copies featured handwritten reverse script as follows:]
The NAHNC wishes ALSO the best. However, under the leadership of Quentin Anderson Sr. ALSO will work AGAINST the interests of senior citizens.
- The Midwest is full of meat packing plants. Midwestern voters are relatively benign toward immigrant labor.
No Mexicans = No chicken plant
Plants close, residential property taxes go up.
- Social Security might face a shortage in 25 years. If we had enacted comprehensive immigration reform two years ago, millions of new U.S. citizens would now be paying into social security.
- Phoenix Arizona extorted a federal bailout of $40 million to reimburse landlords victimized by local immigration reform.
- Senior citizens are naturally a liberal constituency, reliant upon big government for quality & prolongation of life. The Quentin Anderson agenda of attacking minorites won't help seniors. The anti-immigrant voting bloc is imploding.
NAHNC West Limestone field office.
[end of leaflet]
On Feb. 15 a letter in the Athens News-Courier represented an upcoming meeting of the Athens-Limestone Seniors' Organization as an immigration panic event, arguing that any business that hires an undocumented immigrant should be fined $30,000, that persons living in Mexico should not be allowed to accept gifts from relatives working in the USA, and that Police Chief Wayne Harper would be the keynote speaker.
http://www.enewscourier.com/...
Keep in mind that, while the Greater Athens Hispanic Association no longer exists, the Limestone County NAACP no longer has a headquarters, the Alliance for Limited Government meets inside the Athens Police station. One of their members, Hugh McInnish, argues against the prosecution of German Nazi war criminals.
Mr. Anderson's February 15 letter said that their would be "conversation, hugs, and friendship to go around in these trying times." Men typically don't hug each other in the South. A man can hug his wife at home. Something is going on at ALSO meetings that violates Baptist traditions on gender separation, something like married people hugging on people that they ain't married to.
I wrote to Police Chief Wayne Harper and told him that he hurt my feelings by agreeing to speak for a group whose spokesman is known for a racist political agenda. I told him that I don't feel safe here now. I told him that I am still a peaceful, law-abiding activist and will still be nice to cops, but I won't speak up politically defending local cops from federal investigations. Please not that I was not present at the ALSO meeting because, when police came to my house, they instructed me not to be there. His reply:
March 3, 2009
Mr. Amptmeyer,
I am writing [sic] you to clear up some misconceptions you have concerning my speaking to a Senionr Citizens [sic] group last week at Shoney's. My presentation to this group was on Crime Prevention for Seniors, in particular home burglaries and identity theft. At no time was there any discussion of illegal immigration or any other political issues. The meeting was cordial, informal and the people were very gracious to me. I have given the same presentation to several other civic groups recently without any politics being discussed or complaints being received.
I am concerned with the tone of your note and recent editorials. You should be careful when using terms like genocide, extermination and Neo-Nazis [sic] referring to persons and groups you don't know or are [sic] familiar with. Your accusations are inflammatory and you should be careful what you write or say. These statements could be considered slander and you would be responsible for the consequences of your words.
Wayne Harper Chief of Police
If you don't believe that there is gonocidal activity in northern Alabama, google: mo brooks and larry darby were there.
Keep in mind that this is a community where it is widely believed that Barney Frank is running a whoreh**se in his basement, that Harry Reid is a Communist, that every civil rights demonstration in the South and southwest has been funded by a foreign government. In fact, Pastor Mike Westmoreland of Madison Street Baptist Church once accused Mayor Dan Williams of being a puppet of the United Nations. Right-wings are free to throw accusations at anything, including each other.
Y'all have been patient to read all this. Let me close with my March 1 letter to the Huntsville Times that got the Athens Police Chief upset:
Letter writer Quentin D. Anderson claimned in his Feb. 20 letter "E-verify jobs" that undocumented immigrants cost taxpayers $100 billion, yet provided no proof. Loose accusations and phony statistics are routine in the hate that passes for an immigration debate.
Anderson has said for years that immigration is a local concern, not federal. Suddenly, he wants the federal government to give most of us the mark of the beast to determine who may work and who must starve.
Of remissions to Mexico, Anderson said, "most of it probably comes from illegal workers in the United States." Hispanic equals illegal. Anderson is admitting that his goal is to complete the extermination of the indigenous people of this continent. This really is a racial issue.
Since when is there anything illegal or immoral about helping foreigners? Is it wrong to support missionaries? Did God create the population of Mexico by mistake?