This week as Arizona signs into law the biggest expanse of government power in decades, we hear nothing but crickets from the Vaunted ME Party Baggerettes - as noted by Eugene Robinson:
Activists for Latino and immigrant rights — and supporters of sane governance — held weekend rallies denouncing the new law and vowing to do everything they can to overturn it. But where was the Tea Party crowd? Isn’t the whole premise of the Tea Party movement that overreaching government poses a grave threat to individual freedom? It seems to me that a law allowing individuals to be detained and interrogated on a whim — and requiring legal residents to carry identification documents, as in a police state — would send the Tea Partyers into apoplexy. Or is there some kind of exception if the people whose freedoms are being taken away happen to have brown skin and might speak Spanish?
Maybe it's because this new law isn't about policing or immigration, it's about Power and Voting.
Despite their "What, ME RACIST?" protestations the marked absense of Tea Party Outrage is notible. Particularly when polls indicate the vast chasm of Baggerite Racial Intollerance: Via Thinkprogress.
For instance, the Tea Party, the grassroots movement committed to reining in what they perceive as big government, and fiscal irresponsibility, also appear predisposed to intolerance. Approximately 45% of Whites either strongly or somewhat approve of the movement. Of those, only 35% believe Blacks to be hardworking, only 45 % believe Blacks are intelligent, and only 41% think that Blacks are trustworthy. Perceptions of Latinos aren’t much different. While 54% of White Tea Party supporters believe Latinos to be hardworking, only 44% think them intelligent, and even fewer, 42% of Tea Party supporters believe Latinos to be trustworthy. When it comes to gays and lesbians, White Tea Party supporters also hold negative attitudes. Only 36% think gay and lesbian couples should be allowed to adopt children, and just 17% are in favor of same-sex marriage.
Not big fans of the brown-skins they.
Still why is it so easy for Me Partiers and the GOP to not see any of this in terms of Race? Because for them, it's not about Race - it's about Politics.
As pointed out by Investigative Journalist Greg Palast, this move in Arizona has a long history and it's real target is Voter Suppression.
What moved GOP Governor Jan Brewer to sign the Soviet-style show-me-your-papers law is the exploding number of legal Hispanics, US citizens all, who are daring to vote -- and daring to vote Democratic by more than two-to-one. Unless this demographic locomotive is halted, Arizona Republicans know their party will soon be electoral toast. Or, if you like, tortillas.
In 2008, working for Rolling Stone with civil rights attorney Bobby Kennedy, our team flew to Arizona to investigate what smelled like an electoral pogrom against Chicano voters ... directed by one Jan Brewer.
Brewer, then Secretary of State, had organized a racially loaded purge of the voter rolls that would have made Katherine Harris blush. Beginning after the 2004 election, under Brewer's command, no less than 100,000 voters, overwhelmingly Hispanics, were blocked from registering to vote. In 2005, the first year of the Great Brown-Out, one in three Phoenix residents found their registration applications rejected.
Since attempting to vote when you aren't a citizen is a Felony, Palast asked the then Secretary of State's Office for a list these 100,000 dastardy Felons who had been arrested...
How many did they give him?
ZERO.
The issue was even looked into by a Federal Prosecutor for over 2 years who looked at over 100 complaints of illegal voting. Guess what that Prosecutor found?
Nothing.
Guess who that Prosecutor was? David Iglesias. Yes, THAT David Iglesias - the one who was fired by the Bush Administration for refusing to make false charges against ACORN and filing them just before November 2006 to fire up "the base" and potentially shift the outcome of that Election (an effort which clearly Failed and allowed Democrats to take back Congress).
Iglesias found Not ONE case of illegal immigrants voting - which begs the question, who were the 100,000 people (largely latino) who had their right to vote blocked?
And now that anyone even remotely suspected of being an illegal is going to have to Produce their Papers just what do you think life is going to be like for latinos trying to vote this November?
If you're thinking somewhat like an dark underground hot place with fire and dancing horned demons - you need to add bar-b-q sauce and a spit to the picture. If as many as one in three people in Pheonix lost their ability to vote, how many are going to lose their ability to safely travel through the city without being harassed due to this new law?
SB 1070 is really just an extension of the ploys such as Voter Caging which the RNC deployed - illegally - in Florida to deny the vote to Black Servicemen who were overseas fighting in Iraq in 2004, and as many as 600,000 Voters in Ohio.
There is a strong chance that this law will be overturned as unconstitutional under, ironically, the Tenth Amendment as the power to regulate immigration is expressly given to Congress, not the States.
But by the time that lawsuit and various Civil Rights suits work their way through the courts - unless the practice faces a Federal Injunction - it's not likely to do much to protect the Vote in Arizona, or protect the country from the Republicans Stealing Back Congress - which is all they really care about anyway.
Yes, this is somewhat about Race - just how far do you think we are from "Legal's Only" Drinking fountains? - but it's also about something far more important, the direction of this Country.
Vyan