Another murder of a Latino - this time, a 9-year-old girl

A nine-year-old girl and her father were murdered while they slept.

Police now suspect that last month's killer was a leader of the Minutemen American Defense and representative of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), joined by two other Minutemen. The three anti-immigrant activists are accused of breaking down the door of the Flores family's home, ransacking their house, and gunning down 9-year-old Brisenia and her father in order to fund their "border watch" activities.

Up until now, the mainstream media has mostly ignored the story.

We cannot let Brisenia's story go untold - to remain silent in the face of this kind of extremism.

Click here to learn more about what happened and to share this horrific story with those close to you.

You've seen the Minutemen and FAIR on television - they're quoted as mainstream "immigration control advocates." Congressmen call on leaders from FAIR to testify before their committees as immigration experts. CNN even broadcasts FAIR's hate-speech on the Lou Dobbs show, blaming immigrants for everything from global warming to traffic congestion. All you have to do is watch these folks scream "illegal alien" to get their agenda: making immigrants seem less than human.

I've asked you to speak out against hate crimes before and will keep asking you to let Congress know what kind of America you want to live in. Today, however, I'm asking you to fight intolerance and extremism by shedding light on it. By telling the story of it. By not remaining silent.

Together, we can turn the tide on this culture of hatred and intolerance and stand up for the values that we all share.

Adam Luna
America's Voice

What More Does Lou Dobbs Have to Do to Prove He’s Not Racist?

John O'Bryan offers CNN's Anchor Bigot some helpful advice in his recent column entitled "What More Does Lou Dobbs Have to Do to Prove He’s Not Racist?".

I only question O'Bryan's suggestion that Dobbs is a racist but not Liberals. We have just spent the last couple of weeks watching America's leading liberal politicians--Bill and Hillary Clinton--unabashedly using the race-card against Barack Obama. And I've heard few objections from liberals. If anything, some see the Clintons' clever racial tactics as evidence of their political smarts. Under that line of thinking, Lou Dobbs is not a racist, he's simply a very clever man that knows how to strum America's racial chord for big audiences.

Anyway, O'Bryan's is a good read--and Lord knows, we can all use laugh.

"It never ceases to amaze me. Somehow liberals and other sensitive types in this country have managed to turn America’s greatest cable news crusader into a bigot.

Just because Lou Dobbs spends night after night fighting to criminalize people who cross the desert to pick your tomatoes, some loony leftwingers have accused him of harboring white supremacist sentiments. Just because he accidentally quotes studies conducted by racist organizations and occasionally references the opinions of eugenicists, some people have decided that Daddy Dobbs is driven by nefarious motives. Well I’m not one of them. Who among you has not unwittingly supported a Nazi on occasion? We’re all only human.”

Olberman: Dobbs is a hypocrite, racist and a drunk!

Keith Olberman nails Lou Dobbs as a hypocrite, a racist, and...a drunk? True.

RightWing Media Killed Immigration Reform

The Politico has an interesting article on a Project for Excellence in Journalism study confirming that rightwing radio/cable helped defeat immigration reform.

The report found that unlike mainstream media and liberal radio which devoted very little time to the immigration debate, rightwing talkers spent the spring and summer trashing immigration reform proposals.

Lou Dobbs was the leader of the anti-immigration reform pack that included Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Weiner Savage.

What the study doesn't mention is that rightwing radio/cable fomented anti-Latino racism as a way to kill immigration reform. Or that the rightwing wanted the immigration dust-up in order to distract people away from the $500 billion travesty that is the US-Iraq War.

Read Talk radio helped sink immigration reform (The Politico - 8.20.07).

Immigration debate wasn't colorblind

Immigration debate wasn't colorblind (by Ruben Navarrette - 7.29.07)

SAN DIEGO -- The winners write the history. And now that border restrictionists have won the battle to scuttle immigration reform, the history that many are desperate to write is that the debate was colorblind.

Really. The restrictionists and those pundits who have taken up their cause claim that race and ethnicity aren't even part of the discussion and that those who oppose giving illegal immigrants a shot at legal status would feel the same way if the immigrants were coming from Canada instead of Mexico. They say their concerns are limited to border security and the rule of law, and have nothing to do with nativism or xenophobia. And they reject any suggestion that the debate was hostile to Hispanics.

And, as I travel the country speaking to Hispanic groups, one thing I hear is that "anti-immigrant" rapidly morphed into "anti-Hispanic" and specifically "anti-Mexican."

This is the fable being spun by CNN's Lou Dobbs, a commentator labeled by New York Times columnist David Leonhardt as "the heir to the nativist tradition that has long used fiction and conspiracy theories as a weapon against the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, the Jews and, now, the Mexicans." In recent days, Dobbs has argued that the Senate compromise died because Americans of all colors dispassionately concluded that it was bad for the country. Racism played no role, he insists.

Most Hispanics feel differently. I've seen three surveys, including one by the Pew Hispanic Center, where majorities of Hispanics say that the immigration debate has led to an increase in anti-immigrant sentiment. And, as I travel the country speaking to Hispanic groups, one thing I hear is that "anti-immigrant" rapidly morphed into "anti-Hispanic" and specifically "anti-Mexican."

I get evidence of that every day in my e-mail. Just last week, after I defended the prosecution of two Border Patrol agents, a reader called me a "dirty Latino" who needs to get "back to Mexico." Another writer called me an "anchor baby" -- the term used by nativists to describe the children of illegal immigrants born in the United States. Never mind that I was born in the United States and my parents were born in the United States. What I see here is racism.

More

Hall of Shame: Lou Dobbs, CNN Commentator

"Dobbs is a favorite on white supremacist websites that cater to klansmen and other lowlife."

Ruben Navarette, Jr., San Diego Union Tribune

We Must Respond to the Lies

Editorial: We Must Respond to the Lies (La Opinión, Editorial, Translated by Elena Shore - 7.27.07)

Traducción al español

LOS ANGELES – During the immigration reform debate, radio commentators and propagandists mascarading as news programs, like CNN’s Lou Dobbs, stoked resentment towards undocumented immigrants, repeating lies and perpetuating hateful images.

The defeat of the comprehensive and humane changes to immigration laws was the triumph of a deafening slander that never met much resistance.

This outcome forces us to think of the strategy for the next steps toward an immigration reform that considers legalization for the millions of working families who, from the shadows of illegality, contribute to the well-being of Americans. This year the topic of immigration reform in Washington is dead, despite attempts by a group of Republican senators to revive only the most restrictive clauses, and by piecemeal provisions that deserve to succeed, introducing the bills AgJobs and the DREAM Act in budget-related measures.

However, the discussion on immigration should continue, because anti-immigrant sentiment grows daily across the country. The National Conference of State Legislatures estimates that 48 bills were introduced this year that restrict the activity of the undocumented, while locally more than 100 ordinances were introduced last year.

The failure of reform has aggravated this negative trend, as anti-immigrant forces capitalize on people’s frustration with Congress. A law approved in Arizona, for example, prohibits employers from hiring undocumented immigrants. Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano said she enacted the law after Congress failed to act on immigration reform.

Fortunately, the courts are setting things right for the time being. Yesterday, the anti-undocumented ordinance approved in Hazleton, Penn. was declared unconstitutional. The federal judge kept an unjust law off the books. But the responsibility to promote a just law falls on the shoulders of the immigrant and Latino community. The marches were impressive; the collection of signatures demonstrated that getting out the vote is crucial for the future. However, there was no response to the hysterical lies promoted by conservative hosts on talk radio.

The repeated lies – from comparing the law to an amnesty, to blaming undocumented immigrants for all the ills of society – were not challenged at the same level, and they convinced thousands to pressure their senators to reject reform.

The lesson is that we must to respond to these talk shows, unite in an effort to confront them concretely and not allow this to happen again.

Ya Basta! Time to hit back against anti-Latino bigotry

Time to hit back against anti-Latino bigotry (by Andres Oppenheimer, Miami Herald - 7.22.07)

Here is what the National Council of La Raza -- the biggest U.S. Hispanic organization -- should do at its annual meeting in Miami this week: draw from the experience of African Americans and Jewish Americans by launching an all-out campaign to expose anti-Latino bigots in the media, entertainment and politics.

The recent immigration debate in the Senate, which ended with the defeat of a bill that would have given a path to citizenship to many of the 12 million undocumented workers, has given way to the biggest explosion of antiHispanic sentiment I have seen since I arrived in this country three decades ago.

Most Hispanics feel the same way. A new nationwide poll by Bendixen and Associates says 76 percent of U.S. Hispanics agree with the statement that ''anti-immigrant sentiment is growing in the United States,'' and 62 percent say this phenomenon has directly affected them or their families.

Few Hispanics believe statements by rabid antiimmigration radio and television hosts who say they only oppose ''illegal immigration.'' When asked what fuels the current anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States, 64 percent of Hispanics in the poll mentioned one factor: ``racism against immigrants from Latin America.''

Indeed, in recent times we have heard statements on radio and television that go far beyond the boundaries of fair debate over the need to fix the U.S. immigration system, and that twist the facts in ways that make it difficult to believe in the good faith of those who make them.

It's not just what fearmongers such as CNN's Lou Dobbs or radio talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage allow to be said in their shows, which systematically blame Hispanics for many of America's ills. Prominent academics such as Harvard University political scientist Samuel Huntington are getting away with sweeping statements such as ``America's Latino immigration deluge . . . constitutes a major potential threat to the cultural and possibly political integrity of the United States.''

While the 44 million Hispanics are the biggest minority in America, you don't see the kind of nationwide protests, legal actions or calls for boycotts on a scale that you would probably see if these statement were directed against African Americans or Jewish Americans.

When you visit the website of the NAACP, one of the first things you see is an 'NAACP `Stop' Campaign'' headline, which is a call to action against racism in the media.

The NAACP and other African American groups regularly launch name-and-shame campaigns, and most recently forced the firing of radio host Don Imus over an April comment calling the Rutgers University women's basketball team ``nappy-headed hos.''

The Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has been exposing racism in the media since 1913.

But when you go to The National Council of La Raza's website, you don't find a similar emphasis on fighting bigotry. The group's main theme is ''Ya es hora!,'' a voter registration drive conducted alongside the Spanish-language Univisión network and other Latino organizations aimed at adding two million new Hispanic votes for the 2008 election.

La Raza President Janet Murguia conceded in an interview Friday that Hispanics need to do more to fight back against bigotry in the media.

''We do need to rethink our strategy; there is no question about it,'' Murguia told me.

``But the key change that we need to focus on is to make sure that we can influence the outcome of elections. Getting madder doesn't necessarily help, but getting smarter will help.''

My opinion: The National Council of La Raza and its sister institutions are doing the right thing with their ''Ya es hora!'' citizenship drive. But they should also launch a nationwide ''Ya basta!'' campaign to identify, name and shame those who systematically bash Hispanics.

If anti-Hispanic sentiment is allowed to keep growing, we will soon have an underclass of 12 million immigrants that will feel not only frustrated by not having a legal path to citizenship but increasingly insulted by the mainstream media.

And social exclusion mixed with frustration can be a dangerous cocktail, as we've seen in the violent 2005 riots by Muslim youths in the suburbs of Paris.

The time for Hispanics to say ''Ya basta!'' is now, before it's too late.