Chris Sanchez
speaks about Arizona HB 1070
and racial profiling
“They (our children) are going to be
taking care of me and they are
going to be taking care of you”
Chris is part of one of the most pro-active immigrant’s rights groups in Denver, Colorado, Padres y Jovenes Unidos. He and other adults monitored students who walked out of Denver area schools May 30th, 2010 in protest over Arizona HB 1070. The ugly law, which was passed along party lines, Republicans for, Democrats against, requires law enforcement to detain those who they suspect may be undocumented workers. It also makes it illegal to transport undocumented people to church and anywhere else gringos and Latinos congregate together.
This was an all student’s day. The adults left it to our youth and future leaders to pull off the event. However, Chris and many other adults were on scene to make sure our young people remained safe.
Some opposition was expected but because of careful planning and tight security the word had not filtered to radical elements in time to react to the march. No events were reported on part of the students despite hundreds of students who left early from school.
The schools were careful not to endorse the event. No announcement was made over public speaker systems. It was up to the students to pass the word and organize the walk out.
While there was a tacit agreement with school administrators students would not be penalized for exercising their free speech rights, there were no guarantees. Students who left did so because of their commitment to their belief in freedom and of the injustice of racial profiling. Some schools refused to allow their students to leave at all.
Denver Public Schools ( DPS ) recently denounced Arizona and Governor Jan Brewer for passing their hate law. The schools prohibit teacher and staff visits to Arizona pending a change in the law. The Boulder City Council has followed suit along with hundreds of private and municipal entities throughout the nation.
Meanwhile, Arizona claims their law prohibits racial profiling. They hang their hat on a phrase in the law which says the law shall not be used for discriminatory purposes. The law, however, is silent on how one tells the difference between an “illegal alien” and everyone else. Since most of the undocumented workers in Arizona are Hispanic in descent, citizen Latinos will logically bear the brunt in the inquiry about who is “legal”.
HB 1070 and Republican Jan Brewer’s law is clearly designed to advocate racial profiling. Even if the Republicans were willing to sacrifice voting Hispanics in order to “cleanse” the land of undocumented workers, one would have to be an idiot not to see how the law will be abused. This is especially true with abusive law enforcement teams like Maricopa County’s “Little Joe” Arpaio who prides himself on ‘rounding up’ undocumented aliens by sending battalions of storm troopers into barrios where poor Hispanics live.
Even conservatives oppose the law. A woman who said she was a staunch conservative pled with right-wing talk show host Sean Hannity to be reasonable about the potential for racial profiling. Hannity made the woman out to be a fool. The reality is, those who buy into the conservative line which eliminates probable cause for anyone who is not fair skinned is the fool.
Finally, fair minded Americans are standing up for basic beliefs of personal liberty. A just and free people don’t allow law enforcement sweeps of 900 officers to swarm through poor areas asking for documents.
As far as we know, the officers don’t pull men’s pants and underwear down arresting any man or boy who is circumcised, as happened in Nazi Germany! Since circumcision is a practice of the wealthy, they would, of course, be looking for those who are intact, not cut. But then we already know who the pricks are. They tend to vote along conservative party lines!