Immigrant Rally Hits Home: Traffic Not Dreamy But Good
The L.A. Times reports:
Tens of thousands of advocates for immigrant rights took to the streets in Los Angeles and the rest of the nation today, hoping that passion would offset the smaller turnout from last year’s demonstrations.
I didn’t need the paper to tell me that there was a demonstration, or that it wasn’t as big as last year. Here’s how I knew: traffic was better than usual today. But not as awesome as it was one year ago today.
Every so often the paper noodles over how we could make traffic better. But the editors never come within 5 miles of the obvious answer: get rid of the overwhelming number of people who don’t belong here to begin with. (Hint on doing this in a feasible and humanitarian way: start with the criminals.)
I am up in Santa Barbara today and my hotel is right near the Santa Barbara City College campus. Today’s campus rally and march consisted of exactly twelve students with the same old tired chants of “Si, se puede” and “Students have the power.” If this is the best they can do, it’s hard not to believe that the movement is starting to fizzle out.
JVW (cd8002) — 5/1/2007 @ 7:03 pmWhy does this remind me of the self-destruction of the Whig Party in 1860? No, I am not that old. But I tried to teach a European houseguest our political system and all I could could come up with on the Republican side were Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Am I giving a hint here that I have become totally disillusioned with the Shrub? Not that I will ever vote “run #$$%^^& run” Democrat ever again.
nk (db0112) — 5/1/2007 @ 7:18 pmIt was today? Well, speaking as someone who lives in Santa Ana, I didn’t notice anything at all. So… there you go.
David N. Scott (71e316) — 5/1/2007 @ 9:30 pmBut he’s close…
Here’s your walker, grandpa…
Scott Jacobs (a1de9d) — 5/1/2007 @ 9:37 pmI just saw the news roundup of the fracas that took place near MacArthur Park (in Los Angeles). Very interesting to ponder how this will be spun and how it will turn out. On the one hand, the video they ran did seem to show a bunch of anarchists and leftist thugs attacking police with rocks, bottles, boards, etc, and the police understandably working aggressively to disperse the crowd and force everyone to move along. On the other hand, I am distressed by a report on one of the TV stations that only one person was arrested. That leads me to believe that either (a) the police were only interested in breaking up the crowd, not in making arrests or (b) the police provoked the event. Guess which of the above options will be treated with the most sympathy by the media.
JVW (cd8002) — 5/1/2007 @ 9:50 pmIt’s already an anti-police, pro-illegal story. Mayor Tony was in EL SALVADOR. Which shows how much LA has become La Raza (and El Salavador) only.
Bratton has already said he’ll hang the cops out to dry if you read between his lines and read his body language.
Seems like a bunch of hard-left anarcho thugs started a riot, the police responded by clearing the park, and that’s “illegal.” Black Bloc and the rest of the anarchists won this.
Also of note all the Mexican flags and Mexican TV stations on hand. LA? Latinos only is the political message.
Jim Rockford (e09923) — 5/1/2007 @ 10:11 pmI just watched the 11 news coverage on Ch 13 and then Ch 4. The LAPD was out of control. Such an overreaction. The spinning is not by the media, but by Bratton and the police.
I’m very much against illegal immigration. It starts with a crime, destroys middle-class wage-earners, and makes this city a cesspool. This May Day rally today was a collosal public relations failure, until our hair-trigger police itching for a fight and a show of force blew the whole thing up. If our police, with great warning and planning, can’t handle a handful of so-called “anarchists” without mowing down press, innocent onlookers, and peaceful marchers it is yet another example of their incompetence and overwhelming need to demonstrate who is boss.
I don’t need a self-serving months-long investigation to tell me what happened. The video and witness accounts speak for themselves.
nosh (de5a83) — 5/1/2007 @ 10:15 pmMaybe nosh, maybe. But on the other hand, the organizers of these pro-illegal immigrant rallies have a duty to disassociate and distance themselves from the ugly radicals in their midst, and I don’t get the sense that they care too much to live up to that obligation. If an anti-illegal immigration rally featured a contingent of KKK members, you can bet that the media would lambaste the organizers for allowing them to be there (as if they would have a choice). If the KKK members then got in a melee with the police, I doubt if the media would care too much if some Minutemen got hit with rubber bullets or took a nightstick to the head in the confusion of it all.
JVW (cd8002) — 5/1/2007 @ 10:40 pmAmusing to watch the anger in a city with a Spanish name, in a State with a name that may be Spanish, Latin and Aboriginal American (but not English) in an economy that is predicated on immigrant labor, and among a group of who supported NAFTA.
AF (d700ef) — 5/2/2007 @ 8:18 am[…] Immigrant Rally Hits Home: Traffic Not Dreamy But Good The L.A. Times reports: Tens of thousands of advocates for immigrant rights took to the streets in Los Angeles and the rest of the nation today, hoping that passion would offset the smaller turnout from last year’s demonstrations. […]
Headline Summaries: Border Security at Traction Control (2d8ea5) — 5/2/2007 @ 9:07 amAmerica’s immmigration policies, and especially the immigration policies advocated by those who are most up-in-arms about “illegal” immigration, has recently begun to remind me of the of East German communism before the fall of the wall — only inverted.
The East German commies kept desperate people inside their walls, to prop up an economy that otherwise would crumble under the laws of supply and demand.
America’s immigration laws keep the desperate people outside their walls, to prop up an economy that otherwise would crumble under the laws of supply and demand.
Phil (427875) — 5/2/2007 @ 10:04 amShorter AF: “I like burritos. Open the borders!”
TLB (0c89cb) — 5/2/2007 @ 10:43 amShorter AF: If you want fewer illegal aliens don’t try your best to undermine the economy of neighboring countries. Phil. sounds like a libertarian.
AF (d700ef) — 5/2/2007 @ 10:57 amI’m not a libertarian.
You’re not? I never would have guessed…
I’d love to know who we’re undermining Mexico’s economy…
Especially when you consider that their system is closer that *I* would like to socialist.
We loan Mexico money whenever they ask. We make stuff there. How the holy hell are we UNDERMINING it?
Scott Jacobs (a1de9d) — 5/2/2007 @ 11:26 amRead up on NAFTA scotty
AF (d700ef) — 5/2/2007 @ 11:30 amTeh owned.
Leviticus (43095b) — 5/2/2007 @ 11:33 amYou mean that thing Clinton signed into law? Wasn’t he “your guy“?
And since you blame NAFTA, you must also believe that we’re destroying Canad’s economy…
And if that is so, were’s the flood of french-speakers?
Scott Jacobs (a1de9d) — 5/2/2007 @ 12:01 pmWe are not undermining Mexico’s economy. American businesses and citizens stand ready to help ignite an economic boom in Mexico, but for the basketcase economics south of the border which somehow manages to combine oligarchism and Marxism. The rich and powerful don’t want to let any outsiders share in Mexico’s wealth lest they lose influence, and the third world leftists think that wealth is finite and that anything that goes to Americans must somehow come at the expense of Mexicans.
JVW (8770b8) — 5/2/2007 @ 12:44 pmYou mean that thing Clinton signed into law? Wasn’t he “your guy“?
I’m not a Clintonite. He ran and won as a moderate republican: “ending welfare as we know it” etc. etc.
AF (d700ef) — 5/2/2007 @ 1:03 pmReagan Lite.
“The rich and powerful don’t want to let any outsiders share in Mexico’s wealth lest they lose influence”
And NAFTA supported them in that desire. It did nothing for the workers but make life harder
AF (d700ef) — 5/2/2007 @ 1:07 pmGreat American Boycott: so what?…
In this post, I shared the agenda of the immigration activists behind the GAB II: unconditional legalization for all immigrants. By all accounts, the crowds were much smaller than anticipated, but the usual Mexican flags, chants in Spanish and the…
Cop The Truth (72c8fd) — 5/2/2007 @ 1:49 pm[me] “The rich and powerful don’t want to let any outsiders share in Mexico’s wealth lest they lose influence”
[AF] And NAFTA supported them in that desire. It did nothing for the workers but make life harder.
I submit that the fault lies more with the abovementioned oligarchs and anti-capitalists who formed an unholy alliance to keep the broken status quo when Vicente Fox made his initial moves for reform. That Fox then shrugged his shoulders and went along is regretable, but anyone who bases their economic policy largely upon exporting their poorest and most unskilled workers to a wealthy neighbor probably is barking down the wrong path anyway. Mexico’s internal dynamics are much more the problem than any clauses or articles embedded within NAFTA, but it is a lot easier to say “the capitalist Gringos snookered us” than it is to own up to the defects in your political economy.
JVW (6aa166) — 5/2/2007 @ 2:21 pmbarking down the wrong path
To mix metaphors in a semi-allitertative and semi-illiterate way.
JVW (6aa166) — 5/2/2007 @ 2:26 pmSoooooooooo lemme see if I got this straight…
It’s the republican’s fault Mexico is so effed up, even though it was Clinton and his cronies that made the deal that sealed it’s fate…
Huh. Shocking.
Mexico doesn’t have to stay in NAFTA. No one has a gun to their head…
Scott Jacobs (e3904e) — 5/2/2007 @ 2:41 pmJVW #8:
And, you know that the Minutemen are all Kluxers because???
BTW, am I the only one who noted that whenever the MSM interviewed an Immigrant Spokesman, the rhetoric that spewed from them was straight from the Marxist-Leninist playbook?
Another Drew (8018ee) — 5/2/2007 @ 4:43 pmNo no no, Another Drew, my point is that if some KKKers were mixed in with the Minutemen, and if said KKKers, started attacking cops, and if in the course of combating the KKKers some innocent Minutemen got hurt, I don’t think that the mainstream media would care one tinker’s damn. In fact, they would probably go all law and order on us.
Conversely, if some anarchists are mixed in with pro-illegal immigrant advocates, and if said anarchists started attacking cops, and if in the course of combating the anarchists some innocent pro-illegal immigrant adovcates got hurt, it would appear that the mainstream media would go to full whine mode about police brutality.
You see the point I am trying to make?
JVW (940646) — 5/2/2007 @ 7:31 pmI see the point in your clarification. The original was not as clear.
The interesting thing is, in my interaction with the Hispanic community (both legal, and illegal), I find a greater amount of racism than I ever experienced in my pre-MLK days as a teen-ager here in SoCal. Will SoCal end up with its’ own version of the Southern Poverty Law Center to fight racism within our predominant culture?
Another Drew (8018ee) — 5/2/2007 @ 9:38 pmHmm its down from last year? then maybe it will get smaller and smaller after all last years stupid demonstration did,nt get the results they wanted and it was done unlawfuly
krazy kagu (a6e311) — 5/3/2007 @ 6:20 am“Jack Dunphy” of the LAPD presents his colleagues’ version of what went on at MacArthur Park over at National Review Online.
JVW (bcc29b) — 5/3/2007 @ 9:08 am[…] is an L.A. County prosecutor, and his morning commute on May 1 led him to what he thought was an insight into the immigration […]
appletree » Blog Archive » More Irrational Immigrant Bashing (164637) — 5/6/2007 @ 12:13 am