President Trump has stirred up anger over his provocative executive orders targeting immigrants, both undocumented people inside the U.S. and arrivals from seven mostly Muslim nations, as Dennis J Bernstein describes.
By Dennis J Bernstein
A grassroots rebellion against President Trump’s anti-immigration policies is taking shape in California and across the country, spearheaded by farmworkers, day laborers, immigrant domestic workers and their supporters.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) SWAT officers. (Wikipedia)
One of its leaders is Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day-Laborer Organizing Network or NDLON, who is sometimes called the “Cesar Chavez of undocumented Day Laborers.”
I spoke to Alvarado after a strategy session that he had convened with staff and supporters in the immigrants’ rights movement in California and across the nation.
Dennis Bernstein: I know you just emerged from a national planning meeting in terms of beginning a series of proactive steps in response to Trump’s frontal assault on all immigrants and their supporters. I think you were calling it Alto Trump, Stop Trump. Could you outline what you all were talking about and planning in response to the Trump directives?
Pablo Alvarado: Sure. Well, during the electoral process … we saw and heard all of the incendiary and overheated rhetoric, and racist rhetoric, by the President, by President Trump. And people thought, “Maybe he doesn’t really mean it”. Then he won and people said “Well, maybe we gotta give him a chance. Maybe he’s not as bad as it appears.” Then he comes into power, and then by the fourth day of him being in power we know what he really is about.
The executive decisions that he has taken are decisions that will impact … the lives of many, not just undocumented immigrants, but all of the folks that he intended to attack, during the electoral campaign. We’re talking about Muslims, we’re talking about women, African-Americans, the disabled, members of the LGBTQ community, and, of course, the undocumented … community.
And now we’re seeing that he actually meant what he said. Now the question is what kind of resources he’s going to put into those initiatives that he wants to push for. It appears that he is serious about [increasing] the number of ICE agents from 5,000 to 15,000. He’s talked about an ICE force, an immigration enforcement force. They’re here. And with 15,000 officers across the country, the persecution is going to be unprecedented. He spoke about the wall, about reviewing NAFTA, it appears that he’s moving on all of those fronts. And it’s not going to be a good thing for us.
And so, it’s becoming more and more clear to us, that he meant what he said. So, now, for us, the first act of resistance that we need to put together is people knowing, understanding and exercising their rights.
The second level of that, the process of resistance, is coming together with neighbors and building these migrants defense collectives, across the country. Where, at this point, what we feel is that communities shouldn’t expect an organization to come and save them, or leaders to come and save them, or a political party to come and save them.
This is a moment for people who have been harmed by the policies of this President to stand up and organize themselves, and defend themselves. Oftentimes when I am talking to undocumented people I tell them, “Hey, there’s good news, and the good news is that Mr. Trump has stated that he’s only going to prosecute criminals and deport criminals. The bad news is that we’re all criminals, in his mind.”
ICE officers during the second national wave of Operation Cross Check, an effort by ICE to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants with criminal records. September 28, 2011. (Wikipedia)
And, in terms of the law, he is going to expand the definition of what a serious misdemeanor is, and what a serious felony is, to deport more people. He’s going to, obviously, in order for him to accomplish what he said he’s going to do, in terms of deporting two to three million people in the first years of his mandate, the only way that he can do that is by enlisting local police to enforce immigration law.
And, of course, you know we plan to put up a fight. If he thinks that we are going to go quietly into the night, without putting up a fight, he is fundamentally wrong. So, the struggle is going to be at all levels: defending ourselves in the neighborhoods, litigation – our legal team is rethinking and retooling, and finding the legal grounds that we’re going to need to challenge the measures that Mr. Trump implements against our community.
For example, in California we have introduced a legislation called the California Values Act, which actually would prohibit the state of California from investing any dime, any dollars, in the deportation, interrogation, detention of undocumented people. So, that bill is moving forward in the legislature.
So, this is the way that we’re going to resist. There are hundreds of municipalities who believe that migrants need to be protected, rather than persecuted. We’re going to go and keep supporting those so-called sanctuary cities. Making sure that they extend better protections for migrants, but also that they stem the attack from the Trump administration. So, we are definitely planning in all fronts. We’re preparing for the worst, and obviously, hoping for the best.
But one thing is for sure, we are not going to go quietly into the night, we’re not going to disappear, we’re not going to go down without a fight. And I think… I believe that this is, obviously four years of resistance, and it’s barely starting. And I can tell you that there is so much energy in our communities. People feel the fear, there is obviously fear, widespread fear, but at the same time there is courage.
If you think about, for example, the workers that I represent – they, everyday, in order to feed their loved ones, they defy all the odds: the weather, the rain, the hot sun, unscrupulous employers that fail to pay their wages, minute men in white supremacist organizations that come and harass them, security guards, police officers, ICE agents. They defy everybody, in order to make a living, and feed their loved ones. That is courage. That is the courage that politicians and activists and organizations need to match, as we fight back, as we resist President Trump and his policies.
DB: Pablo Alvarado, I want to ask you more. Those… you talked initially about, sort of, local defense committees, which reminds me a lot of what began to happen in the south when the resistance to apartheid, Jim Crow, in the south. There began to be these black ministers’ defense committees. It seems like almost a… sort of an evolution of that idea for the 21st century and this, what could really turn into a brown revolution.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona speaking at the Tea Party Patriots American Policy Summit in Phoenix, Arizona, Feb. 25, 2011. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)
PA: Well, look, I don’t think that at this point we have any other choice. And, yes, I mean these are experiences that other people have done in other places when they are under attack. People organize themselves to defend themselves. It’s very simply not another choice in terms of how we respond to the attacks.
And, by the way, it’s already happening. See, in Arizona, when SB1070 was introduced and created this human rights crisis in Arizona, the first thing that we did is we went to our communities and said, “What do you want to do?” And they laid out the strategy for us. Right in front of the capital of Phoenix, you know, we have about 10,000 people.
And we began asking people, “How do you want to fight back?” People said, “We’ve got to boycott the state.” That’s exactly what we did. People said, “We’ve got to organize block by block” – so the barrios in these communities emerged, in Arizona, around that time. People said, “We have to denounce SB1070, as a racist, as a fascist law and we need to have artists to come in and help us, define what we already know it’s about.” Then we brought in the lawyers, and we brought in organizers from all over the country. Massive civil disobedience. The fight we put together in Arizona is exactly what we need to replicate nationwide.
And, I believe that our communities are not only ready to do that, but we don’t have any other choice. See, when we began the campaign against Sheriff Arpaio, for instance, he enjoyed 85% of voter approval ratings. The man was untouchable. Anybody who dared to criticize Mr. Arpaio would end up under criminal investigation. One newspaper, actually, the Phoenix New Times, was raided because they dared to criticize Mr. Arpaio. The man was untouchable, at that time. And we knew that we couldn’t confront him in an open field, in an open battle. We knew that we had to draw him into another fight that we could control and that we could win.
So, we decided to boycott a furniture store that had hired six off-duty sheriff deputies to patrol the surroundings of the neighborhood, and arrest and turn over to ICE anybody who looked Mexican. We initiated the boycott [this was in 2007] and in a period of three months we had defeated the owner of the furniture store. And he ended up firing the six off-duty sheriff deputies. These were Arpaio’s sheriff deputies. That was actually the first defeat that Mr. Arpaio suffered. Ever since, people began taking him on, and lost their fear to go after Arpaio. That’s exactly what you do to bullies. You draw them into alley fights that you can control.
And we plan to have hundreds, if not thousands, of those alley fights, across the country. The struggle will not be a centralized struggle. It will be a de-centralized struggle. People doing whatever they can, from civil disobedience, to litigation, to educating, for example, Americans about the importance of defending migrants, and showing that those who employ nannies, defend their nannies. Ensuring that those who have a gardener, to keep their gardens green, that they defend the gardener. Because without that work force, Americans will not be able to do the kind of jobs that they do, and would not be able to have the kind of lifestyle that they have. So it’s in their best interest to protect our community, to protect our undocumented communities.
Artists work on a sign that reads “Deport Trump” during the presidential inauguration. January 20, 2017. (Photo: Chelsea Gilmour)
So that resistance is going to take different shapes across the country. In places where there is no infrastructure to defend migrants, in places where the political reality is too hostile, than in those particular places, like Alabama, Georgia, it will be pure resistance. It will be pure barrio, you know, community defense organizing so that people can protect each other.
And, in places where there are possibilities, to push for more proactive measures, like California, that’s exactly what we are going to do. But that struggle, again, is going to be decentralized and this time around, we want every community group, doesn’t matter how small or big, that group is to stand up, and organize.
And the way we’re going to win is by exposing, you know, the lies, by exposing the injustices that this precedent will undertake, and, during his administration, by showing the American people how ugly racism is, how ugly xenophobia is, and by putting our bodies on the line. This is the kind of resistance that’s going to take place, nationwide.
DB: We’re speaking with Pablo Alvarado, he is the Executive Director of the National Day Labor Organizing Network. That network protects… has centers all over the country, in which day laborers are able to gather and organize and protect themselves as they do the hardest work in this country.
Now, Pablo Alvarado, I imagine that work of those day labor centers also takes on new meanings because who knows who’s going to show up and say, “Oh, we want to hire some workers”…and then all of a sudden you’re going to be facing some sort-of extreme right-wingers who want to take it upon themselves to fight for the new Breitbart white America. Are there special precautions, are their suggestions, are there ways that people are getting ready to protect themselves?
PA: Sure, I mean we understand that… I mean look, it’s not the first time that day laborer, themselves, are under attack. In our community, day laborers are under attack every single day. And, you know, people talk about undocumented immigrants coming out of the shadows. For the day laborers, there is no shade. You know, they are there, exposed. And they are ready to fight.
The thing is that in 2006, that Immigrant Project targeted the day laborers. They came with cameras, they filmed them. And they said “I’m going to send this film”… they filmed their employers, to intimidate them, and they said “I’m going to send this film to ICE, so they can come and get you…” So, this is the kind of hatred that people confronted around that time. And guess what? People resisted in a beautiful way.
So even though they were provoked, they were lured into violence by some of them, the workers, by some of the minutemen, the workers remained peaceful. And we came in and claimed every single worker out of there. If you’re calm about… If they provoke you, that’s exactly what they want, because obviously that’s the kind of attention that they want, that’s the kind of tension that they want to create in the community. Because that way they get coverage by the media. But if you resist, if you don’t engage in any act of violence against them, if you peacefully, kind of prod us, then we’re going to win.
A popular anti-Trump slogan, “Respect my existence or expect my resistance”. Artwork by Victoria Garcia.
So, what we did instead of creating so much tension, screaming back and forth, when they came to prod us and what we did is we began putting cultural events in front of them. And they, of course, hated that because, you know, Mexican music was offensive to them… it was beautiful for us, but it was offensive to them, because for them anything that has to do with our culture… it’s a bad thing, you know? Except the food, because they do like Mexican food, and Latin American food. But anything that has the cultural background of Latino is something that they feel that is not American. So, we fought differently, and we defeated them.
So, this time around if they show up, which will actually happen, we’re going to defend ourselves, using the same strategy. I think the importance… what’s important here is that a resistance is going to be highly peaceful, but there will be a lot of tension. Even though it’s going to be peaceful.
DB: Do you see any silver lining in the cloud that Trump anti-immigrant policies have cast over the communities you represent?
PA: The good thing about what’s happening… nothing is good about what’s happening. But, what’s different is that it’s not just that Trump is not just attacking the Mexicans. He’s attacking women, and we’re going to be in solidarity with women. We’re going to be in solidarity with the Muslims, we’re going to be in solidarity with the indigenous communities. So we’re going to fight together. And we’re going to find the ways to align with each other, to resist. Because it’s the only way that we’re going to be able to stop the fears of attacks that Mr. Trump is unleashing. Not just on the people that he attacks, but I would say on the American people.
And, hopefully, those who voted for him will realize what they have done has cost a lot of harm to the country. And to those, the folks that voted for Mr. Trump, I want to be very clear, cause they might be listening, I want to tell them that we don’t have any hatred in our hearts towards them. But they also have to understand that we don’t fear them, and that we’re going to confront them, if necessary. Always, in a peaceful manner. And we’re going to fight back, as much as we can. So, we’re not going to just disappear, from one week to another. We work here, and we’re not going anywhere.
Dennis J Bernstein is a host of “Flashpoints” on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom. You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net.
1. I’ll be more impressed with the progressive pussy hat crowd when they explain why they think we should invite more
people into this country that believe in honor killings, female mutilation, arranged marriages, and how that fits their cause
of respecting women.
2. I remember stories in the paper a few years back about Chinese immigrant stowaways coming here on Chinese ships, is that still happening? Are they considered illegal immigrants too? Everyone seems obsessed with Mexico but what about the other countries…the Philippines etc.?
It just blows my mind that the Saudi’s continually manage to fly above the fray as the entire world twists itself into moral, philosophical, and spiritual pretzels over terrorism. How is it that THEY are not on this ban??
The problem in Islam today IS Saudi Arabia and its violent, virulent, toxic, homegrown, 7th century, fundamentalist version of Islam; Wahhabism/Salafism, which has birthed the vile Sunni terrorist groups ISIL, Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, Al Shabob, Boko Haram and dozens more and which the European Parliament in Strasbourg in 2013 declared THE main source of global terrorism.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/29/what-is-wahhabism-the-reactionary-branch-of-islam-said-to-be-the/
For the past forty YEARS they have spent 100 BILLION dollars building mosques and madarases throughout the world, including the U.S., to spread it, with the express purpose of eliminating every other form of Islam, of which, BTW, there are many. They have also spent billions and billions more over the course of 40 years paying off our U.S. Government and its politicians to look the other way.
It is well past the time that the world ADDRESS and DEAL WITH the ginormous oil covered elephant in its living room.
The issue of illegal immigration is like all of the other issues affecting the U.S. The people are not being educated, short and long-term consequences are never spelled out on any issue, and people can’t make informed decisions. Whenever new policies are enacted, people just say, “Oh, well, it’ll be okay.” What choice do they have? Like a frog in a pot of water who didn’t realize the consequences until the water started to boil, the American public are now starting to wake up. They’re starting to feel the heat.
Ross Perot tried to warn the American public about the “giant sucking sound” re NAFTA. Sir James Goldsmith (a member of the British elite) tried to warn the American public when he spoke to Charlie Rose in 1994 re the so-called “free-trade” agreements. (Watch his 50-minute talk with Charlie Rose on YouTube; it’s an eye-opener). The problem is that the politicians and media hammered these people into the ground, vilified them. The six corporations who own 90% of the media need to be split up so that dissenting opinions can enter the conversation.
We always end up with what we deserve, don’t we? The American people are going to have to feel some real pain before anything changes, and they shouldn’t be afraid of this pain. Pain is what wakes you up.
All the Fake Left outrage is just a little bit late. Between 8 and 24 years late, or perhaps more depending on one’s knowledge of real history.
http://stormcloudsgathering.com/trump-muslim-ban
What this so-called travel ban does is aimed at the 7 countries we have ‘regime changed’ (not the other 45 or so predominantly Muslim countries), using our paid terrorists we have armed and supported in our recent proxy invasions and Saudi arms deals. Gee, I don’t wonder there might be a few who don’t want to hang around in the ‘old country’ while these Orwellian, illegal wars go south as they surely will. Now, as for the millions of legitimate refugees we have created, the travel ban will have no effect other than causing a slight delay on entering the US (which we haven’t bombed, yet).
Again, where was the outrage when President Peace Prize was continuing his service to the Deep State as Bush/Cheney 2.0?
Again, where was the outrage when President Peace Prize was continuing his service to the Deep State as Bush/Cheney 2.0?
CounterPunch – http://www.counterpunch.org/swanson03162011.html – and CodePink come readily to mind for early and diligent critics of Obama.
March 25, 2011: If this is Obama pacified, I hate to see him riled up, but of course he doesn’t get riled up. Suave, articulate and personable, Obama is proving to be just as deadly as Bush, but clearly more cynical. A great, loyal tool of the establishment, Obama has dampened protest from American liberals. – http://www.commondreams.org/views/2011/03/25/winding-down-obama
I know I was being called “racist” for supporting Cynthia McKinney in ’08.
Of course, by “Fake Left”, I am going to guess you mean the right-wingers called Dimocrats.
A little one-sided. The slogan is nice: “Respect my existence or expect my resistance”. But of course the immigrants need to respect MY existence and MY need to be protected from illegal labor and terrorism.
It is the protection from terrorism which I find especially important and not mentioned in the article at all, as if it is irrelevant. It’s not. That’s why the vetting of people from eight Muslim countries, identified by Obama, is necessary. They didn’t vette in Germany and look what happened: numerous terrorist attacks in the days leading up to Christmas.
No one has the right to enter our country just because they want to. Being allowed to enter the United States is a privilege, despite all the rhetoric in the article. Vetting to rule out the entry of terrorists is perfectly reasonable and needs to be done. Hurrah for President Donald Trump.
They didn’t vette in Germany and look what happened: numerous terrorist attacks in the days leading up to Christmas.
The indigenous peoples of North America and Australia didn’t vette either and look at what happened to them. Massacres and ethnic cleansing and their lands ruled by barbarians and warmongers.
I’m not going to defend the actions of the Old Americans doing their massacres and ethnic cleansing – partly because a lot of my ancient relatives were on Andrew Jackson’s Trail of Tears death march.
But it must be kept in mind that the worst dying spells – probably 95%+ – were caused by the germs of the invaders from Europe. A lot of the empty-looking lands were that way because the formerly numerous inhabitants had been wiped out by measles, scarlet fever, typhoid, typhus, influenza, pertussis (whooping cough), tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria, chickenpox, the common cold, sexually transmitted diseases, and the very worst – smallpox.
and the very worst – smallpox.
And smallpox was deliberately spread by giving blankets carrying the disease to Native Americans.
It happened in some places. Not in others. Unfortunately, smallpox is quite capable of getting around in many other ways.
Title to google: “Did the U.S. Army Distribute Smallpox Blankets to Indians? Fabrication and Falsification in Ward Churchill’s Genocide Rhetoric”
Individuals were as evil back in the Good Old Days as they are today, so instances of biowar happened. The Brits attempted to use smallpox against Washington’s troops in the Revolution.
But likewise, modern authors are quite as good at making things up as anybody in those same Good Old Days.
Our ancestors behaved badly, and that’s a fact. They also used their superior numbers and better organization and weaponry against the survivors of the plagues. I simply claim that the overwhelming majority of the megadeaths deaths were early ones.
We need to be rigorously honest and empirical when judging claims like these. The fact is the “Germ Theory of Disease,” though occasionally proposed by some like Ignatz Semmelweiss and John Snow during the mid-19th century, was NOT believed, in fact it was widely opposed until it was conclusively demonstrated by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch in the years between 1860-1865. Bacteria were not well-characterised until the 19th century and viruses not discovered until 1890. Native Americans may well have been decimated by exposure to germs carried to the Americas by Europeans, but it is far from established as deliberate if those Europeans had no clue, or in fact disbelieved, that diseases were caused by tiny invisible “germs.”
I have the same problem with religious types telling me that their Church has always preached that “life begins at conception”–when the sperm fuses with the egg, when, in fact, science did not observe fertilisation in ANY organism until it was first noted in 1876 by Oscar Hertwig in sea urchins, so they had no concept of conception. Sperm cells were first observed by Van Leeuwenhoek around 1700 when microscopes were brand new inventions, but eggs were not identified until the early 19th century, and most scientists thought that the sperm alone carried a tiny homunculus which developed into a new human being. It was not until Pope Pius IX proclaimed “ex cathedra” in about 1870 that his church adopted the dogma that “ensoulment” is from the first moment of embryonic development and abortion is a grave sin at any stage of pregnancy. Before that his own church accepted the Aristotelian idea, promoted by Aquinas and Augustine, that life begins during the “quickening”–when the mother can feel the fetus move within her uterus. Incidentally, Pius IX (the Great Anti-Modernist Pope) was also the first to proclaim i) papal infallibility, ii) the Immaculate Conception, and iii) the right of Christians to forcibly baptize Jewish children. He himself kept a Jewish boy so-baptized in his own residence from the child’s parents. This man essentially shaped Roman Catholicism as it is known to most practicing Catholics today and they have not a clue because nobody seeks out facts or history but prefer to simply believe what they are told.
I can’t respond directly to realist, so I’m responding here. Germ theory may not have been widely accepted, but it was well known in the middle ages that the best way to deal with a house where people had died of the plague was to burn the house and it’s contents to the ground. It is unlikely that any written evidence will ever come to light that Native Americans were deliberately given smallpox infected blankets, but given the use of alcohol in negotiations with tribes and given the many other examples of genocide, it is entirely plausible.
Irene, in my opinion you are entirely correct. Old-time humans were just as bright as we are, and quite knowledgeable about diseases and poisons. Since this site has turned link-phobic, I invite you to google the terms “History of biological warfare”. That wiki site just scratches the surface of the horrors ancient people inflicted on their neighbors – be it in offense or defense.
You do realize that toddlers kill more people in the US each year than terrorists do, right?
So do falling televisions…
Cops kill about 8x as many… (though one could consider them terrorists with badges, and it would be difficult to craft a definition of “terrorism” that did not apply to them.)
For that matter, right-wing homegrown terrorism kills far more people than foreign terrorists in the last decade.
Also, for that matter, no immigrants from any of the countries on this list have ever killed anyone as part of terrorism in the US. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, UAE, and Lebanon, all of which have given us terrorists who killed on US soil, are not on the list.
Professor Emeritus at Cracker Jack University?
Hi Rudolph,
I have previously joined into the question on why all the protest NOW, plus would it be happening under Clinton. My take now is that a second wave of disgust with what was normal under Obama is happening, the first being Trump supporters who elected him, and they in a response similar to the Brexit sentiment and disgust with the previous “normal.” Of course, as indicated by this article, resistance to immigration injustice has not just started in. But the commotion from last Friday’s travel ban has startled people and led to questions like yours. I think the vigor of the current Trump rejection is the second wave of disgust with what was “normal,” and has been activated by people being amazed that Trump could take power. They see him as they saw him as a candidate—a laughing stock basically, as depicted by Alex Baldwin on SNL, completely unfit. Thus for many he is automatically written off, including the current high levels of protest energy. This fits with a rising tide of disgust globally, threatening global chaos, the globe’s biggest problem. If Clinton were activating safe zones and flyovers and re-supplying the anti-Assad militants we might be seeing this same kind of protest also (that could be a big “might be”). The disgust fueling Brexit and the Trump election is widening into more impatience and anger, growing more problematic. But it may fizzle out if Trump can settle in and more cleverly mask what he is doing. It is easy to get tired of protesting. There is also no clarity as yet on which direction he will go—toward détente and new world order, or toward Plutocracy Version B, as bad as Version A.
But it may fizzle out if Trump can settle in and more cleverly mask what he is doing.
IF
Hi,
Absolutely, I agree.
best regards
Hi,
Obama make identical decrete on Irakians people, in early days of his mandate.
No such contestation at this time, no violence just standalone applauses at this time …
It’s just me that remember ? (and not a us citizen, so excuse-me for my bad english)
Regards
Not a fan of Obama, but his temporary ban on Iraqis did not leave people with visas, airline tickets and even green cards stranded, detained or deported to the wrong country as is the case with Trump’s immigration ban. We should have been out protesting Obama’s interventions in the seven countries that led to the refugee crisis and we should be protesting Trump’s recent massacre in Yemen that killed civillians including an eight year old girl and three American soldiers.
Hi,
I copy that.
But about Yemen, just a remark (I note remarkable silence on main medias here in europa about this war)
I always thinking that was Saouds (backed by Obama for hardware and things like that) that were involved, not Trump.
I can be wrong (sure) but your president just in take charge theses days, and even if he goes fast in decisions, the entire establishment continue (it seems, as for other presidents) as before until further notice.
So, is he really guilty of that ?
Here in Europa (france-belgium-germany area) the people with no sympathy for Trump, estimate Trump because
lots of our politicians are weaks, liars and serve only the “elite” cast. He break the politically correct and he is the opposite of our politics making a drama on insignifiant things and no attention on people’s critical problems.
The people are angry and even if it’s more subtle and intricated than raw emotional reaction described here by me, the fact is that the people prefer a guy like your president Trump (and I often hear : ” Ah ! We need a guy like him here”
simplistic, of course, but thats a fact.
…again sorry for my bad english
Rudolph
The reporter and the “grassroots rebellion” leader seem to think that mass deportation is a new thing that’s just been started by Trump. They’ve already forgotten the 2.5 million people that were deported by Obama. That’s more than by any other president, and about the same as the two million to three million that Trump plans to deport.
We definitely need to protest these civil and social injustices, but when I see career politicians, in this case, the conservaDems, I’m skeptical if these protests are really grass root, or just more money driven hoopla created in a DC lab think tank which is being used to distract us from the duopoly. “The focus on Trump is a mistake.” The duopolies around the world and the multinationals that own them are the real boogiemen.
David F., N.A. – you are absolutely correct.
I’m not ready to cast stones yet. I get a more accurate picture about what’s really behind all the hysteria over Trump, from an article by N.Y. attorney Rahul Marchanda, “Time to bring Lyndon LaRouche out of Exile”, published in Diplomacy Now, Jan. 28th, and Veterans News Now, Jan. 27th. The old Imperial Order is dying NOW, as we speak, and these would-be Emperors and their “Royal Court” of Managerial Elites in MSN, Intelligence, MIC, and Finance, are in hysterics over that fact. They are literally freaked out that Trump (along with Brexiters, and other similar movements in the EU, the Phillipines big middle finger to this old Order, Turkey’s about-face, etc…) is going to hurl all of these oligarchs into the Atlantic Ocean. World Development (via China’s New Silk Road win-win policies) is on the march, like wild-fire. This will automatically alleviate all immigrant problems, as 3rd-World Countries receive their long-delayed Development and Advancement (Home no longer a place to flee from, the imperial wars ending finally), while Trump initiates the rebuilding of USA after decades of damages, immiseration and impoverishment of “rust belt America”.
The immigration orders are probably a mistake.
Dissent is appropriate, and so is political opposition.
Dissent memos are an important internal device meant to keep the government connected to reality, to break out of the danger of the DC Bubble. It is like setting up a B-Team to re-evaluate ideas.
However, a dissent memo is supposed to be internal, protected as part of the process. It is not supposed to be a public attack on the boss, a partisan attack on an incoming Administration by holdovers.
Likewise, those who hold office are supposed to do their jobs. They can give good advice, and still follow orders. A good staff officer knows how to do both, and that is what loyal staffing does.
Public release of “dissent” by outgoing bureaucrats, and plain defiance of orders, are simply not within the realm of acceptable peaceful transfer of power.
Elections have consequences. Losers don’t have to like that, but in this country they have to accept that.
Elmer Fudmeir thinks leaving the country to dumb white trash will “make America great again”. This is a bit like marrying your cousin….”keep it in the family”. Dumbing down America seems to be the target of Trump Inc./GOP, so why not just close schools all together? Especially those who teach that science stuff. Hey, Elmer’s ” a smart guy”…just like our president. He doesn’t need any schooling because he’s a smart guy too!
Truthfully…white americans are not able to run this country alone. Prices will skyrocket soon on foodstuffs, as the migrant farmworker community will be lost and Trumps “20%” will come directly out of your pocket.
But, if you’re living on Campbell soup, none of this will matter much. Good luck.
Stiv – “Truthfully…white americans are not able to run this country alone. Prices will skyrocket soon on foodstuffs, as the migrant farmworker community will be lost and Trumps “20%” will come directly out of your pocket.”
Mexico should throw the U.S. multinationals off their land and reclaim it for themselves. Then they should start producing their own crops and exporting them to the U.S. (fruits, vegetables). The difference in the currency exchange would keep costs down, Mexicans would have jobs again, in their own country, and everybody could win.
And “white Americans are not able to run this country alone”. They’d certainly have to start mowing their own lawns again, or hiring the kid down the street, like they used to. Be good for the waistline.
“Dumb white trash will ‘make America great again’.” Hey, it’s a bell curve, and half of the people in any country are on the left-hand side of that bell curve, no matter the color of their skin. If you had have said “dumb black trash”, you would have been banned from this site.
“Dumbing down America seems to be the target of Trump Inc./GOP.” No, that was done a long time ago. As soon as American citizens started becoming dependents, relying on their government to bail them out of everything, was the day they started to get “dumbed down”. The elite don’t want an educated public. An educated public ask too many pointed questions, and who wants that when you’re busy looting? Keep them dumb, create lots of different factions/special interests, pit one side against the other, and then let them tear each other to shreds. That was no one notices what’s really going on.
As far as education, the dumbing down is purposeful again. Water down the courses, instigate programs of ‘success for all’, and that way no one ends up knowing anything, or very few. But they’re all in debt to the banks! Bingo, that’s what they want. And the U.S. taxpayers are going to end up owning that $trillion+ of student debt.
There are a lot of people that would like to see NAFTA and globalization continue, the vested interests. I think it has done nothing but harm the average guy. What do you think?
And the media (an arm of the elite) have been instrumental in keeping people “dumbed down”. If you could open up your daily newspaper and read the “other side” of the story, why, you might start getting educated. Same thing with TV news programs. Imagine if we had a media that spelled out all of the pros and cons of having illegal immigration, what’s going to occur within the short-term, and what you’re going to end up with in the long-term. People would actually be able to make an informed decision. Imagine that.
The elite don’t care one bit about the illegal immigrants, but they’re going to be used by them to ensure that NAFTA and globalization continue, that their plans are carried out. Lots of different vested interests are going to start pouring out of the woodwork to make sure that the flow of cheap labor continues.
The day that the U.S. started to rely on others to pick their crops, do their nails, mow their lawns, build their homes is the day they started to get dumbed down. They lost self-reliance.
Fudmier would have it so that the United States denies the best and brightest from advancing U.S. research and industries. These people will enrich other institutions in other nations. He also fails to recognize that the U.S. is an exceptionally punitive country in all respects (unheard of, steep U.S. tuition rates, premiums, the like ARE punitive), and so that the way things are going (and have been going for decades), “foreigners” will not want to come. I am an American citizen, one who happens to be well traveled, and I am choosing to leave the United States to complete my graduate education in a country that is less dense. The truth is getting out.
America may be an “advanced” nation, but it sits at the bottom of that stack, and may soon fall out of the category altogether — of no fault of immigrants, but corrupt politicians who would rather perpetuate the primitive state of the United States than modernize our country and ensure access to the basics, such as high quality healthcare and education, for all.
This is the system you end up with when you embrace the notion that one has absolutely no responsibilities except to oneself, that “greed (or selfishness as Ayn Rand put it) is good,” and that society is only something you utilise to your own gain. It’s a philosophy that’s been pushed incessantly by the power elite in this country since the dreams of Roosevelt’s liberal Democrats (Great Society, War on Poverty, etc) went down in flames because they were chased from government subsequent to the disastrous Vietnam war they foolishly embraced. The DLC Democrats who finally came back to power under the Clintons were NOT the same. Neither was the deceptive Obama. They were pseudo-progressives on the surface, but neocons and neoliberals under the skin, regardless of their pigmentation. Hillary offered nothing different.
Trump offered to be an unpredictable maverick, an outsider who ran against both parties (which few can stand any longer) but without a well-formulated philosophy of governance, economics and social justice. If he’s actually got one, we’ll find out, I suppose, or the system will collapse. I think most people impute their own preferences, biases or fears to this tabula rasa. Based on his life’s work, he is a monument builder and I suspect he does have grandiose visions of an American renaissance, but can he effect them in the face of the enormous opposition and without adopting authoritarian means?
Good luck on your emigration plans, sir or madam. I suspect that you will find that America is not the “be all and end all” as it is portrayed internally. People have made major contributions to posterity and immense personal fortunes in many other places on this planet.
Realist – I’ve read differing opinions re Roosevelt: some say he was a benevolent leader who truly cared, some say that he was just going along with the elites who were worried about the threat of communism, so he handed the people a few bones. I don’t know which one is correct. But as we’re fast learning about the elite, there’s usually a reason for their benevolence, and it usually has nothing to do with kindness, and a whole lot to do with protecting themselves from harm.
Which one was Roosevelt?
Again, let’s not forget how many American policies and actions – regime changes and wars of choice – have helped create many of the millions of refugees in and around the Middle East and Central America. The otherwise deplorable Colin Powell got it right when he advised George W. Bush about the Pottery Barn Rule before going to war on Iraq – You break it, you own it. America broke it, now it owns it, but in line with the shameful side of American history, many Americans are in denial.
“America broke it, now it owns it, but in line with the shameful side of American history, many Americans are in denial.”
No, AMERICANS did not break it. The psychopaths that the oligarchs have placed in CHARGE of America broke it. Why should average Americans be expected to suffer the consequences of these psychopaths where immigration is concerned? On top of all of the OTHER consequences of the psychopaths’ actions we’ve been forced to endure? And please don’t tell me that the American voter is responsible. We’ve been brainwashed, lied to, manipulated and dumbed-down for DECADES. You cannot hold the average American, many of whom are working two or more jobs just to survive (if they are lucky enough to HAVE jobs), responsible for the outcomes of rigged elections.
Consider the old adage about all that evil needs to succeed is for good people to do nothing.
Why should average Americans be expected to suffer the consequences of these psychopaths where immigration is concerned?
Average Americans should raise their standards to make “average” something more than docile residents to become active citizens. Saying “somebody should do something” is really saying “somebody else should do something.” Where I live we had about 350 people march through the county town protesting the imminent war on Iraq. That was 350 people out of a population well in excess of 100,000. In other words, more than 100K did nothing and let evil commit what was till then the greatest war crime of the 21st Century and the most major crime against humanity since the Vietnam war. This ratio of protesters and do-nothings was similar across the nation.
And please don’t tell me that the American voter is responsible. We’ve been brainwashed, lied to, manipulated and dumbed-down for DECADES.
All Americans have been lied to from their formative years. Those with sufficient intelligence to recognize they have been lied to will reject the lies and oppose the liars if they also have the necessary integrity. Those who lack the necessary intelligence and integrity continue as accomplices of evil. If they are certified as mentally incompetent then they may be forgiven. Others will have to plead for forgiveness for their failure to live up to their duties as citizens. Obviously, when these people recite the pledge of allegiance the words are meaningless and their participation in this ritual is an act of hypocrisy.
In 2000 the American voters had three choices: Ralph Nader was the only candidate for president with a record for integrity. Only around four percent of the voters supported him. The rest – around 96 percent voted for the other two candidates mired in our corrupt political system. Your defense of the “average” voter fails. The verdict is “guilty.”
Please don’t respond with that old discredited BS about votes for Ralph Nader cost Gore the presidency and gave it to Bush. The problem in 2000 was that so many people voted for Gore and Bush instead of Nader.
Thank you.
Also, the problem with 2016 is that even fewer people voted for Jill Stein…
“Where I live we had about 350 people march through the county town protesting the imminent war on Iraq. That was 350 people out of a population well in excess of 100,000.”
In my town it was maybe 30 out of a population of 30,000.
However, millions did march in NYC and other cities worldwide. I went to three marches.
To no avail. The numbers of protesters were downplayed by the media, and protester were characterized as weirdos. That showed how pointless demostrating had become. Then, remember how protesters were “caged” at the Dem National Convention in Boston in 2004?
At least under Trump the idea of political protest seems to be getting a boost—it’s just that the protesters seem to be being led around by their noses to waste their energy on meaningless, targetless protest.
I think Mr. Trumps deport them all orders are the first step in straightening out America.. I do not agree with Trumps support of the foreign nation Israel either..
Graduate programs in American colleges and Universities should not have one, not one single, foreigner..
No corporation should be allowed to hire a single foreigner when their is one, just one American in need of a job, and no
job no matter what at any American corporation, or corporation doing business in America, should be allowed to hire to a
non exempt position any foreigner for any reason.. Make America great again.. Run the foreigners off.
“Graduate programs in American colleges and Universities should not have one, not one single, foreigner.. ”
“No corporation should be allowed to hire a single foreigner when their is one, just one American in need of a job”
I think the consequences would be more or less obvious. US universities would lose their elite status, and hightech companies would move most of their research and development to other countries. For example, we would probably see a large increase in Google employees in Zurich (although Google already takes up a large part of the quotas for new employees from outside Switzerland and the EU for Zurich).
Of course, it is a political question whether there should be more or less immigration and which kind of immigration should be promoted. But research on a high level would be massively restricted if only people from one country could be employed.
I doubt the US really wants to lose a significant part of its research at universities and tech companies. But European and Asian countries would certainly be glad to take over if the US does not allow international teams any more.
I spent my career training doctoral students in the biomedical sciences and was involved in graduate programs in the other sciences as well. The simple fact of the matter is that American-born students are NOT choosing careers in science, though many do want to go to medical school because the MD is worth mucho $$$’s. If we shut off the supply of foreign (especially Chinese and Indian) graduate students, post-docs and research associates in the sciences America’s pre-eminence in science, engineering and technology would quickly come crashing down. That’s why the TA’s in your kids’ science classes are all foreigners whom they cannot understand.
If we were serious about doing something about it, we wouldn’t simply shut off the flow of educated and motivated geniuses into this country. Our country’s pre-eminence in science and technology has ALWAYS been dependent on a “brain drain,” first from the mass migration of European Jews before WWII, and then from Germany (and all other countries in Europe) after the War. Europeans don’t all want to come here any longer (though many still do, especially Russians), so we have picked up the slack from the Far East, without which your kids would have no one to teach them general biology or “chemistry for poets.”
If you are serious about closing American higher education to foreigners, you had better initiate a crash program that vastly increases the number of American kids (especially boys today as girls outnumber them nearly 2-to-1 in American colleges in all fields) enrolled in STEM degree programs. That will require more money spent all along the pipeline, from tuitions for undergraduates to salaries for the professional Ph.D.’s developing the new technologies and cures that are going to benefit society. There needs to be a reward commensurate with the effort required, which is currently lacking and why American kids are staying away from the hard sciences in droves.
But that doesn’t click with the system of “offshoring” American jobs that our oligarchs have used so successfully to keep their costs down and profits high in whatever their business. Again the root of the problem is the form of tyrannical laissez faire capitalism practiced in this country solely for the benefit of the top ) 0.0001%. Bill Gates, Elon Musk and the late Steve Jobs would privately admit this because they are not stupid men, but they will never publicly admit it and certainly never do anything about it because that would cost them a minor dent in their profits… and you know how scores are kept amongst the uber-rich.
you are soooo right, realist!!!
and the stupid dogma about eliminating “foreigners” is all a smokescreen in my opinion.
It’s a smokescreen for establishing authoritarian control in the guise of trying to ‘help” American workers who have been devastated not by immigrants – as they are trying to tell us – but by the greedy rejection of New Deal policies.
Paul Volker, FRB Chair in the 1980’s, said just a few years ago that over the last 30 years the only real innovation he observed from the big banks on Wall Street was the ATM machine.
So, if that’s all the meaningful innovation they contributed to the current economy does that justify their huuuuuge hundreds of billions of dollars of profits while average working people got the short end of the stick? I don’t think so.
Realist is correct in damage assessment resulting from long existing policy of allowing American know-how to be vested in Foreign brain power. Read my reply to Realist..
The real problem is experience.. all human development is dependent upon experience; experience shapes the minds of our genius, focuses entrepreneurial opportunity and makes outlaws of our socially and financially deprived. If you give the high level STEM graduate education to foreigners and you allow products produced with today’s technology to be produced outside of America and you hire foreigners outside of America to learn and advance the technology to produce them, the experiences needed to produce within America, “American brain power and expertise”, will be absent, and worse the opportunity to develop such genius and experts in native born Americans will be lost.. Trump is correct, Teach it to Americans, let American school graduates, produce in American staffed facilities, all that Americans need, because America needs its own brain power in order to remain independent of, and superior to, the rest of the world.
Any young American citizen who is really bright, who might have considered a degree in the sciences, has now turned to the financial industry, to securities, derivatives, etc. Unfortunately, that’s where the money is.
Michael Lewis (author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Big Short, Flash Boys) was surprised at the response he got when he wrote his first book, Liar’s Poker. He expected people would be appalled about what was going on on Wall Street, but instead he was inundated with requests for advice from young people who wanted to do what he did. The financial industry has sucked away most of the best minds. You watch (and it’s already starting) the Asian minds steer clear of the sciences in the not too distant future.
This glorification of the financial industry, to the detriment of science, is leaving a huge hole.
I appreciate the observations of Realist. Especially the Jewish 1904-1913 exodus from Thessaloniki; the WWII era exodus; and the post German influx.. but what I see is that if foreign brain matter dependence is not corrected, Americans will not correct their technology dependence on foreign brain; a case recognized when Sputnik made space history in the 1957 era.. but that move in the right direction was quickly doused by the same oligarchs who set out to remove American access from production facilities and technologies so necessary to genius inspiration and development. Unless domestic genius is encouraged America excellence will never mature.
To inspire genius requires first to make the genius aware and to expose that aware genius to the challenge found in experience. The oligarch push to remove productive eyeopening experiences outside of America for short term economic gain suggest a most impelling reason to exclude by force, policy and law all foreign student, worker or expertise and to deny products produced outside of America to be sold within America. Sanctions preventing the purchase of foreign technical products, and Iranian national participation in extra Iran education, forced Iran to develop within its nation, complete independence; so it is clear, achieving foreign brain power independence, is possible. Realist outlines the long term, highly detrimental results should Americans fail to deny foreigners into America and extra-American produced goods and services to be sold and marketed within American borders.
I think we have seen (or read about) a similar dynamic in Russia.
The sanctions have helped them focus on developing their own capacity.
We espouse this idea in the form of Outward Bound adventures, which subject participants to many types of challenges in order to force them to think and act or themselves and overcome fear.
The same can be applied to the country as a whole.
We have been coasting for a long time, not educating our young citizens adequately and, then, failing to train them so that they can acquire expertise and. The state should pay 75% of the costs of American citizens’ tertiary education and professional/vocational training. Not to do so is a disincentive to get educated. Especially teachers and other socially necessary professions (nursing, social work, environmental protection, engineering, public finance/administration, etc.) should be trained on the state’s dime. Those entering the high-stakes financial world to make big bucks should pay for their own MBAs etc.
it is just for the consequences Mr. Engler post that I posted that no graduate program in America should have a single foreigner it.
When I was in graduate school there were no foreigners and we were among, if not actually the most elite people in the world.
Only after American graduate education deleted Americans and promoted foreigners has America become dependent on foreigner born knowledge. Trump is right run the Foreigners off.
Then you must be over a 100 years old or so, because the atomic bomb would never have been developed in the Manhattan Project if not for the contributions of Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, Hans Bethe, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, Otto Frisch, Klaus Fuchs, Rudolf Peierls, Ernest Titterton, and Eugene Wigner to name just a few foreign expats that the U.S. government employed. This is to say nothing of the earlier benchmark work in developing the field of nuclear physics by German scientists like Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, and Fritz Strassman. The same is true for our guided missile and space program which was created nearly entirely using over 10 dozen German scientists in Werner Von Braun’s group from Pene Munde in “Operation Paperclip.” At least half of the breakthroughs in the development of molecular biology and DNA technology was done in Europe or in the United States by scientists with roots in Europe starting with the elucidation of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick. Watson was American. Crick, Wilkins, Kendrew and Perutz the other scientists to win a Nobel for their contributions to that endeavor were British or German. Maybe you think computer science was an American creation because of Steve Jobs. Well, the mathematicians upon whom the technology was based go back to antiquity, most of them from Europe and the Middle East. Unknown ancients invented devices like the antikythera, the sextant and algorithms used in the slide rule. Napier invented logarithms which others, like Pascal and Liebniz, applied to crude calculating devices. Babbage and Lovelace invented the first mechanical difference engine. Turing and Von Neumann brought digital computing into the modern era circa the 1940’s. None of these people were Americans. Many brilliant foreign scientists have flooded American shores, but that’s because the money was always here, not the talent, the curiosity or the drive. Look to where they were born and educated, not solely to their highest level of employment. Sorry to burst you bubble of “American exceptionalism” in science. We’ve basically been intellectual parasites since long before I was born. I am sure there were numerous foreign scholars surrounding you in graduate school (they were there back in the ’60’s when I started graduate school), but you just did not notice them.
fudmier – I remember reading about how Disney hired a bunch of foreign workers, had their own employees “train” them, and then handed these employees their pink slips after the training was complete. The same thing has been happening at banks. These American workers were left high and dry in favor of cheaper labor. Of course, the real insult was in having to train their own replacements. This should not be allowed.
World class competition is what makes the difference between an excellent graduate program and a mediocre one. You don’t say what school you went to, but I have a hard time believing you were “among the elite” if you had no foreigners in your program. My mother, who is 86, stopped going to dances at University of Michigan because it was awkward dancing with Chinese a foot shorter than she was and it was awkward turning them down
I have a question for author Dennis Bernstein and Pablo Alvarado. Do either of you have any objection at all to simply opening US borders? The quote mentions two to three million, so would either of you have any problem with expanding the “migrants” to four to six million? Twenty to thirty million?
Either a line has to be drawn or not. If not, then allow in anyone and everyone who can get to our borders without vetting. In not too short a time the country will become one with the third world. If yes, then someone in our government will have to set standards. In the not-too-distant past (during my post WWII childhood years) we took in immigrants but many fewer than today and with rigorous quotas and standards that did not embroil the populace. Didn’t affect me or mine, but it took decades to get family members over from many European countries. I’m sure those standards would be considered racist and unjust today when many more bodies are trying to gain entry by hook or crook, a great many from the third world or war-torn nations. Nevertheless, some standards need be set and adhered to. I’ll let you imagine the scenarios if our borders were simply thrown open on the premise that “we are a nation of immigrants,” diversity to the max will prompt us all to live in peace and harmony, and we’ll be a model to the world (our inner cities and minority communities excepted). Sure, that’s why people are so mellow today, and the Shias will lie down with the Sunnis, and the Muslims with the Christians if only the red, white and blue flies o’erhead. USA, USA, USA… makes it all okay! Don’t plan it, “just do it!” Personally, I prefer careful deliberation about such things before acting, but that’s just me.
Realist – very well reasoned post. The U.S. elite don’t care whether people get along or not, whether they’re packed in like sardines and sharing 10 to a house, whether they’re fighting each other for jobs or religious beliefs. All they care about is having more “bodies”, more consumers. They keep a lid on the anger brewing, but just barely. It’s all just sitting right below the surface, waiting to erupt.
The immigrants who came to the U.S. made the U.S. great. They worked hard, under very trying circumstances (the pioneers, the settlers). There was no relief, other than charity; they were on their own. That’s not the case anymore. The immigrants who now are demanding to be let in are coming to a highly developed, well-established country with a rule of law, great educational and medical facilities. The hard work has been done. Of course the U.S. should be highly selective about who they let in. To do otherwise is insanity.
Agree. A key point that the MSM consciously ignores is that most Americans are not “anti-immigrant”. They are “anti-bad-immigration law” and “anti-immigration law non-enforcement”.
What were are seeing now from the Left and the Corporate Cronies who want cheap labor is the smug, sanctimonious demonization of common sense…
Careful deliberation…reminds me of the Gandhi quip. When asked about Western Civilization, he responded it sounded like a good idea.
Stop making other countries unliveable if you want people to stay put. Keep environmental and labor laws in place if you don’t want the US to become a third world country. It’s not rocket science. It would be done if it were not for the mentally ill oligarchs who can never get enough to satisfy their voracious appetites.
Right. And the easy Federal response is for ICE to do massive job site audits to validate right-to-employment. With HUGE fines levied against the employers, not the illegals workers who are broke anyway. No State assistance required.
Or should ALL immigration laws be casually dismissed? And following up on Zachary Smith, is consigning American workers to the trash-heap of displacement a reasonable trade?
BTW, where are the demonstrations for the Americans mired in learned helplessness in economic wastelands like Appalachia, Northern NY State, NE Pennsylvania, the bombed out cities like Flint and Gary? Maybe those CITIZENS should call themselves “refugees” hoping someone will notice.