Racist SB 1070 Rally and Sheriff Joe.

This is from my friend, Dennis Gilman's YouTube site, Humanleague002. He's been faithfully chronicling the racist regime unfolding in Arizona and exposing human rights abuses. Spend some time at his site if you're at all into the protests and counter-protests going on here, or if you want to see Copwatch video done right...

This video is chilling, by the way.

----------------------

And they Pre-emptively lock up the Left as Terrorists?

Celebrate the International Observation of the Anniversary of
the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade:

ABOLISH THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!!

These Tea Partiers and legislators that take such pride in their "right" to be obstructing millions of poor, working, and middle class families from accessing health care are pitiful representations of what I grew up believing were the best qualities of "Americans" - perceptions passed on to me by my Republican elders, ironically. It is the myth that drives young men and women to their deaths or worse in war all around the world. It goes like this:

Americans are champions of the oppressed, always cheering on the underdog; the revolutionary and rebel dominate our folklore - Robin Hood is one of our most legendary European heroes. My great-grandfather, an Iowa farmer who endured the Depression, was named after the outlaw Jesse James. The vast majority of us aspire to build a more just and sustainable world together, beginning with how we resolve conflict or crisis in our homes, schools, and communities so that we aren't just feeding our most vulnerable, troubled kids and naive citizens through the pipeline to prisons. We just can’t see that far past our fear or what may be our family’s economic dependence on perpetuating the cycle of crime and punishment – which only churns out more victims, incapacitating more communities, and destroying more lives...

We need to take responsibility for each other before it gets that far. Most child abusers are never caught because they are, by and large, white men in power - usually a member or close friend of their victim's family. A child reporting a crime like that has about as good a chance of being protected and getting justice (forget mercy) in America as a prisoner does suing his incarcerators. The kids just end up in foster care or detention and get brutalized more. How are we going to improve their odds so they don’t end up enraged and “violent” as adults, or self-destructing rapidly with drugs and dying as a petty offender in jail of Hepatitis.

All our sentencing mandates didn't do a damn thing to protect the most vulnerable women in the state from violence, either: migrants and women in prison and detention. In fact, recent legislation has criminalized them further and made it all the more likely they will be victimized and murdered in silence by legal residents and non-citizens alike: Pearce declared open season on those women with his assault on Sanctuary Cities.

You will no doubt try to hide their bodies as "John and Jane Does" in county morgues until it is time to cremate and bury them. We'll have to dig to get the names, numbers, and causes of death, but we'll try to include everyone in our May 20 memorial for those who have died in the custody of the state.

The preceding day, May 19, we may have a vigil for the 4 hours Marcia Powell was left in the sun, asking for help - perhaps film a guerilla theater piece on it someplace appropriate. That day is also World Hepatitis Day, so we may do a special service for Hep C survivors and victims.

We may spend a good part of our lives striving for financial and material security, but most of us would sacrifice it in a minute if it meant we could really affect something we believed needed to change. The images of nationalism and patriotism and Christian faith that are so readily exploited to snap us all in line are things I take really very seriously. I'm descended directly from the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded by the Pilgrims, William Bradford. My direct ancestor who fought as a revolutionary war soldier was Brigham Young's dad. My father spent his life in Military Intelligence in service to his country - to save the world for democracy and freedom.

I can draw on that heritage. It comes from a well deep within me - images of my father, the gentlest man I knew, leaving for the war in uniform when all I could associate soldiers with were Dad, parades and candy. He came home grievously wounded, to a family that was there for him no more. I know what people have sacrificed for the defense of our liberties and privileges as Americans, and I know that it comes from a place of good intention.

I also know that sometimes the greater harm is done to the one who conducts torture than the subject of their violence, simply by virtue of being so consumed with self-righteousness, sadistic glee, or an entitled vindictiveness on behalf of a prisoner's imagined victims. That twists a person's soul, being so brutal and justified on a routine basis.

Anyway, these people (our republican legislators and the tea partiers) haven't been dying like flies the way our people are, and don't have a thing to bitch about - much less to threaten violence to others for. They're whiny, spoiled, selfish, privileged, mostly-white racists all coming out of the closet now because they think Obama's election is "proof" that people of color are no longer disadvantaged in this country - which naturally means that all the white and moneyed people are the real victims, here.

That's them. Poor Tea Partiers. Boo hoo.

I think they would be more comfortable in white hoods, burning crosses on Democrats' lawns.
---------------------

Hoyer decries talk of reprisals against lawmakers over health care vote

By The Associated Press

Published: March 25, 2010 at 7:55 am

WASHINGTON - House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer voiced concern today (March 25) over warnings of violent reprisals against members of Congress who voted for landmark health care legislation, saying the threats are being taken “very seriously.”

“The bottom line is, we need to be very careful in public life that our rhetoric doesn’t incite to violent acts,” the Maryland Democrat said on a network morning news show. He said dealing with difficult issues in a civil and peaceful manner is “at the core of our democracy.”

The FBI is working with lawmakers subjected to menacing obscenity-laced phone messages. In some instances, bricks were hurled through congressional offices, including Rep. Louise Slaughter’s district headquarters in Niagara Falls, N.Y.

At least four Democratic offices in New York, Arizona and Kansas were struck and at least 10 members of Congress have reported some sort of threats, congressional leaders have said. No arrests had been made as of late March 24, but the FBI is still investigating.

Hoyer had said March 24 that lawmakers who felt at risk were to get attention “from the proper authorities.” He declined to say whether any were receiving extra security. Normally only those in leadership positions have personal security guards.

Slaughter, a Democrat, is chairwoman of an influential House committee. She said someone had left her a voice mail that used the word “snipers.”

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said “it’s an effort to kind of hijack the debate by coercive elements. I’m glad the Republican leadership colleagues denounce it. But they were very late to do that.”

Hoyer did not single out any member of Congress or political party as having made statements that could encourage such acts. But he did say he thought some of the rhetoric “has been far beyond legitimate debate.”

“In our democracy,” he said, “we resolve things, not through violence, not at the point of a gun. If we don’t do that, we will devolve into a society that we’re not going to like.” (a good case for abolishing the police state - peg)

“It is unacceptable in America,” said Sen. John McCain. The Arizona Republican said angry citizens should channel their rage into voter registration for the next election and efforts to repeal the health care law.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said in a statement that while many Americans are angry over the bill’s passage, “violence and threats are unacceptable.”

Some of the anger spilled over in a flood of threat-filled phone and fax messages to the office of Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich. Stupak vowed to oppose the health care package unless given greater assurance that it would not allow federal funding of elective abortions. He voted in favor after the administration agreed.

Stupak’s office released some of the messages, declining further comment.

“I hope you bleed … (get) cancer and die,” one male caller told the congressman between curses.

A fax with the title “Defecating on Stupak” carried a picture of a gallows with “Bart (SS) Stupak” on it and a noose attached. It was captioned, “All Baby Killers come to unseemly ends Either by the hand of man or by the hand of God.”

The vandalism and threats surprised a researcher at a think tank that monitors extremist groups.

“I think it is astounding that we are seeing this wave of vigilantism,” said Mark Potok of the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center.

Hoyer said earlier that people have yelled that Democratic lawmakers should be put on firing lines and posters have appeared with the faces of lawmakers in the cross hairs of a target.

While not directly criticizing Republicans directly, he said “any show of appreciation for such actions encourages such action.”

Gun imagery was used in a posting on the Facebook page of Sarah Palin urging people to organize against 20 House Democrats who voted for the health care bill and whose districts went for the John McCain-Palin ticket two years ago. Palin’s post featured a U.S. map with circles and cross hairs over the 20 districts.

McCain defended Palin, saying it was commonplace practice and “part of the lexicon” to refer to “targeted” congressional districts.

In Virginia, someone cut a propane line leading to a grill at the Charlottesville home of U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello’s brother after the address was posted online by activists angry about the health care overhaul. Perriello also said a threatening letter was sent to his brother’s house. The FBI and local authorities were investigating.

Tea party activists had posted the brother’s address online thinking it was the congressman’s home. The post urged opponents to drop by and “express their thanks” for the Democrat’s vote in favor of the sweeping health care reform.

Nigel Coleman, chairman of the Danville Tea Party, said he re-posted the comment that originated on another conservative blog, including the address, Monday on his Facebook page. The posts were taken down after the mistake was discovered.

“We’ve never been associated with any violence or any vandalism,” he said. “We’re definitely sorry that we posted the incorrect address.”

JD Hayworth is Tried and True.

Tried and true...

This seems like a good one to follow that bit on Arpaio. Hopefully Pearce's endorsement will be the nail in JD's coffin. He was tried, alright, and got off on those charges. He had a good attorney when he was being prosecuted - more than most people in prison can say.  The local Republicans just had a big fundraiser to pay off the remaining $100,000 of his legal fees, in fact, lamenting how he ended up being persecuted and penalized even though he was "innocent".

Meanwhile, there aren't even enough pillows to go around for prisoners (what do they do for beds?) - much less money for their legal fees, and most of them got screwed by their state-funded attorneys the first time around, anyway. I have a friend whose daughter needs dental care desperately, and it's not covered by anyone, including AHCCCS. In fact, they just changed their eligibility criteria to cut off even more poor people from their remaining resources - she and her family are among them.

Don't tell me "this is going to hurt a little", John Kavanagh from Fountain Hills - even your neighbors out there are struggling, but you aren't about to be hurt by what you people are doing - you made sure that you and your kids are taken care of for years to come – at our expense..

Those tea-partiers who claim it's an All-American thing to hoard health care resources - that their “right” to "freedom from government interference" supercedes the rights of their neighbor to access lifesaving resources – are full of double-speak. They finance and support the same people (Pearce, JD et al) who keep tweaking all these laws and sentencing mandates, imposing even more governmental controls on the rest of us. If they pass SB 1070 contravening local sovereignty over law enforcement priorities, I'm going to go out of my way to aid and abet "illegal immigrants" however I can - I'll be doing more than leaving water for them in the desert. Take that for my statement of criminal intent.

These guys aren't trying to protect anyone but themselves and their kind from "government interference" (eg, the People holding them responsible to the community and laborers they've been sucking their profits out of all along). Just about all this legislature has done has been to manipulate government into interfering with our lives on their behalf. So many middle-class people fall for it,  and the rest of us are just too hungry and weary to fight back effectively.

But we aren’t taking much more of this.

Here's Russ gushing about JD and imploring us for more money. Where does he think real people are going to pull money out of for this guy's campaign? People are still losing their jobs, homes, and families, and he seems pretty clueless to that. He plans to defeat his political challengers by outspending them before they even make it to the primaries, though - that's his explicit campaign financing strategy. Big defender of Democracy, Pearce is.

I'm sure JD has the same thing in mind, and they want us to foot the bill for their power trips and egos. They are hardly champions of liberation; they are the few who lust for dominance over the many, by whose interests our legal precedents are set. Enough people with money will be supporting these guys that they’ll fill their accounts just fine, I’m sure.  Their big-money financiers tell you whose interests they really represent...and it’s not the white blue-collar guy in Chandler or Mesa. 

JD’s tried and true, alright...Just not in the People's Hall of Justice. 

I realize that anarchists don’t believe in the American version of “democracy” – I have my doubts, too. It’s never been all that democratic, and the anarchists frankly have a much more humane and just model of living together than we do. It’s more democratic, in terms of creating egalitarian structures. 

 

Nevertheless, I’m still working from within the power structure we’ve got (I know it doesn’t make me a very good abolitionist - certainly not very “radical”) - so let's bury these men in this election. If we don’t, then maybe I’ll consider other strategies to alter the balance of power – I just refuse to believe that the majority of Americans are really like these guys, and in any event I don’t think we should condone their behavior. They claim to represent us, which means we have an obligation to object vociferously – and resist - when they don’t. Many forms of resistance will be necessary for true democracy to win.

All the following typos are Pearce’s alone, not mine.

                                       

---------------Pearce Alert! (www.russellpearce.com )------------------

Greetings ,

I am hoping and praying for a "change" in Washington D.C. and I am hoping it is a change that is good for America and for freedom loving Americans, and I hope and pray we are in time. What is going on in our Capitol should concern every America.  The candle of liberty has always been kept burning by the vigilance of a few.  In 1776 it all started with a smal band of rag tag Patriots who had all they could stand on government that did not listen to the people and did not respect our natural (God given) liberties.

I am sure that I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but just in case, here is some great news for all of us here in Arizona and across the country.

The political revolution that started in Virginia and New Jersey, and continued into Massachusetts, has finally made its way to Arizona.  We are about to have the chance to elect a conservative who will change politics all across this country.

I'm writing to you about a very special friend of all of ours, who on Monday will be announcing his candidacy for the United States Senate.  His name is J.D. Hayworth!

If you don’t know, J.D. is a tried and true patriot who believes in securing the border, reducing the size of government, restricting its intrusion into our economic and personal lives and protecting America against those who would try to destroy her.  He believes in the rule of law, the sanctity of Life, and the rights guaranteed by our Constitution.  He has an amazing lifetime rating of 98 from the American Conservative Union.

J.D. helped write the tax cuts that John McCain voted against.  J.D. opposed the big government bailouts that John McCain voted for.  And don’t even get me started on Amnesty, the Gang of 14, or McCain-Feingold.

Many of us have been asking J.D. to run this race and he has accepted our challenge.  Now we must do our part to elect J.D. Hayworth to the United States Senate.

How do we send a message to Washington that the people of Arizona don't support amnesty, government subsidies for illegal's and won't tolerate the guns, drugs and gangs flowing over the border into our state any longer?

       ...by joining me today and making an online contribution to JD!

How do we make sure Washington hears our voices loud and clear that we want smaller government, a balanced budget, and tax relief for families and seniors?

       ...by joining me today and making an online contribution to JD!

Conservatives across Arizona and America are joining this fight.  Together we can win this battle.  We need your support today, whether you can contribute $20, $50 or even $500.  Every contribution helps send a signal that we're behind J.D. Hayworth for U.S. Senate 100%.

Please join me and donate TODAY!.  And when the campaign is in your area, please join J.D. at a campaign event.  Visit his website at www.JDforSenate.com to learn more, and thank you, in advance, for supporting J.D. Hayworth for Senate.

God bless you and God bless America.


Russell

If the links in this email are broken, please visit: http://www.JDforSenate.com

Pearce Alert: Partying with Tea.

December 17, 2009. International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. 

http://swop-tucson.org

December 18, 2009. Rally at Arizona Department of Corrections, 

1601 W. Jefferson St. Phoenix. 

High Noon.

---------

 Is it any wonder his constituency is a bunch of tea partiers? Those people will be remembered by history as the quintessential selfish, spoiled Americans. We cannot let them define this state or our generation. All they seem to care about is what's "theirs" - and making sure that if we mess with it (the balance of power, that is), then we get ours. 

Anyway, just thought folks would want to know this was happening, in case you're a big fan of his, he's begging for money (Shh!!! I'm still on their supporter email list. Has everyone else signed up, yet, too?).

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I will be speaking tonight at the The Mesa Red Mountain Tea Group tonight.

Thursday, Dec. 17, 7 pm – 8:30 pm,
at the Red Mountain Multigenerational Center,
west room #3, 7550 E. Adobe
in southeast Mesa, 85207.

I hope to see you there.

Russell

Tea Partiers at the Trough

Getting ready to go to bed (it's 3am now) I made a last stop in my email box, and sure enough, there was something provocative waiting for me: The Health Care Freedom Act For Arizona - click in and you'll find the actual proposed bill and a summary - as well as their strategy, which is a disgusting perversion of "freedom" as being something that can only come at the cost of people with nothing left to steal anything from...some of you are even going to try to get more out of us by shifting the tax burden from the wealthy on to the poor, through income tax and sales tax changes.


This opposition to accessible health care has nothing to do with "freedom" - that's just the pretty red white and blue paper they wrap this garbage in to sucker people into thinking they need to defend America from...other Americans - and my god, all those immigrants too! It's about keeping insulin from diabetics, and inhalers from kids with asthma, or trimming real food out of the grocery trip in order to buy those life-saving necessities. Food, or medicine? That's a tough one.


Now frankly, these people have been whining for decades about having it all their way, like we're talking about whoppers. Granted, I think the plan that's passing through congress is going to help Americans about as much as the Medicare Rx plan did - anyone who invested in the pharmaceutical industry when the thing was being worked out must have known who would really be making off with the government's money, and it isn't people on Medicare.


I'm drowning in the that damn doughnut hole right now: every year, around May, my prescriptions are no longer covered by Medicare D (even though I have to pay the premium year-round), and I have to either change my meds or shell out over $1000/month for them until I've spent another $4500 of my own money, then they'll step in and cover them again under catastrophic care. Then in January 2010 it starts all over again. I won't pay that money to those people for those drugs, so I slide by on what I can tolerate this half of the year. So, I should be a little more mellow from January to May  next year.



Anyway, it disturbs me greatly that there are so many proud people and politicians carrying on this way, in a continuing effort to block uninsured Americans from getting medical attention. I'd like to say that our founding fathers would roll over in their graves - but I don't think they gave a shit about the rest of us, either. They sold us out to the devil after that war was over. They codified the gross dehumanization of people who had been abducted and enslaved, excluding them from the protections of the constitution, and designating each of them and their descendants to be valued as 3/fifths of a human being for tax purposes.


Maybe it's fitting, then, that the Tea Parties are what they've latched onto - a resurrection of the glorious days leading up to the Revolution that freed all of about 10% of the population to vote, hold office, make laws, etc. - and kept women, Africans and their descendants, certain immigrant groups, and Indigenous peoples (including Latinos already settled in Northern Mexico when it was invaded, raped and stolen by Americans so that the land as well as cheap labor could be exploited to their fullest...)



So, let me guess: this whole tea party idea was strategized by a white male far-right republican who has no clue of the real history of this country, or who is just counting on everyone else being clueless (he may be right). This has been going on for over a century - working people trying to get decent wages, health care for their families - this is nuts. You tea baggers wouldn't have shit for health insurance today if it wasn't for the kind of people you're trying to deprive of having any too. The poor, the working class, minorities, veterans, persecuted immigrants - not to mention generations of socialists and communists and anarchists - all who have had to fight through the years to access the basic resources needed in this country to survive. 

Maybe I'll go to the next tea party and take pictures of cars and people there - I wonder how many have a car like mine - or maybe took the bus because they don't have one at all? 

Real American "Patriots" - as my Dad taught me - aren't selfish, privileged, spoiled, whiny brats who protest only when they think another group's progress or liberation might disrupt their own power base, profit margins, social comfort, or the delusion that all is well in American now that racism is over.Good patriots look out for each other - that meaning ALL of us, not just you people watching your own backs, and leaving us vulnerable to the fallout of perpetual economic inequality.



Tea Parties have become just pathetic. That's not "self-empowerment". That's the most effective, pervasive mechanisms of oppression the very wealthy have: scare the middle class into keeping down the poor - by cutting services, access to food, impeding our ability to organize effectively in our workplace (and prisons!!), withholding lifesaving care from a dying children or and elders, increasing sales tax while cutting taxes on the wealthy (via income and property tax breaks)...that's some pretty nasty stuff. You might as well be standing at the edge of the bridge coming out of New Orleans after Katrina hit and thousands tried to escape - but they we're going into that community, that's for sure - the sheriff and a bunch of other people were armed and waiting for them.

That's what the tea partiers make me think of - not "Revolutionary" heroes (mine would be Nat Turner, John Brown, Harriet Tubman - those people were revolutionary - and heroic). These tea partiers represent some of the worst characteristics of Americans: bigotry, self-interest, short-sightedness. They just ooze meanness, and fundamentally seem to lack the courage to really try to make the world a more just and healing place for everyone other than themselves.



Considering all that, it makes it hard to take seriously any of the politicians who cater to or help organize them and egg them on. They should be embarrassed to be in a public forum with them.


Some of us know that we're all in this together. So are they, only not with us - or we aren't allowed to be with them, I guess is how it goes. Some of us should either work harder or accept our diminished station in life. Besides, there are free clinics around, and some people think that if we end up stealing our medication and going to prison, at least we'll get good health care there. 

Prisoners have a shorter life span that free people - did everyone know that? It's a combination of things - they're often sick already when they get there and if they're poor (which is usually the case) they may not have had medical or dental care for years. There's a higher incidence of HIV and Hepatitis C in prison, as well as other communicable diseases, like TB. If you're fighting colon cancer and can't keep weight on or nutrients in your body, you have to buy your own daily vitamins - for about $20 a month. If your poor, then you're screwed. 

There always a few exceptional individuals in any insitution, no matter how brutal or corrupt it may be, but I've heard enough from prisoners and ex-prisoners about the health care in AZ prisons, which sucks. People die all the time there for lack of prompt, competent medical attention. And now we're hiking the cost of their co-pays again? You know, to someone who only makes ten cents an hour, increasing the co-pay from $3 to $5 is pretty drastic - especially since we're also talking about cutting prisoner pay (to what? what left?). Some folks are just too old or sick or confused to even work if a job was available. What do they do for basic needs in prison if they have no family who can help - or if their family is now struggling too much because they lost a breadwinner?


That's enough for tonight - I'll be up till dawn if I don't stop here.

United they Stand in their own little world.

Tea party crowd protests bailouts, health reform,immigration

by Matthew Benson - Nov. 11, 2009 05:41 PM
The Arizona Republic
 

About 200 people gathered Wednesday on the state Capitol lawn to protest a government they believe has overspent, over-regulated and generally overstepped its bounds.

Bank bailouts, health-care reform and illegal immigration were among the targets of the crowd that assembled for the United We Stand Tea Party.

Phoenix resident Howard Kurr noted the hundreds of billions of dollars the federal government has spent in the last year to prop up financial institutions.

"It hasn't trickled down to any people," said Kurr, 72. "The status quo is totally stacked against regular people. I just feel so much is going in the wrong direction."

A string of speakers addressed the crowd, including several elected officials who may be on the ballot in 2010. Notable among them: state schools chief Tom Horne, who is weighing a run for Arizona attorney general, as well as Paradise Valley Mayor Vernon Parker and state Treasurer Dean Martin, each considering campaigns for governor.

The tea party was billed as non-partisan but clearly had an anti-Democratic Congress, anti-President Barack Obama tilt. Several attendees spoke of a general sense that their country as they've known it is slipping away.

"Government has too much control over the American people," said Phoenix resident Michelle Tremblay, 45, a veteran of the U.S. Navy. "Our country is just being torn apart."

The Capitol tea party was one of a series organized in the last year in honor of the original, Revolutionary War-era tea party. As such, several attendees Wednesday also spoke in terms of public revolt.

"There's about to be a revolution," Tremblay declared.

Kurr said he'd like to believe that public sentiment and innocuous events like Wednesday's are all that's needed to turn the country away from its current path. He, too, sounded an ominous note.

"I hope it can be done totally peacefully," he said. "I have my doubts."