Events.
Other
notices.
Articles:
1. Phoenix's big immigration march: A
Green
marcher's informal account of April 10.
2.
Greens
join protests against punitive anti-immigrant bills, urge repeal of NAFTA.
3. César Chávez invoked to defend labor.
(Opinion)
4. Immigration control is a right of a sovereign people in
their rightful territory. (Opinion)
5. Tempe run-off and bond vote May 16; Primary results,
expropriation, and publicity pamphlet.
6. Humor: Haiku, Terry Baum, Mo Udall, Al Franken, and Bill Nye.
7. Peace and forgiveness candidate Michael Berg: A
Green
candidate
for US House of Representatives from Delaware; son beheaded in Iraq
.
8
. What
you've been missing if you're not in our
Green
e-group.
9. AZ Libertarians will campaign for a "citizens' assembly".
10. Bill would gut AZ Clean Elections Act.
11. Mixed
Greens
(short news, etc.).
12. Attend launch of “Smart Spaces: Inside & Out”,
ASU students'
green
TV pilot.
Articles sought
for future issues.
Masthead: publication identity, address,
owners, etc.
End
of TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Events
2006
May
May 1, Monday.
May Day,
traditional day to celebrate working people.
Some
Greens are supporting
"T
he Great American Boycott 2006: A day without an
immigrant" general strike and boycott (See Article # 2
below.)
See also
Freecycle
in Article # 11, Mixed
Greens.
May 1,
Monday
, 7
p.m
. Launch of “Smart Spaces: Inside &
Out”, an ASU students'
green TV pilot. Neeb Hall, ASU Tempe campus.
See Article # 12
below.
May 5, Friday, 6 - 11 p.m.
In central Phoenix, AZ.
First Friday Art Walk (first
Friday of each month). The
Green
Party usually has a table in the parking lot just west of Modified Arts,
407 East Roosevelt Street, from about 6 to 10 p.m.
Free shuttle bus all around central Phoenix to participating art
galleries, etc., such as the Phoenix Art Museum, 1625 North Central
Avenue. Free admission to most galleries.
www.cenpho.com/journal/2005/11/5/first-fridays-art-walk.html
and
www.maricopagreens.org.
(Tentatively) May 13 and 14, Saturday and Sunday. Prescott, AZ.
General meeting of the Green
Party of Arizona. Free. www.azgp.org.
May 15,
Saturday.
Due date for articles for
the next issue of this e-newsletter. Later submissions are
welcome–we'll try to squeeze them in.
May 16, Tuesday. Throughout Maricopa County, AZ. Elections
for local offices, bonds,
etc.*
Recurring
events
followed by June and later
Mondays, 5 - 6 p.m.
Tempe,
AZ.
Peace Vigil
outside 740 South Mill Avenue (n.w. corner of West University Drive).
Free.
(Corrected since mass e-mailing) Sundays, 6 - 7 p.m. Cold Turkey
on television Channel 51,
i Network (formerly
Pax). Re-runs of this great self-help, reality show with a
huge difference: no one can get "kicked off the island."
Instead, they are usually supportive of each other. The 10 unwitting
volunteers try to quit smoking. www.ionline.tv/shows/coldturkey/.
Saturdays,
10:25~ to 11 p.m. The Red
Green Show
on television Channel 8, PBS. Some women can barely tolerate
this low-brow Canadian comedy show. Maybe it's more for blokes who want
to laugh at their own ignorance of women, disregard for the environment,
apolitics, etc. (See Article # 6, Humor.)
www.kaet.asu.edu.
Saturdays
,
11 p.m.
The cancelled television show
Eyes of Nye
. See Article # 6
Humor: Bill Nye.
2006
June –and later
June 2 to 4, Friday to Sunday.
Flagstaff,
AZ.
National Democracy
School
with Thomas
Linzey. Democracy is
difficult when corporate rights can overshadow those of citizens. Protecting
local environments and communities.
Workshop 275 $ and up.
Northern Arizona University.
www2.nau.edu/community/com_events.htm
www.constitution411.org/natl_dem_schl/main/natl_ds.html
June 14, Wednesday. Last day to collect signatures for our
Green
Party candidates in Maricopa County. Donations needed, too. See
Other
notices, below.
September 12, Tuesday. Arizona. Primary election for
state and federal offices.*
November 7, Tuesday.
Arizona.
General
election for state and federal offices and others.
See
Green
candidate
s in
Other notices, above, and
Article
#
1, 2006 April issue.*
Other
notices
Our Green Party candidates in Maricopa
County
Everyone can help our candidates in some way or another,
regardless of your place of residence.
Saif
Al-Alawi
for the Arizona State Senate in District 4.
Let's
help him collect the 577
signatures
needed
by
June 14. He also needs 5 $ from each of 210 people.
That district is mostly between Van Buren Street on the north and the Salt
River on the south, 39th Avenue on the east and 67th Avenue on west.
We can help him collect signatures now.
He also
needs donations of 5 $
each.
E-group. See Article # 8
below.
Pima County Greens.
Includes city of Tucson, Arizona. You may read or subscribe free to our
sister e-newsletter
in Pima County, Green
Party Digest, no matter where you live, whether you are
registered
Green
or not:
http://pimagreens.org/getinvolved.htm.
Green
Party of Arizona. Our state-wide party.
T
elephone voice-mail and
hot-line: (602)
417-0213.
www.azgp.org.
The new
station for Air America Radio in Phoenix
is KPHX
1480 AM, as reported in the last issue, Article
# 3. They have a NEW
website:
www.aaphx.com.
Their telephone comment
line is
602-297-6642.
(See Al Franken, Article # 6, Humor, below.)
The
League of Women Voters, Arizona:
www.lwvaz.org. See also Article # 10.
The
Sierra Club
in Maricopa County:
www.arizona.sierraclub.org. See Article # 11.2.
Citizens'
assemblies.
Jim Snider
's
blog about progress around the world. News from Nederlanden and
Ontario. http://snider.blogs.com.
See Article # 9 below. For the whole proposal for Arizona, see the March
issue of this e-newsletter, Article # 7.
Center for
Voting and Democracy. To
receive their news, etc., see
www.fairvote.org.
Working Assets.
To
receive their periodic action calls, etc., see
www.ActForChange.com.
See Article # 11.
9/11
Truth. Regular meetings
in Phoenix and Mesa, AZ, about what really happened 2001 September 11.
Telephone 602-246-4299. www.911Truthaz.org.
AZ One Voice, a new free local
monthly newsletter on paper. Available at AIPER,
or telephone 623-583-7070. PO Box 1959, Sun City,
AZ 85372-1959 azonevoice@earthlink.net.
End of Other
notices.
ARTICLES
Immigration
Special: first 4 articles!
Article
# 1:
Phoenix's big immigration march
A
Green
marcher's informal
account of
April 10
by Celeste Castorena
Hola. The march was very moving.
I arrived with Cesario a little before 10 a.m. and the Coliseum
was already packed. He went on to work where, he told me later, they sold
zero cars for the first day in a LONG time. Their clientele is about 80%
Spanish-speaking. The work force is also about 80% Latino. The workers
decided to stay at work and to support the marchers by wearing white and not
making any purchases that day.
The photo that made the front page of the
Arizona Republic
on Tuesday really captured the essence of the marchers:
multi-generational, extended families banded together with strollers, USA flags
and white shirts to voice--via 3 miles [4.8 km] of tightly packed people--that
HR 4437 is a miserable idea which will not be the correct solution for our
future.
I hung out at the southwest corner of Encanto Boulevard and 19th
Avenue for an hour and handed out flyers of the
Green
Party's 10 Key Values (in Spanish and English). I talked to various
people. Then I marched as the sole representative of my and my husband's
families.
I caught up with
only 2 fellow
Greens
:
Leenie and Randall, who I almost walked with, but felt a calling to stay put at
that corner and distribute those
Green
flyers. Sometimes it felt lonely, but then I would find myself
overwhelmed with the comforting feeling that this is a day to forget about
oneself and be engulfed in the oneness of our mission.
Besides, I was in a sea of over 120,000 people! It felt to
some of us that there were 250,000. I was stunned that the BBC and KTAR
reported only 25,000. That was soooooo innaccurate!
At the Coliseum, there was a voter registration crew who had just
shooed away Democrats and Republicans trying to distribute their party
stuff. I would have to distribute
my
Green
stuff away from that area in
order to maintain the commitment by the organizers of not pandering to any
particular political party.
There was virtually no opposition present. I saw one white
middle-aged man holding a sign that said "Yes on HR 4437" on the corner alone a
few blocks north of the Coliseum. I saw nothing else that directly
opposed the march from then on.
There were four (also middle-aged white) guys holding huge banners
at the entrance of the Coliseum that said slogans about the USA being corrupt
and going to hell. They tried to discourage people by announcing they
should go back to their countries of origin so as to avoid the emminent
downfall of the soul if they stayed in this country.
I spoke with a man who is Muslim and concerned about what he sees
as a hopeless situation. I spoke with 4 men from Mexico who are part of
the only state-recognized day labor union.
Some of those who I spoke with are born-again Christians who felt
the march was more a spiritual issue than a political one. I have to say
that my favorite T-shirt I saw was the one that said, "Jesus was an immigrant
too!"
Yes, Joseph and Mary took Jesus as a toddler to flee King Herod's
wrath and became refugees in Egypt for awhile--and I doubt they checked in with
any governmental body as they crossed the border. They probably laid low
and just quietly blended in.
Although I see a great ignorance on behalf of the various Mexican
nationals who favor Presidente Vicente Fox and the PAN (Partido de Accion
Nacional--kind of Libertarian / Republican), I see great potential to educate
them (and our fellow Arizonans) about the
Green
party coalition that gave Fox the majority to oust the PRI. Afterall,
that was one symbol of
Greens
compromising for the greater good.
In Arizona we've got to come to terms with the fact that our state
is exploding with unsustainable population growth, while presenting reasonable
solutions that respect and sustain our values.
Quotes follow from the
The Arizona Republic,
April 11, story by
Daniel González, Mel Meléndez, and Pat Flannery.
For the
complete article, see www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0411march.html
". . . more than 100,000 marched and rallied Monday [April 10] in
Phoenix in support of legalization for millions of undocumented immigrants . .
. adding momentum to the nationwide movement that included similar marches in
cities across the country.
"The boisterous but peaceful crowd was so huge it filled wide
boulevards with a river of humanity that snaked more than two miles [3.2 km]
from the state fairgrounds to the state Capitol, . . . by far the largest
political demonstration in the city's history."
End of Article # 1.
Article #
2.
Greens
join protests against punitive anti-immigrant
bills
Urge
repeal of NAFTA
From
www.gp.org/press/pr_2006_04_12.shtml.
2006 April 11 news
release.
GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED
STATES.
WASHINGTON, D.C. --
Green Party
candidates and members across the U.S. have spoken out against proposed
immigration bills, and are participating in various rallies and other actions to
protest punitive legislation, such as House Bill 4437, directed at undocumented
immigrants and those who assist them.
"We call on Congress and
state legislatures to reject laws that turn people into criminals for seeking a
better life for themselves and their families," said Carol Brouillet, Green candidate for
Congress in California's 14th District
<www.carolforcongress.org>.
"Congress should police those
in high office who abuse power, rather than attack the most vulnerable members
of society who have been underpaid and exploited, and have done the most
back-breaking labor to put food on our tables."
Many
Green
Party members support 'El Gran Paro Americano 2006:
Un dia sin immigrante' ('The Great American Boycott 2006: A day without an
immigrant') general strike and boycott planned for May 1 to demonstrate the
economic clout of immigrants www.nohr4437.org.
"This country was
founded on immigration," said Rae Vogeler, Wisconsin
Green
candidate for U.S. Senate www.voterae.org, who
attended a rally in Madison in support of immigrant rights on April 10 and has
spoken out against two bills in her state, Wisconsin Senate Bill 657 and
Assembly Bill 69.
"With the exception of American Indians, we
are all immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Yet, there are several bills at
the state and national level that will be devastating to immigrants, as well to
lower-income U.S. citizens. These bills discriminate against those least able to
afford and obtain documentation of legal residency status, whether they be
immigrants, or citizens of the United States."
Greens emphasized the role of international trade pacts,
which benefit corporate elites at the expense of labor, human rights, and
environmental protections, in recent immigration to the U.S.
"If
we're really concerned about the flow of new immigrants into the U.S., we'd
address the damage cause by NAFTA," said said Sundiata Tellem, co-chair of the
Green
Party's national Black Caucus. Mr. Tellem, a Texas
Green, is married to an immigrant.
"International trade authorities have allowed transnational corporations to
slash wages, disrupt other nations' economies by dumping U.S. products on their
markets, privatize water and other public goods and services, and pollute the
land. Many new immigrants, especially those who arrive impoverished and
without documentation, are fleeing nightmares in their home countries. We
urge all Americans to stand up for their safety and for the rights of working
people who are already citizens of the U.S., and join the
Green Party's call for repeal of NAFTA and similar trade
pacts."
Green Party leaders also called for passage of immigrant
reform legislation, such as the American Families Act, which contains provisions
that allow families to unite, including same-gender couples and their
families.
Greens note that many people fleeing into the U.S. have done
so to escape sexual abuse, repression based on gender, and anti-gay and
anti-transgender violence.
"Hostile anti-immigrant laws, walls
along the border, workplace raids, and armed vigilantes have put an ugly face on
our nation," said Rebecca Rotzler, co-chair of the
Green Party of the United States and an indigenous American
(Eskimo).
"America at its best welcomes those who come here for
economic security, political asylum, and escape from ethnic, sexual, and
religious discrimination."
End of Article #
2.
Article # 3.
César
Chávez
invoked to defend labor
A recent article argued from a progressive viewpoint, with
extensive historical background, that for the sake of U.S. workers' rights and
incomes, unapproved
immigration must be prevented.
The article is by Thom
Hartmann, a Project Censored
Award-winning and best-selling author. He hosts a daily progressive talk
show syndicated by Air America Radio, on Sirius satellite, and audio on-line:
www.thomhartmann.com.
(The Arizona affiliate of AAR doesn't
carry the program.)
Hartmann seems to represent one view from the labor
movement. The article is "Today's
Immigration Battle - Corporatists vs. Racists (and Labor is Left Behind)",
2006 March 29.
It starts:
The
corporatist Republicans ("amnesty!") are fighting with the racist Republicans
("fence!"), and it provides an opportunity for progressives to step forward with
a clear solution to the immigration problem facing America.
Both
the corporatists and the racists are fond of the mantra, "There are some jobs
Americans won't do." It's a lie.
Americans will do virtually any job if they're paid a decent wage. This isn't
about immigration - it's about economics. Industry and agriculture won't
collapse without illegal labor, but the middle class is being crushed by it.
The reason why thirty years ago United Farm Workers' Union (UFW)
founder Cesar Chávez fought against illegal immigration, and the UFW turned in
illegals during his tenure as president, was because Chávez, like progressives
since the 1870s, understood the simple reality that labor rises and falls in
price as a function of availability.
(For the rest, see
www.commondreams.org/views06/0329-21.htm.)
Showing that opinion is further split, a recent Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation show interviewed
Kathy McKee, the Arizonan who started
Proposition
200. That referendum passed and limited government services for non-citizens. She is an instructor at ASU.
The report said that she is a supporter of
Ralph Nader, a former
Green
candidate.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_Arizona_Now.
Still another stance was expressed in April by the
Coconino Anarchist Tribe
in an e-letter sent to the Arizona state
Green
Party e-group (see
Other notices, above). It calls
for the abolition of borders and vigilantes.
End of article # 3.
Article # 4.
Immigration
control is a right of a sovereign people in their rightful territory
Opinion
by Korky Day.
The European invaders of
the Western Hemisphere have no right to be here. We are intruders who now
must negotiate fairly in order to stay. The
Green
Party and I have been advocating for indigenous rights for decades.
The colonization included
genocidal maniacs, some of our predecessors.
Today's occupation governments continue to enjoy the spoils of the earlier
thefts from the First Nations. Atrocities against the First Nations
continue today because no one has stopped the racist, exploitive USA and
Canadian governments.
After we have fair
treaties and deals with the First Nations to legalize our presence here, then
we might have a right, along with them, to help decide who else should be
allowed into each area. In the meantime, we must consult with the
First Nations regarding interim steps.
Of course, in most places
in the world, it is impossible to determine exactly which people have the
right to which lands--if that's even desireable to do. The world's people
must now create complete world peace and share the wealth.
Then all the subtleties and difficulties of drawing boundaries and
of making deals on those rights can be overcome. Divvying up the land
then will be much less a matter of life and death, and much less matters of
glory and misery.
Nevertheless, every little step now in the right direction toward
land sovereignty justice will actually contribute to that overall goal of world
peace and harmony.
If I were living in a place occupied by my ancestors for thousands
of years, I would feel more confident that I had a right to help make
immigration decisions myself. Likewise if I were adopted into an
aboriginal nation.
Generally, adoption
into a nation (called immigration and naturalization by the USA government) has
been practiced throughout history. It can be done in a non-racist way, by
the way.
The aboriginal or rightful residents of a country might hold a
national referendum on the question of who to let in, if anyone. The
ballot could list alternatives for the voters to rank in order of preference.
Examples of options, from the extremes of least to most
immigration:
1. No immigration,
visitors, or guest workers.
2. Various
options consisting of all combinations of immigration, visitors,
students, and guest workers.
3. Various criteria
for deciding who qualifies to enter, such as refugees, the needy, relatives of
people already resident, and those likely to contribute to society.
4. Rules which are
little enforced, with hordes sneaking over the border. (The situation at
present over the Mexico-USA border.)
5. Let in
anyone except criminals on the lam.
6. Open borders (no
quards or checks of any kind).
The present situation in
the USA, # 4 above, is perhaps the worst because terrorists, criminals, and
parasites, though very few in number, can go back and forth over the
border. Also, tragically, many die in the trek through the desert.
That present situation
serves the exploiting ruling class just fine. Most of all, they love an
oversupply of labour which drives down wages, worsens working conditions, and
breaks unions. However, they don't want all those workers, or their
descendents, to actually vote, so they are somewhat split as a class.
All those reasons are why the duopoly hasn't done anything to
change the situation much for centuries. They could easily control almost
everyone crossing the border if they wanted to, as has been proven on portions
of the border, such as in Texas. There they built a string of guard
towers within sight of each other.
End of Article # 4.