My main goal in doing this blog is to get the word out about what's going on around immigration (particularly in maricopa county, az) and expose anti-immigrant sentiment for what it truly is. By doing this, i hope that more people will get involved to undermine the efforts at keeping people divided, powerless, stripped of their dignity, and worse.
I especially want to get more white people (non-white citizens also have the power to take this on) in the fight for immigrants' rights, because we're in the position to respond to those who are trying to preserve "our culture" by not only asking "whose culture?" but also exposing them and opposing them as the racist scum that they are. We need to communicate to other people who feel threatened by this so-called "invasion" about what's really going on here. Way too many people actually think that there is some level of legitimacy to their movement. We need to delegitamize them. We can shift the focus from scapegoating immigrants to placing the blame where it should be: on capitalism and our government.
We need to undermine the idea that white people and citizens are more entitled to a first world country than anyone else (particularly because it was built on genocide, slavery, exploitation of working people in general, war, and exploitative economic/foreign policy. This sense of entitlement has perpetuated racism in general for a long time. We also need to destroy the concept of whiteness, although i can't tell you exactly how (various people have ideas, but i'm not sure, see noel ignatiev for one). We can, for one, reject and oppose the idea that people need to assimilate. There's an interesting section of this academic paper that talks about Defining a White Man Through His Work (you'll have to scroll down about half-way to find it), which i want to develop my thoughts on further.
We need to be more than allies- we need to act in solidarity with people who are affected by these efforts to gain or maintain power. We can talk to our friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, and other acquaintances about immigration issues. We can show our faces at rallies, even document and perhaps prevent harassment and brutality by vigilantes, counter-protesters, and cops. I'll share more ideas later.
