Their Gov'ner down there signed an outrageous law that actually sickens me more than anti-gun bullshit that makes it way down to us little people every other federal administration.
"The latest bill would make it a state crime for illegal immigrants to not have an alien registration document. It also would require police to question people about their immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally."
Well, what would make a police officer (PO) suspect a person is in the country illegally? Well, probably the same thing that made me stand out in a crowd (besides my big mouth) when I was growing up: Brown skin, black hair, and short (yet proportional) body stature.
I'm not even going to call it what it is, but IT is targeted at my peeps, my indigenous peoples, and anyone else who is decidedly "not quite white." And before you tell me different (like them dumb-ass racist plomeros in VA last week) you need to remember that many of these people coming up looking for work are indeed Native Americans and Native South Americans.
So now one can be stopped, questioned and harassed "if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally." What's it going to be? Is going to be the black hair? the brown skin, the use of Spanish language? the 1994 Chevy Malibu? It's as if the police are going to use race as some sort of profile with which to check and guard against immigration status or lack thereof...
As if the only illegals here, stealing jobs and burdening the health care system (we got one of those don't we? I wasn't sure. Was it reformed? Who the hell knows) are from south of the border.
I challenge you to go to your local China Palace or Hong Kong House and ask for some Resident Alien Cards. I didn't see ANY Asians protesting May 1st with the Latinos four years ago. And If there were any illegal Canadians in the crowd, I think I could have spotted them then, but not on the street now...they are masters of disguise and easily look like white bread Americans when need be.
I've a mind to go to Arizona after the law goes into practice, and flaunt my 1990 Volvo, and my black hair, and my brown (summer time only) skin and pray a jar-headed, racist asshole cop stops me and asks for ID.
"Que?" I'll say, and take my beating for the real Americans...then get paid.
So what is to be done? Well, it seems pretty simple to a dumbass carpenter like myself.
They're here, they're queer, they won't disappear--wait, that's a different rally cry. What I mean is, they're here to stay. They aren't going anywhere. If the crash of 2008 proved anything, it was that even the lack of skilled labour jobs wasn't enough to prod the people homeward.
1. Make sure they know they can stay. Call it whatever you like, amnesty, grandfathered in from the colonial times (don't get me started, whitey) or whatever it takes to shut your mouth, but very quickly, we need to make available dual citizenship with a goal, perhaps, of permanent citizenship. (they may not want to stay after our putrid, unfair and failing tax system gets done with them)
2. Find them, and make sure they get a U.S. ID with their name, their real name, all four of them, on a plastic document that any jar-head high school graduate with a GTCC degree in "Criminal Justice" can read. And with their U.S. ID comes their U.S. Tax Payer Identification Number. If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for them.
(A word on taxes--they do pay taxes--sales tax, property tax, unemployment tax, and fuel taxes, so don't think they're getting a free ride. The wages they earn are in line with tax-paying "Americans" because shady employers pay them less, so take home pay is about the same.)
3.With their U.S. ID and TPIN, they can now get a driver's license and auto insurance commensurate with legal licensed drivers' rates. The rates they pay now are exorbitant because they do not hold legal U.S. Drivers' Licenses. So insurance companies make more off their backs.
4.Open the border.
5. Enforcement...that's a toughy, because we're back to profiling if we're not careful. But the system we have now, which often fails us legal residents as well, fails them too. Right now, in NC, it's catch and release, just like it is for Residents here.
So find them, document them, tax them, and welcome them. Learn some of their language. It wouldn't hurt us fat, lazy Americans to learn something new besides Nascar and Tiger Woods.
brett
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/20/arizona-immigration-law-s_n_544864.html
p.s.
"Other provisions allow citizen lawsuits against government agencies that hinder enforcement of immigration laws, and make it illegal for people to hire illegal immigrants for day labor or knowingly transport them."
I'm not sure about this one.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
40 somethings
Remember the first time you heard "Telegraph Road" by Dire Straits? Remember that feeling of a cresting, coming wave? And Marc, Marc is whispering it to you, mush mouthing it to you and you wait for every word, every beat and you want to kiss the session piano player (Benmont Tench?) on the mouth for playing so well, so hidden in the background?
And Marc, picking like a pro. If you've never heard it on paper woofers and plastic record, you're only getting 60% of it.
How about the first time you heard "The End" without Martin Sheen losing his mind on film, without his narrative of "Charlie squatting in the bush." The first time you heard it with just you, two speakers, and your girlfriend under you in college and you made it until the end of the song, both of you, together.
What you remember most about "The Wall", so shamefully taken out of context on FM radio, was the kids, just like you, standing up (you imagined) on their desks and shouting, "Hey! Teacher!" like you wanted to yet never did*. You felt, knew that you could be in THAT chorus of sixth graders.
Remember when you thought it was called "Teenage Wasteland?" instead of its proper name, and you wanted to own that too, but you couldn't hit the high notes unless you were drunk on Little Kings beer without knowing the truth was that you sounded horrible...
And you sang in the basement with your now dead friend, whom you always thought you'd see again.
I hated "Smells Like Teen Spirit" the first time I heard it. I thought it was stupid. "A mosquito, my Libido" My, what else rhymes? And I thought that for a long time. Maybe until I found the record in the used bin at The Record Exchange (Home of the $12.95 CD) and really heard it. It wasn't really until the second album I got that they had their hooks in me. And seeing the little good-looking drummer kid in the background banging his head as a good drummer should, flipping out and getting the rest of the band to "follow me." Of course that kid rose from the ashes, as he should've. He never looked back I think, and it has paid off.
Lastly, you bought the record for "Been Caught Stealin'" but at the end, in the grand tradition, you heard "Three Days" and were resurrected, like the song said, and blown away. A long mantra indeed that should have had your eyes closed and your foot tapping in the old traditions. Long hair was made for swinging to this song! It was a long good-bye and so worth it. Green Day smiled and thanked FM radio ten years later for playing their opus on the free airwaves, but it was the boy and his dog that had put it all down before, way back at the end/beginning.
I don't know why I got hooked on these songs when at the same time, there were so many more that tweeked the loins so to speak. I can only say (yeah, right) that they'll always be held high.I've left out so many. I could go on for hours about U2 alone...so commercial? yet so deserving, I think, in the early years....and even some later years. I reckon we could stop at the album with "The Fly" on it: Achtung Baby! After that...
And Marc, picking like a pro. If you've never heard it on paper woofers and plastic record, you're only getting 60% of it.
How about the first time you heard "The End" without Martin Sheen losing his mind on film, without his narrative of "Charlie squatting in the bush." The first time you heard it with just you, two speakers, and your girlfriend under you in college and you made it until the end of the song, both of you, together.
What you remember most about "The Wall", so shamefully taken out of context on FM radio, was the kids, just like you, standing up (you imagined) on their desks and shouting, "Hey! Teacher!" like you wanted to yet never did*. You felt, knew that you could be in THAT chorus of sixth graders.
Remember when you thought it was called "Teenage Wasteland?" instead of its proper name, and you wanted to own that too, but you couldn't hit the high notes unless you were drunk on Little Kings beer without knowing the truth was that you sounded horrible...
And you sang in the basement with your now dead friend, whom you always thought you'd see again.
I hated "Smells Like Teen Spirit" the first time I heard it. I thought it was stupid. "A mosquito, my Libido" My, what else rhymes? And I thought that for a long time. Maybe until I found the record in the used bin at The Record Exchange (Home of the $12.95 CD) and really heard it. It wasn't really until the second album I got that they had their hooks in me. And seeing the little good-looking drummer kid in the background banging his head as a good drummer should, flipping out and getting the rest of the band to "follow me." Of course that kid rose from the ashes, as he should've. He never looked back I think, and it has paid off.
Lastly, you bought the record for "Been Caught Stealin'" but at the end, in the grand tradition, you heard "Three Days" and were resurrected, like the song said, and blown away. A long mantra indeed that should have had your eyes closed and your foot tapping in the old traditions. Long hair was made for swinging to this song! It was a long good-bye and so worth it. Green Day smiled and thanked FM radio ten years later for playing their opus on the free airwaves, but it was the boy and his dog that had put it all down before, way back at the end/beginning.
I don't know why I got hooked on these songs when at the same time, there were so many more that tweeked the loins so to speak. I can only say (yeah, right) that they'll always be held high.I've left out so many. I could go on for hours about U2 alone...so commercial? yet so deserving, I think, in the early years....and even some later years. I reckon we could stop at the album with "The Fly" on it: Achtung Baby! After that...
Monday, April 5, 2010
Not My God
The painting was of a doorway, an ornately carved wooden valance surrounding a wooden door, almost in black and white like a photograph. The door and casing were set into a plaster wall that had been depicted as flaking and rust-streaked from old nails driven into the stucco. In all, the effort was very nice.
The artist had painted his name proudly, legibly, in the lower corner as most artists do, but I could actually read it.
Centered over the door were Arabic words that were carved into the wood as well all the flourishes and hallmarks of Arabic, African...Muslim art. At first the sight of these words raised an eyebrow as I was with family waiting in the lobby of a huge Christian church to go in for my annual appearance on Easter. (Not true, I go all the time to ogle women.)
What I mean is, it didn't bother me of course, I can't read Arabic, but we were in NC, the "No you cannot hunt on Sunday" bible belt state!
Well a tad later, I was introduced to a man in black, and when I heard his name, I recognized it as the painter's name.
"You're the artist," I said.
"Yes. I saw the door doing Mission work in Africa, tiny island off the coast. blah blah blah..." Of course I asked him what the words over the door said.
"I am the Door," He said. Quickly he explained that he meant Jesus was the door. That he wanted people to see that on Easter (without a translation) because it was relevant, or so he thought.
I blabbed about the "Knock and the door will be opened," part of a verse I read long ago...he smiled.
He remarked how the image reminded him of Passover and the offering up of blood from a sheep to save the first born of the believers.
"I changed the door from what it originally said," he offered up.
"What did it say?" I asked, almost throwing out, "Kill whitey?" but biting my tongue.
"In the Name of God, The Compassionate, the Merciful," he said as I smiled on blithely.
"Why'd you change it?"
"Because it's from the Koran."
I blinked at him, and before I could ask, so? He said, "He's not my God."
Inside I shuddered, wanted to laugh and yell the obvious*, but I didn't...not the place or the time I reckoned.
And I thought, that's why I'm never at these places, these multi-million dollar expansive, invasive, and sometimes obscene monuments to religion. A friend once told me on facebook about a cathedral in Canada and how awesome it was (in the classical sense of the word--not how to describe a pizza--but awe inspiring) and i felt the same way about that, though I never even saw it in person.
I sat and thunk, they probably bulldozed a million trees or Indian burial grounds just to build it so people could convert the heathens of the land...or give them smallpox, whatever was easiest.
It's so cliche to say now, but my god doesn't need any of that...that gaudy display of wealth that some mistake for piety. For some, it was easy to put into words, and don't roll you eyes, but Robert Ruark, in The Horn of the Hunter, put down in a few words what he thought about his God:
"There was nobody around but me and a million animals and a thousand noises and the bright sun and the cool breeze and the shade from the big trees that made it cathedral--cool but a lot less musty and damp and full of century-old fear and trembling. I got to thinking that maybe this was what God had in mind when He invented religion, instead of all the don't and must-nots and sins and confessions of sins. I got to thinking about all the big churches I had been, including those in Rome, and how none of them could possibly compare with this place, with its brilliant birds and its soothing sounds of intense life all around and the feeling of ineffable peace and good will, so that not even man would be capable of behaving very badly in such a place. I thought that this was maybe the kind of place the Lord would come to sit in and get His strength back after a hard day's work trying to straighten out mankind. Certainly He wouldn't go inside a church. If the Lord was tired He would be uneasy in a church."
And if you saw, I talked about my god, in an awkward little note sometime back:
"Living things. Eternal combinations of a magic molecule sit high in my list.
Not just us, but all of “us.”
The same twisted ribbon makes a carrot, makes a cat, and makes a Mozart.
It, everlasting indeed, will make me a “ghost” and immortal.
I do worship life. I have seen how fragile, yet how unrelenting it is.
How? I can’t describe the collective feeling I have with our family.
To see a sunrise, and be there when colour comes back to the world.
To see life all around you, even in your home. And know, unseen, life is buzzing; marching, crawling, replicating…it blows my mind.
I hear it, I feel it. I am just here like the ant, the deer, the dog, the tree, the vine. I can’t explain. There is no ritual, only of being thrown in the pot with everything else. And everything dies. And everything eats. And there is no life without destroying life, and I am humbled by that, but not to tears."
So I think back on "Not my God," and wish maybe we could be happy not editing carvings in paintings, not bull-dozing trees and wiping off the green for the kingdom of heaven and not forsaking green soccer fields for a Jesus, or a Mohammad, or a Torah...
The artist had painted his name proudly, legibly, in the lower corner as most artists do, but I could actually read it.
Centered over the door were Arabic words that were carved into the wood as well all the flourishes and hallmarks of Arabic, African...Muslim art. At first the sight of these words raised an eyebrow as I was with family waiting in the lobby of a huge Christian church to go in for my annual appearance on Easter. (Not true, I go all the time to ogle women.)
What I mean is, it didn't bother me of course, I can't read Arabic, but we were in NC, the "No you cannot hunt on Sunday" bible belt state!
Well a tad later, I was introduced to a man in black, and when I heard his name, I recognized it as the painter's name.
"You're the artist," I said.
"Yes. I saw the door doing Mission work in Africa, tiny island off the coast. blah blah blah..." Of course I asked him what the words over the door said.
"I am the Door," He said. Quickly he explained that he meant Jesus was the door. That he wanted people to see that on Easter (without a translation) because it was relevant, or so he thought.
I blabbed about the "Knock and the door will be opened," part of a verse I read long ago...he smiled.
He remarked how the image reminded him of Passover and the offering up of blood from a sheep to save the first born of the believers.
"I changed the door from what it originally said," he offered up.
"What did it say?" I asked, almost throwing out, "Kill whitey?" but biting my tongue.
"In the Name of God, The Compassionate, the Merciful," he said as I smiled on blithely.
"Why'd you change it?"
"Because it's from the Koran."
I blinked at him, and before I could ask, so? He said, "He's not my God."
Inside I shuddered, wanted to laugh and yell the obvious*, but I didn't...not the place or the time I reckoned.
And I thought, that's why I'm never at these places, these multi-million dollar expansive, invasive, and sometimes obscene monuments to religion. A friend once told me on facebook about a cathedral in Canada and how awesome it was (in the classical sense of the word--not how to describe a pizza--but awe inspiring) and i felt the same way about that, though I never even saw it in person.
I sat and thunk, they probably bulldozed a million trees or Indian burial grounds just to build it so people could convert the heathens of the land...or give them smallpox, whatever was easiest.
It's so cliche to say now, but my god doesn't need any of that...that gaudy display of wealth that some mistake for piety. For some, it was easy to put into words, and don't roll you eyes, but Robert Ruark, in The Horn of the Hunter, put down in a few words what he thought about his God:
"There was nobody around but me and a million animals and a thousand noises and the bright sun and the cool breeze and the shade from the big trees that made it cathedral--cool but a lot less musty and damp and full of century-old fear and trembling. I got to thinking that maybe this was what God had in mind when He invented religion, instead of all the don't and must-nots and sins and confessions of sins. I got to thinking about all the big churches I had been, including those in Rome, and how none of them could possibly compare with this place, with its brilliant birds and its soothing sounds of intense life all around and the feeling of ineffable peace and good will, so that not even man would be capable of behaving very badly in such a place. I thought that this was maybe the kind of place the Lord would come to sit in and get His strength back after a hard day's work trying to straighten out mankind. Certainly He wouldn't go inside a church. If the Lord was tired He would be uneasy in a church."
And if you saw, I talked about my god, in an awkward little note sometime back:
"Living things. Eternal combinations of a magic molecule sit high in my list.
Not just us, but all of “us.”
The same twisted ribbon makes a carrot, makes a cat, and makes a Mozart.
It, everlasting indeed, will make me a “ghost” and immortal.
I do worship life. I have seen how fragile, yet how unrelenting it is.
How? I can’t describe the collective feeling I have with our family.
To see a sunrise, and be there when colour comes back to the world.
To see life all around you, even in your home. And know, unseen, life is buzzing; marching, crawling, replicating…it blows my mind.
I hear it, I feel it. I am just here like the ant, the deer, the dog, the tree, the vine. I can’t explain. There is no ritual, only of being thrown in the pot with everything else. And everything dies. And everything eats. And there is no life without destroying life, and I am humbled by that, but not to tears."
So I think back on "Not my God," and wish maybe we could be happy not editing carvings in paintings, not bull-dozing trees and wiping off the green for the kingdom of heaven and not forsaking green soccer fields for a Jesus, or a Mohammad, or a Torah...
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