Recently in Citizen Orange Category

I'm in Las Vegas, today, for Netroots Nation 2010.  It's my third time in this city, my first time over 21.  Las Vegas is a plastic city, at least where all the resorts are.  Everything is designed to get you to spend money.  I had to drop $20 for wireless just to write this, and I haven't even gambled yet! 

I'm here to put on a panel entitled "'Illegal' Organizing: Lessons from the Migrant Youth Movement."  The description is as follows:

I've spent most of the holidays reconnecting with family and friends but I'm ready to get back to blogging, pretty soon.  I always seem to start blogging on the worst days.  No one reads on Saturday!  Still there are a lot of important updates to inform people of which I'll try to write about this weekend.  

I have not written since my grandfather died.  I have not let sadness overtake me either.  I've wallowed in nothingness, occupying myself mostly with movies and online television shows.  Writing it out, now, I realize that nothingness is worse than sadness.  It certainly is no way to honor a life that was so full.

I've long imagined writing something brilliant about my grandfather, or my whole family, for that matter.  As my grandfather's health deteriorated, I also imagined having something profound to say after his death.  Writing that out feels macabre and self-indulgent.  Weeks have passed and the words haven't come.

Harvard freshman Jacob D. Roberts '13 has easily written one of the most well-informed and balanced accounts, yet, of the cancellation of Jim Gilchrist's invitation to Harvard.  Here is where Roberts quotes me:

The movement to ban Gilchrist from the conference was largely initiated by Kyle A. de Beausset '11, who in early October began using different university mailing lists to build support for uninviting Gilchrist due to his involvement in the Minuteman Project, which organizes civilians to patrol the border for illegal immigrants and to report crossings to the Border Patrol.

"It might be an interesting intellectual exercise for Harvard students to hear extremist views," de Beausset wrote in one of these e-mails, but he added that the "broader implications of legitimizing these extremist views with the Harvard name" were more important.

After my appearance on the O'Reilly Factor on Friday night, I was flooded with facebook messages like this:

I hope you are a victim of the next 911 you piece of shit

Keith Glassman - Facebook Message (16 October 2009)

These were the reactions who found me through facebook by googling my name after the O'Reilly Factor.  The only way I know how to interpet Keith Glassman's facebook message, is that he wishes me to have the same fate as 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father.  Thankfully, I don't allow non-friends to have access to my profile.  Admittedly, not all of the reactions were as hostile.  Some conservatives even said they were impressed and asked to be friends.  One of my favorite negative reactions was that of someone who spoke like she was my mother:

Thanks to Jackie Mahendra at America's Voice for recording this video and sending this over to me.



Again, not the best performance. I wasn't able to make the most important point. I learned my lesson. Lead off with your most important talking point. Still my face when they cut me off is priceless. It cracks me up every time.

The producer told me I was going to get five minutes and they gave me just under two.  I had three points I wanted to make.  I was able to make two of them when Juan Williams cut me off.  If you want to see something funny, check out the sad puppy face I make when Juan Williams cuts me off.  I wrote out the final point I was trying to make in my earlier post:

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the reason it would have been irresponsible for HULC to invite Jim Gilchrist is because of the violence he encourages and enables with his speech.  There are countless examples of this.  Jim Gilchrist advocated violence in his statement about being disinvited at Harvard:

It is obvious why our Founding Fathers placed the Second Amendment directly after the First Amendment.  When free speech is no longer an irrevocable right, well, that's what the Second Amendment is for...to preserve the First Amendment...for everyone on U.S. territory.

Jim Gilchrist - Minuteman Project (16 October 2009)

In a statement about being uninvited from Harvard I can only interpret this as a threat to bring guns to Harvard to "defend" his right to speak.  This would be fine if this was all talk and no action, but the case of Shawna Forde has shown us that there can be deadly consequences to this sort of speech. 

Forde, the head of Minuteman American Defense, is being tried for shooting and killing a 9-year-old girl Brisenia Flores, and her father, in an apparent attempt to finance her nativist activism.  The only way to truly understand the consequences of hateful speech like Gilchrist's is to hear the audio of Brisenia Flores' mother when she dialed 911 to report that her husband and her daughter were shot and killed. (WARNING: Listening to this audio might be traumatic for those who have suffered violence.  I have only listened to it once and that was enough.)  Jim Gilchrist is a close associate of Shawna Forde's and has defended her in the past.

I was invited on the O'Reilly Factor after my comments in the Boston Globe about canceling Jim Gilchrist's invitation to Harvard.  I won't be talking to Bill O'Reilly tonight, but with Juan Williams who is taking his place tonight.

If you're coming onto Citizen Orange after seeing me on television, I recommend checking out another blog I am the co-founder of, The Sanctuary.

I apologize to those of you who were trying to access Citizen Orange last night or this morning.  We were shut down down because our mt-search.cgi script was "causing a heavy load on the server."  I think it's because spam bots were constantly using the search form. 

The only way I was able to get Citizen Orange back online was by disabling the search form.  I'll have to leave it like that until I can figure something else out.

I continue to put a considerable amount of effort into updating Citizen Orange's pro-migrant blogroll, because I believe it is important that we all stay connected.  In an effort update and trim down the pro-migrant blogroll, it has only grown, showing just how strong the pro-migrant sanctuarysphere has become. 

The list of almost 130 pro-migrant blogs I've come up with are not a random assortment of obscure blogs.  I'm actively in touch with an author at each of these blogs, they have all been updated in the past year, and they meet a stringent set of requirements.  Please continue to contact me if I'm missing any.  I missed quite a few obvious ones in the beginning.

I will paste the updated list, again, below, and give it a rest for a time.