Recently in Media Category
Today's New York Times story titled "Pakistan Reported to Be Harassing U.S. Diplomats" highlights the hypocrisy of the Pakistani government in accepting U.S. aid and military support while refusing to renew visas of U.S. personnel and subjecting American diplomats to routine vehicle checks. Certainly Pakistan's government doesn't have to accept the billions of dollars the U.S. government is giving it. But there is more to this story.
First of all, the U.S. wrote the book on denying visas for opaque, often senseless reasons.
The State Department has a history of denying visas for political reasons, and should not be surprised when other countries do the same from time to time. (I believe denial of the right to travel is rarely justified, but this is an oft-used tool of U.S. foreign policy.)
Second, the U.S. is unpopular in Pakistan because it bombs Pakistanis using unmanned drones and has this year pressured the Pakistani military to take action that led to societal upheaval and mass suffering. This has had the not unforeseeable consequence of making the current Pakistani government's relationship with the Americans somewhat toxic.
But this is mostly missing from the Times story. Only near the bottom of the article do we get any indication of why Pakistanis might not be grateful for the presence of the Americans in their country:
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.
I hope you are a victim of the next 911 you piece of shitThese 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:Keith Glassman - Facebook Message (16 October 2009)
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 award winning filmmaker Arturo Perez, Jr., just released the this powerful video in tandem with Presente.org's announcement that their Basta Dobbs campaign has signed up 50,000 people in support of their demand that CNN get rid of anti-migrant commentator Lou Dobbs. I'm happy to use this opportunity to announce that Citizen Orange has officially endorsed the Basta Dobbs campaign as evidenced by the "Who We Are" page.
Part of the reason I have been dutifully quantifying the number of pro-migrant blogs in the sanctuarysphere is so that I can encourage the sanctuarysphere to throw its full weight behind bastadobbs.com.
The blogosphere and cable news have been talking for the last week or so about James O'Keefe and his hidden camera video of ACORN employees in Baltimore. O'Keefe posed as a pimp and brought along college student Hannah Giles to pose as a prostitute who worked for him. He led two ACORN employees through an elaborate scenario in which he solicited advice on how to circumvent U.S. tax laws to run a brothel using underage undocumented Salvadoran prostitutes. Two ACORN employees proceeded to give him the advice he asked for.
I watched the video recently. Those employees were fired and rightly so. ACORN needs to do a better job of screening its employees and instituting procedures to ensure its employees are obeying the law. ACORN has a lot of housecleaning to do, and hopefully will become a more effective organization in the process.
But O'Keefe did not make this video out of a desire to improve provision of services to low-income communities. Glenn Beck didn't devote an entire FOX show to the piece out of concern for Latin American victims of sex trafficking.
Beck pushed this video to derail discussion of the health care bill and take down a longtime political opponent of the GOP: ACORN, a national organization that works to register low-income voters of the kind O'Keefe wants to see excluded from the polls, an organization that helps low-income homeowners avoid ending up on the street.
I watched O'Keefe's video at the Baltimore ACORN office and Beck's show promoting the clip. On my reading, James O'Keefe and Glenn Beck have not demonstrated that they care about improving the situation of low-income communities or that they want to improve the situation of actual undocumented Salvadoran children in this country, or mitigate the suffering of real victims of trafficking.
If I am wrong, where is the evidence? Where is O'Keefe's story on unaccompanied minors in the U.S. who are smuggled by coyotes to rejoin their parents or trafficked into prostitution, then arrested and targeted by DHS? Where is Beck's expose on the failure of the U.S. government to prevent human trafficking or protect trafficking victims? Has O'Keefe ever met any undocumented Salvadoran children? Does he know what their concerns are? Does he know anything about their struggles in El Salvador or in the U.S.? I've seen no indication that he does.
Instead, I've seen him and his accomplice use underage Central American prostitutes--who do exist in this country--to execute a dirty takedown of a political opponent.
I picked this video up from Atrios, but it's a good intro for a pitch to sign this petition asking your Congressional reps to support ACORN and the low-income communities ACORN serves instead of cowering before Glenn Beck.
Someone please tell Congressional Democrats that it is unbecoming to prostrate oneself before a supreme weenie like Beck.
Clearly, ACORN needs to do some internal housekeeping, including training and screening its employees better. Workers at community-based organizations should give clients advice on how to comply with the law, not circumvent it. But Beck's promotion of O'Keefe's video is a transparent political hit piece. If the GOP gets any nonwhite votes at all in the next twenty years, it will be despite the best efforts of Beck, Hannity, and Limbaugh.
Eventually I learned what other bloggers on the site had realized long before, that a certain reactive style of blogging based around the news of the day or content provided by other sources was not the most effective use of time or blog space. What I saw other editors doing there which I tried to mimic was to introduce new content and analysis into the blogosphere and use the site to promote offline campaigns.
It is clear that management and the bloggers at change.org are committed to achieving impactful social change. I only recently started to realize the truly revolutionary potential of the platform which the site's founders have put in place. I sincerely hope that the site reaches its goal of becoming a hub for grassroots collaborative activism, and I am happy that the site plans to maintain its current commitment to promoting the rights of migrants both inside and outside the U.S.
