Bush goes to Stanford

"for every pig there will be a Saturday"

So they hate Bush at Stanford. He can't really go anywhere these days without people turning out in droves to protest. The Stanford Daily gives a lot of detail in this article- a lot of detail.

“I think there’s going to be a new wave of student activism around the country,” [Steve Westly, CA demo guv. candidate] said. “I’m glad to see some of that’s happening at Stanford. I found the protest peaceful and well-organized.”

“I thought Stanford was really a bubble, but seeing all the people that are out here has shown me that people really are concerned,” [Alejandra Aponte] said. “I’m Latina; I’m from Guatemala. Right now President Bush is doing some very interesting things in Latin America. We have a phrase ‘For every pig, there will be a Saturday.’ Basically, his game is over.”

Fantasy Island in Tucson

Unidentified dork out at the Tucson Mountains, opposite side of Tucson from Fantasy Island

One of my favorite mountain bike trails is Fantasy Island, about 10 miles from my house, located to the east of Davis Monthan AFB's "bone yard." Fantasy Island is full of cactuses and steep washes and rocks and lizards and old jack rabbits with gray muzzles. There's about 18 miles of trail there. The land was going to be developed, naturally, which around here means they scrape the desert bare- our Sonoran desert, a unique ecosystem, and one of the things us desert rats truly love- and put up ticky tacky houses. Local bikers and other community members fought back, joining up, writing letters, going to meetings, working with the city government and trying to work with the State Land Dept. The latest news, according to this AZ Daily Star article, which looks very encouraging, is that the state legislature has passed a resolution calling for Fantasy Island's preservation. The article quotes a Republican from Tucson, a Tom Paton, as saying it's important for the government to listen to and respresent the people. Way to go Mr. Paton. Right you are. The protest against ruining this huge strech of desert, which I put at about 3 square miles, was apparently quite large.

Republicans mountain bike too, and true Republicans are all for the preservation of nature. In this case a Republican argument can be made that having the Fantasy Island area preserved increases property value all around.

The State's resolution is non-binding, however, and the southern part of the mountain biking area (encompassing the Bunny Trail and the Snake Dance Loop) is supposedly going to be developed anyway, but the City of Tucson is behind the preservation measure, and has been working with Tucsonans on the issue for quite some time. The real snake is the State Land Dept, which has been somewhat secretive. They are the ones to watch out for- to many of us the State Trust Land situation is a slimey one, with a PR face and millions of dollars going somewhere but not where they'd like you to believe.

More about protesting against Republican policy in Tucson

Update, 4/20/06: the fuckin idiot who burned the Mexican Flag was arrested, according to the Star. They just mentioned it in passing and did not say why. Apparently 20 or so people attended a meeting and spoke out against the local police using pepper spray and etc, and that was the subject of the article.

It seems to particularly rile the state's backwards right wing legislators that youth have become interested in speaking out against Republican immigration policy. State Representative Jonathan Patton of Tucson is up in arms over local school district's use of buses to take kids back to school from protests. Patton is also busily working up the hocus-pocus machine against U.S. Representative Raúl Grijalva- one of the few Democrats not afraid to speak out against Bush and Company- for giving a speech to students at Tucson High School about the current immigration legislation and Grijalva's role in it. The speech was after Monday's protests. So a congressman with an Hispanic surname giving a speech to students in his district is enough to get the congressman on our good local Republican Jonathan Patton's shitlist! Wow. I can't think of a better illustration of stupidity and racism and attacking freedom of speech than this. I can't think of a better illustration of current trends in "Nuevo Republicanism" - stamp out debate and opposition, create a fuss like there's something wrong with it, divert attention away from the issue at hand, etc. etc.

The story in the Star I refer to above is here.

The Arizona Daily Wildcat, the University's daily, ran a couple stories about the Monday round of protesting- one about the local side of things and the other about state angle. 100,000 to 200,000 people turned out in Phoenix, by the way, depending on who ya talk to.

One of the stories included an excellent picture of what is apparently a pair of fools or professional troublemakers burning a Mexican flag in the middle of the protest. Just trying to get people pissed off and make everyone else look like fools, give the protest a dangerous, violent, unruly subtext.

According to one of the Wildcat stories the current Republican bill, HR 4437, would "require church and humanitarian aid organizations to check the citizenship of parishioners before they provide any assistance." So if you're a U.S. citizen, or anybody at all, and you go to a church and ask for help, you have to prove your citizenship. There you have current Republican philosophy in a nutshell- no ethics, no presumtion of privacy, no attempt to mind their own business.

But the Republicans in government, as many "real" Republicans will tell you, are actually supposed to represent us the people!! Not xenophobes, people who think everyone has to join their church "or else," or other whackos, but those of us who are a part of civil society, who acknowledge that we all want the same things in life from the government, etc. The protests over immigration seem to say a lot of people's voices are not being properly represented in the current round of Republican domination. One student put it succintly:

"I think that there needs to be a counter voice to the conservative right that has been pretty outspoken," said Brett Lovick, a Latin American studies graduate student. "I think that (conservatives) are a minority, but I think that they have had a much louder voice."

Arizona Republican congress-people don't like protests

Republican morons in Phoenix are struggling to mis-characterize the subtance of recent protests, saying the protests are made up of "illegals" and comparing the people who exercised their right to peaceable assemble and redress grievances to, you guessed, terrorists.

Here is the story, GOP lawmakers assail assault on 'rule of law'.

The Star does breifly mention a Democrat's response to the Republican whining, a warm and fuzzy story of an 84 year WWII vet who attended the marches- this is an accurate representation of local Hispanic folk, i.e. a U.S. citizen who's been in the military, etc. Of course the Star does not go into detail about further Democratic congresspeople's arguments against the Republican stance. It's amazing how they boil it all down to a spunky 84 year old man, going up against wealthy Republican congressmen in Phoenix, who promptly respond that "it has nothing to do with race."

More on election fraud and Republicans

Here is a story that show business as usual among Republicans of today. This is how they win elections:

White House link shown in scheme to limit voting

Hiring a telemarketing company to jam the calls at a Democratic get-out-the-vote effort, with the intention of preventing Democrats from voting. Apparently there have been 3 convictions in this case, and the Republican Party shelled out millions to defend its accused employees. The case made the national wire service since one of those convicted was proven to have been in constant communication with the White House during the scam.

Imagine this on a nationwide scale- this why we have a moron backed by corporate criminals sitting in the White right now.

More about current Tucson protests against Republican policy

The local paper- the one I read anyway, the Arizona Daily Star, (sometimes called the "Daily Red Star" by those who are convinced this paper, which has its share of right-wing propaganda daily, is actually left-leaning, part of some kind of liberal conspiracy, etc.) seems to focus the local protest issue on schools, parents and teachers. Here is another story, Parents hope for business as usual at school : Teachers to join immigration protest, acknowledging the scale of the protests coming this Monday that came out in Today's Sunday 4/9/06 edition. Apparently the reporter interviewed some parents with Hispanic surnames, and asked about the protests, kind of signalling the idea, "hey is this some kind of crisis or what?" and illicit some emotion-charged responses.

The paper seems to be proposing it as an outrage that 450 teachers out of 3700 have asked for the day off. But in fact many many are out protesting right now, that includes students, families, and professionals. Republican policy is massively unpopular and people are beginning to show it, turning out in numbers too large to control.

I say the larger issue is the seriousness of the issue at hand- Republican immigration policy- and the fact that people are turning out in droves across the country to protest, making it hard to portray the protesters as small amount of crazed left wing liberals. Most of the protesters are Hispanic people- mostly not illegal immigrants, mind you- lots of the "Mexican" folks around here in Southern Arizona have had families here for 300 years. Hispanic folks as a whole include many who are quite conservative, strong on military service and Christianity, but not necessarily strong on neocon/ Bush administration versions of conservatism.

Today's Star also included a story, GOP governor hopefuls take hard border line, about Republican gubanatorial candidates, and a meeting serveral of them had at a local highschool. The meeting was attended by all of 100 people. Woo. The candidates said some truly asinine things, for example that teachers who took the day off this coming Monday- the day of yet another round of nationwide protests against Republican immigration policy- should be fired.

The real outrage is that the Star does not have any discussion of the subject of the protests, the scale, the protest issue in other cities across the country, etc.

[Update 4/11/06--The Star must've read my blog (ya right). They did carry a story 4/10- "Marchers in streets; more are due today : In San Diego, other cities protesters seek new laws that benefit immigrants" admitting the nationwide scale of the protesting and discussing briefly the subject of the protests. Of course they channel the whole thing down to unnamed "organizers," just like they when in discussing opposition to BushCo they use the phrase "critics say..." It'd be more accurate to say who by who the protest was organized i.e. just how many U.S. citizens are organizing, and how many of us have had it with the current Republican fashion of screwing people over and lying cheating and stealing and etc, and that we, along with Mexicans here working, participated on a massive scale to oppose Republican immigration policy. The Star doesn't really mention the issues per se but has to admit the scale of this thing.]

The extent of protests in Tucson

I don't know if this is receiving national coverage. See this article in the Star.

It seems to be going on a couple times a week. The local highschool students are really being heard, leaving class, getting out to protest Republican immigration policy. The teachers are even walking out to join the marches. There is really a very large number of people getting out to make their voice heard here in Tucson.