Another reason not to boycott Arizona, no matter how much you loath that new law. (If you don’t loath the law, this is obviously not an issue to you.)
The Phoenix Suns announced they would temporarily change their jerseys to read LOS SUNS, to protest against Arizona’s recent passed immigration law.
After making the decision internally, the team went to the NBA for approval, reports the Sun-devoted news site, The Bright Side of the Sun.
In addition to the jerseys, both members of management and some of the team members made statements about the political protest, among them, star Sun player Steve Nash.
“I think the law is very misguided. I think it is unfortunately to the detriment of our society and our civil liberties and I think it is very important for us to stand up for things we believe in,” Nash said of the bill. “I think the law obviously can target opportunities for racial profiling. Things we don’t want to see and don’t need to see in 2010.”
Amare Stoudemire and Alvin Gentry also expressed their support for the decision with more of a focus on supporting their neighbors. “It’s going to be great to wear Los Suns to let the Latin community know we’re behind them 100%,” Stoudemire said.
Although the team was reportedly aware that the gesture may infuriate some Arizona fans and certain corporate sponsors, those like Steven Nash instead saw themselves as indirectly championing Arizona with their stand.
“It doesn’t feel good to have people around the world and around the country look at our state as less than equal, less than fair. As proud citizen of this state, I want us to be held be held in the highest esteem. I think we have a lot of great attributes and a lot of great people and I think we need to be very cautious in how we respect our civil liberties and the tone we’re setting and the precedents we’re setting moving forward.”
Read more here.
Arizona woke a sleeping giant, and that is a “silent majority” in America that truly wants to live in a post racial America, and this giant consists of people of all ethnic backgrounds and now includes some high profile athletes, as a couple of baseball players have spoken out, too. I really think this is the beginning of the end for the fringe right, because after the Republican party pays a heavy price for this at the voting booth this year and in 2012, the first thing they’re going to do is cut all ties to anything looking like a minuteman or a tea bagger, which will usher in the end of their place in the national spotlight. I’m hoping by the time Obama leaves office in January of 2017 the fringe right will be Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The comments above are blatantly racist in my opinion, guess there’s no place for you in a “post racial America” SNS. You did say… “I really think this is the beginning of the end for the fringe right, because after the Republican party pays a heavy price for this at the voting booth this year and in 2012, the first thing they’re going to do is cut all ties to anything looking like a minuteman or a tea bagger”…
Minutemen and tea baggers look like what exactly?
If you don’t like the Arizona Immigration Law, than you should be trying to change the Federal Law, which is identical.
Federal ICE offices in Arizona are regularly sweeping across Phoenix to investigate suspicious companies making large-scale arrests of illegal immigrants and deporting them.
The Arizona plan is simply expanding the Federal Program which is the current law of the land 100 fold.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/us/16raid.html
If you want these illegal aliens left alone in this country, demand amnesty for them all and anyone who steals their way over the border or overstays her visa. Reagan did this
Those that think that the Arizona is unconstitutional, had better think again.
http://www.examiner.com/x-5738-Political-Buzz-Examiner~y2010m4d29-An-analysis-of-the-constitutionality-of-Arizonas-immigration-law
Minuteman and tea baggers look like what exactly?
Um, Crazy.
http://gawker.com/5500371/what-happens-when-the-crazy-gun+toting-teabaggers-meet-the-crazy-gun+toting-minutemen
Celeste, what do you mean by “Another reason not to boycott Arizona,” ?
Arizona is a rogue state, that is run by and large by bigots, xenophobes, and white supremicists like JD Hayworth (soon to be Senator if he out Mexicans McCain), who make statements against any immigration, legal or illegal, because he says he is afraid of Mexicans building an Aztec State on the ashes of “American Sovereignty” (my quotation marks), which is double speak for “scare off the MExicans and Mexican Americans who vote primarily democratic and save the state as a bastion for white Republicans”. There are many others like Hayworth in Arizona who would resort to facist and racist laws to keep themselves from any kind of multicultural power sharing.
#1070 is ethnic profiling pure and simple and pogroms and ghetto sweeps by the likes of the Joe Arpaio’s and his white posse are the SS enforcers of this fascist edict.
The boycott of Arizona is having an effect both financially and as a PR tool that shines a light on Arizona for the whole world to ridicule.
Did you not think that the boycott of South Africa during the reign of white supremecy and apartheid was legitimate?
Looks to me like Arizona is very similar in it’s desire for an ethnic cleansing of Latinos and other minorities.
Boycott Arizona!!
The accusation that SNS’s post is somehow racist is bizarre and wrong. I’m fairly certain SNS didn’t mean the electorate would cut ties with white people (that would obviously be impossible), but meant cut ties to people who associate with the tea parties and minutemen. That judgement may be wrong – I would guess it’ll be true in some areas and false in others – but it is in no way racist.
I am excited, however, to see something approaching an NBA post. That this blog has so failed to embrace the NBA is a major social justice failing. Hopefully we will soon tackle the travesty of playoff-only Laker flags.
Okay, just sharing a couple of things, even though I’m sure that many of you will call me a racist for that.
1. @PhoenixSuns Here’s how you avoid being called hypocrites: Don’t man the arena gates & whoever sneaks in w/out a ticket gets to stay!
2. SNEAK INTO ALL SPORTS VENUES ILLEGALLY
Those borders around the sporting events that keep you from realizing the dream of going to a baseball game? Pffffft. SNEAK IN! And if any usher asks to see your ticket to the game, cry out, in a foreign language, that your CIVIL RIGHTS ARE BEING VIOLATED!!!
But it doesn’t end there. You sit in your seat and DEMAND that the people around you pay for your hot dogs and beer. And that line at the bathroom, the bathroom that is for paying customers, why just move to the head of that line, mister. As a guy who sneaked into the arena you have protection status! …
Furthermore, if you sneak in with your pregnant wife and she has a baby at the game – SEASON TICKET HOLDER! That’s right!
BTW, if I show up at your house tonight, you have to let me in and feed me. You don’t want to be a hypocrite, do you? Who’s having steaks tonight?
Hmmm. Didn’t offset the comment correctly. The last paragraph was mine.
I may have just turned all the commenters into vegetarians.
And if you have bought tickets but are “seated while brown”, and if Sheriff Joe enters the arena with his white posse and gives the thumbs up sign to the people in the expensive box seats with the Phoenix Republicans aka The White People Party of Arizona, but then surrounds the “nose bleed seats” and conducts a sweep, asking the brown people he finds to not only show thier ticket stubs but also their passport and birth certificate to prove they are legal. If the person can’t produce his “papers” then he is taken from his seat and moved to a holding cell until someone can get down to the arena with his birth certificate.
And God Forbid! If the brown skinned person was a product of parents (Mexicans), who are not Aryan in race, even though he or she might have been born in the country, they will be shipped out immediately to the Warsaw Ghetto, for their own protection of course.
Sure Fire, I didn’t know the Tea Party and the Minutemen were exclusively white organizations. Are they?
You got it, DQ! Anyone who does something that liberals don’t like has to be a racist. Good job!
Of course, I didn’t expect you to get the point that a ticket to a sporting event is analogous to a visa into the U.S. And, if someone complains to an usher that you’re in their seats, then the usher has a duty to check your stubs and ask you to move. But, no more! The Suns are in the playoffs and no one needs a ticket to get in! No, sir. Not with their compassion. Only suckers pay!
DQ, I want this ugly, racist, unAmerican law challenged and tossed out. I believe in boycotts, but not all boycotts across the board. This one has me very ambivalent as it also slams all the Arizonians I know who are horrified by the law.
The one thing in favor of a boycott is that, in these economically depressed times it might disuade other states that are contemplating similar laws.
Arizona has the crazy and hideous Joe Arpaio, but it also has (or had) mayors and police chiefs—like George Gascon of Mesa (now of SF)—who successfully stood up to his thuggery.
Bottom line, I want to target the law and the thinking behind it, not every Arizonan.
A lot of my close friends do not agree and are in favor of a boycott.
And Sure Fire, I don’t appreciate the racist accusation. It’s baseless, especially considering that neither the tea party or minutemen are exclusively white organizations. If you disagree with anything I have to say, please state your reasons and give your argument to the contrary. Racist accusations are pretty low.
No Woody, believe me I got it, I just don’t think you get “it”.
Sweeps in Mexican American neigborhoods by legitimate racists and fascists like Sheriff Joe and his Mexican hate’n posse, to instill fear and terror under the disguise of fighting crime and “helping” the Feds with the illegal immigration “problem”, even if that means putting up a police check station at the Catholic Church, on Easter Sunday, aren’t profiling, are they?
Boycott Arizona!
The thing is, Celeste, is that while Arizonans who are against this law might be hurt by a boycott, they still won’t be hurt as bad as Latinos in their state, who’ve basically just lost their 4th amendment rights. The whole point of a boycott is to hurt the pocketbooks of companies and/or governments who’ve done something wrong, and, yes, the trickle down effect is going to hurt everyone. All wars have casualties on both sides. A war analogy might be kind of extreme, but I’ll use a labor strike for example. Should a union choose not to go on strike when management is looking to basically take away all of their benefits, just because it will hurt too many of the good people who are their consumers and may even support their cause? That’s kind of the point. A boycott, like a strike, is designed to halt the system out of protest.
# Celeste Fremon Says:
May 6th, 2010 at 10:51 am
The one thing in favor of a boycott is that, in these economically depressed times it might disuade other states that are contemplating similar laws.
………
Bingo.
The bottom line is, Celeste, I care more about the people who will be profiled because of this law than the people who would be affected by a boycott, even the good people affected. I think the former outweighs the latter. Civil rights comes before quality of life. It’s one of the pillars of our democracy. Quality of life has been sacrificed before. Wars, etc. There have been plenty of times in history where Americans have had to hunker down and conserve financially, and there’ll be many more. But civil rights CAN NEVER be taken away.
Sure there are a lot of good people in Arizona Celeste, but when I read the stats that 60 or 70 % of the people of Arizona support #1070 which coincidentaly breaks down about what the ethnic makeup of Arizona is 30% Latino, 70% other than, then it makes me wonder how many “good” people are going along with this bigoted #1070.
I’m sure there were a lot of good people in Nazi Germany,Mussolini’s Italy, South Africa’s aparteid era, the problem is that if these good people just shrug thier shoulders and wring thier hands then these evil efforts by facists continue and escalate.
With the call for a boycott of Arizona then the situation becomes a world wide concern and cause for justice and human rights and that will sharpen the focus on the antics and depravity of the Arizona White Peoples Party aka The Arizona Republican Party.
If you recall this is the state that not only has given us SB #1070 but has recently passed a bill that requires school districts not to teach any ethnic studiers, fire teachers with an accent, passed a “birther bill” aimed at President Obama, allows people to carry concealed weapons anywhere they want without a permit, (shit even in old west Tombstone you had to check your six gun in before going into the dancehall and bar), the state where former Supreme Court Justice Renquist made his bones dressing up like a cop and mau mauing Mexican Americans at voting locations, where an authentic idiot like Mea
I’m sorry, didn’t paste my whole bit!
Sure there are a lot of good people in Arizona Celeste, but when I read the stats that 60 or 70 % of the people of Arizona support #1070 which coincidentally breaks down about what the ethnic makeup of Arizona is, 30% Latino, 70% other than, then it makes me wonder how many “good” people are going along with this bigoted #1070.
I’m sure there were a lot of good people in Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, South Africa’s apartheid era, the problem is that if these good people just shrug their shoulders and wring their hands then these evil efforts by fascists continue and escalate.
With the call for a boycott of Arizona then the situation becomes a worldwide concern and cause for justice and human rights, one that will sharpen the focus on the antics and depravity of the Arizona White Peoples Party aka The Arizona Republican Party.
If you recall, this is the state that not only has given us SB #1070 but has recently passed a bill that requires school districts not to teach any ethnic studies, it’s now against the law, a law the requires firing teachers that might have an accent, (what kind of accent would you think, German?, Dutch?, oh yeah), the state that just passed a “birther bill” aimed at President Obama, (but then suddenly rescinded the law, afraid of even more ridicule?), a state that allows people to carry concealed weapons anywhere they want without a permit, (shit even in old west Tombstone you had to check your six gun in before going into the dancehall and bar), the state where former Supreme Court Justice Renquist made his bones dressing up like a cop and mau mauing Mexican Americans at voting locations, where an authentic idiot like Evan Mecham was elected Governor and who then cancelled Arizona’s Martin Luther King Jr holiday. This was the same Mecham who used to refer to black children as pica ninnies and who blamed the high divorce rate in Arizona on “working women”. The list goes on and on but the picture is clear. Arizona has a long history of police state mentality and racial and ethnic profiling.
Boycotts work, Mecham was finally thrown out on his ass and MLK was a holiday again in Arizona, South Africa finally gave up the ghost and granted black Africans equal rights, and the world wide boycott of Arizona is costing them millions maybe billions of dollars in lost revenues. Sorry about the good people in Arizona who may be hurt by a boycott but even Tucson Congressman Grijalva is calling for a boycott.
You either stand for something or fall for nothing, Boycott Arizona!
DQ, if 80,000 people tried to cram inside 56,000 seat Dodger Stadium, you can bet that there would be sweeps to see who was inside legally by checking ticket stubs. Nothing racist about that. You can’t have legitimate ticket holders being inconvenienced and paying for the entertainment of people who snuck under the fence.
If you really want to help illegals in Arizona, start a drive to collect money for the state to pay for them.
Woody, if you had 80,000 people in Dodger Stadium and it only has seats for 56,000 it could mean a couple of different things. One would be that the Dodger organization sold too many tickets, a situation caused by avarice and an attitude of “who cares about the working people that will have to fight over the cheap seats. But the season ticket holders who consist mainly of corporate fat cats and their cronies, who dwell down in the ringside seats with ushers to protect them don’t care, they are assured a spectacle, not only on the field but also in the stands where the worker bees will fight and scrap over their place in the “stadium”. It’s called monopoly capitalism and Darwinian economics, or if you will, profit at any cost.
Or it could be a situation where the corporate fat cats, in the gold seats, and seeking to stay there, sold too many tickets, not only for a substantial profit but as a means to keep the worker bees fighting each other, and blaming each other for their predicament, leaving the comfortable fat cats to enjoy their leisure and sense of entitlement, without being attacked or accused of profiteering on the backs of the worker bees, who are too busy fighting over the cheap seats to realize what has happened to them.
And as a last resort, if things in the cheap seats got too out of control, and some of the worker bees started to become suspicious of the motives of the fat cats down around the dugouts, then the fat cat’s could just announce that the intruders and interlopers were the brown bees, and that no matter if their hive was a local one or one on the other side of the hill, the brown bees were the cause of all the problems and confusion.
Solution, round up and remove all the brown bees, no matter if they are local bees, in this way the white worker bees are happy and content with their place in the stadium, cheap seats or not.
Mavis, no points for your response.
Celeste, regarding your comment #13, the law requires people to follow certain procedures to enter our country. How would you propose checking people who are here illegally? Would you accept schools and hospitals reporting all illegals?
We can’t be the relief valve for every country boiling over, and we can’t accept keeping people here who knowlingly violated the law to get in.
I’m still waiting for DQ to start the “Save Arizona” fund so that the state can support the illegals that others want to keep there. Would you donate?
It is hard to take arguments seriously when words like ugly, racist, Nazi, Fascists and un-American are tossed around carelessly, with little respect for the people of Arizona who 70+ percent support it and their representatives who 60+ percent voted YES for bill SB1070.
If you are not for enforcing the law — Are you for an OPEN BORDER policy?
Where are your solutions? —- Or are you limited to ugly, racist, Nazi, Fascists and un-American name calling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_calling
Pokey, good point. I likely could have used different words to express my loathing of the law than hot button words.
And, just to be clear, I loath the law, not the people of the state who are in favor of it.
After all, in our home state of California we passed a worse law—and it was initiative that, unlike Arizonans, the majority of Californians actually voted for.
I am speaking about the hideous Prop. 187, which—among other things—would have excluded undocumented children from being educated.
Fortunately, it was found—rightly—to be unconstitutional. May that happen to SB 1070, sooner rather than later.
Woody, your last post only starts fights. It doesn’t promote dialogue or civil argument. This is a warning.
WTF, I deleted a couple of your posts. Please stop with the endless references to Mexican drug cartels. I don’t like Mexican drug cartels either. Nor do I like the Russian mob. Or the government of Burma, where “torture has become an institution” according to Amnesty International. Or….
There’s a long list. Your consistent drumbeat starts to make you seem merely anti-Mexican, which has no place here.
Thanks for listening. (And, yes, this too is a friendly warning.)
Warned the first day back. I don’t stand a chance. Liberals are allowed to call other commenters names, but we can’t even point out how stupid that is.
Celeste, you inferred that people who backed the Arizona law, including conservatives here, were “ugly, racist, unAmerican.” That starts fights. This is your warning.
“Fascist Usher” Checking Papers at a Baseball Game
Woody, Pokey pointed out that my words were inflamatory. I granted him the point, clarified that I was criticizing the law not the people, and back pedaled on the language.
Please do the same. Argue issues, don’t demonize groups of people.
And as long as you divide the world into liberals and conservatives, you’re right, you won’t last here.
Celeste! You can’t say that a law is “ugly, racist, unAmerican” without inferring that its supporters are, too. You’re playing word games by being indirect and then feigning that it was a misunderstanding. You know that what you said expressed your heart, in an unguarded moment, and you only slightly backtracked when caught. Admit it.
(And, just to be clear, I loath the law, not the people of the state who are in favor of it.) Right. Your “clarification” is phony. I guess you hate a rope used for a lynching but not the mob behind the act. You’re the bigot. You’re the one generalizing. You’re the one who labels groups who disagree with you.
I have been arguing the issues. But, you make false value judgments on them and proclaim yourself the winner, with no dissent allowed.
Go through this comment thread on your new commenting rules again. I predicted exactly what you’re doing, and, of course, you criticized me for that…for being right!
A debate in which you can say anything but in which dissenters must follow strict rules isn’t going to work. It may be your blog, but I’m telling you it’s not fair and it can only result in a feel-good community of people convinced of their own wrong-headed ideas because they are reinforced by like-minded idiots – all going unopposed.
Celeste, you know that I consider you a friend, but I have to be honest and say, “What a hypocrite!” Don’t worry about banning me. I cannot adequately express the facts and the truth within such a one-sided, restrictive, politically correct, knne-jerk, over-sensitive framework, so I’m not going to try.
Woody, this is just not working. I’m sorry. I’m not having this argument. The rules are clear. If you don’t like them, we will just have to respectfully disagree. But that argument won’t take place here.
You’re a longtime commenter and I have valued your presence here a great deal, despite our disagreements. However right now I’m instituting a time out.