Mosque flap tests limits of NYC tolerance

The word tolerance comes from the Latin “tolerare” – to bear. In our dictionaries, we define it as, among other things, the “freedom from bigotry or prejudice.”Its meanings are almost as numerous as the people who express them, as recent entries in the visitor comment book at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles suggest.It means “to respect other races even if u hate them,” says one commenter, signed only as G. “Acceptance,” says another, Alejandra, adding, “To me, tolerance is tinged with the negative aspect of `putting up with’ someone or something, but not fully embracing it.”

As rancor swirls around the issue of whether a mosque and Islamic cultural center should be built two blocks from the New York site where the destroyed Twin Towers stood, Americans are being forced to examine just how tolerant they are – or are not.The issue has always been with us. Against the backdrop of Puritan rigidity and the infamous Salem witch trials, the Founding Fathers made sure the concept of tolerance was woven into the very fabric of the young American republic.In 1790, in a letter welcoming newly elected President George Washington to Newport, R.I., on behalf of “the children of the stock of Abraham,” Moses Seixas reflected this view. “Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens,” he wrote, he saw the hand of God in the establishment of a government “which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

In reply, Washington assured the Jewish leader that the birth of the United States meant a new birth of freedom and respect.”It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights,” he wrote. This would be a country, he pledged, where “every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

If Washington’s promise remains part of the nation’s creed today, it’s still true that disputes like that involving the New York mosque test the limits of that tolerance.”We were never as tolerant as we thought we were,” says the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “I think that the rock on which tolerance is built is often more like sandstone than it is granite. It is easy to erode at any times when problems in the culture develop.”

Despite the current imbroglio over the Manhattan mosque, the Rev. Patrick McCollum says he believes Americans are becoming more tolerant. His proof: The fact that his house hasn’t been firebombed in a while.”There were people actually killed and such for having beliefs different than the dominant belief system,” says the San Francisco man, a Wiccan minister in the “sacred path” tradition. “And that doesn’t happen as much anymore.”

McCollum, 60, has been involved in a seven-year federal court battle over California’s policy of employing as state chaplains only Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims and adherents to Native American religions. He attributes both his struggle and the Manhattan mosque fight to what he calls the “dominant religious lens factor.”

Even so, he interprets the latter as a sign of growth.”I think that the intolerance that we’re experiencing right now is that for the first time in a long period of time, since almost the founding of our country, we’ve actually begun to ALLOW pluralism to surface in our country,” says McCollum. “So we’ve started to uphold the ideals that our country was founded on … and the people who’ve been in the dominant position begin to feel like they’re under attack.”

Although not declaring his outright support for the mosque planners’ real estate choice, President Barack Obama has defended their constitutional right to be there.

Not everyone was satisfied with his words.”I think to reason in that manner is to shortchange American identity; it’s not to apprehend fully the robustness of American identity,” says Brad Stetson, co-author of the book “The Truth About Tolerance: Pluralism, Diversity And The Culture Wars.”

America’s “penchant for toleration,” as Stetson puts it, is “beyond question.” But he says that tolerance has always been “circumscribed by some understanding of what was best for the commonweal, the health of the social body.””It’s not necessarily intolerant to say no,” says Stetson, who also lectures at Chapman University and California State University, Long Beach. “Governing bodies at various levels of a deeply pluralistic society like ours have a duty to consider the range of public sensibilities … a given decision affects, and not merely reflexively grant the naked exercise of rights upon request.”

Lynn can understand why some people are so upset about the Islamic center plans. “I’m not saying that everybody who is against building this mosque is some kind of a bigot,” he says. But is building the mosque really the equivalent of, as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich suggested, putting a Nazi sign “next to the Holocaust Museum” in Washington, D.C.?

Yes, says 88-year-old Abe Rosenblum.In 1943, Rosenblum was taken from his home in the Carpathian Mountains and “drafted” into the Hungarian labor force. When the Nazis occupied the area, he and the other Jews were sent to a ghetto, then loaded into boxcars, and eventually wound up in Mauthausen, a notorious concentration camp not far from Adolf Hitler’s hometown of Linz, Austria.

By the time the Russians liberated him from another subcamp in 1945, the 6-foot-1 Rosenblum weighed just 85 pounds. His father, grandparents and five sisters all perished. Only he and his oldest brother, who had emigrated to Chicago in 1939, survived. Rosenblum eventually joined him, settling in the suburb of Skokie, Ill.

In 1977, Rosenblum and the many other Holocaust survivors who settled in Skokie were horrified when Frank Collin and his National Socialist Party of America announced plans to march there. Although the courts eventually upheld Collin’s right to parade, the march was called off after Chicago, Collin’s original target, agreed to grant him a permit to rally there.

Years later, when arriving for the dedication of the Holocaust Museum in Skokie, Rosenblum looked out his bus window and saw a single protester standing in the rain, holding a Nazi flag and wearing a swastika arm band. It made him physically ill.

“We already lived through all these atrocities, and these guys come over here and still want to?” he says in heavily accented English, his respiration quickening. “They didn’t have enough? … This is not free speech. This is antagonizing.”Rosenblum does not believe that Islam is an inherently violent religion. But he says Muslims have no more business building a mosque so close to ground zero than an order of Carmelite nuns had to establish a convent outside the walls of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

His voice rising, he asks why another New York site can’t be found. “You have to build it there, where people suffered? … It hurts me even to talk about it. Because I know what these people feel, those people who lost their loved ones.”Lynn wonders who is speaking for the Muslim-Americans who died in the 9/11 attacks. “There was the same terror for Muslims as … for Jews or Christians or atheists that morning.”

Eighteen-year-old Ceara Sturgis has been oblivious to the storm clouds emanating from New York. But she’s had a busy week.On Wednesday, she started classes at Mississippi State University. The day before, she filed a federal lawsuit against her high school in Wesson, Miss.

Sturgis claims she was discriminated against when her name and photo were left out of the senior yearbook. School officials said Sturgis, who is lesbian and generally dresses in gender-neutral or “masculine” clothes, violated a policy that allowed only boys to wear tuxedos for their senior portraits.When Sturgis tried on the scoop-necked drape, she felt so uncomfortable that it brought her to tears. She changed into a tux and submitted that photo.

Sturgis – a National Honor Society member who was involved in numerous school sports and clubs – had been told the photo wouldn’t be included in the yearbook. But the omission of her name seemed an attempt to deny her very existence.”I’d been going there 13 years, and that was my senior year, and that was the last memory I was going to have,” she says. “And, like, 40 years down the road, when people look at that, I’m not going to be in there. My friends aren’t going to see me in there. And that just, it really hurt my feelings.”

Ironically, it took what Sturgis sees as an act of intolerance to show her just how much support she has. A Facebook page dedicated to her has nearly 3,000 friends.”Most of them are not from Mississippi,” she says with a chuckle. “I really think it’s just the small, closed-minded towns that are doing this.”

If Americans are conflicted, they can be forgiven, says tolerance museum director Liebe Geft. She admits to finding the word “problematic” herself.Geft – whose paternal grandmother and namesake was among Lithuanian Jews rounded up by their neighbors ahead of the Nazi invasion, taken out to the woods and shot – would like visitors to define tolerance “in a much more active way, putting respect into practice.”

“It’s not a mandate to accept everything,” says Geft, who grew up in Zimbabwe and has lived on four continents. “There are limits to what a civil society should tolerate. And when the human rights and dignities of others are being trampled and denied, that’s not acceptable in a country that advocates rights and freedoms and dignity for all.”But, as the visitor comments reveal, intolerance is in the eye of the beholder.

In the museum’s “Tolerancenter” are four polling stations that allow visitors to weigh in on the provocative topic du jour. On Wednesday, Geft posed the question: Is it appropriate to erect a Mosque and Islamic Community Center close to the 9/11 site?”The results, as of Friday: 37 percent answered “yes,” 62 percent said “no.”

Some Companies using criminal records or bad credit reports for job screening tactics challenged as illegal

WASHINGTON Companies using criminal records or bad credit reports to screen out job applicants might run afoul of anti-discrimination laws as the government steps up scrutiny of hiring policies that can hurt blacks and Hispanics.A blanket refusal to hire workers based on criminal records or credit problems can be illegal if it has a disparate impact on racial minorities, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The agency enforces the nation’s employment discrimination laws.”Our sense is that the problem is snowballing because of the technology allowing these checks to be done with a fair amount of ease,” said Carol Miaskoff, assistant legal counsel at the EEOC.

With millions of adults having criminal records – anything from underage drinking to homicide – a growing number of job seekers are having a rough time finding work. And more companies are trying to screen out people with bankruptcies, court judgments or other credit problems just as those numbers have swollen during the recession.Just ask Adrienne Hudson, a single mother who says she was fired from her new job as a bus driver at First Transit in Oakland, Calif., when the company found out she had been convicted seven years earlier for welfare fraud.

Hudson, 44, is fighting back with a lawsuit alleging the company’s hiring practice discriminates against black and Latino job seekers, who have arrest and conviction rates far greater than whites. A spokesman for First Transit said the company does not comment on pending litigation.”People make mistakes,” said Hudson, who is black, “but when they correct their mistake, they should not be punished again outside of the court system.”

Justice Department statistics show that 38 percent of the U.S. prison population is black, compared with about 12 percent of the general population. In 2008, African-Americans were about six times more likely to be incarcerated than whites. The incarceration rate for Latinos was 2.3 times higher than whites.If criminal histories are taken into account, the EEOC says employers must also consider the nature of the job, the seriousness of the offense and how long ago it occurred. For example, it may make sense to disqualify a bank employee with a past conviction for embezzlement, but not necessarily for a DUI.

Most companies tend to be more nuanced when they look at credit reports, weeding out those applicants with bad credit only if they seek senior positions or jobs dealing with money. But if the screening process weeds out more black and Hispanic applicants than whites, an employer needs to show how the credit information is related to the job.

About 73 percent of major employers report that they always check on applicants’ criminal records, while 19 percent do so for select job candidates, according to a 2010 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management.The same survey found that almost half of major companies conduct credit checks for some job candidates, such as those who would be in a position of financial trust. Another 13 percent perform credit checks for all potential workers.

Last fall, the EEOC sent a strong message to employers when it filed a class-action lawsuit against Freeman Companies, a Dallas-based events planning firm, alleging the company discriminated against blacks, Hispanics and males by rejecting job seekers based on credit history and criminal records. Freeman has denied the charges.The growth of online databases and a multimillion dollar background check industry have made it easy for employers to find out reams of information about potential hires. Companies see the checks as another way to weed out unsavory candidates, keep a safe work environment and prevent negligent hiring claims.

“Past indiscretions may be an indicator of future behavior, especially in the criminal context,” said Pamela Devata, a Chicago employment lawyer who has represented companies trying to comply with EEOC’s requirements.Devata said employers nationwide have seen the EEOC become more active in investigating employer hiring practices. The scrutiny has caused many companies to reevaluate their screening process and move to a case-by-case standard.

Ariela Migdal, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project in New York, said a person might have a blemish that has nothing to do with the job he or she is seeking. And records sometimes are inaccurate or not updated to reflect that someone arrested later had charges dropped or a conviction overturned or expunged, she said.”Somebody with an old conviction that has been rehabilitated doesn’t have any greater likelihood of committing a crime, so its irrational to use that against them,” Migdal said.

Ron Heintzman, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, said he’s seen dozens of job candidates disqualified “for reasons that were just ridiculous.” His union, with 13,000 members in First Transit, is paying for the lawsuit that Hudson filed last month against the company which operates bus service in Oakland and several other major cities.

In Hudson’s case, she was fired after just two days on the job as a bus driver because of a 7-year-old felony welfare fraud conviction. The conviction was later dismissed under California law, but her lawsuit, filed in federal court last month, claims the company has a policy to deny employment no matter how old the conviction, the applicant’s prior work history or whether it is related to the job.

(This version CORRECTS name of American Civil Liberties Union.)(AP)

Rahm Emanuel would resign from the position of White House Chief of Staff

Some foreign media reported that Rahm Emanuel would resign from the position of White House Chief of Staff because he was tired with the idealism of the people inside the circle of the government of President Barack Obama.

UK newspaper, Telegraph, citing unnamed sources from Washington, launched that Emanuel will withdraw in six to eight months. A number of media such as New York Times, the Daily Telegraph; Israeli newspaper Haartez; and New York Magazine, then follow the preaching of the Telegraph. They called Emanuel would resign out of frustration will officials stubbornly difficult to unite opinion in order to pass the government’s policies the United States (U.S.).

However, so far no official statement from the White House about it. Emanuel, 55 years old, really enjoyed working relationship with Obama. However, as media reported that, Emanuel and Obama are equally understand that the difference in style between them will result in Emanuel – are known to talk frankly and this aggressive – only to be served during the half period of a four-year tenure .

Emanuel friends also says that followers of the Jewish and fluent in Hebrew is worried that he would be “annihilated” if still maintaining his position. He also felt it would be farther away from his family because of the pressures of work to be received as a holder of one of the key positions in U.S. government.

It has become an old story in Washington that the arguments and differences of opinion occurred between Emanuel minded pragmatist and a very senior member of Congress who are known to compromise.

A U.S. government official from the era of Bill Clinton’s claim would not be surprised if Emanuel will be back around November when the Democratic Party is struggling to maintain its majority in the House and Senate. If I were to resign from the White House, Emanuel is rumored to be running for mayor of Chicago, his birthplace.

All Star Game boycott sought to protest Arizona law

The only Latino in the Senate urged Major League Baseball players on Monday to boycott the 2011 All-Star game in Arizona to protest the state’s tough new immigration law.”The Arizona law is offensive to Hispanics and all Americans because it codifies racial profiling into law by requiring police to question anyone who appears to be in the country illegally,” New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez wrote Michael Weiner, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association.

Menendez, who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is the only Latino in the 100-member chamber. In his letter, he noted more than 1 in 4 players are Latinos.Signed into law last month by Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer, the law requires state and local police, after making “lawful contact,” to check the immigration status of anyone they reasonably suspect is in the country illegally.The measure has prompted a number of calls for boycotts of businesses in the state, amid charges that it is unconstitutional and a mandate for racial profiling.

Representative Jose Serrano, a New York Democrat, and some Latino organizations have called upon MLB Commissioner Bud Selig to move the All-Star game, which is scheduled to be played in July 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona’s state capital. A Major League Baseball spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment.Calls for a sporting boycott of Arizona began soon after Brewer signed the bill into law on April 23. A group of protesters turned out to picket the Diamondbacks, the state’s Major League baseball team, at a game in Chicago.

The new law has reignited calls for Congress to overhaul the U.S. immigration system, and Menendez joined two fellow Senate Democrats last month in unveiling a “draft” plan.But lawmakers from both parties appear reluctant to tackle the emotional issue months before November’s congressional elections.

‘HUMILIATION AND HARASSMENT’

Almost two-thirds of Arizona voters and a majority of voters nationwide support the law, which backers say is needed to curb violence and crime stemming from illegal immigration in the Mexico border state.

In late April, Brewer signed changes to the law that she said made it “crystal clear” racial profiling was illegal. However, a recent poll of Hispanic voters in Arizona found that 85 percent felt that Latinos who are legal immigrants or U.S. citizens were likely to be stopped or questioned by police.In his letter, Menendez wrote that Latino players come to the United States legally “and should not be subjected to the humiliation and harassment that (the new law) would inflict” on them during their visit to the state for the All-Star game.”Imagine if your players and their families were subjected to interrogation by law enforcement, simply because they look a certain way,” the senator added.

Menendez said, “the Arizona law is an embarrassment to our country and a call to action to our communities to stand up against injustice.””For these reasons, I ask that you consider boycotting the All-Star Game in Arizona until SB1070 (the new law) is repealed, or the League decides to move the game to an alternate location,” Menendez wrote.(Reuters)

Drug Combinations Reduce HIV Transmission Risk

Chicago  In a study that supports the widely used drugs to help control the AIDS pandemic, researchers said on Wednesday that HIV patients who take the drug combination has a much smaller chance to infect their partners. Using a combination of drugs to reduce the possibility of transmission of 92 percent, the researchers report in the journal Lancet. They said the findings meant a combination of drugs known as highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART, may be useful as a means of prevention and treatment. “These results … until now strong evidence that HAART can reduce HIV transmission risk,” said Dr. Connie Celum, a professor of medicine and global health University of Washington, who worked on this study.

The team analyzed 3400 pairs from seven African countries. In each pair, one positive among immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, which causes AIDS. The team tested the couple because they are easier to trace. All couples were given counseling about HIV prevention methods, and some were given HIV drugs.

During the study, 349 HIV-infected people began taking the drug combination. Of the 103 partners of patients taking the drug, only one was infected with the virus. “Data observation strongly supports the hypothesis that antiretroviral therapy substantially reduces the risk of HIV infection and transmission,” Dr. Deborah Donnell from the Institute of Vaccines and Infectious Diseases at the Fred Hutchinson of Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

Donnell said, the drugs cut the concentration of HIV in the blood to extremely low levels, which can make people not easy to transmit. In people who take the drug, the virus was suppressed to very low levels in almost 70 percent of cases. A randomized trial is now underway to see whether the effect
immortal.

“While awaiting those results, our research indicates that antiretroviral therapy may have significant public health benefits as well as clinical benefits for individuals who were treated,” Donnell said in a statement. He said the findings offer strong arguments to begin early treatment for HIV. But although at a slower partner handled, drugs provide benefit.

AIDS virus infects 33 million people globally and has killed 25 million since the pandemic began in the 1980s. There is no cure and a vaccine but the drugs keep patients ‘healthy’. Without treatment, the viral damage to the immune system, leaving patients vulnerable to infections and cancer.

More than 20 drugs now on the market and can be combined in various ways to control the virus, although it usually mutates and ultimately the patient must switch to different ways to keep under control. Manufacturers of drugs that includes GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Gilead, Bristol-Myers and Abbott Laboratories, according to Reuters.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors back Arizona boycott

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors took a symbolic jab at Arizona today for passage of a controversial law last month that gives law enforcement authorities in the Grand Canyon State broad powers in determining a person’s immigration status.Critics fear the law will lead to racial profiling.

San Francisco supervisors, on a 10-1 vote, approved a nonbinding resolution that calls for a boycott of Arizona-based businesses. It asks for, but does not demand, that city departments refrain from entering into new contracts or extending existing ones with companies headquartered in Arizona, unless severing those ties would result in significant costs to the city or violate other laws.

”This is really about sending a very clear message that when a state passes a law that is egregious as this law is, that people of good conscience in other parts of the country have an obligation and responsibility to speak up and not remain silent,” said Supervisor David Campos, chief sponsor of the legislation.He said San Francisco is not acting alone. Oakland, Los Angeles, Chicago and El Paso also are contemplating similar statements.

San Francisco’s resolution also calls on pro and college sports leagues to not hold any championship games or tournaments in Arizona and backs the city attorney’s decision to offer legal support to challenge the law.Supervisor Sean Elsbernd cast the lone vote against Campos’ call for a boycott of Arizona businesses, but backed the remainder of the resolution.

Mayor Gavin Newsom already has condemned Arizona’s law, but he has not decided whether to sign the board’s resolution, said spokesman Tony Winnicker. However, he will not veto the legislation. He added that the mayor already has directed city employees, except for law enforcement or public health purposes, from traveling to Arizona on official business.

Major League Baseball to take any kind of strong stance on Arizona's controversial new immigration law

Don’t expect Major League Baseball to take any kind of strong stance on Arizona’s controversial new immigration law  if baseball ever gets around to commenting on it at all.Commissioner Bud Selig can’t go around shaking his fist and making threats to take the 2011 All-Star Game out of Phoenix, for instance, when he’s got his other hand in Arizonans’ pockets fishing for money for the Cubs’ new spring-training facility.

Selig may have no choice but to bite his lip and remain conspicuously silent on the subject.But standing idly by while others fight the battle on this wrong-headed law is reprehensible for an industry with so much potentially at stake, an industry more deeply invested in Arizona than any other professional sports league and with more Spanish-speaking, foreign-born players than any other league — not even counting the hundreds of minor-leaguers who fit that description.The Cubs alone have 13 players on their 40-man roster who were born in Latin American countries and another 104 among the minor-leaguers listed in the media guide.The battleground already reached the Cubs’ doorstep last weekend when protesters of the law demonstrated outside Wrigley Field when the Cubs played the Arizona Diamondbacks.The law requires police to question, with reasonable cause, people they suspect of being in the country illegally.

Even proponents all but admit the law is unnecessary considering it mirrors existing federal laws, which seems to make its only purpose to create enough of an onus and pressure on local cops to assure heavier doses of racial profiling and harassment (requisite anti-discrimination, window-dressing language aside).President Obama, lawmakers from other parts of the country and the major-league players union are among those who publicly oppose the law, which is being challenged in the courts.

Plenty of strong opinions

Within baseball, players such as San Diego Padres star Adrian Gonzalez, who was born in San Diego and spent some of his childhood in Tijuana, have been especially vocal in their opposition. Gonzalez called the law ”immoral” and called for baseball to boycott Arizona spring training if the law still is on the books next February.He and White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen both have said they’d boycott the 2011 All-Star game if selected to participate.Some of the Cubs’ Latin players were less strident or unwilling to talk publicly about it.

But Venezuelan-born pitcher Carlos Silva, who now lives in Minnesota, said he has thought a lot about how it might impact him and other Latin players. ”It’s kind of tough for us,” he said, ”especially for me — I look like a Mexican. I’m going to get stopped a lot of times.”He said he joked with his wife that she shouldn’t be surprised if he calls her from Mexico.This isn’t baseball’s law. And many say it’s not baseball’s place to get involved. But it could become baseball’s problem.

Said former Cub Cesar Izturis: ”Now they’re going to go after everybody, not just the people behind the wall. Now they’re going to come out on the street. What if you’re walking on the street with your family and kids? They’re going to go after you.”

Proponents of the law have said those kinds of fears are unfounded. And maybe they’re right.But those kinds of fears are real. And the first time this new law produces a publicized wrongful detention of a citizen, they’re going to grow.And there’s enough history of bigotry and profiling in this country to justify the fears.

In addition, the Phoenix and Maricopa County authorities have a reputation for being among the more aggressive in the West, if not the U.S.Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who already has been heavily criticized for his aggressive enforcement of immigration laws, is regionally famous for his road-side chain gangs of county inmates and calls himself ”America’s toughest sheriff.”This is the place where drunk drivers get sentenced to a tent city. And a place where police practice an unwritten policy of DUI-stop quotas.

A friend from Chicago who hasn’t had a drink in more than 10 years tells the story of being pulled over one night during spring training for ”weaving in your lane.” After eventually convincing the cop he was sober and persistently challenging the notion he’d done anything worthy of being stopped, the cop finally admitted he was required to stop a certain number of drivers every shift.Bottom line: It’s an MLB issue How does Bud Selig think this new immigration law is going to play out in the hands of these local authorities? And why wouldn’t guys like Silva or Izturis be concerned?

It’s not about whether they’re legal or if they’ll have documents to prove it. It’s about the potential for being singled out because of what they look or sound like, for being hassled disproportionately, for being afforded a different set of civil rights.For instance, does anybody think Canadian Ryan Dempster will face the same scrutiny?While Selig may be fumbling to keep his eyes, ears and mouth covered while keeping one hand free to dig for Arizona taxpayer money, believe this: This law is a baseball issue.Possibly baseball’s problem.And the longer he pretends it doesn’t concern him, the worse he and the game look.

After immigration law and now Arizona will faces boycott calls

PHOENIX Civil rights leaders are urging organizations to cancel their conventions in Arizona. Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks are encountering protesters on the road. And the AriZona iced tea company wants everyone to know that its drinks are made in New York.Arizona is facing a backlash over its new law cracking on illegal immigrants, with opponents pushing for a tourism boycott like the one that was used to punish the state 20 years ago over its refusal to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. with a holiday.”The goal is to as quickly as possible bring to a shocking stop the economy of Arizona,” former state Sen. Alfredo Gutierrez said Friday as a coalition called Boycott Arizona announced its formation.

The outcry has grown steadily in the week since Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed the nation’s toughest law against illegal immigration. The measure makes it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally, and directs local police to question people about their immigration status and demand to see their documents if there is reason to suspect they are illegal.Many in Arizona support the law amid growing anger over the federal government’s failure to secure the border. The state has become a major gateway for drug smuggling and human trafficking from Mexico.

Critics say the law will lead to racial profiling and other abuses, and they are giving Arizona a public relations beating over the issue.Groups have called on people not to fly Tempe-based US Airways, rent trucks from Phoenix-based U-Haul or go to Suns and Diamondbacks games. A New York congressman and others are urging major league baseball to move the 2011 All Star Game out of Phoenix.

The Major League Baseball players’ union opposes the new law, issuing a statement Friday expressing concern it could have a negative impact on hundreds of ballplayers and their families. The union will consider taking “additional steps” if the law goes into effect this summer.The cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles have talked of cutting off deals with the state and its businesses.Phoenix is vying for the 2012 Republican National Convention, and at least one mayor has called on political leaders to choose a different city.

About 40 immigrant rights activists gathered outside Wrigley Field in Chicago on Thursday, chanting, “Boycott Arizona” as the Diamondbacks opened a series against the Cubs. A small plane pulling a banner criticizing the law circled the stadium.Civil rights leaders from the Rev. Al Sharpton to Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa have pushed for a boycott.Turning the tables on the state, the Mexican government warned citizens to use extreme caution when visiting Arizona.With all things Arizona now under attack, the AriZona Beverage Co. evidently feared business would suffer. The iced tea company tweeted: “AriZona is and always has been a NY based company! (BORN IN BKLYN ’92)”

Fifteen million people visit Arizona each year for vacations, conventions and sporting events such as the Fiesta Bowl, pro golf tournaments and baseball spring training. The state tourism office estimated that conventions and other travel and tourist spending in Arizona brought in $18.5 billion in 2008.Some companies said the call for a boycott has had no noticeable effect, although Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., said he has heard of six events being canceled. One of the groups to pull out is the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which canceled a fall conference to be held at a Scottsdale resort.

“We knew that the governor had this bill sitting on her desk,” spokesman George Tzamaras said. “Literally, minutes after she signed it the board of governors convened a conference call, and by an almost unanimous vote the association decided to pull that meeting.”The prospect of a boycott unnerves Arizona tourism officials.”We’re worried about keeping every convention and meeting here in Phoenix. It’s an economic driver here in the state; it provides hundreds of thousands of jobs and a good economic boost to the state,” said Doug MacKenzie, spokesman for the Greater Phoenix Convention & Visitors Bureau.MacKenzie said he has heard of five or six event cancellations, adding, “I think it’s misguided to bring the tourism industry into the crosshairs of this political issue.”

In 1990, Arizona voters’ rejection of a King holiday set off a cascade of cancellations of conventions and other events. The NFL pulled the 1993 Super Bowl from the Phoenix suburb of Tempe. The NBA told the Phoenix Suns not to bother putting in a bid for the All-Star game.By the time voters finally passed a holiday bill two years later, estimates of lost convention business in the Phoenix area alone topped $190 million.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who surprised many by reversing course and supporting the new immigration law, said the latest furor and the King dustup are completely different.”One was about honoring a civil rights hero who a majority of Americans held in extremely high esteem,” he said. “The other is about an issue of national security and the security of our citizens, where we have broken borders and are literally overwhelmed with both human smuggling and drugs.”

The governor’s spokesman, Paul Senseman, said boycotts are a foolish response when opponents can mount a legal challenge or try to repeal the law in a referendum.”A boycott is not only the least effective but the most discriminatory and harmful method to utilize when there are other methods in our democratic process that are readily available,” he said.(AP)

Arizona's controversial immigration law will spark scores of people to protest in May 1 rallies nationwide and add urgency to pleas for federal immigration reform

CHICAGO Immigrant rights activists hope Arizona’s controversial immigration law will spark scores of people to protest in May 1 rallies nationwide and add urgency to pleas for federal immigration reform.Dozens of marches are planned for Saturday in cities across the country from Los Angeles to Dallas to New York.”What happened in Arizona proves that racism and anti-immigrant hysteria across the country still exists. We need to continue to fight,” said Lee Siu Hin, a coordinator with the Washington, D.C.-based National Immigrant Solidarity Network.

Activists believe opposition to Arizona’s new law  which requires authorities to question people about immigration status if there’s reason to suspect they’re in the country illegally could be the catalyst needed to draw record-breaking crowds similar to those four years ago.

That’s when more than a million across the country united to fight federal legislation considered anti-immigrant. Though the bill, which would have made being an illegal immigrant a felony, was unsuccessful, it triggered massive marches across the nation.Since then, the May 1 movement has fractured and attendance has dropped sharply as attempts to reform federal immigration policy fizzled. In 2006, nearly half a million people took to Chicago’s streets. Last year, fewer than 15,000 participated.But after the Arizona law was signed into law last week, immigration reform advocates have seen a flurry of activity.

Relying on online social networking, churches and ethnic media to mobilize, activists have called for a boycott of Arizona businesses and protested outside Arizona Diamondbacks baseball games. Earlier in the week, two dozen activists chanting “Illinois is not Arizona” were arrested for blocking traffic outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in suburban Chicago.While supporters say the law is necessary because of the federal government’s failure to secure the border and growing anxiety over crime related to illegal immigration, critics say it’s unconstitutional and encourages racial profiling and discrimination against immigrants or anyone thought to be an immigrant.

Activists fear that without federal legislation in place to address the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S., other states will follow Arizona’s lead and pass similar legislation.”If Republicans and Democrats do not take care of this albatross around our necks, this will in fact be the undoing of many, many years of civil rights struggle in this country,” said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, a spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, where a downtown march is planned on Saturday. “I’m hoping that there is enough fire in people’s hearts and minds to urge them to be mobilized.”

But chances the federal government will step in this year seemed slim.President Barack Obama, who had once promised to tackle immigration reform in his first 100 days but has pushed back that timetable several times, said this week that Congress may lack the “appetite” to take on immigration after going through a tough legislative year.

Meanwhile, activists say problems with a broken immigration system continue to affect millions  raids on workplaces create mistrust of authorities and separate families with mixed immigration status, employers take advantage of immigrant labor and thousands of college students are left in limbo.That includes 19-year-old Patricio Gonzalez who immigrated to the U.S. from Argentina at age five with his family on a tourist visa. It expired and his family wasn’t able to gain legal status.The Memphis teen said he had to drop out of college last fall because he wasn’t eligible for most student aid and couldn’t afford tuition.

“Do you know how difficult it is to see all your friends getting their education, and you’ve grown up with these people for years, they’re part of your family?” he said. “We’re creating lost generations — kids who grow up hopeless with no sense of betterment.”Activists aren’t alone in their opposition, a fact May 1 organizers hope will draw out even more people to rallies on Saturday which also is International Workers Day.California legislators have mulled canceling contracts with Arizona in protest. Denver Public Schools has banned work-related travel to Arizona. And several legal challenges, preventing the bill from going into effect this summer, are in the works.

Immigrant rights activists also say they’re stepping up other forms of action including more civil disobedience tactics. In Chicago, several college students plan to publicly “come out” as illegal immigrants on a downtown stage on Saturday.
“It’s time to come together and show that undocumenteds have dignity. They’re human,” said Douglas Interiano, a spokesman of Reform Immigration for Texas Alliance, which is helping plan Saturday’s march in Dallas.

He projected up to 100,000 could march in Texas with similar events planned in El Paso, Houston, Austin and San Juan. Organizers in California predicted up to 100,000 marching in downtown Los Angeles, too.”Given what’s happening in Arizona now it’s crucial for us to speak out and denounce what’s happening,” said Veronica Mendez, an organizer with the Workers Interfaith Network in Minneapolis, Minn., where there’s a Saturday rally. “We all have the same hopes and goals.”(AP)

PHOENIX,Lawsuits challenge new Arizona immigration law

PHOENIX  Anger mounted Thursday over an Arizona law cracking down on illegal immigration as a police officer filed one of the first lawsuits challenging the law and activists gathered outside an Arizona Diamondbacks game at Wrigley Field in Chicago, chanting “Boycott Arizona.”The lawsuit from 15-year Tucson police veteran Martin Escobar is one of two filed Thursday, less than a week after Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed the law that’s sparked fears it will lead to racial profiling despite the governor’s vow that officers will be properly trained.U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said the federal government may challenge the law, which requires local and state law enforcement to question people about their immigration status if there’s reason to suspect they’re in the country illegally, and makes it a state crime to be in the United States illegally.Escobar, an overnight patrol officer in a heavily Latino area of Tucson, argues there’s no way for officers to confirm people’s immigration status without impeding investigations, and that the new law violates numerous constitutional rights.

Tucson police spokesman Sgt. Fabian Pacheco said Escobar is acting on his own, not on behalf of the department.The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders also filed a lawsuit Thursday, and is seeking an injunction preventing authorities from enforcing the law. The group argues federal law pre-empts state regulation of national borders, and that Arizona’s law violates due process rights by letting police detain suspected illegal immigrants before they’re convicted.

“Mexican-Americans are not going to take this lying down,” singer Linda Ronstadt, a Tucson native, said at a state Capitol news conference on another lawsuit planned by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Immigration Law Center.At least three Arizona cities  Phoenix, Flagstaff and Tucson are considering legal action to block the law. In Flagstaff, police are investigating a threatening e-mail sent to members of the city council over their opposition to the law. The author said council members should be “arrested, tried in court, found guilty of treason and hanged from the nearest tree!”

About 40 immigrant rights activists gathered outside Wrigley Field in Chicago Thursday as the Cubs open a four-game series against the Arizona Diamondbacks. A small plane toting a banner criticizing the law circled the stadium, and activist George Lieu said they’ve sent a letter to Cubs management asking them to stop holding spring training in Arizona.A Cubs spokesman declined to comment. Arizona manager A.J. Hinch says the team is there to play baseball.

On Wednesday, a group filed papers to launch a referendum drive that could put the law on hold until 2012, when voters could decide whether it is repealed.The legislation’s chief sponsor, Republican Rep. Russell Pearce, said he has no doubt voters will support the new law at the ballot box, which would then protect it from repeal by the Legislature. In Arizona, measures approved by voters can only be repealed at the ballot box.

Meanwhile, the effect of the law continued to ripple beyond Arizona.A group of conservative state lawmakers in Oklahoma are considering pushing a bill similar to Arizona’s. In Texas, Rep. Debbie Riddle, a Republican, said she will introduce a measure similar to the Arizona law in the January legislative session. And Republicans running for governor in Colorado and Minnesota expressed support for the crackdown. “I’d do something very similar” if elected,” Former Rep. Scott McInnis, told KHOW-AM radio in Denver.

Denver Public Schools is banning work-related travel to Arizona. Even though school employees are in the country legally, DPS spokesman Kristy Armstrong said officials don’t want them to be “subjected to that kind of scrutiny and search.Retired South African archbishop Desmond Tutu also chimed in, saying he supports the idea of a boycott of Arizona businesses, according to a letter he wrote that was posted Wednesday onTheCommunity.com, a website for Nobel peace laureates that promotes peace and human rights.

“I recognize that Arizona has become a widening entry point for illegal immigration from the South … but a solution that degrades innocent people, or that makes anyone with broken English a suspect, is not a solution,” Tutu saidColombian singer Shakira planned to visit Phoenix on Thursday to meet with the city’s police chief and mayor over her concerns that the law would lead to racial profiling.(Ap)