TancredoCode: Illegal Immigrants? Nah, Too Many Mexicans!

The anti-immigrant rhetoric of 2007 is really anti-Mexican prejudice (long a tradition in the Southwest and West, but becoming universal throughout this land) warmed over. Ruben Navarrette is a Harvard-educated Californio who calls an espada an espada. (Tr. "espada= spade") Press 1 for English or Dos para Español . If this is (fair & balanced) truth to xenophobia, so be it.

[x San Diego Fishwrap]
Separate fact from fiction in immigration debate
By Ruben Navarrette Jr.

What can I say? Bill Richardson rocks.

While John Edwards and Barack Obama were taking shots at Hillary Clinton during the recent CNN Democratic debate in Las Vegas, the New Mexico governor was focusing on his own candidacy and delivering one of the best performances of the night.

Even those who believe that Richardson is really auditioning for a vice presidential nomination would have to concede that the audition is going well.

Just think about the novel way in which Richardson, in answering a question from the audience about the tone of the immigration debate, did something that is practically unheard of in the dizzying pander-monium of the 2008 campaign: He scolded the audience and told them that not only do we have a dysfunctional border that is being breached by illegal immigrants, a dysfunctional system that makes it too hard for people to enter legally, and a dysfunctional Congress that won't tackle the issue in an honest and productive way, but even the way we discuss these issues is dysfunctional.

For one thing, too many Americans keep falling into old habits and repeating a historically familiar depiction of immigrants — legal or illegal — as inferior to natives, defective in their culture, slow to assimilate, prone to criminal activity and devoid of any positive values. Or, as Republican presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo contends in an outrageous television commercial, terrorists in the making.

Tancredo's point was not lost on the person who asked the question during the Democratic debate. George Ambriz, a graduate student at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, noted that one thing shaping the immigration debate is the claim by some that controlling illegal immigration is linked to the war on terrorism. He then asked the Democratic candidates if they agreed that these two things should be linked.

Richardson seized on the question to make a pitch for more civility in our discourse.

"We should stop demonizing immigrants," he said. "We should stop doing that."

Amen. You don't hear that sort of thing often enough from politicians, even from liberal Democrats who like to portray themselves as more progressive on immigration policy than those retrograde Republicans. It should be clear by now that immigration is one issue that cuts across party lines and makes some Democrats sound downright Republican.

Nor would you expect to hear it from Hispanic politicians, many of whom might fear being tagged as overly sympathetic to illegal immigrants. That's the risk that Richardson faces whenever he talks about immigration.

The last time I heard something similar to what Richardson said, it came from someone who is an immigrant — California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, like Richardson, has the advantage of living far from Washington and having the real-world perspective of a border governor.

Schwarzenegger says that Americans should channel their anger over illegal immigration toward the federal government and not toward immigrants.

I know what you're thinking — that these governors are wrong and that the angst that many Americans feel isn't over "immigrants," just "illegal immigrants."

Sure, sure. It's a lovely sound bite but one not based in fact. Anyone who believes that nonsense hasn't been paying very close attention to the immigration debate. It may have started off being about words such as "legal" and "illegal," but that lasted about 18 seconds. From there, the debate meandered into the cultural swamp. It became about the outrage that we have to "press 1 for English" and how it's bad manners to wave the Mexican flag and how cities should be able to outlaw taco trucks or dictate the number of people who can squeeze into a single-family house. It became about whether we should admit educated and skilled immigrants rather than those whose only qualifications are a strong work ethic and hope for the future. And it became about whether it is time to impose a moratorium on legal immigration to aid the assimilation process for those already here.

Once we went down that road, of course, things were going to get ugly. And, of course, the debate was going to be acrimonious. And, of course, the subtext of the discussion was going to go from anti-illegal immigration to anti-Mexican, just as it has. No surprise there.

That's why it is crucial that people speak out against this sort of thing, especially if they happen to be running for president. We ought to be grateful that at least one has.

[Ruben Navarrette Jr., a columnist and editorial board member of The San Diego Union-Tribune, is a fresh and increasingly important voice in the national political debate. His twice-weekly column offers new thinking on many of the major issues of the day, especially on thorny questions involving ethnicity and national origin. His column is syndicated worldwide by The Washington Post Writers Group.

After graduating from Harvard in 1990, Navarrette returned to his native Fresno, Calif., where he began a free-lance writing career that produced more than 200 articles in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, The Fresno Bee, the Chicago Tribune and The Arizona Republic.

In 1997 he joined the staff of The Arizona Republic, first as a reporter and then as a twice-weekly columnist, before returning to Harvard in the fall of 1999 to earn a master's in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government. He joined the editorial board of The Dallas Morning News in July 2000, and in 2005, moved to the Union-Tribune. His column has been in syndication since 2001.]

Copyright © 2007 The San Diego Union-Tribune

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Get Your Guns Up! It's You Or The Damn Feral Cat!

A sharp-eyed reader of this blog in Madison, WI passed along an item that illustrates Lone Star priorities in a time of war, $100-a-barrel oil, and global warming. A few years back, this same reader sent along an item about the feral cat problem in Cheesehead Land. Now, it seems there is a feral cat problem in Galveston County, TX. Only Texas can produce a gun-totin' bird lover, though. A gun-totin' cat lover in Wisconsin isn't possible because Wisconsin doesn't have a right-to-carry law. In Texas, there can be a shootout between cat-lovers and bird-lovers. As it turned out, the Galveston cat-lover (lacking a gun at the moment) ran the bird-lovin' cat killer off the road after giving chase. No wonder the supporters of the Texas Tech Red Raiders say: "Get your guns up!" That sure beat hell out crying "Hark!" or "Here, Kitty, Kitty!" If this is (fair & balanced) folly, so be it.

[x Wisconsin State Journal]
Cat killer is big news in Texas
By Bill Wineke

It's a matter of perspective, I guess.

While most of the world is concerned about war, rumors of war, global warming and $100-a-barrel oil, the big news in Texas is cat killing.

Killing pet cats in Texas is illegal; killing wild cats is not.

If you shoot a pet cat in Texas, you could be fined $10,000 fine and jailed for six months to two years.

But you can shoot a feral cat with impunity.

The problem for Jim Stevenson, founder of the Galveston Ornithological Society, is that he mistook Cat One for Cat Two.

On Nov. 8, Stevenson aimed a .22 caliber rifle filled with hollow point bullets and shot dead a cat near the San Luis Pass Bridge. As one of the state's most prominent birders, Stevenson has a strong dislike for outdoor cats. He thinks outdoor cats have a propensity to stalk and kill birds — most likely because all cats have a propensity to stalk and kill birds.

What Stevenson didn't know is the cat he shot had a name, Mama Cat.

Mama Cat and several other strays had taken up residence at the toll bridge because toll collector John Newland fed them and hung cat toys under the bridge to make them feel at home.

Newland was not happy at seeing his "pet" cat killed. He jumped into his vehicle and took off after Stevenson, who was driving a white van emblazoned with the name "Galveston Ornithological Society." The vehicles collided and Newland called the cops.

Stevenson was arrested and charged with cruelty to animals. A jury deliberated his fate but could not come to a conclusion, so the drama ended — for now — in a mistrial.

If all this strikes you as a little overdramatic for a cat that lived under a bridge, you don't know cat lovers.

We faced a feral cat battle in Wisconsin in 2005. The Wisconsin Conservation Congress suggested amending state laws to classify wild cats as an "unprotected species." Had that happened, people would have been free to shoot feral cats the same way they can now shoot gophers or, for that matter, feral pigs.

The reasoning was Wisconsin has an estimated 2 million feral cats and they kill — we think — lots of songbirds, as many as 139 million a year by some estimates. Or, as few as 8 million by other estimates. The fact is we don't know much about feral cats or about their birding abilities. But we do know cat lovers are more vociferous than bird lovers. The proposal never got off the ground.

That's probably a good thing. When you see what's going on in Galveston, you can be glad we don't have to force juries here to determine whether cats are feral or tame.

You do have to wonder, though, about a society that can't seem to agree on a definition of "torture" when it comes to human beings but is more than willing to go to the mat to defend bird-killing cats.

[Bill Wineke writes a personal column for the State Journal, where he has worked since 1963. He also is an ordained clergyman of the United Church of Christ.]

All contents Copyright © 2007, Capital Newspapers, Inc.

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My Mother Road

Colfax Avenue is the east-west axis of Denver, CO. West Colfax begins at the foothills of the Rockies, near Golden, CO and proceeding east to the upper end of the downtown area East Colfax Avenue continues east to the plains that are indistinguishable from western Kansas. West Colfax was the main street of my adolescence (I lived two blocks south of Colfax at 1325 Raleigh Street.) and East Colfax was the main street of my early college years. (I lived at 690 Pearl Street eight blocks south of Colfax between Pennsylvania and Washington Streets.) West Colfax Avenue was lined with used car lots, motels, and, heading further west, bars and nightclubs. East Colfax is described, as it is today, by a freelance journalist for the NY Fishwrap. Looking back, I always felt more at home on West Colfax. Neither one — to paraphrase Neil Diamond — is home anymore. If this is (fair & balanced) nostalgia, so be it.


[x NY Fishwrap]
Denver Journal: A Notorious Main Drag, in Line for Big Changes
By Dan Frosch

Click on image to enlarge

Colfax Avenue is often described as one of America’s wickedest streets. Jack Kerouac wrote of its tawdry watering holes in “On The Road.” In the movie “Every Which Way But Loose,” Clint Eastwood’s character and his pet orangutan, Clyde, came here looking for action.

The broad, bustling thoroughfare is Denver’s most famous and notorious drag — a refuge for poets, addicts, hipsters and hustlers that has been the Rocky Mountains’ answer to Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco and Greenwich Village in New York. But while those neighborhoods have become gentrified, Colfax Avenue has largely retained its hardscrabble soul.

But there are signs the avenue is changing, particularly the Capitol Hill section, where ambitious new zoning laws and increased police presence are drawing businesses and driving down crime. And some residents worry that the resurgence will sanitize Colfax Avenue’s legendary grit.

“People always say they’re trying to establish a sense of community here, as if it didn’t already exist,” said Walt Young, who has been cutting hair for 38 years at the Upper Cut, an old-time barber shop on the avenue.

The Capitol Hill slice of Colfax Avenue was a haven for the wealthy before it fell on difficult times. Today it is among the city’s most colorful and distinctly urban neighborhoods, a warren of apartment buildings where young, upwardly mobile transplants, low-income senior citizens and street-hardened addicts co-exist.

In the shadows of the Colorado Statehouse, the Roslyn Grill opens in the morning to serve beer to drunks and to delivery men fresh off the graveyard shift. At night, half-dazed homeless people stagger among college students going to see bands at Colfax Avenue venues. Drug dealers peddle heroin and crack as the young professionals who have flocked to the remodeled Victorian-era buildings nearby walk their dogs.

“The social configuration of the streets here is a reflection of the neighborhood itself,” said Mr. Young, who counts street denizens and the Colorado secretary of state, Mike Coffman, as customers.

Mr. Young fears that the dynamic could change. In September 2005, the Denver City Council approved more structured zoning regulations for Colfax Avenue, parts of which are blighted by abandoned buildings and vacant parking lots, with the intention of turning it into Denver’s Main Street.

The Capitol Hill area, where haphazard development is particularly apparent, was rezoned to encourage ground-floor businesses with residential units above them. The idea was to create a synthesis between people on the street and activity inside the storefronts, said Katherine Cornwell, the principal city planner. It is part of a long-term plan for Colfax Avenue that is meant to proceed without disrupting the neighborhood’s eccentricities, Ms. Cornwell said.

“We recognize that Colfax is one of those places where a lot of very different types of people can co-exist together with good results,” she said.

Farther east, Colfax Avenue has been galvanized by a similar renaissance, mostly with the arrival of the spacious Tattered Cover Book Store and the transition of a once seamy motel’s ground floor into one of the city’s most popular bars, Ms. Cornwell said.

Already, establishments of a new breed are springing up in Capitol Hill, like the Cheeky Monk Belgian Beer Cafe, whose expansive glass storefront allows passers-by to peer in at customers, just as city planners had envisioned.

“The more you can do from a design perspective, the more participation you get from the community, the more likely you’re going to see a decrease in crime,” said Drew O’Connor, executive director of the Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods group.

Cracking down on disorder has also been an integral part of the revitalization efforts. Last year, Mayor John W. Hickenlooper convened a task force to focus on areas overrun with criminal activity.

“This is a beautiful area, but what’s unappealing about it has been the drug trafficking and the punks that hang around here,” Mr. Hickenlooper said of Colfax Avenue. He was once a part owner of the Red Room, one of the newer, sleeker bars on the avenue.

The task force included police officers, city officials and community leaders, and it has used detailed crime data to help fight the “largest open-air drug market in the Rocky Mountain West,” said Jeremy Bronson, public safety special assistant to Mr. Hickenlooper.

The strategy seems to be working. According to city statistics, crime is down 40 percent in the area since 2005, and police calls responding to drug activity are down 34 percent.

Crime was never a worry for Sheila Keathley, who has owned a popular gay bar, the Denver Detour, on Colfax Avenue for 24 years. “People who live here understand that Colfax is just very different,” she said.

Ms. Keathley’s business will soon move because her landlord recently sold the property. But Ms. Cornwell, the city planner, pointed to the fact that the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless had bought the building as proof that the neighborhood’s social consciousness was thriving. She said the city would help pay for the Detour’s move.

Still, Phil Goodstein, a local author who leads walking tours of the Capitol Hill area, said he was skeptical whether the city’s plans would work. With a wry smile, he pointed out some of the Colfax’s more memorable landmarks, including an old optometrist’s office, now abandoned, where customers could buy eyeglasses to better see the pornographic magazines that were also on sale.

At the corner of Colfax Avenue and Pennsylvania Street, Mr. Goodstein stopped and surveyed the street. A young, smartly dressed couple walked home from work. A group of teenagers, draped in goth clothes, wandered toward the nearby Fillmore Auditorium. A haggard looking old man sat on a stoop, one hand gripping an oversized walkie-talkie, his eyes shut, mouth agape.

“Just let Colfax be Colfax,” Mr. Goodstein said.

[Dan Frosch is a freelance journalist based in New York City. He's been on staff at the San Gabriel Valley Weekly section of the Los Angeles Times, The Source magazine, the Pacific Palisades Post and most recently the Santa Fe Reporter. Dan's work has also appeared in In These Times, AlterNet, VIBE, Washington City Paper, and the New York Times.]

Copyright © 2007 The New York Times Company

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