(SPECIAL-LENGTH FINAL COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS)

   By: Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez
How do you end a column after 16 years? With regrets and unfulfilled dreams? Perhaps, but truthfully, Column of the Americas as a deadline-based column ends with even bigger dreams.

There indeed is disappointment with the ease in which the U.S. populace has accepted and normalized 1) the notion of permanent war as a God-given U.S. birthright; 2) the further militarization of the nation & world; 3) the politics of fear, hate and blame; and 4) Big Brother Government. All with nary a whimper.

Under George W. Bush, this was not surprising. The disappointment has come in seeing the Obama administration generally embrace the reactionary policies of Bush’s 9-11 Nation. Despite the 2006 & 2008 electoral sweeps – in which the electorate thoroughly repudiated the Republican program of war, xenophobia and corporate welfare – [angry] conservatives act as though they won. The irony is that president Obama actually has governed as though he agrees, and owes them. For example, his health care reform is actually a centrist compromise; universal health care it is not.

There are regrets; while many of us drove CNN’s Lou Dobbs into political exile, we didn’t consistently go after the entertainment industry – an industry that enables dehumanization and what amounts to racial apartheid. During this era, Jay Leno made Americans comfortable laughing nightly at “illegal aliens.” After 35 years, Saturday Night Live has still not taken its “No Red-Brown comedians need apply” signs down, and Spanish-language TV continues to generally be an assortment of “all-blonde” networks.

Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez and Patrisia Gonzales, Ph.D

Another regret is that the journalism profession has now become the lapdog of government.

Even now, there’s plenty of money for invading, occupying and bombing nations, but little for health and education.

While pols are seemingly unaware of this jarring equation, media lapdogs are nowadays handsomely rewarded for being consistently wrong and/or silent.

Enough on these failings.

The bigger dreams involve ceasing writing reactively and writing from a point of creation. Column writing is necessarily reactive; I’ve been writing about human/Indigenous rights, anti-immigrant hysteria and U.S.-support of brutal military dictatorships since 1972. And now, with a president lying us into Iraq, the instinct is to counter. The same holds true when society unabashedly scapegoats brown peoples, and treats migrants as disposable populations; witness the March 21 rally in Washington D.C. More than demanding reform, it was a demand by more than 100,000 marchers to treat migrants as full human beings. While the president’s centrist approach to immigration reform places a heavy emphasis on draconian enforcement, conservatives will interpret human rights for migrants and “the path to legalization” as nothing short of “freeing the slaves” and a cause for insurrection.

Simply creating, without countering is akin to burying one’s head in the sand. But there comes a time when always responding means always reacting – rarely creating. But because of permanent war, my focus as a writer lately, has become heavily tiled towards resistance. The creation element of who I am has suffered (this is true of most people). It’s time for balance, thus a time to create.

Through the years, I’ve been exposed to great maestros/maestras and great Tlamintini – great teachers – who have shared their knowledge and Huehuetlahtolli (ancient guidances) about what it means to be human. Hereafter, I want to continue with those traditions and contribute to the definition of what it means to be human.

In discontinuing the column, I take no pleasure in hereafter writing strictly for an academic audience. It goes against who I am. I’ve always written for mass audiences, including writing Column of the Americas since 1994 for more than 100 newspapers nationwide. For the first 12 years, it was co-written as a weekly, syndicated column with my wife, Patrisia Gonzales, for Chronicle Features, then Universal Press Syndicate (Her Patzin column is slated to return). In writing for the academy, the audience is much smaller and narrower, while jargon is the preferred means of communication. It’s not naturally conducive for storytelling. Even beyond that, the acceptable experts continue to be “the usual suspects.”

I will continue to assert that if our own aunts and uncles, parents, grandparents, neighbors and other elders – whom we used to quote frequently – can’t understand our own writing, then what good did all our years of schooling accomplish?

As such, I plan to continue to make public the knowledge that has been passed on to me via elder knowledge – in forthcoming essays and columns and academic and non-academic books. I look forward to the day when I will not have to write for two separate audiences.

I also look forward to the day when we as a society have finally eliminated war as a “solution” to anything, and when society ceases to divide human beings into legal and illegal categories. I am convinced that even the most conservative of conservatives don’t either want such a society. I look forward to the day when we can all truly say: San Ce Tojuan – Nosotros Somos Uno – We Are One.

It’s not something that comes about solely through dreaming. One has to imagine it, fight for it, and then live it.

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You change my way of writing, you change my way of thinking. You change my way of thinking, you change who I am.
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Beware of the new Sheriff in town; he’s actually an old coyote.
He denigrates, dehumanizes and belittles; he’s an eater of flesh.
pink underwear, pinstripes and ball and chains are his trademark.
He’s actually an old sheriff who lives in another century, in the Wild West.
This is Sheriff Arpaio, of Maricopa County, Apartheid Arizona,

Beware of lawmen who hide behind their badges.
Be aware of this man who abuses his badge.
Beware of men who flaunt the law.
Be aware of this man who takes the law into his own hands.
Beware of the most investigated lawman in the country.

Beware of this man who even gives apartheid a bad name.
He chases red/brown men, women and children,
but says he only hunts down the “illegals” amongst them.
He says he knows how to tell them apart…
by the way they dress and talk, and by where they walk.

He’s got a sixth sense for justice and a sixth sense for humanity.
He’s got a sixth sense for determining who is human…
er, he has a sixth sense for determining who is a citizen,
who is an American and who merits human rights, and who does not?
That’s what compels him to use barricades and mass dragnet raids.

It is this sixth sense that guides him: Round them up!
Round them all up wherever red/brown people congregate,
wherever they live, work, shop, eat, play and pray.
His sixth sense tells him that many among them do not belong…
in Arizona, this country or anywhere on this sacred earth.

He does not mind being photographed with racial supremacists,
because he says he will photograph with anyone.
This is America, he says, and it is his job to be everyone’s Sheriff.
It is his job to send them back to where they came from…
the brown hordes ? not the supremacists.

This is a man who defies the federal government,
who thinks he is bigger and greater than the law,
who thinks his number one job is to separates families,
and to create fear, hate and panic amongst us,
and to silence the rest of us.

Do not go near this man; he is rabid, rabid like a wild javeli.
He foams at the mouth, whenever he speaks of his duty,
to round up and deport the red/brown people in his midst.
If necessary, the lil Big man himself will drive them to the border,
especially if cameras are right behind in tow.

Do not go near this man; a man beloved by vigilantes,
a vain man who craves attention and aspires to higher office.
He is but a merchant of fear, ignorance and hate.
He is a man with a complex, but he is not complex;
he’s but a man with a big brown chip on his shoulder.

When you see this man and his posse, call 9-11.
When you see this sheriff running amuck and putting up barricades,
when you see and hear him yapping and wildly waving his arms,
when you see him engaging in his antics before the cameras,
Blow the trumpets and blow them loudly!

Blow the trumpets for his time has come.
Just as the time of Apartheid has also come and gone,
and just as CNN’s Lou Dobbs is now living in forced exile,
Arpaio will also surely be forced to flee, tail between his legs,
insisting on his constitutional right to racially profile.

When you see history marching by, know that Apartheid Man,
will be too preoccupied with trampling the Constitution,
to have time to march on by. Let that inspire you.
Like the undocumented who have lost their fear to march,
take the time to make an appointment with history.

Blow the trumpets loudly, for in the count of days,
his days and his nights are numbered.

* There was a National Call to Action Jan 16, 2010 to protest the
policies of Sheriff Joe Arpaio at Falcon Park in Phoenix, Arizona. For
more info: 602-314-5870 or www.puenteaz.org

The ‘NEW’ Lou Dobbs?: A ‘Kinder,’ ‘Gentler’ and ‘Wiser’ Lou Dobbs Admits Own Stupidity

O’Reilly helps rehabilitate “kinder, gentler” and “wiser” Lou Dobbs

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Bill Cunningham, a well-known racist, disparages Barack Obama at McCain rally. “Now we have a hack, Chicago-style Daley politician who is picturing himself as change. When he gets done with you, all you’re going to have in your pocket is change,” Cunningham said as the audience laughed.

Radio THUG Berates Obama While Introducing McCain

In the audio below, Cunningham falsely referred to “Barack Mohammed Hussein Obama” and advanced MADRASSA falsehood — even though “Mohammed” is not a part of Obama’s name, saying at one point that “it would be a shock” if “Barack Mohammed Hussein Obama can be elected the president of this country in these difficult terrorist times.” Cunningham also falsely claimed that Obama “was raised in madrassas in Indonesia” and falsely accused Obama’s church of being “black separatist” and “black racist.” — [ READ MORE ]

The ScumBag Falsely Inserts Mohammed Hussein into Obama’s Name

McCain denied that he authorized this racist attack on Obama — I do not believe him at all.

Racism in America is alive and well!

……and what the heck is that one BLACK MAN (top video) doing in such a racist meeting — Perhaps just another ReTHUGliTOM suffering from Negrophobia!

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Subject: Tell Lou Dobbs to get his facts straight

May 15, 2007

Dear Friend,

The increasingly nasty immigration debate, driven by demagogic politicians and right-wing pundits, is stoking the fires of racist extremism — spawning a new breed of well-armed vigilantes and fueling a dramatic growth in hate groups.

Unfortunately, mainstream journalists like CNN’s Lou Dobbs are playing a major role in fomenting anti-immigrant hysteria.

Despite being confronted with undisputed evidence to the contrary, Mr. Dobbs says he stands “100 percent behind” the claim that there have been 7,000 new cases of leprosy in the U.S. in recent years. What’s more, he has attributed part of the increase to “unscreened illegal immigrants.”

The truth, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is that new leprosy cases peaked in 1985 at 361 and have declined since, even as the number of undocumented immigrants has increased. The source for Dobbs’ outrageous leprosy claim is an anti-immigration zealot who once publicly stated that “most” Latino immigrant men “molest girls under 12, although some specialize in boys, and some in nuns.”

This is not the first time that Mr. Dobbs has chosen to rely on dubious sources with a virulent anti-immigrant agenda. He has repeatedly given legitimacy to individuals and groups who promote wild, unsupported claims about immigration.

Given that Mr. Dobbs refuses to retract his leprosy claim, we believe it is CNN’s responsibility to do so. We feel so strongly about this that we’ve placed open letters in today’s New York Times and USA Today calling for CNN to correct the record on Mr. Dobbs’ show.

Please join with us in asking CNN to tell Lou Dobbs to get his facts straight. Contact CNN and tell company executives that it is dangerous to present false claims about a serious public health issue and demonize an entire group in the process.

Thank you for your commitment to justice and fairness.

Sincerely Yours    Richard Cohen, CEO and President

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References | ViewPoints:

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Report: Supremacist activity flourishes — Factions fueled by anti-immigrant passions grow by 33 percent, study says.

Special Read: CNN’s Lou Dobbs – The Minister of ‘Propaganda and Enlightenment’ – An Anti-Immigrant Bigot. A Racist, Xenophobic Extortionist.

   The National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group, rallies in Lansing. Mich.,
   in April 2006.