Justicia, Libertad, y Ciudadanía

Arizona just continues its journey to crazy land. In addition to the draconian antimmigrant/racial profiling law, the legislature is also considering two measures that would deprive funding to schools with undocumented students and also a measure that would outlaw race and ethnic studies programs in the state of Arizona. Well, race and ethnic studies programs except those focused on white people, who apparently aren't a racial group in Arizona. The latter measure also carries a reference title of “prohibited courses.” Sounds to me like Arizona is racking up its anti-U.S. points by now being against free speech, doesn’t it?

Today happens to be Cinco de Mayo. In Mexico, this holiday commemorates an important military victory against a French invasion force. That's right, France. Personally, I always suspected that this holiday only gained traction during the brutal dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (since he was involved in said Battle of Puebla), but I’d need to look into that.

In the United States, this holiday commemorates any flimsy excuse to drink oneself silly midweek. Nota bene to the people of the U.S., José Cuervo was not a Mexican freedom fighter.

President Benito Juárez led Mexico into battle with the rousing statement, "The [French] Imperial Government will not succeed in subduing the Mexicans, and its armies will not have a single day of peace... we must stop them, not only for our country but for the respect of the sovereignty of all nations." He did not motivate his troops by saying, "Winning this war will mean half off on all pitchers of frozen Strawberry Margaritas! If you finish by 1867, then I'll throw in some complimentary chips and salsa."

Far be it from me to interfere with people's drinking, though. Hey, even ol’ GayProf will take the opportunity to enjoy his new favorite spring cocktail, the Tequila Gimlet.



Beyond the ritual drinking, I thought we could also use the day to strike back against Arizona’s anti-Mexican lunacy. There have been a number of proposals to hold Arizona accountable for its legalized hatred. Boycotts seem the best measure. If there is one thing Americans respond to, it’s cash-based incentives.

Still, I think we can be more creative in our approach to Arizona. Here are some additional ideas to make Arizona rethink its xenophobic policies:

* Since Arizona is so obsessed with documentation, let’s void Arizona drivers licenses in neighboring states. Before being permitted to take your car across state lines, an Arizona driver would need to prove their adeptness at parallel parking. I’ve seen these people’s driving skills. Trust me – There would be a whole lot of walking once they left the state.

* Cut off their water. Over 1.5 million people are greedy enough to live in Phoenix, or, as I like to call it, the City that Shouldn’t Exist. I would imagine the desert city could get might thirsty this August if their external sources of water suddenly dried up.

* Redesign Arizona’s flag to be this:



* Disallow Mexican food from being served in Arizona. Hey, if they don’t like the people, then they shouldn’t like the cuisine either. Let’s put them back on the diet that turn-of-the-twentieth-century Euro Americans used to prize so highly. For breakfast, they will now get to enjoy cornmeal mush with top milk, toast, and coffee. Not very satisfying? Well, wait until Arizona’s new lunch course: dried peas, bread with oleomargarine, and stewed rhubarb. If they want to pretend like it is 1906, then they can eat like it too.

* Maybe it’s time for another meteor to visit the state...

* Manufacturers should stop shipping sunscreen into the state. Some cases of melanoma might give Arizonans a new appreciation for their neighbors of a darker hue.

* Given Arizona really likes the idea of racial profiling, let’s allow police to start targeting angry white men. After all, several of the most recent terrorist attempts in our nation seem to have been performed by angry white men (Eight members of the Christian Michigan Militia Hutaree are charged with plotting to levy war and also trying to use weapons of mass destruction; Gregory Guisti allegedly threatened to assassinate Nancy Pelosi and some of our other national leaders; and Joseph Stack tried to fly his plane into Austin’s IRS building). Shoot, if Arizona started racially profiling angry white men, Sheriff Joe Arpaio wouldn’t be able to make it out of his own driveway without being pulled over by the cops.



* Only allow Delta to provide airline service to the state. A couple of flights on the “world’s largest carrier” and the residents will be begging for mercy.

* Since Arizona is claiming that they are doing the job of the federal government, let them take possession of the national debt. By my calculation, each Arizona citizen would owe $1,945,615.06. They might want to hold off on applying for that boat loan.

* John McCain and Jon Kyl will henceforth be introduced as “the honorable Senators from that jerkwater state that makes the rest of the U.S. sick.”

* Force Arizona to relinquish its claims to the Latina star Lynda Carter. She might have been born in Phoenix, but she is a national treasure now.



* Conversely, Arizona must take back former Scottsdale resident David Spade.



* Arizona can no longer claim to be a republican government. Jan Brewer, who was not actually elected as governor, should be given a new title, like “Chairman Brewer” or “Leader Brewer” to suite her style of government.

* GayProf will withhold his recipe for the remarkably tasty Tequila Gimlet until Arizona comes to its senses. It’s a shame that Arizona is making the rest of the nation suffer like that.

* Make sure that Alice really doesn’t live there anymore.

* Put all of those who supported this measure on a plane to Russia with a note pinned to their clothes stating, “These Arizonans have severe antisocial issues/behaviors. We no longer wish to be citizens with them.”

* Every person who supports the legislature's measures needs to write an essay entitled, “Why Hating Immigrants is Unamerican.”

* Send Zorro in and watch him kick some tyrannical ass.



* Since the legislature claims that their real motivation is jobs, allow them to retire from government and assume a job recently vacated by a migrant worker. Oh, look at me, assuming that members of the legislature could do a real day of hard work.

* BP now has a new place to stick all that spilled oil. I’m not sayin’, I'm just sayin’.

Nasty Law in a Nasty State

GayProf goes away for just a bit of time and look what happens to man’s world! Like most Americans, I watched with revulsion as Arizona passed a draconian measure that basically compels police to harass anyone they “reasonably suspect” to be an undocumented migrant worker. Apparently Arizona is tired of waiting in the shadow of Texas to be named the most evil state in the nation. They want that trophy for themselves!

What constitutes “reasonable suspicion?” To claim that it won’t involve forms of racial profiling is disingenuous at best. Do they seriously think that we believe that police will be instructed to be on the look out for anybody sporting a beret? Are they going to scrutinize people whose clothes suspiciously display a red maple leaf?

Arizona shouldn’t insult our intelligence. This is a mean spirited law that will target people of Mexican descent, particularly if their first language is not English. The law also requires that migrants carry papers with them at all times and produce them on demand. Yet, the law's drafters are shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that many people are making comparisons between Arizona and fascist governments. All Americans who believe in fairness should boycott Arizona.

Those in the historical know see this as a continuation of Arizona’s long history of racism and harassment of Latinos. You might not be aware, but pro-slavery Confederates founded Arizona way back in the 1860s. And weren’t those the type of people you would want as neighbors? It turns out, they didn’t arrive in Arizona with a cherry pie and a smile. They had every intention of instituting a brutal racial hierarchy against the already existing Mexican community in the region (which predated the U.S.-Mexican War). In 1877, the editor of Tucson’s Spanish-language newspaper Las dos repúblicas lamented the “the attack of the [Anglo] hordes from the north . . .” Before the arrival of these white supremacists, Arizona had been part of the territory of New Mexico. For the rebel whites, though, the idea of living in a territory with a Mexican majority was anathema. They therefore separated themselves from New Mexico and created a whole new territory where they could institute a tyrannical government.

One of the first things that whites did when Arizona became a state in 1912 was to enact measures to restrict the civil rights of Mexican Americans. Arizona passed laws that denied the vote to any person unable to “read the Constitution of the U.S. in the English language.” Don’t be deceived, though. Euro Americans never truly wanted to rid Arizona of Mexicans entirely. Through the nineteenth century, corporate mining interests came to control the region. These mines were more than happy to exploit Mexican laborers in inhumane working conditions, harshly segregated living arrangements, and depressed wages. They simply created institutional mechanisms that deprived those workers of their basic voting rights.

So, while I am greatly depressed by it, the new law does not surprise me. Many things strike me about it. Mostly it seems a product of conservative white fantasies about the nation. It distracts from the role Republicans had in crippling the United States economy. Scapegoating Mexican migrants has been a cherished Republican tradition at least since 1929. Republicans hope that it will stop Arizonans from asking tougher questions about the gluttony of the small majority motivated by uncontrolled corporate greed.

Enacting this measure also taps into xenophobic fantasies. It presumes that the nation’s demographics have not already shifted tremendously. Though Republicans might wish it were not true, Latino/as are now the nation’s largest minority (accounting for 15 percent of the total population). No amount of walls or borders will alter that fact.

They seem to be under the delusion that migrating to the United States is just a matter of daintily crossing an imaginary line in the sand. The U.S. Border Patrol, however, has made crossing the border a remarkably brutal endeavor. Their patrols and posts have intentionally funneled undocumented workers into the Sonoran desert. They imagine that making entry into the U.S. so difficult (even deadly) it will deter migrants.

Yet, it does not. We should well ask why not? Migrants brave conditions unimaginable to most Americans. Crossing into the United States is expensive and dangerous. Coyotes routinely abandon entire groups in the desert. Others kidnap those who paid them and extort money from their families in Mexico. Violence, including sexual violence, is well documented in these crossings. Yet, the United States remains blind to the circumstances it is creating on the border.

White supporters of this law also fantasize that the United States exists in some supposed isolation from the neighboring republic in everything except migration. What they don’t seem to appreciate is that migration from Mexico occurs because the U.S. is so deeply intertwined with the history and present of Mexico.

We live in a nation with just 4 percent of the global population, but consume over a quarter of the world’s resources. The overwhelming majority of those who cross into the United States are seeking basic employment opportunities and an escape from the crippling economic conditions in Mexico. Most Americans are probably vaguely aware of the rapid pace that U.S. corporation built factories ( maquiladoras) after the passage of NAFTA in the 1990s. They might not be aware, though, that when the U.S. economy started to decline in 2000, almost 300,000 of those jobs were eliminated in northern Mexico. More than 340 maquiladoras closed between 2000 and 2003. The United States’s unending quest for avoiding a fare wage brought many of those factories to China. WTO membership (and the accompanying changes in tariff restrictions) allowed China to compete with the same labor advantages as Mexico. Between 1997 and 2006, the number of jobs in China’s versions of maquiladoras increased from 18 million to 40 million. Unemployment and underemployment in Mexico leaped by bounds.

I cannot deny that the United States desperately needs to rethink its immigration laws. What I would suggest, though, is that we need to consider the motivations for migration and our commitment to a basic standard of living for the world. It is a nation that depends on the degrading labor of workers that most Americans scarcely know exist to maintain their standard of living.

I Earn Frequent-Flyer Miles

I have returned to Boston again. Traveling so much in a short period leaves me tired. Of course, it doesn't help that I think that the airlines are basically evil.

Now, I am not one of those people who romanticizes air-travel in the past. You know the folk who remember when “flying was fun.” When was that? You mean when Orville and Wilbur were your pilots? Flying has always been stressful. I think mostly because humans aren’t supposed to be in the sky.

That aside, the airline companies and the FAA are both way out of control. I simply don’t believe that airlines can’t be profitable. Air traffic today is greater than pre 9-11, so they can’t hide behind that anymore.

If they are really so financially strapped, it is time to nationalize them and get rid of private business all together. No more corporate welfare for these corrupt companies. The CEO’s of these allegedly failing businesses make more money than Puerto Rico’s annual budget. I never obtained an MBA, but if a company is losing money, that might be the first place to cut some corners.

Instead, though, they cut services left and right. On all of my flights, I had the option to buy a “snack” (stale cookies or staler pretzels) for $2. These weren’t bargain-basement airlines, either. If you fly Jet-Blue or Ryan Air, you expect such things because you paid $18 for your ticket. A “full-service” airline, though? Exactly what is the “full” part of that service? Does not burning us with lye now count as “full service?”

Northwest had the even more astounding policy of charging an additional fee for certain seats in the plane, like the exit rows. Being an “elite” member of the frequent-flyer program (soon to expire – gasp), I could opt for these seats as well. So, basically the airlines are creating a class-hierarchy within the coach cabin. Passengers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your roller-bags.

Keep in mind that airline fares are peculiar as a service because you and the person next to you might have paid radically different prices for the exact same ticket. Can you imagine going to a barber and paying $10 more than the person who came before you for the same haircut? Or being charged a fee for that haircut, but finding out that the barber had “oversold” his time? We accept these policies, however, as necessary for airlines.



I remember, in the mid-nineties, Congress and President Clinton threatened legislation (dubbed the “Passenger Bill of Rights”) that would have required airlines to treat their passengers as slightly more than cattle. Oh, how the airlines protested! While under that threat, however, somehow they managed to improve! Once that fear went away, the airlines went right back to business as usual.

Of course, nationalizing the airlines would just put them in the same hands as the people who are already bungling security. Yes, we all want a safe and secure air-transport system. That doesn’t mean, however, that being reactionary makes us safe. Instead of addressing the economic inequalities that fuel terrorism across the globe, our government has decided that they can magically prevent all terrorism. Okay, I am particularly annoyed by the 1-1-3 rules.

For those who haven’t flown recently, you may not know the meaning of 1-1-3. If you have flown, then you have heard the same announcement over and over every ten minutes. Every (1) passenger is allowed a one(1)-quart zipper-topped bag of liquids or gels no greater than three (3) ounces. This rule emerged as a compromise from the briefly enacted 1-0-0 policy. Some law enforcement agencies in Britain uncovered a potential plot to destroy an aircraft by mixing an explosive cocktail on-board. As a result, they panicked and made an impossible policy.

Now, I am no explosives expert, but it seems to me that a clever person determined on bringing down an aircraft would be able to accomplish his goals with certain materials less than three ounces. Or, potentially, they could have several people bring on-board dangerous liquids, in three ounce sizes, that would amount to the necessary amount.

So, it seems to me, that the 1-1-3 rule is all glitter and no glam. We are as unsafe as ever. The airline safety authorities, however, want to look like they are doing something to make us safe. If we feel inconvenienced, they figure, then they must be on top of things.

It’s just like the deal with the shoes. Do we even remember why they started the shoe thing? FOUR years ago, a single (one) loser named Richard Reid unsuccessfully tried to make his shoes into a flaming weapon. Apparently Reid figured he could combine his contempt for human life with all those episodes of Get Smart that he watched in his parents’ basement.

The 29-year-old’s pyromania hardly appeared the most successful or imitated form of terrorism. Yet, domestic flights now require that we all have some stocking-feet time before boarding. That way the technician can ignore images of our shoes as much as they ignore images of our carry-on baggage. Yeah, that solves the terrorism problem.

Oh, and by the way, Richard Reid had a fuse sticking out of his shoes when he went through security. Did security really need him to take them off for the x-ray to figure out his plans? I mean, I haven’t heard of Nike marketing their new cross-trainer with built in fast-burning-flint.



Maybe I am just bitter because I am a nervous flyer. Nothing like being all twitchy to raise a few eyebrows as you head towards the metal detector. Combine that with my goatee and gravitas and I become the perfect target for airport screening. By the time I get through security, all I have left on my body is my strategically placed one-quart zipper-top bag.

One day, it will eventually come to this:

Security Guard: Do you have liquids, aerosols, or gels?

Me: No.

Security Guard: What’s that in your mouth?

Me: Saliva.

Security Guard: It better be less than three ounces. We scanned your brief case and saw a 32 inch flat coil with a metal end.

Me: You mean my belt? You made me take it off before I went through the line. Remember?

Security Guard: A belt? Didn’t Richard Reid wear a belt? Get him!

I have a solution that solves all of these problems. With one simple policy change, I can resolve security concerns, the airlines’ lack of services, and my own flying anxieties.

Instead of harassing us and pretending like they can tell the .0005% terrorists from the rest of the flying public, just drug everybody before boarding. Put us all into a chemical-induced coma before the plane even leaves the ground. We can just sleep through the whole flight. With enough drugs, we won’t even notice the lack of a complimentary beverage service. If a terrorist happened to sneak aboard, he will feel just too darn good to commit any evil acts. It’s win-win.

We can implement this plan immediately. Between the liquor and Xanax I take to fly, I have been single-handedly field testing this program for years.