This footage is from the protest in front of the INS building that took place from noon to 1pm at 444 Washington Street in San Francisco on June 13, 2003.
Speaker: Ben Allen
Organization: Blue Triangle Network
Ben Allen in San Francisco (Small – 36 MB)
Audio – Ben Allen in San Francisco (MP3 – 11 MB)
Ben Allen, Blue Triangle Network
(Excerpt) Many of those who came to register were detained under brutal conditions. Now, with this announcement by the government of its intention to deport 13,000 of those who voluntarily registered, a grave new escalation is occurring. These measures and actions have already caused deep fear and anxiety, wrecked lives, broken up families and devastated communities.
The government says it is doing this for our safety and well being. This has a familiar ring.
Just as the government used fraudulent documents and a web of lies to create a pretext for war in Iraq, it is using lies, distortion, racial stereotypes and fictitious alerts to manufacture a climate of danger to justify its repression at home. Under the cover of this climate of fear, the government has rigged up a parallel legal system that allows it to deny its victims even the most basic human rights.
Haven’t we seen this before? The lie of an imminent internal threat was used to justify the roundup of Japanese-Americans during WWII, and a similar lie was used to justify the roundups, expulsions, detentions, and eventually the outright murder of communists, jews, trade unionists, catholics, and others in Germany during that era…
So what should we do about this?
What we should not do — and what Dick Cheney would have us do — which is to accept this as the new normalcy…
We have to create a climate and culture of resistance, such that attacks on these communities, or any communities, is not tolerated.
Wow. Talk about a member of the “tinfoil hat brigade.” So, people who are staying in the US ILLEGALLY are finally deported after ILLEGALLY overstaying their visas, and we’re supposed to cry over that? Even according to their own website, the Blue Tinfoil Hat Network, admits they had overstayed their visas. So they “volunteered” the fact that they are ILLEGALLY here. Does that now grant them the right to stay?
So INS holding facilities are “brutal?” and people are denied “basic human rights?” and this is compared to THE HOLOCAUST? Get real. If you play the “Hitler card” every time the existing law is enforced, you blind yourself to the real Hitlers when they come along.
Some of us are here legally, and we aren’t being deported. It seems to me that these protesters should be spending time trying to help INS enforce the law, instead of trying to frustrate the law.
These activist pukes make me sicker than the illegal immigrants who can’t be bothered take advantage of, arguably, the world’s most liberal immigration policies. The activists are in this for Bush-bashing and not for actually HELPING anyone LEGALLY.
FOR A CHANGE, WHY NOT COVER REAL PROTESTERS WITH A GENUINE CAUSE….AND POST VIDEO OF IRANIANS DEMANDING FREEDOM AND REGIME CHANGE
M. NoCal Resident Alien,
Perhaps you didn’t read the bluetriangle.org website carefully enough. If you did, you would have found the story of a couple detained because they happened to be dining at an ethnic food restraunt. They were refused a lawyer and intimidated by police who were happily pointing guns at people. Oh, did I mention they were USA citizens? They were eventually let go, but not until after they’d discovered that immigrants have accepted this sort of thing as “normal”.
I don’t know about you, but I would rather not have police pointing guns at me with their finger on the trigger. Especially not if I’m dining. And last I checked, the US doesn’t have a National ID card or a secret mark that tells police if you are a citizen or not. (You may have a passport, and I do, but only 20% of US citizens do.)
Perhaps you haven’t read about abuses of the Patriot Act…?
I would much rather America cease to be the police state it has become lately. Otherwise, where am I to go? I don’t know about you, but my ancestors came here to escape injustice. I/we should use what privledge we have as being USA citizens to discourage further deterioration of the Bill of Rights.
Read a little more, and then tell me it is all tin-foil. (If only that would save us!)
M. NoCal Resident Alien,
Perhaps you didn’t read the bluetriangle.org website carefully enough. If you did, you would have found the story of a couple detained because they happened to be dining at an ethnic food restraunt. They were refused a lawyer and intimidated by police who were happily pointing guns at people.
I don’t know about you, but I would rather not have police pointing guns at me with their finger on the trigger. Especially not if I’m dining.
Perhaps you haven’t read about abuses of the Patriot Act…?
I would much rather America cease to be the police state it has become lately. Otherwise, where am I to go? I don’t know about you, but my ancestors came here to escape injustice. I/we should use what privledge we have as being USA citizens to discourage further deterioration of the Bill of Rights.
Read a little more, and then tell me it is all tin-foil. (If only that would save us!)