Brown on Brown, Heart Ache on Heart Ache
Did you ever think that Arizona and the Salem witch trials would have something in common? How about Arizona and the incarceration of the Japanese Americans during World War II? As hard as it is to say: In 1941 it was don’t be Oriental in Arizona or California. In 1941 it was don’t be Jewish in Germany. Back to Arizona: Now, especially in 2010, don’t be of Spanish descent, not in Arizona. That makes you LOOK like a criminal. In the minds of their state legislators it makes you a criminal. For the most part they are white and not too sure of it. But in the hands of the black booted patrolmen, the city cop with a long hardwood baton, your neighbor with a grudge because your dog barks too much or you happen to like Mariachi bands… well do you get the picture?
One of the chief architects of the new, about to be enforced, legislation says it’s for officers that see someone of Mexican/Spanish descent running down the street waving a .44 magnum, screaming : “I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you.” Experience has taught us that this type of law is for anyone that cops don’t like or think they don’t like. Someone like you or me, someone they want to harass. Who among us carries “their papers” with them. Most don’t. I never do. Now do we have to if we visit Arizona? Arizona cops can ask for them. What if you don’t have them? Has the punishment become far worse then the scab that it hastens to cure?
Any man’s discomfort touches me. It should touch us all. To my undying amazement there are people that support this “well intended and poorly guided” effort to solve an immigrant problem. You fools. There is not one among you that within a generation or two were not immigrants. Some of you were illegal. Going back far enough you were all illegal. Your fathers and mine came here to escape this sort of BS. Not long from now that legislative sword will cut deep into your souls for it is never wielded but it wounds the handler and the persecuted.
Line up. Even now the ropes have been stretched for the hanging. Even now the camps are being readied to house the Japanese, I mean the Mexicans…and you, anyone with black hair and brown skin.
Who will save us from ourselves? Who will rescue us from the very prisons we build to capture ourselves?