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Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Enlace Communitario Video: Anti-Immigrant Policies Hurt Women, Families
, an Albuquerque-based non-profit social justice organization, has developed the video above in response to the harsh, anti-immigrant sentiment that is influencing our lawmakers to create unnecessary links between law enforcement and immigration enforcement. The organization says this approach is creating significant barriers for domestic violence victims and their children.
Recent policies by state and municipal governments in New Mexico have sought to blur the lines between police and immigration enforcement. The unnoticed consequence of this has been that immigrant domestic violence victims have become fearful of law enforcement, making all of our communities less safe. Enlace Communitario says its video is designed to raise awareness of how these policies are working against these innocent women and their children.
Take Action: What can we do to help? First watch the video. Then visit the to learn about simple, specific actions people can take to help create a more humane policy in the Southwest regarding immigrants -- especially those who are the most powerless.
March 30, 2011 at 11:21 AM in Children and Families, City of Albuquerque, Hispanic Issues, Immigration, Law Enforcement, NM Legislature 2011, Susana Martinez, Women's Issues | Permalink
Comments
Thanks for posting this blog post here. This is an important issue and Enlace is doing heroic work.
I would add, however, that there needs to be an element to this that currently is off the table.
The Republican Party has built on use of the Southern Strategy to exploit white southerners' deep racial bigotry and dismay over the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, and now is using immigration and fear of a coming brown majority.
This strategy works in the absence of good information and good vision for how the society of the future we want to become can really be built.
The media has been completely out to lunch on what is really causing this and has instead, gone with the sensational Punch and Judy show version that keeps it all superficial. It is a carnival tent method for selling tickets, but it is irresponsible.
A responsible press and responsible public leadership instead, would be looking to ways that the real causes could be alleviated.
After all, half a million people a year is an exodus and it is driven by conditions that make risking one
s life seem a good bargain.
Basically this tsunami of human tragedy is the result of Wall Street and big bank investment. Anyone with anything in a bank is most likely involved, whether they know it or not and it may be hard to find out.
There are a number of hemispheric trade agreements, NAFTA being the most famous, which address the free flow of investment, but do not contain sufficient ways to ensure labor and environmental standards.
For those to change, the nature of the argument needs to change. As long as the Republican way of framing this as about "what part of illegal don't these people understand" and how much to punish immigrants, no constructive progress can be made.
The bigots will win the day because they have the energy as long as the whole arena of debate is defined by negative framing that is racial in its undertones. That is called "dogwhistling."
What has to happen is for a hemispheric view of what is going on and what the history is to become prominent in the public debate at all levels, and for the states, Congress and the President to address the need for economic and social justice.
Posted by: Stuart Heady | Mar 31, 2011 9:09:02 AM
