Posted by
Playful Walrus on Monday, April 30, 2007 10:16:52 AM
Two stories in yesterday’s
Los Angeles Times show why we’re so messed up.
The first is about
this May Day March of the Criminals.
City officials are bracing for thousands of marchers to converge Tuesday on Central Los Angeles in two separate May Day rallies for immigration reform and labor rights, gatherings that are stirring anticipation among immigrant-rights advocates but anxiety, even anger, among some business owners.
It’s actually a demand that Americans be forced to take care of Mexico’s citizens, providing them with money, health care, education, housing, etc.
They are warning that the downtown march will snarl traffic for hours, disrupt more than 60 bus lines and halt some public business, including the high-profile murder trial of music producer Phil Spector.
Actually, last year, traffic in most of the greater Los Angeles area was GREAT, because illegal aliens were not using our roads. Mostly, it was businesses in their own neighborhoods that were closed for the day. The economy didn’t take a hit. I loved it.
"Last year was a once-in-a-lifetime mobilization," said Mike Garcia, president of Local 1877 of the Service Employees International Union in Los Angeles.
Yes, look at what your union is doing with your dues – bringing in cheap replacement labor! That’s why your union newsletter is printed in Spanish.
Organizers have said on their official march permits this year that they expect crowds of about 100,000 downtown and 15,000 for the other event, a couple of miles to the west.
Sounds like a great place to round up some criminals.
Rallies and boycotts are expected to take place around the nation as well, but March 25 Coalition spokesman Javier Rodriguez said the number of participating cities was expected to fall by half to about 75 this year.
Hey why don’t you
really boycott and go back to your own countries. Teach us a
real lesson.
The March 25 Coalition, which Rodriguez described as the "more militant wing" of the pro-immigrant movement, is pushing a boycott of work, school and all consumer spending Tuesday.
Yeah, that’s smart. Pull those kids out of school. It’ll probably be one of the safest days ever on campus as a result. Class can be conducted in English. Meanwhile, hundred of millions of people will be working, attending school, and spending as a show of solidarity with American citizens and LEGAL immigrants.
District officials have provided educational materials on immigrant rights and are encouraging students to discuss the issue in classrooms or on-campus forums.
I hope some naturalized kids stand up and denounce lawbreaking and biting the hand that feeds you.
In Santa Ana, the Orange County Alliance for Immigrants' Rights, an umbrella group of 20 organizations, is sponsoring a march Tuesday from the Plaza of Flags downtown to 17th and Bristol streets and back beginning at 3 p.m. Turnout is expected to fall short of the 15,000 people the event drew last year but still amount to several thousand people, said Nativo Lopez, president of Hermandad Mexicana, an immigrant advocacy
organization.
Larry Lopez, thrown off of a school district board and apparently not busy enough anymore promoting cockfighting, is continuing to fail miserably trying to be the Latino Jesse Jackson.
Other business owners, however, are fed up with the whole march spectacle. Cia Amir, a Panama native who runs a pizza shop at 6th Street and Broadway, said he opened his shop last May Day until throngs of passing marchers demanded that he close, frightening him by banging on his windows. He expects to lose thousands of dollars when he shuts down his shop again Tuesday.
Lovely. The March of the Criminals.
And then there’s
the anniversary of the riots.
Although a 15th anniversary typically does not carry the emotional cachet of, say, a 10- or 25-year milestone, hundreds of residents gathered Saturday at two South Los Angeles events to call attention to a community still racked by the poverty and violence that fueled the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
And they will continue to be “racked by poverty” as long as women keep having babies out of wedlock, as long as men don’t step up and be good husbands and fathers, as long as crime and gang life is glorified, as long achievement and education are ridiculed, as long as churches fail to impose moral standards, and as long as people rely on “someone else” to take care of them.
Across town at First AME Church on Harvard Boulevard, civic leaders warned 70 to 100 listeners that the conditions that sparked the riots still fester, despite the myriad post-riot promises of better jobs, schools and supermarkets. Many promises never materialized, leaving some residents embittered and resigned.
Awwwwww, isn’t that a shame. People burned down businesses in their own neighborhoods, and they wonder why the place is so bad off. I remember the millions of dollars people threw at the area to assuage their misplaced guilt. What good did it do? All it did was encourage irresponsibility.
Without a massive effort to undertake these underlying issues, "We're going to be right here after the next riots," said veteran civil rights attorney Connie Rice.
Translation: Give us more money and freebies, or we’ll throw a tantrum again.Adding to their angst over the anniversary is that many of the new retail centers and manufacturing plants promised after the riots have not materialized.
Who wants to invest there? Who wants to work there? Why would someone set up shop in a neighborhood where people burn down buildings, loot, rob, vandalize, and shoot each other?
State records show that the area has 517 stores selling liquor. That is 150 fewer than the 667 stores in business when the riots began, but about 200 liquor stores burned down during the unrest.
STOP USING THE BUSINESSES AND THEY WILL GO AWAY. Then, you can have more boarded-up buildings. But you know what? Liquor is legal.