Sensenbrenner Is a Great Organizer (irony alert) Matthew Rothschild

[rodeodance]

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Subject: Immigration, Iran
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 15:03:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: Progressive Weekly e-Alert <[e-mail]>
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Dear friend:

There's a new civil rights movement aborning, and it's exhilarating to see, and even more so to join.

I offer my thoughts on this to you below, and Ruth Conniff analyses it on our website.

I also want to draw your attention to the grave possibility that Bush will bomb Iran before November.

We write about this in our May issue, but we've posted the editorial ahead of time, "Beware the Bombing of Iran."

And after Seymour Hersh's New Yorker piece came out, warning about the possibility that Bush will use a nuclear weapon against Iran, I wrote "The Human Costs of Bombing Iran."

As always, I appreciate your feedback at [e-mail].

Best,
Matt

Matthew Rothschild
Editor, The Progressive

P.S. I'll be speaking on impeachment in Mill Valley, California, on the evening of May 5. For more information, click here.

Sensenbrenner Is a Great Organizer

On Monday, I marched with about 25,000 people in Madison, Wisconsin, on a gorgeous spring day.

Mothers were strolling their babies, fathers had their kids on their shoulders. One little girl held up a sign that said, “I am the future.”American flags were everywhere. Mexican flags were also common, and others flew, as well. One woman next to me was waving both an American flag and a Bolivian one.

Chants of “Si, se puede” predominated, with a sprinkling of “El pueblo, unido” and the frequent call and response, both in Spanish and in English: “What do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now.”

Many of the handmade signs packed a punch, like the one that said, “We can die for this country but our families can’t live here?”

Another read: “Did the Pilgrims have papers?”

But the ones that hit home the hardest here in Wisconsin were aimed at James Sensenbrenner, the Congressman from the Milwaukee area who has been among the most nativistic, sponsoring a bill that would turn undocumented immigrants into felons.

“Sense not Sensenbrenner,” read one sign. “Wisconsin is ashamed of Sensenbrenner,” read another.

The most common sentiment, expressed in signs, speeches, and in my interviews with demonstrators, was a simple one: “We are not criminals.”

Maria Hernandez used that line. “We are here to work,” she added. “We want amnesty.”

Her brother Miguel echoed another popular sentiment: “This is a country made of immigrants.”

Fernando Tlaheul put it simply: “We want liberty,” he said. “We want justice for Latinos.”

Dagoberto Ramirez, 27, came from Coahuila, Mexico, seven years ago. “We want to be legal in this country,” he said.

Ana Muñoz, 14, was waving a huge Mexican flag. She said she was thrilled to be at such a large rally. “I didn’t know there were so many,” she said.

Maybe we should thank Sensenbrenner for that.

I was standing by an old union guy, Ed Sadlowski, at the rally, and he said, “The worst bosses make the best organizers.”

Sensenbrenner is quite an organizer.