Immigrants Hit the Streets; Nerds Hit the Web

In case you haven't heard, and I wouldn't be surprised since the media doesn't have much to say about this sort of thing, 100,000 people, many immigrants, marched in Chicago last week to oppose the disgusting anti-immigrant legislation moving through Congress. The so-called Sensenbrenner Bill would attach criminal penalties to a number of immigration violations and also calls for more border fences. In a statement from Mercedes Castillo of the National Latina/Latino Law Student Association, she wrote:

Here are some of the provisions in HR 4437:
--More money for MORE border officers, inspectors, etc.
--More money for surveillance and every technical gadget that comes along with it --Denial of benefits to immigrants the AG deems "terrorists"
--Detention and removal of non-citizens will be increased, protections take away, judicial review taken away... the list goes on --You will be considered an aggravated felon just for being "unlawfully present", this means you will NEVER be able to fix your papers, NEVER see any legal protections afforded to other people, etc.
--Gang member?! Who me? Sure if the AG says so.
--Give your undocumented friend a ride home, you might just get charged with "alien smuggling"
--Illegal re-entry will lock you up for a period of up to 20 years and THEN we will deport you.
--Burden of proof: guilty until proven innocent.

The right-wing feels like this is an issue they can run with. Things are going poorly in Iraq, with jobs and healthcare, and with numerous scandals in Washington, so it is perfect timing for a scapegoat. Immigrants are easy because most are disenfranchised and few have money, in other words they have no political capital. But if we can get tens of thousands of immigrants and non-immigrants alike into the streets, like they did in Chicago, politicians will have to listen. It makes it easier that a lot of Americans, even if they won't march against this legislation, haven't bought into the immigrant bashing scare-tactics.

Meanwhile, I've been dealing with some right-wingers of my own on Wikipedia. I know, how did I ever get sucked into another web-based project? I already have this blog, pages on friendster, myspace, tribe, flickr, an amazon wish list, a pay pal and eBay account, etc. etc. But one (maybe two) right-wingers have been vandalizing the National Lawyers Guild page with reactionary, red-baiting hogwash pulled from some of David Horowitz's websites. It's pretty frustrating, but I like the fact that Wikipedia exists. These free-marketeers must wonder how it works so well. I mean, people aren't even getting paid and yet they actually take time and energy to write content and maintain the site. Some people take advantage of that almost communal setup for the wrong reasons, but it actually ends up working pretty well, and we don't even have to pay an MBA-degree-holder millions of dollars to run it.