Interview on the Repeal Coalition

Below is an interview on the Repeal Coalition that I did recently. It provides information on one group's grassroots strategy to change the immigration debate in Arizona.

http://socialistworker.org/2010/05/28/organizing-at-ground-zero

SB 1070: Battle at the Grassroots

By Joel Olson

In the struggle over the notorious anti-immigrant, anti-Latino, anti-working class law SB 1070, a person might be tempted to see this as a conflict that plays out among the elites of Arizona politics: legislators, governors, sheriffs, newspaper editors, judges, lawyers, and nonprofits. This view would be understandable, but wrong. The real battle is at the grassroots.

On the one hand, there is a strong nativist movement afoot in Arizona that is overwhelmingly white, mostly over the age of fifty, and largely male. They fear that “illegals are invading” and causing all manner of mayhem, from home invasions to overcrowded emergency rooms to automated voices forcing them to “press 1 for English.” They are represented by the Tea Party and local politicians such as State Senator Russell Pearce. Their goal is to hound and harass all “illegal aliens” out of Arizona—and if they have to check the papers of every brown-skinned person in the state to do it, fine. “Attrition through enforcement,” Pearce calls it. That phrase is now written into Arizona law. At their demand, SB 1070 turns every cop in the state into an immigration officer, practically requires racial profiling, and denies the freedom of Arizonans to associate with whoever they please, documented or not. With the passage of 1070, nativists are confident that they control the territory.

But what happens when you hold a Tea Party and a bunch of “illegals” show up?

Facing down the nativist faction is a ragtag, underfinanced, increasingly fearless, and thoroughly working class movement that seeks to destroy SB 1070 and replace the Tea Party’s bogus call for “small government”—by the way, how is a government where every cop is empowered to check your papers “small”?—with a real call for freedom of movement and association. The hope for Arizona rests with this group that is fighting at the grassroots for the freedom to live, love, and work wherever you please.

One of the first battles between these two forces took place last Tuesday in the small mountain town of Flagstaff, Arizona (population 60,000). The Flagstaff City Council voted 7-0 to sue the state government to prevent SB 1070 from going into effect. (Earlier that day, Tucson’s city council voted 5-1 to do the same thing. Now other towns, such as Yuma and Naco, are also threatening to file an injunction.)

This decision from within the most nativist state in the nation came as a shock to many. True, Flagstaff has a reputation for being a liberal bubble, but the city council hardly has a stellar record of standing with people of color, as anyone from the Save the Peaks Coalition could tell you. The city council has been hostile to this indigenous-led effort to prevent the local ski resort from using Flagstaff sewage water to make artificial snow on a mountain that is sacred to thirteen tribes. (That’s right, they want you to ski on pee.)

Further, a poll taken just after SB 1070’s passage showed that seventy percent of Arizonans supported it. And when Rush Limbaugh heard that over 150 people came to the previous Flagstaff City Council meeting urging them to file an injunction, he told his listeners to besiege the Council with calls in support of 1070. Over the next few days, Flagstaff’s little city hall received a slew of racist voice mails and several death threats. Then the local Tea Party put out a call to pack the next meeting.

But they didn’t count on getting beat at their own game.

The Tea Party nationwide prides itself on being a grassroots organization feared by politicians. They probably thought that a good word from Limbaugh would help them bumrush city hall and put this whole injunction business to rest. But that was before they met the Repeal Coalition, a grassroots organization that seeks the repeal of all anti-immigrant laws in the state of Arizona and believes in the freedom of all people to live, love, and work wherever they please. (For more on the work of the Repeal Coalition, see my previous article, “New Arizona.”)

While Limbaugh blathered on, the Repeal Coalition held a mass meeting in the local Catholic church to put pressure on city hall. Sixty adults and twenty kids, most of them Latino, most of them undocumented or related to someone who is, came after work in their McCafe uniforms, bounced babies on their laps, and in a sweltering room for two and half hours, patiently developed a strategy—hashed out in Spanish and English—to keep the pressure on the city council. They planned a protest before the council meeting, and then to pack the meeting chamber itself. The Tea Party boasted it would do the same.

At 4:45 p.m. on Tuesday, people began trickling in to the chambers, while a crowd opposed to SB 1070 gathered on the street in front of city hall. Repeal members handed out scraps of paper to people as they filed in, suggesting that if they spoke before the council during the meeting they should demand that the council condemn SB 1070 and vote to file an injunction against it. By 5:30, over two hundred people were jammed into the council chambers. The room was stuffed so full the fire marshal had to shut the doors.

But only about thirty people were from the Tea Party. Opponents of 1070 had them outnumbered six to one. Plus there were a hundred people watching a live feed of the event in the lobby. Plus there were dozens of people who would not go into city hall because they were undocumented and feared police harassment, but fed messages to Repeal Coalition members, who conveyed them to the city council. Plus there were two hundred people outside still protesting—oh, and a lone Tea Partier holding a sign. (Yes, one person. Remind me, why are liberals so afraid of this group?)

With drums from the protest audible in the chamber, waves of people spoke out against 1070 and in favor of filing an injunction against it, while just five Tea Partiers spoke against the injunction. Each of the five went to great lengths to emphasize that they only opposed illegal immigration—but in the next breath they warned of “invasions” and a “virtual border that’s moving northward.” They weren’t racist for supporting SB 1070, they insisted—but then they talked about how “these people” commit crimes. Their logic was simple and crude: Undocumented = criminal = Mexican = all Latinos.

They knew they were out-organized, and they were furious. One elderly gentleman, who earlier had tried to get me kicked out of the council chamber for handing out our speaking suggestions, waved the scrap of paper in front of the council and accused the Repeal Coalition of telling people what to say. “Am I right about this?” he turned and asked the crowd. “No!” it roared back. He sat down and left the meeting shortly.

Many of those who spoke against 1070 deeply impressed the council and the crowd. One man openly admitted he was undocumented. A Latina whose family has lived in Flagstaff since the 1890s told the Tea Partiers, “You think this law won’t affect you? You’re right; it won’t—because you’re white. You bet it’s going to affect me and my family, and we’ve lived here for four generations!” A white guy in a tie mocked the racial profiling within the law by saying “I’m not a bigot, but I look like one, don’t I?” Roars of laughter.

In the most powerful testimony of the night, a woman from the Navajo Nation told the council how this law would inevitably harass and profile indigenous people. Angrily she said, “I never had to carry my C.D.I.B. [Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood] and now I do. You all [white people] are our guests in this land. And this is how we are repaid. I’m going to be stopped because of this law, and I’m from a First Nation.” She left the podium in tears, and to thunderous applause.

The Tea Partiers began filing out in defeat midway through the meeting. As they did, Latinos who were waiting outside filled their seats. By the time the council actually voted on the injunction, there wasn’t a tea bag in sight. The symbolism of a grassroots movement devoted to oppression being replaced, one by one, by another grassroots movement devoted to freedom, smelled as sweet as creosote after a desert rain.

Four and a half hours into the meeting, three things struck me. First, the legal struggle against 1070 is driven by the grassroots struggle. I realized this as one councilperson, Scott Overton, admitted that he wanted to wait to see what other cities were going to do first before approving an injunction, but “the community pushed hard.” He then proceeded to vote for it. Then, the most conservative member of the council (and a candidate for mayor in an election that’s just three weeks away) voted for the injunction, too—even though minutes earlier he had said he would abstain! From his rambling comments it was clear that he did not like the injunction and probably liked the spirit of SB 1070, but he didn’t have the guts to go against 200 people pressuring him to do the right thing.

Politicians and lawyers may be in front of the television cameras, but they are not in the lead in the battle against SB 1070. Rather, they are being pushed into action by a teeming movement of undocumented people, their loved ones, and their allies. To be sure, the city council’s decision required some courageous initiative by Councilwoman Coral Evans. But this issue is hot because people at the grassroots are hot, and politicians feel they have to do something. In figuring out what happens next in the struggle, then, the question is not, “Will the legal battle win?” but “Will the grassroots be able to push the legal struggle even further?”

Second, the Tea Party and their ilk can only be defeated by out-organizing them. Tea Partiers are wrong, but they’re not stupid. Their minds won’t be changed by showing them “the facts” about immigration, for ideology always trumps truth. Rather than dismissing them as ignorant, you have to beat them at the grassroots. In Flagstaff, a grassroots group led by working-class Latinos out-organized the mighty Tea Party. They left early, and at 10:00 p.m. we celebrated a unanimous decision. Even Rush Limbaugh couldn’t save them.

Third, this evil law can be defeated. Flagstaff is a sign. New polls show that support among Arizonans for the law has declined to just over fifty percent, with those numbers going down to forty-five percent of those under thirty-five. Enthusiasm for 1070 is dampening because the grassroots is firing up.

We can win this.

In 1963, Malcolm X wrote about a Black revolution coming from the grassroots, one in which Black people were determined to control their destiny rather than be controlled by whites. Similarly, a new movement is emerging from the grassroots in Arizona, one that rejects the weak tea of “liberty” proposed by nativist Tea Parties. This new Arizona demands a new kind of liberty called for by a global economy: the freedom to live, love, and work wherever one pleases, and the freedom of ordinary people to have a say in those affairs that affect their daily lives.

The day after our victory, a hundred high school and middle school (!) students walked out of school in protest against 1070 and marched to city hall. Repeal Coalition members met them there and exchanged phone numbers. That evening, another mass meeting organized by the Repeal Coalition voted to keep the pressure on with more protests and more resolutions for city hall to pass.

So what happens when you hold a tea party and a bunch of “illegals” show up? You can see the new Arizona in sight, and it’s as beautiful as a Sonoran sunset.

Joel Olson is a member of the Repeal Coalition. He has lived in Arizona for twenty-five years.

New Arizona

New Arizona

By Joel Olson

In the midst of the Arizona state government passing the most outrageous anti-immigrant law since the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, several happenings pass unnoticed by the national media. At a packed Flagstaff City Council meeting discussing the law, waves of people declare publicly that they are undocumented, practically daring law enforcement officers to arrest them. At the same meeting, a member of a radical immigrant rights group receives thunderous applause for demanding the repeal of all anti-immigrant laws and declaring the right of all people to “live, love, and work wherever they please.” Even the most conservative city councilman admits he liked the notion. Down in Phoenix, high school students spontaneously organize a school walkout through mass texting, without direction from the established immigration reform organizations. This infuriates the organizations because it pre-empts “their” planned protests. And then these same students chuck water bottles at cops when they arrest one of their own.

Welcome to the new Arizona.

Arizona has been dragged through the mud by the media and national opinion over the passage of SB 1070, a heinous anti-immigration law that massively expands police power in the state, basically mandating racial profiling and making it a crime to associate with undocumented people. Much of this derision is deserved. The law was crafted by one of the most nativist politicians in the country, State Senator Russell Pearce of Mesa, and signed by Governor Jan Brewer, who is running as far to the right as she can in order to win the coming Republican primary. The anti-immigrant sentiment is so strong in this state that even our “maverick” U.S. Senator, John McCain, endorsed the bill. McCain, who supported immigration reform when he ran for president in 2008, is also up for reelection this November.

Anti-immigrant sentiment is so widespread it could change the political landscape here—for the worse. The rumor is that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio—who began the nativist sensation in Arizona in 2006 with his roadblocks and sweeps for “illegals”—is going to run for governor against Brewer. Andrew Thomas, the Maricopa County Attorney who is otherwise known as Arpaio’s mini-me, recently quit his job in order to run for state attorney general. Pearce salivates at the thought of replacing Arpaio as County Sheriff. So if you think things are bad now, wait until November, when we could have Arpaio, Thomas, Hayworth, and Pearce running the state. It’s enough to make David Duke exhale a low whistle.

But the courageous actions of undocumented workers and high school students suggest that nativism will not rule the Grand Canyon State without a fight. And those from below just might win.

You can see the kernel of the new Arizona in the shell of the old in the Repeal Coalition, a grassroots, all-volunteer organization with chapters in Flagstaff and Phoenix. As one of its main organizers, Taryn Jordan, explains, the group was formed in 2008 to fight anti-immigrant legislation. “We knew something like this [SB 1070] was coming, and we’ve known it for a long time,” says Jordan. “Our goal in Repeal was to provide a new face of resistance to it.”

And it is new. Most immigrant rights groups here call for “comprehensive immigration reform,” a law that would create a long, arduous path to citizenship for only some undocumented people, while leaving many in legal limbo. The Repeal Coalition, however, argues for the repeal of all anti-immigrant laws. “We demand the repeal of all laws—federal, state, and local—that degrade and discriminate against undocumented individuals and that deny U.S. citizens their lawful rights,” their literature states. “We demand that all human beings—with papers or without—be guaranteed access to work, housing, health care, education, legal protection, and other public benefits, as well as the right to organize.”

Flagstaff Repeal Coalition organizer Ashley Cooper says that in the current anti-immigrant climate, repeal is the only relevant demand. “You can’t reform these laws; you can only repeal them,” she says. “And this gets to the heart of the issue. In a global economy, where goods and services move effortlessly across borders, humans deserve the same freedom. The only way to achieve that is to repeal existing laws, not create complicated and difficult paths to citizenship that only some people will be able to access.”

The group is finding an increasingly receptive audience for its message, especially among undocumented people and college and high school students.

Repeal’s approach to political organizing is also different from most immigration reform organizations. “Our goal is not to work for the people but to work with them,” explains Phoenix organizer Ceci Saenz. “We believe that the people should be leading this struggle—and that they already are leading it.” Repeal’s task, she explains, is to facilitate this leadership by bringing people together, encouraging them to “develop their militancy,” and to provide a political framework for their struggle, which is expressed by their slogan, “No more hate, harass, and blame: Freedom for all people to live, love, and work where you please!”

Flagstaff Repeal helped mobilize the undocumented workers who courageously spoke out at the City Council meeting, for example, and they are currently organizing pickets at a local hotel that has harassed and abused (and now fired) undocumented workers there. The weekend before, they organized three protests in a row, which drew 500 people in a town of 60,000. “It wasn’t even our idea,” explains Flagstaff Repeal Coalition organizer Katie Fahrenbruch. “We held a meeting just before 1070 was passed. When one of our volunteers asked folks what they wanted to do about [the law], the entire audience said ‘Protest!’” (In Spanish, of course.) “They couldn’t collectively agree on a day, so they said let’s do it for three days. So, we helped organize it in less than twenty-four hours’ notice.”

In Phoenix, the Coalition is organizing undocumented people, trailer park by trailer park, apartment complex by apartment complex. While thousands massed at the state Capitol the day after Governor Brewer signed SB 1070 into law, the Repeal Coalition was with a group of several hundred, led by undocumented women, who led a protest through the Latino neighborhoods they are organizing. Later that evening they called an emergency meeting, and within thirty minutes there were forty undocumented people meeting inside a garage in a trailer park, discussing strategy.

Many people have been talking about leaving the state since 1070 was passed, but this group did not. They talked about fighting. Something is new here.

All of this is being done by a group of just a handful of volunteers without non-profit status and with virtually no budget. Three Phoenix organizers live in a “Repeal” house, paid for by a small grant they obtained. They agree to work at least thirty hours a week for Repeal in exchange for free rent and utilities. “We don’t live large and it’s been stressful since 1070 was passed, but it’s worth it,” says Chris Griffin. He lives in the house and spends his days visiting jails, courthouses, and the homes of undocumented workers struggling against these laws.

This is the new Arizona. As conservative whites try to drive every “illegal” out of the state, and as immigration reform groups wait for Obama and Pelosi and Reid to put immigration reform on the agenda, folks in the Repeal Coalition are holding mass meetings of undocumented workers and are going to the hangouts of high school students, encouraging them to take their struggle to the next level. And as snipers line the roof of the State Capitol, they are smiling every time a water bottle whizzes past a cop who is now empowered to check their papers.

Welcome to the new Arizona.

Joel Olson works with the Repeal Coalition in Flagstaff. He has lived in Arizona for twenty-five years.

Political Science and Values--Making Social Science Meaningful

At the APSA conference in 2003, President of APSA, Robert Putnam, gave a rare speech calling political scientists to endorse public service, i.e to learn about what the people need. Politics is a mix of science and values, he claimed.

What an honest speech, I thought! But as others pointed out, social sciences since the '50s and '60s have been anything but scientific. Clearly, hidden are the discourses of liberal democracies, markets and individualism-- as something to be aspired. What is public choice theory without individuals and market-type efficiency? What is rational choice theory, for that matter?

Kenneth Prewitt (2005) expounds: American political science has been nothing more than a reflection of American values, policies and goals. But are these truly the foundations of human behavior, even in the US? Are people really motivated by only greed, profit and consumerism? What about the good of the community? Are we then living out the ideals of capitalism?

An APSA Task Force Report of 2004 states that income inequalities of Americans are on the rise. Between 1973-2000, the top quintile households saw a 61.6% rise in incomes, while the bottom quintile saw only a 10.3% rise. Statistics for the racial divide are alarming also. In 2000, the median White households income was 62% greater than that of Blacks, and wealth for median White households was 12 times that of Black households. More so, the pool of people with no net worth whatsoever was significant--1/4 of Whites, 1/2 of Hispanics and 2/3 Black households. At the same time, means of political participation for the poor have been minimal--unions have decimated, campaign contributions by blue-collar workers insignificant, and political representation by Capitol Hill minimal. The opposite is true for the top quintile.

Such a confluence of money and power! Should we then think that American social science today is nothing more than a reflection of power politics in DC?

Putnam's speech (2003) is priceless also because of what he thinks the great goal of political science should be-- that we must all come together to build global institutions to further America's foreign policy! I'm not surprised. One might ask, when was this project ever dead? Have we not witnessed this project of American imperialism before in the language of modernization theorists, in the discourses of liberal democracy or of religious fundamentalism?

In fact, it might be a good time to recognize the power politics in political science. As for public service, are we rising to that cause? I thought that what the world really wants is no longer to be dehumanized, treated like exotic subjects and children, and paid lip-service about inclusion into the various power houses of globalization.

At the end of the day, let's talk about public service, but let's also talk about making an honest day's wages. I don't want to make my living dehumanizing separatist movements in any part of the world. We have states doing that for us, anyway. In fact, if that is the bread and butter of social science, to be yesmen to the global elite, count me out. I know science from nonsense.

Good work by Obama?

As the great grandson of an immigrant from a group that until recently faced xenophobic backlashes and because of my recent life circumstances, I am somewhat nauseated by the political construction of the recent immigration debate. Immigrants frequently become dehumanicized, functioning as mere representations of their connection to a legal document.

As many other politicians, Barack Obama has utilized some of this recent xenophobia throughout his campaign and presidency. His advocacy utilizes a wider notion of security (more than armies that threaten the country) to be resolved by a more narrow security method (traditional ways of securing objects of the country) for the traditional security object (the country or nation). The actual White House policy suggests:

President Obama will remove incentives to enter the country illegally by preventing employers from hiring undocumented workers and enforcing the law.

The web site also tells us that he will fix the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy and address the problem holistically within its economic context:

President Obama believes that our broken immigration system can only be fixed by putting politics aside and offering a complete solution that secures our border, enforces our laws, and reaffirms our heritage as a nation of immigrants. He believes our immigration policy should be driven by our best judgment of what is in the economic interest of the United States and what is in the best interest of the American worker. President Obama recognizes that an orderly, controlled border and an immigration system designed to meet our economic needs are important pillars of a healthy and robust economy.

Of course Obama remains extremely political in this instance. As Gramsci suggested some time ago, the very notion of common sense remains a political object, constructed by intra- and inter-class struggle. The notion of the immigration "problem" and the means of addressing it seem natural to many people: Too many people are not following the rules (immigrant and citizen) so we need more and better legal enforcement for the good of everyone. This problem, then, becomes a threat to our nation-state (our ability to regulate people flows across borders and remain cultural homogeneity) and way of life (standards of living brought down by an influx of labor), according to many people within the debate. While these formulations get articulated in slightly different ways and levels of urgency, their speakers make appeals to everyone's common sense, suggesting the problems and solutions are simply natural, thus limiting the scope of rhetoric and semantics.

Against common sense, let me suggest that labor remains the main problem, though not in the way one might think. People without legal work place protections and the ability to organize are threatening those with such protections. The solution should not be top down (enforce regulation of employment and punish employees and employers). The solution should be bottom up. It should enable employees. People who work in sweatshops, without workplace protections, or the ability to organize -- especially in the case of recent immigrants -- are not criminals, but victims.

Rather than dictate reality from the center like the Politburo, let's take a page from the rational choice handbook that suggests institutional design fosters individual behavior. Let's reform our labor institutions to allow greater and easier organizing by workers (and thus let workers take problems into their own hands). On the civil side let's support groups that are organizing workers in spite of the law (for a great example see http://www.ciw-online.org/). On a common sense level let's aide those undermining the hegemonic common sense.

It may be too early to tell, but Obama may be taking small steps on the issue of common sense (from Border Action Network:)

[The] Department of Homeland Security has canceled Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s 287g Agreement, revoking his deputies’ authority to make immigration arrests in the field. Though Arpaio wanted to renew an agreement with DHS to allow both field arrests and immigration checks at his jails, a DHS official recently gave him a document allowing only jail checks.

It seems too early to tell if this is random act, something in contradiction to public policy, a preview to centralizing raids entirely in ICE, or something else. Our common sense will dictate where we stand on these interpretations.

The Emperor is Naked!

It would seem that there is little to no respect for honesty on this planet. In an upset win, Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, while human rights activists from China got sidelined yet again. The Nobel Foundation claimed that Obama won: "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/) But how different is Obama's foreign policy from that of the previous administration? I thought I'd do a quick comparison.

Early this year, Obama bowed to the Saudi king and kissed his hand. Bush held the king's hand. The US still has military bases there protecting an unpopular ruler--one of Bin Laden's main beef's with the US and reasons for 911.

Bush started the War in Iraq and gave free handouts to Halliburton and the like. Obama keeps promising he will pull out most US troops in Iraq by 2010, but is diverting war efforts to Afghanistan, where he hopes for a greater international presence. Obama says his war is against al-Qaeda, not the Taliban. Poor people in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province pay the price, irrespective.

Both protect the rich. In Michael Moore's documentary, Farenheit 911, Bush called the richest corporations his "base". Obama bailed out Wall Street.

Both lack credibility in the developing world. Bush promised $15 billion to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa, but nothing followed. Obama, in his visit to Africa this year, lectured its political leaders to "clean up" their act, but ignored all the ways the US aides and abets their "acts" and impoverishes those nations.

As far as human rights go, both are a joke. The policy on China is so much the same, one doesn't wonder why Muslim dissidents didn't win the Nobel Peace prize. North Korea and Iran, as well as Cuba, remain "problems." And it's US, USSR, Israel, and China that hold the world's stockpile of nuclear arsenal.

Granted, most of us who hoped he would win in 2008 didn't expect Obama to offer anything new, but to claim he's done something revolutionary and that too for "world peace" is like saying the emperor has new clothes! Clearly, the only difference is this--Bush's empire did not apologize for colonization. Obama wishes to rule by consent, or at least poses to. He's invited the Europeans back to the table, after all.

In fact, Obama's America is no less a threat to world peace as Bush's. Like a shameless self-seeking power it understands "money" and not human rights, let alone world peace. Over 300 US corporations still do business with Burma's oppressive military regime. What has Obama done about this?

Minutemen and Klansmen

I recently reviewed The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan by Rory McVeigh (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) for the academic journal American Studies. The book is a little dry, but there were some notable lessons in it for understanding anti-immigration organizations today.

The Klan originated after the Civil War to restore white supremacy by terrorizing ex-slaves and antislavery whites during Reconstruction. This generation of the Klan ended when Reconstruction did in the 1870s. McVeigh’s book studies the second generation of the KKK, which started in 1915 (coinciding with the release of D.W. Griffith’s famous pro-Klan movie The Birth of a Nation) and exploded in growth from 1920-1924, with a membership of over four million people at its peak.

McVeigh argues that this version of the Klan emerged as a white Protestant response to the rise of large-scale manufacturing and retail, which squeezed small businesses and farms, diminished the political influence of the heartland, and strengthened the power of the cities—and the ethnic communities that lived in them. Klan organizers successfully mobilized White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) by playing on their fears of losing their economic, political, and social power as a result of these economic and political changes.

McVeigh argues that while the 1920s Klan was racist, its focus was not primarily on anti-Black terrorism like the Reconstruction-era KKK. Rather, the 1920s Klan was essentially an anti-immigration social movement. Most social movements, he notes, seek to win power and status for the powerless. But right-wing movements “act to preserve, restore, or expand rights and privileges of a relatively advantaged social group” (38). The 1920s Klan is an example of this. They used a populist rhetoric that attacked industrial elites above them for manipulating labor markets and the “rabble” below them (i.e. ethnic, Catholic working class communities) for flooding these markets and for being culturally alien. The top and bottom of American society, they charged, conspired to squeeze the virtuous, hard-working, upright, white Protestants in the middle.

The KKK argued that “true Americans” were losing ground to immigrants, that immigrants burdened public resources, and that they degraded American culture. The Klan mobilized anxious WASPs by presenting itself as a “one-hundred percent American” organization that promised to restore their status. The fears of these relatively privileged WASPs, combined with effective mobilization techniques by the Klan, led farmers and middle class white Protestants to join the KKK in droves.

These arguments—and many of the quotes McVeigh provides from Klan papers—could have come from the Minutemen today.

What this suggests is that the key to understanding today’s anti-immigration movement—as well as anti-Obama organizing such as the “tea parties”—is to see it as a “virtuous middle” movement. In other words, these are movements whose members see themselves as a virtuous middle—religious, moral, hardworking, patriotic and truly American—who face the threat of losing their relatively privileged social status. They fear that they are under attack by a bewildering global economy and unscrupulous corporations that are moving their jobs overseas. Even more, they feel they are being attacked by cultural elites—Harvard and Hollywood, the universities and pop culture—who undermine the moral values of this virtuous middle with moral relativism and sexual permissiveness. They also fear that they are under attack by the rabble below them—lazy people who live off public benefits paid for by the virtuous middle’s tax dollars (these folks are often secretly coded as black) and illegal aliens who are flooding the country, stealing jobs and degrading American culture (these folks are often coded as brown). The virtuous middle fears that cultural elites from above and the black and brown rabble from below are conspiring —now with the help of a black president!—to undermine their social status and by extension the moral, political, and economic foundations of America. The fall into Sodom is right behind.

This fearful “virtuous middle” (or the “silent majority,” to use Nixon’s term in the 1970s) is a commonplace in American history. Jacksonian Democrats used it in the 1830s to attack corporate elites and slaves (but not masters), populists used it in the 1890s to attack corporate elites and defend segregation, the Klan used it in the 1920s to attack economic elites and Catholics and immigrants, Nixon used it in the 1970s to attack cultural elites and Black and student protestors, and now the anti-immigrant right is using it today.

From the perspective of participants in the anti-immigration movement, this is an effective strategy that should be continued, for it has often worked in U.S. history. From the perspective of those who support immigrant rights, it seems to me that the task is to convince this middle that their true interests lie in a united front with the black and brown “rabble” below them against the capitalist elites above. That would be hard, but it would also make for interesting times.