The Los Angeles City Council today joined the growing list of cities and organizations boycotting Arizona because of our new "papers please" legislation SB 1070. Well, kinda sorta.
According to LA Times reporter Phl Willon, the council voted to "ban most city travel to Arizona and future contracts with companies" here, but it stopped short of "canceling all of the city's $58 million worth of contracts with Arizona companies."
During the debate over the measure, Arizona's new immigration law was compared to Nazi Germany and the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. To which, I would say, if the city council felt that strongly about it, why weenie out of cancelling the city's current contracts with AZ?
Seems the Port of Los Angeles and Los Angeles International Airport didn't want to ax their ongoing business with Sand Land, therefore the council relented.
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United Nations human rights experts are blasting SB 1070, as well as the newly-instituted ethnic studies ban in Arizona -- aka, Schools Superintendent Tom Horne's crack at nativism.
After all, Hispanics make up about 30 percent of the state. Lord forbid someone tell their kids that Arizona used to be part of Mexico. The parents might even rise up and, um...vote.
But I digress. In a statement published on the Web site for the U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the U.N. wonks claimed that,
"A disturbing pattern of legislative activity hostile to ethnic minorities and immigrants has been established with the adoption of an immigration law that may allow for police action targeting individuals on the basis of their perceived ethnic origin, and a law that suppresses school programs featuring the histories and cultures of ethnic minorities."
Regarding SB 1070 specifically, the U.N. folks said that,
"The law may lead to detaining and subjecting to interrogation persons primarily on the basis of their perceived ethnic characteristics...In Arizona, persons who appear to be of Mexican, Latin American, or indigenous origin are especially at risk of being targeted under the law."
The U.N.'s assessment is dispassionate and more accurate than Counciman Reyes' take on SB 1070. Maybe the U.N. can help kick off a worldwide embargo of Cactus Country. Who needs those foreign tourists anyway, eh?
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Isn't Seattle supposed to be some bastion of liberalism, or somethin'? Apparently not to judge by the video above of a Hispanic male getting stomped on by Seattle cops, even though they eventually let him go, and he apparently had nothing to do with the incident they were investigating.
One of the boot-lovin' cops involved later apologized for saying, "I'm going to beat the Mexican piss out of you, homey! You feel me?"
"Homey"? What is this, an old episode of In Living Color?
And you thought Sheriff Joe was bad. Most of the stompings he's been sued for happened at least out of plain sight, although many of them were caught on tape with jail cameras.
Now watch the Seattle city council boycott Arizona as a CYA move. Don't even try. "Emerald City"? In a pig's eye.
Arizona, you finally have some place you can feel better than...for the moment.