This boiled my sangre yesterday when the google alerts rolled into my inbox. I'm not sure what else to do beside rant, though. Replacing hardliner legislators is a long-term goal but there seems to be little action in the short term to protect these families from exploitation by the system.

A problem I come to again and again. What to do with knowledge when you want to act, but do not see an option. For myself, I have recently been thinking of something that will satisfy my own heart.

(No, Gonzales I am not typing it here, and no, it doesnt involve terror, violence, or funding any qeustionable groups. you'll just have to keep reading, vendido!)

I can't say what any one person should do, but it seems to me it is up to each of us to find a way to act in accordance with our heart and knowledge and worldview. A little effort in some way or another from millions of people is bound to have a serious effect on something sooner or later.

And if not, the hope can't hurt.

Hopping up and down mad here too.

To boot, these people had really great lives, working in meatpacking plants!!!!! Getting screwed by their employers, then by the fuckin' migra.

Wish you could tell what you are up to as would like some ideas myself...I need some ideas! But soon I am moving to a larger midwest city with substantial Latino population (thank god, Brown people!!!) and also large Asian and Somali immigrant populations so I'm hoping to get involved with some groups who are working on immigration/labor issues.

i will either write you, turtlebella, or post on it sooner or later. i have to finish thinking it out. i'm almost there.

WTF?!

this almost makes me as mad as I was when I read about the Mexican immigrants in the dairy industry who become overwhelmed by the toxic fumes of huge amounts of hormone heavy cow feces then fall and drowned in mammoth pools of slimy shit.--the #1 reason I should be a vegan.

The number #2?--Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" is about the horrors of the meat industry. and, of course, "Fast Food Nation"--a great read. In "...Nation," Schlosser reports that McDonalds and other fast food companies advertise for meat packing jobs in Mexico. They lure people here with the promise of fair pay and medical care only to leave them without either when they loose an arm in a machine or something.

Fuck that. I wish I believed that these corporate heartless assholes would be punished in the afterlife but, alas, I'm an athiest.

Yes, I've read the Jungle, sure is something. I have Fast Food Nation, too. And they've been recruiting cheap Mexican labor and then persecuting Mexicans anyway, ever since they were building the railroads. That's what gets me so pissed about this fake debate. It's all about exploitation, hatred, greed, and control. A little studying of history shows a long war against Mexico. And these lou dobbsian idiots who try to overlook the glaring hypocrisy reveal their true agenda.

I'm sick over this shit.

http://muskrathunt.blogspot.com/2006/12/icemen-cometh.html

This makes me so mad! (And this I say with my very un-tanned sun-burnable white skin.) Could it be more obvious how racist and asinine the migra police have really become?

You're on the money with this comment, Nezua: "A little studying of history shows a long war against Mexico."

Damn right! The Mexican War was, after all, little more than a massive aggressive war whose chief purpose was to spread that glorious American institution of slavery into territories the US wished to (and did) seize from Mexico. I guess nothing's changed, just the form of slavery has disguised itself a bit more artfully.

Work these poor Latino laborers almost to death, take out taxes and Social Security-- and then forcefully send them out after extracting so much labor from them? What crap! I for one will be happy when the terms of the Mexican War treaties are actually enforced, i.e. when the property and hard work of Latinos (who have been dispossessed for 150 years) are respected, when Spanish is made equal to English in the offices and the state legislatures, when the US finally comes to terms with the brutality of that war in 1848 and comes to accept the Latino people as the original crafters of the urban life in the region.

Ay, ojala que tuvieramos exigir que estos agentes de la Migra pasarian un mes, solo un mes trabajando en las condiciones en que los "ilegales" trabajan. Quizas van a darse cuenta quien *verdaderamente* apoya la economia de este pais!

hola agralla,

well, my skin will burn once if i get out in hot sun, and then after that its protected, usually, and won't burn again. black/african-american skin can burn too. just so ya know!

y un mes trabajando allí may cure their mindset...but probably not. yet, pienso i'd love to see it happen anyway! at least un mes, pero quizas uno o dos años es mejor...

I posted the following over at Jesus' General.

Michelle Malkin aka Maglasomething is going to Iraq

http://michellemalkin.com/archiv...ives/ 006537.htm

Thought some of you might be interested.

Maybe not. Personally, karmic fantasies give me solace.

L.G. I just was reading about that! It's very exciting. It's just a tough situation because if she makes it through alive, we will NEVER EVER EVER hear the end of it, and of course, that will mean ALL HER OPINIONS on the war will then "have to be" true. Ugh.

So what's left? To wish for her to meet an I.E.D up close? I can't wish that even on her. So it's sort of a no-win situation for me....

A win-win would be for her to get so scared as the date approaches that she loses her voice and then she'd just be on Hot Air signing away like mad and making very angry faces....and somehow, that would make it all a bit better for me.

graz for the link, amigo.

It's just a tough situation because if she makes it through alive, we will NEVER EVER EVER hear the end of it...

Haaa. I was just thinking of that. I don't really wish harm on anyone, but after finding out that Michael Yon is going, and that Curt from Flopping Asses may go (pending the approval of Sheriff Taylor), I say bombs a-fucking-way. They will be insufferable if they get back unscathed.

Seriously though, I hope the blast just blows their stupid asses into reality.

http://www.floppingaces.net/2006...-jamil-hussein/
.

and to make it clear... i can't feel comfy wishing death on anyone. but that doesn't mean i'll cry over hers, either, should she choose to accept this assignment and find out the hard way that she has been full of shit. i mean life is tragic and greater tragedies have occurred and do every day. in fact, it's a much greater tragedy that children are dying daily who never wanted any kind of war or blog readership in the first place.

i'm afraid of your link.

So, after 5 years of stressing 'security' and 'Homeland Defense' and eroding civil rights, we are told that 11 million out of 300 million people do not have legal documents. How strange is that? Somebody *just* noticed 11 million people? I don't remember many immigrants working in Nebraska’s packing plants before Reagan’s time, but there were unions and more, smaller, packing plants. Now there are a few corporate megapackers that advertise for workers in Spanish. If a person was inclined to cynicism they might think that a back door was quietly opened then for a few million nearly invisible exploitable workers. And now that the unions are busted, and many of the jobs have been exported, it’s time to export the cheap labor too.

yes...if a person were inclined to cynicism, as you say, it would all look pretty nasty. but we should really trust the government, don't you think? they only want the best for all of us.

Four words:

You are fucking refreshing.

Four Words:

Possibly best review ever.

thanks mark