Governor Huey P. Long of Louisiana once warned that “If fascism came to America, it would come on a program of Americanism.” If anybody has any doubt that SB 1070 of Arizona and other draconian measures people keep proposing about so-called “illegal aliens” is any different from the way that Jews, Gypsies, and political refugees from the Nazis were treated in pre-World War II Europe, they should read Erich Maria Remarque’s book, Flotsam. Anyway, these are the responses that I am proposing for how LULAC (of which I am a national civil rights commissioner) and other civil rights organizations should respond to the passage of SB 1070. This is from a memo I just fired off to some top level LULAC people:
Jews forced to wear Yellow Star of David
1. In World War II, on the day that had been decreed by the Nazis for the Jews of Denmark to wear Yellow Stars of David on their clothing so that they could be singled out and identified, the King of Denmark took his morning horse ride wearing a Yellow Star of David himself. By that afternoon, the King’s message to the Danish people resulted in every Dane who was not a Nazi and a traitor wearing the Yellow Star of David. This act of civil disobedience made it impossible to implement the law.
LULAC calls on all Arizonans and everybody visiting the state to wear a Yellow Star of David in protest against the law with the word’s “undocumented immigrant to Arizona” written on it. It will throw a big monkey wrench into what constitutes probable cause for police officers who want to enforce the law, especially if they fail to stop and attempt to identify gringos wearing the Yellow Star of David with that message.
Additionally, we call on everybody in Arizona to state the following if questioned by law enforcement about their immigration status: “Disobedience to an unconstitutional law is not punishable before or after the law is declared unconstitutional. I therefore respectfully decline to comply with your request as it violates my constitutional right to privacy and my right to be free from unlawful search and seizure.”
2. We demand that Arizona enact a law to make the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations self-executing so that anybody who is detained for two hours or longer for suspicion of being unlawfully in the United States be advised of their right to contact the consular officials of their nation and that their consular officials be notified by law enforcement of their detention and given access to the prisoner.
3. We call upon Mexico to invoke the provisions of Article XXI of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to demand formation of a bilateral commission to formulate proposed solutions to ALL ISSUES INVOLVING IMMIGRATION INCLUDING THE QUESTION OF THE LEGITIMACY OF THE BORDER ITSELF BECAUSE OF CONSISTENT U.S. (E.E.U.U.) VIOLATION OF THE TREATY AND THE PROTOCOLS OF QUERETARO. If such a commission cannot resolve these issues, we expect Mexico to invoke Article XXI rights to third-nation neutral arbitration of the disputes.
