An Injury to One is an Injury to All
ARIZONA–On Monday, June 25 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the onerous provision of the Arizona state SB 1070 law called “show me your papers.” This measure requires local police to determine the legal status of anyone they apprehend, no matter how minor the infraction.
Though the Supreme Court struck down three other repressive provisions of the Arizona state law, the door is now open for reintroducing them, or for other states to do copy cat laws.
The undocumented are criminalized for seeking what every other American worker wants: the right to contribute to society and seek a better life. They are scapegoated because the corporations that run the government don’t want to guarantee a decent standard of living for any American worker they can’t exploit. In truth, the undocumented are not the cause of our financial problems, nor are they a drain on our social services—and the Arpaios and the Jan Brewers of the world know it. An attack on the undocumented deflects anger from the real problem—corporate control of government.
Today, work as we know it, is being eliminated by modern technology. At the same time, it is creating an unheard of material abundance. Yet that abundance is not getting to those who need it because of the profit motive. As a consequence, we are witnessing the most drastic polarization of wealth and poverty ever seen in this country.
We are on a slippery slope when we allow workers to be stigmatized and hunted down, reminiscent of the Nazi pogroms of Hitler’s time. The finger is pointed in the wrong direction. When the government, courts, and police are doing the corporations’ bidding and not insuring a decent standard of living for all Americans, that is a formula for fascism.
Attack on the undocumented is an attack on us all.
