Moon, sky, clouds




Image courtesy of Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center. 10 Jul. 2006.
"Astronaut Photography of Earth - Display Record," image ISS013-E-54329 (2 Feb. 2007). Via NASA Earth Observatory. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:13:00 PM -- |    

 
New ICE age for labor?
The recent ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) raids at the troubled Smithfield Tar Heel meat processing plant may be the harbinger of a new unionbusting tactic, judging by ICE director Julie Myers' comments to the annual University of Chicago Legal Forum last year. Last October law professor Jennifer Chacon (UC Davis) wrote, at "ImmigrationProf Blog":

Ms. Myers briefly noted that, as unions increasingly provide representation for undocumented workers, "we need to look at" whether these activities cross the line into criminal conduct, such as harboring. When later asked to clarify those remarks, Ms. Myers appeared to back off the statement, emphazing that it is just something that "we need to think about."

Writing at The Nation in early January, Rick Perlstein reported more of Myers' remarks:

"In order to have a better America," Myers pronounced, ICE was busy catching undocumented immigrants before they could commit "criminal and in some cases even terrorist acts."

Chacon was not the only one who noticed Myers' remark about "need[ing] to look at" unions' breaking the boundary between "charitable assistance and the unlawful employment of aliens." Perlstein:

Several lawyers were soon on the phone with labor officials trying to figure out what she meant. Is an ICE crackdown on labor organizing drives imminent? Was one already under way? Were unions harboring undocumented immigrants in violation of the law?

As Perlstein points out, the notion makes little to no sense. Earth to Myers: unions don't employ, they organize. It's companies that employ -- and under federal law (the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, or IRCA), they're the ones who are (theoretically) on the hook for knowingly hiring illegal alien workers; the same law specifically exempts unions, which organize workers after they're hired.

But according to Perlstein, IRCA enforcement has been so lax that companies can easily afford to be scofflaws -- and then use the fear of deportation to undermine organized labor action by the resulting workforce. He cites Yale law professor Michael Wishnie, who found that 54% of ICE raids occur at workplaces with active labor disputes. Chacon had written similarly:

Although they are technically protected by laws such as the National Labor Relations Act, decisions such as the 2002 Hoffman Plastics decision have sharply limited the degree to which such workers can actually claim remedies under these law. This creates a perverse incentive for unscrupulous employers to hire undocumented migrants and then to ignore wage and workplace protection laws. When undocumented workers try to organize to improve working conditions, the employer can engage in retaliatory firings, knowing that these workers will not be entitled to the same remedies that would be available to citizen workers.

For his part, Perlstein proposes Congress find out just what Myers -- a controversial recess appointment with more connections than experience -- has to say for herself on the subject.

For my part, were I a cynical blogger type of fellow, I'd note that once again the struggle to keep us safe from "terrorist acts" seems to have a political and financial payoff for the Bush administration and its corporate allies. But no worries: I'm sure that just like the political commissars Bush wants to create, recess appointments like Myers will do just fine keeping their agencies at the DHS focused on Job One.


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NOTE: Chacon and Perlstein items via Kevin Johnson (also of "ImmigrationProf Blog"); thanks to Brett Marston for the tip. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:01:00 AM -- |    

 
Our day at the demonstration
So I went to the big DC demonstration last weekend. As usual, I can't tell you much about it, if you want to know who spoke and what they said, but I can tell you a bit more about who I met.

As promised, I decided to try to dress up for the occasion; slacks, tie, overcoat, polished my shoes, etc. The effect was marred by, well, my usual ambivalence about all that, plus the crude hand lettering of my sign -- "We are the majority -- Bring the troops home."

My first stop was Union Station, where I met up with a bunch of other bloggers and/or online activists -- althippo, Keith (KCinDC, one of the chief impresarios of the Dupont Circle DC "Drinking Liberally" chapter), yarrow, and hilzoy of "Obsidian Wings," who arrived a little later with a friend, as did a few others. I'm not positive any of them want their real names published, so I won't. But we didn't call eachother "althippo," "hilzoy," etc.

Like yarrow, I enjoyed meeting hilzoy, who is more puckish and less relentlessly serious than I had somehow expected. She did start an interesting conversation about law saying she felt a grounding in philosophy gave one a head start in analyzing legal issues, or at least some confidence when closely reading legal texts. That reminded me of a post by Lindsay Beyerstein's ("Majikthise") that I admired, analyzing Judge Taylor's ruling on the NSA warrantless domestic surveillance case -- a case of a non-lawyer doing a notably better job of analyzing the ruling than usually cogent lawyer-writers like "publius" did. (Should have nominated it for a "Koufax," hope someone else did.) Hilzoy's friend, a lawyer, said she felt there really wasn't such a thing as "conservative" or "liberal" judges, that they really tried to work the case in front of them as they saw the law. I couldn't quite buy that, attempting to reproduce some of the "Fair Share" case I've been following lately, where the dissenting judge's reasoning seemed so much more concise and on point than the several judges who found for RILA and v. Fielder that it seemed to me somebody started with the verdict and worked their way back.

But I'm neither a lawyer nor a philosopher, just a computer guy -- like several others at the table. Sometimes I wonder if there's a predisposition to a certain kind of idealism/activism in that job description: "if we just fix the algorithm, we'll finally get the right output." But not if you can't describe the problem well; I doubt I made a cogent or even very interesting case regarding RILA v. Fielder.

Enough preliminaries. We finally completed "brunch"/lunch and headed over to the Mall; I said my goodbyes (to my relief, this was later confirmed) and found my own family and that of a schoolmate's of Maddie's. As for the crowd size -- who knows. "Tens of thousands," the common news media description, seems conservative, but I couldn't dispute it one way or the other, I never got much further back from the Capitol than the National Gallery, one of the closest museums on the Mall. Judge for yourself from my photos and those of others.

My newly elected state senator Jamie Raskin was there too, as were several other Takoma Park folk. County council member Marc Elrich had the funniest t-shirt of the day, an, um, wordplay on "Meet the Fockers" -- you can probably work it out -- with pictures of Bush, Cheney, and Condi Rice. Raskin was justly proud of his anti death penalty bill and another measure seeking to bring voter registration to high schools; he's also supporting a Clean Car bill before the Senate that he's excited about. Raskin told me there's a Senate companion bill to Sheila Hixson's audited voter verified ballot election law (HB18) that I mentioned in an update last week; he said there's been some negotiation with advocates for disabled people, resulting in some tinkering to ensure that the resulting bill will address those concerns.

So what about the issues -- Iraq? The surge? Bush? The signs were all around us in their thousands. I guess I was struck by the strong pro-impeachment tenor of many of the signs, both the quality printed ones and the informal hand-lettered ones. It's a bit of a jolt to see hundreds of signs saying "impeach" even when you agree. A good jolt. It was a a different kind of jolt to find myself marching next to two guys wearing official-looking "Iraqi Freedom" baseball caps. Sure enough: veterans -- and one of them a convalescent outpatient from Walter Reed. (No visible injuries, but that's not all they treat there.) He said he thought he "might as well do some good" and join the demonstration.

The mechanics of the route were such that there was a major bottleneck right at the exit from the Mall towards Constitution Avenue, so that it seemed to take the better part of two hours to move the first maybe one or two hundred yards. By then our girls were fading -- even though they'd had a great time and had grown very attached to their signs. So we parents felt discretion was the better part of valor and decided to exit the march.

As usual, there's been some of the familiar grousing about what marches like this one actually accomplish, or whether they persuade anyone who needs persuading. For my part, I was "favorably impressed," and thought "'wow, I like these people'" as one (constructive) critic once put it; but then I'm not hard to please in that respect.

I also think critics should give the organizers and auxiliary 'movement' a little more credit than they do. The next day there was a big lobbying training day at a local high school; on Monday citizen lobbyists fanned out across Congress to buttonhole their representatives and Senators and try to inject a little bit of spine where needed. I like to think Saturday's rally and march was encouraging for them, and a useful reminder for both them and their legislators that there's a majority for getting out of Iraq. Maybe Nell Lancaster ("A lovely promise") will tell us some of what she experienced as one of those lobbyists -- she stayed with us Saturday night, and talking with her into the wee hours and again the next morning was the highlight of the weekend for me. The demonstration "made" that happen, too, just as it catalyzed new friendships for me at the Union Station brunch.

As Avedon Carol said after mentioning some of the criticisms, there's value in just seeing that lots of other people agree with you. There's also value, I hope, in learning -- and reminding oneself -- that it's good and right and it's still American to get out when it's important and say what you think as loud as you like.

There's a new America happening all the time; it's made of new Americans. Some of them got an idea of what that can mean on Saturday.





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UPDATE, 2/2: Photos from the San Francisco march by janinsanfran ("happening-here?").
UPDATE, 2/5: worldwideweber ("Notes from the Basement") writes about it, too.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:32:00 PM -- |    

 
Heh. Indeed.
Libby: "bitch set me up" --- headline at "WTF Is It Now?" The Party of Responsibility marches on.*

Beyond Parody --- Regarding this, by wingnut TNR publisher Martin Peretz -- "Poor Tom Friedman. He is looking for a Muslim Martin Luther King. There is none, Tom. If one were living on earth, they'd break his windows. Imprison him. Or kill him. Finished." -- Matthew Yglesias responds:

Imagine that! A society where a figure like King could be imprisoned or even killed! Those Muslims sure are vicious and evil.

Pandagon on Chris Muir on global warming ---

Roy Edroso on Glenn Reynolds' communitarian/libertarian version of "I have a dream" --- "...if a combination of loaded semi-automatic rifles and whiskey running "down gullets like rain after a dry spell" is what the Perfesser is after, I say let him try it in Knoxville first. I am content to watch the fireworks from a distance." The paper is titled "IT TAKES A MILITIA: A COMMUNITARIAN CASE FOR COMPULSORY ARMS BEARING." Coming soon: "It takes a militia: a communitarian case for compulsory suitcase nuke bearing."


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* For you youngsters out there, the headline is an allusion to this. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:02:00 PM -- |