“No H8″ marks the campaign to speak out against the November 4, 2008 California Proposition 8, which amended the state’s Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. The hate, though, has only escalated in degree and in number since the revitalizing campaign and subsequent election of President Barack Obama. During the campaign, Kentucky Congressman Geoff Davis referred to then Senator Obama as “that boy.” Recently, Tea Party supporters protesting against health care reform screeched racial and sexual epithets at Democratic members of the House. Protestors even spat on Representative Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO). And to the high-mark of their convoluted thinking, Tea-Party supporters don’t want to see Social Security and Medicare cuts.
Just this past Tuesday, April 27, racists slashed the tires of Washington Community Action Network staff members, spray-painted “Heil Hitler” symbols, and even threw a metal ball through a window. Washington CAN had planned a rally to demonstrate against the extremely idiotic Arizona immigration bill SB1070. Click here to watch a segment about the vandalization from a local news station.
Furthermore, Rolling Stones reporter Greg Palast says investigation shows Jan Brewer, Gov of AZ, has tried to keep American citizens of Hispanic heritage from voting in the past. Please take a few minutes to watch Rachel Maddow explain the personnages and groups behind SB1070:
Just to be explicit, these groups do not function in isolation. Kris Kobach, for example, works for the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR), which featured prominently in the tumultuously racist climate in Suffolk County on Long Island. Kobach is also “birther.”
Judith Warner of the NYTimes wrote a succinctly clarifying blog entry on November 6, 2008. I’ll quote just a paragraph:
And it was. An era of unbridled deregulation, wealth-enhancing perks for the already well-off, and miserly indifference to the poor and middle class; of the recasting of greed as goodness, the equation of bellicose provincialism with patriotism, the reframing of bigotry as small-town decency.
So where does this subset of American thought come from? How is it such a powerful force in our culture–rearing its force from time to time? Look to my next post for that discussion.
