Pinal County Greens congratulate Activist and Prescott College Prof. Randall Amster on his article, "U.S. Greens Work to Stem Anti-Immigrant Tide"

Apache Junction, Ariz., July 25, 2011

The Pinal County Greens congratulate the well-known activist/author Randall Amster, graduate chair of humanities at Prescott College, on his article, "U.S. Greens work to stem anti-immigrant tide," posted on Friday on Green Pages, the national newspaper of the Green Party of the United States.

Randall Amster's article includes this excerpt featuring the good work of the Arizona Green Party leadership and its 2010 candidates:

In June of this year, both Alabama and South Carolina passed measures that are rhetorically competing for the misbegotten title of the “nation’s toughest immigration law.” According to Reuters, the South Carolina law will require police to check the immigration status of any individual they suspect is in the country illegally after they have stopped that person for another reason (akin to Arizona’s SB 1070); will allow the state to revoke the business license of any employer who knowingly hires “unauthorized aliens;” and will create a new (and pejoratively named) “Illegal Immigration Enforcement Unit.” Alabama’s new law, as reported by the Associated Press, “was modeled on Ari­zona’s” and contains additional provisions “requiring schools to find out if students are in the country lawfully and making it a crime to knowingly give an illegal immigrant a ride.”

The passage of these new draconian laws has prompted the U.S. Department of Just­ice to initiate a review and call for meetings with state law enforcement officials in order to ascertain whether the federal government will file lawsuits similar to the successful challenge it launched against SB 1070. Yet here in Arizona, well before the federal government stepped in, the state Green Party took a strong stance on immigration issues, as reported by the local FOX News station: “Besides its position on the environment, there is another issue the Green Party is very clear about and that is its position on immigration. The Green Party is the only party that supports amnesty. ‘We want comprehensive immigration reform. We do not support any of this legislation, whether it’s SB 1070, anti-ethnic studies legislation, employer sanctions, English only,’ says Angel Torres, AZ House candidate.”

During the 2010 election cycle, Arizona Green Party (AZGP) candidates for state office were outspoken about immigration issues, including AZGP co-chair Torres, who noted that “as a Puerto Rican/Xicano and life-long Arizonan, SB 1070 is an insult to me, my family and the entire Latino community. To scapegoat or racially profile an entire community does not solve the problem. Our economic and immigration policies need to serve the interests of all working-class folks, not the interests of the corporations.”

Linda Macias, AZGP vice co-chair and 2010 State House candidate, added: “We need major federal reform of our immigration laws. Immigrants come to the United States in hope of a better life. We need to give them citizenship now and write immigration laws that are humane and just.”

The AZGP further issued a press release asserting that “Arizona’s anti-immigrant legislation does not address the root causes of migration: poverty, lack of economic opportunity, war and political conflict, and environmental devastation…. The Arizona Green Party encourages all Arizonans to join the grassroots movement to overturn SB 1070, and organize for comprehensive immigration reform.”

As indicated by Leenie Halbert, AZGP and national Green Party co-chair, some im­portant gains were made here, “In Arizona, we’ve been able to use our special status under the state’s Clean Elections laws, in which we participate in organized televised debates, to directly address issues like im­migration and SB 1070, without parsing our words and hedging our positions like the Democrats do. We’re looking forward to the upcoming election cycle, as we pre­pare to field candidates who will represent our intention to become an electoral arm of a growing political movement against the state’s racist and draconian anti-immigrant laws. We are the only poli­tical party in the state that’s aligned with this perspective.”

(Photo courtesy of Bart Everson on Flickr)

"We urge everyone to read this article by Randall Amster," Pinal County Greens Co-Chair Richard Grayson said. The Pinal County Greens are a group of members of the Arizona Green Party residing in Pinal County, which according to the 2010 U.S. Census, is the second-fastest-growing county in the nation.

Pinal County Greens: Like Conor Oberst and Desaparecidos, We Believe SB1070 and Other Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Youth Republican Laws Are Unacceptable

for Telemoonfa

Today's New York Times notes the obvious, gathered from the 2010 census, that we are in

a changed American landscape, with whites now a minority of the youth population in 10 states, including Arizona, where tensions over immigration have flared, said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.

“This is a huge demographic transformation,” Mr. Frey said. “A cultural generation gap is emerging.”

The growing divide between a diverse young population and an aging white population raises some potentially tricky policy questions. Will older whites be willing to allocate money to educate a younger generation that looks less like their own children than ever before? How will a diverse young generation handle growing needs for aging whites?

The rapid change has infused political debates, and they have been noisiest in the states with the largest gaps.

Arizona is the leader, with whites accounting for just 42 percent of its young people, compared with 83 percent of its residents 65 and older, according to Mr. Frey. Over all, the state’s Hispanic population nearly tripled between 1990 and 2009, and is now a third of all residents.

The Pinal County Greens and the Arizona Green Party will respond to the needs of all Arizonans, unlike the right-wing bastards in the legislature who have declared war on the state's youth. As young people turn 18 and are eligible to vote, the radical Republicans' days in power are numbered.