Arizona Goddamn!

Yesterday I had to send a prayer up to my beloved Nina Simone and let her know that to Mississippi Goddamn...we now have to add Arizona.

First the Arizona legislature lost their goddamn minds by coming up with this heinous bill that actually makes it illegal to be an undocumented immigrant in Arizona (and, despite Supreme Court rulings to the contrary, basically directs the Arizona law enforcement officers to engage in blatant racial--and clothing--profiling). Secondly, facing an election year, Republican Jan Brewer, waiting until the last possible minute, steeled up her bright red ovaries and signed the bill into the law.

I expect legislators, especially white racist legislators in territory that legally belongs to Mexico and that has consistently violated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, to try and pull some fucked up shenanigans, but the fault for this bill becoming law lies squarely in the lap of that blocked headed creature of darkness called Jan Brewer.

Not only did she signed the damn bill, with a straight face, she said as she signed it, and I quote, "I will NOT tolerate racial discrimination or racial profiling in Arizona." (Emphasis is HERS and is included in the full text of her speech--the link to the full text is in the box at the bottom of the page).

I almost never ever use the following word in reference to a woman but...excuse me, bitch?

Jan Brewer just signed a law that explicitly makes being an undocumented immigrant in Arizona illegal. Already, we have heard about advice to police from California Rep. Bilbray suggesting that an undocumented immigrant can be identified by his or her clothes (read sombrero y chancletas). And, frankly, there are reams and reams of research that shows exactly that racial profiling is the ONLY way that law enforcement has used, outside of raids into particularly employers, to track and arrest undocumented immigrants. Again. Excuse me. Bitch.

And let me clarify my use of language. When you decide to demonize, demoralize, and establish laws to make a human being illegal (up to this point they were undocumented, now, in Arizona, undocumented immigrants are actually illegal) then you have no more sense than a common wild dog. If you act like a dog and raise your leg to piss on people, then you have earned the use of the term bitch as an apt noun and adjective to describe you.

Already there are calls to boycott Arizona. The Lakota and Ojibwe nations have released a poignant and beautiful statement establishing the rights of indigenous people from across Turtle Island to migrate as they wish as the borders themselves are illegal constructions created by an illegitimate occupying power that used genocidal practices to create their political and military hegemony. And even Shakira, today, has turned her ojos asi towards Arizona and rolled them so far up in her head that she can see her brain.

And, of course, GOP Chairman Michael Steele (who should, as my Mama used to say, be held up and have the black beaten off of him) along with other GOP turd faced pundits called President Obama's condemning of Arizona's idiocy "playing the race game."

This is a race game mother fuckers, and it was not started by President Obama or any other person of color in this nation, but I swear before God that we will finish it either by Malcolm's plan or Martin's, but the shit is on. Bitches.

Arizona goddamn.

(P.S. Just to be clear, if you ain't native...you are undocumented.)

A New Poem: Chief Joseph’s Song for Those That Cannot Change What Is

For Frank Inman: Heal. and for the LCO Band of Ojibwe, my great-grandma Susannah Johnson, and her mother Bim We We.


I shall fight no more forever
Lay down my bow and arrow
Set aside my shield
Take up my sorrow
Like a shawl
Drape it carefully
Around low slung shoulders
Use the last light of the setting sun
to clasp it to my breast

I shall fight no more forever
Spread my arms and embrace the rising tide
Use my body to shield
Those things most precious
until my last breath
is my grave marker
and the grass is churned into concrete
the North wind whispering
here fell the shadow of man

I shall fight no more forever
From where the sun now stands
no more dawns will I greet freely
no more the war path will I take
no more shall I know peace
that I lay aside too
only here now lives sorrow and sadness
coldness
our blankets are thread bare and hollow

I shall fight no more forever
Stealthily among the young
An ancientness has invaded
Like a cavalry rampaging
Slaughtering innocence
Herding what’s left
Into dusty reservations
The secret land where Death hides it kingdom

I shall fight no more forever
I surrender
There are those that will find new ways
Warriors to resist
But the song my children sing is hunger
Their Fathers are buried in forgotten places
Their Mothers dry bones thrust up from the tall grass
And I have only emptiness to feed them

I shall fight no more forever
Until one day
When the sun rises again
When songs of hunger
Are set to war drums
When fires are built
From broken treaties
When love turned bitter
Is honey sweetened again
When the judgment has passed
Then, then
Bend near to this place
Place your lips on the ground
And whisper my name

-Brandon Lacy Campos
-New York, NY
-8 March 2009

-The photo is courtesy of David Berube and was taken at the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.