"Immigrants and hate" (UPDATED)

Geov Parrish reports on the underlying hostility that surfaced in Seattle and how our police and press reacted to it:

"Monday, while my column on immigrants and May Day ran as the lead at WorkingforChange.com, I was busy for most of the day helping provide security for the massive immigrants rights march here in Seattle.They were concerned about a steady stream of virulent, anonymous death threats directed both at organizers and march attendees, and they didn't have nearly enough security to protect people adequately against such threats.

Their fears were well justified. At one point in the march, a car plowed into the crowd (a passenger later called the driver's decision to drive into a street jammed with people a "mental lapse.") And, as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported, in the 21st paragraph of their story, Seattle police reported that a total of seven people were arrested during the march, and those included five people on possible weapons violations. The SPD said all five may have permits for the weapons, however, and have been released.

This was fairly typical local media coverage. What the SPD apparently did not say, but any organizer could have (and perhaps had) told any local reporter who cared to ask, was that the five were not marchers, as the P-I intimated. They were self-identified Neo-Nazis, and in the context of the large number of death threats organizers had received, there is only one possible explanation for their having come to the march armed. It was march security that brought their presence to the attention of SPD.

Here, as in much of the rest of the country, large numbers of (white) people have been whipped up into an anti-immigrant frenzy (they would call it "anti-illegal immigrant," but as any immigrant will tell you, people on the street or workplace can't and don't tell the difference) by media icons like Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the whole Fox crew, and an assortment of reactionary local talk show hosts across the country.

Howard Dean, who has been warning that the rovians will "use" the immigration issue in the fall elections, repeated his position last week on the administration's approach to immigrants:

"This is a president who says he's going to send 12 million hardworking people back where they came from. He can't find a six-foot-four Saudi terrorist! How's he going to find 12 million people ... ?" Dean asked the more than 450 people who came to see him speak. "All this business about sending everybody back -- I am tired of everybody being divided."

He also criticized the Bush-supported guest-worker proposal and legislation that critics say would wrongly require doctors, teachers and clergy members to report suspected illegal immigrants. "We don't think we should criminalize religious figures," Dean said. "The oath I took to become a doctor was not, 'I'll help everybody -- unless they're an illegal immigrant.'"

We know the rovians are going to try to paint the Dems as soft on "illegal aliens," just like they did on national security. I have heard the "12 million illegal aliens" being blamed for low wages and other ills in the workplace. The economic insecurity all around us is the perfect breeding ground for this sentiment. Rising gas prices this summer will only cause it to grow louder. I hope a solid strategy is developed to counter it.