Around a hundred supporters of immigrant rights were outside Wrigley Field in Chicago to boycott the first game of the Cubs vs. Diamondbacks four-game series and the Arizona Diamondbacks owners’ support for the immigration law recently passed in Arizona.

The boycott of the Diamondbacks was a response to what immigrant rights activists called an “anti-immigrant/xenophobic bill SB1070,” which was signed into law by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer.

The Rainbow Raiders, Comite 10 de Marzo, The Justice Mission, Immigrant Youth Justice League, the International Socialist Organization, and the Chicago Community and Workers Rights groups were there to support the action.

Those who organized the protest outside Wrigley Field Stadium encouraged fans to consider not attending any of the games in the series or bring a sign against the law to show solidarity with those the law targets in Arizona.

The majority of the press was in attendance. WGN and WBBM covered the action live and the local affiliates from ABC, NBC, and FOX were there along with Univision, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, New York Times, and various other news organizations.

Pastor Jose Landaverde of Our Lady of Guadalupe Anglican Church in Chicago conveyed to those in attendance that those boycotting were here to send a message to legislators that they will be boycotted and pay the consequences for criminalizing workers. Landaverde also compared the law to laws in Nazi Germany in the 1940s. (See video.)

A Cubs fan named Paul D’Amato drew press attention when he explained that he could not attend the game because he was angry and outraged at the law. He held up his ticket and tore it right in front of the news cameras. (D’Amato writes for Socialist Worker and, so, his action was a smooth, calculated act that earned significant attention for the cause; it was smart manipulation of the press.) (See video.)

A half hour into the protest a black man showed up to counter-protest. He was the only counter-protestor to officially show up (although many of the Cubs fans attending the game shouted at protestors and voiced support for the Arizona law). (See video.)

The man created a scene as he walked up to a mob of protestors and began to shout about being for legal immigration but not illegal immigration. He made it plain that he was also very angry because he felt people were protesting “America’s favorite past time” and he did not think people should do that.

This was the only instance where it seemed like the police might surround people and arrest or detain protestors. The protestors did not like the attention this character attracted and directed people away from the man after briefly engaging in conversation. They realized the more they talked, the more the press wanted to record and shoot what he was shouting.

Some fans engaged protestors in conversation–like Tom Dow, who stopped to make it known that if people have nothing to hide they shouldn’t be worried about being searched. (See video.)

The action was the first of many actions. Organizers across the nation are prepared to launch actions whenever the Diamondbacks play baseball.

Americans can expect more protest. AZ Central reported that the immigration law was actually changed and expanded upon the law Thursday.

The new changes approved by the Arizona House included changing the phrase “lawful contact” to “lawful stop, detention or arrest” to, according to AZ Central, “clarify that an officer would not need to question a crime victim or witness about their legal status.”

“Solely” was eliminated so that it was made evident that racial profiling would have no role in this law. It’s hard to tell if that will do anything to prevent profiling.

Those changes, however, are not so bad when compared to this change which allows law enforcment to force people who violate city ordinances to show their documents, which show they are legal immigrants.

“”[This] change clarifies that a police officer responding to city ordinance violations would also be required to determine the immigration statusof an individual they have reasonable suspicion of being in the country illegally. City ordinance violations vary by municipality but could include things like loud parties, barking dogs, cars on blocks in the yard or too many renters.

Bill supporters say the addition of the word “ordinance” does not change anything because under the signed law, officers could question the legal status of anyone they come into lawful contact with, whether that lawful contact related to a law or an ordinance.”

As Arizona law enforcement and politicians refuse to back down, one can count on those for a different approach to immigration reform to continue to stand against the law.

May Day is on Saturday and the Cubs have three more games to play against the Diamondbacks. The protests will continue and one can expect this to amount to a backlash similar to what was seen after Proposition 8 passed in 2008.

Posted on OpEdNews

Flickr Photo by NCMR2007| Malkia Cyril speaks at Free Press’ National Conference for Media Reform in 2007.

On April 8^th & 9^th, Columbia College in Chicago will host a major arts & media Summit called “Art, Access & Action” to explore the intersection of arts, media and politics and the role of artists and media makers in society. The college will give community arts & media organizations and organizations that promote art and media activism a unique opportunity to connect with students who are interested in creating art and media for social change.

The Summit will also look at shifts in art, media, and technology that threaten the future of democracy in America.

As co-chair and a lead organizer of this Summit, I interviewed one of the Summit’s speakers, Executive Director for the Center for Media Justice Malkia Cyril. She is a communication rights activist, someone dedicated to the struggle to ensure that people of color’s rights are defended as regulations are passed determining how much power and control corporations have over the Internet.

KEVIN GOSZTOLA: How did you get involved with the Center for Media Justice? How did the Center for Media Justice come to be?

MALKIA CYRIL: The Center for Media Justice started in 2002. It was a project that used to be called the Youth Media Council. It was a project of organization called We Interrupt This Message. It was started initially to respond to the incredible media bias against young people of color in California and the way stereotypes were being used to fuel a racist public debate around criminal justice here.

Over time, we realized that those stereotypes were the result of serious structural problems in our media system that excluded people of color, that created inequities, that ensured that certain voices were privileged in public debate while other voices were left out. And so we began to focus more on media policy and ensuring that those same voices — the voices of young people, the voices of people of color in both rural and urban communities — were able to participate in making the rules that structured the media game and not just playing in it once the rules were already made.

How I came to it is I founded it and I founded it because my family, both my mother and father, were Black Panthers in Brooklyn, New York. And, I basically witnessed the aftermath of media bias, what media bias can do to a movement. I wanted to ensure that people of color, the left, young people, and migrant communities were able to create a media system that didn’t do that to them.

GOSZTOLA: On the website, the Center defines its agenda in three parts race, youth and media–how was it determined that was how the agenda would be divided?

CYRIL: [Well, I would really say] the categories are race, policy, and content. Race in an overarching way shapes both how the rules are made at the FCC and Congress that relate to what kind of journalism we have, whether or not we have access to the Internet, whether not we can make phone calls and afford to use our phones, who gets cable and who doesn’t, who gets public access and who doesn’t. Some cities are able to use that technology to improve the lives of the people, some cities aren’t. So in an overarching way our media system is fragmented by racism. And so, we’re working in terms of content campaigns–so working around hate speech, working around media diversity, working around ensuring people of color are not digitally redlined. Across the board, racism is an overarching piece that touches in all of our campaigns.

In terms of policy and regulation, we’re working with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to make sure that marginalized communities—all the communities I mentioned before (migrant folk, native folk, in general people of color, poor folk particularly in rural communities)–that all of these folks get access, get to step in to conversation about media rules. Right, so that those communities get to participate in the democratic process of deciding what rules are going to move forward and what rules are going to be pushed back.

In our policy campaign, we’re focused right now on protecting an open Internet. We’re focused right now on ensuring the civil rights community steps into that fight around the open Internet so our open Internet campaign is around the open Internet and civil rights.

Another fight in the policy arena is around broadband access–making sure that broadband is defined as a universal service. And then, a third campaign will be around the universal service fund–making sure the Internet (including all the things on it including your phone service, your television that you get digital, all of the digital services) that they are affordable and affordable to all people.

In the third area, it’s more focused on alternative. So, ensuring that we have real journalism and that journalism really tells a good story, a true story about our communities. That we have real public access and funding–that these companies actually break off real change for public access. And then, figuring out ways to use digital technologies to improve and empower our communities.

So, the three arenas I would break our work down in is transforming and eliminating racism and poverty, changing policy to reach that goal, and defending and creating new alternatives to improve our lives.

GOSZTOLA: What is the biggest obstacle that you find your organization is running into as you fight to keep the Internet open, fair and free? I’m noting the recent court decision.

CYRIL: I would say our biggest obstacle is the extraordinary power of corporations to define the debate, to use their profits to secure partners they would not otherwise have. So, let me be more specific.

The media companies have been central in communities of color for a very long time. Like McDonald’s, Verizon gives lots of scholarships. They are a huge provider of jobs. There’s a lot that they do in communities of color and a big part of why they do it is because this where they make a lot of their profit through their phones, through their video franchising, through a bunch of different things.

They also give national beltway civil rights groups a ton of money; we’re talking about millions of dollars—2.5 million dollars to the NAACP last year, millions of dollars to the Urban League, millions of dollarsto a Latino beltway group in D.C., and going down the list the National Council of La Raza—all of these groups receive tons of money from the biggest media companies. As a result, those organizations have taken a stance against an open Internet despite the fact that evidence clearly demonstrates that an open Internet would increase opportunities for the poorest among us, the darkest among us, that they have taken a stance in opposition to it and they are spouting industry studies that are clearly designed to move an industry and they’re done by industry folks. They are not independently researched.

So, the biggest obstacles is this particular unique partnership between the civil rights community and the major media corporations because it gives our communities a false impression, false information about what an open Internet, who will help and who it will hurt. The only entities that open Internet limits are Big Media companies. And, the whole idea is that having an open Internet means you have Internet that does not have corporate gatekeepers. And that forces big corporations to compete and it forces them to provide services regardless of one’s ability to pay. It provides the only consumer protections that are found on the Internet.

To have major civil rights groups stand in opposition to this particular piece is very, very difficult. It means that all over the country organizations that claim to represent people of color but actually don’t have a face on the ground but have wide social marketing value are all marketing this idea about an open Internet that is proven false but that is believed by the average person. That’s a major problem and trying to change a public story in public communities is very difficult.

GOSZTOLA: In your experience with grassroots organizing, how have artists and media makers proven to be a viable asset in effecting change?

CYRIL: Absolutely. I think there are two ways that cultural artists and media artists participate in grassroots organizing. One is as messengers and as mediums to deliver the message of organized constituencies,as partners in the effort to shape a story or shape the debate around a given issue. They are able to bring complexity to a story. They are able to bring nuance through songs, through poetry, through theater. They are able to bring depth and make one-dimensional stories three-dimensional because of the added value of emotion. They are able to popularize ideas through ways that organizers cannot do.

On the other hand, they are also a constituency to be organized. So, around issues like the open Internet, artists are an example of a kind of small business that will lose if the Internet has gatekeepers. Same thing for journalists in particularly freelance journalists. Those folks lose if they can’t use the Internet without gatekeepers. They are not able to innovate and expand and reach a larger audience in that context.

So, on both counts both as a medium and as a vehicle for messaging–and adding the emotive value of messaging but then also as a constituency to be organized–artists are a crucial part of this work. You know the quote the job of the artist is to make revolution irresistible. That’s real. That’s not just rhetoric. It’s the most powerful recruiting method known to mankind–to have people tapping their feet to your song because that’s how it really deepens I think in terms of changing the community’s beliefs and vision.

GOSZTOLA: What would you tell a young artist or media maker who had not been turned on to issues of social justice? Why should they be moved to give their art greater depth? What message would you give to them?

CYRIL: All of our entire lives are shaped by the stories that we’re told. If we believe that we don’t ask for anything, we don’t demand anything. If we believe that we deserve the same as everybody else, then we’ll organize for change. Every single thing that makes our lives better including your weekend, including school lunch, including most of our rights to go to college. All of those things were won by community organizers.

As artists, even your own right to speak a language, to write and read–for many communities those were won through organizing campaigns of some kind. So, for the artist, the fact of having language–the fact of having a medium through which to express one’s own work and one’s own passion and one’s own belief–you don’t secure that right by wanting it. You secure that right by fighting for it. And so, given that we have some things that our parents didn’t have, our parents had that their parents didn’t have.

The question for the artist is what do you want for the next seven generations. What do you care about? What do you think is important? What do you think our people need? And what are you willing to give through your art to make that happen?

Malkia Cyril will be speaking on the “Navigating Media Landscape” panel Friday morning, April 9^th, in the 1104 S. Wabash Ave Building on Columbia College’s campus in downtown Chicago. For more information on the Summit, please click here. And if you would like to learn more about the great work that the Center for Media Justice is engaged in, click here.