Save Our State vs. ANSWER
A conversation with Joseph Turner of Save Our State and John Beacham of ANSWER LA
(August 2005)
Interviews by Adam McKibbin
In the summer of 2005, riot police were summoned to maintain order in the Los Angeles suburb of Baldwin Park, where hundreds of counter-protesters had taken to the streets against a new but vociferous group of anti-illegal immigration activists called Save Our State. The SOS efforts were centered around a piece of publicly-displayed artwork that the group had deemed racially offensive [more specifically, inscriptions on an archway that read "It was better before they came" and "This land was Mexican once, was Indian always and is, and will be again"]. The monument remains standing and the protesters were heavily outnumbered by the counter-protesters--led by groups like A.N.S.W.E.R. LA (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism). The protest was a success, though, in returning a long-simmering dispute to the forefront of Angeleno consciousness.
As these battles continue, SOS has begun to actively seek expansion into L.A.’s black community. So who is this group and what are they fighting against? In candid interviews with The Red Alert, SOS founder Joseph Turner and ANSWER's John Beacham don’t find much common ground on those questions--or many others.
JOSEPH TURNER, SAVE OUR STATE
What is the mission statement of Save Our State?
We are a small, hardcore group of grassroots activists who are dedicated to doing more than simply talking about the problem or writing letters in respect to illegal immigration. We take a very aggressive, in-your-face stance on the illegal immigration issue. Obviously, if I could be king for a day, it would be to shut the borders and deport all the illegal aliens. But our group, since we’re a small group and we’re less than a year old, is designed to create little victories and create positive momentum as we grow to accomplish larger objectives. I’m not looking to take on the world right now, but to mobilize people and get them active.
What led you to founding a group instead of joining a group?
I’m a leader by nature, first and foremost. I like to be in control, and I feel that I have a pulse on the American people in general, and especially on this issue. There are groups out there doing positive things for the movement, but I feel there’s not a group quite like ours that’s aggressive and stirring up trouble. If you’re looking to write letters or call your congressman, go join another organization. Our belief is that if that worked or had any sort of positive influence, we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in. The founding principle of our organization is a philosophy called the transference of pain. It’s a very simple concept, and it just means that if you do not make it painful enough for an organization or entity to continue doing what they’re doing, then they’re simply going to keep doing it. That pain can take any number of shapes or forms. If you’re a politician, the pain could be at the ballot box or in the polls. If it’s a corporation, it’s inflicting the bottom line or their PR and image and things like that.
I’ll give you an example, if you don’t mind me elaborating a little bit more. The city of Baldwin Park have a monument up there, and the local paper that covers that area just published an article recently said that our very first event cost the city of Baldwin Park $20,000 in overtime for their officers. That only covered the actual Baldwin Park contingent. There were over 200 officers there for our first rally, but the city of Baldwin Park has fewer than 100 full-time police officers, based on the most current numbers available on the Internet. That tells me that probably another $20,000 was spent by the other municipalities that were reinforcing them.
Then you have the mayor crying about how the city is under siege and people are saying that they can’t afford the financial burden. Let’s face it: $20,000 in the grand scheme of things in a city the size of Baldwin Park isn’t a huge amount of money, but when you consider that local governments pretty much allocate every single of their budget, it obviously adds up.
So you met the goal of that protest, then? Did you ever think that they would actually remove the artwork in question?
First and foremost, I never called on the actual removal of the monument; that’s one of the fallacies or red herrings that the opposition has spun out there. I simply asked for a couple passages to be removed. I actually think that the monument itself is quite aesthetically pleasing.
I’ll be frank: I wasn’t ever expecting the city of Baldwin Park to cave in and say, “We’re going to take down that language.” It just obviously wouldn’t work that way. But if you talk to people at ANSWER or what not, they’ll say, “Oh, those racists at Save Our State were outnumbered 10 to 1 or 15 to 1 each time they came out.” Well, yeah, that might be true, but I don’t measure success or victory by the size of the crowd turnout. I’m looking to inflict economic damage, and I’m also looking to use the size of the crowd that opposes us to our propaganda advantage, with respect to showing the public all of the Mexican flags waving, the American flags they’re kicking, their violence against us, the epithets they hurl at us. The opposition doesn’t understand that we’re fighting two different battles. We’re on the same battlefield, but their battle is completely different.
How do you mobilize and try to reach out to new supporters?
Most of it is through our e-mail and website and message board. I give our opposition credit for being adept at mobilization and getting people out there. I’m never going to be able to match them or compete with them unless there’s some huge catalytic event out there like a 9/11-style attack that’s traced back to someone crossing the Mexican border.
One of the reasons why they have such an inherent advantage is that they have a lot of these college kids or kids—a lot of them are socialists and so forth—and it’s more of a communal-type atmosphere and you have kids who basically have nothing else to do but school and rally, whereas the members of our organization and movement are, generally speaking, just average middle-class people who want to work 9-to-5, mind their own business, spend time with their family and go home and not deal with all these problems. The idea is that if I can get Joe Blow citizens who are fed up with this problem and will go out in the streets and protest, that will send a huge message to our elected officials about how pissed off the American people are.
In many ways, what I’m trying to do is co-opt much of the strategy and ideas and objectives from an activism standpoint that are used by my opposition, but it’s a slow process.
I think the irony is that, in many respects, the views held on our side of the movement are actually very closely held by the people you represent—for example, the NAFTAs and CAFTAs and stuff like that. As a whole, we’re generally anti-free trade agreements, we’re more of a populace-based movement. In many ways, our opposition is not really adjusting to that, and they’re constantly resorting to referring to us as “racists” and “bigots” because that’s their only argument, their only tool. They can’t really debate us on facts and logic; that’s what we maintain.
At Save Our State, we’re very anti-Home Depot. It’s a corporate giant that many people in our opposition don’t like, either – they’re non-union, they’re a corporate behemoth and so forth. We might obviously oppose them for different reasons, but a lot of these things are, I think, a little unsettling for our opposition.
I have a lot of people who hate my guts, like the LA Indymedia sites or ANSWER LA or the Socialist Worker – a lot of them hate my guts. But I’ve actually flirted with the idea of approaching some of them and saying, “Hey, do you want to team up on certain things?” They can mobilize folks and I have ideas – we could take down a Home Depot. I don’t know how realistic it is. If I try to go and outreach to them, I might be pissing off people in my organization who don’t want to work with socialist-type people. There are always those types of frictions.
Jumping back a little – you were talking about using propaganda and the pictures of people kicking American flags and so forth. On the flipside, are you leery of behavior from your own members and supporters? For instance, in spending just a little time on the Save Our State message boards, I saw user icons of the Mexican flag on fire, I saw references to Mexicans—not illegal immigrants—as “dirty beaners,” “cockroaches,” and “hysterical pigs.” Is that something that you try to monitor or want to monitor?
I haven’t been on the board, actually, in the last day or so, but I haven’t seen anyone referred to as “beaners” or “cockroaches” on the message board – and certainly not immigrants as a whole, because we actually have legal immigrants in our organization who join us at rallies. But I do monitor my website pretty aggressively, and I’ve had to delete a shitload of white supremacists who want to come over and throw epithets. I’ve also had to delete members of the opposition who come in and try to invade our boards and use trollish behavior.
I don’t support any sort of racial supremacy ideology. We definitely have had a problem as far as an influx; essentially, our message board is public. Up until recently, you could simply validate your e-mail account and be on the message board, so not everything said on there is representative of what Save Our State believes. I monitor it and I’m concerned about it.
One of the interesting side effects of us being active, because I’m an aggressive person, I’m a young guy, and I’m tired of all this bullshit—the Stormfronter-type population have started doing their own rallies now, and they’ve even tagged along to our events and caused a lot of friction and problems. I can’t keep ANSWER LA from counter-demonstrating and I can’t keep these guys from following us.
We talk about propaganda, the propaganda the opposition uses is that we’re the Minutemen, we’re racists, we’re bigots, we’re trying to kill illegal immigrants, whatever they say to rile their people. They have their propaganda tools and we have our propaganda tools. I understand the rules of the games, and that’s one of the rules: they say we’re racists and we tell them they’re anti-American.
One of the recurring themes I’ve seen on the boards is anger at a perceived failure to assimilate into American culture. I assume that does extend into legal immigrants as well as illegal immigrants?
Of course.
So legal immigrants should be obligated – where’s the line? There are a lot of comments about people listening to Mexican music in their vehicles, flying Mexican flags on their houses – do you actually want that sort of thing discouraged or legislated against?
No, it should not be legislated, because I believe in as limited government as possible. I think what you actually do by having less government is that you encourage assimilation. We’ve seen with legal and illegal immigrants – you see a lot of legislation for English as a Second Language programs, you see catering to non-English speakers with voting materials or forms and documents at your local city or state government office – to the schools that are bending over backwards to teach in Spanish. It boggles my mind that we’re required to publish voting materials in Spanish or any other language. To me, it’s like, “You want to be in this country? Learn the language.”
The assimilation thing, to me, isn’t that big of a problem with the legal immigration community. Obviously, there will always be exceptions and, by the way, I think there are quite a few of illegal immigrants that try to assimilate – not the majority, by any stretch of the imagination.
I can guarantee there’s a double standard with some of the illegal immigration activists in California. If they see a porch with a Mexican flag, they get all pissed off, but I bet they wouldn’t get all pissed off if they drove past a house with an Irish flag on it or something. I think that’s definitely an issue that is a little bit of a double standard on our side, and I think that’s definitely fair to say.
Yeah, if the average American moved to Paris and was told to not listen to Nirvana while driving their car or to take down the American flag in their own home, it’s easy to imagine the response.
Sure. The only caveat I would put to that is that you have to understand that there is an idea called the reconquista movement. There’s this belief that the Southwestern United States was stolen from Mexico, and this is propagated by groups like MEChA, the student Chicano activist organization. They teach and preach that this land was stolen, and they talk about reconquering it, taking it back. If you talk to some, they’ll say they mean by force, and some will say they just mean a spiritual sort of liberation of their people, whatever high and mighty language they want to give you.
So when you see a Mexican flag on a porch, many of us have a reconquista impression that pops in our mind, whereas if you go to an Irish neighborhood or even a Vietnamese neighborhood, there’s no inclination or desire to conquer this land to be Irish or something. Even though there is a double standard, there is some justification.
Let’s say America did close the borders and managed to deport all of the illegals, do you think the actual immigration framework is effective? Would you want a temporary moratorium, as some advocate?
There are a lot of people out there, not necessarily in my organization because we’re pretty pro-legal immigrant, but there are people out there who think immigration in general is too high. But I think much of it has to do with them being overwhelmed by illegal immigration. I’m not saying we need a moratorium on immigrants. That’s not my position. I can understand the frustration that would drive people to have that position, that they’re so frustrated with being invaded by so many illegals that they want to cut everything off.
I do think we need reforms. I think it’s ridiculous that someone needs to take seven years to jump through all these bureaucratic hoops to prove that they should be a citizen. Our opposition likes to talk about reforming the legal immigration process, and I think they have some legitimate complaints there.
I really think that if our country would take the stand that we’re going to go after the employers of illegal immigrants, you really wouldn’t even have to have military on the border or massive deportations. If you start cracking down on employers, the people fleeing Mexico would deport themselves because they wouldn’t have the opportunity to get jobs.
I tell people all the time – if I was an illegal alien, I’d do the same damn thing. You think I’d want to live in a shithole like Mexico where my family was living off two bucks a day, living in squalor? I wouldn’t want to have that for my family, so I’d do the same thing--I’d try to come here. Now, even though I would try to do the same thing if I was in their shoes, I’m not in their shoes, and I don’t want to pay for them. We’re not anti-illegal immigrant, per se. It’s not like we go out and target the illegal alien and say “Hey, you’re a scumbag and we want to kick your ass out.” There are obviously people out there who say they want to shoot illegal aliens when they cross the border, but that’s not where I’m at. We go after Home Depot, which we believe is a corporation that encourages and supports illegal immigration. We go after communities that establish day labor centers that we believe are used for illegal immigration. Then we go after employers by doing public targeting and taking cameras and they don’t want to filmed picking up day laborers. We understand that although illegal aliens are a problem with respect to using our services and lack of assimilation and all those types of things, we realize that they’re not really the true problem. The true problem is our government’s ineffectiveness—you could argue complicity in actually aiding and abetting illegal aliens—and also these corporations and employers of illegal aliens.
JOHN BEACHAM, A.N.S.W.E.R. LA
What do you see as the mission statement of Save Our State and its followers and supporters?
Save Our State is a racist hate group that is organizing attacks on the immigrant, Mexican and Latino communities in Southern California. They are very small at this point, but are potentially very dangerous because they appeal to neo-Nazis and other white supremacist groups who are participating in and welcomed at their rallies.
Is this a group of noisy provocateurs or a group that has the potential to actually wield political clout?
Racist groups like the SOS have historically wielded a lot of political clout within the U.S. In a deeply unequal system, hate groups and racists terrorist groups like the KKK are needed as an extra-legal means of oppression that can supplement institutionalized discrimination, especially when the system is in crisis or there is a mass movement for social change. Whether or not groups like SOS will wield politically clout or not depends upon how strong and united the movement is to stop the current rise of the right-wing in this country.
How did A.N.S.W.E.R. get involved in mobilizing people for Baldwin Park? How many different organizations partnered in the effort?
Many organizations from all around Southern California mobilized for both Baldwin Park counter-demonstrations. ANSWER was one of those organizations. On both occasions, tens of racists were met by over 500 anti-racist activists and community members.
We became involved because of our commitment to fighting racism. Racists, especially when they raise their head in organized fashion, must be organized against. In the U.S., inequality is so deeply entrenched in every respect that white racists groups always have the potential to grow and spread their message of terror against oppressed communities. The only way to counter the terror is to actively organize a determined resistance and fight back.
How can organizers help prevent these continuing collisions from becoming violent, especially when there is so much hostility on both sides? Your opponents are clearly waiting to seize on things like the water bottle incident [at the Baldwin Park rally, an elderly woman on the SOS side was struck by a thrown water bottle].
The hostility, attacks and encouragement of violence are emanating solely from the SOS side. The counter-protesters are defending their rights to equality, freedom and self-determination. SOS is specifically organized around promoting inequality for immigrants and staging intimidating, hateful demonstrations in Latino communities and in places where immigrants gather to look for work.
Racists have no right to speak, especially when they are organizing to terrorize oppressed communities. By their very nature, groups that advocate inequality and racism promote violence against oppressed people.
People should know that the KKK in the last month has begun showing its face again with public rallies in Ohio and Virginia. The Bush Administration, because of its warmongering, social program slashing and anti-people policies, is encouraging racist groups.
Do you think that racism or bigotry is inherent amongst supporters of Save Our State? The press release on the A.N.S.W.E.R. website following the Baldwin Park counter-protest referred to the entire group of protesters as “bigots.”
SOS promotes racism and inequality. People who attend their demonstrations are engaging in activity that promotes inequality.
The write-up was also pretty clear in stating that Save Our State did not have the right to be protesting in the first place. How come?
In our opinion, the right to freedom of speech doesn’t apply to groups like SOS. No one has the right to speak and organize in the name of oppression, inequality and hate. One of the fundamentals in the struggle to eliminate inequality is that no one should have the right to organize an attack on oppressed communities.
To recognize the right of racist groups to organize is to ignore the long standing inherent complicity and participation of these kinds of groups in the widespread violence used against oppressed communities in the U.S., especially against African Americans, immigrants and Latinos.
In the U.S., we are fighting against a mountain of long entrenched institutionalized racism, sexism, homophobia and every kind of oppression. The only way people have ever won rights in this country is by struggling for them. Corporate elites, government officials and armed police in the U.S. do not grant rights unless the people demand them. Racism and discrimination come from the top down in U.S. society.
No matter what they say, when SOS attacks and blames immigrants as the root of society’s problems they are objectively siding with this long history of oppression. The disgustingly wealthy, the ones who benefit greatly and need an unequal system to maintain their wealth, encourage racism and they encourage discrimination and attacks against immigrants, women, people of color and LGBT people.
The policies of the Bush Administration, which are fully backed by his friends in Wall Street, come from the same source as the orientation of groups like SOS. The Bush Administration and Governor Schwarzenegger want to deny immigrants equal rights in order to divide working people so that they can continue to roll with the greatest transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top of society in the history of the world. SOS also wants to divide working people. But our real enemies are in Washington, Wall Street & the Pentagon.
Are they overstating the effects of illegal immigration on California?
Unemployment, poverty, prisons, police brutality, the US war on Iraq, lack of health care, lack of education and everything else that we are fighting to get rid of are not caused by immigration. They are caused by a system of greed and exploitation.
Historically, greedy white elites have appealed to working class whites to side with them as a necessary way to maintain their position. They have encouraged, been a part of and funded groups, like the KKK and neo-Nazis, whose purpose is to blame, attack and kill immigrants, African Americans, Latinos an others.
But all working people have much more in common with immigrants than they ever will with greedy white elites. Fighting racism and countering the lies and attacks of the right against immigrants is crucial in building a united struggle against the right-wing.
From ANSWER's perspective, what needs to be changed to better our immigration policies?
Immigrants must be granted full equality and rights. At the heart of things, racism and discrimination are the problems that must be changed. In the struggle against racism and inequality, there are no borders. Full equality for everyone will greatly help to solve the problems people face.
Is it ANSWER's position, then, that there is no such thing as an "illegal" immigrant? That full citizenship should be granted to all who seek it - without the trouble of waitlists, work visas, etc.?
It is true, of course, that the US government classifies people as illegal unless they have been granted the legal right to work and live in the United States. The sole reason for not granting everyone who works legal status - and the US economy needs a huge pool of low-paid, part-time, seasonal and unemployed workers in order to produce the kinds of profits it does for huge corporations - is to create a lower caste of workers.
Every year around 7-8 million people work "illegally" in the US. Immigrants often work in the lowest wage, most difficult and most dangerous jobs. For illegal immigrants the situation is even worse. Illegal immigrants are the backbone of the US economy, but are denied equal rights. For example, illegal immigrants pay $7 Billion into the social security fund every year through payroll taxes. They will never see a penny of this money.
For the US, the border between its territory and others, among other things, is a means to create and recruit a pool of workers that is less equal under the law. This longstanding and inherent feature of US politics promotes racism and division among working people. In order to combat this, we demand full legalization now for all immigrants.
One of the most recurring gripes on the Save Our State boards is that illegal immigrants from Mexico are hostile in their refusal to integrate into American society/culture. Is there any indication or evidence that illegal immigrants are less likely to assimilate than legal immigrants?
We disagree with this kind of accusation altogether. Immigrants have the right to determine their own culture, identity and political destinies in whatever way they choose. They also have the right to defend themselves against oppression in any way they choose.
How do you answer SOS’s claim that your organization has consistently, from its founding, adopted a harshly anti-American tone?
ANSWER fights against U.S. war. We stand with people who are struggling against foreign domination in Iraq, Palestine, Haiti, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, Korea, Iran, the Philippines and everywhere. We fight against racism, sexism, attacks on all immigrants and LGBT oppression. We fight for worker and union rights.
We fight for an inclusive and independent people’s movement for broad social change. We need social change in this country. We feel that the best way to effect change is to help build the biggest, most experienced, most united and militant movement as possible.
Groups like SOS hope to divide the vast majority in this country who are natural allies in the fight against racism and all forms of inequality. One of the ways they hope to divide us is by calling people and groups that fight for justice “un-American.” This is a thinly-veiled fascist accusation that SOS is making. This kind of nationalism and racism hurts us all, dividing us from what is really one common struggle to end all injustice, greed and exploitation.
SOS must be stopped. SOS, on their website, explicitly fights against groups that are working for equality in their communities. This is, again, the mark of a neo-fascist grouping. Mobilizing against racist groups like the SOS is necessary. It is also important in our efforts to help build and strengthen the kind of movement that will rid humanity of racism once and for all.
We hope that everyone who wants to fight the rise of the right-wing will get involved. When the people are united, there is no way we can lose. |
