[Peace] [Peace-discuss] Urbana Sanctuary City Ordinance passed.

Tue Dec 20 19:49:13 UTC 2016

I think that’s right. People want to do something helpful in the face of social evils, and making a statement of support of people who might be deported - especially while Obama is president, who has deported more people than any other recent president - may be helpful. 

More helpful would be a serious left politics, of which the local Democrats, say, produce just a parody - and not, I think an innocent one.

“The defensible heart of identity politics is its commitment to opposing forms of discrimination like racism, sexism, and homophobia. I share that commitment. But opposing discrimination today has no more to do with a left politics than do equally powerful ethical commitments against, say, violence or dishonesty. Why? Because the core of a left politics is its critique of and resistance to capitalism—its commitment to decommodifying education, health care, and housing, and creating a more economically equal society. Neither hostility to discrimination nor the accompanying enthusiasm for diversity makes the slightest contribution to accomplishing any of those goals. Just the opposite, in fact. They function instead to provide inequality with a meritocratic justification: If everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed, there’s no injustice when some people fail…” 

[Walter Benn Michaels: full article at <https://www.thenation.com/article/what-is-the-left-without-identity-politics/ <https://www.thenation.com/article/what-is-the-left-without-identity-politics/>>]

—CGE

> On Dec 20, 2016, at 11:53 AM, David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> At the very least, it's important to understand that sanctuary proclamations avoid any serious analysis--economic or legal--of either neoliberalism or its Trumpian response; I fear that that is by design.
> 
> DG
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 11:43 AM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> I think Mort is quite right - “the humanitarian impulse seems admirable, but the reasoning seems nonexistent, flawed."
> 
> You don’t have to be too cynical to see it as another identity-politics twisting of liberal concern into a support for neoliberal capitalism, of the sort that the Democrats have been peddling.
> 
> 'Because who’s for illegal immigration? … as far as I know the only people who are openly for illegal immigration are neoliberal economists.
> 
> 'First of all, neoliberal economists are completely for open borders, in so far as that’s possible. Friedman said years ago that, “You can’t have a welfare state and open borders,” but of course the point of that was “open the borders, because that’ll kill the welfare state.” There’s a good paper you can get off the web by Gordon Hanson, commissioned by whoever runs Foreign Affairs, and the argument is that illegal immigration is better than legal immigration, because illegal immigration is extremely responsive to market conditions.
> 
> 'So it’s quite striking that you have all this protesting against illegal immigration, and especially at a time when it’s down. So why are people so upset about it? They are upset about it not because it has gotten worse, it hasn’t, but because they somehow recognize that one of the primary sort of marks of the triumph of neoliberalism in the US is a very high tolerance of illegal immigration, and that illegal immigration is the kind of ne plus ultra of the labor mobility that neoliberalism requires. I mean that’s why for years — even though it’s a kind of contradiction in terms — as a policy it’s worked well. The Bush administration did everything it could to talk against illegal immigration but leave it alone and I’m sure the Obama administration would do the same thing…’ [Walter Benn Michaels, Jacobin, January 2011]  
> 
> Why don’t we turn our energies to getting our Congressional representatives to 
> 
> (1) pass a reasonable amnesty plan; and 
> 
> (2) revoke neoliberal trade pacts like NAFTA that promote illegal immigration from countries ravaged by the Democrats’ neoliberalism.
> 
> —CGE
> 
> > On Dec 20, 2016, at 11:17 AM, Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:
> > 
> > The humanitarian impulse seems admirable, but the reasoning seems nonexistent, flawed. If one advocates open borders, then there wouldn’t be an immigration problem. But if one wants to control immigration, i.e., laws to enforce it, then those laws will be enforced, and one will have people subject to deportation if they violate the laws. I see no way to get around that. 
> > As for those already here, illegally, you can invoke amnesty, or courts to consider each case—a virtual unfeasibility— but then you have the future to contend with. 
> > 
> > —mkb
> > 
> >> On Dec 19, 2016, at 9:21 PM, Karen Aram via Peace <peace at lists.chambana.net <mailto:peace at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:
> >> 
> >> It passed, with only one in dissent. The House was packed again, with over 200 people in attendance. 
> >> 
> >> Thank you to Professor Frances Boyle, Brian Dolinar, Geovanny Vega and all those who made it happen. 
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