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Immigration See other Immigration Articles Title: Lefties Gone Wild Lefties Gone Wild FrontPageMagazine.com | October 26, 2006 When the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) planned to bring “Catch an Illegal Immigrant” to the University of Michigan on Oct. 13, they expected resistance. The event, which has been held with varying degrees of success on other campuses across the country over the last few months, is purposefully offensive. Like the “Affirmative Action Bake Sale” which has also been held at numerous universities over the last few years, “Catch an Illegal Immigrant” is an event designed to create passion and dialogue about issues which sit at the heart of America’s cultural landscape. This particular event also succeeded in exposing the Left’s predictable hypocrisy when it comes to the issue of free speech. Andrew Boyd, Chairman of the U-Mich chapter of YAF, said, “YAF members all have very different opinions on the issue of immigration; this event was intended not to promote any one of them, but rather to get a dialogue going. Political life here on campus has been dry, boring, and stagnant…someone had to stir things up, and we decided to be that someone.” Predictably, the event was more successful at demonstrating the Left’s intolerance of views it finds distasteful than it was in provoking debate on the issue of illegal immigration. In fact, most of those gathered were there to protest the event. Andrew Grossman of the Michigan Daily reported: Boyd said he welcomed the peaceful protestors. “The majority of protestors were there to protest peacefully... I knew they would be there and I encouraged it because they were using their freedom of speech and exercising their individual rights just as I was. These principles are something that YAF strongly believes in,” he said. The event turned out to be anything but peaceful, however, when Leftist group By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) decided to make an appearance. As Christopher Zbrozek explained in the Michigan Daily: “’We want to shut it down,’ explained Liana Mulholland, co-chair of the campus BAMN chapter. ‘They can't have that game here.’” Clearly Ms. Mulholland and her friends among BAMN believe they can determine unilaterally what kind of speech is permissible and what isn’t at U-Mich. In an interesting twist to the game at U-Mich, the YAF dressed their “illegal immigrant” as Christopher Columbus, and their American citizen as a Native American. Boyd tried to pose numerous questions to the crowd. “Was Columbus an illegal alien? Should the Native Americans have sent him packing along with all the rest of the settlers to come? Was the relationship between the natives and the immigrants beneficial at all? What things went wrong in the eventual blending of cultures that could perhaps be avoided in future cross-cultural interactions?” However, several reports on the event mentioned the BAMN group, which consisted of both students and imported protestors from other parts of the state, including 17 high school students from Ann Arbor, chanted so loudly they drowned Boyd out as he tried to speak. So rather than participating in a reasoned, respectable debate on the issue of illegal immigration, BAMN turned the event into a spectacle of Leftist intolerance and militancy. BAMN, which considers itself a leading voice in the “new civil rights movement,” is actually a front group for the Revolutionary Workers League, of which its co-chair, Luke Massie, is an active and influential member. The RWL describes itself as a “U.S. sympathizing section of the International Trotskyist Committee.” BAMN has a long history of abhorrent behavior, much of it extremely counterproductive to the Civil Rights cause. For example, this November, Michigan residents will be voting on an amendment “to ban affirmative action programs that give preferential treatment to groups or individuals based on their race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin for public employment, education or contracting purposes.” As such, BAMN, whose full, pretentious name is the “Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigrant Rights, and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary,” has been spearheading the campaign against the amendment. When numerous lawsuits filed by BAMN and other Leftist groups failed to stop the initiative from being placed on the ballot this November, BAMN resorted to violence and intimidation. On December 14, 2005, BAMN disrupted a Michigan Board of Canvasser’s meeting, shouting obscenities and even flipping over a table. Chetly Zarko is the treasurer of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative Committee, which created the ballot initiative. Zarko described the events of that night as follows: “Following the voluminous testimony, at around 12:30pm, Canvasser Lynn Bankes read into the record a motion to certify the initiative pursuant to the Court ruling. As she read, BAMN leaders Luke Massie and Shanta Driver began to yell a slogan, started clapping, and the noise level in the room quickly drowned out the Board and any other conversation in the room became impossible… “Several minutes passed inside as the chanting continued, and BAMN members began jumping on chairs, moving around, and flailing. The situation was becoming more frenzied…” Eventually police had to be brought in to reestablish order at the meeting. The fact is, the civil rights movement, and the progressive moment in general, would be far better off without extremist groups like BAMN, which would use noise, violence and intimidation to silence their political opponents. As a matter of fact, the NAACP at U-Mich denounced BAMN in Oct. 2005, after BAMN bused in hundreds of students for an anti-MRCI rally. According to Donn M. Fresard of the Michigan Daily: Alex Moffett, who was vice president of the NAACP’s campus chapter at the time, publicly denounced them for perpetuating negative stereotypes of African American youths. She wrote in an email which was published in the Michigan Daily: As Zbrozek bemoaned in the Michigan Daily: Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 2.
#2. To: gargantuton (#0)
What a pussy. Patently, the angle chosen by YAF would stir discussion only because it is offensive to the prevailing view on campus. Patently, YAF members do not by and large share the prevailing view on campus. They ain't fooling anyone, except perhaps themselves. They're following the Eddie Haskell school of reform, and it ain't gonna work. It worked for the left only because Christendom is so f'ing nice. ‘They can't have that game here.’ Homey don't play dat. “The protesters came from a wide range of campus organizations, including the Student of Color Coalition, La Voz Latina, Black Student Union and the undergraduate and law school chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union. Many wore yellow ‘Michigan Immigrant’ T-shirts, which the protesters had made specifically for the event.” Well at least the enemy feels strong enough to identify itself. “Was Columbus an illegal alien? Should the Native Americans have sent him packing along with all the rest of the settlers to come? Was the relationship between the natives and the immigrants beneficial at all? What things went wrong in the eventual blending of cultures that could perhaps be avoided in future cross-cultural interactions?” O.K., that was mostly good. The answers are Yes, Yes, No. Fourth question was a pussy question, but maybe, maybe they realize that, and know the opposition realizes that too, which is why they won't ever answer it.
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