To Whom It May Concern:

You might perceive my letter as ‘unfriendly’, however it represents the thinking of most every person with whom I’ve discussed the matter in recent years. This country and our Constitutional liberties are dependent upon a free, active and representative press willing to challenge the status quo.
Many Oklahomans are exasperated with the failure of the Daily Oklahoman to provide that crucial element to our state and republic. We are repulsed by political correctness and concerned that the two major voices for this great State are so extremely out of touch with our heritage, our values and our views. Furthermore, we are outraged that you have chosen to endorse candidates and issues in opposition to our expressed wishes.
Your choice now is to either be offended by my comments and ignore me or to do some soul searching about the performance and direction of this newspaper over the past few years and return to defending the tenets of liberty that allowed it to grow and prosper. It’s your call. DB

Last Thursday evening 300 Oklahomans loaded into six ‘Tea Party’ buses heading to Washington DC for the Glenn Beck 8/28 Restoring Honor Rally at the Lincoln Memorial – possibly the last rally allowed at that historic monument to freedom, as Congress moved recently to strip away that right.

Tea Party participants are ‘grassroots’ citizens with concerns about the direction this country has taken over the last few decades. We are educated on the U.S. Constitution and its provisions for liberty, including limited government, responsibilities required to enjoy rights, vigilance against inevitable assault on liberty by those who seek power, excessive taxation, etc., so we have banded together to preserve our heritage. We believe our efforts are crucial, particularly in light of escalating assaults on our Constitutional rights and freedoms by an administration filled with admitted anarchists, Marxists, socialists, statists, progressives …. all radicals from the 60s or their mis-educated children.

The Founding Fathers also warned that “a free press is vital for the preservation of liberty”.

At the first rest stop, after crossing the state line back into Oklahoma on the return trip, I dashed to the newspaper stands to see how the event was being reported locally. Unfortunately, I found nothing written about this historic event on the front pages – zero, zip, nada. Disappointing, but not unexpected. Likewise online I found sparse reporting on this major event by OPUBCO and local journalists. In fact, the state’s largest newspaper chose to reprint only articles provided by AP – which we recognize to be a notoriously left-leaning media resource and a major contributor to the distrust felt by most Americans. Does this newspaper not feel the slightest compulsion to send reporters to cover such an event?

Sadly, I found wonderful articles from independent news outlets in other states (many of which can be seen at:
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/44912/)

This inaction strikes me as either sheer laziness or penny-pinching by the mega-wealthy OPUBCO empire. I have long been embarrassed by industry criticisms that OPUBCO does not lend itself to paying adequate wages for good journalists/reporters. What are journalism students learning at OU’s Gaylord School of Journalism? Marketing & Advertising?

The Oklahoman, in the interest of integrity, should either report credibly or dump its byline “The State’s Most Trusted News”. Currently, you are not.

The trip to Washington was long and arduous, as would be expected transporting so many so far, but liberty is very much worth fighting for. It’s just too bad we had to do so without the help of a free press.

Debi Bohannan – OK Military Mom

AND THE OKLAHOMA PUBLISHING COMPANY (OPUBCO) REPLY:

Dear Debi Bohannan,

Thanks for your letter. We were not aware of any buses carrying Oklahomans to the Washington event or we would have attempted to include that information in our coverage. In Sunday’s Oklahoman we had a front page — top of the rail — refer to the Washington event and it was the play story with photograph on our national page.

Likewise, we have had several stories and photographs — including some on page one — on the Tea Party movement and the various rallies held in recent months at the Oklahoma capitol.

As you can see from our Sunday paper, we report on a variety of local issues that have significant impact on Oklahomans. Thanks for caring enough to write and for being an Oklahoman reader.

Sincerely,
Robby Trammell

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

We are developing a list of questions to be submitted to all Candidates for Oklahoma Governor. We want you to help develop the topical areas and the specific questions to be posed.

If you want to participate, click on the below link:

Candidate For Governor Interview Questions Poll

Tip of the hat to Mark Levin for alerting us to the existence of this testimony. Mark discussed the below at the very beginning of his August 13, 2010 radio show.

Testimony of Edward J. Erler

Professor of Political Science, California State University, San Bernardino
and
Senior Fellow, The Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship
and Political Philosophy

Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims

June 25, 1997

It is my considered opinion that Congress has authority under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to define the jurisdiction of the United States. Indeed, it is my contention that Congress has exercised that power on many occasions, most recently in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

Senator Jacob Howard, the author of the citizenship clause in the Fourteenth Amendment, defined who would fall within the “jurisdiction of the United States”:

[E]very person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. This has long been a great desideratum in the jurisprudence and legislation of this country.

Clearly, the author of the citizenship clause intended to count “foreigners,” “aliens,” and those born to “ambassadors or foreign ministers” as outside the “jurisdiction of the United States.” Senator Howard knew, as his reference to natural law indicates, that the republican basis for citizenship is consent. This is the natural law principle of the Declaration of Independence that proclaims that legitimate governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Senator Lyman Trumbull, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a powerful supporter of the Fourteenth Amendment, remarked on May 30th, 1866, that the jurisdiction clause includes those “Not owing allegiance to anybody else. . . It is only those persons who come completely within our jurisdiction, who are subject to our laws, that we think of making citizens; and there can be no objection to the proposition that such persons should be citizens.” This was familiar language. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 had defined citizens of the United States as “all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed.” It is universally agreed that the immediate impulse for the passage of the fourteenth amendment was to constitutionalize the Civil Rights Act of 1866. This was an attempt to put the question of citizenship and matters of Federal civil rights beyond the reach of simple congressional majorities. Thus it is clear that the idea of allegiance (”not subject to any foreign power”) was somehow central to understanding the jurisdiction clause of the fourteenth amendment.

Much of the debate about the jurisdiction clause in the Congress centered on the status of Indians. The immediate question was whether the fourteenth amendment would confer citizenship upon the Indians as well as upon the newly freed slaves. The former slaves, of course, had been born in the United States and had always been subject to its jurisdiction. Was the same true of Indians? Indians were surely born in the United States, but were they subject to its jurisdiction in the sense of “[n]ot owing allegiance to anybody else?” Senator Trumbull noted that “[t]he provision . . . that all persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens’. . . means subject to the complete jurisdiction thereof.” Trumbull proceeded to deny that Indians were “in any sense subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United Sates . . . We make treaties with them, and therefore they are not subject to our jurisdiction. . . . It cannot be said of any Indian who owes allegiance, partial allegiance if you please, to some other Government that he is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States’.”

The author of the citizenship clause, Senator Howard, emphatically agreed with Trumbull’s assessment that Indians would not become citizens of the United States as a result of the passage of the fourteenth amendment:

the word jurisdiction,’ as here employed, ought to be construed so as to imply a full and complete jurisdiction on the part of the United States, coextensive in all respects with the constitutional power of the United States, whether exercised by Congress, by the executive, or by the judicial department; that is to say, the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now. Certain, gentlemen cannot contend that an Indian belonging to a tribe, although born within the limits of a State, is subject to this full and complete jurisdiction.

Clearly, insofar as Indians owed tribal allegiance they were not within the jurisdiction of the United States, even though there were born within its territorial limits and in many instances subject to its laws. It is important to note here that jurisdiction does not mean simply subject to the laws of the United States. Rather, it refers specifically to political jurisdiction in the sense of allegiance. Aliens in the United States are properly subject to the laws of the United States and the jurisdiction of its courts; but this is not the same as owing allegiance to the United States. Aliens subject to the laws of the United States still owe allegiance to another country and are thus not within the political jurisdiction of the United States the only jurisdiction contemplated by the fourteenth amendment.

In 1870, the Senate directed the Judiciary Committee to “report to the Senate the effect of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution upon the Indian tribes of the country; and whether by the provisions thereof the Indians are not citizens of the United States.” The Committee report noted that “[t]he inference is irresistible that the amendment was intended to recognize the change in the status of the former slave which had been effected during the war, while it recognizes no change in the status of the Indians. The report’s conclusion was unequivocal:

those who framed the fourteenth amendment, and the Congress which proposed it, as well as the legislatures which adopted it, understood that the Indian tribes were not made citizens, but were excluded by the restricting phrase, “and subject to the jurisdiction,” and that such has been the universal understanding of all our public men since the amendment became a part of the Constitution.

Thus it seems to be beyond cavil that the jurisdiction clause of the fourteenth amendment was intended by its framers to have independent force; not all persons born in the geographical limits of the United States are within the jurisdiction of the United States. To be within the jurisdiction of the United States means to be within its political jurisdiction. Those who today advocate birth-right citizenship for children of illegal aliens born within the geographical boundaries of the United States believe that the fourteenth amendment extends to these children what the framers of the fourteenth amendment said did not extend to Native Americans.

As the Supreme Court said in Elk v. Wilkins (1884), “[t]he evident meaning of [the jurisdiction clause] is, not merely subject in some respect or degree to the to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction and owing them direct and immediate allegiance . . . Indians, born within the territorial limits of the United States, members of and owing immediate allegiance to one of the Indian Tribes, an alien though dependent power, although in a geographical sense born in the United States, are no more born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’ . . . than the children of subjects of any foreign government born within the domain of that government; or the children, born within the United States, of ambassadors or other public ministers of foreign Nations.” In this case, Elk had renounced his tribal allegiance and had lived for some years apart from the tribe. But the Court was adamant that the ascription of citizenship could not be a unilateral or self-selected act. “The alien and dependent condition of the members of the Indian Tribes could not be put off at their own will, without the action or assent of the United States” signified either by treaty or legislation. Neither “the Indian Tribes” nor “individual members of those Tribes,” no more than “other foreigners” can “become citizens of their own will.” It must be emphasized that no individual can be made a citizen against his will or consent. Yet, self-selected citizenship is not enough; it must be ratified by those are already members of the political community. As the Court concluded, the jurisdiction requirement of the fourteenth amendment embodied “the principle that no one can become a citizen of a nation without its consent.”

The Supreme Court in Elk noted that several congressional acts had been passed subsequent to the fourteenth amendment to bring various Indian tribes within the jurisdiction of the United States, acts “which would have been superfluous if they were or might become, without an action of the government, citizens of the United States.” In this regard, the Court mentions the “Act of July 15, 1870,” extending the jurisdiction of the United States to any member of the Winnebago tribe who desired to become a citizen. A similar act was passed on March 3, 1873, extending jurisdiction to members of the Miami tribe of Kansas. Indeed, this was the method used by Congress exercising its section 5 powers to enforce the provisions of the fourteenth amendment to bring various members of Indian tribes within the jurisdiction of the United States. General legislation was passed in the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 which provided that “all non-citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States be, and they are hereby, declared to be citizens of the United States.” Most recently, the amnesty provision of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 extended the jurisdiction of the United States to include illegal aliens residing in the United States for a specified period. Thus, Congress has a long history of exercising its section 5 powers to define who falls within the jurisdiction of the United States.

In the case of the children born to aliens illegally in the United States, their citizenship would follow the citizenship of their parents or be determined by the laws of the country in which the parents hold citizenship. The fact that illegal aliens have violated laws of the United States precludes any possibility that they can be properly said to be within the jurisdiction of the United States as the aliens surely have demonstrated that they do not believe themselves to be subject to the laws of the United States, or are only partially subject. Contrary to a currently fashionable argument, the denial of birth-right citizenship to children of illegal aliens does not punish the children for the sins of the parents because the children don’t have a right to citizenship in the first place they are being denied nothing that is rightfully theirs. It would, of course, be a different matter for the children born of legal aliens who have been admitted by the laws of the United States. Whether their children would be citizens at birth or upon the attainment of citizenship by the parents would be a matter for Congress to determine.

Congress, of course, has plenary power, under terms of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, “to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” By necessary inference, Congress has the power to regulate immigration and set the terms by which those who are legally admitted can remain in the country. It certainly can establish the standards for which the contract of citizenship can be offered and the qualifications of those to whom it will be proffered. I believe that Congress is fully competent, under the fourteenth amendment, to pass legislation defining those who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. It does not require a constitutional amendment to withhold citizenship from children born in the United States of illegal alien parents. Their parents are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and they seek citizenship for their children without the consent of the nation. It defies logic to insist that an illegal act on the part of parents can confer the boon of citizenship upon their children. The nation has specified the terms of its consent in the uniform rules for naturalization and laws governing immigration.

The argument for birth-right citizenship is, of course, more suitable to feudalism than it is to republicanism. Under the feudal concept of citizenship, anyone born under the protection of the sovereign owed perpetual allegiance or fealty to the sovereign. It is hardly credible that the framers of the American Constitution would have contemplated a basis for citizenship that had its origins in the feudal regime. Indeed, in basing citizenship on the consent of the governed, the obligations of citizenship were placed on an entirely new and republican basis. The Reconstruction Congress recognized this point when it passed the Expatriation Act of 1868. This act a companion piece to the fourteenth amendment was an explicit rejection of birth-right citizenship as the ground for American citizenship. It simply declared that “the right of expatriation is a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Thus the English common law doctrine of birth-right citizenship was decisively rejected as incompatible with the principles of consent embodied in the Declaration of Independence. After all, the Declaration of Independence announced to the world that Americans no longer considered themselves to be British citizens. If Americans held to the notion of birth-right citizenship, they would have been incapable of declaring their independence from Britain!

Senator Howard, the author of the fourteenth amendment’s citizenship clause, stated in his support of the Expatriation Act that the principles of the Declaration of Independence necessarily mean that “the right of expatriation. . .is inherent and natural in man as man. . .” The notion of birth-right citizenship was frequently described as an “indefensible feudal doctrine of indefeasible allegiance.” One member of the House of Representative gave expression to the general sense of the Congress when he concluded that “[i]t is high time that feudalism were driven from our shores and eliminated from our law, and now is the time to declare it.”

Blackstone had described the allegiance required by the English doctrine of birth-right citizenship in these terms:

Natural allegiance is such as is due from all men born within the king’s dominions immediately upon their birth. For, immediately upon their birth, they are under the king’s protection . . . . Natural allegiance is therefore a debt of gratitude; which cannot be forfeited, canceled, or altered, by any change of time, place, or circumstance . . . For it is a principle of universal law, that the natural-born subject of one prince cannot by any act of his own, no, not by swearing allegiance to another, put off or discharge his natural allegiance to the former: for this natural allegiance was intrinsic, and primitive, and antecedent to the other; and cannot be divested without the concurrence act of that prince to whom it was first due.

The English common law became a part of the American system only insofar as it was consistent with the principles of republican government. James Madison wrote that one “fundamental principle of the revolution” was the assertion of the competence of American legislatures to pass legislation independently of the common law. In some cases, aspects of the common law were accepted as a matter of convenience, in others it was rejected outright as incompatible with the principles of a free and self-governing nation. Surely the notion of birth-right citizenship, with its requirement of indefeasible allegiance to a king, was one of those aspects of the common that was rejected by the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

Among a host of other considerations, birth-right citizenship denies that the people always retain the natural right to revolution, a right that is the fundamental right of rights described in the Declaration of Independence. As Representative Norman B. Judd remarked on the floor of the House in the debate over the Expatriation Act, “the English common law was not adopted. . . except so far as applicable to our situation and our form of government. . . . The very origin and nature of our institutions utterly forbid the idea that the doctrine of perpetual allegiance’ is consistent with our institutions.” Representative Judd further specified the precise sense in which the common law doctrine of birth-right citizenship was inconsistent with the principles of “our institutions:” “The right of expatriation is clearly implied as inalienable in the enumeration of rights in the Declaration of Independence, and its obstruction was one of the wrongs charged by the colonies against the English crown.” There can be no doubt whatsoever that the fortieth Congress that passed the Expatriation Act believed that it contained a thoroughgoing repudiation of the English common law notion of birth-right citizenship and its attendant requirement of perpetual allegiance. Since this Act was contemporaneous with the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, there can be little doubt that it also embraced the principle of citizenship that was embodied in the amendment. Reciprocal consent is the principle of citizenship embraced in the fourteenth amendment and the Expatriation Act is a confirmation of that principle.

Chief Justice Fuller remarked in his dissenting opinion in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), that in the American Revolution “when the sovereignty of the Crown was thrown off and an independent government established, every rule of the common law and every statute of England obtaining in the colonies, in derogation of the principles on which the new government was founded, was abrogated.” It was emphatically the case, Fuller rightly argued, “that the rule making locality of birth the criterion of citizenship because creating a permanent tie of allegiance, no more survived the American Revolution than the same rule survived the French Revolution.” Indeed, the consensual basis of citizenship, so far from creating a permanent and indissoluble allegiance to the sovereign, maintains “the general right of expatriation, to be exercised in subordination to the public interests and subject to regulation.”

The majority decision in Wong Kim Ark failed to make an adequate case for American adoption of the English common law basis of citizenship. Wong Kim Ark’s parents were legal residents of the United States but were rendered ineligible for citizenship by both statutes and treaty; and they still maintained their allegiance to China. The Court nevertheless held wrongly in my view that Wong Kim Ark, having been born within the territorial limits of the United States, had birth-right citizenship. The majority opinion failed to see that the English common law of birth-right citizenship was not only contrary to the principles of the founding, but had been explicitly rejected by the fourteenth amendment and the Expatriation Act. In any case, there has never been a Supreme Court opinion holding that the children of illegal aliens are entitled to American citizenship by virtue of their birth within the geographical limits of the United States. Jurisdiction is not a geographical concept; it is a matter of political allegiance. Birth-right citizenship has no place in republican government; it is the relic of monarchy and should be recognized as such once again by Congress.

BELOW ARE PICTURES TAKEN BY “OFFICIAL” TEA PARTY PHOTOGRAPHER DON SPENCER. THANKS DON! BE SURE TO SEE THE IMPORTANT NOTE AT THE END ABOUT STORIES FROM THOSE WHO ATTENDED.

ALSO CHECKOUT TWO VIDEOS AT KTOK’S REID MULLINS BLOG HERE.

Congresswoman and Republican Candidate for Governor Mary Fallin gives words of encouragement as OKC Tea Partiers do their final registration to board buses for Washington D.C.

OKC Tea Party charter travelers are just moments away from boarding and hittin' the road to D.C.

Our "official" photographer Don Spencer and Historian David Barton.

KTOK's Reid Mullins gives a big thumbs up in front of the Mall reflecting pool with the Washington Monument in the background.

Giving a wave is Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, head of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus

It starts! If you don't know what his name is, your name is Rip Van Winkle.

Who can beat that smile? Sarah Palin speaks before she introduces three real American heroes.

Before the rally program starts, attendees amble past and through and pick a spot at the World War II Memorial at the East end of the reflecting pool.

As the "Restoring Honor" Rally ended, Al Sharpton's "Reclaim The Dream" marched to the area being vacated by "Restoring Honor" attendees.

"Reclaim The Dream" marchers.

A "Reclaim The Dream" marcher. Note professionally produced signs and placards.

In case you can't read the sign, it says: "EQUALITY IS THE AMERICAN DREAM. BIGOTRY (with parenthetical red Devil's horns) IS A TEA PARTY FANTASY. WAKE UP AMERICA."

SPECIAL NOTE TO OKLAHOMA “RESTORING HONOR” RALLY ATTENDEES —-

We are setting up a special section containing personal stories and opinions about this special event from those who attended the 8-28 rally. If you have an interesting viewpoint or special story, please either post mail or email (preferred) your piece to one of the below addresses. Please keep it as short as possible and to the point — no more than 300 words please!. But don’t shorten it to the point that the meaning you want to convey is obscured. Once again, a personal anecdote about the rally. No general rants, please.

Mailing Address:

OKC Tea Party

Post Office Box 94851

Oklahoma City, OK 73143

Contact Margie at

teapartynews@gmail.com

On Saturday, June 26, 2010 at the Ford Center, the Taking Our Country Back Tour 2010 starring Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, and Country Music singer John Rich was conducted live here at the Ford Center. The three hour event also featured a live appearance of Joe Wurzelbacher — “Joe The Plumber”.

John Rich performed Master of Ceremonies duties, spoke, sang, and conducted a special recognition of Oklahoma servicemen who gave their lives in Afghanistan. Recognition included bringing several of their families on stage who were honored by Rich & the crowd

Karl Rove concludes by exhorting the crowd to explain what's at stake and to convince 25 friends, neighbors, relatives and other close associates to begin scrutinizing every candidate and to be sure to vote in 2010 and 2012.

Glenn Beck speeches, teaches, & preaches for nearly an hour and a half of the three hour Taking Our Country Back Tour. Here he reads the Rudyard Kipling quote in his new novel, The Overton Window.

In a surprise appearance, Joe Wurzelbacher - Joe The Plumber - pulls no punches with his Roto-Rooter comments about the mess our nation's now in and common sense solutions

Taking Our Country Back Tour with some of the OKC Tea Party production team. From left: Dan Ward, Dan Fisher, Karl Rove, Chaz Inez, Glenn Beck, Margie Drescher, & John Rich. The Tour asked the OKC Tea Party to conduct a "Pep Rally" on June 23rd to help promote The Taking Our Country Back Tour event. Help with the special rally -- including a live appearance by John Rich -- was provided by KTOK and Lee Matthews, Holden Productions, and Creative Entertainment Unlimited of Norman, Oklahoma.

A big thanks to Don Spencer for taking all the wonderful photographs. Don also took pictures of the two OKC Tea Party “Pep Rally” Grand Prize (book and admission) winners.  Grand Prize winners also got to “Meet & Greet” their book’s authors, Karl Rove and Glenn Beck, who personally autographed them in the event “Green Room”.  (We will post their photos when we get them.)  Also a big thanks to KTOK and Lee Matthews for helping the OKC Tea Party with the June 23rd “Pep Rally”.  And a final big and absolutely huge thanks to Tony Holden of Holden Productions of Tulsa and Brad White of Creative Entertainment Unlimited in Norman, the Taking Our Country Back Tour 2010 promoters. Thanks Tony and Brad for the great logistical support and the heartfelt consideration you provide to us throughout all Tour activities.

Sitting just a few seats to her right (no pun intended), Margie couldn't refuse having a picture taken with Donna & Randy Brogdon

JUNE 23RD "PEP RALLY" BOOK WINNER DEBI BOHANNAN WITH HER BOOK'S AUTHOR KARL ROVE AND GLENN BECK AND JOHN RICH IN THE "GREEN ROOM" BEFORE THE TAKING OUR COUNTRY BACK TOUR PERFORMANCE.

Karl Rove, KTOK's Lee Matthews, Glenn Beck, KTOK's Reid Mullins, and John Rich before the June 26th Taking Our Country Back Tour performance.

“Citizenship has never been granted to persons because of their race or national origin—nor has this privilege been accorded to “groups” of persons.  The measure of a citizen has always been the measure of an individual person.  It is the individual who comes to our shores and is accorded the blessing and dignity of a free person by the citizens of the nation called America—“the last, best hope of Earth”.  For you and your like-minded parasitic professional politicians to suggest citizenship can be given to a group—or what is no more than the disingenuous equivalent “a path to citizenship”—is for you to propose the destruction of one of Freedom’s cornerstones. ” — From Freedom Papers’ The Measure of A Citizen

TO READ THE COMPLETE FREEDOM PAPERS PIECE CLICK HERE

READ “AN ETHICAL CHRISTIAN APPROACH TO IMMIGRATION REFORM” by Dr. James Edwards. His testimony before Congress. Read this and then read the below.

And More —-

Open Editorial: Welcome to Maywood, Mexico

by Roger Hedgecock — 06/25/2010 (Hedgecock is a talk radio show host and a former Mayor of San Diego, California)

Boasting a population that is 97% Hispanic, more than half foreign born, and 40% illegal, the Los Angeles County, Calif., incorporated city of Maywood has achieved the Reconquista goal. It is now as lawless and chaotic as any place in Mexico. Maywood is a warning to every city and town in America.

The Maywood City Council announced this week that after years of radical policies, corruption and scandal, the city was broke and all city employees would be laid off and essential city services contracted out to neighboring cities or to L.A. County government.

How did this happen? Until recently, Maywood was the model for “brown power” politics.

Maywood was the first California city with an elected Hispanic City Council, one of the first “sanctuary” cities for illegal aliens, the first city to pass a resolution calling for a boycott of Arizona after that state passed a law to enforce federal immigration laws, the first California city to order its police department not to enforce state laws requiring drivers to have licenses to drive, the first American city to call on Congress to grant amnesty to all illegals.

Council meetings were conducted in Spanish. Maywood was the leader in the peaceful, democratic achievement of the La Raza goal to take power in the U.S.

The City of Maywood started out quite differently. Back after World War II, Maywood was a booming blue-collar town with good jobs, a multi-ethnic suburb of Los Angeles.

On the 25th anniversary in 1949 of Maywood’s incorporation as a city, the town celebrated with a beard-growing contest, a rodeo, and wrestling matches in City Park. Chrysler operated an assembly plant there until 1971.

But the early 1970s saw these industrial jobs in aerospace, auto and furniture manufacturing, and food processing evaporate under the pressure of higher taxes, increased local and state regulation, and the attraction of cheaper land and cheaper labor elsewhere.

The multi-ethnic Maywood of the post-war years was transformed in the ’80s and ’90s by wave after wave of Hispanic immigrants, many of them illegal.

In August 2006, a “Save Our State” anti-illegal immigration rally in Maywood drew hundreds of protesters—but a larger number of defenders of illegal immigration. The pro-illegal protesters carried signs which read “We are Indigenous! The ONLY owners of this Continent!” and “Racist Pilgrims Go Home” and “All Europeans are Illegal Here.”

According to newspaper reports at the time, objectors to illegal aliens were subject to physical attacks. A 70-year-old man was “slashed,” a woman attacked, and cars vandalized. Pro-illegal demonstrators raised the Mexican flag at the U.S. Post Office.

The illegal population and their sympathizers became increasingly radicalized. Elections to the City Council saw “assimilationist” incumbent Hispanic council members ousted by La Raza supporting radical challengers.

For years, the Maywood City Council authorized police checkpoints to stop drunk driving. Drivers without licenses had their cars impounded. Illegals in California cannot get drivers licenses. By 2005, the number of such impounds were in the hundreds. A community campaign was launched forcing the City Council to suspend the checkpoints.

Cars were still being impounded whenever a police traffic-violation stop resulted in a driver without a license. Felipe Aguirre, a community activist with Comite Pro-Uno, an “immigration service center,” coordinated a new campaign against any impounds. He was elected in 2005 to the City Council. He is the mayor of Maywood today.

Aguirre and a new majority of the council dismantled the Traffic Department. Illegals were given overnight-parking permits and impounds stopped. You didn’t need a license to drive in Maywood. The Los Angeles Times wrote glowingly of this “progress” in a story entitled “Welcome to Maywood, Where Roads Open Up For Immigrants”.

The Maywood Police Department was restructured by the new council. A new chief and new officers were hired. Later it turned out that many of the new officers had previously been fired from other law enforcement agencies for a variety of infractions. The Maywood P.D. was known as the “Department of Second Chances.”

Among those hired was a former L.A. Sheriff’s deputy terminated for abusing jail inmates; a former LAPD officer fired for intimidating a witness; and an ex-Huntington Park officer charged with negligently discharging a handgun and driving drunk.

Even the L.A. Times called the Maywood Police Department a “haven for misfit cops.” Their story alleged that a veteran officer was extorting sex from relatives of a criminal fugitive; that another officer tried to run over the president of the Maywood Police Commission; and that another officer has impregnated a teenage police-explorer scout.

Charges of corruption and favoritism led to one recall of city council members and threats of more recalls are heard to this day.

Maywood is represented in the state Senate by Democrat “One Bill” Gil Cedillo. He earned the nickname by introducing every year in the state legislature a bill to grant drivers licenses to illegals. Maywood is represented in Congress by Democrat Lucille Roybal-Allard, a staunch advocate of amnesty for illegals.

Today, Maywood is broke. Its police department dismantled along with all other city departments and personnel. Only the city council remains and a city manager to manage the contracts with other agencies for city services in Maywood.

Maywood is the warning of what happens when illegal immigrants, resisting assimilation as Americans, bring with their growing numbers the corruption and the radical politics of their home countries. Add the radical home-grown anti-Americanism of Hispanic “leaders” and groups like La Raza and you get schools where learning is replaced with indoctrination, business and jobs replaced by welfare and gangs, and a poisonous stew of entitlement politics.

In too many American communities, this sad tale is all too familiar.

Calling on all Patriots and history buffs:  You are invited on a historical trip to Washington, D.C. and the Gettysburg battlefields. Dan Fisher , amateur historian and  board member  of the Oklahoma City Tea Party will be  our tour guide .   We will leave on October 17, 2010 and return on October 23, 2010.   This trip includes 2 days in Washington D.C and 2-1/2 days in Gettysburg.    If you have never had the opportunity to experience the history of Gettysburg or Washington D.C. then this trip is for you.  For details, itinerary and travel costs, please see the attached flyer.

DC Flyer