Here’s the information I have . . .
From Christine Neumann-Ortiz of Voces de la Frontera, Milwaukee:
ACTION ALERT! TODAY AT NOON AT THE STATE CAPITOL! PROTEST GARY MEINTERD, AN ANTI-IMMIGRANT, RACIST SPEAKER AT NOON THURSDAY AT STATE CAPITOL. GATHER AT 11:30 A.M. AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE SOUTH WING (NEAR CORNER OF CARROLL AND MAIN STS.) TO HEAD UP TO ROOM 411 SOUTH.
The entire Wisconsin State Legislature has been invited, so come show your support for humane, comprehensive immigration reform.
Bring signs such as “NO TO ETHNIC CLEANSING IN ARIZONA!” “WISCONSIN WANTS COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM,” “WHAT IS IT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS?” “WHAT IS IT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ABOUT THE WORK ‘UNCONSTITUTIONAL?” “BORDER WALLS HAVE NEVER WORKED AND NEVER WILL”, “BORDER WALLS CAN’T SUBSTITUTE FOR RATIONAL IMMIGRATION POLICIES” OR “RESIST SB 1070-TYPE LAWS”, “BOYCOTT ARIZONA,” “ARIZONA: BUT IT’S A DRY HATE”, “LET’S MAKE SURE WHAT HAPPENS IN ARIZONA STAYS IN ARIZONA”, etc.
See e-mail on the speaker below from Voces de la Frontera.
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Vanessa Ramos
Date: Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 4:28 PM
Subject: FW: Tomorrow’s Event in MadisonI tried to find the information on the Wisconsin Tea Party Groups website but could not find it. This is the information we received for tomorrow’s meeting (in a flyer format):
EVENT INFORMATION:
Thursday, August 12, Noon (but come early to get a seat)
Room 411-South
Wisconsin State Capitol, MadisonPRESENTATION ON ARIZONA BORDER ISSUES
The public is invited to attend a special symposium on border issues with Gary Meintert. Gary is a native of Wisconsin, lives four months a year in his log cabin with his wife, Karlyn on Boulder Lake in Vilas County. The other eight months is spent in Green Valley, AZ which is located almost half way between Tucson and Nogales.
Living on 36 miles from the boarder has had the uniqure opprotunity to view first hand what is now called a major crisis. For five years he has photograped and documented the illegal activities of the Mexican cartels and the drug and hun trafficking. To obtain this information he travels the 1100 squre miles of the beautiful, but often in hospitable, Sonoran dessert – almost always off trails.
He serves on the Citizens Advisory Board of the Nogales Boarder Patrol Station, the largest in the country. He has developed a mutual trust and respect with many officials. Those include the ranking officers of the Border Patrol, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Pink Underwear Fame, his Chief Brian Sands and deputies of the various County Sheriff’s Departments. He recently had the opportunity to sit with Governor Brewer for 30 minutes and discuss the SB1070immigration bill and its affect on Arizona.
He and his colleage, Don Sever, have given slide presentations to dozens of organizations in several states, have been guests on many radio talk shows and are used as source materal for magazines, newspapers and on TV Documentary. They have also briefed U.S. Congressmen on the border crisis.
Their goal is to share their experiences, hundreds of photographs and facts with interested citizens. In doing so they can proivde accurate information so citizens can make up their own minds regarding the subject.
Please forward to any allies and friends. There will be approx. 10 of us from Milwaukee driving up to attend.
Thank you so much!
Can I mostly just say that he uses a very broad brush in talking about Mexicans? 98% of his talk is about all those drug smugglers, human traffickers, and illegal aliens with nary a mention of what I presume to be a huge population of very good human beings that happen to be Mexican, whichever side of the border they live on.
Some things I can agree with, particularly the need to sort out good guys from bad guys, but I can’t agree with the solution of tossing back people up here illegally, sealing off the border and letting them fend for themselves.
I agree that the bad guys are probably running things in Mexico, but, since I know so many that have fled from it, I differ from their seeming belief that they should be isolated to deal with it on their own with my belief that the majority are good and need our help.
They seem to have little or nothing to say about what we might do to help the good folks get their county back, they seem mostly concerned with sealing the problems out of the US.
For myself, I’d rather do whatever is needed to erase the lines and let people come and go with relative ease and have a good working relationship back and forth.
I did ask a question about that which he answered with 4 options, one of which was for the US to make marijuana legal, but he brushed that off as not going to happen. So I asked why not. His reply was that if we put the drug cartel out of business by taking that trade away, they’d have to replace it with some other crime to make money. I suggested that we could put them in charge of the production of marijuana for sale in the US since they seem to be pretty good at it. Room laughed… but got the point I think.
I know it’s hard to turn people around when their environment has been so hard on them, but I truly believe that the vast majority of people are good, given the opportunity. I guess living in Mexico is a lot like being in jail, huh??
BTW, if folks are interested in contacting them, I’ve got a copy of the Media Alert from Voces De La Frontera with posted phone numbers for Leila Pine at 608-234-0399 or 233-5566 and Christine Neumann-Ortiz at 414-736-2835
OK, you can have your blog back now. And, btw, if it needs saying, my opinions are my own. I don’t know people from any group well enough to say whether we agree or not.