Thursday, April 6th, 2006...6:12 am
It Worked So Well at Kent State in 1970
A letter from Sen. Ron Gould to Gov. Janet Napolitano, courtesey Espresso Pundit:
Re: Illegal Alien March on April 10th
Dear Governor Napolitano:
I believe there is a cause for great concern regarding public safety during the upcoming protest march. The promoters of this event claim that over 100,000 demonstrators will be in attendance. They also claim that this will be a peaceful event, but we cannot go on the assumption that it will be peaceful. The marchers may be peaceful, but outside agitators could disrupt the event. If this happens, the march could very easily turn violent.
With this in mind, I request that the Arizona National Guard be stationed in the area of the march. The presence of the Guard will have a stabilizing effect on the entire situation. In addition to stability, the guard would get real life experience in crowd control.
I hope that you will give my request serious consideration.
Sincerely, Senator Ron Gould
Yes, call out the National Guard. Stationing heavilly armed people along the protest route is the best way to send a message of peace and harmony. Such a policy has worked so well in the past.
Does this call come from anyone in local law enforcement that thinks that they can’t handle the situation? I didn’t think so.
This alarmism from Gould and other conservatives is not justified from our experience over the last few weeks with other marches here in Arizona. Of course, if the rhetoric you use equates immigrants and their supporters with criminals and terrorists, it would only be natural to think that any gathering will result in violence. Such a request has more to do with pandering to the fears of the xenophobes that support people like Gould and his colleagues than any concern about actual violence.
I also have to wonder if the pleas to call out the Guard are motivated by people who are worried about the growing movement and want to intimidate the protestors. The anti-immigrant forces have had a free ride in the mainstream media, particularly local television. Here you have the other side asserting themselves and getting their point across. This just won’t do, will it?
NB - Anyone hear that Tom Horne is suggesting campus lockdowns during the protest? I don’t think students should cut class either, but literally suggesting that gates on campus be “locked up” to keep students from expressing a political view is probably not the sort of civics lesson we want to give them.
8 Comments
April 6th, 2006 at 9:18 am
Maybe the National Guard could go out to Sen. Gould’s house in Lake Havasu and make him take down the Confederate Flag he fly’s. What country does he think he lives in anyway - I hate these people who fly the flags of foreign countries. Especially the flags of countries that attacked the United States!
April 6th, 2006 at 9:54 am
LOL, insider!
Perhaps Gould wants the Guard called out to protect the marchers from the RW nut jobs who have been posting on the internet for the past few days, talking (joking?) about taking out protesters with snipers. He’s probably just looking out for those poor …
*sigh* who am i kidding?
Tedski, Horne is calling for a lockdown. It’s front page news in the Republic.
April 6th, 2006 at 10:00 am
What an idiot Horne is. He can lock all the schools up he wants just as sure as the Fire Chief will unlock the schools just as soon as they are locked. You cannot lock kids in any instance, its against fire code and the police have almost always sided with the Fire Chief over some lame politician who wants to score political points.
April 6th, 2006 at 11:42 am
um, i don’t believe a lockdown is meant quite that literally, tom. my understanding is that it prevents students down the campus, not literally locking kids into the buildings.
lockdowns occur quite frequently when there are emergency situations nearby. [e.g. hostage situation or fire in neighborhood]
April 6th, 2006 at 11:59 am
Horne’s advice has been quoted in several places as asking schools to “lock the gates,” quite different from the more metaphorical “lockdown.”
April 6th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
Take a look at the L.A. march - 500,000 people and ZERO incidents. The police were just amazed at how peaceful it was. I don’t think it’s the marchers we have to worry about.
April 7th, 2006 at 6:50 am
FYI - latest news is that chickensh*t state lawmakers are leaving early on Monday to avoid the march.
Nice to see representative democracy in action!
April 7th, 2006 at 11:41 am
SonoranDesertRat hit this right on the nose.
Immigrants and their supporters are marching to protest the fact that they are not being treated as the productive and peaceful members of society that they are. It would make no sense for people trying to make this point to commit acts of violence.
If anything, any acts of violence would play right into the hands of Sen. Gould and others on the extreme right. They could then claim that these people are ‘criminals.’
My guess is that they want to make that claim anyway, hence the call for the national guard, then they can claim that the guard’s presence in and of itself was responsible for preventing violence.
But the Governor won’t play into their hands. And I’m sure that the Phoenix police department will be on the scene and ready to arrest any agitators who try to provoke anything, and I bet if that happens and they arrest some, it will turn out that they are members of the Minutemen or the John Birch Society or some other loony tunes rightist group.
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