Gotta love this. Illegal immigration and unemployment are both above-the-fold policy issues currently being bantered about in American politics. Bringing them together in a clever campaign, United Farm Workers has created a program called Take Our Jobs, where undocumented immigrant farm workers will train “legal” American citizens to take their jobs in the farms and fields. This is a fitting solution, since these are the jobs that illegal workers “stole” from taxpaying Americans. See Ronald W. Mortensen, founder of the conservative, nativist organization Center for Immigration Studies (which the Southern Poverty Law Center has expressed serious concerns about) urging Tea Partiers to get more vocal on illegal immigration.

Evidently, however, the campaign is under-promoted because thus far, only a handful of people have filled out a form. It’s odd because surely there are more than a few unemployed Tea Partiers in Arizona alone. So please help us encourage unemployed Americans to walk their walk. Tea Partiers, do the patriotic thing and go work in the farms and fields for minimum pay and maximum labor, just like the founders intended. To apply to take an undocumented farmworker’s job in the fields, go to TakeOurJobs.org. But make sure to invest in a hat and some sunscreen. It can get hot out there.

As evidenced by the rather extensive list of issues covered on this site, we follow a variety of movements and campaigns. One that we often overlook, however, is the growing trend of people counter-protesting the Westboro Baptist Church—a hate group known for picketing at public events and funerals, usually in relation to gay people, Jews and soldiers killed in battle (the latter of which they consider “God’s punishment” for the moral decay of America).

While this group deserves opposition and resistance, the typical response has been somewhat counter-productive. A distinct attitude of snarkiness and irony pervade the counter-protests, which usually consist of signs mocking the language of the Westboro Baptist Church. For instance, parodies of the sick “God hates fags” signs present at most WBC gatherings range from the sarcastic “God hates signs” to the absurd “God hates fuzzy tiny kittens.”

That’s not to say there isn’t power in humor. One admittedly funny photo from a counter-protest shows a WBC woman holding a sign that reads “Homosexuality is a sin”, while a young man stands next her holding a sign mocking her attire: “Corduroy skirts are a sin.” By playing on the stereotypical keen fashion sense of gay people, this comment is in its own way incisive. Yet, by also being insulting, it can only serve as a further divide between two people that ultiamtely must come together for hatred to be extinguished.

I have yet to see much effort to reach out to the WBC, perhaps because people think they are insane, irrational and unchangeable. Unfortunately, this attitude toward their fellow man/woman is something they share with the WBC. If both sides are belittling the humanity of the other as irredeemable than no progress will ever be made. Since the basic ideology of WBC is based on hate, the burden is therefore on the counter-protesters to bring the WBC folks back from the edge.

But if counter-protesters aren’t ready to make this gesture, they can at least improve the effectiveness of their campaign in other ways. Perhaps the best tactic being employed (or about to employed) is by an LGBT support group in Dallas. According to The Advocate:

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Zubi Advertising Services, an independent Hispanic ad company based in Miami, decided to take on the issue of racial profiling in Arizona by creating what it calls the “Gringo Mask.” Unfortunately, some seriously humorless people took offense to the slang term and caused enough of a controversy to warrant a local TV news piece and force a formal apology. Now, the following appears in place of the once downloadable mask:

We understand from your responses that some people might equate the word “Gringo” with an ethnic slur.  We do not.  It is simply a slang term used to describe Caucasians, and we don’t assign any negative connotations to it.  In fact, the mask communicates that looking this way will keep you above suspicion of being an illegal immigrant in Arizona, a positive thing not a derogatory one.  We hope everyone will view the mask the way we do…a comical tool to convey a message and raise awareness about an issue that is important to all Americans.  If the campaign has been taken in a different light by some, we sincerely regret the misunderstanding.

The irony that white people would be offended by a term no more disparaging than “redneck” in the face of greater racial injustice is truly frustrating. But at least the controversy brought more attention to the issue—which, as Zubi also noted, was its primary goal.

Thanks to your involvement, the GringoMask has achieved its primary objective to raise awareness of the potential for racial profiling by enforcement of Arizona SB 1070.  GringoMask was not a commercial product or intended to be a long term project, but a piece of satire to promote discussion and thought.

In addition to raising awareness, the mask was used to promote dialogue between people of different opinions in the hopes of arriving at better solutions than SB 1070, and to show solidarity with Americans of every race and color across the country that found this law unfair in its targeting of a specific ethnic group even if only implicitly.

For more on the many creative ways people are finding to act in solidarity with Arizona’s Latino community check out this great piece in Yes! Magazine called The 21st Century Civil Rights Movement.

Over at New Tactics, a great site that I’m just now discovering, a week-long discussion about the role that humor can play in countering activist burnout, attracting interest in the cause from a wider audience, and gaining better media coverage as we engage in nonviolent action with some wonderful practitioners of nonviolence from around the world – including Srdja Popovic, one of the leader of the Otpor movement that brought down Milosevic – wrapped up on Tuesday. To check out the dialogue, click here.

And keep an eye on their site for other similar discussions. From April 21-27th, for example, they will be hosting a dialogue on “Engaging youth in non-violent alternatives to militarism” that sounds like it will be very worthwhile.

On the Daily Show last week there was a powerful segment where Jon Stewart tore apart the recent decision in Texas to exclude Archbishop Oscar Romero – who was assassinated 30 years ago this week by graduates from the School of the Americas (SOA) – from a list of great political or moral figures of the twentieth century that will appear in high school text books.

As Jimmy McCarty explains at Sojourners’ blog:

Romero was Archbishop of El Salvador for only three brief years, but his impact continues to this day.  In the midst of dire poverty and rampant violence, Archbishop Romero never wavered from publicly preaching nonviolence and the Christian commitment to the poorest of the poor.  He did not waver when intimidated, and he loved both the poor and the enemies of the poor.  He brought international attention to the gross human rights violations in El Salvador and was a living witness to the gospel of Jesus.  His life is recent evidence of the power of the message of Jesus to transform individuals, communities, and social structures.  Every Christian can learn from his example.

On March 24, 1980… as Archbishop Romero prepared to administer the Eucharist during the memorial service of the mother of a friend, a single bullet pierced his chest, splintered, and struck his heart.

To read more, check out John Dear’s reflection on Romero at the National Catholic Reporter, and this nice piece in Killing the Buddha.

According to the environmental blog Treehugger, Nestlé was forced to drop its Indonesian palm oil producer Sinar Mas Group after a successful viral video campaign by Greenpeace, which highlighted the destruction palm oil production causes to rainforests and orangutan habitats. But the success can’t be completely credited to Greenpeace. Apparently Nestlé blundered when it got the video taken off YouTube after only fewer than 1,000 people had seen it. This allowed Greenpeace to repost the video on Vimeo.com and send out word about Nestlé’s attempts to suppress their message, ultimately causing enough hubbub to force Nestlé’s hand. This is a great example of what’s known as political jiu-jitsu or as Treehugger put it, “how activists can succeed and how corporations can screw up bigtime.”

“Prison officials don’t need a gun; they already have full control over you,” said a former Michigan prisoner who was raped by a correctional officer. She shared her experience with Just Detention International (JDI), an organization working to end the sexual abuse of detainees in prisons and jails around the globe.

The horror of prison rape has been well-documented by Human Rights Watch (hat tip, Te-Ping Chen at change.org). But in American popular culture, the issue of prison rape (when it’s not being ignored), is somehow considered funny, the subject of late-night, drop-the-soap humor. Humor can bring relief to conversations of uncomfortable facts, but it can also dehumanize and trivialize.

Just Detention International (note the name’s double entendre) seeks to change that dynamic with a moving new campaign. JDI prepared three sets of images.

The first set challenges the view that prison rape is somehow not really rape:

The second highlights the health of rape victims:

The third targets the alleged humor of people being raped:

Prison rape has reached epidemic proportions in US jails and prisons. Some 60,500 (4.5%) of the 1.3 million people in federal and state prisons were sexually abused in 2006, according to a 2007 Department of Justice study. By one account, one in five male prisoners is sexually abused at some point during his incarceration. Meanwhile, HIV is four times more prevalent, and Hepatitis C is eight to 20 times more prevalent, in US prisons than in society overall.

Among juveniles in U.S. youth prisons, according to a just-released Department of Justice study, one in eight reported being sexually victimized in the past 12 months (or if they were incarcerated for fewer than 12 months, since they were admitted). Eighty percent of these victims were abused by prison staff.

Kudos to Just Detention International for humanizing people in prison by depicting them in something other than prison garb. Rape is awful whether it happens to women or men, free or imprisoned. “No matter what crime someone has committed,” says JDI, “sexual violence must never be part of the penalty.”

Here is the latest biting comic from our good friend Jason Laning. For those that can’t read it, Bush is saying to Obama: “You know, you almost had us worried, for a minute there.” Again to get the full experience, check out the original on his site. There will be more on the escalation of the war in Afghanistan and resistance to it here soon.

Launched on the eve of Veteran’s Day last week, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,” the latest in “first-person shooter” video games, raked in an unbelievable $310 million in its first day on the market.

The game – already the subject of controversy over a scene where the player indiscriminately mows down innocent civilians in an airport that looks like LAX in Los Angeles – is supposed to be one of the most realistic war games yet. As Peter W. Singer describes it:

As part of a US special operations team, the player roams everywhere from Afghanistan to the Caucasus, winning hearts and minds with a mix of machine pistols and Predator drone strikes. The players also fight out in range of potential new conflict zones, from the rough urban favelas of Brazil to a simulated Russian invasion of Washington, D.C., and the Virginia suburbs (This is actually a major flaw in the game; any invasion force would clearly get stuck in traffic at the Interstate 95 Mixing Bowl).

On The Daily Show last week, there was a funny, but ultimately dismissive and wrong-headed segment on the logic and effectiveness of boycotts.

In his comedic way, Wyatt Cenac made the case that liberals shouldn’t stop shopping at Whole Foods simply because, as he describes it,  “the CEO of a company had the audacity to express his personal opinion about health care in writing.”

Why not? If the head of any company is doing something that you think is morally wrong or advocating for a policy that you think is going to hurt a lot people, why not publicly refuse to give him any more of your money by shopping somewhere else? It makes perfect sense.

Cenac did make a valid point, however, by arguing that it’s nearly impossible to buy anything in our capitalist system and hold on to your morals, because of how interconnected everything has become.

For example, he pointed out that Toyota, the maker of the Prius – the hybrid car that is so popular with those concerned with the environment – also recently sponsored a reggae concert that included an artist with homophobic songs that encourage killing gays.

I think of how the metal coltan, which is at the heart of the brutal civil war in the Congo that has left more than 5 million dead over the last decade, is also in virtually all of our electronics, including our cell phones and laptops. We are truly all complicit.

Nevertheless, while many boycotts go nowhere, others clearly have helped build a more just world. In a recent article on Counterpunch, John Macaray discussed a few examples of effective boycotts:

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I had the good fortune of being able to catch Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno’s new film, “The Yes Men Fix the World,” when it aired on HBO a couple months ago, and thought it was fantastic.

If you weren’t able to catch it then, however, and you live in New York City, you’re in luck.  The film opened at the Film Forum last week and is currently scheduled to run for two weeks. Over the next month or two, it is set to open in other cities across the country as well. Check out the film’s site to see if it’s coming to a theater near you. (And if it does really well now – if my limited understanding of these things is correct – it has the potential to make it on to many more screens.)

For those not familiar with the Yes Men, their M.O. is to finagle their way into business conferences or onto major media outlets posing as representatives of major corporations – such as Exxon Mobil and Halliburton – or U.S. government officials. They then give speeches that either take the free-market thinking to it’s logical extreme, revealing its absurdity in the process, or make altruistic announcements for government or business action that we would only see if they were moral entities. For example:

In the film’s opening scene, Bichlbaum, purporting to be a Dow Chemical representative, goes on the BBC to announce that after 20 years of denial, his company will finally clean up India’s toxic Bhopal plant and compensate all the victims of the industrial disaster that occurred there. As people connected to the issue celebrate the news, Dow’s stock plummets.

Pundits ask whether the duo perpetrated a cruel joke by giving Bhopal survivors false hope, so Bichlbaum and Bonanno travel to India to ask residents for their reactions. Some say they were disappointed to learn of the fraud, but others seem pleased that the prank called attention to the shameful neglect of big business and government.

I think the Yes Men’s actions hilarious and at times incredibly poignant indictments of a system that thrives on greed and is – in an absolutely literal way – destroying the earth.

While some will undoubtedly see their nonviolent tactics as deceitful and distasteful, I was moved by Bichlbaum’s explanation of their work to someone confronting him after one of their pranks. What they are doing, he said, is “truth-telling where there would normally be lies.” And the lies of the powerful few have profound repercussions on billions of lives at the bottom that they see as worthless, or at least not of enough value to do anything to help.

One exciting new direction that the Yes Men are heading in, which the movie only touches on briefly, are pulling off stunts that require the collaboration of thousands of people – such as the creation and release of nearly a million copies of a fake New York Post last month that focused on what needs to be done to avert the worst effects of climate change.  The more people can be drawn in to participate in these types of creative actions, the more hope we can all have for the future.

In a pretty funny segment from Thursday’s Daily Show, John Oliver attempts to help the G20 activists in Pittsburgh get the same “warm reception” Tea Party protesters have received from the government and media. So he talks to some Tea Partiers to seek their advice. Naturally, their suggestions are filled with irony: “They need to stay on message” and “They’re scaring everyone away”. While most of the joking is done at the expense of the Tea Partiers, the G20 activists aren’t exactly let off easy. They’re shown to have a bunch of crazies in their midst, as well as a disorganized conglomeration of competing interests. Plus, Oliver seems to paint them as somewhat weak and pathetic. But that may have more to do with the joke he seems to be making about the unnecesarily large police presence. Ultimately, I get the sense that the Daily Show sympathizes with the G20 activists, but, as is always the case when pop culture attempts to explain protests, stereotypes take over.

Last week protesters in London targeted the annual Defence Systems & Equipment International (DSEi) exhibition, the world’s largest arms fair.

One anarchist group, called the Space Hijackers, claimed to have acquired a helicopter and threatened to somehow shut down the weapons bazaar “by swooping in from the sky,” according to Danger Room. While that sounds ridiculous, London police actually had a reason to take the group seriously.

At the DSEi in 2007, the Space Hijackers threatened to bring a tank and auction it outside the show. What ended up happening is really wonderful.

“The police intercepted a tank approaching the Excel exhibition site,” David Hambling reported at the time, “but this turned out to be a decoy and a second tank (pictured) got through.”

I would personally love to hear more about how in the hell they managed to pull off this stunt. Pretty hilarious.

Well this year it turns out they didn’t actually have a helicopter, but they still managed to cause a stir. “It was VERY funny watching the police panic everytime one flew near the DSEi arms fair and Delegates Dinner,” the group says on their website. “Not to mention the extra helicopters they had flying around looking for ours.”

A full report on their involvement this year will be coming soon, so check back on their site if you want to know the full story.

While there were apparently peaceful protests during the arms fair, some unfortunately decided to turn to property destruction and vandalism. According to DISARM DSEi, the protesters’ main website, windows were smashed and paint bombs were thrown at “some of the biggest backers of the arms trade, including Barclays, Legal and General and Axa. British Telecom, who have a £59 million share in the arms trade were also occupied.”

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