We Have Been Warned (Video review of "Immigration: Threatening the Bonds of Our Union")

By James Lubinskas
Published in The Social Contract
Volume 9, Number 4 (Summer 1999)
Issue theme: "Population growth and resource depletion"
https://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc0904/article_827.shtml



Immigration: Threatening the Bonds of Our Union

Video produced by Voices of Citizens Together

Los Angeles, 46 minutes, $19.95

Glenn Spencer, who heads the immigration reform group Voices of Citizens Together (VCT) has assigned himself the mordant task of chronicling the fall of California. Perhaps best known for his annual Fourth of July anti-immigration rally in Los Angeles, Spencer also has the best immigration web site on the Internet. In a little over a year, the hit-counter at www.americanpatrol.com reads almost half-a-million. With updates several times a day Spencer is doing nothing less than recording the displacement of one culture - primarily "Anglo" - by another, hostile culture - primarily Mexican. While that transfer may be inevitable in California he is doing his best to make sure it does not happen to the entire United States. VCT's new video, Immigration Threatening the Bonds of Our Union, is designed to alert Middle America to what awaits them if there is no change in our immigration policy.

The video starts by noting that the Republican party, due to political stupidity and cowardice, has abandoned the issue of immigration reform in California. The gains the party made under Pete Wilson have all been erased and with Gray Davis, the state now has the most liberal governor in America. Davis proudly supports Mexican-American radicals including his Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante. Mr. Bustamante, it may be recalled, went to Mexico after the passage of Proposition 187 to "apologize" to the Mexican government for the "racism" of Pete Wilson. Indeed, a central message of Spencer's is that Mexican-American leaders have an openly racialist plan to "reconquer" the Southwest and they are using immigration - both legal and illegal - to increase their power.

Charges such as these are often written off as right-wing paranoia but VCT provides the video and audio clips to back up this claim. We see Mario Obledo, the founder of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) announcing on the Tom Leykis show that, "California is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who doesn't like it should leave." When asked if he could see how people would construe his remarks as racist he coolly replies, "No, because that is the reality." Far from being hurt by his remarks he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998 by President Clinton. Obledo was praised as a "hero" and a "civil rights pioneer" by Hillary Clinton and Gray Davis - even after he had made his remarks.

Other video clips show Art Torres, former state senator and current chairman of the California state Democratic Party, addressing Hispanics at a post-187 rally. "Power is not given to you. You have to take it," says Torres. "Remember, 187 is the last gasp of white America in California." Of course, his racial pandering does not stop him from referring to immigration reformers as racists and bigots.

The current speaker of the California state assembly, Antonio Villaraigosa, is seen at a 1997 rally in Washington D.C. which demanded citizenship for illegal aliens. "Somos Mexicanos! (We are Mexicans!)" shouts the speaker. Joe Baca, a member of the California Assembly, is seen railing against Proposition 209 (which outlawed racial quotas in state government) at a voter registration rally. "We are in a civil war," he shouts. "United, Latinos will win!"

It would be a mistake to think that only elected officials, or indeed only Mexican-Americans, are involved in the "reconquista" (reconquer) movement. Professor Armando Navarro of California State University at Riverside is heard explaining what reconquista means. "It means a transfer of power. It means control...even in terms of an Aztlan." Professor David Kennedy, a historian at Stanford agrees with this view (though he does not endorse it). He predicts that the Southwest will become a sort of "Chicano Quebec" within a generation.

Though it may be alarming that powerful officials and academics hold these anti-American views, they are at least somewhat constrained by their positions from speaking out more forcefully. Street activists are much more blunt, and perhaps more representative of the reconquista mentality. Ricky Sierra of the "Chicano National Guard" is seen telling a cheering crowd that, "We are here united and we are recolonizing America so they are afraid of us .... It's time to take back what is ours."

One of the more graphic scenes in this video shows the attack on a VCT rally on the Fourth of July in 1996. Members of a Mexican Marxist group called the Communist Progressive Labor Party are shown attacking elderly members of VCT. Several of the VCT demonstrators are shown bleeding profusely as a result of beatings administered by sticks, bricks and fists. Augustine Cebeda, an apparent ringleader of the attack who heads the Brown Berets (a Mexican version of the Black Panthers) is shown surrounded by what appear to be shaven-skulled Mexican skinheads. Shouting, "Go back to Boston! Go back to Plymouth Rock you Pilgrims," he warns "no more of this talk of deporting. If anyone is going to be deported it is going to be you!"

Spencer does not limit himself to the United States in this video. He also puts the spotlight on high-level Mexican officials doing their best to undermine the sovereignty of the United States. We see Mexican Consul General Jose Pescador Osuna telling a group of lawyers in Los Angeles, "Although I am saying this half-jokingly, half-seriously, I think we are practicing la reconquista in California." Even more ominously, Mexican president Ernest Zedillo is seen in a 1997 speech to the National Council of La Raza (The Race) declaring, "I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders." This is the same man who warned the United States after Prop 187, "Mexico will not tolerate foreign nations imposing laws upon its citizens."

Of course, the immigration invasion is not limited to California or the Southwest and Spencer documents the damage it has already done to Middle America. The town of Rogers, Arkansas is swamped by aliens recruited to work at the local Tyson's Foods poultry plant. Lower wages, crime and a foreign culture are brought to a once sleepy, Southern town. Ranchers in Eagle Pass, Texas have to arm themselves at all times because of the crime committed by illegal immigrants who are "just passing through" their property. Drug gangs from Mexico invade Des Moines, Iowa. Police in Salt Lake City, Utah claim that 80 percent of all felony drug arrests in the city are illegal aliens. Mexican gang-bangers riot at the annual "Hot August Nights" festival in Reno, Nevada. Even Cheyenne, Wyoming is not immune from the problems of immigration as one official declares that illegal aliens and drugs are the biggest problems in his city.

If we had a president with an ounce of patriotism, he would take back the Medal of Freedom from Mario Obledo and give it to Glenn Spencer. VCT is one of the only groups in the country that is documenting what could be the real story of late 20th century America, namely, the loss of American culture and sovereignty in our most populous state. If Middle Americans do wake up to the danger that awaits them, it will be because of the tireless work of people like Glenn Spencer.

As for the Golden State, it's fate is sealed due to uncontrolled immigration. California is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who doesn't like it should leave. -//-

About the author

James P. Lubinskas, with an M.A. in political theory from Catholic University, is assistant editor of American Renaissance.

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