Kansas? Ping!
Sorry, Dodge City never struck me as being Southwest...Liberal, maybe, not Dodge.
But I do understand the meatpackers being concerned, a huge portion of their labor is supposed to be illegal.
Posted on 04/08/2006 12:06:12 PM PDT by aft_lizard
DODGE CITY - On Monday, John Martin, a meatpacker here, plans to skip work to attend a rally aimed at bolstering the call for immigration reform.
"We want the work we do to be valued," he explained. "It's hard work in the plant."
Fellow meatpacker David Gunion seconds that, wondering what would become of the plant without the workers, many of them immigrants. "Without us, the plant dies," he said.
Fliers, e-mails and text messages are circulating like wildfire around southwest Kansas, calling on the zone's sizable Latino population to rally, skip work, skip school and boycott stores Monday to show solidarity with the immigrant cause.
No one knows how many will heed the calls, many of them anonymous. But Gunion, whose plant was targeted by one of the fliers, suspects a large chunk of his cohorts will take off, and some school officials are bracing for the possibility of mass absences.
"There have been kids who've said, 'We're not going to be here,' " said Terry Lee, a social studies instructor at Dodge City Middle School and also the city's mayor.
Vernon Welch, superintendent of Liberal USD 480, said he will arrive early on Monday to prepare in the event of massive no-shows, not only among students, but also among lunchroom workers and other support staff. Leaflets and talk of skipping school also have prevailed there this week.
"We've got a plan in place," Welch said.
With debate in the U.S. Senate continuing on how best to reform the nation's immigration system, immigrants' rights groups and Hispanic advocacy groups are planning rallies for Monday all across the United States. A rally is set for 9:30 a.m. in Garden City - organizers expect 2,000 or more - and another is scheduled for 10 a.m. in Dodge City.
Beyond that, a leaflet making the rounds in Dodge City on the letterhead of a group called the Hispanic Union of Telluride, Colo., calls for workers to skip work on Monday and for students to stay home. It also calls for a one-day boycott of all stores and services to protest "unjust, unconstitutional and inhumane anti-immigrant initiatives" and to pressure for "fair, humane and ordered" change.
Similarly, an unsigned leaflet circulating in Liberal denounces a controversial U.S. House of Representatives proposal, HR 4437, and calls, indirectly, on workers to steer clear of work on Monday. HR 4437, decried by many churches and Hispanic advocacy groups, calls for construction of a wall between the United States and Mexico and would make it a felony to aid illegal immigrants.
"If no Hispanic in the United States goes to work this day, we will demonstrate that (the country) really needs our sweat," says the leaflet. "Or go and work and continue being humiliated, discriminated against, jailed, deported or murdered by racist people."
Members of Liberal's Cinco de Mayo Committee, which organizes an annual celebration around Mexico's May 5 holiday, had been planning an event for Monday as a show of solidarity with calls for immigrant reform. But they canceled the plans in light of the letter as well as what they see as lack of clarity from federal officials on the direction of immigration reform.
"There was really nothing there we could be solid about," said Cinco de Mayo Committee Chairman Jack Cooley, referring to U.S. Senate efforts at immigration reform. "Then all these rumors started going and everything else."
Welch said mass e-mails also are being used to spread the word, and Concha Aragon, head of a southwest Kansas advocacy group called Hispanics United, said some students are receiving anonymous text messages about skipping class.
Amid the flurry, some are calling on the zone's Hispanics to keep their appointments with work and school and warning that doing otherwise can hurt the immigrant and Latino cause.
Onesimo Aranda, head of the Regional Latino Affairs Council in Dodge City, an advocacy group, said contacting elected leaders is the way to demonstrate.
"We don't want to promote anything that's going to hurt the (Hispanic) community," he said. "We're trying to build them up."
Sister Janice Thome, a member of the Dominican Sisters Ministry of Presence and one of the organizers of the Garden City rally, said going to class instead of skipping will demonstrate Latino students' dedication to education. That, in turn, will help in efforts to open up universities to undocumented students, she says.
For its part, National Beef, in a letter distributed to workers this week, questioned the wisdom of skipping work as a form of protest, touting contact with elected leaders instead. The letter alluded to Latino efforts to demonstrate their importance to the U.S. economy and Hispanic opposition to HR 4437.
"We at National Beef already know that we need our Hispanic work force," the letter stated. "We disagree that not working is the best way to express your disapproval of this bill."
"We've got a plan in place," Welch said.
Lots of illegals living in that area, lots.
Skip the lecture.
You and your "business" don't own me, or my opinions.
Some of us are sick of the hispanderers, and could care less of our unelected "business" overlords like you.
Berate me all you will.
http://www.online-literature.com/view.php/animalfarm/10?term=more%20equal
ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS
Now perhaps you understand the error of the extremists
I say to those who skip work that day don't bother coming back the next day. You won't have a job.
August 24, 1855
I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.
http://www.nps.gov/liho/writer/immigran.htm I respect Abraham Lincoln, and share his opinion. Do you?
They are not IMMIGRANTS, they are ILLEGAL ALIENS!
Let's not forget Foreign Invaders!
The illegal invasion has concentrated the attention of Americans on the nature of democracy and its central bulwark against anarchy---our Constitution and the rule of law.
The arrogance of these illegal mental midgets---- lettuce pickers and hamburger flippers. These imbeciles actually believe wavng the Mexican flag in our faces helps their case.
Some lowlife drug lord actually told these morons that Americans are a bunch of suckers who cannot see past the smoke and mirrors, and that we would sit still for their abhorent immigration amnesty bill.
The drug cadres, the pushers and smugglers, are hiding behind the backsides of vote-hungry US elected officials bandying about the bill that treats these lawbreakers better than law-abiding US citizens.
No one is impressed by this conspiracy of spineless marionettes dancing limply on the strings of corruption, manipulated by the unseen alien horde puppetmasters lurking behind the scenes, ready to pounce on US assets.
Keep on hispandering. You are the one calling me an "extremist". There comes a time when you go with the flow or you do what is morally and socially responsible.
Pointing out lawbreaking is not morally or otherwise reprehensible.
Like I said in my previous post.
"ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS"
What gives Mexicans the right to jump ahead of all other immigrants, other than proximity?
Are Mexicans better than Ecuadorans, South Africans, Hatians, Indians, Russians, Chinese, Philipinos, Liberians or any others that wish to immigrate to the USA?
Do you support the current efforts by the Hispandering communities to allow amnesty for the illegal aliens in the US?
Do you hire illegal aliens?
"DODGE CITY" Kansas
Marshall Matt Dillon would have all the illegals out of town by sunset!
OK, we'll give the illegals that one, but no more!!!
Sorry, Dodge City never struck me as being Southwest...Liberal, maybe, not Dodge.
But I do understand the meatpackers being concerned, a huge portion of their labor is supposed to be illegal.
Ahhh maybe not Southwest as in Southwest US but its definately SWestern Kansas, on a side note the first Catholic mass held in the interior north of the Rio Grande was 9 miles west of Dodge City by Coronado.
News and Houston Chronicle say at least 10,000 suppose to protest here Monday. Candle light vigil at St. Thomas University.
I was stationed at Ft. Riley and drove through Dodge City about a dozen times in three years.
FWIW, I never considered it SW Kansas...I always reserved that appelation for Liberal.
I used to live in Garden City and Dodge is definitely part of SW Kansas.
Sheesh...can't you two just leave a guy to be wrong in peace?
How about an apology.
wehirealiens
From ozarkgirl | 04/08/2006 6:39:50 PM PDT replied
I don't know if my email did it or you had anything to do with it but XXXX XXX is now gone from illegal alien hires. I would like to tell arealmotherssonforever but I think I'll just let it go. He sure had a heyday with it. I'm sorry if it caused you discomfort, I certainly didn't mean that. Judging by your email to him, I'd say it didn't worry you too much.
If my company wasn't so darn patriotic I would have let it go too but they are a wonderful American company and I hate to see that happen to them.
I like the website - I just checked the Kansas page and *gasp* I ate at Applebee's tonight, but not the one in Overland Park. Oy.
ozarkgirl, I am terribly sorry that a website pimped by axes_of_weezles sullied the image of the fine company that you work for. Can you please find it within you to forgive me for remaining steadfast in my conviction that all men are created equal, presumed innocent, and deserving of equal treatment under the law?
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