Free Republic

The sponsor of a failed measure that targeted illegal immigrants is running for the city's school board and says he will campaign to abolish bilingual education in the city's schools. Joseph Turner, 29, said he is running for the San Bernardino City Unified School District board to "aggressively target the policies that aid and abet illegal immigration." His girlfriend, Alexis Ashley, is running for the San Bernardino County Board of Education and is seeking the same seat as Gil Navarro, a pro-immigrant activist who campaigned against Turner's ballot measure. Turner and Ashley, both political novices, turned in their candidacy papers...

SAN BERNARDINO - Voters may never cast ballots on a controversial initiative that has drawn national headlines and divided the city on illegal immigration issues. The future of the so-called "City of San Bernardino Illegal Immigration Relief Act" is in jeopardy after Superior Court Judge A. Rex Victor ruled Monday that its proponent, city resident Joseph Turner, had not collected the needed number of signatures to force a vote. Turner and other backers of the initiative will be given a 10-day window to collect the thousands of additional signatures that are needed, but Turner said he is not likely to...

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. -- A judge ruled Monday that an activist had not collected enough signatures to prompt a city vote on a measure that would severely curtail the rights of undocumented immigrants. San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge A. Rex Victor granted activist Joseph Turner 10 days to collect the signatures needed to qualify his measure for a September special election in the city 70 miles east of Los Angeles. The initiative, which the City Council referred to voters last month, would be one of the most far-reaching in the nation in its effort to limit the rights of...

http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/count...12459%2C00.html http://www.saveourstate.org Activist feels a calling to oppose illegal immigration By Zeke Barlow, zbarlow@VenturaCountyStar.com July 8, 2005 Joseph Turner was a 150-pound white high school kid when he started his fight. A senior at John W. North High School in Riverside in 1994, Turner took to a debate stage to support Proposition 187, which denied illegal immigrants publicly funded services. The school was about 35 percent white, 35 percent Latino and the remainder Asian or black. Most in the school were against the measure, remembers Principal Dale Kinnear. Those in favor of it "were in the minority," he said. Turner...

BALDWIN PARK, CALIF. – For a dozen years, a 20-foot monument has stood quietly at the rail stop in this predominantly Latino city. Ray Leyba had never bothered to read it - even though he lives next door. It wasn't until the monument became the focus of a group raging against illegal immigration that he walked across the street and looked at one inscription: "This land was Mexican once, was Indian always and is, and will be again." Mr. Leyba was surprised, but his response pales in comparison to the recent fury launched at the slab of concrete by Save...

As the insults flew and the protest reached a boil, Joseph Turner couldn't help but smile. The 29-year-old head of the upstart Save Our State organization had come to Baldwin Park to pick a fight over illegal immigration. They got all of the fight they could handle. Hundreds of counter-protesters in the predominantly Latino city rose up to meet them, chanting "Go home, racists!" "I couldn't have scripted it better," said Turner, a former stock trader who runs the anti-illegal immigration group from his Ventura home. "My goal is to continually keep this issue in the forefront of the American...

As the insults flew and the protest reached a boil, Joseph Turner couldn't help but smile. The 29-year-old head of the upstart Save Our State organization had come to Baldwin Park to pick a fight over illegal immigration. He had led a band of like-minded souls into the heart of the city to protest public art they deemed "seditious and anti-American." Part of a monument at the Metrolink station is inscribed "It was better before they came," interpreted by some as a barb at whites who displaced California's Mexican residents in the 19th century. They got all of the fight...