Rev. Danny Fisher

James Ishmael Ford. Photo by Peter Bowden.

My latest “On the Buddhism Beat” post is now online over at Shambhala Sun Space.  This week, it’s a conversation with our friend and past interviewee, the Rev. James Ishmael Ford (Zeno Myoun, Roshi), of Monkey Mind fame.  He and I discuss his time at the National Day of Action Against SB1070 in Arizona. Here’s just a taste:

James, would you say a bit about SB1070? At least among pundits, there’s a lot of divisiveness about what it means. How do you understand the bill?

There are two particularly problematic points in the law.

The first is that it changes the status of someone who is in our country without documents from administrative to criminal. Before the new law someone who makes his or her way into the country illegally is liable to deportation. In Arizona it is a crime with a mandatory sentence—first time as a misdemeanor, and the second as a felony.

For me the problem here is that these people are almost all simply trying to get work. Work that is here; they would not be here otherwise. Those who study the undocumented are generally in agreement that they are less criminal, less violent than the general population. There are in excess of ten million undocumented people in the country. This is a problem. But this provision of the Arizona law pursues and punishes the weakest, the poorest, most vulnerable people in a complicated situation.

The second provision in the new law is the requirement that law enforcement officers follow up on any “reasonable suspicion” that an individual might be undocumented. The senate version explicitly excludes visual cues such as race. This is repeated in the house version and is underscored in a separate statement issues by [Arizona Governor Jan Brewer] when she signed the bill.

We’re talking Arizona. The majority of the undocumented here, the vast majority are Hispanic. There is simply no way someone who is mandated to pursue the undocumented can avoid looking at everyone with a certain coloration or accent as possibly undocumented. This law pushes law enforcement officers to make decisions based upon color. I find it inescapably racist.

Read the rest here.