What Would Martin Do?

Written by Sara Veliz, Communications Intern

“Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress”.—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

It is grimly ironic that the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords occurred within days of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

This bloody assassination attempt, which left six bystanders dead, once again showed that the gun violence which ended Dr. King’s life still trumps his historic message of love, tolerance, and nonviolent action. Even more ironic is the fact that these bullets were fired in a particular place — Tucson, Arizona — at a particular person – a Democratic Congresswoman. This much is indisputable: Representative Giffords was a significant minority voice opposing a rising anti-immigrant political tide in Arizona. As the majority of Latinos and African-Americans in this country see it, this tide of anti-immigrant sentiment has the real potential of washing away the social progress Dr. King’s Civil Rights Movement had accomplished for many Americans.

Like most ironies, this one is about the stirring of feelings, about associations. It has nothing to do with the shooter’s “real” motives, or the lack thereof. No doubt, there’s plenty of evidence to show that Jared Lee Loughner was not influenced by political rhetoric from one party or another, but that he was acting out the impulses of a paranoid-schizophrenic. But while liberals are seen as opportunistically making this tragedy into a political pedestal from which to cast blame against conservative ranters like the Tea Party, no one can deny that the rhetoric from the right has become more heated, and that their political actions more extreme, than at any time since the pre-civil rights era that Dr. King worked so hard to change.

For many people, the apex of that extremism was the signing of SB 1070 by Gov. Jan Brewer on April 23, 2010. Though the law was largely enjoined by a federal judge last summer, SB 1070 was set to empower Arizona law enforcement to stop any person they suspected of being in the United States illegally. SB 1070 made it a crime not to carry federal documents identifying the legal status of the person in question. It also targets people who knowingly hire and transport illegal immigrants. As many of its critics have pointed out, all of these provisions are an invitation for harassment and racial profiling. In the words of Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County, Arizona, SB 1070 is not only “unnecessary,” it’s “unwise, it's stupid, and it's racist.” After the tragic shooting in Tucson, his conclusion about the groundwork for SB 1070 resonates all the more chillingly: “The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous...We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

This is the atmosphere in which Representative Giffords worked, in which her campaign offices suffered physical attacks, in which a leading national politician felt it was appropriate to “target her” on a map with the crosshairs from a gun scope. The tragic shooting became a physical representation of the political and social insensitivity currently occurring in this nation.

No wonder a national tragedy has led many to question how far we have strayed from the values of Dr. King. I think we need to go further. Dr. King didn’t just stand for “peace” as an end to itself; he stood for peace as a means toward justice, toward human rights. Americans need to re-analyze not just the heat of their rhetoric, but its target too. And, yes, that means they need to re-consider where their opposition to immigrants stems from. As Sheriff Dupnik also said about SB 1070, it is a “national embarrassment,” and the embarrassment stems not just from its tenor, but its intent.