Letter To The Editor

Note: This letter was published in the Orange Co. Register, 12/11/01

Tuesday, December 11, 2001

Another side to Anaheim rally protesting use of Mexican ID

The Register's account of the rally at the Anaheim Courthouse on Sunday protesting the new Mexican ID card policy is highly selective ["Rally becomes brawl," Local, Dec. 9]. According to reporter Paige Austin, "Little was actually said about the ID cards at the rally." The same mistaken notion is repeated in the photo caption accompanying the story.

But, in fact, the illegality and unconstitutionality of the new policy were the principal focus of the remarks made at the podium by Glenn Spencer, organizer of the rally and one of the key speakers. Furthermore, Austin seems to have bought into the rhetoric of the counter protesters, whose accusations of racism seem to be accepted uncritically in the story.

The three quotations by counter protestors on which the story ends label the rally as "anti-immigrant," "scapegoating," "racist" and as "creating an environment of hatred." Nothing in the story offsets or qualifies these slurs. What Austin fails to mention is the clear and repeated insistence on the part of the speakers that their protest is focused on illegal immigration.

This distinction - between anti-immigration and anti-illegal immigration - is often ignored by careless or biased reporters and editors in the mainstream media. Legal immigrants, as Spencer and others emphasized, are welcome into the American family. It's the illegals that constitute the problem. Austin also ignored the multiracial makeup of the program: of the nine speakers, three were black and two were Latino.

True Seaborn
Los Alamitos