Stephen Montemayor
On boycotts, girlcotts, etc.: Today I received a story and interview pitch from a peace activist who advocates for the boycott of Arizona in retribution for the enactment of SB1070, our new immigration regime.
Specifically, the pitcher wanted to talk about the growing movement of musicians to refuse to tour here in the Copper State. The idea is compelling, if a little blunt.
But then I read this blogger, on the Huffington Post.
His byline reads “Stephen Montemayor, student journalist,” and he offered a more nuanced view. He gave a condensed history of the musicians’ boycott, dubbed The Sound Strike (started by Rage Against the Machine singer Zach de la Rosa – how perfect is that?!).
But then he shared the view of the musician dubbed Bassnectar.
“I have no interest in boycotting Arizona. I think any state that has such misguided and illogical legislation needs more love and attention, not less.”
So here’s one musician who opposes the law, but wants to play here because of the law.
(Stephen, by the way, is “about to finish his final semester at The University of Kansas where he will graduate in December with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He spent the spring as editor-in-chief of The University Daily Kansan and upon graduating, he will immediately seek work as a reporter.” Read his whole blog entry here.)
What do you think? Some readers may feel the law is a good idea. But for those who do not, I ask:
- Do we need the whip of punishment? Or would more love (and music) be just what the médico ordered? (No points given to those who answer “Both.”)
AZ Attorney 
June 21, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Boycotts have been a proven method of policy change…e.g., the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, Grape Boycotts by UFW, & the Arizona tourist Boycott (due to AZ’s refusal to recognize MLK day) were all very effective in bringing policy change…Because the U.S. is, without a doubt, a business-run society, and the bottom-line is all that corporate america values (don’t be fooled by multi-million dollar PR campaigns, e.g., BP’s recent PR strategies…), one of the most effective ways to target them is to impact their bottom line…meaning BOYCOTT! I believe that Cesar Chavez said that it only take about an impact of about 8% of the profit margins before coporate america (in his case, agribusiness) starts to sweat…and believe me, the City of Phoenix and the state of Arizona is sweating some major bullets with the their fiscal projections of how this is going to effect their annual budgets…eventually, the business owners are going to start making noise and putting pressure on the Governor to ease-up on the hate rhetoric and, if the US hasn’t filed a law suite against the state by then, AZ will try to carefully backtrack their way out of the SB1070…it’s as simple as that.
June 21, 2010 at 5:21 pm
The Tea Bag Party are just “haters not debaters” or as others have dubbed them “screamers not dreamers”, with their failed attempts at stopping Healthcare reform, they say they respect the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence but they do not mind passing laws, through weak Governors (no one voted for this crazy) who only cares about getting elected Governor, on the backs of undocumented workers, that will not pass Constitution muster.
Brewer signed into law;
1. S.B. 1070,
2. No permit conceal weapons law,
3. The famous Birthers law,
4. Banning Ethnic studies law,
5. Could she be behind the Mural in Prescott, Arizona, ordered to be whiten,
6. On deck to pass, no citizenship to babies born to undocumented workers,
7. If she can read she should look up Arizona’s House Bill 2779 from two years ago (which was un-constitution and failed when legally challenged),
8. The boycotted Martin Luther King Day, what idiots don’t want another holiday? Yes, you guessed it Arizona.
Well Arizona, you can boycott new holidays and keep passing crazy laws and the rest of us will continue to challenged them in a court of law and continue to add cities to our Boycott of your state.
I real cannot believe anything that comes out of Brewer’s mouth, in an interview she first said her father had died in Germany fighting the Nazi in World War II (war ended 1945) but of course we find out the truth that father was never in Germany and died in California in 1955. But we are suppose to believe everything else she says, right! No one voted for you for Governor, yet you keep listening to the tiny brains of the crazies and signing into law everything that comes into their feeble minds, it only make you look dumb, stupid or racist, or maybe all three.
As for the Tea Bag Party, their phony patriotism is sickening; they are just racists going by another name. We all know you are just itching to put a sheet on their head? Let’s face it the Republicans had eight years to deal with health care, immigration, energy (remember Cheney’s secret meetings with oil companies where loosening regulation and oversight were sealed), climate change and financial oversight and governance and they failed. It appears that the Republican Party is only good at starting wars (two in eight years, with fat contracts to friends of Cheney/Bush) but not at winning wars as seen by the continuing line of body bags that keep coming home. The Republicans party will continue turned inward to their old fashion obstructionist party (and their Confederacy appreciation roots) because they continue to allow a small portions (but very loud portion) of their party of “birthers, baggers and blowhards” to rule their party. I will admit that this fringe is very good at playing “Follow the Leader” by listening to their dullard leaders, Beck, Hedgecock, Hannity, O’Reilly, Rush, Savage, Sarah Bailin, Orly Taitz, Victoria Jackson, Michele Bachmann and the rest of the Blowhards and acting as ill programmed robots (they have already acted against doctors that perform abortions).
The Birthers and the Tea Bag party crowd think they can scare, intimidate and force others to go along with them by comments like “This time we came unarmed”, let me tell you something not all ex-military join the fringe militia crazies who don’t pay taxes and run around with face paint in the parks playing commando, the majority are mature and understand that the world is more complicated and grey than the black and white that these simpleton make it out to be and that my friend is the point. The world is complicated and people like Hamilton, Lincoln, and Roosevelt believed that we should use government a little to increase social mobility, now it’s about dancing around the claim of government is the problem. The sainted Reagan passed the biggest tax increase in American history and as a result federal employment increased, but facts are lost when mired in mysticism and superstition. For a party that gave us Abraham Lincoln, it is tragic that the ranks are filled with too many empty suits and the crazy Birthers who have not learned that the way our courts work is that you get a competent lawyer, verifiable facts and present them to a judge, if the facts are real and not half baked internet lies, then, and only then, do you proceed to trial. The Birthers seem to be having a problem with their so called “Internet facts”. Let’s face it no one will take the Birthers seriously until they win a case, but until then, you will continue to appear dumb, crazy or racist, or maybe all three. I heard that Orly Taitz now wants to investigate the “Republican 2009 Summer of Love” list: Assemblyman, Michael D. Duvall (CA), Senator John Ensign (NV), Senator Paul Stanley (TN), Governor Mark Stanford (SC), Board of Ed Chair, and Kristin Maguire AKA Bridget Keeney (SC), she wants to re-establish a family values party, that is like saying that the Catholic Church cares about the welling being of children in their care, too late for that. Yee Haw!