I am all for political activism and I am completely against this new immigration bill, but I feel like these people were out of line. First off, yelling at people with bullhorns is not going to change their minds or say "Way to go! I support what you are doing a 100%!" For the most part it is just going to annoy the heck out of them. It also does not seem very intelligent and is counterproductive to start chanting "Go home, racist" at a man that seemed to support the new bill. However, maybe this is just their way of "public shaming" and getting people to voice their opinions.
My main point is that I do not feel like this was the best place to be protesting this bill. If they felt the need to do this at a game it would have been better to do it in Arizona and not in the state of Illinois. This is a sporting event though and the Arizona Diamondbacks had nothing to do with the passing of the bill. I am not very knowledgeable on the finances that go into major league teams, but I am almost sure that the state does not pay money to these teams. I know the state of Arizona does receive some benefits through taxes on ticket sales, etc., but should players and teams really be punished because their state decided to pass an unpopular bill?
What are your thoughts? Should Americans boycott teams from Arizona to oppose this bill or is it just harming the players and teams themselves and in this case, another state that has nothing to do with the bill?
This seems to be the best place for such a protest to take place. For one, it gives people traveling in from out of town the message that not all persons from Arizona support the law. More importantly, the MLB has a vested interest in resisting laws which puts its players in direct threat of persecution and more. There are persons from Latin and South America playing for the MLB. If you are the manager of the Cubs for example, would you really want to go to spring training wondering if certain players (Zambrano maybe) will make it to practice or whether he'll be targeted for harassment in ways that other players (Dempster for example, or arguably even Fukadome, since we all know who this law is supposed to target and it is not immigrants from Japan) will not be. The MLB players union has already come out in opposition to the bill (http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5152397), and I think a serious discussion about the location of next year's spring training could have some sort of an impact. Such a discussion won't take place though unless activists continue to make the links between this law and baseball. It is just one small example of the discriminatory nature of the law but it is an extremely powerful example due to all of the social lore and American patriotism that surrounds baseball. Having players from around the world strengthens America's favorite pastime just as much as it strengthens America itself. Tying an immigration debate to something widely sentimental like baseball could probably do more to challenge the law than can typing it to the "other" directly. If people can see the impact on the ball players who regularly enter their house through the tv, then perhaps it will become easier to expand the circle to a concern about the everyday people who may or may not be legal but whose skin color will target them for legalized harassment and discrimination.
ReplyDeleteThat is Fukudome by the way, and the link seems not to have worked so I'll try it again: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5152397
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