By Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger

While immigrant rights groups pressure the federal government via high-profile marches and rallies, anti-immigration forces are pushing punitive laws on the state and local levels. Thousands of immigration reform proponents rallied last week to push federal lawmakers to pass reform this year, but the Arizona House of Representatives passed one of the toughest immigration laws in the country, which enables racial profiling of Latinos.

If the Senate fails to propose a reform bill this Spring, immigration reform won’t be on the agenda for 2010. With elections at the end of the year, it’s uncertain if reform will pass after that, as the resulting Congress could be more conservative.

More rallies from the grassroots

As Seth Freed Wessler reports at RaceWire, “Rallies for immigration reform were held in at least seven cities on Saturday, including Las Vegas, Seattle and Chicago, and were meant to maintain momentum from the massive march in Washington last month.” The rallies were part of a sustained effort by reform supporters to pressure the Senate to take up reform this year.

In Las Vegas, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) made an appearance and told supporters that the Senate would start work on reform soon after legislators came back from a brief recess this week.

“Speaking before a crowd of more than 6,000, Reid, a vulnerable incumbent, assured his audience of his commitment,” Steve Benen wrote for the Washington Monthly.

“We’re going to come back, we’re going to have comprehensive immigration reform now,” Reid was quoted as saying. “We need to do this this year. We cannot wait.”

New America Media cites a report from Univision, writing that “Reid, fresh from the fight for health system reform and with a difficult re-election campaign ahead, told demonstrators that there is some urgency to passing legislation to reform the immigration system, including improving border security and creating a guest worker program for seasonal workers.”

New America Media also reports on a surprising conservative-evangelical alliance that supports comprehensive immigration reform that protects children and families. “While not entirely new, the involvement of conservative Latino and evangelical leaders in the immigration debate puts additional pressure on Congress and the president to take up the issue this year.”

In Seattle, AlterNet reports on the large presence of Asian immigrants at the local rally, quoting Diane Narasaki, executive director of the Asian Counseling and Referral Service: “There are about 1 million Asians living in this country who are undocumented, so comprehensive immigration reform is really key to our community,” Narasaki said.

Local laws target immigrants

Meanwhile, the GOP-controlled Arizona House of Representatives voted along party lines this week to pass a state law that would, as RaceWire’s Freed Wessler reports, “make it a criminal offense simply to be an undocumented immigrant on Arizona soil and to require local cops to determine a person’s immigration status if there is any ‘reasonable suspicion’ the person is undocumented.”

“The law would essentially require police to racially profile Latinos and threatens to terrorize immigrant communities already trying to survive in what is arguably the country’s most anti-immigrant state,” writes Freed Wessler.

In Colorado, where a similar state law passed despite wide criticism of civil rights abuses, there are reports on an effort in Denver to push back against a a local city-wide anti-immigrant  law that encourages police to impound vehicles of undocumented immigrants.

“Members of the city council here are considering eliminating a controversial vehicle impound law that has raised financial and constitutional questions,” Joseph Boven reports for the Colorado Independent. “It’s unconstitutional, for example, to require Denver police to judge whether someone driving in Denver without a license might be an illegal alien.”

Linking national concerns with local issues, the National Radio Project reports on a panel called “Race, Immigration and the Fight for an Open Internet,” which focused on how telecommunications corporations’ moves to restrict internet access could affect immigrant communities.

“Right now, telecommunications companies are pursuing a restrictive pay-for-play business model for online access that many say will only further the digital divide, discriminating between those who have Internet access and those who do not,” the news outlet notes.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

Barack is back on the campaign trail this weekend, today in Colorado. At his Denver event this morning, Fox News's Major Garrett didn't shy away from reporting the huge numbers gathered there.

We have seen another history making event on the Obama campaign today. Originally, the Denver police estimated the crowd here at 75,000 but the Denver Police Chief has just notified us that the crowd was in excess, well over 100,000, he says. That would be the largest domestic crowd for a Barack Obama rally during this campaign breaking the record that was just set last Saturday in St. Louis, Missouri.

But gathering huge crowds isn't just about optics; it's not about setting records. This was an "Early Vote For Change" rally. Just as Joe Biden did in Las Vegas last week and Hillary Clinton did in Florida, Barack Obama turned his focus to early voting and urged folks to take advantage of it. Here is how he framed it this morning.

Just the other day, George Bush returned the favor [of John McCain voting 90% with Bush] and voted early for John McCain. Well, Colorado, George Bush isn't the only one who gets to vote early. You can vote early too and you can finally put an end to the Bush/McCain philosophy.

As Garrett said in his report, yesterday Nevada posted one of its largest early voting days of the year and there were two big early vote rallies that day.

Already, Democrats are way overperforming the 2004 early vote in Colorado. According to Garrett, so far Democrats have a 3k vote lead over Republicans. In 2004, Republicans outnumbered Democrats in early ballots by 77k. Also, by this time 4 years ago, only 3% of the vote was in; now it's 20%. "Not only are the numbers larger but the numbers for Democrats are much larger." Rallies like the one he held today will drive that number even higher.

Garrett also pointed out that the Obama campaign is using these huge rallies, just as they did in the primary, as a recruiting tool. I wrote often throughout the primary that Obama wouldn't just use rallies to excite supporters, but he would harvest e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers, organize cell phone phone banks AT his events and recruit volunteers. Garrett again:

Last Saturday we were in St. Louis, there were 100k people there. They filled 40% of their volunteer shifts for the next week just from people they recruited at that rally.

Coming from Fox News, this was a remarkable report -- an example of narrative trumping ideology -- one that sounded a decidedly triumphalist note. Nine days out it would appear that Fox is banging the Obama inevitability drum, which is just the sort of thing that could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more the media, especially Fox, reports on the record-breaking votes that Barack is banking and the growing size of his crowds, the more likely Republicans are to become dis-enchanted and the fewer votes McCain is likely to bank on Nov. 4th. Through these rallies, the warfare the Obama campaign is waging is as much psychological as it is electoral warfare and is playing the media like a fiddle.

Update [2008-10-26 17:34:53 by Todd Beeton]:JerryColorado23 was there.

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I understand that the convention is already over and I wish I had realized it earlier but I have to say it.  Most people in the MSM and indeed here in the blogosphere refer to the site of last nights speech as Invesco Field.

I'm asking you all (especially you posters like Todd, Jerome, Johnathan, and Natasha) from now on to call it MILE HIGH STADIUM.  "Phooey," you say, "Mile High was demolished years ago." Furhermore aren't there better, more noble, less nit-pickey causes to write about?  Certainly all these points are true, but let me explain my reasons before you dismiss this as moon-bat-ery.

As many of you may know Denver was home to a Stadium called Mile High Stadium from 1948 to 2001. Around 1998, after the Broncos finally won a Super Bowl, the owner of the Broncos, Pat Bowen, strong armed the city into building a new stadium for the team which they did using mostly taxpayers dollars to do.  The new stadium was slated to carry the same name as the old one.  However, once the new stadium was built, Invesco bought the naming rights to the stadium and changed it to Invesco Field, setting off a PR firestorm in the local media.  The Denver Post refused to use the name Invesco.  Citizens who had paid to build the stadium felt they had been betrayed and finally Invesco settled to call it officially "Invesco Field at Mile High."

So why should anyone care about a name?  A rose is a rose is a rose, right?  As George Lakoff would say, its all about the framing.  The importance of using Mile High instead of Invesco is that Mile High reminds us that the stadium was built on taxpayer dollars.  The name Invesco concedes the "right" of private companies to rename -- and metaphorically take ownership of -- a building that we the people of the City of Denver paid for.

After a speech like the one that Obama delivered last night, one in which he criticised this conservative doctrine of private companies freeloading on publicly funded projects, it just isn't right to call it Invesco Field.  Granted the stadium isn't a public park, but we paid for it and then Invesco slaps their name on it.

Obama's speech and this convention will be talked about for years to come, so when you write about it call it Mile High Stadium.  It doesn't cost you anything and it reinforces the idea that the building was built by us and not Invesco.  Its also going to make you popular with people from Colorado.

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I am in Denver for the 2008 Democratic Convention.

This morning in Denver I attended a Seachange Forum panel on messaging titled "Winning Words on the Toughest Issues: National Security, Taxes, Healthcare and Immigration".

This was an excellent panel on how to talk about progressive values and issues in ways that the public "hears." To really, really simplify the issue, in a 1988 campaign debate between Michael Dukakis and George HW Bush Dukakis was asked, "Governor, if Kitty Dukakis [his wife] were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?" Dukakis replied coolly, "No, I don't, and I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life," and calmly went on to explain his position.

He was calm and reasoned, but the public needed to see emotion.  Emotion, not reason is how people decide what they think about issues and people.   It's just the way it is -- it is how our brains work.  This is what neuroscientists, psychologists, marketers and others who study how people make up their minds are concluding.  You have to connect viscerally or people just won't "get it."

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Despite what you Obamabot THUGS think, there are thousands - perhaps tens of thousands of PUMAs in Denver right now.

I'm there, and I've met several hundred. They are everywhere. During my flight to Denver, I met three black men who were going to Denver to protest Obama's election. They are upset that the DNC/Donna Brazille/Pelosi have taken the election away from Hillary Clinton. And they are not alone. There are thousands here. We will march the streets on Tuesday.

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