Save Our State

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"Save Our State" redirects here. For other uses, see Save Our State (disambiguation).

Save Our State (SOS) is an activist organization opposed to illegal immigration in Southern California. The group also has a chapter in Northern California. It was granted 501(c)(3) non-profit status in late 2005.

1 Origin
2 Tactics and Organization
3 Baldwin Park I
4 Response
5 Opposition
6 Alleged ties to extremist groups
7 References
8 External links
9 News

[edit] Origin

The group takes its name from California's 1994 Proposition 187, known as the "Save Our State" initiative. The proposition, which would have denied health care and education to aliens who illegally immigrated into California, was approved by a majority of voters in 1994 but was immediately challenged in court and was eventually struck down by a US district court four years later.

The group was incorporated in July 2004 by Ventura resident Joseph Turner, who was unsatisfied with the existing immigration-reform groups whose letter-writing campaigns he deemed ineffectual. In an interview, Turner stated, "Our belief is that if that worked or had any sort of positive influence, we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in."<ref>The Red Alert, August 2005</ref> In contrast, SOS's tactics are statedly "aggressive", and "in-your-face". Their language reflects this, intentionally eschewing what they perceive to be the political correctness that characterized the language of the 1990s. In the opinion of Turner and many of his supporters, political correctness and multiculturalism are both factors that contribute to the continued entry of illegal aliens into the United States. At times out-spoken, Turner describes his philosophy to protest as a "transference of pain" (a term he credits to his wife), in which protest must be "painful enough" to create a deterrent to status quo operendi.<ref>The Red Alert, August 2005</ref>

[edit] Tactics and Organization

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SOS has become a political lightning-rod in the increasingly-divisive debate over illegal immigration. Due in part to the visible nature of SOS's protests and related activities, Turner and his group have garnered considerable media attention. SOS's mainstay has been to disrupt the hiring of illegal aliens as day labor. However, SOS may be better-known for it's protests in neighborhoods with large numbers of illegal immigrants, and the resulting mayham. SOS protests have been covered by nearly every major news outlet, and leading SOS members are regular guests on talk radio. <ref>[1]</ref>

SOS's ability to stage events and attract new members is attributable to a combination of membership activism and Turner's own emergence as a conservative political voice. Turner's role as the director of SOS may be somewhat ambiguous, because it is the membership of SOS who conceive, organize and implement most of the organization's protest events. The process begins openly and publically on the SOS forum, an internet message board, in which contributors to the forum can make suggestions, and try to convince others to participate in activities.<ref>[2]</ref>Turner rarely interferes with this membership-driven consensus-building process on the forum, other than to appoint key members to monitor the message board in the removal of offensive content. Turner's strength in promoting SOS is perhaps more-indirect; through his own political activities Turner draws his organization into the media spotlight. In 2005, Turner became a nationally-known figure in his failed-attempt to place the highly-publicized Immigration Relief Act on a San Bernardino Cityballot.<ref>www.saveourstate.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=13184</ref> In 2006, Turner ran for an unsuccessful bid to the San Bernardino County School Board, a nasty campaign in which Turner's opposition branded him a racist.<ref>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvWAhfuOr70 </ref>

SOS's first campaign was in December 2004, when, after launching a website with a forum, they announced a boycott of Home Depot for funding day labor centers on or near their store locations. Later, in the spring of 2005, SOS protested billboards advertising KRCA-TV's Spanish-language newscast that displayed the Mexico City landmark Angel of Independence in the center of the Los Angeles skyline, which culminated in the partial-covering pf a prominant billboard with an U.S. flag. The billboard read "Los Angeles, CA Mexico. Tu Ciudad. Tu Equipo." ("Your city. Your newsteam.")<ref>http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43973</ref> Reports vary as to whether or not the protests had any effect on their removal. SOS has continued protesting against Home Depot, day-laborer hiring sites, and even works of art they view as promoting illegal immigration.

[edit] Baldwin Park I

SOS protested the monumental artwork Danzas Indigenas at the Metrolink station in Baldwin Park, California. The work, commissioned by the city and designed by UCLA professor, Chicana artist, and SPARC founder Judy Baca with community input, featured several inscriptions on Mission-style arches, two of which drew the ire of anti-illegal immigration activists. A quote from the Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldua reads, "This land was Mexican once, was Indian always and is, and will be again." The other read "It was better before they came." About the first quote, Turner stated, "It's seditious. It essentially talks about returning this land to Mexico." About the second quote, which Baca states was actually uttered by a white Baldwin Park resident lamenting the influx of Mexican Americans after World War II, Baca has stated that it is deliberately ambiguous to allow the viewer's interpretation of "they" to reveal something about the viewer. SOS claims the referent of "they" is "white people".

On May 14, 2005, approximately 40 members of Save Our State held signs in front of the monument. About 600 counterprotesters, including college students, community members, and immigrants' rights activists, arrived, urging the group to abandon its protest, shouting such slogans as "Racists go home". Defenders of the monument prominently displayed the flag of Mexico when squaring off against the American flags carried by Save Our State. They were joined by a man an independent journalist later identified as Frank “Mohammed” Martinez, a "known agent provocateur".<ref>http://www.mudp.org/bp2/Baldwin_Park_2.htm</ref> Police in riot gear were called in from several neighboring departments to maintain a wall of separation between the groups. In the day's only incident of physical violence, an SOS protester, a sixty-six year old Minuteman Project volunteer named Laura D. "Dottie" Dalton, was hit in the head by a water bottle lobbed from area of the counterprotesting crowd. She was held overnight for observation but was released the next day.

[edit] Response

The event was covered in local newspapers, as well as by writers for the Los Angeles Independent Media Center, and in broadcast media by KPFK's Uprising and What's Right With America (WRWA), a conservative public access talk show in Santa Barbara, California. National conservative websites such as World Net Daily picked up the story after viewing footage posted on WRWA's website.<ref>http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44501</ref> The most shocking footage was of Martinez, who, wearing a turban, made such statements as "Viva Zarqawi, the gringo killer!".

The SOS website also experienced heavy traffic, with supporters and detractors alike registering thousands of opinions.

The police presence required to separate the two sides was precisely the type of "pain" Turner and his group sought to "transfer" to the city government of Baldwin Park. In an interview, Turner stated,

The city of Baldwin Park have a monument up there, and the local paper that covers that area just published an article recently said that our very first event cost the city of Baldwin Park $20,000 in overtime for their officers. That only covered the actual Baldwin Park contingent. There were over 200 officers there for our first rally, but the city of Baldwin Park has fewer than 100 full-time police officers, based on the most current numbers available on the Internet. That tells me that probably another $20,000 was spent by the other municipalities that were reinforcing them. Then you have the mayor crying about how the city is under siege and people are saying that they can’t afford the financial burden. Let’s face it: $20,000 in the grand scheme of things in a city the size of Baldwin Park isn’t a huge amount of money, but when you consider that local governments pretty much allocate every single of their budget, it obviously adds up.<ref>The Red Alert, August 2005</ref>

Baldwin Park Mayor Manuel Lozano has publicly defended the language of the monument as a work of art, therefore free expression, and has demonstrated his support for counterprotesting organizations with "handshake walk" among their ranks. He has publicly described Save Our State as a 'hate group'. Mayor Lozano led the Baldwin Park City Council to formally proclaim that the monument would remain intact on June 25, 2005.

[edit] Opposition

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Opposition to SOS has originated in many quarters and organization of counterdemonstrations has largely been ad hoc. Galvanized by the protest of the monument, a coalition calling themselves "Committee to Defend Danzas Indigenas" was formed, and they helped the city of Baldwin Park to plan the response to the second protest of the monument known as Balwin Park II (BPII). An Inland Empire-based group called the Southern California Human Rights Network began to protest Save Our State within a few months of the beginning of its activities. They group worked with another newly-founded coalition, La Tierra Es De Todos, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The San Diego-based Gente Unida ("People United") extended their anti-Minuteman activities to include anti-SOS actions. Leftist antiwar organizations such as San Gabriel Neighbors for Peace and Justice and the Los Angeles branch of ANSWER also organized in opposition, as did the socialist groups ISO and the Socialist Workers Party. Day laborer organizations such as the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) and their supporters the Catholic Charities have both spoken out against SOS and their tactics. Hispanic groups such as Mexica Movement, MEChA, La voz de Aztlan, SPARC, Danza Azteca groups, and local musicians and visual artists have all denounced the group.

[edit] Alleged ties to extremist groups

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SOS has attracted attention from White nationalist and Neo-nazi groups such as the National Alliance, who have made several appearances at their protests. After SOS announced their intention to return to Baldwin Park, notice was placed on the Stormfront website, an "online white nationalist community" headed by former klansman Don Black.

Neo-nazis made their first appearance in the presence of SOS members at a Home Depot protest in Victorville, a sanctioned SOS event coordinated by high desert member Sandy Brogan. (During the rally the members of SOS separated themselves from and shunned the white supremacist group.)

In regards to neo-nazis and White nationalists, Turner has stated, "One of the interesting side effects of us being active, because I’m an aggressive person, I’m a young guy, and I’m tired of all this bullshit—the Stormfronter-type population have started doing their own rallies now, and they’ve even tagged along to our events and caused a lot of friction and problems. I can’t keep ANSWER LA from counter-demonstrating and I can’t keep these guys from following us."

Don Silva, co-founder of Save Our State, has also attempted distanced the organization from known hate groups by threatening to remove overtly-racist posters from the SOS forum. In his communication on November 13, 2006, entitled, "Setting the Record Straight & Reiterating the Ground Rules" he wrote, "If you have anything against Mexicans for the sheer sake of them being Mexican, you can just leave the web. We will no longer walk by your side, you racists." <ref>http://www.saveourstate.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=19115&view=findpost&p=1050001697</ref>. Silva's actions were prompted after complaints by several members of Save Our State, which includes a number of Latino and African American supporters within its ranks.

On October 11, 2006, hundreds of SOS's videos taken primarily of well-known illegal immigrant labor gathering sites in southern California were removed by YouTube shortly after it was purchased by Google. The videos were part of series taken by SOS to document the use of illegal aliens as day labor, and to protest the unlawful practices of unlicensed contractors. As evident from the videos, SOS members contend that hiring illegal aliens violates U.S. federal law. The setting of the videos was often the parking lot of building supply retailer Home Depot, a popular site for the congregation of undocumented immigrants and unlicensed contractors. The removal of the SOS films is considered by some to be part of a wide-spread effort to censor conservative videos on Youtube. <ref>http://www.youtube.com/groups_forum?name=conservative&topic=-ZyM-kJYweg</ref>

As of October 16, some of their videos were still being added to YouTube. These videos featured SOS members engaging in various tactics designed to discourage violation of employment and tax laws including photographing license plates, verbally confronting would-be employers, handing out summaries of state and federal employment laws, and providing directions as to where citizen and legal-resident laborers can be hired for temporary work. (Unlicensed contractor use illegal aliens in order to avoid paying worker compensatory insurance and taxes, and to avoid certification all-together.)