May 6, 2008 10:02 AM
I attended the board meeting of the Long Island Immigrant Alliance yesterday and got a full update on the situation of IR 1105.
The bill is still bottled up in committee by the judge's temporary restraining order. However, Beedenbender is trying to get around the order by gathering signatures of legislators calling for the bill to come to the floor of the legislature. He apparently has seven of the ten sigs he needs.
The four legislators we need to concentrate on to keep them from signing the petition are Stern, Horsley, Kennedy, and Schneiderman. All four should be called to ask them not to sign the petition.
Here are their phone numbers:
Steve Stern 631-854-5100
Wayne Hosley 631-854-1100
John Kennedy 631-854-3735
Jay Schneiderman 631-852-8400
For more info on the bill, consult our toolkit.
I talked to Jay, Pat, and he told me he was going to vote for the Cooper bill, "which does the same thing as IR11o5 except for the offensive language."
I did not say, both bills are offensive anyway. Just because 1105 never mentions "illegal aliens" as one of its NoAmnesty supporters testified publicly. Differently, but Cooper's bill doesn't mention the white elephant in the room, either. It's offensive, I didn�t say, as it does not express gratitude and deep thanks for today�s Suffolk immigrants which would sink into the Slough of Despond without them.
It was immigrant labor that built the LIRR & the LIE. Suffolk immigrants have always been very productive and today's immigrant no less. Perhaps even more as even the NoAmnesty crowd recognize the legendary hard and honest work of today's immigrants.
Certainly their heroic work (well, I have an affection for Socialist Realism) deserves kudos, applause, accolades by acclamation, plaudits, citations of honor and respect, encomiums of praise, a celebration, a sense of the legislature resolution memorializing the exemplary contribution to Suffolk's well-being, materially, culturally and spiritually, and l'esprit de corps from the exuberance of the Latino immigrant.
They have widened our horizons, given us more choices, more diversity & richer lives. The pols nasty bit of compromise still doesn't express the truth and reality of their own lives which are direct and indirect beneficiaries of immigrant labor and expenditure, especially right now, in a scary moment of economic peril. Legislators readily admit, but say they have no choice.
I am told by reluctant legislative supporters of the bill they well know how, without immigrants, LI would be reeling. It pisses me off no end, that Cooper's bill adds insult to the undoubted injury 1105 promises so cynically. As if Levy doesn't believe he needs his name out there, in the public arena, no matter its costs or that he stands high on the brink of challenging Patterson (a neophyte unknown to the young & upstate) on his sweep to the pantheon of Albany. He doesn't want those pesky brown extremists to have the effrontery to challenge his will and hand him another public defeat. the 2nd in a row, maybe even 3rd straight.
For all his vaunted & shrewd political acumen, even he knows that will just not do. He doesn't want to lose; he needs a win.--mo
By mo May 6, 2008 01:26 PM