05/27/2011
A year ago The New York Times sneered at Jackson,New York:Small New York Town Makes English the LawIt’s easy to see from that how much contempt The New York Times has for normal American towns. But the people of Jackson can ignore the NYT’s bad opinion of them. I suspect the feeling is mutual.By Peter Applebome
Published: May 12, 2010
It’s about 2,500 miles from this green, rural town in the rolling hills near Vermont to the Mexican border at Nogales, but that hasn’t stopped Jackson from making a bid to be New York’s small version of Arizona in the immigration wars.
Or that’s how it is beginning to feel two months after Jackson — which has 1,700 people, no village, no grocery store or place to buy gasoline, no church, no school, two restaurants and maybe a few Spanish-speaking farm workers — decided it needed a law requiring that all town business be conducted in English.[More]
But they can’t ignore this, because it’s backed by the power of the civil rights enforcement state:
New York Town Ordered to Scrap English-Only OrdinanceThat, believe it or not, is from Fox News Latino. What’s the thinking behind that?Published May 20, 2011
New York — New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman ordered the upstate town of Jackson to "immediately" overturn a local ordinance that made English the town’s official language, warning that the statute is "illegal" and "discriminatory."
The ordinance, which prohibits public officials in Jackson from speaking or writing in any language but English while they are carrying out their official duties, will be voted on once again by the town council on June 1 because of the intervention by the state AG’s office.
Schneiderman’s office on April 27 sent a letter to Jackson Town Supervisor Alan Brown warning that the ordinance violates the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause, federal and local statutes, as well as the right to freedom of expression for public employees and all people who visit the town or work in it.[More]
But not only is there supposed to be no place to hide from immigration, and nowhere where Americans can act like Americans, there’s no party you can vote for to stop.
Both immigration and civil rights enforcement have bipartisan support. This would have been a terrific wedge issue for the Republicans to use in the recent NY 26 election, since Republicans can fight back against the zeitgeist and gain votes, where as if Democrats start being patriotic, they'll anger their base.
But Republicans didn’t even try.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.