Why I Support a Boycott of the 2020 U.S. Census

     Local government is urging the American people to cooperate with the 2020 U.S. Census survey.

     A court recently ruled that the Trump Administration could not include the citizenship question on it. But what will local government do to protect us, if the administration insists on including it anyway (whether they figure out how to do it legally or not)?

     The Constitution authorizes the federal government and its census takers to collect no information other than the number of people. Therefore,all questions about ethnicity, race, religion, country of origin or birth, and citizenship, are thus illegal, and laws providing for those questions to be asked are unconstitutional. We cannot legally be obligated to answer any of those questions, and I urge residents not to answer them (especially given that there is no enforced punishment for evading the census).

     Another reason why our local governments are urging us to cooperate with the census, is that our elected officials use the census to make money off of us. Making sure that everyone participates in the census is, after all, how government makes sure that congressional districts have equal numbers of people. And that is what they use to justify taking the census in the first place; they say apportionment and drawing districts are impossible without a census.

     However, the number of people in the district also secures that district federal funding, as part of its “equal share” of federal funding. That is how our representatives are using us – taking advantage of the fact that we are in their districts – for their own monetary benefit (i.e., the idea that we need to be represented is what allows them to hold positions and profit).

     Of course, it matters to almost nobody that spending and the tax burden are not shared anywhere near equally by the districts and states (shown in the maps below). 

But the fact that equality is not furthered in determining where these districts lie, should show that the census's main purpose is to secure whatever funding the district can manage to get. That is why urging people to participate in the census, and offering people well-paid positions to be census takers, is nothing more than a scam to continue the redistribution of wealth across the country.

     The census is nothing more than a scam to defraud us, the voters and taxpayers and residents, of our financial power (through our right to those funds), and our legal power (through allowing our elected officials to take away some of our power of attorney, and in so doing, to appropriate more of those federal funds towards themselves and their own offices than towards We the People).

     Aside from the census being a money-making scheme for our legislators, it is also a plot to track us, and harvest our private personal information. Government-regulated credit rating agencies and banks routinely lose millions upon millions of people's personal information; do you really trust government to handle your personal information wisely?

     Moreover, the census could potentially be used as a way to round-up non-citizens and other “undesirables” or “enemies of the state”. What do our state and local governments plan to do, if the Trump Administration goes forward with its plan to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census (whether legally or illegally)? Do they intend to protect us?

     Unfortunately, I predict that they're going to continue to urge cooperation at all times, because to do otherwise would be against the law, and the opposite of what they're supposed to do as elected officials (which is to urge faith in all public institutions at all times, and participation in as many government programs as possible).

     You might think that elected officials and police have an obligation to do their jobs, and do as ordered. But if your job is to threaten force against people who entered this country illegally but without threatening force themselves, then your job is immoral, and you doing your job conflicts with the public's moral obligation to peacefully resist unjust laws. The police, for the most part, have no obligation to do “their jobs” (if by that we mean “protect and serve the general public”; that's out because of Warren v. D.C.) because they can only do as ordered. “I was only following orders” didn't fly at the Nuremberg Trials, and “I was just doing my job” is the new “I was only following orders”.

     Local governments throughout Illinois should urge Governor J.B. Pritzker to instruct the Illinois National Guard, and all public police in Illinois, to refrain from cooperating with federal authorities. And that goes for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.), and agents of the 2020 census, alike; and the same goes for other states urging their governors to interpose the same federal authorities. That's because the vast majority of these agencies' activities (and the census takers' questions) were not properly constitutionally authorized.

     Under no circumstances should the public be urged to cooperate with federal authorities in pursuit of these unconstitutional aims. All fifty state governors should immediately issue orders nullifying the federal law which authorized I.C.E.; effectively removing the authority of I.C.E. to operate legally within the boundaries of each particular state.

     If necessary, state National Guard troops should be mobilized to arrest federal troops or agents, and/or prevent more of them from entering the given state, if they insist on enforcing unconstitutional federal laws. If local government doesn't intend to do anything to stop the continued operation of an illegal federal department that didn't even exist just 17 years ago, then it cannot rightfully claim that what it does, promotes either freedom or public safety.

     Local governments are doing their residents no service to recommend that they cooperate with the Trump Administration. Even if the administration doesn't use the census to carry out deportations, it's already deporting peaceful undocumented immigrants.

     I.C.E. is hassling Hispanic-Americans who were born in America now. Seasonal farm workers are being trapped in America at the end of harvest season, and mocked and driven into the shadows for being here illegally (through no fault of their own), now. Immigrants are being funneled away from points of entry where they could easily declare asylum, and instead are forced to trek through dangerous desert, now.

     Whether the Trump Administration's immigration, deportation, and census policies going forward, will be legal and constitutional or not, why should state and local governments urge us to cooperate with those “authorities”? Aren't they supposed to protect public safety? Governments are supposed to work for the people, not the other way around.

     If the police state national guards do not come to the aid of all non-violent residents (not just the citizens who pay them) during deportation raids, then neighbors will come together to protect vulnerable residents who are in the United States without proper permission.

     And if that happens, then it will be the members of local government whom will have urged resident and police cooperation with federal authorities, whom will be remembered as the people who urged cooperation with a blatantly authoritarian regime, and whom will have suckered us into becoming fascist collaborators (and potentially even turning-in our undocumented neighbors, especially if you consider the potential usurious ends for which the census taker could be used).

     I urge the people to arm themselves, and to resist the census. I also urge the people, and the police, to refuse to cooperate with federal authorities enforcing all immigration laws.

     The federal government has the authority to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, not to enforce it (which means it should fall to the states). The federal government, also, lacks authority to establish any other types of immigration policy; and moreover, the federal government has no obligation to collect census data in addition to the number of people.

     That is why I support boycotting the 2020 U.S. Census. It will be used – and, in my opinion, is already being used, by our legislators - as a way to convince citizens to shame one another into supporting the census, with the non-participating person being seen by the pro-census people as if they were withholding money from the district and their fellow citizens. We are being forced to compete against one another, and encouraged to spy on one another.

     In mid-July 2019, a federal court ruled against including a citizenship question in the 2020 Census. However, on July 29th, N.P.R. reported that the U.S. Census Bureau sent out census forms including the citizenship question to 240,000 households.

http://www.npr.org/2019/07/29/746158231/why-the-2020-census-citizenship-question-hasn-t-gone-away
     The Trump Administration says this was only a test. However, they've been criticized for not doing this test long enough before the 2020 census, before it can be approved in its final form. There are now, at the time of this writing, only six and a half weeks left until 2020. My local U.S. Representative recently reassured an audience that the census information will be secure, and will not be used to deport people (nor sold for profit to big data collection companies), but I remain unconvinced.

     It was completely predictable that the administration would keep pushing on this issue, because pushing and doubling-down is what this administration does. Lawsuits don't work against fascists; the Trump Administration will find a way to use this information for evil. After all, the Nazis might never have been able to murder as many Jewish people as they did, were it not for the assistance of I.B.M. computers, which collected census data that allowed the Nazis to track Jews down.

     We should not forget that something like that could happen again. Big data companies are real threats. Facebook, for example, has been about encouraging people to voluntarily surrender information about themselves (where they are, who they're with, what they like) from the start; in its early days, Facebook was funded by the C.I.A. through a startup called In-Q-Tel.

     We shouldn't wait for the Supreme Court to stop the Trump Administration doing something illegal; they will find ways to keep enforcing policies even when they know they are unconstitutional, improperly authorized, or could easily be enforced differently or not at all.

     Instead, we should endorse Jeffersonian nullification. The governors would be fully within their powers to nullify I.C.E., deportation orders, and additional census questions, and in so doing make the states “sanctuary states”. Although using a "states' rights" solution could be politically unpopular (or even offensive), the same power could also be used to justify keeping Illinois a "sanctuary state".

     However, I would not recommend that this “sanctuary state” designation be made in a way that secures federal funds to the given state, as the federal government should not be in the business of settling immigrants; its only duty is to establish a uniform rule of naturalization.

     I believe that this policy will help make assistance to undocumented immigrants legal, constitutional, and voluntary (i.e., neither prohibited nor mandatory).

     Until state and local governments can start offering more than words when criticizing the Trump Administration's desire to implement legislation they know damn well is unconstitutional – if the council could offer condemnation and plans for action – then it could show a generation of young Americans that their country's civic ethics are not only about promoting civic engagement, but also in recognizing our freedoms and our rights to resist tyranny.
     The American people stood up to fascism, and they will stand up to it again, whether it is at home or abroad.

Based on notes written in July and August 2019

Edited and expanded on November 13th, 2019

Originally published in final form on November 13th, 2019

(includes fragments of articles published in July and August 2019)

Speech to the Waukegan City Council on August 5th, 2019 (Third Draft)

     In the matter of the mayor appearing in ads for the Waukegan Music Festival, the legal issue at hand is this: Whether it constitutes taxpayer fraud (an illegal use of taxpayer funds) for elected officials to appear in advertisements for public events.

     Since this is a tradition started by a previous mayor, we shouldn't blame the current mayor for this; we should only find fault if he continues this practice. You see, it unfairly benefits incumbents – not just the mayor, but all elected officials who are up for re-election – whenever sitting public officials allow their names, faces, or titles to appear in ads. It's arguably a misappropriation and misdirection of public funds to promote an incumbent candidate's campaign.

     The only thing appropriate for the current mayor to do about this controversy, for now, is to recuse himself from it, due to the possible conflict of interest involved. But I'd like to ask the rest of the city council to do whatever is in its power to cease including the names and faces of all elected officials in advertisements for the Waukegan Music Festival - and all other public events - and also to refrain from including the title of any elected official in the name of any public event. It must be made perfectly clear to voters that this is the people's festival, not the mayor's, and that the mayor did not personally give this festival to the people of Waukegan.

     This is a delicate legal issue that should be handled by the Illinois Supreme Court, not argued out between the mayor and one of our aldermen. Even if it turns out that this practice is totally legal, the appearance of public officials in ads still unfairly helps incumbents. So, for the sake of fair elections, this practice should end immediately; before someone gets charged with taxpayer fraud, and before the courts have to get involved.

     The set of career opportunities which the city will stand to offer our young people, following the opening of this casino - is appallingly disappointing.

     The city council should not be encouraging kids who just graduated high school, to join the police – nor enlist at Great Lakes Naval Base - because they could get shot and die before the age of 20. That should be obvious, but judging from the last meeting, it's not obvious to the city council.

     To the parents present: If you value your children's career prospects, and their lives and health (which you should not be willing to trade for career prospects), then you should offer them something better than the three most prominent career choices in this area once the casino moves in, which will be:

     1) deal cards, or serve alcohol (a neurotoxin and central nervous system depressant), at a casino or bar to men who will flirt with them and leer at them;

   2) join the police or military, and get beaten up, pepper sprayed, and injected with strange chemicals as part of basic training; or

     3) work for a company that makes medicine while polluting the air we breathe.

     The purpose of the Waukegan City Council should not be to abide by a jobs policy that lets outside companies exploit Waukegan residents' need for jobs; nor to allow local government to passively enable local parents to expose their young adult children to these very real dangers in exchange for the prospect of money and jobs. It's not worth it.

     Even if your kid ends up in government (or tourism), he's just going to convince a bunch of criminal businesses to set up shop in this polluted county. And who will that help? Only the exploiters and polluters.

     I'd like to thank the council for celebrating that a federal court ruled against including a citizenship question in the 2020 Census. However, on July 29th, N.P.R. reported that the U.S. Census Bureau sent out census forms including the citizenship question to 240,000 households.

     The Trump Administration says this was only a test. However, they've been criticized for not doing this test long enough before the 2020 census, before it can be approved in its final form. There are five months left until 2020.

     It was completely predictable that the administration would keep pushing on this issue, because pushing and doubling-down is what this administration does. We shouldn't wait for the Supreme Court to stop them from doing something illegal; they will find ways to keep enforcing policies even when they know they are unconstitutional, improperly authorized, or could easily be enforced differently or not at all.

     We should endorse Jeffersonian nullification. Although using a "states' rights" solution could be politically unpopular (or even offensive), the same power could also be used to justify keeping Illinois a "sanctuary state".

     What are you going to do, Waukegan City Council, to stop peaceful undocumented immigrants from being deported? I'll tell you what you're going to do; you're going to urge the public to cooperate with law enforcement personnel at all times, because that's your job, and that's the law.

     So if you don't intend to do anything to stop the continued operation of an illegal federal department that didn't even exist just 17 years ago, then you cannot rightfully claim that what you do promote either freedom or public safety, which I believe are the tasks with which you're charged.

     The city council should demand that Governor Pritzker use his power to nullify unconstitutional federal law, to stop federal agents working for the unconstitutional Immigration and Customs Enforcement, from attempting to operate within the state legally (that is, without being arrested).

     Is it really worth the cost of freedom involved, if all of us be encouraged to cooperate with law enforcement - including in the enforcement of a census that includes a citizenship test (which could carry with it the risk of deporting beloved members of our community who committed no violent crime)?

     The only benefit we get from cooperating with the census, is a guarantee to federal funds. The number and location of people determines where district lines are drawn, and how much money they get. Our elected officials make money off of the fact that we live in their districts. That sounds like slavery to me.

     The census is a deportation and extortion racket, and I urge my fellow citizens not to participate in it.

     Finally, it is Monday night. I do not come to the Waukegan City Council to pray. Who even prays on a Monday night? Which religion is that?

      I thought we were supposed to have a separation of church and state. Instructing all people present to pray for the public officials before them, seems like enough of an endorsement of religion by a public institution to me, to potentially conflict with the freedoms listed in the First Amendment.

     We cannot truly consent to anything if we are under such intimidating circumstances, because we could easily become intimidated into refraining from expressing our disagreement. I will remind you that children have been physically assaulted in American schools for failing to salute the flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance; this shouldn't happen to children or adults.

     I would ask that the city council stop inviting everyone to stand and pray. This should upset not only those who don't believe in any gods; it should upset the Christians who just went to church yesterday that they have to stand and pray again today... for the government... while the government watches them. When they'd rather be praying inside of a church.

     This is not only a First Amendment violation, it is just plain rude, and creepy. It tests our abilities to do what is in our conscience, when everybody around us is doing something that we are not doing. If the city council will not discontinue this practice of public prayer, then it should pass an ordinance that if your friend jumps off a bridge, then you have to too.

     We should not be urged to pray for our elected officials; that is feudalism-era thinking. If anything, our elected officials should be urged to pray for us. After all, their job is salvation; their job is to save us.

     And we need the city council's help, in order to save us.

     And it can do so by helping us to protect ourselves; from the casino, from companies that pollute our air, from companies whose H.R. departments want to exploit us, from the fascist administration that's currently running the federal government, and from government overreach in general.

     And also, from possible white supremacists in our police departments who may want to cooperate with I.C.E. and let them operate within the state, and from people in our government who excuse the continued operation of I.C.E. under completely baseless constitutional foundation.

     And I understand why you'd want to keep a casino away from schools, but not from churches. Where are Waukegan fathers going to go for repentance, after they've gambled away all of their family's rent and food money on card games and alcohol? Any casino approved, should be required to be near, even surrounded by churches.

     What on Earth do you think you're doing? Please do the exact opposite of what you're currently doing.

Source:
http://www.npr.org/2019/07/29/746158231/why-the-2020-census-citizenship-question-hasn-t-gone-away

Read previous, more detailed drafts of this speech at:
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/07/taxpayer-funded-local-events-should-not.html
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/07/licensing-breeds-licentiousness-speech.html
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/07/speech-to-waukegan-city-council-on.html

Speech to the Waukegan City Council on August 5th, 2019 (Second Draft)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Waukegan Music Festival Controversy

3. Young Waukegan Residents Urged to Join Police Force

4. Council Tolerates Poor Set of Local Career Opportunities

5. Why the Council Urges Cooperation with the Census

6. Census Carries Deportation Danger

7. Local and State Government Must Avoid Betraying the People
8. Religion in the Public Square
9. Conclusion

Content

1. Introduction

     My name is Joe Kopsick, I'm originally from Lake Bluff, and moved to Waukegan a year and a half ago.

     When I last spoke here, on July 15^th, I talked about garage sales, the census, immigration, and permits. I meant to explain my criticism of the casino approval, but I didn't have time then, so I'll address it today. But not before sharing my thoughts about the Waukegan Music Festival.

2. The Waukegan Music Festival Controversy

     At that last city council meeting, a citizen shared her concern that it might be a case of illegal taxpayer fraud, that the mayor appears in advertisements for the Waukegan Music Festival. I feel that that citizen's concerns were not adequately explained.

     Please imagine, for a moment, that someone else is the mayor of Waukegan. We don't know the person's name. But they're facing re-election, like all mayors do. If the mayor's name, likeness, and/or title, appear in advertisements for public events, then it's reasonable to expect that that incumbent mayor would get an edge in the election, because of that ad, right?

     We should not blame the current mayor personally for the fact that he has appeared in advertisements for public events, because – as he explained - this is a tradition which was started by an earlier mayor. But we can blame the mayor who started it (if indeed this is an improper and illegal use of taxpayer funds). We can't blame Mayor Cunningham for starting this tradition, but we can blame him if he doesn't end it.

     Elected officials – or at least those whom are incumbents and are actively running - gain an unfair advantage from being allowed to appear in ads for public events. The issue of whether this constitutes taxpayer fraud, should best be decided by either the Illinois Supreme Court, or by the voters gathered here in this room; not through a shouting match between the mayor and an alderman.

     The city council allowed the mayor to be his own judge, and acquit himself, without any charges being filed. The mayor should have done the legally appropriate thing, and recused himself from this controversy, seeing as he is a party to it. Either the state Supreme Court should be consulted on the legality of this matter; or if there is no question about the illegality of these ads, then charges should be filed against the mayor (and/or the city department that plans public events).

     The appearance of incumbent candidates in advertisements for public events, unfairly hurts the election chances of new candidates who wish to unseat incumbents, whom should have the same chance as the current mayor to get elected. Finally, the name of the festival should not contain the name, nor title, of any public official, for all the reasons I have explained above.

3. Young Waukegan Residents Urged to Join Police Force

     I have to express my concern about the city council congratulating high school students, who have their whole lives ahead of them, to sign up to be police officers. Eighteen-year-olds may be adults, but they are not old enough to decide whether to sign up to work as police officers and soldiers.

     What would you sacrifice to make sure that your child has a good career? Would you sacrifice their very health and safety? Police and military recruits are often subjected to being pepper sprayed and tased. Military recruits are injected with strange mixes of chemicals that they're never told what it is.

     Do Waukegan parents really think that whatever their kids are getting paid, is enough to offset the emotional and medical cost of enduring beatings in the military, and an onslaught of poisonous chemicals? Is this what you're willing to put your kid through, in order to secure them a job?

     We're told that we're supposed to be proud when young adults – especially racial minorities – join the police force. “Make the police look like the communities they serve”, they tell us. Well, it just so happens that tyrannical regimes throughout history, have co-opted the local communities, and found members of them who were willing to sell all the others out, and chalked it up as a mark of social progress and racial equality.

     For example: European colonizers got African tribal chiefs drunk, and bribed them into letting the colonizers round up their people as slaves. Other colonizers got Native American tribal chiefs drunk, and bribed and defrauded them into letting them claiming the land and kick everybody off. When the Nazis conquered Ukraine, Poland, and Western Russia, they found local military leaders who were willing to compromise with the Nazis. Similarly, the Jewish Ghetto Police enforced Nazi rule over the ghettos (with some degree of Jewish self-governance), while maintaining communications between imprisoned Jews and Nazis.

     Tyrannical regimes co-opted native peoples they conquered, and used the fact that a representative has been chosen from among them, to pretend that that conquered people has given their consent to be ruled. It is a lie, and the idea that more minority police officers will improve a deeply racist, intrinsically violent law enforcement mechanism, is a complete hallucination.

     We should not be encouraging our children to join the police force, especially not at such a young age. God forbid they get shot to death at the age of 18; not even in a war zone, but on the streets of America while doing their job (when they could have chosen any other job, most of them much safer for a young adult whom, again, has their whole life ahead of them).

     Lastly, I must note that I find it laughable that the city noted that the students present, decided to become police officers because of their feeling that “being a cop isn't just for the stupid kids”. I mean, if these are the smart kids, I'd hate to see the stupid kids! Especially the ones who want to become cops. By the way, I hope the city council warns those students against becoming police officers in New Jersey, where courts have ruled it's legal to refuse to hire police applicants if their I.Q. is too high. Because I'm not so sure that the world has any need for smart cops; not until we start training them to de-escalate violence (instead of escalate it) in the course of carrying out orders.

4. Council Tolerates Poor Set of Local Career Opportunities

     And what career opportunities the graduates of Waukegan High School have these days! Why, they can volunteer for the police, and get pepper sprayed and tased as part of training! Hell, why not bring police training directly to the high school, as one town down south did? Why not tase and pepper spray these kids right in their classrooms!? God knows that school security officers have tased and pepper sprayed younger children in public school classrooms in recent years; why stop now?

     But suppose the kid doesn't want to be a cop. They can go to Great Lakes Naval Station, and sign up to be in the military! And be injected with mysterious chemicals, and routinely beaten up as part of basic training, for a very difficult to determine amount of money. Fantastic.

     If your kid doesn't want to be a cop or a soldier, luckily, that new casino is coming to town! Your 17- and 18-year-old daughters can take this opportunity to work at the casino, dealing cards or serving drinks to older men. Men who will probably leer at them, and get away with it because your child will be expected to flirt with them as part of earning tips. Swell.

     Don't want your kid to be a cop, soldier, casino employee, or bartender? Well, she can work at Medline, or a cement company, or the local Sterigenics plants. Why not help her make some money polluting the air that we all have to breathe?

     Waukegan City Council, you are not protecting us. You're not protecting our job opportunities, because none of them are any damn good. You're not protecting public health, nor public safety. And you're not protecting our children's prospects for a clean environment, and a future with decent, honest, respectable careers.

5. Why the Council Urges Cooperation with the Census

     Anyone who was paying attention during the last meeting, will remember exactly why the city council urged us to cooperate with the 2020 U.S. Census survey. The first reason was that a court ruled that the Trump Administration could not include the citizenship question on it. But I ask the members of the city council: What will you do to protect us, if the administration insists on including it anyway (whether they figure out how to do it legally or not)?

     The Constitution authorizes the federal government and its census takers to collect no information other than the number of people. All questions about ethnicity, race, religion, country of origin or birth, and citizenship, are thus illegal, and laws providing for those questions to be asked are unconstitutional. We cannot legally be obligated to answer any of those questions, and I urge residents not to answer them.

     The second reason why the city council urged us to cooperate with the census, is that our elected officials use the census to make money off of us. Making sure that everyone participates in the census, is how government makes sure that congressional districts have equal numbers of people. But the number of people in the district also secures that district federal funding, as part of its “equal share” of federal funding. Of course, it matters to almost nobody that spending and the tax burden are not shared anywhere near equally by the districts and states. But the fact that equality is not furthered in determining where these districts lie, should show that the census's main purpose is to secure whatever funding the district can manage to get.

     This is nothing more than a scam to defraud us, the voters and taxpayers and residents, of our financial power (through our right to those funds), and our legal power (through allowing our elected officials to take away some of our power of attorney, and in so doing, to appropriate more of those federal funds towards themselves and their own offices than towards We the People).

6. Census Carries Deportation Danger

     Aside from the census being a money-making scheme for our legislators, it is also a plot to track us, and harvest our private personal information. Government-regulated credit rating agencies and banks routinely lose millions upon millions of people's personal information; do you really trust government to handle your personal information wisely?

     Moreover, the census could potentially be used as a way to round-up non-citizens and other “undesirables” or “enemies of the state”. I repeat, what do you – the city council – plan to do, if the Trump Administration goes forward with its plan to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census (whether legally or illegally)?

     Well, I know what you're going to do; You're going to urge cooperation at all times, because to do otherwise would be against the law, and the opposite of what you're supposed to do as elected officials. Which is to urge faith in all public institutions at all times. And you might think that elected officials and police have an obligation to do their jobs, and do as ordered.

     But if your job is to threaten force against people who entered this country illegally but without threatening force themselves, then your job is immoral, and you doing your job conflicts with the public's moral obligation to peacefully resist unjust laws.

     The Waukegan City Council should urge Governor J.B. Pritzker to instruct the Illinois National Guard, and all public police in Illinois, to refrain from cooperating with federal authorities. And that goes for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.), and agents of the 2020 census, alike. That's because the vast majority of these agencies' activities (and questions) are unconstitutional.

     Under no circumstances should the Illinois public be urged to cooperate with federal authorities in pursuit of these unconstitutional aims. The governor should immediately issue an order nullifying the federal law which authorized I.C.E.; effectively removing the authority of I.C.E. to operate legally within the boundaries of the State of Illinois. If necessary, Illinois National Guard troops should be mobilized to arrest federal troops or agents, and/or prevent more of them from entering the State of Illinois, if they insist on enforcing unconstitutional federal laws.

7. Local and State Government Must Avoid Betraying the People

     Just as the Waukegan City Council is doing its residents no service to help them find a clean environment or decent careers, it is also doing them no service to recommend that they cooperate with the Trump Administration.

     Even if the administration doesn't use the census to carry out deportations, it's deporting peaceful undocumented immigrants now. I.C.E. is hassling Hispanic-Americans who were born in America now. Seasonal farm workers are being trapped in America at the end of harvest season, and mocked and driven into the shadows for being here illegally (through no fault of their own), now. Immigrants are being funneled away from points of entry where they could easily declare asylum, and instead are forced to trek through dangerous desert, now.

     Whether the Trump Administration's immigration, deportation, and census policies going forward, will be legal and constitutional or not, why should you urge us to cooperate with those “authorities”? Aren't you supposed to protect public safety? The city government is supposed to work for the people, not the other way around.

     If the police and National Guard of Illinois do not come to the aid of all non-violent residents (not just citizens who pay them) during deportation raids, then neighbors will come together to protect vulnerable residents of Illinois who are in the United States without proper permission.

     And if that happens, then it will be the members of local government – of this city council - who will have urged resident and police cooperation with federal authorities, whom will be remembered as the people who urged cooperation with a blatantly authoritarian regime, and nearly suckered us into becoming fascist collaborators (in turning-in our undocumented neighbors).

     The Waukegan City Council is either against fascism and for its own people, or else it is against its own people and it is enabling the fascist Trump Administration and the companies that are polluting our air and our social culture. Now is the time to choose.

8. Religion in the Public Square

     Finally, I must express my dismay at the fact that these city council meetings begin with a public prayer. Participating in the prayer may be voluntary, but for some 98% of audience members to stand at being urged to pray for the officials here gathered today, should by any reasonable person's standards constitute at least the appearance of government endorsement of religion (even if not some particular religion).

     The people should not be instructed to pray for their legislators. If it is a legislator's job to be concerned with the problems and salvation of the people, then if anything, it's the legislators who should be instructed to pray for the people, not the other way around.

     Residents, look at the way your elected officials are gathered before you. How was Jesus displayed when he was crucified? He was elevated, as a mark of sarcastic reverence towards someone who was said to be a king. Well, your elected officials are elevated in front of you too. Of course, modern legislative chambers and courtrooms are modeled after royal courts; so it should be obvious that this was done intentionally. Under monarchies, kings got their power from God, and everyone below the king (including judges) got their power from the king, who got it from God.

     Fellow citizens, I came to the Waukegan City Council meeting on a Monday evening. I did not come here to pray. I did not come here to watch 98% of you turn this place, intended to promote civic engagement, into a place where we pray for our king as if we were in feudal times, ask the government to answer our prayers, agree to sacrifice our own neighbors for the sake of federal funds and the illusion of civil order, and agree to sacrifice our children's health and safety for the sake of humiliating jobs and depreciating money.

9. Conclusion

     Waukegan City Council: You have no intention of protecting us against fascist federal authorities enforcing unconstitutional deportation orders. You are poisoning your people physically and morally. You are behaving as if the public commons were a church. You are thus a usurpation of God. Everything you are doing is wrong and has no authority, because it comes from neither God nor the people.

     I urge the people to arm themselves, and to resist the census. The federal government has the authority to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, not to enforce it, nor to establish any other types of immigration policy; and the federal government has no obligation to collect census data in addition to the number of people.

     Moreover, the governor would be fully within his right to nullify I.C.E., deportation orders, and additional census questions, and in so doing make Illinois a “Sanctuary State” (although I would not recommend that this designation be made in a way that secures Illinois federal funds). Thus, I also urge the people, and the police, to refuse to cooperate with federal authorities enforcing all immigration laws.

     The Waukegan City Council, and Governor J.B. Pritzker, have a decision to make: Whether they are on the side of freedom and the American people, or whether they want government to be a religious cult, in which we may trust nobody to solve our problems, except for the elected officials who happen to be in charge at the moment. And those officials may only attempt to solve those problems by enforcing whatever set of laws happens to be on the books.

     The Waukegan City Council does the youth of this community no service, by ruining their respect for the importance of civic engagement for the remainder of their lives, by blindly urging cooperation with - and trust in – government, even when the officials and laws we are expected to trust have authoritarian and fascist intentions.

     But even if the city council does put a generation of young adults off of the idea that the government deserves to be trusted, then frankly, so be it; it's not such a bad thing after all. Because government doesn't work - more bad untested laws and more violent enforcement don't work – and so, we should not teach young people to trust the government. If we do, then the next thing you know, their baby is missing, and they've been pepper-sprayed in the eyes, injected with toxic chemicals, and handed a wad of cash.

     Until the Waukegan City Council can start offering more than words when criticizing the Trump Administration's desire to implement legislation they know damn well is unconstitutional – if the council could offer condemnation and plans for action – then it could show a generation of young Waukegan residents that America is about not only civic engagement but also freedom and resistance to tyranny, and that the American people stood up to fascism, and will stand up to it again.

Written on July 30^th, 2019

Based on "Public Officials Should Not Appear in Ads for Public Events:
Speech to the Waukegan City Council on August 5th, 2019"
(which can be read at the following address:
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2019/07/taxpayer-funded-local-events-should-not.html)

Edited on August 19th, 2019

Twenty-Nine-Point Comprehensive Immigration Plan

            1. THE WALL: Do not add fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border, and do not build walls on the borders with Mexico nor Canada.

            2. CIVIL RIGHTS: Do not revoke the civil liberties nor civil rights (such as rights to equal protection of law, and due process of law) on the basis of the suspect's national origin, religion, nor enemy combatant status. All persons have these constitutionally recognized rights; not just American citizens.

            3. BANS: Enforce neither temporary nor permanent bans on immigrants and refugees coming from particular countries; especially not as a way to discriminate against refugees on the basis of the religious majority of the nations from which they come.

            4. REGISTRIES: Pass legislation specifically prohibiting the creation of federal registries, and of lists of Americans' races and religions.

            5. VETTING: If illegal immigration is really the problem, then maybe we shouldn't worry about who is trying to immigrate into the United States legally as much. Either way, relax procedures for the naturalization of legal immigrants and refugees; background checks and health examinations should take up the majority of the procedure.

            6. CRIME: As soon as possible, deport all undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of violent crimes.

            7. ARREST: Do not allow police officers, nor immigration and customs officials, to detain and deport undocumented immigrants for non-violent crimes; not for breaking petty vice laws, nor for having insufficient identification.

            8. HARBORING: Urge all governments (at all levels) to decriminalize harboring and assisting undocumented immigrants and refugees; these actions should not be felonies. State and local governments, the private sector, and charity and religious organizations, should not be punished for providing humanitarian relief (such as housing, education, health services, and food), to undocumented immigrants and refugees.


            9. AMNESTY: Grant permanent or temporary amnesty, temporary work visas, or Green cards, to all non-violent undocumented immigrants, regardless of their religion or national origin.


            10. BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP: Continue allowing all people who were born on U.S. territory to apply for U.S. citizenship when they turn 18.

            11. CHILD ARRIVALS: Ensure that undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children – especially in the last 35 years – are not deported; and ensure that they are not separated from family members who may be undocumented immigrants, unless they have been convicted of violent crimes. Support congressional deferred action for childhood arrivals and their parents; not executive orders which bypass Congress.


            12. TRAVEL: Increase the freedom of movement of labor and capital – and refrain from inhibiting the freedom of locomotion of non-violent undocumented immigrants to other countries – by decriminalizing the act of entry into the United States without going through required naturalization procedures. Urge governments to agree to make monetary settlements with any legal immigrants who feel slighted by the relative ease with which undocumented immigrants become citizens.

            13. NATURALIZATION: Ensure that the federal government retains its authority to establish a uniform rule of naturalization. Oppose and abolish any and all support of immigration quotas as calls for unconstitutional discrimination on the basis of national origin.

            14. WORK: Do not make work a condition for citizenship. Make it easier (for undocumented and documented immigrants alike) to get green cards and temporary work visas; by increasing the number of temporary work visas for immigrants who want to come here to work (especially the number of visas for high-skilled workers). Provide easy paths to legal work, lawful permanent residency, citizenship, and full voting rights.

            15. IDENTIFICATION: Do not establish a national identification card. Do not require businesses to use e-Verify (or similar programs) to confirm citizenship as a condition of hiring. All this does is turn undocumented immigrants who want to work into unemployed second-class citizens, and turn hiring managers into immigration enforcement officials.

            16. VOTING: Allow non-violent undocumented immigrants residing in the U.S. to vote, as long as they are not eligible to vote in any other country.

            17. PURCHASES: Ensure that undocumented immigrants are not expected to show identification documents that would reveal their citizenship status, in order to purchase products that have legally mandated minimum ages of purchase (such as alcohol and tobacco).

            18. DRIVING: Make it easier for immigrants and refugees – and ordinary citizens as well - to obtain drivers' licenses. First, by urging more states to allow undocumented immigrants to obtain drivers' licenses for non-citizens; second, by urging courts to find that charging fees to license drivers amounts to charging people to leave their state, which interferes with the freedom of locomotion. As long as driver's licenses are considered constitutional, and as long as people are expected to carry identification, all levels of government should be urged to issue driver's licenses and identification documents at no charge to the recipient.

            19. WELFARE: Ensure that state and federal welfare agency employees do not violate immigrants' Fifth Amendment freedom from self-incrimination, by using undocumented immigrants' state of need as an excuse to make them state their citizenship status, in order to have them detained and deported (without any evidence of commission of a real crime against person or property having appeared).

            20. SOCIAL DIVIDENDS: Ensure that governments cannot discriminate against undocumented immigrants seeking welfare support in the form of cash payouts from social dividends; if the opportunity arises to choose between a residents' dividend and a citizens' dividend, a proposal of a residents' dividend should be drafted and passed rather than a citizens' dividend.

            21. SAFETY NET: Stay open to the possibility of revoking federal social safety net benefits for undocumented immigrants; but only consider doing so after all structures supporting the corporate welfare system are abolished, and during the same time period that the federal social safety net is being phased out for all residents.

            22. SOCIAL SECURITY: The right to receive social welfare supports (including the entitlements, the S.N.A.P. / Food Stamps program, and others) should not be contingent upon paying taxes and paying into Social Security. There is no enumerated constitutional authority for federal involvement in retirement savings nor welfare; federal involvement in retirement should end; authority for any continued federal involvement in welfare should be passed constitutionally; and all government revenue should derive from fines that penalize waste rather than taxes that penalize productivity. Such a policy on welfare and taxation will provide additional tax relief to low-income undocumented immigrants and refugees; easing the transition to work, without overwhelming the worker with tax forms. Allow immigrant and native-born workers alike to opt-out of the Social Security system.

            23. SANCTUARY: End the federal government's monetary support of so-called “Sanctuary Cities” for undocumented immigrants; but only do so as part of a broader effort to stop these unconstitutional payments from the federal government to community governments.

            24. STATE WELFARE: Allow state and local governments to decide whether to grant undocumented immigrants' requests for social welfare benefits such as housing, education, health, and food assistance.

            25. PRIVATIZATION: Save money, shrink the welfare state, and make ordinary consumer goods more affordable (for immigrants and the native-born alike), by making health, education, and housing easier to purchase on the open market. Phase-out federal involvement in those sectors, and urge state and local governments to decrease regulations and taxes on them. Make purchasing goods like health insurance, medications, and education – and buying or renting housing – as easy and affordable as buying foods and drinks.

            26. EDUCATION: Require all publicly funded universities to offer in-state tuition rates to undocumented immigrants who reside in the state. Do not inhibit private colleges from offering scholarships and grants to undocumented immigrants.

            27. MILITARY: Ensure that acts of Congress concerning immigration allow non-violent undocumented immigrants to serve in the military (and become citizens); rather than giving undocumented immigrants a choice between serving in the military for two years or attending college. Do not make undocumented immigrants, nor anyone else, subject to selective service registration, military drafts, nor civil emergency preparedness service; not as a condition of citizenship, nor for any other reason.

            28. LANGUAGE: Do not interfere with the First Amendment freedom of speech of undocumented immigrants and refugees who speak languages other than English. Do not make English the official language of the United States of America; and pass a constitutional amendment formally prohibiting any state or local government from doing so. Do not require immigrants nor refugees to learn English as a condition of citizenship.

            29. CULTURE: Do not interfere with the freedom of cultural expression. Do not expect, nor require, immigrants and refugees to "assimilate" to American culture; which includes liberal and conservative political cultures, neither of which fully embraces all of the freedoms that make people want to come here. Achieve civic pluralism by respecting ethnic and religious cultures' self-determination rights; while protecting the rights of ethnic, religious, and political minorities, with full civil liberties, and equal protection of law with due process.

Written on January 26^th, 27^th, and 30th, 2017

Edited on February 18th, 2017