Drop The I - Word. don't feed the hate machine.

Narrator: Calling people ‘illegals’ feeds a hate machine and hurts our nation's future.  News organizations and government officials who use the I-word need to drop it now. Commentator 1: The only thing that is being added to this state are illegals. Commentator 2: Amnesty for illegals in America… Commentator 3: …don’t want illegals to compete for those… Commentator 4: Hello! You’re illegal! Narrator: We get barraged by I-words every single day. Joe Arpaio: We will arrest people pursuant to our duties that are illegal. Lou Dobbs: Illegal aliens are in the country, including many murderers and rapists. Glenn Beck: To aid illegals sneaking across the border… America… wake the hell up! Narrator: The I-word exploits economic anxiety. Commentator 5: …bringing in illegals who undercut wages and take jobs away from American citizens. Narrator: It creates fear about our multicultural America. And like we’ve seen in the past, the I-word is a racial slur that breeds hate against whole groups of people.  It’s getting worse. In 2010, use of the word ‘illegals’ on television quadrupled from 2009.  And hateful language is dangerous. More than half of reported hate crimes in 2008 were motivated by race. In the recent period of rising anti-immigrant hysteria, hate crimes against Latinos rose by 40%. Hateful Language can be deadly. In Pachaug, Long Island in 2008, Marcelo Lucero and his friend Angel Loja were attacked by a group of teens shouting hate speech. Marcelo was stabbed to death by local high school student Jeff Conroy. District Attorney Thomas Spota: The defendants, each and every one of them readily agreed to ‘go looking for Mexicans to beat up.’ Professor Robert Smith: …'illegal' or 'Mexican' functions like a racial epithet; it’s a way of legitimizing violence against a particular group of people because of what they are. And that's the definition of a hate crime. Narrator: Words that feed hate can also be used to deceive and divide people. Rightwing strategists have cast immigrants to the US as the enemy. It's no accident that vulnerable people are used as scapegoats. Editors, public servants and all of us should stop using the I-word and other words tainted by hate. Calling people ‘Illegals’ is just plain wrong. No Human being is illegal. Drop the I-word. Don’t feed the hate machine. Sign the pledge at droptheiword.com