After I put this out and my lawyer submitted printed versions, a few things happened.
Questions Prepared By My Lawyer For Immigration Court Date Tomorrow
Immigration Court Date: June 6, 2011: Prepared Statement
One, my immigration court date got postponed, for now looks like indefinitely.
Two, two black guys claiming to be Hispanics from the Bronx met me at a tech event the final Monday of Internet Week. (Internet Week: Final Day: June 13) They had identical, give-away short hair cuts. The one who talked gave a false name and an email address that bounced. For someone claiming to be a political worker in the Bronx he knew too many details about me. I asked if he knew so and so in the Bronx, he said no. The talk first started gentle. He is like you Obama people really did good raising 10 dollars and so on and so forth. Then he started getting hostile. I felt like he was recording the conversation. It is like when I was in the thick of a political revolution in Nepal in 2006 and some agent showed up in my Yahoo Messenger: I am a Muslim boy, 16 years old, want to come to New York. You can tell when it is a professional or when it is just some stranger.
So this guy is like, you could not have done what you did if you were in NYC. I said that is correct. If I had been in Kathmandu or even Delhi, I could not have done the political work I did for Nepal.
Then he is like, the Indian intelligence agencies are watching your every move. He insinuated I might be sending funds to armed Madhesi groups.
I was about to say, "Tell your boss, I am smarter than him. He is going to stop misbehaving or I am asking for a name and a badge number. This harassment is going to have to stop."
But this is what I said for the benefit of his recording device.
"My mother's cousin was Education Minister for Bihar, the second most populous state in India. There was this guy Laloo who was Chief Minister at the time. Well, a few years back Laloo was Education Minister for all of India."
"My phone company always knows where I am at." You don't fucking need no Indian intelligence agency to follow my moves. It is not even rocket science. Just read my blogs. Give me some page hits.
This reminded me of May 2008. When they picked me up their first insinuation was I might blow up a tunnel. The motherfuckers would say something like that fully knowing there is not an ounce of truth to something like that. The only people more disrespectful of the 3,000 victims of 9/11 than the Al Qaeda are law enforcement people who would do something like that. And now this dude is like we think you are funding armed groups. Motherfucker, I am funding armed groups?
You see that thing before you? The potentially biggest political tsunami in world history that is unfolding before your very fucking eyes, I just so happen to be the top political authority on the topic on the planet, and I look to you like I am funding armed groups? I looked to you like I might blow up a tunnel?
Racist people in Kentucky, racist white people, would do the same thing. They would front a black guy to do their racist bidding. There is a term for that: institutional racism.
Rangel is not in the picture. So who is doing this? The orchestrations against me when inside were too precise for it to even be the work of a committee. Maybe there is one faceless bad apple sitting somewhere in the ranks.
The guy is like, so your hero is Malcolm X? No, motherfucker, my hero is Larry Ellison, I am a tech entrepreneur, I just so happen to be extremely good at this politics thing. Malcolm X never masterminded a nonviolent democracy movement for 30 million people.
Paradigm Shifts And Challenged Assumptions
Three, I was followed when I was taking pictures around Williamsburg. (Hello Williamsburg) I was taking pictures with the same camera that made Barack Obama president.
The First Time I Heard The Obama Name
The haircut gives it away. This clean cut white guy with a dog that just did not look like belonged in a home, it sniffed me with too much care, a trained dog. So I snap a picture.
"Were you taking a picture of the pole?"
The guy is like, you saw me, you got scared, and you nervously took a picture of that pole?
I laughed.
"No. Oh no. I was taking pictures of the Empire State Building" in the distance.
"Hey there doggie," I said to the dog, gently touched.
I turn the corner, walk the block, and they have to plant a black guy again. Will I please take five pictures of him standing against this wall?
Read: we got you sniffed, and we tried to scare you, but you did not get scared, and because there is a black guy in the White House, we think you are clean, you just like to take many, may pictures, and we think that's okay, no, we don't think you are a terrorist.
I go near the water. No van on my way there. But a police van on my way back. A dog barks inside. I make a point to stand right in front of the van and snap a picture of a graffiti on the wall.
I walk three blocks. The van comes by. I meet eyes. The van moves on green. It felt like when Jason Bourne is followed in the streets right before this scene.
I don't do physical, assholes. I do nonviolent militancy on behalf of movements for democracy in the Global South. That is my specialty. Let me be. And, by the way, if a few pages bothered you let me inform you, I have 200 pages that will be published down the line.
I have not been bothered since. And that's a good thing.
My final scare idea from them in 2008 was this Hispanic druglord who had served seven years already in a federal facility. The guy banged on the glass window and threatened to kill the guards. They had me sit next to him on the bus ride to Alabama.
In Alabama I'd buy icecream and I would eat most of it, and I would hand it over to him, and he would finish it up.
I single handedly stopped a fight between this dude and this other black dude. All I did was talked. Something similar in a next door dorm had ended up with use of tear gas shells.
I do political. I do tech. That is what I do. Calm the fuck down.
Arrington, Calm The F____ Down
Doubling Down On Tech Consulting
Using Political Contacts To Beat The Immigration Beast
