NE: Around the Rotunda: No proof immigration verification is

I am submitting this story as information only. I know William Gheen, ALIPAC volunteers, myself and many Nebraskans were upset & disapointed because of the Nebraska immigration bills defeat earlier this year.

Quote:

At least three times, Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha chastised the audience for outbursts when they disagreed with something a witness or committee member (Chambers) said.

I know we shouldn't have been groaning but you have to had been there to experience Mr. Chambers for yourself. Below is a newspaper article that will give you some idea of what comes out of his mouth! Even though he won't be a legislator anymore, we haven't seen the last of him in Nebraska!

In some ways, the defeat may work out to be a blessing in disguise. Chambers and other "open-borders" enthusists really got us fired up for next year and frankly, the bills were not written that well!

Published Saturday | April 19, 2008
Chambers follows his own lead
BY LESLIE REED
WORLD-HERALD BUREAU
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=2 ... d=10314918

Originally published in The World-Herald Nov. 26, 1995.

Leaving a meeting this summer in North Omaha, Ernie Chambers caught sight of a group of black youths playing basketball just down the hill from where he stood.

The 58 - year - old state senator challenged them to a foot race.

The boys, ranging in age from 10 to 13, laughed and rapidly accepted. They stopped laughing when Chambers told them how the race would be run: He'd run down hill - and they'd run up.

Later telling the story to a reporter, Chambers described the race as a spur - of - the - moment moral lesson.

"As long as you're black, there are things you're going to have to do that other people don't have to do," Chambers said he told them. "You're going to have to run up that hill faster than a white person running down the hill. Even though it's not fair, that's the way it is. If you're going to be in this race, you've got to find a way."

Ernie Chambers is still running his uphill race and is still finding a way to influence state policy.

It's been 25 years since the man who the public knows for harsh remarks and controversial positions won election to the Nebraska Legislature. Chambers is now the Legislature's second - most senior member.

The barber who burst upon the Omaha scene in the mid - 1960s with a call for blacks to take up arms if need be for justice is a grandfather now. His hair and beard are turning white, and his fiery eyes sometimes look weary. He hasn't cut hair in years.

His legislative strategy has evolved. In his early years as a state senator, he played quarterback, guiding significant changes, such as district elections, through the legislative process. Chambers now is more of a "roving safety," batting down bills he fears would hurt minorities, poor Nebraskans and others with little political influence.

He continues to press frequently unpopular causes, although with mixed results. Every year since the Legislature adopted the current death penalty law in 1973, he has made sure a bill to repeal it has been before the body. He has not admitted defeat, even though the state carried out its first execution in 35 years last year.

Civil rights, welfare, police oversight, prison reform, abortion rights and student athletes' rights are among the other issues he's pursued.

Longtime observers say time has failed to mellow the Omaha senator, once called the angriest black man in Nebraska.

Still he refuses to wear a suit and tie, preferring the comfort of short - sleeved sweatshirts, jeans and sneakers. Still he keeps physically fit by lifting weights in his office. Still he boldly attacks what he sees as injustice. Still he shows no qualms at discomfitting listeners with bitter invective and downright prejudiced remarks.

In an interview he said this of Jewish people in Omaha: "Jews need us in this community, because if there were no black people, white people would be on these Jews just like the Nazis were. We're the buffer, and Jews know it."

And of white and Jewish people: "You know how we as kids would say how you can tell the difference between a Jew and a white person? Because white people are mean and Jews are stingy. If a person's stingier than he is mean, then he's a Jew. If he's meaner than he is stingy, he's white."

He drew public rebukes in 1993 when he said an assistant state attorney general, a woman, was seeking sexual gratification in trying to hasten an execution. Chambers said she should seek satisfaction elsewhere, "maybe with a vibrator. I doubt she can get a man."

Sen. Jerome Warner of Waverly, who with 33 years service is the only state senator senior to Chambers, said "it's pretty well accepted that's how Ernie is. But if other senators tried to make such comments, they'd be disciplined pretty quickly."

Still, Chambers receives overwhelming support from voters in his district, who re - elected him for the sixth time in 1992 by a nearly 3 - to - 1 margin.

The influences of history, family and community - along with his own irrepressible personality - combine to make Chambers one of the most fascinating and frustrating members of the Nebraska Legislature.

He is a product of the black militant movement of the 1960s. Even today, his passionate beliefs about race dominate his political philosophy. Yet it is too easy to dismiss him merely as a militant hothead.

"The only ones who think Ernie Chambers is radical are those who just don't listen, really listen, to what he's saying," said the Rev. Larry Menyweather - Woods of Mount Moriah Baptist Church. "He's a man of reason, in my observation. He's going to sit down and talk to you - radicals don't want to talk."

In early 1968, Chambers told the Kerner Commission, which was convened by President Johnson to study race riots in American cities, that black Omahans would be justified in burning their city down.

His strong views had prompted the FBI to open a file on him in 1961. The federal law enforcement agency continued its surveillance for a decade.

Yet the same spring that he testified before the Kerner Commission, the so - called "militant" stepped in to stop students who were breaking windows and setting fires at Horace Mann Junior High School.

"How in the world are people like me going to help you if you do something like this?" he was quoted in The World - Herald. "You guys aren't doing anything to help yourselves."

Interviews with family, friends and associates, and with Chambers himself, hint at the influences beyond militant politics:

A talented, preacher father who worked at a packing house to support his family.

Chambers' disillusionment with and disavowal of the Christian religion of his youth.

The effect of college and law school on his inquisitive nature.

Personal experiences with racism and discrimination.

Malcolm and Lillian Chambers raised their seven children to be leaders, according to Ernie's 61 - year - old brother, Eddie.

Malcolm Chambers, who died earlier this month at age 88, was a minister who worked at the Armour Packing Co. to support his family. Lillian Chambers cleaned houses. Now 85, Mrs. Chambers lives in an apartment in her son's district. She declined requests for an interview, citing poor health.

"People always seemed to look up to the Chambers family, even in the neighborhood," said Eddie Chambers, an elementary - school counselor for District 66 schools. "Because they taught us how to play musical instruments, they taught us how to speak. We'd dress up and go up to church. We were taught manners, you know, stuff like that."

For the record, Ernie Chambers plays bongo drums.

As an adult, Chambers has never allied himself with any particular organization or movement. Not the NAACP, not the Urban League, not the Black Panthers, not the Muslims. He doesn't belong to a political party.

As a child, however, Chambers believed so strongly in the church that, at age 15, he converted his older brother Eddie to Christ. The conversion changed Eddie's life, leading him to go to college and to a 30 - year career in education, Eddie said.

But Ernie lost his faith. He says he just outgrew it.

"I began to admit frankly to myself that the doubts I had were justified. These stories didn't make any sense, and a lot of these other things that were in the Bible were not essential for day - to - day living."

Chambers is careful about what he chooses to reveal about himself, telling only the childhood stories designed to make a point.

"When I was young, I was quiet," Chambers said. "I was very obedient. I paid attention to everything that happened around me and listened very carefully to everything adults said."

One childhood story has become emblematic. It is of the day in the early 1940s when his grade - school teacher read "Little Black Sambo" to his class.

The other children, all of whom were white, laughed at the caricature of Little Black Sambo, with his braids and big eyes and big, red grinning mouth.

"I wouldn't swallow. I didn't move. I remember my back itched like I would itch if it was a real hot day and I had on those wool clothes from when I used to have to go to church," he recalled.

"My palms got wet and I just sat there and wouldn't move, and was just hoping that nobody would look at me. But the kids would look, and they would laugh."

In 1976, he succeeded in having "Little Black Sambo" removed from school libraries in the state.

Even after working in the statehouse 25 years, Chambers insists that he is only "in" the system, not "of" the system - an often repeated line. He has not wavered from his fundamental belief that Nebraska government - and western civilization in general - is based on oppression, white supremacy and racism.

"I have a loyalty to black people - not to this state," he said. "I never say 'our' government or 'my' government. It's always 'this' government or 'y'all's' government."

Chambers said his loyalty to black Nebraskans prevents him from moving to a larger city, as friends have urged, to further his political career.

Chambers said he likes his home community, even though outsiders may view it as economically deprived and socially troubled. "There is a vibrance and a life found in my community that I don't believe I can find anywhere else," he said. "That's where I'm most alive and most contented."

He said he is realistic about his chances for higher office in Nebraska - "White people in Nebraska wouldn't give me enough 'yes' votes to go to the electric chair," he said - and he's uninterested in "petty," "picayunish" and "nitpicky" city government.

He ran for the Omaha school board in 1968 and for the City Council in 1969, not expecting to win, but to gain a forum to discuss issues.

The campaigns were an outgrowth of other battles fought to force neighborhood businesses to serve blacks and to protest police brutality and corporal punishment in the schools.

An indifferent student in high school - Ernie Chambers said he wouldn't have graduated from Omaha Technical High School as scheduled in 1955 if the school hadn't given him a physical education credit for playing football as a freshman - Chambers was an honors student at Creighton University and at Creighton law school.

He quit buying textbooks after his books were stolen from the library his first semester. Instead, he read library books on his class subjects. He said teachers quit calling on him in class because he was always questioning their statements and values.

During law school, Chambers began spending more time at his post office job than in class. Even though he kept up with his studies and passed his exams, he said, the law school refused to allow him to register for his final classes because of his absences.

He finally got his degree 15 years later, when a new law school dean made arrangements for him to return, tuition - free. However, he's never taken the bar exam that would allow him to practice law.

In the early 1960s, Chambers began attracting wider attention. When reporters wanted black Omaha's perspective, it was Chambers they sought out, said Dan Goodwin, owner of the Spencer Street Barber Shop, where Chambers cut hair for many years.

"When people would hear him talk, he was so sharp, so sure of himself, so intelligent. You couldn't help but like that," said Goodwin.

The first World - Herald news item on Chambers appeared July 15, 1963, when he picketed a testimonial dinner for then - Postmaster John Munnelly at a downtown Omaha hotel.

Chambers had been fired from his job as a distribution clerk earlier that year for alleged insubordination. Chambers maintained that he was fired because he complained about a white supervisor who had called him "boy."

He was noticed even earlier by the FBI. The federal law enforcement agency began watching Chambers in 1961, after receiving a report from the post office that Chambers might be an adherent to the teachings of Elijah Muhammed, the black Islamic leader who inspired Malcolm X.

Chambers obtained his 156 - page FBI file through a Freedom of Information Act request in 1976. Although the investigation turned up no evidence of illegal or "disloyal" activities, he continued to be watched throughout the 1960s. The file was closed in 1971, after investigators determined that he had decided to use political means, rather than violent ones, to improve conditions for black citizens.

In 1965, filmmakers associated with the Lutheran Church asked Chambers to participate in a documentary on race relations. The film, called "A Time for Burning," later was nominated for an Oscar. It made Chambers a draw on the national lecture circuit, Dan Goodwin recalled.(**SEE NOTE)

From there, the Legislature was only a short step away.

Goodwin said he and Chambers were in Texas for a speech when they learned on Jan. 26, 1970, that Sen. Ed Danner, who had represented their legislative district for eight years, had died. Then - Gov. Norbert Tiemann appointed George Althouse to serve until a special election in November 1970.

Chambers said an Althouse statement compelled him to enter the race. Althouse reportedly received a standing ovation from other state senators after a speech in which he criticized Chambers for his stridency and called for black and white Americans to work together.

"If it was God's plan that the white man was to be in command, then there's nothing we can do about it," Althouse, a black, was quoted in The World - Herald. "So let's all join up and work together. Sooner or later we'll all sit around a table and talk out our grievances, and then we can all say 'God Bless America.' "

Chambers capitalized on the statements and narrowly defeated Althouse in the general election, receiving 1,574 votes to Althouse's 1,158. In 1972, Chambers was elected to his first full term by a more than two - to - one margin. He has been re - elected five times since then, once in a write - in campaign undertaken at the same time he ran as a third - party candidate for the U.S. Senate.

"It's been controversy, opposition, tension, the entire time I've been here," he said. "I think it's because I'm black, intelligent, fearless, relentless and eminently fair. Oh yes, and very modest. Modesty is my most dominant trait - but I'm too modest to say that."