Organizer Of Shenandoah 'Unity Rally' Agapito Lopez - 'We Will Never Assimilate'
By Digger

I did not have time to look much into the "Unity Rally" that was held simultaneously in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania as the immigration enforcement rally we had, now I have.

As I was putting together this media bias report I saw someone I know. That someone made me chuckle a little. If I would have realized this in advance you can be assured that my speech would have been a little different. For it turns out that the organizer of the Unity rally is none other than Dr. Agapito Lopez.

Now for those who don't know (and if you haven't been watching this issue in depth since at least 2006, which cuts out a lot of bloggers even), Dr. Agapito Lopez was one of the most outspoken activists against Hazleton, Pennsylvania's Illegal Immigration Relief act, was actually a plaintiff in the lawsuit against Hazleton and Mayor Lou Barletta and actively formed rallies against the ordinance. He's not a newcomer to this issue and he's been spreading his racist speech out there for a long time. Dr Agapito Lopez - an eye doctor by trade - was none other than the very first witness called in the Hazleton trial on day one by the plaintiff's attorney of the ACLU.
"We will never convert ourselves into Anglos. We will aculturize. We will learn the language. We will learn the laws. We will follow the laws. But we will never assimilate."
- Dr. Agapito Lopez, July 2006


"We are family. If you insult part of the family, you insult the whole family"
- Dr. Agapito Lopez, July 2006
There are some very "uniting" statements that Agapito Lopez said at the time of the trial.

According to him the Hispanic community does not want "unity" and that the way to get unity into communities is if nobody assimilates, everyone speaks their own language and illegal aliens are free to come to this country and go wherever they please without fear of being discovered. I don't know about you, but that is not the United States I live in.

Dr. Agapito Lopez is on the Governor's Advisory Committee on Latino Affairs and was vice president of the Hazleton Latino Association. When Lou Dobbs went to Hazleton for a town hall meeting Dr. Agapito Lopez was one of the people on stage. He didn't get much face time, but his message was clear.

You can read the full transcript of that town hall meeting here, but here is just a little of it.

DOBBS: ... are you suggesting that employers and landlords would only resort to looking at one's ethnicity in deciding that, as apparently some people have in this country, that illegal equals Hispanic, Hispanic equals illegal?

LOPEZ: The message that has gone through to the -- to the massive amount of people is that Latinos are identified as illegal, because that has been the great wave that has come into town. About 10,000 new immigrants have come to the...

(APPLAUSE)

DOBBS: Mr. Mayor...

BARLETTA: They're misleading the public.

Our ordinance does not allow landlords or businesses to determine anyone's immigration status. Only the federal government
will make that determination. So, there are no store owners who are required to check any documents. And you know that's not true.

But the real people who are being discriminated are people like -- like Joe Farrow (ph) over there, an 82-year-old gentleman who drove from New Jersey to talk to me this week because his two children cannot find work. The American workers are the ones who are being discriminated against...

(APPLAUSE)

BARLETTA: ... because illegal aliens are taking their jobs.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

So Shenandoah, its mayor, its city council and the church that hosted the "unity" rally were used by Dr. Agapito Lopez to further his cause of unchecked illegal immigration
. He did so under the guise of "unity" and the leaders of that community fell for it hook, line and sinker.

http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/002928.html



If you want to read the mainstream populist account of the "Unity Rally" from the Standard Speaker, click here (oh go ahead, it's good for a chuckle):

http://www.standardspeaker.com/articles ... 96_loc.txt