An Immigration Flashpoint, Through Our Lens
from the Washington Post
How did Prince William County, one of the richest, most diverse counties in the nation, become a flashpoint in America’s battle over immigration? What led to threats of racial violence during public meetings and grown men screaming at children on the streets? And how did a team of Asian American documentary filmmakers end up in the middle, with both pro-immigration and anti-immigration forces demanding that they take sides?
On Oct. 9, Eric Byler and Annabel Park began posting short video clips on a YouTube channel they created called “9500Liberty” at http://www.youtube.com/9500Liberty. The “interactive documentary” project took its name from a street address in Old Town Manassas where a sign had been posted, reading: “Prince William Co. Stop Your Racism to Hispanics!” The sign — on what was known as “Liberty Wall” — protested a county policy that requires police to check immigration status during routine traffic stops and denies some services to undocumented immigrants. The county, like many places across the nation, is in the middle of a demographic transformation: Since 1990, its Hispanic population has quadrupled; today one in five of the county’s 360,000 residents is Hispanic; and the number of Asians has more than doubled.
Since it started, “9500Liberty” has been viewed more than 270,000 times and garnered comments from all over the globe, including hate mail and death threats. On Friday, Byler testified before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
In the following two articles and a video essay, the filmmakers turn the camera on themselves and reflect on their experiences.
Annabel Park: I Can Relate to America’s Identity Crisis.
Eric Byler: My Heart is Where the Bottles Shatter.
To see the video, click here.
would like to discuss how our HEY-OYE nonprofit might get involved with your efforts
you are doing good work
call or email
Jose Diaz-Asper, Chair
202-669-1294
I had the link to your work on my little personal website for a while.
When I looked tonight, I found out that your youtube account has been suspended. Is it censorship or something else? If the documentaries are “soon to be a major motion picture”, good luck.
You guys had an event in my neighborhood around the holidays. Sorry I missed it (had to attend holiday parties that night).
A small group of us in the county are looking to change the climate in the community. I urge people to get involved. Come out of your houses and get to know your neighbors again. End the nasty language towards others. Get educated about the issues. Work to change our county for the better, in ways that bring people together rather than divide. Report racial profiling and discrimination to police and your county supervisor.
Spread the word about this website and get people talking - sharing ideas and experiences
hi Annabelle,
my name is Inmar and we met at the county building that night when the supervisors made their final mistake.
I have seen all the videos on you tube.
We spoke about my business and what all of this would do to it and the community.
Well, wrote a note to Kristem Mack who is a writer for the Post.
I told her to do a survey about how many homes are abandoned at this moment and what that would do to the economy of this place.
I wanted to let you know that she will be calling me about this.
they are about to do areport on this.
How about putting a video on yoy tube about the housing market here.
I wrote Mr. Martin Nohe a note as well, but he won’t reply.
Kristen will be calling me about this so please let me know what to say.
My business has droppped 50% since last month, so
let’s see how many will close in the next 3 months.
So taxes are not there like the county expects it.
thank you.
You have an error regarding the Help Save Virginia “president”. The individual cited in your documentary is a Greg Latique follower and not associated to our group.
Could you please correct your error and not make no reference to our organization.
Sincerely,
I came across your documentary on accident, while looking at some videos on YouTube. It’s great to see democracy in action. That said, as a Latino, I think that it is unsettling, as a Chicagoan, this is nothing new. Just look at U.S. history.
History always repeats itself. Currently, Hispanics and Muslims are despised, for different reasons. Hispanics for doing the drudgery that most other Americans will not do. And Muslims for the heartbreaking event of September 11, 2001, which 99.999 percent Muslims had nothing to do with other than a faith. A faith which was perverse by some rightwing religious nutcases, sound familiar?
In the 1830s, the Irish Catholics were being targeted and depicted as apelike and called immoral, thuggish, lazy and worse. This was done by so-called “native” Americans, like the Know Nothing Party and many Protestant groups at the time. Or when the Italians, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, and most immigrants were considered good for nothings and beneath the “native” Americans. Native meaning having the good fortune of just being born on this continent. Less we forget that before the Europeans, America had people; 500+ different nations in the 48 contiguous states alone. Not to forget the plight the millions of Africans that were enslaved and that had died on the Middle Passage. And again, to remind us, the tragedies, broken promises and broken treaties with the original people of the Americas.
So, what can we do? I will not say we should all sing Kumbaya, that is not reality. However, one way to get things done, in our country is hit ‘em where it really hurts, the pocket book. It seems that is already happening in Prince William county. There are many other ways, but money is where it really counts. I am sorry for the losses in revenue for the people who live in the county like the immigrants and non-racists. I hope people can still frequent those establishments.
It seems that the electorate allowed this bigotry to rear it’s ugly head. Maybe it’s time for a recall vote, if permitted in the Virginia constitution. It’s unfortunate that the immigrant cannot vote nor can the people with common sense be in the majority.
We do live in a great country, for me, this is the greatest country, however, patriotism is not the same as fascism. Patriotism, to me, means to be proud of your country and recognize its faults. We do have faults, this is one of them. I think we’ll get through this as other immigrants have and will.
Thank you for sharing your documentary,
Oscar
Presented by the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, this short piece depicts the unique perspectives of 3 immigrant laborers in an industry greatly affected by immigration policy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M9ENvJnSoA
The facts are this.. if Prince William County was so wealthy, how were illegal aliens able to afford to live there? Throught government welfare subsidies.. secton 8 housing vouchers and the like. Through forged and stolen documents, illegals get away with working and being subsidized by the taxpayer at the same time.
The costs of incarcerating illegal alien criminals, the huge cost of educating the children of illegal aliens (examine the costs of K-12 ESL education, especially in working poor communities) which runs into the millions per community. An unfunded mandate from the federal government. Even the former member of congress who wrote the ESL amendment (of Hispanic descent) regrets doing so, because it has proven to be a crutch to avoid learning English, and has helped increase the dropout rate.
The costs of welfare subsidies, to public hospitals, increased competition for rental units drives up the costs. At the same time, illegals have been proven to drag down American citizen’s wages as well as displace American citizen workers. American citizens are being fired and driven out of their jobs, not because they are too lazy (as illegals like to claim) or do not want to work, but because greedy business owners, and illegals themselves, undercut wages.
Citizens have civil rights, as do their children. They do not magically become wealthy or disappear when displaced. They are ignored by the MSM, as well as people like the film makers who run this blog. Amazing that those who claim to care about “human rights”, want to sweep the cold hard truth under the carpet.
Poor American citizens, black, brown and white are becoming increasingly homeless, suffer from hunger and privation. There are more cases of malnutrition and anemia among poor American citizens being diagnosed than there were during the great depression. The US has a declining job pool, there are not enough jobs.. it is inhumane and extremely selfish to demand that Americans be discriminated against because illegal aliens want to come to the US because they want to earn US wages and subsidize their relatives in their home countries.
They have the ability to march and protest in their home countries, American citizens did that in the last century to demand higher wages and workplace protections. The president of the Banco de Mexico has stated that as long as Mexicans enter the US illegally, the wealthy government of Mexico will be able to get away with not enacting the needed reforms it promised to, when it co-wrote NAFTA.
We are so happy about the work that you are doing.
HELP! I have been trying to get in touch with Annabel or Eric on topically related activities in Herndon.
PLEASE contact us.
You would be glad you did.
Running out of time fast!
ekibastos…
ekibastos…
Hi everyone. We are rather behind on answering questions posted here. We are more often reading comments left on the channel page at:
http://www.youtube.com/9500Liberty
Oscar, thank you for your insights. Ann, we’ll be contacting you soon.
Help Save Virginia, thank you for pointing out our error. We’re glad to have fixed it.
John Clark, we don’t know if it was a form of censorship or what. But we did get shut down for a day or so in January. We have our suspicions as to who and why, because we had just come into contact with a very large news network of which one of our videos is quite critical. But we have yet to get an explanation.
If we find out (and we’re allowed to talk about it) we’ll post an update soon.
Eric
Just realized that we have already met you Ann… FYI both Jose and Ann contacted us by more reliable means than this often neglected little page…
9500 Liberty is doing a great service in fearlessly reporting the immigration news in P.W. County. In a Christian country, we must find a way to respect every human person.
In the words of a great Baptist leader, we must find a way to “show compassion for otherwise law abiding people.”
you guys are horrible, your about as horrible as those propaganda pushers of 3rd reich. you probably took your film making skills right from the pages of their handbook. congratulations on assisting the plight of illegal aliens who dont even belong here in the first place
Mr. Byler:
I noticed in one of your you tube clips you were attending a PWC police press briefing. Do you have press credentials? If so, if I may ask, who were they issued by? If you don’t have press credentials, how do you know about those press briefings? I may want to attend them.
It would have been very easy for you or any non-journalist to attend the public meetings and press conferences we have documented, as you can see from the ubiquitous presence of your mentor Greg Letiecq.
Also, I am a member of the Directors Guild of America, and I’m making a documentary film if that helps ease your suspicions.
But you don’t have to join the DGA to go to all these meetings, seriously.
There is a much fuller discussion on immigration issues at http://www.AntiBVBL.net
Annabel and I don’t have the time to administer a blog. We thought we would but as you can see there isn’t much going on here. It takes a lot of work.
So we are letting our videos speak for themselves and allowing dialog to take place at AntiBVBL.net