Google celebrates Cesar Chavez, not Easter

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 19:00:00 +0000

If you used Google on Sunday, March 31, 2013, you may have noticed the above Google Doodle, a type of drawing Google uses frequently to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, or historically relevant days. On any other day, the above doodle celebrating the birthday of American labor rights activist Cesar Chavez, who would have been 86 today, may have gone unnoticed.

However, for millions of people, that date celebrates something else: Easter Sunday. Several conservatives and Christians alike took issue with Google's decision to honor the rights icon over their holiday:

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Immigration, yes. Indentured serfdom, no

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The outlines of a bipartisan plan for immigration reform have been announced by a group of senators. While most of its provisions are reasonable -- a path to citizenship for most illegal immigrants, increased skilled immigration and increased law enforcement -- one provision stinks to high heaven and should be rejected by Americans of left, right and center. That provision is a massive, special-interest-driven expansion of indentured servitude in the United States, in the form of a new “guest-worker program.” (President Obama, while hailing the plan in general on Tuesday, has not weighed in on the specifics of the guest-worker program.)

Indentured servitude or contract labor, like slavery, is a form of unfree labor. Unfortunately, the U.S., having abolished slavery, still has pockets of indentured servant labor. Whether relatively well-paid, like many highly educated H-1B workers, or poorly paid, like many H-2A agricultural workers, indentured servants are, in effect, indentured serfs. Because their presence in the U.S. is dependent on their employment by a particular employer, they cannot quit and are motivated to appease their employer, no matter how brutally they are exploited. If they protest maltreatment, they can be fired and forced to return to their home countries.

Salon.com > Cesar Chavez

Google celebrates Cesar Chavez, not Easter

Immigration, yes. Indentured serfdom, no