Welcome to Maywood, Mexico
by Roger Hedgecock
06/25/2010
Boasting a population that is 97%
Hispanic, more than half foreign born, and 40% illegal, the Los Angeles
County, Calif., incorporated city of Maywood has achieved the
Reconquista goal. It is now as lawless and chaotic as any place in
Mexico. Maywood is a warning to every city and town in America.
The Maywood City Council announced
this week that after years of radical policies, corruption and scandal,
the city was broke and all city employees would be laid off and
essential city services contracted out to neighboring cities or to L.A.
County government.
How did this happen? Until recently,
Maywood was the model for "brown power" politics.
Maywood was the first California city
with an elected Hispanic City Council, one of the first "sanctuary"
cities for illegal aliens, the first city to pass a resolution calling
for a boycott of Arizona after that state passed a law to enforce
federal immigration laws, the first California city to order its police
department not to enforce state laws requiring drivers to have licenses
to drive, the first American city to call on Congress to grant amnesty
to all illegals.
Council meetings were conducted in
Spanish. Maywood was the leader in the peaceful, democratic achievement
of the La Raza goal to take power in the U.S.
The City of Maywood started out quite
differently. Back after World War II, Maywood was a booming blue-collar
town with good jobs, a multi-ethnic suburb of Los Angeles.
On the 25th anniversary in 1949 of
Maywood's incorporation as a city, the town celebrated with a
beard-growing contest, a rodeo, and wrestling matches in City Park.
Chrysler operated an assembly plant there until 1971.
But the early 1970s saw these
industrial jobs in aerospace, auto and furniture manufacturing, and food
processing evaporate under the pressure of higher taxes, increased local
and state regulation, and the attraction of cheaper land and cheaper
labor elsewhere.
The multi-ethnic Maywood of the
post-war years was transformed in the ’80s and ’90s by wave after wave
of Hispanic immigrants, many of them illegal.
In August 2006, a "Save Our State"
anti-illegal immigration rally in Maywood drew hundreds of
protesters—but a larger number of defenders of illegal immigration. The
pro-illegal protesters carried signs which read "We are Indigenous ! The
ONLY owners of this Continent!" and "Racist Pilgrims Go Home" and "All
Europeans are Illegal Here."
According to newspaper reports at the
time, objectors to illegal aliens were subject to physical attacks. A
70-year-old man was "slashed," a woman attacked, and cars vandalized.
Pro-illegal demonstrators raised the Mexican flag at the U.S. Post
Office.
The illegal population and their
sympathizers became increasingly radicalized. Elections to the City
Council saw "assimilationist" incumbent Hispanic council members ousted
by La Raza supporting radical challengers.
For years, the Maywood City Council
authorized police checkpoints to stop drunk driving. Drivers without
licenses had their cars impounded. Illegals in California cannot get
drivers licenses. By 2005, the number of such impounds were in the
hundreds. A community campaign was launched forcing the City Council to
suspend the checkpoints.
Cars were still being impounded
whenever a police traffic-violation stop resulted in a driver without a
license. Felipe Aguirre, a community activist with Comite Pro-Uno, an
"immigration service center," coordinated a new campaign against any
impounds. He was elected in 2005 to the City Council. He is the mayor of
Maywood today.
Aguirre and a new majority of the
council dismantled the Traffic Department. Illegals were given
overnight-parking permits and impounds stopped. You didn't need a
license to drive in Maywood. The Los Angeles Times wrote glowingly of
this "progress" in a story entitled "Welcome to Maywood, Where Roads
Open Up For Immigrants".
The Maywood Police Department was
restructured by the new council. A new chief and new officers were
hired. Later it turned out that many of the new officers had previously
been fired from other law enforcement agencies for a variety of
infractions. The Maywood P.D. was known as the "Department of Second
Chances."
Among those hired was a former L.A.
Sheriff's deputy terminated for abusing jail inmates; a former LAPD
officer fired for intimidating a witness; and an ex-Huntington Park
officer charged with negligently discharging a handgun and driving
drunk.
Even the L.A. Times called the Maywood
Police Department a "haven for misfit cops." Their story alleged that a
veteran officer was extorting sex from relatives of a criminal fugitive;
that another officer tried to run over the president of the Maywood
Police Commission; and that another officer has impregnated a teenage
police-explorer scout.
Charges of corruption and favoritism
led to one recall of city council members and threats of more recalls
are heard to this day.
Maywood is represented in the state
Senate by Democrat "One Bill" Gil Cedillo. He earned the nickname by
introducing every year in the state legislature a bill to grant drivers
licenses to illegals. Maywood is represented in Congress by Democrat
Lucille Roybal-Allard, a staunch advocate of amnesty for illegals.
Today, Maywood is broke. Its police
department dismantled along with all other city departments and
personnel. Only the city council remains and a city manager to manage
the contracts with other agencies for city services in Maywood.
Maywood is the warning of what happens
when illegal immigrants, resisting assimilation as Americans, bring with
their growing numbers the corruption and the radical politics of their
home countries. Add the radical home-grown anti-Americanism of Hispanic
"leaders" and groups like La Raza and you get schools where learning is
replaced with indoctrination, business and jobs replaced by welfare and
gangs, and a poisonous stew of entitlement politics.
In too many American communities, this
sad tale is all too familiar.
