{"id":424145,"date":"2010-03-13T07:39:14","date_gmt":"2010-03-13T12:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thehollywoodliberal.com\/2010\/03\/13\/city-removes-spanish-language-census-sign-after-angry-citizens-and-lawmakers-raise-a-fuss\/"},"modified":"2010-03-13T07:39:14","modified_gmt":"2010-03-13T12:39:14","slug":"city-removes-spanish-language-census-sign-after-angry-citizens-and-lawmakers-raise-a-fuss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/424145","title":{"rendered":"City Removes Spanish-Language Census Sign After ?Angry? Citizens And Lawmakers Raise A Fuss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a  rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2010\/03\/12\/census-spanish-banner\/\" >City Removes Spanish-Language Census Sign After ?Angry? Citizens And Lawmakers Raise A Fuss \t\t<\/a><br \/> Until recently, downtown Prescott, AZ had two large banners encouraging people to participate in the 2010 Census &#8212; one in English and the other in Spanish. However, the Spanish-language banner has been taken down &#8220;after at least four dozen citizens and two city council members questioned its appropriateness&#8220;: City of Prescott Executive Assistant Patty Crouse [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/censusbannerp.jpg\" alt=\"Census banner\" title=\"Census banner\" width=\"261\" height=\"211\" class=\"imgright\"\/> Until recently, downtown Prescott, AZ had two large banners encouraging people to participate in the 2010 Census &#8212; one in English and the other in Spanish. However, the Spanish-language banner has been taken down &#8220;after at least four dozen citizens and two city council members <a  rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.dcourier.com\/main.asp?SectionID=1&#038;SubSectionID=1086&#038;ArticleID=78660\">questioned its appropriateness<\/a>&#8220;:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>City of Prescott Executive Assistant Patty Crouse said she also <strong>fielded five or 10 calls from people angry about seeing a banner in Spanish near the entrance to the city<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>[Council member John] Hanna said he personally didn&#8217;t like the sign, either.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;If you&#8217;re here in the U.S. and can&#8217;t speak English, you need to go home,&#8221; Hanna said, especially people who are here illegally.<\/strong> &#8220;If you&#8217;re counting them&#8230;you&#8217;re saying you&#8217;ll do whatever you can to cater to their needs.&#8221; [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>When The Daily Courier asked about why he was concerned about visitors seeing a sign in Spanish, [Council member Steve] Blair explained, <strong>&#8220;It would seem like we&#8217;re a Spanish community rather than an English community,&#8221; and most visitors are not Hispanic.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Blair also tried to insist that he wasn&#8217;t being racist. &#8220;I have nothing against Spanish people,&#8221; said Blair, adding that &#8220;many of his wife&#8217;s family members are Hispanic.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>These lawmakers aren&#8217;t doing their city any favors. Data from the Census are <a  rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2009\/06\/27\/census-bachmann-mpr\/\">used to determine political representation<\/a> and direct $300 billion in federal funds to state and local governments. When the Daily Courier pointed out to Blair that Prescott &#8220;<a  rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.dcourier.com\/main.asp?SectionID=1&#038;SubSectionID=1086&#038;ArticleID=78660\">gets $12,000 in federal money<\/a> over the next decade for every 2010 resident regardless of whether they&#8217;re here legally,&#8221; the council member said that he didn&#8217;t know about that fact. Hanna &#8220;said he&#8217;d rather see illegal residents leave than get the extra money.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The <a  rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/wonkroom.thinkprogress.org\/2009\/10\/07\/vitter-bennett-census-immigration\/\">right wing<\/a> has been <a  rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/wonkroom.thinkprogress.org\/2009\/10\/13\/phil-kent-census-immigration\/\">waging an aggressive campaign<\/a> to <a  rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/wonkroom.thinkprogress.org\/2010\/02\/06\/marco-rubio-immigration-census\/\">exclude<\/a> undocumented immigrants from the Census count. But an exclusion of undocumented immigrants could lead to &#8220;inaccurate demographic information and result in costly mistakes in <a  rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/wonkroom.thinkprogress.org\/2009\/08\/10\/immigration-census-bureau\/\">infrastructure, education, and healthcare planning<\/a>.&#8221; Businesses &#8220;also rely on accurate social, economic and demographic census information so they can make smart investment decisions.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Prescott City Manager Steve Norwood said that although he took down the $995 Spanish-language sign <a  rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.dcourier.com\/main.asp?SectionID=1&#038;SubSectionID=1086&#038;ArticleID=78660\">after just four days<\/a> (it went up on March 1 and came down on March 5), the city is reaching out to the Latino community on the Census in other ways. (HT: <a  rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/john-amato\/arizona-cant-have-spanish-census-banner\">C&#038;L<\/a>)<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>City Removes Spanish-Language Census Sign After ?Angry? Citizens And Lawmakers Raise A Fuss Until recently, downtown Prescott, AZ had two large banners encouraging people to participate in the 2010 Census &#8212; one in English and the other in Spanish. However, the Spanish-language banner has been taken down &#8220;after at least four dozen citizens and two [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":807,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-424145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/807"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}