{"id":984,"date":"2010-03-07T01:10:48","date_gmt":"2010-03-07T01:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoe.com\/wheresjoe\/?p=422"},"modified":"2010-03-07T01:10:48","modified_gmt":"2010-03-07T01:10:48","slug":"road-blocks-and-ant-hills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=984","title":{"rendered":"road blocks and ant hills"},"content":{"rendered":"

I met with Alterna’s Anton Flores one more time before leaving LaGrange. \u00a0 (Alterna, again, is a small community of Hispanic immigrants living in a cluster of homes on one block here.) \u00a0 As part of Flores’s work with Alterna, he is an advocate for Hispanics at the local court house. \u00a0 He said one of the biggest problems in the town for immigrants, as he sees it, are the frequent police “road blocks.” \u00a0 There were a phenomenal 190 road blocks set up in LaGrange last year. \u00a0 Flores said while the police indicate their intention is to look for things like open containers, drugs, and the like… What happens often at these road blocks is that illegal immigrants are caught driving from the factories at shift changes (when the road blocks are often set up) without a driver’s license. \u00a0 If caught, the fine is a staggering $987. \u00a0 Flores said this is a significant revenue earner for the city of LaGrange. \u00a0 (LaGrange, incidentally, doesn’t have a property tax.) \u00a0 Flores said he sees this as tremendously exploiting. Speaking of the road being blocked… \u00a0 We left LaGrange on Friday afternoon and headed toward the Open Door Community<\/em> \u00a0 in the heart of Atlanta. \u00a0 On I-75, about 10 miles from the Open Door, we ended up in a massive<\/em> , rush hour traffic jam. \u00a0 It took us a good hour to go about 10 miles. \u00a0 There was no accident(s). \u00a0 Just cars inching along at a snail’s pace on a multitude of lanes converging all over the place. \u00a0 People metaphorically refer to it around here as ants streaming to an ant hill. \u00a0 And it’s a quite apt description. What’s more, our daughter Sarah (who once won an Earth Day<\/em> award for an essay about global warming) pointed out that many of the cars had just one person in them. \u00a0 Note:<\/strong> \u00a0 During World War II, people in America were rationed four gallons of gasoline a week. \u00a0 And billboards went up saying: \u00a0 “If you’re riding alone, you’re riding with Hitler.”<\/em><\/strong> \u00a0 People sacrificed for the war effort then. \u00a0 We now, I believe, have an all out ‘war on the environment’ that requires a tremendous amount of sacrificing as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I met with Alterna’s Anton Flores one more time before leaving LaGrange. \u00a0 (Alterna, again, is a small community of Hispanic immigrants living in a cluster of homes on one block here.) \u00a0 As part of Flores’s work with Alterna, …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}