Two rallies, two outlooks
“They had forsaken home and family, and gone into the unknown of a new land with only courage and the hands that God gave them, and had given us in our turn the right to be born American.”
With those words, Nevada’s much-beloved author Robert Laxalt exquisitely told the story of his own immigrant family, a story brimming with the dignity of hard work by his own father, a Basque sheepherder who immigrated to Nevada’s “promised land” in search of a better life.
Those insightful words were adopted as a call to action by a group of protestors last Saturday, whose T-shirts were emblazoned with the Laxalt quote on the back and the words “Immigrants Welcome to this Sweet Promised Land” on the front. The protesters set up on a corner of Highway 395, about a mile from the Corley Ranch where the author’s great-nephew, Adam Laxalt, was hosting a fundraiser for his political action committee as he runs for governor on an anti-immigrant platform one imagines his great-uncle would abhor.
Laxalt traded on his family heritage by using a traditional Basque Fry as a fundraising device, inviting supporters to the ranch to mingle with right-wing Republicans as they held forth on GOP campaign themes. Saturday’s event produced surreal moments as speaker after speaker insisted that Nevada is being threatened with a takeover by an imaginary hoard of invading progressives from California, arguing that the election of Republicans up and down the ticket is our only hope of salvation.
Participants heard from Nevada’s U.S. Sen. Dean Heller as he promised forcefully to prevent Las Vegas from becoming a “sanctuary city,” an action virtually no one is planning. Heller also attacked the media, specifically Reno Gazette Journal political coverage, accusing the paper of writing “puff pieces for all Democrats,” a statement that will surprise many a Democratic candidate who might argue that Republicans are the ones treated far too gently.
National Rifle Association spokesperson Dana Loesch urged the crowd to take notice of the “scourge” of Californians moving to Nevada who “are bringing their socialist values with them” and suggested that perhaps building “another wall” around Nevada might protect us from the California migrants “who think we can’t have guns, we have to have high taxes, and the government has to tell us what to do every second of our lives.”
Back on the corner of the highway, home-grown progressives were framed by the Trump chicken—an inflatable balloon with a decided resemblance to the president—serving as a counter-point to Laxalt’s guests, who also included Kellyanne Conway and Republican U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes of California. This crowd was very diverse, full of descendants of the original peoples of Nevada from several local tribes, families who have lived in Nevada for generations and immigrants who have called Nevada home far longer than candidate Laxalt, who moved here in 2011 from his home in the D.C. area.
Perhaps most striking were the number of youth represented at the rally, indicative of the national surge of newly registered voters and emerging political activism from those under 30 years old. Flyers outlined the protestors’ grievances, ranging from the Trump/Heller/Laxalt war on women and health care to the GOP attacks “on our land, water and communities.” They also were critical of Laxalt’s stand on gun safety and background checks and the GOP’s “inhumane immigration policies that divide parents from their children.”
While Nevada’s GOP leaders yucked it up at the Fry with recycled Ron Knecht gags about re-naming our state Eastern California—a joke that wasn’t funny in 2003 and is just as ludicrous now—there’s something vital they failed to notice or acknowledge. Nevada’s progressives aren’t massing at the border with California. We’re already here.