Why hispanics think it's racism, not illegals.

One has to look no further than the blog of the President of Help Save Manassas for clear examples of why the Legal Hispanic Community has a right to think that groups like Help Save Manassas are not really about illegals, but about ridding our county of Hispanics.

In a post titled "An Interesting Approach To Spanish-Language Signs", Greg relays a story from one of his readers:

I do most of my grocery shopping at Shoppers of Manassas up by Costco. I went in the other day and was tired of seeing some sign in Spanish on the door. I walked in reached around and took the sign down. I walked over to the customer service manager and said, “I do not approve of signs in anything other than English. Do not put this back up.”

Greg than exhorted his readers to follow this example:

The key here is to not damage any store property in any way, but to just bring it to the management with the request that they not display it. This could make one heck of a powerful statement if enough people did the same thing. At this point in the year, I imagine the last thing retail managers want to do is be constantly fooling with signage instead of managing their customers.

The idea Greg is pushing is that if his readers take down spanish signs in the stores, the managers will be too busy with Christmas to be able to run around and put them back up. He suggests that this does not "damage any store property", but of course the signs are the stores, as well as the placement of those signs.

And in fact, Greg admits this is a cost to the stores, noting that it will take time (paid time) away from dealing with customers if they have to put the signs back up.

TO their credit, SOME of Greg's readers showed a lot more sense than Greg did. Some examples:

You don’t have to like it, and you can stop shopping there if you want, but pulling that sign down comes pretty close to destruction of private property.
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Lowe’s and Shoppers have every right to put up signs in Spanish and sell Spanish language birthday cards, and they freely exercise that right (as do Walmart, Home Depot, Target, CVS, Giant, and many other area retail establishments). Customers do NOT have the right to take down signs in stores without permission even though they’re annoyed.
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Unlawfully removing a sign might build up morale for some, but it does a lot of harm to the rule of law point of view

Other regular readers saw nothing wrong with the suggestion, and in fact had their own complaints about Hispanics and the Spanish Language:

I’ve seen Hispanics (they were speaking Spanish) eating the peanuts out of the bin and throwing back the shells in the bin. I’ve saw another Hispanic couple (they were speaking Spanish) proceed to eat from the produce. Maybe we should call the health department.
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We are whining about it because our cities (in America mind you) are being overrun by these Spanish signs. ... If they want to cater to a bunch of criminals that the local government chooses to coddle, against the wishes of its citizens, then they will do it without my patronage. The last time I was in there was about three years ago when the place was packed with Hispanics and it was literally like Scottie beamed me in to Mexico.
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I stopped shopping at shoppers many years ago because they cater to the Hispanic crowd at my expense. It was like a Tijuana flea market in there with a gazillion Hispanics, half of whom were on food stamps, kids running amuck and all speaking foreign languages. I don’t want nor do I need to be around that. Bloom is a much nicer experience. I’ll pay the extra to shop somewhere that resembles America. I suggest you all do that as well.

Separate but unequal? "resembles America"? I wonder if the writer has ever been to a downtown ethnic neighborhood?

Another poster blamed republicans for this. I reject that notion, I don't know what these people are that post to Greg's web site, but Greg is no "republican", nor a "conservative", and the people he leads around aren't any republicans I know:

the post above and this subject is an example of why the Republican party continues losing elections in Virginia and elsewhere.
A campaign against Spanish language signs is clealy aimed at ALL Hispanics - legal or illegal, recently arrived individuals, or those who arrived with Cortez.

You can be in favor of border enforcement, but when you’re whining about Spanish language signs, you’re alienating millions of people.

Keep it up. The Republican party is the party of whiners and they will continue to be losers.

I urge all REPUBLICAN elected officials to appropriately distance themselves from Help Save Manassas so long as they have Greg Lettiecq as their President. This type of bigotry has no place in the Republican party, of which I believe Greg is no longer a member.

It's perfectly rational to argue that the STATE should do all business in English. It is criminal to call for people to tear down the private signs of a private business just because it bothers you that you can't read it.

This follows on the heels of a previous Greg complaint about a Hispanic entry in the Christmas parade. In that thread, one poster summed up the contention being raised in the community:

I think Freedom said it best with her “poke in the eye” remark. If the Latino community was, indeed, interested in living in peace with the rest of us they wouldn’t be trying to “poke us in the eye” at every turn. This past year has been one long continual “poke in the eye” from Hispanic extremists and their Anglo supporters. It’s almost as if they are TRYING stir up anger and negative emotions to the point where violence is inevitable.

If any reasonable Latinos who actually came to this country for the purposes that they claim (wanting only to work, seek a new and better life for their families, and earn the American dream on the path to citizenship) then they better start thinking long and hard about those they are allowing to put THIS face upon their efforts.

If I were talking to a Hispanic who was asking me how we could mend fences, I might find some nice way to say that. But when a white person makes that kind of statement to other white people in a thread complaining about Hispanics, the comment serves only to stir up resentment and anger.

Which seems to be the intent of Greg and his blog.