Save Our State is an activist

Activism

Activism consists of intentional efforts to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing...

 organization opposed to illegal immigration

Illegal immigration

Illegal immigration is the migration into a nation in violation of the immigration laws of that jurisdiction. Illegal immigration raises many political, economical and social issues and has become a source of major controversy in developed countries and the more successful developing countries.In...

 in Southern California

Southern California

Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...

. The group also has a chapter in Northern California

Northern California

Northern California is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The San Francisco Bay Area , and Sacramento as well as its metropolitan area are the main population centers...

. As of November 2009, the Saveourstate.org has become inactive and bears the message, "Saveourstate.org forums and website have been closed indefinitely." The Northern California Chapter has since taken over direction of the organization.

Origin

The group takes its name from California's 1994 Proposition 187

California Proposition 187 (1994)

California Proposition 187 was a 1994 ballot initiative to establish a state-run citizenship screening system and prohibit illegal aliens from using health care, public education, and other social services in the U.S. State of California...

, known as the "Save Our State" initiative. The proposition, which would have denied taxpayer-funded health care and education to illegal immigrant residents of California, was approved by a majority of voters in 1994 but was immediately challenged in court and was eventually struck down by a US district court

United States district court

The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...

 four years later.

The group was incorporated in July 2004 by Ventura

Ventura, California

Ventura is the county seat of Ventura County, California, United States, incorporated in 1866. The population was 106,433 at the 2010 census, up from 100,916 at the 2000 census. Ventura is accessible via U.S...

 resident Joseph Turner, who was unsatisfied with the existing immigration-reform groups whose letter-writing campaigns he deemed ineffectual. In an interview, Turner stated, "Our belief is that if that worked or had any sort of positive influence, we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in." In contrast, SOS's tactics are statedly "aggressive", and "in-your-face". Their language reflects this, intentionally eschewing what they perceive to be the political correctness

Political correctness

Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...

 that characterized the language of the 1990s. In the opinion of Turner and many of his supporters, political correctness and multiculturalism are both factors that contribute to the continued entry of illegal aliens into the United States.

Tactics

Members of Save Our State frequently travel outside of their hometowns to protest day labor sites in other communities, sometimes eliciting criticism from locals for doing so. They are known to carry signs, pepper spray

Pepper spray

Pepper spray, also known as OC spray , OC gas, and capsicum spray, is a lachrymatory agent that is used in riot control, crowd control and personal self-defense, including defense against dogs and bears...

 and other weapons, and video camera

Video camera

A video camera is a camera used for electronic motion picture acquisition, initially developed by the television industry but now common in other applications as well. The earliest video cameras were those of John Logie Baird, based on the electromechanical Nipkow disk and used by the BBC in...

s with which to post footage from the day's events to video-sharing services.

The underlying philosophy of the protests is referred to by Turner as "the transference of pain", a tactic for which he credits his wife.

Activities

SOS's first action was in December 2004, when, after launching a website with a forum, they announced a boycott of Home Depot for funding day labor centers on or near their store locations. This campaign continues to the present, and SOS members routinely travel to Home Depot locations to protest.

In the spring of 2005, SOS protested billboards advertising KRCA-TV's Spanish-language

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 newscast that displayed the Mexico City

Mexico City

Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...

 landmark Angel of Independence

El Ángel

El Ángel de la Independencia , most commonly known by theshortened name El Ángel and officially known as Columna de la Independencia, is a victory column located on a roundabout over Paseo de la Reforma in downtown Mexico City.El Ángel was built to commemorate the centennial of the beginning of...

 in the center of the Los Angeles

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

 skyline. The text in question read "Los Angeles, CA Mexico. Tu Ciudad. Tu Equipo." ("Your city. Your newsteam.")http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43973

Baldwin Park

The group's next action provoked a great deal of controversy. SOS protested the monumental artwork Danzas Indigenas at the Metrolink

Metrolink (Southern California)

Metrolink is a commuter rail system serving Los Angeles and the surrounding area of Southern California; it currently consists of six lines and 55 stations using of track....

 station in Baldwin Park, California

Baldwin Park, California

Baldwin Park is a city located in the central San Gabriel Valley region of Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 75,390, down from 75,837 at the 2000 census.- History :...

. The work, commissioned by the city and designed by UCLA

University of California, Los Angeles

The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...

 professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

, Chicana

Chicano

The terms "Chicano" and "Chicana" are used in reference to U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. However, those terms have a wide range of meanings in various parts of the world. The term began to be widely used during the Chicano Movement, mainly among Mexican Americans, especially in the movement's...

 artist, and SPARC

Social and Public Art Resource Center

The Social and Public Art Resource Center is a non-profit community arts center based in Venice, California. SPARC hosts exhibitions, sponsors workshops and murals, and lobbies for the preservation of Los Angeles-area murals and other works of public art...

 founder Judy Baca

Judy Baca

Judith Francisca Baca is an American artist, activist, and University of California, Los Angeles professor of fine arts...

 with community input, featured several inscriptions on Mission

Spanish missions in California

The Spanish missions in California comprise a series of religious and military outposts established by Spanish Catholics of the Franciscan Order between 1769 and 1823 to spread the Christian faith among the local Native Americans. The missions represented the first major effort by Europeans to...

-style arches, two of which drew the ire of anti-illegal immigration activists. A quote from the Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldúa reads, "This land was Mexican once, was Indian always and is, and will be again." The other read "It was better before they came." About the first quote, Turner stated, "It's seditious. It essentially talks about returning this land to Mexico." About the second quote, which Baca states was actually uttered by a white Baldwin Park resident lamenting the influx of Mexicans after World War II, Baca has stated that it is deliberately ambiguous to allow the viewer's interpretation of "they" to reveal something about the viewer. SOS claims the referent of "they" is "white people".

On May 14, 2005, approximately 25 members of Save Our State held signs in front of the monument. 300 counterprotesters also showed up, shouting such slogans as "Racists go home" and displaying the flag of Mexico

Flag of Mexico

The flag of Mexico is a vertical tricolor of green, white, and red with the national coat of arms charged in the center of the white stripe. While the meaning of the colors has changed over time, these three colors were adopted by Mexico following independence from Spain during the country's War...

 when squaring off against the American flags

Flag of the United States

The national flag of the United States of America consists of thirteen equal horizontal stripes of red alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the canton bearing fifty small, white, five-pointed stars arranged in nine offset horizontal rows of six stars alternating with rows...

 carried by Save Our State. Police in riot gear were called in from several neighboring departments to maintain a wall of separation between the groups. One woman was injured; she was held overnight for observation but was released the next day.

The event was covered in local newspapers, as well as by writers for the Los Angeles Independent Media Center

Independent Media Center

The Independent Media Center is a global participatory network of journalists that report on political and social issues. It originated during the Seattle anti-WTO protests worldwide in 1999 and remains closely associated with the global justice movement, which criticizes neo-liberalism and its...

, and in broadcast media by KPFK

KPFK

KPFK is a listener-sponsored radio station based in North Hollywood, California, United States, which serves the Greater Los Angeles Area, and also streams 24 hours a day via the Internet...

's Uprising and What's Right With America (WRWA), a conservative public-access television

Public-access television

Public-access television is a form of non-commercial mass media where ordinary people can create content television programming which is cablecast through cable TV specialty channels...

 cable TV talk show in Santa Barbara, California

Santa Barbara, California

Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...

. National conservative websites such as World Net Daily picked up the story after viewing footage posted on WRWA's website.http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44501 The SOS website also experienced heavy traffic, with supporters and detractors alike registering thousands of opinions.

Baldwin Park Mayor

Mayor

In many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....

 Manuel Lozano has publicly defended the language of the monument as a work of art, therefore free expression, and has demonstrated his support for counterprotesting organizations with "handshake walk" among their ranks. He has publicly described Save Our State as a 'hate group'. Mayor Lozano led the Baldwin Park City Council to formally proclaim that the monument would remain intact on June 25, 2005.

Alleged ties to extremist groups

Save Our State has been described as an anti-immigrant hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center

Southern Poverty Law Center

The Southern Poverty Law Center is an American nonprofit civil rights organization noted for its legal victories against white supremacist groups; legal representation for victims of hate groups; monitoring of alleged hate groups, militias and extremist organizations; and educational programs that...

. In 2005, the SPLC reported that white supremacists had participated in Save Our State demonstrations, and stated that the Save Our State online forums frequently contain derogatory or hate-based statements about Mexicans and other Latinos. The same report quotes Turner as saying "there seems to be very little we can do to keep them from piggybacking off our activism. ... [W]e are unable to really do anything about it." And admits that he has kicked several white supremacists off the forums, though he allows offensive comments to remain, as long as they do not advocate violence.