Dodgers radio KABC 790 AM is now airing a 30-second ad created by Los Angeles labor unions calling out the racial profiling aspect of Arizona’s new immigration law as “wrong.” In baseball, the ad notes, “the umpire must call the play the same way, no matter what uniform the player is wearing.” But according to Arizona’s new law, local police officers will have to “call things differently.” Based on skin color or appearance, a person “might be arrested as a suspected undocumented immigrant.”
The ads are sponsored by the L.A. County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, which represents more than 800,000 working men and women in LA County. The ad contrasts the prejudice and racial profiling encouraged by the Arizona law with the achievements of Jackie Robinson and Major League Baseball in breaking the color barrier in 1947.
“L.A. unions stand united against Arizona’s immigration law that targets brown people as suspects,” says Maria Elena Durazo, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, “What Arizona poses as a solution is no more than ethnic and immigrant scapegoating. It is not what the United States is based on, and it is wrong.
RBR-TVBR asked Caroline O’Connor, Communications Director Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, how long the campaign will run: “We have an ongoing spot with Dodgers Radio to play our ads. Our ads run for as long as we need them to in terms of our various campaigns. We do not have a set date for taking the AZ immigration ad off the air at this point. We use the Dodgers Radio airwaves to inform our members and working families in Los Angeles County about the L.A. County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO and the issues and campaigns we are fighting for. In this case, the Dodgers Radio ad is just one part of our overall campaign to achieve comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level,” she said. “Our ads on Dodgers Radio KABC help bolster our organizing and political efforts in Los Angeles County. We don’t believe Arizona’s SB 1070 is the solution for our national broken immigration system. The L.A. County Federation of Labor is working on several fronts to activate our own people in Los Angeles County to push the federal government to enact comprehensive immigration reform, and the Dodgers Radio ad is one piece of that.”
RBR-TVBR observation: Certainly, a lot of Dodgers fans in Arizona will hear the ads – online or via AM skywave for some later games. However, we wonder why the LA unions didn’t give Phoenix/Arizona stations the buy too. There are no Arizona stations on the Dodgers Network, so they’d likely have to air them in local inventory on Arizona ESPN Radio affiliates, which carry MLB play-by-play games.
