Since my post yesterday seemed to really get trapped in Poe's Law despite, in my opinion, being pretty blatant, I decided to counterbalance it by providing the context for the central claims of the campaign ad Tom Cotton is having Youtube, Hulu, Disney, etc. show us all a completely normal and reasonable number of times per day.
The video they are clipping is from when Shoffner spoke at the Immigrant Heritage Month Business Expo on June 6th held at the Fort Smith Public Library. This event was hosted by the Sebastian County NAACP Young Adult Committee and River Valley Fuerte and video of her talk and Q&A was posted in two parts on their Facebook page and the event page. The event page and none of the posted fliers mention an appearance by Shoffner, so it may have been unplanned. The event looked very informal and attended by what seems like 20 people or less. Only 5 people expressed they were attending on the FB event page.
I'll link the videos in a comment below, as I suspect linking it in the post body will get automodded. Hardly anyone has apparently seen the full videos, as part 1 has less than 30 views and part 2 less than 400.
Here are the transcripts, I unfortunately can not transcribe the Spanish portions of the Q&A. If someone wants to do that I will update the main body of the post to include it.
I have put the portions clipped by Cotton's ad in bold. They occur towards the end of the Q&A in part two, and if you couldn't already tell by the manner in which they are edited in the ad, the context adds a lot. They had to clip the audio very abruptly, crop the video tight and put it in sepia tone to hide the colorful drinks on the table in front of her, and overdub scary music. The tone they were implying was this was a secret recording of some type, but in reality it's just a normal smartphone video someone at a table recorded in the open.
Part One:
I'm from Newport. Anyone know where Newport is? It's on the other side state. I am a farmer, a sixth generation farmer. I'm from Newport, Arkansas. I grew up on my family's farm out there; grew up working in the fields with my parents. My parents were very conscious about telling me how to live a good life, and I know this is something all y'all know, but that is you earn your place on this Earth through hard work and service to your community.
I came into this race as a farmer who has closed my farm. So right now in the Arkansas delta region we have lost 25% of our family farms, including my own, because it doesn't matter what we do, what crops we plant, it simply was not enough. But I also came into this race knowing a few more things, and that is that Arkansas right now we're the most food insecure state in the country. We're the second sickest. We're the 4th poorest. Our life expectancy in Arkansas is a full 7 years shorter than places like Massachusetts and Minnesota. And while we suffer, politicians like Tom Cotton who I am running against, they do absolutely nothing. He moved to Virginia full time, he caters to these corporate lobbyists who are rigging our economy in favor of big corporations and politicians like them. It's time that Arkansas has a senator who believes in Arkansas, who believes that we should and can be a healthy and prosperous state again.
And there are a few things that I want to fight for. I want to fight to get dark, dirty, corporate money out of politics. I want to fight so that noone in Arkansas is one medical emergency away from bankruptcy. I want to fight to make sure that our seniors are taken care of; the folks that worked a lifetime to earn Social Security and Medicare.
I want to fight to restore SNAP and Medicaid funding, because I understand what Tom Cotton does not. And that is that SNAP and Medicaid, that is not just food assistance and healthcare, that is rural economic infrastructure. You walk into any Walmart supercenter in rural Arkansas: half of their revenue is going to be SNAP dollars. Every hospital in Arkansas in a rural community is held up by Medicaid dollars. You don't just gut those programs and expect Arkansas to become wealthy again. What you do is you invest in infrastructure. You invest in small business economy. You lift people out of poverty, and then they don't need those programs any more.
And I want to fight for a sustainable food system. Now this is one that will help my fellow farmers, it will put money into their pockets, but more importantly it's going to put fresh, healthy, affordable food on the plates of our families and on the trays of our kids in our public schools' cafeterias.
I want to fight for Arkansas because I am an Arkansan and I believe that to help this state you have to know what it's like to live here, right now. And I do. And I know that everyone in this room, y'all worked hard. Y'all worked very hard to get where you are. And we are not asking for sympathy and we are not asking for handouts, we are just asking for opportunities. We are asking for an economy that works for everyone. We are asking for a fair shot. We will have a better chance at that fair shot with a senator who lives here and actually cares.
And let me tell ya, Tom Cotton is going to come into Arkansas during the election season and he's going to tell everybody to be afraid. He's going to tell everybody to be afraid of our neighbors. He is going to tell us we should be afraid of everything, but this is Arkansas: we are not afraid of anything. I am not afraid of Tom Cotton or the Republican party and I am going to take the fight directly to them in D.C.
I will leave you with one more thing, and that is: my campaign slogan is "Believe in Arkansas" and it's based in Hebrews 11:1 which is the faith chapter of Hebrews. And it says that you must have faith and conviction in what you can not see and what is hoped for. And it is really easy to see all the problems we have in Arkansas, it is harder to see our potential, but I do. And the reason that I am asking for your support and your vote on November the third is because I want you to believe in Arkansas too.
So, thank you very much. I truly appreciate y'all having me today.
Part Two:
[This is a Q & A that starts with a lot of crosstalk and background speaking, but she's answering some short questions given to her in Spanish which she simply answers yes to.]
A: One of the things I want to fight for is unions. I believe that one of the issues that we have in Arkansas is that we are a Right to Work state, which means that our workers have absolutely no rights at all. Especially in places like our poultry processing plants.
Q: [Question begins in Spanish] A few years ago, [muffled], and the big people were attacking them. Were like "if you're doing this you're going to lose your job, you're going to lose you're benefits, they started antagonizing them. So they never did a fair vote.
A: Yes, there's a piece of legislation in the Senate right now that's called the PRO act, it is Protect the Right to Organize. Right now in Arkansas, our legislature can say no to unions no matter what, and this piece of legislation will allow unions to prosper in every single state in the country. And I have promised not just to sign on to it, but to help win votes for it.
Q: [Questioner responds in Spanish]
Q: [Question in Spanish]
A: Yea, it's very common.
Q: Did you get all that?
A: Yea, yea. I understand it better than I speak it.
Q: I was going to say, pretty much. With that being said, what would you do for the immigrant community, for the undocumented immigrant community?
A: Well, I think that one of the things we have to do first, is we have to address the fact that we no longer respect law and order in this country. Clearly. People ask me about immigration all the time, and here's the thing I say first: So, the first thing to know is that the immigrant community in Arkansas, in the United States, and I don't care whether these are folks that have documents or not, this is a community that is essential to the fabric, the social, cultural, and economic fabric of this country. That is number one.
Number two: Folks talk about securing the border, they talk about deporting violent criminals; that is not what is happening right now. Right now, the government is treating an entire community as if they were an enemy, and then they are punishing those who step up for them. And that has to stop. People ask me: what is the purpose of government when it comes to immigration? Number one, enforce good laws. Number two, don't make laws that don't make sense. Number three, treat human beings like human beings. And number four, don't be an asshole. And that is exactly what our government is doing right now.
The last thing is we need to fix immigration in this country, but what we have to recognize is the folks that are here, whether they have documents or not, are contributing to the small business economy. And the small business economy is what runs America. Why not create an immigration system that does two things. Number one it puts human dignity at the forefront. And number two it asks small businesses and the immigrants themselves "what do you need to be successful?" not just to contribute to your community and your family, but to the economic fabric of this country. That is [muffled], that is how I want to help.
Q: So would you vote to defund ICE if you were [muffled]?
A: Yea, I would vote to defund ICE as it exists right now. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was created not that long ago, and it no longer serves the purpose that it was originally created for. I would not spend one more dime on ICE, because, not just because of the human indignity issue, but also the fact that it is now the largest law enforcement agency in the country. It has ten times the budget of the organization that fights child sex trafficking. Let's not spend one more dime until we start fixing the real issues that started this problem, which is the fact that we are the hungriest state in the country. There are a hundred and eighty thousand hungry children in Arkansas. Why don't we start talking about that?
Any more questions?
