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A week from today Arizona police will have the legal authority to stop people they suspect of being undocumented and demand their papers. A number of civil rights groups including the ACLU are presenting arguments in court this morning to try to block the implementation of SB 1070, the law giving police that authority. In the wake of Governor Jan Brewer signing the controversial bill into law, the momentum against anti-immigrant sentiment has been building on a number of fronts and even spilling into the American mainstream. Particularly potent is the threat by Major League Baseball players to not play in next year’s All Star game scheduled in Phoenix. Considered to be part of the broad-based boycott of Arizona, pressure is mounting to simply move the entire game out of the state. At the July 13th game here in Anaheim, California, protesters gathered to send a strong message to “Move the Game.” Major League Baseball is a huge business and actually has a significant portion of its workforce born outside the United States. Jose Valverde, a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers originally from the Dominican Republic, said “us Latinos have contributed so much to this country… We get our hands dirty and do the work gringos don’t want to do.” But the MLB Commissioner Bud Selig has side-stepped the issue, saying that the Arizona immigration law will “be solved in the political process.”

GUEST: Roberto Lovato, a writer and commentator with New America Media. He is also a frequent contributor to The Nation and the Huffington Post, and a founding member of Presente.org.

Find out more at www.movethegame.org, or text the words “all star” to 30644.