I moved west to escape the East. I stayed west to inform the East.
This took place in the late 1960s, when the anti-war movement and its cultural twin were both flowering. There's that window of opportunity we all have in our early 20s when there's nothing -- love, family, job, mortgage, school -- to batten us down. "Arizona," someone suggested with a nod and a wink. "Arizona." I knew nothing about the youngest of the lower 48, except that Barry Goldwater and marijuana both came from there, and I thought that any place where those two elements are both at play is worth investigating. I jumped through that window of opportunity and landed in Tucson.
A squat two-bedroom adobe in a working-class neighborhood full of similar houses rented for $150 monthly. A friend and I took the place. My bedroom window looked out on a couple of lonely saguaro, and every morning, I awoke to a Western B-movie set.
An active anti-war movement was in place, and I found a freelancer oasis -- a fertile town with no one else writing for the underground press or sea-level magazines such as Crawdaddy!, Fusion or 2-year old Rolling Stone. I could take part in affairs that mattered and write about Southwestern mythology at the same time.
For Crawdaddy! I wrote about the real Rosa's Cantina in El Paso and the copper-smelter workers who sipped away their afternoons at its bar. For Fusion, about the acid cowboys of northern New Mexico. And the bi-weekly Rolling Stone? They put me on retainer, sending me $50 an issue simply to be on call and give them first dibs on story ideas. I arranged for a hipster country band to play for imprisoned draft resisters at a minimum-security federal prison, then wrote it up for the Stone. Like that.
The people, the issues, the land, the air, the music and, yes, the language. All these ingredients constructed my new West. I grabbed a picket sign to march for farm workers in front of Safeway. I joined another demonstration against a university's Mormon beliefs of racial inequality. (That was at a college basketball game. Boy, were we popular.)
Late one night, I ran with a secretive group called the Eco-Raiders and wrote up their efforts to combat urban sprawl. The war against Vietnam was a constant reminder of global issues, while the desert Southwest taught me the fragility and permanence of the land.
I had not just moved to the American West. I had moved to a region with an odd-angled line running through it -- the international boundary. The north of Sonora and Chihuahua had much in common with New Mexico and "dry-faced Arizona," as Jack Kerouac called it. Mexico, too, became part of my faculty, and I, one of its pupils.
I spent time in Bisbee, Silver City, Cananea, Walsenburg (Colorado, but who's counting), El Paso-Juárez, Morenci, Cd. Chihuahua, Douglas-Agua Prieta -- many of these towns with huge mining and smelting operations. They were more than just colorful destinations on the map.
I cannot explain why I am attracted to mining camps and their stories. Traveling through the towns where copper, zinc, and coal rise to the surface and get processed, I've found a genuine kinship with miners and their families. Certainly it cannot be envy: I have no desire to descend hundreds of feet underground and extract ore or calibrate explosives in a shaft, nor do I want to drive mammoth yellow equipment pitched on tires three times the size of a pickup truck. It cannot be common background, either -- the mining communities and I have no shared past.
Still, time and again, I have been invited into miners' homes and felt privileged to listen to family histories and collective memories, to hear cherished songs explained and to read unpublished letters. It's been an honor -- one-sided, as far as I can determine -- and I've benefited by it enormously.
Back in the late 1970s, the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border was a warm and inviting place (and still is, to a certain extent, though no one believes me anymore). I traveled that Third Country sandwiched between two large powers, listening to fronterizos and writing down my impressions. Only one other writer was traveling the frontier at the time, a fellow from The New York Times who invited me to contribute to his newspaper. And so I wrote about the American West for people back East -- very part-time, nothing more than a stringer, but in a region full of life and rough edges.
They asked me to report conventional stories such as court cases, regional angles on national trends, and curious university research, but what assignment editors valued most was stories pitched from the field -- all the more so, I discovered, if they evoked the Old West with dirt roads, dusty boots, and barbed wire.
Their notion of the Southwest was matched by my compulsive attempts to fulfill it, and soon, in deference to my editors, I put a sign over my typewriter: REMEMBER: COWBOYS AMBLE, BUSINESSMEN STRIDE, MARIACHIS STROLL.
One day, I learned about a Yaqui judge who helped a Jewish retirees' club unearth the old Hebrew graveyard at Tombstone's Boothill Graveyard. The rededication ceremony was to take place later that week. This Old West story linked Jews, cowboys and Indians -- a threefer! I breathlessly called the National Desk. Instead of the usual follow-up questions, I was immediately green-lighted with an open-ended word count and a photographer.
Interpreting the Southwest for the East, I tried to give an accurate picture, though my credibility only went so far. To file a story, we'd type or handwrite our copy, then read it over long distance to the recording room in the bowels of the old Times building on West 43rd Street. A battery of transcribers would monitor our calls as we dictated our stories into their machines.
We e-nun-ci-a-ted each word, especially names, which we'd spell out, and always spoke dis-tinc-t-ly, even giving punctuation commands. The transcribers would call back if they had any questions, period, paragraph.
In one story from the frontier's smallest border town, Antelope Wells, N.M. (population: 2), I wrote about the annual cattle crossing that attracted cowboys, livestock brokers, Department of Agriculture inspectors, ranchers and customs officials from both countries.
On my way to file from the nearest pay phone five miles away, I colored the story, describing the strong chuckwagon coffee served to gathering vaqueros at daybreak by "a few Mexican cooks." The next day, I was chagrined to read in the Times that the event attracted "a few Mexican crooks."
I liked interpreting the West for the East, and in chit-chat with an editor one warm day, he asked about the racket in the background. "Oh, that's the swamp cooler," I replied, as matter-of-factly as if I had said it was my dog barking. "The what?" I explained that a swamp cooler worked on the principle of a cool damp towel tossed over the metal grill of an electric fan. This led to a major conference among editors, all of whom were intrigued with this exotic contraption -- should they assign a piece on the poor man's air conditioner? (They did, but not until much later, and then to another contributor.)
One story I wrote included the word campesinos. A copy editor called back, insisting that I blend a translation into the article. I blanketed my exasperation and asked if he would agree that campesino is one of those foreign words that has been absorbed into contemporary English. The line went silent for a moment. "I'll tell you what," he finally said. "I'll learn Spanish if they'll learn Yiddish."
Touché.
One morning, the phone rang at 7 o'clock, usually a warning that someone on the East Coast didn't understand time zones. It was an editor at Esquire who, after describing a story he wanted pursued in Texas, asked if I would, and I believe these were his exact words, "mosey on over to Houston." I informed him that if we both started moseying at the same time, he'd likely mosey into Houston before me.
The rhythm of the Southwest, its natural continuity and occasional brute force -- I suppose that's what keeps me here. I tried to move away. Twice: once to the San Francisco Bay area, and another time to Austin, Texas. Neither venture lasted more than six months. Both times, I maintained my post office box in Tucson. I knew.
Thornton Wilder lived in Southern Arizona at various stages of his life, once in Tucson in the mid-1930s, just weeks after Our Town had opened on Broadway. One early summer day, he was asked how he liked his temporary home. "I like it very much," he answered, then tempered his reply. "There are three disadvantages, two of which would be curable. I miss a great library to browse in. I miss great music. And I came at the wrong time of year."
The library problem and lack of great music have both been cured, but not Wilder's third disadvantage. In more than four decades of living here, from my first arrival one August, I've never grown accustomed to the unrelenting heat of the summer, never liked it, and annually grumble that this summer will be the last one I spend here.
The sun bores a hole through your skull until it singes the synapses in your brain and renders you powerless and stupid. Like Thornton Wilder, I came at the wrong time of the year.
The rest of the year, I need the desert. Not all the time, please, but inhaling a good whiff of it now and then keeps the lungs satisfied and reminds me that I'm not too far from the dread unknown. I need the border for its anarchic sense of reality. I need Bisbee, population 6,800, for the stumbling satisfaction it conveys. I'd like a good river and more green, but then it wouldn't be the desert Southwest.
[Tom Miller's 10 books include Trading With the Enemy: A Yankee Travels Through Castro's Cuba, and The Panama Hat Trail. He has previously written for The Rag Blog about Phil Ochs, Don Quixote, and Jerry Rubin. Read more articles by Tom Miller on The Rag Blog.]
Adrian Gonzales decided not to boycott; will he do something to make a statement at the game? Photo by Lisa Blumenfeld / Getty Images.
Why I'm boycotting Tuesday's All-Star Game in Arizona
Bud Selig's tributes to baseball's civil rights tradition now look as hollow as Sammy Sosa's old bat.
By Dave Zirin / The Rag Blog / July 11, 2011
Over the last year, civil rights organizations, politicians, sportswriters, and baseball players have asked Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to move Tuesday's 2011 All-Star Game out of Arizona. He chose not to listen and now I choose not to watch. If I lived within a day's travel of Arizona, I'd be choosing to protest at the stadium gates. Ever since Arizona passed its darkly punitive racial profiling law SB 1070, thousands of people have pleaded with Selig to do the right thing and move the game. Baseball is 27.7% Latino. It's a sport dependent on Latin American talent from the baseball academies of the Dominican Republic to today's biggest stars, Albert Pujols and Adrian Gonzalez. Even more, Major League Baseball has prided itself -- and marketed itself -- on historically being more than just a game.
Bud Selig, in particular, is a man, who publicly venerates the game's civil rights tradition. Jackie Robinson's number is retired and visible in every park and the great Roberto Clemente in death has become a true baseball saint. But Selig's inaction makes his tributes to the past look as hollow as Sammy Sosa's old bat.
Selig clearly loves the symbolism of civil rights more than the sacrifice. The presence of the game will mean a financial windfall for the state as well as for Arizona Diamondback owner Ken Kendrick. Kendrick is a first-tier right wing money bundler who has let the state politicians behind SB 1070 use his owner’s box for fundraisers.
The game will also mean a national spotlight for the vile Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County, our 21st century Bull Conner. Arpaio has been threatening to bring down his pink-clad chain gang to clean up outside the stadium.
Selig is not the only one backing down from the moment. The Major League Players Association issued a very strong statement last year against SB 1070 and hinted that a boycott might be in the cards, saying they would “consider additional measures to protect the interests of our members.” Earlier this week, after months of silence, Executive Director Michael Weiner said, “SB 1070 is not in effect and key portions of the law have been judged unlawful by the federal courts. Under all the circumstances, we have not asked players to refrain from participating in any All-Star activities.”
To say SB 1070 “is not in effect” is sophistry. Only a section of SB 1070 has been judged unlawful: the extension of police powers to demand papers without cause. Other aspects are now on the books, including stiffer penalties for “illegals” and giving citizens the right to sue any city that sets up safe havens for immigrants. In addition, State Governor Jan Brewer is currently appealing the pruning of SB 1070 directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. Also, the law has spawned copycat legislation is states around the country.
My own discussions with Arizona activists tell me that racial profiling has been rampant since the law passed, with Latinos, legal and illegal, in fear to call the police or the fire department, or even attend church. Even if you agree with Michael Weiner, as he writes that immigration matters “will not be resolved at Chase Field, nor on any baseball diamond,” the MLBPA is being remarkably cavalier about its responsibility to “protect its members.”
As for the players, a massive number are bowing out of this year’s game. Is this because of SB 1070? We don’t know, but either way a weakened product will be on display Tuesday night.
If the spotlight shifts to anyone on the field, it will be centered on Boston’s All-Star first baseman Adrian Gonzalez who changed his position a year ago that he wouldn’t play if the game were in Arizona. There is a movement to have players like Gonzalez, sympathetic to the cause, to wear a ribbon or make some kind of statement. We will see if Adrian Gonzalez takes advantage of the spotlight.
But in the end, responsibility for this debacle rests with Selig. NFL owners, whom no one would confuse with the NAACP, threatened to pull the 1993 Super Bowl out of Arizona if the state continued to refuse to recognize Martin Luther King’s birthday as a national holiday. Now, 20 years later, baseball’s commissioner does nothing.
Yes, Bud Selig would undoubtedly have received an avalanche of criticism if he had moved the game. That’s what it means to actually sacrifice something for the sake of the civil rights he claims to hold so dear. Instead, his legacy will bear another blot, joining the steroid boom, the cancellation of the 1994 World Series, and the gouging of state economies with tax-payer funded stadiums.
Now Bud Selig can always be remembered as the Seinfeld of sports commissioners: the man who did nothing; the man who, with the game on the line, kept his bat on his shoulder and took a called third strike.
Arizona's Sheriff Joe. Image from The News Junkie.
ARIZONA
1.
Cochise, son of the oak, (Guchiish) Arise The desert cries for justice
(We must scalp Sheriff Joe)
Lt. Bascom hung your brother and nephews Fed their eyes to the ravens And their feet to the coyotes
Cochise of the lance Call your blood, Mangus Colorado, (Gandazislichiidn) Tall as a mountain and unyielding
Johnson massacred 400 Apache women and children So Mangus, in his grief, made the white moon scream
Cochise, you craved peace, But the invaders murdered your children for gold, copper and real estate
(We must scalp Sheriff Joe) 2.
Arizona is one of God’s great poems But the pale mad ants Want only to spill water, asphalt, and hate
Cochise, brother to the Black man, You defeated the slave owners’ invasion at Dragoon Mountain But Lincoln sent no congratulations
Instead from Washington came soldiers, Railroads, pox, and slander Dams, jails, and ultimately Goldwater
Cochise, Last Poet of free people, You asked these questions: “Why do the Apache carry their lives on their fingernails? Why is it that the Apaches wait to die?”
“Why shut me up on a reservation? We will make peace; we will keep it faithfully. But let us go around free as Americans do. Let us go wherever we please."
3.
The Secretary of War replied:
“My dear Cochise, your aboriginal freedom is a disease that we will cure with gallows, howitzers, and cheap whiskey
We’re coming to build fences, make borders, dig holes Put men’s sweat to work under the earth Feeding bankers in distant cities
Your people are vagabonds who drift like clouds in the sky But the future is already written In the Prospectus of the Arizona Copper Corporation
If you complain about the reservation, your starving cattle and sick children We’ll exile you to a land without mountains Where, like the Jews, you’ll weep for centuries.”
4.
Great-great grandfather,
They say it has been forever But your people know it’s only been a day Since you came down from the Dragoon Mountains
Still, the sky has exploded And the locusts have eaten our dreams
Syndicates took the ore And then sold the dirt To shriveled people craving heat
Millions of lights blind the valleys The Land can no longer see Or remember its name
The whites have a new God Stranger than the last Who goes by the name ‘No Trespass’
He wears guns to school And wants to deport all the children to Mexico
He’s chiseled off the First Commandment from the church doors And replaced it with the Second Amendment
5.
Cochise,
Robespierre of the saguaro
Your pony is ready, Painted for war,
The young girls have finished Your medicine shirt
Here’s your father’s talisman Of lightning-struck oak
Cochise,
The people are chanting And we must go
To take the scalp of Sheriff Joe Arpaio
Mike Davis / The Rag Blog February 3, 2011
[Mike Davis is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. An urban theorist and a social activist, Davis is the author of City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles.]
Image from Jesse Kelly's website (now removed). The article about Kelly's appearance in Sierra Vista originally appeared in the Sierra Vista Herald.
Getting on target: The Right and the shooting in Tucson
By Tom Hayden / The Rag Blog / January 12, 2010
It appears that Arizona is ground zero in a right-wing war against the democratic process.
Rep. Giffords was on Sarah Palin's "target list" of 20 2010 incumbents, a list which featured a graphic showing the crosshairs of a gun. Giffords' office was was one of those vandalized by the right-wing in March 2009 in a protest against national health care bill. [Judge John Roll, killed in the incident, also was subject to significant threats due to his positions on immigration.] As recently as June 12, 2010, leaflets appeared in Giffords' district proclaiming: "Get on Target" and help remove Gabrielle Giffords. "Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly."
Jesse Kelly is a Marine veteran, and right-wing Republican who lost to Gifford November 4, by 48.8%-47%. Kelly was strongly supported by the Tea Party.
Salon.com named Kelly the Number 1 "most terrifying candidate" in the 2010 Congressional elections. He was criticized for taking funds and support from Americans for Legal Immigration [ALIPAC], an anti-immigrant group once denounced by Sen. John McCain's office as "white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and anti-semites." [The Hill, campaign blog, Oct. 26, 2010]. The Anti-Defamation League shared McCain's office view of ALIPAC.
Kelly's campaign site favored 10,000 U.S. troops being sent to the Arizona-Mexico border "in an active enforcement mode." Gifford supported the president's overall immigration reform legislation.
Image from Talking Points Memo.
The anti-Gifford campaign generated a climate infected by hate and violent rhetoric. But who pulled the trigger? Little has been released about Jared Lee Loughner, but at first look he seems to fit the profile of an individual prone to far-right rhetoric. Here is an apparent excerpt from Loughner's diary:
You don't have to accept the federalist laws.
Nonetheless, read the United States of America's Constitution to apprehend all of the current treasonous laws.
You're literate, listener?
If the property owners and government officials are no longer in ownership of their land and laws from a revolution then the revolutionary's from the revolution are in control of the land and laws.
The property owners and government officials are no longer in ownership of their land and laws from a revolution. Thus, the revolutionary's from the revolution are in control of the land and laws.
In conclusion, reading the second United States Constitution, I can't trust the current government because of the ratifications: The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar.
No! I won't pay debt with a currency that's not backed by gold and silver!
On the evidence so far, this is not a case of an "isolated psychopath." Nor can Sarah Palin and the Tea Party excuse themselves from responsibility by expressing best wishes for Giffords' recovery. There is a connection between the politics of vitriolic hate, symbolized by crosshairs and calls to "lock and load" or "shoot an automatic M16," and the outcome in Tucson Saturday morning.
[Tom Hayden is a former California state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice, and environmental movements. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles. His latest book is The Long Sixties. This article was also published at Progressive America Rising.]
Malcolm X at Harlem rally, December 31, 1969. Photo from New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection.
On chickens coming home to roost: Armageddon in Arizona
By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / January 11, 2011
Shortly after JFK was shot and killed, Malcolm X, the Black Muslim leader, observed, “The chickens have come home to roost.” His comment did not endear him to the Kennedy family or to large swath of the American public, but Malcolm wasn’t trying to make friends or to be nice.
He wanted to tell the truth as he saw it, and he felt that those who live by the gun, whether they are presidents of the U.S.A., or street thugs, die by the gun. In his view, it was the American way. Another African American from the same era, H. Rap Brown, noted that, “Violence is as American as cherry pie.” The shootings in Arizona show once again, after all these many years, the staying power of Malcolm X’s and Rap Brown’s words. Indeed, their words have all the force of bullets, and perhaps more, though they have caused far less violence.
Undoubtedly, much will be written about the suspect, Jared L. Loughner, and new information will emerge about him. Moreover, as we gain distance from the event, it may emerge with greater clarity, and we may have deeper insights than we now do. But reporters, columnists, and editorial writers have already piled high heated words about the incident, and, before attitudes harden, it might be helpful to float a few ideas and add them to the mix.
It seems clear from where I stand, that the suspect, Jarden L. Loughner -- who allegedly shot and killed a federal judge, a nine-year old-child and others, and seriously wounded a U.S. Congresswoman -- is a terrorist. That’s spelled T-E-R-R-O-R-I-S-T. What he did was terrorism -- it has had the effect of frightening many citizens, though not all, of course. It has made people feel terrorized.
Loughner might be a madman and a right-wing fanatic. The picture of him that the Pima County Sheriff’s office released makes him look deranged. But his armed attack was political, overtly political. It sent a clear political message. If you support health care, as Congresswoman Giffords did, and if you care about immigrants, as Federal Judge John M. Roll did, then you are a marked man or woman.
Giffords knew that she was a marked woman. Indeed, she was targeted by the Tea Baggers for her political stance on the issues, and she knew it.
“We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list,” she said. “Crosshairs of a gunsight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there’s consequences.” Giffords probably did not realize how accurate her words would prove to be.
If the shooter had been an Arab or a Muslim he undoubtedly would have been labeled a terrorist. If he were from Yemen, for example, politicians would by now be calling for the invasion of Yemen. Only the fact that he has a white skin and is a U.S. citizen has so far spared him the label of “terrorist” in much of the mass media.
Reporters have focused attention on the suspect’s mental state and on the gun he used. More attention ought to be focused on his political views and actions, though that will take some doing because Americans have a hard time understanding politics unless it’s an election year and Democrats are running against Republicans. Politics is about power, and ultimately power comes out of the barrel of a gun. Loughner must have known that.
It’s no accident that this terrorist attack took place in Arizona. Indeed, Arizona seems like the perfect or near-perfect place for an act of terrorism to take place, at least on domestic soil. Arizona politicians have been whipping up hatred for Mexicans, liberals, and Democrats. They have been lighting a fire under the citizenry, and sooner or later, given the volatile atmosphere they created, it was likely that an armed and a dangerous man would take action.
Loughner’s lawyer, Judy Clarke, who defended the Unabomber, Theodore J. Kacznski, and also the alleged Al Qaeda operative, Zacarias Moussaoui, might well point out that Loughner did not act in a vacuum. In fact, he was cooped up in a tinderbox waiting to be exploded.
Could he have chosen “better” targets? Perhaps. He chose political figures close to home and to whom he had access. Surely, his white skin and his American citizenship enabled him to get close to Congressman Gabrielle Giffords and Judge Roll without raising suspicions. Again and again, as a society, we do not seem to be alert to the white terrorists in our midst.
President Obama spoke about “grieving” and about “the tragedy.” But unless he and we do more than grieve and remain in shock, acts like the one that just took place in Arizona will take place again -- sadly, shockingly, and tragically.
H. Rap Brown was insightful in what he said: Violence is as American as cherry pie. It’s as violent a place now as it was when he made his remark in the 1960s -- and perhaps more so. We are a society that lives by the gun, worships the gun, and adores gunmen. We also die by the gun. Look around and there seems to be no end to the violence.
[Jonah Raskin has lived through the violence of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and now, twenty-first century. He is the author of American Scream, and For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman.
Protest agains Arizona's new immigration law April 25, 2010, in Phoenix. Photo from Getty Images.
Widespread struggle offers human rights vision: A movement rises in Arizona
By Jordan Flaherty / The Rag Blog / July 29, 2010
PHOENIX -- Three months ago, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law the notorious SB 1070, a bill that put her state at the forefront of a movement to intensify the criminalization of undocumented immigrants.
Since then activists have responded through legal challenges, political lobbying, grassroots organizing, and mass mobilizations. More than 100,000 people from across Arizona marched on the state capitol on May 29. Today, hundreds more have pledged to risk arrest through nonviolent direct action. These are the public manifestations of an inspiring and widespread struggle happening in this state. The organizations leading this fight offer a vision for people around the U.S. concerned with human rights.
A rogue state
Yesterday, Federal District Court Judge Susan Bolton issued a preliminary injunction against sections of Arizona law SB 1070, which is scheduled to go into effect today. The judge put a hold on some of the most outrageous parts of the bill, such as language that mandates racial profiling by officers. However, Judge Bolton left much of the rest of the law intact, including sections that specifically target day laborers.
For Arizona activists, the legal ruling represents -- at best -- a small respite. “It’s not a victory, it’s a relief,” says Pablo Alvarado of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON). “We’re putting a band-aid on a wound.”
Alvarado and the organizers with NDLON are part of a broad network of national organizations and volunteers who have joined with local organizers to fight not just against this unjust law, but also against a general climate of anti-immigrant hatred. “Arizona is a rogue state,” says Alvarado. “We’re going to use every single means that we have at our disposal to fight back.”
Puente Arizona, a Phoenix-based organization that describes itself as a human rights movement working to “resurrect our humanity,” has formed Barrio Defense Committees in neighborhoods across the city. Emulating the structure of groups founded by popular movements in El Salvador, the community-based structure work to both serve basic needs, and also build consciousness and help bring people together.
According to Puente activist Diana Perez Ramirez, the committees host regular “know your rights” trainings and ESL classes, and are organizing “Copwatch” projects. “We ask the community to unite and organize themselves,” says Ramirez. “And we are just there to support that.” More than 1,000 people have joined these neighborhood organizations so far, with more joining every day.
Puente has made use of volunteers from across the U.S., utilizing national support to help with local organizing, and initiating direct action with the support of out of town allies like the Ruckus Society, Catalyst Project, and various chapters of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). They have issued calls to action including a Human Rights Summer (modeled after the civil rights movements’ Freedom Summer) and “30 Days for Human Rights,” a month of actions culminating today, the day SB 1070 will become law.
Just after midnight, as the law took effect, the first protest of the day began, as nearly 80 people blocked the intersection at the entrance to the town of Guadalupe, a small (one square mile) Native American and Hispanic community just outside of Phoenix. The town has a long history of struggle against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has been one of the main public faces of SB 1070, and most of the protesters (and all of the organizers) were from the community.
Holding signs declaring their opposition to the new law and leading chants against police brutality, activists declared that Arpaio’s officers are not welcome in their town. The stand off against police lasted more than an hour, before protest leaders in consultation with the town’s mayor decided to open the intersection. Several more actions are planned for today.
Working proactively
The Repeal Coalition, a Flagstaff- and Phoenix-based grassroots immigrants-rights organization, was formed in 2007. The group came together because they saw a vacuum in the immigrants’ rights movement in Arizona. “Some of the left here were not being very audacious,” explains Luis Fernandez of the Repeal Coalition. “The positions in the public debate ranged from ‘kick them all out,’ to ‘get their labor and then kick them out.’”
The Repeal Coalition has staked out a position of calling for the elimination of all anti-immigration laws, declaring, “We fight for the right for people to live, love, and work wherever they please.” With this call, says Fernandez, “Now we have a real debate.”
When the coalition was founded, organizers brought in labor activists to advise them on how to build an organization along similar models to those that have built strong unions, utilizing house calls, neighborhood mapping, and group meetings. Although they are an all-volunteer group with little to no funding, they have developed a structure that has initiated large protests and provided direct service, and they are now strategizing more ways to take direct action in the post SB 1070 era.
Fernandez says that this struggle is ultimately about overcoming fear and moving from reaction to proactive action. “We’ve been in a crisis in Arizona for a long time,” he explains. “Even if SB 1070 weren’t implemented, it wouldn’t matter. The political crisis would continue.”
To address this crisis, Fernandez believes organizations must build unity across race and class. “Traditionally in America, when the working class starts suffering, instead of connecting together and looking upwards at the cause of the problem, they look sideways or downwards for who to blame.” Most important, he believes activists must take action to seize the initiative.
In this vision, he has been inspired by young organizers working on the federal DREAM ACT, a federal law that creates a path to citizenship for undocumented youth. “They came to Arizona and said, ‘we’re undocumented and we’re going to commit acts of civil disobedience.’” At first, Repeal Coalition members tried to talk them out of this action, but the youth explained, “We are going to lose our fear because it is the fear of being arrested or the fear of being deported that fuels the inability of political action.”
The bravery and vision of these youth has inspired Fernandez to continue to search for new and bold ways to take action, rather than just continually respond to right wing attacks. “We need to set the agenda,” explains Fernandez. “We have to say, ‘No, you’re going to react to us.’”
Despite a range of tactics and philosophies, one thing organizers here have in common is a dedication to exporting the lessons of their struggle. While Arizona’s law is the first and most draconian, similar laws are pending across the country. And during this current national economic crisis, more and more politicians have found that they can score political points by demonizing immigrants.
“The last two months we’ve had a lot of people calling us asking what they can do to help Arizona,” says Fernandez. “We say, organize in your own town. You don’t have to come to Arizona because Arizona is coming to you.”
[Jordan Flaherty is a journalist, an editor of Left Turn Magazine, and a staffer with the Louisiana Justice Institute. He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience, and his award-winning reporting from the Gulf Coast has been featured in a range of outlets including The New York Times, Mother Jones, and Argentina's Clarin newspaper. He has produced news segments for Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, and Democracy Now!. Haymarket Books has released his new book, FLOODLINES: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six. He can be reached at neworleans@leftturn.org.]
Reading “The Grapes of Wrath” in 2010: Immigration, capitalism, and Arizona's historic moment
By Alex Knight / The Rag Blog / June 14, 2010
[The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, published 1939 during the last Great Depression.]
Arizona SB1070, signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer on April 23, 2010, requires Arizona’s local and state law enforcement to demand the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally, and arrest them if they lack documents proving citizenship or legal residency.
Effectively making racial profiling into state policy, this law is the latest in a series of attacks on Latin American immigrants, as well as the entire Latino community, who must live with the fear of being interrogated by police for their brown skin. Then on May 11, Arizona went one step further, outlawing the teaching of ethnic studies classes, or any classes that “are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity." This same law also states that schools must fire English teachers who speak with a “heavy accent.”
Perhaps these new laws make sense if we imagine that undocumented immigrants are merely “aliens," a danger to the good, mostly white citizens of this great country. But suppose we look at the problem of immigration from the perspective of the immigrants? Why are they risking life and limb to come to a foreign land, far from their home and families? Why aren’t they deterred from making this trip no matter how many walls we put up, no matter how many police collaborate with ICE, no matter how many angry armed “Minutemen” vigilantes are conscripted to guard the border?
John Steinbeck’s classic novel The Grapes of Wrath, following the Joad family as they migrate to California during the “Dust Bowl” of the 1930s, sheds light on these questions in a way that perhaps every American can relate to. One of the most popular and well-written American books of all time, The Grapes of Wrath gives a very human perspective on the harsh lives of migrants, personified by the Joads -- a family of poor sharecroppers from Oklahoma.
Evicted from their family farm, just as the millions of Mexicans who have suffered enclosure from their land and become homeless and jobless because of NAFTA, the Joads travel to California in a desperate search of work, only to encounter the harassment of authorities and the hatred of the local population.
There are important differences between the “Okies” who traveled to the Southwest in the 1930s and Latino inmigrantes of the 2000s. The Joads, of course, were white, and did not cross a national border when they made their exodus. But at its core the story of the Joads is the story of the migrant workers, their troubles, their fears, but also their humanity, and their hope.
It is a story that can inspire us to recognize the historic nature of the moment in which we live, understand why these enormous transformations are occurring, and recognize that justice for the immigrants is justice for everyone, regardless of color or citizenship status.
"Migrant Mother." Destitute pea picker Florence Thompson with several of her children, photographed in Nipomo, California. Farm Security Administration (FSA) photo by Dorothy Lange (1936) / Wikimedia Commons.
Enclosure
In order to understand the inmigrantes we first have to understand the story of their displacement, or the enclosure of their land, which has left them homeless and with no other options than to leave their homeland in search of a wage. What can The Grapes of Wrath tell us about this reality?
People usually do not resort to risky and desperate moves unless they have nothing left to lose. Steinbeck begins the Joads’ story with the loss of everything they had: the small farm on which they had sustained their family for generations by growing cotton. Young Tom Joad, fresh out of prison, returns to his home to find it deserted.
The Reverend Casy and young Tom stood on the hill and looked down on the Joad place... Where the dooryard had been pounded hard by the bare feet of children and by stamping horses’ hooves and by the broad wagon wheels, it was cultivated now, and the dark green, dusty cotton grew... ‘Jesus!’ he said at last. "Hell musta popped here. There ain’t nobody livin’ there." (51)
Whether as tenants or small landholders, either for subsistence or for markets, the vast majority of the poor inmigrantes now coming to this country are fleeing the loss of their farms and their livelihoods, just as the Joads. Perhaps for generations, maybe hundreds or even thousands of years, they had lived in connection with the land and had been able to depend on it for the survival of their families and culture. The loss of this land is devastating to those cultures, but larger forces stand to gain by driving these people into homelessness.
The phenomenal book Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation (Autonomedia 2004) details the violent origins of capitalism in 15th-17th century Europe. In it, author Silvia Federici defines the “enclosures” that were necessary for giving birth to capitalism by divorcing the European peasantry from their traditional lands and leaving them with no other choice but to sell their labor for a wage in the emerging industrial economy.
In the 16th century, "enclosure" was a technical term, indicating a set of strategies the English lords and rich farmers used to eliminate communal land property and expand their holdings. [In the footnote she quotes E.D. Fryde:] "[p]rolonged harassment of tenants combined with threats of evictions at the slightest legal opportunity" and physical violence were used to bring about mass evictions… (69)
She goes on, revealing that this enclosure process remains a core element of the capitalist economy we live in:
In the same way in which multinational corporations take advantage of the peasants expropriated from their lands by the World Bank to construct "free export zones" where commodities are produced at the lowest cost, so, in the 16th and 17th centuries, merchant capitalists took advantage of the cheap labor-force that had been made available in the rural areas to break the power of the urban guilds... As soon as they lost access to land, all workers were plunged into a dependence unknown in medieval times, as their landless condition gave employers the power to cut their pay and lengthen the working-day." (72)
Enclosure is precisely the part of the story we never hear about in the mainstream immigration debate in America. It is never questioned why hundreds of thousands of workers are scrambling to come to the U.S., other than for “our freedom” or to “take our jobs.” But Steinbeck boldly begins The Grapes of Wrath by highlighting the enclosure process as it operated in rural America during the Great Depression.
In the 1930s, Oklahoma was ground zero for the “Dust Bowl." Unsustainable industrial farming practices such as the monoculture of cotton without crop rotation caused the soil to die, then be picked up by the wind and create enormous dust storms. On page 41, Steinbeck laments, “You know what cotton does to the land; robs it, sucks all the blood out of it.” The settling layers of dust killed the crops and made it harder for small farmers to earn a living, and many were driven into debt and became tenants on land that was then technically owned by the bank.
At the same time, large, wealthy landowners were able to use tractors and other new farming machinery to replace the many tenants who had previously been needed to work the land. “Pa borrowed money from the bank, and now the bank wants the land. The land company -- that’s the bank when it has land -- wants tractors, not families on the land” (193).
In this passage, Steinbeck brilliantly exposes the evictions as part of the normal functioning of capitalism, as a land owner arrives to evict a tenant family:
Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves...
If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, the Bank -- or the Company -- needs -- wants -- insists -- must have -- as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them… [T]he owner men explained the workings and the thinkings of the monster that was stronger than they were. A man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that. But -- you see, a bank or a company can’t do that, because those creatures don’t breathe air, don’t eat side-meat. They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don’t get it, they die the way you die without air, without side-meat... The bank -- the monster has to have profits all the time. It can’t wait. It’ll die. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can’t stay one size. (40-42)
As far as capitalism is concerned, whatever will maximize profit is the arrangement that must be pursued, regardless of the human consequences. The situation in Mexico today resembles that of Oklahoma 75 years ago. Small family farms are no longer profitable enough, and people are being thrown off their land every year by the thousands.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed into law by Bill Clinton on December 8, 1993, created the largest “free trade” zone in the world: Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The treaty stipulated that there could be no “barriers to trade," such as a tariff/tax on foreign products. In this video [below] MIT professor Noam Chomsky, interviewed by Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha, explains how the modern enclosures in Mexico are a result of NAFTA, which has not had the effect it was promised to have for the U.S. and Mexican economies.
As mentioned by Professor Chomsky, one direct result of NAFTA was the flooding of the Mexican market with artificially cheap agricultural products from the United States, such as corn, which is heavily subsidized by the U.S. government. From 1990-2000, the price of corn in Mexico fell by 58 percent, and as there is simply no way for the vast majority of Mexican tenant farmers to compete with this artificially low cost of American corn and other products, millions were driven into poverty and debt, and soon faced eviction.
This excellent article from the Institute for Food & Development Policy states that “Since NAFTA, 80 percent of rural Mexicans live in poverty, with 60 percent living in extreme poverty.” It also points out that as of 2004, a total of 1.7 million subsistence farmers had been pushed off their land because of NAFTA. So it should be no surprise that the number of Mexican immigrants entering the U.S. increased by 75 percent in the five years after NAFTA became law. The form of the enclosures has changed, but the fact has remained. People driven from their land will search for work in other places.
A group of Mexican immigrants await the arrival of authorities after being apprehended in the Arizona desert by members of Civil Homeland Defense, a citizen vigilante group. Photo by Mike Kane (2004) / UT Documentary Center / University of Texas at Austin.
Xenophobia
The second great lesson The Grapes of Wrath reveals about the immigrants is how they are feared and hated, by the local population as well as the authorities, and what it means to endure and overcome this xenophobia.
Once California belonged to Mexico and its land to Mexicans; and a horde of tattered feverish Americans poured in. And such was their hunger for land that they took the land -- stole Sutter’s land, Guerrero’s land, took the grants and broke them up and growled and quarreled over them, those frantic hungry men; and they guarded with guns the land they had stolen... And as time went on, the business men had the farms, and the farms grew larger, but there were fewer of them.
Now farming became industry, and the owners followed Rome, although they did not know it. They imported slaves, although they did not call them slaves: Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos. They live on rice and beans, the business men said. They don’t need much. They wouldn’t know what to do with good wages. Why, look how they live. Why, look what they eat. And if they get funny -- deport them. [....] And then the dispossessed were drawn west -- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Caravans, carloads, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless -- restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do -- to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut -- anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live...
They had hoped to find a home, and they found only hatred. Okies -- the owners hated them. And in the town, the storekeepers hated them because they had no money to spend... The town men, little bankers, hated Okies because there was nothing to gain from them. They had nothing. And the laboring people hated Okies because a hungry man must work, and if he must work, if he has to work, the wage payer automatically gives him less for his work; and then no one can get more. (297-300)
Throughout the book, as the weary Joads meander west on their old jalopy, their eagerness and optimism about finding decent work and a better life in California is dashed against the rocks of poverty and hatred. Early in the book, Tom’s pregnant sister Rose of Sharon Joad goes on about her expectations about life once the family arrives in California.
Well, we talked about it, me an’ Connie... Connie gonna get a job in a store or maybe a fact’ry. An’ he’s gonna study at home, maybe radio, so he can git to be an expert an’ maybe later have his own store... An’ Connie says I’m gonna have a doctor when the baby’s born; an’ maybe I’ll go to a hospiddle. An’ we’ll have a car, little car... (212)
But shortly after crossing the border into California, the Joad family encounters the authorities, who are less than pleased by the arrival of more migrants into their state. After setting up camp by a river, Ma settles down for a nap in the tent, only to be disturbed by a law enforcement agent who gives her a threatening welcome.
“Well, you ain’t in your country now. You’re in California, an’ we don’t want you goddamn Okies settlin’ down." Ma’s advance stopped. She looked puzzled. "Okies?" she said softly. "Okies." "Yeah, Okies! An’ if you’re here when I come tomorra, I’ll run ya in." He turned and walked to the next tent and banged on the canvas with his hand. "Who’s in here?" he said. (275)
It becomes clear through the story that the California police and authorities tolerate the presence of the “Okies” so they can be exploited for their extremely cheap labor. Sheriffs and rangers even guard the grounds of large private farms where migrants are bussed in. However, the cops maintain a close eye on the Okies, and are not afraid to resort to violence when they step out of line.
The Joads arrive one night in a “Hooverville,” the name for the slums on the edges of towns during the Great Depression where unemployed would set up camp. Here a contractor comes to find desperate workers, escorted by a deputy sheriff with whom Tom Joad gets into an altercation.
The contractor turned to the Chevrolet and called, "Joe!" His companion looked out and then swung the car door open and stepped out... "Ever see this guy before, Joe? He’s talkin’ red, agitating trouble…" "Hmmm, seems like I have. Las’ week when that used-car lot was busted into. Seems like I seen this fella hangin’ aroun’. Yep! I’d swear it’s the same fella." Suddenly the smile left his face. ‘Get in that car,’ he said, and he unhooked the strap that covered the butt of his automatic. Tom said, "You got nothin’ on him." The deputy swung around. "F you’d like to go in too, you jus’ open your trap once more. They was two fellas hangin’ around that lot." (338-9).
The goal of the authorities in the story, as in the country today, is to keep immigrants in a constant state of precariousness, where they cannot make waves for fear of being imprisoned or deported. This climate of fear is the real effect of Arizona SB1070, not to actually deport all the undocumented workers from the state, because that would hurt the economy that depends on their cheap labor.
In fact, this CNN video [below] documents that SB1070 has already driven away too many workers from the state and hurting the businesses that had employed them. It seems it has backfired so much that even Russell Pearce, the author of the legislation, has now reversed his stance and is supporting “guest worker” legislation to invite undocumented workers back into the state.
What does the climate of fear surrounding immigrants do for the U.S. capitalist economy and its ruling class?
First, it keeps undocumented immigrants in that precarious state where they will not seek help or point out injustices, nor will they try to organize unions and demand higher pay or working conditions. It guarantees they will mostly toil for less-than-minimum wages and suffer in silence.
Most Americans are not even aware that since NAFTA was enacted, at least 3,000 Mexicans have died trying to cross the border. Every wall that goes up on the border drives the immigrants into more remote deserts to reach their destination, increasing the likelihood of injury and death, but precious few U.S. citizens are willing to stick their necks out to help prevent such unnecessary deaths.
Second, the xenophobia encouraged by measures like SB1070 is useful for the ruling class because it drives a racial wedge into the American working class. Instead of uniting to fight for better jobs, affordable education, health care, housing, an end to environmental nightmare and endless wars, the anger of the common people is directed at the scapegoat of the immigrant.
Steinbeck illustrates this phenomenon when “a crowd of men” “armed with pick handles and shotguns,” confront the Joads after they flee the Hooverville. Interrogating and threatening the Joad family, these self-styled vigilantes act just as the “Minutemen” who today rove the deserts of Arizona, looking for “illegals.”
Though these people’s anger and fear over the state of the U.S. economy is warranted, they are failing to confront the actual thieves and criminals who have plunged the world into a new Great Depression. Because by identifying “foreigners” and people with brown skin and different accents as the reason why wages are low and jobs are lost, corporations and politicians are able to deflect attention away from the real source of economic hardship: themselves.
Conclusion
The crisis in the Southwest in the 1930s is unfortunately similar to the situation today. Hundreds of thousands of poor migrants, their land enclosed and with nowhere to go, facing long trips through the heat of the desert and the ice of xenophobia, are nevertheless persisting to do what they need to do to feed their families.
There is a tidal wave coming north now, which resembles one that three generations ago came west, but like that one there will be no stopping it by putting up walls and threatening people with violence or deportation. Desperate people will always do what they need to do to survive. The only way to stem the flow is to repair the dam that has burst through poverty and enclosure.
Latinos need decent livelihoods in Latin America before they will stop coming here, “scurrying to find work to do.” Repealing NAFTA and ending the massive corn subsidies for U.S. agribusiness would be two huge steps in the right direction. Rather than making the United States into a nasty place that no one will want to come to, why not focus on helping Mexico, Latin America, and the world as a whole, be suitable places to live, work, and raise a family?
The Grapes of Wrath, though it details the hardships of the migrant workers at great length, won the Pulitzer Prize and captured the hearts of the nation because it is ultimately a hopeful book that inspires us to act for positive change.
John Steinbeck, flexing his radical muscles, argues in the book that by targeting the weak and poor with measures such as those currently being enacted in Arizona, capitalism is only putting off its inevitable demise. “The great owners ignored the cries of history.” “[Especially,] the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.”
He explains:
The land fell into fewer hands, the number of dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on. The tractors which throw men out of work, the machines which produce, all were increased; and more and more families scampered on the highways, looking for crumbs from the great holdings, lusting after the land beside the roads. The great owners formed associations for protection and they met to discuss ways to intimidate, to kill, to gas. And always they were in fear of a principal -- three hundred thousand -- if they ever move under a leader -- the end. Three hundred thousand, hungry and miserable; if they ever know themselves, the land will be theirs and all the gas, all the rifles in the world won’t stop them.” (306-7)
[Alex Knight is an organizer, teacher and writer in Philadelphia. He is currently helping Philly mobilize for the United States Social Forum Source in Detroit this June 22-26. He also maintains the website endofcapitalism.com and is in the process of writing a book called The End of Capitalism. He can be reached at activistalex@gmail.com.]
Maintaining a whip hand, southern politicians once calculated, was the best way to defend white power. The same calculation drives contemporary Arizona politics.
By Char Miller / The Rag Blog / May 17, 2010
CLAREMONT, California -- Standing in the middle of a busy rotary intersection in Orange, California, was a clutch of anti-immigrant protesters; these young white males were demonstrating their solidarity with what they presumed to be embattled Arizonans.
As a steady stream of cars revolved around the circle, they held up hand-lettered signs, the most blunt of which read: “Illegal is not a race. It’s a Crime!” That is a distinction without a difference in Arizona, however, where being Latina/o has become criminalized. When Governor Jan Brewer signed legislation requiring local and state police to demand identification of those they “suspect” are undocumented, she and the state legislature went on record establishing a two-tier caste system: those who look white will get a pass; those who do not will get rousted. Jim Crow is alive and well in the Grand Canyon State.
Like white Southerners’ intense efforts to segregate public space after the destruction of slavery, contemporary Arizona politicians are determined to define who is “legal” and who is not; who looks like an American and who does not; who can walk down the sidewalk without fear of harassment and who must hide in the shadows.
They have also decided -- as did their white-supremacist predecessors of the late nineteenth century -- that controlling the movement of a suspect people is but one part of the battle to dominate social life. As essential is managing who gets educated and on what terms. In the postwar south this was accomplished through the creation of a flawed and inequitable educational system that received constitutional sanction in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Until repudiated by Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Plessy succeeded in deflecting Blacks’ intellectual aspirations, lowering their economic horizons, and shackling their political ambitions.
In Arizona, legislators are just as serious about cracking down on the educational hopes of what is increasingly looking like a captive population. Within days of the passage of the anti-immigration law, another bill swept through the legislature: HB 2281. Its language is disturbing, for it “prohibits a school district or charter school from including in its program of instruction any courses or classes that: Promote the overthrow of the United States government. Promote resentment toward a race or class of people. Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group. Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”
HB 2281’s goal is clear -- to tar Chicano Studies programs in state universities and public schools as insurrectionary, denounce them as anti-white, and condemn them as sources of suspicious group cohesion. Its rhetoric may be different from the Black Codes that white southerners once enacted to manipulate former slaves, but the legislation’s desires are the same -- keep the downtrodden down.
Maintaining a whip hand, southern politicians once calculated, was the best way to defend white power. The same calculation drives contemporary Arizona politics. Three years ago, for instance, Tom Horne, the state superintendent of education, lashed out at ethnic studies programs. As author of HB 2281, and now a Republican candidate for state attorney general, he rails against “ethnic chauvinism” to scare up voters. More inflammatory still is his department’s recent ruling “that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English.” In Horne’s Arizona, only whites have the right to be chauvinistic.
We have been here before. In his incisive critique of segregated America, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), W.E.B. DuBois recorded the “many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the 20th Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.” That same deeply troubling divide, as Arizona has demonstrated, is staining the 21st.
[Char Miller is director of the environmental analysis program at Pomona College, Claremont, CA. and is the former chair of the History Department and Director of Urban Studies at Trinity University in San Antonio. He is author of Deep in the Heart of San Antonio: Land and Life in South Texas and editor of River Basins of the American West. This article also appears in the Rio Grande Guardian.]
Here come the Suns! Taking a stand on Cinco de Mayo
By Dave Zirin / The Rag Blog / May 4, 2010
A battle has been joined for the very soul of Arizona. On one side, there are the Minutemen, the craven state Republican lawmakers, Governor Jan Brewer, and the utterly unprincipled John McCain, all supporting SB 1070, a law that codifies racial profiling of immigrants in the state. On the other are the Sun Belt residents who protested on May 1st, the students who have engaged in walkouts, and the politicians and civic leaders calling for an economic boycott of their own state. This battle has also been joined in the world of sports. On one side is Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks. Owned by state Republican moneyman Ken Kendrick, the team has drawn protestors to parks around the country. On the other side, we now have the Phoenix Suns.
On Tuesday the news came forth that tomorrow on Cinco de Mayo, the team would be wearing jerseys that say simply Los Suns. Team owner Robert Sarver said, after talking to the team, that this will be an act of sartorial solidarity against the bill. Their opponent, the San Antonio Spurs have made clear that they support the gesture.
In a statement released by the team, Sarver said,
The frustration with the federal government's failure to deal with the issue of illegal immigration resulted in passage of a flawed state law. However intended, the result of passing this law is that our basic principles of equal rights and protection under the law are being called into question, and Arizona's already struggling economy will suffer even further setbacks at a time when the state can ill-afford them.
He followed up the statement by saying to reporters,
I looked around our plane and looked at our players and the diversity in our organization. I thought we need to go on record that we honor our diversity in our team, in the NBA and we need to show support for that. As for the political part of that, that's my statement. There are times you need to stand up and be heard. I respect people's views on the other side but I just felt it was appropriate for me to stand up and make a statement.
After Sarver spoke out, the team chimed in against the passage and signing of SB 1070. Two-time MVP point guard Steve Nash, who in 2003 became the first athlete to go on record against the Iraq war said,
I think the law is very misguided. I think it is unfortunately to the detriment to our society and our civil liberties and I think it is very important for us to stand up for things we believe in. I think the law obviously can target opportunities for racial profiling. Things we don't want to see and don't need to see in 2010.
All-Star power forward Amare Stoudamire, who has no political reputation, also chimed in saying, "It's going to be great to wear Los Suns to let the Latin community know we're behind them 100%.”
After the story broke, I spoke on the phone with NBA Players Association President Billy Hunter about the Suns audacious move. He said,
It’s phenomenal. This makes it clear to me that it’s a new era. It’s a new time. Athletes can tend to be apolitical and isolated from the issues that impact the general public. But now here come the Suns. I would have expected nothing less from Steve Nash who has been out front on a number of issues over the years. I also want to recognize Amare. I know how strident Amare can be and I’m really impressed to see him channel his intensity. It shows a tremendous growth and maturity on his part. And I have to applaud Bob Sarver because he is really taking a risk by putting himself out there. I commend them. I just think it’s super.
He said that the union would have their own statement out by the end of the week.
This kind of political intervention by a sports team is without precedent and now every athlete and every team has an opening to stand up and be heard. Because when it’s all said and done, this isn’t just a battle for the soul of Arizona. It’s a battle for the soul of the United States. Here come the Suns indeed.
[Dave Zirin is the author of the forthcoming Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love (Scribner). Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com .]
Alfonso Vasquez of Phoenix lights candles during a prayer vigil at the Arizona State Capitol on April 24, protesting Arizona's controversial new immigration law. Photo by Matt Pavelek / The Arizona Republic / AP.
Boycott Arizona: Church leaders call SB 1070 'racist and sinful'
By Casey Hayden / The Rag Blog / April 29, 2010
"It is an act of injustice aimed at people whose appearance is suspect. To say there will be no racial profiling is an insult to the integrity of all Arizonans," -- Rev. Carmen B. Guerrero of Phoenix, representing the Episcopal bishop and church of Arizona, April 28 at Tucson gathering of religious leaders.
TUCSON -- Calling Arizona Senate Bill 1070 a racist and sinful law, more than 30 area religious leaders gathered for a press conference at noon Wednesday, April 28, in Tucson.
At the gathering at Southside Presbyterian Church, 317 West 23rd Street, they called for people of faith and conscience to resist enforcement of the legislation. AZ SB 1070 is a huge bill. Presence in this country without citizenship documents is not prohibited by federal law, although it does subject the undocumented person to deportation. AZ SB 1070 makes such presence a crime.
Besides the racial profiling inherent in asking police to stop and demand papers from anyone who they think may be here “illegally,” everyone by law now has to report on everyone else they suspect, or face criminal prosecution. All police are now immigration agents.
Yesterday, at the press conference held by clergy, the speakers were eloquent. There was not much press coverage, although the Washington Post has a reporter here so maybe they will report. (Their online ongoing immigration discussion is informative.)
This gathering, at Southside Presbyterian Church, was much like movement church meetings back in the day -- but sadly, no freedom songs. Oh, well. Mostly Anglo gray hairs, whaddya gonna do?
There's a second clergy meeting here next Wednesday. We will attend. My husband Paul is an Episcopal priest, and is an organizer for the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) -- and the Pima County Interfaith Council -- and he was a leader in the Sanctuary movement. I'll tag along. Our buttons read "No papers." And "Resist SB 1070. Resist racism. Resist fear. Solidarity." I also attended a rally at Congressman Raul Grijalva’s campaign office in Tucson last weekend. His other offices are closed following death threats.
There is a strong church based coalition of nonviolent resistance here in Tucson, active for years around border issues: people of color/Anglo/native. (Humano Derechos, Sin Frontera, Samaritans.) This bill criminalizes their humanitarian activities (leaving water in the desert, harboring sick migrants, or welcoming them to churches).
There were many stories at the meeting of home intrusions by INS agents, children being separated from parents on the road into foster care... the human toll. All police departments opposed the bill. No training, no staff, no place to house detainees, nothing.
There is great support across the country for opposition to the bill. Black churches, even Korean churches in Phoenix, are very strong against it. But Arizona polls are 75 percent in favor. Arizona is now the right wing leader, as Mississippi was previously.
This bill is Republican immigration reform. If Obama wants their input, this is it. He should be asking for input from human rights groups instead. This would provide the potential for some radical thinking from the left to emerge, as it has from the right. If he delays immigration reform, he will have to take on every state one at a time.
Make it clear we would like for Obama to to take his attention away from the Republicans for a minute or two, and direct it instead at the opinions of his constituents, us. The great Raul Grijalva, our Congressional representative, is calling on Obama not to cooperate with this bill. Arizona will need the feds to take rounded up detainees off their hands. Obama must refuse to take these detainees into federal hands. Attorney General Eric Holder may try to tie this law up in court, but it’s my guess the state will resist.
Everybody knows we are in an unsustainable mode on all fronts: energy, financial industry malfeasance, economy, military overextension, immigration, jobs. Because we all know this, right and left alike, the time is right for radical ideas, large and deep-seated ideas which will address the depth of the situation we are facing.
Not to knock the great unified movement of which I was a part in the 60’s, but we made some bad moves which led to our fracturing. One result was that the right took the churches. Immigration provides a way into deep conversation -- which should include religious leaders -- about the kind of country we want.
AZ SB 1070 is the most obvious example of Fortress America, the right wing’s answer to the real issues we all face: "We’ve got it and we are keeping it and we’ll shoot you if you try to get any of it."
If that’s not you, please come forward around this bill. Boycott Arizona. And get on Obama’s case. Enough buddying up to the Republicans and Wall Street. Immigration reform now. Rule by the Constitution, not states’ rights.
Pass it on.
[A Texas native, Casey Hayden was a pioneer in the civil rights, New Left, and feminist movements. She was involved in anti-segregation efforts in the 50s while attending the University of Texas at Austin, was a founding member of SNCC and SDS, and organized white welfare women in Chicago. Hayden and Mary King wrote "Sex and Caste," a document about the role of women in the civil rights movement that helped to set in motion the modern feminist movement. She was a co-author of Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement. Casey Hayden now lives in Tucson with her family.]
Mormons for racial profiling? Unsustainable contradictions in immigration law
By Greg Moses / The Rag Blog / April 27, 2010
What’s up with the Mormons? Orem, Utah legislator Stephen Eric Sandstrom last week pledged to follow the lead of “my friend” Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce and expand the number of states with show-me-your-papers bills aiming to criminalize, jail, and deport irregular migrants. Rep. Sandstrom, who is a graduate of Brigham Young University and a former Mormon missionary to Venezuela, takes credit for co-founding a state’s rights organization called the Patrick Henry Caucus.
Sandstrom’s “friend” Sen. Pearce of Arizona, sponsor of the recently signed SB-1070, hails from the Mormon stronghold of Mesa and claims to be the mastermind behind Maricopa County’s infamous Tent City Jail.
For Pearce and Sandstrom, the crucial issue of liberty in the 21st Century would appear to involve the rights of states in relation to the federal government of the USA -- never mind the rights of individual people who reside in those states.
What’s curious about this particular Pearce-Sandstrom movement for state’s rights over individual rights is how it seems to contradict the interests of the Mormon family itself, which has been witnessing an increase in Spanish-speaking congregations.
Last summer, Salt Lake Tribune writer Peggy Fletcher Stack reported increasing fears among Spanish-speaking members of the Mormon Church of Latter- day Saints (LDS) who were concerned about travel restrictions they were facing for missionary work and then-impending implementation of Utah’s anti-migrant law, SB-81. “People are very scared,” said one woman via translator.
“Other than for its missionaries, the LDS Church takes a ‘don't ask, don't tell’ approach toward the immigration status of its members,” reported Fletcher Stack. “But some estimate between 50 percent and 75 percent of members in Utah's 104 Spanish-speaking congregations are undocumented. That includes many bishops, branch presidents, even stake presidents.”
Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank declared that Utah’s SB-81 would require illegal racial profiling, so he openly refused to enforce the self-contradictory statute. Last week Chief Burbank “blasted” Arizona’s SB-1070, telling KSL NewsRadio talk-show host Doug Wright: “This sets law enforcement back 30 to 40 years.”
Mormon Times columnist Jerry Earl Johnston shook his head last year in dismay over the unwisdom of the Utah anti-migrant legislation:
“I can only speak from my own LDS experience here, but I hold Utah lawmakers responsible for breaking up good LDS families and forcing young American citizens out of their native land,” wrote Johnston, predicting that victory would not reward the shortsighted anti-migrant forces.
“I could see these Hispanic brethren were going to win,” wrote Johnston. “I could see their faith, resilience and strength. They wanted to be in Utah more than Utah lawmakers wanted them out. They had weathered tribulations with good humor and without malice toward those who persecuted them.”
Meanwhile, in the Mormon stronghold of Mesa, Arizona, represented by SB-1070 sponsor Sen. Pearce, the number of Spanish-speaking LDS congregations had grown from five to 13 between 2002 and 2007 according to East Valley Tribune reporter Sarah N. Lynch.
Last fall, official LDS printing presses in Salt Lake City ran off an approved Spanish-language edition of the Mormon Bible -- The Santa Biblia: Reina-Valera 2009 (Publicada por La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días, Salt Lake City, Utah, E.U.A.) -- with an initial press run of 800,000 copies.
“It is one of the most significant scripture projects ever undertaken by the Church,” proclaimed a notice of Sept. 14, 2009, posted at lds.org. “The volume contains new chapter headings, footnotes and cross-references to all scriptures used by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Announcement of the volume was reportedly shared among “thousands of Spanish-speaking Latter-day Saints congregations.”
Mormon political leaders, like everyone else in today’s global economy, are confronting a real crisis in human welfare. Maricopa County in particular is a frontline disaster zone for the crisis in real estate values, mortgage defaults, unemployment, and revenue shortfalls.
“In Maricopa,” according to an April report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Q3 2009 unemployment, “every private industry group except education and health services experienced an employment decline, with construction experiencing the largest decline (-32.2 percent).”
Crisis reveals character. So when Mormon political leaders campaign for agendas of states’ rights according to Patrick Henry rhetorics of “liberty or death,” perhaps their Spanish-speaking LDS brethren can remind them that there are millions of people of goodwill in need of actual freedom-loving legislators in whatever state they have freely chosen to congregate and build up.
[Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. He can be reached at gmosesx@gmail.com.]
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