Phoenix Gets Its Selma Moment

Intense Racism? Check. Government Abuse? Check. Imploding Local Economy? Double Check.

From the New York Times:

Showdown in Arizona, Where Mariachis and Minutemen Collide

By LAWRENCE DOWNES
Published: December 10, 2007

PHOENIX — Want to see America unraveling? Come here, to Thomas Road and 35th Street, to M. D. Pruitt’s furniture store. Come on Saturday morning and stand near the eight delivery trucks barricading the parking lot, like the wall of an urban Alamo.

For the last seven weeks, a sidewalk protest here by Latino immigrants has blossomed into a feverish reality show, attracting Minutemen, mariachis, children dancing in Mexican folk costumes, white racists, United Nations observers, Phoenix police officers and Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies.

The weekly confrontation — strident and stalemated — perfectly mimics the national debate. But it’s a sideshow to something even uglier: what happens when immigration’s complexities are handed to local law enforcers sympathetic to the fury of one side.
Thomas Road has lots of Latino day laborers, or jornaleros, who hustle for work near Home Depot. A few months ago, the Phoenix police shooed them away. They dispersed to streets nearby, angering local businesses. One of the biggest, Pruitt’s, hired off-duty city police officers to keep jornaleros at bay. The city put a stop to that, so Pruitt’s turned to the county sheriff, Joe Arpaio.

Sheriff Joe, as he is known, needed no prodding: hunting undocumented immigrants is his specialty. He has arrested hundreds under a state antismuggling law (for smuggling themselves) and has had 160 officers deputized as federal immigration agents. They have made more than 50 arrests near Pruitt’s since the protests began. They’ll pull a car over for a traffic infraction, then check everyone’s papers. They say they act on reasonable suspicion only — if they see a shirt or shoes like those worn south of the border or hear Spanish. They say it isn’t profiling.

There is no doubt whose side Sheriff Joe is on. He has officers on Pruitt’s payroll, guarding the lot on protest days. Last week, he issued a news release demanding that the demonstrators stop hurting Pruitt’s and vowing to crank up the pressure until they went away. It was a naked attempt to stifle dissent and help a business ally.

People here are used to that from Sheriff Joe. He describes himself as “America’s meanest sheriff” and has recently been basking in the love of nativists like the Minuteman Chris Simcox and radio host Terry Anderson, who gushed over him at a roast in Sun City West this month.
If Arizona begins punishing companies that hire illegal workers under a state law that takes effect Jan. 1 — a lawsuit to block it was thrown out Friday — it will fall to counties to do the purge. In Maricopa, that means Sheriff Joe.

The protests at Pruitt’s are the only real opposition he has faced. Their leader is Salvador Reza, a stocky American of Mexican and Apache ancestry, an Air Force veteran who has spent years organizing jornaleros and small-business owners here.
Mr. Reza says he can’t understand why America accepts global flows of companies, money and jobs but not workers. Why faith in market forces seems to have been eclipsed by fear of immigrants. Or why the country cannot set up legal channels to let jornaleros come and go and not be hassled. “They actually are people with a work ethic that would make the Puritans proud,” he said.

Pruitt’s owner, Roger Sensing, says he needs armed officers to protect customers from jornaleros. Mr. Reza calls that ridiculous, and one informed noncombatant, the Rev. Craig Geiger, pastor of a Lutheran church across the street, agrees. He told me he had never seen a laborer enter Pruitt’s lot. He also said his Latino congregation did not drive to church anymore. Documented or not, they fear Sheriff Joe. They walk.

Pastor Geiger leaves the neighborhood on Saturdays, because it gets deafening. When I was there, a trio singing Mexican ballads strolled through the crush. A Minuteman with a bullhorn followed them. “Monkeys coming through!” he shouted. His side rushed up to drown the music out: “Born in the U.S.A.! Born in the U.S.A.! K.K.K.! Viva la Migra! January First!”
The restrictionists see Jan. 1 as the dawn of a new era, when the Mexicans disappear and everything gets pure and legal again. It is uncertain whether Arizona’s economy will survive the exodus. “Unfortunately, they’ll probably wake up when they bankrupt the state,” Mr. Reza told me.

All I want for Christmas is a burning cross in my yard.

Dear Lou Dobbs and Joe Arpaio,

You two make me feel icky inside.

Love, Aaron



Dear voters of Maricopa County,

Please stop re-electing that man.

Warmest Wishes, Aaron

Bonecrusher n00dz r so hawt right now.

So I was robbed yesterday.

It is sort of a long and complicated story, but the basic plot line is that someone tried to break into my apartment by ripping out the lock, failed, and then came back the next day to finish the job while I was out trying to get it fixed. Annoying, I know.

I didn't actually realize that I had been robbed until about 24 hours after it happened. I woke up this morning, tried to look at my old cell phone to see what time it was, and realized that it wasn't there.

Neither was the cord.

Neither was my guitar.

"Am I going crazy?" I thought. And then, as the haze cleared, "shit."

It took me a while to think about looking to see if anything else was missing. It doesn't look like I have lany fewer DVDs than I used to, but I didn't really check. The three dollars on my dresser are still there. So are my CDs. I guess it's a good thing that I keep my Daddy Yankee and Fat Joe collections in a safe under the bed.

In related news, my digital camera seems to have grown legs and walked away.

So I'm oscillating between being a little bit and very upset. Clearly I'm not happy about the idea of being robbed. It's like, "Really? Robbing people? Wow." And I'm not happy that they broke into the outside courtyard, but that I left my inside door unlocked. Because now it's partly my fault. Except that our apartments have this really neat little design flaw where it's entirely possible to be both locked in the courtyard and out of the house AT THE EXACT SAME TIME. So if I could go back, I don't know that I'd do it any differently. But of course I am second guessing myself because making the "wrong" decision has cost me about $800. Sweet.

What really bothers me is the specific stuff that I lost. For one, whoever stole my phone is going to be disappointed that it a) has no service and b) doesn't work even if it did. So they have something which is useless to them, and I no longer have the pictures that I took over the past three years.

And the camera does not make me happy either. It was only a year old, and a Christmas present from my dad. I asked him to help me buy a camera. He bought it for me. He's so generous. It had my only pictures of Deanna on it. It had the pictures of Chiapas that I take around to show people on it. So, no more camera.

But it's the guitar that kills me. I love playing that guitar. And I love that my mom bought it for me. I remember thinking of how much it meant to me. How cool I felt. I remember knowing that she saved up money to buy me that guitar. My sixteenth birthday present. I was always going to keep that guitar because of what it meant to me.

It's not the stuff, it's what that stuff means to me.

The bright side? They didn't steal my hot water heater. That's a popular little item here in Agua Prieta. Three cheers for hot showers.

Keep Crashing This Car, Over and Over

Why are we still so afraid?
The things we do deserve their rightful names.

Swing with all you have.
Stop me if you can.

-be sensible, jimmy eat world


I think that, in a way, we all bought into the hype.

It's the trial. At last. The trial.

And of course there's so much to be said about that. Justice. A reckoning. Punishment. Confrontation. Something.

Whatever we thought it would mean, if we ever really thought about it at all, we were not prepared for what it actually was. In poetry you can never say "I love you." In life it is never enough to say "good and hard." How to describe that week? Imagine Jesus descending into hell. Grace personified. But in hell.

The trial was, both literally and metaphorically, a destination. Something that we could look forward to. Something that we could place our stock in. Something that was, I don't know, tangible. But it was also an unwanted guest, still in the house far after we tired of its company. It was the emergency surgery.

And it's understandable really. We needed this. Some of us more than others. Several of us much more than me. We all needed this. But none of us wanted it to be necessary. All we've ever really wanted was escape.

When I try to think of the last time that I sat down with a bunch of other people from Central Presbyterian to discuss Peter, for any reason, I picture his welcome party. The rest of it has sort of slipped by. I've never really talked to my parents about it. I've never gotten a card in the mail saying "we're having a meeting at the church, why don't you come join us." I've never had someone even suggest that maybe we should sit down and talk this out. What in the world would we talk about? How would we possibly begin?

Looking back, these events (the Peter years, the post-Peter years, the Peter's back!?! trial years) have all transpired with surprisingly little fanfare. Look back again and you'll be forced to realize that he has never really left us alone. A constant presence that everyone is ashamed to talk about. Scared to talk about. Confused about. The 600 pound gorilla in no uncertain terms.

I got a phone call this morning saying that Peter has been arrested. Again.

I couldn't move on even if I wanted to.

When the stone first hit the water, the disruption of our lives was just too much. Surface tension destroyed. The rotting muck underneath revealed. And when the water returned to glass, no one could intentionally throw another stone. But the wake remains, bouncing off the shore and ricocheting around us. The ripples lapping against our collars remind us that we are up to our necks. The temperature drops slowly. We alternate between bouts of confused panic and treacherous sleep.

Look out the window. The green bleeds away, leaving a sickly, jaundiced yellow in its place. The lazy breeze speeds up, and then its temperament sours. The wind grows teeth and tears at the flesh of the trees. And then one day you realize that the cover from your shade tree is gone. You look up to see a weathered oak standing naked in the sun.

At some point I realized that all of this was choking me. This recurring sliding feeling wasn't going away.

So the trial, this public spectacle, became the chance to say that the emperor has no clothes. It was a chance to come out. All is not well. Something terrible has happened here.

Something terrible has happened here.

Late in the week I was listening to an expert witness testify about trauma and its impact on adolescents. Suddenly I became alert, conscious of myself in a room full of strangers. I was nodding along, picturing my life in the scenes of escapism and guilt.

Here's a test:

Do you often assume that people in the church are full of shit? Clearly guilty of something, definite skeletons in the closet?

Do you look for cracks in the corners, sagging rafters, proof that the foundation is slipping? Are you convinced that the building will collapse? It's only a matter of time. Save yourself.

Do you feel caught between the past and the present, as if some blunt instrument has struck your history and shattered its continuum? Endangered your future?

Do pieces of your life feel fragile? At any moment a wave will come and sweep them away, like great walls of ice abandoning the glacier and drowning themselves in the sea.

Do you search desperately for something that looks like Jesus and feels like love?

The trial unlocked the hard drives and knocked over the file cabinets. Information everywhere. Bits and pieces of fear and hate and betrayal just littering the floor. Millions of pixels all distorted. An image I had not forgotten, but had very clearly lost.

The trial turned out to be a chance for the world around us to crash the party, to reach the epicenter and look for survivors in the wreckage.

Ultimately, it didn't quite go our way.

Mistrial.

A miscarriage is when you lose the baby. We didn't lose the trial. We had a trial.

In some way it was validating. It was good to hear eight voices say that was has happened was wrong. That what has happened was criminal.

Why did I need to go? Why did I feel so compelled? A physical draw, my headlights pointed towards the one thing I wanted most to avoid. Was it to support my friend? Clearly. But what does that even look like? Was it to, in some way, confront Peter. Possibly. I confess that I always stayed out of the men's room when he was at the urinal.

Mostly I think it was because someone finally gave me the chance to show up, to walk into a room. To say with my presence, "this was wrong."

I have been living my life like a sprint since the moment Peter left. Or maybe since the moment I left Peter. I've been running. From myself. From him. From the guilt. But sprints don't last. You can't live a sprint.

I've been running because the temple where I worshiped, the place where I Am dwells, burned to the ground. All that cedar and bronze. Poof.

But we've found that life goes on without the temple that Solomon built. Instead of the altar, we've had the Nicoletti's table. Instead of the burnt offerings, we've had the Wicklund's fire pit. Understanding in a car crash.

Transformation just takes so much time.

If I could make it better for the people around me. The friends and the family. Oh God. I would. But I'm not God.

And God is. God Is.

I'd be lying if I said that I don't still try to offer myself up as the ram caught in the thicket. I'd be lying if I said that I was alone in that.

Ouch.

Josh Marshall and company link to a report card of sorts for the Bush's time in office. It's worse than you think. Not that we didn't know all of these things already, but it really isn't pretty when his "accomplishments" are listed together.

It's also worth noting that this is not some sort of hatchet job. This is the Associated Press. Quoting former Bush campaign strategists and staffers. Only one more year...

How to tank an economy:

This week's lesson brought to you by the Department of Homeland Security and our beloved POTUS.

Is he trying to make his poll numbers worse, or just create chaos for millions of people? You be the judge. Thank God for the AFL-CIO.

Meanwhile, back in Zimbabwe, President Mugabe accepts the challenge from our own Mr. Bush and seeks to regain the title of "worst leader ever" for himself. It's a race to the bottom.

Did you know that the EPA has 18,000 employees?

What is it that they do? And more importantly, why do we still have pollution? That's 360 people per state.

At any rate, the Gray Lady has once again shown why she is an invaluable national treasure.

The article drags a bit in places, but the subject matter is so important I just couldn't stop reading.

A taste:

"Only 1 percent of [China's] 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union."

As always, there's a silver lining: "Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China."

Huh. And I thought it was the parking lot that they call the 405.

Feminism: Helping me to procrastinate talking about my 80 miles in the desert.

Thanks feminism!

This is yet one more fantastic present brought to you by the one and only Andrew Sullivan. I love him more and more all the time. Except for when I disagree with him completely.

It's not the shortest article ever written, but I highly recommend it if you have a few minutes to spare. Come on, you know you do. The article is a reflection piece written by Megan Stack, a writer and bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, looking back on her time spent in Saudi Arabia and her place there as a woman.

What first caught my attention to the piece was the combination of feminism and Andrew's criticism of Starbucks:

"The multinational company acquiesces in and enforces the oppression and segregation of women."

And it is more than a valid point. Would you still shop at a company that served African Americans in the back? What about a company that wouldn't let Jews in the front door? Of course not. The greatest argument for the existence of feminism is the fact that my friends who work at Starbucks will not immediately quit their jobs, and many of you reading will still go and buy a latte there. Of course the issue is not that simple, but stop and let this sink in: we will still go to Starbucks, a company that won't serve half of the population in the same way as the other half. They still do business, and make a profit, in Saudi Arabia. The parallels to Jim Crow, apartheid, and Nazi Germany are more than uncomfortably close. It is both tremendously sad and unbelievably revolting.

And clearly my pleasure at seeing a little Starbucks bashing was anything but secret.

There is a question I must ask myself in this as well. I don't shop at Starbucks or drink their coffee, but am I blameless? If I have chided Starbucks as a company who will gladly look the other way in the face of sexism, is Just Coffee, my coffee company of choice, able to withstand the same scrutiny? Sadly, I believe that the answer is a very complicated "sort of."

Just Coffee, in all honesty, is a company of men. It is not a company of all male employees, but it is a company of all male owners. Why is that? Well, it really boils down to gender roles in Chiapas. Men are the coffee farmers, simple as that. This is not true in all parts of the world (where women farmers greatly outnumber men), but it is true in Chiapas. Women help at times, but are more likely to be found preparing food, caring for children, or working around the house. So even though these women benefit from the higher price and health benefits that come from Just Coffee, they don't really have a voice at the table in terms of voting. They don't really come to the meetings of the directors. That's not to say that they don't have a "presence" (any married person will tell you that's simply not possible), but that's sort of the same argument that is used in the article to say that women don't need to be able to vote in state elections. Not very comforting, I know.

Does this mean that I don't support Just Coffee? Well, no, not at all. I still love the people, the company, the coffee, and the model. Reality, as always, is more complicated than theory. The business of living in Chiapas requires more intentional effort than it does here. More time cooking and cleaning and all of that good stuff. Life is a partnership, and the contributions of women are tremendously important. And in the face of migration, gender lines become more than a little bit blurred. Once again, this is clearly not a simple issue. Ask any feminist about the tension between cultural sensitivity and women's rights and you'll see the blood start to quicken in their veins.

Culture, history, and economics, all embedded with some degree of sexism, have come together to make men the coffee farmers in Chiapas. Is that wrong? Not necessarily. The goal must never be to tell all people what to do, but to increase their ability to make good choices freely. But it would be better if women had more choices, and especially if they had more say. What is my repsonsibility to try and make that more of a reality? I'm not sure about that either. But I think it is important to ask these questions, and to be honest when things make us uncomfortable. I think this issue pales in comparison to Starbucks in Saudi Arabia, but it is by no means a non-issue. It is important, however, to call a good thing a good thing. Starbucks health benefits in the U.S. are a good thing. And Just Coffee is a good thing. But so is honest self-reflection.

Feminism is a great thing.

The desert post and pictures are coming. I promise.

Police Brutality Is Like Soooo 1990's.

Video from the May 1st migrant march in Los Angeles. When will the LAPD ever learn that there are always cameras in the City of Angels?



I guess it's a good thing that Rage Against the Machine are back.

Meet Your Neighbors: Agua Prieta Edition

Oscar Ruiz, along with his wife and niece, were attempting to migrate from the Mexican state of Puebla to the United States in order to look for work.

When they arrived in Agua Prieta, however, they were taken by their taxi driver to what they thought was a hotel. Inside the building they were detained against their will for what they think was between two and three weeks. After ten days they lost count.

While they were being detained they were robbed, fed very little, and never allowed to bathe or go outside. At the end of their stay they were taken to the desert, dropped off, and told which way to walk. Three days later they were picked up by Border Patrol.

On Monday I had the opportunity to meet Oscar and his family when they came in to the Migrant Resource Center after being deported. I couldn't help but be fascinated by the diverse reactions that they showed to experiencing so much trauma. Oscar's niece seemed very relieved to be safe and back in Mexico, but, or perhaps because of this, she would occasionally burst into tears. Oscar's wife had rolled her ankle in the desert and was clearly in pain, but never spoke a single word to anyone the entire time I was with her. Oscar himself seemed to be the most composed, but he was terrified of the taxi drivers and, understandably, wanted to avoid them at all costs.

Fortunately the Mexican consulate in Douglas has funds which are designated to help migrants, and we were able to buy them bus tickets back home to Puebla. Unfortunately the people who robbed them and held them captive are still here in Agua Prieta.

I love the migrants, but I hope I've never romanticized what they go through.

"Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses..."

Three pieces of border news and a comment on the Border Patrol.

With an already bad situation in Iraq steadily deteriorating, I can't imagine the border gets all that much news coverage elsewhere. That's just a guess. To gauge this, I want to know if anyone who reads this blog heard that a Border Patrol agent shot to death a 22 year old Mexican migrant from the state of Puebla about three weeks ago.

It happened about 8 miles from where I am sitting, out near where we leave the water in the desert. Like all Border Patrol shootings, the details surrounding the "incident" have not been released.

In other border deaths news, another body was found in the desert last week by the family of a missing migrant. When he didn't show up or call, the family called the Border Patrol to advise them that he was missing. Eventually the family came from Florida and California to search for him. I'm glad that they found him, but sad that he had already died from "exposure."

And finally, in honor of Rage Against the Machine reuniting, here's a sad story of a racist wearing a badge. Two very close friends from Agua Prieta were visiting another very close friend in Tucson this weekend. On their way back to the border they decided to visit a state park and hike around the lake. As they were leaving the park they were stopped by Border Patrol and asked for their papers. They supplied their tourist visas (which they have had for a number of years) and were told by the agent that these papers were for "shopping at Wal-Mart and then going back to Mexico." He then called them a derogatory term for Mexican migrants, told them that he wasn't stupid, and accused them of being smugglers and "helping (expletive) migrants." I'm told that they were lucky as the agent could have seized their Visas without a guarantee that they would be returned.

I am aware that this post is pretty harsh on the Border Patrol. In many ways I regret that. I appreciate the work that the Border Patrol does in fighting drug smuggling, something I have no love for. I also appreciate the lives that they have saved by finding lost, sick, or injured migrants in the desert. The fact is that I have a number of friends down here who are agents, one very good friend in fact. I think they are good men. I wish more agents were like them.

That's A Nice Reminder

So I've been going a little bit crazy lately. I feel like my work is all out of sorts and I have been spending A LOT of annoying time on the phone with tech support companies.

I still feel that way, but stopping to play this game helped my perspective quite a bit.

Sim Sweatshop. Check it out. www.simsweatshop.com (link's aren't working for me again. My main problem with blooger.)

Oh No He Didn't

I used to like conspiracy theories and government secrets and all sorts of stuff like that, but I left it all behind in the eighth grade when I decided it didn't matter all that much who killed John F. Kennedy.

I've even managed to dislike the Bush administration profoundly (and from the primaries of the 2000 election) without paying any attention to all the talk of secret government plots against the American people, etc.

I think I was too hasty...( sometimes the image of the video takes a minute to load)



This, I believe, would be the straw that breaks my back.
He's not even saying this in private. This is in the Senate. On TV.
This is the man watching out for your legal rights.
Wow.