Correspondence from Phoenix
We drove six hours to Phoenix, Arizona. It was Saturday, April 24, the day after Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed Immigration Senate Bill 1070 into law, which makes it a crime to be in Arizona illegally and requires the police and other law enforcement to demand proof of legal residency of anyone who they suspect could be an undocumented immigrant. We were listening to Spanish radio as we hit the city limit and caught a call-in debate over what people should do about the law. Most callers and the talk show host said people had to fight the bill. They had 90 days they said to change the situation, 90 days before the law is implemented. One caller blamed the Mexican people for not embracing American culture.
We could only be in Phoenix for 24 hours. We wanted to learn as we could about how people understood what was happening to them, what people were thinking and feeling about this bill, what they were going to do about it. Several things stood out. First, many, many people are calling this law fascist and racist and are comparing what's happening in Arizona to Nazi Germany and Governor Brewer to Adolf Hitler. Second, many different races came out to the protest rally on Sunday: Latinos from Mexico, Central and South America; Aztec and Native American Indians; Korean and other Asian immigrants; white people. Black people were striking in their absence, only a small handful came out. Third, many realize that Arizona is a test case and that if this law is implemented it will spread to other parts of the country. There is a great need to fight this bill, and thousands are stepping out to resist. At the same time there is a tremendous amount of fear in the immigrant community, and the Democrats are working overtime to contain the opposition to this law in the courts, electoral politics and a boycott.
People we talked to had a lot to say. Here are excerpts and summaries of some of our interviews.
We found a café in the downtown Phoenix art district where all kinds of people hang out. I spoke to two Latinas, one of whom was an illegal immigrant, Marta. She told me that she was devastated. She felt almost hopeless. She said that her mother and her sister moved to the United States for a better life than what they had in Mexico and now they were thinking that the best thing to do would be to move back to their country. She's lived in the U.S. for ten years. Why should she leave? But since the law was signed she's beginning to think that maybe she would move back. She said that people are living in a lot of fear. People are afraid of going out even to buy groceries because they are afraid of being picked up. She said they only go from home to work and from work to home. Marta's friend is from Texas. When I asked her about the bill she said that she was completely against it. She was afraid that this bill passing in Arizona would mean it would eventually spread throughout the U.S. She said it is very wrong when a law like this passes that is only meant to hurt people.
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To stay or go was not only on the minds of people targeted by the law. There was a discussion in progress between a young white slam poet from Flagstaff who had come to protest the bill, and an older man, who helps out at the café when we entered. The poet, Sam, said he was thinking of leaving the state. He couldn't bear to live here with a bill like this aimed at Latino people. Allen argued that he should stay and fight it. When Allen learned that I had come from Los Angeles to support resistance to the law, he came over and gave me a hug.
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We learned that there was a protest rally called at the state capitol Sunday morning and decided we had to be there. I saw a group of children preparing signs that read "Brown is not a crime." Among them was Manuel who was wearing a shirt that read "We are humans." Manuel is in fifth grade. I asked him why he came out to demonstrate. He told me that his parents were undocumented. They already run the risk of being deported and if the law is passed they wouldn't be able to leave their homes. When I asked him what he thought was behind all of this he said, "They just don't want us here. They want us out." He said that his father doesn't have a valid drivers license because he isn't a citizen, but that he still has to drive to work every morning and run the risk of getting caught and deported. I asked him what his parents thought and what they were planning on doing if the law goes into effect. He told me that his father was overwhelmed by all of this and wants to save up enough money to move somewhere else. But Manuel told his father that they shouldn't move. He said that what was happening was wrong and they should stay and fight.
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Rachel, a Mexican-American college student:
"I was born and raised in Arizona. I graduated from high school and I'm going to college to get my major in criminal justice. There's no words to explain how ashamed I am. Like I mentioned I was one of those persons who would give my life for my country, let alone my state. I was a proud Arizonian and I just can't explain. I can't believe it. Because this is my state here. I can't believe we're so divided and we're just tearing it to pieces. And personally I just can't remain here by the end of the year because I don't want to see what else is going to happen. I don't want to see my state worse than it is already.
"I've been here all week. Thursday I was here all night, all morning Friday. The people who are for the bill have their signs saying 'We are Americans' and you just can't get through to them that we're Americans too. Somewhere along the way our grandmother's mother came here illegally and so we're still illegal. They're so closed minded and it's sad. They're so ignorant."
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There were a small number of white people at the rally, Katlin, an anthropology doctoral student was among them.
"I've had a lot of people come up to me and thank me for being here because I'm white and because my fiancé is white. But the thing is, while I do appreciate the sentiment, it's really unnecessary. I'm a human being. It's my duty to stand up to injustice where I see it. There should be a ton more white people here. The fact that there aren't more white people here or that they're on the fucking wrong side of the line, is totally a shame. It's embarrassing to me. It's a shame to the white community as a whole. It's a fucking shame. They should be ashamed—even the ones who aren't on that side—because they're not here. They're not here because they don't think it affects them. They're wrong and they're going to find out how wrong they are."
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Justin, who calls himself an anarchist, has been at the State Capitol since earlier in the week with a group of other youth, most of them were white, who put up banners saying "SB 1070 = Police State: No Racism No Borders No Deportations," "We are not criminals—Veto SB 1070 Don't Hate, Educate," and swastika with a slash through it.
"When I heard it [Senate Bill 1070] got signed—I felt it was going to get signed, but part of me was hoping that it wasn't. It really affected me emotionally because I'm from the inner city of Phoenix. Growing up I was submersed in the Latino culture. That is the only culture I had. I have friends who are undocumented. I grew up around all Latino people. Knowing that racial profiling is still going on, the fact is that this heightens that. My friends are going to be subjected to this extreme level of violence even more so. It wrenched my heart. I see it as using a group of people as scapegoats. There isn't an immigration problem. It's a capitalist problem. NAFTA messed up Mexico. NAFTA took those farmers out of the picture and now those farmers are coming to work for probably the farm that took their job. It doesn't make sense and it's not fair.
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Roberto is a Chicano student activist who goes to Arizona State University at Phoenix. He's been thinking hard about what is happening and why it's happening.
"A friend of mine told me once, he said, if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, he's going to jump out, but if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and you slowly warm it up, he's going to boil to death. That's what they've been doing in Arizona. They pass something, Prop 200, Prop 300. They pass little pieces of legislation here, little bits here, little bits there, little bits here, little bits there and we're taking it. We're taking it. There usually an uprising, a small contingent and we speak against it and there's marches and there's walk outs and then we forget about it….
"What they did and this is a really smart technique and they did it perfectly. They did it perfectly. In the media they have people like Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck. You know, they have people like Bill O'Reilly sending out these messages. Not only these messages that there are undocumented people here, but they have these messages like, whoa, they're drug dealers, they're murderers, they're killing our people and they're taking over. You see it all over in the news, over and over. There's a drug war, there's a depression. Right now there's an economic downturn, and we're the scapegoat. We're not only being scapegoated, we're being criminalized. Just to be brown is given a negative connotation. To be Mexican or Brown or Latino or Hispanic, whatever you want to associate yourself with—Chicano—it doesn't matter. We all look the same to them. They created this mentality, they created this image within the American public and now they [the American public] believe it. So when legislation passes [the American public see it as] 'Okay, now someone's doing something to help stop this. I'm going to support it because these people are bad. This person is good and he's trying to get rid of the bad.'
"So the conditions have been developing slowly and we've been letting it happen. Even though Lou Dobbs is out, Glenn Beck is still out there. Fox 10 is promoting this shit like hardcore. The only thing they show is waves of people, waves of people, waves of people. They don't realize that we're not even 14 percent of the population. What are you talking about—the Conquista? We don't have the economic or political power to conquer anything. We're just trying to survive."
"This is ground zero. Arizona is the guinea pig. If it [SB 1070] survives it's going to spread throughout the nation. If it passes and there's no uprising, cool. If they pass another one and there's no uprising then it's cool. Eventually it's going to spread out. If it can happen in Arizona, it can happen in California. It can happen in New York, Wisconsin, wherever. This is close to becoming national policy."
