Rally and march to oppose racism, immigrant bashing

In response to the immigrant bashing and fear mongering tactics of the infamous racist sheriff, Joe Arpaio, and his colleagues in the Arizona state Legislature, Phoenix activists have called for a national day of action in Phoenix on Jan. 16. The event has been endorsed by dozens of organizations throughout the country, and will put the right wing on notice that they are no longer welcome in Arizona.

The people have had enough of Arpaio, his racist arrogance and the funding he continues to get from the state Legislature. We need money for jobs, not for Arpaio’s tent city jails!

Arpaio’s racial profiling earned him a Congressional investigation, which resulted in the revocation of his 287(g) agreement. This agreement allowed Arpaio to have his police and deputies carry out immigration enforcement. Arpaio’s response to the termination of his 287(g) agreement was to launch massive neighborhood sweeps in Latino/a communities, terrorizing and arresting people and declaring that these sweeps would continue.

In addition to Arpaio’s crimes, which have been written about many times in the pages of Workers World, the Arizona Legislature has been introducing legislation nonstop aimed at criminalizing undocumented workers. A law passed in 2008 makes an undocumented worker from another country guilty of “conspiracy to commit human smuggling” for smuggling themselves into the country! (Associated Press, July 17)

Another, recently passed law requires that Department of Economic Security employees report any applicant who cannot show their “lawful presence” to the Department of Homeland Security. Failure to report makes the DES employee guilty of a class 2 misdemeanor. (www.azgovernor.gov) DES employees, who are already fearful of losing their jobs under draconian state budget cuts, are now being forced to be cops.

In June, community activists organized to successfully fend off, for the second time, a racist attempt to eliminate ethnic studies programs in K-12 and university classrooms. The state has already cut $135 million from university budgets over the last two years and is preparing another round of across-the-board education cuts for the coming year. It will likely choose the ethnic studies programs as its first target.

The Southern Poverty Law Center documents 19 “hate groups” located in Arizona, almost all of them setting up shop in Phoenix, which is under the jurisdiction of Maricopa County Sheriff Arpaio. The so-called National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group, held an open march on the streets of Phoenix on Nov. 7. While these racists can walk free and carry swastikas in Maricopa County, brown-skinned people who are indigenous to this area — which was stolen from Mexico in 1848 — must live in fear of both the racists and the cops.

The Jan. 16 action will show that things are going to change in Arizona.

¡Basta Arpaio!