APRIL 23, 2011: Chavez Plaza to the Capitol: NO SB1070!

From my good friend, Dennis:

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On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 8:53 PM, Dennis Gilman wrote:


Tomorrow, April 23, is a big day for Arizona. It has been one year since Gov. Brewer signed SB1070. We are not the same and never will be.

It has created confusion and given law enforcement carte blanche to harass and intimidate our friends, families and neighbors even as not one official arrest has been made under the law.

It is now common knowledge that the 1070 Boycotts have had such a powerful impact on the business community that it stopped the republicans from passing 5 bills even worse then 1070.

The business community made it very clear by their own testimonies before congress. Yet we cannot forget that under the Obama administration, deportations of non-criminals have increased. Children continue to lose their parents who should've been given legal status years ago. Much of this could've been done administratively despite the lack of republican support.

Young adults raised here are denied education or even the right to work. Those DREAM-ACT students risked so much and fought so hard. What kind of a society would reject them? What kind of world is this where they are Legally considered less then human?

This Wednesday, ICE arrested 40 people working at Chuys restaurant chain. Their crime? Trying to survive. How many children lost their parents because of what was supposed to be an IRS raid? Does the Obama administration really need ICE to be involved in a 400,000 dollar tax debt? Arpaio misused 100 million in tax dollars yet I see no federal action toward him. He is still free to destroy families and our economy with heartless raids designed for self-promotion.

So tomorrow, at 10:00AM we meet, greet and rally. Why? One reason is we forget we are part of a larger community or family. God knows we sometimes fight with each other just like family.

Lets all meet as a family tomorrow. Lets break bread, walk, talk , shout and sing together. Lets stick up for each other. Lets listen to one another.

We need each other. I know I need all of you to teach, forgive and love me. I am so grateful for all of you. Those that decided to get arrested standing up for justice and dignity last summer are my heros. Others who have been arrested simply because of who they are and what they do are also heros. I want to be the kind of person that always has your back.

You are all in my prayers or thoughts-all of you. From students and teachers in Tucson who continue to fight for the Ethnic Studies program that brought us so many remarkable people and saved many from what was referred to as "at risk" youth become amazing successes to the people of Flagstaff brave enough to say unapologetically that EVERY HUMAN has the right to live, love and work wherever they wish.

From the Anarchists who refused to give up our streets to neo-Nazis to the republicans from Mesa supporting the recall of Russell Pearce. From the Barrio committees organizing their neighborhoods to those teaching one another english. From those helping the victims of Arpaio's raids helping children find their parents and put together their lives to those that simply send money to the many lawyers that have given freely.

From the rock stars who give up money, time and even fame to help, to the medical professionals on the streets for us...even willing to offer assistance to those that wish us harm.

From those that have stood ground in front of Wells Fargo for over 3 years to those that stayed at the Capitol every day last summer and those who confronted the hatred this legislative session at a cost to there own careers only to be accused by racist politicians of being paid. From the wonderful churches and atheists who stand on the side of love....together. And, of course, my brothers and sisters who made me stand and film in the pouring, freezing rain in Washington DC as they protested in front of the DOJ making it clear they will not back off until Arpaio is somewhere he cannot hurt anyone anymore.

It's no secret we don't all get along. Sometimes it seems like we fight with each other more then the evil we are supposed to be opposing. But thanks to all of you-I know what it means when they say "It takes a village."

You are all amazing and I am so very grateful for all of you-even the ones that piss me off. We are all more connected then we are able to see sometimes.

Two short videos:

One shows an arrest of a brave, non-violent protester who was brutally detained and arrested last week while Arpaio was bragging about the 100 million he stole from the Tax Payers at the Tea Party.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dapK49JKieQ

The other shows Russell Pearce as an "Illegal". Pearce decided to make out a check for 225 dollars to the Fiesta Bowl. But he said he would show us receipts. Show us your papers Mr. Pearce. Illegal is illegal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnv8gHR-Okc

SEE YOU ALL SATURDAY! LETS DO THIS!

Start: Cesar Chavez Memorial Plaza

200 W. Washington

10am

End: Arizona State Capitol

1700 W. Washington

SB 1070 Resistance: Stand up, Fight Back.

Support the SB 1070 Resisters

Maricopa Superior Court
Central Court Building
201 W. Jefferson
Phoenix, AZ

Tuesday at Noon

November 16, 2010

---------In from Puente------

Meet us at the Maricopa Court at noon on Tuesday November 16th as we support all of the freedom fighters who participated in civil disobedience on July 29th 2010. Everyone who participated in civil disobedience as part of the day of non compliance will have their court hearing. WE MUST BE THERE TO SUPPORT THEM!! Please come spread the word and bring your friends. Make banners bring your instruments and get ready to make some noise!!! We will have special guest Zach de la Rocha from Rage Against the Machine joining us! For more information email Sandra@puenteaz.org

SB 1070 Resistance Dancin' in the Streets!

This is long and a few days late (so I know I'm not stealing anyone's audience), but it's such a joyful Feathered Bastard that I still can't resist. There's a tune I've been listening to lately called "The Great Stone Wall" by Jim Page, that reminds me that things haven't always been so dark, so bitter, and so hateful on this planet as it seems to be here and now some days. We're so indoctrinated to the way things are that we fail to understand that things haven't always been this way - and its not the only way for them to be tomorrow, either. Ordinary people really can change the world.

Now, read on about the all night party outside of Sheriff Joe's jail while supporters waited for civil rights organizer Sal Reza to be released after his second arrest last week. And hit Stephen's blog (this week's is too funny) at the Phoenix New Times often for updates on what's happening in this place. Between the protests, parties, patrols, prisoners, people power (check out Guadalupe's resistance, too, folks), and my own personal battles (as well as the theft of my laptop from my home), I can't begin to tell you myself what's going on from day to day. So, I'm going to keep hitting up the New Times until they tell me to stop.

Enjoy the Feathered Bastard now, knowing that no matter what the mainstream media reports and pollsters tell you about popular opinion in Arizona, Sheriff Joe is eating a lot of crow these days - spoonfed by people of every age, color and creed. And PLEASE - regardless of anything else you hear, beg Natalie Merchant and all those superstars heading to the Dodge Theater this month to cancel their engagements - we need their moral support more than their money now more than ever. Tell them to come join the people dancing in the streets.

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Salvador Reza Released, Prosecutor Admits No Probable Cause for Arrest

By Stephen Lemons, Sat., Jul. 31 2010 @ 1:54PM

As civil rights leader Salvador Reza stood in stripes before a night court judge around 3:30 a.m. this morning at the Fourth Avenue Jail in downtown Phoenix, the county prosecutor made an eye-popping admission.

"This is really my review," he stated cautiously of a statement from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office before him. "I did not see that this rose to the level of probable cause."

Reza's attorney Robert Pastor immediately pounced.

"Your honor," said Pastor, "I just heard the prosecutor tell the court that there's not enough evidence here to suggest that Mr. Reza committed a crime. I ask that the charge be dismissed and he be released immediately."

Of Reza's bogus charge for "obstructing a judicial proceeding," the judge herself seemed skeptical.

"I do not have enough information to find probable cause in this matter, sir," she told the county attorney.

She declined to dismiss the charge, but she released Reza on his own recognizance and set his next court date for August 18.

Reza, leader of the organization Puente, had been arrested late Friday afternoon after watching a band of protesters engage in civil disobedience by blocking Sheriff Joe Arpaio's command post for the MCSO's latest anti-immigrant sweep. The post was located near 35th Avenue and Lower Buckeye, close to the Lower Buckeye Jail. Reza was across the street in an unpaved parking lot.

Reza, after being released Saturday morning

Though Reza was not participating in civil disobedience that day, a pack of aggro sheriff's deputies ran across 35th Avenue and arrested him. Arpaio, MCSO Chief Brian Sands, and MCSO flack Brian Lee have all been videotaped stating that the arrest was because Reza had violated his order of release after he'd been let go on bond the night before for taking part in civil disobedience on July 29. This, as part of a "national day of non-compliance" to SB 1070.

After court was adjourned with Reza's O.R., a crowd of about sixty supporters, who had crammed into a viewing room to watch the proceedings from a TV monitor, erupted into applause. They then filed outside to wait another two hours-plus before Reza and the others arrested that day were set free.

Supporters danced all night waiting for Reza to be let go

The main entrance to the Fourth Avenue Jail had turned into an all-night block party for Reza supporters, with speakers blaring cumbia and protesters dancing in the middle of the street, sometimes in the pouring rain. At one point the crowd of Reza supporters numbered more than 100, and included numerous members of Unitarian Universalist Churches (referred to as "UUs") from across the country, who were in town to protest SB 1070 going into effect.

Sheriff's deputies and detention officers looked on from the roof, and from the corners of the building, but did nothing to stop the crowd. I asked one deputy why he and his compadres were seemingly okay with the revelry.

He simply shrugged and said, "It's a free country."

Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, was present in a parking lot with Reza as sheriff's deputies arrested the longtime anti-Arpaio activist. He said NDLON regarded Reza as a political prisoner, and that in the first two hours of putting up an online petition to "Free Sal Reza," NDLON had garnered 900 signers-on.

"They arrested him for no reason," he told me, as we all awaited Reza's release. "He was doing nothing. They just took him. To me it's clear that it's retaliation, because he's been highly critical of the sheriff. They [Arpaio and his staff] don't like him. They hate him."

Indeed, Reza has led several massive marches aimed directly at ending Arpaio's rule, as well as daily protests outside the Wells Fargo Building in downtown Phoenix, where Arpaio keeps two floors of pricey executive offices. Reza's Wells Fargo campaign ended with the bank asking Arpaio to leave, forcing the county to find another building for the MCSO, which Arpaio will likely move into sometime in 2011.

No one parties like a Unitarian...

When Reza finally emerged from jail Saturday morning, the sun was up, and his fellow activists were overjoyed to see him.

Reza said he was shocked by the arrest, which came without warning, just as he was about to leave for an interview.

"When I saw them coming, I thought they were coming for the people in the street," he explained. "But then they just passed them and went for me."

Regarding who actually ordered his arrest, Reza believes it was MCSO Deputy Chief Brian Sands, one of Arpaio's top henchmen, a man who looks like he would have felt right at home in the KGB.

"It was Sands," Reza contended. "Sands was in command."

MSCO thugs hustled a cuffed Reza to a van, where he remained for hours by himself. At one point, the MCSO opened up the van to display Reza to photographers and journalists like a captured prisoner of war.

"If they can do this to me," he told the reporters present before refusing interviews, "what do you expect they can do to anybody else."

Reza was transported to Fourth Avenue, booked, and forced to change into county stripes. As he was the night before, he was placed in solitary confinement. Reza said he was allowed no phone call, and there was no phone in the cell. He also stated that deputies never read him his Miranda rights.

I asked if he thought the MCSO was trying to break him.

"I think it's going to be a long time before they break me," he laughed. "I was ready to go eighteen days...that's when the court date is."

I wondered if he planned to sue the MCSO, as so many of Arpaio's victims have done, earning massive payouts from county coffers. Reza didn't say yea or nay.

"I just wish the [ U.S. Department of Justice] would get on the ball and do something about it," he replied. "I don't know what else they want...It's very clear."

The DOJ has been investigating Arpaio for more than a year now for civil rights violations. There's also a federal grand jury in Phoenix looking into Arpaio and the MCSO for criminal abuse of power.

Concerning the detention officers, Reza said he actually got along with some this time.

"Some of them are nice," he said. "Some of them, they basically don't like Arpaio."

This sentiment was echoed to some degree by Sarahi Uribe, a Yale graduate and organizer with NDLON, who'd been one of the protesters blocking sheriff's patrol cars from leaving for the sweep. She, too, was released on her own recognizance by the judge.

"One of the clerks or one of the officers inside slapped a message on the window [of the cell] that said, `By the way, what you guys are doing is awesome,' and walked away," Uribe told me.

Still, she was interrogated repeatedly by 287(g) officers in the jail, even though she's an American citizen. This, likely because she's not white and she initially refused to tell them her country of origin.

She also described "disgusting" conditions in the holding cell where she was kept with several other women. Uribe said women were sleeping on a floor littered with feces. Like Reza, she was never Mirandized.

Before he headed out to get some much needed rest, I asked Reza if he had any words for Sheriff Arpaio.

"Yeah," he said. "Come back to civilization."

Fat chance of that. They don't call it "Mari-Kafka County" for nothin'. For those of you reading who loathe Reza because of his politics, keep this in mind: There was no probable cause for his arrest. And if you want Arizona to resemble part of America, rather than a Third World junta, you should denounce his detention just as if you were one of his supporters.

Brewer Signs SB 1070; most fascist in nation.

Thus begins 90 days of mass civil disobedience in protest...Arizona's Freedom Summer. Jan Brewer just became our George Wallace. Once school is out, this state becomes ground zero for the biggest civil rights demonstrations in a generation...

ROCK ON!! 


DEFY SB 1070!!!

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Brewer signs far-reaching immigration bill; thousands protest

By Arizona Capitol Times Staff

Published: April 23, 2010 at 1:39 pm

Gov. Jan Brewer today signed a sweeping immigration bill that would make it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally.

Her announcement punctuated the tension at the state Capitol and as far away as Tucson, where thousands protested S1070, regarded as one of the country’s toughest anti-illegal immigration bills.

Earlier in the day, President Barack Obama president called the bill “misguided,” saying it could violate people’s civil rights and said the federal government must step up immigration reform to avoid states passing what he called similar irresponsible bills.

Brewer said the bill will make Arizonans safer and stressed that it mirrors provisions in federal immigration law that ensure civil rights.

“I will not tolerate racial discrimination or racial profiling in the state of Arizona,” she said. “My signature today represents my steadfast support for enforcing the law.”

PUENTE Detention Protest Thursday, Noon-1pm.

Local Activists Demand “Dignity not Detention” and Call for an End to Human Rights Abuses in Arizona

Submitted by sshah on February 24, 2010 - 17:27

PHOENIX – Local activists and community members will participate in a solidarity action in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in central Phoenix where they will deliver a letter calling on the federal government to end all immigration enforcement agreements with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office(MCSO). The action will take place from 12:00pm to 1:00pm ending with a press conference at 1:00pm. 

Despite DHS announcements made last fall regarding plans to reform the immigrant detention system, there is little evidence of change. In addition to detaining 3,000 immigrants in Arizona daily, and over 33,000 nationally, the Department of Homeland Security continues to work with MCSO through a 287(g) agreement in the county jails.

Who: Puente, American Civil Liberties Union-AZ

What: Action in front of ICE Office in Phoenix, Delivery of Letter calling on the federal government to end all immigration enforcement agreements with the Maricopa Country Sheriff's Office. 

When: 12:00pm-1:00pm Thursday February 25th, 2010

Where: 2035 N. Central Avenue Phoenix, AZ 

For more information about Puente please contact Carlos Garcia at carlos@puenteaz.org or call 602-314-5870