SB1070: Flagstaff City Council Explores Challenge

The Arizona Daily Sun reports from Northern Arizona:

The Flagstaff City Council came out Tuesday against the state’s controversial new illegal immigration law, unwilling to enforce a law that one councilmember called “horrible” and “racist.”

They echoed sentiments held by a crowd of about 100 who turned out for the meeting at City Hall.

“I am here to speak on the behalf on the kids, los ninos,” said Ada Luz Mendoza — she knows of small children who spend nights worrying that their parents are going to be taken away at any time under the new law.

But the council, with Scott Overton absent, did not decide specifically how to oppose the immigration law, known as SB1070, during their Tuesday night meeting. The city attorney said she was unwilling to lay out legal options for the city council publicly without doing some research.

The council is expected to review its legal options against the measure next Tuesday.

Opposition to Arizona’s march to extremism will not be fading anytime soon. There is a renewed sense of activism growing each day. November will be referendum on the nativists who crossed the line with SB1070. Voter engagement campaigns are already revving up to make it so.

We will not forget.

 

City of Flagstaff Gets the ICE Problem

The City of Flagstaff has decided not to rent space for ICE to conduct its operations in Northern Arizona. The justification given is a good sign that city officials understand how abusive DHS personnel have been toward the migrant worker community.

“Co-locating this office in the LEAF building would impact some of our day-to-day public safety operations. If victims and witnesses of crimes are not coming to the LEAF building because they know ICE offices in the building, this is a problem. If they are not reporting the crimes to the Flagstaff Police Department because they think we are one-and-the-same due to a co-located office, this impacts our public safety,” Burke wrote.

Both Police Chief Brent Cooper and Burke said last week during a presentation by ICE officials at city council meeting that immigration status is not relevant when reporting a crime.

Arizona Daily Sun

It’s clear from the article that human rights advocates were successful in putting pressure on the city. Immigration is a federal issue, yet over the past several years D.C. politicos have sat on meaningful reform, causing local and state agencies to be creative in targeting migrant workers. Abuse runs rampant, families are separated because of trigger-happy Deport-Them-All officials, so it’s a good feeling to see families and migrant advocates win a battle.

Thanks, Flagstaff.

 

Flagstaff ICE Agents Served With Deportation Notice

Creative activism from allies in Coconino County. Members of Flagstaff Immigrant Rights Enforcement (FIRE) served the following notice of deportation to ICE agents:

Notice served on this, the 4th day of December, 2008 by Flagstaff Immigrant Rights Enforcement (FIRE) for the immediate deportation from the Flagstaff area of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and officials.

FIRE charges ICE with the following activities deemed criminal and in violation of human rights. These activities include but are not limited to:

1. Terrorizing entire communities resulting in the destruction of over 34,000 families within the last year alone, including most recently, 16 persons within the immediate Flagstaff area.
2. Causing fear that has extended into the hearts of our community’s children, who, due to your presence, live in constant trauma of returning to an empty home.
3. Taking no meaningful measures to ensure the well-being of those impacted by family members’ deportation.
4. Perpetuating institutionalized racism and practicing racial profiling.
5. Aiding and abetting border militarization on both sides of the US- Mexico border.
6. Creating and upholding the myth of “illegal human beings”.
7. Enforcing and benefitting from a global economic system that criminalizes labor and creates deathly low wages.
8. Enforcing immigration policies on borders drawn on indigenous lands.
9. Misappropriation of taxpayer funds for aforementioned terrorist activity while education, health care, and housing services

Video:

via National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights

 

Arizona News Round-Up

Now that you’re done marking your calendars for Gila Bend’s Desert Scorpion Shrimp Festival, lets take another trip down the unbeaten path to see what’s going on in the Grand Canyon State.

Lake Havasu City – Mecca of Jet Skis, Boating, and…Rusty Buses

The double-decker bus in the English Village has hit the road.

Not that the bus could make it anywhere on its own. The bus was pulled Thursday from its base with a crane and then towed off the property through a donation by Steve Getter, owner of Steve’s Towing service.

Today’s News-Herald

I’m pretty sure that thing puts the Death in Death Ride. Anywho, heading up the highway towards Laughlin Kingman, the Mohave County Board of Supervisors grasp with the effects of Proposition 101 on rural areas.

The focus of Tuesday’s budget workshop for the Board of Supervisors seemed less about what the different county departments were asking for and more about what funds were being taken away from the county. The effects of Proposition 101 on the county’s coffers was repeatedly brought up by not only the Board but various department heads as well.

Proposition 101 was passed by voters in November. It limits the amount the county can increase the property tax rate to 2 percent each year plus new development.

Kingman Daily Miner

Heading east, the town of Williams is facing an emergency that will probably become an inevitability for the entire Southwest region – water woes

“We are finding ourselves, currently, in what I would term a water crisis. Williams has had water crises in the past,” said Wells. “This last winter created virtually no rainfall or snow of any amount and we are looking forward, as we always do, and we came to realize that, within a year, this town could be totally out of water. To compound things, our Dogtown I Well recently went down. The electric motor has burned out and we plan, at some point this summer, to replace the motor and get Dogtown I back up, so we currently only have one producing water well that is available for usage and our reservoirs are precariously low. June is the month of the year that tends to reduce the levels of our reservoirs rather dramatically. It is what I would term a crisis, because we know if the drought continues, and it is expected to continue, then within one year this community is out of water.”

Williams-Grand Canyon News

Continuing down I-40 to Flagstaff, the newest Democratic candidate for Congressional District 1 announced her bid.

Mary Kim Titla hopes to become the first Native American woman in Congress. She has announced her candidacy and plans to unseat Rick Renzi from Arizona’s Congressional District One.

Titla took her campaign race onto the winding woodland trail above Flagstaff’s Thorpe Park that has served as the route for the Native Americans for Community Action (NACA) Sacred Mountain Prayer Run for several years now.

Navajo Hopi Observer

Here is her campaign website to get more info on her candidacy. I recall her stint with Channel 12 in Phoenix, it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

Dipping south now towards Camp Verde, some residents will finally reap the rewards of the town getting their crap together.

In 1993 an election was held in Camp Verde to annex a large tract of the town into the sanitary district.

The landowners that were taken in have been paying taxes just like everyone else in the district. Only they haven’t been hooked up to anything. In many instances they have had to pay additional fees to have their septic systems repeatedly pumped.

That is going to change.

On Wednesday, sanitary district Chairman Rob Witt took a trip to Phoenix to the offices of the district bond council Fred Rosenfeld. There he signed the paperwork that finalized the last $11 million needed to finish the expansion project.

Camp Verde Bugle

Speaking of sewage – two vigilantes in Prescott are facing charges for harassment

A Prescott Police investigation has revealed that two members of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps had provoked the alleged attack by a man they photographed picking up the day labor at the corner of Lincoln and Grove avenues on May 18.

Lt. Ken Morley said that David Hunter and Bentley Bremmon could face misdemeanor harassment charges.

“They were harassing him to the point where Scott Blair got out of his truck and went after these two guys,” Morley said.

Prescott Daily Courier

And not really news, but definitely intriguing (at least to me), an excerpt from historical and creative writing out of the former mining hamlet of Jerome.

Lillie watched as the driver turned and started running down the rocky canyon road toward Jeome. She knew that he would probably run all the way to town. She wiped the handkerchief around her lace collar. It was hot. One of those spring days in Arizona that reminded you of just how hot it could be by the time summer came around. She knew that she should have waited for Jack to arrive from San Francisco, but she just couldn’t resist the idea of coming over the mountain in a stagecoach. She realized that soon there would be no more stagecoaches, and since it was only a day trip from Prescott to Jerome . . . well . . . She just hoped that the booming mining camp was all that it professed to be – the luxurious Hotel Montana, the spectacular view, the Opera House.

Lillie leaned her head out of the coach and surveyed her surroundings. They had just come down from the pass where they had been surrounded by pine woods and meadows. Then abruptly the terrain had changed. She was now in a small rocky canyon. Instead of pine forest, it was highland desert – red rock, manzanita, cactus, and desert flowers. Her eyes ran down the canyon to where it opened into the valley a couple of thousand feet below. She could see all the way across the valley to the massive red rock cliffs on the other side. Lazy white clouds drifted across the blue sky. The sun was growing hotter in the canyon.

Jerome Times

What’s going on in your part of the world?