Arizona

Inspired By West Virginia, Teachers Spread Red For Ed Movement Across Arizona

March 20, 2018 By Rebecca Garelli, Labornotes.org Organize! Arizona, Education, Labor, Strikes, Teachers

This all got started two Fridays ago, March 2. I had become friends with Jay O’Neal from West Virginia, who helped start the teachers and public employees Facebook group there, and he let me into their group. I’d been hanging out, just watching things, thinking, “Why is nobody in Arizona doing this?” So my Chicago blood got boiling, and I said, “I’m just going to spark the fire, I’ll be the catalyst.” I had been communicating with some folks on the Arizona BATS page—Bad Ass Teachers. I had been posting some things coming out of West Virginia, and others would get fired up too, so we started a dialogue. And then one of the admins of that page said, “Anybody else think Arizona should do something like that?” I said, “Yess!!!” I and another teacher started a Facebook group that day: Arizona Teachers United. There was no mention of striking, no mention of action.

Arizona Unconstitutionally Banned Mexican-American Studies Classes

August 24, 2017 Roque Planas, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Arizona, Courts, culture, Legislation, Racism

By Roque Planas for The Huffington Post. PHOENIX ― A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the state of Arizona violated students’ rights by banning a Mexican-American studies program from Tucson public schools. The ruling issued by U.S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima found that a law passed by Arizona’s Republican-dominated state legislature in 2010 violated both the First and 14th Amendments. It marks a major victory for educators and activists who viewed the ethnic studies law as a flatly discriminatory effort by Arizona Republicans to keep Hispanic students from learning about their history or studying writers of color that are often ignored in public schools. Curtis Acosta, one of the former teachers of the banned program, celebrated the ruling on Twitter.

Police Tear-Gas Demonstrators At Huge Anti-Trump Protest

August 24, 2017 Julia Conley, www.commondreams.org Resist! Arizona, Donald Trump, Police, Protests, Repression

By Julia Conley for Common Dreams - Contrary to Trump's claims that protests were small, many thousands showed up to peacefully condemn the president. Tensions soared and police ultimately dispersed crowds with tear gas at the huge anti-Trump protest outside the Phoenix Convention Center on Tuesday night, where Trump was inside raging about the news media's coverage of his administration and dog-whistling his defense of white supremacy at a campaign-style rally. Contrary to Trump's lie that only a few protesters were outside, many thousands of people had shown up to demonstrate peacefully and condemn the president's rhetoric and agenda. Mayor Greg Stanton said officials would examine whether excessive force was used by the city's police. The police said they only responded with force after protesters threw water bottles and other objects at them, an account that was disputed by witnesses. The Los Angeles Times along with several demonstrators reported that officers first fired tear gas after protesters tried to move police barricades as the president finished speaking.

IWW Miners Of Jerome & Bisbee Loaded Into Cattle Cars & Deported From State Of Arizona

July 18, 2017 Janet Raye, www.weneverforget.org Resist! Arizona, Deportations, Mining, Working Class

By Janet Raye for We Never Forget - The above photograph shows more than 1000 working class men, mostly members of the Metal Mine Workers Industrial Union of the Industrial Workers of the World, being loaded into cattle cars in Bisbee, Arizona, July 12th, for the purpose of being deported from the state of Arizona. The men were force to stand in manure and left without food and water for hours until they were hauled across the state line and into New Mexico. More than 1000 men were left stranded in the desert near Hermanas, New Mexico. The sixty-seven men deported from Jerome were taken across the state line and left at Needles, California.

Cost Of Cuts: Arizona Tax Carve-Outs Last Year Hit $13.7B

June 7, 2017 Jim Small and Evan Wyloge, www.azcir.org Educate! Arizona, Budget Cuts, New Economy

By Jim Small and Evan Wyloge for Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting - PHOENIX – Teachers who marched on the Capitol this past week in support of doubling the salary boost that lawmakers were considering went home empty handed, as Republican lawmakers backed a budget proposal that grants them a two-percent increase over the next two years, saying there simply wasn’t money available. The cost of doing so would have been an additional $34 million per year in the first year and $68 million in the second, a tiny fraction of the $9.8 billion spending plan approved May 5. But that figure is dwarfed by how much tax revenue the state doesn’t collect each year: In fiscal year 2016, state law allowed $13.7 billion in taxes to go uncollected through a litany of exemptions, deductions, allowances, exclusions or credits. And that number is likely to grow by another $1-to-2 billion once individual income tax deductions are tallied. According to data compiled by the Arizona Department of Revenue, more than half of all state taxes haven’t been collected for at least the past ten years. Called “tax expenditures,” they amount to $136.5 billion since fiscal year 2007 – roughly equivalent to sum of state budgets spanning the past 15 years.

Arizona Utility Signs Game-Changing Deal Cutting Solar Power Prices In Half

May 30, 2017 Joe Romm, www.thinkprogress.org Create! Arizona, Solar Energy

By Joe Romm for Think Progress - Remarkable drops in the cost of solar and wind power have effectively turned the global power market upside down in recent years. We’ve seen prices for new solar farms below 3 cents per kilowatt hour (kwh) in other countries for over a year now, but before this week, not in the U.S. That changed on Monday when Tucson Electric Power (TEP), an Arizona utility company, announced that it had reached an agreement to buy solar power at the same game-changing price. TEP says that this is a “historically low price” for a 100-megawatt system capable of powering 21,000 homes — and that the sub-3-cents price is “less than half as much as it agreed to pay under similar contracts in recent years.” For context, the average U.S. residential price for electricity is nearly 13 centsper kwh, and the average commercial price is 10.5 cents. NextEra Energy Resources will build and operate the system, which also includes “a long duration battery storage system” (whose price is not included in the 3 cents/kwh). Also worth noting: The sub-3-cents contracts that have been signed in other countries such as Chile, Dubai, and Mexico are unsubsidized, whereas U.S. prices include the 30 percent Investment Tax Credit.

Arizona GOP Kills Bill That Would’ve Treated Protesters Like Terrorists

March 2, 2017 Brian Grenoble, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Arizona, Legislation, Protesters

By Brian Grenoble for The Huffington Post - “People need to know we are not about limiting people’s rights,” Arizona House Speaker J.D. Mesnard said. An Arizona bill that would have let the state government charge protesters the same way it charges terrorists will not get a hearing in the state House, Speaker J.D. Mesnard (R) said Monday. Last Wednesday, Senate Bill 1142 passed the state’s upper chamber on a party-line vote, prompting an outcry from watchdogs like the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona over its chilling implications for free speech.

Arizona Senate Votes To Seize Assets Of Associated With Protests

February 24, 2017 Howard Fischer, www.azcapitoltimes.com Resist! Arizona, Protests, Senate, Violence

By Howard Fischer for Arizona Capitol Times - Claiming people are being paid to riot, Republican state senators voted Wednesday to give police new power to arrest anyone who is involved in a peaceful demonstration that may turn bad — even before anything actually happened. SB1142 expands the state’s racketeering laws, now aimed at organized crime, to also include rioting. And it redefines what constitutes rioting to include actions that result in damage to the property of others. But the real heart of the legislation is what Democrats say is the guilt by association — and giving the government the right to criminally prosecute and seize the assets of everyone who planned a protest and everyone who participated. And what’s worse, said Sen. Steve Farley, D-Tucson, is that the person who may have broken a window, triggering the claim there was a riot, might actually not be a member of the group but someone from the other side.

Protests Erupt As Longtime Arizona Resident And Mother Hauled Off In Deportation Van

February 10, 2017 Nika Knight, www.commondreams.org Resist! Arizona, Deportations, Protests

By Nika Knight for Common Dreams - "We're living in a new era now, an era of war on immigrants," Rayos' lawyer, Ray A. Ybarra Maldonado, told the New York Times. Rayos came to the attention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in 2008, when she was discovered to be undocumented during a raid ordered by the former anti-immigration sheriff Joe Arpaio of the theme park where she worked. The Los Angeles Times explains: Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, 36, had lived in the country since she was 14. She was arrested in 2008 during a workplace raid ordered by then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio at Golfland Sunsplash amusement park in Mesa, Ariz., and convicted of felony identity theft for possessing false papers.

Save Oak Flat! Protest Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick Speech

October 26, 2015 Staff, www.leonardclark.wordpress.com Resist! Arizona, boycott, Indigenous Peoples, Mining

By Staff of Leonard Clark Blog - Update since this last article was written …“So the board of the Phoenix chapter of the DFA has just censored my post … We must be getting their attention … I just got censored from a so called Progressive Democratic group Phoenix for posting the truth about about Ann Kirkpatrick. Good … now we are getting the big wigs attention … we are starting to scare them. My apologies to those in DFA that don’t think (as their board does) that we should look the other way when a human rights crime is about to be committed by a Democrat congress lady Ann Kirkpatrick they have chosen to run for the U.S. Senate in Arizona …

San Carlos Apache Tribe Clashes With Rep. Gosar After Rally

July 24, 2015 Indianz, www.facebook.com Resist! Arizona, Congress, Indigenous People, Land Rights, Mining, Sacred, Save Oak Flat

By Indianz - Members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe declared victory in their campaign to protect one of their most sacred places at a rally at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday even as some were threatened with arrest by a Republican member of Congress. With almost no financial backing, the Apache Stronghold left Arizona earlier this month on a 2,000-mile journey to educate the nation about the threats facing Oak Flat, a sacred gathering, ceremonial and burial site in Arizona. The trip culminated in a rousing rally in the Washington, D.C., heat with calls to support a bill that will protect the land from a controversial mining development. "Nothing is going to stop us," elder Sandra Rambler stated to cheers. "No surrender." As a spiritual leader within the tribe, Manuel Cooley said it's not common for him to take political stands. But Oak Flat is so important to his people that he drove to the nation's capital to explain why the proposed Resolution Copper mine will destroy the site.

Questions Surround Private Prisons After AZ Riot

July 20, 2015 Donald Cohen, www.capitalandmain.com Educate! Arizona, Mass Incarceration, Prison Industrial Complex, Torture

By Donald Cohen in Capital and Main - By now, you have probably heard about the riot at the for-profit Kingman Prison in Arizona. Days of unrest at the prison, run by the privately-held Management Training Corporation, left 15 wounded and forced nearly 1,000 incarcerated people to be transferred to other facilities. The same facility also suffered from a major riot in 2010. Similarly, people detained at an MTC-run camp in Texas names Willacy rioted earlier this year, forcing that facility to close completely. The Kingman riots are focusing renewed attention on the Arizona legislature’s long, cozy relationship with the private prison industry.

Arizona Protesters Organize Against Border Patrol Checkpoints

May 30, 2015 Ashoko Jegroo, www.wagingnonviolence.org Resist! Arizona, Immigration, Patriarchy, Racial Justice, Wars and Militarism

Protesters from a small Arizona town staged a demonstration at a nearby border checkpoint early on May 27 to express their opposition to its presence as well as the discriminatory and racist practices of Border Patrol. “If I was with a ‘brown’ person, I’m stopped. If I’m by myself, I’m a honkey, and I go right through,” protester Susan Thorpe told News 4 Tucson. “That makes me very sad to see what’s happened to my country.” About 100 people from the town of Arivaca, Arizona made their way to the temporary Border Patrol checkpoint on Arivaca Road, about 50 miles southwest of Tucson, at around 10 a.m. on Wednesday morning.

Arizona School Officials Protest Ed Cuts, Protests Made Illegal

April 6, 2015 Maggie's Farm, www.dailykos.com Resist! Arizona, Education, Freedom of Expression, Law

Some of the most vocal critics of Ducey's education policy have been school board members, district superintendents and teachers, which does not please the governor. Early on, when his budget was being debated, 233 superintendents signed and sent a letter to the legislature asking them to stop their boneheaded budget slashing. After Ducey's draconian budget passed, Dr. Michael Cowan, superintendent of Mesa School District, the largest in the state, sent an email to teachers and parents that was critical of the governor's plan. Ducey's response was swift: his "dark money" backers (Koch of course), with the governor's knowledge, organized a robocall campaign to smear Dr. Cowan. The message to school employees was clear: shut up or we'll shut you up. Well, they did not shut up.

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