Some artists already have stepped up to make a stand, such as Rage Against the Machine/One Day as a Lion frontman Zack de la Rocha and Ernesto Yerena, an L.A. graphic artist who works with Shepard Fairey, of Obama/Hope poster fame. There have been local artists, as well, but not nearly enough to counterbalance the ongoing injustice and tyranny of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and others.
Within the past couple of weeks, however, I've seen signs that local creative types are beginning to agitate. There was the recent parody of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" (with pro-immigrant lyrics) that interrupted the last 15 minutes of Arpaio's appearance at the ASU's Cronkite School of Journalism.
Ramon Delgadillo's Crucifixion, now on display at the new Arizona Latino Arts and Cultural Center in downtown Phoenix.
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While some students were disrupting Joe's confab with journalism profs, a group of anarchists and activists took the school's lobby, without a peep from the police. There, the Phoenix "punkgrass" trio Haymarket Squares gave an impromptu concert, crooning an anti-Arpaio song with lyrics making mention of the victims in Joe's jails. I've posted a YouTube video of the Haymarketers in action on my Feathered Bastard blog. You can also catch them on Friday, December 11, at Mardi Gras Bar & Grill in Scottsdale.
The Haymarket Squares' "Sheriff Joe" ditty recalls such folk songsters of yore, such as Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. It makes a cool companion piece to Tucson rapper Outlaw Fleetwood's hip-hop tune "Tent City," which I wrote about in a September Bird column.
In addition, the opening of the new Arizona Latino Arts and Cultural Center, at 147 East Adams Street, across from the Hyatt hotel downtown, featured a handful of artworks aimed at Arpaio, the MCSO, and their persecution of the undocumented. ALAC's debut exhibit, "Visiones," included more than 45 artists, most of them doing less-controversial stuff. But it was the anti-Joe material that caught my eye.
Chino Valley sculptor David Romo depicted Arpaio as a creepy, lizard-y king, with an alligator head topped by a copper crown and a skeletal steel body that held a pair of handcuffs in one hand and a key in the other.
A mini-mural on canvas done by Phoenix artist Francisco Garcia showed an Arizona divided, literally, by a bifurcated face. Half was Joe's face, flanked by an MCSO deputy in a black ski mask, drawing down on the viewer. The left half was the face of César Chávez, and to his side, Latino students demonstrating in favor of the Dream Act.
The masked cop was inspired by a March New Times cover illustrating Village Voice Media Executive Editor Michael Lacey's feature, "Are Your Papers in Order?," the beginning of our series on Arpaio's racial profiling. You may also recall that Garcia is the same artist whose work was censored by the Pine-Strawberry Elementary School because it included the image of an African-American child.
The third anti-MCSO offering was the most iconic, and the most powerful: painter Ramon Delgadillo's Crucifixion. On an orange backdrop, a sheriff's deputy points his handgun at a kneeling prisoner. The prisoner's arms are outstretched, his hands bearing stigmata. Around his head is a golden aura indicating sainthood.
"Everybody's being crucified by this guy [Arpaio]," Delgadillo, 60, said to me about the religious overtones in his piece. "That's the way I feel about what he's doing to our people."
Delgadillo has experienced MCSO discrimination first-hand. A court interpreter, he was denied access to Joe's jails in 2007, even though he'd worked in the court system for more than 25 years, and though he was and is a naturalized American citizen. Arpaio's goons were demanding that Delgadillo prove his citizenship.
"Throughout time, artists have been the voice of rebellion," said Delgadillo, who still works for the courts as a freelance interpreter. "And they have exposed things like this to the world. I can't imagine doing something just because it looks pretty."
