The events of the last week have been so consuming that I missed this little ditty dated July 31 by reporter Alia Beard Rau in the Arizona Republic, entitled, “Civil-rights activist, Pearce plan summit on migrant issues.” The headline alone is enough to make your pupils pop. The day that neo-Nazi…
The film Sleep Dealer, showing Saturday at Madcap Theaters in a benefit for Puente/TonatierraThe future might look something like director Alex Rivera’s dystopian sci-fi flick Sleep Dealer if the nativists get their way. In it, an impenetrable wall guards the southern border, and workers on the Mexican side slave away…
As Jack Nicholson’s character writes over and over again in The Shining, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”Which is why I decided to take a break last night from immigration, Sheriff Joe, and all the drama here in Mari-Kafka County and pay a visit to the…
Though the false collar of Phoenix’s best known civil rights leader by a goon squad of sheriff’s deputies has rated only begrudging coverage in the Arizona Republic, the New York Times evidently thinks the incident significant enough to condemn.In a commentary on District Court Judge Susan R. Bolton’s 1070 ruling,…
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio isn’t up for re-election this year — or next year. As far as we know he’s not planning on running for county attorney, either. But that’s not stopping him from airing “campaign ads” bashing his old foe, Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley.Romley’s not stooping to…
Sheriff Joe’s bully boys in beige targeted him for a political arrest on Friday, July 30, but now Phoenix civil rights leader Salvador Reza is sitting pretty, with even Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley agreeing that there was no probable cause for his arrest by the MCSO. Reza has Arpaio on…
Salvador Reza being hauled off to jail by MCSO deputies last Friday. As far as we can tell, the crime ” being Latino on a Friday afternoon” isn’t on the official books in Maricopa County. Nor is “activist on a Friday afternoon,” or “enemy-of-Joe-Arpaio on a Friday afternoon.”That didn’t stop some…
Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez has sent a letter to Sheriff Joe’s legal counsel, threatening to sue the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office if it does not comply with the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation into allegations of civil rights violations against the agency.You can read the entire letter, here…
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio can’t be too thrilled that some of his national ink has been hijacked recently by Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu. But has media-whore Arpaio’s resorted to a game of media-one-upmanship with his Pinal County counterpart?As you may have heard, the latest bounty on Arpaio’s inflated head…
Update: Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley said during a press conference today that he agrees there was no probable cause for Reza’s arrest, and that the charge against Reza from July 30 will be dropped. Please see my colleague James King’s report, here. Yesterday, I obtained the “probable cause statement” in the…
All it takes is a cell phone text and bit of garbled audio to get Sheriff Joe Arpaio running around like a chicken sans head. “America’s toughest sheriff”? Puh-lease. As was reported by Fox 10 back on July 29, and is now being regurgitated by The Drudge Report and the Associated Press,…
Kudos to Valeria Fernandez and A.J. Alexander for their work on this video You never know when Sheriff Joe is going to blurt out a bit of the truth. Case in point: This video from the crew at 90daystoPhoenix.com, part of a documentary about Arizona currently in post-production. Crusading independent…
Is this America, or is this a Third World dictatorship? You decide.Puente has posted this new video of Phoenix civil rights leader Sal Reza’s arrest Friday. Literally, it looks like something out of a film by Costa-Gavras. The sort of thing that happens in Third World dictatorships. That is, a…
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…
Governor Jan Brewer’s bad week just got worse. Today the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied Arizona’s appeal of District Court Judge Susan R. Bolton’s July 28 injunction of the most significant parts of SB 1070, the state’s “paper’s please” legislation. In their motion to the 9th Circuit, Brewer’s pricey…
Note: For the latest on Reza’s release, and the prosecutor’s admission of no probable cause, please click, here.Like you needed more evidence of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s police state tactics, civil rights leader Salvador Reza of the group Puente was arrested this afternoon by a contingent of MCSO goons, apparently on Arpaio’s direct orders…
A cluster of supporters were there to meet Phoenix civil rights leader Salvador Reza when he stepped out of the Fourth Avenue Jail around 10:30 or so Thursday night.The 58 year-old veteran activist, who heads up the pro-immigration group Puente, was collared earlier that day by Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s boys…
Phoenix exploded today in a fit of anti-SB 1070 rage that only a summer rain seems to have dampened for the moment. Scores of activists including Phoenix civil rights leader Salvador Reza of the organization Puente, and former state Senate majority leader Alfredo Gutierrez were arrested by federal officers, Phoenix…
Chanting, “We will not comply,” and, “Whose streets? Our streets,” a group of about 70 protesters took over one of the entrances to the square-mile town of Guadalupe Wednesday night, facing down Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies in a tense standoff that lasted a little over an hour.From 11:45 p.m. till…
In a daring act of civil disobedience in downtown Phoenix this evening, at least four activists occupied a tall crane near Central Avenue and Jefferson Street and deployed a huge banner that read “Stop the Hate,” with red lines crossing out “287(g)” and “1070.”Phoenix Fire Department trucks and Phoenix Police…
Although district court Judge Susan R. Bolton did not enjoin Arizona Senate Bill 1070 in its entirety this morning, she cut the heart out of the state’s discriminatory “papers, please” legislation, leaving its zombie-like corpse bloodied but still standing. In her order filed in response to the U.S. Department of…
If ever there was a time for people to raise freakin’ hell in this city, July 29 is the day. As we all know, that’s when SB 1070, Arizona’s new “breathing-while-brown law” is slated to start harassing Latinos, assuming federal Judge Susan R. Bolton doesn’t put the kibosh on it.And…
