Sheriff Joe gets wood from his prejudiced pals. Photo courtesy of Barriozona Magazine.
The racists of Rusty Childress' United for a Sovereign America, the most vicious anti-immigrant hate group in the Valley, have been getting off their geriatric duffs of late. Sunday afternoon, about a dozen of them hit the sidewalk in front of Mayor Phil Gordon's house, supposedly to protest the killing of fallen Phoenix Police Officer Shane Figueroa by a drunk driver who was in the country illegally from Mexico.
The snaggletoothed reactionaries of Childress' U.S.A. wouldn't have given a roadrunner's patootie if the DUI-er had been named "Ron White" and hailed from Mesa. That scenario would not have granted them the opportunity to race-bait against Mexicans. In any case, they spent about an hour in front of Hizzoner's house. Gordon wasn't in, but they did manage to spook a children's Halloween party going on at a neighbor's home. (Look at their scary costumes, kids! Ooooooh.) One of their signs read, "Phil Gordon, you piece of shit!" Nice. No wonder these folks weren't in church on a Sunday.
"You know the saying, `If you lift a rock, you'll find a snake?'" asked Gordon spokesman Scott Phelps. "Well, if you lift up a snake, you'll find United for a Sovereign America."
Well said, Scott-o. Our friends at Channel 5 had a short segment on the protesters. Alas, there's no smell-o-vision. So you'll miss the full-on aroma of the unwashed hillbillies here. But I think you can imagine for yourselves after feasting your peepers on these trailer park rejects.
Dennis Gilman's latest, which in part traces the links between Joe Arpaio and Joe's white supremacist supporters.
For the uninitiated, United for a Sovereign America is an extremist organization of white trash wackos with links to white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Mesa stormtrooper J.T. Ready has attended their events in the past, and veteran brownshirt Elton Hall, who raised Cain for the Arizona branch of George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party back in the day, remains in the group, despite having caused some to leave U.S.A. because of his presence.
U.S.A.'s membership has welcomed members of various race-baiting orgs to their ranks, mainly because they have much in common with neo-Nazis and white power pinheads, at least when it comes to the issue of immigration. Mesa bigot and current state Senate candidate Russell Pearce has attended U.S.A. events, as has Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who once spoke to U.S.A. members with aged neo-Nazi Elton Hall present.
Coincidentally, Dennis "The Liberal Menace" Gilman recently cooked up one of his short videos connecting the dots between Sheriff Joe, United for a Sovereign America, and neo-Nazis such as Elton Hall. So I've included it above. In it are featured recorded conversations where Rusty Childress discusses a picture someone took of Hall and Arpaio together during Joe's visit to a U.S.A. meeting earlier this year.
Speaking of Sheriff Joe, a similar U.S.A. clown patrol presented our crooked top constable with an award on the capitol lawn Monday afternoon. Ostensibly, the organization in charge of this little bigot bash was the "National Veterans Coalition," which shills for the far-right loony Constitution Party. That's the party that worships the ground Ron Paul walks on, is aligned with the politically bonkers John Birch Society (you know, the nutbars opposed to the fluoridation of drinking water, and who think President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a commie), and believes the mythical "North American Union" is poised to absorb the sovereign Unites States.
Whoever was running the show Monday, the participants were pretty much the usual suspects out of the ranks of U.S.A., including Buffalo Rick Galeener, who's set to go on trial this December 2 for allegedly taking an al fresco whiz in front of a Hispanic lady and her two-year-old son. Also on the lawn was wing-nutty Hobbit lady Anna Gaines, aka, "the anti-Hispanic Hispanic," who was the head of the failed recall effort against Mayor Gordon this year. You know, the one that was so successful that it submitted not one signature to the city clerk after circulating recall petitions for several months. Even Minuteman founder Chris Simcox was on site, videotaping the blessed event.
You can check out the pics of Anna, Buffalo, Simcox and all the rest of the 25 or so present in a photo essay by Eduardo Barraza of Barriozona Magazine. According to their own press release, these geezer goons were supposed to walk from the Capitol down to the Wells Fargo Building, where activists protest Sheriff Joe every day from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Obviously, someone was spoilin' for a streetfight, at least in theory. But the Wells Fargo crowd outnumbered the geezers by at least two-to-one, so the haters decided that it was safer for Joe to come down to the capitol to get his "America First" award.
They later said they'd intended to fool the anti-Arpaio activists into thinking they would be marching down to confront them. But the way this announcement reads on the U.S.A. Web site, I'd say the racists chickened out:
"The veterans and other non-veteran supporters will march around the Arizona State Capital [sic], on the public sidewalk at least twice and proceed to the Wells Fargo building, where the Sheriff has his office. The Sheriff said he will greet the supporters."
What, did the rednecks carve this hunk of kindling themselves? (Photo from Barriozona Magazine.)
In any case, Joe did go down to the capitol to fetch his piece of wood from the wackos, and he gave 'em a little speech as well. After all, they are his people, his power base. You know, alter kockers and unemployed drama queens who spend all of their energy and apparently copious free time. Pathetic, really. Sheriff Joe groupies, you could call them...
