The scriptures advise us that a gentle answer turneth away wrath. Apparently it has the effect of disarming Tea Baggers as well.That proverb was put to the test last Sunday at Phoenix’s Margaret T. Hance Park where a couple of hundred people gathered to celebrate International Workers’ Day, otherwise known…
Police in full riot gear, some tech-ed out SWAT-style with pepper-spray guns. A cop chopper overhead. Protesters locking arms to prevent police vehicles from moving. A 69 year-old activist on crutches arrested and cited, along with six others. Cops flinging demonstrators around like rag dolls.In other words, not your average…
Ethnic studies student Angelica Penaran takes a TUSD board member to the woodshedThe fight against the effort to slowly kill the Tucson Unified School District’s embattled Mexican-American ethnic studies program continues today with a TUSD board of governor’s meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Last week, a TUSD vote on a proposal…
In the wake of President Barack Obama’s announcement that terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden has been killed by American forces during a firefight in Pakistan, I have a few predictions.The first is a given: traitorous right-wing nutjobs will not grant the Obama administration any credit for the kill. They also will…
With their own words and deeds, they are damned.I’m talking about what’s in the latest filings in the American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office over claims that his anti-immigrant sweeps racially and ethnically profile Latinos in Maricopa County. Both sides in Melendres vs. Arpaio have asked for…
Attwood on Arpaio’s cockroachesBack in August, I wrote up my interview with former ecstasy kingpin Shaun Attwood, whose memoir Hard Time: A Brit in America’s Toughest Jail provides a harrowing account of his two years in Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s medieval prison complex.Filth, cockroaches, a cornucopia of drugs, the neo-Nazi Aryan…
Sheriff Joe Arpaio recently tweeted that he will “speaking at [Arizona State University’s] Cronkite School of Journalism” today at 3 p.m.But if you’re expecting a repeat of the debacle that occurred in 2009 when Arpaio attended a public forum at ASU’s Cronkite School in downtown Phoenix, and questions from ASU dons…
As I’ve pointed out in my cover story this week on Phoenix Law Enforcement Association president Mark Spencer and his sleazy ways, PLEA swallowed the Phoenix Police Department’s controversial kidnapping stats whole hog at one time. Long before they used them to bash ex-Police Chief Jack Harris as corrupt.Now like…
Nobody would accuse Mark Spencer, president of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, of having a commanding presence. Pudgy and bespectacled, with spiked hair and a voice described by one of his allies as akin to Porky Pig’s, sans stutter, he hardly looks or sounds like a cop. His frumpy garb…
BULLY BEAT-DOWN I hate bullies, and I hate dumb rednecks, and I particularly despise redneck bullies who go on to become cops. So I think you can guess what I think about Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Lieutenant Joe Sousa, a vein-popping hick from Rhode Island, infamous for telling elected politicians…
Courtesy of the Three Sonorans, the revolution is YouTube-izedHow often have you seen students protest and commit acts of civil disobedience because they want to study something?While their peers in the rest of the country may be looking to cut class, Tucson’s students are battling to maintain ethnic studies in…
A couple of weeks back, I blogged about how Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu’s spokesman Tim Gaffney had apparently borrowed some stills of desert barricades taken by National Socialist Movement member Harry Hughes, otherwise known as the world’s “nicest neo-Nazi.” Or so I’ve dubbed him.Well, hell hath no fury like…
The Obama administration on blast and the 1070 boycott rolls on, one year laterBehold this first ever video collaboration between Phoenix videographer Dennis Gilman and New Times, documenting Saturday’s anti-Senate Bill 1070 march to the Arizona state Capitol.In the above video, Gilman captures some great footage of angry nativists, pro-immigrant…
Around a year ago, just days after Governor Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1070 into law and made Arizona synonymous with nativism and bigotry, Arizona Congressmen Ed Pastor and Raul Grijalva, both Democrats, spoke before an anti-1070 rally of thousands, exhorting the crowd to fight against the hate 1070 represents.Pro-immigrant…
Well, it wasn’t too difficult to find out where pro-Hitler propagandist and Holocaust-denier David Irving was having his coffee klatch of kooks, the one I informed you about in a blog post yesterday. By Thursday afternoon, several folks were calling me with the information that he’d be holding court with…
It’s been a couple of years since disgraced historian and Holocaust-denier David Irving hit town. You may recall the ruckus raised by anti-fascist protesters at Jerry’s Restaurant in Phoenix in 2009, where Irving spoke before a small crowd of neo-Nazis and assorted kooks.The manager at Jerry’s recently informed me that…
This Saturday, April 23 marks the one-year anniversary of Governor Jan Brewer signing Senate Bill 1070 into law. And though there have been a few encouraging cracks in the racist facade of late, the oppression, the raids, and separation of families continues.That’s why it’s important to support the Puente Movement-organized march…
GANG OF THIEVES Just how dumb does Sheriff Joe Arpaio think the voters of Maricopa County are? Granted, he’s counted on the majority of them being so enraptured with his cult of personality, Tent City, the pink underwear, the tank, and more recently, his Hispanic-hunting escapades, that they’ve re-elected him…
>p>Who let this gum-smacking, white trash witch out of her cage?Oh, do I have a treat for you. Here’s a new video from Phoenix activist and radio show host Carlos Galindo of him taking on racist Republican state Senator Lori Klein. In the video, Klein basically admits to telling an…
When I first heard that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service were raiding 15 Chuy’s restaurants in Arizona and California, my first thought was that this operation sounded suspiciously like a Sheriff Joe Arpaio-style raid against Pei Wei, Sizzler, McDonalds, et al. In fact, I’m stone-cold certain…
When I read the recent Salon.com article “How a boycott meant to save Arizona is hurting it,” I wondered to myself how its author, a woman by the name of Drew Grant, ended up writing such an insipid, one-sided piece about the Sound Strike, a piece that’s essentially a Q…
Chalk up another embarrassing defeat for state Senate President Russell Pearce and his fellow Republinuts on three bills they desperately wanted: the birther bill, the guns on campus wackiness, and a bill allowing for an anti-health care reform compact among the states.Governor Jan Brewer has just vetoed all three measures…
