About 50 protesters from groups such as Puente and the newly formed LUCHA (Living United for Change in Arizona) demonstrated against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano as she spoke at ASU Thursday night at the John P. Frank Memorial Lecture. Carrying signs that read, “Janet Stop Joe Arpaio,…
Kris Kobach, the far right-wing nativist attorney Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s hired to train the MCSO in immigration matters, is receiving $300 per hour, plus expenses, including airline tickets to and from Arizona.Though Arpaio’s Chief Deputy David Hendershott surmised in his recent deposition in the civil rights lawsuit Melendres vs. Arpaio…
With demonstrators outside the Phoenix federal courthouse clamoring for Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s head, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder today characterized the Department of Justice investigation into Arpaio’s office as “serious” and “ongoing,” and said that he expected the probe to produce “results.”The attorney general was at downtown’s Sandra Day O’Connor…
CBS 5’s Peter Busch did a segment for last night’s news on the fight to save the Career Criminal Squad, a squad of four detectives and one sergeant that goes undercover to investigate street-level hate crimes and murder-for-hire cases.I decried the impending disbandment of this squad in last week’s Bird…
RUSSIAN SPRING Jana Rozenman curls up on a sofa on the patio of her Scottsdale apartment as her 4½-year-old twins watch TV and play with balloons scattered nearby. She seems at peace, relaxing in the mild spring air, as she recalls the events of the past year, one that’s just…
Video of Mary Rose Wilcox in D.C. by videographer Dennis GilmanTelling the crowd at the big immigration rally on Sunday in Washington, D.C. that Sheriff Joe runs Maricopa County like a “police state,” county Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox urged listeners to call the U.S. Department of Justice and tell Attorney…
****Please See Update Below****Will we live in state Senator Russell Pearce’s dream police state, or will we live in the United States of America?That’s the issue at hand this afternoon as Pearce’s SB 1070/HB 2632 goes to the House Committee of the Whole for debate. The bill, which would greatly expand…
Freedom’s Phoenix Web site owner and Libertarian activist Ernie Hancock is demanding that state Senator Russell Pearce be censured by the Senate Ethics Committee. This, over an e-mail Pearce sent out recently suggesting that Hancock’s advocacy against Pearce’s SB 1070/HB 2632 was “just short of a domestic terrorist act.”As I’ve…
Today, President Barack Obama buffaloed tens of thousands of activists demanding immigration reform in Washington, D.C., appearing via video on jumbo screens, and telling the masses, according to the New York Times that,”I have always pledged to be your partner as we work to fix our broken immigration system, and…
Jason Shelton (aka, “4409”) arguing against Pearce’s unconstitutional billState Senator Russell Pearce’s police state/bigot bill is under siege by the Libertarians and Ron Paul Republicans over at Ernie Hancock’s Web site Freedom’s Phoenix. As I’ve blogged previously, Hancock sent out a mass e-mail last week with a link to an article…
The soon-to-be-disbanded Career Criminal Squad of the Phoenix Police Department has scored another W: The conviction of local cigar czar Dimitri Rozenman for contracting to have the mother of his two children and members of her family murdered.The jury delivered verdicts of guilty yesterday for Rozenman’s murder-for-hire scheme, as well…
Let’s hear it for the Libertarians. It seems civil liberties concerns raised by writers like John Green over at Freedom’s Phoenix may have gotten the Ron Paul-wing of the local GOP up in arms over a provision in state Senator Russell Pearce’s bigot bill SB 1070/HB 2632, which they call a…
HATE SQUAD ON HOLD I’m not sure which news emanating from the Phoenix Police Department is more disturbing: the fact that hate crimes were up nearly 30 percent in Phoenix in 2009 from 2008, or that PPD muck-a-mucks have decided to do away with their most effective tool in tackling…
What an embarrassing day for the Republican leadership in the state House. Though House GOPers were prepared this afternoon to ram through state Senator Russell Pearce’s anti-Hispanic apartheid bill SB 1070/HB 2632, to the surprise of almost everyone in the chamber, its House sponsor Rep. David Gowan suddenly moved that…
There’s something particularly obscene about the fact that state Senator Russell Pearce’s bigoted, anti-immigrant legislation SB 1070/HB 2632 will be heard today on the House floor, falling, as the date does, on St. Patrick’s Day.Because before nativist hatemongers had Mexican immigrants to kick around, there were the Irish. Fleeing poverty,…
Maybe Sheriff Joe figures that if he runs for Governor of Arizona, the federal grand jury now investigating him won’t indict him. Could that be why he keeps playing up the drama of a possible candidacy for Governor of Arizona? You know, like in his latest Tweet, where he states…
Not all of the water from all of the jugs placed in the desert by activists from groups like No More Deaths can wipe clean the blood of migrants from President Barack Obama’s hands.What other conclusion can be drawn from the news from Tucson advocacy group Derechos Humanos that the…
During this past Wednesday’s rally against state Senator Russell Pearce’s new apartheid-like bill SB 1070/HB 2632, I remained with the mass of the protesters, while a small contingent of demonstration leaders went into the Capitol’s Executive Tower and up to the 9th Floor to try and meet with Governor Jan…
Inspired in part by New Times’ March 19, 2009 cover art for the feature “Are Your Papers in Order?” by Village Voice Media Executive Editor Michael Lacey, Phoenix muralist Francisco Garcia first painted an image on canvas based on that ski-masked, gun-pointing MCSO deputy. That image later became part of…
Around two hundred protesters and speakers from groups such as Border Action Network, Puente, Maricopa Citizens for Safety and Accountability, Somos America, the ACLU of Arizona, and others rallied at Capitol’s Executive Tower today to demand that Governor Jan Brewer veto state Senator Russell Pearce’s bill SB 1070/HB 2632. The…
The ACLU of Arizona has issued a blunt analysis of state Senator Russell Pearce’s SB 1070/HB 2632, which gives the brass tacks on why and how the bill is unconstitutional and the impact of the legislation. For those unfamiliar with Pearce’s new anti-immigrant bill, it offers a good overview, and for…
The Bishops of the Arizona Catholic Conference, which includes the Dioceses of Phoenix, Tucson, and Gallup, New Mexico, issued a statement today criticizing state Senator Russell Pearce’s mirror anti-immigrant measures HB 2632 and SB 1070, urging that they be yanked from consideration.In a message signed by Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted, Tucson Bishop Gerald Kicanas…
