Reflections on a Crucifixion: the Arizona Immigrant Movement's Slow, Steady March to Oblivion

Or, "The Smartest Guy In The Movement Revealed"

As we approach the one year anniversary of the passage of SB1070, we naturally tend to look back. As I've pointed out in other articles, the year leading up and and since then hasn't been the easiest one, as we have fought off recuperators, reactionaries and straight up Nazis in the meetings, on the internet and in the streets. No one has yet written a comprehensive analysis of that period of heightened struggle, which for me stretches from the first Inglourious Basterds Bloc through the DO@ Bloc, on into the hot summer of 2010 with its student walkouts and the Border Patrol occupation, and then culminating with Inglourious Basterds II. I for one would welcome it if an anarchist would take on the job of documenting and analyzing that struggle, although I don't yet feel up to the task.

Although that larger project remains incomplete, in a recent discussion, we at PCWC decided that it might be worth tackling it in smaller, bite-sized portions -- reflections on the interesting moments, those lightbulb-going-off-in-your-head instances, and those things that weren't perhaps clear at first but became so over time. There were a lot, even for us veteran militants. The terrain of this struggle became so complicated over time that we were bound to come out of it wiser and, of course, surprised, as one always is when the working class is in motion.

In July of last year, we saw the last gasp of the mainstream migrant movement. It had marched us to death, sign-held us to death, and fund-raised us to death. Will it return? The prognosis is not good, as the political rump that remains clings to its dirty non-profit money and celebrity contacts like a Titanic refugee to a bit of driftwood.

No new or creative ideas emerge from that bottomless whirlpool, that navel-gazing vortex. All the interesting things happen outside the movement, and have for some time. The Border Patrol occupation. The resistance around the new freeway and Snowbowl desecration. Interestingly, all these actions operate within the analysis developed within the militant anti-state, anti-capitalist wing, with its assertion of "free movement for all" and "no to dislocation" as its main guideposts.

Meanwhile,"Boycott Arizona" remains the mantra of the defeated movement. This is a movement that celebrates year after year it's never-ending protest outside Sheriff Joe's office with cake, music and party favors. Another year of failure, another year of using the same bankrupt tactics to no avail. Failure, increasingly, is the goal of the movement. Implicit in the slogan is its desperate cry for outside help.

Because the movement leadership was at war with creativity and critical thought, in the end it was the Arizona Chamber of Commerce that answered that plea and stopped the march of anti-immigrant legislation. Capital re-evaluted its relationship with the reactionary white working and middle classes and blocked further regression, much as the Libertarian right had nearly scuttled SB1070 before that. The movement is a sham, and it wouldn't be so terrible if it hadn't had such terrible consequences for so many.

So it's in the spirit of reflection that I share with you the smartest man in the immigrant movement. This is a person who really understood what was going on, long before any of us did, with our flyers and our sweaty and tired participation in the mainstream miles-long marches. I mean, we came around eventually: at first we just started skipping the marches and showing up at the end to handout literature. Then we gradually returned more and more to doing our own things, playing with contradictions, fucking with the Libertarian right, provoking reactionaries and designing actions and events with ideas and composition that the mainstream leadership could not ignore. Our "fractures and fissures" theories developed in the midst of this phase of the struggle and we deployed them. And it was during this time that we organized the neighborhood assemblies, actions and marches in Tempe, for instance, a deviation that movement leaders and the sycophantic non-profiteers they surrounded themselves with found hard to countenance.

But at first, there was us, with years of showing up at these protests, supporting, holding signs, playing nice and watching movement leaders one after another peel off to the right, towards conservativism in action and thought, terrified of their own rank and file. Not that they ever had our allegiance, but one is polite at first, especially as white militants. One waits to see what develops and what can be supported, without compromising one's views, and one hands out a lot of flyers. One organizes her friends and breaks up Minuteman rallies in front of the Mexican Consulate. That's what one does.


It's hard to really remember now how before things exploded with the general strike, the rallies had only twenty, fifty, a hundred, maybe two hundred attendees. We were all opposing the early wave of reactionary laws, although we didn't know it for sure then -- it seemed apocalyptic even then. Now, with a tiny shadow of what had come before remaining, the movement leaders are surely more comfortable with a few dozen activists and non-profiteers than they ever were with several hundred thousand wildcatters waving Mexican flags, like in those early days. We know they are happier with a handful of dedicated student activists rather than the thousands and thousands of students who walked out a day earlier than their "responsible adult" leaders had prescribed, occupying the capitol lawn and finally rioting in an explosion of righteous anger when the law was signed despite their protests.

So, let me get back to this seer of the movement, the man who saw with total clarity before anyone else the purpose of those long -- many, many miles long -- hot, summer marches. Before I even figured it out, when I was just stoked at seeing so many people in the streets of Phoenix, even if we anarchists had to fight for them to be open to us. It's easy to forget the blistering heat of those marches, which repeated every so often, leaving from the same park and heading to the same, distant destination. People collapsing of heat stroke all around. The ritual of the march, the self-sacrifice of the struggle -- it all looks so obvious in hindsight, now that the excitement of the working class in motion has worn off and that same working class has been out-maneuvered, bored, exhausted and beaten down by movement leaders. But one man got it right from the get-go, from the minute we set foot to blacktop (or sidewalk, as the leadership tried so desperately -- and sometimes unsuccessfully -- to limit it).

I present to you this man.


This man showed up every time, along with others from time to time, dragging this ridiculous cross with him march after march, mile after mile. He understood that these marches were a punishment, a self-sacrifice, not intended to stop the raids, not intended to mobilize the people, but instead meant to tire them out, to discipline us like a teacher punishes a student. These marches were meant to kill the movement, literally. Where the heat couldn't do it, boredom would, as we literally took the same route month after month. It must have made filling out the permits easy as hell, as well as routinizing the police response, as the plan is put into action time after time, refined and redeployed again and again. This guy understood that he was a martyr and that, as a movement, we were marching up a hill to be crucified.

New PCWC Poster: Boycott Rosita's - No Love for Rightwing Tacos!

Our new PCWC poster "Boycott Rosita's: No Love for Rightwing Tacos" is finished and ready to be posted around town! It recently came to our attention that the Rosita's location in Tempe had quietly been the hub for rightwing and anti-immigrant organizing in Tempe, this included hosting Tea Party groups and a Sheriff Arpaio speaking engagement. The owners at Rosita's took their anti-immigrant and anti-worker activities a step further by firing a longtime employee in retaliation for posting about the Tea Party events on an anti-Arpaio facebook page. This news was all the more disturbing because we have been patrons there for years, all the tacos, burritos, and beers we'd bought were lining the pockets of a rightwing Mexican restaurant. We'd been funding our enemies!

In early July we were tipped off that Sheriff Arpaio was in Tempe speaking to supporters at Rosita's, so we made some calls, got a few friends together, and booked it over to crash the party. We missed that old bastard Arpaio by just a few minutes, but there was still a few dozen Tea Party people in the main dining room where the walls were adorned with a number of Republican "Tea Party" candidates' campaign signs. We were given the boot pretty quickly by management, who insisted they have the right to host Arpaio, the Tea Party, and whoever they want, regardless of how uncomfortable or fearful it makes the customers or employees.

One worker wasn't having it, so he went to the facebook group "People against Sheriff Joe Arpaio" and posted a call out for people to come down to Rosita's to confront the anti-immigrant gathering.

A disclaimer: We did not learn of this event from this employee, in fact a friend was eating lunch at Rosita's and saw Arpaio arrive and speak, it was this person who hit us up to tell us this was going down. I want to address this because the employee who wrote the post on facebook was fired a couple of days later, and that if the worker was fired because of our appearance at the restaurant it was not because of the post on facebook, because we hadn't seen it.

I've since met the worker, he told me that when he came to work a couple of days after the Arpaio-Tea Party event that his manager was waiting for him with a printed copy of the facebook page in hand. It struck me as bizarre that his boss would think to take a look at the anti-Arpaio facebook group for some evidence behind our interruption earlier that week, as this is a page that is monitored by Arpaio's security detail, and possibly other law enforcement agencies, it's not unlikely that the management was in collusion with MCSO. While this information could have been provided to Rosita's by one of Arpaio's goons, it also could've been a customer who saw the post and called it in, or some rightwinger keeping an eye on the anti-Arpaio site who reported it to the management.

This isn't the first incident in recent months of workers being fired in retaliation for standing in solidarity with immigrants, or taking action against rightwing anti-immigrant groups . In June I wrote in support of the 13 Latino Pei Wei workers who were denied a day off to attend the large immigrant demonstration back in May, these workers defied the company's orders by taking a wild cat strike to join the thousands of other people at the march. Like the Pei Wei workers, the Rosita's worker took action by blowing the whistle on the rightwing organizing going down in the restaurant, but unlike the Pei Wei workers this came from a white worker who took the initiative to go public on Rosita's love affair with the authorities and the racists from the right.

For all of the efforts of media outlets, politicians, and anti-immigrant activists who continue to exacerbate tensions between white workers and workers of color, these incidents show that while action by workers is isolated, there is an undercurrent of class solidarity that could grow to push the debate on SB 1070 in a liberatory direction. Along these lines, it may be surprising to workers who fight back to find that, whether brown or white, the capitalist has a pink slip waiting for those fighting against the white supremacist order by fighting for their dignity, or for those who defy their perceived elevated status on the class/race hierarchy to stand with workers struggling below them. This is the fragile truce between white workers and the capitalist class, a system that rewards white people with a series of privileges in return for their loyalty to the system of private property and profit that benefits the rich and powerful at the expense of our counterparts from communities of color.

The disciplining of workers who challenge the white supremacist order and the collaboration between the owners and the rightwing and anti-immigrant groups cannot stand, we ought to discipline the bosses who find it acceptable to bring this level of terror into the workplace and community. In this "right to work" state an employee can be fired with or without cause, so taking walk outs, strikes, or other forms of collective action almost certainly guarantee getting laid off.

We are calling for a permanent boycott of the two Rosita's restaurants in the valley, not with the intention of harming the workers, the owners of this restaurant do that enough by hosting the enemies of working people. We want to drag these cheer leaders of repression into the light, to shame them publicly, and to withdraw any monetary support for them since they've used so much of our money spent there to attack immigrants and communities of color, this is unacceptable. In these times it's important to "out" businesses that provide shelter or a space for anti-immigrant, rightwing, racist, and/or fascist groups.

General Plutarco Calles, Dec 1924

Perhaps the owners of Rosita's (Rosa's son and his wife) would do well to look at a little history, it could be easy for them too, they wouldn't have to start any further than their own restaurant's menu. Rosa Keeme, the founder of Rosita's, would probably have never made it to Tempe or opened a restaurant fifty years ago if her family had to contend with the border, movement, and immigration controls that Mexicans face these days. Rosa's mother, Maria Jesus Calles-Moreno, benefited significantly from the lack of border controls, in fact it may have saved her life.

If the biography on the menu is to be believed, Rosa's great uncle was Plutarco El穩as Calles, a Mexican general, politician, and later a president and dictator-like figure who founded the group which later became the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the corrupt and brutal political body that ruled Mexico for seventy years. Plutarco ruled formally as president for awhile and then informally after that through his political machine until he was finally forced into a short exile in the United States. So, the Calles family, like many Mexican families during this era, was forced to flee to Sonora, Mexico to escape political repression. Over the years, the family moved back and forth from Sonora to Arizona, to Sonora, and back again, not all together any different than thousands of other Mexican workers who had to travel to the U.S. and back for decades doing seasonal work, or the millions of families that NAFTA uprooted and divided with the border wall.

We can't change capitalism, it has to be abolished, so we won't pretend that even if the owners of Rosita's came to their senses and put a stop to their cooperation with the anti-immigrant groups, that their restaurant, or virtually any other workplace, will be a workers' paradise. At the end of the day it's still an underpaid, overworked, misery inducing job, but I'll be damned if we let those who seek to actively lower our material conditions have an open place from which to propagandize and organize to keep us all down.

Shutdown racist, anti-immigrant, and rightwing organizing in Tempe, boycotting Rosita's is just the start!

Fuck the RCP: New PCWC Poster

I suppose it was only a matter of time. What with all the movement hacks from the Left Coast making their cameo appearances here since SB1070 passed, I was a little surprised that we hadn't yet heard from one of the worst of the worst: the self-described "Revolutionary Communist Party". Naturally, no sooner had I evoked his name but the devil himself appeared.

So now the RCP's been sniffing around Phoenix, hoping to prey on well-meaning warm-blooded anarchists in order to get their necrotic vampire hands on the movement here. The dead require fresh blood to live, they say. Naturally then, PCWC was approached by a cadre looking for support for their shenanigans. Of course, we told them an unequivocal and unqualified "Hell, no!" And not just because they're an authoritarian cult! There is no way that we would work with the RCP and there's no reason that anyone who believes in human freedom and equality ought to either.

Not only that, but the RCP obviously hadn't done their research. PCWC is composed of members who cut our teeth at mass actions in LA in which the RCP revealed their sketchy manipulations and anti-anarchist skulduggery. These types always come from outside. It was in fact our experiences with the fallacy of the big leftist tent that taught us to be deeply skeptical of the authoritarian left. They talk a big game about all being in for the same thing, but the truth is anything but! Of course, looking to the history of anarchist-authoritarian communist relations only reinforces that.

No doubt the RCP will whine about how we're being divisive for calling them out and refusing them aid. But do we call the prisoner who fights her jailer "divisive"? Of course not! We won't bend to this bullshit fake logic. We are under no obligation to show them any quarter. It is the authoritarian communist, after all, who has to answer for the crimes, lies and distortions of her ideology. We, having been for so many decades on the shit end of that stick should have to offer no further explanation than that we will not continue the pattern of abuse.

Naturally, being PCWC, we will of course offer further explanation. It is our firm commitment that the left -- especially the authoritarian left -- is in fact an impediment to revolutionary struggle. After all, it's always they who swoop in at the last minute and save capitalism. Or who impose bureaucratized state capitalism. Or who sell out the wildcats. Or who imprison the militants. Or who argue for the popular front. Or who build the labor camps. None of which takes us a centimeter closer to the revolution that the RCP's creepy leader, American ex-pat Bob Avakian, claims to want in his Left Bank pontifications. On the same note, we always believed that the one good thing Arizona had going for it was no left to speak of and a strong libertarian bent amongst the right.

Since learning the true nature of these left fascist bastards, you can imagine our frustration at the massive flood of them that has followed the celebrity of SB1070. One parasitic leftist operation from out of town after another has parachuted into the Valley of the Sun and proceeded to lecture the locals on who we should be working with and why, to seek to impose their myopic, petty and narrow view of our conditions and struggle, and to generally make a nuisance of themselves, trampling over legitimate local projects and organizing in the process.

So, because of that, I'm announcing a week of anti-RCP posts here on Fires Never Extinguished. We'll have something for you pretty much every other day for this week. Essays, links, media, even a book (the poster above should fit on a 8.5" by 14" sheet of paper). Things that will help you understand what the RCP is, why it should not be welcomed here and, in the broader sense, to help you develop a critique of Leninism so that you can stand up to these revisionist creeps.

Long live anarchy!

Support the Arpaio Five!

This is a reminder that several comrades of ours still face charges stemming from the police attack on the Dine', O'odham, anarchist/anti-authoritarian contingent (DO@) at the January 16th anti-Arpaio march. If you visit the support page, you can read updates and donate money for the defense. Please consider helping out our friends in their fight against this bullshit.

Rereading the DO@ statement lately, I'm impressed with how prescient it was, as well as how the problems within the movement that were highlighted in it remain with us. Indeed, the statement was a clear, unambiguous call for a new kind of movement that recognized that the fight against white supremacy and colonialism transcended the crass and limited opposition to Sheriff Joe Arpaio. This is a point that was brought clearly home the day that SB1070 passed and the movement in general was forced to recognize the truth, even if (as usual), the people who made that point earlier have continued to be ostracized and attacked.

In addition, it critiqued the boring repetition of useless marches and predicated and called for the rise of a direct action-oriented movement, which was ridiculed at the time but has since come to pass. There is certainly a time for marches and vigils, but I think it was clear to all of us involved in organizing and writing that statement that that time had long since passed, given the situation in Arizona. As I said, that logic, though lost on the conservative movement leadership (and other non-profiteer types outside the state) and various self-appointed gatekeepers, has found fertile ground in many people these days, as we saw most recently with the lock down of the Tucson border patrol office by an affinity group of anti-authoritarian, anarchist and indigenous militants.

But, perhaps most of all, it called for a broadening of the movement, of a reconsideration of the composition of the movement and for a radically democratic and participatory movement to replace the rigid, leftist, hierarchical movement that currently holds power. We see more and more evidence of this emerging these days, whether in the student self-organized walkouts during the week SB1070 passed to the neighborhood assemblies now forming in several cities in the Valley, originally initiated by anarchists and other residents in Tempe (including PCWC), that have begun to spread, prefiguring a new way of resisting the law and racism in general that bypasses both statewide government and the movement hacks, and determines to drill down as small as it takes to get a core that can set up resistance in collective, accountable and democratic fashion.

As men and women willing to stand up and defend that vision with their bodies and their futures, the Arpaio Five deserve our support. Please visit their page and make a donation. And continue to fight for the movement we want.

Not in my Hood: Tempe residents organize against SB1070

by Jon Riley

As Arizona veers closer to becoming a white supremacist police state, there can be no doubt that many in the immigrant rights movement are wondering what's next. The pickets, rallies, and marches organized by the mainstream movement have failed to stop the attacks on Arizona's immigrant and Latino communities. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants and Latinos have "self-deported" from Arizona for years, and with the passage of SB 1070 many thousands more will likely follow. Even when the marches were absurdly long (often in 100+ degree weather), or the movement leadership sold out radicals and marginalized indigenous people, year after year we attended these events to show our solidarity with immigrants.

Up until the signing of the law, our primary activities had been supporting our O'odham friends in their struggles and campaigns against the border militarization and ecological destruction effecting O'odham communities. Our own projects reflected our deep commitment to attacking white supremacy and the ongoing colonialism in the Southwest.

We intervened both in word and deed in many of the right libertarian/constitutionalist movements in Arizona, specifically those opposing the speed/red-light cameras and the border patrol check points. Within their agitation to the police state we saw contradictions that could challenge whiteness and create the fissures needed for white working class movements that challenge the police state and engage in projects of solidarity with communities of color.


It was after this recent May Day rally at the state capitol that some us started discussing our tasks for the coming months, and asking ourselves some important questions. The most important question was how do we go about building areas safe from SB1070 in our town, and in what ways shall we attempt this. The first and most obvious step was reaching out to like minded people, so we went back to our communities, our neighborhoods, and began working with others residents opposed to the racist and anti-immigrant social order.

In Tempe, a mixed group of politically active folks and first-timers put a week's worth of afternoons into fliering local neighborhoods. Calling for a neighborhood assembly and picnic, this flier presented a reasonable stance given the many diverse communities that would be threatened by the new law. Open to all who want to see a non-compliance/no enforcement stance from the city of Tempe, it attracted more than 40 people who shared ideas and got to know one another. Most importantly, the residents took the initiative. In a week's time there were yard signs (pictured below), a website, a neighborhood protest against SB1070, a banner and sign making party, a hot marching band for the demo, and even more fliering on a much larger scale.


Our unpermitted demonstration drew over 100 residents. Folks from the neighboring town of Guadalupe, a few hacks from the mainstream immigrant groups, students, teachers, small business owners, workers, mothers, and radical resisters showed up. We took the streets, snaked through the hood, and saw our neighbors come outside and give us a thumbs up. A handful of others came out, cursing Mexicans, immigrants, and/or the demonstration, most folks ignored them and walked on. We stopped at Mill Ave. & University -the busiest intersection in Tempe- and residents in the march spoke passionately on a megaphone, sharing their knowledge and solutions. After resting a minute we marched to the city council building where more speeches were given, the final speaker discussed how the proposed comprehensive immigration reform actually calls for the militarization of indigenous lands along the border. People in the crowd defiantly shouted back
"Mr. Obama, tear down this wall!"
"Tear down the damn fence!"
"We need open movement."


This demonstration is a first step in the campaign towards creating safe places from racist laws. We are inspired by the leadership and initiative of our neighbors as we participate in the only campaign in Maricopa County against the enforcement of SB1070 in a city organized solely by its residents. We are excited by the future possibilities for freedom in our neighborhoods across the valley.

Fired workers and Phoenix Wobblies picket Pei Wei restaurant in Chandler

Cheers to the laid off Pei Wei workers, supported by wobblies from the Phoenix IWW , for taking action after thirteen Latino employees were fired for participating in the large mobilization against SB 1070 two weeks back. Over 20 people, including the workers fired for resisting SB 1070, held a protest outside of the Pei Wei chain's Chandler location last Saturday. In the words of one employee: "We decided not to go to work because we don't want SB 1070 to go through," said Maria Laurean, who works at Pei Wei. "It’s nothing against the company. It's just to show the American people, 'who's going to run the restaurants?'"

In the video below, one of the fired workers discusses the hypocritical and racist decision making of the management, as a white worker who no-showed was given a slap on the wrist, while the Latino workers, who are fighting back against state sanctioned racial profiling, are given pink slips. This isn't the first time that Pei Wei has fired workers for standing up against anti-immigration policies, a couple of years back a store manager was fired after telling four Maricopa county deputies “You are the guys arresting all of my kitchen staff." The thin skinned cops complained to Sheriff Joe, who in turn wrote a letter to the parent company of Pei Wei, P.F. Chang's, and the worker was promptly fired.

It's heartening that Phoenix wobblies are throwing down to support working people under attack, through projects of solidarity lies the possibilities for a free world. A world where a job is no longer an impediment to spending a day lounging in the sun, resting from an illness, or relaxing with a lover. Or, for that matter, taking to the streets to fight back against racist laws that will target communities of color across the state.

Solidarity to all those struggling under the regime of capital!

Tomorrow: Community meeting to organize against SB1070 in Tempe

Tomorrow at Mitchell Park in Tempe (9th Street and McKemy) at 5pm, residents of Tempe will be gathering to meet and organize towards forcing Tempe to take a non-compliance/no-enforcement position on the racist law SB1070. People will be grilling and eating food, talking and finding common ground towards this goal.

Flier below:

Financial support needed for the 6 people arrested at the Tucson border patrol lock down

Financial support is needed for the six people who locked themselves together in the lobby of the Tucson sector border patrol office for over three hours last Friday.

In the statement released the day of the lockdown, the group demanded the end of the militarization of the border, in addition to the end of the racist SB1070 law, and the 287(g) program that allows police to act as immigration agents. As if on cue, the federal government answered today as President Obama has decided to militarize Arizona's southern border with 1200 National Guard soldiers, and over $500 million dollars in funds. It's clear the government, from the local, county, state, and federal levels, is declaring war on indigenous communities, immigrants, and the communities of the border states. Likewise, it's clear that many more will stand up to the repression and terror of the authorities, and to fight for autonomy, dignity, and freedom that is under increasing attack every day.

We can't fight alone, and we hope we won't have to, so please consider showing solidarity to our O'odham, Dine', Latin@, and anti-authoritarian comrades who locked down and are now facing misdemeanor trespassing and misdemeanor disorderly conduct charges. Click the link below to make a donation that will aid our comrades with their court fees and related expenses over the next few months.

No borders, no state, no papers!

1st NATION AND MIGRANTS OPPOSE SB1070 DEMAND DIGNITY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND END TO BORDER MILITARIZATION

Many comrades of ours, with whom we have organized in a variety of ways this year, including the DO@ Bloc and the Inglourious Basterds Bloc, occupied and locked down in the Border Patrol HQ this afternoon. This statement was issued to press and various resistance and anarchist sites for proliferation and discussion.

The statement further pushes the discussion around freedom of movement and the rights of people to be free from state harassment and, most importantly in my view, directly attacks the idea that "immigration reform" must come with a commitment to militarizing the border. These two ideas must be de-linked! To continue the dialog as it predominates now is to concede to further shifting the burden of controlling movement onto native land and to force indigenous peoples to suffer even more attacks from the state and its myriad racist agents.

Those who do not currently include the perspectives and concerns of those who live everyday with the extreme expression of border militarization do everyone, including themselves, a disservice. If one is not free until all are free, then it is impossible to support "immigration reform" as long as it includes militarization of the border. At least until that is no longer true, we must be opposed to reform.

The occupation lasted several hours. Through persistence and creativity, all who participated in the action were released with a citation and no one was taken into custody. Solidarity, comrades!

Statement follows:

OCCUPATION OF BORDER PATROL HEADQUATERS
DAVIS-MONTHAN AIRFORCE BASE, TUCSON, AZ

1st NATION AND MIGRANTS OPPOSE SB1070 DEMAND DIGNITY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND END TO BORDER MILITARIZATION

“The militarized border imposed by the U.S. has lead only to cultural and environmental destruction of the indigenous peoples whose land is on or near the border. This militarization brings death and terror for indigenous peoples from other parts of the continent migrating to this land.”

21 May 2010

Tucson, AZ – More than a dozen people occupied Border Patrol headquarters at Davis-Monthan Airforce Base today in an act of peaceful resistance. The group includes members of Indigenous Nations of Arizona, migrants, people of color and white allies. Six people used chains and other devices to lock themselves in the building. These Arizona residents disrupted the Border Patrol operations to demand that Border Patrol (BP), Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), their parent entity, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Obama administration end militarization of the border, end the criminalization of immigrant communities, and end their campaign of terror which tears families apart through increasing numbers of raids and deportations.

The protesters also call on the State of Arizona to repeal the racist Senate Bill 1070 that criminalizes immigrant communities on the state level, makes it illegal to transport or harbor an undocumented person regardless of family relationship, requires police agencies to engage in racial profiling, and ultimately is an attempt to ethnically cleanse Arizona of those with brown skin. This act of civil disobedience was only the latest in an increasing wave of direct action targeting the federal government’s terrorist immigration policies.

Border militarization destroys Indigenous communities.

The development of the border wall has lead to desecration of our ancestors graves, it has divided our communities and prevents us from accessing sacred places.

Troops and paramilitary law enforcement, detention camps, check points, and citizenship verification are not a solution to migration. We have existed here long before these imposed borders, my elders inform us that we always honored freedom of movement. Why are our communities and the daily deaths at the border ignored? The impacts of border militarization are constantly made invisible in the media, the popular culture of this country and even the mainstream immigrants rights movement which has often pushed for “reform” that means further militarization of the border, which means increased suffering for our communities.

Indigenous communities such as the O’odham, the Pascua Yaqui, Laipan Apache, Kickapoo, and Cocopah along the US/Mexico border have been terrorized with laws and practices like SB1070 for decades. Indigenous people along the border have been forced by border patrol to carry and provide proof of tribal membership when moving across their traditional lands that have been bisected by this imposed border; a border that has been extremely damaging to the cultural and spiritual practices of these communities. Many people are not able to journey to sacred sites because the communities where people live are on the opposite side of the border from these sites. Since the creation of the current U.S./Mexico border, 45 O’odham villages on or near the border have been completely depopulated.

On this day people who are indigenous to Arizona join with migrants who are indigenous to other parts of the Western Hemisphere in demanding a return to traditional indigenous value of freedom of movement for all people. Prior to the colonization by European nations (spaniards, english, french) and the establishment of the european settler state known as the United States and the artificial borders it and other european inspired nation states have imposed; indigenous people migrated, traveled and traded with each other without regard to artificial black lines drawn on maps. U.S. immigration policies dehumanize and criminalize people simply because which side of these artificial lines they were born on. White settlers whose ancestors have only been here at most for a few hundred years have imposed these policies of terror and death on “immigrants” whose ancestors have lived in this hemisphere for tens of thousands of years, for time immemorial.

In addition, the migration that the U.S. government is attempting to stop is driven more than anything else by the economic policies of the U.S. Free trade agreements such as NAFTA have severely reduced the ability of Mexicans and others from the global south to sustain themselves by permitting corporations to extract huge amounts of wealth and resources from these countries into the U.S. This has led to millions of people risking the terror and death that so many face to cross into the U.S. looking for ways to better support their families. Thousand of women, men, children and elders have died crossing just in the last decade. If the U.S. really wants to reduce migration it should end its policies of exploitation and wealth extraction targeted at the global south and instead pursue policies of economic, environmental and social justice for all human beings on the planet, thus reducing the drive to immigrate.

The protestors are demanding:

-An end to border militarization
-The immediate repeal of SB1070 and 287g
-An end to all racial profiling and the criminalization of our communities
-No ethnic cleansing or cultural genocide
-No border patrol encroachment/sweeps on sovereign native land
-No Deportations
-No Raids
-No ID-verification
-No Checkpoints

-Yes to immediate and unconditional regularization (“legalization”) of all people
-Yes to human rights
-Yes to dignity
-Yes to respect
Yes to respecting Indigenous Peoples inherent right of migration

The fight continues: A reminder from the Phoenix Class War Council about the struggle in Arizona

Friends in the North American anarchist movement,

I suppose it goes without saying that things here in Arizona have been moving fast and furious since the week or so before SB1070 passed. The resistance continues to broaden. Direct actions and civil disobedience continue to spread in a state where "responsible" leaders on all sides try hard to pretend that such things are not necessary for social change. In the face of the attack, the twin "trust the politicians"/ "trust the political process" mantras that have been repeated for the last several years have become ridiculous to the point of absurdity.

The racist rift that has, for the rest of the country, burst quite impolitely out into the light of day continues to deepen and polarize. In Phoenix, violence has already broken out on at least two occasions, leaving one dead, and we're heading into what promises to be a particularly hot summer, even by Arizona standards. If nothing happens to change it, SB1070 will go into effect on July 28th, when the temperatures march towards 120 degrees. The kind of days where you sweat just sitting still. The forces of reaction, armed and ready, prepare to form up to defend the border again. The National Socialist Movement, who we successfully countered last year, have re-emerged from their holes at long last and are interviewed on television by a complacent, cowardly and pitifully uncritical media afraid to call them the Nazis that they are. Things are in flux and the struggle intensifies. It's too early to call this "Bleeding Arizona", but we do wonder: are we on the verge of an explosion?

It is in that context that we decided to put up this note to our comrades in the state and, in particular, outside it. We know that you rely on us for analysis and news about the class war here. We apologize for not updating the site as much as we have in the past. And for not directly addressing the ever-growing crisis in our backyard with the written word as much as we would like to. It may help you to know that we have begun along with some other comrades a new site to chronicle all the resistance to SB1070. You can get updates on the situation in Arizona very easily there and we add several new articles a day from a variety of sources.

But the truth is, we have been very busy intervening, fighting and organizing, and taking the time to write has not been easy (especially with the Suns in the Western Conference Finals!). Likewise, aside from the pace of struggle, a lot of what is going on cannot be written about for a variety of reasons. We hope you understand. When we get a minute to put something comprehensive together, we will. In the meantime, we hope that our past analysis has helped prepare the way for those interested in acting in solidarity or joining us in the fight.

Along with everyone else, we are running to keep up with events, which is natural in situations like these, where the people show ever increasing signs of pushing past vampiric politicians and professional managers of struggle and making a break for it. The movement leadership here in Phoenix, at least, have failed miserably in their obligation to deliver even the most modest self-defense for migrants in town, not to mention to provide a vehicle for the fight back. This most recent bill (a particularly onerous one indeed, but not the first of its kind in Arizona by any means) has revealed this bankruptcy to many. With each internal movement peace cop and every repeated, failed tactic or strategy, the defeat delivered by mainstream organizers to us all seems more and more clear, which is why more and more people are stepping outside the conventional movement organizations and taking action themselves.

It has been our contention and continues to be that the struggle in Arizona contains all the elements necessary for a social explosion. In Arizona we have reflected the segregationist, colonialist history of America (the Arizona territory was in the Confederacy, for instance, and imposed a regime of segregation after the Civil War).

In fact, there's a semi-famous story about a Nazi officer, a prisoner of war, being shipped across the country to a POW camp during World War II and who passes through Arizona on his way. Among his military police escort is a black soldier. The unit stops at a roadside diner to eat, taking a seat in the dining room. Almost everyone takes a seat there, that is. Because Arizona is a segregated state, the black MP has to eat in the kitchen, with the Mexican staff. That's Arizona in a nutshell: Nazis eat in the dining room.

Of course, there's another story about a cadre of imprisoned Nazis during the war who managed to get a map of Phoenix and to construct a rubber raft while they were held at a camp in the city. A crafty bunch, they got over the wall and to the Salt River, where they expected to float to the Colorado River, Mexico and, ultimately, to the ocean and to whatever Nazis consider freedom. Unfortunately for them, the Salt River had long ago suffered from dry weather and damming upriver. They were quickly recaptured.

So our history isn't everything -- it's also what people bring with them. While we have a racist past to be sure, we likewise have the ongoing settler expansion, which continues to this day as an internal influx of people from other parts of the US. The population of Arizona has more than doubled in the last thirty years, thrusting Phoenix practically overnight from a backwater to the fifth largest city in the nation, and gobbling up land at a rate that quickly gave our city a geographical area larger than LA, bumping uncomfortably up against the two O'odham reservations that sit to the south and east of the Valley.

While many people in states outside Arizona bemoan the backward nature of Arizona politics, it's important to note that given this flood of people from other parts of the US, Arizona's politics are not really just "Arizona's politics". They are the politics of the rest of the country, magnified -- smashed together in collapsing now but once overpriced suburbs and set on fire by long commutes to work in the company of hot-headed right wing radio jocks.

In Arizona, white people who have moved two thousand miles in just the last few years to set up their suburban homestead or to secure their cheap retirement denounce the movement of people who may have only traveled a few hundred miles, or who may have migrated back and forth for generations. Or, it's true, who may have been deported during one of the previous economic crashes, dispossessed of their labor and their meager earnings and deposited across la linea when they became inconvenient to the demands of Capital, just like the Wobblies from Bisbee in an earlier era, the largest part of whom were Mexican.

Perhaps people who move here can be forgiven for not knowing the history of Arizona, but did they not at least look at a map before they piled their possessions in a U-Haul and headed West? That funny shaped thing to our South is Mexico! And Phoenix is in the "Sonoran Desert", a name it shares with the Mexican state of Sonora that borders us. The Sonoran Desert also contains the O'odham pilgrimage site of Magdelena. The rising border fences and military deployments that so many new Arizonans request will impede or even make impossible this yearly voyage. Likewise the demands for papers cannot be met by many traditional people, born outside cities and unable to acquire documents acceptable to law enforcement and border authorities. Sometimes the obvious ain't so obvious to everyone.

But, unfortunately, when these internal white American "immigrants" and migrant workers to Arizona (and what else do you call people who moved here for jobs at Taser International and Boeing that now find themselves foreclosed and dispossessed in the era of the new austerity?) left their crowded East Coast cities and turned West, their RV's and East Coast and Midwest accents weren't all they brought with them: they also brought their racist politics, which finds fertile grounds in the not-so-long-ago-stolen Arizona land.

So, we have the default white supremacist class politics of the white middle and working classes, who substitute their vulgar and petty cross-class alliance with the white ruling class for what ought to be a genuine class consciousness of solidarity, selling the rest of their class out in the process. But we also have a long history of open borders and free movement of peoples. The border with Mexico has, for all intents and purposes, been open for all of human history until just the last few years. And we have a history of indigenous resistance, which stretches back hundreds of years but continues today in the resistance to the predations of corporations like Resolution Copper in Superior and Peabody Coal on Black Mesa.

And we have a history of worker resistance, too. The bitter Phelps Dodge copper strike in 1983 wasn't that long ago, even if the Phelps Dodge Tower sits now victoriously in the heart of downtown, in the "Copper Square" district named for it (and copper's place in Arizona is enshrined on our very flag). But we remember that the very same National Guard units that racist politicians now threaten to deploy at the border in order to satiate the demands of the white working class for the the recognition of their white privileges, dividing Tohono O'odham lands and disrupting their natural right to travel freely, are the very selfsame units that Governor Babbit deployed to break that strike. It's interesting to note that the Bisbee City Council just voted to oppose SB1070, joining Flagstaff and Tucson, so let's never say that lessons can't be learned and that things can't be different. Other cities will, we hope, soon follow.

As for us, we continue to believe that another dialog is possible around movement and dislocation, as well as the conditions that cause it, hinder it and seek to control it. In particular we have learned from our O'odham comrades, with whom we have worked very closely over the last couple years, that we must maintain the heat on those who demand immigration reform. Because from our experience such demands usually contain a call for militarization of the border, and we firmly believe that we should not "solve" the question of illegalization by shifting the burden onto people at the border, in particular indigenous people.

We remain committed to the principles laid out in the Din矇, O'odham, anarchist/anti-authoritarian bloc statement. The process isn't easy, but the fight to elbow out some room for a broader discussion continues. At the same time, as white revolutionaries, we still take very seriously the admonition of Malcolm X to organize within the communities we come from and amongst white people. The struggle continues to find arguments and to push on contradictions that can open up opportunities for white people to act against whiteness so that a genuine ethic of solidarity can prevail, creating the kinds of conditions that can turn this struggle into a revolutionary one. We will continue to intervene in white movements and to see what shakes out.

In the near future we hope to get together a statement that can offer direction for those anarchists/anti-authoritarians interested in engaging in solidarity actions. Your solidarity means a lot to us, and to those who have been in contact or who have come out already, many thanks. As we said before, there is a real opportunity for anarchist ideas to spread in this context. Much is happening, though, so to list a lot of specific actions is beyond our means right now.

In solidarity from occupied O'odham land,
Phoenix Class War Council

P.S.
Go Suns!

The Suns of Anarchy

by Jon Riley

It's that time of year again, the NBA playoffs are in full swing, and we at PCWC are closely following our favorite sports team, the Phoenix Suns, as they battle it out with the San Antonio Spurs in the Western conference semi-finals. Game two was tonight, and it was a fantastic game, and not just because the Suns took down our biggest rivals for two games in a row ("rivals" may be too kind to describe the vitriol Suns fans reserve for the Spurs, "immortal enemies" may be a better fit), but we're pleased for their actions off the hardwood. Yesterday the Suns organization came out against the racist bill SB1070, sponsored by state senator Russell Pearce, signed into law a couple of weeks back by Governor Brewer, and the focus of numerous protests locally, and solidarity demonstrations, rallies, walkouts, boycotts, and direct actions across the US.

Thousands march against SB1070 during tonight's game

In an act of solidarity with the state's immigrant and Latino communities, the Suns donned their "Los Suns" jerseys, originally worn as part of the "Noche Latina"promotion, tonight it was an act of defiance to the terror being spread by the reactionary and white supremacist political and social forces at work in Arizona. Suns general manager Steve Kerr made the Suns' case at a press conference yesterday:

"It's hard to imagine in this country that we have to produce papers," Kerr said. "It rings up images of Nazi Germany. We understand that the intentions of the law are not for that to happen, but you have to be very, very careful. . . . It's important that everyone in our state and nation understands this is an issue that needs to be explored. So, we're trying to expose it."

While the announcement came from the Suns front office, team owner Robert Sarver said the decision to challenge the new law came with the final approval from the players. The Phoenix Suns players came to consensus to wear the Los Suns jerseys, and stand in solidarity with Arizona's Latino community, a bold move in these days as the social tension is ever so present.


Suns point guard Steve Nash, winner of two MVPs with the Suns, and one of three foreign born players on the roster, has earned a reputation for his political stance. During the opening days of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Nash caught a firestorm of criticism after taking a very unpopular stance against the war, and it's encouraging to see him step up once again, this time in defense of the state's Latino community:

"I don't agree with this bill, I don't agree with the spirit of the bill or the message it sends, not only to people in our community but how it represents our community across the country and the world.

"I think the bill opens up the opportunity for racial profiling, racism. I think it puts the police in an incredibly difficult position that isn't fair to them. It's an infringement on our civil liberties to allow the possibility for inequality to arise in our community."

Other Suns spoke out on the bill as well, Grant Hill, Amar'e Stoudamire, and coach Alvin Gentry, even our long term rivals are in support of the stance against SB1070. Spurs coach Greg Popavich had this to say in defense of the Suns management and players:

"It's kind of like 9/11 comes, and all of a sudden there's a Patriot Act, just a knee-jerk sort of thing, and it changes our country, what we stand for. This law smacks of that to some degree. So, I think what he's doing . . . is very wise and very correct."

To be clear, I hate the Spurs. Hate 'em. Their bad behavior in previous playoff series with the Suns was just as despicable as the notoriously poor officiating from the refs (or was it something else at work?), but I will reach across the aisle on this, they should be commended for supporting the Suns stance. Popavich and the Spurs will show a little solidarity with AZ on the hardwood by wearing their own "Los Spurs" uniforms during one of the next couple of games in San Antonio.


For those outside of the valley, I'm not saying this is a perfect political moment, we get very few of those after all, but it is a moment to build momentum from. The Suns are run by a bunch of billionaire and millionaire investors, the players themselves are millionaires, I understand that. However, the significance of this should not go unremarked by anti-authoritarians, regardless of your inclination towards professional sports. The Suns are a staple of life in Phoenix, they were the city's first professional sports club, many a Phoenician has fond memories of their grade school class receiving free tickets to Suns games at the old Veterans Memorial Collesium ("The Mad House on McDowell"), and the greatest season of all, the 92-93 team led by Charles Barkley who took it all the way to the NBA finals to challenge Michael Jordan and the Bulls.


While we've been life long Suns fans, we don't mistake these acts of solidarity from the players or management with a developing anti-capitalist, or anti-authoritarian critique. Make no mistake, we see this for what it is, this is a multi-million dollar sports franchise weighing in on the very oppressive atmosphere in Arizona, and some may be speaking up because they recognize the egregious rise in racial profiling and detentions by police, others from the Suns organization probably see a profit incentive with a future Latino audience. If, however, there is some chance of a breakthrough during this playoff run, it's will originate from the commonality that sport offers us, the sense that we are all on the same side as long as we cheer on our team. So, yes, their decision to speak out is massive, but it's no cure all, we remain certain of the ability of ordinary people organize their own lives, to struggle, and to wage war on their oppressors on their own terms.

On a final note, I had a good laugh watching the evening news the other night as the racist politician Russell Pearce was interviewed by a Channel 3 reporter on his reaction to the Suns move against SB1070.

Reporter: Are you surprised that the NBA and the NBA teams taking a stance like this, do you think it's their place to?

Pearce: No it's not their place to. It's the rule of law, I mean, that's anarchism!

Ah, "anarchism" and "anarchy", time and time again this simple utterance by a blowhard politician is intended to strike fear in the hearts of every law abiding, god fearing, immigrant hating, patriotic American citizen, but there's a catch. See, when he calls the Suns' actions anarchism, or labels anyone opposed to his brand of racist terror as an anarchist, he is effectively saying that the common sense of the society is "anarchy." By his logic what the Suns are doing is anarchism. Those who speak out against Sheriff Arpaio are anarchists. All those critical of immigration policy, or law enforcement are obviously for open borders, against the rule of law, or so the logic goes. Everyone else is the anarchist. If only this were the truth.

Then again, perhaps we need not look too far. The kids are self-organizing and walking out of school, or the 90 cities across the USA had solidarity rallies against SB1070 and bills like it, are closer to the visions of a popular movement than we may give them credit for. We may all be anarchists now, in the eyes of the state, or the reactionary social forces, but the challenge we still face is how we can contribute to a popular anti-authoritarian common sense. The Suns position is certainly a step forward, but also not enough, the position against racial profiling is right on, but where is the defense of immigrants, legal or not? How far will we have push the limits of the debate before the mainstream acknowledges that comprehensive immigration reform (as it's proposed now) means the militarization of the border lands, and as a direct result the lands of indigenous people divided by the border wall?

At best we can thank the Suns for opening this void, but it's up to all of us to fill it, and to keep pushing forward. Reform will never deliver freedom or autonomy. The state will never concede anything to those demanding liberties beyond its own laws and constitution. So we forever look beyond compromise and the state.

No controls on movement, no borders, no militarization. It's a start.

***
For a previous writing on our pro-Suns and anti-authoritarian orientation/contradiction, I recommend checking out the old blog of PCWC member Phoenix Insurgent for some thoughts on the Suns, anarchy and basketball, and former Suns center Pat Burke.

I'd also recommend some of the writing from lefty sport writer, Dave Zirin, on this matter. Check out "A New Era: Here Come the Suns", an essay he wrote a few days back, I've posted it over on the Resistance to SB1070 blog, a little side project of ours dedicated to recording the struggles against SB1070 and other forms of resistance to controls on movement.

GO SUNS! BASKETBALL KNOWS NO BORDERS!

Resistance to SB1070 that you may have missed.

One of the problems with the overwhelmingly leftist orientation of the anti-SB1070 rally today, as evidenced by the seemingly unending admonitions to register to vote (for Democrats), is that it tends to obscure potential fractures and fissures on what may appear to be unanimity on the right with regard to the bill.

If you know anything about PCWC these days, it's probably that we look precisely for these kinds of potential openings in movements so that we can force open a space for more libertarian (in the traditional anarchist and anti-capitalist sense of the word) organizing, especially if we can encourage the development of contradictions that will cause a falling out on one side or another of white supremacy, and particularly amongst white movements on top of that. In our evaluation, it is the cross-class alliance of white supremacy that screws up what might otherwise be a revolutionary working class solidarity that would allow the overthrow of the capitalist state.

Anyhow, the events of the last few days have been momentous indeed, but in the rush of media attention and, as I mentioned before, due to the overwhelmingly leftist reformist orientation of the anti-SB1070 movement leadership (since they control the bulk of the message -- often with Stalinist like precision), some smaller actions have been overlooked. Here I will highlight two of them.

The first is of someone known to PCWC, and with whom we have interacted very cordially at a variety of our events, but who I won't identify since I don't know if he wants to be named. Regular attendees of PCWC actions and events will probably know him. The video linked below, taken by someone in the counter-protest on Friday, shows this person bravely moving into the reactionary crowd and calling them out vigorously for their support of the bill. In true fanatical fashion, this man begins yelling forcefully "This bill is the mark of the beast!", "Prepare for the New World Order!" and "Who would Jesus hate?!".



This is important for a few reasons. One, it comes at the right reactionaries on terrain that they are familiar with. This is something that we, as anarchists are not able to do anywhere near as effectively. Two, it opens a front on the reactionaries from their rear, hitting them in a way and from a direction that they do not expect. Three, it comes as a heartfelt and genuine defense of the true values professed by the libertarian and even Christian right, while recognizing the general tendency not to live up to them in any meaningful way.

In my opinion the disconnect that is being called out between professed Christianity and actual results derives from their adherence to white supremacist values. They defend their cross-class alliance of whiteness over their professed values of Christian love for their brother and sister, effectively. And, probably most importantly, the charges made in the video demands accountability and asserts an either/or dichotomy that attempts to erase middle ground, asserting, will you be Christian or will you hate? Will you be Christian or will you support the "mark of the beast"? This is very important because to oppose the bill in many ways contains within it the potentiality of refusing the alliance of whiteness. PCWC has spent quite a lot of effort encouraging this sort of thing and I welcome it and support it. Cheers for this revolt!

The second video is one published by Shelton at 4409. Shelton is perhaps best known amongst anarchists for his work around speed cameras. We have engaged on this front several times in the last year, encouraging their work but also being critical of pointing out what we perceive to be the unconscious white supremacist undercurrents of their strategy.

I want to be clear, this is not to say that we consider Shelton a white supremacist or anything of the sort. Even though he opposes what he calls "amnesty" for the undocumented, we believe that the racism inherent in the argument he makes is not conscious or malicious: it is the sort of white supremacy that underlies most of the assumptions that underpin white organizing in general, whether of the left or right. The flaw is not his in particular and it is important to separate it from the kind of overt racist strategy that we see being pursued by those who support the bill.

And, indeed, the arguments that Shelton has made in the past against the bill are generally pretty good although, as with the anti-SB1070 current on the left, he suffers the same problem of demanding increased policing at the border. On the left, this manifests in a demand for reform that included heightened border patrol enforcement at la linea itself. This is important for a lot of reasons, but not least of all because it sacrifices the lives of people that live on the border, specifically but not limited to the Tohono O'odham people, whose land down south is bisected by the border and who have an inherent right of travel across it. This right is currently under heavy assault by the very forces that many opponents of the bill propose to "secure" the border.

On the right the opposition to SB1070 is weakened by a similar assertion that if policing at the border were increased, then there would be less need for internal surveillance and checks on movement. Indeed, this is also the critical flaw in the libertarian/constitutionalist opposition to internal border patrol checkpoints. You can see how, ironically, these two positions, though from opposite poles of the political spectrum, suffer from the same problem. The fact is, militarization of the border must be separated from the discussion of SB1070 (and, of course, it must be opposed). If not, it remains a devil's bargain that sells some out in the name of defending others. That's not solidarity.

So, in that context, consider Shelton's interesting new video, in which he goes to the state capitol and confronts legislators on the bill and its effects. Aside from its entertaining nature, it is really informative about the kinds of opposition to this bill that could -- and sometimes does -- spread from the right. This is a tendency that I continue to believe is worth engaging with and I would be very interested in developing some sort of way of further fleshing out common ground for critical solidarity with elements of this type that are interested in challenging the bill and constraints on free movement generally (the position we defend). Of course, in the end, we will not accept any increased policing at the border because we believe in free movement for all. However, that in my opinion does not preclude the increasing investigation of points of common struggle within this milieu.