Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

Roll over, Gene Pulliam

The Arizona Republic on Sunday published a remarkable front-page editorial concerning the pile of feces into which the state has done a face-plant, otherwise known as its attempt to "address" illegal immigration. It was not remarkable for its placement — old-time newspaper publishers often did page-one opinion pieces, perhaps most famously the Republic's own Eugene C. Pulliam. Rather, this article, pretty as it was with the paper's current obsession with design, proved astonishing in its intellectual shallowness, dishonesty and desperate pretzel-twisting to cast "blame" equally in every direction. And all the while demanding "leaders." Rarely has an institution in the broad land of vapid corporate newspapers made such a gaudy display of its daft cowardliness. One is reminded of Lincoln's line: "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

"Old Man Pulliam," who ran the Republic and Phoenix Gazette for decades, occasionally published — and even wrote, for he was a newspaperman to his marrow — thundering page-one editorials. They were not intended to compete in the Society for News Design. They were sometimes long, always trenchantly and even intellectually argued. I recall one from the late '60s (I believe) that was a fierce jeremiad against rising government bureaucracy. You always knew where his newspaper stood. Pulliam was a man of the right but he would not be allowed into today's Republican Party or corporate journalism club. He was too independent, endorsing LBJ over Barry Goldwater in 1964 and renouncing the idea of a newspaper as merely a business. It is said he wrote a trust to prevent the sale of his beloved papers to the likes of Gannett, but that's another story.

There's no doubt that were he alive today and running the Republic, he and his famed investigative reporters would make short work of Russell Pearce and Joe Arpaio.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix Politics: National

Arizona crazy

From the Jim Crow anti-immigrant law and birther bill to the reality television show Sunset Daze, Arizona is gaining an international reputation for being crazy. It's not just "image" or "bad publicity." How did this happen to my beloved home? It took decades and tectonic shifts. Some will sound familiar to regular Rogue readers, but for the sake of the thousands of newbies that have found Rogue Columnist and are curious/frightened about Arizona, here's a primer:

The new Republican Party: Arizona always had a strong reactionary element, going back to its dependence on mines and railroads. Even the Democrats were mostly conservative. Arizona never produced, for example, a William Borah, the progressive Republican senator from Idaho. But even among the Republicans, there was independence and an understanding that Arizona would blow away without massive amounts of federal money. Republicans were a minority until Barry Goldwater slowly built them into the state's dominant party in the 1960s. Even then, Goldwater, Arizona Republic publisher Eugene C. Pulliam and others kept the John Bircher element at arms length, happy to use them but never let them take control. This changed with time and massive influx of new people. By the 1980s, conservative extremism was in the governor's seat. From the 1990s onward, the Christian Coalition and other national right-wing groups began taking control of the party from the lowest levels up, and purging old Arizona Republicans who now were labeled RINOS (Republicans in Name Only). They also focused on winning offices that held the most budget power, from school boards to the Legislature. The result is an entirely different creature: militant, frozen in ideological conformity, hostile to the facts, deeply committed to enacting "conservative" abstractions with little evidence they succeed. And, as the evidence shows, racist. Now, the Republicans have pretty much ruled for decades and the state is a catastrophe. Questions? That doesn't stop them from acting like victimized outsiders and the duhs and ignos in this ill-educated state fall for it.

The Big Sort: The journalist Bill Bishop used this as the title of his book on the dramatic clustering of like-minded people in different regions. It's a big change from most of American history, and as Bishop puts it, the Big Sort "is tearing us apart." Arizona is Exhibit A in this self-selecting process, especially among the Anglo population that votes, has money or is easy pickings for the demagogues. Arizona doesn't have its Austin (sorry, Democratic Tucson's strings are ultimately pulled by a car dealer and the sprawl barons). Despite the notion in the mid-1990s that population growth would moderate Arizona politics, or even the Democratic seats picked up during the nadir of the Bush presidency, Arizona has become redder and redder. People increasingly seemed to move to Arizona or the Phoenix suburbs to be with their co-religionists on the right, while progressive-minded folks moved out.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

Causes and consequences

They came from far away by the millions, bringing strange, sometimes offensive customs and values. They show no interest in Arizona's history or traditions, preferring to keep to themselves. Through their numbers and the way the state uses them for economic gain, they profaned the peerless beauty of the Sonoran Desert and destroyed the magic of the Salt River Valley. They caused billions in public costs that will linger for decades. While many are said to be hard-working, most are in the state for its government-subsidized goodies, and their numbers have included no small share of criminals, even kingpins seeking to extend their dangerous empires across the border. And it's the smaller things, too. As wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III would have it, they deliberately cause accidents on the freeways and otherwise drive like maniacs. I'm no bigot — some individuals are even personal friends — but I even find their accents grating, their clothing bizarre, the ever-growing accommodations we must make for them unfair.

I'm writing, of course, about the other great migration that destabilized my home state: That of the Midwesterners and Californians. We all have our biases. If mine had been acted upon, Arizona would have passed appropriate taxes and strong land-use protections to help mitigate and reduce this wave of destructive immigration. Instead, it has rolled out the nation's harshest law against illegal immigrants. A Legislature whose majority prides itself on disdain for learning and believes the facts have a leftist bias won't solve one of the most complex problems facing America, or any rich nation adjoining a poor one. But it can guarantee racial profiling and provide tools to further oppress the working poor. It has also made Arizona an international pariah, ground zero of crazy. How did we get here?

Arizona was once part of Mexico, and without the Gadsden Purchase the international border would be just south of Phoenix. For generations, people came and went at will between the (territory and) state and Mexico. Mexican-American families predate the arrival of my kin in the 19th century. The economic and social destinies of the Arizona and Mexico were tightly intertwined (rent the movie Lone Star to understand the textures and ironies). The Anglo elites long exploited Mexican workers for the farms and groves of the Salt River Valley (including the Goldwater family's Goldmar), officially for a time through the Bracero Program. The American government implicitly allowed Mexico to use the states as a "safety valve" for lack of economic opportunity at home, in exchange for the authoritarian ruling party's anti-communism. Everything started to change in the 1980s.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

On the border

By Emil Pulsifer

Guest Rogue

Whatever your position on
the difficult issue of immigration, looming events make the need for
comprehensive immigration reform more important than ever, for America as a
whole and for Arizona in particular.  Mexico's proven oil reserves
are dwindling fast and may be exhausted at the current rate of production
within less than ten years: the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
estimates that Mexico will become a net oil importer by 2017.

Why is this a source of
concern for America in general and Arizona in particular?

First, is the fact
that Mexico has consistently been one of the top three sources of
America's imported oil (with Canada and Saudi Arabia). As of late 2009,
Mexico was the second largest source of America's imported oil. More importantly from the
standpoint of immigration policy is the reality that oil exports constitute
Mexico's largest source of legal revenues (about 40 percent); second to
this, and larger than tourism, are the remittances sent home by immigrants
working in foreign countries (chiefly the United States).  Remittances
are, in fact, so large a component of Mexico's economy, that they constitute a
peculiar form of foreign investment. So, barring rosy developments in
Mexico's oil industry, and unless the United States takes an even greater
nosedive than Mexico is going to in coming years, expect massive immigration,
on a scale to make the recent wave look puny, within a decade.

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Posted inPhoenix

Phoenix in December

I made a quick trip back home to speak at the Arizona Library Association annual conference. Sorry to all the friends I couldn't see, but beyond the speech I wanted to drive around and see the city, especially to gather material for the next Mapstone mystery, South Phoenix Rules. Some non-literary observations:

— The gigantic rental car facility is one of those head-shakers. It's so big that I suppose it could become the terminal for the much smaller city that Phoenix may become because of the Great Disruption. In any event, how much did this monster cost and why wasn't that money put into a speed-up of the people-mover to connect with light rail? It's the usual backward thinking and spending, assuming the future will be based on single-occupancy car trips. The "landscaping" and "public art" out front are hideous. Saguaros baking in tightly packed gravel is totally ahistorical for the oasis city that was Phoenix, not a natural look for the Sonoran Desert and plain cayo-ugly. Nice job, Frank.

— Christmas is always magical in Phoenix. As a child, I watched snowy Midwestern holiday scenes on television, but I knew the first Christmas came in the desert. This was especially enchanting with a rainstorm swirling, making the transplanted Midwesterners complain. I let it fall on me as I walked to the hotel next to the Willo district, feeling centered to be in the old 'hood. The rain is so precious, especially in this drought. Has it occurred to anyone that what makes the Sonoran Desert special, so rich in its plant and animal life, is its relatively high rainfall. A few decades like this and it will become more like the Mojave and Chihuahua deserts — bleak and bereft. But you "won't have to shovel sunshine."

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

Go Goddard?

Terry Goddard is a good man. He was a popular and effective Phoenix mayor, and after failing to achieve the governor's office in the '90s came back to become the best attorney general in the state's history. Among his top achievements has been going after the wire transfer companies that are enabling the smuggling of people, drugs and guns. He's also knocked off some of the rough edges he was said to possess as mayor and, I would assume, collected lots of political IOUs. For all these reasons, I wonder if he should run for governor.

A Rasmussen poll showed Democrat Goddard only 9 points ahead of Gov. Jan Brewer and in virtually tied with Treasurer Dean Martin, his likely Republican opponents. Another survey indicated Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio as a huge favorite of Republican voters and, according to the Info Center, leading Goddard by 12 percentage points. It's unclear whether the Badged Ego will run.

This seems like madness, or, if the polls are accurate, the pulse of a madhouse. The Republicans have wrecked Arizona through their policies and set it on a collision course with a very nasty future. The party's cruel, spiteful behavior is epitomized by Arpaio and detailed in the brutal budget cuts of the Kookocracy Legislature. Brewer and Martin are empty suits. Arpaio probably won't run because the exposure of a statewide race might finally cause the mask to slip and leave him exposed as the calculating bully he is. Yet why would any of these clowns even be in contention against Goddard, a man of genuine accomplishments and a centrist one would hope represents the best of my home state and the hope for its future?

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People of color in old Phoenix
Posted inPhoenix Phoenix 101: History

People of color in old Phoenix

George_Washington_Carver_High_School_graduates_7th_St_Grant_1948(1)The 1948 graduating class from George Washington Carver High School (McCulloch Bros. Collection/ASU Archives).

From its founding until the late 20th century, Phoenix was an overwhelmingly Anglo city. But Phoenicians of color were always here. This column tells a bit of their stories.

Phoenix was settled by many Southerners and ex-Confederates, and it kept that Southern sensibility well into the 1960s. The white Chicagoans who started coming in the 1930s brought their own racial biases that for decades tore that city apart.

Into the early 1950s many places in Phoenix were legally segregated, including schools. Phoenix Union Colored High School, later George Washington Carver High, opened in 1926. Booker T. Washington and Paul Lawrence Dunbar elementary schools were built for younger "colored" children. (Washington is now home of New Times).

Ad_Hollywood_Heights_subdivision_1913Deed covenants restricted many neighborhoods to "whites only." Minorities couldn't buy houses north of Van Buren Street well into the 1940s (and, as the 1913 advertisement shows, often couldn't buy south, either). Many stores and restaurants would not serve blacks, Mexicans, Japanese and American Indians. Swimming pools were segregated, too. Arizona had an anti-miscegenation law on the books from 1865 to 1962.

To be fair, there was no "colored waiting room" at Union Station and Encanto Park golf course accepted minority players in the 1940s. No lynching based on race is on record. Chinese-American children went to white public schools. Early minority businessmen such as Jose M. Iberri prospered. Mexicans who could "pass" for Anglos, such as the Van Harens, could move more freely. But the race and class lines were not hard to find. Phoenix always saw itself as an Anglo city (and the demographics back this up, especially after 1920), unlike old Tucson with its proud Spanish and Mexican traditions.

And consider: For decades the distance between the mansions of "Millionaires Row," Chinatown, and "the slums" were often only a few blocks. 

The Salt River Valley, of course, had once been part of Mexico. Prior to Columbus, it was the site of the most advanced irrigation-based civilization in the Americas before being abandoned by the Hohokam. By the time the cavalry forced peace on the Apaches and white families such as mine began arriving in the latter part of the 19th century, Hispanics and Pimas were living in the Valley, too.

The nature of the town was embodied in one of its founders, Jack Swilling. He had a Mexican wife, Trinidad Escalante, as well as an adopted Apache son, Guillermo.

In other words, Phoenix was never Des Moines in the desert.

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Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

The Hispanic illusion

Progressives and liberals cling to the expectation that Republican antagonism of Hispanics will lead to electoral disaster. This was ever-present during the confirmation fight over Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Now the predictions of GOP doom are back. This time Republicans are slitting their own throats by using the health-care-for-illegal-immigrants lie to reignite the anti-immigrant (anti-Hispanic) hysteria in The Base. This is suicide to alienate the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority, and it will be especially lethal for Republicans in the Southwest, with its huge Hispanic population. That, at least, is the view from Washington, D.C. The reality can be summed up in two words.

Joe Arpaio.

The Italian-American sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, anchored by the nation's fifth-largest city, Arpaio waged a vicious campaign against illegals ahead of last fall's election. Egged on by talk-radio haters, the "sweeps" were part of a notorious climate of antagonism against all Hispanics, even Mexican-Americans who have been in the country for generations. Arpaio didn't go after the Anglo Republicans who employed the illegals. He arrested the weak, the vulnerable, the already exploited. Maricopa County is at least one-third Hispanic citizens who might object to this racist atmosphere. Risky, no? And it should be added that the incumbent was lacking in many ways that informed citizens of ethnic groups should have found deserving of a swift kick to the door. Arpaio was re-elected by a landslide — and the sweeps mostly stopped, having served their purpose for a publicity seeking hotdog many other cops call "The Badged Ego."

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Posted inPhoenix

Arizona: Deeper into the Kook zone

The Kookocracy continues not to disappoint. Their draconian cutbacks mean that new state archives building will be closed less than two weeks after being dedicated. State parks have, or are on the way to being, closed — with no provisions being made to protect these priceless sites from looters. Meanwhile, the Kooks are rushing a bill through the Legislature that would bar Arizona from participating in the Western Climate Initiative — a mild but promising effort by states to begin curbing greenhouse gases.

This is what you get when you don't vote. This is what you get when you have an ineffective opposition party, which made few noticeable gains in local and legislative offices during the reign of Saint Janet. This is what you get when the party of Lincoln, TR, Eisenhower — even of Coolidge, Hoover, Reagan and George H.W. Bush is taken over by a nihilistic bunch of extremists. They want a radical individualistic law of the jungle, where the strong rule and profit, and devil (or Arpaio) take the hindmost.

And this is only the tip of the iceberg — the press in the state has been suffering its own draconian cutbacks, and fear of crossing the right-wing thugs by reporting on their activities.

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Posted inPhoenix

Joe and Peyton go after, gasp, real-estate crime!

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Maricopa County Supervisor Don Stapley's legal troubles provide an instructive window into much of what's wrong with Arizona. He was indicted by a grand jury on 118 felony counts for properly failing to disclose his real-estate dealings. The first "tell" on the case is that it's being pushed by Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Peyton Thomas, who are hardly the most reliable figures in law enforcement. As New Times' Sarah Fenske pointed out:

Seven years ago, as my former colleague John Dougherty first reported,
Arpaio obtained a court order to purge his real estate records from
county files. Arizona law allows judges, cops, and prosecutors to
petition the court to keep their home addresses and telephone numbers
out of county records.

That's right. The sheriff of one of the most populous counties in America had deals for shopping strips going on the side. 

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Posted inUncategorized

Gunslingers, sheriffs and the militarization of law enforcement

By Cal Lash, Guest Rogue

Human social evolution created the gunslinger.

Human Cowardice bought us the political lawman.

Since the beginning of socialization and the family unit, group control has been administered by the dominant figure in a group. Groups grew larger and became villages, towns, cities, states, kingdoms and empires.

In Europe, royalty hired out tax collection, to the “High Sheriff.”  The Sheriff also attended to other civil disputes, attended royal ceremonies and was responsible the enforcement of some criminal statutes. As Europe grew, municipalities provided their own law enforcement constabulary and contemporary High Sheriffs now have few genuine responsibilities and their functions are largely representational.

Marshal Wyatt Earp may or may not have been the best thing for Tombstone, Arizona, but he set the tone for paid protection along with other gunslingers and companies like Pinkerton. These hired “lawmen” were given a badge and the responsibility of making a town safe for the people who out of fear believed this was the way to create a safe environment. Different versions exist of the deeds and the resultant benefits or determents of people like Wyatt Earp and Tom Horn, who was a hired killer for cattleman. Horn’s killing of “rustlers” was tolerated until he allegedly shot a young boy.  Eventually many citizens in the old west began to wonder if the hired gunslinger was not worse than the problem they hired the gunman to solve.

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