Here is an interesting quote from Sir Elton John delivered on-stage at a show in Arizona:
"I have read that some of the artists won't come here. They are fuckwits! Let's face it: I still play in California, and as a gay man I have no legal rights whatsoever. So what the fuck is with these people?"
There is a debate to be had about the efficacy of the boycott; ultimately, such a boycott hurts local promoters, venues, and vendors, and by turn, the music industry and local economy in Arizona, which is obviously not responsible for the law in question (there is a similar debate about the BP boycott hurting individual gas station owners who have no agency in the safety schema the corporation chooses to employ). However, name-calling artists who, out of moral conscience, choose not to play in Arizona is hardly useful to this debate.
Further, Elton John's rhetoric is a little intense here; true, Proposition 8 was a huge disappointment to progressives in California and beyond, but the statement that gays have no legal rights in California is a bit over the top. Unlike many states, we do have domestic partnerships and protections for LGBT people in the workplace; while California is not an equality utopia in any sense, this hardly constitutes having "no legal rights whatsoever".
The comparative logic is also flawed. While marriage equality is an important cornerstone of civil rights for all people, not being detained, questioned, and hassled because of the color of one's skin is absolutely necessary in a free society. As far as I know, the Redlands Police can't legally detain me if I'm walking down the street holding hands with another dude.
As I said, there is a debate to be had about who the boycott actually hurts, but slinging mud and name-calling is a pretty juvenile response, especially when one is working with a fairly flawed premise. Even if one doesn't agree with the boycott, or won't participate in it, it is good to remember that in most cases, the impetus to boycott Arizona in light of this stupendously misguided legislation comes from a morally reasoned and responsible place.
The struggle for civil rights for all segments of society would be much easier if we all started playing team ball a little more.
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I guess Kermit the Frog has a wingnut cousin who supports Arizona's new immigration law and is a close of friend of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who put together this absurdity:
I guess the habitat of this species of frog doesn't cross the border. He won't be cut off from others of his species like so many other animals.
As anti-immigration activists work to pass laws undermining the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, granting citizenship to people born here, I wonder how serious they are. There is almost no question that the recent Arizona anti-immigration is going to be thrown out of court almost immediately. While judges such as Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas vote for the Republican party line regardless of constitutionality, most judges at least have a semblance of respect for the Constitution.
Now, the same Arizona legislator who introduced the insidious legislation is coming back with a bill denying citizenship to babies born of undocumented people in the United States. This is blatantly and obviously unconstitutional. Anyone with even the slightest perfunctory knowledge of the Constitution can tell you this. So are these politicians just making a name for themselves by introducing racist legislation they know will never pass just to make a name for themselves? Quite possible.
This may be the only time in history I will agree with Michael Gerson, but he is making sense on Arizona's recent racist anti-Mexican laws:
Immigration issues are emotional and complex. But this must be recognized for what it is: political suicide. Consider that Hispanics make up 40 percent of the K-12 students in Arizona, 44 percent in Texas, 47 percent in California, 54 percent in New Mexico. Whatever temporary gains Republicans might make feeding resentment of this demographic shift, the party identified with that resentment will eventually be voted into singularity. In a matter of decades, the Republican Party could cease to be a national party.For all the massive evil of the Bush Administration, Bush and many of his cronies did see the political reality his former speechwriter describes here. Republicans cannot be knee-jerk anti-Mexican and survive. And Gerson is right that if Republicans weren't so damn racist, they could make real inroads into the Latino vote on issues like abortion and gay marriage.
Even describing this reality invites scorn from those who regard immigration as a matter of principle instead of politics. But this represents a deep misunderstanding of politics itself. In America, political ideals are carried by parties. Republicans who are pro-business and pro-life, support a strong national defense and oppose deficit spending depend on one another to achieve influence. Each of these convictions alienates someone -- pro-choice voters, economic liberals, pacifists. But Republican activists who alienate not an issue-group but an influential, growing ethnic group are a threat to every other constituency. The vocal faction of anti-immigrant Republicans is not merely part of a coalition; it will eventually make it impossible for anyone else in that coalition to succeed at the national level.
The good news for Republicans is that Hispanics tend to be entrepreneurial and socially conservative. While the general image Hispanics hold of the GOP is poor, individual Republican candidates can make significant inroads. In presidential elections, Hispanic support can swing widely. In 1996, Bill Clinton got 72 percent of the Hispanic vote. In 2004, John Kerry's support was in the 50s. And Republicans do not need to win a majority of the Latino vote to compete nationally, just a competitive minority of that vote.
But even this modest goal is impossible if Hispanic voters feel targeted rather than courted.
Gabriel Arana provides worthy analysis of Arizona's recent spate of racist legislation:
The story of Hispanics' political powerlessness in Arizona is partly a story about big demographic trends. Since the 1990s, the state has seen an influx of two groups: white Midwesterners and undocumented workers from Mexico. The swell of Midwestern retirees and families to the Phoenix area follows a pattern of migration from post-industrial cities in the middle of the country to the Sun Belt, where the cost of living is lower and economic opportunities more fruitful. In addition, according to the Department of Homeland Security, the rate of illegal immigration to the state jumped 70 percent between 2000 and 2008.Agreed entirely. But I think it's worth stating more bluntly than Arana the commitment of many white Arizona voters to white supremacy. While they may not state it as such, the older Midwesterners who move to Arizona came of age in the generation of white backlash. Many of them themselves likely moved out of neighborhoods when blacks moved in, participating in anti-busing or anti-civil rights protests, or just think this is a white man's nation.
Experts say the influx of the two groups has led to a cultural clash and strengthened the conservative base in Maricopa County, which dominates state politics. Republicans control both houses of the legislature and the governorship, which left Democratic representatives -- who hail largely from Southern Arizona -- relatively powerless to stop SB 1070.
"[Midwestern immigrants] are less familiar with Latinos as a group, which partially explains the support for tough immigration laws," says John Garcia, a political science professor at the University of Arizona.
In theory, these two demographics would both influence state-level policy. But the infrastructure for political participation by Hispanics doesn't exist in the same way it does for native-born Americans, the exceptions being states like California and Texas, which have more multi-generational Hispanic families and a larger percentage of eligible voters who are Hispanic. There is the obvious problem that about a quarter of Hispanics in Arizona are undocumented, but political participation is also low for citizens and permanent residents. Hispanics in Arizona – as well as nationwide -- are less likely than whites or African Americans to register to vote or participate in civic organizations. Only 17 percent of voters in the state are Hispanic.
This TPM piece got me thinking. They ask, what in the world happened to Arizona? In 2008, it seemed on the verge of swinging to the Democrats and perhaps would of had the Republican nominee not come from the state. Today, not only has it passed a racist and unconstitutional immigration bill, but a whole series of other insane right-wing bills.
But did anything happen to Arizona in the last 18 months that would so drastically change Arizona politics? No, not really. And I will get to that in a minute. But what I found most interesting about the piece is how big national news organizations, including progressive blogs, are so tone-deaf to local issues. I'm not really blaming them for this; I understand their interests and their audience. But the intense focus on national issues and national legislation gets in the way of subtlety and context. TPM thinks Arizona was becoming a more progressive state because they almost voted for Obama. But is a vote for Obama and a vote for racist anti-immigrant statues really that much of a discontinuity?
Progressive sites (and the media more broadly) love repeating Tip O'Neill's mantra that all politics are local. O'Neill was right about that. But the national news media doesn't really understand what that means. More broadly, I don't think today's Democratic party really understands much about what that means.
Arizona has been one of our most secretly right-wing white supremacist states for a long time. There's a reason a guy like Barry Goldwater came out of Arizona. Although the state actually created a very progressive state constitution in 1912, soon after statehood, conservative elements took over. These people essentially thought of Mexicans like white people in the South thought of blacks--cheap exploitable labor with no right to civil liberties or human rights. They rounded up Mexican-Americans, including American citizens, and kicked them out of the country during the Great Depression. They lobbied to ensure that New Deal labor legislation would not cover farm labor. When they needed Mexican labor again after World War II, they pushed for the Bracero Program, which allowed for guestworkers from Mexico. But they treated those Mexican farmworkers like slaves, often not paying them, allowing them to die of heat stroke, putting them in substandard housing, etc.
On top of this, after World War II, Arizona began attracting crowds of old retirees, centering in new Phoenix suburbs like Sun City. These people from other parts of the nation had no experience with Mexicans, but they clearly saw race in terms of white supremacy and had little problem entering into Arizona's established race relations.
But just because these people are racists doesn't mean they approve of the war in Iraq or weren't disturbed by the financial collapse. And it doesn't mean they don't believe in New Deal economic policy. It's quite simple to vote for Obama but also vote for a Republican state legislator who stirs up local fears about immigration, gun rights, or abortion. It might not make sense to a partisan like myself, but millions of people do this.
But what seems self-evident to me does not to those who focus obsessively on national political trends. Arizona has suffered from economic crisis more profoundly than most states. But most of those legislators in Arizona weren't elected as a response to that crisis. Most have been there for a long time, passing these crazy bills. But before 2009, they were vetoed by Governor Janet Napolitano. But when Obama picked Napolitano to be Secretary of Homeland Security, right-wing Attorney General Jan Brewer took over, giving the crazies power where it really counts.
I think modern Democrats do a particularly poor job understanding the importance of local politics. Republicans get this. They understood how to build a conservative movement beginning in the 1950s--take over the school boards and local offices and work up from there. They still do a better job of mobilizing people for local elections than Democrats. Some of this certainly has to do with an easier to reach demographic. But a lot of it is institutional. Look at the Democratic Party before Howard Dean's 50 state strategy. The Democrats were just punting half the nation, not only on a national but a local level. When I lived in Knoxville, Tennessee, the local Democrats never bothered running candidates for many offices. They thought--why bother, it will just hurt our influence with the Republican officials.
Moreover, Democrats, including the big progressive blog sites, look at local trends through national eyes. This leads to the kind of misunderstanding we are seeing in analysis of Arizona. When Tom Daschle lost his senate seat to John Thune, it wasn't South Dakota voters rejecting Daschle's policies. It was that they were pissed because they felt Daschle had abandoned his home state, in fact claiming Maryland (I think) as his home state on some tax form or some such thing. When Scott Brown defeated Martha Coakley to replace Ted Kennedy, some of that had to do with right-wing organizing, but a lot of it had to do with the fact that Martha Coakley ran the worst campaign in modern memory. These things are local. Looking at them through the lenses of national politics can help us find interesting trends, but they provide little understanding for what's going on in a particular place. When you get to the level of state legislatures and ballot initiatives, the national lenses provide almost no understanding at all.
A site like TPM can find people who do understand the local scene. There are many excellent sites dedicated to local politics. Each state has several. Some are great, such as Texas' Burnt Orange Report. I will say though that these sites often get caught up in the hothouse atmosphere of politics and don't provide a lot of room for analysis and understanding.
But there are scholars removed from the political atmosphere who do understand the history and culture of places. I am no expert on Arizona, but there are several states I do know pretty well where I could provide useful analysis. And there are a lot of people like me out there who could do a great job. Rather than asking out loud what has happened to Arizona, why not go find someone who can tell you?
A core myth of the environmental movement is that of the Ecological Indian, which I've talked about here before. Environmentalists think Native Americans are their "natural" allies, with natural having more than one meaning in this context. But what happens when indigenous people don't act like environmentalists think they should? What happens when they invite corporate development of their resources? Often, environmentalists accuse them of betraying Indian values, whatever that means, or even of not deserving to be called Native Americans. And sometimes, the tribes get pissed:
Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley, Jr., said Wednesday that he strongly supports the Hopi Tribe’s resolution to declare local and national environmental groups unwelcome on Hopi land.
“I stand with the Hopi Nation,” President Shirley said. “Unlike ever before, environmental activists and organizations are among the greatest threat to tribal sovereignty, tribal self-determination, and our quest for independence.”
“By their actions, environmentalists would have tribes remain dependent on the federal government, and that is not our choice. I want the leaders of all Native American nations to know this is our position, and I would ask for their support of our solidarity with the Hopi Nation in the protection of their sovereignty and self-determination, as well as ours.”
...
“Environmentalists are good at identifying problems but poor at identifying feasible solutions,” President Shirley said. “Most often they don’t try to work with us but against us, giving aid and comfort to those opposed to the sovereign decision-making of tribes. They support tribes only when tribes are aligned with their agenda, such as our opposition to renewed uranium mining in the Grand Canyon and on Native land.”
“Environmentalist actions led to the demise of Navajo logging and the closure of our sawmill at Navajo, New Mexico but did nothing to replace the 600 jobs that were lost,” President Shirley said. “Environmentalist actions led to the closure of the Mohave Generating Station and the shutdown of the Black Mesa Mine but did nothing to replace the 400 paychecks that were lost or the tribal revenue that was not replaced.”
“Now, environmentalists are doing all they can to prevent the development of the Desert Rock Energy Project, which includes misleading the public by saying Navajos oppose it and failing to mention it is the cleanest coal plant the EPA has ever evaluated, or that its twin is being built right now in Duisburg, Germany, one of the greenest countries in Europe.”
Building on my piece about the future of exurbs from yesterday, I strongly recommend Rob Inglis' and Jonathan Thompson's profile of Surprise, Arizona in High Country News.
While Ben Adler's piece I discussed yesterday typically focused on the DC area (what a surprise coming from a national political publication!), exurbs are far more prevalent in the Sunbelt. There are hundreds of communities like Surprise in the Southwest, in Texas, Georgia, Florida, and around the Sunbelt. Inglis and Thompson hint at why I think the glory days of exurbia might be behind us. There are literally millions of housing units in exurbs. Most of them were built because of the housing bubble kool-aid. Many of the people who bought these homes did so with adjustable-rate mortgages and then got thrown out of their homes when the payments ballooned.
As the authors point out, people don't move to the Phoenix suburbs for the weather or even for jobs. They move there because California is too expensive. Cheap land means development. But the overbuild of housing has led to plummeting prices. So it will continue to remain cheap. However, they still don't get at the core issue of what I believe will be exurban decline--oil. If you actually have a job now, you can buy those homes tremendously cheap if you can get then mortgage. But what good are those homes going to be when gas is $5, as I believe it will be in 2-3 years? The affordability of extreme suburbia will be undermined by structural problems beyond the real estate industry's control. Again, I think many of those houses will be occupied, but as working-class housing by people who will have to use their meagre resources to commute long distances to work, commutes that will eat up their low salaries in astronomical gas prices. There won't be public transit as an option. The West and Southeast will come to look like the Santa Fe area, with an expensive city surrounded by poor areas filled with working-class people forced to drive 30 miles from home to get to their jobs.
This week's images will revolve around the rise of the Republican right. Good times, I know.
Democrats for Barry Goldwater, 1958.
There's a lot of interesting things happening in western politics right now.
Montana:
Led by Montana Congressmen Denny Rehberg (R), a group of right-wing Montana politicians are threatening to secede from the union (!!!!!) if the Supreme Court doesn't decide in favor of gun rights in the D.C. v. Heller case now pending. Read their resolution here. Secretary of State Brad Johnson has also hinted in a letter to the Washington Times (read down a bit) that the state should have seceded in 1939 when the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Miller that gun ownership was subject to a two-part test: the type of weapon and its connection to a legitimate militia function, to steal the words from the good blog Intelligent Discontent. As Jay Stevens writes, Rehberg and the Montana secessionists are cowards and they won't do a damn thing except blubber and bluster about gun rights and secession. I guess this is Treason in Defense of Killin' Shit or something. I firmly believe the Democrats should never touch the gun issue again, but this kind of extremism is disturbing. There is political room to separate the loonies from the people who just like their guns. If there's a way to take advantage of this, I'd like to see it.
I'm surprised this hasn't received more attention. As always, Left in the West has great coverage on anything going on in Montana.
God damn, Montana is crazy sometimes.
Nebraska:
Scott Kleeb is running for Senate! Kleeb, running for Congress in one of the most conservative districts in the nation in 2006, put fear into the hearts of Republicans. He didn't win, but he did force Republicans to spend time and money in western Nebraska. W even came out to give a speech. With Chuck Hagel's retirement, there is potential for a Democratic takeover. Right now, the favorite for the Democratic nomination is Tony Raimundo. Raimundo was a Republican until recently. His switch reeks of opportunism. He wasn't going to win the Republican nomination against Mike Johanns. So he switched parties. The Democratic establishment supports Raimundo, but he sucks. At best, he's Ben Nelson, arguably the worst Democrat in the Senate not named Lieberman. I'd take him over Johanns, but Kleeb could be really great.
Candidates like Scott Kleeb really test both Howard Dean's 50 state strategy and the Netroots' ability to affect elections. In 2006, the Democratic party apparatus supported conservative Democrats in both the Virginia and Montana primaries. The Netroots got behind Jim Webb and Jon Tester instead. Both came out of nowhere to win the nomination and then the general election. They proved that Democrats can win statewide election in red states if they run true to their beliefs. Kleeb's candidacy more closely mirrors Tester's--these are very conservative western states that will occasionally elect Democrats to statewide office. Kleeb deserves a huge amount of support from the grassroots now and from the party if he wins the primary. Very exciting news.
Arizona:
This news is a bit older, but worth mentioning. Last week was a reminder how screwed up Arizona is. The massively corrupt Rick Renzi, Republican congressman, was indicted on 35 felony charges, including fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, and extortion. As of now, he is refusing to resign, though he is not running for reelection. Classic Republican. Meanwhile, Republicans, desperate to not have to fill more vacancies, convinced retiring Republican John Shadegg to change his mind and run for reelection. Endorsed by the Hair Club for Growth, Shadegg is awful, voting against raising the minimum wage and lowering interest rates on student loans, while voting for building the border fence and lowering taxes while also funding the war. He won less than 60% of the vote in 2006, meaning that the Democrats should give him a run for this money this time around.
Finally, there is the death of former Governor Evan Mecham. Like Renzi, Shadegg, Goldwater, McCain, Kyl, etc., Mecham epitomized class. He won the governorship in 1986 on an extreme right-wing agenda and openly touted the endorsement he received from the John Birch Society. He immediately canceled the state's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Arizona was already one of the last two states to honor King. He blamed working women for the nation's high divorce rates and freely used the racist slur "pickaninny." When accused of being racist, Mechem said, "I've got black friends. I employ black people. I don't employ them because they are black; I employ them because they are the best people who applied for the cotton-picking job." He also said that a group of Japanese businessmen "got round eyes" when he told them how many golf courses Arizona had.
Of course, in less than a year, impeachment proceedings had begun against Mechem, not because of the horrid positions listed above; many Arizonans loved that. No, he was as corrupt as Renzi! He was impeached for misuse of government funds, perjury, fraud, not reporting campaign contributions, and obstruction of justice, but he was found not guilty by a sympathetic legislature.
Arizona embodies the worst of western politics--anti-government rhetoric coming out of their mouths during the rare periods when they are not sucking the government tit for every cent it can, corrupt as all get out, racist as the Deep South. The place was settled by right-wing retirees, military men, developers, and defense contractors after World War II and it has never looked back. Farmworkers, Latinos, and Native Americans are routinely treated like third-class citizens and have been basically forever. It's hardly surprising Barry Goldwater was from here--he embodied this ethic. Except that by Arizona standards, he was hardly crazy. It's also fitting that John McCain is from here. McCain fits the place perfectly. He holds retrograde positions on every issue, but he blinds the nation to his craziness by a facade of rugged masculinity. This is a tried and true strategy for Arizona politicians going back a long time. When the general public thinks of scary places in America, they come up with Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and West Virginia. But Arizona can give any of these states a run for its money.
South Dakota:
Finally, a quick note about South Dakota. The Republicans are desperate to pick up the SD Senate seat from incumbent Tim Johnson. But despite his recent health problems, Johnson is quite popular in the state. Nonetheless, the Republicans are recruiting wealthy businessman Steve Kirby to join the race. Where has Kirby made his money? He runs a company that harvests skin from dead people to sell to plastic surgeons. Not for burn victims but for cosmetic surgery like making your lips bigger or thickening your penis.
Well, that should make for some fun Democratic campaign ads at the very least.
This article about the destruction of Arizona's sky islands again reminds us of what we have done to the Earth.
The mountains of southern Arizona and New Mexico provide fragile bits of ecosystem for many plants and animals unable to live in the heat of the desert floor. Thanks to climate change, many of these animals will soon be extripated from the Southwest or just extinct altogether.
Climate change has affected the West like no other part of the nation. We should not be surprised by this as the region already had the most precarious climate in the United States. Drought and heat have become increasingly more common over the past decade. Fires have swept through several of sky islands. Now early melting snows and increased temperatures are causing significant and rapid species shifts, as lower elevation species are moving up the mountains and those animals hanging on in these eco-niches are disappearing.
Get used to it folks. Our lifetimes will see massive extinctions around the world. Good times.
