Sheriff Joe Arpaio | VivirLatino

Posts Tagged ‘Sheriff Joe Arpaio’

Health Reform for Latinas Should Include Not Being Shackled While Birthing

27 Oct 2009

shackles Yesterday, la Macha told us how today is the National Call in Day for Women of Color to Demand Health Care Reform (have you called yet?). And while immigrants have been used as scapegoats, not much attention has been paid to the access for immigrants, especially immigrant women who find themselves detained while pregnant, women like Juana Villegas DeLaPaz who we wrote about last year.

Seems like Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who revels in terrorizing Latino communities, wants to make sure that even infants entering into this world know their place in his eyes. From Latino Politico:

During her second night behind bars, the bleeding started. On the morning of October 14, she felt contractions. Her hands and feet shackled, she was in labor and ushered into a paramedic’s van by a detention officer who restrained her to the stretcher.

“That’s not necessary,” the paramedic told the officer.

“It’s my job,” the officer responded. The guard was a Latina.

She thought she would be released from the shackles once she arrived at the hospital, but she wasn’t.

The officer chained her ankle to one leg of the hospital bed.

A nurse requested that she be freed to get a urine sample. But the officer suggested instead that her bed be dragged over to the bathroom.

Later she was changed from her jail uniform into a hospital gown.

“The officer chained me by the feet and the hands to the bed,” she said. “And that’s how my daughter was born.”

It is the lives of women above that make me keep repeating why the issues of immigration reform, health care reform, and prison reform all work together. It is why I am not a reformer because the reform movements tends to separate the issues into neat little blocks. I think of those who cried victory when Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s 287(g) contract was modified to only include checking the status of those in jail, those in jail like the woman forced to give birth in chains.

287g Programs Expanded, Despite “Revamps” Immigrants Fearful

10:37 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration · 2 Comments

11 Jul 2009

NA-AY903_IMMIG_D_20090710164113 Did any of the immigrants’ rights groups have anything to say about the announcement of the expansion and “revamping” of the 287(g) program?
287(g) programs allow local law enforcement agents to enforce Federal immigration laws. The revision of the plan is supposed to calm the fears of immigrants and advocates who say that 287(g) programs encourage racial profiling among other abuses.

From the LA Times:

Local police agencies empowered by the federal government to enforce immigration law must focus their efforts on criminals who pose a threat to public safety, with less emphasis on those who commit minor crimes, Department of Homeland Security officials announced Friday…

…Some police departments check immigration status in a wide variety of crimes. Friday’s directive lays out federal priorities: violent crimes such as rape or robbery, as well as major drug offenses; followed by property crimes, such as burglary and fraud.

All 66 police departments that already participate in the program must sign a new, uniform memorandum within 90 days.

They also must agree to pursue the criminal charges that prompted an illegal immigrant’s detention. In other words, police can’t make an arrest just to find out if someone is in the country illegally…

…The memorandum says that police agencies will be bound by civil rights laws and subject to oversight by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as they arrest and detain illegal immigrants for possible deportation. Any agency that cannot prove that it is following those standards could lose its federal authority.

Raid in Sheriff Joe’s Country Leaves a 9 Year Old Girl Without Parents

10:35 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · arizona|children|Family|Immigration · 6 Comments

19 Jun 2009

I cannot wrap my mind around a few things at play here.

One, how anti-immigration activists can dehumanize the children of immigrants and immigrant children to the point that leaving a child without parents is ok. Or that a 9 year old’s murder is ok.

I also cannot understand how President Obama can keep postponing meetings on immigration and legislators drag their feet as if people are not being killed and children aren’t being left as defacto orphans by immigration enforcement.

Latinos: Somos Mas o Menos? Malos o Buenos?

11:11 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · arizona|Cities|Media|States|Women · 4 Comments

14 May 2009

One of the biggest lines fed by the anti-immigrant movement is that there are already so many of “us”, that the U.S. can’t afford to school any more of “our” children, and give “us” anymore of “their” jobs. And today I have come across a flurry of stats being released that seem to be all over the place in terms of just how many of “us” there are.

Today, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that: The minority population reached an estimated 104.6 million — or 34 percent of the nation’s total population — on July 1, 2008, compared to 31 percent when the Census was taken in 2000. Nearly one in six residents, or 46.9 million people, are Hispanic, the agency reported.

Even more telling for the future: 44 percent of children younger than 18 and 47 percent of children younger than the age of five are now from minority families.

The quickly expanding Latino population is having a healthy impact on the economy, according to Ken Gronbach, author of “The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Growing Demographic Trend.”

“Latinos have saved our country,” he said. “They represent 14 percent of the population but 25 percent of the live births. The United States is the only western industrialized nation with a fertility rate above the 2.2 percent replacement rate.”

So people should be thanking us no? Well let’s look at some of the areas that are experiencing growth and the reception that growth is getting.
Read more…

Joe Arpaio on Colbert Show

10:17 am By la Macha · Immigration|U.S.-Mexico Border · 1 Comment

21 Apr 2009

Joe Arpaio, the draconian sheriff that is connected to all sorts of human rights violations, was on Stephen Colbert last night. People protested his presence on the show (which Stephen mentions in his questioning), and Mr. Arpaio is getting some flak because he chose to come on show rather than attend a meeting about the border.

The Colbert Report

Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Joe Arpaio

colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

NASA Name Contest

I don’t know, I think Colbert has gotten in much more pointed critiques against others. Although I do really appreciate his questioning about racial profiling.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio Officially Under DOJ Investigation

2:39 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · arizona|Immigration|Justice · 3 Comments

11 Mar 2009

aleqm5ju_4eh4du9r9t5xsbw7sy6wydiea It’s about time! Arizona’s Maricopa County’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio has been officially put on notice, on notice that his actions and the actions conducted in the police department he ran are under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

From Latino Politico:

The U.S. Justice Department has launched a civil-rights investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office after months of mounting complaints that deputies are discriminating in their enforcement of federal immigration laws.

Officials from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division notified Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Tuesday that they had begun the investigation, which will focus on whether deputies are engaging in “patterns or practices of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures.”
An expert said it is the department’s first civil-rights probe related to immigration enforcement.

One of the things that can happen in such an investigation is that the police department can be put under the guidance of the Department of Justice until certain changed are made.

Pero the investigation is just the start, it’s not a victory. We still need to put the pressure on the DOJ and the U.S. government as a whole so that we move away from enforcement first immigration policies to policies that put the human rights of people first.

Thousands Protest Racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona

8:00 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Activism|arizona|Immigration · 2 Comments

4 Mar 2009

3321251432_f8c03e4b78_m No evil deed goes unnoticed by a community united against hate and on Saturday in Phoenix, thousands united against Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The crowd gathered at Steele Indian School Park in the morning to hear several speakers, musicians, religious and tribal leaders offer their thoughts and prayers before setting out south down Central Avenue towards downtown. The crowd steadily grew as the march advanced in the near-90 degree heat of the Arizona desert.

This latest exercise of 1st Amendment rights to assembly was in response to the escalation of anti-immigrant and anti-latino actions by Sheriff Arpaio since winning reelection in November 2008. The racial profiling has increased under his leadership and families continue to be separated by gestapo-like workplace & home raids that Arpaio claims are part of his oath to uphold state law. He also believes that it’s his duty as sheriff to segregate and humiliate migrant workers, treating them like animals by electrifying the perimeter fence around their tent city detainment facility.

The actions of Arpaio have attracted the attention of activist celebs like Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine, who was at the march.

“By parading human beings shackled in chain gang stripes,” said De la Rocha, “in a misguided effort to collectively humiliate and to terrorize an entire population, he reopened the wounds from which we all still suffer, by invoking the painful memories of slavery and segregation…by doing so, he has not only brought shame upon the state of Arizona, but is bringing shame upon the entire nation.”

De la Rocha also came down on the country’s new Secretary of Homeland Security, who was governor of Arizona before her current post.

“If Janet Napolitano seeks to perform her mission as head of the so-called Homeland Security Department,” admonished De la Rocha, “she must realize the dangerous threshold that the 287(g) agreements have crossed. She must deal directly and quickly with the real threat to peace and security here in Arizona, by terminating the 287(g) agreement with Sheriff Arpaio’s office and joining the courageous members of congress who have begun an investigation into his criminal behavior.”

Via / The Sanctuary and Latino Politico

Say Hell No to Sheriff Joe

7:00 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · arizona|Immigration|Justice · Comments Off

27 Feb 2009

Sign a petition against the racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio so that the new Obama administration and it’s Justice Department will investigate his sick power plays and demonstrate that racial profiling is no joke.

Zach de la Rocha Calls for Gente to March Against Sheriff Joe Arpaio

1:32 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Activism|arizona|Immigration|Music · 1 Comment

23 Feb 2009

Zach de le Rocha from Rage Against the Machine is calling for people to join the growing voices against the racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

In the last month Sheriff Joe Arpaio intensified his on-going escalation of attacks against Latinos by segregating the county jail and parading undocumented migrants shackled in a chain-gang into “tent city.” He erected and surrounded the tent with an electric fence in a grotesque display of human degradation.

Zach de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine responded to the news by saying, “To witness what is happening in Arizona and remain neutral is to be implicated in human rights violations that are occurring right here on US soil against migrants. History will not be kind to Joe Arpaio. He will be remembered with other infamous sheriffs like Bull Connor who subjugated and terrorized communities for shortsighted political gain. I hope everyone will join me in protesting Sheriff Joe.”

Who: National Day Laborer Organizing Network, Puente Arizona, and Zach de la Rocha

What: March to Stop the Systematic Persecution of Migrants and Latinos in AZ.

Where: March Start Location for Feb 28th: 300 E Indian School Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85012

When: March to Stop the Hate in Phoenix to be held 9:00 am on February 28

Not in Arizona? Aqui you can sign a petition demanding the U.S. Department of Justice Investigate Sheriff Joe.

Via / Standing Firm

Hip Hop for Justicia : Hip Hop Against Sheriff Joe Arpaio

9:12 am By Maegan La Mala · Activism|arizona|Immigration|Music · Comments Off

10 Feb 2009

If you’re in the Tempe, Arizona area tonite, you can put you can move to musica por el movimiento. In direct response to the continued racist and anti-immigrant antics of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, renowned musical artists from Chicago, Detroit, New York, and from the Arizona area are unleashing their lenguas for “Stop the Circus! (Fight for Tolerance, Stop Arpaio)”.

On Wednesday, February 4, 2009 in a shocking display of anti-immigrant racism, the man who calls himself the “Toughest Sheriff in America” publicly chained and paraded 220 immigrant detainees through a gauntlet of media cameras from the Maricopa county jail to outdoor tents. The immigrants housed in the “tent city” will be surrounded by electrified fencing and subject to different disciplinary standards than other prisoners. Disobedience of Sheriff Joe’s “tent city” rules is punishable by chain-gang labor; eerily reminiscent of totalitarian regimes.

Donde :

Stray Cat
2433 E. University Drive
Tempe, AZ
8pm

Scheduled to perform: One Be Lo, Wordsworth, Verbal Kent, G-Owens, Fiyah Station, Nobuddie, Bliss-Writers Bench: Hosted by Wild Life Refuge.

Check out Wordsworth aqui:

Let us not forget the roots of hip hop, as a way of speaking truth to power and reflecting realities ignored in the mainstream media and in portraits of the “American dream”. Protest comes in many forms so let us build movimiento con musica.

For mas informacion contact: Jill Garvey(jill@newcomm.org) at the Center for New Community
312-266-0319 or 773-787-6353 (mobile)

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