Email this page
Print this page
del.icio.us
digg
yahoo!
CommentsPolitical Merry-go-round
Upcoming elections will decide whether old or new policies reign.
(page 1 of 5)
About a hundred protestors from a group called Maricopa Citizens for Safety and Accountability (MCSA), a coalition of community-based organizations, labor unions, religious leaders, students and elected officials, protested raucously when board of supervisors stopped them from speaking at the meeting.
Maricopa Sheriff Deputies closed the doors and locked out citizens and news media who trying to get in to the meeting, resulting in a violation of the Arizona Open Meetings law.
Down the street that same day, more protesters from another group -- Puente AZ -- chanted slogans, hoisted signs and jammed the sidewalk outside the
“Wells Fargo profits from the bank services of undocumented immigrants,” says Annette Sexton-Ruiz, one of MCSA’s leaders. She added that it was hypocritical of the bank to house a sheriff’s department that targets immigrants, and racially profiles other Latinos in the process.
Protesters also have held demonstrations outside the offices of Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas.
The on-going, noisy demonstrations at county facilities are organized public reactions to official actions by the Maricopa County Sheriffs Department and
But to get at these county departments, they are targeting the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, who have oversight of the budgets of both departments.
Created four months ago, MCSA was founded to draw attention to the perceived inaction or acquiescence on sheriff and county attorney policies – and politics -- by the Republican-dominated Maricopa Board of Supervisors.
“MCSA (is protesting) at the Maricopa Board of Supervisors meetings to raise concerns over how our tax-payer dollars are being wasted by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and how public safety has been sacrificed to promote the political agenda of Sheriff Arpaio,” says Raquel Teran, executive director of the organization.
Fallout from the sheriff’s controversial policies – such as his “crime suppression sweeps” that critics brand as racial profiling, and rising number of pending lawsuits – are putting the spotlight right on the board.
In fact, the top item on the board agenda during the rowdy protest and citizen lockout was the supervisors cancelling the sheriff’s agreement to provide police services to the tiny town of
The board axed the services because Sheriff Arpaio requested it in retaliation against the town mayor. Guadalupe Mayor Rebecca Jimenez had argued with Arpaio during one of the sheriff’s sweeps for undocumented immigrants in the Yaqui/Mexican American community.
The sheriff’s and county attorney’s Draconian policies regarding immigrants dominate county priorities, say critics, to the detriment of other county-important business.
All the attention has brought another kind of pressure on the board.
The four Republican supervisors have Democrats running against them for the first time in years.
Candidates who will oppose elected county officials in the Nov. 4 election have made “fiscal responsibility” and “partisan politics” buzzwords in their platforms to unseat the incumbents.
