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Sheriff's Tactics Opponents Bring Heat to MCSO's Offices
By Eduardo Barraza
BARRIOZONA
September 2, 2008
Sheriff Arpaio’s opponents have been protesting his abuse of power and zero-accountability tactics in Maricopa County for
years and months, but most recent actions against him have gotten as close as they can get, with demonstrators
standing outside the building where his office is located.
About fifty picketers gathered outside the Wells Fargo building in Downtown Phoenix to begin a two-month series of daily,
two-hour sit-ins, where local community organizers were joined by members of the Los Angeles-based National Day
Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), and the El Paso-based Association of Border Workers.
The quest of this new series of protests directed to challenge Arpaio’s violation of human rights is to pressure Wells
Fargo Bank ─the Corporation leasing the office space to Maricopa County─ to not renew a lease agreement expiring on
September 30th of this year. MCSO has been occupying the 19th and 20th floors of the building for the last decade.
Similar protests took place in Phoenix last fall, when a furniture store hired off-duty sheriff deputies to allegedly keep day
laborers seeking work off their parking lot. Last year’s protests ─which also began with about the same number of
demonstrators showing up today─ spiraled up to hundreds of people attending, and confrontations between protesters
and counter-protesters that bordered in violence.
After two months of consistent protests every Saturday outside MD Pruitt's Home Furnishings, furniture store’s owners
ended their hiring of MCSO’s personnel as their private police. In retaliation, groups of counter-demonstrators moved their
own protests to the Macehualli Day Labor Center, in Northeast Phoenix, where Salvador Reza, main protest organizer at
Pruitt’s coordinates the center’s operations. After eight months of unsteadily-held protests outside the Macehualli, the
number of picketers has been reduced to 3 or 1, and attempts to shut down the work center have been evidently
unsuccessful.
The new series of protests bring the immigration debate that made national and international headlines to Downtown
Phoenix. The volatile demonstrations positioned Maricopa County ─and Arizona─ as the so-called epicenter of the country’
s polarizing issue on undocumented immigration. The battle on the streets escalated to sharp opposing views and verbal
confrontations between public officials, particularly between Sheriff Arpaio and Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, who have
become the opposite symbols of the immigration clash.
“It is widely known that the state of Arizona has become the laboratory where new bills and new policies are being
implemented,” stated Pablo Alvarado Executive Director of the NDLON. “We believe that those policies and practices must
stay here and end here in Arizona. We must ensure that these practices are not exported to other places.”
Alvarado added that “when you have a sheriff that’s engaging in this type of illicit enforcement of the law, what happens is
that all of the sudden you create an environment where a society views migrant workers, and their rights, as something
completely different.”
Guillermo Glenn, Coordinator of the Association of Border Workers, came from El Paso especially to attend today’s first
protest. “We feel that Arizona and Sheriff Joe are in the leadership of this anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican racist kind of
promotion in the United States, and all over the U.S.,” he declared. “We have to oppose this kind of civil rights violations
and we have to oppose this kind of human rights intrusion.”
Organizers from Puente ─the network of individuals who evolved from the committee organizing the protests at Pruitt’s─
and Arpaio’s opponents in general vow to maintain the daily sit-ins outside the Wells Fargo building for two months, and
to achieve their goal to force MCSO out of their offices. Customers from the banking corporation will be encouraged to
withdraw their money and close their accounts if Wells Fargo continues to lease space to Maricopa County.
Copyright © 2008 Hispanic Institute of Social Issues
Grassroots Journalism
www.barriozona.com
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Local, out-of-state organizers bring immigration debate to Downtown Phoenix, target Sheriff's
leased space in Wells Fargo tower.