Immigrants and Unions Work To Oust Notorious Arizona Sheriff

Truthout ^ | 21 October 2012 | Jenny Brown, LaborNotes

[moonshinner_09]

Latino workers in the Phoenix area are fighting back against the bullying sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio. They’ve registered over 34,000 new voters for the November election.

The “Adiós Arpaio” campaign is part of a strategy by the hotel union UNITE HERE to turn around Arizona’s anti-worker policies, in a right-to-work state where Latino workers have only recently begun to flex their political muscles. Maricopa County contains 60 percent of Arizona’s population

Organizers say they feel a seismic shift in the political landscape. “I’ve never been part of something historic before,” said Lucia Vergara Aguirre, president of UNITE HERE Local 631. The union has been growing, representing workers at the Phoenix airport complex and at several downtown hotels, and has other organizing drives underway.

The campaign could have national importance in drawing the line against politicians who use anti-immigrant rhetoric to gain office. UNITE HERE members have been taking time off to work on the voter registration campaign. Fifty volunteers from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, along with labor activists from Texas and New Mexico, traveled to Phoenix to bolster the effort.

But a phalanx of Phoenix high school students has formed the backbone of the campaign. They’ve been coming into the union office after school and working four shifts a day on weekends, heading out to register people in grocery stores and on doorsteps, making inroads in a Latino community that has not traditionally registered to vote in high proportions.

“All these students committed because they have the same issue inside, that they can’t stand discrimination against Latinos,” said Carmen Robles, a Tempe High School student who, at 15, leads one of a dozen student voter registration teams. Hers is jokingly called the T Party, for Tempe.

[ccmay]

Arpaio will be re-elected with well over 60% of the vote. I’d much rather see these union goons and Reconquista/La Raza/MEChA types chasing that white whale than walking suburban precincts for Obama in Nevada or New Mexico.

[MomofMarine]

Notorious is not a word I would use for America’s Sheriff.

[bcsco]

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[freekitty]

Thank you

[stephenjohnbanker]

” Arpaio will be re-elected with well over 60% of the vote.”

All you need to know!

[HiJinx]

Ping!

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Sounds like they're taking a page from the Community Organizers' Handbook...

[Straight Vermonter]

Are people so White Guilt Liberal that they would be a member of a union who is trying to make you un-employed? Are people really that stupid?

The coal miners endorsed Al Gore. 'Nuff said.

[Dante3]

Maybe they hate this country or they have vested interests.

[Irish Eyes]

................... but something very strange is happening in Arizona, with Obama within 2%, and Carmona and Flake changing leads every few days. Soros and the unions are spending a fortune trying to turn Arizona blue.

I agree, someone has been pouring TONS of money into the Arizona elections for the past month. Most of the money against Arpaio and Flake.