(Tuesday, January 25. Phoenix, AZ) As President Obama prepares to deliver his State of the Union address tonight with an expected call for civility, the Arizona legislature is taking up a bill with a less chummy message to the federal government. That declaration can be summed up in three words: “Stay outta Arizona.”
HB2077 doesn’t t actually ban Feds from entering the state. It would just harass them and prevent them from doing their jobs. And who better to enforce this anti-Washington law (with its old-timey, anti-Easterner resentment) than that iconic Western figure: The Sheriff.
But Pearce has never been known for his sense of humor — and that’s not t likely to change with the “joke” he recently told about what would happen if President Obama visits Arizona.
One note of context: during the president’s 2009 visit to Phoenix, where he addressed the national convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars, armed men milled around outside the hall, including one carrying a semi-automatic version of a U.S. military assault rifle. The man with the assault rifle was a member of a Phoenix-area church that also expressed a less-than-welcoming posture toward the nation’s first Black president.
The day before Obama’s visit, Steven Anderson, pastor of the Faithful World Baptist Church, explained that he wasn’t about to “pray for God to give [Obama] a good lunch tomorrow, while he’s in Phoenix, Arizona. Nope. I’m not going to pray for his good. I’m going to pray that he dies and goes to hell.”
To be clear, Pearce is not a member of Anderson’s church. But, he is certainly aware of the hate-talk and prayers for the president’s death that filled the airwaves in Phoenix during and after the president’s visit. It’s a climate Pearce continues to stoke. In late November, Pearce told a crowd that Obama had committed treason when the president “sided with a foreign government” against the United State by opposing SB1070.
In a few weeks, Pearce will be sworn in as president of the Arizona State Senate. And that’s no joke.
Yes, there are climate activists in Phoenix, Arizona, as the picture on the right proves. The picture is from last year’s 350.org International Day of Climate Action and shows a local bicycle club from…Cairo? Oh. Wrong desert.
Moving on…forget about last year. This year, Phoenix — and several other Arizona cities and towns — will, indeed, be enlisting desert dwellers in the fight against climate change. And, boy, do we need it. Studies suggest that the record heat and drought we’ve been experiencing throughout the Southwest may be the “new normal” — especially if we don’t take action to reduce our CO2 output.
The Sonora desert is actually one of the most biologically diverse deserts in the world — largely because we used to receive quite a bit of rain in an average year. But the diversity of life we love here is threatened by a lack of moisture and an average temperature increase.
This Sunday — 10-10-10 — is a chance to learn about what can be done to reduce global warming. And an opportunity to show that we’re serious about taking these steps, now!
If you live in Arizona, check out the maps below to see what’s going on in your area. If you live outside of the state, you can get to the original international map, here.
