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Arizona organizers won an important campaign against the sheriff who terrorized their community for decades.
During his 24 years as the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio erected a tent city prison he referred to as a “concentration camp;” forced incarcerated people to march in front of media cameras while chained together; repeatedly defied court orders to stop racially profiling people of Latin American descent; and became a national ambassador for Arizona’s inhumane detention and deportation policies. It is difficult to know exactly how many people were tortured, killed or committed suicide in his jails, but many suspect the number is high.
So when community organizers with the Bazta Arpaio coalition on Tuesday won a long-term struggle to unseat the sheriff, now 84, the community rejoiced. “The people Arpaio targeted decided to target him,” declared Carlos Garcia, executive director of the migrant justice coalition Puente. “He lost his power when undocumented people lost their fear.”
The Arizona organizers—whose campaign was buoyed by hundreds of high school students who staged an anti-Arpaio walk-out on election day—cannot escape the rise of President Donald Trump, who ran his campaign on pledges to implement Arpaio-style policies. In turn, Arpaio was a prominent surrogate for the Trump campaign, a sign that he could be tapped to advise the Trump administration. The two figures have constituted a tag team on the campaign trail. When Arpaio spoke on behalf of Trump at the Republican National Convention in July, the crowd chanted “Build a wall!” during his speech. The sheriff has been a consistent supporter of Trump’s false allegations that President Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen.
Arpaio lost his bid for a seventh term as sheriff by a considerable margin, with his Democratic challenger Paul Penzone, a retired Phoenix-area police sergeant, poised to take over his position. Now the organizers who won the grassroots victory hope that their campaign to overturn Arpaio, who was once considered politically invincible, can help provide a compass for the rest of the country.
“When the fight here began, there was a huge move to support brown people no longer complying with their suffering,” said Caitlin Breedlove, campaign director of the Unitarian Universalist-affiliated Standing on the Side of Love and an active participant in the Bazta Arpaio campaign. “From that came their consciousness, and there is a whole generation of organizers in this county who have been fighting Arpaio all along. Some of the young people of color in this campaign have family members who have been held in the tent city or been in chain gangs. When I say Arpaio has been torturing people here, I am being very literal.”
‘Talking to the People Who No One Is Talking To’
According to Breedlove, the successful effort hinged on “going out and talking to the people who no one is talking to and no one is listening to. Some of the partner groups here, like Lucha, have been part of registering 150,000 new voters, primarily working class and of color,” she said. “People knocked on doors for four months."
Parris Wallace, an organizer with Bazta Arpaio, told AlterNet that “Maricopa county is super spread out. We targeted first-time unlikely voters who were people of color. We reached out to Latinx neighborhoods all over the country. We talked to working-class white folks, college kids and people who are unlikely to turn out to vote. We reached out to the people who politicians don’t think it’s worth their time to engage.”
Wallace says that, throughout the process, she received an education in how to have one-on-one organizing conversations with people who are alienated from the political process, as well as people with vastly different life experiences and backgrounds. “It really is about the door-to-door outreach and going to far-off places like the far west valley, where I was assigned,” she explained. As a black woman, Wallace says she "learned how to talk to an older white couple about the election, race and where we’re headed.”
According to Ernesto Lopez, who organizes with People United for Justice, the organizers were boosted by the fact that “it was the right moment. People dislike Arpaio and were aware of the horrible things he has been doing. We were tapping into the power of people knowing he was a bad person. We were able to motivate people who were not engaged in the political process to be engaged.”
‘Combine Direct Action with Civic Engagement’
Arpaio’s atrocities against the local community are no secret, and in fact, he has loudly advertised them in an effort to build his national profile. This includes selling his own line of pink underwear, a reference to the humiliating garments he has forced people incarcerated in his jails to wear. Meanwhile, Arpaio has cost taxpayers roughly $130 million throughout the course of his career to defend him against lawsuits. On October 11, protesters rallied outside of a federal court in downtown Phoenix, where Arpaio faced proceedings related to contempt charges for refusing to heed an order to cease racially profiling. “No justice, no peace!” protesters chanted within earshot of the court.
Throughout the campaign, traditional protests were coupled with creative direct actions. The local chain Discount Tires faced an organized boycott after its owner displayed pro-Arpaio signs. According to Wallace, protesters also staged a mock retirement party outside of Arpaio’s office. "We combined direct action with civic engagement," she said.
“Most of us who worked together on this had never met, but we built together and learned together,” Wallace said. “Sometimes we didn’t have the same viewpoints on how things should be handled, but the end goal was the same.”
Breedlove was frank. “I think there has been a misnomer about this campaign, that everyone was already in groups that worked together and loved each other and everything was perfect,” she said. “That’s not true. Some of these groups have struggled, but people have not walked away from the table. This is a win that comes out of majority working-class people of color and our national partners. We had electrical workers and steelworkers helping us. We brought in folks from Southerners on New Ground to do LGBTQ work. We really knit it together. This campaign is about the power of not quitting.”
Hermelinda Cortés, an organizer with the regional queer liberation organization Southerners on New Ground, told AlterNet that “one of the things that’s been really great about the Arpaio campaign is the willingness of traditional electoral organizers to work with grassroots organizers. The campaign merged the best of what we know about those two things.”
‘A Call to Action’
Since Tuesday, when the electoral college propelled Trump to victory, Phoenix-area high school students have followed their anti-Arpaio protests with walkouts against the president elect, in step with ongoing, nationwide protests. They are mobilizing against a billionaire who has repeatedly pledged to unleash racist policies across the country. He has proposed imposing a blanket ban on non-American Muslims; called for torture and war crimes, including killing the family members of ISIS; claimed he will “force” Mexico to build a wall and deport millions of immigrants; and engaged in dangerous incitement against Black Lives Matter protesters.
Arpaio is not the only racist sheriff Trump counts among his close associates. Trump surrogate and Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke rose to prominence during the 2016 presidential election cycle by openly declaring war on the Black Lives Matter movement, once falsely claiming on social media that racial justice protesters will “join forces” with ISIS. Clarke’s incitement continued even as residents of this deeply segregated city staged angry protests against the cop killing of 23-year-old Sylville K. Smith.
“When I think about the national moment, my first thought is, I am a person who has spent all my organizing years in red states, where people violating and speaking ill of my beloveds is not new,” said Breedlove. “It is very new that that person now has a nuclear code, and that’s horrifying.”
“I think it would be really wonderful if the blue coast and some of their money came to the rest of us, and folks said they want to learn more about what you all know in those red states," Breedlove continued. "Some of us know a bunch of stuff that would be helpful. Listening to poor people, people of color and women organizing in those places is really important for morale, hope and strategy.”
Cara Page, executive director of the New York City-based Audre Lorde Project, told AlterNet that organizations across the country are struggling to envision a path forward. “Fascism is alive and well,” she said, posing the questions, “What will we do to sustain a better future? How do we turn rage into power? How do we recalibrate how we are putting our bodies on the line? How do we meet these higher stakes?”
Parris Wallace says her experience organizing against Arpaio has helped her begin to answer such questions. “I feel like organizing is going to have an amazing upswing, and we're going to have to be building a bigger, broader coalition,” she said. “Keep an eye on the youth. They are mobilizing and getting prepared to do something really wonderful.”
According to Ernesto Lopez, “There’s a call to action to find organizations and like-minded people and get ready for whatever is going to come. It's going to be tough. I have a lot of friends, both documented and undocumented, who are afraid. We need to be brave and get together.”
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