Marchers declare state of human rights emergency in Arizona
Please read this Peaks update as well: Stop Snowbowl: Upcoming Flagstaff Elections, Know Where They
Stand (http://indigenousresistance.org/stop-snowbowl-upcoming-flagstaff-elections-know-where-they-stand/)
By Klee Benally
Censored News
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. -- More than 300 people including dozens of organizations
rallied in Wheeler Park, then marched through the streets of downtown
Flagstaff, Arizona in response to escalating human rights violations.
"Arizona is in a state of human rights emergency,"
stated Eli Isaacs, a volunteer with the Repeal Coalition and an organizer of
the march. "We may come from different parts of this community and face
different issues, but this racist state and greedy corporations can only
push us so far. With our backs against the wall, its easy to see the same
forces are oppressing us all, its natural to find unity against common
oppressors."
Community members and students addressed reproductive
justice, hetero-sexism, cultural survival, racism, sexism, ageism, police
brutality and racial profiling. The gathering spoke out against racist laws
such as SB1070 and HB2281, and John McCain and John Kyl's water
settlement. They urged protection of the San Francisco Peaks and all other
sacred places. They agreed to be in solidarity and to support one another in
the struggle for human rights.
Luis Fernandez, from Arizona ALCU, asked the crowd what
human rights were. Voices rang out, crying "Access to shelter, enough
food, safe birth control, freedom to worship as you please" and more.
In August 2011, The Havasupai Tribe, Klee Benally, a Dine’
(Navajo) activist, and the International Indian Treaty Council, filed an Urgent
Action / Early Warning Complaint with the United Nations (UN) CERD Committee,
on the desecration of Sacred San Francisco Peaks, Arizona. The complaint
addressed Arizona Snowbowl’s clear-cutting of 40 acres of pristine forest and
the laying of over 5 miles of a waste water pipeline in furtherance of a US
Forest Service and City of Flagstaff supported project to spray artificial snow
made of waste water effluent on the Holy San Francisco Peaks.
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination,
known internationally as the CERD Committee is charged with monitoring compliance
with the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial
Discrimination (ICERD).
“The Forest Service, the City of Flagstaff, and the
courts have proven that they do not understand or respect our spiritual
ceremonies and practices and our spiritual relationship to the Earth,” said
Klee Benally, arrested multiple times while demonstrating to protect the Holy
Peaks. “We have no guaranteed protection for our religious freedom as
Indigenous Peoples in the US. The desecration of this Holy site is an attack on
our cultural survival.”
Steve Kugler, an advocate for the homeless, stated,
"During 2007’s winter solstice, a Homeless Memorial Day Service was
conducted on city hall lawn. Twelve names of the city’s unsheltered people that
died from exposure during the winter were read.
Unknown to the public, twelve more people had died. These
twelve were not acknowledged by city officials, nor were they mentioned in
Flagstaff’s media. I feel that the officials did this, because the unreported
twelve people were not substance abusers, they are a blight to Flagstaff’s
service industry.
My take is that Flagstaff has 2,500 all season, homeless,
people who do not have a voice. Thirty percent of the 2,500 homeless are
students. Let me be their voice. Flagstaff’s city’s officials were elected by
the people to be a proxy voice for the people. Do Flagstaff’s citizens have
justice when its elected officials feel that they are above the law, adhere to
their own agendas and are not accountable to the people that elected them to
office?"
Ofelia Rivas from O'odham Voice Against the Wall, talked
about resisting border militarization and how she just testified before a UN
special rapporteur in Tucson, Ariz. "The rights of mother earth is what we
need to protect today to survive as human beings." stated Rivas.
Paloma Allen, O'odham, who has been working to stop loop 202
from desecrating the sacred South Mountain in Phoenix stated, "Indigenous
rights and indigenous identity don't mean anything to this state, that's why we
have to be vocal."
Lola, a youth member of a new Flagstaff based group called
B.L.A.S.T. spoke passionately about how she has been impacted by Arizona's
immigration laws, "This has affected me by my family getting deported, I
cannot see them any more because they are on the other side of the border. It
just hurts me inside to have them leave and just wake up one day and they're
not there. What if that was your family getting deported, what if that was your
mother getting put in jail? That is not good, that's not a way we as humans
should be treated. We all have rights we all should be treated equal, so I do
not understand why they are trying to take away our families."
Raquel, a former member of Tucson based U.N.I.D.O.S., the
youth organization that occupied Tucson Unified School District's (TUSD) school
board meeting last year, stated, "It's very clear the path that this state
lays for youth of color.
It's very clear from the militarization of schools, from the
militarization of neighborhoods, from the militarization of the border itself
on O'odham lands. The reason that ethnic studies is under attack is because
these classes represent a rupture in the plan that Arizona had for youth of
color. The TUSD fears resistance so much that every parent or teacher has to go
through metal detectors."
Claire Bergstresser, an NAU student and member of
Immigration Action Research Team, directly addressed SB1070 and HB2281.
Bergstresser quoted HB 2281 as "prohibiting ethnic solidarity" and
responded to it by expressing, "I could not understand why our government
had mixed politics with education, why students were being limited education on
ethnic studies, the things that they can connect with, understand, and
love." Bergstresser addressed the crowd, "Your voice and your passions
hold no borders and will be heard. At the end of the day, it is not the loudest
voices that are remembered but the ones with the passion and courage to listen,
express and act in the name of something bigger than yourself. We will march
today for our passions, we will march today in the name of human rights, but
also we will march today to have our voices heard."
.
