Arizona’s Two Futures
Youth Movements Confront Legislated Intolerance
by Joel Olson
As spring heats into summer in the desert, two Arizonas fight for supremacy. One, lodged in power in the Arizona State Capitol, drafts anti-immigrant and “fiscally responsible†bills with glee.
It is old, it is white, it is dour and narrow. The other protests these bills from outside the capitol walls. It is young, it is largely brown, it is hopeful but angry, and it aims to clash with the old Arizona. And last Thursday it earned its first victory.
The day before that, a hundred youth from six weeks old to drinking age marched on the Capitol to protest a rash of anti-immigrant bills that, if passed, would have made Arizona’s notorious SB 1070 look like an act of charity. These five bills challenged the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship and would have required every member of official society — from nurses to teachers to school secretaries to doctors to employers — to check a person’s immigration status before healing or educating or hiring them. (more…)
