One by one we go around the room. Westate our name and why we are here at this meeting, seeking the repeal of SB1070 and other anti-immigrant laws. “I want to keep my family together.” “Ibelieve in human dignity.” “I’m afraid my family will be broken up.” “I believein freedom for all people.” “I want a resolution to this problem.” “Iwant a new world.”
This is what my Wednesday nights havebeen like since the passage of SB 1070 in April: for three hours Isit in a hot, sweaty room at the local Catholic church in Flagstaff, Arizona,with anywhere from 25 to 50 adults plus a gaggle of little kids. It’sa meeting of theRepeal Coalition, an all-volunteer, grassroots organization that isstruggling for the repeal of all anti-immigrant laws in Arizona. Three-quartersor more of the participants are Latino. About that many areundocumented or related to someone who is. Women outnumber men, andthey participate more. The discussion is noisy and animated, andmostly in Spanish, with people doing the best they can to translate intoEnglish or vice-versa. Often just the gist gets translated. (Someonesays a joke in Spanish and three-quarters of the room erupts in laughter andthe rest of us smile sheepishly, then someone says a joke in English and itgoes the other way.) But somehow we feel like part of the samegroup. The kids in the adjacent room tear through the paper andcrayons and cheap toys until someone pops in a video. By 8:30 p.m.,exhausted, we clap it out, clean up, socialize, and take care of the littlethings we couldn’t get to in the formal meeting. Then we all gohome, do the work we volunteered to do, and come back fighting the nextWednesday. This is what democracy looks like.
In Arizona right now, this is the lullbefore the storm. SB 1070 is scheduled to become law on July 29. Ifyou don’t know, SB 1070 is the notorious anti-immigrant law that makes it astate crime to be undocumented, requires everyone in the state to carry ID (“Yourpapers, please!”), makes it a crime to give an undocumented person a ride inyour car or a meal in your home, and practically mandates racial profiling.
On July 29, if the police have “reasonablesuspicion” that you are undocumented, you will be ripped from your family andthrown in jail.
On July 29, if you give a ride in yourcar or allow into your home a person you know is undocumented, you are “recklesslydisregarding” that person’s legal status and can be arrested for “harboring” an“illegal alien.”
On July 29, if you get stopped by thecops and you don’t have identification on you, this will count as “reasonablesuspicion” that you may be in the country illegally, and you are subject toarrest, no matter where you are from.
If this sounds to you like the makingsof a police state, well, it does to me, too.
When Governor Jan Brewer signed 1070into law at the end of April, Arizonanstook to the streets in the tens of thousands. Weorganized protests, held community forums, and spoke out wherever we could: thestate capitol, trailer parks in Phoenix, Flagstaff City Hall, the borders ofthe Tohono O’odham nation, neighborhoods in South Tucson.
After the crowds died down, the lawyersstepped in. To date at least six lawsuits have been filed that seekto prevent SB 1070 from going into effect, including one by the Obamaadministration.
Undocumented folks and their loved onesare holding their breath, praying that the lawsuits will succeed. Butmany of them aren’t putting all of their eggs in that basket. Theyknow that ultimately, onlygrassroots action will defeat this evil law.
Which brings us to the meetings.
Americans generally don’t know how torun a meeting, or participate in one. We can vote, we can speechify,and we can scream at each other, but we rarely debate constructively and in away that encourages the participation of all. Our political systemsimply isn’t set up for that. Instead, what typically happens isthat the people vote once a year or so and the politicians do the work—with thehelp of lobbyists, bureaucrats, judges, and lawyers, lots of lawyers; It’s a really limited form of democracy, when you think about it.
But the meetings of the RepealCoalition are entirely different. They are utterly ordinary, yetincredible. The great Marxist revolutionary C.L.R. James once wrotea pamphlet about direct democracy called “Every Cook Can Govern.” Hewould have been inspired to see these cooks, cleaners, servers, chamber maids,college students, linen service workers, teachers, maintenance workers,warehouse clerks, and cashiers practice democracy in Arizona. Andthe Coalition doesn’t just go through the motions of democracy like mostAmerican voters; we debate politics. We cometogether, discuss the right thing to do, develop strategy, make decisions, andcarry them out. People (mostly) raise their hand to speak and(mostly) listen patiently to others. And we do all of this in twolanguages!
The political theorist Hannah Arendtclaims that ordinary people directly participating in politics is literally a miracle. Miracles, she argues, are the spontaneous creation ofsomething new. This, she argues, is precisely what people acting inthe public sphere do: they create a new beginning, a new community, a newpolitical possibility, something that has never existed before.
That’s what happens every Wednesdaynight in Phoenix and Flagstaff. At one recent meeting, for example,Flagstaff Repeal discusses the finer points of a resolution we’ve written thatdemands the repeal of all anti-immigrant legislation in the state of Arizona. Theresolution, which we hope the city council will pass, calls for the city toproclaim itself a safe haven for all people, whether they have papers or not. Wediscuss and then approve the resolution unanimously, to great applause. Wethen move on to developing strategy for how to get the city council to pass it. Fromthere we discuss the situation of some undocumented workers who have beenunjustly treated and fired by the local Hampton Inn, and then to plans for aprotest and march against SB 1070 in downtown Flagstaff for the comingSaturday. The facilitator (who is doubling as translator) gets usthrough the agenda so that we can end by 8:30. We all marvel at whata great job she did—and it was her first time. The meeting ends by “clappingit out,” or a slow, disorganized clap that increases in speed andsynchronization, leading to a crescendo of group unity and power until itbursts into individual applause again, reminding us of how the individual andthe collective are interdependent.
These meetings are inspiring, boring,disciplined, way off track, frustrating, empowering, intimidating, and awesome—oftenat the same time. Like I said, this is what democracy looks like.
The Repeal Coalition’s slogan is “Fightfor the freedom to live, love, and work wherever you please.” Butthis slogan is meaningless without another: “All people deserve the right tohave an equal say in those affairs that affect their daily lives.” Democracy isnot voting for elites every four years while quietly fuming at the tyranny ofyour boss for 40 hours a week (more if you’re undocumented). It’sthe ability of all people to have a say in those affairs that affect theirdaily life. At our meetings, we seek to live out this principle ofradical democracy. It’s built into the very heart of the RepealCoalition: the weekly meeting.
The Repeal Coalition has been meetingevery week since March 2008. For the first few months there werebetween a dozen and 20 people. Sometimes there were four of us,staring at each other, wondering what the hell to do next. That wasthe case last January, for example. Thanks to an inside source, weknew the notorious bill that would soon be named SB 1070 was coming, evenbefore it was made public. We talked about how we needed to build amovement to fight it. But there were just four of us. Whatthe hell could we do?
And then in April the world discoveredSB 1070, and we went from six people to 40 to 60 in two weeks (plus 20 kids—Ispent several meetings doing childcare in the adjacent room, occasionallysticking my head in the meeting room to hear what was going on). Theprimary language went from English to Spanish. The college students,who were formerly a majority in the group, became outnumbered by servers andlaundry workers.
Since then we’ve had at least 25 peopleat every meeting. We’re busy, but we’re nervous. July 29approaches. People don’t know yet how they are going to keep theirfamilies together. They are scared to drive, so they aren’t evensure how they’ll get to work, how they’ll get their kids to school, how they’llshop for groceries. Down in Phoenix, Sheriff Joe Arpaio calls July29 the “magic day” when he can truly begin to sweep the streets clean of brownpeople.
Another political theorist, CarlSchmitt, argues that the real miracle in politics is what he calls “theexception.” This is when a ruler declares an “extreme emergency” andsuspends the rule of law. SB 1070 isn’t quite a miracle in thisrespect, because it is the law, even if it does suspendliberty and decency. Regardless, July 29 is Arpaio’s miracle.
In the face of this, Repeal keepsmeeting, planning, fighting, and conjuring our own miracle.
The question in Arizona right now, asJuly 29 approaches, is which miracle will win out, the miracle of grassrootsdemocracy or the “miracle” of unrestrained state power; the miracle of a newArizona, in which ordinary people—with “papers” or without—control the affairsthat affect their daily lives, or of the old Arizona, in which nativistpoliticians and business interests determine how the rest of us live.
I’m not sure which Arizona will win. ButI’m damn sure that I’m not going to leave it to the lawyers. I’ll seeyou at the next meeting.
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