A big victory in a small Arizona city

SOUTH TUCSON, Ariz.—In a landslide victory, largely ignored by the company owned media, a slate of three neighborhood activists was elected to the town council in certainly one of Arizona’s most impoverished municipalities.

Town of South Tucson’s new Council members, Cesar Aguirre, Roxanna Valenzuela, and Brian Flagg, defeated three incumbents by such an overwhelmingly massive margin within the August major that they won’t have to compete within the November Normal election.

South Tucson is a separate municipality, one and 1 / 4 sq. miles in dimension, surrounded on all sides by the town of Tucson. At one time it was a working-class suburb, however as Tucson has mushroomed into a big ‘trendy’ metropolis South Tucson has devolved right into a poor inner-city principally Chicano and immigrant barrio of about 5,000 people.

Because it’s tax base eroded, it has change into increasingly tough for the city to supply the essential providers its residents want. Half of the city’s workers positions stay unfilled for lack of funds inflicting residents to concern that even police and firefighting safety won’t at all times be accessible.

The three winners are related to the Casa Maria Catholic Employee collective that operates a soup kitchen within the barrio and has been organizing homeless and poor individuals for many years. Casa Maria has been a serious participant in Tucson progressive politics and struggles from immigrant rights, to elevating minimal wages, opposing U.S. navy aggression, and the anti-Apartheid motion within the Eighties.

Arizona’s very energetic ‘Jobs with Justice’ group is an outgrowth of the labor Solidarity Committee of the Casa Maria led Tucson Coalition for the Homeless.

The choice to hunt public workplace got here from the rising housing disaster and the specter of gentrification to native residents. Rich builders have begun South Tucson as their subsequent prey. Landlords are elevating rents to unaffordable quantities; homelessness is rising visibly, not solely in South Tucson, but additionally within the bigger metropolis of Tucson which is without doubt one of the nation’s poorest cities.

At a presentation the three gave at Tucson’s Salt of the Earth Labor Faculty final Saturday they defined that certainly one of inheritor goals is to tackle Arizona’s regulation that forestalls municipalities from enacting lease management.  That regulation must be challenged for the sake of all Arizonans and one of the best ways to try this is by altering the state legislature the place the Republicans have very slim majorities in each homes and by electing a good governor.

With all legislative seats and the governorship up for election this November, there’s an excellent probability it may be completed and campaigning on the necessity for lease management might assist end up voters. Additionally they really feel they’ll have sufficient help from the opposite 4 members of the town council who weren’t up for reelection this 12 months.

Brian Flagg, who has lived at Casa Maria for 39 years, defined that “individuals have to be political,” and except for attempting to straighten out a fiscally broke city, they’ll now have a bully pulpit to advocate for poor and dealing individuals.

Cesar Aguirre, a single father, stated he doesn’t need to be a politician, however to stay an organizer.

Roxanna Valenzuela, who grew up in an adjoining Tucson Barrio, added that organizing with Casa Maria has taught her what she by no means realized in class, and he or she additionally sees herself as a neighborhood organizer and never a politician.

Clearly, there may be a lot work that wants doing.

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CONTRIBUTOR