Boycott Arizona!

Author: Stephen DeVoy

Arizona has made it illegal for immigrants to go about their daily routines without carrying their immigration documents. There are many reasons why one might not be carrying such documents. For example, replacing the documents is often impossible should they be stolen. Additionally, Arizona's police can now stop anyone on suspicion of being an immigrant and demand these documents. My wife is a permanent resident alien of the United States. She is from El Salvador and speaks English with heavy accent. Our daughter is a U.S. Citizen and I am a U.S. Citizen. Should we travel to or through Arizona, we now must worry that Arizona's Gestapo might stop us and throw us into a legal nightmare. Though my wife is completely legal, we all know that legal entanglements can take a lot of time to untangle. I don't want to risk my wife being held by Gestapo in a jail somewhere in America's Southwest. Consequently, we've decided to never return to Arizona, so long as Arizona is prepared to trample upon our rights and harass us.

In light of Arizona's fascist and discriminatory law, any legal immigrant passing through or living in Arizona now must fear harassment by local police. If you trust the police, I suggest you go to YouTube and see the countless videos of American police officers brutally beating innocent people, tasering them, and otherwise behaving like Nazi brownshirts. Arizona police already have a national reputation of being trigger happy. Arizona sports a sheriff that interns prisoners in tents out in the desert, feeding them only bologna sandwiches, and forcing them to pedal bicycle based generators to watch television. No other state in the United States is so brutal, backwards, and mean spirited. Why on Earth would anyone wish to visit a state inhabited by people who support such inhuman behavior and such draconian and unconstitutional laws?

Arizona's neo-fascist white citizenry is fond of claiming that they are “under siege” by “illegal immigrants. They ignore completely the fact that they live on land stolen from Native Americans and Mexico. They tear up the desert to build monotonous communities of cookie cutter homes while declaring that it is the beauty of Arizona's deserts that bring them to live there.

I call upon all Americans with a conscience to boycott Arizona, completely. Do not travel to Arizona. Do not purchase any products from Arizona. Do not do business with any companies based in Arizona. Do not fly between any two destinations if you must change planes in Arizona. And, most importantly, if you are an immigrant, stay far away from Arizona. Arizona doesn't want you there. Arizona hates you enough to seek to destroy your life and subject you to daily harassment for nothing more than not being white.

Boycott Arizona!