We Saw SB1070 Coming

My family has been working for 2 electoral cycles to vote out Senator Russell Pierce of Mesa, Arizona. We helped candidates from both political parties and canvassed, called and urged people to vote against him. Few heard the message.

Especially during the 2006 election we could count with our fingers the number of volunteers helping a way better candidate: a couple of acorn community organizers, the candidate, 3 high school students and a couple of teachers. We wondered where everybody else was.

Russell Pearce is an ideologue of the worst kind. While Joe Arapio attracts the attention of many and it is picketed by protestors Mr. Pearce has been concocting laws helped by extremist like Kris Kobach and organizations like FAIR and Numbers USA. In October 2006, he forwarded an email from" National Alliance, a white separatist group, to a group of supporters. The email titled "Who Rules America" ^[8] criticized black and white intermixing and Jews in the media for promoting multiculturalism and racial equality, for depicting "any racially conscious White Person" as a bigot, and for presenting the Holocaust as fact.^[9]"

The first time I saw him in person was for the 2006 candidate’s debate for the House of Representatives. We went to support of Tammy Pursley, the Democratic Candidate at the time. When Mr. Pearce started to speak I was completely startled at his speech because I expected to hear him trashing immigrants, sprinkling his speech with false statistics that create hysteria among misinformed followers. To my surprise he did not spoke about “them” but said something that I considered even more dangerous. “This country needs to go back to it’s origins” he thundered…. Not a Democracy but a Republic”.

Who is this man that wants to limit the access of people to the political process? I wondered. Does that mean that he wants to limit the access to the political process just to individuals like him because they deem themselves somewhat superior? or part of "God's plan"?

That is when it hit me that Russell Pierce was not only and anti-immigrant but represented a deeper problem and danger to Democracy.

When this man introduced the Employer’s Sanctions Law I thought members of the Legislature will not vote for a bill that threatened the economic stability of the State. “He is a Republican, isn’t he? Republicans are pro-business, right???? Wrong. The Republican dominated Arizona legislature does not care about business or the well being of the State anymore.

The week of April 23rd 2010 was one of the saddest of my life…. We have been putting so much work and energy trying to convince people that this man should be voted out because he does not care about anything but his narrow and backward ideology and because we saw SB1070 coming in a slow motion for years.

I hope people wake up, register to vote and realize this man needs to be voted out.