Tuesday, May 18, 2010

MEANWHILE IN ARIZONA












As Arizona attempts to become the primary racist police state in the Union, it emerges that it’s just part of a long and ignoble tradition. Our pals at Delancey Place clued us in to this shameful piece of history.

“In January 1864, the U.S. Army forcibly removed between 8,000 and 9,000 Navajo Indians from their traditional lands in the eastern Arizona Territory and the western New Mexico Territory to internment camps in Bosque Redondo in the Pecos River valley. They had been conquered by a campaign whereby the U.S. Army had systematically destroyed their crops and other food sources, and old and weak among the Navajo had to either surrender or die. During the Long Walk, at least 200 died or were kidnapped along the 300-mile trek that took over 18 days to travel by foot. Their settlement in Bosque Redondo had such catastrophic consequences in death and disease and was so disastrously expensive that the U.S. returned them to a reservation in their original homeland in a second "Long Walk" in June 1868.”

Click here for Johnny Cash

3 comments:

Fred said...

If you are interested in Arizona, you must check out Sheriff Joe Arpaio, "the toughest sheriff" in America.

Fortunately, he's the sheriff of Pinal County, in which is located Phoenix, the state capitol and home of the infamous immigration bill. I think you'd love Old Joe.

Racial profiling is a flash point, but to me it's just another step closer to a police state.

I'm lucky (so far) as I live in Tucson, which is in Pima County. When interviewed about the immigration bill, Sheriff Dupnik of Pima County, in one report I read, said it was a bunch of crap.

The police chief of Tucson (he was more diplomatic) said it was unworkable and that it asked police officers to do something they weren't trained to do or expected to do.

Mick said...

We hear all about Joe Arpaio in California.

Fred said...

Ah, his fame is spreading.