Independence Day in Arizona

Today it’s 97 degrees in Sedona and I’m told, the threat of monsoon season is just around the corner. I’m not sure I give much credence to it. Maybe, having returned to Arizona after the stay-at-home order was prematurely lifted by Governor Ducey, the spirit of the skeptic is rising in me too.

But my skepticism isn’t against any sort of proven science, the track record of other states (and countries), or the repeated advice (pleas, really) of medical professionals, it’s just observational, in contrast to some shared weather anecdotes from a few locals.

Independence Day is usually a cause for celebration, community, food, and fun. A time to get together as a people, to wish our nation a happy birthday for its conception, having been born from the umbrage of those long-ago protestors who chose as their act of defiance, to destroy the private property of a government, a system of power, that they felt no longer represented their liberties and freedoms as citizens.In this Black Lives Matter moment—though I hope and pray it is not just a moment, and not solely for our long-suffering black brothers and sisters—may it be a spark that leads to a defining movement that will at long last, deliver real justice for every person of color, whether immigrant or indigenous, as well as for our LGBTQ community members.

This 4th of July, it feels like the neat narrative of American exceptionalism has finally been turned on its head. Starting with the police home invasion and execution of 26-year-old EMT, Breonna Taylor, then with the hunting and shooting of 25-year-old Ahmaud Aubrey by a white father and his son, and finally, the banal, eight minute and 46 seconds of extra-judicial choking of 46-year-old George Floyd, by officer Derek Chauvin and his abetters—the illusion of our singular value as that shining city on the hill, has been completely peeled away.

These are of course not the first Americans to suffer from the embedded hatred, fear and racism that in so many ways defines what it is to be black in this country, the list is endless with names like Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, and Freddie Gray. And most recently, Rayshard Brooks. But theirs are the first deaths to evoke in our nation’s masses, a stirring and recognition that something is fundamentally broken in our society.

Yet even as the nation, by and large, is awakening to this moment of light and progress, there is a virulent sickness that has taken hold.

And no, I’m not writing about COVID-19. Rather, it’s the disease of small, angry and ignorant minds, bent on denying not only science and reason, but the truth before their very own eyes. While there will always be those on the fringe in any society—soothsayers and conspiracists who grasp at straws because they are overwhelmed by the complexity of the world around them—at no time before now, have those in power in America, so callously chosen to incubate and weaponize these sordid, diseased minds for their own political gain.

Here in Arizona, the state House representative in LD 6, Republican Walt Blackman, issued a rambling 45-minute screed on his own Facebook page, and then again in an interview, that labeled the Black Lives Matter movement, a terrorist organization “because the FBI had deemed them so.” He also took pains to compare BLM to the Klu Klux Klan…!

His LD 6 state Senate counterpart, Sylvia Allen, for her own part, congratulated Walt for his insane rhetoric and announced that she was proud to “stand with this man,” and urged him, “Don’t stop standing for truth.” As a white woman, Sylvia had the common sense to refrain from also accusing George Floyd of being nothing more than a life-long criminal. However, she recklessly joined Walt on the campaign trail (and at the Dream City Church rally for DJT in Phoenix), and has continuously railed publicly against mask-wearing, declaring “Masks will not stop this virus!” So there you have it, an African-American who blames blacks for being victims of generations of slavery, lynchings, poll taxes, red-lining, police bias and violence, and the 1,001 daily macro- and micro-aggressions that define their lived experience, and the Chair of the Arizona’s state legislative Education Committee who not only believes the planet is 6,000 years old, but that children should be sent back to school in the midst of a pandemic, because the Coronavirus is “nothing more than a cold virus.”

Still, despite this sickness of heart and mind, I know there are real patriots like Felicia French, and people like her countless supporters—here in Arizona, and across the country in places as far flung as San Francisco, New York, Portland, and Miami—and they, and you, and me; we are the cure for what ails us and ours are the values that will ultimately move this nation forward.

So today, it’s worth remembering the words of one of our founders, but also fully recognize that he spoke these words while he was a slave owner:

“Equal and exact justice to all men…freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us.”~ Thomas Jefferson

Here’s to rising up again in protest and through our votes, to throw off a government that no longer represents its citizens…