Colbert Makes the Connection: Arizona/Detroit

On Friday, Jan Brewer signed a bill into law that allows police to question "suspected illegal immigrants" for their papers, inspiring a great deal of furor among Tucsonans. It is a common first instinct for many of us recently-arrived young folks to say that it's time to leave when such things happen. But after years of thinking that Arizona's red politics (and its SOLE art house theater and its completely illogical tanning salons and its bleached blond sorority sisters and its 3% black population) would eventually prompt me to leave, I am starting to feel more aware of just how many people around here aren't as divorced from reality as our Martian-like politicians.

At the restaurant where I work, for example, my co-workers used their breaks from work to grab (free) "Legalize Arizona" tee shirts across the street at American Apparel, to the delight of our customers. And as I walked the dog yesterday morning, I listened to speeches at Congressman Raul Grijalva's headquarters against the Immigration Enforcement Bill, and felt a buzz in the air. Brewer's naive, bizarre step in the direction of fascism has, like any natural disaster, started to bring folks together:






While it's been my temptation to abandon this town, (and I am going to Detroit for a break soon, obviously) there is something satisfying about sticking around, and helping a new culture-- one that is compassionate, culturally diverse, and artistically dynamic-- manifest itself. I'm starting to consider being the antithesis of bi-coastal. Being bi-Tucson/Detroit-al. Spending time in two places that are becoming America's most unfortunate. I mean, c'mon, what's so great about having low self-esteem in Brooklyn when you can walk around knowing that you have more degrees than Arizona's governor?

That said, I can't blame people for wanting to escape racial profiling, deportation and a general air of harassment. But if everybody leaves, what will be left? Stephen Colbert likened the Arizona of the future to "a very dry Detroit." After all, it only took a couple of crooked politicians to help hurtle Detroit toward it's current state. One possible solution could be to give these tired Arizona politicians a chance to relax in one of the Sonoran desert's many spas while somebody else (as my friend Dallas has suggested, those "crystal-yoga women in Sam Hughes who walk their dogs at 4AM") tries to fix our dismal economic/educational situation. There are PLENTY of folks in Tucson who actually have a college degree, unlike Gov. Brewer.