A message to Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox
Over a dozen people took to the Maricopa Board of Supervisors office to call out Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox for her support of the loop 202 freeway extension. Below is the text handed out:
http://nosouthmountainfreeway.wordpress.com/
Mary Rose Wilcox, despite your history of supporting economic projects that have uprooted working class and poor people from their land and lives (Bank One Ballpark), you continue to posit yourself as some champion of immigrant and worker rights. You may believe your presence at the immigrant marches and rallies, your purported solidarity with the down trodden and oppressed, makes you a rare breed in Maricopa County and perhaps this gains you some credibility in the movement.
“An injury to one is an injury to all,” is the essence of solidarity in action. For we are pro-migrant, and in our support of immigrants who have been dispossessed by predatory American trade policies, we recognize that it is those trade policies, in particular NAFTA, that are the enemy of all workers in North America. What, then, is solidarity when you support all of these conditions that line the pockets of corporations, while keeping indigenous people, workers, and immigrants down?
It is your involvement in the Arizona-Mexico Commission that signals your complicity with the exploitation caused by neo-liberal trade that continues to impact people’s lives in Mexico by dispossessing them and keeping wages in the toilet, forcing the poorest to migrate for survival. This is not solidarity; it is rank political opportunism. But hypocrisy is like breathing to politicians. Another of the consequences of increased trade between Arizona and Mexico are the proposed freeways that would devastate the land and air, in particular the proposed Loop 202 freeway extension through the Gila River Indian Community (Akimel O’odham land). Surely, you’re aware that the tribe has opposed the freeway extension, as both District 6 in Gila River, and the tribe as a whole has previously opposed any new freeway, so it should be no surprise that there continues to be opposition.
You and your staff should take plenty of time to read and understand why O’odham people are fighting for their community health and their cultural survival through the defense of their sacred mountain, and why others are supporting this fight. Below is a link to an information resource for freeway opposition. We do not speak for these groups, nor do we act on anyone’s behalf but our own. We are simply -People Against Freeways-
NO SOUTH MOUNTAIN FREEWAY
http://nosouthmountainfreeway.wordpress.com/
It’s clear that the Phoenix metro area does not need a new freeway. If anything, we need less freeways. As mile after mile of asphalt and concrete is poured, set, and dried, the thermometer continues to rise. We can all feel the heat these days.
No comments:
Post a Comment