Univ. of Arizona Protest Against SB 1070

This afternoon, I attended an on-campus protest organized by University of Arizona students against SB 1070. Several hundred people were in attendance, and the protest lasted roughly an hour in the middle of the day, with people standing for as long as they could in 90 degree heat — all in order to express their displeasure regarding SB 1070. Protesters also signed a circulating petition calling on UA president Robert Shelton to condemn SB 1070, and direct campus police not to carry out the law when it comes into effect this summer.

Here are some pictures from the protest:

The crowd grew bigger over the course of the afternoon, peaking at a few hundred.
Protesters used umbrellas to shade themselves from the sun.

 Some of the speakers were alright: 

Like this guy, who was pretty animated.

But, honestly, some of the speakers seemed more intent on reliving the sixties’ protest era than on actually making the case against SB 1070. For example, one enthusiastic speaker argued that SB 1070 was an example of heterosexism, and would in practice be both anti-queer and anti-woman. Another speaker urged us to follow the migrant children in order to find our souls. I’m sorry, but huh?

But, as with all protests, the point is to express one’s outrage and disappointment over an unjust action. And for many protesters, that was accomplished by protest signs. Here are some great ones:

This one was easily my favourite.
A little simplistic, but we get the reference to racial profiling (in essence redndering "brown-ness" a crime)...
I still want to know: what does illegal look like?
This was by far the better side of this sign. The other side read something like "UA Abjure Nativist Hysteria" -- which requires a dictionary to properly understand

But then, there were also some protest signs that were just ill-conceived and in poor taste. I do not agree with the sentiments in these signs: 

Godwin's Law!
There are so many things wrong with this sign, I don't even know where to start...

And, of course, with every protest of this magnitude, you get the haters, who come to desperately represent the “other side”. This woman accosted the local news reporters who were trying desperately not to die from sunstroke, and remarked (rather loudly), “All they want to do is to open the borders. They’re trying to take over.”

The woman in the green suffers from fears of the Brown Peril.

And we caught a picture of one dude flipping off the protest as he walked by.

Because that's the level of debate we're at right now. The two middle fingers are just above the girl's head, right in the center of the image.

All in all, while the protest had its ups and downs, it felt good to hit the streets and express my own disapproval of SB 1070. I think it’s important that those of us who spend time blogging about injustice actually make the effort to extend our activism beyond the internet. It’s not enough to just point out inequity and racism around us, we must take the time to actually enact change — even if it’s just by adding our voices with others in civil protest.

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