Interrupting Arpaio
I am an advocate for comprehensive immigration reform. I am against Arizona legislation and laws that discriminate with an anti-immigrant sentiment, and I am most certainly against the violation of civil rights, due process, representation, racial profiling, discrimination and abuses of power associated with Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s immigration policies.
I am also pro advocacy, pro First Amendment and pro the right to protest (or sing “Bohemian Rhapsody” for that matter).
But as a caring fellow agent of change, I feel it’s important to express some concerns and constructive criticism on the protesting of Arpaio at the Downtown ASU event that led to his walking offstage.
First of all, I don’t question anyone’s dedication, motives or anyone’s privilege to express his or her First Amendment right (particularly at a First Amendment Forum). I get that. But what I do question is the tactics and strategy in this particular occasion in light of a larger picture. I do feel that, on this occasion, the protesting of Arpaio missed the mark and became potentially counter-productive.
Here are my feelings on why:
Efforts by students (including those present last night), advocacy groups, community mobilizers, agencies, organizations, media outlets, politicians, families, individual citizens and many more people and places that as a whole make up this movement have fought to bring notice, awareness, attention and, most importantly, legitimacy to this cause so that more and more scrutiny comes onto those who promulgate such social injustices until critical mass is reached and change can happen.
The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication inviting Arpaio, I felt, was at least another small step in that ground swell of legitimacy that finally has local, national and international media and government agencies asking more and more questions that shed more and more negative light on the activities of Arpaio and others. That, I believe, is strategically and tactically a good thing for the cause (in the larger picture).
This wasn’t the Young Republicans inviting Arpaio to preach to the choir where an opposing voice was missing.
Whether you believe the journalist panel was asking scrutinizing enough questions or not, or whether Arpaio’s responses were the same tired, evasive, deflection, non-answer responses we’ve grown accustomed to hearing from him doesn’t matter.
In this situation, I don’t understand the need to shut him up if he’s not saying anything? Let him spin his own wheels and tie his own rope.
His non-answers expose his hypocrisy and his complete lack of reasoning or legitimate basis for his actions and policies all on his own. It just would have seemed to me more appropriate, in this case, to have left it alone and for the headline to have been, “Arpaio under scrutiny at ASU” or “Arpaio says nothing,” rather than the headlines of Arpaio being heckled offstage (which offers him potentially perceived sympathy).
I’m not even sure that he was heckled offstage as much as he used that excuse to walk off an interview he wasn’t happy with anyway. And I feel we gave him that excuse.
We gave him legitimacy for having walked off and it allows him and others to paint us as obnoxious, annoying, immature, self serving attention seekers who disrupt for the sake of disruption (or worse: just to get on TV).
The last thing I think we would want is a perceived negative label that risks us access to such events and/or alienates ourselves from the greater movement at large and potentially sidelines or excludes us from future dialogues or participation if all we ever bring to the dialogue is disruption.
This isn’t Hollywood where any publicity is good publicity. Negative publicity hurts the cause, and in a cause where public perception and public sentiment is critical, I feel we came off the bad guys on this one, and it was therefore potentially counter-productive. We should keep that in mind moving forward. Attention should be on Arpaio not on us.
I write all of this with the utmost respect to the good fight and to all those who take up the mantle for social justice. I truly mean this with complete constructive intent and hope solely to open a dialogue maybe amongst ourselves to avoid being counter-productive in the future.
It’s important to have an amassed united front, it’s important to have a voice and to use it, but I feel it’s also important to be strategic about it. That’s really my major concern. There are many voices in this movement and sometimes the loudest voice is the voice unheard.
Hector Valdez
Graduate Student
Whining about Woods
(In response to Dustin Volz’s Monday column, “Golfing idol Woods no longer extraordinary.”)
It seems like you’re the one acting like you’re better than Tiger Woods because he got caught doing something bad and you didn’t.
You can criticize him for his mistakes as much as you want, but your argument that those mistakes somehow nullify his achievements doesn’t make any sense at all. Also, if you’re going to attack someone’s integrity, be specific.
How does he act like he’s better than the rest of us? Is it because he’s better at golf than the rest of us, or because he’s better at making money than the rest of us?
And you failed to mention what “sleeping with women and making money” motivate him to do. I doubt that’s what motivates him on the golf course, and, either way, there’s nothing inherently wrong with sleeping with women or making money.
It seems like what you’re trying to do is to tie him to the abstract concept of greed because you have very little concrete evidence to use against him.
The only reason you’re trying to make him seem greedy is because he makes a lot of money and you recently found a reason to criticize him even though it has nothing to do with money. Peyton Manning’s NFL salary is about $14 million a year, not including lucrative endorsements from Gatorade, Reebok, Master Card, Sprint and Direct TV, but that won’t matter until he does something wrong, in which case his salary is directly proportional to his greed.
Maybe you wouldn’t be so keen to demonize everyone who makes money if you had founded numerous charitable organizations. Money isn’t inherently evil. This is the Perez Hilton culture that is permeating our youth: Everyone is either perfect or evil, and it is our right to judge everyone’s character, because we have never done anything wrong in our life.
They say that a person’s character can be judged by what they left behind. If it all ended today, Tiger Woods would leave behind one unhappy wife but also thousands of people who benefitted from his charities.
I could mention the fact that you probably haven’t left very much behind, but neither have I. The point is that it’s very easy to criticize people but not so easy to think rationally about the situation.
I’m not defending Woods’ actions, and I really like your column, but I think this specific article was weak.
Jack Fitzpatrick
Reader
