Immigration battleground in Arizona

Jeff Biggers says his new book looks at two showdowns that have occurred in recent Arizona politics.

One showdown was the recall of Sen. Russell Pearce as the president of the Arizona Senate.

“He was the architect of Senate Bill 1070 and he played an incredible role in the framing of the issue,” Biggers said in a phone interview.

	“State Out of the Union – Arizona and the Final Showdown Over the American Dream” by Jeff Biggers Nation Books, $25.99, 277 pp.

SB 1070 was the so-called “papers, please” state law that authorized law enforcement officers in Arizona to stop anyone to verify that they have papers proving they are American citizens or in the country legally. The law was aimed at detaining illegal immigrants. It was criticized for its racial profiling potential.

According to a New York Times report, the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year struck down several provisions of the law but allowed a key provision to stand. It ruled that federal law did not pre-empt the state’s instruction to its police to check the immigration status of people they detain.

The law was a national news story, but Biggers said Pearce’s recall on Nov. 8, 2011, has been under the radar.

“In the book I look at the incredible partisan group led by Randy Parraz that emerged and pinpointed Pearce to go after,” he said.

Biggers said Parraz is in the organizing tradition of César Chávez. His efforts grew into a movement that included young Latinos, a new generation of retiring baby boomers, Republicans, Democrats and independents.

It was the first time, he said, that a sitting Senate president in any state legislature was recalled within his district. Pearce, of Mesa, Ariz., once proclaimed himself as “Tea Party president,” Biggers wrote.

“This is one of the conflicts I really want to show in this book tour, that there is this other Arizona that has been fighting back for a century – in the copper fields, in the barrios – and now they’re fighting in the political system,” Biggers said.

“To me, Parraz was representative of this long continuum of resistance to this fear-mongering, this anti-immigrant extremism we’ve dealt with in the last 100 years.”

The book’s second showdown was over another Arizona law that prohibited schools from including courses that promoted the overthrow of the government, advocated ethnic solidarity or resentment of other races. The law also banned ethnic studies program in schools, according to Biggers.

The law, which is being challenged in federal court, apparently targeted a 12-year-old Mexican-American Studies program in a Tucson school district.

Jeff Biggers talks about “State Out of the Union” at 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29, at the Harwood Art Center, 1114 Seventh NW. Free. The talk is part of the Albuquerque Cultural Conference.