VETS FOR PEACE SHOULD BE PROUD TO BE EXCLUDED FROM VETERANS DAY PARADES

Apparently Veterans Day is when the fascist, flag-waving crazy comes out in the Valley of the Sun.  Maybe this shouldn't be surprising.  After all, we're talking about the same sprawling megalopolis that includes Mesa, a city that almost had notorious National Socialist and white master race proponent JT Ready as the master of ceremonies for its soldier celebration in 2006, only booting him when it came to light that he had been kicked out of the Marines with a dishonorable discharge.

Last year some neo-Confederates used the holiday to honor a defender of the southern slavocracy in Arizona.  Said they to the old-timey East Valley Tribune in 2012: "We seek to restore the honor for the soldiers who fought in this army. They put everything on the line for a cause they believed in and they died for it..."  So controversy abounds, naturally.

Meanwhile, in the county jail, Arpaio has plastered American flag stickers on the cells, leading some inmates to deface them, resulting in bread and water diets as punishment.  He's also reminding prisoners that they're in the greatest and most-incarcerating nation on Earth by playing the national anthem and "God Bless America" every day.  Apparently Arpaio's jail can test the patriotism of even the proudest flag fanatic.  And, in what must rank as the most bizarre tribute to the troops, Channel 10 reports on plans to recognize the troops by housing "all inmate-veterans together, in honor of their service."  Cue the F-16 fly-by.  Brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it?

And that segues nicely into the recent controversy in Phoenix.  The city outsourced control and planning of their yearly parade to a private nonprofit called Honoring Arizona’s Veterans -- which promptly banned the anti-war group, Veterans for Peace from participating.  Apparently HAV disapproved of V4P's message.  As well they should.  After all, everyone knows these veterans parades are really about the national religion of war, the deifying the armed services and the glorification of militarism and patriotic masculinity.  And Veterans for Peace are for, well, peace.

Hence whatever parade you watch you can be certain to see the American Legion among their numbers.  The Legion was founded in 1919 during the height of the Red Scare, aiming to "uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America; to maintain law and order; to foster and perpetuate a one hundred per cent Americanism."

Thus they naturally went right to work breaking up radical meetings and labor gathering, attacking immigrants, and basically violating the constitutional rights of anyone suspected of having anti-war or "anti-American" (read: leftist or labor union) sympathies.  Indeed, in 1919 Arizona Governor Campbell urged the Legion to rid the state of the troublesome radical unionists of the IWW, who he deemed "human vermin."  In 1948, the Arizona branch of the Legion sent representatives to a Los Angeles conference aimed at forming "inter-state un-American activities committees."

But I seem to remember that each soldier swears an oath to uphold the constitution.  And yet somehow the serial-violators of the American Legion get the green light to join the parade despite its vile history.  So considering all that, it seems to me that Veterans for Peace would do far better protesting the parade than participating in it.  Do they really want to put their stamp of approval on this jingoistic spectacle?  After all, in being excluded they are in good company.

Consider this simple thought experiment.  Private Chelsea Manning sits in jail today for revealing to the world the nightmare of the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, including its high civilian toll.  Among the revelations in the files she delivered to Wikileaks was the shocking video of Apache helicopter pilots gunning down journalists and civilians.  Without a doubt, those Apache pilots would be welcomed to participate in HAV's exclusive parade, while Manning and Vets for Peace are denied.  Revealing war crimes gets you banned, but participating in them?  Feel free to join right in!

Because 9/11 happened in Tempe?

So I have a suggestion for Veterans for Peace.  Since you're not welcome in the parade in Phoenix, you may consider coming down to Tempe.  Why?  Well check this out.

Tempe is going insane for veterans on Monday.  Not only are they having their own pointless parade down Mill Avenue, but they're sending their local aspiring brownshirts, the Tempe Police Explorers, door to door to place lawn flags in everyone's yards.  Check out the flyer below that appeared last Thursday on doors throughout the neighborhoods surrounding downtown Tempe.

Additionally, there's no word on whether these are recycled flags from Tempe's yearly 9/11 tribute at Tempe Beach Park (cuz, ya know, nothing says "support the troops" like a bunch of flags hemmed in between an artificial lake and public bathrooms) or if the city went ahead and purchased a thousand new flags.

What exactly being a police explorer has to do with spreading "some pride and patriotism" is left to our imaginations, but it does beg the question as to why exactly all this fuss is necessary.  Maybe it has something to do with Tempe's expanding counter-insurgency strategy against residents and students.  But, if Tempe residents were to support the young fascists' dream of covering the neighborhood with "red, white and blue to show support and appreciation for our veterans," are we to believe that, unlike in the case of Phoenix, this support extends to Veterans for Peace and Pvt. Manning, as well?  Highly unlikely.  And nor should they.

In 1954, Veterans Day usurped Armistice Day, the now ancient -- almost old-timey feeling -- holiday invoking the memory of the so-called "war to end all wars," and our alleged determination to learn the lessons of the past.  After the sometimes hot/sometimes not Cold War and more than ten years of the War of Terror, Armistice Day almost seems like it's a quaint relic from another world.  Not fit for our modern times.  So it should be no surprise then that those who oppose militarism, war, jingoism, mass murder and imperialism would find themselves excluded from Veterans Day parades and celebrations.

So, Veterans for Peace, quit trying to join that celebration of death and warfare in Phoenix.  Pack your signs into the spacious trunks of your bumper-stickered Priuses and drive over to Tempe.  Stand on the corner of Mill and University on Monday morning and declare your opposition.  Accept your well-earned place, along with Chelsea Manning, outside the parade.  Then maybe help the neighbors take care of all those flags.  And maybe bring a lighter.

Phoenix makes its poorest residents pay for the cushy pensions of the very cops who jail and kill them

As the City of Phoenix has been hemming and hawing about whether it will eliminate its absurdly regressive 2% sales tax on food (the cost of which disproportionately falls on the poor), the Arizona Republic reports that those charged with policing the city's poor have been making a killing (while actually doing the killing) by taking advantage of a city policy that let's retiring cops and firefighters cash out unused sick and vacation pay.  It's against the law, but no one is talking about jail. After all, these are cops, not ordinary criminals.

Phoenix allows officers to take saved up sick and vacation time as additional pay or one time payout, which has allowed some cops to massively pad their paychecks.  Some of these payments, which the state views as illegal, have totaled in the many hundreds of thousands of dollars – per person. The Republic reports that according to their research more than a dozen retiring officers received over a hundred thousand dollars each in added salary in their final years on the job.  More than a hundred retired cops receive pensions that amount to more than twice the average wage for Arizona workers.   Some have taken home over a million dollars in added pay while more than 650 have gotten over a quarter million dollars in lump sum payments, with ten boosting their lump sum payouts to over $700,000.

And it's not like Phoenix cops can plead poverty.  City cops, who at just shy of $60,000 a year already rake in $10,000 more than the statewide average for law enforcement, also make double the typical wage of other City of Phoenix employees, people who get hit much harder by that 2% sales tax than do their fellow workers in blue.  

Many of these city workers were forced to take pay cuts, freezes and furloughs in the past, as with so many other workers at the bottom of the economic ladder.  And, as is typical with austerity, while the rhetoric may be about shared sacrifice, the real pain is only distributed at the bottom.  For instance, city manager David Cavazos got a $78,000 raise last year.  Ironically, even the head of the cop union PLEA thought it was outrageous.  Other city managers got raises as well.  Meanwhile the budget has been balanced on the backs of the poor and low-paid city workers.

Which certainly puts the whole controversy in a different light. Given that the prime target of policing is the poor, essentially what the City of Phoenix is doing is making its poorest residents – and lower paid city workers – pay for the cushy double-dipping retirement plans of the very cops who will arrest, beat and imprison them and their families. Now that hardly seems fair. Not to mention that the example of the city's law enforcement breaking state law for financial gain with impunity doesn't really look good (no arrest or jail for them, apparently!).

At the very least, those who expect to benefit from this police protection ought to be the ones who pay for it. At the end of the day, it's the city's wealthy population who benefit most from keeping the poor, unemployed and over-taxed population in line. So, if the city insists on paying its hired killers such high wages, maybe they should retire the levy on food and replace it with a tax on high end restaurants and personal chefs.  You know, a little shared sacrifice.  At least we'd have some consistency. Something says that proposal would be a non-starter.

Bomb threat closes down work on Joe's new HQ, reveals local news buffoonery

AzCentral and 12 News reports today that workers showing up early this morning to their gig building Joe's new gulag hq were stunned to find a bomb threat spray painted on one of the buildings.  The message seemed obvious enough, which photos taken overhead from an entirely necessary news chopper that wasn't intended at all to give a sense of false urgency to a slow-moving story, revealed to be scrawled in large (mostly) capital letters, reading, "Bomb inside…No Work Today...Happy May Day…Stop building prisons for other workers.”  And that's apparently exactly what happened: workers were sent home or to other job sites and construction stopped for the day.

And, indeed, given that Sheriff Joe intends to use it fill his jails up with migrant workers and that other workers were the ones building it, the point seems both apt and easy enough to understand.  That is, if you're not a local news reporter.  But, never keen to waste an opportunity to be confused by a story, the local media dove right in, displaying their complete inability to grasp just what it was the vandal might be getting at.  Just what could it all mean?

Let's start with the facts, shall we?  The Channel 12 anchor started off by reporting only a fragment of the message, making the "May Day" part seem like a distress signal (which, when combined with the ellipses in the AzCentral article, made it seem like it was written while falling off a cliff).  She also warned us about a suspicious lunch box (more about that later!).

Meanwhile, Channel 10's Diane Ryan demonstrated her journalistic prowess by managing to quote the message correctly, but got stuck instead on the significance of the first of May, reporting that "May Day is anarchist day".  It's true that May Day historically honors the Haymarket martyrs, anarchist labor organizers who were hanged in Chicago during the struggle for the 8 hour day, but one hardly suspects Diane Ryan has this level of understanding.  Nope.  Anarchist Day.  That'll do!

Anyhow, closing out the story with a dose of patriarchal male authority, long time and beloved local news anchor Ron Hoon reminded us that law enforcement takes this sort of thing seriously, and then took to openly advocating for the capture of the scofflaw defacer. "Hopefully we can announce an arrest soon," he opined.  No need to interview the police, their man behind the desk, secret super cop Ron Hoon, will advocate their position for them, apparently.  Will he make the arrest himself?  Think of the savings!  The time, the money.  But seriously, what journalism school did the Hooner go to where they taught him that his job was to take the side of law and order when it comes to political protest?

Of course, in this day and age, the Hooner is right -- the cops do take this kind of thing ridiculously seriously.  Recently bomb threats have shut down schools during AIMS week, and today the PPD proved to any doubters than any suspicious lunch box that falls of a work truck from now on will be dutifully and spectacularly blown up by a fucking bomb-blowing-up robot.  Yes, you'll be late to work.  Yes, it's just some guy's tools.  Too bad.  Because despite the budget cuts plaguing our schools and transit system, there's always money for the bomb squad.  Because it keeps you scared.