The Daily Agenda: Preventing a repeat of SB 1070

Legislation resembling the “show me your papers” law is on the November ballot … Political advocacy groups are pushing back … District 3 Dems to debate.

Anyone who lived in Arizona in 2010 remembers well the controversial “show me me your papers” law that put our state in the center of a national conversation around immigration enforcement.

SB 1070 allowed police to act as immigration enforcement and request proof of citizenship, leaving the door open for racial profiling and a battery of lawsuits that eventually stripped the law of most of its power. 

It wasn’t a great look and Arizona officially did away with the law in 2016.

Now, a similar measure has worked its way onto the November ballot and political advocacy groups are striking back, filing lawsuits of their own and increasing efforts to get voters to the polls.

LUCHA, Living United for Change in Arizona, was born out of SB 1070 and is playing a pivotal role in the fight against legislation like HCR 2060, referred to by the group as “SB 1070 2.0.”

The group has filed a lawsuit to prevent the legislation from moving forward at all and organizers say they remain steadfast in their commitment to get people –– especially underrepresented communities –– registered to vote in time for the primary and general election.

“When we're out there working in the community, we try to remind folks of the actual power that they have to make their voices heard and to make a difference in their community,” said LUCHA representative Cesar Fierros. “Our communities have been left out of the political process for a long time, purposely and by design. There have been many attempts throughout American history to silence our power.”

According to a national poll by Unidos US, 50% of Latino voters in Arizona support prioritizing a path to citizenship for long-residing undocumented individuals, and 30% support increasing legal immigration. 

“HCR 2060 actually goes against the good parts, the non enforcement parts of federal immigration law and refugee law, that the U.S. has,” said Allan Colbern, an expert on immigration and politics at Arizona State University. “These are parts that are going to be challenged because the federal government, and the immigration system is meant to actually allow people to seek asylum.”

The word “lucha” is Spanish for fight, or struggle. The organization was created to mobilize, defend and protect communities under attack, and many see this new legislation as an attack on communities of color. 

“(HCR 2060) will be a mobilizing law. I think that LUCHA will be able to use this law to build up and mobilize voters, build up its membership to strengthen the Democratic Party, and the visibility of the party in Arizona,” Colbern said. “People in Arizona and throughout the country remember SB 1070 and this law is much worse.”

LUCHA has been on the political scene for over a decade now playing a pivotal role in state and national elections. In the past decade, they’ve led the effort to pass the current minimum wage law, mobilized to flip Congress in 2018, helped elect Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020, and most recently Gov. Katie Hobbs in 2022. 

LUCHA is member-led, with organizers and canvassers across the state leading the efforts to register people to vote. Volunteers have seen what is possible through organizing and building political power through voting and educating.

Take LUCHA spokesman Fierros for example: he is a first-generation Mexican-American from Tucson, but his family has deep roots in Sonora. He got to see first-hand the effects of SB 1070, of “bad policy making” on his community, and it drove him to become politically active. 

“There's a lot of effort to educate folks and give people the sense of belonging and empowerment that, ‘Hey, if I show up and vote in my city elections or my town elections, we can probably elect some really good people to represent us, and that will keep us in mind, keep our values, keep our interests in mind when they are elected, and that'll translate to good things for our group, for our community and for our family,’” Fierros said.

With anti-immigration rhetoric running deep this election cycle, LUCHA is hoping to turn the tide. The group has set a national goal for 2024 to knock on one million doors. In Arizona, the goal is 20,000 doors, and the organization says it’s well on its way to reach those markers. 

“In this election, one of every four Arizona voters are going to be Latino, nearly 25% of Arizona's voter base will be a Latino voter,” Fierros said. “That is a massive number. That's a very powerful number that will tilt the scales for President Biden if he's able to secure their vote.”

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Susan's work with the Tucson Agenda is supported by the Local News Initiative of Southern Arizona, a fund of the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona.

Hear from the candidates: Three Democratic candidates for the Pima County supervisor seat in District 3 will participate in a debate on Saturday at 3 p.m. Jennifer Allen, Miguel Cuevas, and Edgar Soto will answer questions about issues important to county voters at the Flowing Wells Library, 1730 W. Wetmore Road. The debate will be hosted by the Democrats of Greater Tucson and moderated by Curt. For more information, go to the DGT website.

That’s a lot of vehicles: The FBI seized nine vehicles from the residence of former Santa Cruz County Treasurer Liz Gutfahr, the Nogales International’s Angela Gervasi reports. The vehicles were seized in April shortly after $4 million went missing from county accounts and Gutfahr resigned. The value of the vehicles ranged from $7,000 to $83,000, according to a legal notice filed by the FBI. Gutfahr also owns hundreds of acres of land and her residence in Tumacacori is worth around $2.7 million. 

Finding work-arounds: School officials in Vail are looking at providing services to home-schooled students, for a fee, Tucson Sentinel columnist Blake Morlock writes. Families that use school vouchers don’t qualify for some programs in public schools, like sports or clubs. But the Vail Unified School District Governing Board may decide to charge them $750 to play sports in middle school or $2,000 for high school sports, for example.

Not exactly reformed: Loans taken out in the name of students without their knowledge, students getting no response from the career services center, and students finding out they weren’t told key information about the qualifications they’d need to get a job. Those are just some of the complaints students made about the University of Arizona’s Global Campus, the Arizona Republic’s Hannah Dreyfus reports. The UAGC is the reincarnation of Ashford University, which the UA bought in 2020, and a superior court in California found Ashford liable for defrauding vulnerable students. 

Live like Tom: The man convicted of fatally shooting UA professor Thomas Meixner was sentenced to life in prison by a Pima County Superior Court judge, the Arizona Daily Star’s Prerana Sannappanavar reports. Meixner’s widow, Kathleen, penned an op-ed for the Sentinel where she encouraged everyone to “Live like Tom” and called for red flag laws to help prevent future tragedies.

“I plan to keep the momentum going for the safety of our community and for the victims in our tragedy, and I invite institutions in our community to do the same. My family and I thank from the depths of our hearts the multitude of people who have been strong for us, and for honoring the memory of Thomas Meixner,” Kathleen Meixner wrote.

Keep an eye on your mailbox: The Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission sent out the 2024 Voter Education Guide for the July 30 primary. You’ll get info on the legislative candidates in your district and candidates for the Arizona Corporation Commission, along with a calendar of key dates, contact info for local elections offices, and instructions on how to return early ballots.

The next meeting of Caitlin’s solutions-focused community book club (co-hosted by the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona and Tucson Tome Gnome) meets July 25 at 5:30 p.m. at the Community Foundation campus. Join us as we discuss Sara Nović’s “True Biz,” a story about “sign language and lip-reading, disability and civil rights, isolation and injustice, first love and loss, and, above all, great persistence, daring, and joy.“ Refreshments will be served and the event is free to attend, but you need to RSVP in advance.