I just got back from walking my dog, the one that survived the africanized bee attack a few weeks ago. I walk her after dark as in Tucson it takes a few hours to cool off enough in the evening for me to want to take a quick jog around the neighborhood. It is 9 pm and 91 degrees.
UMC is just down the street and a helicopter took off from the helipad on the roof while we were walking. I cannot see that sight, even a year and a half later, without thinking of that January day when Tucson changed forever. Tonight that memory was very close to the surface with today’s special election to fill Gabby Giffords’ seat for the rest of her term until this fall and the regular Congressional election.
The two major party contenders and a green party candidate vied for her old seat.
Ron Barber, the Democratic candidate, who was also shot twice on January 8,2011, is ahead as I write this, 53 to 45 percent with half of the votes in. This percentage has held fairly steady for the last hour. I’m breathing a bit easier. Jesse Kelly, the Republican candidate, is to the right of even most Tea Bag Types. He ran against Gabby in 2010 in what was a very, very close election. He hosted the target practice with automatic weaponry that “targeted” Gabby in what I still believe was one of the ugly acts that tainted the atmosphere and energy in Tucson that a very disturbed young man picked up on and interpreted as encouragement to act that horrible Winter day. I attended debates where there were Kelly supporters in Nazi attire.
The white supremacist in Arizona politics is, unfortunately, common enough to bring many individuals and groups to mind at its mention. J. T. Reading, an avowed Neo-Nazi, was running for Pinal County Sheriff when he killed his family and himself earlier this year. Reading was Russell Pearce’s buddy, before Pearce was recalled as Arizona Senate member and president. The border militias that have much in common with the Tea Party, have Nazi and Aryan connections as the trials for murders of a family in Arivaca showed. And of course there is the northern Arizona connection with Tim McVeigh. This shit is real. In this state the border militias, neo-nazis, ultra-conservatives, mingle with the conservatives in what I find to be a very disturbing manner. RNC money was backing Jesse Kelly like he was a good Republican.
Ron Barber has been declared the winner, Kelly has conceded, and Barber has given his acceptance speech. Gabby is right on stage with Ron. There is chanting of “Gabby” from the audience. It signals a bit of closure for us here.
I have made no bones about not being aligned with the Blue Dog Democrat that Gabby was in Congress. But she was my representative. There was an assassination attempt on her life. I was at the UMC vigil the day of the shooting. Tucson came together in a way that was amazing, for her and all the injured, and for those we lost. The event changed us all and political nuances became completely unimportant. Citizens came together to support a public servant who had nearly given her life.
For me, this election has been an extension of the journey we Tucsonans and Southern Arizonans all began 18 months ago. Gabby next to Ron on that stage tonight was the best closing of this particular circle within Arizona history that could have happened.
I’m breathing so much easier tonight than I have since it became obvious that national money, Rove and the RNC, was coming in early on to support the extremist right wing candidate Kelly, complete with his High School diploma and construction experience in his father’s company.
But the November elections are fast approaching and Kelly will probably run again. The redistricting changes the districts for this fall’s elections a bit.
Thinking About Isabel and Heartache in Tucson
The anniversaries of births of an historic figure who committed atrocities recently went by. The anniversary of a domestic terrorist event also came and went in the past week. I only wanted to light a candle for the souls of the individuals who perished through these horrible acts by evil people. I did not want to give any recognition to the responsible individuals. I still don’t. I thought this year the events would just pass by. Then a little girl in my hometown disappeared. This is the third day she has been missing. The police are searching everywhere there is any reason to search. Local police, FBI, even the Border Patrol are in on the search. There isn’t much we in the community can do other than focus our energies and love on Isabel Celis and her family. From what I can tell from the local news, her mom is a nurse, her dad is a dental tech of some sort, and there is another child or children in the normal family. Suspicion does not seem to be falling on the normal, hardworking family.
I cannot help but be reminded of another local missing child who simply disappeared. Karen Rosalba Grajeda was around 6 when she disappeared. She was the same age as my daughter. She was playing outside her home when she was abducted. She was never seen or heard from again.
I can remind anyone who happens across this post of things they can do to make their children safer in their own homes. That is really the only thing I can do with the energy inside me that keeps bringing me back to thinking about Isabel.
Large barking dogs are reported to be among the best deterrents to people breaking into your home. Lighting is also very important in discouraging break-ins. But dogs and lighting are primarily discussed in burglary prevention. Child abduction is another matter entirely, and I have not found the studies I hoped to find on what measures are best for keeping your family safe from person on person crime when you are in your own home.
Bars or grills on windows are effective, but also slow down evacuation from a home in case of a fire.
I think this heart-breaking topic of child abduction is one of the most maddening crimes to which a person can think about responding. No one wants the macabre to rule their lives or those of their families. I used to work as the head of a section in a museum that was responsible for security at a museum, and I worked closely with the police who were the primary responders for any problems. We did not have our own security force. Thousands of children came through the museum during the months when school was in session. I had to think about safety and security in a way that many people will never have to think. It can profoundly change your outlook on life.
So what can you do to be a bit safer? Being armed with the facts is one of the best ways to prepare for any situation. Parents.com has a good overview document on child abduction.
No one can say for sure. If someone is stalking you or your child in your home and you do not know about it, which would have to be the case for most parents, how do you find out what you do not know about? To me it seems like risk assessment would be one of the first things to find out about. Extremely rich and powerful people, and celebrities, think about safe-guarding their families from kidnapping, but most people do not consider in home abduction to be a major threat to their families. Child abductions at home are relatively rare.
The things that I initially thought of include:
- Do you have convicted sex offenders and sexual predators living near you? How can you tell? Should you give out your info? State by state listings are available through the FBI website and they maintain the national database that is searchable by the offender’s name. Laws vary from location to location about what type of information is available over the internet regarding sex offenders. For example in Arizona where I live only individuals with higher risk for repeat violations, level 2 and 3 risks, are listed. This site, a free and no info required from searcher other than zip code , criminalcheck.com says that it searches all state files in one search, but I do not know if this is accurate. Blackbook online also has a large number of all sorts of public records that you can search for free. It is organized by jurisdiction, or location. Crooks use it I am sure, you might as well find out all the info that is out there about you.
- Are your windows alarmed, accessible from the exterior of the home?
- Can you hear distressed sounds from a child’s room throughout the house?
- What kind of unsupervised time is there in your family?
- Do you know the names of all the people who have entered your home?
I have spent a large portion of today on the web trying to find out about the state of safety and protection of children in Arizona.
While this may have nothing to do with Isabel, I cannot help but wonder whether a state that actively strikes down protections for women and children, such as Arizona, can ever be a safe place to raise a family. When I looked at results from a search on child trafficking in Arizona I mainly found links to a so-called crisis pregnancy center. I couldn’t trust anything associated with those listings. Even physicians, as of last week or so, can lie to a female patient if it involves the fetus in the woman.
We have to do something! I know I’m jumping all over the place here. I can’t concentrate and I want to do something. Prayer and information doesn’t seem like enough.
Here's Hoping The Lean Toward Political Sanity Lasts
I’m still somewhat awash in happiness over local and far-off year election results of yesterday. While I would have loved to see Mary DeCamp as mayor of Tucson, a Green Party Mayor isn’t in the stars for us just yet. I am very, very happy that the lobbyist for Rosemont Copper, also known as the Republican candidate for Mayor in yesterday’s election, aka Rick Grinnell, was soundly defeated. The airwaves were blanketed with anti-Democratic candidate ads for the days leading up to the election and pro-Rosemont mine ads have been everywhere for the last month. Lots of corporate money went into anti-Rothschild and anti-Democratic, and pro-corporate mining ads before the election.
Arizona knows mines. Abandoned mining towns such as Ruby are evidence of the temporary nature of mines. The toxic warning signs posted around what is left of Ruby are evidence of the long-term impact of the use of toxic substances in the mining process. The Santa Rita Mtns are some of the most beautiful, and avian species rich, land in the U.S.A. Just take a look at Madera Canyon in the Santa Ritas. Birding, nature, hiking, picnicking, vacation cabins and the like are apt to last much longer than a mine while bringing in tourists and providing respite for locals. Of course the owners of Rosemont Copper Company, a subsidiary of Augusta Resource Corporation are sort of like tourists too, just ask the Canadians at its headquarters in Vancouver, BC, but ones with heavy equipment and massive need for limited water supplies.
So I’m still pleased as punch, to the point of being somewhat punchy, over the City of Tucson not being home to a Lobbyist Mayor. I believe small local business will benefit from our more traditional soon to be mayor Jonathan Rothschild even though one large foreign corporation may not want to hear that.
The second happy thought generating event that is still buoying my disposition today is the resounding defeat of Russell Pearce in the recall election in Mesa, AZ.
The fact that the loss of the mayoral race by my friend Mary DeCamp, Green Party Candidate, to a middle of the road Democrat and the election of a moderate Republican, Jerry Lewis, over Pearce, actually makes me happy shows just how extreme the concerns of Progressives like myself have become in the last few years in this state.
The sensible defeat of the attempt to grant personhood status to blastocytes in Mississippi and the reaffirmation by the people of people to be able to gather together and discuss labor issues and act collectively in Ohio are also quite heartening, and overall I am very, very pleased that some sensible movement away from extremist positions seems to have begun across the country including in my own state.
I do dearly hope that the right of individuals to have control over their own lives is being reasserted in opposition to Religious Group and Corporate Group attempts to usurp the sovereignty of the individual over his or her own body and behavior.
Hey Radical Progressive Groups in AZ, Read This!
I know you know social justice orgs that need money…
by Dana Balicki on Sunday, August 21, 2011 at 12:36pm
Hi friends!
I’m doing some work with the folks over at Funding Exchange (www.fex.org) and their grant cycle is starting soon–I thought with all the amazing work you do in the world you’d know some groups that would want this info.Their 2 current grant programs are:
Social Justice Collaboration Grants: Supporting cross-issue and cross-geography coalitions that create more impact than any one organization can do on its own.
and
Bold Frontiers Grants: Expanding our reach into areas that have neither a local FEX-affiliated fund nor a strong progressive movement. We are particularly interested in hearing from organizations from Arizona, Texas, Ohio, south Florida and New Jersey.
Here are a few of their questions to help folks determine whether or not they are applicable…does this sound like any groups you know?Building Community Power: Is your group led by and/or accountable to the people who are most directly affected by issues of social, racial, economic and environmental justice?
Getting at the Root of the problem: Does your organization identify and address the root causes of your social, racial, economic, or environmental justice issues? Yes or No
Changing the System: Does your organization mobilize your community to work together to change the political, social and economic policies, systems and institutions that perpetuate injustice?
Lack Mainstream Support: Does your organization have a hard time accessing mainstream funders because you are too radical, cutting edge or controversial?
So if you know groups like this, please share the link below with them. Letters of Inquiry are due by 11:59 pm (Eastern Standard) on
Saturday, Sept. 1, 2011. They don’t fund projects by individuals (sorry artist friends with amazing projects!)http://fex.org/grantmaking/letter-of-inquiry
Help spread the word! Thank you for all you do!
xoxo
Dana
———-
I’ve sent an inquiry about the problematic date, as Sept. 1 is not a Saturday. Will post correction here as soon as I receive the correct info.
So go ahead. Forward this link, right now, to at least 3 people linked with progressive Tucson and or Southern AZ groups you know of who could really soar with just a little bit of funding!
Blogging About The City I Love: Happy Birthday Tucson!
Click to get info and grab badge. |
I am celebrating my town’s birthday along with thousands of other people in Tucson, Arizona. It is a month long birthday party. The cyber party starts today and runs through the end of the month.
Tucson, Arizona has been my home for the past 22 years. My paternal grandfather was an Arizona snowbird way back in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He continued this practice of making his summer home in Mentone, Indiana and his winter home in Casa Grande, Arizona from then through shortly before his death as an octogenarian in the early-mid 1970s. I grew up in the middle of No-wheres-ville, Indiana on a small farm smack dab in the middle of “rented” out farm land that had no farm familes one them and thus no neighbor kids with whom to play. I was saved from an early death by boredom by reading and re-reading the copies of Arizona Highways (and National Geographic) for which a subscription was always sent by Grandpa as a Christmas Gift. I learned to love the magnificent and mind-boggling variation of people and places that was Arizona. By the time I was a teenager, I knew as much about Arizona as I did about the state in which I actually lived.
In spite of my appreciation of Arizona’s beauty and diversity, I never thought much about moving to Arizona, or even visiting it until I was well into adulthood. My big trip as a young adult was a graduation gift to myself, a trip to Spain for a month during the summer after I graduated from college. But when my father passed away in 1986 I thought I should encourage my mother to accept her new life and status by traveling with her on Amtrak from Chicago to Los Angeles to visit her brother who lived in north of L.A. We stopped for a few days in Arizona, getting off in Flagstaff along the way, to visit my father’s youngest sister who lived in near Prescott. I loved the scenery, and felt very comfortable visiting places I felt like I already knew, but I still didn’t think about living in Arizona.
Then an old friend who had just returned to the U.S. after a stint as a post-doc in Zurich, Switzerland, got a position as an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson and invited me out for a visit. That was 23 years ago, and, as they say, “the rest is history.” I fell in love both in and with the place. It is magical. Really. People have been using the Tucson Basin for a home at least part of the year for over 10,000 years. Permanent human settlements in the Old Pueblo go back at least 4,000 years.
My husband and I married in the open air in Lemmon Meadow on Mount Lemmon in the Santa Catalina Mountain Range. Pink Flamingo lawn ornaments marked the trail through the forest to the wedding site. That day in June when it was 84 degrees F. where we were hitched at nine thousand and something feet in altitude, it was 117 degrees F down the mountain that day in the Tucson basin, that checks in at a mere 2300 ft. above sea level.
I have had a child here. I was stung by a scorpion when I was 4 months pregnant. I went on a gruesome Vindetta against any and all black widows with large shoe (for smashing), broom (for knocking down spiders out of webs) and a flashlight (for spotting the poisonous arachnids under the eaves without causing them to scurry away) every night after we move into the first only home we’ve owned here in the Old Pueblo until every last one of them was dead.
I was a Girl Scout leader and a Sunday School Teacher here. I headed a section that worked to protect and secure and to allow access to the treasures of antiquity in the Arizona State Museum for several years in the mid-1990s. The future of Tucson is amazing.
I helped my neighbor, my daughter’s surrogate grandmother, who passed away in 2009 at the age of 105, get groceries and run errands after could no longer walk to the nearby stores as she had done every week since that day in 1928 when her husband carried her, his bride, accross the threshold to the home he had built for her and in which they both lived out the remainder of their days. I loved her, her stories and language out of another era. She talked about how handsome her husband was and how “frisky” they made each other feel. Her ancestors are honored in statuary in downtown Tucson. Her husbands family owned part of Sabino Canyon. Her family history became my native Tucsonan child’s stories of her town. She and my mother who loved to visit us and Tucson became good friends.
There were rough times, sure. Pubic education which my husband and I both fiercely support was not an easy path to walk with our daughter who attended a “rough” middle school. My votes have been manipulated in voter fraud if you believe the very solid case that a friend exposed after he found discarded election paperwork outside a precinct almost 10 years ago. I became very politically aware and active here. I became even more progressive than I was when I was young because Tucson is such a wonderful and enlightened Mecca in the vast and barren conservative landscape that covers so much of this state.
After January 8th of this year when my huband walked into my study, in shock with tears in his eyes, and said “Gabby has been shot,” well my heart ached and I knew I had to do something. I knew so many of the people who were shot that day; and thankfully and still say, in the present tense, that I continue to know most of them. My husband, a friend and I walked the few blocks to the hospital Gabby is my Congressperson in the House of Representatives. I’ve presented petitions in her office in Tucson and in D.C., many times. We don’t often agree, but dammit she is my duly elected representative. Gabe had just begun working with my husband on bringing more green chemical companies to Tucson before he was killed. I worked with Jim who was in campus fire safety at the time when I was at the Arizona State Museum. Ron is a very good friend of a very good friend and we spent time together up in Oak Creek and Sedona at the Verde Valley Music Festival that was annually put on by Jackson Browne in the 1990s. And then there is Suzi. I figured out that Suzi was Ashleigh even before it was announced on BlogHer.com. I am a darn good internet sleuth. I began reading her before she was able to post again. I commented. I felt her desire and determination to do something for our community. She already had. It was up to her readers to do something; her hands were more than full with healing body, mind, and soul. We wanted the same thing she did, to show that people can come together and good can come out of even the most horrific events. This is doubly true for charmed places like Tucson that capture people’s hearts forever even when other spendors in the state only captured their attention for a few days at most during a visit. Tucson is special.
I decided to repu
rpose my Casita Gaia blog as a community-centered blog, website and company focused on the amazing and wonderful progressive (in so many ways) town I have called home longer than I’ve called any other place home in my life. I went to the BlogHer|bet Conference to find out how to do this. I’m still working on the big plan for it, but I have the blog started and am carefully designing the website so as to fit my down the road plan for things to come on the site. One of these things is for Casita Gaia to host a cyber-neighborhood event for Tucson’s Birthday. I hosted a virtual world event for it a couple years ago, but could not sustain it. But a cyber-neighborhood gathering, just like all the other neighborhood gatherings that take place at scores of spots all over Tucson during the month of August, a written celebration, a blogging celebration, a celebration of all that is the gentle and enlightened communtiy, the biggest small town in America, well, that was something I could host and do to give back to the community to encourage the civility and friendly relationships that are Tucson.
So I am hosting a blog carnival from today through the end of August and I hope you can come enjoy the celebration on other’s blogs and share a story on your blog about Tucson, why you love Tucson, why you think it is a nifty place, or why you want to visit if you have not made it here as yet.
I am getting to know Suzi/Ashleigh in real life now and was so delighted when she agreed to participate in what I have come to call the Birthday Blog-o-rama. In fact her post yesterday is the first post I’ve linked to on the Casita Gaia site. This past month was to have been spent doing promo for this event, as well as attending BlogHer ’11, according to the original plan, but, mid-July my son-in-law was terribly injured in a boating accident and ended up deciding that he had no choice but to have the totally non-functional foot amputated; my husband decided to take a sabbatical; my 21 year old daughter dumped her 100 lb. puppy off for us to puppy sit- for a month. Life happens. So I have extended the original date to 11 days of cyber celebration starting now! Please join us.
Once you grab your blog bling badge, like the badge near the top of this post, and post a piece of your own, be sure to let me know, so I can link to it from Casita Gaia, and so I can bundle all the links for the official Tucson Birthday site. The detailed “how-to” info is all in the post on my site.
We are a small group so far, but we are growing larger and this will be a piece of cake, literally and virtually, next year when we do it again, and the year after that when we do it again….
As Emily Latella Would Have Said, "What's all the fuss about this Gerry Manders, and what does the Beaver have to do with Politics, anyway?"
Sometimes I think I should have named this blog Peace Bitch. I do a lot of bitchin’. I try not to whine or moan, but I do bitch.
Today I spent some time thinking about migraines, sexual harassment in the House of Representatives, business cards, and hair color, and cats. The last three items are not appropriate for this blog so I will cover them elsewhere. Like I think I expounded upon a few days ago, women are multi-taskers by nature. I cannot stick to one thing all day. If we had more women in the House and Senate there would be no stalemate about remedying the intentional default that will send us and a whole lotta other folks around the world into a global depression. We would have to have some variation in our subject. We just aren’t inclined to work all day and come home and fondle the remote control all evening. We need more stimulation than that. Yet another reason to support increasing the number of women in elected office.
Migraines probably have very little to do with whether one Rep. can do her job or not. Her dedication to many beliefs and practices far outweigh her loyalty to and sworn duty to upholding the Constitution of the United States. That is the crux of the problem with her – not unresolved personal issues and conflicts that are stressing her out to the point of her body wanting to make her head explode. (Aside: as a woman and a migraine sufferer for 15 years of my life I can say these things.)
But… speaking of elected office,
Carolyn (a friend) posted a link to this on Facebook:
I think this may be one of the single most important efforts being made in Arizona today! We have no chance of ever having a normal state if the grossly skewed partisan manipulations of citizen representation are not removed from infrastructure. We cannot let this effort be nuked!