Confronting the Tea Party, Sheriff Arpaio, and Brandon Darby
lynne purvis
The Tea Party, and Brandon Darby himself, were very suspicious of those of us who entered the event from the very beginning, perhaps because we were young, perhaps because several of us were brown, and they assumed we were Occupy Orlando protestors. Yet we had paid our tickets and attended the event, and when Joe Arpaio began his speech, we began to let him know that he, nor Darby, were welcome in our state. There was quite a disturbance, as shown in these videos:
From a Tea Partier's camera, action starts around 2:00
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIWdHEWkrFI
As shown on the news in Phoenix (hitting home to Arpaio's legal jurisdiction):
http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/politics/sheriff-joe-arpaio-heckled-in-florida-11122011
After that disturbance ended, another activist entered the conference, and handed out the attached flyer, and was given similar treatment - they threw a black cloth over his head, knuckled his ribs, and physically carried him out.
This behavior by the Tea Party was very aggressive, uncouth, and uncalled for.
Below is the press release sent to local media, talking only of a press conference.
Immigrant Rights Groups Will Hold Press Conference Outside Joe Arpaio Speech on Saturday
Groups from across the state say “Arpaio’s Not Welcome in Florida!”
(Orlando, FL, November 12, 2011) Saturday at 4pm at the Orlando Airport Marriott, groups from around the state will be holding a press conference to denounce the Eastern Orlando Tea Party’s invitation of infamous anti-immigrant Sheriff Joe Arpaio, from Arizona’s Maricopa County, as the keynote speaker at their election year kickoff event, “Choosing Liberty 2012” taking place Saturday inside the hotel.
The event website promotes the sale of Arpaio’s “Pink Merchandise”, referring to the pink underwear he forces his inmates to wear as humiliation. This is one example of Sheriff Arpaio’s draconian and racist tactics, which include chain gangs, feeding inmates surplus & spoiled food, and a tent city outside the jail that Arpaio has called “a concentration camp,” where at least one inmate has died from heat.
"Sheriff Joe Arpaio is a clear example of how local law enforcement can abuse immigration powers by increasing raids, racially profiling anyone that looks immigrant, and creating fear in the community instead of protecting it from real crime," says María Rodriguez from the Florida Immigrant Coalition.
Arpaio was instrumental in the passage of Arizona’s SB1070 in 2010. The law, which has been partially enjoined in federal court, mandates that police investigate immigration status based on “reasonable suspicion,” a provision which many have deemed the legalization of racial profiling. Florida immigrant rights activists helped spur the state to reject similar provisions in Florida this past legislative session, staging protests and sit-ins in the capital building.
“Here in Lake Worth, we’ve already seen the chilling effects of Secure Communities. We proved it last year, and we’ll continue to demonstrate that Florida is no place for racist laws or Arpaios,” said Radym Davis of the Palm Beach Coalition for Immigrant Rights.
The invitation of Brandon Darby, an activist-turned-FBI informant, as a presenter at the Tea Party event has also sparked reactions from the environmental movement.
“What is the Tea Party celebrating by exalting Arpaio and Darby, two people whose main goal has been imprisoning non-criminals? This sounds more like the British empire than the American Revolution.” —Panagioti Tsolkas, activist with Everglades Earth First!
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"Our search for a future that works keeps spiraling back to an ancient connection between ourselves and the earth, an interconnectedness that ancient cultures have never abandoned." - Helena Norberg-Hodge