Marisa Franco

Marisa Franco: There was a Catholic church and a Yaqui church and that area, which was predominantly Yaqui. Sara la Cuarenta as a kid that was called La Cuarenta and I never knew why it was called La Cuarenta. And then later, I think what they're referring to is the original 40 acres. Um, so anyway, um, you know, I think Guadalupe became. Yeah, it was founded by Yaquis, but as close to the border as it is, you know, Mexicanos or people coming and crossing over, um, would settle there. And so today it is a mix of Yaqui, Mexicano, Chicano, you know, um, and it, uh, has a very, I think, interesting history. Sometimes my companeros make fun of me because I say Guadalupe is the center of the universe, but yeah, that's a little bit. But the town, you know, there's that history. And then leading up into the 60s and 70s, Fred Ross actually came to the town of Guadalupe. And at that time the town didn't have basic services, unincorporated land, and they didn't have garbage collection. They didn't have, you know, water. Um, one of the big cases around bilingual education or right to education came out of there was one here in Tucson, but there was also Guadalupe where the children were being given IQ tests in English, and they were being tracked into special ed programs in the 50s and 60s. Obviously, you can imagine the quality of, um, special education at that time, and especially in a poor community. So there was a mujer that sued, a teacher that sued, and that became, um, some of the standards around, I think it was bilingual education. Um, there was also, um, in that time when Fred Ross came, they started doing organizing. And so that's when they started organizing for basic services, which later becomes, you know, the IAF model, the Alinsky model would also had roots into the UFW because Fred Ross obviously trains us that. Um, and there was a room like I heard it once and I never was able to understand. I never confirmed it, but there was an old, um, they ended up forming this organization, Guadalupe Organization, and it was called go. When I was a kid, we would go to the go, but it would be to pay the bills or like check cashing and stuff like that. Sometimes we're organizing goes to die. You can come. So it's called what go Guadalupe organization. So when I was a kid I'd go, but then it was an acronym, but nobody remembered that. That's what it was. But El Segundo in that building, one of my friends told me, um, that Cesar did his last fast there, and that they just knocked that building down. And I asked my friend, who's the mayor? I was like, hey, you guys know that? You're like, why didn't you guys make that historical? Like, what the ___? But don't say, but they ended up, um, in the 60s and 70s that that kind of grouping there started, you know, Phoenix was growing. And so this story was told to me by Socorro Bernasconi, who was one of the teachers at Frank school, and I think she was involved in the case. But she said that, you know, there started to be rustling about, um, you know, that that Guadalupe was going to get annexed by Tempe or Phoenix. And so you figure now, you know, you look at broader historical trends in the 60s in particular, and, and urban blight and redevelopment in the building of the airports and the building of the freeways. They always, like Chicano communities and Chicano communities in Phoenix were decimated in that time, like Guadalupe is one of the last remaining. And I think fundamentally, that battle that that happened, I think is why. So there was people that were like, we need to incorporate ourselves. And though some people like that, you guys are crazy, let's keep things as is. This is emblematic of all crossroads of social change. And then there was the third that was like Alvaro Los Gringos. And they had this whole debate, and it was supposedly this huge process in the town, and they ended up deciding to incorporate. So Guadalupe is like a strange example, like sometimes you see that with like rich, like wealthy districts inside of a city. He said, no, we want to keep the tax to ourselves, you know, and they, they, they, they incorporate themselves to kind of well, loop is almost like the opposite example because it wasn't a wealthy, it was poor and it was trying to keep its own identity. Um, so the town incorporated, I think, in 1975.

Marisa Franco: I mean, when I look back on it, I think that there are waves of it. There's, you know, we used to say in organizing that was like a light switch. But I think for me it's more like a succession of waves. Um, you know, and. Political exposures, right? Um, so I don't I don't know, I mean, there was things that happened. I was very, uh, I was very I think I also think that I was just always pretty aware of. What starts as noticing imbalance of power, and then you start to put a name to that and understand that as unjust, and that you see inside of your family where you don't necessarily have language. Right. So I think it's those early things. And sometimes I think that I was had a. I noticed that, I don't know, everybody does that, but I noticed that and I didn't necessarily have language. So in some ways, the process of politicization is having language to things. Um, and connecting dots perhaps. And um, there are many dots to connect. So that's why it's not quite one thing, but I would say there was moments of political, of exposure to injustice in my childhood and young like as a young person. I saw that in my high school. I was very impacted when I saw Prop 187 and I wrote about it, I studied it. I was really into journalism at the time, and I wrote about it, um, friends of mine who were killed and seeing the conditions in which they were killed or the, the, the way that their death was recognized or not. And seeing again the imbalance versus other, other cases. Um, and then more. Yeah, obviously like the more you know. More of the systems analysis, I think came at school when I went to I went to ASU and, you know, just that process of being exposed to analysis, all the systematic piece, you know, so that was another layer. And then um, travel I think was a big one going to Mexico. I went to Cuba. And when I was still at ASU, I figured out a way to get there. And that was very, very politicizing, very politicizing. I think, in fact, that trip changed my life, um, the course of my life. Um, and then going into organizing and then that has been absolutely a ripple of so many different, um, you know, points of exposure. And I think there, you know, sometimes it's about gender, sometimes it's about gender identity, sometimes it's about sexuality, sometimes it's about race. Um, you know, I, I spent like, you know, when I, my, my, my time doing local organizing, I can say it was probably majority in black communities. And that to me is one of the most significant gifts that I could have. As someone from where I'm from, you know, because there are not there's not a significant black population in Arizona, and there was definitely not a lot of black folks where I grew up. And to be able to have that exposure and, and learn from people and understand a little bit. Um, and to be able to connect that to my experience and to. To have that. Just that that that. Um. Teaching. Um, uh, so it has a lot of different ripples aside from ideology, aside from the isms and the aside from the theorists and the Gramsci's and the Marx and the Nozick, um, but there's also that. So it's been many, many different layers.

Marisa Franco: Yeah. So the 1070 chapter, which is like the Alto Arizona, um, you know, it follows a this could be probably many hours, but I'll try to be succinct, but it's just following the, you know, uh, proposal of a, of a, the proposal of a legislation gets to the governor's desk, the governor signs it, and then you go into the implementation and the litigation around the law. So really, that entire summer following, I think she signed it in April of 2010. And, you know, and mind you, just to name that, they also had the Ethnic studies ban that was happening here in, in Tucson. And that has its own, you know, that there's ways where those struggles coincided and overlapped, and there are ways that they had a very particular nature to them that I think is important to mark. Um, but in the, you know, so we had we had connection to folks here, um, who are doing that, but also folks who are focused more on immigration, on deportations. But yeah, the Phoenix component of Maricopa County, um, there had already been existing campaigns targeting Sheriff Arpaio. And so there's a way where those things kind of coincided. Right? Arpaio, in many ways, was the embodiment of what happens when you leave, uh, when you devolve, right, when you allow states to take matters into their own hands. And, um, you know, in the litigation, you know, we the so the, the, the, the federal government sued the state of Arizona at the time, the Obama administration. And so the posture that folks had here, um, particularly, you know, folks, that what was like, you know, Tony Tierra, which created an organization called Puente Human Rights Movement, and they were really tied into the National Day labor network battle. Everybody that was doing anything immigration was here. Um, and it was definitely a whirlwind moment. And, um. You know, there's like real history there. Like, I think even preceding all of that battle there posture was, you know, that they obviously had to litigate. So there was like several different strategies. Right? There was the litigation, there was a boycott, there was a noncompliance strategy, and there was a barrio defense committees. Um, there's probably a fifth one I'm not remembering right now. Um, but, you know, that was kind of the strategies that were being employed amidst an absolute whirlwind moment. You had every news outlet, you had people coming here, um, you know, groups, people, you know. Yeah. So we.

Marisa Franco: And so part of the message culminating, you know, coming out of here was, you know, I don't remember if it was Carlos or Salvador. No say, but it was like there was this like recognition of like the support. And it was very regional to me. Like people in the southwest were like those people coming from all over the country. But there was some like, uh, about people from the southwest that just kind of were drew in to the Arizona in that moment, both in Tucson and in Phoenix. And at the end of that, it was basically go fight Arpaio in your backyard, because there was this thing of like, you know, and I think we made a fucking showing of it. You know, I think that we did we did honorable work, you know, with that moment. But there was a there was like, it's like, okay, ahora esto. No, no, this is not just an Arizona problem. This is, you know, an everywhere problem. And you might think that a place like Arizona is like you might fail, but it's actually everywhere. And you might not be aware of it, but it's coming. It's coming to your neighborhood. And so from there it was like fanning out. And so we did this conference at the end of 2010, like in the fall called Turning the Tide. And that was kind of bringing back some of the national networks that had been in, in support immigrant rights groups. And it was a national gathering held in New Orleans that was trying to both project kind of what happened in Arizona, but then kind of then exposing to people, strategizing with people what's happening with S-comm, what's happening with two, eight, seven, where are the other states? And so it became this kind of battleground states or like red states, and then the beacon cities, right, where you could maybe have policies where localities were essentially trying to either prevent the full scale kind of implementation of these, these programs or, you know, finding ways to stop them from coming in. Um, and so from there, that kind of, you know, Arizona continued to be a major, like major place. Like from there they started really going into deportation cases, which we called Uno, Uno. And that's where you started to really see the innovation of like, you know, they were, you know, before you call a lawyer and like, you're going to pay through your nose. But they were actually organizing and it was akin to what I think was so successful about the Bill of rights campaign in New York, where we had a Bill of rights campaign. But the building blocks of that campaign were individual like wage theft cases for domestic workers. Like, sometimes our suffering.