Tucson Weekly

In Light of Local Poverty, Tucson Needs Creative Direction & Progressive Economic Ideas

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Development33-sig-sm72by Pamlea Powers Hannley

Business friendly? Tucson’s been there, done that, … and got the t-shirt at Goodwill. As former City Councilwoman Molly McKasson said, we put all of our eggs in the development basket and look where it got us.

Twenty percent of Tucsonans are living in poverty.

Thirty percent of Tucson children are living in poverty.

Fifty-two percent of Tucson children live in a one-parent household.

Seventy-one percent of Tucson Unified School District students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. (Statistics from the Arizona Daily Star.)

How did we get here?

The Back Story on Tucson’s Poverty Rate

In a November 2011 “What If?” article published just a few days before the last mayoral election, former Arizona Daily Star reporter Josh Brodesky interviewed activist, writer, and artist McKasson and mused about how Tucson would be different today if she had beaten former Mayor Bob Walkup back in their 1999 match-up.

I remember that election well. Walkup– a former Hughes Aircraft executive and former head of the Greater Tucson Economic Council– was the quintessential business candidate. Bankrolled by Tucson’s business community, Walkup’s campaign successfully painted McKasson as a flighty hippie artist whose no-growth, tree-hugging, water-conserving policies would be bad for Tucson (ie, bad for business and bad for growth). Meanwhile, Walkup was championed as a business savvy savior who successfully ran a business, and, therefore, (of course!) could successfully run a city.

As mayor, the glad-handing, ribbon-cutting Walkup promoted business development, Rio Nuevo, and ill-conceived, taxpayer-funded private projects like the downtown hotel (which went down in flames, thank goodness). Except for his pro-business, pro-growth cheerleading, Walkup was a do-nothing mayor who depended upon defense funding, the occasional TREO call center moving to Tucson, and housing boom construction jobs to bolster Tucson’s chronically low-wage tourist economy. The Tucson Weekly’s endorsement of McKasson (here) eerily  predicts what happened to Tucson under three terms of Walkup. Read it and more background and new ideas after the jump.

MAS Redux: Tucson Weekly & MalintZINE Dare to Tell the ‘Rest of the Story’

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Domestic violence_20b10e08caby Pamela Powers Hannley

Sexism and sexual violence cross all ethnic, racial, and class boundaries. This story focuses on the struggle against misogyny and sexual violence in Tucson’s Chicano community.

For years, the Tucson Weekly’s Mari Herreras has covered multiple aspects of the rise and fall of Mexican American Studies (MAS)– the chaining, the chanting, the demonstrations, the fundraising, the controversies, the personalities– but A Broken Community, the cover story of the July 18 issue, was one of the more fascinating stories about the evolution of MAS.

Maybe it’s because I gave up reading the Three Sonorans blog years ago, but I haven’t heard or read much about MAS since the former director of the program, Sean Arce, was charged with domestic violence back in December 2012.

At the time, the silence surrounding the Arce’s charges and what happened between him and his wife that night in December at La Cocina was deafening. As I wrote, “Bloggers who regularly post ‘news’ stories every time Arce catches a cold are mute, and none of the mainstream media have touched his story.”

A handful women bloggers wrote about the Arce story– most notably, a relatively new blog, MalintZINE. “Dear Sean”, a moving essay about machismo and sexism in the MAS movement, was one of the first few posts on this blog, and at the time, the author(s) was/were anonymous to the general public, myself included.

Herreras’ TW story updates us on this thread.

Rape and Violence

Without naming many names, Herreras gives us the back story on sexism, sexual abuse charges, and fallen idols in the MAS program, with accounts dating back to 2011 (more than a year before the December 2012 Arce incident). At the core of the story is former MAS spokesperson and former cover girl for the Precious Knowledgemovie Leilani Clark and the womyn of MalintZINE. In the early heyday of the MAS protests, Clark was everywhere. I heard her speak with poise and fire  about the MAS struggle at multiple events, and then… poof… she disappeared from the scene.  She was everywhere, and then, nowhere. (I’m sure I’m not the only one who wondered what happened to her.) 

To find out, follow the jump.

TW and AZ Star on TUSD board race: Contrasting coverage shows media biases

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by Pamela Powers Hannley Undoubtedly one of the more contentious local races this election season is the non-partisan 12-person race for three unpaid positions on the Tucson Unified School District's (TUSD) Governing Board. In this race, there are two University of Arizona professors, a call center supervisor, a Sunnyside School District employee, a self-employed landscaper, a … Read more