For the unelected officials, right? I mean, these are the, the, the, the
developers and the, the, the owners, the real estate. If we had those
kinds of records about their discussions, you know, when they sat with
their cigars and their cognac, you know, making these, I would love to
know what their reasoning was, right, to, to, to complete this discussion
we do have a small oral history interviews uh collection around the
Phoenix 40 actually in the Arizona that would be of other thoughts.
Oh, by the way, uh, city keep good records of city council minutes and
subcommittee, uh, minutes, and that's a good source to at least get a
sense of what's openly being discussed. Yes, that's what I think you also
have there guys like you see in these letters going up there and saying
you guys are a bunch of crooks, and yeah, you see all that stuff. Yeah, I
was thinking about the Phoenix where where was, where did they used to
meet? What was that restaurant? Was it up in the Westford Hall where they
used to. Me, I don't know, every Thursday was it Duran's where they would
meet? Yeah, yeah, yeah, these are the closed door meetings, you know, you
can imagine them with their other big stokey cigars, you know,
the letters there are 3 different letters from individuals who are
affected by these events. Um, are those voices complete? Are there other
voices we should be hearing from? What what did you think about the, the
perspective generated from those letters? Well, just from, uh, this
presentation, it's not an accurate representation of the community. These
are probably Anglo families that wrote these letters or more educated
families. So it was probably 90%. South Phoenix was minority back then as
opposed to the whole city being 50/50, so that that 90% wasn't really
heard. Mhm. Yeah, you know, when I was putting this together last summer,
I, I was, uh, really disappointed in how little we had. In the way of
annexation, I don't know that there's a lot in the Chicano,
it's very hard for people to attend meetings. Well, it's not that. Let me
say this, um. If you look at the arch of the records of the state archives
and you're looking for issues with issued content letters relating to
school segregation, racism, or whatever, you'll find very few letters
actually written by people of color for whatever reason you don't know,
but that means archivists have to do a better job of going out into the
community and bringing in those records, whether they're records from city
council meetings or whether they're records from. Group or an organization
that means that we have to do a better job as archivists or historians to
go out and thank goodness the judge was good enough to donate his material.
Why he did that for whatever reason he maybe was aware of the importance
of of a scholarship ahead for these kinds of materials to be in the on the
repository, but at the same time, uh, there are people who have memories
and who can speak. We can talk about these things and so that's why all
this comes into play again and then you go back to historians maybe who
say, oh, to graduate students, we need original sources, not newspaper
clippings,
not magazine articles. Uh, uh, uh, Nancy Delete has, has conducted oral
histories with city managers across the valley, uh, from the, uh, Arizona
City County Management Association, and you're saying that the, the
annexation came up in those interviews. Oh yeah, oh yeah, but it was much
like Eduardo saying, you know, phone calls in the middle of the night,
well, you know. Yeah, we're gonna put Maryvale and South Phoenix together
in one package and get there before Glendale gets Maryvale and you know
that kind of thing but but these letters are really precious in in a way
that. Um, they're communists, those boomers and shakers, aren't they? They
, they're communists. One letter writers accusing the city council members
of being communists. Well, they're precious, I think, because you could.
You could drive through, you know, South Phoenix now and, and the
complaints are still the same, you know, it's still the same thing. You
can see the the consequence of, of this action many years later. In terms
of the lack of facilities and services, yeah, they're saying, you know,
there's. Streets that need help and we've been here for 25 years in there
an eye sore and unfit for travel and you know
I, I wonder if they got their million dollar library one of the things
that we commented here in the table is that these letters are clearly
written from a position of privilege. I mean the people that wrote the
letter was defending something that they believe was uh the right uh to
have and uh I we wonder if uh is there any other source out there that is
not I mean letters or documents that comes from uh non. Privileged, uh,
residents of Phoenix because simply when you speak out when you express
your opinion the way they did it is because you feel that you have to the
right to do so and, and I guess that a lot of, uh, the Mexicans uh and
other minorities that live in the area didn't feel that. Yeah, their,
their comments were not welcome. Exactly, yeah, and, and it leads you to
wonder whether there was any sort of grassroots organization that was
opposed. Uh, we don't see that in this material. It's individuals writing
the judge and saying, man, this is really a bad decision.
Could be because that area of the city was. Basically somewhat divided you
have the heavy tunnel area you have the heavily black areas on, you know,
Broadway Road. You have the, the white areas to the especially the better
off towards the mountain. So I don't think you had a an area wide sense of
community other than we're South Phoenix.
I don't know. I, I need to age myself a little bit. I was 21 when I went
to go to work for calcium Calvin good and that was the medication. And,
and of course, yeah, I'm from South Phoenix. He was from South Phoenix and
he actually gave me a little book. It was the Black History of Arizona and
written by Richard Harris, yes, and. But my understanding was obviously
that African Americans and Latino Mexicanos were the residents of South
Phoenix, but again, you're talking about a time when people of color could
not become landowners, and so it was really easy for for white people to
come in and take over those properties that land, and, and that really
didn't allow perhaps even some of the leadership to emerge like it should
have because the landowners were white. I don't know if that's accurate. I
, I wait and owning land, uh, elevated your status and then again if you
look at some of these items here that we've been reading those petitions,
uh, had to be the reason that the opponents lost their suit to challenge
this annexation was. Because they did not have enough signatures from
those who had property property, right, so that's why they lost these
attorneys who fought against annexation because they didn't have enough
signatures that were valid according to the judge who was following the
law because these signers, uh. Most of many of them did not have property.
So were they pro bono? Were the were the attorneys who were working
against annexation doing it on their own. And who are they and did they know? OK. OK. So was it resources is why they did not pursue a superior
court. The lack of resources, they didn't take this to the Supreme Court
appeal because they mentioned that there was gonna be a possible appeal they were going to the Supreme Court, but they didn't or what
what he mentioned there wasn't the grassroots
effort that was dropping out.
So, um, I, I live in South Phoenix now, um, I was thinking about a number
of things. One about the light rail going to Maryville, South Phoenix, and
so there's a lot of similar language being used around the improvements to
communities and one assuming that our communities don't have the ability
to and the resources already, um, but also particularly the role of the
police, um.
In kind of always sort of being in Maryville, particularly around Grand
Canyon University, um, we see the role of the police in kind of relation
to development and it kind of, you know, making things safer for certain
people, but also in South Phoenix 85,040 and 85042 is the uh zip codes
where the most folks go in and come out of prison. And so I'm saying these
things partly because the second, the second to last question, but that.
You know, here we are having a conversation in this space around the
consequences of these decisions now, right? How they play out, who made
the decisions, where were they decided at, right? Um. The narratives that
are reproduced, justifications that are. Politically accumulate will to
default to a certain perspective and the power that perhaps this room has
as a consequence of a couple things. There have been meetings all in South
Phoenix and in Maryville around these very processes what would it mean to
introduce this as a historical marker to demonstrate that when we say this
has been going on. For centuries that we have the proof that people need,
right? But 2,
the role of this institution in the relationship to development policing,
these narratives of improvement narratives, etc. that I think we can see
have historically justified, right? I'm not saying we don't want to be.
Different than we are, but the notion that improvement for improvement's
sake is someone else's imaginary, right? So I think that those kind of two
things right around contemporarily what is happening, but two, what could
this moment mean for a different engagement of how these historical
questions give us so much information. To what to anticipate in the way in
which power the developers, the landowners, the lawmen, the lenders, and
the land speculators that have historically developed the West on the
backs of violently of other people or even 50 years.
And you know the work that he's been doing specifically around top one for
that like
South being that and just the work that's being done at the at the
grassroots level and just staying on top of it which perhaps that wasn't
possible.
Mhm.
Yeah, community has more standing now than it did, uh, and more
opportunity to at least voice concerns to city council, to the city
whether that will result in a different outcome
is another matter. Well, here's what we're seeing from our engagement that
we are able to get small wins, you know, we were able to change some of
the language of the RFPs. Because we knew as a billion dollar projects
we're saying there's gonna be a windfall here and it can't be these
multi-billion multinationals coming into South Phoenix that will benefit
and profit the most. It's gotta come from the people, you know, the people
should be getting that windfall, so we were able to get the RFP, uh, both
the construction, um, and the, uh, design document or the design RFPs for
them to hire local and then of course there's some state statutes that.
You know, don't allow you to put specifically hire local, but it's a
recommendation. So both of the, uh, winners, um, put one because they,
they did include that local piece, but now it's saying on top of them to
make sure that they actually go through the process so that that again
that watchdog or that person's gonna be on top of them that we also did
with the artists, uh, 10 out of 14 artists, they didn't wanna put that
same language in the RRP as. As they do with the construction and design
document, but we fought for it and we got it, so 10 out of the 14 artists.
That are selected are gonna be building the light rail stop are so, you
know, that's all coming from the community level. And so we were at a big
meeting yesterday as we related to design. We, we submitted, um, 44 issues
that exist in our community related to lighting, sidewalk walkability,
shade, you know, trying to improve the quality of life because we've, I've
been born and raised there and this document that promised the better
lighting, the better part program still doesn't exist, hasn't been
happening so. So it's what we're trying to find is this, uh, you know, get
all that embedded into the designing and engineering so that it becomes
part of uh the process and so of course Val Metro was telling us that it's
not incur, it's not in your scope of work. And so the city of Phoenix, you
know, also is like, well, you know, we're just building a light rail, and
so the community is demanding that this has to be a neighborhood
improvement project. It's not just about economic development, but it's
about human development. It's about the bigger picture and how you, how do
you build over time a healthier community. Opposed to the same thing that
annexation did, gentrification is the same thing now with these billion
dollar infrastructure projects. Once they come in with this TOD zoning,
you know, they're gonna have overlays to build 1020 story buildings all
over, you know, 5 story buildings down South Central. You start to
displace displace entire neighborhoods. All these trailer parks were our
most vulnerable and half of it for 40-15 years as soon as. A developer
comes and presents to the landowner, you move out entire communities, so
it's the impacts of the annexation and we're having the same thing with
these billion dollar infrastructure projects that are coming into our and
the owner should start quite frankly with with Prop 104 that was the
infrastructure that provided goods to many 75% of the voters voted for the
light. So we own it and we've got to be responsible and accountable for it
because it'll come back to us, the voters, right? Well, you all wanted it
, so where are you in the process if it if it screws up along the way. So
yes, we take that responsibility very, very, very heavily. Yeah yeah it's
a big moment for the community and an earlier version of the light rail
that that that's mentioned here, the Beltrans, the, the proposition that
kept getting defeated by voters every time the city wanted to expand
further north or develop better transportation and maybe move away from,
uh, problems that related to emissions and pollution for the city, the
voters kept saying no. To Beltrans every time, every time, every time
because it costs money because the city would pay for it, meaning the city
would then take away the money as soon as the profile, the age of the
profile changed, yes, yes, very, very interesting. All right, we are out
of time and uh I want to thank for their comments today can I just, I just
have one thing I wanna say,
um,
I recorded our discussion. And if you don't want to be part of that
recording, please stop here and tell me, but I wanted to capture some of
what was said, and I want to urge everyone to exchange contact information
, names and contact information in case we want to be able to follow up
with one another because there's so many ideas
brought out today. Yeah, I can, I can delete it, yeah.
There are evaluation forms on each of your tables. Please take them into
very quick, uh, please, uh, uh, complete the evaluation forms. Uh, thank
you, Victoria for hosting us and for us and uh thanks again to the
committee here here at State University, uh, and I hope you all have a
great day. Thank you. Thanks.
Look
Can I have your contact info?
Yeah, I'm, I'm making a little sketch here so I can remember where people A L A N and then Gomez. I like your pen. This was on the table. Oh really
? Are there other ones you behind you. I'll get it when I leave. Um, AEG
at ASU AEG.
Oh, that's your, OK, yeah, at ASU sorry and what's your, what's your
affiliation? Oh, I'm in SST in the school of social transformation. OK, SSTer
yeah, you know. Thank you. Take care.
OK, thank you,
you know, it's the past and the future anyway. you click on this? No,
Francisco Francisco. uh Do you mind if I have the recording? No, no problem. Francisco, L A R A
L A R A L A R A, yeah, and uh and I'm in. What kind of studies?
Uh-huh. That's that's the school. OK, good to see you too.
Thank you. Thank you.
So are you gonna send that. Yeah, you know, I don't love it, but, uh, OK,
that's OK, yeah, I don't I have.
You know, I should have said. Would you give the right are you doing.
a lot of places.
there's different likes like 1 mile and a half mile. Yeah, it's just so interesting how much I know it's like there's so much we could have gone on. I mean maybe we should think about it as occupying larger. I think so
. I think it's a limited time
available, but I mean that might be a deterrent, but there are so much,
so much to
explore. Engage with so and that's why I wanted to get you know some
contact information from people. I know they signed up, but to know well
that was that person who sat there and talked about such and such.
Yeah it was it was interesting. I thank you so much.
Yeah, we really should. We were saying it should have been a little bit longer, it's hard. Oh yeah, good luck to you too. You're holding up very
well.
I know I've seen you, or at least reading about you everywhere, so
I will.
property there's no downside.
And then so you're you know really.
I did some work on it.
I mean
it was so yeah I have.