Far right Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Arizona) issued a press release over the weekend celebrating the life of a racist former lawmaker who had been pushed to resign from politics after he suggested that women should only be granted public benefits if they were sterilized beforehand.
Biggs appeared on the House floor last week to speak about the life of former state Sen. Russell Pearce, whom Biggs had served with during his own time as a state lawmaker. Pearce, who sponsored vehemently anti-immigrant legislation, died earlier this month.
Biggs also praised Pearce in a newsletter (in which he misspelled his name as “Pierce”) that was sent to constituents on Friday, describing Pearce’s political legacy as “truly unmatched.”
Biggs’s statements — both on the House floor and in the newsletter — referred to Pearce as tough and courageous, touting his public service in politics and in the military while praising his fascist and racist legacy.
Biggs celebrated Pearce’s authorship of Senate Bill 1070, which granted extraordinary powers to police and other agencies in Arizona to racially profile and harrass people who they suspected were undocumented. The bill’s text allowed police to target people for questioning based solely on their accent, their name, their display of Mexican flags, or their skin color.
The policy also required residents to provide law enforcement with documents on the spot showing they were either citizens or lawfully in the U.S. If a resident didn’t comply — including in cases where they had simply left their ID at home — the statute permitted law enforcement to make an arrest if they had “probable cause” to believe they had committed “any public offense that makes the person removable from the United States.”
Pearce also promoted other legislation targeting undocumented people and the broader Latinx community in Arizona. He pushed a bill, for example, to prevent children born in the U.S. to immigrant parents from being granted citizenship rights (a power state lawmakers don’t actually have due to the 14th Amendment of the federal Constitution). In promoting that bill, he described children born to immigrant parents as “anchor babies.”
Biggs’s celebration of Pearce’s life also omitted that, as head of the Republican Party in Arizona, Pearce suggested that women seeking public assistance in the state should only be allowed to do so after being sterilized or forcibly given long-term birth control that could only be reversed through surgery.
“You put me in charge of Medicaid, the first thing I’d do is get Norplant, birth-control implants, or tubal ligations…Then we’ll test recipients for drugs and alcohol, and if you want to [reproduce] or use drugs or alcohol, then get a job,” Pearce said in 2014 as state party leader.
Aliento, an organization dedicated to serving undocumented, DACA, and mixed immigration status families, issued its own response to Pearce’s passing.
“We offer his family our deepest condolences,” the organization wrote in a statement that was shared on Twitter. “We also acknowledge the trauma and harm his actions and policies have caused to the immigrant community in Arizona.”
“At Aliento, we believe in truth and reconciliation,” the group added. “In order to heal, we must acknowledge the harm caused by those in power as we also acknowledge the humanity of every human regardless of their beliefs.”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.