Rogue Columnist

The left-wing bubble

If you follow the news through a certain group of Web sites (Huffington Post, Salon, Vox, etc. — even the New York Times)... If you run in circles where everyone is college-educated and progressive... Then events such as Ferguson and Baltimore fit a precise narrative.

Police are murdering unarmed black men in great numbers and getting away with it. The elites have turned their backs on African-Americans. Rioting is a rational response to despair. "Thug" is another word for n*gger. The war on drugs is a war on the underclass. Incarceration rates of black men are immorally high. Whites don't get it, none of it, from their position of privilege.

And some of this is even true.

Unfortunately, this is a rare case where there is equivalency between progressives and the right-wing. Both are operating in their distinct echo-chambers, their bubbles. For progressives, asking for a more nuanced and factual approach to understanding these problems risks losing friends and being labeled a racist.

The right-wing bubble sees things very differently. These are criminals, and the ones who aren't still live an adversarial gangsta lifestyle. They are "takers." Why do they have children they can't afford or support? Why are they on the street in the middle of the day, loudly taking up the sidewalk, instead of working? Why don't they obey police orders? Look how successful Asians are. Look how many blacks have advanced, even if it's through affirmative action.

American Eden

Agriculture is the oldest organized human activity in the Salt River Valley. This is why Phoenix was never a Wild West town like Tombstone or even Prescott. It was never a copper square.

For hundreds of years this sustained the Hohokam, who created the most advanced irrigation civilization in the New World. They built hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles of canals to bring water from the Salt River to their fields. After the Hohokam left in circumstances that are still debated, the valley lay empty for 400 years. Waiting.

Jack Swilling may get too much credit among the founders of Phoenix. But one thing that's certain is this soldier of fortune immediately grasped the valley's agricultural potential when he arrived after the Civil War to help John Y.T. Smith farm hay for the Army at Fort McDowell.

He saw the Hohokam canals, the seemingly flat ground and rich earth, and knew it was farming country. In some cases, old Hohokam canals were simply cleaned out by the Swilling Irrigating Canal Co. His passion in selling what "Lord" Duppa would aptly name Phoenix attracted men from Wickenburg and Prescott. Swilling's Ditch was built in 1868 from today's 40th Street and ran west beside Van Buren Street.

No other place in the West between the 100th meridian and California and the Pacific Northwest was so hospitable to farming. Three rivers met here and the soil was alluvial and priceless. Unlike the future Dustbowl, with its shallow topsoil and dependency on fickle rainfall, the Salt River Valley alone had almost all the makings of a major agricultural empire.

By 1870, 200 Anglo settlers had arrived and laid out the townsite, land was platted from the Gila and Salt River Baseline and Meridian, and more ditches were dug. Wheat and grains were the early crops. Former Union officer William John Murphy led building of the 41-mile Arizona Canal between 1883 and 1885. In the late part of that decade, the Rev. Winfield Scott, an Army chaplain, acquired 640 acres. With his brother George, he planted the first citrus trees, along with growing dates and figs and other tree crops.

Yes, tony Scottsdale is named after this chaplain-farmer. (So is Winfield, Kan.). But other farm villages preceded it: Mesa (1878), Tempe (1879), Glendale (1887) and Peoria (1897).

 

Note to readers

I always feel as if I let you down when I don't post two columns a week. But the reality is that my day job intrudes. Thursday is the deadline for my Sunday Seattle Times column. I also do a daily online column for the Times, as well as being a commentator for KUOW, the local NPR station. Then there are books. I have been commissioned by the History Press to write a Phoenix history.

The result: Some weeks you're not going to get two Rogue posts. This is one of them.

 

The woman and the moment

This marks the third presidential election since Rogue Columnist launched. And even though it is some 18 months before voters go to the polls, I'm already exhausted. I'm already missing the "front-porch campaigns" of the 19th century, when it was considered unseemly to appear to covet the highest office in the land.

The Republicans offer up the usual clown college, with even less experience. No new ideas. Just new countries to attack. Gone are the days when the GOP was a mass party and great debates between the likes of Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller presented genuine choices. And yet the Republicans are highly successful in extending the governance of the New Confederacy.

That ever-more besieged and pushed-into- coastal-enclaves tribe of liberals would like to see Elizabeth Warren run for the Democratic nomination. I have the highest regard for Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders. They would also carry perhaps one state in the Electoral College.

That leaves the Democrats with Hillary Clinton. She faces serious obstacles. Some are of her own making. She's not a natural campaigner, lacks telegenic charisma (not as bad as Bruce Babbitt who was wonderful in small groups), and is attached to a real potential scandal (The Clinton Foundation, not Benghazi).

The corporate media can't report on issues. That leaves personalities, and Hillary is their catnip. But not like Reagan. For the worst kind of coverage. Recall that the pre-Murdoch Wall Street Journal virtually accused her of killing aide Vince Foster. Worse, the historic vitriol directed by the vast rightwing infrastructure and average working-class whites against President Obama will turn against Hillary with the ease of the old Soviet party line.

Reform and extremism

One of the curiosities of Arizona politics is how widely supported efforts to make government cleaner — the approval of term limits in 1992 and so-called clean elections public financing of candidates in 1998 — coincided with the rise and now dominance of the extreme right.

Term limits were a fad in the early 1990s, ostensibly meant to eliminate a permanent political class. Although never implemented on a national level, they gained traction in many state and local government. "Clean elections" was intended to take big money out of politics, especially in the aftermath of the bribe-ridden AzScam scandal.

Under the new rules, a Burton Barr, who ruled the Legislature as House majority leader from 1966 to 1986 would have been impossible. Barr's time, working with such Democratic leaders as Alfredo Gutierrez and Art Hamilton, also was the high-water mark of legislative achievement for Arizona.

Had term limits been enacted nationally, we never would have had a Carl Hayden, who served in the Senate for 42 years, or a John J. Rhodes, who served in the House for 30 years. And thus, no Central Arizona Project, which demanded such longevity from lawmakers from what was then a small and politically weak state challenging mighty California.

Raul Castro, an appreciation

Raul Castro, center, along with his wife Pat and longtime law partner and friend Henry Zipf at the Castros' home in Nogales, Ariz., circa 2008.

By Jack August Jr., Guest Rogue

In 2007, then-91 year-old Raul Castro addressed a packed auditorium at the Arizona Historical Foundation’s annual Goldwater Lecture Series at Arizona State University.  At the time, I served as Executive Director of the foundation, which, among other things, maintained the personal and political papers of Sen. Barry Goldwater. 

Two hundred mostly conservative and arguably skeptical supporters of the legendary Arizona senator were curious to see what the former Democratic governor, judge, and ambassador had to say.  

After introducing him, I sat down and watched Castro stride to the podium; he had no notes. He launched into a one-hour presentation that seemed like ten minutes, telling his life story, touching upon the role that education played in his life, his years as a “hobo” riding the rails, his undefeated professional boxing career, and his countless experiences of prejudice and adversity. 

But the overarching theme in his talk was the promise that America held for all its citizens. When he finished the audience exploded in applause and stood on their feet clapping for several minutes. It was a stunning performance.

The distinguished professional career of Castro, who died last week, stood in stark contrast to the adversity inherent in his humble beginnings, which only hardened his resolve and strengthened his determination.

The callow field

The problem with wealthy Republican John Sydney McCain III running for a sixth term has nothing to do with his age. Far from it. In the past, age was prized for its experience and wisdom. Sen. Carl Hayden won funding for the Central Arizona Project when he was 91.

The shame is two-fold. Unlike Hayden and almost all of the congressional delegation during the 20th century, McCain has done nothing to help Arizona, a state deeply dependent on the federal government. Second, all of McCain's seasoning has been squandered on flip-flopping, opportunism, and working the Sunday news shows. What a waste.

The man he lost the presidency to in 2008 was another senator, freshman Barack Obama. I have a prediction: When Obama is out of office, he will be missed by most, not least for being No Drama Obama. But that is a column for another day, another year.

His unfortunate precedent was to make it appear legitimate for a freshman senator to run for the presidency (with an assist from McCain, who chose the half-term governor of Alaska as his running mate). Few people have Obama's intellect, maturity, and integrity — least of all (not so wealthy) Republicans Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz and Randal Howard "Rand" Paul, but they are running for the most powerful office in the world. (So, too, is Marco Rubio, another- first-term senator, who announced after this column originally posted).

For whom the bell tolls

California, facing its worst drought in modern times, gets all the press. Arizona, confronting many of the same issues, albeit less severely so far, flies under the radar.

I'm told that the latest meme of is Phoenix 3.0 — 1.0 being an agricultural economy, 2.0 being development and 3.0, now, is moving into the broad, sunlit uplands of a technology economy.

This is only boosterwash. Data centers and profaning the desert with solar "farms" is far from being at the headwaters of the tech economy. Where the innovation happens on a global scale. Where the world talent congregates for high-paid jobs. This is almost exclusively happening in blue states, in a few "technopolises" such as Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego, Boston and New York.

The headwaters of advanced industries don't go to states defined by their extreme politics, underfunded education, and cuts to universities.

The reality is that Arizona is desperately trying to restart the growth engine for one, two, maybe three more runs — with championship golf — before the edifice finally collapses. By then, the architects of the short hustle will be living off their profits somewhere else.

Bringing forth fruit

I first met Kit Danley in 2001 when she asked me to visit Neighborhood Ministries at its new home, hard against the railroad yards on Fillmore Street west of 19th Avenue.

It was a place that held fond memories for me. As a child, I had spent many hours train watching at the nearby Mobest Yard of the Santa Fe Railway. In those days, Fillmore ran through to 19th Avenue, and this end of the yard featured a cleaning facility for passenger cars (when Phoenix had passenger trains) and the locomotive turntable. South was the busy and (to my young eyes) imposing Valley Feed and Seed, where railcars were switched against the warehouse for loading and unloading.

Valley Feed and Seed looked very different in 2001: abandoned, decomposing, the grounds full of debris, silos that once provided seeds for this great agricultural valley now empty, eight acres of sadness. It was a graveyard that extended to Van Buren Street. Fillmore had been closed to a cul-de-sac when the yard was moved south (to lessen the train delays on McDowell). The surrounding area was known for crime now, not commerce.

But this was the site that Neighborhood Ministries had purchased in 1998 for an ambitious campus that would increase its outreach to the poor. By the time of my first visit, the organization had raised $2.2 million to begin renovations.

I liked Danley immediately. She was a near-native, went to Scottsdale High (I went to Coronado), and had chosen to make a stand in the wounded heart of Phoenix, founding Neighborhood Ministries in 1982. She was the polar opposite of the city of the short hustle, the state where hate was peddled for political profit.

And she would be frustrated that I appear to be making this column about her (it's not; read on). Like her spiritual forebear in Phoenix, Father Emmett McLoughlin, she felt called by Christ to minister here to the least and the lost, to the stranger and the wanderer, and find Christ in them.