Politicians, media remain silent on conditions behind Arizona shootings

A week after the assassination attempt on Congressperson Gabrielle Giffords, the political climate in Arizona remains unchanged.

President Barack Obama came to Tucson on Jan. 12 to meet with survivors of the shooting and families of the victims. He gave a televised speech at the University of Arizona’s McKale Center that evening. During his speech Obama made some mild criticisms of the vicious right-wing language that encouraged these murderous acts, but the essence of his speech was an appeal to people’s emotions and a call for calm “civil discourse.”

Obama was accompanied by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who served two terms as Arizona governor immediately prior to being picked as director of DHS. It was during Napolitano’s tenure that plans for the multibillion-dollar Secure Border Initiative project were developed; Sheriff Joe Arpaio was given free rein to terrorize and round up immigrant workers in Maricopa County; and the fascist Minutemen and Border Guardians were permitted to recruit and train in Pinal and Cochise counties.

Both Napolitano and Obama are aware of racist law SB 1070; the attack against Tucson’s Ethnic Studies program; and the intention of reactionary legislators in Arizona and 13 other states to attack the Fourteenth Amendment, which gives citizenship to all people born in the U.S. Yet none of these subjects was mentioned during Obama’s speech.

Arizona ranks in the top 10 states for foreclosure rates, second in the country in poverty, and its official unemployment rate is 9.4 percent. The effects of the capitalist economic crisis are devastating. The corporate media, which have been camped out in Tucson since the shooting, have not uttered a word about these economic conditions.