Text Message Organizing

An old friend adds your number to their cellular address book after a recent professional interaction and you'll think nothing of it. Until, you receive a text message at 7:30 PM on a Thursday evening. It reads "Arpaio is sweeping in Maryvale, 15 detainees, 3325 W. Durango." Now you have to make a decision, do I go, is this a protest, YES.

So, reluctantly, you tell your family that you have to (almost as if required) go to a protest, head to your car and drive into the Maricopa County Sheriff''s Complex where you'll keep an eye on Joe.

As you pull into the Complex there is a press conference happening, the Sheriff is talking about the sweep. He moans into the microphones of every major news station in Phoenix, "These are illegal street vendors without a permit and we have reason to believe that they are getting their corn from illegal drop houses." Seriously!

There are two women wearing white knee length laboratory coats searching the street vendor's make-shift convenient stores for "Health code violations" and taking temperatures of jars of mayonnaise. All this is happening while Arpaio spews into the microphone about how he's making Arizona a safer place. Blatantly describing his racially motivated schemes to media and anyone else who will listen.

Other organizers begin to show, a city councilman and his staffer, real citizen activists all motivated to show-up by a text message.

Last night at least 15 men and women were detained by Sheriff Joe Arpaio for selling corn out of a shopping cart. Organizers counted more than 50 Sheriff's Deputies among other county officials on the site. All this happened for 15 men and women trying to make an honest living five blocks from one of the most active gang neighborhoods in Phoenix. Maybe we should re-evaluate our priorities.

All this with a simple text message from an unlikely re-acquaintance with an old friend who happened to put your cell phone number in their address book. The more organizing changes the more it stays the same.