The Luis Gutierrez Bridge Spans the Santa Cruz River; It Also Links Both Parts of a Divided Community and Makes Connections to the Past

by Alice Whittenburg At 8:45 on October 14, if a thin veil of high clouds hadn’t occluded the morning sun, a work of solar art commemorating the Tucson Pressed Brick Company would have appeared on the Luis Gutierrez Bridge on Tucson’s West Side. Because of those clouds, seven people, including myself, who had gathered on …

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Ofelia Zepeda’s Ocean Power and the Apocalyptic American Summer of 2020

Black and white photograph of Sonoran desert

by Greg Evans Anybody who reads the Tohono O’odham poet Ofelia Zepeda’s collection of poems, Ocean Power: Stories from the Desert, might reasonably assume she is being ironic with the title. What power, after all, can an ocean have over a people who live in the Arizona desert, “That land where the ocean has not …

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A Small Example of How, on the 10th Anniversary of Occupy Tucson, Homeless People Are Still Screwed

Picture of Armory Park, showing absence of picnic tables

The Occupied Tucson Citizen working group, the last active portion of Occupy Tucson, recently held its first in-person meeting since pre-COVID days. More to the point, it held the meeting on the tenth anniversary (plus one day) of the founding of Occupy Tucson and on the site of Occupy’s first encampment, Armory Park in downtown …

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Politically Non-Political: The 10th Anniversary of Occupy Tucson (Some Reflections)

Photo from an Occupy Tucson backed march from January of 2012

It was, I think, Barack Obama’s decision to rescue the banks and largely ignore the people that helped to create the political backdrop for Occupy. It was as though Obama’s campaign slogan of 2008, “Yes, we can,” had degenerated into “No, we can’t – at least not for you.” The political backlash this generated from …

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On the Ten-Year Occuversary, It’s Time to Occupy the Archive

Occupy Tucson logo from tee shirt

Ten years ago on October 15, 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement arrived in Tucson. Energized people filled Armory Park and set up tents, then began to hold General Assemblies and working group meetings to organize the community that soon became Occupy Tucson. But where is it now? What is left of that once-cohesive group …

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