Diamond Does the Desert (reprise)

Caricature of Don Diamond as a King of Diamonds

[Ed. note: First published in our pages in 2012, we are reprinting this piece in the interests of giving a more rounded assessment of Don Diamond’s legacy than that offered by the Tucson Weekly and Inside Tucson Business, who ran identical articles about him, titled respectively “Requiem for a Heavyweight” and “Mourners laud Don Diamond’s …

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Privatizing the Old Pueblo

rich, monopoly-man caricature hauling recognizable Tucson icons (Tucson Inn, saguaro cactus, city hall) in a wheelbarrow as he pushes down a ladder with a mother on it as her children look on.

OCCUPIED TUCSON CITIZEN The list is long: the Ronstadt Transit Center, Access Tucson, the El Rio Golf Course, the former downtown Greyhound Bus Station, the former YMCA on 5th St., among others. Taken together, they demonstrate a disturbing pattern of the City of Tucson’s desire to sell or lease public land and institutions to private …

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Diamond Does the Desert

"Don Diamond, with large red stencil lettering above which reads, 'WANTED'"

OCCUPIED TUCSON CITIZEN First in an ongoing series of irreverent profiles on Tucson’s One Percent Net worth: $400 million, as estimated in 2003 by Worth magazine. Business model: Buys a swath of heartbreakingly beautiful desert—preferably abutting an environmentally sensitive area—and spends a decade or so gaming the political system to increase its value. Then, having …

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