Tucson Weekly, June 10, 2021

YEE-HAW! IT’S TIME TO VOTE IN THE BEST OF TUCSON®!

JUNE 10 - 16, 2021 • TUCSONWEEKLY.COM • FREE

Seeking Sanctuary An excerpt from border journalist Todd Miller’s new book, Build Bridges, Not Walls CURRENTS: Do You Need the Vaccine If You’ve Had COVID?

DANEHY: Charter Schools Still Suck

2

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

JUNE 10, 2021, 2021

YOUR NOMINEES FOR

THE

Best ® f Tucson o s d n Lege st! e W e th 2021 OF

First Round Voting Through July 12! www.tucsonweekly.com Presented by

and

JUNE 10, 2021, 2021

JUNE 10, 2021 | VOL. 36, NO. 23

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

3

The Tucson Weekly is available free of charge in Pima County, limited to one copy per reader. Additional copies of the current issue of the Tucson Weekly may be purchased for $1, payable at the Tucson Weekly office in advance. To find out where you can pick up a free copy of the Tucson Weekly, please visit TucsonWeekly.com

STAFF

CONTENTS

CURRENTS

For students at Chicano Por La Causa charter schools, graduation is an act of resistance

4

FEATURE

8

An excerpt from Tucson journalist Todd Miller’s new book, Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders

CINEMA

13

The latest Conjuring installment is a hell of a mess

MUSIC

16

ADMINISTRATION Steve T. Strickbine, Publisher Michael Hiatt, Vice President

EDITOR’S NOTE

Jaime Hood, General Manager, Ext. 12 jaime@tucsonlocalmedia.com

Miller’s Crossing

AUTHOR TODD MILLER,WHO IS BASED here in Tucson, is a dogged border reporter.

He’s the guy who visits shelters in Nogales to hear the stories of migrants, who travels to conventions to learn what kind of border security programs are being sold to the government and who studies budgets to understand how your taxpayer money is being spent, often on boondoggles that don’t make life any safer for U.S. citizens. He’s also written extensively on how climate change is driving the migration of people around the world as their homes are washed away by storms or their farms dry up thanks to drought.

We’re proud this week to bring you an excerpt from Miller’s latest book, Build Bridges, Not Walls (City Lights Books), in which Miller wonders what the borders of the future will look like. Staff reporter Christina Duran speaks to Miller about his book in this week’s cover package.

Elsewhere in the book this week: Duran reports from a high-school graduation ceremony for students who might have fallen through the cracks if they hadn’t ended up at charter schools sponsored by Chicano Por La Causa; associate editor Jeff Gardner talks to health experts about whether you need a vaccine shot if you’ve already had COVID; Dave Wells

Claudine Sowards, Accounting, Ext. 13 claudine@tucsonlocalmedia.com Sheryl Kocher, Receptionist, Ext. 10 sheryl@tucsonlocalmedia.com

of the Grand Canyon Institute digs into how Gov. Doug Ducey’s proposal for a flat income tax gives away huge cuts to the highest-earning Arizonans while providing peanuts (and cut budgets) for everyone else; cinema writer Christina Fuoco-Karasinski talks with the stars of In the Heights, which is opening this week at The Loft Cinema and other local theaters; movie critic Bob Grimm scares up a review of the latest Conjuring flick; and we’ve got more in our pages, including a preview of Sweet Ghosts’ upcoming record-release party at Hotel Congress, a breakdown of the latest cannabis news and all the cartoons, puzzles and other columns you all love so much.

Speaking of love: It’s the time of the year again when we ask you to tell us what you love about this town in our annual Best of Tucson® reader poll. Visit TucsonWeekly.com to cast your vote in this year’s celebration of all that’s great about this burg. We’re just launching the first round of voting, so any business is eligible.

Voting will continue through July 12 and then we’ll be back with a final round later that month. Vote now or forever hold your peace!

RANDOM SHOTS By Rand Carlson

Jim Nintzel Executive Editor

EDITORIAL Jim Nintzel, Executive Editor, Ext. 38 jimn@tucsonlocalmedia.com Jeff Gardner, Associate Editor, Ext. 43 jeff@tucsonlocalmedia.com Mike Truelsen, Web Editor, Ext. 35 mike@tucsonlocalmedia.com Christina Duran, Staff Reporter, Ext. 42 christinad@tucsonlocalmedia.com Contributors: David Abbott, Rob Brezsny, Max Cannon, Rand Carlson, Tom Danehy, Emily Dieckman, Bob Grimm, Andy Mosier, Linda Ray, Margaret Regan, Will Shortz, Jen Sorensen, Clay Jones, Dan Savage PRODUCTION Courtney Oldham, Production Manager, tucsonproduction@timespublications.com Ryan Dyson, Graphic Designer, Ext. 26 ryand@tucsonlocalmedia.com Emily Filener, Graphic Designer, Ext. 29 emilyf@tucsonlocalmedia.com CIRCULATION Alex Carrasco, Circulation, Ext. 17, alexc@tucsonlocalmedia.com ADVERTISING TLMSales@TucsonLocalMedia.com Kristin Chester, Account Executive, Ext. 25 kristin@tucsonlocalmedia.com Candace Murray, Account Executive, Ext. 24 candace@tucsonlocalmedia.com Lisa Hopper, Account Executive Ext. 39 lisa@tucsonlocalmedia.com Tyler Vondrak, Account Executive, Ext. 27 tyler@tucsonlocalmedia.com NATIONAL ADVERTISING VMG Advertising, (888) 278-9866 or (212) 475-2529 Tucson Weekly® is published every Thursday by Times Media Group at 7225 N. Mona Lisa Rd., Ste. 125, Tucson, Arizona. Address all editorial, business and production correspondence to: Tucson Weekly, 7225 N. Mona Lisa Rd., Ste. 125, Tucson, Arizona 85741. Phone: (520) 797-4384, FAX (520) 575-8891. First Class subscriptions, mailed in an envelope, cost $112 yearly/53 issues. Sorry, no refunds on subscriptions. Member of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (AAN).

The Tucson Weekly® and Best of Tucson® are registered trademarks of Times Media Group. Back issues of the Tucson Weekly are available for $1 each plus postage for the current year. Publisher has the right to refuse any advertisement at his or her discretion.

Local band Sweet Ghosts finally gets to celebrate the release of An Endless Blue

TUCSON WEEDLY

17

Medical marijuana card applications way down this year after legalization

Cover image courtesy Bigstock

Copyright: The entire contents of Tucson Weekly are Copyright © 2019 by Thirteenth Street Media.

No portion may be reproduced in whole or part by any means without the express written permission of the Publisher, Tucson Weekly, 7225 N. Mona Lisa Rd., Ste. 125, Tucson, AZ 85741.

4

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

JUNE 10, 2021

CURRENTS

PHOTO BY CHRISTINA DURAN

Envision High School graduating senior Caitlyn Esquivel.

SEEDS OF SUCCESS

For students at Chicano Por La Causa charter schools, graduation is an act of resistance

as indigenous people, as people of color, the ways that we’ve survived in a society that said you don’t belong here. When you get your diplomas AS THE SUN SET OVER ANSELMO that’s one of the ultimate forms of Valencia Tori Amphitheatre on resistance. When you succeed, that’s Thursday night, the graduating class- resistance. I want to see some fists es of Toltecalli and Envision high up in the air. That represents your schools, led by Pasco Yaqui tribal resistance, and that represents that member, keynote speaker and social we’re not afraid and that we’re going worker Maria Molina Vai Sevoi, perto take space, and that we’re going to formed a rite of passage ceremony. be the caretakers of today and of the Acknowledging the land they stood future.” on and recognizing their roots, Vai In her speech, Vai Sevoi described Sevoi asked everyone present to close the graduating class as flourishing their eyes and breathe in light, love flowers and their seeds as everything and pride, then breathe out the water, that comes from their ancestors. breath and fire that was carried in “You’re the seeds that sprouted their ancestors’ body and peace. Then that your ancestors prayed for, that she asked them to raise a fist in the your mothers carried in their womb, air. that your caregivers nurtured,” said “This represents resistance,” said Vai Sevoi. “You flourished to this Vai Sevoi. “This represents resistance beautiful flower. Everything that they

By Christina Duran christinad@tucsonlocalmedia.com

taught you. Those are flowers. Every paper you’ve ever written, every song you ever jotted down, any artwork, anything that you’ve ever done.

Those are your flowers, and they have seeds.”

Graduating senior Cassandra Sanchez is one of those flowers. At the age of 16, Sanchez graduated last week from Toltecalli High School and will attend the University of Arizona to study marine biology.

As a graduating senior from one of the Chicano Por La Causa Community Schools, Sanchez had a flexible, tuition-free learning experience where she could make up for failed credit, utilize on and off campus resources and even graduate early.

Despite the pandemic and remote-learning woes, Sanchez pushed through to graduate.

“That was definitely difficult in the beginning but towards the end it got a lot easier,” said Sanchez. “My grades started going up so much but then we went back to school and then they went up even more.”

The possibility of graduating early and the knowledge that she could do other things after high school inspired Sanchez to graduate. She admits she is scared about starting university when she is much younger than her peers, but is grateful and inspired for the possible opportunities after high school. She was awarded the Wildcat Recognition Tuition Award and thanks her school for the help and resources they gave her to accomplish this.

“Toltecalli has really done a lot for me, and really just brought my spirits up and everything and I’m really grateful for the school,” said Sanchez.

“They’ve definitely given me a lot of support, more than I’ve ever gotten from any other school, like they have supported me in creating clubs, getting into new things and going after what I really like.”

While at Toltecalli, Sanchez created a travel club and participated in the Student Council. Sanchez also thanked her mom for her support during her graduation speech while choking back tears.

“But mostly, I want to thank my mom for helping me throughout high school and pushing me to be my very best,” Sanchez said. “I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes throughout high school, and especially at home but I’ve learned from Toltecalli and from you that the most important thing you can do is learn.”

Like Sanchez, Envision High School graduating senior Caitlyn Esquivel thanked her family and school for their support through a pandemic that made school harder.

“Over these last four years, or three, we have all had experiences of learning from the good and the bad, to laughing and the crying, or from the late night to the early mornings. I’m not going to stand here and tell you it was easy either, because it wasn’t.

Some of us had to deal with loss, anxiety, relationships, grades, tests and figuring out our futures. Some of us did that while working and all of us did that during a global pandemic,” Sanchez told her graduating class on Thursday night. “It is through both our struggles and perseverance that we are walking the stage and getting that diploma with our heads high and our futures on the horizon.”

She specifically thanked her dad for pushing her to graduate as well as everyone present at the ceremony who “helped us graduates get to where we are now and for that we are forever grateful. Whether it was family, friends or teachers we thank you, not just for helping us in our journey but for putting up with us.”

Esquivel accomplished a part of her plan when she graduated early from Envision High School at the age of 17 and plans to attend Pima Community College in the Fall to study business management.

Toltecalli High School Principal Angel Sobrino asked the students to remember who they are and their unique experiences.

“Most importantly guys and I say this seriously, never forget where you come from,” said Sobrino. “It’s your personal experiences that have brought you guys here today, as many of you guys said.” ■

JUNE 10, 2021

immunization for people post-COVID,” Cullen said. “It’s a risk/benefit, and the risks with acquiring immunity from the vaccine are very minimal…

I think the word I’d use is ‘enough.’ We know that you should get some natural immunity, but do you Health Director: Those Who’ve Already Had COVID Should Still have enough natural immunity to prevent you from getting sick again? The point is to get enough imGet Vaccinated munity in your system that if you get exposed, your memory T cells are going to stop it.”

By Jeff Gardner Cullen herself contracted COVID in December, jeff@tucsonlocalmedia.com and still got vaccinated as well. Cullen also serves as a clinical associate professor in the University of ArIN DISCUSSIONS ABOUT THAT EVER-ELUSIVE izona’s College of Medicine. She is a 25-year veteran herd immunity, the COVID-resistant population of the US Public Health Service’s Commissioned is divided between those who are vaccinated and Corps, and previously volunteered to establish and those who’ve achieved a “natural immunity” by operate a medical unit during the Ebola outbreak of becoming infected with the virus.

2014 and 2015 in Sierra Leone.

Either way, the immunity stems from the human Cullen says you can speculate the immune reaction body creating antibodies against COVID. So the from COVID cases in the state by combining the question naturally emerges: If someone has already number of people who’ve contracted COVID (nearbecome infected and then recovered from COVID, ly 1 million in Arizona) with the number of people do they still need to receive a vaccine? After all, who’ve been vaccinated (nearly 3 million). With shouldn’t their body already have those valuable these numbers combined, we approach the low end antibodies? of population estimates for herd immunity, but we’re As with many elements surrounding the pandem- not seeing that halt in cases, which may indicate ic, more research is required to reach a definitive naturalized immunity is not sufficient (as well as the answer. Pima County Health Director Theresa fact vaccines are not perfect).

Cullen acknowledges it’s a controversial topic, but “For us from a public health perspective, it’s a fine recommends those who’ve already had COVID to line. We want to encourage vaccination independent still get vaccinated for the simple reason she says of previous illness or infection,” Cullen said. “From a that the number of antibodies the body produces population perspective, we can’t reassure individuals post-COVID can vary widely, and thus, the strength what their current antibody status is, even if they had of a person’s immunity can vary as well. an infection—and because of the variants.”

“Because COVID really hasn’t been around that Another question is the longevity of immunity. long, there’s a lot of unknowns. If you look at what Again, research is still being conducted, but experts people like the World Health Organization and the estimate vaccines can remain effective for up to eight Centers for Disease Control are saying, even though months. And a study in The Lancet (“Incidence of we believe 90% to 99% of people who get a sympSARS-CoV-2 infection according to baseline antibody tomatic disease develop some kind of antibodies, status in staff and residents of 100 long-term care the amount of antibodies is unpredictable,” Cullen facilities”) found that residents in long-term care fasaid. “It seems to be clear that people who were sig- cilities had antibodies “associated with substantially nificantly ill develop a stronger antibody response reduced risk of reinfection... for up to 10 months after than people who were either asymptomatic or very primary infection.” mildly ill. And that’s an important factor, because There is discussion as to whether those who’ve had the recommendation that you get immunized would COVID need both vaccine shots, or just one, because depend on a high level of antibodies. The problem they likely already have some immunity. Cullen is, no one really knows what a high level is.” points to her work fighting a hepatitis A epidemic in Because of the difficulty of tracing asymptomatic the 1990s. That hepatitis vaccine also required two cases, estimates of their prevalence vary. Reports shots. And while Cullen said they were able to almost estimate that anywhere from 20% to 60% of COVID entirely stop transmission of that epidemic after only cases are asymptomatic, and state that the majority one shot, health workers still gave two shots to ensure of COVID is spread is due to these asymptomatic immunity. cases. However, data does show that those asymp“I don’t want to encourage people to only get one tomatic people most likely did not develop a signifi- shot, but I think the more people we can immunize cant antibody response. with only one shot, the more likely we are to stop the “Because of our inability to know on an individual transmission,” Cullen said. “And there is no indicabasis what your response has been, we recommend tion that the vaccine side effects are any different for

CURRENTS

COVERING BASES

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

5

people who’ve already had [COVID]. Now there are individual reports of people that have had COVID, and then get the vaccine and report that they feel like they have COVID again, usually for 12 to 24 hours.

But the problem with that is there are people who get the shot who’ve never been known to have COVID and they COURTESY PHOTO “I think the word I’d use is report those same ‘enough.’ We know that you kinds of should get some natural immusymptoms.” nity, but do you have enough According to the natural immunity to prevent you Arizona Department from getting sick again?” said of Health Services, Pima County Health Director Dr. daily COVID cases Theresa Cullen. have been at a low plateau since early March averaging, about 700 new cases in the state per day. Compare this to December and January, which had more than 5,000 new cases per day in the state.

“It’s really a scientific miracle in some ways, with what’s happened with COVID, because of the rapidity with which we developed the vaccine, produced, released it and immunized people,” Cullen said. “None of us have ever seen anything like his before, to go from scratch. But the key thing to halt the pandemic, we need to continue to get people immunized.” ■

3384 E. River Rd. at Green Things Nursery

(520) 209-1881 www.greenladyhydro.com LOCALLY OWNED AND CHEERFULLY OPERATED!

6

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

JUNE 10, 2021

it’s three times as many getting $15 or less; in Gila County, it’s eight times as many.

You may be shocked to discover that the number of kids most at risk of not completing high school is related to Gov. Ducey’s flat-tax promises don’t add up where the people getting $15 or less live.

So the places that most benefit from the “flat” tax, like Catalina Foothills or ParaBy Dave Wells are allowed to spend at the state-level dise Valley, are not the places that could tucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com on education. That we are almost at the most use new state investments to help bottom for state-funds per pupil to K-12 education (as opposed to local or federal) children be successful in school—such as Sunnyslope, Globe or Glendale.

REPUBLICAN LEGISLATIVE is of no concern to the lawmakers who Even if the “flat” tax fails, there’s good leadership and Gov. Doug Ducey think could be sending us a request to get rid that with forecasts of a $1.5 billion ongo- of such an ill-founded limit. Prop 208 has money betting that the legislature will ing budget “surplus” the best thing to do wording designed to evade the limit, but still carve out a break for the top 1% to is provide a $1.9 billion tax cut that goes the Arizona Supreme Court will have the spare them from having a top marginal rate of 8% on their incomes above overwhelmingly to wealthier households final say…soon. through a “flat” tax and neutralizing the In the world these policymakers live in, $250,000 (individuals) or $500,000 (married or head of household). Prop tax impact of Prop 208 on the top 1%. rich people are known as “job creators” 208 added a 3.5% surcharge for these Note that “surplus” here means project- or the vernacular “geese that lay golden higher income amounts. Grand Canyon ed revenues against a baseline of ongoeggs.” The rest of us don’t really count Institute estimates that over 10 years, ing formula expenditures that excludes in this world—as we merely fill jobs, we one-time funding areas that are not nec- don’t create them—and we don’t provide that surcharge could mean 10,000 out of more 3 million jobs would be lost in essarily really one-time and ignoring any anywhere near the productive capacity the few small businesses that would be areas not currently adequately funded or that rich people do. impacted by the surcharge. Of course, for formulas no longer being filled (such as How do we know this? They are rich for community colleges). and the market gives to each according Yes, that’s aggressive mathematics— to their economic contribution. It says but fear not, it will have such strong so in small invisible ink in Adam Smith’s SORENSEN dynamic growth covering one-third of Wealth of Nations—not to mention in the the costs that all will work out in the end. Prosperity Gospels found alongside MatThe market tells us so—at least that’s thew, Mark, Luke and John in the Bible. what economist Jim Rounds calculates.

Yes, there may be truth to the rumor Comparisons to Kansas that enacted that the real reason the legislature went a proportionally smaller income tax on recess before Memorial Day was bereduction geared toward its wealthier cause someone had sighted the invisible residents that led to catastrophic results, hand of the market—and they flocked to we are told, were because in Kansas they the scene to worship it. Mind you that’s were totally drinking the Kool-Aid think- only rumor—it’s perfectly possible the ing tax cuts actually pay for themselves, Senate President really did have a vacawhile here we’re being conservative. tion planned in Hawaii.

Proponents have two goals in mind: Flat taxes are notoriously regressive creating a flat personal income tax normally. Usually to lower the rate for instead of a progressive income tax and the rich, you need to massively raise making sure that the Prop 208 surcharge our rates so that the system is revenue does not hurt the top 1%. In other words, neutral. But alas, when a budget surplus the most important priority for the state is seen instead, they can lower the rates is protecting the well-off. for everyone. Of course, lowering the top Prop 208 though passed by voters marginal rate from 4.5% to 2.5% for marmust still survive a Arizona Supreme ried couples earning more than $300,000 Court challenge related to spending too is not exactly equivalent to lowering much money on education. the lowest marginal rate from 2.59% to Wait—Prop 208 could be thrown out 2.5%—so, yes, technically, the number of because it spends too much money on households getting $15 or less out of the education? Yes, while we do not have “flat” tax change will more than double a constitutional limit on how much we those who get $1,000 or more. can cut taxes for rich people, we do have And in some areas of the state the difa constitutional limit on how much we ference is more drastic. In Pima County,

GUEST COMMENTARY

AGGRESSIVE MATHEMATICS

those drinking the Kool-Aid, the Goldwater study that says 124,000 or more jobs would be lost—or more than one in six jobs at impacted small businesses—is what you believe to be gospel truth.

GCI instead has argued that investments that target the most at-risk students by making permanent changes to the public school funding formula is a much more prudent use of $800 million of the projected “surplus.” It not only provides dynamic returns in future economic growth, it targets rural and lower income communities. It’s called an “opportunity weight.”

How long do we have to wait for an opportunity to be seen as just as important as the people perceived as blessed by the market? ■ Dave Wells is research director for the Grand Canyon Institute which has done multiple analyses found at its website http://GrandCanyonInstitute.org. The views and sarcasm expressed are his own and may not reflect the views of the Institute and its Board of Directors. Reach him at DWells@azgci.org.

JUNE 10, 2021

DANEHY

TOM IS MOST DEFINITELY NOT COMING AROUND ON CHARTER SCHOOLS

By Tom Danehy, tucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com NOT LONG AGO, THERE WAS A headline in the op-ed section of a nationally known newspaper that read, “Can We Stop Fighting About Charter Schools?”

My initial response to that question was an emphatic “Oh, hell no!”

But then I thought about it and tried to be more open to the possibilities. I, for one, would be willing to stop fighting about charter schools when the last Republican stops trying to get tax breaks for the rich.

I’ll stop complaining about charter-school rip-off schemes when the other side stops trying to keep people of color from voting.

Heck, I’ll stop fighting about charter schools when the Arizona Legislature stops using taxpayer money to send rich kids to private schools. That seems fair.

The piece’s author, Eve L. Ewing, tries to walk a tightrope pointing out the gaping flaws in the charter system while expressing hope that, with everybody on board, the problems will just magically disappear.

Basically, her muffled cry of “Why can’t we all get along?” didn’t work when Rodney King tried it and it’s not going to work now.

Her argument is that charter schools are basically entrenched in the educational

CLAYTOONZ By Clay Jones

system, so why not just shrug and go along.

Charters are here to stay, so stop pointing out the hypocrisy behind their creation and the incredibly uneven quality of the education provided by charters. Some people might think that charters are here to stay, but I used to think that there was no way that Shakey’s Pizza and Chicken would ever go out of business and there you go.

Most people who hold education dear know about the sordid political machinations, the vulgar hatred of public-school teachers by Arizona’s elected officials, and the outright criminality that ran unchecked during the first decade of charters in our state. Arizona probably lost hundreds of millions of dollars to outright fraud because the legislators who were in such a rush to get the charter sham going that they forgot (or did they?) to provide any oversight for where the taxpayers’ money was going.

(For those of you who weren’t in Arizona in the 1990s, crooks would rent an abandoned convenience store building, send in a phony list of students who were “attending” their “excellence academy,” cash the check, then skip town. It happened a lot, but nobody knows how many times and with

how much loot.)

Nowadays, some of Arizona’s charter schools claim to have a patina of respectability. There is the much-despised BASIS, the high-pressure academic factory that churns out test-taking burnouts. The latest thing is the chain of charter schools owned by hedge funds. At last count, Arizona has at least THREE high schools named American Leadership Academy. Yeah, OK. I have no doubt that the teachers and parents of charter-school students want those kids to succeed. But if the entire system is built on a false premise and, to this day, is wide open to fraud and mismanagement, it’s ridiculous to suggest that we should just embrace it and move forward.

There was a reader’s comment recently in this publication claiming that “That the Black Lives Matter people would form an alliance against school choice is an abomination.” It’s such a lazy argument to claim that being against charter schools is the same as being against “school choice.”

In fact, Arizona parents have had a choice as to where to send their kids for decades now. And they have always had a choice of sending their kids to private school; they just had to pay for it. Now, “school choice” means using taxpayer money to defray the cost of sending kids from wealthy families to a private school that they were going to attend anyway.

It’s like the anti-vaxxers whose empty arguments revolve around “protecting

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

7

one’s medical history.” Ain’t nobody cares about your medical history, whether you’ve had gallstones or hammertoes. We just want to know if you did your part to help us get our country back on track. If so, you can go to the movies with us.

One of the numbers that jumped out in the article is that only 19% of all charter schools outperform their (closest in geography) non-charter peers in reading and math. I don’t know, I only got my math education in public schools, but it seems to me that 19% is a pretty crappy number.

Again, to be fair, 19% is better than less than 1%, which is where charter schools stacked up against real public schools for the longest time. So, in the past quarter-century, we’re up to 19%. If (and that’s a big IF) that trend continues, charter schools will be all the way up to mediocre by the year 2061 (which is also the year that Halley’s Comet is coming back).

How many kids will fall through the unmonitored charter-school cracks (as untold thousands have done in the past 25 years) in the Republican legislators’ never-ending quest to give public-school teachers the middle finger? For that matter, how many unscrupulous Republican legislators will bend the law in their favor so that they can enrich themselves at the public trough? And finally, how many years will pass before those of us who truly care about education just give up and accept the charter-school myth?

Sorry, that’s not gonna happen. ■

8

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

JUNE 10, 2021

us? Whatever it was, the woman seemed to carry a wisdom beyond us, leaving us speechless. A chair scratched against the floor, and a person in the back coughed.

As the uncomfortable pause persisted, I realized that I, too, was baffled. The political and economic conditions appeared to be so entrenched that change did seem virtually impossible. Trump was about to roll out his plans on live television. He was about to make the claim that “open borders” were allowing “drugs and gangs to pour into our most vulnerable communities,” and to claim that “millions of lowwage workers” would “compete for jobs and wages against the poorest Americans.” Trump may have even said this at the precise moment the woman asked her question, as we stood there looking at An excerpt from Tucson journalist Todd Miller’s new book, each other, hoping that somebody in the Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders group might answer.

The thing was, at that moment there After the students and I introduced was no practical alternative to the long ourselves, an older woman immediately legacy of border militarization to even ON A COLD EVENING IN JANUARY asked: “Why are you here?” She paused. talk about. Opposition to the wall among 2018, the very same night of Donald Democrats seemed to gain prominence Trump’s first State of the Union Address, She had a blanket around her shoulders like a shawl, to fend off the cold evening only after the 2016 election. But what several students and I visited the San they offered were simply different forms Juan Bosco shelter in Nogales, Mexico. In air. “What benefit does it bring us?”

A long and uncomfortable pause of the same “wall,” such as so-called the shelter’s chapel was a group of people, followed, partly while I interpreted her “smart walls,” technology meant to monmany recently expelled from the United question from Spanish to English, and itor, sort and exclude people with even States, seated in metal chairs. The funeral partly because we had no immediate greater efficiency than a standard barrier. of a six-week-old baby from Honduras a answer.

Why were we there?

Was it Just a week before, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuelfew days before had left a somber mood that still weighed heavily in the space. The because we were simply a class, learning lar had penned an op-ed for CNN titled “The answer to border security is techchild had died of exposure to the cold. The about border issues for a grade? Or was nology, not wall.” The Texas Democrat baby’s young, moneyless parents had just it something else all of us wished to be part of, was it that we wanted to learn characterized the wall as a 14th-century reached Nogales en route to the United how to topple the border barrier between solution to a 21st-century challenge. “InStates when the tragic death occurred.

stead of a wall,” Cuellar wrote, “we should increase the use of modern technology, including cameras, fixed towers and aerial and underground sensors.” This position has become a standard one for the Democratic Party and was reflected in the Joe Biden administration’s immigration platform when he took office in 2021. Unmentioned in Cuellar’s op-ed was that some of the top border contractors—companies such as Northrop Grumman, Caterpillar, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin—were lining his coffers to support his 2018 reelection campaign.

And two of the top prison management companies contracted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement—GEO Group and CoreCivic—contributed a whopping $55 million to his war chest.

I suppose we could have repeated the cliché that the “immigration system is broken” and we have to fix it. But what if it really was functioning entirely as designed? We could have told her that we would push for reform. But what exactly is meant by the phrase “comprehensive immigration reform”? It is true that new laws might contain provisions for a better legalization process and a more permanent status for beneficiaries of Deferred Action on Childhood Arrival (DACA) who fit a certain set of criteria.

But that would in no way help the people sitting before us on that cold night in Nogales. In fact, if the history of comprehensive immigration reform were any indication, any new policy would likely involve even more guns, guards and gates. The

REDRAWING THE LINES

“Part of COVID-19’s potent message is that everything can change at a moment’s notice,” Miller wrote. “Hierarchies can suddenly clash and reorganize. Perhaps the pandemic has brought humanity to something that has been needed for a long time: a new frontier.”

Miller acknowledges that his new frontier—a borderless world—is an idea that most people dismiss, including politicians on both sides of the aisle, who say a borderless world would cause chaos. Miller wonders if that’s a myth.

“It was like night and day. All of a sudden the border is sealed there,” said Miller. “Why can’t you do it the opposite way? Like Operation Un-hold the Line, but anyhow, that’s not even in the

SEEKING SANCTUARY

Carlos asked him for a ride and, while Miller’s first instinct was to help the man, he experienced what he calls “wall sickness.” He hesitated when he remembered his kindness would be considered a federImmigration author Todd Miller says we need al crime. At the same time, he thought the bigger crime would be leaving a man to to think about borders in new ways possibly die in the desert.

“Why am I compelled to be complicit

By Christina Duran either with enforcing authoritarian law or christinad@tucsonlocalmedia.com with upholding our common humanity, with building a wall or building a bridge?”

TUCSON JOURNALIST TODD MILLER Miller asks himself in Build Bridges, Not opens his newest book with an encounter Walls: A Journey to a World Without he had with an undocumented immigrant Borders.

“In a lot of ways [the book] is a meditain the Arizona desert about 20 miles from tion on the fact, ‘Why did I hesitate in that U.S-Mexico border. moment?’ It’s also a meditation on these Miller offered Juan Carlos water and years of reporting on the border and just asked if he needed anything else. Juan

kind of even a reflection of those years,” said Miller.

This week’s excerpt from the book takes Miller from a shelter in Nogales to conventions where corporations try to convince government agencies to purchase “solutions” to border security issues.

With 15 years of experience as an immigration journalist, Miller has investigated the increased spending on militarization, security and fortification. At the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, he said there were 15 border walls in existence; today, there are more than 70 walls around the world.

Writing most of the book during the pandemic last year, Miller found the novel coronavirus showcased the inability of borders to deal with global issues.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 11

JUNE 10, 2021

2013 bipartisan “gang of eight” reform bill— the last one passed by the U.S. Senate but rejected in the House—had $45 billion going to the border over a 10-year period. The budget’s intention was to double the forces of the Border Patrol and triple the capacity of its “zero tolerance” Operation Streamline, which incarcerates border-crossers by the tens of thousands each year. Hungry to tap the bulging purse, corporations lobbied for loads of border technology to be purchased as part of the reform. Three companies—Northrop Grumman, United Technologies, and EADS North America—pumped more than $70,000 per day into their lobbying efforts. This meant more VADER systems (man-hunting radar manufactured by Northrop Grumman), more Blackhawk helicopters (15 of them from United Technologies, a company then about to be bought by Lockheed Martin) and eight helicopters from EADS North America.

That is the long-term vision planned for the people in the shelter, and neither we nor they are invited to the planning sessions. It doesn’t matter if you are on the move because droughts wilted your crops, hurricanes blasted your house, mines poisoned your water, or floods swallowed your land, or you are fleeing murderous persecution and extortion, or violent economic dispossession by corporate or local oligarchies. It doesn’t matter if you are skipping meals for your children, or if you are fleeing for your very life.

I have gone to conferences and conventions involving companies and government in Phoenix, Paris, Tel Aviv, Mexico City, San Antonio, El Paso, and Washington, D.C., to observe how the long-term vision is monetized and dehumanized. There are lots of carpeted convention centers filled with vendors hungry to sell robots, drones, surveillance cameras, radar systems, license plate scanners, facial recognition systems, iris recognition software, guns, sunglasses, ready-to-eat meals, and insta-latrines. I remember one man selling a portable, easy-to-deploy metal barrier capable of stopping a truck at high speeds. The material it was made of was on display at the expo. When I asked the salesman if the stuff could really stop a Mack

Truck, as his sales video indicated, his response was, “You better believe it. This is evolution. This is the future.” When I saw him again later that day, he called me over with semi-anxious eyes and asked me where he could find buyers for his product. Startled that he was asking me, I could only point to my name tag indicating that I was a journalist. A few hours later, I was in front of a Raytheon salesman who was hawking the latest technology for acoustic detection that, and I couldn’t get this out of my mind, looked like the sad, maligned Christmas tree from Charlie Brown.

For 40 years, border and immigration enforcement budgets have gone up, year after year, with little or no public consultation or debate.

“It’s to detect where bullets are shot from,” he told me.

“Bullets are flying over the border?”

I asked, knowing the answer to my own question.

“You’d be surprised,” he told me, “not every day, but every other day.” He left it to the world of long-cultivated assumptions as to who was doing the shooting.

While pointing to his product—a desert-colored pole with microphones extending from its top in all directions— he said that it could be mounted on the border wall “every quarter mile or so.”

The vision was tangible and precise, the raw imagination of the constantly churning border-industrial complex. Within constraints, it is constantly imagining how to monetize a future world of increasingly militarized compliance, caste, exclusion, and hierarchy, with next to no pushback or dissent.

Most of us are not involved in debating the future marketed at these sales conventions, we’re not at the closeddoor meetings, the hotel rooms, the golf courses where future borderscapes are mapped out, and where money begins to line the pockets of influential poli-

cy-makers. This is especially true of the people sitting at the shelter, the people who are targets of the acoustic detection systems, Mack Truck–stopping walls and infrared goggles. For 40 years, border and immigration enforcement budgets have gone up, year after year, with little or no public consultation or debate.

It has been amazing to me, as I’ve traveled the country for the past decade or so speaking on these topics, to see the general lack of awareness about how much these border and immigration enforcement budgets have increased over the last four decades. At the advent of the Ronald Reagan presidency in 1980, the annual border and immigration budget was $349 million, through the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). In 2020, the combined budget of its superseding agencies, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), exceeded $25 billion. That is a 6,000 percent increase.

These increases are fueled by rhetoric that uses the seemingly incontestable term “security,” with no debate at all. But when I began to examine the appropriations process—the one through which budgets like that of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are determined, including how much money is earmarked for certain contracts and certain companies—I found the level of public ignorance less startling. In fact, the debate about the future happens every year; it’s just that most of us are not invited. Big corporations such as Northrop Grumman, Elbit Systems, General Atomics, and Deloitte show up in throngs, but behind closed doors that

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

9

keep you and me out.

The absence of public involvement was on full display in 2006 when Michael Jackson, an official with CBP, stood before private industry representatives.

When discussing the new technology program on the border, known as SBInet, he said: “This is an unusual invitation.

I want to make sure you have it clearly, that we’re asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business. We’re asking you. We’re inviting you to tell us how to run our organization.” As a former executive with Lockheed Martin, Jackson knew how corporations and the U.S. government interact, free from public oversight. And after Jackson made that comment, from 2006 to 2018, CBP and ICE doled out 99,000 contracts worth approximately $45 billion, equivalent to the accumulated border and immigration enforcement budgets from 1975 to 2002.

That’s 27 years of budgets combined.

The U.S. government and multinational corporations project enforcement scenarios decades into the future, imagining a world increasingly destabilized due to mass migrations caused by catastrophic climate change. Countries such as the United States and Australia need to envision erecting “defensive fortresses” in response, according to a 2003 Pentagon report. In March 2013, Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, the commander of the United States Pacific Command, said that global warming was the greatest threat the United States faced. Mass destabilization, he said, “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen [to] cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.”

CONTINUED ON PAGE 10

10

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

JUNE 10, 2021

SEEKING SANCTUARY CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9

Today, as the scientific basis for catastrophic climate change has become hard to avoid even for its most fervent deniers, officials are explicitly placing weather and environmental events in the same threat landscape as terrorism or organized crime. As Admiral Craig Faller, commander of Southern Command, said during a July 2020 hearing titled National Security Challenges and U.S. Military Activity in North and South America, “The ability to rapidly respond to events, whether it’s a weather event, or an environmental event, a terrorist attack, [or a] transnational criminal organization, is important.

So we continue to watch that closely and ensure that our exercise programs, our security cooperation programs, emphasize the partners’ capacity to do that, because as we see in some of these massive hurricanes, no one nation has the ability to do that alone.” The seemingly bland term “security cooperation programs” means that the United States is redefining its border, training border guards and sending armored patrol vehicles and guns and other resources not only to Central American and Caribbean countries, but also deep into South America, with CBP attachés now in Brasilia and Bogotá. As with the war on drugs and the war on terror,

there is now a war on climate change, aimed not at mitigating carbon emissions in the biosphere, but at erecting “defensive fortresses” against the people most impacted, the people on the move. As author, scholar and activist Harsha Walia writes, emphasizing the need to reframe the conversation around borders, there isn’t a border crisis, there is a “displacement crisis.”

Efforts to advance comprehensive immigration reform take place today against this background of increasingly dystopic security forecasts. Despite the fact that the U.S. Border Patrol and ICE remain sacrosanct, with ever more resources, a movement to abolish ICE emerged in 2018 and began to pry open this locked door. However, Democrats— as is often their way—voiced support and watered it down at the same time.

For them, it became a call for reforms.

Democrats have avoided taking on CBP in any substantial way (though U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a notable exception), because questioning territorial boundaries and their enforcement apparatus remains far beyond the party’s parameters of acceptable debate.

The debate is usually silenced by one phrase—“every country has the right to protect its borders”—and it’s left for the crickets to guess who and what actually gets protected and how.

The difficulty of collaborating on

long-term alternatives became apparent to me when the nonprofit Institute for the Future (IFTF) invited me to a workshop in 2019. The purpose of the workshop was to think systemically and imaginatively about the future of immigration. The IFTF invited experts from across the country, many people working on the front lines, and many who were undocumented and refugees themselves, to imagine different possible futures for immigration, from most desired to worst-case scenarios. One revelation that emerged at the beginning of the conference was that front-line workers weren’t able to think at all about the future, let alone strategize. There was no time. The demand of dealing with constant emergencies in real time overwhelmed them.

At the 2018 State of the Union Address, President Trump said, “The United States is a compassionate nation. We are proud that we do more than any other country to help the needy, the struggling, the underprivileged all over the world.

But as president of the United States, my loyalty, my greatest compassion, and my constant concern is for America’s children.” Surely not words the people in the Nogales shelter would find comforting.

Simultaneously, there was something liberating about standing on the other side of the U.S. border, in a space where there was little to no awareness that the State of the Union was even happening.

For just a moment we were free from U.S. discourse and its claustrophobic parameters of what was considered debatable and what was not. In this sense, being there freed us from our own preconceptions, from the scrolling confines of smartphones, from headlines based on whatever view we were supposed to hold.

As the pause continued, we could feel the cold Nogales night seeping through the cracks, but also something more glorious, a conversation that was going to challenge not only the walls enclosing the United States, but also the walls within ourselves. It was as if questions that are never asked publicly in the United States were suddenly freed and could be voiced earnestly and directly.

Before anyone took a stab at responding to the woman’s question—What benefit does your presence bring us?—a man broke the prolonged silence, saying: “We do all your labor.” He paused, as if waiting for somebody to inject dissent.

“All of it.”

“You call us criminals,” he said.

“People are making sacrifices for their families”—he gestured to the people sitting around him on the metal folding chairs, bundled up in jackets, all focused on his words—“so their children can have a taco.”

He continued with building emotion: “We are now separated from our children and you still call us criminals.” Many

COURTESY PHOTO

JUNE 10, 2021

people in front of us nodded in agreement, moving others to comment on the atrocity of children torn away from their parents. This was five months before Attorney General Jeffrey Sessions gave his “zero tolerance” speech, and forced family separations became a daily feature in the news cycle. But they were talking about separation policies that long predated Trump.

Back at his State of the Union monologue, Trump was announcing his “four pillars” of immigration reform that would “fully secure the border,” and end the “visa lottery” and “chain migration” while associating border-crossers—like all the people before us in the shelter—with the violent MS-13 gang.

Indeed, while an awkward tension persisted, people began to talk, and the conversation became more pregnant with possibility, creating a sort of bridge between us. Suddenly the border meant nothing. Indeed, the very conversation challenged not only the militarized borders imposed between us, but also the way they suffocate debate and discourse. We could feel, as the profound Nigerian thinker and writer Bayo Akomolafe would say, the composting of such notions. With the awkwardness came something else: an understanding that how things are named, acknowledged and funded were choices that perpetuate unjust realities and preventable suffering. Change is also a choice, and to drive it, we need new language, one that acknowledges and asserts a sovereignty and solidarity greater than any wall. By committing to such choices, we enter what Akomolafe calls the sanctuary.

In conversations with me from his home in India, Akomolafe explained the difference between refuge and sanctuary. Refuge is a place where you can be safe, where safety is the goal.

Sanctuary, however, is an “invitation to lose shape, to become something different.” The shelter that night in Mexico felt like it was hovering in between those two spaces. ■ From Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders. Copyright (c) 2021 by Todd Miller. Reprinted with permission of City Lights Books. citylights.com.

REDRAWING THE LINES CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8

conversation right?”

Miller finds “wall sickness”—a term first used to describe the heightened feeling of anxiety felt by German people living near the Berlin Wall—extends beyond the border now. The narrowness felt from the “internationalization of the wall into the people’s psyche” could be seen in Border Patrol agents, who do not allow people to touch the wall, or a person in Kansas, far from the border, who may tout “Build the wall” because they believe someone will take their job or food.

“I would argue that is an internalization of something, and maybe in this sense, it’s more mythical right,” said Miller. “The same sort of set of mistaken values, I would say. What is really needed for humankind? What is really a threat?”

Miller quotes Admiral Samuel J Locklear III, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, who said global warming was the greatest threat the U.S. faced because of mass destabilization.

“The real threat, the biggest existential threat that faces humanity, or one of them, is this rapidly changing climate and that’s what every scientist is saying,” Miller says. “And yet you don’t put enough resources into that, instead you build up your borders. And it just makes absolutely no sense. It needs a global solution. It doesn’t need more divisions between people. It needs people to come together to come up with some sort of solutions and broad strokes and also in very local strokes.”

Thus Miller goes on a journey to consult with philosophers, religious and political figures, migrants and his own child, William, to guide the reader through his own questions and explore a world beyond what we are accustomed to.

Miller explores the idea of sanctuary and transgression through Nigerian thinker Bayo Akomolafe, the Franciscan concept of “overflowing love” from Brother David Bauer and the Zapatistas’ view of the world and the fight to achieve it.

While he offers no set solutions, at the heart of Miller’s ’s book is an impulse toward a humble civil disobedience or abolition through acts of kindness.

Miller quotes Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara: “At the risk of seeming ridiculous let me say a true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.”

“What I think needs to be done are the imaginations need to be opened and I’m not even suggesting I know what to do,” Miller says. “What I am suggesting is that me and you talk, maybe our conversation can bring up all these ideas and we bring other people in, regular people, the people most impacted especially and then, we all talk together.

As he wrote the book, Miller watched various moments of social unrest, including the unfolding of the Black Lives Matter movement. Miller believes in the change from the bottom up and the power of interconnectivity.

“If somebody hears abolition, they might think, ‘Oh, that means going and tearing down something,’ or it might mean like a violent act of some sort and really it’s the exact opposite,” says Miller.

“It could be like many things, right? It could be you in an organization. It could be you doing some sort of civil disobedience on a big scale or it could be like you deciding to be kind to somebody that you wanted to be mean to.”

Miller finds borders to be anti-empathetic, thriving on the idea of “us versus them,” so the person in Kansas who has never seen the border thinks there are

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 11

bad people on the other side, “which just naturally makes them inclined not to think about their lives at all.”

At an event for this book in Patagonia, Miller met someone who tried to support his idea of a wall by talking about his experience with Columbians in New York.

Miller suggested the man travel 10 to 20 minutes to the Nogales border crossing to meet and talk to people.

“I think that is really effective, the more that people could go and talk to people that have been otherized, maybe even subconsciously by them, through the ways that people get depicted, and just break through those boundaries,” Miller says. “I think that brings the walls down too.”

When imaging a world with bridges instead of walls, Miller also consulted his now 5-year-old son William. William called Border Patrol agents “green men,’ indulged in his own act of civil disobedience when he playfully peed on the wall and asked his father why the steel bollards couldn’t be turned into bikes.

“I think that captures the spirit of what I was trying to say with this book, actually,” Miller says. ■

12

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

JUNE 10, 2021

CINEMA

COURTESY PHOTO

ASPIRING TO NEW ‘HEIGHTS’ Emotional, upbeat film recalls old Hollywood

By Christina Fuoco-Karasinski tucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com

be able to grasp.”

Set to hit screens on Friday, June 11, In the Heights fuses Lin-Manuel Miranda’s IN THE HEIGHTS STARS OLGA music and lyrics with director Chu’s liveMerediz and Jimmy Smits say their mu- ly eye for storytelling. Chu also directed sical masterpiece is the perfect anecdote 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians. to a rough 18 months.

The film takes viewers to the streets of “It’s balanced with emotional and deep Washington Heights, where the scent of moments, but there’s a lot of happiness Cafecito caliente hangs in the air outside and joy,” says Merediz, who plays the of the 181st Street subway stop. Led by matriarch Abuela Claudia. “The musical bodega owner Usnavi (Anthony Ramos, numbers are just right. The music cuts A Star is Born), the tight-knit, multiculright through to you and Jon Chu has tural community shares its dreams and done an amazing, amazing job with his wishes with each other—in the hopes of incredible visuals. I think people are paving a way out, while maintaining its really going to resonate with the charac- ties to Washington Heights. ters and I think people are really going to “I hope people recognize themselves enjoy it.” and see themselves and feel proud,” With a wide smile, Smits says, “ditto,” Merediz says. but takes it a step further.

Smith adds viewers mustn’t live in “We’ve also had to reckon with a lot of Washington Heights to feel for the social issues in the past year and a half,” characters. says Smits, who plays Kevin Rosario, a fa“I’m sure you had your nanas, your ther who butts heads with his ambitious grandmothers and that,” he says. “The daughter. “We’re hoping that this film city might be different, and the cultural provides joy. Musicals tend to be upliftspecificity might be a little different, but ing and inspirational, but the universal the feelings of community and family, themes resonate very strongly. I think and how the generation who comes here this film is something all audiences will from another place has expectations for

their (children and grandchildren) are all the same. Those are universal things.”

Merediz starred as Abuela Claudia on the stage version of In the Heights. She’s excited to spread her character’s word among the mass of movie lovers.

“I wanted to give Claudia the platform she deserves,” says Merediz, referring to her character’s age. “She’s a character who is overlooked in our society. It’s just such a youth-oriented society. It gives me such pleasure to give her that platform.”

She explains she enjoyed translating the stage version for film, although it was a little challenging.

“The difference is, on stage, you’re delivering to the last row and you’re doing things chronologically. In a film, everything is very internal, and you shoot out of sequence. That is a challenge for an actor to keep your place, to where you are to keep that flow and that intensity of the moment in the song. It was definitely challenging, but I was up for the challenge. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

In the Heights will be available in cinemas and on HBO Max. Smits and Merediz say, although it’s available to watch at home, In the Heights is worthy of a trip to the movie theater.

“The film has to be seen in the cinema,” Merediz says. “These huge numbers are epic, and they need the biggest screen you have. I know in the past year we were in lockdown. We didn’t have a choice. I think it’s a good idea to have the option to see it in the movies and also at home, if you don’t have the ability to go to the cinema. I hope people see it in the theater.”

The singing and dancing numbers can translate to a cellphone or computer, but Smits agrees — go to the cinema.

“Jon’s chosen to give these visual flourishes to old Hollywood,” he adds.

“It takes your breath away. He really did such a great job. I hope we bring richness, light and happiness to their (cinema-goers’) lives. After the horrible year that we’ve had, people are ready for a film like this.” ■

“In the Heights” Opens Friday, June 11, in theaters and HBO Max

COURTESY PHOTO

JUNE 10, 2021

CINEMA

PHOTO COURTESY BEN ROTHSTEIN/WARNER BROS

POOR EXORCISE FORM The latest Conjuring installment is a hell of a mess

By Bob Grimm tucsonweekly@tucsonlocalmedia.com

THE FILMS OF THE CONJURING universe haven’t all been winners, but the first two main installments (director James Wan’s The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2) had a stylish, creepy charm to them, and some of the spinoffs (including Annabelle: Creation) provided solid exercises in horror.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is the third film based very loosely on a “true” story featuring Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga). The now infamous paranormal investigators always seemed to be present when somebody cried possession in the ’70s and ’80s.

For example, they were sniffing around the premises that later inspired the Amityville Horror franchise (referenced in The Conjuring 2).

This time out, the story is based on the real “Devil Made Me Do It” case that saw a man stab another man to death, and later claim that demonic possession led to his crime. So, a real life guy murdered somebody and then entered a plea that it wasn’t his fault

because demonic forces were controlling his limbs. That early ’80s case didn’t get very far in the courts, but it is treated with total seriousness in the world of The Conjuring.

And that world has become a hackneyed, tiresome recycling of horror tropes in The Devil Made Me Do It. James Wan has vacated the director’s chair, leaving the proceedings in the not so capable hands of Michael Chaves (The Curse of la Llorona), who resorts to full-on rip-off of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist in the film’s opening minutes.

The Warrens are present in the prologue as a young boy gets possessed and does some unintentionally funny “spider walk” contortions accompanied by the obligatory disgusting mouth froth. The priest that performs the exorcism arrives on scene in a moment that recreates the silhouetted image from The Exorcist poster, so there’s no real attempt to hide that classic film’s influence. The only things missing from the exorcism scene are Max Von Sydow and gallons of pea soup.

During the latter stages of the demonic melee, the young boy passes his malevolent body renter onto his

sister’s boyfriend, Arne Cheyenne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor). Johnson suffers some hallucinations soon thereafter, and eventually stabs a guy to death while allegedly under the influence of the devil’s minions.

The Warrens, after witnessing the initial exorcism, come back to town to investigate the possible possession, and find that all sorts of evil forces are involved.

So, a real-life murderer is depicted in this movie as an unwilling vessel for the devil’s business, with the Warrens fully convinced he’s innocent thanks to the forces of the little red devil guy. As portrayed by O’Connor, Arne Johnson is just a sweet fella who protected a little bespectacled boy by allowing a demon to jump from the kid into him. He’s actually a hero in the movie.

Who cares, right? As long as the scares are good, we’ll take some bending of the truth in the name of cinematic horror.

Chaves and his writers are not up to the task, concocting a bunch of unfocused nonsense involving curses, witch totems, cults, ghoulish priests, basements, scary woods, corpses, rats, waterbeds, dog kennels and murderous daughters. It seems as if every other scene in this film features Farmiga’s character heading into a basement or crawlspace with a flashlight because that’s what you do in horror films. While Wan could make old tricks feel new, Chaves just does them to death with no reward. At just under two hours, his film feels twice as long.

The Warrens had quite a few investigations during their run, so this franchise has some more “true stories” to bounce off of for future installments. Rest assured, there will be more Conjuring films.

The Warrens need a serious change of scenery, so future writers should transform one of their haunted houses into a skyscraper that’s on fire, or an airplane flying over the Bermuda Triangle. Switch things up. Little kids frothing from the mouth and possessed dudes with foggy contact lenses hanging around in basements are getting tired.

As for that true story claim at the beginning of this movie, the level of truth in a Conjuring film is akin to the level of actual alcohol you find in your watered down dive bar cocktail mixed by a guy named Lenny on a Thursday night. ■

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 13

Although the Loft Cinema is hosting indoor movies once again, they also recently announced a series of films in their “Open Air Cinema” series in partnership with Barrio Brewing Co. for Pride month. Their Open Air Cinema takes place in The Loft’s parking lot with the movie projected onto the side of the building. Seating is limited (sanitized chairs will be provided, or you can supply your own). Attendees at Open Air Cinema may remove masks only when seated; all interactions with staff and volunteers must be conducted while masked. Here the latest entries in their open-air series: The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. The Loft is celebrating Pride month with this landmark of queer cinema, that sees two drag queens travel across the Australian desert performing for enthusiastic crowds and homophobic locals. Aside from helping bring LGBT themes to mainstream movie audiences, this ‘90s comedy allows you to see Hugo Weaving in some outlandish get-ups. 8 p.m.

Friday, June 11; Monday, June 14; and Thursday, June 17. 3233 E. Speedway Blvd. $10.

My Own Private Idaho. This indie film takes River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves on an adventure from Oregon to Idaho and then overseas, all loosely based on Shakespeare’s “Henry” plays. From the director of Drugstore Cowboy, Gus Van Sant, the film is a combination of two screenplays, and sees the principal character navigating “a volatile world of junkies, thieves and johns on their grungy journey of discovery.” 8 p.m.

Sunday, June 13 and Wednesday, June 16. 3233 E. Speedway Blvd. $10. ■

14

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

JUNE 10, 2021

by Emily Dieckman Harkins Family Fun Series. Didn’t you miss the movies? With the popcorn, and the big ol’ drink, and the beautiful, wonderful air conditioning? Sometimes it’s really more about the experience than about the movie itself. Throughout the summer, Harkins Theatres is featuring family movies every week for just $5. If you join My Harkins Awards, a free loyalty program, they’re only $3, AND you get 50% of a kids combo on weekdays before 6 p.m. Up this week: Despicable Me, an age-old tale of a man who sets out to steal the moon and instead has his heart stolen by a trio of loveable orphans.

Showing June 11-17 at Harkins locations.

Visit harkins.com for more info.

A Life in the Theatre. If you ask me, there are few things theatre-lovers love more than theatre about theatre.

But stage aficionado or no, you won’t want to miss this hilarious, Pulitzer Prize-winning show over at Live Theatre Workshop. The two main characters are John, an up-and-coming young actor, and Robert, an older actor whose career is beginning to wane. Watching the contrast between youthful wonder and middle-aged cynicism, and their places in the cycles of life, might sound a little heavy, but it’s done with levity and

humor and sincerity that will have you feeling like it’s all going to be OK. Thursday, June 10, to Saturday, July 10, at Live Theatre Workshop, 3322 E. Fort Lowell Road. $20 GA, $18 military/senior/student, $15 Thursdays and previews.

Summer Safari Nights. To the zoo! To the zoo! Summer Safari Nights are our favorite because it’s a chance to hang out with animals without having to venture out into the heat of the day. This week’s theme is ocean conservation and sustainable seafood. Many animals—including otters, grizzly bears, jaguars and alligators, love spending time in the water.

So this is a great chance to come hang out with them and learn what you can do to help protect the health of Earth’s oceans. Wear your best ocean blue outfit and opt for your reusable water bottle tonight. Live music by Michael P. and the Gullywashers. 5:30 to 8 p.m. Saturday, June 12. Reid Park Zoo, 3400 Zoo Court. $10.50 adults, $8.50 seniors, $6.50 kids ages 2 to 14.

HUB’s Rooftop Dinner Summer Series.

You know what? It has been a long year and a half, and a long semester, and probably a long week. And you should treat yourself to a rooftop dinner at some point this summer. Luckily, HUB is providing multiple chances.

In the first dinner in the series, they’re partnering with Dragoon Brewery on a five-course food and drink experience.

Just to whet your appetite, we’re talking coffee rubbed smoke beef short rib paired with a Russian imperial stout, and apple cheddar bruschetta paired with a pale ale. And that’s just two of the five courses! Must call 207-8201 to reserve a spot. 6 p.m. Thursday, June 17.

HUB Restaurant, 266 Congress. $70 per person, plus tax and tip. Future dinners take place on the third Thursday of summer months.

Round Up at the Ranch 5K. Community races like this one are really special for a couple of reasons. One is the sense of camaraderie they build between participants. Oftentimes everyone stands together at the start cracking giddy jokes about how they’re nervous or how it’s funny that runners choose to torture themselves with early-morning events like this. Another is the sheer sense of accomplishment you get from completing a race. And another is just those good ‘ole endorphins. This race starts at Steam Pump Ranch and goes down the multi-use path toward Catalina State Park. You can also choose to participate virtually and run 3.1 miles wherever you

want, but you won’t be eligible for any awards. Proceeds benefit Oro Valley’s Youth Recreation Scholarship Fund. 6 a.m. start time Sunday, June 13. Steam Pump Ranch, 10901 N. Oracle Road. $25.

Encompassing Arizona. Did you know that Tohono Chul’s Exhibits Program has worked with more Arizona artists than any other organization in the state since the program began in 1985? If you haven’t had a chance to check out this exhibit yet, don’t miss it. And even if you have, come check it out again. Encompassing Arizona is a rotating invitational exhibition that presents a wide variety of artworks from established and emerging artists all across the state.

If you find something you can’t leave without, you can feel good knowing that half of all sales proceeds help fund programs at Tohono Chul. Tohono Chul Main Gallery, 7366 Paseo Del Norte.

Open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. $15 GA, with discounts for seniors, military, students and kids.

One Dollar Clothing Sale. I’m going to venture a guess that most of us, at some point in the last weird year, did a little bit of cleaning or decluttering around the house to combat feelings of either boredom, confusion or terror. So, you might just have a little bit of extra room in your closet now for some new thrifted threads. In conjunction with the exhibition Pia Camil: Three Works, MOCA is partnering with Buffalo Exchange for this sale. And 100% of the proceeds ben-

JUNE 10, 2021

efit MOCA and its educational resources. The sale runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, June 12, but you must book a timed ticket in advance at moca-tucson.org. Masks are required. 265 S. Church Ave. Cool Saturday Nights in June at the Desert Museum. Strolling through the Desert Museum is always a treat, even if you have to do it in 100-degree heat.

But doing it NOT in 110-degree heat is even more of a treat. On Saturday nights in June, the Desert Museum is open until 9 p.m., so you can hang out with soaring bats, splashing beavers and glowing scorpions.

If you come at the right time, you might even get to catch one of those stunning sunsets that makes you think living in the desert isn’t so bad after all. Bring a flashlight to explore, and add a beer or wine tasting if you’re feeling fancy. 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday, June 12. Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, 2021 N. Kinney Road. $23.95 GA, with discounts for youth, seniors, military and Arizona/Sonora residents.

Kingfisher Road Trip. Oh, this is a true rite of summer, and we are so glad it’s back this year at the Kingfisher! This six-week virtual tour features cuisines from six distinct regions of the U.S., so you can feel like you’re traveling across the country even if you won’t be going on any trips this summer. Stick with it throughout the summer, because if you purchase five Dinner Road Trip entrees, the sixth is free! At the very end of the season in September, they’ll do a “best of” compilation with guests’ favorites from throughout the summer. First up is the Southwest! Featuring chile verde soup, grilled pork medallions with mole, tres leches cake and plenty more. Now underway and served through June 12 at Kingfisher, 2465 E. Grant Road.

Artists Studio Tour and Sale. Do you ever miss DVDs? They had those amazing special features section with things like deleted scenes, bloopers and be-

hind-the-scenes content. There’s just something cool about going behind the scenes and seeing how art is made. That’s one reason why this double show, which features both art for sale and studio tours, makes for an excellent summer outing. Don Baker, who works with rusted steel on canvas, is doing a retrospective. And Risa Waldt is showing her spring collection paintings.

10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, June 12, and Sunday, June 13. Don Baker is at 16530 N. Ridge Rock Road. Risa Waldt is at 65650 E. Edwin Road.

Tucson Museum of Art. TMA has several shows terrific shows this summer, including 4X4: Willie J. Bonner, Nazafarin Lotfi, Alejandro Macias and AnhThuy Nguyen, which are four solo shows making up on exhibition of work by artists “influenced by their personal experiences, politics of space, and social issues of our time.” (Through Sept. 26). TMA is taking pandemic precautions: Attendance is limited and you’re asked to reserve your tickets in advance. Face masks are required and guests are asked to physically distance from other groups. 140 N. Main Ave. Ready to Launch: Arizona’s Place in Space. The Arizona History Museum is launching a really neat new exhibit this week, all about the role that Arizona and Arizonans have played in space exploration.

Arizona has several claims to fame, but things like sending multiple missions to Mars and helping capture the first image of a black hole have got to be among the coolest. The exhibit includes objects from NASA, Lowell Observatory, the UA and—in the spirit of galactic neighborliness—even ASU. Come be inspired, whether you’re 2 years old or 102. Ongoing through Nov. 30, 2021. Open 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Arizona History Museum, E. Second St. $10 GA, with discounts for students, seniors and youth (free for kids 6 and under). Ask about free admission for veterans. ■

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 15

16

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

JUNE 10, 2021

vocal harmonies. The truly sweet title track sets the themes of wide-open spaces and connection.

“A lot of the lyrics, and even the moods and environments I was aiming to interpret, there was an intentional drive to be in a calmer place, sort of as a reaction to not being calm myself,” Alfred said.

“There was a lot of wondering about the world and how I relate to the world and how we relate to each other.”

With such a gorgeous opening, listeners could be content with the chamber folk style throughout, but the sky contains clouds and thunder as well. The track “Back to Tucson” is a bona fide desert blues anthem, while “Crusher” is a darkly distorted soundscape. But it all comes together with a theme of trying to understand, but at the same time acknowledging that some things aren’t able to be understood.

“I often feel adrift and go through PHOTO BY TAYLOR NOEL PHOTOGRAPHY periods where I feel loved by my friends and family, and periods where I feel alienated or angry, and trying to get better about not placing too much emphasis on those feelings. And I think 2020 was just Local band Sweet Ghosts finally gets to celebrate the release of An Endless Blue one long exercise in surfing those waves between having periods of loneliness and seeing friends. But even then it was often in many ways, coming from a place of out in a park and only feeling connection

By Jeff Gardner uncertainty and an attempt to make sense for a few hours,” Alfred said. jeff@tucsonlocalmedia.com of things larger than one’s self. Released While Alfred and Byrnes’ interplay in the infamous March 2020, the band takes center stage, the beauty of the even dedicated all of the album’s proceeds record is also due to a variety of local muUNLESS WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF toward the Tucson Musicians COVID-19 sicians. An Endless Blue was recorded in the monsoon, it’s rare for a Tucson concert Relief fund. But with stages repopulating, early 2018 at Landmark Studios by Steven to get rained out. It’s almost unheard of it’s time for Hotel Congress attendees to Lee Tracy. Those recording sessions infor a show to get rained out twice. But for finally hear live performances of An Endcluded Ben Nisbet and Emily Nolan on vifolk outfit Sweet Ghosts, the lucky number less Blue’s vast, heartfelt songs. olin, Sarah Toy on viola and Luciana Gallo might just be five. Their latest album, “Now we’re in this weird wishy-washy on cello. Other local musicians, including An Endless Blue, released more than a period where there are gigs, but not a ton. Angelo Versace on piano, Gabriel Sullivan year ago at this point, but they’re hopWe’re all trying to figure out how to cobon bass, Winston Watson on drums, Mike ing a June 16 show will be the chance to ble together a living in a world that is sort Moynihan on horns, and Karima Walker finally perform the album live, after being of half-open,” Alfred said, who also works with her signature experimental ambience delayed twice due to weather and twice as production manager at Hotel Congress. also added to the project. due to COVID. For a lesser collection of A simpler album may have stayed in If this sounds like a large ensemble, songs, the towel may have already been the year it was recorded or released, but it’s because it is. And their collaboration thrown in—but An Endless Blue is worth An Endless Blue, with its varied sounds, shines large and bright, even when the celebrating. shifting layers and open interpretations, tone takes a somber turn.

“There was almost a kind of awe that it seemed to change its meaning as the pan“I really only enjoy recording music for kept happening again, especially the rain- demic took over and then shrank away.

Sweet Ghosts with a full ensemble. That outs. The COVID ones at least were on (Aspects even seem a little too prophetic, particular music, the way I conceive of it, us for cancelling because it didn’t make including a recurring lyric of “What were has so much ebb and flow to it that proves sense to play a show, but the rain-outs we waiting for?”) really hard for me to maintain a vision for it were baffling, because it doesn’t rain here,” Reflecting its open and vibrant blue-sky while building it one step at a time,” Alfred said Ryan Alfred, who fronts Sweet Ghosts artwork, the album opens with a delicate said. “That’s why we did this last one with alongside Katherine Byrnes. “So it goes.” piano passage, empowered by sweeping all six of us in a room playing the songs Although recorded before the pandem- strings and ambience before Alfred and together, that way we could hear it as it was ic, An Endless Blue is a prescient album Byrnes step forward with their signature coming together and quickly identify if

MUSIC

DIZZYING SKIES

Sweet Ghosts An Endless Blue 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 16 Hotel Congress outdoor stage 311 E. Congress Street $12 (All previously purchased tickets will be honored) hotelcongress.com

things were boring or beautiful.”

Alfred says the album’s title and inspiration references those unfathomable spaces, such as endless skies or great oceans and one’s own inconsequentiality in the face of them. There is also a running theme of a relationship intermingled with this, such as the opening lyrics to the song “Things We Can’t Unsay”: “In a storm of angry words / All that we have made is blown away / Fickle is the wind, and the calm will come again / But not all wreckage is remade.”

“In my own life, I understand better what’s really important to me, but it surprisingly makes me less sure about how I understand people and how I feel like I should move through this world,” Alfred said. “I think a lot of the lyrics on that record came from that place of wanting to acknowledge that and feel comfortable with it.”

As An Endless Blue is more than a year old, Sweet Ghosts do have some material for a new album. Alfred says nothing definite is planned, but “it will come.” The pandemic and social distancing especially complicated this musical style, which often saw six musicians performing in the studio at once.

“That’s not to say all music must be made that way, I recorded [A Sudden Rush of Noise] completely alone and enjoyed every moment of it. But for the music with the Sweet Ghosts name, that batch of ideas is so much about communication, and improvisation not in the song forms but in how the performers interpret them. That’s really what makes that music breathe to me.”

In the meantime, we can be glad shows are being booked again, and we’re slowly headed Back to Tucson. ■

JUNE 10, 2021

NEWS NUGGETS KNOW WHEN TO HOLD ’EM, KNOW WHEN TO FOLD ’EM It appears that not many people are rushing to apply for medical marijuana cards now that recreational cannabis is available on shelves throughout Arizona.

Between Jan. 1 and April 30, 2021, fewer than 14,000 qualifying patients have applied for medical cards, according to the most recent report from the Arizona Department of Health Services. By comparison, in the first four months of 2020, nearly 95,000 qualifying patients applied for cards.

While the numbers of people applying may have dropped significantly, the number of qualified patients in the state has increased in the last year. At the end of April 2021, Arizona had just under 308,000 qualified patients; at the end of April 2020, the state had nearly 236,000 qualified

patients.

The drop in applications is bad news for certification clinics, which generally charge about $100 to $150 for an exam on top of the $150 that it costs to get a card from the state. (There’s a half-price discount from the state for those eligible for SNAP benefits.) That’s a sizable sum to sink into being a licensed user now that a recreational program is active in the state.

A second reason for the drop could be related to the state expanding the expiration of the card from one year to two last year. It’s been more than a year since the change, so many folks who got a new card or a renewal in 2020 don’t need to go back in 2021.

Still, there are benefits from hanging onto your card: Recreational customers pay an extra 16% tax. We’ll let you do the math to determine if you buy cannabis enough to save money, but you can figure that for every $100 you spend, you’re paying an extra $16. Cardholders can also buy a wider range of higher-dose edibles, legally possess more cannabis and receive other discounts at select dispensaries.

While the number of qualifying patients who are seeking cards has decreased,

the number of people seeking to work in dispensaries has increased. At the end of April 2020, the state had just under 7,300 licensed dispensary agents. At the end of April 2021, that number had climbed to more than 10,000.

A HIGH NUMBER OF TRANSACTIONS Medical marijuana cardholders have smoked, eaten and otherwise purchased more than 60,000 pounds of cannabis so far this year.

That includes more than 52,000 pounds of old-school flower along with more than 1,000 pounds of edible products and 6,300 of cannabis in other forms.

The most transactions were in January, with nearly 1.1 million sales. February had more than 800,000 transactions, March saw more than 900,000 transactions and April—which featured the stoner holiday 4/20—had nearly 900,000 transactions.

That 4/20 holiday saw a big spike in sales, with nearly 900 pounds sold in that one day. April’s second-highest day of sales, on April 17, didn’t top 700 pounds.

Compare this to 2020, when nearly 1,000 pounds of cannabis were sold on 4/20.

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 17

POLICY UP IN SMOKE Online retailer Amazon announced last week that they would no longer fire employees or reject potential new hires for using cannabis.

“In the past, like many employers, we’ve disqualified people from working at Amazon if they tested positive for marijuana use,” wrote Dave Clark, CEO, Worldwide Consumer. “However, given where state laws are moving across the U.S., we’ve changed course. We will no longer include marijuana in our comprehensive drug screening program for any positions not regulated by the Department of Transportation, and will instead treat it the same as alcohol use.”

Clark said the company would still do impairment checks on the job and test for drugs and alcohol after accidents.

Clark added that the company would also lobby on behalf of “the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2021 (MORE Act)—federal legislation that would legalize marijuana at the federal level, expunge criminal records, and invest in impacted communities. We hope that other employers will join us, and that policymakers will act swiftly to pass this law.” ■

18

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

JUNE 10, 2021

MJ

OIL

OIL

710 MJ Oil Edition

Coming July 2021 Reserve your space NOW! Call 520-797-4384

JUNE 10, 2021

TUCSON AREA DISPENSARIES Bloom Tucson. 4695 N. Oracle Road, Ste. 117 293-3315; bloomdispensary.com Open: Sunday through Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Botanica. 6205 N. Travel Center Drive 395-0230; botanica.us Open: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., daily Desert Bloom Re-Leaf Center. 8060 E. 22nd St., Ste. 108 886-1760; dbloomtucson.com Open: 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., daily Offering delivery Downtown Dispensary. 221 E. 6th St., Ste. 105 838-0492; thedowntowndispensary.com Open: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., daily D2 Dispensary. 7105 E 22nd St. 214-3232; d2dispensary.com/ Open: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., daily Earth’s Healing. Two locations: North: 78 W. River Road 253-7198 South: 2075 E. Benson Highway 373-5779 earthshealing.org Open: Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Sundays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Offering delivery The Green Halo. 7710 S. Wilmot Road 664-2251; thegreenhalo.org Open: Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Monday, Tuesday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Green Med Wellness Center. 6464 E. Tanque Verde Road 520-281-1587; facebook.com/GreenMedWellnessCenter Open: Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 7

a.m. to 10 p.m.; Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Sunday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Hana Green Valley. 1732 W. Duval Commerce Point Place 289-8030 Open: Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Harvest of Tucson . 2734 East Grant Road 314-9420; askme@harvestinc.com; Harvestofaz. com Open: 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., daily Nature Med. 5390 W. Ina Road 620-9123; naturemedinc.com Open: 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., daily The Prime Leaf Two locations: 4220 E. Speedway Blvd.

1525 N. Park Ave. 44-PRIME; theprimeleaf.com Open: Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Purple Med Healing Center. 1010 S. Freeway, Ste. 130 398-7338; www.facebook.com/PurpleMedHealingCenter Open: Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Sunday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Southern Arizona Integrated Therapies. 112 S. Kolb Road 886-1003; medicalmarijuanaoftucson.com Open: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., daily Total Accountability Patient Care. 226 E. 4th St., Benson 586-8710; bensondispensary.com Open: Sunday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Friday and Saturday from 11 .m. to 7 p.m.

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 19

20

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

JUNE 10, 2021

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

By Rob Brezsny. Go to RealAstrology.com to check out Rob Brezsny’s EXPANDED WEEKLY HOROSCOPE 1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700 $1.99 per minute. 18 and over. Touchtone phone required.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries actor Leonard Nimoy became mega-famous by playing the role of Spock, an alien from the planet Vulcan in the Star Trek franchise. He always enjoyed the role, but in 1975 he wrote an autobiography called I Am Not Spock. In it, he clarified how different he was from the character he performed. In 1995, Nimoy published a follow-up autobiography, I Am Spock, in which he described the ways in which he was similar to the fictional alien. In the spirit of Nimoy’s expansive self-definition, Aries, and in accordance with current astrological potentials, I invite you to make it clear to people exactly who you and who you aren’t.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The poet Rumi declared, “A lover has four streams inside, of water, wine, honey, and milk.” With that in mind, Taurus, I will recommend that you seek a boost in the honey department. Your passions and feelings have been flowing along fairy well, but lately they’ve lacked some sweetness. As a result, you’re not receiving as much of the sweetness you need from the world around you. So your assignment is to intensify the honey stream within you! Remember the principle, “Like attracts like.”

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): I’m glad you’re not on the planet Saturn right now. The winds there can blow at 1,000 miles per hour. But I would like you to feel a brisk breeze as you wander around in nature here on Earth. Why? Because according to my interpretation of the current astrological omens, winds will have a cleansing effect on you.

They will clear your mind of irrelevant worries and trivial concerns. They’ll elevate your thoughts as well as your feelings. Do you know the origin of the English word “inspire”? It’s from the Latin word inspirare, meaning “blow into, breathed upon by spirit.” Its figurative meaning is “to inspire, excite, inflame.” The related Latin word spiritus refers to “a breathing of the wind” and “breath of a god”—

hence “inspiration; breath of life.”

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Cancerian author Franz Kafka put his characters into surreal dilemmas. In his novella The Metamorphosis, for example, the hero wakes up one day to find he has transformed into a giant insect. Despite his feral imagination, however, Kafka had a pragmatic relationship with consumerism. “I do not read advertisements,” he said. “I would spend all of my time wanting things.”

In accordance with astrological omens, I invite you to adopt his earthy attitude for the next two weeks. Take a break from wanting things, period.

Experiment with feeling free of all the yearnings that constantly demand your attention. Please note: This break in the action won’t be forever. It’s just a vacation. When you return to wanting things, your priorities will have been realigned and healed, and you’ll feel refreshed.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Author Umberto Eco declared that beauty is boring because it “must always follow certain rules.” A beautiful nose has to be just the right shape and size, he said, while an “ugly nose” can be ugly in a million different unpredictable ways. I find his definition narrow and boring, and prefer that of philosopher Francis Bacon, who wrote, “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”

Poet Charles Baudelaire agreed, saying, “That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal: from which it follows that irregularity—that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment—is an essential part and characteristic of beauty.” Then there’s the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, which reveres beauty that’s imperfect, transitory, and incomplete. Beginning now, and for the rest of 2021, Leo, I encourage you to ignore Eco’s dull beauty and cultivate your relationship with the more interesting kind.

SAVAGE LOVE DUMPLINGS

By Dan Savage, mail@savagelove.net

I’ve been living with my boyfriend for a year. We met on FetLife and I was honest about being in an open relationship (at the time) and seeking a sexual connection over a relationship. But one nut after another and pretty soon we were professing our love for each other and he shared that he wanted to be the father of my children. However, right before he moved in I found out he was still texting other women despite asking me not to text, sext or have sex with any other men. He also regularly “yucks my yum” and makes fun of the types of porn I watch and

calls it “gross” (my thing for cuckolding being his main target) and he also tells insists men can’t be friends with women yet he’s still friends with women he’s had sex with. He hides the fact he is masturbating from me but expects to participate in all my masturbation sessions. He claims we have no sexual secrets but I snooped and learned he was looking at porn with titles like “TS,” “sissy,” “gay,” and “BBW Black.” It makes me feel small because of the nagging feeling I may not be his cup of tea since he hides these other interests from me while not allowing me to hide

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): One of the more evocative passages in J. R. R. Tolkien’s novel The Return of the King is about the warrior Éowyn. It says, “Then the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it. And suddenly her winter passed, and the sun shone on her.” I’m predicting a comparable transformation for you in the near future, Virgo. There’ll be some fundamental shift in the way your heart comprehends life. When that happens, you will clearly fathom some secrets about your heart that have previously been vague or inaccessible. And then the sun will shine upon you with extra brilliance.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Libran actor and author Carrie Fisher had more than the average number of inner demons. Yet she accomplished a lot, and was nominated for and won many professional awards. Here’s the advice she gave: “Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident.” I hope you’ll employ that strategy in the coming weeks, dear Libra. The time is favorable for you to work hard on your number one goal no matter what your emotions might be at any particular moment.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Scorpio author Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) had a gambling addiction for many years. At one point, he lost so much money betting on roulette that he had to take drastic measures. He wrote a novella in record time— just 16 days—so as to raise money to pay his debt.

The story was titled The Gambler. Its hero was a not-very-successful gambler. Is there a comparable antidote in your future, Scorpio? A gambit that somehow makes use of the problem to generate the cure? I suspect there is.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In her poem “Escape,” Michelle Tudor addresses a lover: “Inside of you: a dream raging to be set free.” She implies that she would like to be a collaborator who provides assistance and inspiration in liberating her companion’s dream. The coming weeks will be an excellent time for you to make a similar offer to an ally you care for—and to ask that ally to do the same for you. And by the way: What is the dream

nothing from him. I also worry that his “affection” for my black BBW ass may be no different than his objectification of trans women. He says he doesn’t want to “burden” me with “rapey” sex play but I am open to sex of all kinds of sex, not just the softcore-porn-type kind—so long as he doesn’t start by rubbing my boobs like they’re doorknobs. I am at my wits end. I already e-mailed an LGBTQIA+ friendly couples counselor because we are both scared the relationship will end. But I can’t keep turning a blind eye to his half-truths, double standards, and hypocrisy.

—Feeling Extremely Tense BREAK UP. This guy sounds like equal parts

inside you that’s raging to be set free? And what’s the dream inside your comrade?

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Author Martha Beck has helpful counsel for you to keep returning to during the coming weeks. “It isn’t necessary to know exactly how your ideal life will look,” she writes. “You only have to know what feels better and what feels worse. Begin making choices based on what makes you feel freer and happier, rather than on how you think an ideal life should look. It’s the process of feeling our way toward happiness, not the realization of the Platonic ideal, that creates our best lives.”

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Aquarian author James Dickey celebrated “the holy secret of flowing.” But he added, “You must be made for it.” In other words, he implied that the secret of flowing is a luxury only some of us have access to. And because we “must be made for it,” he seemed to suggest that being in possession of the secret of flowing is due to luck or genetics or privilege. But I reject that theory. I think anyone can tap into the secret of flowing if they have the desire and intention to do so. Like you! Right now! You’re primed to cultivate a robust relationship with the holy flow.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Why do humans enjoy much longer life spans than other higher primates? Here’s one reason: grandmothers.

Anthropologists propose that earlier in our evolution, families with elder females especially thrived.

The grandmothers helped care for children, ensuring greater health for everyone as well as a higher rate of reproduction than grandmother-less broods.

Their longevity genes got passed on, creating more grandmothers. Lucky! Having older women around while growing up has been key to the success of many of us. In accordance with astrological omens, I invite you to celebrate and honor the role your own grandmothers and female elders have played in your life. And if you’re a grandmother, celebrate and honor yourself!

Homework: Send word of your latest victory.

Write to: newsletter@freewillastrology.com

asshole and mess. And he needs to work on that—he needs to clean up his mess—on his own. You can’t do the work for him, FET, and I would urge you to resist the urge to use the relationship as leverage. Because by staying in this relationship despite his half-truths, his double standards, and his hypocrisies—by sticking around to be shamed and manipulated—you’re sending him a message that says, “It’s fine, you’re fine, we’re fine.” Perhaps I shouldn’t say, “You’re sending him a message,” because this shit isn’t your fault, FET. But he will self-servingly interpret your willingness to stay and work on the relationship—as if the relationship is the problem here—as proof that he doesn’t need to do

JUNE 10, 2021

something about his own shit. He will assume he can continue to get away with being a controlling, manipulative, and sex-shaming asshole… because he’s getting away with it.

When your current boyfriend “yucks your yum,” when he says the porn you like is gross, he’s projecting the shame he feels about all the non-normative (but perfectly wonderful) stuff that turns him on. When someone vomits their shame all over you, FET, getting yourself out of vomit-range is your best option.

And for the record: I don’t think your boyfriend is mess because he’s interested in more kinds of sex than he admits or more types of women than just your type of woman or dudes or power games that touch on gender roles and/or taboos. And the fact that he’s hiding his attraction to trans women from you isn’t by itself proof that he objectifies trans women, FET, or that he’s objectifying you. You don’t know how he would interact (or how he has interacted) with a trans partner. What you do know is he treats you like shit and makes you feel bad about yourself and demands transparency from you without being transparent in return. DTMFA. P.S. Please don’t let his shitty comments about your turn-ons lead you to doubt your desirability—just the fact that you’re into cuckolding makes you something of a prize, FET, as there are easily a hundred times as many men into cuckolding as there are women.

It wouldn’t take you long to replace a guy who shames you for being into cuckolding with a guy who absolutely worship you for it.

P.P.S. I don’t think you had grounds to snoop, FET, or a need to snoop.

You knew everything you needed to know about this guy before you found his secret undeleted browser history.

Insisting you cut your male friends and years later—he throws the details of one exes out of your life was reason enough particular email I sent to another in my to end this relationship. face every chance he gets. He has actually told me he was dating other women I’m an out when we first met. Of course he was! No 26-year-old big deal at all but it irks me that he hired gay man with a someone to follow my every move! (He 30-year-old boy- even accused me of getting paid for sex friend who is not and said he had proof! Totally false!) We out. That’s fine. have been engaged and I am holding Everyone gets back from marrying him. Otherwise he is to come out at good to me. What’s the deal here? their own pace.

—Engaged Dame Grows Edgy We have been together three RUN. years and lived This is emotional abuse—hurling together for two. that none-of-his-business email in your Which is also face every chance he gets—and it’s fine. I like living gonna get worse if you marry him. This with him. But he kind of shit always gets worse after the “jokingly” calls wedding, e.g. it gets worse once getting me his “faggy away from someone like this requires roommate” and lawyers and court dates. DTMFA. sometimes puts There’s a huge difference between the me down about being gay when we are around mutual friends so people won’t think he’s gay.

—Just Over Keeping Everything Secret

Comics

NO. Everyone gets to come out at their own pace—sure, OK, I guess, whatever.

But closeted adult gay men don’t get to heap insults on their out gay sex partners in order to throw mutuals off the scent. (The scent of cock on their breath.) Unless you get off on this treatment and wrote in to brag (not a single question mark detected in your email), JOKES, you need to DTMFCCA. (“Dump the motherfucking closet case already.”)

I’m a fit and healthy 66-year-old woman.

(Vegan 53 years and have never been sick a day in my life!) I’ve been told I look 40ish—so not too bad! I was married for 20 years and then sat on the bench without so much as one date for 18 years because I was a hardworking single mom of three kids. So I meet a guy about six years ago. I was dating around a bit at the time and figured he was too. Well, I later found out he had me “checked out and followed” and even hacked my computer, where he found a couple of sexy emails to another guy. We were not exclusive at the time and years later—six

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 21

kind of lapse in judgement that might prompt someone to snoop and hiring a private investigator to track someone’s movements. Someone who would do that—someone who would essentially outsource stalking you—isn’t a person you’re obligated to break up with faceto-face or sit down with to give them “closure.” Prioritize your safety, EDGE. A text message and a block are all the closure he needs and far more consideration than he deserves.

P.S. Veganism is healthy and an allplant diet is good for the planet. And it’s wonderful that you haven’t been sick a day in your life! But we’re all going to die—it’s just that some of us are going to die with a slice of cheese pizza in our greasy hands. mail@savagelove.net Follow Dan on Twitter @FakeDanSavage. savagelovecast.com

22

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

JUNE 10, 2021

CLASSIFIED ADS ADOPTIONS

MASSAGE

           Adoption is a brave choice A loving, financially secure, joy-filled home awaits your newborn. We will respect your wishes for your baby's future.

Ann & Dave 973-910-0603 Expenses Paid           

☺2☺2☺2☺2☺2☺2☺2☺

BUSINESS/PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

HANDYMAN Handyman Service

Doors* Drywall* Painting Roof Repair/Coating*Hauling Coolers* Odd Repairs Minor Plumbing/Electrical* BBB Member.

Not a licensed Contractor

520-425-0845

HEALTHY LIVING/ FITNESS Full Body Massage by a licensed professional of 27 years. Centrally located in Tucson. New client special, $60/ hour. Incalls only.

Call 520-461-2881.

Please, no texts.

NETWORK ADS NEED NEW FLOORING? Call Empire Today® to schedule a FREE in-home estimate on Carpeting & Flooring. Call Today! 877-591-3539 (AzCAN)

COVID Precautions Taken Body Rub Ajo and Kinney area.

You all stop by and enjoy a stress free body rub by a man for a man. Private/Discreet.

Call or text Oliver: 520-358-7310

☺2☺2☺2☺2☺2☺2☺2☺

 FULL BODY RUB Best full body rub for men by a man. West Tucson. Ajo and Kinney. Privacy assured. 7AM to 7PM. In/Out calls available.

Darvin 520-404-0901.

No texts. 

Mature Woman Full Body Massage Satisfaction Guaranteed.

Provided by a woman for a man.

10 am to 8 pm Text or Call 520-278-0597

Crossword Answers

NETWORK ADS

Are you at risk for stroke or cardiovascular disease?

Screenings are easy, painless and non-invasive.

Call Life Line Screening at 855-575-6793

R A S P

A L T E RED

C L A S S

C O G U N O RED M E E S U D O N A N D R E E K A R

V E T O

I M O N

S E R F S

S P L O T I C G H G Y

P T U H R A E S T B O S RED D O A D S D A G S A D H R U N T O N O P E W I D

B O J A N G L E S

A R A B

R A R E

S I B C O K Y

M A R N E

S T E E L

E D D Y

Know Us Know Your Community AUTO PARTS/ACCESSORIES

BUSINESS/PROFESSIONAL SERVICES Mention this Ad to receive advertised prices.

Se Habla

DONATE YOUR CAR TO CHARITY. Receive maximum value of write off for your taxes. Running or not! All conditions accepted. Free pickup. Call for details. 866-932-4184 (AzCAN)

DISH Network. $64.99 for 190 Channels! Blazing Fast Internet, $19.99/mo. (where available.) Switch & Get a FREE $100 Visa Gift Card. FREE Voice Remote. FREE HD DVR. FREE Streaming on ALL Devices. Call today! 1-855-722-2290 (AzCAN)

S A T S T I L L

S T E W E A C H A T E P E C B A K T E RED T A S M C P A N R I A N B A

Special Offer for Readers 5 screening package for $149

NETWORK ADS

LONG DISTANCE MOVING: White-Glove Service from Americaʼs Top Movers. Fully insured and bonded. Let us take the stress out of your out of state move.

FREE QUOTES! Call: 877-706-1204 (AzCAN)

I N G O T S

W BUY WE NO OTIVE M O T U A EN OXYG S R SENSO

Español

ALUMINUM CANS

Clean.

Not Destroyed.

Not Contaminated.

50¢-55¢

LB.

#1 Beverage Plastics 20¢ LB.

Top $$ For Catalytic Converters

We Buy Oxygen Sensors, Starters, AC Pumps, Alternators, Radiators, Complete Cars & Trucks

520-999-0804

WASHERS: $5 - $30 (call for details) BATTERIES: 18¢ - 22¢ LB.

WE BUY

PROPANE TANKS! $5 - $10

We match any LOCAL competitors price!

All Metals, Scrap Cars, Clean Aluminum 35¢-60¢, Old Water Heaters, Dryers, Refrigerators, All Circuit Boards & All Computers/Parts.

Also Non-Working Tablets, Laptops, Cell Phones & Home Electronics

ALL

METALS , LLC

Hours:

Mon - Fri 7:30am - 5:00pm

Closed Sat & Sat *Any Questions Please Call

3818 N. Highway Dr.

Tucson AZ 85705

342-4042

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM 23

JUNE 10, 2021

CLASSIFIED ADS MOTORCYCLES/ SCOOTERS

Get your message to our readers

Call 520-797-4384 to learn more about advertising

WANTED TO BUY

IKIKIKIKIKIKIK

I Buy Record Collections Large or Small. Rock, Jazz, Blues, Soundtracks etc. $Cash$ and I will come to you.

Call 520-389-8668 (Text only) 559-355-5935 Local Company

IKIKIKIKIKIKIK HOME FOR RENT? Place it here!

81% of our readers read the Classifieds!

Call 520-797-4384

RECYCLING

$CASH$

For ALL unwanted Cars, Trucks & SUVs Now buying Catalytic converters

Call or text anytime for quote FREE PROFESSIONAL REMOVAL

271-0546

New, Old, Running, or not!

Tucson and surrounding areas

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

14

ACROSS

1 “How to Be an Anti___” (best-selling book of 2020) 7 Big kahuna 10 Way up to go downhill 14 Totally original 15 Bird that’s the source of Kalaya oil 16 Dance sometimes done to klezmer music 17 Play-by-play job?

19 A little cracked 20 Spanish for “weight” 21 Presidential nickname of the 19th century 23 Kansas or Kentucky, politically 26 Cap’n’s mate 27 Details, details 29 Certain Miller beers 31 Gear tooth 34 Soaks up a lot of sun 36 Improv comic’s forte 38 Chicago-style pizza chain, familiarly 40 Big Ten nickname 42 Architectural style of Nebraska’s capitol building, informally 43 Rhetoric for the political base, figuratively 45 Warning sign 47 Word with high or dive 48 “Cómo ___?”

50 Follower of “Too bad,” in an expression of mock pity 52 Gomer Pyle’s outfit: Abbr.

53 Low humming sounds 56 “Stay calm” 60 Stand-up comedian

Bargatze 62 “___ Am Telling You” (song from “Dreamgirls”) 63 Traffic go-ahead that should be followed four times in this puzzle 66 Dance done to fiddle music 67 Director Lee 68 No longer under wraps?

69 Lagerfeld of fashion 70 ___ leaf (stew additive) 71 Over a large area

DOWN

1 File type 2 Drunkenness or hypnosis 3 It may be dismissed 4 Some metal castings 5 “Get it?”

6 Onetime United competitor 7 Refuse to pick up the bill?

8 “That’s my cue!”

9 Poodles, but not schnoodles or doodles 10 “How strange …”

11 Nickname for tapdancing legend Bill Robinson 12 ___ League 13 Unusual

18

20

21 23

24

10

32

33

38 43 48

26 29 35

40

30 36

41 45

49

37 42

46 50

52

47 51

53

57

58

54

59

63

64

66

67

68

69

70

71

when a race is won 22 Common mixer 24 P.D. alert 25 Udder end 28 Lord’s laborers 30 Warped, as a sense of humor 31 Pancetta or prosciutto 32 “My treat!”

33 Becomes insolvent 35 Inkblot, e.g.

37 Early man?

39 Behaved for a haircut, say 41 Glazier’s frame 44 Pack down 46 Long-bodied fish

55

60

62

18 Something waved

61

65

49 Bug that inspired Poe’s

“The Gold-Bug”

51 Persistently demanded

payment from

54 French river in W.W. I

fighting

55 Metaphor for strength 56 Like yin but not yang 57 Suited to serve 58 Simone known as the

“High Priestess of Soul” 59 Punk’s Pop 61 Water whirl 64 AAA offering 65 Nail polish brand with a Bubble Bath shade

WORSHIP GUIDE NEW THOUGHT

13

22

34

44

12

19

28

39

11

16

25

27

56

9

15

17

31

8

UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST

24

TUCSONWEEKLY.COM

JUNE 10, 2021

MEDICAL MARIJUANA EVALUATION CENTER

Save Money on Taxes!

Get Legal Today!

Medical Card Holder Benefits • • • • •

18+ Up to 2.5 Ounces of concentrate* Up to 2.5 ounces of flower* No potency limit on edibles HIPAA/Legal Protections to your rights

Recreational Disadvantages • • • • • •

21+ No more than 10mg per serving on edibles No more than 100mg per package of edibles Limit 5 grams of Concentrate 24.5% tax on all purchases No Protections

TELEMEDICINE CERTIFICATIONS NOW AVAILABLE! GET LEGAL TODAY! *MUST HAVE CURRENT MEDICAL RECORDS FOR MONTHLY SPECIAL

$125 *

SPECIAL

ALL MONTH LONG! **excludes State fee.

WALK-INS WELCOME: OPEN MON-FRI UNTIL 6PM, SAT UNTIL 4PM

• Receive A Voucher With Every Certification!

• Choice of 1 Free 150mg Gummies or Syrup from Baked Bros.

520-623-0

4120 E SPEEDWAY, TUCSON, AZ 85712

Voted #1 in the Cannabis Bowl