- Slug: BC-CNS-CN2Go Weekly Update. Runtime 15:35.
- Download audio briefing here. (Note: Some web browsers may not support media download)
(Music)
THIS IS YOUR CRONKITE NEWS 2GO BRIEFING.
(Bring up music briefly and duck below and out )
I’M AYANA HAMILTON…
THE FEDERAL HIGHWAY ADMINISTRATION AND THE ARIZONA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION WANT TO BUILD A NEW HIGHWAY. THE ORGANIZATIONS HAVE SPENT MORE THAN FIVE YEARS SPEAKING WITH COMMUNITIES AND STAKEHOLDERS IN THE AREA OF THE PROPOSED HIGHWAY… ONE REQUIREMENT TO MOVE FORWARD WITH CONSTRUCTION IS TO COMPLETE AN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT. CONSERVATION GROUPS ARE NOT HAPPY WITH THE RESULTS… CRONKITE REPORTER AMBER VICTORIA SINGER WENT TO TUCSON TO SPEAK WITH THEM…
SINGER: A collective of conservation groups is suing the Federal Highway Administration. Last November the administration proposed that Interstate 11 be built in a corridor that’s approximately 280 miles long. The north-south corridor stretches from Wickenburg to Nogales, cutting through Saguaro National Park, the Tucson Mountains and Ironwood Forest National Monument. A national monument is similar to a national park – but it’s protected for historical or cultural purposes rather than scenic or educational ones. According to the nonprofit organization Friends of Ironwood Forest, the monument could have as many as three thousand archaeological and historical sites.
HANNAGAN: “We’re doing everything we can to stop them from putting the highway through those locations.”
SINGER: That’s Tom Hannagan, president of the board for Friends of Ironwood Forest. The group is involved in the lawsuit against the Federal Highway Administration. He said they’ve been attending stakeholder meetings for years and submitted numerous comments against the highway. Now he feels the only option is to ask a court to stop it from being built. We drove out to the monument to meet him.
HANNAGAN: “It was named Ironwood Forest because it has the densest remaining stand of ironwoods in the entire Sonoran Desert, including Mexico. The ironwood tree lives up to 800 years. It’s extremely hard, basically like a rock almost.”
SINGER: He said the proposed I-11 is harmful to more than just the physical environment.
HANNAGAN: “The highway would affect the animal life and the plant life we believe… The Ironwood Forest National Monument has the only indigenous herd of bighorn- desert bighorn sheep in southern Arizona and we’d like to keep that herd as healthy as possible. We also have a number of endangered plants in the National Monument, and there are other animals that have habitat here – the desert tortoise, the pygmy owl, the lesser long-nosed bat, among others.”
SINGER: The Federal Highway Administration doesn’t consider the monument a wildlife refuge, but Hannagan disagrees. By cutting through the forest, the highway would make it difficult for animals to migrate between mountains. It would also create noise and air pollution harmful to surrounding wildlife… David Robinson is the director of conservation advocacy at Tucson Audubon Society, one of the groups suing the Federal Highway Administration.
ROBINSON: “Tucson Audubon Society’s mission is all about connecting people to the joy of birds, promoting conservation.”
SINGER: He said building the highway would have a ripple effect.
ROBINSON: “There’s actually no way, at this point, of knowing how any species would be impacted because it’s all so interconnected. But it really would impact an entire desert ecosystem.”
SINGER: But it’s not just the initial highway construction that’s an issue.
ROBINSON: “You then open up all this land to development. It’s kind of like the 19th century with the railroad, you know, when the railroad was going to be going through, people bought up land along the route, right? And it suddenly becomes very valuable, and you do all this development. The same thing happens with freeways. And I’m convinced that what’s driving this is development money…but we can’t afford that kind of development in terms- just in terms of water… and in terms of climate, this is about as backward thinking as you could get.”
SINGER: Robinson said a good alternative to highway expansion is to create a better rail system. He said it’s upsetting that we haven’t learned from consequences that came from building freeways across the country in the 20th century.
ROBINSON: “They were almost always put through poor communities, usually poor communities of color, and that’s what happened here. Lots of people were displaced, and a vibrant community was close to destroyed – we only have the remnants now… A move that’s happening in a lot of places is talking about redressing, trying to repair that monumental injustice. And instead of putting the attention there… we’re talking about building another freeway that will very harmful impacts.”
SINGER: Conservation groups have been fighting the proposal for I-11 for a decade. There was a hearing last week. If the court rules in favor of the Federal Highway Administration, they can continue their plans to build the highway. If not, the administration will have to rework their environmental impact statement. We reached out to the Federal Highway Administration and ADOT, but both declined to comment. Amber Victoria Singer, Cronkite News, Phoenix.
HAMILTON: HUMAN TRAFFICKING IS STILL A MAJOR DOMESTIC ISSUE TODAY. CRONKITE REPORTER, KENNY RASMUSSEN (RASS-MUH-SUHN) RECENTLY ATTENDED A CONFERENCE HOSTED BY CHICANOS POR LA CAUSA TO DISCUSS THE ISSUE, CLEAR UP MISCONCEPTIONS SURROUNDING IT, AS WELL AS WAYS TO HELP RESOLVE IT.
FONTES: “And now, therefore, I Adrian Fontes, Secretary of State of Arizona, do hereby proclaim today January 28th, 2023, Human Trafficking Prevention and Awareness Day, to encourage everyone to become more informed of this growing problem, to be vigilant and report suspicious activity, and to work towards solutions and to end trafficking in all its forms in our community.”
RASMUSSEN: The recently elected secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, was one of many speakers to feature in a joint conference hosted by Chicanos Por La Causa as part of an event made to raise awareness about human trafficking. The conference involved discussion of the history of the nationally recognized problem.
FONTES: “In 2010 President Barack Obama declared January National Slavery and Human Trafficking Month by presidential proclamation. And every year since, each president has followed this tradition.”
RASMUSSEN: Fontes praised Chicanos Por La Causa and other organizations for their work in reporting crimes that are often happening in plain sight. Angela Solomon of StreetLight USA was among the presenters who were emphatic in declaring that human trafficking is “not what you see in the movies.”
SOLOMON: “What we know is that in our clients, most of their exploiters are what we call Romeo pimps or boyfriends. So this can be someone that has lured them, or groomed them, or built a relationship with them either in person or online. Online sexual exploitation is our second most common sexual exploitation means that we see at StreetLight.”
RASMUSSEN: Solomon works with sexually exploited youth at StreetLight, mostly adolescent women. Last year, her outreach program served 30 sexually exploited young women. 70% of which identified as Latino or Hispanic, 15% as Black or African-American, and 10% as Indigenous… According to Joanna Jauregui of the McCain Institute, these groups are representative of those typically being trafficked. Jauregui is a program coordinator for Arizona Combating Human Trafficking and says her time as a college student spurred her toward the cause.
JAUREGUI: “The way that I really got involved was through undergraduate at Arizona State University. And so as I learned about this issue, I related to that vulnerability. I could see that most people from my community, Black, Indigenous and people of color from my community were at the highest risk of this.”
RASMUSSEN: Jauregui says human trafficking is still a largely domestic issue where people with fewer resources are deliberately targeted. The speakers at the conference wanted people to know there are resources to help, and they encourage people to contact 1-877-4AZ-TIPS to report any suspected human trafficking. Kenny Rasmussen, Cronkite News
HAMILTON: THE ACADEMY MUSEUM CELEBRATED ONE OF IT’S EXHIBIT’S ABOUT EARLY BLACK CINEMA THAT WAS LOST OR FORGOTTEN… I WENT TO THE MUSEUM TO LEARNED MORE ABOUT THE EXHIBIT AND WHY BLACK FILM HISTORY IS IMPORTANT…
**[Open with the sound of chant from the Academy Panel]**
HAMILTON: Spike Lee, Ava DuVernay, Jordan Peele and Ryan Coogler are part of the praised Black directors today. Oscar Micheaux, Madeline Anderson and Gordon Parks paved the way for those directors, and they can’t be forgotten… For Black History Month, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures highlighted its exhibit “Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898–1971.”… It features rarely seen film excerpts films restored by the Academy film archive … The exhibit brings back what was lost in American film history as it elevates the Black artists who contributed to it… Kyle Bowser is the senior vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Hollywood Bureau… He says we have to be careful with reviving lost or forgotten history…
BOWSER: “Much of what has been recorded in history about the African American experience is very distorted and was originally composed to put forth a particular narrative that was favorable to points of view that weren’t necessarily accurate.”
HAMILTON: Bowser says even with the preservation of historical documents, we have to be careful not to reinforce myths, stereotypes, and misinformation because every form of media has its relationship and history.
BOWSER: “We just have to be very careful that we don’t assume the accuracy of all that documentation without doing additional research. Every storyteller has a point of view, and as readers or consumers of their work, we have to keep in mind that it is an individual’s perspective on things, and it needs to be tempered by additional research.”
HAMILTON: Maya Cade is the creator and curator of the Black Film Archive. From February 10th through the 20th, the Regeneration exhibit will launch a series called “Try a Little Tenderness.” Which contains a film once thought was lost… It’s a series that focuses on love in Black film, and it’s programmed by Cade…
CADE: ‘I wanted to use Tenderness as a guide through Black cinemas’ history. I think so often when we think about black films past, it’s only in this lens, you know. These were racist or these were all just one limited thing.”
HAMILTON: When it comes to Black films, Cade thinks it’s important to understand the multitudes and expressions of it. Cade hopes the Black Film Archive will continue to make itself visible to generations of people…
CADE: “The future of it is ensuring that all these people can exist in harmony on the archive because really the archive was designed with Black people in mind, and it’ll continue to serve growing Black people’s film knowledge.”
**[JUKEBOX SOUND]**
HAMILTON: What you’re hearing is a “soundie from the Academy Museum’s Mills Panoram movie jukebox…. Soundies are three-minute American musical films. It’s important part of Black film history because for Black talent it was opportunity for exposure beyond nightclubs… Susan Delson is a Film Historian who currently taking a deeper look into the role of Black performer play in soundies…
DELSON: “There is such a rich history that is just, I wouldn’t say necessarily hidden but if we don’t pull it out it’s going to be lost.”
HAMILTON: On Delson’s site there’s a online jukebox of soundies that were overlooked in the Black entertainment industry in the 1940s. Delson encourages people to view them…
DELSON: “If you watch them with 2023 eyes, they’re going to look weird and a lot of them are going to look racist. They’re sometimes a combination of both. I think it’s important to have that context if you’re really going to get the history out of them.”
HAMILTON: Delson says soundies were created to be enjoyed. Black film history should be celebrated and enjoyed but also viewed with a historical context so we can understand how impactful it was. For Cronkite News Los Angeles, I’m Ayana Hamilton…
HAMILTON: THE LEGISLATIVE LATINO CAUCUS MET AT THE ARIZONA STATE CAPITOL THIS PAST WEEK TO DISCUSS PROPOSED BILLS THAT DIRECTLY AFFECT THE LATINO COMMUNITY. ROXANNE DE LA ROSA WAS AT A PRESS CONFERENCE AND SAYS THE BILLS TOUCH ON EVERYTHING FROM HOUSING TO CHILD CARE.
DE LA ROSA: There are currently 28 Latino legislators representing the state of Arizona. The caucus is a bipartisan group that works together to create legislation that serves the Latino population. Democratic Senator Catherine Miranda, who represents a district that covers south Phoenix, Guadalupe and Laveen, says their numbers are strong…
MIRANDA: “Latino caucus has grown. It has tripled. So the strength and the power, we are feeling it. We are feeling it. “
DE LA ROSA: They are hoping to use their influence to make real changes in the state. Senator Miranda says one of the major issues the group hopes to tackle is the affordable housing crisis.
MIRANDA: “So our housing crisis has touched nearly everyone here in our state. The Latino caucus is committed to policy that works, policy that gets people into homes. We know one thing, a safe, affordable and stable home anchors every other positive thing in a person’s life.”
DE LA ROSA: Representative Oscar De Los Santos of District 11 emphasized that caucus leaders are fighting for Latino families and communities. Two subject matters he addresses in bills he has introduced…
DE LOS SANTOS: “House Bill 2749 provides one-hundred percent tuition-free public community colleges and public universities, so that every single student in our state can pursue their dreams. Things like House Bill 2681 universal child care assistance. We know that child care assistance is out of control. The costs are skyrocketing. And we need to ensure that the youngest children in our families are well taken care of.”
DE LA ROSA: De Los Santos said it is unlikely that the bills will be heard since the House holds a Republican majority, but remains hopeful since Governor Hobbs was elected into office… House Bill 2634 is a bipartisan bill that would allow a part of real estate sales to go towards the Arizona Housing Trust Fund. The money would help supplement the trust fund and assist with low-income housing, homeless shelters and support services… The Latino caucus’ goal is to address issues that not only affect Latinos, but the community as a whole… Roxanne De La Rosa, Cronkite News…
(bring up music under very last track and post up in the clear for a couple of seconds and duck below)
HAMILTON: WE HAD HELP TODAY FROM AMBER VICTORIA SINGER, KENNETH RASMUSSEN (RASS-muh-suhn) AND ROXANNE DE LA ROSA….
(Bring up music and duck below)
HAMILTON: YOU CAN LEARN MORE ABOUT THE STORIES YOU HEARD IN TODAY’S NEWS UPDATE, BY GOING TO CRONKITENEWS-DOT-AZPBS-DOT-ORG… THAT’S ALL FOR YOUR CRONKITE NEWS 2 GO. I’M AYANA HAMILTON…
(Music out)
^__=