By Sergio Arellano-Oros
A push by environmentalists and animal rights activists has begun to replace Ken Salazar with Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva. Salazar is the current United States Secretary of the Interior, who will not be returning to his post according to MSNBC.
Salazar recently made news for his war on the Drakes Bay Oyster Company, in Marin County, California. The Department of the Interior and Secretary Salazar have issued a decision to shut down the oyster farm according to the company, which was known for its sustainable farming methods. The company believed that sustainable farming methods were “essential to conserving and restoring our natural surroundings.”
However, environmentalists wanted to turn the area into “America’s only West Coast marine wilderness park” according to Politico.
Salazar’s mission to shut down industries like Drake wasn’t enough. Now the environmentalists and animal rights activist want a more aggressive representative in the White House. One who will protect, “America’s wild horses, burros, wolves, bison…any animal God gave life to and placed on our lands.” One group calling itself Restoring America’s Wildlife, is planning to post an online petition to promote Grijalva.
Grjalva is best known for his fight against the military, has earned a reputation as a foe to private industry and secure borders. His now famous call to boycott his own people for the passage of an immigration law, essentially destroyed many Arizona businesses and crippled Southern Arizona’s tourism industry.
Just last week, Grijalva was accused of “contributing to the fears that we’re going off the fiscal cliff” and as a result causing markets to fall because according to CNBC host Michelle Caruso-Cabrera “it doesn’t sound like there’s any compromise in what you’re saying. Grijalva is not known for his willingness to compromise.
Hence, the environmentalists support. Environmentalist and writer, George Ochenski writes “Salazar has generally been a disappointment in office, especially to those who looked for a change from a resource-extraction focus to one more attuned to preserving and enhancing our environment for long-term sustainability.” Ochenski wants someone offers a change away “from wholesale resource extraction.”
Grijalva would deliver as he has against the proposed Rosemont Copper Mine. The mine, which would use state-of-the-art extraction methods, would create hundreds of high paying jobs in his district which the 6th poorest region in the country.
Like the Drakes Bay oyster farmers, the primarily democrat steelworkers, who have picketed Grijalva’s headquarters and supported his opponent in the Democratic Primary, are mystified that one of their ideological compadres could turn on them and ignore their own efforts for sustainable harvesting and while depriving them of a means to support their families.
While Grijalva is gaining support from extremists across the country, at home he is coming under siege. According to progressive blogger Pamela Powers, “On Monday, while the eyes of Tucson were on the TUSD desegregation public forum, a coup took place on the west side. As a representative of Congressman Raul Grijalva read the Congressman’s statement in favor of the restoration of Mexican American Studies, anti-Grijalva forces took the chair of LD3 and key positions on the county Executive Committee. The new LD3 chair is Luis Gonzales.”
The classes Grijalva supports were deemed illegal by the state of Arizona for their segregation of students based on their ethnicity. The classes were anti-capitalist and students were told in the curriculum that they would “not become cogs for the capitalist machine.”
Luis Gonzales corrected Powers in her blog and posted a comment saying that his election was not a coup, but “I have been a Democrat all of my life. Throughout my political involvement, there have been occasions where I have not agreed with positions that the Democratic Party (as an institution)has taken and I have always stood up when I believe that the Party has strayed away from what I believe are the core values of the Democratic Party.”
The United Steelworkers in Arizona and the oyster farmers in California seem agree with Gonzales.