Here's the thing: Scottsdale complied
And I am trying to keep it together, but I am not doing well.
Unfortunately as fascism rises, life goes on. I am trying to attend every protest I can. I am trying to stay informed, and keep my day job. I am trying to churn out content, but it’s hard to focus. But Scottsdale complied and in my mind, thats our canary in the coal mind.
If you haven’t listened to Molly Conger’s Weird Little Guy’s Episode on Scottsdale’s most recent actions, I suggest you do.
In it, she details how Scottsdale created the first diversity office at the city level, in the late 90s, and why they needed it. And white supremacists, hated that. So much so that a man mailed a pipe bomb to the head of the Diversity office in 2001. Luckily, Don Logan lived. Unluckily, he lived long enough to see Scottsdale dissolve that office on February 12, 2025.
*Don Logan. Source for the photo - AZCentral*
In a vote 5-2, Scottsdale’s city council shut down it’s diversity office earlier this month. And while the entire country and our corporate world is already complying in advance to D&E’s demands to remove diversity, cities have held fast.
Molly Conger outlines it all perfectly and supporting her by listening to that podcast is one of the best things you can do. She shares that Don Logan spoke that night with fifty some odd other people in support for the diversity office. She mentions the number of emails that were sent in support and dissent, a staggering percentage saying something to the affect of we, the people, want the diversity office open.
She goes into detail about the first Orthodox Jewish city council member instagramming about that “DEI stuff being everywhere,” and how members of his own community asked him if he thought he’d even be in this position without it. There is NO proof whatsoever that anyone in Scottsdale EVER was hired without the proper experience. And the Mayor wasn’t interested in even looking. She said that a working group didn’t matter - a working group being the exact thing that would dive into the data and prove one way or another about the efficacy of this very very (financially) minuscule department.
Our country is made of up fifty tiny countries in a trench coat trying to tussle - so when one city stands up, it means something. When one state stands up, it means something (looking at you Maine, New York, Illinois, California). And when one city falls in line despite public outcry it also means something. Every single time a corporation falls in line, it means something. And we cannot ignore it. We have to push forward, while finding a way to keep our jobs and roofs over our heads, because the set up for this has long been coming. There is a reason why camping is now being outlawed in major cities. The rise of fascism feels swift, but it’s been in the works since 1940s.