Bill Montgomery Skewered in Puente March, SANE Defends Monty

Right across from Monty's office, a banner drop from a downtown parking structure telling Monty what's up

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery took it on the chin Monday, as about 120 demonstrators protesting Monty's discriminatory policies toward undocumented workers marched more than 3.5 miles from Steele Indian School Park to Montgomery's offices in the county administration building in downtown Phoenix.

See also:
-Bill Montgomery Blasted By Hispanic Bar Association over Apartheid Policies
-The MCAO Follows ICE's Blueprint for Separating Immigrant Families
-Bill Montgomery's Victims Plead Not Guilty En Masse as Their Children Weep

Organized by the local human rights group Puente, protesters carried signs calling for an end to Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigrant-hunting raids on employers, and demanding that the Obama administration stop all deportations, pending the passage of comprehensive immigration reform.

Read the Real Arizona Coalition's defense of County Attorney Bill Montgomery.

They also carried signs comparing to apartheid the county attorney's practice of charging undocumented workers so as to hold them nonbondable, thereby almost guaranteeing their eventual deportations upon conviction.

Julia Ojeda with her American citizen children, Jennifer (hugging her) and Jonathan: their father, her husband, is being held nonbondable by Monty's apartheid system

Pro-immigration activists incorporated Monty and his sinister policies into their chants, with, "Arrest Montgomery, not the people," and "Stop the raids, drop the charges."

After they reached the county building, two activists unfurled a banner that read "Montgomery is racist," from a parking structure directly across the street.

Montgomery's defenders, the counter-protesters, were the sort who normally defend Arpaio: Grizzled motorcycle-huggers from Riders USA, screamin' Teabagger Art "El Tudy" Olivas with bullhorn in tow, alleged lesbian-transsexual-nativist Lynne Stevens, plus a few other oddballs wearing NRA caps and bearing signs that read "Remember 1986."

You know, as in the Reagan amnesty.

The Teabaggers were on the steps of the little plaza leading to the doors of 301 West Jefferson as the marchers approached from the east. They were soon overwhelmed by the pro-immigration folks, though many of the T-bone-granddaddys held their ground, including Olivas, who screamed non-stop and incoherently into his beloved bullhorn.

Interestingly, despite usually wearing a sweatshirt that identifies him as representing "Latino Legal Immigrant Tea Party Patriots," Olivas claims to be a mixture of Native American, Italian and German. I asked him why he used the term Latino to describe his group.

"The reason it is `Latino' [is] because that's what the white people classify us as," he said. "When they see us, they say, `Latino, Hispanics,' and all that bullshit."

Shining Soul's Franco Habre (left) and, um, Non-Latino Latino Art Olivas chop it up

Well, that clears that up. I also asked him what he thought of Arpaio's recent slip and fall. Olivas shrugged it off.

"He'll be doing his goddamn job from a goddamn hole in the ground or wherever," Olivas replied.

I wondered about Joe's "broken arm," saying it must be worse than that, maybe a broken rib or a stroke, if it's taking him this long to recover.

"I have no idea," he said. "Just because he talks to me doesn't mean I'm going to go kiss his ass."

Interesting. And what did Olivas think of Monty?

"He's just doing his job," Olivas explained. "He's doing what we pay him for."

Later, the ornery Olivas met his match when a young, tattooed, pro-immigrant guy went toe-to-toe with him, holding a bigger bullhorn into Olivas' face. It was hot bullhorn-on-bullhorn action, with insults and vulgarities flying, till Olivas eventually packed it in, realizing he was out-bullhorned.