Page 14 - the NOISE March 2014

his concerns. “I went up to him and said, ‘Hey, I have some concerns about the restricted access to the sidewalk. I feel like my free speech is being denied.’ Mayor Nabours said he wasn’t the person to talk to about that. I asked him who was responsible for creating the free speech zone, and again he said he wasn’t the person to talk to about that.”
“That wasn’t really sufficient to me be- cause I felt like he’s the mayor and he should have more responsibility to address some serious concerns of potential free speech violations,” said Mr. Benally. At this point Mr. Nabours began to walk away and Mr. Benally followed, seeking answers to his questions, and one of the Rangers told him he needed to leave immediately. “I said, well this is a public area, and he responded, ‘You’re tres- passing; you’re unwelcome here.’ And he was very aggressive,” claimed Mr. Benally. When Mr. Benally stepped up onto the sidewalk, he was informed that he was still trespassing and he needed to go down to Birch.
Three fellow protestors claim to have also heard Mayor Nabours say to Mr. Benally, “You’re not welcome here,” though Mr. Benally
himself didn’t hear it. One man, who wished to remain anonymous for this article swears he heard him. “Under oath, I couldn’t say be- cause I didn’t see his lips moving, but I swear Nabours said to Benally as he was walking away, ‘You’re not welcome here.’”
A woman who identified herself as Meline brought it up at a City Council meeting the following Tuesday, and claimed to have doc- umentation. Mr. Nabours adamantly refused that he said it. “That’s not true. Bring me the documentation; I think we do have the right to contest a statement,” he said. At the time of publication, no documentation has been produced to support this claim.
“Regardless of whether he said it or not, he turned his back on people who were asking serious and legitimate questions,” said Mr. Benally. “He was right there when the officer told me I was unwelcome; he turned his back and walked away.”
On Monday, Mr. Benally called the City’s Senior Recreation Coordinator, Glorice Pavey, who is in charge of filing the paper- work for special events. “I asked her if their permit [for the Dew Downtown event] ex- tended to the sidewalk and if they had the ability to restrict movement or speech on the sidewalk, and she said no. She said there was nothing in the permit that would restrict any movement on the sidewalk.”
When this reporter called Ms. Pavey sev- eral days later to confirm this information, he was told that she couldn’t talk to the press. When pushed to confirm that she told Mr. Benally that the sidewalks were to remain public space for special events permits, Ms. Pavey said such inquires needed to go through their lawyers.
“To me, it’s one thing for the mayor to say I’m unwelcome, or a cop to say I’m unwel- come. It’s another thing to celebrate this un- sustainable event. Through its special events permit, one of the criteria it has to meet is that it upholds the quality of life in Flagstaff. A free speech zone to me doesn’t reflect the quality of life in any community,” said Mr. Benally.
Beyond issues of free speech restriction, those protesting — evidenced through sign and speech — were primarily concerned with the use of over 300,000 gallons of Flag- staff’s drinking water used for recreation.
For Mr. Benally, it was a young Diné woman who said something that really stuck with him. “She comes from Cameron, Arizona, where the water is contaminated by uranium, by abandoned uranium mines that corporations left in her community — and little to nothing is being done to clean those up — so her community has to haul water. What she said, which was chilling to me and a chilling contrast to what was happening downtown as we watched the 60-degree sun melting away this drinking water, is that if her family misses a week- end to haul water, they have to go that week without water,” he said. “I just can’t reconcile that reality alongside this event.”
In a short National Public Radio segment on the protests, Utilities Director Brad Hill noted that 300,000 gallons “isn’t very much.”
Three hundred thousand gallons of water would meet the needs of a typical Flagstaff family for 7 years; and by its own water rates, the City would have charged a private citizen $3,222 for the use of that much water.
For Mr. Benally and others, this event can- not be taken out of the context of ongoing water crisis in the Southwest. Indeed, this winter has been one of Flagstaff’s driest on record. “Anyone who thinks it’s harmless to waste such a precious resource in the face of such a crisis is simply out of touch with the realities of life in the desert,” said Mr. Benally.
He also sees the use of over 300,000 gal- lons for recreation as duplicitous. While in the driest months, Flagstaff maintains strict wa- ter conservation rules that stipulate specific days of the week, and hours of the day that residents should water their lawns; there are other rules that place limits on the number of gallons for swimming pools. On the other hand, Mr. Benally sees the Dew Downtown event as one that “flies in the face of any type of sane and sustainable water conservation effort. It just sends a hypocritical message.”
Mr. Benally continues, “To be able to dis- miss or delegitimize concerns over water when we’re facing such a serious water crisis, it’s really a double standard. I mean what is the outcome of this event? It’s celebrating recreation. So essentially we’re wasting water for fun, and to me that sends the wrong mes- sage. If we’re trying to build a sustainable and healthy community, we need to think better than that, and act better than that.”
Mr. Benally noted that last year’s Dew Downtown didn’t even break even, finan- cially. “What the city is trying to do with this event is bring in tourism when businesses have a lull. So it’s purely economics and I think there are other ways of addressing the economic situation Flagstaff faces than just sending drinking water down the drain.”
| Kyle Boggs prefers his caffeination via the drip method. kyle@undertheconcrete.org
T
he Sedona International Film Festival
th concludes the celebration of their 20 an-
later, after having a child, returns to reclaim her role as the company’s lead. It’s a tale of one woman’s struggle for self realization.
Sunday brings the audience favorites and the director awards to all the theatres in a “spray of the best of the fest.” If you can only
come to one day of the fest, this is the one, because the 168 films of the week are sifted for you and distilled down to the best of the best. Try and stomach the frightening docu- mentary The Act of Killing at 9AM Sunday morning and Susan Sarandon’s Ping-Pong Summer in the evening at 6PM as the festi- val winds down. Don’t miss this chance to rub elbows with filmmakers and Hollywood stars. Look at Sedonafilmfestival.org for all the specific day-to-day details on their final weekend!
The College of Arts & Letters Series
continues in March with “Hollywood Outsid- ers: filmmakers who started, ended or spent their entire careers outside the Hollywood system.” The films are shown at Cline Library at 7PM on Tuesday evenings for free. (Park behind the library for free!)
3/4/14 – Badlands – Directed by Terrence Malick, (1973) PG, 94 minutes. Starring Mar- tin Sheen, Sissy Spacek and Warren Oates. Anyone who’s a fan of Malick’s work will love his first feature. He’s only made six features in his 40-year career! We follow a young couple in the badlands of middle America as they go on a crime spree in the tradition of Bonnie and Clyde. Don’t miss this elegiac gem.
3/11/14 – The Long Goodbye – Directed by Robert Altman, (1973) R, 112 minutes. Star- ring Elliot Gould and Sterling Hayden. Ray- mond Chandler’s famous detective, Philip Marlowe, makes a critically-acclaimed resur- rection in this early Altman re-imagined-re- make. Some thought the attempt would fail, but Robert Altman showed them all! Don’t miss this fun detective classic and Gould has never been better. (Okay, maybe MASH, an- other Altman masterpiece.)
3/25/14 – The Killer of Sheep – Directed by Charles Burnett, (1979) R, 83 minutes. Starring
niversary on March 2nd with the “Oscar on the Rocks” Academy Awards telecast simulcast from Los Angeles. Friday 2/28 and their two busiest days, Saturday and Sunday March 1 & 2nd, are full of films and events for cinephiles from Northern Arizona.
Friday at 5PM at the Sedona Performing Arts Center don’t miss Waiting for Mamu with CNN’s Hero of the Year, Pushpa Basnet. She’s a woman from Katmandu, Nepal, who saw the injustice of incarcerating innocent children, just because their parents were put in prison. She started an orphanage to allow these children a chance at a life off the streets. Produced by Susan Sarandon and Morgan Spurlock, this film resonates with anyone who has a sense for justice.
Also, Friday 2/28 at 6:15PM, check out the long awaited documentary from ML Lincoln, Wrenched. It’s the story of the life and times of Edward Abbey and his legacy in environ- mental activism. Those in Northern Arizona know the Abbey story well, as many of Ed’s friends come out and share their tales.
On Saturday 3/1, check out These Storied Streets also produced by Susan Sarandon about homelessness, as a documentary crew travels across the country to major cities in- vestigating who really is becoming home- less in America these days. This should be a powerful, timely film with a great discussion afterwards. It shows at 6PM Saturday in the Performing Arts Center at Red Rock High. Don’t miss it!
Saturday morning at 9AM at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre join in a free workshop about social media and the new distribution mod- els. Jason Pollack, filmmaker, will lead an interesting discussion sharing ideas for how to get your film seen in this new distribution world.
Also Saturday at 12:15PM the narrative feature written, produced and directed by Jayce Bartock Fall to Rise plays. It follows the tragic story of a dancer who looses her first position because of an injury and then years
14 • MARCH 2014 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us