Every other Wednesday, an interpreter attends the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors meeting to sit in his designated chair and wait.
The position was created in late 2009 in response to a federal inquiry into the county’s potential civil-rights violation for failing to provide an interpreter at public meetings for people who speak limited English.
Community activists had complained for two years about the lack of a readily available Spanish-language interpreter, especially in meetings that address the immigration policies of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
Since then, however, demand for the position has faded. Still, county officials plan to keep the position indefinitely. Read more.
See: The Republic
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Maybe those "community activists" need to get the people they supposedly represent to the meetings to have their say. Otherwise it would seem that they are not doing much in the community.
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With the current winds of xenophobia and intolerance blowing in Arizona these days, it doesn't surprise me that Latinos are absent from those meetings. There's power in silence.
[Edited at 2011-05-10 18:07 GMT]
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With the current winds of xenophobia and intolerance blowing in Arizona these days, it doesn't surprise me that Latinos are absent from those meetings. There's power in silence.
[Edited at 2011-05-10 18:07 GMT]
In my state, which has a much lower Spanish-speaking population than AZ, the demand for Spanish interpreters is high and growing exponentially. It's very odd that this would be happening in AZ. You may be quite right about why this is the case.
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