Just over a year has passed since Naomi Ramirez Rosales, a Mexican-American transgender woman living undocumented in Phoenix, was arrested at a Valley Metro light rail station for standing on the platform without a ticket, and was later taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
She was waiting there with a friend and planned to part ways after her friend boarded the train, said Stephanie Figgins, a Phoenix activist and media coordinator at Trans Queer Pueblo who spoke during a Thursday evening Zoom discussion.
The Zoom forum, hosted by Mass Liberation Arizona, focused on resegregation and the extension of the city’s light rail system.
“They’re on the platform, they’re drinking their iced teas together, and she doesn’t have the intention of getting on the light rail car,” Figgins explained to the 85 participants in the Zoom call, recounting Ramirez Rosales’ story. “Right that moment, a Valley Metro security guard comes and asks her if she has a ticket.”
The encounter led to Ramirez Rosales’ arrest, the threat of deportation, and months in an all-male ICE detention center. Now released, she’s still fighting a deportation case, Figgins said.
It’s a situation that some residents fear could happen again to someone else when the light rail, which has a security agreement with the Phoenix police department, expands its reach into Southern Phoenix as part of a $1.3 billion extension, expected to be completed by 2023.
“Her story, while extraordinary, is actually quite common when looking at how Valley Metro invites Phoenix PD to have contact with people of color — women of color, trans folks of color, queer folks of color — that leads to dire consequences for their lives,” Figgins said. “There’s a growing coalition of people who are fighting to keep our folks safe at light rail the best way we know how, and to actually get police out of light rail.”
“This is one local way we can start to divest from the police and invest, instead, in modes of being and resources that actually keep people of color safe in Phoenix.”
Local advocacy group Mass Liberation Arizona is currently behind a community initiative demanding for Valley Metro to end its partnership with the Phoenix police, and instead, collaborate with Black and Brown communities in South Phoenix to come up with an alternative safety plan. Three times a month, the organization hosts meetings about racism and modern-day segregation.
In an April 2019 interview, former Poder in Action Executive Director Joe Larios said that Valley Metro and the city of Phoenix paid attention to the displacement of businesses, but not people, when planning the light rail .
“Where is the tension around race and development?” he previously told the Downtown Devil. “How many more of these conversations do we have to have before you, yourself realize that we have to step into these conversations as well?”
Lola Levesque, an organizer with Mass Liberation, recalled fond memories of growing up in South Phoenix in the 1980s and expressed concerns that the expansion would further resegregation and displacement for Southern Phoenicians.
“The South Phoenix I grew up in had orange groves, big yards, family-owned businesses, and Black and Brown people in it,” she said in the Zoom meeting. “It sounded like ice cream trucks, low-riders and kids playing in the public pool. It smelled like cookouts and orange blossoms, and everyone knew exactly where to get the right tamales.”
But Levesque, who served more than a decade in prison, said her neighborhood changed, as gated communities and housing developments popped up.
Public defender and Phoenix resident Jamaar Williams also spoke to participants Thursday night, addressing ways that individuals can stay safe on the light rail.
Williams shared tips to help residents stay safe on the light rail. He encouraged participants to buy an extra pass, even something as small as a one-ride pass, and keep an eye out for people who are unable to present a ticket and provide them a pass.
He also urged anyone who rides the Light Rail to observe, film or record interactions with police or security guards, and to create a verbal presence and ask questions to help de-escalate a potentially dangerous situation.
Observations and media evidence can help give a more accurate account of an interaction, and possibly de-escalate a situation, Williams said.
“Our call is to frame our future and build healthy, safe communities for each other,” Williams told the audience. “Our call is from the future, from the people that will come to this space in the future. In creating that future, we can end our reliance on these carceral systems.”
Contact the reporter at gdelia@asu.edu.
