Lady Gaga Protests Arizona Immigration Law in Phoenix
Lady Gaga loudly contested Arizona’s controversial new immigration law SB 1070 during her Monster Ball tour stop in Phoenix Saturday night. With “Stop SB 1070” written prominently on her left forearm, Gaga told the approving crowd, “Tonight, I want you to reject any person or any thing or any law that has made you feel like you don’t belong. I got a phone call from a couple really big rock and rollers, big pop stars, big rappers, and they said, ‘We’d like you to boycott Arizona because of SB 1070.’ And I said, ‘Do you really think that us dumb fucking pop stars are going to collapse the economy of Arizona?’ “
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Instead of avoiding the state, Lady Gaga said she wanted to take the fight straight to the heart of Arizona. “I’ll tell you what we have to do about SB 1070: We have to be active,” she said. “We have to protest… I will not cancel my show. I will yell and I will scream louder and I will hold you, and we will hold each other, and we will peaceably protest this state. Because if it wasn’t for all you immigrants, this country wouldn’t have shit.”
SB 1070 mandates that Arizona police officers must question any person they suspect to be an illegal immigrant and imprison any aliens not carrying one of four allowed forms of proper identification. According to AZ Central, during the two days Gaga spent in Arizona prior to the Phoenix show, the singer met a young fan whose family was affected by the controversial law. “I met a boy today who is suffering… He told me his house was raided because of a parking ticket or something,” Gaga told the crowd, adding that the boy’s brother was deported to Mexico, which she found “disgusting.” “I think it’s important that people understand that it’s a state of emergency for this place and this state,” she said. Gaga later dedicated her song “You and I” to the boy.
As Rolling Stone previously reported, Rage Against the Machine and Conor Oberst have led music’s fight against SB 1070 by establishing the Sound Strike, a collective of artists who have pledged to boycott Arizona while this “odious, unconstitutional and racist law” is in effect. Kanye West, Sonic Youth, Nine Inch Nails and Maroon 5 are among the hundreds of artists that have signed on with Sound Strike. Last weekend, Rage Against the Machine performed their first Los Angeles show in a decade to protest SB 1070 and raise funds for immigrants’ rights groups.
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While a U.S. District Court Judge recently put a stay on some of the more controversial provisions of SB 1070 until November, the law has already begun being implemented in Arizona. Watch Gaga’s anti-SB 1070 speech to in Phoenix:
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