On Hard Knock Radio, host Davey D welcomes longtime Arizona organizer and community strategist Salvador Reza for a wide ranging conversation that traces the roots of today’s anti immigrant policies back to Arizona’s political experiments of the early 2000s. Reza joins the show to discuss his book Macehualli Day Laborers Spiritual Roots of Our Fight Against Sheriff Arpaio, which centers the lived experiences of day laborers and grassroots organizers rather than politicians nonprofits or party leaders.
Davey D opens by situating Arizona as a testing ground for policies that later became national under Trump. Reza explains that his organizing began in the late 1990s when Phoenix police routinely harassed day laborers and attempted to push them out of public space. That repression escalated in the mid 2000s with the rise of the Minutemen movement, which Reza describes as a media driven vigilante force used to manufacture fear and justify anti immigrant legislation. While the Minutemen drew attention, Reza argues that the real power was inside the legislature, naming Russell Pearce and ALEC as key drivers behind SB 1070.
Reza details how Sheriff Joe Arpaio used 287g style agreements to transform local law enforcement into immigration police and recounts how raids were staged around commercial centers to criminalize workers. He stresses that these tactics were nationally coordinated and legally backed by right wing organizations. Rather than responding through traditional nonprofit or electoral channels, Reza and others focused on building what he calls parallel power. This included organizing families and neighborhoods directly through dozens of rapid response defense committees that could act immediately without waiting on centralized organizations.
A major thread of the conversation is Reza’s critique of the nonprofit industrial complex and electoral politics. He argues that nonprofits often become hierarchical and constrained by funders, while electoral strategies are ultimately controlled by developers and corporate interests. According to Reza, meaningful victories only came when people applied economic pressure through boycotts and collective action, forcing business interests to intervene.
Reza also grounds the struggle in Indigenous history and spirituality. He explains that the term Macehualli honors workers as the builders of civilization and rejects the idea that day laborers are disposable or illegal. He discusses organizing through family based structures rooted in ancestral traditions and highlights the Peace and Dignity Run as both spiritual practice and political resistance across ancestral lands without borders.
The conversation closes with Reza reflecting on the deeper spiritual lessons in his book, particularly the chapter on Tezcatlipoca, which he describes as a mirror for self transformation. He warns that without reconnecting to land community and spirit, movements risk fighting for power without purpose, leaving society vulnerable in an increasingly unstable world.
Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson.
The post In Conversation with Salvador Reza appeared first on KPFA.
