O'odham Pepper Sprayed in Phoenix ALEC Protest

David Ortega, Tohono O'odham, suffered a stroke after being pepper sprayed by police and is now at the hospital.Tohono O'odham protesters at the ALEC protest in Scottsdale, Ariz., in the Phoenix Valley, were pepper sprayed directly in their faces by police. O'odham were non-violent and singled out because police viewed them as key to the protest.Ofelia Rivas, Tohono O'odham and founder of O'odham VOICE against the Wall, said, "There is a lot of unnecessary police brutality."O'odham from Tohono O'odham, Salt River and Gila River have joined Navajos resisting relocation from Big Mountain on the Navajo Nation at the protest to battle the corporate influences underway of legislators and lobbyists.Police helicopters are hovering overhead.Native American protesters are battling mining interests, the theft of water and land rights, abuse by US Border Patrol agents, desecration of sacred lands and the militarization of the border. On the Navajo Nation, Peabody Coal, responsible for orchestrating the so-called Navajo Hopi land dispute, continues to poison the land, water and air with coal mining for power plants. On the US/Mexico border, the US Border Patrol continues to beat and abuse O'odham and other Indigenous Peoples in their homelands. Uranium mining continues to target the Grand Canyon and Indian lands, while radioactive tailings from the Cold War remain. In Arizona, corporate profiteers continue to push copper, coal and uranium mining, devastating the land, water and air, and resulting in widespread health problems for the people.

The US/Mexico border wall, and its non-functioning spy towers, has been a source of corporate profiteering for US corporations including Boeing, who entered into a contract with the Israeli Apartheid defense contractor Elbit Systems for the border wall and security systems.The US is now asking Tohono O'odham to approve new US spy towers on their lands, after the last billion dollar boondoggle of the US, failed spy towers on the Arizona border which did not function.
Further, as the media fans racism which aids border profiteers, G4S based in London, profiteers from transportation contracts for the Wackenhut buses transporting detained migrants from the Arizona border.