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In today’s newsletter:
🍎 For nearly four decades, Maestra Yvette Lanz has shaped Tucson’s bilingual classrooms — now, she and thousands of educators could see long-overdue raises if TUSD voters approve Prop. 414 on Nov. 4. Read more.
🔥 A new 4-part documentary from Arizona Public Media + Arizona Luminaria uncovers the hidden crises inside Southern Arizona’s mobile home parks — where heat and housing collide. 📺 Part 1 premieres this Sunday, Nov. 2 at 6:30 p.m. on Arizona Illustrated (PBS 6). Learn more.
🏜️ In Southern Arizona, colonia communities — unincorporated settlements along the border that often lack basics like safe water, sewage systems, and paved roads — face rising threats from deadly heat, dwindling water, and funding cuts. Read the investigation by Arizona Luminaria and The Margin.
Featured stories
Teacher raises could pay off for students. TUSD voters decide Nov. 4
From the chaos of a kindergarten classroom, Maestra Yvette Lanz makes sense of her life. She shuffles the books into neat rows, straightens the uno, dos, tres number lines and […]
AZ Luminaria and AZPM team up for “The Last Affordable Housing,” a new documentary about mobile homes
Once seen as a symbol of independence and affordability, mobile home communities now face deadly heat, predatory management, inflated utility costs and few protections. But over the last several years, […]
Deserted at the border
This story was produced by The Margin in collaboration with Arizona Luminaria. Alfonso Figueroa and Anel Juarez drove 100 miles from their cobalt-blue manufactured home in Winchester Heights to a […]
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The 36th Annual All Souls Procession will take place Nov. 9 on Tucson’s west side, assembling on Grande Avenue at 4 p.m. and departing at 6 p.m. and culminating in the “Restoration of Care” ceremony and burning of the urn in the Mercado District. Details.
A coalition of local environmental groups, led by Save the Scenic Santa Ritas, wrote a letter to Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs encouraging her to cancel plans to auction 160 acres of state trust land to the company hoping to mine for copper in the Santa Rita Mountains, south of Tucson. “The sale of this land to Copper World will facilitate the development of a series of open pit mines that will destroy the northern half of the Santa Rita Mountains, consume enormous amounts of groundwater, devalue State Trust Land, and have devastating impacts on nearby communities and natural and cultural resources,” the letter signed by eight environmental groups states. Read more about the proposed Copper World mine here.
Tucson government meetings next week: The Pima County Board of Supervisors will meet Tuesday, Nov. 4, and the Tucson City Council will meet Wednesday, Nov. 5.
An “abuelas workshop” in Tucson will explore “how food traditions carry culture forward while confronting the ways climate change impacts our kitchens and crops.” Latinos in Heritage Conservation, in partnership with the Arizona American Planning Association, are launching the workshop series, RaĂces Comunales. The Tucson workshop is Nov. 6 at 3 p.m. Participants will share their stories through interviews, photographs, and help create maps that will be added to the Abuelas Project’s national people’s archive. Learn more here.
For the first time, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office is offering its Citizens Academy entirely in Spanish, giving Spanish-speaking county residents the opportunity to engage directly with Arizona’s criminal justice system. The free, one-day program will include presentations from prosecutors and experts, a mock felony case review and insight into victims’ rights and resources. The Spanish-language session will be held Nov. 6 at MCAO’s downtown Phoenix office. Register here.
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