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Hawkers' Thanksgiving Give One Less Cheer for Democracy. By Susan Zakin I WAS STANDING on the corner of Speedway and Alvernon one windy afternoon last week watching Annie and John sell papers. Annie, who is 22 and beautiful, with freckles and dark blue eyes, tells me that she spent her adolescence in Colorado, where she took care of a baby bear in its den after its mother was shot. Her partner John is 38, tall and obviously intelligent. "I read at the level of a college junior and I passed the entrance exam to the University of Arizona," says John. "They say I'm paranoid-schizophrenic, but it's mild." I believe all of it. Why not? Annie is half-wild herself and John is the hardest-working man I've ever seen on a road median. He strides the concrete like Mick Jagger, wearing rainbow shades, his ponytail bobbing on his back. He is more careful than most pedestrians. Not that he has much competition, since nobody walks in Tucson, which is right up there with Phoenix in pedestrian-unfriendliness. A few weeks ago, the City Council made it even more unfriendly, making it illegal for people like John and Annie to sell newspapers from the road medians, even though this is one of the few jobs around for people who just can't settle into the straight world. The move was led by council member Carol West and opposed by every homeless advocate in Tucson. West says her concern was safety. Council member Steve Leal, who also voted for the ban, says he was worried about the city's liability. These concerns have some validity. Two hawkers were killed a couple of years ago and the city was almost sued. Since then, the Tucson Citizen, the newspaper most dependent on hawkers, has instituted safety measures, including training classes and requiring hawkers to wear brightly colored vests. There haven't been any problems since then. That wasn't enough for West. Critics say that West's real motivation was to make Tucson safe for the city's tourism industry--and for the haute bourgeoisie in her district. West, a Democrat, has been a swing vote on the council, but lately she's been swinging very Republican. Homeless advocate Brian Flagg suggested that the hawker ban came about because West leaned hard on Democratic colleagues who want to keep her on the reservation. Whatever the motivation of Tucson's politicians, everyone is ignoring the bigger picture. All roads lead to sprawl in Tucson--literally and figuratively--and this depressing vote is no different. The hawkers play in traffic because there are no customers on the sidewalks. That's the story, how untrammeled developer greed erodes democracy in ways that are both crude and subtle. This is also why it's troubling that West's commitment to fighting sprawl isn't as strong as her white-glove desire to clean human detritus off Tucson's roads. West initially supported Proposition 202, the growth management initiative on November's ballot, but later withdrew her backing. That's typical of most Arizona Democrats, who, unlike Al Gore, justify third-party arguments that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. There are other consequences of this mean-spirited vote. The Tucson Citizen will be far more affected by the hawker ban, which goes into effect May 1, than the Arizona Daily Star. Like most afternoon papers, the Citizen is on life support, with less than 40,000 circulation compared to the Star's 98,000. According to editor Mike Chihak, the Citizen depends on hawkers for 6 percent of its circulation, while the embarrassing, flaccid Star, which has jumped into bed with developers under the business-friendly publisher Jane Amari, sells a mere 1 percent of its papers through hawkers. Democracy dies by inches. Sometimes by a few yards on a road. John cuts to the chase better than the politicians. "I like selling these newspapers, because these people otherwise might not read them. They're on their way home from work, they might not want to stop at a store. Because of freedom of speech, we have the right to all the information. Look," he says, pointing to a date on the Citizen's front page. "Established 1870." The threat of turning Tucson into a one-newspaper town is one of several reasons that the ban may be worse for us than it will be for the hawkers. If democracy and freedom of speech weren't enough, there's also the matter of human spirit. John and Annie are among the last American adventurers. Ten years ago, long before the era of cell phones in the wilderness, the mountaineer and photographer Galen Rowell was warning that human existence becomes impoverished when we eliminate risk. In his excellent book, Rolling Nowhere, writer Ted Conover described how he went AWOL from his fancy Eastern college to see what it was like to be a hobo. He found himself getting dangerously close to becoming addicted. Not to heroin or crank. To freedom. I never feel more alive than when I'm out there without a net. That's how John and Annie live every day. They are people with big problems, but they are our holy fools. We would do well to think hard before banishing them from our sight. We would also do well to consider what it means to strip away their small victories. "I like selling papers," says Annie, who "flies a sign" or begs when she isn't hawking the Citizen. "I can wear my makeup. I can wear my jewelry. You can't do that when you fly a sign. You have to play the poor piece of trash." Unfortunately, the City Council has already voted. But you can still send a letter or e-mail to your City Council member or to Mayor Bob Walkup. Tell the politicians that we won't buy the usual amorphous promises of job training. Tell them to find a way to keep John and Annie out there hawking democracy.
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