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DEDICATION
This newspaper is dedicated to my mother and father, who taught me to always stand for my truth, remain fearless and never ever give up.
The Sedona Observer also dedicates this site to our literary heroes - writers, journalists, muckrakers and social reformers - whose work helped to shed light on the social injustices of their time: Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Henry David Thoreau, John Swinton, Jacob Riis, Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, Karl Marx, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Dickens and others.
Their legacy to expose corruption through the tip of their pens serves as an inspiration for our work here in these media-impaired times.
It is our intention to carry their torch and keep the spirit of muckraking alive in an era when it remains more desperately needed than ever.
A LABOR OF LOVE
We do not accept advertising to prevent outside control of our editorial content. So we're not making a penny off this publication. The Observer, therefore, represents a gift to the Sedona community, Arizona and all of America to uphold the First Amendment and to eliminate censorship.
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Coming soon to a city near you!
Left for Dead
Social Insecurity Plagues America
With the highest unemployment and foreclosure rate in history and a severe lack of social services, the system has turned its back on its citizens and left them for dead, without medical care, jobs, financial assistance, short-term disability and even their very own homes.
ONGOING INVESTIGATIVE REPORT
INVISIBLE SEDONA
Swept under the rug:
forgotten folks and ignored issues
by Catherine J. Rourke
Published July - December 2009
This ongoing compilation of exposés reveals the truth about the everyday reality of the city's invisible people, struggling to make ends meet in an affluent community that thrives on their cheap labor. In order to tell her tales, Rourke rides with trash collectors, burns toast with waitresses, flushes toilets with janitors and chases fire trucks with EMTs, peeling through the layers of affordable housing and immigration issues as well as archaic labor laws. She chronicles the triumphs, trials and tribulations of the city's service workers, celebrating their contributions to society and posing possible solutions to Sedona's economic challenges.
While the ubiquitous Pepto-Bismol pink appears ubiquitously on everything from NFL uniforms to Barbie dolls and even donuts in "search for the cure," the sad truth is that the cure already exists but remains suppressed to ensure the profits of a multi-trillion dollar industry laughing all the way to the bank off women's unnecessary pain and suffering. It takes American capitalism to turn a disease into a blatant marketing opportunity...
Click here to read the Observer's full investigative report:
Sedona’s Health Care Emergency Siren Keeps Resounding − Two Years Later – as One Resident’s Cry for Help Remains Ignored by a Heartless Health Care System
Everyone in America knows Joe the Plumber. Now meet Joe the Handyman, of Sedona, Ariz. − shortchanged, defaulted, repossessed and practically foreclosed on everything he’s ever worked for, saved for and lived for. Then, in March 2008, Joe Dimarcolost the most precious thing of all: his beloved wife, Andrea, to cancer. Joe believes her life could have been saved with proper medical and financial support. MORE…
"We need to challenge the insurance companies, not appease them. There’s no evidence that suggests they’re constructive players, or are likely to do anything except defend their own parochial interest." Read MORE from Seattle-based political essayist and author Paul Rogat Loeb ...
Seattle-based political essayist Paul Rogat Loeb offers profound insights for our times in these excerpts from his books
The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear and
Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time.MORE...
TIME FOR A NEW REVOLUTION?
Published March 21, 2009
The Sedona Observer encourages readers to burn their credit reports and listen to the following call from Thomas Paine for a Second American Revolution. We agree it's time for Americans to raise their pitchforks and storm the detached Bastille in Washington forking our taxes over to the "Let them eat cake" financial elite in our modern-day Versailles on Wall Street.
As old economic paradigms disintegrate, authors Kent and Maria Carr offer new guidelines for Americans to create a WE versus ME society that benefits everyone.MORE ...
As of press time, Senate Republicans continue to block the nomination of Hilda Solis due to her progressive stance in support of the nation's workers. With nearly two months lapsing since the December 19 nomination, the Senate will finally determine this week whether or not Solis will serve as the nation's next Secretary of Labor. For American workers, their fate inevitably hangs in the balance. MORE ...
Sedona Community News - Video
Published February 9, 2010
Mr. Adams Goes to Washington
Sedona Mayor Rob Adams talks about his recent meeting with senators and other political reps in Washington, D.C., to obtain $15 million for three vital city projects
No corporate jets, no tin cups. Just straight talk from the Sedona mayor to congressional leaders about obtaining the city's share of the
2009 Stimulus Appropriations Bill
for various municipal enhancements by the end of 2009.
For many Americans, the dream once included a home of one’s own, a good job with decent pay, affordable health care and a sense of security that would carry them into retirement. Now, with that dream shattered by a blizzard of pink slips, foreclosures, lost benefits, bankruptcies, frozen wages and mounting medical bills, people are wondering what happened to the American dream. MORE ...
Global spiritual film distributor and environmental activist Jim Law, of Sedona-based VOICE Entertainment, is one of those people moved to tears of joy by a tree. In 2007 he led a grass-roots citizen campaign to save Sedona’s sycamores – approximately 60 heritage, 300-year-old trees slated for demolition due to the Highway 179 road expansion project near the city’s Tlaquepaque landmark.
As a result of his collaborative effort with many other community leaders and activists, a majority of the trees were salvaged. While the story “Barking Up the Wrong Tree” (The Sedona Observer, Oct. 21, 2007) documents a chronology of this remarkable campaign, it’s time to revisit the status of the road reconstruction project and gauge its influence over the past year on the trees and surrounding environment. MORE ...
The Beatitudes often come in handy for someone like Father John Dear, a 49-year-old Jesuit priest who has dedicated his life to a path of nonviolence. Like Mahatma Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many other change agents before him, the passion for peace has only paved the way to prison. MORE ...
Demand affordable and accessible health care for all Americans now and put your money back in your wallet. We'll deliver this petition along with your comments to our representatives in Washington. SIGN HERE.
Changing the Economics of Journalism: No government control, no corporate monopolies, no advertisers. Why The Sedona Observer offers readers the best of all worlds, blending 18th century journalism principles with 21st century technology to uphold our First Amendment freedoms.
Join a new movement designed to end the fragmentation and fierce competition currently dividing members of the Fourth Estate, who should be bound together to report the truth. Click here for more information.
And now the good news:
Health-Care Heroes
We know they're out there. Nurses, doctors, healing centers and practitioners who go the extra mile and treat people with compassion, dignity and respect. Send your story suggestions, ideas and comments to: editor@SedonaObserver.com.
For many Americans, the dream once included a home of one’s own, a good job with decent pay, affordable health care and a sense of security that would carry them into retirement. Now, with that dream shattered by a blizzard of pink slips, foreclosures, lost benefits, bankruptcies, frozen wages and mounting medical bills, people are wondering what happened to the American dream. 
The Beatitudes often come in handy for someone like Father John Dear, a 49-year-old Jesuit priest who has dedicated his life to a path of nonviolence. Like Mahatma Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many other change agents before him, the passion for peace has only paved the way to prison. 
