Arizona

亚利桑那社会主义坚共和国 (Yǎlìsāngnà shèhuì zhǔyì gònghéguó)

Socialisma Amerika Respubliko de Arizona

Mandarin Chinese (1.2%)

Native Languages (0.6%)

Esperanto (0.2%)

**Arizona**, officially the **Socialist American Republic of Arizona**, is a constituent state of the United Socialist American Republics.

## History

### The Revolution

The Arizona SAR was founded in the wake of the Phoenician Uprising, lead by Augustus Frederickson. Frederickson and a small militia of Phoenix college students and Vietnam veterans, known as the Rising Phoenix Army, with the support of various disadvantaged rural groups and the urban poor, seized the administrative buildings of Arizona State University in Tempe. The RPA declared itself the legitimate government of Arizona and demanded the previous government's surrender, and in an effort to gain external support recognized Cesar Chavez's fledgling Socialist Republic of Aztlan, which promptly reciprocated. After a protracted siege, the RPA seized the Capitol Building, cementing its control over Metropolitan Phoenix. Governor Jack Williams and his cabinet, with the support of the United States Army and the Arizona National Guard, fled to Flagstaff. Augustus Frederickson declared the Arizona Socialist American Republic on December 16th, 1972, and was admitted to the Union the next day.

For the next year, the Phoenix and Flagstaff governments avoided large-scale engagements, instead skirmishing along the banks of the Verde. The Arizona National Guard, already weak from fighting Chavez down south, began suffering desertions. The United States Army, preoccupied with the bloody guerrilla war in the Southeast, was unable to provide much assistance. The only outside force able to assist Williams' government, the army of the newly-created New California Republic, was engaged in a two-front war. To the north, the Berkeley Revolutionaries and the California SAR. To the southeast, the combined forces of Aztlan and the Arizona SAR. As New California fell back to the Tehachapi mountains, Williams was left isolated, but held out nonetheless. Frederickson marched north, and by spring of 1974 was able to fully surround Flagstaff. But it was only in 1975, when the Deseret Liberation Army finally defeated all resistance in the former Utah and marched south that the stalemate was able to be broken. On october 17, 1975, Flagstaff fell.

In 1978, Aztlan and Arizona pushed west into California. When the NCR fell in late 1978, Arizona annexed the western Mojave desert, to serve as a buffer zone should Californian reactionaries rise again.

### Post-Revolution

After the revolution, Arizona attracted a large amount of immigrants, lured in by the dry climate and hospitable winters. It continues to be a popular immigration destination, and as a result only 15% of Arizonans claim Arizonan birth. A large influx of Chinese immigrants beginning in the 1980s substantially altered Arizona's demographics, with 6% of Arizonans claiming full or partial Chinese ancestry in 2015.

New irrigation projects created an agricultural boom throughout the 1990s. In the 2000s, Arizona began development of wide-scale solar power. The 10 km2 Mojave II Solar Plant, completed in 2010, now provides 45% of Arizona's energy, and, combined with the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant on the banks of the Gila River, enables Arizona to export power to Zion, Nevada, and Dinetah.

Arizonan scientists form the core of the USAR Space Council's  Heliogenic Orbiting Power Extractor (H.O.P.E) Design team. Construction is expected to begin in 2023. When completed in 2029, the station, orbiting in geosynchronous orbit will provide up 10 TWh per year of solar energy, beamed directly back to 5 ground-based receivers across the country. Due to its robust power infrastructure and abundance of empty space, Arizona was selected in 2016 to be the site of one of the 5 initially-planned receivers.

## Geography

Arizona is a landlocked SAR, bordered by the Alta, Nevada, Zion, Dinetah, Aztlan and New Mexico SARs. The terrain of Arizona is varied, ranging from scorching desert (Arizona comprises sizable portions of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts) to lush forest to snow-capped mountains.

## Government

### Municipal Assemblies

Based on the village soviets of 1917 Russia, the Municipal Assembly (MA) is the basic unit of government in the Arizona SAR. Municipal Assemblies are democratically elected governing bodies which combine the roles of pre-revolution United States City and County governments, albeit with more independent authority to act on economic and environmental issues. The Municipal Assembies form the basis of republican representation in the Arizona SAR government, and can be thought of as "states" or federal sub-units of the SAR, with their own powers and responsibilities distinct from the SAR.

Every twelve years, beginning in 1982, communities which have been registered with the Arizona SAR may vote to remain with their current Municipal Assembly, begin a new one (a task which they can accomplish individually or with the cooperation of neighboring communities), or join a neighboring Municipal Assembly. As such, community membership within the Municipal Assemblies is quite fluid and entirely democratically-determined, with a 6/10 majority vote required to change a community's status within a Municipal Assembly.

Municipal Assemblies, then, may be thought of as federations themselves, comprising all willingly-participating communities. As there is no minimum number of communities or population requirement to form a Municipal Assembly, there exist a number of Municipal Assemblies which comprise only a single registered community, while others contain hundreds. However, as representation within the Arizona legislature is allocated proportionally, no legislative advantage is gained by a community seceding and creating its own Assembly, but it does allow communities which want more authority over their own affairs, communities that are remote or isolated, or communities with unusual or unique demographic makeup to decide their own policies.

The smallest Municipal Assembly, the Yucca Flower Municipal Assembly in the eastern Mojave desert, comprises only 431 people, while over one million people call the largest, the North-Central Phoenix MA, home.

The only restriction on Municipal Assembly membership is geographic adjacency. After 1992, Municipal Assemblies were disallowed from govern non-contiguous territory, and a 1996 law further restricted the cases in which Municipal Assemblies were allowed to fully surround other Municipal Assemblies. Additionally, the Arizona Capital Territory, comprising the SAR legislative building and the few surrounding blocks, is excluded from all Municipal Assemblies. Autonomous Indiginous Communities function similarly to Municipal Assemblies, but with far greater autonomy with regard to their form of government and the ability to deny communities from joining and eject communities as they see fit.

## Flag

The flag of the Arizona SAR is derived from the flag of the U.S. state of Arizona, out of which the Arizona SAR was created. The sunrise is turned on its side, representing the overturning of the old order, while the star has been replaced with the starless USAR cog and hammer symbol, colored copper to represent Arizona's historic copper mining industries. The red in the sunburst represents the blood shed in service to the revolution, the yellow the riches seized from the overthrown capitalists. The blue field, the same shade as in the U.S. and U.S.A.R flags, represents liberty under the new socialist order.