Author: mopress

Email from Jay Johnson-Castro

A great Christmas Eve to y’all…

One last e-mail before I hit the road for [1400 Welch St.] Taylor, Texas …for the Christmas Eve Vigil…for the mom’s and especially the children that are imprisoned in the Hutto prison camp.
We’re grateful that folks like y’all are picking up on the travesty being committed on American soil just 35 miles from the Capitol of Texas.

We did the walk and held the first vigil just one week ago…and look at the momentum that grass roots America has made. With this vigil this Christmas Evening…we will fan the flames of American outrage against the fascism that has crept into this country of immigrants. We are exposing Chertoff & Company. We are exposing the immigration-corporation complex…in which children and their desperate mothers are imprisoned like hardened criminals.

I know it’s short notice…but if anyone can spare an hour…from 5p-to 6p…you would be able to share in the demise of the perverted mentality that would rejoicingly exploit children for obscene profits. One hour…plus travel time…and you can be back with your friends and families for a warm and cozy Christmas Eve. At least the children and their moms…the media…and especially Chertoff & Company will know that there are Americans who not only genuinely care…but will fight with the power of democracy and all of our freedoms of speech and press and assembly…until these immoral and criminal acts are fully exposed, the children and their moms are freed…and real justice stares the real criminals in the face.

If you can make it…please bring a candle…

Jay

PlanetFlamenco

Teye is a Flamenco artist who along with Jay Johnson-Castro is returning to the Hutto prison camp Christmas Eve for a vigil–a Flamenco vigil. The Texas Civil Rights Review sent a few questions via email:

TCRR: I hear you are from Europe, and that your family has had experience with fascism.

Teye: I am actually from the Netherlands: My father was a soldier in Rotterdam when it was bombed by the Germans in May 1940 (my father was 40 years my senior, and I’m 49 now).
My father nor mother ever allowed even one ugly word in our house on Germans: he always said that the Germans were by and large brainwashed and misinformed by the nazi fanatics. He spent months in German captivity; then was allowed to return home, then when the nazis started to deport capable men to do forced labor, he like many others disappeared underground and hid out. He never was discovered nor betrayed and survived the war intact as did my mother.

We will need to separate the term FASCISM from the idea “everything bad”. Fascism is basically defined thus: the government works closely together with
the big corporations and they mutually enlarge each others power. It is the pyramid of power: a broad and obedient and mis/disinformed base, narrowing towards
the top where the power sits and the information is made. The nazis definitely fit the description!

TCRR: What is your motivation for going back to the Hutto jail Christmas Eve?

Teye: My motivation to do the Christmas Eve event, which will be really more of a Gypsy Campfire Flamenco gathering, only without the campfire of course,
but with candles, is that I want to bring hope to especially the children inside.

I’ve tried to contact the prison to offer a free of charge flamenco performance inside, for the children and their parents and for the staff, but I never heard
back from them. So we will do it outside. I am positive that the rumor will travel to the inside of the facility that there are some people right by the entrance who choose to celebrate their Christmas Eve in support, so
that the children and their families may know that they are neither forgotten nor ignored.

And let us not forget: they must feel forgotten inside: The lawyer who is representing them tells us that SEVEN INMATES HOLD VALID IMMIGRATION VISAS ISSUED BY THE US GOVERNMENT, but since there is no effective appeal in the system of for-profit private prisons, they are still being held in detention!

TCRR: How are people responding to your call for a Christmas Eve vigil?

Teye: Reactions from people have been enormously positive: I am getting emails in from all over the world, pledging support and dedicating a virtual candle. And that is the second idea behind this Gypsy Candlelight performance: to raise awareness via the grassroots alternative circuit: and it is working.

TCRR: Why go back to Hutto jail only a week after the first vigil?

Teye: We have GOT TO KEEP THE BALL ROLLING until this situation changes for the better.

On Christmas Eve we celebrate the joyful birth of Jesus: the big ray of Hope Peace and Sunshine that was given to ALL humankind! The Gypsies have always said that God created this world for ALL of us!
And I do not believe that [means] incarcerating children. So we need to keep at it.

from Jay Johnson-Castro (Dec. 23 pm)

Afternoon y’all…

The media has played a great role in getting this truth out to our fellow Texans and Fellow Americans. This is an appeal to you of the media…

Regarding this vigil, I received this caution from someone who knows more about the inside of the Hutto prison camp than most of us.

I would be careful though, because I heard that as a result of the last vigil, the detainees were kind of in lock-down most of the day. They didn’t get to go outside that day. So I would be careful, because you wouldn’t want ICE to get upset and take it out on the detainees. Just a heads-up.

I appeal to the media to help people know what happened last week as mentioned here. The media has a great opportunity to inform the public about what is really going on. By doing so…perhaps the children and their moms will not be mistreated this way tomorrow evening.
Here is the latest great link…and networking together of two local media folks to bring transparency to this cruelty right here on Texas , American soil. Greg Moses, editor of The Texas Civil Rights Review has consistently been right on top of this. http://texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke/index.php

Gratefully the Austin American Statesman, Fox news, Univision, BBC and even the Taylor and Williamson County newspapers have shown journalistic leadership in weighing in on the prison camp that has incarcerated innocent children and helpless mothers behind razor wire walls. I keep asking myself…where is the outrage from the other big(s)?

Where’s CNN…and all the national networks? Where is Houston , Dallas , San Antonio ? Is this too insignificant of a story for them. Where’s USA Today, NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post? Where’s Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Riley, Jack McCaferty, Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer? What does it take for these folks to weigh in? Do the children and their moms in this prison camp have to somehow be tortured too before they respond? Or are they too deep into Chertoff & Company for their national ratings? Let’s hope not!

Meanwhile…my deepest respect and admiration to all the media that has had the courage to report this issue of incarcerating children in the Hutto prison camp. Until this garners the national and international media…much credit goes to the local and grassroots media…and the many blogs that have picked up on this heartbreaking story. You are perpetuating the truth and exposing the immoral and criminal actions of those who would exploit and abuse the weak…for obscene profits…all in the name of national security. When history is written about this expanding Texas-American Gulag for greedy profit system…you of the media who have already courageously weighed in…will be recognized. The internet has the reporting time-line all archived.

Keith Olbermann? Where are you? You’re not afraid to say it like it is?

The Christmas Eve Vigil goes on tomorrow evening. 5pm-6pm.

Jay

Photos by Jay Johnson-Castro of the T. Don Hutto jail, taken at the Dec. 16 vigil.