Author: mopress

Austin, Texas (Dec. 16, 2005) The Austin City Council yesterday
approved unanimously a resolution opposing the activities of the
Minutemen and other similar groups. The resolution cites concern over
untrained civilians taking immigration law into their own hands,
activities which may encourage discrimination and racial profiling.

The resolution directs the City Manager to report any vigilante activities to the City Council. The resolution was an initiative of the American Friends Service
Committee (AFSC) and the Coalition for Justice and Dignity in Austin, a
diverse coalition of immigrant and advocacy organizations. Fifty-eight
allied civic, faith and labor organizations were signatories to this
effort.

"We are pleased that Council recognized the dangers of vigilante groups
posturing as nothing more than neighborhood watch groups, and took
proactive action to diffuse any potentially violent situation," said
Yvonne Montejano of the AFSC.

The Minuteman Project and other vigilante groups say they are
protecting this country’s borders. Human rights organizations point out
that vigilante groups frequently use fear, intimidation and violent
tactics in their efforts to "secure" borders.

"These groups are providing simplistic answers to our nation’s
social, economic and political difficulties and many politicians are
jumping on the Minuteman bandwagon to distract the public from major
budget and employment problems," said Montejano.

Yesterday, U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner
(R-WI) introduced anti-immigrant legislation that would make the entire
undocumented population, including 1.6 million children, felons by
their unlawful presence in this country. The House Judiciary Committee
is also considering the construction of a fence in parts of California,
Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to stop the flow of migrants.

The AFSC strongly opposes these anti-immigrant measures and instead
calls for an examination of the roots cause of migration, which it
maintains are primarily due to free trade and globalization policies.

——-

The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker organization
that includes people of various faiths who are committed to social
justice, peace and humanitarian service. Its work is based on the
belief in the worth of every person and faith in the power of love to
overcome violence and injustice.


Note: press release received via email, Dec. 16, 2005–gm

Dear Friends:

Ramsey’s health continues to improve slowly…

I was given the strength and knowledge to care
for my huband from Lovelia Perez, one of Ramsey’s best
friends (during the early 70s), and former Raza Unida Party
activist. Lovelia remained with me by telephone every
morning, noon, and night providing love, courage, compassion,
and the medical knowledge needed to help my husband survive
a very grave illness.

Lovelia Perez demonstrated the most unselfish act of placing
others before herself. Her beautiful heart and giving spirit
will never be forgotten. Lovelia (Mama Love) Perez, 66, of Austin, died
Sunday, Nov. 20, 2005, in Austin. She was born Nov. 20, 1939, in
McCulloch County, to Nemesio Perez, Sr. and Francisca (Aguirre) Perez.
She was a registered nurse and was Poly Spiritual. She attended SMU,
received a bachelor of science in nursing from the Texas Women’s
University in Denton and received a masters degree from South West
Texas State University in San Marcos. Survivors include her mother, Francisca Perez of San Angelo; a son,
Carlos Gonzales of Austin; a daughter, Driana Gonzales, also of Austin;
and two sisters, Estela Perez Santos and husband, Manuel, of San Angelo
and Berta Perez Linton, also of San Angelo. She was preceded in death
by her father; and two brothers, Nestor and Nemesio Perez, Jr. The
family requests memorials be made to The Christopher House in Care of
Hospice of Austin. Her obituary can be accessed online.

Lovelia Perez was an angel sent by God to teach us real love and
compassion, and to help save a man whose message she embraced and
shared with others. In a letter to Ramsey she wrote, "Some people want
to talk about La Raza, but I tell them they cannot discuss La Raza
without you. Whether they like it or not, you are our history — our
hero. Have you done research as to how manmy times people have used
your name on their books or their articles? We have won the war of the
tortilla. HEB makes tortillas better than some Mexicanos, and that
includes me. We have won the color war. It’s okay now to have a pink,
purple, or green house. We have made progress in the food and language
wars, but it’s the spiritual war that we are so behind in."

We dedicate the poem below to our dear friend, Lovelia Perez.

–Irma Muniz (Nov. 27, 2005)

———————————-

VOYAGE

I languish in this world of woe and tears.
Bleak is my exile, heavy are my shackles and chains
on this day of remembrance in the darkness
of this medieval dungeon.

I rest my eyes and soul.

I voyage to a far and distant land that was ours long ago.
Here I gaze into the colors that are not rare to me.
As I journey further with the spirits of this land,
I reach the clearing of the dark jungle;
I can envision the temples of Huitzilopotli and Quetzacoatl.

The day is August 13, 1521. There stood Cuauhtemoc,

he who is pure, who died in war for us,
he who lives close to the sixth sun — the valiant Mexika

(me-shee-ka) warrior.
What a magnificent sight it was, for he lives

in the house of the sun, a place of wealth and joy.

He, like a fine burnished turquoise, gave his heart.
It arrived at the place of the sun where it will germinate,
once again to blossom into the Rising of the Sixth Sun.
When I gazed into the eyes and heart of Cuauhtemoc
I could sense the consciousness of our Mexika birth-soul.

I perceived the pride and dignity of my native ancestors

within me — the sixth sun rose.

I walked with Cuauhtemoc up the temple steps that reached
the heavens.
I was in the shadow of our past, present and future of our
beloved Aztlan.
I witnessed the suffering, sorrow, pain, misery, hunger,

and sacrifices on that ancient historical day.

But as I voyaged further into what is above us, Topan,

and in the region of the dead, Mictlan,
the winds from the four directions of the universe sang a
sweet song to my heart and I rejoiced when I gazed into

the faces of our destined heroes in my dreams.
For you see, when I’m in the realm of my forefathers and

ancestors, I fear nothing and take pleasure in their

presence of this sixth sun.

It is this transformation and reformation of my indigenous

Mexika spirituality I long to know — an ancient history

concealed and denied for 500 years.
Yet within me does the rage of thousands build for the many

sorrows, hardships, and sacrifices my forefathers endured.

There is no rest for my soul (Mexicayotl) until the

manifestations of the rising of the sixth sun appears
among our people.

My Mexika brothers and sisters, all my world is caged

and confined yet my spiritual birth-soul runs free.

"Wait, Cuauhtemoc, for I am coming."

Ramsey Muniz/Tezcatlipoca

Solitary Confinement
August 13, 1999

———————————

"It is not true, it is not true
That we have come
To live here,
We came only to sleep
Only to dream…"

CANTARES MEXICANOS
1904, 17r.
Facsimile Ed. Mexico City: Antonio Penafiel

http://www.freeramsey.com

By Greg Moses

IndyMedia Austin / Houston / NorthTexas

In the relationship between knowledge and freedom, children derive
their right to free education. Take for example the Texas constitution
of 1875 (Article VII, Section 1):

A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the
preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the
duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable
provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of
public free schools.

Into this succinct line of reasoning is packed a serious claim.
Where there is no suitable education, there can be no real hope of
preserving rights and liberties; therefore, elected representatives
have a duty to establish, support, and maintain public schools.

Yet in the wake of the latest collective judgment handed down by the
Texas Supreme Court, we are left shaking our heads. The court has
affirmed that Texas is dead last among the fifty states of the USA when
it comes to high school literacy among adults 25 and older. And the
court has stipulated that high-school-dropout rates consume fully half
of the state’s Hispanic students and nearly half of African Americans.
Yet, the court finds this system of public education adequate,
suitable, and efficient.
Had the court wanted to signal a higher standard of respect
for ‘essential’ conditions of education, justices could not have
concocted a more timely environment. A state district court had already
ruled the education system unconstitutional, and the legislature had
convened several special sessions ordered by the governor in open
admission that something better should be done. But legislators, time
after time, had failed; until finally they said it might be better to
wait until the high court gave guidance.

Because the trial court, the governor, and the legislature were already
behaving as if a constitutional crisis in education had been reached,
the Texas high court had only to stand squarely on the side of the
rights and liberties of the people to issue a profound and lifting
command. Yet the court retreated from the rights of the people and
aligned itself instead with the prerogatives of a decadent legislature,
whose inability to agree on some better course of action now stands in
a sentimental glow of constitutional sympathy.

Instead of casting into 21st Century law a progressive
commitment to vigorous support for the “essential” institution of
public ed, the court tottered backward, deferred to backward looking
comparisons, and anchored its logic squarely in 19th Century habits of
mind that have usually blunted the keen logic of the constitution.

With a decisive choice before it, whether to raise
expectations for the people or lower expectations for the legislature,
the court decided that deference to the legislature was its wisest
course. And so the court, when served up with a critical and hard-fought
opportunity to enliven the relationship between knowledge and liberty
among the people (an opportunity that will take many years to rebuild)–the court abandons its rare and recent tradition
of trying to be part of the public education solution.

In its deferential (cozy) embrace of the legislature, the
court decided that so long as the legislature is not being “arbitrary”
in its provision of education, its crucial provisions for the rights
and liberties of the people cannot be second guessed.

But what requires the court to be deferential to the legislature when
it comes to assessing public education, especially if public education
is so clearly founded on the need to preserve the liberties and rights
of the people? It is to the liberties and rights of the people that the
court is more urgently bound to defer, not to the liberties and rights
of the legislature.

A plain reading of the legislature’s actions since 1875 prove
that in the absence of a jealous court, the state legislature tends to
deflate the concept of public education, preferring to keep the rights
and liberties of some people hostage to the rights and liberties of
others. The paradigm for this pattern is marked out in two words: Jim
Crow.

Or to put it another way, if a jealous court is not actively
protecting the rights and liberties of the people one and all, then the
promise and hope of democracy loses an essential foundation of
legitimacy within the state structure upheld by that court. A lousy
court results not only in a lousy state, but in lousy hopes that the
state can ever be democratically reformed. Yet the court in this case
seems to believe that a lousy court can motivate a lousy legislature to
do what it has never voted to do to date without court pressure. As a result of the court
ruling, the promise of education for democracy in Texas is once again a revolutionary hope.

By Greg Moses

OpEdNews / DissidentVoice / CounterPunch

"Next year Lord we’d love to give thanks for everybody’s freedom and
equality, but in the meantime please accept our appreciation for the
fact that after you adjust for race and class, some of our kids seem
not too pulled down by impossible situations."

Such was the blessing spoken by the Texas Supreme Court this
week as justices released a long-awaited school funding decision just
in time for the American Winter Holiday Season.

To the wealthier school districts of Texas (known as the West Orange
Cove plaintiffs) the court granted permission to raise local tax rates
in behalf of ‘educational excellence’ in all the right neighborhoods.

To the rest of us, the court explained how the structure of funding in
Texas does not make it impossible for poor districts to keep themselves
accredited, and therefore the urgent pleadings from the poor districts
for more support cannot be expected to rise to the level of
constitutional concern.
In one sense it was a crisp and clear ruling, cutting through
the panic arguments filed by the state in an attempt to steer the case
away from the godawful facts that had impressed the trial judge. Panic
arguments such as the court has no jurisdiction nor the districts
proper standing were one by one dismissed. After all, the court had
already issued a decade or more of school funding rulings all named
‘Edgewood’ after a famous San Antonio school system.

After cutting through the panic arguments, the court took the facts
boldly in hand and said things like, sure, the buildings look like crap
in these pictures, but what does that have to do with education? The
kids seem to be passing, don’t they? It’s a bad situation, but it’s not
that bad. One fourth of all school districts in Texas have not yet
levied special taxes to support their own school buildings, so the
question of the state’s obligation is beside the point.

This Thanksgiving, we can give thanks to a few attorneys and school
districts who jumped into the lawsuit because they wanted to make sure
the rich districts didn’t run away with all the money. In that
struggle, our longstanding heroes from Edgewood and Alvarado seem to
have maintained a very costly line in the form of a warning from the
Supreme Court that if things get much worse, well there has to be some
limit to the amount of hypocrisy the court will publicly tolerate.

MALDEF was quick to denounce the decision as justice delayed
for the children of Texas. With richer districts now able to ‘enhance’
their schools through higher local taxes than previously allowed, and
with the legislature under no real court pressure to make things more
equal (just don’t let them get much more unequal) the timeline for
justice is matching up a little closer to that previously scheduled
cold day in hell.

“In 2003,” said the court, “Texas ranked last among the states
in the percentage of high school graduates at least 25 years old in the
population.” Fully half the Hispanic students and nearly half the
African-American students drop out during high school. In Texas, Black
and Hispanic students are the majority. By the year 2040, these
‘minorities’ will constitute two-thirds of the population. But the cost
of a just education is difficult to quantify said the court. Glaring
challenges of high school literacy the court could not quite translate
into a single legal reason for constitutional urgency.

There was a dissenting opinion: a heartfelt manifesto for
justice through ‘competition’ duly applied to suggestions for
competition between districts and more tax money for private schools.

BTW, all those anti-affirmative action voices who say we should really
start equalizing education at the elementary level? There were so many
of them hollering when the Hopwood case was news. Today they seem quite
happy to note with the Texas Supreme Court that democracy is still good
enough for constitutional purposes so long as you know how to properly
adjust your expectations for differences of race and class.

Anyway, that’s the news from Texas. Dog bites kid. Pass the turkey please.