The Spring Break Border Walk from Roma to Brownsville has been wonderfully chronicled by Matthew Webster’s Walk Diary at Smart Borders
“It was hotter than a human heart, the organ this entire walk has targeted. Believing that people are innately good, we feel that they simply must not know the wonderful people and beautiful places which a wall would destroy and immigration legislation could enhance.”
Emial from John Wheat Gibson:
“Today the US attorney filed a motion to abate or dismiss the suit in Abilene to drug Rrustem Neza. He said he filed it because of Congressman Louie Gohmert’s private bill.”
Note: for more information on the case of Rrustem Neza and the efforts of Rep. Gohmert, please see the Texas Civil Rights Review Index of Documents, “Saving Rrustem Neza.”
A Texas Civil Rights Review Editorial
Terms like ignorance, indignation, hatred, divisiveness, and racism surely apply to the typhoon that swirls around the sound bites of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. You can tell by how nobody pays any attention to Rev. Wright’s insistence that he be judged by theological standards.
For his own part, the right Reverend couldn’t have been more clear about it. When he was invited onto Fox News March 1, he begged for a conversation that would be literate in the works of black liberation theology. But this is the conversation that was denied to him. Instead, the Fox News interrogator smirked about Wright’s “black church” and asked a hateful question about why there can be no “white churches”.
Perhaps Fox News should break the ice and name itself White News, if that would satisfy their juvenile sense of fair and balanced branding.
Rev. Wright is a preacher, a pastor, and a theologian of accomplishment and distinction who has now been relegated to a whipping boy of ugly white backlash. It is quite hateful and divisive what has been done to the man, and a bolder crop of presidential candidates might be calling on so many grown men to apologize for their disrespectful treatment of the Reverend.
Returning to the juvenile question of why there is such a thing as Black Entertainment Television, but not White Entertainment Television as such, or a proud black church but not a proud white church as such, one only has to know the basic facts of American history. Pretending that one does not know these basic facts while at the same time drawing a salary as a professional journalist is stark evidence of racist malice aforethought.
In ten days, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is scheduled to be honored in Texas; therefore, Texas has the opportunity to honor him properly as a distinguished theologian and pastor.
Here’s all the Governor has to say as he hands Rev. Wright the first James Farmer, Sr. award for unflinching courage to speak truth to power:
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, I am not a theologian, I am a Governor. You and I have chosen lines of work which have long traditions of close relations. There has hardly been a time when your profession and mine have not rubbed close together. Thank goodness the ancient Hebrew people had the strength of character to treasure the words of their prophets, even when the words must have been scathing to hear. We are here to say that today, we commit to the courage it takes to hear a prophet, and to the justice required to honor the prophet’s voice as an indispensable public good. This is a free state in a free country, and we have the audacity to hope that you to will enjoy your stay.
Note: we have found one item on the internet that pays Rev. Wright the respect that he requested from Fox News: to be treated as a man of the cloth. Please see “Race and Religion in Context” by Daniel Pulliam at getreligion.org.
Oops! Posse gets wrong man. See Fox News’ effort to curb ‘excesses’ of the great media riot of ’08.
(March 20, 2008) The attorney for Albanian refugee Rrustem Neza reports that US immigration authorities have resumed questioning his client directly, in violation of procedures that require them to notify legal counsel.
On the same day that attorney John Wheat Gibson expressed his concern in writing, he received an order from the federal district court of Abilene closing the case that sought to dope and deport Mr. Neza.
“I would appreciate it if you would explain to your client that it is unethical to communicate directly with an adverse party who is represented by counsel without obtaining the consent of counsel,” wrote Gibson to Assistant US Attorney E. Scott Frost of Lubbock. “In this case, your client did not even notify me of his intent to communicate directly with my client.”
Gibson explained that immigration authorities have asked Mr. Neza, to fill out a questionnaire with information that they already have.
After sending the letter, Gibson received a copy of the federal court order, dated March 20, closing the case that had attempted to get court permission to dope Mr. Neza for the purpose of deporting him in a submissive posture. Efforts to place Mr. Neza on a commercial airplane in 2007 were turned back because of his loud protests.
Mr. Neza has been seeking asylum since two of his cousins were killed in the aftermath of the assassination of Albanian Democrat Azem Hajdari. Mr. Neza fears that the same faction that killed his cousins and Hajdari will kill him, too.
Mr. Neza’s efforts to remain in the USA took a turn for the better when he was recently released from a year’s imprisonment at Haskell following a US House of Representatives Subcommittee Hearing that ordered a report on his case.
“It is clear that your client’s attempt to communicate [with] my client is nothing but a charade, so that the Bureau of Customs and Immigration Enforcement can tell the Congress that it conducted an ‘investigation,’ when, in reality, it has no intention of investigating anything, but only intends to rubber stamp the refusal of other bureaucrats to allow Mr. Neza to present his case for asylum to an immigration judge,” wrote Gibson in his letter to the US Attorney’s office of Lubbock.
The House Subcommittee on Immigration ordered the report in connection with a special bill filed in Mr. Neza’s behalf by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Nacogdoches).
For more information on Mr. Neza’s case and Rep. Gohmert’s efforts to help him, please see the Texas Civil Rights Review index of documents, “Saving Rrustem Neza.”–gm
MoPress 