Category: Uncategorized

By Jay j. Johnson-Castro

While driving back to Del Rio from the People’s Hearing at the Texas State Capitol yesterday a song was going through my head…

Then I decided to answer phone messages from the day. While I was speaking with Dr. Javier Iribarren…recognizing that he was born and raised in Spain…I realized that the tune in my head was probably not known in Spain. I asked him. He said he had never heard it.
It occurs to me that all over English speaking Anglo North America…there is probably not a human who was raised in this country who doesn’t know this song. I don’t care if one is red or yellow, black or white…we know this song…probably better than we know the National Anthem.

I just Googled the song…and found that it was written by C.Herbert Woolston (1856-1927). It is based on Matthew 19:14. “Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.”

Few will not know this song by heart…

Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
All are precious in His sight,
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

I’m 60 years old and find myself totally committed to freeing these little children from a prison camp on American soil…here in Texas. Then this little Sunday School Class tune comes full circle and hits me yesterday. How much more simple can our cause be. To show love to the little children of the world…and to their mothers and fathers who want them to be happy. And yet the cruelty and tyranny of our immoral and criminal leaders would have us believe that Hutto is humane!!!

After nearly five months of being driven by conviction, truth, honesty and dignity, here we are, a rapidly growing group of Americans…trying to free these precious little children of the world…red and yellow, black and white. Trying to free them from the grips of one of the most evil forces in human history. The grip that has them imprisoned without any freedoms whatsoever comes from the hands of a group of so called evangelicals…who also get money from a racist supremacist micro-minority who are committing this atrocity…using every cruel weapon in their arsenal…for money.

According to the dictionary, “evangel” means “good news”. Correspondingly, “evangelical” is “a designation for Christians who hold to basic conservative interpretations of the Bible…and the proclamation of the “evangel” or “good news” of salvation through Christ.”

Interestingly, at the Capitol yesterday, many were commenting on the gross absence of the faith based organizations when it comes to the cruel, inhumane, immoral and criminal detention of these little children…of the world…right here in Texas, 35 miles northeast of the Capitol building. Excuse my profanity…but where the hell are these well salaried spiritual leaders?

The answer is ever so simple. Dr. Javier Iribarren gave me a wristband on our walk to hold a vigil in Governor’s Perry’s hometown of Haskell, Texas, where Suzi Hazahza and here family are still incarcerated in a prison camp for wanting to be Americans. The wristband is wrapped on my rear-view mirror. Silence is Complicity. The churches KNOW about the imprisonment of the innocent and precious “little children of the world”…especially those in Taylor and Williamson County. So…after all of their silence…what could/would/should any one of us conclude? One would do well to ask…”Do they still teach the Sunday School classes C. Herbet Woolston’s little song…’Jesus Loves the Little Children of the World”?

Fortunately, religious bigotry has not corrupted the hearts of all Taylor and Williamson County residents. Many were at the Capitol building yesterday…strategizing on how to get the political leaders of the Texas Legislature, who like us also grew up with Woolston’s song burned in their minds, to obey their consciences instead of their political party…and support the freeing of “the little children of the world” who are imprisoned “for profit” by the White House, Chertoff and ICE at the CCA prison camp.

After all is said and done…I just got this link from Trish Taylor…who was also with us at the Capitol yesterday…committed to freeing the children.

Moral leadership?! How degradant can “Christianity” and their leaders become in America …before the flocks rise up in outrage? Weren’t the religious leaders and their flocks in Germany complicit with the fascism of that era?

Jay
“NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND BARS”
Free the Children
jay@villadelrio.com.

Dear Friends:

On May 18, 2007, the Warden and Associate Warden of the Three Rivers Federal Correctional Institution, informed Ramiro Muniz that he would not be moved from Three Rivers FCI for a while, unless a medical situation necessitated the transfer. This news has brought us great
joy and a cautious sense of optimism.

We owe this new development to your assistance, and we extend our gratitude for the invaluable support that you have provided.

Thank you for being with us throughout this difficult time. We ask for your prayers as we move forward with plans to prove Ramsey’s innocence.

We will keep you abreast of this volatile situation as we continue to seek freedom for Ramiro “Ramsey” R. Muniz.

Sincerely,
Irma Muniz

www.freeramsey.com

“Justice abhors punishing an innocent person; and if they are innocent why shall they not enjoy their natural rights as fully and absolute as the rest of mankind. Or is it their being born of a different colour from ourselves that gives us this prerogative of dealing with them as we please…”

–Anthony Benezet

From the remarkable recent collection of Benezet’s anti-slavery writings: To Be Silent Would be Criminal: the Anti-Slavery Influence and Writings of Anthony Benezet. Edited, with extensive prefatory notes, by Irv A. Brendlinger. Revitalization: Explorations in World Christian Movements. Pietist and Wesleyan Studies, No. 20. The Scarecrow Press; Lanham, MD; Toronto; and Plymouth, UK. And The Center for the Study of World Christian Revitalization and Movements. 2007.

“we Christians introduced the Traffick of Slaves, and that before our coming they lived in Peace; but, say they, it is observable, that wherever Christianity comes, there comes with it a Sword, a Gun, Powder and Ball.”

–William Smith, quoting a 1726 conversation with a European merchant in Africa (cited in Benezet’s 1762 “Short Account of Africa,” edited by Brendlinger 2007).

Email from Jay J. Johnson-Castro.

On April 13th we held the press conference at the Capitol…and did the first day of Hutto Walk II…to protest ICE and CCA’s imprisonment of innocent children in Taylor, TX. Not until today did I learn that Michele Adams, Policy Specialist for the Texas Department of Family and Child Protective Services EXEMPTED CCA and Hutto from the laws that protect families and children in Texas.

But…thanks to a young journalist of the San Antonio Current…we now know. He shared the attached with me…as I now share them with you.

As we endeavor to get the House Committee of State Affairs to allow a public hearing on HCR 64…it becomes even more sinister how corrupted this system is in protecting the immoral and criminal treatment of the children and their mothers from some 30 countries at the Hutto prison camp.

Anyone who is remotely aware of how Hutto was prior to the Hutto Walk and Vigil in December, prior to the suit by the Texas Civil Rights Project, prior to the ACLU law suits, prior to the Women’s Commission’s condemnation of Hutto, prior to the editorial boards of the Austin American-Statesman and the Houston Chronicle…compare the attached letters. You’ll see flagrant and willful dishonesty. But…at least we have it in writing. And we have a copy of the DFPS in writing…just two weeks old.

It is gut wrenching when one thinks of the Ibrahim family and the fact that the children had no access to their pregnant mother at night. I suspect that when some of you sift through this…there will be an outrages so hot that the Lege will feel the heat of spontaneous combustion.

Is it yet time for an investigation by the Texas Attorney General, the Texas Rangers? How about the FBI? Who has the courage and the moral fiber to stand up to this immoral activity?

I know some of you will know exactly what to do and with whom to share this information. I, for one, have said all along that anyone who is complicit with the imprisonment of these little children…should be indicted and serve in one of those cells in Hutto.

Jay
“No Child Left Behind Bars”
FREE the CHILDREN
jay@villadelrio.com
(830)768-0768