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Indymedia Austin

Second in a series of comments recorded at the anti-militarization protest at Camp Mabry, Texas, June 24 (2006)

K.C.: “I’m here to basically protest the increasing militarization of the border. You know I feel like these are human beings who are trying to survive, and we shouldn’t create an atmosphere where it feels more like an occupied territory rather than a community of people trying to live and do right by their kids.

“And so I’m protesting our country sending national guard to the border. I just got back from El Paso, and already the community is extremely stressed, scared to come out of their houses, there is a lot of anxiety, and now these troops being sent to the border is just going to increase that tenfold.

“And I don’t see anything but bad news. I don’t think it’s going to stop migrants from coming over, but it is going to result, it may result, I hope it doesn’t, but it may result in some deaths, in some deaths of innocent people, so that’s what I’m here protesting against.

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Ruth Epstein, board member of Central Texas ACLU: “We are opposed to militarizing the border and having police violate the constitution. We’re for the Bill of Rights all the way.”

Q: What’s wrong with militarizing the border?

Epstein: “Well, the military don’t seem to think they need to pay attention to the Fourth Amendment, and we have had complaints about people in the little towns near El Paso being harassed, and we think that’s wrong.

“I’m having a public forum on immigration, the Central Texas chapter is doing that, and it’s going to be on June 29. People come at 5:30, and it will be taped for access tv from 6:00 to 7:00. It’s going to be at Cafe Caffeine, which is 909 West Mary.”

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Roxanne, originally from Sugar Land, TX: “I’m here to lend my support to the protest against militarization of the border, because it leads to deaths and it’s a policy that goes about what it’s trying to achieve in what I think is a wrong way.

“I don’t have an answer to what the right way is, but it seems to as though handling a situation that is not civil and human rights with military is not a correct response in any circumstance. While I can’t pinpoint, because I’m not the most informed about government policies and procedures in this area, I do personally think that it’s not the right one.”

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LaVelle Franklin, executive assistant, ACLU: “I believe in what’s happening here. I think that we need to welcome our friends from across the border. I think that we shouldn’t be sending military troops down there. And I’m here because basically I think that we need to be more peaceful and get along, not send more military people down there.”

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Ray Ybarra, Racial Justice Fellow ACLU: “Things are going great, it’s a much larger turnout than I thought we would have, so it’s always good to see people who are willing to stand up for justice and stand up for human rights.”

Q: Did you hear about the checkpoints being taken down?

Ybarra: “Yeah, we’re very happy. We spent all the past few weeks working double-overtime on this issue, and I think it’s an example of what can happen when community groups and grassroots start organizing and finding injustice in their community and mobilize around it. But it’s not a total victory yet, but it’s a small step, and I think that’s owed to the community, and I was happy to see that announcement yesterday.”

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Meggie, from Holland: “I’m here to show support tor the disadvantaged people on the other side of the border.

“I think the reason that made me to come here is a few weeks ago I was in the Chaparral Wildlife Management Area, it’s close to the border, close to Laredo. I’m a scientist, and I was doing some research there (studying invasive species) and I was exposed to I guess ignorance and one-sidedness of park managers there who deal with that issue everyday, and one of the people said that if it were up to him it would be perfectly fine to put razors on top of these fences.

“At that time I didn’t say anything. I felt extremely bad, but I didn’t say anything. And I felt bad afterwards for not saying anything, so I guess I’m here to repair that silence then.”

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Carla Vargas, law student summer intern at ACLU: “I’m here to protest the National Guard going out to the border, because I oppose militarization of our border.

“For example, we’re passing out flyers today about Esequiel Hernandez who is an 18-year-old goat herder out on the border who was shot by Marines when he was just out there tending to his goats. And he was shot in the back. And killed.

“We’re out here protesting the National Guard, trying to shed some light on the real issues they might encounter when they are down there. I understand that the National Guard troops who are being sent down there are essentially following orders, but they do have the option to shoot or not shoot if they’re down there. We’re trying to prevent some deaths that could possibly occur. I’m not saying they are going to happen, but with more troops being sent down there the possibility of another accident, another shooting, another death happening by our US government increases. So that’s why I’m here.”

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Courtney Morton, grad student at UT School of Social Work: “We’re working on a project this summer, trying to get people accurate information about immigration and the contribution of immigrants to this country.

“Our school focuses heavily on social activism, like grassroots organizing, and so we’re trying to start an immigration information network to connect the immigration organizations in Austin with immigrants and just get more people out at these events and just knowing about them and what they are, and facts about immigration.”

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Jesse: “I’m here because I don’t think they should militarize the border.”

Q: Why not?

Jesse: “Sh*t. It’s wrong. There are many levels of wrong reasons. There’s no reason to have guns down there. It just escalates all tensions and violence. I feel our border should be relaxed. I feel like I should be able to come and go. I feel like other people should be able to come and go. That’s how it goes.”

The Wall Street Journal has a peculiar way of talking about a measured shift in public opinion. By comparing poll numbers between December and today, the WSJ reports that citizens of the USA are less likely to think that immigration hurts more than helps.

To account for this shift the WSJ gives credit to the President for achieving his goal of a civil debate. And what about those amazing demonstrations that broke historical records from L.A. to Round Rock?
“Today, despite predictions of a backlash from demonstrations this spring demanding immigrants’ rights, the public is more evenly split.”

Is the WSJ saying that the public has been educated to tolerance because of the President, in spite of the demonstrations? A better assessment is possible.

The tendency of The Street to frame things top-down is contradicted by the rest of the poll, which shows that what worries Americans most is the prospect of two more years of uncontested Republican leadership.

Are people confident that the Democrats can supply the needed alternative? About this, in strict keeping with the evidence in front of them, citizens of the USA have significant doubts. It’s a good year for none of the above, says the WSJ, as the people of Texas already know.

First Part: Reviewing the Past

The victor in Mexico’s July 2, 2006, presidential election faces many of the same domestic policy challenges as his predecessor—fiscal dependence on volatile petroleum revenues, enormous pension liabilities that expand with Mexico’s aging population, insufficient investment capital in the energy sector, declining global competitiveness, weak job creation and growth, corruption, inadequate rule of law, and increasing crime. How these problems are addressed during the six-year tenure of the new president will determine Mexico’s economic and political course well into the future. The main contenders for the Mexican presidency present a fairly broad array of programmatic solutions to Mexico’s challenges, ranging from continued heavy reliance on the free market to a more activist state that promotes and regulates private economic activity. Rarely have Mexican voters been able to make such an important choice about the future course of their nation. The stakes for the United States in this election are large as well. Finding a solution to the immigration question inevitably involves Mexico. A politically and economically stable Mexico is necessary to manage the flow of Mexicans into the United States, coordinate binational efforts to fight drug trafficking, and resolve a long list of border issues. A stable Mexico plays an important role in fostering U.S. national security. And a stable and prosperous Mexico can contribute significantly to U.S. efforts to ensure its energy supplies and to enhance the global competitiveness of important sectors in the U.S. economy.1 The United States has also come to rely on Mexico as an important ally in trying to secure a hemispheric free trade agreement and mitigating the efforts of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to build an anti-U.S. block of Latin American states. The outcome of the 2006 election will determine the tenor of U.S. relations with its southern neighbor and will therefore place Mexico squarely at the center of both the U.S. domestic and foreign policy agendas.

As investment capital returned to Mexico, encouraged in part by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which institutionalized Mexico’s opening to the international economy, Mexico’s political leaders lauded the resulting spurt in economic growth as clear evidence of the success of their market-based strategy. Unfortunately, many Mexicans blamed the ensuing collapse of the peso in 1994–95 and its associated economic crisis on the very same economic strategy. A 7 percent drop in economic activity in 1995, an increase in unemployment, and the spectacular and costly failures of the recently privatized banking and highway systems soured Mexicans on privatization and reinforced the position of politicians who opposed the “neoliberal” economic model. When the opposition took control of the Congress in the 1997 midterm elections, economic reform ground to a halt, leaving behind a broad array of structural weaknesses in the Mexican economy that today threaten the country’s capacity to generate growth and jobs.

Before the 1990s, Mexican foreign policy was based on broad principles—self-determination, nonintervention, and the peaceful resolution of disputes—rather than specific national interests. This policy focus made pragmatic sense for a country that lacked the capacity to stop great powers from meddling in its internal affairs. It also was feasible because Mexico’s insular model of economic development created very few economic interests that needed protection in the international arena. The opening of the Mexican economy to international trade, however, created Mexican national interests that could be protected only by engaging the international community, including the need to ensure access to markets and to protect domestic producers from unfair competition. Since the vast majority of Mexico’s international economic interactions involved the United States, foreign policy innovations focused on its relationship with the United States.

The deepening of these bilateral ties, however, was hindered by domestic opposition in Mexico and the 1994–95 economic crisis. Important segments of the Mexican populace were never comfortable with this new foreign policy focus. Many in the political and intellectual elite, the media, and the urban middle class believed this institutionalization of Mexico’s dependence on the United States was a mistake. NAFTA’s role as the symbol of the new U.S.-Mexico relationship and its association with Mexico’s broader economic opening also made the country vulnerable in the aftermath of the 1995 economic crisis. The crisis weakened the president, forcing him to choose his political battles carefully. Although President Zedillo solidified the bilateral cooperation established by his predecessor, he downplayed the significance of these cross-border ties and did little to promote their expansion or formal institutionalization.

In the economic realm, the country deepened and institutionalized previous policy advances rather than adopting additional measures to ensure future growth and democratic stability. Consequently, the competitiveness of the Mexican economy fell steadily over the past five years. (Mexico surrendered its position as the number two exporter to the United States to China.) The country is still unable to generate more than a fraction of the formal sector jobs needed to absorb new entrants into the job market. The underlying causes of these economic problems are weak investment in human and capital infrastructure and inefficiencies in the country’s energy and labor sectors. Mexico has not yet implemented fiscal reform to increase tax collection, which remains one of the lowest rates in the Western Hemisphere, 11 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Such a move could generate the funds urgently needed to finance investments in human and capital infrastructure while reducing the government’s dependence on volatile petroleum revenues. Nor has it undertaken changes to the national petroleum company, Pemex, in which declining production and a profound shortage of investment capital threaten the economic viability of a firm that generates a quarter of Mexican exports. Finally, Mexican labor law has not been revised to allow for the increased flexibility characteristic of modern labor markets and to encourage uni*n democracy and transparency in order to eliminate the traditional practice of Mexican uni*n leaders enriching themselves at the expense of workers and economic efficiency. The pension liabilities of the Mexican government, meanwhile, are already greater than the country’s GDP and growing rapidly.

The culprit was a series of structural and transitory factors that undermined governability throughout the Fox administration. Understanding the nature of these obstacles, and particularly the balance between the structural and the more transitory barriers to effective governance, is essential to determining their probable long-term impact. As the last five years have demonstrated, it is not sufficient to propose viable technical fixes to Mexico’s political and economic problems; they also require the political capacity to act. The impact of the 2006 elections on Mexico and U.S.-Mexico relations, therefore, depends heavily on the policymaking environment that will greet the new president, how it interacts with his particular policy preferences and political skills, and his consequent ability to deal with Mexico’s pending reform agenda. Excerpts from Pamela K Starr’s June 17 Report from the Council on Foreign Relations(2005)

You want to pinch yourself reading this story. A Texas probation office works with local school district to educate kids out of trouble, resulting in a decreased criminal justice budget for youth enforcement? The reduction in Texarkana detentions may have something to do with recently completed juvie halls elsewhere, reducing contract assignments, but we are more in a mood to believe with Socrates that expediency and justice are really quite the same thing, and that Texarkana offers a clue why. Thanks to the Yahoo Prison Movement list for this little gem: Bowie’s detention center holding fewer juveniles

By Greg Bischof

Texarkana Gazette

Of more than 16 office budget requests reviewed by the Bowie County Commissioners Court last week, most requested the same amount of money, but one asked for much less for the upcoming fiscal year.

For the 2006-2007 fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, the Bowie County Juvenile Probation and Detention Center asked for a 21 percent cut in funding.

During last week’s budget hearings, Bowie County Chief Juvenile Probation Officer Bruce Ballou asked for $1,357,901 — $515,000 less than he received for this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

The Bowie County Auditor’s Office attributed this to a decrease in the juvenile population during about the last three years — not only in terms of Bowie County inmates, both long- and short-term, but also out-of-county contracted inmates (both long- and short-term).

The center is holding about 50 children ages 10 to 17. This amounts to just under a third of the center’s capacity.

The Auditor’s Office attributes the dwindling population, in part, to the fact that more Texas counties have built their own juvenile detention centers.

However, Ballou also attributes a portion of the decrease to what appears to be an overall decline in the county’s juvenile crime rate during the last three years.

Three years ago, the county averaged about 1,000 juvenile arrests on an annual basis. That has dropped to about 580 — a 47 percent decrease since 2003.

Ballou said some of the decrease could be attributed to the center’s effort at reforming juveniles and setting them back on the right path for their adult lives.

The center, licensed by the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission, is staffed by faculty provided by the Liberty-Eylau Independent School District to provide regular classroom education to both pre-adjudicated and post-adjudicated inmates, Ballou said.

LEISD has also provided a new, top-of-the-line computer system classroom, which inmates will use once the school year starts.

“We focus on teaching the kids daily living skills during the time they are sent here,” Ballou said. “But during the time the kids are here, the state requires that each one have at least six hours of classroom instruction.”

Juveniles are processed in, just like adult inmates in adult prisons. This includes being fingerprinted and photographed.

Then the inmates are placed in a holding cell until a judge can determine whether they will be sentenced for a period of time to the center, or released immediately to their parents’ custody.

One part of the center is designated for pretrial (or short-term inmates—meaning from 1 to 10 days) while the other part is designated for sentenced or long-term, post-adjudicated inmates (for periods that could last up to six months or longer).

Apart from the traditional inmate reform program, the center also offers students expelled from either the Texarkana, Texas, independent School District or LEISD a Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program, which stipulates that an expelled student must complete 45 days of good behavior before being released to return to school.

“What this does is get the troublemakers out of school so as to allow teachers to go ahead and instruct the public school students who are behaving well,” Ballou said.

Besides academic instruction, the center also provides students with vocational education through an automotive technical and body frame repair shop, which the JDC opened about two years ago.

“The kids learn everything from oil changing to engine overhauling in this workshop,” Ballou said. “This includes brake work, tire rotation, frame repair and auto body repainting.”

Ballou said the vocational training has been and continues to be particularly valuable because of trade skills it teaches the juvenile.

“Here the kids learn the importance of working at a legitimate job for a living, rather than selling dope on the streets,” he said. “They learn how to be an asset to society, not a liability.”

http://www.texarkan agazette. com/articles/ 2006/07/17/ local_news/ news/news07. prt