Category: Uncategorized

By Greg Moses

IndyMedia
Austin / CounterPunch

There I was, eating enchiladas mole at Las Manitas, trying not to make a big deal out of Jon Dee Graham standing right next to me, when, through the window, Congress Avenue turned red, white, and green with chanting students…

500 high school students from Austin, Cedar Park, and Leander marched to the capitol Friday where they rallied for immigrant rights in opposition to a threatened federal crackdown.

Students marched up Congress Ave. shortly before 2:00 p.m. and rallied along the wide sidewalk just outside the capitol gates.

Dressed mostly in white t-shirts and carrying various sized flags of Mexico, students chanted “Me-xi-co, Me-xi-co, Me-xi-co” and “Hell No, We Won’t Go!”
“We’re here to work. We’re not criminals!” declared one hand-made sign. “Viva Mexico, Si Se Puede” said another, echoing the famous slogan of Cesar Chavez, “Yes, We Can!”

“We Pay Taxes,” said a slogan written in black marker on the back of a white t-shirt. “Without US Mexicans, the US is Nothing,” said a posterboard sign in black and white. A few young women wore petit-sized flags tucked to the fronts of their shirts.

The students were greeted with frequent honks from passing cars as drivers waved and gave ‘thumbs up’ to the impromptu demonstration for immigrant rights and dignity. Sometimes the car would be a mint-condition Chevy SUV, full of students waving Mexican flags from the windows.

One demonstrator, with his face half covered by a bandana made from a Mexican flag said most of the students were between the ages of 15 and 18. Others identified themselves as from Reagan, LBJ, and Garza high schools in Austin.

“I was on lunch break from Garza High School,” said 19-year-old Daniel Dimas, “and I heard the people walking shouting ‘ay, ay, ay!’ So I pulled up beside them and played my Spanish music real loud and said, ‘Do you need some support?’ So I ended up here!” Dimas held a Mexican flag mounted on a short pole that he waved as he led chants.

“Who made this country?” asked Dimas before he turned back to his newfound friends and shouted,”Who likes beans?” and “Who likes tortillas?” He could have asked also about caramel-colored lollypops, which seemed very popular with the crowd.

“You see what I mean,” says Dimas, smiling at the robust cheers that answered his questions. “We’re a whole new diverse group that this country needs. And we’re not going anywhere. What else can I say?” Of course, he had more to say:

“We built this country. We are nearly half the population. Even if they stop us, we’re going to come back. They’re not going to stop us. We’ve been here too long.”

Sixteen-year-old Vanessa Villa from Vista Ridge High School in nearby Cedar Park said she had planned to march next Tuesday, but on the spur of the moment this morning, students started walking from the high school toward the capitol, a distance of 24 miles.

“We’ve been walking all day, since 10:30!,” exclaimed Villa.

“We’re that proud!” said 15-year-old Jacki Caballero of Cedar Park, recalling the long walk down FM 1431 to Highway 183 where the students caught a bus.

“We’re the ones who created this place!” said Caballero.

“And we’re working for all immigrants,” said Villa, “not just Mexicans, but Puerto Ricans, and Cubans, too.”

An adult passed through the crowd with flyers announcing a national day of action here on April 10 (at 4pm). On Saturday (April 1) the annual Cesar Chavez march was also scheduled to highlight immigrant rights.

Leading up to last Saturday’s immigrant rights march held in Los Angeles, students there staged walkouts. That march topped a million people, and students across the country have continued walkouts this past week.

The afternoon was unusually warm for late March, and one student was taken away by ambulance for apparent heat exhaustion. She was only one block from the capitol.

At the main entrance to the capitol grounds, some students sat shoulder-to-shoulder along low stone walls, occasionally joining in chants or making “waves” from one end of the wall to the other with a ripple of dancing hands.

Other students enjoyed the rally in the modest shade of small trees. Still others led chants and cheers from the warmed up sidewalk along 11th Street.

When a television cameraman moved into position behind the sidewalk crowd they turned their attention from passing traffic to face the camera.

“No, no,” explained the cameraman, “face the street!”

When the students first arrived at the capitol, the Austin police department lined up eight motorcycle patrols along the curb of the sidewalk. But with students in a cheerful, peaceful, and sometimes playful mood, police soon retreated to the shady side of the street.

Tourists passing through the main gate to the capitol grounds made their ways gently through the crowd of students. It was impossible not to note that two Anglo women passed through the crowd walking their Chihuahua.

After about an hour of rallying, students began to peel away from the rally, many of them leaving by way of the nearby bus stop where they could be seen lining up to board buses and Dillos (the smaller downtown shuttles).

Afterword, with Obscenities

If you visit the streets of Austin often enough, you’ll see occasional t-shirts that say, “F**k y’all, I’m from Texas,” a trend that might possibly be blamed on the cultural influence of Texas songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard who wrote a song with a very similar title a few years back, but who of course sings the song with a great deal of wry glee.

This is just a long way of introducing the context for one carefully lettered t-shirt in red, white, and green marker that was covered up most of the time. But for a few minutes the student took off his outer t-shirt (yes it was a guy thing) revealing the back panel of his his inner white-t, lettered with the kind of font that you sometimes see in family names written on the rear windows of pickup trucks.

“F**k Y’all,” said the t-shirt, “I’m from Mexico.” It was a total work of art.

AMY GOODMAN: So what’s Dow’s responsibility now?

DIANE WILSON: Dow’s responsibility, they claim all the profits, and we believe that they claim the liabilities also. I do know that they have taken on Union Carbide’s liabilities in the United States. There was a case where a child was contaminated with some of Union Carbide’s pesticide. And I believe the American child received up to $6 million. And the children over in India, a lot of them received nothing at all. And some of them just, you know, like $500.

AMY GOODMAN: You found Warren Andersen here in this country. Can you talk about what happened? DIANE WILSON: Well, it’s real interesting, because, you know, they had been trying to extradite him to India for a long time. And the FBI kept saying, well, they couldn’t find Warren Andersen. They just had no idea where that man was. Well, actually, it was Greenpeace who found him first. And once we heard that Warren Andersen was in South Hampton on Long Island, I was in New York one day. So I just decided just to go by his house and stand out front. And I had a big sign that said, “Warren, shouldn’t you be in India?” And I had actually had no idea that he was inside. You’d see — every once in a while you would see a curtain pull back. And I was really surprised when he and his wife walked out.

Note: In her preface to the interview, Goodman cites the Oct. 10 story by Corporate Crime Reporter.

A Conversation with Pia Orrenius: The Economics of Immigration

Congress is considering various proposals for immigration reform this year. Pia Orrenius, a Dallas Fed senior economist and immigration expert, discusses the economic aspects of the growing number of foreign-born workers, including their effects on the U.S. economy, government budgets, and native-born Americans’ jobs and earnings.

Q: What can you tell us about the size of the immigrant population in the United States?

A: Immigrants make up about 12 percent of the overall population, which means about 36 million foreign-born live in the United States. The commonly accepted estimate for the undocumented portion of the foreign-born population is 11 million. Immigrants come from all parts of the world, but we’ve seen big changes in their origins. In the 1950s and 1960s, 75 percent of immigrants were from Europe. Today, about 75 percent are from Latin America and Asia. Inflows are also much larger today, with 1 million to 2 million newcomers entering each year. What’s interesting about the United States is how our economy has been able to absorb immigrants and put them to work. U.S. immigrants have high employment rates compared with other developed countries. This is partly because we don’t set high entry-level wages or have strict hiring and firing rules. In this type of flexible system, you have more job openings. You have more opportunities. You also have lower entry-level wages, but immigrants at least get their foot in the door.

Being in the workforce allows immigrants to interact with the rest of society. They learn the language faster, pay taxes and become stakeholders.

Q: Where do immigrants fit into the U.S. economy?

A: Our immigrants are diverse in economic terms. We rely on immigrants for both high- and low-skilled jobs. Some immigrants do medium-skilled work, but more than anything else they’re found on the low and the high ends of the education distribution.

The economic effects are different depending on which group you’re talking about. We have an extremely important group of high-skilled immigrants. We rely on them to fill important, high-level jobs in technology, science and research. About 40 percent of our Ph.D. scientists and engineers were born in another country. We also employ many high-skilled immigrants in the health sector.

High-skilled immigration has good economic effects—it adds to GDP growth. It also has beneficial fiscal effects—the impact on government finances is large and positive. People tend to focus on illegal or low-skilled immigration when discussing immigrants and often do not recognize the tremendous contribution of high-skilled immigrants.

Q: What about the low-skilled immigration?

A: With low-skilled immigration, the economic benefits are there as well but have to be balanced against the fiscal impact, which is likely negative.

What makes the fiscal issue more difficult is the distribution of the burden. The federal government reaps much of the revenue from immigrants who work and pay employment taxes. State and local governments realize less of that benefit and have to pay more of the costs associated with low-skilled immigration—usually health care and educational expenses.

Q: Does it matter whether the immigration is legal or not?

A: If you’re making value judgments about immigrants, or if you’re discussing national security, you probably need to distinguish between those who come legally and those who don’t. From an economic perspective, however, it makes more sense to differentiate among immigrants of various skill levels than it does to focus on legal status.

The economic benefits of low-skilled immigrants aren’t typically going to depend on how they entered the U.S. Illegal immigrants may pay less in taxes, but they’re also eligible for fewer benefits. So being illegal doesn’t mean these immigrants have a worse fiscal impact. In fact, a low-skilled illegal immigrant can create less fiscal burden than a low-skilled legal immigrant because the undocumented don’t qualify for most benefits.

Q: How does immigration affect jobs and earnings for the native-born population?

A: We focus a lot on that—for example, exactly how immigration has affected the wages of Americans, particularly the low-skilled who lack a high school degree. The reason we worry about this is that real wages have been falling for low-skilled U.S. workers over the past 25 years or so.

The studies tend to show that not much of the decline is due to inflows of immigrants. The consensus seems to be that wages are about 1 to 3 percent lower today as a result of immigration. Some scholars find larger effects for low-skilled workers. Still, labor economists think it’s a bit of a puzzle that they haven’t been able to systematically identify larger adverse wage effects.

The reason may be the way the economy is constantly adjusting to the inflow of immigrants. On a geographical basis, for example, a large influx of immigrants into an area tends to encourage an inflow of capital to put them to use. So you have a shift out in labor supply, but you also have a shift out in labor demand, and the wage effects are ameliorated. At the same time, the native labor supply is changing. We have fewer and fewer low-skilled workers, largely because older workers, who are more likely to lack a high school degree, are retiring and leaving the labor force. In that way, low-skilled immigrants are filling a disappearing niche in our native labor force. So that, too, might work against finding large wage impacts.

Q: Is it all about wages?

A: Economic models say people move in response to wage differentials, and that’s pretty much it. When wage differentials shrink, migration should slow. Sociologists have long pointed out, however, that other dynamics affect immigration, such as family reunification, risk diversification, security and access to financial markets.

Workers are more likely to migrate if patterns have been established to help them make their way to the foreign workplace. In Mexico over the past 15 years, for example, we’ve seen increased migration to the U.S. even as living standards in Mexico improved slightly. Because of the networks and migration flows in place, it’s going to take longer before a small shrinkage in the wage gap results in a decline in immigration.

Q: What about the American Dream of immigrants coming to this country, working hard and prospering? Is it still alive?

A: Most immigrants start out behind the native-born because they don’t have the advantages of growing up in this society. As they learn, their wages grow. Within the same generation, you should find that immigrants assimilate to natives with similar characteristics— job, age, education and such. So a high school dropout immigrant will likely achieve the wage outcomes of a native high school dropout. However, if you don’t take into account education, you don’t see the same economic assimilation. Mexican immigrants who lack a high school degree don’t achieve the average wages of natives once they come to the U.S., even after 10 to 15 years.

What we want over generations is for the children of immigrants to achieve the same education and incomes as average natives. You do see that for many groups. Our biggest concern is with Hispanic immigrants, because they’re the ones coming in with the lowest education levels.

While the great majority of children of Hispanic immigrants do well, their summary statistics aren’t as favorable. This is because in the second and third generation they still have twice the high school dropout rate as other natives. So a fraction of these immigrants and their children aren’t assimilating even over generations. They’re not achieving overall U.S. averages in educati

on and wages as much as they’re assimilating to Hispanic averages, which are lower.

Q: What are the likely economic effects of a guest-worker program?

A: A guest-worker program would likely have two components, addressing existing and new migrants. Incorporating illegal immigrants who are already here and working, while controversial, would not have large economic effects. These immigrants have already had a labor-market impact. They’ve already had a fiscal impact. Because they’ve been working here, we’re not going to suddenly have a big wage impact or see native workers displaced.

What might change is that they would get temporary legal status in the U.S., and they’d be able to get driver’s licenses and open bank accounts. It would make their lives easier. It really wouldn’t worsen the fiscal situation because, as guest workers, the immigrants presumably wouldn’t be eligible for more public benefits than they are now.

The economic effects of legalizing new migrant workers is more complicated. If the program simply institutionalizes the existing stream of undocumented workers, economic and fiscal effects will be much what they are today. In fact, depending on how it’s implemented and how employers are impacted, a guest-worker program combined with stricter enforcement could actually serve to reduce the demand for immigrant labor.

If the program comes with fees on employers and workers or if employees who were off the books are now going to be contributing employment taxes, the program would raise the cost of immigrant workers. This would increase the relative demand for native-born workers. If there is no cap on the number of new workers coming in or other measures to limit the guest-worker inflows, then increases in labor supply could negate any benefit for natives.

Southwest Economy

Issue 2, March/April 2006
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

On The Record

http://www.dallasfed.org/research/swe/2006/swe0602e.html

To:
T. Michael O’Connor
Victoria County Sheriff
101 North Glass St.
Victoria, TX 77901

Jan 20th 2006

Dear Sheriff O’Connor:

I am a female inmate in the Victoria County Jail, TX, though I was arrested on criminal trespass charges in Calhoun County. I was given a sentence of 150 days plus a $2,000 fine for protesting Dow Chemical Company’s refusal to appear in Indian courts in response to charges against its wholly-owned subsidiary, Union Carbide, and its treatment of the survivors of the toxic-leak disaster in Bhopal, India, where a catastrophic pesticide release has killed over 20,000 people to date.

I am a fairly new inmate and have only been here five weeks, since December 10, 2005, yet I have a number of grievances. Many of these come from other inmates and you may ask why they don’t report them themselves. Well, it’s pretty simple: there is absolutely no effective avenue to raise issues and if there is, the inmates have certainly not been made aware of it. There is a standard form that inmates can use to make an attempt at communication, but the response can take anywhere between a week to never.

There is no information available, no pamphlet explaining the procedures or the rights of the inmates or even something as simple as “when is commissary.”

I asked to see the law library since the inmates rarely see legal counsel, but was told that there is not one available. If inmates ask for legal counsel they are told, “You’ll see one when your trial comes up,” and usually that’s ten minutes before one goes to trial.

The women in this jail are predominantly African American or Hispanic and very poor. Most of their offenses are minor, for things like traffic tickets or soliciting or violating probation—nearly all non-violent, yet they are forced to remain in the cell without counsel for long periods of time. I don’t think I am bringing up any issue that you are not aware of. I spoke with someone within the jail system (I will not name him), and he is aware of the length of time inmates have to wait for legal counsel and a trial. He has talked to a judge about the problem and the judge apparently said something along the lines of, “Yes, we got a problem.”

So you can understand my concern to at least have access to a law library. Though jail personnel told me that the only time access to a law library isn’t provided is when legal counsel is available, I have still not had access to either.

When I requested, nonetheless, access to the law library on my title form, a week later I got the answer, “We do not have a WRIT ROOM.” Well, that certainly explains everything. No WRIT ROOM. No Law Library.

Next, I asked for the jail’s standards. These are the minimum standards that jails have to maintain, and inmates have the legal right to request and receive a copy of the standards. When I made my request I got a response a good week and a half later asking, “what’s your concern?”

My concern is that inmates have no voice, no access to legal counsel, no law library, no WRIT Room, no jail standards. That is my concern, but you can bet I didn’t write that on the next form I dropped. I could see I’d be ‘dropping forms’ until this jail went to hell in a breadbasket. So this is partly why I am writing you. I figure that you are next in the chain of command, and I am listing not only permission to see the jail standards for ALL inmates—but other grievances and concerns that have come up in the month I have been here.

Healthcare

I don’t know if you are aware of the series of investigative stories by Mike Ward and Bill Bishop of the Austin American Statesman about the dismal state of health care in the Texas state prison system. What the reporters were able to discover was a systematic neglect and mistreatment of ill prisoners, the use of healthcare as a means of punishment, and stupidly dangerous miss-administration of medicine that can lead to viral and bacterial resistance and potential epidemics—epidemics that will hardly remain within prison walls.

I know that the state prison system is separate from the county jails, but if you haven’t read this report, then you should, because similar neglect is happening in your jailhouse. I have only been here a few weeks, and have collected these three instances directly from the inmates about their experiences with the Victoria County Jail. The cases cover approximately 10 years. So you can see this is a long-term problem and seems to be continuing a legacy that the Texas Prison system has built for itself. It seems to be downright overkill to repeat that, yes, all these girls are very young and poor, and either Hispanic or African-American.

1. Mary DeLeon
Ms. DeLeon was jailed for 18 months in the county jail on drug charges. During this time, she was suffering due to gallstones. The response from the healthcare of the jail was to dispense Milk of Magnesia and tell her to lie down on her cot. Eventually, Ms. Deleon’s condition got so bad that she was shaking and had chills and fainting spells. Again, the response was Milk of Magnesium. Finally, towards the end of her 18-month sentence, Ms DeLeon collapsed in pain and an inmate called the guards. Mary was rushed to Citizens Hospital, where it was found that her gallbladder had ruptured. She was told that they almost lost her. Ms. DeLeon did not file a lawsuit for criminal neglect because she was afraid that she would be punished and lose her position as trustee in the jail.

2. Lacy Leyva
Ms. Leyva had been arrested and jailed for one month. During that time Ms. Leyva was suffering severe pain in her kidneys, but she was only given ibuprofen every 8 hours for the pain. Pain and chills were a steady diet for Ms. Leyva, but she was only given advice to lie down and take ibuprofen. Finally, after one month, Ms. Leyva was discharged and she went to the hospital and was immediately admitted for kidney failure. After Ms. Leyva was discharged from the hospital, she got a call from the jail on her cell phone saying, “Go to the hospital. We believe your kidneys are failing.”

3. Shandra Williams
Ms. Williams was picked up on a warrant even though her file stated that Ms. Williams should not be picked up because she was 6-7 months pregnant and she had a very rare uterine condition. However, Ms. Williams was thrown in jail while pregnant, and her condition worsened. She began bleeding, and the nurse was reluctant to believe her and said, “Show me your bloody pad.” So Ms. Williams was subjected to the humiliation of proving that she was really in pain and bleeding.

Eventually, Ms. Williams was put in isolation where she was removed from contact with people, which Ms. Williams hated. This was her first child and she was very afraid since no medical staff was around. Eventually, to keep her from complaining, Ms. Williams was given Benadryl.

When Ms. Williams was finally returned to the cell, her water broke. She was told that she was hallucinating, that her water hadn’t broken. Then the nurse told her that she shouldn’t worry, she wouldn’t have a baby until a month later. Then they proceeded to put Ms. Williams back into isolation, even though she was frantic not to go where there was no contact with people. Ms. Williams was alarmed about the baby coming early, especially since the nurse had expressed great disdain for even performing a sonogram to determine the baby’s condition.

When Ms. Williams became agitated about going into isolation, the sergeant told her that she was going into isolation “the easy way or the hard way,” and the hard way was being shocked with a taser gun. A female guard was

so alarmed that she grabbed Ms. Williams’ stuff and coaxed her to the isolation room.

Sure enough, Ms. Williams proceeded to go into labor without anyone present and the baby was coming out breach! Worse still, the baby was arriving while Ms. Williams was on the toilet; so to get help Ms. Williams had to crawl approximately 60 feet to reach a button on the wall. After three attempts to call and saying that she was in labor, a female guard arrived. The baby was hanging with its feet first down around Ms. Williams’ knees.

There was pandemonium, followed by a rushed ride in the ambulance to the hospital. The baby was dead and Ms. Williams was handed the dead child in a blanket. She was not told that the baby was dead, and she only realized the fact when she saw on her own that the child was not moving or breathing. No attempt was made to call her husband. When, much later, he got word, he rushed to see his new baby. He was handed the dead baby in a blanket. Ms. Williams was not even allowed to attend the baby’s funeral. Later, Ms. Williams said that you, Sheriff O’Connor, called her into your office and told her that the unfortunate incident was not your fault, but the fault of the jail administration under the previous sheriff, Michael Ratcliff.

Given the long-term consequences and terrible suffering imposed on these women, it is my hope that you will take this situation seriously and give it the consideration it deserves.

Blocked window

Another complaint is that the only window within our cellblock is either covered with a Venetian blind or plastered with paper. We never know the time but are told that we are on ‘short time’ and don’t have need of another. You would think that locking a person in a cinder block cell for months on end for a trespassing misdemeanor is sufficient punishment, but apparently not! I feel that the stress levels of the inmates would be reduced with more visibility through the window, and stress is a real problem here.

Reading Material
This might be a good time to point out the piece of paper plastered to our window. It is a memo to all inmates that, henceforth, no books bought from bookstores will be accepted. This is a jail where the library consists of a single metal cart with about 30 dog-eared romance novels.

In this county jail, few diversions are allowed—I might even say none—and perhaps that is one reason why these women inmates make roses out of toilet paper and create their own stationery out of toothpaste and map colors. I am a little reluctant to tell you this in the fear that the guards will make a run on the roses and confiscate them as “contraband.” We have not been allowed to go outdoors or get any exercise.

What this jail administration hopes to accomplish by refusing reading material or any activity to the inmates is beyond me. It seems counter-productive to any form of rehabilitation and results in anger, behavior problems and depression.

Access to High School equivalency program Since most of the inmates are very poor, young and from minority groups, I was astonished to discover that while GED (high school equivalency program) is offered, it is also used as punishment. A 32-year-old woman in my cell who is struggling to better herself and raise her nine-year-old child, had entered the GED program, but was kicked out because she passed a note in class. This is merely one instance I’ve heard. But I know for a fact that many inmates do not have their GED. I wonder about the jail’s reluctance to encourage the inmates to pursue their GED. It is a well-known fact that a person with a GED receives higher paying jobs than a person who doesn’t, they have more job satisfaction, and they are less likely to get in trouble with the law in the future. Kicking a woman out of a GED class for passing a note sounds totally counter-productive!

Humiliating Treatment
I realize that some of these grievances may not seem like much to you and you may be thinking that the treatment meted out in Texas prisons is nothing like the kind of abuse in Abu Ghraib in Iraq. That’s true, for what it’s worth, but I want to inform you that I’ve read reliable reports and have experienced horrendous treatment that makes me wonder if Texas county jails are dysfunctional.. While I was in the Harris County jail in Houston for five days, I joined fellow inmates stacked into cold holding tanks for hours and hours so that we were forced to sleep on cement floors strewn with trash and waste from backed-up toilets, while guards showed up at periodic intervals yelling “Pigs!” We were eventually shuffled into rooms where we were forced to strip our clothes and ordered to parade in our panties, then spread-eagled on the wall. These were women, some picked up merely on traffic violations, who hadn’t even been produced in front of a judge or seen a lawyer yet! Then 70 of us were packed into a 10- x 20-foot holding cell for over an hour. A guard occasionally opened the door and calls us “stupid bitches!” because the noise was loud.

On December 10th, I was transferred to Victoria County jail, where I was kept in a freezing holding tank for over six hours, then put into the cell where I am currently housed, with only one thin mat to sleep on a concrete floor. I was not given a blanket or sheet or any type of hygiene kit because I was told there were none available. I never received a blanket from the jail. After 3 days, an inmate who left the cell gave me her blanket. Then too, after about three days, I received a hygiene kit so I could finally brush my teeth and comb my hair. All prior requests for a towel or toothbrush were met with “Drop a form.”

In my experiences I consider myself relatively lucky, and because of my activism I have supporters outside who have constantly supported me by calling the jail and sending letters.

Most inmates are not so fortunate.

This letter is partly for them. It is said that a civilization is judged by how it treats its weakest members. It is my hope that you will recognize the seriousness of your job and of the issues raised in this letter and respond accordingly.

Sincerely,

Diane Wilson

CC:
Calhoun County Sheriff
B.B. Browning
211 South Ann St.
Port Lavaca, TX 77979

Tim Smith
Jail Administrator
211 South Ann St.
Port Lavaca, TX 77979

Honorable Judge Michael Pfeifer
Calhoun County Judge
211 South Ann St.
Port Lavaca, TX 77979

Honorable Judge Robert C. Cheshire
377th Judicial District Judge
Victoria County Courthouse
115 North Bridge
Victoria, TX 77901

Honorable Judge Donald R. Pozzi Victoria County Courthouse
115 North Bridge
Victoria, TX 77901

Honorable Judge Joseph P. Kelly
24th Judicial District Judge
Victoria County Courthouse
115 North Bridge
Victoria, TX 77901

Honorable Judge Juergen Koetter
267th Judicial District Judge
Victoria County Courthouse
115 North Bridge
Victoria, TX 77901

Honorable Judge Kemper Stephen Williams
135th Judicial District Judge
Victoria County Courthouse 115 North Bridge
Victoria, TX 77901

Mr. Jerry Julian
Executive Director
Texas Commission on Jail Standards
P.O. Box 12985
Austin, TX 78711-2985

Ms. Terri Dollar
Deputy Director
Texas Commission on Jail Standards
P.O. Box 12985
Austin, TX 78711-2985

Mr. Shannon Herklotz
Inmate Grievances
Texas Commission on Jail Standards
P.O. Box 12985
Austin, TX 78711-2985

Honorable Governor Rick Perry
State of Texas
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, TX 78711-242

8

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500

Office of the Attorney General
P.O. Box 12548
Austin, TX 78711-2548

Greg Gladden
Vice President Houston Chapter
American Civil Liberties Union
3017 Houston Ave
Houston, TX 77009-6734

Jodie Evans
Code Pink
2010 Linden Ave
Venice, CA 90291-3912