Category: Uncategorized

“You too must love the alien resident…for you became alien residents…” The God of Abraham (Deut 10:19)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Afternoon amigos…

Little has changed! Folks need reminders. How and why their hearts harden against the poor foreigner is baffling to me. Such arrogance! Such haughtiness!! Such meanness and cruelty!!!

Below (see the myspace link) are but a few of the many-many results from Monday’s Hutto Vigil VIII and related events. Attached is a special publication for Indiana children…about Hutto…

View Full Size (1mb)

Jay

P.S. Be especially sure to check out FREE the CHILDREN on MySpace. This is a phenomenally successful effort by a couple of our sharpest media savvy gals.

For Immediate Release

May 8, 2006

Press Conference

Newly-Forming “We Are America Alliance” Announces Next
Steps to Stop HR 4437 and Press for Real
Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Alliance of key immigrant, grassroots, labor, local,
and national organizations join together to produce a
million new citizens and voters between now and
Election Day 2006, conduct advocacy drives, and
organize future rallies

On Wednesday, May 10th, the newly forming “We Are
America Alliance” will announce its Millions for
Change and Democracy action plan for the coming weeks and months. The Alliance is made up of grassroots, statewide, and national organizations from across the country (see initial list of convening organizations below).

The Alliance will coordinate activities in order to:
1) produce a million new voters and citizens between
now and Election Day 2006; 2) press the nation’s
lawmakers to stop the punitive and harsh HR 4437, and 3) enact real comprehensive immigration reform that provides a path to citizenship for the nation’s
undocumented immigrants, reunites families, respects
civil rights, and protects workers.

WHEN: Wednesday, May 10, 2006, 11:00 a.m. Eastern

WHERE: Holiday Inn on The Hill Federal Ballroom415 New Jersey Avenue, NW Washing ton, DC 20001

WHO: Eliseo Medina, Executive Vice President, Service Employees International Union (SEIU);
Jaime Contreras, President, National Capital
Immigration Coalition Angelica Salas, Executive Director, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA); EunSook Lee, Executive Director, NAKASEC National Korean American Service & Education Consortium; Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director, Center for Community Change;

Contacts:

Germonique Jones, Center for Community Change, (202)
339-9331 or 202-494-9876

Cheryl Aguilar (en español), Center for Community
Change (202) 339-9316 or (202) 360-7867 (mobile)

Eliza Leighton, National Capital Immigration
Coalition/Casa of Maryland, (301) 431-4185 x264 or
(240) 354-0765

Avril Smith, Service Employees International Union
(SEIU),(202) 730-7480 or (202) 285-8761

Marie Watteau (en español), Servic e Employees
InternationalUnion (SEIU), (202) 842-9882

The first coordinated activity is scheduled for May
17th. With the Senate expected to take up immigration reform that week, grassroots advocates will descend on Washington, D.C. from across the country in support of real comprehensive immigration reform. A rally the same day is expected to78draw five to ten thousand participants. Those from around the nation who cannot make it to Washington, DC that week will be making visits to lawmakers in their home states and districts.

Beginning on July 1st, the “We Are America Alliance”
will begin Democracy Summer to help a million eligible individuals become citizens and voters. On Labor Day Weekend, regional immigration reform mobilizations in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C. are expected to attract a million people. During the months of September and October, many of the organizations and networks that make up the Alliance will be mobilizing eligible voters to participate in the November elections.

Over the past several months, millions of immigrants
have come out of the shadows to make their voices
heard in the national immigration reform debate. A
movement has been born. In addition to keeping the
pressure on the policy makers to enact real
comprehensive immigration reform, the
next step is to ensure that eligible immigrants and
their allies hold elected officials accountable at the
ballot box.

Convening Organizations:

We Are America Alliance (in formation)

* Center for Community Change (www.communitychange.org)

* FIRM (Fair Immigration Reform Movement)
(www.fairimmigration.org)

* Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) (www.chirla.org )

* Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
(ICIRR) (www.icirr.org )

* Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy (MIRA) Coalition (www.miracoalition.org)

* National Association for Latin and Caribbean
Communities (NALACC) (www.nalacc.org)

* National Capital Immigration Coalition
(www.ncic-metro.org)

* National Day Laborer Organizing Network
(www.ndlon.org )

* National Korean American Social & Education
Consortium (NAKASEC) (www.nakasec.org)

* New American Opportunity Campaign (NAOC)/Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR) (www.cirnow.org)

* New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC)
(www.thenyic.org)

* Piñeros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United) (Woodburn, OR) (www.pcun.org )

* Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
(www.seiu.org)

* UNITE HERE! (www.unitehere.org)

Contacts:

Germonique Jones, Center for Community Change, (202)
339-9331 or 202-494-9876

Cheryl Aguilar (en español), Center for Community
Change (202) 339-9316 or (202) 360-7867 (mobile)

Eliza Leighton, National Capital Immigration
Coalition/Casa of Maryland, (301) 431-4185 x264 or
(240) 354-0765

Avril Smith, Service Employees International Union
(SEIU),(202) 730-7480 or (202) 285-8761

Marie Watteau (en español), Servic e Employees
InternationalUnion (SEIU), (202) 842-9882
New website at weareamericaalliance.org

Pipe assault prompts call for hate crime registry

By BILL MURPHY
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

Prompted by the savage assault on a Hispanic youth in Spring last month, state Sen. Rodney Ellis called today for requiring hate crime offenders to register with local law enforcement.

He said he will press for the measure in the regular legislative session that begins in January, hoping to create a registry similar to the sex offender registry.

“If registration is good enough for sex offenders, it’s good enough for skinheads,” said Ellis, D-Houston said at a news conference outside Houston City Hall.

Three aunts and two cousins of the 17-year-old former Klein Collins football player who was attacked April 22 attended the news conference.

Ellis and leaders of the local chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens also called for changing the state hate crime law so additional years can be added onto sentences of those convicted of hate crimes.

David Henry Tuck, 18, and Keith Robert Turner, 17, are accused of beating and kicking the youth and sodomizing him with a plastic pipe, causing severe internal injuries. At least one of the suspects shouted ethnic slurs during the attack, authorities have said.

They were charged with aggravated sexual assault, which carries a possible life sentence.

Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal said he has not charged Tuck and Turner with a hate crime because state law does not allow years to be added onto the pair’s sentences if they are convicted.

Ellis called for a hate crime registry because Tuck’s name has surfaced before in a hate crime attack.

Tuck, at age 14, was one of three skinheads who took part in beating a Hispanic man pumping gas outside a Spring convenience store Jan. 28, 2003, according to court records, the victim and a woman who witnessed the incident.

The two adult skinheads who took part in the incident are serving time in federal prisons for violating the victim’s civil rights.

The FBI has concluded that Tuck and Turner cannot be charged under a federal hate crime law because that law applies to acts that occur in public settings, not a private home. The victim was attacked in the backyard of a Spring house where the three were visiting other youths.

“It’s not that I don’t feel that this is a hate crime,” said Houston FBI spokeswoman Shauna Dunlap. “We would love to charge this pair with something.”

Carlos Leon, a lawyer retained by the victim’s family to bring a civil rights suit against Tuck and Turner, said, “We need to change the law so this kind of crime can be prosecuted properly.”

The victim remains unconscious in the intensive care unit at Memorial Hermann Hospital, but swelling that resulted from the attack has gone down, Leon and family members said.

“He is improving,” Leon said.

Surgery on his internal organs is being postponed until he further recuperates, said a woman who identified herself only as an aunt.

On Leon’s advice, the youth’s relatives did not identify themselves by name.

Another aunt said Tuck and Turner “should get the worst punishment. They should pay for what they did.”

bill.murphy@chron.com

The following materials appeared previously as site announcements–gm

Monday, May 7, 10am – sundown, at the T. Don Hutto prison for migrant families, Taylor.

They can keep Joan Baez from singing at Walter Reed. They can stop the UN from peeking inside Hutto prison. But they can’t stop the vigils. (Joanie, you can sing for us, anytime.)

In accordance with an announcement issued on April 27 from the Geneva offices of the United Nations, Special Rapporteur for Human Rights of Migrants, Jorge G. Bustamante, was expecting to tour the T. Don Hutto prison camp for migrant families on Monday, May 7.

Access Denied: UN Rapporteur Jorge Bustamante
Photo: Wabash College

On Thursday May 3 the Department of Homeland Security said that the UN’s visit to Hutto had never been approved. Will the USA keep the UN Rapporteur from visiting the migrant prison operated by Corrections Corporation of America?
Writes Jay Johnson-Castro: We will be protesting the inhumane imprisonment of innocent children. We will also be protesting the refusal of Chertoff (Bush) to grant access to Sr. Jorge Bustamante the special investigator for the United Nations…Human Rights Commission. We are adding a feature to this eighth vigil. It will be a walking vigil. For those who can…we will be walking up and down Welch Rd. We’re calling it Hutto Walk-Jericho. It will be an all day event…during the all day vigil. While some hold down the vigil at the entrance of Hutto, others will walk up one side of Welch Rd. back down the other carrying placards. If you have a placard, a megaphone, a camera, a camcorder, a sound maker that you want to bring…bring it. Bring water, good shoes…and a good hat.