Category: Uncategorized

By Greg Moses

OpEdNews

“This is pathetically sickening. This is outrageously sickening. What is the government trying to accomplish by terrorizing people who want to be Americans?”

That’s how Jay Johnson-Castro responded by telephone to the front-page story in Saturday’s Los Angeles Times about the T. Don Hutto prison at Taylor, Texas.

He was specifically talking about news that a 9-year-old girl and her father were abducted from their home in Phoenix during a raid similar to the operation that imprisoned three Palestinian families in Texas. The father from Phoenix is married to an American citizen and had on the previous day stopped by an immigration office to see how he could fix his lapsed status.
“The fact that someone is in this country illegally doesn’t mean they have broken a law,” says Ralph Isenberg by telephone from Dallas.

“A person who is told one day that they have status and another day that they don’t is not a person who has broken the law,” says Isenberg. “It’s not the same as murder.”

“The Ibrahim family were told they were in the country illegally, but they were trying to appeal their status. Once that appeal was considered, instantly the family went from being unlawful to lawful,” says Isenberg.

“The same thing may happen with the Hazahza family very soon. We have asked Joshua Bardavid and Ted Cox to prepare their writ of habeas corpus,” says Isenberg. ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] should release the Hazahzas or shut down their prisons altogether, which would be just as good.”

Further South, Johnson-Castro’s voice crosses the border as he drives across an international bridge into Reynosa, Mexico.

He agrees that the public voice began to speak with the November elections, and he thinks that hard-right border policies had something to do with it.

In weeks leading up the November elections, Johnson-Castro started a campaign of conscience against a proposed border wall. Last week, when he returned to the Rio Grande Valley with activists from other border states, he found media and mayors eager to carry a message of border compassion.

If proponents of hard-line immigration policy think they are going to win with fear and prejudice, they need to think again.

“We have taken their trump card,” says Johnson-Castro. “And we have torn it up!”

Driving through Reynosa, Mexico, Johnson-Castro talks over the cell phone about the social and economic landscape.

“I have documentation that people here are getting paid eight to ten dollars a day for 9.6 hours of work, six days a week,” says Johnson-Castro

“Often they are not given their bonuses. If the factory they are working for changes hands, they lose all their seniority and have to start all over again from scratch,” he says.

“There are toxic waste dumps near these factories, and many of the workers are single moms,” he adds.

“Then when they want to cross the line to work for minimum wage, they are treated like criminals by the same powers who are exploiting them in their country back home.” Many of these Reynosa factories are American owned and pay dividends to American pensioners and other stock holders.

“We now have labor camps that are American owned a couple of minutes from the USA, we have prison camps for profit from the USA. We have plans to build a Berlin wall on USA soil–for profit!

“Prsident Bush is going to totally militarize the Texas-Mexican border, doubling troops and equipment for profit.

“Now we have secret cemeteries where people are buried who die along the border. We don’t know who they are, yet they are buried for profit.

“Where have we seen all this before? Let’s learn form the Germans and tear it all down before it’s built.”

On Monday evening at 5:30 Johnson-Castro will resume a series of nonviolent vigils outside the Hutto prison camp.

“People with true American spirit who recognize they are immigrants or descendants of immigrants will stand up to these imperialistic, nationalistic, supremacistic, and racist tactics,” says Johnson-Castro. “And I think it will happen fast.”

Indeed the placement and tone of news stories about the Hutto prison are evidence that a certain line has been crossed among news audiences across the country.

Back in Dallas, Ralph Isenberg reflects on his long-standing battles with ICE and the way he has been treated by business partners and friends.

“Not one has complained about my cause this time,” says Isenberg. “My business partners and friends are saying, ‘go do what you need to do; this is wrong.’ “

"She stands up and waves,
As a flower she poses
but she is never still,
knows no rest.
Her heart is always in flight.
With her hand she makes signs,
with her eyes she beckons.
She moves her eyes in an arch,
she smiles, goes about laughing and
loving passionately,
shows her charm and love.

Tezcatlipoca

By Ramsey Muñiz

I am man and Mexicano enough to share my writing of this most spiritual letter as tears cover my Mexika face. They are tears of sadness and unbelievable pain as I heard the evening news that Corettta Scott King had just died. Yes, she died physically but has risen spiritually once again for all the oppressed and confined humans in America. How can I forget my meeting Coretta Scott King in Dallas during a march against the brutal attacks against Blacks and others by the police? Her face glowed of spirituality, and I could feel the love and power in her heart from the Reverend Martin Luther King, her husband, is presently awaiting her arrival this very second as I share this letter.

The Reverend Ralph Abernathy was also one of the main speakers at this event for freedom and respect as human beings in this country. Coretta King’s rebirth as an archangel of liberation and justice will be even greater now because she left a legend of strength, courage, patience, compassion, and love — not only for mankind, but for women of all races in the 21st century. I continue to advocate and predict that the 21st century will be led in the world by women of all races and countries. This is not only because of their intelligence and consciousness for humanity, but for the power of life and spirituality as they give life to this world of ours.

Personally, I will be fasting for the next three days, praying and seeking the enlightenment of the Reverend Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King into my heart.

I will never forget when I finished speaking on behalf of nuestra raza. She came to me and spoke these words I shall treasure forever saying, "Son, do not ever give up the struggle for justice of all people."

Here I am in the dungeons of this oppressor and regardless of how dark or cold it becomes, I will never give up the struggle for justice and freedom of all oppressed people. In Topan (heavens) there are many liberators of humanity who this very night are providing the energy, strength, spirituality, and power in our hearts and minds in order that we who find ourselves in the battle against oppression, discrimination, and confinement can be able to carry out the destiny that in reality was part of our lives since the time of our birth.

I love and have been loved. Everywhere in the heavens a woman’s soul of liberation and justice has come to bless and sweeten my exhausted life in this mode of cruel darkness. I pray tonight to Coretta Scott King that when she enters into my world here in this unjust darkness, I want only to show her something I have seen and to tell her something I have heard…that here in these oppressed dungeons and there in the world and now and then in ourselves, there is a new creation! It is a new creation of those who are seeking freedom, seeking the truth of spirituality, the practice of spirituality, and the embrace of spirituality once and for all.

It is a very sad night indeed, but at the same time I feel a certain light of happiness knowing that Mrs. Coretta Scott King, her husband, and all liberators are clearing the path of injustice, and providing for us the positive energy of not ever giving up this struggle, regardless of the chains and shackles bounding our bodies. Regardless of how we are unable to touch the hands and hearts of those we love so dearly, regardless of how some of us are indefinitely imprisoned for a crime never committed against mankind, she will be with us forever and her spiritual rebirth will become part of our cultural consciousness and awareness. Que viva Tonantzin! Que viva Coretta Scott King! Que vivan las mujeres de este mundo!

In exile,
Tezcatlipoca
*****************
http://www.freeramsey.com

Message dated 1/31/06; received via email from Irma L. Muñiz Feb. 11, 2005.–gm

We got the tip from Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr., who writes, We’ve wondered where the next Hutto would be.”

Apparently there is federal contract up for bid to build a new detention center for immigrant women and children. And an “undisclosed” company would like to put the project outside Las Cruces, NM.

Here’s a link to the story by Todd G. Dickson posted at the Las Cruces Bulletin.

By Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier
by permission

On Saturday, January 31st, I attended an event in Edinburg sponsored by the Southwest Workers Uni*n (SWU). One of the founders of the group – they just celebrated their twentieth anniversary — is Ruben Solis, who spoke on NAFTA, the increasing economic crisis and the need for better organization to defend the workers’ interests.

When people responded, going around the room afterward, answering a question about the effects of NAFTA in the Valley, I mentioned that the community college I work at is seeing more and more students getting their AA degrees in Criminal Justice and not majoring in the liberal arts right now. I also mentioned my concern that the Border Patrol has doubled in size in the last two years. My point was relevant because Solis had addressed the question of the militarization of the border. I agree with Solis that the Border region, slumping rapidly in jobs and services, is a potential trouble spot for the globalization crowd and they watch it closely.

He told me afterward that he personally planned to spend much more time in the Valley over this next period, in fact spending more time here than in San Antonio for a while. He is right: this is a very important area right now.

Leading up to the Saturday event, I interviewed one of the Valley organizers, Anayanse Garza, for my column in the Mid-Valley Town Crier. I will share it here.

Braune: I am somewhat familiar with the Southwest Workers and have attended two of their activities up in San Antonio over the recent years. One was an excellent workshop about the militarization of the Border, and another was a forum about a San Antonio military base that showed no concern for the surrounding environment. So I am happy your group is active in the Rio Grande Valley. Tell us about it.

Garza: The SWU is noted as a grassroots organization that organizes low-income public school workers like custodians, bus drivers and cafeteria workers in San Antonio and South Texas. We empower communities to fight for justice where we live and work from the ground up. Because of this we are also active in developing the leadership of youth and students so they can be part of the social justice movement in the community.

We create a “space” for grassroots voices, create connections that strengthen our local struggles, and construct global understanding. We proudly see ourselves at a crossroads between the global north and global south and U.S. south and southwest.

Braune: On the leaflet you distributed, it says that The Wall and NAFTA have devastated our community. What do you usually tell people who ask about this?

Garza: In the last 15 years of this forced neo-liberal experiment, NAFTA has proved to be an economic disaster for Mexico and for the U.S. In the U.S. generally, NAFTA has devastated our jobs and income. And the Rio Grande Valley is no exception. NAFTA caused job loss for workers who face limited or no opportunities, and forced them to compete for poverty wages. Hidalgo County and Cameron County, 15 years later, continue to be among the poorest counties in the nation.

Our border community bears witness to NAFTA’s failures. Look at the poverty. NAFTA benefitted the multi-national corporations while the working poor in Mexico became poorer. It simply dislocated millions of working poor from Mexico’s rural farm areas, forcing them to move to the border cities and later to emigrate to the U.S. NAFTA devalued the peso by 50 – 60 percent, and NAFTA industries have paid exploitation wages. And NAFTA has robbed the US of light and medium manufacturing jobs, closing thousands of plants and factories, such as Levi Strauss & Company. Companies moved to Mexico, China or elsewhere.

Braune: Yes, I lived a few years ago in Harlingen when Fruit of Loom closed, robbing that city of hundreds of jobs; greatly because of NAFTA, the owners flitted off to some other country to pay cheaper wages. It is amazing how damaging it has been to Mexico’s workers and to U.S. workers.

Garza: And NAFTA industries have created massive environmental contamination: pollution, discharge and toxic waste. Our event will discuss this and also how NAFTA has dislocated workers in Mexico to face abusive and exploitative situations, and we will show how NAFTA has spawned narco-wars, border violence, feminicide, and militarization.

Braune: Your literature is demanding that the Obama administration (particularly the Labor and Commerce departments) and the Mexican government make efforts to dismantle NAFTA. Right?

Garza: Yes.

Braune: Could you tell us a little about yourself and how you got interested in working with a worker’s organization.

Garza: Certainly. As a woman of Mexican heritage who grew up in a colonia right here in the Rio Grande Valley, I understand the need to fight for justice, the need to defend our dignity, our rights. And no one else will fight harder than us, the people who are living that injustice, but only if we organize ourselves to rise up, take action, and speak out. Through my own experience and through witnessing the experiences of other workers, I know that an organized community makes real change possible, and that means a better quality of life for all working families.

Braune: Thanks for your time, and I hope you do well in your organizing.