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Asking your support for a walk from Brownsville to Mission

email from Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.

Good morning mis amigas y amigos…

I write you first…in the hopes that you will help us make history…just as you already have in the past and are all ready doing. We have a special opportunity to not only make history but alter it in a meaningful and beneficial way.

It’s been a half a century since Texas has been a key player in the selection process of the President of the United States. The March 4 Texas primaries will play such a pivotal role in the selection of the presidential candidates for both parties. Before they get the Texas delegates, we have a chance to…and need to…make sure that the issues of the Texas-Mexico border are on their lips…during the debates and during their campaigning. For example…”No Border Wall”.

We are the poorest region, not only in Texas, we are the poorest region in the entire country. We are the dumping grounds for northern part of Texas and the Middle America. ASARCO, nuclear waste and profit prisons. We are the target of political corruption and human indignities by outside forces. As a result of the policies of a corrupt leadership, we are a militarized zone that is going to double in militarization by the end of the year, which will include mercenary forces like Dynacorp and Blackwater.

We are under assault by not only the ruling elite but divisive and prejudicial forces that would build an “iron curtain” between friends and loved ones. We are in the cross hairs of the military-industrial architects of being the Israeli-Palestinian border conflict of this continent…which is good for corporatism and bad for democracy. We already have “defense” contractors drooling over the militarization of the land that we love. Now…finally…we have a chance to get our message out…and in doing so, help decide who will win the primaries.

So, in just two weeks we will be walking again…marching…to garner the attention of the remaining presidential candidates…before the debate and before the Texas primaries. Below is the route for the March 4 March 4…starting at UT Brownsville and ending at La Lomita Chapel.

Seven days. Feb. 25 to March 2. 63 miles over 7 days is a casual 9 miles a day. Ends on a weekend…going through Saturday and ending on Sunday. Great for momentum. Plenty of time to hold special events along the way if someone wanted to.

We can become the human wall that stops the cruel and destructive wall of prejudice. Our voices and our presence cannot be ignored any longer. Up until now, the public…the grass roots…have had little way of voicing their outrage against the wall before the elected officials make their decision, before the primaries or before the elections. It’s always the Cheroffs, Cornyns, Perrys, judges and mayors who get their voices heard…often without the approval or blessings of we the people. Common folks like Eloisa Tamez would never be heard if it were not for the power of our media. Now, the national network media is being forced to cover our love of the border culture to the rest of America. A March prior to the Obama-Clinton debate and the Texas primaries will allow we the common people to be seen and common voices to be heard even more.

The walk is designed specifically to impact the Obama-Clinton debate on Thursday the 28th. It will in turn impact the Texas primaries on Tuesday, March 4th…which takes place two days after we make la frontera a major bargaining chip in the garnering of delegates. There are going to be people from all over the country that will in some way want to be a part of this. The media has been waiting for something like this from the people.

This is our chance to expose all that is corrupt in this country…a corruption that wants to harm the goodness, solidarity and amistad that dwells here on the border. We’ll do this with the power of our reason, using the truth that has set us free from falsehood.

We hope that others will free themselves once they know what evils are behind this wall and the militarization of the part of the world we love. We will show them how we get along…multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, multi-socio-economic, multi-religious…and we can let them know we want them to leave us the hell alone. Better yet, they might want to learn from us.

We will do this by exercising our loves and passions for the truth, for fellow humans, for the earth and for the Grand Designer of all that we enjoy. We will do this in a law abiding way. We will show what the exercising of democracy from the ground level…”we the people”…on up really means and how it can be done.

You are the ones I feel have helped the most from the beginning of this quest some 16 months ago. Some have dropped out while others have joined in since. But everyone counts in this quest. Y’all are the ones who have helped made a difference. Now…let’s make the change.

Can we stop the wall? “Yes we can”.

In solidarity…

Jay

Driving Directions

Start address: E Elizabeth St

End address: Levee Rd

View Larger Map

Start at: E Elizabeth St

1. Head northwest on E Elizabeth St toward Gorgas Dr – 0.4 km

2. Turn right at Int’l Blvd – 95 m

3. Turn left at E Washington St – 1.6 km

4. Turn left at Palm Blvd – 0.1 km

5. Turn right at W Elizabeth St – 0.8 km

6. Turn right at Central Blvd – 1.2 km

7. Turn left at Boca Chica Blvd/Military Hwy/US-281 Continue to follow US-281 – 76.9 km

8. Turn right at Cage Blvd – 3.2 km

9. Turn left at W Dicker Dr – 4.7 km

10. Turn right at S 10th St/TX-336 – 2.4 km

11. Turn left at FM-1016/W Military Hwy – 3.
6 km

12. Turn left at Acapulco Ln – 0.7 km

13. Continue on E FM-1016 – 4.6 km

14. Continue straight onto FM-494/Military Rd – 0.5 km

15. Turn left toward Levee Rd – 0.3 km

16. Turn left at Levee Rd – 0.1 km

Arrive at: Levee Rd

By Greg Moses

An 18-year-old immigration prisoner at the Rolling Plains jail at Haskell, Texas has made a formal request to be housed with his 23-year-old brother.

Ahmad Hazahza made the request shortly before 8:30 Saturday evening according to a Sergeant who was reached by telephone at the facility.

Ahmad and his brother Hisham have been jailed at the Haskell facility, along with their father and two sisters, since they were abducted in a raid last November by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
For the first eleven weeks of detention, Ahmad was held in “alternative housing” because of his status as a minor among adult prisoners. A friend of the Hazahza family called it “solitary confinement.” No explanation has been given as to why Ahmad was not initially sent to a jail such as T. Don Hutto, where other minors are being kept.

Sgt. Baldwin said housing units usually contain either 8 or 24 people. Each of the three male members of the Hazahza family is being detained in different housing units, he said.

The Haskell jail is a medium security prison managed by the Emerald Companies of Louisiana.

The Texas Civil Rights Review contacted the Haskell facility because of a news tip that Muslim prisoners in one housing unit had been threatened with restriction of their prayer privileges. But Sgt. Baldwin said the men were at the Mosque praying, and his report was later confirmed by our source.

Release of the Hazahza family members from Haskell has become a top priority for activists since Hazahza family mother and youngest son, Juma and Mohammad, were released last week from the T. Don Hutto prison in Taylor, Texas.

Along with the father, Radi, and two adult sons, Ahmad and Hisham, there are two adult Hazahza family daughters at Haskell, 19-year-old Suzan and 23-year-old Mirvat.

New York attorneys Joshua Bardavid and Ted Cox are reported to be preparing a federal habeas corpus plea for the remaining Hazahza family, much the same as they did for the recently released Ibrahims.

Jay Johnson-Castro asked us to find out what’s happening with the house that the Suleiman family purchased last summer, which now lies empty without them while they live as deportees in Jordan.

Riad Hamad of the Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund says the Suleimans put $20,000 into the home. It was their first home to own, and it is still in their name. Foreclosure is imminent because payments have not been made since the family’s abduction in early November.
The Suleimans added a room to the back of the house to accommodate their family, including twin citizens of the USA, age four. The home is currently valued at $153,000.

Although Hamad usually works only for children inside Palestine, he said via telephone that he would continue to make an exception for the Suleimans, who were shipped to Jordan in early February.

If you would like to help with house payments, please contact Riad Hamad of the Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund (pcwf.org). He can be reached via email at pcwfaustin@yahoo.com

“The suggestion that the family come back is welcome,” says Hamad.

“We’re going to fight for that,” says Jay Johnson-Castro via cell phone. “We’ll be talking about it at the vigil Monday.”

For us, Williamson County resident Angela Kopit has become the face of Vigil III. When word went out about the release of the Ibrahim family last week, she was one of the local folks who gathered at Hutto jail to signal solidarity with the family. In a Dallas Morning News report on the family’s release, Kopit was quoted: “The things that my parents were fighting for in the ’60s are being taken from us now,” said Taylor resident Angela Kopit, who came with her three sons. “This is the fear of immigrants in its ugliest form.”–gm

Hi Greg, I didn’t actually see my quote in the Dallas Morning News, I hope it was worthwhile.

The morning’s events were lovely [Feb. 3, during the release of the Ibrahim mother and children from T. Don Hutto prison]. The crowd was small, but it was
quite moving to see the family back together and away from that place.

We were cheering their release and had at least one sign showing that we were supporting their release. We didn’t get close enough to actually talk to the family, but I think it was clear we were supporters. I heard from a friend in LA that our little prison made the front page of the LA TIMES today.

The article was not flattering to CCA or the facility in general. She’s sending me the front page. Our seed of dissent is growing.

Angela “Immigration’s net binds children too: Hundreds of minors are being held with parents caught illegally in the U.S. The facilities and conditions are like jail.” By Nicole Gaouette and Miguel Bustillo, Times Staff Writers. February 10, 2007. Los Angeles Times.

The story features 9-year-old Khadijah and her father “Sebastien Bessuges, 30, a Frenchman who last year married an American …. Bessuges had visited a federal immigration center last month to see what forms he needed to extend his stay in the U.S. The next day, immigration agents raided his suburban Phoenix home and detained him and Khadijah.”

The story also says a hunger strike was waged last week at Hutto over the poor quality of food and “other conditions.”