Category: Uncategorized

Beauty from the Heart of Texas

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch

Over at the Internet Movie Database, redneck trolls are saddling up their cyber posse to go night riding on the message boards against Denzel Washington and “The Great Debaters.” All of which is a good thing if you like to see relevance in contemporary art. Because deep down, “The Great Debaters” is a film about how to grow yourself into a real person despite the needlers, taunters, and brutes who dominate the space around you — and who dominate it, still.

Passion, poetry, learning, and love. These are the things you must keep working at. “The Great Debaters” is about never being deterred. In art, thank goodness, we are graced to craft images of humanity into beauties that last. And the beauty of Professor Melvin B. Tolson in “The Great Debaters” is heroic as it should be.

Okay, so the actual Wiley College debate team from Marshall, Texas didn’t actually debate the actual Harvard College debate team in or about the actual year of 1935, as the actual movie shows. But what Tolson and his students did achieve was just as beautiful as the film portrays. The students and scholars of the most unlikely little community in NorthEast Texas embodied the Harlem Renaissance. They breathed in the mighty poetry and aspirations that had converged upon Lenox Avenue, and they gave back to the world tiny seedlings of a civil rights movement that would make history, yes, upon brand new roots. And they were great debaters.

If “The Great Debaters” has not been able to satisfy internet demand for documentary accuracy, that’s a good thing again; because now there is opportunity to nourish that appetite. The more you get to know the actual beauties of these folk and their work, the less the film will appear like exaggeration. The more you’ll see that the film did the best it could do in two hours’ time to share with you the force of spirit that was distilled among the children and grandchildren of slaves.

Pecking through the internet, I’m locating a handful of seeds to get you started on your East Texas victory garden. The University of Illinois has a good starter page on Melvin B. Tolson. There you will notice that many of Tolson’s poems did not make it into print during his lifetime.

The Center for East Texas Studies has a good starter collection of materials about James Leonard Farmer, Sr. I have linked to the “historical marker” page, but if you navigate to the Farmer root directory, you’ll find a nice collection of texts and pictures. For example, I like what the Bostonia file says about the sermons of Farmer Senior:

“No printed copies of those sermons have been uncovered, but poet Melvin Tolson, on the Wiley faculty during the 1930’s, offered another glimpse in his Washington Tribune column, ‘Caviar and Cabbage,’ describing Farmer’s Mother’s Day 1938 sermon: ‘I was thrilled,’ Tolson wrote, ‘by this vivid picture of Jesus the young rebel,’ who dearly loved his mother while battling the convention of his time.”

Notice on the big screen how much smiling goes on between Tolson and Farmer Senior when the subject of Jesus comes up. Glimpse the game they play within a close intellectual relationship. In fact, Farmer Senior was a great scholar of the Gospels, which is another story altogether. A clip of the film scene, featuring the two academy award winning actors Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker, is widely available on the internet.

The autobiography of civil rights activist James Farmer, Jr. is rich with early memories of black college campuses, not only in Marshall, Texas. Here’s a link to the publisher’s page for “Lay Bare the Heart.”

During the 1930s, a federal work program collected slave narratives in Texas, which have been typed up and stored at the Library of Congress. Here’s a link to the index of that collection. Could it be the case that so many former slaves of Harrison County Texas actually had the failing memories they reported to federal writers?

And Salatheia Bryant of the Houston Chronicle offers a fine writeup on the “real” woman debater of Wiley College, Henrietta Bell Wells. Of the film says Ms. Wells: “I hope I live up to the ideals in it.”

So please don’t bother believing what the bigots tell you about this film, not even the trolls who claim to have Harvard degrees. You don’t have to be Black to feel beautifully about Denzel Washington’s fine new film, “The Great Debaters.” The “message” of this film is for anyone who still desires the capacity to dream higher than what you already are.

See Also: Philadelphia television reporter Tamala Edwards presents a more personal report on “Ma Wells.”

If this Court grants the Plaintiff’s request for authorization to drug Rrustem Neza so Plaintiff can deport him without his protest, then the deportation will deprive the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit and the BIA of jurisdiction of the actions now pending before them to prevent the deportation of the Defendant. As the Appendix demonstrates undeniably, “If Rrustem Neza is returned to Albania, he very likely will be killed on account of his political activities related to the Hajdari assassination.” Affidavit of James Pettifer, Exhibit 6 to the Appendix to Amended Motion to Reopen on Account of Changed Circumstances, which is Appendix 1 to the Appendix to Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss, Motion for More Definite Statement, and Reply to Motion for Preliminary Injunction.

Excerpt from Rrustem Neza’s Oct. 22, 2007 reply to continuing legal efforts to dope and deport him to Albania.

See also: Oct. 1, 2007 motion by USA immigration authorities to dope and deport Rrustem Neza to Albania.

Email from Jay Johnson-Castro, Sr.

Hola ya’ll…

If we cannot free innocent children imprisoned “for profit” on American soil…right here in the “heart of Texas”…our State and our country are doomed.

We must free them!

Many of you have been there since day # one…and already know this. Many are just coming to discover the details. Many of you from all parts of the country have shared in solidarity with us in our quest to free the innocent children from the Hutto prison.

A year ago, May of 2006, Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff proclaimed the T. Don Hutto prison for immigrant families the prototype of many more to be opened across our great land. Hutto just so happened to be a privately owned prison…run “for profit”. Immigrant children would condemned to becoming a commodity for huge financial gain of the corrupt political-corporate world. A few informed Texans tried to find a way to expose and bring public awareness to this immoral, callous and criminal scheme.

At that time, children were confined to 8′ x 12′ cold cells for 23 hours a day in a medium security prison surrounded by razor wire walls. Often not with either parent, the children, ranging from 2-y-o and up, were forced to wear prison uniforms, stand for head counts starting at 5:30am and only allowed 20 minutes to finish a meal, often prepared with out of date food and spoiled milk products. They were getting sick on a regular basis and loosing weight.

Those were the conditions…up to early December, 2006 when an alliance of Central Texas organizations solidified to form Texans United For Families (TUFF) collaborated to hold a protest walk and vigil. Starting with a press conference, hosted by Texas State Senator, Carlos Uresti, at the Capitol building, the first Hutto walk was launched on December 14th. Arriving at 11:00am on December 15th, in Taylor, TX at the Hutto childrens prison, the walk joined the first Hutto Vigil…with some 150 grassroots citizens coming together for the first time to publicly condemn the Chertoff-ICE-CCA-Williamson County collusion to imprison children and their mothers for profit.

Since that time numerous vigils and walks have been conducted. The most recent walk, Hutto Walk III, went from the Hutto childrens prison in Taylor to the Williamson County Commissioners Court in Georgetown, in order to confront the commissioners about moral breakdown and their complicity of profiting from the imprisonment of innocent children.

Since the first Hutto Walk and Vigil, many things had come to light.

1. ICE funnels a minimum of $2, 800,000 per month to the private prison company CCA…Corrections Corporation of America.
2. Parents were often separated from their children.
3. Fathers are generally imprisoned in a different prison far away.
4. Hutto did not comply with Texas or US educational laws.
5. Hutto did not comply with Texas family and day care laws.
6. Women were not being given proper medical care.
7. Women were chained to beds while undergoing checkups.
8. Women were being sexually assaulted.
9. Media was not allowed to tour the facilities.
10. Hutto did not comply with the UN Rights of the Child.
11. CCA was grossing $7,000 per month per child.
12. WCC would make $1 per child per day.
13. No toys were allowed.
14. Mothers and children were threatened with separation as a form of punishment.

Under those conditions, at the end of January, 2007, the Williamson County Commissioners Court ignored the expressed concerns of a public with a conscience and extended their one year contract for two more years. But thanks to grassroots citizens, human rights organizations and media pressure, some of those things started to change as early as mid February. Razor wire started to come down, cells doors got painted lavender and the media was allowed to enter the facility…although they were not allowed the freedom of the press to interview the children or their mothers.

In March, the ACLU, TCRP and UT Law Clinic filed lawsuits against Chertoff and ICE, adding another level of legal and media attention.

On May 8, the UN Special Rapporteur, Jorge Bustamonte, of the Human Rights Commission, came to Texas to inspect the human rights violations of the children in Hutto. He was denied access by Chertoff.

On June 23, an Amnesty International coordinated Hutto Vigil X was held at which half a thousand folks peacefully protested this international crime against innocent children.

The ACLU effectively won their lawsuit against Chertoff…in the form of a settlement. Conditions for the children would be significantly better…but…any settlement would fall well short the rightful freedom for the innocent children that we the public demand.

Since there was a clear case of sexual assault by a guard on an immigrant woman in front of the woman’s child, the Williamson County Commissioners Court finally saw their could get caught with their pants down. Concern about exposure and “liability” became public. For a short time, the WCCC entertained termination of their contract with ICE and CCA as the money laundering mechanism for ICE and CCA. Yet ICE and CCA courted the WCCC to keep it in the loop…with CCA offering the WCCC a $250,000 line of credit and legally holding them harmless in the event of law suit. Not at all concerned with the moral or criminal aspects, or the international mockery they had become for imprisoning innocent children, WCCC unanimously accepted the offer of protection from “liability”.

YET…not one national television network has covered this international crime against children. While more concerned this past year with celebrity crimes, paternity DNA, panties, drunk driving, dog fights and heists and jail sentences…CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, Fox…national…have all refused to tell the story of innocent children being prisoners in a privatized “for profit” internment prison in the United States.

While we recognize that the national networks are complicit with an administration that would commit this dehumanizing crime against the most innocent and helpless of our human family, we applaud all of the local media here in Texas…along with those around the country and around the world. “Hutto” has gone from four Google search results one year ago…to tens of thousands today.

From Australia to Iran, Russia to Argentina, the media…radio, television, newspapers, magazines and blogsphere… have carried the message all across the planet of how children are being imprisoned in America…in the heart of Texas…for profit. Radio, newspapers, television and online news and blog sources…have faithfully published the story. We also applaud the vast national and international media that has tried to inform their audiences about this American tragedy. We look with cynicism upon the national networks that rebuff this international crime being committed by the administration on American soil.

We have also had Texas legislators try to condemn Hutto during the legislative session. Unfortunately, and that’s how corrupt politics is, legislators who are on the payroll of private prisons refused to allow the condemnation to be aired publicly.

This December 16th will be the anniversary of our first Hutto Vigil. We will indeed hold an anniversary vigil…regardless of the weather. Regardless of the weather, the children from upwards of 50 different countries have been imprisoned in Hutto. After months of being treated as criminals and slaves…we don’t even know what has happened to them, or where they are or how they are. Worse yet…the vast majority of our fellow Americans do not YET know that Hutto even exists.

What’s interesting about this vigil…we have come to learn that it coincides with December 18…the International Migrants Day. How fitting that we would be prote

sting the imprisonment of immigrant children in the land of the free.

So, we now notify you…and invite you…to join us on December 16th…in front of the T. Don Hutto prison for innocent children…for our Hutto Anniversary Vigil….and in honor of the International Migrant. We will hold the Anniversary Vigil from 2pm until dark. After sunset, the anniversary vigil will become a candlelight vigil.

T. Don Hutto is located at 1001 Welch St. in Taylor, TX, 35 miles N.E. of Austin. The following link can be used to get directions from your particular point of origin.

Before we sign off here, may we all, in total solidarity, make a personal appeal to the President of the United States. Would you join me in requesting his intervention in behalf of the innocent children imprisoned by his Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff? Would you join me in demanding that he order the immediate release…the freedom of the innocent children…from Hutto and from any other facility that detains them against their will?

Do you, as President of the United States, approve of the imprisonment of innocent children…in America…in Texas…”for profit”? If not, please immediately free them and their mothers.

If you actually do approve of the imprisonment of innocent children…in America…in Texas…and “for profit”…then we expect you to give them at least as good a deal as you gave Scooter Libby. After all, if you can pardon Scooter Libby…a convicted criminal…before he had to serve even one day in prison, surely you can free innocent children that are already imprisoned under your watch.

One December 16th…and our Hutto Anniversary Vigil…may we have a 1001 candles lit up and down 1001 Welch St.

In solidarity
Jay
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BorderAmbassadors
FreedomAmbassadors
“Connecting the Dots…Making a Difference”
Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.
jay@villadelrio.com
Please read my column: Inside the Checkpoints

Email from Dr. Francisco Javier Iribarren:

I met Jay some time ago. Actually I read about him and I contacted him. To make a long story short, he is the reason why I became involved in denouncing and exposing for-profit concentration camps for immigrants on US soil.

His commitment to the helpless and forgotten, his unbridled enthusiasm and his earnestness bonded me to him, and I have called him my brother ever since. He has walked hundreds of miles, and traveled thousands, all in an effort to denounce the for-profit concentration camps. Jay has inspired others to get involved, and he is a good man.

I walked with him once; I joined him near Haskell some months ago, and I saw first hand the horror of for-profit incarceration of innocents: the prison at Haskell is a private human warehouse where a private corporation is receiving government funds to hold human beings locked away. I also traveled to meet him and others to the border in San Diego to denounce the building of the wall.

Jay continues to work on behalf of these innocents, and denouncing the government-corporate partnership fueling the criminalization of immigrants. Jay has spent, and continues to do so, from his own money going to different places where immigrants are being held for-profit: he spends his own money and gives of his own time during his walks of denunciation against the border wall and the concentration camps on Texas soil.

Jay is about to lose his bed-and-breakfast because he is behind on several payments. Jay needs our help now, and I humbly request that those of us able to help him out, to do something. If you can help, below you have a couple of different routes through which you can do it.

Sincerely,
Dr. Francisco Javier Iribarren

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