Magdaleno

DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS

I am amazed by all the items in the news.keeps me busy`         `.. as we get ready for the 4^th of July… I wonder if we understand what a revolution is and who makes the sacrifice for freedom. And while we celebrate this war anniversary we must also find a day to celebrate all of the peace makers.. And those who are revolutionaries in their own time because they would stand for the truth no matter the odds.  And standing for freedom does not always mean you have to take up arms..

 

NOW FOR MY VIEW OF THE NEWS

a.     Gay pride parade

b.    Iran Iran

c.     Sanford and sins

d.    Al Franken declared winner

e.     ALEX SANCHEZ BY TOM HAYDEN

f.       Boulder killer gets life sentence.

GAY PRIDE PARADE SEATTLE

          A good celebration for all

 

I went to my first Seattle Gay Pride festival in 2004 when it was still held on Broadway in Capitol Hill… This Sunday it was in Downtown and went down Fourth Avenue..

It was a huge and festive event.. The parade was long and organized and the crowds were very large.. It was fun experience..  I was given beads, stickers, (some by candidates), buttons and a couple of condoms. I stood there guarding my spot just few feet from the parade.

 

The creative costumes and floats were wonderful .. Some had only the costumes that they were born in and that was fine by everyone.. Plenty of family and straight groups were in the parade including Aztec and Filipino dancers… there was lots of cheering by all present…

As I was leaving I had to pass some so called Christians who were condemning the marchers… they were few in numbers but had huge signs… I asked one of them if they might want to go with their signs to visit Governor Sanford of South Carolina.  This red faced young man pointed to my shirt and said… THAT MAN SET UP SANFORD.. HE SET HIM UP …I looked down at my chest and noticed that I was wear one of my many Obama shirts.. Wow  … so it was obviously Obama that got Sanford to begin his affair with Maria of Argentina… I smiled and began walking towards my car. The right wing can blame the democrats for any and everything..THIS IS RIDICULUS.

In spite of these couple of crazies I had a great time and was proud of all those who marched…

IRAN IRAN ..

In a country where a council chooses the candidates and where they are governed by a religious council land a Supreme Ayatollah .. There were questions and dissention over the results of the election. More than what we had about our own elections in 2000 and the Ayatollah like our Supreme Court seems gave the election away.

 

At first the protestors were allowed to march and protest and then they began the harsh crackdown of the demonstrators. They attacked them with water cannons, tear gas and eventually live ammunition. Later they would roust people from their beds, beat them and jail many.  In the process the government injured its youth, and killed several … by being so harsh they were able to quell the immediate protests but they planted many seed of mistrust and hatred amongst these protestors and their supports. By being so harsh the government has planted its own demise. … Which may not come tomorrow but this historical wheel of change has begun moving

SANFORD AND SINS … THE DRAMA CONTINUES

Seems the governor saw Maria more times than he first admitted and now … now it turns out he had some other extra relationships with other women.  He is a very active governor and to think he would not take some of the stimulus money … seems as if this governor was already over stimulated.. But he is a right wing, family loving conservative.  Not too long ago he was urging Bill Clinton to resign. Mark Sanford is a marked man.

STATE SUPREME COURT SAYS THAT FRANKEN WON THE ELECTION.

Took them forever … now we will have Al Franken in the Senate. Now we have a senator who can tell a good joke… and he is smart….how soon can we get him sworn in?

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ALEX SANCHEZ

By Tom Hayden
THE NATION

The indictment of Alex Sanchez, a revered gangbanger-turned-peacemaker, raises new doubts about whether the Los Angeles police department has reformed enough to be released from a federal court order.

The Sanchez indictment makes the same charges hurled by the LAPD and federal anti-gang task force a decade ago, that his community-based violence prevention work is only a “front” for continuing ties to Mara Salvatrucha, the feared immigrant street gang that arose after the 1970s Central American wars.

The Rampart scandal, named after a police precinct in the immigrant Pico-Union neighborhood, erupted in the late 1990s when a corrupt police officer, Rafael Perez, began testifying to widespread police criminality after being caught selling cocaine out of his locker room. The US Justice Department charged a pattern and practice of constitutional violations, including shootings, brutality, and planting of evidence. Sanchez was targeted for deportation by the LAPD and INS in January 2000, months after testifying publicly about police harassment of community peace workers. As the scandal mounted, federal prosecutors chose not to prosecute him for illegal entry to the US, where his two-year old son and family lived, but turned the case over to an INS court. On July 10, 2002 the INS judge granted him political asylum, the first such verdict in history.

Since those days, Sanchez has built up Homies Unidos, a transnational gang peace organization from the US to El Salvador. Its hazardous work centered on trying to prevent gang violence and open alternative paths for young people, including art therapy, spiritual exercises, education, rehabilitation, training and job development. Alex became a beloved figure in the community, making endless presentations before wider audiences around the country. His activity spawned enemies in the gang world, and never satisfied the LAPD and federal war-on-gangs units’ desire to retaliate against one who caused them unprecedented embarrassment.

The escalating war against mara salvatrucha provided the prosecutors the opportunity. The use of federal racketeering and conspiracy laws is the favored prosecution tool in this war, charging large numbers of alleged MS members with operating a large top-down enterprise with a board of directors, finding them guilty of conspiracy instead of trying them on individual counts of drug-dealing or violence. Alex Sanchez is named in the indictment as one of four “shot-callers” in the Normandie neighborhood in Pico-Union. He therefore is held accountable for any crimes of anyone who can be connected with the organization. The indictment includes 153 overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy to violate the racketeering laws.

Fifty-six of the overt acts consist of street corner drug sales to undercover FBI informants. The serious counts include eight murders and one murder plot, five of them occurring between 2001 and 2003. Instead of bringing murder charges in individual cases, where evidence might be difficult to accumulate, the defendants need only to be “associated” with the conspiracy to be found guilt.

Alex Sanchez is accused of being heard on wiretapped phone calls on May 6 and 7, 2006, in which several members of MS “conspired” to kill Walter Lacinos, whose street name was Cameron. On May 15, an alleged MS member killed Cameron in La Libertad, El Salvador.

To illustrate the nature of the charge, imagine that the following conversation took place:

First party: that dude should be shot.
Second party: No question.

In an ordinary criminal trial, it would be difficult to connect these words to an actual deed one week later. There would be evidence, for example, that all kinds of people wanted Cameron dead. He was deported to El Salvador after serving at least fifteen years in California state prisons as a high-ranking gang member. He had enemies as well as friends. But in the conspiracy model, it is easier for the prosecution to “prove” that the wiretapped voices are people who “conspired” in his death.

This example is purely hypothetical. The government has not released the actual content of the tapes, nor a list of its witnesses, nor any of the documents it will be compelled to hand the defense.

Alex Sanchez denies the charges.

Most gang researchers and defense attorneys are critical of RICO and state laws like California’s Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act [STEP]. Malcolm Klein, considered the dean of gang research at the University of Southern California, thinks the notion of vertically-organized cartels with an Al Capone at the top makes no sense.

“These [federal] agencies know and understand organized crime. They do not know street gangs. They often assume the two are similar, when in fact they are not…Calling each kind of group a gang leads to the application of cartel thinking to street gangs.”  [Klein, The American Street Gang, Oxford, 1995, p. 167]

Even more dismissive is Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit who works directly with street gang members in the most well-known organization of its kind in the country.

“These [federal] agencies know and understand organized crime. They do not know street gangs. They often assume the two are similar, when in fact they are not…Calling each kind of group a gang leads to the application of cartel thinking to street gangs.”  [Klein, The American Street Gang, Oxford, 1995, p. 167]

Even more dismissive is Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit who works directly with street gang members in the most well-known organization of its kind in the country, from whose June 28 email I quote here:

“This is all heartbreaking, I’ve sent a letter for the granting of bail…A New York Times reporter called me and what they think they have is a ‘gang interventionist gone bad’ story. I’ve told  two reporters here’s your story: law enforcement is unable to interpret what they have.

“There is a gulf between what they have [wiretap evidence, witnesses] and what they think they have. The FBI could multiply their tools and resources and this still would not issue in actual knowledge of how gangs think or operate.

“I spoke to two MS members who I trust and who would tell me the unvarnished truth about Alex. They actually hadn’t heard the news. I said, “They claim that Alex is the shot caller for the Normandie clique of MS.”  They laughed and deemed the whole thing ridiculous. They would  have told me otherwise if it was true.  I didn’t need affirmation in this but it just underscores my point.  Law enforcement will never have access or knowledge of this issue. But they see through a glass darkly and so Alex gets caught up in their ignorance.

“Just yesterday, a homie who works for me, gets stopped by Hollenbeck cops, who tell him, “I know for a fact that Fr. Greg is affliated with the Mexican Mafia.”  A month ago , a cop tells another homie that the Mexican Mafia holds meetings at Homegirl Cafe (Chief Bratton has his Tues. morning meeting at the Homegirl Cafe every week–but I don’t know when the EME has their meetings at my place.)

“They aren’t just trying to discredit me–I think they believe this stuff–because they know very little about gangs, and so have to interpret what they see from a place of real ignorance.  Yet every jury and judge in the land think law enforcement (and of course, the FBI,) know what they’re talking about. But no one who lives in any of the 12 hot-zones in LA think cops know very much about this. Anyway–it’s complex.  The cops must force the square peg into the round hole. It’s not a conspiracy to get Alex, it’s what happens when you only possess half the pieces to the jigsaw puzzle and feel forced to assert that they have all the pieces.

Later I received a follow up email from the priest:

“You know me–I’m not much of a conspiracy buff–it requires so much
sophistication. Cops don’t possess this.  All of this is cultural–a
bias and predisposition, a by-product of wholesale demonizing. Which is
to say, it’s worse than a conspiracy.

“Had mass at the Chino YTS last night–again, illuminating to speak to
MS guys. They were very clear about Alex’s role in the community and
how he was, in fact, the opposite of “shot caller” for MS.  If he is
the shot caller, why do all his troops not know it?

All this raises severe questions about whether – and how – the LAPD has been reformed, almost a decade after agreeing to terminate its patterns and practices about rampant constitutional violations at Ramparts.

URGENT UPDATE: THIS AFTERNOON A LOS ANGELES MAGISTRATE JUDGE DENIED BAIL TO ALEX SANCHEZ.  WE WILL PROVIDE MORE INFORMATION AS IT BECOMES AVAILABLE.

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Alcalde receives life sentence for Chase murder

Family members remember Susannah as ‘sunshine of my life’

By John Aguilar (Contact)
Monday, June 29, 2009

Susannah Chase Homicide

BOULDER, Colo. — Diego Olmos Alcalde will spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance of parole for the 1997 murder of Susannah Chase, a Boulder judge decided Monday.

Boulder District Judge James Klein also handed Alcalde, who turns 40 on Tuesday, 48 years for sexually assaulting Chase and 24 years for kidnapping her — the maximum for each charge.

“The thought of any human being doing to another human being what Diego Alcalde did to this victim is simply unthinkable,” he said. “I can’t imagine what it would have been like to live with this for 12 years.”

Klein said the sentences for Alcalde’s lesser offenses will run consecutive to the life term.

Alcalde’s attorney, Mary Claire Mulligan, asked the judge to consider her client’s tumultuous history and allow her to gather information about him for the court before imposing a final sentence.

“Mr. Alcalde has had a background that would make most people blanch,” she said.

Klein declined her request.

A jury last week convicted Alcalde, a Chilean native who has lived in the United States for more than 20 years, of beating the University of Colorado senior with a baseball bat, raping her and then dumping her nearly lifeless body in an alley near her Boulder home.

For more than a decade, police were unable to link a suspect to the Dec. 21, 1997, killing until sperm recovered from Chase’s body and preserved in evidence was matched to DNA taken from Alcalde and submitted to a nationwide criminal DNA database.

Members of Chase’s family took to the podium Monday and spoke to a packed courtroom about the woman who would have turned 35 in October.

“Some days, I think I’ll turn a corner in New York and see her crouched down and talking to a homeless person — the nicest words he’ll hear all day,” said her brother Stephen Chase, who, like most of the family, flew out from the East Coast to attend the hearing.

He said his sister “paid the biggest price for her random encounter with evil,” but that if anything good comes from the tragedy, it’s that Alcalde will no longer be on the streets to terrorize others.

Chase’s other brother, Doug Chase, recalled ribbing his little sister as they grew up in Connecticut. He said he noticed Susannah growing into someone who saw the good in people and beauty of nature.

“When she died at 23 years old, Susannah was a young woman who I was immensely proud of,” he said.

He thanked the Boulder Police Department and the prosecutors for their work on the case, and he expressed gratitude to the community that rallied around the family.

“This is not a place to fear; this is a place to love,” Doug Chase said of Boulder. “This city has embraced our family in a community hug.”

Then, turning to Alcalde, he said his sister would have hoped that he put his energies into redeeming himself.

“She would hope that in some way you redeem your existence on this earth so you are not just a rapist, a kidnapper and a murderer,” he said.

Alcalde, who declined to speak at the sentencing, mostly conferred with his attorneys and wrote on a piece of paper as the Chases spoke. Occasionally, he looked up to glance at a childhood photograph of his victim that was being displayed on a screen.

Christy Chase called her little sister the “sunshine of my life.”

“I felt such joy on the day she was born, and I rode around on my bicycle and shouted to anyone who would listen that she had been born,” she said, her voice cracking.

Susannah’s other sister, Carrie Chase, said she wished her daughters could have met their aunt before she was killed.

“If Susannah were alive, my girls would sing loudly and out of tune with her,” she said, as several spectators sniffled and laughed in the courtroom.

Eight of the jurors who sat through the three-week trial came to the sentencing Monday. Many of them hugged members of the Chase family after the hearing was over. They all declined to speak to reporters.

Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett said justice was done in one of Boulder’s most confounding cold cases.

“A guilty sentence in a murder case is never a happy thing, but it’s satisfying,” he said Monday.

Alcalde will be psychologically diagnosed at the Colorado Department of Corrections Diagnostic Center before being assigned to a prison facility in the state.

Note; the Chase family are opposed to the Death Penalty and spoke out in favor of a Life Sentence.
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My cat Estrella

She is providing me with gifts … parts of dead birds that she deposits on the rug….nice but I don’t need these gifts.. But I guess you should not look a gift cat in the mouth

 

My best

leno