Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Specter's switch

From Racewire yesterday:

Channing Kennedy
What Does Specter’s Switch Mean for Racial Justice?

Conservative-challenges-Specter-in-Pa.jpg
For those just joining the fray: This morning Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter announced that he is officially switching parties, from Republican to Democratic. Pending the long-disputed seating of Minnesota’s Al Franken, this puts the Democrats at a 60-seat filibuster-proof Senate supermajority — filibuster-proof, that is to say, if all Democrats vote the same way. But Specter’s a bit of a loose cannon, to be polite, and an opportunist, to be blunt. In press conferences today, he all but spelled out that he decided to switch based on polling numbers indicating he’d do better in the 2010 election running as a Democrat than as a Republican. So, in terms of votes, it may not make much of a difference.

One of the most concrete ramifications of this development for the racial justice movement is around the Employee Free Choice Act, which would empower unions and help protect the economies of communities of color. Specter once supported EFCA, then flipped on it, and has devoted time today to confirming that he will not flop back to supporting it, regardless of his party alignment. He thus joins the likes of the Blue Dog Democrats and Joe Lieberman — Democrats in name who vote conservative, many of whom came out against EFCA once Specter’s renouncement of it made its passage mathematically difficult.

From his statement today:

My change in party affiliation does not mean that I will be a party-line voter any more for the Democrats that I have been for the Republicans. Unlike Senator Jeffords’ switch which changed party control, I will not be an automatic 60th vote for cloture. For example, my position on Employees Free Choice (Card Check) will not change.

On the other hand, Specter's major schism with the GOP manifested large in his vote to support the stimulus, a piece of legislation that the party fought hard to present a united front against. And just today, Specter's vote helped confirm former Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services, an appointment much contested by the Republican pro-life movement. Would Specter have voted for her anyway, given his relatively pro-choice voting record? Could be.

At the end of the day, Specter's still nearing the end of his term, and while it's accepted that part of the deal for his defection was that he'd face no primary opponent as a Democrat, he's still got to face Toomey, the hardline Republican who wanted to oust him in the Republican primary, who'll now probably grab the nomination unopposed. While Specter may well defeat Toomey, one can argue that Democrats and labor would have been better off if Specter had stayed Republican and gotten defeated by Toomey in the 2010 primary, leaving Toomey open to defeat by a more hardline, pro-EFCA Democrat. As it is, Pennsylvania labor and EFCA supporters may be backed into a corner -- forced into supporting the Democrat, even if that Democrat is anti-EFCA Specter, because there's no other option.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Police brutality in Philadelphia

Protest says police killed dozens of unarmed Black men

By Betsey Piette
Philadelphia


Over 50 protesters braved stormy weather and a reign of terror on April 20 to gather outside the headquarters of the Fraternal Order of Police and take a stand against police brutality in the Black community. Rally organizers charged that in the Philadelphia area 36 unarmed Black men were killed by police between May 2008 and April 2009.

Initiated by the African American Freedom and Reconstruction League, the demonstrations denounced the bigotry, bias and racist murders that have been committed by the Philadelphia Police Department.

Leon Williams, speaking on behalf of AAFRL, said, “We have a situation where none of us are safe in Philadelphia. We need accountability. Mayor [Michael] Nutter is not doing anything. Police Commissioner [Charles] Ramsey is not doing anything. The police Internal Affairs are not doing anything. The only way things will change is when citizens stand up and be vigilant. Let’s get rid of the corrupt, abusive police and do it now.”

Several speakers denounced the FOP’s attack on Craig Washington, an African-American municipal judge who in February asked police to remove photos and flowers left in memory of a slain police officer from his courtroom in the 35th District police headquarters, which serves as an official courtroom for preliminary hearings. When the police officers denied his request to remove the items, Washington turned a picture over on his own “to avoid any appearance of bias in this courtroom.”

The FOP sought Washington’s transfer and is now conducting a campaign to vote him out of office in November. Referring to a large banner reading “Dump Judge Craig Washington” that adorned the outside of the FOP building, AAFRL spokesperson Brother Robert denounced this campaign. “The FOP is a disgrace to have the audacity to try to trash a judge for being principled,” he said. “But what do you expect from an organization which has all kinds of corrupt police, white and Black?

“Internal Affairs is like the fox guarding the hen house,” he continued. “They need to be investigated. The FOP is racist to the core. Let a police officer in Philadelphia stub his toe and the city comes to a standstill. They allow drugs and guns to flow freely into our communities. They do nothing about it.” Brother Robert continued, “The police have been given license to kill.”

Legislative Black Caucus calls for investigation

A growing number of community leaders, including state legislators, are calling for an investigation to address allegations of police misconduct and abuse. The Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus joined this call in the aftermath of an incident involving State Rep. Jewell Williams.

Williams, who is Black, was driving in his North Philadelphia neighborhood on March 28 when he observed two police officers frisking an elderly Black man. He started to intervene out of concern over how the officers were treating the man. When Williams got out of his car to ask if everything was okay, the police officer replied, “Get the f**k back in your car before I give you a bunch of tickets.”

Williams identified himself, asked to speak with the officer’s supervisor, and was subsequently handcuffed. Both officers involved in the incident, members of the Narcotics Strike Force, had been named in earlier cases of police brutality and excessive use of force.

The calls for an investigation have been sparked by other allegations of racism by officers, including a report by a Temple University student who allegedly heard one officer refer to residents in his North Philadelphia precinct as “animals.”

Speakers at the rally talked about Williams’ arrest, and noted that not even Black politicians or Black police are safe. “The FOP is organized crime,” Pam Africa of International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal told the gathering. “They have organized media. They have organized courts. These are our children they are beating down, our children they are killing.

“Our children can’t stand on the corner because the police allow drugs in our neighborhoods. They know who brings drugs in and they protect them,” said Africa.

Shahrazad Ali, mother of an 8-year-old and an adult son, described her constant concern that her sons could be shot or locked up. “Mayor Nutter has given police the political right to come up against us,” Ali said, referring to Nutter’s “stop and frisk” policy, which gives police license to stop anyone on the streets at anytime. The program is allegedly designed to stem the number of murders in the city.

“Black people don’t make the guns and bullets,” Ali noted. “They come from outside our community.”

Police brutality victim Abdul Jon described being beaten by police inside City Hall with a baseball bat in 1981. He spent five days in the hospital and five months in jail before going to court, where a judge described the beating as “insignificant.” Jon said, “We’re suffering under a state of police tyranny. They’re about terrorizing us. It’s not just an issue of brutality.”

Articles copyright 1995-2009 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Victory for Resistance

I found this on PhillyIMC. Power to the people! :)

Yesterday was a great victory for me, the entire peace movement and for troops and civilians all over the world. I faced the military for my refusal to deploy to Iraq, and I walked away a free man with a general discharge from the Army’s Individual Ready Reserve.

This does not affect my discharge from Active Duty Service, however, which is the term of enlistment from which my G.I. Bill does derive. My benefits are mine, and I will use them to attain education, as all people have the right to do and should not have to fight in any armies to realize.

The hearing was attended by my three JAG attorneys, my civilian representation, James Branham, Prof. Marjorie Cohn, the President of the National Lawyers Guild, and my mother Patricia, both of whom testified on my behalf. The hearing was also attended by Mike McPherson, Executive Director of Veterans for Peace, Bill Ramsey, of St. Louis Instead of War, and Alexandra, by beloved.

My eyes were glued to the board the whole time. I looked those officers in the eyes, and I could see the humanity in each of them. I don’t know if they agreed with me, but there was humanity, and their hearts and minds were open.

The prosecution, or literally ‘government,’ opened by reading a list of when they sent me the call-up, when I contacted them in Feb. 2008 and asked for a delay to finish a semester of school I had just paid $4,500 for. They tracked when they issued me several delay orders until the final orders were issued for June 15th. They tracked when they sent me several failure to appear notices and when they finally initiated the discharge process against me.

After this, they showed the youtube video of my refusal to deploy after Winter Soldier on the Hill. They followed it by a portion of my speech from Fathers Day, the day I was supposed to report, and then a Democracy Now interview I did the day after.

They questioned a young Captain about the paperwork process, and then they called me to testify.

I thought I’d be more nervous than I was, but I very much felt relieved. You know, there’s all kinds of nifty ways to communicate now-a-days, and maybe call me old fashioned, but there’s nothing like looking someone in the eyes and telling them what’s in your soul. And I bared it for them.

I told them I believe that the war is illegal, and that as a Soldier, I thought it was my responsibility to resist it. I told them I was originally planning on deploying, despite my belief that the war is illegal, but that after I was exposed to Winter Soldier, Iraq and Afghanistan, I found clarity, and I found courage.

We later submitted the Winter Soldier book, as well the IVAW-produced Warrior Writers book to the record as exhibits that I believe can be referenced by future IRR boards, at least in the Army, which would take place in the same building as my hearing did.

When asked why I thought the war was unconstitutional, I pulled from my back pocket my Constitution. I opened it and told them I’d read from Article 6, Paragraph 2, the Supremacy Clause. The ‘government’ objected immediately, insisting the document was irrelevant.

After much deliberation, the lead council of the board, a civilian lawyer, shut down debate and said the board wouldn’t hear the constitution, and that questioning should continue.

So I said fine, I can just quote it, and I quoted, “this Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”

I said when we violated the U.N. Charter to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, when we systematically defy the international laws of war to wage occupation, we violate U.S. Law and the Constitution, and that it is every Soldiers’ responsibility to resists the crimes of our Government for which we are ultimately responsible.

I focused upon the eyes of each board member as I spoke. I told them I was there because they needed to know that we are not cowards, and we are not traitors, we are people who are dedicated to doing what’s right beyond any measure.

Startlingly, they stared back at me with no disgust in their eyes. They heard me, and they considered what I said, and they did not threaten, nor did they smile. They listened, and I beared my soul with no fear of persecution. And I felt so relieved, as every word rolled off my tongue. I felt a world of weight lifted from me. I suddenly felt the solidarity of millions there in the room with me.

And not just from now, or from the people demonstrating outside the hearing, but since the beginning of organized warfare. Military resistence has been heralded for millennia by the premier scholars, poets, philosophers, scientists and spiritual leaders of humanity.

I thought of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian citizen who refused to fight in Hitler’s army. His head was removed after every chance was given him by the authorities to accept some duty, even if without a weapon.

I thought of those brave G.I.’s in Vietnam who stood against the system, who worked to prevent the victimization of their brothers and sisters by resisting the continued genocide. Many went to jail. One was shot and killed while trying to escape.

I thought of my brothers and sisters in IVAW. Those who realize the humanity in us all deserves to be respected beyond what the military trained us to think. We are sacred; we are beautiful. We are not killers, we are women and men of dignity and justice.

The ‘government’ tried to rattle me by asking if I’d have objected to simply taking photos, and I told him any act to support an illegal war, from the front lines to a state-side base, was a violation of the Oath of Enlistment.

I took my leave of the witness chair feeling satisfied that everything I had come to say and do had been done, and then Marjorie Cohn walked in!

Prof. Cohn gave the most thorough, detailed, understandable and spot-on breakdown of the illegalities of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan I’ve ever heard. She focused on the U.N. Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremburg Tribunals, U.S. Federal and Constitutional law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

She spoke with elegance and grace about some very hard subjects, and when the ‘government’ asked if she thought every Soldier in the Army who had deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan or supported the occupations from the states were a party to war crimes, she answered honestly.

Marjorie will always be a hero to me, as well Kathleen Gilberd of the NLG, who has provided me priceless council and support since the earliest stages of my resistance.

After we broke for lunch, my mother was given a chance to testify, during which she nearly broke my “military bearing” when she recounted the last thing I said to her in July of 2002 before I got out of the car to catch a ride to basic training: “I have to go be a grown-up now.” I had no real idea what I was being led in to.

My mother told them how much she loves me and that I am a man of honor. She said I am kind and principled, and that I take everything I do very seriously. She told them I am not selfish, nor am I vain. She said that I had sacrificed much to be there and that she was ever so proud of me.

My mother has always been my hero for reasons only she and I could ever understand. I love you, Mama.

The closing arguments were laid out. The ‘government’ accused me of trying simply to get attention for myself so that I could launch a career in politics. They said I didn’t care about the law, that I just wanted to get out of doing my duty, and that they should give me a dishonorable discharge as a result.

My lead JAG attorney told a story of his father, a retired sergeant major. He said he was shocked to learn one day that his father supported Mohammad Ali’s decision to refuse deployment to Vietnam, despite the fact that he had done two tours himself.

His father told him that he disagreed with Ali’s decision but had respect for any man who would stand up for what he believed in and be held accountable by his own will. His father told him this is what it means to be honorable. “Sgt. Chiroux is an honorable man,” said John Adams. “He could have stayed home. He’s here. He’s a man of honor. He deserves an honorable discharge.”

With this, we were sent off for the board to deliberate. Upon our return I stood as the decision was read.

The Army found me guilty of misconduct for refusing to deploy to Iraq, but recommended I only be discharged from the reserves with a general discharge under honorable conditions.

I left the building with the biggest smile I’ve had for years. I feel truly vindicated, in more ways than one. My ass is mine, and so is my soul. I’m not guilty of misconduct, but that board is human and bound to make mistakes. Perhaps it’s a decision than can be overturned in time. But they got the overall principle right. My refusal was not an act that falls outside of honorable conditions.

Which brings me to Winter Soldier, St. Louis, which occurred later that afternoon. I’ve been hesitant for years to talk about certain details of my military service, and my life prior to the military. The time finally came that I felt I could share, and IVAW was there, and so was the town of St. Louis.

On the afternoon of April 21st, 2009, I, Matthis Chiroux, did confess to a number of secrets that I had not made broadly known to the public before this date, but I brought forward at Winter Soldier (of which video will follow as soon as it’s processed).

I confessed to having been physically abused by my father from a young age until 13 and emotionally abused until well after. I confessed to having had extensive problems with the authorities in Alabama beginning after I smoked my first joint at age 16.

I told the world that before I graduated high school, I had been incarcerated for nearly six months over several periods of time in juvenile prison, correctional boot camp and a state-run drug rehabilitation facility for minors. My crime: The possession of one eighth of a GRAM of marijuana and a pipe in the middle of the woods, or as they put it, private property.

I confessed that upon graduating high-school, I was kicked out of my house and did move into a tent in the woods near the center of town, and that shortly after, I did sell a small amount of psychedelic mushrooms I had gathered from a cow field to a few friends and to my step-brother for food money. My step brother returned home to be caught by my father under the influence and did inform him that I was the source.

As a result, I was brought into the courthouse, specifically before my probation officer, where I first met Sgt. Whitetree, the man who would put me in the Army. I was threatened with serious prosecution, though the state had no physical evidence against me. I was told I could be looking at 10 to 20 years in “big boy pound you in the ass prison,” as Sgt. Whitetree put it, or I could enlist for a term in the Army.

While I believed I could beat the charges, I saw myself as a young man with very few options by design. I agreed to enlist, but I spent the weekend in jail anyway.

It almost felt like home sweet home at that point. I’d been on that same block so many times before, and this time, I was staring into a system that I at least thought could surely be no worse than where I was coming from. I was mistaken.

Before I was released from custody Monday morning, the Judge presiding in Lee County, Judge Richard Lane, willfully back-dated my release from probation 30 days so that I could proceed directly to the recruiting station and sign my butt into the Army.

After signing initial papers and attaining waivers for my juvenile marijuana conviction, and before heading to MEPS for the first time, Sgt. Whitetree bought me a system flushing drink so that I would not test positive for marijuana on my initial drug test to get into the Army. At every step it was made totally clear to me that should I choose not to enlist in the military, I would face charges stemming from the incident with my step-brother.

What happened to me was illegal, and I am not alone. I am living proof we do not have an all-volunteer Army, and I’ve met countless throughout my time in the military that could tell similar to identical tales. And if not forced by the police, then because they saw themselves on a destructive path and were in fact seeking a way out similar to me. Or those who really just wanted to go to college, which should be a basic human right for all anyway. Or those with mouths to feed other than their own. Or those who just never knew any other way. Or those who were lied to and told they would serve freedom and justice.

War is not a natural state for man. We are propelled to war and destructiveness in all forms by forces which seem beyond our control; that reach into our lives and move us to some drastic end. That is why in a truly just society, war would not exist. But when the sacrifice of war becomes less than the sacrifice of life, we must look at ourselves and ask, “what have we created?”

I confessed, I was tortured by the Army, as are we all. We are beaten down, we are brutalized and dehumanized in all forms, physically, emotionally and sexually. We are taught that human life is cheap, and that all things burn if you get them hot enough. We are taught where and how to stab bayonets into people, we are taught to kill from great distances using bullets and bombs, we are taught that napalm sticks to kids.

We were taught that people from the middle east were Haji’s, Sand Niggers and Rag Heads, and that terrorists were going to kill our families if we didn’t go kill them and theirs first. We were taught that civilians could never understand and should never be trusted. We were taught the “Army family” was all we had.

We were taught that woman were objects, and were to be treated like objects, and though we had cute little classes about sexual harassment and racial sensitivity, the practice of male chauvinism and exploitation of women was rampant, especially in Japan and the Philippines, which I believe to be indicative of racism in the military toward non-whites.

I confessed that while I was stationed overseas four and a half years, I saw rampant prostitution on and around military bases. I confessed that my conscience is not clean of this disgusting act. Twice in Japan, I solicited prostitutes with fellow members of my unit. These were acts not only meant to make us feel powerful as men and Americans, they were to bond us together as a unit that works together, plays together, eats together and even ‘fucks’ together.

I’m happy to say on both these occasions my conscience got the better of me and I could not produce an erection. For fifty dollars each time, I was supposed to have sex with those women, and instead I asked them to rub my back for the half- hour while I listened to my comrades on the other side of hanging sheets defile the miracle of life.

I’ll never forget on the second occasion the piercing, painful and sustained scream of one women being taken on by my comrade whose name I will not share. After ferocious laughter erupted from his throat, he said in a very matter of fact kind of way, “she doesn’t like it up the ass!”

I remember laughing because I couldn’t believe what was going on. I knew something was wrong, but it’s like I didn’t know I was supposed to care. As long as it wasn’t me doing it or receiving it, I felt free to giggle away. These were prostitutes, I was taught, and they were there to service us as men, even if it was just to rub my back because I couldn’t ‘get it up,’ which is a fact I did not share with my comrades out of shame. Little did I know it was evidence to be proud of, that even when my mind forgot what is right and wrong, my body did not, or not in Japan, anyway.

The first of the two prostitutes I did have sex with was in the Philippines. This act has haunted my conscience for years. It continues to haunt me even now. Even though I have publically confessed it and asked for the forgiveness of all who I treated like objects, including my those former girlfriends of mine who I was unfaithful to in all of these acts.

After weeks of working in the Joint Information Bureau with American and Philippine military personal in Puerto Princesa, the officers of the operation decided they wanted to reward us for a job well done. I was told to put on civilian clothes and meet in front of our building immediately following work.

At the time we had orders not to leave the base unless under armed guard by Philippine Soldiers as there were rebel forces in the area likely to target American forces if given the opportunity. So we were met by a squad of armed Soldiers with a military vehicle which we rode in off base to a local disco.

Upon arrival, the armed soldiers took up post in front of the door, and I was given beer and invited to display my dancing moves to my comrades and the women present in the club. When one came up to me and started dancing, I thought nothing too fishy of it. A Philippine officer came over and put his hand on my shoulder. He asked me if I thought the girl was pretty, and I said yes and continued dancing.

This officer, after a few more minutes of observing, whistled to a woman behind the bar and pointed at the girls me and the other Americans were dancing with. He made the international sign for money and he pointed toward the vehicle. It was then that I knew, I had just been purchased a human being.

Our armed escort drove me, two other enlisted guys and the officers to a collection of one-room bungalows that was the hotel. Each troop retired to a bungalow with a woman, and soon, the sounds of men having their way with women filled the damp night air.

I sat in my bungalow with a young girl, who couldn’t speak a word of English, which is strange for people from the Philippines, which makes me believe this young girl was a victim of human trafficking. She was obviously frightened that I would push myself on her in some violent way, which made me feel sick and uneasy.

To ease my churning stomach and scared heart and her as well, I began teaching the girl English. I thought her to say “how are you,” and “I am 18.” I taught her to say “Love” and “I have to pee,” when she did so in a bucket in the back of the room. I then kissed her, because I wanted to, and she kissed me back.

I left the room, when I heard my comrades talking outside under the palm trees in dark. They were drinking from a bottle of whisky and talking about the sex they just had with “their” women. And they were talking with the officers, who had also had their way with several women. When they asked me what I had done, I told them I taught the girl to speak a little English, and that I’d watched her pee in a bucket and kissed her, but that was about it.

They laughed and told me I was a nice boy, but that they hadn’t paid for the woman so that I could teach her English. They said if I didn’t go back inside and “be a man” with that girl, they’d be offended. In one moment, I felt every ounce of not only my manhood questioned, but also my main mission of “fostering positive relations with Philippine counterparts.”

I went back inside the bungalow, and I had sex with a person who I treated like an object. But I did it, and will forever feel violated for it. I had unprotected sex with a woman who’s only purpose in being with me was money that she may not have even been receiving. I broke her heart, and I broke my own. I sold out on my manhood that night.

When it was done I wanted to hug her, but I could tell she wanted to lie nowhere close to me. She didn’t love me, she didn’t want to be with me. We had defiled a beautiful act of creation and intimacy without ever having taken any responsibility for ourselves. I felt as though I had raped her. I felt as though I had raped myself.

But we did it, and it was what it was. We didn’t stand near to each other after that, though she sat with me in the front seat of the van as we took the women back to the disco. I vaguely remember someone in the car commenting that they’d never “pissed in a whore’s ass before,” before a very angry woman started screaming in Tagalog. I was so ashamed. I couldn’t hold her hand. I could barely hold the contents of my own stomach. I knew I had done wrong, and it killed every relationship I had from that point forward.

I couldn’t come to grips with myself as a man after that. I couldn’t feel like a sacred thing, anymore. We’re all miracles; burning, walking miracles, but we cover ourselves in thick robes of guilt, isolation and despair, and we forget to see the spiritual wholeness and actualization of a human being as sacred, as it is, as we are. And if we did, we wouldn’t do things like I did, we wouldn’t do things like we do, and like what’s still being done by our good boys and girls in untenable situations.

But this followed me, and I took it to Germany where one evening while I was out in Frankfurt with a Major and a former Provost Marshal (like the chief of the military police), I found myself in a legal, medically-approved brothel where I did have sex with a Columbian girl. Almost immediately after we started, however, I snapped out of what felt like a haze and told her I really wanted to leave and that I’d pay her the money anyway. I knew I didn’t want to be there. I realized I was just trying to impress some Major who turned out was actually trying to hit on me, though I was a little slow on the uptake at the time.

I apologize from the bottom of my heart to the women I’ve hurt as a result of my sexual dehumanization. This includes every one of my girlfriends while in the Army, all of whom I cheated on when they got too close to my heart, and I broke many of their hearts in doing so. This includes my girlfriend, my love, Alexandra, who has stood so bravely and non-judgmentally by me during these revelations. My apology includes my mother and my sister, both of whom I know will be hurt by this information that I refuse to conceal anymore. This includes every woman who reads this horrible testament to the truth of sexuality in the U.S. military. This includes every woman who has ever been sexually preyed upon by U.S. troops in countries all over the planet. This includes every woman, every where, those who hate me and those who love me. Those who will never know my story. I’m sorry for the wrong I have done to womankind. I am not the careless, heartless, thoughtless and highly-trained boy I once was. My heart weeps everyday for the wrong I have done in this world.

Since I left the Army in August of 2007, I have struggled severely with Depression, probably due to post-traumatic stress. In fact, the night before I returned from Germany to Brooklyn not really knowing what I was going to do, I confessed to my then girlfriend that I was having suicidal feelings. I confessed to her that I had an image of myself blowing the back of my skull out with a .45 that I could not get out of my head. This would become somewhat of a recurring image to me, as I struggled to get my feet under me in Brooklyn.

Even with my freedom, I was struggling, and I didn’t know why. I wondered why I didn’t want to talk to people or get to know anyone at my school. I couldn’t figure out why no matter how much weed I smoked, or other shit I dabbled in, I couldn’t find peace of mind. I was on the road to being a student, which is all I thought about, all those years in the military, and yet I was crashing in on myself, and that damn .45 kept going off in my mouth!

And then I got my call-up orders for Iraq, and I disappeared into my room for days and days upon end. I felt so trapped. So cornered, and I had nowhere to turn. I had no family in New York, one of my only friend was struggling with PTSD herself from two deployments in Iraq, and all she could talk about was wanting to go back. I felt doomed, and I broke into pieces. That’s the closest I’ve ever come to suicide, and my greatest fear to this day is that I will die by my own hand.

But then I found IVAW, and slowly started peeling off my blankets of guilt and isolation. And with every blanket I shed, I found the strength to shed a few more and a few more. And now I stand before the world today, a free man, free of the military, free of his secrets, free to be whoever I choose to be.

And I choose to be a good man. I choose to be one who sees all women and men as created equal, and as equally miraculous in this universe of ordered chaos and deserving of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness through all means which have been withheld from us. I feel great remorse for the wrong that I have done but will WORK to make right those things I HAVE made wrong.

I felt like a coward for years in the military because I knew what we were doing was wrong, but I simply couldn’t find the legs to stand against it. Conformity was valued above all else, and though for years the quote above my desk read, “Whoso wouldst be a man must be a non-conformist,” those words never really took root before this past year.

I will not conform to war crimes. I will not confirm to sexism, racism and homophobia. I will not conform to injustice nor ignorance. I will not be silenced by fear. I will share my life, for better or for worse, like an open book, for people are not meant to live in shame. We are meant to live proud and free as individuals of principle and courage. But even people of principle and courage are wrong sometimes, and when we can realize it, apologize if necessary, and confess that which we are ashamed of, we can know peace, both in our hearts and in our world.

I’m sorry for the wrong I have done and forgive the wrong that has been done me. I will learn from my mistakes and live as a man of conscience. I will love without limit and share all I have with those who need and may not even know it. I will be humble until the end of my days and thankful for all that I have, including a woman who loves me despite all of these things and who IS the love of my life and has set me free more than she’ll ever understand. And she was at my hearing, and she was my cornerstone. I love you Alexandra like I’ve never before been capable of feeling.

But I will struggle. I will struggle until all my brothers and sisters all over the world are free from militarization and imperialism. I will struggle to see the end of Racism, Sexism, Homophobia and the commodification of the human body in all forms. I will struggle to see that our planet is left to our Grandchildren in FAR better shape than it was left to us. I will struggle to free the world of economic inequality. I will struggle to prevent any more war resisters from being jailed by the military and for the freedom of those who are currently incarcerated. I’m looking at you, Robin Long (among MANY others)!!! You’re still a hero of conscience and we can’t wait for your return to freedom!!!

The battle is won, but the war is FAR from over. Please continue to struggle to end our illegal occupations and horrible practices all over the world, from Iraq to Japan to the Philippines! The U.S. military must be brought home in its entirety and reformed into a force for purely national defense and not murder, rape, torture and war!

We are not bad people. We are not war criminals. We are the victims of lies, brutality, dehumanization and exploitation. We know the true war criminals by their hoards of bloody money and oil barrels overflowing with the tears of Iraqis, Afghans and servicemembers world-wide who have had their lives stripped from them by these criminal occupations and policies.

And that is why I’m releasing the remainder of my legal defense fund, I believe around $2,000, as well I’m turning over the remainder of the money I’ve collected from my website, just over four hundred dollars which represents nearly half of the money which has been donated to me through my paypal since I started it last summer, to Iraq Veterans Against the War.

IVAW represents the voices of conscience for an entire generation of Americans, and really our entire society. We, the Winter Soldiers of the War on Terror, who will speak our truths, no matter what the personal cost, and stand our ground no matter what adversity we may face, and reflect openly and honestly upon ourselves, we represent hope for this nation.

In South Africa after Apartheid fell, truth and reconciliation commissions were set up to investigate crimes committed by both Apartheid forces and rebel forces. To bring about witnesses to reveal crimes which they participated in or knew about, the commission had to grant amnesty to a large number of people who testified to things not greatly different than we do.

And we risk everything to come forward and are asking for NOTHING but an ear to hear us, and the means to carry on, and the willingness to know the truths of our government’s policies. And it lays so many of us so very low, as we struggle in a society that would rather shut our real histories, us, who we are, out, for a lie, one big murderous soul-sucking lie.

Well we’re done taking it, we’re done being victims, and we are organizing a victory, for truth, for the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, for our nation in distress, for the people of the world who we have treated like dispensable objects for too long! For the troops, who languish and grow further away from us while our nation worries about paying rent! For the veterans, who are sleeping homeless on the streets and stuck with the image of a gun in their mouth, or with the sounds of screaming babies. For the women, who are first and most being made the victims of these policies and occupations, and for the female Soldiers in Iraq, don’t ever forget that THIS IS NOT NORMAL!!! And for the Muslim people in the United States who have languished in this climate of racism and hate. We are sorry! Your liberation is most important to us!

IVAW represents hope for all these people, and it represented hope for me, when I needed it most, and it continues to represent so much hope to me. We are going to end this war and we need the support right now folks, more than ever, and we need your energy as we move into Spring and Summer.

We are strong, and we are determined. We acknowledge there are still illegal occupations being waged, and human rights violations occurring at the hands of Americans world wide, and we pledge to bear witness to the truth and nature of our experiences to bring about change from the front lines of the real struggle, right here at home.

May we stir now with the coming Spring and blossom hope for all the world to see. Hope in acknowledging we’ve done and are doing wrong, taking responsibility for ourselves by halting the wrong from occurring and seeking the forgiveness and to offer healing to those we know we’ve hurt.

Onward with the struggle, forever!

Matthis Chiroux

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Non-support of the Gender Employment Non-Discrimination Act

My dear friend Lex sent this to me - a coalition of New York organizations came together to issue a statement of "Non-support of the Gender Employment Non-Discrimination Act." It gave me a lot to think about because it reminded me how much we have to re-train our minds to imagine a world beyond the institutions upon which we are so dependent. The full thing can be read here but I liked the parts that Lex picked out:

The hate crimes portion of this law may expose our communities to more danger—from prejudiced institutions far more powerful and pervasive than individual bigots.
...
By supporting longer periods of incarceration and putting a more threatening weapon in the state’s hands, this kind of legislation places an enormous amount of faith in our deeply flawed, transphobic, and racist criminal legal system.
...
Hate crime laws are an easy way for the government to act like it is on our communities’ side while continuing to discriminate against us....Hate crime laws foreground a single accused individual as the “cause” of racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, or any number of other oppressive prejudices. They encourage us to lay blame and focus our vengeful hostility on one person instead of paying attention to institutional prejudice that fuels police violence, encourages bureaucratic systems to ignore trans people’s needs or actively discriminate against us, and denies our communities health care, identification, and so much more.
...
These [most marginalized members of our community who are most likely to end up in prison] are the same people our community must mourn every year at the Trans Day of Remembrance. Can we really continue to shed tears and flowers for the dead if we eagerly hand the state more power to crush the same people?
...
When thinking about responding to hate violence, we believe the most important question is not “who is the perpetrator and how can we punish them?” Rather, we want to ask “how can we help the survivor(s) and the community heal from this violence? How can we prevent it from happening again?”

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Make a call!

From the Sentencing Project

On Thursday, April 23, thousands of people across the country will phone their members of Congress to call for an end to the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. We hope that you will mark your calendar and join us. Your calls will make an important difference.

The National Call-In Day is part of Crack the Disparity National Month of Advocacy, a month-long coordinated push to eliminate the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine.

The current law:

* overstates the relative danger of crack cocaine compared to powder cocaine;
* contributes to the growth of our prison population, increasing the financial burden on taxpayers;
* disproportionately affects African Americans; and
* uses limited federal resources on low-level street dealers rather than on the major drug traffickers.

Twenty-three years of a failed policy is long enough! It's time to end this unjust and disproportionate sentencing policy. To participate, mark your calendar for April 23, call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at 202.224.3121, and ask to speak to your representatives in the Senate and House. Urge them to support and co-sponsor H.R. 265, the Drug Sentencing Reform and Cocaine Kingpin Trafficking Act in the House and legislation in the Senate that eliminates the 100 to 1 disparity between crack and powder cocaine.

You should place three calls because you have one representative and two senators.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

New Findings: Decline in Black Incarceration for Drug Offenses

Dear Friend,

For the first time in 25 years, since the inception of the "war on drugs," the number of African Americans incarcerated in state prisons for drug offenses has declined substantially, according to a study released today by The Sentencing Project. It finds a 21.6% drop in the number of blacks incarcerated for a drug offense, a decline of 31,000 people during the period 1999-2005.

The study, The Changing Racial Dynamics of the War on Drugs, also documents a corresponding rise in the number of whites in state prison for a drug offense, an increase of 42.6% during this time frame, or more than 21,000 people. The number of Latinos incarcerated for state drug offenses was virtually unchanged.

The study notes that the black declines in incarceration represent "the end result of 50 state law enforcement and sentencing systems" which need to be examined individually. But overall, the decline in blacks incarcerated for a drug offense follows upon declining arrest and conviction rates for blacks as well. The study suggests much of the disparity resulting from the drug war has been a function of police targeting of open-air drug markets. As crack use and sales have declined, or moved indoors in some cases, law enforcement activity may have been reduced correspondingly.

Because of the rising number of whites in prison for a drug offense, the overall number of persons serving state prison time for a drug offense remained at a record 250,000 during the study period. The white increase may be related in part to more aggressive enforcement of methamphetamine laws, according to the study. While methamphetamine is only used at significant levels in a relative handful of states, data from states such as Iowa and Minnesota show a substantial influx of these cases during this time period.

The analysis by The Sentencing Project also documented a sharp contrast between state and federal prison populations. While the number of persons in state prisons for a drug offense rose by less than 1% during the study period, the increase in federal prisons was more than 32%. These latter changes are attributed to ongoing aggressive enforcement of drug laws, including application of harsh mandatory sentencing policies. Despite declines in the use of crack cocaine, federal prosecution and incarceration levels for crack offenses remain high and have a stark racially disparate impact.

In reviewing the study's findings, Mauer noted that despite the new trend, African Americans are still imprisoned at more than six times the rate of whites for all offenses. Moreover, high incarceration rates for low-level drug offenses remain a function of the largely punitive approach to drug abuse that has proven expensive and ineffective.

Today's study is based on an analysis of government data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, FBI, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

-The Sentencing Project

Monday, April 13, 2009

Pot may be legalized? What?

From the SF Chronicle:

Marijuana has been a part of the American cultural landscape for nearly a century, tried by millions - including, apparently, the last three presidents and the current California governor.

So why has it taken so long to arrive at a political moment of truth - a full national debate about the legalization, taxation and regulation of cannabis?

Experts say an unprecedented confluence of factors might finally be driving a change on a topic once seen as politically too hot to handle.

Among them: the recession-fueled need for more public revenue, increased calls to redirect scarce law enforcement, court and prison resources, and a growing desire to declaw powerful and violent Mexican drug cartels. Also in the mix is a public opinion shift driven by a generation of Baby Boomers, combined with some new high-profile calls for legislation - including some well-known conservative voices joining with liberals.

Leading conservatives like former Secretary of State George Shultz and the late economist Milton Friedman years ago called for legalization and a change in the strategy in the war on drugs. This year mainstream pundits like Fox News' Glenn Beck and CNN's Jack Cafferty have publicly questioned the billions spent each year fighting the endless war against drugs and to suggest it now makes more financial and social sense to tax and regulate marijuana.

"It's a combination of all these things coming together at once and producing that 'aha' moment," said Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, who for years has monitored the wavering political winds on the subject. He says so much has changed in recent months that "for the first time in my adult lifetime, it looks possible."

"If you'd asked me 10 years ago - or three years ago - I would have said it will be a long, slow slog," he said. "And now, it looks like it might happen faster than any of us believed."

President Obama recently took a prime-time news conference question on marijuana legalization - and laughingly sidestepped the question. But among the very serious items driving the public debate is California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano's bill to tax and regulate the drug - an idea that polls suggest is no longer out of the mainstream.

The findings of a February Rasmussen poll showed 40 percent of Americans support legalizing the drug, with 46 percent opposed and 14 percent unsure.
54% in state favor legalization

A new California poll by Oakland EMC Research specifically tracked state voters' attitudes on marijuana use, taxation and legalization.

Alex Evans, president and founder of EMC, said his firm has done the same study for years for Oaksterdam University, an Oakland medical marijuana dispensary and education group, but 2009 marks the first time the poll showed that a clear majority of state voters, 54 percent, say the drug should be legalized, compared with 39 percent opposed. (The poll of 551 likely voters was taken March 16-21 and has a margin of error of 4.2 percentage points.)

"Part of the explanation is people's good feelings about medical marijuana," he said. "It's demonstrated that it can work. People are growing in confidence that we can continue to make it more legal."

The shift appears to be driven by aging Baby Boomers' "own personal experience with cannabis," he said, especially their growing belief that "there's not much difference between that and alcohol ... it is leading them to support more of a tax-and-regulate attitude."
Some see pot as gateway drug

Opponents of legalization have long expressed concerns, saying that making marijuana legal will compound substance abuse problems, that it is a gateway drug that leads to use of harder drugs and that legalization would send the wrong message to children.

But Democratic state Sen. Mark Leno of San Francisco, who supports Ammiano's effort, says that in a state racked by a $42 billion deficit - where marijuana is also now ranked as the largest cash crop - it is "completely reasonable and sensible" to take another look.

"To continue to outlaw it and not tax it is really to keep one's head in the sand, as if we can pretend and it will go away," he said. "Minimally, I'm hoping we take a look at the billions of dollars we've spent on the war on drugs: Have we gotten our money's worth?"

Already, some localities are exploring that issue - and whether they can get their money's worth from rethinking cannabis legislation.
Marijuana as industry

Voters in Oakland, a city crippled by a $65 million deficit, could soon decide whether to approve a hike in the business tax of as much as 10 times the current rate for medical marijuana dispensaries, an idea advanced by City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan.

She co-authored the voter-approved Measure Z, which makes cannabis the lowest law enforcement priority in the city and mandates that Oakland tax and regulate the drug as soon as possible under state law.

Richard Lee, the director of Oaksterdam University, said the keen interest in possible new revenue from cannabis sales was underscored when he was recently asked to testify to Oakland officials on the matter "in front of the finance committee ... not health and safety."

Lee said his own thriving multi-faceted enterprise, a national spearhead in what is increasingly being called the "cannabis industry," dramatizes exactly the potential for those revenues.

Oaksterdam operates four medical marijuana dispensaries and a score of busy related downtown businesses - including an Amsterdam-style coffee shop, an educational facility offering popular 13-week marijuana cultivation courses, a bike rental shop, a gift shop, a glass blowing facility for making pipes, a marijuana nursery and a media company that produces publications like West Coast Cannabis magazine. Business is booming.
'We have to prove ourselves'

Still, politicians on both sides of the aisle have been wary of aligning themselves with marijuana advocates, and "we have to prove ourselves," Lee said .

But it appears the movement's advocates have learned some political lessons since the '70s, when the Woodstock generation thrived.

In the 21st century, Lee said, the message of the marijuana movement is "about less government ... and more jobs, taxes and tourism."

Marijuana use - facts and figures

Some of the studies and statistics being cited in the discussion on taxing and regulating marijuana:

-- A recent World Health Organization study found that 42.4 percent of Americans have tried marijuana. That is the highest percentage of any country surveyed and compares to a 20 percent rate in the Netherlands, where the drug is legal.

-- A National Survey on Drug Use and Health suggested California may be producing a whopping 38 percent of the marijuana grown in the United States. The study suggests there are an estimated 3.3 million cannabis users here, representing about 13 percent of the nation's marijuana users.

-- California's state-funded Campaign Against Marijuana Planting seized nearly 1.7 million plants in 2006 with an estimated street value of more than $6.7 billion, according to the Los Angeles Times. Studies have ranked the state as the national leader in both outdoor and indoor marijuana production, with an estimated 4.2 million indoor plants valued at nearly $1.5 billion, the paper reported.

-- National statistics show 872,000 arrests last year related to marijuana, 775,000 of them for possession, not sale or manufacturing - sparking some critics to suggest that the resources of the criminal justice system, including the crowded state prisons and courts, might be better used elsewhere.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Rally for Healthcare in Hartford!

Are you interested in making Universal Health Care a reality in Connecticut?

On Friday April 24th, there will be a student rally in Hartford to push House Bill 6600, a plan for affordable healthcare in CT, into law. Organized by Yale Uni's College of Democrats and SustiNet, all like-minded college groups across Connecticut are invited to turn up for a fun-filled day with major speakers, other students, and signs! Come prepared with as many people as possible and an enthusiasm for universal health care. Press coverage is expected, so the more students that turn out, the stronger our message to the legislature will be.

Activities will go on from 10am-2pm. Kick-off at 10am with legislators and SustiNet advocates, followed by individual meetings with legislators, and distribution of SustiNet literature to legislators and their aides. It may also be possible to schedule a meeting with your specific representative and/or senator.

Attached is info about lobbying for health care. If you are interested in learning more about the event, want to schedule a meeting with your representative/senator, would like information about SustiNet or Yale College of Democrats, please contact Audrey Huntington (audrey.huntington@yale.edu). If you are attending, please also let Audrey know so they can track number of participants.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

US Citizens Rounded up in ICE Raids

This begs the question: Why are people being raided at all in our "democratic" country?? And how flawed is a system where citizens aren't even safe from their own government's blatantly racist immigration raids?

From the LATimes


By Andrew Becker and Patrick J. McDonnell

April 9, 2009

Reporting from Tacoma, Wash., and Los Angeles — Rennison Vern Castillo thought his legal troubles were nearly over at the end of a jail stay for harassing his ex-girlfriend. But then a U.S. immigration hold order blocked his release.

"They think you're here illegally," a jailhouse guard said to him.

Castillo, mystified, insisted it was all a mistake. Though born in Belize, he had come of age in South Los Angeles, spoke fluent English, served a stint in the Army and had become an American citizen about seven years earlier.

He had some legal problems, but being in the country unlawfully was not one of them. Castillo said he wasn't worried -- not until he was shackled and transferred to a federal detention center. He spent months in custody before an appeals panel blocked his deportation and an immigration judge finally ordered Castillo set free.

Although his case is an extreme example, mistaken detentions are drawing increased attention as immigration officials mount workplace roundups and jailhouse sweeps in search of undocumented immigrants.

Immigration raids of factories and other work sites often result in at least a short-term detention of lawful residents and even citizens, as agents seal targeted businesses and grill workers about their status.

Officials in Washington said last month that the Obama administration was expected to rein in the controversial workplace raids -- shifting enforcement emphasis to target employers rather than workers. Immigrant advocates have long pushed for such a change, while others say easing workplace enforcement will encourage illegal immigration.

Castillo is one of many citizens and legal residents held for suspected immigration violations -- some for a few hours, some for much longer. No agency tracks such incidents, so statistical totals are not available.

Officials at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement downplay the problem.

"ICE does not detain United States citizens," said spokesman Richard Rocha, adding that agents thoroughly investigated people's claims of citizenship. "ICE only processes an individual for removal when all available facts indicate that the person is an alien."

He declined to comment on Castillo's case or others, citing privacy concerns or pending lawsuits.

The surge in ICE workplace actions during the Bush administration spawned fierce complaints from employees caught up in dragnets at factories, slaughterhouses and poultry farms.

Mike Graves, a two-decade veteran of the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Marshalltown, Iowa, said he was handcuffed and held for eight hours in December 2006 when ICE agents raided Swift plants throughout the heartland.

"My government treated me like a criminal, and I didn't do anything wrong," said Graves, a native of Iowa.

An ICE raid last year at a Van Nuys printer cartridge manufacturer, Micro Solutions Enterprises, generated wrongful-arrest claims from more than 100 citizens, said Peter Schey, chief lawyer at the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Los Angeles. All were held for two to three hours before being released, Schey said.

Americans seldom carry proof of their legal status, which can be a factor in the confusion about detainees' citizenship. There is no comprehensive database or list of all citizens for agents to check.

Official investigations may miss crucial documents such as birth certificates and naturalization papers. In some cases, names have been jumbled or misfiled and records lost. Confused detainees have signed their own removal orders. Some in custody may even be unaware of their citizenship or unable to prove it without a lawyer's help.

Unlike suspects in criminal matters, however, immigration detainees have no right to government-appointed counsel -- and, in some cases, have no access to paid lawyers. Fast-track deportation procedures enacted by Congress in recent years also limit court review once the expulsion process is underway.

In border regions like Southern California, residents on both sides of the international boundary have for generations moved back and forth without regard for passports, status or birth certificates. Many U.S. citizens by birth or parentage have no proof of their status.

Frank Ponce de Leon, a native of Mexico who lives in La Puente, got out of ICE custody Dec. 31 after spending almost three months locked up -- all the while insisting he was a citizen. The longtime California resident had never sought citizenship because he was the son of an American-born parent. His father was a New Mexico native and U.S. serviceman during World War II.

"I knew they couldn't hold me forever, and sooner or later they would see it my way because I had every right," said Ponce de Leon, 47, whose five California-born children include a daughter, Deanne, 22, who served in Iraq as an Army nurse.

On occasion, the uncertainty can lead to mistaken deportation, as was the case with Pedro Guzman, a mentally disabled U.S. citizen living in Lancaster.

U.S. immigration officials shipped Guzman to Tijuana in May 2007 from the Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles, where he was being held on a misdemeanor trespassing charge. The Los Angeles native, then 29, spent three months rummaging for food in dumps and sleeping in the Mexican borderlands as his desperate mother, a fast-food cook, searched for him in hospitals, shelters, jails and morgues, his family said.

Eventually Guzman, a cement finisher with limited Spanish and a second-grade reading ability, was reunited with his family in the border town of Calexico.

The Guzman case sparked Washington hearings at which immigration authorities were chastised by Congress members and accused of "stunning incompetence." ICE officials called the case an aberration and vowed to review all citizenship claims before anyone was detained or deported.

Out of more than 1 million detentions, ICE officials say, Guzman was the only citizen known to have been shipped out of the country. But others dispute that claim.

Rachel E. Rosenbloom, supervising attorney at Boston College's Post-Deportation Human Rights Project, cited at least eight cases of wrongly deported citizens and said she expected the number was substantially higher.

One such case, detailed in an upcoming report by Rosenbloom's group, is the curious saga of Duarnis Perez. He is a native of the Dominican Republic who became a U.S. citizen at 15 when his mother was naturalized. But he didn't know citizenship had been conferred on him as well. He assumed he was illegal, and so did everyone else.

Perez was deported and subsequently arrested trying to sneak back into the United States from Canada. He spent almost five years in prison for unlawful reentry. It was only upon his release in 2004 that an ICE official reviewed his file and informed Perez that he had been a citizen all along.

In Castillo's case, he was an infant when his mother left Belize and sought work in Los Angeles. She later became a nurse and sent for her son. Castillo attended elementary school in South L.A. and graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1996. He became a naturalized citizen in 1998. He joined the Army and served in Korea, then was posted to Ft. Lewis, Wash. He was honorably discharged in 2003.

After domestic disputes with a girlfriend, he was convicted in 2005 of felony harassment and violating a no-contact order, and was sent to Pierce County Jail in Washington state for eight months. He was in a holding area with inmates about to be released when a corrections officer held him back.

Castillo was handcuffed and whisked off in a van to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. A federal officer said records showed he was an illegal immigrant.

"Your records are wrong," Castillo said he replied. He said he told the officer that he was a citizen but that his naturalization certificate had never arrived. It was sent to the wrong address, he later learned.

Castillo went before an immigration judge, who appeared via video conference, a common procedure in the crowded immigration court system. Again, he claimed citizenship. The judge didn't believe him. He was ordered deported on Jan. 24, 2006.

The nonprofit Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, a legal advocacy center based in Seattle, provided a lawyer to handle Castillo's appeal. The lawyer searched for Castillo's naturalization documents and records of his military service.

The Board of Immigration Appeals blocked Castillo's deportation, noting proof of his military service. A month later, he was released without further explanation. It turned out Castillo was the victim of a paperwork mix-up: His name was spelled wrong in immigration records. And he had been assigned more than one "alien number," causing further confusion.

Castillo, now 31, is still incredulous.

"If it had taken 30 days to figure it out, I wouldn't be upset. But seven months?" he said in an interview.

He, like Guzman and others with similar experiences, has filed suit against the ICE.

"I want them to recognize they made a mistake," Castillo said. "Something needs to change. If it can happen to me, it's going to happen to someone else."

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Philadelphia Cop Not Allowed to Wear a Headscarf

Found here

By STEPHEN ZOOK
Philadelphia Daily News

zooks@phillynews.com

A Muslim woman who works as a Philadelphia Police officer Wednesday lost her court fight to be allowed to wear her head scarf while on duty.

The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that granting Kimberlie Webb an exception to a regulation banning religious symbols while in uniform would impose an "undue hardship" on the city of Philadelphia.

Webb, a Philadelphia cop since 1995, requested permission in February 2003 to wear her head scarf while on duty. She was denied that permission, and filed complaints with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In August 2003, Webb showed up to work wearing her head scarf. When she refused to remove it, she was sent home. This was repeated on two additional days.

"There is a history of allowing palms in police cars on Palm Sunday," said Jeffrey Pollock, Webb's lawyer. "[Washington,] D.C., New York City and Chicago all allow officers to wear religious symbols.

"Why can't the Philadelphia Police make the exception?"

In October 2005, Webb brought a lawsuit against the city, claiming religious and sex discrimination.

The court's opinion said that "uniform requirements are crucial to the safety of officers (so that the public will be able to identify officers as genuine, based on their uniform appearance)."

The appeals court also declined to consider Constitutional issues brought up by Pollock. Those issues were not raised at trial, so the court did not have to consider them, according to the opinion of the three-judge panel.

A lower court already had ruled that the city would suffer undue hardship if it were required to accommodate Webb's request.

"I respect [the judges], but I'm obviously disappointed," Pollock said.

Pollock said that no decision has been made about whether to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Monday, April 6, 2009

US Military funding Mapping of Oaxaca

Sorry for the lack of commentary and just cutting and pasting, when my thesis is done I'll be a better blogger.

I found this on PhillyIMC:

War was God's way of teaching Americans geography," once wrote Ambrose Bierce, an American journalist and social critic. Today, a University of Kansas (KU) professor may be using geography to teach Americans war.

Dr. Jerome Dobson, a geography professor and president of the American Geographical Society (AGS), sent out a one-and-a-half page white paper sometime in late 2004-early 2005 to the Department of Defense and civilian agencies looking for funding to promote a $125 million "academic" project that would send geographers to countries all over the globe to conduct fieldwork.

"The greatest shortfall in foreign intelligence facing the nation is precisely the kind of understanding that geographers gain through field experience, and there's no reason that it has to be classified information," wrote Dobson. "The best and cheapest way the government could get most of this intelligence would be to fund AGS to run a foreign fieldwork grant program covering every nation on earth."

This fieldwork program, named the Bowman Expeditions, was enthusiastically received by Dr. Geoffrey Demarest, a former Lieutenant Colonel and current Latin America specialist at the U.S. Army's Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO). The FMSO is a research center housed at Fort Leavenworth, about 50 miles down the road from KU. According to its website, FMSO "conducts analytical programs focused on emerging and asymmetric threats, regional military and security developments, and other issues that define evolving operational environments around the world." Demarest, a School of the Americas graduate who served multiple assignments in Latin America during his 23-year military career, has written extensively about counterinsurgency and believes mapping and property rights are necessary tools to advance U.S. security strategies, such as with Plan Colombia. He helped secure a $500,000 grant to partially fund México Indígena, the first Bowman Expedition, which until recently has been quietly mapping indigenous lands in Oaxaca, Mexico.

In January, a communiqué sent out by the Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO) alleged that the project was carried out without obtaining free, prior, and informed consent of local communities as mandated by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. UNOSJO also questioned whether the project, which in addition to the involvement of the U.S. military office that runs the controversial Human Terrain System, involves the participation of Radiance Technologies—a weapons development and intelligence company that could in the future use the information collected to the detriment of the local population in terms of counter-insurgency, bio-piracy, or the privatization of land.

The communiqué generated a confined hurricane of criticism on Internet sites and listservs (and a flurry of articles in Oaxaca daily newspapers). But when reports of the conflict starting appearing on international media outlets like Pravda and Seoul Times, project directors Dobson and fellow KU professor Peter Herlihy (lead geographer for México Indígena) were prompted to defend the ethics, purpose, and scope of their projects.

"Because the Foreign Military Studies Office has been one of several sponsors of the first Bowman Expedition México Indígena," they wrote on the México Indígena website to address "misconceptions" on the project, "there has been some understandable confusion regarding the project's aims.... FMSO's goal is to help increase an understanding of the world's cultural terrain, so that the U.S. government may avoid the enormously costly mistakes which it has made due in part to a lack of such understanding."

On the gathering controversy in Mexico, they stated, "The México Indígena team is well aware that some people are suspicious of the fact that FMSO is one of its sponsors. We ask only that such potential critics keep an open mind, that they learn a little about what we really do, and that they reconsider their assumption that any action which involves any part of the U.S. government must necessarily be bad." These words only added fuel to the fire.


Community on Fire

In a small rural Zapotec community deep in the distinctly isolated Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca, southern Mexico, a regional gathering of indigenous peoples' autonomy took place from February 21 to 23. The 3rd Feria of the Cornfield-Globalization and the Natural Resources of the Sierra, convened by the UNOSJO coordination, drew together a couple of hundred local attendees to consolidate the ongoing process of autonomy and present a showcase of indigenous corn-based culture and food sovereignty. But the burning topic of the mapping controversy seemed to overshadow other discussions.


Aldo González—photo by Ramor Ryan

"We made it very clear that we don't want anyone mapping around here," said Juan Perez Luna, community leader of the host village, Asuncion Lachixila. "Yes, we want to map our own communities and, yes, we want to learn how to do it, but we don't believe what these (México Indígena) geographers were saying." Don Juan, an elderly grandfather who attended the gathering, was straightforward with his thoughts on the project: "We think these studies are about counter-insurgency."

The U.S. geographers promoting the México Indígena project first approached UNOSJO in 2006, as if recognizing the NGO as the informal conduit to the Zapotec communities. This coincided with the development of the popular social movements in Oaxaca that gave birth to the Oaxacan Peoples Popular Assembly (APPO) and a dynamic new kind of popular uprising marked by horizontal organizational structures and militant non-violent direct action. APPO seized the city of Oaxaca for seven months in what become known as the Oaxaca Commune, often mobilizing as many as a half-million citizens in support of their revolutionary demands. The state, unfamiliar with how to deal with this kind of social unrest (no obvious leaders to arrest, disappear, assassinate) repeatedly failed to quell the uprising and eventually sent over 5,000 members of the Policía Federal Preventiva (PFP), Mexico's heavily armed federal military-police force, to retake the city. The violent counter-offensive led to several deaths and hundreds of arrests, and was followed by intense repression against the social movement.

Indigenous communities across the Oaxaca state, representing the poorest and most oppressed segment of the population, sided with the inclusive social movement. The Zapotec communities of the Sierras threw their weight behind the APPO, supporting its demands for indigenous autonomy.

"Indigenous peoples' demand for land tenancy and territorial autonomy challenge Mexico's neoliberal policies—and democracy itself," wrote Professors Dobson and Herlihy in a July 2008 article published in the Geographical Review ("A Digital Geography of Indigenous Mexico: Prototype for AGS Bowman Expeditions"). This overtly political observation contrasts strikingly with Dobson's February 5 written response to the growing controversy around his project, where he claimed "our team's abiding dedication to the indigenous people of Oaxaca and our neutrality in all things political."

"UNOSJO have been showing how Dobson, or better said, the U.S. military authorities who are behind the mapping project, have an interest in the privatization of communally held lands," explained Aldo González, director of the Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juárez. "Throughout their mapping investigations, they are seeking to understand the communities' resistance to privatization and identify mechanisms to force them to join PROCEDE [a government privatization scheme]. Bowman Expeditions clearly state that they are collecting information so that the U.S. government can make better foreign policy decisions. So obviously they are going to take into consideration the information gathered here in these communities and apply it in general to all the communities in similar circumstances in Oaxaca and all over Mexico."

México Indígena's own website reveals, "Since the tumultuous period of political unrest in the summer and fall of 2006, Oaxaca has been in the news as a region where long-standing grievances among many indigenous communities are meshing with other movements in complex ways. Our work will illuminate neglected but important facets of these movements." This reinforces concerns, like Don Juan's and González's, that the project's real focus is on counter-insurgency and social engineering.

When asked about the stated goal of understanding social movements, Herlihy didn't initially recall that from the project's website. When asked in a follow-up interview to clarify the statement on the website, he defended his research and its purpose. "Land is often at the root of social conflict. Our participatory research mapping methodology helped illuminate the neglected and little-understood PROCEDE program and how the neoliberal privatization of 'social property' begins to threaten indigenous lifeways through the introduction of individualistic and capitalistic land tenure practices, changing historic guarantees of the inalienability of communal property," wrote Herlihy in an email. "Indeed, indigenous communities and organizations have only begun protesting the results and impact of the Mexican land certification program."

Another intrinsic part of the war of words in this bitter dispute is the Bowman Expeditions' insistence that UNOSJO, and particularly its director, Aldo González, have no right to speak on behalf of the communities. "UNOSJO is a small NGO that works with Zapotec and other indigenous communities in the Sierra Juárez (but) it is not the political or official voice of the Zapotec communities where we did our research," wrote Herlihy in an official statement with other students and professors participating in México Indígena.

González refutes the charge. UNOSJO—with the affiliation of 24 communities—is the largest Zapotec organization in the region. He said: "Mr. Herlihy and Mr. Dobson—and indeed the U.S. military—are used to speaking to individuals. For them it is sufficient to ask one person as the owner of a piece of land for permission. But for the indigenous communities things aren't like that. Today we are struggling for autonomy for our indigenous peoples, and this is a project bigger than any one single community. So what is happening in Tiltepec and Yagila is affecting other Zapotec communities. For this reason, we have the courage, the duty, and the reason to protest against Bowman Expeditions because it is not just the communities of Tiltepec or Yagila, but all the Zapotec communities in that region, and, ultimately, all of the indigenous communities in Mexico, who are being or will be affected by the studies."

"Let the indigenous people of Oaxaca speak for themselves," wrote Dobson in his February 5 response to critics. The problem in this is that the two communities who hosted the mapping project—San Miguel Tiltepec and San Juan Yagila—have not yet come out publicly on the matter.

Herlihy, the México Indígena team leader, wrote in the aforementioned statement "our (sic) community leaders have openly expressed heartfelt appreciation for our hard work. And you recognize the usefulness of the maps we produced together with you, as well as the training received by the community investigators and university students involved."

González offered a different version of events: "We have been talking to the communities involved in the U.S. studies and they maintain that they were not sufficiently informed about the source of finance and they feel angry because of this. For sure the Herlihy team will try and go to them to change their minds and convince them otherwise, and that will generate more debate."

Zoltan Grossman, a faculty member in Geography and Native American Studies at Evergreen State College who also serves as co-chair of the Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers (AAG), has been following the project and the controversy surrounding it. "In this case of mapping collective land holdings, it seems like some indigenous communities are working with Herlihy's project, while others are suspicious of it," said Grossman, speaking as an individual and not on behalf of the AAG's Indigenous Group. "Personally, I don't think the support of some indigenous people for the project should be used as an answer to criticism by others."

He added that this could exacerbate internal divisions among the Native peoples, while it also creates a colonial divide-and-conquer dynamic that pits indigenous communities against each other. Meanwhile, in Oaxaca, everyone is taking a position. Don Juan from Lachixila is more disappointed with his neighbors in Tiltepec and Yagila: "They don't have enough awareness of what's really going on. They were fooled."

Melquiades Cruz, an indigenous communications worker from Santa Cruz Yagavila (the first community to stop work with the México Indígena project), admitted that people there were initially interested in the project as a way of empowering local students. "At first the community was interested in the México Indígena project primarily so that the youth would learn how to do this kind of graphic information work, to be useful for the community and the region. The community entered into communication with them, and there were three assemblies during which they presented their project," said Cruz. "It was during the third assembly that the community told them that this project doesn't appeal to us because we think that it seems like an awful lot of money and there must be something else behind it. But if you have the money to just leave your people here to train our people to do the work, that's all, then we can do it. So that this knowledge can be communal, and so that it is shared between the community and the academics that come from outside."

Cruz said the México Indígena team broke off relations after that. This led the community to determine it would not make a formal decision in the assembly. "These people from outside always come trying to sell a great idea—in this case to produce a graphic picture of the community—but this time we saw through it, and we said, it's not just a graphic map, maybe they are interested in the community resources," said Cruz. "We saw that there was something else behind it."

Among the Zapotec in Lachixila, the charge of counter-insurgency activities resounds. UNOSJO has also outlined its concerns in terms of both land privatization and bio-piracy. "It's not just about military control, but also about strategic control over the communities, controlling their land and their consumption," said González.

The bio-piracy issue has been taken up by groups working in food sovereignty and environmental advocacy. Silvia Ribeiro, a researcher from the environmental advocacy ETC Group wrote in the Mexican daily La Jornada, "These maps are of great utility for military ends and for counterinsurgency, but also for industrial purposes (exploitation of resources like minerals, plants, animals and biodiversity; mapping access roads already constructed or 'necessary,' sources of water, settlements, social maps of possible resistance or acceptance of projects, etc)."

"We're putting the power of maps into the hands of these communities," insists Herlihy. But could it also be that these University of Kansas geographers' mapping project is serving as an imperial alibi for the FMSO's Demarest, "champion" of the Bowman project, to further his agenda of strengthening the collaboration among "policymakers, officers and soldiers to have better on-the-ground information" through GIS mapping systems to conduct war?

Santa Cruz Yagavila's Cruz alleged that the geographers were not forthright with where their funding was coming from, thus suggesting either a lack of comfort with the project's relationship with the military, or a conscientious effort to conceal the military designs behind the project. "Herlihy made a presentation in the community showing what were the uses of the maps, where they had worked before, but he never told us where the funds for the project were coming from," said Cruz. "He said it was funded by the University of Kansas or by the University of San Luis, but he never mentioned the source of the funds coming from the Armed Forces of the United States, never."

"By not really revealing their intentions, by not revealing the sources of their funding, by not giving all the information, México Indígena are violating the communities. They are concealing the truth, they are lying," said González. "What they say is a façade, a deception. Yes, we recognize that the maps do have a certain usefulness for the communities, but what we see behind the project is not a helping hand. No, in reality, it's espionage, a form of spying on the communities."

Answering critics' attacks on the lack of transparency, Herlihy recalled how he gave numerous presentations about the project to local communities and "was sure to declare that the project was partially funded by the Foreign Military Studies Office." Nevertheless his description of the FMSO as a "small military research office within Fort Leavenworth down the road from the University of Kansas" seemed deficient, especially in light of the fact that the research being carried out by the office largely concerns counter-insurgency and focuses on "emerging and asymmetric threats."


An Indecent Proposal?

Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan often spoke of America as "a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere," even as he was cozying up to Guatemala's genocidal former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, funding and training death squads in El Salvador, and being charged by the World Court for "unlawful use of force" (terrorism) for Washington's overt and covert support of the Contras in Nicaragua.

In a similar light, neither Dobson nor Herlihy seem to accept any type of radical critique of U.S. power, refusing to acknowledge the country's imperial designs for the region dating back to Manifest Destiny. "My whole rationale for Bowman Expeditions is based on my firm belief that geographic ignorance is the principal cause of the blunders that have characterized American foreign policy since the end of World War II," Dobson wrote in his February 5 statement answering his critics. He told me in an interview that, "America abandoned geography after World War 2 and hasn't won a war since." But statements like that seem to contradict assertions that the project in Oaxaca was conceived exclusively to "help" the local indigenous population.

"It's the prostitution of geography for the national ruling class," said Neil Smith, distinguished professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Smith, whose book American Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization exposes Isaiah Bowman, whom KU's Dobson named his project after, as an imperialist and racist. "This project is aptly named the Bowman Expeditions," Smith said. "[It] follows in the tradition that he started."

Dobson and Herlihy's July 2008 article in the Geographical Review reveals that General David Petraeus, co-author of the "U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual," met with México Indígena's research team in October 2006, and commented how, "U.S. troops were unprepared for the 'cultural terrains' of Iraq and Afghanistan and how they needed ways 'to get troops smarter faster.'" Dobson shares with readers his reply, explaining "how geography combines the 'cultural' and 'geographical' terrains into the synthetic 'cultural landscape.'"

In the project's executive summary, prepared by defense contractor Radiance Technologies (whose role according to the company is to provide "requirements oversight"), México Indígena "represents the initial step in a much larger concept of reviving a tradition of research by university scholars providing 'open-source intelligence' on different parts of the world...[in light of] the unfortunate realization that the United States is now perceived as a mighty global power crippled by its own ignorance and arrogance about its dealings with its vast global domain."

The document also states, "Indigenous regions in Mexico, like in so many parts of Latin America and around the world, are where rebellions are fomented, where drugs are produced, where resource pirates operate, and where conditions of poverty and despair drive up the highest rates of our migration. Few would disagree that as we move into the 21st century, indigenous populations are among the most important social actors in struggles of the future of Latin American democracies. Today's populist struggle against neoliberalism has been central to the indigenous movement in Mexico as illustrated by the emergence of the Zapatista army in Chiapas, challenging the corruption and neoliberal strategies of past PRI-run governments at the onset of NAFTA."

Amnesty International (AI), on February 9, issued a statement criticizing a Mexican government human rights report recently submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council. Mexico is one of 16 countries up for review this year by the world body's Universal Periodic Review Working Group. According to AI, the report "fails to acknowledge the worsening human rights climate in many parts of the country." AI also offered an alternative report, which concluded that "Mexican federal, state and municipal police officers implicated in serious human rights violations, such as arbitrary detention, torture, rape and unlawful killings, particularly those committed during civil disturbances in San Salvador Atenco and Oaxaca City in 2006, have not been brought to justice." It also noted that, "Human rights defenders, particular those in rural areas, often face persecution and sometimes prolonged detention on the basis of fabricated or politically-motivated criminal charges."

The FMSO, the principal sponsor of the Oaxaca mapping project, runs the Human Terrain System (HTS), an army program used by General Petraeus in Iraq and in Afghanistan, which embeds anthropologists with military units to conduct field research with the aim of assisting counterinsurgency efforts in the two countries. UNOSJO's first communiqué sent out in January claimed they believe that the Bowman Expeditions are a new manifestation of the counter-insurgency program.

Roberto González, an associate professor of anthropology at San Jose State University and author of American Counterinsurgency: Human Science and the Human Terrain, told CounterPunch in an interview that the program is "a scheme to whitewash counterinsurgency and to clean up the image of anti-revolutionary warfare, which is always a dirty business. Even though the U.S. military has more than a century of experience in counterinsurgency warfare (going back to the 'Indian Wars' of the 1800s and the cruel campaign against Filipino revolutionaries in the early 1900s), General David Petraeus and other battlefield technicians have portrayed the method as a 'gentler' means of fighting, while recruiting political scientists, anthropologists, and other social scientists to create the tools to do this." This led the American Anthropological Association's Executive Board to produce a statement officially condemning the Human Terrain program as a violation of the field's ethical tenets, such as ensuring both voluntary informed consent and ensuring the welfare of affected populations.

Dobson, in his Geographical Review article, claims allegations that México Indígena and the Bowman Expeditions are part of HTS are unfounded. "The AGS Bowman Expeditions offers a means of studying the human terrain, but they are substantially different from the human terrain system or human terrain teams as currently constituted: Our purpose is scholarly, not military," wrote Dobson.

"I feel that this particular controversy would not have the traction that it does if it were not for the direct role of the U.S. military, especially in light of the turmoil in Oaxaca," said Evergreen State College's Grossman. "Oaxaca is not just any old state in Mexico and southern Mexico is not just any old region in the Americas, it's an area that has had significant repression in very recent years against indigenous peoples by federal forces funded by the U.S."

Grossman said that given the political turmoil in the region, coupled with U.S. military pronouncements in recent years equating indigenous and anti-globalization movements with insurgency and terrorism, it's not surprising that some people believe that the maps could be used by the Mexican government for repressive actions in the name of stability. Specifically, FMSO analysts have lumped indigenous movements with insurgents and terrorists and suggests they are troublemakers and a threat to U.S. interests.

Adding to the specter of U.S. and state violence and repression in the region, the U.S Joint Forces Command released a report in November 2008 that stated Mexico risked becoming a failed state and, if that were to be the case, it would demand U.S. intervention. Meanwhile, the U.S. House passed a spending bill on February 25 which allocates $410 million for the Merida Initiative, a militarization project modeled after Plan Colombia, to "carry out counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, and border security measures."

CUNY's Smith said he believes the motivation behind the Defense Department is very clear, especially in light of Dobson's words. "It's clear that the work they are doing could feed into the Human Terrain System," he said. "The question to ask is why wouldn't it go into the HTS?"

Grossman essentially agrees with Smith. He believes that the FMSO is interested in the research, if not "officially" for its Human Terrain System program, then to better understand the social and cultural human landscape of the regions research.

But México Indígena's Helihy passionately defended his project and intentions. "This is not an evil military plot to destroy indigenous lands. It's nothing of the sort," said Herlihy. "I knew it would be conflictive precisely because we had FMSO funding, but I hoped it would be a project that would make a difference in the world."

In addition, he stated, "We told the Tiltepec community Assembly, where UNOSJO Director presented the first public denouncement, that we would take down the maps if they wanted us too, and we would do the same for any other study community." Likewise, Dobson notes that one thing he insisted on with the FMSO was that the academic investigator in charge of any of the projects would have sole responsibility for choosing the topic of his or her expedition, which he believes quells any notion that this is a military-run research program.

The debate over this program, the contradictions surrounding it, and the broader question of whether it is ethical for academia to be working so closely with the U.S. military and intelligence community has been going on for decades. But, in a way, it seems closer to beginning rather than ending. Whether this project is "about science in the service of the state and science in the service of elites," as Smith contends, or about using participatory mapping to empower indigenous communities to protect their land and cultural rights, as Herlihy and the projects' other supporters argue, an answer probably won't be fleshed out any time soon.

Grossman said that dealing with research controversies and the ethical questions raised in cases such as this one could be a way for geography to overcome its colonial and imperial past. Indigenous peoples have been waiting over 500 years for the world to overcome its colonial and imperial past. What's uncertain is whether these indigenous communities in Oaxaca can afford to wait a few more.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

For U.S. immigration, 'partnered' doesn't count

From the SF Chronicle:

Shirley Tan has been with her partner, Jay Mercado, for 23 years. The Pacifica women have twin 12-year-old sons and have been registered domestic partners since 1991.

That means nothing to the federal government, which recognizes only a marriage between a man and a woman. Federal authorities ordered Tan, who is not a U.S. citizen, to be deported from San Francisco to her native Philippines this morning.

But with the help of her congresswoman, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, Tan received a three-week stay of the deportation order, allowing her to remain with her family until April 22.

"This is good news, since we now have a little more time for the legal process to work," said Tan's attorney, Phyllis Beech. "If this was not a same-sex couple, the spouse of an American citizen would be able to immigrate fairly quickly and fairly easily. Instead, they're being discriminated against because they are lesbians."

Under the federal Defense of Marriage Act, domestic partnerships and even legal same-sex marriages, such as those last year in California and which still occur in Massachusetts, aren't recognized as valid in immigration cases.

"I just really feel helpless," Mercado said. "If I was a man, none of this would be happening."

A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the agency does not comment on individual cases.

For Tan, 43, the whole affair is a shock. After meeting Mercado in the United States in 1986, she returned from the Philippines on a visitor's visa in 1989 to be with her lover.

In 1995, she applied for political asylum, saying she feared for her life in her home country. She had been shot nearly two decades earlier by a relative in a dispute over an inheritance.

"I was 14 when it happened, and I was shot in the head and beaten," she said. "It's a miracle that I'm alive."

Any deportation action was stayed while the asylum request was being considered. But when the Board of Immigration Appeals turned down the request in 2002 and ordered Tan deported, no one - not even her previous attorney - told her.

"She and her family even received a security clearance to tour the White House in 2005," said Beech, a Fresno attorney who took over Tan's case this year. "They checked her fingerprints and never said there was a deportation order outstanding."

The respite ended Jan. 28, when immigration agents showed up at Tan's home in Pacifica to take her into custody.

"I'm not an activist," Tan said. "We're just common people living a peaceful and happy life, and then this happens."

It's a familiar story, said Rachel B. Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality, which works to end discrimination in immigration law against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and HIV-positive people.

"We hear every day from American citizens whose families are being torn apart because their partner is being deported," she said.

A survey commissioned by Immigration Equality found that in 2000 there were about 37,000 same-sex couples in the country where one partner was a foreign national. About half of these couples had children under 18.

"The average age of these people is 38, so we're talking about long-term relationships," Tiven said.

Federal officials can look past immigration violations when heterosexual couples have children, Beech said.

"Even on an overstay (like Tan's), Congress has always taken the position that maintaining the family unit is so important that a noncitizen spouse can be legalized virtually without penalty," she added.

Since 2000, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., has introduced bills to allow the "permanent partners" of U.S. citizens the same avenue to permanent resident status spouses now have.

The bills have never made it out of committee, but that could change, said Ilan Kayatsky, a spokesman for Nadler.

"The landscape is changing with a president who supports the idea of immigration change and more progressives in both chambers," he said.

So far, 93 members of the House and 17 senators have signed on as co-sponsors of either HR1024, the Uniting American Families Act of 2009, or its companion measure in the Senate, S424 by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

The stay of the deportation order opens some paths for Tan. Her attorney is still working on efforts to get the appeals board to reverse its decision, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office is reviewing the case to see if anything can be done for Tan.

But those efforts might not be enough to keep her off that plane to the Philippines later this month. And if that happens, her entire family will pull up their roots to follow.

"We'll move, and we'll be together," Mercado said. "We raised our family, and we won't let anyone tear us apart."