Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Consul: Immigrants killed by DPS leave wives, children behind


Consul: Immigrants killed by DPS leave wives, children behind

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BACKGROUND
Earlier chapters in this story:
>> DPS helicopter opens fire during chase; 2 dead
>> Trooper fatally shot Guatemalan immigrants from helicopter: DPS
Posted: Monday, October 29, 2012 6:06 pm | Updated: 6:41 pm, Mon Oct 29, 2012.
Ildefonso Ortiz | Twitter: @IldefonsoOrtiz
McALLEN — The Guatemalan consul here says two countrymen who were killed by an airborne DPS sharpshooter last week have been identified as family men who were seeking a better life for their children back home.
The illegal immigrants were shot with a .223-caliber rifle, said Guatemalan consul Alba Caceres, who identified the men as Jose Leonardo Coj and Marco Antonio Castro.
Both men — who hail from San Martin Jolitepeque, Chimaltenango, Guatemala — were with a group of seven others riding a red Ford pickup that was being chased Thursday afternoon by Texas game wardens, state troopers and other law enforcement officers. A Department of Public Safety helicopter joined the chase as the truck traveled near the intersection of Farm-to-Market Road 2221 and Mile 7, north of La Joya.
The trooper in the helicopter was cleared to fire in order to disable the vehicle. A photograph taken byThe Monitor shows the rear left tire blown out, but it also shows what appear to be various bullet holes near the rear of the truck.
The bullets fired from the helicopter killed Castro and Coj, Caceres said. A third Guatemalan immigrant was shot in the arm and also had some shrapnel injuries from the missed shots, she said. That man was treated and is recuperating from his injuries.
The Texas Department of Public Safety has placed the trooper on leave following the shooting. The agency said the sharpshooter opened fire thinking that the chased pickup truck was carrying drugs — not people.

VICTIM FAMILIES
As Texas Rangers investigate the shooting, DPS has remained tight-lipped about the case, which has Caceres very concerned.
“Sadly enough, we have not been given access to pictures of the bodies so that we can send them to Guatemala so the family can do a full identification at home,” she said in Spanish. “We have identified them through their IDs, but I am worried by the lack of communication.”
Caceres’ staff has notified the families and said she was heartbroken upon hearing their stories.
Coj didn’t want to travel illegally to the U.S. to work, but he was pushed to do so by the medical needs of his 11-year-old son, who needed surgery, the consul said. The father, who hails from a very poor region, resorted to seeking work illegally to cover the costs.
“He leaves behind three little orphans: his 11-year-old son, a 7-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old boy,” the consul said. “When I contacted his wife late Friday night to tell her that her husband had died, she was leaving the hospital where her son was at.”
The other victim, Castro, is survived by a wife and two children, Caceres said.
The consul is preparing the necessary process to have the bodies of the two men sent back to Guatemala to be buried by their families, but because of the ongoing investigation that process may be delayed for weeks.
“While to some, these cases are numbers and statistics, each one of these individuals has a story and a family,” Caceres said. “We must not forget that.”
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Sunday, October 28, 2012

policía de Sudáfrica disuelve con gas lacrimógeno manifestación de mineros


Los huelguistas trataron de evitar una reunión sindical del ramo
La policía de Sudáfrica disuelve con gas lacrimógeno manifestación de mineros
Foto
Los conflictos laborales han paralizado los socavones de oro y platino desde agosto pasadoFoto Ap
Afp, Dpa y Reuters
 
Periódico La Jornada
Domingo 28 de octubre de 2012, p. 23
Rustenburg, 27 de octubre. La policía sudafricana dispersó hoy con gases lacrimógenos una manifestación de mineros en huelga que trataron de impedir la celebración de una reunión organizada por el principal sindicato del ramo en el estadio de Rustenburg, 110 kilómetros al noroeste de Pretoria, sede del Poder Ejecutivo de este país.
Los agentes expulsaron a 300 miembros de la confederación sindical Cosatu que se congregaron en torno del coso y bloquearon la entrada con vehículos blindados.
Estamos aquí para manifestarnos. Nosotros, los mineros huelguistas, estamos cansados del Sindicato Nacional de Mineros (NUM, por sus siglas en inglés), explicó un empleado de Amplats, Reuben Lerebolo.
Estas protestas se produjeron un día después del anuncio hecho por la primera empresa productora de platino del mundo, la Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), sobre la decisión de readmitir a 12 mil mineros en huelga, despedidos en octubre tras estallar su movimiento en favor de mejoras salariales y laborales.
Los manifestantes aseguraron que no fueron advertidos sobre dicho acuerdo, pactado con el NUM –afiliado a Cosatu–, lo cual podría significar la reanudación de las huelgas, las cuales han paralizado las minas de oro y platino desde agosto pasado.
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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Cherri Chains Herself Keystone XL Pipeyard Gate


UPDATE 9:00AM – Cherri Chains Herself Keystone XL Pipeyard Gate 
___
WINFIELD, TEXAS – WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012 – Drawing connections to all coastal communities threatened by toxic tar sands development, Cherri Foytlin, an indigenous South Louisiana mother of six and wife of a Gulf Coast oilfield worker, chained herself to the gate of a Keystone XL pipeyard. Effectively blocking pipe from being shipped to construction sites along the controversial pipeline’s route, Foytlin’s action coincides with theDefend Our Coast activities in British Columbia, where more than 60 Canadian communities are protesting a proposed tar sands pipeline through their region. Hers marks the 32nd arrest since Tar Sands Blockade’s actions began over two months ago and today marks the 31st day of sustained protest at its Winnsboro tree blockade.
“This pipeline is a project of death. From destructive tar sands development that destroy indigenous sovereignty and health at the route’s start to the toxic emissions that will lay further burden on environmental justice communities along the Gulf of Mexico, this pipeline not only disproportionately affects indigenous frontline communities but its clear that it will bring death and disease to all in its path,” Foytlin declared.
Refusing to accept the Gulf Coast’s designation as the Nation’s Energy Sacrifice Zone, Foytlin, along with many Gulf Coast residents and indigenous activists are dismayed but not surprised to find the conversations regarding Keystone XL as a whole from national environmental groups to the Presidential campaigns have made little to no mention of the damage TransCanada’s Keystone XL Pipeline will heap upon Gulf Coast communities like Houston and Port Arthur, TX, where Keystone XL will terminate. Already overburdened with oil refineries and other dirty energy related industry, this neglectful attitude dovetails neatly with TransCanada’s reckless disregard for the health and safety of families in the refinery communities and elsewhere along the pipeline’s route.
The Rayne, Louisiana resident, who in the Spring of 2011 walked 1,243 miles from New Orleans to Washington D.C. as a call for action to stop the BP Drilling Disaster, has been a constant voice speaking out for the health and ecosystems of Gulf Coast communities.
She continued, “This fight is also about the personal freedoms given to us through the blood of all of our combined ancestry. Conservatives believe government is too big, that they are choking out our freedoms. The Occupy Movement believes corporations have kidnapped those same rights in the pursuit of profit over humanity. I believe both groups are right, and this pipeline and the use of eminent domain by a foreign company to seize and lay claim to American land, aided by the silence of the government, is an epic example of those truths.”
Tar Sands Blockade is a coalition of Texas and Oklahoma landowners and climate justice organizers using peaceful and sustained civil disobedience to stop the construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
“From the Pacific Coast to the Gulf Coast, Tar Sands Blockade acts in solidarity with all communities and indigenous people rising up to defend their homes from toxic tar sands pipelines. The refinery communities of the Gulf Coast have historically been and continue to be treated as collateral damage by industry and now landowners from Canada to Texas are learning that reality, too,” stated Ramsey Sprague, a Tar Sands Blockade spokesperson born in Houma, Louisiana to a Chitimacha family. “From start to finish, tar sands development only further endangers communities already at far greater risk for death and disease from toxic environmental exposure to human-made chemical pollutants than communities further away from the petroleum refineries and the unconscionable mining operations that define their origins.”
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Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Justice 4 Sharmeka Moffitt



When the Hoodies Are White: Justice4SharmekaMoffitt

23OCT
Sharmeka Moffitt
On Sunday evening, Sharmeka Moffitt went to a local park in Winnsboro, Louisiana to “walk a mile and run a mile.” Sometime later, she was approached by three men in “white t-shirt hoodies” who doused her with flammable liquid and set her on fire. For good measure, they scrawled “KKK” and “nigger” on her car. Sharmeka was able to get to a spigot of water, put out the flames, and then call 911 for help. She is now in critical condition with burns to over 60% of her body at the Louisiana State University Medical Center in Shreveport, LA.
As of late Monday evening, the local Louisiana authorities were still vacillating over whether or not to call this a hate crime. Part of their hesitancy stems from the fact that Sharmeka could not definitively identify the race of her attackers. 
The fact that the race of her attackers is being used as a gauge for this hate crime demonstrates the limitations of how we think about race and racism in this country. This Black woman was targeted and subjected to severe and life-threatening bodily injury for sport. Her perpetrators then thought they should punctuate their crime by scrawling hateful racially incendiary messages on her car. What isn’t hateful about that?
And what is with all the shock and bewilderment? Winnsboro, Louisiana is just about 60 miles from Jena, Louisiana, the site of the 2007 Jena 6 incident. I grew up in Ruston, Louisiana, about 75 miles from Winnsboro. As late as the 1990s, the KKK marched in downtown Ruston, and my classmates bragged during class trips about having relatives who were high ranking officials in the terrorist organization.  Racially incendiary acts are commonplace in this part of the world. (Every damn part of the U.S. world) Like critical race theorists tell us, racism is not an aberration. It is part of the everyday, commonplace fabric of our lives. Before folks start decrying this act as an individual aberration of 3 sick individuals, perhaps we would do well to remember that their acts are symptomatic of the continued persistence of racism in this country.
Racism is like an autoimmune disorder. It attacks the body politic from the inside out, warring against itself, but frequently on the surface, things seem normal and healthy. We are only attuned to the problem when a flare up happens. But to continue to act as though the flare up is the disease is to engage in the most unhealthy and self-defeating form of denial there is. 
Then again, maybe it’s the hoodies. Selective historical amnesia being what it is, perhaps folks have come to believe that only Black men roam in public space under hooded covers threatening to do harm to other citizens.  Our rush into a postracial fantasy makes us too soon forget that white men, particularly rural Southern white men, are experts in terrorizing and policing racial minorities’ access to public space.
Even if it turns out that Sharmeka’s attackers are not white men, we should ask ourselves why her attackers would choose such a powerfully interpretive  historical narrative in which to play out their need to do harm to a Black girl’s body and personhood. Racism has a basic grammar, a set of rules, which we all learn to speak, having been immersed in it our entire lives. In a racist grammar, the subjects know that power is predicated on the ability to exercise violence (of various types) against a direct object, namely an innocent victim who bear the marks of the wrong skin color in the wrong time and place. 
And for all the folks who think Black women don’t use public parks for exercise because we want to maintain our hair styles, let this be an object lesson. Maybe Black women with modest resources who can’t afford to go to the gym  don’t use public parks because those spaces are unsafe. 
As of this point, the coverage of Moffitt’s attack has been minimal. I knew about it only because folks back home were posting info from local news sources. I guess it is left up to social media to convince the world yet again that violence against Black women matters. And I hope Black folks remember, too, that Sharmeka’s life deserves the same energy that we gave to the Jena 6 and to Trayvon Martin. 
Sharmeka, you are not invisible to us. We stand with you in your fight.

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