Posted by D. Allen, v.P./GM IBNN Posted: Rybak I...
by admin on June 2nd, 2009
filed under Causes And Organizations
Posted By D. Allen, V.P./GM IBNN posted:
Rybak is calling it a “transfer” but this proposal is to cut five full time minority attorney investigators, two contract minority attorney investigators and one supervisor, minority law school graduate of Thurgood Marshall Law School, who has been in the unit for over eight years.
Protection of civil rights within the City of Minneapolis can be traced back to an executive order issued by Mayor Hubert M. Humphrey. In 1967 the Minneapolis Civil Rights Ordinance was passed. In 1974 the investigative powers were strengthened with subpoena power, less than 10 cities have this power with such power in the nation. In 1991 a new section was added to provide for Domestic Partner registration at City Clerk.
“Cutting this unit is discarding decades of civil rights history and ignores the growing need to service Minneapolis’ increasingly diverse population,” said George Brandon, from the Council of Black Minnesotans. “We cannot stay quiet; citizens of Minneapolis must rally to have their voices heard by contacting the Mayor’s office and City Council Persons, because cutting this unit means that it will never come back.”
For the first time in the department’s history, they have an all minority attorney staff doing this legal work and have closed 100% more cases in 2008 than in 2007. The Complaint Investigations Unit has seen a backlog of cases from its inception, which is a sign of the amount of discrimination complaints that make it through its doors.
There are over 450 open and active cases and it is highly unlikely that the Minnesota State Department of Human Rights can absorb all of these cases as they face cuts also. Additionally, there are jurisdictional and time limits issues which may make transfer of these cases impossible.
“I truly believe the Department’s role in investigating and adjudicating complaints affords
access to justice for people who otherwise feel they have none,” explains Amy Johnson, Executive Director of OutFront Minnesota who served as an attorney Civil Rights Commissioner.
“Investigators can come and go but at the end of the day, it is the people of Minneapolis who will be disenfranchised and their voices will not be heard because Saint Paul is just not as accessible to citizens of Minneapolis like this department is,” said Toni Newborn, former President of the Black Law Students Association – William Mitchell College of Law chapter.
The Ways and Means Committee Meeting is on March 2, 2009 at 1:30 PM and full City Council meeting is on March 6, 2009 at 9:30 AM.
Civil Rights Coalition includes: Council on Black Minnesotans, Council on American-Islamic Relations – MN Chapter, Jewish Community Action, MN Dakota Conference NAACP, OutFront Minnesota, Urban League Minneapolis
Posted by Milton Henyon
Rybak is calling it a “transfer” but this proposal is to cut five full time minority attorney investigators, two contract minority attorney investigators and one supervisor, minority law school graduate of Thurgood Marshall Law School, who has been in the unit for over eight years.
Protection of civil rights within the City of Minneapolis can be traced back to an executive order issued by Mayor Hubert M. Humphrey. In 1967 the Minneapolis Civil Rights Ordinance was passed. In 1974 the investigative powers were strengthened with subpoena power, less than 10 cities have this power with such power in the nation. In 1991 a new section was added to provide for Domestic Partner registration at City Clerk.
“Cutting this unit is discarding decades of civil rights history and ignores the growing need to service Minneapolis’ increasingly diverse population,” said George Brandon, from the Council of Black Minnesotans. “We cannot stay quiet; citizens of Minneapolis must rally to have their voices heard by contacting the Mayor’s office and City Council Persons, because cutting this unit means that it will never come back.”
For the first time in the department’s history, they have an all minority attorney staff doing this legal work and have closed 100% more cases in 2008 than in 2007. The Complaint Investigations Unit has seen a backlog of cases from its inception, which is a sign of the amount of discrimination complaints that make it through its doors.
There are over 450 open and active cases and it is highly unlikely that the Minnesota State Department of Human Rights can absorb all of these cases as they face cuts also. Additionally, there are jurisdictional and time limits issues which may make transfer of these cases impossible.
“I truly believe the Department’s role in investigating and adjudicating complaints affords
access to justice for people who otherwise feel they have none,” explains Amy Johnson, Executive Director of OutFront Minnesota who served as an attorney Civil Rights Commissioner.
“Investigators can come and go but at the end of the day, it is the people of Minneapolis who will be disenfranchised and their voices will not be heard because Saint Paul is just not as accessible to citizens of Minneapolis like this department is,” said Toni Newborn, former President of the Black Law Students Association – William Mitchell College of Law chapter.
The Ways and Means Committee Meeting is on March 2, 2009 at 1:30 PM and full City Council meeting is on March 6, 2009 at 9:30 AM.
Civil Rights Coalition includes: Council on Black Minnesotans, Council on American-Islamic Relations – MN Chapter, Jewish Community Action, MN Dakota Conference NAACP, OutFront Minnesota, Urban League Minneapolis
Posted by Milton Henyon
Michael Webster Posted: By MICHAEL WEBSTER: Synd...
by admin on May 12th, 2009
filed under Causes And Organizations
michael Webster posted:
BY MICHAEL WEBSTER: Syndicated Investigative Reporter: Mon Jan 19, 2009 at 12:01 PM PST.
A full scale civil war is underway in Mexico. The Mexican President Felipe Calderon and the powerful drug cartels that operate unmolested throughout Mexico are locked in a battle over control of the country. With tens of thousands of the Mexican army fully deployed and often fighting Zetas’ (ex-Mexican army Special Forces trained in the U.S.) who is now working for the cartels.
The Mexican government has not been able to curtail the on going gruesome and erupting new violence and confrontations between the two warring parties throughout Mexico. This relentless fighting with casualties on both sides is in truth and scope a civil war. Mexico try’s to hide that fact and the United States is apparently in total denial.
To date some 7,000 Mexicans have died in this war – all attributable to the government versus the rich and powerful Mexican Drug Cartels war.
During 2008 Mexico’s violent deaths broke historic records raising the death toll to 5,630 execution murders, beating out last years all time record.
In 2008, more people lost their lives in Mexico do to violence then were lost in the war torn countries of Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
Were it not for the fact that the cartels are also frequently at war with one another, they might have won the war by now and would be in complete control of Mexico.
Execution-style murders, beheadings, dismemberings and kidnappings are common now in every state in Mexico on a daily basis. Gun battles are frequent events in Mexico City and in Mexican towns all along the border. On Jan. 5, the body of Jose Ivan Vasquez Lopez, 43, was found in a trash drum with his head cut off. On Jan. 7, the body of Ricardo Arturo Alvarado Contreras, 45, was found dead in a vacant lot with his hands chopped off. Mexican border town officials have crossed into the U.S. seeking asylum, fearing for their lives.
Now a third factor is reported to be getting into Mexico’s civil war as the Mexican border towns are void of tourist. Mexican citizens are getting feed up with not having any business and that is making it very difficult to survive and make ends meet said Jose Lopez a shop keeper in what had normally been a busy typical Mexican border town and we the people are done with the fear and the bloody killings on our streets.
A group calling itself the Juárez Citizens Command is threatening to strike back against lawlessness that has gripped the city for a long time they say that they are striking back by killing one criminal a day until order and piece is restored. A potential rise in vigilante justice in Juárez is expected by some experts to spread throughout Mexico and would raise the steaks and escalate an already dangerous and bloody civil war.
The city’s police and the Mexican army together have not been able to stop the plague of killings, beheadings, or the extortion targeted business owners, teachers, medical professionals, or the carjackings, kidnappings, robberies and other crime. Last year, more than 1,600 people were slain in Juárez alone.
“Better the death of a bad person, than that bad person continue contaminating our region,” the group, named Comando Ciudadano por Juárez, or CCJ in Spanish, stated in a news release spread on the Internet.
“There is a call for the public to remain calm,” said Andres Andreu, a Juárez representative in the Chihuahua state congress.
“In anger, this could start an uncontrollable wave of unjust deaths,” Andreu said in a statement condemning vigilantism and urging authorities to do more to stop the violence. “Movements of this nature are directed more by a sense of vengeance than of justice.”
The El Paso times reported that Howard Campbell, an anthropology Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso stated: “What (vigilantism) says is people do not think the government can fix the violence, you have to remember, there is the whole history — the killing of the women and the drug killings. The common person feels there is no one to protect them.”
The environment exists for the creation for a group such as the CCJ, Campbell said. If the CCJ is real, Howard said, it could be reminiscent of Los Pepes, assassins who in the early 1990s targeted relatives and associates of drug lord Pablo Escobar in Colombia.
It was rumored that Los Pepes might have had links to rival drug traffickers or government special forces, including those in the United States.
Lynchings, mob beatings and other forms of vigilante justice are not unheard of in Mexico and other parts of Latin America, often because of lack of trust in government and law enforcement authorities.
Not long ago an enraged mob swarmed three federal police officers in the Mexico City suburb of San Juan Ixtayopan, and beat them nearly lifeless then doused them with gasoline and then burned two of them alive while thousands watched live on national television.
Dramatic as it was, the cop killings were not an isolated incident. Vigilantism has taken root in Latin America over the past decade, lending credence to the notion that the region is in the throes of a civil war. From Venezuela and Guatemala to Bolivia and Peru, angry crowds are increasingly taking the law into their own hands, meting out physical punishment for crimes real and imagined. Vigilantes often “lynch” common criminals who, in their view, have escaped justice. More recently they’ve started attacking public officials suspected of malfeasance. A mob in the Peruvian town of Ilave beat their mayor after accusing him of embezzlement, then dragged him into a public square and left him to die. “Lynching has grown totally out of control,” says
Mark Ungar, an expert on Latin American police reform at the Woodrow Wilson International School for Scholars in Washington. “It’s spreading in the sense that vigilantes are going after criminals, officials, even governments–and once it starts it’s hard to stop.”
Mexican civil war is also spilling over into the U.S. Reports of incursions into the U.S. by heavily armed men in Mexican army uniforms (and often driving U.S.-made Humvees) now occurs on a regular basis. Sometimes the “soldiers” are cartel men, probably ex-Mexican army; sometimes they are real Mexican army. In many cases, their purpose is to escort and protect a drug run into the U.S. and back off any lightly armed local sheriff or Border Patrol agent in the way.
The evidence is clear Mexico is in a civil war and this civil war is happening in America’s back yard in a neighboring country of a population of well over 100 million people. A 2000 mile open border and with corrupt officials operating on both sides of the Rio Grande River. There are estimates that the Mexican cartels produce, smuggle and sell some $300 billion worth of drugs into the U.S. annually. These drugs are poisoning our children and violently killing citizens on both sides of the U.S. Mexican border.
Editors Note:
Michael Webster’s Syndicated Investigative Reports are read worldwide, in 100 or more U.S. outlets and in at least 136 countries and territories. He has published articles for Maxims News, which is associated with MediaChannel.org and Globalvision News Network, global news and media information services with more than 350 news affiliates in 135 countries. Many of Mr. Webster’s articles are printed in six working languages: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish. With ten more languages planed in the near future.
Mr. Webster is America’s leading authority on Venture Capital/Equity Funding. A trustee on some of the nations largest trade Union funds. A noted Author, Lecturer, Educator, Emergency Manager, Counter-Terrorist, War on Drugs and War on Terrorist Specialist, Business Consultant, Newspaper Publisher. Radio News caster. Labor Law generalist, Teamster Union Business Agent, General Organizer, Union Rank and File Member Grievances Representative, NLRB Union Representative, Union Contract Negotiator, Workers Compensation Appeals Board Hearing Representative. Mr. Webster publishes the on-line newspaper the Laguna Journal and does investigative reports for print, electronic and on-line News Agencies. Click on or Google Michael Webster’s other writings.
Posted by Milton Henyon
BY MICHAEL WEBSTER: Syndicated Investigative Reporter: Mon Jan 19, 2009 at 12:01 PM PST.
A full scale civil war is underway in Mexico. The Mexican President Felipe Calderon and the powerful drug cartels that operate unmolested throughout Mexico are locked in a battle over control of the country. With tens of thousands of the Mexican army fully deployed and often fighting Zetas’ (ex-Mexican army Special Forces trained in the U.S.) who is now working for the cartels.
The Mexican government has not been able to curtail the on going gruesome and erupting new violence and confrontations between the two warring parties throughout Mexico. This relentless fighting with casualties on both sides is in truth and scope a civil war. Mexico try’s to hide that fact and the United States is apparently in total denial.
To date some 7,000 Mexicans have died in this war – all attributable to the government versus the rich and powerful Mexican Drug Cartels war.
During 2008 Mexico’s violent deaths broke historic records raising the death toll to 5,630 execution murders, beating out last years all time record.
In 2008, more people lost their lives in Mexico do to violence then were lost in the war torn countries of Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
Were it not for the fact that the cartels are also frequently at war with one another, they might have won the war by now and would be in complete control of Mexico.
Execution-style murders, beheadings, dismemberings and kidnappings are common now in every state in Mexico on a daily basis. Gun battles are frequent events in Mexico City and in Mexican towns all along the border. On Jan. 5, the body of Jose Ivan Vasquez Lopez, 43, was found in a trash drum with his head cut off. On Jan. 7, the body of Ricardo Arturo Alvarado Contreras, 45, was found dead in a vacant lot with his hands chopped off. Mexican border town officials have crossed into the U.S. seeking asylum, fearing for their lives.
Now a third factor is reported to be getting into Mexico’s civil war as the Mexican border towns are void of tourist. Mexican citizens are getting feed up with not having any business and that is making it very difficult to survive and make ends meet said Jose Lopez a shop keeper in what had normally been a busy typical Mexican border town and we the people are done with the fear and the bloody killings on our streets.
A group calling itself the Juárez Citizens Command is threatening to strike back against lawlessness that has gripped the city for a long time they say that they are striking back by killing one criminal a day until order and piece is restored. A potential rise in vigilante justice in Juárez is expected by some experts to spread throughout Mexico and would raise the steaks and escalate an already dangerous and bloody civil war.
The city’s police and the Mexican army together have not been able to stop the plague of killings, beheadings, or the extortion targeted business owners, teachers, medical professionals, or the carjackings, kidnappings, robberies and other crime. Last year, more than 1,600 people were slain in Juárez alone.
“Better the death of a bad person, than that bad person continue contaminating our region,” the group, named Comando Ciudadano por Juárez, or CCJ in Spanish, stated in a news release spread on the Internet.
“There is a call for the public to remain calm,” said Andres Andreu, a Juárez representative in the Chihuahua state congress.
“In anger, this could start an uncontrollable wave of unjust deaths,” Andreu said in a statement condemning vigilantism and urging authorities to do more to stop the violence. “Movements of this nature are directed more by a sense of vengeance than of justice.”
The El Paso times reported that Howard Campbell, an anthropology Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso stated: “What (vigilantism) says is people do not think the government can fix the violence, you have to remember, there is the whole history — the killing of the women and the drug killings. The common person feels there is no one to protect them.”
The environment exists for the creation for a group such as the CCJ, Campbell said. If the CCJ is real, Howard said, it could be reminiscent of Los Pepes, assassins who in the early 1990s targeted relatives and associates of drug lord Pablo Escobar in Colombia.
It was rumored that Los Pepes might have had links to rival drug traffickers or government special forces, including those in the United States.
Lynchings, mob beatings and other forms of vigilante justice are not unheard of in Mexico and other parts of Latin America, often because of lack of trust in government and law enforcement authorities.
Not long ago an enraged mob swarmed three federal police officers in the Mexico City suburb of San Juan Ixtayopan, and beat them nearly lifeless then doused them with gasoline and then burned two of them alive while thousands watched live on national television.
Dramatic as it was, the cop killings were not an isolated incident. Vigilantism has taken root in Latin America over the past decade, lending credence to the notion that the region is in the throes of a civil war. From Venezuela and Guatemala to Bolivia and Peru, angry crowds are increasingly taking the law into their own hands, meting out physical punishment for crimes real and imagined. Vigilantes often “lynch” common criminals who, in their view, have escaped justice. More recently they’ve started attacking public officials suspected of malfeasance. A mob in the Peruvian town of Ilave beat their mayor after accusing him of embezzlement, then dragged him into a public square and left him to die. “Lynching has grown totally out of control,” says
Mark Ungar, an expert on Latin American police reform at the Woodrow Wilson International School for Scholars in Washington. “It’s spreading in the sense that vigilantes are going after criminals, officials, even governments–and once it starts it’s hard to stop.”
Mexican civil war is also spilling over into the U.S. Reports of incursions into the U.S. by heavily armed men in Mexican army uniforms (and often driving U.S.-made Humvees) now occurs on a regular basis. Sometimes the “soldiers” are cartel men, probably ex-Mexican army; sometimes they are real Mexican army. In many cases, their purpose is to escort and protect a drug run into the U.S. and back off any lightly armed local sheriff or Border Patrol agent in the way.
The evidence is clear Mexico is in a civil war and this civil war is happening in America’s back yard in a neighboring country of a population of well over 100 million people. A 2000 mile open border and with corrupt officials operating on both sides of the Rio Grande River. There are estimates that the Mexican cartels produce, smuggle and sell some $300 billion worth of drugs into the U.S. annually. These drugs are poisoning our children and violently killing citizens on both sides of the U.S. Mexican border.
Editors Note:
Michael Webster’s Syndicated Investigative Reports are read worldwide, in 100 or more U.S. outlets and in at least 136 countries and territories. He has published articles for Maxims News, which is associated with MediaChannel.org and Globalvision News Network, global news and media information services with more than 350 news affiliates in 135 countries. Many of Mr. Webster’s articles are printed in six working languages: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish. With ten more languages planed in the near future.
Mr. Webster is America’s leading authority on Venture Capital/Equity Funding. A trustee on some of the nations largest trade Union funds. A noted Author, Lecturer, Educator, Emergency Manager, Counter-Terrorist, War on Drugs and War on Terrorist Specialist, Business Consultant, Newspaper Publisher. Radio News caster. Labor Law generalist, Teamster Union Business Agent, General Organizer, Union Rank and File Member Grievances Representative, NLRB Union Representative, Union Contract Negotiator, Workers Compensation Appeals Board Hearing Representative. Mr. Webster publishes the on-line newspaper the Laguna Journal and does investigative reports for print, electronic and on-line News Agencies. Click on or Google Michael Webster’s other writings.
Posted by Milton Henyon