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Mendocino County Today: February 11, 2013

THE KEEGAN MURDER CASE remains on hold. How long will it remain on hold? If we weren't talking about a murder it would be laughable (or suspicious) that the case would be stuck in what seems to be permanent limbo. Susan Keegan was bludgeoned to death in her Ukiah home the night of November 11th 2010. (A comprehensive account can be found elsewhere on our website — https://www.theava.com/archives/15379) Her death has since been ruled as homicide. There was one other person in the home when Mrs. Keegan was murdered, and that person was her husband, Doctor Peter Keegan. Why hasn't Dr. Keegan been arrested and charged? Because the Sheriff's Department initially failed to treat Mrs. Keegan's death as a crime scene, simply taking the Doctor's word that his late wife fell in her bathroom, hit her head and died. The Doctor wasted no time slandering his late wife to the police as drug and drink addicted, which she wasn't. Arrest has been delayed because the case against the Doctor has had to be made well after the fact of the poor woman's death, thanks to the cops screwing it up from the outset. And, it seems, the DA's office is still assembling that case. Two forensics warrants have been served on the Keegan house, one not long ago and, one supposes, the results from the second visit are being analyzed. Soon after his wife's murder, Doctor Keegan hired Ukiah criminal defense attorney, Keith Faulder, an expenditure an innocent man would not think to make. It's time for the DA to move.

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STATEMENT OF THE DAY: “Rodney King's name is a hot button for some. Can anyone name the African-American man who saved Reginald Denny's life at great risk to himself? Bobby Green was one of the riot's greatest heroes. The black truck driver was watching the violence unfold on television at his Los Angeles home when he saw Denny being attacked and quickly headed to the scene. He helped push Denny back into his truck's cab and then drove him to the hospital, saving his life. Later, despite threats and insults from the community, he went on to testify against Denny's attackers. He and his family have since moved to a suburb east of Los Angeles and he did not respond to messages for comment. On the 10th anniversary of the riot, he told the Los Angeles Times: ‘I can tell my kids that color is on the outside, not the inside. To me, I turned justice around and showed them that all black people ain't the same as you think’.” (from KTVU.com)

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THE 13-YEAR-OLD Annapolis girl who shot herself to death last Tuesday was apparently a victim of sexting and betrayal. She'd taken a picture of herself nude, another young person copied the picture off to others, mortifying the child. The humiliation of her being revealed this way was too much for the child to bear, and she ended her life before it had really begun.

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KZYX HAS SOME COMPETITION on the South Coast from KGUA, a project of the Native Media Resource Center. KGUA even describes itself as “local listener-supported community radio” while urging listeners to “call for reasonable underwriting rates.” Programming is confined to the daylight hours and is similar in content to KZYX, leading off at 8am with Democracy Now, then an hour called “Peggy's Place” with the station's founder, Peggy Berryhill, and lots of programming directed at Native Americans throughout the week.

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Ochoa
Ochoa
Salgado
Salgado

THE VICTIM of the January 29th night-time drive-by in Gualala has been identified as Lupe Medina, a resident of the South Coast since 1991. Ms. Medina has been left blind in one eye. A cook at the Point Arena casino, it is unlikely that Ms. Medina was the intended target of the shooters who were arrested and identified the night of the shooting as John Ochoa, 21, of Rohnert Park, and Lamont Benito Salgado, 18, of Stewart's Point. Ochoa remains in custody. Salgado, much to the surprise of many South Coast residents, posted an extraordinarily low bail of $65,000. ($65,000 translates as $6,500 to a bail bondsman who keeps that ten percent assuming the person he bonds out of jail makes his court appearances.) Ordinarily, considering the circumstances — multiple shots fired, a person badly injured, plus likely gang enhancements — bail would be set much higher. The shooters will appear this Wednesday in Ten Mile Court, Fort Bragg.

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TODAY COMMENCES the Chinese Year of the Snake. Mendocino County's Year of the Snake seems, well, perennial.

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RON MILES

Mar 4, 1948-Feb 1, 2013

RonMilesRon Miles passed away at his home in Redwood Valley with family by his side on Feb 1 at the age of 64 after a brief battle with cancer. Ron spent his life as a mechanic fixing cars and heavy machinery utilizing skills he learned from his father-in-law Johnny Riva, of Riva Motors, who was very special to him. But his life's dream was building his own home which he accomplished at the age of 50. He loved hunting on his and his wife's Modoc ranch and in the Ruby mountains of Nevada with his daughter Tracy. He was a truly special man, loved by all, and will be remembered for his love and kindness of others. He will forever be loved by his best friend and loving wife, Dianna, and his daughters and sons-in-law Tracy and Nate Morales of Gardnerville, NV and Nina and Len Vieira of Riverbank, CA. The light of his life was his grandchildren Sai and Handsome Morales and Brooklyn and Gabriel Vieira. He was born in Mena, AR to James Theron Sr. and Marjorie Miles who met him in heaven. He was raised in Boonville before moving to Ukiah and finally Redwood Valley. He will be missed by his brother Jim Miles (Dawn) of Rathdrum, ID, sister Ginger Mellor (Frank) of Eugene, OR and sister Kathy Mangrum of Eugene, OR as well as brother-in-law Leon Smith (Charlene) and family of Vancouver, WA and sister-in-law Dorenna Hayes (Robert) and his special nephews Nathan and Hayden, and Jeremy Miles (Tonya), his mother-in-law Mabel Wells, nephews George (Cathy), Todd, Frankie, Curtis, and neice Ronni and several great nephews and nieces. Special thanks to friends Lauren Abshire and Gary and RaeAnn Robertson, his hospice nurse Deana Starr, Jeremy and Tonya Miles, and their neighbors for all their love and support for him and his family. A Celebration of Life will be held on Saturday, February 16 at the home of Gary Robertson located at 680 Road N, Redwood Valley at 1:30pm. In lieu of flowers, Ron would appreciate donations made to Phoenix Hospice of Mendocino County, 100 San Hedrin Circle, Willits, CA 95490 as thanks for all their help through his battle with cancer.

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POINT CABRILLO Light Station State Historic Park offers a variety of volunteer opportunities: in the 1909 Light House, with Whale Festival (March 2-3 and 16-17, 2013), lead tours of the 300 acre State Historic Park, interpret Marine Science, help in the office with data entry and volunteer record keeping, or show off and interpret the history of the First Assistant Light Keeper’s Home.

MARINE SCIENCE, DOCENT TRAINING

Saturday February 16th, 1 to 4pm. A healthy ocean is very important to all of us - particularly those of us who live here. If you volunteer to be a docent at our beautiful aquarium, you'll learn about local marine life, and how to discuss it with visitors. No experience necessary - just a love of nature. Meet at The Smithy (near the lighthouse.) Contact: Caroline Schooley 964-9460 or schooley@mcn.org or Nancy Kleiber nkleiberca@mac.com

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NORMAN DEVALL FEARS Mendo might be fracked. The following is an exchange between deVall and Supervisor John McCowen:

DeVALL: "John, Had we waited for the first drill rig off our coast we would have never the mounted enough opposition to stop it. We know that we have petroleum resources within the County. Please remember that they drilled for oil in Pt. Arena during WW II. Only an over abundance of sulphur brought the project to an end. Drilling was proposed on the Manchester Anticline in the early 1980's/ We exported tins of oil off this coast at the turn of the last century. Thus the name of Petrolia in Humboldt County. Oil seeps have been located in San Juan Creek north of Ft. Bragg In our phone conversation of a month ago I referred to the change in acquirer temperature changes after Mt. St. Helens erupted in the 1980's. PG&E still holds their energy/power easement from Pt. Arena to the gas lines alongside Highway 101. (I wonder if they were ever recorded). Please reconsider….or at least ask the question. Thank you, Norman"

MCCOWEN REPLIED: Norman, Check out this link:

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/130110071032-california-shale-map-monster.jpg

Don't you think we should find out if there is any realistic chance of fracking being used in Mendocino County before we ban it? Or do you also favor a ban on open pit coal mining in Mendocino County? We have enough real issues to deal with. Seriously. Show me some evidence there is any prospect of this technology being used here and I'm right there with you. John

DAVID SOLNIT of Berkeley writes: How can anybody even mention fracking in California without also mentioning the millions of gallons of water that it uses? Since when do we have that much water to spare? Last I heard, we had no water to spare. This is California, remember? Where we worry about droughts, where the guy measuring the Sierra snowpack is featured in the news every year, and where the water supply is only going to get more uncertain than it already is as the effects of climate change play out.

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THE DIGNITY CAMPAIGN'S ALTERNATIVE VISION FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM. By David Bacon

Oakland— For some immigrant rights organizations, President Obama's principles for comprehensive immigration reform sound very familiar. "The idea of the three-part tradeoff, that is, that we get some legalization in trade for guest worker programs and increased immigration enforcement, has been around for a long time," says Lillian Galedo, executive director of Filipino Advocates for Justice in the San Francisco Bay Area. "We need a new alternative, based on much more progressive ideas. I don't think the Dignity Campaign is the only alternative, but it's an effort to get us to talk about what we actually want, not just what politicians in Washington DC tell us is politically possible or necessary."

The Dignity Campaign is a loose network of over 40 immigrant rights and community organizations, unions and churches that has crafted an immigration reform proposal "based on human and labor rights." (Full disclosure: I am an active supporter of the Dignity Campaign.) But it is more than a network and a particular proposal. It is an alternative to the political strategy behind the tradeoff. And the campaign's member organizations support it because of what they call the bitter impact of earlier tradeoffs over the last 30 years.

In Tucson, Arizona, the Coalicion de Derechos Humanos calls comprehensive immigration reform, the shorthand name for the tradeoff strategy, "primarily a vague promise used to attract immigrant and Latino voters, [while] border communities have suffered the costs of irresponsible and brutal enforcement-only policies, resulting in death and violence." A recent study found the federal government spends more today on border and immigration enforcement than on all other law enforcement agencies combined.

When the first discussions of the Dignity Campaign proposal began four years ago, Derechos Humanos formulated the demands about border enforcement. Instead of even more immigration agents, walls and now drones, they calls for dismantling the high tech wall, removing the National Guard, closing private mass detention centers, and restoring civil rights to people living in border communities.

Garcia is a public defender, and every day her fellow lawyers defend dozens of young people brought into Tucson's Operation Streamline courtroom in chains, where they're sentenced to prison terms for border crossing. "That courtroom should be closed," she says, "and the money redirected to healthcare and education, which our state is now busy cutting." Derechos Humanos wrote that demand into the Dignity Campaign proposal too.

Galedo and Garcia first saw the tradeoff in 1986, in the Immigration Reform and Control Act. That law, signed by President Ronald Reagan, set up an amnesty that gave legal status relatively quickly to almost four million people. Nevertheless, they and other immigration activists of the day, including Bert Corona -- widely recognized as the father of the modern immigrant rights movement -- campaigned against it. The bill also contained employer sanctions, a provision that made it illegal for employers to hire undocumented workers, and expanded a limited guest worker program into today's H2-A visa scheme.

"We've lived with the consequences ever since," Galedo says. "That's why, when we look at Obama's principles, or the CIR bills of the last decade, we think not just about our need for legalization, but that we'll have another 25 years of enforcement and more guest workers. Because we've lived with those costs we believe the best starting point for immigration reform is a discussion of what immigrant communities actually need and want, and what we know will actually solve the social problems around migration. That's the source of the Dignity Campaign."

In San Jose, the heart of Silicon Valley, Local 5 of the United Food and Commercial Workers has been fighting the use of employer sanctions against workers at the Mi Pueblo market chain, where they've been organizing a union for three years. The community coalition supporting the union declared in a letter to Janet Napolitano "It is clear that Mi Pueblo is using an I-9 audit [an administration enforcement tactic for employer sanctions] to terrorize workers because the workers are exercising their right to end labor violations and organize a union."

Local 5 is a member of the Dignity Campaign, and, together with the Laborers Union, brought it to the South Bay Labor Council, which voted to support it. One important reason is that the campaign advocates the repeal of employer sanctions, while every CIR proposal from 1986 on has called for even greater measures to criminalize work for the undocumented.

Anoop Prasad, staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco, worries that President Obama's plan for mandatory national use of the E-Verify database [another tactic for enforcing employer sanctions] "would in effect compel employers to act as immigration agents, responsible for verifying employees' immigration status. This approach has not only proven ineffective in deterring people from coming to the U.S., it inhibits workers from exercising their basic workplace rights and protections." Another leg of the tradeoff, expanded guest worker programs, are also hotly opposed by Dignity Campaign organizations. Some wanted them abolished immediately because of a long record of employer abuse, while others favored an approach based on ensuring that workers in those programs have rights. In the end, the proposal called for their abolition after five years, and increased enforcement of worker rights during that period.

A resolution passed in 2011 by the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (the AFL-CIO's constituency group for Latino union members), and by labor councils and local unions "supports the proposal for an alternative immigration reform bill made by the Dignity Campaign, because it is based on protecting the labor and human rights for all people," and notes that guest worker programs treat migrants "as low wage workers with no rights, in conditions described as 'Close to Slavery' by the Southern Poverty Law Center,"

Even among the labor leaders surrounding President Obama as he announced his principles, some clearly did not agree with his call for expanding guest worker programs. Communications Workers President Larry Cohen warned "CWA will monitor any proposed changes to visa programs like the H-1B visa, which are sought after by business but have cost U.S. technicians and other workers tens of thousands of jobs."

Changing trade policy especially separates the Dignity Campaign and other grassroots proposals from beltway CIR programs, which depend on support from corporate employers. The Dignity Campaign proposal was modeled on the Trade Act, introduced by Congressman Mike Michaud (D-ME), and calls for renegotiating all trade agreements to eliminate provisions that increase poverty abroad and displace workers and farmers, or lower their living standards.

"Massive migration caused by poverty can only be addressed by changing those policies that cause poverty in the first place," says Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance. "President Obama promised to renegotiate NAFTA before his first election, and that promise must now be kept as part of a humane immigration policy."

The Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations is an organization of Mexican indigenous communities with a base in Oaxaca, and chapters in California and Baja California where Oaxacans travel as migrant workers. For Jose Gonzalez, its binational vice-coordinator in San Diego, "the economic policies of the U.S. must be changed, because they are an enormous factor displacing people from our communities, forcing us to leave as our only way to survive. Instead of trade policies causing displacement, new ways of dealing with the future flows of migrants should guarantee us rights and equality."

FIOB held a long series of meetings among its chapters and at its binational assembly, and adopted its own program for progressive immigration reform. It joined the Dignity Campaign at the beginning, and in addition called for protecting indigenous culture among migrants, and language rights. FIOB also opposes guest worker programs

"As a binational organization, our members know migration because we experience it in our own lives," it said on International Migrants Day last December. "The Dignity Campaign makes a clear demand for a broad immigration reform, and deals directly with the situation in which we live in our communities of origin."

Finally, the Dignity Campaign calls for legal status for the undocumented, in a rapid and inclusive process, without excessive fees, fines, waiting periods or a preliminary temporary status. At the same time, it also calls for protecting the family reunification system. and eliminating the current huge backlog by issuing all pending visas within a short period.

The Obama proposal, like most CIR bills of the last decade, pits people applying for family visas against those needing legalization. It proposes that the undocumented, "must wait until the existing legal immigration backlogs are cleared before getting in line to apply for lawful permanent residency (i.e. a 'green card'), and ultimately United States citizenship." Today some applicants in Mexico City receiving family reunification visas applied over twenty years ago. In Manila the line is even longer. But no CIR proposal would issue more family visas to clear that backlog, while on the other hand they increase visas for guest workers.

"The only way to resolve this is by eliminating the backlogs," Galedo says. "In our community we have people who have been waiting for years, and according to the federal government, 280,000 undocumented Filipinos as well. We need common ground here, not a fight."

The Dignity Campaign is more than just a set of principles. It is a critique of the politics and strategy of CIR, especially over process. Garcia and others believe the CIR bills are products of Washington DC insiders, not the result of consultation with grassroots immigrant communities, unions and churches. "Now that there finally appears to be the political will to address immigration, it is critical that the voices of these communities be central in the debate," she urges.

Over the past few years, especially since the failure of the last big reform bills, this kind of process has taken place in many parts of the country. In addition to the FIOB consultations, in Washington State, Community2Community and Pueblo Unido por la Dignidad organized over 30 Dignity Dialogues to get input from immigrant communities. The Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance talked about an alternative to the CIR bills at its annual Black/Brown conferences of African American and immigrant community leaders.

Even before the Dignity Campaign started, the American Friends Service Committee had extensive community meetings that resulted in a plan called "A New Path." The Dignity Campaign proposal drew extensively on its ideas. There are others as well, but almost all have basic elements in common.

Campaign participants warn that the CIR proposals will move to the right as they go through Congress. Political insiders in the nation's capitol already say President Obama's proposal will be the "left pole" in negotiations over immigration reform. In other words, Republicans, employer groups and immigration restrictionists will bend it to the right. This is what happened in the effort to pass the succession CIR billss over the last decade, and one reason why they died. It is an important reason many groups outside of Washington have called for an alternative.

In the battles over those earlier bills, advocates for more progressive ideas were criticized for "making the perfect the enemy of the good," discrediting what was "politically possible," and dividing the base of support for CIR. Yet with weak progressive pressure on Congress, every new restriction, enforcement measure or "labor shortage" program peeled away supporters. They also lost some support on the right because they weren't restrictive enough. Eventually CIR had too little support to pass.

Yet immigration reform resonated when it was linked to a fight for greater rights in general, and for jobs. Many of the organizations that developed the Dignity Campaign supported a bill introduced by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee that tied legalization to job training and creation programs, and bolstered workplace rights instead of increasing enforcement. "Finding common ground between African Americans and immigrants is a key to winning immigration reform," according to Bill Chandler. "Fighting for jobs and rights is a much better way to do that than anti-immigrant enforcement and guest worker programs."

MIRA's base among immigrants and African American political leaders has a history of successfully defeating anti-immigrant bills in the state legislature. Chandler says a movement-building strategy is necessary to produce real change. "It was the civil rights movement that ended the old bracero guest worker program, and won the 1965 immigration reform that repealed discriminatory quotas and set up the family reunification system," he emphasizes.

Whether the Dignity Campaign proposal, and others like it, become the basis of an alternative bill in Congress depends on the willingness of progressive members to act independently. In the face of pressure to line up behind the President, it is unclear whether that will happen. But Jackson Lee did introduce her alternative at the height of the last debate. John Conyers sponsored a "Medicare for All" bill that many credit with keeping pressure on the President from the left during the health care debate.

The Dignity Campaign says, "We need to raise our aspirations, rather than simply criticize Congressional proposals." Its supporters argue that a progressive alternative gives the movement a goal and a vision to organize and educate the community. Instead of being "the enemy of the good," Rosalinda Guillen of Community2Community says, "A good proposal will rescue immigration reform from bad ones."

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Coming in 2013 from Beacon Press:

The Right to Stay Home: Ending Forced Migration and the Criminalization of Immigrants

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DISPLACED, UNEQUAL AND CRIMINALIZED - A Report by David Bacon for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation on the political economy of immigration

http://www.rosalux-nyc.org/displaced-unequal-and-criminalized/

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David Bacon and Anoop Prasad on what's wrong with the current immigration reform proposals in Washington DC

http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/88447

David Bacon talks with Solange Echevarria of KWMR about growers push for guest worker programs. Advance to 88 minutes for the interview.

http://kwmr.org/blog/show/4156

David Bacon at the Gandhi-King Youth and Community Conference, Memphis 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1PXka-Sbq4&feature=player_embedded

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See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008)

Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008

http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002

See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US

Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)

http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575

See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html

Entrevista de David Bacon con activistas de #yosoy132 en UNAM

Interview of David Bacon by activists of #yosoy132 at UNAM (in Spanish)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyF6AJQa9po&feature=relmfu

Two lectures on the political economy of migration by David Bacon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GgDWf9eefE&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd4OLdaoxvg&feature=related

For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org

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