tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82893102024-03-18T22:06:35.788-06:00duckdaotsu media artslisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.comBlogger3222125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-1107989657028921162017-10-05T15:41:00.000-06:002017-10-05T10:44:02.878-06:00Photography <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<ul>
<li> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgULxtFk7s2EXPl5MAum_n62X_YvHkrxejqMU-RhFK1vF6QX4PFbizOETVf5U9hwRlpCv61cRdTKDCvHgNImKmbQ2G69RtkgLDxX6zkN7ob_mgUxBYQpJulxrdEnoXxKgHFue0m/s1600/bw+mahog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="453" data-original-width="535" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgULxtFk7s2EXPl5MAum_n62X_YvHkrxejqMU-RhFK1vF6QX4PFbizOETVf5U9hwRlpCv61cRdTKDCvHgNImKmbQ2G69RtkgLDxX6zkN7ob_mgUxBYQpJulxrdEnoXxKgHFue0m/s320/bw+mahog.jpg" width="320" /></a></li>
</ul>
</div>
lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-70122848355231855122013-06-11T21:50:00.002-06:002013-06-12T08:06:11.504-06:00Roseanne, vagenius poet, East Colfax, and yellow bathroom doors<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
@<a href="https://twitter.com/lisbethwest">lisbethwest</a> vagenius poetry<br />
— Roseanne Barr (@TheRealRoseanne) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheRealRoseanne/status/341403424807604225">June 3, 2013</a></blockquote>
I must admit that the title of "Vagenius poet" was a huge ego burst for a short time. Yup, I wrote a great poem. I knew it when it was being penned and I mean that literally. I do not write poetry. It writes me.<br />
<br />
And so I have spoken this poem, i am stood in the mirror and recited this poem when finally, then-memories of my own childhood abuse came rushing to me in that terrifying, liberating, life-changing day. I remember standing and looking at myself in that mirror and knowing, finally, truth.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
@<a href="https://twitter.com/lisbethwest">lisbethwest</a> we said 'the children will speak the names of their secret abusers'<br />
— Roseanne Barr (@TheRealRoseanne) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheRealRoseanne/status/341403173010939905">June 3, 2013</a></blockquote>
So the Roseanne I met at the bookstore back in the '70s was a helluva woman. She became part of the collective with the spirit, dedication and absolute conviction that has become evident to the world. She opened the door for many of us<br />
<br />
Those memories flooded when we connected on twitter. I did a photo exhibit for the first Lesbian convention held in Denver, and most of the subjects were women from the bookstore. These are packed away, I work to get to them and will find them soon as i have helpers coming to go through some of the things I need to finally accept.. time to give away, throw away, or keep dear.<br />
<br />
I remembered being a single woman. I didn't marry a man until I was 43. I married a woman at age 39. We remain wed, though she is incarcerated in a nursing home in Texas.<br />
<br />
And so, the vagenius poet has not much to poeticize today. Oh wait. The poem I wrote for my wife.<br />
<br />
Roseanne's Poem can be found at http://vageniuspoet.wordpress.com/ <br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS';">
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #000026;"><b> thirty</b><br /><span style="color: #000026;"></span> </span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #000026;"></span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #000026; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS';"><span style="color: #000026;">you are the twelve year old</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">child who daddy</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">used to lie on top of his thick palm</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">slapped over your mouth</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">you learned not to scream</span></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #000026; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS';"><span style="color: #000026;"></span><span style="color: #000026;">you are a twelve year old</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">child who learned</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">to pierce your screams with a needle</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">you spiked heroin into your vision</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">you learned not to scream</span><span style="color: #000026;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #000026;"></span></span></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #000026; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS';"><span style="color: #000026;">you are a hundred year old</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">junkie the monkey</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">lays on top of you his thick palm</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">forcing himself inside you</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">you need no screams</span><span style="color: #000026;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #000026;"></span></span></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #000026; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS';"><span style="color: #000026;">you are that sixty year old</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">daddy the rapist</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">who lays on top of me your screams</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">forcing yourself inside me</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">I learn not to scream</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;"></span> <span style="color: #000026;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #000026;">twelve year old</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">children we watch</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">from the corner of the room</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">slapped silent by his thick palm</span></span></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #000026; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: xx-small;"><i>
<span style="color: #000026;">©2000 lisbeth west</span><br /><span style="color: #000026;">written May 1, 1992</span></i></span></blockquote>
<i><span style="color: magenta; font-size: xx-small;">for my wife, Candy. </span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="background-color: yellow; font-size: xx-small;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="background-color: yellow; color: purple; font-size: xx-small;">You will have to come back for the yellow bathroom door. </span></i></div>
lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-28955259706448938362013-06-11T21:33:00.002-06:002013-06-11T21:33:45.644-06:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Hear ye, hear ye! Be it known throughout the Twitterverse & beyond that @<a href="https://twitter.com/therealroseanne">therealroseanne</a> hath gifted us with "vagenius!" @<a href="https://twitter.com/lisbethwest">lisbethwest</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23WotD">#WotD</a><br />
— fugi #RecoverySec (@fugitive247) <a href="https://twitter.com/fugitive247/status/342410158758047744">June 5, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
</div>
lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-39386046316151265892013-05-28T08:06:00.000-06:002013-05-28T08:06:03.981-06:00Peabody is getting back into her tree, after watching a horrid trauma involving an Owl and two SeaBright chicks...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><iframe width="520" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/kSf9JBmT3KI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br /></div>lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-46352697607360651872013-05-16T19:05:00.002-06:002013-05-16T22:07:12.707-06:00ALFALFA<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Copperplate, sans serif;"> The fowl see themselves on a 5x7 screen</span></h2>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/s8tnc4cgFd0?rel=0" width="420"></iframe>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Copperplate, 'sans serif';">The peacock might have fallen in love (again) ...</span></div>
</div>
lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-58819890656623178532013-05-13T01:02:00.003-06:002013-05-13T01:02:41.265-06:00May Day 2013<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://naphone.org/mayday.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="579" src="http://naphone.org/mayday.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-51339089579286151902013-05-09T23:20:00.001-06:002013-05-13T00:49:08.551-06:00The big news around the barnyard ...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">T</span></span><b><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">he big news around the barnyard is that Peabody, the five year old white Chinese peahen (that's a female peacock for you city slickers) has decided to mate this year. We have a new duck that came to us last fall who was already a bit confused, as he had raised a chick from birth and felt very motherly toward the whole flock. He did meet other ducks here. </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Ling looks like the AFLACK duck, he's a white Pekin. Here's the fun part. Peabody and Ling started to notice each other a few weeks back, and then started hanging out together. </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">We watched as the began to sit near each other (Peabody never sits that close) and next came the grooming. We have officially declared them mated.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Their courtship ritual is wonderful and believe us when we share that it isn't the strangest courtship we've seen in this barnyard. But it is the most wonderful, as Peabody and Ling have both found a fine spouse.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">An impromptu wedding took place the day after this original blog subject was posted. Here are the photos from the event and a description by a local admirier:</span></b><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">The
wedding of the Peacock and the Duck took place in the West barnyard Friday May 10, 2013 at 7:30am MDT. Stills are in order of the lovely wedding, some
show the full blessing ceremony. May we present Mr and Mrs
Ling-Peabody! We were able to take stills of the ceremony as it was rather loud to the average vidoe listener, but if you click on the You Tube movie, you can witness their first dance.</span></span></i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"type":45}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">THE WEDDING OF LING AND PEABODY. </span></span></span></b></span></span><br />
<i><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: purple;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"type":45}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">Officiated by Bitsy Gander.</span></span></span></span></span> </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinpldz9o0lkbarAzqMRQb4POJNZRsF-0fUjcwScmRwd5NH1vfKnl3Be13z-aEe9GrBoURddZBBAcrBFP6tPPZLJGSKZLxypRo7x3jFl3-oCSVgI9rqm3pgUvdCPYoDh90yRk6U/s1600/Do+you,+Ling+Ling,+take+this+Peahen,+Peabody,+to+be+your+webbed+err+wedded+partner%3f.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinpldz9o0lkbarAzqMRQb4POJNZRsF-0fUjcwScmRwd5NH1vfKnl3Be13z-aEe9GrBoURddZBBAcrBFP6tPPZLJGSKZLxypRo7x3jFl3-oCSVgI9rqm3pgUvdCPYoDh90yRk6U/s320/Do+you,+Ling+Ling,+take+this+Peahen,+Peabody,+to+be+your+webbed+err+wedded+partner%3f.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"type":45}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">"Do you, Ling Ling, take this Peahen, Peabody, to be your webbed err wedded partner?"</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7l99gr1sofdAwAZoHHW5RoQ6o8ajIKe0u1TMFtIj_D21kNSEtB1AaEpRyRQ_nZWhPtYCtJ-D2QLtpKa6a2QvWpDK1SIdsGa2NvC7VizfMQAcqeFoVcOBTFDm5J98Rwz_GvPCt/s1600/%22And+do+you,+Peabody,+take+this+duck,+Ling+Ling,+to+be+your+webbed+err+wedded+partner%3f%22.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7l99gr1sofdAwAZoHHW5RoQ6o8ajIKe0u1TMFtIj_D21kNSEtB1AaEpRyRQ_nZWhPtYCtJ-D2QLtpKa6a2QvWpDK1SIdsGa2NvC7VizfMQAcqeFoVcOBTFDm5J98Rwz_GvPCt/s320/%22And+do+you,+Peabody,+take+this+duck,+Ling+Ling,+to+be+your+webbed+err+wedded+partner%3f%22.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"type":45}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">"And do you, Peabody, take this duck, Ling Ling, to be your webbed err wedded partner?"</span></span><span class="fbPhotoTagList" id="fbPhotoSnowliftTagList"><span class="fcg"> </span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQmmymSkH8nKdmcsnkjK2_bhU_jeXg-Qq6ie4tSFng0dzGBWtGV0Ia73gO-necsWBxla3w_QUZ3UiBwEjLI-iVNcYpHWr5CUAyo5bAKxfYaMC2BxPWYIIUPwvWdohVEPnuovFZ/s1600/%22I+NOW+PRONOUNCE+YOU+HUSBAND+AND+WIFE.+You+may+groom+the+bride+or+bridle+the+groom,+the+barnyard+is+going+to+PARTEE%22.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQmmymSkH8nKdmcsnkjK2_bhU_jeXg-Qq6ie4tSFng0dzGBWtGV0Ia73gO-necsWBxla3w_QUZ3UiBwEjLI-iVNcYpHWr5CUAyo5bAKxfYaMC2BxPWYIIUPwvWdohVEPnuovFZ/s320/%22I+NOW+PRONOUNCE+YOU+HUSBAND+AND+WIFE.+You+may+groom+the+bride+or+bridle+the+groom,+the+barnyard+is+going+to+PARTEE%22.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"type":45}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">"I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU HUSBAND AND WIFE. You may groom the bride or bridle the groom, the barnyard is going to PARTEE"</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJa8m0CYu_KMCqo5nhyphenhyphenRrbDQNYAqzS_56SwcDc9iu5xj5kFXwSdDF4q1qCA7A40iJS5xZZF-ycPPe5CiXJXCB7F2j2whuxSqMyC55Knt2K4FgjXWo17YHkS3hc4PckYB2WtDIR/s1600/%22I+couldn%27t+be+happier+for+you+two+kids!%22.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJa8m0CYu_KMCqo5nhyphenhyphenRrbDQNYAqzS_56SwcDc9iu5xj5kFXwSdDF4q1qCA7A40iJS5xZZF-ycPPe5CiXJXCB7F2j2whuxSqMyC55Knt2K4FgjXWo17YHkS3hc4PckYB2WtDIR/s320/%22I+couldn%27t+be+happier+for+you+two+kids!%22.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"type":45}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">"I couldn't be happier for you two kids!"</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NBns3_2Ouic" width="400"></iframe>
</div>
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The first dance as <span style="font-size: large;">Mr. and Mrs. Ling-Peabody</span></span></span></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></span></h3>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">We thank you so much for all the joy and humor you've shared with us about this momentous occasion. </span></i></span></div>
</div>
lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-10333133256900197142013-05-09T22:06:00.003-06:002013-05-09T22:06:44.019-06:00In case you follow twitter, please follow @naphonemtg <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23MothersDay">#MothersDay</a> for a woman in <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23recovery">#recovery</a>? Give her childcare so she can go to a <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23meeting">#meeting</a>. And <a href="http://t.co/pKsgkgAjDY" title="http://naphone.org">naphone.org</a> for the rest of the year.<br />
— NA PHONE MEETINGS (@NAPHONEMTG) <a href="https://twitter.com/NAPHONEMTG/status/332706932009881600">May 10, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
</div>
lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-36109582823329360632013-04-30T12:18:00.002-06:002013-04-30T12:18:59.309-06:00MAY DAY MEANS MORE THAN BASKETS TO THE REST OF THE WORLD: National Immigrant Workers Rights March!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="moz-text-html" lang="x-unicode">
<span id="role_document" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">
<div>
<div>
<div align="left" class="style51">
<span class="style52"><span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><b>May Day 2013</b></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="style51 style58">
<span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><b>National Immigrant Workers Rights March!</b></span></div>
<div align="left" class="style51 style58">
<a href="http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/MayDay2013/index.html"><b><span style="font-size: large;">CALL TO ACTION!</span></b></a><b><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></b></div>
<div align="left" class="style51 style58">
<a href="http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/MayDay2013/events.htm"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Lists of Local May Day 2013 Events</span></b></a></div>
<table border="0" style="width: 575px;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th scope="col" valign="top" width="200"><img height="600" src="http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/images/MayDay2009/MayDay2009logosmall.jpg" width="200" /></th>
<th scope="col" valign="top" width="382"><span class="style81">National Immigrant Solidarity Network </span><a href="http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/">http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org</a><br />
<div align="center" class="style11">
<span class="style76">Please send your May Day
2013 action report to <a href="mailto:info@immigrantsolidarity.org">info@immigrantsolidarity.org</a></span></div>
<div align="left" class="boldSm01">
We are calling A national day of multi-ethnic
unity with youth, labor, peace and justice communities in solidarity with
immigrant workers and building new immigrant rights & civil rights
movement! Wear White T-Shirt; organize local actions to support immigrant
worker rights!</div>
<div align="left" class="style79">
1. No to anti-immigrant legislation, police
surveillance and the criminalization of the immigrant communities. <br />
2.
No to militarization of the border. <br />
3. No to the private prison,
immigrant detention and deportation. <br />
4. No to the guest worker
program. <br />
5. No to the NDAA, Gitmo political prisoner's camp. <br />
6.
Yes to a path to legalization without condition for undocumented
immigrants NOW. <br />
7. Yes to speedy family reunification. <br />
8. Yes to
civil rights and humane immigration law. <br />
9. Yes to labor rights and
living wages for all workers. <br />
10. Yes to the education and LGBTQ
immigrant legislation. </div>
</th></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<span lang="33" style="color: maroon; font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><b><br /></b></span>
<br />
<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" style="width: 570px;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td valign="top"><span id="role_document" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><div align="left" class="boldSm01">
We encourages everyone to actively linking
our issues with different struggles: wars in Africa, the Americas, Asia,
Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine & Korea with sweatshops exploitation in
Asia as well as in Los Angeles, New York; international arm sales and WTO,
FTAA, NAFTA & CAFTA with AIDS, hunger, child labors and child solider;
as well as multinational corporations and economic exploitation with
racism and poverty at home—in order we can win the struggle together at
this May Day 2013!</div>
<div align="center" class="style13">
<span class="style9">Past May Day Actions: <a href="http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/MayDay2010/MayDay2010Report.pdf"><br /></a><a href="http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/MayDay2011/">May Day
2011</a></span><span class="style9"><a href="http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/MayDay2010/MayDay2010Report.pdf">May
Day 2010 Reports from Across the Country</a></span> <span class="style75"><br /><a href="http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/MayDay2010/reports.html">May Day
2010 Reports Home Page</a></span></div>
<div align="center">
<img height="216" src="http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/MayDay2010/Photos/LA/LA-1.jpg" width="300" /></div>
<div align="left" class="boldSm01">
<div align="center">
<b>Los Angeles, May Day 2010</b></div>
</div>
<div align="left">
<span style="color: maroon; font-size: 22pt;"><span class="style60"><span class="style70"><span class="style28"><a class="style71" href="http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/MayDay2009Report/index.html">May
Day 2009 Photos & Essay Reports from around the
World</a></span></span></span></span> </div>
</span></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<span lang="33" style="color: maroon; font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><b><br />National Immigrant Solidarity Network<br />No
Immigrant Bashing! Support Immigrant Rights!</b></span><b><span lang="33" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />webpage: <a href="http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/">http://www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org</a><br />e-mail:
<a href="mailto:infor@ImmigrantSolidarity.org">info@ImmigrantSolidarity.org</a></span><span lang="33" style="color: #004040; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><br /><br />New York: (212)330-8172<br />Los Angeles:
(213)403-0131<br />Washington D.C.: (202)595-8990<br />Chicago:
(773)942-2268</span><span lang="33" style="color: red; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><br /><br /><br />* join the immigrant Solidarity Network daily
news litserv, send e-mail to:<br />
</span><span lang="33" style="color: navy; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><u>isn-subscribe@lists.riseup.net</u>
<br /><br /><br />Please consider making a donation to the important work of <br />
National
Immigrant Solidarity Network<br /><br />Send check pay to:</span><span lang="33" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><u><br />National
Immigrant Solidarity Network/AFGJ</u><br /><br />National Immigrant Solidarity
Network<br />P.O. Box 751<br />South Pasadena, CA 91031-0751</span><span lang="33" style="color: navy; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />(All
donations are tax
deductible)</span></b></div>
</div>
</div>
</span>
</div>
<div class="moz-text-plain" lang="x-unicode" style="font-family: -moz-fixed; font-size: 12px;" wrap="true">
<pre wrap=""><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, Times, serif;">**NEW Activist Tools from Peace NO War Network!**
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.activistvideo.org/">http://www.ActivistVideo.org</a>
An Activist-Run Video Sharing Page!
=================================================================
Peace, NO War
War is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate
Not in our Name! And another world is possible!
URL: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.peacenowar.net/">http://www.PeaceNoWar.net</a>
Tel: (213)403-0131
e-mail: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Info@PeaceNoWar.net">Info@PeaceNoWar.net</a>
Please Join PeaceNoWar Listserv, send e-mail to:
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:peacenowar-subscribe@lists.riseup.net">peacenowar-subscribe@lists.riseup.net</a>
Please Donate to Peace No War Network!
Send check pay to:
ActionLA/AFGJ
ActionLA
P.O. Box 751
South Pasadena, CA 91031-0751
(All donations are tax deductible)</span>
</pre>
</div>
</div>
lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-26688283784505305812013-04-02T17:50:00.000-06:002013-04-02T17:50:34.939-06:00Cruel and Unusual Punishment: The Shame of Three Strikes Laws<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Cruel and Unusual Punishment: The Shame of Three Strikes Laws</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
While Wall Street crooks walk, thousands sit in California prisons for life over crimes as trivial as stealing socks</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
by: Matt Taibbi</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Illustration by Victor Juhasz</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
On July 15th, 1995, in the quiet Southern California city of Whittier, a 33-year-old black man named Curtis Wilkerson got up from a booth at McDonald's, walked into a nearby mall and, within the space of two hours, turned himself into the unluckiest man on Earth. "I was supposed to be waiting there while my girlfriend was at the beauty salon," he says.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
So he waited. And waited. After a while, he paged her. "She was like, 'I need another hour,'" he says. "So I was like, 'Baby, I'm going to the mall.'"</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Having grown up with no father and a mother hooked on barbiturates, Wilkerson, who says he still boasts a Reggie Miller jumper, began to spend more time on the streets. After his mother died when he was 16, he fell in with a bad crowd, and in 1981 he served as a lookout in a series of robberies. He was quickly caught and sentenced to six years in prison. After he got out, he found work as a forklift operator, and distanced himself from his old life.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
But that day in the mall, something came over him. He wandered from store to store, bought a few things, still shaking his head about his girlfriend's hair appointment. After a while, he drifted into a department store called Mervyn's. Your typical chain store, full of mannequins and dress racks; they're out of business today. Suddenly, a pair of socks caught his eye. He grabbed them and slipped them into a shopping bag.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
What kind of socks were they, that they were worth taking the risk?</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
"They were million-dollar socks with gold on 'em," he says now, laughing almost uncontrollably, as he tells the story 18 years later, from a telephone in a correctional facility in Soledad, California.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Really, they were that special?</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
"No, they were ordinary white socks," he says, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. "Didn't even have any stripes."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Wilkerson never made it out of the store. At the exit, he was, shall we say, overenthusiastically apprehended by two security officers. They took him to the store security office, where the guards started to argue with each other over whether or not to call the police. One guard wanted to let him pay for the socks and go, but the other guard was more of a hardass and called the cops, having no idea he was about to write himself a part in one of the most absurd scripts to ever hit Southern California.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Thanks to a brand-new, get-tough-on-crime state law, Wilkerson would soon be sentenced to life in prison for stealing a pair of plain white tube socks worth $2.50.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Gangster Bankers Broke Every Law in the Book</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
"No, sir, I was not expecting that one," he says now, laughing darkly. Because Wilkerson had two prior convictions, both dating back to 1981, the shoplifting charge counted as a third strike against him. He was sentenced to 25 years to life, meaning that his first chance for a parole hearing would be in 25 years.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
And given that around 80 percent of parole applications are rejected by parole boards, and governors override parole boards in about 50 percent of the instances where parole is granted, it was a near certainty that Wilkerson would never see the outside of a prison again.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
The state also fined him $2,500 – restitution for the stolen socks. He works that off by putting in four to five hours a day in the prison cafeteria, for which he gets paid $20 a month, of which the state takes $11. At this rate, he will be in his nineties before he's paid the state off for that one pair of socks.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
As for the big question – does he ever wish he could go back in time and wait it out in that McDonald's for another hour, instead of 18 years in the California prison system? – Wilkerson, who has learned to laugh, laughs again.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
"Man," he says, "I think about that every single day."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Wilkerson is unlucky, but he's hardly alone. Despite the passage in late 2012 of a new state ballot initiative that prevents California from ever again giving out life sentences to anyone whose "third strike" is not a serious crime, thousands of people – the overwhelming majority of them poor and nonwhite – remain imprisoned for a variety of offenses so absurd that any list of the unluckiest offenders reads like a macabre joke, a surrealistic comedy routine.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Have you heard the one about the guy who got life for stealing a slice of pizza? Or the guy who went away forever for lifting a pair of baby shoes? Or the one who got 50 to life for helping himself to five children's videotapes from Kmart? How about the guy who got life for possessing 0.14 grams of meth? That last offender was a criminal mastermind by Three Strikes standards, as many others have been sentenced to life for holding even smaller amounts of drugs, including one poor sap who got the max for 0.09 grams of black-tar heroin.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
This Frankenstein's monster of a mandatory-sentencing system isn't just some localized bureaucratic accident, but the legacy of a series of complex political choices we all made as voters decades ago. California's Three Strikes law has its origins in a terrible event from October 1993, when, in a case that outraged the entire country, a violent felon named Richard Allen Davis kidnapped and murdered an adolescent girl named Polly Klaas. Californians were determined to never again let a repeat offender get the chance to commit such a brutal crime, and so a year later, with the Klaas case still fresh in public memory, the state's citizens passed Proposition 184 – the Three Strikes law – with an overwhelming 72 percent of the vote. Under the ballot initiative, anyone who had committed two serious felonies would effectively be sentenced to jail for life upon being convicted of a third crime.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
On Daily Beast: California Death Penalty Survives, Three Strikes Cut Back</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
The overwhelming support for the measure touched off a nationwide get-tough-on-crime movement, embraced especially by third-way-style Democrats, who seized upon the policy idea as a powerful weapon in their efforts to throw off their party's bleeding-heart image and recapture the political center. Having seen their wonk-geekish 1988 presidential candidate, Michael Dukakis, expertly exploded by the infamous Willie Horton ad cooked up by Republican strategist Lee Atwater – an ad that convinced voters that the Democrats were the party of scary-looking black rapists on furlough – Democrats had spent years searching for a way to send Middle America a different message.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Three Strikes was a perfect way to convey that new message. The master triangulator himself, Bill Clinton, stumped for a national Three Strikes law in his 1994 State of the Union address. When a federal version passed a year later, Clinton took special care to give squeamish wuss-bunny liberals a celebratory kick in the ear, using the same "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists" rhetorical technique George W. Bush would make famous a few years later. "Narrow-interest groups on the left and the right didn't want the bill to pass," Clinton beamed, "and you can be sure the criminals didn't either."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
A national craze was born. By the late Nineties, 24 states and the federal government had some kind of Three Strikes law. Not all are as harsh as the California law, but they all embrace the basic principle of throw-away-the-key mandatory sentencing for the incorrigible recidivist.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Once California's Three Strikes law went into effect at midnight on March 8th, 1994, it would take just nine hours for it to claim its first hapless victim, a homeless schizophrenic named Lester Wallace with two nonviolent burglaries on his sheet, who attempted to steal a car radio near the University of Southern California campus.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Wallace was such an incompetent thief that he was still sitting in the passenger seat of the car by the time police arrived. He went to court and got 25 years to life. In prison, Wallace immediately became a target. He was sexually and physically attacked numerous times – there's an incident in his file involving an inmate who told him, "Motherfucker, I'll kill you if you don't let me go up in you." He was switched to protective custody, and over the years he has suffered from seizures and developed severe back problems (forcing him to walk with a cane) and end-stage renal disease (leading to dialysis treatments three times a week). And even months after California voters chose to reform the law, the state still won't agree to release him. "He's a guy who's literally dying," says Michael Romano, director of Stanford's Three Strikes program and a key figure in the effort to reform the law, "and he's still inside."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Wallace's conviction set off a cascade of preposterous outsize sentences of nonviolent petty criminals. In many of these cases, the punishments were not just cruel and disproportionate, but ridiculously so. Oftentimes, the absurdity would end up being compounded by the fact that there would be another case just like it, or five just like it, or 10 just like it. They began to blend together, and if you could keep track of them at all, it was only in shorthand.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Lester Wallace became the schizophrenic-on-dialysis-who-stole-a-car-radio case, not to be confused with Gary Ewing, the blind-in-one-eye AIDS patient, who died in prison last summer while serving 25 to life for the limping-out-of-a-sporting-goods-store-with-three-golf-clubs-stuffed-down- his-pant-leg case.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
In that one, the Supreme Court decided life for shoplifting wasn't cruel and unusual punishment, with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor defending the sentence as a "rational judgment, entitled to deference." She added, with a straight face, that the Supreme Court does "not sit as a 'superlegislature' to second-guess" the states, despite the fact that that's precisely what the Supreme Court has been doing for almost 250 years.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
There are at least two life-for-stealingpizza cases. The most famous is Jerry Dewayne Williams, who got 25 to life after stealing a slice from a bunch of kids near Redondo Beach but was released after a paltry five years because of public furor. Still imprisoned, however, is one Shane Taylor, whose first two strikes came from a pair of nobody's-home residential burglaries committed in a single two-week stretch in 1988. In both of these crimes, the only thing taken was a checkbook from one of the houses (in the other residence, nothing was missing, but Taylor's fingerprint was found). With that checkbook, Taylor did exactly one thing: He bought a pizza with a forged check.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Eight years later, Taylor was standing outside his car, drinking beer and listening to tunes with his brother-in-law and a friend at a vista point in the little town of Porterville, near Sequoia National Forest, when a police car drove up. Officers investigated because they said they thought Taylor and his pals looked underage. They said they flashed a light on his front seat and spotted a baggie protruding from Taylor's wallet. They grabbed the bag and claimed they found 0.14 grams of meth – the equivalent of a tenth of a sugar packet.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Taylor went on to become one of the rare Three Strikes defendants to remain free on bail, even after his conviction. A month later, at his sentencing hearing, presiding Judge Howard Broadman was stunned to see Taylor voluntarily show up to be sent away for life over a few grains of meth. "I never expected to see you again, frankly," he said. "I thought a lot about you. And I said, 'Jeez, if I were him, I'd do research and find out what country didn't have extradition laws, because I don't think I'd have showed back up.'"</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Broadman had no choice but to impose a 25-years-to-life sentence, but he made an unusual move to extend Taylor's bail, pending appeal. For the next two years, Taylor worked and supported his family. Taylor lost his appeal, and surrendered himself to begin serving his sentence in 1998.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
More than a decade later, Broadman had an attack of conscience and called Romano at Stanford. "I'm a conservative, tough-on-crime kind of guy," he later explained, but "Shane Taylor was a mistake." Broadman wrote a declaration on behalf of Taylor, supporting his petition for release. But Taylor is still in jail, three full years after the judge had his come-to-Jesus moment. When I spoke to Taylor by phone from Soledad correctional facility, the dominant emotion in his voice was sheer amazement. "It's baffling to me that I'm still in here," he says. "Even the judge says he's done me wrong."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
As for why he did show up in court all those years ago, he says it's simple: "I'm not the type to run out on my family," he says. "And honestly? I never thought I'd get 25 years."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Three Strikes turned out to be not only an abject failure but also a terrible embarrassment to the state of California. Politics and the law coincided to create a yin-yang cycle of endless, expensive stupidity: District attorneys were terrified of the political consequences of not seeking the max for every possible third strike (even when the cases were "wobblers," what lawyers call a crime that could be charged as either a misdemeanor or a felony, depending on the circumstances, like petty theft), while judges were legally bound to impose maximum sentences whether they agreed with them or not.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Things got so bad so fast in California's prisons, in fact, that the Supreme Court was ultimately forced to declare the state in violation of the Eighth Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment, with Justice Anthony Kennedy citing the use of "telephone-booth-size cages without toilets" as one of the reasons he was ordering the state to slash its 140,000-plus prison population by more than 30,000 inmates. That decision came in 2011; a lower court had previously noted that it was an "uncontested fact" that a prisoner in California died once every six or seven days due to "constitutional deficiencies."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Where some saw Three Strikes as a moral outrage, others seized on the financial burdens. Conceived as a way to keep child molesters in jail for life, Three Strikes more often became the world's most expensive and pointlessly repressive homeless-care program. It costs the state about $50,000 per year to care for every prisoner, even more when the inmate is physically or mentally disabled – and some 40 percent of three-strikers are either mentally retarded or mentally ill. "Homeless guys on drugs, that was your typical third-striker," says Romano. "And not that the money is the issue, but you could send hundreds of deserving people to college for the amount of money we were spending."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
The typical third-striker wasn't just likely to be homeless and/or mentally ill – he was also very likely to be black. In California, blacks make up seven percent of the population, 28 percent of the prison population and 45 percent of the three-strikers.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Like wars, forest fires and bad marriages, really stupid laws are much easier to begin than they are to end. As the years passed and word of great masses of nonviolent inmates serving insanely disproportionate terms began to spread in the legal community, it became clear that any attempt to repair the damage done by Three Strikes would be a painstaking, ungainly process at best. The fear of being tabbed "soft on crime" left politicians and prosecutors everywhere reluctant to lift their foot off the gas pedal for even a moment, and before long the Three Strikes punishment machine evolved into something that hurtled forward at light speed, but moved backward only with great effort, fractions of a millimeter at a time.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
The first break in the struggle against the law came in 2000, when Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti, a hardcore Three Strikes advocate (you may remember him as the blow-dried shock-white head of hair who quarterbacked the O.J. Simpson case into one of the most embarrassing losses ever suffered by an American prosecutor's office), lost a re-election bid to his former deputy, Steve Cooley, who campaigned against Garcetti's embrace of the Three Strikes law. A month later, Cooley signed a special order indicating that his office – the largest prosecutor's office in America – would no longer seek maximum sentences for minor offenders. Cooley's unofficial reform would later provide the framework for the Proposition 36 ballot initiative that changed the law.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Around this same time, Romano, a Stanford Law grad who was clerking for a federal judge in Seattle, came across a pair of California cases that disturbed him greatly. One involved a Mexican immigrant sent to prison for life for taking the written portion of a DMV exam for a cousin who didn't speak English. In the other, a man named Willie Joseph received a life sentence after helping an undercover policeman set up a $5 crack deal. "That case stuck with me," says the bespectacled, quick-witted Romano. "Willie didn't hurt anybody in those offenses."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Romano eventually left his clerking job and returned to Stanford Law, with the idea of doing something about Three Strikes. There, he met up with professor David Mills, senior lecturer at the school, who was in the process of founding Stanford's renowned clinical-education program, in which law students do active work in multiple disciplines – everything from Supreme Court litigation to prosecuting criminal cases. Mills is a man of big plans and big ideas, a sort of entrepreneurial intellectual who not only co-chairs the NAACP legal-defense fund but has also built several successful private businesses in the financial sector. Like Romano, Mills had hated Three Strikes from the start. But he also knew that, in the age of mass media and the sound bite, fixing the law would be a heavy lift. "It's very easy to say, 'Three strikes and you're out,'" he says. "It's a lot harder to say, 'Well, wait a minute – do you mean three strikes, or do you mean three serious strikes? And what do you mean by "serious"?'"</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Mills, Romano and Stanford decided to put together a Three Strikes program as part of the university's clinical curriculum, the idea being that the school would represent inmates serving Three Strikes sentences and try to reverse or at least scale some of them back. Initially, the school saw this mainly as a teaching opportunity for students, but as Romano learned about what Cooley was up to in L.A., he saw an opportunity for something bigger.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Cooley, in 2005, had ordered a review of Three Strikes cases – statewide, nearly 40 percent of them originated in L.A. County – and his staff came up with a list of some 60 names of inmates who had likely been oversentenced.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Perhaps, Romano thought, Cooley's office would work with Stanford to help fix some of those cases. He reached out to his office and the two groups immediately found common ground. There was even discussion at one point about Stanford working within the district attorney's office to reverse old cases, but that was ultimately discarded in order to preserve the traditional adversarial legal structure – which made sense because, among other things, Cooley didn't agree with Stanford about every single nonviolent inmate. Ultimately, the DA agreed that if the Stanford group challenged some of the more absurd Three Strikes cases, his office, on a select basis, might not oppose their efforts.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
In the program's initial stages, the Stanford team operated by filing habeas-corpus motions, asking courts to rule on whether or not this or that prisoner had been unlawfully detained. One of the first cases they took up involved a homeless man from Long Beach named Norman Williams, who had been on the list of 60 potentially excessive sentences uncovered in Cooley's 2005 review.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Williams had an IQ of 71, had been placed in classes for the "educable mentally retarded" as a child, had suffered horrific physical and sexual abuse (including being forced into prostitution as a boy to "pay for [his] mother's wine"), and had been homeless and addicted to crack most of his adult life. He'd never committed a violent crime, and his third strike was stealing road flares and a floor jack from a tow truck. Police caught him when they spotted him wheeling a baby buggy full of stuff near the crime scene.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Williams was sent to California's notorious Folsom State Prison ("You don't want to go visit" is his description), where he learned to mind his own business, abide by the rules (no sitting with whites or Mexicans at meals) and pass the years in a nine-by-six cell. If Curtis Wilkerson is the unluckiest man on Earth, Norman Williams might have been the loneliest. In the 10 years he spent in prison, Williams never had a single visitor until the Stanford people came to see him about his case. He describes the first time he saw the Folsom visiting room the way a tourist might describe a first visit to the Sistine Chapel or the Taj Mahal.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
"I had never been in there before," he says now. "I saw all them vending machines. . . . I was like, 'Wow, this is amazing.'"</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Cooley's office didn't oppose Stanford's motion to reconsider Williams' sentence, and he was freed in 2008. (He now lives in Palo Alto and works as a manager of a street-cleaning crew.)</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Inch by inch, bit by bit, the courts slowly began to release more prisoners like Williams. Often, the Stanford lawyers would seek to have sentences reduced or reconsidered based on what some might term legal technicalities, with ineffective assistance of counsel being a common argument. But in a broader sense, the Stanford team was relying upon an innovative new legal argument they themselves invented.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
"The hypertechnical legal term," says Romano, "is the 'You've gotta be kidding me' motion." As in, 25 years to life for stealing a pair of socks? You've gotta be kidding me. Life for stealing baby shoes? You've gotta be kidding me.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
It didn't happen all that often, but Cooley occasionally agreed where Garcetti had not. This was interesting for one conspicuous reason. "Garcetti was a Democrat," says Mills. "And Cooley was a Republican. It's not what you'd expect, but with Three Strikes, everything turns out to be backward."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Mills and Romano would learn this lesson in a big way when they decided to aim higher than just freeing individual prisoners one at a time. From the very beginning, there had always been significant opposition – from members of both parties – to the dumber aspects of the Three Strikes law. As far back as 1994, when the original ballot initiative was first being planned, everyone from Gov. Pete Wilson to Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block to the California District Attorneys Association supported versions of the law that required the third strike to be a violent or serious crime.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
But in the end, many California pols caved to public pressure and supported the more brutal version of the law rather than risk being labeled "soft on crime" – an attitude famously symbolized by the then-California Assembly speaker, the well-known liberal Willie Brown, who in early 1994 gave up his opposition to Three Strikes: "I got out of the way of this train," he said. "I tell you, I looked like Harrison Ford in The Fugitive. I got out of the way because I'm a realist."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Ten years later, when a group called Families to Amend California's Three Strikes, or FACTS, tried to reform the law, it was the same story. They fought to get an initiative onto the ballot, Proposition 66. Two weeks before Election Day, a Los Angeles Times poll showed the measure winning by a nearly three-to-one margin. But days before the vote, an Orange County billionaire named Henry T. Nicholas donated $1.5 million for a major ad buy. Soliciting the support of then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his predecessors – including Democrats Jerry Brown and Gray Davis – the anti-Prop 66 camp ran a series of scare ads, including one called "He Raped Me," which showed a middle-aged white woman claiming the initiative would release her attacker, and Polly Klaas' father promising that "murderers, rapists and some very dangerous child molesters" would be released thanks to the new law. It wasn't Willie Horton – the mug shots shown in the ad were mostly all of scary-looking white criminals – but it was in the rhetorical ballpark.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Jerry Brown flew to Long Beach at Nicholas' request, where he recorded anti-Prop 66 radio ads at a studio belonging to Ryan Shuck, guitarist of the rock group Orgy, while Korn drummer David Silveria looked on. The last-minute bipartisan ad blitz worked, and Prop 66 lost by a slim 53-to-47 margin, a come-from-behind win that one pollster at the time called "unprecedented."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Over the next few years, the Stanford Three Strikes program continued to pull prisoners out of jail one by one, freeing more than two dozen people between 2009 and 2012. But it was a laborious process, each case taking hundreds of hours. "I came to Mike," says Mills of Romano, "and I said, 'We can't do this one-off anymore. We have thousands of people in there.'"</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
So they came up with the idea of doing another ballot initiative, one that would be laser-focused on correcting what they saw as the most serious defect of the law: requiring that an inmate's third strike be a serious crime. The surprise came when Mills went looking to raise money for what he expected would be a hard-fought campaign.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
"I could not get any liberals to give me any money," he says. Mills did find one donor – George Soros – but that was it. In the end, more than 90 percent of the campaign was funded by two people: Soros and Mills himself.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Meanwhile, the campaign was having astonishing success attracting support from conservatives, even hardass law-and-order types. The very father of modern zero-tolerance, brokenwindows-policing techniques, William Bratton – the former chief of both the New York and Los Angeles police departments who had built his career around the idea that cracking down on minor crimes like subway-fare jumping and vandalism would reduce violent crime overall – backed Prop 36. "The Three Strikes approach," he said, "has political appeal for dealing with repeat offenders." But, he added, "Evidence has shown limited impact on crime levels."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Former Reagan Cabinet member George Shultz was another supporter, as was Reagan's attorney general, the anti-porn crusader Ed Meese. And, shockingly, so was Grover Norquist, the anti-tax mullah to many extreme-right causes. Norquist called California's law "big government at its worst," and added that "nonviolent offenders should be punished – but conservatives should insist the punishments are fair."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
The many conservative endorsements, along with numerous endorsements of prominent California law-enforcement figures, went a long way toward helping the proposition finally pass in November.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
The people who led the campaign remember their election-night victory with great fondness, but the whole experience was a bit bittersweet, at least for Mills, who seems scarred by the failure of liberals to stand up for the Norman Williamses of the world.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
"They'd say things like, 'I hear you, but I really care about environmental causes, education for the poor,'" Mills says. "What it came down to, though, is that these people just don't care about the poor people of color who are locked up, and would as soon see them not released."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Romano tends to look more on the bright side and seems more focused on the big picture, which is that the measure passed and thousands of people finally have a chance to get out of jail. But he does have some thoughts about the politics of what happened. "I think some liberals overlearned the Willie Horton lesson," he says. "But I hope what we did is prove that this political third rail is no longer electric."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Prop 36 might have been a great victory, but it didn't mean that all the unjustly imprisoned were immediately freed. In fact, while 156 inmates have been released, 2,844 nonviolent three-strikers remain behind bars. Worse, due to a quirk in the methodology by which California is complying with a federal order to reduce its prison population, there are many murderers and rapists getting out of jail more quickly than three-strikers. The state's method of emptying its overcrowded prisons was to give out lots of "good time" to prisoners with long sentences – in other words, accelerate a well-behaved prisoner's march to a parole hearing. But three-strikers cannot get "good time," they only get "straight time" – meaning 25 years is always 25 years. The only way out for them is still through a long, slow court process, one in which the state often fights release with a Frazier-in-Manila refuseto-lose desperation.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
In December 2010, a mentally disabled 53-year-old prisoner named Dale Curtis Gaines received a letter in his cell at the California Medical Facility, a prison for medically needy inmates in Vacaville, California. Meek of character and heavily medicated for years by prison doctors, Gaines had difficulty comprehending even the simplest things, but he had been pretty close to a model prisoner. In his 13 years behind bars, he had four minor infractions on his inmate record, one of which was refusing to give prison doctors a DNA sample. The reason? Gaines was afraid the state was going to clone him.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Gaines had never committed a violent crime. He was homeless and indigent for much of his life, and his third strike had come in 1997, when he was caught in possession of some computers stolen from an American Cancer Society office. Prior to that, he had two petty residential burglaries on his rap sheet. He struck out on the stolen-computers case and got the usual with extra fries, 27 to life.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Anyway, he opened the letter and was surprised to see it was from Ann GallagherWhite, the woman who had prosecuted him 13 years before:</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Dear Mr. Gaines, I hope this letter finds you well. You may recognize my name and recall that I tried your case on behalf of the County of Sonoma. I had probably been with the District Attorney's office for about four years at that time. . . . I have always felt that your sentence was harsh, given your crime. Over the years, it has been on my mind as a case I regretted having been assigned to handle. . . .</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
White, who a decade before had scoffed at the idea that Gaines was at the "lower end of the mental scale in terms of the continuum" and insisted that Gaines was, in fact, "an opportunist of a more sophisticated caliber," went on in the letter to recommend that Gaines get in touch with the Stanford program through his original attorney. She had left the prosecutor's office and was working as a public defender at the time.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Not comprehending the importance of the letter from his old prosecutor, Gaines promptly forgot about the whole thing. When the Stanford lawyers reached out to him a year later on their own initiative, they were stunned to discover the letter from White, and even more surprised to find that White, who had since gone back to work for the prosecutor's office, wouldn't take their calls.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
"To look at those documents side by side," says Emily Murphy, a Stanford law student who worked on Gaines' case, "it made us think about what it means for prosecutors to do their jobs and to zealously advocate on behalf of the state."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
More than two years after Gaines first received the "I'm sorry" letter from his prosecutor, he was still behind bars. When I met him at the Sonoma County Jail – in a surreal visiting room where prisoners sit in darkness, appearing as silhouettes in small glass-and-concrete cubicles, while visitors in fully lit chambers yell at them through small, waist-high mesh screens – he was so out of it he could barely grasp the most basic questions. It took nearly five minutes for him to explain to his lawyers that he still hadn't had a shower at this new jail (he'd been transferred there for a court hearing) and that the local doctors had changed his meds.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Gaines' Stanford lawyers were a little troubled by the new medication. "Dale, do you know what they gave you?" asked Jessica Spencer, a law student who was now working his case.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Gaines shrugged. All you could see behind the glass were his teeth as he incongruously smiled at the question. "Was it for something physical, or mental?" Spencer asked.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
He thought about that. "Something . . . mental," he whispered.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
It would later turn out that in order for Gaines' jail doctors to consult with his normal prison doctors, he needed to make a request in writing. The only problem was, he had no paper. This issue had come up before, when Gaines tried to apply for acceptance into a post-release program. The only way to get paper was something straight out of Catch-22: He had to make a request – in writing.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Despite all this, the DA seemed to oppose Gaines' release, quoting an old report that said the "subject appears to be an easygoing man of limited natural abilities. However, it would appear that, in reality, he is an extremely sophisticated criminal who preys on charitable institutions."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Nevertheless, the court ignored the prosecutor and ordered Gaines released. Justice was served. It only took 16 years.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
This gets to the heart of what went wrong in America in the years following the mandatory-sentencing and Three Strikes crazes. We removed the human element from the justice process and turned our courts into giant unthinking machines for sweeping our problem citizens under a rug.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
And it isn't just in California, but all over the country, where there are countless instances of outrageous and brutal mandatory sentences for relatively minor crimes. Often, they're so ridiculous that even the judges imposing them publicly denounce them, like a 1997 Florida case in which a 27-year-old black woman named Stephanie George was given life for holding her boyfriend's cocaine stash. "Your role has basically been as a girlfriend," said Judge Roger Vinson, "so it does not warrant a life sentence." But Vinson had no choice, just like Massachusetts Judge Judd Carhart had no choice when he gave 48-year-old Michaelene Sexton 10 years for selling coke ("Ten years is an awful long time," the judge said. "When I look at this case compared to crimes of violence, I wonder"), or federal Judge James Todd, who gave a Texas pool-hall owner named Mike Mahoney 15 years for buying a gun 14 years after he was convicted for selling meth ("It seems to me, this sentence is just completely out of proportion to the defendant's conduct," said the judge).</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Why did all of this happen? Some of this has its roots in a complex political calculation, in which the Democratic Party in the Clinton years made a Faustian bargain, deciding to abandon its old role as a defender of unions and the underprivileged, embrace more Wall Street-friendly deregulatory policies, and compete for the political center by pushing for more street cops, tougher sentences and the end of welfare – the same thing the Republicans were already doing. By the mid-Nineties, neither party was really representing, for lack of a better term, the fucked, struggling poor.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
The end result of this political shift was an unprecedented explosion of the American prison population, from just more than a million people behind bars in the early Nineties to 2.2 million today. Less than five percent of the world's people live in the United States, but we are home to about 25 percent of the world's prisoners, a shocking number.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Another result was that instead of dealing with problems like poverty, drug abuse and mental illness, we increasingly just removed them all from view by putting them in jail. It's not an accident that so many of the most ridiculous Three Strikes cases are semicoherent homeless people or people with drug problems who came from broken homes. It wasn't a cost-efficient way of dealing with these issues – in fact, in California at least, it was an insanely, almost criminally expensive burden on taxpayers – but it was effective enough as a way of keeping the uglier schisms of our society hidden from view.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
But these cases are resurfacing now, in "Tell-Tale Heart" fashion, to point an accusatory finger at us for the choices we made decades ago. In California, it wasn't just people like Judge Broadman or Ann Gallagher White who had attacks of conscience. The prosecutor in the Shane Taylor case had a similar change of heart. Ross Stores sent a letter supporting the release of a man who was sent away for life for stealing a pair of its baby shoes. There were numerous others. And in a way, the success of Prop 36 was an attempt by the whole state to make right nearly two decades of past wrongs.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
The fact that some progress toward scaling back these draconian laws involving the poor and underprivileged is finally being made is coming at a time when there is an emerging controversy over the conspicuous nonpunishment of big bankers, notorious subprime lenders (many of them Californians) and other wealthy offenders is probably not an accident. One of the interesting results of the polling Mills commissioned last summer was that California voters were surprisingly unmoved by the issue of the cost of incarcerating Three Strikes inmates. "But they were intensely interested in the issue of fairness," says Mills. "That's one of the things we found out: People will pay for justice, no matter how much it costs. But it has to be fair."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
Obviously, people who commit crimes should be punished. Even people who steal socks and Snow White videos should probably do time if they have priors, especially serious priors. But the punishment has to fit the crime, and the standard has to be the same for everyone. If a homeless crack addict like Norman Williams is going to get time for stealing road flares, they should leave the top bunk in his cell open for the guy who laundered money for the Sinaloa drug cartel at HSBC.</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
"People get so hung up on the concept of innocence," says Mills. "But it's intellectually uninteresting. What does matter is how we treat the guilty, and that's where we still have work to do."</div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0976563); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(191, 107, 82, 0.496094); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: Noteworthy; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
This story is from the <a href="x-apple-data-detectors://10" x-apple-data-detectors-result="10" x-apple-data-detectors-type="calendar-event" x-apple-data-detectors="true">April 11th, 2013</a> issue of Rolling Stone.</div>
</div>
lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-86138261663407593212012-12-23T22:52:00.001-07:002012-12-23T22:53:22.964-07:00poem on thanksgiving day, by the duck who blogs <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 class="date-header">
</h2>
<div class="date-posts">
<div class="post-outer">
<div class="post hentry" itemprop="blogPost" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8289310" name="110142939041050530"></a>
<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name">
poem on thanksgiving day, by the duck who blogs
</h3>
<div class="post-header">
</div>
<div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-110142939041050530" itemprop="description articleBody">
cold morn, found frosty leather
<br />
gloves sitting
<br />
out on the bucket feed those fowl!
<br />
and thelma whits and
<br />
shares her glory in making it
<br />
through
<br />
her first thanksgiving
<br />
as not dinner
<br />
<br />
she needs cuddles or she moans
<br />
luis doesn't care about
<br />
nuthin
<br />
but chopped corn and
<br />
<br />
the white
<br />
duck is in
<br />
the house recouping from
<br />
slipping on the ice
<br />
<br />
caldonia, what makes your big head so hot! <i>MOP
<br />snap snap bobby darin fingers
</i> <br />
<blockquote>
<i>goodbye cruel world i am</i>
<br />
<i>off to join the circus</i>
</blockquote>
sneaks in the door when the hound
<br />
of the west
<br />
goes out trolling for eggs I smelled one drop, she says
<br />
and doesn't care if she lets
<br />
the chicken named for the love of lous jordon in
<br />
<br />
peck and paw
<br />
the morning revolving
<br />
door
<br />
and ling sits by the heater
<br />
wondering how to get up for more water
<br />
<br />
ho hum not worth it, ling sits and sigbs
<br />
such a day
<br />
grateful to be fowl
<br />
<br />
did you see the daily bresson ?
<br />
random surrealizm generator sits right below it
<br />
blog blog blog I tells ya!
<br />
where is a parrot
<br />
when ya need one. aye mayteeee
<br />
<br />
home is hearth
<br />
hannah
<br />
<br />
<br />
11.25.04
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: courier new;">soon to be published in "Psychic Rotunda" volume 2 barlowpress toronto</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-15898800576671827752011-09-21T22:41:00.000-06:002011-09-21T22:41:29.931-06:00BLOOD ON MY HANDS TONIGHT<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3spcMX5yEX7g_IxlPmYW88JqDoaNw78h600wLP9EcD1skBPQ-7YnvLGUzxV2G4iZtliJVs366fsxd52fmTCGazJKsw-uUT0bWlVX10jdJNJG1DfTAXy3LAXxZQyxje2jEedKY/s1600/troydavis.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3spcMX5yEX7g_IxlPmYW88JqDoaNw78h600wLP9EcD1skBPQ-7YnvLGUzxV2G4iZtliJVs366fsxd52fmTCGazJKsw-uUT0bWlVX10jdJNJG1DfTAXy3LAXxZQyxje2jEedKY/s640/troydavis.png" width="386" /></a></div><br />
</div>lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-31468310225754691152011-09-03T15:34:00.000-06:002011-09-03T15:36:20.123-06:00Fireworks "stand" Cheyenne, WYO<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Tfy3mVHVf-HSyu2QO-2GdHAAky3EEPhJ6Paj0h5HgNbVf9jdXshyo2Lovq78EQJb7OsyP_xMUrlKMqzE2D_XTV-KcbObvsTHWMjXbIKL5JGH728oZrWzOnpDke5d_MQ3rIZ0/s1600/photo-780124.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Tfy3mVHVf-HSyu2QO-2GdHAAky3EEPhJ6Paj0h5HgNbVf9jdXshyo2Lovq78EQJb7OsyP_xMUrlKMqzE2D_XTV-KcbObvsTHWMjXbIKL5JGH728oZrWzOnpDke5d_MQ3rIZ0/s400/photo-780124.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5648250424286185522" /></a></p>lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-54411261338336319882011-06-11T22:57:00.000-06:002011-06-11T22:57:23.943-06:00hound howling while geese honk in my world (ducks also share)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/i82XYGYhvJI" width="425"></iframe></div>lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-34988379427750271472011-06-11T22:53:00.002-06:002011-06-11T22:53:59.243-06:00my world<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/88i4t8DnGRk" width="425"></iframe></div>lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-4900058672957251432011-05-31T13:24:00.001-06:002011-05-31T13:40:41.316-06:0067 Sueños Shows Love for an Undocumented Majority - COLORLINES<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><iframe frameborder="0" height="225" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/24033813?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="400"></iframe><br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/24033813">67 Sueños</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/namvideo">New America Media</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
<a href="http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/05/67_suenos_daily_love.html">67 Sueños Shows Love for an Undocumented Majority - COLORLINES</a></div><br />
<br />
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Wednesday, May 25 2011</div><br />
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Over at New America Media’s Youth Outlook, <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2011/05/67-suenos.php">Josue Rojas and Ann Bassette bring us</a> the tale of <a href="http://dreamdeployed.blogspot.com/2011/03/67-suenos-birth-of-movement.html">67 Sueños</a>, a youth-led collective based in Oakland that strives to tell the stories of everyday young people who are often left out of the national narrative on immigration reform. </div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The group’s name is a response to a recent report put out by the <a href="http://www.migrationpolicy.org/">Migration Policy Institute</a>, which estimates that 67 percent of undocumented youth and young adults wouldn’t qualify for the DREAM Act. Given that stark statistic, the collective’s working to give voice to folks who are neither criminals nor class valedictorians.<br />
“Our young folks don’t want to be separated from their one cousin who did get a 4.0,” says one of the group’s founders. “The struggle is the same struggle, and one deportation in that family effects the entire family.”</div><div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>please comment on page (link above)</i></div></div>lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-89171189833711318072011-05-29T16:18:00.000-06:002011-05-29T16:18:34.192-06:00Playing for Change<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><embed src="http://www.playingforchange.com/player/widget.swf?episode=46" width="460" height="360" allowfullscreen="true" wmode="transparent"><br />
<br />
</div>lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-3743564354366983102011-05-16T13:59:00.000-06:002011-05-16T13:59:32.609-06:00Join War Resisters' International!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" src="http://widgets.causes.com/badges/cause?cause_id=33327&width=200&height=240&tagline=Support+Our+Cause&faces=1&awareness=1" style="border: none; height: 240px; overflow: hidden; width: 200px;"></iframe></div>lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-35935425301869549152011-04-05T21:27:00.000-06:002011-04-05T21:27:01.800-06:00Beijing police detain another prominent democracy advocate<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">China’s crackdown on free speech and political activists is getting worse. We’ve just learned that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Beijing police have detained another prominent democracy advocate, the world-famous artist and nominee for Time Magazine’s 2011 List of Most Influential People, Ai Weiwei</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, as he tried to board a flight to Hong Kong yesterday.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold;">[1]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Fearing that any mention of the revolutions currently sweeping the Middle East might spark similar popular protests in China, the Chinese authorities are cracking down hard. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In the past month, dozens of Chinese lawyers, bloggers, and dissidents have been detained or “disappeared” and in less than 24 hours after his arrest, Ai’s name was virtually erased from the Chinese internet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.[2]</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">Today, the UK, Germany, France, and the US all publicly called for Ai’s release, and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;"><strong>now it’s time for us to show that the world’s internet users stand with him and the countless number of his compatriots who have been similarly detained. Please sign this urgent petition</strong></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;"> urging the Chinese government to step up as the global leader it aspires to be, by ending its practice of detaining its critics and attempting to erase them from the internet.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;"><a href="https://www.accessnow.org/page/m/3717cd8c/13a4670c/729c299b/1de40771/876199047/VEsH/"><br />
https://www.accessnow.org/deleted-from-the-internet</a></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Following an anonymous post on the US-based site Boxun.com in February calling for a Middle East-style “Jasmine Revolution” in China, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Chinese authorities have been cracking down on activists of all stripes, even those who have traditionally been immune from censorship</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. Indeed, Ai Weiwei (who was not even involved in any of the calls for a Chinese Jasmine Revolution) is known as a Chinese hero and China's most famous artist – his Sunflower Seeds exhibit is at the Tate Modern in London right now and he helped to design the “bird’s nest” stadium used at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Now, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the Chinese government is attempting to delete all mention of him from the internet, while restricting the movements of countless others.[3]</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> We need to send a strong message to the Chinese government that security and stability comes from addressing the underlying causes of dissent, not censoring it. Ai and his art could be an international example of China’s growing leadership on the world stage, but instead they’ve decided to erase him from national cultural memory, and thereby diminished their stature in the international community.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;"><a href="https://www.accessnow.org/page/m/3717cd8c/13a4670c/729c299b/1de40771/876199047/VEsE/"><br />
https://www.accessnow.org/deleted-from-the-internet</a></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Chinese government has recently made strides in expanding access to the internet to its citizens, but this crackdown – the worst in at least a decade – is rapidly jeopardizing any progress that has been made.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> And now in Big Brother fashion, they’re trying to erase all mention of Ai and many others who have spoken out against the regime.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong>Ai is clear that human rights are not western values, they are universal values. Yet only the most circumspect posts about Ai, such as this one, remain uncensored:</strong> “</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When a fat guy lost his freedom, you said, “It has nothing to do with me, because I’m skinny.” When someone with a beard lost his freedom, you said, “It has nothing to do with me, because I don’t have a beard.” When a man who sells sunflower seeds lost his freedom, you said, “It has nothing to do with me, because I don’t sell sunflower seeds.” When they are after everyone—even the skinny, beardless ones that don’t sell sunflower seeds—there will be no one left to speak for you anymore.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">”[4]</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">Please help us free Ai by signing this petition. If enough of us take action now, we can help release him, bring him back to life online, and make sure that Chinese voices of freedom aren’t lost forever.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;"><a href="https://www.accessnow.org/page/m/3717cd8c/13a4670c/729c299b/1de40771/876199047/VEsF/"><br />
https://www.accessnow.org/deleted-from-the-internet</a></span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">With hope,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">The Access Team</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">P.S. World renowned human rights advocate Bianca Jagger has teamed up with Access to help drive this campaign, and we look forward to working with her to deliver your petition to Chinese officials.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">[1]http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2058044_2060338_2063019,00.html</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/31/china-disappeared-lawyers?CMP=twt_gu</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/31/china-crackdown-on-activists-arrests-disappearances</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">[4] http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2011/04/ai-weiwei-disturbing-the-peace.html#ixzz1IZXH2EyG</span></div>lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-38976287667181703452011-03-08T17:54:00.000-07:002011-03-08T17:54:36.126-07:00Conscientious objector Halil Savda sentenced to five months imprisonment for solidarity with Israeli conscientious objectors<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b> conscientious objectors need our support</b></span></div><hr size="2" width="100%" /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTqKIoiMiNKr7W0aDxy7eQi_ydsi_FtepJX30U1wDE0YnYYzyeLzqmJ3_n_xnnuNYAFaHHJ5fkxqek4p_cNPHpv7CA2nYsKdVALe-ms1gpPLSJwwLks31qXg18f25-4oq4mZBm/s1600/WARRESISTERSLOGO.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTqKIoiMiNKr7W0aDxy7eQi_ydsi_FtepJX30U1wDE0YnYYzyeLzqmJ3_n_xnnuNYAFaHHJ5fkxqek4p_cNPHpv7CA2nYsKdVALe-ms1gpPLSJwwLks31qXg18f25-4oq4mZBm/s1600/WARRESISTERSLOGO.gif" /></a></div><div style="text-align: right;"><br />
</div><div class="right" style="float: right; margin-left: 5px;">War<br />
Resisters' International,<br />
London, 07 March 2011<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</div><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>TURKEY: Conscientious objector Halil Savda sentenced to five months imprisonment for solidarity with Israeli conscientious objectors</h3><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Halil
Savda" class="image image-img_assist_custom " height="150" src="http://wri-irg.org/system/files/images/halilsavda-email.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Halil Savda" width="113" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="inline inline-right" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span class="caption" style="width: 111px;"><b>Halil Savda </b></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">T</span>urkish conscientious objector <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://wri-irg.org/node/829">Halil Savda</a> has been finally sentenced on 3 March 2011 to five months' imprisonment for a solidarity statement for Israeli conscientious objectors <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://wri-irg.org/node/5439">Itzik Shabbat</a> and <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://wri-irg.org/node/5437">Amir Pastar</a> on 1 August 2006.<br />
<br />
<a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://wri-irg.org/node/829">Halil Savda</a> was initially sentenced on 2 June 2008 by the Sultanahmet 1st Court of First Instance in Istanbul to five months' imprisonment for the press statement (see <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.bianet.org/english/freedom-of-expression/107363-halil-savda-is-sentenced-again-for-speaking-against-military-service">Bianet, 3 June 2008</a>), but appealed against the sentence. This sentence was now <br />
upheld and finalised by the Court of Appeals.<br />
<br />
Various institutions and committees released a press statement to protest <br />
the prison sentences handed down to <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://wri-irg.org/node/829">Halil Savda</a> and other conscientious <br />
objectors. Savda's sentence was upheld and finalized by the Court of Appeals, <br />
Bianet reported on 4 March 2011.<br />
<br />
In June 2010, <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://wri-irg.org/node/829">Halil Savda</a> was sentenced in a similar case - a statement in support of then imprisoned <br />
Turkish conscientious objector <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://wri-irg.org/node/9478">Enver Aydemir</a> - to six months' imprisonment, together with three co-defendants (see <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://bianet.org/english/freedom-of-expression/122808-supporters-of-conscientious-objector-convicted">Bianet 18 June 2010)</a>. An appeal against this sentence is still pending.<br />
<br />
Article 318 of the Turkish Penal Code represents an unfair limitation of the right to freedom of expression in Turkey, and is considered to be in direct breach of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which protect the right to freedom of expression and to which Turkey is a state party.<br />
<br />
More information on Article 318 is available at <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://www.wri-irg.org/node/3554" title="http://www.wri-irg.org/node/3554">http://www.wri-irg.org/node/3554</a> <br />
.<br />
War Resisters' International calls for letters of protest to the Turkish authorities, and Turkish embassies abroad.<br />
<br />
Presidency of the Turkish Republic: Fax +90-312-4271330, email <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="mailto:cumhurbaskanligi@tccb.gov.tr">cumhurbaskanligi@tccb.gov.tr</a>.<br />
<br />
A protest email to the Turkish President Abdullah Gül can be sent at <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://wri-irg.org/node/12315" title="http://wri-irg.org/node/12315">http://wri-irg.org/node/12315</a>.<br />
<br />
Andreas Speck<br />
War Resisters' International<br />
<div class="image-clear"></div><br />
Archives of co-alert can be found at <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://wri-irg.org/news/alerts">http://wri-irg.org/news/alerts</a><br />
<hr size="2" width="100%" /><b>Support War Resisters' International! Donate today!</b><br />
<div id="footer"><small>Online: <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://wri-irg.org/en/donate-en.htm">http://wri-irg.org/en/donate-en.htm</a></small><br />
<br />
<small>Help WRI to support conscientious objectors!<br />
Send your donation:</small><br />
<ul><li><small>online by credit or debit card (in GBP, Euro, or US Dollar) at <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://wri-irg.org/en/donate-en.htm">http://wri-irg.org/en/donate-en.htm</a>;</small></li>
<li><small>by cheque in GBP, Euros, or US$, payable to WRI</small></li>
<li><small>by giro transfer to War Resisters' International</small></li>
<li><small>in Euros to Bank of Ireland, IBAN IE91 BOFI 9000 9240 41 35 47, <br />
SWIFT/BIC BOFIIE2D</small></li>
<li><small>in GBP to Unity Trust Bank, IBAN GB11 CPBK 0800 5150 07 32 10, <br />
SWIFT CPBKGB22</small></li>
</ul></div></div>lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-415316517842566182011-03-06T22:24:00.003-07:002011-03-06T22:49:18.018-07:00“Everywhere you look today there’s a story about Charley (effing) Sheen.”<span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);font-size:180%;" ><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">“Everywhere you look today there’s a story about Charley (effing) Sheen.”</span></span><br /><br />Yes, that is the the lead line in the story (Under the title of "community news") titled:<br /><h2 style="text-align: center; color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-family: georgia;"><span class="title" style="font-weight: bold; line-height: 110%;font-size:180%;" >Charlie Sheen Doesn't Need 12 Step Recovery</span></h2><h2 style="text-align: center; color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-family: georgia;"><span class="title" style="font-weight: bold; line-height: 110%;font-size:180%;" > And Says You Don't Either</span></h2><span style="font-size:180%;">M</span>any people whose lives have been saved by twelve steps have taken offense to the distasteful way Mr. Sheen quoted (or should I say “misquoted”) out of one of the most recognizable recovery text available around the world. For some it may have felt as if their holiest books had been tossed aside.<br /><br />But this wasn't the Talmud, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">K'oran</span>, or the Bible. It was the Big Book.<br /><br />Why all the anger and confusion, you ask? I personally know many people whose lives are completely changed by following the twelve steps and twelve traditions of whatever fellowship we find fits us the best. So I get the idea that throwing a book away is really tough to see.<br /><br />However, these are simply texts written many years ago to help the addict to stay clean.<br /><br />I am unwilling to depart with my grey form - the precursor to the NA Basic Text. I have shared in many a study hours about the roots of our literature; and been involved with more engaging discussions than I care to mention. But the truth is that the words do make a difference in our lives.<br /><br />However the actions of recovery speak louder than even Charlie Sheen in a manic state can destroy.<br /><br />Threatened by someone trashing the steps? Then practice the spiritual principles that the steps and traditions should be teaching you.<br /><br />Love thy neighbor. Know that there's always going to be a copy of your book available to you. And remember the cliche - there but for the grace of .....<br /><br /><br /><br />love from this addict in Coloradolisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-33467101556455796122011-03-06T20:03:00.002-07:002011-03-06T20:07:14.035-07:00A few words shared about the disease of addiction; as well as money, property and prestige ...<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">in reply to a copyrighted newsletter that asked for feedback:</span><br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />The "ridiculous" shows you talk about are the very ones that got me back on the right track after a relapse, and if I remember correctly ITR embraced the interventionists when they got involved with this website.<br /><br />That said: When Rush Limbaugh admitted his addiction, it was a bit issue with me and the progressive community I am involved with. He is one of my family now. As is said about many situations in the free world "I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to my death your right to say it."<br /><br />This situation is much more critical than many others. He is dying before our very eyes. I pray that his family gets him on a course of intervention and pray that he finds recovery before he dies.<br /><br />It's scary watching our own disease manifest itself so loudly and blatantly in front of us, but if you remember THAT IS THE DISEASE OF ADDICTION TALKING and if you think it's gone from your thinking, just look at how disgusted you are about it being everywhere. One finger pointing out leaves three pointing back at you.<br /><br />Since you took the opportunity to put yourself first and list your accomplishments in the article, I might just say that the article appears to be filled with addictive thinking and that isn't just quoting Charlie Sheen. Who did the photoshopping of the picture? Would you do this with any other family member who desperately needs to get in the rooms of a twelve step fellowship?<br /><br />When I pray for the sick and suffering addict, I pray for that addict without concern for their social status or wealth, their drug of choice or whether they are living under a bridge or have a bridge named after them.<br /><br />Anonymity means (among other things) that we are all of one mind, we are all the same, there is no distinction. Principles before personalities comes to mind LOUDLY HERE. You are me and she is we and they are us and WE ARE ALL TOGETHER.<br /><br />Prayer to all addicts who are still suffering and thank you Craig Ferguson who comes out and says "I won't tell any jokes about people struggling with addiction. It's life and death." Celebrity or not, left or right, regardless of age race creed sexual identity religion or lack of religion -- you are my family.<br /><br />I live in a world where "when one of us is in pain, we all feel the ramifications of that pain" -- I might be a stranger to you but I will stand up for your right to do whatever it takes to find recovery. God bless family, friends, loved ones and most of all, the addict. Pray Them Up In These Rooms.<br /><br />I personally keep them on my prayer list (even Limbaugh) cuz I know that tradition TWELVE is one of the most important ones in the book (besides the other eleven). love and respect,<br /><br /> lizzie from Colorado<br />optimist </span><span style="font-family: lucida grande; font-style: italic;"><br /></span>lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-20380125279363094692011-03-05T17:52:00.008-07:002011-03-11T07:19:42.562-07:00A different kind of discussion about Charlie Sheen<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-size: 180%;">C</span>harlie Sheen is not a joke. His disease is fatal. The fact that the media has put him in the position of power is simply called "enabling" and it must stop. Only <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/print/2011/mar/02/entertainment/la-et-onthemedia-20110302" target="_blank">one article</a> I've seen lately even hints at the enabling caused by the running-jokes about his demise.<br />
<br />
The owners of a popular <a href="http://www.intherooms.com/news/article?id=18165" target="_blank">12 Step Recovery Website</a> have had their moment making a point of cashing in on Charlie Sheen's meltdown, making me wonder who ISN'T interested in watching this travesty occur before our very eyes.<br />
<br />
My discussion on that forum was obviously so clearly stated that it was censored. Even other addicts seem to want to watch the meltdown. How telling the response is to the <a href="http://www.intherooms.com/mrclean" target="_blank">owners</a><a href="http://www.intherooms.com/rt" target="_blank">' dedication</a> to free thought on the site.<br />
<br />
Maybe America likes to watch melt-downs. Perhaps people with less money think it's interesting to watch a man who seemingly has everything go off the deep end in a spiral of drugs, alcohol, sex addiction and just plain mania. Whatever the reason, a clear word must be said about making fun of this tragedy.<br />
<br />
STOP.<br />
<br />
Craig Ferguson has it right. Here's an example of socially-conscious reporting. On a Late-Night Talk Show.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WigGPO6EJ20?rel=0" title="YouTube video player" width="400"></iframe><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">A Casualty</span><br />
<br />
Sheen is just one more casualty in the war on drugs and the media's fascination with celebrity and absurdity. Whatever the reason, this man is very very sick. As a person with the same disease (addiction) I cannot go on watching him become the butt of every one's jokes.<br />
<br />
Absolutely — his words have been filled with self-centeredness and his actions show an obsessive and compulsive denial of even being an addict. That is the definition of addiction. Kissing it off to "no one can get help unless they want it" has proved to be a fallacy. Watch a few episodes of "<a href="http://www.aetv.com/intervention/index.jsp" target="_blank">Intervention</a>" to know that the bottoming out process can be lovingly pointed out and orchestrated by those who truly love and care for the addict.<br />
<br />
The man might have bi-polar disorder. He certainly looks as if he is close to death. The <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0521143/bio" target="_blank">producer</a> of the hit show that was just canceled as a result of Sheen's antics is one of the few people who have shown they will no longer stand by and watch him crash and burn. The intervention started at that very moment by a man who has obviously seen his share of enabling and co-dependence.<br />
<br />
Thank you to the honesty of this <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0521143/bio" target="_blank">Hollywood mover-and-shaker</a> who realized his only chance at getting help for Sheen was to cut the cord.<br />
<br />
Martin Sheen has been open about his own struggle with the disease and should know quite well that there is a road to death by this disease and there is a road back called recovery. What I ask now is "Where are the family members? When are they going to step in?" The shame of having an addict in the family can only be measured by how far the family will go to get the addict help. Sheens? <a href="http://dimewars.com/Blog/Martin-Sheen---Martin-Sheen-Still-Hopes-Charlie-Sheen-Will-Recover-From-Addiction.aspx?BlogID=b0255683-1efa-431b-96f1-1137c26664c4" target="_blank">Where are you</a>? Do you feel the need to step away from Charlie as he goes through his own personal hell?<br />
<br />
I remember reading about and watching Martin Sheen melt down in an early scene in "Apocalypse Now" when he was obviously very drunk and allowed to go the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078788/trivia?tr0742322">extreme lengths of self-destruction</a> to shoot that scene and to show the horror of a man and his demons. At least M. Sheen was able to see on screen just exactly what meltdown looks like as the director and editor chose to leave the horrific drunken rage in the film, even after being physically attacked during the shooting.<br />
<br />
There are no high priced directors and big money backers watching Charlie Sheen melt down. There are only people who will either cheer him on or walk away from him.<br />
<br />
This addict embraces her brother in the fellowship of recovery just as much as I embraced Rush Limbaugh into the family. Was that hard to do? No. Did I get a ridiculous amount of flack for supporting him. You bet.<br />
<br />
But had it not been for those who stood by me while I was going down and telling me they would not watch me kill myself I would not be here today to write about and for any person enduring this disease. Laugh if you want. But know that there were a great deal of people who enjoyed watching the beheading of Royalty in Britain and the Colosseum spectacles in Rome.<br />
<br />
Question is, what does you heart tell you? If you care about your fellow human being, I pray you will stop all Sheen jokes as you hear them being told and remind the joke teller that life and death are no joking matter.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Getting Help</span><br />
<br />
Praying for you Mr. Sheen. May that the next article I read about you not be an obituary. Here's a link you might be interested in... <a href="http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/03/04/dr-drew-charlie-sheen-special/" target="_blank">Get Help for Charie Sheen</a>!<br />
<br />
<br />
</div>lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-45365009141297875412011-03-05T11:18:00.002-07:002011-03-05T11:25:49.304-07:00genderandmilitarism: The Trials of Pinar Selek<div id="tabs-wrapper" class="clear-block"><h1 class="with-tabs" align="center" style="font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The Trials of Pinar Selek</span></h1><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">by Cynthia Cockburn</span><br /></div> <span class="submitted"></span> <div class="content clear-block"> <div id="nodereferrer-create-main-menu" style="display: none;"> <div class="nodereferrer-create-menu"> <ul class="nodereferrer-create-top-level"><li style="float: left;"> <div class="nodereferrer-create-title"> Related peace activists <img src="imap://westgallery@mail.mac.com:143/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX%3E161344?part=1.2&filename=down.png" title="" alt="" /> </div> <div style="position: absolute; display: none;" class="nodereferrer-create-items"> <ul class="nodereferrer-create-second-level"><li> <a href="http://wri-irg.org/node/12292/create_referrer/0/codb_conscientious_objector/0">Create new Conscientious objector</a> </li><li> <a href="http://wri-irg.org/node/12292/add_referrer/0/codb_conscientious_objector/0">Add to existing Conscientious objector</a> </li></ul> </div> </li></ul> </div><br /></div> <p style="font-family: times new roman;"><em>Pinar Selek, Turkish feminist and antimilitarist writer and activist, framed on a charge of terrorism, has been the subject of an unresolved legal process for twelve years. On 9 February 2011 she was acquitted for the third time in an Istanbul court. Next day the prosecution appealed for the third time to the Supreme Court to over-rule the finding.This is not justice but judicial bullying.</em></p> <p>The experiences of Pinar Selek at the hands of the Turkish judicial system defy understanding. I have just returned from the February 9 hearing of her case in the Istanbul Court. The charge against her is implication in a deadly bomb explosion. The sentence called for is a life term in solitary. I attended the hearing as a representative of War Resisters International, one of a score of international ‘observers’, including several Members of the European Parliament and a representative of Human Rights Watch.</p> <p>We joined Pinar’s supporters, friends and relatives in the tightly packed public gallery. We watched as the presiding judge heard a cursory presentation of old evidence, retired to deliberate for fifteen minutes, and returned to pronounce the few words necessary to acquit Pinar. There was singing and dancing outside the court as we celebrated the removal of the threat hanging over Pinar. We phoned her in her exile in Germany and said “Come home and join the party tonight, Pinar!” Fortunately, wisely, she hesitated to do so. Twenty-four hours later we were confounded and dismayed to hear that the prosecution had appealed to the Supreme Court for a retrial.</p> <p>So what is this all about? In 1998, Pinar, then a young feminist sociologist, seeking to understand the motivations of both sides in the enduring armed conflict between the Kurdish minority and the Turkish state, carried out a research project that involved interviewing members of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. On return she was apprehended by the Turkish security services and, when she refused to reveal the names of her informants, was severely tortured.</p> <p>A little while before this, an explosion in the Istanbul Spice Bazaar had caused a number of deaths and injuries. Pinar, now conveniently in the hands of the state on account of her research, was a handy suspect ‘bomber’. In the twelve years since that fateful explosion she has been subject to continuous unresolved prosecution. She has been imprisoned for two and a half of those years. During periods of relative freedom, after acquittals and before re-prosecutions, she has founded and been active in a feminist antimilitarist organization, Amargi. Amargi women activists have in turn been at the core of her support group. Recently Pinar, aged 40, has been living the life of an exile in Germany, supported by a grant from International PEN, the worldwide assocation of writers. She is the editor of Amargi Journal and respected for her many analytical articles and books, the most recent of which is a critique of militarized masculinity.</p> <p>In a succession of court hearings, no credible evidence has ever been produced to suggest that the explosion in the Spice Bazaar was caused by a bomb. On the contrary, the material facts point to a gas leak. The only link between Pinar and the explosion that, for a while, seemed credible, was a confession by a man who named her as his partner in this ‘crime’. At his trial, however, he retracted his statement, which had been obtained under torture. The truth was that he did not even know Pinar. He was acquitted. Pinar however continued to be suspect.</p> <p>She has been tried twice in the Istanbul local court (in 2006 and 2008) and each time acquitted. On both occasions the prosecution has refused to accept this verdict and appealed to the Supreme Court which has found Pinar guilty of the charges against her and called on the Istanbul Court to re-open the case. The hearing of February 9 was the third occasion the matter has come before the Istanbul Court. February 10 was the third occasion the prosecution has batted the ball back to the higher judiciary in what has become a game of ping-pong that would be a joke were it not so malign. This is not any recognizable judicial process but rather a sustained harassment. In short - bullying.</p> <p>Poignancy is added to this case by the fact that Pinar Selek’s leading advocate is her father, a respected lawyer. Besides, Pinar’s sister decided to study law in order to pursue justice in the case. She has had ample time in these years to qualify and practise law. I found it very moving to see both family members in court last week, not only reviewing the evidence for the defence but also telling the judge, from their own bitter knowledge, of the psychological trauma being inflicted on Pinar.</p> <p>The media paid full attention to the court hearing. All the international observers including myself made short statements to the assembled journalists. The case was headlined in the Turkish evening TV news programmes and the newspapers the following day. For twenty-four hours we were hopeful that the knowledge that the world was watching them would be an added prompt to the Turkish judiciary to finally deliver the justice it purports to uphold. But no. The only explanation of its bizarre behaviour is that the trials of Pinar Selek, like several other recent and current cases before the Turkish courts, are in fact designed by the Turkish state for a political purpose - to be an object lesson to anyone who thinks of stepping out of line.</p> <p align="right"><i>Cynthia Cockburn</i></p> </div>lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8289310.post-13529913648179792372010-12-24T15:40:00.000-07:002010-12-24T15:41:24.798-07:00Video shows 'US attack' on Iraqis<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/UaqY12VHFv4?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/UaqY12VHFv4?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>lisbethwesthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00610227461382480357noreply@blogger.com0