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The Sagon Penn Chapter of CopWatch Conference, focusing on Police Brutality, was held on October 22 at the Hot Monkey Love Cafe in San Diego. Audio and transcribed excerpts from the third panel "Abuse of Police Power Under the Patriot Act."
Abuse of Police Power Under the Patriot Act
Facilitator: Bob Alba
Panelists: Enrique Morones, Linda Brown
Audio Duration: 1 hr 8 min
Enrique Morones (0:35)
As a native San Diegan and proudly 100% Mexican who's grown up here in san diego I know that never before has there been so much brutality, so many hate crimes as there are now. Never before has there been so much division within the country and so much hate toward this country as there is right now. I blame it on the man that sits at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and his policies. This regime has got to really be taken out, the Bush regime. It's horrible what's going on and it's only going to get worse... Never before has there been so much hate radio and hate television like there is right now... They seem to create more and more hate, more misinformation out there. And that has led to more anti-migrant legislation, more hate crimes in this country, more people getting beat up. The abuse that all communities of color, people that have a different lifestyle are taking, it is absolutely wrong. It has to change. It absolutely has to change... One of the things that is happening on our front lines that many of us here have been actively involved with is the racist vigilante minutemen that are on the border. They're still out there. They have never left. They've been here since 1846. But they have been here and active and popular in California since April, April in Arizona... On July 16 they arrived in San Diego. Many of us have been out there and confronting them. We have protesters, we have legal observers.,, The minutemen, because of the patriot act, because of the racist policies seem to have a license to do whatever they want. And they have been doing virtually anything they want... About a half dozen migrants have been shot, they have all been hospitalized in Mexico so the u.s. authorities say well they're hospitalized in Mexico so we can't do anything, But some of them were shot in the united states, so that's absolutely wrong... I've been threatened directly by Jim Chase, saying he's going to kill me, looking right at me, pointing at me and the police don't do anything... They're promoting this hate, telling people to bring baseball bats and machetes, shooting migrants, threatening our people, shooting at observers... Nobody would get away with it In another time frame, but now people are getting away with it and it's wrong. So we have to be very vigilant, we have to say no to these racist vigilantes... The whole world is watching... Our crowd is like this - multicultural, different beliefs, different lifestyles, and that's the way it should be. When you see the minutemen, you see mostly anglo men in their 60s. They are heavily armed and they have that law enforcement mentality and we just have to shut them down.
Gente Unida: sdgenteunida@yahoo.com
Linda Brown (13:18 )
What we have going on right now in the united states is an assault on the bill of rights, that's what the patriot act is... You have people afraid to speak out... We're living under a tyrannical government right now... There was a presentation at my daughter's school, they were studying the holocaust and they had a survivor come to the school to talk to them... She spoke to the children... about her own personal story... She had been living in a little village in Hungary. She was fifteen years old. She was in school. One day she's in school sitting with her classmates and friends and the next day she's being herded out of the town with the other Jews in the town going down the middle of the street in a parade of Jews, with the other villagers standing on either side in the parade yelling at them, jeering at them, calling them names. She looked out at the crowd and she saw kids that she had just sat next to the day before. It really struck me about how easy it is to hate another people and how easy we can fall into it. She said to the kids... You have to speak out against it. because that's not what was done back then. The most important of your rights is the first amendment. That's where you can make a difference, because you can speak out against the government... We need to get the word out. It especially needs to happen in the schools with the young people.
Q/A with Linda Brown (23:14 )
Homeless harassment comes from the City Attorney's office. The City Attorney's office has a special unit that prosecutes the homeless... The illegal lodging statue is one that says you cant "illegally lodge" meaning if you've got what they would consider evidence that you are making a home because you've got a bedroll, you've got your stuff with you that you own, you're staying there and you're sleeping on the streets, if you don't have permission from the owner of whatever property it is that you happen to be on... It's persecution of people who don't have a voice to object about what is being done to them. These are poor people that are unfortunate, they're on the streets. Their putting them in jail... It keeps up the numbers because that justifies their existence, they get to hire more cops, they get to build more jails... They're arresting people for a crime that shouldn't be on the books, 647J, illegal lodging, persecuting people who can't afford to pay for a hotel room, a motel room or an apartment somewhere... They give them an order to stay away from where ever they got arrested, and usually that's someplace where they are getting their services, like near the Neil Good Day Center, or St Vincent de Paul, and they tell them they can't go back there again, which puts these people in a hole where they are never going to get out... There are certain areas, like the river area or certain blocks downtown, you are going to get 30 days, 60 days, because of a special agreement with the business people.
I did meet Jim Chase one day. He came right into where we were sitting there watching a place where they were sitting watching. The guy is a wack job, he is completely out there, he's talking about how he's watching for Al Qaeda at the border... The scary thing about them, aside from that the fact that they are out there, is that the sheriff is not enforcing the law out there... A legal observer went to deliver a letter to Jim Chase... to warn him about what happened with Juan [a legal observer who had been assaulted] and to warn him that we were going to seek legal remedies... Somebody shot at her, kicked up dirt right next to her car. She kept going. Nothing has been done about that. Jim Chase acknowledged that she had been shot at. His boys told him that she had been shot at but that there are Mexican bandits and hunters out there, and it was probably one of them. We know it wasn't one of them. It was one of the minutemen. Im sure it was a warning shot. I think those guys could have hit someone if they wanted to. But nonetheless, that's a violation of the law, what they just did, and nobody is out there investigating it. The legal observers are out there non-confrontational. All we are doing is setting up in an area where we can watch the minutemen and what they are doing. And we are filming them, we've got video, we've got still cameras, notepads, we are just watching because if they come in contact with migrants crossing, we want to make sure they don't harm them, we want to make sure they don't violate their civil, their human rights.
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