This is something new I am going to try. I am wanting to have some type of event aggregator on here. There are event that are happening here in the US that we don’t really hear about or if we do it is after the fact. So for now I will post things up events that hear that are happening here in Texas and I will go from there. To make this successful, I will need help from my readers, if you know of something, please let me know by using the contact form. The event does not have have to be a major. The purpose of this little project of mine is to give people another vehicle to get the word out about their event, whether it is a demonstration of one or one thousand people. This is an attempt to answer the age old question of “How do individuals even have a chance of being heard?” The act of dissent is a practice of self-realization of many individuals and is crucial for challenging unjust hierarchies and for promoting progressive change; and if used wisely it can move mountains.

Events Happening Around Texas
#1 For those who live in Coppell, TX, please help the Charania family.
Date: June 16 (this Saturday)
Time: 11:00 AM
Location: Andy Brown Community Park East Shelter
260 East Parkway Blvd
Coppell, TX 75019
Click here for map
(side note: if you are not from Coppell and are trying to use Google or Yahoo maps to find it, I have bad news. Both search engines will tell you the address does not exist. The best address to use is 401 N Denton Tap Rd which is the address to the main park and from there it will show the different park locations. Click on the link above for a map of the location.)

Fighting For:
On Tuesday morning the parents of Ali Charania were arrested by the Dallas immigration authorities and are being held in one of concentration camps here in Texas, () and is pending deportation. They will be transferred to the Rolling Plains Concentration Camp Prison in Haskell, TX, while Ali, 16 years old, is being sent to a juvenile home in Chicago. His sister, a former honors student at Berkeley, lives away and avoided arrest. All of this is because their former attorney “missed two critical filling deadlines.”

The Charania family had been working diligently on seeking asylum to avoid religious persecution. They are a few weeks away from green card status and if it had not been for the mistakes of their former attorney, they would already be legal residents of the United States. The Charania family has been an important part of this community, business owners, top students, and our friends. They deserve a chance. The Charania family should be granted leniency.

If you have some free time to spare, please attend the rally and show your support. If you can not stay long then please find some way to sign their petition to ask that leniency be granted for them. More information on this story can be found on Greg Moses’ Texas Civil Rights Review and here.

#2 For those who live in Dallas, TX, there is a Sign Making Party for the upcoming Hutto Vigil X this month (I will provide info).
Date: June 16 (this Saturday)
Time: 11:00 AM
Location: al-Islam Masjid
2604 S. Harwood
Dallas, TX 75215
Click here for map

Fighting For:
This is a sign-making party in preparation for Hutto Vigil X that will be held on June 23. The Hutto Concentration Camp Detention Facility in Taylor, TX is a privately-run, for-profit prison for immigrants, usually who are seeking political asylum. Most of the prisoners are women and children. A UN inspector was recently denied access to the facility.

Before I get to the last event, because it will be a huge event. I know people are really tight for money, but there are two young and brave souls who risked to all for our immigrant bothers and sisters and they are in need of help at this moment. Here are a couple of links (audio and video) of the coverage of their dissent of the status qou.

Ben Browning and Ashley Turner locked themselves to the entrance gates of the Houston Processing Center, another private immigration concentration camp detention facility here in North Houston. The two were arrested and charged with misdemeanor criminal trespass for using u-locks to fasten their bodies to the entrance and exit gate. However, while they were in jail, additional charges were added – Felony manufacture of a criminal instrument – for using a u-lock. This is their statement (the link also has photos, be sure to check them out):

“Here in the United States, a rising xenophobic sentiment in large parts of the population is being fed and exploited by politicians who are scapegoating immigrants and this system that is stratifying the working class.

To this end we have chosen to commit an act of civil disobedience, blocking gates to the “Houston Processing Center”; an Immigrant Detention Facility in North Houston run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). CCA is a company that turns a profit of over a billion dollars a year by administering prisons for state and federal governments. They run the notorious Don T. Hutto Facility in Taylor Texas, a converted jail that imprisons asylum seekers and children. These children are subject to inhumane treatment and ICE/CCA denied access to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants this past month as he tried to investigate the conditions at the Hutto Facility. By the fall of 2007 ICE will spend an estimated 1 billion dollars a year to detain over 27,500 people. ICE operates eight Service Processing Centers and seven contract detention facilities such as Hutto, Raymondville and the Houston Processing Center, all three run by CCA.

We decided we had to put our bodies on the line in an effort to slow down and expose the oppression and exploitation of immigrants by the capitalist economic order, the US Government and the US Prison Industrial Complex. We condemn the policies of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Corrections Corporation of America. We recognize this escalation of raids and deportations are not a fundamentally new development, but part of a continued effort to terrorize our communities for the sake of maintaining an unjust social order.”

They need your help, a legal support fund has been established to pay for bail and other legal fees:
You can donate online via Paypal (click “send money”) to the seditioncollective(at)yahoo.com email account c/o Sin Fronteras Legal Aid.
or
You can mail well concealed cash, checks or money orders with a blank recipient info to:
Houston Sin Fronteras Legal Aid
c/o Houston ABC
PO Box 667614
Houston, TX, 77266-7614

Last item: The Hutto Vigil X
For more information please visit their site, Free The Children of Texas’ Hutto Prison. If you interested in going and need a ride or need more information feel free contact me for more information. There is even word that Elizabeth Kucinich, wife of Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich and a long-time child advocate will be there. Please attend this rally, we need to shut down Amerikkka’s concentration camps.

Related posts

• A Happy Reunion For This Immigrant Family (0)
• Don Hutto Vigil Report (21)
• XP Hits the Small Screen (14)
• The Anti-Immigration’s Propaganda on Reproductive Rights (13)
• Senate’s Second Secret Immigration Bill (10)

Tags: Charania family, concentration camps, Elizabeth Kucinich, Hutto Detention Facility, ICE, Immigration, Mobilization, Rolling Plains Prison, Texas, video |  Print This Post |
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