Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entered the single-family, two-story home in the 10000 block of South Normandie Avenue about 6:30 a.m.. and arrested 61 Central and South American immigrants in the house due to citizenship status.
Be on the look out and be careful. These raids continue to devastate communities and tear up families. South LA has long been a site of INS agents, dating back to the horrid summer raids of 2004.
Via racewire.org: Ruben Kihuen, the son of Mexican immigrants, is up for re-election in Nevada’s state assembly. The Dem has represented the 11th District since 2006, when he ran his first campaign a year after becoming a citizen. Kihuen made news most recently though because he endorsed and canvassed aggressively for Hillary Clinton, though the local Latino-heavy Culinary Union supported Obama. Clinton won the Nevada primary, but how Kihuen will deal with the difference in opinion between himself and his constituency is something to keep an eye on, says Bill Fulkerson of Plan Nevada, a nonprofit alliance of over 24 groups that works for progressive social change in Nevada.
Ruben Kihuen’s website: http://www.rubenforassembly.com/
After reading about the issues plaguing the Soboba Indian Reservation, I had to take a minute and ask myself what year it is: 2008. The conflict between the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department and the Soboba Indian Reservation looks strikingly similar to the Indian Wars of the 18th century. So much so, I am alarmed and saddened that amidst all of the social and economic problems plaguing Indian Reservations today, they still must face police brutality and outright racism.
Essentially, a wild gun battle between Riverside County sheriff’s deputies and a pair of suspects on the Soboba Indian Reservation left two people dead and tribal members frustrated and demanding answers Tuesday.
“There are better ways to solve these problems than by bringing in the 7th Cavalry and wiping them out. I would say we are in a war right now,” said Robert Salgado, Soboba tribal chairman and a cousin of those killed. Chairman Soboba was refused entry into the crime seen by Riverside County Sheriff’s intensifying the disrespect felt by this community, on top of the mourning of two of their peers. In response to the Sheriff’s, Soboba states ”See why I’m angry? You see what I’m talking about?” he asked as he drove off. “If I was the mayor of L.A. and I was visiting a crime scene, they would have said, ‘Hey, how you doing?’ but they treat me with no respect. Do we look like gangsters?”
Moreover, after the land, natural resources, and livelihood was taken away by European settlers and their descendants, Native Americans have had few resources to deal with the isolation that their newfound ‘reservations’ provided them. They face issues of alcoholism, drug abuse, violence, and depression. Common issues plaguing today’s inner cities, but in this case they are socially isolated and all but forgotten, if it wasn’t for the creation of Indain casinos.
Salgado said he believes some of the tension stems from 2006, when he canceled a contract with the Sheriff’s Department that paid for deputies to patrol the reservation.
“We paid $400,000 and we didn’t see the benefits, so we did away with the contract,” he said. This explanation makes total sense: the sheriff’s department is pissed off they lost easy money for no work and have decided to harass the community in response to the loss of their contract. Are there no rules to regulate unprompted retalialtion and civil rights abuses?
The notion that these blatantly racist and discriminatory public officials can harrass, threaten, and even harm members of this community is beyond my own comprehension. Yet, I must remember this is the same country and same people that have colonized native people into laborers under harsh public policies that favor the rich and beat down on the poor. Now, two members of the Soboba Tribe have died, and tension is only escalating. Seems like the traditions of the wild west are still alive and well in the racist Inland Empire.
The California law against setting prices based on gender is 13 years old, but some businesses in Santa Monica didn’t get the memo. What nine dry cleaners and laundries did get this week was a lawsuit filed by the Santa Monica city attorney. They’re allegedly not posting prices for their 15 most-requested services, or not handing out prices lists when customers ask, or not posting a large anti-discrimination sign.
Facing a potential life sentence in federal prison, a former Los Angeles police officer who was the admitted mastermind of a home invasion robbery gang apologized for his crimes Monday, telling a federal judge, “I became something that I despised.”
In a somewhat rambling, emotional address made moments before he was sentenced, Ruben Palomares told U.S. District Court Judge Gary A. Feess that he failed to face up to undisclosed “problems” he encountered as a young police officer and “I took a short cut.”
Palomares has been sentenced to 13 years in federal prison. Coupled with time that Palomares is serving on a related drug case, he probably will spend 20 years behind bars before he is released, prosecutors said. The disgraced officer, who also admitted to planting drugs on suspects and committing other crimes while working in the LAPD’s Rampart Division in the 1990s, had earned a reputation as one of the department’s most notoriously corrupt officers in recent memory.
Given that more than two-thirds of Los Angeles city workers earned overtime last year, totaling $355 million, even as the mayor issued a directive to curtail such payouts, the Daily News has saught to provide transperant commentary by way of a salary database.
SEARCH: Salaries; Overtime | REACT: City Hall payroll
Mexico also made its official debut at the Venice Biennele, renting a labyrinthine Gothic palazzo near the Rialto Bridge that looks like something out of a Tolkien fever dream, with a high interior courtyard flanked by a winding stone staircase. The exhibition, by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, is the opposite of the don’t-touch art that fills most of this city. Every piece requires some kind of participation.
