Mass Movement for Migrants Rights 2010 on the threshold of history-the Last Stage by Javier Rodriguez

http://bit.ly/9r95JQ

Similar to the epoch of 2006, but contributing its own characteristics, as a whole, the process of today has already entered the massive and irreversible galvanization that apparently is about to reach the coveted goal, the big prize, immigration reform.
by Javier Rodriguez ~ Political Strategist Los Angeles ~ February 17, 2010
Wed Feb 17, 2010 6:00 am
javier rodriguez ~ Email: bajolamiradejavier@yahoo.com

Once again the US movement for immigrant rights is in the threshold of history. This last stage for legalization and immigration reform has arrived and it’s moving fast. Though the political conditions are difficult, the long-awaited legislation that will empower the millions of undocumented now in the shadows, could well be debated and approved by congress and signed by President Barack Obama in the next months. To put the legislative strategy in motion, the nation is expecting the immigration proposal of Senators (D)Schumer and (R)Graham to be introduced in the coming weeks. At the same time the movement and its leadership have changed the tone of their political message and pressure on Washington by calling for a large mass mobilization on March 21st. The potential catalyst event will gather an estimated 100,000 people plus.

The general background to these developments is the global economic crisis and the wall street bailout with colossal gifts of hundreds of billions of dollars to the same financial class known to be the root of the country’s economic downfall. The millions of jobs lost have not been replaced and the double digit unemployment continues unabated. Millions of homeowners have been displaced from their homes, the health reform bill is paralyzed while the empire's wars have no end and the future of the middle and working class has diminished greatly.

In the area of immigration there is the long existence of an absurdly broken immigration system. Under President Obama the violent end to ICE raids in the work place was won, but it was not free. Instead, the Obama administration launched a Machiavellian strategy of securing the country by unleashing its own and unexpected campaign of persecution and deportation, police programs and the expansion of employment verification. The year long effort has unveiled ironic results considered by DHS Director Janet Napolitano, as proof, that the nation is secured and the country is ready for full immigration reform. Astonishingly, the battle cry could be enhanced by the fact the undocumented population has depleted to 10.8 million.

Accompanying these developments are several revealing political and organizational achievements that have been amassing steadily for over a year. On the one hand these include the 2008 elections and the defeat of the right, in which the Latino and immigrant vote played a pivotal role, especially in the former battleground states. The high-level White House meeting on immigration along with the continuing statements of support for reform by the president, senior officials and key federal legislators. The national surveys and academic studies that point to a well known favorable public opinion in support for legalization and that in fact it is essential for the country’s economic recovery(DR. Raul Hinojosa UCLA). The departure of Lou Dobbs from CNN and the recent presentation of Congressman Gutierrez immigration bill in the house, co-signed by 92 congressional Democrats from the Hispanic, African American, Asian and Progressive Caucuses.

Most important are the persistent educational and motivational campaigns along with protests proliferating nationally, including the entrance of this social movement into the electronic arena with its nets roots environment deploying effectively hundreds of thousands of emails, faxes and texts as well telephone meetings of up to 60,000 attendees. All this combined with summit meetings and lobbying in the capital.

Also, a month on the road is a dramatic marathon hike of 2.414 kilometers, from Florida to Washington DC, by four undocumented university students, culminating on May 1st. And the fasts or hunger strikes are growing parallel with the continuing protests and legal complaints against the infamous separation of families. In Chicago, the city council adopted a resolution in favor of immigration reform. In Phoenix 20.000 protested against conservative Sheriff Arpaio. In Detroit, as in other cities, 2,000 people gathered to plan their lobbying work and in Los Angeles over a thousand activists attended a fired up rally headlined by Luis Gutierrez.

Furthermore, with plans to mobilize by land and air tens of thousands to the March 21st national demonstration, the massive preparations are speedily advancing already heralding a huge success. In fact, the Hermandad Mexicana Trans-Nacional, based in California and Nevada, has already reserved the flights for a hundred of its members, 100% women “adelitas�. And amazingly all the funds for airfare, hotels, meals and ground transportation are being raised grass roots, including a Mexican wrestling match.

Added to the outpour of multiple and eclectic activities is a well funded national movement, more professional and multifaceted, different from the May 1st street groups. Organized and composed of large social sectors and coalitions, NGOs, Reform Immigration for America, Center for Community Change, FIRM, unions, the churches, etc., this movement can be observed moving in unity and in alliance -partnership- with progressive forces and legislative lobbyists in the beltway and Congress pushing the political process.

Indisputably the principal national figure has turned out to be the Chicago Puerto Rican (D)Congressman Luis Gutierrez who in 2009 headed the historic “National Campaign of Familias Unidas� with rallies of thousands in more than 20 cities. Inherently within this broad display of participating social forces, parts of the national grass roots movement that led millions of immigrant demonstrators unto the streets and also boycotted the economy since early 2006 is also included.

It is obvious that we are in the dynamics of the last stage of a 24-year struggle to legalize the millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Also more than obvious is that the present national movement is a logical extension of this social struggle, with more leadership skills it sought and found unity and is moving so far under a national strategy. Similar to the epoch of 2006, but contributing its own characteristics, as a whole, the process of today has already entered the massive and irreversible galvanization that apparently is about to reach the coveted goal, the big prize, immigration reform.

*A clarification. This piece does not include an analysis of any bills with a comparative to international human rights principles. Nor a deeper look into the leadership of said movement and its principal organizations, their political trajectories and ideological roots. It also does not contain a look into the more radical and hard sectors, its divisions and its present vision or strategy. In spite of other writing priorities, I expect to broaden this article and offer my critical contributions on this points in the following days.

* Javier Rodriguez, a Media-Political Strategist, is a co-founder of the National Coalition for Fair Immigration Laws and Practices 1973-78, CASA 1971 -78, the Coalition for Visas and Rights for the Undocumented 1982-90, California Latinos for Jesse Jackson 1984, the March 25 Coalition 2006, May 1st National Movement 2007 and Paramento Migrante Mexico City 2007. As a progressive journalist, has also published for the LA Times La Opinion, Eastern Group Publications, Uno Mas Uno-Mexico, syndicated with Hispanic Link, ZMAG.org, Newtorkaztlan.com and STN's Portaluno.com. He is now writing his experiences and perspective as a leading activist in the Immigrant Rights Movement, including the making of 25 March 2006 For which he was the initiator.

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Snipers Imperil U.S. Troops in Offensive in Afghanistan via NYTimes

http://nyti.ms/axUUMh

Snipers Imperil U.S. Troops in Offensive in Afghanistan

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Marines and Afghan Army soldiers fought as they were attacked Monday in an open field in Marja by the Taliban. More Photos >

By C. J. CHIVERS

Published: February 17, 2010

ARJA, Afghanistan — In five days of fighting, the Taliban have shown a side not often seen in nearly a decade of American military action in Afghanistan: the use of snipers, both working alone and integrated into guerrilla-style ambushes.

Five Marines and two Afghan soldiers have been struck here in recent days by bullets fired at long range. That includes one Marine fatally shot and two others wounded in the opening hour of a four-hour clash on Wednesday, when a platoon with Company K of the Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, was ambushed while moving on foot across a barren expanse of flat ground between the clusters of low-slung mud buildings.

Almost every American and Afghan infantryman present has had frightening close calls. Some of the shooting has apparently been from Kalashnikov machine guns, the Marines say, mixed with sniper fire.

The near misses have included lone bullets striking doorjambs beside their faces as Marines peeked around corners, single rounds cracking by just overhead as Marines looked over mud walls, and bullets slamming into the dirt beside them as they ran across the many unavoidable open spaces in the area they have been assigned to clear.

On Wednesday, firing came from primitive compounds, irrigation canals and agricultural fields as the bloody struggle between the Marines and the Taliban for control of the northern portion of this Taliban enclave continued for a fifth day.

In return, Company K used mortars, artillery, helicopter attack gunships and an airstrike in a long afternoon of fighting, which ended, as has been the pattern for nearly a week, with the waning evening light.

The fight to push the Taliban from this small area of Marja, a rural belt of dense poppy cultivation with few roads and almost no services, has relented only briefly since Company K landed by helicopters in the blackness early on Saturday morning. It has been a grinding series of skirmishes triggered by the company's advances to seize sections of villages, a bridge and a bazaar where it has established an outpost and patrol bases.

Over all, most Taliban small-arms fire has been haphazard and ineffective, an unimpressive display of ill discipline or poor skill. But this more familiar brand of Taliban shooting has been punctuated by the work of what would seem to be several well-trained marksmen.

On Monday, a sniper struck an Afghan soldier in the neck at a range of roughly 500 to 700 yards. The Afghan was walking across an open area when the single shot hit him. He died.

The experience of First Platoon on Wednesday was the latest chilling example. The platoon, laden with its backpacks, was moving west toward the company's main outpost after several days of operating in the eastern portion of the company's area.

Marines here often stay within the small clusters of buildings as they walk, seeking the relative protection of mud walls. But it is impossible to move far without venturing into the open to cross to new villages. As First Platoon moved into the last wide expanse before reaching the command post, the Taliban began a complex ambush.

First bullets came from a Kalashnikov firing from the south, said First Lt. Jarrod D. Neff, the platoon commander. The attack had a logic: to the south, a deep irrigation canal separates the insurgents from anyone walking on the north side, where the company's forces are concentrated. Vegetation is also thicker there, providing ample concealment.

There have been several ambushes in this same spot since the long-planned Afghan and American operation to evict the Taliban and establish a government presence in Marja began. Each time, the Marines and their Afghan counterparts have run through the open by turns, some of them sprinting while others provided suppressive fire.

The routine had been a long and risky maneuver by dashing and dropping, without a hint of cover, as bursts of machine-gun bullets and single sniper shots zipped past or thumped in the soil, kicking up a fine white powder that coats the land. At the end of each ambush, each man was slicked in sweat and winded. Ears rang from the near deafening sound of the Marines and Afghan soldiers returning fire.

As First Platoon made the crossing under machine-gun fire, at least one sniper was also waiting, according to the Marines who crossed. After the Taliban gunmen occupied the platoon's attention to the south, a sniper opened fire from the north, Marines in the ambush said.

The Marine who was killed was struck in the chest as he ran, just above the bulletproof plate on his body armor, the Marines said. The others were struck in a hand or arm. (The names of the three wounded men have been withheld pending government notification of their families.)

All three were evacuated by an Army Black Hawk helicopter that landed under crackling fire.

Whoever was firing remained hidden, even from the Marines' rifle scopes. "I was looking and I couldn't see them," said Staff Sgt. Jay C. Padilla, an intelligence specialist who made the crossing with First Platoon. "But they were shooting the dirt right next to us." The sniper also focused, two Marines said, on trying to hit a black Labrador retriever, Jaeger, who has been trained for sniffing out munitions and hidden bombs. The dog was not hit.

The platoon was just outside the company outpost when the ambush began. A squad from Third Platoon rushed out and bounded across the canal, trying to flank the Taliban and chase them away, or to draw their fire so that First Platoon might continue its crossing. The squad came under precise sniper fire, too, while the company coordinated fire support.

First the company fired its 60-millimeter mortars, but the Taliban kept firing. Company K escalated after the Third Platoon commander reported by radio that several insurgents had moved into a compound near the canal.

The forward air controller traveling with Company K, Capt. Akil R. Bacchus, arranged for an airstrike.

About a minute later, a 250-pound GPS-guided bomb whooshed past overhead and slammed into the compound with a thunderous explosion.

"Good hit!" said Capt. Joshua P. Biggers, the company commander. "Good hit."

After the airstrike, two pairs of attack helicopters were cleared to strafe a set of bunkers and canals that the Taliban fighters had been firing from.

They climbed high over the canal and bore down toward a tree line, guns and rockets firing. Explosions tossed soil and made the ground shudder. First Platoon pushed toward the outpost.

For all the intensity of the fighting in this small area of Marja, and in spite of the hardships and difficulties of the past several days, both Captain Biggers and the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Brian Christmas, suggested Wednesday that the seesaw contest would soon shift.

Company K had been isolated for several days, and by daylight was almost constantly challenged by the Taliban. But on Wednesday morning, before the latest ambush, the battalion had cleared the roads to its outposts, allowing more forces to flow into the area, significantly increasing the company's strength.

By evening, as Cobra gunships still circled, the results were visible to the Marines and insurgents watching the outpost alike. The company had more supplies, and its contingent of several mine-resistant, ambush-protected troop carriers, called MRAPs — each outfitted with either a heavy machine gun or automatic grenade launcher — had reached the outpost.

Colonel Christmas looked over the outpost's southern wall at the vegetated terrain beyond the canal. "We'll be getting in there and clearing that out," he said.

http://nyti.ms/axUUMh

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Olympic Resistance: Indigenous Groups, Anti-Poverty Activists, and Civil Liberties Advocates Protest 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver

http://bit.ly/bNANlP

Note: See Video at Websource ~ Peta

February 15, 2010

Olympic Resistance: Indigenous Groups, Anti-Poverty Activists, and Civil Liberties Advocates Protest 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver

Our Olympic coverage begins today in the streets of Vancouver, where some say a historic convergence is taking place. Indigenous groups, anti-poverty activists and civil liberties advocates are some of the voices being heard in protests against the Olympic presence. Franklin Lopez of the Vancouver's Media Co-op has been following the Olympic protests. He filed this report. [includes rush transcript]

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Video Report From Vancouver, produced by Franklin Lopez with assistance from a coalition of over forty independent media activists including members of The Dominion Paper, Victoria Indymedia, B Channel News, Rochester Indymedia, Friendly Fire Collective, Pittsburgh Indymedia, Upheaval Productions, SolidarityResponse.net, Pepperspray Productions and subMedia.tv

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AMY GOODMAN: The 2010 Winter Olympic Games are underway in Vancouver, Canada. The $40 million opening ceremony was held Friday night, kicking off an event that's covered the host city in national flags and the logos of the Games' corporate sponsors. The ceremony was held against the backdrop of tragedy, following the death of a Georgian luge team member during a practice session just hours before.

Unseasonably warm temperatures, meanwhile, are hindering some of the Olympic competition sites. Organizers have been forced to use helicopters and trucks to haul in snow for thinly covered mountains.

Well, our Olympic coverage begins today in the streets of Vancouver, where some say a historic convergence is taking place. Indigenous groups, anti-poverty activists and civil liberties advocates are some of the voices being heard in protest against the Olympic presence. Franklin Lopez of Vancouver's Media Co-op has been following the Olympic protests. He filed this report.

FRANKLIN LOPEZ: A historic mobilization in Vancouver against the 2010 Winter Olympics has pushed back hard against the International Olympic Committee and the $6 billion sporting event. People of all political persuasions joined together to reject the Olympic industry, holding conferences, marches and carrying out direct actions aimed at undermining the image of the Olympics, an image critics say obscures the negative social and environmental impacts the Games bring with them. The primary slogan of the resistance movement is "No Olympics on stolen Native land," referring to the immoral and illegal occupation of indigenous lands by settlers.





After years of organizing and mobilization, the anti-Olympics convergence got underway in Vancouver this weekend. Following dozens of protests and disruptions across Canada, the Olympic torch was blocked from passing through Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.


Here's Melissa Elliot of Six Nations explaining why they blocked the torch.


MELISSA ELLIOT: With these 2010 Olympics, VANOC and the IOC, in partnership with Canada, is trying to create a false illusion. They're creating a false illusion that Canada is good and has positive relations with our people. But we are here to break this illusion, to tell the truth, by declaring the following. We are not Canadian. We are not a defeated people. This land was never surrendered. Our nations and our people still exist and will continue to exist.


FRANKLIN LOPEZ: Next, residents of Commercial Drive, a historically progressive street, showed their collective resistance to the torch and what it represents.


PROTESTER: The people at Victory Square reportedly chased the torch as it continued to move. It's on its way here now, or at least it's on its way down Hastings.


FRANKLIN LOPEZ: Hip-hop artist Testament was present to lend his support.


TESTAMENT: Alright, well, we're here today, because there's been a call out by people of this community to stop the torch coming through Commercial Drive. So, many of my friends live in the neighborhood, so it's a great place. So we want to avoid having the Olympics come through here with their bull [expletive] RBC and their bull [expletive] propaganda, their bull [expletive] Canadian flags. And we want to—you know, we want to reclaim this neighborhood. So, it's what people are doing. We're taking the streets. We're taking this over. We're blocking the torch. And we're going to – we're going to stand here. We're going to stay here. We're going to, like, occupy the [expletive] intersections and force them to reroute it.


FRANKLIN LOPEZ: Even the disrupted torch-bearer, Carrie Serwetnyk, could empathize with protesters, whose cause continued to gain support as the Games drew nearer.


CARRIE SERWETNYK: I think it's great for people to have free speech, and I salute it. Some of my friends are there. But I'm a national team athlete, and—I was. And I'm in love with the Olympics, and I think the spirit has really uplifted our country in a better way than just complaining.


FRANKLIN LOPEZ: The torchbearer was loaded into a police car, a fitting symbol of the $1 billion spent on police, military and private security during the Olympic Games.


PROTESTERS: Hey, hey, hey, goodbye! Call and response! Call and response! Repeat after me! Repeat after me! What are we resisting? What are we resisting? Stolen Native land! Stolen Native land!


FRANKLIN LOPEZ: The main event of the day was a family-friendly rally and march titled Take Back Our City, organized by a coalition of groups called the 2010 Welcoming Committee. The evening brought out at least 3,000 protesters representing activists of all stripes, including indigenous sovereigntists and supporters, migrant justice and environmental justice groups, anti-poverty groups, queer rights organizations, and more. Harjap Grewal of the Olympic Resistance Network commented on the success of the mobilization.


HARJAP GREWAL: But we know the Olympics suck. What's more important is this resistance. What's more important is, is that I'm absolutely ecstatic that all of us today are going to take to the streets and give them a hit like they've never had before. The IOC didn't know what was coming, but we're here now, and let's party!


GARTH MULLINS: Well, we're going to take to the streets today. We're going to do this because people said we couldn't do it. People said you couldn't have an amplified voice, like this one. People said you couldn't have protest signs, like these ones. And people said you couldn't go outside of a designated protest area. Well, the world is my designated protest area!


FRANKLIN LOPEZ: That was Garth Mullins, an anti-Olympic organizer from Vancouver. As darkness fell, demonstrators marched towards BC Place, where the opening ceremonies for the Games were taking place.


On Saturday morning, anti-capitalist activists took Georgia Street in downtown Vancouver in an action designed to block Olympic traffic from Vancouver to the resort town of Whistler. The action was billed as a heart attack, set to clog the arteries of capitalism. A brass band accompanied marchers who carried banners, shouted slogans, and advanced through the streets of downtown.


After blocking the street with dumpsters and paper boxes, a small contingency broke away from the crowd and smashed the windows of the Bay, a company with direct ties to Canada's colonial past and an Olympic sponsor. Longtime Vancouver resident Maxim Winther explains.


MAXIM WINTHER: If you look at the stores and the industries that had their windows smashed, if you actually look at their history of what they've done—the Hudson's Bay Company, exactly, it was the original government of this land. It was instrumental in bringing smallpox to the local people and, you know, policing the fur trade and, you know, the genocide that happened. Something like 90 percent of the people that lived here were taken out. And so, Hudson's Bay has a hand in that.


FRANKLIN LOPEZ: Saturday's actions were met with harsh violence coming from police, who beat demonstrators in the street, kenneled another group, and arrested thirteen.


On Sunday, an estimated 5,000 people turned out for the nineteenth annual Women's Memorial March to honor missing and murdered women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. This event, led by indigenous women, was not an Olympic protest, but all activists were invited to stand beside them.


More actions are planned for Monday, when homelessness activists will erect a tent city, and an antiwar rally will highlight Canada's military presence in Afghanistan.

AMY GOODMAN: That report was produced by Frank Lopez and a coalition of over forty independent media activists, including members of The Dominion paper, Victoria Indymedia, B Channel News, Rochester Indymedia, Friendly Fire Collective, Pittsburgh Indymedia, Upheaval Productions, SolidarityResponse.net, Pepperspray Productions and subMedia.tv. For more of the Vancouver Media Co-op's coverage and analysis of the Olympic protests, you can go to vancouver.mediacoop.ca.

Coming up, we'll speak with Vancouver physician Gabor Maté on the mind-body connection.

DR. GABOR MATÉ: Naguib Mahfouz, the great Egyptian writer, he said that "Nothing records the effects of a sad life" so completely as the human body—"so graphically as the human body." And you see that sad life in the faces and bodies of my patients.

AMY GOODMAN: Coming up, more with Dr. Gabor Maté, and we'll be talking about the latest on the Olympics. Stay with us.

Related stories

• Vancouver Community Activist Am Johal Condemns Use of Public Money to Subsidize International Olympic Committee at Expense of Basic City Services
• Vancouver Activists Greet Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony with People's Summit, Protest
• Amy Goodman Detained at Canadian Border, Questioned About Speech…and 2010 Olympics
• Sportswriter Dave Zirin on Obama's Olympic Error
• Democracy Now! Visits Olympics Past: During the 1968 Olympic Games, Among the Most Controversial Games Ever Held, Two Medallists Gave the Black Power Salute

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California prepares to release thousands more prisoners

afurillo@sacbee.com

Published Monday, Feb. 15, 2010

The fury unleashed in Sacramento over the early releases of a couple hundred inmates has set the stage for a more massive but less detectable state prisoner population shift about to unfold.

By the end of the year, another 6,300 offenders from Modoc to San Diego who otherwise would have been behind prison bars will instead be on the streets – and the debate already is raging on the public safety fallout.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration, which pushed for the bill that led to the prison population reduction to save money in a cash-strapped state, contends the legislation will make the state safer. More parole supervision time will be reserved for the truly dangerous, a prison agency spokesman said, and more inmates will complete more rehabilitation programs to smooth their transition into free society – even if it comes six weeks earlier than their sentences had prescribed.

"What you really have is a changing California parole structure that is really unprecedented," the corrections department's Oscar Hidalgo said. "It allows our agents to focus on the highest-risk parolees, which increases public safety. As far as the earned credits, we're asking inmates to complete programs that have proven helpful to success on the outside, such as getting a GED or learning a trade."

Law enforcement and victims' rights groups counter that the bill that enabled the upcoming offender population shift from inside to out is a high-risk move. They say that police budgets slashed as a result of depressed local economies will mean fewer street cops available to cope with increased numbers of so-called lesser-risk offenders such as car thieves, drunken drivers and spousal abusers.

"The legislation was based on a lie that the prisons are filled with low-level offenders who pose no real threat to public safety, and that is absolutely not true," said Ray McNally, a political consultant whose client list includes the California Correctional Peace Officers Association and Crime Victims United of California, which is partially funded by the guards' union. "When you release dangerous people, other people get hurt."

A trailer bill to last year's state budget authorized the prison population cut. Most of the reduction is expected to come through parole policy changes in which lower-risk offenders will no longer be subject to revocations that return them to prison. The legislation, Senate Bill X3 18, also granted six-week time credits to prisoners who complete education and other programs.

The bill also contained the provisions that led about 20 counties, including Sacramento, to grant early releases to an estimated 1,000 inmates from their local jail facilities.

In Sacramento, one inmate released early was arrested on suspicion of trying to rape a woman staff member at the Loaves & Fishes compound for the homeless. It prompted the Sacramento County Deputy Sheriffs Association to file a lawsuit to block the releases.

Superior Court Judge Loren E. McMaster on Thursday issued a temporary restraining order on the deputies' behalf. He also ruled that as of Jan. 25, last year's bill inexplicably eliminated county inmates' good-behavior credits.

The decision caused confusion later in the week in the local courts, with some lawyers postponing sentencing on their clients until the lawsuit plays out more fully. A hearing on a preliminary injunction is scheduled for March 3.

"I have a county jail sentencing (on a client) coming up, and I continued it until I think the waters have cleared and we know what's going on," said veteran Sacramento criminal defense lawyer Russell W. Miller. "There's no way you can advise your client. It's part of our ethical obligation to make sure our clients are fully and properly informed."

Assemblyman Alberto Torrico, D-Newark, closely involved in shaping the final version of the prison legislation, said in a declaration in support of the deputies' suit that the bill was never intended to apply to county jail inmates.

Torrico, a candidate for state attorney general, is trying to craft a new, emergency bill to fix what in effect was a legislative blunder. The assemblyman said through a spokesman Friday he did not know how the provisions that triggered the early releases made it into the bill's final language.

Tim Yaryan, a lobbyist for the Los Angeles police and deputy sheriffs' unions, said the mistaken inclusion of the jail provisions illustrates the shortcomings of the state's legislative process, one in which bills such as SB X3 18 can become law without being vetted in policy committees.

"There was no review," Yaryan said. "If you go through the committee hearings, you have people analyzing it and looking at it, and this would have been picked up. I have no doubt about it."

If it took a suit by the Sacramento deputies' union to bring the problem to light, the association's president, Kevin Mickelson, was happy to oblige. But he said he fears the impact of thousands more offenders hitting the streets.

"It's only the tip of the iceberg," Mickelson said of the 200 inmates in Sacramento who got out of jail early .

Prison reform advocates such as Jim Lindburg, a lobbyist for the Friends Committee on Legislation, hope that the state's first significant corrections-policy change in decades ushers in a whole new mind-set on crime.

"There's really nothing scientific or magical about the length of prison sentences," Lindburg said. "Those are political calculations made in a political environment. It seems preposterous to me to suggest that letting people out a little bit early is going to have any kind of (negative) impact on crime rates. I think we just need to change the way we think about public safety."

http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/2537539.html#none
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Comment: Results of a failed state and failed prison system.
We need true humane rehabilitation that truly equips new released prisoners with the skills set and social tools they need to better function in the minimum security of the general prison population in society.

Unidos Venceremos! United We Will Win!
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