New Bedford ICE Raid Redux
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 06/06/2007 - 22:53WTNH in New Haven, CT is reporting Illegal immigrants arrested two days after ID proposal passes
Federal agents storm through New Haven rounding-up illegal immigrants in sweeping raids just two days after the city approved I.D. cards for un-documented residents.
Mayor John DeStefano, (D), said the timing is certainly curious. The board of aldermen passed the bill on Monday and on Wednesday morning, agents carried out sweeping raids in the city. The city said it is something that has never happened before.
A dawn raid and at least 29 undocumented workers are arrested by federal agents, using what the DeStefano describes as questionable tactics.
"ICE entered the home with no warrants, they searched every room in the house, they had all the occupants, including the children, gather in the living room, they separated the men from the women and even had the children on the floor," said DeStefano.
Sound familiar? On March 6th, ICE staged a similar early morning attack in New Bedford, MA.
In the early morning hours of March 6th, hundreds of Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents raided a leather factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts. 361 employees, most of whom were women, were arrested in the sweep. The majority of those arrested were expeditiously booked and flown to detention facilities in Texas. Immigration rights activists have condemned the March 6th ICE raids saying that it has triggered a humanitarian crisis. Immigrant families were ripped apart by the raids as hundreds of children, many of whom are U.S. citizens, became separated from their primary caregivers. The raid has also economically devastated families that depended on the income of workers arrested and detained. Humanitarian relief efforts in New Bedford, Massachusetts have been hampered by the widespread fears that have spread since the raid. Outrage over the immigration sweep has even reached Congress as Senator Kennedy criticized the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency by saying they, “performed disgracefully.”
Tearing apart families of legal U.S. Citizens is the latest of example of ‘Family Values’ that the Bush administration values so highly.
Over at CT Local Poltics, Gabe reports, “Boston-area spokesman for ICE, Paula Grenier ... indicated, as reported in the Independent linked below, that these raids are happening all over the country, all the time”
She is right. To use the words of Sen. Kennedy, ICE is performing disgracefully in New Bedford, MA, New Haven, CT, and around the country.
(Cross posted at BlueMassGroup)
More entrails reading
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 06/06/2007 - 20:19How much should I write about what is going on in my personal life on my blog? It is question that many of us face, and it depends, to a large extent, who we think our audience is. In a recent blog post, I wrote about A Legacy for Our Loved Ones. Yes, part of my audience, I hope, will be grandchildren fifty years from now wondering what the early years of the 21st century were like and what their grandfather’s life was like. I want to give them as much details as I can. Part of my audience is friends and family simply checking in to see how I am doing. I want them to get enough details to know what is going on, but not so much that they worry unnecessarily. Part of my audience may be future employers and I hope they will come away with a positive impression and call me up with great new opportunities soon. Others are people interested in the various subjects I talk about; politics, technology, group dynamics or whatever.
With all of these possible readers in mind, let me give you a few details about my day. People looking for politics or technology can skip the rest. For everyone else, it will be tempered to meet the needs and expectations of the general audience.
The other day, I had my annual physical. I’m slowly addressing different issues that came up from it. Next week, I will meet with an allergist. Today, I had an abdominal sonogram. Before anyone gets too freaked out, here’s what is going on. My blood work came back with elevated liver enzymes. The same thing happened in 2002 and 2000, and probably other times as well, for all I know. In 2000, my doctor thought I should have it checked out, so I had a sonogram back then, and they found nothing. Apparently, in 2002, the doctor looked at the 2000 reports and figured it wasn’t worth it to have another sonogram.
Well, now that seven years have gone by, my doctor thought it probably made sense to double check the liver, just to be sure. So, I went to a medical imaging lab today. I’ve told family members the story above, perhaps partly to reassure them, perhaps partly to reassure myself. Perhaps some of my requests that people pray for Faith is as a way of dealing with my anxieties about possibly finding something wrong with me.
At the imaging center, things went smoothly. Checking in was quick and easy and in a few minutes I was on my back with a technician moving her magic wand around my abdomen across nicely warmed gel to gather images of my innards. After around half an hour of variously holding my breath or shifting from one side to another, all the requisite data had been gather.
Being the techie that I am, I glanced over at the screen whenever I could. They did a thorough job and I saw images that I assume were my liver, kidneys and pancreas. I watched her flip switches which brought bright reds and blues onto a ghostly gray screen. I wondered if there were ways that I could get any of these images. Perhaps I could have my liver up for next weeks Wordless Wednesday, assuming there was nothing wrong with it.
I listened to the technicians as they talked. I tried to read their expressions. Were there any indications of them seeing anything abnormal? I thought of asking them what they thought, but I expected that the imaging center’s lawyers have told all the technicians to have a standard line about being just technicians and it is up to the radiologist to interpret the results. It’s probably just as good to wait for the radiologist’s interpretation anyway.
Back home, Kim asked me how it went. I shrugged it off and described the uneventful event. I asked her how the ‘perc’ test at the house went. We are in the process of selling our house and we have a possible buyer who wanted to have the test done. It seemed somehow oddly fitting that I was having my innards tested at the same time as the house’s land was having its innards tested.
So, as I tried to focus from my distractions and get through emails, websites, data, etc., the phone rang. It was the imaging center. They had forgotten to measure my spleen. I do try to control my spleen, but it does come out in my blog posts every now and then, but that wasn’t what they were interested in. Could I come back? It would only be for a few minutes.
I told Kim that they wanted me to come back in, and before I could get out the reason why, she burst into tears. I guess she’s feeling a little agita as well. We laughed about that and I headed back to the imaging center. The technician quickly measured my spleen and I was back on my way.
On the way home, I looked at the deep blue summer sky. Cirrus clouds in thin wisps up high looked a bit like some of the thin white wisps that had appeared on the screen during my sonogram.
So, now I wait for the results. As I said at the top, I don’t expect anything out of the ordinary, yet as has been reflected in the words below, I still worry. Yet with these tests behind me, I can now focus on preparing for the coming weekend.
Wordless Wednesday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 06/05/2007 - 19:18
A Legacy for Our Loved Ones
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 06/05/2007 - 17:06On June 5, 1989 a solitary man stood in front of a column of tanks in Tiananmen square. The image is emblazoned on the minds of many who long for a more democratic China. Eight years earlier, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report had a report about five gay men in California who suffered from a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with a weakened immune system. For those concerned with AIDS, it was a key moment.
Yet for many of us the day will be remembered as a friend’s birthday or some other important event in our personal lives, or want have any significance. Yet these moments that make up a dull day may not be special to us, but to someone we love, they may have special meaning some day.
In Been There, Emily writes about the letter Elizabeth Edwards is writing to her children. She talked about a book that she had written with a friend ‘about leaving a legacy for our loved ones.’ To me, that is part of blogging.
My daughters rarely read my blog. Perhaps some day they will. Perhaps my blog will provide insights to them or to grandchildren or great grandchildren years hence.
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.
Perhaps some day when Faith is old and gray and full of sleep And nodding by the fire, she will read the words her mother wrote.
So, I hope that my words, together with Stacie’s, Emily’s and Elizabeth’s words will be a legacy to our loved ones. Hopefully, they will be more than just some memorial in the future but will also motivate all of us to leave meaningful legacies to our loved ones by working to fight disease, hunger, injustice, whether it be AIDS and Tiananmen square or the simple diseases, hungers and injustices that we run across in our daily lives.
Network Neutrality and Special Agreements
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 06/05/2007 - 14:47It was a year ago, this coming Friday, that Senator Barack Obama put up a podcast about Network Neutrality.
It is because the Internet is a neutral platform that I can put out this podcast and transmit it over the Internet without having to go through any corporate media middleman. I can say what I want without censorship or without having to pay a special charge.
But the big telephone and cable companies want to change the Internet as we know it. They say that they want to create high speed lanes on the Internet and strike exclusive contractual agreements with Internet content providers for access to those high speed lanes.
I applaud him for those comments. However, an entry on techPresident, Did Facebook Play Favorites with Obama? raises some interesting questions.
While the Internet itself is a neutral platform, some sites can be much more important in getting your message out than others. Facebook is a good example of such a site. The techPresident article raises an important question of whether or not Facebook provided an unfair advantage to the Obama campaign. Where there ethical lapses or FEC violations?
I don’t know the details of what happened and I’m not a lawyer, so I won’t touch the FEC question. However, if the Obama team did have access to privileged information it raises some interesting questions about how it should have been handled.
During Gov. Dean’s 2004 Presidential bid, I worked with a bunch of volunteer programmers. We started off calling ourselves Hack4Dean, and later changed it to DeanSpace. We were working with Open Source software, in particular, Drupal. We had lively discussions about how widely or tightly controlled our developments should be shared. Many argued that the software could give Gov. Dean a competitive advantage and should not be made available to others. Hypotheticals were presented about whether or not people would feel comfortable with Republicans using the software.
I was always the idealist. Open software should be open. What matters isn’t the software, but what you do with it, and for that matter, what your choices about software say about you. I still have these arguments today and I can well see the other side.
If there was some sort of special agreement between Facebook and the Obama campaign, what does it say about Obama’s commitment to keeping the Internet a neutral platform? What does it say about his commitment to the ideals of Network Neutrality?
Perhaps nothing. I’m sure that is what the more fervent Obama supporters will say. Perhaps they are right. Yet the old idealist in me still feels a little uncomfortable.
(Cross posted at MyDD)
