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Worry, Wondering, And Waiting As The Grand Jury Ponders Michael Brown Shooting

Worry, Wondering, And Waiting As The Grand Jury Ponders Michael Brown Shooting

By Jim Gallagher, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (TNS)

ST. LOUIS — Worry, wondering, and impatience marked the mood in Ferguson and Clayton as a dreary Sunday passed with no word from the grand jury considering whether to bring charges against a Ferguson police officer in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.

People went about a rainy day shopping, sitting in cafes, and speculating about what is to come. The grand jury, meanwhile, is to convene again Monday.

Richard Schademann, a teacher at Johnson Wabash Elementary School in the Ferguson-Florissant School District, was taking a break at the Corner Coffee House in Ferguson.

“The school’s mood is pretty tense. We’ve been going through lockdown drills,” Schademann said. “We want the kids to be safe.”

Children seem to be taking the situation in stride, he said. But after one drill, a fifth-grader asked him, “Why would they want to attack our school?”

People worried about a possible repeat of the scenes of August, when police and demonstrators confronted each other amid tear gas, hurled rocks, occasional gunfire and outbreaks of burning and looting along West Florissant Avenue in Ferguson.

“I worry because I have a daughter,” said Anisha Cole as she shopped at the Buzz Westfall Plaza shopping center, near the scene of the August troubles. “Why should we tear down our own community?”

Her 3-year-old’s day-care center will close if there is violence, she said.
On Canfield Drive, at the scene of Brown’s death, a small crowd gathered as two men arrived after traveling by foot from Atlanta, a journey that began on Nov. 3.

Londrelle Hall broke down in tears as he knelt next to the makeshift memorial of flowers and stuffed animals that mark the site. He and fellow runner Ray Mills called it a “run for justice” to raise awareness of “racial injustice and police brutality.”

In Ferguson and in Clayton, where the grand jury is meeting and demonstrations also are expected after the grand jury’s decision, people expressed degrees of unease.

“I don’t think it’s a dangerous as the media made it out to be,” said Marina Vile, 22, a University of Missouri-St. Louis student enjoying lunch at a Ferguson cafe. “But I don’t feel I’d come out here at night.”

People in downtown Clayton gazed at metal fencing stretching around the county police headquarters, and barriers around the jail and prosecutor’s office. Postal boxes were locked shut around the Clayton business district.

The national news media had taken over the parking lot across from the Buzz Westfall Justice Center, setting up tents and satellite trucks.

Kaitlyn Pemberton, a waitress at the Break N Egg diner, wasn’t worried by the barriers half a block away. “I think it’s been blown out of proportion,” she said, saying she was confident in the police.

Others were more cautious. “If something starts happening, we’ll get everybody out to safety,” said Josh Venverloh, manager of a restaurant across the street from the St. Louis County police headquarters.

Clayton businesses are open, said Ellen Gale, executive director of the Clayton Chamber of Commerce. “People are still coming into Clayton,” she said.

Many had expected the grand jury’s decision on Sunday, and people were speculating about the delay. Others continued the debate over whether Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson police officer, was justified in shooting Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old.

Some hope that, if the grand jury opts not to call for an indictment, protests that follow will send a message. “If it doesn’t blow up, I’ll be very disappointed,” said Ardester Williams, a security guard at the Buzz Westfall Plaza shopping center in Jennings. “People have been putting up with this kind of thing for 300 years. I want people around the world to know we’re tired of it.”

Several of those interviewed hoped some good would come from four months of trouble. Cassandra Butler said it had placed racial “unfairness” on the national agenda.

“Everybody is apprehensive,” she said. “Even the hopeful are apprehensive.”

MCT Photo/Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Competing Sides Gear Up As Obama Pledges Action On Immigration

Competing Sides Gear Up As Obama Pledges Action On Immigration

By Jayna Omaye, Orlando Sentinel (TNS)

ORLANDO, Fla. — As the immigration debate heats up in Washington, several Central Florida groups are banding together to push President Barack Obama to follow through on his pledge to take executive action to save millions from deportation.

Obama said he would focus on easing certain restrictions on undocumented immigrants, drawing strong opposition from Republican congressional leaders who warned doing so would “poison the well” and hinder further legislation.

The local groups seeking movement on immigration, including the Florida Immigrant Coalition and Mi Familia Vota, hope to secure a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 825,000 undocumented immigrants in Florida and the nearly 11.7 million in the U.S.

“It is not a matter of politics. It’s a matter of humanity,” said Jose Luis Marantes, state director of Mi Familia Vota, a national nonprofit with state offices in Orlando, Poinciana and Tampa that promotes social and economic justice in the Latino community. “Immigrants are interconnected within every part of our economy, our system and our families.”

Marantes added that the group hopes reform policies will “cover a broader set of folks” so immigrant families would not be separated.

In Lady Lake, a Lake County town of about 14,250, a 16-year-old boy named Diego and his mother, both undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. in 2001, are among those who could feel the effect if Obama uses his executive powers to address the divisive issue.

The teen, who was diagnosed with epilepsy and autism, recently underwent brain surgery to alleviate weekly seizures including compulsive attacks that cause him to lose control of his body and drop to the floor. His family and doctor said the teen wouldn’t have received the same level of medical care if Diego, who is covered under a state-run insurance plan for kids, were in Mexico.

“I’m scared. I don’t want to be deported,” Diego’s 39-year-old mother, who didn’t want to be identified or use her son’s last name out of fear of deportation, said through a translator.

While Diego is eligible for a green card issued to certain undocumented minors, the future remains unclear for his mother. Immigration reform could have a major impact to countless others in Florida, where about 19 percent of the state’s population is foreign born, census figures show. In Central Florida, the numbers are highest in Osceola at 20 percent and Orange at 19 percent.

Last year, a bipartisan group of eight senators, including Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., unveiled an immigration bill that would combine improvements to border security with a conditional pathway to citizenship. While the then-Democrat-controlled Senate approved the sweeping bill, the measure became mired in conservative backlash and the Republican-led House has not voted on it yet.

Republican U.S. Rep. John Mica, who represents parts of Orange, Seminole, and Volusia counties, said he wouldn’t support reform that “attempts to reward an illegal act” by granting a pathway to citizenship, according to a statement on his website. He said policies should center on improving border protection and immigration enforcement.

But Democratic U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson backs action by Obama.

“You leave the president with no choice but to try to go ahead and address the problem,” said Grayson, who represents Osceola and parts of Orange and Polk. “These are human beings and they deserve consideration like anybody else.”

Marantes said undocumented immigrants are “in the shadows” and are always threatened with deportation.

“The fear is real,” he said. “All it takes is one wrong turn and before you know it, they’re shipped to an immigration center and deported.”

But some critics say undocumented immigrants put a burden on local and national economies and argue that states, including Florida, need to stop offering immigrants incentives to come and stay illegally. For example, Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill in June that allowed children of undocumented immigrants to pay in-state college tuition.

“We understand and empathize with the aspiration of people who want to come here,” said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a national nonprofit that seeks to improve border security and halt illegal immigration. “It (a pathway to citizenship) would basically be like ringing the dinner bell. The inevitable response is that people around the world would take this as a signal to come.”

Last year, deportations hit 438,412, an increase of 13 percent from 2011, according to Pew Research. While the number of deported immigrants with criminal convictions has stalled, the number of immigrants without past criminal backgrounds has increased, Pew found.

In Diego’s case, his family says remaining in the country is vital because sending him back to Mexico would “honestly mean death” for the teen, who attends a special-needs school in Leesburg.

“He’s not the worst we’ve ever seen but his seizures were not doing very well,” said Diego’s neurologist, Dr. John Kevill of the Florida Epilepsy Center in Orlando. “It’s pretty severe.”

Kevill said Diego probably wouldn’t have had access to the same type of brain surgery in Mexico, where epilepsy and psychiatric care are not “anything close” to the treatment Diego underwent in Orlando.

To allow the teen to stay in Florida legally, his legal guardian, Alba Alonso, a U.S. citizen and fellow Lady Lake resident, is working with Groveland attorney Bridgette Bennett to secure a green card. Alonso, 44, became the teen’s guardian because his mother didn’t understand how to care for the teen by herself.

“When you come to a foreign country, you can’t do it by yourself,” said Alonso, a single mother of two who home schools her son who struggles with learning disabilities. “His life depends on him staying here. We all deserve a chance at freedom. … Humanity has no boundaries.”

Bennett, who is fluent in Spanish and English, said the portion of the law she’s trying to tap into is not widely used — only 3,434 undocumented immigrants last year were granted the special status, which allows minors to legally remain in the U.S. while applying for permanent residency.

“We are not going through this process just to get Diego ‘papers,’ ” said Bennett, who added that she handles two to four of these types of cases per year. “Every day someone is here without documentation they are at risk.”

AFP Photo/Christophe Archambault

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Rick Perry Does His Best To Make Israel An Issue Next Fall

At a raucous press conference in downtown Manhattan on Tuesday, with American Jewish leaders and members of the Israeli Parliament standing proudly behind him, Republican presidential frontrunner Rick Perry slammed Barack Obama over his “appeasement” of Palestine and other regional Israeli adversaries and, with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ push for official recognition by the United Nations over the coming weeks as the backdrop, repeatedly labeled the president’s approach to the region “naive” and misguided.

“The Obama policy of moral equivalency which gives equal standing to the grievances of Israelis and Palestinians — including the orchestrators of terrorism — is a very dangerous insult,” Perry said. “There is no middle ground between our allies and those who seek their destruction.”

Perry attacked the president for pushing for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to halt settlement construction and come to the negotiating table.

Obama “put them in a position of weakness taking away our flexibility to offer concessions,” Perry complained.

The Texas governor and several of the Jewish leaders appearing with him pressed for a return to the contours of the 1993 Oslo Accords, where Palestinians acknowledged the right of Israel to exist and the Jewish state pledged to withdraw forces from some of the contested areas in Gaza and the West Bank.

Perry gave red meat to a crowd that wildly applauded him and seemed thrilled to have a Christian with theological reasons for backing Israel in its midst.

“There is no middle ground between our allies and those who seek their destruction,” he said.

Perry staked out a far-right position, seeming to embrace further settlement construction by Israeli settlers in the West Bank — “it’s their land” — despite most observers agreeing new settlements are an obstacle to peace.

As many have before him, Perry criticized the president for calling for a return to 1967 borders with mutual land swaps. And the context — the recent special election in New York’s ninth congressional district where a Republican won for the first time in 80 years by running to the right of his Jewish Democratic opponent on the Israel question — was almost as important as the speech itself.

The winner of that race, Republican Bob Turner, was praised by Perry and appeared himself, saying the message from his win was that Obama was wrong on Israel.

The speakers were most animated when talking about the potential for the United Nations to recognize Palestine, as if Obama supported the bid; the cognitive dissonance was palpable, as the president has loudly called for such efforts to halt until a peace deal is brokered directly between the two sides.

Asked at one point if his Christian faith factored into his wholehearted support for Israel, Perry acknowledged that, like many Evangelicals, he had Biblical reasons for backing the Jewish state.

“I also as a Christian have a clear directive to support Israel,” he said

This follows Perry raising the Israel issue during a recent stop down South in front of an Evangelical crowd.

“What our current president did relative to the 1967 border issue, to basically throw Israel under the bus… was unconscionable, in my opinion,” Perry said earlier this month in Conway, South Carolina, a key early primary state.