PROP 6 - Unjust, UNREAL and UN-TRUE! Initiative

by Marlon Crump/PNN Revolutionary Legal Scholar

"The goal of this initiative is to breed widespread fear and panic among the public. It relies heavily on law enforcement strategies and incarceration as a means to promote public safety. This Prop 6 is resurrecting failed crime polices from the past in effort to promote the prison industrial complex."

Prop 6 is a proposed ballot initiative called the "Safe Neighborhoods Act" which is a subsequent "gang injunctions" gentrification tool that is aimed towards the youth, in communities of color........... at the hands of wealthy land developers.

The trend of these injunctions have traveled, and have descended upon major U.S. cities, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, CA, El Paso and Forth Worth, TX, Chicago, IL, and most recently Durham, NC.

This political plague is swarming towards threatening the youth, (from 16-14 yrs old), funding for treatment programs, undocumented immigrant youth, and even the hip-hop generation.

This proposal, according to Community Justice Network for Youth (CJNY) Program Manager, Christina "Krea" Gomez, is alleged to "Protect Victims, Stop Gang and Street Crime" is another "Get Tough on Crime" initiative in California that targets the poor communities of color.

Gomez summarized her extensive research, investigations, and the final analysis of Prop 6 to my family and comrades of POOR during our frequent first Tuesday-of-the-month Community Newsroom, on September 2nd, 2008.

She feels a sense of urgency to oppose

this initiative, before it arrives on the ballot in November. All of us at POOR un-arguably agreed!

One of the main concerns I have with this "initiative" are the youngsters who are viewed as "unfit" for juvenile court from ages 14 to 16--ultimately unleashing more wolves on the youth upon their entry into the savage system, at a younger age............... than almost anywhere in the country.

Prop 6, also known as the "Runner Initiative" is being sponsored by California Republican senator, George C. Runner Jr, and is authored by Mike Reynolds, also the author of Three Strikes. The primary funding machine of Prop 6 is fueled from Henry T. Nicholas "Nick" III, an American communications technology businessman and co-founder of Broadcom Corporation.

The Runner Initiative strengthens gang injunctions. Some of its causes and damaging effects are defining the service process for civil gang injunction.

This would increase the normal standards of these injunctions by applying this to everyone in the gang, and not just individually. Prop 6 would give increased strength towards gang injunctions so that a violation can lead to prison time.

It would target communities by providing funding to local housing authorities, WITH the requirement that people who are housed with public housing subsidies, WITH additional family members also listed on their lease, to submit to annual criminal background checks.
(The intention is to remove housing subsidies of people with recent criminal convictions.)

Even worse, this prop would explicitly allow evictions or closures to be entered and eliminates the 30-day eviction notice process!

The average cost to incarcerate one person in a California prison is $13,000 per year. Increasing incarceration rates have only a negligible effect on reducing violent crime. Proven prevent programs such as the Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care have produced up to a 22% drop in offending, at a cost of less than $7,000 per participant.

The Legislative Analysts Office has estimated that the Runner Initiative will cost taxpayers $1 billion the first year and $500 million every year after that to pay for prisons, probation, and law enforcement.

California currently has a gang database, called CALGANG. It is the largest statewide gang database in the country and lists more than 100,000 names. The criteria behind the data, is so untrustworthy that former California Attorney General Bill Lockyer refused to forward them to the federal authorities.

According to Lockyer, "This database cannot and should not be used, in California or elsewhere, to decide whether or not a person is dangerous or should be detained."

In reference to that statement, the Los Angeles DA's Office found that close to half of Black males between the ages of 21 and 24 had been entered in the county's gang database.............. even though no one could establish that all of these young men were current "gang members." One has to wonder who's name is going to go where and when and for what reasons.

Prop 6 threatens the hip hop generation by continuing to manipulate to the minds of the public that the youth of color are a threat to their safety, or as AmeriKKKa defines it, "National Security."

Speaking of "security" isn't one of Prop 6's sponsors, Henry T. Nicholas "Nick" III, ranked # 195 in 2007 in Forbes Magazine's list of richest Americans, currently under indictment for federal charges for felony drug, conspiracy, and securities fraud?

The Runner Initiative excludes members of the communities most impacted by violence from making decisions about our own safety. This is done, by requiring that the juvenile justice coordinating councils, be responsible, for developing county responses to juvenile crime.

However representatives from community-based drug and alcohol programs, nonprofit organizations serving minors, and the community at large are excluded! This would injure mental health services, in part.

"Prop 6 will take away the community voice and mental health component." argued JewnBug co-founder of POOR's Family Project, and member of Parent Voices. "You can't make a safe neighborhood WITHOUT the community's voice."

POOR Magazine has an Arts, Media, and Literacy program for anyone struggling in poverty looking to publish either a book or a CD. One of the POOR Press Authors, name Angel Garcia had published his first book, titled "Gangs, Drugs, and Denial" just last year. (I personally did the review on his book.)

"I felt the cop's hard boot hit my neck, I heard the wind pass as he lifted back and swung his foot onto my neck and upper back, I tasted the warm blood drip down my mouth..........."

Garcia was a former gang-banger who turned his life around, and published his first book, with the intent that others wouldn't make the same mistakes that he did. If Prop 6 gets passed, what would this mean for youngsters wanting to make a difference in their life?

With community-based organizations and non-profits stripped of their involvement, who are supposed to lead them on a positive path?

This "initiative" also denies the right to a pretrial release to undocumented immigrants who are accused of serious, or gang-related crime from being released on bail or their own recognizance, while awaiting trial.

It would also require local sheriffs to alert the Immigration Central Enforcement (ICE) of the arrest and charges of people who are undocumented.

Prop 6, as it clearly seems, allows the City of San Francisco to establish even more power to criminalize the undocumented youth immigrants to the dooms of deportation........from a not- so "Sanctuary City".

It is not coincidental and/or un-questionably clear that "gang injunctions" and "undocumented immigrant youth" are BOTH placed on the ballot, in the disguise of Prop 6, in the biggest election of the year.

The not so hidden agenda of Prop 6. The "Runner" and "initiative" is to ................initially run off the youth population. Is that really a Safe Neighborhoods Act?