It's a new day, bohemian breakfast was like a work of art. Ooh, the coffee crowd is on the way, ready to read.  Aah, try to stay mellow, like cinnamon, yellow sun or gray rain, it don't stop. Straw hat or umbrella.  It don't stop.  Hear the train sang, hear the ferry sang, hear the bus sang.  There a loyal street paper vendor calling out in exstacy and pain. "Fresh off the press. Get your paper today."  Like a merry-go-round.  The vendor's musical mind spin on real-time, hyped up on hot coffee from bitter grinds. On a hope and a mission to help the homeless. It's showtime to survive in the month of May and Beyond!!!

The following are six different "reparations" narratives by six anonymous authors excerpted from the chapter... From Removal to Reparations in the upcoming book: Poverty Scholarship #101 The Population Brings the Popular EduKashun- a PeopleSText which will be released in 2012

1) Blood Money from People with long-term memory loss...

blood money from people with long-term memory loss. for whom forgetting, not looking back, is the only way to reconcile. land-grabs from indigenous people, that’s literally where the root of my money is. white european settlers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. the captors of pocahontas, mr. founding father thomas jefferson himself - this is my blood, passed down and down, but still in mine, trickling directly through the centuries of a family tree to present day. milking capitalism, too - taking part in the rat race and winning. using privilege to make more privilege - a tip off before the great stock market crash of 1929 saved my great-grandmother’s bank account. privilege begets privilege.

i think my family - the whole extended networks of ancestral aristocrats -  doesn't oft remember this. in fact i think they choose to forget (sometimes i do too). the past is in the past. true to the WASP form, there is little emotion, even little attachment. what’s done is done, that’s what they say. we can only do what we do now. it’s a learned pattern, so i’ve learned to forgive them. it’s not their fault - it’s not my fault.

thinking of all the resources i have overwhelms me - a trust fund, a savings account, a stable job, healthcare, an apartment, my parents’ house. a father in politics, a doctor for a mother. a lifetime of consistent (western) healthcare, vaccines, TLC and ample time off when i’m ill. always a multitude of vegetables, fruits, local foods and wholesome options. enough space and time in my life to cook food and enjoy it. enough space and time in my life to sleep for 8 hours a night and enjoy it. braces when my teeth were crooked, eye exams when my vision was questioned. specialty therapists when i felt depressed, specialty therapists when i had an eating disorder. uncles and grandfathers in high places at prestigious universities, who’ve hobnobbed with presidential candidates and their ilk. a network at wesleyan and beyond of professors, academic resources, bright-eyed young people with a college education and a background like mine. 40 hours a week (at least!) spent connecting with other young wealthy folks. innumerable friends with apartments, innumerable family members and extended community members with homes with extra beds.

parents who love me, whom i love fiercely right back. who would take me in and hold me - emotionally and financially - for as long and as deeply as i ever needed. a sister who who do anything for me. friends who i can call when i go on a shitty date, or when i hear a funny joke, or when my grandparents pass away.

2) I will never be without a food or home

Rich people traded pieces of earth among themselves as if they were theirs to trade, and someone I love facilitated those transactions for a percentage of the sale costs, and a small share of that share was passed along to me. But even that sliver of a sliver of huge dollar amounts is big enough that I have the safety net of knowing that whatever I might do, whatever choices I might make, through no work or effort of my own, and on the backs of people who have been displaced, gentrified out of their longtime homes, whose entire neighborhood, where their families in many cases had lived for generations, was completely changed without their consent, I will have a chunk of money coming to me that means I will never be without food or a home. On other people’s backs, my basic needs, for the rest of my life, will be met.

What makes sense within the dominant economic system makes no sense when all the lives, people's and earth’s included, are acknowledged. What seems to make sense within this system—that earth can be divided up and owned and traded, that people can profit off other people’s housing and have so little responsibility to them—just doesn’t. There are so many unacknowledged costs: stories upon stories, lives, life, of people who were shoved out, displaced, disrespected, disregarded, unacknowledged—the people buying and selling have to blame them or make them wrong when they manage to notice them at all in order to justify to themselves what they are doing—stories upon stories, lives, life of land partitioned and owned, traded, with no regard for its life and needs and wholeness outside of its utility to whoever happens to “own” it at a given moment, then whoever comes next, with no regard for the people who live there without the entitlement ownership confers, whose payment for their housing enriches the very owners who are unaccountable to, unconcerned with them when the time comes for another trade.

I could consider as “mine” money that streams to me through an accident of birth in the context of white supremacy, colonialism, earth exploitation, and capitalism, but only if I shut my heart, spirit, and mind to huge pieces of the story, only if I am willing to not notice impacts, not register the whole. I could consider this money “mine” and use it as such only if I were willing to not be whole and I am not.

To be whole, to even move or aspire or dream toward wholeness within a context of thousands of years of violence enabled in part by fragmentation and disassociation, requires facing the fact that the entire earth is a whole, that each aspect of it is connected to each other. That it is all and we are all in some senses already whole, but we have been violently disassociated from that fact, and there is no true wealth or security or fulfillment in “benefiting” from violence and disassociation.

I make reparations through POOR and many other projects and people because what else would you do in the face of interconnectedness? Because interconnectedness is the truth and the obfuscation of that truth that makes exploitation and violence of all kinds a reality is trauma on trauma on trauma and reparations are one piece of healing that, and healing from that.

And while I make reparations and put heart and time into collaborative experiments toward interdependence, I learn from people who may not have the “privilege” of financial resources earned at other people’s and the earth’s expense things about love and mutual support and family and spirit that the money I have been given, the famous and powerful people I have known, have not given, could not possibly give, me. Reparations are part of dreaming for communities, for the earth, for the truth of interconnectedness, in waking life, in action.  

3)Unlearning the Lie

In my life I have made money and not made money. Sometimes living off the inherited stolen profits and wealth from my family. But class privilege and wealth is so much more than the material things. I have an effervescent positivity and optimism, generated by never having to worry about money. I have a sense of freedom in how I move about the world that lets me enjoy confidence, that is reinforced because people respond well to confident energy. I can afford to share resources, including time, with friends and aqcuaintences, and get a lot of credit and praise for “being there” for people and being a “good friend” because I can afford to consistently prioritize people I care about, not needing to hold on to a job or save money on transportation to get places. My relationship  to wealth, stolen capital, affects every relationship I have. It is direct access to often invisibilized power, a power that is seductive to hold onto and that so many folks, even with tight anti-capitalist analysis, are also attracted to. It makes me feel and makes me get treated as super-human, superior. Someone who’s time actually is more valuable than other people’s, just like I was told everyday growing up that I was one of the “best and brightest.”
 
Unlearning that lie can’t happen just in the classroom, even in peopleskool. It’s going to take practice. Living without direct access to wealth. It’s going to take vulnerability, anxiety, disappointment, and loss. I won’t ever experience Poverty Scholarship (probably). There is money in my name I don’t have control over, but will be available for emergencies, including medical emergencies. I could live with either of my parents—I won’t go houseless even if I can’t work and make rent. I am learning from peopleskool that I need to let go of this extra extra privilege. I need to let go of enough that I can start experiencing my humanity. Asking for help. Not being the hero at the meeting who takes on huge tasks because I have limitless time. Disappointing friends that I can’t see whenever we both want. Not being able to buy whatever I want whenever I want it, or live anywhere I want, or spend my time however I want. I am afraid to give these things up. But I know the cost of these privileges is a separation from what it is to be human in this world, and an allegiance, no matter how subtle, with the system of capitalism.

4) Class Ascendance

My father and our family returned to the US from Turkey, and he got a degree at UC Santa Cruz. He was a member of the first graduating class at this experimental college. Like my Grandpa, he was the recipient of state-subsidized financial aid before the days of affirmative action, and got through school basically for free because he had traveled through Europe, Asia and the US, accumulating experiences that signified his complex and unique perspective on the world. Inheriting my Grandpa's legacy as a world traveler, he was able to use the paths that US imperialism had carved before him to advance academic interests in obscure and exotic subject matter. He and his revolutionary ideas learned from time spent with Italian Socialists took off for Cornell Graduate School (Dad was a legacy now), where he became  a scholar of Antonin Gramsci and Socialist organizing. He didn't have a lot of spending money, but he was provided a stipend to cover food and housing through various fellowships and loans thru his Akkkademic networks. He got to travel to Italy and finished his dissertation, after which he was hired to teach politics at SUNY Albany, where he and my mom met. He was a professional now, living cheap in the de-industrialized city of Albany NY. There are lots of pictures of my parents' earlier life together in bucolic upstate New York, dressed in dapper '70s tweed and silk prints, or bakcpacking through the granite-faced, deep green Adirondacks during summer break, or sitting with healthy, tanned friends around the coffee table.

Through my ancestors' experiences of world cosmopolitan travel and research, I have inherited financial security directly tied to the caste/apartheid system we have here in the US, and worldwide tourist and academic institutions. From my Jewish great-great grandparents, who could easily find jobs in the racially-charged industrial economy of World War I; to my grandparents, who were eligible for loans to buy a house during the 1940s and 1950s white flight; to my dad, whose increasingly exclusive education had been financed by US military and academic imperialism....with each generation, my family's class ascendence has been subsidized State institutions designed to support white families at the expense of everyone else. I have grown up caring deeply about my parents' stories of travel, study, and adventure, hoping to emulate their curiosity about the world and their wish to make it better. My head is filled with some very complex questions about how I can best transform the culture of imperialism and entitlement that my family has grown wealthy within. I need to repair the patterns of inheritance, to challenge ideas about what a rich life of knowledge might mean, and to heal some of the wounds that my family's extraction of resources have inflicted.

5) Because Capitalism is so Violent

As i write this, i realize more and more that i don’t really understand what my mom does, how her work fits into this economic system. the company she works for now, the company she’s paid to legally protect, trades in things that aren’t real, that i can’t touch. insurance, annuities, portfolios. these are ways to make rich people’s money “grow,” and to provide rich people with the feeling that Certain Financial Decisions will keep us safe until we die, without having to rely on anyone else. the  company's website says: “how much is enough? how much would you need to accumulate over time to fund a 20-year retirement?” 

money “growing” means that people, somewhere, are working without being paid what their work is worth, and that that money is being siphoned into financial markets, which contain things like ‘annuities.’
because capitalism is so violent to so many people, and because it doesn’t make sense for the things our souls long for, it takes intense labor to keep it standing. so the kind of work that people in my family do, that help keep these enormous companies and structures intact and humming smoothly, is crucial to the system. and so my mom gets paid more than almost almost almost anyone else in the world.
some of the reparations i owe, at least the ones i can trace directly through my immediate family, are vague, enormous. it’s the heart of this economic system, of people trading in non-tangibles, in things that don’t help anyone meet their basic needs. some are a little more specific: affirmative action, which brought my mom where she is today, grew from civil rights and freedom struggles that demanded something much bigger, and whose visions are still visions—visions that demand reparations from me and my family.

6) For Class Privileged Peoples

I think it’s crucial to draw connections – between media storytelling and the stories we tell in our families; between the racism of politicians and legislators and the insidious, institutionalized racism that affects us without our even realizing it; between the paternalism of philanthropy and the privilege that we as individuals unconsciously enact; between the oppression by obvious perpetrators like police, military, and sweatshop-owning, union-busting multinational corporations and the oppression underlying our personal family fortunes.
Anti-capitalist social justice movements continually inspire me to challenge myself as a rich person and to challenge other rich people, because they situate us as players in systems that deeply harm the majority of people on the planet. It’s crucial to me to incorporate a radical critique of capitalism into both my understanding of my own wealth and privilege and into the donor organizing work I do. The “progressive philanthropy” world tends to take a stance that resists truly challenging capitalism and oppression in order to accommodate more moderate wealthy donors. Much of the landscape of social change philanthropy seems designed to make rich people feel better about ourselves and to channel some funds to progressive (or even radical) organizing without actually challenging the roots of inequality.

You don’t have to look hard to find clear explanations of how capitalism is inextricably linked to multiple oppressions: racism, through (for example) slavery, imperialist acquisition of land and raw materials, and dividing white and POC workers to keep them from organizing; sexism, through exploiting the labor of women (who are already culturally devalued) and relying on women’s unpaid and unrecognized labor; ableism, through laws allowing companies to hire people with disabilities at less than minimum wages; and so on.

We should talk about these things when we talk about having class privilege, because as the beneficiaries of capitalism we are implicated whether we like it or not. For white folks with class privilege, the history that gets erased when we tell our simplistic “pulled-himself-up-by-his-bootstraps” money stories is the (continuing) history of explicit and institutionalized racism in the U.S. Some of us can trace our inherited wealth to slavery or other systems in which white people directly profited off of the stolen labor or land of people of color. Even for those of us with “new” money, previous generations of our families are more than likely to have benefited from racist policies and institutions that helped white people and discriminated against people of color (Homestead Act, G.I. Bill, land grants, New Deal, loans, jobs, contracts, unions…). Throughout U.S. history, people of color have been explicitly prohibited by racist government policy from building assets; and since the most important indicator of wealth is how much money your parents had, cultural myths about a “level playing field” start to look pretty empty.

For class-privileged people to be allies in social justice movements, we have to take responsibility for the bigger picture behind our own wealth. Our personal decisions about money and the stories we tell (to ourselves and others) have reflections and repercussions connected to our place in the larger class system. Challenging these decisions and narratives, and challenging ourselves to look deeper, is a good way to start shifting our participation in oppressive systems.

WRAP (Western Regional Advocacy Project) has been documenting the increases of mentally ill people in local jails as a result of diminished funding for mental health treatment and housing, escalation of “nuisance crime” enforcement by police and private security, and expansion of mental health courts.

The scale of this issue is enormous: it is reported that the LA county jail alone houses 3,000 mentally ill people a night. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, as many as 64% of people in jails nationwide have mental health problems.   In the 1980s and early 1990s, people with severe mental illness made up 6-7% of the jail population. In the last 5 years, this percentage has climbed to 16-30%. Nationwide, there are three times as many people with mental illness in prisons as there are in hospitals; 40% of people with severe mental illness have been imprisoned at some point in their lives; and 90% of those incarcerated with a mental illness have been incarcerated more than once and 30% have been incarcerated ten times or more.

We at WRAP see this ever-increasing incarceration of mentally ill people as part of a trend toward using the criminal justice system to address health and socioeconomic needs.  On the ground, this means that mentally ill homeless people who lack adequate access to housing and treatment services are vulnerable to getting caught in the criminal justice system, especially arrest or citation under local “quality of life” or “nuisance crime” laws that include sitting/lying on sidewalks, panhandling, and loitering. Oftentimes, the seriousness of these infractions is escalated to “failure to appear” bench warrants, which require jail time.

To gain a clearer understanding of the scope of the problem, we are conducting outreach to self-identified mentally ill people, service providers, justice system employees, lawyers and researchers.  We have also conducted a literature review of Department of Justice reports and periodical pieces.  We were stunned to learn that never before has there been systemic outreach to self-identified mentally ill homeless people about this issue.

During the month of August 2010, WRAP did street outreach with 253 self-identified mentally ill homeless people in six cities (Portland, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Los Angeles and Denver).  The National Consumer Advisory Board of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council is doing 350 more in seven cities across the country. We currently have a small sampling of online surveys from 36 frontline service providers.  If you or your organization would like to participate in either of these surveys contact staff at WRAP.

The initial responses tell us we need to bring together all the concerned members of local communities and finally start to reverse this trend.

Here’s just some of what the street outreach found:

• 76% reported being stopped, arrested, or cited due to “quality of life” offenses.
• 60% reported being harassed by private (Business Improvement District) security.
• 35% reported having ignored tickets issued against them.
• 59% reported having Bench Warrants issued for their arrest.
• 22% reported having outstanding warrants at the time of the survey.
• 21% reported being incarcerated while 5% reported being referred to a program when brought before court.
• 29% reported losing their housing or being discharged from a program due to incarceration.

This closely mirrors the initial service provider experiences even though they were not all in the same cities:

• Almost 20% of service providers report that their clients’ interactions with police occur because they appear to be homeless.
• More than 60% of service providers report that their clients’ interactions with police occur because of drinking related offenses
• 30% of service providers report that their clients interact with police because they are loitering, 16% report interaction because of jaywalking, and 16% for trespassing.
• 53% of service providers report that approximately 20% or more of their clients have bench warrants against them.
• 44% of service providers report that 50% or more of their clients have outstanding tickets.
• 74% of service providers report that at least 70% of their clients have been arrested.

By looking at and analyzing the experiences of the clients and of the service providers and relating these to the research that been done on issues of decreasing access and increasing criminalization, we will lay the foundation needed for all of us to come together and finally begin to dispel the myth that mental illness and homelessness are the result of people choosing a lifestyle and that service providers are incompetent. These claims have gone unanswered far too long and the result, as we all see, is killing us.

While re-funding housing and treatment services might seem to be a logical response, local and state governments, with the support of the Federal Department of Justice have instead been implementing Homeless and Mental Health courts. In the last 10 years, the number of Mental Health Courts in the U.S. has increased from 4 to 120.

In theory, the mental health court system is a collaborative effort between judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, caseworkers, and mental health professionals aimed at figuring out an appropriate treatment plan for the offender. Some recent studies suggest that mental health courts substantially reduce recidivism, and others have shown that participation in mental health court increased defendants’ access to long-term care. Which would seem to disprove the whole services resistant argument, which is so prevalent in the creation of these courts.

However, mental health courts also have significant drawbacks.  In order to gain access to the mental health court, defendants must plead guilty to the crime they are accused of and agree to adhere to the courts recommendations or be remanded to the traditional court.  These conditions are coercive and can also perpetuate the criminalization of people with mental illness. As one service provider noted, “in Mental Health court, people are often “remanded to custody” for non-compliance with court case management, which includes medications. To jail someone for not taking medication, especially if it is medication that causes extremely adverse side effects, is questionable from a legal standpoint, and from a treatment standpoint, it is barbaric. Everything described above then happens ⎯ people [lose] their income, health insurance, housing, and everything else.”

WRAP seeks to ensure that jails do not replace community-based mental health treatment services and that the hundreds of millions of dollars that are currently funding the whole bureaucratic process of criminalizing people instead be applied as an initial down payment towards the housing and treatment that is not only much more humane, but in the long run, much more affordable as well.

We’ll use our collective strengths, organizing, outreach, research, public education, artwork and direct actions. We will continue to expand this network of organizations and cities and we will train ourselves to ultimately bring down the whole oppressive system of policing poor people and poverty as a non-human broken window to be discarded and replaced.

Eating is an Agricultural Act

Last year Poor Magazine spoke to Matthew Robeson, a young African-descended brother who honors Pachamama with his hands, heart and mind.  Matthew welcomed us into his garden, a “Garden in the ghetto” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoXUO2qaV0U) in the Visitation Valley/Sunnydale neighborhood where he resides.  He grows a bounty of vegetables that include pumpkin, garlic, green beans, onions, zucchini and potatoes .  He spoke of the challenges of planting; of community--sharing knowledge of indigenous vegetables, working side by side with Filipinos, Vietnamese, Samoans—all kinds of people who honor our earth mother.  Poor Magazine honors this planting and tending to the earth--a conscious effort to take back the land. It is also a resistance to mainstream media that would have you believe that the only thing that grows in Sunnydale is crime and violence.

When I was growing up, my parents prayed before each meal

                        Gracious lord we thank thee

                        For these bounties of thy

                        Providence and pray thee to

                        Sanctify and to nourish our    

                        Bodies and God Bless the

                        Hands that prepared it

I uttered those words not savoring its meaning--the syllables that connected letters, words, forming a stew that was poetry, song, praise.  It was a quick utterance without thought of the ties between family, me, the land and the creator. 

My life travels in dual realities.  One reality is that of an indigenous human being with indigenous values that have been passed to me through the poetry of my uncles (their street language, the only language that holds meaning to me), the words of my grandparents and the example of hard work sketched in their hands and faces.  The other reality is one whose hands have been disconnected, chopped off at the wrists, propagandized and disassociated from the life-giving soil that is the basic source where natural processes merge to give the miracle of life. 

Looking at my brown skin, I see the history of the land written on it, moving like rivers that refuse to stagnate—whose memory is alive in the pores.  Yet, I know by looking at my hands that I have not planted a seed, picked a melon, fed chickens or bent down--like my ancestors —and met the earth with the sun pressing down, searing poems on my bent back.  I think of the poet/children’s author Jorge Argueta who wrote about coming to the US from El Salvador (http://www.childrensbookpress.org/our-books/latino/movie-my-pillow):

                        Here in the city there are

                        Wonders everywhere

                        Here mangoes

                        Come in cans

                         In El Salvador

                        They grow on trees

                         Here chickens come

                        In plastic bags

                        Over there

                        They slept beside me

I recently came across a book of essays by writer/activist Wendell Berry—essays that address subjects such as the food economy, responsibility of the poet, reasons for not buying a computer (http://home.btconnect.com/tipiglen/berrynot.html) and the ultimate question: What are people for? (http://www.ecoliteracy.org/essays/pleasures-eating)

He writes: “I begin with the proposition that eating is an agricultural act.  Eating ends the annual dream of the food economy that begins with planting and birth”.  An agricultural act—how often does one think of eating in these terms?  One doesn’t have to delve too deeply to know this is a reality—as tangible as rain—but we are inundated and assaulted by messages propagated by the food industry—an industry whose profitability is more or less contingent on people seeing themselves participating in the agricultural act—as, what Berry calls, “passive consumers”, buying what they’ve been convinced they want and need without asking questions such as, “is it fresh?”, “is it healthy?”, “how pure or clean is it and how far was it transported?”  For most of us, Berry’s assertions are not earth shattering—yet thinking oneself as part of an agricultural act takes conscious effort—physical and spiritual—a process that gives back to the earth and the creator.  That process can start with two words:  Thank you.

As in all of American society, the bottom line is, invariably, the bottom line.  The food industry has 2 overriding concerns as Berry points out:  volume and price rather than quality and health.  Berry writes: Increased volume presumably reduces costs.  But as scale increases, diversity declines, so does health. As health declines, the dependence on drugs and chemicals increases.

We have seen the effects of industrialized food on the population.  Berry refers to this as a “walled city surrounded by values that let merchandise in but no consciousness out".  He cites Sir Albert Howard who asserted in “The Soil and Health”: how we eat, determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used.

I grew up in a time when corporate logos began encroaching on high school hallways and cafeterias--in addition to our minds.  We thought it was great.  I recall seeing students eating twinkies and potato chips for breakfast—washing it down with coke, pepsi or sprite.  In the documentary “Super Size Me”, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVErU0eJAWU) filmmaker Morgan Spurlock visited a public high school where much processed food was being served to students.  The film included interviews with school administrators, cafeteria workers, teachers and policymakers who agreed that the corporate food giants have infiltrated the schools, reaping enormous profits at the expense of the health of young people—hooking our kids on their products, yet immune to the health consequences of their products.  With the preponderance of fast food and processed foods made with unhealthy amounts of fat and sugar—coupled with the whittling down of physical education programs in schools, is it any wonder why obesity rates are at their current levels, or that diabetes is on the rise.  Said one physical education teacher in “Super Size me”, “In America we have sick care, not healthcare”.

Wendell Berry writes that it is “possible to escape the trap of industrialism, to be liberated from the old food economy voluntarily, by reclaiming responsibility for one’s own part in the food economy.  He suggests the following:

1.  Participate in food production.  Grow something to eat if you have a yard, a porch box or a pot in a window.  Compost kitchen scraps and use it as fertilizer.  In this way you will be fully responsible for any food you grow yourself and you will know all about it.  This will acquaint you with the beautiful energy cycle that revolves from soil to seed to flower to fruit to food to offal (IE: entrails and organs of a butchered animal) to decay and round again.

 2. Prepare your own food

3.  Learn the origins of the food you buy, and buy food that is produced closest to your home

4.  Whenever possible, deal directly with local farmers (Farmers markets such as the Civic Center Market are good places to meet growers face to face).  In doing so, you eliminated an entire fleet of merchants, transporters, processors, packagers and advertisers who thrive at the expense of producers and consumers.

5.  Learn, in self-defense, as much as you can of the economy and technology of industrialized food production.  What is added to food that is not food, and what do you pay for these additions?

6.  Learn what is involved in the best farming and gardening

7.  Learn by direct observation and experience, if possible, the life histories of food species.  Were animals raised in crowded spaces, did they have good water and bountiful pastures?  Were fruits and vegetables grown in good soil and not in huge factory fields rife with chemicals?

My family still prays at the table before eating.  I have yet to plant, to grow my own food but I intend to start.  I begin by planting the seeds of thankfulness in the mind of my 7 year old son, who said the following at the table this evening:

                                    I want to thank

                                    The buffalo

                                    For giving his body

                                    To us so we could

                                    Eat dinner

My son’s words tell me that eating is not only an agricultural act, but a spiritual one.  To the creator we say two words: Thank you

© 2011 RWS

"The universe is nothing but stories"

--a possibly very paraphrased anonymous quote

My name is Thornton and I'm a baseball addict.  I almost beat the addiction in 2010, wasn't aware the San Francisco Giants were close to getting into the post-season playoffs until about 2 weeks before they did.  I had a conversation with a cashier where EYE was the "expert" on the multiple ways the team could extend their season.  It was strange.

They got to and won the "World" Series.  One of the KNBR radio (and tv) announcers said on-air one day, of the 2010 season, "It's torture!"  That became the slogan for the season, and that slogan has returned for the 2011 season.

The real torture is that the word itself is being used to describe a game played by adults earning millions of dollars.  We've tortured ourselves in Amerikkka with our attitude about torturing people to get information from them so we can "win" a "war on terrorism".  The torture of anyone is a worse crime than ALMOST anything anyone may have done.  It sucks us all into a mental hall of mirrors that reflects poorly on our Amerikkkan Dreams about what and who we think we are.

"Our" governments, state and national, torture us with Budget Brawls, budget cuts, promises and threats of more of the same, and many people have joined the rest of us with no jobs, no homes, and no ability to trust anyone who says they can help us get back in the saddle.

We've said it before, we'll say it some more.  Some who read these words think WE'RE TORTURING THEM, from comments we've gotten on this website.  Yeah, right.

I'd like those commenters to give up everything my POORMagazine sister Ingrid DeLeon has.  I'd like them to walk every day in the shoes of a Vietnam war vet we recently met at a First Tuesday Newsroom.  "Papa Bear" is his nickname.  He is a victim of George W. Bush, who demanded that some Vietnam vets with documented disabilities have their cases reconsidered, an act which put Papa Bear on the streets.  Papa Bear is tortured every day by the memories of what his country asked him to do.

POOR Magazine Elder Skolah "Bad News" Bruce Allison is also a Vietnam War vet, with memories just as nightmarish as Papa Bear's.  Baseball isn't torture, unless your city has been "asked" to spend millions of dollars to build a stadium, torturing the city budget while the team owners could easily pay their own way.

San Francisco went crazy the night the Giants won the 2010 "World" Series.  I watched the big screen set up across the street from City Hall until I realized that no matter how the game ended, getting home would instantly become...torture.  I got home just in time to see the last pitch of that game.

What followed was hours of loud ear-torture craziness.  People seem to have developed a bottomless leg thirst for pleasure in the reflected glory of millionaire game plaers, Bay To Breakers elite marathon runners, stars dancing on tv, etc.  

What I love most about baseball is the stories.  If you read my article GENTRIFUCKATIONS OF THE SOUL, we don't believe in story (herstory or history) enough, we don't believe in truth enough, though I didn't put it exactly like that.  POOR Magazine's Tony Robles is all about the stories the old manongs tell, Tiny is constantly writing a new chapter in the story of what it means to be Daughter of Dee.

The San Francisco Giants recently got rained out of Chicago, winning a game called in the 6th Inning, not playing the next game.  I listened to the KNBR "Midnight Replay" of the shortened game.  The radio talkers spent the entire delay-before-the-calling-of-the-game doing nothing but what Tiny calls "Talk/Story", telling stories about baseball players.  I loved it.  Baseball is at its best when Talk/Story rules.

So are we. 

Can people just have fun with each other and/or their families without watching millionaires and billionaires spend the money they throw at them to entertain them with a game? 

The National Football League owners and players are in a lock-out war over how much money rookies and veterans get paid, and how much more money owners get to keep.  The NFL, MLB (Major League Baseball) and other sports leagues have tortured their fans this way, and KNBR has reported that the television networks are busy planning all-college-football on tv when the football season starts because they expect the lock-out may still be in place.

Perhaps the answer is no, we can't just have fun with each other, we're all addicted to this spectacle of money and gazillionaires?  Thinking about it can be torture.  Not thinking about it is worse.

"I love the fact we open our arms to the world and work hard to support all of our citizens"
--Joanna Rees, venture capitalist candidate for San Francisco Mayor at May 5th candidate forum at the University of San Francisco (quoted in Bay Area Reporter newspaper)

"2 million people in prison, 2 million young people on the streets--there's something wrong about that!"
--"Bad News" Bruce Allison (talking to me) before the march to the Great San Francisco Sleep-In

POOR Magazine Elder Skolah "Bad News" Bruce Allison and I went to the "lawn" across the (Polk) street from San Francisco City Hall, betwen McAllister and Grove Streets.  We were there to support Operation Shine America (dot org) and Trans Youth Rise Above (dot blogspot dot com).  Bruce has his ways of getting information and I'd stumbled across Operation Shine America, its excellent and devastating video clip, and at least one link I happily attached to my Facebook addiction.  Then I was asked to make sure Bruce didn't go all kamikaze on us the way he did at a Sacramento, CA education budget protest the weekend before when he had to get arrested to get decent health care perpetrated on an infected foot.

I walked down Polk Street from the Elk Hotel and crossed the "lawn" wondering where everyone was at 5:45p.m.  Bruce and I arrived simultaneously, finding the gay/lesbian/bi/transgender youth across the street from the Bill Graham Auditorium.  Food Not Bombs also showed up then and set up a meal served at 6p.m., the beginning of the action prior to the march to Castro and Market, where the Great San Francisco Sleep-In was to happen at Harvey Milk Plaza.

Humans weren't the only critters there, a half-dozen dogs were having fun getting to know each other and humans new to them.  I was surprised to see no cats, for I have noticed some cat loving shopping cart-equipped houseless veterans of the street here and there in the city.

From 7 to 7:30p.m. there were several announcements about the impending mostly-silent march.  Banners, signs, and brooms--for symbolic sweeping of the streets of all housless  (and particularly queer youth, who have even fewer resources in this city, ever smaller crumbs to fight for than adult poor and/or houseless) folks.

Neither Bruce nor I have sleeping bags, so both of us were there to be supportive but we weren't going to participate in the whole thing.  Before the march kicked off the wind got stronger, the temperature dropped fast, and the other ingredients for a rain storm loomed overhead.  Bruce and I marched to Van Ness Avenue where I split off from the group to catch a bus to POOR Magazine.

Bruce is a champion walker, but this time I got to 16th and Mission Streets first.  The rain started falling in earnest soon after.  We both hoped the Sleep-In folks were okay.  Walking to Castro and Market would have dismantled ME, which wouldn't have been the case in some of my earlier brushes with houselessness in San Francisco.  I walked EVERYWHERE in 1989.

Sunday, May 22nd, 2011, there will be another event to place houselessness firmly in front of anyone who still thinks they can ignore it.  May 22nd is Harvey Milk's birthday.  Milk, the first openly gay male elected official in the U.S., (assassinated in 1978--I watched the riots in San Francisco on tv in college after his assassin's "Twinkie Defense" got him a light sentence), opposed a 1970's Sit/Lie law attacking gay men.

The gay community is split, with some being suckered into supporting Sit/Lie laws, supporting Po'Lice abuse of houseless people whatever their age, and national gay organizations like Human Rights Campaign not embracing economic justice for everyone.  Local activist Tommi Avicoli-Mecca gave me a flyer for the 1p.m. event before the Great Sleep-In march got started. Gay Shame is an organization that campaigns against the assimilation of gay people into Capitalist consumer-culture, but Tommi is part of a new organization, called QUEEN (Queers for Economic Equality Now) overtly sponsoring this event.

Harvey Milk Plaza is also the place to be on May 22nd for this anti-Sit/Lie event.  I want to recruit you to be there!

Hello all, its's Joe. I haven't written anything in more than a month. Since the rapture has not happened I thought that writing a few words from me was way overdue.

If you've seen me on the web tv (real fat black guy) I don't smoke stogies so apologies for the slight gray tented shorts. I had left, gone to Colorado for a month and enjoyed my stay before foolishly returning to grab my passport which was thought not needed before I left. Then with money spent I couldn't return for Beardance, roundance, and drumming by the Southern Ute. I'd mention other tribes but don't want to lump all tribes together.

Other Nations had different traditions, cultural stories, and customs and I don't want to be an ugly American. Just because I'm ignorant of customs does not mean I'm not capable of learning customs and cultures of people's after all my forefather's had to learn or die out as slaves in chains brought to this land of so called milk and honey.

I've made many friends and have chosen a small town to live in and though I'll miss many folks in San Francisco I know it is a place I can no longer reside in. This is a huge Sea change in my life. Also the challenge is to live an abundant life without the many trappings of a teeming metropolis.

This coming from a man born and partly raised in New York City, and later Oakland, Berkeley, on the border of Hayward and San Leandro then finally San Francisco. A one bedroom cottage/house or apartment with kitchen,restroom, and maybe laundry (don't expect to get the latter) but all the rest to me plus enough money for rent and steady employment as housesitter/caretaker, car driver, courier, dishwasher, maybe as a d-j on radio probably volunteer at the station after an internship.

A car to drive to various cities, churches, and other social events. Yes and dating also. I've found many date sites a few are really raunchy,dirty, and positively filthy along with sedate less bawdy, sexually explicit sites. (I know what a few are thinking) "Go for the quiet ones Joe, slower paced less pressure." Yeah, right-no I've always been uneasy with women though the few times when they have shown interest lets say some special ones shock and awed me when I was much younger.

And if any readers have read my past columns this is no time for easy-does-it. Most of the really bad sites I will show my mug on and get rejections over and done as for the rest I won't mind visiting or being visited by lots of voting age and more mature women as long as no games are played and we can Meet-Greet-Eat-Speak, and after pre or post do our mutual Double- Back-Beast. Love is wondrous, miraculous, and spiritually uplifting when two souls truly meet. However as an actor answer to another actor's question in "Good Luck Chuck" asks "What is love without sex?" "Its Sex, It's Just Great Sex."

Gentlemen and Ladies love has already taken its time with me so at the moment I'm going with the great sex and less worries about the vagaries of love and romance. I may have misquoted both actors but you get my drifts (young adult women and more mature experienced women) Romantic love is icing on the cake. All I'm sayin' is GIVE ME CAKE! icing not needed. If I've offended anyone... too bad, don't read my columns if pretty set pieces is what you want.

As many of my friends in Colorado have said "LIFE IS NOW." I just want to get on with and really get-it-on and enjoy a few soft feminine human's and pray they get exactly as much joy from me as I aim to give freely to them. I'm just living my life, hope to have a partner one day to share it with but if not; the next best thing is to give joy to those who as I are starving for joy and are energized from-by it. I hope this is publishable but if not its alright my columns are an eclectic mix and mess of my thoughts on many things but this time It had to be earthy, fleshy, blue-veined-bosomy if you take my meaning literally, Life is Large, I need to be deep within it. Whatever metaphors you see in my words is how I live my life.

GENTRIFUKATION TOURS

“R”

US

 (Aburgesamiento Gira

“Somos”

Nosotros)

“Coming to a Displaced, Dismantled, Redeveloped Neighborhood or Stolen Art "exhibit" Near You”

“Viniendo a  un desplazamiento, Desmantelado, Barrio Rediseñado Cerca de Tí”

Serving silenced peoples and removed indigenous peoples since 1493

Watch previous Tours By Clicking Here

OWENS NEVER SAID AIYANA JONES’ DAD GAVE HIM GUN USED IN TEEN’S KILLING

Aiyana Jones’ father Charles Jones and Dominique Simpson grieve in front of window shattered by cop grenade, the morning of her murder

Is deal part of cover-up of cop murder of 7-year-old child? 

By Diane Bukowski/Detroit Voice

May 20, 2011

Detroit–On April 11, headlines in Detroit’s daily media trumpeted, “Guilty plea fingers Aiyana Stanley-Jones’ dad” (Detroit Free Press) and “Suspect promises to testify against Aiyana’s father” (Detroit News). Mildred Gaddis and other local talk show hosts hurried to their mikes to blame Aiyana’s family for the death of the seven-year-old child, killed by Detroit police last year during a military-style police assault.

Chauncey Owens during earlier court hearing

Chauncey Owens, 32, pled guilty that day to second-degree murder in the death of Je’Rean Blake, 17. Police had said they were searching for Owens when they lobbed an incendiary grenade through the living room window of Aiyana’s home in an impoverished east side neighborhood, and shot her to death on May 16, 2010.

The Jones’ family’s attorney Geoffrey Fieger said during a press conference after her death that police surveilling the house saw Owens leave the premises about 6 p.m. May 15, and could have arrested him then. Fieger contends in a lawsuit that police deliberately waited to set up a scene for the A&E program “48 Hours” before entering the home at 12:30 a.m. May 16.

Chauncey Nobles and Lyvonne Cargill, parents of 17-year-old Je'Rean Blake, at his funeral

“There are a lot of young people out there getting killed,” Je’Rean’s mother Lyvonne Cargill told this reporter on July 6 that year. “Both Je’Rean and Aiyana are up there in heaven looking down and asking, ‘Why did this happen?’ We gotta help our kids. They want jobs. They don’t have any recreation centers, nothing to do with their lives. I want to get a foundation set up to build a recreation center in Je’Rean’s name.”

Cargill was being interviewed about a police assault that occurred during a memorial picnic on Je’Rean’s June 17 birthday. She said white officers beat and shot at Black youths who were cleaning up afterwards (click on http://michigancitizen.com/mother-of-slain-teen-claims-police-brutality-p8783-1.htm  to read story).

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy being interviewed by Mildred Gaddis

But on April 11, Gaddis and others featured Cargill on their shows, encouraging her to join in the media-generated hysteria blaming Charles Jones for the death of his child, and essentially exonerating the police.

There is, however, absolutely no documentation indicating that Owens or anyone else said Charles Jones gave him the gun that killed Blake. NONE.

 It does not exist in Owens’ written plea deal, in statements he gave the police, or in interviews court-appointed psychiatrists conducted with him, which VOD reviewed in Owens’ court file. No witnesses included on a police investigator’s list in the file make the claim either.

Roland Lawrence in front of Jones' family's former residence at 4054 Lillibridge, on the first anniversary of Aiyana's death May 16, 2011

“The police and the prosecutor (and others) will go to any length to get rid of the Aiyana Jones story including but not limited to creating fictitious stories and associations,” said Roland Lawrence, chair of the city’s Justice for Aiyana Jones Committees.

 “Unless these entities come out and explain to the public what is really going on, there will be a parade of stories created about them and why they are sitting on the investigation into Aiyana’s death.  Were Worthy, Evans, Bing and others so intimately involved in arranging for the Hollywood film crews to trample through Aiyana’s poverty-stricken neighborhood that they are working overtime to quash the investigation because they do not want to be implicated?  Were there 36th District Court judges involved as it pertains to the signing of arrest warrants?  Were the Detroit and Michigan Film Offices involved in arranging for film permits?  The community should conduct their own investigation, and let the can of worms come running out.”

On May 20, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Richard Skutt postponed Owens’ sentencing from May 23 to July 29, reportedly because complications have arisen regarding the terms of the plea bargain.

Asst. Prosecutor Robert Moran speaking during court hearing on former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's text messages

“Defendant must testify truthfully about who supplied him with the gun to shoot the victim,” Assistant Prosecutor Robert Moran said in the plea document in Owens’ file. “If defendant cooperates and testifies truthfully, then we will ask the sentencing judge to reduce the sentence by two years. He must testify at all hearings requested and must submit to polygraph exams.”

According to his court file, Owens’ statements to police were obtained soon after the police assault on Aiyana’s home, but only after he repeatedly denied any involvement in Blake’s death, and after he discovered Aiyana had died. His attorneys Pamela Szydlak and later David Cripps filed and argued motions to suppress the statements, which Skutt denied.

Je'Rean Blake

In the contested statements, Owens says Charles Jones was with him in a group that went to the store at St. Jean and Mack where Je’Rean was shot to death. However, he names another individual as the one who gave him the gun.

He said he first went to the store with his brother, known as “Chinaman,” and a friend, but his brother could not get into the store to buy a beer because a group of young people outside the store “were talking s—.”

Two witnesses who testified at Owens’ preliminary exam, who knew neither Owens nor Blake, said there were approximately 40 people in the crowd. They said Owens and Blake had a verbal confrontation. Owens said he then drove down Lillibridge on his moped, encountered the group including Charles Jones, and asked them to go to the store with him to “whup some ass.”

Owens said they did so.

Asked whether Charles Jones knew what was going to happen, he said only, “He knew the gun was there.” He said the group had a gun for self-defense because one was wearing diamond Cartier glasses, and the the person who gave him the gun told him to take it for self-defense because “there are a lot of n—-s out there.” He said he fired the gun accidentally.

The preliminary exam witnesses identified Owens as the shooter. On cross-examination, Szydlak obtained an admission from one that he did not pick him out of a photo display immediately after the shooting.

Mike's Motor City Marketplace on St. Jean and Mack, site of Je'Rean Blake's murder

Also in testimony at the exam, Cargill said she drove to the store to pick up her son after he called her. When she got there, her son’s friends were about to put him in their car to take him to the hospital, but Cargill drove him herself. It is unclear why police or 911 had not responded to the scene, either after the shooting, or because of the gathering of such a large crowd before the shooting.

On a website called the National Speed Trap Exchange, a man reported on May 13, 2010: 

“On Mack Avenue between St.Jean and Conner is a railroad bridge. Detroit police in the white traffic cop cars catch speeders coming Westbound on Mack. They sit in the party store parking lot across St.Jean with the laser gun pointed up the bridge and catch speeders coming down the hill.The speed limit on Mack is 30MPH. Usually they are out on the weekends doing this as I have seen them doing it on Sundays.”

Je’Rean was killed at that store on Friday, May 14, 2010. Where were the police then?

Getting Ghost tells of battle to stop Lou Nafso's liquor store at St. Jean and Mack from opening

In 2008, author Luke Bergman published a book, “Getting Ghost: Two Young Lives and the Struggle for the Soul of an American City.” Beginning on p. 61, it details the struggle of Mack Alive, community members and former Councilwoman Alberta Tinsley-Talabi to stop the opening of Lou Nafso’s “Mike’s Motor City Marketplace,” the store where JeRean Blake was killed.

To read an excerpt from the book (p. 61–”Boot dancing with Nafso,”  detailing the battle to stop the store’s opening, click on:

http://books.google.com/books?id=rt S8Xe1S_wC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=Motor+City+liquor+store+St.+Jean+and+Mack&source=bl&ots=AEwNpuXzeJ&sig=3-T9v8PPAhhzIM16MgLqO rAqRQ&hl=en&ei=3UvaTantFoyatwf25LToDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

A quote from the book: “According to their detractors, on the East Side, such merchants sell liquor with impunity to vulnaerable African-Americans in Detroit neighborhoods; they are drug dealers with licenses to do their business–selling ‘liquid crack,’ as one Mack Alive supporter suggested. Moreover. as on on the corner of Mack and Beniteau [where Nafso owns a beer and wine store), such outlets are seen as magnets for other so-called disorderly behavior, including prostitution and street drug-dealing. Indeed, gatherings of Black young men leaning against liquor store walls are archetypal symbols of such markets."

Alberta Tinsley-Talabi with Kilpatrick appointee Charles Beckham; despite her opposition, the City Council approved liquor license for Mike's Motor City Marketplace

The book, published by the University of Michigan press, also details the devastating effect that such stores, primarly owned by Chaldeans and Arab-Americans who do not live in Detroit and do not have such outlets in their own neighorhodds, have on the impoverished population of Detroit.

In response to defense motions for determination of Owens’ ability to be criminally responsible, waive his Miranda Rights and stand trial, Skutt appointed two psychiatrists from the Center for Forensic Psychiatry to interview him.

Skutt eventually declared Owens fit on all counts, based on the psychiatrists’ reports and on his viewing of a police videotape of Owens giving his second statement.

LaKrystal Sanders consoles her mother Mertilla Jones at press conference on the death of their niece and granddaughter Aiyana Jones

But the interviews, summarized by the psychiatrists in detailed letters, are nonetheless enlightening. They raise questions regarding Owens’ mental condition, both at the time he was interrogated by police, and throughout his life, as well as police tactics used in obtaining his statements.

In one interview, Owens described the night of the police assault, saying he was in bed with his fiancée LaKrystal Sanders, Aiyana’s aunt, when the incident began. Sanders lived in the flat above the home where Charles Jones, his mother Mertilla Jones, Aiyana and several other children lived. The homes had separate entrances.

“We heard a shot, we jumped up, my fiancée went downstairs,” Owens said. “My oldest daughter who is 15 came upstairs because she was scared. I told her to get dressed. I had my boxer shorts on. I came down and the police started screaming at me and handcuffed me.”

Interior of Jones' home after Aiyana was killed; couch cushions on which she was sleeping are on floor, after family moved couch outside to porch

Owens told the psychiatrist the police took him into the Jones’ flat, and sat him down on the couch where Aiyana died.

“Blood was on me and pieces of brain were all over the couch,” he said. Later after he was taken to the police station, he said the police would not give him his clothes, only a paper gown.

“I was freezing,” Owens said. “They put a shower cap on my head and laughed at me.”

Police investigator Theophilus Williams looks at statement signed by Chauncey Owens during preliminary exam in front of Judge Willie Lipscomb, Jr.

According to the psychiatrists’ accounts, as well as accounts of the videotaped statement in the court file, Owens denied any involvement in the Blake killing for over one and a half hours. He kept asking to call his fiancée. One officer told him he would let him call her if he gave him the testimony he wanted. Owens finally agreed, and was allowed to call Sanders.

“The detective wanted to use the phone call he gave him to get him to confess,” the psychiatrist wrote. Szydlak said in her motion to suppress the statement that police knew Sanders would tell him Aiyana was dead, and that he would be “overcome with anguish and grief.”

Sanders did so. Owens began weeping, then composed himself and gave the police the statement on record..

Defense Attorney Pamela Szydlak and Chauncey Owens at preliminary exam

In statements, Owens said he confessed to cover up his brother’s role in the shooting, but the police told him that he would not want to testify against his brother. They also told him, as Szydlak said in her motion, “that his family had suffered enough and he should agree with the interrogator for the sake of his family.”

Owens also told the psychiatrists he had been raised by his grandparents, and that his mother died of cirrhosis of the liver in 2008, after he had cared for her during her declining years. He said an uncle had abused him. He reported that he had “auditory hallucinations” from the age of 13 until the age of 30, and also reported paranoid delusions. He said he had been in special education classes since fourth grade, left school in the seventh grade and could barely read and write. He said the other students made fun of him.

The psychiatrists said those reports did not show Owens was mentally incompetent or unable to waive his Miranda Rights, as he did by signing a statement that the police had him read. They also asked him to read his confession out loud, written out by the police officer. The record shows he started to do, then stopped and just signed it.

One psychiatrist concluded, “It is the examiner’s opinion that available information raises the possibility that Mr. Owens functions below average intellectually, and the reader may wish to consider whether below average intellectual functioning might have impaired his ability to understand that the police meant to use the statements against him and that he was free to stop the questioning and request an attorney.”

That psychiatrist also said that Owens told him he was not sure if he could be tried without an attorney.

Judge Richard Skutt (Facebook photo)

Owens’ plea bargain was reached April 11 as he was about to go to trial. A jury had already been impaneled. Assistant Prosecutor Maria Miller, communications director for Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, issued the following statement regarding the plea bargain.

“Today Owens entered a guilty plea before Judge Richard Skutt to Second Degree Murder which carries a penalty of Life or any term of years. He received a sentence agreement of 28 years in prison.  He also pleaded guilty to Felon in Possession of a Firearm (5 years) and Felony Firearm (2 years mandatory consecutive).  As part of the sentence agreement Owens is required to testify truthfully in any future proceeding about who supplied him with the murder weapon.  After Owens testifies the prosecution can appear before the court to request a sentence reduction on the Second Degree Murder charge to a sentence of 26 years.  He is expected to be sentenced on May 23, 2011.  

“We are very pleased that Owens has admitted his responsibility for the senseless killing of Jerean Blake and that he has agreed to cooperate with our investigation,” said Prosecutor Worthy in the statement.

VOD requested answers to the following questions from Asst. Prosecutor Miller regarding the postponement of Owens’ sentencing:

1) What are the reasons for the delay in Chauncey Owens’ sentencing?
2) Is the prosecutor’s office delaying the sentencing of Chauncey Owens because of the conflicting statements?
3) Is it the aim of the prosecutor’s office to charge Charles Jones in the Je’Rean Blake killing to divert attention away from the police killing of his daughter Aiyana Jones?
4) Although Judge Skutt denied defense motions to suppress Owens’ statements to police, does the prosecutor’s office support the following tactics:

·         Waiting to arrest suspect until a spectacular scene could be set up for a reality TV show?

·         Seating suspect on couch where Aiyana Jones died, covered with her blood and bits of brains, after his arrest?

·         Interrogating him while he was dressed in his boxer shorts and a paper gown, and complained of freezing?

·         Police putting shower cap on his head and laughing at him?

·         Enticing him to confess with promises that he could call his fiancee if he went along with the interrogators’ version of events in his statements?

·         Telling him to confess to save his family further grief?

5) Again, WHY have no charges yet been brought against the police in the death of Aiyana Jones? Your earlier statement regarding the length of time the prosecutor’s investigation is taking belies the fact that Prosecutor Worthy turned over the investigation immediately to the Michigan State Police to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. WHY would she now have to conduct her own investigation? Couldn’t this be considered obstruction of justice?

Pros. Kym Worthy at school board meeting Oct. 2010

Miller responded, “The Owens sentencing was adjourned at the request of the prosecution because the investigation in the homicide of Je’Rean Blake is ongoing.  This is the reason that was placed on the record in court on May 20, 2011.  We will not be able to answer your other questions as investigations are ongoing in the Blake matter and also regarding the death of Aiyana Jones.”