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THE COMING DESTRUCTION OF THE U.S. ECONOMY

Paul Craig Roberts on the plummeting dollar, the soaring trade deficit and the hollowing out of the American economy. PLUS a special feature by Jennifer Loewenstein on Palestine after Annapolis and the horror that is Gaza. "Humanitarian catastrophe" only begins to describe it. PLUS Allan Nairn on the butchers of Dili. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great holiday presents.

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"Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair

Today's Stories

December 17, 2007

Uri Avnery
A Gaza Massada?

December 15 / 16, 2007

Peter Linebaugh
A People's Penny for the Magna Carta

Howard Zinn
Bomb After Bomb

Standard Schaefer
The Greening of Big Tobacco

Raymond J. Lawrence
Let's Take Christ Out of Christmas

Alan Farago
Down on Desolation Row: the Vultures and the Growth Machine

Saul Landau
Lord Byron and the Bad Tourists

Jenna Orkin
Lying to "Reassure" the Public: Bush's EPA and the Post-9/11 Toxic Air Cover-Up

Ahmad Samih Khalidi
Why a Palestinian "State" is a Punitive Construct

Robert Fantina
Politics By Photo-Op

Missy Comley Beattie
Resistance Amid the Ruins

Ramzy Baroud
Of Mormons and Muslims

James L. Secor
A Vision for China's Future

Elijah Wald
Ike Turner's Music Won't be Forgotten

Website of the Weekend
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies Needs (and Deserves) Your Support

 

December 14, 2007

JoAnn Wypijewski
The Dirty Cad: What Giuliani's Sex Life Tells Us About Him

John Ross
Iraqi Refugees Return: One Cruel Hoax

Jacob Hornberger
Terror Suspects Belong in Federal Court

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened?

Allan Nairn
"Shoot Them on the Spot": Rewarding War Crimes

Dave Zirin
The Mitchell Report: Absolving the Owners

Dave Lindorff
The First Cut is the Deepest

Misty MacDuffee
Toxic Grizzlies

Ben Terrall
What Happened to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine?

Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi
Prerequisites for Peace

Website of the Day
Sen. Kit Bond: "Waterboarding is Like Swimming"

 

December 13, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Shrinking the Dollar from the Inside-Out

Mike Whitney
Dershowitz for the Defense--of Waterboarding

Ron Jacobs
Blank Check DemocratsL the Great War Funding Conspiracy

Norman Solomon
The USA's Human Rights Daze

Peter Morici
The Dragon and the Toothless Dog: China Doesn't Flinch

Sandy Mayes
Blocking the Strykers: 13 Days of War Resistance at Port Olympia

Franklin Lamb
The UN in Lebanon: Whose Mission Is It Fulfilling?

Jacob Hornberger
Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It

Nadim Rouhana
An Interloper in My Own Land

Dave Zirin
On Pigskin and Petrol

Website of the Day
Rachel's Needs (and Deserves) Your Support!


December 12, 2007

Allan Nairn
US Intelligence is Tapping Indonesian Phones

Alan Farago
How Sprawl Eats Its Young

Ray McGovern
Torture, Lies and Videotape

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Phony Pentagon Budget Cuts

Evan Jones
The Raid on Great Western: Why an Australian Bank Might Spell Doom for the US Farm Belt

James Petras
An Open Letter to Sarkozy on the Exchange of Political Prisonsers

Joel Hirschorn
The Horserace Fiction: Clinton, Obama and the Democratic Machine

Joshua Frank
Why Ron Paul Deserves Our Attention

Sherry Wolf
Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul

Dan Bacher
Survey of a Fish Graveyard

Website of the Day
Men Eating Bugs

 

December 11, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
What's Really Happened During the Surge?

Diana Johnstone
The Next Kosovo War

Paul Craig Roberts
It's Waco All Over Again: Preventive Detention and the Constitution

David Macaray
Impasse in Hollywood

Ralph Nader
Gail Collins Versus the Underdogs

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Britons to be Released: a Mixed Result

Martha Rosenberg
No Holiday for High Risk Sex Workers

Steve Champion /
Anthony Ross

Words for Our Brother, Tookie Williams

Kim Nicolini
Tangled Up in Dylan

Michael Dickinson
Say Goodbye to Purgatory: Pope Rat Gets Indulgent

Website of the Day
A Charming (and Worthy) Pitch


December 10, 2007

Uri Avnery
How They Stole the Bomb From Us

Debbie Nathan
The Perils of Journalism and Child Porn

JoAnn Wypijewski
Is There a Left Here Left? If So, What Can It Do?

Steve Kelly
Cheap Chips, Counterfeit Wilderness

Donna J. Volatile
Welcome to the Revolution

 

December 8 / 9, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Coup Against Bush and Cheney

Brenda Norrell
Seize the Land, Chain the Peace Activists

Saul Landau
The Ruins of Empire

R. F. Blader
A Rape in Every Drink?

Ray McGovern
Spinning Iran's Centrifuges

Allan Nairn
Imposed Hunger in Gaza, the Army in Indonesia

Linn Washington, Jr
Spotlight on Death Row

Paul Craig Roberts
When Will Bush Come Clean?

 

December 7, 2007

Sean Penn
Piano Wire Puppeteers

Arthur Versluis
Mining Water in the Desert

M. G. Piety
Racism and the American Psyche: Some Thoughts on Race and Intelligence

Pam Martens
Banksters Gone Wild

Alan Farago
Will the Free Market Kill Suburbia? Sprawl and the Credit Crisis

Allan Nairn
It Takes (Out) a Village

Col. Dan Smith
Bush, Iran and the Politics of Doomsday

Alice Slater
The Iran Opening

Robert Weissman
The Story of Stuff

Website of the Day
Something About Mitt

 

December 5, 2007

Mike Whitney
Why the CFR Hates Putin

Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Enablers: Tom Hayden and the Dead End Democrats

James Petras
Venezuela in the Aftermath

Ron Jacobs
The Iran Charade

Dave Zirin
Kicking a Dead Man: the Sliming of Sean Taylor

John V. Whitbeck
Two States or One? Time to Choose

Peter Zinn
Covered in New Orleans

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Impeach Pelosi Instead

Alan Farago
The Credit Bomb Detonates in Florida

Heather Gray
US Meddling in Australian Politics

Website of the Day
A Donner Summit Night Before Xmas

 

December 4, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Jackboot State Stubs Its Toe in Ann Arbor

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the Supreme Court

Paul Craig Roberts
The Lies at the End of the American Dream

Ray McGovern
No-Nuke Iran

Winslow T. Wheeler
Admiral Mullen and the Defense Budget: When White Elephants are Too Small

Allan Nairn
The Regime Still Stands in Burma, Where "the People Just Want Food"

Russell Mokhiber
The USA v. Al Arian

Nikolas Kozloff
As Chávez Falters: Raising the Stakes for the South American Left

John V. Walsh
Peace Movement Paralyzed

Ghada Ageel
Will Peace Cost Me My Home?

Stephen Soldz
The Facts be Damned!: Psychologists' President Defends Psychologist Involvement in Interrogations

Website of the Day
Hands Off the People of Iran

 

 

December 3, 2007

Tariq Ali
Venezuela After the Referendum

Bill Quigley
New Orleans: Bulldozers for the Poor, Tax Credits for Developers

Eric Walberg
The Bible and Middle East History

Uri Avnery
After Annapolis

Marjorie Cohn
Operation Iraqi Freedom Exposed

Dave Lindorff
Vengeance Isn't Sweet

Stephen Fleischman
Homeless in Paradise

Martha Rosenberg
Perp Walks for the Mink Clad on Chicago's Mag Mile

Website of the Day
So Just Lead!

 

December 1 / 2, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Emblems of the Bush Age: Adrift in a Sea of Booze

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Bear Minimum: the Grizzly and the Future of the Rocky Mountain West

Mike Whitney
"Iraq Doesn't Exist Anymore": an Interview with Nir Rosen

Shemon Salam
A Visit From the FBI

Roger Burbach
The Battle in Bolivia

Benjamin Dangl
New Politics in Old Bolivia

Brian M. Downing
The Quiet on the Middle Eastern Front: How Much Credit Goes to the Surge?

Greg Moses
Night of the Living Redneck: a Texas Horror Story

Sonja Karkar
The "Never-Never" Peace Conference

Saul Landau
Ethics and Evil in South Boston

Margaret Kimberley
Black America Left Behind

John Ross
What are the Prospects for a New Mexican Revolution?

Reza Fiyouzat
Exit on the Left: When Che's Children Visited Iran

Judith Scherr
Berkeley Turns Right for the Holidays

Lance Olsen
Of Forests and Finance: Logging for the Wealthy

Christopher Brauchli
Mr. Bush and the Despots

Robert Fantina
Iraq as U.S. Colony

Dan Bacher
Fish Triage on Prospect Island

Michael Donnelly
Remembering How to be Human: John Trudell and the Music of Urgency

Website of the Weekend
Appalachian Voices

 

November 30, 2007

Peter Stone Brown
The Re-Packaging of Bob Dylan

Wajahat Ali
The Volatile Mistress: an Interview with Javed Jabbar, Pakistan's Former Minister of Information

Allan Nairn
Cold-Blooded Celebrity: Thomas L. Friedman and the Bali Bombers

Alan Farago
The Sorrows of Suburbia: Politics, Sprawl and the Housing Crash

John Ross
The Death of Latin America's First Revolution

Corporate Crime Reporter
America's Corporate Crime Capitals

Lucia Alvarez
Diego Gonzalez
Argentina's Political Future

James Rothenberg
The Iraqi Miracle

Website of the Day
Bio-Bling?

 

November 29, 2007

R. F. Blader
The Most Dangerous Kind of Bribe

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Distorting Fascism to Demonize Iran

Stephen Soldz
War on the Couch: Fear, Aggression and Empire

Sheldon Richman
Iraq 3.0

George Wuerthner
Forest Fires, Lies and Chainsaws

Felice Pace
Did All Things Considered Self-Censor on Annapolis?

Col. Dan Smith
The Meaning of Annapolis

Harvey Wasserman
Terror Target Nukes

Nikolas Kozloff
Primetime Hate Debate: Lou Dobbs, Immigration and Campaign '08

Paul Krassner
Huffington Post Bloggers Go On Strike!

Dave Lindorff
News Not Fit to Print: US Coup Planned for Venezuela?

CP News Service
The One State Declaration

Website of the Day
A Native View of Yellowstone Bison Slaughter

November 28, 2007

James Petras
CIA Destabilization Memo Surfaces on Venezuela

Jeff Halper
Annapolis: When the Roadmap is a One Way Street

Pam Martens
Crashing Citigroup

Peter Morici
Economy in Crisis: Avoiding a Recession

Mohammed Khatib
Separate and Unequal in Palestine

Helen Redmond
The Horror and the Hope: Health Care in America

William S. Lind
In the Fox's Lair: Quiet Before a New Iraq Storm?

Ben Tripp
We, the People: a Trope for All Seasons

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan: First, Restore the Constitution and Reinstate the Judges

Jeff Berg
Holbrooke Says Bush Won't Attack Iran

Website of the Day
The Lies of Joe Klein

 

November 27, 2007

Joe DeRaymond
On the Road to the Torture School

Paul Craig Roberts
Meet the Only Two Candidates Worse Than Bush and Cheney: Hillary and Rudy

Marjorie Cohn
Remembering Victor Rabinowitz

Mike Whitney
A Dollar the Size of a Postage Stamp

Ron Jacobs
The Myths of Military Progress

Col. Dan Smith
The Pentagon's "People System" Still Doesn't Work

Ralph Nader
Family Learning

Karim Makdisi
Annapolis and the Unholy Alliance: the View from Beirut

Christopher Ketcham
Memo to Hollywood Writers: Strike Until You Drop

Ronan Bennett
Martin Amis Does a Coulter

Website of the Day
Celebrating the Uncensored Media

 

November 26, 2007

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Heading for Annapolis

Paul Craig Roberts
The End of All That

David Macaray
Enter Mediator

Sameer Dossani
Pakistan's Wounded Dictator

Roger Burbach
The Final Battle in Bolivia

Mark Scaramella
Guns and Greed in the Emerald Empire

Brian McKinlay
Howard's End

Rick Kuhn
The Fall of a Racist Union Buster

Binoy Kampmark
Ruddslide and Dull Alec

Monica Benderman
What Do You Know of War?

Brenda Norrell
Return to Alcatraz

Website of the Day
Ghostworld by DJ Spooky

 

November 24 / 25, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Ordeal of Catherine Wilkerson, MD

Robert Fisk
Darkness Falls on the Middle East

Saul Landau
Norman Mailer will Not R.I.P.

Jeffrey St. Clair
Justice Stephen Breyer, Cancer Bonds and the Origins of Neoliberal Environmentalism

Rannie Amiri
Beirut's Black Friday

Christopher Brauchli
Iraq Embassy as Gilded Palace

Daniel Gross
The Gap and Black Friday

Mike Whitney
"A Generalized Meltdown of Financial Institutions"

Marjorie Cohn
Iran and the 2008 Elections

David Rosen
Senior Sex: the Real Sexual Life of Aging Americans

David Michael Green
If Conservatism is the Ideology of Freedom ....

Kenneth Rexroth
When Euripides Played the Hindu Kush: Greeks and Buddhists in Afghanistan

Muhammad Iqbal
Trans. Shahid Alam

Ghazal

Website of the Day
Aerial Footage of Delta Fish Kill


November 23, 2007

Gary Leupp
Killing the Buddha in Pakistan's Swat Valley

Laura Carlsen
Coming to Terms with Diversity in Bolivia: an Interview with Alvaro Garcia, Bolivia's VP

David Macaray
Keeping Labor Unions Out

Andy Worthington
Former Guantánamo Detainee Seeks Asylum in Sweden

Clifton Ross
Trashing Chavez: Keith Olberman's Toxic Rant

Seth Sandronsky
Battling Sodexho

Dan Bacher
Death in the Delta: Thousands of Fish Stranded by Bureau of Reclamation

William A. Cook
The Myth of Middle East Peace

Website of the Day
Waiting for the Guards: Stress Techniques as Torture, a Short Film

 

November 22, 2007

Alan Farago
Who Lost America's Everglades?

Greg Moses
A Thanksgiving Basting

Dave Lindorff
Impeachment is Back on the Table

Mike Ely
Native Blood: the Myth pf Thanksgiving

Omar Azfar
Gore for President of Pakistan?

 

November 21, 2007

Vijay Prashad
Our Dictator, Their Democracy

Martha Rosenberg
Undercover at a Turkey Slaughtering Plant

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Epiphany on the Glacier

John Ross
The Last Days of Mexican Corn

Brian McKenna
Cancer Terrorists Unmasked

Stephen Soldz
Isolation Torture Routine at Guatánamo

Monica Benderman
Needing Peace

Ben Terrall
Slavery in the Fields: The Real Price of Sugar

Website of the Day
Mercy for Animals

 

November 20, 2007

Oren Ben-Dor
Why Israel Has No "Right to Exist" as a Jewish State

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Norman Finkelstein

Alan Farago
The Dark Arts and the Bush Dynasty

Marjorie Cohn
Musharraf Plays Bush for a Fool

Ralph Nader
Green is Gold?

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Whistleblower Launches a New Attack on Rigged Tribunals

Sara Olson
When Going AWOL is the Only Escape

Dave Lindorff
Likelihood of Iran Attack Gains Credence

Paul Krassner
The First Amendment, a Dialogue

Website of the Day
Joanne Mariner on Torture

November 19, 2007

Winslow T. Wheeler
Why Congress Won't Reform

China Hand
The U.S. Game Plan in Pakistan

Allan Nairn
Sitting Around Talking, in Indonesia

Uri Avnery
How to Get Out?

David Macaray
The Chalice that Poisoned the Labor Movements

Dave Lindorff
Democrats in Future Shock: They Could Lose It All in 2008!

Bill Quigley
Twenty Thousand Protest at Ft. Benning; Eleven Face Federal Criminal Trials

Ron Jacobs
Sitting on the Group W Bench: War, Thanksgiving and Arlo Guthrie

Sunsara Taylor
Legalized Rights for Fertilized Eggs?

Binoy Kampmark
Why Steve Irwin--You're Dead!

Heather Gray
Another Look at W.E.B. DuBois

Website of the Day
The Meat Market

 

 

November 17 / 18, 2007

P. Sainath
Neoliberalism's Price Tag: 150,000 Farm Suicides in India

David Rosen
The Scarlet Hypocrites: Republicans, Christians and the Politics of Adultery

Mike Whitney
Pentagon Cover Up: 15,000 or More US Deaths in Iraq War?

George Wuerthner
Saving the Big Wild

Brenda Norrell
The Case of Jim Main, Jr: In Montana, Indians are Guilty Until Proven Innocent

George Ciccariello-Maher
Of Submarines and Loose Screws

Karim Makdisi
Lebanon is Hanging by a Thread

Marie Trigona
Wal-Mart in Argentina

Valerio Volpi
The Catholic Church, Incorporated

Fred Gardner
The Straight-Ahead Runner

Robert Fantina
The White House Press Office

Mike Ferner
Thank God for the Senate Republicans!

Missy Comley Beattie
The Radical Majority

Kenneth Couesbouc
Circles of Power

Patrick O'Hayer
A Portrait of Mailer and a Young Poet

Poets' Basement
Davies, Buknatski and Ford

 

November 16, 2007

Cockburn / St. Clair
The Vices of Hillary Clinton: Secrecy, Intransigence and War

Dave Zirin
The Indictment of Barry Bonds: Busted by a Broken System

Gary D. Barnett
A Day in the Life of an Unwilling Federal Agent

Alan Farago
Sprawl, Mortgage Fraud and Political Corruption

Dave Lindorff
Two Brothers and Two Scandals

Russell Mokhiber
Pelosi and Me: "What Should be Done with Those Protesters?"

Robert Ovetz
Cargo Ships in Paradise: Shipping Lanes Threaten the Yosemite of the Sea

Brenda Norrell
"Today We Experienced America:" Arresting Indigenous People on the Border

David Swanson
Wolf Blitzer Loses Democratic Debate

Peter Letheby
Outside the Box on the Great Plains

Website of the Day
Why Activism Fails

 

November 15, 2007

Cockburn / St. Clair
Hillary Clinton in Arkansas

Adolfo Gilly
The Spirit of Revolt

Peter Bohmer
10 Days That Shook Olympia

Andy Worthington
The Trials of Omar Khadr: Gitmo's Child Soldier

Gray / Derks
Obama's Pitch to South Carolina's Black Churches Affronts Gay Groups

Liaquat Ali Khan
Liberating Pakistan

Dave Lindorff
Where's the Party?

Christopher Brauchli
Tipping Point: the Politics of Gossip

Anthony Papa
Racism as Law: Crack Cocaine Sentences

Martha Rosenberg
Merck's Big Write Off

Ben Terrall
Thank You, Ehren Watada

Website of the Day
On the Colorado: Drought, Climate Change and Water Supplies


November 14, 2007

Cockburn / St. Clair
The Making of Hillary Clinton

James Petras
Venezuela Between Ballots and Bullets

Al Giordano
Campaign 08: Don't Trust Anyone Over 50

Paul Craig Roberts
The Lobby

Andy Worthington
Innocents and Foot Soldiers

Stephen Lendman
Torturing Palestinian Detainees

Fatima Bhutto
Aunt Benazir's False Promises: the Dismantling of Pakistani Democracy

Martin Smith
Norman Mailer and the "Good War"

Jeff Leys
Slip Sliding Away: House Votes on War Funding

Website of the Day
Why the Writers are Striking

November 13, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Hillary's Big Problem and How Bill Can Fix It

Jeffrey St. Clair
Mailer and Us: the Writer as Fighter

Robert Bryce
The Pakistan Fuel Connection

David Macaray
The Teamsters and the Hollywood Strike

Mike Whitney
Bulletins from the Titanic

Ralph Nader
Pakistani Lawyers vs. American Lawyers

Nikolas Kozloff
Chavez Blasts the Spanish King

Jordan Flaherty
Education Versus Incarceration in Tallulah, Louisiana

B. R. Gowani
Dear Mrs. Bhutto

Website of the Day
Monty Python: "Fuck You, Very Much FCC"

 

November 12, 2007

Vicente Navarro
Why Hillary's Health Care Plan Really Failed

Ben Brown
Letter from Ho Chi Minh City: a Tribute to My Vietnam Vet Father

Omar K.
A Pakistani Lawyer's Testimony: Life Under the Brutal Emergency

Sadia Abbas
The Roots of Pakistan's Political Crisis: Corrupt Elites and a Kleptocratic Military

Farzana Versey
Mailer's Miasma

Richard W. Behan
The Political Crimes of Complicity

Paul Krassner
Asshole of the Year: Congratulations Tim Russert!

Cindy Sheehan
Faith and War

Peter Stone Brown
The Return of Levon Helm

Dave Lindorff
Dennis, You are Not Alone

Website of the Day
Police Attack in Olympia

 

November 10 / 11, 2007

Alain Gresh
Uncle Sam's New Backyard: How to Turn a Region into a Graveyard

Mike Whitney
For Whom the Closing Bell Tolls: the Last Dead Bull on Wall Street

Ron Jacobs
A View from the Pakistani Left: an Interview with Farooq Tariq

Jeffrey St. Clair
The First Dambuster: a Coyote Story

Alan Farago
Tangled Up in Blue: a Brief History of Florida Environmentalism

Binoy Kampmark
When Language Drowns: Torture in America

Robert Fantina
Legitimizing Torture

Fred Gardner
Psychological Torture in the Name of Family Values

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The General in His Labyrinth

Nicola Nasser
NATO's Southward Drift

Philip Rizk
The Blame Game in Gaza

Michael Dickinson
Condom Nation: the Pope vs. Terry Higgins

Joel S. Hirschhorn
The Grand Delusion: a Conspiracy of Two Parties

Paul Krassner
Flunking Out of the Electoral College

Wadner Pierre /
Joe Emersberger
The Ongoing War on Journalists in Haiti

 

 

 

 

 

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December 17, 2007

Sundown Action Brings Toys to Imprisoned Children

Crossing the Line in Texas

By GREG MOSES

In an act of civil disobedience on Sunday marking the first anniversary of protests against the imprisonment of children at the T. Don Hutto immigrant prison in Taylor, Texas, 100 people carried holiday toys and wrapping paper into the prison lobby. The action at sundown was the first time this year that protesters carried their message onto prison property.

Jaime Martinez, National Treasurer of the League of United Latin American Citizens called for the toy march shortly after 5:30 p.m. Carrying a bullhorn, Martinez informed the protesters that prison officials had made a promise to come out and get the toys at 5 p.m.

When Martinez called for people to take the toys to the children, the crowd pressed forward across a yellow line painted on the driveway marking official prison property and walked up to the lobby of the prison. Accompanying the protesters was LULAC National President Rosa Rosales.

"Bring the toys!" called Martinez from the prison door as volunteers grabbed boxes and bags of toys along with rolls of wrapping paper and rushed to the prison door.

One of the volunteers, Georgetown resident Peter Dana, later described carrying a box of toys through a metal detector. He said he thought about his experience years ago helping to engineer a metal detector.

Inside the lobby, prison officials appeared to be accepting the toys for the imprisoned children. Previous reports from various sources say that the Hutto prison houses about 400 immigrants, half of them children.

On Friday, Georgetown activist Sherry Dana reported that Hutto prison held 142 people, more than half of them children: 13 men, 55 women, 31 boys (17 and under), and 43 girls (17 and under). The numbers can change on a daily basis.
The toy march was the high point of an active day that began with a longer march from downtown Taylor to the prison that lies upon a large, flat field at the outskirts of town, across the tracks.

Local LULAC Secretary Jose Orta began the day's preparations by parking a rented trailer across the street from the prison. The trailer served as a stage for speakers during an afternoon rally.

"The children were out playing when we first marched here from town," said Orta. "They saw us, but they were taken inside."

"Of all the sick and perverted acts committed in this country in the name of the United States is the imprisonment of innocent children by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff," said Jay Johnson-Castro, Sr. in a pre-event email. "ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests innocent children and their mothers and turns them over to a private 'for profit' prison which, as of today, receives some $20,000 per child...per month...to keep an innocent child in an 8' x 12' prison cell." Johnson-Castro joined the marchers on Sunday.

The Hutto prison is managed by Corrections Corporation of America which boasts itself as "founder of the private corrections industry and the nation's largest provider of jail, detention and corrections services to governmental agencies." CCA co-founder T. Don Hutto secured the first contract for private incarceration of immigrants in 1983 and spent New Year's Eve of that year searching for a motel in Houston that would yield rooms to the venture.

At sundown Sunday, the final speaker of the day, Rev. Jim Rigby of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin, asked the people to turn around and face the Hutto prison. By that time, most of the participants were holding lit candles as part of a sundown vigil.

Shortly after the crowd had turned around, Martinez began walking among the people with his bullhorn.

"Free the Children, Now!" chanted the crowd with Martinez. "Close Hutto Down!"

When marchers stepped toward the prison, they were accompanied by a banner that declared, "Schools not Prisons. Education not Incarceration. Texas Families of Incarcerated Youth."

The Department of Homeland Security says the Hutto prison is dedicated to immigrant families with children. Organizers agreed that protests will continue until the prison is closed and child imprisonment is brought to an end.

After the toy march, filmmakers Matthew Gossage and Lily Keber transformed the chilly night darkness into a screening of their 16-minute film, "Hutto: America's Family Prison" which can be viewed at: americasfamilyprison.com/Hutto.mov.

Keber was taping the day's protest, including the toy march, so perhaps a sequel will be forthcoming.

Near the end of the screening, a few people made two more attempts to deliver more toys to the front door of the Hutto prison. The first attempt was rebuffed by a security guard, but the second attempt succeeded as a young man carrying a child took bags of toys past the guard to the front door. Inside the lobby, it appeared that people dressed in civilian clothes were processing the toys for delivery to the children inside.

Texans United for Families (TUFF) was lead organizer of the first protest in 2006 and co-sponsor of Sunday's event. One of TUFF's organizers, Bob Libal maintains a watchdog blog, Texas Prison Bid'ness. Over the past year, several blogs and web spaces have been dedicated to the protest against imprisonment at the Hutto prison.

During more than a dozen protests since Dec. 16, 2006 security guards have jealously guarded the perimeter of the prison to discourage protesters from walking on prison grounds. A few participants Sunday evening held themselves back from the toy march for fear of arrest.

Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. His chapter on civil rights under Clinton and Bush appears in Dime's Worth of Difference, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. He can be reached at: gmosesx@prodigy.net.

 

 

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