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Exit Strategies for Afghanistan and Iraq

2010-03-08T22:50:05Z

It's been a long winter for the peace movement. Waiting for Obama has proved fruitless. The Great Recession has strengthened Wall Street and diverted attention from the wars. The debate over healthcare still won't go away and has demoralized progressive advocates. Given a chance to exit from Afghanistan when the Karzai election proved to be stolen, President Obama escalated anyway, but also promised to "begin" exiting almost before an opposition could mobilize at home.

Upcoming appearances in Oregon

2010-02-22T21:51:30Z

Tom will be speaking at two events in Oregon in the next two weeks. This Friday, February 26, he will be discussing and signing his newest book, The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama at Reed College in Portland. The reading will begin at 6:00 pm, in Vollum Lecture Hall. More details can be found here.

On March 5, Tom will be participating in the Lane Peace Symposium, at Lane Community College in Eugene. He will be speaking at 6:00 pm. Information on the location of this event can be found here.

What Obama Must Do, and Cannot

2010-01-29T20:23:42Z

Barack Obama has faced peril before, particularly during the controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright last year, but the crisis he faces now is more systemic. The wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan cost at least 541 American lives in the past year, and the overall total will pass 1,000 this month and likely double before 2012. The unfunded taxpayer cost of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan during Obama's first year was $119.1 billion, and Afghanistan alone will become another trillion-dollar war under his administration.

NATO's Role in the Afghanistan Escalation

2010-01-29T20:00:19Z

NATO countries are poised to add 7,000 soldiers to the 30,000-troop US escalation in Afghanistan, providing a cover of multilateralism for the Obama administration and the NATO commander, US General Stanley McChrystal. The NATO decision is expected to be ratified January 28 at a conference called by the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Karzai administration and the United Nations Afghan Mission (UNAM).

Alex Wins Bail

2010-01-14T06:09:28Z

LOS ANGELES. Jan. 13. U.S. Judge Manuel Real granted Alex Sanchez bail after a closed ninety-minute session with law enforcement and civic officials today. The former gang member and founder of Homies Unidos is expected to be freed in ten days after posting $2 million property and sureties.

The Judge Gets Real, But Why?

2010-01-07T03:38:55Z

In an unexpected turn, federal Judge Manuel Real today ordered prosecutor and defense attorneys in the Alex Sanchez case to bring in top LA city and police officials to advise the court about the gang peacemaker’s public activity over the past decade in a special hearing on January 13. Real repeatedly questioned the prosecution’s evidence for the first time in the proceeding’s six-month history. Lawyers and advocates scrambled to make sense of the judge’s order, which must be met in six days. Professor Beatriz Cortez, coordinator of the nation’s first Central American Studies program at Cal State Northridge, was among the skeptics. “How will this hearing be conducted, will it be secret, will the community be left out?”, she asked. Others claimed the judge was going through the motions in response to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recent admonishing. The Sanchez family and official defense team expressed guarded optimism about the development.

Next Alex Sanchez Bail Hearing January 6

2010-01-06T07:09:27Z

Responding to an admonishment by the federal appeals court, Judge Manuel Real has set a new bail hearing for Alex Sanchez at the federal court in downtown Los Angeles at 10 a.m. on January 6, leaving little time for legal preparations.

Judge Real is not expected to alter his denial of bail for Sanchez, but simply make new findings consistent with the 9th Circuit’s requirements issued December 22. Those requirements are that Real “accept and consider” evidence “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Sanchez would be a danger to the community if released on bail, and the “preponderance of evidence” in determining whether Sanchez would be a flight risk.

The problem for Sanchez is that the 9th Circuit order only requires that Real “consider” such evidence. Real is widely regarded as hostile and arbitrary, and has been admonished or reversed many times before by the higher courts. Currently he controls both the bail hearing and the trial itself, which virtually guarantees that Sanchez will not be released for over a year unless the 9th Circuit intervenes.

Of particular interest is how the judge will find that Sanchez is a danger to the community “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Hundreds of letters demanding bail for Sanchez have been filed with the court, insisting that his gang intervention efforts at Homies Unidos help maintain community peace rather than violence. As to whether the preponderance of evidence indicates Sanchez is a flight risk, the judge must consider the fact that over two million dollars in property and funds has been proferred by Sanchez supporters, including a pledge by a former LA FBI director, Thomas Harper, to personally ensure that the defendant makes his scheduled court appearances.

At the previous bail hearing, Judge Real dismissed the letters of support as having nothing to do with the issues of danger and flight risk, although the vast majority of the letters spoke directly to those issues.

The judge also dismissed a lengthy affadavit by Fr. Gregory Boyle, SJ, as “irrelevant”, and refused to allow the priest to take the stand. Fr. Boyle, the nationally-recognized founder of Homeboy Industries, offered a detailed refutation of charges against Sanchez made by LAPD anti-gang officer Frank Flores. Since no evidence has been offered showing Sanchez conspired in a 2006 gang killing in El Salvador, the LAPD’s Flores attempted to argue that gang members spoke in code on wiretapped phone calls. Fr. Boyle dismissed Flores’ interpretations as absurd efforts to create evidence that did not exist.

Though the LAPD’s Flores was presented as an objective expert, his testimony on the wiretaps failed to include exculpatory evidence showing that Sanchez was a former member of Mara Salvatrucha who was inactive at the time of the phone calls. Sanchez maintains that he intervened only on several of 2006 phone calls [the FBI has tens of thousands of recordings] after learning that his life was being threatened and rumors spread that he was collaborating with the FBI. When cross-examined, Flores had no explanation for his omission of the recorded evidence that Sanchez was a former member who left the gang life to found Homies Unidos in the 1990s.

If there is “reasonable” evidence that Sanchez was an inactive former gang member, the prosecution’s conspiracy claim that he is a currently-active shotcaller leading a double life – and therefore a present danger – falls apart. #

TOM HAYDEN is a former California state senator and author of Street Wars.

Greece and the Global Sixties

2009-12-21T22:42:42Z

I am here as a witness to the importance of memory to the future. Direct action to build a participatory democracy in the image of the Greek city state was the chosen ideal of the first activists of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the early 1960s. The college papers of the young Martin Luther King Jr., written in the 1950s at Crozer Theological Seminary, included 13 references to Greek thought, typical of students in those years. That the Greeks held slaves in the midst of their democracy only meant that the struggle for a democratic polis was unfinished or not even begun for the many.

Judge Real Takes Back Alex Sanchez Case

2009-12-09T21:36:53Z

In a surprising new development, Judge Manuel Real now apparently insists that he will be presiding over the Alex Sanchez trial, despite a several-day-old order transferring the case to a new federal judge.

What will Congressional Democrats do now?

2009-12-08T19:21:45Z

Congressional Democrats held a closed caucus on Tuesday to consider their stance on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and what to do about the president's 30,000 more troops, whose deployment will begin without a Congressional decision or funding. The majority Democrats are uncomfortable in being caught between their constituents' peace sentiments and the president's deployment of 100,000 American troops. It's going to get more uncomfortable.