When you write 'KKK' and let's shoot the n-word in the head' and use confederate flags, you can't hide behind a free expression law.

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The NAACP told a UNC commission why a hate speech policy is needed throughout the UNC Systems' 16 schools.

This comes in light of racist graffiti that was painted on North Carolina State University's Free Expression Tunnel after Barack Obama was elected President.

The NAACP started its presentation to the commission by displaying a picture of one of those racist statements painted on the Tunnel that reads, "let's shoot the N****r in the head.'"

"When you write 'KKK' and let's shoot the n-word in the head' and use confederate flags, you can't hide behind a free expression law," said The Rev. William Barber, NAACP President.

The commission is tasked with deciding if the UNC System needs a policy on hate speech. On Monday, Dr. Barber made his case why he believes it's necessary. He said the incident at NC State is not justifiable as free speech.

"That speech is not merely offensive, it's threatening and it's not protected (under the First Amendment)," said Dr. Barber.

Barber said the UNC System needs to define how it will investigate hate crimes and what the penalities are. Also, he said, "we need a clear curriculum that teaches us more about how we must interface and be one community."

But Barber said this issue extends beyond NC State. It's something he believes boils down to peoples' mindsets.

"We may not be able to change their mind, but we need laws and regulations that will prohibit actions," he said.

Barber was allowed to address the commission alone today because he was unable to attend the public hearing earlier this month.

The commission's next meeting is February 9th at 1 p.m. at the Spangler Center. Commissioners will have to decide by the end of March whether to implement a hate speech policy. They are also taking a look at whether students should be required to take diversity traning courses.

Can we restore Human rights or we are above the rule of Law?

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Ali: An HIV+ Man Suffers in Detention Ali has been living in New York city for 30 years with a green card. Life changed when he spent more than a year in immigrant detention where he witnessed the worst kind of physical abuse and medical mistreatment, including constantly fighting to get his HIV medication. Despite all this, Ali reaffirms that “life is beautiful”! Can we restore the Rule of Law, Civil Rights and Human Rights?

4Th Amendment and your Freedom.

The surveillance inside the United States. Senator Arlen Specter’s (R-Pa.) bill (S. 2453), which Specter revised to accommodate White House requests for greater authority, would ratify and dramatically expand the President’s authority to wiretap U.S. Citizens and non U.S. Citizens.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. — Fourth Amendment, U.S. Constitution.

“If the right to privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion.” — William J. Brennan, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice.

The right of an individual to conduct intimate relationships in the intimacy of his or her own home seems to me to be the heart of the Constitution’s protection of privacy.” — Harry A. Blackmun, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.” — Christopher Dodd, U.S. Senator.

Freedom of Speech. Constitutional right?

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Made your own judgment and opinion. I did mine. Ashamed to see this happen on the 21st Century. Clearly violation of Constitutional rights in Maricopa County against they own constituents.

Human Rights Declaration under Threath.

All human beings are born free and
equal in dignity and rights".

It is now years since the signing of the universal declaration of human rights.

Translated into more than 360 languages and incorporated into many national laws, the document condemns discrimination, slavery, torture and arbitrary arrest.

But six decades on, many of those principles are under threat around the world.

Rosie Garthwaite's report contains images that may disturb or offend some viewers.

H2A More vulnerability for Farmworkers.

The long anticipated regulation changes to slash wages and reduce worker protections under the H-2A agricultural guestworker program are out. The changes, proposed by the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were revealed on the DOL website late Monday evening but have not yet been officially published in the Federal Register.
The changes are horrible. At a time when the jobless rate is at a 15 year high, they reduce obligations for growers to effectively recruit U.S. workers before applying to bring in guestworkers for these jobs. They lower the wage rates for all farmworkers by changing the program's wage formula and, in an industry known for labor abuses, they eliminate or reduce government oversight.

This parting gift on behalf of the Bush Administration to our nation's farmworkers is irresponsible and completely unacceptable. The H-2A guestworker program is already rife with abuse. These changes will only make a bad program worse. That's why today, Farmworker Justice is releasing a special report, Litany of Abuses: Why more -not fewer-labor protections are needed in the H-2A program. This report explains the current protections within the program and highlights some recent court cases illustrating the harm caused to both U.S. farmworkers and guestworkers alike. We urge you to take a look at the report then act now to urge Congress to take action to stop the Bush Administration from formally issuing the regulations. There are reasonable alternatives to solve the farm labor crisis that have won bipartisan support. The Bush Administration's harmful changes are completely unnecessary.

These midnight regulations will put farmworkers in this country back more than 60 years. During this holiday season, with so many families facing overwhelming economic burdens, we must think about the people toiling to put food on our tables. They deserve fair wages and decent working conditions. Bush's legacy to farmworkers must be undone.

Was Juan Mendoza Farias beaten to death by Arpaio's Guards?.

deaths — like Juan Mendoza Farias' — are but one indication that there may be a systematic violation of constitutional rights in Arpaio's jails. I believe that Arpaio's jails violate a number of constitutional rights, including the right to medical and mental care; Also the jails are overcrowded and inhumane.

On December 2, 2007, a 40-year-old man named Juan Mendoza Farias was arrested and booked into the Maricopa County Jail. Like a lot of people who come through Sheriff Joe Arpaio's doors, Farias' offense was DUI-related, a probation violation.

Farias wound up with a death sentence.

After three days, he was clearly going through alcohol withdrawal. According to written accounts from detention officers, Farias became hostile and started resisting their orders.

When that happened, officers cuffed Farias and put his legs in shackles and moved him to an isolated "safe" or "soft" cell, designed to prevent him from hurting himself or others. The officers fired six rounds of crowd-control "pepper balls" at Farias and shocked him with at least two Tasers.

Later, jail officials moved Farias into the psychiatric ward, according to the reports they wrote after his death.

Eleven officers teamed up to move Farias. They swarmed him, wrapped a blanket over his head, and strapped a leather restraint, known as a "belly belt," around the blanket to hold it in place.

Then they put him in a wheelchair with restraints.

"Get me out of here. They just kidnapped me. They are trying to shoot me. They just [shot] me on my legs. Somebody is trying to kill me," Farias yelled as the officers surrounded him, according to one sergeant's report.

Another officer wrote that Farias was "talking nonsense."

Maybe not. Photos show that he was, indeed, shot in the legs — by Tasers and pepper balls. And he did stop breathing minutes after shouting that he was being killed.

As officers pulled Farias out of the wheelchair, they wrestled a "spit mask" over his mouth. Spit masks are used to cover an inmate's face below the nose; they're supposed to be used only if an inmate is biting or spitting.

Officers then pushed Farias face down on his stomach — a deadly position that can lead to suffocation if guards push down too hard. It's well known in law enforcement that an inmate on his stomach can easily die from "positional asphyxiation." If the inmate is cuffed behind the back and officers apply too much pressure, the lungs simply can't function. A mask over the mouth — limiting airflow — can exacerbate the situation.

Two officers held Farias' legs and other guards pinned down his arms and back while yet another "held his head down" for nearly 10 minutes, according to the reports.

Farias was fighting for his life. The county medical examiner documented "blunt force injuries" on his face, torso, and limbs. His neck muscles hemorrhaged internally from the strain, and a gash was notched out of his nose — either from being struck or from being pressed into something.

As the guards held him face down, one noticed that Farias was no longer moving or breathing. The guards rolled him over and pulled the spit mask off his mouth. It was filled with blood. So were his nostrils.

The guards attempted CPR, but it didn't work. Farias was transported to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Juan Mendoza Farias is not the first inmate to die after a violent exchange with guards in Arpaio's jail. In the past 12 years, at least four other men have died after exchanges with guards. And those are just the ones we know about, the ones whose families sued Arpaio and won hefty payments.

In one case, a jury found officers responsible for killing 33-year old Charles Agster, a mentally retarded man who weighed 125 pounds.
That jury awarded $9 million to Agster's family in 2006. It was one of more than 2,500 inmate lawsuits against Arpaio that have cost the county more than $43 million (see "Inhumanity Has a Price," John Dickerson, December 20, 2007>).

This is the first time you're reading about Farias, even though he died in December. That's because Arpaio isn't open-mouthed when it comes to the deaths of his inmates.

If not for an anonymous tip to New Times, Farias' death would still be secret. Even after New Times requested specific records about Farias' death, the sheriff refused to hand them over, citing an "ongoing investigation."
The Maricopa County medical examiner released the records, in response to a public-records request from New Times.
Otherwise, the details of Farias' death would be unknown to all but his family, anyone with unrestricted access to the sheriff's records, and the medical examiner who inspected his corpse.

The examiner concluded that the manner of Farias' death was undetermined. But she reported "complications of chronic alcoholic withdrawal associated with cardiopulmonary arrest during subdual for combative and violent behavior," adding "hypertrophic and dilated cardiomyopathy with coronary artery disease." The "prone restraint on bed," the spit mask, and the altercation with the guards also contributed to Farias' death, she wrote.
In other words, the excitement required more oxygen in Farias' lungs, but the mask over his mouth and the weight on his back restricted his lungs from functioning. An underlying and non-lethal heart disease meant that Farias' heart couldn't handle the combined weight and lack of oxygen.

New Times asked an out-of-state medical examiner to review Farias' records. He concluded that Farias was beaten and then suffocated

I certainly would list restraint asphyxiation as a component here," said Dr. Dan Spitz, medical examiner for Macomb County, Michigan. "I wouldn't classify this death as anything to do with alcohol withdrawal."

Spitz said it's difficult to know if and how much the guards could be at fault — because medical examiners have to rely on written testimony from those same guards to determine what happened.

In Farias' case, those written testimonies are suspect. Two of the guards' written testimonies are word-for-word identical in places, a red flag in any death investigation. Two additional reports are exact copies of each other, down to the punctuation and capitalization.

That's one reason why jails have surveillance cameras — for accountability. Video footage could show whether Farias actually was aggressive toward officers. It could also show how much force the officers used on an inmate who was already cuffed, shackled, restrained with a leather corrections belt, and suffering from alcohol withdrawal.

On July 25, New Times requested that video and other records related to Farias' death. The MCSO has refused to produce the footage.

Captain Paul Chagolla did not respond specifically to repeated requests for the video and other investigative materials. Lieutenant Dot Culhane, "legal liaison" for MCSO, told New Times the request would not be granted because the material is part of an ongoing investigation, but she did not give a specific reason why releasing the materials would harm the investigation, as required by Arizona public-records law.

Attorneys who regularly request video and other records from the jail say the sheriff stopped producing such videos after two cases in the late '90s, both of which showed guards beating inmates. One of those inmates died, and the other's neck was broken during a separate incident.

Those videos resulted in two lawsuit settlements that totaled more than $9 million. Since then, attorneys say they see video only when a judge orders it. Even then, the videos are usually ruined or rendered useless.

"We had one case where a magnet was put to the video to ruin it," says Joel Robbins, an attorney who represents inmates and their families against Arpaio.

"The cases I have are regularly missing papers, missing documents. When they kill someone, they don't ever seem to have the report done. They'll hide it until you get a judge order to hand it over."

Robbins says any citizen should have the legal right to review jail footage because about 70 percent of inmates are still considered innocent as they await trial, and because public tax dollars fund the jail and its employees.

"We ought to know what our problems are if we pay taxes to a government agency," Robbins says. "The MCSO hides the problems and puts their little press releases out on whatever they want people to focus on. They want you to sit there and just eat up whatever Arpaio has to say about the topic of the day. They don't want you to know what actually goes into the sausage."

Juan Mendoza Farias' story is still untold, to some extent. Other jail deaths have been described in excruciating detail, though, as the result of years in court proceedings. The judgments and settlements in the following four deaths alone total $20.25 million.

Dr. Dan Spitz, the medical examiner in Michigan, says that knowing the truth about an inmate's final moments is crucial in determining the true cause of death. That's why only video footage could show exactly what happened to Farias, he says.

"It's hard to know what to believe. The story [as reported by guards] on these cases is really a big part of the investigation . . . the stories that you get, especially in a jail, where everybody knows each other and everybody gets together to discuss it ahead of time are very suspect," Spitz says.

"It leaves a big hole in what a forensic pathologist needs to be certain to know what's going on."

The Maricopa County medical examiner agrees that it's hard to know just what happened. "The manner of death was found to be undetermined, because the extent that the decedent's interaction with the jail officers contributed (if at all) to his natural process of a metabolic disorder due to chronic alcohol abuse can not be clarified," she wrote.

But Spitz says that even without the video, it's clear that alcohol abuse alone did not kill Farias. "I don't agree with the cause of death as listed," Spitz says of the county examiner's "undetermined" conclusion. "I think there are components that are accurate, but I wouldn't classify this death as anything to do with alcohol withdrawal. He's a chronic alcoholic, but there's no indication that he's undergoing active withdrawal

By John Dickerson At Phoenix New Times.