A1A South

A few weeks ago, I wrote about what I considered the evils of illegal immigration. One of the (many) evils from my point of view was that illegals often toil in substandard conditions with very little, if anything, in the way of wages. Some people might refer to it as slavery.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Federal authorities backed by sheriff’s deputies raided the Westside warehouse of a food distributor Tuesday morning, taking into custody 20 workers suspected of being illegal immigrants in what authorities called a filthy warehouse.

Investigators from the Border Patrol, the Department of Environmental Protection, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided N&L Inc. in the 4100 block of Dillon Street.

In addition to immigration issues, authorities said they also found a number of health violations. Channel 4 was told the business has 48 hours to remove perishables before it is shut down.

“It was bad,” Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Lt. Michelle Cook said. “Open containers of food, food products on the floors, very dirty floors, lots of litter on the floor, workers smoking in the warehouse.”

The raid came after a two-year investigation of the warehouse that provides food to many Chinese restaurants in northeast Florida and southeast Georgia.

Authorities said they have not located the owner of the warehouse, but they may charge her with harboring illegal immigrants and other violations.

Channel 4’s Jim Piggott reported that 18 Hispanic and 2 Asian workers would face a hearing on immigration violations. He was told the workers lived in a house next to the warehouse that health officials condemned after everyone was removed.

“To put it bluntly, they were being held, exploited by their own culture,” Cook said. “People with their own culture, bringing in people from Mexico or China and having them work illegally, and then paying them and holding them hostage and taking all the proceeds.”

Source: News4Jax

So, what is the definition of slavery again?

PORT-AU-PRINCE — Hungry Haitians attacked the presidential palace Tuesday, throwing rocks and demanding the resignation of President René Préval over soaring food prices.

Overwhelmed palace guards struggled to hold back the crowd until U.N. peacekeepers came to their rescue, firing rubber bullets and tear gas.

Food prices, which have risen 40 percent on average since mid-2007, are causing unrest around the world. But nowhere do they pose a greater threat to democracy than in Haiti, one of the world’s poorest countries where in the best of times most people struggle to fill their bellies.

”I compare this situation to having a bucket full of gasoline and having some people around with a box of matches,” said Préval adviser Patrick Elie. “As long as the two have a possibility to meet, you’re going to have trouble.”

For months, Haitians have compared their hunger pains to ”eating Clorox” — both because of the burning feeling in their stomachs and the skin-bleaching effects of chronic malnutrition. The most desperate have come to depend on a traditional hunger palliative of cookies made of dirt, vegetable oil and salt.

Riots broke out in the normally placid southern port of Les Cayes last week, quickly escalating as protesters tried to burn down a U.N. compound. At least five people have been killed there. The protests spread to other cities, and on Monday tens of thousands took to the streets of Port-au-Prince.

On Tuesday, demonstrators in the capital barricaded streets and pelted a marketplace with rocks, and a crowd tried to break down the gates of the presidential palace, demanding Preval’s resignation.

”We are hungry!” the crowd shouted. “He must go!”

Préval, who aides said was at work in the palace during the protests, has made no public statements since the riots began.

The protesters also are demanding the departure of the 9,000 U.N. peacekeepers, whom they blame in part for rising food prices. The peacekeepers came to Haiti in 2004 to quell the chaos that followed the ouster of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

They helped usher in a democratic transition, but critics say both Préval and the international community have focused too much on political stability without helping to alleviate poverty. That could spell trouble not only for Préval, but for Haiti’s fragile democracy as well.

”We voted Préval for a change. Nothing happened,” said Joel Elie, 31, who like many Haitians is unemployed. “We’re tired of it and we can’t wait anymore.”

While the peacekeepers spend more than $500 million a year in Haiti, the World Food Program has collected less than 15 percent of the $96 million it says Haiti needs in donations this year. The WFP recently issued an emergency appeal for more.

Meanwhile, new customs procedures aimed at collecting revenues and stopping the flow of drugs has left tons of food rotting in ports, especially in the country’s north. In a country where almost all food is imported, cargo traffic from Miami has ground nearly to a halt.

Government officials say the riots are being manipulated by outside forces, specifically drug smugglers who can operate more easily amid chaos and supporters of Guy Philippe, a fugitive rebel leader wanted in U.S. federal court in connection with a drug indictment.

And there is clearly a political component: Many in the crowds are demanding the return of the exiled Aristide. Thousands showed up Monday for a rally by a key Aristide ally, the Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste, in the oceanside slum of Cité Soleil.

But the anger among everyday Haitians over food prices is real.

”The government of America sees that the kids of America are eating and going to school — and that we Haitians are not,” said protester Frantz Pascal, 45. “For Haiti to move on, the high cost of living must go down.”

Source: Miami Herald

Again, it appears to be not so much a food shortage as a food distribution problem.

In response to the story on Good Morning America, one of the students in the third grade class in Waycross interviewed on camera said that one of the students was mad because the teacher told her not to do something. Various students were assigned things to bring for the plot to stab the teacher. The little girl being interviewed was shy and holding onto her mother. She didn’t bring the item assigned to her (rope or ribbon for tying the teacher’s feet) to class, per her mother.

The NAACP is calling for an independent investigation and protesting the children being suspended from school. They are calling for the children to be allowed to attend class while the independent investigation is ongoing.

I hope to be able to link to the actual broadcast later when it is posted instead of paraphrasing it for you.

I do not think that allowing children that had (according to an interview with one of the children in class, not the child interviewed on Good Morning America) planned to stab the teacher and that the other children were apparently afraid of should be allowed to attend school.

Hmmm. The 6:00 news didn’t have the interview where the little girl said that a student was going to stab the teacher; however, it did have the NAACP leader calling for an investigation of the teacher for causing or provoking the children to do this.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Duval County School Board on Monday took up a vote and decided to expand Project Safe Student, which will give more information to police about those breaking the rules on campus.

 The Jacksonville sheriff said the expansion of the program will make the city streets safer by keeping a closer eye on bad behavior in area schools.

The school board acknowledged that too many students end up in jail after committing serious crimes and that many of the young people who go to jail have had a lot of prior problems in the classroom.

That’s why the board voted to expand Project Safe Student. In the past, police could get involved only with students involved in very serious offenses, such as bringing a firearm to school, arson or any other major school disturbance.

Now, the bad behavior doesn’t need to be as severe to gain the attention of police.

“(We will) be able to identify these children and have our school resource officers, who are already in our school settings, work with them so they can turn the unacceptable behavior around,” said Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Assistant Chief David Coffman.

Project Safe Student will now look at students caught doing things like using tobacco or bullying. However, the program will affect only the five biggest rule-breakers at each school.

The intervention could include the students getting involved with police to help them and talk with them about things like the police athletic league and other programs in which children can get involved to make sure they behave better in class and don’t have behavioral problems down the road.

“It is not criminal in nature. So, there’s nothing criminal about it. There is no criminal record associated with the student being identified as making poor decisions. Simply put, we just want to reach out and help these students,” Coffman said.

The NAACP had opposed a similar program in the past, saying that program used racial profiling. However, the organization’s leaders said they’ve changed their minds about Project Safe Students.

“We know now that it’s not necessarily going to track a student. That’s what we were trying to prevent — that it would profile or track a student throughout their careers. But, some of these violations can easily be corrected through intervention,” said NAACP spokesman Ferdinand R. Juluke.

The sheriff’s office and the school district said they would work together and use a scoring system to determine which students are having the most problems in school.

Source:  NewsforJax.com

I’m experiencing conflicting emotions about this.  On the one hand, I think this is something that should be between parents, students, and the school administration.  On the other hand, having spent the past year working at a school, I also understand that it is the same students committing offenses against other students and teachers over and over and over again, and often the responsible person for that child is a foster parent, a grandmother,  an aunt, or a great aunt that is having difficulty with a defiant teenager.  What I hate to see are young people with all the potential of youth that, judging by their behavior and records thus far, are just marking time between the juvenile detention system and adult prison.

If the sheriff’s office can do something to turn around just 10% of these troubled students, it would be a program worth having.

The report says Dennis O’Brien and John Esposito began arguing Sunday and O’Brien swung at Esposito with the tool in his right hand.

Authorities say Esposito suffered a swollen left eye and cuts on his nose and mouth.

Esposito said both he and O’Brien worked at Wal-Mart. He would not discuss the nature of their argument.

The report says O’Brien told a sheriff’s deputy he acted in self-defense, but security tape showed O’Brien raising his hand first, striking Esposito in the face and then pushing him to the ground.

Officials booked O’Brien into the Palm Beach County Jail on aggravated battery charges.