I never thought I’d write about Steven Seagal.

But a few weeks ago, Steven Seagal teamed up with The Toughest Sheriff in America to teach a handful of posse members how to protect school kids from school shooters. (Here’s the story I wrote for The Daily Beast.) Our story ran before the actual event.

I had called Seagal’s house, and his agent, and his lawyer, seeking comment for the story but did not get a reply. Seagal lives in north Scottsdale, and has teamed up with Arpaio for reality TV stints. Seagal has lately been joining police departments, as a special deputy or as a volunteer, and then shoots his reality tv scenes as a “lawman.”

Next, Seagal teamed up in 2011 with Arpaio, and the two orchestrated a very famous giant show bust, complete with tanks and SWAT team members, against an alleged cockfighter. With cameras whirring, the lawmen battered down the man’s  gate with a tank,  sent robots here and there looking for bombs, and bashed down the guy’s door. But it was all for naught. After Seagal ziptied the guy, he refused to sign a release. He was not a rich man, but he spent $30,000 of his own money, according to court records, suing Seagal et al.  But his lawyers filed the case in the wrong court, and it was dismissed. Seagal never answered the lawsuit.  The target of the show bust later copped a plea to two misdemeanors related to attempted cockfighting.

Seagal, in the meantime, got some additional publicity in Arizona  in 2012 by inviting (either personally or via his lawyer)  a TV reporter to cover a dispute with his homeowner’s association over parking. Oddly, he didn’t want to appear on camera because he said he was doing an undercover op.

I checked Seagal’s property records. A trust associated with him owns the home where he lives, and it is worth $3.5 million. But last I checked, Seagal owed more than $10,000 in property taxes.

Seagal and Arpaio were quiet for a while, and then the Newtown shootings happened, and Arpaio decided to send his armed volunteer posse members to “protect” schools by patrolling the neighborhoods near schools. And of course Seagal trained his posse members during the exercise.

The school-shooting exercise gave Seagal and Arpaio airtime,  but perhaps not the type of airtime they  might prefer. First, Channel 5, a CBS affiliate in Phoenix, pointed out that folks with criminal records — including child molestation and domestic violence — had signed up for Arpaio’s protect-the-schools posse. This earned Arpaio and Seagal airtime  on the  Steven Colbert show.

As we enter the post-election season of immigration reform, some Republican, like the Cafe Con Leche Republicans, question the motives of  three very well known hardline immigration groups that fed the GOP  for years.

The three groups –the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), NumbersUSA, and Center for Immigration Studies (CIS)  have been called into question very publicly for years — by Southern Poverty Law Center, by the National Council of La Raza, by the Anti-Defamation League and by several other groups.  Six years ago, an investigator for the Southern Poverty Law Center visited the University of Michigan, where the papers of the  groups’ founder, John Tanton, are stored. Read the SPLC findings here.   Shocking stuff about eugenics, racism, and white nationalism.The response of Center for Immigration Studies: Launch a mighty effort to discredit SPLC for its unwarranted “smear” campaign of  FAIR.

Now some  Republicans  shed light on the true character of the immigration groups  visited that same library, according to The Washington Post:

“In a 2001 letter by Tanton being circulated as part of the current campaign, he laid out his idea to “move the battle lines on the immigration question in our favor” by convincing Republican lawmakers that “massive immigration imperils their political future.” The goal, he wrote, was to “change Republicans’ perception of immigration so that when they encounter the word ‘immigrant,’ their reaction is ‘Democrat.’ “ Organizers of the campaign against the groups found the letter at the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library, which houses Tanton’s papers.”

I interviewed Tanton and investigated the three groups  in 2010, for  a story for Village Voice Media. Experts in the story detailed how the Tanton groups issued misleading reports quoted by Republican immigration hardliners to convince frightened penny-pinched Americans that unauthorized immigrants were taking their jobs and government benefits. Not true.

The reports were roundly criticized by experts, but they created fear and got Republicans elected.

Worse,  in the face of rapidly declining illegal immigration, the Tanton groups supported (in some cases wrote) controversial immigration laws that have proved extremely costly to taxpayers and the Republicans who trumpeted them.

When I wrote my story about FAIR, NumbersUSA and Center for Immigration Studies, a Center for Immigration Studies staffer wrote in an email:  ”So here’s what you’ve done. You’ve taken the phony smeary [sic] cooked up by the SPLC and echoed up by these other groups, which cite the SPLC as their authority. You read our report on the SPLC’s smear campaign. You know how this was done. Nevertheless, you’ve made yourself complicit in spreading the smear. This is character assassination dressed up as reporting. It’s atrocious.”

Wow.

Republicans who want to “out” the Tanton groups will likely face the same criticism.

After posting my little blog about the Clutter killings sending chills through rural America, American Public Media rang up and asked for an interview. American Public Media – Dick Gordon – The Story.

Pretty much on a whim, at the very last minute, I signed up to run the PF Chang Rock and Roll Mini-Marathon – a 5.8-mile trot through downtown Tempe on January 20.

I’m 63. So, it took me a lifetime to muster up the moxie to run my first-ever race.

I’m running in honor of my stepson, Jordan Sterling, who died four years ago of Cystic Fibrosis.

Jordan’s mom, family and close friends set up a foundation to advance scientific knowledge for treatment of people with CF. Because CF affects the lungs, among other organs, the more we learn about how to treat the symptoms of CF, the more we add to the database of what works and doesn’t work for many who struggle to breathe – regardless of whether they have CF or another health problem.

This is the link to the Jordan Sterling Foundation website  http://jordansfoundation.org/index.html where you can learn about the foundation, donate online, or get an address to send a check.   He also has a FB page under Jordan Sterling Foundation.

Thank you so much,

Terry Greene Sterling

Here’s the problem with crazy  people over 18, like Jared Loughner,  James Holmes, or Adam Lanza, who slaughtered 20 kids and six adults  in Newtown, Connecticut.

They are so crazy they don’t think they’re crazy.

And neither does the law, necessarily.

For years, states have tried to honor the rights of people who don’t want to be treated for their mental illness, so unless adults ask for help, or prove to be a danger to themselves or others, they don’t have to be on meds.

Read Pete Earley’s book, Crazy. The father of a mentally-ill son, Earley chronicles his efforts to get his son committed, so he could get help. His son, of course, did not want help because he did not understand he was mentally ill. Earley tells about one incident when his son is seeing messages and patterns in a magazine as an emergency-room doctor signs his release papers.

What Earley  learned, painfully and repetitively,  is that he could not demonstrate that his adult son was a danger to himself or others until his son committed a crime.  Most mentally ill people who commit crimes tend to commit inconsequential crimes. In Earley’s son’s case, it was a burglary in which he spent hours in a stranger’s bathtub.

In the case of Loughner and Holmes and Lanza, though, the crimes were atypically horrific.

But anyone with a mentally ill adult child will tell you getting treatment for these  people  is often legally impossible — until it’s too late.

When my book came out in 2010, several radio hosts reached out for interviews. They were all conservative talk show hosts, and that was fine with me, but they worked for radio stations that also ran Alex Jones’ show. I refused to go on any station that also carried Alex Jones program.
At the time, few people I knew had ever heard of Alex Jones. Now, thanks to this week’s visit with CNN’s Piers Morgan, he’s more well-known.
Here’s a clip of Alex on Piers Morgan’s show:

After the show, Jones said he was being followed.

Here are some of Alex Jones’ most dramatic moments, aggregated into a Daily Beast video.

Curiously, Alex Jones repeatedly told Piers Morgan about the dangers of psychiatric drugs.

For a couple of weeks, I’ve laid low.

I vowed not to pitch stories despite all the stories breaking around me because I wanted to think  without distractions. I finished up some magazine work, but concentrated on hiking, jogging, cooking  and sharing time with friends and family.

Then I got this email, out of the blue, from a reader:

“I have been hoping to better understand the human reality of immigration, and your book – often hard to read – did just that. My heart breaks.”

I realized my heart is full of thanks too. To the readers, like this one,  who took the time to write. To the undocumented immigrants who inspired my narrative nonfiction book and who told their stories, warts and all. To all the people who purchased the book Illegal, Life and Death in Arizona’s Immigration War Zone and were moved by the raw truth of the stories.

Little things mean a lot — for instance, readers had the decency and grace to buy the book new at indie book stores and on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online sites. They shelled out four or five bucks more, but by not buying from cheesy private dealers to save a few dollars, they signaled a  support of  the kind of investigative  journalism and writing that takes years and years of practice  to nail down.

Thank you.

One night about 50 years ago in Kansas, two madmen slaughtered a family of four in their farmhouse.

There was no reason for the killing.

The two drifters who killed the Clutters were  ex-cons. Some  delusional cellie in prison had lied about the Clutters stashing money in their house. When the drifters got out of prison, they decided to rob the Clutters.

When the drifters failed to  find the non-existent money at the Clutter house, they executed them.

Of course you know all this. The Clutters, and their killers Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, were memorialized in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

But in rural America, long before the book was published, the Clutter murders forced families to take stock of their own vulnerability.

Our family lived on an isolated Arizona cattle ranch.  Our  closest neighbors lived more than 10 miles  away.  We didn’t have TV, and our electricity came from a generator. On cold nights, we listened to news accounts of the creepy Clutter murders on our static-laced battery-powered  radio.

My mother later told me she swore she saw the Clutter killers drive by our ranch house en route to Las Vegas, where they were later arrested. She said they took the road past our house because it was a back road that connected to Route 66, and I have no idea whether she was imagining this. It doesn’t matter.

The point is, she was scared.

On some days, my mother and I were the only living souls at the ranch house — my father and the cowboys were far away working distant pastures.

Once, when my mother and I were alone, a car inched past our house, seemingly staking it. The car turned around, and drove past again, going the other way. Then it came back and stopped.

Two men  got out and walked to the front door. My mother made me hide. She loaded her pistol. Separated by only a screen door from the men, who asked to come in the house for a glass of water, my mother pointed her pistol at the ground, where they could see it. She  told them to move on, and lied that my dad and several others were in the back yard and they didn’t allow her to have strangers in the house.

The men backed off, got in their car and drove away fast. I don’t know if it was the gun, or my mother’s lie that did it.

But this story explains why we we had guns in rural Arizona, back when I was a kid.

After I became an adult and a reporter,  I took a test and qualified for a concealed weapons permit just in case I needed protection during assignments on Arizona’s lonely roads.

But I have never felt the need to own a military-style assault weapon.

I don’t need the testosterone-tinged NRA, either.

And I surely don’t need Arizona’s lax gun-show laws, which allow killers  to get assault weapons via straw buyers.

Sadly,  these days I don’t even need a concealed-weapons permit since Arizona’s new NRA-Tea-Party-backed gun laws permit practically everyone to  to carry concealed weapons without testing their ability to handle guns safely.

Can you imagine the additional carnage that would have occurred if whacked-out Kansas killers Perry Smith and Richard Hickock lived in Arizona — or passed through Arizona — today?

What would have happened if they had gotten their hands on military-style killing machines at Arizona gun shows — weapons like the ones that surfaced at the elementary school in Connecticut, at the Safeway parking lot in Arizona, at the movie theater in  Colorado?

Take it from a gun owner: Assault weapons and NRA-backed laws don’t keep us safe.

They only make us more vulnerable.

I am an American —  carrying the DNA of my  Mexican,  German, English, Scottish and Irish ancestors with more pride than you can imagine. I am  deeply thankful for all the sacrifices and lessons, for all the food and language and music passed down from my Scottish ancestor who landed in 18th century America as an indentured servant, from the German intellectuals who fled their country fearing persecution in the 19th century, from the Irish great grandmother from “lovely County Kerry” suffering a potato famine, from the Gilded-Age  grandfather of English descent who loved his thoroughbred horses and his private railway car, from the Mexican grandmother who passed down tears, laughter, pride, shame, superstition, chocolate and her namesake, the Virgin Mary.

All this explains why the music of Los Cenzontles pulls my heart hither and thither.  Doesn’t matter whether you’re German, Mexican, or Irish — this diverse group has your roots covered because it plays music with links to all these cultures, and many more. Los Cenzontles has created music with the Chieftans, David Hidalgo, Chavela Vargas, Taj Mahal and Linda Ronsdadt, among other superstars.

Here’s a song called “Regresa Ya” about a migrant having a phone conversation with his wife in Mexico. He’s trying to “triumph” in the USA because he’s a  guy who feels he must support his family. But he’s not triumphant, not by any stretch. He doesn’t have enough money to send home. And the wife says  over the phone that it’s better to be poor together than poor apart.  One word of warning — this is a Mexican country song but don’t peg Los Cenzontles  as a just a country group. What’s important here is that the music choice fits the story and characters in the song.

Los Centzontles sing of our American life. The music confirms who we are.

National columnist Ruben Navarrette thinks some Dreamers, certain undocumented kids granted a two-year-ban from deportation by the Obama administration, are acting like  spoiled brats. They’re  blowing immigration reform possibilities for others by becoming radicalized, he contends. Keep in mind Ruben Navarrette is a Latino, and quite liberal. But certain Dreamers, and not all Dreamers, he points out, are starting to annoy him because, he says, they feel too entitled, just like other American young people.   The gist of his story  is that some Dreamers have become so politically radicalized  they’re making a bad name for other Dreamers and other undocumented immigrants. It’s an uncomfortable argument,  especially for a liberal like Ruben Navarrette.

In response,  Gregory Pratt, also a liberal Latino columnist, writes that Dreamers are not spoiled brats, but extraordinarily humble and hardworking heroes. He writes:

^{“Don’t believe me that the DREAMers are extraordinary people? Go read my story about Angelica Hernandez, an undocumented valedictorian in electrical engineering at Arizona State University. Or check outUndocumented Inc., a cover story I wrote about DREAM Act students who have started their own small businesses.}

^{In that piece I highlighted Lilly Romo, a talented young woman who couldn’t attend nursing school because she lacked a social security number, so she started her own English school; Celso Mireles, an ASU graduate who listened to President Obama deliver the commencement speech at ASU in 2009 then went to work Colorado alfalfa fields days later; or Dulce Matuz, then a real estate agent who is currently President of the Arizona DREAM Act Coalition. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME magazine this spring.”}

Ok, so now I’ll weigh in. I think both writers speak the truth.  Navarrette is right — some  Dreamers have been radicalized to the point of harming  their movement’s image, and, honestly, grating on nerves. But  as Pratt points out, the Dreamers he knows (and I know) are  uncomplaining,  strong, smart and kind human beings who have been through more hardships than most of us can imagine.

I believe the  good-kids image prevails and  and makes Dreamers the most attractive and beloved immigrant group in America.

The problem, of course, is that because Dreamers are so beloved — and so young — they have to steer clear of manipulators who want to use them for the political gain of others.

]]> http://www.terrygreenesterling.com/2012/12/20/dreamer-dispute-are-dreamers-heroes-or-spoiled-brats/feed/ 0