Is This Justice?

Shawna Forde Gets the Death Penalty. BY JULIANNE HING | POSTED 02/22/2011 AT 05:04 PM The anti-immigration activist who was convicted last week of first-degree murder for her involvement in the May 2009 murders of nine-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father Raul, has been sentenced with the death penalty. CNN reports that the jury's unanimous decision is binding: If the jury had not voted for the death penalty, the judge would have decided whether Shawna Forde should have received life with a chance of parole after 35 years or life with no possibility of parole. Forde was convicted February 14 on eight counts, including two counts of murder for the shooting deaths of Raul Flores and his daughter, Brisenia, and the attempted murder of the child's mother, Gina Gonzales. On May 20, 2009, Forde and two alleged accomplices stormed the Flores' home in Arivaca, Arizona. Two men killed Raul Flores Jr. and shot his wife and Brisenia's mother Gina Gonzalez before shooting the 9-year-old girl point-blank. Gonzalez testified during the trial that she could hear her daughter, roused from her sleep in the living room where she was camped out so she could be close to the family's new dog, ask why her parents had been killed, then silence as the shooter stopped to reload a gun, and finally two shots that went through the little girl's head. Forde reportedly planned elaborate heists of suspected drug dealers as a way to fund her anti-immigrant activism and her splinter group, The Minuteman American Defense. Nothing besides pot residue was found in the Flores home, according to Terry Greene Sterling. MAD was inspired by the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, and both groups recruited civilians to patrol the border for migrants attempting to enter the country. Forde was found with Gonzalez's wedding ring. During the trial and sentencing phase, Forde's defense was very disciplined about crafting a portrait of an unstable woman, a big talker with little follow-through. The prosecution argued she could have been both a braggart and a murderer. After Forde was convicted, she reportedly called a press conference. Forde's defense asked psychologist Dr. Judith Becker how Forde's actions, including the fact that she called for a press conference, should be interpreted. "That does not surprise me," Becker testified, the Green Valley News and Sunreported. "It shows poor judgment." Such information is crucial for shaping a jury's understanding of a person's health and frame of mind. It's also a useful way to help anti-immigrant groups like Federation for American Immigration Reform, which have since tried todistance themselves from Forde, further disassociate themselves from one of their former members. Anti-immigrant groups may not want anything to do with Forde these days, but she certainly thought of herself as one of them. Much of the chatter on the lefty blogs and immigrant rights networks in the weeks of the trial has been dominated by bitter confusion about the lack of media coverage the case got. As Gabe wrote last week, the tragic deaths of two 9-year-old Arizona girls received very different public responses. It may be that the country is not interested in the scary lessons that Brisenia Flores' murder offers about the real life consequences of the national discourse surrounding immigrants. (http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=02&year=2011&base_name=shawna_forde_gets_the_death_pe) What does justice mean when the media is still hellbent on convincing segments of the population that immigrants who look brown are sub-human? In other words, is justice possible on just an individual case-by-case basis when systematic injustice exists?

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It's Been A Long Time

It's been a while - almost a year to be exact and during which, so much has occurred.

Reading back and reminiscing on my mindset last March, I realize that not much has changed in the world, and if anything, everything that has happened only re-affirms what I previously thought - and to a greater degree.

Simply put, the world, or rather, our society, is going to shit.

By that, I mean that when push comes to shove, something's got to give.

What a more perfect example than the BP oil drilling disaster - a chronological landmark that will probably last for the rest of my cognizant lifetime, cementing the fact that in our current society, the rich make the rules.

So what has happened since last March?

I've moved - first from San Diego to Irvine, then from Irvine to New Orleans, then from Uptown New Orleans to Mid-City New Orleans, and finally, from Mid-City to New Orleans East - Versai, otherwise known as home.

The BP oil spill occurred, wiping out an already struggling Gulf Coast fishing industry and community. To this date, fisherfolk - white, black, Cajun, Creole, native american, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai - have not been justly compensated for subsistence damage. Hundreds of thousands of people became unemployed overnight with peripheral effects spreading to other industries such as the restaurant business.

Arizona SB 1070 - State sanctioned terror against people of color.

Kanye West releases 'My Dark and Twisted Fantasy'

The shooting incident in Arizona involving Congresswoman Gifford - homegrown terrorism.

DJ Kool Herc is hospitalized.

Brisenia Flores, 9 years of age, shot and killed by 'anti-illegal immigrant vigilantes' - in other words,

Revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, with more to come.

Republican assault on Planned Parenthood, NPR, and Americorps.

The list could go on but I'm kind of lazy. Just want to start posting more regularly again... about life, thoughts, and perhaps my struggling garden (it's weird to think that sunlight could be such a limited/hard-to-obtain resource).