This is an urgent update Sara Escudero, a high school student who's been part of organizing the most vibrant student movement since the 1994 Prop-187 walkouts was suspended for two days by the principal of Reside High, for passing out leaflets without his permission. This bully then told her they're going to try to expel her, and threatened to arrest her because some stickers made their way onto a police car and she had stickers.

Students like Sara have been putting themselves on the line for the future -- of humanity! We've got to have their backs. Call Reseda High to protest. Join the massive protest in the streets, along Wilshire, beginning at noon.

www.worldcantwait.org, worldcantwait_la@yahoo.com, 323-462-4771

Here's a picture of the fascist pig (principal Alfredo Tarin).

Send her ass to Catholic school where they know how to deal with troublmakers. Her knuckles will never heal

Sara Escudero should just comcentrate on her math, or whatever. High school kids don't know their hindquarters from a hot rock, but just parrot whatever idiotic leftist sentiment they pick up from LA Lefty Magazine. Stickers magically "found their way" onto a police car? Not exactly the perfect crime, young Sara. Maybe expulsion will wise you up. A couple of years making beds at the local Motel 6 and you'll be rarin' to shut your yap and get back to school.

Add your comments in Support of Sara Escudero. Fine young people like Sara are doing the work and we need to hold together and give them our strength and guidance. They face resistence everywhere and people against the war need to let people know they are anti-war, anti-exploitation, right then and there, not a day later like this post.

Last week a couple of young sisters on the bus said a bus driver attacked a guy coming on the bus, using hate slurs while pummeling him. They came to his defense and when the cops got there the sisters were kicked off the bus. The others on the bus did nothing, it was left up to these principled young people to move the system, explain the situation to the cops, while older knowledgeable and supposedly caring adults just stood around. Don't be like that. Off the Freep

Why do I doubt that this really happened?

So without knowing all of the facts of the case (just what was posted at the top of this article), "Black Hand" decides to plaster a swastika over the principles forehead and call him a fascist pig.

This is yet another example of the 8th grader, juveline, intellectually bankrupt reactionary left at its totalitarian best.

Whatever happened to the principle of due process, or the idea that a person is innocent until proven guilty? The school prinicpal mentioned is teaching his students that these are just technicalities or slogans that need not be taken seriously, at least by those who have power over others (cops, school bureaucrats, bosses and the like). Where is the proof that this girl put sickers on a police car ? The fact that she had some of the some type of stickers? In what court would "proof" like that be accepted? And what is so horrible about putting some stickers on a car that it merits punishment like that? I wonder whether the same thing would have happened if the stickers said "Support Our Troops Fighting For Freedom in Iraq."

I can't believe what I'm reading from these anti-American socialists. The principle has EVERY right to suspend Sara. Her actions were disruptive to our education system. Where does it end if he doesn't put a stop to it? You lefties misinterpret the First Amendment, which reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." That doesn't mean that anybody is free to do or say whatever they want without consideration of the repercussions.

Are you a moron or what?

You're calling someone else a 'moron'? Before you do that you may want to make sure you understand how to spell CONTRADICT.

People who determine right or wrong and propose punishment based on internet postings have no concept of due process. The facts they use to decide what to comment on and their orientation towards report amount to Star Chamber reasoning, which makes them dumb monkeys with computers. People are out there doing things, making certain they have a say in what happens in their own live's, and these hairy-knuckled desk jockeys spill their fritos tearing into a young teenage girl who is speaking out against murder and hypocrasy. Off the Freep!

Thank you, holding together.
And rightcross, as well as Danny Ireland are still morons.

Actually, I think that was cheetos that the fascists spilled. In any event, the courts over the decades have interpreted that part of the Constitution to mean that local authorities cannot abridge freedom of speech, either. To argue that a school district has the right to prevent this girl from voicing opposition to the war would be to turn the clock back many decades, which only an ultra-reactionary or a fascist would want to do.

Surprise, surprise. Someone decides to exercise their freedom of speech rights, and the principal finds it threatening and disruptive. Why? Why threatening, why disruptive, such that the punishment for handing out stickers is expulsion from school?

Because the job of education, as this principal sees it, his job that is, is to turn out thoughtless yes-men and women, highly trained yet highly uneducated, automatons who will lend their support and their lives to whatever the system requires of them. The student's actions were certainly disruptive of this effort, so certainly (I see some bloggers argue) she should be expelled.

A telling example illustrates this same mentality, as it is applied under our nation's auspices in Latin America. From the Intro to Kevin Danaher's "10 Reasons to Abolish the IMF and the World Bank" (p.17-18): Kevin was talking to a Guatemalan woman who's husband was dragged from their home and hacked to death with machetes by the military in front of her and the children. "Why, why did they do this" Kevin asked. The answer? Because he was teaching his neighbors how to raise rabbits. "You have to understand the structure of society and the rules of power here" she explained. The people have been driven off the best farmland, and so are a captive labor force for the large plantation owners, who grow for export. "So if we do things like teaching each other how to raise rabbits so we can feed ourselves, without being forced to go and sell our labor for a dollar a day, that is subversive, given the structure of this system."

Justify that, if you can, and if so count yourself a fascist.

Bravo to Sara. She is not the only one being persecuted by high school administrators, I hear. Power resides in the people, but only if we use it.

In our nation now many people don't know what freedom is, are frightened of freedom, either having it or seeing it used. They think it means merely the ability to buy what they want at the mall, and afford cheap gas for over-priced, unnecessarily over-sized, useless (in terms of how they're actually used) sport utility vehicles.

This is arrogant stupidity, not freedom. It will destroy our nation and the Earth, if we let it. True freedom entails the ability to recognize the rights of others. Lacking this I am a despot or fascist thug, more enslaved than ever to fear and hatred.

True education entails encouraging others critical thinking, not punishing them for it. Thomas Jefferson said,
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.
I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere."

This is a lesson the principal of Reseda High School should learn, and take to heart.

"Kevin was talking to a Guatemalan woman who's husband was dragged from their home and hacked to death with machetes by the military in front of her and the children. "Why, why did they do this" Kevin asked. The answer? Because he was teaching his neighbors how to raise rabbits."

While there may be arguments for abolishing the IMF and World Bank, this particular antecdote points well more to the unevolved and savage cultural conditions of Third World central and south America.

You forget, Commander Fresca, that the Central and South American death squads were trained, financed and encouraged by the US military and CIA. What kind of cultural evolution does that show?

You took the bait.

Regardless of where their training came from, their culture is one in which death squads can actually occur and flourish.

For all your fingerpointing at US military training, death squads have never and probably could not ever happen here.

Evolution baby.

Frescaw as usual you are blowing it out your a**.

And of course the U.S. Fedgov would never engage in torture or launch illegal immoral wars either - eh?

It would be difficult to do here but not impossibe ONLY because we have guns and fight back.

Unfortunately it could happen here. You and your NeoTrotskycon buddies would do it in a hearbeat if you thought you could get away with it.

Nice post.

Also, regarding the savage conditions in Central America. The US military intervened on behalf of fruit plantation interests in the area during the early part of the 20th century. This business relationship set the stage for politics in Central America that would eventually lead to our funding and training of terrorists in the region. Here's a chronology of the United Fruit Company:

http://www.unitedfruit.org/chronology.html

" And of course the U.S. Fedgov would never engage in torture or launch illegal immoral wars either - eh? "

Well, beyond the fact that you've missed the point AND changed the subject away from DEATH SQUADS, there is still no evidence of torture being committed by us and certainly haven't been any "illegal immoral " wars started.

Your sloganeering is silly and your intellect is clearly stamped out for you.

Get back on your bandwagon.

Death Squads will never happen here simply because we are more evolved a culture than the savages in central and south America.

I think torturers should be given the Key to the City, don't you?

Where would Civilization be without unbathed mental cripples?

What was COINTELPRO, the FBI assasination of 60's radicals, and the Palmer Raids?

They weren't "death squads" per se, but branches of the police that were political in nature, that sought to repress political speech by injuring and killing political dissenters.

" They weren't "death squads" per se,"

No. They weren't.

Next.

Death squads under the command of General George Armstrong Custer murdered countless Indians. Hundreds of years before that, death squads of English settlers were massacring Indians in New England and in Virginia. Not so long ago, American death squads were massacring Mexicans, Spaniards and, especially, Indians right after the US seized California from Mexico in a Hitler-like blitzkrieg.

First of all, we never "seized" anything from Mexico. California was simply a part of the US which was under the occupation of mexicans. We simply reminded them of that.

Secondly, calling the violence committed by the US AND the Indians against one another an example of death squads is fairly assinine. You might as well call all wars the actions of death squads.

You need to learn the meanings of words and phrases before you pipe up Meyer.

and this is from someone who pipes up everyday about things it knows nothing about.

"and this is from someone who pipes up everyday about things it knows nothing about."

Please. With all due respect, I've forgotten more than 95% of the typical leftist fools here will ever know.

It's really not very hard at all to be the smartest guy around here, considering how inane, by definition, the average leftist indymedia type is.

I rest my case. But let's add pompous and retarded to your qualifications.
Is Bush Admirer your boyfriend? You two should tie the knot.

"I rest my case. "

Well, at least you know when you're beat.

Fresca, your command of history is surpassed only by the open-ness of your mind. I suggest you expand your reading list.

A few items:

At "The School of the Americas" at Fort Benning, Georgia [Google it], recently closed due to bad publicity and opened two weeks later under another name, we have been training the right-wing military of the dictators we've installed how to run their death squads, and "fight insurgents," rather than have to go there and get our hads dirty, for the last twenty years. Before that the school was in Panama. [Check out the film "Innocent Voices"]

Then there was General Norman (of 'Operation Desert Storm', Gulf War 1 fame) Scwartzkopf's father who trained the Shah's secret police, after a CIA operation deposed Iran's democratically elected (with vast popular support) president, Moussadek, in 1953.

As far as death squads in this country, one of the first was certainly the Dutch on what is now the island of Manhatten, New York, in the early 1600's. When the natives were reticent to agree to allow them to establish a permanent settlement and trading post, the Dutch snuck upon the native encampment at night and slaughtered them all, men women and children. So delighted were they with their victory that they returned with the heads of their victims to prove the success of their exploit to their fellows, and gave great thanks to their God, taking it as a sign of their great favor in His eyes. Somehow, as New Amsterdam was established and then became New York, this somewhat embarrassing story came down through history as a bunch of foolish Indians selling the entire island for some glass beads. The original record exists because the Dutch in great pride of their accomplishment wrote it all down of course.

But then I guess you could argue that was before we were a "country," so for a more recent example check out what the Feds did in the seventies agains AIM (the American Indian Movement). They trained Goons (I kid yu not, the term is an acronym), a bunch of 'Uncle Tom' (I hope you know what this reference is; Hariet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, "So you're the little woman that started this big war"— Abraham Lincoln. Basically, it means turncoat, or traitorous) Native Americans who went around in the night killing AIM leaders or terrorizing by firing into people's homes. Leonard Peltier is in jail to this day, a political prisoner, for being an AIM leader, the crime he was convicted of on the basis of coerced testimony from a single witness, later recanted, having been confessed to by another.

Fred Hampton, a leader of the Black Panthers in the sixties, which was a target of COINTELPRO (Google it), was executed in his bed by a hail of bullets from a dozen or so of Chicago's finest, so since they were wearing police uniforms this could be called 'a police killing' rather than a death squad, though I'm sure this distinction would be lost on Hampton, or his wife who survived.

Then there's all those people who swore they heard shots from the 'grassy knoll' in Dallas, Nov. 22nd, 1963, many of whom died mysteriously in the ensuing year. But of course one can't prove this would fit the definition of 'death squad' killings, as there are no witnesses we know of (which was the point).

Then there was the Earth First activists who were nearly killed when a car bomb was planted under their vehicle by local law enforcement and the feds. In an ironic twist they were prosecuted, unsuccessfully, for supposedly making the bomb that blew them up.
Once aquitted, they countersued. On June 11, 2002 a federal jury returned a verdict in favor of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney in their landmark civil rights lawsuit against four FBI agents and three Oakland Police officers, awarding them $4.4 million in damages. But then, this was only attempted murder...

So I guess you could argue, that while we seem to manufacture and export death squads on a substantial basis, our use of them within the fifty states is pretty limited, unless you're black, Native Amreican, or an activist of any stripe.

As far as the Mexico stuff, Pulle-a-s-e read your history.

Though it seems to work for the moment for Anne Coulter, Rush, and this President, just naming things doesn't make it so. "Clean Skies Act," "Leave No Child Behind Act,' and of course the ever popular "Patriot Act." check out http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/05/AR2005110501366_pf.html
This policy didn't end well for Senator Joseph MaCarthy (Google it) and it won't end well for our country either if we can't free ourselves from following down that path.

There is truth and there is lie. We've got to learn how to tell the difference.

Check out this too: http://nightweed.com/angrygirl.html
With any luck, you might become an angry girl too, in a good way.
On the other hand, if you continue to hold your present views, there's a pretty good chance you'll never see a death squad, or end up standing on a crate with a hood over your head and electrodes attached to your fingers. I should warn you this will become increasingly difficult unless you give up reading altogether (except Ann Coulter of course) and limit your TV viewing to Fox "we distort, you comply" News.

Thanks for the United Fruit history link, John K.

Not sure what you mean by "Neo Totskycon," Juan. Think you have a sense of false security with your 'happiness is a warm gun,' due to the imbalance in firepower. Guns in Fallujah didn't do them a whole lot of good. Part of the stress on the planet right now is how to turn around folks like Fresca without using the preferred tactics of the right (violence, distortion, fear). Truth, patience, love are more powerful but take longer to work, and are therefore less impressive in the short run. Be in for the long haul.