Maywood Mayor Felipe Aguirre (L), Dr. Rudy Acuna (R) @ Chicano Moratorium, 8-28-10
I saw an old college chum today. Jim Howard got in touch with me yesterday and as I was going to be speaking in the San Fernando Valley at Mission College, he dropped by and we had a great chat and some reminiscences of old friends and old times at CSU Northridge.
I double majored in Political Science and Chicano Studies. In Chicano Studies I took five classes and got a nearly impossible five straight A’s from Dr. Rudolfo “Rudy” Acuna. In Political Science I took five classes from Dr. Phillip C. Wall and got an almost impossible five A’s from him as well.
Jim had tracked down Phil yesterday and I hope to call him as well soon. It’s been too long. I’ve seen Rudy a couple of times in the past week and will see him again Friday night at more festivities at Mission College for the launch of the new Chicano Studies Department. These two professors had enormous influence on me and I apply their teachings on a regular basis.
For Inauguration of Chicano/a Studies Dept @ MissionCollege
Three longtime San Fernando Valley community leaders have been scheduled to give keynote addresses on Wednesday, September 1, 2010 during the week-long ceremonies to mark the inauguration of the new Department of Chicano/Chicana Studies at Los Angeles Mission College.
Norma Ramirez, who holds a B.A. from CSU Northridge in Chicano Studies, is a long time community activist who heads the San Fernando Valley Council of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). She also serves on the board of the San Fernando Valley/Northeast Los Angeles Chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Ramirez will speak at the campus ceremony at 12:00 p.m.
Jan Tucker was the second “gringo” in America to major in Chicano Studies, graduating with a double major B.A. from CSU Northridge in Political Science and Chicano Studies. He currently serves as a National Commissioner for Civil Rights of LULAC, Co-President of the SFV/NELA Chapter of NOW, and recently ended a seven (7) year stretch as the longest serving chairman of the board of directors of the California Association of Licensed Investigators (CALI, the world’s largest private detective organization). He is scheduled to speak at 1:00 p.m.
Maria Cano, who works for the Los Angeles Unified School District, attended UC Santa Barbara and was instrumental in assisting a successful legal action by Dr. Rudolfo “Rudy” Acuna, who is heralded as the “grandfather of Chicano Studies.” The proceeds of the effort led to Acuna’s founding of the For Chicana/Chicano Studies Foundation. She will speak at 2:00 p.m.
The overall schedule for Wednesday’s events is:
10:40 am – 12:05 pm:
Professor Al Juarez: Chicano Studies 37, Chicana and Chicano LiteratureSN 0160
12:05 pm - 1:00 pm
MC: Melissa San Vicente, Former M.E.Ch.A. Chair (2004-2005), Chicano Studies Major (tbc)
1st Cultural Performance: Mitotiliztli Nahui Ollin-Danza Mexica Cuautemoc
1st Keynote: Norma Ramirez
1:00 – 2:00 pm
MC: Maria Huerta, Former M.E.Ch.A. Chair (2005-2006), (tbc)
2nd Keynote: Jan Tucker
2nd Cultural Performance: Mitotiliztli Nahui Ollin-Danza Mexica Cuautemoc
2:00 – 3:00 pm
MC: Sal Rodriguez, Former M.E.Ch.A. Chair (2003-2004), (tbc)
3rd Keynote: Maria Cano
3rd Cultural Performance: Mitotiliztli Nahui Ollin-Danza Mexica Cuautemoc
On August 29, 1970, 30,000 people marched through East Los Angeles protesting the Vietnam War and racism. Three people died that day: L.A. Times reporter Ruben Salazar who was shot through the head with a tear gas projectile fired by a Sheriff. Angel Diaz and Brown Beret Lyn Ward were also killed by the Sheriffs. At a previous Chicano Moratorium demonstration, Sephardic Jewish immigrant Gustav Montag was shot and killed.
On August 28, 2010 the National Chicano Moratorium Committee will hold a march from Belvedere Park to Ruben Salazar Park (Whittier & Alma) and rally with speakers, music, dance, and informational booths. For further info, call Jaime Cruz 323.687.0963 or Xenaro Ayala 818.365.6534.
My friends Irv Sutley, Eric Sorensen, Aron Morton Kay, Miguel Angel Perez, Gary Kast, Jaime Cruz and many others were there on August 29, 1970. Here are some of their reminiscences:
Aron Morton Kay: i was at the chicano moratorium march and rally on 8/29/70 helping green power distribute free sandwiches when the fireworks began to commence as the la county sheriffs attacked the march as it arrived at salazar park
Gary Kast: I remember vividly that day. I was in valley with girl friend when i heard on radio a riot had broken out. I went down immediatly but could only get to border of “riot zone” on , I think Eastern and Whittier Blvd( Atlantic?? not good with ELOS) . Anyways, B&W full of sheriffs in riot gear were everywhere and tossed a brick through the windshield of one and cops fly out and everyone scatters and we were taken in by neighbors running down a street. it was great energy in the crowd.
Irv Sutley: Irv was staffing the Peace and Freedom Party table promoting the candidacy of gubernatorial candidate Ricardo Romo (first Chicano on the ballot for Governor since 1905). When the sheriffs attacked, Irv finally found refuge on Soto street at the home of George and July Luna Mount.
Late in life Frederick wrote that what he was proudest of was not his achievements in the fight to end slavery or to seek justice for African Americans. It was his role at the Seneca Falls Convention for women’s rights where he gave the keynote speech in favor of the right to vote at the request of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The only controversial issue at the convention, women’s suffrage only passed 28-25 and Douglass was one of the best orators of his time. He was proud of his role because it was completely altruistic: as a male he had nothing to gain.
One of the roles I’m proud of is that I can say that I’m probably one of the only straight males on the planet Earth who has been actively supporting LGBTI rights for forty (40) years. Most LGBTI people cannot even say that they’ve been actively supporting their own civil rights for that long.
In 1970, I founded a debate club at Pacoima Jr. High (now Pacoima Middle School). One girl wanted to join the club. Other males were objecting and were accusing her of being a Lesbian. She denied it. I insisted she be allowed to join and said I didn’t care if she was a Lesbian or not: she had a right to be in the club. That same year I argued on behalf of the rights of Gays, Lesbians, and Trans people. I argued that eighth grade sex education classes should teach that these were perfectly reasonable, normal lifestyles. I got into an argument with my ninth grade English teacher Mrs. Haberland, who conceded that maybe we should get rid of the laws against Gays and Lesbians, but she thought that cross dressing in public was disgusting and it should remain illegal. I of course took the opposite position on Transvestism.
In 1978, I was campaigning for Lieutenant Governor at University of California at San Diego when I was approached by the girl I’d stuck up for at Pacoima Jr. High. She was now out of the closet, active in support of LGBTI rights, and reminded me of how I was the only guy who stuck up for her eight (8) years earlier. I hadn’t even remembered until she reminded me but now I’ll never forget. Ever. As long as I live I’ll be proud of my record of supporting my LGBTI brothers and sisters in the movement for their civil rights.
Now that same sex marriage seems to be on its way to being legally vindicated by Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision, I can feel deep pride in my role of support for many LGBTI causes and issues over four (4) decades of activism. It was written by Ambrose Bierce that “Radicalism is the conservativism of tomorrow, injected into the affairs of today.” What was once a radical and scorned position that I took in 1970 when I campaigned for the Peace and Freedom Party’s “Long Beach Platform” adopted that year is now mainstream, accepted, and even a bit conservative in some circles.
“Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences…” — Susan B. Anthony
The Los Angeles County Nuisance Abatement Team (NAT) and the County Sheriffs Department have provoked a revolt by the residents of the unincorporated community of Littlerock, California in the Antelope Valley. The residents of Littlerock and other unincorporated communities are alleging that they have been subjected to Gestapo tactics in the county’s zeal to generate revenues from fines and seizures of homes and other property for auction.
The Littlerock Town Council estimates that approximately 25% of the homes in their communities have been subjected to enforcement actions over county ordinance violations. Residents report that the NAT tells them that if something on their property isn’t expressly allowed by law then they have the discretion to force them to get rid of it. One example is that an NAT agent ordered a man to remove a bottle from the hood of a car he had parked on his property (he was leaving it in the sun to change its color for artistic purposes).
One elderly woman in a wheel chair was accosted by NAT agents accompanied by armed sheriffs with a search warrant. She says a gun was put to her head.
The search warrants issued over what amounts to the lowest level of “crime,” county ordinance violations that deal with the community aesthetics of an “agricultural zone,” were issued based upon a claim that the Littlerock Town Council itself made the initial complaints to county authorities. But a resolution passed by the Council and announced last night to the public repudiates this and alleges that there are no minutes or records of any purported action or resolution of the Council to ask the County for enforcement actions. The resolution, which you can find at http://www.calulac.org or http://www.janbtucker.com/IdeaOpinions.html spells out just how outrageous the county’s actions have been and demands federal intervention by the Civil Rights Divisions of the FBI, the U.S. Department of Justice and calls upon the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) for assistance.
I spoke on the civil and constitutional rights ramifications of what was going on before the Council and residents last night. Click the following link to hear my speech: Littlerock CA 5-13-10
Kevin D. Akin is the State Chair of the California Peace & Freedom Party (the party that for some crazy reason I still chose to be a member of). Recently, Kevin sent an email which wound up getting re-circulated to a number of people, some of whom I know and most of whom I don’t know (who probably don’t know me from Adam). Kevin starts his email out by asserting that “Jan is not a reliable source, as he has told many malicious lies about people I know, but this of course does not mean that what he says here is not true, just that it needs to be checked out.” He goes on in the middle of the email to claim that “I find it amusing that Jan, who slanders and libels people frequently under false names…”
Well, let’s talk about credibility. This will be the first of several missives dealing with Kevin’s record of credibility — or incredulity — based on past conversations I’ve had with the guy over the many years I’ve known him. But first, I’ve demanded that Kevin put up or shut up by telling me exactly what “false names” I’ve ever used and what it is that I’ve supposedly said that was slanderous or libelous about anybody.
In response, Kevin has explicitly told me to get my head out of my ass (his words). You have to wonder about somebody who engages in the argumentum ad hominem (abusive) who has somehow managed to get himself elected to head a political party on the California ballot that purports to be for due process (he’s for due process except for people that he accuses of misconduct, apparently). He has so far refused to identify the names that I’ve supposedly used or what defamation I’ve engaged in.
Anyway, how’s this for credibility, Kevin?
Years ago I was in a conversation with Kevin in which I pointed out that my father had become such a hard core Stalinist that he’d even supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and that he’d even bought into the Russian contention that Warsaw Pact intervention was necessary because supposedly, 20,000 British troops had been parachuted into the country. Now, a rational and honest person might wonder in the aftermath of the Russian led invasion that depending upon the estimate, put 175,000 – 500,000 troops and 2,000 tanks into Czechoslovakia, why no British troops were displayed by the Soviet forces as captured and killed, but this concept did not occur to Akin.
Akin opined that not only was that allegation of the Soviet’s true, but he also repeated some bizarre nonsense about statistics about thousands of Western supposed tourists in Czechoslovakia with certain characteristics who were claimed to be Western spies and saboteurs. Well again, a rational and intelligent being might question why none of those spies and saboteurs were captured by the Warsaw Pact forces and put on public trial for espionage and sabotage. But not Kevin.
Well, I’ve been known to get hoodwinked now and then into taking wrong political positions, but swallowing the Brezhnev Doctrine hook, line and sinker is not one of them. I was a fan of the Plastic People of the Universe, as was later Czech President and Poet Vaclav Havel (after the fall of the Iron Curtain), whose LP album Egon Bondy’s Happy Hearts Club Banned had to be smuggled out of the country to the West, because playing rock and roll or jazz without a government permit was a crime under the Soviet installed regime.
People like Kevin are afraid of the truth, in the tradition of the Soviet installed regime that ruled Czechoslovakia before the “Velvet Revolution.” Prior to that revolution, the Plastic People of the Universe were put on trial by the regime for their audacity in performing the “One Hundred Points:”
They are afraid of the old for their memory.
They are afraid of the young for their innocence.
They are afraid even of schoolchildren.
They are afraid of the dead and their funerals.
They are afraid of graves and the flowers people put on them.
They are afraid of churches, priests and nuns.
They are afraid of workers.
They are afraid of party members.
They are afraid of those who are not in the party.
They are afraid of science.
They are afraid of art.
They are afraid of books and poems.
They are afraid of theatres and films.
They are afraid of records and tapes.
They are afraid of writers and poets.
They are afraid of journalists.
They are afraid of actors.
They are afraid of painters and sculptors.
They are afraid of musicians and singers.
They are afraid of radio stations.
They are afraid of TV satellites.
They are afraid of free flow of information.
They are afraid of foreign literature and papers.
They are afraid of technological progress.
They are afraid of printing presses,duplicators and xeroxes.
They are afraid of typewriters.
They are afraid of phototelegraphs and telexes.
They are afraid of automatic telecommunications with abroad.
They are afraid of letters.
They are afraid of telephones.
They are afraid to let people out.
They are afraid to let people in.
They are afraid of the left.
They are afraid of the right.
They are afraid of departure of the Soviet troops.
They are afraid of changes of the ruling clique in Moscow.
They are afraid of détente.
[This line is missing in the printed version.]
They are afraid of treaties have signed.
They are afraid for the treaties have signed.
They are afraid of their own police.
They are afraid of the spies.
They are afraid for their spies.
They are afraid of chess-players.
They are afraid of tennis-players.
They are afraid of hockey-players
They are afraid of gymnast girls.
They are afraid of St. Venceslas.
They are afraid of Master Jan Hus.
They are afraid of all the saints.
They are afraid of gifts to the kids on St Nicholas.
They are afraid of Santa Claus.
They are afraid of knapsacks being put on the statues of Lenin.
They are afraid of archives.
They are afraid of historians.
They are afraid of economists.
They are afraid of sociologists.
They are afraid of philosophers.
They are afraid of physicists.
They are afraid of physicians.
They are afraid of political prisoners.
They are afraid of the families of prisoners.
They are afraid of today’s evening.
They are afraid of tomorrow’s morning.
They are afraid of each and every day.
They are afraid of the future.
They are afraid of old age.
They are afraid of heart attacks and cirrhosis.
They are afraid even of that tiny trace of conscience that may still be left in them.
They are afraid out in the streets.
They are afraid inside their castle ghettoes.
They are afraid of their families.
They are afraid of their relatives.
They are afraid of their former friends and comrades.
They are afraid of their present friends and comrades.
U.S. District Court Judge Florence Marie Cooper died Friday.
I had the distinct honor of seeing her courage in doing the right thing when I was defense investigator for Gyula Tamas Zubovicz (aka Dracula) when the LAPD and the District Attorney’s office were dead set on framing him. It’s not that Zubovicz was an upstanding example of morality, but when the authorities couldn’t get him for anything real, they just invented a case.
Zubovicz was accused to conspiracy to possess explosives in a residential area. The evidence came down to the word of a notorious snitch, Gregory James Bartole. Bartole is still on the scene and still as delusional as he was before: he recently convinced some other ex-con that he was the head of the Sicilian Mafia on the West Coast, as though LCN would have anybody in its ranks that had ever testified as state’s evidence before.
The LAPD didn’t put the detective on the witness stand who’d taken certain evidentiary photos of where dynamite wrappers had supposedly been burned in a fire place and the ashes supposedly recovered. Maybe they were worried that his having been sued by his wife for divorce on the grounds of extreme cruelty would come out, or maybe the D.A. — John C. Spence III — was worried that the photos he’d taken clearly showed the electrical cord that went to the fire place which had long since been cleaned out and converted to a faux electrically lit up fireplace.
Long story short, there had been a motion in limine granted by Judge Cooper before the trial even began precluding the prosecution from referring to the Hungarian Mafia, the Jewish Defense League or the initials JDL or introducing any evidence about those entities. Spence had claimed that he’d given us his entire file during discovery and there was nothing in any of that evidence that he was introducing — or so he claimed — that had anything to do with the Hungarian Mafia.
At the last minute of the trial, literally, he showed us (the defense team at counsel table) a two page document without showing us the second page which he wanted to introduce to prove Zubovicz’s co-defendant’s address at a certain point in time. The second page he didn’t show us, which the jury saw, contained the claim that the co-defendant was a purported hit-man for the Hungarian Mafia.
The jury hung on Zubovicz but convicted the co-defendant. I spoke with one of the jurors who’d held out for Zubovicz acquittal and found out that the reference to the Hungarian Mafia was why the jury convicted the co-defendant.\
I filed an affidavit with Judge Cooper alleging violation of her order on the motion in limine by the prosecutor, Spence. I asked her to jail him for contempt of court.
She didn’t do that but she went one step better: she declared a mistrial and threw out the jury’s verdict against the co-defendant. Judge Cooper was a courageous woman and an honorable judge of the highest order.
Well, the case I discussed in my last report thankfully came in 9-3 for acquittal today! I guess I did a decent job — having gotten into the case on September 21, 2009….
Last time I told you I’d discuss what the police knew and didn’t do anything about. Here are some tidbits.
A guy named Raul Chanel is noted as a person of interest. He has an identical statistical description (height, weight, etc) to the Defendant, but they do next to nothing to try to find the guy or explain why he’s a person of interest in the case.
Another guy is busted for DUI, having driven his car off the freeway. The CHP finds the murder weapon right near his vehicle while inspecting the scene, but because he adamantly denies it’s his, they discount the possibility that maybe he tossed it from his vehicle after the crash and don’t investigate him as a suspect. Now, in the meantime, I’ve found some intriguing stuff about a guy matching this name (33 years later of course) and I’m following up (more later).
They know that the Defendant at the time of the murder lives up in Sanger (they have his address). They send a notice to the Sanger PD but nobody bothers to follow up. They don’t go into his place of work to even check his time card or interview anybody to see if he was or wasn’t at work on the day of the murder!
There were latent prints lifted from the passenger side of the vehicle, the side the shooter would have been on if you believe the story of their star witness (who admits he drove the car). They didn’t match the Defendant and seems that nobody’s bothered to follow up on those prints since the crime. Maybe, just maybe, the person who left them has been fingerprinted for some reason in the past 33 years….ya think???
September 21, 2009 I got court appointed as investigator/expert witness for a 33 year old murder case that was tried in Dept E of the Pomona (East District) branch of the Los Angeles Superior Court.
The Prosecution Theory
The prosecution’s theory of the case was that on September 9, 1976, my client was in a car driven by their star witness (a felon with multiple convictions that they’d given an immunity deal to), following Roberto Lozano, because Lozano was supposedly having an affair with his wife and was the biological father of his first son. According to this theory, my client shoots Lozano, drives down to San Ysidro (by the U.S. – Mexico border), abandons the car, and flees into Mexico immediately. Then according to the prosecution theory, the defendant hid out first in Mexico and then hid out in Texas by adopting an alias when he re-immigrated to the United States.
Big Problem with the Prosecution Theory
One of my best attributes is to “pick the fly shit out of the pepper” during investigations. Going through lots of documents supplied by the defendant’s family to his lawyer, I found the defendant’s son’s Baptismal Certificate and immediately recognized the significance of it: it was dated September 14, 1976, just five (5) days after the murder of Roberto Lozano.
I tracked down the church, St. Alphonsus in Fresno. I contacted the staff, convinced the on-duty secretary to go down into the basement and locate the Sacramental Registry for 1976. Lo and behold…sure enough….there was the registry listing authenticating the certificate, listing my client and his wife as the parents and one of our witnesses and his wife as the god-parents. I drafted a declaration for the church’s administrator as custodian of records and they rushed a copy down to the lawyer just in time for the trial.
Another Big Problem with the Prosecution Theory
According to the District Attorney’s way of thinking, when the Defendant came back to the United States in the 90′s, he changed his name around from using his father’s surname first and his mother’s surname last to the other way around. This “alias” was supposedly to hide from the authorities. The first issue is that there is a perfectly innocent and much more believable reason for this.
In Spanish usage, the technically proper way of constructing a child’s surname from their father’s and mother’s surname is to place the father’s name first with the conjunctive use of “and” followed by the mother’s name. So properly, if the father’s surname is Gomez and the mother’s surname is Toledo, the child’s name should be something like Jose Gomez y Toledo. In some countries, an “i” or an “e” is used for “and” instead of the more common “y.” I’m not certain as to why this variation in Spanish exists, but I suspect it’s done in areas where the Spanish has been influenced by Sicilian immigration (Sicily was part of Spain for centuries starting in the 12th Century), because “y” and “w” don’t exist in the Sicilian language as vowels the way they do in other Romance languages.
In Anglo-American English usage, the custom is to simply drop the mother’s surname for a child, although in modern feminist-influenced times, we have begun to see the hyphenation of surnames, with the mother’s surname coming first, hyphenated to the father’s surname. This is like what I’m told is the rule in Tagalog (the Phillippines native language), where the mother’s name becomes the middle name and the father’s name the surname (or last name in order).
Both Spanish and English “surname” or family-name order is completely different from a number of Asiatic languages, like Hungarian (from the Finno-Ugric language family) and Chinese. In those languages, the surname is first, followed by the given name. So a common Hungarian name transliterated into English as Zoltan Horvath should properly be Horvath Zoltan, or Mao Zedong in Chinese is really Zedong Mao.
Traditional/classic Semitic languages followed a completely different construction, with the use of “Ben” or “Ibn” for “son of” followed by the father’s name (and the given name appearing first in order, even though to begin with, the languages are written from right to left instead of left to right).
So, getting back to the case at hand, part of my expert witness testimony was to explain to the jury why there was nothing necessarily sinister about changing the order of the defendant’s surnames on the American side of the border. In fact, he’d even disclosed the discrepancy on one of his INS (the former federal agency, Immigration & Naturalization Service) applications for legal residency.
It’s perfectly common in America, historically, for names to get really screwed up or Americanized, depending on one’s point of view, when people immigrate to the United States. The people who interview and process immigrants are clerks, not linguists. As I told the jury in this case, a similar thing happened with my family. My grandfather’s original family name, from Tereshki, Belarus, was “Tokar,” which means millwright in Slavic languages and of course would have been written in the Cyrillic alphabet in the Czar’s old empire. When my grandfather arrived at Ellis Island in New York, the name was transliterated and Anglicized rather than being translated into English. It became “Tucker” simply because “Tokar” sounded like “Tucker.” Properly translated it would have become “Turner,” because a “Turner” was a millwright in Old English (literally, one who turns a lathe).
More to come!
In my next blog about this case, there will be more issues, more details about my expert witness testimony, and more on the Archaeology of knowledge that goes into a defense investigation of a very, very old case, including:
What the police knew
What the police never followed up on
Why my client wound up back in Mexico
What my client did in Mexico
What my client did after he came back to the United States
How my client was fingerprinted and not found to have any outstanding warrants REPEATEDLY
Meanwhile, please keep your fingers crossed while the jury’s out. I’m convinced he’s not guilty and should be acquitted. He’s been in jail since May 2009 and his family are the Salt of the Earth!
Gypsies, more properly referred to in their own language (with origins in Sanskrit) as the Roma or Romany, comprise about 14% of the population of Eastern Europe.
The “Gypsy” people, originated in Northwestern India and migrated westward until they reached Europe. Originally settling in Romania, they were enslaved in that country until 1864-one year after Abraham Lincoln issued the American Emancipation Proclamation. The word “Gypsy” originated from the misconception that the dark skinned migrants to Europe were of Egyptian origin. Like African Americans, the end of formal slavery for the Roma did not mean the end of their persecution. Because they were generally dark skinned, and, like American slaves, kept illiterate and vilified by stereotyping, they were kept out of professions, subjected to arbitrary law enforcement, and frequently, like Eastern European Jews, forbidden from owning land. Like African – Americans who were subject to the sexual whims of slave-owners, and Eastern European Jews who were subject to rape, there is great disparity in Roma physical types. Although many remain dark skinned owing to their Indian sub-continent origins, you simply can’t tell Roma by any particular look.
The Roma language derives from ancient Hindi and has picked up elements of many languages of the people through which they traversed on their journey from India to Europe and from there to every corner of the world. In the 20th Century, the Roma have continued to suffer both horrific and petit forms of persecution.
During World War II, the Nazis deemed them to be sub-human. They were the first people upon whom Zyklon-B gas was used as an experiment in extermination techniques. 80%–probably around 800,000—Roma died at the hands of the Nazis, about the same percentage as European Jews. Some estimates are higher, placing the number of Roma killed at 10% of the total holocaust number.
Roma who made it to America have similarly faced arbitrary discrimination after migrating to the land that held out the torch of liberty: Roma presently in their late 40′s to 50′s report having been expelled from various California school districts, arbitrarily, as soon as it was discovered that they were “Gypsy” children. Consider that stereotyping by the media about “Gypsies” that would be considered “politically incorrect” and socially unacceptable remains completely unchallenged to this day. The movie “Quicksilver” starring Kevin Bacon features as the villain, “The Gypsy,” who is a violent drug dealer; a children’s show recently on the Disney Channel portrays a scenario of a “Gypsy” who has a pet monkey that he has trained to steal. A little girl befriends the Monkey and teaches it that it is wrong to steal; an episode of “Law and Order” deals with “Gypsy” cab drivers, none of whom happen to be ethnic Roma.
If one were to substitute the words Jew, Asian, Latino, African-American, or half a dozen other ethnic groups into these scenarios, studios would be picketed, movies would be boycotted, and stockholder resolutions would be introduced condemning the practice. As with any ethnic group, there are the good as well as the bad: famous and well respected people of Romany descent include Charlie Chaplin, Rita Hayworth, Bob Hoskins, and Yul Brynner.
Gypsies in the Holocaust
I began doing civil rights work with the Moshwara Clan of the Roma, beginning with a press conference demanding extradition of Nazi war criminals from Canada who had massacred Gypsies during World War II. Gradually, I became involved with them on investigative and social levels.
One day, I found myself in the company of the King of the Moshwara Clan–Duey Stevens–and a certain drunk Gypsy female. In Roma society, there are Roma and Gadjo, or non-Gypsies, just as there are Jews and Gentiles: you are either one or the other. The woman, in her inebriated state, said certain things that a Roma should not have said in the presence of a Gadjo.
As we drove away from meeting with the woman, the King was making apologies for her behavior. At one point, he said, “but she was drunk…she didn’t know what she was saying.”
To this I replied, “I come from simple folk. My grandparents on my mother’s side came from a little town called Gorodiesche outside of Kiev. They taught me an old Ukrainian proverb: ‘what’s on a sober man’s mind [as I touched my fingers to my head], is on a drunken man’s tongue [as I touched my fingers to my lips]‘”
He didn’t say anything for the next ten minutes. When he finally spoke, he said, “my friend, there is great wisdom in your family. You’re absolutely right. She meant every word she said. You have saved me from a lot of grief and anguish. From now on, you are no longer Gadjo, you are Roma. You are part of my family.
Some months later, I repeated this story to a couple of Duey’s younger brothers and other members of the Moshwara Gypsy council. One of them, visibly astonished, asked me, “he said that?!” “Yes,” I explained, quizzically.
One of the brothers then said, “I don’t think you understand. You are now no longer Gadjo; you are Roma; you are part of our clan.” “I’m honored,” I told them, and I truly was, at this confirmation that Duey was not simply flattering me.
“I don’t think you understand,” the brother continued. “This only happens maybe once every 50 years, that Gadjo is accepted as Roma.” I responded that I was doubly honored to be part of the Moshwara clan.
“You still don’t understand,” he went on. “In the entire history of Gypsy clans, we have never heard of Gadjo being adopted into the King’s family!” “I’m triply honored to be part of the King’s family,” said I.
“You still don’t get it. You are our brother. We can deny you nothing,” he insisted.
“I like that. I will tuck that away for future reference,” I told them, truly and deeply honored…and to this day they have never disappointed me or treated me differently from my status, as I suppose, a Prince of the Gypsies. At the current King’s grandson’s wedding, I was seated next to the King.
To this I say, Bach t’lo (Roma for “Life and Luck,” the Roma toast!)
