Norma Ramirez Speaking @ Mission College Chicano Studies Inauguration
Maria Cano Speaking @ Mission College Chicano Studies Inauguration
Posts Tagged ‘Jan B. Tucker’
Why Chicano Studies; Why Arizona is Afraid of Chicano Studies
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010Chicano Studies Dept @ L.A. Mission College
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010News Release
J.B. Tucker & Associates
P.O. Box 433 Torrance CA 90508-0433
Email: admin@janbtucker.com Web: www.janbtucker.com
Blog: www.janbtucker.com/blog
For Immediate Release: 8/31/10
Community Leaders Slated as Keynoters
For Inauguration of Chicano/a Studies Dept @ Mission College
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 Literature SN 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
-30-
This Would be Funny if it wasn’t Pathetic
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010The following is a purported “Press Release” from David Herrera, the President of the Professional Investigators of California (PICA). I say “purported” because what Herrera and PICA apparently don’t know is (1) the proper formatting of a real press release, (2) that a real press release is written third person just as if an objective reporter was composing it, and (3) that reporters and editors think that you’re silly if you call something a “press release” and expect it to be taken seriously when you’re just spouting off your own opinion. It apparently has not occurred to Dave that if you want the news media to print or broadcast your opinion, you should buy advertising space or time.
What’s really pathetic about this is that Rick Von Geldern, PICA’s “Legislative Director,” is a CSU Northridge graduate (I almost hate to admit we have the same alma mater) from the Radio-Television-Film Department (RTVF). Thankfully, my double major was in Political Science and Chicano Studies, although like Rick I do have experience in the news business. I served as First Vice President of The Newspaper Guild, Local 69 (AFL-CIO, CLC, CWA) and represented the local in the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor for years. Anyway, Rick ought to really know better than to call something as embarrassing as this a “press release:”
| PROFESSIONAL INVESTIGATORS OF CALIFORNIA, INC. Press Release – Gary Ermoian – CR-F-08-224-OWN 08-16-2010 |
||
| Dear PICA, Fellow Private Investigators and brother Law Enforcement,
It is a sad day for many of us. According to the Sacramento Bee, CALI Member, PI Gary Ermoian, PI# 8855, on Friday, August 13, 2010, was convicted in federal court of Conspiracy To Obstruct Justice, http://tinyurl.com/sacbee0814 This involved CALI Member Ermoian’s conduct in unlawfully tipping off the owner of Road Dog Cycle, who was reportedly affiliated with the Hell’s Angels, of a search warrant to be executed on the subject business. Little did CALI Member Ermoian know, but the Road Dog telephones had wire taps and CALI Member Ermoian’s conversations were used by the U.S. Attorney’s Office as key evidence against him at trial. For some inexplicable reason, certain CALI Board members (Jim Zimmer, Francie Koehler, Chris Reynolds and Jan tucker) put the entire CALI membership into this mess with CALI’s Amicus Letter to the Honorable Oliver W. Wanger. http://tinyurl.com/calizim10-09 This original letter was authored by Francie Koehler for Jim Zimmer’s signature. Initially all CALI Board members were alleged to be signatories to the letter until many complained that their names had been added to the Amicus Letter without their permission, causing their names to be later removed. Our law enforcement members and friends are rightly furious with CALI’s support of the Road Dogs, Hell’s Angels and the felony conduct that placed the lives of law enforcement in jeopardy. PICA’s law enforcement members are asking how CALI could be so disrespectful of law enforcement in light of the facts of the case. We don’t know and we don’t expect sincere answers. We are just happy that no one was injured during the investigation. CALI members warned Jim Zimmer last November of the damage this would cause by CALI openly supporting a case which would resonate as support for the Hell’s Angels. How did Mr. Zimmer respond to this member criticism? He didn’t and continued indirect support for the defense of this case. CALI should have known better last November 19th after Judge Wanger wrote in his decision that this case should not be dismissed. “These concerns (CALI) are misplaced as they do not address the types of conduct here in dispute.” http://tinyurl.com/judgedecmtd (see page 22, lines 14 through 18) Mr. Zimmer, Mr. Reynolds, Ms. Koehler and Mr. Tucker have continued to this day to support just about anything over law enforcement. Intentional or negligent, it doesn’t matter because when amateurs play the big leagues and fail, it’s harmful to our good reputation. In retrospect, we have seen CALI’s white paper pleadings under SB1282 and SB202, and with CALI Chairman of the Board, Jan Tucker’s letter dated June 22, 2009, resolving among other things, “….since 80% of all private investigators are former law enforcement officers who have little or no training regarding family law and civil practice procedures, laws, ethics and regulations…” http://tinyurl.com/jantuc202 PICA and the industry apologizes for the actions of Past CALI President Jim Zimmer, CALI President Chris Reynolds, CALI Legislation Chair Francie Koehler and CALI Chairman of the Board Jan Tucker because we know that the industry does not and will not support this continuing type of reckless advocacy against our law enforcement brothers and sisters. Once again, CALI leadership have placed their members on the wrong side of the issue for the wrong reasons. No PI association or its Private Investigators are above the law. PICA’s Code of Ethics proudly states that “PICA members pledge to respect and protect confidential and privileged information except in those instances contrary to state and federal law.” In short, PICA never condones “Obstruction of Justice” as CALI so condoned in its various letters to Judge Wanger by Mr. Zimmer and other CALI members. PICA does not condone this conduct and this latest misstep should put NCISS and other interested associations on notice of what their CALI leadership is doing in California. The industry needs PICA and others to step forward to help correct all that is wrong in certain California private investigator associations. As more facts are released, we will share them with our membership. Please, don’t allow anyone who disrespects law enforcement to move their damaging personal agendas forward. We thank our local, state and federal law enforcement community, officers, Investigators, Special Agents, prosecuting U.S. Attorney Mark Cullers, the Honorable Judge Oliver W. Wanger, the jury and all law abiding men and women who support and appreciate the efforts and safety of law enforcement. Permission granted to repost. David G. Herrera ___________________________________________ The above ravings either deliberately distort what CALI (and I) did in this case or else Dave just doesn’t have a clue about what he’s talking about. For example, the letter that I authored from which he extracts a quotation is actually a quotation I made in the letter citing another organization’s position on SB 202. Convenient he doesn’t put that in context, but then he’s a licensed investigator who thinks our profession doesn’t need continuing education…. |
||
NCISS vs ISPLA III
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010The following is my response to Bruce Hulme’s letter on behalf of ISPLA concerning the discussion and ongoing controversy over whether CALI should reduce funding of NCISS (as proposed by a motion made by CALI VP Administration Ed Saucerman) and begin to fund ISPLA (again based upon a motion by Ed Saucerman). I find it unnecessary to respond to most of the letter at this time but I do think I need to expound upon certain issues that emanate from the letter and the context of other organizations and individuals communications on the issues.
First, my blog posting had nothing to do with a lobbying effort directed towards CALI members on the subject. Off the top of my head, I can think of only one subscriber to this blog who is a CALI member and he happens to be a non-voting service and industry member. I did nothing out of the ordinary to publicize my 7/23/10 blog entry so the only people who’d be automatically notified of the posting were my subscribers. I don’t even know who most of my subscribers are, so it’s entirely possible that there may be CALI members amongst them whom I don’t know by username or email address.
Regardless of the fact that I made no particular attempt to lobby CALI members on these issues with my blog, that was the interpretation given by people like Rick Von Geldern and Ed Saucerman who (a) made all sorts of fantastic accusations about the blog which included taking portions of it and spinning them out of context, (b) resurrected their attack of last year when they claimed that I was purportedly “anti-law enforcement” and therefore not to be trusted by anybody, and (c) my blog seems to have been an issue with PICA President David Hererra’s pronouncement that PICA was severing all ties with NCISS and transferring its support lock, stock and barrel to ISPLA. Macchiavelli never said or wrote that the “ends justify the means;” properly translated his phraseology is more akin to the “outcome is what counts.” Well the outcome of all this attention that was generated by Von Geldern, Saucerman, and Hererra is that I had about 200 hits in a single day on my blog and website, the most I’ve ever had in a 24 hour period. I’m still getting way over average hits in light of the latest postings on this subject.
But of course Von Geldern, Saucerman, and company should have nothing to fear by having generated so much interest in the posting. After all, they are of the opinion that their relentless attacks on me have paid off in spades and that my opinions have been thoroughly discredited and my credibility shot all to hell on these subjects. Instead of getting in a tizzy over a blog with a single CALI service and industry subscriber, they should have adopted Alfred E. Neuman’s Mad Magazine philosophy of, “What? Me worry?”
I also have to give some context to the quote that Bruce utilized to illustrate his points from the Nez Perce Chief Joseph. Chief Joseph, when the Americans betrayed him and his tribe and stole their land at gunpoint, changed his christian name to a Nez Perce name, “Thunder Rolling in the Mountain.” He fought with tenacity, bravery and great tact. But it was only after the U.S. Army had as a matter of strategic policy killed the tribe’s Appaloosa horses, almost wiping out the breed, that Chief Joseph finally said that he would fight no more. Deprived of its transportation and war vehicle, he could fight no more.
British Election Results: 1 in 20 Have Gone Neo-Nazi
Saturday, May 8th, 2010In case people missed this little asterisk on the British election results, a full 5% — in raw numbers just under 1.5 million Britons — voted for the United Kingdom Independence Party and the British National Party. These parties are the spiritual descendants of Sir Oswald Mosley’s pro-Nazi movement and try to maintain a polite veneer of supposedly being non-racist enough to meet the qualifications of parties to run in British elections.
This poses a BIG problem for electoral reform in Britain.
One thing that is a must for either the Conservative or Labour parties to come to power in a coalition government is to get the support of the Liberal Democrats. There is simply no other possible coalition formula that doesn’t include them, and the Lib-Dem bottom line is going to include some form of proportional representation or electoral arrangement that enables them to reflect with parliamentary seats a closer measure of the votes they actually get.
Many “list” systems of straight proportional representation systems that nations use also have a minimum proportion necessary for a party to receive any seats at all. If I recall correctly, Germany has a 5% minimum threshold. If Britain went to a system like that, an electoral alliance between the BNP, UKIP and other far-right groups looks like they could easily attain a 5% threshold, inasmuch as they just did it standing on their own.
What the Lib-Dems and the Labour Party might want to agree on as a method of keeping the Nazis out of parliament while still instilling fairness to the system would be a French type of system, where there are two rounds of elections with every party able to participate. What happens in effect in France is that after the first round, whoever came out on the left with the best chance of winning and whoever on the right has the best chance of winning goes on to the second round, with the other parties that they can align themselves with dropping out of the race.
This latter type of election is similar to what some Labour Party cabinet members were already suggesting de facto, when in the last days before the election they openly promoted “strategic voting,” urging their own members to vote Liberal Democratic where that party was the best chance of beating the Conservative candidates and imploring Liberal Democratic voters to vote Labour where their candidates, likewise, were in a better position against the Conservatives.
No matter how you configure election rules, somebody will get and advantage and somebody will lose an advantage. When California used, for a couple of elections, an open primary system, I was the hands down primary winner against the leadership of my own party, the Peace and Freedom Party. I set the all-time high vote record for the PFP primary for any candidate for any office in any election in history. Partially as a result, PFP’s leadership teamed up with the Democrats and Republicans to challenge the open primary in court. They got rid of the Open Primary, which was immensely popular with California’s voters, but they are stuck with the fact that I will now always hold the high primary vote record as long as we have a closed primary.
Konversations With Kevin (Akin) #2
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
This is the second in my series of anecdotes about Kevin Akin, Chair of the California Peace & Freedom Party.
In 1994, when I was the PFP’s nominee for State Treasurer, I had repeatedly sought a resolution from the State Central Committee of the party to take a strong stand against the Turkish-Azerjaijani blockade of Armenia that was literally killing Armenians. The party had twice tabled a resolution I’d proposed and I was getting insistent upon having the matter heard. Over dinner with Tom Condit at the Oakland Airport Hilton, where I’d stopped for a campaign appearance in the Oakland area, I outlined the issues for him and he promised that he would use his influence for me to get a fair hearing on the matter from the PFP’s executive committee.
This was when I first found out that people I’d thought of as friends, ideological allies, and comrades were in fact back-stabbing, sectarian, and incompetent fruitcakes who were completely out of touch with real issues that were important to real people. Not only did Condit later deny that we’d even discussed the matter, Bob Evans — a then perennial party candidate for Attorney General — later denied knowing what the party position was even though he’d been on the conference call that decided the issue. But Kevin Akin’s role in the whole affair was even more insidious.
Various party activists had gathered at different locations around the state. In Los Angeles we were at the Paul Robeson Center in South Central L.A. linked with the other sites.
The one really choice bit of insanity that is seared into my memory during the Alice in Wonderland type discussion that emanated from my request to go on record for having the Commerce Department apply the anti-boycott law to Armenia to protect it from corporations that were complicit with the Turkish/Azeri blockade was the one by Kevin Akin. Let me preface his statement by explaining that PFP, which was founded by people with a real concept of opposing racism and bigotry of all sorts, had degenerated into a clique of sectarians who only had a concept of anti-racist struggles if they were radical chic as in Tom Wolfe’s Radical Chic and Mau Mauing the Flak Catchers. Because there was no existing left-wing radical chic movement about dealing with the Turkish genocide of World War I in which 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered, and the ongoing legacy of that conflict, most of the PFP leadership couldn’t grasp what to average people who read the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times or virtually any daily newspaper would understand.
Let me also point out that under the leadership of Kay McGlachlin and Marilyn Seals, two eminent leaders of PFP during the seventies, PFP had adopted novel parliamentary procedures including points of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. that could be called during meetings just like more traditional “points of order.” Unfortunately for me, since I wasn’t a voting member of the executive committee, I wasn’t in a position to invoke a point of racism against what Kevin said.
The inane (and insane) discussion that ensued on my proposal for a resolution centered around everybody else’s ignorance of the history of the Caucusus region and the issues surrounding Armenia’s relations with Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and the United States role in the area. So, people like Kevin would insert tid-bits of misinformation that they’d heard from lord-knows-where as though they were contributing to a sensible discussion. But the worst was not even the substance of what Kevin said, but with the language that he prefaced it with: “….all the Armenians I ever knew…..” believed or espoused thus and so.
Now, if he’d substituted the word “Blacks,” or “Chicanos,” or “Native Americans,” for Armenians, everybody on the call would have been up in arms because it would immediately be apparent to them that he had maligned a radical chic cause celebre group of people. Not one word of protest, not one point of racism, not one gasp was to be heard from the assemblage, who apparently considered that this was some sort of wise and legitimate comment, i.e., what Kevin had heard anecdotally from “all the Armenians” he ever knew.
Bottom line: I had to repudiate PFP’s leadership position because what they came out with was an abomination that placed the party to the right of Dick Cheney, and that was really hard to accomplish given that Cheney, as President of Halliburton, had received the Azeri-American Chamber of Commerce “Freedom Support Award” around that time. In fact, the position they took was to the right of the position of the Turkish embassy. They wound up calling for ‘sanctions against both sides” in the dispute, which, since under Section 901 of the Freedom Support Act there already were sanctions against Azerbaijan under American law, put PFP in the place of supporting extension of sanctions to Armenia for the crime of the nation’s having been blockaded by its neighbors (which led to the death of 1% of the population in a single year). Whereas Dick Cheney and the Turkish government wanted Section 901 sanctions taken off Azerbaijan, not even they advocated sanctions against Armenia.
Now, Kevin claims to be a somewhat religious Jew. I on the other hand am a thoroughly secular and blasphemous Jew at best, even though I’m the great-great grandson of a Rabbi. But at least I understand the concept of why Jews traditionally call themselves the “chosen people.” Being the “chosen people” is not a privilege. It’s a duty. Supposedly, god chose us to do his/her bidding and to bring justice to Earth. So, if we have any duties imposed on us by history in the spirit of our tribal mythology, then we should assume the duty to speak for all other nations, like the Armenians, the Roma (Gypsies), the Garifuna and all other peoples who like the Jews live for the most part in a diaspora and who have been routinely persecuted.
But then Kevin’s opinion on the subject was predicated on his anecdotal experience of what he was told by “all the Armenians” he ever knew.
A Photo from the World
War I Turkish slaughter
of Armenians
33 Yr Old Murder Case goes to Jury
Monday, November 16th, 2009September 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!
