Environmental Racism lives on...

(San Antonio is home to one of the largest TCE plumes in the country thanks to Kelly Air Force Base. The 60,000 homes that are impacted suffer from kidney failure, liver cancer, reproductive disorders to name a few. EPA has done nothing to address new findings about the extreme danger of TCE)

A Well of Pain
Their Water Was Poisoned by Chemicals. Was Their Treatment Poisoned by Racism?

By Lynne Duke
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 20, 2007; C01

DICKSON COUNTY, Tenn. Sheila Holt-Orsted sits on the edge of a sofa in her mother's living room, digging through the large translucent plastic bins arrayed at her feet. The Holt family's fight is in there -- the contaminated water, the cancers, the allegations of racism, the lawsuit. A family's seeming devastation, documented in those bins.

Papers are everywhere, spilling onto the sofa, the floor. Holt-Orsted, 45, burrows in deep. But the document she's looking for can't be found.

"It might be in my bed," she says in a voice always verging toward laughter, and she trots off to check. Her mom, Beatrice Holt, 61, just shakes her head.

"I'd wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning and she'd be in there writing something," Mrs. Holt says. "I worry about her, because she has breast cancer and stress is not good. I worry about her cancer coming back."

Holt-Orsted's father, Harry, had cancer too, and died of it in January at 67 after it grew in his prostate and his bones. "The Lord was just ready for a good man. He wanted a good man and He took him," Mrs. Holt says wearily.

She has had cervical polyps. Another of her daughters, Holt-Orsted's sister, has had colon polyps. Three of Holt-Orsted's cousins have had cancer. Her aunt next door has had cancer. Her aunt across the street has had chemotherapy for a bone disease. Her uncle died of Hodgkin's disease. Her daughter, 12-year-old Jasmine, has a speech defect.

They believe trichloroethylene, or TCE, is to blame for it all. The carcinogen leaked from the county landfill, just 500 feet away, and contaminated the Holts' well water. That fact is undisputed. For years, the family drank that water, bathed in that water, cooked in that water -- and had no clue that it might harm them.

Potted plants from Mr. Holt's wake still fill the Holt living room. A stack of albums and CDs recorded by his gospel group, the Dynamic Dixie Travelers, sits on a bookshelf. "I Feel Like My Time Ain't Long" was his favorite song.

From the den, filled with cheetah and zebra figurines and velvet pictures of matadors, comes the sound of a clock that chirps birdlike every hour on the hour. And the dining table is covered with home-cooked dishes, because a group of lawyers is in town to talk about the family's predicament.

Holt-Orsted is ready with her bins, often the only passengers in her Windstar van as she drives between her home in Dale City, Va., and her mom's home on Eno Road in Dickson County. In one, a large notebook is visible, a statement in bold black letters scrawled on its cover: "I want this country to hear my pain."

A Crusade Begins

Her husband, Corey Orsted, 38, gave her "Erin Brockovich," the 2000 Oscar-nominated movie about the busty and bodacious self-made environmental activist. The film offered some good pointers, except that Holt-Orsted, as a breast-cancer survivor, can't show off cleavage the way that Brockovich did.

"Mine's all scarred up," she says. "Looks like a railroad track." She is not as reticent as her father. He was more private, more old-school proper, didn't want to publicly discuss his prostate cancer and his fears of how he got it. "I think when my dad was first diagnosed, I was like, if this was me, I'd be shouting," Holt-Orsted says. And then it was her. And she started shouting.

That was back in 2003, when Holt-Orsted received her diagnosis and her crusade began. She opted to have her treatments in Tennessee, where she could rely on extra family support. Between treatments, she mustered the energy to fight those she believes responsible for her family's illnesses. She transformed her parents' home into her command center, there in the semi-rural community where she grew up, where her family's only wealth was the land.

When she wasn't throwing up from the chemo, she dragged herself to government offices to search public records. She researched environmental issues on the Web, sometimes falling asleep at her computer. A former high school and college athlete turned bodybuilder and fitness trainer, she schooled herself in TCE, one of the most prevalent contaminants of drinking water in the country. It had been dumped at the Dickson County landfill in the 1960s and 1970s.

She reached out to environmental justice activists, including Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University. She called him so often and for so long that he finally gave in and called her back. "She sounded desperate," remembers Bullard, who is now advising the family. "She was doing this by herself."

When she heard Danny Glover would be at a Nashville walkathon, she ignored her family's advice and showed up to chase him down. She even tried to jog. But, weak from chemo the day before, her wig sliding off her head, she gave up in tears. "I was a sight," she says, able to laugh now at the memory.

Another time, at a meeting of the Dickson County Commission, she stood up and accused county officials of lying to her family about the safety of the Holt well water, warning, "Whoever in this community decided to let us drink this water, there's a place in Hell for you if you don't find God."

In January, she carried her fight to Capitol Hill, speaking at a panel on environmental racism. Her family's attorney, Matthew Colangelo of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, attended to support her. She had buried her father only days before. Her usual ebullience was gone, as she read, flatly:

"We have uncovered one of Tennessee's dirtiest little secrets: a contaminated conspiracy."

Suits Claim Racism

The Holts' lawsuits, originally filed in 2003 and 2004, name the city and county of Dickson and the state of Tennessee, and claim the family was a victim, among other things, of negligence that resulted in their cancers and other health problems. They also named Schrader Automotive Group, the company that state and federal documents say dumped drums of TCE and other toxins at the landfill. The company's parent, Scovill Inc., now is called Saltire Industrial Inc., whose assets are in the hands of a trust approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. Alper Holdings, Saltire's owner, also is named in the suit.

But Michael Etkin, the attorney representing the trust of Saltire's assets, says, "We have yet to see evidence that whatever injuries that the Holts allege were the results of any conduct on the part of Saltire or to what extent the science supports the claim that the various injuries alleged were the result of TCE contamination."

And Don L. Weiss Jr., mayor of the city of Dickson, which originally owned the landfill, said in a statement that city officials had "handled their responsibilities properly."

The Holts also claim the state and county discriminated against them in treating them with less care than the white residents with similarly contaminated water. (The EPA was originally named in the discrimination claim but was dismissed as a defendant because of a legal error. The Holts parted ways with the attorney they had at that time.)

Cribbing Bullard's pithy description of the Holts' plight, Holt-Orsted says it's a case of the "wrong complexion for protection." Attorneys for the county and state deny the claims in the lawsuits.

"The county considers any allegations that the Holt family members were the victims of racism to be baseless and unfounded," said county attorney Timothy V. Potter, in an e-mail.

But David England, a former Dickson county commissioner who went to high school with Holt-Orsted, believes racism has played a role in the saga. England, who is white, recalls being upbraided by an acquaintance angered at his support of the Holts. "You're a damn fool," he recalls being told. "There's 94 percent white people in the county and 6 percent black people and you're taking sides with the blacks."

Family Responses

A battalion of angel figurines, big ones and little ones, all of them brown, guard Holt-Orsted's Dale City home. They march across her wallpaper border, keeping watch over her own small family. They've been married 13 years, she and Corey Orsted, but the past four have been difficult, what with the upheaval of back-to-back father-daughter cancers.

Orsted, an electrician and Army veteran of Operation Desert Storm, would rather they all be together, but says, "I have to do what I have to do to support my wife."

He, too, believes the family has been discriminated against. Though he is white, he does not feel uncomfortable with his wife's talk of racism and the blame she lays at the feet of some white officials. Dickson County, population 43,156, was 4.6 percent black in the 2000 census, and Orsted does not know Dickson County well. But he knows that back in the 1990s a man in a pickup truck hollered "[epithet]-lover" at him when he saw Orsted with his black wife. So he does worry about their daughter, who has been living and going to school in Dickson since 2005.

"I don't want my daughter to hate my race or be leery of them because of these actions," Orsted says. He calls his wife's work "awesome." When she was featured on CNN recently, he says, he felt a surge of pride to know that his family name is part of this battle. His wife, he says, is aggressive, the kind of person who seizes the initiative.

"Anything she's done, she's been fully fledged, very focused. She makes things her mission, especially this," he says. Her mother and two sisters call Holt-Orsted obsessive, but they mean it affectionately.

This style and singular focus have angered some within her extended family who feel Holt-Orsted has taken the reins of the TCE battle too tightly.

"She caused it. I'm going to tell you right out," Lavenia Holt, the aunt who lives across Eno Road, says of the family split. That part of the Holt family is pursuing its own legal case.

Says Holt-Orsted, "I know I probably burned a lot of bridges." But that is the price she has to pay for the crusade she has chosen, she says.

"I had a minister tell me that this is a ministry for me," she says. "He said think of yourself as Moses. Do you think Moses was volunteering? You're going to have to take it this way rather than questioning why this happened to you."

Says former county commissioner England, "Sheila's been very patient in this. A lot of people look at her as a militant and an iron fist hammering all the time. But in all of us there's a time you snap. "No doubt, she's scorched earth in relationships all over the place. . . . But I still respect her. Somebody had to carry the banner up San Juan Hill. And I don't think there's selfishness here," he says, adding sadly, "I think it's a girl and her daddy."

'Smoking Gun' Documents

When the Holt family learned in 2000 that they would be hooked up to the city of Dickson's water system because of a problem with their well water, Holt-Orsted and her family assumed it was a mere precaution. They didn't know anything about TCE. They weren't told that their well water contained 24 times the EPA's allowable limit of the toxin.

Only later, after the cancers started and after she'd begun sniffing around the subject, did Holt-Orsted connect the dots and realize the deep health trouble her family might be in. Based on TCE's toxicity and the fact that it had leaked from the landfill, the Holts filed suit.

But even then, Holt-Orsted assumed the contamination of her family's well was due to someone's carelessness or incompetence.

"In the beginning, that's what I thought," she says. "Until I found the letters."

It happened quite by chance in late 2004, when she went to the state environment and conservation offices in Nashville and asked to see records about the landfill and the family's well water. "They just hand you a big box of stuff," she says. "They didn't have a clue" that she was being handed fodder for her crusade.

In that box, she found letters and documents indicating that Tennessee environmental and water officials had concerns about the possibility of TCE appearing in the Holt's well water as early as 1988. The Holts' well was left untested for nine years while TCE problems in the wells of white families were tended to with haste, the records showed.

Based on those letters -- what Bullard calls the "smoking guns" -- the Holts amended their suit and added the civil rights claim of racial discrimination, which a judge split off into a separate action. (Both suits are pending.)

"Use of your well water should not result in any adverse health effects," an EPA official wrote to the Holts on Dec. 3, 1991, after one high TCE test was followed by two low ones. But a Tennessee water official questioned the EPA's conclusions, saying that the geology of the area was so prone to leaching that a low TCE test "was in no way an assurance that Mr. Holt's well water will stay below" the EPA standard. State and federal officials agreed that the Holt well should be tested further. But for nine years, no tests were conducted.

Meanwhile, the toxin also showed up at high levels in a spring and several wells in 1993 and 1994. The white families at those sites were immediately told to stop using the water. And tests were conducted repeatedly all around the landfill -- but not at the Holt well. Still, the Holts knew nothing. They did not know their well should have been monitored. And they did not know until many years later about the other families with TCE contamination. They never knew anything at all, until Harry Holt's daughter Sheila began poking around in dusty boxes.

A common manufacturing degreaser, TCE is "highly likely to produce cancer in humans," according to the proposed cancer guidelines contained in the EPA's 2001 draft report of its ongoing health risk assessment for TCE. TCE is associated with cancers of the kidney, liver, cervix, lymphatic system and, some say, breast. It is also associated with immune disorders, skin diseases and birth defects such as cleft palate.

Asked why the Holt well was not tested for nine years, Joe Sanders, general counsel for the state's Department of Environment and Conservation, said the state's resources were focused on the places where TCE existed at levels higher than at the Holts'. "We're definitely not the Holts' adversaries and never have been," he said. "We tried to do what we've done based on the facts that we've had. I've seen Ms. Holt many times at different meetings. I think she's a fine lady and she sincerely believes her cause."

Background for a Funeral

A sharp winter wind whips across an oak-lined ridge, over the tombstones and graves of the old Worley Furnace Cemetery, named for James Worley, a 19th-century slave who ran his master's iron furnace nearby. Here lie the dearly departed of the historically black Eno Road community, now a dwindling group of African Americans who owned farms amid the area's gently rolling hills.

The cemetery is just across the road from the landfill. To the east are 150 acres of property owned by the Holts for a couple of generations. To the south, on the other side of the landfill, is the vacant and crumbling building of the old Negro Coaling School where Harry Holt was a student. Also to the south is the Worley Furnace Baptist Church where the Holt family once worshipped.

During the days of Jim Crow, African Americans played baseball on that open swath of land, but by 1956, the field had become a dumping ground, according to Bullard, the environmental expert, who found a reference to a "city dump" in a property deed from the period.

The city's official dump opened on that site in 1968. On its five acres, everything from dead animals to drums of chemicals were dumped. The site bred mosquitoes, flies and rodents. It produced the worst smells imaginable -- like burning carcasses -- which the Holts describe smelling every day, not to mention the dust, smoke and ash always in the air. Until 1972, it was unregulated.

After passing into county ownership in 1977, the landfill was upgraded and expanded to 74 acres. But by 2002, the acres of land where chemicals and rotting refuse once were dumped had been capped with layers of soil and clay from which tall white pipes rise like periscopes to vent the buildup of methane gases below. And a collection system for its leached liquids was installed.

But the old landfill's undulating landscape of tall grass interspersed with those tall pipes behind a fence topped with razor wire tells the ominous tale of what lies beneath. Today, the site takes in only construction and demolition debris. Earth movers and trucks still rumble around there, producing a racket that intrudes upon the small cemetery across the road. It was the background noise to Harry Holt's funeral.

"They didn't have enough respect to stop," Holt-Orsted says one mid-February morning, on her first visit to her father's grave since his Jan. 13 funeral.

Tears cut a trail of makeup down her face. She folds her arms tightly across her chest, braced against the wind, against the pain. She bends down to straighten two toppled angels that mark her father's grave until his headstone arrives.

Quickly, grief overwhelms her. The sound of plaintive weeping swirls in the cold wind.

"My dad didn't deserve to be treated like garbage," she sobs, gasping for breath.

Hungry for migrant rights

Southwest Workers Union and the May 1st Coalition held a 1-day hunger strike in front of Senator Cornyn's office today to highlight the injustice of recent legistation drafted by Cornyn that would get rid of all visas for families to reunify. Instead, Cornyn wants all immigrants to only have the option of coming to the U.S. as exploitable guest workers. Hunger strikers stands in solidarity with Elvira Arellano, currently facing deportation and living in sanctuary in a church in Chicago in order to stay with her son Saulito, and all families torn apart by racist & unjust immigration laws.

San Antonio students tell minutemen to GO HOME

Police, protesters clash at UTSA

Melissa Ludwig
Express-News
A simmering illegal-immigration debate at the University of Texas at San Antonio— where 45 percent of students are Hispanic — erupted into a heated protest Wednesday during an outdoor speech by Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a group of volunteers who patrol the Mexican border to stop immigrants from entering the country illegally.

UTSA's chapter of the Young Conservatives of Texas invited Simcox to speak to draw attention to the lack of security on the border, said Laura Morales, the group's executive director.

Liberal groups descended on the Simcox talk, booing and chanting "Racist, fascist go away!" into bullhorns throughout the speech and clashing with university police, who were pushing them away from the stage. The spectacle drew a crowd of about 750 to the university's Sombrilla Plaza, making it perhaps the largest culture clash on campus to date.

Before the protest, school administrators asked protesters to allow Simcox to speak without interference, but they resisted.

"This guy represents hatred and murdering of immigrants on the border," said senior Jonathan Bryant. "We're not just going to sit back and let that happen."

Struggling to be heard amid the noise, Simcox scolded the audience for their behavior.

"Thank God I taught kindergarten for the past 13 years; it helped me prepare for this kind of crap," he said. "What you see here is a vigilante lynch mob."

Police pushed back the mass of angry students, and at least one protester fell , but no one was arrested. When Simcox left earlier than planned, the crowd cheered wildly.

In his speech, Simcox said he believed in immigrants' rights, and that his Minutemen stood watch on the border to rescue the families from dying in the desert. He also called the North American Free Trade Agreement an economic disaster and said Latin America needed to do more to help its citizens.

"We are not haters," Simcox said. "We are trying to solve a problem."

Though Simcox's platform sounded measured, protesters weren't buying it.

"He's racist," said Justin Felux, a member of the Student Worker Teacher Alliance, the group that organized the protest. "It's a continuation of the Ku Klux Klan border watch in the 1970s."

Fliers distributed by Felux's group claimed the Minutemen are linked with white supremacist organizations, a claim that Simcox denies.

"He's not racist, he cares about the border and he cares about America," said Morales, director of the conservative group. "It was the great philosopher John Locke who told us if the government is not providing for you, you have the right to do something for yourself."

Earlier this year, Morales' group gathered signatures to remove the so-called "border crossing statue," a bronze sculpture in the Sombrilla plaza on campus that depicts a family crossing the border. Like the Simcox event, the petition drew more protesters than supporters.

UTSA's isn't the only Young Conservatives chapter sparking controversy on campus. In 2005, members at the University of North Texas in Denton drew criticism for staging a mock roundup of undocumented immigrants. Passersby won a candy bar if they "caught" another student wearing a shirt marked "illegal immigrant."

Morales said she supported the Denton students' effort, but would not do the same at UTSA because it "would not come off as well."

Carla De Leon, a 23-year-old criminal justice major who stopped to read the anti-Simcox flier, said she didn't agree with the civilian border patrols. Her parents both crossed the border from Mexico and are now U.S. citizens, she said.

"I am surprised how they could do this at such a diverse university," De Leon said. "He's lucky that he was born here. Because otherwise he would be going through the same struggles" as immigrants.

See Video: Student protest minutemen, UTSA students protest minutemen leader

Rally for Immigrant Rights at Texas Captiol

Hundreds rally for rights of illegal immigrants

Proposed state legislation is discriminatory, crowds say.

By Claire Osborn
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Several hundred people protested outside the Texas Capitol on Tuesday, saying proposed legislation would discriminate against illegal immigrants by denying them education and health care.

"There's a hypocrisy that says, 'We want you to come; we want you to work cheaply, but we don't want to give you any rights,' " state Rep. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, told the crowd.

Lawmakers have filed more than three dozen proposals focusing on illegal immigrants and trying to lessen the burden they put on social services. Texas has an estimated 1.5 million illegal immigrants.

In April 2006, an estimated 12,000 people marched up Congress Avenue in one of the largest civil demonstrations in the city's history to protest proposed federal legislation that would have made it a felony to be in the country illegally. The U.S. House proposal died, as did other congressional efforts to overhaul immigration laws.

Cities and states are increasing efforts to pass laws addressing illegal immigration.

Noe Lemus, an Austin cafeteria worker who was holding an American flag at the rally Tuesday, said that all illegal immigrants in the United States should be granted legal status.

Che Lopez, who came from San Antonio for the rally and march, said he was urging all workers to go on strike May 1 for International Workers' Day.

Lopez said he is a co-director of Southwest Workers Union, which campaigns for labor rights.

"Without the working class, the system will not function," Lopez said.

SWU crashes Kelly railport opening

from Express-News

Railport open for business

Meena Thiruvengadam
Port San Antonio held a coming-out party Thursday to announce the opening of its massive multimillion-dollar rail facility.

Called the East Kelly Railport, the facility is seen as the first step in transforming the former Kelly AFB into a global distribution hub.

It originally was expected to cost about $35 million, but revised estimates suggest the price tag could run as high as $60 million.

"We sit at a junction that really can impact the national freight system," said Harrison Grindle, a senior business research coordinator for the port.

The property off Quintana Road on the Southwest Side is adjacent to a Union Pacific rail yard and near Interstate 35.

The railport is envisioned as a regional distribution and industrial center, a place where trucks and trains quickly and seamlessly will exchange cargoes.

So far, it has seen one shipment of copper bound for Germany. It came by train from Idaho to San Antonio, where it was transferred to a truck for the ride to Houston. From there, it was shipped to Germany.

"They did that here because it was quicker and cheaper than going by rail into the Port of Houston," said Bruce Miller, Port San Antonio's chief executive officer.

(Jerry Lara/Express-News) The Southwest Workers Union's Genaro Lopez Rendon (right) talks with Port San Antonio Marketing Director Stephanie Ramsey at the railport's opening. A small group of protesters turned out Thursday. In back are U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez (left) and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff.

The shipment is a sign that "we're not blowing smoke anymore," said Loy Garcia, vice president of RLI Logistics Solutions, a company under contract to provide services at the railport. "This really can be done."

Grindle said the facility's location near a Union Pacific rail yard makes it an ideal place "to get products in and out as quickly as possible."

But the property also lies near homes, businesses and schools, a fact that has some community members speaking out against the project.

"We're really disappointed to see the opening of this new railport," said Lara Cushing of the Southwest Workers Union. "We'd like to see more people-centered economic development, an alternative plan that would include small businesses that the community needs, green spaces and sidewalks."

The San Antonio-based union organized a protest outside the railport with about a dozen people. It's an advocacy group for "people of color, workers, youth and grass-roots communities."

Cushing said community members also are concerned that the facility may bring hazardous cargo through their neighborhoods, something Miller promises won't happen.

"This railport is never going to receive hazardous materials," he said Thursday. "This site is too close to the neighborhoods."

As planned, the East Kelly Railport will be a collection of warehouses with train tracks, roadways and an open-air dock to make loading and unloading cargo more efficient.

Titan Industrial Development, a real estate developer, already is building a 360,000-square-foot facility on the property. Another 270,000-square-foot building is being designed, Titan Development Director Don Wittschiebe said.

Fiesta Warehousing and Distribution is the only company that has a signed contract with Titan, but Wittschiebe said companies have made verbal commitments for the remainder of the space in the initial building.

May 1st - General Strike & Mass Mobilization for Migrant & Worker Rights

Raising Change in Ecuador

March 4-9th 2007 No Bases Quito, Ecuador

by Diana Lopez

As I reflect on the outcome of the No Foreign Bases Conference in beautiful Quito, Ecuador, I realize that more than half of the people attending were active youth from Ecuador who want change in their life. I went to this conference to show the impacts of military toxics from former bases in my community, and to have not only white representation at the conference. The most difficult/saddest part was that we (SWU) were the only grassroots, non-profit organization that went from the US, the rest was rich, white ladies who are all talk and no action (political tourist), other countries think that is our representation and it shouldn’t, so our message got across that we are people of color who have been impacted directly and are representing our people. It was hard, and I was shy but overall the practice of the process was much needed. I learned so much about Ecuador history, Plan Colombia, the military impacts on almost 40 other countries, cool fun ice breakers, what other countries think about the US, and the experience was unforgettable. Being in another country, breathing their culture, and the fact that the youth were there for a reason, surprised older folks and it rejuvenated them to know that when they are gone the fight will not stop it will go on strong, in the hands of powerful youth.

article:

A new network forms to close US overseas military bases - commondreams

Kelly area seeks more development

Michelle Mondo
Express-News Staff Writer

Economic development in the communities surrounding the former Kelly AFB was the topic of the third and final roundtable discussion sponsored by the Kelly Area Collaboration, or KAC.

The purpose of the roundtables was to come up with a plan for the community and address concerns on issues of health, environment and economics. The KAC is an initiative organized by a collection of federal agencies called the Interagency Working Group of Environmental Justice. It includes federal, state and local public agencies and community groups.

Residents, business leaders and city officials met March 3 at Dwight Middle School to tackle such issues as job training, the lack of economic opportunities and ways to open communication between businesses and residents — especially businesses at Port San Antonio, formerly Kelly USA.

Representatives from the Southwest Workers' Union have attended all three roundtables. Lara Cushing, the environmental justice coordinator for the grassroots organization, said the community turnout was excellent.

"It was really positive — just the fact that the community came out and they had a lot of great ideas that were put out there as really community-driven, and they said this is what we want to see in our neighborhood," she said.

About 50 people attended the meeting, according to organizers.

Residents said they would like to see an increase in non-industrial businesses, social services, grocery stores, drug stores and health clinics, along with green space, Cushing said.

Jeff Labez-Hough represented the South San Antonio Chamber of Commerce. He worked on similar discussions about the Kelly area in the early 1990s and said the detailed dialogue he heard at the meeting impressed him.

"This kind of collaborative was not occurring in the '90s," Labez-Hough said. "And Bruce (Miller, the chief executive officer of Port San Antonio) has the approach that says, 'I want as much help as I can get' (in developing the area), and that's a very positive step that he's taken."

Educating tenants on what businesses and services are located near the port is one problem the South San Antonio Chamber of Commerce may be able to help with in the future, Labez-Hough said. The chamber could think about creating graphics or publications to send to current and new businesses in the area, he said.

"No one knows what's right outside of the fence," he added.

Barbara Ankamah with the city's economic development department answered workforce development questions. Residents expressed concern over the lack of training for adults who want to move into more technologically advanced jobs.

Ankamah told them about the information technology training provided through a city partnership with the Alamo Community College District at the Advanced Technology Center at Port San Antonio.

"Whether going into the IT industry or health, they have a training module in place to help get better training to compete in the workforce," she said.

Ankamah added that she was pleased with how informed and concerned the residents appeared.

"I got the feeling that the majority seemed very aware of what was out there," she said. "They are very entrenched and very involved. I just think it was a really good thing to see so many people there. People really want to provide input to see the initiatives (be) successful."

But Cushing said she was disappointed that more representatives from businesses at the port did not attend the roundtable.

Stephanie Ramsey, vice president of marketing at Port San Antonio, said the authority wants to cooperate with the community.

"We certainly understand people are looking for help in putting together their projects and things they think need to get done," Ramsey said. "Certainly the members put forth suggestions and recommendations on what they would like to see Port San Antonio do in the community — largely things that would involve contributions by the port to specific endeavors, in some cases to donate (green) space or building space."

With all of the roundtables completed, KAC members will compile the requests and recommendations for a final report, which will be distributed at an implementation meeting. That meeting likely will be held in a couple of months, but no date has been set, organizers said.

Moderately Priced Speech

By: Keli Dailey
San Antonio Current

Those activist City Councilwomen in District 5 (Patti Radle) and 7 (Elena Guajardo) were the ones who pulled the consent item developed in the troll-dark cellar of the City Manager’s office from the March 1 agenda.

Radle said she has had just a few chances to protect the Constitution in her seat at the Council dais. And the sudden proposal to create a new parade-permit process imposing million-dollar liability insurance fees and police costs upon organizers of moving processions — like the two record-breaking, 18,000-person immigration-reform protests that erupted here in San Quilmas last April — seemed to counter our First Amendment right to peacably “assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” as the Bill of Rights puts it.

The draft of Article 17, which was tabled indefinitely at the March 8 council meeting and will be the subject of a community tete-a-tete between concerned activists and Assistant City Manager Penny Postoak-Ferguson on Thursday, also requires applicants to notify all businesses and homes along a proposed route, increases the permit-application period filed with the chief of police from 30 days to 45 days before an event, and replaces the authority of City Council to hear an appeal of a denied permit with that of the City Manager.

Another conspicuous aspect of the proposal increases the maximum fine for “engaging in, participating in, or organizing a procession without a permit” from $500 to $2,000. (Raising the question, when was the last time you went to a “Basta con Bush” march and asked to see the
organizers’ permit?)

The proposed ordinance raised a flag for Radle, the Westside official who collaborates on the César Chávez March for Justice (taking place March 31 beginning at 11 a.m. at 1321 El Paso in front of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church), an event exempted from costs and penalties in the existing and proposed parade ordinances, along with the Martin Luther King March and the Veterans Day Parade.

“I think Elena and I were just concerned it would outprice our right to assemble,” said Radle. “I don’t think [the City was] trying to pull a fast one. They saw it as a simple raising of a fee.”

The proposed changes have created a credibility moment for the principal actors in San Antonio’s grassroots protest efforts — can they organize enough concern about the right to organize?

Councilwoman Guajardo is helping coordinate the delegation of activists going before City staff to weigh in on the ordinance. “We don’t want to give an impression as a city that we are trying to restrict the right of assembly in any way,” the self-described “warrior [for an] open, transparent government” said. “When I spoke with the City Manager’s office they said ‘let’s have an open dialogue’ … it was never about ‘let’s get this thing pushed on the agenda.’”

The meeting is expected to include:

The Southwest Workers Union — the group behind a stationary protest outside the Army recruiting station on Main last Saturday morning in observance of the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war; that coordinates the annual march to cleanup Kelly’s Toxic Triangle surrounding the former Air Force base said to have poured cancer-causing chemicals into a shallow aquifer; and the wily folks behind one of the 18,000-person immigration marches — an event that did not have a permit. “We actually think the permit rules are prohibitive for groups trying to do events,” says SWU organizer Lara Cushing.

The San Antonio Chapter of the ACLU — President Patrick Filyk sees the proposed Article 17 as a “tax on your First Amendment rights.” Board members at a strategy meeting hosted by the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center last Monday were already talking lawsuits. The Pittsburgh Chapter of the ACLU — I pointed out to attendees — successfully sued their city in 2003 when they proposed similar cost-recovery fees, insurance, and police costs related to peaceful demonstrations.

One good thing Filyk said about the proposal was it’d do away with fixed parade routes (need everything start in Milam Park?)

T.C. Calvert and the Neighborhoods First Alliance/ The Esperanza Peace & Justice Center — In Esperanza gadfly and St. Mary’s law professor Amy Kastely’s view, exempting some events like the MLK March from the ordinance probably would not be upheld as constitutional (see Trewhella v. City of Lake Geneva, she says) since it appears that the permit process could favor less controversial groups and types of speech.

“The City Council might come up with something we don’t agree with and we want to demonstrate against,” said the imposing T.C. Calvert at the Monday-night strategy session.

“Like this ordinance,” shot back Esperanza Executive Director Graciela Sánchez wryly.

San Antonio Police Department reps — “People are writing more into this than is actually there,” said Traffic Administration Officer William Jenkins. “I can assure you that there is no difference [between the existing and proposed ordinances]. This is actually loosening things … rather than making it more strict.” Jenkins supports free speech, he says, and from his perspective collapsing two different ordinances addressing how events use our streets and sidewalks (City Code Chapter 19, articles 12 and 13) into one is a “language-tightening and housekeeping issue.”

City Manager’s Office — An aide in Postoak-Ferguson’s office said they decided at a recent management and executive-level meeting to table the proposal so that they could “kinda include the organizations affected by the ordinance.”