For those that don't know there is an internet Radio show called ARC ( America's Reality Check). They have a variety of guests ranging from authors, mother's of teen RFSOs, Lawyers, Professors etc. Well next Tuesday June 30th they have a special guest. Ron Book will be on live to speak and answer questions. If you are not familiar with who Ron Book is, he is the lawyer/lobbyist who has campaigned for the 2500 ft residency restrictions that have forced many RFSOs to have to live under a bridge in Miami. The other irony to this stituation is that he is also the head of Miami's Homeless Trust. Questions can be send to the e-mail below. Please be respectful when calling in. How he is treated will reflect on the whole RFSO community. But it should be interesting to hear him defend himself and these laws. Tune in Tuesday. For more information on Ron Book Click this LINK.
Hosted by: RealityUSA
Title: SPECIAL SHOW/SPECIAL NIGHT/SPECIAL TIME/RON BOOK FROM FLORIDA
Time: 06/30/2009 08:30 PM EDT
Episode Notes: Join us on TUESDAY NIGHT special show at 8:30pm est. Where are guest will be Ron Book who is a Miami attorney and lobbyist from Florida. In 2004, in one of Mr. Books proudest moments, he was awarded the Alvah Chapman Humanitarian of the Year Award for his 12 years of service to the homeless in Miami-Dade County. We at this time are excepting emails from all with questions that we will ask on the show that night. Please keep the questions decent/proper and please have respect to the guest as we hear his side of the issue. Email your questions to AMERICANSREALITYCHECK@GMAIL.COM
For all episodes you can call in or you can get on your Computer or laptop and Listen to the show and participate too.
http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/29521
Phone Number: (724) 444-7444
Call ID: 29521
Showing posts with label Julia Tuttle Causeway Bridge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Julia Tuttle Causeway Bridge. Show all posts
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
SOSEN Video Using Stills, Announcing their Video Project
In this video SOSEN members announce their plans to make a documentary detailing the situation in Miami Florida. As soon as the video is released I will have a copy. I am not sure if I can post it or not but it will be available to groups and others to view. I will let everyone know as soon as it is finished.
This was posted on a forum I belong to by Anita, used with her permission. Thanks Anita!
Dear Julia Tuttle, The Mother of Miami, do you weep?
You, who gave so generously for the prosperity of millions of people by creating this Causeway to Miami, what has become of your endowment?
Did you ever envision that one day, those who became the leaders of this magnificent metropolis would create a city of such wretchedness that even God must be weeping. And they call it, Civil Law. And they call it, Home. Some even call it, Deserving.
What would YOU call it?
I call it a Disgrace to your honorable name. I call it Inhumane. I call it a slur against your Legacy. The city of Miami has created its own Misery City. They have forever tarnished the history of The Julia Tuttle Causeway. The poor souls who are forced to live underneath this now infamous Bridge, They weep. Their families weep. We weep. God weeps. Is this what the lawmakers call, "The Path to Redemption"?
You are called, The Mother of Miami. Surely you weep for what has become of your heritage. Who else will weep with us and recognize how valuable is the dignity of the Human spirit?
This was posted on a forum I belong to by Anita, used with her permission. Thanks Anita!
Dear Julia Tuttle, The Mother of Miami, do you weep?
You, who gave so generously for the prosperity of millions of people by creating this Causeway to Miami, what has become of your endowment?
Did you ever envision that one day, those who became the leaders of this magnificent metropolis would create a city of such wretchedness that even God must be weeping. And they call it, Civil Law. And they call it, Home. Some even call it, Deserving.
What would YOU call it?
I call it a Disgrace to your honorable name. I call it Inhumane. I call it a slur against your Legacy. The city of Miami has created its own Misery City. They have forever tarnished the history of The Julia Tuttle Causeway. The poor souls who are forced to live underneath this now infamous Bridge, They weep. Their families weep. We weep. God weeps. Is this what the lawmakers call, "The Path to Redemption"?
You are called, The Mother of Miami. Surely you weep for what has become of your heritage. Who else will weep with us and recognize how valuable is the dignity of the Human spirit?
Monday, June 22, 2009
BBC Does Show About the Florida RFSOs
Wow! imagine this that scandal of the residents living under the Julia Tuttle Causeway Bridge has drawn the attention of the BBC. You'd think that Florida would get the message that what they are doing is violating these peoples human and civil rights. There is a long list of politicians, lobbyists and officals that all share the blame for this terrible situation.
Rough justice
21 June 2009
article here
A Miami law is forcing many of the city’s sex offenders to sleep rough under a bridge, reports Emilio San Pedro for the BBC’s Americana programme.
Tents set up by released sex offenders under a road bridge in Miami
The area under the Julia Tuttle Causeway in downtown Miami has in recent years become the unlikely home for a growing community of about 70 convicted sex offenders.
They have ended up living in a makeshift tent city under one of the causeway’s bridges because of a local law which prohibits those who have sexually abused minors from living within 2,500 ft (760m) of anywhere where children congregate, such as schools, libraries and parks.
After the local laws were enacted, Florida’s correctional authorities found there was virtually nowhere else for these people to live and began dropping them off at the bridge.
Some of them have even been issued driving licences with the bridge listed as their home address.
Angry
“Welcome to American justice,” said Dr Pedro Jose Greer, the Dean of Florida International University’s Department of Humanities, Health and Society, as he met me under the bridge to discuss the squalid conditions at the camp.
“We have people living together with mental and physical illnesses in an environment where people can’t possibly sleep because of the cars going by overhead - where you can smell the urine and see the trash mounting all around us.”
“This is the stupidest damn law I have ever seen and it’s purely mandated by revenge without any consideration for the well-being of these people“
Dr Pedro Greer
Campaigner
Dr Pedro Greer
Dr Greer has for decades been a leading advocate in Miami for homeless people and their right to receive adequate medical and social services.
He told me that he has become increasingly angry over the last few years at the existence of this camp and the lack of an alternative way to reintegrate these convicted sex offenders into society.
“What we’re doing is we’re saying ‘let’s take the people that we most despise, that did some of the most egregious things in society and let them all get together and not supervise them and let them wander around the community’,” he tells me with a clear sense of frustration in his voice.
“This is the stupidest damn law I have ever seen and it’s purely mandated by revenge without any consideration for the well-being of these people - who deserve better despite the severity of their crimes,” he says.
No money
As we walk around the camp, with its tents and makeshift huts, lack of running water, electricity or any form of sewage, I meet Isaias, a 35-year-old Latino and former US Marine, who has been living at the camp for over two years.
He tells me how the state authorities simply drop former offenders like him under the bridge and - as he puts it - let them fend for themselves.
“They don’t give us no water, no food, no portable toilets, no money - nothing,” he tells me.
“ I’ve only been here five days but I can’t believe these criminal conditions we live in“
Julio
Julio
Isaias - who served five years in prison for having sexual relations with a 16-year-old girl and is now out on parole - says that all that he and many of his neighbours under the bridge want is to be able to attempt to lead a normal life and move beyond their criminal past.
“I can’t live with my wife and my daughter. I would like to have a normal life and be able to become a productive member of society again, but society is not giving us that chance,” he tells me.
I then ask him if - as a father himself - if he can understand why society harbours such anger for people who have committed these sorts of crimes.
“I would understand it - yes - as a father but at the same time I cannot expect that a person who committed this kind of crime against my own child should then come out of jail and be forced to live like an animal - as we’re doing here,” he says.
A few metres away I meet Julio - a 62-year-old Cuban immigrant, who served 10 years in prison for abusing of a 12-year-old girl. He is a recent arrival at the camp and is finding it very difficult to adjust.
“The conditions here are terrible. I’ve only been here five days but I can’t believe these criminal conditions we live in. I have absolutely nothing and no-one to give me any form of assistance at all. I wonder if I’ll ever get out of here,” he concludes.
Too sensitive
The problem for people like Julio is that the serious nature of the crimes they committed makes it very difficult for them to get much sympathy from the local community or from local politicians - who for the most part have found the issue too sensitive and downright controversial to become involved.
However, earlier this month, one city of Miami commissioner, Marc Sarnoff, did just that.
With the backing of the city government, he wrote a letter to the state governor, Charlie Crist, asking him to shut the camp down.
He based that request on the fact that there is a small island that serves as a weekend park for boaters and their children that lies within the existing local boundaries.
“I’m not here to support or endorse anything with regard to sexual offenders… However, they are living in squalor“
Marc Sarnoff
City Commissioner
I met Mr Sarnoff on a recent sunny morning at a local park, where a group of boys were playing baseball with their coach.
He told me that his top priority remained protecting these children from sex offenders like the ones who lived at the camp.
“Let me be absolutely clear. I’m not here to support or endorse anything with regard to sexual offenders. They are my least bit of concern,” he tells me.
“However, they are living in squalor. I don’t think human beings will stay in that condition. They’re going to start leaving and what we thought was a good law of 2,500 ft to keep them away from our children will eventually push them back into the population.”
Mr Sarnoff hopes that the letter to Governor Crist will force the state either to find some alternative place to house the sex offenders or force some form of legal action that will get the state’s courts, which are not beholden to the desires of the electorate, involved.
For the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others like Dr Greer - who believe the offenders have already served their time in prison and deserve the right to attempt to get on with their lives - the camp’s existence and the desperate conditions there serve as a troubling reflection of the values of modern-day Miami.
“The question is - have we become a society that doesn’t let you die but let’s you suffer Do we just say we’re living in the Middle Ages - an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” Dr Greer told me after we had finished touring the camp.
“I think we’ve gone beyond that.”
This article is an adaptation of a feature that was originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Americana programme. Americana is broadcast at 1915 BST every Sunday on BBC Radio 4 FM.
Rough justice
21 June 2009
article here
A Miami law is forcing many of the city’s sex offenders to sleep rough under a bridge, reports Emilio San Pedro for the BBC’s Americana programme.
Tents set up by released sex offenders under a road bridge in Miami
The area under the Julia Tuttle Causeway in downtown Miami has in recent years become the unlikely home for a growing community of about 70 convicted sex offenders.
They have ended up living in a makeshift tent city under one of the causeway’s bridges because of a local law which prohibits those who have sexually abused minors from living within 2,500 ft (760m) of anywhere where children congregate, such as schools, libraries and parks.
After the local laws were enacted, Florida’s correctional authorities found there was virtually nowhere else for these people to live and began dropping them off at the bridge.
Some of them have even been issued driving licences with the bridge listed as their home address.
Angry
“Welcome to American justice,” said Dr Pedro Jose Greer, the Dean of Florida International University’s Department of Humanities, Health and Society, as he met me under the bridge to discuss the squalid conditions at the camp.
“We have people living together with mental and physical illnesses in an environment where people can’t possibly sleep because of the cars going by overhead - where you can smell the urine and see the trash mounting all around us.”
“This is the stupidest damn law I have ever seen and it’s purely mandated by revenge without any consideration for the well-being of these people“
Dr Pedro Greer
Campaigner
Dr Pedro Greer
Dr Greer has for decades been a leading advocate in Miami for homeless people and their right to receive adequate medical and social services.
He told me that he has become increasingly angry over the last few years at the existence of this camp and the lack of an alternative way to reintegrate these convicted sex offenders into society.
“What we’re doing is we’re saying ‘let’s take the people that we most despise, that did some of the most egregious things in society and let them all get together and not supervise them and let them wander around the community’,” he tells me with a clear sense of frustration in his voice.
“This is the stupidest damn law I have ever seen and it’s purely mandated by revenge without any consideration for the well-being of these people - who deserve better despite the severity of their crimes,” he says.
No money
As we walk around the camp, with its tents and makeshift huts, lack of running water, electricity or any form of sewage, I meet Isaias, a 35-year-old Latino and former US Marine, who has been living at the camp for over two years.
He tells me how the state authorities simply drop former offenders like him under the bridge and - as he puts it - let them fend for themselves.
“They don’t give us no water, no food, no portable toilets, no money - nothing,” he tells me.
“ I’ve only been here five days but I can’t believe these criminal conditions we live in“
Julio
Julio
Isaias - who served five years in prison for having sexual relations with a 16-year-old girl and is now out on parole - says that all that he and many of his neighbours under the bridge want is to be able to attempt to lead a normal life and move beyond their criminal past.
“I can’t live with my wife and my daughter. I would like to have a normal life and be able to become a productive member of society again, but society is not giving us that chance,” he tells me.
I then ask him if - as a father himself - if he can understand why society harbours such anger for people who have committed these sorts of crimes.
“I would understand it - yes - as a father but at the same time I cannot expect that a person who committed this kind of crime against my own child should then come out of jail and be forced to live like an animal - as we’re doing here,” he says.
A few metres away I meet Julio - a 62-year-old Cuban immigrant, who served 10 years in prison for abusing of a 12-year-old girl. He is a recent arrival at the camp and is finding it very difficult to adjust.
“The conditions here are terrible. I’ve only been here five days but I can’t believe these criminal conditions we live in. I have absolutely nothing and no-one to give me any form of assistance at all. I wonder if I’ll ever get out of here,” he concludes.
Too sensitive
The problem for people like Julio is that the serious nature of the crimes they committed makes it very difficult for them to get much sympathy from the local community or from local politicians - who for the most part have found the issue too sensitive and downright controversial to become involved.
However, earlier this month, one city of Miami commissioner, Marc Sarnoff, did just that.
With the backing of the city government, he wrote a letter to the state governor, Charlie Crist, asking him to shut the camp down.
He based that request on the fact that there is a small island that serves as a weekend park for boaters and their children that lies within the existing local boundaries.
“I’m not here to support or endorse anything with regard to sexual offenders… However, they are living in squalor“
Marc Sarnoff
City Commissioner
I met Mr Sarnoff on a recent sunny morning at a local park, where a group of boys were playing baseball with their coach.
He told me that his top priority remained protecting these children from sex offenders like the ones who lived at the camp.
“Let me be absolutely clear. I’m not here to support or endorse anything with regard to sexual offenders. They are my least bit of concern,” he tells me.
“However, they are living in squalor. I don’t think human beings will stay in that condition. They’re going to start leaving and what we thought was a good law of 2,500 ft to keep them away from our children will eventually push them back into the population.”
Mr Sarnoff hopes that the letter to Governor Crist will force the state either to find some alternative place to house the sex offenders or force some form of legal action that will get the state’s courts, which are not beholden to the desires of the electorate, involved.
For the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others like Dr Greer - who believe the offenders have already served their time in prison and deserve the right to attempt to get on with their lives - the camp’s existence and the desperate conditions there serve as a troubling reflection of the values of modern-day Miami.
“The question is - have we become a society that doesn’t let you die but let’s you suffer Do we just say we’re living in the Middle Ages - an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” Dr Greer told me after we had finished touring the camp.
“I think we’ve gone beyond that.”
This article is an adaptation of a feature that was originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Americana programme. Americana is broadcast at 1915 BST every Sunday on BBC Radio 4 FM.
ACLU Speaks Out In Florida, Threatens Legal Action
It's about time that the ACLU and other Human Rights Organizations spoke out in defense of the homeless RFSOs living under the Julia Tuttle Causeway Bridge, in Miami, Florida. Friends of mine spent several days down there interviewing the residents and filming them, last week. There is a documentary coming soon.
http://www.aclufl.org/news_events/?action=viewRelease&emailAlertID=3748
Homeless Sex Offenders Under Julia Tuttle Bridge Continue to Be Targeted by State, Local Law Enforcement
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
June 2, 2009
CONTACT:
ACLU of Florida Media Office: 786.363.2737 or media@aclufl.org
The following statement can be attributed to Jeanne Baker, ACLU of Florida Board President:
"State and local communities, including Miami and Miami Dade County and other local communities have enacted residency restrictions that impermissibly exceed state law. Governor Crist and the Florida Legislature have repeatedly ignored requests from the ACLU and others to address this growing crisis. Instead, the Governor and Legislature have turned a blind eye to the impact of this public health and safety threat to our community.
"Now, the State and local communities point their fingers at each other in an attempt to shift blame. This is a statewide problem, and the Julia Tuttle Causeway is only the most graphic example. We need a state-wide solution, and sadly, the Governor remains AWOL.
"While the best solution would be intervention by the Governor, the ACLU and other advocacy groups are prepared to seek a solution through the courts."
2009 Press Releases
http://www.aclufl.org/news_events/?action=viewRelease&emailAlertID=3748
Homeless Sex Offenders Under Julia Tuttle Bridge Continue to Be Targeted by State, Local Law Enforcement
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
June 2, 2009
CONTACT:
ACLU of Florida Media Office: 786.363.2737 or media@aclufl.org
The following statement can be attributed to Jeanne Baker, ACLU of Florida Board President:
"State and local communities, including Miami and Miami Dade County and other local communities have enacted residency restrictions that impermissibly exceed state law. Governor Crist and the Florida Legislature have repeatedly ignored requests from the ACLU and others to address this growing crisis. Instead, the Governor and Legislature have turned a blind eye to the impact of this public health and safety threat to our community.
"Now, the State and local communities point their fingers at each other in an attempt to shift blame. This is a statewide problem, and the Julia Tuttle Causeway is only the most graphic example. We need a state-wide solution, and sadly, the Governor remains AWOL.
"While the best solution would be intervention by the Governor, the ACLU and other advocacy groups are prepared to seek a solution through the courts."
2009 Press Releases
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Recording of a Live Radio Show, From the Julia Tuttle Causeway Bridge
This is a recording of a live radio show, in it you will here some of the men and the one woman who Florida/Miami have forced to live under the Julia Tuttle Causeway Bridge. The people live in squalid conditions that if we forced our animals to live in the SPCA would be called to investigate us for animal cruelty. This interview gives a voice to the Former Offenders. These are human beings! They deserve human treatment. Just think, you may wonder why should I care about them? They did something wrong and let them rot. Well how many of us have done things that we are not proud of? As Jesus said when the religious leaders wanted the prostitute stoned under Jewish Law... "He who is without sin cast the first stone" Let's stop casting stones and figure out how to solve the problem of child sexual abuse. Over 90% of child sexual abuse is done by someone not one the Registry and it is their first time offense. Laws that banish Former Offenders will not stop abuse from happening. 97% of abusers are people known to the family and the child, 80% are family members. No one wants to admit that the true danger is right in their own homes. It is much easier to look at Former Offenders and blame them. The myth that is being touted by those who sponsor these laws is that Former Offenders have high recidivism rates but the truth comes from the Department of Justices own studies, Former Offenders have a rate of 3.5% in a three year time from when they are released and that the rate falls off dramatically after that. That is not ignoring that there are some truly sick people who do re-offend. There can be laws that address such instances. laws that fit the crime and that don't lump every offender into the worst of the worst and allow those who want to live a law abiding life to rebuild their lives.
Please listen to the whole show, one of the last to speak is a 51 year old man who is a quadriplegic confined to a wheelchair. His story will make you cry. After you listen you can contact me and I will give you information on how to help these people. Thanks!
Please listen to the whole show, one of the last to speak is a 51 year old man who is a quadriplegic confined to a wheelchair. His story will make you cry. After you listen you can contact me and I will give you information on how to help these people. Thanks!
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