Something Fishy About Legal Aid

If your going to use the services of legal aid you'd
better check them out first. Scams come in all shapes
and sizes so why not with your local legal aid. Read on
and see what's so fishy about some legal aids.

One of California's largest law firms has filed a civil case seeking to put an allegedly fake legal-aid operation out of business in Northern California.

Legal experts said the lawsuit tries to address a growing problem statewide.

The suit, filed in Contra Costa County Superior Court last week, alleges that the Legal Center for Legal Aid has swindled Northern California residents who were seeking assistance with evictions.

San Francisco-based Morrison & Foerster asserts the center employed false advertising in a "brazen . . . scam" to deceive four people, including an elderly blind man, a double amputee and a plaintiff with a severe head injury, according to court documents.

The center provided either no or faulty assistance to the plaintiffs and continues to use false advertising and other illegal tactics, according to the suit, filed in Martinez.

Morrison & Foerster attorneys, led by Angela Padilla of the firm's San Francisco office, are seeking an injunction barring the center, and its principal, Richard Gugg, from engaging in fraudulent activities.

The center advertises in a number of California Yellow Page directories and its Yellow Page entry "was placed alongside and sometimes directly above and below those of legitimate legal aid services, enhancing its apparent credibility and deceiving those who were hurried or confused in their need for legal help," Padilla said in a written statement.




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"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
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If Not The Rooney Rule Then What?

This looks like a case of the good-old boys trying not to
change things. But the way I see it there needs to be
some kind of a program in place so that minority coaches
can get an even shot at coaching in the college ranks.
For too long now minority coaches have been denied access
to the college ranks and a change has to come.


Mississippi State Coach Sylvester Croom said he doubted that diversity could be mandated in college football.
The Black Coaches Association has suggested Division I college football, possibly through the N.C.A.A., needs to implement guidelines similar to the Rooney Rule in the N.F.L., which requires teams to interview minority candidates when hiring a head coach.

“I don’t think that’s feasible, because every institution is so different,” Croom said during a recent teleconference. “You have so many parties to satisfy in college football.
“The N.F.L. is an organization. It’s a lot easier to have missions and address issues. I don’t see how that would work at this level.”

The Rooney Rule has resulted in a gradual increase in black coaches around the N.F.L. The N.C.A.A. has said it does not have the authority to control the way its members hire coaches.
Croom is one of only six black coaches among 119 Football Bowl Subdivision teams, along with U.C.L.A.’s Karl Dorrell, Buffalo’s Turner Gill, Washington’s Tyrone Willingham, Kansas State’s Ron Prince and Miami’s Randy Shannon.

Shannon was one of two minorities hired to fill 23 coaching vacancies for bowl subdivision (formerly I-A) teams after last season. The other was Florida International’s Mario Cristobal, who is Hispanic.
Shannon said minority candidates had been getting more interviews. “You just have to make sure you’re not interviewing somebody just to interview them,” he said. “That’s what kills you about the Rooney Rule.”





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Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Heroes

Now here is a woman that can definetly be called a champion
for human rights. Check out her article and you'll agree that
we still have a very long way to go.


We are within hours of learning whether AB 1539 will be signed or vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to help relieve the crisis in our prisons where real people are perishing from overcrowded conditions caused by medical neglect. While this is far from being a perfect bill, we have often rallied at the prisons and at the Capitol, attended hearings for a decade, filed legal actions to put teeth into our insistence that these basic human rights be respected, and have inspired and written thousands of articles to get the issue on the front burner. The wait is nearly over and we should hear today, or at the latest by Monday whether or not our work to get even a baby step achieved toward compassionate release of sick and dying prisoners was in vain or not.

Today is my birthday, and as I mark another year's milestone in our UNION's daily, brutal, decade-long battle for compassionate release and all basic human rights, I would like to publicly thank Judges Thelton Henderson and Lawrence Karlton for taking action to try and stop the constant murder by medical neglect in California's prisons. There is no way that I can express enough gratitude to both they and Attorney Donald Specter of Prison Law Office and his staff for the great legal work that brought us to this point. The heroic work of our UNION family members who had the courage and common sense to file 28 lawsuits against 350 state employees also deserve a round of applause as all serious reform comes from lawsuits, initiative campaigns and putting the right people in office.

Most of their lawsuits are for wrongful deaths, and those UNION families who opened up their lives during their worst nightmare in order to help identify the true extent of the crisis deserve everyone's deepest respect and gratitude. After all, they are fighting battles for those who are still alive, even their own sons and daughters are dead at the hands of State employees still running amok. It is predicable that another 400 plus people are going to die in prison this year, while their family members live in denial and take no action to prevent it. Many of them will be young, healthy, men and women imprisoned for a non-violent, minor crime who did not have a death sentence, and those who are bereaved are fighting to benefit them and to try and find some sort of relief to their own excruciating pain, which will no doubt last a lifetime.

As part of my birthday reflection, I re-read this famous letter sent by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as he sat alone in jail in Birmingham, Alabama. He was being criticized and abandoned by fellow members of the clergy, who were the very people who should have been helping him. People were dying over the battle for the black's right to vote and those who were trying to stand up to it were being murdered, stoned, burned out of their homes and churches during the 60's.





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Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Poor Clarence

If it is which molds that we are cast from I sure
hope like hell the one Justice Clarence Thomas
came from got broken. The man was a perfect
ringer when the elder President Bush nominated
him. The way things have worked in this country
is by when one person of a race rises to prominence
then he in turn would pull up some other member
of that race up with him. Instead Thomas is stomping
on fingers. Somebody get a rope! Eugene Robinson's
commentary is right on target so check it out below.

I believe in affirmative action, but I have to acknowledge there are arguments against it. One of the more cogent is the presence of Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court.

If you caught Thomas on " 60 Minutes" on Sunday night, you know that he will probably consider me one of the many people who want to see him "destroyed" because he doesn't "follow in this cult-like way something that blacks are supposed to believe." That's what he told CBS correspondent Steve Kroft -- that he'd been persecuted for "veering away from the black gospel that we're supposed to adhere to."

The up-close-and-personal "60 Minutes" piece, timed to coincide with publication of Thomas's autobiography, was compelling television. It was also a useful reminder that whenever my Bush Derangement Syndrome flares up to the point where I'm actually feeling nostalgic for the days when George Bush the Elder was in the White House, I need only recall that it was Poppy who put Thomas on the court. That snaps me back to my senses. Thomas is only 59; we'll be saddled with him, and that gigantic chip on his shoulder, for decades to come.

Thomas said in the interview that the scorched-earth battle over his confirmation wasn't really about him, it was about abortion. Yet at other points he made clear that the whole thing was about him, specifically his commission of the ultimate sin: He is (drum roll, please) a black conservative. Cover the children's ears.

"I'm black," he told Kroft. "So I'm supposed to think a certain way. I'm supposed to have certain opinions. I don't do that. You don't create a box and put people in and then make a lot of generalizations about them."

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Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/