Audio By Carbonatix
I Will Not Be Destroyed
Even though white media like you are out to get African-American men like me: I am not surprised that the white media would write a story on April 24 slamming the Miami-Dade Corrections Department’s internal-affairs bureau for alleged corruption in its investigations, then just three months later, New Times and Tristram Korten — same newspaper and same reporter — would publish a story against me, legitimizing the same department he previously criticized (“Case Closed,” July 24).
Since 1970 I have been in the fight for justice on behalf of African Americans. After reading “Case Closed,” I am reminded of J. Edgar Hoover’s corrupt investigations into the late Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The FBI set out to discredit Reverend King’s good name and reputation. But the FBI, despite all its power, failed. The New Times organization and some members of the Miami-Dade Corrections Department will also fail. America has a long history of attempts to break the spirit of people who fight for freedom and justice in order that someday African Americans will be first-class citizens.
I do not have any ill feelings toward Ms. Monique Chester and Mr. Kevin Pettigrew, and I ask Miami-Dade correctional personnel to not retaliate against them in any way should they unfortunately return to your institution.
I also encourage my brothers and sisters to stay with the fight for justice and to assist our people no matter where you may find them. Remember the words of Reverend King: “Everybody can be great … because anybody can serve.”
Walter G. Clark
Special Consultant for African-American Government Employees, Inc.
Miami
More Racial Foolishness
Celia Cruz was not black or white or purple — she was Cuban: As a Cuban I was very offended by Celeste Fraser Delgado’s article about Celia Cruz (“Over Her Dead Body,” July 24) and how she made a racial issue of the whole affair. In my family, as in most Cuban families, we have all shades of color. As we say: “Tenemos de la pinta. “
It’s unfortunate that Ms. Delgado seems caught up in the racial foolishness that infects this country. It is always said in Cuba: “Si no tiene del Congo tiene de Carabali“ — we are all of color, even the blond-haired, blue-eyed ones. We Cubans are one blood, one soul, one heart. It really saddens me to read this at a time when the world mourns the loss of a great person.
Angelo Figueras
Miami
We Cubans
Found It Offensive
But what do you expect from such a biased newspaper? What an idiot Celeste Fraser Delgado is. I just read “Over Her Dead Body” and as a Cuban woman I was quite offended by her constant mention of Celia Cruz being black. First and foremost, Celia was Cuban. It is also offensive that Celeste refers to the slave trade as an exile more terrible than the Castro dictatorship. She should go and live on that island and experience the lack of freedom we have experienced during the past 44 years.
This newspaper is extremely biased against Cuban exiles. Get all the facts, will you?
Rebecca Diaz
Miami
Just the Facts, Ma’am — If You Have any Facts
Like everyone else, cops are innocent until proven guilty: Perhaps it’s the fact that I am a liberal Democrat. Or maybe it’s the fact that I am an ACLU member. More likely, however, I think it’s the fact that, as a Miami police lieutenant, I’ve put more robbers and dopers in jail than most cops. Whatever the case, I feel I have a right and an obligation to speak out.
I am tired of the anonymous, “behind the walls of dark alleys” type of people who speak shit when they haven’t the balls to identify themselves. Let me start by saying that if the high-ranking Miami police personnel Tristram Korten writes about are guilty as accused, I hope they rot in hell (“Rumors Flying Like Bullets,” July 24). And if there is any coverup of their involvement in wrongdoing, I hope their protectors languish in a prison somewhere.
But until all the facts are in, we are dealing in rumors and assumptions. Rumors, like a vicious cancer, must be cut out at their earliest stages or they’ll spread. Whenever I read words like “alleged,” it tells me that nothing has been proven yet. You show me some evidence and I’ll make a crucifixion that would rank among the Bible’s best! But until you give me that proof, I would rather be wrong and be called a naive fool than be wrong and destroy a man or woman’s reputation.
We need to get away from these Gestapo-type accusatory outbursts and treat everyone (including cops) as innocent until proven guilty.
David Magnusson
Hialeah
Padrón and the
Mas Canosas
Inspiring examples of what makes Miami a Third World corrupted cesspool of thievery and mismanagement: I love the takedown Kirk Nielsen and New Times did on Eduardo Padrón, the caudillo of Miami-Dade Community College (“Bad Man on Campus, Parts 1 and 2,” June 19 and July 3). I wonder if Padrón had his “goons” (i.e., campus police) run around and collect and destroy the papers, which he’s done in the past as an expression of his appreciation for freedom of the press. The cover illustration of a red-horned devil was a perfect image for so many Miami politicians — just fill in the blank — in this beautiful but Third World corrupted cesspool of thievery and mismanagement.
As I read this excellent coverage, I kept asking myself one thing that was never explicitly mentioned: What is really going on here between Il Duce Padrón and the utterly corrupt Mas Canosa family? The Mas Canosas got rich not by inventing a product (like the Fords with the automobile) but by creating a public lobbying entity, then installing the father as a Machado/Batista/Castro-like dictator for life, then turning it into a divine-right monarchy and passing it on to the son, and then employing gangsterlike methods using that machinery to shake down the Miami political system for taxpayer-financed contracts that did make them rich and saddled the public with fraud (e.g., bogus pavement contracts), gross mismanagement (the Broward County prison project), and untold other looting we don’t even know about.
So what’s the latest heist they’ve been contemplating? Selling the Freedom Tower, the so-called symbol of the Cuban-exile experience. They bought it on the cheap to supposedly preserve and turn into a museum glorifying the father and family’s role in all this, but when it looked like nobody was really interested and it would be a money-loser for certain, they concocted this behind-closed-doors scheme to greatly inflate the value of the building, make a killing off it, and the suckers of Miami would swallow it like a big dumb carp. The Führer Padrón would score untold points he could cash in the future, not to mention whatever else is really going on we don’t know about. The Mas Canosas would pull off a daylight robbery of the Public Bank and be congratulated by their cronies on the way out.
How sick is all this and how did the real essence of the story (as good as it was) get lost? The follow-up article, Part 2 of the story, seemed to pick up on this much more than the first, which focused on the attempt to violate the law and crush a whistleblower. All that is fascinating but not the heart of what’s going on.
Michael Juchnowski
Miami Beach