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“PLACAS: The Most Dangerous Tattoo” a play by Paul Paul S. Flores, directed by Michael John Garces and starring Ric Salinas of Culture Clash will go on a six city U.S. Tour this coming spring including dates with the GALA Hispanic Theatre in Washington, DC, Salinas, Laney College Theater in Oakland, Los Angeles Theater Center,Su Teatro in Denver and the Traveling Puerto Rican Theatre Company presented by Pregones in New York City.

Played by Ric Salinas from Culture Clash
Inspired by true events and in part in the life of Alex Sanchez  of Homies Unidos

Thursday April 3 Benefit event  after performance for Homies Unidos Q & A with cast and Alex Sanchez. To buy ticket for play and benefit event call Alex Sanchez for info. 213-793-1050 or follow link: Homies Unidos Benefit

Friday April 4 @ 6pm pre-performance conversation “Healing From Violence” with Father Greg Boyle, Jerry Tello and Alex Sanchez Saturday

April 5 post performance party and reception with cast and crew Sunday

April 6 @ 1pm Youth Voice for Change featuring youth presentations from Boyle Heights

For details on dates in each city, click on the website links below

Placas on Facebook

GALA Hispanic Theatre, Washington, DC
Friday – Saturday March 14-15
http://bit.ly/1mtvN4E

Alisal High School, Salinas, CA
Wednesday – Saturday March 19 – 22
www.brownpapertickets.com/event/603046

Laney College Theater, Oakland, CA
Wednesday – Saturday March 26-29
www.sfiaf.org/placas_2014

Los Angeles Theater Center, Los Angeles, CA
Thursday – Saturday April 3-6
www.thelatc.org

Su Teatro, Denver CO
Thursday – Sunday April 10-13
http://suteatro.org/201314-season/

Traveling Puerto Rican
Wednesday April 16
http://www.pregones.org/

English Information Below:

Homies Unidos les invita a una noche de música y diversión en apoyo a nuestra familias encarceladas. 

Homies Unidos y el Consulado de El Salvador les invita a una noche de música y diversión para apoyar la Asociación Salvadoreña De Apoyo a Privados De Libertad En El Exterior (ASAPLE) es una organización en El Salvador que aboga para los derechos humanos de familiares Salvadoreños detenidos en las prisiones de California. Homies Unidos se ha unido a coordinar el trabajo de la Directora de ASAPLE, Elisa Jurado en Los Ángeles.
Hay cientos de gente en las prisiones en California y muchos de ellos ya cumplieron sus sentencias, pero no los dejan salir, Unos se encuentran con enfermedades terminales y no reciben tratamiento apropiado, otros sufren violaciones de sus derechos humanos. La Sra. Elisa Jurado por más de ocho años ha estado luchando ganar la libertad de estos ciudadanos Salvadoreños.
En un crimen hay más de una víctima, la familia de la víctima y el victimario sufren el dolor de perder a su ser querido. Únanse con nosotros el sábado 4 de mayo y escuchen a Elisa Jurado y las historias de nuestras familias mientras recaudamos fondos apoyar este importante trabajo.

Central American Resource Center (CARECEN-LA)
2845 W. 7th St., Los Angeles, California 90005
6PM-12AM
$5 Donacion Minima
Checkes se pueden hacer a Homies Unidos Inc.
Baile, Comida y Bevidas estara diponible

English: Homies Unidos Invites you to a night of music and dancing in support of our incarcerated families.
Homies Unidos and the Consulate of El Salvador invites you to a night of music and fun to support the Salvadoran Association in support of freedom deprived in the Exterior (ASAPLE) is an organization in El Salvador, which advocates for the rights of Salvadoran relatives incarcerated in the prisons of California. Homies Unidos has joined to coordinate the work of the Director of ASAPLE, Elisa Jurado in Los Angeles.
There are hundreds of people in prisons in California who have completed their minimum require sentences, but they continue in prison year after year, some are with terminal illnesses and do not receive appropriate treatment, others suffer violations of their human rights. Ms. Elisa Jurado for more than eight years has been fighting to win the freedom of these Salvadoran citizens.
There is more than one victim in a crime; the families of the victim and the aggressor suffer the pain of losing their loved one. Join us on Saturday, May 4 and listen to the stories of our families while we raise funds to continue the very important work of Elisa Jurado.

Central American Resource Center (CARECEN-LA)
2845 W. 7th St., Los Angeles, California 90005
6PM-12AM
$5 minimum donation
Checks can be made out to Homies Unidos Inc.
Dancing Food and beverages will also be available

Example: Sorry, this entry is only available in Spanish.

Example: Sorry, this entry is only available in Spanish.

SUPPORT MOUNTS FOR SALVADORAN GANG TRUCE
BY TOM HAYDEN

Longtime gang peace process advocates in Los Angeles announced new support on Memorial Day for the 11-week truce called by incarcerated Mara Salvatrucha and 18th Street gang leaders which has sharply reduced homicides in El Salvador

An estimated 700 lives have been saved since March as homicide rates have fallen from 14-15 to 4-5 per day, or a 65 percent reduction. For the first time in decades, polling shows Salvadoran public opinion defining poverty reduction as their first priority, ahead of sweeps and mass detention. The truce, which is supported by Salvadoran president Mauricio Funes, began Mar. 9 when 30 truce leaders were transferred from a super-max prison to high-security facilities where they were permitted contacts with family and friends. The transfer was approved by the Salvadoran Minister of Justice and Security David Munguia. On March 20, it was confirmed that mediation efforts were being led Raul Mijango, a former guerrilla commandante and legislator, and the head chaplain of the armed forces and police, Bishop Fabio Colindres.

As LA-based peace advocates gathered Monday at La Placita church on Olvera Street, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States [OAS] was set to travel on a supportive visit to El Salvador, to be followed by United Nations and European Union representatives.

A new “Transitional Advisory Group in Support of the Peace Process in El Salvador” was announced at the LA press conference. The twenty-member committee includes a new official presence  in gang peace efforts, Paula Cruz Takash, president of the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission, and a cross-section of leaders with deep roots in past gang peace efforts, including the author Luis Rodriguez and his wife Trini of the Tia Chucha Cultural Center, Aquil Basheer and “Niko” of Maximum Force Enterprise, Aqeela Sherrells of the original Watts truce, Enrique Hurtado of Aztecs Rising, Angela Sambrano of CARACEN, Fr. Michael Kennedy of the Jesuit Restorative Justice Initiative, Fr. Gregory Boyle of Homeboy Industries, Hector Verdugo, also of Homeboy, and Javier Stauring of the LA Archdiocese.  Chairing the press conference was Silvia Beltran, former director of Homies Unidos and currently on the staff of the LA City Council. Also speaking were a Salvadoran student at Cal State Northridge, Elvira Padilla, and a sister of one of the incarcerated men, Mayra Rivas.

The new transnational committee is represented in Washington DC by Luis Cardona and Carmen Perez of the Gathering for Justice [founded by Harry Belafonte] and Juan Pacheco, director of Barrios Unidos.

The purposes of the transnational committee are to work for the safety of those involved in the Salvadoran truce, doing an inventory of the gang members specific needs, and building support and resources for the community-led process. Needs identified so far include: new mattresses for family visits, mental and medical health services, sentence reductions for good conduct, and vocational training in prison with job placement upon release. The MS and 18th Street representatives also call on the army and police to control and prevent ongoing human rights violations, and protect the safety of the peace process  Female gang members are demanding the involvement of women’s and family service organizations to address their specific needs.

Besides initiating the truce, the gang leaders so far have defined schools as “safe zones”, ordered the end of  forced recruitment of young people, and suspend criminal activities and  attacks on each other.

Luis Rodriguez and Aqeela Sherrells spoke passionately and at length about the history of past peace process efforts in Watts, East Los Angeles, and among deported gang members in El Salvador. “Peace comes from the heart of people, from a rejection of violence by the people, and when it comes from the ground up we must stand with them”, Rodriguez began. “This has happened before, has been sabotaged before, and failed before for lack of resources and respect, but out of every failure there rise new peace warriors.” Rodriguez said he sees “peace surging again, and we have to learn the lesson that peace doesn’t come from institutions, peace doesn’t come from peaceful people, peace can come in the end from the people who began the violence, the best sometimes can come from the worst.”

Sherrells recalled that 20,000 died in LA’s gang wars between Crips and Bloods before the 1992 truce. “It was a war zone, but we created a culture of peace on the streets”, he said,  attributing ten percent of the violence reduction to policing. “Gangs are not inherently negative, do not come like outside aliens, but arise among our sons and daughters, and they need healing, a public health approach, a community-based approach.” He pointed out that gang homicides have continued to fall in Los Angeles even while poverty rates have been climbing. “We love you”, he declared to the largely-immigrant gathering. Bashir, an ex-Panther, added that “we have to unify or die.”

In the most dramatic moment of the day, Homies Unidos leader Alex Sanchez spoke for the first time in public since his June 2009 federal indictment on gang conspiracy charges. Los Angeles police anti-gang officers and prosecutors have charged Sanchez, a former MS member, with continuing to secretly participate in the gang as a so-called “shot caller.” Sanchez and his many supporters argue that a key role in violence reduction can be played by respected former gang members when they mediate conflicts and create alternatives to the violent gang life. But any such “association” is suspect to law enforcement and often prohibited by anti-gang laws and regulations.

Sanchez was arrested by the LAPD and faced deportation over a decade ago, but all charges were dropped and a federal immigration judge granted Sanchez political asylum. He was arrested again in 2009, charged with multiple conspiracies,. He was granted bail in 2010 after representatives of the LAPD and FBI were unable to prove in federal court that he would be a social danger if released. His trial now is set for next June.

Imprisoned Salvadoran gang members and their families,  as well as Salvadoran officials have made phone requests for Sanchez to intervene as a mediator and coalition-builder on behalf of the fragile process. The irony is that Sanchez is prohibited from communicating with any MS members except in the office of his Los Angeles public defender, Amy Jacks. Despite the technical difficulties, Sanchez seemed energized on Sunday by the opportunity to act positively in a context painfully familiar to him, after two years of defending himself in numerous court appearances. On this Memorial Day, he called out the names of Homies Unidos members killed in El Salvador – Hector, Ringo, Bullet, and Smoky, among others – saying, “this is a baton thrown out to us, and it is our duty to pick it up. ”

Twenty years of organizing in Los Angeles have yielded  two models which can be useful for El Salvador, Sanchez said. The first, peace work in the streets and prisons by former gang members like Sanchez, is already adopted and funded in LA as an official “gang prevention and intervention model”, endorsed as well by the LAPD after years of debate. Since the intervention model was developed in part from the experience of Salvadoran gang members it already is “indigenous”, not a foreign model run by government bureaucrats, Peace Corps-style.

Second and equally important, Sanchez and others stressed, is the urgent need for rehabilitation, training and jobs modeled at Homeboy Industries under the inspiration of Fr. Boyle, who has been involved in the Salvadoran community for years. At Homeboy, where the motto is “nothing stops a bullet like a job”, young homeboys and homegirls are counseled, trained and directly employed by the agency, the largest of its kind in the US.

Homeboy staff are expected to confer directly with Salvadoran parties, private investors and government agencies interested in the model of such direct employment. They will stress that gang violence reduction is the key to attracting foreign investment to the besieged country, and jobs the key to violence reduction – a virtuous circle in place of a vicious one.

Gang rappers and poets in El Salvador have long described themselves as the fruits of the war – “las fruitas de la guerra.” There now is the possibility of a great reversal, with gang members, their families and all of El Salvador realizing the fruits of peace. #

June 24, 2010

I was reminded last night of the psychological trauma that children go through when they witness their parents torn apart from them either through violence or incarceration. I spoke with a 15 year old young man who had been a witness to both parents getting arrested by the FBI two and a half years ago. He was mad at the world at how his life had suddenly come to a halt and was flipped over that morning when he saw both of them being dragged away in handcuffs. This young man was trying to deal with his trauma and no one was there to help him through his ordeal, he elected seek help from what was in his neighborhood for a quick fix of his problems.
He joined a gang, got a tattoo and now that his parents were released from prison it has become so hard for him and his family to be what they once were. I looked at him and asked him why was he angry. His answered that he felt his father was disappointed with what he has turn out to be. His eyes started to get watery and said that he wants to change, that he doesn’t want to be in gangs anymore. All he wants is to be understood and so do his parents who are going through the stigma of now being called ex-felons.
It is important for all of us to take extra consideration of those children who have been affected with the trauma when Immigration comes braking the doors of their homes and tear apart parents from U.S. citizen children and housing them in detention centers until they are deported, when law enforcement comes charging into communities arresting individuals putting people in prisons under the three strikes law and many other inhumane laws that continue funneling the parents of U.S. citizen children into warehouses they call rehabilitation centers. They can call them Department of rehabilitation, detention centers it is still a prison. They tear up families. What happens to the children, not only those who are citizens but those who did not have a choice and are now called an immigrant?
This young man reminded me of what my children went through this day one year ago. I was awakened by LAPD, Sheriffs, and FBI officers at six in the morning at my home in Bellflower as part of an FBI Gang Taskforce sweep throughout Los Angeles. In front of my six year old daughter Melissa, my 14 year old son Alex and 13 year old Marlon, while my wife Delia was taking a shower getting ready to head to work. I was taken in shackles after I walk out from my apartment and turn myself over to over 20 armed officers with M16 that they were pointing at me while my children watched, after they had awaken all my neighbors with their screaming ordering for me to turn myself over to them. It was a day I will never forget, neither will my children who I have spoken with them about it, but they don’t really want to have to remind themselves of it and live through it again in their minds. They, unlike this young man that I spoke to last night had a support system, a community that came to heal them through this ordeal, my family, my extended family, all my friends that have stood next to me in the work I do for Homies Unidos, youth whom I helped leave the gang life, they all came together for my children. Forever I will be indebted to all of you and today I invite you to recommit yourselves to do the same for other young men and women who everyday turn to negativity because we are not there for them.
Peace,
Alex Sanchez