ACTIONS CAUSE REACTIONS - NOT ALWAYS WHAT WE ARE READY FOR

This week was a very tragic one. Without going into so much detail, I only have to say that I have frequented a restaraunt called Gordo's Pizza for many years. This week I was not shocked but saddened that yet another murderous rampage was the only one to hit the front page with victims friends crying for their loved ones. it was another EVERYONE LOST on this one. A club here in Dallas holds Monday nites for the workers who work in restaurants to party there - it is a small pub and after they close often fights break out - i think it is sort of a ritual in fact. People work all week in hot kitchens, they gather together, they drink like there's no tomorrow and in fact there may not be a tommorow for them any more. Well this Monday nite, they partied and one thing led to another - someone bumped into someone - on purpose or accidentally. A beer bottle was thrown hitting one of the someones in the face and causing a bad injury to his face. His friends rushed him to the Hospital and left him there while they took off to 'settle the debt for him'. He had no idea they were off to do that. They took his car, since he was in the hospital and it was a late model white Jaguar with a sunroof. They cruised back to the club and waited for the bottle thrower to leave with his friends. Two guys worked at Gordo's. one was the chef - the other was his helper. In fact they were cousins. They gave a ride to two more guys who were also in their car. As they pulled out of the car the jaguar followed and the shooter raised up out of the sunroof with an SKS ASSAULT RIFLE and pumped fifty or so rounds into the car the bottle throwers were riding in instantly killing the driver, his cousin and one of the two in the back seat and critically injuring the other.

Their car then careened into the bridge crossing a major freeway in downtown dallas Interstate 75 / Central Expressway and crashed with the dead and injured in it. The Jaguar sped away and was found the next morning two blocks from where I live. Our zip code where our old place is is the most dangerous zip code in all of Dallas - 75217. It seems like a sleepy neighborhood but when the sun goes down the arms come out and the wars begin. The car was found there - the search was on for the shooter and driver.

Not surprisingly enough they found the young boy, Mexican, at home watching TV in his mother's house. she was getting grocieries out of the car when the police pulled up and asked her if he was inside. they told her he was a suspect in a murder of three or four people. She said - 'oh no, that couldn't be my son, he's a quiet shy good kid' - well she was right on all of those things but as they entered the house armed to the hilt - he tried to run up and into the attic. They easily caught him and it was over. Now he is in jail with over a $1,000,000 bond and most certainly his future is now looking like the Texas Death Penalty will inject him and kill him for what he has done. And the most ironic thing is that the young man who was the victim of the bottle injury is the one who told the police who was the one who did the murders. They called him at the hospital on his cell phone after the murders and told him 'we took care of those guys who hurt you'. Now one of them is in custody and the other one is on the run. Now the one who told the police on them is now in hiding from his own cousin, afraid now he will kill him.

Where does this senseless tragedy ever end?

Saddened once more, in Dallas

NEWSWEEK

This week i was contacted by Newsweek for an article they are doing about the Marasalvatrucha or MS13 Salvadoran Gangs. I would never disrespect the gangs because all gangs are made up of human beings. I am more of a modern day anthropological socio behavioral scientist and researcher working in the field of prevention and intervention as well as rehabilitataion than I am a judge of anyone. However I am looking forward to any mention Newsweek will give Bajito Onda and my work. I think the article comes out this week. They had seen the article that came out in the NY TIMES MAGAZINE back in August so that is why i was contacted. Thanks Newsweek reporter Jennifer Ordonez of Los Angeles.

A PROGRESS REPORT

Hello to all who are reading this weblog. Please feel free to leave comments wherever and whenever you want. Your feelings are important to us in this work.

It is great that we are finally feeling able to grow into our new place and new space here at our new office and production as well as Global Empowerment Center for the training of social trainers worldwide so that we may take our fine programs out into the world wherever they are needed to uplift the lives of young people of all ethnicities and cultures as well as languages and give them an opportunity to one day have their own businesses in their own community and to become leaders of their peers who are searching for a better life, a peaceful and productive life as successful human beings and respected for their good work and good lives not as mere survivors in the jungles of madness around the world that us as adults have caused such grief and loss to exist in their young and upcoming lives.

I must commend the great work of my two dear sons in the struggle - both are true soldiers who are 'against all odds' proving that we can truly play by society's rules and beat them at their own game in the name of youth, women and prisoners around the world in order to give all oppressed peoples a face, a voice and to welcome them into loving arms with encouragement for them to leave their problems and pain behind and come into a Good and Loving Family of Bajito Onda Self Sufficient Social Programmes.

I just realized i run my sentences into long ones becoming paragraphs but it is my writing style so please forgive me. Afterall, I am 'one of my people' whose life has been changed by this wonderful peace ministry and educational outreach. I am not perfect although I am in the difficult position now of Global Founder and Leader. My dearest goal is to become humble as the earth itself so that in being on the level of the earth that others walk on I am able to lift up all those lives who have come into our path. In lifting them up, some of them will join us in this movement to lift up others who have fallen, and together we will form a 'red' in spanish / web or network in English and we will soon perfect our methodologies and processes so that saving lives and futures is as effortless as having them wrecked senselessly.

The nonstop hours spent in true dedication to this movement by my African son, Amidu Mansaray, Global Outreach Director and himself the humble Chapter President of Bajito Onda Africa Foundation, a member in excellent standing of the African Commission of Human and Peoples Rights. Amidu came to the USA two years ago when my struggle was at its hardest. He slept on the floor of our old warehouse space, it was freezing cold and he was freezing. There was no place for him to put his clothes he brought and we had very little to offer him even in the way of food. He was shocked that here in America our foundation had no support or even volunteers. He hugged me and told me he was here to learn and serve so that he could return to Africa and implement my work there. He was able to see the miracles that could be performed by his joining me in the struggle. He went back to Africa and immediately began recruiting social soldiers to help us form a great movement in Africa. Amidu's great love for children and the oppressed drives him to continue establishing ways to reach the children of the war torn regions of the Continent. Amidu was born into the war torn area Sierra Leonne and due to that war moved to The Gambia where Bajito Onda now has the Official Observer Status, a very high working status. As a young man he was also a victim of the wars and destruction left behind. At only 27 years old he now has three college degrees and his heart is to go back and save the children of the world through our educational outreaches. amidu.mansaray@bajitoonda.org We from here in the US were able to get some people to help us send Amidu a laptop, digital camera, scanner and other supplies so that we can communicate our work better. Antonio Melin, my Mexican Son and President of Bajito Onda of the Latin Americas has been working tirelessly to develop global relations as well as to continue to empower the children of Mexico, who because they have joined gangs, or children who ever so sadly have become the street vendors selling everything they can from stolen merchandise, to washing the busy traffic windshields when cars stop for a red light to even prostitution at such young ages as seven years old. When I went to mexico on all my trips i have been taken to all the districts where they children are reported to be so violent and out of control. At some times I was afraid to go into the groups of up to 200 kids all with puzzled angry faces, often quick to make gang signs or act sneaky around me - but after talking to them like they are human beings and that i am not there to judge them or harm them, they quickly become a multitude of little persons deserving of so much love and compassion. Antonio and I cannot understand why they are so mistreated except for the pure economic fact of a population that is becoming younger and younger and having less and less parental or community guidance. It is a division that is becoming greater and greater today. Bajito Onda is not afraid to bridge that division and bring those children back into a loving and empowering mainstream society. please feel free to let Antonio hear from you as well at antonio.melin@bajitoonda.org .

I must leave you now to leave one more important post - Blessings to all of you. Please pray for our continued growth and strength in this movement so that we may reach thousands upon thousands of innocent lives and empower them for their future. THEY ARE OUR FUTURE!

IT HAS BEEN A HARD MOVE BUT WELL WORTH THE WAIT!

Well we are finally into our incredible new huge space! We call it the PRINT HOUSE / PENT HOUSE. Well deserving of so much work for so long of a time. And we are getting it done by our hard work and strong efforts not by begging for donations. Yesterday we moved our darkroom! we had to enlist the help of 11 mexican strongmen to help us. whew! moving a 47" steel table into a doorway only 28" took some meskin engineering and then some! it about killed us to do it. no hands were crushed - no egos bruised when they it just would not budge or be lifted. finally we conquered it! check out some pics on the site for more of a view. hugs, del and crew