Thursday, May 25, 2006

Born For Bad Luck


Boys I'm most done travellin', Lord I'm at my journey's end
B'lieve I'm most done travellin', Lord at my journey's end
Well I been lookin' for me a good partner, bad luck is my best friend

Lord I was born for bad luck, bad luck is everything I see
I was born for bad luck, bad luck is everything I see
Well I wonder why, bad luck keeps on follow me

There was thirteen children in my family, I was the last one born
Thirteen children in our family, I was the last one born
I was born on bad luck Friday, lord on the thirtheenth morn'

Play it Jim

Bad luck is just like my shadow, follow me everywhere I go
Bad luck is just like my shadow, follow me everywhere I go
Till they follow me one time, back to my best gal's door


-- Brownie McGhee, The Complete Brownie McGhee (Recorded 1940 Released )

I saw Brownie McGhee with the legendary blind harpsmen Sonny Terry at the Student Union of the then SUNY-B back in the early ‘80s. Since then, Sonny died. Well he was pretty old already then. Brownie moved on to play with other harpsmen (harmonica player).

I couldn’t quite get remember any song from that duo. I pick this one cause I believe it is also sang by the legendary guitar boogie bluesmen John Lee Hooker. This song of Brownie’s epitomise the sense of hopelessness within the former slave Black community.

After the emancipation of slaves by the decree of Lincoln, resulted in the American Civil War, life didn’t get any easier for the slaves. 


They continued to work on cotton farm and plantation of their former masters as lowly paid workers without any regard for their welfare. The harsh condition continues. 

Unconstitutional discriminatory laws, like Jim Crow law, continue to exist. Segregationist practices in school, public facilities and even church last for another century.

If you get to watch movies and documentaries on the 1950s in the US, you’d likely to come across scenes of a baseball game where the blacks are separated from the whites and signboard "No Blacks, Jews and Dog allowed" placed at public and private facilities. 


It took Dr Martin Luther King 1956 march in Alabama to remind that they are citizens with constitutional right to vote.

Aside from the illegal act, social and economic discriminatory practices by the dominant whites are near impossible to curtail. 


Today discriminatory practices prevail under the coverage of individual rights. That it is enough to say that its bad luck all the way I see. What much more should they bear for being black?

While writing this thoughts, I can’t help but compare with what is happening here. 


The discriminated here are the majority saved by the political numbers. Capital ownership remains with the minority and they continued to discriminate unabated and fail any attempt for social equality. 

And, talking of slaves, do we feel the same of the displaced lots in the plantation and the immigrant workers living a dreaded and endless work life.

The power of money and capitalism has usurped into mainstream media to ironically blame laws and policies for social equality as discriminatory, unproductive and inhuman.

With the power of money and valueless society today, even the powerful pious are no more incorruptible. You hear great cliche which effectively does not serve the lesser of society but for the interest of rising new power devoid with any sense of loyalty for the country. 


Who will champion the down-trodden ones? Who do we trust today? Who will have the heart in themselves?

It’s a hopeless feeling, ain’t it? Do you feel the blues? Heck man, its nightime …

Till they follow me one time, (I’m) back to my best gal's door.

A Voice
Kuala Lumpur
May 25th, 2006, 1.00 am

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

someone say something please!!!!

Anonymous said...

The Silly Things Women Say

Posted 08/06/06 16:44Email Print Save





Phew! It appears that Mama Mediawatch, the unwitting inspiration for this feature, isn't alone in being a member of the fairer sex and failing to understand a few of the rudimentary rules of the beautiful game and the World Cup.


If you hear any silly female verbal offerings over the next five weeks, drop us a line at the usual address, theeditor@football365.com, preferably naming and shaming the young lady involved for maximum impact...


Here's a starter for daft things women say about football. My best mate, she's blond, thought that offside was when the ball went OFF the SIDE of the pitch.
Paul Clarkson, Everton



..."I don't understand why everyone is so excited, there wasn't this much fuss last year" - A stunner called Cara Walker, so I kept my mockery to a minimum.
Charlie Longe, London


...The Local Oz Bar Maid during Saturday's friendly commented:



"That fella's not trying very hard!"

Only feeling embarrassed and going bright red when the Old Boy at the bar pointed out it was the Referee.
Scotty



....From my lovely lady - "I'll let you watch the World Cup this year, but you have to promise me you won't watch all the World Cup matches next summer."


But this one was my favourite: "What division are Jamaica in?"
Jose


...She: "So Who's the England goalie then?"


He: "Paul Robinson."


She: "What, the one from Neighbours?"
Steven Spinola


...'But surely if Rooney's injured we can put Thierry Henry in instead and he's
good isn't he?' - Courtesy of Anna Wheeler
Anon




...My Australian wife (Caz Ball, consider yourself named and shamed!) asked how they decided who played the first game in the World Cup. I explained that it was usually the holders but it is now the hosts.


She thought for a second and asked "Well, how do they decide who plays in

the last match?"
Ted Ball




...Over lunch with a colleague, this week:


American woman: "So whose playing in the first game of the World Cup - Barcelona and who else?"


Me: "Germany and Costa Rica."


American woman: "So who are Barcelona playing against?"


Me: "Barcelona is a city in Spain, not a country. It's a tournament for national teams."


American woman: "Right, right. So who are Barcelona, Spain playing against?"


No word of a lie.
Richard Marshall


...Overheard at a restaurant on Sunday in Co.Cork, Ireland:


Wife: "Are we in the World Cup?"

Husband: "No, we didn't qualify"

Wife: "I'll be shouting for Barcelona then."
Denis Hurley, Co. Cork


...My mum started early this year in her pretending to be interested in football tomfoolery. After the Champions League final she asked me who won, I informed her that Arsenal had lost and Barcelona had won, she replied ,"Does that mean England aren't in the World Cup now" Numpty!
Darren Curtis


...Just last night after I came home with a brand new England white shirt for my little brother, my girlfriend asks me why I have bought the 'home' kit. To which I reply 'eh?'. Her witty comeback is a classic! "Well, silly, the World Cup is in Germany so England won't be needing the home kit will they? You should have bought the red one." Silly me.
Ben Chelton, Welling


...On overhearing a discussion at work between some of us non-Americans about the tournament starting in two days, a young American lady added "The World Cup, that's tennis, isn't it?"
Sean Kinnear, English in the USA




...I was asked by an anonymous female friend why there were five teams in our group and yet four in the others. She was disappointed when I pointed out that Trinidad wouldn't actually be playing against Tobago in the tournament!
Richard Saxton




...How's about this for the silly things women say?!? Sat watching telly with my girlfriend last night she said the following:


"I've got a hair appointment in town at 2.30 this Saturday, would you mind dropping me off and picking me up? I'll treat you to tea somewhere..."


Sorry love, you can walk!
Chris Jordan, LUFC, Hull


...Since we've been together, my girlfriend Julie has fully embraced my passion for football with enthusiasm but has come out with some good ones. Here is a small selection:


1. In the pub last night, a mate said he'd seen the film United 93. Julie said: "I'm getting fed up of all this football talk."


2. We were watching MOTD when Jose brought on Duff, Cole and Robben when chasing a game at the end of last season. Julie wondered why Motty said: "Chelsea started the game without any but now they've got three white men on the pitch". The concept of wide men hadn't landed on planet Julie yet.


3. MOTD were showing Citeh when Shaun Wright Phillips was in the team, who she knew about. The commentator then referred to Bradley Wright-Phillips, and then showed him on camera. Julie said, "Are they related?"


4. When watching a game in the pub, the ads were on the telly at half time. She looked up and saw the bloke in the wheelbarrow on the Wickes advert. She thought the second half had started and they were taking an injured player off in a barrow.


There have been others, but I can't remember them at the moment. As we head into the World Cup, I am looking forward to posting any further gems.
John Smith, Handforth, Cheshire




...Looking through my World Cup 2006 sticker album (yes I know I'm too old, but it's tradition!) my dear fiancée asked just how Ruud Van Nistelrooy could play for Holland when he was still a Manchester United player. Now bless her for listening to my rants about how sad it will be for Ruud to be sold this summer, but she hasn't really got to grips with the club and country aspect - unless they're English...


Fiancée = Laura Louise Watson - still the love of my life.
Alex Alderson


...When I was in Italy I bought a hat which had INTER written across the top of it. One of the birds in my class goes "what happened to the W?"
Johnny Q.



...During the recent England v Jamaica friendly, my lovely girlfriend Lori remarked "I thought David Beckham played for Real Madrid?".


Oh dear.
Chris Davies


Ok...not a World Cup one but pretty stupid none the less:


Back in '96 when I was doing my A levels and Liverpool were on their way to the infamous cream suit cup final fiasco with the Mancs we had drawn the first game, maybe the quarter final I can't remember which now. Anyway, the replay was a midweek one and as we were finishing our last lecture of the day this girl Emma overhears me and the lads planning that night's boozy footy viewing and shouts over:


"Dave, what are you lot up to tonight?"


Me: "Watching the game, it's the FA Cup replay tonight."


Emma: "Replay? Why are you watching it when you already know the result?"


Cue the lads and half the girls falling about laughing and a very stern-faced girl giving us all dirty looks. She still hasn't forgiven me for that ten years later....
Dave Walker


...This is going back to Euro 2000, but a female colleague at work had just learned that Dennis Bergkamp was Dutch. She pondered for a moment, and then asked "So, what happens when Holland play Arsenal?"
Rob Johnson, Bristol



...Me and my mentally challenged missus Rachel were watching the 10:30 news last night, I was quite surprised actually as she did not open her mouth and embarrass herself once all day - Until about 10:50. The 1966 ENGLAND World Cup winners classic masterpiece that was recorded in 1982 for the World Cup was on the news. In the clip it went round all the players singing about themselves in which Martin Peters was zoomed in on. Now I don't know why she said this and I don't really want to challenge her mind as to why it came out, but she said about Martin Peters, "He's Scottish isn't he?".


I just looked at her in disbelief. Granted, she is Welsh, but I thought she was different, Jesus Christ it had a big heading at the bottom saying "England 1966 World Cup winners" - Nevermind!
James Dunn




...Along the lines of stupid things that women say about the World Cup, I have a cracker...


I organised the office sweepstake for the World Cup, and being the only bloke this was never going to be easy. After I had cut out team names and kits and put them in the bag ready for the draw the girls I work with played a prank on me and replaced some teams from the draw with the likes of 'Vatican City', 'Disney Land' and 'Antarctica'.


How very amusing!


Anyway, one girl walks over to see what we are doing, looks at the piece of paper with Antarctica written on it (which has now been removed so I could proceed with the serious draw) and promptly says the following: "Antarctica! I didn't even know they were in it. A load of Eskimos running around on the pitch! Ha Ha! They haven't got a chance blah blah blah'


I mean, seriously, give me strength.
Mr. Bash (I got Togo and Ivory Coast in the draw)


...Two Welsh birds sat behind me on the Easyjet flight from Barcelona to Gatwick on Sunday morning:


Bird One: "Hang on, David Beckham's English but he plays in Spain. Who's he going to play for in the World Cup?"

Bird Two: "Good question, I really don't know."


As if that wasn't bad enough, the one in the seat directly behind me then proceeded to vomit for the rest of the flight. Going British Airways next time.
Moles

Anonymous said...

Remembering Vincent Chin

Fifteen years later, a murder in Detroit remains a turning point in the APA movement

by Alethea Yip

It was an unlikely place for a pivotal point in Asian American history. A young draftsman named Vincent Chin was attending his bachelor party at a suburban Detroit strip club called Fancy Pants. With the party in full swing, Chin and Ronald Ebens, a white autoworker, began trading insults across the bar. "It's because of you little motherfuckers that we're out of work," witnesses later remembered Ebens yelling at Chin.

Chin struck Ebens, and an altercation ensued. Ebens' stepson, Michael Nitz - who had been recently laid off from his job at an autoplant - jumped in. But it was soon broken up by a parking attendant. Chin and his friends left the bar and went their separate ways. Twenty minutes later, Ebens and Nitz caught up with Chin in front of a fast-food restaurant. Ebens grabbed a baseball bat and delivered a blow to Chin's leg. Nitz held the wounded Chin, while Ebens struck his head with the bat, bashing his skull in.

Before he slipped into a coma, Chin murmured to a friend, "It's not fair." Four days later - and five days before his wedding - Chin died as a result of the injuries he sustained during the beating.

The incident on June 19, 1982, seemed an almost perfect metaphor for anti-Asian sentiment in America. It was ignorant; Ebens and Nitz presumed Chin, a 27-year-old Chinese American, was Japanese. It was economically motivated; the two autoworkers blamed the Japanese - and, mistakenly, Chin - for the ailing U.S. auto industry and the consequential loss of jobs. And it was horribly violent; the use of a baseball bat as a murder weapon was a brutal act and an equally brutal reminder of Americana.

But if the beating itself was emblematic of the racial prob-lems in America, the subsequent trial challenged many Asian Pacific Americans' faith in the American way.

Ebens and Nitz were charged with and pleaded guilty to manslaughter. For this, they each received a sentence of three years probation and a $3,000 fine - a sentence that many APA community leaders perceived as a slap on the wrist.

Later federal civil-rights cases brought against the two defendants were appealed, and the juries acquitted each of them. Neither served a jail sentence.

The first judgment against Ebens and Nitz outraged a group of APAs and motivated them to form American Citizens for Justice (ACJ), a pan-Asian American activist group that mobilized to demand a retrial against the two men.

It was the first time, according to APA advocates and academics, that people who traced their ancestry to different countries in Asia and the Pacific Islands crossed ethnic and socioeconomic lines to fight as a united group of Asian Pacific Americans. They were Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Filipino; they were waiters, lawyers, and grandmothers who were moved by the incident that heightened their awareness of discrimination and racism directed toward the APA community.

Vincent Chin became a contemporary martyr of the APA movement. Fifteen years later, his death remains a turning point for many Asian Pacific Americans.

"I think that the Vincent Chin case ... was a watershed moment for all Asian Americans," said Helen Zia, a longtime community activist and ACJ co-founder. "Previously, there were mostly college and progressive activists who had taken up the name 'Asian American,' but as far as the average person in the Chinatowns, Japantowns, Koreatowns, they considered themselves their own ethnicity.

"For the first time, we considered ourselves as a race, a minority race in America that faced discrimination and had to fight for our civil rights. The Vincent Chin case marked the beginning of the emergence of Asian Pacific Americans as a self-defined American racial group."

For William Wei, who started teaching a course in Asian American history at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the 1980s, the Chin case offered his students a tangible example of anti-Asian violence.

"It was understood in an abstract sense that people could, throughout the study of history, read about these problems - stereotyping, the problem of violence, and scapegoating," Wei explained. "But [Chin's] murder made it real for people. ... The kids can relate to it more readily than to the violence that occurred in the 19th century. We have lots of examples from that time period, but none hit home more or had the depth of information than the Vincent Chin case.

"It continued to inform the consciousness of Asian Americans in classrooms and in the community that it was a symptom of a larger problem - racism and its violent expression. And in spite of our self-congratulatory image as the model minority, in the final analysis, Vincent Chin was simply a gook to those men."

The five-year legal battle that followed the shock of the initial verdict was conducted by APA advocates who had little experience dealing with national civil-rights cases, said Stewart Kwoh, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Asian American Legal Center, which was organized the same year the Chin case went to court.

"It was really a wake-up call in the legal community as to what we needed to do - to fight for justice in an effective way," said Kwoh, whose organization served as a co-counsel for ACJ. "Anything you could think of that could go wrong in the criminal justice system went wrong. ... People did a good job, but people didn't have the civil-rights experience and it was hard to anticipate what was going to happen."

In the first trial in Wayne County Criminal Court in 1983, the prosecutor of the case did not show up for the sentencing hearing; there were no advocacy groups present; and neither Lily Chin, Vincent's mother, nor any of the witnesses was called to testify.

With only the defense lawyer making a case for his clients, Judge Charles Kaufman handed down his verdict of a $3,000 fine, $780 in court fees, and three years probation for each of the men. Kaufman reasoned that Ebens and Nitz did not have criminal records and were not likely to violate the terms of their parole. And at the same time, Kaufman ignored the pre-sentence report that identified Ebens as an alcoholic with a history of alcohol-related problems. The report also recommended that in addition to incarceration, Ebens undergo detoxification and counseling for his problem.

The decision sent shock waves throughout the national APA community. Civil-rights leaders interpreted Kaufman's decision as judicially condoning anti-Asian violence.

"It was an intense time," said Henry Der, a longtime community activist and then-executive director of San Francisco-based Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA). "Here these murderers were sitting out there literally smirking at the whole situation.

"Before Vincent Chin, people dealt with hate violence at the local level. But Vincent Chin galvanized the political consciousness among Asian Americans - that's the only way it can be described. The lack of a meaningful penalty for the murder was egregious. It was something that could not be ignored."

ACJ, with help from several other APA groups - including CAA, Japanese American Citizens League, Organization of Chinese Americans, Filipino American Community Council of Michigan, and Korean Society of Metropolitan Detroit - staged rallies, organized demonstrations, and launched a massive letter-writing campaign. They wrote to politicians, the press, and the U.S. Department of Justice demanding that the two men be charged with violating Chin's civil rights.

Lily Chin, who barely spoke English, traveled the country raising money to pay the costs involved in bringing about a civil suit. Many credit her appeal to the APA community for bringing forth seniors and immigrants - who could identify with her - into the movement.

After an FBI investigation that was ordered by the Department of Justice gathered sufficient evidence, federal charges were filed and a federal grand jury indicted the men in November 1983 on two counts: one for the violation of civil rights, the other for conspiracy.

In June 1984, Ebens was found guilty only on the first count and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He also was told to undergo treatment for alcoholism, but was freed after posting a $20,000 bond. Nitz was cleared of both charges.

But in September 1986, Ebens' conviction was overturned on a legal technicality; one of the lawyers for ACJ had been accused of improperly coaching the prosecution's witnesses.

The Justice Department ordered a new trial in April 1987, but this time in a new venue: Cincinnati. But while the change in venue was meant to increase the chances of a fair trial, in some important ways it made that almost impossible.

Cincinnati was, in the early '80s, a city that had had little exposure to Asian Pacific Americans. Out of 200 prospective jurors interviewed, only 19 said that they had ever encountered an Asian American. They were quickly dismissed.

According to Zia, the actual jury had little if any understanding of the hostility people in Detroit harbored against Japanese cars and Japanese-looking people. The nation's trade imbalance with Japan had been blamed for the closing of or cutbacks at many auto plants in Detroit.

"The whole mood was total anti-Japanese," Zia said about Detroit, where she lived when Chin was killed. "People who had Japanese cars were getting their cars shot at, and it didn't matter if they were white. And then if you were Asian, it was assumed that you were Japanese just like Vincent and there was personal hostility toward us.

"So, when Vincent was killed it was a confirmation to all Asian Americans there in Detroit, the antagonism that we were feeling. I felt totally like a moving target."

In May 1987, the jury of 10 whites and two African Americans acquitted Ebens of all charges. He never served a jail term for his crime.

The whole experience had taken its toll on Lily Chin. Disheartened, she left the U.S. and returned to her native village in the Guangzhou province in China.

Later in 1987, a civil suit ordered Ebens to pay $1.5 million to Chin's estate. But shortly before the verdict, Ebens had disposed of his assets and fled. He has been evading officials for the past 10 years.

The manner in which the case was prosecuted still bothers many who were involved with it. "One of the things that we realized was that had we had an experienced civil-rights attorney working on the case throughout the case, the result could have been different," Kwoh said of the three trials. "It's kind of a haunting notion. But no one knows for sure. ... I have a suspicion that we didn't do a good enough job as we could have had we had people experienced with civil rights."

Today, things are different, said Roland Hwang, current board member and former president of ACJ. Now the APA community has national lobbying organizations based in Washington, D.C., and several agencies throughout the country that investigate and follow hate crimes against APAs locally.

"Asians and Asian Americans have always been subject to hate crimes, going back to the lynchings in the 1870s and Chinese being run out of towns in the West, the history of the Chinese Exclusion Act [of 1882], and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II," said Hwang, an attorney for the state of Michigan. "The progress has been in organizing and networking. The incidents still occur."

In fact, the number of hate crimes against APAs is on a steady rise, with violent hate crimes against APAs up 11 percent in 1995 compared with the 1994 rate, according to the 1995 Audit of Violence Against Asian Pacific Americans compiled by the Washington-based National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium (NAPALC). The most recent report from the consortium, which is scheduled to be released within the next few months, showed a similar rise in overall hate crimes in 1996.

Cases that are currently on the radar screens of national APA advocacy groups include the recent assault on a group of APA students outside of a Denny's restaurant in Syracuse, N.Y.; the fatal shooting of a Chinese American man in Rohnert Park, Calif., by a police officer; and the stabbing death of a Vietnamese American man in Los Angeles.

"Now, anytime an Asian American is killed under suspicious circumstances that possibly involve race, Asian American groups are there - immediately investigating the case, alerting the police department to be sensitive to race, the district attorney, politicians," said Renee Tajima-Peña, a filmmaker who produced the documentary Who Killed Vincent Chin?, which chronicled the Chin story and its legal battles and included interviews with witnesses of the beating. "That didn't happen when Vincent Chin was killed. The prosecutor didn't show up for the sentence hearing, there was no translator for Lily Chin, and no advocacy groups were present. People were caught off guard.

"Now there are national lobbying groups in Washington and people on the Internet, and there is this consciousness now that Asian Americans are a distinct race and have been victims of racist violence. That consciousness didn't necessarily exist 15 years ago."

The case helped spawn a number of APA organizations devoted to tracking and investigating hate crimes, including ACJ, the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence in New York, the National Network Against Anti-Asian Violence in Washington, Asian Americans United in Philadelphia, and Break the Silence Coalition Against Anti-Asian Violence in San Francisco.

Although these groups have been effective in dealing with hate crimes on a local level, Zia said that Asian Americans still lack a national organization of the stature of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or the Anti-Defamation League.

"That is the one piece of unfinished business," Zia said of the need for a strong national APA organization that deals with hate crimes. "Otherwise we are reinventing the wheel in different regions where hate crimes occur. So in Rohnert Park, Coral Gables, Florida, and Syracuse, we have to start all over again.

"They just end up being local cases and there is no national group to call a press conference to say that we see the incidents as part of a chain of events and that we won't stand for it. We don't have a vehicle to say that. And I think it is very much needed."

Nonetheless, in recent years a whole generation of APA civil-rights lawyers whose inspiration was the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the Chin case have come of age.

For Karen Narasaki, who was in law school when Chin was killed, the case helped her decide to use her law degree to fight for civil rights.

"It was such a powerful story that brought home how fragile our existence here as Asian Americans is and the need to be vigilant," said Narasaki, executive director of NAPALC. "I know that the incident shaped a lot of people who are currently involved in civil rights, including myself."

Liz Ouyang, a staff attorney at the New York-based Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, who was also inspired by the incident to work in the civil- rights field, felt a personal connection to the Chin case.

"When I heard about Vincent Chin, it made me think of my brothers," said Ouyang, who was a senior at the University of Michigan in 1982.

Growing up in Rochester, N.Y., Ouyang recalls the neighborhood bully taunting her brothers with racial slurs. One day the bully attacked one of her brothers, tying a lasso around his neck and dragging him down the street when he tried to flee.

When the Chin case drummed up memories of what happened to her brother, Ouyang knew what she had to do.

"The legacy of Vincent Chin has left very deep impressions on my work today," she said. "It clearly has influenced me in what I am doing today, representing victims of anti-Asian violence and police brutality. And I tell my clients, 'I will represent you like you were my brother,' because, in a way, they are."

Despite the gains made since Chin's killing, Asian American studies professor Wei warned that the lessons learned from the Chin case must not be forgotten, that the community must continue to remind and teach future generations about Vincent Chin because it is such a significant milestone in the APA community's quest for political empowerment, racial equality, and social justice. It gave the struggle context, a face.

"It was an important event, but I do worry about whether in the passage of time it will become abstract for succeeding generations," Wei said. "For our generation, it was a real event. At some point it becomes history. It's not as real. It's no longer today's news, it becomes a historical footnote."


The Trials of Vincent Chin
June 19, 1982 - Vincent Chin attends his bachelor party at Fancy Pants, a strip club in suburban Detroit. Autoworkers Ronald Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz, enter the bar. Ebens taunts Chin, who he mistakenly thinks is Japanese and blames for the ailing U.S. auto industry. A fight ensues. After the fight is broken up, Chin leaves the club. Twenty minutes later, Ebens and Nitz find Chin in front of a McDonald's. Ebens knocks Chin down and beats him with a baseball bat.

June 23, 1982 - Vincent Chin dies as a result of his injuries.

March 16, 1983 - Wayne County Judge Charles Kaufman finds Ebens and Nitz guilty of manslaughter after a plea bargain and sentences each of them to three years probation, a $3,000 fine, and $780 in court fees. The prosecuting attorney is not present and neither Chin's mother nor any witnesses is called to testify.

November 1983 - The U.S. Justice Department, following an FBI investigation, files charges and a federal grand jury indicts Ebens and Nitz on two counts - one for violating Chin's civil rights, the other for conspiracy.

June 1984 - Ebens is found guilty of violating Chin's civil rights but not of conspiracy. He is sentenced to 25 years in prison, but is released on a $20,000 bond. Nitz is cleared of both charges.

September 1986 - Ebens' conviction is overturned by a federal appeals court on a legal technicality; an American Citizens for Justice attorney is accused of improperly coaching prosecution witnesses.

April 1987 - Under intense public pressure, the Justice Department orders a retrial, but this time in a new venue: Cincinnati.

May 1987 - The Cincinnati jury clears Ebens of all charges.

July 1987 - A civil suit orders Ebens to pay $1.5 million to Chin's estate as part of a court-approved settlement. However, Ebens disposes of his assets and flees the state. He has not paid any of the settlement.

September 1987 - Disgusted with the country's legal system, Lily Chin, Vincent Chin's mother, leaves the U.S. and moves back to her native village in Guangzhou province in China.

Anonymous said...

oi keling jebon ... kau pi lah kawan dgn spore... gua jumpa lu , gua pukul lu

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