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Politics : About that Cuban boy, Elian -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (8142)	7/5/2000 11:14:26 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9127

I don't believe that the Miami relatives' economic situation or eligibility as foster care parents has anything to do with it at all, but I think you were replying to other's posts, not mine, with all that stuff, so I won't belabor that part. To be fair, though, Newsmax had that ridiculous comment about the neighbor saying that "Juan drank like a fish" and smoked a lot - which was just as silly. It had never reached a point in my mind that their qualifications for guardianship really needed approving. I think that when people began bringing out the hospitalizations and the unemployment and the criminal records, they were responding to exactly the type of emotional rhetoric you are attempting to use here--- the innocent, poor, abused completely guiltless relatives. Although I don't believe as you do that it was a healthy situation for Elian in the relatives' home for other reasons, I agree that he wasn't in immediate physical danger. However, I DO believe that they had no right to keep him after they defied the order to turn him over to his father. I think they DID become "criminals" of a sort after that point. I think Elian needed to be removed from this situation and the government had allowed itself, for whatever reasons, to be manipulated into a corner. THey had to act-- arguably in not the smartest way. I leave it to the courts to determine the legality of it. If we don't like the broad powers of the INS, then we need to go about changing them, but they had those powers at the time. Also you are misstating priorities-- at least mine. This was not about an immediate father-son reunion for me; it was about a country forcing its own values of freedom on a man who didn't want to accept them. And the penalty some wanted to extract for this decision was to take his son from him for his terrible choice. We may not like it, but by our own value system, we can not terminate his parental rights for this. I believe we were restrained by our own beliefs in freedom from doing what you wanted to do. Castro may not allow him the freedom to choose, but we MUST. TO do otherwise is to only GUESS what Juan wanted and to override all that we stand for. At six Elian is far too young to understand what he would have been choosing when he signed that petition. I fail to see what you are getting at with your "equal footing" proposal. C'mon, Michael. They had more legal representation than you or I could ever afford! They took this to the Supreme Court in our land. And they lost.

To: greenspirit who wrote (8142)	7/5/2000 11:16:22 PM
From: gamesmistress	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9127

My dislike for the Miami relatives grew as I saw them continually parading that little boy around for CANF's political purposes, and their lawyers' trashing of Juan Miguel one day and saying the next, "It's a family matter, come to Miami and we'll discuss it." I too would like to have seen more of a compromise solution, but given all the political agendas - Clinton/Reno's, Castro's and the CANF's, I very much doubt it could have been accomplished. For example, I don't see any ground for compromise in this letter to the editor of the LA Times. It seems to me that I was being asked to pick between "parental rights" and "freedom". In this case, I choose "parental rights." * I and thousands of others have been fighting for Elian Gonzalez's right to freedom for the last several months. We have been defeated by Fidel Castro and the Clinton administration (June 29). But our defeat is nothing compared with the suffering of Elian since the illegal April 22 raid orchestrated by Atty. Gen. Janet Reno. We have been blasted for standing up for Elian's individual and human rights, which we know trump his father's parental rights. We also know that Elian's father will not truly have custody of Elian because in Cuba, officially, the parent is the state. We are proud to have fought the battle and have not been weakened by the defeat but, instead, strengthened. We fought for truth and justice. We weren't waging a popularity contest. We gave Elian a taste of freedom. He was free for five months. We pray that God will protect Elian and that the memories of his courageous and loving Miami family will comfort him in his moments of despair. SANTIAGO MARTIN Santa Ana