“One thing that is important to note is that Ahmadinejad doesn’t make the forein policy in Iran. His realm of power is domestic.” – Laura Secor.
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ON STUDENT MOVEMENTS/ VOTING IN IRAN:
(from L to R, Profesor Lonnie Isabel, Journalists Laura Secor and Roozbeh Mirebrahmi)
Laura Secor said she saw a poll that cited the fact that about 70 % of Iranians want democracy. On the student movement in Iran, according to Secor, in some cases they got more radical than the reformists.
Roozbeh Mirebrahmi said that the student movement has a long history in Iran, but that it has some flaws. “We have too many student activists who believe in communism…” He also said that women’s activists are becoming more and more important in Iran.
A question from a graduate student, Shuka Kalantari asks: “In relation to what you just said Roozbeh, one of the main qualms about these activists groups is that they are too segmented. I’ve heard people say that if the women’s groups and the student groups could unite it could be more effective for change. Do you think that’s possible?
The question was answered by Laura Secor. “Women’s activists are staying that they have more support from young men. The women’s activists that I talk to, all of them came out of the student movement. There is a relationship between these groups.”
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Roozbeh Mirebrahmi said the current election wasn’t interesting for him. He said that everyone knew which groups could go the parliament and which groups could not go. “The majority in parliament will be a conservative group,” said Mirebrahmi, “There is not really an election in Iran.”
“The reformist enemy in Iran is the people.”
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Laura Secor : “Most of the people I spoke to (about the Iranian elections) said they were there to show their loyalty to the government… It seemed to me that the people who feel invested in the political system at this time… are people who are already supporters of the government… a year ago I was in the same places and I saw people debating to me about choices and democracy…”
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About 40 people are gathering at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism tonight to hear journalists Laura Secor and Roozbeh Mirebrahmi speak about Iran. The event has drawn a mix of students, professors and many people from off campus. The event is being moderated by CUNY’s own Professor Lonnie Isabel.
Professor Lonnie Isabel kicks things off by announcing that a recent poll lists “America’s top enemies” as Iran, Iraq and China.
The speakers today will be Laura Secor and Roozbeh Mirebrahmi, they are two journalists who have both covered Iran.
Laura Secor speaks of her recent trip to Iran, saying she experienced the “monopoly of power” in Iran. She said there was a small number of reformists running in the most recent election in Iran.
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Bronx community board 7 president Greg Faulkner (left) and board members Paul Foster and Margaret Mack opened the community board office last Saturday and had visits from community activists Anthony Rivieccio, Greg Steele and Ursula Perez Morgan during the CB7 Open House.
The Saturday event was part of a series of open house workshops designed to make the office, located just around the corner from the Grand Concourse on 204th St., open during downtime, since so many work during the week.
Talk around the table at the office included everything from parking to the water filtration plant. Faulkner sits on the plant’s Monitoring Committee and will vote Monday for whether or not to call for an investigation into cost overruns.
Board members will keep Saturday office hours once a month.
by Joshua Cinelli
Nelson Perez, Sr. will most likely not experience a golden parachute retirement. The once patriarch of a $5 million a year family run policy ring throughout four New York City boroughs may instead spend his twilight years behind bars.
The business 69-year-old Perez allegedly ran was a numbers game, an illegal lottery based out of over 100 policy stores, mostly grocery stores and beauty salons. The indictment for enterprise corruption charges in essence that Perez served as the CEO in “both tactical and strategic decisions regarding the operation of the illegal policy enterprise.”
Every other family member and employee of the 24 members of the Perez Gambling Organization arrested three years ago, including his son, his girlfriend and her sons, have entered pleas to lesser charges. Some are scheduled to testify as witnesses.
There were no family members in the spacious court on the seventh floor of the Bronx Courthouse. Instead the silver haired and bespectacled Perez sat at a table by himself wearing headphones with his interpreter a few feet away waiting for the court to resume. One got the feeling he was enjoying the slow process of the judicial system, considerably more than the 12 jurors.
Retired Detective Michael Young plodded through his testimony of numbers: license plates, phones, faxes, addresses and of course the policy numbers. Painstakingly Young explained the difference between the NY Lotto and the illegal bolita or “little ball.” Young said the attraction of the illegal version is one can bet whatever amount they wish and it’s tax-free. Also, the odds are slightly greater, in that the “straight”-three numbers in a row, would pay 600-1. The winning three numbers are composed of the last number of the total bets placed at various horse tracks for the win, place and show payout amounts.
“It was very slow,” Young said. “We had to build it up from nothing.” The investigation began on an anonymous tip in the summer of 2002. On the first day of observation they followed a runner from policy stores to policy banks. After two years of surveillance, wiretaps, fax tracking and undercover operations, there were 40 patterns listed in connection with the charge of enterprise corruption. If Perez was conscious of the tightening noose of the Bronx District Attorney’s Rackets Bureau’s investigation, it did not show. In one recorded conversation he directed a colleague to read to him the amounts of the prizes owed to several policy locations.
Behind the desk of the Assistant District Attorney, Rachel Singer, were 28 boxes containing a fraction of the phone records and transcripts of conversations. The investigators said it was a “well-run, sophisticated citywide operation” in which the employees were paid a fixed salary and given vacation time. In a recorded conversation, Nelson Perez Jr. complained that his father believed because the employees were under his employment that he could treat them badly.
At the time of the arrest the Perezes were bringing in $400,000 a month making the statement of Chief Douglas Ziegler to the New York Times somewhat nonsensical, “No one knew about them except the people in the community.” Policy rings in the United States date back before 1860 and are especially prevalent in poorer communities.
Justice Martin Marcus, who is overseeing the case, is no stranger to crime rackets. He worked in the New York State Organized Crime Task Force from 1981 until 1990 during the mob crackdown. When asked why the case had taken three years to come to trial, Marcus smiled and said, “You have to ask the lawyers. The cases just come to me.”
In ’04 Bronx District Attorney Robert T. Johnson announced the arrests as the “largest policy ring we’ve seen in decades.” Which was true until the next summer when the police indicted 24 people in a $10 million a year policy ring through an undercover investigation known as “Operation Numbers’ Up.”
Nelson Perez is perhaps familiar with that particular number. He and he alone.
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