Please join me from 7-8:30 p.m., Thursday, November 24.
Elaine Halleck presents her book ‘A Parallel Universe’
along with poetry readings by me & Thanksgiving dinner.
All on one night — ‘Noche Americana’
at Entre2 Antojeria, Guadalajara, Mexico

BOOK REVIEW by Thomas Gayton
Civil rights and adobe x pro suite for students and teacher criminal defense attorneys are well aware of the erosion of our civil liberties and adobe x pro suite for students and teacher the devolution of the criminal justice system into the prison-industrial complex. But after reading “A Parallel Universe” by Alex Landon and adobe x pro suite for students and teacher Elaine Halleck, anyone who still thinks that by electing an African-American president we have adobe x pro suite for students and teacher adequately redressed these burning civil rights issues will be thoroughly disabused of the adobe x pro suite for students and teacher idea.
Attorney Alex Landon teaches at the adobe x pro suite for students and teacher University of San Diego and has battled fearlessly for many years for adobe x pro suite for students and teacher justice in the criminal courts of San Diego, and journalist Elaine Halleck has adobe x pro suite for students and teacher reported insightfully on social dynamics in contemporary society and in Nazi Germany.
Together, in alternating nonfiction and fiction (based on facts) chapters, they treat the adobe x pro suite for students and teacher hot-potato issue of sex offenses and laws — the authors call them “designer laws” — that adobe x pro suite for students and teacher were named after the victims of gruesome sex crimes, such as laws passed after the adobe x pro suite for students and teacher summer of 2002, dubbed “The Summer of the Abducted White Girl.”
The alternating chapters by Landon and adobe x pro suite for students and teacher Halleck, although they closely parallel one another and partly explain the adobe x pro suite for students and teacher title, will be challenging for some readers because of the adobe x pro suite for students and teacher mix of genres. And the book maybe be generally challenging because so many people have adobe x pro suite for students and teacher been deceived by fear-mongering politicians to believe that designer laws (Megan’s Law, Jessica’s Law, Chelsea’s law, etc.) actually protect children. So, parents and adobe x pro suite for students and teacher children suffer a false sense of security, while convicted people live in a adobe x pro suite for students and teacher parallel universe where they are not protected by principles that others take for adobe x pro suite for students and teacher granted.
Landon describes in glaring detail how the adobe x pro suite for students and teacher forces of fear have mutated those who were once described as “Mentally Disordered Sex Offenders” to “Sexually Violent Predators,” “pervs, perps and peds.” We now have adobe x pro suite for students and teacher a system where the Hippocratic Oath has mutated into “police-affiliated therapists” who adobe x pro suite for students and teacher are not troubled by the lack of voluntary consent or adobe x pro suite for students and teacher doctor-patient confidentiality in their “sex therapy sessions” because they profit from adobe x pro suite for students and teacher the public financing of this charade. The abuses are so well described in Halleck’s chapters that you’ll surely be left saying, as does one convicted man, that he’d rather be in prison than in “therapy.”
Landon masterfully explains the adobe x pro suite for students and teacher larger constitutional issues involved in some U.S. Supreme Court decisions, such as the adobe x pro suite for students and teacher 2002 decision, McKune v. Lile, that, as Landon writes, “put another bullet in the adobe x pro suite for students and teacher already badly maimed body of convicted people’s rights,” in this adobe x pro suite for students and teacher case the protection against self-incrimination for sex offenders, and the 2003 decision that adobe x pro suite for students and teacher gave the green light for Megan’s list to go on the Internet. (Landon’s factoids in Chapter 3 that adobe x pro suite for students and teacher one out of every 135 California men are on Megan’s list and, in Chapter 23, that, per Jessica’s law, the adobe x pro suite for students and teacher annual cost of GPS tracking for all sex offenders would cost $1.05 billion are also illuminating.)
Halleck’s fictional chapters present a adobe x pro suite for students and teacher lower middle class Mexican-American family in Orange County — from adobe x pro suite for students and teacher the POVs of a convicted man named Danny Fernandez, his mother, daughter and adobe x pro suite for students and teacher friend — who are suffering the effects of Danny’s blacklisting under Megan’s law, effects such as housing discrimination, hate incidents and vigilantism.
This may not be an easy read for many, and the “parallel universe” into which Danny and the “surfing fool” sex offender Michel are adobe x pro suite for students and teacher exiled is certainly not a pleasant place to visit, even from adobe x pro suite for students and teacher an armchair but Danny’s mother, daughter and adobe x pro suite for students and teacher Michel interject lighter notes that engender empathy and smiles.
In conclusion, the authors ask the reader, “If the ‘parallel universe’ where adobe x pro suite for students and teacher precious rights are scarce and where tax money disappears into a adobe x pro suite for students and teacher dark hole, has grown too large to take on.” And if “the money interests of politicians, media, prison guards, police and adobe x pro suite for students and teacher the ‘helping professionals’ will give up without a tooth and nail fight.”
Implicit in the adobe x pro suite for students and teacher question is the challenge to 21st century Americans to take action before the adobe x pro suite for students and teacher New Jim Crow and sex crime juggernaut wake us up to adobe x pro suite for students and teacher a financially ruined police state.
The authors urge us to adobe x pro suite for students and teacher keep in mind the words of the imprisoned German pastor Martin Niemoller who adobe x pro suite for students and teacher in 1946 made a speech about the failure of the Germans to adobe x pro suite for students and teacher resist Hitler. “They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a adobe x pro suite for students and teacher trade unionist. Then they came for me and by that time no adobe x pro suite for students and teacher one was left to speak up.”