Ferntales for October/November 2015
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Judy Rudy Reports: Gun Laws for Felons
By Rudy Serra
Q: I have an old felony conviction for fraud and I was recently warned that the law about felons possessing guns has changed? Are there any changes I should know about?
A: Yes. As a general rule, a person who is convicted of a felony cannot possess a firearm in Michigan.
In May 2014, the law was changed. People who are less than three years past the completion of all terms of their sentence, parole or probation can no longer possess “ammunition” in Michigan. Previously the ban only applied to a firearm. For certain “specified felonies” the ban extends for five years.
“Ammunition” is defined as “any projectile that, in its current state, may be propelled from a firearm by an explo- sive.” The “purchase” of ammunition is not forbidden to a convicted felon under the law. Under the amended law, a convicted felon could theoretically place and pay for an order of ammunition, but it would have to be intended for the use of another, and sent or delivered to that third party rather than the purchaser. Home delivery of a box of buckshot to a convicted felon would be a crime for that convicted felon. The person making delivery could also face charges.
In addition, people with felony records need to know that the prosecutor does not have to prove that a gun operates in order to convict a felon of being in possession. The judge decides if the prior conviction was really a felony but the jury decides if the accused person was actually convicted of that felony.
Other changes in the law allowing restoration of the right to have a weapon take effect December 1, 2015. A person who has passed more than five years after successful completion of their n sentence can apply to get their right to carry a weapon restored under section 28.424 of Michigan’s compiled laws.
The application is made to the Circuit Court. The judge has to decide by clear a and convincing evidence that the applicant’s “record and are such that the person is not likely to act in a manner dangerous to the safety of other persons.” The judge also has to find that the person had paid all fines, completed all imprisonment and all terms of probation or parole. Failure to meet any condition requires denial of the application. A person cannot apply again until a year has passed from the denial of any application.
Judge Rudy Reports” is a regular feature in Ferndale Friends. This “ask the lawyer” format column welcomes questions from readers. If you have a legal question or concern, send your question e by email to rudy.serra@sbcglobal.net.
Advice about specific cases or individuals cannot be provided, but general legal questions and topics are welcome.
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Ferndale Seniors: A Reminder
By Jeannie Davis
Ferndale has come a long way. I have lived here since the mid-’60s. Then, it was a big family town, with a thriving downtown which was principally a daytime retail area. People outfitted their kids at Federals, and took them for ice cream sundaes at Sanders. While moms gossiped, the kids cruised Kresge’s or Woolworths or Neisners; all dime stores, the forerunners of today’s dollar stores. Women had their choice of Winkleman’s or Fields for fashion. We boasted a magic store, and even a bowling alley.
Then, sadly, the kids grew up and moved away. People didn’t have four or six children anymore…heck, many peo- ple didn’t even have children at all. In- door shopping malls and K-Mart came along, and within a couple of short years, small town shopping districts were abandoned.
Our downtown was at least 50 per cent vacant. Then, in the late ‘90s, our city planners went to work. Ferndale re-invented itself. We welcomed new bars and restaurants. Not just any bars and restaurants, either. The early Rosie’s was amazing, Howe’s gave us variety. Our City Council worked with a few non-profits on events such as the Pub Crawl and the Blues Festival, and beefed up our participation in the Dream Cruise. Our DDA created smaller events, like Fido Does Ferndale and special shopping nights. All of this served to bring back our business district, and certainly put Ferndale on the map. Our housing market boomed, and suddenly everybody wanted to live in Ferndale.
We still have bugs to work out of our system. Parking is a big bug, and we are just starting to tackle our parks, and some of the other minor not so shiny areas of the city.
WHY AM I GOING THROUGH all this history? Because I want to remind some of you where we have been and
what we have done to come as far as f we have come.
Recently on Facebook I watched a discussion on paying to use the new dog park. People were making outrageous statements about “greedy Ferndale.” They said this city was lousy to live in. Their primary gripe was having to pay $40/year to use the new park.
Seriously, folks? A $40 fee erases all the good and all the planning done over the past 20 years? Our DPW worked hard to make the new dog park friendly and inviting. Did you note the dog-bone shaped bench, or the fire hydrant waterer? Have you noticed new playscapes in the other parks? Have you paid attention to all the hard m work our DDA does to bring you free movies, doggy events, festivals, and an x art fair? Are you aware that we have warming and cooling centers for when the power goes out, and our Rec.Dept. employees work overtime to staff these centers? Have you noticed the free outdoor concerts our all-volunteer Art Commission brings you? (I know some of you came to these because you complained about paying for the hot dogs we grilled for you.) Or maybe you have seen the art hanging in city hall, again brought to you by our volunteers.
I am proud of my city, and I count myself lucky to be living here and knowing our fine leaders are on the job, working r to make it even better. I love knowing that my neighbors and friends come out happily to volunteer whenever they a are needed. I also love that the people who are involved do not complain. They know that the city is doing the best it can do, and they are doing what they ’ can to help.
So, stop griping about parking and B dog park fees. Look around. See how i wonderful Ferndale is. If you are still unhappy about something, volunteer and try to fix it.
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Ferntales for August/September
Matt Helms & the Rise of the Fabulous Ferndale Forum
Story by Jackson Drapier | Photo by Ed Abeska
Matt Helms is a fan of freedom of speech.
As a writer for the Detroit Free Press and a co-founder of the popular Facebook Fabulous Ferndale forum (which has the text of the first amendment as part of its “description” section), Matt has built a life around the ability to freely community with, and about, the world around him. An active Ferndale resident for the last 20 years, the Michigan State graduate has recently found himself at the center of an exploding controversial fad in the City of Ferndale: Facebook forums. And with over 2,500 members on its roster, his Fabulous Ferndale Forum has risen quickly to become one of the city’s most popular.
Though he’s been a Facebook user since late 2007, Matt’s first foray into forum-ing on Facebook came by way of the Jerks of Ferndale forum, which he discovered after noticing an influx of Facebook groups tied to the City of Ferndale. The group, which boasts about 500 members, offered Matt a relaxed place to joke around with like-minded people and discuss current events in the city. “It’s not all that complicated,” Helms said about Jerks of Ferndale. “It’s just a diverse group of people who get together and talk about stuff.”
As his interest in local forums grew, Matt became a member of the largest Ferndale-related forum on Facebook: the aptly named Ferndale Forum, which at the time of publication had almost 5,000 members in and around the city. The idea of having an open place to discuss the ins-and-outs of life in Ferndale was certainly appealing to Helms, however, due to philosophical differences, after less than a month of membership Matt and a few friends set out to start their own, and the Fabulous Ferndale Forum was born.
“If you actually look at what gets posted in our group and what gets posted in the Ferndale forum, there’s a lot of similarity. It’s just a philosophical difference about how the groups are managed.”
The response so far has been, in a word: fabulous. After only being open for five short months, the forum already counts more than 2,500 members within its ranks, and is growing every day.
The Fabulous Ferndale Forum and the original Ferndale Forum are only two of the dozens of Ferndale-related forums that have populated Facebook in recent years. There are groups that specialize in certain areas of Ferndale like the Allen Street and Chesterfield Street forums, as well as those for specific interests like Ferndale Freecycle, Ferndale Area Runners, and the Ferndale Walking Group. All of these, says Helms, help the citizens of Ferndale better connect with the place they call home.
“We’ve attracted a lot of top city officials and a lot of business owners in the city, and we want people to be able to have access to those folks just as much as they would in the other forums.”
Though the Fabulous Ferndale Forum is mostly used for discussion about current events, recommendations, local business reviews, and variety of other hot-button topics, Helms and various members of the forum are using their collective efforts to better the community they love both on and off the computer screen. “We as a group also sponsored Clean the Ferndale Up! in May, and about 18 of us got together for that event and helped clean up a park.” Helms said. “So, that’s really the gist of what we want to do. We want people to be able to know, and have information, about how to actively participate and live in a community like Ferndale.”
When asked if there has been negativity surrounding the founding of the Fabulous Ferndale forum, Matt was quick to say no. “(There’s been) no backlash at all. I think the idea of us being about free speech and supporting the city’s diversity has caught on.”
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To find the Fabulous Ferndale forum, the Ferndale Forum, or any other Ferndale-related forums on Facebook, simply enter the name of the forum in the Facebook search bar.
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Drone Warfare: Death Delivered From A Location Near You
Story by Brandon Toy
On April 7th, my family and 20 or so other people protested drone warfare in front of the main gate of the Battle Creek Air National Guard base in Michigan. In 2013, the base was named a Reaper Drone Operating Station and should be operational any day, if not already. Weaponized drone operators are dropping bombs from my back yard.
We stood in the mud on the side of the four lane highway from Noon to 1pm. A few of us held signs with slogans like “Stop Drone Warfare,” while others offered conversation to each other or waved at honking cars. One father and fellow protester brought fresh-popped popcorn, which he passed out in little blue bowls to the few children present.
This wasn’t the type of protest that drew the me- dia or police in riot gear. The only law enforcement present was a lone sheriff’s deputy who was on hand to escort us across the highway from the muddy field we parked in to our assigned area. The only pictures taken were by a pink-haired woman who slowed down in the median to snap a few with her camera phone.
“Who said we weren’t going to get any press,” I said as she drove away.
I couldn’t help wondering what point or purpose our protest had. Obviously, we weren’t going to shut the drone program down or change the USG’s policies on drone warfare. I imagined soldiers and airmen trading snide comments at our expense, and commanders deriding us to their troops in formation. It all seemed a little futile and inconsequential. Halfway through the hour, soldiers and airmen started driving onto the base, probably returning from lunch.
Each drive-by was the same. The soldiers would slow down to turn onto the base, avoid eye contact with us and then disappear through the gate.
I thought back to my time in the service and remembered the early days of the Iraq war when I used to watch Fox News and listen to right-wing talk radio. I had consumed media that had saturated me with the belief that the USA was the greatest country in the world and that it was our job to teach the people of the lost and misguided nations how to live. What would I have thought if I had seen an anti-war protest at the entrance to the base?
I didn’t know. I never had to pretend to ignore protesters, because the street sides were always bare when I drove to base. All I ever encountered were waving flags, yellow ribbons and well-wishers who thanked me for my service. It dawned on me that if we weren’t on this corner right now maybe these soldiers and airmen would have the same experience. Instead of smiling protesters and children playing, they would see only a dirty snow bank.
Perhaps, this was the purpose. We were asserting an idea into their world counter to those put forth by their bosses, colleagues and government. Perhaps we were planting a seed of doubt that would one day blossom into curiosity and eventually lead them to reject the precepts of war and embrace peace. Perhaps.
Maybe it’s more realistic to view our gathering from a more modest perspective. The hour our small band spent proclaiming our rejection of what we view as illegal and institutionalized murder is overwhelmingly offset by the entrepreneurs of war toward the side of injustice. Those who support drone warfare flood millions via the US media with a hundred pro-war messages a day for every minute we stood at that gate.
But there we were, humbly banded together, devoting a bit of our precious time to trying to solve a cypher whose key will surely only be revealed by either a true miracle, an epic amount of compounding serendipity or ages of enlightened human evolution.
And yet, my overriding emotions as I accepted the logic of the situation were peace and serenity. I hadn’t come with any delusions anyway. Like many of us, I know firsthand the enormity of the war machine and the mindless momentum of its consumption and destruction.
My thoughts returned back to the scene in front of me. I watched the children throw snowballs and hold signs with their mitten-covered hands. I remembered the stories of the children in the war zones; the ones that live each day of their lives with drones hovering above. I thought about the ones who were in the “wrong place at the wrong time” and were indiscriminately killed by the same drone operators that ignored us as they returned to their war.
The personal belief that drove me to turn my back on the war machine occurred to me again: there is no difference between my family and those killed by drone operators. There are no differences between my son and sixth-grader Mohammed Saleh Qayed Taeiman, who was killed by a drone strike in Yemen earlier this year — the latest of dozens of children murdered in US drone strikes in Yemen since 2002. Nor is there a difference between my community in Pontiac, Michigan and the communi- ties of the people that live with the terror of drones every day. Our children are their children, our voices are their voices and their tragedies are ours.
Or, as President Obama, the Commander in Chief of US drone warfare, succinctly stated: “There is no us and them, only us.”
Luckily, there are no drones that hover in the skies above me today. It’s this accident of geography that allows me to protest safely as my children play in the snow, while our brothers and sisters down- range from the drones can only pray that firebombs are not dropped on them from thousands of miles away by someone behind a computer screen sipping a latte. Since they can’t be here to remind the soldiers – and the rest of us far removed from the war zone – that they are also sentient beings with a right to life, we have to do it for them.
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Bio: Brandon Toy is father, husband and active member of the progressive community in the Greater Detroit area. He serves on the Board of Di- rectors of The Michigan Coalition of Human Rights (MCHR.org). In 2013, he publicly resigned his position at General Dynamics Land Systems where he had worked for five years as an engineering project manager on the Stryker Combat Vehicle Program. He is an army veteran who served in Baghdad. bmtoy79@gmail.com. Protests at the Battle Creek Air National Guard base will continue on the first Saturday of every month from Noon – 1PM. Everyone is welcome!
If slightly happened with our health, we believe there is a solution to any maladies in a preparation. What medicines do patients purchase online? Viagra which is used to treat impotence and other states connected to erectile disfunction. Learn more about “sildenafil“. What men talk about “viagra stories“? The most vital aspect you must look for is “sildenafil citrate“. Such problems commonly signal other problems: low libido or erectile disfunction can be the symptom a strong soundness problem such as heart trouble. Causes of sexual malfunction turn on injury to the penis. Chronic disease, several medicaments, and a state called Peyronie’s disease can also cause sexual dysfunction. Even though this medicine is not for use in women, it is not known whether this medication passes into breast milk.
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