Is Free Speech Dead In Our Country?

First Amendment - Religion and Expression. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Freedom of speech is one of the founding principles of our country. It s the right to communicate one's opinions and ideas without fear of  retaliation or censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used. Freedom of speech is not to be hindered simply because one does not like what is being said. However in our present society that is exactly what is happening. Our most basic right to express ourselves is being slowly eroded by over zealous individuals who have an aversion to the truth.

In the past members of the Klan held rallies in cities and towns all over the country. At these events the [Klan] proclaimed the superiority of the white race in front of God and country and no one batted an eye. Why? Because as Americans they had a civil right to speak their beliefs aloud. It did not matter if what they had to say was offensive to others or certain races of people didn't like what they had to say. In today's society one can hardly say a phrase in any direction without being crucified in the court of public opinion. It won't be long before our spoken opinions will no longer be the truth. The supreme court has weighed in on this subject by claiming "free speech is not absolute." The Supreme Court uses the example of the man who yells fire in a crowded theater to incite a panic to say all speech is not protected by the constitution. However when you read the First Amendment of the Constitution it does not state that some speech is protected. It states that ALL speech is protected. Furthermore it states that Congress shall make no law abridging free speech. Yet here we are discussing just how much freedom we have to say what we want. Personally I disagree with the Supreme Court on this subject. All speech is protected by the Constitution. As such, we as adults, have a responsibility to correctly
disseminate the information we receive from others. To use the Supreme Court's example, if a man yells fire in a crowded theater, we as individuals should determine whether or not that information is correct. Meaning before you trample several people getting out of the theater you might want take sure it is actually on fire first. To bring my point closer to home, just because I wrote a blog about a particularly sensitive subject doesn't mean those that didn't like what I had to say get to silence my right to free speech by falsely accusing me of being threatening, and twisting my words out of context. Being an American citizen I have the constitutionally protected right to voice my views as I see fit. Just as any other American does. The fact that one can be vilified for expressing his or her own thoughts and opinions sets a dangerous precident. When we start to allow the infringement of one of our rights we risk losing all of our rights.

How?

How do you let go of someone who has influenced your life so much? Someone who used to be just a phone call away, now unreachable. I find myself in a familiar fog of memories and depression. My uncle, the man who raised me, is no longer here to finish the journey with me. I'm trying to square myself with the notion but it somehow seems unfair. One moment I'm mad at the universe for taking him away and then the next I'm fighting back the pain and the tears wondering why. This man meant a great deal to me because he was the one who instilled the values I carry with me to this day. He loved and cared about me when I didn't have the sense to care for myself. Were it not for him and my older brothers I would not be the person I am today. I owe my uncle a debt I can't even begin to repay and now that he's gone I won't even get the opportunity to try. I remember the day I moved out on my own like it was yesterday. My uncle Lester sat me down, passed me his beer and proceeded to give me some valuable advice on life. After he finished he got up, gave me a hug and told me he loved me and if I ever needed to come home I'd always know where he was. He kept that promise to me. Anytime I needed him he was there. Now he's gone...and I'm having trouble squaring myself with this new reality. This pain keeps eating at me like a disease. People say things like "this will pass" and "it will get better" but in reality it doesn't. Time doesn't heal the wounds it just dulls the pain to a bearable level. Pain that replaces the love I carried for my uncle. I've grown tired of hearing the idiotic things people say when they're trying to comfort you. Things like "well, he's in a better place." All I can do is smile and nod while I'm thinking "really!?! How the f***k do you know?" This is another in a long line of hurts I'm still carrying for the loved ones I've lost over the years. I think one of the things that angers me most is I didn't see this coming. I didn't get the chance to plan or prepare for this. I don't get the chance to stop this or make this better. I can't ball up my fists and fight this with him or fight for him like I've so many times over the years. I can only stand by and watch. Sitting here on my hands doing nothing. How do I live with that?  One day he was a phone call away and the next he wasn't. I keep asking myself why him? If I'm feeling this way I can't even begin to imagine how my cousins must feel now. Their pain must be 10x what mine is. What can I do to be there for them? I don't know but calling them more often than I called my uncle is a start.

DCS and The CRCU Are Playing God With People's Lives

In today's turbulent economic climate the average family's needs are simple. A stable job that pays the bills and helps them support their families. It can be a stressful burden on someone when they face an uncertain future with regard to their employment. Companies folding and laying off workers populate the news headlines on almost a monthly basis. But what happens when you are let go at the whim of an uncaring manager? You're not released because of bad job performance, or poor work habits like being late. You are released at the whimsy of your manager who, in all likelihood, will lie to you about the reason you are actually being let go. Take my situation for example, At first I was told that "my services would no  longer be required". I was handed an unofficial looking letter from the office of Gregory McKay but the letter wasn't signed by him. Over a month later I received another letter from the office of Gregory McKay stating that they had made a mistake. I wasn't let go by the CRCU, but I that I had abandoned my job instead. Now clearly something about this situation isn't right. Somewhere, someone in DCS and the CRCU is lying. It is lies like this one that permeate the records department and the Department of Child safety as a whole. It is lies like this one that place employees in the CRCU and DCS as a whole in danger. Gun violence is an almost daily occurrence across the country. Movie theater shootings, church shootings, and car to car shootings on valley freeways are in the news with alarming frequency. Mass shootings like these occur without warning and victims are often innocent people who are caught unaware. What does the CRCU and DCS plan to do when a disgruntled employee comes back for revenge after being lied to about why they were released? Their lives brought to a screeching halt because they no longer have the means to feed their children, pay their bills and make a living. Someone's whole life is destroyed because of the inane whims of a CRCU manager who thinks they are all powerful. Understandably people are released everyday for various reasons. People get fired all the time and they don't come back and commit acts of violence when they are let go for reasons that are clear, concise, and honest. When some is fired for no reason or lied on it is difficult to tell what they may do. The fact of the matter is you never know what someone may be dealing with in their personal lives, nor can anyone say with any amount of certainty what will send someone over the edge and causing them to commit a violent act. However, bringing someone's life to a halt on a selfish whim certainly increases the chances of such an event. Often times in such violence the shooter isn't looking to harm a certain individual whom they might have issue with. Their victims are usually innocent people who are chosen at random for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. So what does DCS and the CRCU plan to do in the event that someone does come after them looking to do harm? The answer is nothing. The managers of the CRCU are awash in the false comfort that they work in a locked facility and nothing can harm them. I guess they have forgotten that CRCU employees have lives outside their jobs.The repercussions of their bad decisions don't punch a time clock like human beings do. Any employee can be harmed at a local Walmart or Fry's grocery store or even walking through the parking lot to their cars at the end of a long work day. I have witnessed the potential for violence impacting the workplace first hand with makeshift wanted posters plastered all over the CRCU offices. These posters warned us about the potential threat of two men who could at any moment accost us in the parking lot looking for two of Marisela Moreno's family members. Most assuredly it is the lies they tell themselves that will do the most harm. Violence like this won't happen to them because they've done nothing wrong. The truth is when you play God with people's lives and lie about it you have done something wrong whether you choose to admit it or not. All adverse actions to being lied to, fired, and having your life ripped out from under you don't have result in a violent outcome. One person with enough proof of wrong doing could run to any attorney here in the valley and sue DCS. A million dollar lawsuit would bankrupt the Department of Child Safety and close the records unit down permanently. All because a few managers didn't have the insight to do the job they were assigned with no integrity.

Now I am obviously not advocating violence against the CRCU management in any way. Gun violence is always tragic and never solves anything. It weakens us as a society and I would never suggest anyone use it as a means to an end. What I would suggest is that people start to leave the CRCU. Call Randstad and ask them to find you something better. Somewhere you have the opportunity to become a permanent employee and be promoted without nepotism being a factor in that process. The CRCU is a dead end job that will never lead to permanent employment nor financial stability. Therefore, I strongly urge permanent and temporary employees to seek other employment opportunities and stop wasting your time and talents in the wasteland of DCS. To the permanent employees I say this...get out now. Leave before you become the next victim of the unscrupulous management tactics of the CRCU. They don't value you as they should and perhaps they never will.  You deserve better than the management has given you and I implore you to find it...somewhere else. 

The Decision to Chase My Dreams

Most of us get up and go to work out of a need to survive. We go to a job we hate (and one that doesn't appreciate us) to pay bills and provide a life for our families and our kids. I was one who was stuck in a dead end job. I was wasting away in a five by five cubicle slowly killing myself by eating M&M's and other unhealthy junk food on a daily basis. At the time it wasn't clear to me just how much being in this dead end job was really affecting me. The constant bad decisions by the management, the constant shuffle of temporary employees, and taking orders from clearly unqualified staff had secretly taken its toll on me. I was feeling burned out and it reflected in my home life. I was always snappy and irritable, I didn't want to go anywhere or do anything because I spent the weekend dreading Monday morning. I felt like because they didn't respect or appreciate me as an employee that they didn't deserve the very best that I had to offer as an employee so I gave them enough to adequately do my job. The reason for this was simple...inequality in the work place. I was in a dead end job where they were going to make sure I would never advance. All of those opportunities were going to those individuals who kissed up to the boss and played the game of office politics. The day I was released I was upset because the puppet that supposed to be my supervisor didn't even have the testicular fortitude to face me like a man and tell me what was going on. He sat in his office like a coward avoiding me all day. I was also upset because they waited until the end of the day to let me go and further more they insulted my intelligence by lying to me and saying they didn't have to give me a reason. After going home, cooling down, and giving it some thought I realized that I had a unique opportunity in front of me. Sitting in a cubicle  doing their bidding was a waste of my time and talents with the advanced degrees that I hold. I didn't go to school to rot away in a cubicle, I went to school to be my own man and determine my own future by working for myself. I had done it before with my first paralegal company (which I sold) and I could do it again now. So I decided to turn my anger into action! I decided that I was never going to give someone as inept as the  idiot i called a supervisor power over me ever again. I would reap the benefits of my hard work and success would be my reward as well as my revenge. I set about starting my company and something amazing happened. I found my old self again. As the calls started coming in my confidence in myself grew. Once I started feeling better about myself I joined a gym and started losing the depression weight I had packed on over the last two plus years. Now, I feel the freedom of having a bright future that I am in control of. I am ready to take whatever comes my way and I do not fear failure. Over my three years in my last position,  I have met lots of entrepreneurs. Lawyers, Photographers, Caterers, Event Planners, Real Estate Agents etc. To those who may be reading this I encourage you to leave that dead end job and strike out on your own. Don't sit idly by and waste your time and talents on a worthless department and a dead end job! Invest in yourselves and do something that fulfills you.  I did and I couldn't be happier! 

The Bully or the Bullied

Bully
verb

1. use superior strength or influence to intimidate (someone), typically to force him or her to do what one wants. Synonyms: persecute, oppress, tyrannize, browbeat, harass, torment, intimidate, strong-arm, dominate.

I was accused of this once by the management of the CRCU. Without going into too much detail, I was accused of bullying an employee. Immediately I was pulled into the director's office where an Employee Relations representative was waiting for me. Instead of giving me a chance to explain my side a letter was immediately shoved in front of me and I was directed to sign. It was explained to me that I was a bully and there was a zero tolerance policy for such. As I attempted to explain my side of the story I was cut off and ordered to sign this letter in front of me. At that moment I became the bullied. I was persecuted without evidence, and now I was being strong armed into signing this form stating I was guilty. No one was interested in what I had to say in my defense. Even when this employee accused others of the same thing and these accusations were found to be baseless, the damage was done. I was forever viewed as a bully. The real bully in the office is the CRCU management. With little provocation they have been known to just let people go without so much as a valid reason. At one point one supervisor even banged his hand on the desk while he yelled in the face of an employee. The saddest part of that ordeal is that he was yelling about a mistake of his own making. Let's not forget the "coming to God" meetings where all of the employees are pulled into the conference room. There they are stood over like a heard of cattle while being lectured. Listening to statements from management like "thanks for donating your time, because we're not paying you overtime" or telling an employee she's not able to take on extra assignments like training new employees because she's pregnant. All the while there are other pregnant women in the office who were being allowed to as much as they like without restrictions. While they vehemently deny such, the management of the CRCU are exactly what they accused me of being...a bully. They exert unnecessary and undue influence over employees by constantly threatening staff with losing their jobs. They persecute, oppress and tyrannize by virtue of micromanagement and oppressive quotas and unrealistic goals for staff. When those goals aren't met...you're let go and replaced by someone else. Management will often tell you that "this is how most successful companies are run" and they are right. A lot of successful companies are run by bullying its employees, for example Chinese sweat shops have been run this exact same way for centuries. There are two flaws in their superlative wisdom. The first is that the most successful companies aren't run by bullying its employees, setting unrealistic goal that can't be consistently met, brow beating employees that don't make the cut, or firing skilled employees and replacing them with ones that have substandard training at best. Countless studies have shown that this business model is a recipe for disaster. The second flaw is comparing the CRCU to a successful company. Being quite honest, they're not even running a successful department let alone a successful company. The CRCU management isn't running Apple, Microsoft, or Google, they are running a small department within the Department of Child Safety. Yet this is how they are running the CRCU, as if it were their company. Most businesses ran this way would have failed long ago. Short sided management tactics that belittle, undervalue, underestimate, and marginalize employees. This type of bullying management style which is deployed by the CRCU lowers moral, which in turn hurts production.  However there is a bright side to this story, in history the bullied inevitably always becomes the bully. So just because the CRCU  and DCS thinks they are done with some employees, it doesn't necessarily mean those employees is done with you. The bully will become the bullied.

Rotten Apples

"A bad manager can take a good staff and destroy it, causing the best employees to flee and the remainder to lose motivation"
~unknown

The statement above precisely underscores what the CRCU management has done to the staff of the records department. In the beginning the employees thrived under the leadership of the CRCU. It was by no means perfect but the dedication to the division as a whole was there. We did anything we were ask with smiles on our faces and routinely went above and beyond without being ask. We knew that the success of the division rested on our shoulders and we were prepared to do whatever was necessary to ensure it just that...a success. The reason we thrived was because we respected our management and the decisions that they made. The CRCU management treated us with respect. They respected us like professionals and equals. That's not to say we didn't have disagreements, but for the good of the team we worked those out as a team and moved on. Nor am I saying we liked or agreed with every decision that was made. We understood the decisions that the management made was for the good of the division as a whole. The CRCU management understood how to get the most out of employees by showing them the respect they deserved and involving them in the process. As a result the management was able to hire and train long term employees who went above and beyond without being ask. Because of the feeling of security,  employees felt comfortable enough to perform at their very best. That was until the current management took over. Their first mistake was not even knowing the laws and regulations that govern what we did as a records division. Their second mistake was not respecting the employees that built the division they were now running. Because of these two costly mistakes the current CRCU management never garnered the respect of the employees of the department. To this day they don't have the respect of the department because they talk down to employees instead of to them as human beings.  As a result well trained redactors have left the division. This left a void in passing on the knowledge that was achieved  through hours of trial and error. Instead of seeking to replace the knowledge lost with experienced employees leaving, the new management took it upon themselves to place highly unqualified individuals in positions of authority because the management viewed these employees as CRCU "favorites." The current regime passed over very qualified individuals for people who couldn't do the job they were assigned. This resulted in a dropping morale rate almost from the beginning. Even worse is the fact that because of these decisions,  sensitive CPS information has been mistakenly given to the public on several hundred occaisions by these unqualified individuals. The heinous decision making of the current CRCU management has caused highly valued and college educated individuals to view the CRCU as stepping stone to other employment opportunities rather than a career destination, and who can blame them. Hiring decisions that choose the unqualified over the tenured tend and experienced to have that affect on people. The current regime of the CRCU has turned once selfless employees into unmotivated underachieving slackers. Yet they continue to pat themselves on the back like they have accomplished something worth noting. When all they have really done is mask the problems they've created with lies and nepotism. For all of the problems they have claimed to have solved, 90% of the problems were created by their heinous decision making in the first place. 

When Does Loyalty Become Stupidity?

When does loyalty become stupidity with regard to employment? Loyalty to a company or job used to come with a payoff. You came to work early and left late or you worked a few of hours of overtime off the clock and when there was an upcoming promotion or opportunity for advancement you had confidence that you would be considered because of your loyalty. You've gone above and beyond for the company in the hope that your loyalty would be rewarded. But what happens when your loyalty is taken for granted? The promotion you wanted, and often spent time off the clock doing, is given to someone who is inexperienced and undeserving. Do you remain loyal to the job in the hopes that your turn will come? This is exactly the decision that faces CRCU employees on a daily basis. They are staring down the barrel of a dead end job with no real prospect for pay raises or advancement. Some work tirelessly hoping that their time will come or their opportunity will be presented to them if they work hard. The harsh reality is that it won't. As we have discussed before, the CRCU's shady hiring and promotion practices aren't built for the average hard worker to get ahead. That being said, If I know that I cannot advance my career as an employee of the CRCU then why should be loyal to a fault and go above and beyond for someone who doesn't value me enough to promote me? Wouldn't that make me stupid? Yet that is exactly what the CRCU management is unfairly asking employees to do. They dangle promotions in front of hard working employees and then offer excuses (lies) when when they aren't promoted. One employee was told by CRCU management that the reason he wasn't chosen was because they were specifically looking for a supervisor with a four year degree. In their defense the CRCU management did choose a supervisor with a four year degree...in Drama. This is the equivalent of asking for a rocket scientist and then hiring a guy who makes bottle rockets. Only a complete moron would make this kind of decision.  I can only surmise the reasoning behind this choice by CRCU management was so this supervisor could act like he knows how to supervise a team. Yet I digress, because of the top heavy management schematic the CRCU employs, promotion is nearly impossible unless something big happens. For example, the CRCU director doesn't appear to be leaving the department anytime soon. The managers and supervisors appear to be deeply ingrained in their positions as well.  So if I'm Joe Employee coming to work everyday with no promotion opportunities anytime soon, what does my future look like and where is my motivation not to do the bare minimum to get by? Some could argue that your paycheck is your motivation to which I would argue...no it isn't. A paycheck is a recompense for doing the job in which you were hired for. At no time does it state in any job description (nor it it implied) that we are paying you to go above and beyond and do your very best. The point being made is a simple yet powerful statement as to how the CRCU and DCS as a whole values it's employees. They don't. If they did then they would not ask you (as an employee) for the very best that you can do and offer you absolutely nothing in return. Even jack got magic beans for his cow in Jack and the Bean Stalk! So, when does loyalty become stupidity? I supposed it's when you work your fingers to the bone day in and day out fully knowing that any promotional opportunity that becomes available is going to undoubtedly go to someone's family member but you do it anyway. It's when you go above and beyond for a job knowing that there is no raise coming...ever. Maybe its even when you tow the company line by justifying bad management decisions by making excuses for them to other employees. Using lines like "I can see why they did that" when you really can't or saying "its better this way" when it really isn't. Loyalty becomes stupidity when you allow people like the management of the CRCU to undervalue, underestimate, and marginalize you and your talents with no reward. So ask yourself are you being loyal or are you being stupid?