Melvin Sembler Gets By with a Little Help from His Friends!
Melvin Sembler and the City of St. Petersburg are trying to stop Peace Protestors from exercising their right to free speech on city property.http://www.stpeteforpeace.org/
Melvin Sembler likes to flex his muscles. He likes to do that because of who he is. He gets by with a little help from his friends. He bears the title of "Honorable" by an official act of Congress. He is a very rich man living on St. Pete Beach. He and his family are friends of the Bush family and major financial contributors. He worked as the Head of the Financial end of the 2000 Bush Campaign. Good ole' Mel is a also a wealthy land baron and owner of shopping malls with even more property and land holdings being developed all over the South and Puerto Rico. Bush initially picked him to head the Export-Import Bank, but Sembler withdrew his nomination when it was discovered that his company did business with banks that received loans from the agency. He is also a Bush appointed ambassador to Italy and was a former ambassador to both Australia and Nauru. After all, with the Bush family, everyone knows that you have to pay up front to work for them--it does not matter if you have very few morals or ethics, having a lot of money is the only prerequisite to a government appointed position.
Melvin has a problem that people have heard about lately--in spite of the fact that he touts himself as a good American citizen and diplomat, he does not like to see people exercising their First Ammendment rights. He also hates to see young people, and in particular, black people having fun or frequenting his Malls. The Peace protestors of the Tampa Bay area are not welcome in front of BayWalk, one of Sembler's properties, even though they stand on the public sidewalks. The protestors have not damaged Mel's business at all, in fact they have probably increased it! Mel apparently has the St Petersburg police, the St. Petersburg City Commissioners, privately hired security agents and even the NAACP in his back pocket, as they carry out his unconstitutional policies unabated or unchallenged by other city officials and leaders. For more information on some of the recent tactics used see the following sites and articles:
http://www.stpeteforpeace.org
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But there are a lot of things about Melvin Sembler that people either do not know or don't want to talk about.
On October 31, 2001 Melvin Sembler addressed the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee which was then considering his nomination for ambassadorship to Italy and told the assembled Senators this:
"In 1976 Betty and I helped found STRAIGHT, a nonprofit, adolescent drug treatment and rehabilitation program with branches across the US, which successfully treated and graduated more than 12,000 young people nationwide. For 17 years, I served as chairman of the board of STRAIGHT. Other than our children, nothing was more rewarding than this effort. Betty and I initially agreed that if we helped one child it would be worth all the effort. With 12,000 successful graduates . . . It was a gratifying accomplishment."
What has surfaced about the Straight facilities were incidents of torture, behavior modification, child abuse, brainwashing and cult-like activity (and some would rival the incidents of torture of the political prisoners of Abu Gharab) during the so called rehabilitation of many of these young people. And the fact that the Sembler Family Fortune was enhanced even more by the bilking and forceful marketing tactics to lengthen the rehab stays used by the staff of Straight on well to do or middle class white families to the tune of more than a $95 million dollar profit. Racial profiling occurred with the patients accepted into the program and even the hired staff of the facilities. Matt Sembler does not like black people, that is certainly apparent.
Straights eventually closed all over the country under mounting civil suits and criminal investigations. In 1989 state health authorities in Florida tried to close the flagship Straight treatment camp in St. Petersburg but were not successful in closing it until several years later.
Mel Sembler insists that Straight graduated 12,000 kids. Since it is well known that most children never graduate from the Straight Program, perhaps as many as 50,000 kids were intentionally abused at Straight, physically, mentally or both. The survivors of the rehab program call it The Great Straight Holocaust. Mel Sembler may be the only living American to be able to say that he has been ambassador to three countries and he has been bestowed these honors because he purchased the positions. But worse for him he has the gall to brag that it was his work at Straight that got him his titles!
A lof of people think that Straight went into oblivion, was closed down and no longer exists. BEEP--wrong answer! It has merely morphed and changed names I guess this should not come as a surprise to anyone, it is the same program headed up by none other than Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida and brother to the President of the United States, who is on the Advisory Board for Straight which now calls itself the DFAF (Drug Free America Foundation, Inc.) and so is his wife Columba! Other notables on this same board include Richard M. Baker, a Republican and the Mayor of Saint Petersburg, Florida, Susan Latvala, a Republican on the Pinellas County, Florida Board of Commissioners (and everyone knows the Pinellas County Board of Commissioners ignore First Ammendment Rights ie., the Fortuneteller's Ordinance--more to come on that later), Robert L. DuPont, Jr., the founding director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the second White House Drug Czar, and James R. McDonough, Florida's Drug Czar.
Recent protests for peace and racial equality that will occur in downtown St. Petersburg around the BayWalk Mall will no likely be curtailed by the city law enforcement that are in Mr. Sembler's pocket. Sembler is trying like hell to get all protests shut down. See the article about the latest protest action here:
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Yes, that is for sure! Just like the song, Melvin Sembler gets by with a little help from his friends.
Company website
http://www.sembler.com
Official Portrait
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/pix/amb/portraits/eur/12091.htm
Official Biography
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/7043.htm
Properties under development
http://www.sembler.com/underDevelopment.php
The Sembler Family's Political Contributions
Info on Straight
http://www.rickross.com/groups/straightinc.html
http://www.thestraights.com/articles/melsembler-bio.htm
http://fornits.com/anonanon/revoke.htm
http://thestraights.com/news/http://thestraights.com/images/dfaf-jeb-board-hires.jpg
Urban Profiling at Sembler's Properties
http://thestraights.com/reports/white-kids-only.htm
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/02/18/Neighborhoodtimes/BayWalk_celebrating_d.shtml
http://www.thestraights.com/articles/sembler-naacp-coalition.htm
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/03/14/news_pf/Southpinellas/Visions_divide_black_.shtml
http://www.inpdum.org/news/framed.htm
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posted by Zalala @ 7/27/2004 09:38:00 AM
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