SOME PICTURES FROM GABRIEL'S LAST FUNDRAISING EVENT...

THANKS TO ALL THE WONDERFUL PEOPLE THAT SHOWED UP. WE STILL FEEL YOUR LOVE AND SOLIDARITY.

NEW EVENT SOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nelson Sosa playing beautiful Latinamerican music

Tia Richardson painting live a beautiful piece of art that she named "One Day....Volveras" created for Gabriel

Sura Faraj flag dancing for all of us....amazing!

Marcia Lee reading her powerful poetry

Some of the silent auction items generously donated by local artists and friends

Without the support of The National this fundraising would have never being possible.... THANK YOU!!!...Please, if you are in Milwaukee support The National...fresh, local food....and extremely generous owners!

WE STILL NEED YOUR SUPPORT!!!

WAYS YOU CAN HELP:

1- Donate anything you can to Gabriel's Defense Fund
2- Buy "From Death to Life" poetry book by Gabriel: book@gabrielgonzalez.net
3- Distribute his flyer: http://www.scribd.com/doc/12312911/Gabriels-Flyer-2

For questions, comments, or ideas contact: ontherise@gabrielgonzalez.net

You may wash your hands
In my blood
But will that cleanse your slate of anguish?
Who prescribed death as a balm for your wounded heart?
I am a mother’s child
A loving father and husband
How can killing me make you feel better?
How does killing me differ from
Killing in general?
By Gabriel Gonzalez

"FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE COMMUNIST,

     AND I DIDN'T SPEAK UP, BECAUSE I WASN'T A COMMUNITS.

THEN THEY CAME FOR THE TRADE UNIONIST,

     AND I DIDN'T SPEAK UP, BECAUSE I WASN'T A TRADE UNIONIST.

AND THEN THEY CAME FOR THE JEWS,

     BUT I DIDN'T SPEAK UP BECAUSE I WASN'T A JEW.

AND THEN...THEY CAME FOR ME...

    ...AND BY THAT TIME THERE WAS NO ONE LEFT TO SPEAK UP."

ABOUT ME, GABRIEL:

I grew up in arun-down, poverty-stricken neighborhood, where gangs, drugs, prostitution and violence were created by social injustice. A place where I had no role models.I had no parental guidance in my life. Drug lord’s gang members looked for and targeted children like me. A place where one develops a false sense of manhood and lives in a perpetual state of fear.

Once veiled by ignorance, my destructive actions were but reflex actions to a hostile social order. Due to this blinding veil of ignorance, the social order of things,though hostile, appeared in no way unnatural to me.

I was born and raised seeing only this reality. Never was I admonished that I was born into a predetermined set of social circumstances, arranged by oppressive forces, and devised to make prison and death row the likely fate of the Latino child. Thus,without awareness I was on a track fated for my current confinement: Texas Death Row.

Fourteen years ago San Antonio County placed me on death row for a crime I did not commit!

There I sat,young, unconscious, and with no idea of where I was or where I was going. That was a decade ago. Today, I can hold my head high and say to the world, “I have embraced the gates of manhood and I am no longer that young, unconscious individual who was sent to death row so long ago under pretentious,controversial, unprecedented circumstances”.

While wrongfully convicted and sentenced to die, I have utilized my time as a beneficially as possible via study: Social, Political, Spiritual and Cultural awareness and implementation, introspection, recognition of mistakes and misconceptions of manhood.

I am a Latino father of three and a husband to a wife who I love more than anything. I am a prison activist involved in many social causes. I’m a poet and artist. I love to read and write. I spend most of my time writing, reading and seeking to extend myself beyond the limitations of this cruel and unusual confinement of isolation, sensory deprivation, and physical and psychological abuse.

They can confine my body, but not my MIND and SOUL.

Solidarity,Action and Transformation

Gabriel Gonzalez

TO CONTACT GABRIEL DIRECTLY, WRITE:

Gabriel Gonzalez
# 521992
Bexar County Jail
200 N. Comal
San Antonio, TX 78207
USA

OR E-MAIL HIS WEBMASTER AT: ontherise@gabrielgonzalez.net