PAGE 14A
Sunday, January 30, 2000
Laredo Morning Times
NATIONAL
Lawmaker:
Elian wants
to stay here
Just For Feet
plans liquidation
BY MADELINE BARO DIAZ
Associated Press Writer
BY RENEE DEGROSS
c. 2000 Cox News Service
MIAMI — About 200 chanting,
flag-waving protesters marched in
front of the Immigration and
Naturalization Service’s office
Saturday, demanding that 6-yearold Elian Gonzalez be sent home
to his father in Cuba.
But Rep. Dan Burton, whose
congressional maneuvering to
keep Elian in the United States
has infuriated the boy’s father,
said Saturday that the boy told
him he doesn’t want to go back.
“He’s a very intelligent young
man and I was able to ask him
without any coaching a couple of
questions,” the Indiana Republican said after meeting for 30 minutes with Elian at the home where
the boy is staying with relatives.
“The first question I asked him is
how did he like living here and he
said he liked it very much as he
was blowing bubbles. And then I
said ‘Would you like to go back to
Cuba?’ And he was very firm in
saying ‘No’ and this without any
coaching.”
Elian has been the subject of
heated debate since he was
found clinging to an inner tube
Nov. 25 off the Florida coast. His
mother and 10 others traveling
with him drowned during an effort
to leave Cuba.
Elian’s grandmothers were
expected to continue a tour of the
United States, where they have
been campaigning for Elian’s
return, Cuba’s Prensa Latina
news agency said.
More than 100,000 Cubans
gathered Saturday in the Cuban
ATLANTA — This time last year
Just For Feet had hoped its
Super Bowl ad would boost
sales at its athletic apparel and
shoe stores. Instead, it seemed
to be the beginning of the end.
Just For Feet announced this
week that it plans to liquidate all
of its stores.
The Birmingham, Ala.-based
chain originally filed for Chapter
11 bankruptcy protection on Nov.
4, and had hoped to find a buyer.
But that hasn’t happened.
Now, Just For Feet intends to
sell all or part of its assets in a
court-approved auction by midFebruary.
The company’s Super Bowl ad
last January showed white
hunters drugging a Kenyan runner and giving him shoes.
It was attacked as racist by
AP photo by L.M. OTERO
A DIFFERENT SENTIMENT: Ednel Joachin, 10, carries a sign as a mounted policeman looks on during a
protest favoring Elian Gonzalez’s return to Cuba.
city of Cienfuegos for another in
an almost daily series of government-sponsored, nationally televised rallies for Elian’s return. One
child speaker idolized the boy as
“a kidnapped angel.”
In Miami, the protesters at the
INS office yelled “Send Elian
Home” as a small plane towing a
banner with the same slogan
passed overhead.
Cuban-Americans among the
group said they wanted to show
that not all Cuban-Americans
want Elian to remain here. They
said the boy had been kidnapped
and should be returned to his
father.
“Every child needs a father and a
mother,” said Juan Morales, a
Cuban who has lived in the United
States for eight years. “If the
mother dies, the person directly
responsible is the father and not
the uncle and not the United
States.”
Andres Gomez, national coordinator of the Antonio Maceo
Brigade, a group that organized
the protest and advocates normalizing relations with Cuba, said the
demonstrators have a noble purpose.
“We are coming together in
this case in defense of the most
fundamental rights of a human
being, which are the rights of a
child,” he said.
Later Saturday, the anti-Castro
Democracy Movement, a group
which wants Elian to stay put,
launched a flotilla of about 20
boats to pay tribute to Elian’s
mother and the 10 others who
drowned. About 300 people,
including about 200 aboard boats,
took part.
Demonstrators released balloons into the air and threw flowers into the water as the American
and Cuban national anthems
played. Donato Dalrymple, a fisherman who found Elian floating at
sea, tossed a wreath with flowers
arranged in the pattern of the
Cuban flag into the water.
Spy ring member gets seven-year sentence
MIAMI (AP) — A confessed
member of a spy ring was sentenced to seven years in
prison for attempting to infiltrate U.S. military installations
in Florida for the Cuban government.
Alejandro Alonso, a U.S. citizen born in Des Moines, Iowa,
was the first member of the
group to be sentenced. He
had pleaded guilty to being an
agent for a foreign country.
Five others who have pleaded
guilty are awaiting sentencing.
“I can only say that I did
wrong,” Alonso said after sentencing Friday. “I am repentant. I apologize to this court
and to the whole world.”
Alonso was charged with trying to penetrate U.S. military
bases, infiltrate anti-Castro
exile groups and manipulate
U.S. media and political organizations.
Prosecutors said his assignment was to report on the
Cuban-exile group Democracy
Movement. He joined exile
demonstrations, disclosed the
names of participants and
reported on related U.S. Coast
Guard activity, prosecutors
said.
He was one of 10 people
arrested in September 1998 in
connection with the spy ring.
Four others were added to the
list of defendants in May 1999.
After his arrest, Alonso told
investigators where to find a
fake identification kit, a page
of codes, and a pad of watersoluble paper used for secret
messages.
Prosecutors said the ring
tried to infiltrate the U.S.
Southern
Command
and
planted an agent at the U.S.
Navy’s Boca Chica Naval Air
Station near Key West.
advertising critics and viewers.
Just For Feet pulled the ad created by Saatchi & Saatchi after
about a week.
To help turn around slumping
sales, Just For Feet last March
hired Helen Rockey, a former
Nike executive, as president and
chief operating officer. She was
quickly promoted to chief executive officer.
Like most retailers selling athletic clothing and footwear, Just
For Feet watched its sales slump
as consumer tastes changed.
In recent months, the 12-yearold company closed 85 Just For
Feet stores, leaving the chain
with 151 superstores, 88 specialty stores, and 39 franchised specialty stores.
The company is attempting to
secure funding from its debtor-inpossession lenders to continue
its operations while liquidating.
Sharpton vows to hold
protests at Diallo trial
BY KATHERINE E. FINKELSTEIN
c.2000 N.Y. Times News
Service
NEW YORK — The weather in
Albany will be “hot,” the Rev. Al
Sharpton told 200 supporters
Saturday, declaring that he
would be a rambunctious and
daily presence at the trial in the
killing of Amadou Diallo, which
begins there Monday.
Sharpton said moving the trial
140 miles north to the capital
was a “scheme” to diffuse his
effectiveness, but he promised
headline-grabbing protests at the
courthouse there, beginning with
a human prayer chain for justice.
Sharpton’s supporters packed
the House of God, his Harlem
headquarters at 1941 Madison
Ave., for his weekly radio broadcast Saturday. The slain immigrant’s father, Saikou Amad
Diallo, was also there.
Sharpton told the energetic
crowd that while the news media
had depicted him as being
unwanted in Albany, he had
“secret” support akin to that of
the Underground Railroad. And
with a flourish that brought a
standing ovation, he said that he
had had a tete-a-tete with the
dead heroine of the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, who told him, “Head north,
young man, young woman,
stand up for justice.”
Ms. Tubman also told him, he
said, that in her day, she had to
travel by herself without modern
conveniences. “We didn’t have
fax machines,” he quoted her as
saying.
Lacing his exhortation with talk
of King David, Sharpton told his
audience that long-distance trials
were good for long-distance runners.