The Message Of Mary Jesus

The Message Of Mary Jesus
By Lynda Carson January 21, 2005

On December 10, 2005, tragedy struck downtown Oakland, when a 33 year old woman who felt brutalized by Oakland's kangaroo courts, plunged to her death from the Oakland Tribune Tower.

Longtime Oakland renter, Mary Jesus, had a message that she wanted to get out into the mind of the public at large, and she was willing to sacrifice her own life to do so.

On that fateful day, high above the crowd down below, Mary Jesus gazed upon the hundreds of people that had gathered upon the sidewalks below, to shout and tell her not to do it. Local attorney Bob Salinas, was one of those in the crowd that tried to save her as he frantically yelled out and told her not to jump.

A moment before she died in a crushing pool of blood upon the sidewalk eight stories down below, Mary Jesus responded to the crowd by tossing down a fistful of copies of the suicide note that she had wanted everyone to read.

All too often in American society, there are way to many who feel that they are being pushed over the edge by the greedy profiteers and the corrupt legal system that caters to them. Mary Jesus, was one of those people that had been chewed up and spit out by Oakland's brutal eviction system, and she took her own life to bring attention to those that had forced her over the edge.

The suicide note mentions four names that Mary Jesus wanted exposed to the public domain.

In the suicide note, Mary Jesus starts out by saying; Mark Roemer, James Lewis and Dean Miller, they are the catylist. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Yolanda Northridge, was the only other name mentioned in the suicide note of Mary Jesus.

As it turned out, Mark F. Roemer and James L. Lewis were the landlords that owned the building where Mary Jesus resided in. Dean Miller was the attorney representing the landlords trying to evict her, and Judge Yolanda Northridge was the one that ordered the eviction of Mary Jesus from the home she had loved for so many years.

Mary Jesus had pointed her finger at these four individuals, who in her mind had apparently held the keys of life or death to the world that she had loved and cherished.

During the afternoon of January 20th, I reached Juanita Moore, the court clerk for Judge Yolanda Northridge, to ask how this tragedy could have ever come about. At that point, both the clerk and the judge had both declined to comment on what had occurred in their courtroom and how it resulted in the death of Mary Jesus.

On that very same day of January 20th, I contacted Dean Miller at his residence in Piedmont, at 41 Wildwood Ave, and he confirmed that not only was he the attorney that went after Mary Jesus, but, that James Lewis and Mark Roemer are some longtime high school friends of his from Piedmont High, many long years ago.

It just so happens that Mary Jesus believed that this same trio of chums from Piedmont High, were the ones that were pushing her over the edge. They are the catylist, as she states in her suicide note.

Mary Jesus had resided at the beautiful Dunsmuir Apartments during the past 13 years at 1515 Alice St., in downtown Oakland. The 29 unit residential apartment building, was built in 1912 and was loaded with beautiful old oak trim that surrounded the doors and the windows throughout the building. The beautifully crafted oak trim added a look of elegance and old world charm to the spacious building, in one of Oaklands finest downtown neighborhoods.

The records show that the Dunsmuir Apartments were bought by the landlords of Mary Jesus on January 16 1998, for the grand sum of $1,320,000, and is listed as the Dunsmuir Apartments Limited Liability CX.

The records list the mailing address for the building at, 1035 Underhills Rd, Oakland CA 94610, which may possibly be the residential address of none other than James L. Lewis, who happens to be in partnership with Mark F. Roemer, as co-owners of the Dunsmuir Apartments.

I tracked down the whereabouts of the other building owner, Mark F. Roemer, to a residence in Piedmont, at 12 Keefer Ct., which has an unlisted phone number for that location.

The records show that Judge Yolanda Northridge is part owner of a residence at 890 Union St., in Alameda, which may be where she resides.

To get to the heart of the message that Mary Jesus had wanted so desperately to get into the mind of the public at large, one has to first take a peek at an October 27 2005, Press Release, that Mary Jesus had sent out to a number of media outlets.

The October 27 Press Release, reads as follows;

This is a newsworthy story that the public would definitely be interested in. The Building I live in, in downtown Oakland was purchased five years ago. I had already been living here for seven years. I was the manager for a brief period of (three years), then fired without cause. They have harassed me consistently since then. Even attempting to evict me in July of 2003, then again in September of 2004. I am very poor, so had to represent myself. It seemed to me that this particular judge (Yolanda Northridge) a Superior Court Judge in the limited jurisdiction, has a tendency, to decide against in Pro Per litigants. My case NEVER should have gone as far as it went, because the Oakland rental board had already stated that I did not owe the landlords any money. They sought to evict me anyway, the judge allowed their attorney to stifle my evidence. It was all totally illegal! Just look up the case history on line-- case #W004171966. There will be a motion to set aside and vacate judgement on November 2nd in Dept #14, at 1221 Fallon Street, at 9:00am. I have a tape of both the owners discussing the fact that they had no case but were going to try to evict me anyway. All of these people broke the law. Thank you, Mary Jesus, 1515 Alice St., #15, Oakland CA. 94612-5001 (510/444-2013).

The above Press Release referred to an Oakland rent arbitration board case that Mary Jesus filed against the two owners of the Dunsmuir Apartments, where she was fighting an illegal rent increase. Even though the Oakland rent arbitration board had ruled in her favor as of September 1, 2004 because of an improper notification, four weeks later Judge Yolanda Northridge of the Alameda County Superior Court had over-ruled the rent board decision, and had ordered Mary Jesus to pay the landlords $1,018.77 in back rent and to vacate her long term residence of the past 13 years.

Mary Jesus was crushed by this cruel corrupt heartless system in Oakland, after having done everything possible to defend herself from the illegal rent increase being imposed upon her by the greedy landlords.

Any way that one looks at what had occurred, Mary Jesus was overwhelmed by a foursome of professionals wielding great power over her. The four of them were unrelenting in their efforts to run her out of the home that she resided in during these past 13 years, and it resulted in the violence of her death.

It's no secret that Oakland's renters have been up against a brutal eviction for profit system these past many years. Nor is it a secret that Oakland's renters have held several protests these past few years outside of the courtroom of Alameda Superior Court Judge James Richman, in an effort to get him relocated out of his position in Law and Motion. Well over 2,000 people have signed a petition in the past, to demand the removal of Judge James Richman from the bench in law and motion, which was flatly denied by Judge Harry Sheppard.

Indeed, Superior Court Judge Yolanda Northridge, is not the only judge in Oakland that has come under the scrutiny of the public spotlight during these past few years, nor shall she be the last.

The tragic message of Mary Jesus, is a testimony thats been written in blood and death. It cannot escape our attention, nor should it ever be ignored.

For a deeper insight into the message from Mary Jesus, which she had sacrificed herself to tell, the suicide note itself is her last testimony to a corrupt and brutal system in Oakland that is controlled by the rich and the powerful.

The December 10, 2005 suicide note of Mary Jesus says;

Mark Roemer, James Lewis and Dean Miller, they are the catylist.
Goodbye cruel world, and all that. Just look up the case, WG (or NG?) 0417966, and you'll see why. Just listen to the August 31st 2004 Authenticated recording from rent adjustment. And everyone will say what they always say when something totally preventable was'nt prevented. "Why did'nt anybody do anything." A couple of people did, but they had no power, and those that did have power were more concerned with technicalities, than justice. Except for Yolanda Northridge, she just does this to people too poor to afford an attorney, and attorney's only take your case if you have money. It's all about money! The love of money is the root of all evil!
(Case T04-0129 August 31st 2004) Mary Jesus P.S. Just cremate me and I have no family.

For me, the death of Mary Jesus, had a profound impact on my deep conciousness.

It was on December 20, 2004 that I received a call from a dear friend named Sue Doyle. Sue works for a number of local pro-tenant attorney's in Oakland that I happen to know.

Sue told me the unfortunate news about the death of Mary Jesus. I felt stunned.

I have not seen Mary Jesus since the day I was wandering up and down Alice Street in Oakland, on a warm saturday afternoon, using a bullhorn to call tenants out of their sleepy apartments to sign a Just Cause (anti-eviction) petition. I was with Sue Doyle and John Reimann at that moment, and we were part of a group known as the Campaign for Renters Rights.

The people streamed out of their apartments that day to join us and sign the petitions we had brought with us. Some of the landlords were screaming at us from their buildings and threatening to call the cops if we did not start moving along.

Sue Doyle had briefly met Mary Jesus that sunny afternoon as we were out collecting those signatures for an initiative that re-wrote Oakland's rent laws, and gave the renters some protections from unfair evictions and the eviction for profit system.

Once upon a time, I had resided on Alice Street in a lovely building for around 8 years, and I lived directly across the street from Mary Jesus for much of that period. Of course, that was until some greedy bastard bought the property I resided in and immediatelly evicted me because I had the cheapest rents in the building. I wanted to kill that bastard and send him back to his maker. To this day, I still miss the garden that I nourished for so many years in the back yard of the property.

Mary Jesus was a splendid character that was very unmistakable. She generally dressed all in black, and usually wore her dark shades that were sandwiched between her long flowing dark hair.

She seemed rather fierce in her own way. Not the type of person that I would want to get into a feud with.

We got to know one another abit, and at times we went out for a bite to eat and a chat. At one point I helped her to plant some new flowers and other plants in front of the building where she resided. She was the Resident Manager at that time.

In a crazy world thats gone totally mad, Mary Jesus was no crazier than anyone else, and it's a shame that the media pundits described her as a lunatic that lacked therapy, when they wrote the stories about what had occurred on December 10, at the Tribune Tower.

Therapy, nor John Georges little rubber rooms and thorazine, would have done a thing to keep the profiteers from evicting her from the home she had loved, even if she had lived there long enough to be a part owner of the building by now. Mary Jesus was targeted and the whole weight of the legal justice system was set in motion to push her over the edge.

These landlords in Oakland have been monstrous enough to make many a soul in Oakland consider suicide as an escape from their greedy grasp. Believe it. I get calls and e-mails from desperate tenants all the time, and at times suicide seems like an option in a world where the rents are so high that people become convinced that they will never come up with the cash needed to move into some other slumlords rat infested hell hole.

Dean G. Miller, Mark F. Roemer and James L. Lewis are lucky that Mary Jesus did not do to them, what she had done to herself.

That would have given the Tribune and the Chronicle something to write about, but, that was not what her message was all about.

Mary Jesus took her own life to expose the legal system that exists here in Oakland CA.

On October 18, 2004 I received an e-mail from a V. Vale of Re/Search Publications, in San Francisco, asking for some assistance to help stop the eviction of Mary Jesus.

I immediatelly responded, and sent off a good sized list of attorney's names & phone numbers, including the Eviction Defense Center address, which is located only a few blocks away from the former residence of Mary Jesus. I gave instructions for Mary Jesus to take action as soon as possible, to stop the eviction and to contact an attorney immediately for assistance.

I was happy to do what little I could to stop the profiteers from dumping her out onto the cold hearted streets of Oakland. I live for moments like this.

Indeed, when V. Vale contacted me, he had no idea that I actually knew Mary Jesus, and was totally surprised that I knew a few things about her which I mentioned when I responded to his call for help. I sent him a list of attorneys and instructions, which he handed over to Mary Jesus. Vale also called some of the attorneys to see if he could line one of them up to help out Mary Jesus in her time of need.

It felt good to hear back from Vale, and receive a thank you for being there to help out. I thought that I did my part to help out... I did not see, I could not see the dark future that lay ahead looming in the near distant future. I felt that I did what I could to help out, and set my mind to other tasks.

I cannot get the picture out of my head of Mary Jesus standing there high above the street, just before she went to her death. I keep thinking of what she may have been feeling those last few moments and days of her life. I keep wondering how her whole short life of 33 years had finally ended up so tragically at the Tribune Tower. This was not something that was taught to people in a college course at the local university.

I wish that I could have done more to help keep a roof over her head and help keep her in the home she knew for these past many years.

It was somewhat of a comfort to learn that Mary Jesus spent the last evening of her life with Vale and his wife Marion, in San Francisco. These two had tried their best to help Mary Jesus fight against the eviction proceedings that ended up pushing her over the edge. They had offered her shelter from the storm when she needed it the most.

May Mary Jesus rest in peace, and may her troubled soul find some happiness in the next dimension of reality, far removed from the greedy landlords and War Criminals that have wreaked havoc on the American people and the world at large...

I can't help but cry when I think of the last few moments of Mary Jesus, and what she must have been going through as she gazed upon the crowd of 200 on-lookers that witnessed her death.

I can't help but think about her final moments as she made copies of her suicide note and the message she wanted the people to read.

The message of Mary Jesus is splattered with the blood of her ultimate sacrifice to make sure that her voice is heard loud and clear.

Mary Jesus is pointing her finger at the landlords, the judges and the legal system that had pushed her over the edge.

I call for an immediate and thourough investigation into the cases that Mary Jesus refers to in her message to the people.

It will be up to each and everyone of us to take the message of Mary Jesus to heart, and to do whatever is necessary to make certain that the individuals who have pushed her over the edge, will be held accountable for what they have done to her.

In Memory of Mary Jesus...

Lynda Carson may be reached at 510/763-1085 or tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com