Support for Los Angeles gang activist Alex Sanchez

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Alex Sanchez, the nationally known anti-gang activist who was arrested last month on federal charges of racketeering and conspiracy, is gaining support from “clergy, professors, lawyers, community organizers and youths from Latino, black and Asian communities,” writes Esmeralda Bermudez in the latest report on the controversial case.

“They hail the Salvadoran immigrant as a reformed gangster turned peacemaker and believe he is incapable of betraying the community’s trust,” she writes.

One of Sanchez’s supporters, former state Sen. Tom Hayden, said outside court at Tuesday’s bail hearing, during which Sanchez, head of the anti-gang group Homies Unidos, was denied bail: “If they wanted my house, they could have it.”

You can read Hayden elaborating more about what he describes as a “weak case” from the prosecution in The Nation, and watch him speaking outside the courthouse on the video below.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutor Elizabeth Carpenter says that Sanchez’s supporters have “been duped by his public face.”

— Deborah Bonello in Mexico City