I was reading Stan’s ISNQRWS blog today, and he featured an article out of the Chicago Tribune. The article was about how Illinois psychiatrists, and other sanctioned drug dealers had doubled the number of non-consensual druggings of little children. It is informative about how anti-psychotics are being increasingly prescribed to foster children. The percentage of foster kids being put on these “[p]owerful mood-altering drugs” nearly doubled, while the number of foster kids has increased. Also, the number being prescribed four or more of these, “metabolic abnormalities and pronounced weight gain” causing pharmaceuticals is increasing too. I agree with Stan’s take on it:
“The sad and tragic truth of this following report about foster children in Illinois: is that this corporate behavior is being mirrored in just about every state and county throughout America. The cost? The expense in dollar terms is more than significant and mind boggling no doubt; but absolutely pales in comparison to carnage of human damage and suffering being imposed upon this very vulnerable populations of children.”
What really struck me was how a psychiatrist from UI Chicago is playing this off like it was the pharmaceutical corporations advertising departments fault. No!, it was the fault of the elected officials who have been told for years about the unlawful influence of PHARMA, it is the fault of the psychiatric industry, and it is our fault for silently capitulating to their paradigm. “It’s the untouchable corporations that made me do this to you,” is what I’m hearing here. Am I to believe that we allowed them to divide and conquer us with some slick advertising campaign?
On the one hand politicians blame us saying, “we need to be fixed,” and on the other they blame the “fix” they chose. They claim that taking away peoples children and pumping them full of dope is somehow democratic. It is tyranny. It is a war on the poor.
The problem is that this fix is a slower modern version of killing off what the rich view as “undesirables.” Diabetes is a life shortening disease. So is suicide. So are gas chambers. Anti-psychotics take longer to kill so therefore cause less public outrage. Since these children are being evaluated by the schools, it is in fact the government deciding who lives a long life and who dies early.
I don’t know what else to say about this except, I’m shaking my finger at you too, and am searching my soul to see if I can’t do a little more to stop this. It doesn’t take a difficult calculation to figure out, that if these policies are used against the poor, and especially people of color, whether your in the half that gets to stay, or the half who …
I want to apologize for being so lax in getting these things out to you. I don’t know why I am not as self motivated as I usually am, but I’m open to change. Anyway there is still time for the community to act on these issues.
Last Wednesday, at the Arcata city council meeting Alex Stillman and associates voted to send out to committee their supposed “aggressive” pan-handling ordinance. There are many sections of this ordinance that are very far from “aggressive,” even by Stillman standards. Once again our resident millionaire wants those whom she views at “undesirable” removed from her town.
Here is a link to the video of the meeting (at about 3:26:00). I want everyone to pay attention how Alex Stillman completely takes over the meeting. She is called the “vice-mayor,” yet she just talks over everyone, and runs the show. The council is supposed to be chaired by the Game and Fish cop Mark Wheetley, but it is more than apparent that he has been totally emasculated by our vice mayor Stillman.
I also want to talk about the police raid of the nightly shelter set up by the People’s Project in Eureka. Evidently Garr “pop ‘em” Nielsen’s support for an “parking lot amnesty program” is just a bunch of, feel good, bullshit rhetoric.
The Times Standard article in Tuesday’s paper quoted Eureka City Manger, David Tyson, as saying, “[t]he employees and their representative were concerned . . . that this was not a safe work place.” This parallels the concept that begging in Arcata “causes people to fear.” Everybody is afraid of houseless people. Hell you’re taught to fear us. Even I feared houseless people until I became one. The truth is however, that they are the most oppressed simply because they are the meekest. And, who is this “representative” anyway?
Think about how fear plays into a propaganda campaign designed to run off the houseless. The Arcata meeting playing the fear card, the Eureka manager playing the fear card, the paper and local news playing the fear card, while the houseless are anteing up more and more oppression.
Another bullshit propaganda term is “tool,” as use in Wheetly’s, “this is just one of MANY tools in the toolbox,” statement. The “tools” are oppressive laws meant to be selectively enforced against the poorest people in our community. People are daily running out of options, because of actions taken by the very tool makers who now want more laws. If you have rats in your house then you will not give them anyplace to hide, constantly bother them with cats and such, cut off their food supply, poison them, set traps to ensnare them, and certainly suppress advocacy that they are sentient beings with an inherent right to exist. If Stillman has houseless people in “her town” then she will . . .
When people get desperate they do desperate things. When will we realize that today’s problems are the direct result of yesterday’s desperation creating oppression? Oh yeah, I remember, when its too fucking late.
As long as we ignore the economic causes of homelessness then we will never do more than prescribe it expensive nut pills. While denying the huge lack of jobs in this country we will forever be paying for more and more cops, poverty pimps, and grant whores. If we took all the salaries paid to those three “tools” in the toolbox, we could feed, and shelter all the houseless in Humboldt county. When people do it for themselves however, we Humboldt liberals call the cops.
I want to extend my thanks to Verbena, and Jack, and everyone else who kept the “parking lot amnesty” shelter going in Eureka.
“I have no particular love for the idealized ‘worker’ as he appears in the bourgeois Communist’s mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.” George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
Today Humboldt County Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 2 to create a “Citizens’ Law Enforcement Liaison Committee.” What a Citizens’ Law Enforcement Liaison Committee is is a seven member committee to white wash and justify every instant of police abuse by the Humboldt County Sheriff’s office. The three supes who voted for this frivolous idea are Jimmy Smith, Bonney Neely, and Mark Lovelace.
The committee, which was endorsed by both the Sheriff, Gary Phelps, and the Humboldt County Human Rights Commission, has absolutely no authority to even investigate, let alone make real changes to, the complaints they will be required to receive. The most they would be able to do is recommend that the Sheriff allow an “auditor” to investigate the complaint. The Sheriff has to approve the request.
This appears to be heavily supported by the Human Rights Commission. It seems to me if a toothless bureaucracy would be able to stop the local police abuse, and cover ups, then the HRC should of stopped it years ago. The truth is that the HRC is really a front group for the current status quo, and likewise so will the new CLELC.
The ugly truth of the matter is that the cops are out of the people’s control, and fortifying that position with this new quisling committee. Police are the only profession in the US allowed to lie, steal, and use indiscriminate violence against the general population. Police use “force” (another word for violence), in one study, 1 out every 6 arrests. This translate to half a million cases of abuse a year. Kristian Williams points out, in his book “Our Enemies in Blue,” that “[b]y emphasizing the idea that most officers rarely use force, they demonstrate that brutality is individually rare, while obscuring the fact that it is collectively common” (emphasizes in original).
Williams makes a very good comparison between the rhetoric used by abusive men to justify violence against the women in their lives, and the rhetoric used by police and their supporters when justifying police abuse. Denial – “the cops didn’t do anything wrong.” Minimization – “the cops use force rarely.” Blame – “they wouldn’t of been beat if they weren’t criminals.” Redefinition – “the suspect was resisting arrest.” Unintentionally – “the cops were defending themselves.” Its over now – “we didn’t do anything wrong, but we’ve changed our policies.” It’s only a few – “it was just a few bad apples.” Counterattack – “I promise when the autopsy is complete he/she will had been on drugs.” Competing victimization – “your just a ‘cop-hater.’” The hero defense – “cops risk their lives everyday to insure peace.”
More cops die from car wrecks every year then are murdered. In the year 2000 135 cops died in the line of duty. 51 were murdered, and 84 died from car crashes. There were 5,915 work related deaths in 2000. Police on duty death rate is 12.1 people per 100,000. Compare that with loggers whose death rate is 122.1 persons per 100,000, or miners with a rate of 30.0, or truck drivers at 27.6, or farmers at 20.9. Even lawn care people die on the job at a rate of 14.9 per 100,000. Cops are fully aware of the risks, and paid for that risk, yet have a safer job then the gardener. We never seem to have all the pomp and circumstance marches for the truck drivers.
The whole purpose of this smoke and mirrors bullshit is to attempt to quell dissent about local police abuses. The only thing that will end this type of crap and get our elected officials to take real steps to rein in our abusers is public outrage. I doubt this will fool very many of the real people in our community.
The sad truth is that the police have the ability to abuse because those in power want it that way. The supes, local city councils, DAs, Grand Juries all refrain from using their power to stop police abuse. To quote Kristian once last time, “the real limits on police power are established not by statutes and regulations – since no rule is self-enforcing – but by their leadership and, indirectly, by the balance of power in society.”
It was just a matter of time before some idiot pissed me off. The idiot in question is the editor, Kimberly Wear, of the slime rag the Eureka Times Standard. In Wednesday’s paper Wear wrote an idiotorial titled “giving to those who truly need.”
The stupidity in question was not a call to be charitable as the title might suggest. It was a complaint about “[activists] who choose to be ‘homeless,’ as a matter of politics or lifestyle.” Wear doesn’t have a clue about what she wrote about. She’s not an activist, and I seriously doubt she has ever conversed with those whom she writes about in this recent op-ed.
I find it agonizing to deconstruct such blatant bullshit for two reasons. One is it is so obviously illogical that anyone who is the least bit honest and older than a cub scout knows it. The second is it hits a little too close to home, and could easily cross my line about bragging about my accomplishments. I find it hard to talk about all the “good things” worked for and done by centuries of dedicated activists, because I nurture those traits in myself. I do the things I refer to in here, and I am proud of that fact. I am all too aware that pride is perhaps the worst of all sins, and left unchecked can have very negative impact on a much larger segment of society than one would initially suspect. I feel remorse every time I mention what I do. Though I don’t hide my involvement in what I view as, picking and dusting off my brothers and sisters, I certainly must watch getting a swelled head over it. Besides life is really easy for me, ’cause like Popeye said, “I yam what I yam.”
First lets talk about Wear’s fantasy idealization about the “chosen homeless.” Wear’s throwing around Kevin Hoover’s hyperbole here. Hoover, the editor of the Arcata [L]Eye tabloid, is a self proclaimed houseless bigot (see “Police Log). Not being able to articulately argue against the activist’s growing mountain of evidence that the police and business owners repress the houseless population, he resorted to name calling and a campaign of discreditably. He concocted the harebrained theory that there is this group, whom he calls “the chosen” who run around shitting in the alley, wasting billions of “homeless” dollars, and live exclusively off his bank account. Though Hoover completely made that shit up, it goes to show that a lie repeated often enough becomes accepted truth – at least among news paper idiotors.
Wear took up Hoover’s call, and without any evidence is claiming that those who are houseless and also champion the cause of human rights within the houseless population are really distractors trying to obscure the real issues surrounding this pervasive problem. Her ridiculous proposal that activists putting their time and effort into making positive and lasting social changes are some how “obscuring” the real issue was the main point of her piece. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Could it be that these activists are beginning to make headway. Perhaps TS readers are calling and asking why the fuck are these public demonstrations being ignored by the “community news sources.”
Would Wear’s argument have meant that because Martin Luther King lived better than those he organized marches for, in Selma, he too was just obscuring the “faces of those in need?” Or how about Jesus? Didn’t he really have it made? He did after all say “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” He was a “chosen” too, wasn’t he? White people helped in the underground railroad too. Did they casue those who “c[ould] help [to] hold back for fear of furthering a political aganda they don’t agree with” too?
What is it about these activists that so scares Wear anyway? Some say that the real crime of the Black Panthers was their feeding programs. Could it be that these activists not only champion equal justice, but actually do things that achieve it? Could it be what Ms Wear is really pisssed off about is the shelters being built, or the marching around town feeding people? She ends her “differentiate between the two” rant with the usual plea to only give your “deep diggings” to “reputable, local charitable organizations [that] can help make sure that what you give gets to those who truely need the help.” Ms Wear is aware that “the chosen” activists feed a whole shit load of people, and we really don’t have very much to do it with.
Wear was out to slam the activists who truly help houseless people, year ’round, right here in her own community. The TS printed a big hurray for Betty Chinn’s help to the “homeless” a day earlier. Did you notice that in the article next to it, activists providing shelter, and protesting the sleeping ban, had plenty of opposing views in articles about them, yet Ms Chinn and her support of the status quo gets only applause and kind praises. I think it is great the little that Ms. Chinn does, but those activists who are nightly in front of the Eureka City Hall, do way fucking more, get way less recognition for their efforts, mostly pay for it out of their own empty pockets, and risk dangerous confrontations with the “law” due to their grassroots help.
I am more than a little upset that Ms Wear would try to insinuate that we (activists) are some how sucking the needed funds out of the system. Having worked with food not bombs for many years, I personally know we fed more people with less resources than the Endeavor used to when I volunteered there. I often took money out of my own pocket to buy rice, beans, or cooking oil to feed the multitudes of houseless people. Unfortunately for Ms Wear and her ilk, the people who help us activist with our costs do it precisely because we are activists, and they know what we do. People don’t hand me a hundred dollars and say “get something to eat you poor urchin,” they hand it to me and say “thanks for doing what you do, keep up the good work.”
I learned to be a houseless advocate from the bro who regularly fed 5,000 people with just a loaf of bread and a can of tuna fish. The last advice he gave Peter (who was to carry on the revolution) was, “feed my lambs.” In fact he repeated it three times for those too dense to get it the first time. Give your money to a houseless activist, and you can be assured most of it will go towards food, shelter, and bathrooms for the houseless. Give it to a poverty pimp?, and you can rest assured that 90% will go towards those things, but only for the poverty pimp managers.
In short Ms Wear doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. I do agree with her sub-point, regardless of how buried it was, that we must give to the needy. We shouldn’t give to organizations that spend $9 out of every 10 taken in on “overhead.” That is called profit, not helping the needy. Don’t limit your human compassion to just the holiday season either. Hunger does not feel any better in June than it does in December, hunger is a year ’round problem. Services are being rolled back, while repressive “run the bums out of town” tactics are being increased. Where are the Times Standard’s championing of these life and death issues? They never considers the “truly needy” when discussions about hassling FNB, or the city of Arcata stopping the feeding of people at the Endeavor, or the cruelty of the sweeps by Merl Harpham of the Eureka PD.
To help The Chosen activists contact the People’s Project at 633-4493. Blankets, tarps, rice, beans, and cooking oil are always in need this time of year.
I got unexpectedly released from jail yesterday at about 4:30. I am still in that interesting time between eating and not eating, I will write more soon, but right now I want to taste the nectar for a wee bit.
Jail is a sad disgusting place, run by sad disgusting people, for the benefit of sad disgusting rich people.
I want to thank everyone who helped me, inside and out.
[The letter below was written by Tad in jail and received by friends on the outside.]
Peace be with you
Laws for the most part are used for the repression of poor people. Laws meant to reign in the government are seldom, if ever, enforced. There is a law however that was designed with the good of the people in mind. That law is Penal Code 647a.
647a requires cops to check for bed availability at homeless shelter or youth shelter when they detain a houseless person for sleeping. The code also says that the cop “may” transport the houseless person to the shelter if the houseless person so desires.
I realize it is a little hard to see how this helps, so I will try to elaborate. Houseless people who get sleeping tickets (also called camping tickets) are found not guilty if they meet the legal requirements of the necessity defense as outlined in IN RE Eichorn. The only difficult thing to prove is that there is no room available at the shelter. If there is no room at the shelter then no houseless person is guilty of “camping in public.” If they’re not guilty then the cops should leave them the fuck alone.
Penal Code 6f47a is a model law. That means the California Legislature felt that communities should have a law such as 647a, but left it up to the county’s board of supervisors to enact the law.
As you all are aware, Humboldt County supervisors make their discussions according to their own good, the good of the wealthy, and the good of the oppressive Washington/Sacramento police state. The supervisors are zombie puppets for the greedy department heads, especially the DA, probation, and mental health departments. After years of going to public meetings I have never seen an ordinance pass that actually helps people.
Houseless people are constantly being harassed by cops. PC 647a would either reduce that harassment, or it would clearly demonstrate the cops’ unlawfulness.
As a community we have allowed a few business owners to create an atmosphere of hate. Between Alex Stillman and Associates’ (formerly known as the Arcata City Council) stopping the Endeavor from serving food, and their new anti-panhandling law, and Eureka’s weekly sweeps of houseless encampments by Merle Harpham, it is accurate to say we have a severe lack of compassion here in Humboldt County.
I am currently on a hunger strike to bring attention to the constant police repression and criminalization of the non-rich. I ask you to call your supervisor and tell them you want a more compassionate community and to pass a Penal Code 647a ordinance
Tad was visited in the slammer again last night. He is doing well and in good spirits. He has been on a hunger strike for 16 days now.
He has filed an appeal of his conviction. I’m not going to spell out all the grievances just yet because it is an ongoing case, but you will hear about them soon.
Thanks to all those who have been supportive, including the youth with the colorful signs that read “Tad is Rad!” and “Don’t be sad, we’ll free tad!” and others.
Also thanks to those who spoke at the county suppervisors meeting on tuesday. If tad isn’t out by next tuesday (he’s not schedualed to be released until the 13th), then let’s do it again!
About half a dozen friends and supporters spoke today at the county supervisors meeting during the public comment period, addressing their attention to the fact that tad is in the humboldt county jail, 2 weeks into his hunger strike, resulting from his being removed and arrested during a board of supervisors meeting in January. The supervisors were reminded of what happened and asked what they were going to do about it.
After all of the public comments were done, the supervisors made their responses, allowing no more time after their comments forthe public to speak.
They said that they were not responsible for what happened.
Supervisor Mark Lovelace called the report of the arrest “false,” and tried to defuse the idea that tad was physically dragged from the room. Though tad was not dragged from the room, he was indeed escorted out by a bunch of cops when he had every right to be in that meeting.
Lovelace also said that tad’s arrest had nothing to do with anything that happened in the meeting room, but failed to explain why then 6 cops came into the meeting room and told tad that he had to leave the meeting (after he was done talkinig and had left the podium), if it had nothing to do with anything that happened in that meeting.
One of them repeated the fact that tad was convicted of resisting arrest, as if that in any way justifies or explains the arrest that he was accused of resisting, and that he refused probation (2 years), as if refusing probation somehow justifies tad being put in jail or being punished at all for what happened that day.
Supervisor Lovelace claimed that he heard tad saying “arrest me” to the cops outside of the meeting room. Supervisor Jill Duffy summarized her lack of empathy with tad in her statement that “tad made a choice.” She didn’t mention which “choice” tad “made” that resulted in the cops getting called in, or him getting escorted out of the meeting.
The supervisors said nothing about the Bar-O Boys Ranch that was repeatedly brought up by public commentors. None of them offered an explanation for why tad was treated so rudely when he spoke. None of them apologized or made any mention of advocating for tad in any way.
TUESDAY 1:30pm, Eureka Courthouse (826 4th street) – county board of supervisors meeting, public comment
Public Comment for the county board of supervisors meeting happens at 1:30pm on TUESDAY.
We are working together to show our support for tad and our outrage at the unjust treatment that he has received, as well as the outrages that tad has spoken out against. It was a county board of supervisors meeting that tad was forced out of and arrested at (january 27, 2009). See previous posts for more details about the arrest, the Bar-O Boys Ranch private youth detention facility, and the “jailing children for money” judges.
Even if you just want to tell the effin a-holes what a bunch of ess-fer-brains they is for having tad thrown in jail, feel free to show up.
Be advised that you will have to go through security to get to the supervisors’ chambers for the meeting.
Tad is doing well this morning. He was just visited, and was obviously the healthiest clear-headed person in the visitation area. Today is the 12th day of his hunger strike.
Tad says that everyone in jail is dressed up as pumpkins this year for halloween, and he hopes that folks will come out to the public comment part of the county board of supervisors meeting this tuesday, 1:30pm at the eureka courthouse (826 4th street).
Thanks to all the supporters, including those vigil-ing on the plaza in arcata, and everyone else.
