Mongoose Distro

For as long as I can remember America has had a fixation – bordering on a compulsive obsession – with what television, the media, politicians, and other similarly situated loud, influential, profit-oriented voices call ‘justice.’

JUSTICE: the quality of being just, impartial, or fair; the principle or ideal of just dealings and right action.

JUST: conforming to truth, fact, or reason.

The purpose of justice in a society is to maintain order and civility, so that a community of human beings might be forestalled from descending into an orgy of barbarism when the inevitable conflicts that arise from gathering too many freethinking individuals together threaten to supplant reason with emotions. Simply put, mob rule is a coup by feelings that topples logic, an anathema to anything civil.

Justice, in a society that actually practices it, serves as the release valve for the tension that comes when things get, as the Grinch says, too ‘peoply.’ Justice allows the wheels to turn and life as folks have become accustomed to it to continue without everybody freaking the fuck out because they can’t reconcile their feelings with the circumstances surrounding them. Justice balances the iconic scales, and balances out emotional reactions with rational contemplation.

Unfortunately, we don’t practice justice in this country.

VENGEANCE: punishment inflicted in retaliation for an injury or offense.

When someone hurts us our knee-jerk reaction is to hurt them back. This is not rational; it is an emotional response, a reflex, a little kid-ism that if indulged becomes a real nasty habit. We didn’t heed the warning label, so now we need to break this habit before its toxic byproducts deliver to our society an ugly, painful, premature death.

There’s no patch, or pill, or 12 step crutch for kicking vengeance but that doesn’t mean we’re helpless.

There may not be any methadone-esque substitutes for brutally excoriating those fellow citizens whose actions run counter to what has been quite literally by hook or by crook established as the baseline of what our society deems acceptable, but there’s something better than any synthetic skag or going cold turkey: forgiveness.

There are few more misappropriated, misused, or misunderstood concepts in our modern lexicon than forgiveness, but much of that confusion is manufactured and disseminated by the same aforementioned hooks and crooks who prodded us into this mess to begin with. Rather than quibble over rhetoric let’s stick with the old wordbook:

FORGIVENESS: to cease to feel resentment against.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean excusing a wrong or permitting its commitment. It doesn’t even mean not punishing someone. It’s just about accepting the past – which cannot be changed – and moving forward without holding a grudge. It is, in short, about justice.

When someone does wrong, an emotional response calls for wrong to be done back to them – an eye for an eye. Retribution. Vengeance. Yet once we take off the blinders that being led around by the nose care of our feelings put on us, the logical mind recognizes that answering harm with more harm only leaves us with a collective that has suffered twice. We can’t heal harm with more harm any more than a doctor can beat broken bones back whole.

That we still try to do just that speaks volumes about the insanity of building an orderly society then surrendering its maintenance and care to the emotional whims of the aggrieved heart and the offended sensibility.

Speaking of insanity, let’s talk about Wanda Mercer. More specifically, let’s decide whether our system for determining where a person is ‘insane and dangerous’ is itself insane and dangerous. If we find that it is, hopefully we can then agree that to consign anyone to it, regardless of their past, would be an act of vengeance that flies in the face of any true justice, and is therefore in nobody’s best interest save for the fear mongers and string pullers.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sick of them running the show.

The following tale is not pleasant and doesn’t have a happy ending. I don’t ask you to reserve your judgements, only to be aware of them and to consider whether they are at their core an emotional reaction or the product of rational, objective consideration.

Wanda Mercer dedicated her life to serving others. She was a mother, a homemaker, a United States Army veteran, a law student, an artist, and a poet. She was also a strong, intelligent, outspoken, ambitious individual who rarely sat idle and never played a passive role in her own life.

Yet life pulled no punches when it came to Wanda. After struggling in silence for many years she sought help from a professional to get out from under the crushing emotional burden brought on by an abusive marriage and contentious custody battles. The doctor prescribed an antidepressant to her and she believed that she would soon feel less stressed and sad.

But Wanda’s struggles were only beginning. Over the next sixteen years the doctors she trusted prescribed her more psychiatric medication to combat the problems in her life that only seemed to grow more intractable as her dosages crept ever upward. Eventually Wanda experienced a rarely discussed but frighteningly common reaction to her mind-altering regimen: instead of helping her through her most difficult times, she became delusional. As she withdrew further and the medication’s hold on her senses became total, Wanda tumbled into a bottomless hole of social and existential isolation, psychotic, paranoid, and completely separated from the people in her life who might have recognized she was in crisis.

In the depths of this darkness she then did something so shocking to the conscience that it threatens to cloud an outsider’s reason as thoroughly as the meds clouded hers: Wanda took the life of her beloved daughter, then attempted to kilI herself as well. She did not act with malice, but out of a love expressed through the warped lens the meds had imprinted on her mind. She believed her child was in imminent danger of being kidnapped by Satanists hellbent on consigning her to a brutal life of exploitation and damning her eternal soul. So, she did the only thing she could think of to spare her daughter.

Wanda was arrested. She spent days in the hospital recovering from the wounds she had inflicted upon herself, then she went to jail. After two years the court found her Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity. Despite no longer being acutely psychotic, the crime which came to define her life stood too large in the public attention for forgiveness to even be considered. With the media fanning the flames, justice was abandoned in favor of vengeance. Instead of asking how a person who had fallen so far but survived such an ordeal might be made able to grieve her devastating loss and become once more whole, Wanda was thrown away into the forensic hospital system.

The purpose of involuntarily committing someone to a state psychiatric hospital is ostensibly to administer treatment to the individual so that they might record from the disorder or disease which rendered them ‘insane and dangerous,’ the prerequisite for confinement under her state’s NGRI laws.

Yet Wanda had been dangerous only because she was psychotic, and psychotic only because she’d been prescribed an irresponsible cocktail of psychotropics and left to her own devices until she imploded. Once the medication no longer polluted her mind she was neither.

But ‘justice’ – vengeance – must be served, and her time within the state hospital designated to heal her saw only harm piled atop harm as the doctors tried to beat her broken psyche back to wholeness.

Wanda was assaulted over 90 times by other patients over the next dozen years. She had her hair pulled out by the fistful, she was beaten, kicked, clubbed, stabbed, and attacked with a chair resulting in five bulging discs in her neck. Her attackers were sometimes psychotic, egged on by malicious staff members. Other times those who assaulted Wanda did so in exchange for favors, treats, or privileges from the nurses and technicians in charge of the facility.

These same staff members also took a more direct role in her torment: during the same twelve years, Wanda was verbally, physically, and sexually abused by hospital employees. They also violated her sense of safety with intrusive searches at all hours, cavity searches to humiliate her, and sleep deprivation to ratchet up her stress until she developed PTSD. Some even encouraged her to kilI herself and one went so far as to provide her a plastic bag and instruct her to wrap it over her head so she could suffocate.

Still – Wanda had never been a pushover. She weathered years of abuse, refused to take the medications which had led her into this nightmare to begin with, and petitioned for discharge in order to return home and care for her dying father. Despite being neither psychotic or dangerous she was denied. In a moment of despair she attempted to end her own life by taking pills, but she only became ill. The next day she self-reported her suicide attempt but did not require any medical attention.

Two years later Wanda petitioned for a conditional release again. This time the judge recognized that due to the longstanding antagonistic relationship between Wanda and the head psychiatrist, she could never receive effective mental health care while confined to the state hospital. The judge believed her to have a personality disorder, to be ‘difficult, disagreeable, and narcissistic’ as well as ‘unlikeable,’ but to neither be psychotic nor dangerous, so the judge – the same one who presided over her original trial years before – ordered her to be conditionally released pursuant to a five year plan the thrust of which was that Wanda would live in her own apartment in the community rather than at the hospital and would receive ongoing mental health treatment from a private psychologist who in turn would promptly report any violations of the many conditions of Wanda’s release should they come to pass, much the same way a parole agent would.

Wanda was released. The irresponsible hacks at the local newspapers whipped the public into a frenzy, rehashing the gory details of Wanda’s crime and warning that a ‘throat-slashing psycho mom’ was coming to a suburb near you. This inflammatory rhetoric brought immense scrutiny and backlash – emotional firestorms, just as the papers intended by dropping such incendiaries.

The prosecutor filed an appeal, citing that there existed ‘no clear and convincing evidence that [Wanda] would not reasonably be expected to inflict serious harm upon herself or others,’ should she be allowed out of the secured environment of the state hospital. The keystone that his entire argument rested upon was none other than Wanda’s self-reported suicide attempt from years before.

After less than two weeks living in her own apartment on conditional release, the courts agreed with the prosecutor that Wanda could possibly still be a threat to public safety despite the overwhelming lack of evidence; in over 90 instances she was assaulted yet she never once even defended herself, and in all this time the only person she’d ever harmed, once, was herself. She was ordered back into the hospital’s custody and she turned herself in.

She remains there to this day. Her prospects for ever earning a release seem grim. Because of the court’s ruling, the burden of proof for Wanda – and anyone else seeking release from her state’s hospital system – has been shifted to the petitioner. Meaning: in order to be released, Wanda must prove while she is in custody that she will never harm herself or anyone else were she not in custody.

Our legal system rests upon a foundation of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ precisely because of the inherent impossibility of proving a negative. In this instance, while locked up Wanda cannot demonstrate how she would behave in the free world, yet she cannot re-enter the free world until she demonstrates how she would behave there. Thus she twists in the wind, condemned by her past mistakes to have no future.

Were she to have been found guilty in court as a criminal and sent to the penitentiary, whatever the penalty, we could debate the fairness and justness of the sentence. Yet she was found not guilty, and sent to the hospital for treatment. She fulfilled her responsibilities by returning to sanity and no longer being dangerous, but because of the nature of her reason for being there and the inflammatory rhetoric used by the prosecutor and the media she was painted as such a monster that the courts felt justified in creating a new cage in which to keep her. They let their emotions reign, and changed the rules. They piled harm on top of harm for the sake of sating the mob’s thirst for blood.

Is that justice, or just vengeance?

~

Beyond The Ninth Wave Journalism Project

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To surmount the situation of oppression, people must first critically recognize its causes,so that through transforming action they can create a new situation,one which makes possible the pursuit of a Fuller humanity. — Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

I had been B-Line for months now, and people would come visit me and field ministers would come pray and play music for us, and one of them I knew really well. The man would minister to me and we would have these conversations about the resistance and unionization, and how impactful its been for the unit as a whole. On this day,he’d told me a field minister died. The man was a father of three, married and was about to get sent somewhere to begin his journey of field minister job. However, something had happened to one of the Providers on the unit, who was known for denying all medical needs to inmates.

This man had been diagnosed with H-pylori bacteria, and they told him there was nothing they can do about it. Well, I tell the guy, why didn’t you tell me sooner, that’s bullshit they can’t do nothing about this. His response was, he didn’t want them to retaliate on him and take his visitation or something. Anyway, I was like don’t worry about it I’m going to show you its bullshit. The next day I put in to get checked for H-pylori and they drew blood from me within the week. Nothing happened, it took them a couple of months to give me my results, but someone in that medical department was holding the results hostage.

I don’t who or how, but it ended up in the mail, absent right to my cell, lo and behold I was positive and on the high side of infection. Well, I get the results and walk them to my visit, and the nurse had said I was going to see a provider, and she asked me why I was there. I said I’m positive for H-pylori, and she said how do you know? I flipped the blood test results out and she panicked, she went straight to the nurses and began bombarding them with questions as to how I received my results. After this she prescribed three different antibiotics, some generic pepto bismol pills and sent me on my way.

The following weekend the field minister comes to me, and I show him the meds and my results. He was in tears. He couldn’t believe his friend was left to do for nothing, just because the provider was trying to save money for the state. The story was that after that, he was told there was nothing they can do for him, he began to waste away, and within 3 months he was pale and skinny ,and walked into the medical department and begged them to please help him, he couldn’t take it anymore. They said he was rushed to the emergency room where he died of cancer caused by the H-pylori infection, and its intentional neglect by the staff there at Darrington Unit.

This was of course my next campaign, with help from certain people, we told the entire unit what they did. We asked them all to get tested, and it began a slow movement, for months people were getting checked, and coming out positive for the bacteria. TDCJ was overwhelmed immediately and began trying to cover it up, getting rid of medical records and handing out antibiotics to just about anyone who was asking for them, no questions asked, the lastime I saw the man who I spoke to about this, all I could say was I’m sorry about your friend, but like I said, it was bullshit they fed him. He was lied to, and you guys bought it.

I just showed you what this agency is about, never forget it. Just because they’re in authority is the red flag, always question their motive, and if in doubt, get the outside to call in and question it.

Julio A. Zuniga 1961551
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266

Brian “Hakiym” Simpson is a Black father, firefighter, community leader, and poet who was imprisoned in Oregon for defending himself against a racist attack. Hakiym is fighting for his freedom –– join him!

Hakiym welcomes all correspondence from supporters! Address envelopes to:

Brian Simpson* #27433390
Snake River Correctional Institution
777 Stanton Boulevard
Ontario, Oregon 97914-8335

To put money on his commissary, venmo @siskiyoumutualaid with “Justice 4 Hakiym” in the description.

Hakiym also wants to encourage folks to check out a hip hop / spoken word track he released during the George Floyd Uprisings, titled “Old News”: https://youtu.be/NHBASipyR0ATo support Hakiym, visit @justiceforhakyim on IG.

At nine A.M. in the Correctional Training Facility’s Rainier building the buzzer blares for the hourly unlock. I meet a fit middle-aged man in the day room who isn’t shy about showing off his personal flair. Today Danny sports tailored blue jeans embellished with colorful beadwork that matches his hat. He smiles, then leads me to the oversized blue plastic security couches in the middle of the room. We sit, surrounded by the clamor of California prison inmates watching television, working out, showering, and playing dominoes. He looks at me.

“So, where do you want to start?”

I tell him, “From what I understand, you had a parole violation for smoking weed and somehow that turned into you being locked up in a state hospital.”

“Yeah! So, OK, this was after my second term. That was…” he thinks for a moment. “2003. 2002. Around then. I was on parole. I had this really cool parole officer. John B- He never tested me for drugs or alcohol, and he always used to drive me to my job interviews. Really nice guy.”

“So, one day I came home and my roommate said, ‘hey, your P. O. came by looking for you.’ And I said, ‘that’s weird. What did he want?’ And she said, ‘no, it was a female. She left a business card.’ And I saw this card said ‘Victoria W-‘ So I called her and she wanted me to come in right away, but the buses don’t run that late, so she said, ‘fine, first thing in the morning,’ and I told her the buses start at ten so I’ll be there at eleven.”

“Why were you supposed to see her and not John B-?”

“I had no idea. I didn’t know what was going on but I got there at eleven and she takes me into her office and she says, ‘OK, I’m your new P. O. and I need you to piss test for me right noW-‘ And I said, ‘no, I don’t do that.’ ‘So, you’re refusing?’ ‘Yeah, I’m refusing, because it’s not a condition of my parole. That means I don’t have to do it.’ And she says, ‘well, I was in your place and I saw these.’ And she goes to her desk and pulls out some photos and she says, ‘can you explain this?'”

“What were the photos?”

“She had a picture of my roommates, from Christmas. My one roommate is  quadriplegic, it was her and her boyfriend. I’m not even in the photo.”

“So what did she want you to explain?”

Danny chuckles. “Well I asked her. And she says, ‘this looks like a joint,’ and I’m staring at the photo where she’s pointing, where my roommate’s boyfriend is holding a cigarette for her and lighting it. So I told her, ‘she can’t use her arms or her legs. He’s helping her. Look. You can see the filter on the butt.’

“And she squints at it, then she says ‘OK fine, but what about this one?’ And she’s got another photo and I’m still not in it. So, we started arguing. It escalated. I’m getting loud, she’s shouting at me, and people are walking by and staring. Then she just stops. She takes a breath, then she smiles. ‘I just want to be honest with you, Daniel. Like I am with all my parolees. And I would like you to test as a new condition of your parole because I suspect you were smoking marijuana.’

“‘Shouldn’t we have your supervisor here for that or something?’ Because I’m not sure but I don’t think she can do that,” he tells me. “But she just shakes her head. ‘We don’t need the supervisor. Just be honest with me and tell me if you smoke weed.’

” and I’m thinking, OK, we got off on the wrong foot. She’s just doing her job, maybe she’ll be alright. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. So I told her, ‘OK, I did smoke weed once, on Christmas.’

“Did you take psych meds at the time?”

“No. OK, let me back up. That was after my second term. I got out in 2002. But during my first term, in ’96, when I was in reception I had a cellie who slept all day long. Seriously he only got up for breakfast and dinner. And I thought, wow, that’s a great way to do time. So I asked him what’s the deal, how come you sleep all the time? He told me the psych put him on pills because he told them he hears voices and sees things that aren’t there. And he said, ‘you can do it too, and they’ll put you on this shit and your time will go by so much faster.’ That’s what I wanted, so I put in to see the psych.”

“How did that go?”

“The psych asked me, ‘are you hearing voices? Seeing things?’ But I didn’t really want to lie so I said, ‘no, but I’m really depressed.’

‘Hmm. OK. Well, what do you like to do for hobbies?’

‘I’m an artist. I work with stained glass on the street. I see designs, patterns in things.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look, see that wall behind you?’ And it’s a cement wall full of cracks and blemishes. ‘I see a skull, right there. Don’t you?’

‘I don’t see anything, Daniel.’

So, I took a pen and I drew the skull the cracks in the wall formed. And he said, ‘oh, wow, that’s incredible!’ Then he put me on Zoloft.”

Danny has been quite animated as he tells me his story and his candor is refreshing. I chuckle, imagining the scene. “So what happens when you get to jail?”

“They held me on a violation. For the weed, for spitting on my P. O., that’s an assault. And one of the officers who tied me up said I kicked him. Which I didn’t. But, you knoW- So I had to wait to see the parole commissioner. And when I did she told me they weren’t going to charge me for the assault but they were going to violate me and send me back to prison for smoking weed. For nine months!”

“Whoa, that sounds excessive.”

“You think? I said, ‘nine months?! I didn’t even test positive! Why so long?’

‘Oh, it’s based on your conduct.’

‘My conduct? Fuck you, you skinny old bitch, and fuck your ‘conduct!’ And this was when you really had to kiss the commissioner’s ass but I cussed her out just like I did my P. O.

‘This is exactly what we’re talking about.’ And they came and grabbed me up, put the spit mask on me again, and threw me in a cell.”

“So, back to prison?”

“Yep. Three days later I was in Wasco [State Penitentiary]. I stayed there for six months, then they transferred me to Soledad [State Penitentiary]. And right before I was about to get out all of a sudden they want me to talk to these psychiatrists.”

“Did you take psych meds at the time?”

“No. OK, let me back up. That was after my second term. I got out in 2002. But during my first term, in ’96, when I was in reception I had a cellie who slept all day long. Seriously he only got up for breakfast and dinner. And I thought, wow, that’s a great way to do time. So I asked him what’s the deal, how come you sleep all the time? He told me the psych put him on pills because he told them he hears voices and sees things that aren’t there. And he said, ‘you can do it too, and they’ll put you on this shit and your time will go by so much faster.’ That’s what I wanted, so I put in to see the psych.”

“How did that go?”

“The psych asked me, ‘are you hearing voices? Seeing things?’ But I didn’t really want to lie so I said, ‘no, but I’m really depressed.’

‘Hmm. OK. Well, what do you like to do for hobbies?’

‘I’m an artist. I work with stained glass on the street. I see designs, patterns in things.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look, see that wall behind you?’ And it’s a cement wall full of cracks and blemishes. ‘I see a skull, right there. Don’t you?’

‘I don’t see anything, Daniel.’

So, I took a pen and I drew the skull the cracks in the wall formed. And he said, ‘oh, wow, that’s incredible!’ Then he put me on Zoloft.”

“How long did you take that?”

“While I was in reception. Six months. Then I went to prison and got off it. I was there for three more years. Then I got out, and I caught my second case for GBI [Great Bodily Injury] with a deadly weapon. I did that term and got out too, so I had been off of psych meds for over six years by the time the psychiatrists wanted to see me at Soledad.”

“So why were they talking to you?”

“That’s what I asked them, too. They told me, ‘you’re under MDO [Mentally Disordered Offender] criteria because of your past violent behavior and your psychiatric history.’

‘But I have no write ups. And I didn’t get any during my other terms either. I’m a programmer.’

‘You still fit the criteria, so we have to evaluate you to see if you’re an MDO.’

Two of them interviewed me, separately. One said yes, I am. The other said no. So they brought in a third psychiatrist and he said yes, too.”

“So what did that mean?”

“Nobody told me anything. A few days before I paroled they called me into the captain’s office. Him and a bunch of other bigwigs were there. They told me I was an MDO and I had to go in for a formal evaluation at the state hospital. I got really upset, because I thought I was getting out after this nine month bullshit violation for my parole officer tricking me. But on my parole date they transferred me to Atascadero [State Hospital].”

“What happened when you got there?”

“My first day there I saw a psychologist. He told me, ‘don’t worry. This is just for one year.’

‘A YEAR?! They told me it was only for ninety days!’

‘Whoever told you that, they lied.’

And I got really upset, and he said, ‘Hmm, Daniel, do you need some medication to help you relax?’

But meds got me into this mess, and I knew I had to get myself out, so I said no.”

“How did you set about getting yourself out?”

Danny sighed. “Well, I spent a year at Atascadero. And it sucked. My mom died during that year, and I got really depressed because I was stuck in that place and I couldn’t go see her. Still, I didn’t take any medication. I worked, and I did well, and I even became the representative for my building so I could help the other patients.”

“Help them how?”

“That place was bad. They abused the patients all the time. Physically, mentally… spiritually. I hated that. Half the staff was abusive. The other half were compassionate, but they didn’t say anything or stop the abuse. So, I said something. I told them, ‘you better cut that out right now or I’ll report you. Not to your supervisor, not to their supervisor, but to outside agencies. Think I won’t? Try me.”

“Did it work?”

“Sometimes. The staff didn’t like me there but they didn’t mess with me. I got treated with kid gloves.”

“So, what was your supposed diagnosis?”

“I think they said I was bipolar, but there was something else too.”

“Like borderline or antisocial personality disorder or something?”

Danny laughs. “Everybody gets that one. We’re all ‘antisocial.’ And they said I was ‘high functioning’ too. That’s important. All the guys who got out were high functioning.”

“How many people got out while you were there?”

“Of MDOs, maybe six per year. One every two months or so.”

“How many people were in Atascadero then?”

“About three thousand. But some of those were SVPs [Sexually Violent Predators]. Those guys never get out.”

“So after the year, what happened?”

“They didn’t let me out. So I decided, OK, I’m going to just kick ass here. I am going to do ALL their groups and everything else possible. Except take meds. I never took meds. So, I went to the groups. I saw the psychologists and talked to them. I did really good. I even helped staff when they were being attacked by other patients and got the staff to give me commendations.”

“So, after year two?”

Danny sighs. “After year THREE, finally I got to go to court for a hearing. I still hadn’t taken any meds, not even an aspirin, nothing. So, we were all sitting in court, me and a bunch of guys from the jail. And who walks in but my first public defender, from my first term. Total truck. Piece of shit lawyer. He calls some guy’s name, and the guy says, ‘here,’ and the judge says, ‘Mr. Royal is going to represent you.’ And after the lawyer left I told that guy, ‘you gotta fire that lawyer. He’s awful. He totally threw me under the bus and sent me to prison.’”

“Then Royal comes back in, and he calls my name. And I said, ‘what, are you going to tell me my lawyer is in the back?’

‘No, I’m your lawyer.’

‘No, you’re not. I want nothing to do with you.’

And he’s all confused. ‘You look familiar. Have we met?’

Then the judge, the same judge from my first term too, Judge Hammer, says ‘All rise.’ And they called me right away. ‘This is Mr. Royal. He’s going to be your public defender.’

‘No, sir. This man is the devil.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘He’s the devil and I don’t want him to be my lawyer.’

‘Well, he’s going to be.’

‘No, he’s not, he’s the devil and you’re the devil too, and my lawyer is Joe L-‘ I told him that, that I’m represented by Joe L- Every time the judge said anything I interrupted him. ‘JOE L- JOE L- IS MY LAWYER. JOE L- I WANT JOE L- I WANT MY LAWYER!’

‘Calm down!’

I started freaking out, I’m yelling it over and over, until finally Judge Hammer says, ‘court is in recess! I want Joe L- in here right now!'”

Danny grins, giving me a look like ‘what did you expect?’

“So I’m sitting there all by myself and they had to go get Joe L- from some other courtroom where he was in a hearing. But they brought him in and the judge asks, ‘do you know this guy?’

Joe says, ‘no.’

But I tell him ‘Your Honor, THAT’S my lawyer! There he is, Joe L-!’

The judge says, ‘I’ll give you a few minutes to talk.’

So Joe asks me, ‘do you know me?’

‘Yes, sir. You’re the one who is gonna get me out of here. I’ve heard nothing but great things about you.’

‘Well… I’m very expensive.’

I told him, ‘I got no money, I only get sixty dollars a month from my job, but I have so much faith in you to get me home.’

And he thought about it, then he tells the judge he’ll represent me. And he asks me, ‘how did you hear about me anyways?’

‘All the MDOs who go home had you as their lawyer. I asked them.’

“After that I gave him the whole run down of my situation. I told him I’ve never been in trouble, I do all my groups, I have staff to speak on my behalf, people on the street who support me, and I don’t take meds, not even a toe cream. And I told him about the public defender and the judge both being from my first term and how they threw me under the bus, and isn’t that a conflict of interest? Because they fucked me over before, and he said ‘it sounds like it could be. Let’s get your records and see what we can find.’

“When I got back from court I was going to the yard and I saw this cop I’d never gotten along with, Officer Penny. And she’s just smirking at me, and she says, ‘Oh, hi, Daniel. Gee, you’ll never guess who I had dinner with last night.’

‘Who, Satan?’

‘No, my brother in law-.. J- Hammer.’

And I just stared at her, because there was only one way she could know that was my judge. Then I gave her a big smile and I said, ‘thank you! You just did me a huge favor!’ And I didn’t even go to the yard, I ran back to my building and called Joe L- to tell him what she said.”

“So, we went back to court and right away Joe L- got me a new judge due to many, many conflicts of interest. Instead of Judge Hammer I got a judge who was about to retire, which my lawyer said was good. ‘He doesn’t give a shit anymore.'”

“That’s a good start. What happened at the hearing?”

“First the state put my psychiatrist on the stand, and Joe L- just shredded him. Like, ‘oh, Daniel is bipolar and he has a history of violence.’

‘Has Daniel been violent while he has been at Atascadero?’

‘No, but he argues with the other patients.’

‘Argues about what?’

‘Let me look at my notes. OK, he said the other patient hit him.’

‘So, Daniel was the victim?’

‘Um… he could have been.’

‘Well, the staff report that you’re referring to says Daniel was the victim of an assault. So?’

But that psychiatrist testified for two and a half hours, and the whole time he just smutted me up. He made me look horrible. We took a break and I went back to my room and I’m just thinking, I’m done, I’m fucked. They’re not going to let me out. I need a miracle. Then there’s a knock on my door … It was John B-!”

“Your first parole officer?”

“Yeah, the one from before that bitch set me up.”

“Out of nowhere?”

“Totally out of nowhere. He said, ‘I hope you remember me.’

‘Remember you? I miss you so much I want to give you a hug! But what are you doing here?’

‘I saw your name on some paperwork and I wanted to see you ASAP. I wanted to telk you I’m sorry. I read what Victoria W- did and I couldn’t believe it.’

‘But where did you go?’

‘My wife and son were killed in a car wreck and I just couldn’t deal with work, so I took some time off. But if there’s anything you need…’

‘Can you be my character witness?’

‘Sure, of course!’

“So, we went back to the hearing. Joe L- called him to the stand, and a psychologist, and an officer and a psych tech who were on my side. They all basically said I’m a model patient and a good guy, all that stuff. Joe L- wanted to call another psych tech but the judge stopped him. He said, ‘I’ve heard enough. From what I’ve heard from both sides, Daniel doesn’t meet the criteria for MDO. So I’ll release him from Atascadero. You’re free to go.’ Then he banged the gavel and walked out.”

“I turned to Joe L- ‘What did he just say?’

‘Daniel. You’re going home.’

‘What?’

‘I said you’re going home.’

‘What?’

‘Didn’t you hear me?’

‘Yes, I heard you twice, but I just want to hear it one more time because it sounds so awesome!’

“That must have been the best feeling in the world.”

“When I got back I was jumping in the hallways. I kept yelling, ‘I’m going home! I’m going home!’ And people I knew were saying, ‘awesome!’ But then Officer Penny stepped into the hall.

‘Why are you yelling, Daniel?’

‘I’m going home! Thank you!’

‘You’re not going home.’

‘Yes I am, and thank you so much!’

“Nobody on the unit knew what happened yet because all the staff who went to court took the rest of the day off, except I saw the psychiatrist who smutted me up, so I went up to him and I went like this.” Danny slumps, staring at the floor looking dejected.

“And he says, ‘oh, I’m so sorry, Daniel. Maybe if you take more groups and some more classes, maybe next year…’

Then I smiled. ‘Oh! I guess you haven’t heard. I’m going home!’

“And I saw him going through my chart, frowning and conferring with the other staff, so I went to the chow hall and I said, ‘cake and ice cream for everyone!’ See, I always bought this five gallon drum of ice cream and a cake for my unit on my birthday, so they’re like, ‘is it your birthday?’ ‘Nope! I’m going home!’

“It took three days to get discharged, but when I did I was off parole and everything. John B- showed up, and said goodbye. He told me, ‘you’re totally free, you can go anywhere, France, Mexico, anywhere in the world, Daniel.'”

“So, where did you go?”

“Some friends of mine picked me up. We got some beer and I moved into their house and the first thing we did was smoke a big ol’ joint.” Danny laughs. “But really, the MDO thing messed me up so bad I ended up going to school and becoming a paralegal especially for MDOs after I got out. So, you have my permission to write this. I want people to know my story.”

—————————————

RONIN GREY SUBSTACK: HTTPS://RONINGREY.SUBSTACK.COM — RONINGREYAUTHOR@GMAIL.COM

Mail: TERHUNE AD0786
CTFN PO BOX 705
SOLEDAD CA 93960

Most people don’t know how Mongoosedistro was born. I’m happy to report it was born out of a very unusual circumstance.

I was on Dirty Darrington Unit, I was in medium custody with access to cell phones, and drugs, but I wasn’t off into the drugs, I wanted to reach my family. I wanted them to say, hey can we send you some money, that way you can eat and buy hygiene, or something like that. Days went by and nobody ever offered, and gave up hope. Sitting alone in this tiny cell, I had a tattoo magazine, it had advertising in it for multiple shops all over the country. Weird me, I look at the phone, then look at the magazine,…..look back and I said fuck it, I dialed the first Tattoo parlor.

First guy answers, he’s cool, so I say ” listen man, I’m a tattoo artist in prison, I’m not asking for money, I just wanted to know if you had some patterns or designs that you can mail me so I can get to making my own money”, the guy was like man, you’re in prison? Yeah, I’m locked up bro, I don’t have any help right now, and I need some tattoo references, and the guy was nice about it, he said ” I’m sorry man, but all I do is custom work”, but good luck to you. It went on like this, for about 10 calls, until I ran I to a parlor in Ft. Bragg, California? Yeah, I though the same shit, I thought it was in North Carolina!! Well, apparently there more than one, and Nicky Needles answered the phone, the chick was awesome, she didn’t spook, she was kind and said “yeah man, give me your Addy , I’ll help you”. Once, that conversation was over with, I had one more call, it was to (redacted) Tattoo in LES, Nyc.

I dialed the number and. I heard,” (redacted) Tattoo this is (redacted)”,… so I immediately went into my I’m not asking for money-but-for- tattoo patterns skit, and right when I thought everything was cool, this guys says” So, where are you?”, I was very nervous but I told him,” Houston”, but I’m from San Antonio, I’m doing time and I needed some patterns, and after I said that, he let out a giggle, and said “oh yeah”, Dude, I’m from Austin, and bam!! We got on some Texas boys conversations, it went from nervous to shooting the shit, and finally after a few minutes, he says give me your address man, I’ll help you,…I was elated, and shocked I met a fellow Texan by accident, its awesome,but after we spoke for a while we said our goodbyes, I was informed it would be a couple of weeks before he did anything, and that was that.

I felt better, I’d accomplished something, I couldn’t even get my family to do,so I went about my day. That was the beginning of something big, that I didn’t see coming, but I felt better about life in general, I had made contact with the outside world and I was heard.

Two weeks later, I get caught with this same cell phone and sent to the Administrative segregation areas again, I was alone and nobody was coming to my rescue. One night, I get a letter, it was from (redacted),he said he tried mailing something, but it didn’t make it, we didn’t know shit about mail, and how stiff necked they were about stamps and sufficient postage, but we soon began to learn, for he was mailing me references and letters that carried me through a whole year of isolation again, I had a friend to vibe with and boy did we vibe.

It wasn’t too far into this journey when he asked me if he could mail me a book, it was called” The Last Act of the Circus Animals” (by Sean Swain), well this was it, I was enlightened, this book allowed me to name all the bullshit I was going through, and call it out for what it is. We spoke about the author who I’m a fan of, and I even got to meet him through (redacted), I was beginning to become Comrade Z through anarchist teachings and literature I’ve never read or heard of, but damn was it good for the soul, it was fuel to a bonfire, I was not sure what was going on inside of me, but I fucken loved it.

I began drawing portraits because of (redacted), I wasn’t very good, and I only had No.2 pencils to work with, but it kept me busy, and (redacted) was loving the Artwork.

Time was better. (to be continued)

Julio A. Zuniga 1961551
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266

Mongoose Maniacs,

welcome to Comrade Z’s favorite Anarchist Movement Tactics series,this is for your autonomous viewing pleasure,please read and spread the knowledge far and wide.

THE PIQUETEROS “HASTY BLOCKADE” AND TIRE FIRES

The piqueteros of Argentina, a movement of poor and unemployed people that arose in the late 1990’s, developed the hasty blockade to a high level. During large mobilizations, and through coordination between many autonomous groups, they used hasty blockades to paralyse the transportation infrastructure of the entire country. In August 2001, for example, the piqueteros were able to shutdown some 300 highways and roads throughout the country.

The most common tactic used by piqueteros was to arrive on a road, highway or city intersection, and block it with tires. Small fires were often built in the middle of the road, and if necessary the tires themselves were set on fire, often by inserting a few plastic bags doused with gasoline into each tire’s rim and igniting them. The burning plastic bag would quickly ignite the rubber on the tire.

In one case, a Hasty blockade established by piqueteros consisted of the unravelling of a chain link fence and extending it across a roadway, where it was secured to a telephone Pole.

The piqueteros, a movement based in community and family groups, would also have a self defence force at their blockades, usually masked people armed with batons. The batons became one of the symbols of the movement. These groups would defend the blockade against any vigilante actions by motorist’s as well as assault by small number of police.

Piquetero blockades often lasted until police had mobilized a large enough force that threatened the blockade, at which point they dispersed.

TREES: Some hasty blockades have been established by cutting down trees so they fall across the roadway,making them impassable. A military term for this technique is ABATIS or (abattis),with the trees felled so that they cross over top of one another. Historically, abatis were made of branches pushed into the ground with their sharpened tips pointed toward the enemy.

An abatis made of trees can be dismantled fairly quickly by forestry workers equipped with chainsaws,or by heavy trucks equipped with cables that pull the trees off the roadway.

Felled trees were used during the 1995 siege at Ts’Peten in South Central BC,and during October 2013 Mi’kmaq blockade of fracking vehicles in New Brunswick.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of Z’s favorite Anarchist Movement Tactics,stay tuned for the next round.

Solidarity and Sabotage, Z .

Julio A Zuniga 1961551
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266

Check out :U.S. Army’s Field Manual on Countermobility Operations (FM 5-102) WarriorPublications.WordPress.com

“I held my gun so that the generations after me could hold a sickle…” -Palestinian song, Ahd Allah Ma Nerhal (By God We Won’t Leave)

“…[W]e have hope because we know, now more than ever, that these horrors in the name of upholding a racist settler-colonial occupation are not going to last forever. Anyone who ever thought it would will be astounded in hindsight.” -Rawan Masri, “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood Was An Act of Decolonization”

I, like most of Our comrades who organize behind the gulag walls, have been following the ongoing genocide carried out by the Zionist entity upon the people of Palestine with varied mixtures of feelings, with the number one emotion being unadulterated rage alongside an equal amount of awe at the steadfast courage of the Palestinian resistance and their allies throughout the Levant, or the “Middle East”.

You might think that the rage stems from the atrocious conduct that sadly has been par for the course of the Zionists since at least 1947 in the beginnings of what would become the Nakba carried out by the various Zionist terror organizations such as the Haganah, Irgun and LEHI who most infamously were responsible for the April 9, 1948 Deir Yassin massacre in which 250 defenseless Palestinians were slaughtered, including 100 wimmin and children, and then the village was subsequently looted and plundered. While I cannot deny that the daily depredations of the Zionist occupation forces raises my ire profoundly, the rage actually stems more from the stunning ignorance of the so-called “friends and supporters” of “I$rael” who voice their profoundly inaccurate, and most of the time entirely false statements, “hystory lessons on the so-called ‘conflict’,” (non)interpretations of international law, and most importantly their insistence on not calling the Zionist entity’s actions and policies what they’ve been since the start of the ethnic cleansing under Plan Dalet beginning in April 1948: genocidal. Many of these people are probably of the opinion as well that the vast majority of other settler-colonial projects (such as the United $nakes, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, etc.) were also not genocidal from their beginnings, likely using the age old excuses of blaming the so-called “savages” for provoking the “reasonable” and “peace loving” settlers into defending themselves and the land they mistakenly believe they didn’t steal thanks to their belief that God gifted or promised it to them in perpetuity because “he’s God” and “what he says goes.”(1) These “friends and supporters” of “I$rael” will do absolutely no research into the validity of their statements, instead choosing to equate the Palestinian struggle to liberate all of the hystoric Palestine and finally be free to return to their lands, with a genocidal Arab conspiracy to wipe out the Jews.

So in the interests of correcting the misinformation and lies, and cutting through the Zionist propaganda it stems from and in full solidarity with Our comrades across hystoric Palestine, in the diaspora, on campuses and in the streets, this article will attempt to deconstruct some of the most common discourse that is parroted in the bourgeois media which has fueled this latest round of anti-Arab hysteria and Islamophobia and crucially, the pattern of Amerikan rejectionism to Palestinian Liberation and indifference to the crimes of its client state.

It behooves all of us to study history, and studying the hystory of what has become known as the Palestinian-I$raeli conflict and the principal actors and organizations is not an exception to this rule.

So in that context, I will begin with one of the Zionists’ more devious lies; the so-called “I$raeli” “purity of arms” and its common usage, that “I$rael” never targets civilians or civilian infrastructure. Although any cursory observation of I$rael’s conduct from the 1948 Nakba to the present day would prove otherwise, We can look to none other than Zionist hero and first prime minister David Ben-Gurion for the proof. In his Independence War Diary, he set down on paper the military doctrine that would become standard protocol throughout the history of the Zionist project.

There is no question as to whether a reaction is necessary or not. The question is only time and place. Blowing up a house is not enough. What is necessary is cruel strong reactions. We need precision in time place and causalities. If we know the family – [we must] strike mercilessly, women and children included. Otherwise the reaction is inefficient. At the place of action there is no need to distinguish between guilty and innocent.(2)

This specific entry was written on January 1, 1948, one day after the Haganah occupied the Palestinian village of Balad al-Shaykh, the burial place of Shaykh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam (one of Palestine’s most revered resistance leaders of the 1920’s and 30’s), massacring over 60 Palestinian civilians, men, wimmin, and children, most while they were asleep in their homes. This massacring of civilians in their sleep over 75 years ago lines up exactly with the countless stories told by survivors of today’s indiscriminate bombings to the doctors that have been working nonstop within the largely destroyed remains of Gaza’s hospitals.(3)

Let us also remember that when Ben-Gurion wrote those words, the Zionist leadership at the time was working on “Plan Dalet”, finalized on March 10, 1948, which was the military blueprint for the ethnic cleansing of hystoric Palestine.(4)

To illustrate before moving on to the next topic, lets look back at two of the lesser known massacres during the initial Nakba; “Lydda and Ramla” and “Safsaf.”

On a blistering hot Ramadan day in July 1948, a Haganah general named Yitzhak Rabin (who would later become ambassador to Washington D.C., then “I$raeli” Prime Minister, then sign the Oslo accords on the White House lawn, then be assassinated for it by “I$raeli” reactionaries) descended upon the Palestinian towns of Lydda and Ramla with his unit and violently expelled approximately 50,000 men, wimmin and children.

In Lydda, dozens of Palestinians were gathered and detained in the Dahmash mosque and church premises, all unarmed, and were subsequently gunned down. Afterwards the Zionists gathered an additional 20 to 50 Palestinians to clean up the mosque and bury all of the bodies. After they had placed the bodies in their graves, they themselves were shot into the open graves and left there to bleed out and die. In total between 250 to 400 Palestinians were massacred in Lydda. An additional 350 more died after being expected and forced to march to the frontlines of the Arab armies in what would become known as the Lydda Death March.(5)

As a sidenote, the events that occurred at Lydda and the subsequent death march after, were a formative event in the life of a young George Habash, who was from Lydda, and in 1948 at age 19 left the American University in Beirut, Lebanon where he was a medical student and returned to Lydda during the war to help his family. The Haganah attacked the town soon after, and in the subsequent death march, without water or food, during Ramadan no less, his sister died before they reached the Arab army’s frontlines. This could possibly be one of the reasons which fed his uncompromising leadership and opposition to the Zionist regime as a pivotal leader of first the Harakat al-Qawmiyyin al-Arab (Arab Nationalist Movement) and then of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Lastly, we come to the massacre at Safsaf during the initial Nakba. Though this is one of the lesser known atrocities of the Nakba, it is vital to the overall understanding, as a quarter of the 12 well documented instances of rape by the Zionists were recorded here. Those who remember the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War will know what happens next.

The Zionists started by cleansing the town by using their “patented” strategy of surrounding the town on 3 sides, firing into the air and into the sides of buildings in the hopes of driving the population out of the fourth, open side of the town. Then they entered the town, gathering up all of those who still remained in their homes, initially shooting and killing 12 young men. The remaining 52 men were caught, then tied together and thrown into a pit the Zionists dug, then subsequently shot and killed. Seeing this, the remaining wimmin of the town came and asked the Zionists for mercy. The Zionists told several of the wimmin to go and fetch water to the town. Once they moved away from the others, they were followed by the militiamen and raped, two of the women being killed in the process. The womyn who survived was a child of fourteen years old.(6) These are just a few of the massacres of civilians by the Zionists during the initial Nakba. If we line them up alongside others, for instance, the October 1953 massacre in the West Bank village of Qibya by Ariel Sharon’s (another past war criminal made prime minister) infamous unit 101 of the “I$raeli” Offense Forces (IOF) special forces, the October 1956 Kafr Qasim massacre, the full IOF support given during the 1982 Lebanon war to their proxies, the Christian Phalangist and Maronite militias, to massacre 2,000 civilians in the Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Shatila (which in hindsight was probably the last time there was mass protests within “I$rael” by Jews over their regime’s crimes against Palestinians), to the more recent wars, such as during “Operation Cast Lead” in 2008-09 which the UN’s fact finding report (Goldstone report) called a “deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population”, a certain pattern starts to emerge; one of ethnic cleansing and genocide, funded and with political cover by Amerika.

Genocide & Denial

Genocide, the word as well as the action hangs heavy over Amerika and “I$rael”, so much so that it has stopped many from speaking out and acknowledging the Zionist regime’s actions against Palestine as genocidal.

A comrade over at Slingshot Collective in Berkeley, CA wrote an article for their latest newspaper issue, trying to elaborate on the reasons behind the silence during an active genocide, and though I agree with many of their conclusions (not wanting to sound “anti-Semitic”, general Amerikan apathy and indifference to the suffering of others and not wanting to split the Democratic Party base leading to a Trump victory this election year), I think there are other, deeper explanations for this, as well as outright genocide denial.(7)

When most Amerikans and “I$raelis” think about the word genocide, it is inevitable that they will first think of the Holocaust. The mass shootings carried out by the Einsatzgruppen (Nazi SS mobile death squads) and the gassing and immolation of millions of Ashkenazi Jews are rightfully called genocide; and yet many of these same Amerikans and “I$raelis” forget the genocide of approximately half of the 2 million Sinti and Romani peoples (Gypsies) of German occupied Europe known as the Porrajmos in the Romani language, nor do they seem to remember the systematic massacres of Slavic, LGBTQ+, and disabled peoples along with many political dissidents during the same time period by Nazi Germany.(8) And so, the benchmark for both countries for some act to count as genocide is something which looks like the Holocaust; a massive extermination of people in a relatively short amount of time.

And yet, the Nazi genocide and Zionist genocide do not resemble each other structurally or in any other meaningful way.

Like the settler colonial regimes of the United $nakes, Canada, New Zealand and Australia among others, the genocides that took place upon the indigenous First Nations have taken place over many decades, a small act here, a large act there, and this is what the genocide of the Palestinian Arab people by the Zionist regime has looked like and continues to look like to this day.(9)

As this practice of genocide continues against the people of Palestine, so too does Amerika continue this practice upon the internal semi-colonies of New Afrikans, Chican@s, and the First Nations here on occupied Turtle Island. Amerika also has a very interesting, as well as appalling, history relating to the UN Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide that bears mentioning.

After its founding convention in San Francisco in 1945, the United Nations set about sponsoring the creation of an international legal instrument for the prevention and punishment of genocide. The job for drafting this document was handed down to the Economic and Social Council of the UN General Assembly (GA) which retained several international legal consultants foremost among them Dr. Raphael Lemkin; an exiled Polish-Jewish jurist who had in 1944 coined the term ‘genocide’ in his work “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.” Lemkin, who authored most of the draft, submitted it in June 1947, and a month later it was rejected by several member states of the General Assembly, foremost among them the United $nakes, because of “important philosophical disagreements.” It was edited and then finally adopted by the GA on December 9, 1948. By 1951 enough countries had ratified it to afford it the status of binding international law; except for a partial ratification (with conditions and edits) in 1988 by the Reagan Administration, the U.$. has still not ratified the convention in its entirety.(10)

First off, lets look at what parts of Lemkin’s draft were so “philosophically disagreeable” to the United $tates. Lemkin was extremely thorough in the draft document, where he included linguistic and political groups under currently protected groups of racial, national, and religious groups. Also importantly, he included in the list of punishable acts (enumerated in Article 3 of the current convention) engaging in a number of “preparatory” acts such as developing techniques of genocide and setting up installations for the purpose of committing genocide.

Already we can see that if the above made it into the final draft, both Amerika and “I$rael” would have been in the ‘hot seat’, so to speak.

Lemkin also included preventing the “preservation or development” of the above groups as a punishable act as well as policies that would bring about the disintegration of the political, social, or economic structure of a group or nation (author’s note: Settlers & Neocolonialists Beware!).

Lastly and most crucially, Lemkin detailed 3 distinct and specific forms of genocide: physical, biological, and cultural. For physical genocide he included “slow death” measures such as the “subjection to conditions of life which, owing to lack of proper housing, clothing, food, hygiene and medical care… are likely to result in debilitation or death of individuals”, as well as “deprivation of all means of livelihood by confiscation of property, looting, curtailment of work, and denial of housing and supplies otherwise available to the other inhabitants of the territory concerned.” Biological genocide, apart from compulsory abortion and sterilization, included segregation of the sexes and obstacles to marriage. Cultural genocide included forced and systematic exile of individuals representing the culture of a group, as well as the destruction of a groups hystorical or religious monuments and the destruction of a group’s hystorical, artistic, and religious documents or objects.(11)

If one looks to the UN Genocide Convention today, it would be entirely accurate to say it no longer resembles in any meaningful way the original intentions of the author(s).

One might ask what the consequences of this are, and though there are many, I’ll only go into one.

Consequently, it has continued to further obfuscate what constitutes genocide, further allowing imperialist and reactionary regimes to continue policies of genocidal oppression, domestically as well as in the Global South. Yet as a direct result of this in the case of “I$rael”, many countries in the Global South have had enough of the genocidal Zionist regime. Most importantly South Africa (where the Zionists supported the apartheid regime before its collapse) charged the Zionist entity with genocide at the ICC (International Criminal Court) in the Hague. Many Central and South American countries, like Chile and Honduras, who both had to deal with genocidal reactionary regimes propped up by the support of both Amerika and “I$rael”, have both said enough is enough, and recalled their ambassadors to “I$rael” over the Amerikan funded genocide.(12) And also extremely important, and as a great way to segue into my last topic of this article, it has set off an explosion of support for Palestine from within the belly of the imperialist beast, in the U.$. but also all across Europe; vital to this effort has been Our comrades on college campuses across Turtle Island.

Student Activism and U.$. Attempts

to “Silence the Intifada”

When the first encampments and building occupations were setup, from Columbia University to campuses across occupied Turtle Island all the way to UC Berkeley, though I wasn’t surprised, (and forgive me for my emotional subjectiveness) tears of joy and pride sprang to my eyes as I watched the moving images on CNN move across the screen. Not since the Vietnam War and organizations like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) have we seen the anti-war movement, nor the BDS movement since its iteration against South African apartheid, consolidate into such a huge outpouring of love, rage, and solidarity on college campuses.

I was sadly also not surprised when the Pro-Zionist reactionaries sent the pigs in to silence the movement, nor have I been surprised at the Zionist propaganda campaign attempting to label the entire Palestinian solidarity movement “anti-Semitic” and “violent”, even going so far (a la Stop Cop City activists) as calling all protesting for Palestine “terrorists” and “supporters of terrorists”. Here in the Bay Area, there have been lies spread saying that the BDS strategy is no longer viable or legally possible for UC Board of Regents to boycott/divest from the Zionist entity, which has been uncovered as a lie to get Our comrades at Berkeley to abandon their camp and goals. Whether divestment is possible, we can look to the success of the anti-apartheid movement in 1986 at Berkeley to finally pressure the UC to divest $3.1 billion from companies doing business with apartheid South Africa.(13) Aside from this it’s also been insane to watch the bipartisan effort, from Genocide Joe to the outer reaches of the far right, to attempt to get the masses concerned with some of the alleged rhetoric of individuals on campus and the violence at the encampments (which from numerous sources have been proven to be incited by Zionist counter-demonstrators and the pigs), to try to get everyone to somehow forget his “ironclad” support of “I$raeli” genocide. Sadly for Genocide Joe and his Pro-Zionist rabble in Congress, students on campuses across Turtle Island have dug in and refused the false images the imperialists and their media have tried to paint of them, and have let the imperialists know 3 things: We are NOT going anywhere, We will NOT be silenced, and PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!

As the college term wraps up for the summer and many in the Palestine Solidarity Movement, on and off campus, set their sights this summer on an explosive confrontation at the Democratic National Convention alongside many other avenues for protest and action, I’d like to give one bit of advice if any students or other outside comrades may be reading: I think aside from the also important avenues of protest and actions here in the belly of the imperialist beast, it would be extremely beneficial to send as many comrades (students or otherwise) to the West Bank this summer, to live and learn among the Palestinian people themselves. Black Panther Party leader Huey P. Newton saw the importance of this, which led him to visit Palestine as well as revolutionary China. So did our recently passed elder and comrade SeKou Odinga, member of both the New York Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army (BLA), who met several times with members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and other resistance factions under the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) umbrella at the time while building the international chapter of the BPP in Aligiers, even finding time to train with the resistance fighters in guerrilla warfare. SDS and what would become the Weather Underground Organization (WU) also saw the importance of this in the 60’s and early 70’s meeting with revolutionaries from Cuba, Vietnam, and other countries to learn about them, their life and their struggle from their own points of view and in their own voices.

As the Zionists have only continued the ramping up of repression in the occupied West Bank since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, you could also play an integral role in getting the stories of Palestinians there back to the masses here in the U.$. as well as help in the already ongoing humanitarian efforts going on there. Just something to think about as we move into the summer.

In case you weren’t aware, We behind the gulag walls admire your unshakable and uncompromising support for Palestine’s liberation, and your unwavering courage in the face of wave after wave of attacks by Zionist reactionaries and their pig helpers. You inspire Us behind the wall and We can’t wait to see what you do next.

From the river to the sea,
Palestine will be Free!

Glory to the Martyrs

Freedom to the Prisoners

Healing to the Wounded

Revolution until Victory

^Notes:

1. <sup>Patrick Wolfe, December 2006, “Settler Colonialism and the elimination of the native”, Journal of Genocide Research, 814
   2. Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle – The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, ( Haymarket Books, 2014), pp. 200
   3. Irfan Galaria, February 23, 2024,”Doctor in Gaza sees only annihilation”, San Jose Mercury News
   4. Noam Chomsky & Ilan Pappe, “Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S. Israeli War on the Palestinians” (Haymarket Books, 2013), pp.69
   5. Nur Masalha, “The Palestinian Nakba: Decolonizing History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory” (Zed Books, 2012), pp. 86
   6. Adel Manna, “Nakba and Survival: The Story of Palestinians who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee, 1948-1956” (University of California Press, (2022), pp. 75-80
   7. Kermit, “Watching and Waiting?: On Speaking Out & Being Silent During Genocide”, Slingshot Issue 140 Summer 2024, pp. 2-3
   8. Ward Churchill, “A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present” (City Lights Books, 1997), pp. 36-49
   9. Patrick Wolfe, December 2006, “Settler Colonialism and the elimination of the native”, Journal of Genocide Research, 8/4
   10. Ward Churchill, pp. 363-364
   11. Ward Churchill, pp. 265-266
   12. FP Explainers, 3 May 2024, After Colombia, now Turkey: Which other nations have cut ties with Israel over Gaza war?, FirstPost.com
   13. DD, “Resisting the Neoliberal University & Unethical Investment”, Slingshot Issue 140 Summer 2024, pp. 5</sup>

“California has no fewer than nine involuntary commitment procedures that may apply to persons who have various mental problems and who pose a threat to their own welfare or to the safety of others. Some of these laws, including [Welfare and Institutions Code §] 6500, operate in a manner largely independent from the criminal justice system.”

– California Supreme Court Justice J. Baxter, People v. Barrett, 54 Cal. 4th 1081, 30 July 2012

If you have ever wondered what happens to people once they enter the system under an involuntary civil commitment, you might consider watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as a documentary – it’s far less fiction than it appears at first glance.

The differences between prisons and lockdown psych wards (now termed ‘forensic hospitals’ in the ever-shifting sands of mealymouthed obfuscation) are nominal. Having personally spent time in both, I can attest that prison is far less terrifying. And fewer people die there.

A common misconception, one even I held until I really started beating the bushes, is that you have to be stark raving mad in order to end up in a place where psychiatrists are elevated to godhood and nurses are permitted to forcibly inject ‘patients’ with powerful psychotropic drugs or strap them to a table in five point restraints – imagine a straightjacket, but for your legs as well as your arms. The fifth ‘point’ is your head, by the way.

Yet being crazy really has nothing to do with ending up in a psych ward – after all, prisons are full of people who are stark raving mad, too. The people who populate forensic hospitals, by and large, are more often simply inconvenient.

Let’s talk about Christine Barrett. You don’t know who she is; that’s OK, nobody else does either. But since you and I still retain the vestiges of our humanity we are allowed to care about people we don’t know, and the way the system so neatly erases them from existence can illuminate our understanding of the machine from which we are all struggling to break free.

“Christine Barrett is an adult who has long been diagnosed with mental retardation and other mental disorders, and who has lived in the community while being supported and supervised by others. Because of her increasingly violent behaviors, Barrett became the subject of this proceeding to civilly commit her as a mentally retarded person who is a danger to herself or others.”

– Justice J. Baxter

The proceeding in question was a petition for civil commitment under California Welfare and Institutions Code § 6500, a state law which permits ‘the involuntary institutionalization of adults with developmental disabilities deemed to be “mentally retarded and dangerous”.’

I am aware that it is offensive to call people ‘retarded,’ however this is the language in use by the California Code of Regulations and the California Supreme Court at the time this case was decided – 30 July 2012 – so I’m rolling with it. Literally everything about the way this went down offends me and the words are the least of it.

I stumbled onto Christine’s case while doing research for the Beyond the Ninth Wave journalism project, seeking subjects to interview about their experiences in prison or in forensic hospitals. Most people in psych wards are either convicts, or those who have been found not guilty by reason of insanity of some crime, or people who have served their time but have been deemed too much of a risk to let go – outrageous stories for other days. I had never heard of Welfare and Institutions Code § 6500.

Discovering that somebody could be locked up even if they didn’t commit a crime, especially a person who was developmentally disabled and therefore not in their ‘right mind,’ rang an alarm bell. When I realized this as a California Supreme Court ruling which set a precedent that could be applied to any future unfortunates who found themselves in similar dire straits, I smelled an uncommon stink. The more I dug into the scant details concerning the fate of Ms. Barrett, the more that stink grew downright sulfurous.

Christine has been virtually obliterated from existence, so the only narrative concerning her experiences comes from the official court record. One-sided as it mostly is, we can glean a lot by reading in between the lines.

Christine lived at home with her parents until 2001, when ‘because of physical assaults, verbal abuse, and noncompliance with her treatment plan’ she was placed in a group home [at age 18.] She remained there for five years, but she ‘repeatedly left the premises without proper notice or supervision, disrupting the community by “threatening people,” and acting in “inappropriate” and “self-destructive” ways.’ The same problems occurred inside the group home, ‘often triggering emergency response and psychiatric hospitalizations.’

Setting aside a few obvious red flags – a teenager’s ‘noncompliance’ with her ‘treatment plan,’ a psychobabblese way to say she didn’t take the pills they told her to and did things they’d forbidden her to do, for instance – we are already talking about a person whose young life has been overrun by meddlers and who is obviously struggling. Whatever her parents, doctors, caregivers, or others did right, wrong, did that they shouldn’t, didn’t do that they should, is immaterial because as soon as she’s of age Christine was removed from the only home she’s ever known and dumped in a halfway house with a bunch of strangers.

It’s hardly shocking that a teenager would want to do anything but remain locked up all day, but the vague language still leaves open the possibility that her behavior was, in fact, truly dangerous. We’ll need to run it all through a translator to shear away the bullshit:

‘Emergency response and psychiatric hospitalizations’ is just a fancy way to say someone didn’t like how she was behaving so they called the cops, wrestled her down, and took her to a psych ward for a shot of Thorazine in the ass and some time in isolation. None of that is conducive to promoting positive mental health outcomes, evidenced by the fact that it kept right on happening.

At some point the group home decided it could no longer deal with her – Christine had become inconvenient, so in 2006 she was moved into a condo owned by her parents ‘with support staff [from the San Andreas Regional Center, the same “community-based nonprofit agency funded and regulated by the State of California to serve developmentally disabled people” that ran the group home] so she could live independently.’

Well, it didn’t work out.

In January of 2009 the coordinator of the Regional Center, Betty Crane, requested that the Santa Clara district attorney file a petition ‘on behalf of the People’ to civilly commit Christine under Welfare and Institutions Code § 6500. Meaning: the person ultimately charged with her care, maintenance, and support, the person paid by the state to take care of her, contacted the top prosecutor in the county and requested they lock Christine up in a forensic hospital against her will.

Inconvenient.

The district attorney filed the petition, the same as an indictment would be filed against a criminal. The petition alleged that Christine was ‘a mentally retarded adult who lived in a private residence with staff assistance,’ and that she was a danger to herself or others. On this basis alone the court was asked to hold an evidentiary hearing and to commit Christine to the custody of the California State Department of Developmental Services [DDS] for a period of one year.

The evidence the petition relied upon was ‘assessments, evaluations, reports, and other documents’ provided by the Regional Center and DDS, which were filed in the form of a confidential exhibit. In other words, the people who had control of her life worked with the state department in charge of their funding in order to transfer her from one agency to the other by giving a bunch of their internal documents to the prosecutor facilitating the transfer. Then they all claimed the documents were her private medical records so on one else would be allowed to scrutinize what they’d written about her.

Most of what we know about Christine comes from the doctor’s testimony: she was 27 years old at the time [2009], and her IQ was in the 40s or 50s, what Dr. Thomas classified as ‘moderate retardation.’ Based on school records and psych reports ‘from her early life, before she became a client of the [Regional] Center in 2001,’ she had been diagnosed with various other mental disorders over the years, including ‘autism, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and schizoaffective disorder.’

None of these reports were put on record, nor were the clinicians who threw such a wide variety of spaghetti strands at the wall of Christine’s childhood self brought in to testify. Christine’s counsel, appointed by the state because her parents apparently didn’t find it worth the trouble to hire one for her, voiced no objections and allowed the prosecutor’s axeman to weave his narrative unopposed.

Dr. Thomas continued, opining that ‘because of the cognitive deficits associated with mental retardation, [Christine] has serious difficulty controlling her behavior and is a “danger to herself or others.'” That danger rested on two main factors, he claimed, the ‘incapacity to understand the complexity of her disorder,’ and ‘volatile and violent history as set forth in “incident reports” compiled by the Regional Center.’

The same Regional Center he worked for. The same Regional Center the coordinator who initiated the commitment proceedings worked for. The same Regional Center which prepared the documents from which he cited his evidence. The same Regional Center which had been solely responsible for Christine’s welfare and supervision for at this point nine years, her entire adult life.

Yet still her public defender challenged nothing and raised no concerns of conflicts of interest, allowing hearsay and speculation to be transmuted into truth. If it were a boxing match, that’s what’s known as taking a dive.

From Dr. Thomas’s testimony we can at least catch a glimpse of what Christine’s ‘dangerous, violent, volatile’ behavior consisted of. He cited Regional Center reports documenting 30 ‘incidents’ during the 18 months she lived at her parents’ condo, and characterized a typical ‘incident’ as a time when Christine ‘grew agitated about personal matters and responded by assault, property damage, or self abuse.’

For example: ‘[Christine] was once obsessing about her hair color, then became upset when she found out her mother was coming for a visit. She broke a chair and other furnishings, and was restrained by staff when she showed aggression towards her mother. [Christine] locked herself in the bathroom but became docile when the police arrived and took her for a psychiatric evaluation.’

The horror! I wonder who was more traumatized, the mother who got yelled at by the daughter she knows is unwell, or the girl being gaffled up by the police and hauled off to the psych ward – again – when she has had a lifetime of psychological intervention. What more possible ‘evaluation’ need be performed? And why the police, when she already has Regional Center staff restraining her? But her lawyer asked no such question, nor did anyone else.

Dr. Thomas further testified that ‘the furnishings and pictures and all kinds of things had to be removed from her apartment just to keep her safe.’ Such a stark, sterile environment brings to mind the image of a barren prison cell, one she could neither be alone within nor leave unsupervised. Yet this was all done so she might ‘live independently’ – like a dog chained up in a backyard.

Later that same month: ‘[Christine] was crying in her bedroom when she suddenly emerged and punched holes in the walls. She threw a glass bowl at a window, breaking the window on the second try.’

Is this really ‘dangerous’ behavior? It’s not like she’s driving drunk down the street or waving a gun around. This is the equivalent of a temper tantrum by a distressed individual who has never been free, nor been taught any coping skills whatsoever. And 30 such ‘incidents’ in 18 months equates to about one bad day every couple weeks – that’s few enough to be inconsequential in the aggregate.

Absent from the testimony of Dr. Thomas is any mention of precipitating events and aggravating factors, attempts to de-escalate, or any explanation as to why the Regional Center staff was so ill equipped to deal with Christine’s ‘outbursts’ that they had to continually call in the police to traumatize her further and haul her away for psychiatric hospitalizations despite being fully aware that she was developmentally disabled, not psychotic.

More: ‘In December of 2008 [Christine] refused to leave home for a mental health appointment. She threatened to harm staff, destroyed furnishing, and purposely scratched her [own] face to make it bleed.’ This ‘episode’ too triggered a 911 call and an admission to a psych ward for forcible medication.

Finally, the two ‘incidents’ which led to the petition for her commitment: ‘[Christine] came home upset after attending church with her parents. She assaulted staff and was hospitalized for emergency psychiatric care.’ No further details were given by Dr. Thomas, but again her inability to express her distress in a socially acceptable way is met with an extreme overreaction and ends in her being injected with sedatives and locked up.

‘Later that month [Christine] cursed and angrily announced she had changed her name. She threatened to harm the staff with a knife, then entered the bathroom and scratched her [own] arm.’

That was apparently the last straw, though no mention is made of how this woman who is imprisoned in her condo with no furniture and no pictures was permitted to get her hands on a knife. Despite the dramatic rendition by the prosecution’s ham, nowhere in the records is there any mention of anything Christine did genuinely harming anyone or herself – ‘scratches’ and ‘assaults’ resulting from her thrashing about when staff tries to restrain her aside.

Dr. Thomas nevertheless recommended Christine be committed to ‘a particular secure treatment facility’ – serendipitously enough, the same one in which she was already being held for her ‘interim placement.’ Then the prosecution rested.

Christine’s counsel called only one witness to testify on her behalf and refute all the allegations Dr. Thomas made: Christine herself. In response to her public defender’s questioning, she testified that she didn’t like her current placement because she couldn’t go on outings, but the people were nice and the food was good, she liked her medication because it calmed her, and she denied being mentally disordered.

Perry Mason declined to call Christine’s parents or other family, any of her current or former doctors or nurses, anyone who had ever been even peripherally involved in the care she’d been receiving her entire life, or even anyone who had ever known her. Instead he simply asked if she liked the food, then rested his case. Bravo.

The trial court found that Christine was ‘mentally retarded and dangerous under § 6500, and that the danger she posed to herself or others was based on, and caused by, her mental retardation.’ Thus she was committed to the DDS for one year beginning that day – 8 April 2009.

~

Then Christine Barret entered California’s Great Disappearin’ Machine.

A follow up hearing was scheduled for July 2009 to ‘review the complex nature of [Christine’s] diagnosed disorders and ensure the best placement and treatment options over the long term.’ The court imagined that in the intervening three months either the Regional Center or the Department of Developmental Services secure treatment facility would conduct a full evaluation of her psychiatric history and prepare a plan to help her cope with the issues which had necessitated her commitment in the first place.

None of that happened. No record exists of any July 2009 hearing or any other trial proceeding after 8 April. However, she did appeal her commitment order on the grounds that the trial court violated her rights of due process and equal protection under the law when they failed to advise her that she had the right to a trial by jury (rather than to have the matter decided by just a judge), and that they failed to obtain her consent to waive that right.

The appellate court denied her appeal, and the California Supreme Court upheld that denial with an astounding demonstration of just how thoroughly an inconvenient person like Christine Barrett can be screwed by the system:

The California Supreme Court concluded that ‘such people [the subjects of a hearing to determine whether they are mentally retarded and dangerous under § 6500] are not in a position to personally assert or waive the right to a jury trial, to sufficiently comprehend the jury trial advisement, or to override the views of counsel on the subject. Sole control over such tactical and procedural decisions rests with counsel, whether or not the client has been consulted or objects.’

In other words, someone even alleged to be mentally retarded and dangerous does not even need to be advised of their rights, let alone be permitted to assert them. In really other words, merely being accused of being retarded makes you so retarded you couldn’t even assert your rights, so don’t bother even telling you what they are or asking for your input.

No, leave it all to the court appointed public defender to be the sole custodian of that person’s fate. If such a notion doesn’t put a chill in your bones then you’ve never had the opportunity to experience just how little help these bastions of apathy are capable of rendering. Virtually everyone sitting in prison or involuntarily committed to a forensic hospital had a public defender, if that might serve to clarify the dangers of this prospect.

The other clever – diabolical – maneuver the system pulled in Christine’s case concerned the actual requirements of § 6500:

‘No mentally retarded person may be committed to the California Department of Developmental Services unless he or she is a danger to themselves or others. . . . for mentally retarded persons under the treatment of a state hospital or other facility when the petition is filed, proof of a recent overt act is not needed to find them to be a danger to themselves or others.’

Meaning: the mere fact of having been placed under the care of a facility imputes dangerousness. Just by filing the petition, the Regional Center’s coordinator ensured Christine would be locked up in her ‘interim placement,’ which then served as a basis to prove she was dangerous, thus sealing her fate with a tidy circle of self-serving logic.

Finally, the petition asserts that it only commits the unfortunate target for a period of one year. One might ask why not ride it out? Do your time, as it were, even if it is manifestly unjust. One year is not a life sentence.

Oh, except it is, sucker. The law further provides: ‘an order of commitment expires automatically one year after it is made. Subsequent commitment for additional periods may be sought for persons who remain mentally retarded and dangerous. Recommitment procedures are the same as with the initial petition.’

Are you still retarded? Check. (And even if you say you aren’t, we’ll have to ask your lawyer.)

Are you still dangerous? Being that you are in a state treatment facility, that’s implied.

Check.

See you next year. And the next. And the next.

~

POSTSCRIPT:

Christine Barrett was involuntarily committed to the California Department of Developmental Services on 8 April 2009 for a period of one year. As of 30 July 2012 her appeals were exhausted and she was still enmeshed within the system, being recommitted year after year. Unlike a state convict, there is no public information regarding DDS ‘clients’ or even the facilities in which they are located. She has, for all intents and purposes, been disappeared.

I managed to track Christine to a place called California Psychiatric Transitions in Delhi, CA but so far as I know she is no longer there – mail addressed to her there comes back ‘return to sender,’ at any rate. California Psychiatric Transitions is a ‘private, secure psychiatric treatment facility contracted to provide services for the State of California’ – one of countless bląck sites sprinkled across the Golden State where inconvenient folks like Christine can be buried.

Judging by the allegations in the lawsuits against California Psychiatric Transitions that I’ve read, I’d prefer taking my chances with Jack in the Cuckoo’s Nest.

~

RONIN GREY SUBSTACK: HTTPS://RONINGREY.SUBSTACK.COM — RONINGREYAUTHOR@GMAIL.COM

Mail: TERHUNE AD0786
CTFN PO BOX 705
SOLEDAD CA 93960

Dear Director Chambers-Smith,

  Hi… yet again… again.

  I hope these letters are benefitting you, expanding your thinking, increasing your empathy, persuading you to see that bigotry against people whose ideas for human social organization are more imaginative and thoughtful than your own is not very nice… or reasonable… or fair… or appropriate. Perhaps you’ll come to see that it is a waste of your agency’s resources to continue its campaign against my very existence.

  Previously, I shared how Anarchism is the only real advocate of freedom– which is “the absence of external regulation.” So, it isn’t only that if you are an Anarchist, you want freedom; it’s that, if you want freedom, you *are* an Anarchist.

  Everyone else pays lip service to a “compromised freedom,” which is really “slavery.”

  Also, Anarchists are the only ones who do not suffer the trifecta of delusions that are the foundation for the Kool Aid cult called hierarchy. Thus, to be an Anarchist is to rationally apply reason to questions of social organization and reject the collective mental illness called hierarchy.

  So, based on what we’ve already covered, it’s safe to conclude that Anarchists are rational, healthy-minded advocates for freedom in human society while Hierarchs are irrational and mentally ill slaves accepting a compromise they falsely call freedom.

No offense.

  I would like to continue here by discussing how Anarchism alone promotes the principles of autonomy, voluntary association, cooperation, and mutual aid; while the Hierarch delusion, on the other hand, dooms us to compulsion, alienation, compliance, conformity, and obedience under the threat of force. But to begin, I think we first have to discuss violence.

  Hierarchs love to call Anarchists “bomb throwing crazies,” characterizing Anarchists as violent and destructive and unpredictable. Is this fair? Let’s consider…

  Every single war in the last 8,000 years was started by Hierarchs, forcing armies of strangers to slaughter one another for their nation states or religious authorities. In World War II alone, just in the area of the Russian front– a space the size of New Jersey –Hierarchs from two opposing sides butchered more human beings in an eighteen month period than the entire world population at the time of the Golden Age of Greece. That is, the equivalent of the world population at the dawn of democracy was reduced to bones and ashes in eighteen months on the Russian Front.

  Can you name a single war carried out by Anarchists? Neither can I.

  Harry Truman, a Hierarch, ordered two bombs dropped on population centers that evaporated more human beings than everyone killed by all of the Anarchists throughout human history. Just one Hierarch was more murderous, all on his own, than all Anarchists combined over millennia.

  Can you think of a single event where Anarchists deployed weapons of mass destruction on a population center? Me neither.

  Every single genocide in history has been carried out by Hierarchs in campaigns of religious, ethnic, or national cleansing.

  Can you point to a single genocide waged by Anarchists? Exactly.

  Over the last 8,000 years of human civilization, Hierarchs have exclusively ruled every nation state, have organized and deployed every single military attack, have exclusively imposed “order” by force of arms, have exclusively ruled, raided, invaded, occupied, and conquered in every conflict where humans have slaughtered other humans.

  Nobody can kill, kill, kill like you Hierarchs.

  You’re off the chain. Somebody should stop you.

  On occasion, Anarchists have tried– to no avail. In the early 1900s, some Anarchists, exhausted by the continual Hierarch bloodbath, killed a king or two and shot the President of France. An Anarchist named Leon Czolgosz killed U.S. President William McKinley.

  The Hierarch death machine just kept grinding along.

  And, in all fairness, just as a quick side note, even when it comes to presidential assassinations in the U.S., Hierarchs are responsible for 3 out of 4 presidential killings. So, Hierarchs are still 3 times as murderous as Anarchists, even when it comes to killing the leader of Hierarchs.

  This reveals an important point, I think: hierarchy has always been carried out through violence, right from the beginning, and up to today. Need I remind you, but the “few” have never ruled the “many” by recourse to rainbows and daisies and cuddly puppies; from hierarchy’s inception, the “few” ruled through recourse to clubs and spears and sharp swords. Archaeologists uncovering forgotten civilizations can tell you whether there was hierarchy or not; if they find large numbers of weapons, there was hierarchy.

  The enforcement of hierarchy has evolved from clubs and spears and swords to tanks and guns and helicopters, but the program itself that you still worship and defend at all costs hasn’t come up with a single original idea about human social organization since the Bronze Age, the same period when somebody invented the wheel.

  I’m not saying you should feel stuck in the past or feel stupid… but if you DO, in fact, feel stuck in the past, or, if you feel sort of stupid, that’s probably a good sign that you’re picking up what I’m throwing down. Just saying, if I were a proponent of a slavery system pawning itself off as freedom… and it was based on irrational delusions irreconcilable with reality… and it caused more carnage and human suffering than anything else in the history of the world… I might feel stuck in the past and stupid too.

  But that’s just me.

  At any rate, everything else aside, the principle problem with hierarchy is that it’s based on violence. Force. The few rule the many, however the few may arrive at power, by demanding obedience, conformity, compliance to their rules and laws. The many obey… or else.

  However well hidden it may be, there’s always an “or else.” Laws do not enforce themselves. If laws were self enforceable, they wouldn’t be necessary in the first place. The few write laws to compel us to do what we do not want to do, not what we do voluntarily.

  Laws are enforced by law enforcement. The word, “enforcement,” has 3 syllables, “en-force-ment.” The important one is that syllable in the middle: “FORCE.” There is no enFORCEment without FORCE.

  Cops carry guns. There are no nonviolent uses for guns.

  Wherever hierarchy exists, whenever the few rule the many– however the few obtain power –the many are forced to obey, comply, conform… under violence and the threat of violence. This means the many are alienated from power, which resides elsewhere, with the few.

  Just a quick note, but in the U.S. we have a convenient myth to distract us from this truth, a narrative that government is “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” This myth is actually quite laughable. If government were just an extension of people being people, it would not be government. It would just be a continuation of everybody living in some hippy-dippy utopia. Government is power… wielded by the few… withheld from the many… despite well intending slogans.

  Where you have “of the people, by the people, for the people,” you don’t have laws imposed to make people do what they don’t want to do… and you don’t have Secret Service whose job is to stop them many from killing the ruling few.

  In the U.S., you have a sales pitch (“of the people…”) that’s very Anarchist, but a system that’s very Hierarchist. Anarchism is the fulfillment of that sales pitch. By an Anarchist understanding, we are equals and we are free, each autonomous and possessing dignity. No one can compel you; they must persuade you.

  In such a world where each of us is free, where none of us has power over the other, our relationships and associations are voluntarily entered into. We choose our relationships with equals rather than being compelled by rulers.

  In such a world where power is distributed, there are no bosses, no kings, no authorities to whom we must bend the knee. Equals do not command other equals.

  THAT weirdness only happens in the Hierarch delusion.

  Instead, we have freedom to choose with whom we cooperate and collaborate, with whom we organize ourselves for mutual benefit between equals. In the absence of rulers and bosses we have a community of the willing, collectively deciding through consultation and consensus how to maintain our community, stockholders in its success, contributors and beneficiaries.

  Now, anyone indoctrinated in the Hierarch delusion will immediately respond, “That will never work.” I will address the practicality of an Anarchist world in later correspondence but will simply say here that not only could this work, but it has worked. In fact, for more than 4 million years, over 99% of human existence, humans lived in nonhierarchic, consensus-based communities… prior to the advent of hierarchy… and they lived quite well, it seems.

  It is not just possible for humans to live in such egalitarian communities, but we are literally designed for it. We inherit DNA from thousands of generations of people who successfully lived and thrived in such societies. If they could do it, we could do it. We are, genetically and biologically, continuations of those millions of years of nonhierarchic success stories.

  In my experience, there is only one group who insist a society of free humans could never work. The term for such people is, “assholes.” Assholes are absolutely convinced that, without imposition of force, everyone would behave as badly, as viciously, as stupidly, as the assholes themselves would behave. It is in the nature of assholes to project onto the entire population their own incapacities, incompetencies, and flaws of character endemic to assholes themselves.

  Because they are assholes, they imagine everyone else to also be assholes.

  If it were true that it is the nature of humanity to be assholes, we would have gone extinct long ago, before hierarchy had the collateral effect of allowing assholes to thrive.

  Hierarchy is, objectively, an asshole factory.

  But, to everyone who genuinely worries that the absence of hierarchy could lead to a world of “all against all,” defined by brutality, violence, the strong subjugating and exploiting and devouring the weak, I urge you to look out your window; the imposition of hierarchy has brought you the very world you fear most.

  The difference between the dystopia you mistakenly imagine under Anarchism and the dystopia you experience under hierarchy is that the predators in your imagination have mohawks and face tattoos and nose piercings, while the predators running this current dystopia wear suits and carry briefcases and tell you how good you have it… and that you should stop daydreaming and get back to work.

  Apart from the question of fashion, the current dystopia is very real. Whatever can be said against Anarchism, it couldn’t do worse than this. By all historical evidence, it would do far, far better.

  Just a quick observation before I close: I realize I can’t go questioning the deeply held myths that are central to how people see themselves and their world. Both Galileo and Copernicus did that, insisting in their eras that the earth was round and circumnavigated the sun… and people in power wanted to burn them at the stake.

  Here, now, I’m committing a grave sacrilege far more dangerous than Galileo or Copernicus; I’m suggesting the very social structure from which you derive identity and meaning is a swindle, a complex of delusions designed to enslave and imprison you, and you cannot see the cages from the inside.

  I suspect that’s part of the reason your predecessor designated me a gang leader… had me tortured for a year… isolated me at supermax… then blacksited me in place… and weaponized the disciplinary process to make me look like a super-terrorist who should never be released… and began the process of illegally renditioning me… all because I had the audacity to to question his deeply held belief central to his understanding of his own identity and the world… but you guys no longer burn heretics at the stake.

  I’m also questioning your central beliefs.

  I guess I have to hope you’re not an asshole.

  The truth is dangerous.

  Stay dangerous.

Freedom,

Sean.

***

Feel free, as always, to send this whole series to ODRC Director Annette Chambers Smith:

Director Annette Chambers Smith

Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction

4545 Fisher Rd., Ste. D

Columbus, OH 43228

annette.chambers-smith@odrc.state.oh.us