Kimya Dawson knows from where protest must burst: At the Seams.

Kimya Dawson not only nailed the essence of protests for #BlackLivesMatter. She knew in which direction the protest marches needed to push. Toward our system’s seams. If you are having trouble finding the lyrics of her song about HANDS UP DON’T SHOOT I CAN’T BREATH, it’s because it’s called At the Seams.

I’ve taken the liberty to reformat Dawson’s brilliant lyrics to unpack her references and simulate her cadence.

AT THE SEAMS by Kimya Dawson

1.
Left hands hold the leashes
and the right hands hold the torches,
And Grandpas holding shotguns
swing on porch swings hung on porches,
And the Grandmas in their gardens
plant more seeds to cut their losses,
And the poachers,
with the pooches
and the nooses,
preheat crosses.

And the pooches see the Grandpas
and they bare their teeth and growl,
While their owners turn their noses up
like they smell something foul,
And they fumble with their crosses
and they start to mumble curses,
And they plot ways
to get Grandpas
off of porches
into hearses.

But the Grandpas on the porches
are just scarecrows holding toys,
And the Grandmas in the gardens
are papier-mâché decoys,
While the real Grandmas and Grandpas
are with all the girls and boys
Marching downtown to the City Hall
to make a lot of noise,
Saying:

  Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
  BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
  I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
  A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

2.
Sometimes it seems like
we’ve reached the end of the road
We’ve seen cops and judges sleep together
wearing long white robes.
And they put their white hoods up,
Try to take the black hoods down,
And they don’t plan on stopping
til we’re all in the ground.

Til we’re dead in the ground
or we’re incarcerated
‘Cause prison’s
a big business form
of enslavement
Plantations that profit
on black folks in cages
They’ll break our backs
and keep the wages.

It’s outrageous that there’s no place
we can feel safe in this nation
Not in our cars, Not at the park,
Not in subway stations,
Not at church, The pool, The store,
Not asking for help,
Not walking down the street,
So we’ve gotta scream and yell:

  Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
  BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
  I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
  A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

3.
You tweet me my own lyrics,
Tell me to stop
Letting a few bad apples
ruin the bunch.
Don’t minimize the fight
comparing apples to cops
This is about the orchard’s poisoned roots,
not loose fruits in a box.

Once the soil’s been spoiled,
the whole crop’s corrupt.
That’s why we need the grassroots
working from the ground up.
And we look to Black Twitter,
to stay woke and get some truth,
‘Stead of smiling cops
and black mugshots
from biased corporate news.

‘Cause if you steal cigarillos,
or you sell loose cigarettes,
Or you forget your turn signal,
will they see your skin as a threat?
Will they KILL you, And then SMEAR you,
And COVER IT UP and LIE?
Will they call it “self defense”?
Will they call it “suicide”?

  Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
  BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
  I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
  A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

4.
Decades of cultivation start
from tiny seeds that were once planted.
And we mustn’t take the gardens that
our elders grew for granted,
Though it is up to our youth
how new rows sown are organized,
Because movements can’t keep moving
if old and unsharpened eyes
Can’t see the need to hear
what those on the ground hafta say,
In Ferguson and Cleveland,
Staten Island, The East Bay,
Charleston, Phoenix,
Detroit, Sanford Waller,
Seattle, Los Angeles,
Chicago, Baltimore.

Climbing flagpoles, Taking bridges,
Locked together to the BART,
Speaking up about injustice
in our music and our art,
Storming stages to ask candidates
when they’re gonna start
Really DIRECTLY addressing issues
BREAKING OUR HEARTS.

  Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
  BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
  I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
  A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

    Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
    BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
    I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
    A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

5.
And if the altars are torn down,
we’ll just keep on placing flowers
For the boy whose body was in the road
FOR MORE THAN FOUR HOURS.
We will honor the dead
of every age and every gender
‘Cause we can’t just have it be
the brothers’ names that we remember.

Oh black boys with skateboards,
and black boys with hoodies,
And little black girls who
are on the couch sleeping,
And all of the black trans
women massacred,
Too many black folks killed and brutalized,
And there’s no justice served.

After the lynchings of our people
by the murderous police,
Who stand like hunters ’round their prey
gasping helpless in the street,
Feet from the TEEN SISTER they tackled
and locked handcuffed in the car,
Feet from her TWELVE YEAR OLD BROTHER DYING —

WHILE NO ONE DID CPR…

6.
And we’ll keep on planting flowers,
and we’ll fight until the day
That we don’t have to pick them all
to put them all on graves.
Yeah we’ll keep planting flowers
and we’ll fight until the day
That we don’t have to pick them all
to put them all on graves.

  Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
  BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
  I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
  A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

Sovereign constitutional oath activist Stephen Nalty sentenced to 36 years!


DENVER, COLORADO- Judge Michael Spear came down hard on judicial reform activists Stephen Nalty and Steve Byfield, who prosecutor Robert Shapiro insisted “can’t be rehabilitated.” The quiet Byfield received 22 YEARS, and this afternoon, so-called ringleader Nalty was given a sentence of 36 YEARS. For insisting that holders of public office file oaths secured by bonds as required by the US and Colorado constitutions. Their victims, judges and officials who were exposed for having sworn no oaths, testified about now having nightmares about the public coming to get them with torches and pitchforks. Which is of course what ought to happen, now that the bastards have retaliated against critics who were only trying to bring them into compliance.

The most severe remedy proposed by WE THE PEOPLE, the sovereign citizens organized to confront fraudulent office holders, was in fact resignation, or if necessary, banishment. Even so, the reformers were targeted by the FBI and its Colorado affiliates. A join anti-terrorism task force was deployed to infiltrate and entrap the “paper terrorists” who were then charged with criminal enterprise and racketeering, then held on quarter million dollar bonds. Now the two were given prison terms to exceed their lifetimes, ensuring both will die in jail. Because our system will not abide free men.

White mass shooters are not terrorists. They present no pretext for retaliation. Remember, the Global War On Terror?

Stephen Paddock sniper nest in Mandalay Bay Hotel Las Vegas
Las Vegas mass shooter Stephen Paddock is not a terrorist. That’s not because you or anyone is a racist for thinking only darker-skinned Jihadists are terrorists. “Terrorism” is a bureaucratic contrivance, as in, The Global War On Terror. It means nothing, but apparently provides legal justification to enforce American global hegemony with military strikes on “supporters of terror”. Of course it doesn’t. It’s artifice. Naturally the public wants to see the charge of terrorism applied equitably to all mass murderers who terrorize the public. Like they want to see police brutality applied liberally to white crime suspects not just black. Like they want to see children charged as adults when the media is fomenting their anger.

Terrorism is a semantic contrivance. It’s how we denounce US adversaries and their desperate means to counter our asymetric military superiority. Our bombs don’t terrorize, their hand delivered bombs do. The Nazis accused resistance fighters of being terrorists.

“Hate Speech” is another contrivance. Priests used to be allowed to burn parishoners for it, priests called it blasphemy. Secular indignants avoid calling it heresy. The Enlightenment was supposed to mark the west’s transcendance of the fear of heretics. Hate Speech is how Americans dismiss unsavory opinion. Fortunately the courts have struck down hate speech laws for what they always were, violations of the First Amendment, but the concept is still a litmus test by which the public wants to pin the ears of irritating speakers.

Likewise the term “genocide”. THAT’S a crime only other nations commit. And only when retaliation suits our agenda. After Rwanda, the UN contrived that charges of genocide mandate international action. As a result, genocide doesn’t mean genocide unless somebody wants to invade. Oil interests are currently eyeing Burma.

Terrorism, hate speech, and genocide are real things, but they are real offenses of which our government is far more culpable than you, or the random deviant individual white male mass shooter.

Does it matter then, if individuals are accused of terrorism when the state is not? I’ll offer you two examples of other contrivances. Conspiracy and racketeering. Both are heavily trafficked by our corporations and government, but easily applied to people whose enterprise authorites want to deem criminal. I just witnessed the trial of two legal reform activists, charged and convicted of both counts. When the law applies to you and not to those enforcing the law, it’s time to stop cheerleading for the prosecution.

Stephen Paddock terrorized, but who do you really fear now that he’s dead –another random white man with too many guns? I’ll wager you’re afraid of the too many guns, their too wide availability, or the purveyors, who keep assault rifles legal in the US to obfuscate the mass manufacture of guns for international arms trafficking. The weapons industry terrorizes.

Judged by intent, the common wife beater is a terrorist. No question, but see? The distinction is unhelpful. How about we call Stephen Paddock a SNIPER. He was that. The Route 91 concert venue was his paramilitary free-fire zone. Paddock may now hold the world record for most American citizens sniped, but his feat pales as uniformed North American white male snipers go.

Why should you attend the Denver Nalty-Byfield ENTERPRISE TRIAL?

Why support the “We The People” public-oath sticklers who the state is prosecuting like a criminal enterprise? A few reasons: Solidarity. Because as hardheaded as they might be, defendants Stephen Nalty and Steve Byfield are still JUDICIAL REFORM ACTIVISTS. Sense of fair play. Half the courtroom gallery is filled with Colorado Attorney General staffers and FBI special agents chumming it up with jurors and briefing their THREE FBI UNDERCOVER WITNESSES while the defendant pariah side of the audience is warned by the judge that even a whisper will result in ejection. Thrills. Where else are you going to see this many federal agents pushing their weight around, barking at you in the hallways, swaggering gleefully about how much smarter they are than the defendants? Pathos. Come watch the Assistant Fucking Colorado Attorney General, Robert Shapiro himself, lead a team of prosecutors against the unrepresented defendants, watch Shapiro belittle them, lecture them, trivialize their difficulties defending themselves in jail, and pretend they can review “tens of thousands” of pages of evidence and “hours and hours” of undercover surveillance tapes in a single day. Because you can make a difference. Come push the FBI-guys’ buttons. Come witness and document the abuses of the overbearing prosecution team. Come lend public pressure on the judge, whose conscience is already bothering him about how unfair this sham trial has become.

Liens
You don’t have to agree with how Nalty and Byfield went about trying to reform the judicial system, but aren’t they mostly right? Judges ARE corrupt. Local officials ARE NOT accountable to the people. Law enforcement WON’T pursue charges of their own corruption and the media certainly won’t side with the reformers. When Nalty, Byfield and Co, served commercial liens valued at billions and trillions of dollar against officials who hadn’t filed oaths of office, it was an effort of last resort to get someone’s attention. No one was thinking, hey, maybe this eleven-figure dollar demand will slip through the cracks and the billions will be ours!

Each lien was calculated to represent the sum defrauded from and owed to the American People. Prosecutors can tap these defendants for conspiring and racketeering and extorting and attempting to influence public officials, but they can’t say the defendants aimed to obscond with one single penny. Throwing three undercover infiltrators at a twenty member judicial reform group, putting thousands of manpower hours into locking these defendants away, is gross abuse of authority and it’s hubris.

Authentic transgressions
As the sham trial goes on, the pieces are coming together on the cases of Nalty and crew. It turns out federal investigators labeled them “sovereigns” because they’ve held themselves not responsible for paying traffic tickets, property taxes, and the like. In the end I’ll grant you Nalty’s group may be guilty of those. I say “may” because such citations may have been retaliatory for their political beliefs.

As to the punishment, I believe adjudicators should take into account that the defendants acted not to enrich themselves, nor to flaunt the law per se, but to assert political rights about which they may have been misguided. Again I say may because the defendants are being tried, after all, according to a set of laws, which enforce a social contract, the terms of which the parties do not agree.

I use the word misguided as a nod to those who think the Nalty gang have acted like idiots. That’s easy to say, and easy to laugh, but no one’s yet figured out how to emancipate labor from the yoke of capital. You may regard interest and rent as your inherent debts. These sovereigns don’t and they’re trying to say so.

Economic slavery
Ours is a system of peonage to which this crew feels they never indentured themselves. The ersatz writs and liens they spammed to every official they encountered were the legal loopholes they thought could break the bank and liberate everyone from financial tyranny. While Nalty’s scheme intended insurrection, it wasn’t against democracy or the republic, it was against taxation without representation, the same beast Americans pretend to have overthrown with the Declaration of Independance.

Instead of tea into Boston Harbor, this crew dumped a bunch of junk paper unto the reception counters of Colorado public offices. Charge Nalty’s crew with littering maybe, at most, vandalism, though it’s hard to say these vandals caused even a scratch. Every public official who testified as a victim said they didn’t take the ersatz documents seriously.

The writs and liens looked officious, but weren’t attributed to known government or banking institutions. Likewise signatures were signed in red. Red was chosen to represent the signer’s blood, even though red is a color which automated banking systems reject as unreadable, therefore invalid.

Not one witness expressed confusion about the validity of the papers. They mentioned too the rambling diatribes in the text block.

To call the defendants “paper terrorists” wildly overstates the effect they achieved. They didn’t terrorize anyone. Governments like to accuse rebellious insurgents of “terrorism”, but that’s another paralegal threshold with which most common citizens, and certainly these “sovereigns”, disagree.

Real funny money
These guys did the equivalent of feed Monopoly Money into ATMs. No bank balances were changed and no real money came out. Counterfeit currency is one thing, but denominations of your own handywork pretending to be only that does not qualify as funny money in the illegal sense. I’m guessing forms submitted in a language foreign to bank clerks would be rejected out of hand. How are these any different? Irregular submissions, as one witness called them, need not generate calls to the FBI or the Colorado Joint Terrorism Task Force. I’ll bet that ATMs know to reject Monopoly Money. If they don’t, whose problem is that?

The trial of defendants Stephen Nalty and Steve Byfield is due to wrap up Friday. The prosecution will have taken seven days to present its case and Assistant Attorney General Robert Shapiro intends to object if the defense rebuttal takes more than a half day, maybe a whole. This trial is meant to intimidate the other defendants to convince them to take pleas.

Next in the pipeline is Bruce Doucette whose trial starts October 16. Defendants Harlan Smith and Dave Coffelt have hearings on October 18. If they do not take deals, Shapiro intends to enjoin their cases, to save time and money. He’s already convinced defendant Brian Baylog to take a deal and turn state’s evidence. Baylog is scheduled to testify against Nalty and Byfield shortly.

By now the condemnation of Nalty’s commercial lien scheme will have cost Colorado millions in man hours and legal expenses. You can fine a graffiti artist for having to restore an edifice to its original lustre, but you can’t expect him to bear the full cost if you chose a cleanup crew that wears Gucci loafers, most of whose jobs is to pat the other on the back.

Colorado’s overkill with federal agents and counter-terrorism experts is a problem of its own making.

The Nalty-Byfield trial continues through this week 8:30am – 5pm, at Denver’s Lindsey Flanigan Courthouse, in Division 2H, ironically, “Juvenile Court”.

FBI undercover rats on sovereign pals, says they planned to seize small county jails, except he was their lone soldier.

 

 
DENVER, COLORADO- Very interesting testimony Friday at the trial of sovereigns Stephen Nalty and Steve Byfield. The prosecution’s latest witness was FBI INFORMER Marshall Ringer. Not a sovereign citizen type turned by government agents, Ringer is a disgraced police officer hired by the FBI and inserted into the so-called “enterprise” to report its activities and propose courses of action conducive to arrests. Ringer calls himself a “self-employed security expert.” His handler FBI Special Agent Ryan English calls him an “embedded confidencial human source”. His targets gave him the title “Continental U.S. Marshall”. They hoped he would recruit like-minded sovereigns to the cause of correcting what they saw as a corrupt judicial system. Ringer’s FBI codename was “Earp”.

The accusations corruption hinged on the understanding that according to Article VI of the US Constitution, positions of public authority must take an oath secured by a bond. The “enterprise” had discovered that many Colorado judges and prosecutors and sheriffs and other elected officials didn’t have oaths or bonds on file. If this expectation was indeed a misconception, and Article VI is inapplicable, you’d think the remedy might be to tell the would-be reformers, “no, that is not a requirement, here’s why, etc.” Strangely that was never done. Neither to their person, in a handout, or to reporters looking into this sad case. An undercover would present an excellent opportunity to huddle with the enterprise and say “hey guys, I was looking into this oath stuff and discovered that according to such and such law, or ruling or whatnot, oaths and bonds are no longer mandatory, end of story!”

But “Earp” didn’t. Nobody did. Nobody has yet to spell it out, even in this courtroom. When the defendants have tried to put Article VI into the trial record, they’ve been refused. So the issue is certainly a curious one.

Instead of using an undercover to diffuse the oath-seekers by presenting the incontrovertible truth of their error, the FBI and the state prosecutors instead gathered evidence to ridicule their character. We’re told they met in trailerhomes, they struggled to cobble enough money together to give their marshall a pair of handcuffs. They dreamed of putting together a network of De Jure judges to replace the corrupt ones currently alas De Facto.

Tapes
You might think the taped conversations of the sovereigns would be damning. The defendants certainly seem to be embarassed by them, but they’re less incriminating than disarming. When “Earp” asked what was he to do with the officials he arrested, he was told, nothing, for now. Do not take any action on your own. Wait for instructions from the People’s Grand Jury. Every time “Earp” goaded his colleagues about what he could do, they’d tell him to wait until matters could be addressed democratically and judicially.

The most interesting information to come from the undercover testimony was about how the FBI wires up its informants. Colorado law requires that at least on person in a conversation consents to being recorded. As a result, every recording presented to the court begins with the person wearing the wire dictating this preamble: “This is confidential human source X, on such and such date, etc” before that informant gets out of his car or enters a meeting area.

This offers potential targets a remedy for how to avoid intrusive surveillance by authoritarian law enforcement agencies IN COLORADO. Before every meeting, have everyone say out loud: “I do not consent to being recorded.” In unison is fine. Then a leader can then ask: “Was that everyone?” To which everyone can answer in unison: “Yes.” Provided that everyone said it, that meeting cannot be recorded. Such a method not only invalidates a recording being used as evidence later, it makes the recording a crime and the agency undertaking it and in possession of it, cupabe. If an undercover continues with the recording, he’s committing a crime.

In the case of te sovereigns, and likely your scenario as well, the government’s criminal act will far exceed in severity what they thought they were recording you doing.

We’ve yet to learn how, but apparently this undercover was discovered by the defendants early in 2017. They outed him by accusing him of making recordings and giving them to the FBI. That’s when he extracted himself and the indictments and arrests happened immediately thereafter.

The Enterprise
However you may feel about these perhaps misguided judicial reformers, their adversaries are behaving every bit the corrupt villains they pretend not to be.

The accused called themselves the People’s Grand Jury, the Indestructible People’s Trust, The Colorado Supreme Court, the Continental US Marshalls, the De Jure whatnot, or simply We The People. There seems to be no end to the permutations but they never called themselves “The Enterprise”. Yet that is what their accusers call them. In fact, for the duration of the prosecution’s case, a posterboard has been left in the center of the courtroom, beneath the judge’s dias, from which the jury cannot look away, it’s titled The Enterprise, with photos of ten member now-defendants, like employees of the month, except with mugshots, ranked in order of their title or prominence. Another ten members didn’t warrant photos or arrest, yet are listed as culpable parties, guilty by association and without the chance to . You wonder if that is legal. It certainly is prejudicial. Never mind if the witness testimonies don’t add up, there is The Enterprise, like it’s a thing instead of a characterization fashioned by frame-up artists.

MONDAY UPDATE:
On Monday defendants were given one day’s recess to review the evidence for their defense, which being incarcerated has impeded. So FBI informer Marshall Springs will resume his testimony tomorrow. But the courtroom also heard that the prosecution plans to bring TWO MORE UNDERCOVERS to testify, plus two cooperative witnesses, one of whom is a co-defendant who’s taken a plea to turn STATE’S EVIDENCE.

So that makes THREE undercover officers infiltrating “the enterprise” of not much more than a dozen conspirators, two of whom have become so intimidated they’ve changed their minds about what they were trying to achieve.

The next few days should prove enlightening and heartbreaking because although prosecutors have been documenting what the defendants did, they haven’t demonstrated the acts were crimes,. As much as defendants conspired, organized and racketeered, they didn’t aim to make one cent profit, illicit or otherwise. To what offenses did the cooperative witnesses plead guilty and what accusations do they make toward their friends?

So Nalty and Byfield have the rest of the day to study the evidence against them. The jail has not provided the paper and pencils ordered by the judge. The jail hasn’t afforded the defendants access to the case evidence either. Nalty indicated today that he’d spent a sum total of 45 minutes with the electronic files. He asked for a break of four days to prepare for the rest of the trial.

Both are in Denver jail, though their legal papers were not transferred with them when the defendants are on loan from Adams and Arapahoe Counties respectively. All the defendants being charged with conspiracy are being detained in different jails to prevent them talking to each other. But the problem is they don’t have their case papers or filings, and are in Denver’s customary 22 hour lockdown in their cells, which inhibits using the jail computers which are confined to the jail law library.

Prosecutor Shapiro responded to the defendant’s complaints of the jail not providing paper and pencils by cavalierly handing them writing pads, which they grasped with handcuffed hands, with polite thankyous. Though Shapiro no doubt know they won’t be allowed to take these into the jail. Then he condescendingly bragged that he’d resolved that complaint by providing “brand new” pads to each defendant. Defendant Byfield’s pad had a couple sheets missing, so he immediately pointed out that his pad wasn’t new. I couldn’t help but burst out with a laugh.

The judge thought there was merit to Nalty’s complaint Both defendants have scant access to the jail computers necessary to see the evidence. By the prosecutor’s own admission, the “tens of thousands of pages” would have been prohibitive to provide on paper, and the “hours and hours of taped testimony” likewise can only be provided electronically.

Prosecutor Shapiro acquiesced to allowing the defendants one day to catch up, though it sounds like he is well aware that analyzing tens of thousands of pages and hours and hours of evidence would take longer than that. Shapiro told the judge he calculated the state had wiggle room to allow a one day delay and still finish with the case by Friday. Here’s what he calculated: The state figures to rest its case by Thursday afternoon. That should leave a day and a half, less closing arguments and jury instructions and jury deliberations, to finish the trial on Friday. The prosecutors’s case will have taken six and a half days, but Shapiro thought the extra day needed to look over the evidence could come out of the defense’s day planned for defense.

To help the defendants prepare, Shapiro volunteered a preview of the witnesses to expect to testify to close out their case. Coming up we have four Gilpin County administrators, but we have also two more government undercovers, and the two cooperating witnesses. One of them co-defendant Bryan Baylog.

Denver magistrate separates mother from breastfeeding infant. Jail refuses pump, as they do common decency.


DENVER, COLORADO- A heartbreaking scene unfolded yesterday when Denver Magistrate Kate Boland decided to impose a $10,000 bond on a domestic violence detainee, against the recommendations of the husband (victim), the public defender, and even the city prosecutor, who all wanted the 35-yr-old mother of five released on personal recognizance. Most critical, no consideration was paid to the family’s month-old infant who is breastfeeding. Neither by Boland, nor the downtown detention center, known for its systemic disrespect for the rights and needs of its inmates.

You might not care how poorly criminals or their children are treated, but the inmates of jails are suspects, not convicts. They are unconvicted detainees held on some officer’s probable cause. They’re suspected of a crime, but have a right to a fair trial (under the 6th Amendment) and a right not to be punished before conviction (under the 14th). Depending on who calls 911, they could be YOU.

For those reasons (and the Golden Rule and the social contract), jails have to show a semblance of concern for the still innocent lives disrupted in their care. Denver’s Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center has a famously outlandish record in that regard. Marvin Booker and Michael Marshall are two well known extremes to which Denver sheriffs deputies have disrespected inmates’ lives. A rare survivor, Jamal Hunter, was awarded $3.25 million for beatings he received there. Unfortunately his settlement was contingent on burying the evidence of broader misconduct, thanks Jamal.

Those cases have generated reviews and reforms, but abuses persist. Isn’t it amazing that after repeated court-ordered overhauls, the public could still be told “the detention cenver has no protocols for breastfeeding mothers.”

Magistrate Boland made no allowance for the accused mother to maintain her feedings. After the morning hearing, friends learned the jail didn’t care to accomodate the mother either. That afternoon Baby Thomas became ill and began vomiting, so the father brought the baby to the visitor’s lobby hoping emergency visits could be arranged. The jail said no, though after some persuading, a sergeant agreed to convey a breastpump to the mother if one was supplied. A device was purchased and submitted, but the jail recinded their offer. This time a charge nurse named “Monica” explained she was under no obligation to comply, that she’d called her boss at Denver General who confirmed it. Without a court order, she said, the jail had no further responsibility.

By now activists with Denver Court Support were agitating online about the plight of Baby Thomas. The jail was innundated with telephone calls. The sheriffs cleared the public lobby, cancelled visitations, and put the facility in lockdown in anticipation of a rally.

Nevermind feeding Baby Thomas, release his mother immediately. Activists had raised the monies needed to hire a bondsman to post the bond. The jail was urged to expedite the mother’s release once bond was posted.

Shouldn’t inmates be release when they’ve paid to have their freedom? This is where the Van Cise-Simonet’s disrespect is arbitrary, punitive, and universal. Time to process inmates, either intake or release, takes forever, or just feels like it. Denver’s Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center likes to take a MINIMUM of 11 HOURS for these proceedures.

The pretext for the first delay is “for fingerprints to clear”. Enough time for INTERPOL in Timbuktu to review your prints and give the all clear, because they can’t be expected to be standing at the fax machine at all hours of the day, the jailers explain.

That step is required before a bond can be posted. Once a bond is paid, an inmate’s release requires a second computer delay. Also commonly at least eleven hours. The jailers attribute that wait to “that’s how long the system takes.”

On occasion we’ve seen public pressure result in a shortening of the release time. The upshot is the the release time appears to be at the jail’s whim. In the case of our breastfeeding mother the jail wouldn’t budge.

Worse for Baby Thomas’ mother, someone new to the bonding desk re-initiated the print clearing process instead of terminating it. She had to wait another interminable cycle.

The mother was taken into custody on Monday, her prints cleared by Tuesday morning. After the hearing in Room 2300, where the $10,000 bond was set, the bondsman tried to pay but learned he had to wait. The aforementioned administrative error meant it wouldn’t be before WEDNESDAY morning when her bond could be posted. Everyone is awaiting her release STILL.

As it stands, the mother is supposed to be fitted with an ankle bracelet by 8pm today. That will make it more than 48 hours that she’ll have been in custody. Mothers under stress withheld from feeding infants can stop lactating in less than that time.

The specifics of this domestic violence case are few. A neighbor called the police because the mother was seen holding a knife. The police chose to charge the mother and take her into custody. Who knows what the whole story is. The Denver Court Support activists didn’t get involved to solve the couple’s problems. Because that’s beside the point.

A child shouldn’t have to be harmed while authorities sort this out. An infant deprived of breastmilk suffers a calculable detriment which this magistrate and this jail could minimize, if they cared.

It’s hard to imagine anyone cares at Van Cise-Simonet. The jail is notorious for inedible food and poor health standards. The 23-hour lockdown is standard in all pods. Right now we hear that inmates are sleeping three to four in a cell which has only bunks for two. The one or two extra sleep on the concrete floor. This of course in addition to the litigated sadism of the Denver jailers.

Last night, outside the door of the jail, the Denver sheriffs deputies eventually re-admitted visitors into the lobby at 8pm, but kept the activists outside. Then deputies lined up and started warning the father’s friends to “calm down”. That warning and the posture of the deputies was recognizable to activists –and to many African Americans– as the precursor to the use of tasers. The only option was to leave.

UPDATE: The mother wasn’t able to rejoin her children until 10PM Wednesday. The baby is okay, although no doubt impacted by the interrupted feedings. At a public meeting the next evening to address law enforcement accountability to the community, activists told officials about what happened. They were told by the Denver Sheriff Patrick Firman that the jail DOES HAVE A POLICY to handle breastfeeding and that he was very sorry his employees didn’t know to tell the complainant.

Occupy allstar Caryn Sodaro breaches bank doors, allows water protectors to ask Denver Wells Fargo to defund DAPL

Glenn Morris, Caryn Sodaro
DENVER, COLORADO- At the behest of the beseiged Standing Rock encampment currently blocking the Dakota Access Pipeline, Denver water protectors held an unannounced rally on the capitol steps Friday morning and marched prompty to the Wells Fargo building several blocks north. Led by the American Indian Movement, and joined by allies, the predominantly Native American assembly intended to deliver a message to the major banking entity underwriting the Energy Transfer pipeline project. The action Friday was prompted by President Trump’s recent executive order to bypass legal restrictions holding up the drilling. Arriving at the bank, the hundred fifty marchers found all doors locked.

After a few minutes of rallying outside, a door suddenly opened and everyone rushed inside the atrium. That everyone included drummers, dancers, leaders, and television crews.

After a long rally and a round dance were held in the Wells Fargo atrium, another door leading to the bankteller counters miraculously opened and the group was able to rush in to the bank. Behind these miracles was veteran Occupy Denver activist Caryn Sodaro.

The security guards and police were unable to reach the open door in time, so within a minute the lobby was filled with water protectors making loud their demands. Eventually all the banners were gathered inside and multiple television cameras and reporters covered it all.

Occupy Denver has breached the Wells Fargo Building before, in 2011, for an allied action against the predatory bank. The original feat resulted in an arrest.

In the bank lobby, the water protectors chanted and walked in circles as leaders asked to speak to bank representatives. None appeared, and eventually DPD took to a megaphone and gave the gathering three minutes to leave. That was the cue for AIM leader Glenn Morris to spend well over three minutes telling the bank and the police that the water protectors would be back.

Caryn Sodaro
Caryn Sodaro urges water protectors to raise their voices so that bank officials can hear them from the upper floors.

Caryn’s feat on Friday was unheralded even as participants celebrated their victory. But that’s par for the course for the unsung agitator. Maybe it’s unwise to brag about it here. Nonesense. Activists deserve mythbuilding all the more when the adversarial media and moderate reformists refuse to credit radical actions. I’ve purposefully obfuscated the details of Caryn’s breach so that they remain Occupy Denver trade secrets. But let’s here give Caryn Sodaro her due. If the DPD can glean one lesson from their unsuccessful blockaid of marchers on Friday, it can be this: next time keep better eyes on Caryn!

Where to protest the 2016 Philly DNC

PHILADELPHIA, PA- Depending on what you’re here to accomplish at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, pro-Bernie, anti-war, reformist, or disruption, here’s our shortlist of the event sites according to theme.

1. WELLS FARGO CENTER– Main site of DNC, for delegates only, surrounded by four miles of 8ft tall modular steel crowd control barriers.

2. CITY HALL– Most rallies and demonstrations are scheduled to converge here before a 4-mile march to DNC site.

3. INDEPENDENCE HALL– Sunday’s “Clean Energy” march ended here. Its lawn of is the backdrop for MSNBC live convention coverage and was the 2011 site of Occupy Philly.

4. CLINTONVILLE– Located 8 miles due North of DNC at America & Somerset, “Clintonville” is an urban campsite for the people’s movement, economic justice issues, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

5. MARCONI PLAZA– Less than a half mile from the DNC, Marconi Plaza is an ideal launching point to rally demonstrators against the DNC. Shade is sparse but this plaza appears to be the daily epicenter for Bernie Sanders supporters.

6. F.D.R. PARK– This park is immediately adjacent to the DNC and at the last minute was made available for overnight protest camping. There is ample shade but the many trees will prevent large centralized assemblies. It’s the place to be Monday afternoon and evening.

The European Union is a banking cartel to impose undemocratic reform & debt.

HURRAH for the British electorate who figured it out! Look at who else is NOT in the EU and you’ll see where the smart money is. Switzerland for one. What does that tell you?! Ironically London is the financial capitol of world usury. Let Londoners complain about BREXIT and the provincial “racism” that drove the UK to seek independance. It’s not xenophobia, it’s local autonomy! It’s what Greece should have done, it’s what Ireland should have done. Breaking with EU is the first step out of debt slavery and the “austerity” squeeze engineered to privatize public wealth. Now the Scotts who didn’t know enough to leave the parasitic UK are griping about being forced from the EU, doubling down on ignorance of their self interest. And Londoners are talking about seceding. The days of landed gentry and bankers carving out tax havens like Luxemburg and Lichtenstein are past. Hopefully the English peasant rebellion we’ve just witnessed will storm London next.
 
Addendum: John Pilger explains the BREXIT triumph nicely. Threats of dire financial consequences for leaving the EU are the work of extortionist. The pain will be real of course because that’s how extortionists rule.

Earth Day, Hour, Minute now Memory. KRCC’s Democracy Now, Then, Was.

FrackedRemember Earth Day? It became Earth Hour, then I think Earth Minute. If there was an Earth Second you and I missed it. With every chance for commemorative environmental actions squeezed out by the newest condensed schedule, the Earth Moment became a void. Now for Earth Day we do nothing. We reflect in acquescence. It’s become another holiday, minus the time off, which is not ironic. Our uninterrupted industry on Earth Day is fitting. Earth Day is like Valentine’s Day. Happy Earth Day! 🙂

Earth Day
Who were those assholes who decided a whole day was too much for consumer culture to spare in reflection, potential enlightenment and transcendence? Those reformist subverted all hope of drawing popular support to the movement. They’re the same moderates who think people need warm cookies to be attracted to a revolution. They are the same Sunday schoolers who think protest must be made safe for picnic goers and their children.

These “innovations” appear well meaning, if naive, but sometimes outside-the-box thinking falls outside of all effectiveness. What passes for unschooled, so consistently, is very likely shepherded by handlers as clever as fox.

The function of subversives used to belong to the anti-establishment. The dark side is using them much more effectively. Rooting them out is depicted as fingerpointing by the Left, which initiates the circular firing squads. And we’re played for idiots.

So let me tell you about my Earth Day.

Democracy Now
My Earth Day featured a visit by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. She came to Colorado College to speak on behalf of her program and her most recent book which is a twenty year retrospective about the social movements she’s covered. Amy spoke in the tiniest of lecture halls which was full because it was tiny.

Because guess what? The public radio station on which the program used to appear didn’t promote the event. The community radio station which streams her for now isn’t on the air as yet. Word only spread through a student organization on campus. Thus the audience was kept small. Amy’s previous appearance filled a venue much larger, and the one before that filled the school’s largest. Someone shrunk Democracy Now’s local reach by a combination of destructive intent on the part of CC’s regents and a lack of vigilence on the part of her local station KRCC and its supporters.

Not only did the cretinous traitors at KRCC sabotage the potential of Amy’s personal appearance, the event was put into the hands of a strange new student association dedicated to the project of nuturing communication between two Colorado Springs campuses: Colorado College and the Fucking U.S. Air Force Academy. Because apparently the two vocational vectors have things to share with one another.

So two students, one from each school, introduced Amy and before they did they spoke about the importance of people going into civil life collaborating with those heading into military leadership. As if.

These two insipid dwarf-people introduced DEMOCRACY NOW, the flagship news program of the PACIFICA Radio Network, dedicated to a media independent of corporations who profit from war.

The two representatives were clueless, as were their faculty sponsors, and of course they were applauded by liberals who probably think that the educated liberal arts students will have a chance to infect or soften the warmonger mentality of the military academy.

Except it’s of course the reverse. This exchange normalizes the jerk-off war lovers by giving them a seat at the table of academia as if Air Force Academy professors and students have anything to do with university level education.

Amy of course was gracious and didn’t offend her oblivious hosts or their audience. One can only hope the audience was patronizing, but probably not. Instead we’re all thankful for what civic engagement and communty building there is, regardless if it’s subverted by the poisonous outreach of the military state.

Too many do-goodests among us haven’t a clue we are carrying water for the purveyors of contaminants. They fracked Earth Day right under our noses. Where our shouting mouths are supposed to be.

Have a Nice Earth Day! 🙂

#NuitDebout occupies Paris. March 51 marks 20th day of mass protest siege.


NUIT DEBOUT started as a protest against the weakening of labor protections. It’s grown since March 31 into a pan European movement driven by students who resume daily protests every night at six. What’s being lauded as a Paris Spring is also being likened to Occupy Wall Street because the assemblies have no leaders nor do they make any demands. They do present an ultimatum. The month of April will not begin until economic policies are reformulated. Until then the Nuitdeboutistes are counting successive days against March, not April, so today is March 51. If you think mainstream media is ignoring #DemocracySpring it’s unanimously mum about this spontaneous uprising spreading across French cities and European capitols.

Denver Detention Center a user’s guide

eric verlo denver detention center sheriff county jail
The Denver Detention Center came under scrutiny after the county had to pay out over $6 million to the family of street preacher Marvin Booker who was killed by sheriff’s deputies while in custody. Reforms may or may not have been implemented; the deputies were neither charged nor dismissed; and the facilities remain defiant about disrespecting your rights. I had the opportunity to visit the DDC recently and I can report the experience was miserable. While the public often thinks that inmates deserve the worse the better, a county jail houses suspects not convicts, protected by the 14th Amendment from punishment before a fair trial.

As a detainee not an offender, you are not supposed to suffer handcuffs tightened like tourniquets, left fastened for hours as you wait in isolation cells. Those innocent until proven guilty should not be made to endure sleep deprivation in the booking area as you wait between EIGHT OR TWELVE hours for your fingerprints to “clear”, waiting supposedly for Interpol in another time zone to pop a new roll of thermal paper into their fax machine.

Although a bond may be listed next to your charges on your public file viewable through the Sheriff’s online inmate search, your do not become bondable until your fingerprints clear.

If you become bondable, but someone hasn’t reached the bonding desk one hour before your scheduled court appearance, you must wait not just until court, but until after the entire docket has cleared and the paperwork is put into the system.

Once your bond is posted, the release procedure can last up to eight hours. If the magistrate checked a box on your documents requiring “pretrial services” your release will be delayed until the next morning. County workers explain that these delays are not unlawful detention but are due to regular computer inefficiencies.

I haven’t even started on the jail experience.

To the Denver Better Business Bureau: Complaint about DPD Moving & Storage


Dear sir,
We are writing to you as a last resort to recover our lost property or to receive compensation. On Sept. 18th of this year we contacted Toni Lopez ( Head Mover) with the DPD Moving & Storage Co. As you can see clearly in the attached video, when the DPD Moving & Storage showed up at our home, there were many more movers than were needed for the task at hand. It’s true they were all dressed in company uniform, but it seemed they were a little over-armed for the occasion.

Toni Lopez handed my husband the contract for his signature, my husband refused to sign until Lopez gave a cost estimate for the extra help. At that time my husband was overpowered by the movers demanding payment, he was place in one of the moving vans and taken to their office for further negotiations. They are now demanding one thousand dollars before my husband’s release from their office.

As you can see in the video, many of the movers at our home preformed no task and should not be paid. They left our home with trash scattered everywhere and now claim they have lost all our possessions. Any help you can give in this matter will be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
Freda Farkel

Subverting the justice system with Jury Nullification: too radical for radicals?

Here’s our spiel for those burned out on the reformist treadmill. Jury Nullification is not about reforming the justice system or asking power to temper its abuse. This is about convincing ordinary people that as jurors they can upset the whole racist classist for-profit applecart.

Ordinary citizens serving their jury duty can refuse to be par† of the system which funds municipal coffers and supplies the prison system. They can listen to the jury instruction and the legalese box outside of which they are restrained from thinking, and they can say no.

When jurors refuse to convict, prosecutors can’t press charges and cops can’t make arrests.

Jury Nullification doesn’t reform law so much as explode it from within. Not via the legislator, nor civil servant, but through ordinary conscientious people.

Jury Nullification has the potential for radical change. When more people figure this out, these juries will be the pitchforks and torches that riot police can’t stop.

You want to make Black Lives Matter, put them in the hands of subversive jurors.

You want to defeat Denver DA Mitch Morrissey? Load his juries with people who don’t support him.

Undermine the cases authorities bring against people, don’t become preoccupied with prosecuting cops. That’s just reinforcing the power of the prosecutor.

Take away the authority of the police state by denying them guilty verdicts. Acquit arrestees so they can sue for false arrest. Acquit accused people of color on principle. Defeat the racial incarceration problem by halting the conviction of minorities.

End the war on drugs. The war is over if you want it. Just say no to one more mandatory sentence. Tell the judge and prosecutors and your fellow people that the war is over.

Requiring activists to “make space” for black or brown voices, if apolitical or reformist, is a counterinsurgency trap.

 
 

 
OFF-STREET ACTIVISM floweth over with do-gooders begging for a seat at the table, literally, tables, where the powers-that-be want them. Street protest organizers are berated about providing forums for disenfranchised voices, as if indoor choir-singing yields redress of grievances. Leaders of disadvantaged communities mistake cis-gendered, white activists for their actual oppressors, because that’s easier than facing down the police. But the dynamic is disingenuous subterfuge and it’s not coming from the allies who matter. The people of Ferguson did not wait for white social justice groups to “make space” for their protest. You’d think the lesson of Ferguson is obvious.

Across non-Ferguson, religious community leaders and token spokespeople of color insist that they should monopolize local manifestations of anti-racism movements. Never mind that their call is for people to sit in church pews, meet with cops, vote, GOTV, petition, or join intra-city marches to nowhere, nowhere more than away from urban uprisings. In Denver I have never seen black resistance voices or leadership unwelcome at any rally no matter the subject. But I have seen tokenism at #BlackLivesMatter events used to discredit radicals and diffuse public outcry.

The making space argument certainly applies to entrenched nonprofit leadership but among militant voices it’s a laugh. If anyone is oppressing upstart minority voices it’s the seniority membership who don’t want unscheduled rocking of the boat. Reformist claptrap is the police state’s first line of defense.

“Black Lives Matter” must be shouted loudly even if your token black appointees won’t. Don’t mind the usual detractors peddling apolitical identity politics, let’s call them IDENTITY A-POLITICS, they’re a counter-revolutionary tactic to divide natural allies. This has been used against insurgents across the country, from Deep Green Resistance to Occupy, as fly-paper to waylay alliances or force effective organizations to go down the old rabbit holes occasioned by the usual novice errors.

Ferguson has shown the way. The anniversary of Mike Brown’s killing on August 9, 2014, correctly commemorates the public uprising not the policeman’s bullet. Unsurprisingly the early emphasis is being placed on ensuring crowd anger doesn’t get out of control. The eyes on the ball, whether blue or brown, focus on the racist police state.

The Black Lives Matter activists who interrupted Netroots Nation shared knowing themes through a people’s mic. Here’s a transcript of what they chanted until shut down by the speakers on stage.

If I die in police custody.
#BlackLivesMatter at #netrootsnation

If I die in police custody,
Do not let my parents talk to
Don Lemon, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson,
Or any of the motherfuckers
Who would destroy my name.
Let my parents know
That my sisters got this.
If I die in police custody,
Say my name, say my name.
Say the name that I chose,
Not the one that I was given.
If I die in police custody,
Make sure that I am remembered.
Make sure my sisters are remembered.
Say their names. Say their names.
If I die in ICE custody,
Say that I am not a criminal.
Stop funding prisons and detention centers!
Shut ICE down and our county jails and our prisons,
Not one more deportation!
If I die in police custody,
Know your silence helped kill me.
White Supremacy helped kill me.
And my child is parentless now.
If I die in police custody,
Know that I want to live!
We want to live!
We fight to live!
Black Lives Matter!
All Black Lives Matter!
If I die in police custody,
Don’t believe the hype, I was murdered!
Protect my family!
Indict the system!
Shut that shit down!
If I die in police custody,
Avenge my death!
By any means necessary!
If I die in police custody,
Burn everything down!
Because no building is worth more than my life.
And that’s the only way motherfuckers like you listen!
If I die in police custody,
Make sure I’m the last person to die in police custody.
By any means necessary!
If I die in police custody,
Do not hold a moment of silence for me!
Rise the fuck up!
Because your silence is killing us!

The New Slave Ships Have Arrived

The year was 1960, and there was only one men’s prison in Colorado at that time, located at Canon City. There was a women’s prison that sat next to the men’s prison. There were three small satellites off the main prison: the ranch, dairy farm and garden. And there was the young men’s reformatory at Buena Vista, for a total of three prisons. In 1960 the population figures for Colorado was nearly two million people, in 2010 it was a little over five million; In a span of fifty years Colorado gained three million people. In 1960, it took 3 prisons to confine the convicts of two million people living in Colorado. By 2006 there were 30 prisons in Colorado, while adding only three million people to the population. Hold on here a minute; something doesn’t add up: 2 million people needed 3 prisons, now 5 million people need 30 prisons?!

It would be safe to assume that this growth in population were of people about to commit a crime, judging from the growth of new prisons compared to the population growth.

That’s quite a growth from 3 prisons to 30 prisons in 26 years; but then we didn’t have the “Prison Industrial Complex” in those years; Corporation private prisons. Their motto should read “If there are no prisoners; there is no profit”

If you and your family were out on a Sunday drive in 1960 and happen to drive by “Old Max” on Hi-way 50, you would have noticed a sign in front of the prison that advertised “Visitors Welcome” the sign went on to tell you that you could enter the prison for fifty cents on a guided tour at certain hours. This fifty cents was to go into a prisoner burial fund, for indigent convicts who died while imprisoned. They would then be buried in a pauper grave yard and sentence was complete due to death.

A few years later these tours were discontinued for fear that the prisoners might take the tourist hostage, also the Prison Administration had decided that it was better not to let the taxpayer see the condition of the prison they were paying for.

My wife and I decided to take the tour.

I had the feeling of a rat in the trap when the large steel door slammed shut behind us. After taking only a few steps, we left behind a warm sunny day and stepped into a dark gray world. The doom and gloom seemed to lurk at every corner, the guards in their towers, stared down at the tour, rifles at ready. We had the feeling that this tour, was a bad idea.

There was a guard about 70 years old who served as our tour guide, he wore a guard’s uniform and walked backwards as he pointed out the finer attractions of the prison; like the hole or the gas chamber. We were not allowed to go into these building as the old guard explained; we could be taken hostage.
However we were taken to the curio shop where the convicts were allowed to sell their hobby work, and it was here that the old guard gave us some stories on the history of Roy Best an ex-warden who was discovered with state cattle on his personal ranch and convicts were used as ranch hands. The old guard told how Warden Best would tell all newly arrived convicts: “While serving your sentence, you are allowed to make a dollar any way you can, Just make sure it’s not my dollar.” He also told a story of what happen when two convicts were caught in a homosexual act; they would be taken to the curio shop and handcuffed to a steel rail, they both would be made to wear a woman’s dress, for all the tours to see. It didn’t matter who was pitcher and who was catcher, they both had to wear a dress.

There were two yellow lines painted on the concrete about six feet apart, we were warned as tourists of all the harm and mayhem that could befall us if we stepped outside of the yellow lines and it was here that some of the tourist began thinking about what a mistake this was and could they get their fifty cents back. And of course the convicts were well aware of the rule of crossing the yellow line while a tour was in the prison or of talking to any of the tourists; it meant a certain trip to the hole. As the tour progressed through the prison, I noticed that many of the tourist heads kept bobbing down, making sure their feet didn’t touch the yellow line.

As we neared the end of the tour we came to where three convicts were waiting for the tour to pass before crossing the yellow line; There was an older lady with white hair near the front of the tour, when she saw those three convicts, (who were all dressed in white pants and shirts) she whispered to the old guard.

“Who are those men?”

The guard turned to look and then began to name the convicts.

The old woman stopped him and said ” No! I mean are they convicts or are they civilian employees?”

“They are convicts,” the guard replied, “they are allowed to wear white because they all work in the hospital.”

The gray haired lady then exclaimed with the most bewildering look on her face “my goodness! They look like anybody else”.

It’s been over fifty years since that white haired lady spoke those words, but her words are burned into my memory as if she had only spoken them yesterday.
What the white haired lady never realized is those convicts were sons, with mothers and fathers.

As all convicts are; they are the sons and daughters, the brothers and sisters, mother and fathers of us all.

Like that old white haired lady’s words “They looked like anybody else,” society looks at prisoners and sees them all the same, maybe that’s because they are all dressed the same or their mailing address is the same. They eat the same food and spend the long boring days together. It’s true that while you are a prisoner, the rules of a prison or jail apply to all, a sort of “One size fits all.” Yet the crime that sent these men and women to prison are as different as day and night.

Willie “The Actor” Sutton, a bank robber from back in the 40s use to dress up as a policeman when robbing a bank. Willie would never put any bullets in his gun; he wanted to make sure that no one was injured while robbing the banks, you might say Willie was a little different kind of criminal, but when he was in prison, he dressed like all the other convicts.

Back in the 50s the prison at Canon City had a rule: all prisoners shoes must have a “V” shaped notch cut into the heel. This was intended to make it easier for the guards to track escaped convicts. In theory the rule seemed pretty “air tight.” The drawback was that the convicts all knew about the notch, and would simply fill the notch or remove the heel. It took a few year for the guards to figure out why they weren’t finding any tracks of escaped convicts with a “V” notch in the heel.

The old white haired lady was right about one thing; they do look like everyone else. But the underlying problem that sent them to prison are very different.

From the New York Times: U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations.

“The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations. Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences. The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London.”

In reading the above and the complete 1700 word article you will not find the word ‘Corrections” used once.

Webster’s Dictionary: Correction; 1 a correction or being corrected, 2 a change that corrects a mistake; change from wrong to right or from abnormal to normal.

As you are reading this story you may have noticed that I do not use today’s language to describe prisons, convicts, guards and wardens, as “Correctional Facility”, “Correctional Officer”, “Superintendent” or “Inmate”. To call them “Correctional Facility’s or Correctional Officer” is the height of hypocrisy. The truth is the guards can’t correct the problems in their own lives let alone solve the many complex problems of the men and women they guard.

The word correction was introduced by the prison industrial complex to fool the public into thinking they were solving the problems of the people they were warehousing and collecting all of those tax dollars for.

Again! hold on here a minute; If they are correcting all the problems of these errant people? Then why are we building so many new prisons and filling them with men, women and children?

You might be asking yourself “How did America, end up with so many criminals? The truth is “We didn’t.” The American Prison Corporations quite simply found it very profitable to imprison citizens.

The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) simple minded solution to the problem is to build more prisons and pass new laws which will produce more criminals for their prisons.

Looking to the CCA and their lobbyist is equivalent to hiring the fox to guard the hen house.

This all leads to a greater bottom line profit for the CCA but does little to solve the crime rate, the recidivism rate or help those prisoners who truly need help. And it certainly does not slow the growth of new prisons. “The breeding grounds of crime”.

Confronting Confinement, a June 2006 U.S. prison study by the bipartisan Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons, reports than on any given day more than 2 million people are incarcerated in the United States, and that over the course of a year, 13.5 million spend time in prison or jail. African Americans are imprisoned at a rate roughly seven times higher than Whites, and Hispanics at a rate three times higher than Whites. Within three years of their release, 67% of former prisoners are rearrested and 52% are re-incarcerated, a recidivism rate that calls into question the effectiveness of America’s corrections system, which costs taxpayers $60 billion a year. Violence, overcrowding, poor medical and mental health care, and numerous other failings plague America’s 5,000 prisons and jails. The study indicates that even small improvements in medical care could significantly reduce recidivism. “What happens inside jails and prisons does not stay inside jails and prisons,” the commission concludes, since 95% of inmates are eventually released back into society, ill-equipped to lead productive lives. Given the dramatic rise in incarceration over the past decade, public safety is threatened unless the corrections system does in fact “correct” rather than simply punish. For a copy of the complete report and the commission’s recommendations for reform, see

From: U.S. Prisons Overcrowded and Violent, Recidivism High — Infoplease.com

In the words of George Carlin; we add syllables to soften the meaning of words; From the Colorado Central Magazine; (The polite modern terms are inmate, not prisoner or convict as in historical years, and corrections officer instead of guard.)

The Huffington Post published an excellent piece yesterday by reporter Chris Kirkham describing how the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) wants to buy up state prisons, all under the guise of helping state governments deal with their budget shortfalls.

Called the Corrections Investment Initiative (sounds so positive, right?), it’s a sickening display of exploitive behavior — perhaps best underscored by the fact that the CCA stipulates in its “investment” overture that, as part of the deal, the states need to keep the prisons packed. Their language for it:

“An assurance by the agency partner [the state] that the agency has sufficient inmate population to maintain a minimum 90 percent occupancy rate over the term of the contract.”

In reading the above article I did not notice anything pertaining to correcting the prisoner’s problems that sent them to prison. I did read the words “Helping state governments deal with their budget shortfalls” Whenever someone comes to me and tells me they can save me money… But I have to spend money in order to save money, it’s right here I become suspicious of their motive, “Thank You, but, No Thanks'”

“The Corrections Corporation of America” and that white haired lady have something in common with one big difference; the white haired lady saw us all the same looking like anybody else but she had no motive for profit when she looked at us, she can be forgiven for her mistake.

“The Corrections Corporation of America” sees the prisoners also all the same; as a free labor force to manufacture goods in their prison industrial program. For the CCA it’s a win-win proposition, the taxpayer pays for housing their captive work force and then they again made a profit off the manufactured goods. It appears “The Corrections Corporation of America” has found a new way to reconstitute slavery. The only thing missing are the slave ships from Africa; we are already here so there is no need of the ships. However they will need to lobby the congress for new laws to insure the prisons are full of able bodied workers. And of course the lobbyists don’t work cheap; they have a large overhead in the moneys they must contribute to our elected legislator campaign fund.

The money travels from the taxpayer’s pocket to the government coffers, from the government coffers to “The Corrections Corporation of America” and then from their checking account back to the Colorado Legislator reelection fund, a vicious cycle that never ends. They are all so busy stuffing their pockets with the taxpayer’s money they have little left to correct the problems of the prisoners that got them the money in the first place.

In conclusion, with solutions; The unsuspecting, hardworking taxpayers have been taken for a ride for too long. It’s time we told the Prison Industrial Complex; “The Jig is Up.” It’s time for a revolution.

There is an old saying among the convicts; All the convicts in prison combined, never stole more money than one banker or corporation stole with one swipe of their pen. “While the poor man was out stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family, the banker was stealing the poor man’s house”.

One of the very best and clear examples I can give, happened right here in Colorado. For years and years the prisons have been filled with “Pot” smokers, the public was told; These are criminals, depraved drug addicts that will rob, steal and rape your daughter.

When the opposite was more true; ‘Pot” smokers are very relaxed, looking only for some Twinkies to munch on while watching cartoons.

And now that Colorado has de-criminalized marijuana, we are left with a bunch of taxpaying ‘Pot “smokers living normal lives, working and contributing to society. I’m sure that it’s not much consolation to all the men and women who suffered for years in prison, classified as a criminal, not to mention the families that were destroyed. Men and women who were filled with hate in this prison system, then released to commit a real crime.

Back in 1960, I was not taken as a hostage while touring the prison, but in 2015 we are all being held as hostage by the CCA (Private Prison Corp.) for our tax dollars.

You can help change that by contacting one of the local or national groups to end mass incarceration.

————–
About the author: David Anderson is an ex-convict, who had escaped from “Old Max” twice. He was serving three life sentences for crimes of which he was innocent. It took seven years for these convictions to be reversed. He walked out of the prison on April 29th 1983.

Last Rhodesian Dylann Roof was racist and white supremacist AND mentally ill


When a white racist mass murderer is apprehended, it’s a Western law enforcement tradition not to treat the suspect as cops do suspects of color. Fortunately television audience are now rejecting this inequity, and predictably they call for blood, instead of suggesting that all pre-trial interaction with police be conducted with respect for the presumed innocent. Similarly, white shooters and bombers are not called terrorists or racists but rather loners struggling with mental illness. I think it’s hugely important to call out the racism and xenophobia which breeds antisocial renegades like Dylann Storm Roof, and NOT judge Roof differently than the rare but much abused non-white even un-domestic insurgent. But why dismiss the insanity defense, when it obviously plays a part in more crimes not fewer. Dylann Roof was on psych meds. That’s another nightmare altogether, by which I mean for the pharmaceutical industry, who I think have a perfect record for supplementing white mass shooters. American prisons are filled with mental illness and mental disability and mental shortcomings. The justice system needs to be reformed with respect for mental health challenges, not with calls to get tougher on those with lesser ability to cope in society.

Dylann Roof’s alleged manifesto shows he’s not the brightest bulb either.

I was not raised in a racist home or environment. Living in the South, almost every White person has a small amount of racial awareness, simply because of the numbers of negroes in this part of the country. But it is a superficial awareness. Growing up, in school, the White and black kids would make racial jokes toward each other, but all they were were jokes. Me and White friends would sometimes would watch things that would make us think that “blacks were the real racists” and other elementary thoughts like this, but there was no real understanding behind it.

The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case. I kept hearing and seeing his name, and eventually I decided to look him up. I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words “black on White crime” into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders. I was in disbelief. At this moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be blowing up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on White murders got ignored?

From this point I researched deeper and found out what was happening in Europe. I saw that the same things were happening in England and France, and in all the other Western European countries. Again I found myself in disbelief. As an American we are taught to accept living in the melting pot, and black and other minorities have just as much right to be here as we do, since we are all immigrants. But Europe is the homeland of White people, and in many ways the situation is even worse there. From here I found out about the Jewish problem and other issues facing our race, and I can say today that I am completely racially aware.

Blacks

I think it is is fitting to start off with the group I have the most real life experience with, and the group that is the biggest problem for Americans.
Niggers are stupid and violent. At the same time they have the capacity to be very slick. Black people view everything through a racial lens. Thats what racial awareness is, its viewing everything that happens through a racial lens. They are always thinking about the fact that they are black. This is part of the reason they get offended so easily, and think that some thing are intended to be racist towards them, even when a White person wouldn’t be thinking about race. The other reason is the Jewish agitation of the black race.

Black people are racially aware almost from birth, but White people on average don’t think about race in their daily lives. And this is our problem. We need to and have to.

Say you were to witness a dog being beat by a man. You are almost surely going to feel very sorry for that dog. But then say you were to witness a dog biting a man. You will most likely not feel the same pity you felt for the dog for the man. Why? Because dogs are lower than men.

This same analogy applies to black and White relations. Even today, blacks are subconsciously viewed by White people are lower beings. They are held to a lower standard in general. This is why they are able to get away with things like obnoxious behavior in public. Because it is expected of them.

Modern history classes instill a subconscious White superiority complex in Whites and an inferiority complex in blacks. This White superiority complex that comes from learning of how we dominated other peoples is also part of the problem I have just mentioned. But of course I don’t deny that we are in fact superior.

I wish with a passion that niggers were treated terribly throughout history by Whites, that every White person had an ancestor who owned slaves, that segregation was an evil an oppressive institution, and so on. Because if it was all it true, it would make it so much easier for me to accept our current situation. But it isn’t true. None of it is. We are told to accept what is happening to us because of ancestors wrong doing, but it is all based on historical lies, exaggerations and myths. I have tried endlessly to think of reasons we deserve this, and I have only came back more irritated because there are no reasons.

Only a fourth to a third of people in the South owned even one slave. Yet every White person is treated as if they had a slave owning ancestor. This applies to in the states where slavery never existed, as well as people whose families immigrated after slavery was abolished. I have read hundreds of slaves narratives from my state. And almost all of them were positive. One sticks out in my mind where an old ex-slave recounted how the day his mistress died was one of the saddest days of his life. And in many of these narratives the slaves told of how their masters didn’t even allowing whipping on his plantation.

Segregation was not a bad thing. It was a defensive measure. Segregation did not exist to hold back negroes. It existed to protect us from them. And I mean that in multiple ways. Not only did it protect us from having to interact with them, and from being physically harmed by them, but it protected us from being brought down to their level. Integration has done nothing but bring Whites down to level of brute animals. The best example of this is obviously our school system.

Now White parents are forced to move to the suburbs to send their children to “good schools”. But what constitutes a “good school”? The fact is that how good a school is considered directly corresponds to how White it is. I hate with a passion the whole idea of the suburbs. To me it represents nothing but scared White people running. Running because they are too weak, scared, and brainwashed to fight. Why should we have to flee the cities we created for the security of the suburbs? Why are the suburbs secure in the first place? Because they are White. The pathetic part is that these White people don’t even admit to themselves why they are moving. They tell themselves it is for better schools or simply to live in a nicer neighborhood. But it is honestly just a way to escape niggers and other minorities.

But what about the White people that are left behind? What about the White children who, because of school zoning laws, are forced to go to a school that is 90 percent black? Do we really think that that White kid will be able to go one day without being picked on for being White, or called a “white boy”? And who is fighting for him? Who is fighting for these White people forced by economic circumstances to live among negroes? No one, but someone has to.

Here I would also like to touch on the idea of a Northwest Front. I think this idea is beyond stupid. Why should I for example, give up the beauty and history of my state to go to the Northwest? To me the whole idea just parallels the concept of White people running to the suburbs. The whole idea is pathetic and just another way to run from the problem without facing it.

Some people feel as though the South is beyond saving, that we have too many blacks here. To this I say look at history. The South had a higher ratio of blacks when we were holding them as slaves. Look at South Africa, and how such a small minority held the black in apartheid for years and years. Speaking of South Africa, if anyone thinks that think will eventually just change for the better, consider how in South Africa they have affirmative action for the black population that makes up 80 percent of the population.

It is far from being too late for America or Europe. I believe that even if we made up only 30 percent of the population we could take it back completely. But by no means should we wait any longer to take drastic action.

Anyone who thinks that White and black people look as different as we do on the outside, but are somehow magically the same on the inside, is delusional. How could our faces, skin, hair, and body structure all be different, but our brains be exactly the same? This is the nonsense we are led to believe.

Negroes have lower IQs, lower impulse control, and higher testosterone levels in generals. These three things alone are a recipe for violent behavior. If a scientist publishes a paper on the differences between the races in Western Europe or Americans, he can expect to lose his job. There are personality traits within human families, and within different breeds of cats or dogs, so why not within the races?

A horse and a donkey can breed and make a mule, but they are still two completely different animals. Just because we can breed with the other races doesn’t make us the same.

In a modern history class it is always emphasized that, when talking about “bad” things Whites have done in history, they were White. But when we learn about the numerous, almost countless wonderful things Whites have done, it is never pointed out that these people were White. Yet when we learn about anything important done by a black person in history, it is always pointed out repeatedly that they were black. For example when we learn about how George Washington carver was the first nigger smart enough to open a peanut.

On another subject I want to say this. Many White people feel as though they don’t have a unique culture. The reason for this is that White culture is world culture. I don’t mean that our culture is made up of other cultures, I mean that our culture has been adopted by everyone in the world. This makes us feel as though our culture isn’t special or unique. Say for example that every business man in the world wore a kimono, that every skyscraper was in the shape of a pagoda, that every door was a sliding one, and that everyone ate every meal with chopsticks. This would probably make a Japanese man feel as though he had no unique traditional culture.

I have noticed a great disdain for race mixing White women within the White nationalists community, bordering on insanity it. These women are victims, and they can be saved. Stop.

Jews

Unlike many White nationalists, I am of the opinion that the majority of American and European jews are White. In my opinion the issues with jews is not their blood, but their identity. I think that if we could somehow destroy the jewish identity, then they wouldn’t cause much of a problem. The problem is that Jews look White, and in many cases are White, yet they see themselves as minorities. Just like niggers, most jews are always thinking about the fact that they are jewish. The other issue is that they network. If we could somehow turn every jew blue for 24 hours, I think there would be a mass awakening, because people would be able to see plainly what is going on.

I don’t pretend to understand why jews do what they do. They are enigma.

Hispanics

Hispanics are obviously a huge problem for Americans. But there are good hispanics and bad hispanics. I remember while watching hispanic television stations, the shows and even the commercials were more White than our own. They have respect for White beauty, and a good portion of hispanics are White. It is a well known fact that White hispanics make up the elite of most hispanics countries. There is good White blood worth saving in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and even Brazil.

But they are still our enemies.

East Asians

I have great respect for the East Asian races. Even if we were to go extinct they could carry something on. They are by nature very racist and could be great allies of the White race. I am not opposed at all to allies with the Northeast Asian races.

Patriotism

I hate the sight of the American flag. Modern American patriotism is an absolute joke. People pretending like they have something to be proud while White people are being murdered daily in the streets. Many veterans believe we owe them something for “protecting our way of life” or “protecting our freedom”. But I’m not sure what way of life they are talking about. How about we protect the White race and stop fighting for the jews. I will say this though, I myself would have rather lived in 1940’s American than Nazi Germany, and no this is not ignorance speaking, it is just my opinion. So I don’t blame the veterans of any wars up until after Vietnam, because at least they had an American to be proud of and fight for.

An Explanation

To take a saying from a film, “I see all this stuff going on, and I don’t see anyone doing anything about it. And it pisses me off.” To take a saying from my favorite film, “Even if my life is worth less than a speck of dirt, I want to use it for the good of society.”

I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.

Unfortunately at the time of writing I am in a great hurry and some of my best thoughts, actually many of them have been to be left out and lost forever. But I believe enough great White minds are out there already.

Please forgive any typos, I didn’t have time to check it.

The frequently cited St Paul Principles had their time and place: ST PAUL


In my circle they’re called “Saint Paul’s Principles” because my colleagues think the edicts are Catholic I guess. The St Paul Principles came from St Paul Minnesota, circa 2008, and were formally adopted by the varied groups organizing to disrupt the Republican National Convention of 2008. They’ve lived on as guiding principles for activists of all ilk. In 2011 many Occupy encampments ratified the StPP as their own code of conduct, indifferent to whether they were applicable or even beneficial. Let’s examine the well intended dogma. Do they apply universally? Are they constructive? And how did they work out for St Paul? The last one is easy. As you may remember, disruption of the 2008 RNC failed spectacularly.

The St. Paul Principles

1. Our solidarity will be based on respect for a diversity of tactics and the plans of other groups.

2. The actions and tactics used will be organized to maintain a separation of time or space.

3. Any debates or criticisms will stay internal to the movement, avoiding any public or media denunciations of fellow activists and events.

4. We oppose any state repression of dissent, including surveillance, infiltration, disruption and violence. We agree not to assist law enforcement actions against activists and others.

It’s hard to argue against this elegant expression of solidarity. With the SPPs, the protest organizers aimed at preempting COINTELPRO style disruption from generating conflict within the movement. The implicit condemnation of violence was of state sponsored violence, not authentic barricade defense. And no snitching. The SPPs addressed the problems which were already scuttling Denver’s 2008 DNC protests. In Denver, “Recreate ’68” planners let the press infer they meant to revive the Chicago riots of 1968, prompting almost every traditional social justice group to circulate a contract which everyone was expected to sign. It was a vow of nonviolence. Organizations who refused to sign were ostracized and could expect the violent police clobbering they invited.

Essentially the SPPs aimed to unite the nonviolent and non-nonviolent activists, to ensure neither denounced the other, and that physically neither wound up caught in each other’s fights or sit-ins. Probably the chief concession was being asked of the nonviolent crowd: Please, as long as we promise not to shroud your family atmosphere and your baby strollers in tear gas, please let the Black Blocs do their thing without your repudiation. Please. We share the same goals.

Can you begin to see where such a strategy might fail to lead?

But the St Paul organizers did share the same goals. Their aim was to disrupt the RNC via a strategy they called “3S” actions. SWARM, SEIZE. STAY. It’s easy to see why three years later Occupy Wall Street was attracted to these directives. “3S” defines Occupy and another three years on, OWS activist followed the 2014 Climate March with an action called “Flood Wall Street” the instructions for which rephrased 3S aquatically.

The “movement” to which the SPPs refer shared a goal, to disrupt the RNC, by means of swarming, seizing, and staying, by whatever tactic each member group wanted. They shared a further agreement, that the city of St Paul was to be partitioned in sectors allowing groups to conduct their actions in isolation, united in time, but separated geographically so that red zone, yellow zone and green zone participants needn’t mix and find themselves out of their respective confort zones.

The groups organizing against the 2008 RNC shared one more thing in common, bound as they were to the St Paul Principles, they were all signatories to the principles.

Do the St Paul Principles apply universally?
It’s easy to see that the 2011 OWS occupations in major cities across the country shared a similar goal. It was, if perhaps more vague than to prevent a party convention, to disrupt the wheels of commerce by means of encampments; the “3S” tactic now reduced to a single verb “Occupy”. Allies such as unions and antiwar organizations, while sympathetic, cannot be said to have shared the same determinaton to disrupt. Even MoveOn with their “99% Spring”, FireDogLake with their merchandizing, and Adbusters had to relent with the revolutionary rhetoric. Eventually OWS spinoffs like Occupy Sandy Relief began to serve functions diametrically opposed to disruption. Did they expand the “movement”? Of course. But did the more inclusive “movement” outgrown the capacity for St Paul Principles to maintain its unity? Are activists bent on disruption expected to respect and support activists determined to prevent disruption?

I know it’s lovely to imagine every social justice effort as anti-authoritarian, and whether nonviolent or indulgent, each comprises a unique wing of a broad anti-government movement. If you are prepared to pretend that everyone’s aims are progressive, we share similar enough goals and we are reformists. But if some aims are revolutionary, explicitely anti-Capitalist for example like Occupy Wall Street, then reformists are counterrevolutionary. If you think reformists aren’t Capitalism’s first line of defense, even as they consider themselves activists, then you don’t know your adversaries from your allies. To imagine that activists shouldn’t address such chasms of understanding in favor of upholding popular delusion is going to get a movement nowhere.

At last year’s Climate March in NYC, the prevailing sentiment was against Capitalism. The organizers didn’t want to mouth it, but a vast number of marchers began to grasp instinctively that Capitalism has no solution for Climate Change. The anti-Capitalist movement can become “the movement” but reformists will have to understand they are obstructionists before they as individuals can be said to share the common goal.

The St Paul RNC Welcoming Committee aimed to disrupt the Republican National Convention for a WEEK. Can activist groups as they grow and transform over years and compete for membership and community resources expect that they shouldn’t be critical of one another’s missteps or aggressions even as their goals diverge?

How scalable are the St Paul Principles? Do they apply to no matter who considers themselves part of a greater “movement”. Do they apply to signatories and non-signatories alike?

Are the St Paul Principles constructive?
I would argue: Hardly. While it seems safer to segregate the Black Bloc from the civil disobedients from the family picnic crowd, you’re not going to reach critical mass with each on its own. With public dischord still in its infancy and while we have nowhere near the numbers to defend against or deter violent repression, perhaps it is only reasonable to program our street protests according to color zones, as if marches were amusement rides for protest tourism.

If you’re satisfied to lead combatants to jail and probation for mere symbolic shows of defiance, and you’re prepared to let nonviolent activists subject themselves to brutality which even when filmed will not awaken the conscience of the sociopathic oligarchs, and you’re resigned to let the masses burn themselves out with boredom given nothing to challenge their apathy, then the St Paul Principles are for you.

“Going postal” takes aeronautic twist: Campaign reform whoop-whoop de doo

Common American highschoolers have eclipsed what used to be the purvue of disgruntled post office workers: GOING POSTAL. Norwegian post-adolescent Anders Breivik could even be said to have “killed it”. So leave it to a mail carrier to set the new trend in making a mess of things to make a point. Retired mailman Doug Hughes thought outside the semi-automatic box to conceive an unconventional package delivery system for his letters to Congress. Hughes piloted a gyrocopter unto the White House grounds as his take on Mister Smith Goes to Washington and we wish him all the best. Hughes has a website The Democracy Club and because he didn’t kill anyone, or because his issue is merely campaign finance reform, the site was not taken down and the media is not calling his material a manifesto. Whoop-whoop whoop-whoop-de-doo. The White House nevertheless sidestepped the topic. When asked what President Obama thought of Hughes’ stunt to call for campaign finance reform, the president was said to remark: “what’s a gyrocopter?”

Denver march against police brutality interrupted by a DPD demonstration

DENVER, COLO.- Saturday’s “Every 5th” Anonymous march didn’t get two blocks along the 16th Street Mall before Denver police officers advanced into the compact procession to extract what looked to be targeted activists. Said one Anon: “One minute we were chanting ‘FUCK THE POLICE’ and the next they were fucking themselves! Our demonstration AGAINST police brutality was in solidarity with the New Mexico action #OpAlbuquerque, but became a demonstration OF police brutality. Thank you DPD!” Hundreds of downtown shoppers were drawn to the shit show, to see four dozen masked protesters menaced by a paramilitary force three times the size, ostensibly for jaywalking.

Local news outlets reported that the marchers were diverted from the pedestrian mall when their path was blocked by a dense row of police. Officers made five quick arrests, spraying pepper spray into the faces of marchers who weren’t accommodating their unprovoked, seemingly arbitrary snatch and grab maneuver.

ftp-nmt-dpd-arrestee-groundA few minutes later, with tension waning, the DPD made an odd sixth arrest, tackling an unrelated passerby who suddenly bolted from between their ranks. Whether opportune or calculated, the officers piled on this small man which provoked the crowd to close in on the action and boo. This resembled an attempt to incite obstruction, to provide a pretext for a police escalation, because the little man’s curious entrance coincided with a squad of riot cops already dismounting from the sideboards of their SUVs, in formation to march but without a situtation to warrant it. Let’s also add that the mystery arrestee was cop-shaped and was led off in a different direction than the other detainees.

There was plenty of shouting “FUCK THE DPD” but protesters didn’t take the bait, hardly resembling the riotous mob the DPD pretended them to be. Instead Denver citizens were treated to a front row DPD command performance of “SHOW ME WHAT A POLICE STATE LOOKS LIKE.”

For me, the FTP message resonates on more levels than the delightfully juvenile. The DPD show of force makes a regular cameo at every political demonstration. Often the military equipment is kept around the corner, but the oppressive presence is made felt. After DPD brutally squashed the Occupy demonstrations of 2011, even activists are deterred from joining protests in large numbers because of the eminent threat of police violence. The ever present police escorts which tail protest marches also taint demonstrators with the implication that their legal assembly verges on illegality. No matter what your issue, the police are going to stand in your way.

Though unpopular with the nonviolence zealots who consider it more effective to be non-confrontational, the FTP theme has become universal across activist disciplines, even with those one might presume were uninitiated. Obviously police violence extends well beyond the curtailment of civil liberties. Earlier on Saturday a group of Colorado Springs Anons stood before the CSPD HQ with a sign than read only “FTP”. It was complemented with posters that tempered the message for the city’s more conservative population, such as “Free the Prisons” and “Failed the People”. Yet countless passing motorists responded by rolling down their windows and pumping their fists shouting “Fuck the Police!”

More photos from Denver Anon and photog Stuart Sipkin.

Here’s the official 4/5 press release, reproduced from Pastebin:

Anonymous Police Brutality Protest/#Every5th/@AnarchoAnon

MEDIA ALERT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: anarchoanon@riseup.net / @AnarchoAnon

Denver 4/5—Police in Denver violently attacked a protest march against police brutality on the Downtown 16th street mall a few minutes after it began at 5:30 pm. 6 arrests took place, with police violently tackling individuals in the crowd and spraying pepper spray at protesters and bystanders. A witness said that several of those arrested were passers-by who were not involved in the protest. This protest, called by the informal net-based group known as “Anonymous,” was part of the “Every 5th” event series, in which protesters have gathered downtown on the 5th of every month to protest various issues since November 5, 2013. This particular march was planned in solidarity with protests over a recent police murder of a homeless man in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with an eye to similar ongoing police brutality issues in Denver.

“The Albuquerque Police Department has come under federal scrutiny for being involved in 37 shootings since 2010, 23 of them fatal.” (Democracy Now)

One participant said: “There were about 50 of us at the march. We peacefully marched from Civic Center Park to the 16th st mall, our usual march route. As soon as we turned off the mall, police officers violently tackled individuals, swung clubs at others, and sprayed clouds of pepper spray at the crowd. They then formed a line and took out rubber bullet guns, and continued to try to antagonize the crowd. The crowd grew larger as pedestrians became alarmed by the aggressive behavior of the Denver Police Department. There were also numerous military-style vehicles present with SWAT officers riding on the outside. This seems to be a deliberately intimidating response in which DPD is trying to send a strong message to the citizens of their city that the police will not tolerate people speaking out against police brutality. Despite the police violence, our march continued successfully for several hours, snaking through city streets, denouncing police brutality with chants and fliers. This sort of behavior by the police really only serves to promote our protest, and as we saw today, it actually encourages people to join us.”

UPDATE:

All 6 who were wrongfully arrested have plead not guilty and have been released on bond/PR and reported back the following:

Police kept insisting the protestors’ water bottles in their backpacks were “molotov cocktails” even after smelling the water. Repeatedly.

They were taken to what appeared to be a mass arrest area that had been set up in advance. There was a table piled with sandwiches and frosted cupcakes. When asked by one of the protesters if the cupcakes had been made especially for the occasion. A cop responded “Yes, there are cupcakes. And they aren’t for you!”

One Denver Sheriff was heard bragging in the jail to another sheriff about how he had just said to one of the cuffed arrestees “I can beat the shit out of you and won’t even lose my job. Nothing will happen to me.”

Multiple photos of direct police interaction during the protest were deleted off of one of the arrestee’s cameras.

When one bystander tried to ask a question about the protest, he was called homophobic and sexist slurs by the police as he was being arrested.

Regardless of arguments about reforming the police versus abolishing them altogether one thing the protesters are in agreement about is that DPD acts like a gang of terrorists who aren’t accountable in any way to the people they purport to “Protect and Serve.

Archived livestream footage clips from march: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/anarcho-anon

Twitter handles with details from the event: @anarchoanon @standupdenver @mcsole @occupydenver @internerve

Pueblo museum excises Mine Workers Union from Ludlow Massacre exhibit!


PUEBLO, COLORADO- 2014 marks one hundred years since the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. A variety of commemorations are planned before the formal anniversary on April 20. I attended one such event on Wednesday, a lecture by a CSU professor to footnote the “Children of Ludlow” exhibit at El Pueblo History Museum. I’m always excitied when attention is paid to Ludlow, a subject regularly left out of American schoolbooks, but I was disappointed to find key elements of labor history excised from the museum’s narrative. Literally. The United Mine Workers of America, the organization central to the strike, which supplied the tent city, and which even today maintains the memorial site, was mentioned only once, IN FINE PRINT! The Ludlow miners voted to strike because the mining companies refused to recognize the UMWA. Unmentioned. The horrors of the atrocity were not tempered, in their explicitness perhaps we think them enough, but there was also the apologist suggestion that some culpability belonged to the miners. I questioned one curator who admitted they were at pains to keep the story “balanced” and that the squeakiest wheel thus far has been the National Guard. Apparently the Guard is offended that its role will be misconstrued. What balance do they want, I wondered. Had they lost children in the “battlezone” too?

Children are at the heart of commemorating Ludlow and at the heart of this preversion of the massacre’s memory. Were they recklessly endangered by their parents and union organizers? Were they dragged into a battlezone? The museum seems to suggest as much, highlighting the beligerence of the miners, mischaracterizing the soldiers, and leaving the union actions largely unexplained.

First I’d like to declare how I tire of the objective irrelevance which results when academics seek the approval of government technocrats. I am also disturbed by educators who pretend blindness to subtle inferences which shape a political takeaway. To them, “remembering” Ludlow seems sufficient in itself. I can hardly see the point to remembering Ludlow unless we have discerned its lessons. Until we are remembering the LESSONS OF LUDLOW, our educators’ self-proclaimed raison d’etre will be self-fulfilling: “history will repeat itself.” This Pueblo exhibit suggests no lesson other than the exploitation of tragedy, and leaves me fearful about the Ludlow commemorations to follow. The anti-union, pro-military climate which prevails these hundred years since the massacre will make for a travesty of a remembrance unless someone with a worker’s perspective speaks up.

NOT BROUGHT TO YOU BY…
Let’s start with this exhibit, which alas has already escaped critique since September. Its full title, as evidenced in the photo above: “Black Hills Energy presents: Children of Ludlow, Life in a Battlezone, 1913-1914.”

I’ll bet curators thought it a measure of truth and reconciliation that the Ludlow presentation was sponsored by a local extraction industry business. Black Hills Energy trades not in coal but natural gas. In fact they’re among the frackers tearing up Southeastern Colorado. I think the irony more likely suggests how the UMWA’s starring role was left on the cutting room floor. There are generic mentions of “the union”, as at right, keeping a ledger of which families were assigned tents, but only in the fine print is the UMWA named as owning the ledger.

BATTLEZONES
More troubling is the skewed framing of the museum’s narrative. It begins with the subtitle, “life in a battlezone.” That’s taking a rather curious liberty don’t you think? The event we accept now as “Ludlow” became a battlezone on April 20, and the regional Coal Field War which followed was a battlezone to which both revenge-seekers and militia thronged, but the tent colonies in which 12,000 lived, 9,000 of whom were the children of the title role, were camps full of families. That they were straffed regularly by the guards makes them shooting galleries not battlegrounds.

Calling Ludlow a battlezone is like calling Sand Creek a “collision” or calling the Middle East a “conflict”. All of these mask the role of the aggressor.

I will credit the curators for offering a candid detail of horrific import. In a description of the day before the massacre, when the Greeks among the immigrants were celebrating Greek Easter, mention is made of the mounted National Guards offered this taunt: “You enjoy your roast today; we will have ours tomorrow.” No one should deny today that the events of April 20, which culminated in the torching of the tents and asphyxiation of women and children, was a premeditated act.

THE CHILDREN
Should the miners have put their children in harm’s way by defying the mining companies? How could they not? As immigrants they didn’t have nearby relatives to foster their children away from the random bullets. Also left unsaid by the display: many of the children had already been working in the mines and counted among those on strike. This was before child labor reforms.

Curiously, the exhibit did include a famous photograph of the notorious activist Mother Jones leading a childrens’ march through Trinidad. The caption explained that Jones wasn’t above using real children to advance the cause of Colorado’s coal miners.” Emphasis mine. While technically true in a modern context, it’s probably disingenuous to imply someone is using the children when a key issue of the demonstration is CHILD LABOR.

No really. Mother Jones was leading a march of children, many of them workers of the mines, for the reform of labor practices which abused children. This and subsequent campaigns eventually led to child labor laws. Is saying “Mother Jones wasn’t above using children” in any way an accurate characterization?

Compounding the inference that the Children of Ludlow were jeopardized for the cause, was the implication that the miners were combatants who contributed to the battlezone. As the displays progressed in chronological order, the first weapon on display was a rifle used by the miners. Immediately behind it was an enlarged photograph vividly depicting miners posed with two identical specimens.

Moving along the exhibit chronologically, anticipating the rising violence, the museum goers is apparently supposed to register that the strikers were firing too, if not first. Recent historical accounts have deliberated about who fired first. I think the motive is suspiciously revisionist in view of today’s dogma of nonviolence absolutism: if your protest devolves into violence, you deserve every bit of the beating you get.

Whenever it was that the miners began firing, the single militia and three guard casualties were not recorded until after the massacre took place, belying the narrative that the miners invited the massacre. Witnesses conflict about when the three union leaders were executed. I’ll give the museum credit for defying the National Guard in summarizing that among the casualties, three of the miners were “executed”.

PARITY OF WEAPONS
Students of the Ludlow accounts know that many of the miners were better riflemen than the soldiers. Many were immigrants who’d served in Bulkan wars and outmatched Colorado’s green guardsmen. That is not to suggest that the miners and their harrassers were equally armed, yet…

The only other weapon on display is a rifle of vintage used by the national guard. It shares a case with a uniform and sabre, lending it official authority. Also, the rifle is not presented as having been used at Ludlow, so it doesn’t project an aura of culpability. Missing is the machine gun depicted in the photograph of the machine gun nest which fired down upon the camp. It’s depicted with a caption about the Guard being a welcome presence. Missing too is the armored car dubbed the “Death Special”. Obviously the armor protected its operators from being hit by striking-miner bullets as it drove through the canvas encampment, straffing the tents with its mounted machine gun.

HUMANIZING THE PERP
Right after the photo of armed miners was the display at right, with a very contrived bit of spin catering to today’s military families. Although the photo shows soldiers actively aiming their gun at the camp, the caption assures us that the “Ludlow families feel relief with the arrival of National Guard”. This supposition is based on the fact that when the soldiers first arrived they were serenaded with the “Battle Cry of Freedom” and greeted with American flags. Most of the miners being immigrants, they were eager to show their patriotism, but the conclusion drawn here is a terrible mendacity. The miners and union organizers knew full well the purpose of the National Guard. They knew the strikebreaking role it played in famous strikes of the past. The miners feted the soldiers hoping to sway them from their eventual task. Protesters of all eras hold out this hope every time they face riot police.

A following paragraph suggested that by the time the massacre was committed, most of the soldiers had been mustered out and replaced with militia members and company guards. This is slight of hand. After the official inquiry, which was prompted by the public outcry, twenty National Guard soldiers were court martialed. All were acquitted. Is the Guard wanting us to believe they were acquitted because they weren’t there?

This attempt to put a friendly face on the National Guard, coupled with an abdication of effort to give the union its due, seems engineered to appeal to the average Pueblan of today, many probably related to an active-duty soldier and long since indoctrinated against evil unions. When I asked the lecturer about the omission of the UMWA, she prefaced her answer for the audience, explaining that unions of old were not like those despised today. I told her I thought failing to describe the hows and whys of the strike was a real teaching opportunity missed.

HISTORY COLORADO
It’s probably important to point out that the Ludlow presentation at the History Museum was developed with the assistance of History Colorado, which finally shuttered a contested display: a Sand Creek Massacre exhibit with a similar flavor of whitewash. Like labeling Ludlow a battlezone, History Colorado tried to typify Sand Creek as a “collision.”

Also typical of History Colorado is the propensity to address their exhibits to children. Programming for school bus visits invariably dumbs down what can be presented and I hardly think the compromise is worth it. If children ran the world, maybe Disney versions of history would suffice.

I’d like to have seen it highlighted that the Ludlow miners were mainly immigrants who were looked down upon by the residents of Colorado. If the museum audience were the “Children of Ludlow” in the extended sense, as a few descendants probably were, more of us were the children of the soldiers of Ludlow, or the citizens who cheered them on, or joined the militia or built the armored car at Rockefeller’s Pueblo factory. If we’re going to remember Ludlow, we ought to remember our role in it so we don’t do that again. It’s easy to pretend we were the martyrs. In all probability that’s who we will be if the lessons of Ludlow are discarded.

Yay! Ukrainians win austerity measures and right to go in debt to World Bank!

We can keep arguing about who the Ukrainian opposition/protesters were, but the aftermath of the celebrated uprising has wrought this: the new leadership is being courted by the EU and the IMF so long as they agree to club requirements. Make austerity reforms, aka the privatization of public assets, and saddle their economy with debt to the World Bank. Meanwhile Russia is being warned to keep its military out. That should confirm who won in Ukraine.

What Does Democracy Look Like? Not likely the Old Testament Thank You

I attended Occupy Denver’s forum “What Does Democracy Look Like?” this weekend to hear activist scholars of considerable repute throw in their two cents. The first day was a splendid gathering, except where a curated discussion of intentional community lapsed into theology. Yes, a distillation of mostly white reform literature (Fanon was dismissed as wayward) yielded three steps for The Way Forward: Egypt, Exodus and the Promised Land. Yep.

By which he meant: 1) Recognize your enslavement, 2) have the courage to leave all for an uncertain fate in the desert, and 3) seek/develop/discover your own promised land.

Even as metaphor it’s embarassing. Enlightened salvation from Old Testament mythology? No thank you, and for that matter, up yours! Unfortunately the language I used was less restrained, but his religious offensiveness had been compounding. He’d begun his presentation admonishing listeners that transformation begins with the self and so he’d already unmasked himself as spiritual. Worse, a monotheist.

Egypt: I’ll come back to “systems of oppression” in a moment.

The Exodus: a myth, it didn’t happen, even Hebrew scholars now agree with the historical and archeological records.

As to the Promised Land: that was a real estate scheme to backdate a deed, offered as divinely conceived proof of landlordship. The same title is being waived around to dispossess Palestinians today.

But really, isn’t the exodus-to-promised-land malarkey at the very foundation of Western Civilization’s expansion problem?! Are we really all entitled to virgin land? As if earth hasn’t been continuously and fully inhabited since before agrarian civilization, before monotheism was conceived to impose inequity, and justify slave-wages, interest and rent. The craddle of exploitation, that was Egypt.

But can we run from Egypt? The remedy staring us in the face, from which common men are deliberatly destracted, conspiring to emancipate Egypt, is to rid ourselves of the oppressor sociopaths. In practical terms understood more clearly by the better educated before us, we must strangle Egypt’s kings with the entrails of its priests.

I don’t care how academic your garb, when you tell your flock to reapply themselves to the sacred, and your “sacred” is biblical, supposing to transcend nature, you’re a priest.

Thank you WDDLL organizers but I do not go to church and I resent when devious means are employed to bring it to me. Actually those priests are the worst, they’re missionaries! If we’ve learned one thing as we discuss mankind’s break from his mille millenia of sustainable existance, resist the colonizer. Conquored peoples ourselves, we can only wish that indigenous peoples could have given Western missionaries the reception they deserved, and it’s no less true today: fire.

Alas as a result I heard a number of attendees today praise their faith. To each his own, but unhelpful. If you have to evangelize you’re a liability because nonsense is infectuous, especially as education levels recede. Can others entrust you with the battleplan while you commune with the adversary?

There’s a wonderful scene in AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD, Werner Herzog’s dramatic depiction of conquistadors wreaking havoc in the Amazon. Following a coup among the greedy Spaniards, the wife of the abruptly deposed leader appeals to the mission’s priest, as her last resort to restore order. The priest, her ally only moments before, turns on her thus: “Her ladyship must know that the church always stands on the side of the strong.”

Media conference misses inconvenient lesson: coverage of Arkansas oil spill is coming from illegals

DENVER, COLO.- It’s day three of the 2013 NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MEDIA REFORM and I haven’t heard one mention of perhaps the media story most pertinent to this gathering: the tar sands oil spill in Mayflower Arkansas that is and isn’t in the headlines. Because the media is being denied access to the story, because the media isn’t making a story of that censorship, and because most relevant to the media reform crowd, the scarce images that are emerging are coming from activist video streamers breaking the law to get the story. I’m especially excited by that development because it renders my exhortations mute, that journalists look with skepticism on the oath of “objectivity” which binds them to the corporate spun narrative. “You can’t be neutral on a moving train” was Howard Zinn’s entreaty. “Neutrality helps the oppressor never the victim” said a Zionist without irony. But when reporting means having to break the law, then wanting to tell the story means becoming an activist.
 
I use the expression “illegals” in accordance to the AP’s new stylebook, to connote an illegal act, and to poke fun. “The I-word” is no longer acceptable to describe undocumented immigrants, but speaker after speaker at the conference heralded the announcement as if it had not just been explained by the previous. It was apparently “the applause line” of this year’s conference. Too bad, because in a year of unending Obama betrayals, the victory is meager cause for celebration.

Obama cried because the Connecticut schoolchildren were not Pakistani. Is that statement untrue?

Lucky to be an American BabySo, no, the twenty schoolchildren killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut were not Pakistani. That’s apparently what everyone is so upset about. I’m rather embarrassed how distraught Americans are about the Connecticut school shooting, considering equivalent child-massacres happen daily in Pakistan, victims of US drones, to no public outcry. In Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and all the far reaches of our multinational corporate empire, child killing is public policy, far from being a subject of public anguish.

Now I’m besieged with invitations to join local and statewide protests to “end gun violence.” I say YES, so long as I can ALSO commemorate the thousands of children killed by US drones and US troops. “Don’t politicize this tragedy” is the indignant objection. Classic.

Might there be a value to hopping aboard this bandwagon opportunity to call for gun control and mental-healthcare reform? Maybe by showing solidarity with this profound revulsion to our cultural violence, a social justice movement can broaden a reciprocal sense of solidarity for the larger pool of its victims? I doubt it. Showing antiwar support for veterans of war, for example, hasn’t yet tempered anyone’s senseless enthusiasm for militarism or blind patriotism, or I’ve yet to see it.

A disclaimer: my apparent insensitive is helped by the fact that I don’t watch television. I’m guessing the media are really cooking this tragedy to an unrelenting boil. Probably my lack of exposure has rendered me unfathomably incapable of addressing the subject with sufficient tact. I’ve no idea the orchestrated catharsis indulged upon the viewers over dead American children. My profound condolences to the parents, but curses upon the media for exploiting the event to condemn lone crazies and not to curb the culture of violence which breeds them.

Frank Lloyd Wright said television was chewing gum for the eyes. Turn it off. You’ll quickly see what an emotional maelstrom they’ve made of the Sandy Hook shootings. Imagine if they created that kind of drama about war’s atrocity. We’d have viewers clamoring to end war. This might give you some idea about why the ongoing Sandy Hook fallout leaves such a bad taste.

My advice to nearly all Americans parents upset about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting: get a hold of yourselves. These weren’t your children. Your schools and schoolchildren are many leagues out of harm’s way. Connecticut may as well be Pakistan for all you care.