Reader criticizes Asheville police
and
Buncombe County Sheriff tactics
Editors, Asheville Global Report,
Unfortunately I haven’t done much in terms of gay rights in
the past, but I was really offended by the Asheville police and Buncombe
County Sheriff tactics this past Saturday. Now I see how badly local
government, and state and Federal government, treats people ‘not
like us’— “we the straight, us Christians” (not
to say there aren’t plenty of gay Christians out there). I will
be involved more in supporting the ability of all community members
who live within the law to access life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness; and in ensuring their safety from illegal activities by
government and organized hate groups.
There was no cause for what local government did on Saturday at City-County
Plaza. It was a perversion of both justice and Christian doctrine
(unless you use the KKK Authoritarianism Handbook). If right-wing
nut job people are going to make incendiary remarks in public spaces
and tell others they’re going to burn in hell and should be jailed
for the way they have non-violent, non-profit sex past age 18 (or
just co-exist) with other consenting adults, they should be ready
to be mildly heckled. It’s not something law enforcement needs
to make arrests over. And it damn sure is not the role of law enforcement
to play politics and act with illegitimate force to support the political
agenda of a quack pseudo-president who squats over the White House.
The cops were the criminals in Asheville, yet again. The right-wing
extremists created a little more hell on earth, yet again.
The documented trend with our local government and police forces is
no longer to uphold the law, but to implement the illegal orders of
an illegal president. Last year’s attacks by APD are part of
this. I made it clear a number of times to Asheville City Council
that there were problems with laws like the USA PATRIOT Act and the
new Homeland Security doctrine under Bush. Unfortunately no one reacted.
The real problem was when one of the right-wingers on stage at City-County
Plaza on March 6 said, “The police are here to show that you
can’t just do whatever you want.” We must assume “whatever”
to include peaceful assembly. That was right before the attacks. Umm,
peaceful assembly is a guaranteed right, even for “freaks”
like us (I’m for gay people, just not gay). It is a major problem
when our police become political police, and right-wingers get special
powers of official force based not in law, or even official office;
but rather based in demagoguery, property status, religious status,
and ability to speak the correct right-wing aggression linguistics.
That is to say “The Good Old Boy System” not relegated to
the rest of us.
APD-Buncombe Sheriffs had no right or legal standing to push the opposition
around the way they did. Local government (including Rep. Bruce Goforth
and US Rep. Charles Taylor) planned to use force before the 10:30
am event began, and just like Bush’s “roll up” to war,
they felt some urgent need to use as much force as they could express.
Officials in the City of Asheville and Buncombe County government
must have been aware of the plans of law enforcement and approved
the kind of action taken. This is merely the obvious. Do they not
believe in democracy either? What style of government do we have any
longer in America? Authoritarianism? Fascism? Something like what
the Taliban wants, or the Iranians endure? No thanks. That’s
not what I defended my nation for. That’s not my vision as a
true Christian.
It didn’t matter if the law or any idea of real justice was on
the side of the people in uniform, the ones with the guns. The opposition
against the Bushians never approached the fascists or the police.
A large tree mainly separated the two groups. The police were the
ones who instigated force. The people who were arrested were being
shoved into the crowd. Because they couldn’t move back, this
makes it appear as if the pro-democracy activists were doing something
in the way of resisting the authorities.
When APD moved against the pro-democracy crowd, the citizens didn’t
have time to back up. No verbal warning was given. APD only went on
stage to order the opposition to back up across Spruce St. after the
first arrests were made, and then the instructions were inaudible.
No one knew what the APD and the Buncombe Sheriffs wanted. They just
started to get violent.
It was insane that after a line of APD were set up against the opposition,
a SWAT team of APD and Buncombe County Sheriffs were sent in to quell
the “emergency.” It was disgusting to see “Democrat”
NC Rep. Bruce Goforth sit onstage and never say a word about the illegal
police activities. It was bizarre to see an African-American APD Lieutenant
or Captain, and other African-American officers, and women officers,
doing a Bull Connor/official domestic abuse routine on 120-lbs. kids
and women as these people holding the public trust became bullying
storm troopers and attacked the harmless gays and their friends without
mitigation.
Their were probably one or two gays in uniform on Saturday. (Probably
some “undercover gays” inside the pro-democracy crowd.)
They were all “just following orders.” We all know who else
is famous for saying those infamous words, “just following orders.”
The Nazis.
Now I’m much more interested in how APD and other government
agencies treat the gay community. I’m making myself available
to act as a witness if anyone is going to do a Civil Rights Act, Sec.
1983 suit against the City; or if folks arrested on Saturday are going
for trials ... which is something someone should do.
Three things are now true: 1) The new APD Chief needs to come with
a real civil rights and community relations background, preferably
with organizational reform credentials of having fought institutional
bigotry and corruption. 2) An alternative media source to educate
the public on issues hidden by local government and corporate media
is proper (i.e. URTV). 3) The secret “Homeland Security”
policies developed at the Grove Park Inn by the NC Police Chiefs Association
in February of 2003—just before the attacks on peace activists
in Asheville—need to be made known to the public. That is to
say in terms of policies pertaining to political activity and public
demonstrations. There are now more than enough reasons to see that
local law enforcement is abusing their authority under a right-wing
political mandate that has nothing to do with counterterrorism. Will
anyone in authority in WNC government do anything to roll back the
re-emergence of American fascism?
It was strange that the APD and Buncombe Sheriffs never accosted me.
I was standing in the crowd with the opposition, then I moved through
the police line without any problem. Law enforcement was only going
for people “dressed weird with signs” that didn’t fit
the motif of the gay bashing event. I guess when I yelled, “Fascists.
Look at the Fascists!” so loud it overcame the din of abuse and
echoed across City-County Plaza it was okay. I looked straight.
Grant Millin
Asheville, NC
Stan Goff replies to review of
Full Spectrum Disorder
Editors, Asheville Global Report,
As a long time admirer of AGR, I hope you will afford me a reply
to John Brinker’s review of my book, Full Spectrum Disorder.
While I am not in the habit of replying to book reviews, pro or con,
I’m making an exception here because I feel that the book has
not been “taken to task,” but significantly misrepresented.
John Brinker is the second person (the first being Mark Hand) who
has experienced apoplexy over the word “vanguard,” and from
there -– taking that word out of my discursive context –
proceeds directly to epithets like “Stalinist.” Any time
the – ist’s get tossed into the room with me, it’s
a sure sign that I’ve bumped up against someone’s most-treasured
shibboleths.
Mr. Brinker says that I advocate for something called “Marxist
revolution,” and that I am “mired in the discredited leftism
of the 20th century,” and that finally I take the position “that
the power of the State is the only true prize in war.”
I am left wondering if he actually read this book sequentially. My
main thesis throughout – if anything qualifies for this –
was related to “moral imperialism,” that predisposition
of well-fed, comparatively safe, mostly white, metropolitan radicals
to decide how brown people in other parts of the world – of which
they have only a vague conception and next to no historical understanding
– should pursue their fight against their attackers in the exterminist
phase of imperialism. Mr. Brinker demonstrated exactly this moral
imperialism with his rhetorical question, “How many revolutionary
armies have established equitable governments and open societies?”
The book was explicit in its rejection of self-appointed “vanguard”
grouplets that have learned just enough Marx to make a religious dogma
of it, and in my only chapter on how-to, I suggested that there are
serious flaws in most current conceptions of democratic centralism.
My first reference to a vanguard – defined as leaders who can
facilitate clarity and purpose among a mobilized people – suggested
that in the United States that will likely be women, and queer women
at that. If anyone can find any Marxist orthodoxy that corresponds
to this assertion, I’ll happily kiss your ass in the middle of
Main Street with a brass band in attendance.
It seems pretty clear that what sparked the outrage against this straw
man that has been substituted for Full Spectrum Disorder was
my contention that the EZLN is losing its war with the Mexican government.
Not that I didn’t support this contention with a wealth of facts.
I did. They are losing. Metropolitan outrage will not change that.
The lion will not lay down with the lamb. I don’t dislike the
Zapatistas. I admire them very much. But they will not win. It’s
important to know why, so I submitted my hypothesis.
The FARC-EP, whom I cited as a functional armed struggle – which
they are – and which I assume is what Mr. Brinker alludes to
with the non-operationizable term “Marxist” revolution,
is prevented from a decisive military victory only by massive infusions
of US aid.
Last time I checked, Marxism was one of many historiographic methods
for the interpretation of social phenomena, and not a blueprint for
armed conflict. I think we have to cleave to a much higher degree
of intellectual rigor than this to avoid being pulled back into the
sectarian swamp of the sixties and seventies, where the –ism’s
were tossed around like so many hand grenades. I use Marxism as an
extremely useful interpretive standpoint, and I was clear about that.
But I also made numerous references to, and uses of, feminism, human
ecology, and world systems theory. Each and all of these perspectives
is useful.
The conflict I explored in the most detail was Iraq, where state power
is not the prize at all, precisely because – as I pointed out
more than once – the state was destroyed. My discussions of asymmetric
warfare in the future focused directly on stateless actors, and focused
on them as objective anti-imperialists. In conflicts where state power
is the objective, like Colombia, these are not “Marxist”
revolutions simply because there are Marxists in the military leadership.
The objectives of these wars, like the war in Vietnam and the revolution
in Cuba, is not communism, but a greater degree of structural independence
from the Euro-American metropoles. In fact, I went to great lengths
in FSD to deconstruct the “development paradigm”
that was (and still is for some) at the core of “old” Marxist
orthodoxy.
I appreciate Mr. Brinker’s engagement with my book, and I appreciate
the important work of AGR. But please take a step above our ruling
class opposition and throw off their propensity to deploy logical
fallacies as polemical weapons. I am happy for anyone to disagree
with what I’ve written, but that disagreement must be about something
I have actually written.
Thanks for this opportunity to respond, and keep up the good work.
Stan Goff, NC
From the Texas plantation gulag
I wrote the following article while our entire 3,800 man unit was
on a semi-annual lockdown status for the purpose of shaking down the
entire unit with a fine tooth comb.
The Allred gulag is one of the largest prisons in Texas, following
a model plan used for dozens of units statewide. Thousands of men
are housed here, but you would not know that by looking around. In
the corridors, halls, and outdoor runways, deathly stillness, peace,
and quiet reign. Once an hour or so, you may see a human wearing a
gray uniform scurrying one way or the other. These are guards going
to and from scheduled breaks.
The reason for the lack of activity is a “lockdown,” a nasty,
horrible, infamous word used in the correctional community to mean
a total and complete freeze on inmate movement and activity.
No inmate is allowed out of his cell except for dire medical emergency.
That’s it! No recreation, no chow-hall, no visits with family
and loved ones, no phone calls, no television, nothing. NOTHING!
Showers twice a week for three-and-a-half minutes. The shower is a
cage, which is padlocked the entire three and a half minutes. That’s
right: you are naked and showering in a padlocked animal cage.
Clean underwear twice a week. Clean sheets every three weeks. You
are reading this while I sit on dirty sheets wearing dirty underwear
in a tiny closet. Did I say dirty? I mean downright filthy. The pen,
the joint, the Big House—you may think it’s cool. Shit,
it ain’t cool; it is filthy. Dirt seeps through vents, through
cracks in the wall, and the door. Prisons are dirt-filled places,
unclean and unsanitary.
The situation is made worse because we are provided no cleaning supplies
to clean our tiny little cell. Don’t misread this. I did not
say cleaning supplies once a month. I said none at all. Think about
your toilet, sink, floor, and walls if you had no Comet, Lysol, broom,
mops, or rags for months. Would would they look like? What the hell
would they smell like?
Guess where we eat? Yes sir! Right there in the same place we piss,
crap, sneeze, cough, fart, vomit, and sleep. The very same place which
is never cleaned and sanitized.
One’s cellmate is never a candidate for the Ajax poster child.
I live with a man who eats and shaves under his sheets and blankets
and then throws the debris onto the floor. A man who has never cleaned
the floor one single time in six months. This man is execrable, vile,
odious, and contemptible, and I assure you that I am one to only speak
the best of other people. He craps in his bed and boxer shorts and
has to be told to wash the feces out of his underwear. He never uses
soap in the shower. If no one is watching, he doesn’t even turn
on the water in the shower! This is exactly how many men are accustomed
to living from early childhood.
You may not believe this, but possession of prisoner-made detergent
used in the kitchen or of prisoner-made disinfectant used over in
the clinic is a major disciplinary infraction. If you like to kill
germs and diseases before eating your food, it could cost you two
extra years of your life in prison. Think about filthy, dirty, germ-covered
food next time you pack a gun or boost those tapes from Wal-Mart.
But don’t stop there. It is easy for me to digress. These cells
are small, small, small. Two men are squeezed into every one of them.
We’re talking 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for week after
week.
Our food? Put half a spoonful of peanut butter between two slices
of bread which has sat out all night. Put all of that in a brown sack
and take it outdoors. Do you know how to dribble a basketball? Dribble
the ball for a while on the sack. Now you have prepared lunch.
Go to your nearest gas station and unpack your lunch on the restroom
floor. Gobble up! Enjoy! Six hours later you get another sack. Guess
what the difference is from lunch? This one is called “supper.”
Far be it from me to complain, though. Cause breakfast includes a
treat. Six scrawny old prunes. Chow time! Oh boy! Your cell partner
doesn’t eat the prunes and suffers the consequences a couple
of days later when he roto-rooters out the blockage from his rectum
with his only toothbrush, then throws the toothbrush on the floor.
What idiot long ago romanticized prison life? I’ll burst his
bubble. In what country club have you ever been where patrons solved
constipation problems pro se with their toothbrushes?
Have I mentioned lonely? Do you know what lonely means? Not until
you are locked in that tiny bathroom with your puerile and rotten-smelling
cellmate who lies constantly and steals from you while you sleep and
who you are sorely tempted to strangle. No other contact at all with
genuine humans. Misanthropy inexorably looks more and more appealing
as a dogmatic religion to adopt. Hard concrete, hard steel, hard crying
in the night, hard bread on your sandwiches. No smiles, babies, fun,
laughter, or clean, comfortable clothes.
This hard environment is true isolation. It is called lockdown. Read
my lips: No contacts, no phone calls, no visits, no mothers. Try going
two little bitty weeks; no, just go two measly days without speaking
to one single friend, loved one, homeboy, not even the pleasant and
vibrant checkout person at the grocery store.
It’s hard. But that is true loneliness. You are all by yourself.
No one gives a rat’s ass about you. And even if they do care,
you will never know it.
Enjoy your stay! Dirty, hard, lonely.
Lockdown!
Michael L. Spradlin may be reached at: #933197, Allred Unit, 2101
F.M. 369 North, Iowa Park, Texas 76367.
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