The large scale, systematic use of psychiatric punishment began in the late 1930's in the Soviet Union, and greatly expanded under Khrushchev. No westerner was allowed to visit a Soviet Special Psychiatric Hospital, but reports from former prisoners showed a stark resemblance to the experimental prison-clinics run by Himmler's SS doctors, both in cruelties practiced and type of doctor in charge. As with most past systems of totalitarian control, psychiatric punishment of the homeless was a precursor to labeling political dissent as a mental illness. On May 24, 1959, Pravda, the official Soviet newspaper, quoted Khrushchev as saying “To those who might start calling for opposition to Communism . . . clearly the mental state of such people is not normal.” In Germany Hitler popularized eugenic psychiatry in his book “Mein Kampf.” And in the United States there is somewhere between 3 and 4 million American children that are on Ritalin!
These psychiatric drugs modify the brain and its neurotransmitters. The human brain is the most complicated and least understood organ in the human body and perhaps the most complicated organ on the earth. Anti-psychotics pollute the brain at far higher concentrations than anything on earth has ever been exposed to. These pharmaceuticals stop the brain from removing and destroying serotonin, and no research has ever been done to find out if this is reversible after the medication is discontinued. There are about 160 lawsuits out against Eli Lilly for murder or suicide, induced by Prozac use, and that is only one drug from one corporation.
Sometimes I don't see a homeless brother or sister for a long time. When finally I see them again, they don't want to talk about where they've been, they can no longer look me in the eye, and life seems to have left them somehow. This is how I expect my next encounter with my friend Jessy to be.
Tuesday I witnessed Jessy being rounded up and taken to “Simpervirens” (a mental detainment facility) to get a dose or two of some drug, made by a corporation, of which George Bush Sr. or Donald Rumsfeld was probably once the CEO (they chaired three pharmaceutical corporations). He was rounded up by the new mental health outreach team, called: “the police.” They claimed that somebody called and when they responded they did not know if they were responding to a 5150 “aide to sick,” or a crime. The police claim Jessy was “conversing with someone who wasn't there” and “wasn't making sense.” When Jessy asked “why am I was being arrested,” he was authoritatively reassured that he was merely being involuntarily institutionalized, drugged and detained for the next 72 hours and not arrested.
Using Police as mental health outreach goes a little beyond “law enforcement” when we authorize them to make psychiatric diagnoses on non-violent and non-suicidal people on the streets. According to AB1421, “Laura's law,” police can round up and detain a suspected mentally ill person for 72 hours if they “feel” that they are a danger to themselves or to society. This law was intended to protect us from the dangerously violent criminally insane. With policies designed to run homeless people out of the towns they reside in, police officers, like Arcata's Brent Chase use, these laws as “tools” to keep homeless numbers down.
Others and myself helped Jessy out quite a bit, taught him life skills, spent time with him, helped him with necessities and enjoyed his company. Anyone who knows Jessy knows that he talks to himself out loud. Jessy, who is actually quite nice, harmless and very introverted, is a victim of the whole neurosis caused by a system that rips your job, retirement, or freedom from you in a second, and then calls you a criminal when you become, the only option left to you, homeless. He keeps to himself, but when he asks me for something he starts to express an internally rationalized shame verbally. The shame poor Jessy must of felt, just because he was stopped and arrested, showed most after telling the homeless/mental health/police officers that he (a) knew what Simpervirens was and (b) that he “did not want to go there,” and then, looked at me, with tears in his eyes, and said, “Don't let them take me there.” Of course there wasn't anything I could do.
A 2004 report, subcontracted by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), written by the Urban Institute, called “Strategies for Reducing Chronic Street Homelessness,” speaks of a “paradigm shift” because of a “trigger event.” I wont elaborate on how the Patriot Act was a paradigm shift because of a trigger event, but I will mention it. This, what is called “problem, reaction, solution” or the “Hegelian Dialect,” is a way for social engineers to incite, justify and implement policies to improve a situation within their culturally narrow bias. The cultural differences between well-paid and housed doctors, law-makers, professors and police, called “experts,” and poor homeless people, is wide enough of a chasm, but then the “experts” advocate creating or utilizing a “trigger event” to force a “paradigm shift” to create “innovative outreach programs developed by and located in the . . . Police Department” (italics mine, ch3, p21). Though the report claims, “Providers have to attract . . . the very resistant people they are trying to serve,” it also advocates to, “combine police and mental health expertise and authority” to be “the only outreach teams on the streets that have the ability to remove people either voluntarily or involuntarily” (italics, bold & underline mine, ch3, p21). A San Diego city policy praised in the report is: “San Diego Police Officers arrest chronic street alcoholics . . . offer treatment plus transitional housing as an alternative to six months in jail . . . they [chronic street alcoholics] may first serve a full jail sentence or even two before they are convinced to try” (italics mine, ch3, p22).
There are many good ideas in the Urban Institute’s report, but they are inter-dispersed with cruel, unconstitutional, and human rights violating ideas. If these programs were so damn good for the chronic homeless they are intended to serve, then they would be flooded with applicants, not forcing people against their will to participate. To involuntarily medicate, institutionalize, and case manage people, based on controversial psychology theories, methods and pharmaceuticals, is the real criminal insanity. Social control through medications and internment is no different today then in Stalin's, Hitler's or Khrushchev's days. The law clearly states that a victim of Laura's Law must be a threat to the safety of himself or others. The only threat to safety was the threat towards Jessy, of what the constitution and all pertinent resulting case law calls “the threat of loss of ones life, by loss of freedom.”
The round up is underway. Homeland Security Department round ups, like
Operation FALCON, round up the “fugitives” - remember fugitives are wanted, not necessarily guilty. The Chronic Homeless Initiative rounds up the mentally ill homeless with police using culturally biased standards and goals. Its not a question of whether they will ignore their promise to “just go after the fugitives and mentally ill” and go after the activists, the communists, the unions, the gays, the Jews, and the real Christians, but a question of when. Just as was done with the racketeering laws and the SWAT teams, the roles of the homeless/mentally ill policies will be revised to include social engineering of a fascist order.
I went to Jessy's hearing. The hearing was not to win his freedom, though 72 hours is all they are allowed to hold him (he has been held against his will for 6 days as of this writing). The hearing was about forced medication, whether Jessy should be court ordered to take pharmaceuticals, which he does not want. This, what I call the “bag 'em and tag em” policies of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the California Department of Mental Health, gives a better understanding of their logic – extremely evil logic, but their rationalization none the less.
As I have also already pointed out, Jessy was in no way, shape, or form , “5150. a danger to himself,” at the time of his non-arrest, apprehension and incarceration. In court it was testified that Jessy was sleeping at the initial contact with the police. A doctor from Simpervirens mental health detention center testified for the prosecution. I initially thought the extremely pale doctor with the thorazine shuffle and drug induced glazed eyes was just another defendant in a hearing of Jessy's type, so imagine my surprise when I discovered it was none other the Dr. John Sommers, the pill pushing Psychiatric Doctor of Simpervirens.
Dr. Sommers testified that when poor Jessy was brought to Sempervirons he was resistant. Asked if he witnessed the resistance he claimed, “No, I observed him resisting the restraints.” Jessy testified that he wasn't restrained. He said that the nurses and staff at Sempervirens threatened to, “Strap me [Jessy] down if I didn't take the medicines they were trying to give me.”
The doctor claimed that in his opinion, from less then half an hour talking to Jessy, Jessy suffered from what the DSM-IV (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, no. 4) calls “Psychotic Disorder Not Otherwise Specified or Psychosis NOS.” I was pretty sure that this “diagnosis” was really a classification, since Judge Wilson seemed very familiar with the term, though if it weren’t so sick, it would be funny. The DSM-IV is a book about 4 inches thick with a 10-page list of categories of mental disorders. Each category has mental disorder diagnosis within them. At the very end of the “Psychotic Disorders” category is this Psychosis NOS. Under the description for Psychosis NOS it reads: “[NOS] is included for classifying psychotic presentations that do not meet the criteria for any specific Psychotic Disorders defined in this section or psychotic symptomatology about which there is inadequate or contradictory information” (italics mine). Talk about a catchall law!
If I understand the professional opinion correctly, then a person who is not a danger to himself or others, but who denies a mental illness that is accused by a mental health “professional,” needs to have the court “make him feel better” by forced medication. The doctor authoritatively proclaimed, from the witness stand, as grounds for Jessy not knowing that he should be strapped down and force-fed anti-psychotics, mood stabilizers, tranquilizers, anti-depression medication and a whole cocktail of drugs to combat the many potential side-effects, that Jessy's “thinking was not based on fact,” he showed “resistance to taking the medication,” he was “speaking in 'word-salad' (Sommers' word for incomplete sentences),” he “can't answer questions” and that Jessy “can't hold a rational conversation.” When Jessy took the stand he was perhaps even more articulate than the doctor wanting to experiment on him. He answered all of the questions asked of him as well as most I've seen in courts, and I've seen a lot. He figured days, times, and people involved when asked to. He did kind of confuse the court audience when he was asked if he knew why he was in court and he replied “to fight for my life.” Everyone seemed to understand him all right though when he said “I don't feel alive when taking those drugs.”
Here's the theory: A homeless person is reported sleeping in the bushes. Brent Chase, an Arcata police officer, ex-park ranger (a position created to prevent homeless from sleeping in Arcata), implementing a “run the bums out of town” policy, from the mayor and city manager, shows up on the scene. Statements by the police department indicate that Chase was not sure whether it was trespassing or “5150, a danger to him or her self,” call. The police made no indications that Jessy did not cooperate in any form. I showed up right after the initial contact, at about the same time as the second officer. Jessy was very coherent and articulate by the time I arrived. Chase having the “authority” to diagnose and take into custody someone he “believes” a danger to themselves, or any other behavior he deems “5150,” takes Jessy and incarcerates him into a mental detainment institution. Though an arrested person has to, by law, be brought before a judge in 72 hours of arrest, Jessy spent a week being threatened, coerced, intimidated, and pestered into voluntarily taking pharmaceuticals that he “didn't want to [voluntarily] take.” Dr. Sommers claimed to have for a week “tried several different tacks to try to get him to give informed consent.” Since Jessy was not crazy enough to fall for the pharmaceutical dope dealers manipulation, he was finally brought to court, not to secure his lawful release, but to try to force lifetime maintenance drugs on him. Even Judge Wilson was trying to get him to consider a pharmaceutical life.
If there is a moral to this story, it is Jessy was the victim of “rope 'em and dope 'em” terrorism that is happening right here, right now. He needs alternative, empowering mental health models and he needs the security to know he is safe in his own person. With anti-homeless police, implementing a whatever it takes policy to run the homeless out of town, how safe will any of us be when $800,000,000 of Prop 63 money is used to enforce procedures that don't require probable cause, speedy trials, and proof beyond a doubt? With so many ties between the current administration and the pharmaceutical corporations, and also the ties between the pill makers and the psychiatric professional organizations, profits and social control have become the obvious goal of forced medication.
love eternal
tad
Friday, June 24, 2005
Friday, June 17, 2005
comment from a Homeless Task Force member: Administrative Mandate Building
Interesting comments have recently been presented to the Arcata Homeless Task Force (HTF), since these comments were not all made publicly available, I thought it best to present a background on what is being said and done. Professor Jane Holschuh, a self-described “survey expert” (HTF-City Council-HSU Consultant Team planning meeting, June 7, 2005), Principal Investigator of the Humboldt State University's (HSU) Consultant Team to the task force, passed out a communique, she found “interesting,” at the HTF Meeting, June 2, 2005. It was subcommittee meeting minutes by the HTF sub-committee that was supposed, “to balance the rights of the homeless with the rights of the housed, to insure Arcata's quality of life for all citizens,” but it soon degraded into the community impact sub-committee. The meeting was between Arcata's chief of police Randy Mendosa and the sub-committee which included: Mark Leppanen, Dr. Virgil Davis; Business Owners: Kate Christensen and Julie Vaissade-Elcock; and Pastor Tim Doty- (HTF) chair. The meeting was held June 1, 2005.
The Mendosa report made many absurd accusations, but due to space restraints I only wish to touch on two and their implications for Arcata, the first is his coining the term “urban anarchists.” Prince Peter Kropotkin, an exiled Russian theoretical anarchist of the early 20th century, said; “Anarchism [is] the name giving to a principle of theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government – harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being.” We really have no way of knowing what Mendosa means by “urban anarchist”, but we do know from these minutes that: “they don't cause physical danger”, “Randy [Mendosa]” is not sure they're “all or even mostly homeless”, “they use services intended for homeless people in need”, “they create negative community backlash”, “decrease Arcata's economic base and quality of life”, and “make people angry” (italics mine). What Mendosa certainly doesn't say is that these “urban anarchists” are criminals. He does however, closely link the “urban anarchist” with the “urban traveler” and “homeless activist” and freely interchanges the terms.
Under the question on the minutes “Urban Travelers/Anarchists vs. Homeless People?”, he tells this sub-committee, “It would seem that many homeless people would want the Homeless Activists to leave because they just keep people from wanting to help them.” (italics mine). As a resident homeless activist, in Arcata, I believe that the tactic of implanting an idea as logical, by civil servant authorities, is really the act of politically lobbying the power base and those who wish to serve it. The Arcata Police Department regularly entices homeless to preform as informant/undercover/provocateurs in the villainization and arrest (primarily marijuana offenses and there resulting warrants) of other homeless. Why would I be surprised that the chief of police is advocating something that is easy for him to incite, especially when others who are closely associated with the desired outcome, “want[ing] the Homeless Activists to leave”, have advocated and offered support for this outcome?
Dr. Virgil Davis, a emergency room doctor, and a member of Arcata's economic development committee, at the time of his appointment to the HTF, repeated Mendosa's lobby in an editorial (Arcata Eye, June 7, 2005). The good doctor points out his belief that “almost all of the negative impact on our community” is done by “about 10 percent” of the homeless and they are either “urban travelers or homeless activists”. Though just this unqualified statement shows how Mendosa is inciting those from this sub-committee, Davis' explicative statement, in the above editorial, “we want to run the 10 percent out of town!”; this is a hate crime at best and if their lynch-mob rhetoric goes too far, it could be accessory to murder. Hate Crime is defined as: any act that is intent on bringing violence upon any minority group (e.g. homeless activists); running someone out of town is violence.
To further insinuate Mendosa's theory HSU, HTF consultant, Dr. Betsy Watson stated at the HTF/HSU/City Council planning session meeting, June 7, 2005, that she had been informed by “people at the night shelter” that I did not represent the homeless. As homeless activists, we have always been supportive of the night shelter. We always held the All Faith Partnership up as a model of efficiency, generosity, community and, at least to me, a good example of God's Love working through people. They are the people who opened their churches last winter during the coldest night. We did, however, have one problem with the rules of the night shelter, and that was - that nobody who stays at the night shelter is allowed to be absent after curfew and thus can't participate in government, at city council meetings and homeless task force meetings. This grievance has never been addressed, because only rarely does someone want to go to the meetings. Does Professor Watson want me, or maybe those who don't know the issue, to believe that people at the night shelter, who have only seen one task force meeting (Thursdays, 7:00 pm, channel 12) at best, think I don't represent them, and Mendosa does?
This community impact sub-committee has self-decided to tackle the task of stirring up contempt against those who live different lifestyles, (chosen or not). Mark Leppanen states (Arcata Eye, letters to the editor, May 25, 2005) that “environmental catastrophe”, “illegitimate government”, and the “status quo [being] not only 'non-sustainable' but inherently evil”, and those beliefs by the “homeless by choice” is “disillusioned[ment]” and “hyperbolic rhetoric” that “is patently hysterical and insidious”. The good doctor Davis suffers from the disillusionment that he “live[s] in a democracy”instead of a country that has a Bill of Rights, to protect the individual and from a majority rules, democratic, mob mentality. “Might” made “right” in fascist Germany, but, at least in theory, people here have liberties. This sub-committee, heavily representative of “Arcata's economic base,” decided they needed a survey to prove the democratic realities of their gentrification agenda.
Professor Holschuh, the self-proclaimed survey expert, came to the rescue. The task force gave Holschuh a list of questions to poll non-homeless people about how they perceive homeless problems. The statecraft of measuring the psyche is called psychometrics. Psychometrics is the think-tank imitation of what science calls quantum mechanics. As any first-year social science student can tell you, statistics can be used to appear to prove any psychometrics theorem. If I asked 10 dentists, “would you recommend some particular tooth-paste, which is basically the same as other tooth-pastes, and 9 out 10 said they would, then I could claim honestly, “9 out of 10 dentists surveyed recommend this particular tooth-paste”. If I target a group of downtown business owners and their proponents with a question like Holschuh's question in the original draft of the “community survey”:
“Should people who are homeless in Arcata be required to participate in a case management, social service, substance abuse treatment, or mental health treatment program (contingencies) to help them move out of homelessness in order to receive basic services such as: Food?, Showers/restrooms?, Emergency shelter?
I would be distorting the truth, planting seeds and inciting violence. To “require” “case management” “to help” in order “to receive” “food, restrooms and shelter” is violence! This question was eliminated by the next draft of the survey.
What ever the final version of this push-poll (a survey intended to propagandize) is, its repercussions will be harmful by planting the seeds of new forms of oppression and then justifying the policies made from the survey as “democratic” mandates. It further distorts the nature of homelessness and its main cause, lack of wage jobs, implying instead that irresponsibility, substance abuse, and mental illness are not just the cause of homelessness, but that the “contingencies” actually have been shown to work. For anyone, especially doctors, professors and city management personal to use their credentials to justify gentrification agendas (running homeless out of town) is what I would call insidious. At the time of this writing I don't know how this poll will be gathered. Printing it in the homeless bigoted Arcata Eye tabloid, mailed to water bill holders and surveying at grocery stores are methods that have been suggested. It seems that when spin-doctors work at the tabloid stage we can point to the reports, at the report stage we can point to the data, but at the data stage the “experts” rein supreme. If the survey is skewed, then it should be skewed in defense of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the Constitution's Bill of Rights. Please fill out the poll, remembering that if one person ends up involuntarily medicated, imprisoned, exiled or otherwise assaulted due to their homeless status, these policies are unacceptably costly and therefore “inherently evil”. When will we see that it is past time to dismantle a machine that doesn't work and grow an organism (community) that does?
love eternal
tad
The Mendosa report made many absurd accusations, but due to space restraints I only wish to touch on two and their implications for Arcata, the first is his coining the term “urban anarchists.” Prince Peter Kropotkin, an exiled Russian theoretical anarchist of the early 20th century, said; “Anarchism [is] the name giving to a principle of theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government – harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being.” We really have no way of knowing what Mendosa means by “urban anarchist”, but we do know from these minutes that: “they don't cause physical danger”, “Randy [Mendosa]” is not sure they're “all or even mostly homeless”, “they use services intended for homeless people in need”, “they create negative community backlash”, “decrease Arcata's economic base and quality of life”, and “make people angry” (italics mine). What Mendosa certainly doesn't say is that these “urban anarchists” are criminals. He does however, closely link the “urban anarchist” with the “urban traveler” and “homeless activist” and freely interchanges the terms.
Under the question on the minutes “Urban Travelers/Anarchists vs. Homeless People?”, he tells this sub-committee, “It would seem that many homeless people would want the Homeless Activists to leave because they just keep people from wanting to help them.” (italics mine). As a resident homeless activist, in Arcata, I believe that the tactic of implanting an idea as logical, by civil servant authorities, is really the act of politically lobbying the power base and those who wish to serve it. The Arcata Police Department regularly entices homeless to preform as informant/undercover/provocateurs in the villainization and arrest (primarily marijuana offenses and there resulting warrants) of other homeless. Why would I be surprised that the chief of police is advocating something that is easy for him to incite, especially when others who are closely associated with the desired outcome, “want[ing] the Homeless Activists to leave”, have advocated and offered support for this outcome?
Dr. Virgil Davis, a emergency room doctor, and a member of Arcata's economic development committee, at the time of his appointment to the HTF, repeated Mendosa's lobby in an editorial (Arcata Eye, June 7, 2005). The good doctor points out his belief that “almost all of the negative impact on our community” is done by “about 10 percent” of the homeless and they are either “urban travelers or homeless activists”. Though just this unqualified statement shows how Mendosa is inciting those from this sub-committee, Davis' explicative statement, in the above editorial, “we want to run the 10 percent out of town!”; this is a hate crime at best and if their lynch-mob rhetoric goes too far, it could be accessory to murder. Hate Crime is defined as: any act that is intent on bringing violence upon any minority group (e.g. homeless activists); running someone out of town is violence.
To further insinuate Mendosa's theory HSU, HTF consultant, Dr. Betsy Watson stated at the HTF/HSU/City Council planning session meeting, June 7, 2005, that she had been informed by “people at the night shelter” that I did not represent the homeless. As homeless activists, we have always been supportive of the night shelter. We always held the All Faith Partnership up as a model of efficiency, generosity, community and, at least to me, a good example of God's Love working through people. They are the people who opened their churches last winter during the coldest night. We did, however, have one problem with the rules of the night shelter, and that was - that nobody who stays at the night shelter is allowed to be absent after curfew and thus can't participate in government, at city council meetings and homeless task force meetings. This grievance has never been addressed, because only rarely does someone want to go to the meetings. Does Professor Watson want me, or maybe those who don't know the issue, to believe that people at the night shelter, who have only seen one task force meeting (Thursdays, 7:00 pm, channel 12) at best, think I don't represent them, and Mendosa does?
This community impact sub-committee has self-decided to tackle the task of stirring up contempt against those who live different lifestyles, (chosen or not). Mark Leppanen states (Arcata Eye, letters to the editor, May 25, 2005) that “environmental catastrophe”, “illegitimate government”, and the “status quo [being] not only 'non-sustainable' but inherently evil”, and those beliefs by the “homeless by choice” is “disillusioned[ment]” and “hyperbolic rhetoric” that “is patently hysterical and insidious”. The good doctor Davis suffers from the disillusionment that he “live[s] in a democracy”instead of a country that has a Bill of Rights, to protect the individual and from a majority rules, democratic, mob mentality. “Might” made “right” in fascist Germany, but, at least in theory, people here have liberties. This sub-committee, heavily representative of “Arcata's economic base,” decided they needed a survey to prove the democratic realities of their gentrification agenda.
Professor Holschuh, the self-proclaimed survey expert, came to the rescue. The task force gave Holschuh a list of questions to poll non-homeless people about how they perceive homeless problems. The statecraft of measuring the psyche is called psychometrics. Psychometrics is the think-tank imitation of what science calls quantum mechanics. As any first-year social science student can tell you, statistics can be used to appear to prove any psychometrics theorem. If I asked 10 dentists, “would you recommend some particular tooth-paste, which is basically the same as other tooth-pastes, and 9 out 10 said they would, then I could claim honestly, “9 out of 10 dentists surveyed recommend this particular tooth-paste”. If I target a group of downtown business owners and their proponents with a question like Holschuh's question in the original draft of the “community survey”:
“Should people who are homeless in Arcata be required to participate in a case management, social service, substance abuse treatment, or mental health treatment program (contingencies) to help them move out of homelessness in order to receive basic services such as: Food?, Showers/restrooms?, Emergency shelter?
I would be distorting the truth, planting seeds and inciting violence. To “require” “case management” “to help” in order “to receive” “food, restrooms and shelter” is violence! This question was eliminated by the next draft of the survey.
What ever the final version of this push-poll (a survey intended to propagandize) is, its repercussions will be harmful by planting the seeds of new forms of oppression and then justifying the policies made from the survey as “democratic” mandates. It further distorts the nature of homelessness and its main cause, lack of wage jobs, implying instead that irresponsibility, substance abuse, and mental illness are not just the cause of homelessness, but that the “contingencies” actually have been shown to work. For anyone, especially doctors, professors and city management personal to use their credentials to justify gentrification agendas (running homeless out of town) is what I would call insidious. At the time of this writing I don't know how this poll will be gathered. Printing it in the homeless bigoted Arcata Eye tabloid, mailed to water bill holders and surveying at grocery stores are methods that have been suggested. It seems that when spin-doctors work at the tabloid stage we can point to the reports, at the report stage we can point to the data, but at the data stage the “experts” rein supreme. If the survey is skewed, then it should be skewed in defense of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the Constitution's Bill of Rights. Please fill out the poll, remembering that if one person ends up involuntarily medicated, imprisoned, exiled or otherwise assaulted due to their homeless status, these policies are unacceptably costly and therefore “inherently evil”. When will we see that it is past time to dismantle a machine that doesn't work and grow an organism (community) that does?
love eternal
tad
Monday, June 13, 2005
Arcata's chief of police and McCarthyism
The chief of Arcata police, Randy Mendosa, recently met with a subcommittee of the Homeless Task Force.
Judging from the notes from the meeting (on the net at: http://www.geocities.com/solarimix/AHSPTF_arcata_police_chief.pdf), there was no discussion about lifting the anti-camping ordinance that has been found in court to be unconstitutional, nor any investigation to the many reported incidents of police abuse of homeless people.
Instead, the chief of police blames “urban anarchists” for much of the city’s problems and rates them as “the #2 public safety issue.”
“McCarthyism”
McCarthyism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
Since the time of the red scare led by Joseph McCarthy, the term McCarthyism has entered American speech as a general term for the phenomenon of mass pressure, harassment, or blacklisting used to pressure people to follow popular political beliefs. The act of making insufficiently supported accusations or engaging in unfair investigations against a person as an attempt to unfairly silence or discredit them is often referred to as McCarthyism.
The term has since become synonymous with any government activity which seeks to suppress unfavorable political or social views, often by limiting or suspending civil rights under the pretext of maintaining national security.
Judging from the notes from the meeting (on the net at: http://www.geocities.com/solarimix/AHSPTF_arcata_police_chief.pdf), there was no discussion about lifting the anti-camping ordinance that has been found in court to be unconstitutional, nor any investigation to the many reported incidents of police abuse of homeless people.
Instead, the chief of police blames “urban anarchists” for much of the city’s problems and rates them as “the #2 public safety issue.”
“McCarthyism”
McCarthyism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
Since the time of the red scare led by Joseph McCarthy, the term McCarthyism has entered American speech as a general term for the phenomenon of mass pressure, harassment, or blacklisting used to pressure people to follow popular political beliefs. The act of making insufficiently supported accusations or engaging in unfair investigations against a person as an attempt to unfairly silence or discredit them is often referred to as McCarthyism.
The term has since become synonymous with any government activity which seeks to suppress unfavorable political or social views, often by limiting or suspending civil rights under the pretext of maintaining national security.
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Arcata's Homeless Task Force co-opted by anti-homeless Bigots
The 14-person homeless task force, of which 2 persons represent the unhoused, divided into sub-committees to take on the various issues at hand. Of particular interest is the sub-committee intended to address "human rights," including Arcata's unconstitutional anti-camping ordinance which has been recently defeated twice in court. Instead, the committee renamed themselves the "community impact" commmittee, and are working with Humboldt State University to distribute a survey proposing a change in the law to require CASE MANAGEMENT in exchange for services.
Arcata Communique
"The interests behind the Bush Administration, such as the CFR, The Trilateral Commission - founded by Brzezinski for David Rockefeller - and the Bilderberger Group, have prepared for and are now moving to implement open world dictatorship within the next five years. They are not fighting against terrorists. They are fighting against citizens."
-- Dr. Johannes B. Koeppl, Ph.D., former German defense ministry official and advisor to former NATO Secretary General Manfred Werner
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies... if the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency...the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent that their fathers conquered."
--Thomas Jefferson
"Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”
-- Frederick Douglass --
Monday, June 06, 2005
know your rights
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS!!!
REMEMBER:
Cops are predators, just like any other predator, and they will prey on the most vulnerable.
You have rights, but many police will not respect your rights.
You have the right to be in a public place and to observe police activity.
If the police stop someone, you can STOP AND WATCH.
Maintain a reasonable distance, and if a cop threatens to arrest you, explain that you don't want to interfere, but that you have the right to observe their actions.
Write down officers names, badge numbers, and car number.
Cops should give you this information when asked.
You have the right to know their identity.
Write down the time, date, and place of the incident.
Ask if the person is being arrested, and on what charge.
Get names of witnesses and how to contact them.
Try to get the name of the arrestee, but only if they have already given it to the police.
Write down all the details as soon as possible.
In case of police violence, remain calm and urge the police to be calm and nonviolent.
Note: Police can arrest someone they believe is "interfering" with their actions.
Maintain a reasonable distance, and if a cop threatens to arrest you, explain that you don't want to interfere, but that you have the right to observe their actions.
If the police stop you:
Ask, "Am I free to go?”
If not, you are being detained.
If yes, walk away.
Ask, "Can you explain why you are detaining me?”
To stop you, the officer must have specific reasons to suspect your involvement in a specific crime (not just a guess or a stereotype).
It is recommeded that, for everyone’s safety, you do not resist physically.
Remember names and badge numbers of officers involved.
If a cop tries to search your home, your car, or your person, say repeatedly that you do not consent to the search.
It is recommeded that, for everyone’s safety, you do not resist physically.
If the police arrest you:
Say repeatedly, "I don't want to talk until my lawyer is present."
Even if your rights aren't read, refuse to talk until your lawyer/public defender arrives.
If the police abuse you or violate your rights, write down details of the incident immediately.
Photograph your injuries and get a medical report describing them.
REMEMBER:
Cops are predators, just like any other predator, and they will prey on the most vulnerable.
You have rights, but many police will not respect your rights.
You have the right to be in a public place and to observe police activity.
If the police stop someone, you can STOP AND WATCH.
Maintain a reasonable distance, and if a cop threatens to arrest you, explain that you don't want to interfere, but that you have the right to observe their actions.
Write down officers names, badge numbers, and car number.
Cops should give you this information when asked.
You have the right to know their identity.
Write down the time, date, and place of the incident.
Ask if the person is being arrested, and on what charge.
Get names of witnesses and how to contact them.
Try to get the name of the arrestee, but only if they have already given it to the police.
Write down all the details as soon as possible.
In case of police violence, remain calm and urge the police to be calm and nonviolent.
Note: Police can arrest someone they believe is "interfering" with their actions.
Maintain a reasonable distance, and if a cop threatens to arrest you, explain that you don't want to interfere, but that you have the right to observe their actions.
If the police stop you:
Ask, "Am I free to go?”
If not, you are being detained.
If yes, walk away.
Ask, "Can you explain why you are detaining me?”
To stop you, the officer must have specific reasons to suspect your involvement in a specific crime (not just a guess or a stereotype).
It is recommeded that, for everyone’s safety, you do not resist physically.
Remember names and badge numbers of officers involved.
If a cop tries to search your home, your car, or your person, say repeatedly that you do not consent to the search.
It is recommeded that, for everyone’s safety, you do not resist physically.
If the police arrest you:
Say repeatedly, "I don't want to talk until my lawyer is present."
Even if your rights aren't read, refuse to talk until your lawyer/public defender arrives.
If the police abuse you or violate your rights, write down details of the incident immediately.
Photograph your injuries and get a medical report describing them.
Psuedo-Science
PSUEDO-SCIENCE
Although the statistics recently collected by the government suggest that only 20% of “chronically homeless” people, which make up only 10% of the homeless population, have “serious mental illnesses,” Sandi Paris, former Executive Director of the Arcata Endeavor, asserts in her letter to the Homeless Task Farce that as much as 50% of Arcata’s “homeless” population are “struggling with mental illness.”
Why would she MISREPRESENT Arcata’s unhoused population as “mentally ill?” Well, it could mean big bucks for those who receive grant money based on how many “chronically homeless” and “mentally ill” people they report having in their community.
But how could someone pull off this grand illusion and fool the good people of Arcata into allowing their houseless neighbors to be labeled “mentally ill,” and possibly even forcibly detained and drugged by the “authorities?”
Well, all you have to do is get Arcata’s “friendly” institution of “higher learning,” meaning Humboldt State University, to conduct a “study” which finds out whatever you want it to! And thus HSU’s Homeless Service Plan is born...
Ending Chronic Homelessness Strategies for Action
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Report from the Secretary’s Work Group on Ending Chronic Homelessness
March 2003
This report is available on the Internet at:http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/homelessness/strategies03/
“Longitudinal analyses of the service users confirmed important distinctions among homeless persons that had first been noted by the Institute of Medicine in 1988. Specifically, the group is not homogeneous and three important subgroups regularly appear:
temporarily homeless — persons who experience only one spell of homelessness, usually short, and who are not seen again by the homeless assistance system;
episodically homeless — those who use the system with intermittent frequency, but usually for short periods; and
chronically homeless — those with a protracted homeless experience, often a year or longer, or whose spells in the homeless assistance system are both frequent and long.
chronically homeless — those with a protracted homeless experience, often a year or longer, or whose spells in the homeless assistance system are both frequent and long.
These subgroups emerge from actual utilization patterns in numerous cities and show relatively similar distributions: Approximately 80 percent of users are temporarily homeless, 10 percent are episodic, and 10 percent are chronic.”
Chapter 2, page 9.
http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/homelessness/strategies03/ch.htm#ch2
National Mental Health Information CenterArticle location: http://www.mentalhealth.samhsa.gov/publications/allpubs/SMA04-3870/default.asp
“The estimated 200,000 people who experience chronic homelessness tend to have disabling health and behavioral health problems. Recent estimates suggest that at least 40 percent have substance use disorders, 25 percent have some form of physical disability or disabling health condition, and 20 percent have serious mental illnesses (Culhane, 2001).”
http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/homelessness/strategies03/ch.htm#ch2
National Mental Health Information CenterArticle location: http://www.mentalhealth.samhsa.gov/publications/allpubs/SMA04-3870/default.asp
“The estimated 200,000 people who experience chronic homelessness tend to have disabling health and behavioral health problems. Recent estimates suggest that at least 40 percent have substance use disorders, 25 percent have some form of physical disability or disabling health condition, and 20 percent have serious mental illnesses (Culhane, 2001).”
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
why does the Co-op still sell coke?
Why does the COOP still sell COKE?
by AP press (“Arcata Plazoid”)
Although the Co-op Affairs Committee has been repeatedly informed of Coca-Cola’s human rights violations (including murder) and environmental trespasses in Columbia and India, the Coop still sells COKE and ODWALLA (which is owned by Coca-Cola).
But, Why?
Well, I asked a Co-op representative, and he said that it was because people still buy it! He also said that if the AFL-CIO supported the boycott, then the Co-op would also. Doing a little research, I found out that the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council resolved to support the campaign to demand that Coca-Cola be held accountable for collusion with paramilitary terrorists in Columbia, and other human rights abuses (http://www.killercoke.org/pdf/sblcres.pdf).
Support the South Bay AFL-CIO and stand in solidarity for the rights of workers not to be tortured and murdered in Columbia or anywhere else, even if the Co-op won’t.
by AP press (“Arcata Plazoid”)
Although the Co-op Affairs Committee has been repeatedly informed of Coca-Cola’s human rights violations (including murder) and environmental trespasses in Columbia and India, the Coop still sells COKE and ODWALLA (which is owned by Coca-Cola).
But, Why?
Well, I asked a Co-op representative, and he said that it was because people still buy it! He also said that if the AFL-CIO supported the boycott, then the Co-op would also. Doing a little research, I found out that the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council resolved to support the campaign to demand that Coca-Cola be held accountable for collusion with paramilitary terrorists in Columbia, and other human rights abuses (http://www.killercoke.org/pdf/sblcres.pdf).
Support the South Bay AFL-CIO and stand in solidarity for the rights of workers not to be tortured and murdered in Columbia or anywhere else, even if the Co-op won’t.
Letter from tad
“I tramp a perpetual journey.” Walt Whitman, a bum who only wrote one book, wrote these words and nothing could ring more true in my heart. Was Whitman wrong, and therefore a fault in me? Henry David Thoreau wrote: “None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage of what we call voluntary poverty.” Is Thoreau deserving of our scorn? Am I? “The birds of the sky have their nests, the foxes their dens, but I the son of man, have no place to lay my head” Jesus the Nazarene said. Was Jesus guilty because of the path he chose? Am I?
I’ve always believed that the chosen non-participators are few in numbers – many are called, few are chosen. I also believe if it seemed righteous to dress like clowns, society would be pretty much the same with bright orange hair. Those who wish to minimize their footprint on this world, pursue a higher calling and resist the evil that always rears its ugly head, greed, are known by the fruit they bare. These people for whom they do not fight wars for oil, nor build nuclear power plants for, might provide a glimpse of solutions to the worlds problems.
The true spiritual wanderer in the 21st century is viewed the same as any run-away slave of human history. They won’t work to make any employer rich, nor will they buy property for the landlords, nor pay taxes for wars - wars for oil, wars on drugs, wars on the poor and wars on the homeless.
The peaceful make easy targets for those who wish to reprogram them, while using them as scapegoats. They wish to make the reprogramming as gentle as possible, they persuade, then they bribe, then they scare, then they medicate, then they torture, then they enslave, but if you don’t become the good citizens, they believe you’re not, then they genocide.
God made the earth for peoples to live on. Greed and fear took it away from them. All land, public as well as private, has been privatized. One man can live while another must make way? The right to sleep has been systematically stolen from those who need commons to sleep, at the same time that need is at its highest levels – ever! These people are not the cause of your problems; those are of a more systematic nature. These peoples are a benefit to the entire planet by reducing and non-use of what is already beginning to run out. We are not only losing our right to sleep, but also our very right to Be. The right to Be is protected under the Freedom of Religion clause, of the First Amendment, of the Bill of Rights, of the Constitution of the United States of America, and ordained by God as our birthright.
I mean no harm to any sentient being, in fact I have a theory: lets prosper together. If I did desire to “get a job”, as it has been suggested, I would start a business selling futons or computers or some other product. I know that a mere 10% of a million dollars is more then half of a hundred thousand, so I would make my money in volume. I would open in the least expensive part of town; but it would be worth the extra two-minute commute in savings. I could guarantee quality service, because I would pay living wages and health benefits to my co-workers. I would free up my time to do more useful things, like recycling, by building in self-sustainability leading to an employee buyout. I would be a philanthropist and give away every cent I earned to the poor and the hungry and the bruised. So if I know this about myself then why should I put Arcata businesses out just to end up outdoors doing what I do now? When it comes to the theory of climbing up my fellow brothers and sisters backs and shoving them under my feet to get to the top, I understand it all too well; for you see I would of sold my soul for wealth once, but for blessed redemption.
Please don’t pretend to know a book by its cover. Some have said; “judge not lest you be judged”. The only reason there is any semblance of freedom in this world is because there is a group, a peoples, who don’t believe in oppression at all. David also said my heart=song when he wrote; “Thou has heard the desires of the humble: thou will prepare their heart, thou will cause their ear to hear: to judge the fatherless and the oppressed, that the man of the earth will no longer oppress”.
Love eternal
tad
I’ve always believed that the chosen non-participators are few in numbers – many are called, few are chosen. I also believe if it seemed righteous to dress like clowns, society would be pretty much the same with bright orange hair. Those who wish to minimize their footprint on this world, pursue a higher calling and resist the evil that always rears its ugly head, greed, are known by the fruit they bare. These people for whom they do not fight wars for oil, nor build nuclear power plants for, might provide a glimpse of solutions to the worlds problems.
The true spiritual wanderer in the 21st century is viewed the same as any run-away slave of human history. They won’t work to make any employer rich, nor will they buy property for the landlords, nor pay taxes for wars - wars for oil, wars on drugs, wars on the poor and wars on the homeless.
The peaceful make easy targets for those who wish to reprogram them, while using them as scapegoats. They wish to make the reprogramming as gentle as possible, they persuade, then they bribe, then they scare, then they medicate, then they torture, then they enslave, but if you don’t become the good citizens, they believe you’re not, then they genocide.
God made the earth for peoples to live on. Greed and fear took it away from them. All land, public as well as private, has been privatized. One man can live while another must make way? The right to sleep has been systematically stolen from those who need commons to sleep, at the same time that need is at its highest levels – ever! These people are not the cause of your problems; those are of a more systematic nature. These peoples are a benefit to the entire planet by reducing and non-use of what is already beginning to run out. We are not only losing our right to sleep, but also our very right to Be. The right to Be is protected under the Freedom of Religion clause, of the First Amendment, of the Bill of Rights, of the Constitution of the United States of America, and ordained by God as our birthright.
I mean no harm to any sentient being, in fact I have a theory: lets prosper together. If I did desire to “get a job”, as it has been suggested, I would start a business selling futons or computers or some other product. I know that a mere 10% of a million dollars is more then half of a hundred thousand, so I would make my money in volume. I would open in the least expensive part of town; but it would be worth the extra two-minute commute in savings. I could guarantee quality service, because I would pay living wages and health benefits to my co-workers. I would free up my time to do more useful things, like recycling, by building in self-sustainability leading to an employee buyout. I would be a philanthropist and give away every cent I earned to the poor and the hungry and the bruised. So if I know this about myself then why should I put Arcata businesses out just to end up outdoors doing what I do now? When it comes to the theory of climbing up my fellow brothers and sisters backs and shoving them under my feet to get to the top, I understand it all too well; for you see I would of sold my soul for wealth once, but for blessed redemption.
Please don’t pretend to know a book by its cover. Some have said; “judge not lest you be judged”. The only reason there is any semblance of freedom in this world is because there is a group, a peoples, who don’t believe in oppression at all. David also said my heart=song when he wrote; “Thou has heard the desires of the humble: thou will prepare their heart, thou will cause their ear to hear: to judge the fatherless and the oppressed, that the man of the earth will no longer oppress”.
Love eternal
tad
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