Morrison Pierce and Chance Isbell: “March Dies”/”Pandora’s Box”

Morrison Pierce and Chance Isbell at CORK

Individually, Morrison Pierce and Chance Isbell have crafted two of the more unique brands in this region’s art scene, spanning a range of media in various parts of the country—Pierce as an a painter, musician and maker of short-films, and Isbell as an illustrator and one of the area’s most in-demand tattoo artists. Collectively, they are working together on a new project centered in and around the One Spark event running April 17-21 in downtown Jacksonville. I spoke with them at the CORK Arts District building in Riverside, a place where both men are fixtures and facilitators of the facility’s functions. Each man maintains their own studio spaces in the building.

CORK plays host to their “March Dies” show, which opens on Friday night, March 29. Both men will be displaying some of their newest work for sale, while also offering a variety of items for a silent auction. Live music during and after the show will be provided by Creep City, Burnt Hair (aka Matthew Moyer) and Pierce’s own group, Scared Rabbits. A $10 donation is requested, but not required. All proceeds raised will go to fund the installation project Pierce and Isbell are planning for the epic One Spark crowdfunding event in April. “Pandora’s Box” (# 598) will consist of a large wooden frame with plexiglass panels, creating a large box for attendees to walk through. The artists will use paints to give the box the feel of a stained-glass window, but rendered in their own inimitable style.

I sat down with Pierce in his studio on the 27^th; video of the session can be found on YouTube. He explained that a lot of his motivation/inspiration for doing the piece relates to challenging the sociopolitical status quo, the quiet complacency that has led Americans to embrace extremism while handing over their own civil liberties, all for the sake of fighting an enemy that is spectral at best, and illusory at worse. Having witnessed, first-hand, the chance in people’s attitudes over just the past decade since our disastrous drive into war, Pierce feels obliged to help spur activism through his art.

Wrestling with Fools: the IOC exposes their business

Kurt Angle, Olympic gold medal winner, 1996

For almost all of its existence, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been a fundamentally controversial organization. From the blatant racism of the Avery Brundage era, to the hookers-and-cocaine taint affixed to the affiliates of Juan Antonio Samaranch, not to mention its historic Keystone Kops approach to doping and overall political cowardice on matters great and small, this venerable and, sadly, irreplaceable organization has been known to the public more for what it has done wrong (which is plenty) than for the many good things it has done right. And that’s a shame, because the Olympics is one of the very few things in this world that humanity has generally been able to rally around, suspend hostilities and truly enjoy as a species, rather than a collection of corrupt nations.

Now, in its 118th year of shady operation, the IOC has actually managed to render a decision so wrong-headed, malicious and foolhardy that it comes very close to exceeding that group’s already pathetic standard. On Wednesday, February 12, the IOC made what may be, arguably, the worst decision ever made by any governing body in the entire recorded history of organized sports when they announced that, starting with the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad in 2020, wrestling will not longer an official Olympic sport. And before you ask: Yes, that is exactly what I just said. Now, take a moment, wherever you are, and let the language linger in your mind for a bit…

WRESTLING, among the world’s oldest sports, and one of the core events comprising the very foundation of the grand and glorious Olympic tradition from almost its very inception in 776 BC, is not suddenly inconsistent with the IOC’s vision. Obviously, this has a lot of people really angry, starting with the international wrestling community itself. The IOC, for some ambiguous reason, felt obliged to discontinue a sport, and it came down to five candidates: Wrestling, Modern Pentathalon, Badminton, Table-tennis and Taekwondo. The elimination of wrestling constitutes an especially bitter blow to women, who’d lobbied hard to acquire medal status for women’s wrestling, and only got it in 2004. (So far, the Japanese have dominated in that field.)

If it stands, this decision will in my opinion have a disproportionately negative impact on the United States, which has always been among the dominant countries for Olympic wrestling, and which has built up a massive, complex human infrastructure around its amateur wrestling scene. For amateur wrestlers–indeed, for most of the leading Olympic sports–that gold medal is the Holy Grail for thousands of young athletes, who work like animals to develop the physical skill and mental discipline required of elite-level athletes. They labor for as much as 20 years, just to get the chance to win a medal, which carries a small honorarium but no career stability. Wrestlers aren’t the kind of athletes who often end up on Wheaties boxes or doing commercials for Gatorade or Subway; that gold medal is not a gold-mine for them. At best, Olympic-level wrestlers can hope to parlay their accomplishments into success in either professional wrestling or MMA, which many experts have claimed is even harder than getting into the NFL or NBA. With the prospect of Olympic glory removed, it’s anyone’s guess as to how chilling the effect may be on the amateur scene here, and worldwide, for that matter; it’s doubtful that the IOC gave that matter any consideration at all.

The end of wrestling as an Olympic sport may also be potentially awful for Olympic business. Wrestling is generally a popular sport for TV audiences, especially in the United States, Japan and parts of the Middle East–certainly not on the level of marquee sports like track and field, swimming and women’s gymnastics, but considerable. Obviously, I’m biased, being a longtime fan of all the combat sports, but I think the blow is already being felt among general audiences, as well. Wrestling is a big heartland activity here; in states like Ohio, Iowa, Oklahoma and Minnesota, wrestling may be even more popular than football. The names of men like Dan Gable, Danny Hodge, Verne Gagne, Bruce Baumgartner, Rulon Gardner, Alexander Karelin, David Schultz, Chris Taylor, the Iron Sheik and, of course Kurt Angle, reverberate in the living memory of a large segment of the population like demigods, more mythos than man after a point. The termination of this tradition is an abomination, and like any rube in pursuit of combat against a skilled wrestler, this decision is unlikely to stand for very long.

Kurt Angle, 11-time world champion pro-wrestler, and counting…

sheltonhull@gmail.com

Preview: “Music For Meows”, Feb. 16

This is the flyer. You don’t need one, because you’re reading about it already…

The third annual Music For Meows concert is being held next Saturday, February 16, at Jack Rabbits in San Marco, and I’d totally forgotten until Heather Bruce (whom I’ve known for years) hit me with a flyer at Birdies the other night. Well, she didn’t literally hit me, in the projectile sense–she slid it into the space between our drinks on the table. Ms. Bruce has been volunteering with the sponsors, the Stray Cat Saviors Group, since the event’s inception in 2011, and she counts it among the most rewarding experiences of her life. The purpose of the concert is to raise money for organizations working to reduce the number of stray, homeless and feral cats in Northeast Florida, with the ultimate goal of making Jacksonville a strictly no-kill city–certainly a noble undertaking, albeit formidable.

As to the event itself: “Music For Meows” will comprise a silent auction alongside the actual concert, which features a diverse sampling of the region’s musical fare, including the maniac metal-men of Status Faux, the ferocious folk stylings of Lauren Fincham, the ethereal electro-pop of Shoni and the balls-out bombast of All Night Wolves. The Pinz, Xgeezer, Dixie Rodeo and FFN are also playing, while I know nothing about them at present, I’m familiar enough the artists cited to be sure it’s all well-worth the $10 cover, which goes to help the little kitty-cats, anyway, so it’s money well-spent in any case. The organizers are partnering with local groups like First Coast No More Homeless Pets. (To buy tickets online, click this link.) As the kids say, “Meow!”

“She Who Is Without Sin”: Notes on Angela Corey

She Who Is Without Sin

Angela Corey’s Folio dis merits greater scrutiny

[Full disclosure: I voted for Angela Corey in 2008, and will probably do so again.]

As a general rule, writers spend Sunday morning asleep—phone calls sent in their direction are, in a word, doomed. But there are exceptions. Case in point: May 20. This writer was enjoying the only day of the week with no pressing business, when a reader called up at 9:33am to report that perpetually-embattled State Attorney Angela Corey had taken the opportunity to opine with vigor on Folio Weekly while appearing WJXT’s Sunday chat-fest, “This Week In Jacksonville”. Because, of course, the best time to criticize someone is when they’re asleep.

In the pro-wrestling business, it’s called “cutting a promo”; in her business, it’s called “hearsay”. Without naming Folio specifically, she noted that “[I]t’s a small paper, not many readers because they aren’t saying much, no one buys it. In fact, they have to give it away for free.” First of all, all that is fair game. She had every right to say those things; Folio hasn’t been exactly nice to her in its reporting, which is a consistent complication of telling the truth. Any critiques she has are worth listening to; in fact, her every public utterance is always worthy of intense focus—for entertainment value, if nothing else. But, given that an elected official was willing to characterize this publication using words designed to denigrate and delegitimize its work, one feels compelled to analyze her statement in greater detail—especially as it offers some useful insight into the thinking of Northeast Florida’s leading legal light.

When Corey says Folio has “not many readers”, that’s an impossible charge to rebut. Our current readership stands at just over 127,000, and like any business the publisher would like to see that number increase, because there is certainly room to grow. As for the idea that we’re “not saying much”, the industry insiders who give out Association of Alternative Newsweeklies awards tend to disagree, several times a year, for as long as we can remember. However, if she meant to imply that our readership makes us somehow obscure or not credible, she should note that 127,000+ readers equals double her vote total in 2008. There were 495,316 registered voters that year; almost 80% didn’t even show up, so her mandate basically amounts to about 8% of the city’s population—which may explain why she draws so much heat.

Is Folio Weekly the most-read print publication in Northeast Florida? Certainly not. That honor goes to the Florida Times-Union, which has been bleeding both staff and money for over a decade, leaving a franchise worth, at best, half of what it was 20 years ago. Nothing wrong with that; thinning-out a paper before sale is a lot like fattening an animal before slaughter. Is it given away for free? Of course—that has been the alt-weekly tradition since the industry’s flagship, the Village Voice, was founded in 1955. Many publications in this region are free, because they have developed a business model that allows them to do so. Folio can’t just raise the cover price to close gaps in revenue; it has to actually make a product people want.

While the daily papers are like commercial music, overpriced and trading on bad-faith, losing money on CD’s every year, the alt-weeklies are like vinyl records, slowly but steadily picking up market share every year, while stimulating the kind of broader changes needed in the industry. Alt-weeklies are showing print media how to remain relevant and vital in the Internet age, and the lack of a cover price makes their achievements all the more explicit. And during an era where even alt-weeklies have lost readers, Folio has only gained in circulation. Our coverage of Angela Corey’s hijinks has certainly helped—thank you!

It’s hardly surprising that Corey has little love for Folio, as our coverage hasn’t always put her in the best light, but one would think she could at least appreciate some of the things we have in common. We both began serving this city in the 1980s, we are both local institutions, and we both share the contempt of the political establishment. Despite whatever flaws she may have, the fact is that Corey never had a chance to prove herself; the basic caricature that most citizens mistake for the real Angela Corey was not created by the media—it was created by her fellow attorneys, then leaked to the media so we could feign loyalty while the sharpened daggers stayed firmly tucked into their sleeves. But when the next election comes, look for them to unbutton their French cuffs and do their best impression of the Roman Senate.

The election that installed her as State Attorney was a debacle. It marked the dissolution of Harry Shorstein’s legacy, as he came off as someone without the authority to ensure a smooth transition of power, which would have sent a strong message at a time when this city’s identity is built largely around violent crime. Instead of running a clean campaign and presenting a unified front to the bad guys, Shorstein’s underlings, Corey and Jay Plotkin, took the “scorched-earth” approach, which ensured that the credibility of whomever won would already be compromised by the time they took over. If the job were about competence and credibility, our State Attorney would be Bernie de la Rionda, who is not only undefeated in murder cases but has no record at all of saying ridiculous things into live microphones.

For voters, it was a harsh lesson in the reality of our judicial system, in which the only thing that matters is who your friends are. If you have the right lawyer, who knows the right people [names omitted, for legal reasons], you’re getting off, no matter what you did. But if you’re one of the poor saps stuck with a public defender, you might as well just hang yourself—and some of them do, allegedly. It’s not Corey’s fault that she was put in such a bad position, and it must have sucked to know how little regard her own mentor and colleagues had for her. She purged her office of veteran prosecutors because they backed the wrong candidate; some of them are now working against her, in the private sector.

The Marissa Alexander situation is a case in point. If Corey is so adamant that justice was done in this case, and that the 20-year sentence was justified, then why was she willing to let Ms. Alexander plea-out to a three-year bid? Same reason that many of the killings here are done by people who should have still been locked-up for previous violent crimes: Because justice serves political interests, not the other way around. Corey’s appointment to run the prosecution of George Zimmerman was, too, motivated by politics: Our weak, embattled governor (who’s only there because of the fecklessness and treachery of state Democrats) made his smartest move to date by picking someone with even more of a knack for controversy than he, to serve as the scapegoat for the inevitable fiasco. Put simply, Angela Corey is his Katherine Harris.

All of this is by way of clarification. At the end of the day, it’s no big deal what Angela Corey says about Folio Weekly, or what Folio Weekly says about her. It’s about a jail that’s almost full, with no possible short-term solution short of giving more plea-bargains to more violent thugs, so they can get out earlier and kill people sooner. It’s about a courthouse that the Mayor and judiciary are treating like a child in a custody hearing between two drunk parents. It’s about a citizenry that feels vulnerable and unprotected, and a criminal class that feels empowered to violate people by the perceived weakness and corruption of our justice system. It’s also about a tourist market, worth millions to local businesses every year, whose decision to mostly bypass Northeast Florida is partly based on what they see of us in national media—which is to say, a steady stream of preventable tragedy, and a nonexistent response to it. It’s not about Angela Corey. The sooner she realizes that, the better off we’ll all be.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; May 20, 2012

“Justice Deflected: Notes on the Marissa Alexander case

[For an upcoming issue of Folio Weekly.]

Justice Deflected:

“Stand Your Ground” runs aground in the Marissa Alexander case. 

Marissa Alexander owned a 9mm semiautomatic handgun for nearly five years prior to March of 2010, and by the time most of you are reading this, Marissa Alexander will have already begun serving a 20-year prison term for the only shot she ever fired with it. What she thought was a “warning shot” to stop her abusive boyfriend from coming toward her was, in fact, a lethal error that has destroyed her life, and that of her three children.

Had she just killed the guy, she would probably be walking free under terms of “Stand Your Ground”, and that is why her case has suddenly attracted such attention in the wake of L’Affair Trayvon. Members of Alexander’s family, flanked by supporters, have been holding rallies on her behalf; the most recent happened in the courthouse parking lot on May 30. It was booked for six, but crowds had already gathered an hour earlier on the Riverwalk, 100 yards away. Turns out they were there for Yacht Week; if the mezzo-soprano following our anthem with “God Save the Queen” was no clue, the wall of pinched white faces was. This reporter was, in fact, the only point of overlap between the two groups.

Local news-crews had already done their remotes for the 6pm broadcast, before things had started; they were nice enough to stick around for a while, turning their cameras on here and there. The two cameramen, a teacher from FSCJ and my bike-riding bartender friend were the only Caucasians in a crowd numbering almost 50, which is to be expected. There were hymns, prayers, lots of nice words and good Christian fellowship, none of which will save her. It was not a time or place for asking hard questions, like: Why didn’t Alexander’s ex-military father just shoot the guy who was beating his daughter?

Sentencing is scheduled for Thursday, May 10. Any mercy, reason or compassion Judge James Daniel might or might not have is negated by political expediency: Mandatory minimums were designed to win elections, not the fight against crime. Disproportionately high sentences handed down to small-time criminals keep the facilities full and allow pols to play crime-fighter, while the real dirt is done out of public view. Unless the judge accepts the motion for retrial filed by her attorney, Keith Cobbin, it’s a wrap.

With stories like these, context flies at you from all directions. Walking down Bay St., after making a loop around the lot, a headline leapt out from a row of newspaper boxes: “Sluggish Economy Fuels Domestic Violence, Police Report”, from that day’s USA Today. It followed on a survey taken of some 700 law-enforcement agencies by the Police Executive Research Forum; the headline reflects the view of 56% of respondents, up from just 40% in 2010. The CDC estimates that 1.3 million women are victims of domestic violence every year. These incidents occurred at 111,681 times in Florida in 2011, according to the FDLE, but consider CDC’s claim that three-fourth of such incidents don’t even get reported, and we’re talking more like half a million. (With 7,604 reported incidents, Duval County is only third-worst in the state.) A woman in this country is attacked by an intimate partner every nine seconds; at least three of them are killed every day.

Domestic violence is estimated to cost this country nearly $6 billion a year–$4 billion for medical care, and another two for the 64 million productive work-hours lost from victims who miss work because their injuries can’t be concealed. At least ten million children have seen this stuff happen right before their eyes, including Marissa Alexander’s; the step-children who saw the shooting are, statistically, twice as likely to become abusers themselves someday, which is bad news for somebody out there. (Chris Brown is the most obvious example of how the “cycle of violence” concept plays out in real-life.)

There is an old Chinese saying: “He who will not listen, will have to feel.” That is the story of Marissa Alexander, in a nutshell. The woman’s life was hard enough, but soon it will be ruined beyond repair, simply because she made the same fatal mistake made by countless women over the years—she showed mercy and compassion to an abusive man. She could have fled into the street and taken her beating there. That she fired into the ceiling, instead of into the sternum, suggests to some that maybe she didn’t feel so threatened, after all.

Had she, in those desperate moments, done what any man would do in her situation—fixed the gun squarely on the attacker’s head and put a bullet right between the eyes, where it belonged—odds are that we would have never known who she was. We wouldn’t be writing about her, and you wouldn’t be reading about her. At best, her story might have been added to the accordion-file of “good news” about guns, next to all those old-timers who stood up to Hitler, and had no patience for some body bluffin’ street urchin who spent too much time listening to the wrong records. The NRA and affiliated lobbies like touting these tales, because it’s the only thing that balances the fact that NRA-licensed gun dealers knowingly sell weapons to criminals.

I would suggest that Alexander was simply blinded by her emotions, the same emotions that kept her in that terrible position, like thousands of other women here in Florida. As I write this (and it’s not even 11am), there’s probably a woman getting her ass kicked in all 67 counties of the state, and odds are that they will tell no one. Over the years, I’ve spoken with many dozens of victims of rape and/or domestic violence, and the vast majority of them never went to the authorities, because the pointlessness of such an endeavor has become the stuff of legend. The social cost of going public is, frankly, punitive, and everyone knows the odds of conviction are slim—the dynamic is about as “top-down” as you can get.

Florida now enjoys a national reputation built mostly around pills, dead children and mediocre football. Well, games are decided on the field, and addiction fights occur in the mind and soul. The continued abuse of innocents is a slap in the face to every single citizen of the state—and those who you saying “Oh wait, this has nothing to do with me” are the worst of all. This is a state of transients, dilettantes and northeastern washouts who come here because, if you can’t make it in Florida, suicide is your last option. The scum has risen because they were allowed to, and they’re just getting started.

More details can be had from justiceformarissa.blogspot.com, and the @Justice4Marissa Twitter feed. Ultimately, the lesson of all this is: Ladies, don’t breed with men who beat you. That such a statement might prove controversial nowadays only reinforces the point. Alexander never learned that, so now she’ll learn in prison, while the daughter she bore him (and whose pictures set off the incident) will be raised by him—really badly, one would guess. But the girl’s already been gifted with a perfect name for the life that lies ahead: “Rianna”. You just cannot make this stuff up!

sheltonhull@gmail.com; May 1, 2012

Notes on Chris Brown, Rihanna and notable woman-beaters of recent history…

Anyone who’s spent any portion of the past couple of years perusing either my Facebook page (arguably the greatest of its kind, ever) or my recently award-winning Twitter feed (thanks again, Jax Mag!) can discern two facts straightaway: 1) I love pro-wrestling; 2) I hate Chris Brown. If I need to explain why, I can only offer congratulations on getting out of your vegetative state, or GITMO, whichever applies to your specific case. My fiery distaste for this glorified minstrel was inflamed yet again by his feuds with WWE Champion CM Punk and country singer Miranda Lambert (both of whom could probably kick his ass), as well as the news that he’s collaborated on two new tracks by Rihanna, who of course is best-known for being repeatedly punched in the face by Chris Brown, and not really minding that much.

To each his own—and these are two peas in a pod. Whereas Brown has spent the past few years trying to balance his need for public absolution against his obvious inability to change the mentality that got him that situation to begin with, Rihanna has spent that time glorifying her abuser and his type in songs, videos and elaborate stage shows built around the single unifying theme of all of Rihanna’s music: S&M. The world erred in viewing that incident as domestic violence, and Rihanna as a helpless victim of an abruptly abusive male. In reality, the beating was just one small, public part of a long-term sadomasochistic relationship between two people who grew up being abused, and whose profession requires them to project self-destructive messages to the urban fans who, being rubes in the most fundamental sense, take their gimmicks seriously. Their job is to help normalize this shit, and make it cool.

The Chris Brown camp—aka the “I don’t hit girls, but if any girl ever gives me a halfway plausible excuse, I look forward to doing so” crowd—makes a very good point in his defense: He did nothing unusual in the larger context of pop-culture. To single him out is unfair, and hypocritical. Brown is not the first famous guy caught beating the crap out a woman, but he is the first who’s ever had to apologize more than once, if only because there were pictures.

A short list would fill this column; a full and detailed list would fill this entire issue, and it’s surprising no one’s actually tried that yet. After looking into the subject, I was disturbed to see that many of my favorite artists, writers and musicians hit their wives, girlfriends, or even strangers; some are well-known, others less so. This list is meant to include only convictions or plea bargains, admitted incidents, incidents that occurred in front of witnesses, or individuals who have been accused by multiple women.

Marv Albert, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Chris Benoit, Big Pun, Biggie Smalls, Riddick Bowe, Jackson Browne, Jim Brown, Bobby Brown, Glenn Campbell, Jose Canseco, Nick Carter, John Daly, Miles Davis, Elijah Dukes, Eminem, Mel Gibson, Jimi Hendrix, Terence Howard, Joe Jackson, Rick James, Sean Penn, Jason Kidd, Sugar Ray Leonard, Lex Luger, Sugar Ray Robinson, Tommy Lee, John Lennon, Norman Mailer, Moses Malone, Steve McQueen, Shawne Merriman, Harry Morgan, Mos Def, Bill Murray, Tito Ortiz, Pablo Picasso, Kirby Puckett, Busta Rhymes, Axl Rose, Randy Savage, George C. Scott, Charlie Sheen, Christian Slater, Dick Slater, Wesley Snipes (accused of beating Halle Berry), Phil Spector, Kevin Sullivan, Tone Loc, Stalin, Daryl Strawberry, Hunter S. Thompson, Ike Turner, Mike Tyson, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Sid Vicious, Yanni. And you know who was one of the most notorious woman-beaters in recent memory? Mr. “peace and love” himself–John Lennon! Hell, even Ric Flair has been accused of domestic violence. (Note: For legal reasons, and to save space, no local examples are cited here, but everyone knows who I’m talking about.)

What can we learn from all this? Nothing.

Let’s also note that the Chris Brown/Rihanna debacle points to a common problem in dealing with domestic violence: What do you do when the woman forgives and embraces her accuser? Rihanna fans who were disgusted by the beating she took have now been forced, by her, to put money into the pocket of the man who did it. All her so-called “friends” and family who went to her birthday party just a couple weeks ago were compelled not only to tolerate Brown’s presence as he nuzzled up to her, but also to reportedly sign confidentiality agreements saying they wouldn’t tell the media he was there—and they did it!

And, lest the world come down too hard on Rihanna’s deplorable behavior in all this (which sets a new low, even in this category), let’s not forget that things could be worse. The example of Halle Berry looms, pointing toward her future, in a best-case scenario. At worst, well, one shudders to think. Hopefully she does, as well.

OccupyJax: The End of the Beginning

Much like music (especially jazz), politics has been an obsession of mine since adolescence, which now covers a period of nearly 20 years. And in that whole time, I’d say that the first Occupy Jacksonville rally on October 8, 2011 was without question one of the greatest days in my life as a political junkie. The part of me that once scoffed at Hunter S. Thompson’s assertion that politics is “Better Than Sex” can now almost appreciate his sentiments, having seen that movement develop over the past six months or so, and the tremendous upside it’s had since.

Within a few weeks, members of Occupy had decided to take up the full-time, 24/7 encampments that defined the movement nationally, voting almost unanimously to begin the Occupation downtown on November 5, 2011. The four-month anniversary of the Occupation’s start arrived on March 5, but by that point there was no Occupation to celebrate, because the General Assembly voted the evening of March 3 to break down the camp two days earlier. I walked by, during a break in the Warehouse Studios benefit show at Thief in the Knight, and found out shortly after. I sat with four of the leaders at Burrito Gallery, debriefing over tacos and beer. It wasn’t a sad time—more like watching a friend’s graduation.

OccupyJax was one of the last of its kind in this country; where other cities saw the end weeks ago, ours stuck around long enough to do what no one ever expected was possible—to end it on their terms. Having run the most progressive political campaign this state has seen yet in this century, I can appreciate the patience and stamina that entailed. (Funny: While writing this column, at 6:23am on the morning of the 5^th, news broke via WJXT that Occupiers in West Palm Beach had chained themselves to an old courthouse building downtown—further proof that, no matter what the haters say, they’re absolutely serious.)

So, what was accomplished in this stage of the movement, besides pedagogy? Well, it offered a disgusting display of widespread, coordinated police misconduct, which has been called out by professionals in that industry–like the police chief of Seattle during the WTO protests of 1999; the actual inventor of pepper-spray (who personally trained 10,000 officers to train most of the others) went on the radio to cite multiple cases of his own directions regard the use of these chemicals being disregarded. Had he not done that, we’d probably not know that the tear-gas being used to brutalize pro-democracy protesters in Egypt was actually supplied by US corporations—a useful tidbit.

It showed folks that even our most liberal politicians aren’t acting quite as progressively as their supporters might “hope”, and that conservatives are willing to violate the Constitution if it means suppressing political dissent. Occupy should have been the beginning of a progressive surge that stymies the upward trajectory of, how you say, “lunatic right-wingers”, in this state and nationwide. Instead it stands right now as another example of how Democrats have kept a defensive, compliant posture instead of challenging for those big-money spots the President needs to implement the policies he’s promised.

And it provided many thousands of people (especially young people) with direct, useful experience in political science, which they can carry on into the high-schools, colleges and professional careers; it’s the birth of the new political elite.  Around the country, friendships were forged, love affairs begun and ended, strengthened and made more complex (in ways surely both good and bad). It won’t be long before the first batch of Occubabies is born; sadly, the first one died, in utero, after its mother was tear-gassed and kicked in the stomach while Occupying Seattle—the movement’s first martyr.

Occupy also generated millions (if not billions) in economic stimulus for most cities where it occurred. Locally, the failed initiative to give $1.25 million in taxpayer money to JP Morgan Chase was stalled-out in large part because of the efforts of OccupyJax, along with Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County and others. Personally, I think it was great for downtown business, but others would certainly disagree.

OccupyOne thing is certain, here and nationally: The end of formal Occupation does not, in any way, mean the end of the movement itself. In fact, they may be now poised to achieve on a level previously unseen in the realm of progressive politics. Having already done the impossible, the next logical step is moving on to the extremely unlikely, and there is no better time than 2012. All the critics, who wanted the Occupiers off the sidewalks so badly, may now end up wishing they had just left well enough alone.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; March 6, 2012

Top Billin’: Sonny Rollins booked for 2012 Jacksonville Jazz Festival.

Mayor Alvin Brown was the star at a press conference held Thursday morning, Feb. 9, to formally announce the 2012 Jacksonville Jazz Festival, which will be held downtown May 24-27. The big news coming out can be summed-up in just two words: “Sonny Rollins”. Jazz fans will need no further embellishment, but for the uninitiated (and becoming a hard-core jazz fan is kind of like an initiation): With the sole exception of Dave Brubeck, Rollins is the world’s greatest living jazz musician, a man whose influence permeates almost the totality of the music in the 60+ years since he first made his name in post-bop New York.

One must note, also, the presence of two other masters among a lineup that is still being finalized: Chick Corea and Terence Blanchard. But the booking of Rollins, who at age 82 does not play concerts that often anymore, and rarely outside the areas more epicentric to the music, is a major coup of historic proportions. He is probably the most important musician to work our festival since those peak years when Dizzy Gillespie headlined multiple festivals toward the end of his life. But that was the ‘80s—a whole different world. The idea of Sonny Rollins appearing in Jacksonville, Florida in 2012 will, for some, be interpreted as a sign of imminent apocalypse; a heavy cynic might wonder if the world is destined to end the day before.

By attaching his name to the festival, Brown does it a service by basically making the festival brand symbiotic with his own. This is a great move, for his own interests, and it also puts a bit of pressure on him to make sure the festival’s long-term momentum is maintained. There were deep initial concerns about its very future coming into this year. Funding for Office of Special Events (which also oversees things like the World of Nations festival and Veterans Day parade) had been in some jeopardy during the last few years of budget battles; while truly significant cuts were not made, the specter of such cuts—and their disastrous effect on the city’s cultural identity—was often invoked by the Peyton administration in its later years.

Those fears, stoked by Peyton, caught fire soon after Brown succeeded him. Those now-infamous staff cuts last year hit the OSE hard, resulting in the elimination of its two top people. Theresa O’Donnell-Price and Christina Langston-Hughes were two of the unsung heroes of city government in the first decade of this century, skillfully implementing the mayor’s mandate to restore the vitality of a festival that had seen better days. Last year’s festival turned out to be their last at the OSE and, headlined by Herbie Hancock and Roy Ayers, one of the best ever. But Brown, at that point less than a month in as Mayor-Elect, was on vacation at the time, so he missed seeing what they could actually do—and within a few months, they were shown the door as unceremoniously as everyone else.

Losing them both, simultaneously, was the biggest blow to the festival as an institution since the scandalous staff cuts at WJCT that led directly to the collapse of the festival under its direction in the late-‘90s. It was a dark day for local jazz fans, that’s for sure, and anxiety about the future has only built-up since. Initial buzz on the 2012 festival has already gone a long way toward assuaging many of these concerns, but more can be done. In a nutshell, there should be a heavy representation of local artists at the festival, the businesses of the Urban Core need to be better-integrated into the overall experience, and the City should take the lead in establishing an even stronger presence for the festival in media, both in terms of social media, as well as trying to strengthen relationships with local and national media.

After WJCT basically washed their hands of the logistics, and the country caught its first taste of the post-9/11 economic instability, it was a gamble to invest public money in the Jazz Festival. (Bear in mind, there are people who oppose its public funding even now, despite the overwhelming evidence of disproportionate upside, in terms of economic impact. If all public monies could generate such direct and visceral return on investment, the whole world would be different right now.) But Peyton did it anyway, in early signs that he was far more moderate than he ever got credit for, and I think we can all agree that the gamble paid off.

It’s entirely likely that, had anyone else become mayor in 2003, the Jacksonville Jazz Festival would have never survived into the 21^st century—the third century of jazz music, which was born in Storyville, New Orleans, in the late 1800s. For this, Peyton will surely someday join Jake Godbold among former mayors enshrined in the festival’s Hall of Fame. At this rate, Brown may end up there, too. He’s got a real gift for the kind of retail politics that work so well in the south, and initiatives like this put those skills out-front.

Having written more about the festival’s modern incarnation than any other reporter (if not all of them, combined), I can say that he’s done the two things I’ve always recommended the political leadership do: 1) Take advantage of the festival’s ability to bridge gaps among citizens, and 2) Bring Sonny Rollins to town. It will be curious to see if the national jazz media gives the festival a bit more hype now; we’ll see about that.

Notes on 9/11, 1998 and the 2012 Election

Notes on 9/11 and the 2012 race

1998 was a long time ago—13 years, to be exact. It was an entirely different world then; the physical dimensions are the same, the topography has been only slightly altered, and the water and air aren’t that much filthier than they were—except in certain parts of China, Mexico and everywhere else. One thing that has changed dramatically, though, is the way people think about the world, especially in the United States and Europe. There were, to be sure, mass quantities of what actor/musician Tricky called “pre-millennium tension”, small wars and mild recessions, and individual concerns always abound, but folks were generally wildly optimistic about what awaited their country and the world in the new century ahead.

“Optimistic” is not the optimal word to describe how people are feeling now. Things have changed a little bit, thanks to 19 men who, on September 11, 2001 used four hijacked planes to set all-time records (in both individual and team categories) for the fastest time a human soul was sent directly to Hell. They didn’t just hijack planes; they hijacked the future of the entire human race, beginning with the United States itself. All the hard work of the post-war era to build the greatest economy ever, the strongest military in history, the most awesome industrial, agricultural and technological force that ever has or ever possibly could exist on this Earth again—all backed by delicate interlocking diplomatic and trade relations that our nation has been developing since the days of Patton—was undone in ten years flat.

How? For years, America’s enemies openly theorized and strategized about how to break our control over their affairs. Eventually, Osama bin Laden and “al-Qaeda” (whatever the hell it actually is) came along and developed a plan to make this country break itself by drawing it into a war of attrition that would a) bleed the US economy, b) drive a wedge between the US and its allies, and c) provide cover for further attacks against other targets. This is not conspiracy theory; these are their own words, but I would advise you against trying to look it up.

It’s highly unlikely that the billionaire guerilla warfare experts did not scout their enemy and figure the context in which their action and the repercussions would occur. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were probably of no strategic value to al-Qaeda at all, other than getting rid of mutual foe Saddam Hussein; they even game-planned for that by placing Zarqawi in Iraq well in advance of the war. No doubt alliances were formed and friendships made in those places, but it’s unlikely that suicidal, homicidal, genocidal madmen would really be all that concerned for collateral damage; they’ve pretty much made that clear.

On the whole, though, holding that territory or protecting the people there was never a priority; the point was to make America spend money and political capital they knew could not be sustained for very long. How did they know? Because everyone in America knew. The need for balanced budgets, to reign-in spending and pay-down debt, to press for peace in the Middle East (while eschewing nation-building) and to crack down on predatory violence in the streets of our own country, was uniformly acknowledged by both nominees in that ridiculous 2000 election, and Bush came into office on a similar track as both presidents before him. But 9/11 put an end to all that.

Now, how exactly does 9/11 this relate to the 2012 presidential election, and what do either of them have to do with the year 1998? Good question. Basically, as the events of 9/11 must necessarily continue to shape the political future of our country, so too should they stand as a window through which can see the past anew. In the years leading up to the 2001, the biggest issue in American politics was the impeachment of Bill Clinton. So fully did this story occupy the business of government, it became a major issue in the 2000 election, by way of a distracting debate on “values” that helped swing the race toward the Bush—which was the point all along. Congressional Republicans never seriously thought removing Clinton was possible, but they correctly figured it could be used as a wedge to weaken Democrats and smooth the way toward an eventual retaking of the White House.

The last years of the Clinton era were helmed by a lame-duck president whose credibility had been sapped so badly that even his ill-fated retaliatory strikes against al-Qaeda in 1998 were dismissed, by many observers, as a distraction from his impeachment. Bush then took office under a cloud of electoral drama, and was not even considered the legitimate President by much of the world until 9/11 galvanized support for America and allowed him to consolidate power, in a form that held for five years. In other words, the United States had a significant power vacuum that opened on January 16, 1998 (the day the Lewinsky story hit the media) and did not finally close until 9/11. That three-and-a-half year period (in particular, those last 24 months of the Clinton era) was the time in which government intervention could have possibly prevented the massive terrorist strikes that eventually took place.

The historical record now reflects that multiple individuals, working independently of each other in different branches of government and law-enforcement, most of whom had zero knowledge of the others’ existence, discovered aspects of the 9/11 plot as well as some of the people involved in its planning and execution. The record also reflects that, in pretty much all cases, their efforts to expand their investigations were scuttled. Now, there is no evidence of any willful negligence by the assorted functionaries implicated in all this, so one can presume that all these different requests were denied because their superiors thought it just wasn’t that important. There was no unified, coherent counter-terror message coming from government prior to 9/11, despite clear evidence (such as a steady, consistent escalation of the size, scope and audacity of previous attacks) that something was coming.

Why? Because the time, energies and mental resources of our political and media class in that period were almost totally wrapped-up in the impeachment of Bill Clinton on spurious, non-essential charges unrelated to his actual functionality as President. Given that the ranking House and Senate members who allowed that charade to proceed were also among the same ones who received the highly-classified briefings that documented the growing threat in the 1990s, one is inclined to ascribe some level of incompetence to their conduct. One is further inclined to hope that anyone involved in pushing the impeachment hype would be forever disqualified from ever holding public office again, or at least the Presidency.

By the time of Florida’s GOP primary on January 31, the field will have been narrowed down to four main candidates: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and front-runner Mitt Romney. Of these four, Romney (who was in the private sector back then) is the only one who had no role whatsoever in the impeachment hype, and as such is the only Republican in this field worthy of anything resembling an endorsement. Indeed, while Paul is a perpetual candidate, one with no obvious intent of ever becoming president, the presence of Gingrich and Santorum in the race is an unpleasant reminder of the days when America laid down for terrorism.

As Speaker Of the House, Newt Gingrich holds more responsibility than almost anyone else to force the impeachment process to its embarrassing conclusion. In fact, it could be said that the only good thing to come out of the impeachment debacle is that it precipitated the end of Gingrich’s career in public service. The man’s third act could bring the curtain down on our entire way of life, and if it does, it will be our fault for not having seen it coming.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; January 13, 2012

Big Top Brawl: Ringling Bros. sparks protests over elephant abuse (with a lengthy disgression related to the depravity of SeaWorld).

Hey, kids: The circus is coming to town! I bet you can’t wait, right? Sure. It is reasonable to assume that we have all had some type of fascination with circuses at some time in our lives, and why not? The visual spectacle of exotic animals and aerial artistry makes a profound impact on the minds of kids; for most, it is the first truly huge, overwhelmingly awesome event of their lives. For most people, it’s just a passing fancy, a relic of childhood soon displaced in our minds by visions of comely contortionists, chicken geekery and other Jim Rose-style freaky, while many are instantly hooked, and remain so forever.

Either way, the circus facilitates our collective introduction into the carny arts and ignites a creative spark that never really goes away. The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus is the gold-standard of such operations, and it rarely fails to draw rapturous crowds as it packs every venue it hits on the road. A business that began in rickety canvas tents, waterproofed with highly-flammable chemicals, now commands top dollar in some of America’s biggest and most-prestigious arenas, from Madison Square Garden on down. Fans come from miles around for the acrobats and the clowns, but what really masses the marks are the animal acts—specifically, the lions, tigers and elephants. It is this, the most popular aspect of their operation, that has proven the most controversial, and a local organization is working to make sure their latest visit to Northeast Florida does not come off without a hitch.

Jax Protest takes a narrow, specific focus on what they characterize as the maltreatment of elephants trained to perform under the big top. Their website is replete with relevant data, as well as pictures that speak for themselves. “For animals in circuses,” they write, “there is no such thing as ‘positive reinforcement’—only varying degrees of punishment and deprivation. To force them to perform these meaningless and physically uncomfortable tricks, trainers use whips, tight collars, muzzles, electric prods, bullhooks and other painful tools of the trade. In the Ringling Bros. circus, elephants are beaten, hit, prodded and jabbed with sharp hooks, sometimes until bloody. Ringling breaks the spirit of elephants when they’re vulnerable babies who should still be with their mothers.” Brutal stuff, all of which Ringling denies, of course.

The group denounces Ringling not only for the harshness of their training methods, but also for the conditions in which the animals are forced to live, work and travel: “Constant travel means that animals are confined to boxcars, trailers, or trucks for days at a time in extremely hot and cold weather … Elephants, big cats, bears, and primates are confined to cramped and filthy cages in which they eat, drink, sleep, defecate, and urinate—all in the same place. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus boasts that its two units travel more than 25,000 miles as the circus tours the country for 11 months each year. Ringling’s own documents reveal that on average, elephants are chained for more than 26 hours straight and are sometimes continually chained for as many as 60 to 100 hours.”

“JaxProtest members are a 100% volunteer group,” they write. “We come together to help those who have no voice. We are teachers, MMA fighters, web designers, stay at home mothers, retired military, students and everyone in between.” The group plans to protest all seven of Ringling Bros. planned performances at the Veterans Memorial Arena downtown, which are spread out over four days between January 19 and 22. To this end, they have partnered with like-minded organizations like the Girls Gone Green, the Animal Rights Foundation and OccupyJax. Headhunter Muai Thai also supports Jax Protest; the fact that some of its members train there makes for a nice counter to the widespread perception of animal-rights activists as, well, geeks. (They’re in the Relson Gracie Academy on Beach Blvd., and worth checking out.) It also makes sense, given the elephant’s prominent positioning within Thai culture. Another collaborator, the Lotus Elephant Sanctuary, has gone so far as to begin preparations to establish its own wild elephant preserve in Laos.

I’m not much of a circus fan (though I do try to catch the awesome all-black Universoul Circus on their yearly swing through the area). While the animal-rights aspect of the argument is plenty compelling, for me the issue pivots on the question of children’s rights—specifically, the right to not be traumatized by these periodic animal freak-out sessions that have, on occasion, been precipitated by the mistreatment of animals. If an animal ran amok in the crowd or maimed its handler in the presence of kids, that outfit should be banned from that particular city forever, and investigations should immediately commence into any possible causalities. Ringling has a responsibility to lead on this issue, so that smaller circuses cannot use any laxity up-top as an excuse for failure down below.

Ringling has so far been able to avoid the disgusting, depraved moral and ethical lapses of SeaWorld, whose executives are some of the biggest pieces of scumbag trash anywhere in the United States today—and if you know any of them, please tell them I said so! The Tilikum debacle should have been sufficient to shut the whole thing down. Instead they were able the a) basically bury the negligent homicide of their own employee by claiming the victim got herself killed through her own incompetence, then b) keep a killer whale known to be lethally-dangerous to its own species and to people (including its closest human companion) performing for the public, whose children will absolutely be forced to watch that thing kill again, on their dime.

Ringling Brothers should be mindful of the piss-poor example set by SeaWorld (not to be confused with “Sea World”, an entirely unrelated Australian company that does pretty much the exact same thing, but better and safer—they like to make that clear). Tilikum was born in the wild, abducted at age two, separated from his family and forced to live with older, non-related orcas that physically abused him on a regular basis. He was trained at Sealand in Canada, using methods that included deliberate starvation, and perhaps worse.

It was there where he killed a 20 year-old female trainer in 1991; it was deemed it an accident—he didn’t do it, he just helped the others do it—and they kept him working. Like a pedophile priest, he was transferred—appropriately enough, to Florida, a state that openly, gleefully encourages the presence of all violent predatory animals, even those that aren’t human. Whether his history raised any red flags, or whether his new handlers were even informed of that history, remains unclear, but since this is Florida we can presume they did know, and just didn’t care. Well, obviously, they don’t care, and never did—we have the public record to tell us that.

They found a man’s naked body in his tank in 1999. SeaWorld said the guy sneaked in drunk, which implies that they kept a known killer under such lax protection that someone could get into the tank when the park was closed, even if they were drunk and naked. Luckily, it was not some intrepid pipsqueak looking to get a closer look at the beautiful orca, or a terrorist hoping to channel Tilikum’s insane killing power for jihad. His third killing, in 2010, fit the modus operandi of the first: grabbed by the orca and thrown around the pool until dead. Dawn Brancheau was a 16-year veteran who knew this beast better than anyone, so she didn’t die quick, unfortunately for her; her jaw, ribs and neck were broken and her spinal cord severed before she drowned, paralyzed, at the bottom.

At least a dozen people had to watch that woman die, but were powerless to save her. It was SeaWorld’s job to keep her safe, and they neglected that duty so profoundly that the park’s continued existence is a disgrace. Brancheau should be a martyr for workplace safety, and the video of her death should be made public, so Americans will understand the pressing need to put these people out of business. Instead, OSHA issued a whitewashed report, a bullshit $75,000 fine, and Tilikum was back entertaining the masses a year later. As the kids say, “OMG!” Suffice to say SeaWorld is so depraved, even Tommy Lee has voiced concerns.

Among the dozens of serious attacks on humans by killer whales, only one has happened in the wild, and that was in 1972. Either the captivity contributes to the aggression, or humans have somehow successfully captured only the most violent specimens. One should note here that Tilikum, who’s spent 28 of his 30 years captive, is himself implicated in 75% of all documented human deaths related to orcas, which makes a compelling case for causalityg. In this increasingly unstable economy, all it takes is one unfortunate incident to torpedo a company, even one as big, as rich and as historic as the Greatest Show On Earth. Just one more elephant, or a single overly aggressive lion, could do to the entire circus industry what fires, economic depression, two world wars and brutal train-wrecks could not: Kill business forever. So, it’s probably best not to beat them, right? Sure. We’ll see how that works out for them.

http://www.jaxprotest.com/

http://www.facebook.com/Jaxprotest

http://www.facebook.com/events/304820789556769/

jaxprotest@gmail.com

http://www.lotussanctuary.org/

http://www.thegirlsgonegreen.com/

http://www.fourfeetforward.org/

http://www.animalrightsflorida.org/index.html

http://www.headhuntermuaythai.com/

sheltonhull@gmail.com; January 2, 2012

Money Jungle: The Sound and the Fury

The Florida A&M University Marching 100 Band is something any true music fan must see at least once in their life. There are other bands, and they are excellent, but the 100 is the band. It’s not an outfit for the lazy or the slow of mind, because they exist on perfection in all aspects of their performances, from musicianship to the choreography. For every person in the band, there are ten, if not 100, who would take their spot immediately if possible. And, when the standards are that high, it’s always possible.

As such, it’s hardly surprising that the FAMU band would now find itself embroiled in a scandal rooted in the perfectionism of such a perfect band. What does shock the senses, though, is the level of violence this scandal entails. Stories of fraternity hazing, sometimes to the point of death, abound in our culture, but rarely is it this bad. Pranks, paddlings, forced-marches, water-boarding, wire hangers bent into Greek letters and used as branding irons on bare flesh (an old George W. Bush specialty, allegedly)—we’ve heard all this. In extreme cases, maybe some nude wrestling, or a raid on Geronimo’s tomb, or a fatal bender; most deaths in college hazing seem to be from alcohol poisoning and/or blunt trauma from falling off of something. Almost never do they kill each other on purpose.

That is point #1 to this whole thing: It takes significant malice, cruelty and focus to dish out a beating like that boy endured, in defiance of his screams, his crying, his bleeding. There is no possible way they did not know exactly what they were doing, and what the consequences would be. Unless he did something horrible that has not been made public yet (which is entirely possible), it appears he was executed by a group of his own peers for nothing more severe than a mistake made in performance. If that’s true, then his assailants are psychopaths, flat-out, and their defenders have enabled a low-tech lynching.

Had a black man died like that at the hands of white people, all hell might be breaking loose right now. Had some black woman gotten her femurs broken by, say, a bunch of cops, the odds of lethal blowback would hover somewhere just shy of 100%. But because the beating was done by their fellow African-Americans, it cannot be so simple, because these kids are products of a culture that, on the whole, celebrates violence while openly protecting the worst offenders as if it’s part of some collective duty.

(To be fair, note in consideration of those names epicentric to the Penn State scandal—names like McQueary, Paterno and that dirty bastard Sandusky—that all those names sound vaguely Catholic. Not that it means anything, necessarily, any more than the ethnicity of the FAMU beat-down boys. But it’s worth noting that Catholics have had a special, unseemly history of looking the other way in regard to this very specific form of systematic abuse, thousands of times all over the world—and that’s just what we know. In fact, the current Pope, through his many years a ranking church official working out of his native Germany and later the Vatican, is himself directly implicated in the very same kinds of behaviors ascribed to school officials at FAMU and Penn State, but no one’s weeping on their vestments.)

FAMU fans imply that some double-standard is in play, that this hazing scandal gets more attention because the principals are black. Well, of course, but it goes far deeper than that. The truth is that the American people worship authority and never fail to find new and creative ways to subjugate themselves. If control-structures do not exist, people will create their own. It makes perfect sense that an institution founded in the spirit of lifting black people into a higher plane of existence would come to incubate a culture of sadistic brutality that, quite frankly, is the sort of thing one usually expects of white people.

We’ll never know how many kids took beatings in that band, because most of them will never speak of it, not if they’re smart. I doubt you could get their stories for any price, because the stigma of snitching defies any upside, any pretense of justice. A long-term predator like the vile Sandusky surely knew well how to scout his victims. It should be no surprise that most of his victims have so far been described as young black males, because 1) He’s a football coach, and that’s just the demographics of it, and 2) Those kids grow up in a culture that openly declares it will not tell the cops about anything, even child-rape. And had that boy at FAMU not died from his injuries, he would have kept his mouth shut, as would everyone else involved. And that is why racial profiling exists—real talk.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; December 29, 2011

Money Jungle: Weakness Is Provocative

Weakness Is Provocative

Since the Occupy Jacksonville movement began, I’ve studiously avoided making comments about it in this space, mostly so I could see how it was handled by the authorities. Having witnessed much of their disgraceful behavior firsthand, I feel now obliged to speak my peace. The city’s crackdown on the Occupation going on outside of City Hall is humiliation for all citizens of a city that, let’s face it, routinely goes out of its way to humiliate itself.

Those of us who labor daily against the perception that Jacksonville is a sub-literate cesspool of racism and religious dogma, a place whose land, air and water are so polluted that the only things that grow here consistently are criminals, have seen our effort rebuked yet again. Whether it was corrupt fire inspectors in the 1990s or the disastrous DART raids of a couple years ago, our “leaders” have remained keen to waste law-enforcement resources on bullshit, despite ample evidence that their methods have actually empowered the organized crime groups that, let’s face it, control far more of this city than any silly old church.

The situation also tends to confirm the mayor’s political cowardice to those handfuls of observers for whom the question remained in doubt. Brown’s tenure has mostly been defined by throwing key supporters under the bus, while retaining much of the core of the administration that preceded his—the one he was elected largely in opposition to. From day one, Brown has acted like an embattled incumbent; it’s almost like he anticipates being there for just one term, a historical aberration, a failed experiment in the craven new style.

The Occupy movement represents, perhaps, the last significant opportunity to address the issues of corporate greed and economic and social inequality in non-violent fashion. It’s scary to think that, when young people organize to assert their constitutional rights to freedom of speech, assembly and association, the establishment reaction is viscerally negative.

Councilman Don Redman has been a constant presence at Occupy events, playing the role of amiable scold. Unless he’s secretly a part of the 99% (and some think he may be), he has devoted extraordinary amounts of his personal time harassing a bunch of kids who have not yet been trained in how to deal with hatemongers. Whatever the needs of the voters in his district, they should know those needs fall second to Redman’s need to bother the protesters. The recent crackdown indicates that it’s Redman, not Brown, who calls the shots as far as how this was handled. Speculation has already begun that the term-limited Redman may join what will surely be a wave of politicians seeking to unseat an already-weakened mayor Brown; Sheriff John Rutherford, who’s been at odds with the mayor and his own union, remains at the top of most lists, but more will come. Because weakness is provocative.

But let’s say this much for Redman: At least he showed up. Brown and other members of the Council have basically adopted the policy of other city leaders nationwide—that of running their mouths about things they have no understanding of. It makes sense that Brown, who bounced back and forth between the Beltway and Corporate America, would be ignorant of the underlying economic reality. It makes sense that his populist campaign rhetoric would be a front for more of the same-old, same-old. It makes sense that our visionary new leader is a just a cut-out caricature, eager to conform to stereotype.

Because as we’ve seen with President Obama, the first job for any black executive-branch pol is to act forcefully to retain the confidence and support of the white business leaders who brought them to power. Hence, the firings, politically-motivated. Ironic that a mayor who was elected largely on a promise to encourage growth downtown has signed-off on suppressing the only people who can actually draw numbers into downtown on a weekend without promising football or free food. It’s further ironic that most of the local Occupiers either voted for Alvin Brown or actively worked for his campaign. Well, they won’t next time!

Our mayor has apparently forgotten that he won by the closest margin in local history, and that it was the support of young progressives that kept him in the game back when elites were focused on that shoddy Hogan-Moran-Mullaney horserace. I’ve heard many Democrats in recent months wish aloud that Audrey Moran had just a little bit more guts, hadn’t been so passive in response to conservative attacks, had tried to reach out to progressive a little bit more instead of prostrating for the business community like everyone else has. Of course, it’s unlikely that she would have handled OccupyJax any differently because, overall, this movement exists to show the people of this country that our leaders have not only abnegated their responsibilities, but have deliberately acted against the best interests of this country.

Why? Because they are on the take. Every single politician in this country is hopelessly corrupt, whether they want to be or not. The system of campaign finance ensures that whoever wins any election is probably already bought and paid for by foreign capital. Those of you who complain about Brown now have forgotten  that he was trained by Bill Clinton, arguably one of the most morally bankrupt human beings to ever walk this earth. He learned his lessons well, but it remains to be seen how much the voters themselves have learned.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; December 24, 2011

100 Homes of Jacksonville: Rational Exuberance

Since exploding into the public debate in the 1980s, America’s homeless problem has remained front-and-center, and never more so than at the present. It took way too long, but policymakers on all levels of government and the private sector have finally begun to recognize the severity of the problem. And just in time. The economic collapse has had predictable results: the numbers of homeless have spiked, while resources allocated to help them have diminished. Nonprofits of all kinds are getting less from individuals and institutions alike, forcing rapid adaptation of their methods.

The most recent statistics, compiled in 2010, offer a sobering picture of an epidemic entirely unconstrained within demographic boundaries. Officially, over 400,000 people are without regular housing in the US; as with official figures on unemployment, the real number is likely much higher.

According to stats compiled by the Emergency Services and Homelessness Coalition of Jacksonville in January 2011, Northeast Florida has about 4,564 homeless, according to the definition provided by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development: “[A] person sleeping in a place not meant for human habitation or in an emergency shelter, and a person in transitional housing for homeless persons who originally come from the street or an emergency shelter.” 4,284 live in Duval County with another 280 spread across Clay (113), Nassau (165) and Baker (2) counties. 1,500 of those are “permanent homeless”; they have no shelter of any kind.

(It’s worth noting at this point the vast disparity in how homelessness is formally defined at the state and federal levels. The state definition basically doesn’t count anyone who has access to any type of legal sleeping arrangement, such as: staying with a relative or friend; staying at a hotel, motel, trailer park or campground; “living at an emergency or transitional shelter”; “is living in a car, park, public space, abandoned building, bus or train station, or similar setting”; “is a migratory individual”. The best qualifier: “Has a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private space not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings”. Not surprisingly, by this definition, there are only 1,903 homeless—59% fewer than by the state definition. This helps explain why the individual homeless people and those private citizens and organizations out there trying to help them have had such a hard time achieving their goals. Simply compiling workable statistics on the homeless population is a great accomplishment in this area of study.)

Some 90% (4,123) are adults, aged 18-60. There are 230 homeless seniors (60+, 5%), and 189 homeless children (18 and under, 4%); they are the generations most adversely affected by the recession. 3,109 are men, and 1,443 are women; there are two male-to-female transgendered homeless, and 10 who refused to answer the question. Homelessness here is almost evenly divided by race: 2,005 white and 2,373 black. Of course, that represents a much larger percentage of the black community, which is one reason why the leaders of that community are so active on the issue. Also, the Hispanic members of that community need to be better-defined in the numbers.

At least 12% of Northeast Florida’s military population is comprised of veterans—570 of them. Given that another 823 respondents refused to answer the question, for unknown reasons, one may presume that proportion to be as high as 31%, or 1,393. That should put a chill into the heart of every Patriot. But it would, sadly, be consistent with the classic (pre-recession) talking point holding that half of America’s homeless men are vets. Back then, Vietnam vets swelled the homeless population after the 1970s recession, while the vets of Korea and WWII entered their old age, and the VA system was overwhelmed, creating the crisis that continues today.

Health disparities are rife, and exert a brutal toll on emergency services. The primary impact of homelessness is on the person’s health. Overall, premature death rates among the homeless are nearly quadruple those of the general population; their lifespan runs, on average, some 25 years shorter than non-homeless Americans.

They die from starvation, malnutrition, illness from living conditions, or eating tainted food, or not seeking general preventive care. In winter, many homeless up north die of frostbite, gangrene or exposure. Homeless people are often subject to violence, be it from each other or random bullies; this author helped the Southern Poverty Law Center document a number of disturbing incidents in Florida a few years ago.

29% of area respondents (1,316) reported some kind of physical or mental disability; another 1,673 refused to answer the question, so the real percentage may run as high as 66%. Only 10% reported any kind of alcoholism or drug addiction, which may be individual self-delusion or evidence that the usual stereotypes of the homeless are not applicable. Indeed, if there is one factor that can be pinpointed as a root cause of local homeless cases, based on the data, it is economics.

Among the 4,564 respondents to the ESHCJ survey, 41% (1,875) cited “financial problems related to job loss”. 1,270 (28%) cited various forced relocation or family, such as fleeing abusive relationships, while 623 (14%) cited disability issues. (At least one person was rendered homeless due to “Natural/other disasters; surely there’s a story in that.) Also, 3% (121) were once caught up in the foster-care system, which points to how the disruptions of families by whatever means can have a negative effect that reverberates through time. And here’s the most important stat of them all: 54% (2,471) have been homeless for less than a year.

The statistics indicate that, far from being lazy, stupid or crazy, the average homeless person is someone who simply had too many bad things happen at once. We already know the leading causes of both home foreclosure and personal bankruptcy is medical bills, and we know the difficulties that people with preexisting conditions faced get stable jobs with health care before the economy tanked. Now, even decorated combat vets and good-looking young people with advanced degrees are struggling to find work, so where does that leave those at the bottom?

A non-profit organization called Community Solutions has emerged with a bold new vision for tacking the topic head-on and changing the overall debate on homelessness. 100,000 Homes is a national campaign begun in July, 2010 that seeks to place the most vulnerable of America’s long-term homeless into housing by July 2013. If successful, they will have managed to reduce America’s official homeless population by 25%—an unprecedented feat. The idea is to give people a second chance at life, and to show what wonders can happen when those chances are given.

100,000 Homes has already partnered with major non-profits like the National Alliance to End Homelessness, Catholic Charities USA, the United Conference of Mayors, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the Center for Social Innovation, the Conrad Hilton Foundation and the United Way. They’ve even received corporate support from Travel Channel and Bank of America, which could use the good press after a brutal autumn tangling with the Occupy crowd. (They were the primary target of Bank Transfer Day, in which $.6.5 billion in deposits was moved from banks to credit unions, largely to protest BOA’s aborted plan for monthly ATM fees.)

Their one-year anniversary report is loaded with impressive and uplifting stories and statistics from communities as diverse as Denver, Atlanta, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Chicago, New Orleans (which leads the country by averaging 62 placements per month), Washington DC (which is second, with 39, and has the highest one-year housing retention rate—94%), Omaha, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Detroit and, of course, Hollywood. Led by Campaign Director Becky Kanis, 100,000 Homes now has more than 2,000 volunteers working in over 80 communities around the country; they expect to be in over 300 communities by 2013. So far, over 10,000 people have already been taken off the streets, but they’re just getting started.

Statistics can be misleading, of course, but early reports suggest that the group’s key talking-point is correct: Housing the homeless saves cities money. The most detailed study yet was conducted by Denver’s “Housing First Collaborative” project, which has already placed 150 people in homes and has already identified another 513 who could be served once additional funding comes in. Based on initial results for the 150, that money won’t be far behind. The Denver study is a must-see.

The cost of housing people, and counseling them to help them retain their housing, costs them only $13,800 each, or a total of about $2.1 million. Overall, placing 150 homeless into quality low-cost housing saved the taxpayers of Denver a total of $4.7 million; extending the project to the other 513 would generate a savings in excess of $16 million. By breaking those savings down into the constituent categories, they’ve helped spotlight the key costs of homelessness, which are surprising.

Of the 150 studied, 30 (20%) had been incarcerated at some point, twice on average, each spending an average of 26 days in jail at a cost of $1,798 to the city. After being put into housing, only 12 were incarcerated (a 60% decrease); they spent only six days in jail (a 77% decrease), costing taxpayers $427 each. Under their program, the cost of incarcerating participants plummeted by 76%, and Denver saved $26,000.

Health-care costs associated with the participants fell by 45%, with the biggest decrease—65%—occurring in the category on “Inpatient Care”. That’s because the sick people had actual homes to be released to, so doctors didn’t have to worry about the risk of releasing someone back onto the streets, where whatever illness they had would surely get worse. Note that, while “Outpatient Care” costs increased by 51% (because outpatient care is not really possible if one has no home), the actual dollar amount of the increase ($894) pales compared to the $6,845 saved on inpatient care.

The number of Emergency Room visits, and the costs of those visits, decreased by 34%. Total “Emergency Costs” decreased by 77%, or $31,545 per person. These statistics prove that the act of housing the homeless has an immediate, and financially measurable, effect to the benefit of their health, and the taxpayers’ bottom line. Every community is different, so it would be incorrect to just assume that what works in Denver will work in, say, Jacksonville. But between the hard numbers out of Denver, and the mountains of anecdotal evidence coming in from other areas, there is plenty of reason for optimism: If these trends held nationwide, homelessness could be eradicated pretty quickly.

Most of the placements done in the first year have been in communities with 1,000 or fewer chronic unemployed. To achieve their long-term goal, 100,000 Homes will need to step up activities all over the country, but especially in those parts of the country with larger homeless populations. As such, Florida is a priority. Our temperate climate and mild winters, like those of southern California, attract all kinds of people, including disproportionate numbers of homeless people. So, any serious fight against homelessness in America must focus on Florida. And where does Florida begin? Exactly.

100 Homes Jacksonville, the local affiliate of 100,000 Homes, is helping set the pace for the peninsula by networking aggressively among the many organizations already working to uplift the local homeless population. They’ve already lined up some of the region’s heaviest hitters, including the Clara White Mission, City Rescue Mission, Department of Veterans Affairs, Downtown Vision Inc., the Duval County School Board, Eldersource, Habitat For Humanity, the IM Sulzbacher Center, the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce, the Jacksonville Housing Authority, Lutheran Social Services, the Red Cross, Salvation Army, St. Vincent’s Hospital, Trinity Rescue Mission, UNF, the United Way of Northeast Florida and Worksource.

The VA is providing assistance by giving housing vouchers to vets, while 100 Homes works to acquire quality, low-cost housing for them and others.. As seen in other cities, when veterans are able to turn a corner in their own lives, they tend to channel their energies into helping their fellow vets do the same. The mutual respect and love they show for each other is almost evangelical in nature, and offers a regular reminder that the oaths they all took to protect our country were not forgotten when they came home. The wars fought overseas in recent years are only a prelude to the real battle to preserve the American Dream in our own streets.

The diversity of affiliated groups reflects the diversity of the community and its homeless population. Jacksonville is one of six communities already enrolled in the project around the state; others include Gainesville, Monroe County, West Palm Beach/Palm Beach County, Pasco County and Panama City. Between their own stats and other data, it’s safe to say that Florida has a minimum of 31,000 homeless people; the real number could easily exceed 50,000, so there’s plenty of work to do.

A project of this scale could not succeed without the right organization. Locally, Dawn Gilman, Executive Director of the Emergency Services and Homeless Coalition, is helping lead the way, along with Shawn Liu, from the VA’s Healthcare for Homeless Veterans. Technically, 100 Homes is managed by the VA. Publicly, the project is being pushed most aggressively by Marti Johnson, whose passion for the homeless is visceral. “We’re not only saving lives; we’re also saving the city money,” says Johnson, who estimates (based on the Denver study, and others) that 100 Homes could save the city up to $2 million in emergency services.

A graduate of Belmont University, Johnson spent a year coordinating for nonprofits in Uganda before returning home to Florida. She helped run an orphanage for children of Uganda’s war dead, sandwiched between a weak central government and the notoriously brutal misogynists of the so-called “Lord’s Resistance Army”. Subsequent work with AmeriCorps Vista brought her back to Jacksonville, as Communications Coordinator with the Emergency Services and Homeless Coalition of Jacksonville, where a big part of her job is getting the word out about 100 Homes.

Johnson lives in Green Cove Springs, to be closer to her family, and so chooses to drive an hour each way, each day, to and from her office at ESHC on the city’s Westside. It’s safe to say the lady has a passion for her business—which is a good thing, because it’s the kind of work that cannot be done without passion.

The next step for 100 Homes is Registry Week, which runs from November 14-19. Volunteers will be out canvassing the streets and collection information from participating organizations city-wide, in hopes of fleshing-out the existing data on our homeless population. Their goals are 1) to update the existing data on the city’s homeless community; 2) promoting the project to those potential allies and advocates who aren’t already aware of its existence; and 3) to begin identifying those homeless who are most in need, and who can make the most of the opportunity.

Besides the veteran outreach (which is probably the easiest part of this project, since there is already an infrastructure in place to identify them and at least try to address their problems), the 76 local homeless families with children are, of course, a priority, as well as the seriously ill.

100 Homes is conducting a “Community Conversation” delineating the data, and where the project is doing next, from 1-3 pm on Thursday, November 18 at the AT&T Auditorium downtown. For the record, 100 Homes has no intention of stopping at just 100; indeed, the room for growth in a city like this is immense, and it has the potential to be another one of those remarkable stories 100,000 Homes is generating nationwide.

http://www.100khomes.org

http://www.100homesjax.org

http://twitter.com/#!/100HomesJAX

http://www.facebook.com/100HomesJax

sheltonhull@gmail.com; November 10, 2011

Notes on Occupy Orlando

Raising the Bar: Occupy Orlando sets the regional standard.

This reporter, who lives in Jacksonville, recently spent a couple of days visiting Occupy Orlando, which was then in its third week. The Occupy movement began in New York City, then quickly went national as graphic evidence of police misconduct inspired others to start their own local offshoots in solidarity. As such, while each Occupy location does have certain features common to all, they mostly reflect the distinctive character of the cities and towns they are situated in.

Having already spent hundreds of hours researching the subject in general, including communications with insiders, observers and other journalists at Occupations around this country, the chance to sprint south and check out the scene in Orange County was welcomed eagerly. It certainly helps that Orlando is a beautiful city with great food, from eateries like Dandelion Community Cafe and Ethos Vegan Café, multi-media madness at Rock and Roll Heaven and Park Avenue CDs, which is the best record store in all of Florida. Right around the corner, Stardust Video and Coffee makes epic soups and sandwiches and a massive selection of DVDs for rental. Each Monday evening, their parking lot hosts the Audubon Park Community Market, while the Homegrown Local Food Cooperative (HomegrownCoop.org) provides sustainable fruits, vegetables and dairy to homes and restaurants throughout Central Florida.

The city’s impressive development in the half-century since Disney’s arrival makes it an ideal location in which to weigh the costs and benefits of the corporatized society the Occupiers stand opposed to. The fact that so many of them (the students, in particular) are beneficiaries of this system does not invalidate their position; rather, it reinforces their responsibility to get involved.

After putting the word out via social media (the author maintains the greatest Facebook page ever, full disclosure), about two hours elapsed before receiving a phone call from Brook Hines, part of their Media Relations team. At 45, her experience in the media and public relations world was put to good use. This type of rapid response and vigor in regard to outreach efforts has been crucial to their rapid success in a state that is generally almost devoid of large-scale progressive activism of any kind. As she puts it, “We want to work with the city, rather than crash it.”

There were veterans of the Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam wars. Some got their first taste of politics via the Obama 2000 campaign. Others are veterans of older movements, including the assorted presidential campaigns of Ralph Nader, Ross Perot and Dennis Kucinich. A smaller segment comprised folks old enough to have participated in the seminal protest movements of the 1960s; for many old-school activists, these may be the final act in their political lives.

As Hines wrote in one of the group’s press releases: “Like Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Orlando is a leaderless movement, but it is far from disorganized. Coordination takes place online and at daily General Assemblies where … participants present ideas and dialogue until reaching consensus. Then, we take action to accomplish out collectively approved goals. The formation of multiple committees, including media, medical, peacekeeping, legal, transportation, food, event facilitation and materials preparation, enables all participants to contribute to the movement.”

The actual Occupation of Orlando commenced on Saturday, October 15, but planning began two weeks earlier, including two General Assemblies held at the Orange County Regional History Center. The date was announced in advance, a website was set up, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds built, supplies gathered, responsibilities designated and promotional materials (flyers, buttons, posters, etc.) prepared. They even sent out a letter soliciting the support of local businesses. The work paid off. The first event was arguably the biggest political protest ever held in Orlando, drawing between several hundred and a couple thousand participants, depending on who you ask.

Beth Johnson Park is just a quarter-mile or so down the street from Boom Art Gallery, a shop showcasing the brilliant hand-crafted work of Glenn and Sandy Rogers, which they describe as “the fusion of functional furniture and nostalgic art”. Their client list is awesome, and includes Ann-Margaret, Jay Leno, Paul Shaffer, Jeff Foxworthy, Mandy Moore, Robert Plant, Carrot Top and Shaquille O’Neal.

The art is must-see, and the artists are two of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. Glenn’s dual backgrounds in fine art and as an International Flooring and Home Furnishings Designer led to a diverse career that included technical work on Broadway, shows, art exhibits in SOHO, storyboarding the “Mr. Whipple” commercials for Charmin, acting credits in Hollywood and the New York stage; he also helped create the Yellow brick Road used in The Wiz. The Rogers met and married during their 15 years spent touring together as clowns in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Sandy was, for seven years, Director of it Clown College, in which capacity she helped train Steve-O. Unsurprisingly, they offered full support for Occupy Orlando.

“This is redress of grievances, not a wedge-issue protest,” said Matthew, a 23 year-old student and musician part of a group of young people sitting on blankets in the park one day. His group included several people who’d been part of the OWS group, but were reticent about sharing further details with a journalist.

Over 2,000 people had taken part in the occupation, over 200 of whom spoke at the General Assemblies; and another 10,000 people had expressed support online in just the first five days, and those numbers spiked in subsequent weeks as Occupy caught steam nationally and Occupy Orlando started getting mainstream attention.

Like many of their fellow Occupy operations, the Orlando group maintained a camera streaming content directly to UStream.tv. Depending on the size of the crowd and the amount of activity in a given city at any given time, most full-time occupations run live video 24/7, while others fill the “dead” time with video of earlier activity; some cities have more than one feed, in addition to whatever is being done by individuals. This type of instant connectivity isn’t just great for outsiders (advocates and critics alike) to watch what’s going on directly and interpret for themselves. It is crucial for the actual occupiers in each of those cities, who can now learn from each other in real-time, share knowledge, adjust their methods, streamline tactics and goals, as well as networking.

Maybe no other city in Florida has brought in as much money from multinational corporations than Orlando, but there are many ways to quantify it. But its public image is tied-in with Disney and Universal Studios in a way no other city is with the many large companies doing business in them. Theme-park money spurred tremendous growth, and the landscape reflects it, especially compared to the relative bleakness and desolation of the outlying areas like Winter Park, Casselberry, Maitland and Ocoee. (The blank-yet-knowing looks on the faces of the kids working at the Walgreens and Steak and Shake in Apopka made me want to adopt them all, or at least write them recommendation letters to the UNF.) Mass-transit out there sucks, putting the lower-income families living out there at a persistent competitive disadvantage for jobs and schooling, the youth in particular.

The reader has probably seen the video(s) from Zucotti Park, where those three wee lasses felt the hot stuff (which really hurts, by the way). Note that at least one officer was already conducting a discussion with the ladies related to their refusal to get up and leave. While not exactly cordial, it was civil until his colleague imposed his own will upon the proceedings. The original cop’s agitated response, directed toward the one who deployed the burning, stinging mist into a group of civilians and fellow NYPD officers, presaged later confirmation of prior complains against the same guy at political events.

The nefarious action of one cop means little compared to the historic reputation of a department that saves and improves the lives of people every day, nor does it mean that the women sprayed that day were necessarily right. But the incident was recorded from a number of angles, and the targets were highly intelligent, well-connected members of a well-organized protest operation that was already ongoing in New York, with affiliated groups already starting elsewhere. The hardest part of civil disobedience is to not fight back when violence is used; that’s why most people generally want no part of it.

NYPD handed Occupy an image to, for lack of a better word, brand their movement, and like all good brands, it has staying power: young people being pushed around for engaging in political protest. Thanks to cell-phone cameras, YouTube and streaming video sites, a huge portion of the thousands of Occupy-related arrests have been documented, replete with scores of clear-cut incidents of abuse. The situation in Oakland alone could fill a book; surely a number of student protesters will apply their field experience directly to the classroom.

It only took a few good squirts of poorly-aimed pepper-spray to transform Occupy Wall Street into a national movement, and Florida is doing its part

 Beth Johnson Park sits at 57 S. Ivanhoe Blvd. It curves off the I-4. Whether approaching from any angle, the first thing one will see is the American Flag. Currently, Beth Johnson Park closes at 11pm. All citizens must vacate by then, but the sidewalk is not subject to those rules. As such, Occupy Orlando adopted what’s called “Sidewalk Solidarity” by standing on the sidewalk in shifts, 24/7. However, the law does prohibit sleeping on the sidewalk, sitting down on it, or sitting in a chair (all activities that are allowed in the actual park when it’s open). Sleepyheads make use of a privately-owned parking lot across the street, 20 feet away. Although trespassing charges was raised by police, they did not occur because the lot’s owner either refused to make a complain, or was otherwise not present.

This is just among the many examples of how, despite the anti-capitalist talking points and the alarmist rhetoric of commercial media, sizeable portions of the business community around the country are exerting subtle forms of support for Occupy activities. Another is that the nearby Doubletree Hotel offers its bathroom facilities for the occupiers. (Note also that Zucotti Park, the epicenter of Occupy Wall Street, is itself owned by a billion-dollar corporation that clearly has no issue with their presence, as long as they clean up after themselves.)

Most occupiers have chosen to heed those rules, but as expected others forced the point. Occupy Orlando took a huge, risky step forward on the night of October 22, when a small group of activists chose to openly defy city rules and remain in the park after 11. They, as individuals, chose to stage their own independent action without the approval of the General Assembly; some 200 people were doing Sidewalk Solidarity at the time. Some allege it was a blatant publicity stunt, others that it was an attempt to be more aggressive in the face of political power.

This civil disobedience resulted in Trespassing arrests for 19 people, including two women and a juvenile. By all accounts, the police were entirely professional in doing their job. (It’s always worth noting that law-enforcement has very little actual influence on the crafting and implementation of our nation’s laws, and citizens are worse off for it.) If it was a publicity stunt, it worked perfectly by forcing the occupation into commercial media, thus helping to grow the numbers. Another 13 arrests were made a few days later, as activists refused to vacate the park following the teach-ins on November 5—Guy Fawkes Day, incidentally, and also a day after the epochal success of Bank Transfer Day.

 

Among those 19 arrested that night was a wheelchair­-bound young man who had been doing unpaid volunteer work for President Obama’s national reelection campaign, similar to his activities in 2008. His disability leaves him unable to do most types of work, so he lives at home with his family, on a fixed income, while he pursues his studies. Like many people in his position, he’s felt the heat of price increases and the pressures exerted on many Americans as state legislatures around the country clip strategic holes in the social safety net; those concerns manifest as political action.

His involvement with Occupy Orlando was as a private citizen, not as any type of representative for an Obama campaign that many critics allege the Occupy movement is designed to help, much as the Tea Party ultimately served Republican interests. However, after the news of his arrest became public, he was dismissed from his official duties and rendered persona non grata, on the pretense that his arrest brought negative publicity to a campaign that hasn’t even been officially declared yet.

Further, the fellowship that made the delicate balancing act of his student life possible was immediately pulled, throwing his educational future into some doubt. The crushing news was delivered by telephone, by a supervisor who was either unwilling or unable to say exactly who made the decision, or to delineate the process by which his life was ruined. He was still emotionally wrecked, visibly and palpably so, as I spoke to him ten days later; the police who arrested him were downright kind, compared to the allies who shafted him, over a petty charge that will most be dropped.

Yet, despite this life-altering humiliation, the young man was insistent that his name not be used here, because that’s how strongly he feels about reelecting Obama. That, in a nutshell, in what the Occupy movement is about: Young (and not-so-young people doing what they think is right, despite the extreme consequences that may result. His plan now is to hit the road, visiting and collaborating with other Occupy operations in places like New York, DC and Chicago, culminating with the ongoing actions in the city of his birth, Philadelphia.

Many activists on the scene gave vocal credit to students from the University of Central Florida. Many of those UCF “Knights” have lived up to the moniker, in terms of their contributions to the effort, from logistics to publicity.

           

            October 25 saw 15 Occupy Orlando activists expanding outreach efforts even further by sitting in to show support for the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1596, which was negotiating with the Board of Directors for LYNX, Orlando’s bus system. According to a press release, “Drivers have not seen wage increase in three years and are being offered only a 0.5 percent wage increase at a time when inflation for food is forecast to rise as much as 4.5 percent.” They had no obvious effect on negotiations, which remain calcified, but it made for valuable experience.

            Such action has become a worthwhile habit.      The day before, Occupy Orlando sent  27 people in business clothes to the Orange County Legislative Delegation meeting, where they had meetings with state representatives from both parties. Occupy has also become a regular presence at meetings of the Orange County School Board and the Orlando City Council.

November 1 was Day 18 of the occupation, and coincided with the “Awake the State” rally. The day’s most popular whipping boy was the local Chamber of Commerce. It operates out of a large multi-story building adjacent to the park, yet reportedly pays only $1 in property taxes per year. Spicing the brew, Mayor Buddy Dyer had apparently, a couple days prior, made the astoundingly absurd claim that there was no corporate money at all in Orlando. 

A low makeshift stage was laid out near the entrance to the park, placing the Chamber building (and the sunset) behind the speakers. Their modest PA was sufficient. Speakers included an older activist whose rights to vote had been forfeited via felony; he copped to his mistakes, and urged everyone else to cast the votes he could not. The owner of Dandelion talked about the wildly disproportionate environmental impact fees that undermined profitability and her ability to hire new workers. A member of the teachers’ union noted that Florida teachers haven’t received a cost-of-living wage increase in three years; “Education cuts don’t heal”, she said. The delightful Sundrop Carter brought glad tidings from the United Auto Workers, who are stepping up organizing efforts in Florida, a state basically built around the automobile.

Although no elected officials made their presence felt on Day 18, the crowd did include a number of veteran political insiders, as well as a couple of candidates. Mike Cantone, 28, is seeking to unseat mayor Buddy Dyer in next year’s elections (scheduled for April 4, 2012). He comes off as a smart, earnest young man who’s quickly developing a certain facility with the lingo of leadership. Having myself run for Jacksonville City Council in Jacksonville earlier this year, I was curious about how his new-reality based, grass-roots approach would fare against an entrenched incumbent like Dyer.

 He began smartly, with a streamlined and systematic approach to his platform. He broke it down into seven key components; for each he created quick, one-line synopses of his vision, then identified a number of forward-thinking proposals he would implement in order to methodically each component of the larger agenda. Listed alphabetically, they are: Clean Energy (4), Coordination (3), Education (4), Innovation (10), Public Safety (7), Quality of Life (6). As a Jacksonville resident, I appreciate the catchphrase “A Bold new Vision for Orlando” even more than his slogan, “I Like Mike!”

As one might expect, he’s fully-synchronous with social media, and his promo materials are well-done; they’re also union-made. The aesthetic centers on soothing blues and greens, reminiscent of the city’s waters and lush plant-life. The candidate’s picture is good, with a nice sunset background, but it can be improved upon.

We both agreed that the non-partisan, “unitary”-style elections held at local levels offer the best chance to get new progressive talent into office, as opposed to the standard process, which allows Democratic gatekeepers to freeze out any dissenting voices. As we have both noted repeatedly, the great efforts made by Occupy so far will be wasted unless they translate to serious political gains in that epochal year of 2012.

Occupy Orlando has a lot of electoral activity they can exert potential influence on. Senator Bill Nelson is up for reelection, and the popular Democrat will have several marginal Republicans chasing his rear bumper; a strong progressive turnout helps bolster what looks so far to be an fairly easy win, and be crucial if conditions change. All seats in the US House are up for grabs next year, and those are always volatile; Occupy’s exact place amidst is impossible to guess..

Locally, besides Dyer’s seat, four of the seven School Board seats in Orange County are up for grabs, as well as three of six seats on the Board of County Commissioners and three of five seats on the Soil and Water Board. The offices of Sheriff, State Attorney, Public Defender, Clerk of Courts, Comptroller, Property Appraiser, Tax Collector and Supervisor of Elections are all on the ballot in 2012, so the stakes are huge. This election will decide the future of their city.

In real terms, a guy or gal like Cantone would need a massive groundswell of progressive activity statewide, the rising tide to lift all boats. He (or any other, similarly-inclined candidates elsewhere next year) can probably build a formidable street team, but to keep them all activated at full efficiency, it takes money. 2012 will be the most expensive election cycle in history; to win in that environment does not necessarily require more money, but it does require a substantial amount of ready cash. My campaign, for example, did not result in victory because I was not an effective fundraiser, and could not find anyone who was. Cantone and his ilk must be a lot better, a lot faster, and it’s quite possible.

I also met a fella named Curtis Southerland, also from Jacksonville. His path into the realm of political activism was neither planned nor voluntary. His obscure, outsider campaign to unseat Jacksonville Sheriff John Rutherford as a write-in candidate in 2011 was motivated by his desire for redress after his brother Mark[?] was killed in a one of those “police-involved shootings” that have now become an unfortunate trademark of the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office. He lost, of course, but that’s fine because the fix was in from the start; former JSO Public Information Officer Ken Jefferson had an excellent chance to win, but regional Democrats stymied his fundraising, for unknown reasons. Southerland’s campaign was more of a protest against the system and a means of telling people about the tragic death of his brother.

Local media coverage was generally fair, though laced with the same snarky cynicism typical of Occupy reporting in general. Leading the pack, surprising, was the nominally liberal Orlando Weekly, which functions in the case as a gatekeeper for an Establishment Left that has been uncomfortable with Occupy from the get-go. In its October 27 issue, staff writers Billy Manes and Jeff Gore flog the standard commercial media talking points: That Occupy has no “list of demands, a chief goal or an overarching political philosophy”. While conceding their sidewalk strategy to be “brilliant”, they repeatedly note the “(ostensibly) leaderless nature of their organization” and keep the focus squarely on the negative aspects, like arrests and shady characters.

Granted, this was published only 12 days into the Occupation, and surely there is more left for them to say on the subject. But as a visitor to the city, I was disappointed to see its leading liberal publication projecting a generally dismissive attitude toward young people whose political views are basically consistent with the values of alt-media in general. It’s the sort of reductionist thinking that has essentially tanked political-based print media in general, in particular an alt-weekly market that has become aggressively corporatized and unresponsive to the needs of their audience.

Ironically, that issue’s cover features a snarling, broken-toothed Tea Party caricature as part of a series of poorly-done humorous Halloween masks. Occupy gets a nod, too, with a cut-out version of the now-ubiquitous Guy Fawkes mask adopted from “V” For Vendetta, which is now a universally-recognized symbol of Occupy and the larger (and more amorphous) Anonymous movement. “Initially dismissed as iPad-wielding hippies, the occupiers leered and groaned in the face of authority, anxiously anticipating police brutality and pepper spray,” writes Manes.

“The very notion that this leaderless movement had come to life as a pseudo-political monster is enough to cause apoplexy and anxiety among those in power [including, apparently, OW itself]. ‘Give us your list of demands!’ they screamed at the occupiers in a panic, only to realize that there really wasn’t a list of demands.” Imagine, two completely contradictory ideas coming from the same writer, in the same publication, just nine pages apart. This kind of cognitive dissonance certainly helps explain why the mainstream media still struggles to comprehend the depth and complexity of Occupy.

http://www.occupyorlando.org

http://www.occupythehood.org;

othorlando@gmail.com 

http://www.mikecantone.com

http://www.ocelections.com

http://www.HomegrownCoop.org

http://www.stores.ebay.com/boomart

sheltonhull@gmail.com; November 7, 2011

Interview: Kathleen Hanna

[The piece below is for Folio--runs Tuesday. But, since Ms. Hanna's birthday is today, it made sense to preview it now, for the one-half of one-millionth of the world who actually checks this thing out--and thanks, by the way. I should also note that the section of downtown Jacksonville with MOCA and the newest Main Branch library are the best investments made in local public infrastructure in the past decade, a decade with many nice moves made.

The library's music section is probably the best in Florida, in part because the collection is old, and in part because their acquisitions game is tighter than the Carlyle Group. The record collection alone was worth perhaps $100,000 before it was sold off piecemeal; WJCT did the same thing, and the cognoscenti worldwide sez "Thanks!" The zine collection is the most recent addition, and it touches on an aspect of regional culture crucial to its current leviathan status.

And next time you're in Gainesville, make sure your visit includes a) the Butterfly Museum, b) Hear Again Music, and c) the legendary Civic Media Center, of which I could never say enough. Etc. and so forth, here ya go.]

Leader of the Pack
Kathleen Hanna on zines and scenes and feminist things.2011 Zine Symposium
“Zines: The Personal Is Political”
Jacksonville Public Library, Hicks Auditorium
Panel Discussion, 11am; Keynote Presentation, noon
Back when people wrote actual letters, I sent one to Kathleen Hanna, former singer for Bikini Kill, whose three imperfectly perfect albums in the ’90s set a sonic standard whose emulators have dominated the 21st century. Between her sound and their fury, Hanna (who turns 42 on the 12th) helped establish the continuity that ensured “girl singers” could do what they want, however they want to do it. What was next? I wondered. She sent back a package with some of the zines she was doing then; soon, Julie Ruin emerged, followed by Le Tigre. The original Rebel Girl is now an established veteran of all aspects of media, and one of the most influential women of her generation. She’s recorded eight albums since 1991, three EPs, seven singles featured on nine different compilation albums and, most tellingly, appeared on 17 different albums by other artists. She’s also the subject of two documentary features: The Punk Singer and Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre On Tour. (And, of course, her cameo in the video for “Bull In the Heather”!)

Hanna’s first visit here comes this Saturday, November 19, by invitation of the Jacksonville Public Library, where she’ll sit on a panel convened by curators of the library’s game-changing zine collection. Panelists include author, musician and FSCJ art professor Mark Creegan; artist/author Adee Roberson (http://www.pineappleblack.blogspot.com–very nice!); zine writer Travis Fristoe (whose credits include Maximum RocknRoll, Library Journal and Gainesville’s legendary Civic Media Center); and myself, a big fan of all their work. Hanna will then deliver the keynote address for the 2011 Zine Symposium. For adepts and adherents of the art form, this cannot be missed. Folio caught up with the ever-busy Hanna via Internets:

FW: Did the Internet kill the ‘zine trade, or somehow make it better?
KH: I think the internet gave certain obscure zines a place in the modern landscape they never would’ve had without it. Having said that, it is annoying to me when people buy older zines and then scan them and put some pages up on the internet without the author’s permission. They lose their original context that way, and often zines that were written in a specific time and place come off as overarching and ahistorical when, really, they were responding to specific things that were going on in local scenes at the time. Zines kind of were our blogs before blogs existed; they were meant to be quick and rough and
local and not overworked.If we wanted to write books, that were more permanent, we would’ve, but we didn’t. They were meant to be ephemeral and function in a specific time period.

FW: Have you ever worked with the Future of Music Coalition(futureofmusic.org)?
KH: I know Jenny and Kristin but I’ve never worked with FMC. [Note: Jenny Toomey and Kristin Thomson co-founded the band Tsunami.] They were, I believe both at the first Riot Grrrl meeting and were verysupportive and involved early on. I went to Junior High with Jenny Toomey.

FW: What are your thoughts on Occupy Wall Street? [Note: OccupyJax has
been in Hemming Plaza since Nov. 5]

KH: I think it’s great. I am pretty inspired by what young people do in general (not like it’s all young people, but it seems like quite a few young people were the instigators). It is interesting to me when people criticized it in the beginning, claiming it was all young, middle class people, and I was like “They are the ones who can manage to physically be down there sleeping on the bricks, and so they are, and that’s awesome, not a bummer!”FW: How do you feel about the “SlutWalk” trend?
KH: I am always happy when women are taking it to the streets and starting discussions.FW: What are your thoughts on the late Slits singer Ari Up?
KH: She was an innovator and I can’t believe she is gone. We lost her and Poly [Styrene] in a 2 year time period [note: both to cancer] and I think many of us are still reeling from this.

FW: Tell me about Lydia Lunch?
KH: LOOOVE HER. There are many spots on the album I am working on with my new band The Julie Ruin where my vocals are totally influenced by her style. She has influenced culture on such a deep level and never really been given her due.

FW: Is it possible for women to take positions that contradict the larger feminist community, while retaining feminist credentials? What must she say or do to be “expelled” from the movement?
KH: There are so many different ways to enact one’s own feminist ideas that it is pretty hard to come up with a unified list of feminist do’s and don’ts, and I personally hate that way of thinking. I am way more into allowing women to define feminism for themselves and keep on stretching its meanings. More arguments, more questions, more disagreements, this is what leads to a vital movement, not lists and rules.

FW: What’s it like seeing yourself on film?
KH: Um. Weird and embarrassing pretty much sums it up, but I have a distance from it now. After Who Took the Bomp? came out, I started being filmed for an upcoming documentary called The Punk Singer and my main thing is that I don’t really care if I come off like a jerk. I just want the movie to be engaging so people will go off on their own and check out my work and the stuff me and my bandmates made together.  I mean, on one hand I have a huge ego and love attention and all that, that’s why I’m a performer, but on the other hand I don’t take any of it too seriously, cuz I really am just an ant on anthill like everyone
else and my time here on earth is finite.

FW: Which of your recordings stands out as most representative of your aesthetic?
KH: I am most proud of the Rebel Girl 7″ Bikini Kill did and the first Le Tigre album. The song “Hot Topic” on that album is very much indicative of my aesthetic. Poppy yet still DIY with a big nod to the past.

FW: Who are the “Riot Grrrls” of today?
KH: Brontez Purnell of The Younger Lovers is my favorite modern riot girl. Also the women who run the website http://www.girlgangunderground.org/.

FW: Why have you never appeared in Jacksonville before?
KH: I don’t really know why, it was always hard to book stuff in Florida for some reason. Le Tigre played in Gainesville and Miami, but BK never played Florida at all.

jplzinelibrary.wordpress.com
jaxpubliclibrary.orgsheltonhull@gmail.com; November 7, 2011

David Garrard: Adding Insult to Injury

Adding Insult to Injury

David Garrard: A good man, treated really badly.

 The end of David Garrard’s nine-year run with the Jacksonville Jaguars was executed in a manner wholly consistent with the team, and the city it represents. A man who gave all he had on behalf of his team and his city was sent packing more in the manner of a deposed Muslim dictator than the local hero he was. If there was any way to have handled it any worse, it may considered miraculous that such conditions were not also met; one can only guess that its slapdash nature left insufficient time.

Recapitulation: David Garrard was drafted by the Jaguars in 2002. He became the starting quarterback when Byron Leftwich was let go in 2007. The clamor to draft Tim Tebow last year signaled the end was near. His teammates denied him a position as team captain on Monday—Labor Day—after his last full practice in a Jaguar jersey, but he was still introduced to a luncheon of community leaders as their starting QB on Tuesday. He was gone within two hours, surprising pretty much everyone.

The stated reasons? “He just couldn’t get it together,” said Coach Jack Del Rio, who made sure to bury his star on his way out. He came into camp sluggish, clearly off a step after years playing behind an offensive line that saw little real investment until it was too late to save Garrard. The team waited to see whether he could regain his old form, but when that failed to happen, they made an apparently last-minute decision to save some $9 million in salary cap room—money that will likely be thrown away on another Cleo Lemon-type free agent bust. By the time most fans were aware that their franchise had been decapitated, Garrard was probably already home, shoes off.

The issue here is not whether Garrard should have been the starting QB. That is a decision for the coaches. This is about business, and about a football team that exists in significant part because of the tax dollars and consumer spending of a city that, like most others, is fighting hard to resist the recessionary rip current swirling through our country. Frankly, it’s a slap in the face to every fan who bought into the “rebuilding” hype that has defined the Del Rio era. The accountability demanded of individual players, or the ticket-buying public, isn’t even humbly requested by team management of itself.

But to eliminate him now is to excise a major component of the team’s drawing power and marketing appeal the last few years. He wasn’t the captain, but if you ask the city’s children who the team’s leader is, they’ll usually say Garrard. How much money was just wasted on fresh #9 jerseys in the past month, while the coaches were planning his ouster? How many fans paid full price for outmoded swag? How many stores have to eat a bunch of worthless stock they were planning to bank on? How many pieces of Jaguar merchandise became curiosity pieces before the season’s first snap?

At the moment Garrard’s exit was announced, the team still needed to sell 7,200 tickets to avoid a blackout. Nevermind that the NFL blackout rule is garbage and should be eliminated; dumping a guy like him this close to the opener implies chaos behind-the-scenes and raises, once again, the biggest question about the team itself: the full extent of its commitment to winning. On this point the political implications dovetail with practical football concerns. It may have been time to switch starters, but removing Garrard entirely means they have no options if the new guys falter or get hurt. (The irony is that Garrard was once the best backup QB in football.) If they start the season slowly, it will have a chilling effect on ticket sales, which itself will generate more heat.

The logistics of Garrard’s final day as a Jaguar contrasts sharply with that of his former teammate Fred Taylor. Freddy T signed a one-day contract before announcing his retirement at an emotional press conference that begins what will hopefully be a short but successful wait for Hall of Fame credentials, the first given to a Jacksonville player. But the man who was the face of the team for four years left the building without fanfare, and the front-office ran him down in a press conference called after he was gone. It was cold, classless and potentially poisonous to team morale.

Garrard was publicly humiliated, but he’s no victim; he’s already rich and still young enough to get even richer, and he surely understood the nature of the business he was in. The fans are now forced to endure another “rebuilding” year of uncertainly dotted with freak success and abysmal failure, but for them it is all just a game—one for which they have a lot of passion, but still just a game. The real victims here are new starter Luke McCown and presumed future starter Blaine Gabbert. They rose on a cloud of negativity not of their making, and expectations are now much higher because removing Garrard represents an “all-in” gesture toward the new guys. It’s now much harder for both of them to succeed, because they’re already being played against each other.

It should say enough about the effectiveness of Jaguar decision-making that the last two starters driven from Duval—Leftwich and Mark Brunell—both went on to productive and lucrative careers working as backups for franchises in bigger markets, or that Garrard’s agent had already received offers from at least three other teams within two hours of the announcement, or that one of them may be the Indianapolis Colts. Even if Garrard’s utility to the Jaguars had truly ended (which it hadn’t), it was maybe not the best idea to leave his talent open to exploitation by conference rivals.      

Were these questions worth considering? Of course! Jack Del Rio said out-front that it was solely a football decision. Perhaps that was really their intent, but it did not work out that way. After spending so much time talking up their love of “character”, to see the literal embodiment of that ethos given the Old Yeller treatment at age 33 sends a clear signal to other players that there is no upside to the time spent “giving back”. Those emotional bonds formed with kids in hospitals, charity groups and such can be snapped on a whim, consistent with a right-to-work state forcing sadistic austerity onto its people.

Garrard’s unceremonious sacking, lacked with acrimony, is an experience that resonates with many city and state employees who have been going through the same thing themselves this summer. Like them, he acted in good faith and gave all to people who treated him more like a broken-down mid-range racehorse than a human being with many positive contributions still to be made. This Garrard thing was the kind of move Rick Scott would make if he ran a football team; it’s something the Florida Marlins would do. That’s not good, not at all.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; September 7, 2011

Guest post: Faith Bennett Meets Michelle Bachmann

Courtesy Faith Bennett

[Artist Faith Bennett (D-FL) was on-hand when GOP Presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) made a campaign stop at Angie's Subs on August 26. Her words and photos follow.]

Michelle Bachman’s blue campaign bus did not come silently, literally or figuratively, to Jacksonville Florida as it pulled into the locally legendary business that is Angie’s Subs. Hundreds packed in the small building pushing the capacity, and much of the crowd pushing 60. Small women stood on chairs, some waited in rocking chairs, others still stood by the glass window anxiously awaiting their favored presidential candidate.

The wait seemed more unbearable than the heat to the members of the First Coast Tea Party that remained inside. Whispers filled the room along with a sing-a-long Tea Party anthem prompting Americans to “Stand up” for freedom. “She’s probably doing her make up,” one woman noted, “she has to.” Another woman took the lull as an opportunity to show off her “I was anti-Obama before it was cool” pin to more people in the room.

When Bachman finally made her entrance, she was greeted with signs and smiles and American flags. The students starting the UNF chapter of the Tea Party seemed nervously excited. The founders of the First Coast Tea Party were proud and stood with their chins up. Ed Malin, the self described “Bible Thumpin’ Gun Totin’ Capitalist Pig,” who owns Angie’s Subs was happy. He had moments ago expressed via microphone that he hoped Bachman to be his next president. Michelle Bachman herself was hard to see at first over the crowd. As one woman put it, “She’s Teensy!” Her diminutive stature is a severe misrepresentation of her personality however. She speaks with a Minnesotan accent and all the enthusiasm in the world and gestures with her hands wildly with the zeal of a tent revivalist (and close to the same values.)

Bachman wasted no time explaining her disagreement with Obamacare. She spoke of how she wrote the bill to repeal Obamacare and how she was “The first member of congress on the floor introducing that bill.” She told of her desire to cut spending to the Enviromental Protection Agency, a declaration that was immediately met with clapping and cheering. “I intend to turn out the lights and lock the doors on the EPA,” she followed while doing a locking motion with her hands.  When she closed her brief speech she made sure to say “God bless you!” to the crowd demonstrating her beliefs.

She spent longer shaking hands, holding babies, and signing the shoulders of Tshirts than giving her speech, though she didn’t stop speaking as she posed for pictures. As she signed a piece of memorabilia for an older gentleman she expressed the ease at which she believed the natural gas movement could be started in the United States: “We can. Very easily. That’s the good thing is that we’ve got the resources in abundance.” She also made note however that she didn’t wantAmericato own GM anymore. She is strongly againstAmericaowning companies. Bachman and her fans spent the hour of meeting and greeting aflutter with hope to, as Bachman put it, “Change the Change.” The collective spirit of the room was one of triumph in that they believed to be taking backAmerica, and preserving their rights.

Outside, there was a smaller crowd. Ten (maybe) protesters stood on the corner with signs also demonstrating a desire to preserve their rights, and their country. The message was the same but the meaning couldn’t have been more opposite. Patriotism in the U.S. will always be relative.

Courtesy Faith Bennett

Pyramid Scheme: The Haitian Memorial Pyramid answers several questions at once.

The horrifying human and material destruction wrought by the earthquake that wrecked Haiti on January 12, 2010 inspired impassioned humanitarian responses from around the world, linking diverse chains of concerned citizens spanning political and socioeconomic categories. These chains will hopefully pull Haiti back from the abyss. One link among these chains is veteran political activist Russell Pelle, whose latest cause is certainly his greatest—the Haitian Memorial Pyramid.

The Pyramid project encompasses many things at once, which is what has made it so potent in the public sphere. The earthquake killed at least a quarter-million people in a matter of seconds, crushed beneath the rubble of buildings built to third-world standards and pulverized by seismic shocks. The body-count overwhelmed any existing emergency capacity—it’s not certain that such an emergency could even be handled effectively in the United States—and forced a Haitian government that was itself teetering on the edge of illegitimacy to make an almost-unthinkable decision: In lieu of normal burial practices, most of Haiti’s death were bulldozed into mass-graves on the outskirts of Port-au-Price. The site is considered hallowed ground by some, a symbol of the country’s weakness and systemic failure to others.

Pelle’s plan is at once audacious and amazingly practical. They will collect the rubble that remains around the earthquake zone, haul it away and use it to construct a gigantic pyramid at the site of the mass-grave. The pyramid’s aesthetics would recall the spirit of the indigenousAmericas: “A stairway, aligned with the sun every January 12, ascends to the summit. Passing under a glass rainbow archway set aglow by the sun, visitors approach the eternal flame. Trees and greenery on the terraces of the pyramid symbolize life—and the reforestation of Haiti.”

When finished, the Haitian Memorial Pyramid should be one of the country’s major tourist attractions, as well as a place where the people can own their pain and take control of how this unspeakable human tragedy will be perceived by future generations. Perhaps most importantly, in the short-term, the project (which could be potentially beHaiti’s largest employer) will not only provide jobs for local workers, but accelerate the snail-like pace of cleanup activity inPort-au-Prince.

The extent of material waste from resources donated by citizens of the world, and the slowness of the redevelopment over the past year and a half, is a flat-out disgraceful debacle. Most reports say that over 500,000 people still live in the camps, but Pelle’s experience suggests the number is more like a million. Those who can get out and try to rebuild their lives have nowhere to do so, because most of the rubble—some 33 million metric tons—remains where it fell. The pace of redevelopment has remained still as sluggish as health care, crime control or the food situation.

Frankly, the most amazing thing is that there hasn’t been some other major humanitarian tragedy (like cholera or malaria) since then. Haitians have been catching the bum’s rush for generations, alternating between dictatorship and chaos. Why? “The ruling class’ wealth is based on buying and reselling imports, so they have no interest in domestic production or agriculture,” Pelle says. The US has been extremely deficient about its responsibilities to a country it essentially sold into French tyranny.

Citizens of Florida have, of course, been always ahead of the curve on theHaitisituation, as our state (particularlyMiami) is the gateway to that whole region. Led by a brilliant contingent of Haitian-American artists, writers, musicians, businessmen and academics (including our own Overstreet Ducasse), money has been raised, connections have been made, and the groundwork has been laid for long-term political and economic means to bring long-delayed social justice to the people of Haiti.

But first, they’ve got to move that rubble. Pelle has partnered with Jeffrey Foster, a fellow Jacksonville resident (and designer of the Girvin Road landfill) who’s leading the design team, as well as treasurer Roland Wasembeck. They will be working in collaborations with Haitian consultants, utilizing a preponderance of their local labor. It may take 10 to 15 years, and millions of dollars, to finish the project, but it’s potential long-term benefit to the country makes it well worth the investment. The site is slated to also include a botanical garden and marine sanctuary built by other groups adjacent to the pyramid. When completed, it will be 100% owned byHaiti itself.

The astonishing disconnect between the billions pledged for Haitian relief and recovery, and the stunning failure of redevelopment efforts to date, suggests even bigger challenges ahead for people like Pelle. For some, Haitiis just the newest, fashionable form of social outreach, and that’s fine. But for Pelle, this whole thing evolves organically from years of direct involvement in Haitian affairs. “It’s an amazing, fascinating place,” he says. He’s spent most summers there since 1996; his most recent trip (Aug. 7-14) was the second one this year, and his 16^th in 15 years. They originally planned to spend 15 days there, but finances compelled some truncation; the estimated cost for two people to make that trip for two weeks was $6,450.

Concerns about the approach of TS Emily, which was slated to approachHaitithat very weekend, did nothing to dissuade the team; it was their most important session yet. They have now met so far with a number of Haitian officials, including former PM Michele Pierre-Louis, current PM Jean-Max Bellerive (whose successor has not yet been chosen), the Minister of Tourism, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and several mayors and senators of the Port au Prince area. Their political bases are well-covered.

The Haitian Memorial Pyramid holds nonprofit status in the state ofFlorida. The group has documented their work via Powerpoint on several occasions. These materials are available online, at HaitianPyramid.org; they will also deliver the message directly to groups interested in participating. (Donations via PayPal: haitianpyramid@gmail.com.) By partnering with others working to advance the same people, options for synergy and symbiosis abound.

The project is intended to be a bipartisan effort, stripped bare of petty ideological concerns; one hopes it can remain that way. Pelle and company reached out to heavy-hitters across the ideological spectrum, and got strong feedback from Bill Nelson and Corrine Brown. The North Florida Central Labor Council (which began reaching out toHaitithe day after the quake) was first to endorse the project. “This project and others like it not only offer needed help; they also serve as constant reminders that there is so much more that must be done. … By supporting the Haitian Memorial Pyramid Project, we are provided the opportunity to help this nation become whole again. It is a worthwhile endeavor”, wrote Mayor Alvin Brown; he reportedly expressed some interest in introducing them to Bill Clinton, whose name is virtually synonymous with the recovery effort in Haiti, and State Senator Tony Hill (who also works as Mayor Brown’s legislative liaison) also supports the project.

Having made a good, quick start to the project, Pelle looks forward to the years of hard work ahead. “Anything for the revolution, anything for the project”, he says, with the kind of positive attitude he’ll need to get it done.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; August 22, 2011

Anders Breivik, Clear Channel, and the London Riots: Loose Threads

It’s almost ironic that Anders Behring-Breivik, the monster who killed nearly 100 people across Norway in late July 2011, conceived and executed his nefarious plans as a exercise in psychological warfare, given that his early adulthood was spent working in the advertising industry. In fact, it now emerges that the seed money that permitted his initial travels to London, where he claims to have been “recruited” into this still-unknown group of possible co-conspirators, was inadvertently provided by one of the most prolific practitioners of such techniques in America, Clear Channel Communications.

Clear Channel is best-known for its role in virtually destroying the terrestrial radio industry in the United States. The infamous Telecommunications Act of 1996 eliminated all previous restrictions on radio ownership in the US, allowing Clear Channel to rapidly expand its radio holdings from the then-maximum of 40 to an unprecedented 1,200 stations, including multiple stations on the same dial in a single city, which was once illegal for reasons the company demonstrated in short-order.

Under their watch, the radio industry became suffused with payola: In exchange for preferential treatment on their centrally-planned national playlists, the “Big Six” conglomerates then controlling most major record labels funneled money into other the company’s other holdings in TV and outdoor advertising. It was technically legal, but brazenly unethical and transparently corrupt. Most of this music was designed to promote anti-social and self-destructive behaviors, typified by the gangsta rap and quasi-Satanic rock music produced by Interscope and Time-Warner. By the time prosecutors in New York and Florida began looking into these practices, it was too late. Terrestrial radio bled money, losing much of their market share to satellite radio and the Internet, both of which gave listeners more options for music unfiltered by corporate priorities.

Breivik was not involved in the radio industry, although it would be interesting to know what kind of stuff he listened to. His dealings with Clear Channel are summarized on page 1400 of his manifesto, in a section detailing his professional experience: “2000-2001: Managing director of Media Group AS. Development and sales of outdoor media solutions (primarily billboards). My company was partially acquired/bought by Mediamax Norway AS after I (and my employee, Kristoffer Andresen) had built a billboard portfolio from scratch in the Oslo area which was then sold to Mediamax Norge AS (which was later bought by JC Decaux Norway) and Clear Channel (July 00 – July 01)”. The profits from the sale of his business funded his trip to London in 2002, where by his own admission he was recruited into a larger right-wing terrorist movement.

Breivik signs his manifesto “London 2011”, raising the question of whether he had been there this year. Given that his name and status as a potential domestic terrorist had been known to authorities at least as early as March, 2011, it’s unclear how he could have been allowed to travel. It’s likely that Norwegian authorities never really considered the possibility of right-wing terror, despite the rising chatter of such around the world over the past couple of years. One looks at the violent rioting that hit London just two weeks later, and can’t help but wonder if there is any connection between the loosely-organized chaos on British streets and the “lone nut” of Oteya Island.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; August 8, 2011

Money Jungle: Deficits and Debt, Credit and Control

I’m writing this on August 1, as President Obama is trying to secure a deal with Congress to raise the ceiling on our national debt (currently hovering around $14 trillion, or 98% of GDP) and avoid possible default on America’s financial obligations. This is the kind of political theate rWashington specializes in.

Of course, longtime readers of this column already know the subtext: America is broke, and has been for the better part of a decade. Osama bin Laden’s master plan to bankrupt the “bleed”Americadry through a series of ill-conceived, poorly-planned and ineffectively-executed military adventures in all of the wrong countries worked so well that we had to blow his brains out just to silence his constant snickering. The national debt has more than doubled (from $5.7 trillion) since 2000, and is projected to exceed $22 trillion by 2015, or 134% of GDP. Anyone who thinks any of this will ever be paid back, or that it’s even possible, is either lying or insane. Maybe both.

Looking at the legendary US Debt Clock website, which belongs on everyone’s list of favored sites, the brutal truth now being revealed to the population is laid bare in cold statistics. On Saturday, July 30 (three days before the deadline) one sees the national debt hovering just above $14.5 trillion. At that moment, our GDP was only $14.8 trillion (a debt-to-GDP ratio of 98%), and the amount of currency currently in circulation was less than $10 trillion. The interest on debt stands at $3.6 trillion for this year alone, which is only slightly less than the total national debt a decade ago, pre-war.

The debt debacle unfolding on Capitol Hill offers the nation’s youth an ideal object lesson in the dangers of a debt-based economy. Not only has theUnited Statesruined its own economy, and helped undermine the financial stability of its allies, but our dependence on foreign countries to sustain our lifestyles has forced us out of the position of global leadership that we’d held since World War II. Just as our addiction to OPEC oil left us unable to check those nations’ continued support of Islamic terrorism (which is essentially funded by the money we send to OPEC, as well as military aid to Pakistan), our slavish dependence on China leaves us impotent to check its expansion into the Western Hemisphere. Centuries of evolved political wisdom faded, like old cotton candy, under the heat of economic expediency.

Let’s make this country-simple: The bailout was a mistake. President Obama laid down like a prostitute for Wall Street, because the underwrote his campaign. He stacked his economic team with people who were directly complicit in the illegal and unethical behaviors that led to the recession, and their time has been spent throwing good money after bad, while working hard to ensure the guilty never face the consequences of their actions, either fiscal or physical. Having demonstrated that you can cheat the system and destroy human lives in the process, while being rewarded for it, Obama eliminated any possibility that Wall Street’s excesses can be reined-in.

Federal finances are in shambles, but under that is a whole matrix of personal and institutional debt that could also collapse if triggered by federal default. Like the abusive spouse who gets a second chance, Wall Street now feels empowered to do anything—and that makes it almost a certainly that our recession is going to get much, much worse. Nearly 15 million Americans are out of work, and millions more labor at jobs that pay poorly, offer no benefits or room for advancement. A majority of citizens are stuck in this cycle of revolving debt, but no one has suggested any relief for them.

No one suggests putting a moratorium on the fraudulent foreclosures that have ruined millions of families, or forgiving student-loan debt, or exempting certain key public workers (like nurses, teachers, cops and firemen) from the federal income tax, or cutting through the labyrinth of paperwork that impedes so many from starting businesses in this country, or containing the artificially-high medical costs that are the primary cause of personal bankruptcy. The only wisdom we’re receiving from our political “leaders” consists of calls for enhanced austerity on one hand, tax hikes on the other—approaches that will only cause economic growth to stall even further. Which means this whole debate will not end with any deal struck this week or next, this year or next. Our nation is in big trouble, but the only people who don’t know are us.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; August 1, 2011

 

The death of Amy Winehouse (1983-2011): Alternative Views

At this moment, it is commonly assumed that singer Amy Winehouse (1983-2011), who was arguably the finest singer the emerge in the 21^st century to date, died from either a drug overdose or a lethal combination of drugs, mixed with alcohol and consumed the night before she was found dead in her London apartment. That would make perfect sense, given her notorious history of dangerous drug abuse. But since she’s famous, of course not everyone is satisfied with that explanation. No matter what happened to her, it’s a goddamn shame and a loss to humanity, but as a public service, we’ll now parse the wealth of conspiracy theories that have emerged in recent days:

*Amy Winehouse accidentally drank herself to death: At her eulogy, her father make what many regard as a spectacularly delusional claim: That Amy Winehouse had been clean of drugs for three years prior to her death, and was only working to conquer alcoholism. The woman was known to consume massive amounts of alcohol, particularly vodka, enough to easily kill a woman her size. The list of British musicians to go out that way is a long one, including Jimi Hendrix (allegedly), Bon Scott and John Bonham.

*Amy Winehouse committed suicide: Although everyone who knew her says she was in good spirits in the days prior to her death—the phrase “happier than ever” is used a lot—surface appearances can be deceiving, especially when dealing with someone who started some days by slamming vodka shots. She had just broken up with boyfriend Reg Traviss earlier in the summer; despite his great grief and his kind words of remembrance, there is no evidence of any reconciliation. Her “comeback” tour ended in boos and tears within a few minutes of her first show. The last four years were really rough for her, and one can easily see how these dual setbacks might have sent her over the edge.

*Amy Winehouse was murdered, either by her bodyguard(s) or people who were partying with her the night before she died, for unknown reasons: Official reports say that her bodyguard was the last person to see her alive, when he asked her not to play her drums so loud in the early-morning hours; he later said he heard her walking around after that. Kelly Osborne claimed to have spoken with her for nearly an hour that night, saying she seemed completely fine; it is unclear whether that conversation happened before or after she’d spoken with the bodyguard. At any rate, he found her dead hours later, twice. He saw her unconscious in bed early that morning, assumed she was sleeping, and left her room; it’s unclear at this writing whether he got close enough to confirm that she was still alive at that point. He returned a few hours later, found her unresponsive and called the authorities, who reportedly confirmed her death within five minutes of her arrival. One report said she had “signs of life” initially, but who knows what that means. Either way, the bodyguard needs a thorough interrogation, and perhaps waterboarding.

*Amy Winehouse was killed at the direction of her record label because she was worth more dead than alive: Her recordings have dominated online retail sales in the week after she died, and one can expect that if (more likely when) the new record is released, it will probably sell millions of copies and win a number of Grammy Awards, bookending a brief-but-bounteous career. It’s thus ironic that she’d delayed the long-awaited project for years, first while publicly battling her demons and failing to write new material on schedule, and then because she was yet satisfied with the finished product. She had begun her disastrous final tour before even releasing the album, which is somewhat unusual for an artist her stature; it’s unclear if her legal issues would have even allowed her to perform in theUnited States, her biggest market. Canceling the tour after the meltdown inBelgrade may have cost millions.

What gives this theory legs (well, Amy Winehouse-sized legs) is that is has some basis in history. Courts are still working to establish exactly how and why Michael Jackson was given a fatal drug combination, either by his doctor, himself or some unknown other person. And evidence is slowly accumulating to support the theory that Hendrix’s death was engineered by his then-manager, the villainous Mike Jeffrey, who feared Hendrix was soon to fire him and who himself died in a shady plane crash just three years later.

*Amy Winehouse was deliberately given bad drugs: Anonymous friends of Winehouse reported seeing her buy cocaine, ecstasy and/or heroin from someone the night before she died, and speculated that bad ecstasy was the culprit. One presumes the London Metropolitan Police have made all efforts to indentify said dealer and roust him about sufficient to confirm or deny those theories, but nothing has been said publicly yet. Winehouse was an experienced drug user with a massive tolerance, but may have displayed the kind of carelessness that often comes with addiction, not taking much care to scrutinize her drugs or the people she got them from. But still, if you’re a drug dealer, and you’ve got a customer who’s worth millions and really likes drugs, it makes no sense to give them anything but the best. Then again, people can be malicious and stupid in spades; it’s not unthinkable that someone would poison Amy Winehouse just for shits and giggles, or to exact revenge against her or someone close to her. Things like that happen all the time.

*Amy Winehouse was killed to manipulate public opinion on the Drug War: A common conspiracist view of celebrity death, one that is not entirely absurd. We are all now familiar with the lengths to which governments will go to manipulate public opinion, and the British are, well, the British. Winehouse’s death brings the issue of drug abuse and addiction to the forefront of public debate. Her father reportedly noted in his eulogy that drug addicts in theUK must face a two-year-long waiting list for rehab treatments, unless they can afford the private clinics his daughter made such famous use of. For the singer of “Rehab” to die just weeks after checking out of one of the finest such facilities in the world looks bad for the whole industry.

*Amy Winehouse was killed by Casey Anthony, perhaps by accident: Maybe she switched-out Winehouse’s vodka for chloroform? The woman has not been seen since she was released from jail in late July, and some feel that she is capable of anything. If there is anyone in the world who might be sympathetic to a young woman who’s been verbally assaulted by commercial media for years, it would be Amy Winehouse. Anthony could probably not walk 1,000 feet in any direction, anywhere inAmerica, without being spat on, beaten or killed outright, so a foreign destination would make sense. My guess, of course, would beMexico; Casey Anthony would probably make a damn good gun moll for some media-savvy cartel boss. That would be epic.

*Amy Winehouse was killed to distract people in advance of another major terrorist attack in the US or Britain: The possibility of such attacks have been teased almost steadily for years, but reached a new peak following the death of Osama bin Laden; it was suggested that the announcement of such would serve as the trigger for terror cells already planted at strategic places in the West. So far, the only thing that’s happened was the atrocity committed against the people ofNorway, which at present shows no outward indication of being connected to al-Qaeda or any known affiliates. Which leads to an extended discussion of this, perhaps the most controversial and convoluted concept of them all:

*The death of Amy Winehouse is somehow connected to the terrorist attacks in Norway, which occurred the day before she died: This is an interesting theory, and not just because I made it up myself for sport. It links easily to many of the other possibilities raised elsewhere. Like all of us, she presumably found out about the attacks on the news; it dominated the BBC for most of her last 48 hours on Earth. Even the most cynical viewer would be sickened, seeing the aftermath of a mass-murder of children on a steady loop, and someone as sensitive as her might have taken it even worse. Maybe she partied even harder to distract herself from those scenes of horror.

But there’s a more unsavory aspect to this theory: What are the odds that her death is directly related? It’s now emerging that suspect Anders Brevik has connections toBritain, where he claims to have been recruited into some shady cabal in 2002. It is unclear when he was last there, but he claims to have been planning the attacks for nine years, even renting a farm in order to stockpile weapons, explosives and the fertilizer used to build the truck-bomb that rockedOslo. He claimed that there were many others connected with his movement, and that other attacks were in the works. Did Anders Brevik ever meet Amy Winehouse? Was she acquainted with any of the Britons who collaborated with Brevik? We will never know.

*Amy Winehouse died of natural causes as yet unexplained: Probably the most unlikely scenario of them all, which speaks to how hard she rolled, but possible. Initial autopsies were inconclusive; had she been murdered, suffered a heart attack or stroke, etc., that would have been revealed immediately. Toxicology reports are not available at this writing, but the intense public interest in Ms. Winehouse’s demise ensures a speedy yet thorough turnaround. Her father claimed she suffered from emphysema due to heavy smoking of crack and/or meth and/or tobacco. She may have suffocated herself during the kind of deep, frenetic sleep that follows a lot of partying; other media suggest that she may have suffered a seizure, possibly delirium tremens.

*We will never know exactly why Amy Winehouse died: An Ambiguous ending to a life that, to many people, just didn’t make any sense. She would have thus share yet another link to the great Robert Johnson, a pioneer of the Delta Blues and one of the most influential musicians in all of history, whose suspicious death (commonly thought to be retaliatory poisoning) inaugurated what has now become known as the “27 Club”. If the toxicology reports don’t reveal anything conclusive, it’s likely the trail will go stone-cold; Winehouse was cremated immediately after her funeral. Rest In Peace!

sheltonhull@gmail.com; July 27, 2011

Money Jungle: Generational Warfare

Generational Warfare

Duval County students have no allies in the political system.

One thing the whole world has learned about Florida in recent years is that you can pretty much do anything you want to children and get away with it. Now, I’m not just talking about our pathological coddling of social predators, but a political structure that makes our young people easy subjects for negative influences and anti-social behavior. At its root is the state’s criminally negligent approach to public education.

The latest round of budget cuts include approximately 256 positions across the county, cuts not limited just to teachers. Student-athletes, whose precious summertime should have been spent in study, at practice or just hanging out with their friends, have been reduced to begging on the streets for money that the private sector should have ponied up instantly. The fact that they haven’t speaks to the genuine contempt adults have for the children of this community.

We have underfunded education for longer than many readers have been alive. We have stuck them with a worthless curriculum and rearranged teaching practices to prepare them for standardized testing that is not only inapplicable to the real world, but whose very existence is mostly the result of blatant political corruption on local, state and national levels. We’ve cut arts, music and sports, which are essential to the shaping of young minds and the building of interpersonal bonds that last a lifetime, while also deemphasizing trade and technical education at a time when America’s physical economy is dissipating faster than blunt smoke in a wind tunnel.

We’ve done all these things, knowing full well what the result would be, because we were warned, exhaustively, at every step along the way. For years, children who saw the raw deal they had been given, and reacted appropriately, were labeled as “disruptive” or tagged with the various fake DSM-IV disorders—ADD, ADHD, OCD, etc.—dictated by Big Pharma, and then what? They were drugged, in the millions, creating an entire generation of addicts, prostitutes and potential mass-murderers. The kids were pilled-up to conceal the comprehensive failure of their parents, their teachers and their political leaders. And now that it’s too big to conceal anymore, the decision has been made to just eliminate them altogether, by torpedoing the public school system.

Obviously, much of the blame goes to Tallahassee and our pathetic joke of a Governor, but this was happening for years, long before anyone had heard of Rick Scott. For me, this goes on everyone: teachers’ unions, PTAs and the private sector, the school board and administrators, all elected officials including this governor and his predecessor. We also fault a Democratic Party that laid down for Scott, offering no resistance while he blatantly bought the governorship. He makes a convenient scapegoat, and rightfully so, but it’s not like anyone, anywhere, has an alternate vision. He was elected by a majority of voters who all knew exactly what he stood for. Now the children get to see what their parents are really good for—specifically, nothing. That is a form of education.

The entire Board should resign, and maybe the Superintendant, too. I’m not talking about the rank-and-file DCPS employees, who are already suffering and will suffer even more in the future. The seven elected School Board members are all nice folks, but they all violated their oaths and their campaign promises to help improve education. Even though funding was cut, their allocation of funds was terrible, wasteful and contributed to the political environment that allowed such cuts to be forced onto an unwilling citizenry.

Hell, if they’d resigned sooner, it might have been possible to offset the budget cuts for a few more months. But instead, they sat back on their taxpayer-padded asses and pled powerlessness, as they voted to deliberately induce hard times on parents, teachers and students countywide. Not one even had the decency to resign in either protest or shame, because nobody has any shame in Florida.

Whether they like it or not, they are now part of the problem. And now, having forfeited all credibility, they can never be part of the solution, because Tallahassee knows they’ll lay down on-command; their ability to legislate effectively has been broken. The good news is that four of the seven seats are up for grabs in 2012, right after they sign off on the next wave of budget cuts. Districts 1 (Martha Barrett), 3 (WC Gentry), 5 (Betty Burney), and 7 (Tommy Hazouri) constitute a majority stake; Burney and Hazouri are term-limited, so their seats are open.

Students should also consider the idea of organizing and starting the new school year with a mass walk-out in the first week. When the adults prove incapable of protecting their children’s interests, then the kids need to go into business for themselves. That is the Free Market at work!

sheltonhull@gmail.com; July 25, 2011

 

Notes on Daniel Somerson (1958-2011)

[Update, 5:13pm, July 21: The police have announced an arrest in the murder of Daniel Somerson; details will be provided at a press conference scheduled for 6pm. Depending on what they have to say, much of the speculation contained below may be rendered moot. My initial thought was to just wait and post this after editing to reflect the new information. But instead, I'll just post this as it was written a few days ago, and any supplementary info will be appended later. More coming--stay tuned!]

Notes on Daniel Somerson (1958-2011)

It remains unclear how long the body of Daniel Somerson lay undetected inside his home in Fruit Cove before the police found it on July 8. It was presumed to be him because the home was in his name, bought for $225,000 three years ago. A secretive man, neither known nor liked by any neighbors who’ve said so at this writing, Somerson had not been seen in a couple weeks; someone requested a welfare check by the authorities, and they have probably checked on them, as well. It’s unclear what room he was in, or the position of his body. Was the air conditioner on? Unclear.

There are two things, however, that are apparently clear—or, as clear as it gets in things like this. The first is that Daniel Somerson died so violently that even the police in Florida went out of there way to define it as such, with nothing else by way of follow-up. The second is that Daniel Somerson lived his last few years as if he expected something pretty much like this to happen. Whether these questions are ultimately relevant are also unclear, but still, they are worth asking: What was he afraid of, and why?

Full disclosure: I’ve known the deceased for some time now. Our paths crossed often at various poetry readings and open-mic nights around the region—inRiverside, downtown, San Marco, Arlington, the Beaches, St. Augustine. Although he wrote under the pen name of “Jonathan Orion”, his peers called him “Daniel the Love Poet”, but I was never sure if he liked being called that or not. He always wore the moniker more with sinister irony than a literal embrace. He looked like the love-child of Freddie Mercury and Hitler, but with Mercury’s mustache and a nonexistent fashion sense. He always wore jeans and a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off; I don’t remember what his shoes looked like, and I don’t think I ever noticed, which really says a lot about the man’s ability to hold a conversation.

Amidst a Northeast Florida poetry scene that has produced some of the best talents in this country over the past 20 years (Alan Justiss, Al Letson, Nestor Gil, David Gerard, Matthew Hernandez, Bob Shipp, etc.), Somerson was, in my opinion, pretty good. I always found his stuff entertaining, mainly because his performing style was compelling. He spoke firmly, with a voice modulating between tenor and soprano, projecting such that amplification wasn’t needed. His pronunciation was exacting, though laced with a little lisp that, among other things, fueled speculation about his sexuality. Research indicates that he may have been a classically-trained singer, which explains a lot about his performance style. He also wrote in a classical vein. It was the kind of stuff that college kids wrote to their lovers, 100 years ago.

Behind the flowery prose and the trance-inducing voice was a really smart guy with a lot of inner turmoil that was, at times, just barely contained. He’d been asked to leave several events for arguments or outbursts over the years; even in conversation, his tone turned terse and testy when addressing certain subjects, especially politics. I knew he was weird straightaway, because he agreed with most of my work.

Beyond his brutal demise, Daniel Somerson will be remembered as someone who maintained a decade-long rhetorical offensive against theUStrucking industry. He used to drive a mail truck for the United States Postal Service, thus giving him the distinction of being not only a trucker, but a postal employee. This is apparently a highly volatile mix, with contents under heavy pressure. His beef with the government and the United States Trucking Association took deep into the recesses of the federal government—some might say, way too deep.

Among other things, he felt the government needed to be more aggressive about mandating sleep for drivers who, under the existing pay structure, make more money by staying on the road for as long as possible. This has in fact happened, to some extent, but not before a number of awful tragedies involving truckers that were either asleep at the wheel, or so impaired from sleep deprivation and/or stimulant burnout that they were unable to react in time to prevent accidents. Some of the worst such cases happened inFlorida, and this was a subject we discussed countless times. One guy slammed into a vehicle full of children as it idled behind a school bus, killing an entire family and nearly setting the bus on fire, which could have killed many more.

These subjects, while serious, were always discussed collegially. But things changed abruptly following the events of October 25, 2002. On that dayMinnesotasenator Paul Wellstone, then the most progressive among his colleagues, died alongside seven others (including his wife and daughter) in a small plane crash inEveleth,MN, while en-route to a political funeral. Ted Kennedy was also supposed to make that trip, but chose instead to go straight to a Wellstone rally inMinneapolis.

The effects of Wellstone’s death on American history are hard to state precisely, except to say they were tragic. For one thing, it eliminated the most strident critic of the looming war inIraq. The fiasco that Wellstone’s funeral became was cited as a major reason that then-Governor JesseVenturaended his own political career. Wellstone’s seat went Republican, and helped eliminate the last legal check on Bush/Cheney agenda; his successor, Norm Coleman, was beaten by Al Franken in 2008, and one may presume that Wellstone would be pleased by that, if nothing else.

The effects of Paul Wellstone’s death on Daniel Somerson were perhaps as severe. To him, Wellstone represented the last chance for a positive resolution to his dispute, the last chance for proper regulation of the trucking industry. Somerson was just one among probably thousands of Americans who immediately saw something shady to the senator’s demise. The ricin attacks began a year and a half later. Overall, some 62 incidents of possible ricin contamination occurred during this time. No one was ever caught, indicted or arrested. Daniel Somerson is the only person named as part of that investigation.

To this day, there remains wide public suspicion that Daniel Somerson was the person self-identified as the “Fallen Angel” who sent ricin to the White House and US Senate in 2004. Ricin is far more lethal than the more well-known powdery poison anthrax, yet far more accessible to the average person; made from castor beans, the ingredients are common and the instructions widely available online. The government is fully justified in taking note of persons looking up such information. Whereas anthrax spores must be inhaled to be effective, ricin can kill just by touching the skin, making it an ideal vehicle for quick mass-murder.

Somerson was married at least once, perhaps twice. Records indicate a man by his name was married inMainein the ‘80s. He was married to a teacher here for some years during the time I knew him. She, too, was a poet of some skill, but that ended; she never returned to the readings, and he never mentioned her again. She was very pretty, but folks still assumed he was at least bisexual, or that they were both swingers, or that she was a beard. At no point did anyone seem to think he seduced her by traditional means.

Years later, he placed an ad on the Internets seeking a roommate—no, that phrasing doesn’t quite describe it. The ad reads: “A life led by two people together, is a life much easier, more fulfilling and i need your help running this home. Offering trustworthy, responsible female opportunity for no cost housing and modest financial support in exchange for domestic skills and homemaker talents. Gorgeous large home on 1.5 acres, located in a peaceful and tranquil setting. Clean, safe and secure environment. I will work diligently to meet your every reasonable need and desire. Please, you must be a kind, gentle and empathetic person. My intentions are absolutely honorable and my heart is in the right place with this effort to find someone special. This is a committed and monogamous relationship. Complete details and a photo exchange available with your thoughtful response.”

He was offering to trade free lodging for female company, like having a live-in girlfriend, but more to the point and without the slow burn or awkward build-up. Now, that’s technically legal, but it’s obviously a sketchy proposition, one that is reportedly on the upswing inAmericatoday. How that even comes up in conversation among close friends, I have no idea. It essentially offers a legal loophole to prostitution, in many different ways. (The porn industry offers another: It’s illegal to pay a woman for sex, unless you record it and sell the video; that’s just fine.)

The kind of woman who would respond in the affirmative to such an offer, tendered anonymously by a rank stranger, almost certainly constitutes a sort of hyper-dimensional portal into all kinds of bad trouble. Especially if she’s hot. She’d either be a grifter, a runaway, or a girl running from someone who might have the skills to take out Daniel Somerson in his own home. The man was an ex-trucker who lifted weights, knew of weapons and had already turned his home into a fortified compound, living almost in anticipation of possible violence. But if he was still working that kind of angle, I could easily see it all ending up as it did.

It’s possible that the pressures induced by the “Fallen Angel” debacle played some role in wrecking his marriage and sending him on the trajectory that terminated in Fruit Cove a couple weeks ago. (He once implied that FBI agents had interrogated his wife at her place of business, but that is not confirmed.) The authorities have not yet conclusively ruled out suicide, but there’s no indication that anyone feels that way.

I last spoke to him via phone, sometime in late May or early June. He seemed well enough, pleasant and conversational. We caught up on a couple years’ worth of political skullduggery, reviewed the current wars and made predictions about the next ones. He asked if I knew where to score some herb; his previous hookup (a mutual friend) has recently died. I didn’t, but even if I did, I’d have probably said no anyway, because I always assumed that he remained under some kind of government surveillance. Not to be conspiratorial; I just figured that if you draw “Fallen Angel”-type heat, it never cools down completely.

Given his nature, he was obviously not the type to service his habit in nicks, dimes or doubles—more like a quarter-pound at a time. An ounce or more is felony weight, which changes the whole dynamic of any such transaction. Upon hearing that he’d died in a home surrounded with cameras, with no obvious signs of forced entry, I wondered if perhaps he’d found the wrong connection. What kind of person drives out into the middle of nowhere, aka Fruit Cove, to carry out a felony drug deal? My guess is the type of person who didn’t really care about the risks or the consequences, and that is a very dangerous type of person.

Ultimately, who knows what was going on out there? Odds are that the full details of Daniel Somerson’s weird life and weirder death will never be revealed. Certainly most of his secrets went to the grave with him (assuming that he’s been buried), and those that remain will be held tightly by his killer(s) until Death comes for them in some form that leaves no connection to the karma that set it in motion. Until we hear otherwise, we can safely assume that Somerson’s murder was related either to vice or to his vendetta against the trucking industry. Maybe he was the “Fallen Angel”, and in the absence of a provable case, the decision was made to eliminate him. Or maybe not.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; July 21, 2011

[Update, 6:13pm: Police announced the arrest of 24 year-old Latoya Jordan, whom they allege had met Somerson via the Internet, then moved into his house. Something happened at some point--those details were not revealed--leading to Somerson's violent death, by means that also not been mentioned yet. Given the size disparity, one assumes that he was shot, or was killed by other means while sleeping or otherwise incapacitated. The phrase in bold print a few paragraphs up basically summarizes the situation as presently understood. RIP, Love Poet!]

[Update, 2:21 pm, August 1: I received an e-mail from Carrie Coombs, the ex-wife of Daniel Somerson. She read the article above and wanted to add some essential insight. With her permission, her words follow this; I may reprint them in a separate post as well.]

I am Daniel’s ex-wife, the “very pretty” wife you referred to. We were married for 7.5 years, together for 10. I thought you did an EXCELLENT job writing about Daniel’s activism, whistleblowing, and safety advocacy concerning the trucking industry. I was with him when the proverbial *shit* hit the fan. We were in and out of court several times. The case history is all well-documented and available online. This was one of Daniel’s passions, and I thank you for giving the issue the attention it so deserves. Also, your paragraph about Senator Wellstone’s death and it’s affect on Daniel was spot-on. Thank you for reminding me about that ~ I had forgotten. Those several years were very stressful and it’s impossible to remember everything that transpired!

I hesitated to contact you right away after I read your “Notes” article because there were also several things you mentioned that were very distressing to me. I have been very heartbroken over Daniel’s murder. He and I tried reconciling twice after our divorce in 2007. We were last together from January to April in 2009. Even though I had not seen nor spoken to him in 2 years, I have always loved him very much and I so wanted him to meet someone that he could be happy with. His murder came as a tremendous shock to me. I really do believe that Daniel had the best of intentions; unfortunately, he let the wrong person into his home. I have needed some time to process all the emotions and flashfloods of memory the past several weeks before addressing my concerns with you.

First of all, Daniel was very proud of his Jewish heritage and your comment about likening his appearance to a cross between “Hitler and Freddy Mercury” was hurtful to me. Also, I felt that mentioning his manner of dress was irrelevant.

The paragraph in which you mention the (mis)perception of Daniel’s sexuality was very hurtful as well. Daniel loved women – hence all the poetry about his past loves and the poems about me. I can assure you I was not his “beard” nor some sort of cover for him. Our marriage was legit…every part of it. I think some people have that misperception of him because they do not understand his dichotomy: how could a man who professes to be a rough-and-tumble truck driver be so eloquent with poetry? It was really the poetry that enabled Daniel to be more in touch with his feminine side and take the edge off of his surly demeanor. We had a very deep, loving, difficult relationship. We went through hell and back together. I miss him very much.

Shelton, I don’t mean to upset you by this. There were so many other facets of Daniel, about which most people are clueless. I just wanted to set the record straight with you. No obituary has been written, so I consider your article about Daniel as an obituary of sorts.

Daniel always spoke highly of you and considered you a voice of reason in this *town*. Thank you for your publication.

Ed Austin interview transcript (2006)

Interview Transcript: Ed Austin—Recorded February 13, 2006

Ed Austin was the 61^st mayor of Jacksonville, Florida, but only the fourth to hold office since the city and county were officially consolidated in 1968. Hans Tanzler was mayor at the time (1967-79), followed by Jake Godbold (’79-‘87) and Tommy Hazouri. Austin won the Democratic primary of 1991, unseating incumbent Hazouri, and would be succeeded by John Delaney in 1995 and John Peyton in 2003. Austin later changed his affiliation to Republican, and is currently the last Democrat to occupy City Hall.

Even without that new emerald-green BMW with its “Go Jags” license plate, Ed Austin would be hard to miss. He’s approaching 80, but looks at least 15 years younger; this is mostly a testament toAustin’s commitment to good health and vigor in his golden years.Austinworks out almost every day, alternating from cardio to circuit-training at YMCAs inRiversideor Ponte Vedra. What really keeps him going, though, is his family. A father of three, Austin has nine grandchildren, five of whom live in the area.

Having lived in Avondale for 40 years, most of which time he was bound-in to his work at the Courthouse and City Hall, and after recovering from a bad car accident a decade ago, he now travels with a passion, spending more time out of the country than most Congressmen or Senators. His itinerary is the stuff of dreams:London,Paris,Venice, salmon-fishing inAlaska, white-water rafting along the Snake River.

SDH: What have you been up to since your days in City Hall?

EA: Well, that’s a long time ago. I’ve been around and covering some ground. I guess I stopped doing any kind of consulting work about four years ago; I’ve really fully retired, and fully enjoy it. I’ve had no problems being with filling up my day.

SDH: Do you live far from here?

EA: I live in a condo down onSt. Johns Avenue, by [the old] Cedar River.

SDH: Have you always been out there?

EA: No. My wife and I moved out there when all our kids got out of high school, went to college, and moved from a house into an easier-to-manage condo. We’d lived in a two-story house down the road [before that].

SDH: What makes this part of Jacksonville so special to you?

EA: Well, you know, I came intoJacksonville back in the ‘50s, over a half-century ago — well over, actually — and I moved into the Westside, and I’ve lived over in the Avondale/Riverside section since 1959. We’d gotten familiar with it, and we know where everything is, everything’s convenient, close-in. When I was in City Hall and the Courthouse, it was a short commute to be down there—ten minutes, no problem. And it’s still a nice neighborhood. I enjoy this area. When I moved, I told my wife I’d move anywhere she wanted, as long as it was closer to the Courthouse.

SDH: What’s fun for a guy like you?

EA: Now, well—I married a lovely lady about two years ago [Austin’s first wife died in an auto accident in which he was seriously injured in the 1990s], and we have a good relationship, we enjoy doing things together. We’ll do some traveling. We’ve had a couple trips toLondon,Paris, and a great trip toItaly last spring; did a whitewater rafting trip down theSnake River in July. And I fish when I can. I planned my trip this summer forAlaska, to fish for silver salmon, and I did a trip for a weekend up in centralCanada, for walleye. The traveling is fun—I enjoy that. We’ll be taking another trip shortly.

I read a lot. I get a lot of good magazines, or what I think are good magazines—

SDH: Like what?

EA: The American Enterprise, National Review, Weekly Standard. Mostly conservative, but they’re good. I get the Wall Street Journal every morning, because they deliver it to your door now. The first hour of my day is taken up with the newspapers.

I have friends. We get together. I have a group that meets at my condo on Wednesday mornings—faith-sharing. There’s about nine of us, and we’ve been doing that for ten years. It’s a good mental-heath exercise. Also, five of my nine grandchildren live here inJacksonville. They range in ages from eight to 15, and I’m going through the things I did as a parent, as a grandparent—going to basketball games and ballets and whatever you do. My son and I are heading out to the Keys; we’re going to take his boys down to the Islamorada for some fishing. My grandkids right now are just the absolute joy of my life; they light me up. I’ve got them all over the place.

SDH: How is running a family like running an organization like government?

EA: In any man’s life, it’s got to be the number-one priority. Family has got to be the number-one priority. I just had a rule: I had to be home for dinner. I upset a lot of nerves at dinner-time. You take the calls when they call in, and you keep your family up there as your top priority. But it’s not—no, you can’t run it like [business], because you’ve got your wife, and that changes the formula. It’s a partnership, not an executive position for the male, if it’s a good relationship.

SDH: As someone who played a part in helping make the city what it is–

EA: My real career was as a prosecutor. I was a State Attorney—

SDH: How long?

EA: I was State Attorney over 20 years, elected. And then I was only there [City Hall] for four years, but you get recognized more as the mayor, not what you really were. Before that, I was an assistant prosecutor, so I had about 25 years as a prosecutor, and that was what I really did, professionally, but I had that four years as mayor, and it was a great experience. This city—we woke it up a little.

We had a little self-esteem problem with this city, and I think we helped turn that around. We got to rebuilding some things, and building some new things. That’s what we set out to do, and I think we accomplished that.

We also fixed HUD over there—HUD was terrible, and we got to straighten it out and turn it around. That and creating the Children’s Commission, which I was real proud of. We had a good four years—you always brag about it, you never cut yourself down.

SDH: You’re held in generally high esteem by all the politicians I’ve talked to—

EA: Well, you’re very kind. I’ve worked hard and tried to be fair. You know, the key to this business is, whenever you’re in any office, is the quality of the people you surround yourself with. And I had such good people working with me—John Delaney, Rick Mullaney, Audrey Moran, John Jolly [sp?], Mike Weinstein—I could go on and on.

SDH: I’ve noticed that, in recent years, some of the top politicians around the country have been former prosecutors [for example, Rudy Giuliani and John Kerry; several are seeking governorships in 2006, including Charlie Crist in FL and, Eliot Spitzer in NY].

EA: You see them come out, they’re in administrative jobs, and it lends itself to staying in an administrative, executive-type of function. You have to make your own decisions over there, and it’s a good decision-making training ground, even for your assistant, because you’re making important decisions all the time. And usually there’s some notoriety and press involved with it, so you get your name recognition out, and it’s a logical step to run for something else. Some of them don’t make it; we’ve had some try, and shoot themselves in the foot with it. You can’t use the office to—I’ve never ran the State Attorney’s Office thinking I was going to use it to run for office—that was never in my mind. The best way to get promoted to another job is to do [the one you have] well and not worry about it.

SDH: Who was the best prosecutor you ever saw?

EA: Oh, I had so many good assistants. I must have had 350, 400 people down there in the State Attorney’s Office. I could make one friend, and lose 350!

SDH: Are there particular skills that come into play to be an effective prosecutor, as opposed to an effective defense attorney? Can the same person do both well?

EA: Yeah—well, I did. I was the first public defender in this community, back in ’63. I got appointed, and I was public defender for five years, and then the State Attorney job opened up, and I simply changed sides. I went from defending hundreds and hundreds of people to prosecuting thousands, so yeah, you can do both. It’s just a transition in state of mind. And this State Attorney’s office is supposed to be about administering justice, not just convicting; you’re running a system.

SDH: Some people say that criminal justice system doesn’t have the resources to do all the tasks it set out for itself. Is that true?

EA: It’s about like it’s always been. I don’t see any lesser emphasis on it. You go to the legislature every year, and they set priorities. I’ve never had any problem getting adequate funding, you always want more, but you do what you can, and if you organize it well and utilize your resources to make your people fully productive, you can do on the money. The funding seems to me to be fair, for both the defense and the State Attorney. You can always use more, but there has to be a limit. They split it up inTallahassee; they emphasize one thing and take it away from something else.

SDH: Who is your favorite mayor ofJacksonville, other than yourself?

EA: I really can’t name one. I was General Counsel for Hans Tanzler. Hans was our first consolidated mayor, and he was the perfect man for that job. I don’t know if “perfect” is the right word, but he was the best man for that job at that time. He did a masterful job. And, of course, I’m so close to John Delaney, who just did an outstanding job for the city. Now that doesn’t mean I don’t like and respect the others, but those two, I thought, really did very well for the city.

SDH: Is there anything aboutJacksonville, from a city government perspective, that makes it harder to run than other, similar, cities?

EA: No—it’s the exact opposite. [Before Consolidation], we had a small central city and big county area. When we consolidated it all into one, we created the most efficient form of city government there is, anywhere. So if you don’t run it properly, it’s your fault, and not the city’s fault. It is the best form of local government in theUnited States, so when you go in there you can’t complain that it’s a mish-mash. They got rid of a lot of the problems of—you know, you go down toPinellasCounty, and they’ve got 28 city governments with 28 mayors. Up here, we have the Beaches community, but we’ve have one government, fundamentally. The police functions, the fire functions, the water and sewer functions, the recreation functions, it’s all consolidated into one 841 square-mile area with one set of controls, and it’s just much more efficient.

SDH: That said, why is it that in the post-Consolidation years we haven’t really seen many people contending for statewide office from this part of the state?

EA: Well, I guess that’s cyclical. For a while there, we had President of the State Senate more than out share. We had Brantley and Jack Mathews; Fred Schultz was Speaker of the State House at about the same time as Mathews was President of the Senate. Jim King was President of the Senate. I suspect that if you check that, over a representative period of 30-40 years, you’ll see we get our fair share.

SDH: Burns was Governor, right?

EA: Yeah, Haydon Burns was our last governor from here. That was in the 1960s. [Burns was mayor 1949-65, followed by Lou Ritter, 1965-67.] We’ve had some run. Jack Mathews tried it, Hans tried it.

SDH: Have you ever had to get snappy with people, in the course of doing business?

EA: Oh sure. You have people who will try to get you to do the wrong thing; your friends will try to get you to do the wrong thing. The most difficult part of the job is saying no, but if you don’t say no to people who want you to violate your oath of taking care of people’s affairs, you’ve failed. You’ve got to be able to stand up, even to your friends, and say “This is not the way we do it; we’re going to do it in the way that’s the best interests of the public.” You stay that course, and they understand.

SDH: I sometimes wonder how discipline issues work out in a city, like this, where it seems like everyone knows each other—

EA: I think you get a better government, on the whole. I think the further you get away from home, you get more of the good ol’ politicking and the favoritism. I think you get better hands-on decision-making at the local level. I think it’s better than at the state level, and light-years better than at the national level, because at the national level they’re elected to represent the whole country. It’s not healthy, the way we run the Congress, with everyone fighting over one little piece instead of looking at the best interests of the whole country. I don’t know why they can’t get that, but they don’t seem to get it.

SDH: It seems like a whole different political culture now.

EA: Oh yeah, and it’s not good for the country. But at the city level, you’re running a municipal corporation. It’s really more like running a business. It’s not a business, it’s a government, but the municipal corporation is really doing a lot of the services—water/sewer, roads, parks and playgrounds. You take some tax money and you get the best of those things that you can give them for that tax money. Now, there’s not much excuse for being politicized all the time. The closer you are to down here, the less you are being politicized—not that it’s free of politics, obviously not.

SDH: We’ve had certain situations in recent years, which I won’t get into, that raise the question of, What is the proper role of local government, or state government, in regard to the federal government? How much should ordinary citizens expect of government?

EA: The balance between the states and the power of the federal government has been an amazing concern since our Founding Fathers put it all together. That’s Madison and Jefferson and Newt Gingrich and Harry Reid. It’s an ever-running thing that stays under reassessment. The Supreme Court is taking some cases recently about that balance, when the federal government starts doing things that are normally left to the states.

I don’t think that’s a real problem at the municipal level. We have some revenue-sharing, which is helpful, from the state down to the city, but I never saw any problems in the relationship of the city to the state. We sometimes think they should take care of an area they want us to take care of, but it isn’t a big problem.

The fight, the political science things is how much the federal people do in relation to how much the state government can do—I’ll just use abortion as an example, where it used to be that the states controlled that, and then the Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade, and that’s a running debate, who should have those powers. That’s philosophical and way up there—it’s more than philosophical, it’s election stuff.

SDH: There will probably be more openings soon, unfortunately.

EA: Well, I don’t know who’ll gets it, but obviously when they start to get 85 or so, I know about that. I know about age!

SDH: How old are you?

EA: Almost 80. I’ll be 80 in July. If you don’t fight it, it’s not a problem. My senior status has been a joy. I am not going to fight it. I work out at the YMCA either inRiverside, or down in Ponte Vedra, wherever I happen to be. My wife has a place out inNeptuneBeach, and I kept my condo, so we live in-town some and out at the beach some. I work out 20 times a month-plus, to keep myself in fairly good shape.

SDH: What’s your regimen like?

EA: I’ll walk one day for about 45 minutes—warm up, walk for about 30 minutes at the pace I want, cool down. The next day I do about 18 of those machines, Cybex equipment, with light weights and high repetitions. I do it every other day—I don’t do the same thing every day, it makes you decay. You have to take a day off every once in a while, to let your body heal, rest. You can’t be a fanatic about it. You have to be sensible.

SDH: What’s your diet like?

EA: I enjoy good food. My wife and I eat out a lot. My routine at breakfast is I just do the same thing almost every morning, pick up lunch. I had a melon and a muffin this morning; that’s about five days a week with me.

SDH: When important people are in town, where do you take them? Do you have a favorite restaurant?

EA: Oh yes, there are some very good restaurants. There’s a place out at the beach called Medure’s; we like Giovanni’s,Sterling’s out in Avondale. I remember 30 years ago, when you couldn’t find a good restaurant in Jacksonville, but now we’ve got two Ruth’s Chris, which I like very much.

SDH: What is the first thing a visitor or a new resident should know aboutJacksonville?

EA: Well, if they’re a family, [just] to put their children in quality schools. To make sure their kids are getting a quality education, however they have to do it. Parents have got to fight that system. That’s always the first thing. Then, I it’s just a question of learning where the action is—how the government functions, the different departments.

SDH: Okay, word association: Charlie Bennett?

EA: Integrity.

SDH: John Delaney?

EA: Effective. Capable. Compassionate. Of course, I knew John better than I knew Charlie Bennett. John worked with me as prosecutors for ten years before we worked together as mayors. I had him right out of law school; he’s an outstanding man. He’s a great President, out there at UNF [University of NorthFlorida].

SDH: Have you been out there since he’s been president?

EA: Oh yeah. I went out and had lunch with John last week. He’s doing a great job, and he’ll grow that university, do some of that “upgrading” we talked about earlier.

SDH: Do you guys still talk about political stuff, or is it more “gentlemen talk”?

EA: Not really a whole lot. You know, you second-guess other people—it’s fun. They’re friends—you don’t do anything about it, you just talk about it. But I’m watching one or two coming along. I’ll still have them out to my condo, do some things with the people I like when they run. I’m still involved, some. You know, a lot of senior citizens vote. I have some breakfast groups that I go to, and sometimes politicians will stop in, so you stay abreast of it. You complain some—everybody does it, but we don’t beat anybody up—not bad.

SDH: What should Jacksonville look for as it moves ahead in the next few years, next few decades? What’s the step?

EA: I think we’re poised. I think we’re situated very, very well, with the way Delaney dedicated resources to transportation, the river, good airport, beaches. What we have to do is manage it so that it will grow in a way that enhances our quality of life, rather than making it miserable because it’s too thickly populated. I think to grow soundly, which we are doing—I don’t think there’s any city poised to grow better than we are. And that consolidated government is a big piece of it. In a light wind, I could pass an ordinance in an afternoon if I needed to.

I think the piece that we need to work on is education—keep on trying to upgrade to get graduate schools so we can get research in here, teaching and training. You need to work the sciences, the math, and you have to have the research engines to attract the right kind of businesses and the right kind of industry. I’d say that the education piece, taking care of the workforce and upgrading the workforce, is the most critical piece of an otherwise fantastic thing, a desirable place to build and grow in.

You’ve got enough there to write a book.

SDH: I know—maybe I will, as an educational tool.

EA: Well, we can get into it. Old geezers like me can give you a lot of history. Even if we didn’t do much, we can tell you what happened. You know, the reason we passed Consolidation is we had such a corrupt government. We had so many public officials indicted that people got into the frame of mind to throw everybody out, in the form of a new government. It really helped pass it; I think it would have passed anyway, but that was a big piece. It really got corrupt in the 1950s and ‘60s.

SDH: What factors made that corruption happen?

EA: It was out of control. It was a machine-political thing. The same people kept getting reelected, and they knew that they’d get reelected. You had the core city, which was one government, the county was another government, and they stayed in power. You know that story: absolute power corrupts absolutely, and they got corrupt, and we prosecuted them. I didn’t indict them; I inherited most of these cases.

SDH: In your travels, do you ever see things that remind you of here?

EA: Yeah. You look at a city differently when you’ve been a mayor. You assess it, you size it up when you go into it. You wonder what their problems are; sometimes you can tell. I think you can tell a lot by how they maintain public buildings, how they maintain the waters and stuff. You can almost tell how a city feels about itself by how its public sector assets are maintained.

SDH: What advice would you give to future mayors?

EA: I think you have to look at what you have. You have to assess what you’ve got, and then make a decision on where you want to take it in the time you have. “Where do you think the people want it to go,” might be a better way to say it. And then you have to select some goals to get it there. You can’t be all over the place; you can’t do all things at all times. You pick the things that you really want to work on, and you concentrate on them to make it happen. The key to all of that is persistence: when you see what you really need in your city, you just stay with it and get it done, even though it’s sometimes difficult, sometimes even unpleasant. But if you know that’s where you need to go, you stay with it. Always try to do it for the right reasons—you always know what’s right. It might be a close call, but you always know what’s right.

[Note: Ed Austin died on April 23, 2011.]

sheltonhull@gmail.com

Sherman Skolnick book review (2004)

Ahead of the Parade: a Who’s Who of Treason and High Crimes—Exclusive Details of Fraud & Corruption of the Monopoly Press, the Banks, the Bench and the Bar, & the Secret Political Police, by Sherman H. Skolnick. Tempe, AZ: Dandelion Books, 2003. 315 pp.

Sherman Skolnick is probably best-known as the founder of Citizens’ Committee to Clean Up the Courts, founded in 1963 to conjure up concepts of corruption and criminality that could be used as political leverage against judges and lawyers. While many of his targets would dispute his version of events then and now, it can’t be denied that more judges and lawyers have gone to jail because of his efforts than any journalist or politician who immediately comes to mind. I could not imagine what price Skolnick has paid to pursue his particular line of dialogue with history, nor, perhaps, what price has been paid to him. I do know, however, that he’s almost 80 years old and knows enough HTML to get a book deal.

His take on politics is less reliable, as demonstrated in his book Ahead of the Parade. It’s technically his second book, but The Secret History of Airplane Sabotage (1973), which examined in excruciating detail the crash of United Airlines 553 at Chicago’s Midway Airport in December, 1972, never actually made it through the first printing—perhaps because he concluded that the crash occurred at the request of Richard Nixon, the master of dirty tricks, who wanted to silence the wife of Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt; she died alongside a US congressman and a CBS News reporter.

So he could be viewed as credible on the subject of judicial affairs, especially in his hometown of Chicago, a tough place to come up doing that kind of work today, more so especially if crippled by childhood polio. Apparently Skolnick’s parents appealed to FDR to personally intervene in obtaining hard-to-find medical care, and he did, even having the boy out to visit with him in Hot Springs, where he made available some of the “alternative therapies” developed for the (usually) sitting President. In later years Skolnick would accuse FDR of complicity inPearl Harborand the squandering of US gold reserves, though he remains fond of the old autocrat. More recent Presidents get harsher treatment, and W is depicted as fundamentally illegitimate.

The challenge here is to describe Skolnick without using the phrase “conspiracy theory,” which isolates the reviewer from heat associated with the author’s arguments but is nonetheless prejudicial. Where once the phrase enjoyed a certain cachet, just a few years ago, in the years since the most flamboyantly destructive conspiracy in modern history was executed by associates of Osama bin Laden the phrase has been used to slur a lot of content that is verifiably true. The liberation of Iraq, for example, was widely and vociferously opposed on the basis of arguments since proven correct, even endorsed by those who argued most stridently for war—and apostates before and since have to worry about being labeled as “conspiracy theorists” by professional conspirators.

Skolnick’s writing style has real old-school punch, like a cross between William S. Burroughs and Walter Winchell. It would be fun to read on almost any subject, but that his chosen field is sabotage and dirty tricks is just delightful! His skolnicksreport.com is loaded with what is, at the very worst, the very best political satire available in English, and at best the finest conspiracy theory this side of Lyndon LaRouche. Until a better phrase comes along, it will have to be called that, though doing so begs the question of whether it is possible for conspiracy theory to ever be true. Having written more about Mr. Skolnick than any other living journalist, and being reasonably educated in many of the matters that come up in his work, I would say: Yes. Conspiracy theory permutates from game theory, and is a fundamental component of political science as an art form.

A number of individuals and organizations come under suspicion within this framework, including the CIA, FBI, MI-6, Mossad, McDonald’s Federal Reserve, Bank of America, Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, CREEP, BCCI, Jesse Jackson, Marc Rich, Rahm Emanuel, Timothy McVeigh, Saddam Hussein, Al Gore, Gore Vidal, and “William Rockefeller Clinton” (don’t ask). All the great dynasties are here: Rothschild, Rockefeller, Kennedy, Windsor (whose matriarch is Queen of England) and five different men spanning three generations of the Bush family, including the current “occupant and resident” of the White House. Now, even those of us who doubt that China uses Wal-Mart’s transportation channels to move drugs into the US and pays law enforcement to look the other way, or that JFK was supposed to be killed at a Chicago Bears game a month before Dallas, can marvel at the audacity with which Skolnick hammers out his theses.

If a fifth of Skolnick’s reports on national and international politics were ever proven true, the shock would reverberate across the world. A fun mind-game to play when reading Ahead of the Parade is to assume that, amidst all the questionable content, there is one line in it that is absolutely true—but which line?

A large portion of the book is devoted to theIllinoisjudicial scene—namely, the details of a lawsuit that sought to overturn copyright protection for Coca-Cola. He writes of judgeships and media anchor-spots being purchased, and of secret courts that do the elite’s bidding behind the scenes. Unless one has a passion for jurisprudence (or lack thereof), or like collecting dirt on one of the world’s most successful brand names, the reader will skip through much of this material for the meat—the dirty deeds of our nation’s elite. Bush, Clinton, Gore, the Pope, the Queen of England, the Rockefellers, Jesse Jackson, Marc Rich, Chandra Levy, even Simon Wiesenthal—very few escape his poison pen, and those who do are excoriated repeatedly on the website.

The visual of an 80 year-old man speaking quite sincerely about how the Pope has killed people to keep up margins in the soybean trade, or how Al Gore was nearly killed twice by air power in the week before JFK, Jr. died in similar fashion (which he has done at length on his cable access show, “Broadsides”), is plenty amusing, like a senile relative rewriting history. But there is a method to his madness, which centers on dissolving the reflexive belief that it is possible to exert real power in this nation while also holding true to professed morality. In that sense, Ahead of the Parade could be viewed as the sequel to the late William Cooper’s Behold a Pale Horse (1991), that classic of conspiracy theory that reads as more legit with each passing year.

The most obvious lesson to be taken from Skolnick’s opus is that most if not all the major global powers have people hard at work on behalf of their interests right here in America. Another lesson would be that bribery is a very specific art form, the mastery of which can greatly relieve the pressures of an aggressive life. I doubt that anyone would seriously question such notions anymore, but it was flatly dismissed as late as the Enron collapse in summer 2001, which to outsiders looked much like a controlled implosion done for the benefit of shadowy forces, and whose perpetrators escaped justice by throwing money at our government.

If this book has any real flaw, other than the questionability of its content, it is that the book could never come close to the sheer vicious joy of the website. A better idea would have been for Skolnick to anthologize his infamous “Overthrow of the American Republic” (OOTAR) series, now numbering 66 parts. But that would be too easy. There is something clearly quixotic about Skolnick’s quest to piss of the entire Western ruling structure, so to see a book under his name at all is pretty heartening for those Americans who truly value our (current) freedom of speech.

The distinct possibility that our country, for better or worse, has already been sold out from under us to people whose identities we won’t know until it’s too late has not been articulated in this way since William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsburg got really deep in the early 1970s, and I would hazard to guess that they would enjoy Skolnick, in moderation. If nothing is true unless you see it with your own eyes, then most of what we know to exist really doesn’t, which is an infinitely more frightening prospect than if everything was true. As the recently pardoned Lenny Bruce once said “Chicago is so corrupt, it’s thrilling.” Indeed.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; December 13, 2004

*Note: Sherman Skolnick died in 2002, but his website remains intact.