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: 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

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

 

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

 

Money Jungle Classic: “Infinite Justiss” (2001)

Alan Justiss: the name brings forth a multitude of divergent opinion from as many different people as you ask, most of whom are probably right. He is a near-deity to some, a near-devil to others; an extreme man for extreme times whose personal habits and proclivities challenge the dainty drudgery of daily life. He is a major figure in the burgeoning local spoken-word scene, and could’ve been a national or international Celebrity Poet had he the stomach to shill his own work. I interviewed him behind the Czigan-Rummel gallery, downtown, during an ad hoc press junket for his reading at the Karpeles on October 6. Church bells and sirens outside. Looking into those small black pupils set into blue irises was like viewing a solar eclipse–much easier to find than people like Justiss, and more so everyday.

Alan Justiss is the product of an age of fresh post-war liberation, a time when the young and idealistic were more empowered to follow their muse, for better or worse, by the sudden realization that, with the introduction of nuclear weapons, “humanity” was a much more impermanent concept than in the days of single-shot muskets, bayonets and trench warfare. “I was born in Dayton, Ohio, 1943. At the age of four days old I moved to FL, grew up in Yukon . . . by the time I was six or seven I had read everything that Mark Twain had ever written, and from that point on I was always fascinated by stories and imagination, and the importance it could have on people’s solitude.” And what is the value of solitude? “Self-discovery. Because when you get around people, they don’t let you know anything about yourself but their own preconceived ideas.” His solitary nature is captured brilliantly in a recent painting by Mr. Jonathan Lux: coffee, cigarettes, a radio that seems to never stop and his manual typewriter.

He has four children–Christopher, Damon, Suzanne and Monet–produced during five marriages ended by his lust for that next poem. Each woman proposed to him–“if they think I’m worthwhile, I better tell them yes.” He attributes his uniform failure within the “family man” motif to his work, which long ago ceased being simply an obsession and became perhaps the raison d’etre we all need to get ourselves out of bed and into the sunlight each day. As for the ladies, well . . . maybe number six is out there, but Alan hasn’t been with a woman in 12 years, and “I Am Waiting,” he says. “I know what love is. I have a lot saved up.”

Alan did journalism for the Mayport Mirror and, later, the Jacksonville Journal in the mid-1960s. “Six weekends I spent at the Astor Hotel and the various fleabag places, talking with winos and people on social security–I had my typewriter and I was looking down on Bay street, Laura street, Forsyth street, Duval–that was where I found true life was, in these small enclaves of humanity.” He expressed no real desire to write prose anymore, unfortunately. The question of influences (a word that, in the context of journalism, comes off so blatantly fanboy I try not to use it while working) brings a flood of names spanning a glorious century of and for American literature: “From Mark Twain and O. Henry, it was Carl Sandburg, Jack London, and then Hemingway, Steinbeck, Henry Miller, the poets–Rimbaud, Verlaine, Baudelaire–and then onward through H.L. Mencken, John Fante, Charles Bukowski, Alan Justiss–a major influence on me. . . .” And why not? He knows his demographic.

Of them all, Bukowski (1920-1994; author of 50 books, my favorite being Shakespeare Never Did This) is probably his favorite, maybe because they met in 1973. The details depend on what source one goes to, but this is AJ’s story: “I had originally gone over to see his girlfriend, Linda King, and I’d just come back from San Francisco . . . Bukowski hid in the bathroom for about the first 30 minutes after I arrived. I’d come over to praise her work, and then I started talking about her boyfriend. Hank came lumbering out of the bathroom and realized that I was interested in his work also. We got thrown in the drunk tank; he wrote that he’d busted out all these panes, but what actually happened was I was razzing him. ‘Come on, old man, you didn’t duke it out with Hemingway.’

“He said ‘Yes, I did,’ and he rammed his fist through a small pane of glass in a French door. We were really fucked up, and I ran my left fist through eight panes of glass, which severed all kinds of things in my wrist [and caused a near-fatal case of gangrene]. Ah, what a fiasco it all became.” The end result is that Alan has the ironic distinction of being called a “drunken swine” by Charles Bukowski in the poems “We All Knew Him” and “With the Other Woman,” from 1981’s Dancing in the Tournefortia.

A unifying trait in the writing he loves is insistence, a confidence born of repetition. Young writers are invariably frustrated, and his advice to them hinges on the idea of detaching from one’s personal stake in their work. “Don’t try to write–write. Don’t be self-critical of yourself because you haven’t reached some perfection. Give yourself credit for the fact that you are vulnerable and that you do things in creation that perhaps have no value, but it is a constant rehearsal for the time that you’ll be able to dance across the page and people will be able to feel the wind in the words. So, discipline . . . discipline . . . discipline.”

The work available from Alan Justiss is hardly commensurate with what he’s done. Most of his work prior to 1990 is unavailable at present. He was in the Peeling Potatoes anthology, also Solidarity; he’s published chapbooks like Freedom At its Worst Angle bootlegs from readings and radio exist; but the thick volume I think is needed to really get a real sense of his art–which should include older stuff and analyses by colleagues like Nestor Gil, Jr. and Robert Eskew–remains uncompiled. That will change at some point, surely. He recorded You’ll Laugh in the Coming Years with Jay Cole and G. Jerome Jones in 2001, performed at the New School last year. (These and other items can be had in some form via Mr. Justiss.)

“I spent most of my life, from the age of seven, running away from home, and when I was finally able to con my way into the military at the age of 16, my parents gladly signed the papers for me to go in. I have since spent most of my life outside of Jacksonville, because there was always such a cultural devastation constantly occurring. Anytime something raised its head, it was put back down into the swamp. But when I turned 50, after my fifth divorce, I came to a conclusion: I knew that I was a writer, but I also came to a conclusion: this is my home town, and this is where I feel I should die. And that’s why I haven’t left this place in ten years. That’s the bottom line. This is where I’m going to die. This is where I will die . . . maybe. [laughs] Hell, I don’t know about that. I ain’t no prophet.” But by voicing it, he makes it so . . . maybe.

There is a saying: “Buy the ticket, take the ride,” and it’s a saying embodied–and emboldened–by the life of Alan Justiss. Justiss lives like a man who knows that compromise, like so much of what passes for “normal” in this abnormal world, is a scam, a short ticket to slow death that much be avoided whenever possible. A lesson worth learning, I think. The ride he’s taken has been interesting, if not always fun. The road he leaves behind him is cracked, mottled, laced with intermittent fires and congested with debris, screaming women, men stumbling through the smoke in dazed delirium, like the Autobahn if they never cleared the wreckage. Of course, his road is great fun to look at from the sky, if you can deal with it. Speed kills, indeed–but everything kills, eventually.

sheltonhull@gmail.com; September 21, 2001

 [Note: Alan Justiss died February 14, 2011]

Money Jungle: Alan Justiss (1943-2011)

[It took the death of my friend, colleague and long-time mentor Charles Alan Justiss to occasion the return of the “Money Jungle”, the creative cultivation of which he helped oversee way back in  the fall of 1999. This is just one of the many tributes offered to the old man, who had a lot of love to give, since his death on Valentines Day; there will be more stuff coming out in Folio Weekly, Ink19 and the web, in general. Certainly, amid the crush of activity that has commenced this year, I will find time to expand further on the thoughts collected below, but this is a preview of next week’s column.]

Space-Age, Near Dust

The light is out on the 17^th floor on Lomax Street, at the retirement community Alan Justiss called home at the end of his life. That light has burned out, and it will shine no more. The light, like the man, was a beacon for people seeking the kind of real talk that is getting harder and harder to find anymore. No more late-night phone-calls with the smell of beer and cigarettes and wet typewriter ink digitized and dispersed by satellites into time and space, where scholars in distant galaxies transcribe them now.

The greatest writer our city ever produced will spend eternity nestled in a pine box in the pauper’s field, maybe with a marker or a mention and some care to his last intention. His overworked Underhill went underground, laid across a chest clothed cheaper than the baby Jesus, his hands clasped across corroding keys in propriety and prayer. His entire body gave out slowly, over the course of 20 years, but you see those hands and you know that serious work was done.

Ten fingers, carpals coiled like copper wires, fused to arms that did old-school labor, did the work of a thousand Angels, to pull thousands of men and women closed to the light, whether we wanted to or not. Ten fingers, ten pages done daily, every day, at minimum, since JFK was POTUS—and what did you do for your country today? What did any of us do? What will we do now that he is not there to point out our mistakes before they have been made? We will make those mistakes.

He would have been a great judge or politician, but he just could not stop telling people the truth. It’s a sad fact of life that we all ask questions whose truthful answers could not be handled. The smart money lies in spin and subterfuge, obfuscations oscillating like sub-atomic particles around a nucleus of truth—or, as AJ would say, “the exegesis”. He was always mindful of the need not to waste time on feathery language. You have a certain amount of space, so maximize it—provide the relevant data and make the reading smooth and enjoyable for the customer. Every word, every space, every punctuation, even the white space around the words matters.

He was found dead in his bed, one more Riverside sunrise burnt out into day, on my birthday, Valentine’s Day. It was the best- and worst-ever at once. The man was built of some material that does not exist anymore. He was literally about to die just a month ago—he held court at St. Vincent’s, making plans, then suddenly the Angel of Death got a contract gig in Egypt, and he was fine again, briefly.

Even after years of hoarding a wildly disproportionate share of every conceivable earthly delight, it took old age, bronchitis, pneumonia, emphysema, cancer, malnutrition, congestive heart disease, the aftereffects of having a lung removed and the immobility of a broken hip suffered in a vicious mugging years ago combined to kill him—and even then, it took damn near a decade. It is unthinkable that anyone would be surprised, yet the better you knew him, the more surprising it was. Even God tweeted “WTF?”

The only thing harder than overstating Alan Justiss’ role in the cultural evolution of Northeast Florida over the last 40 years would be stating it precisely. It would take an entire issue of Folio just to hold the names of the people he’s impacted and influenced. I can only speak for myself. I read about him in Folio when I was in high-school, 17 years ago. I called him, and kept calling. I can hardly conceive of how vastly different my life would be had I not met him. Many of my closest friends and colleagues I met directly or indirectly through him. Many others I’d not heard from in years, until just a few days ago. It is very much the end of an era.

We hope the power of his work persists, and that future generations can reap an approximation of the benefits we enjoyed from his life. The task of fully acquiring and arranging all those manuscripts is a likely logistical nightmare, neverminding the need to digitize it all so it’s available for further printings. But such matters are best-reserved for a later time. Right now, the flags of our city should be flying at half-staff, if not also upside-down. What we have lost cannot be regained, only recapitulated. RIP

 sheltonhull@gmail.com; February 17, 2011

Money Jungle: Demolition Men

Election 2010: Is this Where Florida Ends?

Folio is published every Tuesday, but it’s unclear how many of you actually read it that day. If the office has ever done any research into the subject, I have no idea; it’s possible, since they’re pretty good at understanding their audience (other than the whole “Steven Humphrey is worth more than Money Jungle” calculation, which really does nothing to dispel the stereotype of Floridians as being terrible at math). Certainly, many readers are not able to pick one up on Tuesday; some hold off until the weekend.

I only mention this because this Tuesday, August 24, is the day for primaries in the statewide elections that will ultimately be settled on November 2. No need to preview the race, since most of you will have already voted by now. Obviously, this is the most important cycle for local elections in many, many years, and the results are all but guaranteed to be catastrophic for Northeast Florida, and the state in general. We are about to take major steps backwards in terms of the competence of our elected officials, and in the overall desirability of life in Florida.

While the election of Barack Obama was awesome for the country, it seems now clear that his administration kinda sucks, and that our hopes of dramatic positive changes were naïve pipe-dreams, invested in someone who basically represents the interests of the most corrupt and dangerous elements of Wall Street and Washington. Chicago Flash and his loyal team of Clinton-betrayers have been such a disaster that an unspeakable outside possibility has now been raised: that the likely loss of his congressional majority may be followed by the loss of his job in two years.

The problem, in my opinion, is that many Americans, who sometimes coalesce under the Tea Party banner, still believe that it’s possible to kill our way out of this. If we can just start another war, the theory goes, or cut even deeper into services for children, old people and the poor, the old America will come right back, like the shining silver that emerges after a good polishing. By this analogy, the polish is spewing from the mouth of Glenn Beck, and being rubbed in by Sarah Palin on the campaign trail.

The right loves their “free market”—the idea that, if corporations are given godlike authority its workers and consumers, altruism and civic responsibility will trump the profit motive. Well, ask a Gulf fisherman about that, if you can find one. Having had the central theme of their ideology repudiated by those very markets, the right has found itself a new baby: Austerity. The Republicans of 2010 are running on one promise: to lower taxes for the rich, which is fair enough, but also to put the screws to the underclass like nothing this country has ever seen. Deregulated banks have pissed away the life’s savings of millions, and the only thing that appears to have been manifested by health care “reform” is the Manchurian Candidacy of Rick Scott.

It’s really depressing to think about—a truly hopeless situation. If Jeff Greene beats Kendrick Meek, thereby making Charlie Crist the hold-your-nose choice for US Senate, and Rick Scott beats Bill McCollum for the right to stomp Alex Sink for Governor, you can basically close the door on Florida for the next decade. Being a political junkie myself, I’ve been looking at the 2010 elections across the board, and unfortunately I can report that Florida is leading the nation in collective myopia, willful self-destruction and craven capitulation to the wave of Trojan Horse candidates that is flooding this country like a busted sewer line. But at least you can grow plants with sewage; the only things these guys can grow are gravestones.

Here in Jacksonville, which has already paid a terrible price for not taking this state over when we had the chance, the elections that follow in 2011 will basically mark the end of 30 years of our leaders making good faith efforts (however blatantly shady) to build up this city. It saddens me to think of all those dead (and dying) political giants that once walked among us, putting personal interest aside to do what’s right—or, at least, what they thought was right—for the people, and to know that in 20 years all of their names will have been effectively erased from history, as history itself is eclipsed by the exigencies of present-time or, as Obama puts it, “the fierce urgency of now”.

Today’s Florida kids will have to endure the kind of hardships that most of us have only read about on the “Internets” (Ted Stevens, RIP), and they will probably never know that none of it had to happen. But, like any generation facing existential crises, they will need scapegoats, and that dishonor belongs to those of us casting ballots in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Our terrible decision-making will have “forced” them into whatever fake choices they decide are necessary. I’d hate to be their parents!

sdh666@hotmail.com; August 16, 2010

Money Jungle: “Drawing The Line”

Sexual Assault Awareness Month is every April. It immediately follows Women’s History Month, which makes sense as the two concerns are so inextricably linked, especially in the modern history of our country. Only a fool would deny that racism remains a factor in American life, but it’s far outweighed by misogyny, a cancer on the country’s collective soul, and a driving force behind some of the grossest atrocities in all of history, continuing into the present day. Sexual violence is the leading form of domestic terrorism.

It goes back at least as far as the Witch Hunts that began before Christ and spread like fire, literally, across the world in His name. Vatican officials later wrote the Malleus Maleficarum specifying ways of torturing women to obtain confessions, and enforcing social pressures to keep them docile. Some estimates number 100,000 women killed under official sanction in at least 26 different countries, including the US. Things are comparatively stable nowadays. But that’s small consolation for the thousands living in fear and dealing with post-traumatic stress right now.

The FDLE’s Uniform Crime Report for 2009 notes 289 arrests each for forcible and non-forcible sex offenses in Duval County—collectively, a 7% drop from 2008. Statewide, there were 336 arrests for forcible sodomy, 899 for forcible fondling, 1,642 for forcible rape, and 3,300 non-forcible sex offenses. That’s 6,177 sex crimes in Florida, in one year—down 4% from 2008. That number doesn’t include the 5,296 arrests for prostitution, a matter separate but related, given the brutal histories hookers tend to have. Also, it’s hard to determine what percentage of assaults and murders targeted women specifically. Predators of all types prey on those considered weak.

By contrast, there were 146,056 drug arrests in Florida in 2009, reflecting the twisted priorities of our bloated, corrupt government. The large-scale misappropriation of funds associated with our failed Drug War has had disastrous consequences for the entire country, on all levels, but the women and children underserved by law-enforcement have suffered most. Only 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail; a larger percentage of rape victims will likely do time for drugs, DUI, prostitution or other crimes induced by prior abuse.

 

Conventional wisdom holds that 1 in every 4 women will be victims of sexual violence in their lives, but a growing body of anecdotal evidence suggests that figure is way short. Given that the majority (60%, according to RAINN) are not reported, only women themselves know how pervasive it really is. Many victims are silenced by real or imagined pressures, while some in the younger generation have come to view rape as something like a rite of passage—not unlike the beatings associated with gang initiations. The spike in violent crimes by women only reinforces that parallel. (See Bishop, Amy.)

Northeast Florida organized a number of relevant events throughout the month, and some of the best was saved for last. Theater Jacksonville hosts a production of “The Vagina Monologues” (already a fixture locally) on Tuesday the 27^th as a benefit for The Women’s Center of Jacksonville, which also sponsors a screening of “The Line” at Five Points Theatre on Thursday the 29^th. Nancy Schwartzman’s 24-minute directorial debut documents her experiences as a rape victim, peaking as she confronts her attacker, armed with a hidden camera. Schwartzman has developed an excellent website, elaborating on these issues with an able cast of young contributors. The film will be followed by a panel discussion of local experts.

This region has a credible bunch of local advocacy groups, networked with national organizations, public servants and private citizens. It is a rare truly nonpartisan, multiracial, gender-neutral movement; education is key, as is direct physical intervention, when necessary (and it often is). Unfortunately, law-enforcement and the legal system are lagging behind the times in bringing rapists, molesters and wife-beaters to justice, for a number of reasons neither easy nor popular to describe; the collapsing global economy has seriously affected funding for relevant organizations (public and private), adding to long-standing institutional biases against victims of sexual abuse.

For example, Autrelle Holland, a true diamond among the hard men, has helped lead a surge of women stepping up their personal defenses in many and sundry forms. An aikido black-belt possessing vast knowledge of multiple styles, he’s been schooling chicks of the urban core for several months, to effects felt quick. Florida’s capacity for hand-to-hand combat of almost every known type is mostly a weapon for good; the Gracie family’s deal training police forces (including JSO) has surely saved lives. Their passion is a rare bright spot in a state that has earned its reputation as arguably the most dangerous place in America for women and children.

There is a silent genocide being waged against the women of this country that has already killed thousands, while traumatizing millions in just the past decade—epidemics of rape, molestation and murder, accompanied by relentless social conditioning as nasty and pernicious as the worst abuses of Jim Crow or Willie Lynch. And America has been suspiciously mellow in its response. With women buying guns in the millions and getting hip to the bitter realities at hand, that is almost certain to change, one way or another.

sdh666@hotmail.com; April 19, 2010

Money Jungle Classic: “Exit the Mermaid”

[In light of this week’s national elections in Israel, I thought it prudent to post an old column written as preview of the last round of national elections in 2006. Most of what was written then could stand unedited in regard to what’s going on now, except that the Labor Party’s power is entirely restricted to playing a junior role in a Livni coalition gov’t, and a much smaller role under Netanyahu.]

Exit the Mermaid

A rough guide to the 2006 Israeli elections.

 

The only good to have possibly come of the tragedy that befell Ariel Sharon in January 2006 is that his departure from the scene forces others to step up their game in time for the rapid activity that is likely to occur in the region over the period between now and, say, 2012. One of these persons is Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who has already been described as “Israel’s Hillary.” That’s the highest compliment to be paid either lady.

           

Sharon was a special person, but remember that he was a 77 year-old man, five-seven and 250 pounds, who’d spent 40 years working spots where instant death was always a possibility. We’ll never know if Kadima was in some way a reflection on his own mortality. “The Little Mermaid” personally brought Livni into his breakaway Kadima coalition, and she emerges from his debilitation as the party’s second-leading figure, behind only acting PM Ehud Olmert, a former Jerusalem mayor and skilled fundraiser. All this has major implications for America.

 

Likud has been split on settlement issues for two years. It’s possible that Sharon’s exit clears the path for a reunited Likud that could win an outright majority, but not likely since the issue is so polarizing. (International meddling in Israeli affairs doesn’t help.) To dismantle Kadima would require senior Likud loyalists to cede key Ministerial positions to folks like Livni and Ohlmert, who bolted from Likud to follow Sharon and were about to pound their old mates in the March election. Polls taken before Sharon’s stroke had his party up on both Labor and Likud, despite the Netanyahu Factor.

 

Former PM Benjamin Netanyahu is considered almost universally to be a future PM. The fact of his ascent has been simply a technical matter. He possesses many of the attributes people look for in a leader: young, handsome, a clearly-defined political ideal, military experience, and a legacy. His late brother Jonathan is an Israeli war hero, and his father was an intellectual who participated in the founding of the country. Today, “Bibi” stands out as a major figure, one of only a handful of Israeli politicians recognizable to non-Israelis, and the only one currently likely to reclaim the big chair.

 

When Netanyahu resigned as Finance Minister in Sharon’s cabinet to protest the Gaza pullout in 2005, it set in motion the unraveling of Likud and the new reality of Israeli politics. After Netanyahu resigned, Sharon replaced him with Ohlmert and left the party he’d helped found in the 1960s. Kadima drew Ohlmert and Livni from Likud, with some tacit support from Shimon Peres. Sharon then called for new elections, a right the PM shares with the Israeli Knesset via the No Confidence vote.

 

Lost in all this is the Labor Party, which has struggled to rebound from the death of party icon Yizhak Rabin in November 1995. Shimon Peres, a twice-former PM who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin and Yasser Arafat, succeeded Rabin and was promptly defeated in 1996 by Netanyahu, who lost in 1999 to Ehud Barak. Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount on September 28, 2000 helped spark the second intifada, which began the next day. The resulting tumult brought Sharon to power, five years ago, and left Labor scrambling to find itself. It could be said that the US Democratic Party has a similar predicament, except that Labor has shown signs of actually solving the problem. Of course, Labor chief Amir Peretz has no shot at the Prime Ministership this time, but he could emerge as the third or fourth key member of the post-election coalition.

 

The Sharon situation, in some ways, mirrors Rabin’s assassination, in that both were embattled PMs with Bibi Netanyahu on their trail. Both were suffering from the internal perception of weakness and capitulation to Palestinian terror, even as both were being hailed as peacemakers abroad. One key difference is that Rabin did not die with elections 100 days out and with Iran weeks away from going nuclear.

 

The main question of March 28 is whether Ohlmert can (or should) hold back the challenge of Netanyahu. Whoever wins must then act quickly to build a coalition that can hold up through the tumult of 2006; expect Livni to play a major role in that. At this point Israel really has four “major” parties: Labor, Likud, the upstart Kadima, and the sum of all the smaller parties in Israeli politics. Any could do benefit from the situation. The strength of Israeli civil life should carry them through the difficult days ahead.

 

sdh666@hotmail.com

January 7, 2006

Introductory Notes

I started a blog in 2002, and have blogged a little bit on the MySpace page, but with so much happening now and no serious outlet for many of my views on these subjects, it made some sense to return to the blog format. By way of a start, a few words about why the column is called what it is:

The “Money Jungle” column takes its name from the title of the album below. It was recorded in 1962, and marks the only time all three artists played on the same session. Ellington recorded mostly with members of his own band and in occasional collaboration with people like Coltrane, Count Basie and Louis Armstrong. In this case, United Artists made entreaty for a rare trio record, with sidemen drawn from the younger group of artists working the newer style, making for an instructive crossing between generations and methods.

Mingus and Roach were both masters by this point, and were then at critical junctures of their careers. Both had been employees of Ellington at separate times in 1943. Mingus lasted long enough to get fired after a fight with Juan Tizol (author of “Caravan”), while an 18 year-old Roach sat in for Sonny Greer for a gig.

Mingus had emerged as a force through his Jazz Composers Workshop, recording for labels like Savoy and Bethlehem before a short but phenomenal run on Columbia, a label he would return to in the 1970s. He was working with Impulse at this point also; his “Black Saint and the Sinner Lady” would arrive in 1963. Roach had plowed through the 1950s, first as Charlie Parker’s drummer of choice (appearing on most of his late-period Verve stuff), then as co-leader of a quintet with Clifford Brown, who died in 1956, and then as sole leader of successive bands that did a ferocious amount of work for Mercury and related labels, including two basically perfect jazz albums: “Max Roach+4” and “the Max Roach 4 Plays Charlie Parker”. He’d recorded at least seven albums in 1958-59 alone; much of that is documented on a Mosaic Records box set, reviewed elsewhere. He had just recorded his “Freedom Now Suite” for Candid, and was in the midst of an association with Impulse that produced records like “It’s Time” and “Percussion Bitter Sweet” in 1962; the “Money Jungle” sessions would be soon followed by his last trio recording, with The Legendary Hassan.

As far as I know, Ellington coined the phrase himself on occasion of composing the title track, which is the album’s strongest. My understanding is he wanted to evoke the harshness and drama of NYC, a place that exists as testament to the sustained power of global capitalism. There was an interesting book released last year by Rutgers University Press using that title, playing the theme against redevelopment action in the Times Square area, and the economic contraction has led the occasional journalist to use it, too. And there was also a film by that name, which does in fact center on global capitalism. It may be inevitable.

While I can’t claim credit for inventing the phrase, I do claim credit for being first to jack it from Ellington.