What Happened at the HRC?

I think we need to unpack the recent goings on at the Humboldt County Human Rights Commission. Down here, the Redwood Times reported on a contentious meeting, where violence in Southern Humboldt was on the agenda, and at which, Nezzie Wade walked out and resigned. This front-page story gave us none of the details of the discussion. They told us nothing about the violence. They didn’t even tell us what Nezzie Wade got upset about. She just got upset and walked out. Weird, huh?

Next thing you know, the Supes have signed a letter, thanking Nezzie for her service, and wishing her well. Boom, gone, end of story. They made Nezzie sound like this Woodhouse character in Mendocino, like all of a sudden, one day, she just flipped her lid, and was no longer capable of doing her job. How convenient. Multiple complaints of vigilante violence in Southern Humboldt result in the resignation of one HRC commissioner.

 

Aren’t you glad that’s all tied-up with a nice little bow. Except, the Human Rights Commission didn’t assault people in Southern Humboldt. The HRC didn’t steal, and destroy people’s property, and Nezzie Wade didn’t organize a local posse down here in SoHum to forcibly evict homeless people around Garberville and Redway. That whole segment of the equation: the part about the multiple complaints of vigilante violence that resulted from a string of forcible evictions undertaken by an informal civilian group with no training or authority, known as “Locals on Patrol,” that part of the equation, somehow got overlooked.

 

I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to me that when an informal group of civilians with no special training or authority, undertakes to forcibly evict people from their homes, however primitive, human rights abuses could easily result. Landlords can’t get away with that shit. I don’t know how Locals on Patrol gets away with doing it on land owned by third party absentee landowners who didn’t ask them to do it. It seems reasonable to me that people’s rights may have been violated in these raids, and indeed, numerous complaints of human rights violations were made, in writing, and submitted to the Humboldt County Human Rights Commission. That’s bad enough, but now we get to the part that pissed Nezzie Wade off so much that she walked out of the meeting.

I talked to Nezzie about what happened, and she told me that she was in the middle of composing her letter of resignation, in which she offered an explanation of why she walked out of that meeting, when the supes short-circuited her with their premature letter of appreciation. Nezzie told me that this whole situation with the Human Rights Commission still weighs heavily upon her. She is very unhappy about how the HRC, and Commissioner Jim Glover specifically, handled these complaints of human rights abuses. People down here in SoHum are pissed about it too. Here’s what happened.

“Locals on Patrol” forcibly evicted people from camps in Southern Humboldt in September of 2016. Those evicted people filed complaints with the Human Rights Commission, through well-meaning people in Southern Humboldt. Somehow, these complaints, emailed to the HRC, never made it to most of the HRC Commissioners. However, HRC Commissioner Jim Glover discussed these complaints, at length, apparently, with 2^nd District Supervisor Estelle Fennell, and shared them with at least one member of the press, who courteously reported back to those well-meaning SoHum folks, that Commissioner Glover had exposed and shared confidential information entrusted to the HRC, for their investigation.

This is a big deal down here in SoHum, and it was a very bad thing for Commissioner Glover to do. The man leading the Locals on Patrol group in these eviction raids, and the man named in most of the complaints as the most aggressive perpetrator, is Josh Sweet, a Garbervile businessman, who once worked for Estelle Fennell’s campaign, until the cops raided his hash lab, and found all of the illegal immigrant working on his land. These days, he’s busy gentrifying downtown Garberville, and waging war against the poor and homeless, both on his own, and in conjunction with “Locals on Patrol.”

When Commissioner Glover told Estelle Fennell about these complaints, he might as well have told Josh Sweet himself. Josh Sweet is a man of considerable political influence in SoHum, and was largely responsible for the recent Garberville Town Square closure. By the descriptions in the complaints, it’s clear that he doesn’t mind getting rough with people, himself, personally. All of the people who filed complaints against him, and all of the people who helped them file those complaints, still live here, along with Josh Sweet, and all of the Locals on Patrol people who participated in those raids.

We’re all still here together out in the middle of nowhere, in this tiny, little burg with a population of about 1,000, and not a single stop light. Josh Sweet should not have been informed of the complaints against him before the HRC had a chance to review those complaints, and decide on a course of action, and the commissioners should have respected the complainants privacy. That breach of confidence undercuts the purpose of the HRC. How can people feel safe in reporting human rights violations to the HRC, if the HRC has a record of turning those complaints over to the alleged perpetrators?

Yet, the other HRC commissioners never saw these complaints. That’s why Nezzie Wade got so pissed off. She demanded a copy of all correspondences the HRC has received, including emails, from the Secretary, and the Secretary informed Nezzie that she didn’t have them. Nezzie was flabbergasted. Why didn’t the Secretary have the correspondences? Why couldn’t she find out who had sent what to the commission that she chaired?

Nezzie is concerned for the integrity of the HRC. How many other complaints have been ignored or sidetracked for political reasons? How many people’s rights have been violated by the commissioners themselves who leaked confidential information? That’s why this meeting became so contentious. People around here are outraged at the HRC, and afraid for their lives. At the meeting, a member of the public expressed her outrage about Commissioner Glover’s actions and vowed to take these complaints to the Grand Jury. Glover glibly replied, “That’s OK, I’m the foreman of the Grand Jury too.”

Since Wades resignation, Commissioner Jim Glover was elected Chairman of the Humboldt County Human Rights Commission, filling the void left by Wade. A motion was raised to consider an anonymous letter that the commission received, asking for the resignation of Commissioner Glover, but before it could be considered, Commissioner Byrd Lochte made a motion to ignore the letter, and that motion carried. The Humboldt County Human Rights Commission has seven vacancies in it’s 15 seats, and no budget, but apparently, it serves it’s purpose. That is, if you accept that the purpose of the Humboldt County Human Rights Commission is to act as a figleaf to cover-up abusive county policies and protect violent criminals with political connections.

Humboldt County has a long history of addressing perceived social problems with mob violence. It’s never worked, but we don’t seem much interested in finding an alternative. In many ways, we’re the “deep south” of the Pacific Northwest, and our “good ol’ boys” rival any you’re likely to find in Alabama or Mississippi. Any potential victims of human rights abuse in Humboldt County ought to know that. Save your breath, because Humboldt County’s good ol’ boys will smother you. This is just one example of how Humboldt County’s “good ol’ boy” network works, and how our county government, doesn’t.

We’ve Got Plenty of Critical Thinkers, We Need New Ideas.

I’ve heard people say that Trump won this election because the American people lack critical thinking skills. In fact, I’ve heard people blame this alleged lack of critical thinking skills for everything from the failure of democracy, to people’s unwillingness to vaccinate their children, to the homelessness crisis. This kind of talk always makes me cringe. To me, it always sounds like, “The real problem is that the American people are just too dumb to comprehend the wisdom of my position.”

I don’t think that’s the problem at all. I certainly find people plenty skeptical of anything I have to say. People seem clever enough to me, and they don’t have any problem finding holes in my arguments, even where none exist. I don’t have a problem with that. I present unpopular ideas that challenge the prevailing perspective, so I expect criticism. I can always find another way to frame my case, and I’m happy to do so, because I know that you know how to think for yourself.

I don’t think we have any shortage of critical thinking in this country. In fact we probably have too much of it, and most of it gets wasted on the silliest decisions. If you see some product that you want to purchase, you will carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages of ordering from Amazon or buying at Walmart. You’ll consider an off-brand alternative. You’ll try to find a coupon, or get a discount, or you might wait til it goes on sale. You’ll consider a myriad of factors, almost effortlessly, before you make a decision. People invest an inordinate amount of high quality attention on this kind of pursuit. Fortunately for me, there’s nothing on Amazon, or at Walmart that I want, and I have better things to do with my mind.

Even if you’ve never considered yourself a thoughtful person, you know how to think, and you do it all the time. The problem is, most people confine their thinking to the mundane everyday decisions of modern life, while they leave the big ideas, the ideas that shape the arc of our lives, and our destiny as a people, we leave those ideas to the experts and the authorities. If we ponder any of these big ideas ourselves, we do it mostly for sport, and rarely take it seriously.

These days, we have so many entertainment options, I doubt if anyone thinks recreationally anymore. Thinking takes effort, and unless you are willing to bet your life on your own assessment of the truth, regardless of its popularity, you might as well just hang out with people you like, and believe whatever they believe. The truth is mostly overrated, but the people around you matter.

Still, I see no shortage of thinking, and I don’t think people need instructions on how to do it. The problem, as I see it, is not a shortage of thinkers, but a shortage of ideas, and a lack of conviction. The two go hand in hand. For instance: Most of us still believe in democracy, even though we’ve never, ever seen it work in our entire lifetime. We still believe in it, but only because we don’t have a better idea to replace it.

The experts told us that democracy is the best form of government yet devised, and yet we see that it works so poorly. As democracy continues to disappoint us, and we become more cynical, we continue to trust the experts because they’ve already convinced us that we wouldn’t know anything about the world without them. We believe them, because it’s mostly true, and because we’re suckers for any self-confident man in a business suit or a lab-coat who can demonstrate that he has a lot of money behind him.

On our own, we don’t believe anything we think, and we don’t even trust our own feelings anymore. We don’t know anything, and we don’t even know why we think we know the things we believe, and mostly, we don’t care anymore, because we’re way too busy thinking way too much about stuff that doesn’t mean anything. That’s what I mean by a lack of conviction.

 

Here is the problem as I see it. As a culture, we have run out of ideas. We still believe in democracy. We still want government to work, and we still expect science and technology to save us, and make the world a better place. We expect these things, and invest our lives in them, even though they consistently disappoint us, because we cannot imagine another way. We cannot imagine another way, because we lack the ideas and concepts necessary to evaluate our failed institutions, to understand their failings, and to conceive of an alternative.

Our culture has become an echo chamber ringing with the deafening roar of dead ideas. We shout them all the louder as though we could wake them up and reanimate them, but democracy is dead. Government of the people, by the people and for the people is dead. Science is dead and civilization is dead. They all died a long time before this past election, and nothing we can do will revive them. If you were paying attention, you would have noticed.

Probably, you did notice, but you’ve been praying that God will take you to heaven, or hoping that you were wrong, or just trying to ignore it and make it go away. I think that’s why people focus so much attention on those Amazon v Walmart kind of decisions. No one wants to think about this stuff, let alone talk about it. They’d rather look at stuff, and buy it, or “like” it, or bitch about it, or show it off at the club. We’d rather leave it to the experts, and let the government handle it. Hell, we’d rather work than think about it.

Small minds think alike, and we now find ourselves in a failing culture, surrounded by astoundingly skeptical people, who wouldn’t have the conviction to stand behind an original idea if they ever had one. We desperately need new ideas, and we shouldn’t look to “the experts” to generate them. We need to learn to see things differently, and to think about our situation differently, because we’re staring at a cultural dead-end, and you have to be in deep denial not to recognize that.

I’m not here to humor you. We don’t need any more of the same old, dead, mythology. We need to understand where we went wrong, why what we’re doing here has not worked, does not work, and, most importantly, will not work, and figure out where to go from here. That’s going to take a lot of new ideas, and that’s going to take conviction. That’s why I write this column. Don’t ask me why you read it.

Trump’s New Toy

Finally, we have elected a president who has what it takes to make the United States live up to it’s full potential. Trump understands this country. He knows how it works, and he knows how to make it work for him. Now that the American people have placed it in his tiny hands, he’ll show the world what it can do.

Every cent you paid in taxes, every vote you ever cast, every letter you ever wrote to your congressman, every dollar you donated and every ounce of enthusiasm you devoted to any political campaign here in the US, ultimately coalesced into the perfect opportunity for someone exactly like Trump. This is the US we created, and Trump is exactly the kind of guy we created it for.

Most of the world already thinks of the US as “the Evil Empire,” but apparently it takes someone like Trump to demonstrate it to us here at home. I think we should make the most of this “teachable moment” so that we all understand how we got here, because, in the eventuality that we survive this debacle, we should make sure that we never let this kind of thing ever happen again.

Today, Trump’s victory seems impossible to comprehend. It is a fact that doesn’t mesh with our world-view. I didn’t vote for Trump, and I’m not lying to you about Trump’s victory, it’s just a fact of life that seems incomprehensible at the moment. If we want to disarm Trump, or prevent the rise of future Trumps, we need to understand how and why Trump happened in the first place.

First, let’s talk about how our world-view got so far removed from reality. Very few of us live in reality anymore. Instead, we spend most of our time online, at work, or parked in front of a glowing screen of one sort or another. While reality remains full of mystery, we increasingly inhabit simplified, man-made environments like the internet, indoor spaces and modern cities. We design these simplified environments to serve us, and so they tend to reinforce our cultural habits and thought patterns.

Reality, on the other hand, constantly challenges us, it presents unexpected circumstances, curious facts, and only gets more interesting the more you look at it. Reality demands creativity, and encourages us to think. Simplified man-made environments, on the other hand, are insufferably boring by comparison, which is why we consume a torrent of man-made entertainment and decoration to fill them.

Even with a million channels, and ten trillion websites, however, the man-made environments we inhabit do not challenge our minds nearly as much as reality.  Over time, our minds adjust to these simplified environments, as we become familiar with, dependent on and even jaded to, the intellectual habits of our cultural architects. To us, it feels as though we understand how the world works, when in fact, we’ve simply lost touch with reality.

Simplified environments make us simple-minded. Most of us first lost touch with reality in that simplified man-made environment we call “school.” We learned about democracy in school, and somehow, they taught us the history of this nation in a way that made us proud of it, which is no small task when you think about it. They made us simple-minded in school, and they programmed us all with simple ideas about how the world works, and about what the United States is. We believed them, because they were the experts and because we were stuck in school, and eager to go home and watch television.

Pretty much everything we know about reality comes from teachers and media, and that is also true for teachers, and media people. We have become a nation of simpletons, with a paucity of ideas, and reality is entirely too much for us now. I cannot stress the importance of this factor enough. It effects the ability of American voters to comprehend their situation, and make a decision, and it effects our ability to understand the outcome of the election.

We just watched a billionaire egomaniac ascend to the presidency through a mixture of misogyny, racism and saber-rattling. That’s not supposed to happen. Democracy, and the free press were supposed to prevent that from happening. That’s what they taught us in school, anyway.

Tell me how much you believe in democracy now. Tell me how much you believe in the justice of the Supreme Court. Tell me how much you believe in the American Experiment. It doesn’t matter if this is the best form of government that humanity has yet devised. I don’t care how much you cherish the Constitution, the system has failed. We have created a monster.

Today, it seems obvious, but the system was not designed to serve us, and it never has. The system gave us genocide. The system gave us slavery. The system gave us two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. The system gave us the War on Drugs. The system gave us homelessness, and the system brought us to the brink of global ecosystem collapse. We didn’t ask for those things. Those things didn’t happen while the system was busy serving us; the system used us to accomplish those important goals.

The system’s number one purpose is to serve the interests of trans-national capital. Right now, it is strongly in the interest of trans-national capital, that the US sign on to these secretly negotiated, top-secret trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership. These trade deals relinquish US sovereignty over issues that matter to the American people, like the environment, and tariffs, that can broadly effect jobs, wages and consumer prices, to shadowy multinational entities who answer to no one, but have their own laws and their own courts.

Both major parties had popular candidates who strongly resonated with the American people on this issue, and both parties treated these candidates as outsiders, and tried to sabotage their campaigns. The Democrats eventually tamed Bernie, but the Republicans could not stop Trump. The system failed. The system failed to manufacture consent. Now, a rogue has taken the reigns of the mightiest force for violence and destruction the world has ever known,because the American people have had enough of the system.

In many ways, Trump’s victory really is a victory for the American people. The people have spoken, and they have defied the system. They got behind a populist outsider candidate, and wrenched the awesome power of the United States government from the clutches of multinational capital. Unfortunately, they just handed it to an arrogant, bigoted, impulsive egomaniac whose promise to “make America great again” terrifies most of us.

The world just got more dangerous, and more unpredictable, and we are no longer intellectually equipped to handle reality. How does it feel to be a part of Donald Trump’s new toy?

What has Measure Z Done for “Public Safety?”

A couple of years ago the voters of Humboldt County approved Measure Z, a new, regressive sales tax that disproportionately burdens the poor and homeless. When the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors sold us this ripoff, they promised us that the money would be used for “public safety.” Since then, we’ve had a wave of vicious violent assaults, mostly against the poor and homeless, and more murders than ever before.

Down here in SoHum, post Measure Z, the downtown Garberville shopping district is crawling with cops, who do little but harass street people all day. Then, late at night, after the stores have closed and the cops have gone away, local teenagers go out and beat homeless people with baseball bats while they try to sleep. Measure Z brought more cops to Southern Humboldt, but it also brought more violence to our community as well, and that was by design.

If you believed, for one instant, that the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors wrote Measure Z to make Humboldt County safer for the public you are a special kind of stupid. Unfortunately, the only thing we have more of in this county than greed and marijuana, is stupidity, and we can thank gullible NoHum liberals who voted for Measure Z for unleashing this latest wave of violence and bloodshed in Humboldt County.

What really happened was, the greedy landowners, real-estate bloodsuckers and the merchants down here in SoHum, convinced the tax-friendly liberals up North, to vote for a new tax that hits up the working poor, single mothers, and homeless people of Humboldt County, to pay for a police force for the unincorporated town of Garberville, which is swimming in drug money, but has no tax base. They called it Measure Z, and they said it was for “public safety,” because if they told you that it was a new, countywide, tax to pay for cops to insulate Garberville’s rich dope yuppies from their own customers and employees, you never would have voted for it.

The greedy, hoping to boost property values, and the mean-spirited, eager for blood, tricked naive liberals, who always fall for that “public safety” bullshit, into voting for a war against the poor. Measure Z was the first of a wave of “Fuck Poor People” laws in Humboldt County. The Board of Supes designed Measure Z to hurt poor people, both by taxing them unfairly, and then by punishing them for their poverty, with the cops they pay for. “No Camping” and “No Panhandling” laws soon followed, along with beefed-up enforcement of selective laws that impact the poor. Measure Z came first, however, and because Measure Z was so stacked against the poor, and encountered so little resistance, many people took it as a signal that it was open season on the poor and homeless.

What has it gotten us? Measure Z has given us a record-breaking year for murder, and Measure Z gave us more violence on our streets. Congratulations! And it only cost us, what, 20 million dollars so far? This is exactly what proponents of Measure Z wanted. They wanted more violence. They wanted more violence directed against the poor. They wanted cops to do more of it, but they wanted it done nonetheless.

Another body turned up at a homeless camp North of Redway on Halloween. The Sheriff claims that it is not immediately clear whether the man fell, or was thrown over the cliff, but however you look at it, he was certainly pushed. Local vigilantes known as “Locals on Patrol” have been going into homeless camps during the day to hand-out notices bearing the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Dept. logo and Sheriff Mike Downey’s name. The notices say: “You are on land owned by the State of California, the County of Humboldt or a private landowner in violation of penal code 602 (trespassing). If you are located on this property by any law enforcement officer you are subject to arrest per that section.”

Did the notice from the Sheriff’s office, and the nice people with tazers and pepper spray, who visited their camps to deliver it, scare people into moving their camp to a more precarious position, from which they fell, or did someone go back to the camp later that night to do the dirty work? Will we ever know? Will the Sheriff even conduct an investigation? Oh, and while you’re pondering rhetorical questions, ask yourself, “How does this improve “public safety?”

For politicians, Measure Z is a goldmine. For the poor people of Humboldt County, Measure Z has been a siege, and for the greedy, drug dealers who control most of the Southern Humboldt economy, Measure Z is about political power and selective enforcement. It’s about having cops to bust petty criminals, and harass homeless people around town while allowing major drug kingpins to operate with impunity in the hills, and not having to pay for it. All in all, Measure Z has been a shameful exercise in corruption, coercion, and violence against Humboldt County’s most vulnerable.

Measure Z has not made our streets safer, it has only made them meaner, more dangerous and more expensive, and the problems it was supposed to solve have only gotten worse. Remember that, the next time a politician tries to sell you something else for “public safety.”