Kristallnacht in SoHum

At the time when we need them most, we stand to lose some of our best nurses and medical staff at the SHCHCD because of Vaccine Mandates. I know that these employees have good reason to to refuse to allow their bodies to be used in this global experiment, and I think it criminal that so many people have already been coerced into taking a dangerous and potentially lethal injection that they neither need nor want, but now the injustice of Vaccine Mandates has been laid at our doorstep.

We cannot escape responsibility for this crime. We, as a community are about to fire highly qualified health-care professionals who have loyally served our community for years because they chose to exercise their right to decide what is best for their own health. These are the people in our community who are most qualified to understand the risks of the disease. They’ve seen Covid up close and personal, and watched people die from it. They are also well qualified to analyze the risks of the so-called “vaccine” for themselves. Everyone has the right to make up their own mind about any medical procedure they may or may not undergo. Those decisions are not always easy, and this one is especially fraught. I don’t think we have any business second-guessing them

We can either respect their integrity, and their decision, and continue to value them as members of our community, or we can passively watch our right to make our own medical decisions flutter away forever, as we inflict tremendous financial hardship on our friends and neighbors who have served us so faithfully in time of need. This is our Kristallnacht. This is where we decide to stand with our friends, or to bully them, take away their income and probably force them to relocate. These are our people, and this will be our crime against them, if we let it happen.

I hope you will join me in writing (or calling) your supervisors and your representatives on the SHCHCD. Tell them that we need the nurses and medical staff that we have, and that you respect those employees’ decisions. Please tell them that you oppose vaccine mandates, and you value our hospital staff, and then go find out what those nurses know that you don’t.

Punishing Homeless People

I read that the Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury found that recently passed ordinances and policies designed to punish homeless people have been ineffective and counterproductive. No Shit Sherlock! Groups like AHHA (Affordable Homeless Housing Alternatives) have been telling us this for years, with plenty of evidence to back up their claims. Hell, I’ve been telling you this for years, and it’s not like anyone with half a brain couldn’t have figured it out for themselves. Of course, these policies have never been driven by what is true, or right, or even practical. We punish homeless people for completely different reason that have to do with who we are as a community.

First, we should not forget that among us are quite a few sadistic bullies who will beat up on anyone who can’t fight back. These are just mean-spirited people who see homeless people as vulnerable and helpless and as such, present the perfect opportunity to express their sadistic tendencies. We also have a lot of people, who, when confronted with a bully/victim situation, will join-in on the bully’s side. These people are relieved that the bully hasn’t targeted them, so they join-in because they want to be accepted and don’t want to be picked on themselves.

Then we have a lot of people who feel resentful in general. They hate their job. They hate their boss. They hate the rude customers they have to serve all day. They hate cleaning up other people’s messes. They resent how hard they have to work for the meager pay they earn, and they are sick of forking over half of their income just to have roof over their heads. To them, homeless people seem like freeloaders and sleeping outside in the cold and rain just isn’t punishment enough. Unfortunately, these are the people who have the most to gain by making life easier for the poor. The more affordable housing we have, the easier it becomes to find a place to live, and the easier it is to find a place to live, the more competitive rent prices become, but these small-minded people are too blinded by their own hatred to recognize this, and they only see homeless people as someone they can safely dump their resentments on.

Then we have the flag-waving, love-it-or-leave-it, patriots who still believe in the “American Dream,”and still think that this is the greatest nation on Earth, that it is blessed by God himself and run “by the people, and for the people,” despite all of the evidence to the contrary They can’t understand, or refuse to understand, why so many people lack housing, have mental problems, use drugs, etc. It couldn’t possibly be anything structural, or have anything to do with any flaw in our social, economic or political system, because, of course, our system is the best. Therefore, the problem must be those derelicts who won’t get with the program, and they should be punished for it.

We also have a lot of business-people who blame homeless people, rather than their own business plan, for the poor performance of their businesses. Lots of people dream of running their own business, especially a high-class eatery, or a specialty store for luxury items they like. However, most of us don’t have the money to eat out often, nor do we have the resources to buy high-priced luxuries. So these business-owners dream of hypothetical rich people who might wander into town, as tourists, to patronize their businesses, and fear that the visible poverty that surrounds them will turn these tourists off. In reality, their business plans were based on their own stupidity, self-indulgence and wishful thinking, instead of looking for ways to serve the needs of the people who live in their community, profitably.

Then we have the greedy real-estate people who expect to get rich off of the land under our feet. Not only do they want the police to sweep poor people out of site, so they can promulgate the illusion of prosperity necessary to sell properties at ridiculously inflated prices, but they also campaign tirelessly against any proposed affordable housing.

Of course, these real-estate bloodsuckers wouldn’t be successful without politicians, who happily pass these draconian ordinances, and implement these inhumane policies designed to punish homelessness, as a way of distracting people from their own corruption, and to scapegoat the poor and powerless for the problems facing our community that they lack the courage or will to address. And of course the politicians need law-enforcement officers, who happily accept the job of punishing homeless people with nightsticks, guns, jails and fines, for their, very large, taxpayer subsidized salaries. Now that taxpayers have tired of financing the War on Drugs, these overpaid thugs need someone else to beat-up to justify their existence.

Finally, we have the lazy and cowardly journalists and editors of the press, who care about little else besides filling the space between ads in their publications. They are afraid to say anything that might offend anyone with any economic clout, but pictures of trashed encampments, freak-show mug-shots and stories about “homeless crime” are as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.

So as you can see, even though we all know that punishing homeless people for their poverty does nothing to solve the problem of homelessness, and in fact only makes it worse, for a lot of mean-spirited, small-minded, stupid, cowardly, lazy, greedy and dishonest, citizens, homeowners, working people, business people, cops, politicians, and journalism professionals, punishing homeless people has become a cherished part of life here in Humboldt County.

Vote NO on Measure O

I still remember how much you disappointed me, Humboldt County, when you voted for Measure Z the first time around. What a ripoff that was! Schemy SoHum dope yuppies got their puppet, Estelle Fennell to craft a ballot measure that would sucker gullible NoHum liberals into voting to make Eureka, Arcata, Fortuna and McKinleyville retailers, not to mention Humboldt’s working poor, pay for forty new Sheriff’s Deputies to act as bouncers and security guards for the phony businesses in Garberville that launder their drug money. That diabolically sleazy maneuver took Chutzpah, but that’s how SoHum’s dope yuppies decided to flex their political muscle.

You fell for it hook line and sinker, Humboldt County. Do you feel safer? Are there less drugs on the street? Have they eradicated the homeless? No! We have more violent crime, more murder, and more drugs, and the housing crisis has only gotten worse since Measure Z passed, but now law enforcement has gotten hooked on this money that we never should have given them in the first place.

If I told you that the solution to your affordable housing crisis, drug epidemic and general social dysfunction was to recruit high-school seniors ranked near the middle of their class, give them firearms training, lots of weapons, bullet-proof body armor and a license to kill, and then send them out to look for trouble in your neighborhood, you’d say I was stupid and crazy, but when Estelle Fennell calls it a “public safety initiative” somehow it seems like a good idea to you. You’ve heard the old saying: “If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”? Well, what do you think every problem looks like if your only tool is a gun? Remember this the next time they tell you that more cops is the solution to anything.

I saw Sheriff Honsel and DA Flemming out begging you to vote for Measure O. They can’t tell you that they’ve accomplished anything with the millions of dollars that Measure Z dumped in their laps. All they can say is that they can’t live without it. What could they say? Could they say “Without Measure O we will be able to arrest, prosecute and convict even fewer of the murderers responsible for the many unsolved homicides in Humboldt County.” Is that even possible? As far as I remember, nothin’ from nothin’ still leaves nothin.’

In reality, This sales tax, Measure Z turned Measure O, was never about “public safety.” This little trip to OZ was a vicious and regressive tax scheme designed to make the poor pay for their own brutal oppression. If you recall, Measure Z was part of a strategic offensive conducted by the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors to drive poor people out of the county with a campaign of violence and harassment carried out by a small army of new cops. While encouraging voters to pass Measure Z, the Board of Supervisors also passed a number of cruel, draconian, and ultimately unconstitutional county ordinances designed to criminalize poverty.

One of these ordinances prohibits sleeping in Humboldt County unless you own a home here. Another prohibits people from asking for help. Measure Z was supposed to pay extra cops to enforce these stupid, cruel and unconstitutional county laws. Since then, these laws have proven unenforceable. Instead they have attracted expensive lawsuits that challenge their constitutionality, so now we pay cops not to enforce them, while we pay lawyers to defend them in court.

I think it’s funny that Measure Z, designed by pot farmers and business retailers in SoHum, to drive poor people out of Humboldt County, will now, as Measure O, just make Humboldt County a more expensive, and even less competitive place to buy and sell cannabis, or anything else for that matter. Now Measure O will make the pot farmers and retailers poor so they can see how much they like it. What goes around comes around, and it don’t get any more round than Measure O.

Bad people voted for Measure Z because they are bad people. We have more than our share of them here in Humboldt County, but too many good people voted for Measure Z because they were stupid and gullible and got hypnotized by the words “public safety.” In the spirit of civic responsibility and selfless generosity, they voted for Measure Z, which, much to their chagrin, then unleashed a wave of government sanctioned violence against the poor in Humboldt County. Don’t fall for that bullshit again! When politicians tell you that they are doing something because of “public safety,” you should know that they intend to screw you.

Politicians don’t give a fuck about “public safety.” “Public safety” is a fig leaf that politicians use to cover up something ugly. They passed Jim Crow laws for “public safety.” They made cannabis illegal for “public safety.” Mandatory minimum sentences and Rockefeller Drug Laws were all about “public safety,” and they always use “public safety” as the reason to violate your civil rights whenever you get mad enough about something to go out and protest. In political double-speak, “public safety” really means “police state.” A vote for Measure O is a vote for endless war against the poor, and endless subsidy for SoHum dope yuppies. It’s a vote for violence, oppression and economic apartheid, not to mention, the economic ruin of Humboldt County. You can’t afford to make the same mistake twice, Humboldt County. Please vote NO on Measure O.

SoHum’s Goose is Cooked

“The goose is dead,” I heard Ed Denson tell the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors. He didn’t say “the goose is gonna die if…” He said “the goose is dead.” I’ve heard a lot of that kind of talk lately, but when Ed Denson says “the goose is dead,” I believe him, because he’s the goose’s lawyer. Ed went to the supervisors to complain about the excessive county taxes on legal cannabis, but it appears that the confluence of legalization and regulation created the perfect storm for Humboldt County’s cannabis industry, otherwise known as “the goose that lays golden eggs.”

They could also call it “the goose that eats people, sucks the rivers dry, and turns the community into a ghetto,” but you know how much people around here prefer to focus on the positive. Whatever you call it, Humboldt County’s cannabis heyday is over. The price of black market cannabis collapsed last year in the face of a historic glut in supply. Meanwhile, the CA state regulators dealt the fatal blow to Humboldt’s so called “small farmers” when they decided to license grows larger than one acre. Suddenly, Humboldt County growers are too remote, too dispersed and too small to produce cannabis, competitively in the free market.

The bubble burst. Although it happened suddenly, it didn’t take a genius to see it coming. Anna Hamilton saw it coming a decade ago, and she warned everyone about it. She asked “What’s after pot?” and the community resoundingly replied, “More pot!” Unfortunately, “more pot” quickly turned into “too much pot,” leading to the current collapse in price. It’s a classic small farmer mistake, and it’s why small farmers usually struggle financially, and fail often. Today, the goose still sucks the rivers dry, and it still eats people, but it doesn’t lay golden eggs anymore.

Eventually, life as a small farmer will rehabilitate a lot of black market growers. The people who played smart, paid their land off, love it, and know how to live close to it, will survive on honest labor and thrift. For the rest of Humboldt County’s 12,000+ black market cannabis growers out there, the people who moved here to grow weed, because they thought they could make money at it, it’s just a matter of time. You can tell haw smart they are by how quickly they scram. The smart ones have already left.

A lot of growers will move on to the next sleazy scam. Don’t be surprised if you see them in the health care industry, or working for Big Pharma, but only the smart ones will make that transition seamlessly. Most of Humboldt County growers will not respond well to the economic downturn. Generations of living the low-status, highly secretive, life of a black market drug dealer left us with limited skills, substance abuse problems and chronically low self-esteem, issues we could always cover up, when we had plenty of money. Without money, it’s gonna be a bitch.

A lot of people still don’t know what hit them. They will crumble along with the black market cannabis industry here in Humboldt County. Broken-down cars will continue to accumulate on broken-down homesteads, occupied by broken-down people who have no idea what else to do. We won’t see quite so many big shiny new trucks in town, or cocky young men driving them. Instead, we’ll see more hollow, addicted and despondent young men, hitchhiking and asking for help. We’ll all feel the pinch, but it will be worse for some parts of Humboldt County than it will be for others.

Arcata will be fine. They took steps to run black market growers out of their residential neighborhoods years ago. They also have the college and a strong arts community that will all help buffer and mitigate the impacts of economic upheaval. McKinleyville seems to have inherited most of Arcata’s old indoor grows, and problems, which they are likely to see more of. Eureka and Fortuna have enough economic diversity to withstand the shock, if people, especially in Eureka, could learn to be more humane to each other.

Life up in rural North East Humboldt has always been pretty hardscrabble, and will remain so, but here in Southern Humboldt, where the black market cannabis industry choked out most of our economic diversity decades ago, we will feel the impacts of this collapse most acutely. Despite Anna Hamilton’s warnings, we remain ill prepared for it. Here, instead of facing reality, and preparing for the inevitable, we put our energy into cultivating a mythology about ourselves as growers of superior cannabis, in a region narrowly suited to it. Unfortunately, that myth only fooled us.

The goose has become a liability. Our dream of becoming the Napa County of cannabis just got buried in bushels of bud from Bakersfield. Now, it’s about survival. It’s about recovery. It’s about reality. For the first time in a long time, we’ll have the financial poverty to match our cultural poverty. Ultimately, that’s a good thing. When you build culture, it attracts money, which brings prosperity. A fountain of money, on the other hand, divorced from culture, breeds dependence and weakens communities. It’s time we got back to building culture, here in Southern Humboldt, instead of just growing money.

A New Approach to the Problem of Homelessness

This past Tuesday, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors took up the topic of whether or not to declare a shelter crisis in Humboldt County. At least 20 people came, mostly from the HSU Homeless Students Alliance to ask the Supervisors to recognize the well established fact that Humboldt County does not have nearly enough housing to accommodate its residents and workforce, and that emergency measures should be taken to address this problem.

The HSA is just the latest group to ask the Board of Supervisors to make this declaration. Concerned citizens and organized groups like AHHA have been pressing the county about this for years. The Humboldt County Human Rights Commission, after listening to dozens of hours of public testimony on the subject, has recommended that the Board of Supervisors declare a shelter crisis multiple times. The Board of Supervisors has repeatedly ignored them all.

The Board of supervisors didn’t have any problem taking swift and decisive action to address homelessness, when they thought they could do it by passing radical, draconian, and unconstitutional laws designed to criminalize poverty. Clearly the problem was serious enough that they thought it warranted infringing on all of our constitutional rights, but, alas, this punitive approach failed miserably, yet again.

When this policy of unbridled police state fascism failed, the county jumped on the “Mormon Miracle” called “Housing First,” but even the Housing First consultants, who the taxpayers pay to advise our Board of Supervisors, have told them that there isn’t enough housing in Humboldt County to make Housing First very effective. In reality, all Housing First does in Humboldt County is take housing away from working families, and give it to disabled individuals. We need housing for working families, and for disabled people, and we need it all to be affordable.

We have well established organizations with plans and working models, all home-grown, designed to solve our housing problem here in Humboldt County by creating affordable housing that works for the people who need it. They have made dozens of presentations and attended hundreds of meetings about it. This past Tuesday’s BOS meeting was just the latest. What did the Board of Supervisors decide to do about this serious problem at Tuesday’s meeting? They decided to form an ad hoc committee, which allows them to waste everyone’s time and money for another couple of years without doing anything constructive.

If they could have solved this problem by punishing people, this problem would have been solved years ago. We love to punish people here in Humboldt County, and our Board of Supervisors will eagerly implement our most sadistic impulses and write them into law, but we really hate to do anything that makes life easier on people. Most of us are too small-minded to see beyond our own petty resentments, insecurities and greed, and too well programmed by corporate propaganda to think for ourselves. We don’t mind working two low-wage jobs, just to pay the rent, so long as the people who don’t work that hard, sleep out in the rain. We’re literally just that stupid.

Even without a significant racial divide, Humboldt County gives Mississippi a run for the money in the field of bitter small-minded hatefulness. Honestly, I have never heard hatred and bigotry expressed more openly and frequently, against anyone, anywhere, in all my life as I hear it here in Humboldt County, against the poor and homeless. It is, by far, the ugliest thing about Humboldt County, and all of the media outlets here pander to that ugliness and promote it. It’s shameful.

Unfortunately, the American Genocide, extractive industries, and the War on Drugs have brought out the worst in people here in Humboldt County, and attracted the worst kind of people to Humboldt County for longer that anyone can remember. It shows. It shows in ugly attitudes, bitter resentment, and heartless insensitivity to the suffering of others.

We’re not getting anywhere by reasoning with these people. For them, reason is just a tool for getting their own way. They’ll say anything. Lying is second nature to them, and lying to themselves is first. They’ll make sure that the new ad hoc committee on homelessness does nothing but waste time and money for another year or two, while dozens of people die needlessly on the streets of Humboldt County.

We should stop wasting our time with them. Instead, I think we need to take a more revolutionary approach to homelessness. Instead of appealing to the better nature of people who clearly have no better nature, we should focus directly on providing the needy with the tools they need to secure for themselves, a home, and a brighter future here in Humboldt County.

Instead of appealing to the rich and insensitive to come together as a community, we should arm the poor and oppressed to enable their liberation. For $200 we can put a quality firearm in the hands of a needy homeless man. For $1 we can put a bullet in that gun. With a gun and some bullets, we can give homeless people the tools they need to claim their rightful home here in Humboldt County, the same way early settlers did when they first discovered this beautiful place. That is, by killing, and enslaving the people who already live here.

A lot of our homeless Vets have military training. Providing them with guns and ammunition would give them the opportunity to put that training to use here in the US, and they could train other homeless people how to work together to launch successful tactical assaults. Together, they could overcome any obstacle and rise above their current economic condition, even without the support of Humboldt County’s “Old Guard” or new rich.

Every cop we hire here in Humboldt County costs the taxpayers more than $100,000 a year, and hiring more cops has completely failed to address the problem of homelessness in Humboldt County. The Kevlar vests and semi-automatic weapons our cops carry cost a pittance by comparison. We could save a lot of money, and solve the problem of homelessness once and for all, if instead of hiring cops, we just gave the guns, ammunition and armor to to the people in the street who need them to secure their little piece of Humboldt County and participate in this proud Humboldt County tradition.

Even if we can’t raise the money locally, I’ll bet we can find foreign governments who would be happy to help us out. I know this isn’t a new idea, but I don’t think it has ever been given a fighting chance to succeed in the US before. We could be pioneers here in Humboldt County, with this new approach to solving the problem of poverty and homelessness. They’ll call it the Humboldt Revolution, and it will change the way the world sees poverty in America. It’s got to start somewhere. Why not here?

Drug Treatment Doesn’t Solve the Housing Crisis

I know we need drug treatment options here in Humboldt County, and probably a corporate chain-store methadone clinic is better than nothing, but I can’t help but think that this new Aegis clinic is what they plan to give us instead of affordable housing. Not that long ago 2^nd District Supervisor Estelle Fennell toured homeless encampments in Southern Humboldt with law enforcement. Afterwards, when she spoke to the press, she didn’t say, “Wow, look at all of these people living outside, I guess we really need more housing here in SoHum.” Instead, she said something like, “It sure seems like a lot of the people living outside in the rain and cold have drug problems, I guess we need more drug treatment.”

We got the same story from the Humboldt County Human Rights Commission. All year we asked the HRC to pressure the Board of Supervisors to declare a shelter emergency so that we could create some safe, affordable housing, and address the growing problem of vigilante violence against the poor and homeless here in SoHum. After more than a year of hounding willfully ignorant and purposefully dense politicians and political operatives about this, I finally got a call from HRC Commissioner Lance Morton to come talk about solutions.

So I make another special trip to town to meet with them, to talk about these alleged “solutions,” and the first words out of his mouth were, “We’re going to have drug treatment on demand!”

None of us had asked for drug treatment on demand. We went to all of those stupid meetings to demand that something be done about housing. We asked for affordable housing. We asked for tiny house villages. We asked for low-cost campgrounds and we asked for shelters. We also asked for respect for our human rights, and equal protection under the law, but instead, they bring us a methadone clinic.

None of my friends have problems with hard drugs. None of my friends can afford hard drugs. All of the heroin and Oxycontin addicts I know live in houses, and most of them own land, or their family owns land. My friends don’t need drug treatment; we all need affordable housing. None of us have very good housing options, and a lot of us have simply learned to do without.

Again and again we take our grievance to the Board of Supervisors and County Government. We explain the situation until we are blue in the face, and they look at us like they live on Mars and have no idea what we are talking about. After a couple of years of this, they come back and say, “Oh, we see what you mean, but you must be high on drugs if you think we give a fuck about your housing situation. Here’s a corporate chain-store methadone clinic for you.”

For us, Aegis will be just another shitty job that doesn’t pay a living wage. For the drug-addicted gentry of Humboldt County, however, who managed to support their hard drug habit for years, by growing cannabis and selling it on the black market, they can now get methadone treatment, close to home, at the taxpayers expense, through MediCal. Aegis will be an out-patient treatment center, and the only people likely to benefit from out-patient treatment are people who have homes to go home to, after treatment. How convenient! Politicians provide treatment options for addicted dope yuppies, while they heap the stigma of addiction on the poor and homeless. It doesn’t get much sleazier than that.

I found it both disingenuous and insulting to hear HRC Commissioner Lance Morton promote this new treatment center as a solution to the housing crisis. I’m sick and tired of of having my time and energy wasted by willfully ignorant politicians and political operatives who refuse to care about the real needs of poor and working people within this community. I’m even more sick of the heartless greed, punitive hostility and outright violence from the segment of our population who put those assholes on the Board of Supervisors in the first place.

The ugliness on display when someone throws a Molotov cocktail at a man sleeping in the doorway of a church, is a thousand times worse than the pitiful image of a poor man sleeping out in the cold. A poor person sleeping in the doorway of a church says “a man needs help.” Poor people sleeping outside, everywhere, says something else. It means there’s been a disaster, an earthquake, fire, flood, or economic upheaval. We had an economic upheaval. We’re beyond that now.

Today we have people sleeping everywhere, and we pay highly trained and heavily armed warriors to harass and evict them from anywhere they try to hide. Besides that, a segment of our population is not satisfied with the level of violence that our law enforcement officers meet out against them, so they form vigilante gangs that beat crippled old men to death, and set people on fire while they sleep. This is something else entirely.

Today, in Humboldt County, we’re looking at something like Apartheid, or an occupation, or Jim Crow. We’re looking at something much uglier than a natural disaster, and a thousand times uglier than a poor man who needs help. Here, the fascist business-class sends well financed, heavily armed warriors to beat-down and intimidate bedraggled, disorganized, traumatized, and addicted human beings who have committed no crimes, but have nowhere to hide and lack the strength to fight. These poor souls have no idea how to respond to the situation they find themselves in, and their only weapons against this oppression are the garbage and feces they leave behind and their own appearance.

That’s that’s all that’s left of humanity. That’s all that hasn’t been bought off or taken over by vicious, insatiable, fascistic greed. That’s what’s so ugly about what we see going on here in Humboldt County, and around the country, for that matter, and that’s why it’s so hard to look at it. Seeing desperate people on the streets reminds us of how much of our own humanity we’ve already sacrificed to participate in this whole exploitative system. This system kills us inside, but we can’t face what it’s doing to us, our planet, and our children’s future, so we take our resentments out on anyone who can’t, or won’t, get with the program.

We’ve constructed a perfectly exploitative culture that consumes our lives and destroys the planet, but instead of resisting, and standing up to it ourselves, we help the fascists wage war against humanity, profit from that war, and jeer at, beat down, and fire-bomb our broken brothers and sisters while the fascist system grinds them to dust. That’s a special kind of ugly, and it is definitely the ugliest thing about Humboldt County. Nobody wants to see that, and nobody wants their kids to see that, but here in Humboldt County, we have no shame.

The Hum Co Human Rights Commission’s Annual Report

I heard Daniel Mintz’s story about the Humboldt County Human Rights Commission’s annual report, on KMUD last night. In the story, we heard HRC Chairman Jim Glover tell us that they are listening to Southern Humboldt. Of course, he didn’t tell us what he heard from Southern Humboldt. He just said that they held a meeting down here, and that at least 30 people showed up for it. He didn’t give any indication as to why they had a special meeting down here, and why 30+ people in Southern Humboldt showed up to that HRC meeting on Superbowl Sunday.

He didn’t mention the epidemic of violence against poor and homeless people in Southern Humboldt. He didn’t talk about the people who were beaten with baseball bats on the streets of Garberville. He didn’t mention the gang of vigilantes who attacked homeless people on public land, claiming that they worked with the Sheriff’s Department. He didn’t mention any of the human rights abuses that people in Southern Humboldt complained to them about. In fact, he managed to get through the whole report without discussing any human rights violations anywhere in the county, but he wants us to know that the HRC is listening, and that they want to learn more.

In fact, Nezzie Wade was so enraged by how Jim Glover handled those original complaints from Southern Humboldt that she resigned from the HRC in disgust. A lot of people in Southern Humboldt were pissed about it too, and that’s why so many people turned out at the special HRC meeting on Superbowl Sunday. Many people feel that Jim Glover betrayed them, by taking those reports to 2^nd District Supervisor, Estelle Fennell, who in turn, informed the alleged perpetrators about them.

Nezzie Wade felt that Jim Glover betrayed the HRC by not forwarding those complaints to the HRC Secretary, thus preventing other commissioners from seeing them, discussing them or acting on them. Here’s how she put it in her resignation letter:

“It was in relationship to the message line calls and email communications retrieved by a commissioner acting as the courier for the commission, that I became extremely inflamed over the course of two consecutive meeting (October and November) in which the reports “>and communications sent to the commission describing instances of vigilante violence in Southern Humboldt reported to the commission via the phone line and email were not revealed to the commission in a way that allowed the grave situations described in these communications to be disclosed to the commission. A violation of privacy and confidentiality occurred when the commissioner acted upon the information in the communications without authority from the originators or the commission, by disclosing the names of complainants and their issues to parties outside of the commission thus compromising the investigation and the ethical standing of the commission in the community. A real travesty occurred when the actual situations of violence were minimized and reported in their entirety as “possible vigilante activity” rather than actual occurrences with the documentation. The standard forms for intake on the message line were never submitted to the secretary nor email declarations of the victims of vigilante violence as clarified when I requested copies of them from the secretary, received no response prior to the November meeting, and was informed by the secretary that the commission did not have them; thus, no one had access to the information except the commissioner acting as courier at that point, nearly two months beyond the initial reports. It was in this context that I stated my intention to resign which I am now acting upon.”

“>So much for listening.

“>Then, Supervisor Mike Wilson started praising the HRC for their transparency. What a sucker! Anyone who thinks the HRC is transparent should talk to Chris Weston. Chris Weston was an HRC Commissioner for about three months before Estelle Fennell removed him, via text message, less than two hours after he blew the whistle on Jim Glover. Chris believed, rightly or wrongly, that Jim Glover was putting together a back-room deal in violation of the Brown Act. Chris forwarded the questionable correspondence to County Council to ask for a legal opinion. County Council never replied to Chris’ email. Instead, Chris was removed from the commission. This is how Chris Weston described his experience working on the HRC with Jim Glover, in a letter he wrote to DA Maggie Flemming shortly after his dismissal this past April:

“>The HRC Chairman, Jim Glover, has continually put obstacles in my path. He repeatedly ignored my emails and texts. He repeatedly claimed he did not receive my emails, then sometimes miraculously found them later. He refused to confirm that he would agendize my topics and proposals for discussion and action, so I confirmed with Ana, Deputy Clerk of the BOS office that all commissioners are equal and their requests to agendize should be respected. When I mentioned this to Mr. Glover on April 19, during a return trip from a special HRC meeting in Willow Creek, he yelled, swore like a sailor, used the Almighty’s name in vain, and pounded the steering wheel.”

;”>Chris believes that he was removed from the HRC illegally, and in retaliation for blowing the whistle on Jim Glover’s back room deal. The HRC bylaws tell us that the commissioners serve “at the pleasure of the Board of Supervisors.” It does not say, “at the pleasure of the Supervisor who appointed them.” It seems that it should have required a vote of the full Board of Supervisors to remove a commissioner from the HRC, but that didn’t happen in Chris Weston’s case. Someone should look into why that didn’t happen, but everyone should realize that letting Supervisors appoint and dismiss HRC commissioners at will, makes the HRC more political and less principled.

“I talked to both Chris Weston and Nezzie Wade about their time on the HRC, and I’m sure that neither of them would describe the HRC as “transparent.” Here’s how Nezzie Wade describes the functioning of the HRC in her recommendations to the Board of Supervisors:

“Actions taken by the HRC have harmed its relationships with members of the Humboldt County community. The minimizing of vigilante violence in Southern Humboldt (and other complaints coming to the Commission) is not an isolated incident. The HRC has violated the rights of those it is intended to honor and serve through study or investigation and conciliation to alleviate tensions and conflict and by its recommendations to the BOS. The HRC has undermined the confidence and trust of the community.”
;”>And speaking of transparency:

;”There has been and continues to be a lack of transparency among Commissioners, and many issues are discussed (and strategies decided) behind the scenes in private conversations before the issues ever come to the table for the Commission to act upon… The recent incident in which the chair sequestered communications which did not come to the Commission table and in which he acted alone without Commission knowledge or direction has resulted in harm to residents of the county and this behavior needs appropriate reprimand or sanctioning.“

I’d have to agree.

“Finally, we should remember that, contrary to county guidelines, Jim Glover also serves on the Humboldt County Grand Jury. Not only does Jim Glover serve on both the HRC and the Hum Co Grand Jury, the primary civilian watchdog agencies of county government, he chairs them both. After watching Jim Glover’s weaselry on the HRC, I no longer believe anything the Grand Jury tells us either.

“I know that Supervisor Wilson wanted to thank these unpaid volunteers on the HRC for writing so much legislation for the Board of Supervisors, but here in SoHum, we’ll never trust them again. That’s what the HRC has accomplished in the past year. Excuse me for not congratulating them.

Service Dogs, Veterans and the Housing Crisis

I know, from the time I’ve spent looking for housing here, that if you have a dog, you are more likely to find a dead body, D B Cooper’s money, and bigfoot than you are to find a place to live in Humboldt County. If you’ve ever wondered why so many homeless people have dogs, that’s why. Unless you own your own home, in Humboldt County, you have a choice between having a landlord, and having a dog. Having had a few landlords, I can understand why a lot of people would prefer to have a dog.

Some people, however, NEED their dogs, and everyone needs a place to live. I got this letter from a homeless reader recently, and it should remind people of the kind of people our housing shortage really hurts.

Hi, my name is Lori and my wife Kate and I are new here in this area. Kate is a disabled veteran–she served two tours in Iraq as an Army medic. On her last tour, she was severely injured and then eventually medically discharged from the military. As she recovered back in the US, she dealt with PTSD and was unable to leave her house for months. She then got a Great Dane named Chief who would become her service dog and save her life.

With Chief, Kate was able to go back to school and finish her bachelors degree, then she went to nursing school and graduated with her RN. Chief passed away young, just before Kate graduated from nursing school. Luckily, Kate had Ozzy, our other Great Dane who became her next service dog. With Ozzy’s help, Kate was able to begin her career as an ICU nurse. In the meantime, we rescued another Great Dane named Gilbert, who would then start training to be her service dog (to take over for Ozzy when Ozzy was on break).

Kate blossomed with the help of these two amazing dogs. Kate was deemed disabled enough that she does not technically have to work, she could be collecting a check from taxpayers every month. Instead, she busted her butt and worked hard in a career field that would enable her to give back to society instead of being dependent. Almost 2 years ago, Kate decided to take a job as a travel nurse. We’ve been traveling the country since then with her two service dogs and we’ve had wonderful adventures with them. Kate worked in Crescent City last winter and we both fell in love with the North Coast. We decided we wanted to put down roots here, so when an opportunity came for Kate to work at Mad River Community Hospital, we were elated.

We decided to come to Humboldt County and were hopeful that we could get involved in the community here and stay for a long time. Kate loves her work at Mad River–from her supervisors to her coworkers to the folks she serves–Mad River has been her favorite place out of all the hospitals she’s traveled to. Sadly, we have been unable to find housing here in Humboldt due to Kate’s service dogs and we are officially HOMELESS as of this week.

We’ve stayed in an Airbnb and a VRBO, but we must be out of our VRBO (which is costing us just under $5,000/month) on Thursday as it’s booked with vacationers for the rest of the summer. We’ve spent weeks calling, emailing, answering every ad on Craigslist, even trying to find a clean used camper to live in while we are here. We have been turned down on the phone and in person by multiple landlords here because of the service dogs. Even when they meet us and see the Disabled Veteran license plates on our car, they’ve still illegally turned us down.

We’ve been turned down for housing because of “new carpet” and “new furniture” and just because landlords prefer not to rent to people with dogs—even a disabled veteran who depends on her dogs for functioning in daily life. Landlords here don’t seem to care that it’s illegal to turn away someone because of their service dog. We do understand that there are many people who try to pass off untrained animals as service animals, but we are not those people and we have proof. I’ve reached out to some veterans organizations in the area and I had a great conversation with Ryan from North Coast Veterans Resource Center, who says that this is a HUGE problem in Humboldt County and there are many disabled veterans suffering because local landlords are illegally refusing legitimate service dogs.

I think this would make a good story and speaking out about these issues might help others in the same situation. Maybe drawing some attention to our plight would help us find some housing as well. Kate earns a solid middle-class income, so we shouldn’t be HOMELESS, but we sure are, thanks to the slumlords of Humboldt County.

Sincerely, Lori Ann

Thank you Kate for your service, and for bringing your talents to the Lost Coast. Thank you Lori Ann for sharing your story, and thanks to Ozzy and Gilbert for making it all possible. To be a good story, it needs a happy ending. As it stands, it’s an important story, that reminds us of the continuing crisis that our Board of Supervisors refuses to address because greedy landlords pull their strings. I wonder how many of those landlord’s lives Kate has saved since she started working at Mad River Hospital. Welcome to the Lost Coast, Kate, Lori Ann Ozzy and Gilbert. I hope you find your “Happily ever after” home, soon.

More Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment From Estelle Fennell

A few weeks ago I attended the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors meeting to voice my opposition to Estelle Fennell’s latest proposal to criminalize Humboldt County’s impoverished underclass. She wanted County Council to explore the feasibility of imposing a countywide overnight parking ban. This is just Estelle’s latest cruel attempt to criminalize human need. First, she pushed through an ordinance to prohibit people from asking for help. Then she made it illegal to sleep outside. Now she wants to make it illegal to park overnight anywhere in the county.

Not that long ago, at Shop Smart in Redway, around 11pm, on our way home from somewhere, a woman stopped us to ask our advice. She had just driven all day with her six-year-old son to get to Redway. In the morning, she planned to attend an event at the Heartwood Institute. She’d been to Heartwood before, but it had been some time ago, and she didn’t feel confident about driving the remaining thirty miles or so of steep, narrow, twisted, poorly maintained, roads at night, in the rain. She asked us if we knew of a safe place she could park her mini-van overnight, so that she and her son could get a few hours of sleep before they drove the rest of the way in the morning.

We understood her situation completely. We’ve been to Heartwood, once. I wouldn’t try to drive those roads, at night, in the rain, if I could possibly avoid it. Hell, I wouldn’t try to drive to my place in the dark and rain if I didn’t know the way so well. I also wouldn’t drop thirty dollars on a campsite just so we could turn the engine off, climb in the back and get a few hours sleep before we drove the rest of the way in the morning. If we made $106,000+ a year, like Estelle Fennell, and had political motivation to patronize local businesses, we’d probably get a hotel room, but we survive because we don’t blow money on shit we don’t want or need, and we sure don’t need to be woken up and given a ticket.

We didn’t have a good answer for this poor woman and her son. We warned her that Locals on Patrol had a reputation for harassing people who try to sleep in their vehicles, and that a Sheriff’s Deputy or CHP officer might pay them a visit as well. We discussed the general lay of the land, and wished her luck. It was the best we could do for her.

At the Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Fennell showed pictures of the terrible fire that burned the Presbyterian Church in Garberville about a month ago. A fire in an RV parked next to the church, spread, and burned a portion of the church before being extinguished by firefighters. Estelle complained that the RV had been parked there for an extended period of time, and proposed that if we just ban overnight parking all over the county, we can prevent fires in campers from spreading to churches in the future.

Estelle also reminded us of one of her first ordinances that made life harder for people in Southern Humboldt, the one that banned overnight parking on the Sprowell Creek Rd. Overpass Bridge. That overpass was an ideal location for people who needed to get off the road for a little shut-eye. It has easy access to the highway, and all of the gas stations in Garberville, but it’s quiet, has very little traffic, and minimal impact on residential neighborhoods. Almost all of the RVs in town used to park there. If Estelle Fennell hadn’t pressed for that overnight parking ban on the Sprowell Creek Overpass Bridge years ago, the camper that caught fire probably would have been safely parked on that bridge, far from any structures. The Presbyterian Church would still be intact, and firefighters would have had a much easier fire to fight.

Further, the fire that started in the camper may well have been an act of arson. We have had a rash of such attacks recently. Arsonists in SoHum have torched numerous vehicles, including many campers and Rvs, on county roads in the last several years. You can still see the remains of a recently torched RV on Briceland Rd west of Redway. In February of 2015 Ron Machado and his belongings were set on fire in broad daylight in downtown Garberville. Additionally, Weston Coen, Joe Turner, and James Wallace, among others were all severely beaten on the streets of Garberville, in a wave of violence against the poor and homeless, and no one has been held accountable in any of these crimes. If Supervisor Fennell had done anything at all about the wave of vigilante violence and arson in Southern Humboldt, not only could she have saved lives, she might have saved the Garberville Presbyterian Church too.

Not only that, but if Estelle Fennell, and the rest of our Board of Supervisors had just listened to the Humboldt County Human Rights Commission, last Summer, when the Human Right Commission advised the Board of Supervisors to declare a shelter crisis in Humboldt County, most of the violence we’ve seen in Southern Humboldt, recently, could have been prevented. The HRC looked extensively at the facts on the ground, and determined that Humboldt County faces a real shelter crisis, and advised the Board of Supervisors to declare it.

Declaring a shelter crisis would make some public land available for camping and emergency housing, and relax certain housing regulations to make more structures available for habitation. Declaring a shelter crisis could have relieved a lot of pressure on downtown Garberville, and prevented numerous assaults on homeless people. Declaring a shelter crisis could have gotten all of the campers off of Garberville’s residential side streets, and onto a designated lot, preventing the fire at the Presbyterian Church, and declaring a shelter crisis would have saved people’s lives. Instead, because the Board of Supervisors ignored the recommendations of the Human Rights Commission, several people are dead, others were violently assaulted, many more lost their homes, and the Garberville Presbyterian Church burned.

Time was, the Federal prohibition on marijuana was the only law you needed to bust poor people, and push them around. Now that marijuana is legal, Estelle Fennell has risen to the occasion with a whole slew of new laws designed to keep cops busy harassing people who are just trying to survive, instead of investigating real crimes, like the ones her supporters commit. The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors has a responsibility to protect and serve the inadequately housed residents of Humboldt County, as well as the well-housed, and we have enough stupid laws already, more than we have resources to enforce.

I remember when Estelle campaigned against her predecessor, Cliff Clendennon, who had just voted in favor of an unpopular resolution to prohibit camping around the courthouse, because of the “Occupy” protests going on there at the time. Estelle said that she didn’t think she would support a law that limited people’s rights that much. Instead, once elected, she passed laws that violate people’s rights all over the county. These draconian new ordinances Estelle and her colleagues have dreamed up are exactly the kinds of laws that the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva condemns the US for, calling them “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” That’s what I call them too, and we’ve had more than enough of them from Second District Supervisor Estelle Fennell, already.

 

New Ordinance or Not, Consumers Will Decide

With almost no compliance from growers on our current cannabis cultivation ordinance, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors is looking into crafting a new ordinance which would undo the few environmental protections that made it into the current ordinance. For instance, the proposed new ordinance allows for more new grows in forest habitat. The last thing we need in Humboldt County is more new grows in forest habitat. Destroying forest habitat to grow pot is like killing whales to make Greenpeace stickers. There’s something wrong with this picture, folks.

I don’t like the sound of it either. The new proposal would allow growers to use generators to power lights in rural greenhouses, so long as they get 80% of their power from renewable sources. This cuts no mustard with me. If I can hear your generator, you’re an asshole who should be run out of town on a rail. I don’t give a damn how many solar panels you have, you are still an asshole, and the County damn well better do something about it because otherwise I’m going to blow your motherfucking head off with a shotgun, and we don’t need any more of that kind of violence around here.

You don’t need electricity to grow weed. If you do need electricity to grow weed, there are plenty of places with flat land and convenient grid power, and you should move there, because the people who grow pot on flat, fertile land, convenient to public utilities, will put you out of business if you don’t. Most growers, who want to stay in the game, post-legalization, probably should think about moving somewhere flat and sunny, with grid electricity, on a major highway.

Now is the time to decide whether you want to be a rich pot farmer, or a poor forest gnome. If you want to be a rich pot farmer, find some land that’s suitable for agriculture, preferably in some other county, and go big. If you want to live here in the forest, then make that your priority, and realize that you’ll probably need to find some other way to make a living. Unless you’ve been spoiled rotten by your drug dealing parents and have grossly unrealistic expectations, that shouldn’t be too hard.

On the other hand, I like some aspects of this proposed new ordinance. I especially like the idea to license businesses for on-site cannabis consumption. I think it’s about time that Humboldt County growers start catering to cannabis consumers instead of drug dealers. Growing and dealing cannabis is all about money, which is boring and banal, like most growers and dealers, but cannabis culture really flourishes when cannabis consumers come together, express themselves, and interact with each other in public places. I think we need on-site consumption in Humboldt County, and I think we would do it well.

Humboldt County culture has been largely shaped by cannabis consumption. Our heritage of alternative energy and building technologies, raising money by throwing wild parties instead of with taxes, and our hedonistic history of free love and running naked through the woods testify to the kind of free-thinking creative ingenuity that cannabis use inspires. Who better than us would know how to design the kind of environment that enhances the cannabis experience?

On-site consumption opens up the whole world of cannabis culture and lifestyle. On-site consumption brings food, decor, art, music, entertainment and fashion into the cannabis industry, creating a lot more economic diversity in our community than a simple agricultural commodity ever could. This kind of direct connection makes the Humboldt brand tangible to consumers. We need on-site consumption for cannabis tourism too. We have a lot to offer cannabis tourists, and I think cannabis consumer tourism will look a lot different from the drug dealer business trips that we see today.

Drug dealers don’t like adjoining rooms in hotels, but don’t complain about the quality of overpriced food. Cannabis users care more about the quality and price of the food, and would rather camp than stay in a hotel. Drug dealers keep a low profile and spend liberally, while cannabis consumers don’t mind looking a little freaky, or complaining about being overcharged. We get plenty of both here, but we should make sure to remember that cannabis consumers, not drug dealers, drive the cannabis market. The less time we spend catering to drug dealers, and the more time we spend with people who work real jobs and buy cannabis with their hard-earned cash, the better we will understand what customers want in a cannabis product, and the more opportunity we have to connect with customers in a way that builds brand loyalty.

Of course, to earn that kind of loyalty, cannabis consumers have to like us. To make them like us, we need to make sure that cannabis consumers have a good time while they are here, whether they show up for Reggae on the River, or blow into town around harvest season. If we want cannabis consumers to patronize our product for the rest of their lives, we had better treat them right while they are here.

That’s an important lesson we need to learn as we step out of prohibition and into the free market. We’ve gotten used to the black market, where government policy props-up prices and limits competition, but in the free market, consumer choice, not government policy makes the difference between success and failure.