Tag: marijuana
Why a Snake?
I’m working on a movie project with Myles Moscato about what it took, and who it took, to overcome half-a-century of anti-marijuana propaganda and reintroduce America to hemp. In the process, I’ve had to review a lot of old anti-drug propaganda. It’s kind of a walk down memory lane, and this memory goes back just about as far as I can remember. This was my first introduction to marijuana.
I must have been three or four the first time I saw this ad, and I’m sure I saw it hundreds of times on TV during weekday early morning cartoons. I’m sure I never heard of marijuana before I saw this ad. I remember that this ad was also the first, and only, time I ever heard of smoking corn silk, which I eventually tried. Looking back, the comparison to smoking corn silk hints of hemp’s agricultural roots. It reminded me of this old country song about cannabis:
Back to the AMA’s PSA, I understood what Tinker toys were, because I had them at the time.
I had no idea who the AMA were, but, having seen their ad, I was much more curious about their logo than I was marijuana. I liked snakes very much as a child. I remember wondering about that snake.
It only appeared briefly, but there it was, a snake, wrapped around a stick, only for a second, and with no explanation. Why a snake?
That’s one of my oldest memories. Finding this relic brought it right back. The War on Drugs was real. It was a psychological information war waged against the American people. This movie will be about what it takes to overcome a multi-billion dollar propaganda machine and change the minds of Americans.
I’m excited about this project and am eager to get it out, but I also find this old anti-drug propaganda fascinating in and of itself, both historically and rhetorically, as well as aesthetically and psychologically, but also nostalgically, because it was so integral to my early development.
Vax Nazis Suck, but Pink Floyd Rocks
Really, I don’t like to be the guy with the obtuse opinion, and I’ve got better things to do than spend my time explaining the obvious to a hostile audience in deep denial, but push has come to shove, and the vax nazis have gone on the offensive. Vaccine mandates and vaccine passports must be stopped. I cannot believe how many Democrats and liberals have fallen for the bullshit rhetoric about this pandemic and these experimental new drugs, and are willing to trade their own, and their neighbors, rights as citizens, and as sovereign human beings, for the life of livestock and lab rats. When I think of how many Americans died to secure and protect those rights through the years, just to watch you throw them away, for the false promise of protection from a disease that kills less than 1% of the people who catch it, I can’t just sit back and watch it happen. I have to say something.
When I see the media working diligently to turn neighbor against neighbor, as they tell us lies like: “This new wave of infection is driven by the unvaccinated.” and “the vaccine-hesitant are causing the virus to mutate” even though they have no science to back it up, and all common sense contradicts them, reminds me of the War on Drugs. Drug war lies ranged from: “marijuana makes colored men violent and rape white women.” and “marijuana makes Mexicans lazy and stupid.” to “crack cocaine is 100 times more addictive than powdered cocaine” and “the new marijuana is 40 times more dangerous than the old marijuana.”
This vaccine obsession should remind you of the War on Drugs too. The government lies. Don’t ever forget that, and when the government lies big like this, and the media falls in line, lock step, like they are now, you can bet it is a war, and you can bet that this war is not about what they tell you it is about. In all my life, I have never seen the government mobilize this kind of media dominance for anything except war (and those wars have never been about what they said they were about): The War on Drugs (protect Americas youth), the first Persian Gulf Way (liberating Kuwait from a bloodthirsty Saddam),9/11 and the War on Terror (Find Osama bin Laden), and the Invasion of Iraq (Saddam’s WMDs).
The War on Drugs. Do you remember that bullshit? Mandatory minimum sentences, drug testing in the workplace, zero tolerance, paraquat, CAMP, DARE, gang warfare, prison overcrowding, crack babies, millions dead, tens of millions arrested, millions more lives ruined, and three generations of activists had to devote their lives to walking this insanity back, and we are not even close yet. I want to remind you of the War on Drugs so that you remember just how out-of-hand things can get, if you let yourself believe that the government has your best interest at heart when it pulls shit like this.
This vaccine hysteria has gotten way out of hand. If you are one of those people who is beginning to turn on your jab-resistant peers, you really need to check yourself. I know that you hear the same story from every single trusted media outlet you turn to, and the story they tell is very simple: “Everyone must get vaccinated or we’ll never be able to take our masks off, or go to a concert or have a party again.” You can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t take a couple of jabs in the arm to make everything all better again, especially since everyone says the vaccines are “safe and effective.”
I’m sorry folks, but when was the last time you heard a drug commercial in the media that didn’t have a long list of side-effects read at auctioneer speed at the end of it. What makes you think these “vaccines” are any different? The CDC’s VAERS program reports over 10,000 deaths following the vaccine, and hundreds of thousands of severe reactions, some with long-term, disabling conditions like paralysis. I would feel awful if that happened to someone I had encouraged to take the jab over their own reservations, and so would you. The media, on the other hand, doesn’t mind lying to you at all, and doesn’t care whether you live or die. They are just weapons in a war, and this is another war against us all, just like the War on Drugs, only in reverse.
In the War on Drugs, they lied to us about drugs to get us to stop taking them; today they’re lying to us about drugs to get us to take them, and if that doesn’t work they’ll make it hard to get a job, go to school, get a license, travel, and they will do their level best to stigmatize you and turn your friends and family against you. Since the truth is not on their side, these coercive measures are the only way to get people to comply, but it will breed resentments. These lies will break-up families, destroy friendships, and tear at the fabric of our society, and those are intentional objectives in this kind of war.
It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time, not that long ago, when most Americans had no experience with cannabis, let alone LSD. Back then, people believed whatever bullshit the government told them about these drugs because neither they, nor anyone they knew, had ever seen, let alone tried them. After this indoctrination, however, they sure didn’t want their kids getting involved in anything so sordid as illegal drugs, and they were on the lookout for signs of drug use in their neighborhood.
When they finally did catch their own kids with cannabis, they did just what the government told them to do. They called the cops, on their own kids. Later, in the DARE program, they got kids to rat on their parents and friends, for smoking weed, and then the government destroyed their lives. Millions of lives were lost or destroyed because gullible Americans believed the bullshit they saw on TV. They turned on people in their own community. They turned on their friends, and they turned on family, because they believed what they saw on TV.
This lead to bitter resentments, estrangement, and rebellion. Families suffered, communities foundered, and a counter-culture emerged that rejected this intolerant mainstream ideology, and proudly celebrated cannabis and psychedelics. Within that counter-culture that celebrated cannabis and psychedelics, there emerged a new kind of music that defied all the accepted norms of pop music. This music just didn’t make sense unless you were high on drugs, Hendrix’s feedback, the Dead’s Space, and Zappa’s Freak Out immediately come to mind. On the other side of the world, Syd Barrett’s notorious consumption habits and subsequent collapse, as well as his Zippo-lighter slide-guitar on Astronomy Domini forever marked Pink Floyd as counter-cultural celebrants of psychedelics.
Pink Floyd has several “songs” that really don’t make much sense unless you are really high, and I love them for that. I feel that this kind of music connects to something primal within us. There are no lyrics that you can write that can liberate us from this culture, but there’s a feeling in this music that is deeper than words, and when you tap into that feeling, it tells a whole other story. Roger Waters once described this song as “a poignant appraisal of the contemporary social situation” I’d say that’s more true now than ever. Here’s my cover of the Pink Floyd song “One of These Days” played on electric bass, tin can violin, Omnichord and voice. I hope you like it!
Not Fit to Read or Burn
I appreciate free newspapers. I pick them up religiously, regardless of the subject matter because I need kindling. I need to find three or four papers every week, just to have enough dry tinder to get through the rainy season, and it’s getting harder to find enough now that the Redwood Times has ceased publication, and the NCJ has gotten so much thinner.
I read them too. If I can find anything remotely interesting in them. I also look at the ads, and I feel a warm sense of appreciation for the companies that help me get my wood-stove going on a cold rainy morning.
Lately, I have found a lot of new publications about cannabis, and the lameness of these publications amazes me. Sensi, Emerald, Skunk, Leaf, the list goes on, I’ve picked up dozens of these rags by now and found nothing redeeming about any of them. I love cannabis. I’m a lifelong fan, a true enthusiast, a connoisseur even, but I have found nothing worth reading in any of these publications. Since they are all printed on glossy paper, they don’t even make good kindling.
All of these magazines have the same format: big color ads for cannabis products, interspersed with profiles of people in the industry and one-sided reviews of the advertised products. Could this industry possibly get any more self-absorbed? Could they possibly show more indifference to the interests of their customers? When these people brag about their idyllic little farm in the forest, or show off their their fancy new dispensary, they seem to forget who pays for it all.
Cannabis entrepreneurs should remember that the people who buy their products mostly live in rented apartments and work at high-stress, low-paying jobs, yet still pay ridiculously high prices for cannabis, especially if they buy at a dispensary. Do you think they really care that they are supporting “small family farms,” “community values” or “stoner owners.” Listen, we have enough trouble supporting ourselves these days, and we’re tired of watching other people get rich off of the money we spend on weed.
There are really only two reactions a cannabis consumer will have when they see page after page of stories about unremarkable white people enjoying relative affluence through their cannabis business:
1. “Wow, these people all seem to be making pretty good money, maybe I should get into the cannabis industry.” or
2. “Fuck these people! How much longer do we have to wait for Walmart, Inbev, or RJR to figure out how to grow pot efficiently and sell it at a low enough price that they will put these bloodsuckers out of business for good?”
Neither of these reactions, it seems to me, really helps your brand. Showing off your wealth and ego in a glossy color magazine, that doesn’t even make good kindling, let alone reading material, doesn’t make me want to buy your products.
Lets face facts: Farming is boring. Farming is literally as boring as watching grass grow. Sure, there’s an art to growing good weed, and farmers love to talk about it endlessly, but the rest of us, not so much. I can tell the quality of the product in one toke. I don’t need to read about who made it or how. I know how you made it. I know that producing marijuana is dull work. That’s why I pay you to do it for me. Magazines like these just remind me that I still pay too much.
Why Do I Do It?
You might wonder why I do this. Why do I go so far out on a limb to artfully present an opinion that I know will be wildly unpopular? Some people speculate that I do it for the attention. Although I appreciate an audience, I don’t really care about drawing attention to myself. What matters to me is drawing attention to the things that people learn to overlook. People learn to overlook things when those things do not fit within their cultural mythology.
Whether it’s our local myth about the benign benevolence of the marijuana industry, our national myth of American Exceptionalism and the American Dream, or the greater cultural myth of civilization that tells us that there is a technological solution to every technological problem, the myths of our culture have become a threat to our survival, and the sooner we realize it, the better it will be for all of us. I understand the power of cultural myths, and I know how they can blind us to what’s happening right in front of our eyes. At times like these we need to see clearly and think carefully. Outdated cultural myths interfere with that by lying to us about what is real, and distracting us from what is possible.
Entirely too many people still believe our dominant cultural myths, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Cultural myths act like a security blanket, and an auto-pilot. They give us our default settings about what to believe, how to interpret the world around us, and strategies for thriving in it. Most people rarely think about the cultural myths they inherited, and these myths tend to perpetuate themselves because people constantly repeat and reinforce them. People constantly repeat and reinforce these cultural myths because they constitute all of the safe things to say in a conversation.
You can always say: “It’s so great to live here in the heart of the cannabis community, in the greatest nation on Earth, and we’re so lucky to live at a time when technology has put the whole world at our fingertips.” You can say stuff like that all day long, and practically everyone will agree with you and no one will ever question you about it. You’ll never be at a loss for words, and you’ll be telling people exactly what they want to hear.
The problem is that none of it is true anymore. The Marijuana industry is a blood-soaked ripoff, the US has become the most brutal fascist regime on the planet, and technology has driven us over a cliff, environmentally. 20-30 years ago, some of those myths were still true, or at least half-true, and the jury was still out on others, but today, those myths are all lies, and the sooner we realize it, the better. We’ll never solve problems we can’t face, which is why I draw attention to the inconsistencies that betray our cultural bankruptcy.
People take great comfort in those myths, and in the fact that they are so widely shared, despite the overwhelming evidence against them. People do not like having their bubbles bust. They would rather just complain to each other about why things don’t seem to work out the way they are supposed to. When I make a point, somebody’s myth gets deflated, and that makes them angry, at me. I don’t benefit from that anger in any way, but those myths threaten us all.
Most of our big problems, as a community, as a nation and as a culture, became big problems due to our continued belief in these outdated cultural myths. We will not solve our problems with the same kind of thinking that created them. I try to look at the world from a different perspective, from one that shows the worst side of our dominant cultural myths, and encourages us to consider other possibilities. If we hope to meet the challenges of our time, as a community, across the country, and around the world, we need to remove those cultural blinders and look at what is really happening, with clear eyes, and to consider every possibility.
The Facts of Life about Humboldt’s Cannabis Industry
I heard a report from that stupid conference the HIIMS held last week about the so-called “impacts” of the Netflix miniseries Murder Mountain. From what I heard in the report, people in the cannabis industry worry a lot about their image. Instead of prosecuting the violent criminals in our community, it’s more important to the industry to convict the media for drawing attention to the murders they’d rather sweep under the rug. It seems shocking, but non-events like this recent conference, and the “SoHum Values Conference” that happened a couple years ago, offer incontrovertible objective evidence that the cannabis industry cares a lot about the image it projects. I don’t ever remember having a conference like this to address the problem of violence within the marijuana industry? As I noted last week, the industry obviously cares more about how they are portrayed in the media than they do about real murder and violence within their community.
One should remember that the people who built the marijuana industry, built it on top of an enormous mountain of dead bodies called “The War on Drugs.” To this day, most Humboldt growers refuse to acknowledge that the price they were able to demand for their product on the black market had anything to do with the human costs of the War on Drugs. They’ll tell you that the price they get is all about the quality of their product. This kind of delusional thinking pervades the industry here, and while this denial of reality allows growers to ignore the dark side of this business and helps them cope with the stress of the War on Drugs, it does not help them evaluate their business plans realistically.
Blood stains every single dollar of black-market marijuana money. The bloodbath called “The War on Drugs” makes the Manson murders look like innocent children finger-painting by comparison, and Humboldt County’s marijuana industry was born of it, and in the middle of it. People get killed every day, all across the country, to keep the price of cannabis high, and a lot of those people died right here in this community. The War on Drugs wounded us all in some way. We all lost family members, friends and loved ones in it, and it continues to destroy people’s lives today. At least four people, working in the cannabis industry, were murdered in SoHum in 2018.
Those are the facts of life about Humboldt County’s marijuana industry, because that’s the truth about the War on Drugs. We all know how much blood there is in that marijuana because it is our blood! That’s why the marijuana industry cannot just reinvent itself as “the cannabis industry,” all innocent, clean and new. Anyone who associates the name “Humboldt” with marijuana remembers the War on Drugs. We know! We all know the truth about the War on Drugs in our bones!
For us, cannabis is sacrament. That’s why we found it more valuable than gold, and why the risks you took were rewarded so handsomely. Cannabis is more valuable than gold, because only fools worship gold, but cannabis is not rare, nor is it difficult to produce, so there’s no excuse for high prices. We are not impressed by your expensive display cases, slick marketing lingo or environmentally egregious packaging. That stuff just reminds us that you still make too much money from our blood. We might buy your weed, if it’s the best we can find for the money, but we don’t buy your bullshit.
Try as growers might, to “tell their own story,” that story will remain nothing but a fairy tale from Never Neverland if it doesn’t connect to the facts of life, and the facts of life about Humboldt County’s cannabis industry are intimately entwined in the deadly branches of the War on Drugs. The only real option for Humboldt County’s cannabis industry is to face facts, admit to, and take responsibility for the murder, violence and trauma that the black-market marijuana industry brought to our community and the toxic environment it created here, and in communities all over the country. If Humboldt’s cannabis industry wants to lay claim to the back-to-the-land ideals of their hippie elders, they also need to take responsibility for the war crimes of the outlaw black-market marijuana industry that followed.
It’s going to take real effort to make amends, restore justice and heal wounds to show that the cannabis industry acknowledges its origins and stands willing to take responsibility for its past. If the industry did that, even a little, in a tangible way, they could promote those efforts widely, and use them to rehabilitate their image and their heritage.
That is how you show the world that Humboldt County’s cannabis industry has a conscience and cares about making the world, and our community, a better place to live. But it all starts by facing up to the harm that the War on Drugs has done to our community, and accepting responsibility for it.
The “Impacts” of Murder Mountain
I see that the Humboldt Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research will hold a conference to discuss the “impacts” of the Netflix mini-series Murder Mountain on Humboldt County. If you didn’t already know that the HIIMR exists purely to white-wash the marijuana industry, this should convince you. The six-part docudrama, Murder Mountain tells the story of Garrett Rodriquez, who’s young life was snuffed-out on a marijuana farm in the Rancho Sequoia subdivision near Alder Point, and the remarkable recovery of his body by the, now infamous, “Alder Point 8.”
Locals have called the Rancho Sequoia subdivision “Murder Mountain” for as long as I’ve lived here. That maze of ten-acre parcels, littered with burned out cars, ramshackle shacks, and bullet riddled “No Trespassing” signs held became known as “Murder Mountain” because the only time you heard about Rancho Sequoia was on the news, when someone got killed there, and it happened often enough that you couldn’t help but notice.
I enjoyed the TV series, Murder Mountain. I’m sure I never would have watched it, except for the fact that I played one of the “Alder Point 8” in the fuzzy recreation scenes. Still, I live here in SoHum, and I think they portrayed our community pretty fairly, even sympathetically. I thought the filmmakers gave our community the benefit of the doubt whenever they could, but now we step forward, ourselves, to remove the last veil.
The fact that people here, especially people in the marijuana industry, have gotten much more upset about the TV series, Murder Mountain, than they ever did about the disappearance and murder of Garrett Rodriquez, speaks volumes about the marijuana industry, and our community. The very fact that the HIIMR will hold a conference to discuss the impacts of the TV series, instead of a conference on the impacts of the ongoing legacy of violence within the marijuana industry, plainly and chillingly demonstrates the callous narcissism of Humboldt’s marijuana industry, reflected in the HIIMR.
Garrett Rodriquez was neither the first, nor the last, worker murdered on a Southern Humboldt pot farm. At least four people, reported to have been working in the marijuana industry, were murdered in Southern Humboldt in 2018 alone. None of those murders have been solved. That doesn’t count the missing persons cases, solved SoHum murders, murders in other parts of the county, or murders that happened before or since 2018. There are a lot of Garrett Rodriquezes out there, and potentially many more Murder Mountains to come.
The HIIMR should take note: Dead people count as measurable impacts. So do bereaved families, widows, and orphans. Murderers that walk our streets with impunity impact our community. The poisonous relationship between our community and law enforcement impacts our community. A culture that treats Drug War refugees and honest working people as disposable, impacts our community. Trauma, desensitization and learned indifference to violence resulting from overexposure, impacts our community. Those are just a few of the ways that violence within the marijuana industry impacts our community.
By comparison, no one died making Murder Mountain, and nobody killed anyone to see it. I can attest to the fact that everyone who worked on Murder Mountain got paid promptly and fairly. That’s more than I can say about the marijuana industry. How can we possibly measure the minuscule impacts of a TV show, against the unstudied background of marijuana related violence in our community.
Studying the real violence and murder in the marijuana industry might help us put Murder Mountain into perspective. TV shows like Murder Mountain amount to little more than a sidebar in the long story of how the marijuana industry made murder commonplace in our community and fueled our notoriety for it.
Studying the impacts of real violence and murder within the marijuana industry could greatly benefit our community. We might even find a way to protect workers, save lives and rehabilitate the industry. Any cultural change begins with awareness, and making our community aware of the real impacts of the violence that we have come to accept as normal, just might shock us enough to bring us to our senses.
As a community, we have brushed too many Garrett Rodriquezes under the rug. Instead, we save our indignation for anyone who dares to criticize the marijuana industry, regardless of how accurately. Somehow, in our community, we have come to care more about venerating the mythology of Humboldt County’s marijuana industry than we do about the lives of its victims, or the violence it brings to our community. The high rate of violence in this community, and the indifference we show to it, still amazes me, and it’s uglier than anything we see in Murder Mountain.
Instead of whining about what those mean filmmakers did to us with their TV show, perhaps we should recognize Murder Mountain as the wake-up call we needed.
Watching Murder Mountain
I finally got to see Murder Mountain, the Netflix docudrama miniseries about the disappearance of Garrett Rodriquez and the subsequent recovery of his body by the “Alder Point 8.” The film crew was in town for most of last year putting it together, and they hired me off the street to act in it, so of course I was excited to see myself on TV.
I enjoyed Murder Mountain. I thought they did a great job, and it includes some of the best images of Southern Humboldt’s natural beauty that I’ve ever seen. The series seemed quite slow getting started. I’m sure they could have told the story in two hours, and they included quite a lot of really boring footage of cannabis farms, but they also included lot about this community and it’s history. The series paints a broad portrait of Southern Humboldt, and a cannabis industry in transition, as the backdrop for the Garrett Rodriquez story. Every picture hides much more than it shows, but I am impressed by how deeply they explored this community and how well they told the story. I thought they told it accurately, with sensitivity and more than enough context. Most of the people I watched Murder Mountain with also seemed favorably impressed.
Of course, anytime anyone writes or produces media about the ugly sordid shit that really goes on around here, the knee-jerk reaction of locals is: “How dare those ‘yellow journalist’ outsiders come here to tell sensationalized stories about the bad stuff that happens around here!” According to these people, no one, except people born and raised here, have the right to report on anything that happens here, but when you ask those truly local locals, they all tell the same story: “It’s beautiful here. The people are cool, and everything is groovy. Now mind your own business!” Whether it’s a piece of investigative journalism about human sex trafficking, an expose about environmental destruction wrought by the marijuana industry, or my opinion column, for that matter, whether or not they’ve read it or seen it, a lot of people around here will automatically tell you that it is all just “sensationalized Hollywood bullshit.”
It surprised me that I didn’t hear more of that about Murder Mountain. I think a lot of people actually recognized that the producers of Murder Mountain went out of their way to get the story straight, and to present it in context. Murder Mountain sure doesn’t make us look good, but it tells the truth. Murder Mountain shows us a side of Southern Humboldt that usually remains hidden, and that no one around here wants to face, in a way that is hard to deny.
This time, it’s the Sheriff’s Department that is crying foul, and warning us about “sensationalized Hollywood bullshit.” They feel they were misrepresented in Murder Mountain. They claim that the filmmakers tricked them into believing that the show was going to be about the marijuana industry, not about Garrett Rodriquez.
Sorry guys. I don’t buy it. I will admit that Murder Mountain does not make the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department look good, but it’s the fact that Garrett Rodriquez’s murderer remains at large despite the community’s heroic efforts to recover his body, that casts a pall over the HCSD, not the documentary treatment. More than anyone else, Sheriff Honsal and his deputies, who must have all signed release forms, should know that anything you say, in front of a camera, with a microphone hidden in your shirt, will be recorded and used against you in the court of public opinion. If Murder Mountain embarrasses the HCSD, it’s not because of what they said on camera, it’s because of what they failed to do when they weren’t.
We should also note, however, that the disappearance of Garrett Rodriquez, or the dozens of other people who have gone missing, or been found murdered here in Humboldt County, did not prompt much public outcry, locally. We didn’t have rooms full of angry citizens demanding that the HCSD get to the bottom of this prolonged rash of cannabis industry related homicides and disappearances that happen around here all the time. We didn’t have any public meetings about that problem at all.
No, it wasn’t until a skinny kid from Fortuna shimmied underneath a locked security door and stole some bongs from a head-shop in town, that the folks of Southern Humboldt got up off their asses and filled the gymnasium of the Redway School. Those angry townsfolk didn’t complain about unsolved murders or disappearances in the hills, they complained about poor people smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, and generally looking ugly in front of their businesses in town, so you can’t completely blame the Sheriff’s Department for prioritizing their resources accordingly.
Despite all of the self-delusional happy-talk we like to tell ourselves about our community and the cannabis industry, Murder Mountain offers us an honest mirror that reveals how our community looks to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, it’s not such a pretty picture, but that’s not the photographer’s fault.
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.
Murder Mountain
Recently the Southern Humboldt based true crime docudrama “Murder Mountain” debuted on the Fusion Network. I can’t wait to see it myself, but I don’t have a TV, and I don’t know anyone who gets Fusion Network. So far, all I’ve seen is the one-minute trailer, but the show looks pretty good to me. I’ve heard people around here complain that it seems “sensationalized,” but that seems to be the pat response any time anyone draws media attention to any of the unseemly things that really happen around here.
Some complain about the title of the series, but people around here have called the Rancho Sequoia subdivision “Murder Mountain” for at least as long as I’ve lived here, and we call it “Murder Mountain” because things like the disappearance and murder of Garrett Rodriquez keep happening there. The Garrett Rodriquez story really is dramatic, and I’m sure they tell it dramatically in the series, but I don’t think they exaggerate the story. They don’t have to. The truth is dramatic enough. On the contrary, I think we have, as a community, become desensitized to the crazy shit that really goes down here. We’ve learned to look the other way, or dismiss it as normal business as usual. I’m actually glad for the series because I always wondered about that case.
The information we got in the local news left me with more questions than answers. For weeks we heard pleas from Garrett Rodriquez’s family, asking the community to help them find their son. We knew they hired a private investigator and that he was talking to people in the area. Then one night, a truck drops a man off in front of the Garberville Hospital ER with multiple gunshot wounds. The wounded man claimed he was kidnapped at home by eight masked men all wearing camo fatigues who shot him and drove him to the hospital.
The next day, Garrett Rodriquez’s body was recovered. At the time, KMUD’s Terri Klementson’s report on the Local News suggested some connection between the kidnapping/shooting, and the recovery of the body, but no details emerged about how the events were related. No arrests were made and no one pressed charges. That was the last we heard about the murder of Garrett Rodriquez. Until now.
The producers of Murder Mountain really dug into this case and got the whole story from the people who were there, and the truth of the matter is even more interesting than I had imagined. I think the story reveals something of the humanity of this community, as well as the brutality of it. I won’t spoil it for you. In fact, I can’t spoil it for you because I haven’t seen it, but I did, along with a lot of other people from SoHum, get hired to act in it.
In that capacity I got to participate in the re-creation of those events, and talk to someone who was there when it happened. Acting in Murder Mountain answered all of my questions about the Garrett Rodriquez murder. I suspect that watching Murder Mountain will do the same for you, and the truth will surprise you.
Like You've Got Something Better To Do 