“Aggressive Solicitation”

It’s open season on the poor and homeless in Southern Humboldt. Vigilante gangs terrorize them on the streets. Cops abuse them and local merchants harass them for not looking prosperous enough to patronize their overpriced ripoff businesses. Now the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors intends to pass a new ordinance designed to punish this oppressed population still further, while it chokes out our civil rights and strangles the democratic process to boot. The so-called “aggressive panhandling” or “aggressive solicitation” ordinance will make it a crime to ask for help in Humboldt County.

Under this proposed ordinance, a person who had just been robbed, stabbed, beaten and left laying on the sidewalk screaming for help, could be cited for “aggressive solicitation.” This ordinance could stop Ray Oakes from asking the “Question of the Week” for the Humboldt Independent, and this ordinance could certainly be used to prevent effective grassroots organizing. Unions would have never gotten started without “aggressive solicitation.” It takes a whole lot of “aggressive solicitation” to get any grassroots political movement off the ground, and here in America we have whole religions dedicated to “aggressive solicitation.”

Here in the USA, we decided, almost 250 years ago, that we prefer “aggressive solicitation” to violence, deceit and treachery, which had long been the custom in Europe, and it was the proud American tradition of “aggressive solicitation” established by such patriots as Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry and Paul Revere that made this country a beacon for freedom and democracy. More than a civil right, the right to “aggressively solicit” is a human right, and a birthright. In fact, “aggressive solicitation” is the only thing we know how to do, instinctively, from birth.

Without “aggressive solicitation” we would not survive as a species, and “aggressive solicitation” has an important function within the community, as well as the family. It makes no more sense to prohibit “aggressive solicitation” within the community, than it does to punish a baby for crying in the house. If your baby won’t stop crying, you don’t punish the baby, you feed the baby. “Aggressive solicitation” is a signal, and we ignore it, or worse, prohibit it, at our own peril.

In another era, both past and perhaps future, with more enlightened judges, the Supreme Court would almost certainly shoot down any ordinance resembling the one the Supes currently consider, but thanks to the Scalia Court, the court that handed down “Citizens United” and declared that money is protected speech and corporations are citizens, they could probably get away with it. Who knows how constitutional this proposed ordinance, or the one Eureka and Fortuna passed, will look next year?

I did a lot of political work back in the ’90s, to legalize marijuana, and to close nuclear power plants. We would never have been able sustain those movements without a significant amount of “aggressive solicitation.” I know, because I did it. I could get a complete stranger to write me a check for $100 in two minutes.

I didn’t just approach pedestrians, or stand on street corners, malls, parks and other public spaces, although I did plenty of that too. I went even further. I raised a lot of money for a number of organizations by wandering through neighborhoods where I didn’t know anyone, onto private property, and knocking on complete strangers’ front doors. I knocked on about 50 doors every night. That’s “aggressive solicitation” no matter how you look at it. Lots of people called the cops on me.

At the time, what I did was considered constitutionally protected free speech. We had a legal department, and when we didn’t have a legal department, we had the ACLU. Occasionally, some little uptight burg would pass an ordinance like the one the Supes are now considering, and liberal New England lawyers would swarm them like hornets, and they’d never do it again. We won every time.

Around here, non-profit groups seem to rely more on alcohol sales and parties to fund their campaigns, than the kind of direct grassroots fund-raising that I did. I doubt any of them will recognize the threat this proposed ordinance poses, or stand up for their right to become politically relevant one day. The poor and homeless don’t have a legal team to defend their rights, and the general public has no idea what it takes to organize a grassroots movement, and I doubt many of them even care.. It seems most people in Humboldt County prefer violence, deceit and treachery to democracy anyways.

But here’s the kicker. I have, never once, been “aggressively solicited” by anyone in Humboldt County. I don’t spend a lot of time in Garberville, but I usually walk from the library at the North end of town, to the thrift stores on the South side of town, right through the Garberville shopping district,, at least once or twice a week. I’ve usually got a buck for anyone who asks, but hardly ever does anyone ask. When they do ask, people usually ask very timidly, and often I can barely hear them.

Even in Eureka and Arcata, I get “spanged” every once in a while. Usually by the fourth ask, I’m tapped out, but I can’t remember the last time four people asked me for spare change on the same day, anywhere in Humboldt County. Does that really constitute a problem? Once, years ago, I got hustled for $20, by the kid who used to own Nacho Mamma, when I saw him a few years later, in the parking lot of Eureka Natural Foods. Honestly, I was glad to see that at least someone around here had it together enough to concoct an effective rap, and I knew the guy. If he told me he needed $20, for anything, I’d have given it to him, once.

I don’t think we have a problem with “aggressive solicitation,” so much as we have a problem with “aggressive fascism.” We have a craven cadre of drug dealers, real-estate developers and merchants pulling the strings of our elected officials to invent new laws that criminalize poverty and stifle dissent. They all want to skim the economic cream from the injustice of the War on Drugs, while they criminalize the poverty the War on Drugs creates in this community. Does it get any uglier, greedier or more corrupt than that? No, I don’t think we have a problem with “aggressive solicitation” at all. We have a much bigger problem than that, and it’s going to take a lot of “aggressive solicitation” to solve it.

Understanding SoHum’s “Local Economy”

In most of America, people understand that drug dealers destroy communities. Neighborhoods either band together to drive them out, or they fail to do so, and drug dealers take over, bringing violence, crime and poverty with them as they undermine community values, corrupt innocent youth, and drive property values down.

Here in SoHum, when the drug dealers arrived, both property, and community values had already hit rock bottom, and the youth they corrupted were largely their own. Today, after a couple generations of cultural inbreeding, our population now skews strongly towards the greedy, myopic, and ethically challenged, and have united around their shared willingness to exploit the injustice of cannabis prohibition, rather than stand against it.

For some, it has been a very profitable strategy, and now that they’ve become successful, they don’t like to be reminded that their success has come at the expense of millions of poor working people who could ill afford it. They don’t want to see how good people, who make very little money, have to live, in order to afford their medicine. And they especially don’t want to see the refugees of the War on Drugs, the ones who lost their jobs, lost their homes, and lost their way, and then show up here, hoping for some kind of break in the sleazy game that has already cost them so much of their lives.

Drug dealers create poverty all over the country, and then complain about all of the poor people around. Drug dealers just don’t care. Either they take drugs that suppress empathy, or they lack the faculty for it. Either way, they have intentionally chosen a path of personal gain at the expense of the larger community. They should not be trusted. They’ll say or do anything, so long as they believe it will benefit them.

At first glance, they seem like decent people, and they talk a good game. They spew platitudes like a squid spews ink, and for the same reason, to conceal their sucking tentacles and genuine sliminess. “Community blah blah blah, sustainable, blah blah blah, positivity, blah blah…” they say, but to them, “community” means: “me and my drug dealing friends,” “sustainable” means: “maintaining a high-consumption lifestyle, indefinitely” and “positivity” means: “no matter how gross and slimy we are, I can always find something nice to say about us.” That’s what “community values” means to SoHum’s dope yuppies.

Still, a lot of people rely on them. Merchants love them. Merchants love stupid people with too much money because they easily become infatuated with shiny objects, and purchase them. Non-profits love people with too much money, and a guilty conscience. Where would community non-profits be without the boundless guilt of rich liberals? So the dope yuppies take advantage of working people, the merchants take advantage of the dope yuppies, and the non-profits take advantage of everyone’s guilty conscience, and they call it “the local economy.”

Then they have the nerve to complain about all of the poverty they created, and wonder why no one wants to work for them. Oh, right, I want to work for one of our local merchants for $10-$15 bucks an hour, waiting on rude, obnoxious dope yuppies all day, just so I can spend half of my income on rent, if I’m lucky, and a quarter of it on overpriced cannabis that I need, just to cope with the stress. Fuck that! I’d rather shit and piss on your front step, and beg for beer money on the sidewalk all day.

Why not? Do SoHum’s dope yuppies want cannabis consumers to continue to pay ridiculously high prices for cannabis? You bet they do! They’re lobbying right now for a regulatory framework that preserves prohibition prices and requires more law enforcement activity than ever.

Will Humboldt’s merchants, landlords, bankers and real-estate agents do anything to make SoHum more livable, comfortable, or affordable for working people? Fuck no! They’ll squeeze every last dime out of everyone in town, and then complain that it was such a bother, and barely worth their time.

Will any of the non-profits, who have gladly accepted thousands upon thousands of hours of free labor, donated by people who lack adequate housing, ever launch a campaign to make housing affordable, and available to the people in this community who need it? I wouldn’t hold my breath. The non-profits around here are much more likely to buy up homes in the area, and build new structures, not to house people, but just to have a place to store all of the other crap they own. Besides, our local non-profits have more important things to do, like protecting endangered cannabis from salmon extinction, or looking out for some people’s civil rights, or providing subsidized entertainment for bored dope yuppies.

If you aren’t part of that dope yuppie/merchant/non-profit clusterfuck, they don’t even know you exist, except in the vaguest sense. By that I mean, they understand that all of their money and labor comes from somewhere, but they have no idea where. Together, they’re trapped in a death-spiral of greed, consumption and guilt that feeds on itself, while it sucks the life out of the the rest of the community.

The War on Drugs has ravaged this country, killing millions, and leaving millions more scarred for life, but here in SoHum, the War on Drugs is highly addictive, and too many people remain far too intoxicated by the money it brings in to recognize the damage it does right here in our own community.

Who Buys All of This Weed?

I hear a lot of talk around here about the potential impact to our local economy from the impending legalization of cannabis. Suddenly, dope yuppies who, just a few years ago, weren’t even registered to vote, now spend money on lobbyists to convince lawmakers to construct a legalization framework that keeps the money pouring into the pockets of the same people who have profited from prohibition for more than 30 years.

Dope yuppies have never cared about anyone but themselves, and the bankers and merchants who make dire predictions about our local economy, would be every bit as concerned about the potential loss in revenue if this county’s chief economic export were underage prostitutes and child-pornography. Money is money, after all.

I don’t hear any mention, however, of the people who buy and consume all of this weed. As one of those proud pot smoking Americans, I am even more fed-up with the outrageously high price of black-market weed than I am with cops sticking their noses in places they don’t belong. While everyone pays for narco cops and prison guards, only cannabis consumers pay these ridiculous prices. Let’s take a look at the people who buy the cannabis grown in the Emerald Triangle, to see where all of this economic prosperity we enjoy, comes from.

A recent study found that half of all cannabis consumers have not graduated from high-school. Some of those kids don’t have a high- school diploma because they are still in school. I mean. why do you think they call it “high” school?

Some of those kids dropped out of school to grow or sell cannabis as a career, but most of them end up in shitty low-wage jobs. The people who cook and serve your food, wash your dishes, change your oil and clean your offices and hotel bathrooms all smoke weed, and they all pay way too much of their hard-earned money for it.

The people who work at Walmart smoke weed. The people who work at McDonald’s smoke weed. Almost every low-wage worker in America smokes weed, or they would, if they could afford it. Low-wage workers often spend more money on pot than they do on food. They do without basic necessities like clothing, like housing, so that they can afford marijuana, because marijuana makes their lives tolerable. High prohibition prices keep them poor and insures that they can never afford to buy their own home, start their own business or get more education. The people who buy marijuana today pay for it with their lives. They pay for it with their futures.

Other low-wage workers turn to alcohol, because under prohibition, a few dried cannabis flowers costs more than a big bottle or brewed, fermented, distilled and bottled liquor. People literally choose to sacrifice their health to alcohol, rather than the precious income it would cost to switch to cannabis. A lot of people have quit drinking, by switching to cannabis, and it has saved their lives.

A lot more people would do the same, if cannabis didn’t cost so much. All across America, the people who can least afford it, pay way too much money for marijuana, or do without, when it could really help them. High cannabis prices cause an enormous amount of unnecessary suffering especially among the poor.

People all over America consume cannabis to relieve stress, but high prohibition prices make cannabis itself, unnecessarily stressful. Artificially inflated, prohibition pricing completely undermines the ability of cannabis to relieve stress in the vast majority of it’s consumers. Unless you grow your own, or have more money than you know what to do with, you don’t know what it means to have plenty of weed, and not to have to stress about how much it costs. Cannabis is only effective as medicine, if people can easily afford it.

Millions of Americans enjoy cannabis, millions more rely on cannabis for medicine, and still millions more of us do both. We deserve a break! We are the ones who dragged this state, and the unholy cadre of drug-dealers turned special interest group, kicking and screaming towards legalization. Both the state, and drug dealers have taken advantage of us for decades. We’re sick of it! Now that legalization will finally happen, no thanks to them, they act as though they are still entitled to our money.

The Nerve!

Sexy Street Kids, Homeless Hotties Revitalize Downtown Garberville

A startling new survey published in the July 8 edition of The Independent reveals that SoHum’s street kids and homeless population, so often talked about as “a problem,” are actually what people most love about Garberville. Indeed, twice as many respondents said they loved Garberville’s scruffiest and scrappiest as anything else about the whole town.

No one in the survey said they loved the shops. No one in the survey said they loved the Theater, or the Town Square, or even the marijuana.

Only one respondent said they loved Garberville’s restaurants, and from the accompanying photo, it’s obvious that she has never ordered anything that wasn’t on the kid’s menu, and never picked up the tab. Other also-rans in the “most loved” survey included: people’s tolerance, the fact that there are no stop-lights in town, and one woman I’ve never seen before in my life said she loves that “You can walk down the street and everybody knows your name.”

It appears that sexual attractiveness at least partially drives the love affair with this oft vilified segment of the population. A respondent from Carlotta answered the question “What is one thing that you love about Garberville?” with the answer, “Definitely all of the hotties that frequent the Veteran’s Park.” Her honest enthusiasm shows as clearly in the expression on her face as it does in the words between the quotes.

Clearly the lean, rugged, free spirited young men who live out of their backpacks and take refuge at the Veteran’s Park have caught this young woman’s eye. From Carlotta, it takes longer, and uses more gas to come to Garberville, than it does to go to Eureka, where she could find anything else she needed, at a better price. Instead, she came to Garberville, to see “the hotties that frequent the Veteran’s Park.” Apparently, it’s the homeless beefcake that brings home the bacon for Garberville’s merchants.

The Jim Demulling Memorial Grove, aka Veteran’s Park, a little patch of land at the North end of town, squeezed between a parking lot, an on-ramp and Garberville’s main drag, became a popular hangout mainly because it is the only place in town where people can sit in some shade, socialize, eat lunch and relax without being hounded by shop-keeps to spend money or move along. Usually inhabited by a colorful cast of interesting characters, and their dogs, Veterans Park soon evolved into SoHum’s cultural center. It is, by far, the friendliest, most welcoming place in town, especially for a newcomer.

Today, “Veteran’s Park” is the epicenter of an economic boom in Garberville’s otherwise stagnant and dying downtown shopping district. Like the people fueling this emerging economic engine, the entrepreneurs who serve them have found imaginative ways around Garberville’s exorbitant rent prices, and this seems to be the key to their success:

Chicago Bob’s Hot Dogs opened up a while ago in a mobile food cart on the main drag, but just across the street from Veteran’s Park. Chicago Bob brought something to Garberville that this town desperately needed. That is, lunch for less than $5. Bob makes a great hot dog, with all the fixin’s. If you haven’t had one, you should.

Just last week I noticed a new food truck operating directly adjacent to the park, advertizing tacos for $3. “Right on!” I say. I haven’t tried their food yet, but they had a dining canopy full of people when I passed by, and no doubt full of people like the woman from Carlotta, who came for the hotties, but stayed for the tacos.

It’s refreshing to see some entrepreneurs with good sense and moxie in Garberville for a change. This new economic growth really livens up our little town, and I applaud these business-people for recognizing the potential, and filling a need, rather than complaining about it and trying to make it go away.

If you ask me, the ones who should go away, are the stodgy old business owners who would rather complain about the people in front of their store, than figure out how to meet their needs at a price they can afford.

 

Unfamiliar Faces, Familiar Theme

 

Unfamiliar Faces, Familiar Theme

The following letter appears in our local papers this week.  The more I hear other people voice their frustration with the abundance of poor, young people in our area, the more I feel compelled to vent my hatred for the dope yuppies, moochie merchants and real-estate goons who make up the middle-class around here.

Dear Editor,

Before we give voice to any more unkind thoughts we may have about the influx of new faces in our little town, we should remember that these are the faces of marijuana smokers, and that they are the source of our community’s prosperity. The next time you see a cluster of unfamiliar faces cluttering a stretch of sidewalk, ask yourself, “How much money did they spend on marijuana last year?” and “How much will they spend on marijuana next year?” The answer to both questions is “More than they can afford.”

They will do without decent clothing, a car, or even a place to live, but they will not go without marijuana. This whole community was built with their money. Not only that, they pay prohibition prices for what would otherwise be a common weed. In order to make big money from marijuana, you need cops, and you need to arrest a lot of people. A million people, more or less, every year, for the last thirty years or so, have worn handcuffs, been strip searched, and made prisoners, in order to support marijuana prices, and profits for local growers.

Ask yourself, “How many of them have been arrested for marijuana?, How many of them spent time in jail for it? How many of them have been on probation? How much did they spend on lawyers and fines? How many of them have lost, or been denied jobs because they failed a drug test? How much has their enthusiasm for marijuana cost them?”

Yes, the unfamiliar faces we see around town pay for the prosperity that this community enjoys in money, time, agony and humiliation. They have, and will, continue to suffer needlessly, just so that this community can continue to demand a princely sum for a common fast growing weed.

Every merchant and grower in SoHum owes them a huge debt of gratitude, and should celebrate their enthusiasm for marijuana. The least we could do is provide them with a restroom and clean up after them, just like we do at Reggae on the River.

If you really don’t want to see lots of raggedy looking strangers around town, don’t harass them or vandalize their meager possessions. Instead, donate money to NORML and other organizations working to legalize marijuana, sign the petition to get the Jack Herer initiative on the ballot, and find another way to earn a living that isn’t so dependent on them.

 

 

Some Friendly Advice for Garberville Merchants

Some Friendly Advice for Garberville Merchants

I know things are tough for the merchants in downtown Garberville. At least three stores have closed in the past year, and no one seems eager to move in. With rent in G,ville being what it is, who can blame them?

 

A number of local merchants are up in arms about the quality of the foot traffic they receive. It seems they really don’t like the people on the street with backpacks, grubby clothes and dogs, and they really resent that any of them would have the nerve to ask for money. They don’t like the hippie buses, and they don’t want their parks full of tatted up kids in ratty clothes.

 

Maybe they don’t realize that they are in the heart of the marijuana industry. Who do they think buys all of the pot grown around here? Who do they think wants to see a fucking redwood tree? Every scuzzy hippie in the world has these two things on their bucket list:

1. Visit Humboldt County and buy some pot

2. Camp out in a redwood forest

If you hand most people a joint, they’ll take a toke, and if you ask them if they like like redwood trees, they’ll say “sure”, but only real devotees spend hard earned cash on pot, and only people who smoke pot all the time care about nature. Everyone else just cares about money, and how they look. No one else really gives a damn about marijuana or redwoods.

 

Middle-Class people don’t care about marijuana or redwood trees. Middle-class people live a middle-class fantasy. They want to go to Disneyland or Universal Studios Theme Park. They don’t want to spend time in nature, they want to visit the world they see on TV, and in the movies. If they come here at all, the lack of cheap fast-food chains will surely disappoint them. So, no point courting them.

 

That just leaves the rich. The main problem with courting the rich, is that there are so few of them, and so many people eager to kiss their ass. Think about it. Everyone wants to open that posh little eatery with an exquisite gourmet menu and wine list, serving a clientele for whom money is no object. Everyone wants to open that restaurant, and almost no one can afford to eat there.

 

When someone does open that restaurant, and the rich people fail to materialize, the owner will often blame it on the hordes of people around who can’t afford to eat there, who just seem to hang around, not eating at his expensive restaurant. The owner will complain that all of the poor people hanging around scare away the rich customers he seeks.

 

Nothing could be further from the truth. The rich love to see poor people. Why do you think they live in Manhattan? Nothing pleases them more than seeing the crushing force of their oppression, played out in exquisite detail in the faces of the people around them. They revel in crushing spirits more than they enjoy a gourmet meal with fine wine. So, there must be other reasons that the very few rich people in the world don’t come to Garberville.

 

These people can go anywhere they want. So, why don’t they come here? I mean, we’ve got marijuana, and we’ve got redwoods. Some rich people do come here. The Benbow Inn testifies to that.

But look at the contrast between The Benbow Inn and Downtown Garberville. Even without the street kids, Garberville looks pretty ordinary and pedestrian. You won’t find anything in Downtown Garberville that you can’t find in any suburban strip mall, but you’ll pay more for it in Garberville. What kind of draw is that for the rich? Not much, I’m afraid.

 

The thing that the rich really look for, is people who are EAGER TO KISS ASS. Rich people don’t go anywhere, unless the people there have demonstrated a strong desire to smooch rectum. I hate to break it to local merchants, but high prices and a snotty attitude do not make an establishment “high-class”. What makes a place “high-class” is lots of working people who love to kiss rich people’s asses.

 

So, if merchants in Garberville really want to see more rich people around them. They should learn to kiss ass better. If they want customers, at any income level, they should put more of their focus on providing the services that people want and need, at competitive prices, rather than complaining about the quality of people who come to town.