Crescit eundo

New Mexico is currently ranked 50^th among the U.S. states in child well-being, or obversely, we rank first in child-suffering. In a rational political environment those responsible for such a disgraceful result would be impeached for dereliction of duty. But in the unsustainable political climate in which we are quasi-functioning, our governor is poised to be on the national ticket for one of the reigning corporate goon squads.

The best we can say about our state's ignominious ranking is that none of the hundred or so attendees at The State of Female Justice in New Mexico panel on Sunday, November 17^th, presented by One Billion Rising for Justice Santa Fe, the New Mexico Women and Girls Network, and the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, can reasonably have any illusions about the efficacy of working for reforms within the current system. In fact, panelist Corrine Sanchez of Tewa Women United characterized that system as: “An industrial non-profit complex in which our funding sources are invested in our culture of violence.” 

Emblematic of that violence, Bette Fleishman (New Mexico Women’s Justice Project) told us that New Mexico's women's prison population is the fastest-growing in the nation. The current women's prison is privately operated by a for-profit corporation—Corrections Corporation of America—where 77% of the 510 women currently incarcerated there have been placed on strong psychiatric meds, to control them as a captive slave labor pool for others' profit. But even on its own oppressive terms CCA is failing: Due to the low quality of the cheapest possible meds, side effects are rampant, some of the medicated women are acting out, and they're ending up in solitary. A bad metric.

Bette's current priority—she makes the 170 mile round trip drive from Rio Rancho to the prison in Grants weekly—is “to identify who shouldn't be there, who should be returned to the community?” She exerts herself in full knowledge that an additional facility with the capacity to imprison 850 more female prisoners in NM is in the planning stages. Whose daughters will fill those cells, do we think? Shall we tell Guadalupe Angeles, the soft-spoken Mexican immigrant who courageously stood at the podium and told us her story of privation and struggle, to hide her daughters from the state? That the state is planning, no, banking on, incarcerating them and other girls just like them?

In truth,I would not even be writing this post if Cecile Lipworth, Managing Director of Campaigns and Development for (Eve Ensler's) VDAY and lead organizer of the event on the 17^th as well as the upcoming one next Valentine's Day, had not assured me that at the core of these efforts there will be serious political demands made to Power. I understood from her assurances that these are not meant to be exclusively feel good events, though it does feel good, really good, to forge friendships and community in political struggle for justice. (There was not a woman on that podium who I would not dearly love to interview for this blog.)

The panel discussion, which was filmed and will be available on the One Billion Rising's website after Thanksgiving according to Cecile, has inspired in me a series of questions:

How in good conscience can we Rise, Release and Dance—the tag line of One Billion Rising 2014—knowing that 850 of the daughters of Tewa Women, Adelante, El Valle Women's Collaborative, Esperanza Shelter, Young Women United, and Solace Center have already been slotted to people Power and Greed's new state-of the-art plantation? How exactly will shaking our booties at the Roundhouse this Valentine's Day forcefully give the lie to the “inevitability” of our daughters', sisters', mothers' fates in the narrative the prison-profiteers (and those in the Roundhouse and elsewhere who love them) have already written for certain New Mexicans?

In other words, and building on the real success of the Respect Albuquerque Women's electoral victory, can we Rise, Release and Dance our way into shutting this new prison down even before it's operative? And if we agree that preventing 850 of our sisters from being snatched into the modern-day State slavery apparatus is a worthy goal, what kind of a network would we have to build to get that accomplished?

Happy Ending

 As luck would have it my canvassing partner on Election Day morning in the Burque (as locals call their fun city) was Hunter Riley, who just turns out to be one of the people in all of Albuquerque I most have wanted to meet and talk to. Hunter's a manager at Self Serve, the charming sex shop I'd called to get hooked up with the hippest activists in town—Young Women United, and writes the monthly sex positive column in the Santa Fe Reporter.

Spending the day into night with the valiant community that is Young Women United was like dying and going to activists' heaven. You cannot imagine a more skilled and sensitive execution of a GOTV campaign. They got results and built friendships, community, trust, and mutual respect all along the way. The food and caring was everywhere abundant, and one could relax knowing that one's fundamental humanity would be supported as we joined together to work our butts off to send this proposed abortion ban after 20 weeks—no exceptions—back to hell where it was conceived.

I took the opportunity at the break between morning and afternoon canvassing sessions to drive down Central Avenue past the enormous UNM campus (Go Lobos!) to Self Serve Resource Center to buy a bunch of condoms; they have a fabulous selection priced from 25 cents to $2.50, the top of the line being the thinnest yet safest available. Owner Matie inspires confidence, and she really informed me about the stock (all non-toxic products). Though I think she may have upsold me; my purchases ended up qualifying for the volume discount!

While there, I pitched Matie a Literary Reading Series that I'd conceived on the gorgeous drive down from Santa Fe that morning—The Strap-On Reading Series. Basically the idea is that every literary artist who would dare read in the series would read while wearing a strap-on. I think it would help Literature and I'd be happy to go first.

Cormac McCarthy with a strap-on, anyone? George R.R. Martin...?

Back at HQ we got some tentative positive numbers from the early voting and felt encouraged as we sortied out for the afternoon session, this time four of us in my little red Honda Fit, back over to the West Side. With all of us working together we covered our whole turf, and submitted our data via the Mini-van app on a smart phone in time to revel in one of those blazing New Mexico sunsets that turn the Sandias to coral.

Before the polls closed I ran over to the Bareles Senior Center at the very end of 7^th Street to vibe the atmosphere. Business was brisk as savvy voters rushed in during the last fifteen minutes to shut this thing down. I spoke with Janiece Jonsin, the sharp-eyed poll observer for the Respect Albuquerque Women campaign who had been on duty poised on a metal folding chair since 2pm. I asked her what motivated her to serve this campaign in today's capacity and for months previously organizing the phone-banking efforts in Santa Fe? “I was one of those women who had to have an illegal abortion. We never want to go back there. I think all women should have access to safe and legal abortions.”

Miguel, who hails from California but has lived in ABQ the better part of three years, thinks the city wasted a lot of money on this special election.

Likewise I asked Miguel, age 31, what had motivated him to cast his ballot on this day? “You know what? Good question. It shouldn't be legislated. People are good, I believe they make the best decisions in their interest.”

Our Victory Party was at the very stylish and swank Hotel Andaluz, walking distance from headquarters. All three local news affiliates plus Al Jezeerah America were in the room to document this historic pushback. Pure pleasure.

On the romantic ride back to Santa Fe, the moon and stars and vast blackness were my companions. Billie Holiday was on softly in the background and her velvety voice was mingling with all the other resonances from the marvelous encounters of the day.

Our bodies. Our lives. Our decisions.

Glad You're Waking Up To This

Like most of us, I've felt the unmediated brunt of some of history's tragic moments. For one, I was a 17-year-old political science student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem when the 1973 Yom Kippur War broke out between the State of Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria. The U.S. Army took the occasion of the emergency to rid itself of dozens of faulty tanks, with the result that many young Israeli soldiers were immolated inside.

On November 2^nd at the New Mexico Community Rights Symposium: Elevating Community Rights Over Corporate Rights—Building a Statewide Movement that Drives Local Self-Government into the Constitution, I heard words that marked another kind of corporate/state murder. “We're being fracked,” said the three activists that had driven from the Navajo Reservation in Sandoval County to Santa Fe to share their sickening news. “There was an oil spill. We see flares where I live...we see them from our kitchen table. The Bureau of Land Management leased our land. There are already 50 wells, and 50 more have been surveyed. The semi-trucks are taking over our roads. We live in a nightmare. We are glad you are waking up to this.”

The Bernalillo County activists' report was also grim indeed. “There are three existing Superfund sites already. We had 24 million gallons of jetfuel contaminate our water supply, it's the largest pollution of an underground aquifer. There are 568 waste toxic dump sites on the air force base [Kirtland] and Sandia National Laboratories, radioactive waste. The aquifer has been destroyed. There's no remediation, there's no plan for remediation. Resolution 214 was passed to put in monitoring of wells, but that hasn't helped. There was talk of a treatment plant, but that didn't happen. The remedy is cleanup. So how can a Community Rights Ordinance help with a major contamination site that involves the federal government, an arsenal of 2,000 nuclear weapons and two dangerous nuclear reactors at Sandia?”

The message from Dona Ana County couldn't have been clearer: “We have no water. And there's a big water lawsuit, Texas is suing us for a billion dollars. The suit has risen to the Supreme Court level. But the county is just whistling by the graveyard.”

The Torrance County report too was crushing. “We are in a severely drought-stricken area. We have low water in a closed water supply. We are seriously concerned about sustainability for the future. We have had three geology reports, they all say we are running out of water. We are working to change our irrigation habits, we're going to have to change crops. But the business interests contrast to community interests.”

John Olivas, Chairman, Mora County Commission, explaining the next steps in Mora County

And so on. Reports from San Juan County, which tragically has become the county with the highest child cancer and asthma rates; Catron, where a county CRO ordinance is pending concerning water extraction for profit; San Miguel County, where the eastern part of the county has been sacrificed to the frackers so the western part can remain frack-free; Taos which leads the state in rural electrical coops, but where they are only allowed to produce 5% from solar; and Santa Fe County where a robust effort is being mounted to stop the Santa Fe Gold Company from raping the Ortiz Mountains, all spoke to serious intrusions by corporations swaggering in with their “personhood” into local communities. Might all of the 33 counties in New Mexico, not just the 12 represented at the Symposium, have just causes to enact community ordinances?

The idea is that local communities in New Mexico could enact Community Rights Ordinances, such as the one passed on April 29, 2013 in Mora County, the first county in the US to ban fracking, in which a Bill of Rights is articulated and adopted. Thomas Linzey, founder of CELDF, reported that CELDF (we say cell-def) has helped 160 communities across the US pass CROs. He told us that those 160 communities are now stitching themselves together into a national structure, in the same way we are hoping to do in New Mexico at the state level. The ultimate aim is to change constitutions, our own state's as well as the federal constitution, to assert the right of local communities to self-governance.

I'm seriously attracted to the potency of the defiant language of the ordinances – we declare that all our water is held in the public trust as a common resource...–and the thrill of speaking it in our own voices. Back in one of those lecture halls at Hebrew U, my professor broke it down for us: “Power is a relationship,” she said just days before the outbreak of yet another senseless war about real estate. “They don't have it unless We give it to them.”

I haven't attended a full Democracy School, though I'd like to, but I have read Linzey's book Be The Change, and the CRO approach is an approach that has the potential to re-balance power relations. So I'm attentive to this approach. 

Thomas Linzey told us: "Vehicles are only as good as the values that animate them."

CELDF no longer practices traditional environmental law, which Linzey characterizes as the law of “a little less harm.” Rather the CRO vehicle changes the legal fight from one of challenging the validity of state permit applications, where even a “win” is only a win until the newly corrected permit application gets filed. Instead, it sets up a tar baby, a trap for Power. If Power wants to get ugly and try and overturn the CRO (as they have not yet attempted in Mora)[UPDATE: A suit has been filed against Mora], it has to say many repugnant things out loud. Community by community, people will come to Linzey's own game-changing realization: Sustainability is illegal in America.

And, in Linzey's vision, this new understanding of the very undemocratic way things actually are will drive the army of people who will create the national change. Linzey is hoping that we will help him to build a movement because “movements change structural stuff.”

Thomas Linzey, no longer seeking gaps, omissions and deficiencies, is ready to cross the Rubicon.

  “How,” Linzey asks, “do we build a movement where it does not matter what the courts do?”

I think it's a great question from a brilliant legal mind. And from my current elevation of 7,000 feet above sea level, from the high desert of Santa Fe, I don't see a better bet out there. Does anyone? Do you?

For more information in New Mexico, please contact Kathleen Dudley, Community Organizer, The New Mexico Coalition for Community Rights and CELDF at Kathleen@celdf.org or info@nmccr.org. Please enjoy watching her here (the lovely lady in the sunhat).

  

The Feminine Divine--Jeju-Style

All photos by Frances Madeson

Since leaving Missouri last Spring my life has felt like a beautiful, if peripatetic, dream. Most recently I touched down in Jeju, South Korea, and was plunged into the realm of the feminine divine. No doubt the concept was implanted at the forefront of my mind during shamanic healing sessions at SpiritpathTransformational Healing just before embarking to Korea, in which I was cannily led to visualize my inner divine being. A lusty wanderer, she turned out to be a somewhat rustic full-bodied creature with ivy tresses, gamboling about in deerskin moccasins looking for fun and trouble, in that order. 

The feminine divine served as an apt bridge to the volcanic island just south of the Korean mainland that was my destination. Jeju's creation myth is one of the goddess Seulmundae Halmang shaking seven scoops of soil from her apron to form the island. According to historical legend Jeju was once organized as a matriarchal society, and it is still an abiding home to the Haenyo, a remarkable subculture of (mostly elderly) women sea divers.

My hostess on the island was Elizabeth Holbrook, a professional freelance journalist, who had contributed insightful and enlivening travel essays to the newspaper I’d published in her hometown in southeastern Missouri in 2012.  A source of local pride her enthusiastic readers, myself included, were transported by Elizabeth’s sensitive depictions of her travels in far-flung destinations such as New Zealand and Jeju Island. The accompanying images were of an adventuring young woman with her wits fully about her, upon whom the gift of travel could never be wasted. 

Elizabeth has a full, active and rather amazing life in Jeju teaching English, mentoring junior journalists, working as a television news anchor, and developing her own media and editorial projects. In addition, she is an accomplished volleyball player who was recently invited to compete in a tournament in North Korea; she declined, not wishing to appear to support the regime there. Her future travel plans include possible expeditions to Nepal, Tibet, India, Turkey, Israel and Peru where she hopes to live with a host family in order to achieve fluency in Spanish. When her students recently asked her if she thought she was thin or fat, she replied, "Strong!" and made a muscle for them to prove it. Needless to say, I am rather in awe of this accomplished and worldly young woman.  And grateful to her, too; if it hadn't been for Elizabeth, I might never have ventured to Asia.

Via “Holby” as her many friends like to call her (one of their many pet names for her), I was immersed in the delightful and fascinating company of mostly twenty-something ex-pats teaching English in various public and after school programs in Jeju City. She had kindly arranged for a friend to meet me at the airport while she worked, and, two days later, for an intimate dinner party on the floor of her flat where we all laughed and drank red wine and talked politics and literature and climate change into the wee hours. 

The group loosely defines ex-pat as those with no immediate plans to return to the home countries—in this instance the US, UK, Australia and Canada. In this fluid, open and self-selecting community the glue that binds them is equal parts the English language and participatory sports, primarily sand volleyball; the close-knit group of young men and women, friends and lovers, routinely meets to spend a Sunday afternoon bumping, setting, and spiking together as the Pacific’s surf crests over the black volcanic rocks that border the beach just a short drive from town.

More divinely feminine ones: Elizabeth's friends Sun Hee Engelstoft and Emily Baker

Another gorgeous snap of filmmaker Sun Hee Engelstoft

Canadian, Emily Baker, age 23, teaches English to Korean children. She tries to make the lessons as much fun as possible. According to Emily, her driven and goal-oriented students are always working at their studies and rarely get to play.

Community service provides an additional vehicle for creative play and loosely structured togetherness among the ex-pats. Under various leaders the group has coordinated competitive fundraising Haiku battles, beach clean-up days, as well as the ongoing volunteer service performed by Elizabeth and her friends Emily and Sun Hee at the Aesuhwon Sisters Heights Shelter for moms and babies. Sun Hee is herself a Korean adoptee returned from Denmark to cinematically explore the tricky emotional terrain of mass foreign adoptions of Korean babies.

Not fully recovered from an arduous flight from Sydney, via Beijing and Seoul, I accompanied them, and for a few lovely hours we baked white chocolate macadamia nut cookies and visited with the clients. 

We had a lot of laughs playing cards, listening to a few pop songs, showing each other pictures, posing for some new ones.

 

Elizabeth took it in stride when some of her co-bakers didn’t care for the final result—too soft a cookie and too sweet to their liking. “In Korean culture people are very direct in their communication with each other,” Elizabeth explained.

The shelter is a government-funded facility and program operated under the leadership of director Ae Duck Im (not pictured). When I asked her what she thought the fundamental differences in Korean and American cultures might be, she answered without hesitation: “Values. We have Confucianism, respect for ancestors, tradition.”

Typical and delicious luncheon cooked and served in the 
kitchen of the Aesuhwon Sisters Heights Shelter.

In the following days I was to be the recipient of extraordinary generosity from Ms. Im, who could not have been more welcoming. She accompanied me to the opening ceremony of the 14th Jeju Women’s Film Festival, where after some speeches and musical selections, we saw a stylish Korean film by Kim Sung-hee celebrating  the life and career of Nora Noh, the mother of modern Korean fashion.

On the following evening she arranged for a rather fabulous impromptu dinner of her women’s group at a vegetarian temple restaurant where we sat on mats and ate traditional dishes like bimbimbap and garnishes like kimchee. I was thrilled to meet Ae Duck's circle and especially honored that one of the attendees was artist Kim Juyeon (formerly of Berlin), who will soon be installing her new show at Viaart in the Daedong Hotel Art Center. Her sculptures in the installation called Metamorphosis VII are constructed from collapsed packing crates layered with old clothes and paper, and covered in grass which continues to grow during the course of the exhibition. Her piece collapses the nature/culture split (it's all in nature) and evokes the economic devastation represented by feral structures.

The next morning Ms. Im included me in a calligraphy class with the “single-moms” where I was taught some elementary brush strokes and, to my utter astonishment, was presented with a silk scroll inscribed by the instructor. First in Chinese and then in Korean characters he wrote the title of my novel—Cooperative Village—and beneath it the most gracious possible greeting thanking me for visiting Jeju. Truly humbling, I will always prize this great treasure, a momento of a wonderful shared creative experience, and, as such, so much more meaningful than any other souvenir could possibly be.

Holding the mic during the Q&A, Aori, director of My, No-Mercy Home

Despite a chock-a-block packed schedule of socializing and sight-seeing, at times scooting around town on the back of Elizabeth's motorbike, I was able to attend some portion of the festival on all four days and saw several compelling Korean films, notably: Aori’s My No-Mercy Home, an absolutely transfixing documentary about a young woman’s legal travails in connection with prosecuting her father for sexually abusing her; and, almost as if the rapist/father were a metaphorical stand-in for the corporate predator, the showing of Hong Li-gyeong’s The Empire of Shame, a documentary about suspicious worker deaths among the young women employed at the Samsung Corporation, which concluded the festival. 

I learned that when the latter film was scheduled to be shown at the Seoul Women’s Film Festival, Samsung tried to have it suppressed. The festival showed it as scheduled and the women there have subsequently lost all of their government funding. Samsung makes up 20% of South Korea’s GDP; as Nick, one of the astute UK ex-pats told me: “Samsung is the government.” 

It is feared that this withdrawal of support for the women's film festival will have a chilling effect on future artists and festival directors alike. It also makes all the more courageous the decision to show the film at the Jeju Women's Film Festival. It was my great privilege to be there to witness their inspiring act of female solidarity.

(To be continued...)

 

Be Your Eyes The Witness Of This Ill

If anyone out there witnessed any piece of the shooting of Callion Hamblin by law enforcement agents in Farmington, Missouri on February 20, 2012, or knows anyone who did who would be willing to come forward, we would be grateful if you would please be in touch with The Friends and Family of Callion Hamblin at:

 hamblincallion@gmail.com

Thank you.

Witness

Martha Collins

If she says something now he'll say
it's not true if he says it's not true
they'll think it's not true if they think
it's not true it will be nothing new
but for her it will be a weightier
thing it will fill up the space where
he isn't allowed it will open the door
of the room where she's put him
away he will fill up her mind he will fill
up her plate and her glass he will fill up
her shoes and her clothes she will never
forget him he says if she says
something now if she says something ever
he never will let her forget and it's true
for a week for a month but the more
she says true and the more he says not
the smaller he seems he may fill up
his shoes he may fill up his clothes
the usual spaces he fills but something
is missing whatever they say whatever
they think he is not what he was
and the room in her mind is open she
walks in and out as she pleases she says
what she pleases she says what she means.

from Some Things Words Can Do, 1998
Sheep Meadow Press

Copyright 1998 by Martha Collins.

Shown No Mercy in St. Francois County

ACLU-EM's John Chasnoff keeping his hands where we could see them at all times in Long Memorial Hall, while explaining what to do if you're stopped by the police:

Think carefully about your words, movement, body language and emotions.

Don't get into an argument with the police.

Remember, anything you say or do can be used against you.

Keep your hands where the police can see them.

Don't run. Don't touch any police officer.

Don't resist even if you believe you are innocent.

Don't complain on the scene or tell the police you're wrong or that you're going to file a complaint.

 Do not make any statements regarding the incident.

Ask for a lawyer immediately upon your arrest.

Remember officers' badge and patrol car numbers.

Write down everything you remember ASAP.

Try to find witnesses, their names and phone numbers.

If you are injured, take photographs of the injuries as soon as possible, but make sure you seek medical attention first.

If you feel your rights have been violated, file a written complaint with the police department's internal affairs division or call the ACLU of Eastern Missouri Complaint Line: 314-653-3111

45 brave souls attended the Know Your Rights Community Speak-Out conducted by John Chasnoff, Program Director of the American Civil Liberties Union—Eastern Missouri (ACLU-EM) here in Farmington last week. Brave because we were told that at least two cops were going to attend our meeting, which  understandably might have had a chilling effect on people who were hoping to have a place to speak out. As I was out canvassing at food pantries and laundromats, grocery stores and barbershops, when people asked me if the cops were going to be there as they invariably did because they're savvy about such things, what could I do but shrug?


But the truth is, any meeting I've ever attended concerning civil liberties, whether it be about abuses of fundamental human rights in Guantanamo or America proper, has always also been attended by spies of one sort or another; sometimes they even disrupt the meeting with some kabuki theatrical, sauntering in late, shrieking some madness, distracting the participants from the work they came there to accomplish with some absurd diversion. I've seen it scores of times, even in the meeting rooms of the ACLU in NYC on Broad Street. These sorts of intrusions fuel my sense of urgency to push forward to help make whatever revolutionary changes we have to make before an even more repressive regime rules us with an even more iron fist.

So while 450 would have been better, 45 people leaving their homes, their routines, not watching Dancin' With the Stars, in some cases even bringing their kids, was a pretty marvelous achievement, especially given that the local papers would not print our rather benign press release.

ACLU TO PARTICIPATE IN COMMUNITY SPEAK-OUT IN ST. FRANCOIS COUNTY

Friends and Family of Callion Hamblin To Sponsor Public Meeting: “KNOW YOUR RIGHTS”

    Farmington, Missouri. On Wednesday, March 13, 2013, at 7:00 p.m. at Long Memorial Hall in Farmington, Missouri, representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri (ACLU-EM) will offer a presentation on police/community interactions. According to John Chasnoff, Program Director at ACLU-EM, the goal of the evening is to better inform people in southeastern Missouri about the rights they currently have when stopped, questioned, arrested, or searched by federal, state or local law enforcement officers.

“We want the people of St. Francois County to be aware of the basic rights that all people in America have under the law,” explained Mr. Chasnoff. “I’m looking forward to our public meeting and the chance for the ACLU-EM to find out what’s happening with policing in Farmington and St. Francois County.” The group will also be handing out Know Your Rights wallet cards to everyone who attends.

On the heels of the Associated Press article (link below) filed on February 19, 2013, revealing that Callion Hamblin took six bullets to the back, and the successful one-year commemorative rally outside the Farmington courthouse on February 20, 2013, the group reached out to the ACLU-EM.    [...]   

--###--

Nor would the editors allow our event to be listed on the online Community Calendar. Actually one attendee reported that she had seen it on the calendar but then couldn’t find it again, so apparently it was up and then removed, and we were effectively excommunicated!  But those that report the news around here are totally in cahoots with those who dictate it, so no one should be surprised that the Park Hills Daily Journal and The Farmington Press do not wish their readers to know their rights. Why? Because to know your rights in St. Francois County is to begin to wake up to their wrongs. 

It’s unclear at whom this suppression was aimed. Was it at the ACLU-EM, which has been busy in this neck of the woods challenging local municipalities on various fronts? As part of a national campaign probing militarized police departments Farmington has the dubious distinction of being one of only four police departments in the state of Missouri coming under their scrutiny. Plus, it was announced two days ago that ACLU lawyers have won the right for the KKK to distribute leaflets in the city streets of Desloges, a neighboring hamlet a few towns over to the north. It's an important principle, which they rightly (no pun intended) uphold.

Or was it aimed at us because of our video that shoots about as many holes in the fanciful and incomplete story as printed in the local papers as the cops et.al. fired at and into Callion Hamblin?

Nonetheless, those who found their way to the Know Your Rights Community Speak-Out told us that they’d spied one of the hundreds of flyers posted at local businesses and VFW halls, heard the radio coverage on KDBB or KREI, or got wind via word of mouth. They burned gas from all points in St. Francois County, carpooling from Bonne Terre and Bismarck, or traveling from Iron County, and beyond. Some arrived early, well before the 7pm start time, clutching fat file folders with documentation of alleged abuse by the authorities at the level of policing, courts, jails and elections. And because it was court night downstairs, some folk just stopped in after taking care of business to shake off their funk and pick up a Know Your Rights wallet card.

I was honored to introduce John with this brief profile:

John Chasnoff has worked on issues of police accountability for fourteen years. As a leader in the campaigns for civilian review and local control of St. Louis police, and as a staff member at the ACLU of Eastern Missouri since 2009, John has long advocated for police practices that provide both citizen safety and respect for civil liberties. He has worked on countless individual cases of police misconduct, but believes that lasting improvements will only come with systemic changes to the culture of policing and institutional structures that hold officers accountable.

As John proceeded though his Powerpoint he was soon interrupted by people giving voice, often with a kind of gallows humor, to the cognitive dissonance between what was being asserted on the screen and what happens routinely on the ground. He could not have been clearer that knowing and invoking one’s rights and having them respected by the authorities when they pull you over or attempt to search or arrest you, were two entirely different things. He repeatedly made the point that where knowing your rights and behaving accordingly could make a difference is later in court: evidence, for instance, obtained in an illegal search could be set aside by a judge if you have acted properly, said and not said the magic words.

About two-thirds of the way through the presentation, one woman who'd been squirming and seething with frustration pretty much the whole time got up to leave with these rather pointed barbs: “This has nothing to do with what happens in Farmington with the police. Do you know what happens if you try to remain silent in Farmington? They bash your head onto the hood of your car, that’s what! If they want you to talk, there’s no remaining silent.”

No one disagreed with her assessment.

In fact, the first person accounts that surfaced about doing time in St. Francois County jail were very tough to take—reports of routine and savage beatings, rotten food or forced starvation (not feeding them at all), mold creeping up the walls painted over by paint paid for finally by the inmates themselves, frozen pipes, stinking air, and dangerous overcrowding, as many as five in a cell. It sounded like we had our own miniature gulag going right here in the town of “Tradition and Progress.”

After much deliberation and some avoidance, I decided to see if these claims could be verified and drove over today to the St. Francois County Jail, a place I'd never been before, somewhat off the beaten path over on Doubet Road. A bleak destination on a dreary day made more forlorn by the punishing aesthetics, a visual assault on the central nervous system, a shaming environment.

Not a tourist destination, a very sad place

View across the street, a piece of the State prison complex

Side view of the jail where 200 or so inmates are locked up

In the lobby there's a little memorial window set up to honor a fallen comrade who died in a freak accident on Highway 67 years ago, when a trailer came loose off of a truck and came flying across the highway to absolutely demolish his vehicle and end his life. There is a picture of the pulverized car, the grotesquely twisted mangled metal that looks meteor-struck, and the well-written story is by Doug Smith, who is currently the Editor of The (aforementioned) Farmington Press with whom I've had one rather charming but exasperating conversation (total unreality, he is in about the criminal landscape that is the justice system in these parts).

Through the metal detector one is forced to approach a dark window. I've encountered this twice now, once at the police station last week and now here. In both instances my eyes went immediately to the floor; a refusenik gesture--if I don't have access, neither do you. A very few minutes (no more than seven) later Dennis Smith, Jail Administrator came and invited me back to his colleague's office where we met with Gregory Armstrong, Chief Deputy.

Now anyone who knows Chief Armstrong knows he's a badass dude, charming but in a badass way. The kind of guy who said about Callion's death, because he was there: "Hey, I'm the kinda guy, I'm going home to my wife at the end of my shift." Badass! Who's badasser than that? Dude starts rapping to me about Maricopa County Arizona (where they have chain-gangs), transferring prisoners from there who are happy to come to Farmington just because of the food here, like they had today: ham and beans, fried potatoes, corn bread, and iced tea. Says some of the prisoners at the prison are federal prisoners. I was really shocked that we were housing federal prisoners in our county jail. Dude asks me where I live and if I have a firearm? Badass.

Between the conversation that I had with Mr. Smith and Chief Armstrong, and the impromptu tour of the facility I can absolutely attest to the following:

• I saw no evidence of mold
• There was no stench in the hallways (I didn't enter the day rooms or cells)
• The kitchen was spotless
• I didn't sense that it was a place of terror and torture, people didn't look agonized by and large in my pass through.
• The overcrowding was undeniable
• Everyone gets a mattress and a blanket and if there's no steel bunk then it's the concrete floor.
• It's stripped as bare as a place can be.
• There's not a single comfort to be had or respite from what it is.
• The televison is on.
• There is no silence.
• They can't hear the peepers from their bunks like I can from my plush bed.
• I was saddened to learn that there are some prisoners who are awaiting trial in that sterile sunless moonless windless place for three years.
• They could be innocent but can never get those years of liberty back.
• Unless they're going to court, they don't go outside.
• Six bullets to the back, one from the bondsman's gun.

Becoming a Heroine

Brandy Hamblin


"A heroine, like a novelist, can convert the least promising of lives into art by the way she looks at it." 

Rachel Brownstein, Becoming a Heroine

Along with tens of thousands of others, I first encountered Brandy Hamblin in print, or more precisely, pixels on a screen. I read her words as reported in the St. Louis Post Dispatch article in which she was describing an anguished final telephone conversation with her ex-husband (and father of her son) on the night he was exterminated by Farmington, Missouri law enforcement, and cronies. But I couldn't help but notice that even through her upset, she was scrupulous about conveying the main and telling detail for anyone who cared to see it:

"I heard rapid gunfire," she said in an interview Tuesday. "It sounded like an ambush, like someone had lit a whole block of Black Cats (firecrackers)." 

What an astute young woman, I remember thinking at the time. 

Reading those words again now...sounded like an ambush, like someone had lit a whole block of Black Cats...I remain struck by her keen intelligence: both her personal smarts and what she lucidly seized the opportunity to relate. Another woman might have succumbed to the panic and dread of the moment, sunk into a quagmire of the kind of emotionalism so rampant around here. But Brandy didn't. Not at all. Her brain didn't switch off just because her heart had been shattered, and her son traumatized. And that's where my admiration for her began.

A necessary digression: Farmington, Missouri, which Brandy has called home since 1998, and which is also my home for the past two years, is currently the subject of a probe by the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri with respect to its use of SWAT teams, military-style gear and ops, and tracking devices. With just over 16,000 in population, it's rather amazing that our town is coming under ACLU scrutiny along with the City and County of St. Louis and Columbia, Missouri.

The next phase of our relationship, Brandy’s and mine, came to be as members of a private Facebook group she co-administers: RIP Callion “Smoke/Kinloch” Hamblin. This is a somewhat delicate task because a number of the mourners in the group were Cal's lovers, some from the time after their marriage ended, and some from the time before. But as Brandy recently wrote me with her special brand of humor and generosity: 

LoL that man did get around but you know in my old age I don't even care I have moved past all of that. We ALL LOVED CAL! And that's why we are doing this.

Brandy is such a genuinely lovely person, I’m sure I speak for everyone in the group when I say that one always looks forward to her posts and comments on others’ posts. Hers is a sure and steady kind of friendly leadership, the kind that sees you all the way through, without drama. Posts like: 

Merry Christmas Cal, u have been heavy on my mind lately. Have been missin you bunches. I know u were here with us in spirit today..........wishin you could "get a plate". Lol Just thinking of you puts a smile on my face. You may be gone from this earth but you will live in our hearts forever. We love and miss you so much.

Seasons passed and it came to be that the Facebook group committed to organizing a commemorative rally on the one-year anniversary of the taking of Callion’s life. I took a shine to Brandy at our first meeting. I remember her as being open, refreshingly so for this area, but at the same time nobody’s fool. 

Plus she’d come to the meeting after a long shift (She works at an area nursing home as an LPN in an Alzheimer’s ward) and was game to try what I was serving, a delightful beverage that involved a tumbler of icy apple cider stirred with an ice-breaking pour of Jameson’s whiskey. 

Brandy did a lot of talking that first meeting, which was wonderful for us all. So much had been bottled up for so long, she needed to get it out and we needed to hear it. Because every word she was speaking was all true, every bit of it had actually happened; it was real, not some horror movie we'd all seen or nightmare we'd weirdly shared. 

No..., they really had killed him in a hail of bullets, they actually did leave his desecrated body to bleed out on the frozen ground from 2am to 6am, even though an ambulance was already on the scene. If they had tried, maybe they could have saved his life. But they didn't even try.

Photo from the St. Louis Post Dispatch

 The day before the rally (pictured below), Brandy fielded questions from a journalist writing a national story for the Associated Press in which he publicly revealed the details of the autopsy report for the first time, as well as a very high-profile radio webcaster from NYC. In Alan Scher Zagier's story that appeared all over the country on February 19 and 20, 2013, Brandy made this excellent point:

"I know Cal was in the wrong,"  said Brandy Hamblin,"..."He should have turned himself in. I just don't think that should have served as his death warrant."

Brandy's responses to Ed Champion's tough questions begin around the 27-minute mark, just after the county coroner confirms that Callion took six bullets to the back from all angles. 
 

Keandre, age 11, and Xavier, age 12, Brandy's son with Callion (on right)

Brandy tells the story of the events of that night in our video (soon to be completed!) which is to be called: “Shown No Mercy: Remembering Callion Hamblin.” Her account, while conveyed with utter poise, is not for the squeamish. It’s hard not to admire a woman who in one fell swoop goes from never having spoken on camera before to telling a very tough story with a lot of grace and compassion for her listeners. 

Drawings by Callion Hamblin

In addition, Brandy has given a number of very fine radio interviews, and doubtless will have to give countless more as this story continues to grow in consequence and resonance.We spoke after her interview with KDBB, it was a very emotional interview for her, her first with the local media since the news that Callion had taken six bullets to the back. 

She laughed because even though she had felt herself to be prepared she got a little flustered, and instead of saying "Know Your Rights" the words that came out were: "Right to Know!"

The ACLU will be sniffing the air in Farmington, MO this Wednesday, March 13, 7pm at Long Memorial Hall

A second necessary digression: KDBB Bonne Terre is also running a more in-depth story about Wednesday's ACLU program sponsored by our group this Monday. This expanded coverage is most welcome because not only have the local papers not written in a fair way about our event, they won't even allow it to appear on their "community" calendar listing, even though I dropped by their offices twice in Park Hills and spoke with their IT director, so I know for a fact it's not a technical snafu. Just pure out and out suppression. The other local paper (all part of the same corporate outfit), printed this uninformative opinion piece.

It's risible that, like children, they wish to pretend that if they don't pay attention to our event, that it isn't happening. Earth to Lee Enterprises: Not only is it happening but we will have plenty of news coverage of the event with or without your deliberate disinformation campaign. 

The last thing I'll say about my friend Brandy is that her courage is contagious. While I was posting flyers of our event in Park Hills, Missouri, a neighboring town, I chanced upon the office of one of the bail bondsman who gained $25,000 by helping to make sure Callion Hamblin was good and dead. I couldn't resist, I snapped this shot:

My Not So Very Silent Fuck You to Mike Cross and the Horse He Rode In On

Mostly because I hoped it would make Brandy laugh. I'll ask her when I see her Wednesday at Long Memorial Hall, if it did!