AT MONDAY’S MEETING of the Fort Bragg City Council, Mayor Dave Turner honored Ian Chaney for his bravery and actions on August 27th, 2011, when Chaney and the late Jere Melo came under fire from Aaron Bassler. Melo was shot to death, Chaney narrowly escaped. The proclamation reads as follows:
Whereas, on August 27, 2011 Fort Bragg City Councilmember Jere Melo, working as a security contractor for a local timber management company, headed out into the woods with local resident Ian Chaney to document the existence of an illicit trespass grow operation on private property on the outskirts of Fort Bragg; and
Whereas, after forging their way through dense brush, Jere and Ian entered a recently cleared area, looked up the hill and saw logs piled into a makeshift bunker; and
Whereas, with no warning, 35-year-old Aaron Bassler jumped out of the bunker and fired a semi-automatic rifle at them; and
Whereas, Jere fell to the ground fatally wounded, while Ian managed to return fire while running for cover; and
Whereas, Ian raced towards the Skunk Train tracks and flagged down a maintenance car to get help for Jere; and
Whereas, subsequently, Ian was able to provide valuable information to local law enforcement officials that allowed them to locate Jere Melo and to identify the suspect.
Now, therefore, I, Dave Turner, Mayor of the City of Fort Bragg, on behalf of the entire City Council, do hereby recognize and honor Ian Chaney for his heroism during this tragic event.
AT THEIR TUESDAY MEETING, the Supervisors rejected a proposal from the County’s retirement system to hire a full-time finance and investment officer that we highlighted in the August 11 edition of Mendocino County Today. The Mendocino County Auditor-Controller's Office presently does that most of the work described in the request for an assistant under a part-time, work-share arrangement between the County and the Mendocino County Employees Retirement Association. Retirement Administrator Rich White said he wanted a 40-hour-a-week position, hired by the Retirement Board (and him) that would pay $60,147 not including benefits.
SUPERVISORS Hamburg and Smith (who throw their own money around like manhole covers but have never met a County-paid junket they didn't like) thought another high-paying, full-time County bureaucrat was a swell idea. Pinches, Brown and McCowen voted NO.
BESIDES WHICH as AVA reader Jim Hill points out: “Given that pension plans are typically heavily invested in bonds, and the current 10-year treasury rate is 1.48%, it is going to be damn difficult (most likely impossible) for pension plans to come close to the annualized projection of 7.75%.”
OOPS: Jennifer Poole writes: “Willits short on food kitchens? My bet is Willits gives away more food per capita than any other town in Mendocino County. There’s brown bag lunches in the park across from City Hall on Saturdays; the Methodist Church food pantry where anyone needing food can get it (they have emergency grocery money, too, but that, I’m quite sure, doesn’t go to the street guys); and Our Daily Bread, hot homemade soup and bread Monday through Thursday at the Catholic Church, with a “snack bag” provided for Friday. The biggest provider: Willits Food Bank, which as of the latest report distributes more than 20,000 pounds of food each month, serving about 1,100 local people monthly. Another note: The Willits Gleaners: I’m not sure if other towns have followed suit on this idea, but for some years now, Willits volunteers go and harvest extra and unwanted fruit from orchard trees, as well as garden produce, donating all to the food bank, Senior Center, etc. We have our share of what one of my friends who cleans up after them calls “hobos” — lots of bridges in Willits to sleep under and other areas where we know (and the cops know) they sleep.”
THE WYE FIRE in eastern Lake County and western Colusa County is 80% contained.
LOCAL RED CROSS invites community to learn about volunteering. Ukiah – American Red Cross is offering a free class, “Disaster Services Overview,” for new volunteers and those who want to learn about Red Cross volunteer opportunities in Mendocino County. Opportunities for Red Cross volunteers include responding to local and national emergencies, training the community in disaster education, and staffing health and safety fairs. In 2012-13, the American Red Cross has a major initiative to educate the community on disaster preparedness, and local volunteers are especially needed to present disaster education information to the community. Free training will be provided to qualified volunteers. The Disaster Services Overview class will be held twice: 1. in Ukiah, on Thursday, September 13, 413 N. State St., NCO office. Meeting at 6pm, class at 7-9:30pm, after the monthly Disaster Action Team meeting. New people are welcome at the Disaster Action Team meeting. 2. In Willits, on Saturday, September 15, Willits Library, 390 East Commercial Street. 10:30am-1pm. Interested people can contact Don Rowe, 707-463-2456 to register or for more information. American Red Cross, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake Counties, is a neutral, humanitarian organization that provides relief to victims of disasters, and prepares people to prevent and respond to emergencies. Like all Red Cross chapters, the local chapter is self-sustaining and is funded by local contributions. All assistance to disaster victims and to members of the armed forces provided by the Chapter is free and made possible by voluntary donations of time and money by the people of Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake Counties. Donations can be made at www.arcsm.org, www.redcross.org, via mail to American Red Cross, 5297 Aero Drive, Santa Rosa, CA 95403, or by phone at (707) 577-7627 (Sonoma County), (707) 463-0112 (Mendocino County), or (707)263-8451 (Lake County).
THE US TAX COURT has issued a ruling that medical marijuana operations cannot declare standard deductions such as rent. Dispensaries must pay taxes on sales but aren't allowed to claim most deductions because “We have previously held that a California medical marijuana dispensary’s dispensing of medical marijuana pursuant to the CCUA was ‘trafficking’ within the meaning of section 280E. See CHAMP, 128 T.C. at 182-183. That holding applies here with full force… Congress in section 280E has set an illegality under Federal law as one trigger to preclude a taxpayer from deducting expenses incurred in a medical marijuana dispensary business. This is true even if the business is legal under State law.”
JOE THE PLUMBER calls to ‘start shooting’ immigrants at the border. by David Edwards (RAW STORY, August 14). At two separate events in recent days, Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher has proposed to “put a damn fence on the border going to Mexico and start shooting.” Wurzelbacher first made the remarks during a campaign rally for Arizona Republican state Rep. Lori Klein on Friday, according to video published by Prescott eNews. “For years I’ve said, you know, put a damn fence on the border, going to Mexico and start shooting,” he insisted. Wurzelbacher then repeated the remarks at a so-called “Patriot Rally” with Klein on Saturday. “I’m running for Congress. How many congressmen or people running for Congress have you heard, put a fence up and start shooting? None? Well you heard it here first. Put troops on the border and start shooting, I bet that solves our immigration problem real quick.” While Klein refused to condemn the call for border violence, her District 11 opponent, Republican state House Speaker Andy Tobin, called for Wurzelbacher to apologize or go back home to Ohio. “I would ask for him to retract the statement as made in jest, and if not made in jest, I’m appalled at him,” Tobin told KTVK. “We don’t do that in Arizona.” Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) launched Wurzelbacher into fame during the 2008 presidential election when he repeatedly referred to “Joe the Plumber” during a debate with then-Sen. Barack Obama. McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, called Wurzelbacher’s latest idea “ridiculous.” She had previously said that he was a “dumbass” who should “stick to plumbing.” Klein, who is running for re-election in the 11th District, drew charges of racism in 2011 when she read a controversial letter on the state Senate floor, asserting that “[m]ost of the Hispanic students do not want to be educated but rather be gang members and gangsters.” She is also known for pointing a loaded gun at the chest of Richard Ruelas, a reporter for The Arizona Republic, while he was interviewing her at the state Capitol. “Oh, it’s so cute,” Klein said of the raspberry-pink .380 Ruger that she carries in purse at all times, later explaining that Ruelas had no need to worry because “I just didn’t have my hand on the trigger.”
BACK TO SEPARATE BUT EQUAL by Kevin Rashid Johnson. (Mr. Johnson has spent most of his adult life in prison. He spent 17 years in solitary in Virginia, and has recently been transferred to Oregon.)
On March 1, 2012 I was assigned to Oregon State Penitentiary (OSP) in Salem. The transition from Virginia to Oregon has been interesting to say the least. And not just because I was allowed in a general prison population after 17 years of solitary confinement.
The racial demographics in Oregon prisons are basically the reverse of Virginia’s, and most everywhere else in Amerika. In Virginia about two out of every twenty prisoners are white. The vast majority of Virginia’s prisoners are Black, although Blacks make up only about 20% of Virginia’s social population. In Oregon, however, only about two or three out of every twenty prisoners are Black. And Oregon’s Black incarceration ratio is still grossly disproportionate to that of whites. Bottom line, the vast majority of Oregon prisoners are white. Seeing all these white folks in prison was the first oddity that struck me on assignment to the ODOC.
The second oddity was finding old Jim Crow alive and well at OSP. And I’m told by all that OSP is the ODOC’s most ‘liberal’ men’s prison, with the most racially ‘tolerant’ staff. Other ODOC prisons “out east,” like Snake River, where their Security Housing Units are called “Cowboy Country,” where staff with attitudes like the Klan “do things their own way.” But here’s an example of what I found in OSP: a prisoner cafeteria right out of the Old South.
The prisoner chow hall seats several hundred prisoners, four to a table. It’s one large room with an equal number of tables on either side, divided by a walking aisle down the middle. At the rear are two food service windows where trays are prepared, one on the left side of the cafeteria, one on the right. To reach the service windows prisoners enter through one or the other of two doors situated at the front on the far left and far right sides of the cafeteria. They then proceed in straight lines along the right or left wall to the rear, and collect their tray, utensils, and food at the service window.
The serving lines, service windows, and seating arrangements are divided by race. Whites use the line food service window, and sit on the right side of the cafeteria. All other races use and sit on the left side; Blacks sit in the very back. Asians, Mexicans and Latinos and Native Americans sit in the middle. And up in the front where groups of guards stand nearby, is where sex-offenders sit — this shunned group is generally white. Food service staff and guards assign only white prisoners to work the serving windows on the right or white side, all others, including white outcasts, work the left or ‘colored’ side.
An Outsider Making Waves— When I first observed this arrangement, I thought instantly of George Jackson’s description in Soledad Brother[3] of the t.v. room in 1960s California prisons, where guards enforced segregated seating with whites up front and Blacks in the rear. And how when he dared to sit up front with the whites, he was jumped and guards punished only him as the troublemaker.
I too decided to defy this OSP seating arrangement, and leading by example, sat at a table near the front on the white side. And, consistent with Comrade George’s t.v. room experience, the Black prisoners all cast me nervous or fearful sidelong glances. The guards and white prisoners looked at me like I was crazy or a confused or lost child. Whites seated at the table quickly moved, leaving me to sit alone. Everyone obviously expected me to be jumped. Although I was prepared, nothing happened.
The next day, I went around the white serving line to ‘their’ serving window, and was this time intercepted by a white guard who told me if I sat on the white side again I’d be taken as trying to incite a riot and would be thrown in the hole. So I went and sat in the Black section looking to gauge the thinking and responses of other Blacks. They literally begged me not to sit on the white side again.
For days afterward I patiently questioned and challenged their thinking, pointing out among other things: 1) They are victims of government-enforced Jim Crow eating and seating arrangements exactly like in the Old South, which Rosa Parks, student sit-ins and others had defied; 2) Their attitudes were just like those of complacent ‘broken’ Blacks who “went along to get along,” fearing white backlash to defying Jim Crow segregation; 3) That the key challenges to Jim Crow were initiated by people from other places like me, such as Northern Black college students and white supporters — ‘Freedom Riders’ — who rode buses through the South defying segregated seating laws; 4) Just like in the Old South, OSP officials justify tolerating and enforcing segregated conditions and punishing those who defy them in the name of preventing white mob violence; and 5) The entire game of racial division plays right into the hands of the administration and guards who oppress everyone — that it is an old tactic taken from the Willie Lynch playbook of Divide and Rule.
Although most of them accepted the history lesson, they all resisted following its example. And to save face, they all pretended to be satisfied with sitting on ‘their’ side in the rear of the cafeteria. “We don’t want to sit with the whites anyway,” they proclaimed, but admitted not to be speaking for everyone. I pointed out also that they didn’t seem to want to sit with each other either, since they most frequently bickered and fought each other and there was no Black unity either. And oddly, whites frequently sit in the Black area without protest. I questioned this and what it said of them that even pedophiles and rapists got more considerate front row seating than them. I haven’t gotten a satisfactory rebuttal to either of these points yet.
And no OSP administrator, including the warden/superintendent can claim ignorance or plausible denial, since they all routinely sit or stand right in the cafeteria observing the meals.
We’re Not Racists! Prison officials love to sermonize that prisoners must learn to accept responsibility for their actions. Woe unto them but did they practice what they preach. Perhaps they could be taken more seriously if they began their sermons with a confession in the tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous, “Hi. I’m an Oregon prison official and I’m a bigot.” But these folks aren’t interested in curing themselves or their system Hypocrites….
In fact, I’ve seldom seen as reflexive an angry response as when calling them on their racism. Some of the more ‘professional’ ones temper their reactions with strong silence, changing several shades of red, changing the subject, or simply changing places by charging me with being the racist for noticing racial issues at all. Whether they react, evade or deny, the responses are always defensive. And one only becomes defensive when one has something to protect or hide.
In most cases, when I’ve told guards and administrators here that they practice racism and jingoism, they react negatively. From threats to throw me in the hole to actually doing so, to angry blanket denials, to locking me in the cell as a threat to staff. The truth hurts I suppose. Truth also exposes what one wishes to deny. And denying the obvious in racial matters is an old Amerikan tradition. As old as Amerika itself, actually.
As Stan Goff, the white veteran and career U.S. Special Operations soldier, who exposed blatant Special Ops racism and exclusion of Blacks from their units, once observed, “White America will kill to preserve its lies.”[4] The Old South taught us that too.
So, no, Old South Jim Crow and the South didn’t fall. They just moved out West and merged with the New Jim Crow to become what Oregon officials call an enlightened and humane approach to prison administration. They definitely have Virginia beat! I was just shipped from a plantation run by wolves, to one run by foxes. Either way, as Malcolm X observed, I’m still in the doghouse. Only this time, with back row seats.
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