Categories
Boston Brooklyn Christmas Hollywood Immigration Los Angeles Malibu Photography politics prison Queer

It’s Black and White

1.

While few of us would think to ridicule Jews for still harboring less than warm feelings for Germans some 70 years after the liberation of the concentration camps—we would understand the lack of trust, the wariness, even the anger—we apparently find it hard to understand the same historically embedded logic of black trepidation and contempt for law enforcement in the USA.

Revealed, these past weeks, for the world to see: America’s racist underbelly.  News stories narrated by dumb white folk, binging unashamedly on their justified racism.  The condescending white news anchor asks a black man to explain his fear of the police… then scoffs at his reply.  Others crudely condemn the dead black men “He was no angel.”  “His parents were known to the police.”  “He was resisting arrest.”  The same ‘news’ shows use the millions of crowd sourced dollars raised for the white murderer as proof, as if any were needed, that Darren Wilson and men like him are: “Innocent until proven guilty.” “The grand jury proved there was no case to answer.” “Let him get on with his life.”

The KKK leave cruel and hateful messages wherever they can all over social media, proudly letting the world know: ‘a good nigger is a dead nigger’.  Black men doubly assassinated, in life and death… white supremacists proudly spew vitriol over the bodies of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner.

They demand, “This isn’t about race.”  “Why do you bring race into this?”

White folk have no incentive to let go of their white power, their white privilege, their sense of superiority… their entitlement.  White people remind you with their slippery smiles that slavery was abolished in 1865.  “It’s up to the blacks to help themselves.”  “If we weren’t killing them, they’d be killing each other.”  “They have the same opportunities as everyone else.”

2.

Every Mexican, working illegally in California, is a slave.  White people loathe manual labor.  White people love slaves.  Everybody needs a slave in SoCal.  The fruit growers would have nobody to harvest fruit without Mexican slaves.  Slaves stand outside Home Depot offering themselves for hard labor.   Mexican slaves mow my lawn, scrub my hot tub.  Slaves clear brush in the Santa Monica Mountains under the midday sun.

Serried ranks of plump Mexican women smelling of disinfectant and carbolic soap clean house, serve slim, white wives their afternoon mint tea.  There are thousands of them!  Thousands of enslaved, undocumented maids.

Have you ever seen a white person use a mop, hand wash dishes or polish a crystal glass?  Have you ever watched a white person try removing a stain from a carpet?  Have you noticed how inept white people are?  They don’t know how to look after their own stuff.

“Do you know how to remove a stain from a carpet?  When your dog pees on your rug?”

He shrugs, “Mexican people know how to do that.  I don’t need to know.”

Those Mexican slave women used to be black slave women.

Last week President Obama liberated 5 million slaves by giving them the opportunity to ‘come out of the shadows’.  Watch the white elected officials in Congress and the Senate balk.  Their fat, pink cheeks huffing and puffing indignantly at the partial liberation of more slaves.

Without slaves the USA ceases to function.  The USA is addicted to slavery.  The USA was built on hard work… the hard work of unpaid black slaves.  Conveniently written out of white history.  California’s false economy is carried on the backs of Mexican slaves.

When the black slaves were freed the white folk wanted them to go back to Africa.  “The slaves are free… free to go home.”

Those black folk who thought they were equal to white folk were outlawed, harassed.  If they had entrepreneurial ambitions they were made to think again.  When they opened stores on main street, their stores were looted by white folk whilst the police watched… and did nothing.

There was no opportunity given to black people which could not be taken away.

3.

A black face reminds America’s of its not so distant violent racist past (black neighborhoods were being bombed and burned in Boston and Chicago by white police as recently as 1970).   To liberal white people a black face remains a shameful embarrassment: liberals never did enough for black people.  Liberals turned from the thorny problem of race to an easy fix: marriage equality.

White people who claim to hate racism are privately racist.  Amy Pascal and Scott Rudin at Sony Pictures are revealed to be private racists… when this is discovered from hacked emails they call Jesses Jackson so assuage their guilt.  They publicly call prominent black people to apologize for being private racists… but they merely confirm what we already know: white liberals say one thing then do another when they think they can’t be seen or heard.

For the dogged racists a black face reminds them of an unfinished problem… a problem they tackle every 18 hours when another black man is murdered by the police.  Shortly after the shots are fired, the body transported to the morgue… the excuses begin, the character of the dead black man maligned, the Grand Jury is called and the murder justified… forgotten.

Did it seem this time… after Eric Garner’s Grand Jury refused to indict… fewer people agreed with the decision… or made excuses for the police?  Was it my imagination that after the whole world watched the video of Eric Garner’s murder a million times on TV and the internet that people who might have before… did not want to forget.  In fact they cared a great deal for murdered Eric, his dignified widow and their forgiving daughters.

When the people watch the unnecessary take down and murder of Eric Garner for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes on the streets on New York they are forced to acknowledge 350 years of racism:  state sanctioned torture, murder, rape, abuse, theft…

The people (all ethnicities) began to drag themselves out of apathy and onto the same streets.  The people saw a black man bullied to death and none of the usual excuses from the police or the mayor or the kkk were very convincing.  The people saw Eric Garner bullied and murdered by the police in a country where the police are meant to protect the people from bullies and murderers!

Fear underpins the systematic oppression of America’s black minority.

4.

This week people understood that the criminal justice system isn’t broken,  that police brutality, secret and corrupt grand juries, the deliberate disenfranchising of black men and the unreported/undocumented incidence of murder by police force… is not evidence of a broken system but the system functioning exactly the way it was designed.

Did you know that once convicted, in many states (11 southern states) a felon is never allowed to vote again… ever.  Why don’t you know that?  Most people don’t.  When a black man is convicted of a felony in 11 southern states he is never allowed to vote again.  He is excluded from the democratic process.  How many black felons did you tell me presently reside in jail and prison?  How many of them are working for free (cotton picking, uniform stitching) in American jails and prisons?

America’s untreated racist wound stinks like Michael Brown’s uncovered, bloated corpse on a humid Ferguson street… and no amount of Fox News deodorant will take away the stench.

Did you know, that until modest changes were made to the selection process, people of color were excluded from the Grand Jury?  Those modest and unenforceable protocol changes were made within the last few years.

They say, the secretive Grand Jury was originally conceived to weed out malicious prosecutions.  That’s just a big fat lie.  The Grand Jury is now as it always was… a secret court used by the police and police friendly prosecutors to help crooked cops out of difficult situations so they can continue waging war against the black minority.

The cop’s unwritten law of the street:  all black faces are fair game.

The Grand Jury is unknown anywhere else in the world. It works so effectively because there’s no one in the room defending the victim. In the case of Darren Wilson he was presented as the victim by the prosecutor rather than Michael Brown and this wholly spurious narrative persists.

5.

Criticize racists and the police at your peril.

The police say they have been ‘thrown under a bus’ by Bill de Blasio, Mayor of NYC because Mayor de Blasio told the world he advised his black son Dante: should he ever have occasion to be stopped by the police, Dante should be very polite, not reach for his cell phone or make any other sudden movement.  Dante should assume, like all black young men stopped by the police, that at any moment the police may kill him.

The following day white, bull necked cops feign indignation.  They know they’ve been rumbled, their credibility smashed to pieces.  They’ll have to do what bullies hate having to do: next time they’ll have to think twice.

Bill de Blasio has been warned by the police union not to attend Police funerals killed in the line of duty.   The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association posted a link on its website telling members not to let de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito “insult their sacrifice” should they be killed. The union posted a “Don’t Insult My Sacrifice” waiver officers can sign requesting the two politicians not attend their funerals due to their “consistent refusal to show police officers the support and respect they deserve.”

Good cop?  Bad cop?

Are there any good cops?  There’s no incentive to be a good cop.  The good guys are weeded out.  It’s a tough time to be a good cop.  Crime figures diminishing, the police have to justify their huge organization, their overtime.  They say policing is a dangerous job.  How dangerous?  Policemen are not all killed by criminals,  30% are killed in road traffic accidents… the police are too arrogant to wear seat belts.

Whilst men like Eric are being harassed and murdered on the streets of New York for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes by police thugs, a couple of miles away in another part of the same city the most audacious crimes this century go unpunished.  Wall Street steals a world of wealth and gets away with it.  They say white-collar crime is too sophisticated for most regular cops to grasp.

The cops protect the rich, protect the 1%… as it turns out they’re protecting them from us…  from you and me.

Cops are used to raise revenue for local government, make politically motivated arrests, used by the rich to silence and poleax their enemies.  Cops illegally hold undocumented workers without opportunity to post bail then deport them after lengthy stays in private jails.  I’ve met undocumented workers who were introduced to their mule (a mule illegally smuggles an undocumented worker back into the USA) by the same border patrol guy who originally arrested and deported them.

The cops take their cut, trafficking slaves.

6.

The conspiracy theorists I scoffed at 10 years ago… well, they got it right.

The jails are kept artificially full to justify more cops.  The artificial wars on drugs and terror are in fact… a war on us.

There is a profound connection between criminality abroad and criminality at home. The so-called “war on terror” and military aggression abroad are linked to repression within the United States.  The drive by the American ruling class to build up the infrastructure of a police state is in preparation for the inevitable confrontation with the working class. This is what lies behind the unprecedented levels of domestic spying, the assault on basic democratic rights, the CIA’s trampling on legality and the Constitution, the militarization of law enforcement and the ongoing police rampage against working class youth.

The Hollywood street performer shot in the head by the police, the Down’s syndrome kid choked to death by the police, the homeless woman repeatedly punched in the head by the police, the deaf guy trying to sign tasered by the police, the countless murders committed by the police remain uncounted.

A pattern emerges, you better be a healthy, able-bodied white male to survive the streets of now USA. You better not be black or disabled or deaf or performing or homeless. You better blend in, become invisible, forget any aspirations you might have to be extraordinary.

White Americans may protest that our racial problems are not like South Africa’s. No, but the United States incarcerated a higher proportion of blacks than apartheid South Africa did. In America, the black-white wealth gap today is greater than it was in South Africa in 1970 at the peak of apartheid.

America: it is still a nation of slaves and slave owners. The system that perpetuates this must be deconstructed and if you are white that deconstruction starts with you… asking yourself this question: am I willing to give up my slaves? My white power? My white privilege? My unfair advantages? Am I willing to acknowledge that implicitly and explicitly I colluded with the historical suppression, bullying, false imprisonment and murder of a minority?

My gay friends believe that winning human rights for black people will be as polite as winning human rights for gay people. They think it’s THE SAME.

There must have been a moment in 1945 after the American’s liberated the concentration camps, when the German people were forced by the allied forces to watch news reels of what was found there… there must have been a moment when the German people collectively owned up.   A moment when they realized what they had done. I’m waiting for white people in the USA to own their part, their collusion with a system that murders, brutalized and demeans a minority… then blames them when they complain.

It never really occurred to me until yesterday that the mass murder and incarceration of black men in the USA is deliberate, systemic, entrenched and unlikely to change until white men learn to share their power.

7.

I bought my first house when I was 20 years old. Remember that cottage? 13 Island Wall, Whitstable. 15 years later I sold it and bought Peter Cushing’s house and the house beside it. 2 and 3 Seaway Cottages, Wavecrest. That was a pretty address. I sold them both and moved to California. 2828 Hume Road, Malibu. Now, it’s time to head east. It’s Time.

I sold my house. Goodbye Malibu. I hope the new owners are happy here. It has been quite a ride up (and down) this mountain… literally and figuratively. This is where I buried my dog and this is where I will leave her. This is where the twins lived, this is the location of many spectacular parties, lovers and probably the worst decision I made in my life… to reply to Jake.   But there you go, it’s sold now. The furniture has been packed, the art wrapped and stowed in boxes. I am relieved.

I am only a few months away from having the gagging order lifted so I get to tell my side of the story… how another rich man used the police and the prosecutor to hide the truth.

Categories
Death Fantasy Fashion Gay Money NYC prison Queer

Trans Ambition

charles-james-gowns-by-cecil-beaton-vogue-june-1948

In the jail I was enveloped by the trans community.  They showed me the way.  Black trans women.  They were not entitled white girls, passing themselves off on the street like women born women. They were black trans women subject to everything a black women suffers (and more) on the streets of racist USA.  These women are considered worthless, trash, undignified.  I related to these people.  They taught me more than I had learned for decades.

This winter I will be wearing couture suits.  A jacket and skirt. Based on a Charles James classic.  I found a brilliant couturier to make them, one in dark green tweed and another in aubergine silk velvet.  They are interchangeable.  Deliberately,  I get four outfits for the cost of two.  A lady has to look after her pennies.

My hope?  To look like a lesbian geography teacher from an exclusive private girls school. I rather think I’m going to look like the chef from Two Fat Ladies, Clarissa Dickson-Wright.  I have no desire to look feminine.  Butch lesbians are far more attractive to me than pretty girls.  If I ever had a sex change I am sure to be a lesbian.

Without the power of the penis I am a free man.

I have, these past couple of years since I left the jail, submerged myself in trans culture.  My silly film about Jake became an audacious film about a trans woman and the men who chase her.  My desire to reprimand my ex became a beautiful treatise on my own trans curiosity.  One thing is certain.  If I am true to this path I will never leave the big city.  I will never live in Whitstable.

There is something about rotting pears on the pavement, wasps feeding on the smashed fruit that transports me to my hometown of Whitstable.  There is something about the occasional warm day in October when I hanker for my home.

Last week I had a serious meeting about a play.  I have not written a play or thought about the theatre for years.  This is an exciting  possibility once again.  I have no desire to direct.  NONE.  Write… yes.  Direct… no.

I met a young trans person yesterday.

There is a chasm between gay men and trans people.  My friend Our Lady J disputes this but my other less glamorous, non performing blue-collar trans buddies tell horrible stories of gay people and their rudeness and transphobia.  Bluntly, why should a gay man be interested in a trans woman?  Gay men sleep with men… not women.  However, out of their trans costumes some young working class non theatrical trans m to f are berated and insulted when they tell gay men what they are into.

If you are a young trans person where do you go to meet empathetic straight men?  Many young, transitioning straight men misguidedly think they can meet men through gay dating apps like Grindr.  They make their trans position clear.

He said, “I tell them I want to dress as a woman when I meet them, that it’s only going to work if I am dressed as a girl.  They tell me it’s not ok.  They let me wear panties but won’t tolerate anything else.”

I am taking him on a date this week.  He’s excited to wear a dress and paint his nails.  He says, “There are two of me, straight me wants to meet trans me and fall in love.”  That was very beautiful.

I met another white gay man in NYC, an undergrad at NYU, who condescendingly lectured me about trans culture.  He vehemently posited that any man who wears a skirt is transgender, that make up on a man is transgender, that drag is indisputably transgender.  That the word transvestite was like saying nigger or faggot.   He told me he wants to help his trans brothers and sisters at his university.  What help will he be?   I couldn’t be bothered to fight.  We had sex and I threw him out of my room.

Since I embraced this new path I have come to love my body.  No longer interested in what metropolitan gay men think I should look like to enjoy a full life.   I have been watching endless documentaries.   Paris is Burning versus Candy Darling.  The concerns of the former oblivious to the latter.

I am looking forward to wearing my new suit in the big city.  I’m excited.

Today transvestite (self described) artist, honored by Queen Elizabeth and the British Government, Grayson Perry writes brilliantly in the New Statesman about default man.  Read it here.

Categories
Malibu politics prison Rant Whitstable

Sheriff Lee Baca the ACLU and Me

So, yesterday.

I’m sure you want to know.

Firstly, I want to thank the ACLU for co-counseling my suit against the Sheriff.

They have worked for months on this case and they have every reason to believe in a positive outcome.

My personal suit separated from the class action.

I am suing the Sheriff’s Department for a considerable amount of money.

I arrived early at the ACLU office down town.  I met with my lawyers.  I watched the 30 or so cameras being set up from TV stations all over the USA.

Jennie Pasquarella spoke first.  A more eloquent speaker one could not hope to listen to.  A more brilliant lawyer one could not hope to meet.

Like all of the lawyers who work for the ACLU she is motivated by fairness for all.

She said:

The principle of bail is something so fundamental, that you shouldn’t be held until you’re found guilty.

I waited my turn.

I listened again to this startling fact:  The Immigration Department is mandated  to deport 400, 000 people a year from the USA.

This fact alone never ceases to shock and amaze me.  The implications, I’m sure, are not lost on any of you.

The last time I faced a barrage of press like that I was at the Sundance Film Festival.  It was all about me.

Yesterday I was representing thousands of the disenfranchised, the oppressed and the wrongly imprisoned.

In light of Jerry Brown’s veto of the Trust Act and set against the back drop of a recent, damning report documenting violence and abuse in The Men’s County Jail, this case could not be more relevant.

Sheriff Lee Baca has been effectively told that he is incapable of running a jail by the board of supervisors.

Humiliatingly the Supervisors, not the Sheriff, will find someone more competent to run the jail.

Within minutes of the end of our press conference the Sheriff’s representative disputed the charge that the Sheriff’s Department has denied bail to anyone because of ICE holds.

“If you are able to post bail — say it’s $10,000 — and you’re an immigrant from wherever. With or without an ICE hold, we accept that,” said the spokeswoman, Nicole Nishida.

An outright LIE.

A report by prison expert James Austin cites data from Baca’s office indicating that at least 20,000 Los Angeles County inmates, nearly all of them Latino males, were subjected to ICE holds in 2011.

Latino males arrested, held in the MCJ, forced to accept spurious guilty pleas and deported equals: ethnic cleansing.

Nobody cares about them.  Nobody gives a damn about undocumented workers.  They are treated like animals.  Even by my most (so-called) progressive friends.

Latinos spending their lives doing jobs white people don’t want to do, refuse to do in SoCal.  They are the real victims of the economic catastrophe.

During the good times, we turn a blind eye to these men and women working at our behest for minimal wages.

When things get bad they are thrown out like yesterdays trash, rounded up like cattle to satisfy immigration deportation quotas.

It’s the same everywhere, when things get tough:  blame the immigrants.

I heard my own mother blame Eastern Europeans for ‘taking our jobs’ back at home in Britain.

The Spanish-speaking press asked me: “Do you think Lee Baca is anti-immigrant?”

“You mean, do I think Lee Baca is a racist?”  I replied.  “Well, he is just part of the racist problem in the USA but he gets to be the executioner.”

In a country where most people are enslaved by debt, lack of education, obesity, religious/corporate ideology and hubris it is very easy to forget about ones own enslavement and think nothing of enslaving and demonizing others.

The primary reason I would never vote (if I could) for a second Obama term, regardless of his so-called pro gay marriage smokescreen (designed largely to melt liberal hearts) is his appalling deportation record.

The Obama administration’s deportation policies, which rely on cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities, have already been challenged in California.

Legislation that would have prohibited sheriffs and police departments from enforcing ICE holds in most cases was, as I have already written, vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown last month.

Barrack Obama has deported more people from the USA than any other President in this country’s history.

It goes without saying that the Gay media and my local Malibu newspaper will totally ignore this story.  I am neither pretty enough nor non-controversial for either to cover the story.

Even though it may be of interest to both communities.

Most gay men are unaware that if they fell in love with a non-American their state marriage certificate or their Foreign marriage certificate would mean absolutely nothing to the Federal Immigration Department.

Their husband/wife would risk deportation.

The gay men I know think that deportation happens to other people… you know… brown people.  Not people like us.

Those same gay men run the gay media.

Scott McPherson from The Advocate told me recently that he totally supported The President’s immigration policy and (after I explained to him what a drone was and who was being killed by them) he told me he had no interest in who drones were killing.

All Scott wants is marriage equality.  Apparently, only for Americans to marry other Americans.

You might think that Malibu is a liberal, open-minded place…. with all those rich über gays living down there on the beach… but I have endured more homophobia in Malibu than even my small home town village of Whitstable in Kent where one might expect the crushingly narrow-minded.

My Armenian neighbor was so vile about me and my young gay renter, her invective so shocking… it almost took my breath away.

So.  It has begun.

Where the runes fall… is none of my business.

Somehow the very act of laying ones self bare, open to all sorts of scrutiny, is a relief.

Regardless of the outcome, I am very happy to be of service to those who can least help themselves.

Categories
prison

MCJ Violence and Cruelty

Ivan

This is my deposition for the ACLU.

Reading it makes me nauseous. It infuriates me that incidents like this happened and continue to happen.

They are happening now in the MCJ.

The gay press, of course, are not interested in reporting what happens in our jails to our LGBT brethren.

White, gay elitists control our media and are paid by big pharma.

Our media know that the prisons are full of black and transgender people but choose to ignore it.

They, of course, are those with the least (perceived) sexual currency in the lgbt community.

Even my most liberal and informed friends think it is perfectly reasonable to say “I could never find a black man attractive.”

The gay press scarcely acknowledges the presence of black or trans let alone write about the way they are continually targeted by the police.

That, my friends, is another story.

I was recently introduced to a self proclaimed ‘champion of the gays’, a ‘spiritual’ gay with a huge blog following.

He told me yesterday that he was only interested in helping the gay community with his good works, that the trans community did not interest him.

His bare faced dismissal of parts of our disparate community galls me as much as the vile behaviors of the deputies listed below.

A good looking, white, young, gay man preaching love and kindness…but only to equally good looking…white…young gay men.

Here you go:

My name is Duncan Roy.

I make this declaration based on my own personal knowledge and if called to testify I could and would do so competently as follows:

I stayed in the Los Angeles County Jail system from November of 2011 to February of 2012.

I was housed at Men’s Central Jail (“MCJ”) in Modules 5200 and 5400, which are the gay inmate dorms.

Though I was able to be released on bail, I had to stay in jail because the Sheriff’s Department refuses to release on bail anyone on whom the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) has placed an immigration “hold.”

However, it is my understanding that immigration holds are only requests – not mandatory orders – that local law enforcement hold people for ICE for 48 hours, thus it was the LASD that refused to release me even though I could make bail.

While I was in jail, I witnessed numerous incidents in which deputies verbally abused, humiliated, threatened, and even physically abused inmates – particularly transgender inmates. In addition, we regularly were denied things like hot water and outdoor recreation time.

Processing into Jail

After I had been asked about my sexual orientation at the Inmate Reception Center (“IRC”), I was whisked away from the general population and placed in a light-blue uniform.

Those inmates, who stated that they were gay, were then taken to the Twin Towers Correctional Facility (“TTCF”), Tower 2. We were placed in a pod with other gay inmates, “green lighters” and those who were given a “K-6Y” wristband.

Inmates who are considered green lighters are targeted by other inmates for either participating with law enforcement, for snitching, or for being a gang dropout. Inmates with K-6Y wristbands had been charged with a sex crime involving a juvenile.

While I was in this pod, I recall deputies asking the K-6Y inmates how old they were and how old their victim was.

One inmate said he was about 28 years old and told the deputy that his victim was nine years old, the deputy said, “That’s disgusting!” Or words to that effect.

Another inmate said he was 22 years old and that his victim was 16 years old. The deputy said, “Well, that’s okay. I understand that. Anyone would.”

This type of questioning was not done privately, but in front of everyone.

After I had gone through IRC, I had to be assessed again for my gay status by the deputies who handled the “K-6G” housing.

There were about 50 inmates in this small room, Module 9400 with beds squished together.

There was also only one toilet for all 50 individuals to share. I was in this cramped room for about five days.

After about five days, I was transferred to 5200 where I was housed for the rest of my stay in jail.

LASD Personnel Repeatedly Verbally Abused and Threatened LGBT Inmates in the Gay Dorm

During the 90 days or so I spent in MCJ’s gay inmate dorm, I witnessed countless incidents of violence, humiliation and retaliation by LASD personnel against inmates as well as by inmates against other inmates.

There were several times when a deputy assigned to the module would escort a new deputy, one who had never been assigned to work with gay inmates, into our dorms and make us cheer for him.

For example, there was an occasion when Deputy Polovich brought in Deputy Gonzalez into our module. Deputy Polovich said to all of us, “Give it up for Deputy Gonzalez!”

All of the inmates inside the dorm then had to cheer and applaud for Deputy Gonzalez. Deputies would then tell the entire male to female transsexuals to lift their uniform tops to expose their breasts to Deputy Gonzalez.

I felt like this was not only humiliating for the inmates to be forced to applaud these deputies like we were circus freaks, but I could only imagine what it must have been like for those inmates who had to outwardly parade their sexual parts.

Hearing deputies use slurs and homophobic comments was quite common. I cannot begin to count the number of times some deputies used the phrase “faggot.” I certainly remember a few examples of deputies’ being particularly hateful.

For example, on one occasion Deputy Gonzalez was escorting the other inmates and me to the visiting area. He told us, “You faggots have a sick lifestyle.” He’d also said that he’d “cut off our cocks” and then we’d need to go to a different place.

When I was housed in Module 5200 a male to female transsexual named, “Rosemary” was transferred into my dorm. Rosemary appeared very feminine, had breasts and looked very pretty. Because of her appearance, she received a lot of negative attention from the deputies.

There were several occasion when deputies would bring other deputies into my dorm and would force Rosemary to roll over from her stomach to her back.

By doing so, the deputies would be able to see Rosemary’s body.

There was also one occasion when I saw Rosemary talking to another inmate about a deputy, Deputy Juarez. She was not aware that Deputy Juarez was standing behind her while she was talking about him.

He forcefully grabbed Rosemary and dragged her over to where the escalators were located. I heard him yelling at her in Spanish. I also saw him aggressively kick the insides of Rosemary’s ankles and then search her very roughly. When she came back to the dorm, I saw and she looked very shaken up.

There were also numerous instances when the deputies would threaten us for minute things. I saw the deputies take out their tasers and pretend to shoot them at inmates or hit their flashlights against their palm to intimidate us. It was quite unnerving to see this.

Deputies Pepper Spray and Physically Attack a Transexual Inmate without Justification.

I saw another incident of abuse occur when I was housed in Dorm 5200. A male to female transsexual named, “Sunny” was standing in line for her medication during pill call right outside the door to the dorm, which was open.

I heard Sunny tell a deputy that she didn’t get her medication. The deputy immediately pepper sprayed her in the face and then five other deputies rushed over to them and threw Sunny on the ground. I was watching the scene and Sunny didn’t attack, threaten, or spit on the deputy who pepper sprayed her.

Shortly after throwing Sunny to the floor, the deputies closed the door to the dorm, so I was not able to see what happened after.

Soon thereafter, someone opened the door between our dorm and the hallway where the incident had taken place. A female Senior Deputy arrived and interviewed the nurse who was passing out the medication and an inmate who was standing behind Sunny.

The nurse who was Asian and wore glasses was very upset that the deputies had reacted the way they did towards Sunny. She said that the deputies overreacted.

I was able to hear what the nurse was telling the Senior Deputy because it was conducted right outside the entrance to the dorm. It was also conducted not only in the presence of the inmates, but also in front of the deputy who had pepper sprayed Sunny. In fact, that deputy was about four feet away from where the interview was taking place.

Denial of Basic Necessities Such as Hot Water and Recreation Time

During the approximately 90 days I was in LA County Jail, we were regularly denied basis necessities and had to suffer through barbaric conditions. For example, there were significant problems with the plumbing, and for more than two weeks, we had no access to hot water. Work orders would be placed, however, I felt the way that the work orders were handled deterred inmates from making complaints. The reason why is because when the maintenance staff would complete a work order, all of the inmates in that particular housing area would have to be taken to a very cold holding area with no blankets and no property. We would have to sit there for almost an entire day until the work order was completed.

Also, trying to get outdoor recreation time was very difficult. I felt like the deputies were trying really hard not to give us this time. The deputy who would escort the inmates out to the roof would mumble incomprehensibly that he was here to escort us to the roof.

Even worse, if fewer than three inmates wanted to go to recreation time, the deputy wouldn’t take them. On a number of occasions, other inmates and I were denied the opportunity to go to the roof because there were not enough of us who wanted to go.

Overall, it was nearly impossible to go to the roof. One would have to understand the rubbish that came out of the deputy’s mouth and then one would still need to get more than three inmates to say they wanted to go for outdoor recreation for us to get escorted to the roof. Even when we did go to the roof, we did not get the three hours of time we were supposed to get or there would be other times when those who were allowed to go to the roof would be taken at odd hours, such as at 9 p.m. It would be incredibly cold but, the deputies wouldn’t allow us to take blankets to keep warm. It felt like the deputies would try to discourage us from having our outdoor recreation time.

I hereby declare under penalty of perjury of the laws of the State of
California and the United States that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Executed this 18th day of April 2012 in Los Angeles, California.

Categories
Auto Biography Hollywood prison

LA Weekly

Here it is…

This well written article…the meat and potatoes of the entire, sordid, event.

Love the picture…

Categories
prison

Jail Momento

Lee Baca's Autograph
Sheriff Lee Baca's Autograph

Categories
prison

Illegal Incarceration of Aliens

Things are moving rapidly.

My fight against the illegal incarceration of aliens at the Men’s County Jail in LA and jails across California gathers both support and credibility.

There will be a press conference during the first week of April hosted by NILC.

Follow me on twitter @duncaninla for further details.

Also, if this blog is emailed to you (1800 of you) remember that I often add and edit each post as the day unfolds.

Check into the blog for updates.

I will be Testifying at the LA County Commission on Violence in Jails on Monday April 16, 2012 at 9am at 500 West Temple Street 381BM.

And, most excitingly, I was asked yesterday to consider testifying before the senate in Washington.

Look out for interviews in both the LA Weekly and Newsweek during the coming week.

Meanwhile….

20120321-080150.jpg

Categories
prison

My Faith is Restored

The dog sleeps by my side, I worry that I might roll on him in the night and kill him.  Or, in a dream, I dismember him then wake up and he is dismembered.

As a very young child I worried that I had torn a dress to pieces that belonged to my mother.

I convinced myself that I had stolen the dress from her wardrobe, torn the dress, trying to make it fit me.

The shame of shredding it lived with me for decades.  One day, some time in my 40’s, I confessed to her.  I told her what I had done.  She laughed, the dress had been her sisters, she had returned the dress.

The woolen crepe feel of it, the silk lining, the dark blue flowers lifted like brocade on the darker blue surface.  The dream, the scissors, the cutting, trying to make it fit….me.

It was a dream.

You know that every word I write is being read by the police, by the brunette DA?  By the ‘victim’s’ lawyers?  They trawl this blog for evidence.  Did I just prove how ‘dark and creepy’ I really am?

In another dream the DA is wearing suspenders and a bra, panties (crotchless) a wet gash, slipping herself onto her much older husband’s giant cock.   She glances at the bible that sits primly on the bedside table and kicks it off.  Her ankle bracelet (an anniversary gift) catches the light, her Christian name written in gold.

Her children are sleeping in another room.  Oblivious.

These are the dreams I didn’t have in jail.  I could not dream.

Another marathon press session yesterday.  This time a fearless woman made it up the mountain.  Blond, slim, attractive.  I asked her who would play her in the movie of her life.  Jodi Foster.  Good choice.

I often wonder, when I am having an out-of-body experience, out of my life for a moment experience…what the hell is happening?

A four-hour interview.  After she left I fell into bed and slept deeply until Kevin arrived.   He chauffeured me into Venice, for dinner with Anna at Axe (where I once made a beautiful boy wear agent provocateur underwear and blow me in the bathroom…)  We ate everything on the menu: the flat bread and the crab and the boiled beef with polenta.  Anna drank a bottle of wonderful white wine, I envied her so much.  I wanted to taste it.  To feel the effect of the wine on my body and mind.  To take a few hours off.

When the sun sets, the nights are chilly, cold enough for a scarf.

After dinner a Mormon arrived from the internet.  We could not keep our hands off of each other.  I slipped my hands up under his coat onto his warm belly.  I kissed him on his lips.  He smiled coyly.  28 years in the closet, 28 years yearning for this.  Yes, he was the Mormon boy you see dressed in a suit wearing a badge, looking like a talent agent.

He’s out there experimenting, meeting men, feeling his way into a gay life.

At home we fell into bed and I found myself giving into him, becoming uncharacteristically submissive.  He came three times.  He didn’t lose his erection in between.  I couldn’t stop kissing him.  I made him mark my neck.  I made him bite me.

Sucking the spit out of his mouth.  The cum out of his cock.

The twins arrived home at 2.30am.  He had long gone.

The silent house.  I lay in bed and listened to my breath fill my lungs.  Enjoying the sensation of being alive.  A sensation I have had often since I left the jail.  I have been so alive since they shat me out of the MCJ. Walk through that door and you’ll be free.

The jail has restored my faith in humanity?  You wanted to know how so?

Because I met men in there, undeserving black men, paying the price with dignity. Because it made me re-evaluate everything.

(He brought me a bunch of hyacinths, the pungent fragrance fills the room.)

I have met extraordinary men and women since I left the jail.  Men and women who restored my faith in America. The USA.  Brilliant, humblingly brilliant minds working to free the men I knew (and men like them) from a barbaric life in an American jail.

This is the Newtonian ‘equal and opposite’ reaction to the life I had before I passed imperceptibly into my dotage, my serious…third life.

Picasso was hot, even when he was 70.”  he said.

The people I am meeting, the places I am visiting are so startlingly different from the life you thought I aspired.  I find myself in dingy offices down town.  Understanding obscure laws.  Recasting myself.  Relishing the next interview.  I am useful at last.  I am useful to them.  Useful for changing laws, illegal protocols…and people are listening.  I am being heard…it feels good.

You see what they did to Julian Assange?  They will try to do that to me.  They will discredit me.  They will try.  Scurrilously, meticulously, evidentially.  They will tell you that I can’t be trusted.  When the moment…that moment we have all been waiting for, the moment before the curtain rises, when the audience hushed, the lights have dimmed.

That moment is fast approaching.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
prison

Brothers, Sisters, Mothers and Fathers

Spent the greater part of yesterday removing redundant blog entries from this blog.  Bloody hell, what a waste of time.

It was frankly embarrassing re-reading all that shit.  All that fury, that indignation I had for him.  It was just so embittered and…not very well written.  Beware the curse of resentment!

From 11am-3pm I sat with a journalist discussing my ongoing legal story.  They are sending a photographer.  It’s a cover story.  The last time I had this much interest from the press I was making movies.  Now I am doing something for the greater good, I have been handed an oppertunity to help others and I am grasping hold of it.  Nothing will unseat me from doing the right thing.

I left something of myself in the jail. I left that Duncan who deserved no respect.

Do you understand that darling? Do you remember when I was serious, contained?  You found it so attractive?

Everything from my old life, pre jail has become irrelevant.  The artifice, the indulgence, the decadence…it was a worthless occupation.  Chasing infamy?  Even the places I used to visit daily are of no interest to me.  The people I know there, the people I knew…caught up in their own peculiar madness, their preoccupation with power and prestige.

I remind myself to be truthful, to be kind.

The people I have been meeting since leaving the jail, the activists, the lawyers, the human rights advocates…I am humbled by their brilliance, their focus, their dedication.

Lastly, as I was sitting with the fiercely intelligent man who interviewed me yesterday I remembered something about the jail that impressed me.  Something peculiar to the gay dorm, peculiar to that community of trans and gay men.

On the streets, elder trans women ‘adopt’ younger trans girls as their daughter.  These  relationships were strengthened in the dorm, references to ‘my mother’ or ‘my father’ baffled me.  At first.

Family connections emerged, not bound by blood but by commitment.   Young gay men needing advice, support, succor and council turning to those they respected.  Adopting one another as mother and daughter.  Father and son. Letting those about them know that familial ties now existed, that they were to be honored.

My son is fighting.  My daughter wants a dress. My mother has had bad news.  My father’s husband is being released.

As we ate together at night.  These ‘families’ helped each other practically:  feeding each other, sharing the loaves and the fishes.  Sharing the support, the love, the strength, the gossip.   That which may not have existed from real parents, from blood brothers, from those who we take for granted…from whom we were born.

Many young black men from Compton, Watts and Inglewood had spent their formative years co-opted into gangs.  The Bluds and the Crips.

Their coping skills would horrify you, you my dear readers…but kept them alive.  Murder, guns, retaliation, fighting to the death were common for most of the young black men I met.  Frequent.

On top of all that, against that barbaric backdrop they had to deal with coming out.

More of this later.

Categories
prison

Willing and Able

Since I was released from The Men‘s Country Jail earlier this month I have noticed changes, changes in myself, changes in others.  Even though I have been occasionally combative and resolute when writing here…this may not be the whole story.

The story is revealing itself, the narrative unfolding in ways I did not expect.

There was an occasion in the jail when, after I heard that the immigration lawyers I hired previous to the wonderful Esperanza Immigrants Rights Project had fucked up.  I felt really desperate and powerless.  Carlton, the 24-year-old House Mouse. sat on my bunk and, seeing that I was beginning to flounder, took me in hand and firmly reminded me that The Country Jail was no place for desperation.  He reminded me that if I gave into weakness I would either go mad or die.

He said, “There are too many personalities in here.”  I knew what he meant.  I had lived in Los Angeles for a long, long time.

The other inmates understood that I had a greater purpose for being there and yesterday that purpose became apparent.

Crawling back into life has been challenging.  I feel tender, as if my whole body is bruised. I feel my age.  I am quieter, less prone to irritation, grateful for everything, trying to be kinder.  Becoming vulnerable for all to see, not just those who are the closest to me…everyone.

I had lunch at SH the day before yesterday, saw friends from London who are here for Oscar week.  I saw local friends who knew what had happened but were either too polite or worried to ask details.  If they asked where I had been I blurted out, “I’ve been in jail for three months.”  Then I tell them to read the piece in The Independent.

I sat down with those who needed to know and explained the whole story.

I am not spending every day on the mountain, I am making the effort to live.  I am not making the same mistakes.

Last night we went to a charitable art event in Beverly Hills.  I bumped into Paul Haggis, explained where I had been, the experience of jail.  I told him about Carlton and the men I’d met there.  I’ve no idea why, perhaps because he is a director, I told him things I had not previously mentioned. I painted a more complete picture.

Paul said, “There must have been a reason.”

My jail friend Steve reminded me daily that I was in jail for a purpose, he knew that someone like me doesn’t end up in a place like that without a reason.  That reason is being made clear both on a micro and macro level.

Steve told me, “You can help these people.”  So, it looks like I may very well be able to help.

That purpose will be made clear to you soon.

When I have my ducks in a row.

What is it to be vulnerable, kinder?  What will I lose?  What will I gain?

The boys are here, living here.  Three of them, taking their responsibilities seriously.  Occasionally they clear up without being asked.  Yet, their mess that would have previously pissed me off, scarcely affects me.  Who cares if there are socks all over the place, piles of towels in the bathroom?

What does that matter when I am so grateful they are here.

The life I lived before I was arrested seems like another time, like another place, like a different me.  I am wondering who he was, what interested him, what in hells name I was doing?

I was wondering how he could have got himself into such a mess?  Then I remembered that I left that Duncan back in the jail, the Duncan who was scared of being seen, the Duncan that made unhealthy choices, the Duncan who knew Jake.

When I write about death and suicide, I am really trying to articulate what it is to cast off something already dead. I am not interested in dying.  I have things, suddenly and without warning, that need to be achieved.  Things that before I was arrested never occurred to me.

Am I killing that part of myself that has bedeviled me for so many years?  Can you understand that?  Can you see what I’m talking about now?

Don’t fret my darling friends.  I am emerging from this experience with a different set of principals, new standards of living and unusual priorities.

What was previously important is now worthless.  Clothes, possessions, jewelry, power and prestige.

In jail I learned to get used to the idea of nothing and in nothing I found something I never guessed existed: that very thing after which I had been hankering a whole lifetime.

In nothing I found a peace of mind.