Soon we will hear that the best way to keep children safe is to arrange marriages between the adult member of a trusted family and a child in the womb so the child will be set for life.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

During his 2017 swearing in for another 6-year term, the Sheriff of Bristol County Ma pledged to Trump, the new president, that he would have his inmates from Massachusetts help build the Wall on the Southern border. It was the first of a string of actions that showed he was desperate for #45’s attention, perhaps, with dreams of joining the administration in some capacity.

For his part, Trump began to either actively undo the hard won rights of Gays, Minorities, and women, or announced his attention to do so. 

Individuals and representatives of various Rights groups in New Bedford gathered at the Union hall on Pleasant Street and established We Won’t Go Back. Originally intended to be an umbrella with each group contributing to slow, if not completely stop Trump’s dismantling of rights, but it was clear from the beginning that with the heads of organizations ensuring their group’s mission statement and purpose were not reduced or subsumed, the occasional moments of tension in this regard morphed We Won’t Go Back to a clearing house through which one organization could either notify all of some activity or request help on a particular issue beyond their individual group membership list.

One night at a gathering of We Won’t Go Back, it was decided by consensus that because of the number of issues to be dealt with, those present picked an issue they would like to work on or a right they wanted to protect and gathered accordingly into small groups to begin the necessary work. Although the room could accommodate one large group, because of the need for space to spread out into multiple groups, some decided to meet on another day, while others sought a place to gather elsewhere, such as a home, and since one organization had its offices just around the corner, a member of that group suggested we walk over and meet there.

 One group did.

Having a meeting in that space did not establish that group as anything more than just another member of the group as was the city Democratic club members, church group members, and people with membership in a variety of organizations throughout Bristol County just as, having decided to meet in the closest pub with drinks would not make the bar anything more than a place for the initial meeting.

To avoid the leadership contention that choosing one group’s leader to be in charge might cause, this ad hoc committee chose to make decisions by consensus, and have rotating moderators of meetings settling on one permanently if someone seemed to run meetings better than others, but their control would only be for that meeting or those meetings and not beyond.

Committees were formed, such as communications and legislative, and they could organize themselves as they saw fit, and would make reports at meetings and run ideas for actions before the group for input and approval.

Members were free to write letters to the local news outlets or, in my case, write our independent blogs, as long as they did not speak for the group unless this was previously decided on. Most letter writers addressed the Sheriff issues according to their backgrounds and, perhaps, the mission statement of the group they belonged to outside of the sheriff group.

This lack of a command structure allowed members to freely express ideas and possible activities spontaneously at meetings and without the filter of having to first have an idea run by others, moderated, and then presented with the chance of its having been improved but, more often, subject to the biases of those reviewing the idea, so it was not in action what it could have been. All ideas were valid ones that upon introduction to the group could be modified from the original idea, and not a case of an idea having been modified by a select or self-appointed few before being presented for consideration.

Eventually we needed a name for Identification and, after a little discussion, the name Bristol County for Correctional Justice was chosen.

BCCJ was an ad hoc committee of community members who may or may not be affiliated with organized community groups who wanted to use their skills, both known and yet to be discovered, to improve correctional justice in the county.

I was asked on more than one occasion to speak on the radio, take the interview when we gathered at the Mass State House, and whenever we were somewhere and the media showed up. As I am a former school teacher with activism experience and had been a spokesperson for other groups and causes in the past, people felt comfortable with me talking to the press while others held signs and made speeches. I was pushing to get others to do this as someone in the group, other than myself, might have an undiscovered talent that would make them a better spokesperson and because, if the public only sees one person always talking, it makes the group look like it is run from the top down and not by consensus, and there were leaders and members when it was all members no leaders.

If they only see the same people, the public can rightfully conclude that they are all there is and the group loses clout as, and especially if one is known as the person with a megaphone who shows up places and yells a lot is one of the usual faces, it is seen as the usual suspects and like a throbbing pain you grow used to, they are there constantly but of little influence, unnoticeable in the main.

Eventually BCCJ was making an impression and with this recognition came the usual cancer that infects any such organization.

If and when BCCJ was successful in replacing the white supremacist MAGA sheriff who spread lies about immigrants to justify his bigotry, either the group, even its faceless behind the scenes members, would be commended for its work, or one person could be praised for the successful leadership of their followers.

Danger came when one member organization saw BCCJ getting attention on its own, as it deserved to, which took the spotlight away from that organization, and BCCJ was seen as competition to a social justice monopoly and needed to be annexed.

Someone else was getting good attention and producing results in bringing the sins of the sheriff to light, and this could not stand.

Slowly the change began.

When the person we had chosen to be the permanent moderator of the meetings had to pull away for other commitments, one person, in explaining the exit, began the meeting as she had the notes that had been prepared for it by the previous moderator.

That was the extent of that person’s leadership by practice.

 However, starting with the next meeting where that person just assumed the position of moderator and kept it for subsequent meetings, the group began being informed of decisions made that unnamed, unappointed or elected deciders were sure the group would simply accept, and, because one of those wanting their name on a plaque was the head of a local social justice organization with some members in the group, this dynamic was employed as we suddenly found we had an unelected board and a leader who were making decisions for the group and presenting them as done deals that just needed rubber stamps.

Established actions and gatherings had their form, purpose, and location changed at the last minute by an assumed member of leadership simply dictating the changes on the day as we gathered. All input was dismissed for the “better idea” which in one case resulted in our demonstrating for ourselves as part of the group stood at a set location and the rest had an automobile rally-in-motion driving around the block basically creating a situation where we were cheering on our own demonstration from a standing or driving position. The last minute location change was because the new location would be recognizable in pictures, but ignored the member who lived in the neighborhood and who, being familiar with the area, was aware of the traffic pattern and, therefore, the best location to be seen by the most people.

Those who did not go along with this new approach found that they either became less connected within the group as they were not accepted by those who decided they were in charge, or more overtly dismissed from the group based on falsehoods spread behind the scenes, but not to all members so as to give a veneer of acceptability to the ghosting as is seen in documents so related.

Within time, the group was slowly being connected to the other group who had offered the initial meeting space so that as I sat in a radio studio preparing to be interviewed about an upcoming activity, the host announced that I was a representative of BCCJ, an offshoot of that other group.

It was not, as that group was a member of BCCJ and not its founder, sponsor, or head.

I received emails from the other group announcing some of BCCJ’s planned activity but in such a way that BCCJ was part of the other group’s action.

While BCCJ was establishing its reputation and credibility, this other group took every opportunity to subsume it like a hungry amoeba.

There was a series of apologies for the times this happened, but it was becoming obvious that the apologies were pro-forma as the incidents continued.

A self-appointed leader even self-bestowed a title that appeared in emails.

The result of this was that anything that could have been done effectively was prevented or limited as all activities were now controlled by a board with strong ties to an organization which at least locally seemed to want to be not the top dog in the fight for justice but the only dog in the fight with the results limited to what they would do, promote, and support, whether or not it was the best approach.

With the new control, consensus died.

For 6 years people, individuals, offered their talents for a greater cause and while these were working purely for the cause, the eventual self-appointed leadership were using their work to increase their own value.

They found the group useful and they could benefit from the group’s naivete.

Who in a group of people with good hearts attempting to make the lives of others better would suspect that one member would desire self aggrandizement and made sure when all was said and done one name would be specifically mentioned and all the hard workers reduced to that person’s “people” as if this person had organized the group and had successfully led it from day one and deserves all the praise for the work of others that this individual, falsely representing themselves as the leader and the real power, was an equal part to the others. 

I want to set the record straight.

The lion’s share of the work done to replace the former sheriff was that done by the members of Bristol County for Correctional Justice. It is a betrayal of these people who had worked so long and hard that anyone would claim their work, and it is abuse to have done so while they thought they were all in this together as equals. 

It was not “So and so and their people” who brought about the changes. It was the people among whom was “so and so”.

It was not some well established group with experience and connections who had to lead people by the hand. It was grassroots, independent people coming together and working together for a greater good .

These people were there from the beginning and are no one’s people:

Maria Fortes, David Ehrens, Linda Haskins, Eileen Marum, Lindsay Aldworth, Betty Ussach, Kathy Williams, Julie Kiechel, Amy DeSalvatore, LaSella Hall, Jean Stripinis, Susan czernicka, and some whose names over time slip my mind.

These people are why there is a new sheriff. 

These are individuals and, regardless how some may want to see them, no one’s people.

This was BCCJ.

This is pre-revisionist history

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The present internal debate as to whether a Drag Queen or a Trans person threw whatever the first thing that was never actually thrown to start the rebellion that actually began on the street with Storme Leveray, a Drag King, who often sat outside the Stonewall to watch out for “her boys”, Screamed at the crowd to do something when the bar doors were closed with the police and patrons inside and things became obviously serious.

With Christine Jorgenson as the only popularly known Transgender individual and Drag Queens being commonly known through movies like Some Like It Hot, celebrities like Bugs Bunny, Milton Berle and others who would occasionally perform in Drag, and with bars specifically featuring Drag shows in large metropolitan areas like Jaques in Boston, Transgender people were largely an unknown even in the Gay Community and, this might seem odd, even among many people who assumed they were Drag Queens as that helped fulfill them as people, but in reality were Transgender people as uninformed about the whole thing as the general population because there was no way to get the information.

Men who dressed as women were Drag Queens or Straight men who were into transvestiture which, while known to their wives, was not known in public. They did not perform. They simply dressed up and went out with other Transvestites, or in the company of wives looking like two ladies out on the town.

In a binary world, anything gender was either male or female.

Transexual, Transvestite, and what would eventually be recognized as Transgender were at the time the same thing, men wearing dresses, so they were all Drag Queens in the common eye.

In today’s more open world this lack of knowledge may seem odd, but we are not dealing with these times but then. 

The T is a relatively recent addition to GLBT. It was not always there, and TERFs still object to it.

Like the majority of society, the Gay Community was binary. Straights had males and females and so did the Gay Community in its Gay men and Lesbians. What else was there?

Modern understanding of gender throws confusion on the make-up of the Stonewall crowd and analyzing the event and participants decades later can further confuse things if the assumption is that the people were aware then of what we can be aware of now. Things before 1969 and for some time after are not those of today.

Knowing they could not justify arresting targeted groups without a real reason too often, and really having no real basis for a ban on Drag other than it is an assault on a  weak concept of one’s own masculinity, if they couldn’t outlaw it, cities could at least pass ordinances to make it more difficult to do Drag and would force Drag Queens to go elsewhere other than the Gay Ghettos in the cities they were forced into by the society who found fault with their living in them, or get arrested.

In some places by law, a Drag Queen, no matter how glamorously dressed or for what occasion, had to wear three articles of male clothing that could be inspected if during a bar raid the ID handed over to the police did not match the look of the person who handed it over. For obvious reasons, those transitioning or those who lived their true lives without the benefit of an income to make re-alignment a possibility would wear those three articles as they would be indistinguishable from Drag Queens.

According to a friend who was in the Stonewall Inn that fateful night, the drill there and in other bars was for the men, the obvious ones, to line up on one side of the bar and Drag Queens, Transfolk, and cisgender females on the other, and ID and further, sometimes more intrusive, inspections would take place. One could assume the first area for bodily inspection if the police officer chose to go further than just seeing the required three articles of clothing.

Thus, being in Drag was not the offense, not having the three articles was, and that was a stronger excuse for arrest. 

It was also a constant silent form of harassment because, while going out and having a good time without having an encounter with the police, they were in your head as you had to be aware it could happen, deciding your evening according to where it most likely it might that evening.

Since the Stonewall, Drag Queens have often been the leaders in the struggle for Gay rights right up front, and sometimes the quiet worker bees who might be unaware that everytime they go from their car into the bar to perform in a show and then go back pout to the car, even in an assumed to be safe Gay area, it is a brave act and that of a role-model, not necessarily for Drag, but being true to self. 

That is why, with red state legislatures passing bills as if there were a problem beyond one dreamed up for political purposes, young people will no longer

In my day we did not have the rights and had to fight to get them. As bad as that was, it was positive in that we were making progress and could see the fruits of our labor.

However, now, those same people who, like a pitbull holding onto your butt with its vice grip, just as with a woman’s right to choose, the far religio-political right will not let go of its resentment that we Gay people were slowly getting the inalienable rights with which we were already endowed with by our creator, who they name God, and will not be happy until they can take them away. They did pretty well taking back voting rights and desegregation.

Like the granddaughters of the women who were finally allowed their right to choose what was best for their own bodies have had that existing right, one that had always been theirs taken away, as it hurts those who fought for and now see their daughters losing what they had gotten for them, older Gay people are seeing how our lives became better from our hard work and how that is being reversed so our spiritual progeny will be where we had been but had escaped.

In both cases the legacy of one generation to another is erased by the kids in the class who always reminded the teacher there was supposed to be a quiz.

When the younger generation asks about the past and its attitudes, how we survived it, and what were the homophobes thinking, we older folk can inform them that if they and their friends and daily just sit by, they are about to find out experientially.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.