I'mnot pissed off at you, Bill. I just dislike you immensely because you're constantly talking shit and starting public confrontations like this here one you're stoking right now.
You know, "ghost" doesn't have copies of the email exchanges I've had over the YEARS with Riddile, so maybe she ought to see them.
Ok, I'll get right on it! I'll just hack into your computer and read everyhing you got, ok? Or maybe you could publish those emails?
Anyway, I do think there's a difference between hands on staff and people like Riddile. I think he was among those execs for whom we had that special rule about cleaning up our language and hiding the rough stuff. I think that's because they needed certain players like him and they needed for those ones to remain clueless, just like other outsiders. I don't think he understands what he has done or what he is doing today by running his schools like Stalinist reeducation camps any more than my dad did your yours.
I don't think you guys did a bad thing at all by getting some information into the hands of his students. I hope a good many of the more serious, freedom minded ones among them will get together and publicly challenge unconstitutional, repressive school policies and practices and I hope they'll hook in with students all over the country in doing the same.
However, that doesn't describe the majority of highschool kids who will engage in something like a protest. Most of them won't crack a book or even read the student conduct code. They just like the idea of dissing an authority figure cause chicks dig it. That's what you might call an adverse side effect and I think it's worth discussing the risk/benefit ratio and other ways of communicating.
One alternative means of communication that I've tried to kick off is what I called the Cassandra Project. I think it was a pretty good idea.
Before I got involved in investigating the Program proper, I was involved as an armchair activist in drug policy. I was stunned, really mind-blown to find so many familiar names--all of the most notorious lunatic drug warriors--directly involved in the program, DFAF and close affiliates. I mean, I knew they were lunatics, and I'd said to myself a hundred times "these turkeys sound just like the fucking parents group!" but I was speaking rhetorically and to myself.
I tried to get Mapinc and a couple of other reform groups to make room and give some focus to DFAF and the Program and to promote our issue. I was stunned and very much demoralized to find that the fuckers got to them first; they refused, flat out, because they'd already jumped on the (coerced)" treatment, not incarceration" bandwaggon, funded and supported in large part by ASAM, on who's board sits none other than Bobby DuPont. See, a fair number of drug policy reform leaders are members of the Stepcraft coven. Seems odd, I know, but there it is.
So I'd like to, one day, see if we can organize a couple of ppl to perform mundane editorial tasks to facilitate an ongoing letter writing campaign as Mapinc has done. (Mapinc is not the same organization as MPP, they don't even like each other much, just to be perfectly clear)
It happens spontaneously sometimes, but not often enough in my view. And it's based pretty much on the Media Awareness Project.
http://mapinc.org/ It's pretty simple, really. We just agregate news itmes related to our issue, tack on contact information for the publishers (email addy or url for the editorial dept, for example) and encourage people to spot and send us those articles, read them and respond to them as the spirit moves you. Once that got going strong for mapinc, they found that they also had a stunningly comprehensive history and research resource on the whole drug war story as it evolved. I still use their archive from time to time to verify names, dates and other details when I'm composing letters or silly forum posts.
Anybody interested in discussing this or actually doing this, please take a look around their site and see what you think.
As always, an ye harm none, do as thou will. I'm nobody's leader. What does it matter to anybody if I don't jump on your train? This isn't a competition.
