Imagine you’re in prison for a victimless crime. You didn’t hurt anyone. You just broke one of the government’s rules. Maybe you drove after drinking alchohol, violated parole or got caught with cannabis. Now imagine you are in Phoenix, Arizona, the 6th largest city in the US. You’re under the thumb of Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Maricopa county and administrator of a self-admitted concentration camp in the desert called Tent City. This is a place where the drug-sniffing dogs eat for $1 per day and the prisoners for just 50 cents.
Two days ago, the temperature in your tent hit 145F (63F). As Brad Spangler at C4SS notes, roast beef is cooked at 140F. This is torture. What is going on in Maricopa county?! Many of the prisoners are just awaiting trial. They haven’t even been convicted yet. The bail is simply too high for them to get out.
Where is Amnesty International? They first weighed in 14 years ago. Where is the FBI? They’ve got Arpaio under investigation. Where is your sense of outrage? Where is the action behind that?
Cooked Alive? Not on My Watch. And You?
I don’t know about you, but that’s my limit. Cooking people alive for victimless crimes? Not on my watch. No way. I’m prepared to go to Arizona with my family and work full-time on freeing our brothers and sisters from Arpaio’s Ovens. Here are a couple ideas:
Let’s Get Creative
- Set up a 145F “Arpaio Oven” in Phoenix (Tagline: “Our ovens are hotter than Hitler’s!”) and invite members of the public to spend some time there. See who can handle it the longest. Give out prizes. Publicize it widely. Get lots of follow-on media attention. Raise seed capital to make it happen from fellow libertarians. When the cops shut it down for being unsafe, it will simply be the icing on the cake. Can you imagine they themselves saying it is unsafe?
- How to free our brothers and sisters from the Arpaio Ovens? Go there, document it, talk to the prisoners’ relatives, write a report, deliver it far and wide, lobby the decision-makers bad-ass-Gandhi style, hold vigils outside the camp, do publicity stunts like the idea I mentioned above, issue press releases. If none of that works, start the civil disobedience, general strike and such.
Let’s Make it Happen!
I hope somebody in the Phoenix area picks up these ideas or runs with their own ideas. Arpaio is vulnerable. A strong effort could not only push him out but also grab great media attention for libertarian and anarchist ideas.
I’m willing to travel to Phoenix with my small family (wife, 5 yo son and I) and work on this but I need a fellow libertarian or anarchist to put me up. We don’t need a lot of space and will pay our share of utilities. But for me to rent my own place just wouldn’t be economically sustainable. I would need funding for certain parts of the project but that’s down the road, after (and if) someone in Phoenix puts us up. If you’re willing to do this, let me know before July 9th. I’m prepared to work on this full time.
7/7 Update
I want to work with you to make Jan 2012 Honor Human Dignity Month in Phoenix and elsewhere. Let’s prepare talks for Agora I/O “Laozi” (Sep 23-25). Let’s prepare plans. Let’s meet there and let’s put Arpaio in a 145F oven of unbendable demand for human dignity. IOW, I’m going in 6 months.
20 replies on “Send Me to Arizona to Free Arpaio’s Political Prisoners”
Let me know how I can help. Cash? Explosives? What tactics would have been considered too extreme to free the Jews in Nazi Germany?
I’ll email Ernie’s number if you need it.
George, I’ll put the word out around here. Your always welcome to stay with me, but my house is only a ratty 2/1, near the airport and Tempe/Phoenix border. My roommate is a paleo-libertarian friend willing to give up his small bedroom and stay in living room if you and your family can make it work.
Calling drunk driving a victimless crimes is like firing a gun into a crowd, miraculously not hitting anyone and saying it’s not a victimless crime…but I see where you’re steering this.
No one will care about the oven. Not when there’s men and women lugging a full set of gear around Iraq in those same temps. In fact, this is something that Joe points out time and time again.
The best thing to do now, I think, is to continue to press on about corruption allegations, genuine victimless crime and Tent City being used as a for profit organization.
Arpaio is not made of Teflon. Just like Gotti, he can fall.
Bond the prisoners out. The use of a SSN creates a FEDERAL CONTRACTOR status-go to the LABOR DEPARTMENT web site for the clarification. File certain GSA forms Look to Title 48–Federal Acquisition Regulations System for all the correct forms and the MILLER ACT.
Appoint the declaring JUDGE the FIDUCIARY to zero out -0- all monetary claims and erase all records of the prisoners case. Possibly use IRS FORM 56 for FIDUCIARY appointment.
Following possible GSA FORMS:
1. Optional form 91 (Release of Personal Property),
2. Standard form 28 (Affidavit of Individual Surety),
3 Standard form 24 (Bid Bond),
4. Standard form 25 (Performance Bond),
5 Standard form 25A (Payment Bond)
Additional GSA forms if it is STATE or a FEDERAL prison
This is for educational and entertainment puposes only.
Do not have examples of success with this method.
Not legal advice.
And always plenty of prayer!!!!
“This is for educational and entertainment puposes only.
Do not have examples of success with this method.
Not legal advice.
And always plenty of prayer!!!!”
trollolol
Mike, something like 20 billion FRNs were spent on A/C for the empire-builders in Iraq. So let’s give that piece of Arpaio propaganda a long, long rest.
Update:
I have multiple offers of lodging that would cause a lot of inconvenience to the host. Doesn’t seem sustainable. I have a second-hand offer that sounds like a week, but I need at least a month to make all the required travel worthwhile.
I’m also thinking I led with my mouth here and need to do a lot of background learning on Arpaio and make connections with victims and their family members before going. So If it doesn’t work out for this time, I may try again in 6 months.
Still working on it. Thanks everyone!
I live in Arizona, and I will put you up –for free, in your own bedroom with your own bath, — provided you answer a few questions:
— What do you plan to do if (more like “when”) you are arrested?
— Have you ever organized anything of the scale you suggested?
–Have you reached out to the literally hundreds of community organizations which actively fight Arpaio and offer help to those who are his victims? Specifically, besides going out and making a spectacle, what will you actually be doing to help the victims of this brutality?
I’m also thinking I led with my mouth here and need to do a lot of background learning on Arpaio and make connections with victims and their family members before going. So If it doesn’t work out for this time, I may try again in 6 months.
This sounds a lot more reasonable and intelligent to me than just diving in not knowing whats what.
– If I’m arrested (and I plan to take pains not to be until/unless the time is right), I’ll not cooperate and go on a hunger strike.
– I may not have a sense of the scale, but sure I have organized lots of stuff before, incl years of English classes in foreign countries, two long-lasting small businesses with hundreds of long-term customers, a particularly difficult 20-year high school reunion, an online conference for 80 speakers and hundreds of participants, a dozen or so spur-of-the-moment online mutual aid projects and a national protest at approx 30 airports across the country for Opt Out Day 2010. I’m working on a national pamphleting project right now.
– On the one hand, yes, I need to make contact with all those folks already working on this before going. I need to do more groundwork before making the trip. On the other hand, I may be doing different things than them and any collaboration could be organized on a just in time basis.
– What will I do to help? Considerably more than “make a spectacle.” These things need to be documented in text, audio and video. The resulting media needs to be put in front of decision-makers, including the public. I am an excellent writer. In college I documented the history of a steel factory in Chicago that was decimated by corporate malfeasance and political corruption over the course of 40 years or so. I interviewed workers, lawyers, politicians, did FOIA requests and more and received honors for it. I am an IT guy and can handle all the tech involved.
Once the documentation is there, again, it needs to be put in front of people. This can take the form of documentary screenings, pamphleteering, press releases, radio appearances and more.
There is a special fear in Phoenix (I get the sense from afar) about crime and undocumented people. That needs to be overcome. I know people who can film short commercials. We can then raise the funds to get them run. I’m talking about commercials that can humanize everyone involved and get beyond this fear. That’s just one tactic. But this fear needs to be overcome. It will take a lot of patience, hard work and time. I have all that available.
Once this foundation has been laid (or almost simultaneously), we need to start taking concrete steps to aid the torture victims. This can start with post-torture support in the form of food, clothes, housing, therapy, etc. We can solicit volunteers. It can grow to sousveillance, throwing ice bags over the walls, monitoring police DUI checkpoints, finding ways to let people know where the police are waiting for them, lobbying for de-monopolization of the police and much more.
A special effort needs to be paid towards dividing Arpaio’s base of support. Special emphasis on all the money these lawsuits are costing is a good start. Appealing to their religious and other values is another good tactic.
Finally, we can talk about civil disobedience, blocking the entrance to the prison, sitting in at council meetings, taking over Arpaio’s office, citizen’s arrests and such.
It needs to be a campaign of sustained energy so that it’s in front of the public constantly and they can understand why we’re doing it when/if we finally get to the last stage.
The most important part is to set goals at the very beginning. What must we achieve. What will trigger a cessation of the high energy part of the campaign.
I’m an organizer and a doer. I am a decent communicator. I am confident I can make some things happen but of course I need resources and teammates.
We have had success with appointment of FIDUCIARY and BONDING CASES. I am not against the Sheriff. It is the system that is has been corrupted.We have not had a prisoner willing to learn how to be free yet. So yes we do not have a evidence to free a prisoner from the wharehouse-yet. That is why it is for educational purposes only for now. But, we do have success with a few other cases in Arizona courts where we have won. Do not assume anything unti you can ask the right question. Only fools committ without seeking GOD’s guidance. Educational Purpose only.
I’ve started asking around to people and groups that might be able to either help or point you in a direction. I can’t speak for them, but there are a lot of connections between activists here and in Arizona.
Hopefully, if you do get out there, I can shoot down to collaborate at some point(s). Phoenix is less than three hundred miles from Vegas. Arpaio is one of the worst, and most corrupt, tough guy acting scumbags out there.
Cone and get it. You will be in jail too.
I’m glad, Juan, that you’re able to admit that good people with consciences can end up in the concentration camps too. That’s the first step. I congratulate you.
Thanks Kelly!
You’re missing one big point.
In many cases, pre-trial detention is *WORSE* conditions than for people who were already convicted.
Accept the plea bargain, get nicer conditions. What a nice scam!
Great point. That was certainly true in my case.