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Earth First!: A Brief History

Posted by Klaus


“Resist much. Obey little.”—-Walt Whitman—taken from The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey, one of the Spiritual inspirations for Earth First!

Earth First! or the Earth Liberation Front was first formed in 1979. It is an environmental activist group that came together in the Southwestern United States. This dynamic group even has it’s own magazine, called the Earth First! Journal and the slogan “No Compromise in Defense of Mother Earth” is on the front of its ongoing publication. Information I leave out can be found at www.earthfirstjournal.org and their main base of operations, as far as publication is concerned, is at P.O. Box 964, Lake Worth, FL. 33460.

Donations and subscriptions can be obtained through the Earth First! Journal at the above address. Gift subscriptions for prisoners are welcome. Part of their philosophy is “the growth of the movement and to advance the creation of a world free of speciesism, classism, ageism, racism, sexism, violence, exploitation and oppression.”

I have been a subscriber to their Journal for over 12 years and find information about acts to save our Mother Earth within its pages. Feeling called to action by the books Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey, a group of activists came together to form the nucleus of the movement.

Here, in their own words is what they said about their origin and mission:

“EF! has long identified with the train hopping culture and radicalism of the roots of US history. From signing the instruction manual on ecodefense with the moniker of long-time wobblie Bill Haywood to publishing frequent articles on boycotting industrial civilization, Earth First! authors have taken much from and given much to the traditions and cultures of hoboing and sojourning. The Journal office in Missoula during the late 1980s was a hotbed for dropouts, low baggers, and hobos, just as the office in Eugene, Oregon, became a gathering point for tree-sitters, free-staters, and barricade builders. By the late otties, when the Journal had moved down to the border, it seemed like the spirit of Sonora never tired of throwing desert vagabonds, prophets, and seekers into the whirlpool that surrounded the Journal office in Tucson. Such is the way of radical organizing, and life lived on one’s own terms. As Audre Lordes put it in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, “For some of us there was no one particular place, and we grabbed whatever we could from wherever we found space, comfort, quiet, a smile, non-judgment.” While we seek constantly to grab hold of some notion, faint or strong, of Earth, our place in the world, our territory and terrain, we find ourselves drifting between worlds, our lives weaving greater and greater mandalas of insides and outsides in the sands of rapidly approaching times.”—-Direct quote from EF! Collective

Environmental activist Dave Forman, ex-Yippie (Youth International Party) Mike Roselle, Wyoming Wilderness Society representatives Bart Koehler and Howie Wolke, and the Bureau of Land Management employee Ron Kezar pledged, “No Compromise in Defense of Mother Earth!” as they journeyed from the Pincate Desert in Northern Mexico to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

What brought them together was a total sell-out by mainstream environmental advocates during the “RARE II” (the Forest Service’s Roadless Area Review and Evaluation) planning process. These activists foresaw a giant revolutionary movement to preserve multi-million acre ecological areas all across the United States.

This group borrowed from the notions of author Edward Abbey. As they traveled toward Albuquerque “Suddenly Foreman called out ‘Earth First!’ The next thing you know” quoted Howie Wolke, “Roselle drew a clenched fist logo, passed it up to the front of the van, and there was Earth First!”

Earth First! is now active in over 19 countries with a main focus of environmental protection through Direct Action. Each year they have a gathering of the group called the Round River Rendezvous, which still takes place in a different wilderness area of the country. By going to their website, you may find where their gathering is.

Recently, according to a report on You Tube, the 2011 Earth First! Round River Rendezvous ended when both Rising Tide and Earth First!ers occupied Montana Governor Schweitzer’s office and demanded that he withdraw his support for the Keystone XL Pipeline and the megaload shipments. The pipeline would move oil from the tar sands to international markets and the megaload shipments would bring construction equipment, built in Asia, to the tar sands. Everything would pass through Montana. The tar sands project is regarded by some scientists as the most destructive industrial project on the planet.

From time to time ELF is infiltrated by snitches who rapidly become known and their pictures and information about them is published in the Earth First! Journal so they cannot hurt other group members. I use the term “group members” loosely because the organization is fragmented for its own protection.

Earth First!’s proposals were published (and still are) in their periodical, Earth First!, The Radical Environmental Journal which is informally known as Earth First! (We’ll Strip Mine the other Planets Later) Journal in a very tongue in cheek manner.

ELF would pound spikes into trees so chain saws would break when they hit the spikes. Also, a common practice to protect wilderness areas were tree sits. The first tree sit took place on May 23rd, 1985 by Mike Jabukal. The U.S. Forest Service law enforcement official Steve Slagowski arrived and he and other agents arrested Mike Roselle, Ron Huber and other people who were sitting at the base of the tree to support Jakubal, who was up in a nest he had built in the upper reaches of the tree.

The first tree sit lasted only one day. When Jakubel came down at night to look around, he saw that the rest of the forest around his tree had been clear-cut and officers who were hiding in the area arrested him. But the tree-sitting tactic was adopted by Earth First! and since that first tree sit, there have been many successful actions.

From 1987 on, Earth First! adopted many Direct Action tactics to prevent the destruction of wild life habitats or the rape of wild places. Because ELF was so active, this change attracted many new individuals to Earth First!, many of whom came from anarchistic political backgrounds and other areas of the counter-culture.

Tre Arrow, an affiliate of Earth First!, according to a report by Kaccey Montoya on the internet, lived on a ledge on the Portland, Oregon’s U.S. Forest Service Building for 11 days. His message—“Are you willing to love and respect your mother, Earth?” Tre Arrow was born as Michael Scarpetti in 1974, according to Wikipedia.

Other activists kept joining and one of them, Judi Bari, welcomed the new intense direct-action and leftist direction of Earth First! In the early 1990’s the Earth First! movement headed toward anarchist political philosophy even more strongly than before. In ’92, as Earth First! moved toward more “criminal” acts to protect the Earth, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) truly came together.

The Earth First! Journal became to spokes piece of the organization. There was a clear division between those who published the Direct Actions and those who took part in them for the protection of the journal itself.

The defense of Mother Earth took two directions—the legal ones, i.e. Protests, timber sale appeals, and educational campaigns—or civil disobedience—tree sitting, road blockades, and sabotage of industrial and forest cutting equipment—know as “ecotage” by some Earth Firsters who stated that it was necessary to defend Mother Earth.

The “law machine” stepped up to stop the different factions of Earth First! During a non-violent tree sit, activist David Chain was intentionally killed by loggers. Then, in 1990, a bomb exploded in Judi Bari’s car, almost killing her and also injuring activist Darryl Cherney, who was in the car with her. They were both arrested by law enforcement officials who claimed that “they were transporting the bomb when it accidentally exploded.”

Judi Bari claimed that if she were transporting a live bomb, it would be suicidal to place it under her front seat. The case against Bari and Cherney was contested and it was dropped due to tainted evidence. After that Bari sued the FBI and the Oakland Police. Despite the fact that Judi Bari died in 1997 of cancer, the lawsuit continued and it resulted in a 2002 jury verdict awarding her estate and Darryl Cherney a total of $4.4 million. 80% of the damages were for violation of their First Amendment rights by the FBI and the police who tried to discredit them in the newspapers as violent extremists even though all evidence was contrary to the event.

Even at this time the bombing remains unsolved. In March of 2011, a U.S. federal judge in California ordered the FBI to save the evidence in the bombing event. The FBI was planning to destroy all the evidence, which would lead one to believe that the bomb was planted by the legal authorities.

In recent years the U.S. government has classified the Earth Liberation Front as a terrorist group. Many Earth Firster’s are in prison with lengthy sentences. Every Earth First! Journal has a two page spread dedicated to the Earth First! Prisoner Support Project, a prisoner and post-release support group for earth and animal liberation political prisoners.

The fight to preserve living conditions and endangered species continues as the growth of industrialization and population growth continue to destroy our Mother Earth. Ask yourself: what can you do to help our only home, the planet Earth.

(Part Three) A Controlled Dangerous Substance Act

Posted by Klaus


(Dean, his wife Brenda, their friends Billie & Chrissie are all in the holding pens in Orange, New Jersey. The police are trying to get Dean to turn over his connection, offering freedom with lesser charges for everyone else if Dean turns the trick for them. In the cells, a conversation is taking place.)

“Well, it would get us off the hook. They’d let us go. Chrissie will lose her job at Sandoz if these charges stick,” says Billie.

“I think you should do it. None of us will ever say a word about it after. It will be just like it never happened.”

Dammit! Says Dean. Why did fucking Mickey have to turn us in?”

“How do you know it was him?”

“It had to be. They knew we had the pills and how many we had. They were waiting for us. It was a set-up.”

“I could kill that punk.”

“We have to get out to do that. So Dean, what are you going to do?”

There was a long silence. Then Dean shook the bars for the detectives to come back in. After an hour the gate clicked and Irish and D’azeo came back.

The police had no idea that it was a pharmacist. When they found out, they called in the State Police to assist. Dean was alone in the holding area. The others had gone home and he was set-up to make the buy at 1:00pm that day. It had been a long night.

It was a jailhouse breakfast. Coffee with the taste of metal and a cold fried, dried egg sandwich with crusted ketchup. Dean’s stomach was floppy and he ate very slowly. The roll that the egg sandwich was on stuck to his teeth and he moved his tongue around the rubber paste that it made in his mouth. He wanted to get high.

“How does it feel to want, asshole?” he moaned inside his head.

The car door clicked and inside himself there was something talking that he did not want to listen to. Out of the vehicle. There were candy wrappers in the street and they made little rattling sounds as the chilly wind blew them across the black asphalt.

Dean went into the pharmacy first and Sam, the pharmacist, did that grimace that was his kind of smile and, hand resting on his little gun hooked on his belt, placed the bag of pills on the counter.

Dean was counting the money and the door to the drug store swished again and Irish was paying the girl at the other register for cigarettes. The Judas witness.

“Did you put in the hypodermics?” Dean asked mechanically because he was told to ask that question.

Sam’s head was bobbing up and down on his stubby fat neck and he croaked, “I’m throwing in the spikes for free this time. Are you interested in any morphine shakers?’

“Not right now. Just give me the Quaaludes and I’ll be back another time.” Dean hoped. Dean wondered why Sam couldn’t see the screaming in his eyes.

Money in Sam’s hand and Sam pushing the bag at Dean with Irish watching out of hard-corner eyes that see everything and it was the longest moment with Sam looking at him and the air felt wrong around all of them.

They were outside. Bag in hand. Irish smiling at Dean and telling him it will be all right. Dean knowing that it will never be all right again.

In the car. Surrounded by detectives laughing as they drove away in the black Judas car passing the bottle of pills to one, to the other, to the other.

“See. Easy. Now we just process the papers and you go home and wait for us to call. You do us right and we’ll do you right.”

Later Brenda picked him up. She had some Seconals(barbiturates) that she had picked up from a girl friend and Dean kept eating them until he passed out. When he woke up his neck was all stiff and he was laying half on the couch with the dog’s head resting on his leg. His leg was numb.

Dean sniffed the air and the stench of diarrhea dog hit him and the fluff in his throat from the pill hangover made him gag. He tried to get up to run to the toilet but his leg went out from under him and he fell. He did not get to the bathroom on time.

Dean was frightened but the thought of the morphine shakers drove him on. He had borrowed Chrissie’s car, a red Barracuda, and swung it into the grocery shop parking a short distance from Frost Drugs. The wind felt cold on him and he noticed the wetness under his arms as he stiff-walked across the lot and the street and into the store. Sam stood behind the counter, hand on his gun.

“You didn’t call.”

“I thought it would be better to just come in. Last time you mentioned the shakers.”

“The trouble with you guys is that you think. Leave the thinking to me. Next time call me or I won’t know you. Ever again.”

The thought crossed Dean’s mind that soon Sam will wish he didn’t know him. But right now there was the business of the morphine.

“Sorry,” Dean said. And waited.

“There is one hundred of them. They are very old. I’ll charge you one dollar apiece for them but you got to take the whole bottle. That’s very cheap. I know what they are worth on the street.”

“I’ll take them.” Dean pulled out the hundred plus ten. “And throw in ten hypodermics.”

Suddenly Dean’s bowels lurched upside down and he felt as if he had to go. Dope sickness never forgets. He tightened his sphincter and prayed that he could make it back to the apartment.

Back at the apartment. Sitting on the toilet. Dean leaned over to the sink and twisted the faucet for the hot water and filled the cup. He unscrewed the small cap from the bottle of morphine shakers and dropped two into his hand. They had a slight grayish color.

He pulled the slide from inside the syringe and dropped the tablets into the narrow barrel of the U-100 insulin syringe. His hands were shaking and he dropped the slide. Picked it up from the bathroom floor and slipped it back into the barrel of the disposable injector. He shook it and the pills inside it made it sound like a poor quality baby rattle.

Dean put the tip of the spike into the hot water and sucked air into his lungs as he pulled the top of the syringe to suck up the water. For a second the pills were moving in the water and he shook the device and the pills dissolved. Clear and clean.

Dean put the hype on the edge of the sink. Yanked his belt out of his trouser loops and put the end through the buckle slipping it up his arm to just above his elbow and tightened it like a tourniquet. He tapped the veins in his “pit” just below the elbow and they stood up as if they were yearning for the shot as strongly as he was. He visualized tiny mouths opening just above the veins and the image made a smile break out on his face.

Dean tapped the needle into his arm. He felt the little pop as it pierced through the fibrous flesh above the vein from so many metallic excursions come before and a tiny spot of blood appeared at the base of the barrel. He drew back on the plunger. A plume of blood inked into the water and he licked his dry lips and pressed down on the instrument. He had left a small amount of air in the syringe and he could hear the bubbles popping in his veins at shoulder level and then the rush hit him and his eyes drooped closed. He wilted like a waterless flower in the hot sun. (To Be Continued)

(Part Two) A Controlled Dangerous Substance Act

Posted by Klaus


(Dean, Brenda, Billie & Chrissie have just been set up by Mickey & Viola, who they thought were drug buying friends. Detectives Irish & D’azeo, two of Orange, New Jersey’s most corrupt dicks busted Mickey & Viola and had them call Dean to bring over two hundred Quaaludes. Promised a little extra money, Dean complied and Brenda, Dean’s wife, and their friends Billie & Chrissie came along for the ride. They have just been surrounded by police on Mickey’s street.)

Suddenly the pills in the pants of Brenda were a lot bigger than they were before and it was the hole in her stomach opening wider than the space it was in that made her chest pull together and the shouting and lights caused her to shut her eyes.

“All right, all right, who’s got the pills?” said the man with a t-shirt on him that said, “Beep Beep your ass.”

“What pills? What are you talking about?” squeaked Dean who was so frightened that he actually felt like he was going to vomit but he knew he could pull this off because they didn’t have a warrant to search them. He was wondering how there were so many cops all at once on the street and how they knew to ask for pills. Suddenly it was all quite clear but it was much too late for revelation to be of any good.

“Listen to this,” said a big swarthy dark-haired cop with a black leather vest over a white dress shirt without a tie, as he waved his gun in the air, “what pills, he says, har har har” and he pulled out a bag of marijuana and threw it onto the dashboard of the car and shined a flashlight that was in his other hand right on the green herb in a plastic bag.

“Look here,” the dark-haired cop yelled. “Possession of marijuana. Let’s take ‘em out, book ‘em and search ‘em.”

A big black cop jerked open the door of the car and grabbed Dean by the neck and yanked him out with Dean’s mind stuttering like his mouth wanted to do but he couldn’t make a sound with his tight throat and Brenda started crying and Billie was yelling as they cuffed him and Chrissie saying, “Jesus Christ, we just went along for the ride. That’s all, just along for the ride.”

The thought of the charges of possession of heroin down at Seaside Heights kept chasing the bravado from Billie’s mind. As the police pulled him to the Judas car he remembered the scene on the beach like it was yesterday. The wind had kept blowing out the matches as he tried to cook the heroin in the spoon and Dominic was supposed to be keeping the peek and finally he had gotten it cooked, drew it up and stuck the spike in his vein. His life in the dropper as the red blood sprayed up the glass tube was the only thing that mattered and he looked up when he heard a sound and the two dicks were looking at him and Dominic, who was cooking his own dope instead of watching, and the guns in the police hands. There was only one thing to do and he squeezed the bulb on the pacifier hard and the rush hit him just as the cop kicked him in the side of his head and he spun into the sand face down. There was a ringing in his ears and the sand in his mouth was mixed with blood. Billie thanked God that he had been able to get the shot into his vein and the last thing he saw before the darkness spit into his eyes was the two cops kicking Dominic as he lay on the sand.

When Billie woke up it was night and for a minute he thought he was blind. Three weeks later they let him out on bail that his father had put up and he and his father drank beer together the entire drive home.

Dominic’s parents took him to the Synanon therapeutic community in California after the arrest. After two years in Synanon Dominic had come home and talked about being “cured” of his addiction there. One week later he was shot into death by overdose in the doorway of a condemned tenement in Newark, New Jersey. The needle hung, filled with dark red clotting blood, from Dominic’s arm.

Billie knew it was going to be one hell of a show in front of that Jersey shore hanging judge with pill charges added to his head too. If he ever got out of that court.

The swarthy dark-haired cop leaned into Dean’s face and said, “well, Mr. What Pills, how the fuck do you like this, huh asshole? You are going to jail and whoever has the pills better hand them over right now or that person will take the heavyweight even though we know the pills belong to fuckface here,” pointing to Dean.

Dean turned to Brenda. “Pull ‘em out and give ‘em to me and I’ll take the weight,” and he loved her more than his freedom in that moment. She reached into her spot dry with fright now and pulled them out and Irish grabbed them and turned to the dark-haired cop and said, “Well D’azeo, it looks like paydirt for us and prison for these assholes.”

D’azeo turned to them all and said, “Well I guess you all go down for possession with intent to distribute and that’s that. Bring ‘em all in and process them for Newark Street Jail.”

Irish turned around and said, “Well, you know, I hate to send these sweet girls to that jail. Now if we could get a little co-operation from Dean here, well then, things could be easier on his friends.”

They put each of them in separate police cars and they scattered into the night. Four cars, two cops and one culprit in each car. Alone in their heads with the mystery of the darkness pissing fear into the wild monkey terrain of their minds.

At the station they lined them up at a desk with cardboard and ink in front of them, unsnapped one cuff and pulled their hands to the front of their bodies and re-snapped them again and then fingerprinted each of them making sure to twist each finger to the maximum expression of the joint.

Snap off cuffs. Wash hands. Lock up. Men in one cell, women in the other. Cells facing each other.

“We got the records on Billie here.” The big Irish cop stood in front of the cell with D’azeo, who smiled with big teeth stained by tobacco. “I guess you’ll be going away, eh boy? Unless you can talk your boy Dean into turning a trick for us and giving us his connection.”

The cops looked at Dean. “See. You got the fate of your friend Billie in your hands. Eh. You can keep your mouth shut and Billie goes for a long time for your drugs and his girl and your wife go to. Or else you can give us your man and we’ll let Billie, Chrissie, and Brenda go with a slap on the wrist. Just a get out free card from us to them. And you’ll be the only one charged with possession with intent and then we’ll be sur and let the judge know you helped us.”

Dean felt the snakes turning in his head. He did not want to be a rat, but he felt the world was tilted off its axis and they were offering the best he could get. He didn’t know what to think. He felt his honor was on the line.

He thought back to a week ago at the pharmacy. Old Sam the pharmacist had come out with the bottle of pills and showed him a picture of a big fishing boat.

“What do you think of this boat?” Sam had croaked at him in that familiar frog voice as he stood there behind the counter with his little gun and holster strapped to his belt.

“Nice boat, Sam,” Dean had said.

“Ya know how I got it?” Sam growled with a big grin on his gnarly face. “From you guys. You bought it for me. I’m gonna retire early on the money I make from you junkies.” And he laughed and laughed and the empty spot in Dean’s stomach pushed at his ribs and made his lungs small. Dean pushed them money over the counter and walked out with the drugs.

“Maybe we should let these assholes alone so they can think, huh?” said Irish.

“You give these guys a lot of credit,” D’azeo turned to Dean. “See you in five, fuckface.”

And they left the cell area slamming another barred door that double-locked the cell space. Dean, Billie, Brenda & Chrissie began to discuss their dire situation. (Continued In Part Three)

(Part One) A Controlled Dangerous Substance Act

Posted by Klaus


There was Dean Levy and he was counting the Quaaludes and he kept losing the count at around fifty or sixty. It was beginning to make him mad and his wife Brenda came over to help and dropped the coffee on his lap and he jumped up.

“Come on. Watch out with that, huh,” Dean’s voice whined at her.

Chrissie Bishop and Billie Sky were laughing at them and bumbling around the room. Every time Billie said something to Christine, she would say, “What, what, what,” over and over because she was so high she couldn’t hear.

The dog Conan woke up and started snuffling around the door and looked up at Dean and then squatted. It was diarrhea and it was mixed with blood.

Brenda yelled, “Dammit Dean, didn’t you give Conan the hookworm medicine?”

She stumbled to the cabinet and pulled it open. The medicine was there and she took it down from the shelf. She opened it and dropped two caps into her hand. Dean gave her the finger, smiling at Billie and Billie laughed hard into the kitchen air. Chrissie had the paper towels in her hand and was wiping up the pool of brown mixed red from the floor and Brenda watched with wide eyes as Chrissie’s feet just slicked right out from under her and she managed to hold the towels above her head when she fell.

The mess in the towels was running down her arm and she was swearing. Everyone broke out laughing and Conan ran into the living room and hid behind the couch.

Dean lost the count again.

Brenda went over to the dog and opened the mouth of it. She dropped the caps in and rubbed his throat.

Billie helped Dean make the count right and filled two envelopes with one hundred pills each. There were seven hundred or more still in the jar that they had picked up from Sammy at the Frost Pharmacy in East Orange earlier that day. Which means, between selling close to seventy-five in the afternoon to Jon, who was a lawyer practicing in the District Attorney’s office in town, they had, between the four of them, eaten at least twenty-five of the Quaaludes.

They had to make a delivery. None of them were really in any shape to go out but Mickey, who was a regular customer, had called and he was in begging mode.

“Dean, Dean, I just can’t wait until tomorrow. Please. I’ll kick in an extra ten if you can deliver tonight.”

Dean, cash registers clicking in an otherwise dysfunctional mind, heard himself saying, “That would be per hundred, am I correct?” and the deal was sealed.

As fate would have it, more than just that deal was going down. Listening at the end of Mickey’s hook-up, grinning madly at each other, were the Orange, New Jersey’s finest undercover mad dog detectives who, at the most inopportune time, had come in on Mickey and his “pinch” (girl friend), known as Viola, whilst they were in the midst of selling some pills to one of the dicks.

Selling drugs to cops was bad for business. Unless, of course, they were your friends. Unfortunately for Mickey and his old lady these cops were not their friends but they certainly offered what appeared to be a deal that seemed quite reasonable at the time.

“So all you got to do is call the man for us and arrange for him to bring you two-hundred pills and we’ll let you guys slither on the sales charges and only press for the possession,” the pasty-faced Irish cop hissed at Mickey. “You know what a big difference that will make to the judge and you’ll have us testifying not to send you away. Your girl-friend is real pretty and she would have a rough time down at the Newark Street Jail.”

The detective named D’azeo snickered. “I’ll bet she’ll be the only white chick there, haw haw haw.”

Viola was crying by now and she said, “Mickey, Mickey, don’t you see that we have no choice?”

Pasty-faced Irish smiled and patted her gently on the shoulder as he breathed beer-breath in Mickey’s face and said, “You got a smart girl-friend. I hope you are as smart as her.”

“Haw haw haw,” laughed D’azeo. “I don’t know. It seems like they’ve been thinking about this so long. I really don’t think they want to help us. Let’s just take them down. It’s Friday night so they’ll be stuck in jail for the weekend.”

He turned to Mickey, grinning like some dogs do when spoken to with a bone in the air waving above their heads, “You’ll have a bigger arsehole after a weekend in there. Never have to worry about constipation again, har har har.”

Viola sobbed uncontrollably and Mickey had wide-spinning-like-a-rabbit-in-the-headlight eyes. He caved and took the phone that Irish held out to him. Mickey called Dean.

Dean was at the wheel and Brenda sat next to him all Quaalude loving him with her hands on him in places that were too numb to know the difference and he grinned and watched the lane lines move in the road. The wad of pills pressed Brenda in her wet spot between her legs and she wiggled around lighting a cigarette between the lips on her face that tingled with half-feeling.

Billie and Chrissie in the back seat of the big Chrysler moved into each other and her tongue moving in the back of Billie’s throat as he moaned and slid his hand into her unsnapped jeans and she made the sexing motion with his hand slipping into her sweet.

The lights of the road spilled ahead of them as Chrissi spilled into Billie’s hand and she reached for his and Brenda was so moved by the noise in the back seat that as they turned the corner onto the street where Mickey and Viola lived she reached into Dean’s shirt and began to play with his nipple and——–

The lights were all around them. Shouting. Beer breath. Irish eyes not smiling and guns in their faces and blue lights on spin and Dean swallowed his gum when Brenda almost pulled off the nipple on his chest as she whipped her hand away and Chrissie pulled back from Billie so fast that her breath was still hot as she pulsed empty and closed and Billie was coughing for breath because he knew that he was in big trouble. (To Be Continued)

Borderlands: The Breeder (Conclusion)

Posted by Klaus


(In the last episode Patricia, a captive of Joseph, was being led into the pleasure room of the Kaliedoscope Eye Bar by Garter, an Elvish Rat breeder, who wishes to trade two Elvish Rats for the young dark girl, now owned by a man named Joseph who desires the Elvish Rats.)

They had entered the pleasure room and Garter uncloaked the cage. It was a two-compartment cage with a main lock and an inner and outer cage. The first cage was immediately accessible when the lock tumblers were tapped. There was a small Elvish Rat in one compartment and two full-grown Elvi’s, as they are known on the street, in the second compartment. A door with a tie-lock kept the two larger animals separated from the tiny one.

Garter reached into the cage with a synthetically gloved hand and grabbed the half-grown Elvi by the neck as it raged at him. He pulled a metal ball peen hammer out of a satchel and rapped the Elvi right between the eyes. The hammer penetrated its skull and a high-pitched whine filled the room. It seemed to be too large for the creature that emitted it. Joseph had looked into the cage at the other two Elvi’s and they were standing with feet that seemed to be locked to the cage bottom but they rocked to and fro in unison and their eyes were locked on Garter. Their throats were moving but Joseph could not hear any sound coming from them.

Joseph looked at Patricia. Her eyes were on the Elvi’s and she was rocking as if she heard a strange song with the same rhythm that moved the furry creatures with glowing eyes.

Garter spoke softly to Patricia.

“This,” Garter said as he cracked open the bones of the Elvi with a small metal instrument, “is where the marrow comes from. You, Patricia, will be infused with fresh marrow. This is the most powerful drug of all.”

Garter twisted a dial on the tube connected to the sac.

“The control is here. Only a small influx is needed. You will enter the realm of a permanently flowed being with just a trickle of the marrow. Even a half-flow at this stage will mist your mind and send you out of reach forever.”

Joseph watched as, with a special tool that put forth a hot beam, Garter efficiently scraped the interior of the Elvi’s bones and a loose, moist powder fell onto the table. Soon there was enough to fill the sac and the bulky man took a funnel and the sac swelled and looked as if it would burst.

Patricia watched the two living Elvi’s. Garter hit her head with his large, hard hand and she dropped to her knees in a daze. Garter looped a cord around her hands and lifted her small body to the table next to the cage and the dead Elvi. He opened a small black leather bag and took out stone-honed cutting tools. Garter pierced the neck of the dark girl and the blood pulsed out for a second until Garter plugged the hole in her neck with a tube, spinning a combination lock and sealing the hole in her neck with a cauterization tool.

At this moment Joseph could watch no longer and left the room.

Patricia could feel the dull pain but the humming sound in the room made her able to bear it. Garter was adjusting something in her neck and it was rubbing her flesh—then it was still. Garter made a small twist of the dial. Patricia came to full awareness when the first trickle of the flow hit her. It was a warm feeling and the humming became sharper and more intense. She sat up and looked at the two Elvi. Then she looked at the man who had eyes that spit foul light into the room and saw a bladed tool near her hand. First she used the blade to cut the cords on her wrist. It was as if the humming was instructing her and Patricia, with hands that never moved so fast, held the surgical tool tightly and sliced the throat of the big man who was leaning over her.

Garter grabbed his neck as if to try to staunch the blood, which sprayed about the room and he began to lumber about with small heavy steps. He opened his mouth to yell but his vocal cords were cut and the only sound he made was a hiss that emanated from the widening cut in his throat. He fell against the table and reached for Patricia but his hands hit the cage instead and it crashed to the floor.

For a moment the humming stopped. The cage door snapped open and the two Elvi leapt from the cage. In a nervous gesture, feeling high anxiety because of what had just taken place, Patricia reached up and twisted the dial on the poli-stirex tube and the gap was wide open. The marrow flowed freely into her and she swayed with the power of the hit and then dropped to the floor.

There was Patricia, eyes wide, falling away from the world as we know it and into total communication with the Elvi. Garter’s life was spilling out onto the floor as the two Elvi moved towards Patricia. Joseph, hearing the clatter, entered the room and stopped in shock. For the first time in his life, he was too frightened to move.

Patricia saw the world with new vision and heard the song of the Elvi and, for the first time, totally understood what they were singing. She knew her name was no longer Patricia—the Elvi leaned towards her humming her true name. They called her Yemaya and they leaned toward her loving her with sound and fury.

The Elvi hungered and sang to the dark girl, now called Yemaya. She spoke in the Elvish tongue and called to Joseph, no longer afraid of the pathetic man. Joseph moved towards her like an automaton, unable to resist her call, just as she was unable to resist the call of the Elvi.

Joseph hungered for marrow and the two Elvi leapt into the air tearing at Joseph’s throat. As he fell, he knew that he was food for the Elvi hives. The Elvi tore into his body. They ate of his flesh while Yemaya watched radiating approval to her new friends.

Joseph slipped into the void as he fed the appetites of the Elvi. His eyes were opened forever. The Elvi, when they were done feeding, climbed the arms of Yemaya and rested on her shoulders. It was time to go.

Yemaya opened the door from the back room and walked out into the main room of the Kaliedoscope Eye Bar. Some of the patrons of the bar swore, later as they told the tales, that the Elvi and the dark girl shimmered with rainbow light and floated a few inches above the floor as they walked out into the street.

Others said that all they saw was a skinny black girl holding a gold chain in her hand, flanked by two snarling beasts that leapt around her while she ran barefoot into the street. Some said that the Elvi rode on her shoulders.

There were some that say she opened the door and walked out of the bar. Others say that she traveled through the door and it blew apart after the fact. None will deny that the door ripped from its hinges and splintered in the street. On one thing they all agree. They all saw rainbows and then were stunned by magic.

Borderlands: The Breeder (Part One)

Posted by Klaus


Patricia turned and looked back at the pale man with hate. Her eyes trailed along the gold links of the leash that he held in his hand that connected her to him. She wanted to spit in the street but restrained herself because she knew that Joseph, the master, would beat her if she did. Joseph had eaten onions and eggs that morning and the foul taste of him and his semen lingered in her mouth. Patricia knew his diet much too well.

Joseph let his mind wander as he ambled slowly behind the little dark girl. Today would be a good day. He was going to meet a direct connection of the source of what was known as the “marrow of life”. It had been 23 years since the virus had struck the world. The only way to stop the progression of the virus was to ingest flake marrow, related to opium. No antidote was ever found. Heroin, morphine and methadone had become almost impossible to find.

In the early days the hospitals and pharmacies had been looted and the armed militia of the city, formerly known as the police, had taken control of all the previously legal narcotic dispensation centers. The underground drug runners, always at odds with the militia, consolidated their power also and two opposing camps were created. To survive, the people went to one camp or the other.

There were hardly any citizens left. Those who controlled the drugs ruled. Suddenly a new substance appeared and it was introduced by a ruthless group of strange men. It was called “the marrow” and it did anything the narcotics did and some said the dreaming was better. These men called themselves “Breeders” and only appeared in the city on rare occasions to make secret drops. It was said that for the right price one could purchase the key to the source and become a Breeder.

Joseph was on his way to meet one of these half-men and his mind whirled with excitement. He had brought Patricia, his slave child, because someone had informed him that these half-men had an overwhelming attraction for these children and, very often, they could be a powerful bargaining chip.

Patricia was his favorite of all the children. Joseph could sense that she did not care for him at all and that made her all the more exciting. Patricia, the dark girl, was feeling that strange sense of nostalgia that came over her as the drug wore off. Her feet felt like they would slip through the walkway. At times like this Patricia would imagine that her skin was becoming thinner and that she was beginning to see into her body.

They passed a dark alley. Joseph jerked her chain and pulled her into the shadows. He whipped out two ampoules of marrow, uncovered the injector and plunged the spike into his arm. He gasped as the marrow hit his nervous system and pushed Patricia to her knees and poised the other ampoule over her neck. Patricia reached for him as he pierced her.

The inky blackness around them moved like a gelatinous substance as they shuddered together on the cold cement in the alley.

Garter carried the cage cloaked by a black cotton cover. Strange mewling sounds occasionally issued forth from the cloaked cage. Garter hissed impatiently when he arrived at the Kaliedoscope Eye Bar and saw that his potential breeder surrogate had not yet arrived.

Garter was finding it extremely tiring to care for what they called the Elvin Rats. The anger and sorrow that emanated from the small beasts was overwhelming and, with constant exposure, wore his nerves thin. Many breeders, if they did not use the marrow, finally went berserk and began killing every living thing they came in contact with. After two to three hours of slay-rage, they would turn their weapons upon themselves.

Garter was immune to the virus and did not use the marrow. He saw it as a sign of weakness to indulge. He had, however, developed a unique way to ingest the marrow but it was in the experimental stages. He hoped Joseph would bring the pretty young dark girl with him. Two Elvin Rats would be the price of purchase and then Patricia would be his. He had a flow-tube and a sac waiting for her in his med-kit.

When he entered the bar the Elvin Rats in the cloaked cage went wild. There were dragons that were close to the final stages of the addiction to marrow (called Meat Stage) scattered throughout the establishment.

Garter ordered a drink and sat in a corner. A high-pitched humming filled the bar and everyone looked at the source. Garter flipped his overcoat from his bulky body and the patrons saw the weapons strapped to his belt. He drank with one hand and rested his other on the handgrip of the Ruger.

Then the eerie sound of a dragon filled the air and a man hurtled out of the bathroom spraying saliva and watery excrement everywhere. He was in end stage. People leaped for cover. Garter whipped the pistol out of his belt and fired three times. The end stager leaped into the air as the bullets struck his head. His body slammed into the bar and he fell to the floor. He twitched in spasm and then lay still.

Once in a while a foolish person would stiff their connection for the marrow. A hot shot would change them immediately into end stage within thirty seconds or less. This guy still had the needle hanging from his neck.

Garter reholstered and sipped his drink. One of the patrons of the bar rifled the dead man’s pockets and handed the pouch to the bartender. The bartender spilled the pouch on the bar and examined its contents for a minute. Slid some packets over to a husky young boy at the end of the bar and the boy grabbed the dead man by the legs and dragged him out of the bar and rolled him into the street. The boy returned and took a mop and bucket and swabbed the area.

The door to the bar swung open and a dark girl on a gold leash entered followed by a pale white man with scaly skin and glowing eyes. It was Joseph and Patricia. Before the door closed behind them Garter caught a glimpse of three reptilian creatures tearing at the dead man in the street.

Garter held up two fingers in the air and the bartender scurried over. Garter stared at the dark girl and felt his mouth fill with saliva as she approached. Joseph watched the large man, Garter, with small dark holes for eyes aim those sights at Patricia and he knew he had bargaining power. He sat down and motioned the dark girl to kneel at the table.

Patricia’s stomach churned as she watched the two men. They had their faces so close they were almost touching noses and they hissed at each other like snakes. Suddenly she noticed the humming and looked at the cloaked cage. Captives. Like her. She felt as if she knew them and yet she did not even know what they looked like. Patricia wanted them to hum for her.

She shut her eyes and thought into the cage. There was a light touch and a promise of things to come. A song began in her center mind and then—-

A rough hand was shaking her and hot fetid breath slapped her nostrils.

“Come,” said Joseph. “You will meet your new master in the pleasure room at the back of the bar.”

Patricia stood and felt the blood rushing through her. She was beyond fear and yet not beyond hope of redemption. The two men led her into the back and the other patrons of the bar watched them go and no one spoke. Then they turned back to their drinks. Patricia heard someone laugh and then the door to the back room closed behind them. (To Be Concluded Next Issue.)

Let’s Re-Imagine America

Posted by Klaus


If Barack Obama stood up this election year and said, “I will not take any Wall Street money,” he could possibly win the election by a landslide. That’s just a conjecture. One of the wonderful elements about the Occupy Movement is that everyone is a leader.

Right now, close to 50 million people in the U.S. are in poverty or right on the edge of it. Democracy is hanging by a thread and those in power are gutting the Constitution because the House and Senate are listening to the big money people.

The so-called Patriot Act is stronger than ever. Even United States citizens can be disappeared. All the elements to create a fascist police state are in place. Remember, in a democracy, the one thing we have left is one-person, one vote. And all over our country different states are trying to make it more difficult for people to vote while corporations are declared to have the same rights as individual people.

Who has more money—an individual person or a corporation? Well, that’s a no-brainer—of course a corporation has more money. A corporation is a conglomerate of greed-driven individuals that want to keep their riches and will do anything to make that possible.

Predatory capitalism has been happening across the board for over the last 30 years and has been growing at a phenomenal rate while 17 million American households are now “food insecure.”

When a person comes in to get Food Stamps, he/she is faced with a mass of paperwork—13 to 15 pages to fill out—while their stomach is growling and their children are crying for lack of food. Why is it that we can’t help the poor but always have more money for weaponry?

When people start to slip into poverty, there should be a ladder and someone leaning over to help them up that ladder—but instead—when people start to slip—there is a greased chute and piggy hands shoving them down.

Did you ever wonder why employers now check credit records of prospective employees? If they find their credit records are poor, they won’t hire them. How absurd! People are willing to work but because they NEED money, they can’t get the job! What’s wrong with that system?

There is not a war on poverty—there is a war on the poor! When you start to fall, the system kicks you lower. In 1968 the minimum wage kept a person/family 30 percent above the poverty level. In 2012, to have the minimum wage equal the buying power of the past, it would have to be over $15 an hour—and it’s not even close.

You know, when I was in that voting booth in 2008, and I saw Barack Obama’s name there I cried with joy as I filled in that black oval. I had hope for the first time in over eight years after I watched helplessly as George W. Bush thrust us into two wars our country could not afford.

He and his Congress were spending money destroying other countries while America was falling apart. And when the great financial collapse and mortgage fiasco hit in 2008, no one gave money to the poor—they gave money to the rich. Of course, why should the people who really need the money get fed; the giant corporations had their mouths open for more even as their stomachs were fat with gathered riches?

The government put the poor up for sale. If we don’t rise up and complain vigorously, we will be sold down the river. Which is exactly what is happening in today’s American empire. Corporate America is sitting on $2 trillion of cash; they are recording record profits at our expense, while the people of America hunger for a decent meal and a place to live.

Look at it this way. If a town in North Dakota was freezing and the oil company in the town was sitting on billions of gallons of oil waiting for prices to go up while people froze to death, what do you think would happen? Why, the people of that town would rise up and take that oil so their families could stay alive.

That’s the position of the United States of America right now. Just look at what happened in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit and people were shunted off and filled the Mississippi Coliseum. Mostly people of color by the way. No water, no food, no medical supplies for days, when W. Bush’s America could have been flying in all those necessary supplies.

But the truth of the situation is that the Abyss of American Slavery still exists in the minds and hearts of much of white America. Those people of color in the stadium were expendable in the eyes of our corporate plutocracy. Why save the poor when the rich can just vacation in hot spots all over the world?

The poor in this country are more than bought and sold. They are sold out! The younger you are in America, the more likely you will be living in poverty in the future if the current greedy-corporate-driven trend continues.

It doesn’t have to stay like this. One person, one vote. Occupy America. It is our duty to rise up and take our country, the United States of Amerika, back from the fat corporate pigs and financiers that control it.

I have hope but I am not optimistic. When I filled in that ballot for Barack Obama, I believed in his Audacity of Hope. Right now he is a mediocre president who has done some good things but not enough. Obama is just a whole lot better than Bush, who threw America down the shit-chute in just eight years.

But will he stand up to the corporate fat cats that feed at the same trough as the House and the Senate? It’s no accident that ¾ of our Congress are millionaires or better. It’s no accident that today’s Supreme Court is giving away our rights, one by one.

It’s no accident that student loans are getting more and more difficult to pay back. Student loans are immune to the recovery of bankruptcy—they just don’t go away and keep gathering interest—and how can you make payments if you can’t get a job?

Why aren’t the preachers in the churches talking about the poor rising up and taking their country back? Jesus said, “The poor will always be with us,” but he didn’t say they had to stay that way!

Occupy Wall Street isn’t over. Right now it is just planning, waiting for spring. Like the buds and the flowers and the leaves on the trees, Occupy will bloom all over the country and say, “It is time! We have had enough!”

It looks as if Mitt Romney will be running against Barack Obama. Mitt Romney—that corporate greed-driven raider who even swears that his dog likes riding on top of the family car with a 70 mile an hour wind blasting in its face. He tells us in his own words, “I like to fire people!”

Romney means it. He wants to fire the people of the United States and make us all slaves no matter what our creed or color is. It is amazing that a carpetbagger like Romney has risen so high in our political structure. No, maybe not.

But it is time to wake the sleeping giant, the American people, and make them aware that the lobbyists who throw gifts at Congress are ripping them off. Folks, let us say, “No More.” Let us rise up this spring and Occupy our country and free it from the chains of oppression.

And then, when we take our country back, we can all join hands and sing together, like Dr. Martin Luther King, “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”

A Tale of Two Bullets

Posted by Klaus


A few weeks ago, late in November, I sent a postcard to Deval Patrick asking for clemency for Arnold King. Mr. King is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of a Boston political aide in 1971. At this time, for the first time, the entire Parole Board was in favor of the commutation of King’s sentence. He had come up for parole hearings many times before and this was the first time that it was a unanimous decision.

Since Arnold King has been incarcerated he has earned undergraduate and master’s degrees, worked with incoming inmates as a counselor, and was extremely effective as a peer counselor. There are many ex-cons who have been helped by King’s work. They have completely changed their behaviors upon being released and attribute their success as societal citizens to the help they received from Arnold King. I have met a few of them and this impressed me enough to attend a workshop about King’s deeds while incarcerated.

I pondered the matter deeply before sending the card to Governor Deval Patrick. It is no simple matter to predict the behavior of a person when they are released from prison, especially after so many years on the inside. I felt, in my heart, that Arnold King would be an asset to our society on the outside and that is why I sent the postcard asking the Governor for clemency.

Governor Patrick, after much thought, declined to free Arnold King. This is the first commutation petition to come before Governor Patrick and he, in his decision, said, amongst other things, that, “while his (King) disciplinary record has improved over time, it has been far from exemplary.” He also said that he didn’t believe the petition should be granted, “at this time.” This does leave hope for the future.

I am one of the privileged people who receive e-mails from Arnold King and his friends, and I have also read some of his columns in Whats Up magazine, which now is a part of the Spare Change News. I was hoping that Arnold King would be pardoned.

However, I am not naive. I am an ex-con myself. Though I have been non-violent for most of my life, there was a period when I was young that I was far from non-violent and I also carried a small pistol.

Funny that I called it a small pistol. Sometimes my writing shows the error in my thought-train. Believe me when I tell you that the gun I carried was totally capable of killing another person. As a matter of fact, the only game usually killed by pistols are humans.

In 1967, I was arrested for sale of marijuana. Three joints for 50 cents. But it was still severe enough at that time to be held in Newark Street Jail for 9 days because my bail was $5000. My parents had a court hearing with a lawyer and my bail was reduced to $2500. They paid my bail and I was freed.

It was too late to save my job as a shipping clerk in a factory. I was bitter and not exactly an angel, at least not an angel of heaven at the time. The day I was fired from my job, which was the morning after court, I went with some friends into New York City to buy some heroin. In for a dime, in for a dollar. I had my snub-nose double-shot .38 in my pocket.

We had some trouble copping and the dope was not as strong as I liked. That was often the case. My temper was hot and I was bitching as I drove the car. We stopped at a traffic light and there was a police officer standing on the corner near us with his back to us.

I pulled out the pistol, pointed it at the center of his back, and said, “I’m going to kill that pig right now.”

My friends freaked out and said, “Marc, Marc, what the fuck are you doing? You’re going to get us all killed.”

I had my finger on the trigger and somehow, through my rage, I heard their voices. I lowered the gun and put it on the seat. I still remember my hand was shaking. I really wanted to do it but the stupidity and recklessness of the act was seeping into my addled brain.

Then I made a fateful decision, one that I have never regretted. I handed the gun to my friend. The magnitude of what I had been about to do hit me like an earthquake.

My friend said, “What do you want me to do with this?”, as he pointed at the gun. I told him I had just had my right to carry a firearm taken away. As crazy as I was, even in the depths of my addiction, I realized the impact of what I had almost done. In that moment, if I had pulled the trigger, not only might I have killed another human being (even though at that time I didn’t think cops were human), but the effect of the act would have reverberated through my life and the lives of everyone in the car and the lives of everyone who was family and friend to the police officer who was my target.

If I fired the gun, I would never have been able to take the bullet back. It is like being in a relationship with someone and saying something to them that strikes at the deepest part of their being. Afterwards, you can apologize, but the words are out there and can never be taken back. Irrevocable.

In a way, I am a parallel of Arnold King, the only difference being that I didn’t fire the gun. I’ve done time, only a few years, for drug crimes I’ve committed but if I were caught for every drug crime I committed, I’d probably be in prison for the rest of my life.

However, a miracle has occurred and I now am a committed servant of society and I am pleased to be just that, a worker among workers, a drug counselor and a poet who does other types of writing to get paid.

What does this have to do with Arnold King? Well, I am similar to Mr. King, in that I do work to atone for my sins because I am driven to do so by my heart. It may very well be that Mr. King is the better man because he has accomplished so much with the odds against him. I don’t even have a bachelor’s degree.

The only difference between Arnold King and myself is, in my case, the bullet didn’t leave the gun. I didn’t pull the trigger. I believe that was God’s work, not mine.

The fact is, in an e-mail I received from Arnold King’s supporters, it said that he was okay and was going to continue his work. I am sure he is disappointed. It is only human to be so. At one point in my life, while in prison, I tried to have my sentence reduced. The judge decided against me. I was torn, my heart ached; I went back to prison from court. I recovered. I was the prison librarian but I also mopped the floors in the offices and cleaned the toilets.

Will Arnold King ever be released? That is a question I cannot answer. I sent the postcard to the Governor. I felt that he should be released. I know that people change and he is not the same man that, one night on the Boston streets, put a gun in the face of a man and pulled the trigger.

It may very well be that the work Arnold King does will continue behind the walls. I believe he does this work because it is in his heart to do so and this setback, this refusal of clemency, will not change his continuing good works.

In my heart, I hope that one day he can do this work on the outside. I really do. But the one thing he cannot do, the one thing that is beyond the power of anyone to do, is to put the bullet back in the gun. For that, for John Labanara, the man who was shot, and his family, it is too late. The best they can do, all of them, including Arnold King, is to pray for forgiveness. And wait.

Heroin Addiction: An Illness

Posted by Klaus


A chill ran through my body as I read of the murder of Barbara Coyne of Boston, 67 years old, allegedly by a young heroin addict known as Timothy Kostka, only 27 years old. Violence always did make me ill, especially violence that was irrational and had no valid purpose.

I remembered the picture in the Boston Globe, Timothy leaning over in conference with his lawyer, and I looked closely at his face. Here was a man who was cursed with the same affliction as myself, a craving for heroin, driven by a demonic yearning that brings out the worst in a human being.

I think of my lost years, over 3 decades of chasing the drug, being imprisoned within myself, the police always on my trail because of my desperate craving just to kill the feelings of despair that ate at my soul. I thank Gods I do not understand that violence was not a part of my life.

So many opiate addicts, so many, scattered throughout the world, just chasing release from themselves. When I read of the horrid murder I felt a deep sorrow, not only for Barbara Coyne, who died needlessly, but for all the heroin addicts without any violence in their spirits, who would suffer for the terrible act of one man, prone to violence, and the knee-jerk reaction that would take place in the community.

Hunted, like vampires in a nightmare fantasy, all those heroin addicts whose only crime consists of the search for relief from their tortured realities. Why do some of us become addicts, or alcoholics, which is addiction by another name? What causes this illness, nature or nurture, or is it both?

In my younger days I saw people try the opiates and then discard them, but myself, I was gripped by a raging need for the extreme liberation of the pain of myself and only the opiates would grant that state of being. Those of us who had a tendency towards violence were few. Addiction aggravates the worst in us—if a tendency towards violence exists in our spirits, it will be brought forth in our desperate search for relief.

However, if we were not prone to violence, the need for opiates would not create it. The true horror of this situation is that the cries for the new Prohibition will be louder and more exaggerated than ever.

According to the Boston Globe, police officers will be knocking on the doors of suspected dealers warning them that they are being watched. People are demanding to know why small-time street drug offenders receive small sentences and are quickly back out on the streets.

According to the Globe, U. S. Representative Stephen Lynch “acknowledges that the scourge of drugs is behind the killing of Ms. Coyne.” A community meeting was held in South Boston to chatter about the “curse of addiction.”

A curse it is, but let us have some compassion for those stricken with the disease of addiction, 95% of them just petty criminals, either shoplifting, dealing, or begging to support their habits. Not only am I a person afflicted with the illness of heroin addiction but I am also a counselor for people like myself. I have worked in various agencies that help people who are sick with the disease of addiction—the Cambridge Needle Exchange being one of the places I worked.

At no time was I frightened by the behavior of the people I treated; on the contrary, I was filled with sadness that our civilization has not come to grips with a sickness but chooses to criminalize it. Early this April, I read an article in the Cambridge Chronicle that was entitled “Drugs—Police: Heroin Ring Infiltrated.”

The article talked about hauling in 10 suspects and making numerous arrests, with a list of all the nefarious characters—most of them homeless or couch-surfing—the biggest arrest was a 41 year-old man who was caught with 21 bags—the size of postage stamps—who was living in a boarding house run by the non-profit organization called CASCAP. Ironically, CASCAP formerly ran a small hospital for the treatment of addiction and it was closed due to budget cuts.

Not for one minute will this action make the drugs go away. Small crimes receive small sentences—paid for by tax dollars, more expensive than keeping addicts in treatment centers where they would be better served. When treating the illness of addiction, one must realize that just by keeping someone in the hospital until the physical aspects of the disease are relieved, but then releasing them back into the world with their psychological and spiritual aspects untreated, we just create a revolving door situation.

Addicts just don’t get better because they go into treatment for two weeks or less or because someone tells them they are sick. First of all, part of this powerful illness is seated in the mind of the addict and it actually tells them they are okay—despite all evidence to the contrary. Imagine—an illness that tells lies—but that is exactly what we are dealing with here.

Families torn apart by untreated addiction—youngsters who find it easier to get opiates than marijuana—opiates are now considered to be an entry-level drug. Many people start out by having one of their friends give them some oxy-contin that they took from their parents medicine chest or dresser drawer—and some go on to be hooked and some don’t succumb. Why? If we knew that answer the disease might not exist.

Treatment for the disease, however, does exist. Prison is not the answer. Modern medicine has come up with some wonder drugs for opiate addiction but they need to be made available along with continuous therapy and a complete safety net consisting of support groups—and both therapy and support groups are there.

The miracle drug is called Suboxone. When people use opiates for a lengthy period of time the pleasure receptors of the body atrophy and die. This period of time varies from person to person—but if someone has used for 1 to 5 years or more—atrophy may have already taken place in the receptors.

I was addicted to heroin and other opiates for over 30 years, making many attempts to overcome the horrors of my illness, being treated short term and then released and using, to my dismay, even against my own unguarded will. After many treatments, I found that I could stay abstinent for long periods of time—a few years sometimes—but then the impulse would come and I would pick-up the drug and once the fire was re-lit, it consumed me.

I got clean or abstinent, if you will, and started to rebuild my shattered life, and then I needed knee surgery. Immediately upon narcotics being introduced to my system, it was as if I had never stopped—but I had the knowledge that I was ill this time. Victims of this illness heal in increments and that was what was happening to me.

But there was one missing component. That component was Suboxone, a mixture of Buprenorphine and Naloxone, one drug to fool the atrophied pleasure centers into thinking that it had opiates in it, and the second, the Naloxone, a blocker that would activate if the drug was administered improperly. This drug does not get one high but it is the ingredient that makes impulse using impossible.

Picture the cell in the body that reacts with heroin as a room that bids heroin welcome. When one takes Suboxone, the room is filled to the brim leaving no room for heroin to enter the cell. So even if the addict, like myself, takes heroin—nothing will happen. This drug blocks the affect and fools the body into thinking, as it were, that all is well.

And indeed, with Suboxone, all is well. It must be taken daily, under the tongue, or as they say in medical jargon, sublingually. Of course, the psychological and mental aspects of the illness should be treated too—with the help of a knowledgeable therapist and the psycho-pharmacologist who is specially trained to prescribe the drug—and include support groups.

This is a whole lot cheaper than having a giant prison system and highly paid police chasing after the 95% of the harmless street addicts. It makes more sense too. I know, for a fact, because with all these elements my entire life has turned a complete 180.

So, if a society wants to focus on eradicating drug addiction, well, the truth is—it can’t be done. However, drug addiction can be treated—with a much better result than what our society has done with alcohol addiction. Prohibition is Prohibition. We have reached a breaking point with drugs like the one we reached with alcohol in the years of Prohibition. Our streets are flooded with drugs. Dealers fight for turf with weapons and there are casualties. Then there are the 5% of addicts, probably less, that are prone to violence.

The addict, already a violent individual even before drugs, breaks into a house and kills someone’s mother looking for something that may not have been there. It wasn’t his addiction that brought him to violence—it was his way of being. He just happens to be addicted.

If every addict was prone to violence, our streets would be crackling with gunfire throughout the day. Most addicts are not violent. Fear is a component of addiction. I know. I’ve hung out with these tortured individuals, worked with them–I am one.

There is an answer to the disease of addiction. It must be acted upon, thoughtfully implemented, and the illness will abate. Addiction will never completely go away but the effects of it can be diminished with the proper treatment.

So, as a community of people, let us focus on the ailment and treat it. We have nothing to gain but our sons and daughters—and that’s worth it, don’t you think so? After all, how many families today are affected by this illness? If answers exist, and they certainly do, isn’t it time to use them?

I should know. I’m not only a member of the treatment team—I’m also a client.