Freefalling…

July 13, 2018 (revised July 16, 2018)

For those of you who missed it,  I was blown out of the sky and careened into a freefall after leaving my work in Phoenix a few years ago (best represented at www.arizonaprisonwatch.org).

Almost as soon as returning to Michigan, I was stunned senseless from the cumulative impacts of loved ones’ addictions, and soonafter my own alcoholism and issues with trauma. The consequent professional violence perpetrated on me, my family, and my good name in the aftermath damn near killed me.

In fact, since December 2014, I’ve been only marginally at my Dad’s – increasingly I lived in my vehicles, my storage unit, my big brother’s living room, and in and out of a few good friends’ basements – as well as a few nights tenting in the urban forests of Ann Arbor, that is, until recently – I’m housed now. But basically, I’ve been stumbling through my life in my old hometown no longer as a local hero, but rather as an enemy of the state.

This is what’s been going down. I’m betting it’s not just me, either, so if this sounds at all familiar, friends, drop me a line (solidarityrose@gmail.com). We need to build capacity to help other civilians who resist the state survive medical/psychiatric violence and police brutality.

State-sanctioned trauma usually involves all sorts of slander and attacks on the integrity of the victim, not just our bodies. It’s really quite devastating and CAN drive folks to suicide. Unfortunately, though, all the nation’s suicide hotlines eventually lead to state agents like these folks at the  University of Michigan Hospital’s Psych Emergency Services (who may well summon the police with guns drawn to your rescue, if you call for help but don’t want theirs).

By the way they treated me in this “liberal college town” (where smoking a doobie on the street has long just drawn a $25 fine), PES staff seem far more comfortable using their power to coerce and punish civilians for being “resistant” than they they are proficient in any kind of “trauma-informed” psychiatric care. They used compliance as a yardstick for measuring mental health, treating my protest as a sign o mental  illness when I was really being an informed and assertive patient, challenging why I was being held against my will.

I moved back to Ann Arbor from ten years in Phoenix in December 2014 to care for my father. But I ended up separating from my partner almost immediately upon my return, and was displaced by a house fire a few weeks later. I went downhill in the months that followed, though, drowning in my ex’s addictions,  and eventually in booze myself.

So, I was already pretty compromised when, on February 3, 2017, I was targeted for protesting at Walmart and attacked by local police. By the end of the night I had also been illegally assaulted, restrained and involuntarily drugged (not to mention slandered) by the good people at UM’s PES. 

I made the mistake of carrying on my verbal protest of injustice there, when it became apparent I’d been petitioned for a psych eval by an ER doctor who thought I was paranoid about police abuses of power because I had bystanders at WALMART call an ambulance to get me out from under that cop (who I peed on while screaming at him – oops! I’ve been incontinent for several years, though, and didn’t wear a diaper that day – I wasn’t just really wasted.)

It took me 14 hours to fight my way out of the semi-coma they put me in with heavy psychotropics for cussing them all out in the ER. After that, I gave in and shut up so I could just go home, of course.

I guess Dr Harrison truly believed he needed to risk my life to protect his staff and other patients from hearing me complain about my rights being violated – see? He had to sign this thing, below, and put it in my file, along with the lie he told to justify his violence…

PES staff knew full well I wasn’t “dangerous”, though – and none of them could have heard me make any threats, because I didn’t. That’s precisely why they all generalized that I was “threatening” but never stated what I actually said (except for the guy who noted that I was complaining loudly about my rights being violated while others were sayig I was just “being threatening, thank you.).

Dr. Harrison didn’t note that I was alleging he had violated my rights when he suddenly decided to hold me longer.

I was way outnumbered and out-powered, and am not stupid, even when enraged – I had no reason to threaten anyone, and every reason not to. I assumed that my long local history as an advocate for people who were mentally ill and homeless meant my former colleagues in The System here would be on my side, and that my reputation for integrity would somehow protect me.

But no one in MI  had any way of knowing I was even in distress or at PES that night, much less that I needed their advocacy and assistance on-going. And if they did, they were ill prepared to help, as I am NOT still the well-intended liberal they once knew. My old friends seem to believe I just went nuts in AZ, and need help being the well-grounded mental health clinician I used to be.

So, while I was thinking my people in MI would respond to my narrative about being treated so unjustly here with: “Hey, Power! We see you! WTF are you doing to our old friend, Peg?”,  they’ve instead been like “Oh sh*t, Peg went off the deep end and got into a fight with the cops or something – she even says an MD at UM ‘raped’ her – who would do such a thing? She must be nuts…”

That hurt me more than if i never called out for help in the first place, as while the bad guys saw a few people stand quietly by me, when asked, they also saw that no one who had the power to actually help me came to my defense when I shouted my SOS.  They just agreed I must be crazy, which I think gave the bad guys further license to violate me.

Anyway, even if I was just nuts that February night in PES, I wasn’t being assessed or monitored by trained mental health clinicians for most of my conscious visit. The nurse just kept sending the security guard into my cell to “reason” with me – which was really problematic.

See, he was never trained to assess my mental status or treat trauma survivors in crisis – his job was to gain my trust and compliance. He was a great big easy-going black guy who could NOT for the life of him understand where I was coming from. All he knew was that a “rational” person would have taken his friendly advice, and thus inferred I was not a sane woman.

he was a cop,  not a clinician.

“Mean Joe Greene” (I later dubbed him that, never getting his name) didn’t recognize how his well-intended advice itself was a threat to coerce compliance with crap I had good reason to resist. I kept getting impatient with him coaxing me to “just settle down and go along with them” so I could “go home sooner rather than later”.

Unfortunately, he thought I was being “irrational” when I replied, repeatedly:

“Hell, no, I won’t bend over and take it in the a** from the state, with a smile, then say thank you as they wipe their jizz off on my shirt! F**k you all! I have the right to know what grounds I’m being held on!  YOU guys are the ones threatening ME, then accusing me of being dangerous! You just keep telling me the only way to avoid further violence and prolonged detention  is by “cooperating” with their interrogations! That’s total BS!!!”And on and on…

My well-articulated objections, however, were all just summarized by Nurse Joan Ramsey (as if they were her direct observations, not Mean Joe Greene’s) with notes like: as “patient is threatening staff” and “refusing to comply….” And so the evening went. Nurse Ramsey got a raise this year, by the way (though she runs the PES midnight shift like Nurse Ratched in the Cuckoo’s Nest…).

She clearly resented being challenged and routinely used threats and professional  violence to punish disrespectful patients, not just “manage” the “dangerous” ones. She called the shots from behind her desk until I was restrained, then she came and hit me with a B-52 in the form of a couple of loaded needles, despite me begging her not to give me anything.

By the time my complaint from 02/3/17 was actually investigated, six months later, Dr. Harrison had moved on and refused to be interviewed, so the UM office of recipient rights closed the claim as “unsubstantiated” instead of “incomplete”. I objected to the lousy job they did – I even took it to an appeal committee to reopen it, but was reeling from further trauma and homelessness and they denied me an extension so I could deal with it when I was safe and stable. I believe it was the failure of the rights officer as well as the PES administration to respond immediately to the issues I raised from that encounter that caused staff there in April to think they could get away with abusing me further.

I’ll admit that I can have a big mouth when provoked, and you bet I let a few obscenities loose responding to their profane threats and actions. But I NEVER threatened to hurt – much less took a swing at – anyone. I’d been there plenty of times as a family member and outreach worker – I was once in the UM School of Social Work, even. So I was well aware that some of those staff had good intentions but were being misled. Others were not on my side, though, and lied to cover themselves and others.

Violence has never been part of my protest or social change repertoire, either, but for PES staff, using physical intimidation and threats of indefinite detention, drugging and assault seemed to be a routine way to rein in “resistant patients”. Frankly, no matter what I did or didn’t do,  I see no excuse for the kind of violence and on-going terror they inflicted on me. The PES staff TOTALLY TRAUMATIZED me, all for protesting rights violations and calling the RN a b***h (that was when she picked up the phone and called for back-up and restraints, of course.)

I couldn’t believe that woman had me assaulted over the B-word, as if I’d spit at or hit someone. I just stood there in my cell doorway, in astonishment, when I saw her make the call, and passively waited for them to grab me – what was I to do against 4-6 men? Even if I WAS high on drugs and hallucinating that green aliens had taken over the UM – AND even threatened to punch that security guard in the nose – how could I possibly be dangerous to anyone while I was locked behind several sets of doors and heavily guarded by big men, all 5’5″ and 99 lbs of me dying from heart disease?

I lived in terror after that, but still complained loudly once able to speak, thinking once I was acknowledged, I’d be safe from further harm. And I couldn’t let what they did to me just slide now -how I was treated was more a reflection of the institution’s mental illness than it was about anything I did or said. But when I brought myself to the ER sleep deprived, traumatized and suicidal six weeks later, I was restrained and violently catheterized, again for my resistance. They lied to justify the violence then, too, of course. Here’s an excerpt from the recipient rights investigation report of my March 26, 2017 to UM’s PES:

The MD overseeing my torture this time, by the way, Michael Casher, was my shrink 22 years earlier.  I fired the guy after 6 months for placing his role as a professor over his duties to his patient – and for being a sexist pig, among other things. He didn’t even acknowledge knowing me, if he indeed remembered me. Furthermore, Casher ordered my abuse to serve an administrative need, not medical. Then he and the resident he supervised apparently walked away as I was screaming to Nurse Feth and her crew that I was a rape survivor, and not to traumatize me further.

 

Casher was the head of the University of Michigan’s INPT psychiatric unit at the time, too, not an ignorant over-worked resident specializing in something other than mental health. It was on the INPT unit at UM where we also had a couple of exchanges over common patients we served years ago (when I worked with people who were homeless). I even dared to challenge his assessment of her in his staff meeting (yeah, right, he didn’t remember me 20 years later…).

The ORR report never addressed the physicians’ discipline, by the way – Casher may not have kept his position (at least, his name has been removed as the INPT Psych director from the UM Hospital’s website ), but his crime was never made public and he got a HUGE raise this year – like, I think that’s more than I got to survive on from social security for the whole year after he traumatized me. The psych nurse, Tammy Feth, who so brutally catheterized me and lied to cover herself also got a raise, and earns almost 100K/yr now. Plus, she’s still at PES and is considered some kind of instructor?

They all knew what they were doing was illegal, too, though Kruse at least admitted it when questioned, bless her heart. Thanks as well to the tech that day, Sean Laylow (you’re the only one who told the truth in my record, friend, thank you).

Dr. Casher (questioned after Kruse), was technically busted, he isn’t confessing  here (otherwise he’d have had his attorney with him for this interview, and his tracks well-covered). Nurse Feth outright lied to the rights officer, though – really, she didn’t hear me crying? What BS.

Compounding the original harm they did with the assault is the fact that if you were to request my medical record today ALL their notes and lies remain to inform other medical staff I’m “dangerous” still. There isn’t even mention of the fact I made any allegations about their misbehavior, much less that they were substantiated.

Now, look closely at this situation: how can the “remedies” suggested by Recipient Rights possibly be adequate? How are others to learn that what Dr. Casher has been teaching is NOT the UM Hospital’s official attitude about its patients rights and dignity if they keep it a secret that he condoned abuse and directed his student to engage in criminal assault and lie about it in medical documents?

Furthermore, I’m sure that if was a white disabled woman in a nursing home and my perpetrators here were not highly paid professionals, they’d have been fired and reported immediately to both police and adult protective services for investigation. To not do so endangers every other patient the institution serves, as well as the future of the organization itself. See, what was done to me was a casual manifestation of MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL VIOLENCE – not a real reflection of my behavior – nothing in my UM medical record can now be believed.

I bet this kind of violence against patients by first responders is far more common than patient-on-professional abuse, but its not tracked or even reported as violence or trauma when they hurt us. Really- who is following or researching this kind of state brutality?

I asked the UM to do so, even addressed the Regents, but they’ve ignored me, thus, they’re not in denial: those who run that place are informed now and feigning ignorance. Shame on them all – I guess they learned nothing from what happened with Nassar at Michigan State. He remained in a powerful position, giving him access to all his victims, solely because of those who conspired to protect him and MSU. Here, as at MSU, despite hearing my complaints, the institution prefers and regurgitates their staff’s lies to protect itself now, placing me in constant danger of further abuse every time I seek medical care (or someone seeks it for me).

The response of the institution, to deny the harm they did and protect the perpetrators, is more troubling than the original assault – it means the UM Hospital’s first priority is NOT patient care or safety – its protecting their image as being staffed by professional competent people.

Again, what happened to me at PES – and St Joe’s now, as well – is not about me, its about how the powers of psychiatry are so routinely and easily abused, while using state licenses to superimpose their credibility over the word, reputation, and basic medical needs of their patients.

The rest of the system responds to protect the doctor’s reputation, too, not the patients’ health or welfare – that goes right out the window when the MD decides we aren’t worth the time and trouble it takes to not be violent when trying to coerce someone.

I was especially troubled to find that the UM punishes those who report being victimized by their people, instead of having a reflexive, intuitive response to be alarmed at the implications of what this incident reveals. For example, the PES RN told the MDs this practice there was quite acceptable, when it absolutely NEVER should have been. That’s highly alarming.

I would have hoped they would confront employees who conspire to illegally search and seize patients’  bodily fluids for non-medical reasons by way of violent assault, and make it clear to all that it’s NOT OK to do. Furthermore, they should be teaching all the staff that falsifying medical records in a way that not only results in improper care, but amounts to slander, is ALSO criminal activity.

I was raped at the age of 15, as a virgin, which was pretty horrible and certainly shaped me; I couldn’t even talk about it until I was hospitalized at the age of 17. But what happened to me in the care of the University of Michigan’s purported healers was far more devastating. I reached out to the UM psych department’s leadership after the first assault, in February – to Dr Gregory Dalack and the psych ER supervisor, Dr. Rachel Glick. Because they acknowledged hearing me, I thought it would be safe to go in for help – PES is the gate through which I thought I had to pass for referral to a local psych hospital, I was deeply traumatized and needed a safe place to recover.

When I presented on March 26 in crisis, Dalack and Glick personally assessed me, which I found at first reassuring – they came in on a Sunday,  so I thought they cared and wanted to assure I was safe there. But they minimized my trauma and explicit grievances, just noting I had vague symptoms of depression, then wouldn’t even offer to facilitate a voluntary admission anywhere – I was insistent that I needed hospitalization, had insurance, and was thus kind of baffled about that. Still am.

They both handed me off to Casher, who basically told me to sign a “safety contract” and leave the ER, excusing the UM if I kill myself – or give them some info they could use to commit me involuntarily with, as he was tired of me (NO! I have insight and didn’t want to lose my civil liberties! Why couldn’t they let me sign in someplace? I came asking for help, why were they fighting me now?).

Casher demanded I provide them with some urine for a drug and pregnancy test (I was 10 years post-menopausal, had a 72 YO partner, and told them what drugs I used -why did they need my bodily fluids to prove anything so bad?). I’m an anti-drug warrior and found that highly suspect, so refused.

The good doctor argued with me for all of 10 minutes about that, at most, then rendered me too “incompetent” to recognize my need for treatment (which I came there seeking) solely so I could be forcibly catheterized. That then put me on notice that I HAD to comply with his hospitalization plans (and the INPT doctor’s reckless decisions), or be court-ordered to be forcibly drugged in the community and surveilled for up to a year by the same people protecting my perpetrators.

Had a crazed rapist or gang assaulted me in an alley, at least I would have the sustained protection and comfort of those who love me to help me stay safe and heal. But because I was targeted and slandered by state sanctioned medical professionals instead, the traumatic event further isolated me from my family and community, rendering me defenseless against further abuse and lies.

My medical record still says I deserved it; according to those official documents, I’m the one whose behavior was “dangerous”, even in isolation with no shoes on –  not those with all the power to really harm people who wield it so recklessly, declaring they know what’s best for me. is it any wonder that I’ve been assaulted by medical and security staff several times now over the course of these past 1 1/2 years?

Except for my big brother, Bill, my loved ones didn’t know how to help me, afterwards – even old friends who know the system’s deficiencies  pushed me away, unable to deal with my untreated wounds or what it means to their own sense of security in the world if indeed such a thing could happen to me. Thus, I ended up chronically homeless, and day after day, month after month, since February 2017, under the threat of further attack if I pushed back against the torture I’d already endured.

Arguably, the two attacks on my body and mind in early 2017 contributed to my heart attack in May of that year. I’ve been unable to settle or sleep anywhere stable, even my home now feels precarious. In another week or so, in fact, I may have to have bypass surgery, as my other arteries are in danger now too. Chronic, unrelenting stress and inflammation can take a real toll.

I can’t help but wonder why this incident was never reported to police by the UM hospital administration, in fact. These people conspired to illegally assault me, and their lies still stand as “truth” in my official medical record, which only hurts me! I think there’s a law that violent crimes against vulnerable adults need to be reported by the authorities who discover them… How can the UM give these people shelter and raises instead? That makes them all complicit….

How was forcibly catheterizing me at PES not  vulnerable adult abuse, anyway?

The resident, Dr. Kruse, must have had misgivings about it in the first place, thought it must have been legal or Dr. Casher wouldn’t have endorsed the idea, or maybe just hadn’t yet fully been indoctrinated to maintain all written lies if ever questioned (lest you leave your employer open to a lawsuit). Whatever the reason, thank you Dr. Kruse, for being honest in the end – for that, I hold nothing against you. I hope your professional career wasn’t derailed by Casher, as a result – he’s a real a**. Fortunately the rights officer interviewed her first, or the whole institution would have conspired to silence her.

On the heels of this BS at the UM (with professional slander added to my medical record, declaring me “dangerous” for protesting Walmart and psychiatric violence, now), I was then shipped off 20 hours later for coerced drugging in a distant state psychiatric facility (Havenwyck). I even passed out in my bathroom at one point, and was threatened with criminal charges for summoning the medical care they declined to offer me – that in a ward where young female gang leaders competed with staff for power.

Of course, given the circumstances and place, no one showed up with signs or chants of “Free Peggy!” outside my window to cheer me during the 8 days I was in custody. I was so isolated and despondent, under constant threat, it felt, more abuse delivered under the guise of ‘treatment”. How could I have been so stupid as to seek help from those who had already so brutally hurt me once, then lied about it, I thought?

Hardly anyone even knew I’d been seized and was being tortured; it turns out my old friends here and my folks believe that surely the psychiatric industrial complex was just trying to “help” me, not punish or repress me. After all, who wants to believe how brutal state agents, even doctors and nurses, can be when left alone with someone they think no one will ever believe as a witness against them? How could the rest of us trust them again?

Less than two months later, in May 2017, after trying to get help for my cardiac symptoms and being repeatedly blown off, I finally had a heart attack. Then, August 1, 2017, after summoning 911 when my right leg repeatedly gave out due to a blocked iliac artery, I was tortured in St Joe’s-Ann Arbor ER.

What a scene. I got pissed at the Huron Valley Ambulance staffer, Steve, who called the ER with inaccurate info about my condition to the ER, suggesting I’d fallen down due to being intoxicated because I admitted drinking that day. I told him he totally screwed me with the ER, that I didn’t fall, first, and my drinking wasn’t relevant except that I didn’t think I should drive myself to the ER.  I sat up in my gurney, took off the straps and said I didn’t want to go to the ER under those conditions – “really, man, now I’ll get treated like “s**t!”.

And sure enough, I was brutalized.

The ER, of course, was listening to me the whole way there. By the time we arrived, 6 or 7 large, gloved, hospital police officers were in the bay waiting for me with grins on, as if expecting me to jump out and try to fight them.  I had already promised Steve from HVA I’d let him turn me over so I wasn’t his problem anymore, but I made it clear that I wasn’t happy with how he’d set me up. The cops all crowded in on me as I was wheeled into the ER, even though I wasn’t trying to escape or anything, they were really being unnecessarily aggressive.

Needless to say as the cops and medical staff pushed into my room, I began to have a panic attack. I withdrew, curling up into myself on top of my pillow, begging the MD to “get the pigs out of here, I’ve been traumatized before!!!!”.

She insisted I disrobe and turn over my clothes and property to the cops, arguing that I may have fallen and hit my head while intoxicated.  I absolutely had to have a hospital gown on in order to have a head CT, Dr’s orders.

“WHAT?” I said. “No, I never hit my head, my leg gave out, its my leg!!!” But the doctor knows best, and declaring I was being “rude”, Dr Laurie Dixon gave the order for the police to assault me while she yelled at me “for all I know, you might try to hurt me!” All I was doing was hugging myself and crying “No! No! Get away!” by then – clearly, they were punishing me.

The MD had the cops move in and hold me down – three men, I believe – while the nurse cut off my shirt, exposing my breasts to the officers prying my arms away from my body as I screamed out I was an abuse survivor, and “don’t do this!” One cop even left his whole hand print wrapped around my forearm in a bruise. Of course, my cotton tank top might have interfered with the head CT scan I had no need for, and it thus had to be violently removed this way so I could be fitted with a hospital gown,  or most certainly the head CT scan could not have been performed.

The RN drugged me into unconsciousness with a benzodiazepine in my IV (sloppy, since they had no way of knowing my blood alcohol level yet). She then walked around me, slowly, as I was tied helplessly to the gurney, answering my protests by replying  with malice and a grin, saying under her breath “you have no rights”, three times over, while yelling “stop threatening me!” for others to hear.

The nurse, who I’ve not yet reported due to the trauma I endured there, justified her abuse by slandering me so that every other first responder I encounter thereafter would punish me, too. She charted in my file that I’d not only swung at the cops restraining me, but that I even tried to bite her – both outright lies, which no one ever even confronted me on once I came to. I wouldn’t have known the BS was there, doing me harm every time someone got their report, there but for requesting  a copy of my detailed St Joe’s medical record.

Still dying of cardiovascular disease complications, a week after that St Joe’s ER trip I had my aorta rotor-rootered and stents put in both legs; finally, I could walk again. But I’d had to leave my father’s home for good by then due to threats of police violence. I then had to flee my brothers home, where I’d taken refuge, as the police dragged me out of there for more psychiatric “help” and harassment. I ended up afraid to stay with anyone I loved after that, I was so afraid my brother could have been killed. I felt like no place was safe in this town anymore. Somehow I survived the Michigan winter with all my fingers and toes intact, though  – despite living in my Subaru Outback and a 10×10 outdoor storage locker through most of it.

So, since coming home to Michigan, supposedly to care for my family and write my book, I’ve been subjected to repeated efforts by the psychiatric industrial complex  to institutionalize or otherwise invisibilize me for protesting all this BS happening to me. I’m living out loud, again, now, too – f**k what the neighbors’ think, I’m not the one who should be ashamed, they people who hurt me are. The state compromises my privacy over my objections when convenient, then cites my confidentiality as a reason to try to cloak their actions as well-intended “treatment intervention”, with no transparency.

I was suffering profoundly before all this even happened with PES – that’s how I ended up living in my car for over 3 years before I realized I was actually homeless. I kept thinking it was temporary, we’d work it out…oh geez, did I ever try, too. I hate the treatment industrial complex…Yeah, it all just got SO MUCH worse after I was attacked at UM, then hospitalized:  I was no help to my loved ones anymore, I was incapacitated.

I realize that I can be a contradiction in terms at times like this. I may be an anarchist at heart, but I was raised by a career Army officer (who bought his own indoctrination hook, line and sinker), and much as I’ve tried to shake the whole “proud American” part, he raised me to be the kind of person who feels its not just my right to express myself, its my duty to  push back against illegitimate political repression.

Expressing dissent with our government is how we make sure we still have the right to do so, too, you know. Once there are no more protests, you can be sure we’re in deep sh**. So, think of me as the proverbial canary in the coal mine, and listen to my song with relief, for now. If I do fall silent or disappear, be on notice – your voice may well be next.

My brother Bill and I grew up on Swanson pot pies and TV dinners, which we appreciated much, living with Dad, who never failed to remind us of all the Vietnamese kids he’d seen eating out of garbage cans in Whey.

That war, and the bloodbath in the aftermath, broke Dad’s heart.

That kind of hunger, among other things, was unjust, Dad said, in a world of such plenty. I always thought he actually lived and spoke a lot like a Quaker for being such a right wing hawk – he wouldn’t let us have toy guns (“guns aren’t toys”, and “war isn’t a game”, he’d insist…).

Regardless of everything else that drives American-bred wars, it was that “liberty and justice for ALL” stuff that our Dad was hooked on, for real. I’m sure the Army gave him the prettier version of the truth in his briefings, because he was an honest man who would have given them trouble if they pushed him the wrong way. I like to think he would have, anyway.

It was thanks to Dad telling me all my life that no one has the right to beat me up or down for expressing myself  that I grew up pretty tough and stubborn about my civil liberties. In fact, I came to expect more out of men in uniform and those who wielded government power, in later years, because of him too. Dad set a high bar by walking his own talk about not using violence to silence ones critics – and boy did I used to give him hell! He still doesn’t get much break from me – that’s because he’s still not senile, at a ripe old 90 – no excuses!

Dad gave me the impression that his life was pledged to defend people’s civil rights more than parading and saluting flags and bureaucrats, at least, that’s what he did with how he lived. He preaches plenty of patriotic crap, tho, and watches that Fox News all day – and don’t ever let him catch you saying “f**k you” to a cop or burning a flag, no matter how old you both are, or how many wars he fought for our right to do so!

WTF?

So, it’s thanks to Dad that Power, no doubt, thinks that I think I’m one entitled b**ch when it comes to exercising my right to speak. The bigger the bully is telling me to sit down and shut up, the higher I raise both my voice and my fist, as I insist that I not only have the right to be loud, but that I was MADE to make said noise (all 5’5″ and 99lbs of me)!

It’s a wonder the Phoenix Police never bashed my head in, really (see Red Squad Resistance). Oh wait! They did try one night: though it was really just a lil’ kick to the head, not a bash…and I think they were just a little excited, not really trying to hurt me.

Oh, I miss Phoenix so much – not the cops, its all the radicals of many stripes I love so much there! Perhaps once I have my own place to land again, I can share with my fellow travelers how I managed to make it this far, in case they can use any of the things I’ve learned.

Calling BS out has always been my forte, you see…I’ve just been rendered speechless, lately, by the chronic stress of these past 3 1/2 years, stumbling from one traumatic moment – or month – to the next out here.

It’s going to be something of a challenge to spin this tale into a happy story with a good moral, not one that sounds like another 48 Hours /True Crime episode. For those who still don’t know, this leg of my journey (the one that brought me here, now) all started with falling in love with a real Old Gangster who had just stumbled out of prison after 36 years, having cut his sentence in half on appeal, finding himself quite unexpectedly free  (at the age of 69)…at least, he was free for a spell.

And how I loved him for it…

Dear Pete had become a heroin addict at the age of 12, growing up on the Tijuana border – the smugglers turned kids that way all the time – still do.  His habit, of course, led him to spend most of his life in prison (or trying to get out of it). He was indeed an escape artist – never gave up trying to be free.  A Tucson judge finally buried him in Supermax with a 94 year sentence after he sweet-talked his way out of the city jail while on trial for armed robbery.

First, you see, prison tries to kill the soul – that’s what’s so fundamentally evil about incarceration being used as any kind of “therapeutic” intervention or rehabilitative role. like in addiction.  There’s no lack of drugs or ways to get them inside, BTW – and far fewer alternatives for pain relief than those we have out here. People just go mad, and Pete easily could have – he was in solitary confinement for most of 18 years straight. He got rid of his TV and learned to translate books into braille, though, and helped others out where he could to keep from going crazy.

How I hate the junk that took not only Pete’s hard-won liberty, but his dignity as well. He was a free man in prison at one time, shedding so many chains that bury other men long before he walked into the sun, outside AZ DOC’s walls.

And whatever happened to the maxim of medical professionals: “First Do No Harm?” What the HELL KIND OF PROGRESS since the last narcotics “epidemic” (which conveniently put many revolutionaries to sleep or in prison then, too….) is the invention of Fenatnyl, a drug 50 times more addictive than heroin? And how is Suboxone maintenance really the best advanced medical science has to offer us by way of a response – its harder to kick than methadone!

What a hell of a life Pete endured behind bars to lose his freedom this way, now, it all makes me so goddam mad. I really can’t bear to have my own tale close with your story ending that way, though, so you’re just going to have to keep fighting, my friend. Please don’t let those bastards win.

Meanwhile, I’ve been pretty engaged with my own battles and demons, few of which I’ve been able to speak of until now. Really,  it’s been all I could do to keep my head above water – and the bad guys at bay – of late. I am happy to say, at least, I haven’t had a drop of booze since November 25, 2017. Have hardly even wanted it, since extracting myself from my dad’s house and my ex’s madness.

Thank God my big brother could give me a safe place to land from which I could recover.

I love you so much, brother Bill…

 

(Wrigley Field with Bill, July 2017)

 

So, I’m sorry, friends, for all those FB posts – and moments when I actually reached out and touched some of you – screaming  for rescue from this madness this past year. I’ve just been staggering around in a state of shock, dodging police, psychiatrists, my ex’s provocations, and the monsters from my childhood for so long now.

I  hope this blog turns out to be a better mechanism than my recent FB rages for articulating my own narrative: for sure you’ll see some of those crazed FB posts come down as this thing goes up.

Once I settle down and get some sleep, address the medical care I’ve put off, gain a few pounds, and get back on my feet again, I hope to put together some kind of small retreat center (as in a house) for Survivors of Police, Prison, and Psychiatric Violence. People need places to go that are truly safe from the state’s grasp in the aftermath of attacks like I’ve endured this year, and allows us to be with others trying to heal as well. I should not have been out there like that – I was so totally unable to do anything but keep myself alive for over a year, barely, at that, suspended in a state of in constant trauma without respite or a truly safe place to land.

My family was terribly stressed by me needing to unload my pain and rage on them 24/7, and bill was really even endangered by the police tracking me down at his place when I scared his landlord.  In the end I was literally homeless and lost in my hometown, here, because I couldn’t live with anyone I loved anymore, I was so fearful the police would hurt them while coming after me. I just lived in limbo, never resting when I slept, and wondering what the state would do to me, or my family, next.

Mostly, until I actually got an apartment this month, I really expected to be railroaded into the nut house, then put on an outpatient court order in order to be released to the community again where I’d then be rendered semi-comatose with forced injections of heavy anti-psychotics (from which I already have tardive dyskinesia, extensive cardiovascular disease, and pre-diabetes…). Without ever even committing a crime, I could then be surveilled by the state through daily visits from social workers for the next year (or three), making sure I don’t get too agitated or paranoid about all this state violence and get myself hurt by those well-intended folks again…

Looks like I get to live free in a cute little place outside of town instead, though. God, I hope this part is real.

Are we really back in Kansas, Toto?

Oh, oh – we sure are – and there are ego-maniacs and white supremacists manipulating our take on reality here, too! I think they’ve always been there, though – even in good old Ann Arbor, and it’s me that’s changed. I’m just not Dear Sweet Dorothy anymore. I’m an anarchist now, and I’m back from the Occupied Deep Southwest (the Land of Oz) to let the Good folk know that the Wicked Witch was never real to begin with – she’s just the main distraction for the Invisible Hand yanking our chains here, uniting our nation against a convenient common enemy to gain compliance and train good foot soldiers, once more…

God knows, this can all still get a whole lot worse, so please think good things for my family, dear friends, they’ve been through the mill with me lately. And don’t wish dear old Pete gone from my life for me: I really, really want him to live as a free man for a spell, not just wander off to die someplace as a desperate, lonely soul in chains again.

Please just ask the Universe to spare us all from any more freefalls headlong into the fire again. I think I’ve learned my lesson- many of them now – I really had no idea what i was doing before, I was just answering prayers each day i got a letter from prison. I became an anarchist along the way – or discovered I was already one anyway. When I gave up writing letters to the ACLU and DOJ I went about shouting for help to my people in a loud about way, slamming Power with the names of their dead and the witness of their survivors. See:

 

http://www.arizonaprisonwatch.org/2012/08/

 

i hit every social liberation movement rising, back then, in response to the AZ police/prison state growing power for the racist, neo-fascist extreme wing of  the same scary “Republiocan Party” we’ve seen exert itself on the national level since then. And OMG: such beautiful people are being relentlessly persecuted by the state for their rage and resistance to right wing hate now, and their families are torn by the effects of it all the time. At least they already know i’m on the right side, screaming things they cant if any other children are still alive.

The fact that neo-nazis and the ALT-RIGHT  have gained more support for their “free speech” threatening genocide and justifying state sanctioned brutality than we have for our resistance to it is precisely why anarchist organizing and antifascist blockades to nazis taking our streets are so critical now – and why I’m really in danger here.  The most racist hateful extremist muck of the right wing is out and proud these days, and they will soon see me: that’s why I need your witness now.

Love you all. Back with you soon.

your Friendly Neighborhood Outlaw

and Anarchist,

Peggy Plews