Gmail - RAVING IS NOT A CRIME

Date: Aug 22, 2005 2:30 PM
Subject: Fwd: RAVING IS NOT A CRIME

hey guys, I hope you like this, it was prompted by the incident in Utah this weekend where law enforcement went overboard in shutting down a legal and peacefully fully licensed edm party.

it needs some werk for sure since I started it after the end of a long weekend well after i should have been in bed so it's not as tight in some spots as it can be, but I wanted to get it and see if i can get any feedback on it to make it better.

I feel like I can turn this into a major piece if it's done right.

For example, I didn't even start to go into the arena of how this will ultimately will have turn into a Constitutional First Amendment case, since the very crux of what is happening here with our culture is the impingement of our rights as citizens to freely assemble, in a really big and hostile way.

thanks and plur!

nwa

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ima J. Walker <
Date: Aug 22, 2005 4:40 AM
Subject: Re: RG: UTAH RAVERS TREATED LIKE TERRORISTS! EVOL INTENT'S ACCOUNT OF THE INCIDENT!
To:
Cc: Apollo
(note: this response started life as a one-liner on a music listserv that I'm on that turned into an un-planned and unexpected brain-dump, so I'm just going to have to ask those of you that interested to bear with me for a moment.

thanks. and oh, hey btw, happy Monday, you have you all a great week!)


RAVING IS NOT A CRIME

while I'm borrowing this turn of phrase from skatepunks, and i've posted it here without explanation a couple of times, there's a lot more to it than it sounds like at first blush, since it's so simple a turn of phrase, let me please repeat it, and slightly elaborate on what I mean by that when I say it.

thanks, that'd be great.

here it is again:

RAVING IS NOT A CRIME

it also applies here:

INTOXICATION IS NOT A CRIME

same goes for sex and sexuality, but I'm tired of typing in all caps and i think you've gotten the point.

(how ironic, MSNBC, the cable channel owned by the richest man in the world where an alarming amount of its off-peak content is about America's prisons and cops, really creepy stuff, is running one of those FOX Channel worthy hysteria inducing pieces on the evils of prostitution and the 'cleaning' up the streets doing a ride-along with some Vice Squad cops of the Sunset Strip in LA as I type this.)

As much as I loathe the source of this following quote it absolutely applies to this situation and it would be disingenuous to not make use of it, since it does describe the problem we are facing, to a 'T' and in a nutshell.....
- Hide quoted text -


"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one MAKES them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. ... Create a nation of law-breakers, and then you cash in on the guilt."

-- Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged

William Burrough's priest character in Drugstore Cowboy has a line where he predicts something to the effect that the time will soon come where the right wing in this country will use the war on drugs and drug culture as a pretext that they're looking out for the common good, when their actual goal is to get the people used to an erosion of their civil liberties, thus making it easy to put a police state in place.

Looks like that's arrived and it aint'a 'bout to go away at least for another generation, and when it's finally over, I don't think the make-up of the United States is going to much resemble what it is today.

I've kinda stepped back from American politics at the moment because given the way things ae going, there's a good chance that neither the Democratic and Republican parties will even exist anymore as they do, 15 to 20 years from now, so i've been focusing my thinking on what that might look like, and what my place in that sort of world might be, but this is a little away from what I'm talking about here with the persecution of the raver community, and why it's happening and what's the impetus behind it.

The weasely little trap they set for us that we didn't see coming that we fell into that we who rave, and we who get high, like to get laid, in or outside of marriage, and otherwise enjoy our lives, in a way that's not sanctioned by the mainstream in this society, is that they led us to believe that our pleasure seeking has a 'sinful' aspect to it, and needs to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, this is the prevailing mindset in this country, still, and that somehow a 'sober' approach to life is 'virtuous'

It's fucking nonsense and bullshit and we fell for it.

If you start to believe that raving or getting intoxicated has some sort of criminal aspect to it, then they've got some ammo to use against you.

It's what the john Galt character meant in the above quote when he talked about cashing in on the guilt which is exactly what is happening here.

It's really pernicious, and hard to see how big a deal this seemingly minor distinction is, at first, but once you dial into how much human damage this has done over the years, you'll start to see it as a horrific, ugly thing.

When is the last time you ever saw a positive portrayal of a typical pot-smoker or stone cold junkie on film?

I'll wager not in, oh, like never.

Would you say never?

I would and do there are no positive depictions of drug use ever permitted in our media, there's always a negative subtext attached to it and the user, isn't there?

They're all objects of jeers, derision, mockery and foolery, aren't they?

Mary's Funeral Eulogy where 'they went out doing the thing they loved' that she posted here a long time ago is pretty much the only time I've seen a depiction of a drug user that wasn't derogatory, and shit even he had to die before anyone would say anything nice about him.

:P

yet meanwhile, back in the real world, a non-functioning drug addict like Rush Limbaugh can sign a $100 million dollar contract while high as a kite and face no repercussions?

Explain that to one to me, please.

Either drug users are worthless scum-sucking pieces of effluvious pieces of shit.

Or they're not.

Sorry, you so can't have this one both ways.

Not after you spend $50 billion dollars a year of my hard-earned tax dollars drilling home the object lesson of how 'bad' drugs and the people that use them are.

fuck you very much, no way.

it's either/or.

thanks.

take it back and werk on it and get back to me when you've got something of sense to say, Sonnyboy.

God, I really hate these people that set up and are running this vile system that does nothing but suck the soul and health out of it's citizenry, weakening it from within.

It's just so wrong, on so many levels, that I don't even begin to know where to start.

Those friends of yours that wonder where the 'jack-booted thugs are?'

Surely they must be joking.

Have they somehow missed the 750,000+ pot-smokers alone that get arrested and locked up each and every year in this country?

That's no small number, and it's only gonna grow, and this is just a warm-up.

I understand that there are some mega-prisons being built in remote areas out west that can house a lot more people, and that's a trend that will not reverse itself anytime soon.

This really is a war and we're getting our asses kicked all over the block, up and down the street, and hard too, and it's not going to stop, and we on the side that's getting the shit beat out of it is a) completely disorganized, largely in part to that we buy into their shit about getting high as being a 'bad' 'shameful' thing worthy of punishment b) approaching the same spot as the Jews/Gypsy's were in the late 1920's early 1930's in terms of level of persecution that we are experiencing. c) not doing a damned thing to fight this to get ourselves out of this position, because d) we've got a real blind-spot towards seeing that this is truly a fight to the death war partly because it crept up on us kinda slowly.

Scoff at that if you must, but consider this.

A 'dirty' piss test isn't quite a Star of David, yet, but considering the negative impact it can have on one, where say, keeping, or getting a job, and providing for not only yourself but your family too, is at stake, and all of a sudden the hit or two you have at night to unwind has some real negative and possibly grave real-world implications.

Shit a friend of mine in Menlo Park lost his marriage and nearly had his kids taken away and his house because a nieghbor saw his two pot plants that he was growing indoors through his window and turned him into the cops.

Shit like that happens every day in this country now doesn't it?

About 6-7 years ago I was hanging out with a friend of a friend, while we were on an aborted trip to burning man, and he laid the whole 'drug users are America's equivalent of the Jews in Germany' trip on me for the first time and since he was a bit of a undereducated, drug addled flake, kinda like me, I guess, I was pretty dismissive at first, but given my family background, I found myself thinking about this statement more and more over the years and i've seen more compelling evidence towards the truth of this than I have towards seeing it as a dumb joke told by somebody that didn't know what they were talking about.

One of the corrallaries to this line of thinking that came up was why the absolute vociferousness of these attacks on our culture?

I mean, c'mon, helicopters, dogs, SWAT teams in full riot gear, all that to break up a peaceful, lawful, party?

That's a bit much, don't you think?

Why all that heat?

Then it hit me.

They're shit scared of us and what we represent because, ultimately, we're a threat to them and their game.

See, you just don't go after people like that if you think that they're harmless to you and themselves, why would you?

What these people that have the power in this country want to do is keep their little death machine rolling, and well, if you're constantly going out to all night dance parties, every second that you do that, you've unplugged from their toxic 'make you fat and stupid but not happy' media-food-hospital-criminal-justice-re-hab infrastructure and it makes you that much harder to lock up prematurely in one of their hospitals or prisons where they will literally and slowly milk your carcass to death.

They hate that and they will go out of their way to destroy anything that gets in the way of that.

I'm starting to see this as being really heinous process being that's been happening to millions of my fellow Americans, for decades now, for no other reason than to satiate these greedy pricks sadistic need and lust for power.

Morgan Spurlock's 'Super-Size Me' approach, where he swallows their crap whole hook, line and sinker, really helped me see a lot of this.

I sat down and asked myself one day, well if they don't want me playing video games, consorting with whores and otherwise partying like a rock-star, what is it that they DO want me to be doing with my life and time?

Then I turned on the TV and there was my answer.

The next question I asked myself was OK, if I do everything that they're telling me to do through that video-box, if I were to do that, what would I look like after an extended period of time?

For that, all I had to do is step outside my house and go out in public.

Ugh, nasty, everywhere I go in this country, my fellow americans have really let themselves go, as of late, and in a really big way too.

If Coke and Pepsi and McDonald's and the rest of the crap they spend millions and millions of dollars advertising each and every day, don't have anything to do with that then I really am a retard.

Then, if I go to a rave, it's not so much that there's this huge drop in morbidly obese people that make up the crowd, even though there is, won't see a lot of fat people there, but it just seems that everyone's overall health is better than were you to draw that many people out of the non-raver general population.

Might have less to do with doing drugs like a juvenile and more to do with the fact that you've been spending upwards of 12 hours in one night getting yourself exercised by dancing all night long.

So then this really begs obvious question, which is, given the demonstrable health benefits a dancing lifestyle has and the negative effects a tv watching, stupid ugly vehicle driving, fast-food eating life has wouldn't the 'powers-that-be' bend over backwards to nurture the positive?

This is where things take a dark turn, if you think about it long enough......

They want it this way.

Dumbed down, so it's a lot, lot, easier to follow Fox News, eating and drinking their swill, which gets you nice and slow and lumbering, and if you start to feel antsy and have a vague floating sense of anxiety you can take their witches brew addictive pills that are legal, xanax, anyone, which hopefully will generate side effects so you can take even more of their legal soul and pain-killing pills, and you'll just get more and more used to generally deteriorating life conditions, they want all this and more because that will make us weak, and therefore more malleable as a people so that if Janet Jackson shows a little skin on TV they can get us all worked up in nice hot lather, or get us to sign up for a war, any war, doesn't matter, once you figure out how to do this like this, you can do it all the time, anywhere.

This is so slimey and utterly pervasive that words escape me in describing how awful this is.

And they're going to keep it this way and they're going to come at us with every tool in their utility belts if they ever see us emerge, and i hate to say this but they are going to win these battles, because, well, they're the ones with the guns and helicopters and blanket, coast to coast 24/7 control of the media and dogs and and satelittes pepper spray and jails and handcuffs and the courts, while we may outnumber them, we're completely fucking unarmed, we have absolutely none of that sort of ordnance or firepower at our disposal and most of us are blithefully unaware that this really is a war on us, and believe it or not, these mother-fuckers play for keeps.

it's so bad and so entrenched that i don't even think a revolution of any sort will eliminate this evil, getting militant to match these assholes isn't a way i want to go, so i'm kinda at my wits end as what to do, what sort of approach to take to help solve this. the only way I see it coming to an end is through some long drawn out organic process that's going to hurt millions more people over a long period of time.

be nice if someone could figure a way out of all this, i'd be so down for that.

plus it's a larger puzzle than i'm seeing all the pieces of

what I have been doing to take my mind off of all this is to spend more time working in the garden, odd how that's turned into a place of solace for me as things have gotten so much grimmer around me, but that's a whole 'nother, lots lots happier thread somewheres soon down the road.

n

On 8/21/05, Mary > wrote:

Apollo, will you please post this on Tribe,
under the heading "Attention: Burners, Ravers,
and All Party People"?

Make sure it's posted on "Burning Man" Tribe, and on "thislandisourland"
tribe, also maybe "Politics" (I forget whatever stupid jackoff
typographical convention they use in that tribe's name to make it
hard to find and hard to remember)

Thanks!

I keep running into Burners who think, "We've got money.
We've got permits. It can't happen here."

And I keep running into soi disant "conservatives"
who get all snotty with me when I compare Bush to Hitler,
screaming, "IF BUSH IS LIKE HITLER, WHERE ARE THE
JACKBOOTED THUGS, MISS SMARTYPANTS?!"

Well, Christ, you guys ... they're not starting
with the B'nai Brith meeting this time. But I
can fucking well tell you where they *are* starting!

Any raver can. Any illegal immigrant can.
Most urban kids wearing anything the local plod
considers "gang attire" can.

And to the Zionists who've sold out to the Neocons,
I like to point out, "Wouldn't it be nice if 'never
again' meant 'never again, to anyone!' not just,
'never again, to the Jews'?", you selfish pricks.

Thanks in advance.

Apollo wrote:
> UTAH RAVERS TREATED LIKE TERRORISTS! EVOL INTENT'S ACCOUNT OF THE INCIDENT!
>
>
>
> Originally Posted by knick evl ntnt
>
> Last night, I was booked to play an event about an hour outside of Salt
> Lake City, Utah. The hype behind this show was huge, they presold 700
> tickets and they expected up to 3,000 people total. The promoters did an
> amazing job with the show.. they even made slipmats with the flyers on
> them to promote in local shops.
>
> So, we got to the show around 11:15 or so and it was really cool. It was
> all outdoors, in a valley surrounded by huge mountains. They had an
> amazing light show flashing on to a mountain behind the site, the sound
> was booming, the crowd was about 1500 people thick and everything just
> seemed too good to be true really. Well...
>
> At about 11:30 or so, I was standing behind the stage talking with
> someone when I noticed a helicopter pulling over one of the mountain
> tops. I jokingly said "Oh look, here comes big brother" to the person I
> was with. I wasn't far off.
>
> The helicopter dipped lower and lower and started shining its lights on
> the crowd. I was kind of in awe and just sat and watched this thing
> circle us for a minute. As I looked back towards the crowd I saw a guy
> dressed in camoflauge walking by, toting an assault rifle. At this
> point, everyone was fully aware of what was going on . A few "troops"
> rushed the stage and cut the sound off and started yelling that everyone
> "get the fuck out of here or go to jail". This is where it got really
> sticky.
>
> No one resisted. That's for sure. They had police dogs raiding the crowd
> of people and I saw a dog signal out a guy who obviously had some drugs
> on him. The soldiers attacked the guy (4 of them on 1), and kicked him a
> few times in the ribs and had their knees in his back and sides. As they
> were cuffing him, there was about 1000 kids trying to leave in the
> backdrop, peacefully. Next thing I know, A can of fucking TEAR GAS is
> launched into the crowd. People are running and screaming at this point.
> Girls are crying, guys are cussing... bad scene.
>
> Now, this is all I saw with my own eyes, but I heard plenty of other
> accounts of the night. Now this isnt gossip I heard from some candy
> raver, these are instances cited straight out of the promoters mouth..
>
> - One of the promoters friends (a very small female) was attacked by one
> of the police dogs. As she struggled to get away from it, the police
> tackled her. 3 grown men proceeded to KICK HER IN THE STOMACH.
>
> - The police confiscated 3 video tapes in total. People were trying to
> document what was happening out there. The police saw one guy filming
> and ran after him, tackled him and his camera fell, and luckily.. his
> friend grabbed it and ran and got away. priceless footage. That's not
> all though. Out of 1,500 people, there's sure to be more footage.
>
> - The police were rounding up the staff of the party and the main
> promoter went up to them with the permit for the show and said "here, I
> have the permit." The police then said, "no you don't" and ripped the
> permit out of his hand. Then, they put an assault rifle to his forehead
> and said "get the fuck out of here right now."
>
>
>
> Now.. let's get the facts straight here.
>
> This event was 100% legal. They had every permit the city told them they
> needed. They had a 2 MILLION DOLLAR insurance policy for the event. They
> had liscenced security guards at the gates confiscating any alcohol or
> drugs found upon entry (yes, they searched every car on the way in). Oh,
> I suppose I should mention that they arrested all the security guards
> for possession.
>
> Oh another interesting fact.. the police did not have a warrant. The
> owner of the land already has a lawsuit against the city for something
> similar. A few months ago, she rented her land for a party and the
> police raided that as well. And catch this, the police forced her to
> LEAVE HER OWN PERSONAL PROPERTY. That's right. They didnt arrest her,
> but made her leave her own property!!!
>
> Don't get it twisted, this is all going down in probably THE most
> conservative state in the USA. And this is scary.. a gross violation of
> our civil liberties. The police wanted this party shut down, so they
> made it happen. Even though everything about this event was legal. The
> promoters spent over $ 20,000 on this show and did everything they had
> to to make it legit, only to have it taken away from them by a group of
> radical neo-con's with an agenda.
>
> This was one of the scariest things I have ever witnessed in person. I
> can't even begin to describe how surreal it was. Helicopters, assault
> rifles, tear gas, camoflauge-wearing soldiers.... why? Was that really
> necessary?
>
> This needs to be big news across the USofA. At least in our music scene
> (edm as a whole)... this could happen to any of us at any time. When
> we're losing the right to gather peacefully, we're also letting the
> police set a standard of what we can get away with. And I think that's
> BULLSHIT!
>
> The system fucked up last night... They broke up a party that was 100%
> legal and they physically hurt a lot of people there at the same time.
> The promoters already have 6 lawsuits ready to file with their lawyers
> and the ACLU is already involved.
>
> I'm sure some pictures (and hopefully some video) will surface soon.
> I'll make sure to post them up here on 404, so you can see the Police
> State of America at work.
>
> p.s. - there are more stories of police brutality that i'll post up
> later. gotta hit the airport soon. can't wait to get the fuck out of
> this shit hole state.
>
> www.buzzlife.com/forums/showthread.php
> < http://www.buzzlife.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62975 >
>
> SHERIFF'S STATEMENT: www.utahcountyonline.org/News/...NewsDetails.asp
> < http://www.utahcountyonline.org/News/DeptNewsDetails.asp?ID=17759&WN_System=SHERIFF>
>
> VIDEO: homepage.mac.com/apexgrin/...Sharing2.html
>
>
>
>
> _"No sage or savior has even endorsed greed and gluttony as a path
> toward social justice or personal fulfillment. These sane and
> enlightened people come to us from all cultures and all eras, sometimes
> knowing of each other but more often not. Socrates and Jesus, Lao Tzu
> and Tolstoi, Gandhi and Martin Buber -- no one can find in their lives
> and words a jot of support for a political and economic regime that
> encourages the acquisition of wealth far beyond what is needed for the
> necessaries -- or even the restorative pleasures -- of life while
> consigning the masses to live and work in squalor."
> -Stephen J. Fortunato, Associate Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court.
>
> "Music is prophecy, its style and economic organization are ahead of the
> rest of society. It makes audible the new world that will gradually
> become visible."
> -Jacques Attali in his seminal text "Noise"