Natural Born Trespassers
February 6, 2008 | 3 Comments
Look Mom, no record! Arrest record, that is – because the old Drunken Boat album is still out there. Yep, this morning I’m mailing in the letter to the unflappable Chittenden County State’s Attorney, T.J. Donovan, that vouches for the fact that yours truly has completed the 30 hours of community service he required of me in order to drop the two charges of trespassing hanging over my head.
For those keeping track at home, you’ll recall that I went on one hell of a reckless and lawless spree last year in a rather quixotic attempt to wake the sleepers about the fact that we are, indeed, a nation at war. What can I say? I’m a silly boy who is easily lulled into the illusion that the practice of democracy in the full view of the public still matters.
My first act of wanton lawlessness involved the pursuit of a meeting with Vermont’s lone congressman, Peter Welch. But the ambulance-chasing attorney turned double-talking congressman decided it was best to have us arrested at his office rather than agree to meet with us at a time, date and place of his choosing. Welch, however, quickly realized that the cuffing of his anti-war constituents didn’t look all that good – especially when his supposed “number one issue” was trying to stop the war. Go figure.
Only days after having us cuffed and booked for seeking to meet with him, Welch agreed to meet with us. Oh yes, you all remember THAT meeting, right? Yeah, the one where we had the audacity to ask that the congressman take 10 minutes of unfettered blather time in exchange for five minutes of answering “yes or no” to 15 or so questions about the war and its funding. You know, “yes or no,” kind of like the “up or down” votes he has to cast all day long as a member of congress – no middle ground.
But in the age of terror and bombing the holy hell out of foreign nations, we learned that Vermont’s liberal elite are apparently more appalled by the posing of “yes or no” questions than they are about Welch’s dithering doublespeak and its implied support for an illegal war that has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Priorities, my friends, it’s all about priorities.
The good news on the Welch front is that despite the hand wringing and soft verbal pokes we received from the liberal appeasers, the not-so-good congressman got the message. Welch, as you may know, went on to basically answer our most important “yes or no” question by pledging to not vote for another penny for the War on Iraq. Mission accomplished, indeed.
And so we, the Natural Born Trespassers, turned our attention to the military recruiters in Vermont, with a goal of shutting down their military recruitment efforts for as long as we could. This was surprisingly easy: Put the word out, show up, and see that the big, tough military boys and girls had left and locked up by the time we got there. Hmm, “the few, the proud and the frightened?”
But, lucky for us, the fellows at the Vermont National Guard had a recruitment office right across the street. And so we paid a visit. Well, make that: We occupied the joint and set up our own little “green zone” in their offices. Until, that is, closing time when we were cuffed and carted to the police station and – you guessed it! – charged with trespassing.
In the 90 or so days that have elapsed since our bloodless trespassing spree, I’ve had about four appearances in Chittenden’s District Court – each featuring a friendly greeting from T.J. Donovan himself. You see, he wants us to go away. And so each time we arrived he had an offer for us. First, he wanted us to plead “no contest” to the charges in exchange for 15 hours of community service. Next, he dropped it to 10 hours of community service. And, finally, he offered to dismiss the charges in exchange for 15 hours of community service for each charge. Deal.
As much as we wanted to take this to a jury trial, the annoying drives to Burlington, the scene at the courthouse and the very likeable Donovan made it too easy to accept the deal and wipe our records clean.
Let me tell you, Chittenden’s District Court is a sad place to be. It’s here where Vermont’s under-employed, under-paid and under-belly makes its appearance. Each morning the halls are lined with dozens of people who have been cited for what seems like mostly alcohol-related offenses: DUI’s, fights, thefts, etc.
The case for decriminalizing pot was on the front pages while we were making our court appearances. And, let me tell you, I have to agree with those who say that pot cases are not clogging the courts. I saw only one pot case come before the court, and it lasted about two minutes as the young man accepted the $200 fine as a plea deal before happily making his way to the exit.
But I still support decriminalization – mostly because it certainly seems like we’re focusing on the wrong drug. I didn’t hear one defendant, for example, declare that he put his face in a bong and then punched a wall, his spouse or the neighbor. But I heard several cases where folks hit the bars and then wreaked havoc on a loved one or a neighborhood. It really seemed like it was one, sad alcohol-related offense after another.
My days at the District Court are over now. I did my time – 30 hours of anti-war work on behalf of you, dear fellow citizens, including 5 hours of planning and implementing our little visit to Governor Douglas’s State of the State speech last month. Now, other than the trespassing case involving our little interruption of John Negroponte’s speech in St. Johnsbury in 2006 that is awaiting a hearing before the Vermont Supreme Court, my record is clean!
Which means: We’re in planning mode. Stay tuned.
{Photo Credit: The Fabulous NTodd}
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