FREE SPEECH IS A CRIME IN DC: I Might Go To Jail In July 2018 (If I'm "Good" Until Then)

Please share widely and frequently through July 2018. Thank you.

"The right of free speech was given to us so that we can annoy people. You don't need anyone's permission in order to tell them what they want to hear -- that they're beautiful or awesome -- because no one will  even try to stop you from saying those sorts of things. You need the right to free speech so that you can tell them when you disagree with them -- when what government is doing is wrong and needs to be changed."

-- My eighth grade American history teacher Carl Lampa of Bernardsville, NJ ('82-'83 school year)

You read the title correctly: FREE SPEECH IS A CRIME IN DC: I Might Go To Jail In July 2018 (If I'm "Good" Until Then). My advocacy for DC's homeless -- which I've done since mid-June 2006 -- could lead to me going to jail in July 2018. Kristy Greenwalt, the director of Washington, DC's Inter-agency Council on Homelessness (ICH) since 4/28/14 has a case against me in DC Superior Court. The long and short of it is that my efforts to get Kristy and other well-paid city officials as well as their homeless service contractors to consider the difficult but important questions around their systemic failures and to give serious consideration to what homeless people have to say has created a lot of tension between them and myself.

Kristy in particular has an extreme aversion to hearing homeless people. She'll occasionally send DC Government personnel to hear the homeless; but, you can bet your bottom dollar that, if homeless people speaking is a major part of the event, there's a 99.9% chance that she won't be there. Being as the homeless shelters open at 5 PM or later in the absence of extreme weather, Kristy will arrange for others in the government to visit the shelter after normal business hours so as to hear the homeless. Even though Kristy (43) is single, childless and lives in NW Washington, DC (along multiple bus lines and a 10-minute walk from the U St Subway Station -- the area where I sometimes go to dance at clubs), she personally won't visit the shelters in the evening. Go figure.

In order to understand the nature of the court case, you must first understand that DC is a strange place -- a truth that would take a book, as opposed to a blog post, to explain. Then again, the political news going out of Washington, DC these days speaks volumes to my assertion. We have 45 who got the minority of the popular vote, who has lauded a tax plan that promises to serve as a reason to slice much-needed social services without guaranteeing living-wage employment, who unilaterally declared Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel, who then told most countries of the world that he'd stand against a majority vote of the United Nations and who keeps throwing his "spaghetti of stupidity" against the "wall of war" to see what will stick. Such strangeness is hard to top. (Please don't try.) It's fair to say that, whereas the Trump administration's policies will soon render some very intensely hurtful results, the local government makes up in frequency what it lacks in intensity.

The last four mayoral administrations -- from Williams' second term (2003-2007) to the present administration -- have "worked" on ending homelessness. We've cycled back to where we were 15 years ago in terms of the city's homeless population (7,468 in 2002; 7,473 in 2017) after having had similar decreases (down by 857 from '01 to '02; down by 877 from '16 to '17). Yet, there is no sense of urgency among those who get paid to address homelessness. They seem extremely nonchalant about the glitch pattern and would rather kill the messenger than to "fix their fix" for the problem of homelessness. It took over 11 years of advocacy on my part; but, that toxic mixture of circumstances that lead to those who speak most vehemently for the poor and disenfranchised to be criminalized has finally occurred. That said, DC is a strange place.

I guess it doesn't seem all that strange that those who collectively make hundreds of millions of dollars per year from a committed and sure fund of tax dollars while ostensibly trying to cure a social ill would also come out against a homeless advocate who is calling their bluff and exposing systemic flaws.....

 .....in much the same way that it doesn't seem all that strange that a robber would shoot and kill his victim in an effort to get away with the former crime.

If anything, it can be said that I fell short by letting my guard down and failing to foresee this moment. For 8.5 years ending on December 31st, 2014 (Eric Jonathan Sheptock Day in DC) city officials responded to the concerns raised by my fellow advocates and myself in rational ways. I was able to get the city to make needed repairs at different shelters. My colleagues and I were able to get the late Councilman Jim Graham (1945-2017) to convene the CCNV Task Force for nine months (10/13-7/14) and discuss the future of this shelter which held 1,350 of the 7,748 homeless people which DC had in 2014 -- that process having been catalyzed by a FOIA request that I filed with the feds in January 2013. Since Mayor Muriel Bowser took office on January 2nd, 2015, it has proven impossible to get her administration to act on the law that was passed as a result of the task force's work -- even though she was a council member when it was passed. What's more is that the relationship between myself and an appointee of Mayor Vince Gray whom Mayor Muriel Bowser retained has deteriorated since the fall of 2015 -- the point in time that I trace her passive-aggressiveness toward me back to. Now she has me in court; and, the case promises to evolve into a matter of free speech and government accountability.

I have an awesome lawyer, though I'm not the easiest client to deal with. I struggle to rein in my years-long habit of writing and speaking to large groups -- having been on CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera and other media outlets. I've spoken to thousands of high school, university and college students -- in groups as small as 10 and as large as 250 people. I'm nearing 300 (often lengthy) blog posts since July 2008. I address rooms full of government officials and homeless service providers. I'm used to making my case -- and the cases of many poor people -- to city officials, other Washingtonians and the world population. I'm accustomed to the difficulty associated with getting people who don't relate to the struggles of the American poor to understand where we're coming from. That has translated into me trying to get others to understand the nature of this court case. However, my lawyer would be irate if I were to say too much about the case. So, I'll limit my explanation of the case to the aspects that are both the easiest and the most important ones for the public in general and the poor in particular to understand. That should keep my lawyer's ire to a minimum and make it a bit more manageable.

The requirement to keep parts of the case on the down-low (DL) creates a conundrum for me. People are asking me about my absences during meetings that I would normally attend. I then must explain that, during the case (which could run into July 2018), I can't be in the same room with Kristy Greenwalt. These supporters of mine then explain my situation to other such supporters who meet me on the sidewalk and tell me that they've heard about the case. Folk who respect my work then ask how they can support me. I tell them that this case will evolve into a matter of free speech. They tell me to let them know when it does, so that they can attend the court proceedings. I have every intention of doing that -- as soon as my lawyer gives me the go-ahead. Whereas I actually told very few people -- the ones who tried to call me during my recent incarceration -- about the case, I see that it's imperative that I tell the masses. Thus this blog post. As it turns out, turning out for the court proceedings is the least of ways in which my supporters can help.

You serve yourselves and the disenfranchised American poor community much better by remembering that this case is not as much about me and my personal freedom come July 2018 as it is about getting government -- which has spent billions locally and trillions nationally to psychologically beat the poor down and "to keep the lid on the pressure cooker of social injustice" while capitalism continues to run amok -- to finally solve the problems that they've promised to solve.

In light of this truth, I encourage the poor and homeless of DC as well as those who speak on their behalf to attend meetings of the DC ICH (which are listed HERE) and to make various good-faith efforts to have government to give serious consideration to concerns raised by the poor of our nation's capital. Don't make it your business to talk about this court case or to convey any message to Kristy Greenwalt on my behalf. Make it your business to discuss the concerns of the broader community -- as I've done throughout my years of advocacy. Take note of how difficult it is to have the poor heard and respected and of how extremely difficult it is to get government to actually act on what the poor say. Your findings will help me by showing exactly why I can't be the nicest guy in the world -- a contest that I refuse to enter -- and still expect to effectively advocate for DC's poor (or any city's poor, for that matter).

There's a slim possibility that DC's homeless service providers end up adjusting their ways after reading this post or seeing that many more of the city's poor are attending meetings to see for themselves what I describe herein. That would effectively make me look like a fool in court by disproving the primary underpinning of my arguments. Fortunately for my case and unfortunately for DC Government's poor constituents, it's not very likely that city officials will change their ways enough to prove me wrong. Furthermore, one might ask why it is that I'm exposing the basis of my future arguments to the very people whose guilt I plan to put on display -- especially after seeing that I've already gotten the short end of the stick. The answer is simple. I'm being true to form. I've always had a greater interest in making the powers that be do right than I've had in bringing an indictment against them. As much as it could work against me between now and July 2018, I still prefer to see DC Government and its contractors heed the words of the poor and to implement a plan for addressing poverty that truly works. It would make the nine months that I could spend in jail if I were to lose this case well worth it -- as long as my supporters bring me commissary money throughout.

I warn you against mistaking short shrift for meaningful engagement. I also admonish you to beware that you don't let Kristy's attention to one particular advocate who snuggles up to her in ways that make it impossible for her to ignore him without being rude pass as meaningful engagement with the homeless community that she is paid to serve -- ostensibly anyway.

The case can and should be made that my greatest mistake over the years has been relegating myself to speaking FOR the poor and not doing enough to get them to speak for themselves. Had I focused more on getting others to speak for themselves, then city officials wouldn't be able to take actions against the one of me and thereby ensure that no one from the poor community is offering critiques that are both articulate and recognized by media and the general public. But there's no use crying over spilled milk. So, people can stay tuned for when my court case evolves into an issue of free speech; but, the poor should attend ICH meetings in large numbers, speak their minds and see where it goes. If it doesn't go anywhere, they should bring that assessment to court and make certain that the judge hears them. This can become the beginning of something new and awesome -- the reversal of the disenfranchisement of DC's poor (and the correction of my greatest mistake). After all, the recently-passed tax plan will soon leave them in the lurch and force them to rise up. They might as well start practicing for that moment now.

As stated earlier, DC is a strange place. One of the strange things about this city is that it has a law that sets the bar for a non-sexual harassment charge very low. If you send at least two texts or e-mails to a person whom you had reason to believe didn't want them, you can be charged with harassment. Lifelong Washingtonians are surprised when I tell them that. Being made aware of this truth desensitizes people to accusations they hear of this or that person having harassed someone -- in much the same way that learning of the DC law which defines someone that pees in a bush as a sex offender desensitizes people to claims that a person on the sex offender registry did something terrible. The overly-protective nature of DC law has come back to bite them in the [rear]. Additionally, this local law against "e-mail harassment", when applied to government, flies in the face of the U.S. Constitution's provision that demands that U.S. citizens have access to their government for redress of grievances.

In any instance, the court has determined that my e-mails to Kristy Greenwalt were not threatening -- that her initial claim was grossly overblown. Nonetheless, they are allowing her case to move forward on the basis of this lesser charge of "e-mail harassment". As long as I don't contact her and I comply with all conditions of the court, I'll remain out of jail. As long as I remain out of jail, Kristy has until July to build her case against me. Were I to be locked up again, she'd have to bring her case much sooner. I plan to comply with all court conditions, so as to ensure that the case runs into July. The time frame serves other poor people and myself well.

Mayor Muriel Bowser is up for reelection during the June 19th, 2018 DC Democratic Primary (the city's de facto mayoral election). A high-profile court case that revolves around a locally well-known homeless advocate who calls out systemic flaws taking place while a mayor who ran on a platform of addressing homelessness is seeking reelection works out nicely for the city's poor. It doesn't help the mayor that the primary which, in 2014, took place in April (the month before the results of the annual January homeless count are released) got moved to June in 2016 and will remain there in 2018. Voters who will have learned in May 2018 of (what I'm predicting will have been) an increase in the number of homeless people might also learn in May or June that an advocate who has been telling city officials how to fix the system is on trial for just that reason. This could lead to many people voting for a political newbie and Kristy Greenwalt being dismissed some time between May 10th and June 30th (which would make the case null and void). Of course, nothing is gained from Bowser being voted out and Kristy being dismissed -- unless the 2019 administration learns its lessons and cleans up its act. Maybe Ms. Bowser will heed this post and start cleaning house even now. Maybe. Let's hope.

[I've sought to link a profile of Kristy Greenwalt into what I write about her; but, she is the only DC Government director that lacks a profile on the DC.gov website. That leaves me to wonder what she has to hide -- if maybe her life history isn't gleaming enough to put on display for DC taxpayers. No worries; as, her information is on-line in other places. Kristy Greenwalt was born in 1974, is therefore 43 in 2017 and is originally from Brainerd, Minnesota. She has lived in Virginia and currently resides in Northwest Washington, DC. Anyone can use that information to learn more about her on sites like WhitePages.com, MyLife.com and TruthFinder.com. Have at it; and, don't let her drive you anywhere.]

Please share widely and frequently through July 2018. Thank you.