#44 The Trials of Caltrans On Trial

Will Parrish in crane by moonlight July 2013

     While the Caltrans Willits Bypass builders and supporters are surely hoping the protestors will just shut up and go away, bypass protestors hope that the heinous acts of Maltrans will not escape notice or go unpunished.

Native American Site Destruction
     That includes the destruction of an indigenous Pomo heritage site that Caltrans desecrated by dumping 3 feet of fill on top of the site in the mismanagement of the bypass planning. In mid-October, the National Congress of American Indians passed a resolution supporting the Sherwood Valley Rancheria in their grievance against Caltrans and seeking to prevent further construction and funding for the bypass project. (The link connects to more information on this topic in an essay written by Will Parrish at the Save Our Little Lake Valley.)

The Mitigation Budget Debacle
     Also hitting the news stands in our hinterlands is the recent revelation that Caltrans budgeted a mere $12.7 million to mitigate the damage they are doing to the wetlands, creeks, forests, and critters as part of their 4-lane, 6-mile Freeway for the Few. The mitigation work includes tasks such as erosion control, replanting, and control of herbicides. However, the bids that came in started at $39 million from contractors prepared to do the massive mitigation work. (Connect here to an article by Linda Williams in The Willits News, Oct. 25.) Caltrans does not have the money to pay them. Shouldn't they be forced to stop until they do--if they ever will?
      This budgeting discrepancy follows on a September report from the Water Quality Control Board finding 140 problems with the way Caltrans has handled the bypass in relation. Again, shouldn't they be forced to stop? But no one seems to make the leviathan halt.
     How can we trust the supposedly expert engineering outfit of Caltrans, with its environmental report on how it will clean up its mess and restore sensitive wetlands when it has so grossly underestimated what it says it will do? It reminds me of those bolts in the Bay Bridge that Caltrans wrongly engineered.

Will Parrish’s Trial in the Ukiah County Courthouse starting November 12

Will Parrish in the Crane

       Also in the news is the upcoming trial of Will Parrish. He was the young man who spent 12 days 50’ high in a crane that was used to pummel plastic “wicks” 85 feet deep into 40 acres of wetlands. For many millennia, these wetlands have been the water collection site for six creeks that flow into Little Lake Valley, a feeding ground for elk and the spawning waters for three kinds of salmon. Yet in a mere few months, Caltrans is destroying this precious wetland.


Will lived on this tiny platform
for nearly 2 weeks

     When Will was arrested, he decided that he would put Caltrans on trial. He and his lawyer, Omar Figueroa, will be using the opportunity to bring to the public the ways that Caltrans has, with impunity, violated their own contracts relating to mitigation efforts and their desecration of the Pomo archaeological site and more.

Will Parrish

    However, Will is being charge with multiple felony counts, one for each day that he was in the crane. And Caltrans is also slapping him with $500,000 in restitution fees for the work that they were not able to do with their expensive machinery and highly paid contractors during the days he was using the crane himself.

Restitution?!
         The fact that peaceful protestors engaged in civil disobedience could have to pay for the damage they have done to the company that they are objecting to is a new twist on civil disobedience. Imagine if all those involved in the Birmingham Bus Boycott had to pay back the bus company for the money the bus business lost when their customers decided to walk for miles over more than a year rather than take a bus that forced them to sit in the back. Remember the businesses in South Africa that started hurting when American investors stopped investing in South Africa in order to force South Africa to stop its heinous use of apartheid. What if they required American investors to pay them back for profit lost? Really?
        Obviously, the profit gained by Caltrans contractors is for a cause seen as quite reasonable by the bypass promoters and acceptors (as was slavery and segregation in their times). The "m-f-ing" environmentalists (as we are called) are the ones who are the problem in this scenario. The climate change that is increasingly in the news and that we see as deeply connected to the destruction of this little valley’s micro-climate is mere poppycock to Caltrans engineers and their chainsaw wielding, bulldozer driving supporters. How do we convince the deniers otherwise?

Caltrans "Insular Culture"

You can see the big difference between the huge swath of
land required for 4 lanes compared to 2.

       Caltrans’ “insular culture” is finally catching attention. State Senator Mark DeSaulnier has authored two bills to create more vigilance over Caltrans accountability. In a recent radio program aired on our local station, the senator and our local Caltrans watch expert, Rich Estabrook, discussed  how Caltrans convinced local authorities in and around Willits that a 4-lane freeway was the answer to our traffic “congestion.”
         As you may recall from my earlier posts, we only have 8000 cars leaving and entering Willits to the north on an average daily basis. It was pure manipulation using technical terms, such as Level of Service C, that allowed Caltrans to make people believe that their way is the only way.
         We are still working to have them reduce the northern interchange from 4 lanes to 2 and thus enormously reduce the impact on the wetlands at that northern end of our valley.
          Stay tuned for what is to come of Will’s trial and the effort to bring the corruption, the shortsighted science, and the harmful mismanagement to light.

#43 OCT. 12TH RALLY! They haven't poured the cement yet....

 

            It’s hard to be in the position of begging a bully to let up even for a minute, but that’s where we are at when it comes to trying to prevent the total destruction of the Little Lake Valley wetlands. Since Caltrans has plowed through the valley and created its “boot print” for the future onslaught of more fill and cement, we are hoping to at least reduce the northern interchange from a 4-lane set of on-and-off ramps (see photo below of the Caltrans plan)  to 2 lanes. That would reduce the impact on the wetlands where that interchange is being built, and it would reduce the impact on the general environment of so many extra truck loads of fill and cement, etc.

4-lane northern interchange, Caltrans Plan

            A good rationale for that scaling back exists in that a 4-lane freeway is built for 40,000 cars, according to the Federal Highway standards that Caltrans relies on, but Caltrans data show that only 8000 cars enter and leave Willits to the north on an average daily basis. So is asking for 2 lanes really too much to ask?

2 lane alternative interchange plan

         Some of our city council thought so. Councilwoman Madge Strong had written a letter to the governor asking for a work change order on the northern exchange, with excellent analysis. She wanted the Willits City Council to endorse the request—the very least that our political representatives could do to reduce the huge impact on the valley by Caltrans. About 20 citizens spoke in favor of Strong’s letter to change the work order. Two spoke against.
            However, one councilman insisted that he actually didn’t really care about the bypass because he is only concerned with water and sewage as they impact the city. This statement created a cry of surprise from the audience, given that the destruction of 40 acres of wetlands and the drilling of wickdrains 85 feet into our valley floor will conceivably have a huge impact on our water supply, flooding, aquifer, and more.

Flyover photo by Steve Eberhard of Caltrans work on
the northern interchange--former wetland

            The other councilman present called Strong’s letter a “frivolous” request, and he noted that if we want political change in our society, we either follow the rule of law (which, one might say, was the purpose of Strong’s letter, appealing to our legal authorities) or “you can go out and shoot people.” Gasp, gasp!
            Needless to say, the divisions of ideology and communication in this town run deep.


Former wetland, now a "wick field"
(Photo by Steve Eberhard)

           



     In order to rally support for scaling back of the northern interchange and to have some ceremonial closure to the end of Caltrans’ season of destruction, Save Our Little Lake Valley is co-hosting a Rally for the Wetlands on Oct. 12. The rally will take place on land right across from the wetlands—or our former wetlands—and will feature music, poetry, speakers, and peaceful civil disobedience. One speaker is going to be Julia Butterfly, who sat in a redwood tree for over 2 years in order to protest the cutting of old growth redwoods. She was an inspiration to our Warbler who occupied a ponderosa pine tree for two months starting in late January and kicked off our movement here to halt the Caltrans bypass.
            Other featured speakers will come from the local Pomo Sherwood Rancheria. A Pomo

Willits Pomo site on older map of Native lands

archaeological site was supposed to be protected from Caltrans plans to dump fill in the area, but someone changed the plan without consulting the tribe—or apparently even reading the plan!—and so the Native folks must endure having three feet of fill on top of their sacred site, yet another outrage by the white man.
            Using numbers found on a petition signed by over 1481 people earlier in the year protesting the Caltrans bypass, I called and emailed about 50 people to inform them about the upcoming rally. Given that Willits has about 5000 people within the city limits, 1481 is a good chunk of the adult population against the bypass. I got to talk to a few people and asked them what they thought about the bypass.
            One woman had clearly changed her feelings since she signed the petition. “Those protestors are costing us millions of dollars. When Caltrans came in, they gave us jobs, like for my son who’s a contractor. They discussed the plan enough for twenty years, so let them build it.” I did not try to argue with her.
            Others had this to say: “I’m dismayed by the bypass, but what can you do when it comes to taking action against a big corporation?” Another said, “There’s not much we can do about it now.” Said one woman, “I have five kids I’m trying to take care of, so even though I don’t like what they’re doing to the environment, I just haven’t been able to be involved.” Another man was wistful. “I wish they’d stop because they’re having an awful impact on the wetlands and we need those wetlands.”
            There it is: Many who have read the news and care about what’s happening have not done much to make it stop, either because of their own pressing and real obligations to work and family or because they feel powerless, a David facing a Goliath without even a slingshot to defend himself with.
            I told them all, Here’s one more chance to raise your voice. We are not alone and weak when we are together and inspired.
            So let’s hope lots of people show up, write letters, and realize that we can still have an impact.

Swath of the boot print thus far for the Caltrans' 6-mile long bypass (Photo by Steve Eberhard)

           Radio programs continue to feature the problem and provide opportunities for some of our most knowledgeable citizens to speak on the issue. One featured on Time of Useful Consciousness radio had an excellent interview with the Willits Environmental Center’s Ellen Drell and another local traffic analyst Christopher Martin, called A $300 Million Freeway Bypass Built on Wetlands - and on a Lie."
            Meanwhile, our larger society faces a huge government shut down. A local Congressman continues to get paid his $175,000 while other federal workers earning far, far less are out of their paychecks and children in Headstart programs are denied their food. Of course, a lack of caring for community and the environment is not limited to Willits by any means.

#42 In the Dumps, In the News

What WAS Little Lake Valley Wetlands, North of Willits
(All Photos by Steve Eberhard)

The wetland turned into a wickfield, soon to be covered by dirt

In the Dumps: Irreversible Destruction to the Wetlands

Southern "Interchange" where Warbler's Ponderosa Pine once was.
The hill to the right is where the bulldozer I was locked to was.
This hill is now being used to create "fill," dumped on the wetlands to the north.

            For the last three weeks, caravans of dump trucks have been travelling up and down the Main Street of Willits at night.


  Back in May we were protesting the drilling of 55,000 wickdrains into the wetlands 85 feet deep. Those plastic wickdrains serve to pump the water out of the deep ground after 20’-30’ of dirt is piled on top. Wetlands are like a sponge. The fill on top will compress the sponge and press out the water. The wetlands of Little Lake Valley are being irreversibly destroyed every day now.

A one-container truck being filled by day

Their lights and heft and numbers resemble an invading army. With one or two enormous containers filled with dirt from the very hill where I was once locked to a bulldozer at the south end of town, the trucks caravan to the north end of town to dump their loads on what were our beautiful wetlands.

What was the wetlands, now a "wickfield"

 

 

 

 

 

(Left, plastic wicks)

 

 

 

Arrests continue: Not to be stuck in the dumps about this desecration, resistance continues, from mere crosswalk delays to prevent the trucks from making faster progress to recent lockdowns on a truck by two young people (right), preventing the caravan from delivering their death blows for 8 hours.

       Such desperate acts of civil disobedience have been spurred by citizens' failure to be taken seriously by city councils, the board of supervisors, the governor’s office, and courts of law. Undeterred, opponents to the bypass continue insisting on the insanity of kowtowing to the Caltrans vision of progress.

       But we have been heard by several news outlets that also wonder if this bypass is not a “boondoggle,” given that it’s a major freeway design to carry 40,000 cars when only 8000 cars on average head in and out of Willits to the north. 70% of the traffic congestion is from Willits area residents who have been asking for alternate routes through town for years.

     This brief ABC video outlines some of the key issues with great visuals regarding the amount of actual traffic that leaves Willits to the north. ABC asks why this rural town deserves so much money for an unnecessary freeway, while the Bay Area continues to suffer from transportation nightmares.

      The Willits News posted a wonderful aerial overview done by their intrepid photojournalist Steve Eberhard, showing the Caltrans plan in comparison to what has actually occurred thus far.

      KGO out of San Francisco has done several stories about the Willits Bypass debacle, always . For a hot minute, county authorities questioned whether Caltrans was taking fill dirt from a toxic area: Here are two stories on that, one from Aug. 26th and their story from Aug. 28.

       On Aug. 23 the Army Corps of Engineers questions whether Caltrans was complying with its environmental mitigation plans. The actual letter from the ACE is here.

        Willits was also in the Los Angeles Times on Aug. 24th in an article that detailed what both proponents and opponents are saying about the bypass.

 

       While I'm heartened that we gave gotten this attention, we cannot ignore the daily ravages that we cannot seem to stop. Given the $300 million at Caltrans’ disposal, they could buy an army of contractors with huge machines and buy the use of the police force to protect them, so Caltrans has now completed 25% of their planned bypass. Protestors have used every means possible to alert the public to the expensive, unnecessary, and damaging impacts of their plan, compared to a plan devised by the community to reduce traffic congestion (yes, we want that, too) but in a way consistent with protecting the vital resources we have in this valley.

           This valley was called Little Lake Valley because the winter and spring flow down the hills from six creeks surrounding the valley transformed that north end into a virtual lake. In turn, that water feeds into Outlet Creek to the north of Willits, which in turn feeds into the Eel River. We are a vital part of a watershed for elk, salmon, and other creatures that traversed those wetlands for eons. Now an underground dam and a thirty foot tall earthen and cement barrier will destroy that habitat—and it didn’t have to happen that way.

Do We See Ourselves as Protectors of the Earth or As Dominators?

    Since I last posted to my blog after my jail time, I’ve been working hard on another job. I am not, in fact, a “worthless welfare environmentalist” as I’ve been called by bypass proponents. In fact, I’ve been writing a book about an inspirational man, Malcolm Margolin, who started a publishing company called Heyday, now a "cultural institution." Among many virtues of Heyday, thier books contribute to protecting the natural environment and the heritage of the First Peoples here in California. Malcolm initiated Heyday in 1974 with a book about the natural and cultural history of the East Bay Regional Parks. He went on to write The Ohlone Way, a book that captured the way of life of the Ohlone people in the larger San Francisco-Monterey area.

        What Malcolm said about those Native Californians’ early way of life reflects the values of those seeking to protect Little Lake Valley from the Caltrans Willits Bypass: “The Ohlones lived in a world where people were few and animals were many, …they lived in a world where the animal kingdom had not yet fallen under the domination of the human race and where (how difficult it is for us to fully grasp the implication of this!)  people did not yet see themselves as the undisputed lords of all creation” (p. 12).

One of many roadside demos

       How we relate to nature is at the essence of this battle over the future of Little Lake Valley. The California Highway Patrol officer who arrested me and my companion explained on our ride to the Mendocino County Jail that he did not believe that global climate change is a true phenomenon, and that “God gave man the power to be stewards of the earth.” Therein lies the difference between those who dominate and pillage this valley, and those who seek to protect creation.

   

"Condor" in the last stand of trees to be felled

 

 

    Meanwhile, the last treesitter in a tree that has been continuously befriended is soon to be evicted as Caltrans has begun to cut down the last little forest in the path of the bypass. The ravages continue.

 

 

#41 Sprung from Jail!

            In the midst of these conversations in jail all day and into the night, Maureen and I had been trying to figure out how to deal with our own fate, now that protestors against the bypass were being sent to jail for two days, and then to court, rather than released from the holding tank. What would be in store at court, the next day, Thursday?
           I had a series of collect phone calls to various jail support people who counseled us on what might happen when we got to court. “They’ll take you in shackles, wearing your jail clothes,” Sara warned us, “so be prepared for the shock of shackles. But we’ll be there for you in court.” She also counseled us to ask for a continuance if charges were filed against us, since we had had no opportunity to speak with a lawyer. I was happy for her advice, since I have not been trained in any of these practices relating to “criminal justice” for protestors. Sara also suggested we prepare statements that we would be able to make to the judge.
            Wednesday is commissary day, so after dinner (served at 4:30), women were given the bags of goods and goodies they had ordered (if they weren't "indigent"). What excitement over bottles of conditioner and elastic bands to hold back hair, a pad of paper, candy and powdered coffee. I'd been without my beloved coffee for two days, so I could relate (and I had a headache). Our dorm mate I'm calling Red in the bunk below and next to us prepared dessert for herself and three friends, a tortilla filled with broken up Butterfingers, some kind of chocolate smear, marshmallow mess, and a host of other sweet items heaped on top. Maureen looked at me wryly and said, "Uh oh! Sugar!”
            Indeed. Conversation and laughter lasted until well past midnight. I couldn’t sleep through all the talk. Actually, some of it was too interesting to miss.
            Janet, who has spent one and a half years inside, bemoaned, “You know what I can’t wait to have again? Sex! But it’s gonna hurt after two years. My man’s cock is big! No, I mean 9 inches! He’s so big that I even met other women in here who were dating him, and we all talked about how it hurt so bad.”
            I was laying there with a sweatshirt sleeve over my eyes to be able to catch some sleep, but I just had to be the teacher, you know, so I called out, “Lube!”
            Some voices laughed loudly. “Did you hear her?! What'd you say?”
            More loudly now and with gumption below my sweatshirt sleeve, I repeated, “Lube! Lots of lube.”
            They all got a good laugh. Well, it is good advice.
            “Hey,” one of them called to me. “Let’s hear your speech to the judge!”
            I had told a few of the women who overheard my conversation with Maureen about court that we were going to make a statement, and that had also given them a good laugh—I could only imagine why: how intrepid, if not presumptuous, we were to think that we could make a statement in our defense that might make a political difference.
            I wiped my bleary eyes, sat up, and read my one page statement aloud to all those still awake and listening. I began, “I decided to trespass on the Caltrans site because I could not allow one more day of their destruction against the hills and valley.”
            “Don’t say ‘trespass,’” Maria called out. “Don’t admit anything.”
            "Okay," I said, taking in that perspective. As I continued to read, they gave me a couple of other pointers. At the end, I said, “Hey, thanks for the editing help.”
            One woman laughed, “Oh, you ought to hear the help I got on my letter to my boyfriend.” Other laughter and testimony followed about how they had helped each other find the right words to parents, kids, and lawyers when the right words were essential, and they had lots of time to mull them over.
            The sugar high finally seemed to wear off for our roommates by 1:00 am. I’d just gotten to sleep when I heard the metal door now make its familiar click and a huge slap came down on the floor. I bolted upright. Angela interpreted for me. “That’s the ‘boat.’”  It was a plastic mattress container with the pad in it, accompanied by another inmate who would be sleeping on the floor since there were no other bunks available. I realized it was La Llorona, the crying woman, who finally joined us from the Holding Tank. I felt sorry for her since she’d been in there another 28 hours after we’d left.
            I went back to sleep--until an hour later: a click of the door, a slap on the floor, and yet another inmate brought in. I did not even remove my eye shield this time.
            Though we'd had very little sleep, when the 5:30 am call for breakfast came across the intercom, this time Maureen and I were well practiced in getting up and to the meal-slot-in-the door on time.
              We sat again at the table with Cherise and another woman. Cherise prayed over our food as she had each meal. But the most incredible blessing now: “God, we ask that you be merciful to these women in their search for truth. May the judge hear their plea for the valley and be kind to them. And watch over all our loved ones, God.” I was moved to tears by Cherise’s plea. We had little time for dawdling in emotion since the dorm women were responsible for cleaning the day room before heading back to bed. I gobbled down my frosted flakes--the "best breakfast," I'd been informed, and grabbed a mop.
            We had heard that you get called for an 8:30 court appearance around 7:30 or so, but we were not called. Two other women were instead. I asked the guard, “What about Bancroft and Kane?”
            “Not on my list,” she insisted. "Maybe this afternoon."
            We were distressed to hear that. We didn’t want to play jailbird anymore—not that it wasn’t intriguing and worthwhile, but we felt the pressure to move on with our lives, with the campaign, with life on the outside. But I snapped back to how the other women inside must feel that desire to get out and its constant disappointment so much more thickly than we did.
            I called our ever present jail support and reported that it looked like we were not going to court that morning. Meanwhile, a whole group had arrived at 8:15 to support us in court. They were awaiting further news about our fate. I was sorry they had made the trip unnecessarily.
            We were resolved to spend the morning or even the day in limbo.
             Suddenly, in another ten minutes, we were surprised to hear our names called. “Bancroft! Kane! Prepare to be released.”
            Released! So we weren’t going to court after all. We were just going to be sprung! I immediately called our jail support back and gave her the happy news. "Congrats!" she said. She told me that the group would migrate over to the jail yard and await us outside.
                 Now “outside” means something even more.


Kim, Maureen and Steve, just out

            Maureen and I pulled our bedding and clothing into our duffle bags, and gave good-bye hugs to a couple of the women who were still there and who wished us well on our journey, including Cherise. I left the remains of my indigent baggie and leftover paper and pencils with Angela, my guardian angel, leaving her also a note of encouragement and my phone number for her to call me when she’s on the outside.

Anonymous friends who came to support us in court,
but who helped spring us from jail

            In twenty minutes, Maureen and I were walked quickly through the labyrinth to the booking cell. I laughed with our officer what we were being “debooked” much faster than it took to book us. In a small cement bathroom, we were told to undress and push our jail clothes through a hole in a door. The jail clothes were removed, and then our own clothes were pushed back through to us.
         On the other side of the door, we were given our shoes and a release notice, then effectively pushed outside the doors.
     Fortunately for us, we were received into the arms of several dear friends in the campaign who cheered our arrival. How lucky we were!
            Steve was released from the men's side at the same time. He said he was in the middle of giving a lesson on Buddhist meditation when he got the news.
        I finally read my "Detention Certificate" and discovered I would not even have to return for a court date: The certificate state that "any peace officer may release from custody instead of taking such person before a magistrate, any person arrested when he or she is satisfied that there are insufficient grounds for making a criminal complaint against the person arrested." I guess I did the time, so that was enough of a burden on the system, rather than taking me before a magistrate.
        When I got out, I learned that the following press release had gone out, a fitting end to this jail tale:

               Ripper Restrained from Destroying Hillside 
at Caltrans Bypass Site

 
Willits, CA—


        In yet another stealthy pre-dawn action, protesters against the Caltrans bypass around Willits again snuck onto the construction site, this time on the south end of the route, locking themselves to a giant bulldozer called a ripper. The machine is tearing apart a hillside and using the soil to fill in wetlands and streams to build a freeway. For the first time, press has access to the protest site, after Willits News photographer Steve Eberhard was arrested when he tried to cover a protest last week.

        Two women, Kim Bancroft and Maureen Kane, have locked their hands around the equipment in welded steel tubes, which are difficult to remove and must be sawn through. A third protester, Steve Keyes, was arrested when he would not leave their side, where he was stationed with water.  

         Temperatures have been in the nineties all week. A crowd of local citizens has gathered in support, and CHP is on scene. Bancroft explained: “Caltrans put out false information to justify a four-lane bypass. The people of Willits designed an alternative route that would not be so expensive or destructive, and it was ignored.”  The project’s cost at this point is $210 million.

   “Caltrans is attempting to mitigate for the loss of wetlands on an unprecedented scale, using an untried method with no long term manager and without long term funding to sustain it”, said Ellen Drell, founding board member of the Willits Environmental Center. “They’re replacing an already functioning wetland with a speculative plan”.


          Caltrans purchased one third of the entire Little Lake Valley in an effort to mitigate for this project, which will cause the largest loss of wetlands in 50 years. In a scheme that they themselves acknowledge to be experimental, Caltrans will excavate 266,000 cubic yards of wetland soils, gouging out unnatural depressions. In other areas the plan calls for stripping off existing vegetation and replacing it nursery grown plants. 
         “The total price tag of this mitigation travesty to the taxpayers is $54 million dollars”, said Drell.


           The Mendocino Conservation Resource District (RDC), which Caltrans assumed would take over management of the mitigation plan, has declined to accept ownership of the mitigation lands or responsibility for its management, after reviewing the mitigation plan.  Thus the plan is moving forward with no manager, leaving one-third of valley lands with Caltrans as the sole owner, and no plan for the future. While there is funding for earth moving, planting and 40 miles of fencing, there is zero funding for land management, including rotational grazing for cattle, oversight, maintenance, and flood control. 
          Protests over the Willits Bypass freeway have been ongoing since January when a young woman calling herself “Warbler” took up residence high in a pine tree on the route. Her tree-sit, and 5 others were ended after 2 months in a huge military-style operation by CHP swat teams. “Warbler” returned to the trees this week, this time in a rare wetland ash forest at the north end of the route. Over 30 people have been arrested, and rallies, petitions, protests and a lawsuit continue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#40 Camaraderie When You Least Expect It

            Over the next 24 hours while Maureen and I waited out our time in jail for court on Thursday, I took interest in catching discussions of fellow inmates and observing what life in jail can mean for those spending weeks, months, and even years there.
            What most struck me as the camaraderie I experienced there, including many small gestures of helping out a sister inmate. I remember a most startling comment tossed off gaily by Jenna as she climbed the steps to the dorm, called back to someone downstairs. “Either way, I’ll still love you.” I tipped my head over my bed to see if Maureen, lying down below me, had heard it, too. We raised our eyebrows and smiled. Such references to love were possible in this cold and sterile place? Women can talk about this love among friends here? Did men form such bonds on the other side? What remarkable creatures women can be.
            I saw several forms of intimate talk, including one conversation between Angela and Cherise after Angela was crying on the phone during a difficult conversation with her boyfriend. With her mother literally on her deathbed and her boyfriend saying he didn’t think he could accept her as a non-drinker when she would get out soon, Angela was watching what little life she had going for her on the outside collapsing before she even got there. Cherise was by Angela’s side for an hour, talking it all through with her.
            How vulnerable, how troubled, how revealing the talk. Maria, a beautiful young Latina, perhaps age 28, with the names of her two children emblazoned in tattoos across her neck, told her buddies in the bunks nearby: “It just hit me that I’m not going to have any retirement. I don’t have a mother and father to go home to. I’m not going to have anything! That shit just hit me.” Here they were, trying to help each other figure out how to stay clean and get their lives back on track with absolutely no support.
            The conversation was often far from lively. Other main descriptors for jail I heard there are “boring” and “disgusting.” As for boring, Angela insisted that “you can only read so much.” Perhaps 30 books were on the shelves in the women’s dayroom. I want now to find out how to get more interesting books to the inmates. I remember one woman in particular talking about what a good book she was reading, telling others about the book’s message of taking control of your life. More rehabilitation opportunities inside would be a good thing, even if just through some stimulating reading.
            I did get to visit the small jail library which had a couple of teachers on hand to help with GED studies. The room was fairly well stocked with books and films (and a variety of TV video/CD players), much of it aimed at GED studies, but also geared towards topics like “How to Find a Job When You Get Out” and “Staying Clean and Sober on the Outside.” During our two permitted hours at the library, the other women watched dramas, including Dr. Zhivago, and nature films, with only one studying for her GED test. One teacher was ready to do my intake as a new student for the GED, but I said I wouldn’t be in long enough to pursue it. I just settled in with Angela’s copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, enjoying the relative quiet of the library without America’s Got Talent blasting on the TV. The library also had a real bathroom with a door you could shut—what a privilege!
            Because jail can be so boring, many women seek the opportunity to work if they can. While the men get to work in the kitchen and the garden, a huge expanse of green growth that Maureen and I saw when we arrived, women were limited to working in the laundry. I won’t share stories I heard about the disgusting clothing they had to sort through in the laundry, mostly from the men’s side, they insisted, or about the athlete’s foot and other diseases they talked about circulating. Even when it came to women’s underwear, one of my roommates suggested we ask for maxi pads to put in our underwear if we didn’t want to be exposed to jail panties. Yeah, I’ll stop there on the topic of “disgusting.”
            The boredom also meant that if you didn’t have a job and weren’t into watching one TV show after another, you might sleep a good deal of the day, as did one woman who was a perpetual lump on her bunk. But some exercise was avidly pursued, including by Cherise who had lost nearly 50 pounds in a year and a half with the daily exercise that she and a few other women engaged in, doing 500 jumping jacks and other aerobics in the tiny cement enclosed yard. We also saw women walking lap around the edges of the dayroom at different times, just to get some kind of exercise.
            Finally, boredom means that the meals become a focus, as boring as they are, too. Fortunately, it wasn’t just white bread and hot dogs, but we did get two pieces of whole wheat bread with every meal, which meant you could gain a lot of weight if you weren’t doing jumping jacks and rounds. There was a salad or (overcooked) vegetable with lunch and dinner, and fruit with each meal, including a fresh orange at breakfast, even if the fruit was canned at other meals. Pasta or beans were a big feature. At lunch, a woman who was laughingly called the human garbage pail asked me if I wanted the bologna on my sandwich. When I said no, she asked if she could have it and then gave me a high five in her joy. What we can take pleasure in when we have few pleasures available…
            With so much boredom, a fight in jail between a guard and an inmate was a real highlight. The guard, Ms. Jensen, seemed to garner much respect from the inmates, and she had respect for what Maureen and I had done to land us there--an odd kind of camaraderie we weren't expecting. She told Maureen, “It’s good that you stand up for what you think is right, but you’re a real burden to the system.” Strategically, we want the system to feel the burden—as we know that the system of the watershed, its delicate balance of forests, creeks and wetlands are certainly feeling the burden of decimated hillsides, compressed “swamps,” and desiccated rivers, not to mention state coffers robbed of equally valuable resources for a useless cement river.
            But I digress. Officer Jensen was viewed by others as fair and friendly, if not firm. How firm? Maureen and I were upstairs in the dorm with the lump in the bed while the other women were down in the dayroom, watching TV, waiting for lunch, or in the tiny exercise yard. Suddenly we heard the still indistinguishable muffled voice of the intercom with some kind of shouted order, and the noise of a scuffle downstairs below us. The women in the dayroom quickly moved outside and then turned to look through the glass windows to watch what was going on below, which we could not see upstairs. The lump in the bed leaped up as she heard yelling downstairs and came to stare out the fenced wall before us.
            “What’s happening?” I asked, clueless about this choreographed scene, still evolving as we heard louder shouts below us. A couple of male officers ran into the room.
            “Lock down!” our companion told us. “It’s a fight. Sounds like someone in the med room.”
            In another minute, yet more male officers ran into the room. In a split second, I saw the women in the exercise yard laughing and smiling or looking on with concern at the scene taking place below us, like an odd mirror of the drama we couldn’t witness ourselves. Suddenly, a posse of guards led out a female in an orange jumpsuit—she had not been part of our minimum security group, for sure, since we were all dressed in green. One guard had grabbed a fistful of her hair in his hand and was pulling her head back to keep her in control, while another had her wrists behind her back in handcuffs.
            The inmate was whisked out through the magic door. We could hear the telltale clicks in the doors to indicate that we were no longer in lock down.  We headed downstairs, both for lunch and for news. The women in the exercise yard poured in, all excitement. “What happened?” we asked.
            “She was crazy!”
            “She hit Ms. Jensen in the arm—”
            “—and then Ms. Jensen socked her in the jaw.”
            “She broke her jaw!”
            “No, she didn’t.”
            “Yes, she did. Then they gave her a sedative.”
            “Hey!” cried someone. “Turn off the TV.”
            I thought, “Great idea!” But the impetus wasn’t to annihilate the inanity on the screen, as I had hoped, but to hear the continued scuffling and screaming on the other side of the door from the mad woman and her captors. It was all alluring and sad at the same time, like the excitement, I imagine, from watching the Christians tossed to the lions or for some Southern whites watching a lynching, or perhaps going to any super violent film today. We thrive on brutal entertainment.

           

#39 Locked Down Again, Now "Inside"

  

          “You’ve got trespassing and resisting arrest here as your charges,” the booking officer explained. She knew I was there for locking down to a bulldozer. The latter charge was presumably was a result of refusing to go with the officer when he came to arrest my lockdown companion, Maureen, and me. Oddly, the booking officer sighed, “Well, people have to voice their opinions.” She added, “Your court date will be in two days, on Thursday, so you’ll be spending that time in jail.”
            Though I might have gotten out on my $10,000 bail, our practice in the protest has been to save the money (especially for many of us who don't have that kind of money), and do the time if you've done the crime. It usually was only a day and maybe a night in the holding cell, anyhow, foir first-time offenders.
            But for Maureen and I, it would be two. I was surprised. I quickly put in a call to our jail support to let our most excellent volunteer at the other end of the line know I wouldn’t be out until Thursday. She was prepared to let my dog support folks know I’d need another day of their taking care of Sata.
            Then I put into practice an attitude of surrender, given that I was literally no longer in control of my life. Indeed, being in jail offers so many amazing lessons if we let it. First for me as someone who has never spent time in a “real” jail is the lesson about the rigid controls imposed on your life as an inmate.
            After the paperwork was done, I was directed into a room where the officer took my mugshot and then fingerprints, generated on the computer, of palms, fingertips, and even the “writer’s hand,” a print along the side of a hand. I was, as usual, curious about everything and asked why they needed that. “I’ve had my prints taken as a teacher before,” I mentioned, “but never those.”

              “That’s how Richard Allen Davis was caught, when he rested his hand on a convenience store counter.” He was the murderer of a little girl Polly Klaas. The irony did not escape me that I was now in that league of criminals on record.
            We continued on to the clothing department. My same friendly officer in as nice a way as possible told me to strip, turn around, squat, and cough—the “strip search.” Yes, humiliating in a way, less so for someone who is a practiced nudist, to be honest, but still…. And now I know what all inmates go through, surely many with far less amiability on the part of the booking officer and the newly jailed.
            Then I was issued my green jail coveralls with “Mendocino County Jail” emblazoned on the back, an orange t-shirt, orange socks, and orange canvas slip on shoes—that “orange is the new black” thing. I was also given a duffle bag of extra clothing, bedding, and what is called “the indigent bag,” a little baggie with a stubby toothbrush (one that can’t be whittled into a weapon), toothpaste, shampoo, soap, three packets of 2 Advil tablets, a couple of sheets of paper, and a stubby pencil. Later I learned that inmates who can order better stuff through the commissary call these the indigent bags, referring to those without money to ever get anything more than these minimal supplies.
            I had my glasses returned to me, thankfully—nothing like walking around in a literal haze. And then I followed the officer through a labyrinth of metal doors where we’d stop at each for clearance. The door lock would click open, she’d order me through, and the door would loudly clang shut. I would hear the sounds of the locks clicking open and shut many times throughout the day and night. “Lockdown!” became the recurring call over the intercom or simply the routine the other inmates knew too well.
            We entered the “dayroom,” a large room with built in metal tables and benches for four, and the shower stall behind a curtain. A TV screen hung from the ceiling. There was a shelf for books, a vending machine, and at the far end several individual metal cell doors.
            Then we climbed steps along the side of the room to the dorm above, fully visible behind a floor-to-ceiling metal fence. It was by now 11 pm, but the lights were on in the dorm where I saw four metal bunk beds and a set of metal lockers, figures huddled in bed or sitting up, interested in the new inmate.
            I had some trepidation about who the other women would be, what their levels of “toughness” might be, but not much. Having been a teacher in urban schools most of my life, I’ve often encountered people—both youth and adults—who either had jail records or were going to have them one day, people as tender as they were tough.
            Besides, I had no time to worry. The door clanged open. The officer quickly informed me that another inmate would show me how to make my bed and explain the rules. And that was that. She was off to go book Maureen, who had yet to hear about her fate, and the many other women waiting in the holding cell. This guard worked hard all night long.
            A woman I’ll call Angela, for being my guardian angel, immediately popped down off her top bunk and offered to show me what to do. Angela showed me how to take down the thin mattress pad off the metal bed and tie the corners of the sheet around the end of the pad, thus holding the bottom sheet in place. My mother had taught me how to do “hospital corners.” Now I know how to do “jail corners,” too—brilliant!
            “What are you in for?” someone asked, curiously.
            “Trespassing,” I said.
            “Are you one of those protestors?” someone else called out from her bed with a kind of glee.
            “Yes.”
            “I knew it!” cried another.
            I didn’t know exactly what about my demeanor indicated that status—perhaps my glasses? I smiled.
            Meanwhile, Angela was explaining where to put my duffle and that breakfast was at 5:30 am. She had on her black t-shirt that was to serve as a nightie, so I went and put on mine in the “bathroom,” which was merely a triangular corner at the other end of the room, with a toilet on the other side of a low wall. The toilet flushed like the roar of a truck—which would become one of many night-time disturbances. And the privacy of, well, you know—kiss that good-bye.
            Another woman, now sitting up in her bed, said, “I remember that little older lady who came in from the protests. She was amazing. She did our exercise session with us, 500 jumping jacks.”
            Someone else said, “Yeah, and that woman who came in with her daughter? How is she doing? She was in here a couple of times.”
            That would be Sara Grusky, one of the initiators of Save Our Little Lake Valley, an intrepid fighter for the farmlands as an organic farmer herself. Yes, she’d been in many times. Several of the women here in jail for months, if not years, had come to know our struggle. And they were often interested and supportive, I was to find.
            One woman laughed, “Well, at least you came here for a principle you believed in.” I later learned that while wrestling with a meth addiction, this perfectly sweet woman had beaten someone up under the influence, an incident she has no memory of, but has paid for with a year in one lock down or another.  She was like so many I encountered in jail, where instead of getting a real drug rehab program, they were simply wasting time, getting clean and sober without real tools.
            By now I was tucked into my own hard pallet on the top bunk, with the large fluorescent light three feet above my head. “When do the lights go off?” I asked.
            A laugh. “They are off.”
            Right. Surveillance with the “panopticon,” is always operating. Guards do walk-throughs every hour to make sure everyone is in her place and accounted for. More clicking of doors.
            Finally, Maureen as brought in around 12:30 am. When we’d arrived at the jail at 1 pm, we were told that there were just one or two other new arrestees to be booked ahead of us. Instead, we were not booked until 10 and 11 pm. Having gone through the elaborate process now myself, I could understand why it took so long. Later we were informed that men got booked ahead of women, even if the women had been waiting longer, and there were always five times as many men arrested as women. It was one of several sexist practices I would encounter “inside.”
            When Maureen came through that metal gate, I was now the one to help get her settled in her bed and acquainted with a few rules. Our cellmates started to question Maureen about her involvement and what we had done to get arrested.
            Before we climbed onto our pallets, we shared a giddy giggle and a hug over our new reality. She looked at me incredulous. “Can you believe this?” We had known it was a slight possibility that we would be in for three days, but it had never happened before to first-time arrestees, so why us, why now? Perhaps blow back by folks in the Willits community who support the bypass and are “sick and tired” of the seemingly lenient treatment of arrestees, perhaps. Someone had to pay the real costs, and we were the ones, apparently.
            Off to sleep we went, until we heard the click of the doors as the guard was making her round or someone flushed the toilet intermittently all night long.
            Or what remained of the night. At 4:30 am, the bright lights went on, and I mean bright—right over my head. A voice garbled something on the intercom. In my sleepy state, I sat bolt upright, presuming it was time to get up. Angela called over to me, “It’s not breakfast yet.” By the next morning, I could distinguish the intercom voices better: “Meds! Get your meds.” At 4:30 the women who need meds get up to get them, then return to bed for another hour. I covered my head with a sweatshirt and went back to sleep.
            All too soon at 5:30 the call came for breakfast. Maureen and I were slow moving after a couple of long nights and some disorientation that morning. We were changing from our “nighties” into our jail suit when Angela first said, “You should change in the bathroom because that mirror you see on the far wall in the day room is actually a guard station with men in there, and they can see everything except in the bathroom.” More surveillance.
            As we ambled into our clothes, Angela then warned us, “You better hurry! They don’t like you to be late.”
            We went running downstairs when an intercom voiced called, “No running!” We got to the metal door and the slim slot it in where food is handed through after you say your last name. A voice on the other side demanded, “Be on time tomorrow morning.”
            “Yes, ma’am,” I replied, perfectly serious, my mama’s Southern training coming back to me.
            Maureen stifled a giggle. In our seven hours of lockdown outside and our time in the holding cell chatting, I had learned that she has often lived her life at the margins of society by her own rules, a free-spirit who refuses to give into arbitrary authority and regulations that repress one’s expression and freedom. Submitting to jail rules would be trying, an intriguing new way of life, and fortunately temporary.
            In any case, we now realized why our cellmates wore their green jail jumpsuits to bed, and we decided we’d do the same the next morning. No rush to dress.
            After breakfast was the clean-up period. I mopped the dayroom as my contribution. Then, like everyone else, we returned to our beds, which was the scheduled practice, locked down once again, to return to sleep until the doors opened again at 8:30. It was going to be a long day—and I was already grateful I only had another full day ahead.
         Of course, I have no pictures from "inside," though I can find some online. This picture of a woman in orange in her cell looks like a college dorm room compared to our cell where we only had metal bunks and lockers, no chairs, no tables.
         But I did have reading material. In a stroke of serendipity, Angela handed me her copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, given to her by her mother. Angela thought I might enjoy reading it while I was in. Yes, I did.
         The next day's wonder and boredom require another post soon.

 

           

           

#38 Held In: The Holding Tank at the Mendocino County Jail

            What was supposed to be the third and last stage of my arrest scenario was the Holding Tank at the Mendocino County Jail in Ukiah where my lockdown mate, Maureen, and I were delivered around 1 pm on Tuesday. We had arrived in a squad car with our arresting officer (Blog #37) following our seven-hours communing with the bulldozer (Blog #36) that was ripping down a perfectly beautiful wooded hillside in order to fill in a wetland for the Willits Bypass.
            Our arresting officer was, as ever, kind to us, and warned that when we went inside to be initially booked, we’d be asked several odd questions, such as, “Do you hear voices? Do you want to harm yourself or others?” I guess he knew we weren’t “that kind” of criminal who might go mad behind bars. It seemed slightly funny until I ended up behind bars and saw how one might tip over the edge with enough time doing time.
            I was taken into the jail first. The booking agent, I want to call her, was also perfectly nice. “Oh, one of those bypass protestors,” she half-laughed. “Well, I can see wanting to express your opinion on the issue.” She, like other guards and officers we met, made these oblique references to the odiousness of the bypass without fully condoning our actions. Odd! I suppose enough of the women arrested before me had given them the speeches with rationales for why we fight the bypass, and the officers had some sympathy. Or…?
          After she asked me a slew of questions, including about medications and depression, she removed from me my shoes, glasses, sweater, anything else I might have had in my pockets that the arresting officer had not already taken. Later, I found, with the cold dungeon like climate of the holding cell, we were given jail issued sweatshirts, socks, and coveralls when we got chilled.

(Not my actual picture but this is what it's like,
except this holding tank is a whole lot newer & cleaner)

            Soon I found myself in the Holding Tank, a cement block room not more than 8 feet by 6 feet, with a metal sink and toilet all-in-one extending from a corner. A pay phone was on the wall, though it only took collect calls. One wall had a 5-foot long metal bench on it, the only place to sit.

            I lay down on the bench and rested while I waited for Maureen to arrive, who was still being booked. A window onto the guard’s station had a curtain that could be pulled on the outside for privacy for us to pee inside the holding tank. I soon pushed the intercom button on the wall and asked someone to pull the curtain. I hadn’t gotten to relieve myself since the early morning.

            Maureen arrived 30 minutes after I did. We had a relatively good time chatting about our new conditions, what we had thought about our climate-change-denying arresting officer, the process of getting booked thus far, the whole experience.

            Our contemplative and even light-hearted mood changed suddenly when the metal door opened and the next inmate arrived. From then on, the utter gloominess of what jail can be descended upon us.

            The first arrival was a 40-year-old woman, whom I’ll call Marta. She had been charged with slapping her boyfriend when she found him at his home on the couch with his ex-girlfriend who was wearing his T-shirt and looking very cozy with Marta’s man. Enraged by his seeming deceit about the innocence of his visits with the ex, our cellmate had slapped him for lying. After the ex-girlfriend vacated the premises, Marta and her boyfriend had worked out the problem and were themselves getting cozy again when the police arrived at the door and arrested her for domestic battery. Clearly, the ex-girlfriend had called in the charge since the boyfriend had not pressed charges.

            Marta was from Ft. Bragg and had been brought on the hour-long journey to Ukiah to be put in jail with $10,000 bail. She wept for an hour trying to figure out how she was going to deal with this, what would happen with her 14-old-daughter, how her 20-year-old daughter would get the bail together (which is actually only 10% of the bail) in order to get Marta out in time to get back to her very responsible job as a hotel manager the next day.

            It was all so complicated, so wrong, so painful. Maureen and I tried to comfort Marta as best we could—with little enough time for that since the holding cell was quickly filling up with one woman after another.

            The next arrived only 20 minutes later, another true sob story: Isabel had been addicted to meth off and on over the last ten years, though at age 31, she still held a robust, healthy aspect, compared to the toothless and sunken look of so many meth addicts. Isabel had gotten off meth for good (she truly believes) a year ago when she found out she was pregnant with her now 8-week-old baby boy, whom she was still nursing. As a nursing mother, her breasts were engorged since it was nearly time to feed her baby. She too was from Ft. Bragg, over an hour away. She’d gotten a notice about a false check she’d written a year ago for $80 when she was doing drugs. Since then, she got clean, got married, got a job, and got her new baby. When she went to the police station that day to check in about how to handle in a responsible way the charges related to the false check, the police informed Isabel, “You’re arrested.” Carted off to Ukiah, Isabel had to leave her baby with her husband, whose own meth habit was still not entirely in check.

            So there sat Isabel, crying as deeply as Marta was, each of them trying to make phone calls to get their children and their lives in some order in the midst of this utter chaos foisted upon them.

            Were the two of them not in bad enough circumstances, in comes Summer, angry and cursing the officer who had arrested her and plagued her. I cannot even convey the language coming out of Summer’s mouth in her utter rage. She spent the next three hours on the phone telling anyone who would listen to her among her friends and family how unfairly she had been treated, crying pitifully in between, “I just want to go home! I just want to be with my mom! I just want my dog!” Yeah, I could relate.

            Thinking I have some communication skills under my belt, I was trying to figure out what had happened to Summer and the arresting officer that had gone so wrong. I asked her if she had not overreacted to the arresting officer, who had subsequently put her in jail on suspicion of being on drugs.

            “Look at me. Do you think I’m using?” she asked earnestly. Well, I actually couldn’t tell. And then Summer went on an equally earnest rampage about how her family, Native Americans in a poor part of town, had been hounded by this particular police officer who, according to her, were out to get this family. She recounted the deaths and imprisonment of various family members over time, the disrespect to their Native traditions that she and others had to tolerate. The list of grievances ran on, and soon I was convinced that I certainly had no idea what I had been talking about in relation to a young woman who was feeling tormented by so many ghosts that I could never account for.

            In short, the whole Holding Tank experience was hugely humbling for me. Maureen and I eyed each other repeatedly, sometimes our eyes welling up with tears simultaneously as we realized we were in the midst of great injustice or simply great tragedy, as these young women were in the shock of figuring out how to cope with being thrown in jail, potentially for days or weeks or months even, while their lives would go on without them, their children or families in great need.

            In another hour, another woman, Nina, was introduced into the cell with us, a woman who had apparently violated her parole. From the looks of her, both her ravaged teeth and face and how she immediately resorted to sleeping on the floor of the cell, I figured she was recovering from a meth episode.

            I myself was extremely tired. It was 8:30 pm. We had gotten a meal at 4:40 pm on plastic trays shoved through the hole in the metal door, for which I was very grateful. Exhausted from our own ordeal and that of our cellmates, I found a space to curl up on the floor between Maureen and Nina. With four of us on the floor and Isabel, the young mother, on the bench, that was the only place to rest. I didn’t want to think what had been spewed up on that floor, but one gives up a hold on “decency” under duress.

            So Maureen and I waited out our turn to be booked and told we were going to be released, whether that would be that same night or early the next morning.

            Imagine my surprise at 10 pm when my name was called and I was finally taken in to be booked, only to be told by the booking officer, “It looks like you have a court date on Thursday, so you’ll be in until then.”

            “What?!” I asked. None of the protestors who were first time offenders had been forced to stay in jail beyond the holding cell thus far.

            “Yes,” she reiterated. I could see on my arrest sheet that the words the arresting officer had written, “Do Not Cite,” had been crossed out. I remembered the booking officer, when we arrived at jail, had come out and said to him, “It’s not an infraction,” and she had crossed out those words. We were no longer part of the “Cite and Release” gang. Now, it appeared, the police were going to slap protestors with a more serious response.

            From the booking cell’s phone, I quickly put in a call to our  jail support angel, Judi, who took my notes about what would have to happen to my dog (who now needed an extra day of home care) and my nephew (whom I wouldn’t be seeing on Thursday if I was still going to be in jail). I had known that if I were to be arrested, I risked staying an extra day; in fact, I risked all kinds of trouble. But I had just not expected it.

            And so soon I was off to jail, fo’ real, a very humbling experience.