Open Letter to Bernie Sanders

Every time I see you talk about your campaign's chance of winning, you adamantly state that you need a revolution- that Americans will need to get far more politically active at a grassroots level behind your campaign. I agree- a revolution is the only thing that could overpower establishment candidates' massive war chests and propaganda machines.

Since August last year, I have seen the beginnings of a revolution on the streets of cities across the country. Unfortunately, this revolution has nothing to do with Bernie Sanders. The revolution we are experiencing is one by people of color against our incredibly racist and oppressive justice system. Every day there are large protests in the street, mostly people of color, demanding revolution. And yet when I read about your poll numbers and chances, here's what I see:

"But the foundational flaws in Sanders’ candidacy are pretty easy to spot. Sanders may be polling well in mostly white New Hampshire, but he hasn’t been able to figure out how to earn more than 5 percent of the nonwhite vote, according to national polls. Nonwhite voters make up more than a third of Democratic primary voters nationally." ( http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-to-make-of-the-bernie-sanders-surge/ )

How can this be? How is the candidate whose platform is based on needing a revolution doing so poorly among people who are clamoring for exactly that? This is the one place where you are not taking a strong stand. When it comes to Wall Street, you pull no punches. You demand accountability for Wall Street criminals. But when it comes to the police, the fire fades. You start turning into a typical weasel politician, prefacing your substanceless remarks with platitudes about how you know police officers have a really tough job. When have you ever prefaced a criticism of Wall Street with "Look, let me first say that I know banking is a really hard job"? Yet this is how you treat the organization that is killing (mostly black) Americans once every 8 hours. 

Is it any wonder that none of these revolutionaries trust you?  If you want a revolution of support, it's time you took a real stand on the issues that matter for people of color. Your policies on improving economic opportunities and education will no doubt help black Americans- but how is a person supposed to get excited about jobs when they're afraid that the very people supposed to protect them could gun them down the next time they walk down the street? White guys like me can get behind your campaign because we can afford to care about abstract issues like the TPP or jobs programs. But a black man can't worry about that when he's just worried about surviving the next trip to the corner store. It's telling that when I wanted to write to you about this, there were countless issues I could choose as the topic, but I had to choose "Other" because police brutality and racism isn't even something your campaign even recognizes as an issue worthy of listing.

If you want a revolution to rise up and support your campaign, it's time to take a strong stance against police brutality and racism. It's time to work with black leadership and develop a comprehensive plan to address these concerns. If you come out strongly in support of the solutions being put forth by black leadership, you will have the revolution you need almost overnight.

How White People Can Be Real Allies - And Start a Real Revolution

Across the country, there are hints of a revolution brewing. Occupy Wall Street gave us our first whiff, but there wasn't enough momentum to sustain it and the media's propaganda containment strategies successfully put it on hold. Today the smell if revolution is much thicker, but it's coming from an entirely different segment of the population: People of color. And there is enough momentum to sustain this revolutionary movement as long as it takes. You can feel it in the crowds at protests.

There are other groups out there looking for a revolution. A legitimate mainstream politician, Bernie Sanders, is hinging his entire campaign on revolution. He knows his only chance of winning is if enough people wake up from the fantasy the propaganda has been feeding them for decades. There are other groups out there who know in their private conversations that revolution is needed. Techies and defenders of our civil liberties know we need a revolution to overthrow the NSA surveillance/police state, and to prepare for the way automation is going to render much of human labor obsolete. Libertarians know a revolution is needed to revive the nearly-dead bill of rights, particularly the 4th, 6th, and 1st amendments. OWS knows a revolution is needed to defeat the 1% on Wall Street. Even the Tea Party has a revolutionary spirit, although their brains are so far down the propaganda rabbit hole that I doubt they'll be allies. Scientifically literate people know a revolution is needed to prepare for and slow climate change.

These are very broad demographics that are all starting to realize the United States has become a tyrannical government, and the corporate whores in power need to go. But we remain divided. The propaganda machine makes sure to keep us focused on our differences over issues that don't matter to the powerful. Abortion, gay marriage, small details of gun control- all important issues, without a doubt. But clearly not as important as our own government murdering and enslaving its own citizens, and spying on all of their communication. Clearly not as important as the ludicrously rich pillaging the planet and picking all of our pockets without consequence.

What can be done to unite us and make a peaceful revolution happen, before it becomes too late for a peaceful option? I submit that there is only one group that has the momentum, the motivation, and the sheer force of will and resilience necessary to sustain a revolution: The Black Liberation movement. The revolution already started, folks- On August 9th, 2014 when a government thug murdered Michael Brown and a few brave souls reached their breaking point and said enough is enough.

White liberals have tried to ally with the Black Liberation movement before. But all too often, those so-called liberals were still racist, and not willing to prioritize black liberation. They would join forces, but only really be interested in promoting their individual pet causes. Black leaders were told to wait for the right time, the right political climate, to just keep being oppressed a little bit longer. Black leaders are wary of attempts by so-called allies to co-opt their movement and dilute the core message. We all have our pet issues that are dear to our hearts. But it's time we recognize our position of privilege, and accept that no issue is more important than upholding the human dignity and equality of all our citizens. How is a black person supposed to believe that you really recognize their humanity and worth when you see black people being brutally oppressed but don't make it a top priority to do something about it?

Time For A Black Liberation Party

The way for the 99% to unite and have a true revolution against the white supremacist, corporate-owned government we have today is to unite behind the issue of dismantling white supremacy and liberating America's people of color. Fully commit your political will to this, and the rest will follow. If your pet issue is NSA surveillance, do you think that if an abolitionist party came into power, they would uphold the surveillance state? Of course not! Black Americans (that are aware of it) are as pissed about being spied on by the government as anyone! They're just more pissed about being killed and enslaved by the government. Would an abolitionist party ignore climate change? Of course not! Whatever your progressive issue is, black leadership will probably support it.

So why not unite behind the group that has both the most important issue and the most activist willpower? Let's help black leaders build a political party. Notice I didn't say "build a political party ourselves". We need to follow black leadership. This is their movement. White people have experience with the bureaucracy of political campaigning, and more financial resources to keep a party running. Let's unite a party behind the issue- and if you've got some other pet issue, great. You can join the Black Liberation Party campaign, and help develop the party platform on that issue. But the core focus of the party always must be black liberation- the rest of the platform is just the party's long term plan to do after successfully liberating black Americans.

Or we could just keep standing with our individual splinters dreaming of the day the others unite under our cause, watching the other splinters do their small marches and thinking "man, I wish these people would come to my group's rallies". Because that's worked really well so far, right?

Finally obtained a copy of my police report

After two and a half months of trying their hardest to prevent me from obtaining the police report that I am legally entitled to see to prepare my defense, the state attorney's office finally gave me a copy of it. Here it is.

There are fewer lies than the last police report I read, but that's mostly just because the officer kept it short. Here are the discrepancies between the police report and what actually happened:

"he was observed and heard protesting inside the Mall". I was not heard protesting in the mall, because I was standing silently with a sign, not speaking.

I was not escorted out by "Security Officers". I was escorted out by one security guard.

The officer's description of me as "in the center of the Mall entrance way" is almost accurate. I have marked on a google street view photo the exact location I was in when they approached and arrested me:

The black X is where they first approached me and arrested me, the red X is where the original security guard escorted me to and told me was off mall property. As you can see, I was on the sidewalk and not blocking traffic. Some traffic did slow down to watch the arrest happen, but .traffic was never blocked except for when the officers walked across the road to reach me.

The officers did NOT identify themselves as law enforcement, and instead immediately asked for my name/ID. they did NOT tell me I was trespassing, and they certainly didn't tell me I was blocking traffic as they hadn't decided on that lie yet. The male officer, who I believe is the one who wrote the report as he is the one who actually arrested me, grabbed my arms and tried to steal my phone as soon as he arrived, without identifying himself, telling me why he was trying to steal my phone, or telling me I was under arrest. When he would not stop trying to steal my phone, I had to ask him if I was under arrest, at which point he said yes and I stopped trying to prevent him from taking my phone.

My next court date is on Thursday, 3/5.

Had a nice discussion with a lawyer from the ACLU today about my kidnapping by the Waterbury Police Department. They are very interested in my case and eager to help. I will be speaking with them again tomorrow and trying to acquire a copy of the police report today.

Arrested by the Waterbury Police Department for protesting on a public sidewalk.

I was arrested on Friday at 11:30 AM for engaging in a peaceful political protest on a public sidewalk. I have been charged with criminal trespassing and disorderly conduct. Here is the text of the complaint I sent to the ACLU today. I tried to be as detailed as my memory allows. I will probably be asking frequently for your political support as this case continues.

I was arrested for engaging in political speech on a public sidewalk that offended police officers. On Friday, November 28th, I attended a protest that I read about online in response to the lack of police accountability for the murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The protest was advertised on a Tumblr blog called the “Ferguson National Response Network”, and the advertisement said to meet at the Regal Cinemas at the Brass Mill Center Mall at 495 Union Street in Waterbury, Connecticut at 11AM. I attended this protest, and was arrested by police for trespassing while standing on a public sidewalk. I was not provided the names of any of the officers involved, but will try to give the limited physical descriptions that I do remember of the people I encountered. I arrived at approximately 11AM, and had a little trouble finding a parking spot and then actually figuring out where the Regal Cinemas was located, so it was probably around 11:05-11:10 when I actually arrived at the Regal Cinemas. I didn't see any other people who were obviously protesters, so I waited in a prominent position with my protest sign that said

POLICE
KILL
MORE
AMERICANS
THAN
TERRORISM

to try to attract the attention of any other protesters who might be there. 

The only attention I attracted was that of an elderly white male ex-police security guard, who ordered me to put away my sign. I told him that if he wanted to order me to leave the property, I would comply, but that I was not going to put away my sign. He trespassed me from the property, making sure I was aware that it was private property. I agreed and left as soon as he asked. He escorted me all the way off of mall property. I asked him where the edge of mall property was, and he told me the sidewalk, and escorted me all the way to the sidewalk. 

I was fairly close to the main entrance of the mall, so I moved (along the sidewalk) to be right at the entrance as cars were pulling in. The main entrance has a triangular median (center of this map: https://www.google.com/…/@41.5483322,-73.0268…/data=!3m1!1e3 ) that according to Google Maps has about 50 feet of sidewalk. I chose this strip of sidewalk as my new protest location, and stood around rather bored and discouraged since I was the only person there. I did not block traffic in any way and remained silent, just holding my sign on the sidewalk. After a few minutes of standing there, I decided I should write on the other side of my protest sign rather than leaving it blank, so I knelt to the ground and wrote

JUSTICE
FOR
MIKE
BROWN
‪#‎BlackoutBlackFriday‬

on it. Soon after I finished, a female approached me and started to interrogate me. She was not in a typical police uniform but seemed to be implying that she was police. I asked her if I was being detained, and she told me that I wasn't. I informed her that I was not interested in speaking to her and asked her to please stop harassing me. She said she wasn't harassing me, and I reiterated that I was making it clear I did not want to talk to her, so why was she still trying to talk to me? By this time a male (again not in a standard uniform, so I'm not sure his exact affiliation) had arrived to the scene, and I had stopped holding up my sign and started filming the encounter. The male was only there for a few seconds before he grabbed my arm and tried to steal my camera. I told him to let go of me but he continued to jerk my arm around and try to take my phone. I asked if I was under arrest and he said yes, at which point I stopped trying to prevent him from stealing my phone and complied with all orders. He put me in handcuffs, and a large group of officers (I know there were at least 6 total, but I'm guessing it was 7-9 officers) arrived and surrounded me, insulting me and telling me that Mike Brown was a robber who had it coming. I believe that all of the officers involved were employees of the Waterbury Police Department, but they weren't all easy to identify so I am not sure.

I exercised my right to not answer police questions, and responded “that's none of your business” to the questions that the officers asked me. One of the older white male officers put a different set of handcuffs on me, very tight, and multiple officers patted me down and seized the contents of my pockets. I joked “one set of handcuffs wasn't enough for you?” and the male officer asked me to repeat myself, so I did. He started to respond but the female officer (the one who initiated the entire encounter) told him not to respond to me, something along the lines of “he doesn't want to talk to us, so don't talk to him”. Then I was loaded up in the police prisoner transport vehicle and taken to the station. A female desk clerk patted me down again there, and I was placed in the holding cell right at the entrance. The officers asked me a lot of routine questions. I provided my identifying information, but when they asked for personal information like where I had attended school, I answered that it was none of their business. At all times, I complied with the directions of the officers, and did not physically resist them in any way. I did however remain highly critical of what they were doing. I was shifted back and forth between the cell at the entrance and one of the more permanent cells down the hall a few times over the next few hours. I will have to be very approximate about the times for the events that happened in the police station because I could only see a clock the times I was in the entrance cell. I believe it was in the very first interactions upon arriving at the station that they informed me that I was being charged with criminal trespassing and disorderly conduct.

One of the times the female Hispanic desk clerk asked me questions and I answered “none of your business”, the older white male officer next to her told me I was rude. I argued that it was not rude to refuse to answer personal questions, and asked if he “liked it up the ass”. I asked him this twice- the first time he just got mad and left the room. The female desk clerk said “now that is a personal question”. I asked “does he like it up the ass, though?” and she did not like that question and he overheard from the other room and returned asking what I was saying, so I repeated that I was asking if he liked it up the ass. He replied that yes, he does like it up the ass, but from “real men, not little faggots like you”. He left the room again, and the desk clerk continued to ask questions. She also engaged in some conversation with me about my protest, asking me why I was coming and causing trouble in Waterbury instead of my home town of Middletown. I told her because there was a protest planned here, and in America it's my first amendment right to go wherever I want to publicly protest. She told me “you don't have first amendment rights, you're under arrest” and continued to criticize me and tell me I shouldn't protest and getting more and more angry with me, eventually yelling at me and sending me back to the more permanent cell.

A few hours into my incarceration, an obese white male officer with a white uniform shirt came to check on my cell and ask a few questions about my protest. I told him that I was protesting because I believe that police need to be held accountable in court when they're accused of crimes just like every other citizen, and that the prosecutor in the Darren Wilson case had clearly made some serious ethical violations by not doing his job. The prosecutor essentially argued for the defense. The officer asked me to prove it, and I told him that the prosecutors had provided the jurors with an old version of the statute regarding appropriate use of force by law enforcement that said it was legal for an officer to shoot a fleeing suspect regardless of whether that suspect was a threat. The prosecutors provided this information on the day of Darren Wilson's testimony, so that the jurors would view his story under the light that it was legal to shoot any suspect that was running away, and that later at the very end of the hearing, the prosecutors corrected their mistake but refused to elaborate on exactly what the correction was. He tried to cut me off, but I told him he had asked me a question, so why wasn't he letting me finish answering it? He let me finish and said he didn't believe me. I told him he didn't have to, because the grand jury testimony was public record. He also put his hand over the radiator and remarked that they were keeping it warm (they were not- it was very cold and they took my jacket so I was stuck with short sleeves). 

I could see that this argument wasn't going anywhere, and I was getting pretty impatient, so I told the officer to agree to disagree and asked him to get on with the booking process already. He changed the subject to accusing me of threatening a female officer with sexual assault, which I denied, and then he left. After that discussion nothing happened for several hours, and I had no contact with anyone except for a couple periodic checkups where an officer would walk down the hall and glance in the cell and then leave. On one of these checkups I asked the officer what time it was, and he said 7:45. I told him that I had been here for 8 hours, and asked when I was going to be allowed to speak to the bail commissioner. He told me “you haven't even been booked yet!”. I asked him what the hold up was, and told him I was ready to be booked. He told me that the other officers were claiming I was being uncooperative, and that they were waiting until I was cooperating. I told him that I had been cooperating, and had followed every order since I had been arrested and answered every question that I am required to answer.

He left, but he came bac

k within an hour and they finally took me in to scan my fingerprints, take my mug shots, and ask some more questions. I cooperated fully during this process. The fat white officer with the white shirt asked the officer taking my prints several times “is he being cooperative?” and the officer always replied “yes”. The officers asked some medical questions, like what medications I take. I informed them that I take Pristiq daily, but refused to elaborate on why I take it. They told me they might need it for medical personnel to help me, and I told them that if I encountered any medical personnel, I would tell them about it privately. They also had me sign paperwork- forms stating what they had confiscated from me, a form waiving my need for a medical examination, and a form acknowledging what the charges were against me. There may have been one or two other forms they had me sign here; I can't remember. 

Around 9PM they took me back to the front cell and asked some more questions. A new officer I hadn't dealt with before asked about my employment, and I told him that I was employed, but that it was none of his business what my job is. He told me that he was the guy who was going to help get me out of there. I told him he was welcome to get me out of there, but my job was still not his business. He said “enjoy the 3 days, then” and left. Then the officer who had taken my fingerprints and told me that I was considered “uncooperative” talked to me and told me my bail was set at $2500. He explained what that meant and then gave me the phone to call someone to get bail. I called my mother, Linda Schroth, and it went directly to voice mail so I asked to call a different number. The officer started to help me call my father, Richard Schroth, but then told me to hold on for a moment. 

That moment turned out to be a very long time (long enough for me to do 160 laps walking in my cell) but eventually he came back and let me call both my parents again. I left voice mails for each of them but realized they were on vacation so they weren't going to be able to help, but the officer had already informed me he was “being polite” by even letting me call two people so a third call was out of the question. I was returned to the permanent cell and the rest of the night was pretty uneventful. It was on the way back to my cell around 10PM when I asked if they were ever going to provide me and food or if they were just planning to starve me. The officer then grabbed a cold Styrofoam container of food from the floor and handed it to me. I ended up not eating it because it was disgusting and cold. I alternated between trying to sleep and pacing around my cell, but I was unable to sleep because the cells do not have any sort of bedding material. I could only try to sleep on the mattress holder (with no mattress), and it was ice cold because it was metal) I could only lay on it for brief periods with my arms tucked into my shirt and across my chest to protect my internal organs from getting chilled before I had to get up and exercise to warm up. I removed my underwear and used it as a pillow to keep my face off the cold metal. Later in the night I asked one of the guards checking up on me if they had blankets, and he said no. Around 9AM on Saturday, November 29th, an officer finally came by with the bail commissioner to interview me. 

I answered all the bail commissioner's questions, and she told me that she thought she would be able to release me on a promise to appear, but she would have to look into my criminal record first to be sure (I do not have a criminal record). I tried to keep track of time by walking laps around my cell, and I think it was about 1-2 hours before she came back and said I could be released, on the condition that I avoided going back to the mall. I asked her if that order included the public sidewalk around the mall and she said yes even the sidewalk. I was brought back into the room where they took my fingerprints to fill out the final paperwork for the promise to appear, and the officers returned my property, except for my protest sign which they pretended to have somehow lost. I was finally released at approximately 11AM, just under 24 hours after my arrest.

My promise to appear paperwork states that my appearance date is 12/8/14 at 9AM.