The Nature of Belief

People v. Hansen

I served on a jury 35 years ago, in New York City. The defendants were white cops, and a Black man had died in their custody.

The cops were charged with evidence tampering and official misconduct, and we voted unanimously to convict each of them for both felonies.

Many years later, I searched for the case, and found the appellate court record. I wasn’t surprised to see the conviction overturned–because I believed then, and believe now, that the whole criminal justice system is set up to protect cops who violate the law and abuse their public duty. Even so, I was upset by the appellate judges’ rationale.

The case was cut-and-dried. The patrolman, Hansen, had admitted the facts before a grand jury. There was some wrangling over whether we could receive the grand jury records, and once that was resolved, the case was closed, in my view. We spent some time deliberating over whether Hansen–who watched Compas, his supervisor, hide a shoelace that matched the ligature mark on Leonard Jones’ neck–had tampered with evidence simply by keeping his mouth shut about what he’d seen. Once that was resolved, we were ready to report our verdict.

The trial was plenty dramatic, though. The night Leonard Jones died, Compas and Hansen called their captain at home. Compas had just taken an internal exam and was freaked that this would screw up his chances for a promotion. So he was lying his ass off to the captain, and when the captain testified in court, he was still incensed about it. Maybe even more so because Compas accidentally left the phone of the hook after the call and inadvertently recorded himself and the other on-duty cops getting their phony story straight.

It turned out that the Assistant DA had flipped Hansen only after suggesting that the ligature mark on Leonard Jones’ neck matched the leather strap on Hansen’s nightstick. Then Hansen suddenly remembered about the shoelace.

And I thoroughly remember the Assistant DA’s summation. It was passionate, stirring, beautiful to see. However, it didn’t have any effect on our deliberations, which were entirely about “proper construction of the statute.” The appellate court concurred, essentially, with what we figured out in the jury room.

Here’s what pisses me off: The appellate court judges could see, as clearly as the jurors, that the facts of the case were cut-and-dried and the jury had no choice but to convict. No choice–unless, of course, we allowed ourselves to be swayed by the defense lawyer’s argument that the cops were really good guys just trying to do their jobs. In other words, we jurors should overturn the case the DA built based on the facts, because juries should support incompetent and dishonest cops just because they are cops. We didn’t do that, because–as we agreed unanimously after deliberating there in the jury room–it would be wrong to do so.

What I remember most clearly, all these years later, is the Assistant DA looking at us earnestly and saying, just as is recited in the appellate court’s decision:

“After all, who is Leonard Jones? He is just some skel, so nobody cares about him. So it is OK to cover up what happened to him. So his family has no right to know the circumstances of his death.” “[Defendants] don’t care what right the public has to know about a prisoner’s death in police custody, and [defendants] don’t care about Leonard Jones’ family’s right to know.” “It’s just Leonard Jones, it is just some skel, just some bum from the Port Authority. What difference does it make?”

The appellate judges Kupferman, Asch, Rosenberger, Ellerin, and Smith should have known, or maybe did know, that the Assistant DA wasn’t talking just about the cops, she was talking about the whole damned system, including them.

April 20, 2021 by dan The Nature of Belief 0

Painful, Part 3

On Thursday, 26 days after the surgery, I went to Kaiser Oakland to get the cast removed. I drove the F-150–it’s got an automatic transmission, so I can drive with just my right hand. And who uses turn signals anyway. I parked on a nearby residential street and walked under the freeway and past the tire shops.

I’d been looking forward to the feeling of the technician’s saw cutting the length of it, to the release of the pressure. The relief was good, but not quite what I’d hoped. The forearm looked like a newly shelled shrimp, and felt as raw and amorphously numb. Free, but useless for now.

And just as painful. I‘d thought the pressure from the arm swelling into the confines of the cast was the main cause of the pain, but the rough sores and the rawness of the skin were still hot and sharp. The surgical scars, six inches on the side aligned with the thumb, and another equally long aligned with the pinky finger, sang their sensation brightly with the novel cool air.

And I could feel the fascia, under the skin, stiff and turgid, painful to the touch, and unyielding whenever I tried, with little success, to rotate the forearm, or make a fist, or even droop my wrist.

Life is suffering.

“You can go ahead and use it, lift things,” said the P.A. I asked her to renew my scrip for Dialudid.

Which I haven’t used since, but still might. That morning, I’d awoken with an unexplained headache and nausea so intense I wasn’t sure I could make the appointment. Food poisoning? Sudden onset of severe sinusitis? A little later in the day, I thought about the Dialudid again, and a felt a physical revulsion.

Oh, so that’s it. I’ve been taking this stuff at bedtime, and sometimes again in the middle of the night, for a few weeks now, and my body and brain don’t want any more. I’d had the chronic constipation, and then the persistently runny nose, just like any other junkie. But now it was like I was going to finish with my works and then go vomit in the bushes, just like I’d seen guys do back on the streets of New York.

It didn’t stop there, either. My meditation practice was oddly thrown back, to the time before I felt my self inside myself. These last many sessions I was no longer turning toward that entity; no longer soothing it, or playing with it, or watching it dissolve. Instead, I was just kind of drifting on the cloud.

Life is suffering.

Four weeks ago, as I lay on the pavement, breathing into the pain, waiting for the ambulance, I promised myself I’d stay open to the lessons of this experience. Later, I shared this intention with my muse and sensei, and she kind of went off on how accidents can just be accidents, they are not there to teach lessons. I get that. Still, I honor my intention. Accepting impermanence is hard, and the difficult times in our lives can be gateways to a greater understanding.

I come to praise 2020

as well as to bury it.

2019 was exceptionally tough for me, personally. My household broke up, and my mom committed suicide, and my main work client succumbed to chaos for a time. I had flood cleanup and repairs to do at the river house, and an evacuation during fire season. It seemed like one damn thing after another all year.

But 2020?

Mostly, I feel badly for my kid, and all kids who lost nearly a year of their childhood to the lockdown, and are still losing. And of course I feel badly for people who got sick, or died, and for the people who took care of them, all the time being ill-led and poorly resourced.

Ever since reading Laurie Garrett’s The Coming Plague, back in the ‘90s, I’ve known a pandemic was coming. This disease, this pandemic? It’s still in progress.

So far there are many silver linings.

First silver lining: It happened on Donald Trump’s watch, and drove his incompetent and corrupt presidency into the realm of the ridiculous–and contributed to his defeat. Remember, in the wake of the 2016 election, we actually had some people,–even sober and well-intentioned people–saying GOP supporters were just ill-informed, or economically anxious. This time around it’s clear that Trump is (and was) a convenient focus (not even a leader, really) for an ongoing, broad-based fascist movement rooted in the masses of uneducated white people.

We are polarized, to be sure. Is it a bad thing that so many progressive Americans finally, in 2020, woke up to that?

The Bernie-Sanders-and-leftward left, which seemed kind of resurgent in 2016, and carried some momentum through to the 2020 primaries, has now–by the hand of its own arrogance and cluelessness–made itself practically irrelevant.

In its place, there is an upsurge in political participation–an upsurge that is most urgently anti-fascist and pro-democratic, but also includes new discussion and debate about the country’s history, about whiteness, and about capitalist economics. Many now expect and anticipate radical change, and foresee that change coming over years, via existing democratic structures. Many self-defeating shibboleths–it’s the corporations, it’s the electoral college, it’s money in politics, it’s Fox News–have given way to the realization that American conservatism and resistance to change is rooted in white supremacy, and the scale and nature of our battle is more akin to the American Civil War than to the revolution of 1848 (in Europe), or to the labor movement of the 1880s through the 1930s here, or to the 1960s social upheaval.

The movement for Black lives–at its height over the summer–revealed the potency of this upsurge, not just because the demonstrations were widespread and persistent, but more importantly, because attention was soon directed to demands that are specific, achievable, and far reaching. The Democratic Party, acknowledging its African-American base, embraced that movement. Progressives, who have in the past dallied with “critical support” (or half-hearted support) for the Democratic Party, were required to take a side. All to the good.

As a second silver lining, the response to the pandemic is a dress rehearsal for the required response to climate change: Massive, rapid change is necessary. Trillions must be spent. Competent government is required, or the entire population suffers. A majority (or at least a near-majority, and headed in the right direction) accepts this.

There are other silver linings: Expressions of anti-scientific prejudice now get, in 2020, howls of derision and not merely tut-tuts. There is, to my perception, a marked abating of the “personal solution” attitude that came in to vogue in the early 1970s and has persisted throughout my time. The same goes for various forms of reactionary nostalgia, or the idea that “technology won’t save us” (then what, pray tell, will?).

So overall, I find the country’s political and social milieu much improved over where it was a year ago.

As for my personal situation, as in the past few years, not everything went right, but the things that I did–where I took action–not only turned out mostly right, but were if anything aided by the extraordinary situation of the pandemic. I got a new solar roof on my house, and the house painted, and am happy with the result. In the middle of the year, I signed a new contract to continue assisting my main client.

Around the same time, while dating under pandemic restrictions, I found a great new love relationship.

With no Club rides, and no commuting to the barber or therapist, my mileage on the bike was way down (2,343 miles from 3,660) but I kept it up consistently.

I meditated 20 minutes on each of 364 days during the year.

December 31, 2020 by dan Personal Status The Nature of Belief 0

A brief for a troll

Has there ever been a time when one’s facility for dividing truth from BS has been more needed–and yet more difficult to do? My daily sorting through spam exercises it; my news aggregator and Facebook challenge it even more.
The deliberate lying and misleading–in the service of taking your money or infecting your computer, or obtaining your political support–is annoying, even painful, and it’s all too easy to just hate on it.
At the same time, I think we all admire, secretly or not, a good prank or hoax, when it’s funny and it’s especially when it’s directed at someone, or many someones, whose beliefs and behavior are over the top.
And I’ve done it from time to time myself, but never as effectively as this guy.

July 17, 2020 by dan The Nature of Belief 0

Andy Gill

My 7th grade band teacher, Mr. Preble, was a slim and elegant man. In retrospect, I can see that he was enormously patient, and we tested that patience considerably.

I liked him right up until the time he made a comparison–a comparison I found insufferably arrogant–between the pop music we liked and the classical music he wanted to teach us about. His point, as I recall, was that while pop music was almost invariably about young romance, classical music evoked a refined and subtle reflection on many aspects of the human experience…

I interrupted him there, and not politely. “It depends on what you listen to,” I said. “Pop songs are about all kinds of things.” Mr. Preble and I couldn’t be friends after that.

If my objection was true in 1969, it was even more true a decade later. While I like a love song or a broken-hearted song as much as the next fan, I was still hanging on to my conviction that there were more important and revolutionary things to be found in lyrics and liner notes and in the rhythm and noise. Something is happening here, but you don’t what it is, do you Mr. Jones?

So in the late 70s I found myself defending my view all over again, this time with older colleagues in my Marxist-Leninist collective. Their tastes had moved on from their early appreciation of Dylan and the Beatles and the Stones, and had ended up in that 1970s place where one’s music was no longer an expression of alienation or revolt but had become mellow background for getting an after-work Rocky Mountain High– which is to say, it could be about romance, or not about romance, but it really didn’t need to be about anything at all.

And then, amazingly, the alienation and revolt came back to rock ‘n roll, this time fueled by Thatcherism. I loved the Sex Pistols and the Clash and most of all I loved the Gang of Four, whose music had things to say about social theory that were considerably more profound (and profoundly Marxist) than what I was getting from the collective’s study group.

Some young hangers-on recruited me into a Marxist-Leninist wannabe punk rock band–we called ourselves the Prols–and I learned how to play drums, sort of. One night Ricky, our leader and guitarist, told us Gang of Four was going to be playing at Hurrahs and we were all going together.

Which brings me to this article by Sasha Frere-Jones in the current New Yorker. She gets the Gang of Four’s contributions to the funk/punk genre mostly right, I think, and she includes a vignette from that show, along with a link to omigod, video:

When Gang of Four came to New York in 1979 and performed at Hurrah, they did a version of “Damaged Goods,” which was already enough of an underground hit that the audience sang along to most of it.

Well, we were singing along to it, all of our bandmembers there in the mosh pit, because we wanted to make that sound and sensibility part of our own. Besides, the lyrics could have been written about my unrequited love for the girl I’d followed out to New York two years earlier:

Damaged goods
Send them back
I can’t work, I can’t achieve
Send me back
Open the till
Give me the change you said would do me good
Refund the cost
You said you’re cheap but you’re too much

Which of course actually is about young romance, but what Mr. Preble wasn’t getting about rock ‘n roll is that it’s always all about young romance, but it’s also about rage and alienation and a burning desire to turn the world upside down. When it’s not about some other aspect of human experience.
Or as the Gang of Four’s lyricist, Jon King, put it in a slightly later song, “Why Theory”

Each day seems like a natural fact.
And what we think, changes how we act.

The Gang of Four’s leader and guitarist, Andy Gill, died Feb. 2 of pneumonia. He was just three years older than me.

February 19, 2020 by dan The Nature of Belief 0

Zuckerman asks for regulation

This news less surprising than it looks.

“Regulatory capture” isn’t just about avoiding regulation entirely; more often, it is a way that industry leaders (and occasionally, savvy upstarts) tailor entry requirements to give their own business an advantage over their competitors.

This can go either way, and the same business may find it to their economic advantage to lobby for more or less or different regulations in different times and different circumstances.

My guess is that that Facebook’s main concern is that the EU regs align with their own plans and innovations and not those of current or potential competitors.

Savvy regulators can use that competition to the public’s benefit, by lining up support from companies that stand to gain from needed regulatory initiatives.

February 17, 2020 by dan The Nature of Belief 0

Frontier Justice?

I was riding past the theater in downtown Guerneville, eastbound on the final leg back to Forestville. I heard a screech of tires and a thump, and then a louder thump, and breaking glass. And then I saw him, in front of the green Volvo, writhing on the pavement. He was screaming in agony.

I stopped the bike, pulled my phone out of my jersey, and dialed 911. As the phone connected, a white Dodge sedan with front end damage pulled across the intersection and parked next to where I was standing, headed the wrong way. At the same time, the injured man got to his feet and staggered across the intersection toward me, then collapsed at the curb. A woman went to comfort him. I told the 911 operator a car had hit a pedestrian, who was seriously injured. I stayed on the line for a few minutes until a fire engine pulled up. People were out of their cars, gathering around.

The firefighters were unhurried, professional, as they got the duffel bag out the compartment and put on latex gloves. Something told me I ought to hang around. For one thing, the man was dark-skinned, and his clothes old and worn. His English was thickly accented. He was agitated and fearful. And seemed, in that moment, so very alone.

The firefighters examined his head and neck, and at the same time, tried to get him on to a stretcher. He was resisting, begging them not to hurt him.

While we waited for the ambulance and the Sheriff—it was more than 20 minutes—this fellow in an orange cap shows up. He knew the woman driving the Dodge sedan, and he checked that she was OK. She was smoking a cigarette, rather shakily. Then he went over to the injured man, now bound to the stretcher, and mocked him a bit. “We’ll come see you in the hospital,” he sneered.

By this time, I’ve heard snippets of bystanders’ conversations, and I’m starting to put the pieces together. The injured man wasn’t a pedestrian, he was driving a motorcycle, which had smashed into the other side of the Volvo. But why?

The guy in the orange cap said the motorcycle had just been stolen from in front of his shop.

The woman in the white Dodge may or may not have been chasing him, and may or may not have brought her car into contact with the motorcycle. He may have tried to cut the corner to speed across the bridge on 116, as the Volvo pulled forward into the intersection. He wasn’t wearing a helmet.

I heard the injured man tell the EMT he was Punjabi, so I headed over to a local Punjabi-owned store to pass on the news. I figured he might have local family that needed to know. I told the clerk what I’d seen and a little of what I’d overheard. She said she had no idea who he might be, but would keep an ear out.

As I rode back through the intersection, on my way home, the driver was putting the ambulance in gear. I stopped for a look at the motorcycle and then pedaled home.

October 24, 2017 by dan Cycling The Nature of Belief 0

About the fires

This week I’ve traveled through Santa Rosa repeatedly, on my way between the Bay Area and Forestville. I’ve seen the fires and the devastation, and I’ve been breathing the smoke. We’re now almost six days into the disaster, and the shock is wearing off, so it’s time for lessons learned (or woulda-coulda-shoulda, if you prefer).

Consider urban vs. rural-residential issues separately. I don’t have much to say about rural and rural-residential fires, because they are all-too-frequent, and the issues and (partial) solutions are out there. Urban wildfires are way less frequent, but more devastating.
The fires themselves are a natural phenomenon. Land development and climate change may affect the timing or trigger specific occurrences, but these places have always burned. When the Santa Ana winds blow, any spark can become an explosive conflagration.
I don’t think there is any way to make a single-family house or single-family neighborhood safe or survivable in a fire whipped by 50 mph winds. We should all accept the risk of property loss and instead focus on getting people out of harm’s way when the time comes.
I think most of the blazes were sparked by PG&E lines that were torn apart or knocked down by the wind. Totally preventable. A scandal, really. It is ridiculous and unconscionable that, in California’s disaster-prone environment, electrical lines haven’t been undergrounded in all urban areas, and that aerial lines in rural areas haven’t been upgraded.
The warning and evacuation systems were inadequate. What would work? Pole-mounted loudspeakers and lights that could be activated instantaneously and remotely. This could be implemented throughout urban areas, starting with the ones that are most obviously vulnerable.
People who live in vulnerable areas should have an app that alerts them when Santa Ana conditions are forecast, and the app should tell them to sleep with the phone on and the sound up pending an evacuation alert.
Most people who died were 75+ and/or had limited mobility. Maybe at least a registry so first responders can prioritize during an evacuation?
Immediately after the 1991 Oakland fire, there was talk of rebuilding the neighborhoods differently—at least widening the roads where people died in traffic jams. Almost none of these potential changes were implemented. There is a lot of opportunity to upgrade and consolidate land-use intensity in the burned-over areas of Santa Rosa and Larkfield/Wikiup, but it is unlikely to happen.
Common thread: Vulnerability to disaster is part of the cost of the weakening of our government. This includes budget cuts, poor land-use planning, and restrictions on eminent domain. Progressive people need to sharpen their position on supporting government, including reasonable control over property rights and private decision-making. Some things need to be decided collectively, via democracy, rather than individually, or we all pay the price.

October 14, 2017 by dan Personal Status The Nature of Belief 0

A Norman Rockwell moment

I left Santa Barbara about 6:00 pm. I was a bit tired after three days on the road. There had been an interagency meeting in the morning, and then I lead a 3-hour training workshop in the afternoon.

About an hour into the 6-hour drive home, feeling hungry, I stopped at an In-n-Out Burger in Santa Maria. Santa Maria is an ag-and-oil town, sprawling and charmless.

I skipped the drive-through lane, and instead parked up and walked inside to order, still in my business suit. A high-school wrestling team had got in ahead of me.

As I found my place in line, the coach appeared and told the kids to stand aside and let me through to the front. I thanked him in my public voice and headed to the counter, happy to act a part in his lesson to the kids.

I’m not that well-traveled, but there’s something about this experience that struck me as very American–perhaps it was the way the coach was so well-mannered and so informal at the same time, demonstrating grace and consideration that transcended mere rules. I’d like to think he would have done the same for anyone.

February 9, 2017 by dan The Nature of Belief 0

MLK Day

King’s most famous quote, in his most famous speech, was an audacious, in-your-face challenge to white people.

“I have a dream,” he said, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

The message is uplifting, yes, and is also laced with righteous anger, bitterness, and sarcasm. “I have dream,” indeed.

The reaction to that message still reverberates. Today, after a half-century of advances and setbacks, King’s challenge to white people is as stark as in 1963.

At the August 28, 1963 March on Washington

The 2016 presidential campaign was all about character. About being consistently poised and respectful, despite differences. About answering difficult questions directly and honestly. About doing your homework and knowing what you’re talking about. About listening and remaining persuadable in the heat of argument. About being protective of those who need protection. About speaking one’s mind, and standing up for what is right.

Those elements of character were the core appeal of the Democratic candidate—much more than mere ideology.

And it was a turn-off for many voters. For many white voters, that is.

Here’s what I’ve learned from being white: The existence of white supremacy, with the very real advantages if confers in status and opportunity—constitutes a moral hazard. Because it is all too easy to substitute white privilege for the very difficult effort of cultivating good character.

And the less one has accomplished through real effort and real accomplishment, rather than skating by on white skin, the greater the hazard.

The moral hazard of white supremacy can lead people to stay in economically hopeless backwaters rather than face the rigors of urban life. To stick with fading livelihoods rather than learning something new. To substitute the falsity of homilies and heritage for authentic development of one’s individuality. Enough years of this avoidance will, almost inevitably, cause a whole community to suffer hopelessness, which can be measured in rising substance abuse and mortality.

Many will also suffer anger, and resentment, against “elites” who live in a multiracial, diverse, challenging, and forward-looking world. And they may feel they are being judged and excluded for lacking the elements of character that are, more and more, indispensable currency in that world—urbane poise, open-mindedness, sensitivity to others, attentiveness to knowledge. (These elements of character are often derided as “political correctness.”)

Part of Trump’s appeal is that he offers a comforting reassurance to white people that, in America today, those “elite” character values can still be sidestepped. All you need is white skin and money, and you can be coarse, ignorant, racist, and successful. Without the money, you’re still OK.

So, Dr. King’s dream that his children (and ours) should be judged by the content of their character—that is still a dream. As we continue to pursue it, we would do well to remember that it is not just a “dream” in the sense of a high-minded aspiration, but a dream full of righteous anger at white supremacy.

January 16, 2017 by dan The Nature of Belief 0