The following is an American Dissident broadside, which I handed out in front of Sturgis Library on October 10th during its Celebration of Kurt Vonnegut. 90% or more of those arriving refused to take one. The cartoon on Vonnegut below was part of the broadside.
What is the point of confronting
ambulating brick walls like the 90%? That question I
have to ask myself every time I stand alone protesting against local corrupt
pillars of the community. Sure, I know
it is 99% unlikely that I’ll meet anyone even remotely interested in the free
speech issues I evoke. No matter. During the protests, I often have interesting thoughts and obtain
grist for my mill of creativity.
At the library, the arrived like dignitaries to a
gala. But dignitaries of what? Bourgeois conformity and propriety?
How sad it all was. Nobody was willing to focus on
the facts I presented. Nobody gave a shit. The common reaction is to scorn and mock the rare person
who dares question and challenge such people.
Barnstable is a town dominated by an elite of stepford wives and
husbands, a representative microcosm of
the nation. They are why I do not love
America...
Vonnegut’s Clapboard Tomb…
And Its
Gravediggers of Liberty
—An Open Letter to the Apathetic, Easily
Offended, and Ignorant Citizens of Barnstable—
It really is a sorry kind of person who makes it to
the top.
—Kurt
Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut called Sturgis Library a “clapboard tomb,” upon quitting
his job as library trustee. A tomb, of
course, is a place for the dead. Has
Sturgis gotten any better since Vonnegut’s time in Barnstable? Experience tells me it’s actually gotten a
lot worse. Lucy Loomis, its director, is totally unaccountable and totally
autocratic. Upset her fiefdom with a
dash of freedom of expression and be prepared for permanent punishment, which
is precisely what happened to me in June 2012.
My speech crime consisted of
an open letter published on my blog site and sent to the directors of the Clams
Library System of Cape Cod, not one of whom responded. Not even director Ann Speyer, who lectures on censorship and book banning, gave a
damn. Only Sturgis Library trustee and
Loomis boyfriend Dan Santos responded, though indirectly, dismissing as
“intellectual masturbation” my argument that Loomis was a hypocrite regarding
her written collection development statement that ”libraries should provide materials and information presenting all
points of view.” Loomis and not one
other library director in the system would subscribe to The American Dissident (only $20), published in Barnstable and
presenting a viewpoint at antipodes to that of Poetry Magazine to which Sturgis subscribes. I’d even offered a free subscription, but
Loomis rejected it, thus proscribing the points of view of all those published in
it… permanently.
Less than one week after that
open letter was disseminated, Loomis and three cops approached me while I was
peacefully sitting alone in a room at Sturgis, as I’d been doing almost daily
for about two years. There, Loomis said
she was permanently banning me. No
warning had ever been issued. Off I
went… a tad angry! Loomis and later trustee
Ted Lowry refused to provide me with
a written statement regarding the action and reason for it. Nine months later the State Secretary of
Records forced them to open their records to public scrutiny, so that finally I
could read what had been written about me.
Democracy in action!
Due process? We no need no stinkin’ due process! That is Sturgis Library’s true motto. Would Vonnegut
have embraced it? Did he embrace
it? Imagine no possibility of due
process was offered! Imagine Loomis
having the audacity to deem me a public danger, arguing: “Because
of his behavior when the police were here they almost arrested him—he can go
from calm to extremely agitated in a matter of seconds. So l believe this is the correct decision for
the safety of the staff and public.”
That was the only damning thing written in the documents made
public. Notice it is an aberrant
after-the-fact rationale and, why two years later, has not one staff member
been threatened or harmed by me, if indeed I were such a potential danger? Of course, I have no history at all of violence or of making
threats. How many others like Loomis
protect their fragile selves in layers of self-serving deceit and ignorance of democracy,
including the Supreme Court (Tinker
v. Des Moines Sch. Dist.) argument that “in our system, undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is
not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression.” Trustees Ted Lowry, Sue Angus, John Ehret, Colin Campbell, and Mike Downs, and others who’ve
made it to the top, seem unable to comprehend that America’s greatness lies in
her unique FIRST AMENDMENT, not in political correctness! “Any departure from absolute regimentation may cause trouble,”
noted the Court, “any variation from the majority's opinion
may inspire fear.” Thus, my speech crime inspired fear and caused
Loomis emotional trouble.
The Barnstable Patriot (Noah Hoffenberg) and Cape Cod Times (Paul
Pronovost), to this day, refuse to publish anything regarding the above. Clearly those papers are not independent! My very civil rights today are being denied
in Barnstable because I have been permanently barred from attending any cultural
or political events held at my neighborhood library, you know, that “clapboard
tomb.” Imagine that I was not permitted
to attend Speyer’s lecture on Banned Books Week! Imagine not one community
pillar gives a damn, not Town Manager Tom
Lynch, nor Town Attorney Ruth Weil,
town councilor Ann Canedy, state
reps Cleon Turner and Brian Mannal, who’d proclaimed the
matter a civil rights issue, was going to help, then didn’t (yes, vote for
Mannal!), not local human rights commissar John
Reed, nor artists and poets of Robert M. Nash’s Cultural Council
of Cape Cod, not the Barnstable Village Civic Association, the writers of Nancy
Rubin Stuart’s Cape Cod Writers
Center, the instructors
at CCCC, including Dan McCullough, John
French, and Sarah Polito, not PEN New England, the ACLUM, etc., etc.
Now, would Vonnegut have been on their side too? Surely, none of his living family members and
friends give a damn. “I don’t buy it!”
snapped one Sturgis loyalist a few weeks ago.
And how shamefully easy it is for her willfully ignorant
ilk to dismiss incontrovertible facts, like those presented above, and the very
principles of democracy…
