Take A Stand - by Modesto/Peace Life Center Founder Sam Tyson - January 2002

Every so often people should take a stand, to keep in practice if for no other reason. Conscience needs exercising or it can become dormant.

In the early days of the Peace Center the Girl Scouts raised the United nations flag at the McHenry Public Library. John Birchers immediately took the flag down despite the tearful young people. As no one else would fly that flag, it was flown at the original, dark, storefront Peace Center at 15th and G. It took two or three years for that furor to die down, so the flag was flown these years at the Peace Center for U.N. Day.

Before the UN flag event and before the Modesto Peace Center, officials decided the school lunch program should not be utilized. True such officials are generally well fed so the brunt was carried by those less favored. A sit-in occurred with more than a handful of arrests in Modesto.

Came a time when the local Klu Klux Klan wanted to march in Modesto. Of course the idea may have been hateful but it was their freedom of speech. The Center came down on the side of allowing the march. Jim Higgs, though working with people who would oppose the march, came down very vocally to allow the Klan to go ahead. Should there be a counter demonstration, boo, ignore? The march did go on and a blah. The Peace Center's image was not bunished for the stand.

The Peace/Life Center bought the 922 6th St. property in 1980. Several years later the Center, along with the American Friend's Service Committee S.F., Chico Peace Center and several others, were sued for one million dollars. Something of a shocker it was. Enter John Frailing for the defense. It basically was a harassing effort by the local Consumers Alert, subbing for utilities. The action withered away in light of facts. The suit was supposed to be about anti nuclear power activities at Diablo Canyon, MID, PG&E. The irony was Stanislaus Safe Energy Committee was responsible for the various anti-nuclear power pickets, leafleting, testimony in Sacramento. However, Safe Energy had no money, the Center had a building at that time.

In the days of the Contras in Nicaragua local Congressman Tony Coelho was a political power in Washington DC. It seemed he should be exercising his free speech a little more robustly in human terms. He became a focus which turned into a sit in at this office. Dennis Wilson building owner brought in the pol,ice to dislodge the sit-in. Jane Jackson, Coelho's office person got to see so many people she knew get arrested. Three mornings this went on.

Not long into a new century it is time to stand out again. The Martin Luther King Committee is not an official part of the Peace/Life Center though individuals were involved in the work. King Kennedy Center was the organizer. The Center helped financially but not with policy. For 2002 things started as usual. The proposed speaker, Danny Glover, took some strong positions not necessarily aligned with the politics of the day. When this dawned on those in public position the need to be politically correct took over. King Kennedy operates as part of the Parks Department. Parks refused to sign on the contract. Modesto Jr. College withdrew its facility. Modesto Bee backed down. One by one, the domino effect took over. Modesto Peace/Life Center which started as just one of a group of supporters now became the lead agency. Finances became a major issue necessitating a special fund appeal.

What originated as a normal speaking engagement became a free speech issue. Word got out. People from Fresno, Bay Area, San Diego phoned to get connected. An East Coast paper, the Boston Globe, phoned.

If truth and integrity were to be upheld the Modesto Peace/Life Center had to hurry up and adjust to a major problem not of their making. The Center does stand behind what it believes, the Danny Glover visit was a tremendous opportunity to speak out for civil liberties, free speech and diversity of opinion.

By Sam Tyson January 2002

Surviving Checkpoint Stanislaus

The information I am providing in this article is solely for use within the boundaries of Stanislaus County proper. Derogatory references to any aspect of law enforcement are only inferred and or implied regarding the law enforcement agencies as a whole of Stanislaus County proper, California, USA

To appropriately survive a police encounter it is important that you know specific rights that you have, yet more specifically, it is important to realize the consequences of exercising and not exercising each one.

1.    You have the right to remain silent.  USE IT!!!

This is a right that you have every single moment of the day that you were first introduced to American soil whether by birth or immigration. This is considered an inalienable right to exercise in that you may refuse to speak to law enforcement in any manner or affect. With new “hear-say” laws in effect at present, the persons you should speak to should be extremely limited.

Seldom is the time that you should be compelled to communicate in any manner, matter or way with law enforcement. Only under the direst or circumstances, such as if it were to be that yours or another’s life is in jeopardy, and even then, always remember that the very life you may think you are saving by calling 911 could be otherwise ended by the circumstances arising from that same call. Mainly via homicide committed by law enforcement themselves.

Since this right is inalienable, you do not need to vocalize your wish to enact it. Simply don’t say anything.

When invoking this right verbally, which is unnecessary, since it is an inalienable right, the chances of being directly challenged regarding your persecution are generally much more heightened as to vocalize your exercised choice of implementing this right that you have without having to say so or that you choose "not" to waive it. Also, the very act of invoking this right will generally be a factor that will lean toward your implication in crime(s), if not assumed guilt.
This may also invite police brutality and possibly as with all police encounters, you or a loved one (even including your pet no matter what size or breed) may even be shot and killed by law enforcement. They flex their power and control in this way on a very consistent basis. Much more occurs than what the local media chooses or is allowed to tell you.

You have the right to refuse to consent to a search of yourself, your children, any family member or another person that may be under your care (without proper warrants provided with your full opportunity for inspection (yeah, right), your vehicle(s) or your home(s).

DON'T RESIST OR REFUSE THEM!!!!

Let them search. You would be stupid to resist – they will affix additionally fabricated obstruction and evading charges onto you and once again, use the very act of verbally telling them that  you do not consent to search you at the scene, in their presentation to the da to file charges against you and then again, later in court after the charges have been filed. They will continue to use this verbal statement as direct evidence that you are guilty of whatever charges they need to bring against someone.

If you are not under arrest, you have the right to leave. If you leave without clear instruction from law enforcement that it is safe to do so, you may be killed or taken down and beaten. In the best case scenario they may call you back over to their vicinity, but this action will also be used against you, though it too, is an inalienable right.

You may ask to leave, but do not do so unless you fully understand that you are truly free to leave, even though you have the right to leave at any time unless you are specifically told that you are under arrest. Arrest being defined simply as you are not legally permitted to leave as you have been informed of this by a law enforcement officer.

Though you are under arrest or not - local Stanislaus county law enforcement refer to any encounter that they have with a "suspect" without possessing valid probable cause as "consensual contact". If a member of law enforcement is questioning you, it would be best to assume that you are under arrest and refuse to answer any questions whatsoever.

You have the right to a lawyer if you are arrested. You have a right to a lawyer if you are not arrested. You have a right to a lawyer to be present when a member of law enforcement merely glances over at you. Once again, this is an inalienable right that you have every moment of every breath.

But unless you free yourself in some way from the resulting incarceration resulting from the arrest you will not be allowed to exercise that right for up to 72 hours or in some situations that may be fabricated by law enforcement, even longer (i.e. being held on suspicion of being a public threat or an judge’s whim or influence of law enforcement including the district attorney. In Stanislaus county, most are NOT allowed to exercise their right until their arraignment in a court of law, however unconstitutional this may be – that’s just the way it is. Work on getting yourself bailed out, your bail reduced or getting out on your own recognizance. Then work on the attorney as you prepare to go to war with your persecutors.

Regardless of your immigration or citizenship status, you have constitutional rights. Don’t expect any of these rights to be recognized in Stanislaus, Merced or San Joaquin counties. Remain silent and request to exercise your international inalienable right to contact your consulate. Speak only to them until you have been able to arrange appropriate legal counsel and any translation you may need.







Copyright 2017 Robert Stanford all rights reserved.

Homeless and Truly Needy or Homeless and Really Greedy?

Do nothing Modesto Gospel Mission security guard
posturing for me after I told him I was going to
file a written complaint against him with the Mission.

With Dunkin Donuts an impressively vigorous stone’s throw across the thoroughfare, you find yourself lulled into a crowd at the counter of yet another refugee camp – Saigon. I am just sure these people behind the counter are Vietnamese. I can tell by the way they interact with me.

Which, by the way, seems like an event that could only happen as I approach my turn to be able to request my Cup-a Joe so that I can read the morning’s obituaries summing up the useless lives of many that were in line before me that very same morning. Sounds far out, if not paradoxically impossible, but if you were there behind this unsuspecting mob, every single one of you would, quite suddenly, break that nasty habit of running every single day to catch the mailman in hopes of some sort of an AARP publication with your name on it.

Mortality becomes ominously omnipresent in your solar plexus. So much so, that life begins to lose all meaning.

But of course, these are all elderly Americans. On the other side of the counter, they don’t need to mob. It’s guerrilla warfare with lard being the ammunition of defense and protection.

Yet their clientele may already be dead by the time I do order that discreet cup of coffee, poured from an unseen pot.

And by the time they do interact with me, it is with the greatest of familiarity. As I am recognized as an envoy, if not an all-out American double agent, enjoying the warmth and security of my many safe houses as I conveniently choose to do so. This time it’s been nearly five years since I last sought refuge here.

I turn away from the counter to look out over dozens of elderly bodies strewn across the floor, slumped over tables and others merely decaying within the shelter of a dwarfed and somewhat fragile hedgerow.

And it is just over that hedgerow I look out and see what the future hold for me – One less safe house. One less refuge. The new generation will prefer this new order of a donut shop – Dunkin Donuts.

Yet how could they possibly know anything else? After all, Dunkin Donuts really is a donut shop. Not a Vietnamese refugee camp posing as one, simply to fight off the round faces with lard laden pastries.

No. No one would even know me there.

Yes. The price to pay for my elation of finally being served black coffee, was to be no more than the full realization of my normalcy bias. What’s a covert narcissistic, triple cultural spy to do?

Say, “Good-bye Saigon.”

And hello Ho Chi Minh. Where the lesson I learned in Saigon, I just might be able to turn the tide of this genocidal war, despite the lowering statistical percentages of diabetes and heart disease among the psychopathic American factions hell bent on the complete sterilization of any culture bearing roots before the May Flower crossing. We call this “assimilation”.

But Ho Chi Minh is under siege from a different kind of force. A force fueled by the inevitable apathy produced by dope and booze, forever descending like a viral plague upon the camp. Emitted by the Modesto Gospel Mission, primarily with no consideration whatsoever of the business welfare of the camp.

They converge on anyone approaching the shop, demanding money, tobacco, transportation and if the unsuspecting customer refuses, they are pelted with a barge of extremely profane insults and threats, often times including very real threats of violence.

So the would be patrons take the only alternative they have at their disposal and drive away as fast as they can. Never to return. One less happy, satisfied customer and just another nail in the coffin of a thirty year old establishment.

I’m sorry. I need my refuge. I can’t let this happen. So enter the scene – Pollo Suave.

“Hey Bro,” I announce, looking up from these scribbled bits of paper you are reading now, “If you’re not going to buy something, you need to leave.”

“I don’t need to leave”, they say, “I have every right to be here.”

And I fire back, “If you’re not going to buy something you need to leave.” At which point, I rise up, flexing my chubby forearms and I throw down my pen and heave my man-boobs outward, shouting like a NAZI pig, “HEY BRO!! I AIN’T GOING TO TELL YOU AGAIN!”

They are usually out the door just after the first step I take toward them.

It doesn’t take long for my asshole reputation to take hold and soon, with great relief, families return. Working people return and don’t suffer the harassment of junkies and derelicts threatening their safety, if not their very lives.

The Modesto Gospel Mission parades their mock security guards in a golf cart they drive around the parking lot all day. Ignoring the many junkies shooting up in the doorway where paying customers must wait for them to move or step over them. These so called “Security Guards” should give me their paychecks or at the very least, perform the job they pretend to do.

But, as is everything else with the multi-million dollar a year grossing Modesto Gospel Mission, its nothing but just another farce.

So I will take care of it. Even when I know these people are mis-catagorized as desperate homeless people. Yet there is a vast difference between desperation for drugs and/or alcohol and desperation to grasp a sustainable livelihood.

So now Ho Chi Minh may once again commence in the assisted suicide of the round-faced Americans and contribute to the economic wellbeing of the community. The latter of which no one really cares about outside the safe confines of their own refuge, namely, their pocket book.

“Hey! You not want donut?”

Copyright 2017 Robert Stanford all rights reserved.

I Don't Care About Your Political Fan Fiction

Words in papers, words in books

Words on TV, words for crooks

Words of comfort, words of peace

Words to make the fighting cease

Words to tell you what to do

Words are working hard for you

Eat your words but don't go hungry

Words have always nearly hung me

So, I just ate a candy bar on my no-carb diet. Don’t worry. I can keep a secret. I won’t tell anyone.

You know the last time I posted on this blog, I was told it was fragmented and really didn’t make any sense. That really took me aback in a sarcastic sort of way. You see, the real problem here, is that I need to make yet, yes, another transition. I must be a statesman.

Since I am running for Modesto City Council District 4, I must concentrate on the Serenity prayer and not go off on a tangent, flaring my ego like the wings of a phoenix rising from the ashes, trying to convince you1 that I have upgraded part of the slang English language and that my references of certain members of our community2 are only meant as hard degradations to these individuals personally, and that I am, by no means trying to erode any part of my voter’s sect.

I am the man for all parties3 and I mean why not. I am pro Queer, but pro Life. Pro Immigration, but Pro-Gun.

Anti-Law Enforcement? No, not at all. I back the Badge. Just not the corruption behind it.4

People want to tell me what to say and what not to. What to write, what to show, what to tell, how to live. If it does not agree with them 100 percent they become my enemies in a heart beat, leaving me going, “Wait, what? What?”5

And that reminds me of my 2007 Modesto City Council Run in which I ran at large, rather than by District. After getting a teen drinking ordinance passed in Waterford, CA, a member of the Council had heard that I had turned in my paperwork to run for the office and asked me, “So, Bob, why did you decide to turn to the dark side? – Politics!”

I took that to be more of a rhetorical question, and was later to learn, as I learned even what my aspirations really were that it truly is the dark side if the line is not carefully walked. But that makes me the perfect candidate. A politician with issues you will agree and disagree at the same time with, but the issues of the community solely. Not a developer interest in annexing and zoning purely for profit, prestige and whatever else the hell these bastards are after. Such as golf course memberships, etc.

Me? I want to openly carry a firearm. And so should you.

Neighbor’s dog barking just a bit too much for your taste in the night? Save the taxpayers some money and do what you know you must do.6

Music too loud?7

And that’s just one idea.

Watch how easy it will be for me to annex every square inch of the City of Modesto that is not incorporated.

Watch how red my fellow money leeches on the Modesto City Council will turn when I force the City of Modesto and the County of Stanislaus to turn over millions of dollars worth of misappropriated and withheld grant funds with interest.

Watch indictments fly, only to be shot down by statutes of limitations, but then the truth will be known. And not just through a self promoting blog.8 Well, that and that the head of the Civil Grand Jury (our indictment vehicle) is headed consistently by District Attorney Dave Harris.9

Guerrilla politics? No, just a simple man with a plan. A plan to liberate his fellow Stanislausian.

I don’t have to kiss baby’s and ass. All I have to do is bring my years upon years of experience to the table and show that I know what is up and that I have a plan to do it. And what better way to do it anyway, than to do it as part of my race. That way, even if I lose, my agenda is still accomplished.

Thank God for DC and the Supreme Court. Otherwise, I am sure that the existing members of the Modesto City Council would have me drawn, quartered, tarred, feathered, whipped and altogether exterminated, just exactly in the same way that the Chinese that worked the Stanford railroad in the mid to late 1800’s were slaughtered exactly where the Modesto City Council Chambers rest today.10

Later, in the next Century there was to be built two great monumental buildings that the very beginning of the glory of Modesto was borne of. That would be the Hotel Houston and the Hotel Covell respectively.11

But that is not before the true story tellers of history, would most certainly have you believe that the Chinese man (women and children too – they just forgot to mention them) was literally saved by the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department, formed specifically for the purpose of eliminating a group of Chinese killing vigilantes calling themselves, “The Regulators”.

Because the killings did not stop and the Sheriff Department participated as well all to appease Mr. Stanford, the Central Pacific Railroad tycoon. A man isn’t a man till he has had to make payroll. But since when would these people think of the Chinese as “men”? Certainly no sooner than the Supervisors and Council members would think of the homeless as humans.

But a blind eye is a happy eye.

And you are reading the ramblings of a man that is going to set right what was wronged so many years ago and stand up for the “Oriental” massage parlors. I will be pretending that they are all Chinese, just like I pretend they are Vietnamese at Ho Chi Minh – right smack dab in the middle of the 132 Freeway, Highway or If I had my preference in feign reference – Interstate 132.12

But I digress.

      1.       Yes, you. You know who you are.

2.       In particular, members of the Stanislaus District Attorney’s Office

3.       Dennis Banks was on the Presidential ticket by the way – Peace and Freedom Party. You might know them better as socialists.

4.       The Swastika is actually a peaceful religious symbol.

5.       Yes, you know who you are and so do you as well.

6.       That’s right. You know what I’m talking about.

7.       You get the idea. Problems solved.

8.       Yes, you know who you are too. And you. And you. And you. And you. And you. And you.

9.       And you thought Richard Nixon was bad.

10.   They even have proudly portrayed the photos of Stanislaus County Supervisors upon the walls of the City Hall Chambers that participated in the murder of Chinese Americans where Fuzio’s is now. I wouldn’t order the Chinese food there.

11.   But as though a time machine has gone rogue somewhere, nobody is going to know what I am referring to, except for that fool at the White Only Modesto Museum that is once again going to be irked that I would have the audacity to mention the genocide that took place in my name. (Not that this is the first time, mind you).

12.   Sorry Nick, I just had to.

Copyright 2017 Robert Stanford all rights reserved.