{Greetings dear Reader, thanks for viewing another installment of Gh’s Appeal. If this comes up oddly in your email, please click the title link to get the substack site proper. i did some footnotes that may have shifted the text when i slipped and stumbled and so i started dancing and hopping to recover}
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[ page 42 ]
Running for Mayor and Getting Arrested
In 2007 , I ran on the ballot for Mayor of San Francisco. I was exercising and practicing the audacity of hop , as it were; hoping to change the housing situation here in the city, specifically so that people would actually be able to live here, imagine that! We have an overwhelming commercial vacancy rate. My personal experience was that i had to live in a commercial unit anyway just to get by , so why not make it legal and give people eviction protection? But the concept was so complicated that no one seemed to be willing nor able to understand it, although Luke Thomas1 once pretended to ; I don’t believe he ever propagandized anything positive about me, least of all my actual platform planks and my reason for running. It seemed to me, and still does now, that my whole reason for running was never once conveyed beyond myself. I would say, “housing , housing , housing,” and people would say Grasshopper wants to legalize pot. Well of course I do, and housing too.
What was conveyed to the general public was that I was the homeless taxicab driver running for mayor who kept getting arrested. They did NOT call me a small business owner nor peace activist, which would be complimentary. Although Yaggy had enjoined the jury from using the Internet, i am certain since I was all over it at this time, they could not reasonably have resisted, what with my name and all. They most likely checked me out, with just a few keystrokes, all too easy to do, which would not have provided any complimentary perspective upon my being. I contend the very fact that they found me less credible than Vandebos may be in large part because they researched my name upon the internet, despite admonishment not to do so. Or, because they’d read about me in the paper.23
In any event, the meanness and hatefulness of Yaggy transmitted towards me may not have made the records in its every nuance, nor, oftentimes, in the actual words themselves. Still , she kept repeatedly calling my name in a scolding manner and interrupting me, in front of the jury. I’m sure she made a great impression upon them that Grasshopper is a bad guy, so that every observer took away that impression as their first and foremost. It was impossible not to notice the venomous seething hatred our impartial judge was generating upon my person and self counsel.
Taxi drivers are generally considered scum of the earth, as the starting reference point among most folks, I’ve found. Between my name , career, and self - representation, I already was walking up to the plate with 3 strikes against me.
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Luke Thomas is a vile spooky sort of liar who wrote the Fog City Journal which seemed to be able to blame all of the current ills upon Grasshopper, and painted me as a shadowy sort before the popularity of gaslamping gaslighting we now enjoy. I had friends i lost after they’d follow that Fog City Journal for a while, which framed me in the most unfavourable light, and at least at times was inaccurate (but with all those photos, why bother reading it anyway? the photos were the news…) like when they stated i’d been charged with two counts of felony terrorism, which was not accurate. I was charged, as far as i ever saw, with one count that was dropped by scKamala, then after someone breathed sweet nothings in her ear after Ed Jew, that dropped charge was reinstated, because she knew she could be besties or beasties with BidenHo if only , if only Grasshopper wasn’t in her way… knock his ass over, she did.
Anyway, Luke Thomas wasn’t no friend of Grasshopper, rest assured, he never was.
http://www.fogcityjournal.com/news_in_brief/overheard_061106.shtml
photo of Luke Thomas above, looking spooky like a spook, i think he must be.
http://www.fogcityjournal.com/news_in_brief/caption_action_071015.shtml
photos of zombies
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
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When I got kicked off my own defense, , it was essentially throwing my Grasshopper-ass out of the old ball game.
Although the Thigpen event in early August -07 just after that McDonald’s fiasco did not result in my arrest, it was intrinsic to shutting me down, which Thigpen celebrated along with her birthday that Saturday night. [“non-arrest”]
Also , there was a non-arrest on 11-7th , 2007 , which was the day after the election. That occurred on the steps of 850 Bryant. It was then that Sheriff Deputy Castelagno *1546 injured me, bending my right wrist inward until I was crying. Again, although I was detained, they soon sent me away without charge. They didn’t like my outfit, but were reluctant to charge me for improper attire. One of those events like when i was slammed on the ground in October ‘93 by the Park Police, around the bleachers where I was asking a couple whom I thought were smoking a bowl if they had any herb. Soon thereafter, I was slammed on the ground by two cops who detained me, without charge, without Miranda, nor arrest, I suppose. They held me handcuffed inside a holding cell right there around Aquatic Park, then after releasing me, said that I didn’t have to tell anyone I had been arrested. Gee.
[8-4-15 handwritten note in margin: Yup, there’s a jail there too, for people like me, though not in plain view for tourists to see… who knew? Little Alcatraz, near the Sea Scouts] [ the jail was in the federal (?) park (police) station there, the first one i was kept in in SF, 1993.]
I did actually get arrested at least a half a’ dozen times while I was running for Mayor of San Francisco, upon the fucking ballot, in 2007. I did everything I could to support my candidacy, a task more daunting by the lack of any gainful employment, of which I had been deprived by Jordana Thigpen and Heidi Machen, then Mayor Gavin Newsom appointees to his then operative SF Taxi Commission, since subsumed under the MTA with the help - that is, the crooked politicking and plotting of Aaron Peskin, a rather hairy man. But I digress. But he sure is hairy, like an ape man. He could comb his back. Hey Aaron, thanks for Prop A that destroyed the 1978 Quentin Kopp Prop K that gave taxi driver our hopes and dreams, harboured for years, which you sleazily destroyed. Have any cab drivers thrown their shoes at you? Well, that would be an insult to their shoes.
I’m ashamed to count Aaron among the SF Bay Swimmers, and would be scared to see him in the water. Unlike this baby sea lion that breached a half dozen times yesterday. Seeing that was just far out and phenomenal, I’ve never seen anything like it in my 10 years of swimming. I mean, Man!, This babe just got his or her whole body totally out of the water, right there in the shallows where folks were swimming.
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! ! ! ! !
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It was just tremendous to see. S/he would swim just several feet away from swimmers, as if to say, oh swimming, I can do that! What a most beautiful event, to see such an expression of sheer joy and jubilation, that sea lion baby breaching the water, full of glory and love.
Oh, well, what the hell good is a legal document if I can’t entertain my own digression. I mean, crap, that garbage you gotta wade through that passes for law, all the strata of unintelligible philosiphications, it’s like a foreign language that no body can speak, let alone understand, But that is our law, a dead letter floating in the water, killing the planet. Gotta love the law. Oh , whoops, am I expressing actual thoughts and feelings, that is just way too dangerous, I’ll have to censor this here sidetrack and get back to my task, feeling that whip cracking our freedoms. Speech, hell, I’m afraid to have the wrong goddam thought, anymore.
Meanwhile, I still had to shoulder the responsibilities and costs of having a taxicab business, except for that minor detail about being able to make money, which, of course, I could no longer really do. It just was not really possible to get much flaggage in the cabbage… often the fine and friendly SFPD would politely intervene if they saw me trying to pick up in front of them. Or in their rear-view. Whoops.
Whoopsy daisy.
I’ve already touched upon the Vandebos arrest, whereby I was charged with terrorism. That was the firstest and the worstest. There was also the arrest at the Federal Building, as part of an anti-war action with 13 or so others who also got arrested that day.
I was arrested at 201 Turk, at a so-called debate for mayoral candidates , to which I had been invited in writing. But they decided to uninvite me. Imagine that. They had to have a fire drill to clear the are-ee-o. I was the last to go. Then they wouldn’t let me back in. They didn’t want me to have a voice after all, I guess. So I got arrested trying …, to be part of their lousy debate, to which the actual so-called Mayor didn’t bother going. The one debate at the League of Women Voters event, that was no debate, but there is a nice photo of me holding my hands in an interesting fashion that seemed to impress or puzzle folks. That was for the kids. Check it out, from the
http://www.fogcityjournal.com/news_in_brief/court_jesterings_070906.shtml
[first link great footage of my arrest at 201 Turk mayoral “debate”]
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Challengers-point-finger-at-Newsom-2497478.php
[the caption in the second link photo, in the paper, said, “can you guess which one is Grasshopper Kaplan” or something like that at the time…]
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& & & & & & &
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Chronicle, is where I saw the photo. Wonder why they didn’t arrest me for that? Or my comment, in the 30 seconds alloted for “debate,” to chill out, smoke a joint, and relax. That in response to a question about “aggressive panhandling” which I suppose I am guilty of myself. Spare some change?
There was the Ed Jew arrest, in early September ‘07 , after which I was re-charged with the Vandebos.
I was arrested in San Mateo at a Straw Poll. I daresay I had long ago put my clothes back on, and you couldn’t see nothing revealed anyway, for the guitar I was playing in front of my….front, so at worst you could see some moon. Big deal, please. Isn’t that protected freedom of speech? My ass, yes, it should be. It was an unamplified guitar, a 6 string acoustic, not a lethal weapon.
[ https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/S-F-cabbie-fails-to-show-up-in-court-for-showing-3300259.php
[notice how they manage to gaslight me any chance they can get…and how I “assaulted” a passenger, Cote` says, ain’t that swell]
[ and let’s see, this one actually has an x-rated photo, hide the children…
http://www.fogcityjournal.com/news_in_brief/es_crackberry_chronicles_071023.shtml ] ]
I was arrested at the Board of Supervisors, back here in SF, after the Ed Jew event, which got me a restraining order against Ed Jew. I was attempting to give public comment opposing the proposed immigrant ID legislation, which I contend would make it easier for the federalistas to deport people. They arrested me instead of letting me speak in the same room as his royal highness, Ed Jew.
But worst of all was that re-arrest during that week after parking in Ed Jew’s driveway. They had me in a small room with 4 creepy cops who were trying to get me to spill my guts and sanity. Ultimately, that’s what this has been all about. But you’ll observate that the effort to destroy my mind has not worked, so I implore you at this time to restore my business and my being, thank you so kindly.
I have a friend who is a bike cop, and he comments upon my cosmic struggle, by way of inquiry; how have I managed not to lose my mind? , he asks? —through all of this madness, by the way, which I shall barely be able to describe herein. From the emotional level, this Appeal can barely delve into my time inside. Inside jail. Inside in solitary. I can only give summary overview, and shall not be able in this work to explore the actual jail experience, except to broadly outline in passing mention.
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I answered him, well, I don’t use alcohol, which would surely have been quite an impediment to dealing with all of this emotionally, which I am still working through as i write. (I expect it will be years or decades more before i can really get past all of this devastation. This is true terror, what was perpetrated upon me.) In fact, honestly, I am tired of having my heart in the washing machine and my soul in the dryer.
How come they won’t let me get an appeal?
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