Fascism: Various Thoughts

[Guest guest]

The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism

By Dr. Lawrence Britt

Free Inquiry Magazine / Spring 2003

 

Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, studied the

fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini

(Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and

Pinochet (Chile). He found the regimes all had 14

things in common, and he calls these the identifying

characteristics of fascism. The article is titled

'Fascism Anyone?', and appears in Free Inquiry's

Spring 2003 issue on page 20.

 

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism -

Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic

mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other

paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag

symbols on clothing and in public displays.

 

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights -

Because of fear of enemies and the need for security,

the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human

rights can be ignored in certain cases because of

" need. " The people tend to look the other way or even

approve of torture, summary executions,

assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

 

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying

Cause -

The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic

frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common

threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities;

liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

 

4. Supremacy of the Military -

Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the

military is given a disproportionate amount of

government funding, and the domestic agenda is

neglected. Soldiers and military service are

glamorized.

 

5. Rampant Sexism -

The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost

exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes,

traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce,

abortion and homo-sexuality are suppressed and the

state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the

family institution.

 

6. Controlled Mass Media -

Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the

government, but in other cases, the media is

indirectly controlled by government regulation, or

sympathetic media spokespeople and executives.

Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

 

7. Obsession with National Security -

Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government

over the masses.

 

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined -

Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most

common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate

public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is

common from government leaders, even when the major

tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to

the government's policies or actions.

 

9. Corporate Power is Protected -

The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist

nation often are the ones who put the government

leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial

business/government relationship and power elite.

 

10. Labor Power is Suppressed -

Because the organizing power of labor is the only real

threat to a fascist government, labor unions are

either eliminated entirely, or are severely

suppressed.

 

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts -

Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open

hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not

uncommon for professors and other academics to be

censored or even arrested. Free _expression_ in the

arts and letters is openly attacked.

 

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment -

Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost

limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often

willing to overlook police abuses and even forego

civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is

often a national police force with virtually unlimited

power in fascist nations.

 

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption -

Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups

of friends and associates who appoint each other to

government positions and use governmental power and

authority to protect their friends from

accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes

for national resources and even treasures to be

appropriated or even outright stolen by government

leaders.

 

14. Fraudulent Elections -

Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete

sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear

campaigns against or even assassination of opposition

candidates, use of legislation to control voting

numbers or political district boundaries, and

manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also

typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or

control elections.

 

 

 

On the road to Fascism

United States is taking on all the defining

characteristics

 

Durango Herald -October 5, 2003

http://new.globalfreepress.com/article.pl?sid=03/10/10/1832217

 

We believe that the United States of America is

drifting towards its own version of fascism.

Fascism, whatever its particular national

characteristics, is inherently a destruction of the

" old order " of a country its laws, its culture, its

internal politics and its international relations.

 

Fascists govern within existing systems until parallel

systems are in place. Once those systems are in

position, the evolution from national populism to

fascism is unstoppable. Fascist states are internally

destructive. When they become externally destructive,

they are destroyed from outside.

 

Characteristics of fascist states include:

Fascist countries project that they are in a permanent

or long-term state of war. (Example: We are in an

endless war on terrorism.) Fascist countries invade

other countries without provocation. (Example:

pre-emptive war against Iraq.) We tried the Germans at

Nuremberg for exactly this offense.

 

As Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson, the chief

U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal, said on

Aug. 12, 1945: " We must make clear to the Germans that

the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial

is not that they lost the war, but that they started

it. ... Our position is that no grievances or policies

will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly

renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy. "

 

Fascist countries violate their own treaties and

international law. (Example: violation of the United

Nations Charter by waging war against Iraq without UN

approval.) Fascist countries lie to the general

population, instilling fear and hysteria against

mythological enemies, so they can go to war at will.

(Examples: The 9-11 tragedy was used to generate

hysteria through a massive government propaganda

campaign based upon lies about Iraq; intimidation by

color-coded terror warnings and provisions of the USA

Patriot Act.)

 

Fascism is characterized by single-party rule, the

destruction or transformation of the two-party system.

(Examples: Colorado Gov. Bill Owens abolished the

Colorado 2004 primary election; illegal attempts at

redistricting driven by the White House; monetary

corruption of the system resulting in voter apathy.)

 

 

Fascist governments demand unquestioning support

otherwise you are a traitor. (Example: President

Bush's statement, " You are either with us or against

us. " )

 

Fascist governments project an ideology that they are

" right. " (Example: President Bush, " I am right and I

know I am right and history will prove me right. " )

 

Fascist countries consolidate media control for

propaganda purposes. (Example: Federal Communications

Commission and corporate attempts at consolidation of

the media.)

 

Fascism is characterized by legal parallelism. Fascist

states create shadow agencies, shadow courts, separate

prisons, thus destroying guaranteed constitutional

rights. (Examples: Destruction of the guarantee of

right to trial by jury; holding U.S. citizens without

charge, without access to legal counsel and without

the right to court appearance; intimidation of the

judiciary by threats of blacklisting; intimidation of

lawyers; degrading attorney-client privileges.)

 

Fascism is characterized by using torture,

concentration camps and having major prison

populations. (Examples: Guantanamo concentration camp;

the FBI's description of how it " breaks " suspects with

heat, cold, sound and sleep deprivation. The United

States has the highest percentage of citizenry in

prisons of any country in the world.)

 

Fascism is characterized by parallelism between the

state and corporations. (Examples: Government and

corporate overlap in certain industries oil, energy,

military contractors and the media; massive corporate

donations to both parties to assure connivance.)

Fascism, U.S. version, is characterized by the

privatization of public services and the sell-off of

public entities and resources for the benefit of the

party faithful rather than the public at large.

(Examples: Private profiteering on public services

such as prisons, water, sewer, forest use, oil and

gas; current order for appraisal of all post office

buildings for contemplated sale.)

 

Fascism incorporates racism and attacks on the

nondominant religion. (Examples: Imprisoning

disproportionately one race for using a drug of choice

other than that used by the dominant majority; Muslim

profiling and harassment; denial of franchise to

blacks under false pretenses in the Florida election.)

 

Fascism promotes conservative views of arts,

literature, family culture, family planning and

morals. (Examples: attacks on and decreased funding

for National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting

System, the National Endowment for the Arts, any

institution promoting family planning; school vouchers

as the beginning of class-based private education and

the destruction of the public education system;

passing financial responsibility for Head Start to

states that are near bankruptcy.)

 

Fascism takes religious symbolism and transfers the

emotional and moral appeal to state symbols.

(Examples: Aggressive and ostentatious God Bless

America signs; the attempt to make the Pledge of

Allegiance mandatory in Colorado schools; ostentatious

flag waving and display; destruction of constitutional

separation of church and state.)

 

We believe that the American tradition is in great

peril.

 

Christine Eleanor Anderson, of Vallecito, is a

businesswoman and a former law professor. Ross A.

Worley is retired from Fort Lewis College. He lives in

Durango. This was also signed by Jennifer Gehrman and

Mark Seis, of Bayfield, and Greg Rossell, Charles

Swift and Mary Lou Swift, of Durango.

 

 

 

http://erippy.home.mindspring.com/Guns%2C_Drugs%2C_and_Oil_9-11_and_US-Led_Globa\

l_Fascism.html

GUNS, DRUGS, AND OIL: 9-11 AND US-LED GLOBAL FASCISM

By Ed Rippy

 

Wake Up and Smell the Swastikas!

By Ed Rippy

 

[Note: most of the historical background is documented

on my “9-11 and US-led Global Neofascism”

(http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RIP308A.html)

and “War Is Still A Racket”

(http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RIP308B.html).

 

To save space, I have omitted those footnotes here.]

According to the best information I have been able to

find, we are in much more trouble than most of us

realize. The biological, ideological, and corporate

descendants of the people who ran Hitler & Mussolini

are now running much of this country, much of South

America, much of the Middle East, and parts of Central

Asia.

 

We are in serious danger of a neofascist police

state that will make Nazi Germany look like a picnic,

and we need to take this as seriously as if our lives

and our children’s lived depended on it – because they

do. We are as expendable to these people as the Jews,

the Poles, the Gypsies, and the homosexuals were to

the Third Reich.

 

Today we face unemployment,

homelessness, the prison-industrial complex, a drug

war which is really a war on us, and biological

warfare attacks from our own government. The terrorist

attacks of 9/11/01 serve the same function as the

Reichstag fire which enabled the Nazis to take over

Germany.

 

Prescott Bush, our President’s grandfather, handled

banking arrangements for a host of US industrialists

who supplied Hitler with money, war materiel, and

political cover. Bush owned part of the

Silesian-American Steel company, which used slave

labor in Poland to make steel for the tanks and

airplanes which killed and wounded many of our

fathers, grandfathers, and uncles. He also had a piece

of the Hamburg-Amerika Steamship line, which gave Nazi

propagandists free passage to the US and had

supervisors from the Nazi Labor Front on all its

ships.

 

Henry Ford, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and ITT

built up Hitler’s war machine, some of them racking up

huge profits from slave labor, and often supplying

both sides. The list goes on. Some of these fascists,

seeing Roosevelt as a Communist, plotted a coup

against him – he found out and it fizzled – but they

were so powerful that he couldn’t have a single one of

them arrested, even though a Congressional report

found that the plot was real. The report was hushed

up.

 

After the war, using the military and intelligence

services, US fascists rescued many of the Nazi leaders

and their industrial assets (of course other countries

got some too), using the Morgan Bank among others. The

Dulles brothers, who became head of the CIA and

Secretary of State, managed much of this while the

Justice Department stood by helpless.

 

Hitler’s entire eastern spy network went to work for

the US after the war. Klaus Barbie, a brutal Gestapo

chief, set up the School of the Americas in the Panama

Canal Zone (now the Western Hemispheric Institute for

Security Co-operation at Fort Benning, GA) as a

co-ordinating center for the recycled Nazis of South

America.

 

In 1980 his troops, wearing Swastika

armbands, carried out a bloody coup in Bolivia. Otto

Skorzeny, “Hitler’s favorite commando,” went to the

Middle East, where he built up a network of over 100

former SS officers. Dr. Kurt Blome, a Nazi biological

warfare scientist who experimented on concentration

camp prisoners, went to the US Army Chemical Corps.

 

Walter Dornberger, a general who worked concentration

camp slaves literally to death in the Reich’s rocket

program, became a senior vice-president of the Bell

Aerospace Division of Textron Corporation.

 

The South American Neonazi network has killed,

tortured, and disappeared tens of thousands of people,

and US clients around the globe are little different.

Argentinean death squads tortured victims under

pictures of Adolf Hitler.

 

In the ‘60s and ‘70s

military intelligence gave money, tear-gas bombs,

Mace, and electronic surveillance equipment to thugs

in Chicago for use against local anti-war groups.

 

Sixteen states have passed laws allowing forced

vaccination or quarantine in case of biological

emergency. Eleven allow confiscation of buildings and

property. Seventeen grant immunity from prosecution to

state and private actors for these deeds. Remember,

the anthrax in the mailings after 9-11 was processed

in US Government labs, and a former biowarfare

director said the attacks were a good thing since they

got more money for the budget.

 

Police in Oakland routinely beat up and even kill poor

people, usually of color, with impunity. At last

report, there is still no evidence that protesters at

the Oakland docks on April 7 threw anything at police,

but the police shot them with “less-than-lethal”

weapons and ran into them with motorcycles.

 

Theytargeted dockworkers as well as protesters, dragged an

ILWU business agent from his car, roughed him up, and

held him for eighteen hours. Witnesses report that

police had covered or removed their badges. Port

management and Stevedoring Services of America, which

has contracts in the Persian Gulf, met with police

three days before the protests.

 

The “PATRIOT” Act —written long before 9-11 — allows

the government to lock non-citizens up forever with no

hearing or evidence if the Secretary of State

“suspects” them of terrorists links. A new law in the

works will allow the government to strip people of

their citizenship for joining or providing “material

support” to a group which the Attorney General has

designated “terrorist.”

 

The FBI, with the aid of local

police departments, is collecting intelligence on

antiwar groups as part of its “counterterrorism”

program. Gen. Tommy Franks, retired “liberator” of

Iraq, says that another terrorist attack on the US

would probably lead to a military government. The

Department of Homeland Security said in late November

2003 that it expects al-Qaeda to attack soon.

 

At the FTAA protests in Miami, police shot, gassed,

beat, and arrested protesters without provocation,

injuring over 100 and sending at least 12 to the

hospital. Although the police knew the charges

wouldn’t stick, they arrested over 250 in order to

beat and torture them for daring to voice disagreement

with government policy.

 

One eyewitness relates,

“[O]ver at the jail vigil a few blocks away the police

declare an illegal assembly. They tell people to get

on the sidewalk and they'll be safe. Then they

surround the group on the sidewalk, beat people to the

ground, kneel on their spines and arrest them…. [A]

friend comes up and tells me that Abby and her friends

have been badly beaten up, jumped by cops on their way

home to their hotel, her sweet, lovely face pushed

into the pavement. ‘We could kill you here,’ the cops

tell them.”

 

 

 

 

The Soldiers At My Front Door

by John Dear

Saturday, November 29, 2003 CommonDreams.org

 

I live in a tiny, remote, impoverished, three block

long town in the desert of northeastern New Mexico.

Everyone in town--and the whole state--knows that I am

against the occupation of Iraq, that I have called for

the closing of Los Alamos, and that as a priest, I

have been preaching, like the Pope, against the

bombing of Baghdad.

 

Last week, it was announced that the local National

Guard unit for northeastern New Mexico, based in the

nearby Armory, was being deployed to Iraq early next

year. I was not surprised when yellow ribbons

immediately sprang up after the press conference.

 

But I was surprised the following morning to hear 75

soldiers singing, shouting and screaming as they

jogged down Main Street, passed our St. Joseph's

church, back and forth around town for an hour. It was

6 a.m., and they woke me up with their war slogans,

chants like " Kill! Kill! Kill! " and " Swing your guns

from left to right; we can kill those guys all night. "

 

Their chants were disturbing, but this is war. They

have to psyche themselves up for the kill. They have

to believe that flying off to some tiny, remote desert

town in Iraq where they will march in front of

someone's house and kill poor young Iraqis has some

greater meaning besides cold-blooded murder. Most of

these young reservists have never left our town, and

they need our support for the " unpleasant " task before

them. I have been to Iraq, and led a delegation of

Nobel Peace Prize winners to Baghdad in 1999, and I

know that the people there are no different than the

people here.

 

The screaming and chanting went on for one hour. They

would march passed the church, down Main Street, back

around the post office, and down Main Street again. It

was clear they wanted to be seen and heard. In fact,

it was quite scary because the desert is normally a

place of perfect peace and silence.

 

Suddenly, at 7 a.m., the shouting got dramatically

louder. I looked out the front window of the house

where I live, next door to the church, and there they

were--all 75 of them, standing yards away from my

front door, in the street right in front of my house

and our church, shouting and screaming to the top of

their lungs, " Kill! Kill! Kill! " Their commanders had

planted them there and were egging them on.

 

I was astonished and appalled. I suddenly realized

that I do not need to go to Iraq; the war had come to

my front door. Later, I heard that they had

deliberately decided to do their exercises in front of

my house and our church because of my outspoken

opposition to the war. They wanted to put me in my

place.

 

This, I think, is a new tactic. Over the years, I have

been arrested some 75 times in demonstrations, been

imprisoned for a " Plowshares " disarmament action, been

bugged, tapped, and harassed, searched at airports,

and monitored by police. But this time, the soldiers

who will soon march through Baghdad and attack desert

homes in Iraq, practiced on me. They confronted me

personally, just as the death squad militaries did in

Guatemala and El Salvador in the 1980s, which I

witnessed there on several occasions.

 

I decided I had to do something. I put on my winter

coat and walked out the front door right into the

middle of the street. They stopped shouting and looked

at me, so I said loudly, publicly for all to hear, " In

the name of God, I order all of you to stop this

nonsense, and not to go to Iraq. I want all of you to

quit the military, disobey your orders to kill, and

not to kill anyone. I do not want you to get killed. I

want you to practice the love and nonviolence of

Jesus. God does not bless war. God does not want you

to kill so Bush and Cheney can get more oil. God does

not support war. Stop all this and go home. God bless

you. "

 

Their jaws dropped, their eyeballs popped and they

stood in shock and silence, looking steadily at me.

Then they burst out laughing. Finally, the commander

dismissed them and they left.

 

Later, military officials spread lies around town that

I had disrupted their military exercises at the

Armory, so they decided to come to my house and to the

church in retaliation. Others appealed to the

archbishop to have me kicked out of New Mexico for

denouncing their warmaking. Then, a general called the

mayor and asked him to mediate " negotiations " with me,

saying he did not want the military " in confrontation "

with the church. Really, the mayor told me, they fear

that I will disrupt the gala send-off next month, just

before Christmas, when the soldiers go to Iraq.

 

This dramatic episode is only the latest in a series

of confrontations since I came to the desert of New

Mexico in the summer of 2002 to serve as pastor of

several poor, desert churches. I have spoken out

extensively against the U.S. war on Iraq, and been

denounced by people, including church people, across

the state. I have organized small Christian peace

groups throughout the state. We planned a prayer vigil

for nuclear disarmament at Los Alamos on the

anniversary of Hiroshima this past August, but when

the devout people of Los Alamos, most of them

Catholic, heard about it, they appealed to the

archbishop to have me expelled if I appeared publicly

in their town. In the end, I did not attend the vigil,

but the publicity gave me further opportunities to

call for the closing of Los Alamos. I receive hate

mail, negative phone calls and at least one death

threat for daring to criticize our country. But New

Mexico is the poorest state in the U.S. It is also

number one in military spending and number one in

nuclear weapons. It is the most militarized, the most

in need of disarmament, the most in need of

nonviolence. It is the first place the Pentagon goes

to recruit poor youth into the empire's army.

 

If we are to change the direction of our country, and

turn people against Bush's occupation of Iraq, we are

going to have to face the ire and persecution of our

local communities. If peace people in every local

community insisted that our troops be brought home

immediately, that the U.N. be sent in to restore Iraq,

that all U.S. military aid to the Middle East be cut,

and that our arsenal of weapons of mass destruction be

dismantled, then we might all find soldiers marching

at our front doors, trying to intimidate us. If we can

face our soldiers, call them to quit the military and

urge them to disobey orders to kill, then perhaps some

of them will refuse to fight, become conscientious

objectors and take up the wisdom of nonviolence. If we

can look them in the eye and engage them in personal

Satyagraha as Gandhi demonstrated, then we know that

the transformation has begun.

 

In the end, the episode for me was an experience of

hope. We must be making a difference if the soldiers

have to march at our front doors. That they failed to

convert me or intimidate me, that they had to listen

to my side of the story, may haunt their consciences

as they travel to Iraq. No matter what happens, they

have heard loud and clear the good news that God does

not want them to kill anyone. I hope we can all learn

the lesson.

 

John Dear is a Catholic priest, peace activist,

lecturer, and former executive director of the

Fellowship of Reconciliation. His latest books include

" Mohandas Gandhi " (Orbis) and " Mary of Nazareth,

Prophet of Peace " (Ave Maria Press). For info, see

http://www.johndear.org

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.unknownnews.net/031121civics.html

Civics class: 2003

Teaching kids to live in a police state

Unknown News, Nov. 21, 2003

Cops plan mock commando games for school lockdown

drills

by Mike Conway, Modesto [CA] Bee

Nov. 19, 2003

 

LIVINGSTON, Ca. — Lockdown drills come three or four

times a year at Livingston High School.The one set for

Thursday will be more real than any other.

Officials said someone will open fire and try to break

into classrooms as police close in. The guns will be

real — and loaded with blanks.

Thursday morning, students and faculty again will be

reminded that the exercise is only a drill.

But Police Chief Bill Eldridge said he has a few

surprises that he will not disclose.

School administrators and police said their intent is

not to cause undue alarm. Officials mailed notices to

all students' homes, and alerted nearby residents and

other schools.

 

" We do lockdown drills regularly, " Principal Robert

Wendel said. " We feel the need to take it one step

further, so the police can see how things work on

campus and how to move about. " There's not enough

hours in the school year for our children to learn

about the relationship between their needs & desires

and those of the authorities. I wonder who in the

Senior Class will be voted " Most Likely to Be the 1st

One Killed in Any Hostage Situation " ?

=John C.=

 

Kathleen Luxon has a daughter, Julie, who is a senior

at Livingston High. " I think it's a good thing, " Luxon

said of the drill. " I think the kids always need to be

prepared on how to handle a situation if it happens. "

She said having the lockdown is no different than a

fire drill or " duck and cover " exercises meant to show

children how to protect themselves in earthquakes and

nuclear attacks.Police " I feel that Livingston is a

very safe school, " Luxon said. " We would hate for

something like this to happen and not be prepared for

it. "

 

Chief Bill Eldridge said: " We're not doing this out of

fear or paranoia. After Columbine, we can no longer

say, it won't happen to us. "

In April 1999, at Columbine High in Littleton, Colo.,

two students killed 12 students and a teacher before

killing themselves. While the killing went on, police

waited outside the school for Special Weapons and

Tactics officers.

" We're changing our whole mode of thinking about how

we would get on the school grounds, " Eldridge said.

" The old philosophy was to respond and contain, and

call in the tactical units, " he said. " We can no

longer stand back and wait. We, as street officers,

have to get on the school grounds very quickly to

prevent other students and staff from being injured. "

In a real-life situation, a mutual aid call would be

placed and sheriff's deputies and other available law

enforcement personnel would be called to the scene.

But Livingston police would still be the first

responders.

 

" I don't think we do enough hands-on training of these

scenarios to make our personnel and the school

personnel feel comfortable, " he said.

Eventually, Eldridge said, he wants to have a

full-scale drill with firefighters, paramedics and

neighboring law enforcement.

" That one would include a controlled evacuation of the

school, " he said.

Since 1999, the school has had a response plan and

practices it regularly, Livingston High's Wendel said.

A critique follows each drill.

Thursday morning, students and faculty again will be

reminded that the exercise is only a drill.

But Eldridge said he has a few surprises that he will

not disclose.

" We're going to add to the realism as closely as we

can, " he said. " There's always that percentage of

staff members and students who think these training

scenarios are a joke. But they're not. We learned it's

not a matter of if, it's when. "

Published by

Modesto [CA] Bee

 

Police raid middle school in Vermont

Principal eyes 12-year-old who wears baggy pants

by Peter Freyne, Seven Days [burlington, VT]

Nov. 19, 2003

 

Television brings countless frightening images into

the living room, but none was more chilling than that

of cops with police dogs and guns drawn, terrifying

kids in the hallway of a South Carolina High School on

November 5.

Students that didn’t line up against the wall fast

enough were thrown to the floor and handcuffed.

The principal had called the cops after getting

reports of illegal drug activity, specifically

marijuana. The massive police drug raid failed,

however, to turn up any pot. Not a single seed.

A few days later, when a caller to a Vermont talk show

mentioned the Gestapo-style high school drug raid, the

host was quick to point out it happened in South

Carolina, not Vermont!

 

But guess what, folks? It has happened here.

Seven Days has learned that school officials and

police conducted a drug raid at the Colchester Middle

Schoolon November 6, the day after the controversial

raid in South Carolina. Lockers were searched, as were

individual students. And a German Shepherd sniffed the

joint searching for a whiff of illegal marijuana.

According to Principal John Barone, about two ounces

of marijuana were found behind a tile in the ceiling

of the boys’ bathroom. Three boys were suspended. They

were scheduled to appear in executive session before

the Colchester School Board Monday night.

After finding the pot, Barone said a sniffer dog named

Kilo was brought in to sniff lockers. No additional

pot was discovered, said Barone.

 

The matter was brought to our attention last week by a

hard-hat construction laborer on Hospital Hill. The

31-year-old single mom was upset because she believed

school officials were picking on her 12-year-old son,

a seventh-grader. We’re withholding her identity to

protect the privacy of her child, who’s getting quite

the education in what it means to have no

constitutional rights. Let’s just call her Rosie the

Riveter.

 

According to Rosie, her son was taken to the

principal’s office the Monday after the raid and

suspended for alleged insubordination. In the process

his clothing was thoroughly searched. Then the school

nurse, Melissa Goldberg, examined the boy in a locked

room, said Rosie. She shined a flashlight in his eyes,

nose and mouth and asked if he had “shot, snorted or

smoked anything.” When he asked to call his mom, he

was told by Assistant Principal Karen Gockley they

just wanted “a quick check.”

 

The boy told Seven Days that he was “frightened” and

“didn’t know what was going on.” He also told us the

nurse asked if he could pass a urinalysis drug test.

 

He told her he could.

The assistant principal, he said, also told him he

ought to stop wearing those baggy clothes. “Ms.

Gockley always tells us how it’s not a ghetto school

and stuff. She told us, like, to change how we dress.”

In fact, when his mother later called Gockley, she was

told she should change the way her son dressed

because, “when drugs were found they were often on

kids with the baggy-style clothes.”

When she asked what “reasonable suspicion” they had to

search her son, Rosie said she was told the boy had

been seen with another child who looked to be under

the influence of drugs. It turned out, said Rosie,

that kid was on prescription drugs for an ear problem.

“I feel he was violated,” said Rosie. “It’s not right

to do that to a 12-year-old, especially when he wants

his mother. I’d be scared if I was 12.”

 

No evidence of drugs or drug use was found, but the

boy’s two-day suspension stood.

 

Welcome to middle school in Vermont, folks — the new

front line in the totally failed War on Drugs. And you

thought kids had constitutional rights? Civil

liberties? Think again.

 

One veteran criminal lawyer put it this way: “In

America today there are three places where you have no

rights. One is at the border. One is in prison. And

the other one is in school.”

 

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1985 that school

officials, not police, may search students without a

warrant if they have “reasonable grounds” to suspect

the search will turn up evidence of a crime or

violation of school rules.

 

Principal Barone told Seven Days he received a “tip”

that morning “that there was marijuana being

distributed in school.” Based on that intelligence, he

searched student lockers and individual students. No

pot was found in those searches, he reported.

 

Mr. Barone then received another tip that led to the

discovery of two bags of grass in the boys’ bathroom

ceiling.

More students came forward, said Barone. They told him

there were more drugs in the school but “they couldn’t

elaborate.” At that point, the decision was made to

bring in the Colchester Police and Kilo.

Barone said that when Kilo “hit” on a possible drug

location, Officer Jeff Fontaine would stand back and

let Barone or Gockley conduct the search. No drugs,

however, were found as a result of the K-9 unit’s

help.

 

Colchester Middle School has 605 students. It is the

largest middle school in Chittenden County. Both

Barone and Gockley are in their first year at the

school. Previously they worked in Essex Junction.

“When we were

hired,” said Barone, “it was made clear

to us that student management had been lax.” He said

the school board wanted us “to tighten things up.”

 

Sounds like the kids in Colchester are getting quite a

lesson in citizenship, eh?

 

Published by Seven Days [burlington, VT]

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