Privacy Protection / Some Grassroots Stuff

NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR  (JULY 13 2013)

As revelation after revelation about official and non-official privacy-violating policies and practices travel to the Four Directions about as fast as an Idaho summer thunderstorm sends lightning strikes, one no longer needs to consult Orwell or Aldous Huxley.  But, as always, the burning question hangs in the air: Why aren't more people in this country mad as all Hell about all of this?  Some, civil liberties organizations, and a few media pundits, certainly are.  And for sure there are many grassroots people who resent and seek to reject these mountains and myriads of fish-nets and sharp and pointed hooks.  But there is still 'way too much silence -- and that builds trail to corrals and rabbit hutches.  I do remain the perennial optimist -- if we all Keep Fighting.  In due course, I'll have more on our own challenges in the privacy realm.  In the meantime, here are some things that come to mind.  (H)

That fine Western cowboy artist -- and a great campfire raconteur of many dramatic experiences -- the late Frank Dolphin, told me a story once that's always stuck in my mind.  It was California in the mid-thirties, San Joaquin country, and the air and scenery were filled with farm worker strikes in which Frank, among many others, was engaged in an activist role.  Repression -- including state use of "criminal syndicalism" laws -- was rife, state agents abounded, but the Cause proceeded courageously and effectively. On a chilly night,  Frank, and about twenty others, were huddled around a hobo-type camp fire arrangement in a  brush-encased gully along-side railroad tracks. One obviously battle-scarred man , in a black coat and wearing a black Stetson,  was joining the others in sipping coffee but spoke only little.  Rumor had it that he was a Wobbly, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, still plentiful in those days where the Class Struggle was burning along. 


A kid from the East finally asked the man, "Are you an IWW?"

And the man stared coldly at the Eastern kid, then drew a huge revolver from inside his coat which he pointed appropriately, and replied, "Mind your own damn business!"

The questioner wilted psychologically; the man put the revolver back under his coat.

And everyone was quite impressed.

Ever since I've been small, I've followed a code drawn from several cultural traditions -- which prohibits asking personal questions [Who are you?  Where are your from?  And -- if applicable -- How much Indian are you?"  And other such queries.]  The only exceptions might involve someone who deliberately seeks me out for relatively intricate personal advice and counseling and, even then, I move very carefully. [I never ask about anyone's degree of "Indian blood."]

Quite awhile back, a friend on the RBB list  posted a leader/notice about a quite controversial segment of Big Love due to show via HBO the coming Sunday.  Big Love, of course, was the series on a fundamentalist Mormon polygamist family, based both in their rural Utah community as well as in Salt Lake City.  HBO had depicted, it had been learned, a sacrosanct and secret mainline LDS ceremony -- the Endowment ritual, which prepares a living person [and sometimes a deceased] for ascent [whenever] into the celestial heaven.  The LDS church was offended by this signal breach of its privacy -- and so were the fundamentalist  polygamist spin-off groups as well.  HBO "apologized" but the thing ran anyway.

Cameron and Josie, both Mormon, had spent the weekend down at Salt Lake and, tired from shopping successfully for baby furniture for the forthcoming  family addition, came over for a fine dinner which featured one of Eldri's all-around specialty favorites:  a great blue-berry cobbler/cake.

We watched Big Love silently, saw the depicted Endowment ceremony -- involving a polygamist wife with emotional ties to mainline LDS -- through to its ritual conclusion.  Big Love then moved on into various related personal crises.

I commented to Cameron, "Those polygamist folks should never have moved to the big city."

He agreed.  But we also agreed that the sacred and secret components of anyone's faith -- and all faiths the wide world over have these very, very special and sacrosanct private dimensions  -- should never, ever,  be publicized.

I spoke of the Hopi Nation of Northern Arizona.
 
I was always glad to see the Hopi monitors politely but firmly take the cameras from Anglo tourists who were violating the very well publicized "absolutely no photos" signs during the final day of the late summer ceremonial rain dances -- [known to the tourists as the "snake dance"],  the only day when outsiders can attend. At its conclusion, the snakes [ mostly fanged rattlers] are released to the four directions to carry the request for rain to the appropriate deities.

 And, always, the rain comes down  very, very soon indeed.  Often within the hour.

Inevitably.  Just as inevitably as the Hopis quite rightly confiscate the cameras.

And just as inevitably as some of us -- like the black-clothed man of yore -- fight for our privacy.

And should fight for that of all others.

Yours, Hunter [Hunter Bear]

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / 
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)

See the new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book," 
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new substantial 
introduction by me. This book is a full, very detailed 
discussion of the rise and development of the Jackson  
Movement of 1962-63 -- external life and internal dynamics.  
And this book is also an organizer's how-to manual.
 http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm   

And see the related http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm 
 ("Militant and Radical Organizer": -- and also "Fifty Years:
Remembering Medgar Evers")
 http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/3876
 
See the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Many photos.)

Our very large page on Community Organizing:  
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm