Statement of events of Sunday 8/22/2010 involving John Cassali
[brackets indicate notes from PEOPLE PROJECT]
Prologue: three weeks ago, on 8/3/2010 John Cassali phoned my bookshop at 2:40PM and threatened that if I didn’t stop “demonizing” him he would throw all garbage he collects in the front of my bookshop. I told him I had no idea what he was talking about; he referenced letters in the local papers (not written by me, nor with my preknowledge) and hung up. I was shaken by this call, because John seemed capable of violence.
Yesterday my partner Paul Encimer and I were approached by some of the street population who informed us that homeless encampments had been raided, tents slashed, and things taken. We were asked for help in getting the survival gear—sleeping bags, tents, clothing, blankets, crutches, shoes, food, and other items to safety before these items were taken to the landfill. Guided by community members, Paul went and filled our truck with these needful things. We put word out to the community that we would keep these things safe.
Today at around noon John Cassali pulled up in his white truck and dumped 10 bags of garbage [17 bags in all, 7 of them containing survival gear] in front of our shop. We went out to ask him what he was doing; he was very angry and swore and said that Paul had scattered garbage (not true) and therefore all the garbage was ours to keep. Paul and he exchanged words, Cassali drove away.
Paul called the sheriff’s department, and after a time Officers Zeck and Ireland appeared. Ireland is usually in Eureka; Zeck says he is here at the SoHum substation during the week. They had been contacted by Cassali before receiving our call. We explained our situation and I informed the officers of the previous threat. Zeck phoned Cassali and tried very hard to frame everything in the “everyone desires the best for the community” mode. I spoke to the officers about why they were not taking property to the substation instead of to the landfill. We showed the officers the retrieved survival gear.
Cassali was asked by the officers to come back and remove the bags of garbage. At 12:51pm he returned and filled his truck, staying to chat with a friend at our steps for a few moments before driving away.
I declare this to be a true statement of these events; I have typed this myself.
8/22/2010
Kathy Epling (signed)
[Other documentation about John Cassali's acts against houseless people:
October 2008: John Cassali, some time ago, started petitions against people who live outside, and he harasses them. John Cassali has been bagging people's stuff. He has been stealing survival gear. John broke the law by taking people's stuff after the sheriffs did their sweeps- by coming behind the sheriffs and taking people's possessions to the landfill.The people's DUE PROCESS has been violated.
February 22, 2010: John Cassali steals and dumps peoples' camps with the Sheriff's complicity, assistance, blessing.
July 17, 2010: These raids of sleeping people violate a bunch of human and Constitutional rights, including the right to privacy, to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, etc. When cops (or John Shelter in Eureka or John Cassali in SoHum) steal and/or destroy peoples' property, it doesn't matter what they want to call it- "cleaning up", "helping out", "warning" -it is illegal. It is stealing. It's cruel. It ain't right.]
Okay, this post in and of itself, doesn’t give me an idea of who exactly John Cassali “is”? Someone an officer or such with the sheriff’s department was an impression I got. Though nowhere actually verified, nor the role/identity of the person John Shelter in Eureka? I thought John Shelter used to run the Arcata Endeavor?
I’ve not lived physically in northern Humboldt since January of ’08; but, the place, Eureka, I’d lived in longer than any other place in my life, nearly a dozen years; where I was finally run out of town by elements of the Ku Klux Klan and their allies, who I think are made far too little of as the reactionaries manipulating the conservative base of the region; also great players in the illegal cannabis economy, which is probably why they can get away with so much.
I think my choice was to split the region or become one of Verbena’s followers as a “houseless” person, and even remember Dana Silvernale telling me while waiting for Verbena, who was an hour and a half late to speak at a Green Party county council meeting at HSU; that Dana thought people without jobs shouldn’t have places to live.
While giving me a line about herself working sixty hours a week as a school teacher; which she said made her less well read than myself.
I’d been an elementary school custodian in a large public elementary school in Ojai, CA nineteen long months in ’80 & ’81 struggling with that due to a bad back which in four years would render me into the depth of the realms of the SSDI/SSI way of life; with as much or more years in college than any of the teachers. And remember the cynicism of the other custodian who’d had three sons at that time, all in our grade school.
Where the four hundred student’s teachers, but for three men, were all women whose income contributed to an upwardly mobile middle class income as the more modest portion of that, but who in reality were certainly not greatly suited for the trade other than by their social designs born from inbred notions about themselves and their class’s roles in society. Decisions made far too early in life to reflect either experience or any other great wisdom, as was all too readily apparent in their product. Dana Silvernale reminded me greatly of their type.
For that matter the whole Green county council meeting reeked of the nonsensical; where the idea of a “green” right livelihood seemed culled from the advertisement pages of recent issues of MOTHER EARTH magazine. Save the earth; along with capitalist imperialism.
Wonder what the V-woman was sucking up to them for; along with her pal Haiku? I doubt Silvernale is someone either mooches off of though, as with me. Just a theory, if Dana is actually not as squeaky with her long hours bought and paid for lucre, as a new pair of Converse high tops? Did anyone say “fascist.”