Letter From Manager of Wreck Center.

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Meaning?

I’ve reached a place where I’m grateful for what happened to me in Wheat Ridge.  I’m grateful because it has given me a new purpose in life.   

A man who survived a Nazi concentration camp once wrote a book called Man’s Search for Meaning.  He stated that the people who survived tragedy of the camp all had one thing in common:  They had something to live for, a family, a career, a higher calling.  He  had a name for this purpose.  He called it Meaning. 

And now I have meaning.  I want to use this blog to speak out for the lower class in this country, people like me who are vets, artist, musicians and poor White Trash who are trapped in a mental prison and are too injured physically and mentally to escape, at least for now.

I fled Wheat Ridge and now live in Denver. 

Denver, along with San Francisco, is the kindest city I’ve ever lived in.   I’m around people who are just like me, lower class whites with nowhere else to go.   I’ve met many men had to leave their hometowns due to societal pressures and pressures from police.  All of these men have gone through the same thing I went through in Wheat Ridge.    They’ve been harassed by police, accused of crimes they never committed and made to feel unwelcome in public institutions like gyms. 

When I walk down the street in Denver, I feel safe.  I don’t have to constantly be on the look out for police.   And when I go to the gym, people don’t laugh at me when I walk by and watch my every move on their security cameras.   When I work out, I draw cartoons sometimes for my own amusement.  People don’t seem to really care.  They are more concerned with their lives to worry about me. 

I like who I am and where I come from.  Lower class whites like me are the most creative and artistic and resourceful people I know. 

The modern day White Trash men I know in Denver are similar to the African American men I met when I was a boy hanging around my father’s church in Mississippi.   The men in Mississippi I knew felt there was little the world offered them, so they turned inward and found validation in God and Jesus and art and music.

The same is true for all of us here in Denver.  We feel like we have replaced African American men as the national projection screen for all the suppressed hatred of the middle and upper classes.   So, we occupy one bedroom apartments all over Capital Hill and go to AA meetings and help our fellow vets and alcoholics with the Twelve Steps  and we play our guitars and draw cartoons. 

Currently, there is a class war going on all around me.   

The people in Wheat Ridge had the right not to like me or ask me not to draw cartoons of them.   But when they crossed the line and violated my civil rights, then everything changed.  Now I feel like I have a responsibility to stand up, not just for me and my family but for countless vets and other men.

And this responsibility has given me the greatest gift of life.  It’s a gift that cannot be bought:  I have the gift of meaning.

Thanks bye,

The last thing any good Christian in Wheat Ridge wants to hear...

When I was growing up in Wheat Ridge, the nice people gained strength from social alliances they formed in churches.

Their strength came from people and institutions in the community.

But we white trash were excluded from that world. 

We had to gain strength from abstract sources and that made us all the more odd to people like the police and wealthy church goers who saw us as superstitious more than spiritual.


The most abstract source of strength is, of course, Love. And the greatest teacher of Love is Jesus.  And all us oppressed people love Jesus because he makes us feel valued in the eyes of God.

One day a nice church lady sentenced me to H-E-double toothpicks:  "Sean," she said, "if you don't stop drawing cartoons, you'll spend eternal life in fire."

I countered her spiritual bully tactic with a quote from Jesus.

"Judge not that ye--"

But before I could finish, she walked away.

The last thing any good Christian in Wheat Ridge wants to hear is anything Jesus had to say.

White Trash Lynching

Jim Goad, author of Redneck Manifesto, writes:

So why am I perturbed by all the trash-bashing?" Because they are talking about ME. For the longest time I didn't want to admit it. Realizing you're white trash is like being diagnosed with cancer: First comes denial, then a "lashing-out" phase, the grudging acceptance. If you're fortunate, you'll be able to turn the bad news into something good.

What happened to me at the Wheat Ridge Wreck center is nothing new.

At least twenty times the Wheat Ridge police have iterrogated me and tried to arrest me but didn't have a specific crime to charge me with. It's happened to every white trash man I know in that part of town. The cops always use code words like "you're odd" or "it just seems strange that..." or "you're out-of-the-box." Now that I have gray hair, there's a new twist, "it seems odd that an old guy like you would date younger women."

When I was a kid I visited my father in Clarksdale, Mississippi one summer and saw an African American man hanging from a tree. Being from the North I'd never seen anything that traumatic. My father explained that the man was lynched for talking to a white woman. In Wheat Ridge, if white trash talks to a woman at the Wheat Ridge Wreck Center, he's accused of stalking. This humiliation is called a public lynching.

If any other minority was profiled by the police, accused of a crime with no evidence and attacked from behind and beaten like I was, they'd be classified as a victim. But with white trash like me...well, we don't have the luxury of being victims. Everything that happens to us is our own fault. We are the only minority that is expected to transcend our upbiringing. In their minds I created the attacks myself and got what I deserved. After all I was perturbed by the Wreck Center employees invading my private notebook, stealing my ipod, being rude to me, laughing in my face, talking behind my back, refusing to swipe my gym card unless I handed it to them properly and, of course, making amplified, trash-bashing old guy jokes while I walked by. And so I joined in the fun and mocked them back with my cartoons. Turns out they can dish it out, but can't take it.

Like Rich Swanson implies in his letter posted on my blog, my mere presence is a threat to the safety of his staff. So he, the Mayor, the police made up their minds to get me out of their gym and their city. After they did an intense investigation of me, they realized they had a problem. I hadn't committed a crime. So, they just made one up. Now I'm branded with the Scarlet Letter S on my head.

I was jumped many times when I was a child growing up in Wheat Ridge. After a point, I got sick of it and started fighting back. I got creative at defending myself.

But now I'm too old to fight back. When the thugs from the Wreck Center jumped me on my porch, my mind knew what to do but my body couldn't do it. So, I just turtled and took my beating like a coward. I became their punching bag and kicking post for some built up ethnic rage or projected guilt that had nothing to do with me.

So now I'm sick of these people like Rick Swanson getting away with lies and I'm starting to learn how to fight back with my mind.

Maybe that's what Jim Goad means when he says If you're fortunate you'll be able to turn the bad news into something good.

Other Blogs by Sean H.

Don Juan de Colfax
12 Step Art

Plans Underway for Wheat Ridge Wreck Center Protest

I hope to do caricatures of all the Wheat Ridge Wreck Center Employees for the protest. This is the Mayor talking out of both sides of his mouth, saying he's interested in open communication but not interested in people like me who communicate openly.

Other blogs:
Don Juan de Colfax
12 Step Art

An Ongoing National Lynching

"If I was talking about White Trash, I'm merely be another torchbearer in an ongoing national lynching."
--Jim Goad

"White Trash, old man. Stay out of the Wreck Center. And if you call the cops this time, we'll kill you and your cats."
--voice of one of my attackers

Like I've stated, I'm a member of the most hated class in America today, White Trash.

If Rick Swanson, the supervisor of the Wheat Ridge Wreck Center, sent a letter like the one to the left to any other minority in this country, he'd be in deep trouble. He would be called a bigot and a racists and respected less than the Klu Klux Klan who at least are honest about their sick prejudices.

But as Jim Goad states, we White Trash are the only cardboard figures left in the ethnic shooting gallery. It's so uncool for sophisticated and educated types to hate anybody but us. We are the objects of your jokes and the fodder for you wars. Just sign us up and send us out to the desert to die while you drive your Mercedes Benz down Colfax on the way to Sears to buy your twenty dollar khaki shorts or you fourteen dollar Dockers.

But if I were anything but White Trash, the city officials in Wheat Ridge would not tolerate and vague letter like the one above. If I were any other minority, Rich Swanson and the management team at the Wreck Center might have given me the chance to defend myself before they tied my hands behind my back and put the rope of slander around my neck.

The Mayor and the police surely know what everybody knows, that there are two sides to every story, not just theirs.

But when you are White Trash, nobody wants to hear your side of the story. That might mess up the stories they make up amongst themselves.

Sure, I was wrong to draw cartoons that made fun of employees.

I don't like them or respect them and maybe I could have expressed that in a more adult and appropriate way.

Not only were they consistently rude to me, but they stole my cartoons and my ipod. They violated my privacy and read my personal writings and left my notebook out on the counter for everyone to read.

When I'd walked by them I'd hear them making jokes about old men and how they snore, among other insults. And the police told me they watched my every move for months.

Later they give out my personal information to good ol' boy thugs who came to my home and used me as their punching bag.

Sure, any manager of a business has the right to ask me not to draw cartoons that offend. He even has the right to ask me to leave his establishment if I'm harming his profits.

But did Rick Swanson and the police have the right to violate my First and Fourth Amendment Rights?

The only people I know these days who study the Bill of Rights are White Trash. We have to know our rights to protect ourselves. If I had not known my Fourth Amendment rights, I'm certain the Wheat Ridge Police would have arrested me at the Wreck Center on the night they interrogated me.

The High School's nickname is the Farmers. The city was build by men who plowed the Earth on the same strip of land that is now gated off so that White Trash like me cannot even put the soles of our feet on the same soil we grew up on.

My mother lived in Wheat Ridge for over thirty years and worked hard and payed her taxes. Maybe a few of her tax dollars even helped build the Wreck Center.

She even died in a hospital in Wheat Ridge, the one on 38th, just down the street from the Wreck Center.

Other Blogs by Sean H.
Don Juan de Colfax
12stepart

Hi

Dysfunctional Communication

I was the last one to find out I was stalking women at the Wheat Ridge Wreck Center.

It came as a big surprise to me.

But that's how dysfunctional communication works.

If I have something to say to you, you're the last person I'm going to say it to.

It's much easier to say it say it through someone else who will pass the message along to another person and by the time it gets to you it might not even be true. And if it isn't true, then no skin off my nose since I never said it anyway.

So, the police officer told me that Rich Swanson, the supervisor, told the police chief. The police chief then told the police officer. But before all of this happened, the women I wasn't stalking had to tell someone. So, they apparently told other employees who told the managers who told Rich Swanson.

Or that's what I have now heard.

But I could be wrong.

Maybe Rick Swanson never said what he said. Who knows?

And even if he did say what he said, he can just deny it now.

Rick Swanson apparently talked to everyone in Wheat Ridge about me except for me. I only met the guy once. I recall it was the week after my mother had passed away and someone had broken into my truck in the parking lot of the Wreck Center and stolen my CD player and the CD with my mother's last words on it. All I wanted was to ask Mr. Swanson if his security cameras might have caught the thieves on tape.

"I'd talk to the police if it were me," he said.

Gee, no kidding. I never would have thought of that. What a caring and sensitive fellow this Mr. Swanson is.

I guess his solution to every problem is to call the police.

I had to hear from the police what he said behind my back and could never say to my face.

"You're stalking these women, aren't you?" the police officer said.

"I am?" I said.

"Yes."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you're following them around, seeing what they are up to."

"Oh, I didn't know that. Do you have any evidence?"

"Evidence?"

"Yes, like proof? Do you have dates, times photos?"

"Well, Rich Swanson and the employees here have been watching your every move on the security cameras and they think you have drawings in your bag of women. Can I look in your bag?"

"Don't you need a warrant? Don't you need probably cause? Have you ever heard of something called a Fourth Amendment?"

"Well, if you don't want to show me what's in the bag, that's fine. But I'll have to arrest you."

So, I showed her the drawings. It turns out they were of Rush Limbaugh and President Obama, not of employees at the Wreck Center. I guess what happened was the employees at the Wreck Center saw me on the cameras drawing while I worked out. Based upon this, they were confident I would be arrested, or that's what I have heard.

When the police officer saw the drawings of Rush Limbaugh and the President and realized how wrong she was, her face turned bright red.

But she's not going to tell you that.

And she's not going to tell you this. She's not going to tell you the difference between the real stalker and the token stalker.

These days every women needs a token stalker for social proof. It's the latest fad.

These days a woman can hardly be taken seriously unless she can say she's being stalked. She must have a nice outfit, the right hair and makeup, a boyfriend, maybe a husband and, of course, a token stalker.

But not a real stalker.

A token stalker is different than a real stalker who actually stalks her. That's too scary. Instead a woman only wants a guy like me to be under suspicion of stalking her. After all, if some guy is stalking her, it must mean she is desirable. Right?

The fact that accusations of stalking have hurt me and my family is not significant to these people.

Since this has happened, my book sales have declined and I've had five speaking engagements canceled. I've met women who agree to go out with me and then change their minds. My social life is non-existent and I have concluded that my only hope for a better life is to move out of Colorado within a year.


I'd leave now but I have an obligation to take a class for PTSD at the veteran's hospital.

I was hoping to mediate with the Wreck Center management, Mayor and Police Chief and come up with a solution that would be best for everyone involved.

But it's too late for that.

I'm willing to admit I drew cartoons that made fun of employees. I was more than happy to make amends and set things right. Now I draw cartoons of them to defend myself. I feel I have no other options.

When I emailed the Mayor about the stalking accusations, he avoided it. He would not even use the word stalker.

I found the Mayor's email on his website where he boasts that he is a leader who knows how to get things done and that he believes in open communication, the kind of communication that I and the police officer shared:

"It just seems odd to me," the officer said, "that an old guy like you dates younger women."

"I'm sure it's odd to you and to everyone in Wheat Ridge," I said. "But I don't just walk up to women younger than I am and risk public rejection and humiliation unless they give me plenty of non-verbal signs. And the younger women I date are highly educated, often sophisticated and non-discriminatory types. I've never once forced a younger woman to go out with me."

The truth is the Mayor isn't interested in open communication.

When I tried to inform him that the Wreck Center employees had invaded my private notebook and stolen my cartoons and ipod, this was his reply:

Sean,

Well...I have now asked you to respectfully stop.

Thanks

No, thank you Mayor.

By the way, if you read this and see the Mayor, please tell him I think he's a hypocrite who has moral convictions galore which he cannot live up to. Tell him I don't think he's a leader, but a self-serving schmoozer. Tell him I don't respect him, not that it matters.

I'd tell him this to his face but he is too much of a coward to meet with me.

Heart of Darkness

I'm considered a strange fellow, even in AA.

Click HERE for 12StepArtist

So not too many people ask me to sponsor them.

But about once a year a guy will start giving me the signs. He'll sit by me, make eye contact, smile and eventually pop the question.

"Do you, uh, sponsor people?"

The fellows who ask me are always unique, like me. They are either vets with PTSD or artists/musicians or both.

This is what I usually say.

"I don't like the word sponsor, but what I do is lead people through the journey of the Twelve Steps."

When I was a kid a read a novel called Heart of Darkness. The story starts out with this man in England who is getting ready to marry a very sophisticated and beautiful woman. But he gets called by his company to go up a river in the Congo in Africa and meet with a man named Kurtz.

Kurtz is described as a great man who has the gift of utterance. His command of the language gives him the power to tame the a tribe of primitives in the jungle. He's a man who has gone insane and needs to be stopped.

So this fellow journeys up the river, into the heart of darkness and confronts Kurtz.

When the man named Marlow tells Kurtz he is insane, Kurtz is speechless. The awful thought that he suffers from delusion is too much for him to take and he cannot find the words to attach to the feelings. So, like all great men he quotes the master when in doubt.

"The horror, the horror, the horror," are words from MacBeth by Shakespeare.

Marlow confronts the heart of darkness and returns to his faince.

But he is a changed man. He has lost his attraction for the woman.

The Heart of Darkness is an analogy for the journey of the Twelve Steps.

In the last five years I have lead many men to the part in the Big Book where it says, "God, remove my fear and direct my attention to what you would have me be."

What happens is the horror, the horror, the horror.

But the horror for the alcoholic is different.

What the Steps teach the alcoholic is that he is great.

The Heart of Darkness for the alcoholic is actually the light of God's love.

My experience is alcoholics are horrified by how great they are in the eyes of God.

Alcoholics can handle darkness and adversity and conflict. But handling love is something more difficult.

Alcoholics hate to be loved and they love to be hated.

So when someone asks me to sponsor them, I don't take it lightly.

I know that when an alcoholic finally sees the light within him, it can cause an adverse reaction. They might respond by turning on me or, worse, even drinking.

Imagine being an alcoholic and building an entire life around being a dark, unworthy character and then finding out it is all a lie, that you are actually an innocent, forgiven child of God.

That's enough to make any alcoholic want to drink.

The Barn

"Bring forth that which is within you and it will save you.
"Do not bring forth that which is within you and it will destroy you."
--Jesus

"If I live to tell the secrets I have heard, 'till then,
it will burn inside of me."
--Madonna

I know what is inside the barn that stands outside the Wheat Ridge Wreck Center.

When the time is right, I will tell my secret.

Slam Dunkin' at the Dysfucntion Junction.

"Christianity is for people afraid of hell,
Jesus is for people who have already been to hell."

--White Trash Wisdom.

"I'm not a Christian, but I try to live by the words of Jesus."

--More White Trash Wisdom

There are three significant intersections in my life, one for birth, one for life and the other for death.

I was reborn at the Crossroads in Clarksdale Mississippi. My White Trash past died at Dysfunction Junction in Wheat Ridge Colorado.

And my life's purpose began where my will and God's will crossed paths at the Step Three of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I'm considering making this story into a book. Here's the title of the book:

Wheat Ridge Wreck
How Good Old Boys tried to steal Alcoholics Anonymous Away from God.

You might be scratching your head and saying, "Huh, what' s the big deal? All we did was call the cops on this guy Sean H. and try to have him arrested for drawing cartoons that made us take a look at ourselves. Why does he gotta go and write a book like that and make us look like a bunch of bullies?"

The thing is this. The story of The Wheat Ridge Wreck Center and AA is the story of America. It's a tragedy that William Shakespeare would love. It's the story of how this nation went into the tank based on a few Good Ol' Boys sitting around making decisions based on their own self-interest and not even considering the misery it would create for their fellows and for their community.

The self-appointed Sheriffs of AA sat around the table one day at the Pink Elephant Bar and made a decisions that destroyed a meeting. The management team at the Wreck Center sat in their office and made a decision that brought violence into innocent people's lives.

And a group of group of men sat in an office one day and decided to declare war based on a..., get this...a basketball metaphor.

"It's a slam dunk."

It turns out it wasn't a slam dunk. It was a huge mistake.

You might scratch your big belly and say, "heck, I just don't see how all this fits together."

Well, that's the role of the artist in society, to take elements that seem disconnected and tie them all together to reveal truth and meaning.

And that's what I intend to do.

All three of these events and underlying commonalities.

1. Decisions were made by exclusionary and selfish people.
2. The people most harmed where the people least considered.
3. The people who made the decisions were trusted servants who enjoyed the financial support and tax advantages of the federal and local governments, yet they showed no interest in abiding by the civil rights or laws.

Check Out Dialogues With Don Juan de Colfax

donjuandecolfax.blogspot.com

White Trash Graduation Picture

This is my White Trash graduation picture from Wheat Ridge High School. In an informal pole, I was voted most unpopular, least likely to succeed and most likely to die before aged 25. The Wheat Ridge High School nickname is the Farmers but that's not accurate anymore. All of the farmers have been chased out of Wheat Ridge and have been replaced by Chicken Hawks. A more accurate name would be this: The Wheat Ridge Chicken Hawks.

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DonJuandeColfax

White Trash: The most hated culture in America

"Be careful who you piss off. They might just be sicker than you are."
-White Trash Wisdom


"The problem is never the problem."
-More White Trash Wisdom

Everybody laughs when comedians make fun of us White Trash, how we are uneducated and so stupid and live in trailer parks, how we eat macaroni in the morning and cornflakes straight from the box at night. If they said the same things about other people, they'd be accused of discrimination and have to face the wrath of civil rights activists.

But it's okay to make fun of White Trash like me. As the people in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, proved, it's also okay to steal from me and accuse me of crimes I never committed, like stalking.

And it's okay to come to my trailer at night and hide under the darkness of my porch and jump me and beat the daylights out me.

In Wheat Ridge, the police protect their own. They don't protect White Trash. If anything they want to make it so unsafe for us we have to leave.

My White Trash heritage is in the Deep South. My mother came from Mississippi and died in Denver shortly after she gave birth to me. Her spirit went to heaven but her body went to the morgue in a garbage bag and finally she was set to rest in a pine box. And I was shipped off to foster homes for the first years of my life.

Eventually I ended up in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. I ended up the ghetto of Wheat Ridge where all us White Trash lived. It was the corridor along 38th, from Kipling up to Interstate 70. At Kipling and 38th there was a farm with a big barn. The farmer took care of other people's cows and pigs.

Today, the farm is gone and replaced by the Wheat Ridge Wreck Center which houses swine of a different kind. But the barn I used to do chores in as a White Trash boy still stands there.

One day I was in the barn when I was supposed to be at home. When I came in late I received one of many beatings. The Wheat Ridge police never came around and investigated that. But years later they did a detailed investigation of me for drawing cartoons of employees while I worked out at the gym.

The police officer knew my age, women I dated, the hours I came to the gym and left. She even had a zerox of a drawing I did of a life guard I drew only after she gave me permission. She also told me that the employees had been watching my every move on a security camera.

I thought, "who is stalking whom?"

The trauma of my early years caused me to stutter. Unable to express myself with the spoken word, I turned inward and learned to draw. This gave me a way to connect with people and protect myself. When the bullies at school beat me, I drew them and they stopped.

The bullies in Wheat Ridge are very sensitive people. They can brake my bones but if I draw them, the get really upset. Their little feelings get hurt.

At Manning Junior High and Wheat Ridge High School, they called me the bully of the bullies. When a bully beat me up or abused one of the Special Education Students, I drew cartoons of them and they backed off.

My seventh period English teacher at Manning Junior HIgh, Miss Henderson, used to tell me that the pen is mightier than the sword. Also, she used to sneak me out of class five minutes early so I could run home and escape the beatings from the gangs of rich kids who hated white trash.

That's how I survived until I could get out of Wheat Ridge. The only way out I knew was the Army. When I left, the woman who adopted me cried. She thought she'd never see me alive again. Years later I returned to the place I hated to express my love for her by being with her as she died.

Sophisticated types in Denver say "where do I go to see White Trash? Do I have to drive all the way out to Wheat Ridge where they wear those tacky khaki pants?"

I say no. I tell them that the police have pretty much chased all of us out of our homes there. Now 38th has a gated community to keep people like me out.

I tell them if they want to see White Trash all they have to do is turn on their wide-screen TV. White Trash are the many men you see fighting the dirty war for oil so that a few Good Old Boys can make billions since they aren't satisfied with mere millions and millions.

A lot of people think White Trash are Good Ol' Boys. But they are mistaken. The Good Ol' Boy is the enemy of White Trash.

White Trash like me lack social skills. We don't know how to dress and we don't know how to say the right things in the right situations because nobody ever taught us. But we are honest and we have heart. We don't start fights but we finish them. As white trash, I can look you dead straight in the eye and tell you what I think and what I feel. But I can't tell you what you want to hear.

A Good Ol' Boy has social skill. He's a politician. He's dishonest. He'll tell you what you want to hear to set you up so he can stab you in the back, just like the Wreck Center employees did to me. A good old boy will never tell you what he is thinking. And he won't tell you what he feels because the connection to his heart is cut off, probably because he suffers so much guilt he cannot bear to experience true emotion.

Who knows, maybe if he allowed himself to experience the realm of the heart, his self-loathing would gush out like the oil in the gulf of Mexico.

The good old boys can sit around a table and chew the fat for hours and arrive at decisions that make them feel secure but bring mayhem, misery and destruction to everybody else. Maybe you can't fault these emotionally stunted men. After all they really believe what they are doing is right, no matter how wrong it is.

White Trash vets like me have a name for good ol' boys when they get older. We call them Chicken Hawks. A Chicken Hawk is a liberal in his twenties and too chicken to serve his country. But by his fifties he has morphed into an ultra-conservative Hawk who is ready to send your son to war but not his.

White trash are neither liberal or conservative. We voted for George Bush, senior because he was a real vet. We didn't vote for his son because, well, that's a different story. Let's get back on track.

People here in Denver ask me where they can go to see Chicken Hawks.

I tell them to go out to Wheat Ridge. They are everywhere. They are on the golf courses in their nice guy khaki shorts and the bad boy tattoos and Harleys. You'll see them riding down Sheridan Boulevard in their Mercedes with their baseball caps and golf shirts on while the go to eat lunch with their buddies at the Pink Elephant Bar up on Alameda.

One time I was in the Pink Elephant Bar eating lunch with a group of them and a fellow looked at me and asked me a question about a concern and I told him I could answer it by drawing a diagram on a napkin. One of the Good Ol' Boys told me to stop, as if I wasn't allowed to speak. I asked him why and he said, "just stop, Sean." They feel like people like me shouldn't be allowed to speak in their presence.

Just up the street from the Wreck Center, the Good Old Boys took over the last place for White Trash vets from Wheat Ridge to go. In a blue house that was granted non-profit status by Jefferson County, the Good Old Boys now control Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous was founded by a vet who survived WWII. In his book he described the difference between real alcoholics like me and hard and moderate drinkers like the good old boys. Now days, the biggest outsider in AA in Wheat Ridge is the alcoholic. This once sacred resting place for people like me has become a social and business network for Chicken Hawks. If you go to AA in Wheat Ridge to get sober, your chances are less than five percent. But if you go there to get married, your chances are better than ninety percent.

Now the Chicken Hawks sit around at the Pink Elephant Bar and eat fattening food and make up rules that not only exclude White Trash like me but, also, African Americans, Hispanics and, of course, women.

These men blame liberals for all their problems yet they get rich off liberal policies like Section 8. They don't like bleeding hearts as people, but without their insistence on freedom of speech, these Chicken Hawks could not operate their porn store called PleasuresXXX at the Dysfunction Junction on 38th and Kipling.

The manager of the Wreck Center is a typical good old boy and the letter he wrote me is a concise monument to the cowardly thinking of Chicken Hawks.

If you read his letter you'll notice how he talks about meeting with his management team to discuss me behind my back. You'll notice how they arrive at a decision that would make them feel save but bring mayhem and violence into my life. You'll notice how he never takes responsibility for anything. He begins by shifting blame to his employees. I was a threat to their safety. But he never says how I was a threat. Then he shifts blame to his management team who made the decision. He was just sort of a passive observer, unable to think for himself. Finally, he shifts the blame to me and the Police. I'm the bad guy here the police are the good guys. Whatever the Police say or do is out of his hands.


What he doesn't say in the letter, of course, is that he told the police I was stalking employees at the Wreck Center. The police officer told me that. He also fails to mention that the employees violated my privacy and snooped into my personal notebook, stole my cartoons and my ipod and watched my every move on a camera for months.

The reason he lied about me stalking employees is obvious.

You see, if you call the police and say, "this White Trash guy name Sean H. is here and he draws cartoons and we want you to arrest him," the police will probably say, "well, why don't you do your job and talk to him? Our job is to protect the public, not manage your gym."

But if you call the police and say, "we've got this guy stalking our employees," then the police have to investigate.

The manager of the Wreck Center knows the game, though he pretends he doesn't. Heck, he'd be insulted if I treated him like half the idiot he pretends to be.

Like the Chicken Hawks in AA, this coward will not say to my face what he said behind my back.

Although I'm not a Christian, I do try to live by the words of Jesus who said, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

I don't like the way these men treat me and I don't want to lower myself to their standards.

So, I have requested numerous times to mediate with them on a level playing field with a third party, objective person present.

But they are not comfortable on a level playing field. They are only comfortable if they have safety in numbers and complete control of the terms of the discussion.


Thanks bye,

Sean H.
White Trash novelist and cartoonist.
abuckandabook.com

Chicken Hawks in AA

"The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking."
--Third Tradition

The 12 Traditions are somewhat to Alcoholics Anonymous what the Constitution is to the United States.

The difference is that civil rights are laws. But don't tell people in Wheat Ridge that. They think civil rights are for other people to obey, but not them.

AA Traditions are but suggestions to help carry the message to the suffering alcoholic.

The founder of AA, Bill Wilson, knew that the quickest way to lose the trust of an alcoholic was to tell him what to do, to cram ideas down his throat. So he designed the program to be suggestive only.

Bill Wilson described three types of drinkers, real alcoholics like me and heavy and moderate drinkers like the non-alcoholics like the self-appointed Sheriffs of AA. A real alcoholics like me cannot stop once I start to drink.

When I drink, the craving for more is so powerful that it eclipses out all other matters like eating food and going home or going to work. The only hope for someone like me is Alcoholics Anonymous.

A hard drinker cans stop if there is sufficient reason to do so, like his marriage or business is at risk. Moderate drinkers can have a couple of drinks at lunch and go back to work, even though they might want another one.

Hard and moderate drinkers struggle with the concept of using suggestions, not commands. They don't understand why they can't go to AA and make up a bunch of rules.

Real alcoholics, however, understand it very well. Just as there is honor among thieves, there is honor among real alcoholics and they know that the most demeaning thing you can do to another alcoholic is insult him by telling him what to do. For instance, telling him things like who he can or can't have sex with, how he should or should not vote in matters affecting AA and when or when he cannot speak at the dinner table.

Real alcoholics are street smart and they can spot a fraud from across the room. Self-appointed sheriffs in AA are frauds and everybody knows it.

The real alcoholic is obsessed with controlling his drinking. The so called Al Anon, started for the wives of alcoholics, are obsessed with controlling the alcoholic. Theses self-appointed sheriffs of AA are Al Anons, not alcoholics. Their entire lives are built around trying to get people like me to follow their rules.

About four years ago, these Chicken Hawk, self-appointed sheriffs of AA took it upon themselves to amend the Third Tradition which states that the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.

They changed it to read more like this: "The only requirement for membership is a desire to conform to our rules, like if you're our ex-girlfriend you can't be a member unless you lie and say you are an alcoholic. Also, if you sit in meetings and draw cartoons that are harmless to us, that's not okay. It is, however, okay if one of us Chicken Hawks takes advantage of a newcomer while she pukes into a toilet. We don't talk about that."

If all this sounds confusing to you, it was very confusing to all of us real alcoholics who had to sit in group conscience meetings and listen to these arrogant clowns attempt to explain it all to us as if we were white trash morons who are too dumb to read the writing on the wall:

Tradition Three

"The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking."

As the Big Book points out, confusion is a symptom of self-will run riot, though they usually don't think so.

After all of that, the meeting fell apart. The real alcoholics left in disgust and migrated to a place in Denver called York Street where the group conscience is built around carrying the message, not making up a bunch of rules to make good old boys feel safe and protected from all of us.

Within weeks of that, the so-called Traditions Sheriff, who always starts all the trouble, took all his U.S. dollars from his government check and moved to Mexico where he supports their economy, not ours.

The last time I saw the Chicken Hawks at the the Pink Elephant bar they were complaining about people from Mexico and how they all come here and speak Spanish and send money down South to feed their families.

Letter From Manager of Wreck Center.

I talked to a friend of mine who is a police officer in Denver. He told me about how one of his fellow officers was shot last Friday.

I expressed my condolences.

He said he'd heard about what had happened to me in Wheat Ridge and had looked at this blog.

He said that if Rich Sampson called 911 in Denver over a personal matter involving a cartoon that most likely the dispatcher would have suggested in a polite way that he do his job and talk to me about it.

It seems like police in Denver live in a war zone and have more than they can handle.

It seems like police in Wheat Ridge have to manufacture crimes.

I told my friend that the police had done a complete investigation on me and knew things about me that were creepy. The police officer knew my age, what hours I came to the Wreck Center, what days and she even had zerox copies of cartoons I'd drawn and questioned the dates on them.

When I asked her if she had any type of evidence of any kind of crime I had committed, she just got silent and said, "Well, I think it's odd that an old guy like you dates younger women?"

Is that a crime?

Reasonable Requests

Over the last seven months I've made numerous requests to meet with the Mayor of Wheat Ridge and other public servants to resolve our differences in a manner that is fair to everyone.

All my requests have been denied. Here are two examples.

May 24

Dear Sir,
I am in receipt of your information and have looked into the incident that occurred here at the Recreation Center. I have found no wrong doing by the employees here at the Center. It is the responsibility of Recreation Center employees to insure the health, safety and welfare of all participants, as well as other employees when in the building.
Thank you for contacting me regarding your concern.

Joyce Manwaring
City of Wheat Ridge
Director Parks and Recreation

Hi Sean,
I see no reason to meet at this time.

Mayor Jerry DiTullio

I've been accused of a crime I never committed by people I do not even know.

Shakespeare said there is no art to reading the mind's construction on the face. My experience is that only a face to face meeting can expose the truth. A person's integrity is revealed by the look on their face and the expression in their eyes.

A principle in our judicial system is that the accused should have the right to face his accuser.

It's easy for the Mayor to hide behind his computer and accuse me of things that aren't true, like I have a notebook with cartoons of employees.

It's easy for the police officer to hide behind her blue, double knit suit and ambush me and be a bully when I'm least expecting it.

It's easy for Wreck Center employees to hide behind office doors and discuss me and judge me without even talking to me or even knowing me.

But it's difficult to meet me on a level playing field and look me in the eye and say to my face what you've said behind my back.

I don't respect these people in Wheat Ridge. I think they are public servants with a private agenda. I think they live in a very insulated little society and protect each other and get away with abusive behavior that would not be accepted in a larger city like Denver.

Character is revealed by how you treat those whom you can gain nothing from. These people have looked down at me and judged me as an insignificant, white trash old man who is unworthy of their time.

If they want to call the Petty police and try to have me arrested for drawing cartoons and call that stalking, fine.

If employees at the Wreck Center want to give my personal information out to thugs who can come to my home and beat me up,fine.

If Wreck Center managers want to collect government paychecks and turn their head and pretend to be too dumb to know what is going on in the facility they manage, then fine and dandy.

But these people can hardly complain that after all this time I am doing exactly what I said I would do. I'm exercising my right to freedom of speech. I'm using the written word and cartoons to defend myself against their false accusations, gossip and lies that have spread like a fire to scorch my reputation, harm me and my family.



Click HERE for cartoons

Wheat Ridge Wreck Center.

Nestled in between the liberally conservative city of Denver and the conservatively liberal town of Boulder is the conservatively conservative community of Wheat Ridge. Wheat Ridge is to Colorado what the Deep South is to the United States. While a state like Kentucky is famous for segregation based on race, Wheat Ridge is known to discriminate against anyone with gray hair. Also, Wheat Ridge is not fond of anyone who is unique, creative or, God forbid, different in anyway.
Click HERE for Illustrations