the Gulag

a prologue.

“[my daughter] had been in[Friendship Glen School, a behavior-modification boarding school] since April 1, almost four months. My daughter was a typical ‘troubled teen’ [...]. She was rebellious, depressed, and angry -- getting in trouble at school, drinking alcohol, hanging with the wrong crowd, seemingly out of control. [...] We hired one of school's recommended escort services, a man and a woman, who captured our daughter while she was at school in Santa Fe and led her away crying in handcuffs. She was kept in those painful handcuffs all the way to the airport. They lied to her about where she was going and what to expect once she got there. “ -- Patricia Wolff

we’ve all heard the term “brainwashing” before, usually in the cheezy science fiction that we grew up on. I have vivid memories of watching an episode of Eerie Indiana (a cheezy rippoff of Goosebumps) in which rebellious kids were systematically kidnapped, brainwashed into “productive citizens”, and then returned to society. I saw that same theme in numerous other places; in novels, in movies, etc...but of course...that was all just fantasy, right?

I heard things every now and then; hearsay about so-and-so who got sent off to a boot camp for buying Ecstacy. Once I got a letter from one of my cousins about how she was becoming a “productive member of society” and a “responsible adult”...(she got sent off to boarding school because she got high and got in a car accident) I heard things. a little while after that I saw something on 60 Minutes about a kid who died in a boot camp. Apparently he was forced to stand naked in the Arizona sun; they covered him in sugar water and let bees loose on him. The autopsy revealed an enormous number of stings, as well as evidence of beating. The other kids at the camp tried desperately to alert the authorities, but of course no one listened to them. they were just a bunch of “juvenile delinquents” anyway, right? well eventually someone did, because now the drill instructor responsible is in jail for murder. I had my suspicions...and I always had a bad feeling that something was going on...and now i know that there is.

((('The little punk!' Guards drag Roland "Reno" Scott into the Savage Leadership Challenge for his second stay in less than a year. He violated his probation in August. (Sun photo by Andre F. Chung)))) Credit: Sun photo by Andre F. Chung Caption: 'Confession': Surrounded by black-hatted guards, Christopher Leight of Southeast Baltimore gets his introduction to boot camp. A guard holds the key to the handcuffs. But before they are unlocked, Leight must declare that he is a criminal. He admits to using and selling drugs.

Samantha and the Straights.

In 1981, Samantha Monroe, a typical 12-year old girl (with no history of drug use), was enrolled in a (Sarasota, Florida) branch of Straight Incorporated. Straight Inc. was, and still is, an extremely intense “drug rehab center” for teenagers. During the two years Samantha spent there, she was beaten, starved, and humiliated. Authorities there denied her access to the bathroom for days on end; even when her pants filled with urine, menstrual blood and feces, she was not allowed to change them for six weeks. On several occasions she was confined to a closet for days during which she “gnawed through her jaw” (according to a FOX news report by Radley Balko)...hoping that she would bleed to death.

She said that after she got pregnant (a male counselor raped her) "the wonderful state of Florida paid for and forced me to have an abortion." She is not the only one, apparently, according to investigations by Wes Fager, an independant journalist who once enrolled his son in one of Straight Inc.’s branches. After he discovered that the school had made his son severely mentally ill, he decided to investigate the matter. He compiled the stories that he found “of suicides and attempted suicides, rapes, forced abortions, molestations, physical abuse, lawsuits, court testimonies, and extensive documentation of profound psychological abuse at Straight chapters all over the country” (Balko) into http://thestraights.com, which is, by the way, one of the most impressive anti-brainwashing websites I have ever seen.

Paul and Rite of Passage.

"If I can't make a kid puke or piss in his pants on his first day, I'm not doing my job."--A youth trainer at a juvenile facility

Paul Choy, forced to endure taunting and harrasment (while standing in the Nevada desert sun), finally snapped, becoming “combative” (Hoover). For the next ten minutes, counselors asphyxiated him in a full Nelson, until his breathing became labored, and the restraint finally stopped. Choy was first taken to a hospital in Fallon and later to Washoe Medical Center in Reno. On Paul Choys 16th birthday, in 1992, he was pronounced braindead. The autopsy revealed evidence of anal rape. Not suprisingly, his “coaches” panicked, trying to rationalize what had happened. They said that it had all been an accident. They said he shouldn’t have been put in Rite Of Passage, Nevada, because he never had the "athletic ability" to sustain “restraint techniques." They said that Pauls death was not due to actual abuse, but to a "window of loss", implying that what happened was unavoidable, but rare. But just how rare can such a trajedy be, considering that there was a 1986 investigation by Representatives George Miller, D-Martinez, and Harry Reid based on allegations of physical and sexual abuse? It should also be noted that another charge of that investigation was that the camp was “unlicensed.”

3. Straight Incorporated and the Republican Party

“We have appealed to the U.S. Senate various times. We have requested individual State investigations. We have appealed to the governors of various states in the United states. We have requested investigations by various state agencies. We are convinced and have documents confirming that Melvin Sembler (United States Ambassador to Italy) has hindered and or pressured various agencies and officials into insuring that these centers are allowed to continue to operate. Although, our efforts have facilitated the closing of some of these centers, these centers were often allowed to open under different names and literally across the street from the old facilities.”

--from a formal complaint from the International Survivors Action Committee to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

Before Straight Incorporated, there was the Seed. The Seed was an experimental drug rehab program endorsed by the Reagans and funded by the government. Its purpose was to turn rebellious kids into straight-laced productive citizens, not unlike the purpose of its descendant. In 1975, the US Senate, under the leadership of Senator Sam Ervin likened its methods to Communist brainwashing techniques. The study they published, titled “Individual Rights and the Role of the Federal government in Behavior Modification,” said that the Seed was “based on a similar philosophy,” and that it “seeks to restructure personality through artificially applied techniques.” The study also described the ways in which the “subject” would be punished: “Emergency phone calls only, communication with staff only, doing menial monotonous work or calisthenics several times a day [...], [the subject may wear] pajamas or nightgown only, mattress on floor in room (thats all).”

In 1972 the Seed (which started in Florida) recieved funding from the federal government. Former White House Drug Czar, (and founding director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse) Robert L. DuPont, Jr., M.D. convinced the federal government to contribute 1.4 million dollars to the program. In 1976, Straight Incorporated (the descendant of the Seed) recieved $100,000 in grants from the LEAA (a branch of the federal government), in defiance of a congressional order not to do so.

These things are not suprising, considering that Straight has a long history of buying political influence; Mel and Betty Sembler, (Republicans) always had quite a cozy relationship with the Bush family. Once George Sr. even did a TV commercial for Straight Incorporated. Joseph Zappala, and Melvin Sembler (co-founders of Straight) contributed enormous sums of money to the campaign of George Bush Sr. In 1997, Betty and Mel Sembler, as well as three of their sons, contributed millions of dollars to several different campaigns in Florida. Most of those went to people who were running for Congress, including Boschwitz, Fox, Zimmer, Heintz, Pressler, and others, as well as one, Alexander, who was running for president.

In 1982, Kathleen Wilde of the ACLU filed suit against an Atlanta branch of Straight, charging that it was operating without a license and abusing five teenagers, holding them against their will. Mrs Wilde said that the five were enduring “inhumane treatment [which created an] immediate danger to physical and mental health.” Though it is not clear who won the suit, its very existence is disturbing in itself.

"No criminal charges have been filed in Anthony's death, and the autopsy report by the county Medical Examiner's Office declared the death accidental. It said he died of complications from near-drowning and dehydration after being made to stay in direct sunlight for up to five hours in 111-degree heat. " ---from "Boot camp group has new class" myNRA.com, September 8, 2001

4. this is a message to my generation.

“Hush, my baby. Baby, don't you cry. Momma's gonna make all of your nightmares come true. Momma's gonna put all of her fears into you. Momma's gonna keep you right here under her wing. She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing. Momma's gonna keep Baby cozy and warm. [...] Ooo Babe, of course Momma's gonna help build a wall.

Hush, my baby. Baby, don't you cry. Momma's gonna check out all your girlfriends for you. Momma won't let anyone dirty get through. Momma's gonna wait up until you get in. Momma will always find out where you've been. Momma's gonna keep Baby healthy and clean. [...] Ooo Babe, you'll always be Baby to me.”

---Pink Floyd; The Wall; Mother

"But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin." --Brave New World

How would your parents respond if you told them, “i want to be a lion tamer in the circus.”? How would they respond if you told them that you wanted to do anything dangerous...like be a tight-rope walker for a living?

ok..it was kind of a cheezy analogy, but this is what im getting at:

The fundamental conflict between parents and their children is this: like the Savage in Brave New World (if you haven’t read it, you should) we dont want comfort. We dont want safety. We dont want to be preserved and protected. Kids want to live. They want to experience everything that the world has to offer, even if its dangerous. For a lot of people...thats just the only way to feel alive. Most of us have parents that love us. And because they love us, they worry about us obsessively. They dont want us to get hurt, so they try to convince us that we should accept a watered-down version of life. They try to convince us that we shouldnt take any risks...that we should always play by the rules. They tell us these things because they love us, but at some point they have to let go...because the life that they offer us is just not enough. (I know i said “we” and “they” a million times, and I dont like making generalizations...but sometimes its just hard not to)

Theres so much I could say. There are so many stories I could tell, but I wont, because its late on a school night, and Ive been working on this all weekend. This conspiracy against my generation is simply too complex, too deep to fully explain in less than 4 pages. maybe you believe what i have said, dear reader, and maybe you dont. i hope that you will look into this on your own. i hope that you will do your own research and make your own conclusions. Dont believe everything that you are told.

this is a message to drug addicts/users, rebels, misfits, sexual deviants, car thieves, and runaways. wake up. i want you all to know that you are not safe. i want you all to know that at any time (until you reach the age of eighteen), and for any reason at all, your parents can send you to boot-camps, behavior modification schools, or mental hospitals. Armed escorts will kidnap you, handcuff you, and take you into custody. In Missouri, Baptist boarding schools like Mountain Park and HeartLand arent even regulated by the state on the grounds that such regulation would infringe upon their "freedom of religion." ...convicted, imprisoned criminals have more rights then these kids. they are starved, beaten, humiliated, and broken down psychologically. They are not allowed any contact with the outside world, and all their mail is censored.

You cant beat the system alone. Straight Incorporated (and all institutions like it) have the backing of the Republican Party, the Moral Majority, the entire Bush family (yes i mean Jeb, George and George), the Reagans, Jerry Fallwell, etc. They have money, they have power, they have lawyers, and they have influence. If you’re going to fight the system, great. But be smart about it.

Revolution can be any number of things, from a coca cola jingle to the overthrow of an entire political/economic system. Society is, obviously, separated into many different ethnic groups, cultures and subcultures. Each group has its own interests, and thus, its own idea of what a revolution should be. Most of these groups (African Americans, Feminists, Indians, Gay people, Mexicans) already had their revolutions in the 60’s and 70’s. Cezar Chavez liberated the Mexican people, for the most part. Martin L. King libertated his people; Gloria Steinem liberated Women. Feminism has lost momentum, for the most part, because, frankly, there is not an enormous need for it anymore. While there will always be isolated pockets of sexism (domestic violence) in this country, the national patriarchy network has almost completely obliterated, and women are becoming more and more powerful all the time. The same is true for black people. Though there will always be isolated pockets of racism in the world, Racism as a global network has been severly damaged(at a pro-Somalian rally in Lewiston, we were 4000 strong; the skinheads barely reached 100).

Im not saying that we should ignore the struggles of women/feminists and ethnic minorities. im NOT saying that these people no longer face descrimination.

“ ‘We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we will be movie stars and rock stars; but we wont, and we are just waking up to this fact, so dont fuck with us.’ ” --from Fight Club

where is our Martin Luther King? if adults or ethnic minorities were treated this way, it would, understandibly cause a massive uproar. If sexist husbands could send their feminist wives off to boot-camps to be brainwashed, the country would erupt into riots. So what about OUR revolution? what about the thousands upon thousands of teenagers who are being systematically kidnapped, brainwashed, tortured, and humiliated every day? Who is going to liberate us?

IN MEMORIAM.

the martyrs of my generation.

Michelle Sutton, dead at age 15, Summit Quest/ Kristen Chase, dead at age 16, Challenger/ Paul Choy, dead at age 16, Rite of Passage/ Aaron Bacon, dead at age 16, Northstar/ Dawnne Takeuchi, dead at age 18, VisionQuest/ Lorenzo Johnson, dead at age 17, Arizona Boys Ranch/ Carlos Ruiz, dead at age 13, VisionQuest/ Mario Cano, dead at age 16, VisionQuest/ John Vincent Garrison, dead at age 18, VisionQuest/ Bernard Reefer, dead, VisionQuest/ Robert Zimmerman, dead, VisionQuest/ Charles Lucas, dead, VisionQuest/ James Lamb, dead, VisionQuest/ Tammy Edmiston, dead, VisionQuest/ Leon Anger, dead, VisionQuest/ Charles Collins, Jr., dead at age 15, Crossroads for Youth/ Jamie Young, dead at age 13, Ramsey Canyon/ John Avila, dead, Rocky Mountain Academy/ Danny Lewis, dead at age 16, VisionQuest/ Nicholas Contreras, dead at age 16, Arizona Boys Ranch/ Edith Campos, dead at age 15, Desert Hills/ Matt Toppi, dead at age 17, Robert Land Academy/ Chirs Brown, dead at age 16, Robert Land Academy/ Eric David Schibley, dead at age 17, VisionQuest/ Chad Andrew Frenza, dead at age 16, Polk County Boot Camp/ Robert Doyle Erwin, dead at age 15, VisionQuest/ Lyle Foodroy, dead, VisionQuest/ Gina Score, dead at age 14, State Training School (South Dakota)/ Bryan Dale Alexander, dead at age 18, Texas Correctional Services/ Michael Wiltsie, dead at age 12, Eckert Youth Alternatives/ Tristan Sovern, dead at age 16, Charter Behavioral Health System/ Robert Rollins, dead at age 12, Devereaux School/Andrew McClain, dead at age 11, Elmcrest Psychiatric Hospital/ Anthony Haynes, dead at age 14, American Buffalo Soldiers Boot Camp/ Ian August, dead at age 14, Skyline Journey ...and counting.

(memoriam compliled by Jordan Riak, Lecturer in Photography at Sydney College of the Arts; Executive Director of Parents and Teachers Against Violence in Education)

ESSENTIAL READING ON THIS SUBJECT

An American Gulag: Secret P.O.W. Camps for Teens, by Alexia Parks (2000). Available from The Education Exchange Network, Box K, Eldorado Springs, CO 80025

sources

http://www.thestraights.com/

http://www.teenliberty.org/

http://www.mountainparksurvivors.com/

http://www.nospank.com/boot

“Boot Camp Official Pleads Guilty To Negligent Homicide In Teen's Death”; Foster Klug, Associated Press Thursday, February 21, 2002

“Arcadia Religious Reform School Accused of Abuse in Lawsuit”,The Associated Press, The Herald Tribune, July 10, 2002

“Texas Teenager Dies in Utah Wilderness Program” By Rich Vosepka, Associated Press The Daily Camera, July 16, 2002

“Straight Talk -- Drug War Casualties”; Radley Balko; FOXNews.com, May 23, 2002

“Ariz. To Appoint Boot Camp Task Force” The Associated Press, July 21, 2001

“Are Boot Camps Too Extreme?” By Bryan Robinson http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/bootcamps010712.html

“DEADLY RESTRAINT” By Jordan Riak. Lecturer in Photography at Sydney College of the Arts Executive Director of Parents and Teachers Against Violence in Education December 1999, revised January 2003

"Boy in coma after scuffle at camp for troubled youths" San Francisco Chronicle, By Ken Hoover, Chronicle Staff Writer, February 13, 1992

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