Stewart’s Holiday Gifts

I just received the email below from my best friend and favorite critic of reincarnation, Stewart Vardaman. I highly recommend this form of Kindness to you for several “selfish” reasons:

• It will make you feel good, for hard-nosed scientific reasons.
• It will bring you good karma and closer to the end of suffering.
• It will support organizations that you or your loved ones might well need some day.
• It is in keeping with the spirit of Festivus:  loving, simple compared to shopping, non-commercial, ungreedy… kind. “It is unique to us humans, and to our more developed angels and spirits, to be kind“.

Stewart’s Email:

No gifts from me this year, again.  I’m CC:ing a few friends….FYI, I give what I would have spent on Xmas gifts to causes, an idea my sister Sally came up with a few years ago.  Hopefully the people receiving this email will want to help out these causes with a small donation.

I followed up on last year and sent a few bucks to Cory Maye, a fellow I’m certain is innocent of any crime.  Since last year, we exchanged a few letters, and he’s better.  Now has a private cell, his appeal (seven lawyers offered free service and worked on it) is a nice piece of legal work, and I think this coming Spring the MS Appeals Court will likely cut him loose.  Cory’s daughter made cheerleader this year.

http://www.theagitator.com/2007/12/15/how-to-help-out-cory-maye/

His address is now Unit 29 – B, differs from link.

Next, a few bucks to help Ryan Frederick of Chesapeake, VA with his legal defense:

http://www.myspace.com/ryan_frederick

Frederick will go on trial next month for murdering a police officer.  Much like the Cory Maye case, police did a raid of his house, Frederick says he did not hear them announce that they were cops (he was asleep), and opened fire on what he thought were criminals invading his home.  Once he realized they were police, he gave up immediately.

The case against Frederick has fallen apart.  The police raided because they thought he was growing marijuana.  How did they know that?  A confidential informant working for the police broke into his house three days before, and saw grow lights and plants.  But the plants weren’t weed — they were Japanese maples that look like weed.  The guy was merely an avid gardener, and wasn’t growing dope at all (he did have a 1/3 ounce of weed, though – a misdemeanor).  He’s a quiet, passive, timid, easily startled guy, just 5 foot 7, 120lbs, and justifiably feared for his life the night the police burst into his house (which had been burgled just three days before).  As the facts have come out, there looks to be some serious police misconduct (illegal search warrant, for starters) in the case:

http://www.reason.com/news/show/128723.html

In both cases, it’s the tactics police use.  I personally believe drugs should be legal, but even if you don’t, in cases like these with non-violent, no criminal history people, if you think they possess drugs (in Maye’s case, he merely lived in the other side of a duplex of the actual target of the warrant), you walk up to them as they are getting into their car on the way to work, not burst into their house with a no-knock warrant in the middle of the night when they are asleep.  It’s just crazy to think that either one of these guys is a hardened cop killer.  The sad thing is, I could easily find many other people who have suffered similar fates.  And two police officers, both with families and children, are dead.

Next up, the Innocence Project:

http://www.innocenceproject.org/
The project is a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.

And lastly, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

http://www.leap.cc/
Founded on March 16, 2002, LEAP is made up of current and former members of law enforcement who believe the existing drug policies have failed in their intended goals of addressing the problems of crime, drug abuse, addiction, juvenile drug use, stopping the flow of illegal drugs into this country and the internal sale and use of illegal drugs. By fighting a war on drugs the government has increased the problems of society and made them far worse. A system of regulation rather than prohibition is a less harmful, more ethical and a more effective public policy.

The mission of LEAP is to reduce the multitude of unintended harmful consequences resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition.

LEAP’s goals are:

1. To educate the public, the media, and policy makers, to the failure of current drug policy by presenting a true picture of the history, causes and effects of drug abuse and the crimes related to drug prohibition and
2. To restore the public’s respect for law enforcement, which has been greatly diminished by its involvement in imposing drug prohibition.

LEAP’s main strategy for accomplishing these goals is to create a constantly enlarging speakers bureau staffed with knowledgeable and articulate former drug-warriors who describe the impact of current drug policies on: police/community relations; the safety of law enforcement officers and suspects; police corruption and misconduct; and the financial and human costs associated with current drug policies.

Have a great holiday season, and a happy new year!

Stewart