Some of you may remember that last year I deleted the blog I had on Blogger and stopped using my other blogs for a while. During this time I mostly shared entries on Facebook. This might’ve actually been at the end of 2010. I told you it was because of security issues and this was 100% true. My Gmail account, blog included since Google powers them both, was indeed hacked. But there was more to it that I didn’t share in my blog. This was because I wanted to wait till I had more information and knew what the hell was going on, besides the fact that I was scared shitless. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before I calmed down enough to examine all the telltale signs that assured me there was a 99% chance it was just a hoax. Nonetheless, I was very shaken up and so that’s why I laid low for a while.

It was a tough subject for me to write about while I was busy fearing for my safety and the safety of my husband as well. Actually, it wasn’t that I couldn’t bring myself to write about it so much as I couldn’t bring myself to share it. See, it involves a black person and everyone is so quick to side with non-whites these days that I just wasn’t in the mood to deal with the doubt, the accusations, and the animosity that might’ve come with it. I can only share the facts, folks. What people choose to do with those facts is a whole ‘nother issue. So one of these days soon enough, I will share what happened and you the reader can decide what to do with that information. It’s like giving someone a shirt for Christmas. You can give them the shirt, but you can’t guarantee where that shirt will end up. I will tell you what happened. What you do with that info is out of my control, but I’m not going to worry about who may not be able to handle it for much longer.

I can’t say when I’ll be ready to share the whole story because that’s not one of those things you can exactly put a time frame on. When I get around to writing about it in a way that the public can understand (regardless of who they want to believe and side with in the end) I will do so.

I will at least give you a little prelude to the story, but in order to do so I must jump back to the mid-90s in Phoenix, Arizona. We had a small tract house in Phoenix when the city seized the house next to us. Tom and I moved in in 1993 and were married the next year. From 1996-1999, which was when we moved, we had welfare bums living next to us that drove us crazy, particularly me, because I was home more than Tom was. Loud music, wild parties, screaming kids, barking dogs, fights, drug sales, vandalism, trash… all within just a matter of feet from our place. A black woman and her child lived there for 3 years and then a Mexican family lived with us for our last 4 months there. They also had other people living there that weren’t supposed to.

My husband sent letters to the city complaining of the chaos. What we didn’t know at the time was that the black woman had a friend on the police force. He is no longer a member of the force but in the family real estate business instead, thanks to his misconduct and abuse of authority. I do not know who else this guy victimized but common sense tells me that several complaints had to finally add up to get him booted and that this type of person doesn’t usually pick on just one person. What he did to “pick” on me was add a threatening letter to some journal excerpts I shared with them through the mail as a way of giving them a piece of my mind. The excerpts may’ve been perceived as bordering on threatening, but they weren’t actually threatening by any means. As far as I knew, I was well within my legal right, but again, I had no idea about the corrupt cop friend at the time and what he had in mind for me.

It was now early 2000. We had just moved when I was rudely awakened, yanked out of my house by a fucking swat team, and dragged 45 minutes back into Phoenix to be asked questions I could’ve been asked at home. Well, they photographed and fingerprinted me as well. Then the cop thrusts a threatening letter chock full of racial slurs and asks if I knew anything about it. I didn’t. But it didn’t matter, for he got what he wanted – my prints on the damn thing.

After being told that it was “over,” I had to play court till the fall of that year. Just minutes before sentencing we were shown “evidence” we’d never seen before. The public pretender mostly flashed the evidence in my face for just seconds before yanking it away. It seemed to consist mostly of racially motivated comics that were anything but funny. It also wasn’t until sentencing day that we learned the “victim” was tight with the “cop,” mostly based on how they carried on in court and by how obvious it was that she was coaxed in her so-called statement. It wasn’t until after sentencing that I learned I had been charged and convicted of the letter, NOT the journals.

It was then that I got to really learn not only how much Arizona favors minorities, but also just how barbaric its laws and sentences can be. Guilty or not, a “crime” like this is considered a misdemeanor in most states rather than a felony as it is, after all, mere words on paper and not actions. I never once laid a finger on anyone. Why they didn’t simply not read the journals if they didn’t want to hear it and just discard them was beyond me. But again, I had yet to realize the impact of this “letter” and how that was the focal point of the “case” as opposed to the journals.

As for who really wrote the letter, I don’t know. Possibly the cop himself in order to help his little buddy build a case against me, or maybe the “victim” received it from someone else. I simply don’t know and I probably never will. The author of that letter certainly isn’t going to come forward and claim credit for it. The only other things from me were a card with little bits of confetti in it that I knew would spill all over the place when they opened it, and a bottle I tossed over the dividing block wall one night due to getting fed up with the stress and anger they caused me for raising hell for hours and hours at a time. Right or wrong, I couldn’t even hear myself think half of the time.

Both inmates and detention officers in the jail I had to spend half a year in agreed that the sentence certainly didn’t fit the crime even if I’d written the damn thing myself. After being released in May of 2001 I was supposed to remain on probation till the fall of 2003, but 6 months before that I was finally vindicated.

The courts and media were quick to label me a stalker and a racist (though I was not charged with a hate crime) and for a while, I became the latter part of that label that was affixed upon me. In reality, it never was about their race to begin with. It was about their behavior. All we wanted was to just live in peace. That’s all we wanted.

After getting my life back and out of their hands, I was able to realize there’s good and bad in all kinds. No, I may not like certain groups as a whole, but that doesn’t mean I hate every single person as an individual within that group. Not all blacks are bad just like not all whites are good. I’m smart enough to know this. But I am truly horrified by all the reverse discrimination going on these days and the favoring of certain groups. Yet people don’t want to hear it when it involves whites, gays or Jews getting shit on. I don’t understand why this is. Do they not believe that blacks aren’t the only ones who deal with discrimination? Is it just too scary for people to face and address this issue? Well, the problem isn’t going to go away on its own. Gays still can’t marry wherever they want to, and whites can’t have an all-white beauty pageant without being called racists.

I knew that those involved would be highly furious about my vindication and that was part of why we left Arizona. I felt too much like a sitting duck. If I had to live in either my native state of Massachusetts or Arizona, I’d choose Massachusetts in a heartbeat even though I would HATE the climate. Arizona’s a beautiful state, but the laws, system and so many other things are so twisted there that I know I could never so much as stand to visit the place let alone ever live there again.

So what happened last year? That will be discussed in a future entry.