Report : The Brooklyn Ganja Riot CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
AN UNEXPECTED MELEE IN BROOKLYN
AGENT JON BURGE Report on the Brooklyn Ganja Riot: (verbal)
Our story connects with the politics of the island of Jamaica. Jamaica was granted independence by the United Kingdom in 1962. There are two main political parties there, the People's National Party, and the Jamaica Labour Party. Election campaigns are pretty tough down there. This is how it works: Gangs affiliated with each party dominate certain neighborhoods in Kingston, the capital. Pretty much, the party that your neighborhood gang is affiliated with will carry your district overwhelmingly if you get the picture. Counter-intuitively the Labour Party there was and is the conservative party, and the People's National Party is socialist leaning and its leaders flirt with Cuba.
Marijuana, also known as ganja, is a widespread phenomenon in Jamaica, and a homegrown religion called Rastafarianism considers smoking ganja a communion with the Higher Power much like the Church of the Realized Fantasy does.
At some point, some people in a think tank decided that the wrong guy was always winning these elections. That meant in their point of view, the wrong guy had the strongest election gangs. So the CIA arranged for Jamaican election gangs to come to the United States, get green cards, and enjoy a blind eye to the ganja trade.
I don't imagine you can think about the Eastern Parkway parade and not have marijuana cross your mind, although not much is smoked in public even at the parade. I usually take Labor Days off and go and enjoy the parade myself. It's quite a sight.
Barbecues spring up all over Brooklyn's sidewalks and parks. Thousands go to watch it all, sexy costumes and dancers and all.
Brooklyn has a great park, almost as big as Central Park. It's pretty much in the middle of Brooklyn, and it's called Prospect Park. On a hot summer's day, it'll be packed. It throngs with people, (mainly non-Caribbean people on Labor Day). The main entrance to Prospect Park is not very far from where the Parade ends. A really short walk.
The New Sabbatteans got a permit for a giant outdoor festival for Labor Day evening, 2011. They promoted it everywhere, inside and out. They organized security and hired the Hell's Angels to beef that up. They bought portable barbecue grills. Lots of them. They bought pigs - yes, suckling pigs!
Everyone in Brooklyn knew about this big party that was going to happen after the parade, just over in Prospect Park. On the big day, they barbecued, they gave out cans of sodas and juices, and they opened up a very big surprise: A gigantic van loaded with New York Hydroponic marijuana, driven by "Albanian Louie" Xhaxahka, with "the Pope" in his vestments sitting right next to him, riding shotgun.
The three "rabbis" were convinced that smoking this plant puts a person into communion with God. Or so they said. So, not the most original idea. Rastafarians among many others were looking forward to the whole thing and had caught the rumor there was going to be free weed and food. With marijuana legal or decriminalized in states with millions of people, what mayor was going to order his police to charge into throngs of people - including black hats - at a Labor Day barbecue? For communing with God? Not everyone was happy about this surprise. But lots of people were.
I work around a lot of Jews. Back when I was a cop in Chicago I joined a study group just about them.
Back in the late 1600s, there was another religious/spiritual movement of about a million Jews. That would be as if they numbered around 10 or 11 million, since there are probably a little more than 10 times as many people alive on earth right now as there were in those days. Supposed Messiahs came and went. The king of all "false messiahs" was Sabbatai Z'vi. His followers embraced sin, plain and simple. They ate forbidden meats with milk, they engaged in wild orgies, they blasphemed, and they drew converts and followers from outside the Jewish sphere.
The Ottomans got their hands on this guy Z'vi, and gave him a choice. He could prove he's the messiah by being executed and then returning to life, or he could embrace Islam. Z'vi chose life. The one he was more certain about.
The Church, the Muslim Ottomans, the official rabbis, everyone came down on them. This is the 1700s. The Sabbatai Z'vi movement went underground. Deep underground. Then came Jacob Frank, cut from the same cloth. So underground, that I believe there really still are Sabbatai and Frankist followers in secret, and others don't even know they are following what Zvi and Frank would be telling them to do even now, which is to raise hell one way or the other. I can't help noticing that half the time there's any kind of uproar or countercultural movement they are front and center.
Well, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Allen Ginsburg, Mickey Cezar, Tuli Kupferberg's band The Fugs, and some others figured it out back in the year 1984. They also read about the Mayan prophecies and the coming sun storms of 2012. Three of them, Tuli Kupferberg, Allen Ginsberg and Abbie Hoffman got together and hatched a long term plan that was supposed to come into fruition starting in the year 2010, and culminating at the peak of the 2012 sun storms, a day they reckoned to be September 17, 2012. I could show you the transcripts if I had them, which I don't, but that would be wasting your time. You know what they say about arguments about angels dancing on pinheads and the like.
I'm giving you the outcome of the marathon meeting. That was simple: Reach out and touch "someones." Meet the masses more than half way, and lah tee dah! Let the good times roll bon ami.
Abbie Hoffman said, "If it feels good, do it!"
Allen Ginsberg said, "Howl!"
And so, that's how the New Sabbatean Movement / Noahide Movement was conceived. They organized on the QT among the black hatted and bare headed. They planned and they studied and made contacts. Actually they thought they had the wind at their backs. Sooner or later marijuana was going to be legal in New York. For God's sake bazooka is decriminalized (at least for white people)! Not just for medicine and for fun but that human godhood could be reached. So while the planned party at Prospect Park was definitely illegal there were people who were pushing for legal cannabis who thought that this interethnic love festival might put them over the top.
But something went very wrong in Prospect Park.
It was supposed to be something like a Be-In or a Love-In. And it started out that way. In fact, if you could imagine this scene of Hasidic Jews, Rastafarians and everyone in between smoking weed together and handing weed out to anyone, loud speakers all over the park with different kinds of music going on, and even cops getting in on the fun.
Tuli Kupferberg summed it up best, "Bring the Messiah with Pot, Peace, Pussy and Prosperity and a gazillion acts of random kindness."
But a shadowy and unofficial group of police officers who called themselves LEG (Law Enforcement Group) led by one patrolman Leon Leoni had other plans. There's something about a police riot. The brass don't order it, the brass don't direct it, but also the brass do not try to stop it. They pretty much stand back. And when it's over everyone is doing the "both sides" routine.
So you had mounted cops on horses that are charging into groups of people, trampling them, knocking over tables and everything else. Cops on foot were swinging clubs. Hells Angels swinging pool cues. In a matter of seconds, it was a disaster broadcast all over the world.
When it was all over there were 202 arrests, with seven people dead. Fifteen cops and an unknown number of civilians were hospitalized. Police went into Lutheran, Brooklyn Jewish, Interfaith and Methodist hospitals delivering beatings and arresting random people.
It does us all good to unbend sometimes. Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper
Everyone knows, and I hardly have to tell you, that the next day Mayor A. Okey Hall held a press conference that will never be forgotten.
The first thing he said was "To call a spade a spade what happened was a police riot."
"I smoke pot. I like it a lot. Probably half you reporters do too. I’m gonna be firing cops and following up with the Brooklyn DA’s office. I expect to see cops prosecuted.
“I think we don’t have enough housing projects by the way. How would I pay for it? I just saw a bus stop ad for a luxury apartment building in Brooklyn. The cheapest smallest apartment in the building was tagged at over $800,000!
And do you know what it said on the sign? “ Tax abated for 25 years! Guess what!? What’s wrong with tax abated for seven years? That’s how I’d pay for it."
Depending on how you look at things it got better from there or it went downhill from there. It's safe to say that everybody who was not living under a rock had strong opinions pro and con. The City Council voted to ask for a special session of the State Legislature to declare the mayor incapacitated after complete physical and psychological examination and remove him from his office.
What they found out was that he had had a heart attack that should have killed him. He had been saying strange things ever since.
Mayor Hall's ouster and replacement was all a done deal within a couple of weeks. The Public Advocate Bob "Don't Rock The Boat" Wilhelm was sworn in as mayor.
People in Washington could not have been amused by the events that transpired In Brooklyn on Labor Day Night. I know that for a fact, from a "Fly on the wall."
I'm guessing what I might have done if I were President of the United States and I had got wind of the Prospect Park goings on of Labor Day. First I would have felt a few emotions and thought a few thoughts. Surprise would have been the first feeling. I'm pretty sure that The President of the United States doesn't appreciate surprises so the next feeling would be non-appreciation.
No doubt he would want to know where these troublemakers get their money and how they get it. I would want to know especially about that if I were the President. I'd want to know where to put the pressure, who and what to squeeze if it's needed. I would want that information if I were Barack Obama.
Barack Obama is the least angry Black man in America. I don't think he would have shouted, or banged his fist on a desk or fired anyone. I would imagine that he would want to see videos and that he would want to know who and what was behind all this and what it all signified.
"I'm not taking sides here. There were fine people on both sides. The disturbance was ignited by the Black Hats. We're not going back to the sixties."
So no doubt top secret private meetings were held in secure rooms. I'm sure that guys with lapel pins swept the room and everyone in it with all sorts of secret devices to make sure the meeting was private. I'm also guessing that the President would have requested and demanded an action plan rapidito. I also guess that people burned the midnight oil and burned up the secure wires and cables and frequencies they must have down there in D.C.