Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Touch Turner

Chuck Turner wants to hear from supporters during his expected three-year prison stay. His support site among other places has published the USPS address:
Mr. Chuck Turner
Hazelwood Penitentiary
P.O. Box 2000
Bruceton Mills, WV 2652
I'll correspond with a request that he branch out a bit to draw more attention to the type of sting that catalyzed his fall. I definitely agree with him that the feds had no justification for enticing him into a bribe. Apparently then MA Sen. Dianne Wilkerson suggested he deserved some of the cash she was taking, but there was no history of corruption on his part to justify entrapment.

Understandably, he takes this prosecution as persecution. He's pissed, as he should be.

I do have problems though with his vanity and his stretching for tenuous connections to some unproven and unprovable conspiracy. Honestly, he was a fine constituent-services-oriented Boston City Councilor and a relentless advocate for poor, black Bostonians. He would have us believe that he was such a stirring loudmouth that the feds had to silence him. Yet, back on planet Earth, he was not influential beyond his District 7 and City Hall.

If he really does have to serve those three years, a very productive way to spend part of that time would be to analyze the string, extrapolate it beyond himself, and propose ways to keep that from happening to others, political and non-political types alike. A great gift for the American people would be ways to protect our liberties by stopping such filthy and dishonorable and lazy entrapment.

I think of my favorite social-activist UU minister, Victor Carpenter. Every Sunday at the Arlington Street Church, he gave us homework or rather world-work. As part of his sermons or greetings, he would list very specific acts we could do that week to make life better for other. No pie in the sky or grinning generalities from him...

Mr. Turner is in a fine position to do the same on this issue. Feel free to let him know that.


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