Shame is a tactic we need

On hearing Dennis Bernstein's KPFA story on the medical murder of Rosemary Cox in a women's prison in CA -- and hearing that Dr. Augustine Meckam, the perpetrator of her demise, is still running medical "care" of women prisoners -- I flashed back to the early 1990s, when SMASH (Seattle Men Against Sexism and Homophobia) put up Wanted - Public Enemy posters with photographs of anti-feminist judges, politicians, and other nefarious sexists and homophobes, on bulletin boards and utility poles around the city. Don't know the precise effect of the action, but it was satisfying to publicize the notoriety and attach a face to the crimes that go unnoticed in the mainstream media.

It would be great if someone who has been active in the prison protests could get a good photo of the evil doctor Meckam (don't know if i spelled his name right) and plaster his face around the town where he likes to shop or take his family to dinner.

Speaking of contacting the family members of offending government officials, I recall there was a highly honored environmental activist in the 1980s who did just that and thereby succeeded in preventing the opening of a nuclear power plant in upstate New York. He sent letters to the wife and the grown and/or teenage children of the offending utility commissioners quietly and lucidly explaining the hazards of such a power plant to the local communities that the family members cared about. This is a subtler form of shaming, yet perhaps more effective, in that it appeals directly to the hearts and minds, the consciences, of those most intimate with the offending government official.

I suggest people who have the means of identifying all such offending officials start using such shame tactics. It is an honorable tradition, in the line of muckraking, put a bit more blunt and personal, while still remaining on this side of the ethical fence. It is neither libelous nor slanderous to expose real criminal offenses that go unpunished because of the privileged positions of effective immunity so many of our so-called public servants occupy.

So, get out your telephoto lenses, folks, and start looking up the addresses and family connections of your nearest and dearest government agents. Let's make it truly a family affair when we are confronting injustice.

Steal My Government, will You? Well, I want it back, jack. And when your friends and loved ones hear about what you really do at the office, I fear you may be in for some heat yourself.