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Civil-rights complaint alleges excessive force /
On Sept. 11, 2003, an epic farce reached its pinnacle of overkill in a federal courtroom in Pittsburgh when stonercomedian Tommy Chong was sentenced to nine months in prison for his role in his son’s pot pipe business.
Chong had been caught up in Operation Pipe Dreams, hardy-har-har, a multistate DEA investigation targeting drug paraphernalia distributors, most of which were bong businesses. The prosecution, built upon an obscure and spottily enforced federal statute, led to the indictments of about 50 distributors and was estimated to have cost the U.S taxpayers $12 million.
For that bargain price, Tommy Chong, a 65-yearold with an extensive filmography of pot comedies and no criminal record, was sentenced to prison.
That was on the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which should have reminded everyone in the courtroom that the feds had more important things to do.
“The feds locked up Tommy Chong,” a friend of mine said afterward. “Do you feel safer now?”
The same could be asked when the FBI added the Juggalos to its 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment, and again on Saturday as the Juggalos marched on Washington to protest the absurd designation hanging over their purple mohawks ever since.
Juggalos are devotees of the Insane Clown Posse, the Detroit horrorcore hip-hop duo of Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope. The Posse dropped their debut record, “Carnival of Carnage,” in 1992 and has amassed a considerable cult following known for wearing black-and-white face paint, spraying one another with gallons of Faygo-brand soda, and greeting like-minded fans with a hearty, “Whoop-whoop!”
For three years ending in 2016, the Juggalos held their annual Gathering in central Ohio, at the Legend Valley concert venue in Licking County. I attended the 2016 Gathering and found the Juggalos to be welcoming and pretty darn funny.
Some of them did party hard. At a music festival. Shocker.
I looked forward to a return visit, and was bummed when the four-day Gathering moved to Oklahoma City. Police there reported making eight arrests out of 8,000 or so Juggalos.
The Juggalos struck me as a mostly congenial mix of self-deprecating misfits who considered themselves family. Wash off the face paint, change the soundtrack, and you’d have a Grateful Dead show. Keep the face paint and change the soundtrack and you’d have the Kiss Army.
Jerry Garcia and Gene Simmons somehow skated on the federal gang designation, but ICP and their fans have been shackled to it for years, thanks to a federal report that at times reads like a spoof: “Juggalos’ disorganization and lack of structure within their groups, coupled with their transient nature, makes it difficult to classify them and identify their members and migration patterns.”
With lines like that, it’s hard to tell if you’re reading a criminal gang assessment or a field guide to American waterfowl. Whoop-whoop!
The case against the Juggalos was thin, resting mostly upon a string of unrelated crimes committed all over the place, in which people identifying as Juggalos were involved. Ask yourself this: If a bunch of friends who really dig The Rolling Stones conspire to pull off a few armed robberies, are all Stones’ fans members of a gang?
The Juggalos have taken their fight to the courts, arguing that individual fans have suffered legitimate hardships due to the gang status, but they can’t seem to get no legal satisfaction. So they peacefully assembled at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, brought there by the band’s call to action:
“Who will stand to protect the merrymakers? Who will stand to protect artistic freedom? Who will join together to ‘Clown The Police State?’ Backed by the strength of our entire Family and on behalf of the thousands of Juggalos who have suffered injustice at the hands of our oppressors, we shall stand!”
From media reports, it appears they created a spectacle while behaving generally well, which is to say they behaved like Juggalos. A protest sign music-shaming their opposition — “The FBI listens to Nickelback” — is about as confrontational as things got.
They seem willing to fight on as family and with little outside support, even if the general public writes off their cause as a joke.
It’s a shame if that’s the case. Whenever the government demonizes a group of Americans based on how they dress or what they listen to, none of us should be laughing.