Escaping TO Alabama

Home Sweet Filthy Hippy Lair

This is why we left PC. My memory of the events is somewhat hazy. I had been sick all day and Donna actually woke me up to tell me that there were cars parked up and down the block; like, maybe, cop cars.

This had been a Summer of harassment and arrests at The Head Shop - they would come in and plant things even after we had scoured the place to make sure there was nothing in "the house"; they'd arrest our band for vagrancy when they took their break, they would arrest our patrons and mace them in their cells, cut their hair, say crappy things to the women. etc - our residence, which is where most of us stayed, was clean as a whistle.

Plus I was sick, dammit. I went to sleep.

Was the Chicago Convention near Labor Day or am I melding the two? At any rate, we woke up early that morning to the sound of breaking glass and swatestesterone dripping from the 27 law enforcement officers who were effecting a search warrant of our house, the "filthy hippy lair" as the paper described it the next day.

When no drugs were found they arrested everyone for loitering, others for "disorderly conduct (shacking)." They ransacked the place and then the fire marshals that accompanied them declared it a fire hazard which had to be vacated.

Donna and I (the lease was in our name and we were married) set about the now familiar process of bailing everyone out in time for the club to open.

Whether it was Labor Day or not during this particular bust, the convention was going on. The parallels were astounding. Here we were. There they were. The cops even accentuated it by making fun of our politics and crowing about "their guy" George Wallace. It was at that moment that it became obvious to me that what was happening to us was happening all around the country.

We scurried to get everyone out, still trying to salvage the club. We got the bail money together. Got everyone home. Got them baths. Got them fed. All of this with the convention blaring on the TV.

For me the defining moment was when we returned to the club hoping to salvage the weekend by making the big lick. There they were. Bay County Sheriff squad cars. Ten or Twenty? it didn't matter. Blue lights on, they rang our club like there had been a murder there or something. Forget saving the club. No one came. We just went home.

We left Panama City pretty soon after that. My wife's mother came and helped us pack and we left that stinking rat hole. It's pretty bad when you escape to Alabama from somewhere but that's exactly what we did.

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Jus soli

United States v Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898):

The constitution of the United States, as originally adopted, uses the words ‘citizen of the United States' and ‘natural-born citizen of the United States.’ By the original constitution, every representative in congress is required to have been ‘seven years a citizen of the United States,’ and every senator to have been ‘nine years a citizen of the United States'; and ‘no person except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall be eligible to the office of president.’ Article 2, § 1. The fourteenth article of amendment, besides declaring that ‘all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside,’ also declares that ‘no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’ And the fifteenth article of amendment declares that ‘the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any state, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.’

In Minor v. Happersett, Chief Justice Waite, when construing, in behalf of the court, the very provision of the fourteenth amendment now in question, said: ‘The constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that.’ And he proceeded to resort to the common law as an aid in the construction of this provision.

The interpretation of the constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history.

It thus clearly appears that by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country, and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, and the jurisdiction of the English sovereign; and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject, unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign state, or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.

The same rule was in force in all the English colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the constitution as originally established.

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