The St. Petersburg Seven

After three years at Auburn University Montgomery, two law books published and enough “learned” articles, I was granted tenure and a promotion. I was pretty bummed at the time about Montgomery and spent most weekends in Atlanta visiting my brother, Bud and wife Anna. I decided I needed a break.

I told the Dean I was going to take a sabbatical without pay. He said that I had to apply and be granted leave. “Mail me the papers,” was my reply. He did, and I filled them out, and leave was granted, and I remained away for eighteen months.

I started in St. Petersburg, Florida, practicing law in the office of a friend. I was not busy in the law when I arrived in St. Pete, so I told the Dean of the Episcopal Cathedral that I had time to volunteer. He directed me to a group of advocates for the homeless who needed a lawyer. I began representing seven defendants in the criminal courts who the newspaper dubbed, “The St. Petersburg Seven,” a take on the famous Chicago trial.

The seven were all charged with criminal trespass. They had organized a work day at an abandoned house. Dozens of people had showed up and worked on wiring and plumbing, painting and sheetrock. The work was accompanied by a kiddie parade, a barbeque, and several music groups.

The police waited until after the barbeque when the house was ready for a homeless family to move in. Then they came in force and announced that everybody who did not wish to be arrested should leave immediately. Seven joined hands in the living room and began singing “We Shall Overcome.” They refused to walk out. The TV crews had a field day as the police joined hands to make “baskets” and the seven were carried out one by one. The music continued in the background.

I called the Washington, D.C., mission for the homeless, and they gave me the names of various civil rights lawyers who were helpful in advising me. I filed defenses ranging from necessity to portions of the U.N. Charter.

The newspapers were very sympathetic. There were daily articles, fueled by interviews with me and the seven defendants. Vital information about the causes and effects of homelessness were being passed on. Over sixty percent of the homeless were women with children under the age of ten. The loss of a month’s, or even a week’s pay, sometimes put a family over the edge. If they had to find another apartment, the first and last month’s rent, deposits of almost one thousand dollars for electric and water, was an insurmountable burden. The father of a family who had lost its rental apartment was the weak link. The man’s ability to work and provide for his family is his ego and his life. He cracked. The mother stayed with the children.

The “welfare lady” was most feared because she would take your children away to foster homes, and even if you could overcome the depression that in endemic to homelessness, you could never earn enough to rent a new apartment and pay a lawyer to sue to get your children back. They were gone forever.

Clare Hanrahan, the leader of the group of seven, ran a shelter for homeless women and children, and a bathhouse, fresh clothing, and telephone answering service for the men. Several of the others worked in shelters; one young woman lived on the street; she pretended to be crazy as a defense against predators, and one young woman cared for men dying of aids.

The level of commitment and self sacrifice was astonishing. Clare had chained herself with two nuns to the railroad tracks in Memphis where the “White Train” that carried nuclear warheads had to pass. One woman sneaked on to the grounds of a missile silo and planted seeds. She was caught and imprisoned, but in the spring, the seeds blossomed and spelled out “PEACE” on the side of the missile silo.

Later Clare together with hundreds of protestors stepped across the line drawn in the road at the entrance to Fort Benning, Georgia, was selectively arrested and spent seven months in a federal prison for women. Her book, Conscience & Consequence, is available through her website www.celticwordcraft.com.

The trial of the St. Petersburg Seven began. Two young prosecutors waited while my motion to dismiss was heard. I made an offer of proof. Midway through the day, the judge called the two prosecutors and me into his chambers.

“Mr. Honey, I am very sympathetic to your cause, but we have to end this trial. I am going to ask the prosecutors to make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

The two young men hemmed and hawed for a moment and then said, “Community Service.”

I asked how much community service.

“Forty hours,” was the reply.

“Your honor,” I said. “My clients operate shelters for the homeless and provide in-home care to the dying. They are on duty twenty four hours a day. Forty hours is less than two days caring for them.”

“I don’t care,” he replied.

“And,” I continued. “They won’t plead guilty because they aren’t as a matter of conscience, and they won’t promise not to do it again, also a matter of conscience.”

“I don’t care. Have them plead Nolo Contendere.”

I took the deal to my clients, who begged me to keep the trial going so the cause of the homeless would receive another day’s publicity. They said they were willing to go to jail if that would help.

I told them the judge was not going to let the trial continue and urged them to accept the plea bargain.

They did, and later in the week I filed a motion stating that all the defendants had completed forty hours of community service, and all charges were dismissed.

The St. Petersburg Times published a lovely editorial praising the seven and urging more be done to help the homeless. The City of St. Petersburg agreed to open the concrete hallways and restrooms of the unused baseball stadium on cold nights.
 

Reading Poetry With Allen Ginsberg

About ten years ago I was visiting Paris, and as usual made a call on George Whitman, owner of Shakespeare and Company Bookstore on the Left Bank across from Notre Dame Cathedral. I was pleased when George asked me to read my poetry at one of the traditional Monday night poetry readings.

I arrived at 7:30 in the evening outside the store, and a good crowd had already gathered for the reading. The lights of Notre Dame reflected off the sides of the cathedral across the Seine, and a street light in front of the bookstore illuminated the reading. Many famous poets had read at Shakespeare and Company over the five decades George had succeeded Sylvia Beach , and the scene was intimidating to a seldom published writer/lawyer from Auburn University in Alabama.

The reading began, and what George had failed to tell me was that Allen Ginsberg was the featured poet of the evening. For an hour Ginsberg held forth with excerpts from “Howl” and other poems to the delight of the large crowd. He is a wonderful, spellbinding reader with this tremendously strong voice. The crowd wouldn’t let him finish, and George urged him to read on, which he did into the second hour.

When finally Allen waved his hand and said, No, he had read enough, the crowd continued to clap. I was hoping that since Ginsberg had read into the second hour George would just cancel my reading. The crowd was still clapping for more Ginsberg as George introduced me as the second reader. The intimidation was staggering. I was tempted to disappear with those who were dispersing already after a fantastic reading.

A few people moved aside, and I walked to the small table Ginsberg had used and began to read as the crowd dwindled to a few hardcore who listened politely as I read very low key personal poetry. Allen was one of them, and I could tell he was tired, so I cut my offering short, and we chatted for a moment. He was encouraging, but he was known to be kind to new poets.

The Guatamala Airport

THIS STORY IS A GOOD METAPHOR FOR MY LIFE.

I looked down from the inside passenger seat as we approached the Guatemala City airport. The one story concrete terminal building with the wide veranda looked suspiciously like the one in the movie, “The Comedians,” taken from Graham Greene’s novel about Papa Doc Duvalier and the atrocities in Haiti.

I knew that Guatemala claimed part of the little country of Belize, where I was headed once I had changed planes at the airport down below. The ominous look of the terminal building also reminded me that several trips earlier I had scuba dived off Ambergris Key with a young military attaché to the U.S. embassy in Guatemala City. I was shocked to read in the newspaper several weeks later that he had been machine-gunned in his car in front of his apartment by Guatemalan rebels. The picture in the newspaper showed a small car riddled with bullets.

I awoke from my reverie to the voice of a stewardess saying we were preparing to land in Guatemala City. I checked my watch. We were late in arriving.

Next the stewardess asked if the passenger named Honey would identify himself. I wondered what that was all about. I prefer not to be noticed in strange lands. After the second request, I pushed the call button above my head.

A young, pleasant, olive skinned stewardess came to my seat and politely asked if I would gather my possessions and come forward because the control tower had asked that I debark first. “You can sit next to me by the door while we land,” she said.

I obeyed, of course, but I wondered what it was all about. Why was I being singled out?

We landed and taxied to a spot fifty or so yards from a terminal building. The door folded downward to almost touch the ground with the stairs built into the door. I looked out.

Surrounding the bottom of the stairs were five men in green uniforms. Four held automatic weapons with wire handles for gunstocks and the one directly at the foot of the stairs a sidearm.

I turned questioningly to the stewardess. “What’s happening,” I said.

“We were instructed that you should debark first alone.”

“Why?”

She shrugged and maneuvered in the small space by the door so I could not withdraw. Reluctantly I began to descend the stairs. The men stared at me or toward the terminal building across the tarmac. When I reached the bottom, I said hello to the man with the side arm and smiled wanly. I did not speak Spanish.

Nobody spoke. The four men with machine guns gathered on either side and behind me. The man in charge motioned curtly with his arm that I was to follow him.

Together we walked across the tarmac, one in front, two on either side, and two behind me, and up the stairs and across the veranda and entered the terminal building. They led me to a counter. A man in green uniform behind the counter said “pasaporta.” I didn’t have one. Neither Mexico nor Belize required one, and I hadn’t planned on stopping in Guatemala.

I laid out my ticket, Missouri driver’s license with awful picture, and other identification. The five armed men still surrounded me. Any proof of who I was or that I even existed was on the counter. The man in green picked up everything and left the room. All he had ever said to me was, “pasaporta.”

Several tense minutes passed, and a lovely young lady in a blue skirt and white blouse came back through the door where the man in green had taken my identification. She handed my papers back to me and said in perfectly lilted English, “We held the flight to Belize for you. It’s waiting outside.”

“My baggage,” I stammered.

“Your baggage is being moved now. Everything is being taken care of.”

“Thank you,” I said and motioned as if to ask where the plane was I was to board.

She said something in Spanish to the leader of my escorts, who motioned curtly that I was to follow him. Together we walked out of the terminal, one in front, one on either side, and two behind me, and crossed the veranda, down the stairs, and across the tarmac to where a twin engine plane with its engines running and its door stairs open and down awaited us. I climbed the stairs and looked back. The four men with machine guns surrounded the bottom of the stairs and the leader stood at the bottom of the stairs just as they had greeted me.

The door closed and we took off for Belize City. The rest is still a mystery.

Snapshots of My Life

Serendipity has followed me all my life. From my beginnings in the Thirties to my life as a student, lawyer, real estate developer, teacher, traveler, I have been fortunate. These are snapshots of my life, part of a book of over 200 pages that I have been writing for over a year now. That part of my life when I lived in the St. Louis inner city and met the young boys of the neighborhood for Saturday trips and enjoyed the friendship of Black Panthers, Black Egyptians and the Warlords is contained in a book soon to be available on Amazon entitled SATURDAYS WITH THE BOYS.