This is America, they say

But it could be something far more valuable

This is rather startling so I’m quoting the entire article:

An 82-year-old woman in Valley, Alabama was arrested on Nov. 27 after she reportedly failed to pay her trash bill amounting to $77.80.

According to a Facebook statement from Valley Police Chief Mike Reynolds, Martha Louis Menefield was arrested “on the charge of Failure to Pay-Trash.”

Menefield reportedly received a citation in August for failing to pay for her trash services in June, July, and August. The statement also declares that Valley Code Enforcement attempted multiple times to call Menefield, and later tried to get in contact with her in person at her home.

When their attempts apparently failed, they left a door hanger with information including the reason for the visit and a number to call.

The citation also informed Menefield that she was due to appear in court on Sept. 7, 2022. When she did not appear in court, a warrant for Failure to Pay-Trash was issued.

As CBS42 reports, Menefield was so surprised by the arrival of police she initially thought the situation was some sort of joke.

When it became clear to her that she really was being arrested over the unpaid trash bill, she asked one of the officers, “You’re not kidding?” They were not. Menefield, however, said she thought the bill had been paid, “but they said it hadn’t.”

The officers informed Menefield that they needed to handcuff her; she put her hands behind her back. They then told her that she could hold her hands out in front of her, and she did as she was asked. “And the cuffs,” she said, “They’re so heavy.”

Menefield said that one of the officers then told her not to cry, prompting her to ask him, “How would you feel if they came and arrested your grandmama?”

The officer didn’t respond.

“I’m just happy my grandkids weren’t here to see that,” she told CBS42. “That would have upset them. I was so ashamed. And it’s been bothering me.”

According to Valley Police, Menefield has had her trash services suspended three times in the past two years for non-payment, and additional records dating back to 2006 show at least 22 other incidents of suspensions and revocation of services.

So we’re talking about a serial non-payer here, right? 25 times in 16 years. So why is she surprised? This is clearly a hardened criminal, right?

But wait, there’s more.

“While our officers can use their discretionary judgment on certain matters,” the police statement reads, “the enforcement of an arrest warrant issued by the court and signed by a magistrate, is not one of them. Ms. Menefield was treated respectfully by our officers in the performance of their duties and was released on a bond as prescribed by the violation.”

Menefield claimed that she never received a notice to appear in court, and argued that if her bills hadn’t been paid, her trash bins should have simply been taken away and her service suspended. She said she felt the arrest was unjust and unnecessary.

“I was upset because I didn’t know why they would come and arrest me,” Menefield said.

After her arrest, Menefield was taken to the Valley Jail, and though she didn’t remain there long, she told CBS42, “I was in a little cage-like thing at the police station. And I said, ‘Y’all put me in this cage? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Wait. For all those violations she had services suspended. This is the first time they arrested her, apparently for failure to appear, which she claims she knew nothing about. So her surprise at the arrest is legit. The question is, did she see the initial court summons?

And again, there’s still more….

Her daughter, Neketti Tucker, meanwhile said that the unpaid bills should have never been considered a crime in the first place.

“This isn’t a criminal act,” Tucker said. “This is civil, if anything.”

My thoughts too. We don’t run poorhouses in this country or do we?

Tucker also said that several family members have since tried to pay Menefield’s bills — and the Valley Code Enforcement has told them they can’t.

Wha-a-a-a-???!!?? Nobody else can pay her bills? WTF???

The entire incident has also had a lasting impact on Menefield, a religious Southerner who has lived in the same house for 30 years and spent most of her life as a caretaker, either for the elderly or children.

“I’ve been questioning God a little bit,” she said. “I guess ’cause I’ve been so upset. I had a daycare here for eight years, and I’ve been asking the Lord. I say ‘Why did this happen to me as much as I’ve done for people, Lord? I’ve paid my tithes every Sunday. I ushered at church. I was just questioning. Something’s just not right.”

Indeed. I have questions. Is this a forgetful elderly woman? Someone who juggles her bills and screws up intermittently? How did she get released ‘on bond’ when nobody else was permitted to pay off her bill? Did her kids get to pay her bond?

So I went to Valley, Alabama facebook page and found more.


Today, WDHN-ABC reported this:

VALLEY, Ala. (WIAT) – She never made it to that doctor’s appointment. 

Dee Kent, then 77 years old, had been on her way from Valley to Opelika, Alabama, for a test that would determine if the cancer she’d already beaten twice had come back. But she wasn’t far into Lee County, she said, when she saw the blue lights. 

“And the doctor is waiting on me,” Kent recalled.

She wouldn’t make the appointment.

Police officers had soon handcuffed Kent and placed her in the back of their cruiser, under arrest for failure to pay a $141 trash bill. 

“I’ve never been so embarrassed,” she said. 

Dee Kent is one of at least two dozen people arrested for failure to pay garbage fees in Valley, Alabama, targets of a process that has criminalized debt in a city that contracts its solid waste services to a private company, AmWaste. A review of court documents shows that individuals arrested over unpaid trash fees in Chambers County are often people facing financial difficulties, people of color, or people with disabilities. Some residents, records show, have been arrested repeatedly, and most charged criminally with failing to pay trash bills end up paying hundreds in court costs and fees in addition to the bills themselves.

Okay, I get it now, so it’s a cash register that small towns use to harass poor people, like an old fashoioned speed trap. The article points out that the average debt owed is $122. Add another $329 for fines and court costs to people already struggling to pay.

And I finally found a picture of Martha, the original 82 year old in the first story.

There’s that hardened criminal. Their story continued with her.

Martha Menefield had thought she was alone. Arrested over a $77 trash bill in front of her Valley home, the 82-year-old woman had felt isolated and ashamed.

After Menefield’s arrest garnered state, national and international headlines, prosecutors dropped the case against her. But it was too late, she said. She knew she wasn't the only one.

Now, Martha Menefield is calling for others to get justice, too. She wants those in situations like the one she faced to know they’re not alone.

On Tuesday evening, Menefield’s water had just been turned back on after months of plumbing work. The trash ordeal had made an already bad situation worse. Now she felt she finally had some room to breathe. 

At one point, at the mention of Nortasha Jackson, the gas station worker arrested around the same time as Ms. Martha, Menefield’s granddaughter speaks up.

“Her kids used to come to your daycare,” she told her grandmother. 

Martha had been a caretaker – for both adults and children – over the years.

Martha’s granddaughter looked defiant. 

“The city doesn’t want the attention that's going to go with it, that’s why they dropped your case,” she continued. “But it shouldn’t stop here. This shouldn’t happen to anyone ever again.”

CBS 42 reached out to the City of Valley for comment but had not heard back as of publication time.

Really you should look at the others profiled in the second story, too.

Via Wikipedia, Valley was known for its textile mills. It sits on the border of Georgia, a little north of Columbus GA. It’s a town of less than 10,000 residents, about 54% white and 36% black:

About 18.2% of families and 20.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 28.4% of those under age 18 and 12.9% of those age 65 or over.

A number of people on the Valley facebook page aren’t liking the unwanted publicity of Menefield’s arrest with some saying there’s locals who’d cover these trash costs for people like her. Her story’s been on the Today Show and that publicity is clearly why they dropped the charges.

That’s good, until they arrest the next one who falls behind. But there’s some other points I want to make.

---

In Germany today, more than 2 dozen arrests were made in a case that utilized thousands of police and intelligence agencies. A violent right wing collective, including Q-Anon members, were conspiring to attack Germany’s parliament and overthrow the German government.

Their plot was thwarted before it came to fruition.

Also last night, our strange ex-president was hosting a Q-Anon speaker at Mar A Lago while his handpicked carpetbagger - Herschel Walker - was going down to defeat. He praised the Q-Anon speaker too. This occurred about 2 weeks after his meeting with anti-semite Ye, pedophilia advocate Milo Yiannopoulous and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes.

And while Germany was breaking up a major coup plot, Trump was praising a member of a group that was involved in the plot.

The US, two years ago saw its insurrection effort unfold with months of visible evidence that shit was gonna happen. Not only did a number of agencies fail to thwart the US effort, but some police took part. And some military members, active and retired. Even some members of the Secret Service may be involved.

Not just unthwarted, but the upper ranks of the criminals involved in the US attack are not yet being prosecuted two years later.

Why is Germany better?

Why are major criminals still on the loose here while 82 year old poor people are being arrested and threatened with debtors’ prison?

And why has the mainstream media not thoroughly criticized Trump hosting a Q-Anon conspiracy kook at the same time that Q-Anon was involved in a coup effort against a world power?

Martha Menefield’s nailed it exactly: “Something’s just not right.”

Meanwhile consider the culture of crookedness prevailing in the US these days, like:

1) The richest man in the world disposed of half of the employees of Twitter, turned offices into bedrooms and ordered the remaining staff to work, essentially, double time or get fired. And is promoting the advance of hate speech under the guise of a weak free speech crusade.

2) In 2018, a former National Security Agency translator was given the longest prison sentence ever imposed for unauthorized release of government information to the media after she leaked one report about Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. She was sentenced to five years and three months in federal prison.

One report. While the strange ex-president refused to return hundreds of top security documents for a year and a half. And he hasn’t even been charged for that. But the NSA translator working with the drone program was awarded the Air Force Commendation Medal for "aiding in 650 enemy captures, 600 enemies killed in action and identifying 900 high value targets."

Russia’s interference in the US election has also been well documented through multiple sources so it remains unclear why the translator was treated so harshly except that the strange ex-president was furious about any effort to claim Russia aided his election.

3) Why is Germany outperforming the US Justice system? Because ours has shapeshifted to a system that benefits the rich and powerful and sends the marginalized and poor to jail. It’s shaped by the greed of Trump and his father, Musk and his father and a few thousand others who view humans as tools to exploit and dispose of upon their whims.|

4)Why is the Texas AG still not in jail? Why is Matt Gaetz still not in jail? Why did no Wells Fargo employees go to jail after fraudulently using money from customer accounts to invest under fake names? And why is it that so many Republicans are caught committing crimes with so few actually sent to prison? Because it’s more convenient to fill lockup beds with 82 year old grandmas.

Despair is the easy way out when so much crap - seemingly unconnected - is going on. What’s needed is anger, righteous anger.

Recall that magistrate in Valley, Alabama for ordering Menefield’s arrest. Make exit plans from Twitter and NEVER BUY ANYTHING from a Twitter ad till you bail. Go after corruption and vulture capitalists. Break up big tech under anti-monopoly laws. If Lindsey Graham tried to seat alternate Georgia electors, or Giuliani or Mike Lindell, go just as hard after them as they currently go after people of color, immigrants fleeing to safety, LGBTQ people, drag queens and all other powerless people.

The bottom line is that we’ve normalized excessive greed. The Federalist society has done that. The majority of SCOTUS is doing that. Corporate lobbyists are doing that. Overpaid tv news anchors becoming disconnected from the middle class are doing that.

The powerful require scapegoats to keep us distracted from the crimes of the powerful. And arresting 82 year old struggling grandmas is the result. The refusal to teach the history of institutionalized racism is the result. Mass shootings in schools is the result.

And it only changes with a commitment to sustain the fight for human rights for as long as we’re physically and mentally capable. You gotta see the big picture, all the connections of the corrupted people with excessive greed or their mooks and sycophants working as their hitmen and propagandists and groupies. And yes, even some clergy are just as complicit.

Excessive greed will destroy the planet via climate change, class wars, hate and bigotry. All are driven by the sickness of excessive greed.

And you and we remain the best hope to change that. Make it happen.