Cyrus Joseph Bowie Arrest at SJRSC at Mayor Nancy Shaver's Symposium

Incomplete and sensationalistic local "news" accounts of the arrest of Cyrus Joseph Bowie at St. Johns River State College. Tempest in a thimble, a trifling event complete with judgmental stories and scare headlines.

What's going on here?

I've seen the video of the SJRSC student and the Mayor.

Mr. Bowie, 41, would appear to have trampled on civility with bullying boorishness when he read a barbed, canned speech attacking Mayor Nancy Shaver as a "white supremacist" because she supports retaining the memorials to dead local Confederate veterans, located on city property.

Mr. Bowie evidently feels strongly about it. But he lacks self-control.

But he didn't wait for question time before he made a spectacle of himself by standing at the back of the room and reading a speech.

Besides accusing HerHonor of being a "white supremacist," he claimed she wanted to "suppress protests" and was guilty of "criminalizing homelessness."

He would not stop yammering and chanting. How gauche.

He talked over Mayor Shaver.  How rude.  She was the invited speaker, a guest.

He would not allow Mayor Shaver to speak.  Students attended to hear her, not him.  How disrespectful of his fellow students' right to learn.  How intolerant of differing views.

To Mr. Bowie I give the same advice I publicly gave Rev. Ronald Rawls, Jr.: "Try tolerance" (in the wise words of a District of Columbia Court of Appeals Judge during oral argument of Gay Rights Coalition v. Georgetown University, 536 A.2d 1 (D. C. App. 1987).

Mr. Bowie's retromingent rodomontade rudely disrupted a talk on the Confederate monument debate.
Inartful and inappropriate on several grounds:
o Students have a First Amendment right to hear Mayor Shaver speak, then ask questions.
o Mayor Shaver has a First Amendment right to speak and was invited as a guest with the normal academic freedom, that Mayor Shaver would speak, and then students would ask questions and she would answer them.
o Mr. Bowie repeatedly said Mayor Shaver should "kill herself." That's weird, at best.
o Mr. Bowie would not leave when asked to do so, by a professor and school security.
o Mr. Bowie allegedly resisted arrest by SJSO deputies.

Mr. Bowie's tantrum give real activists a bad name. Words matter. Use them wisely. We've got a faux FOX NOISE "President"* whose words cause violence and create hatred. Don't be like him.

I've been an activist almost all my life.  At age 10, I interviewed New Jersey Governor Richard J. Hughes for my grammar school newspaper, the Orbiter.  At age 17.5, I went to work for Senator Ted Kennedy as an intern, starting the day before my first class, at Georgetown University the morning after hearing Ralph Nader speak at Gaston Hall.  I worked for Senators Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart and Jim Sasser on the Senate payroll, worked as an investigative reporter (helping halt coal slurry pipelines), and worked as an antitrust paralegal.   Then at age 24, I was hired as the Editor of the startup upstart uppity Appalachian Observer in Clinton, Tennessee, where we helped end the reign of a corrupt Sheriff and School Superintendent, with the Sheriff going to federal prison for four years.  We also won Department of Energy declassification of the largest mercury pollution event in the history of this frail planet, 4.2 million pounds of mercury emitted into creeks and groundwater, and into workers' lungs and brains. None of the Establishment newspapers stood up to the power of Sheriff Dennis O. Trotter, School Superintendent Paul Eugene Bostic, Sr., Union Carbide Corporation Nuclear Division, or the U.S. Department of Energy.  But we did.  My friend Jim Ramsey, the DA, dubbed our paper, "The Aggravatin' Disturber."  One fine day I caught the Anderson County Commission Budget Committee in a Sunshine violation with Sheriff Trotter; Commissioners had to re-vote everything they voted that night, with Commissioner H. Clyde Claiborne Ph. D., saying, "Just because the Appalachian Observer screams, we've got to jump through a God Damn hoop!?  (Yes, they did, as God intended).

I've asked questions, demanded answers and expected democracy all over this land.

As Woodie Guthrie sang, "This land is our land."

It occurs to me that what Mr. Bowie and other budding activists need is more book-learning and humlity and a lot less hot air and loudmouth hauteur.  We can disagree without being disagreeable, appealing to what Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature."

What some college students REALLY need is a course in how to be an activist citizen, with internships like mine.

I've discussed this with Flagler College President Joseph Joyner, suggesting that one of textbooks be former Florida Governor and Senator Robert Graham's book, America: The Owner's Manual.

I would be happy to discuss with local college presidents how to teach their students to be effective citizens.

We, the People, have won more than 70 public interest victories in St. Augustine since 2005.   It was not by being unassertive.  It was not by being disruptive, either. Decisions are made by people who show up/. If you show up with facts and law, you can make a difference in peoples' lives.

America needs "replacement democrats" (small "c"),  just like tobacco companies need "replacement smokers."  Otherwise, "democracy" is in danger.  We have "a republic, if you can keep it," as Benjamin Franklin told a Philadelphia lady after the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

We need future leaders and learners with a "catholic taste," (small "c"), who talk and learn from people with diverse experience.  (Some of my best friends are Republicans.).  As Bill Clinton said, paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin, "Our critics are our friends, because we an learn from them."

During my second semester as a college freshman, several of my friends and I went slumming, walking downhill to that lesser beacon of academia called "George Washington University."

We sat on the floor of the Marvin Center, where we heard an overrated former U.S. Senator Eugene J. McCarthy speak.  Gene McCarthy was one of two Democratic candidates opposed to the Vietnam War running in 1968 Democratic primaries for President.  He fooled a good man college students who supported him, over Senator Robert F. Kennedy. McCarthy was an elitist snob, whom Lyndon Johnson installed as a member of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee when Johnson was Senate Majority Leader -- McCarthy got the gig because he was safe with Big Oil tax loopholes like the foreign tax credit, intangible drilling costs and oil depletion allowance.

I listened to Senator Gene McCarthy.

I did not step on Senator McCarthy's preedictable lines.

I did not heckle him.

I was brought up better than that.

But when question time came, I asked former Senator Eugene J. McCarthy about how he said during the 1968 Oregon Democratic Primary campaign that the rich and smart people were voting for him and the poor and stupid people were voting for Robert F. Kennedy.  He blushed. The answer was evasive.  Got him. Got him good.  (For the rest of the night, Gene McCarthy would not call on anyone sitting near me at the GWU Marvin Center.)

During my last semester in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown Universty, the Exxon Chief Economist attended my International Business and Oil class for two hours.

After he spoke and distributed Exxon propaganda, I enjoyed cross-examining him for some 20 minutes about antitrust issues, including price-fixing cases where there were meetings and telephone calls documented.

Exxon's chief economist replied, affecting innocence, "Oh, that was just to cancel a duck hunt."

I replied, oh, "you mean like the duck hunt" that the presidents of the "Seven Sisters, the world's seven largest oil companies said they had when they met at Achnacarry Castle in Scotland in 1928, approving the "Red Line agreement" agreeing to cartelize Middle East Oil?  It was later documented by Senator Estes Kefauver and his chief economist, John M. Blair, later a professor at the University of South Florida.  (Dr. Blair wrote Economic Concentration and The Control of Oil, both classics).

Exxon's chef economist was not prepared for me.  He did not answer very well.  I later learned that he  proceeded to try to answer my questions for several hours over dinner with the invited International Business Diplomacy students, repeatedly referring to "our friend in the front row."

In the words of a copy of Senator Gary W. Hart's book, "Right from the Start," inscribed to me,  quoting from a line the former George McGovern campaign manager liked from War and Peace:"Remember General Kutuzov: 'Patience and time.'"

This is a teachable moment for the college, its students, our community and Mr. Bowie.

As Studs Terkel wrote about my friend and mentor, KKK-buster Stetson Kennedy, in The New York Times Magazine:

Stetson Kennedy, in all the delightful years I've known him, has always questioned authority --whether it be the alderman or the president. He has always asked the question ''Why?'' Whether it be waging a war based on an outrageous lie or any behavior he considers undemocratic, he has always asked the provocative question. In short, he could well be described as a ''troublemaker'' in the best sense of the word. With half a dozen Stetson Kennedys, we can transform our society into one of truth, grace and beauty.

Studs Terkel, Chicago (published January 22, 2006)

* * *

Back to the case of State of Florida v. Cyrus Joseph Bowie.

Based on the video and news accounts, I don't think State's Attorney RALPH JOSEPH LARIZZA will want to prosecute Mr. Bowie.

o Exercising his prosecutorial discretion, LARIZZA dropped charges against Mr. Bowie for a prior protest on the 450th anniversary of the City of St. Augustine on September 8, 1565.   He issued a nolle prosequi document on September 1, 2016 after defense attorney Thomas Elijah Cushman filed a persuasive Motion to Dismiss.  Mr. Bowie was charged with beating a drum and chanting on the occasion of the reenactment of Pedro Menendez's landing in St. Augustine.

o  LARIZZA' dropped battery charges against St. Augustine Beach Commissioner RICHARD BURTT O'BRIEN's campaign manager, LEONARD PATICK TRINCA over his alleged assault on candidate Rosetta Bailey, shoving her.  I was in the State's Attorney's office reception area while doofus Chief Deputy State's Attorney CHRISTOPHER FERREBEE met with Rose and Mark Bailey, refusing to prosecute TRINCA (on the basis of two hearsay affidavits of St. Augustine Beach Commissioner ANDREA SAMUELS, et. ux ROBERT SAMUELS about what they claimed they did not see, notarized by a legal assistant in the office of TRINCA's criminal defense lawyer, Patrick Canan).  FERREBEE did not take depositions. Instead, he took a dive, a favor from LARIZZA to RICHARD BURTT O'BRIEN, a fellow Republican.

Prediction:  In the Bowie case, after depositions and paper discovery, Mr. Bowie's criminal defense lawyer will no doubt file a motion to dismiss. Then LARIZZA will probably drop the case as one he could not win with a jury.

On the plus side, Mr. Bowie's ranting cant resulted in students sitting up and paying attention when Mayor Shaver finally got to speak.

I like and admire Mayor Nancy Shaver.

But Mayor Nancy Shaver and I strongly disagree on the Confederate monument issue -- I support the Confederate Monument Contextualization Advisory Committee's recommendations for contextualization, supported by Vice Mayor Todd Neville, Commissioners Leanna Freeman, Nancy Sikes-Kline and Roxanne Horvath.

But she and I can disagree without being disagreeable.  That's how God made me (and her), and how my parents raised me and my many mentors taught me.

Mr. Bowie should apologize.

Mr. Bowie should learn humility, and some manners and social graces.

And Mr. LARIZZA should authorize a nolle prosequi.