Not Allowed to Speak 2

Tod Bloemsma raised the rent and drove the park into the ground, then sold it to Harry Canfield. Canfield raised the rent more, drove it further into the ground, sold the park to Dan Littlefield. Ah, but Dan is a fairly good guy, has some sense, is actually an excellent landlord: has improved the park in a zillion ways and hasn't raised the rent just to raise the rent.

On taking over he knew I had sued Canfield and had won: not much, my lawyer betrayed his own case rather than let an anarchist (once he realized I was an anarchist) speak before a jury. More on that another time: cut to the cut: Dan called me in to his office on first arriving: get aquainted with the misfit, the trouble maker: show strength, lay down some law.

Dan's wife, Diane, was present. Straight off I told the Littlefields that I am a disciple of Ivan Illich, a disciple of Jesus, that I am the deschooler, that I became the deschooler after failing to communicate with my university: my doctoral committee having interrupted my interpretation of Shakespeare rather than listen to a new reading. I assured Dan and Mrs. that the entire society had refused communications from God, from Christ ... from geniuses, from saints, all along: and specifically from Ivan Illich, my mentor in deschooling, and from me. I told them how Illich and I had conceived of digital librarianship and cybernetic networking to unite Christians in conviviality, protecting us from coercive kleptocracy.

Specifically I told how Ivan Illich, as a Monseigneur in the Roman Catholic Church had told the Church that
If it wished to become Christian
It would have to give upits property
its professional priesthood.
(As an anarchist follower of Illich I wanted Americans to do the same, secularly: give up property, privilege, professionalism, replacing them with conviviality and competence.)

Dan stood up, excused himself, promised to be right back. In his absence, Diane Littlefield, Mrs. Landlord, said, "I don't think he should have been allowed to say that."

I don't think he should have been allowed to say that.

I don't know Diane's religious (or political) practice, if any. But what can she possibly have meant? She didn't believe that monseigneurs in the Church should be allowed to transmit messages from Jesus? Shouldn't be allowed to speak, period?

Who should forbid him?

The Church did defrock him: prevent him from saying additional masses, stripped him of his resources (which he then replaced by private means: writing best-selling books!)

Note: my saying what I say can be seen as a matter of supposedly free speech under the supposed Constitution; but Illich was not an American. I believe he resided in Mexico when he said that about the Church, though he would have said it repeatedly as he spoke publicly on every continent. I heard Illich speak: in Mexico, through his publisher, as a guest speaker at Fordham ... He'd speak in NYC and be back in Cuernavaca the next day. Local politics are silly for a globetrotting philosopher/saint.

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There are so many details relevant here: not even Knatz.com could get them all said sensibly. Dan Littlefield may have been unclear on a point Harry Canfield would have been unable to explain. Harry had evicted me after Mike beat me up. For all I know Harry incited Mike to beat me up. Mike certainly knew that Harry, fundamentalists Baptist Harry, wouldn't mind if I got chopped in little pieces. So how come I was still in Dan's park?

Harry evicted me from the site Harry had rented to me: in 1997 or 1998, me having lived there since 1989. But years before, in 1991 or so, Catherine, in her eighties, the oldest resident left in the park and the longest-in-residence tenant, blind, deaf, crippled, had given me her trailer. So Harry evicted me from site 43, but to evict me from site 14, he would have also had to evict the old blind woman, the tenant most-senior by any measure.

But Harry will never know what's going on in any of his domains. Killing the messenger does not make the messageless wise.