Half Life of Fear

My name is Ramona Mayon. I have been a nomad all my life but it wasn’t until I came to San Francisco – supposedly the most tolerant city in America – did I discover how hated I was for living in a black Blue Bird School Bus. Nov 13, 1997 when we had our first SPFD raid at midnight. It was the night before our wedding. Still married and still just as furious about the hate that continues to pour over my life. Hate that has been codified so it stills almost all the rights I inherently inherited when I took my first breath as an American Sept 1, 1960. The San Francisco police seized our bus Aug 14, 2006 for being an illegal home. Our youngest was only 11 and present for the horror. It tore us apart as a family, as mother and child. Nothing was ever the same. I have been writing ever since. We got another house-on-wheels within three weeks, and a newer one since, but nothing will ever be as sweet as that old black schoolbus. How can a home be a CRIME punishable by fines and up to six months in county jail? Well, in San Francisco it is!

HALF LIFE OF FEAR

from book of essays: Nomadic Proud

Essay written February 2007

We are a Catholic family of five from south Louisiana. We are as refugees in our own country. We lost everything except what we could carry out. But it wasn’t Hurricane Katrina that ripped away our home of a decade. No, this is fresh grief, barely 6 months begun and still raw to the touch. Even as I put pen to paper in a desolate wail, all I know is that I am consumed with this loss. Makes me nauseous to even try to encompass the scope of our emotional injury. This loss feels so endlessly unbearable. It is an agony that wakes me up in the middle of the night. It remains a physical pain even though it was, in the scheme of things, only a commonplace civil rights abuse.

What I find increasingly difficult to assimilate is that it was not an act of God that destroyed my little domestic world but rather, men. Specifically three men from the San Francisco Police Department and one woman from the D.T.P. who acted without the barest semblance of due process or regard for human dignity.

On August 14, 2006, shortly before 10 a.m. three SFPD officers knocked on my front door and told me that because our home was an “illegal residence” it was being confiscated forthwith. That we had half an hour to get my family’s belongings out and that if my husband or I resisted in any way, we’d be arrested for obstruction. You’re joking me, right? Wasted 23 of those precious minutes arguing that not even the cold, cruel place that is the City of San Francisco, not even they possibly put out a family out of a fully paid for and perfectly sufficient home. We’d spent three years in CPS court to establish that it actually is a home. Did it quite firmly. I insisted, of course, that the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment (right of the citizen to be free of Government’s unreasonable efforts to search and/or seize one’s person, property & paper) as well as the Fourteenth Amendment (right of equal access to due process) prevented this action; but mostly, I hysterically argued, to no avail, that no one could so cruel as to make homeless, three children about to begin school in exactly two weeks (ages 16, 14 & 10 years) not to mention their father, my husband, who suffers the ravages of a grim battle with Hep. C liver disease. He is so ill that his doctor certifies me, for the SSI & food stamps/welfare we receive, to be his 24/7 caregiver. More than once he has almost died from this quiet, debilitating disease for which there remains no cure. Although his condition is chronic, the danger is how quickly his health can become critical. Everyone knows stress is a toxin, but stress of this caliber could turn life threatening.

How could anyone do anything so heartless unless they were doing it knowing they were completely confident that not only the neighbors would be appreciative but also the legal and policing community are supportive? I can’t think of anything worse, short of murder, that one man could do to another than to, suddenly, without warning, deprive him of his ability to shelter his wife and children.

No notice, no paper, no procedure to appeal, no method of remedy. Instant eviction. How do we come to be deprived our home of ten years – July 5 1996 til Aug 14 2006 – without some sort of process? How do the authorities get the power to force an instant, paperless eviction under verbal threat of arrest? All without oversight of a judge? Let me translate what that meant to us that dreadful, bright, beautiful, sunny summer morning. At a quarter to ten, I was putting on a cup of tea to take with me to the beach so our youngest son, Merlin, could have his daily twenty- minute session of surf play on his skim board. We’d just spent half an hour fighting his damp wetsuit and applying the three sunscreen layers on both of us. I was highly aggravated and trying to convince him to go to the other beach. He was demanding we go to this beach because it was a harder-packed beach & he could skim long, long stretches. My husband was reading the newspaper & waiting from me to return from our daily exercise session. He told us to hurry because the pink slip (left on abandoned vehicles) said we had to move 10 am. “Get a move on,” he said gruffly to Merlin as the boy ran out the door. Then he flashes that Clark Gable grin of his at me and I’m no longer irritated.

We park the bus along the Great Highway levee after 10 pm while staying on the federal Ocean Beach, between Fulton & Lincoln, all day. Since the beginning of summer, Merlin had been in search of the perfect beach for his new beach hobby. He is impatiently waiting until I let him surf, so until then the best he can do is a skim board, which around Easter, his surfer buddies had hooked him up with, as well as a miniature wetsuit, which I was coming to regard as a thing similar to a high-maintenance seal. I was putting up with it even though I personally detest beach walking and sun-bathing, as our son is home-schooled I try to push him to get way beyond the required daily minimum exercise. So I was the one promoting the surf sport and his hunt for the best beach for skim-boarding. We weren’t bloody doing anything wrong. We weren’t raising hell. We’re raising children. We moved that bus every damned day, we know we have to keep moving. That one particular day, we decided to use that beach instead of another. We were using a stretch of parking not directly in front of somebody’s house, it’s like a thirty-block stretch of open-range parking and it isn’t reserved for anybody EXCEPT beach goers. Which is what we had been doing all summer specifically for Merlin’s new hobby: parking to look for his new favorite beach.

One minute you have a life, the next minute you don’t. At a quarter-to-ten in the morning I am putting on the tea kettle, looking for a piece of cheese to go with the heel of last night’s French bread, getting ready for a beach walk with my 10-year-old. An hour later, I’m sitting in a motel room surrounded by backpacks, boxes, and over-stuffed black plastic bags full of the shards of my home and I have just got off the phone telling our 16 year old that we’d just been disposed of the school bus and where he was to come “home” to once his shift at work ended. Numb from the reality that you only had enough to pay for two nights. A decent motel in San Francisco runs $130 a night. Mission flophouses run $60 a night and we sure weren’t going there. The money we had just spent on 2 nights would have been enough to carry our family until the end of the month, two weeks away. An hour earlier, my biggest domestic problem had been having to walk to the grocery store and carry back cat litter and a big enough bag of dry food for the ravenous pregnant stray that Zoë had brought in a month earlier, and she was just starting to put on weight – no one could ever tell us if Animal Care & Control came and took her off the bus.

An hour later I couldn’t see beyond 36 hours in front of me. Boom, just like that, from a cozy beach cottage of ten years into an over-priced motel full of our stuff and a completely panicked family. In an hour. An hour. One hour. I will never get over how little time it to dispose me of my home. Me, as assertive as I am and as much litigation as I have confronted, and yes, initiated. One hour. From having a calm haven, an affordable home for 5 in this bloody expensive San Francisco to immediate chaos.

In one hour. One hour. WHY? Because somebody – or rather, a bunch of somebodies – don’t like the way I present in their neighborhood? Is that even legal? Isn’t that the very definition of a hate crime? I lose because you don’t like the way I look. And here in a place that prides itself on their bleeding heart liberal façade, a City that likes nothing better than to market herself to the deep dark heart of America as a warm beacon. Come to San Francisco where we will accept you and use a progressive collective to support you in your march to a different drummer. Ha. Only if you are queer or of that strange tribe known as burners who create a city in the desert for a week in order to destroy by fire the art they create for months ahead of time. Freedom of speech and all.

Breaks my mother’s heart when my little boy occasionally says to me that it was his fault we lost the bus, if he’d have just listened to us and gone to the “big beach”, that he knew we’d gotten a “nasty neighbor pink slip” (as the kids call form 37A), that if he hadn’t been trying to be a surfer, we’d still be in our bus. Worse even, he refuses any invitation to take up his board again. Says he left his wetsuit in the bus, and the water’s too cold without it. Has no interest whatsoever. I know half a dozen surfers who would suit him up in a minute if he asked. I even offered to go to the surf shops to look at the new ones, suggesting maybe they’d have an affordable used suit. And he rarely goes on the beach to build sandcastles, which has always been his favorite activity. He doesn’t build just sand castles, but rather huge medieval villages.

The beach has been the constant backdrop in this child’s life. He has always lived on the beach in the bus. He was four months old when we moved into the bus and left a quiet south Louisiana bayou to come out west for our dream honeymoon trip: Highway One, Malibu to Seattle stopping in San Francisco for a private wedding in Golden Gate Park November 14, 1997. Merlin grew up in the bus visiting all the Pacific beaches south of here, not just San Francisco’s un-neighborly beaches. Our trip ended in San Francisco because of the onset of my husband’s liver disease. But we never lost that feeling of beach cottage, because we kept living in our school bus through thick-and-thin. Merlin had been waiting for me to catch up with him on the jogging path, nearby access to the beach, waiting and waiting for me. He ran back home after a few minutes, arriving to the sight of me yelling semi-hysterically at a cop who wouldn’t look me in the eye. I was yelling that we couldn’t make it without our bus. PLEASE don’t do this. I was crying and yes, I’m not ashamed to say, I was pleading with the cop to just please let us drive away. They didn’t have to take our home. It was a choice they made. What, I wonder, made them actually consciously decide to take my child’s home from him on that particular day? All his little childish treasures, his bed, his clothes, his pet, his toys, his books.

I knew from the start that this visit wasn’t like any of the others. It all went into a sort of slow motion nightmare from the second I saw Merlin coming up over the levee. I still remember the horrified look on his face. He started running at once and was having a hard time with the oversize board. He kept slipping on the grass. I was worried he’d twist his ankle as fast as he was coming. I made my tears dry up before he reached the bus. He told me years later that the reason hates surfers is because while waiting for me on the pathway, a surfer had told him “That big old ugly black bus is finally getting towed.” He said he tried to get home as fast as he could to keep it from happening. He was ten years old. Isn’t a day that goes by, in the year since, when I don’t replay that hour in my mind.

Like any victim of random brutality & violence: constant mental replay. That sense if only I’d done this or that, things wouldn’t have happened the way they did. I hate that. I hope publishing this book will stop that, freeze what happened once and for all. I still see him as he ran past the cops without a word, and jumped inside and immediately got peeled out of his wetsuit (which he usually can’t do by himself), dressed and sat nervously on the pink velvet sofa by the front door. This certainly wasn’t the first time we’d been confronted by the police. I would imagine from Merlin’s perspective, he was confident we’d be able to defuse the situation like we always had. Oh but this time we didn’t…we couldn’t. And he witnessed our utter failure to protect his home.

In the instant I fully realized that we were actually losing our home (and that was when the Sr. officer told me that if I didn’t get a move on, he’d not only be towing the bus, he’d be calling CPS to report to them our inadequate housing), I took my husband into our bedroom and I urgently whispered, “This is really happening. I can’t get them to even listen to me. They’re like Panzer tanks. You have to get Merlin out of here. There’s a crowd gathering, we can’t stop this but we can control how much Merlin has to see of it. He’s only ten. He can’t be exposed to this. Please. I want you to leave with him right now, go to the bus stop two blocks over and then go to that blue motel across from the zoo. I’ll get our clothes, my manuscripts, nothing else and I’ll call a taxi. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. He’ll barely miss me. I give you my word: I promise I will come immediately. I won’t fight them. I give you my word I will just leave. We’ll get the bus out of the tow yard later. The tow truck will be here any minute. This is too outrageous. I don’t want Merlin to see his bus towed away. That’s just too visual a memory.” As I write this, I just realized something: to think that was the last moment we shared in our bedroom is too sad. At that point, I really thought we’d get the bus out and life would go on as before. I was desperate to get Greg away from this impossible situation, before the stress and the noon sun caused a seizure or worse. I will remain eternally grateful to my level-headed husband who instantly complied without further argument.

He took Merlin by the hand, pausing only long enough for me to hug my little boy at the door and explain that Daddy and he “were going to get us a motel room, at that nice place by the zoo. The police were definitely taking the bus, but we’d work something out to get it back. Not to worry, I’ll bring all your toy soldiers, legos, and your gameboy. A motel vacation would be nice. Don’t you dare use up all the hot water before I can get there.” I can still see Merlin’s face as he rounded the corner, looking back at me, still holding his father’s hand, as he looks over his shoulder back at me. Nothing but unbreakable steel in those eyes. I could see the man he’ll be one day, I could see it in the way he lifted his chin and gave me a brief nod as he walked away from the only home he’d ever known, seeing it for the last time surrounded by cop cars whose lights were still flashing like it was a crime scene. Not a tear in sight.

The one who took losing our beloved schoolbus the hardest was our then-fourteen-year-old daughter, Zoë, who had been out of bed only a few minutes when the police arrived, still tousle-headed and in her flannel pajamas, eating a bowl of cereal, reading the comics. Our 16 year-old had already left for his job as courtesy clerk @ Safeway on Ocean Beach. We also have another boy, Zachary Bleu, who joined the Marines last fall. There are two more adult children in Louisiana and another in Lake Tahoe. Which means that we are mature adults devoted to family and not a couple of filthy hippies. Which is how we were treated by the City’s agents, in the presence of the two youngest children when I was asked by the DPT female “Why didn’t I provide real housing for my kids, so this wouldn’t have to be happening to them.” She was dripping with sarcasm and obvious hatred.

This DPT agent told the Commissioner of 10/2/06 hearing that she had towed the bus because it was not running. The 4 pink slips and a SFPD ticket from a five-week period prior to the loss of our home, all showed separate blocks of the Great Highway as our location. It meant absolutely nothing to the Commissioner that DPT * 287 had lied, while my documentation clearly stood as factual. This shows a 14th amendment violation of our right to equal access to the law. In plain English, that means that if those in authority dislike a certain group of citizens, it is not necessary for City agents to tell the truth because the goal of urban cleansing has been achieved. The greater good for society had been served.

When Zoë saw her father and little brother walking away, she ran up to me and grabbed me by my shirt, “Mama, no!” and then ran out the front door, pajamas or not, before I could grab her and explain. Explain what? That we were homeless? That I was caving in to the hate that has surrounded our lifestyle for nine years? That I wouldn’t risk everything – that would be Greg’s health – for that ugly old outlaw black Bluebird bus? That I didn’t love it like she did? She ran straight up to the bulldog cop, yelling furiously that she loved her bus and no stupid cop was going to make her leave, they’d have to arrest her first. The bulldog laughed and his partner said, “no problem, we can help you out with that. Be glad to.” By the time I got outside, she was beyond furious. I walked up to the sr. cop and told him that since I was cooperating, that my husband had already complied and left the scene, and that was the one who was the one to worry about, didn’t he agree? That the only way I was able to calmly leave our home was my confidence that a judge would un-do what he was doing today. “So whatever you do to my fourteen year old daughter will be duly noted. I know my girl, she’ll resist arrest, I’m telling you boy, she’s a scratcher, loves to bite, house full of brothers will do that to a girl, she thinks she’s tough, you know. Jeez, you’ll have to shackle her and her a little girl. By then, I’ll have the press here. Or you could just be a gentleman, now that you have deprived us of our home, and call me a taxi.”

Completely bluffing that the battery wasn’t dead in the cell phone that I had snapped open like a pro. He pulled his out and dialed the cab company. By then, Zoë had found her voice and was beginning to bark out the various amendments, frequently returning to the phrase PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS & LIBERTY with a punctuated scream. I remember shaking my head at her command of her rights. “Sixth amendment, that one too! Right to confront your accuser! You tell me who out there wants us gone!!! Who keeps calling my bus in like it’s a piece of trash instead of my home! I LOVE MY BUS! Fourth amendment!!!!! That’s the one. This is sooooooooo UNREASONABLE!!!!!” I could see the sr. cop slide into the bulldog’s place, ready to be beat up by a little girl in full charge of her Constitutional rights and would stop what was going on or go to jail trying. The look he gave me as I went by to go in the bus told me I didn’t have more than just a few minutes to gather what I could from the debris of five childhoods and a happy marriage. How do you put that in a suitcase? Made myself think that a hurricane was coming, a tornado was around the corner, an earthquake had happened, a wildfire was tearing up the hillside. What to take. Photos. Wedding dress. Basic toiletries. The books on everyone’s bedside table. Wait, dump everything on everyone’s bedside table into their own suitcase of whatever clothes I can find. Look in the laundry/don’t forget/I did. All Greg’s medications. Aspirin. Cough syrup. A box of food from the kitchen for supper and breakfast at least. What should I bring? Will the motel even have a microwave? Bring the tea things anyway. Can’t bring the cat/couldn’t drag her out from under the bed where the Christmas boxes (nine of them/brought half of them) are stored. Don’t forget to leave out water. Hardly any dry food. Open a few cans of tuna more than she’ll eat all at once. What toys are Merlin’s favorites?

I got only the boys’ baby books but forgot mine and my daughters’ baby books. It had the only sample of my late mother’s handwriting in it. Only one of two things on earth of hers that I had (her pale pink wedding dress/got that). Lost all the little notes from my children and love letters from my husband. And I lost twenty years of journals, but I especially yearn for my honeymoon diaries. Couldn’t find the vest that my husband wore on our wedding day. Couldn’t bring out any of my kitchen stuff, the things that had mixed and served a decade’s worth of birthday cakes, Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas feasts, and romantic dinners. Who knew memories were tied up in dishes? Something that can be broken so easily.

By the time the growing pile of goods had gotten Zoë’s attention, I had also managed to include my legal files (from litigation with the fire dept. in 1999) and manuscripts (more than half about said litigation) out there. Her furious, though obviously futile, discourse on her civilliberties had given me another twenty minutes to gather stuff. All that was left were her things. Maybe more pillows, more blankets, a mug for my tea. The two younger cops kept telling me every time I went out with another armload, “Don’t take so much, you’ll get your bus back.” After the third variation of this, I stopped and asked why then were they making me leave in the first place, “What are you doing, trying to teach me a lesson? I have a sick husband and young, impressionable children. I have no time for games, even though it’s obvious you do.” They looked at one another and snickered. They laughed out loud.

My daughter was going full blast in front of the bus oblivious to the gathering crowd. She was putting on an oration that would have made a Supreme Court justice sit up and pay mind to, never mind she was still barefoot in pink flannel pajamas and her freshly dyed, rip-roaring magenta red hair looking like she’d slept in a hay loft. Until she was 13, Zowie insisted she was going to be a federal prosecutor. That may not happen because I’ve already hung up on three modeling scouts. Once she’s old enough to not need my signature, I doubt she’ll be able to resist that road scattered with so much easy money. So I paused to watch what may have been her only court appearance. She was stomping from one cop to the other adamantly defending her mother’s choice of housing. She was magnificent in her defense of our Constitutional rights. She ran out of steam about the same time a passer-by in a car flagged over the sr. officer. I was watching my daughter when she saw the pile of stuff. “Why?” she demands and follows me into the bus, accusing me of lily-liveredness (is that even a word?) and assorted other states of civic cowardness.

The sr. cop comes in the bus uninvited and asks if we’d heard what the neighbor driving by had to say about this “situation”. Zoë replied haughtily, “No, we’re a bit busy.” But she crumpled upon hearing his reply, “He shook my hand and thanked me for finally doing my job and getting rid of this ugly, old, black school bus.” I stepped in front of my little girl, who’d run up and down the hall of this happy home that happens to be a bus with her brothers since she was five years old. I crisply replied “Well, now don’t you feel good? That should help you sleep better tonight knowing that while you made a family of five homeless, you were just doing your job.” It gave Zoë just enough so she was able to pull herself together and under the watchful eye of the sr. cop, she helped me collect her older brother’s wardrobe. I turned away to put some more of Merlin’s toys in another plastic bag, telling her to pack the white Samsonite suitcase with her clothes. But instead, she loaded it down with her brothers’ clothes & shoes. She brought nothing of hers off the bus, and to this day remains devoid of her possessions or the memorabilia of her childhood. I should have known to pack for her; she was just cooperating because she was out of breath.

She saw the taxi pull up at the same time as I did and physically collapsed. I suppose the sight of it made everything come into focus. I scooped her up as she began to fall into the driver’s seat, and I uncurled her fingers from the steering wheel even as she clutched for it, her face contorted into tears again. “Listen to me,” I hissed as I none too politely pushed past the cop still in my house and propelled her down the stairs, “Sweetheart, if you let them arrest you, they win,” as I motioned to the crowd all around us enjoying the spectacle of shame that SFPD was putting on for them. Zoë was sobbing inconsolably when the taxi driver came up to us, a friendly older woman, who spoke with a Russian accent.

It registered in my own distraught mind that no doubt her background had seen plenty of human rights abuse wherever behind the Iron Curtain she came from. As I watched her approach this ridiculously public spectacle my life had become, I said to myself cynically, bet she never thought she’d be seeing this kind of business in the good ole U.S. of A. She immediately took charge of our departure, even though she barely spoke English, she could see what was going on. She went to her car and turned on the air conditioning, then opened the back door, holding it like she was the chauffeur of a luxury limo, she kept motioning my hysterical daughter to come over. It took five very long minutes, and I was holding my breath. I kept stroking Zoë’s hair, while the nice plump Russian grandmother kept on motioning, saying terms of obvious endearment in her native tongue. Finally, she straightened her head, squared her shoulders, though still crying with hiccups, finally went over and got into the taxi. The driver came over and began a high speed shuffle of my goods into her car. I never seen any body load a car as fast and when it was looking like I’d have to put back some blankets (even the front seat was loaded) she insisted on putting them on Zowie’s lap (to comfort her probably). I think she had obviously been a refugee at some point in her past, because she grabbed them from me as I was throwing them back in the bus, “No, no. You vvvill need zeem!” as she stuffed them in the front seat. “More? More? Yaa, More?” I indicated no and she pointed to the taxi, “Go now!” I’m sure she knew this would be the hardest part. It had taken fifteen minutes to load and she was aware that I too was crying by now. Oblivious to the nasty neighbors gathered all around, I stopped at the front of my bus and kissed the hood. It had taken me everywhere I’d wanted to go for ten years. It wasn’t just a set or wheels or even a home. It was my steel horse and I’d loved it forever. Even now, I still can’t believe it’s gone. Every time it rains, I catch myself worrying about having left the windows open and all the old-fashioned quilts I’d used to line the walls and give it a cottage look are getting ruined. As if it is somewhere out there waiting for me to come home to. If I knew where it was I’d go to it this very second!

The sr. cop was standing by the front door when I went in to get the key out of the ignition. He told me, “You don’t need those.” I looked at him for a long minute before replying, “Well, neither do you.” Then I closed the door on the best home I’d ever had, the coziest space, the sweetest shelter any mother ever rocked her new baby in. I refused to believe that I’d never sleep again in the bed that my husband had built for me in my father’s front yard a decade ago. I always planned to be an old woman in that bus. It was what I’d always wanted. All I’d ever wanted. The deepest peace and the truest freedom I’d ever know were the years we’d spent inside an old, ugly, black Bluebird school bus. And it was over. In one hour. My daughter was right, I should have fought harder. I should have gone to jail/called the press/gone on a hunger strike. Instead, I got in a taxi and wept as we drove away while a stranger petted my shoulder and cried right along with me. That poor woman was so upset for us. I learned that day that a human rights abuse can transcend any language barrier. Zoë walked into to the motel room and straight into the shower. Merlin ran in & out ferrying our goods, obviously his world was right side up now that I had arrived. By the time Greg convinced the driver that she had to let him pay her, Zowie had redressed and walked past us, snubbing my questioning look. For the next four months, she refused to come anywhere near me. She stayed at her girlfriends’ homes in rotation. Borrowed their clothes. Ate at their tables. Slept in their beds. Let their mothers know she was falling apart without her home. She only started come back at Christmas. But has continued to hate me deeply. Also refused to go to any San Francisco public school. Dropped out. She now attends high-school online until she’s old enough to get her G.E.D. She refuses to discuss going to college at all. She’s decided she’s not “cut out for the Law”, as she icily told me New Year’s Day. What she lost on August 14, 2006 at the hands of the City was her belief that the Constitution could make a difference.

This isn’t just happening to me & mine. When I made a desolate trip to the tow yard (end of August) to retrieve more of our belongings (you must get written permission from the police to go into your home, while a tow yard employee stands watch and times you exactly 15 minutes), throughout the tow-yard, I saw seven different R.V.s that were usually occupied as homes in the Richmond/ Sunset/ Haight Ashbury area. Including our family of five, that makes twenty or so folks made homeless, as well as a dozen dogs and our pregnant cat. This isn’t a hate crime? This is ok? Our Heavenly Father saw to our human needs just as His Son assures us in the Bible that He will.

Our earthly family refused to help with the mounting costs of the bus ($650 for the towing and $98 per day); although they, of course, did help immediately with a further three days @ motel, but once they realized we wanted to rescue the bus (again) all they’d help with was five Greyhound tickets. Our son’s paycheck bought another two nights. Every day was only about keeping a roof over our heads. Even as I trembled and shook in the terror of being homeless in San Francisco, God had already put His plans into motion. Even as I wept in frustration at the thought of even trying to shoulder the local rental costs, even as I sat horror-struck and terrified, no idea where to start, He had already finished. It took the usual blind faith walk to figure that out. From the very hour we lost the bus, Zoë had been on the phone to the staff at the Sunset Youth Services. Our kids have gone to their Center for years, though I’d met them maybe only half a dozen times. They’d participated in field trips, movie trips, Christmas parties, volunteering on Saturdays at their food pantry. Before I’d even gotten to the motel, the SYS staff had already put in multiple calls to the Captain of Taraval Police Station. Unfortunately he was “gone on vacation”. I am sure he was. Within 15 minutes of my arrival at the pretty motel, Maria from the Center was on the phone inviting me to the prayer group that night. Throughout the next weeks of living out of suitcases, the Sunset Youth Services were Christ’s message in motion. They cheerfully ferried our family and an enormous amount of STUFF from motel to motel (five in all), took us to the impound yard for another half hour of possession retrieval, all that one S.U.V. could carry out. They bought Zoë new clothes and school supplies. Took me to the emergency room when I thought I was having a heart attack that turned out to be (just) stress-related chest pain. They stepped in again and again with motel rent and a four days at their church with a full kitchen.

Maria sent an en mass e@mail for a ‘Sunset family in need’. Yes, of course I found it a bitter irony to be called that since it was indeed Sunset neighbors who had insisted that we be gotten rid of. I already knew from three previous major repairs and dozens of minor ones that there was no help from the local charities. It wasn’t just the neighbors and the police and the bureaucrats that hate the gypsy. Charities simply refuse to do repairs on buses & RVs telling you to your face your home is illegal. And every day it was another $98 storage fee on our poor bus. Despair set in.

And then came the terrible morning, the worst hour of our marriage was when he had to tell me that we couldn’t rescue the bus. when my husband turned around and barked at me, “The bus is gone, don’t you get it? Too much time gone by, too much money, too much work, the bus is gone. You’ve got to accept that it’s not going to be rescued. And even if we do, you know the cops will do exactly the same thing.” By then I was crying like Zowie did two weeks earlier, except I had a bathroom to lock myself in, a hot tub to run while I sobbed my way into this harsh reality check. I got dried off, dressed, walked out of the motel room only saying, “Now I’ve got to go tell the staff at the Center forget the damn bus.” Unbeknownst to me, the SYS staff were ignoring the usual route of looking for an apartment, even as I was locating different charities to patchwork move-in costs. Every day found me more frantic than the one before. All I could think was how I couldn’t find my faith. I’ve been a fundamental Christian my entire life. I don’t remember ever not being a Christian. I was in a completely faithless place. I spent sleepless nights asking myself not how to get my bus back, but rather how to get my faith back. Then came the mildest whisper one night, that while it was true I obviously hadn’t been holding up my end of the covenant, God wasn’t any different. He hadn’t gone anywhere. His end of our relationship was just fine. It had to be. I held onto my sanity with that tiny little thought: that God couldn’t do anything but be God, even if I was out of faith. This was my mustard seed.

On September 6, 2006, still my birthday week, the director of the SYS called up and asked me to meet her downstairs in five minutes. As we stood there chatting about the morning’s doctor visit for my husband, she nudged and pointed out her husband driving by in an R.V. waving & grinning. After hugging everybody there twice, I ran upstairs to get Greg, taking two flights of stairs three stairs at a time. I burst into the room and gasped “Hurry, hurry, come on, come on.” He followed me with no idea of what was wrong. The look on his face when he saw the R.V. was beyond description. Relief melted us into a puddle. While we lost our beloved bus, we were able to return to our same daily routine in a small R.V. within three weeks. Sunset Youth Services stopped homelessness in its tracks.

Couple of months ago Merlin suddenly clutched me as I was delivering the usual nighttime glass of water and eleventh kiss & hug. He chocked out a tiny sob, which of course caught on my maternal radar. I stroked his cheek until he said in a furious, chocked voice, “I always hated going to court before, those years when CPS made us fight to stay in the bus. But now, Mama, I want you to get me a judge so I can tell him that they just took my house, they took my stuff, all my stuff, I had so much cool stuff, it’s all gone, my bike, all my hot wheels, I had almost a hundred, all my favorite pants were under my bed dirty, my comics, and what about all the pictures I drew you, and what about the other bears! Mama, I wanna tell a judge how bad this feels. Can you do that?”

Everyone in the house was crying, each of us silently allowed Merlin’s pent-up anguish to mirror our own individual losses that morning. I gave my word that I’d try. That I would really, really, really try. The children look at me as the family lawyer (not the gypsy I was) as their father and I had to fight the city for three trials and I wrote countless briefs and letters, attended endless hours of meetings to keep them in our possession. I put my kids to bed at night with fear in my heart. Of course I do. But never mind my fear, tell me what’s going to be the half-life of the fear planted in our children’s psyche?

Merlin was just two years old when he came to live on the front line of his parents’ war. In these pictures, you can see the joy on his face. He was a happy child, but look at his face close down in the photos taken a few weeks after the bus was seized. He is 17 now and has spent his whole life being lied about by multiple city agents. He’s suffers from PTSD, says his therapist. When a recent juvenile justice official asked me what happened to him bad enough to cause PTSD, before I could even answer, he laughed out loud, horribly sarcastic. I told her that he had been raised under a brutal, refugee-like experience of having his home threatened by police for many years in the middle-of-the-night raids and then finally seized when he was 10 years old. That it had been his home since he was four months old. Sounded traumatic to me.

*

Old Case against City of San Francisco for seizing our school bus in 2006

forced a jury trial (pro se) but lost it 11-1

It was an odd feeling a few weeks ago (March 2012) to discover the FOLLOWING document below that I wrote and filed pro se in 2008 to the California Appeals court that had been uploaded by a stranger and viewed 99+ times at DocStore. The company keeps sending me an email asking if I want to pay to join their ‘shop’ and download this (apparently with the evidence line, since the package comes in at 56 pages). This is probably my 23rd or 24th brief I have written in this swamp, because only the litigation with IAFF local had a real lawyer. And of course, I wrote dozens of letters to anyone I thought would help us. These briefs and letters are merely gravestones where our civil rights died because we are Travellers.

Mayon v. City & County of San Francisco

I lost the jury trial 11-1. This the appeal I filed in case #A122996

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
FIRST APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION THREE

Greg & Ramona Mayon
appellants, pro se
v
City & County of San Francisco
respondent

4th amendment violation:
illegal seizure of schoolbus/home under
the Banes Civil Rights Act

APPELLANTS OPENING BRIEF
in appeal from Jury Trial Verdict 21 July 2008
in the Superior Court of San Francisco County

INTRODUCTION

Before the jury was a simple matter of property seizure with the enhancement of the Banes Civil Rights Act. When the trial court compelled appellant Ramona Mayon to answer Deputy City Attorney’s question of whom she had sued ten years earlier (i.e. Superior Court of San Francisco #300155 Mayon & Mayon v. San Francisco Toy Program & S.F.F.D. local# 798 for theft of mail, settled out-of-court 6 July 1999), it was not acting in accordance to California Evidence Code 1119 (a) “No evidence of anything said or admission made for the purpose of, or pursuant to, a mediation is admissible or subject to discovery, and the disclosure of the evidence shall not be compelled, in the arbitration, administrative adjudication, civil action or non-criminal proceedings in which, pursuant to law, testimony can be compelled to be given.” That would include even the existence of said confidential settlement.

Revealing the nature of this litigation/identity of those sued made the jury biased against appellants. This is even more true when Deputy City Attorney again attacked appellant’s credibility as a witness when appellant was compelled to admit – again by the trial court – that her children had been held by the City of San Francisco under a legal but not physical custody (hotly contested for 3 years 10 July 1998 – 11 June 2001). This is prohibited under the Adoption Assistance & Child Welfare Act (Public Law 96-272). Was it really a matter of justice to reveal this? Not with the children involved sitting in the courtroom. Appellants believe their right to a fair trial was violated by these two unethical questions by Deputy City Attorney Meredith Osborn.

STATEMENT OF CASE

On 14 August 2006, appellants were in possession of their property, a 32′ retrofitted 1979 black Bluebird schoolbus, which had been their home since 5 July 1996. At the time of the seizure, it sheltered both the appellants and their three children, then ages 16, 14 and 10 years old.

According to the City agent, D.P.T. Denise Buitrago, she arrived @ 10:45 a.m. on 14 August 2006. Three days earlier @ 10:37 a.m. she had left form 37a, the so-called “pink tag” placed on vehicles left broke down or abandoned on the street. According to her sworn testimony (appellants recognize that they are at a distinct disadvantage being on welfare/food stamps and not being able to afford the luxury of being able to present record of testimony, but nonetheless stand on what was said). D.P.T. Buitrago arrived 8 minutes past the 72 hours given on the form. She stated that she began writing a citation but was interrupted by the appellants who became “verbal” and she called the S.F.P.D. @ 10:58 a.m. thirteen minutes after arriving. Police records showed that the first of three patrol cars arrived @ 11:08 a.m. By 12:05 p.m. S.F.P.D. records show a taxi being called for Mrs. Mayon and her daughter. When this case was first filed, appellants believed that the police arrived earlier than the 10:37 a.m. but during the trial it was established that no one in the Mayon household had a functioning watch and their cell phone battery had died. Upon seeing the police records, appellants concede that they could not pin down the time of arrival properly. At no time did D.P.T. Buitrago approach the front door of the schoolbus until after the police arrived.

The matter before this court revolves around the issue of truthfulness on the part of D.P.T. Buitrago in her reason for ordering the tow in the first place. It is coercion to lie, bringing the case under the Banes Civil Rights Act: California Civil Code 52.1 “if a person or persons, whether or not acting under colour of law, interferes by threats, intimidation or coercion, with the exercise or enjoyment by any individual or individuals of rights secured by the Constitution and the laws of this State.

Whenever there is cause to believe that any person or groups of persons engaged in conduct of resistance to the full enjoyment of rights described, California law allows for greatly expanded compensatory damages, substantial fines, injunctive and other appropriate equitable relief as well as attorney fees.” The California Supreme Court has characterized section 52.1 as requiring “an attempted or completed act of interference with a legal right, accompanied by a form of coercion.” California Constitution declares “all people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among those are defending life and liberty; possessing and protecting property; pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness and privacy.”

In Kincaid v. City of Fresno, Judge Oliver W. Wagner of U.S. District Court of the Eastern California (June 2006) issued a permanent injunction prohibiting the City of Fresno from continuing “the practice of announce, strike, seize, and destroy (the property of the homeless) immediately is against the law” and “violates the constitutional right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.”

I. Federal & California Constitutions prohibit unreasonable seizure of the citizen’s property

ARGUMENT

This is a seizure of property case by the City’s D.P.T. Denise Buitrago who on 14 August 2006, executed an illegal tow of appellants’ schoolbus when she lied to the S.F.P.D., specifically she informed the officers that appellants’ property was non-operative and had been standing long enough to come under the so-called “pink tag” notice (evidence 1). During the jury trial D.P.T. Buitrago testified that she arrived at exactly 8 minutes past the specified 10:37 a.m. on the “pink tag”. She wrote a ticket @ 11:15 a.m. (evidence 2). She had called S.F.P.D. @ 10:58 A.M. (evidence 3) to report that appellants were not cooperative. When she was questioned over the telephone by D.P.T. Commissioner M. Onderdonk on 2 October 2006, she would clearly state that the bus “was not in running condition and could not have been moved.” (Evidence #4)

A. Appellants presented 6 City-issued documents that showed their bus parked at 6 locations up and down the Great Highway for the twelve weeks prior to the tow (evidence #5) as recent as five days prior. The bus was operable, because if it hadn’t been, then the appellants would have certainly availed themselves of the extension -by-phone that D.P.T. offers on form 37a.

B. This was their home, not a rusted-out hull of a bus broke down across the street from some poor resident; no, the Mayons had, over their ten years of ownership, replaced two engines, a transmission, two clutches, two radiators, three exhaust pipes, two brake jobs, an entire wiring harness, and from 2002 – 2003 replaced 6 over-sized tires that each cost $350.

C. The three neighbors whom the City called in to testify, each commented on some aspect of the bus’s exterior: fully blacked-out windows; the plain flat black paint; well-kempt; Christian icons prominently on display. More significantly, each was asked in turn how long the bus had been parked across the street: 1 to 2 weeks.

II. The sworn duties of the on-scene S.F.P.D. require that after due diligence, they ascertain who is telling the truth in any given situation.

ARGUMENT

That this was a situation that D.P.T. Buitrago brought about by lying, for whatever reasons that are only known to her, is an abuse of power. However, it is also offensive that the police on scene to enforce calm aren’t to be held accountable for their refusal to allow appellant Mr. Mayon to start his bus to show it was running. To tell him that he would be arrested if he started it, on the grounds that he would be interfering with D.P.T. Buitrago’s official duties, that continues the coercion began by the meter maid. Mr Mayon suffers from advanced liver disease (chronic Hep. C) and lung/back injuries due to a 16 December 1998 assault. While stable, his health can turn critical within hours. His health (evidence #6) cannot take being man-handled by a group of cops, much less 2 or 3 days in county jail. For the officer on the scene to prohibit the owner of the vehicle from exhibiting that his property was operative puts him squarely in the wrong because as a police officer it is his duty to ascertain – as much as is in their ability and the evidence allows – who is telling the truth. By refusing to allow Mr Mayon to start the bus, it is obvious that the truth did not matter.

III. Documentable prejudice for the gypsyTraveller (known in San Francisco as the vehicularly-housed) led to the assumption by all involved that there would be little, if any, demand for truth-in-evidence as guaranteed by California’s Constitution.

ARGUMENT

Appellants are in no way trying to convince the court to consider the constitutionality of the anti-gypsy law (evidence #7) in place since April 1971 – – – no doubt a time of over-population that required such a draconian approach.

Throughout the jury trial, appellants were forced to keep focused on the events of the day in question. At no point were they allowed to express frustration over a municipal code that legalizes hatred. There are signs posted everywhere, stating ‘habitation of vehicles prohibited’ and ‘fine/jail’. Think what you will about the appellants’ alternative lifestyle (and it is one that is engaged in by literally millions of Americans at any given time under a myriad of circumstances), this type of posted sign encourages harassment. Occasional articles appear in the newspaper. There are neighborhood groups that patrol the area, posting notices on R.V.s and faxing the same to S.F.P.D. (evidence #8). Appellants are not trying to address the law itself, and only wish to point out that the nuance here is this Jim Crow-type law (i.e. one that first codifies inferiority then prosecutes it) gives City agents the standardized belief that they do not have to safe-guard the civil rights of those who live in their vehicular units. Evidence #9 was presented at trial and encompasses the scope of this belief. This is a set of three identical notices left on the schoolbus windshield and is a compilation of the top of form 37a which deals with abandoned cars; the middle section is the actual police code that prohibits sleeping/eating in one’s vehicle from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. and the bottom of the flyer outlines the penalty for living in one’s vehicle ACCORDING TO THE POLICE DEPARTMENT. Evidence #10 is minutes of meeting @ the City of San Francisco’s Homeless Coordinating Board and shows the head of the S.F.P.D.’s homeless task force describing the way form 37a is used to tag not only abandoned cars but also the vehicularly-housed units that they receive multiple complaints from the neighbors. Regardless of the court’s opinion/individual feelings of the gypsy – an historically hated group – and their unconventional homes, nonetheless it is the property of said gypsy and all Americans have the right to be secure from government’s unreasonable efforts to seize & search one’s home. Because the tow was brought about by a lie, the City is responsible for the emotional distress caused to the appellants and their 3 children (who had school starting three weeks after the seizure of their home), because without savings or credit cards, with their family budget consisting of $960 Cal-works and $360 food stamps, it was impossible to pay the cost of the tow that was an immediate $598 and a daily $98 storage fee. Chief Justice Roland George stated recently in the same sex marriage argument “the fact that there are minorities of all sorts of types who can be victimized by the majority…and protecting the vulnerable minorities is one of the purposes of the courts and the Constitution.”

CONCLUSION

The behavior of D.P.T. Buitrago and the several members of S.F.P.D. on-scene that day violates not only the Constitution but also ‘substantive due process’ prevents the government from engaging in conduct that shocks the conscience’ or interferes with rights ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty’. When government action depriving a person of life, liberty or property survives substantive due process scrutiny, it must still be implemented in a fair manner.

There was nothing fair about what happened 14 August 2006. Respondent intentionally deprived appellants of their property which was also their home, containing everything they owned. The inherent lack of respect for human dignity of the so-called vehicularly-housed is best summed up in D.P.T. Buitrago’s testimony that she gave appellant and her daughter “permission to re-enter the schoolbus and gather whatever personal belongings they wanted while we waited for the tow truck to arrive.”

Nothing has to be added to that statement, except to say appellants’ family suffered homelessness 3 1/2 weeks through an act of government not God until their children’s youth center collected $3000 to purchase a 24′ 1984 R.V. that has remained their home to this time, sufficient to send off their older son to the Marines this past July 2008. Their home-schooled 17 year-old daughter is sitting for her G.E.D. this spring after dropping out of regular school two months after the loss of her home. Their 13- year-old son continues to be very hurt and disgusted over the loss of the only home he has ever known. His home since he was four months old. He lost every bit of his childhood that day because all this happened in front of him.

D.P.T. Buitrago was dripping sarcasm and hatred. The police never took into account that there were young children present. A crowd gathered. It was horrific to witness the way this community actually does feel about the nomadic in their midst. This entire pro per effort has been to assuage one little boy’s anger and grief. It is he that is waiting to hear your opinion about the fairness of how the City behaved the most awful day of his life – that’s how he describes it. No matter how his parents choose to live, his civil rights should not be violated by the rude, abrupt removal of his home in the space of a mere hour. D.P.T. Buitrago arrived @ 10:48 a.m. and a taxi was called at noon. What a heartbreak of an hour. Appellants’ happy memories of their unusual home, a home for a full decade, those memories will forever be tainted by the way it was lost.