Mr. Sabo, you are right to call me out. I agree with you. If I am not willing to write under my legal name, I have no right to write.
Yesterday, I thought about your reply all day. By starting with Mr. Sabo, I made it personal and that was stupid — and I apologize. My tone of voice sucked — and I apologize again. You were asking for thoughts about your ideas, and I had no business adding my own thoughts — and once again, I apologize. In addition to my apologies, I felt that I owed you an explanation.
In real life, people know me as Raffey and I’ve been writing under that nickname since the early 1990s. To keep my social and political work separated, I use my legal name for my work in industry related publications only.
As I’m sure you know, people posting on the internet, are being tracked down in real life. In 2006, I learned this can be dangerous the hard way.
Tough on crime and mass-incarceration politics resulted in massive prison construction in small, rural communities — including mine. All told, there are 19 prisons in my 8-county region alone. Unfortunately, importing 2.1 million inmates from cities, into small rural communities, impacted rural culture too deeply to pretend away.
In 1998, the state announced it would build a mental institution for sexually violent predators at the high-security prison in our community. Rural people are very engaged in our civic life and when I opposed the project, I did so publicly and in person. I was not alone; over 200 people showed up to oppose the project. When our city council refused to oppose the project, attendees appointed three people to lead the opposition. I was one of them.
Prisons mean jobs in rural communities and opposition is perceived as a threat to these jobs. It was a bitter battle and our city council moved their meetings to the high school gym which could accommodate 200–300 people who kept showing up. As the spokesperson for the opposition, the animosity was aimed directly at me.
At the final council meeting, which would decide the outcome, over 550 angry people showed up, and so did armed officers from 3 local police departments, our county sheriff’s department, the highway patrol, the state police, the FBI and a large contingent of prison guards — plus three television crews including NBC and CBS.
When our city council made a motion not to vote on the matter people went berserk.
In the midst of rapidly escalating chaos, the city council sent the city attorney over to talk to our parliamentarians. They quickly reached an agreement that was in violation of the law. But it gave us the tools we needed to restore calm. The council did their part, made an illegal motion, voted on that motion, and opposed the project. The evening ended peacefully.
The state built their mental institution for sexually violent predators in another rural community. However, I had made enemies of the prison guard union with long memories.
In 2006, the community learned that the state had begun the process of placing our school district under receivership. Once again, I was drafted as a spokesperson for the opposition. I took a hard line against racial discrimination and corruption, and 6-weeks later, 64% of the voters put me on our school board.
In my professional life, rural land-use, rural economies and rural culture is my specialty. A huge part of that work depends on my knowledge of local government. I am also a member of a regional activist network with the resources necessary to dig really deep into local government.
To root out discrimination in our school district, I would need to be on the board, where I would be privy to closed-session meetings. However, by the time I took office, we had identified almost $5-Million in mis-appropriated funds and sufficient evidence to instigate an investigation of fraud against the superintendent. In my first few months on the board, by a 4:3 vote, the superintendent, 2 assistant superintendents and 2 principals were terminated.
Our small-town newspaper had just started a public comment section — and people went berserk. By the time anonymous people in our little newspaper’s comment section were done with me, my home had been torched (arson), my car had thousands of dollars in damage, and my family, my employees and I had coped with dozens and dozens of filthy, disgusting, vile, threatening letters and packages containing realistic toy guns, knives and bombs mailed to my home and business. We were under police protection for more than a year.
While I completed my four-year term on the board, I have not written under my legal name again. You see, people did not just come after me, they went after my family, my employees, my friends, even my neighbors.
Those events happened between 2007–2010 in a deeply conservative rural community — long before anyone in cities had heard of cancel culture, doxing, or on-line violence spilling over into real life.
After my husband died, I needed to get out of the house, so I left retirement for a job as a bookkeeper. When Trump was elected, I was still working for a company owned by a black man with all black and brown employees, except for one white man (who is a two-time ex-felon) and a Jew (me). Navigating those years in our deeply conservative community required all of us to keep level heads. The boss kept reminding us ABC, ABC (sometimes several times a day). I tend to push back, and we agreed we would all be safer, if I did not fill in at lunchtime at the customer service counter anymore.
On-line activism is great and I’m all for it. But activism in real life is increasingly dangerous work. Last year, I moved near my oldest daughter, here in Kentucky, and have been busy linking ag related issues here to my rural activist network back home. My youngest daughter is still in California, where she specializes in labor law for farmworkers which makes her especially vulnerable.
Again, I have no intention of inviting violence into my life and the lives of people I care about by writing on Medium under my legal name. I am much safer, conducting my political life in public and in person.
I will make every effort not to repeat my mistakes.
