James Robert Reade’s Latest Hate Crime!

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So, to cut to the chase, rightwing Anaheim gadfly James Robert Reade has just this week committed what appears to be a hate crime, distributing the following official-looking document into the mailboxes of all the mostly-Latino residents of Anaheim’s Guinida neighborhood:

 

Of course this is all pure bullshit, but coming as it does right in the middle of the immigrant community’s fear over Trump-administration deportation, looking official and appearing (illegally) inside their mailboxes, it filled the community with terror, as was certainly JimBob’s intention – to the degree that many parents didn’t send their children to school that week.  [Note the threats of deportation and the inclusion of ICE’s contact info.]  Terrorism anyone?

Actually what Donna and I had been told by some Guinida residents was that a whole new gang injunction was being declared for their neighborhood – that’s the impression they got – even though crime and gang activity has been on the decrease there.  So we went there ready to investigate, complain to police leadership, and resist this further infringement of Anaheim civil liberties, but what residents handed us was the above.

Some of you may not remember “Jim Bob,” who had disappeared from Council meetings for the last year or two, and had only given proof of his continued existence by being Matt Cunningham’s court jester, providing regular goofy, racist one-liners on the Anaheim Blog (like “tamales for José Moreno” etc.)

But for years he had been a notorious fixture at council meetings, since at least 2012, where his continuous theme was exaggerated abuse and slander of all the young men who’d been killed by the police,and always thundering at their bereaved moms for being “bad mothers.”  One of his more infamous speeches  compared Anaheim Latinos unfavorably to bonobo monkeys.  After a while, he started complaining that Latinos and their sympathizers were “tripping” him as he’d leave after his speeches, and he started cozying up to gang unit cops who would escort him away when he was done soiling each meeting.  

 

But possibly what disquieted him the most was my (future) wife Donna frequently sitting right next to him while smiling in his face.  For about a year or two though, we haven’t seen him anywhere except on Matt’s blog.

Pero no, apparently Jim Bob has not disappeared for good, but has instead, like such people often do, found a new low.  Let’s hope this cruel prank lands him in some trouble.

About Vern Nelson

Greatest pianist/composer in Orange County, and official political troubadour of Anaheim and most other OC towns. Regularly makes solo performances, sometimes with his savage-jazz band The Vern Nelson Problem. Reach at vernpnelson@gmail.com, or 714-235-VERN.