Ready for reform: NAMI members say Sheriff Jim Piccinini is receptive to talking about possible changes.

Photograph by Michael Amsler

Shaky Start

Philly sex clubs lure GOP conventioneers

By Jennifer Bleyer

IF, LIKE ME, you don’t frequent executive boardrooms, cattle ranches, Catholic churches, or the Upper East Side of Manhattan, you may never have seen a registered Republican. Indeed, they are elusive figures. In television specials presenting them in their natural habitats, one notices how deftly they camouflage themselves against the surface of a yacht or an oil field, how delicately they prey on a mutinous shareholder. They are fascinating creatures, and it was impossible to resist going on safari to observe their fleshly presence in the wilds of Philadelphia.

They were spotted devouring sandwiches under the “Wawa Hoagie Day” tent, demonstrating that the words “free food” elicit a ravenous primal response regardless of income level. They were later seen pouring drunk out of a Young Republican party, displaying their particular brand of humor to the stone-faced hipsters on trendy South Street (“You must be a conservative, am I right?” they guffawed, with no response).

After so much frolicking around town, the Republican-at-play was finally traced to Delilah’s, Philadelphia’s premier gentleman’s club. Delilah’s is, as they say in the business, a really classy joint. Large tuxedoed men hold open the door and escort guests through a metal detector.

The main room is a cavernous space that seats 200 comfortably, with a 60-foot runway decorated in patriotic red, white, and blue streamers and a banner reading “Welcome GOP Delegates!”

Three or four nude girls at a time writhe onstage as others extend their hospitality to men around the room.

Our subject Republicans were spotted in their requisite khakis and polo shirts, swilling Budweisers and taking in the scenery.

On my first night observing Republicans at Delilah’s, a flock came in with some of their woman Republican friends. The ladies sipped cocktails, their blonde hair in headbands and legs crossed at the ankles. They cooed politely when the dancers climbed the brass pole and slid down it suggestively.

The men sat at the side of the stage, simultaneously talking on their cellphones and tucking dollars into G-strings, demonstrating the multitasking aptitude of the 21st-century Republican.

One of them was overheard saying, “Look who just came in over on your right, the former White House . . .”

The end of his sentence was drowned out by the infectious beat of the “Thong Song,” and the lanky, bespectacled man to whom he referred disappeared into a private room with a lithe black dancer with small, perky breasts.

A black dancer!

Surely a demonstration of Gen. Colin Powell’s promise that the Republicans will “earn the mantle of Lincoln” and “help bridge our racial divides.”

The dancer reappeared after an hour without her customer, and I asked where he went. “Well, he asked me if I would go home with him. I was like, no, I don’t do that. Then he asked me if any of the girls here do that, and I was like, no, so he left.”

She told me his name, and indeed, he was a former Reagan White House staffer, now skulking back into the surrounding city.

ON NIGHT 2 at Delilah’s, three young Republicans were drooling over a size-DD blonde in 6-inch spike heels when an image of George W. Bush was projected on the giant TV screen behind the stage. “I feel like I’m back at the convention!” they shouted, cheering and clapping. The girls onstage, confused, responded with extra-ferocious jiggles.

A cluster of Republicans in the corner took a particular liking to a beautiful short-haired brunette, who looked vaguely like Rick Lazio with a boob job. One of them went off with her for a private dance, and she came out seeming exasperated, gesticulating wildly to a bouncer. True to the rigors of scientific inquiry, I asked what had happened.

“Oh, he just kept trying to put his hands on me, and I kept having to push him back. We don’t allow touching at Delilah’s, and he just didn’t get it. But he tipped me well, that’s for sure.”

Ah, Republicans are good tippers! And people call them greedy bastards who hoard the nation’s wealth. Rubbish!

I spent one last evening at Delilah’s. A small herd of Republicans sat transfixed by a curvy Hawaiian dancer. Her breasts were like huge effervescent balloons; it seemed that at any moment, she would float toward the sky, lifted by their amazing buoyancy. I asked one of them how the convention was going so far. “Oh, it’s just great. I only managed to get in because I’m an elected official, and it’s just such an honor to be there. So, do you work here?”

A blonde dancer came and sat on his lap, and he grinned broadly into her cleavage. But he didn’t have inappropriate relations or do anything funny with a cigar, somehow confirming Dick Cheney’s vow that the Republican Party will restore “decency and integrity to the Oval Office.”

Indeed, three days of watching the mysterious Republicans at Delilah’s revealed them as racially sensitive, financially generous, and morally upstanding creatures. Onward to Washington in November!

From the August 10-16, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Jailhouse Blues

460,000 busted for drugs–and counting

By Kelly Virella

NEARLY one quarter of America’s prisoners–almost 460,000 people–are behind bars for nonviolent drug offenses, reports a disturbing new study released by the Justice Policy Institute, a think-tank advocating criminal-justice reform.

That number reflects a staggering increase in drug-related convictions over the past decade–from 38,541 in 1986 to 148,092 in 1996. The cost of incarcerating these nonviolent drug offenders nationwide will rise to $9.4 billion this year, the report says.

“America does indeed have a drug problem,” states Vincent Schiraldi, director of the Justice Policy Institute and co-author of the report. “And that problem is that we’ve focused on imprisonment as the near-exclusive solution to substance abuse, while giving short shrift to treatment and prevention.”

Rep. John Conyers, Jr., D-Michigan, used the occasion of the report’s release to introduce legislation that would divert more nonviolent drug offenders from incarceration to rehabilitation. “The casualties from this nation’s drug war have continued to mount, with no end in sight,” says Conyers. “Only by breaking the cycle of abuse, trafficking, and incarceration can we find a way out of this nightmare.”

“We are spending $9 billion to guarantee recidivism,” a senior member of Conyers’ staff added. “Without intervention, these offenders will end up in jail for life or get out and become permanent SSI [disability payment] recipients.”

The legislation Conyers proposed is an omnibus bill aggregating several drug reform initiatives, including more funding for treatment, alternative sentencing guidelines, greater post-treatment support, and a new program to ease the offenders’ re-entry into society.

In an important departure from previous legislation, Conyers’ bill would vest federal judges, rather than prosecutors, with the discretion to divert nonviolent offenders to treatment. Prosecutors who must choose between treatment and incarceration face a natural conflict of interest, Conyers’ staff member said.

Though their actions may not yet reflect it, political players over a wide spectrum are starting to agree that treatment for drug abuse is more effective than punishment. However, the definition of “treatment” has become a contentious battleground, with legislators locking heads over issues such as who should qualify for treatment, how extensive it should be, and who decides which offenders to treat and which to jail.

Conyers’ bill notwithstanding, most of these battles are being fought at the state level. In Arizona, the runaway success of a quite extensive treatment program has inspired reformers in other states to push their treatment laws further. Californians, who already have special “drug courts,” will soon vote on Proposition 36, a statewide initiative that would mandate treatment over incarceration for certain drug crimes, instead of just making treatment an option.

Although the proposition would save an estimated $100 million to $150 million a year, opponents of the measure argue it is the wrong approach. “Proposition 36 will seriously undermine effective drug treatment in California by preventing judges from instituting sanctions like short periods of jail time to change the behavior of uncooperative patients,” said the spokeswoman for Californians United against Drug Abuse, a group opposed to Proposition 36. These opponents describe the measure as a ruse that “decriminalizes drugs” and prefer that greater funding be allocated for more treatment under the current system, in which judges divert offenders from incarceration on a case-by-case basis.

The spokesman for the California Campaign for New Drug Policies, the organization that pushed Proposition 36 onto the November ballot, denied these characterizations of the measure. “What it boils down to is that we want to make everyone presumptively eligible for treatment–making treatment the norm, not the exception. We want to treat 95 percent of drug offenders, as opposed to the 5 percent we are treating now.”

Similar battles are being waged in states across the nation, where harsh drug laws are taking serious social and economic tolls. In New York, a judicially driven reform effort has proposed to divert 10,000 drug offenders into treatment instead of incarceration. Michigan recently modified its mandatory sentencing system–one of the oldest in the country–to be less harsh for drug offenders.

DESPITE these changes, and although only 36 states have mandatory minimum sentencing laws for drug offenses, 48 states have drastically increased their drug-related incarcerations since 1986. California, Louisiana, and New Jersey led the pack with increases of 134 percent, 106 percent, and 85.6 percent, respectively.

Even without mandatory sentencing laws, many states have corralled more drug users into prison by policing more aggressively, issuing longer sentences, and abolishing parole, explains JPI’s Schiraldi.

“Also, racial profiling and targeting neighborhoods that are predominantly black have created an influx into the criminal-justice system,” he says. The statistics in the report echo this observation. “Blacks are incarcerated for a drug offense at a rate 14 times that of whites,” the report states, “while survey data reveals that five times as many whites use drugs as blacks.”

All of these issues were addressed in detail at the July 29 Shadow Convention in Philadelphia, emceed by media celebrity Arianna Huffington, and will be re-addressed at an Aug. 11 Shadow Convention in Los Angeles, both gatherings geared to coincide with the Republican and Democratic national conventions.

From the August 3-9, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.