A Drag Queeen, A Pair of Sociopaths, and Two Unsolved Murders--Portraits in American Integrity

A true story in the spirit of Utah Phillips:

We knew him as ‘RH’, short for Runninghorse; no, he’s not Native American. He was a presence at Diablo Valley College in the 1990s, a loud mouthed presence. Nobody ever challenged his leadership of the Frank Little Club. He was full of energy, a zeal for organizing, a megaphone voice, and a confrontational attitude; he started the club, chaired meetings, and actually cooperated, to a modest extent, with the college Administration. He did a lot of heavy work.

But we also knew that he was an absolute creep. Women in the club did not care to work alone with him, and they had good reason. That’s an odd situation for the leader of a left-wing political action club.

Now I have to relate one story to his credit—sort of.

It’s a complicated saga of local politics that starts thusly:

The Reverend Lloyd Mashore, of a fundamentalist congregation in Concord, waxed wroth over the rising tide of the supposed ‘Homosexual Agenda’, specifically the idea that ‘Christians’ were being forced into politically correct tolerance of whatever the Lloyd Mashores of the world fear. His big outrage was that Christian property owners were being compelled to rent homes to gays and lesbians, people certain to engage in unbiblical activities inside these Christian owned bedrooms.

Proof positive, to Lloyd Mashore, that True Religion was under persecution. The Secularists must surely be ready to bring back the popular sport of feeding the lions.

So the local branch of the Christian Coalition ran a ballot initiative that would give landlords the right to discriminate over sexual orientation. Lloyd Mashore also placed his name on the ballot for an open City Council seat.

RH lived in Concord, and as a leftist activist, he took the challenge; the initiative must be opposed.

This is the remarkable moment. RH is a sexist boor, and as homophobic as any red-blooded macho American Man can be. He expressed to me opinions on sexuality not far removed from Lloyd’s, absent the theology, I won’t disgrace this story by repeating his words, needless to say, they were despicable. I do believe he expected me to be sympathetic, it is my shame that I did not emphatically rebuke him.

He twisted like a pretzel to avoid showing his true feelings to his new allies in the Gay and Lesbian movement—nobody was fooled.

The coalition included a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence; yes folks, when Sadie Sadie, the Rabbi Lady, takes off her habit and settles on her couch, she is in a suburban Concord living room, not in San Francisco’s high rent, high crime, Castro District. And of course, without the outfit Sadie becomes just another guy; you wouldn’t recognize her if you saw her in the corner store. She also ran for that open City Council seat. She ran as Sadie Sadie, not whatever the guy’s name is.

It was a colorful campaign, not like ‘normal’ politics in Concord at all. We had marches and rallies (there is a large LGBT community in the suburbs). One club member was a son of an ILWU organizer and we went out canvassing with union volunteers. At a few evening rallies somebody in passing vehicles focussed targeting lasers on our crowd, Concord police wouldn’t even take a report. (During that same period a young gay black man was found dead, naked, hanging from a tree in a vacant lot near the Concord BART station. There was clear evidence the man had been tortured and murdered, neighbors reported hearing midnight screams for help; the police ruled it a suicide)

Another interesting moment occurred on the DVC campus, in the main quad. The school, in Pleasant Hill, served a community from Antioch to Richmond, but the largest student home was Concord; much of Sadie Sadie’s campaign originated at DVC with a coalition of the Frank Little Club and the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Student Union.

The Sadie Sadie camp held a noon rally, by coincidence, a militant Afro-Nationalist club (I’m sorry, memory eludes me over names) held a rally that same noon.

Sadie Sadie approached the militants to offer an alliance. The Afro-Nationalists, largely male, young, and full of defensive machismo, felt mocked by Sadie Sadie; they mobbed her, she nearly met an ugly fate but for FLC/GLBSU intervention. We muscled Sadie Sadie to safety and calmed the situation before the useless campus police even showed their faces.

Credit must go out to Daniel Garcia, FLC member, last time I knew, he was an associate professor of political science at UC Berkeley, or maybe SF State. During the melee he ran and set up a portable PA system, we spent the afternoon making impromptu speeches between the assorted parties, sort of a one-microphone debate; better than belligerence.

And kudos to Don ‘Dooty’ Fletcher, also of the FLC and a meat-headed lug kind of guy who had several friends with the Afro-Nationalists, he and they helped cool the air.

Also thanks to Rick, of GLBSU, a very kind, sweet tempered man larger than most linebackers. Nobody, no matter how militant, fights a man as big as Rick.

The upshot: Lloyd Mashore’s initiative failed, but he won his council seat and Sadie Sadie lost.

But it came about that Lloyd Mashore was not resident of Concord, his home and family are in Clayton. When he filed his candidacy papers he listed the address of a Concord real estate office for his domicile; maybe the Reverend Mashore missed the many verses of the Bible that declare lying is a sin, it’s such a lengthy and tedious book, one can get lost.

Lloyd tried to argue that since his church was in Concord and most of the congregation lived there, he was really a Concord ‘resident’. Alas, the County Clerk didn’t see the light of that reasoning; the wicked Secularist annulled Lloyd’s election and called a special ballot for the following summer. Sadie Sadie didn’t run this time and an ordinary Chamber of Commerce type politician won. Concord was back to normal.

To return to RH; this memory moment was brought forth when I googled his name (his birth certificate namee filed  ), just to see what might have become of the Frank Little Club.

I learned, not much to my surprise, that RH had been to jail for lewd behavior with a fourteen year old girl. But that after doing nine months, and failing to register as a sex offender upon release, he is still an activist with the California Peace and Freedom Party, elected to the Central Committee in 2011.

Now you know, it isn’t just Republicans.

PS: Native American Frank Little was a California labor activist with the IWW. He organized a general strike in Fresno that brought the city to its knees. A mob of goons from a mining company lynched him in Butte, Montana, for the offense of opposing America’s entry into World War I. First they discharged both barrels of a shotgun at his testicles, then they dragged him through town behind a company truck, but he was still alive when they hanged him from a railroad bridge.