Sparkman: Casualty of Methland, USA? Or Victim of Anti-Government Bile?
Is Bill Sparkman -- the 51-year old US Census fieldworker found hanged in rural southeastern Kentucky with the word "Fed" scrawled across his chest -- a victim of hate crime directed at Uncle Sam? Or the casualty of drug-related violence in a struggling pocket of America?
To date, nobody knows for certain. The FBI is intensely investigating whether Sparkman was murdered; if so, by whom (acquaintance? stranger?); and whether his death is an act of violence against the federal government.
After suffering from cancer, Sparkman worked as a teacher and took on the Census gig to supplement his income. Sparkman's workaday life and violent death -- whatever the cause and whoever the culprit -- highlight the precarious struggles of the white working class and the brewing storm surrounding the 2010 Census.
From the mid 1970s to now, the white working class has faced economic decline not measured simply by stagnant take-home wages, but also by cuts in vital non-cash benefits such as health insurance and retirement plans. This deterioration of earnings and vital support goes hand in hand with employment practices that disadvantage rank-and-file workers (the weakening of unions and wage bargaining, outsourcing, the rising exploitation of contracted part-time help, etc).
Count Sparkman among the ranks of America's "perma-lancers," permanent freelancers cobbling multiple jobs to make ends meet. Census workers like Sparkman -- a quintessential permalancer -- report having to scrape together extra bucks working multiple jobs to supplement meager to nonexistent retirement income.
Besides these issues, Bill Sparkman's death spotlights the hot controversy surrounding the 2010 Census.
In an April 2009 fundraising letter, GOP chair Michael Steele accused President Obama and ACORN -- "the leftist, urban 'community' organization with a long history of promoting vote fraud" -- of planning "to rig" the 2010 Census.
Representative Michele Bachman (R, MN) declared in June that she would not complete her 2010 Census form. Bachman echoed her fear that ACORN would be part of the Census Bureau's door-to-door information collection efforts. (ACORN's contract to participate in Census taking has since been terminated.) Bachman's stance sparked a viral protest among right wing and Libertarian advocates to boycott the Census.
"Libertarians believe that these questions violate your privacy and will be used as the basis for expanding the size, power and cost of government," says Erich Smith on his "Boycott the Census" website, referring to the Census long form's 53 questions.
For their part, a slew of Latino advocacy groups are boycotting the 2010 Census, too. The Mexican-American Political Association and The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, a group claiming to represent 20,000 evangelical churches in 34 states, urge undocumented immigrants not to fill out Census forms unless Congress passes "genuine immigration reform."
Fausto da Rocha, a Brazilian immigrant advocate in Boston, bluntly explains the Latino boycott: "Legalize us before you count us.'' His boycott protests government crackdowns on illegal immigrants and seeks to fully incorporate Latinos into the political process.
High stakes loom behind the 2010 Census and thus the heated controversy. 2010 Census data will directly affect how more than $300 billion per year in federal and state funding is allocated to communities for neighborhood improvements, disaster preparation, public health, education, transportation and much more. Moreover, the 2010 Census determines the number of U.S congressional seats each state gains or loses, and therefore the number of Electoral College votes, beginning in 2012, when President Obama will presumably seek re-election.
In addition to money and raw power, a less discussed, equally volatile dynamic looms in this equation. Since its last head count in 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau has been crunching some startling projections and churning provocative press releases. A Census prediction that makes headlines across the nation is fast becoming a reality: By 2042, whites will no longer be the American majority. The next census is being conducted against this backdrop, what I call "The White People Deadline," 2042. While all racial groups are growing in actual numbers and overall percentages, the Latino population grows the fastest. Experts point to that growth as the largest factor for white people's imminent status as a racial minority.
What's in a number? Quite a lot. Who gets to count the population; how groups and individuals get categorized and counted; and what happens with that count: These questions spawn intense anxiety across the political spectrum - especially in a time of limited public resources, heated controversy over immigration policy, and economic fear.
"The American Dream of the middle class has all but disappeared, substituted with people struggling just to buy next week's groceries."
This commentary comes not from a lefty think tank agitating against capitalism, but from a discharged GI writing his hometown newspaper in Lockport, New York, during the winter of 1992. This working-class, white GI would later blow up the Alfred P. Murray Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.
Not responding to the stubborn nexus of economic hardship and anti-government vitriol can be tragic. Add to McVeigh's economic anxiety a dash of present-day nativism, government bashing, race-based fear, and resentment over the government's Wall Street bailouts, and you have a recipe for even more anti-government violence.
Is Sparkman, the late cancer survivor and single dad, the human victim of this deep anti-government sentiment pulsing in America? Or a working-class casualty in a sordid, pedestrian crime in Methland, USA?
Time and research will tell.
In the meantime, Sparkman's workaday life and violent death offer telling lessons on stubborn problems and disenchantment, so that informed people can enter this debate and not concede it to the fringes.
Chart courtesy of University of Kentucky, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues
Simon Rosenberg: Waking Up To the Coming Battle Over the Census
Last night's reports of the murder of a US Census worker will bring national attention to the emerging politics of the Census count, something that we've long been worried about at NDN.
Landon Ross: Census Worker Hanging... What Pelosi Warned?
We don't have all the facts regarding Bill Sparkman's death. Yet the fact that, upon hearing of this incident, politically minded people wonder whether the death was a result of right wing invective is telling.
Gail McGowan Mellor: The Hanged Census Worker: Why Appalachia Hates Feds
The U.S. government began its life back in 1791 by shafting the Appalachian area. People have not forgotten it, perhaps because it has yet to stop happening.
Allison Kilkenny: Discussion Of Dead Census Worker Highlights Right-Wing Paranoia
According to reports, the body of a part-time Census field worker had the word "fed" scrawled across his chest. Suddenly, big government is a big problem, and the "Feds" are to blame.
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NOW is the time for action! Any violence against our side will be interpreted as being purpetrated by the wing-nuts, don't waste a crisis as Barack and Joe Biden said. With the rhetoric reaching fever pitch NOW is the time to act! Shove it back in their faces!
Whatever the motives, to send a message of anti-goverment or of drug people wanted to scare off FED agents, it's heartbreaking that one solitary man had to die! With the health care reform debate raging on, people are dying of diseases with delayed approval for treatment or people without money to have treatment, how could a person be killed for doing his job just to send a message??
I suspect that the descendents of Northern Europe - what we commonly call 'white people' (since they themselves have traditionally excluded most Southern Europeans, Eastern Europeans, and Jews, and only admitted the Irish and Italians after decades of political sruggle) are already in theminority, and that is what the battle over the census is about.
Sparkman is probably a victim of both 'Methland's' criminal underworld and anti-government rhetoric from the likes of Beck and Limbaugh; and probably also of Bible-belt paranoia and deep-seated mistrust of govrnment 'outsiders' found among hills people. None of thse terms is exclusive of the others. Drive by a trailer park in Kentucky and you're sure to drive by several trailer homes housing meth-using fundamentalists listening to Beck rant against Obama or Dobbs' dire warnings about invading hordes of illegal aliens, with a picture of a grand-daddy who made moonshine or a great-grandpa who fought in the civil war (as a terrorist, since Kentucky was technically 'neutral').
Probably the investigation is dragging out because the FBI are trying to depoliticize the issue; but at the end of the day we're still stuck with a murdered census worker with theword' 'Fed' on his chest.
And commentary based on stereotype
And slightly off the main topic, but, why is the Census Bureau is conducting door-to-door interviews now? The Census schedule says forms will be mailed out in March, 2010, and only after an address has failed to respond to that form and a follow-up form will the house be called, and then finally visited. Yet the AP reports that "the Census Bureau has suspended door-to-door interviews in rural Clay County." What was this guy doing out there?
They're sending the long forms out in waves... started in '05 and will continue through '10.
I live in one of the lawless rural areas many have been describing lately. What needs to be added to the litany of problems is corruption in the law enforcement community, as well as in the judiciary and also other facets of the drug trade, such as crack (but I suppose it isn't THAT different at the end of the day. Also, like the Daniel Boon national forest, the county in which I live is dry and this does create incentive for lawbreakers to illegally sell things like liquor and drugs.
I was wondering about that!
Good grief - I would imagine most in that area are taking 'some on the side' to look the other way....
and if that is proven to be the case
"Good Ol RockyTop" will be branded forever
http://www
OK. drug involvement can probably be ruled out. A single perp is unlikely to string their victim up and then hang a sign on him, they're more likely to leave the victim where they drop (it's extremely unlikely any single person could hang someone unwilling). A drug gang is unlikely because that implies organisation and any organised gang is going to realise that scrawling "Fed" on the body is going to bring more heat than they'd want to hide from.
It's possible that there was some kind of personal motive and the sign was an attempt to divert attention, the cops will be able to investigate Mr Sparkman's personal life for potential motives. The body was found hanged, with a sign. That's a fairly elaborate way of disposing of a victim and the presence of a sign implies that they want or expect the victim to be found. If they were expecting the body to be found, the sign becomes a message, either to divert suspician or provide a warning or attract attention.
The date of discovery is telling, the body was in serious decompose at the time, indicating the murder may have been much earlier and then moved to a conspicuous area. This would be a good motive to obscure a drug operation. The method used is a little over the top, and such a display would obviously lead to a media circus. Are the drug guys that dumb or was it meant as a message by anti-census types?
It's possible that the motive was drugs but yes, the method and ensueing media circus make that fairly unlikely. The body could have been moved to a more conspicuous area to divert attention there but if that were the case, why not hide the body entirely? That makes me think the body was meant to be discovered and that drugs are unlikely to be involved.
It could be meant as an anti-census message but it could also be meant to attract attention (As in "Feds, look over here") or as a diversion from a much simpler motive. Without knowing more about the scene, it's difficult to say.
I hope you don't try to equate the Latino groups who are boycotting the census -- who to my knowledge have not advocated any violence against the census workers -- with the vitriol spewed by the Bachmanites.
I wish also that the media would stop suggesting that this is somehow "a suicide." The facts simply do not support that conclusion. I suspect Mr. Sparkman was murdered in part because he stumbled upon a criminal scene (meth lab or illegal still) and was brutalized because of his government connection.
They are just trying to keep themselves from be complicit in their own minds.
I also thought the inclusion of the Latino groups was odd and out of place. Unlike the Bachmanites, they seem to have a legitimate grievance and are suggesting civil disobedience as a form of peaceful protest, whereas Bachman is just preaching crazy conspiracy talk.
We don't know why this guy was killed, but the fact that the killing was so elaborate makes it seem to me like it was premeditated. It's difficult to imagine Sparkman knocking on someone's door and ending up a victim in such a horrific way, or, on the other hand, being murdered simply for being employed part-time Census worker.
If it was in the course of his job, I'd be interested to learn whether the Census Bureau really does have a policy of sending its workers alone into isolated rural areas where there is known to be large amounts of meth production. That would seem to me like a fairly reckless mode of operation.
Premeditated doesn't necessarily mean known to the victim. It could be that the killer predefined their murder but selected their victim at random (not uncommon for psychopaths, for example).
This is one of the saddest things I have ever heard. My father in-law before he past was a part time census taker for the 2000 census. All the time he complained how difficult it was to gather info from the rual areas of S. Carolina.
See Richard M. Benjamin's Profile
Indeed, concealncarry. Was it hard because of the rural geography or because folks were skeptical/
Clinging to their gun, religion and duck tape.
See Richard M. Benjamin's Profile
You're bad, lazercat. What a naughty wisecrack. (Have to confess I really like ur handle pic.)
Um, thanks.
Right wingers preaching fear better learn there are consequences for their politically charged rhetoric. This is not a game to some people.
Like meth and pot dealers can't have anti government thoughts.
They can. But in that area, they are all in good and tight with officials.
What century do you think this is? 1920s?
Thank you for proving my point!
The area is already known for meth manufacturing and pot dealing. Who is going to kill Mr. Sparkman just to avoid being caught by the police.
And yes I know what century this is, do you?
Another reason to decriminalize drugs and take the profit out of meth labs and pot fields.
Just admit all the 9/12 nuts, killed this man.
They can. But they're very unlikely to have staged such an elaborate display of the body. Dealers normally either hide the body or leave it where it drops. They'd also realise that signing "FED" on the body is going to bring swarms of law enforcement down on the area.
no drug dealer wants an investigation on or near their turf. these people left that man hanging as a sign. this was a ly.nch.ing
Thats a good point.
That is a startling graph at the end of this piece.
The context of the graph is "Compared to urban methamphetamine users, rural methamphetamine users:"
So, rather than the implication of the graph without context that 45% of rural residents are psychotic, the graph only displays that 45% of rural methamphetamine users are psychotic.
http://fac
Looked pretty obvious to me.
Really, how is it obvious that the graph for alcohol abuse is not a graph of rural versus urban primary prevalence but is confined to secondary alcohol abuse amongst persons using meth?
ALL methheads are psychotic. Rural, urban, northern, southern, white, not white, young, old. Anyone who uses meth is psycho. Period.
Not to burst your bubble: but I've used meth under fairly controlled circumstances. The last time I got into it, I took it for about two months, during a movie production I was working eighteen hour days on... It's unbelievably difficult, to keep meth use down to functional doses at rational intervals - using meth as a maintenance stimulant, like coffee or ridolin, is like putting a jet engine on a compact car for street driving... but it can be done. I doubt there are many perfectly stable people who use meth regularly, in the same sense that a lot of us use, say, caffeine, or ridolin... but I'm also sure there are a few of them, stable meth users, out there.
True but meth also disrupts the ability to reason clearly enough to stage a body in this fashion.
With so many small towns in America decaying , and decades of being neglected by Washington
they are the sites of huge poverty and people who are just stuck in place while the way of life around them slowly falls apart. No wonder meth is so popular there - it conveys a sense of activity within the
stagnation.
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