Travellers' Rest

Controversy

The Theme:

I not deny
The jury, passing on the prisoner's life,
May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two
Guiltier than him they try.

William Shakespeare, from "Henry VIII"

Outlaws?

One definition of "outlaw" is the obvious one, of course; it is the one that we all agree means a person who commits criminal acts. But the original meaning of the word may be the one that truly applies to Travellers: A person excluded from normal legal protection and rights. I know: we are not all innocents; there are some con-artists, outright thieves and generally non-violent criminals among us. But the overwhelming majority of Irish Travellers just wish to be able to roam free, work for themselves and stay out of trouble, bothering nobody.

1. No one knows exactly how many Travellers there are today, settled and/or on the road.

2. The hallmark of the so-called "Traveller" crime is that the perpetrator gets away clean; in other words there's no evidence who did it, so it's blamed on Travellers.

3. Police "profiling" of certain types of contractors on the road is common, as are apprehensions based on the notorious law-enforcement and BBB list of "Traveller" family names.

4. As any Irish Traveller knows, our common surnames are shared by many times our number of country people of Irish descent.

I will stop lecturing at this point and ask a few pointed questions. Based on the above:

If no one knows how many Irish Travellers there are or how many (few?) of us are convicted of major crimes, is there anyone who can demonstrate that the felony conviction rate of Irish Travellers is any worse than the Amish, the Mormons, or any other population segment in the USA?

If constant harassment by law-enforcement officials is not justified by hard facts, only prejudicial opinion, why should it be permitted to go unchecked?

So what?

I propose that any and all Travellers who are stopped and interrogated without cause, or embarrassed in a store simply because they have Irish surnames and live on the road, forget about "The Fixer" or any other criminal lawyer; find a contingency fee attorney who will take the case to Federal court for damages to compensate them for the infringement of their civil rights. There's a fortune to be made, I think, and some "payback" that has nothing to do with money.

Epiphany on the road to [Nowhere]

I recently received an e-mail that I was skeptical about, at first. The message seemed too earnest, the writing too accomplished to be genuine, again, at first. But I was intrigued enough to do a little checking on the source and, much to my surprise, I found that he really does exist and is who and what he says he is. I have his permission to reprint parts of that e-mail here, leaving out anything identifying the man to avoid getting him in trouble with his employers and others; so here goes:

[06/18/99] Much to my regret, this correspondent feels himself to be at least temporarily jeopardized in his profession and has asked me to withdraw his comments for the time being. Perhaps his literate style, a standout in a profession not known for it, was too much of a dead give-away to his identity. I hope to be able to return his message, as well as further comments, to this page in the not too distant future.

More to come:

In future editions, I'll feature an e-mail dialogue with a [Texas] fraud cop and some questions from and responses to a member of an offshoot branch of our extended family who asks if we're all as bad as the media paints us. Some of it may not go down easy; so I hope you'll keep it down until you've had a chance to digest it. There's no reason that you should get an upset stomach from my attack of gas. (:>D)

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