Good morning Mr. Doran. I have some very important links to share with you. They are links to the text of several “motions” which I filed in Orange County on Thursday, and in Pitt County yesterday. They include “facial constitutional challenges” to NCGS Chapter 50B (the “domestic violence protective order statute”) and NCGS 14-277.3A (the “stalking law”). Both of the statutes have been used against me in 5 different counties of North Carolina to arrest and indefinitely detain me for publications on my independent websites.
Jan 13, 2024, 7:29 AM
Lest there be any doubt that I am a journalist, I had an op-ed published in the News & Observer in early 2015, and in fact I (like you) also wrote for the DTH as an undergraduate at UNC. Before that I was Commentary editor for The Phillipian at Phillips Academy. It is not my fault that I have chosen to publish my writings independently; the protections of the First Amendment apply to everyone.
Jan 13, 2024, 7:31 AM
The significance of these “motions” is that they are likely to reach the Supreme Court of the United States and the Supreme Court of North Carolina, and it is not clear what Mr. Stein will say about my arguments. But in fact the Attorney General is personally responsible for my persecution, having taken part in it since his offices represented District Attorney Ben David in my “public records lawsuit”. It was an open letter to AAG Anna Davis published on my website that was used to have me arrested (for “probation violation”) on the premises of the NC Department of Justice on 11 October 2019, at which time the “public records lawsuit” was still pending. It was just a few months later that Mr. Stein gave the DA Mr. David a “Dogwood Award”, and by that time I had petitioned for Mr. David’s removal per NCGS 7A-66 saying he is a “traitor to the State of North Carolina” and a “white supremacist”.
Jan 13, 2024, 7:34 AM
Before I share the “motions”, here are those two documents concerning “Josh Stein’s favorite district attorney” Mr. David. First link is the “public records lawsuit”, second is the “7A-66 affidavit”:
Jan 13, 2024, 7:36 AM
Now for the “motions”. Here are the “Orange County motions”, which concern a 50B DVPO case “NAME REDACTED* v William Dawson Gage” and the criminal charges which proceeded therefrom. Most of these charges referred to my publication of “text message transcripts” on a website called https://t.co/hJD2B1rk6w
(no longer online). So one key aspect of this is the basic question of “Chapter 50B” vs. “The First Amendment”. The sad thing is that “journalists” in North Carolina have not said a word about my ordeal, which reflects the fact that nowadays Chapter 50B is considered more sacred than Amendment I. However, in my “motion” I make an argument which I do not think Mr. Stein has an answer for.
“Motions for Appropriate Relief & Motion to Terminate Probation” https://t.co/1dcKtEgztn
password: cheerwine
“Motion to Set Aside Judgment” in “REDACTED* v Gage” https://t.co/o7YHZVDd7U
password: cheerwine
Jan 13, 2024, 7:42 AM
So those deal with NCGS 50B. The case in Pitt County is “felony stalking”, but the charge pertains to 3 (three, no more no less) letters in the US mail sent from the Orange County Detention Center to the Farmville Public Library. Here I also challenge the constitutionality of the statute, which in “State v Shackelford” the NC Court of Appeals has already found to violate the First Amendment. I simply take it a few steps further. But I also make arguments per “international law” which make a mockery of Joshua Stein (supposedly a “powerful intellect” etc etc).
“Motion to Dismiss” https://t.co/zcYQfQ1Tr3
Jan 13, 2024, 7:46 AM
And with that, I leave you to it, and ask that you share this information with your colleagues. The other two people who write for the N&O who I have written are Danielle Battaglia and Gene Nichol. Indeed Mr. Nichol is in possession of some very important correspondence sent from the Orange County Detention Center, and this is doubly important because his “colleague” at UNC School of Law Beth Posner is deeply involved in the conspiracy, working closely with the DA’s office in Orange County to pursue their malicious prosecution.
Jan 13, 2024, 7:48 AM
Since when are law professors allowed to work with prosecutors? That is but one of many questions which are presented by this scandalous situation. Thanks for your attention and concern. –Dawson Gage
Jan 13, 2024, 7:49 AM
Good evening Will. I hope you received at least one letter from me, written in the New Hanover County Detention Facility, announcing my campaign for DA. I am at my parents’ home at 6046 Leeward Lane, Wilmington, on “house arrest” . If you did receive my letter, you would have been very fortunate, because most of my letters were interdicted. For instance, a letter to Senator Berger about how “14-277.3A is an unconstitutional law”. Or a letter to Secretary Marshall with my latest poem for the young/lovely Anderson Clayton. Or a letter to Governor Cooper’s speechwriter Morgan Jackson asking for Mr. Stein to withdraw from the race.
Aug 21, 2024, 8:07 PM
P.S., here is that poem, and it’s a show-stopper:
Aug 21, 2024, 8:08 PM
Excuse me, I got distracted. Here is the poem:
“2 May 2024: An Immodest Proposal for the Democratic Party (for Anderson Clayton, with love)”
“These are the lines of attack.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt, “First Inaugural Address” (March 1933)
I. when people ask, “how did you meet?”
we’ll say, “on a cloud in the pale blue sky”
though it’s not so much “how”, but “why”
because spirits are low / and the rent is too high
and the teachers don’t know / so the students don’t try
so the children can’t grow / and the grown-ups all cry
people float to and fro’ / and they work ’til they die
when they ask, “why did you meet?” we’ll say, “that’s why”.
II. when people ask, “where will you sleep?”
we’ll say, “on the straw of the long leaf pines”
though it’s hard to say “where” if we don’t know “when”
since there’s money to spare / and black ink in the pen
there are crowds at the fair / made of women and men
and not one of them care / if we get up at ten
if we ever get there / maybe we can rest then
when they ask, “when will you sleep?”
we’ll say, “that’s when”.
III. when people ask, “who will you call?”
we’ll say, “every single last one of you all”
though whoever we call / it is only to serve
we’ll get up when we fall / and we won’t lose our nerve
we’ll just bounce like a ball / and then bend like a curve
with the world in our thrall / ‘cause we do it with verve
though the orders are tall / it is what they deserve
when they ask, “who will you serve?”
we’ll say, “that’s who”.
IV. when people ask, “what is your plan?”
we’ll say, “to be rather than to seem!”
though it’s less of a plan / and more like a dream
if we know what we are / there’s no need for a scheme
we’ll just burn like a star / and then flow like a stream
‘til we stick like the tar / and we spread like a meme
we’ll get so very far / if we work as a team
when they ask, “what is your dream?”
we’ll say, “this dream”.
—Dawson Gage @ New Hanover County Detention Facility Castle Hayne, North Carolina, USA
Aug 22, 2024, 1:32 AM
Hello again Mr. Doran.
So admittedly I have not read very much of your journalism, but I certainly have read a great deal of journalism, however, perhaps more than anyone at your newspaper. I did some catching up on that last night, and found something extraordinary. While I might develop this idea into a piece of some sort, for now I will just address you personally on the subject, which is the “unconstitutional sections in the Constitution of North Carolina. After all my readings in jail and prison and hospital over the years I daresay I know our state constitution as well as anyone, and your article was very suggestive.
(…I have, however, preferred to remain “underground”, because I have not found a newspaper that would be willing to publish my views–my chosen form is the opinion column–…)
Aug 22, 2024, 5:11 PM
So first, a touching personal point. You feature of precious photo of Laura Stephenson and Emily-Kate Hannapel, and it so happens that I know these two women, and know the former, well, very well indeed. In fact, in 2014, in the spring if I recall, a year before the Obergefell decison, Laura called me from Durham while I was in Carrboro at my apartment. Laura asks “Do you want to come see a movie about the gay marriage Supreme Court fight? I have 4 tickets.” (This was before she married Emily-Kate but they were basically waiting on the “gay marriage decision”, as were a modest but significant number of other North Carolinians.) So who did I call to pitch a double-date with Laura and Emily-Kate?
Why, Caroline Fryar of course, who like Laura was the same year as me at Carolina, and who in 2014 was living in the same apartment complex called White Oak in Carrboro. Alas, she was cohabiting out of wedlock with a certain Zachary Hackney, so my asking her out was potentially problem-causing, but that had not stopped me in the past when it came to Ms. Fryar. So I go knock on her door and say, “Hey! You want to go see a movie in Durham about the gay marriage Supreme Court fight?”
Aug 22, 2024, 5:20 PM
“Umm, yeah! Absolutely!”
Aug 22, 2024, 5:22 PM
So here’s one more bit of background, also to do with Laura and Emily-Kate. So I had met Laura at a Christmas party in Wilmington at the home of Agnes Beane, whose daughter Eleanor Cooper was a childhood friend of mine, while Agnes was something like my mother Hannah’s best friend. Laura is from Morehead City but knew Eleanor from Carolina, where Laura had been in the same sorority as Eleanor, but of course Laura would follow the path of the “lesbian sorority drop-out”, but I digress. Point being that in January 2009 as we both arrived back on UNC campus, we went on this absolutely cosmic walk all through the campus, climbing on fire escapes, smoking marijuana, it might have been the most romantic thing I have ever done. That night, Laura followed me back and spent the night at my apartment at Odum Villiage. The next morning, I woke up, and Eleanor had picked Laura up to take her to the airport, where as she had told me the night before, she was flying away overseas for a sort of “double study abroad” in Tanzania and Vietnam. (I believe it was in Tanzania that she met Emily-Kate, which is amusing given the status of same-sex marriage on the African continent. I believe there’s an ancient joke about going to other jurisdictions to engage in certain practices, but I do not recall it.) But anyways, before the two women met, Laura sent me a very, very affectionate email, but I wasn’t even checking my email that summer, so I didn’t read her love letter until AFTER she had met Emily-Kate. If I had, I certainly would have responded.
But as I suspect you can infer from this story, the road that led to the “Obergefell decision” is but one case of major social and political events seeming to hinge upon the most obscure and intimate and private of episodes. I would consider this one of the spookier, but also the most inspiring, characteristics of journalism and the press: everything in my life would have been different had the photographers in Raleigh not zeroed in on Laura and Emily-Kate, but they did, and as it happens I was in Wilmington on that day and my mother had a copy of the N&O on the table, so I saw it right away. I am even keen enough to notice that the picture in your “constitutional law article” was different from the one that was on the front page back in 2014, so I suppose there was a whole series of these.
I might also observe in passing that the most important newspaper for reports on weddings in America is generally considered the New York Times, where my “prep school sweetheart” Virginia Sweeney’s wedding was reported about that same time. But I would wager that the N&O might have taken the prize in this domain of “wedding reportage” because it shows how there is often a shared seam between the things which DO make the news media, and the life of yours truly Dawson Gage which has also appeared in the news media for most of his life, but NOT since he became the most persecuted dissident writer in the so-called “free world”. The thing which has me wondering is, “Who is going to break my story?”
Aug 22, 2024, 5:49 PM
Anyways, let’s get to the “constitutional law” part, since of all topics that might be my specialty. As of 2024, I am sitting on a whole series of “theses” about the Constitutions (state and federal) and North Carolina law which nobody has been able to challenge. This is because the attorney general Mr. Stein is not only himself guilty of conspiracy where I am concerned, but in his public statements and campaign materials he is the strongest support of Chapter 50B proceedings, just as President Biden is the most vocal advocate of both “protective order law” and “stalking laws”, as evidenced by his executive proclamations of the subject. This relates to the deeply disturbing and misleading phenomenon of “Domestic Violence Awareness Month” (October) and “Stalking Awareness Month”, January. What I’m saying is that my arguments have been dismissed as “psychotic” and “delusional” by the united front of prosecutors and “government forensic psychiatrists” ( and to bluntly editorialize on this point, “government forensic psychiatrists” are probably the most terrible people on earth.)
This has been convenient because Mr. Stein’s offices as Attorney General are doubly involved in criminal proceedings like mine, and that’s not even taking into account my “public records lawsuit” against District Attorney Ben David. Here is some Watergate-style “close analysis” of the “Ben David Josh Stein connection”. Now I started getting involuntarily committed to mental hospitals in 2017, while I started getting arrested for “domestic violence” and “stalking” charges in November 2017. Now there is, in fact Mr. Doran, very compelling evidence of a conspiracy within the New Hanover County Democratic Party to prevent me from running for NC Senate in 2018, and this involved 50B orders.
But the real development of events must turn on what was said and took place in the offices of the 6th prosecutorial district, because once *NAME REDACTED* had filed for her 50B order, using it to have me arrested on 13 February 2018–the SECOND day of the electoral filing period–as I prepared to leave my residence to go to the Board of Elections to file my candidacy for state senate. Did *NAME REDACTED* have any connection to the campaign of Democratic candidate Harper Peterson? Indeed she did, she was one of his “campaign managers” until she abruptly and without explanation switched over to the campaign of James Middleton for County Commission. When asked on the witness stand when she left the Peterson campaign, she pretended not to remember, but then divulged that it was about 2 weeks prior to the “filing period DVPO”.
Aug 22, 2024, 6:17 PM
Let’s try to focus. I liked your piece about the “openly unconstitutional laws” because it is an excellent example of the sort-of “Piedmont liberal” attitude on politics and law. While that school of thought has always been in my line of sight and to some extent in my own “repertoire”, I have spent my adult life trying to go beyond this perspective. Which is to say that I attempt to produce a certain revolutionary political idea by taking the criticism of North Carolina’s “liberals” as my premise. Karl Marx used to do this sort of thing, and its why he kept getting kicked out of countries. In my case, it’s why I have been arrested, jailed and hospitalized so goddamn much. When you criticize Republicans as a Democrat, they call you “left wing extremist”; when you criticize the Democrats as a Republican, you get called “right wing extremist”, but when you criticize the Democrats as a Democratic Marxist, you end up in jail, hospital, or both, because your ideas are considered both sinful and sick, criminal and unnatural. I suppose that my own upbringing in Wilmington, which is the most “cosmopolitan” place in North Caroina, opened a certain lock in the intellectual realm.
But for perspective, my two great-grandfathers on my mother’s side (Terry Lyon of Cumberland County and John G. Dawson of Lenoir) were elected as Democrats to the General Assembly in the early 20th century. That was not long after the Bolshevik Revolution, which perhaps you know made a considerable impact in North Carolina, inaugurating a new chapter in a history in which “extreme left forces” in North Carolina have frequently been suppressed through political murder, whether it’s the police or the Klan. This might be said to go back to Governor Tryon’s method of “dealing with the Regulators”, and would include the events of 1898 as well as the Greensboro Massacre….
Aug 22, 2024, 6:32 PM
But as I said, Will, “Piedmont liberalism” and the state constitution. While these are not for me the only or even the crucial points of contention, let me take the examples you gave of “same sex marriage”, (what you call) “Jim Crow” literacy testing, and (what you call) the “prohibition on atheists holding office”. I am tempted to say your perspective is informed, perhaps even misinformed, by the jurisprudence and legal scholarship of other US states, and of course North Carolina has always had a certain “subaltern” position in the landscape of American law even though our laws and our lawyers are in some ways superior to any in the English-speaking world. You can see this in the way that North Carolina was one of the 13 colonies and acceded to the US Constitution, but has only furnished one (maybe two?) Justices of the US Supreme Court. This issue could soon become extremely pertinent again soon, because (have you heard this yet, is it in the N&O?) with Roy Cooper “opting out” of the VP selection process, it would seem the only position in Kamala Harris’s (hypothetical, sigh) cabinet would be Attorney General. Has there ever been a US Attorney General from North Carolina? I would guess “no”.
Aug 22, 2024, 6:43 PM
It might be especially relevant/significant–let’s say “not a coincidence”–that at that time of publication I was in the Orange County Detention Center for publishing a website called https://t.co/DWMEsDZEBs
which was headed with big letters saying “Down with Ben David! Down with Josh Stein! Restore the Constitututions!” and so on. As with so many things, the dialectic solves problems and puzzles which are otherwise baffling. So what do I mean when I say “restore the constitutions”?
Aug 22, 2024, 6:48 PM
First, a couple of criticisms of you and your paper. You all are terrible about confusing “journalistic vernacular” and “the legal idiom”. In some ways it’s not your fault, because it’s not like your readers have command of the legal idiom. But at the adoption of the federal constitution of our country and, before that, of our state (whose first constitution, with its “Declaration of Rights”, was adopted in 1776), back in that time ordinary people were very concerned in all the particulars of constitutional law, since they saw that their entire lives depended upon what rights they had, what fundamental laws could be counted on. Not so much in our time, where not only the journalist Will Doran but presumably some of his readers seem to miss the distinction between a “law” and a “rule”, or perhaps the more definite distinction between “constitutional law” and “statutory law”, which are generally distinguished from “administrative rules” or “policies” proliferated by the executive, be they the governor or the State whose managers were appointed by the governor. Perhaps what I’m saying is that there are a lot stranger and more interesting puzzles and non-sequiturs in our “form of government” than you seem to notice.
Aug 22, 2024, 6:57 PM
Since it’s the easiest to deal with, let’s begin with refuting the “Jim Crow literacy test” point. My authority here (or rather my citation, since he is not regarded as an “authority” on legal matters though his thinking was quite advanced) is William F. Buckley Jr. Buckley had a sort of oblique attitude toward “Jim Crow”. A famous article in the early years of National Review defended segregation, saying something like “the whites have the right to rule because they are–for the moment–the more advanced race”. But later on Buckley was generally acknowledged to have “evolved” on race questions and by the time he died in 2008 he had demonstrated that there is nothing inherently “racist” about “conservatism”, that it is a correlation without causation when the two appear to coincide, and as often as not, the “racists” are not really “conservatives”. I evoke Buckley in this way because my own position on the “literacy test” is identical to what William Buckley said, when he pointed out that if the same “test” and the same “treatment” were administered/given to blacks and whites and all other “races”–if in other words, the ‘literacy test” were conducted fairly–then no constitutional questions would arise, for instance in “equal protection” terms.
Aug 22, 2024, 7:06 PM
I think that’s enough for the moment. To be continued. Please don’t hesitate to share these notes with your colleagues.
Aug 22, 2024, 7:10 PM
Excuse me, I left out something crucial, which is “Josh Stein’s Watergate”, also known as the “the long Dawson Gage affair”. With a good conspiracy narrative you can kind of pick up at any time, but for evidentiary and logical reasons I would start the story in May 2019 with the filing of my “public records lawsuit”. I filed suit against District Attorney Ben David under Chapter 132-9 on 9 May 2019, in fact I had to risk getting arrested just to go to the courthouse and file it, since I was then–as I am now 5 years later–on “GPS ankle monitor house arrest”. I filed it in the afternoon but I believe it was either that day 9 May 2019 or the next day 10 May that the suit was served on Mr. David by a Sheriff’s officer while he was in his office on the 5th floor of the Courthouse. So when someone sues the DA under Public Records Law, triggering the representation of the DA by an Assistant Attorney General, what is the procedure? Did Mr. Stein need to be notified personally? Mr. David, in his endorsement of Mr. Stein for governor (which was suspiciously weak, to my conspiratorial eye, but more on that later) refers to his excellent relations with the AG’s office under Mr. Stein vis-a-vis the handling of criminal appeals. So they of course had a working relationship.
They also had a political relationship involving the Democratic Party, which as you can know (before the Arrival of Anderson Clayton) has been “criminal lawyer dominated” for the past half-century or something. I suppose I’m actually pointing out that notwithstanding his Jewish ancestry and his Jewish faith (about which I know a thing or two, though very little as to Mr. Stein’s own beliefs and practices)…my idea is that Stein has adopted the traditional “white man Democrat attitude” on the criminal laws. My point would be that there are other forms of “racism” than there used to be in North Carolina, and I do not accept the prevailing view (repeated ad nauseum by the otherwise admirable Gene Nichol) that the North Carolina GOP is a “white man’s party”. In the year 2024 with Mr. Robinson as the Republican candidate, while Mr. Stein quietly campaigns to be our first Jewish governor while saying to his constituents, in so many words, that Robinson isn’t really a black man, that he has no claim on Black identity; these contradictions will not disappear, especially where Mr. Stein’s political propaganda (excuse me, “messaging”) is so disgusting as it is. Governor Bev Perdue, the first woman governor, did not play these games with “rape and abortion” or with “hate and love” (vis-a-vis “LGBTQ issues”). Even Roy Cooper (especially Roy Cooper) did not say that McCrory and his GOP cronies (my roommate at Carolina and I had “le mot juste” about McCrory, which was “McCrony”) were “hateful” or “haters”.
Yes, many North Carolinians thought that before HB2, more thought so afterwards. Perhaps Roy Cooper was sophisticated enough to see that the Republicans only passed HB2 once they had completed their First Term Agenda, rightly denounced by the liberals, who however had no legs to stand on. The point being that Mr. Stein plays the “moral high ground card” against Robinson on almost every single issue. You will notice that he does not do so in the fashion of the Reverend Barber, who is also known for his discourse of “morality over politics”. Mr. Stein basically tries to counterfeit Barber’s ideas without understanding their philosophical and theological content, that is, the political thought of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, of which I am a devoted student and exponent, in North Carolina second only to Reverend Barber, though I would claim that I surpass my dear brother in the “interpretation” thereof, if not, of course, in evangelism and sheer volume of struggle. I mean, I’ve been arrested more times than John Lewis, but never in Tuscon…
And you see, I do not pretend that there in uniformity or consensus among Black people in North Carolina, or that there are not many black professionals and middle-class folk with a stake in the Democratic Party who are genuinely supportive of Stein (just as they are, perhaps privately or silently, skeptical of Rev. Barber’s radicalism and confrontational methods). But the point being that it’s only by the grace of Barber’s achievements that Stein even has a chance. This has only grown massively more relevant since the “new advent “of Kamala Harris…
Aug 22, 2024, 8:06 PM
I somehow wonder whether this was about “Josh Stein’s Watergate” or “Josh Stein’s Waterloo”. As it happens, Richard Nixon went to China and everything else is commentary, and Napoleon Bonaparte had to be defeated twice, so let’s point out that Stein will be LUCKY if he gets to have a “Watergate” or a “Waterloo”, because that’s as grand a part in history as he can hope to play. In fact yesterday’s equally-spirited “Letter to Anderson Clayton” concluded by challenging Josh Stein to a “game of historical analogies”. Who is Dawson Gage? He is the heir to Alex Manly, and the reincarnation of Rose Greenhow. But that’s a trick-answer, since inheritance and reincarnation are not “analogical”. Neither, strictly-speaking, is Donald Trump’s remark about Robinson as “Martin Luther King on steroids”. His comment on JD Vance’s beard (“a young Abraham Lincoln” was equally askew and not-exactly-analogical but not entirely stupid. But I gave Miss Clayton some good “historical analogies” to work with, and it’s better to just enjoy them first before you “poke holes”, that’s how you play “historical analogies”.
They are these:
“Dawson Gage is North Carolina’s Mandela”.
“Dawson Gage is North Carolina’s Aung San Suu Kyi”
“Hannah Gage is North Carolina’s Leon Trotsky”
But the best one, Mr. Doran, I leave for last. Who is Anderson Clayton?
“Like Joan of Arc had graduated from Appalachian State University”.
Aug 22, 2024, 8:21 PM
Listen to The Mixtape for Anderson Clayton, a playlist by Dawson Gage on #SoundCloudhttps://t.co/8gHEZpw4y8
Aug 25, 2024, 5:00 PM
