I wonder if I am on a list.

[moniss]

33. Back

in the days of Nixon most of us young locals weren't important enough to rise to national attention but in small towns if you spoke out aggressively for civil rights and against Vietnam and the draft it was very common that the local big wigs took notice of who you were and among themselves and their businesses, offices for building permits etc. they could and often would see to it that you had a hard time. The local cops/county cops/state cops etc. all had programs with the FBI for keeping "track" of "troublemakers". Like in Milwaukee and Chicago police departments they had "Red Squads" that were intelligence units that also kept track of people and infiltrated social activist groups. They of course were not above some intimidation. The Chicago Red Squad was so notorious that it was ordered disbanded and the cops destroyed much of the files they had from spying on liberal groups. Some of the files remain at the Chicago Historical Society. What they do now is simply use third parties and their software to sift through social media and build up files on you as a resident of a city or as an activist etc. Here is a link to a Chicago Sun-Times newspaper article from just last year. Notice that the company the cops had been using was marketing itself by calling activists and unions as "overt threats". https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/3/8/18392496/chicago-police-use-secret-software-to-spy-on-us-next-mayor-must-clue-us-in
In Wisconsin during the recall election of Scott Walker the GOP took all of the recall petitions and placed all of the names in a database and then sent out to local GOP activists the lists for their area. Then they started doing stuff like harassing phone calls etc. I remember my Mom receiving one. The GOP of course claimed they were only "verifying" the signatures and making sure that people "understood" what they had signed. Sure thing. They also did stuff like check names against court records to try and get dirt etc. I sincerely apologize for writing lengthy entries sometimes without paragraph breaks. I was horrible in 7th grade English class and my teacher never deserved the stress I gave her.