First Two Chapters

Introduction

From the left:                                            

“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.”  -Che Guevara                                                 

From the right:

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”  -Edmund Burke

The real threat to American democracy is no longer external. It isn’t nurtured in madrasas or the halls of communism. Now, the real conspiracy against freedom is internal. It is cultured here on our own shores, behind closed doors. It allowed for the richest 1% of Americans to increase their portion of ownership of American wealth from roughly twenty percent to around thirty percent in a period of only twenty years—all at the expense of the receding middle class. It birthed the demagoguery of Trump, weakens America on the world stage and it puts our freedom at risk. This is the incredible story of the man who accidentally became the leader of the movement that exposed the real collusion in our government and almost took down the two-party system in America. I know his story because he was my friend, and I was there.

Chapter 1

Ordinary people often do extraordinary things. For many years I thought that was the case with John Campbell, but half a lifetime later I found out that I had been wrong.

It all started with a joke. At the penultimate moment of confusion during that now-famous Community Board meeting on the Lower East Side of Manhattan I leaned in slightly toward John and whispered, “I wish I had a tomato right about now.”  Some people don’t believe that I said that to him—that it was me—but those who know the true story know that I was there, right from the beginning, sitting right beside my friend John Campbell in that middle-school gym. John laughed, slightly and quietly, causing his head to bob a half an inch higher. A look flashed across his face and that resembled a lightbulb appearing, which I took to mean, “Wait, I have a tomato.”  Then John Campbell loudly said, “I object,” and slowly started to stand.

           
Mr. Francis, the committee chairman, looked at him and said, “What?  Mr. Campbell, this isn’t a trial. It’s just an informational hearing. What is it you object to anyway?”

           
John Campbell said: “I object to you,” and it seemed like the room suddenly became quieter, and everyone’s attention shifted to John.

           
“To me?!” Mr. Francis said, both indignantly and condescendingly. He seemed surprised by John’s bravado but probably not nearly as much as he might have been if he actually knew him.

           
“Yes. I object to you, to this committee…  To this whole process,” John continued.

           
“But Mr. Campbell,” Mr. Francis said with a snide chuckle, “your dispute isn’t with me or this committee. It’s with Marcus Wiley.”

           
“No, sir. It’s not,” John said, and then everyone’s attention was focused on John, and the room had grown much quieter. “I don’t have any ‘dispute’ with Marcus Wiley.”

Marcus Wiley jumped to his feet then and shouted, “Yeah!  Wait, what?”

“We didn’t have a dispute,” John said. “I barely know the man. I just want him to stop smoking cigars in public places that affect me. We have a simple disagreement. Hell, I disagree with my friends all the time. I don’t know Marcus Wiley well enough to call him a friend—”

           
“Now you and Mr. Wiley are friends?!” Mr. Francis interjected.

           
“I didn’t say that,” John continued. “I just said I don’t know him well enough to call him a friend. But he’s certainly not my enemy. He’s not my enemy for smoking some damned cigars. We’re both Lower East Siders. Bowery guys. So are you. Aren’t you?  We just have a disagreement. And we couldn’t resolve it smoothly so I came to your committee for help but you people don’t want to settle this, you want to turn it into a fight. Why do you want to do that?”

           
There were a lot of people crowded into the school gym on that hot summer evening in 2012. There were two contentious debates on the docket that evening alongside John’s petition to limit cigar smoking on sidewalks in front of bars and restaurants. There was a nightclub’s liquor license application being protested by the usual groups of community organizers and parents groups and perhaps the odd octogenarian or two; and there was a rezoning proposition relating to parking spots around the church on Elizabeth and Prince Streets which had attracted a hot debate—from the usual groups of community organizers and parents groups and perhaps the odd octogenarian or two. A lot’s been written about that Community Board meeting in the years since, and many refer to there being various other issues on the agenda, but I assure you that there were not. It was about drinking and parking—two things New Yorkers never give up without a strenuous fight. And cigars of course. Regardless, it was a perfect storm of local issue flashpoints being capriciously escalated by the heat, and the economy, and the bipartisan style of bickering that had trickled down from the federal government (whereas job creation had certainly not) all the way to our neighborhood.

           
On the way into the gym I had noticed the lone reporter in the back of the room. She was easy to spot, standing alone with one hip leaned against the concrete wall, black jeans, sheer black blouse, camera bag slung over one shoulder. She had a notepad in her hand and while John chatted with a neighbor I even spoke to her briefly.

           
“Who do you work for?” I had asked her.

           
“The Post,” she replied without turning her head.

           
“Got you on all the big stories?”

           
She didn’t say anything but she forced a slight smile, exhaled audibly and nodded, enough to politely acknowledge my attempt at humor.

           
“Skip Winters,” I said.

           
“Yeah. Margaret Chandler…  Are they getting this thing rolling soon?”

           
She was in her mid or late twenties. I couldn’t be sure. I briefly wondered whether she was generally sexy or only sexy to men twenty years older than her. Like me. I remember thinking, I guess that’s who The Post sends to cover the mundane goings-on of Community Board meetings.

           
I don’t think Margaret Chandler left bored that evening. Once John spoke up and Wiley spoke out the mood in that room seemed to go from boredom to confusion to minor melee all in a hot minute. John and I spoke about it many times in the ensuing weeks. There were many days when he would finish an interview and turn to me and say, “So Skip, how’d I do?” and our conversation would invariably turn back to the moments that followed Marcus Wiley uttering, “Yeah! Wait, what?”

Something happened in that cavernous room with all the folding chairs crowded in to one side under the home team basket. Like lightning hitting a puddle of primordial soup the whole crowd woke up and instead of choosing sides and creating bullet points to support their arguments, they became united in one primary-albeit-ambiguous thought: “We object!” They objected to Mr. Francis, and to the Community Board itself, just like John Campbell had done. They weren’t even sure about the specifics, yet they objected anyway. They objected to the frustration and the bureaucracy and the elevation of dissent over cooperation and the unemployment rate and Congress and political news shows and the Lindsay Lohans and the school shootings and the price of gas and the price of beer and the War on Terror and the relentless arguing for arguing’s sake and the fact that America was losing—we were losing, falling behind—while all those nincompoops in Washington did was vie for control of a broken system that governed a slowing economy and a bloated military. Then, as everyone now knows, Patrick Gilmore stood on top of his chair, clutching another, and shouted, “Fuck this,” above the growing cacophony and hurled it at the dais, right at Francis. In what should have been a sleepy sauna of a meeting, a little bit of hell broke loose, signaling the evening’s ultimate moment of confusion. And the John Campbell who the world knows today was created.

Chapter 2

John did some remarkable things. But when all of this began he was no more special than any individual Boston resident throwing tea into the harbor in the 1770s. He wasn’t determined like a Rosa Parks, and he was no more premeditated in his first steps outside that middle-school gym right after the riot than that thin man run over by a tank in Tianneman Square. I guess that in a way what I’m trying to say is that a fuse doesn’t necessarily know it’s a fuse that will lead to an explosion; it’s just a fuse, by its nature. And one doesn’t necessarily come to be the voice of a movement by orchestration. When the message is the truth, and the truth is of great relevance, and a person becomes its medium, and the medium is embraced by the masses, a leader is sometimes created—not born. I know, because I was there when John didn’t matter to anyone.

As soon as Patrick Gilmore threw that chair most of the two hundred or so attendees present at the meeting immediately jumped to their feet. Women made their way for the exits, some running, some with toddlers in tow. There were a handful of teenage boys in the back—I don’t know why; perhaps they were doing research for a paper for school—and they started yelling, “Yeah! Yeah!” and throwing empty plastic water bottles and candy wrappers at nothing in particular. The older men just stood and pointed but some of the middle-aged men, those in their forties and fifties, seemed to pair off with each other, like nervous kids at the dances that probably took place right at that very gymnasium. They sought out random counterparts like the non-combatants in a hockey fight, all finding one guy on the other team with whom to grab jerseys but then wait—to look tough and involved but to wait. A few started to wrestle, and a few punches may have even been thrown, and there were certainly several people yelling. The room filled up with the sounds of folding chairs being toppled and shoes scuffing the gymnasium floor like they do in a basketball game. Like I said, you put a couple of hundred New Yorkers in the same hot room in the Bowery and start talking about their drinking and parking privileges… It’s a formula for trouble.

Francis and one or two of the other committee members were on their feet, pressing their palms back and forth toward the crowd like Baptist preachers, looking like they were trying to somehow tamp down the violence, like putting out a campfire, but it would not be contained. Gilmore pointed right at Francis and shouted, “There’s the asshole who started this whole thing!” still standing on his chair. A few of the men rushed the dais and John turned to me and said, “Let’s get out of here,” and I nodded and we made for the exit in the back of the gym.

Out on the sidewalk a larger crowd was already gathering fueled by the people spilling out of the gym and then further fed by neighbors who witnessed the growing crowd from their windows. They came outside to see if perhaps someone had been shot, or something was being given away, or if maybe DeNiro was hanging out at Cafe Gitane again. The hipsters and the models from Nolita, coconut waters and cigarettes in hand, mingled in with the elderly attendees of the Community Board meeting, their reading glasses draped down over their cheap polyester blouses. It made for a strange oil-and-vinegar concoction of bystanders. There was energy and excitement in the air and it felt dangerous but also thrilling. I remember that clearly. John and I paused for a moment, and I would have just gone home, but then he said, “Wait, there’s Wiley.” Marcus Wiley was approaching us with an angry and purposeful gait, chest puffed out a bit, trailed by five or six other fifty-something men, maybe ten years older than me and John, all wearing T-shirts, tattoos showing on their arms.

I leaned toward John and said, “C’mon, let’s go.”

“Now wait a minute, Skip,” John said.

“We’re too old for this crap.”

John laughed a bit and calmly said, “Hold on.”

Wiley quickly approached us and got right up into John’s personal space and aggressively said, “See the shit you caused now! Why did you stir up this shit?”

“I didn’t stir up any shit,” John said calmly. “Pat Gilmore threw that chair. I don’t know why the hell he did that. Ask ‘im yourself tomorrow at the bar. That was the problem.”

One of the thin, muscular, gray-haired guys behind Marcus Wiley said, “Ah, kick his ass, Mac.”  He wore khaki shorts with a belt cinching his tucked-in shirt. They all did.

Marcus Wiley said, “What’s your problem with cigars anyway?!” loudly enough for most of the gathering crowd to hear. It was like a proclamation.

“I got allergies!” John said, matching Wiley’s volume.

“So get yourself a tissue!” from the guy standing behind Wiley, pushing by him to get closer to John. My pulse was racing. I felt like I was back in eighth grade, surrounded by five high school kids who wanted to know who the hell I thought I was showing up at their courts, with a basketball so new that it was obviously intended to show them up.

“Now hold on, Mikey,” Marcus Wiley said, placing his fingertips to the other man’s chest. “My sister Jill, the younger one, she’s got asthma.” Then, to John, still speaking quite loudly, he said, “You got asthma or something, or are you just some kinda instigator?”

“I don’t know,” John semi-shouted, “I got bad health insurance. I don’t run to doctors. But when you smoke those cigars I get sick. I live right above Flannery’s. For twenty years you know.”

“I know your family,” Wiley said.

“Well I get headaches, and my eyes get blurry and my nose stuffs up. Can’t even sit and watch a Yankees game in the front room if you and the guys are out there smoking those cigars. I told you that but you don’t care.” Wiley seemed pensive for a moment. Then John smiled, and added, more quietly, “Plus they’re pretty shitty cigars. They smell like old cats.”

Mikey said, “What?!” and jerked forward a half a step, but Marcus Wiley kept his hand on his chest and laughed, and said, “Well, he’s right about that one, Mikey. He’s true on that.”

There was a pause and then John quietly said, “Look, if I got you a few decent cigars, could you just smoke them down by the parking lot on the corner?”

Marcus Wiley was stone-faced, and even though it made perfect sense, I was still sure that the whole thing would end with someone yelling obscenities and a bunch of idle threats being issued by middle-aged men stirred by memories of nights from their youths. But Wiley then said, “Yeah, I think I could do that.”

“Well then I’ll bring a box by the bar this weekend. Maybe even give a few to Gilmore to pay for the entertainment,” John said.

“Fair enough,” Marcus Wiley said without smiling. Then he extended his hand. John reached out and took it and they shook. And cameras flashed.

At the time, that moment seemed like nothing to us. It was like tossing a cigarette butt into the gutter, or like a simple nod to a neighbor walking by. We couldn’t anticipate what would later be made of that moment, of that handshake. In the five minutes that had passed between when John and I exited the gym and when he and Wiley shook hands, that young reporter from the Post had apparently alerted her photographer who must have been lingering outside smoking a cigarette and waiting for the end of the meeting. He was there to capture that handshake, and to light the fuse that was John Campbell.

I can’t speak for the others, but until the camera flashed I was unaware that he was there or that Margaret Chandler had followed us outside. I guess I was just focused on John. I was trying to somehow get his back despite the fact that we were outnumbered. I mean, the guy was my friend. It really was that simple. That’s all it meant to us at the time—a neighborhood argument. As soon as the camera started flashing I became aware of much more. Two police cars had arrived. Lights were flashing in an illuminated array against the facades of the old brownstones making the street look a bit like an arcade or a Little Italy side-street lit up during St. Anthony’s feast. People were moving in all directions, some yelling, and it wasn’t until the next day that we even found out that four arrests were made. But not John or Marcus Wiley. They were immortalized shaking hands, working it out. It was as if the whole world had simply never seen a compromise before. Chandler started lobbing questions at John; some of them almost seemed rhetorical: “Why did cigar smoke become your central issue? Is it true that you feel deeply disappointed that the mayor has let the city down on this issue by not going far enough?”

“What?” John said.

“Why do you want to replace the Community Board system?”

John replied to that question: “I never said that.”

Chandler smiled and said, “Didn’t you say…” and she glanced down at a small notepad in her hand, “Didn’t you say, Mr. Campbell, didn’t you—”

“How do you know my name?” John asked.

She smiled. “Funny,” she said under her breath. “Did you or did you not say, ‘I object to you. To this committee. To this whole process.’ Did you say that?”

“Well, yeah…”

“So do you see this event as a local referendum on bipartisanship? On broken government?”

“I thought it was just a referendum on cigars,” John said, which for some reason got several laughs from the crowd, and even a smattering of applause. I smiled.

“But is it true, Mr. Campbell, that you are joining the race for City Council?  A guy inside says you’re some kind of complainer. Should just run for City Council. Where did he get that information?”

“City Council?!” I chimed in incredulously.

“You’re that guy from inside. Who are you?” Margaret Chandler shot back at me and pulled her notepad up in front of her chest.

“Me?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Skip Winters,” I responded a bit sheepishly. She wrote it down. It was about the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me.

“That’s a name?” she asked, still scribbling.

“Yes.”

“Was any of this planned, Mr. Winters?”
           
“What?” I said.

Then John interjected, “Michael, Skip, Winters. My campaign manager,” he added with a smile.

“So it’s true!” she said, writing another flurry of notes.

“Only it’s not City Council,” Marcus Wiley said, eager to get in on the joke, “Campbell here he’s running for mayor. He’s deeply disappointed. You know, like you said.”