Zack Bonnie - Dead, Insane, or in Jail: Overwritten

Copyright Zack Bonnie / Not With The Program 2018.

All rights reserved.

Not With The Program, Dyke, VA 22935

Printed in USA

Print ISBN 978-0-9963378-3-0

Digital (EPUB) ISBN 978-0-9963378-4-7

Digital (MOBI) ISBN 978-0-9963378-5-4

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2018934077

All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.

Book development, coaching, editing, and preproduction by Anne M Carley of Chenille Books, who thanks

Jane Friedman, J.W. Stryder, Mary Sproles Martin, and Abigail Wiebe.

Thanks go, as well, to Ilyse Kazar, Noelle Beverley,

Jeanne Schlesinger, Rebecca Danis,

Richard J. Bonnie, Kathleen Ford, Barbara Danis,

and the other generous beta readers,

for their wonderfully constructive comments.

Art by Jonathan Weiner, who says:

Endless devotion and gratitude to my wife, for your support and love.

Thank you to Hyeyoon Song of Mission Grafica for your

instruction and guidance.

Thank you to the Mission Cultural Center for the Latino Arts for providing the studio space, hours, and resources.

Thank you to SCRAP of San Francisco, for your beautiful, random, circulating supply of raw materials and inspiration.

Thank you to Niku and Kiyomi, for your comforting weird.

To advocates, and the program kids whose numbers they wish to limit.

Dedicated also to my mother and father who created me, and Anne M Carley and Jonathan Weiner for helping me create this book. It is another small miracle that Rebecca Danis, almost without complaint, has for years allowed the impossible schedule of this writing project. Forever being, more delicate than in words, I love you.

Illustrations

A DIJ Primer

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Prologue One Year

Authors Statement

Part I

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Part One Resources

Part II

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Part Two Resources

Part III

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Part Three Resources

Part IV

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Part Four Resources

Coming Attractions

Artist Jonathan Weiner created eight drypoint prints to illustrate the book. He editioned the prints on BFK Rives paper. The prints were then scanned into the digital images used herein. For more information visit deadinsaneorinjail.com.

Noctomber, Chapter 3

Over Easy, Chapter 7

Mombox, Chapter 12

Dadspecs, Chapter 16

Doorbelt, Chapter 20

Pinpen, Chapter 24

Failtube, Chapter 28

Also Ran, Coming Attractions

Dead, Insane, or in Jail: A CEDU Memoir (Book 1)

• 11 July 1988 Zack, age 14, is delivered to RMA for orientation. He joins Papoose family.
• JulyAugust 1988 Truth propheet (Staff = Tess Turnwell, Keith Rios, Prescott Freshwater; Student Support = Jasper Browning)
• September 1988 Zack splits the RMA campus, calls parents from Spokane airport, is taken to foster care in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, then sent to a month of Survival in southern Idaho desert.
• October 1988 Sheriff Darren Snipes and escort Albert Guerre return Zack to RMA.

Dead, Insane, or in Jail: Overwritten (Book 2)

• October 1988 Zacks second RMA orientation
• November 1988 Brothers Keeper propheet (Staff = George Daughtry, Tess Turnwell, Andrew Oswald; Student Support = Terrance Whittlemore)
• Zack joins Brave family.
• December 1988 Parent visit to RMA campus
• Spring 1989 Quest Expedition
• Spring 1989 I Want To Live propheet (Staff = Nat Farmer, Darlayne Hammer, Kelly Grainger; Student Supports = Mariah Verdera, Tim Chalmers)
• Zack joins Warrior family.
• Summer 1989 Zacks first home visit to Charlottesville, Virginia
• Late December 1989January 1990 Zacks second home visit
• Early spring, 1990 Zacks full-time

Future Continuation of Dead, Insane, or in Jail

• Workshops
• December 1990 Graduation

Agreements RMAs rules were disingenuously termed Agreements. The three major Agreements prohibited sex, drugs, and physical violence. Others required tucked-in shirts, showers lasting no more than five minutes, no unacceptable music, etc.

Bans A student on bans from a person or group was forbidden to speak to, look at, or otherwise interact with them until the bans were lifted by a staff member.

Big Ben A large tree around which RMA built the deck of the house.

Bonners Ferry, Idaho Small town on the Kootenai River, near the border with the Canadian province of British Columbia. Closest town to RMA campus.

Bridge Enclosed room in the house, next to the living room, with views of the kitchen and dining room. Students were prohibited from entering at most times. The phones for calls home to parents were here, as was a locked cabinet with prescription drugs for certain students. Music was controlled from here and some staff meetings took place in the Bridge.

CEDU The CEDU schools are generally credited with establishing a new kind of boarding school for troubled teens. Drawing on Synanons encounter group techniques and using interrogation practices to induce change in their teenaged charges, the two-and-a-half-year program included some academic subjects, and many labor assignments at the schools farm, woodlot, and buildings and grounds. The schools featured extended raps highly confrontational encounter groups derived from Synanons the Game and propheets overnight sessions of extreme stress, reputedly based on Khalil Gibrans The Prophet. CEDUs name, pronounced see-doo, suggests the educational method that ostensibly guided the for-profit schools. Although the schools explained the acronym as See yourself as you are and do something about it, history indicates the initials first stood for Charles E. Dederich University, in honor of the founder of Synanon, who strongly influenced CEDUs founder, Mel Wasserman, a California businessman. The CEDU organization was founded in 1967 as CEDU Educational Services, Inc., and was acquired in 1998 by Brown Schools, Inc., under the name CEDU Education Brown Schools, Inc. CEDU and Brown Schools closed and declared bankruptcy in 2005, thereby managing to sidestep financial settlements in lawsuits claiming student mistreatment, employee sexual abuse, and deceptive practices. Universal Health Services subsequently reopened some of these schools, as behavioral health centers.

Challenge Expedition Major outdoor expedition for upper-school RMA students. Also known as Wilderness Challenge.