Ludington's Lynching of Claire the Book Girl

[XLFD]

Background of the Story

Even if you are not from Ludington, you may be familiar with Claire "the book girl" Whitcomb and her loss of the ability to do her job of book selling in the Ludington area because her vendors permit was revoked by the Ludington city clerk.  You may have got the information from the local media or even here at the Ludington Torch, where it was linked to the original story broke by Rob Alway of the MCP.

A brief synopsis of the situation:  Claire registered (as seen below) with the City of Ludington to sell educational materials door-to-door for the summer.  City officials allegedly received numerous complaints about her activities to the point where they were forced to pull the permit for the safety of all in Ludington.  Claire acknowledged the revocation and restricted herself to selling to the rest of Mason County, outside the cities of Scottville and Ludington. 

Two of the local TV stations picked up on the story (see their take on TV 7 & 4 video and the corresponding article) and then the Associated Press put it out on their wire, where it was published in a variety of places throughout the web with the AP's take on it, including:

The Grand Haven Tribune

The Elkhart Truth

Iron Mountain Daily News

Midland Daily News

Marquette's Mining Journal

Washington Times

Huron Daily Tribune

These stories were incomplete.  We are fed a diet of hearsay information from a city official defending their action of pulling the vendor's permit, but nothing solid.  Unfortunately, the way news is dispensed nowadays, the accuracy of such stories are trumped by the alacrity of its publication.  Words of officials are taken as the final say. 

After doing some further research behind the pulling of Claire Whitcomb's permit, I have come to the conclusion that what happened to Claire was little more than a public lynching.  Whether you had a negative encounter with her or not, her plight should serve as a learning experience to show the damage that rumor and hearsay can do, and illustrate how well-meaning officials can operate clearly outside of the law without being called on it-- except by this forum. 

To those who believe the terminology is misleading, Wikipedia defines "lynching" as punishment for an alleged crime or offense carried out by an informal group without legal process or supervision from a court or tribunal through a legal proceeding .    Consider this as the story progresses.

Background of the Characters and Events

Claire Whitcomb is a senior of a Texas university selling books and other educational materials distributed by Southwest Advantage.  The Southwestern Advantage website informs us they still make house calls.  "We want to hear your stories. We want to look in your eyes as you tell us about your kids & your family. Our products help you and your children on personal levels. It only makes sense that we sell them with a personal touch."

                                                             Claire and Some Satisfied Clients

As noted, Claire received a permit in May to sell books in Ludington and Scottville, the rest of Mason County does not have such permits, nor do many other municipalities.  One could argue that permits are unnecessary and redundant if general laws are followed by prospective vendors, or argue that the permitting process is an unconstitutional infringement on the free market and rife with potential improprieties by officials and cronies.  Such arguments are fairly valid in my view, but the Ludington City Council in the past didn't think so.

In Scottville, Claire had some undisclosed complaints, according to their city manager/clerk, Amy Williams, which would have led her not to renew her permit that expired about four weeks before Ludington's revocation.  There seems to have been no complaints regarding Claire inside of Ludington before the weekend or noted throughout the rest of Mason County.  In this era of videotaping, no incidents involving Claire have either been videotaped.  The only video proffered at all is one of Claire allegedly riding off in her vehicle by a Christa Soller.  She would be the lone person who filed a formal complaint with the Ludington Police Department (LPD) involving Claire.

The Extent of the Problem

The first problem documented in Ludington was on July 13, when an unidentified complainant living at the corner of Franklin and Diana stated Claire was "pushy":

You will note that R/O Sailor admits herein that two months of selling had went by without any complaint before (formal or informal) to his knowledge.  Christa Soller's complaint is next, where she describes her ordeal to officer Wietrzykowski:

As seen in the complete report (LPD Incident Reports Whitcomb.pdf), the dates of the three incidents at the Soller house are not included, the report itself saying the interactions occurred that very morning at 8:45.  The police reports the heinous felonies and misdemeanors of name-dropping, dropping by at 8:00 PM, touching a front door, yelling "Hello", and apparently revisiting a house to sell something after being told "no". 

The Notes on Claire Whitcomb Vending Permit.pdf does reveal a third instance, where Gary Boerma reports that on July 21, his daughter was visited by Claire, who allegedly told the saleslady that she was not interested because she was a teacher and had her own curriculum.  Then, he relates, Claire grabbed his daughter's arm as she turned to leave.  He also related that a friend of his daughter had had Claire come to their house, try the doors, and tried to climb in through the windows. 

All of this was second hand information, hearsay and rumor, that was accepted as factual without even any sort of verification through the one's allegedly making the statements or by Claire herself.  Odd, since (minus any clear intent) the hearsay that merited no formal report is of a simple assault and another is of attempted breaking and entering.  As you can see, without any investigation into the inflammatory rumors, the permit was pulled.

Lastly, late on July 22, another LASD teacher, Tanya Gasaway, called in to complain about Claire, mentioning other totally legal acts she did like coming back a second time, talking to her children, and dropping personal info:  Emails Chief of Police.pdf.  You will also note a letter sent from City Clerk Deb Luskin to the full council and other justifying her decision to pull Claire's permit, echoing the hearsay and non-criminal complaints investigated or not by the LPD. 

The Ludington Lynch Mob

So was this a lynching?  Most assuredly, this was a punishment (revocation of her license to sell in Ludington) exacted on the Book Girl without any legal process or proceeding.  The negatively toned news accounts, forever plastered across the internet, will follow Claire Whitcomb well after she finishes selling her last book.  An eternal stain on her good name, for if you look at her Facebook page beyond the incriminating video of her driving away from a house you are overwhelmed by the positive posts from other local folks. 

But let's take a look at the lynch mob, who have decided that the public needed to be saved from a door-to-door saleslady who was good at her job.  I sent our city clerk an E-mail with three questions, which she expediently replied to on the same day.

1) Why was Claire Whitcombe's permit to solicit book sales in the city revoked?

2) Under whose authority was this revocation made?

3) Did the LPD have any credible criminal complaints against her?

She answered:

1. The permit was revoked due to the number of complaints received to the police department, phone calls from the public made to my office, residents coming to the front office counter and complaining as well as giving specific examples that went against Article II Sections 34-61, 34-63, 34-104,34-135. These sections of the Charter are provided to each vendor, solicitor, who takes out a permit to vend or solicit and I explain to each vendor or solicitor when they take out a vending permit that if we receive any complaints the supervisor in each situation will be contacted and if the complaints continue I explain that a permit will be pulled. I pulled the permit as the Code refers to Article II Section 10-36 which states that a vendor, solicitor must first register with the city clerk.

2. The City Clerk under this code section has jurisdiction to revoke the permit and I made the decision to revoke this permit.

3. Yes

The sections cited were in order Trespassing,   Meddling or tampering with property,   Begging and soliciting alms by accosting or forcing oneself upon th..., and   Window Peeping.   I found no first person account of anything in the record that indicated any willful violations of these.  Even the hearsay entered into the record do not indicate Claire did any of these. 

Regardless, section 10-36 of our city code does give her the jurisdiction to issue permits, but does not allow her to unilaterally revoke them-- or for that matter does not give anybody in the city any authority to "pull" a permit.  A look at our city charter (section 10.2 (h))does not allow her the power to revoke any license or permit-- just to issue them. 

So what we have here is a woman guilty perhaps of being good at her job, who rubs local teachers the wrong way with her heretical education books, who has not seriously been charged with any crime, or who has been given any kind of due process, ran out of the city by our officials.  Sounds like another excellent civil rights lawsuit against the City of Ludington if she decides to do so.

                                                         Claire Schmoozing with More of Her Clients

Let's consider:  this girl jumped through the needless local hurdles to register in Ludington, did nothing that has been determined to be illegal or unethical, and because one official without authority revokes her license on unverified rumor (without any dissent from the complicit city council), she immediately becomes the "book girl from Hell" with her story splayed everywhere, without even an attempt by the media or our officials to allow her the opportunity to defend her actions and her name. 

Is there any better reason for eliminating the local licensing process and for getting our local government out of the business of choosing which businesses succeed or fail? 

Epilogue

As part of my FOIA request to the city dealing with this issue, I received a copy of the revoked permit.  Claire Whitcomb's copy taken from her Facebook page was presented at the beginning of this article:

Besides the handwritten "Permit Pulled", did you notice any other differences in the two permits?  Claire covered her own addresses and phone number, because she valued her own privacy.  The FOIA Coordinator of Ludington had no such consideration and allowed those two bits of information to be shared with everyone.  Yet they routinely cover such private information on other public records they have given me over the years. 

[Jasper]

This entire situation with Claire "the book girl," is so wrong on so many levels.  

First and foremost  would be the governmental level of both the City of Ludington and the City of Scottville.  Claire fulfilled the requirements to sell the books in both cities.  

But; due to this area of narrow minded people who have 911 on speed dial, and heavily depend and rely on law enforcement(who by the way have way too much time on their hands) find it necessary to make such a huge issue out of Claire, when there are far more important issues going on in Mason County, and the entire world for that matter.

If one looks at her FB page she also sold books last summer in the southern part of Michigan.  No complaints were filed against her by the citizen's of those communities.

As disgusting and perturbing this situation is within this community ....the hope for Claire would be to take this crappy unfair bunch of BS and chalk it up as a valuable learning experience, and remember Mason County, Michigan as a place to never visit, or recommend to friends or family members. 

That is disgusting Claire's name and address were revealed!  

[XLFD]

Frankly, I find it easy to believe that the blowback against Claire in Ludington that seems to have ran between July 13 and July 22 was generated by a clique of Ludington women, mostly teachers, who resented seeing an entrepreneurial young woman trying to sell educational books that went against their educational orthodoxy. 

Think about it, Claire's material is based on building character, creativity, as well as knowledge, while it seems our local school district is most interested in building financial stability, unilateral consensus, and barriers to transparency, in my dealings with them.  These two philosophies drastically clash.

[woodsman]

XLFD  I guess the address was given to you by FOIA request and you might have covered up part of it to still get your message across and still protect her privacy.  Just a thought..

[XLFD]

I debated myself as to whether covering up the addresses and phone number would be the proper thing to do to maintain her privacy, and I must apologize to Ms. Whitcomb for any inconvenience for deciding not to.

In the end, I arrived at the belief that showing it unedited illustrated that the City was hypocritical in its prior FOIA responses, that their concern for the complainers 'privacy' while ignoring Claire's was similarly hypocritical, and more importantly, that the release of licensee personal data is not usually protected by law (as shown in the case law below). 

If unnecessary, redundant licensing allows such invasions into your privacy, the best answer is to ditch the licensing process.  Hopefully, if this angers Claire and those who care for her, they will direct their anger towards the public officials and laws that allow it, and not this humble pumpkin.  I will certainly cover up the private info on her request, but the City of Ludington will still be giving that info out on request. 

[Willy]

Another excellent article X, something that should be printed in the LDN or MCP but we all know that would never happen. The City should either revamp the licensing process and enforce it on all "vendors" and allow rebuttal by the licensed person or eliminate the license all together since the only person's who get attention are those that are licensed. I'm sure hundred's of other people do business in Ludington in the same manner without any notice. I think that eliminating the license would make more sense. I to thought about the "teacher" connection because that's the way our schools are operated. Union control and a severe lack of allowing parental influence on the education process is normal procedure. Public schools have a monopoly on the education industry with a sprinkling of private schools trying to offset the Government influence. Hillsdale College,[https://www.hillsdale.edu/about] a shining star, represents the struggle to be free of Governemantal influence. They take no monetary help from the Government and do not even allow students who have government loans to attend. A truly independent educational institution.

[XLFD]

Thanks for informing me about Hillsdale, such independence should be celebrated and rewarded in this day and age, and thanks for the compliment. 

I appreciate the publication of the father's letter in the MCP, as linked to in shinblinds's post, but it would be even better if their editor had enough cajones to come out in defense of Claire, or tell us why he won't.  He issued a strong editorial against a Scottville commissioner supposedly violating the Open Meetings Act simply because he wanted to attend a committee meeting to record it.  Heaven help us if the public gets to see what goes on in committee meetings!  Scottville, Ludington, and every other city with less than 10,000 population, would be a lot more open and better off without these 'advisory committees'.

We all know the COLDNews wouldn't dare cross the official lines in anything, they know better than to bite the hand that feeds them press releases and pre-written articles.

[shinblind]

Interesting that Soller's Facebook post mentions on July 18 the city is making an effort to get her permit pulled. That would mean that the city was looking for an excuse to pull her permit when the only complaint that was filed was by someone at Franklin & Diana (homeless person?). One can only draw two conclusions from Sollers facebook post, that either Soller was psychic and somehow saw into the future, or that someone at City Hall let slip that the fix was in to hamstring the Book Girl. 

Interesting that from Gary Boerma's  complaint on July 21 that the Book Girl grabbed his daughter's arm as she turned to leave. What's interesting about this incident is that on July 22 in an email to Chief Barnett LASD school teacher Tanya Gasaway also files a complaint. Is this Tanya"Boerma" Gasaway? Could she be Gary's daughter? And why didn't she mention the Book Girl grabbing her arm in her email complaint to the Chief Barnett?

Interesting that after they talked to the Book Girl's supervisor on July 20 that no follow up call was made seeing if the the supervisor was able to contact the Book Girl. And that other complaints were noted, trespassing,  meddling &  tampering with property, begging and soliciting alms by force, window peeping. Sounds like someone went a little crazy with accusations. Sounds like Barney Fife from MayBerry throwing the book at someone.  It would have been nice to know what the supervisor response to this would have been.

Also interesting that these books can be used as an aid to homeschool your kids and that the local teachers had their panties all in a bunch about the Book Girl. Then factor in that the Mayor Slimebag "Lying" Ryan Cox is a teacher and the effort to pull the Book Girls permit before July 18 makes more sense. Petty turf war by your local educators is more likely.

So could there be a lawsuit in the future because this will follow this young educated girl for the rest of her life and have a grave effect on her future employment and earnings? I hope she sues the panties off of them.

As a side bar Mason County Press published a response by the Book Girl's dad. I don't know if he submitted one to the Daily News and they did't have the balls to print it but it seems likely.

http://www.masoncountypress.com/2015/08/06/letter-life-lessons-from...

[XLFD]

Great post, shinblind.  The extent of the written record up prior to the Facebook post by Soller had only the one report by Sailor, which one could infer by the contents and tone was not taken too seriously.  Which further implies (with the lack of the mention of any other incident prior to July 20, which the clerk readily admits in her letter to council) that the reasons for the pulling would have not been actually complaint-based.

The underlying issue is a scary one:  without any authority and without and due process, our city hall can decide to revoke your ability to make a living.  Then they can ruin your good name by unsubstantiated rumor, innuendo, and manipulating the media.   I sympathize greatly with Claire because this damned, unethical city hall did the same thing to me back in 2011 with the Workplace Safety Policy. 

Thanks for catching the connection between Tanya (Boerma) Gasaway and Boerma's daughter.  The question is valid, why wasn't there a complaint about the simple assault and other issues expressed by Gary in the July 22 E-mail? 

Furthermore, the teacher/LPD connection has to be given some of the blame for escalating this situation.  As noted last year, there are at least four LPD reserve officers on the Ludington School District (LSD) payroll, including our mayor of many hats (police sergeant, teacher, ORV salesman/repairman, mayor, etc.).  Any one of these or their fellow friendly teachers (like Mrs. Gasaway) could initiate a nitpicking list of offenses, real or imagined, that could apply. 

The Facebook record after the revocation shows an almost hysterical lynch mob mentality in itself after the license-pulling, when Claire sells later on in the same day her license was pulled, even though she had no way of knowing that even had happened.  A few centuries back it would just be the simple chant of "Burn the witch", but now it's just full-fledged character assassination.

Claire's father is obviously a class act, just like her, and illustrates what a special person Claire is.  I would be so proud of Claire too, if she was my daughter.

[Jasper]

What kind of person would post on Claire the Book Girls' facebook page the following..."was not actually selling books but rather was selling sex trade."  This quote was taken from Deb Luskin's letter.

Claire's supervisor after being made aware of this comment advised Claire to post her permit to sell books in the COL on her facebook page.

WHAT is wrong with people???  Whomever posted this comment on her facebook page really needs to be ashamed of themselves!!

I hope Claire seeks legal assistance for this entire situation that she has experienced in the "Pure Michigan" cities of Ludington and Scottville!

[Jasper]

Or, perhaps Claire's Company on her behalf will follow up on this complete BS!  

Perhaps Claire could write her own book relating to her summer experience in "Pure Michigan's" Cities of Ludington & Scottville.  A Best Seller???

[Jasper]

Thanks for you in depth reporting on this X.  

The "drama mama queens" of Ludington & Scottville let alone "educators" sure created this situation.  

This young woman was victimized by the paranoia which abounds in Mason County.  Reports of "suspicious person" constantly fill the "police beat" as reported  by local law enforcement, and the MSP! 

Local school personnel filing a complaint against a "book seller?"  One would believe those teacher's would be happy that parent's purchasing these books would help in accelerating their student's success in life, and make their job of teaching far easier.  Instead they assist in running Claire out of town.  What are these "Drama Mama" teachers afraid of??    

Don't these "drama mama's" have nothing better to do with their time to fill the obvious void lacking in their lives?

[XLFD]

I know too many people who call the police on a moment's notice without trying to solve a minor problem by themselves.  These are many of the same folks who lavish praise on the police even when they err and don't deserve it, with the attitude of "my mother can do no wrong".  Because that's exactly what they see the police as-- their mother incarnate.

Someone to be dependent on when things don't go your way and that door-to-door saleslady can't understand that you want to say "no", but can't, because you've been conditioned and trained your whole life not to by our schools and government who want compliant automatons.

Ludington teachers should be encouraging those who want to sell books, even if it doesn't follow their vapid curriculum in place, not using exaggeration and hyperbole against the sellers and effectively ban the books from Ludington, putting gas away on the fires of slander and censorship.