Author: Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett Rev History Rev .00 - 10/02/2012 Rev .01 - 08/12/2014 Rev .02 - 03/09/2022
Michael Oak Flanagan
Michael Oak Flanagan was born to a pair of High School teachers in Small Town, USA. Not Mike or Mikey but Michael. Michael never really gave a fuck about anyone until he turned 13 and fell in love with Elsa Green.
Elsa Green was the only black girl in Michael’s class–one of three black students attending California Middle School in California, Missouri. Michael and Elsa’s year long romantic affair was juvenile and sweet. He brought her Pawpaws in the spring and she gave him an OP Ivy/Green Day mix tape for Christmas. Their relationship ended brutally the following May when Elsa was beaten down to within an inch of her life by a small gang of high schooler’s that didn’t get along with Elsa’s older brother. Mr. Green would allow no one in to see Elsa at the hospital and the whole family moved to Kansas City by the time Elsa recovered from her injuries.
The perpetrators were caught with in days, and the entire town of California was outraged by what had happened.
Outraged?
Really?
A small town in central missouri
outraged by violence against women, black women?
We have to believe that stranger things are possible.
Two of the young men, Harry Tuggle and Tomas Wilson, both Seventeen and the time of the crime, were tried as adults and sentenced to an imaginary number of years at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. The third boy, Darren Wilson, only fifteen, pleaded that the other two boy’s had forced him into participating and ended up spending three years in the Boonville Training School for Boys, before returning home on juvenile probation.
Michael’s rage at losing the love of his life–to the violence of a racist and sexist America–grew into a fiery and militant Anarcho-nihilism. Michael’s mother, known to all as Momma Bear, had grown up a hippy roaming around the open roads of America following flower-power jam bands and playing an indirect support role in the SDS chapter at Iowa State University from 1966 to 1968. She then dropped out to join the Prairie People’s movement, a decision which led her to mother seven children and settling down on the land of Michael’s father. She too was incensed by the crime against Elsa, as was her buried radicalism. She encouraged her son to study increasingly more revolutionary texts about the role of racism in preserving the existing capitalist structure. By the time Michael was 16 he knew the history of the Black Panthers and the current fate of the Black Liberation Army as well as he knew the history of the colonial oppressors. It was always his mother’s hope that her son would realize–through the rich history of black resistance movements in the United States and South Africa–that the best form of solidarity white allies could show to their black brothers and sisters was using their position of privilege to work their way into the system and help subvert it.
On the surface, Michael did a good job of repeating his mother’s rhetoric back to her, and he quickly became her most favored child. But no matter how well Michael did in school, or how often he participated in state legitimated forms of protest, it was never more than an illusion to please his mother. In his heart, Michael learned the necessity of direct militant action the day three white men assaulted the love of his life and lived long enough to regret their actions. He began learning how to make homemade explosives the day after being turned away at the hospital and less than 6 months later he was sneaking out to test his “science experiments” in the woods behind his house.
When Darren Wilson was released from Boonville, and returned to California, Missouri, Michael decided it was time to take action. One night, a month after Darren’s release, Michael snuck out of the house and bicycled his way over to the Wilson Residence–a quaint rural/suburban single-story on South Randolf Street, where Darren was to spend every moment of his probation not occupied by work or studying for his GED. Michael had recently gotten his hands on Earth First! zine at an environmental stewardship conference in Kansas City, MO, that laid out a number of a tactics for automotive sabotage to be used against logging trucks in the Pacific North West. Michael was eager to put his new knowledge into practice.
The technique he settled on was supposed to be nearly undetectable, and even though the Wilson’s had been holding on to Tomas’ ‘81 Jeep Cherokee for their boys to drive when they got out, instead of freight hauler, Michael thought this vehicle would make the perfect test subject. Michael used a serrated hunting knife to partially cut through the brake lines of the front two wheels. He cut into the cables just far enough to feel the brake fluid dripping out on to his fingertips. He then took his knife and cut a series of uneven nicks and divots along the rest of the exposed brake lines and powdered them with gravel dust to make it all look like natural wear and tear on the old jeep.
Then Michael returned home. Two days later, Michael overheard his father at the dinner table mention that there had been a nasty accident on Highway 87, down by North Moreau Creek. Darren Wilson had lost control of his Jeep when his brakes failed him. The vehicle skidded off the left shoulder of the road and then rolled over twice. Darren’s left arm had been severed on the second roll and he had to be flown by helicopter up to a Hospital in Columbia, where he was in critical condition. Michael’s father told him the news with a smirk on his face, as if the knowledge was a gift from the Cosmos for his wounded son.
Michael was shocked, not because he felt any remorse at all, but because his plan worked out perfectly and no one seemed any the wiser.. Michael spent 4 months a nervous wreck on the inside, waiting for the police to arrive and take him away for attempted murder, but the county sheriff never came. Michael had done his job well and no one ever once suspected that Darren’s accident was anything more than bad karma come to collect.
The power and precision of his violent success unnerved Michael for years, and he committed no additional acts of political sabotage for the remainder of his rime at California High School. Michael was not unnerved by any regard for Darren’s life–Michael would have been happy to learn that Darren’s jeep exploded in the crash. His hesitancy came more from the realization that he could be so effective with solitary actions, while at the same time feeling overwhelmed by the lack of control he had once the act had been committed.
What if Darren had plowed into another car, or innocent bystander, before crashing? Michael knew he could have easily ended up with blood on his hands that would never wash away. The thought of living the rest of his life in a little shack all alone, like the Unabomber everyone was so afraid of, combined with the idea of having to bare the all the consequence for his actions with no one to talk to, was more than Michel knew he would be able to handle. Since there was no one in Moniteau county that even held the same political beliefs, much less inclination for violent direction action, he put his life as a political terrorist on hold and decided to dedicate himself to his studies.
His mother had always stressed the importance of going to college, for both the political and social opportunities it presented. Before the Jeep incident, Michael had felt like higher education was solely an institution dedicated to the perseverance of social and economic stratification. After almost becoming a murderer–over what he realized was a desperate act of revenge–Michael decided that getting out of California, Missouri and deepening his political analysis might be a good idea before committing himself to a road from which there could be no turning back. He applied to colleges up and down the West Coast, but the more pretentious schools rejected him for a lack of extra curricular engagement, and the less exclusive ones were too much money for his parents of seven to afford. Big cities were a little to frightening to consider on his own, and in the end, he decided that Truman State University was the best acceptable alternative.