Ping! You’ve got mail!
Buzz! You’ve got a message!
You glance at your screen or your watch and you immediately clench your fist. You grit your teeth and seethe. With a single glance you swallow bile in your throat from a sub-second encounter with the sick, the vile, the twisted. You have been assaulted by non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing, or SPAM.
In 2003 the United States passed the CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing). At that time vitamin scams and dick-picks were a serious problem in the inbox, but technology largely caught up. The act itself proved pretty useless. Nevertheless it is the only piece of legislation out there which has anything at all to say about email, and it wholly exempts politicians.
I argue that, especially in today’s polarized climate, the degree of sheer revulsion generated by “the other side” is at least as horrific as a dick-pick. It is at least as bad as a whole bag of dicks – unkempt, unwashed, under-the-bridge crab-infested, cancer-riddled dicks. I argue that it is reasonable that, in some people at least, the degree of emotional and political fatigue at the end of an election cycle can be so great that the simple act of receiving a non-Solicited Political Advertising/Marketing message and moving it to one’s junk folder can produce a potentially life-threatening physiological response. Such a person might, for example, be taking anti-hypertensives and be experiencing a prolonged adrenal response due to extenuating circumstances – and said person might be desperately avoiding exposure to the campaign or election for exactly this reason.
Now, you might think, like one smart-assed attorney did, that the solution is to simply “unsubscribe” – but, as it turns out, you do not have that right. The law in the United States is quite clear on this point, your unsubscription is a violation of a candidate’s first amendment rights and it is your obligation as a citizen to tolerate any sick, twisted, vile, or disgusting assault of non-solicited bullshit a candidate sends your way. In fact, political groups, religious groups, non-profits, and many other groups are covered by this omission from the CAN-SPAM act. There is no requirements for protected classes to honor unsubscriptions.
My story is the story of someone assaulted by the Trump campaign in 2020, who tried to “unsubscribe” from mailing lists based on the Nation Builder platform, and who continued to be assaulted into 2021 until I fought back – perhaps a little too hard. Honestly, it is hard to say how hard is too hard given the degree of psychological violence experienced – but this is where the law gets really weird, as it usually does. I was ultimately arrested for communicating threats and along the way I learned a great deal. For example, law enforcement can deny you help based on your political party affiliation, it is not a threat if law enforcement threatens to kill you and dispose of your body in order to reduce paperwork (that is environmentalism), and there is no way to even mount a defense in court because a political party can send you as much email as they want, no matter whether you have unsubscribed or not – you simply do not have the right to unsubscribe.
Now, personally I don’t like Trump but on this issue I think we all have common ground. This is what I call the fullness of the First Amendment. The fullness of the first amendment includes the right to tune out or block directed communications from sources you find objectionable. This does not compromise the sender’s ability to deliver their message, just the receiver’s ability to perceive it. This is particularly important in the context of children – a parent’s right to guard the directed message input a child receives.
Current law provides almost no protection from digital predators beyond the twenty year old concept of pornography and marketing over email. Unfortunately for Congress, technology has changed. The only other similar law is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 which protects us from unwanted faxes, land-line calls during family dinners, and established the Do-Not-Call registry, of which almost 3/4 of Americans are members. I am working on an update – I call it the consensual communications act, and maybe you are interested.
I am currently locked in a brick room 21 hours a day and deprived of sunlight, exercise, books, and most communication. I can write pencil letters but can only sometimes receive mail and make phone calls. I can talk to an attorney once a month or so. This is what we call “innocent until proven guilty” – I have been tortured, accidentally of course, and am relentlessly pressured to sign documents which I describe as “purchasing my freedom with a currency of lies”. This has been and continues to be an amazing experience – extremely illuminating about how our legal system really works, and about the front lines of the race wars in the post-slavery south.
Make no mistake about it thought, this is what it takes to unsubscribe from a Nation Builder email list. Even though I am rabidly anti-Trump, the Republican party refused to leave me alone. If you are a Trump supporter, imagine if your child was similarly tracked by radical Democrats! We should both have the right to demand that communication be halted – regardless of political, religious, non-profit, or any other status. The fullness of the First Amendment includes the right to silence.
My goal, with my court case, is to highlight exactly this screwed-up state of affairs – exactly the situation in our legislation such that I can not even legally mount a defense because of the exceptional digital nascency of American law.
If you can help, please contact me at [email protected].
Better yet – send me mail at
Eric Charles Welton 94911
P.O. Box 280
Whiteville NC 28472
By the way – “Junkmail Riot” comes from AUSA Gregory Radics’ assertion that I overreacted to “essentially junk mail”. I disagree. It is also a nod to Pussy Riot and the late Alexei Navalny, true heroes from Putin’s Russia. Feel free to subscribe the above P.O. Box to any and all mailing lists – if P.O. Boxes are not allowed, use 805 Washington – we love USPS!