To Jordan Monaghan, & fellow staff of the Governor’s Press Office & to whom it may concern:
My name is Dawson Gage; I am a poet & journalist from Wilmington, and I have been writing to Governor Cooper from the outset of his administration. Indeed, the record will show that I supported Roy Cooper for Governor from pretty much the moment McCrory took office, or at the latest 6 weeks after that, when my brother mysteriously died in Chapel Hill, and I returned to my home State from California to seek my destiny, diving right into the maelstrom, from which I have not emerged yet in the eleven intervening years; I hope we are close to the start of a new chapter. To that end, I offer the following notes.
I have met Roy three times, once near the front row at the Dean Smith Center in Chapel Hill during a basketball game circa 2007, once at a “secret meeting” in the law offices of Yow Fox & Mannen in Wilmington in 2014, where he announced his bid for governor to a tiny group of Wilmington supporters before he made his public announcement. I was brought by my mother Hannah Gage, who was the only woman at the meeting, while I was the only person under 55. It was a candid discussion about the problems in North Carolina, as we saw them in that moment. But even then I knew something wasn’t quite right, and that eventually Roy Cooper and I would have to have a meeting of the minds, or else a clash of personalities, or something in between.
In any case the third time I saw Roy Cooper was 30 September 2016, the only occasion during the 2016 campaign (other than the debates) when he shared the stage with Pat McCrory. It was a “Power Breakfast” organized by the Chamber of Commerce and both Roy and McRory pandered to this spoiled audience of capitalists, this indicating a fundamental difference between myself of Governor Cooper as concerns the proper relationship between the State and the private sector, as well as I sat at the front table with Steve and Louise Coggins, and Roy was very pleased to see me.
I tell this story to make the otherwise somewhat ineffable or obscure point that to those who “know North Carolina”, it is clear that at 37 I am a genuine force in the landscape of politics and law in our State. It is just as important to recognize my achievements in the realm of literature, which have something of the same superlative character as North Carolina’s “literary geniuses”, they being two men who both emerged from Chapel Hill, the swaggering prose-warrior Thomas Wolfe, and the “slave poet of UNC campus”, George Moses Horton. In light of these authentic contributions to the civilization of our State, for which I have paid dearly indeed, almost with my very life, it is unacceptable for Roy Cooper to continue to ignore me. Far from diminishing or discrediting me, or indicating some “mental illness” or “criminal mindset”, my history of “criminal prosecution” and “psychiatric commitment” in fact proves that I have done something amazing, something worthwhile, something world-historic and necessary.
People have said and written the most vile and bigoted things about me, such that it is hard to even contemplate a response. With this letter I make a modest and partial attempt to transcend this traumatic and shocking history, and I do this for the sake of meeting Roy Cooper where he stands, and not expecting him to come to me; but for this to work, our Governor will have to appreciate how cruelly and unusually the State has treated me, and to reason from these undeniable facts that North Carolina’s crisis has gotten worse, and not better, during the years of Roy Cooper.
I have heard from various skeptical supporters of mine that I am pursuing an impossible dream, that it is foolish to try to fight the State. They say that Governor Cooper does not care about my suffering, that he sincerely believes in Chapter 50B, the Victim’s Right’s Amendment, and all the other nightmarish features of our 21st century form of government. But do you all agree yourselves, and is that really an accurate or respectful perspective on Governor Cooper’s career? Would it not be better if these last few months were a period of radical surprises? Would it not be in the interests of our State to finally have some uplifting news, after years so blighted by violence, chaos, discord, and fear?
As I say, people warn me I am isolated, but that does not deter me, and I hope it does not prejudice any of you. It doesn’t matter that I am only one man, it is still “genocide” even if it’s only one man’s genes, and of course I am not the only victim of the predatory State, I am just the one who was strong enough to fight back effectively. This is actually what the State doctors and prosecutors mean by “mental illness”, “schizophrenia”, “psychotic disorder”, etc: they really are just afraid because they can sense that my success will come at their expense, a prophecy that they themselves by their wickedness guarantee.
My memory of Roy Cooper and my reading of his character tell me that he will understand, and thereby realize that he has a duty to rescue me from persecution and defamation, something which is certainly within his lawful authority to do. I feel certain that when he learns the true story, Roy Cooper will completely agree with what I have done, assuming as I do that he and I share the same basic political principle, which is a fanatical devotion to North Carolina: (as the “North Carolina toast” has it), “the near land, the dear land, whatever fate”. Although our biographies are wildly different as to origins and trajectory, Roy and I have something else very important in common, which might be called “burning a pale blue streak through Chapel Hill”.
If we were to speak of differences as opposed to commonalities, however, it occurs to me that by the time I got to Chapel Hill, I had graduated from Phillips Academy and studied Spanish in Bolivia. For matriculating young men at Carolina, that is somewhat exotic, not to say unheard of, and with my subsequent path I attempted something at UNC which others did not believe was possible or even desirable; to me it was just “Light and Liberty”. Few students in the history of the State University had showed up in Chapel Hill so well-prepared as I did, just as few if any have ever had such a difficult time at Carolina. By the time I left there, the Democrats lost the General Assembly, which of course altered the calculus of my prospects. I had been meditating on Raleigh since I had served as a Senate page for the late Tony Rand, and before that I had attended “young Tar Heel politics summer camp” where I met Rufus Edimisten. That was enough to make me wary of the ways of Raleigh, something which I think has served me well.
I go to all this trouble writing you, brothers and sisters, because I have some appreciation of what it means to be in the service of the Governor of North Carolina. It is something I contemplated myself: way back in October 2009, my late brother Stedman and I serendipitously encountered Governor Bev Perdue in the elevator at Kenan Stadium at a Saturday football game; the first woman governor was decked in pastel blue, and (bless her) had had a few drinks, putting her in a fine mood to match the beauty of the fall day. During the elevator ride, we introduced ourselves as Dawson and Stedman Gage, and the Governor of North Carolina replied “Y’all are Hannah’s boys! Y’all should come work for me!”
As I wrote to Bev Perdue myself back in 2020, right as I first began to write to the Governor’s Clemency Office, on some level I stepped off that elevator with a mandate and a mission, given to me by Governor Bev Perdue, to save North Carolina from the evils which were visible in that moment, or at least to those of us whose compass is not private gain, but “the good of the whole”.
I do not wish to overstate my case, but it really does seem to me that I saw the political situation in North Carolina more clearly and acutely than any politician, including Roy Cooper, whose administration as governor cannot be called a success, given that Mr. Stein threatens to codify and amplify the totalitarian police state which he has quietly built up during his 8 years as AG. There are only some two weeks left before Mr. Stein, as things are going now, will claim to have “won the election”. He will meet with the most fanatical and intelligent resistance–militant, creative, non-violent struggle–from me and those who share my convictions, who can be found all across our North Carolina, in all 100 counties, though my primary constituencies would be in New Hanover and Orange Counties, which are the only places in North Carolina where I’ve made my residence; in any case, I may not be able to stop Mr. Stein from crossing the threshold of the Executive Mansion, but I have enough power, and certainly enough will and wit, in his first term to see him impeached by the House and removed by the Senate for obstruction of justice, interference with civil rights, “interfering with an election by force”, and conspiracy to decimate and destroy the life of yours truly, Dawson Gage, North Carolina’s very own poet & journalist & dissident Internet publisher. If I cannot convey my concerns and judgments to our Governor, and if he cannot open himself and your offices, and by extension the heights of State government, to the true story of my tribulation, then we risk bringing ruin to the State. It is that simple, and I hope that makes it easier for y’all, because it ought to.
I have often wondered what Roy truly thinks of the man who claims to be his “successor”, since I have been attuned to state politics since I was a small child, and I can feel in my heart that something is terribly wrong with Mr. Stein: he is not a North Carolina Democrat, not by my light, not if you respect the history of our State and our Democratic Party, not if you know that our democracy exists to establish our system of enumerated rights and to guard against unconstitutional innovations in government, not if you know that the laws of our State sprang from the immemorial common law of England, and that Magna Carta is still “the law of the land”. So too, in my submission, is “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”.
The past and the future, the legacy and the promise, the distant yonder and the near dear land, are all in play at the same moment in North Carolina as we approach the elections of 2024. The challenge is to split the difference between reform and revolution, between conservative sentiments and futuristic dreams, between fidelity to our native ways and the regulative ideals of cosmopolitan right. By contrast, the vision of Joshua Stein is so offensive and so absurd that I will not describe it here, but in my postscript, which allows me to conclude this letter by directing you to my several websites in my “signature”, where my published and recorded works are available for free to the global reading public, and especially for the English-speaking world, a place which still exists for me, and hopefully also to our 75th Governor, with whom once more I request a private audience to address matters of public interest. The People, the Sovereign people, whom we purport to serve, deserve no less than that.
Very truly yours,
Dawson Gage