Luci Everylove (formerly Ryan Clayton) needs our help
Luci Everylove, formerly Ryan Clayton, has been a friend of progressive causes and resistance for decades. He was an original organizer at Wolf-PAC (when it was fighting for a convention to amend the constitution). In January 2014, he marched with scores of others (including Kai Newkirk) from Dixville Notch to Nashua, NH (185 miles) — again, in January—to press corruption into the political discourse of the upcoming presidential election. In 2015, he helped me try to put that issue at the center of the 2016 debate. After it did become a central issue in that debate (just not as we had hoped), he became a critical force of resistance against the President. He was beaten by right-wing organizers at a post-election event in New York. He handed out Russian flags at a CPAC event (just as suggestions of a traitorous affection between the two presidents was beginning to be recognized) (and for which, he was appropriately meme-ified). He was arrested after throwing Russian flags at a Capitol Hill event with the President. He helped organize the campaign to get Kyrsten Sinema to do the right thing on the filibuster (remember those days?).
And then he took a break. While traveling in Indonesia, he was caught in a riptide and pulled out to sea. For 12 hours, he struggled to find a way back. Bizarrely, and as the fisherman reports it, a fisherman from Nipah was awoken in the night, and driven to take his boat out long before he otherwise would have. He found Luci. He saved him. Weeks later, Nipah itself was devastated by an earthquake. Luci then devoted everything he could to saving the village that had saved him. The story is on one of the Indiegogo pages. Here’s the video he created to try to raise support:
In March this year, Luci traveled to India on pilgrimage. He made the very stupid decision to enter the country without a visa. He was arrested, and that began this insane odyssey. Though India has relatively clear laws minimizing the penal burdens for an offense like his, Luci has been swallowed by a bizarrely punitive administrative state, and held (as I understand it) in horrendous conditions now for more than 250 days. His brother is fighting to get diplomatic support to secure his release. Many have been trying to get the Indian government to apply its law to effect his release. These efforts so far have failed.
No American has any standing to complain about how any country in the world abuses its immigration laws. And without doubt, Luci’s decision to cross the Indian border without a visa was a catastrophically bad one. I’ve not spoken to him directly, but I was not surprised to hear that his mistreatment has followed his vigorous defense of the human rights of other foreign nationals being held in the same prison, some in even worse conditions. Luci was never rational in his fight against wrong. It is why so many love him as we do.
If you think you can help, here’s a form to let us know how. I’ve known so many wonderful LLMs (the human type, not AIs) from India, and have many friends I’ve tried you reach out to. If you’re reading this, please reach back. We’re not raising money here, just rallying support. I had this document produced, which summarizes the story and the legal issues at stake:
I also dumped everything I have into this NotebookLM. You can ask it whatever you want about the case or facts or whatever. I’ll update it as I get more. This audio “podcast” was produced by NotebookLM if you want to listen to the story (or at least AI’s understanding of the story):
Everyone who has known Luci (most knew him as Ryan) knows the complex soul that he is. His struggle everywhere is five steps ahead, even if ever so grounded in the reality of our current outrage. He’s inspired my kids before they could know why. (And that inspiration has nothing to do with fishing.)
The image at the top captures more about him than is obvious. It was taken after he dropped Russian flags at a Trump event, and is pure (as I knew him when this was taken) Ryan: The world not quite understanding just why his protest is so powerful and right, puzzled, while restraining, as he tries to get us to see; him fighting, not because he knows the fight will win, but because he knows the fight must win.
This is not where a just world would leave him. That’s not our world, I get it. But we must organize and fight for it.
