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Jennifer Lauren Gale, professional public office candidate, poet, regular Austin City Council meeting attendee, daily park cleaner, frequenter of the Texas Union, Dobie Mall and all Austin public libraries, constant seeker of answers and friends, and now candidate for governor, is ready for a vacation.
She is preparing travel to Madison, Wisc., her birthplace and nostalgic "paradise." She plans to travel via commercial 18-wheeler and hopes to arrive in time to catch the local Fourth of July activities. But she has so many things to do beforehand, so many campaign finance forms to fill out, so many people to talk to, so many laws to research and legal opinions to receive. The list grows as the day progresses.
"I just ran for city council, Place 4. Did you know that?" she says as we sit down in the Texas Union. Gale is wearing black pants, a long-sleeved shirt covered in dark, pastel-colored flowers and a green pickle-shaped pin with the name "JAKE" on it. An attendee at Jake Pickle's funeral gave it to her. She said she wears it all the time and that it feels just like a pickle.
Gale pulls out a stack of photocopies of pages with many signatures. Though she received 9.2 percent of the vote, she lost to incumbent Councilwoman Betty Dunkerley. Now, she claims Dunkerley's petition to run was invalid. Turning the stack of paper toward me, she says the signatures supporting Dunkerley's candidacy were signed before the candidate's name was written. She says some names were signed and counted twice, and that blanks in the "date" column make the signatures invalid. There is no way, she says, to tell if the people listed were registered voters when they signed it. Dunkerley's office couldn't be reached for comment.
Gale, who considers herself a Democrat, feels that 16 years of experience running for public office, participating in Austin organizations such as the Clean Air Task Force, Parks and Recreation Board, Austin Women's Committee, Minority Owned Businesses, Waste Management and a few more, is brushed off because she has no large sum of money to prop herself up.
In order to keep fighting for her passions, she spends her days reading newspapers and Web sites, talking to people, going to a slew of different meetings and listening to the Alex Jones Show and holistic healer Patrick Timpone on her silver walkie-talkie-shaped radio, which she carries everywhere.
She does not have a job. Many would call her homeless. She prefers "living outside." Gale has lived outside since 1991, the same year she first ran for public office. That was back when she lived in Dallas, ran against Lori Palmer for Dallas City Council District 14 and lost with only 496 votes.
Palmer, the incumbent in that race, said at the time, Gale didn't have a lot of experience in city issues, "but she tried in her own way to describe why she wanted to serve."
Boundless ambition,
unique poetry
Gale always gets nervous when she speaks in public, especially about topics she cares about and prepares for. She says she's spoken to the city council on television almost every week since last October, but every time she's on television she begins to shake and often loses her flow.
The repeated experience has not calmed her fear, and reading books about public speaking doesn't seem to do the trick, either. Instead, she resorts to speaking extemporaneously.
There is never any plan to make it to a specific office, she says, just a spontaneous feeling of needing to change things and figuring out how to do it. Gale says she wants more than anything to make people happy by doing things that will improve the way we live. Winning public office, she says, is the way to start.
In the Union, she seems much calmer than she ever does on television. She is sifting through legal documents in preparation for her candidacy for governor. She plans to make a public announcement when she gets back from her vacation.
Eating an Oreo frosting-filled sandwich, Gale offers me a plastic-wrapped, Batman-frosted cookie. I refuse, and she reluctantly places the cookie in her bag, handing me instead a comic she has torn from a newspaper.
"I wrote a poem. Wanna hear it?" she asks, then recites:
This
Summer day
Hold your son daughter close
With warmth and affirmation softly spoken
So that one day
In a time of inhumanity
A crisis
Frustration
Or anger
They will remember
The love given them by you
Will always be theirs.
A loud noise crashes, and she forgets the second verse, instead moving on to the third. She tells me she recites this poem periodically to the city council but saves the caroling for Christmas.
"I said, 'You can sing at a bus stop, you can sing somewhere else, or you can sing while running before the city council,'" she says. "So I started running. Jogging in place."
While she demonstrates her performance, jogging and singing "Silver Bells," two policemen walk up.
"Miss Gale, I gotta talk to you for a sec. It's probably going to be a little private," one officer says.
Discrimination in the Union
Twenty minutes pass. The two officers and Gale talk while I wait in the main Forty Acres Room, looking at my notes and a Texas Union student official watching the conversation with his arms crossed. He wasn't interested in speaking to me about this. Around 10 minutes into it, Gale raises her voice, which is muffled because of the noise distortion from the windows. "No pictures," she says loudly. The second officer slowly takes his hand off the camera bag hanging on his waist.
Later Gale says they wanted her driver license and her picture taken. She says she wouldn't let them because state law says a person either has to be under arrest or have given the police an alias in order for them to require identification.
"It's not theirs to look at. Who I am is none of their business," she says.
Gale and I leave the Union. Gale is holding a fresh pink criminal trespass warning between her books. Hoa Nguyen, the assistant director of operations at the Union, stands outside the Forty Acres Room, talking privately to the officers. She does not want to comment about the situation and refers me to Dave Puntch, the associate director of operations. Puntch, however, is on vacation.
Although the citation was for soliciting money, Gale says she was not asking for anything; she was conversing with someone about the challenge of raising money for a political campaign. Then a weekend janitor listened in on the conversation, cursed at her and moved towards her in a physically threatening way.
"He's a big guy, I mean, he's like he could be professional boxer," Gale says. "So, he came up to me like this."
She backs up and holds her arms out. She reported the incident to the police soon after it happened.
"Now they're coming back with this. This is their retaliation," she says, shaking the pink slip. "There's discrimination here."
Andy Smith, Texas Union director, has been aware of Gale's presence in the Union for about a decade. She is welcome on the first floor and second floor, he says, as long as she stays out of the areas restricted to UT students, staff and faculty. In this case, he definitely believes she was soliciting.
"I think everybody is pretty convinced that she did what she did," Smith says.
UTPD Lt. Ron Stalder also adheres to the accusation that she was soliciting, and says the complaints came from the Union management. He adds that the warning was not self-initiated by the UTPD, and that in past occasions he has stood up for her and protected her rights.
"We worked very diligently with Miss Gale in regards with her utilization of a restroom in the Flawn Academic Center," Stalder says, adding that there had been complaints from the library staff that Gale was using the women's restroom.
Stalder said he "bent over backwards" to investigate the situation, and he eventually supported Gale's use of the restroom because he had confirmed a sex-change operation she had in Galveston. She is legally a female.
But the Union, a place Gale frequents to talk to people, watch television and enjoy Wendy's sodas, is now off-limits. Unless she's buying something.
"If she went into the Union on legitimate business," Stalder says about the seriousness of the citation, and "as long as she obeys the laws of the state," then she wouldn't have any trouble and almost certainly would not be asked to leave.
Squirrel fishing and military revelations
Jim Vick, outgoing vice president of student affairs, has the power to relieve Gale of her citation. But she can't talk to Vick until the next morning, and Gale's departure to Wisconsin is pushed back another day. So we walk, and she temporarily changes the subject.
"I don't know if you know about me at all, but I wear sweatshirts," she says, pulling out a yellow T-shirt depicting Martin Luther King Jr. A dark gray-blue long-sleeved T-shirt is already pulled through the sleeves of the yellow shirt.
She also carries a keychain stick of Hawaiian Tropic Barbie-themed sunscreen and a brightly colored umbrella, which she opens while we walk. Along the West Mall, two students taunt a squirrel with a makeshift fishing rod and thick string. It appears to have food attached to the end.
"You know, you make those squirrels angry enough they may bite another student," she warns them as we pass by. "Rabies can kill you."
"We've been bitten before," one of the boys retorts.
A police officer walks up to them, smiling and telling them something inaudible.
"Maybe the officer will figure it out," she says to me.
Inside Dobie Mall, which Gale frequents as much as the Union, we pass the U.S. Army recruiting office. Gale jokes that the recruiters need a "help wanted" sign. She served in the Marines in North Carolina from 1979 to 1982 and held the rank of a corporal, she says. Her job was in the communications department, and she specialized in sending encrypted messages.
"I love the Marine Corps," she says. "If it wasn't for the killing now, I'd recommend going in."
Global traveling and excitement aside, she especially liked the "camaraderie," the feeling of always being among friends. And the only time she had too much to drink was in the Marines, while celebrating her graduation from the communications school.
"I had trouble going to work the next day," she says.
Decisions, decisions
Twelve hours later, the sun is rising on the steps of the Main Building. Gale still has no luck in talking to Vick. In a game of hot potato, Gale is told by Vick's secretaries to speak to Andy Smith. Then Smith refers Gale to the UTPD, who suggest talking to Hoa Nguyen. Nguyen insists she talk to Dave Puntch, who is still on vacation.
Gale's decision? Either to complain to the Board of Regents or the chancellor, or to go to the public by posting signs explaining her situation.
"I could give them so much pain right now," she says, with a confident smile and a nod.
Her vacation will have to wait.
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