A $10 million class action filed in federal court on May 15 accuses the county’s political leadership and law enforcement community of denying citizens of their freedom to dance—among other things.

At issue is a 2011 emergency bill that targeted the county’s dance halls and music venues. It instituted requirements for businesses that allow dancing to seek a permit to do so, and it gave county law enforcement more authority to shut down businesses they consider threats to public safety. It also prohibited people with criminal records from obtaining dance permits.

The measure quickly triggered protests from venue owners and music promoters, as well as a petition from fans who felt go-go bands were being unfairly blamed for homicides. It also came at a particularly sensitive time for the go-go scene: Fans had long complained that aggressive policing and gentrification had pushed go-go from the District into the suburbs.

Now promoters and business owners in Prince George’s are claiming in a suit they filed on their own that they have suffered irreparable financial harm.

One of the petitioners to the lawsuit, Dan Richardson, was the owner of the Plaza 23 Event Center in Temple Hills, where a man was killed in 2011 after a concert by the go-go band TCB.

Richardson claims he moved quickly to obtain one of the dance-hall licenses required by emergency law, but that he lost so much businesses during the application process that it was impossible for him to recover. Plaza 23 Event Center, which also was among a group of county clubs indicted in a sweeping tax crackdown in 2012, is now closed.

“If you look at how [the emergency law] was enforced, it was like it targeted small black businesses that can’t afford to fight back,” Richardson says in a phone call.

Karen Toles, the Prince George’s County Council member who wrote the emergency bill, has already filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. She claims it wasn’t properly served.

Meanwhile, in his re-election campaign, County Executive Rushern Baker is touting recent drops in violent crime. A spokesman in the county executive’s office wouldn’t comment on the emergency bill because of the pending litigation. Baker’s campaign website lists crime reduction as his top achievement thus far—and cites a 14 percent drop in homicides in 2013.

Baker is running unopposed in this month’s Democratic primary, and he has made economic development one of the planks of his re-election platform. He often cites the potential of the county’s underdeveloped Metro stations in his pitches for the FBI to relocate to Prince George’s.

An activist from the District who doubles as a go-go promoter, Ron Moten says he suspects politicians are eager to move out businesses that feature go-go music to make those areas near Metro stops more attractive to developers. But neither of the current or former businesses associated with the suit are located within a mile of a Metro station.

Moten, who has helped organize a campaign against the emergency bill, worries about the fraught relationship between go-go and local law enforcement. The tension boiled over in the District about a decade ago, when violent incidents forced the closure of Club U, a nightclub inside the Frank D. Reeves Municipal Building that hosted go-go concerts. Several years later, Washington City Paper reported that the Metropolitan Police Department kept a running internal report on which bands were playing at D.C. venues so it could deploy officers more effectively.

“Everybody loves change,” Moten says. “They just want to be included in that change. Why can’t we learn from the mistakes we made in D.C.?”

Moten is known for recruiting local musicians for “diss tracks” that target politicians with whom he disagrees. He says he’s in the process of making a song directed at the emergency bill and its author, Prince George’s County Council Member Toles.

Go-Go in Prince George’s County

Martin Austermuhle contributed to this report.

Photo of Be’la Dona by Flickr user DrivingtheNortheast used under a Creative Commons license.

But these days, Kramer begins many of his gigs on a different note — like one he played recently at the Patuxent Institution in Jessup, Md.

Instead of cranking up the opening chords to “Kick Out the Jams,” he started his performance with a confession.

“I am Wayne Kramer, and I am an alcoholic and a drug addict — and a sober alcoholic and a clean drug addict,” he said. “And I’m known in the world mostly as a guitar player. But for a few years, I was known as zero-zero-one-eight-zero-one-nine-zero. And I was a federal drug war prisoner.”

Kramer spent two of the prime years of his life locked up in a federal prison in Kentucky on drug charges. He still finds himself going in and out of American prisons. But what brings him behind bars now is a non-profit he started called Jail Guitar Doors USA, which donates guitars for inmates to use for rehabilitative therapy. He told inmates at Patuxent they shouldn’t see the guitars as gifts — that the people who donated them want offenders to know someone believes in them while they’re in a place where it’s easy to feel worthless.

“We want you to be a part of the world,” he said. “We want you to participate in the world. And we know that music, and art in general, is one of the few things that can touch people in their heart fundamentally.”

Kramer treated the inmates to an intimate performance inside the Patuxent library. Books and posters lined the walls in what could have passed for a bare bones junior high school reading room. But some of the songs he played, like one made famous by former San Quentin inmate Merle Haggard, evoked classic jailhouse images.

Prison is a subject that comes up over and over in the American songbook. The man in charge of Patuxent, director Randall Nero, said music should also be a part of how offenders change their behavior and ultimately return to society.

Former MC5 guitarist and Jail Guitar Doors USA founder Wayne Kramer, right, chatting with Patuxent Institution inmate Stephen Simpkins. (Photo by Michael Martinez)

“We really stress for the offenders the need to go ahead and engage in what I would call ‘pro-social’ behavior,” Nero said.

The inmates who came to hear Kramer were certainly social. They jumped at an invitation to grab guitars of their own and join him for an impromptu jam session. But Kramer made clear that he wants them to use the guitars for more than jamming: he wants them to write songs and tell their stories through music.

“The day’s gonna come when you’re gonna be out and things aren’t gonna go your way,” he said. “And you’re gonna have a choice to make. You can pick up your pistol, or you can pick up your guitar. I suggest you pick up the guitar this time.”

The message hit home particularly hard for Artis Bartholow, a 47-year-old inmate who’s currently doing time on an armed robbery charge. He plays guitar every day in his cell at Patuxent. He claims to have written dozens of songs while he’s been locked up, and he intends to write more.

Bartholow wrote “Fallen Angels” in 1999, when the mother of his son was struggling with drug addiction. The song has taken on new meaning for him now that he’s behind bars.

“You can be in jail. You can be on drugs. If you want to change yourself and turn things around, you can do it. I believe that,” he said.

For now, Bartholow’s plan is to keep churning out lyrics and chord progressions. He keeps journals for new song ideas, many of which reflect the hope he has for his future.

But on the recent Sunday that Kramer visited Patuxent, it was one of Bob Marley’s most famous songs that stirred the emotions in the group. Kramer invited the inmates to sing the last chorus of “Redemption Song,” which the men all joined — whether they knew all the words, or not.