buchi della verita of edna, texas

A couple days ago, LI was perusing the collected radio speeches of Ronald Reagan, circa 1976-1979. Research, doncha know, for my novel. In any case, they were impressive, and happily distant from the ape-like norm that now rules the air waves on the right. The Gipper extolled Scottsdale, Arizona, for instance, for having a private fire fighting department. The Gipper said that this was part of trimming the government’s extension into sphere where they didn’t belong and functioned below par. The Gipper pointed out that the Labour government in Great Britain was turning, in desperation, away from the statist model and towards free enterprise. The Gipper pointed out that the Socialist party in Sweden had lost to the Conservatives, and this was because Sweden, in desperation, was turning away from the statist model and towards free enterprise. The Gipper went to Japan and was impressed with the work ethic, which he attributed to free enterprise. So, when I came upon the radio address about California lessening the offense of possessing marijuana to a misdemeanor (oh those dear seventies days!), I expected to read some hurray from the Gipper, as here was a primo, obvious improvement in a problem that could surely be solved, better, by the private sphere. But no. Instead, the Gipper quoted Daryl Gates, who made it clear that making marijuana into a misdemeanor would mean kids (KIDS!) would be getting hold of marijuana. Oddly, the fact that, say, kids would be breathing in toxic fumes from polluting factories didn’t seem to stir the Gipper to the bottom of his soul, but that kids might be getting jolts of THC definitely did.

Why the discrepancy? Well, let’s put it in six letters: B-L-A-C-K-S. The scourge of drug prohibition begins and ends with race in this country. To put not to fine a point about it, the country went into mourning, in the sixties, as its handicraft, its precious tradition of Jim Crow laws was slowly taken away from it. And the country hasn’t come out of that mourning yet.

A case in point is this article by Austin’s best journalist, Jordan Smith. It isn’t only the quality of her work (generally, I read the Chronicle, where I used to contribute, for two things: Smith and the movie schedules). I once talked to a man in the D.A.’s department, and he complained that Smith was the worst reporter he knew of, distorting everything. Which told me that Smith was that rare reporter who wasn’t a law and order shill.

Smith’s article is about another Tulia: Edna, Texas. This time, the bigot who is intent, under cover of law, on imprisoning blacks, the oldest of the Jim Crow moves in the post-bellum South, is a D.A. named Bell. One hopes that Smith’s article will spotlight Bell, and bring some attention to this town from the National press. Otherwise, Jim Crow is certainly going to be victorious once again.

"Eight of the defendants were located at one time in a bar in Edna. Four more were gathered up that same night," breathlessly reported the Edna Herald on Nov. 20. "The bottom line is that this type of conduct will not be tolerated here in Jackson County," sheriff Kelly R. Janica told the paper at the time. "We are going to do our job to keep drugs from infecting our streets." (And as this story was in preparation, it appears the job was far from completed – see "'Crackdown' Becomes 'Shutdown,'" below.)
But, in what has become an all-too-typical tale of rogue criminal justice in rural Texas – epitomized by the infamous 1999 Tulia drug sting – it appears that the Edna "crackdown" had much less to do with eradicating drugs than it did with institutionalized, small-town racism. Under the guise of removing drugs (specifically, crack cocaine) from the streets, local lawmen may have themselves broken state law, primarily by relying on a local crack addict as their sole informant to send 28 of the 29 defendants to prison for sentences from one to 20 years. Only two of the defendants, including Patterson, dared to challenge the charges in court; the rest accepted plea bargains offered by longtime Jackson Co. District Attorney Bobby Bell. They did so, it seems certain, in large part out of fear of challenging Bell's authority and thus receiving even heavier sentences. (Charges were dismissed in one case.)
One white Edna resident who requested anonymity, fearing retaliation, said bluntly that Bell's attitude is "'I'll break you, I'll take everything you've got; so take the plea [or] I'll make sure you go to jail.' He does as he pleases."
What happens when you are a successful black man in Edna, as Rick Patterson was, is that the spirit of Jim Crow comes to get you. And that spirit comes in the form of … drug enforcement. Smith article involves the heartbreaking imprisonment of a man who did nothing but – incautiously – pleaded innocent. A plea that was backed up by the inconvenient fact that there was no evidence against him. However, that there is no physical evidence that Rick Patterson has ever even touched cocaine did not prevent Rick Patterson from being sent to jail for ten years (no doubt, keeping kids in L.A. just that hair breadth away from getting crack themselves – the spirit of the Gipper must be pleased). What sent him down? The usual. First, the cops create the crime. Second, they use an informant who is a criminal. Third, they sorta direct the criminal to the right (black) neighborhood. Fourth, they rely on the criminal’s word, and take that before a white judge and a mostly white jury. Case closed, legal pogram completed, next black man to be processed through the hell hole.
Right, this is all about the children.
Actually, this is all about an empire in which, slowly, the population has grown to accept the very idea that the police can generate crimes, and that this is acceptable. LI has a few questions. Leading questions, of course.
Q: How many movies have shown, with maximum satisfaction, ‘sting’ operations?
A: Go to your local video store’s action movie section and start counting. Multiply by one thousand.
Q: How many movies have shown any, any objection to the abhorrent, criminal, libertystripping, tyrannical idea that one should ever allow a police force this kind of power?
A: Approximately none.
Q: What are “sting” operations connected to, most of the time?
A: Drug enforcement. The DEA spent almost its entire institutional life sending police out, undercover, to make drug deals so as to arrest people who we involved in them. This has gone on, unquestioned, day after day, as the prison population in this country has been jumped a bit behind China, a country with three times our population. This, in a country that is supposedly free by all the indexes of all the heritage like think tanks. Oh, and of course countries are also regularly judged on corruption, too. Bad Egypt. Bad Chad. Funny, the most rampant and dangerous form of corruption there is – allowing a police force to generate the crimes it then punishes – somehow doesn’t get on the index. Could it be that the indexers figure that such fates only befall their maids?
Ah, but such questions reveal an envious, a class biased, and most of all a resentful turn of mind on the part of LI. Heavens, drug prohibition as a weapon of racism? As a way of stripping the meaning from the Bill of Rights? surely it is all about the children. Surely LI hasn’t gotten the message that racism was overcome in the U.S. It happened fast – in fact, it happened on January 7, 1971, at 3 a.m. The non-racism fairy came and waved her wand, and that was that. Since then, talk of racism is just outré. Couldn’t happen. Not in the big, compassionate heart of the American dream. Not in East Texas.

Read Smith’s article. And distribute where you can.
p.s. -- just to be clear about race inflected bannings -- I suspect the same complex of motives is often behind banning handguns. Handgun laws invariably lead to processing more black men through the prison system. Putting gun laws in the hands of the cops is not a good idea.