Otherwise, a few housekeeping odds and ends worth mentioning:
Thanks to Michele Deitch for posting a couple of documents last week that her students produced after a symposium in Houston on "Police, Jails and Vulnerable People." Let's link to them again just to make sure folks saw them:
- Ideas for diverting people with mental illness from the justice system
- New white paper on pretrial release and bail reform in Texas
This Grits item comparing Judge Elsa Alcala to a "black-robed, Latina John the Baptist" got picked up by the Marshall Project's daily email and got a lot of attention. Given how few people follow the Court of Criminal Appeals, I was surprised so many folks reached out to me about that topic. Read it if you missed it.
Finally, the Texas Tribune's crowdfunding campaign to support investigative journalism on police shootings is quite a bit shy of its goal. I hope they make it. If you haven't, give them some love.
Happy Independence Day!
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4 comments:
Grits, freedom is not free!
Tyler, TX. has not evolved it will not let blacks hold office of leadership positions. No black judges, District Attorney or assistant DA! As long as nepotism reins there will never be a black in the he DA's office or judge. AD Clark III and Klan just keeps it in the family!
Probably need to bring in the national media and Alfred Sharpton's team to get this ball rolling! Your thoughts?
I'm not sure Al Sharpton parachuting in would help. When he left, the same folks would live there - the ones that elected Leo Berman. The good news, they're also the ones who elected Kevin Eltife. It's not a requirement that Tyler's elected officials be terrible. What's needed are locals to decide things must change. The black and Latino communities there are disempowered and not politically engaged the way the pro-life/Tea Party folk are. And when I grew up there (REL, class of '85), there was an essentially neo-confederate ideology popular among the white folks that would have seemed extreme in 1965, much less today. Hard to see what Al Sharpton could do for that dynamic besides cement it in stone.
Seen and experienced this firsthand
It damn sure wouldn't hurt, Tyler is F'd up.
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