tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73304697096537950862024-03-28T20:28:18.225-07:00Texas MostlyNigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.comBlogger51125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-54949595622101111812024-03-18T14:15:00.000-07:002024-03-28T16:28:21.398-07:00Notes from the Texas Gulag (Part 2)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHA04DLJqOrthc4m1mBi9yyRiAtPx44yCpQEUP5hpxVI7soZBtQwB2fiI_bTk6WgUPavWFEB6FqWbqhsZBNMlpW4NRHImtJD249F315FAiGGRD0Npptohs902zMHd9U1Yf-ZXp_KEg0fUKmqkFu8zmoCNNYjJFt64eSDKMcujR5pKLM11uJHGawWvxdoc/s4032/891474CF-C41D-483B-A8A6-2651A00A0603.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHA04DLJqOrthc4m1mBi9yyRiAtPx44yCpQEUP5hpxVI7soZBtQwB2fiI_bTk6WgUPavWFEB6FqWbqhsZBNMlpW4NRHImtJD249F315FAiGGRD0Npptohs902zMHd9U1Yf-ZXp_KEg0fUKmqkFu8zmoCNNYjJFt64eSDKMcujR5pKLM11uJHGawWvxdoc/w424-h320/891474CF-C41D-483B-A8A6-2651A00A0603.jpeg" width="424" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 22pt;">iv)<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">As a new nurse, you get to see most of Hospital Galveston pretty quickly but there’s a lot to take in. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, you can come to work at your home unit, mine is 7C, and the charge nurse tells you that you’ve been floated to somewhere they need a nurse more. My assignment for one whole shift was the Infirmary which is a kind of a shithole basically, the Infirmary at Hospital Galveston is. It’s a large room in a basement somewhere—that’s what it felt like, being underground—only been the one time and needed the help of my preceptor to find it. There were a couple of Officers circulating continuously across the room, about 30 beds in rows, all filled the day of my visit. To set the scene. And an apparently secure glass-paneled nurses station. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">There was a TV “lounge” for the inmates who could walk or had wheelchairs. This area was supposed to be off limits to the nurses actually, nobody told me and the whole first half of my shift was spent going in and out of the lounge, getting the guys watching TV to take their meds or whatever. These prisoners had been brought to Sin Island for specialist appointments or for procedures or surgeries or because they were sick but were better now, or reasonably well, and didn’t need to be in the main hospital anymore. Awaiting transport back to their home unit. Waiting for their ride, to use the vernacular, that big white TDCJ bus to take them back to the <i>Pissville</i> <i>Unit</i>, in Piss County, which is next to Shithole where the <i>Shithole Unit</i> is, in deep East Texas? These patients in the Infirmary were stable, the medicine practiced at Medical Branch is pretty high level. The practitioners know <i>how</i> to do the right thing even if it’s not always done? That’s true of a lot of healthcare environments at one time or another. You can’t give 100% all the time. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, the nurses get maybe ten patients each in the Infirmary which sounds like a whole lot and in an ordinary hospital would be <i>too fucking much</i>. In ordinary circumstances the Board of Nursing would probably take your license anyway, just for being dumb enough to <i>accept </i>that kind of patient load, whatever the circumstances and however the shift turned out. You can practically hear the investigator from the Board asking, a little irony in her voice, “And you thought 10 to 1 was a <i>safe</i> assignment?” So, like, you’re kind of fucked either way. To say nothing of bad care for the patients. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">But at the Infirmary a heavy patient load seems okay because all you have to do is pass the guys their meds and do a quick physical exam and write a note on the patient’s condition. Or maybe do a <i>dressing change</i>, which is how my time was passing, about midway through that lone shift in the basement. To set the scene. Still on my new nurse orientation which was 6 weeks and began on <i>day shift</i>, God forbid, this place is busy. So, like, changing a dressing on a diabetic inmate who had just had a leg amputation? He was a Brother which is important to me, younger than me—in his black prime so to speak, maybe mid-forties. A man that age, there’s still a lot of booty to hit, you feel me? But having lost his leg now and being locked up didn’t help his chances in the pussy domain. He seemed to be adjusting okay though or as well as can be expected, what can you say? He was already in TDCJ, what’s losing a limb after the loss of a Black Man’s freedom? You may never give up <i>The Struggle</i> but—believe me, Brother—eventually we all give up The Ghost. To set the scene again. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">This guy who had the amputation was learning to use a wheelchair but he said that he hadn’t showered in 10 days. Which is, like, a long fucking time. Me and the nurse’s aide got him under the water, we offered to lift him onto the shower bench but he wanted to do it himself. He did super, btw, he had already taken ownership of his new life. Soap and water on the wound itself, that was healing well. A lady from Physical Therapy came by and worked with him and she gave me a few tips too. Got him back to his bed to put on a fresh dressing, and you know how, like, my thing is to listen? Not to talk unduly about myself. Not to act like a Black Savior or anything. But helping this Brother taught me something special. <i>How to steal</i>, actually. Which was interesting in itself, worth the trip to the Infirmary, being <i>totally honest</i> myself and not knowing about the activities that may have led some of my patients to be incarcerated in the first place. So, like, me working on this dude’s missing leg, and sitting across the aisle from me on another bed was a prisoner who was explaining to yet another inmate, on the bed next to him, how to be a successful thief. So, like, wrapping a stump is straightforward, you just got to make sure it won’t fall off when gravity goes to work. When the patient stands up on crutches or hobbles around or goes to the pisser or whatever, is that too much information? This black guy could maneuver whatever was left of his leg, there was just nothing on the end. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, me wrapping the bandage and listening at the same time to the guy across the aisle explain how to steal. Being a scrupulously honest person myself, this was, well, an <i>education</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The guy doing the explaining was white, maybe fifty, he looked kind of like a small-town bank president or a successful insurance salesman, actually. Pillar of the community and all that? He looked like a guy working for the Chamber of Commerce in Pisspot, Texas, back in 19 and 58. He had a full head of conservative cut hair, greying at the temples, prosperous-looking in a small-town <i>I-like-to-screw-other-guy’s-wives</i> kind of way. Does that make sense? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The guy who the bank president was talking to was also white, younger but scrawny looking, also in a small-town Texas way. <i>Hardscrabble</i>, that’s the word you hear out west, a Hardscrabble Texas white boy or maybe an Okie in the original meaning of the word, like he really did come from Oklahoma? A <i>cracker</i> in today’s Negro street vernacular, if one wished to be <i>rude</i>, which is not my intent. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">As crude as the word may sound, cracker <i>is</i> nonetheless descriptive of the pallor and dry skin of a certain kind of cigarette-smoking poorly-hydrated Southern white guy or white girl, and is like half the adult population of the Panhandle, Oklahoma and Texas varieties both. Not to generalize or anything. Not to sound racist. Some folks call themselves crackers, actually, and who are we as POC to dispute The White Man or The White Woman? So, like, it was just two guys talking. The scrawny white guy was hanging on the prosperous white guy’s every word.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> “What you do, see,” began the bank president as he explained how he had ripped off his boss back in his Free World days. He didn’t work in a bank, it turned out, he was a truck driver and he said that the key to stealing at work was not delivering all the merchandise that he was carrying. And that made a certain sense. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">There was always a missing last crate, the truck driver said, and he knew because he took it. It was that simple. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">What he did with what he stole was a little surprising. “If you’re hauling eggs, see,” he told the younger guy, “then you hold onto that last crate. And when you’re done with your route you go to the truck stop and you meet up with the other drivers that have something to trade. See?” The younger guy smiled and nodded. Oh wow, so <i>that’s</i> how you do it! The Okie was clearly impressed. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">A crate of eggs must be a whole lot of eggs and you can find other drivers at the truck stop who have ripped off cargo from their own deliveries to exchange with. A kind of a <i>flea market for thieves</i>. Oh wow, how cool is that? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">“Another driver might have shampoo for example, but it’s too much shampoo for him to use. So he’ll trade for some eggs. See? That’s how you do it.” Now we know. This guy talking was my patient too and he was in Hospital Galveston with a diabetic wound not yet as bad as whatever had caused the black guy to lose his leg. The white guy’s dressing had to be changed too and his blood sugar needed to be checked and his sugar was, like, in the ozone. He was heading along the same path as the legless black man, maybe towards an amputation if he didn’t watch out. That would happen in a few months or a few years, after he returned to his cell in the Gulag. At Hospital Galveston on in-patient acute we check diabetic blood sugars before all meals and at bedtime, btw, four times a day just like in a Free World hospital. While in the prisons where these guys live for years at a time they’re routinely checked only twice a day. Or so the prisoners say. That may be the problem, not to sound like a SME, a subject matter expert. Twice is not enough to maintain good blood sugar control? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">What would that look like? A lot of neuropathy, a lot of diabetic ulcers and a lot of amputations, is that right? <i>Hmmm</i>. With a little research, it might make a good paper for a nursing journal. Or it’s all the starch they’re eating—all the white bread. That’ll kill you too. That would also make a great paper—nutrition in the prisons of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, aka TDCJ. Except nobody in the Free World wants to know. And you have to be careful. Putting on my <i>Statistical Hat—</i>that the instructors taught us to use in grad school—would mean judging the rate of diabetic amputations among TDCJ prisoners against the number in the Free World, where it’s not great either. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Anyway, the State of Texas defends itself by saying that you can’t judge TDCJ healthcare outcomes harshly. Many of these patients are folks who may not have been going to doctors even before they got locked up. Their health was already compromised in the Free World, that’s the State of Texas’s argument and it has a certain inherent truth. But when you take someone’s liberty you also take responsibility for their health, right? The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that, in 1976, based upon a <i>TDCJ case</i>. <i>Hello</i>! The ruling involved one of the shithole prisons in or around Huntsville, back in the day. My best professional opinion—if you asked me as an almost master’s-prepared nurse-scientist, diploma already in the U.S. mail? Health care in the Texas Gulag is bad but not as bad as it could be. Like, not as bad as in the <i>Soviet</i> Gulag, for example, the difference being that it’s hot in Pisspot, and in Siberia it’s cold? Or not like being a Roman galley slave or anything like that, back in the day. Not like row or die. Not <i>that bad</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Or not like burning for eternity in the sulfurous flames and fires of Hell. Although it's just as toasty out there on the units, in Shithole and in Pisspot both. The<i> quality</i> of TDCJ health care is probably at a level exactly where the majority of people in the Lone Star State want it to be, bad but not fatal. Or <i>slowly</i> fatal, not so fast as to draw attention. Unless it comes time for the Big Needle, that works within minutes, the TDCJ-administered medicine that cures all ills. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">One thing is certain. Hospital Galveston is the <i>fastest-changing patient population</i>during my time in the saddle as a bedside nurse. To set the scene. You can be taking care of some guy when the shift begins, at 7 pm, and you look up and suddenly it’s 2 a.m. and standing there is a guard with a wheelchair and handcuffs or who has brought a gurney, and the Officer says, “He’s going back to his unit,” and of course it’s the first you’ve heard about the transfer. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">TDCJ’s primary mission is to prevent <i>escape</i> not provide health care. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The primary concern is the logistics of the transfer, not necessarily the prisoner getting his or her next round of meds. Once or twice it’s been a <i>tragedy to me personally</i>—a middle-of-the-night transfer. Not to sound all self-centered, this is only mentioned in order to show how a night shift can roll, on Texas’s Island of the Damned. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, instead of me having a <i>quiet night</i>—which is the only kind of night to have, actually. Instead of me keeping the six patients they gave me <i>at the beginning of the fucking shift</i>—not to sound unprofessional. Instead of me keeping the patients who are known quantities to me by two in the morning, <i>oh no</i>, we can’t do that. Instead, the <i>next admission</i>will be mine. To get me back up to six patients like everyone else. Which is a pisser and means a lot of extra effort with admission paperwork and labs and all that. Which is all going to upset my <i>qi, </i>because boy-nurses are all about <i>rhythm</i> and being in tune with the energy of the nursing unit. That would be my argument to the charge nurse, suggesting that she give the admission to some other more deserving nurse. Btw, the guards don’t want the inmates to know when or how they will be moved because TDCJ doesn’t want the guys or girls to have a chance to <i>make a plan</i>. Which these guys and girls in leg chains do far better than the State of Texas does, make a plan that is. You know? Not to be rude about leadership in Huntsville or in Austin. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">You can be talking to a patient and even in those rare cases when you know exactly at what time the Officers will come for him—or her—for the ride back to his or her unit, and he or she asks you, when are they coming for me? You still don’t tell. There may be a bunch of guys going back to the same unit for example, in Pisspot—the guard is telling you this in the middle of the night. The White Bus is waiting, headed to some unit somewhere in the vast and lonely expanse of the Lone Star State, not to sound all dramatic. On the boundless prairie of West Texas or more likely among the pine trees of the east. Maybe on the coastal plain around Sugar Land. And you just looked up while charting on a computer in the hallway and there was an Officer standing there, or two Officers if it’s a bad dude. TDCJ is transferring your guy or girl in the middle of the fucking night, back to the fires of Hell, because it’s more convenient to do that right now. Or safer. Who is a mere nurse to judge? My boss warned me once—in interactions between security and nursing—everybody needs to stay in his or her “own lane.” Which sounded like good advice. But my lane is still kind of a mystery to me. The comings and goings from Hospital Galveston, by ambulance or by prison bus, are complicated by security—by the roads of the Lone Star State. And by medical condition. There are actually prison cells somewhere on campus too, no shit, even though this is a <i>university</i>. These holding cells, someone told me about them one night. My colleagues said they’re just like regular prison cells, for guys and girls who have been discharged from the hospital and don’t need to tie up a bed anymore, and who are waiting to go back to Shitville. Maybe after an appointment with a specialist. To set the scene. So, like, the jockeying for beds is intense, so many people coming and going, particularly interesting is the lot of the <i>writ-writers</i>, who may have longer stays on Sin Island than other prisoners do. Maybe they end up in the cells because there’s air-conditioning.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Writ-writers are the guys and girls who sue the State of Texas over the abominable conditions? Who complain to the courts about the heat in the cells? And the filth? Or the violence? To say nothing of the damn food. Bitching may actually serve a purpose. The squeaky wheel gets the fan, you know? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">A few of these writ-writers get kept at Hospital Galveston past their scheduled discharge, including a couple of my recent patients, because the lawyers or the judges or whoever is in power in Huntsville has decided that these particular guys or girls can only be housed in <i>well-ventilated </i>cells. Which are extremely rare in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, at the units in Pisspot and in Shitville both. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, in the inmate’s absence his cell was taken over by someone else, maybe while the writ-writer was on the white bus to Sin Island. There’s nowhere cool available on his unit right now for him to return to. Still, all in all, the care at Hospital Galveston seems almost nearly—kinda—<i>okay</i>. From my viewpoint, given the circumstances and given that it’s industrial health care intentionally stripped of the humane element. And given that it’s what the public will pay for. “Bad” with an asterisk, you might say. Based upon my prior experience which is considerable but<i> not</i> in correctional heath. Take this opinion, therefore, for what it’s worth. This is my first and will be my last experience taking care of prisoners. Still, there are certainly some very good people at Hospital Galveston. No doubt about that. Don’t underestimate the skill of the providers. Dr. Ojo the medical director is a Nigerian-American cat and is totally cool. He’s like one of only two Brothers of my acquaintance in the role of physician anywhere on the whole fucking campus, back in the day or today. And there have been, like, only two sisters. This island is still the Old South, literally. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">One of the two black women docs was an internal medicine resident who came to 7C, at dawn, a couple of weeks ago. She ordered every test known to modern medicine? And was super-hot, like an easy 9 or 9-and-a-half? Think she was from the Caribbean, actually, and had more ice on her ring finger than the Titanic. Not to sound jealous. Not that that’s important here. So, like, this cat Dr. Ojo, who is the Big Dog at Hospital Galveston? He is super-competent. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">He actually <i>rounds on the units</i> and <i>asks the nurses what’s going on</i>? What a pleasant change from my prior experience where you only see the bigwigs at the Christmas party or maybe during Nurses Week, when they come by to bring you some little shitty giftbag that cost like $3. Not to go all radical union member only because this is Texas and at Medical Branch there is no nurse’s union.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The first time Dr. Ojo saw me—new to in-patient acute—he walked over to me at the nurses station and took my badge in his hand in order to pronounce the name. He asked me what my last hospital was, seemed to approve the answer, then let me go. This wasn’t mere courtesy, he was vetting me. This is said with complete love and respect for the Nigerian peeps. They are awesome. But in Nigeria people run so many games that Nigerians who come here to the Land of the Free—and Home of the Brave—are still always worried that someone is running a game on them? Not to sound all racist or nationalist or whatever. But speaking as a noble <i>slave-descended</i> Black Man, who is a natural-born straight-shooter, we slave-descended Negroes don’t run games. At least not on other black people, although it’s always open season with white people. For me personally, the most important quality of the Nigerians living in the United States—<i>personally?</i> A lot of African women are hot and will give it up to an American Brother, as a show of <i>Black Unity</i>, so to speak. Not that that’s important here. Let’s see. You may ask, what is my approach to correctional nursing? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">That’s a fair question. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">It’s pretty much like any other kind of in-patient care except you’re more rushed in a prison hospital than in the Free World because of the demands of security. At Hospital Galveston you have less total time to complete tasks than a civilian RN does. Doors to patient rooms and the doors to the nurses station are <i>locked</i> and you have to ask someone to buzz you in or get the guard to bring the key. Literally. All of that takes time because there’s not always someone around to open the door. We’re supposed to have two Officers on 7C at all times but quite a few of my shifts this spring there’s only been one. That adds time to tasks too, because maybe a dozen times each night you have to <i>find the lone Officer</i>and disengage him or her from doing something for another nurse and get him or her to do something for <i>you</i>. You have to cultivate the Officers btw, and respect them, they hold a nurse’s balls/ovaries in their hands. Depending on how fast they move. So, like, weaknesses in my nursing practice? That’s a fair question too. Being organization during the shift is not my strong point, to be honest. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">After all these years. If you asked about my work style, my mantra is to be <i>proactive</i> in order to <i>avoid trouble </i>or in order to have the most time to deal with it. It’s <i>always</i> appropriate to take another set of vital signs, for example. Turn patients who have surgical wounds because you may find a bed full of blood underneath. That’s what our instructors warned us back in the day in school. And make sure you get a look at people’s skin, it’s one of my few rules. The ultimate goal is that in the morning everyone is in at least as good health as they began the shift. That means you have to <i>prioritize</i>. A lot of these ladies and gentlemen are really sick. My thing, my idiosyncrasy of practice is always to look at the patient’s feet as the best outward sign of chronic disease. Especially in TDCJ because it’s a shithole and feet are the point of contact with the institution. The worst luck at bedside is to catch a problem late, it seems to me, after it’s had time to fester. If you catch it early on you don’t have to do <i>the paperwork</i> later or you don’t have to <i>call the docs</i> and start taking orders, which is more shit to do in an already shit-filled environment. The nurse’s interest and the patient’s interest are the same most of the time. We both want a quiet night. My primary overall professional goals can be summarized in only two rules. Not to hurt anybody and to get home on time. Not to repeat myself.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> So, like, you may ask, what about shortcuts? It’s hard not to use them when you’re super busy, with a nursing shortage and all, but bad practice can have big costs. Our instructors back in the day talked to us about that too. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Once at Hospital Galveston—it’s embarrassing to admit, as a seasoned RN. This happened not long after my arrival on 7C. So, like, <i>once</i>—due to rush, although that’s really no excuse. We were passing meds. And, like, not that this would be my usual practice, because the instructors taught us better. But leaving some medications unattended on a computer in the hallway? In order to go into a room to talk to another patient? Does that sound reasonable? It’s actually bad practice. To set the scene.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">And returning to my computer, my preceptor who was this uber-competent African chick? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">She was standing there, waiting to chew a little proud Black Man ass. To set the scene.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">My preceptor was from French-speaking Africa, and she was hot—and a very good nurse. In fact, she was far better than me. She was actually a newly-minted nurse practitioner, still looking for a first job in advanced practice. This chick was my principal preceptor on days, for three weeks, and a Filipino guy picked me up for orientation on nights. The Filipinos and Filipinas who studied at home are some of the best nurses that it has been my honor to meet. There was a PICU nurse at Medical Branch back in the day, during my time, who was an anesthesiologist in her home country. Anyway, this African chick was always right, the Cameroonian lady, you know the way African women are always right? Like sisters here at home but the accent is different when they are lecturing somebody? Skilled in nursing and skilled in chewing a Brother’s ass. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Because black chicks literally<i> are</i> right most of the time. This one, my preceptor, could put this proud black boy-nurse to shame on his skills. At that moment she was standing there with my abandoned meds in her hand. To set the scene. This chick was having a coronary event. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">“Do you know,” she asked me, holding up my medications to make sure every pill was visible, turning her head to the side like a German shepherd trying to understand human speech, “what would happen if Dr. Ojo found these sitting here?” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">One of the other nurses had already told me what would happen, actually. Not to sound like a smartass. But speaking of Dr. Ojo, the other nurses said, basically, “He’s very nice. Just don’t screw up.” Which is fair, right? Because medication safety can mean people’s lives. And leaving meds out is <i>bad practice</i>, especially in this environment. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Medical Branch as an <i>institution</i> though—that’s another story. This place is a totally sketchy spot in the healthcare <i>ecostream</i>. Just like Galveston Island is a totally sketchy spot on the Gulf Coast. Completely <i>dodgy</i>, bro, actually. Some people come here in order to do the wrong thing. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Not to sound petty but for Nurse’s Week, you know what the fucking nursing administration did? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The Chief Nursing Officer, or whoever? They gave all of us a giftbag with <i>skin</i><i>moisturizer </i>and<i> lip balm</i>. <i>Hello</i>! What about the guys? That was my question when the charge nurse gave me mine.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> <i>Fucking hell</i>. What is this shit? That was my question to myself at the time. Not to sound like a Neanderthal but the African American male—descended from warrior stock—does not use moisturizer <i>or</i> lip balm, bro. Again, not to sound like a complete cave-dweller.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Besides, boy-nurses know old African wisdom—how to moisturize your skin. It’s best done from the <i>inside</i>, with water, not outside with creams and potions. But that’s the way <i>chicks</i> like to do it, by putting stuff on. They like to get all tarted up, you know? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Or a pink bow in her hair, if it’s pediatrics. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Like, coming to work on a hospital nursing unit and you’re wearing makeup? You ought to be able to suspend a RN’s license for that alone! Especially if it’s a guy. Not to sound like a Neanderthal again. Does the Medical Branch Nursing Office even understand that there are<i>men in the profession</i> now? How about giving us something really useful during Nurse’s Week, like <i>condoms,</i> or a few of those little blue pills? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Like for E.D.? Which doesn’t mean Emergency Department, although it <i>can</i> be an emergency when it happens, you know? So, like, anyway, <i>something</i> just began to worry me about Hospital Galveston. Call me paranoid if you will. Maybe call me a good nurse. So, like, this is exactly what it’s like to worry in a health care environment.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Sometimes it’s just a question of <i>good care</i> vs bad care, you see that everywhere from time to time in all healthcare settings, in my experience. Good practice versus bad practice, too. But it can also be about someone taking advantage of a vulnerable patient population. Worry in a hospital takes the form of <i>intuition </i>as much as lab results, <i>experience</i> telling you that something bad is going to happen or already did happen and you’re fucked. Or the patient is in trouble. That’s <i>nurse’s intuition</i> which may be backed up by a look of panic on the patient’s face because the first person to know the patient is going bad is usually the patient. And my experience working with children, where emergencies are usually respiratory. If you wait until the airway is already closing, you’re fucked. Not to sound dramatic. But that’s nursing intuition too. It’s what led me to worry on Sin Island or <i>Island of the Damned</i>, if you’re being more formal. Part of the Lone Star State’s sunny Gulf Coast. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Like Devil’s Island but closer to shore and there aren’t as many sharks in the sea. But there may be more on land. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 22pt;">v)<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">You’ve heard of the Nazi medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners? The Allies hanged a few nurses too after the war. Who absolutely deserved it—not to be critical of another RN’s practice. You don’t really know if you didn’t work the shift, isn’t that what people say? The Japanese also experimented on prisoners and the US military seized the data in order to bring it to American scientists, because of its supposed value. That’s a very incomplete history of medical malpractice as seen thru a correctional care lens. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Domestically maybe the second best documented example of healthcare evil in this country, the famous “Tuskegee Experiments” of the U.S. Public Health Service, in the 1960s. You’ve certainly already heard about that. Letting black patients suffer the effects of illness in order for doctors to watch the progression of the disease. Which in the Tuskegee case was syphilis. You couldn’t make this up. And of course the <i>most famous</i> victim of medical exploitation, in a very crowded field, was Ms. Henrietta Lacks of Baltimore, Maryland, who had samples of her cancer cells grown through the years across science after doctors at Johns Hopkins took them from her. In order to cash in on her immortal genes, hence Oprah’s movie and the book by Rebecca Skloot. So, like, of my eight hospitals in the last two decades or so—working as a staff nurse in each—a low-level grunt in the Big Picture of American medicine? UC San Francisco was my first step into this pitiless white abyss of unethical patient care and/or unethical research. Which <i>may</i> also be the template for operations of the University of Texas Medical Branch on Sin Island. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The first whiff of evil, if you will, was smelled at the University of California in Baghdad by the Bay—as San Francisco is called by those in the know, The City is in kind in a class of corruption by itself of corruption. An unethical series of experiments has just come to light at UC’s S.F. campus, btw, which is called Mount Parnassus, located in the Sunset District on a big hill. To set the scene. Looking through a West Coast lens actually, Medical Branch becomes <i>totally sus </i>too and for the same reason. “Sus” being short for “suspect,” as young people like to say. UCSF is a medical corporation with an academic façade, in fact that’s <i>all</i>the campus does, all health care all the time, just like UTMB. UCSF—also like UTMB—conducts well-funded healthcare research and has a big patient care operation, and wants it bigger, the San Francisco campus just bought two hospitals in Hawaii, and is famous for attention to its business side. UTMB on the other hand has a lesser academic reputation but owns bragging rights with a <i>Level Four Biosecurity National Lab</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Don’t you wish you had one? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Where presumably scary shit grows, about three blocks from my crib actually. And a short walk across campus from the prison hospital. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Like UTMB, there’s a long and cherished history of racism at the University of California San Francisco that continues today. If Mount Parnassus is not the belly of the beast, it <i>is</i> the beast, as seen thru a business-of-healthcare lens. The longtime Chancellor at the San Francisco campus is a pediatrician named Sam Hawgood, who is said to drink POC blood during the day and hang from the ceiling upside down at night. Not to be critical. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Back in my day in Baghdad, which is not that long ago, at Mount Parnassus you could walk the halls and hear people speaking obscure foreign languages but no Spanish even though Latinos already in California were half the population. UCSF has historically been a <i>white</i> and <i>Asian</i> institution, like UTMB is still, but for the longest time UCSF was <i>almost solely white </i>even with the large Asian population in town. Black people were the patients and research subjects. Which is also a pretty good description of UTMB today, white faculty with some Asians. So, like, the Mission District where my UCSF clinic was located was almost exclusively Latino, at the time of my arrival, but was already becoming not just white like the rest of the city but <i>super-white</i>. Silicon Valley white people, techies all, with high brows and high incomes. Not to stir racial animus.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">You’d see buses full of Google people coming and going, a few Asians but no blacks and definitely no Latinos. No lie. Not to be judgmental. It wasn’t al bad. A lot of those Baghdad girls are freaks, btw, that was <i>nice</i>, not to stereotype but you didn’t even have to work hard to get laid in San Francisco, even at the hospital. In my experience. Which is another similarity to Medical Branch actually because Sin Island is a party destination too—like Baghdad by the Bay. There are a lot of chicks. Just like its Pacific homologue San Francisco, in Galveston there’s a beach for late-night really freaky shit and the ocean to wash away any traces of the sin. But we digress. During my time in Baghdad by the Bay, people knew what was going to happen to the <i>old San Francisco</i> but it hadn’t happened yet. <i>Gentrification</i>. But because UCSF is an <i>academic research institution</i> and still needed research subjects to test medicines and procedures and similar shit, for new protocols, or whatever, or new products, the University of California was <i>fucked</i>. Like, completely bent over—no Vaseline—no kiss—no nothing. These new-to-town high-tech parents from Google or Apple or wherever wanted nothing to do with research on their perfect little white kids. No way. Not to stir racial animus.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">A lot of the wealthy white San Francisco moms wouldn’t even allow their children to be <i>vaccinated</i>—because of mercury, don’t you know? Much less let little Madison or young Harper—who plays forward in soccer and is learning Chinese—be a research subject? <i>Oh please are you fucking kidding me</i>? As the surprised herb-eating White Mom might ask when the idea of participation in research is first brought up. <i>No way</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Like, there was no way a Silicon Valley mom’s little Ms. Perfect was going to be taking any untested med, thank you very much, something that was not FDA-fucking-approved? And even a lot of FDA meds weren’t going in little Kendall’s mouth either, not in Baghdad. And in my capacity as the nurse, advocating for Mom, not that she needed it, my feeling was, “Good for her. She’s got sense.” Because you can’t trust academic medicine in the U.S. They’re always up to something, that would be my first point really. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Some <i>other moms</i> didn’t have that option though. That’s my second point. This is part of UC’s history of exploitation of vulnerable populations. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The University of California is the same group of people who brought you the Atom Bomb, what do you expect? UC doesn’t take prisoners.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> There’s more evil, including racism, in the UC Office of the President in Oakland than there was in the Reichstag. The difference between UC and the Nazis has turned out to be that UC does better science. So, like, something had to be done to supply research subjects for the great university’s healthcare business plan in Baghdad by the Bay, right? After minorities got gentrified out of town. To set the scene. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, UCSF recruited <i>black children</i> from <i>across the bay</i>—in Oakland—a heavily African American town, where the patient families wanted the care and got it in exchange for cooperation with research. Is that how it works? This was during the period of my time at UCSF too, when Dr. Hawgood was Dean of Medicine and was sharpening the analytic skills he uses now to keep UC profitable and on top of medical science. UCSF has been on a buying spree recently, as mentioned above, gobbling up a number of smaller hospitals in and around San Francisco and—<i>monopolizing health care</i>—not to be judgmental of the famed hill in the Outer Sunset. Which was also my neighborhood during my time there, you know, between the campus and Ocean Beach? The bottom line is that San Francisco is another dodgy town, just like Galveston! But it’s a different ocean and a different vibe, if one is speaking in terms of a <i>cosmic dimension</i>, which masters-trained nurses may be called upon to do. Blacks are especially important in Baghdad because black DNA is more varied and better for research. Is that how it works too, Dr. Hawgood? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, no one in San Francisco blinked an eye about UCSF’s research protocols. And on Galveston Island they used to <i>sell niggers</i>—not to sound judgmental of practices in the Old South. Except it’s still like that today. There’s not a whole lot of free-floating ethical concern in Galveston, any more than there is in S.F., let’s be brutally honest here. Not at Johns Hopkins either.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">UCSF eventually solved its research supply problem by buying Oakland Children’s Hospital, in order to get to the kids, renaming it “UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland.” After the Tech Guy, What’s-his-Name Benioff, of Salesforce, like it’s a royal title. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, those affluent and well-educated parents in San Francisco who didn’t want their kids in research studies really were right, that would be my whole point. Charles Blow of <i>New York Times</i> just reported that two <i>black children died</i> during the testing of a RSV vaccine, back in the day. Without the families ever being told the kids were research subjects? The RSV case was not at UCSF but it’s not for lack of trying by Mount Parnassus. These are very ambitious and greedy people. And now it turns out there’s a <i>totally different</i>research scandal at UCSF, actually. More unearthed history involving vulnerable patients at UTMB’s research cousin on the Pacific. To set the scene. This abuse involved <i>state prisoners</i>. Hello! <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The medical exploitation which has been documented and confirmed was uncovered by a black lady doc at UCSF. You may wonder why be suspicious about your alma mater? It’s a hospital and a university, they’re probably doing the best they can. But, for example, my antennae are raised all the time here on the Cancer Coast. Where there are not many black doctors to speak up. So, like, this was the report on UCSF’s racist research on <i>National Public Radio.</i> It was what the black lady doc or whoever discovered the disease and has since been proven true in Baghdad and may be the template for Sin Island too. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">UC was called out by <i>faculty</i> that—back in the day—there were experiments on dark-skinned California prison inmates, that consisted of injecting them with <i>pesticides</i>. To determine the effect of the poison and to see if the results were based upon skin color. Kind of like the Tuskegee Experiments, intentionally injuring a patient of color, who in this case was a prisoner of the State of California. To set the scene. It was like something the Nazis would have thought of, the difference being that this American version of medical experimentation on prisoners of color was performed by a couple of <i>Jewish physicians</i> who were <i>UCSF faculty</i>, like experiments on prisoners at the University of Pennsylvania about the same time. Which has its own academic medical research operation, like UTMB and UCSF, the difference being that in Pennsylvania the docs used <i>asbestos injections</i> instead of pesticide. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">In San Francisco the experiments were on dark-skinned prisoners to see the effects of darker skin, literally, in case you missed that the first time. Which sounds totally sketchy and is almost perfectly racist. The University of California conducted its own investigation, confirmed that the report was correct—and then started shoveling high and deep, you know? But there was just too much shit and stink, you know? So, like, one of the original UCSF researchers from the pesticide experiments was still on faculty when the radio report aired a few months ago and his counter argument was that his department—dermatology—was being unfairly singled out, because <i>other medical departments</i> of UC were doing unethical work on patients too, for over two decades. <i>Hello</i>! And UCSF said that he would not be disciplined either. All further explanation has been buried by UC President Michael Drake who, by trade, is a <i>UCSF physician</i>, not that there’s anything wrong with that. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">He’s a Brother, btw, although you wouldn’t know it from his actions. He was faculty at Mount Parnassus for years before he began to rise in the UC administration. So, like, one of President Drake’s mouthpieces, a lawyer named Scannell, said it was “harassment” to push for more details of UCSF’s racial experimentation. The most obvious other possibility—the most likely next shoe that could drop in San Francisco—is that the university was also involved in sterilizations of vulnerable populations. Including prisoners. But we digress. This is about Texas. The point is only that UCSF has gone to extraordinary lengths to obtain a vulnerable patient population for whatever reason. UTMB already has one. TDCJ prisoners. The medicine is good but there’s always risk of exploitation at academic medical institutions, of which there are six in UC System, and six at UT, depending on how you count. It makes you worry as a staff nurse at Medical Branch, especially working in Hospital Galveston. Prisoners are particularly vulnerable. Speaking up for and advocating for them, as a masters-trained nurse and all that? It doesn’t look good for Team Longhorn, bro, let me tell you that right now. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">But that can’t discourage a <i>Red Raider</i>. The truth must be told. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The 150,000 prisoners of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice are at risk big time of exploitation. Because UTMB has the same business model as UCSF, it’s in the same “endeavor,” as Chancellor Hawgood on Mount Parnassus likes to say. Like the Cosa Nostra, actually. An administrator in the UCSF School of Nursing was just sentenced to federal prison for example, for stealing $1.5 million by having the nursing students make out their tuition checks directly to her. That’s abuse of another vulnerable population, students, and is what UC does best. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">There are a lot of unconventional and bright minds working in academic medicine but what they’re actually working on can be pretty scary. Specifically the whole “endeavor” that the UCSF chancellor talks about is Big Business—Big Money—and Big Medicine. In Baghdad by the Bay just like at Medical Branch now, on Sin Island. So, like, the announcement about UCSF’s experiments on prisoners only heightened my sense that something was amiss on Sin Island. All these prisoners—it gives you pause, being a prudent nurse. You have to assume the University of Texas is up to something because, historically, UT always is. Speaking as an alumnus. Longhorns are even worse than the damn Aggies when it comes to intrigue, but the Horns are actually not as good at it as the Aggies. Frankly, it seems now, not to lecture anybody, it seems that only <i>Red Raiders</i> have the required high level of<i> ethical purpose</i> that promotes trust in Lone Star health care. It’s because of Tech’s close-to-the-land West Texas roots, that’s my personal belief, “the West Texas ethic,” yeah. That’s my feeling, approaching graduation from the School of Nursing in Lubbock. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Still, the history of unethical behavior in academic medicine is long and varied and it’s hard to know what exactly to fear, especially when there are so many possibilities for UT to do wrong on these 66 square miles, the Island of Texas Damned. Or how about <i>Texas’ Island of the Damne</i>d, which is my own preferred name for my workplace. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">With so much evil that is so totally fucking <i>do-able </i>on prisoners, for example, as we’ve learned from the University of California. The<i> </i>prudent <i>nurse</i> has to worry because our professional responsibility is <i>to the patient</i>, not to the healthcare facility. Not to the docs—God forbid. Nor to our supervisors. You can lose your license by forgetting that a RN’s responsibility, what the Board of Nursing is looking at when it hands out <i>discipline</i>, is to the patients under care. And because nursing discipline—like the Texas criminal justice system—falls hardest on black men. RNs of color have to be especially careful. When the Board punishes, it’s not Kimberley with a bow in her hair who gets suspended, it’s Jamal with eight inches in his pocket. Who is a natural Black man and the chicks feel threatened by his uber-masculinity and report him on bullshit violations of practice? But we digress again.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Still, sorting out cause and effect in a chaotic environment is difficult, you feel me, when you’re busy wiping booties and passing meds. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">For example, this was remarkable, a couple of <i>transgender</i> patients were admitted to 7C recently and it was my first time to work with this patient population. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">How did you know they were transgender, you may ask? Seriously. A patient with a big penis and big breasts is a big sign. To set the scene. One of the ladies kept letting her hospital gown slip down to reveal boob. <i>Please</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Also, this was another clue—never having had a trans patient before—but while passing these two prisoners their meds there was a lot of drama. You know what chicks are like, drama queens and all that? Not to sound completely Neanderthal. But one of the patients was falling right in with gender expectations already, not to say sound totally <i>cave-dweller</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Both patients were getting the same testosterone-blocking pills, estradiol and medroxy-progesterone, have you heard of that particular cocktail? This was my first time to pass these two meds together for this purpose, to the best of my memory. In the old days in nursing school the instructors taught us, “Don’t give any med that you don’t know what it's for.” <i>Fuck that shit</i>. Nowadays it’s hard to do because there are so many <i>new</i> treatments, health care is advancing more quickly now even than at the beginning of my time in the saddle, which is a couple of decades ago more or less. And much much more costly. It can be hard to keep up with all the new medications. And the prices will blow your mind. A lot of new expensive shit keeps appearing, to use a non-clinical description of the modern technology of health care. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Anyway, TDCJ’s rule is that transgender prisoners must be <i>alone</i> in a room, presumably to prevent assaults. A dive into the charts of these two also produced “TRANSGENDER,” like a stamp, which was another big clue. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">An Officer said later, by way of explanation, that some prisoners are already transitioning before they are condemned to prison and TDCJ is obliged to continue the treatment. Which makes perfect sense. But the second of my two patients—doing time for an <i>alleged</i> kidnapping of a kid—was already behind bars for 15 years. This is so totally not meant to sound racist but the prisoner was <i>Caucasian</i>, you know what those people are like! For instance there’s a demonstrably far greater chance that she really was <i>guilty</i> than the average black TDCJ guy, according to my calculations. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, obviously the transition must have begun while in the custody of the State of Texas. Even though Governor Abbott would have a heart attack, and although Lieutenant Governor Patrick’s head would turn a full 360 degrees and he would begin to speak in long-extinct Biblical tongues. <i>If they knew</i>. But there may not actually be much that the Governors can do. According to my online research there was another TDCJ inmate a few years ago—a guy from Brenham, actually? Which is my other hometown, what a small world in which we live! This prisoner from Brenham wanted to transition and sued TDCJ and won in federal court. To set the scene. This is my understanding from looking on the Web. His win was <i>overturned</i> on a technicality by the legendarily conservative 5<sup>th</sup> Circuit Court in New Orleans. But the appeals judges made clear that they were not ruling on the merits of his claim that he has a right to change genders while in custody of the State of Texas. So, like, this was my understanding, not being a lawyer myself, just tell me how much blood to send to the laboratory, you know? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, the appeals court only made its ruling based on the procedural error this Brenham-born writ-writer made. Some of the writ-writers are wonderful writers, btw, you can only admire their descriptions of the horrors of drowning in the Texas Gulag, not to sound all literary. My bet is that they write so well precisely because they are <i>not</i> lawyers—although TDCJ also houses no small number of members of the State Bar, rest assured! The point is not that there’s something wrong with being transgender, which there most definitely is <i>not</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> The point is that a lot of shit happens that you never hear about in Huntsville, which is synonymous with Medical Branch, my employer and my alma mater. No light escapes. Because society doesn’t want to know what’s really happening in prison, and especially not in prison health care. That would be my whole point, really.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 22pt;">vi)</span></i></b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 22pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">My bedside career that’s now ending has included eight hospitals and two nursing homes. One of the hospitals was tiny, in West Texas, a so-called “critical access” facility with a few beds and sketchy care. In the High Chihuahuan Desert, actually. Sometimes we had federal prisoners who were picked up by Border Patrol on foot out on a rancho somewhere, dehydrated and blistered and all that. They were lucky to be alive and needed IV fluids, you know? There was always a Border Patrol guy or Border Patrol girl in the room because the patient was technically in custody. From the hospital their next stop would be Marfa—not to see the famous Marfa Lights. Instead to see the inside of the Presidio County Jail where the feds keep/kept their peeps in the Trans Pecos. To set the scene. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">A couple of my former employers were old-fashioned county hospitals—in Minneapolis and in Austin. Another was part of a huge private corporation, HCA, where the care was pretty good and super expensive. My lone nonprofit gig was in Seattle where one of my patients <i>almost</i> bought the ranch one night—the Big Ranch, up in the sky? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Seattle was my only brush with unexpected death during my entire nursing career, thank you very much, over a quarter-century<i>. </i>Not to brag.<i> </i>Included in my healthcare tally however, through the years, is breaking an old lady’s hip during a bad lift, back back in the day<i>, </i>working as<i> </i>a<i> </i>nurse’s aide<i>. </i>The patient was a stroke victim with one side much weaker than the other and getting here out of bed, into her wheelchair, we went to her weak side and her leg buckled and she went down like a sack of potatoes. To set the scene. The hospital paid all her bills and gave the victim $50,000 above that. Luckily <i>all </i>my patients have gotten out alive over a quarter century, thank you very much, except one, also in Seattle, who was already “actively dying,” an odd phrase really, when my shift began. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Another guy in Seattle on that same neurosurgical unit as the guy who almost bought the ranch? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">This other guy had just whacked his wife and was spending the night on the neuro unit, to await an A.M. mental evaluation? A sheriff’s deputy was with this guy non-stop. Like withing reach, unlike the Border Patrol guy or girl in the hospital in Texas who could be down the hall talking on the phone and the prisoner wasn’t even handcuffed to the bed. The guy who whacked his woman was handcuffed to the bed, or ankle-cuffed actually. So, like, the hospital kitchen insisted on sending the wife-whacker his meal trays with <i>metal cutlery</i>, including a steel knife? Questioning the use of metal cutlery with in-custody patients might make a good paper for a nursing journal, actually, what do you think? Two of my employers have been academic medical centers—UTMB and UCSF, the later being the venerable University of California San Francisco. Which is said to be the most prominent public medical campus in the world. To set the scene. UTMB and UCSF are examples of <i>academic medical centers,</i> like the University of Pennsylvania in Philly. Or Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. At institutions like these the care is almost always statistically better than in private hospitals or “at the county.” But these university hospitals are also the most dangerous—big time—for the patients, ethically. Because there’s a culture in medical research of exploitation of vulnerable populations, previously for medical advancement and now for financial ends. There’s obscene amounts of money at stake. Not to sound cynical. Just a few decades = ago, back in the day, patients were exploited for the prestige of the researcher and now they’re exploited for the money, or the prize that may lead to money. Not to sound jaded as a staff nurse. Btw, we have a genuine German scientist leading health care on Sin Island now. Not that there’s anything wrong with that because the Europeans can’t be any worse than American docs. The physician who replaced Dr. Raimer a few months ago as President is a cat named Jochen Reiser. The good doctor might as will have “Big Pharma” stamped on his forehead. He’s a Big Medicine/Big Money kind of guy who is all about the business of health care. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">That’s because Medical Branch is gearing up for commercialization— bigtime—which isn’t in conflict with its research mission, they’re the same thing. There’s not much transparency, either. The only thing we know for certain is that on any given day as many as 1500 TDCJ inmates are traveling the roads of Texas, going to or from appointments, on Sin Island or at Tech in Lubbock on the noble dust-blown prairie. That’s what TDCJ said in the report on the murder of that family up near Buttfuck, in Buttfuck County, by the prisoner going to see a doctor in Huntsville? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The most-discussed unit in TDCJ may actually not be in Huntsville, btw, it’s probably Dalhart, located up at the very top of the Panhandle. The Dalhart Unit is famous because it was built as an economic boon to <i>two</i> counties, a wider target than Texas’s traditional porkbelly politics in which only one local community feeds from the state’s trough at a time. Dalhart is near the old home of the great cattle spread, XIT Ranch, in an area that is now known for large-scale dairy operations. To set the scene. There’s a community hospital nearby, which is a good thing, but serious cases at the Dalhart Unit have to be shipped to Texas Tech’s university hospital in Lubbock. What there mostly isn’t locally—near Dalhart—is <i>housing</i>. For that reason this prison is famous within the Department of Criminal Justice for being chronically understaffed by Officers and under-populated by inmates. Which may be good because the prisoners are not overcrowded in the cells, is that a felicitous possibility? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Dalhart is a perfect example of how not to build a prison, in Texas or anywhere else. It was the result of a serious planning fuck up by the Texas Democratic Party, btw, that last generation of D’s in power, in Austin and in Huntsville, including the late great Governor Ann Richards. Richards was actually leaving the Governor’s Mansion and George W. Bush was moving in, the same year that Dalhart opened. The Democratic idea was tougher penalties—longer sentences—in order to please conservatives. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Which also presented the opportunity to <i>build more prisons</i> in order to meet the increased need for incarceration and to offer employment to folks across the state, in rural communities, jobs in construction and as Officers. All meant to save the Democrats at the next election and when that didn’t happen, the Republicans took over and liked what they saw because Republican voters like long prison sentences too. What a small world!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Some of the guards who work in Dalhart today actually live in Oklahoma and commute to Texas to do their shifts. If you asked me what is the <i>worst</i> <i>TDCJ unit</i>—well, there’s apparently a lot of competition for the title of worst prison in Texas, isn’t there? Let’s be honest here. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The two you hear about most frequently as the closest to resembling <i>Hell on earth</i> are Coffield Unit, up near Palestine in northeast Texas, and the Stiles Unit just down the road from Hospital Galveston actually, in Beaumont, in the southeast part of the state. To set the scene. Again, according to the Officers and inmates both the level of terror at these two units—TDCJ prisons are invariably called units, like the guards are called Officers not guards. The level of degradation is reportedly pretty fucking unreal, PFU, to use the non-technical acronym. But it’s hard to know exact details because everything in the Department of Criminal Justice is highly non-transparent and meant to be that way. Especially the violence and dehumanization. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">A white prisoner from Coffield, a guy with lightning bolt tattoos who had a neo-Nazi thing going on? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">We kind of <i>bonded</i> during his time on 7C, don’t ask how. It’s still unclear to me how we even got started talking. Anyway, he told me that Coffield is a scary place even for him. He hinted that the only reason he’s a white supremacist at all is because racial allegiance offers a level of protection in certain lock-ups, especially it seems, the units around Palestine, which is in the armpit of the Lone Star State. In my opinion. Never having been there, personally, and refusing to go. Basically, all the units around Huntsville are known for old-fashioned white racism. Although there’s a lot of competition for that honor too, just like most talked-about prison. It’s pronounced “Pales-teen,” btw, like the Texas shithole it is, not “Pales-<i>tyne</i>,” like the beautiful country that will be, <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">This Lightning Bolt guy said he has done federal time and TDCJ time and federal prison is definitely the way to go if you have to be locked up. But we all know that, right?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> So, like, a Black Muslim patient who did time in Beaumont’s infamous Stiles Unit said that there isn’t much difference between the Officers and prisoners at Stiles. “TDCJ recruits in the projects,” this Muslim brother explained. He was speaking of the poor areas of the three oilfield towns down the road from Galveston, shitholes all, that make up the Texas “Golden Triangle” leading to the Louisiana state line. Beaumont, Port Arthur & Orange, respectively, each worse than the other. Meaning that some young brothers and sisters who grow up in or around Beaumont for example, and who are poor—despite the city’s wealth and its fame as home of the Spindletop gusher that made Texas rich? Despite white people with money, there aren’t many ways to escape your birth. Which is the kind of thing that you might even hear from an Officer who has dropped of a patient at Hospital Galveston, or is picking one up and has time to chat. A lot of the Officers are black and are aware of systemic inequities in Texas even though they work for the system. Some of the folks who grow up in Beaumont for example go to work as Officers and others clock in as prisoners. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Luckily for “public safety,” and to satisfy the demand for prison cells in Texas, there’s also a <i>federal</i> prison in Beaumont that is nicknamed “Bloody Beaumont” for its level of violence. If you accept the premise that conditions in federal lock-ups are better than in state prisons, like Lightning Bolt said, imagine how bad Stiles must be if it’s <i>worse than</i> <i>Bloody Beaumont</i>? It might actually make a good paper for a nursing journal, looking at the number of jaw fractures, for example at Stiles as compared to the federal prison during any given year? Let’s see. To smuggle a phone into Stiles can cost $2000, paid to an Officer, which seems like a lot of money to me. But that’s my information and the source is good. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Prison corruption cuts out the middleman and has the Officer receiving the payoff directly from prisoners’ family members. No money changes hands at Stiles itself. A reliable TDCJ-related source said that phones are bought by <i>syndicates of prisoners</i>, each inmate chipping in a certain amount of money, a dozen guys let’s say. The phone is hard for the warden to find during a search of the cells because it only stays in any one prisoner’s hand for one day and then moves to the next member of the syndicate. Not that it’s important here, but the phone is always moving. The prisoners say that their odds of not having it confiscated are better that way. Other than how to smuggle a phone though, of which my knowledge was detailed, my understanding of TDCJ’s inner workings was <i>slim to none</i>. It’s hard to judge an organization that you’re part of, especially if you’re low-level and can’t see the <i>Big Picture</i>around you. And never having done time, state or federal, thank you very much. Just a few months ago, starting work at Hospital Galveston, my knowledge of TDCJ as an <i>organization</i>was nada. To set the scene. The public hears a lot about Texas prisons in the media, even people living outside the state know the horrific acronym <i>TDCJ</i>. Like Dachau, without the ovens? Although it’s still pretty damn hot.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> In my circle of Black Men for example, not me personally but brothers of my acquaintance who have gotten on the wrong side of the judicial system for whatever reason? Like some of the black guys in Hospital Galveston. Knowing more than a few men of color who were political prisoners of the State of Texas. Still, as an outsider to TDCJ you usually only hear about the gory details of an “incident” on one of the units, of civilians who get whacked or raped by an escapee, like that family in Buttfuck last year. Or the insufferable heat in the cells—you hear a lot about that. Conditions that are cruel and inhumane, which is the way the State of Texas likes it. You don’t hear more, because it’s a closed system. TDCJ is a closed complex social environment, like Sin Island itself actually—and is an economy of its own. That now includes Medical Branch. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">To know what “they” were up to at Hospital Galveston, speaking as someone who sees conspiracy everywhere and was at the same time concerned about his patients? You needed to find out what was really going on in TDCJ as an <i>institution</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">That meant understanding the town of Huntsville and the proto-plantation life that still exists in Lone Star prisons, originally in East Texas but now spread across the whole damn state. Not to sound paranoid. Happily, there was a way to do just that! By talking to the Officers who came and went on 7C, delivering patients and guarding them at night. And of course by talking to the patients themselves, most of whom were longtime observers of TDCJ, you could say. As in years, if not decades. And, frankly, <i>listening to shit that didn’t concern me</i>, which some people might call <i>eavesdropping</i>, but is my thing anyway, not to sound like a freak. Trust me, you can <i>bust a</i> <i>nut</i> listening to TDCJ’s greatest hits, Huntsville’s worst episodes of violence alone, across the years, will take your damn breath away. And then—by contrast—you’re completely blown away by an occasional breath of institutional <i>humanity</i> in the Gulag. No lie.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> What follows is coming from a very smart young black female Officer. She was/is smoking hot actually and liked/likes to listen to rap. Music is always playing low in the background at her work station. To set the scene. So, like, she told me early one morning, both of us tired as shit and waiting for the morning peeps to <i>show the fuck up</i>. Even though it was still two hours before they were due to come to work? To set the scene again. So, like, she was talking about TDCJ the institution and she said that during her training she was taught that if she’s working on a unit somewhere—in Shithole, let’s say, which is next to Pisspot, in Piss County? It’s up in North Texas but before you hit the plains. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, if she’s guarding the fence line from the guard tower and she has a rifle. Can you picture that? Let’s say someone is trying to escape through the fence, or over the wall, or whatever, trying to get off of the unit, wherever. Prisoners are trying to get away. The instruction she received in her TDCJ training was that if she has her rifle, “Shoot to wound.” She said that was what she was told. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">“But if you accidentally kill, <i>you won’t get in trouble</i>.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">How cool is that? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Doesn’t that make you proud to live in the Lone Star State? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">And that totally surprised me actually, not to sound all jaded again. But expecting to hear the exact opposite from TDCJ. Knowing a little more by that point about the Department of Criminal Justice and all. But sometimes even as a liberal in Texas you can be <i>wrong</i>. Even as a Black Liberation Warrior who is critical of <i>everything</i> the White Man and White Woman do? Even as a radical African American you can still be pleased by an act or policy of the State of Texas, rare though it may be and almost certainly <i>accidental in nature</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, instead, TDCJ could have said, “Shoot to kill but if you accidentally wound, you won’t get in trouble.” That sounds more like State of Texas, don’t you think? Medical Branch goes to great lengths about security, btw, to avoid <i>escape</i>. There’s not a fence line to electrify or guard tower to shoot people from but there are certain safety practices that involve secrecy. What follows is just between you and me. So, like, there are <i>no signs </i>pointing to the prison hospital on campus. <i>Hello</i>!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">You either know where you’re going or you don’t, in which case you’re totally SOL. Good luck finding my patient care area—med-surg—aka in-patient acute. If you don’t have detailed instructions you’re fucked, doomed to wander the endless halls of the University of Texas Medical Branch forever, like the damn Flying Dutchman out on the Gulf. What good does that do actually, having no signs pointing the way? Because frankly, the lack of geographical clues on campus has confused me up the ass on a couple of occasions already. This may be <i>partially</i> due to advanced age but just as likely it’s due to the layout of this campus. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, you probably <i>haven’t </i>heard about a political incident—you could call it—back in the day in Washington, during the Eisenhower Administration. So, like, what happened back then in D.C. illustrates the Hospital Galveston conundrum, in the context of subterfuge for security reasons. So, like, it was the mid-1950s—must have been—when General Eisenhower was President? This applies to finding the prison hospital at UTMB too. So, like, it’s about President Eisenhower and his driver and the President’s brother who needed to get to the CIA headquarters. Have you heard that one before? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The President was in a White House car with his brother who was also some kind of public official and the President’s brother needed to be dropped off at the CIA, wherever it was, before Langley. And the Secret Service driver couldn’t find the CIA offices because <i>signs had been</i> intentionally put up that were misleading or that didn’t name the CIA or Office of Strategic Services or whatever name the spy agency used, back in the day, during the 1950s. Have you heard that one before? The camouflaging of the spook headquarters was intended to confuse foreign spies or Soviet paratroopers or whoever.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">And President Eisenhower made a command decision, that not being able to find the CIA headquarters was probably not helping to keep the nation safe. He ordered that the correct signage be posted. That’s kind of my whole point about <i>working in Hospital Galveston</i>, actually. Does not being able to find the front gate really help to stop prisoners from escaping? It’s a very practical question, actually. Because <i>Hospital Galveston</i> is in a big building that contains a lot of other shit and getting to work at night requires going up these elevators and down this hallway and turn here, turn there—go up these stairs, whatever, and swipe. And swipe again. There are at least three Officers in glassed-in posts to get past, maybe a pat-down too. Getting to work is just do-able at my age if you’re highly caffeinated and the buzz hasn’t worn off. And if you still have good blood levels of testosterone or estrogen or whatever and you’re ready to begin night shift in a correctional healthcare environment, where some guy who the press dubbed the Mad Fiend can roll thru the door any moment. An oral surgery resident told me the other day about a patient who had part of his face bitten away by another prisoner. Not that that’s important here. So, like, if you’re a new employee like me, getting off work in the morning and trying to get out of the building at 7 a.m.? That can be a mofo too.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Going from all that artificial light and stumbling outside into the glow of morning. It’s disorienting. So, like, it was hard to master—even for an almost masters-trained nurse, you know? It was two whole months before <i>finding the exit</i> of this motherfucker became routine and unconsciously do-able. Not to sound all special needs. You may say, well, you still sound pretty fucking dumb, but it’s not me, it’s <i>working nights</i>. It’s a killer. There was a study a few years ago that night nurses lose five years off their lives. From metabolic disorder or whatever, and a few of them probably clock out and leave the building in the morning and walk into traffic. Like, by accident? Fatigue dumbs you down. Your reaction times are slower too. Speaking of mistakes—speaking of <i>dumb</i>—any discussion of TDCJ safety practices has to include the biggest security errors, right? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Right now we’re actually marking the 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the Huntsville Massacre, aka the Huntsville Prison Siege. Have you heard of the killings at the Walls Unit, back in the day? It was a particularly bloody example of Texas’s Great Age of Carnage—the 1970s when so many peeps were getting whacked over drugs. More even than today, actually. The drug then was cocaine, not weed fentanyl. And a lot of other peeps were being sent for prolonged stays in prison for killing them. Does that sound familiar? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">That’s how it’s known, the Huntsville Massacre. It was a bloody day in East Texas, at the Walls Unit. To set the scene. That bloodshed led to TDCJ’s non-negotiation policy today that the lady Officer told us about during safety orientation. Huntsville negotiated that time—a half century ago—<i>before</i> the Rangers or whoever started shooting. Unlike the policy today which is that the Rangers shoot first and negotiate <i>after</i>. Unless it’s Uvalde, where they never shot at all. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">That time 50 years ago at Walls, the Governor agreed to a lot of the prisoners’ demands, actually, just not guns. But the escaping inmates didn’t need guns because guns had already been smuggled in. To set the scene. You can read all about it yourself but the important part, noted by <i>Wikipedia</i>, “The convicts made a number of demands, such as tailored suits, dress shoes, toothpaste, cologne, walkie-talkies and bulletproof helmets, all of which were provided promptly. With the approval of Texas Governor Dolph Briscoe,” who was from Uvalde actually, and was member of that dying breed, a Democrat at the Governor’s Mansion, and for good reason. The D leadership, just like the hostages, were Dead Men Walking but didn’t know it yet. TDCJ was a big part of the reason. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">At the Walls Unit everybody got died, btw, actually, everybody got whacked except one inmate who was executed later for his part. The dead hostages were both prison librarians—not nurses—but my point is <i>exactly the same</i>, you feel me? Anyway, that’s some of the history of TDCJ, known as the Texas Gulag. Geography makes the Gulag impenetrable but it <i>is</i> possible to describe its shape. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Originally the prisons were arranged like a crescent or an arc in East Texas. A former warden said that if you’re looking at a map of the state and look <i>down</i> from Huntsville, to the south towards the coast, there have always been prisons in Brazoria County for example, and just north of Brazoria in Sugar Land too which is the Sugar Land of <i>The Sugar Land Express</i>—an early Spielberg movie, with Goldie Hawn. To set the scene. The film was about an escape from TDCJ. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">That movie—spoiler alert—ends with a Ranger’s bullet and is taken from actual events. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">If you look <i>up</i> from Huntsville on the map, which means looking at northeast Texas there’s a pisspot called “Tennessee Colony,” which sounds very antebellum, pre-Emancipation—pre even Jim Crow—moss on the trees and all that. It’s part of the larger East Texas shithole surrounding Palestine. Again, don’t be a tourist, it’s “Pales-teen” if you’re talking about the town. “Pales-<i>tyne</i>,” if you’re talking about the land of milk and honey. East Texas is corrections country, the same way it used to be cotton country, not to repeat myself. This arc of area from Brazoria in Southeast Texas up to Palestine in the northeast part of the state—with Huntsville in the middle—has always included the state’s lockups, now known collectively as TDCJ. The cells were segregated until the 1960s, the towns and prisons both, actually. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">That arc is part of the Lone Star State’s old plantation economy which extends into the cotton-rich Brazos River valley, where Daddy’s people swung a scythe back in the day. Where there were once slaves doing the work that the prisoners would do later. For the longest time actually prisoners were <i>required to work</i> and were rented out as farm laborers or road crews, for construction, or whatever, by wardens. The prison system has also always owned its own land for growing food, and raising animals, prison farms where inmates worked and work still. That’s what the Officers say. TDCJ was self-supporting in food production at one time and used to have <i>good food,</i> or reasonably good, but that changed as the prison system has turned to selling its best products. Maybe not <i>exactly</i> that scenario—but close enough when you’re talking to somebody in the middle of the night, as they’re putting cuffs on your patient and you’re trying to get the last meds down the guy or girl’s throat before they go. That’s the narrative that you hear from the experienced guards who rotate in and out, coming from the units or wherever, spread across the Lone Star State. This information may actually be a few decades old but that doesn’t mean it’s not still good! That’s the beauty of TDCJ. Change comes very slowly to Huntsville.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> “The pigs and chickens eat better than the inmates do,” said an Officer who works on a unit that has a big agricultural operation. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">A lot of people complain, btw, about China and Xinjiang cotton—or whatever—produced by prisoners? Our own Texas Gulag also has some fine products to display. For example all the highway signs in Texas are produced by prison labor, an Officer told me that. You didn’t know, did you? Me neither. This Officer who was a black guy working at a prison in Shithole, East Texas, said that TDCJ owns a lot of acreage across the state and he said there’s a big plot of <i>prison land</i> being sold to developers right now. A fact that was confirmed by my Internet search. To set the scene.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, exact details of the sale have been ruled <i>confidential</i> by Ken Paxton, our esteemed Attorney General, whose office has been kind of Corruption Central in Austin for a few years now? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Like, even if he is the <i>chief law enforcement officer of the state</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">General Paxton has decided that TDCJ does not have to reveal who the buyer is, where the land is or how much it’s selling for. <i>Oh wow</i>. So much for Republican demands for transparency in governmental operations, huh? So much for draining the swamp. Hearing about this land deal is actually when my paranoia first appeared, but it was probably an unrealistic fear, like an earlier theory of mine about the vast number of mood meds used by TDCJ. Not because General Paxton is honest but because what he's doing with real estate doesn’t really affect the health of my patients. Not for <i>that</i> reason, but instead just to dish dirt on TDCJ. The prison land transaction is being handled by Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham who is a plastic surgeon by training and is also a graduate of Medical Branch. What a small world in which we live! <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Medical Branch is a very connected campus in the halls of power of both the Lone Star State and in D.C. too. UTMB actually produces quite a few docs whose specialty is politics, like other docs are renal or pulmonary specialists. For example there’s a black Republican UTMB doc who is a Galveston County commissioner. So, like, before we get all paranoid about Medical Branch alums—let me just assure you, there will be time for that later. To get all paranoid about the practice of medicine on Sin Island. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, this is the oldest medical school west of the Mississippi River. It’s also a very <i>political</i> campus and bigtime conservative too. The quality of the medicine comes and goes, UTMB was very good for a long time and may be on the rise again. One time back in the day, working in the Children’s Hospital almost exactly 20 years ago, which was also the time of the American invasion of Iraq? To set the scene. On a break one afternoon, you know, going to the campus cafeteria—and guess what? The French fries had officially been replaced on the Medical Branch menu by “Freedom Fries.” The horror! The horror! It definitely left a bad taste in my mouth. This whole fucking campus is beaucoup conservative and totally sketchy. Not to sound suspicious, but as a prudently paranoid nurse. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">For example not to carry tales—not to gossip, which boy nurses don’t do. We only <i>share information</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">But a very good RN who worked with me in Children’s back in the day, at the time of the Freedom Fries, was totally <i>pro-Bush</i> and <i>pro-invasion</i> of Iraq and we got into it a few times, let me tell you. It’s not just the whackjob docs who you have to worry about at UTMB, there are whackjob conservative nurses too. Anyway, this <i>white woman</i> who worked in the PICU had to be schooled by a RN of color about <i>oppression</i>, you know? But only <i>up to a point</i>, because she was a very good nurse and did a lot of important <i>shit for me</i>, not to sound all mercenary. When she helped me that made up for some of her political failings, you know? She wasn’t even hot and we still became friends, call me noble if you will. Medical Branch is a <i>Republican campus</i>, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Unlike UCSF on the Left Coast where everyone claims to be ultra-liberal and they do even worse shit to people of color. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, Dr. Buckingham who is the incumbent elected Texas Land Commissioner may not have been the one who sold the prison property to the developer in the first place. She’s not the first person to suspect, actually. And she’s a good person even if she is rightwing nut like practically everybody else in the Texas Republican Party. Not to generalize. She would only be like number 3 or 4 on <i>my list of suspects </i>about the prison land deal.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Besides, Dr. Buckingham is not a boob-job kind of plastic surgeon, she’s the real thing, her specialty is reconstruction, if memory serves our paths crossed once morning back in the day. Not that this is important but the last hour of my shift had been spent doing a beautiful dressing change on a kid with burns and this young blonde chick walked in at 6 a.m. and took the dressing completely down, destroying my noble work, an edifice of patient care? Which pissed me off big time, because she could have called and said that she was coming and the dressing could have been changed when she was finished. My idea at the time was to ask, “Who’s your attending?” Like you wound say if you were schooling an intern on the power of nurses? But it turned out that <i>she</i> was the attending physician. She was kind of hot, actually. That was Dr. Buckingham, if memory serves. She’s kind of a hottie.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">She would be for example the doc to help those indigent burn victims from Latin America who are staying around the corner from my crib. One hesitates to criticize someone who really helps others, unlike the liberals who just talk, even though, not to repeat myself, Dr. Buckingham is apparently a totally whackjob conservative. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The land deal which has become my favorite TDCJ conspiracy may actually be more about her predecessor—another one of the Bushes. You can blame the Bush Family for all kinds of shit in Texas, that would be my point, including over a hundreds executions at TDCJ. But you can’t find out the exact facts about the land sale because General Paxton has sealed the file. And Dr. Buckingham <i>is</i> responsible for asking him to make the deal confidential. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The land is probably in East Texas, btw, which is the fastest growing part of the state, did you know that? Not Austin or even the Big D. All we know is that the <i>uncle</i> of the Land Commissioner Bush who might have sold the land was <i>responsible</i> for the Freedom Fries in the UTMB cafeteria and the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents in Iraq. Which is bad enough. But anything else would be speculation on my part. Maybe the Bush nephew is the heavy, if there’s any plot at all. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The land that’s being secretly sold probably includes old plantation land which has historical value but doesn’t really affect the prisoners who are my patients today, right? Which has to be a concerned RN’s primary concern. Not to worry about corruption in Texas government, which may be pretty fucking overwhelming, but instead <i>how might patients be at risk</i>? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, you had to look somewhere else. In order to discover what TDCJ was really up to at Hospital Galveston. You had to dig into the institution itself, to find what’s really going on. The key to the prisoner’s health care was UTMB itself. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 22pt;">vii)<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The political profile of Medical Branch is prominent for such a small school. This campus was for a time considered a dying institution, that has been re-born with the help of prison patients and powerful friends in D.C. and in Austin. To set the scene. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, Galveston was Texas’s most important port until Houston began to grow—and the same is true of Galveston’s healthcare infrastructure. Medical Branch used to be the most important medical institution in the state. A research university like UTMB is judged not just by its doctors and facilities, however, but also by the <i>patient base</i>, by seeing many different kinds of patients and a lot of them. A lot of people coming for care or coming for procedures or for research, or for all three. That was Johns Hopkins’s road to fame and success in Baltimore, btw, there were a lot of black charity patients who traded being studied or being used to teach procedures, whatever Hopkins needed them for, in exchange for receiving medical care. Is that how it worked? Which was also the origin of UCSF’s interest in black kids in Oakland. Health care is a cynical trade everywhere and medical research can be a dirty business indeed, especially in S.F. and in Baltimore. Maybe on Sin Island too. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Gradually, coming to Galveston Island was no longer worth the trip for many patients in Texas, not worth the extra mileage past Houston which eventually had more hospitals and more providers to choose from. At one time the majority of surgeons practicing in Texas were educated at Medical Branch—a lot of white guys basically, not that there’s anything wrong with that. These Galveston-trained docs were still in senior positions in the county hospital in Austin at the beginning of my career in healthcare. That number dropped precipitously as schools in Dallas and San Antonio grew and claimed patients and medical glory. The only reason UTMB was not closed entirely after any one of the bad hurricanes tat have hit the island—we’re due one now, btw. The only reason why Medical Branch survived the storm politically is that UTMB survived the storm <i>structurally</i>, or so we are told. UTMB’s former graduates are older now and in positions of influence in the State of Texas and want their alma mater open. Which is my alma mater too and, you know, you can’t help but feel sentimental ties to your university. It’s an exceptional campus, inbred like the island itself. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">While UCSF is international—like San Francisco.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Both places are sketchy as hell. Not to get all metaphysical but UTMB is closed and incestuous, like East Texas? The brother of the last Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives graduated from Medical Branch, btw, neurosurgery or something hands-on like that, and is now the state representative in a district that includes part of Galveston County. Congressman Ronny Jackson of Shithole, West Texas, is a Medical Branch guy and was Physician to the President for both Bush and Obama. Representative Jackson was a Navy admiral but he just got demoted after revelations of sketchy shit that he allegedly did in the White House. Still, anyway, there was the matter of not enough patients coming to Galveston until—thirty years ago exactly—UT got the contract to provide health care to most of Texas’s prisoners, ensuring a constant flow of patients for <i>practice and study</i>, the tab going to the State Legislature. To set the scene. After the contract was signed, Texas’s powerful <i>Congressional delegation</i> chipped in—during the Presidency of former Texas Governor Bush? What a small world in which we live!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The Texas delegation in Congress succeeded in getting a <i>National Lab</i> placed on the island, Wuhan-on-the-Gulf you could call it. Even though common sense might question building a laboratory with dangerous organisms a few hundred yards from a prison hospital with locked-in patients? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Although prisoners do still <i>try</i> to get away. Let’s see, what else bad can one say about TDCJ? How much time is there in your day? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">In a spirit of transparency, and as part of the same critical appraisal that we apply to Chinese prison labor? Western ethicists and journalists like to make disparaging comments regarding prisoners in the People’s Republic, right? Regarding inmate-produced goods and exploitation of prison labor. And taking prisoner’s organs for transplant. Shouldn’t the same standard be used in judging TDCJ? <i>Clear labelling</i>, bro. Our prison system also profits from human bondage, after all, in the cotton fields or onion fields, or whatever, of the Lone Star State. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The Officers say for example that a percentage of meat sold in Texas supermarkets, including big chains, comes from prison farms. To set the scene. Shouldn’t that beef or chicken or whatever have a “<i>Inmate Labor</i>” label like everyone wants from Xinjiang? Wouldn’t that be fair? What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and all that. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">My revolutionary idea could be a great marking tool, actually. Or not. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">How about TDCJ having its own food label, “<b><i>Prison’s Best</i></b>”? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Or how about “<b><i>Prison’s Pride</i></b>”? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">What do you think? The trademark image would be a sweating bare-chested black guy in leg chains. Or better yet he’s attached to a ball and chain, like the kind Great-Granddaddy wore when he was in Huntsville. But this prisoner is smiling and holding up an organic tomato in manacled hands? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">What do you think?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Prison’s Pride</span></i></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Also on the exchange economy inside TDCJ’s walls? A black woman who was an unwilling guest of the State of Texas for a few years near Waco told me that in her lock-up the currency of exchange was <i>blowjobs</i>. Giving hummers to the Officers was how you got what you needed. “I wouldn’t suck,” she told me proudly, although her quality of life was rougher for that reason, she said, because she wouldn’t go down. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Huntsville, home to TDCJ, is a cesspool although it’s a pretty little town just like before, back in the day in the post-bellum/Jim Crow era when the wardens rented out chain gangs and they lynched niggers in the town square. Up the road aways from Huntsville is Anderson County—county seat Palestine—smack in the middle of East Texas where the good people especially liked their Negroes swinging from a rope. Texas’s great early 20<sup>th</sup> century Golden Age of Lynching was in and around Anderson County, where the prisons are an evolution of the plantation and wholly designed to keep POC down, that’s my hypothesis, as seen through a nursing equity lens. Everything affects health care, including imprisonment. A particularly well-informed Officer and a poor toothless Brother who had experience doing time in East Texas, both these black guys told me the same thing, actually. This is just so fucking scandalous. They said that unless a TDCJ unit produces watermelon for example, which is a fruit near and dear to the black peeps, or peaches or whatever, and it’s harvest time, and there’s a superabundance of produce—so to speak—the inmates don’t get much, even though they’re the farmers who raised the shit in the first place. Is there no justice in the Lone Star State? This Officer who has several years in was a middle-aged black guy like me which means <i>totally trustworthy,</i> at least to me. He was working on 7C a couple of nights, you know, and he was speaking to me brother-to-brother in the context of the evil that White Men do? He told me a couple of things actually. To set the scene. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">He was maybe 15 years younger than me, not that it’s important here. He said that of the 21 meals served to an inmate during a week on his unit, five are real food and the rest is just slop. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Nutrition and health care are <i>weaponized</i> at TDCJ, actually. If you have a bunch of guys and girls who are in good shape, in good health, they have a better chance of jumping the fence when the chance comes, or kicking the guard’s ass in a fight. You feel me? Bad nutrition and bad health care are part of the game plan, a second line of defense after the steel bars and fence. Because state leadership says that’s what the public wants and it probably is. The Texas public <i>is</i> a bloodthirsty crew <i>and </i>tight with its pesos. Not to be negative or disparaging because TDCJ is not all bad. Only like 75% bad, or like two-thirds bad, In my opinion, which may be biased. If you asked people who know me, what’s that cat like? Somebody might say, “He likes to listen. The same way other niggers like to talk.” Not to sound cool or anything. What else? You soon realize at Hospital Galveston that everybody has a story, even if it’s not true. And what you hear sometimes is <i>totally bizarro</i> <i>and depraved</i>. Not to sound all in danger in the frontlines of health care or anything. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Or if that kind of shit is your thing, you know, and you look at the app. That’s not me, to get all curious like a white chick, that’s not the way a strong Black Man rolls, not to sound better than everybody else but my interest in other people’s personal lives is zero, after a quarter-century doing this job. There’s absolutely no prurient interest left on my part, speaking as someone who cleans shit for a living. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">But there’s some kind of odd smell here. Around this place—Hospital Galveston—like when you know a patient has taken a dump and you haven’t even opened the diaper yet. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Once in Seattle, this might make a good paper for the annals of bedside care. An infectious disease guy appeared at the doorway of my patient’s room in Seattle and told me just from the smell as he entered the room what bacteria the patient’s wound was infected with. It gives you a bad feeling because something stinks here too. The problem with having a bad feeling in a hospital is that you may not know what the feeling is about. It may be unfocused or <i>generalized</i>? Or there are so many possibilities about what is wrong. And frankly—having made a mistake previously in this regard, to be honest—having previously had a completely unfounded suspicion about the prisons of Texas. To be totally honest. And that first time being totally <i>wrong</i>. Because God knows that you don’t have to <i>make up bad shit</i> about TDCJ. It’s happening all the time. My mistake that time was a false interpretation of data about medications being purchased by the prisons. To set the scene. That time turned out not to be <i>really bad shit</i> in health care, despite my suspicion. TDCJ was actually <i>innocent</i> of wrongdoing, for a change, that was the way things worked out. Me blaming TDCJ for something bad that they really didn’t do, finding conspiracy where there was none. As a nurse-scientist you have to report that too. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Because sometimes it’s not what you think. So, like, the same data can have a lot of different meanings. My big mistake, you could call it, was believing the worst interpretation of something happening at TDCJ because it’s such a shitty place, you know, Huntsville and the prison farms and executions and all that. Believing something that upon closer inspection turned out <i>not true</i>. Clarification came from working at Hospital Galveston actually. How cool is that?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, to start at the beginning, some records came into my hands a few years ago showing massive purchases of <i>mood stabilizers</i> for the prisoners that Texas Tech cares for, in Lubbock. This was long before my studies there. To set the scene. So, like, maybe six or eight years ago? And out west, basically, west of the Pecos River. Not exactly geographically but <i>cosmically</i>, where Tech handles health care for prisoners, not UTMB. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">In one of the areas where TDCJ had expanded beyond its historic East Texas roots. That’s not exactly <i>geographically</i> accurate but it’s close enough. Comanche territory basically, if one is making one’s Indigenous Land Acknowledgement. My first impression of the medication purchases was, oh wow, <i>that’s how TDCJ controls the prisoners</i>! That’s why we don’t hear about riots or Officers getting dismembered in the penal hellholes of the Lone Star State! Again, how cool is that? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The inmates are all on <i>mood meds</i>, bro! <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Paxil or Prozac or whatever, that was my inexpert analysis of the data on the purchases. By keeping everybody <i>artificially mellow</i> the State of Texas avoids mayhem. That was my premise as a wannabe nurse-scientist. It would make a good paper in a nursing journal. The only problem was it wasn’t true. There’s a big caveat, it turns out, when drawing conclusions about stats generally. This is something our instructors hammered into us as Red Raider nurses, graduates of the Health Sciences Center. Y<i>ou have to be careful about what inference you draw</i>. The numbers may be right but that doesn’t guarantee that the numbers mean what you think they do. TDCJ has a unit for inmates with <i>psychiatric problems</i> out west, somewhere past the Pecos, and it might make sense that there are large purchases of that class of meds, in that part of the state. Lubbock, basically.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">On Sin Island, on the other hand, at the hospital that covers prisoners across the rest of Texas, the average medication profile appears to be quite different. At least based upon my experience on 7C, passing a lot of meds pretty quickly to a lot of people. A cross section of prisoners you could almost say, maybe not exactly but close enough. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Only one of my patients been on a mood stabilizer actually, so far.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">He was a young white guy with tats who looked kind of edgy like he needed something. In fact a couple more of my patients probably need to be taking something too, but that’s above my pay grade, and it’s apparently not really the way things roll at TDCJ. That’s not the institutional culture of the Texas prison system. You’re there to do the time and feel every minute of it. So, like, call me a worrier or call me a good nurse, there’s just been this nagging feeling that something is wrong on Sin Island, besides the gambling and the whores. And not to mention the historical slavery? Here on the sunny Gulf Coast, home of the first medical school west of the Mississippi and all that that. That’s my whole point really, Medical Branch is up to <i>something, </i>evil and corruption running amok on the each at night. There’s always evil in big academic medical centers and there’s been a lot of historical evil on Galveston Island and Medical Branch is where two bad influences meet, you could say, not to sound all puritanical or anything. But what it is—what’s been bothering me—is lost in the fog on Galveston Bay. How does that sound? Be honest, is it too dramatic? <i>Just out of sight in the mist, </i>one might say<i>.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Back in the day during my studies in Galveston there was a doc named Raimer, who was a <i>jefe</i> in TDCJ health care actually. Twenty years ago he told me about a Death Row patient who had tried to kill himself. To set the scene. The means of suicide was saving up his pills and taking all at once, alone in his cell? If my memory serves. The circumstances were a little unclear even at the time but poisoning oneself <i>is</i> popular in prison, kind of like suicide by hanging used to be or being hanged with the help of the guards, which is a possibility as well. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Anyway, the poisoning episode earned the condemned guy an ambulance ride from Huntsville to Hospital Galveston and a stay in the ICU. To set the scene again. Dr. Raimer telling me this as we talked about correctional health care long before it became my work area at Medical Branch. So, like, the ICU fixed up the Death Row guy and returned him to Huntsville and TDCJ whacked him. That’s the bottom line. That’s what this cat Raimer said. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">In the prison health context, poisoning is an especially popular way to pull the plug<i> </i>on Death Row. A couple of the last guys sentenced to death from Austin—a Negro who killed his girlfriend’s mother? He was in the news quite a lot if you were in River City at the time. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">And an Asian guy who capped a cop in a Wal-Mart? You don’t hear of Asians running amok that often, not to sound all racist or anything.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Both these guys cheated the hangman. At least one of them is known to have used a practice called “cheeking,” when a patient <i>pretends to swallow</i> scheduled medication but actually hides the pill in the inner cheek. In order to do the deed later—after collecting multiple doses—he or she takes everything all at once, maybe a week’s worth of heart meds, or whatever, and it’s good night, nurse. And goodbye too. What else is there to say of morbid interest? Medical Branch had the dubious distinction last year of being sued twice in 12 months by young black female doctors, who are extremely rare on campus, and who were dismissed from their residencies for “professionalism.” In other words after a subjective view of them by faculty, as opposed to their objective skills as physicians. Dixie never died. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Speaking from my personal experience, mostly dealing with the on-call residents at night, very few trainees of color have passed my way <i>unless they’re Asia</i>n. This campus can be a brutal place and a good hospital. And at least those black female MDs were <i>on campus</i>, as short a time as it was. Because other than Dr. Ojo, <i>no black male doctors</i> have physically crossed my path at Medical Branch. Asian or white is mostly what you see. There are not even many T<i>ejanos</i>, speaking of diversity in a state that is half-Latino. Just like UCSF, Medical Branch was built upon a caste system. UCSF also has a history of showing minority trainees the door and Mount Parnassus has actually been studied and in the literature on UC there is said to be a “black tax” for studying there. The tax is psychological and means everything is more difficult for minority students at UC San Francisco. There’s a racial hierarchy on both campuses, actually, if one looks thru a social justice lens. In Galveston’s case this funky little island is where the Old South still lives, just like in the plantation lands around Huntsville. So, like, being especially curious about the two dismissed young black female doctors, you know? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">And sending an email to a reporter who wrote about the first woman? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">This reporter replied that she didn’t actually come to Medical Branch for her story. But she said that she was told something special about Galveston Island, to prepare her if she <i>did</i> have to come. This comment was told to her by a source who gave her a description of the character of our very own <i>place in the sun</i>, here on our Texas Gulf Coast. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">“Galveston is like something out of the 1960s.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">That’s what the reporter said. But the island is actually more like something out of the <i>1950s</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Galveston was like Las Vegas before there was a Las Vegas. What follows is an absolutely true anecdote and better than President Eisenhower looking for CIA headquarters to drop off his bro. So, like, the Texas attorney general back in the day, in 1956 actually—unlike the guy who holds the office now—was serious about law enforcement and <i>not a thug</i>, again, unlike the guy now. To set the scene. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Attorney General Will Wilson came to Sin Island with a squad of Texas Rangers—in 1956—and shut down the gambling and the brothels. Before that, Galveston was Sinatra country, a playground for high rollers and the Mob, including Frank Sinatra himself and his presumed Rat Pack. Until then, the authorities had always turned a blind eye to what happened here. Seen thru a morality lens, if you asked my opinion? The real problem on Sin Island right now is that there hasn’t been a good hurricane in 15 years and a lot of moral detritus has built up, just like that plaque on your arteries. It’s like what happens when you don’t clear your gutters, too. In academic health care it’s often about exploitation of vulnerable people and the doctors at Medical Branch must have a degree in that, too. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, Dr. Raimer who told me about the Death Penalty patient? He eventually became President of UTMB and he lasted until a short while <i>after</i> my hire on 7C, actually. Just a few weeks ago he was removed by the Regents for something weird, involving a vulnerable population, in this case male students. His crime was inviting them to his home in order for the good doctor to style their hair? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Details are scant, although no other touching was apparently involved. Just the hair. What would you call that, <i>freaky deaky</i> or not? It’s certainly something new in the annals of academic misadventure. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Dr. Raimer told the Galveston <i>Daily News</i> that the <i>real reason</i> he was removed was for clashing with the campus diversity guy, who happens to be married to a high-ranking official at UT System offices. That sounds more likely but both could be true. There’s always a lot of drama at UT, like at UC. On Sin Island there are a lot of storms and high seas, it’s not just the location in the Gulf, it’s the institution. Medical Branch is an academic medical center—a research school. The patients are sicker, the outcomes are supposedly better, although that’s been challenged recently, and the ethics are almost always <i>worse</i>. There may be some evil shit going on here, that would be my maters-level opinion, something being done <i>to the prisoners</i> not <i>by</i> them, that would be a preliminary nursing diagnosis. American university medical centers like UCSF and UTMB are Ground Central for sketchy shit, really. You have to measure that against the good they do. Speaking of which—the good that UTMB does—around the corner from my crib is an apartment building full of poor families from Latin America whose kids are burn victims. You have to weigh that kind of service to humanity against Medical Branch’s sins. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">We pass each other—me and these indigent families—walking to and from the Seawall. The kids are in wheelchairs or some of them on foot and bandaged like mummies. Or missing limbs. So, like, no one denies Medical Branch’s history of service but in addition to the good, UTMB also likes more sketchy endeavors. Previously, as a Longhorn, it would never occur to me to say something like that. But now—speaking as a Red Raider? The truth must be told. Let the stats fall where they may. So, like, what follows is an example of <i>data theft</i> by UTMB. It’s NFD, no fucking doubt <i>in my opinion</i>, as a masters-level nurse. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Call it what you will. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, <b><i>all prisoners who are admitted to Hospital Galveston sign three pieces of paper when they arrive</i></b><i>. </i>Just after they roll through the doors in fact. To set the scene. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">It’s all part of the admission process that goes along with a doctor’s exam and blood tests or CAT scan or whatever, to settle him or her in. <i>If</i> the patient is cognitively with it and can participate. Each signature is witnessed by the nurse. Indeed, nursing provides the paperwork, together with a clipboard and a pen, these two items being religiously removed from the room afterwards. You don’t want idle hands trying to make something, do we? So, like, the admission process is where prisoners get their shit stolen by the State of Texas, in the persons of the faculty of the University of Texas Medical Branch, my alma matter and present employer. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The <b><i>first form</i></b> the prisoner must sign is a consent to be treated, that is standard in any hospital. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The <b><i>second form</i></b> is a promise not to do anything stupid that might lead to a fall, like getting out of bed without using the call light or without talking to the nurse. The <b><i>third form</i></b> is actually the one that is problematic. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, it’s a <i>blanket consent</i> allowing Medical Branch to use the prisoner’s healthcare information for any purpose whatsoever. <i>Hello</i>! You have to read the fine print, which nobody does, but it’s there. Not to get all paranoid, but what do you think about that? It’s totally sketchy, that would be <i>my</i> view. It’s exploitation of a vulnerable patient population, in my almost-done grad-student opinion. They taught us about shit like this in class actually, not to sound all uppity educated Negro or anything. Not this <i>specific bullshit </i>but the possibility that researchers will exploit vulnerable patient populations for data, yeah. Most students in the healing professions are probably being taught the same thing today. What’s interesting is that at Hospital Galveston it's the State of Texas you have to worry about as the thief. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The prisoner is signing away their information when he or she arrives and agrees to care. At a vulnerable time, btw, when he/she is sick and wants to be treated. To set the scene. Having assisted in this process myself without recognizing the dubious ethics, it makes me guilty of a certain complicity, not like the nurses in Dachau or wherever, but bad enough, you know? The patients don’t know because the nurses don’t know and wouldn’t have time to talk about it even if we did. The only reason this is even vaguely on my radar is because we just learned about it in class, not to repeat myself but we’re <i>Red Raider</i> nurses now, in my case not a mere Longhorn anymore. And God help me, not a fucking Aggie. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Healthcare data is a big business in the United States, worth a lot of money to a lot of people. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Big medical data sets like TDCJ’s can be <i>golden</i>. To train A.I. or whatever. Not to sound like a s.m.e. And the prisoners at Medical Branch are being asked to sign away their privacy and/or commercial rights, that’s my whole point, really. The accent is supposed to be on “informed” in “informed consent” but instead, on Sin Island, it’s on <i>consent</i> for commercialization. Some of these guys and girls have been locked up for a <i>long long time</i>, you know, or their education levels were not that high to begin with. Which is what a lot of inmates have in common, poor formal schooling. <i>Hello</i>! The only thing that they may know about DNA is that it’s what got them busted in the first place. No disrespect intended. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">You know what you call that? A <i>vulnerable patient population</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">And then there’s the matter of hatred. Some of these guys and girls don’t like TDCJ very much and they don’t like how the State of Texas treats them and when it’s 4 in the morning—time to draw labs—they refuse because it’s their only act of defiance in the Lone Star Gulag, LSG is the appropriate acronym. <i>Maybe</i> they’ll give up their data for <i>research</i>, that’s possible if the prisoner really did the deed, that’s my theory. If he or she really is <i>guilty</i>and feels guilty? It’s possible, not to go all Freudian on you. They’re <i>penitent</i>, like he or she wants to make it up to society? Don’t hold your breath in Texas. Do you know what the Old School social pecking order is in the prisons. High up are murderers and bank robbers, but the top are the prisoners who have successfully escaped, even if they got arrested again later. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> If it’s black peeps behind bars of course—remember that only a third of us got locked up for something we really did do? The rest is just damn racism. According to my calculation. Most of my brothers and sisters in custody of the State of Texas today are actually <i>political prisoners, </i>that would be my views. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Anyway, the hijacking of prisoner data is exploitation of a vulnerable population, a practice that has a long and ugly history in health care and appears highly likely here. So, like, if you were concerned by the karma on Sin Island and asked me, bro, what’s Galveston really like? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">What’s the real deal at Medical Branch? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">My answer would be that there used to be a market just down the street for <i>selling people</i>. What does that tell you, bro? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">History actually is the necessary backround for sussing out, as our British cousins say, what’s been bugging my intuition at Hospital Galveston. So, like, there are clues in the past, like that alleged picture of those black residents being forced to clean up dead bodies after the monster 1900 storm. A big hint actually came from my student days at Medical Branch, back in the day, working weekends in Children’s. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, it was the appearance in my life of Dr. Raimer, when purely by chance we met on campus. Raimer is a white guy, not that there’s anything wrong with that, especially since that’s what there mostly is at Medical Branch, white guys. So, like, at the time we met—it’s not important <i>how</i> we met but my memory is that we just started talking one day at a meeting or something and he offered me a job in the prison hospital and my response was, like, <i>no thank you</i>. Being happy at Children’s, liking that patient population and the care. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">My response was kind of like <i>not in this fucking lifetime, </i>actually. Or NFW, as in <i>no fucking way</i>? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">That level of negativity but expressed politely? That chance meeting turned out to be an augur of my future at HG, Hospital Galveston as it is known by the cognoscenti.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 22pt;">viii)<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, my feeling of suspicion at work began to focus one morning while emptying a bag of pee, actually. It had nothing to do with bad food or medicine purchases, as it turned out. You may ask, well, what happened? What did you see? And there’s no real answer. It’s just nurse’s instinct. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, one of my patients was a white guy in prison for child molestation. To set the scene. Something caused me to look him up on the app. Not that he was difficult, or threatening, just that he was <i>strange</i>? With some patients it seems prudent to find out something about them in order to know if there’s a history of violence, for example. So, like, this guy was in the hospital for a <i>kidney resection</i> because of cancer, which means the surgeons had cut out the bad part of one kidney. To set the scene. A partial resection like this guy’s surgery is theoretically still cool because you can live with only one kidney or maybe even a part of one. He would be okay if the surgeons got all of it, is that right? So, like, it’s six one morning, me kneeling on the ground beside this Kidney Guy’s bed in order to drain the urine at end of shift. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">His pee looked like pink Kool-Aid which can be normal because kidneys contain a lot of blood. Not being a renal specialist—a nephrologist—or anything but having taken care of a few of these patients over the years, child and adult both. Kidneys can bleed like a mofo, to use the nontechnical term. That’s pretty much the limit of my expertise. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, me on my knees filling a urinal in order to chart the amount, and a couple of medical residents came to bedside. To set the scene again. And they were happy to see me doing the end-of-shift output because the overnight urine flow is important and the nurse sometimes forgets, including me. And my question to them, since they were standing there, me holding up the urinal full of the guy’s Kool-Aid in my hand, “Is that the color you expected?” In order to give report to the next nurse who may not know normal. That’s called <i>collegiality</i> which is not exactly my middle name but <i>does</i> happen. Especially if the RN who is going to follow me in the morning is hot or nice or whatever. Or has been collegial with me. Or it’s particularly important to the case, like here. “That’s exactly the color we expected,” one of the docs said. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">That patient raised my suspicion subliminally. His stay was completely unextraordinary and would have passed out of my memory like most of the others over the years. Except, a couple of days later, there was another kidney resection patient who <i>was</i> extraordinary. An extraordinary pain in the ass, actually. To call a spade a spade. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, this patient was already in a room on my arrival for work at 7 p.m. and she had given the day nurse a little trouble but not much. Only because the patient barely just arrived. This Kidney Lady and me would be spending the whole night together which turned out to be <i>highly emo,</i> you know, a lot of drama. <i>Not to be critical of women</i>. But it was all her fault. This lady had already lost one kidney to cancer and just had the second one partially resected. Theoretically she still had enough working tissue to survive without dialysis. <i>Hopefully.</i> Or so the doctor’s notes said. It was a long night. Let me say that at the start, the Black RN always perseveres, you know? Not to sound all noble. This particular patient the Kidney Lady complained about <i>everything</i>, madre bloody mia. From pain to nausea to the nurse. Just to prove it wasn’t me, let me tell you what happened about a week after the Kidney Lady came to 7C. So, like, one night we had <i>three women in a room</i>, including her, and we almost had to break up a fistfight. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">When the nurses entered, after hearing a commotion thru the impenetrable security glass of the nurses station? The three ladies being just a tad <i>loud</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Kidney Lady was sitting on the side of Bed 3, gathering her strength to get up and go after the patient in Bed 1. The background to the dispute was never revealed. And it was odd that the Kidney Lady was going to kick a little ass because she claimed to be on <i>death’s door</i>every moment from the time she arrived on 7C the week before. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Even that first night, the week before, her medical condition in my judgment was cool and the gang actually, she was p<i>rogressing</i>. In a bedside job you need to be honest about your own skills and mine are not perfect but are <i>competent</i>, that’s me. Knowing when not to worry is a skill just like being able to start an IV and my judgment was that she had a good first night. The Kidney Lady was getting an opioid for pain, although it was never enough. Except there was no physical indication that she was in discomfort. She just <i>bitched</i> all night. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Pain levels are the patient’s call but when they tell you it’s 10 out of 10 and they’re having a normal conversation until you walk into the room—and then they’re suddenly dying—the <i>experienced RN</i> has doubts, you know? What you’re hearing may not be grounds enough to call the on-call physician to increase the dose. She complained of a lot of nausea that first night and said that she had vomited and—this may be gross. But she puked into a cup and showed it to me and there was barely anything there. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">After a quarter century working in hospitals—having seen more than my share of puke, not to sound like a guy. But considering myself pretty spew-competent as a nurse, my experience ranging from a baby’s dribble to medically-induced launch of bodily fluids that can stain your scrubs from across the room. Not to get all cocky. If you’re not even going to hit the wall from your bed, don’t even bother to use the call light, you feel me?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Just joking! <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">She had retched, okay, but ma’am—this was my explanation to the Kidney Lady. Ma’am, you just had surgery and consumed a lot of medication. Sometimes the best way to deal with nausea after surgery is to get everything out of your system, you know, does that make sense? And a good spew—aka Technicolor yawn, like we used to say as kids? It can be a good thing.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">This Kidney Lady was getting Zofran for nausea, that is routine, and the docs also ordered a med called Phenergan, to be given IV, at the nurse’s discretion. This nurse chose not to give it. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, Phenergan was the first med that my clinical instructor warned me about back in the day, third semester nursing school after learning how to wipe booty and things got serious. The instructor said Phenergan can have a lot of unpleasant side effects, although it <i>is</i> effective for nausea. To set the scene. The head of trauma surgery at the county hospital in Austin, who was another Medical Branch-trained guy, told me that he gave Phenergan to the cattle on his ranch because it was cheap—a dollar a dose. Which was not the best recommendation, you know? Phenergan was already on my radar as a new nurse, entering the profession at the turn of the 21<sup>st</sup> Century, as a measure of medication price inflation and an indication of the changes about to take place in health care. As hospitals and doctors became more profit-centric. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">We were just exiting the era of cheap drugs like Phenergan, effective but with drawbacks. Appearing now were meds like Zofran, that the doc ordered for the Kidney Lady actually, and was originally intended for chemo patients? But was suddenly being more widely used. And was much more expensive—$120 a dose for Zofran at the turn of the century, in the county hospital, as opposed to a buck for Phenergan out on the ranch. Zofran was better at targeting symptoms, or doing whatever, and Phenergan became a second line drug. A lot of Old School nurses have views about using it and mine is not to give Phenergan IV unless <i>absolutely fucking necessary</i>. AFN is the nursing abbreviation. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Which did not describe the Kidney Lady’s condition that first night. Phenergan wasn’t AFN. That was the patient outcome during the night, actually, she did okay, everything went well for her in <i>my opinion</i>. But the Kidney Lady was on the rag in the morning at the end of shift, which was her right. It was that first morning after her arrival when everything kind of turned to shit for me actually, not to sound all self-obsessed as a member of this selfless profession. So, like, bright and early the next morning four residents showed up outside the Kidney Lady’s room. To set the scene.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Morning is usually a good time for me personally. Night shift is going home for one thing, which means me. And two—not to sound totally superficial! But <i>number</i> <i>two</i>, sometimes the docs on morning rounds are hotties? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">A little end-of-shift eye-candy helps to raise a Black Man’s blood sugar and can give him that final burst of energy to reach the door, you know? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The four residents broke up and one of the women went into the Kidney Lady’s room. Looking through the glass, the patient was clearly giving the medical resident an earful about the Nursing Service’s shortcomings. The doc stepped back out of the room. “How was her night?” she asked. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The doc was kind of hot actually, Asian chick or partially Asian, an easy 8 on my personal scale. Asian chicks and Latinas are kind of my thing, btw, not that it’s important here. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">“She did okay.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">“That’s not the story in the room.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Giving the attitude right back to her. “There’s a lot of drama in there.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The Black RN admits mistakes but will stand up for good care given. Clearly, nonetheless, the resident believed the patient. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Then all four of the doctors kind of confronted me. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">They wanted to know why the Phenergan hadn’t been given? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Because it was <i>my call</i> whether it was necessary. Which was true. Being nice about it but that’s the way it is sometimes in a hospital. It falls on the shoulders of experienced nurse leaders like myself—many of us masters-trained—to teach young doctors which way is <i>arriba</i>. Especially boy-nurses like me who have <i>huevos grandes</i> like mine. Not to sound all cocky or anything.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> If you use a med that the doctor says <i>may</i> be used, and it has bad side effects, the Board of Nursing may question your judgment later. “Didn’t you know,” the Board investigator might ask, “that Phenergan has a lot of side effects?” It's a valid question. You can’t win. But you can lose. The Kidney Lady was getting Zofran and, for all intents and purposes, the vomiting had stopped. The patient still felt some nausea that first night but is that reason enough to use an iffy med? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">My judgment was that her anxiety was making her feel worse and that was communicated to her civilly and as the advice of <i>her nurse</i>. So, like, one of the four residents who were grilling me was European, he sounded Eastern European actually. You could tell that he was pissed off. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Part of the problem for doctors from other countries who have come to the U.S. for further training is that nurses in the United States exercise <i>judgment</i>. We’re not merely the physician’s assistant—although we do assist. We have our own practice and make our own decisions when they are our decisions to make. It’s not like that in some countries where the nurse is basically the doc’s to order about and the physician tells you what you need to do on a micro level. But seeing that these guys and girls were not happy—it was time for an apology to the rounding physicians. They have hard jobs.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> The nurse’s ego comes second to what’s best for the patient. And having apologized to a resident maybe five times in my entire career and four of those were insincere? That did not dissuade me from making amends. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">My words of contrition would move the <i>ball forward</i>, so to speak. Because it wasn’t about me, it was about the Kidney Lady’s needs and getting the team on the same page. Like, in the past, one of my apologies to a resident, maybe even the senior resident, might have been something like, “Yeah, I’m sorry that didn’t get done. Can I get an order for an enema for Bed 3?” That had mostly been the nature of my apologies in the past. This would be my sixth insincere apology to a medical or surgical resident, over more or less twenty years. But it was completely called for, in part because these docs were standing between me and the door at 7 a.m. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">“Maybe I didn’t handle this very well.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">That seemed to smooth the waters. And what’s interesting is that any one of these guys and girls—the unhappy trainees? They could have changed the order to <i>require</i> use of Phenergan but did not. In my report to the morning nurse, the same African chick who oriented me to 7C actually? And who was a better nurse than me, remember her? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Telling her in change of shift report that <i>the docs want the Phenergan used</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">And coming back that night and checking the Medication Administration Record she didn’t give Phenergan either. And soon it became clear why this patient, the Kidney Lady, was a train wreck. She was with us a couple of weeks, and full of drama. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Someone looked her up on the app and googled her and the backstory was passed from nurse to nurse during report. “She killed her child.” Because it was <i>pertinent</i>. She was in prison for killing her own kid. She had a lot of emotional issues—psychosocial issues we say, especially after advanced nursing study. That view was eventually shared even by the doctors actually, the more they dealt with her. Although the docs did not address it. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Can you imagine being a mom in prison for killing her own kid? Locked up with thousands of other mothers, many of whom would give anything just to see their children? Child molesters probably have it better, by comparison to child killers in prison. The Kidney Lady was going mad and no one cared because she was an inmate. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Crazy, btw, can be the least of your problems in TDCJ. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Or being crazy is <i>a way to escape</i>, as seen once again thru a psychosocial lens. Crazy was an <i>escape</i> for those prisoners who will never make it over the wall. There are a lot of crazy people in prison, btw, if you aren’t fucked up mentally when you arrive in Huntsville, TDCJ sees to it that you will be when you leave. <i>If you leave</i>. So, like, my original diagnosis that there was a lot of drama with this patient turned out to be correct. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">One night a doctor came out of the room after seeing the Kidney Lady and mentioned that the patient was odd. “She killed her own child,” was my explanation. Boy-nurses call it the way it is, unlike the chicks who like to sugarcoat. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">And this doc, who was kind of hot, actually? She stopped and looked up at me and nodded. Like that explained it. Which it did. “We never hear about that, you know,” she said. She meant what the patient is in prison for, like it was not a consideration in the deliberations of the medical team. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">But maybe it should be? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Because maybe cellulitis <i>isn’t</i> the same on a member of the Mexican Mafia as on the guy who barbecued his mother-in-law. Maybe healing is influenced by who the person is and what their life story was before they got sick? That’s my soon-to-be masters-trained professional opinion. This lady doc was saying that the docs already have a lot on their plates curing physical illness, without bothering with what the patient is locked up for. Where the prisoners’ heads are at is something different altogether, apparently, unless they’re stark raving mad, and they get sent to a unit out west of the Pecos River.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, a couple of days later, you know what happened? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">One night when my patients happily did <i>not</i> include the Kidney Lady, by luck of the draw? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Standing at my computer in the hallway, doing charting, like 3 a.m. To set the scene. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The Kidney Lady walked by in handcuffs, accompanied by an Officer. She was being taken back to her unit, in Pissville. The White Bus had finally come for her. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">She stopped and turned and looked at me when she reached the gate. “Bye, Lucius,” she said. Like we were BFF. When in reality she had driven me crazy, from 7a to 7p, on any number of occasions. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">It made you sad to watch her go because she was such a young woman. My headstone will be mossy, and the inscription will be faded, long before the Kidney Lady sees the Free World again. If she ever does. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Anyway, as it turned out <i>she</i> was why my nursing intuition was worrying me, here at Hospital Galveston. My intuition focused on <i>kidneys</i>. Don’t ask me why. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">My nursing diagnosis was <i>corruption</i>, something festering and putrid, like an infected wound. And that stinks just like damn<i> pee</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Kidneys made the most sense for any number of reasons. They’re worth about $50,000 each and the trafficking in body parts we blame on the Chinese is just as likely in this country with our burgeoning transplant industry. There’s beaucoup unfilled demand. With a lot of the surgeries being done at academic research institutions, there’s big money that <i>appears to be nonprofit</i>, rather than straight up Wall Street which it really is. Like at UCSF. Not to be critical but these people are capable of anything. The American transplant pipeline is already described as hopelessly corrupt and there is a move by the President to change it completely. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">To set the scene. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 22pt;">ix)<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The largest number of transplants in the United States are kidneys, but you also got your livers, lungs, corneas and hearts. The family of an inmate who died in state prison in Alabama just announced a lawsuit against the State of Alabama because his body was delivered to his family for burial without a heart. Literally. There’s probably a lot of harvesting of organs going on actually, not just in Asia but closer to home as well. Which is totally cool with me, to tell the truth. My feeling as a HCW is that when you give up the ghost, you also give up the body, but a lot of people don’t feel that way. Especially in the conservative South. What American medical centers are using cadaver “research” subjects for now may be more like spare parts than anything else. Major research schools ask for bodies to be willed to the university, supposedly to teach anatomy thru dissection, or for other kinds of study, but just as likely now for transplantation. That’s my masters-educated guess.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">UCSF for example has an aggressive body donation program, for “research” purposes. But where are the body parts for those 800 transplants every year coming from? The biggest difference between UCSF and UTMB is that UTMB has a better source of cadavers. All those inmates who were given exorbitant sentences and died in custody and there’s no one left to claim the body. Kidney transplants can be done with live donors, btw, which have the best outcomes, but the vast majority are from <i>deceased donors</i>. The waitlists are being gamed, after all, we know that already from reports of the federal government. Some patients break the implicit rules and go on the transplant list in multiple states, like Steve Jobs did back in the day, to get his new liver. To set the scene again. That’s the transplant pipeline in a nutshell. It’s corrupt, like academic medicine itself. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The Kidney Lady piqued my interest not because she didn’t really have cancer and her kidney was not really diseased, but because of the possibility of a kink in the transplant line. Medical Branch is probably involved in a lot of shady shit, actually, let’s be honest here, we’re in Texas, it goes with the territory. And medicine is particularly problematic, as we know from Tuskegee and from San Francisco. Practices that may or may not lead to “better” medical science, not just related to transplants, are acceptable in medical centers like UCSF where big money is the biggest player. It’s a commercialized environment and there’s <i>good reason</i>to think that there’s a hidden market for kidneys on Sin Island too. Cargo ships still arrive at the dock in Galveston, from Latin America, with bananas and sugar. Are kidneys going out? They used to import niggers here, and sell them, kidneys ain’t <i>no big thing</i> as seen thru the lens of Galveston’s ethical history.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">A former TDCJ warden told me that there’s a cemetery in Huntsville where they bury prisoners who have died in custody and whose bodies are not claimed by family, and that every year as many as <i>one hundred prisoners</i> are interred there. What’s that, like, 200 kidneys, 200 lungs, 100 livers, 100 hearts and 200 hundred corneas? The beautiful thing about kidney transplantation is that recipients and donors both can be well into middle age. Transplantation is not always about exact matches, either, there are degrees of matching, that we won’t get into here. It’s also a fairly-straightforward and much-in-demand surgery. You just need a supply of organs. The hot young black female Officer who liked rap and told me about how to handle a rifle if you’re standing guard on a prison wall for the State of Texas? She told me something else. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">She said that earlier during the spring there were a total of 13 <i>suicides and homicides</i>on one TDCJ unit alone. All that testosterone, hundreds of deaths in units across the state, Medical Branch could be running a chop shop for prisoner parts, not that there’s anything wrong with that. There used to be a market for whole human beings down the street, what are a few especially in-demand human organs? That’s the fear that taking care of the Kidney Lady provoked. Not that she didn’t have cancer, Medical Branch didn’t harvest <i>hers</i>, most kidney transplant donors are <i>dead</i>, or so it is said. Just think how easy it would be to take someone’s organs if the bodies are headed to a pauper’s grave in Huntsville? Parts poached from a vulnerable patient, literally, in a population of the most vulnerable in society. You may say, well, that’s not proof, but there’s proof too. It’s circumstantial but still pretty damning. Let’s dish some dirt.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, doing an open records request to Medical Branch, the university’s lawyers didn’t know me from Denzel Washington, right? They didn’t know that this guy asking for records is actually an employee who works across campus, you know? My request was for the total number of kidney transplants done at Medical Branch in the last couple of years. And UTMB refused to say, which was a tad odd. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, the university appealed to the Texas Attorney General, the venerable Ken Paxton, to allow Medical Branch to refuse to release the information. Which he did. Just like with that TDCJ land purchase, the A.G. decided that everything was confidential. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">And which was, like, odd because universities usually like to brag about their accomplishments, how many transplants they’ve done and all that, but not Medical Branch. The answer from the university lawyer, a cat named Taylor, quoted the head of the UTMB renal transplant team saying that the number of live kidney transplants—that is from living donors—had not increased from a handful in the last couple of years. UTMB’s lawdogs gave me a link to an academic source on transplants. If the university is up to no good, it would be from <i>cadaver donors</i>, all those guys and girls who die in custody and TDCJ disposes of the bodies. This is where it gets interesting. So, like, the stats reported by Medical Branch were for a couple of years “post” pandemic, and showed 90 or so one year and 100 the next, kidney transplants that is, with cadaver donors. About 40% of the kidneys were sourced from willed bodies, including presumably TDCJ inmates who left their bodies to science. A small number came from the national transplant network. But over 50 came from ”other” sources. And you can’t know exactly what that means because Attorney General Paxton has declared any other info is confidential. What do you want to bet that some of those “other” donors were wearing TDCJ white uniforms at one time? Transparency in high-demand transplants is up to the most corrupt state official we have. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Some information came from UC San Francisco, which is totally sus in its operations too, enough said. The University of California is as bad as the damn CIA but the CIA has better ethics. To set the scene. So, like, there was a disruption on a bridge leading to San Francisco and UCSF issued a press release saying that the bridge closure was endangering the 800 transplants that Mount Parnassus does every year. Which is a huge number, almost 1% of all the transplants done in the country every year done by UC San Francisco alone. Obviously if UCSF says it’s doing that many, there is no reason to doubt they have the surgical suites and the surgeons. The real question is where the university is getting the body parts? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Both UCSF and UTMB have willed body programs, in which people leave their bodies to medical science for research. But not as spare parts, you know? And it's easy to see how this would play out on Sin Island, with access to all these prisoners. Take for example Attorney General Paxton himself, who is already under indictment for securities fraud, trial to begin “shortly,” and who has admitted the facts leading to a multi-million dollar judgment against the State of Texas for his malfeasance in office and who was just acquitted but not absolved in an impeachment trial? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">That Ken Paxton. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, suppose one of his mistresses has end stage kidney disease. Does she get on the transplant list and take her chances like everybody else, undergoing the pain and indignity of dialysis, three times a week? And maybe take the risk of death like the dozen to two dozen members of the American public with end stage renal disease, mostly minorities, who die every day waiting for a kidney transplant? Or does she call <i>Sex</i> <i>Pax</i>, as he is said to be known to his women? Does she call him and say, “Pax Daddy,” another diminutive that the state’s chief law enforcement officer is said to like, “I need to find a kidney or I’m fucked”?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Or General Paxton himself needs the transplant. Or one of his big money donors, like a rightwing nutjob oil guy who lives just up the coast from Sin Island, in Houston? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Or it’s a University of Texas Regent, or ex-Regent. Or someone high up in UT System Administration? Or a member of the Legislature? Do these guys and girls die waiting for an organ or do they call Medical Branch and get a prisoner cadaver chopped up special? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Last year a former Texas governor said he was having a kidney transplant. Did he take a number and wait and take his chances like the rest of us? Have you noticed that celebrities who are <i>more than willing</i> to talk about all the intimate details of their health, in order to stir interest, rarely talk about transplants? Because the first question that will be asked is did he or she go on the transplant list and take their chances like anyone else? Frankly, even if there is favoritism—corruption—the practice should be short-lived. Medical science is moving towards artificial kidneys in the long run. It’s just that in the short run, you may die waiting.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Maybe it’s just me. In a place that is full of bad actors like Hospital Galveston it’s easy to see conspiracy everywhere, like with those mood meds west of the Pecos. During a break at night, when we were having a quiet night, the only kind of night to have, an online search revealed that UTMB and TDCJ were questioned by a state agency a few years ago about transplants and were asked to produce a report detailing numbers and practices. But TDCJ in response to another open records request said they know nothing about it. Ditto Medical Branch. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">According to the contract between UT and TDCJ, any transplants on prisoners must be done by UTMB. So it’s not like we would have the wrong perp if we start by accusing Medical Branch. And there’s just one other thing. It’s probably just my paranoia though and doesn’t mean anything. But Medical Branch’s new president, Dr. Reiser? He’s a nephrologist, that’s his specialty. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">In other words, he’s a kidney guy.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Not that there’s anything wrong with that.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"><a href="https://abc7chicago.com/eddie-johnson-chicago-police-superintendent-surgery/2358329/">https://abc7chicago.com/eddie-johnson-chicago-police-superintendent-surgery/2358329/</a> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 22pt;">x)<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like not to totally focus on pee and poop, or dissection of prisoners for body parts, this is my alma mater and my most fun moment as a nurse happened at Medical Branch actually, back in the day. It was in Children’s. A kiddo was having an emergency in the ICU, which would eventually be successfully resolved. To set the scene. The whole crew was surrounding the crib, and the respiratory therapist had been called to come down from the wards to help. A lot of kids’ problems involve airways. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, everyone was doing what they had to do. The respiratory therapist, who was young, and new to the job, was nervous about what was happening, the kiddo’s condition and all, and he looked up anxiously from the crib. The respiratory therapist asked, “Is the code team coming?” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">And the charge nurse, who was a middle-aged black woman, and hard as nails, with a heart to match, was at the crib and she glanced up. There was just the faintest trace of a smile on her face. She answered the nervous therapist. This was not, btw, the South African respiratory therapist in Children’s we had back in the day, who was a total babe, this respiratory was a guy.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">“<i>You</i> are the code team,” the charge nurse said to him. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Pretty funny, huh? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Or, maybe you had to be there. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Let’s see, the finest moment for me in a quarter century of health care also took place at Hospital Galveston, much more recently. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">It was a Sunday morning, five a.m., and my new patient had just arrived from a unit a few hundred miles away. To set the scene. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">This guy was my first “ad-seg” patient which means administrative segregation which means he was a bad dude or <i>could be </i>a bad dude or because he <i>had been a bad dude</i> on at least one occasion in prison, in addition to whatever shit got him locked up in the first place, is that how the classification system works? He was a white guy. <i>Those people</i>! What can you say?</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, you have to presume a level of guilt, if one looks thru a revolutionary healthcare lens, as mentioned before. This patient’s personal history may have involved him being a bad dude in the Free World too, we didn’t get into any of that during the admission and, for the record, the app was not checked. Yet. This was exactly the kind of white guy who worries me most, in Hospital Galveston and in life. Not to sound all racist or anything. He was maybe 40 and without a high school education.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">That came up in the patient assessment, he answered the question, at the time me still on orientation with my preceptor. Not to make any snap judgments about <i>those people</i>, you know, but education levels are sometimes minimal in the Texas bubba community, which may have something to do with family values in communities of lack of color? It might make a good paper for a nursing journal actually, looking thru a psychosocial lens, using a masters-trained perspective.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">This ad-seg guy had a pretty nasty leg infection which didn’t appear to have been helped by sanitary conditions at his home unit, a pisspot somewhere near Corpus Christi. To set the scene. He required a lot of blood work which involved me and my preceptor bending over him with a needle, while the oncology lady’s warning was still ringing in my ears. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">With this guy, you didn’t need to guess what he was capable of because he’d already done it. That was kind of reassuring in a way because it took away any doubt. You just didn’t know details, does that make sense? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Even with <i>two </i>officers standing a few feet away, you feel me, as is apparently required in an ad-seg patient care, this guy still looked dodgy and potentially unsafe. Then, out of nowhere, a white coat appeared in the doorway, just like cavalry arriving at the last minute in a Western movie. Enter the physician.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Not just any physician but an attending physician—a Big Dog. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">He was “rounding before church” an older nurse told me the practice is called, from back in the day when Medical Branch attending docs came to the hospital to round early on Sunday morning, before going to church. Although my bet was that churchgoing wasn’t this particular M.D.’s reason for coming in early on Sunday. Maybe he was going sailing or was going to have brunch in Houston with Barbie—or with Ken. Something like that, it was none of my business who he was bonking but one guy always wonders that about another guy, especially if mating resources are scarce. Not that it’s important here. He had given the residents the day off? Sounded like a good guy to me. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">This time with the ad-seg patient on Sunday morning, it was this internal medicine guy, a white guy like the patient actually, maybe fifty y.o., and he walked into the room with confidence and he did something extraordinary to my newbie eyes in correctional health care, even after a quarter-century in nursing and as a proud African American warrior who knows a little bit about what the world is really like. And being totally cool and unflappable myself. And whose own family has been extended guests of the State of Texas. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The doc stopped a few feet from the bed, introduced himself and stepped forward and shook hands with the ad-seg guy. He asked, “May I examine you?” Which the patient—who had probably not heard a lot of may-I’s recently, back at his home unit in Pissville, Texas. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The prisoner agreed to, to let the doctor do what he needed to do. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">After the examination the doctor shook the guy’s hand again and thanked him for his cooperation. It was a beautiful act of humanity and <i>humility</i>. And <i>in Texas</i>! That would be my whole point, actually. Even though, speaking as a R.N., one would prefer to praise this kind of professionalism <i>exhibited by a nurse</i>, not by one of nursing’s natural adversaries, the dreaded physician. But this white doc was cool and totally empathetic. And <i>in Texas</i>, not to repeat myself. Which is a place—a political entity—the State of Texas—that you don’t immediately associate with empathy. Maybe we should. Shoot to wound, remember that, not shoot to kill and all? Because the worse and most racist care in my experience has been at another academical medical institution, the University of California San Francisco, the world-renown UCSF, in bleeding liberal Baghdad by the Bay. But we digress again. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">What was so cool was the Medical Branch doc’s courage, treating the patient with complete dignity. And being fearless. While personally, at that moment my back was against the window, the one that looks out towards the docks and Galveston Bay? My eyes searching for a potential escape route, in case this healthcare encounter started to go south which it did not. My sphincter held. But just barely. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">It’s like they tell you when you’re hiking with a friend in the woods and you run into a bear? It’s not the bear you have to outrun. The doc and my preceptor would have been on their own because Lucius would be, like, gone. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">“TDCJ does not negotiate” was on my mind, yeah. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">There was not the warm sensation of urine running down my pants leg, but it wouldn’t have taken much. My job description is to render care <i>not hinder</i> escape. Anyway, the patient’s infection made an attack unlikely, because of the distance he would have to cover on a bad leg. Unlikely doesn’t mean never, you know, but that morning as the sun rose over the Gulag, some of the most humanistic care that it’s been my privilege to see at bedside was displayed at Medical Branch by a <i>white doc</i>. Those people! The nurses don’t care what you’re in for, actually, unless you give us reason to wonder and we have to check the app. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
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<iframe allow="autoplay" height="480" src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E7ZxvFs9K8IhslM3yg3lqgeBRXNmfgmz/preview?usp=sharing" width="640"></iframe>Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-53735616448638835512023-12-31T08:02:00.000-08:002024-03-19T19:46:15.927-07:00Two Last Best Bar Stories Before I Die<p> <span> <span> <span> <span> <span><span><span><span><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEVcm_ai7uje7zfXCgBfI0IFEjtkQlVTfUb_uoGAEztipbgi7C8YsyIiJ5kbXAddVi0Zh4j2aekp9aDVHN9gTH4HdAeAbvA2WqelupLmvVDzNdkQztWgBzgTKz6A5thiWLn6e3Intmy-Ex131OhXrOFyjQVOZGemKAZmJCPj5xRyQy7y6hqCxQELhs-vw/s275/Unknown.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEVcm_ai7uje7zfXCgBfI0IFEjtkQlVTfUb_uoGAEztipbgi7C8YsyIiJ5kbXAddVi0Zh4j2aekp9aDVHN9gTH4HdAeAbvA2WqelupLmvVDzNdkQztWgBzgTKz6A5thiWLn6e3Intmy-Ex131OhXrOFyjQVOZGemKAZmJCPj5xRyQy7y6hqCxQELhs-vw/w409-h201/Unknown.jpeg" width="409" /></a></p> Credit: Debbie Hill<br /><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Sixty years ago last month you would have found me sitting in Miss Jones’ 2<sup>nd</sup> grade class. It doesn’t matter where, my family moved around a lot, but my best guess is that it was Normandie Avenue School in L.A. My teacher’s name was probably not Miss Jones but thru the years she remains an ageless young white woman, who at that time fit the stereotype of an elementary school teacher. Call her Miss Jones for our purpose. She had blond hair, not that that’s important. So, like, she was standing there in front of the class when another teacher entered the room through a side door and went up to Miss Jones and whispered something in her ear. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">This is my memory of the day. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Our teacher’s face kind of collapsed. The other white lady who had spoken left the room and Miss Jones turned to us and tried to speak. She started to cry and then covered her face with her hands and she ran from the room. The voice of the school principal came on the public address system overhead.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">“President Kennedy has been assassinated,” he said. “Class is over for today. You can go home.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">We—the students in my 2<sup>nd</sup> grade class—started to jump up and down and shout with joy. Because we didn’t know what “assassinated” meant but we know what you can go home means. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Walking away from school that day with an older student, who knew what assassinated meant, he explained the word to me and that something bad had happened. My point would be that you have to know your audience. You have to know the maturity level, or education, or whatever, of whoever you’re talking to. To communicate effectively it’s super-important. Do people understand what you’re actually saying? Like, literally. When you’re communicating with someone it’s the first question to ask yourself really—no matter the circumstances. Be sure to do a mike check too. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">When a storyteller reaches a certain age, fear sets in. About the most important tales that you know but still haven’t gotten around to telling. That worry can also be true about so-called “bar stories,“ my favorite kind of anecdotes actually, of lives <i>widely </i>spent, that you would tell a co-worker after hours. Bellied up to the bar or at a corner table if you were doing serious drinking, after putting the workday behind. Telling others about the kind of happenings in your life that you might not find cause to mention otherwise. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">The kind of stories you trade in order to decide who pays for the next round, does that make sense? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">So, like, the big concern about aging is not just that you may die before you get the chance to tell somebody something. But also that you may not have the <i>faculties</i> left to say what you want to say. <i>The way you want to say it. </i>Or memory fades. That you may not still have all your marbles, as my mother used to say. She never lost hers, btw. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">My own memory has been underperforming recently. That risky age has been reached, it may be the weed but it could be the synapses, you feel me? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">My very real concern has been about losing to posterity two particular anecdotes that should be shared with somebody leaning over a bar. This may be last call. The answer to “Where were you when John Kennedy was shot?” is one. That’s the kind of question that people of my age ask each other, in between sips of tequila.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">That anecdote was about something that happened in Dallas and the other one is about something that happened in Jerusalem. One was short and the other requires a little set-up. Overall this will be brief. Take another sip or another hit, as the case may be. My second anecdote is completely unrelated to the first and is instead about current—not historical—events.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Those immigrant workers on the kibbutzim attacked by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7? That could’ve been me, in a prior age, back in the proverbial day. Bold and potentially self-serving words, you may say, this guy is a drama queen trying to insert himself into international news. Not exactly. Take a moment and <i>listen</i>. Order another drink if you like—this one’s on me. So, like, years ago during the era of My Young Black Manhood, which lasted into my late 40s, those kibbutz agricultural workers who got snatched would have been a lot of American and European college-aged kids like me, who went to Israel to work for a few months or a few years, as volunteers—<i>mitnadvim</i>—in Israel’s agricultural fields. To set the scene.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Being a kibbutz volunteer was a job—kind of—six hours of labor six days a week, you got room and board, also a little pocket money and the chance to explore the Holy Land on your days off. You also got two packs of cigarettes a week if you were a smoker, that was the age, there were still smoke breaks at work, and if the kibbutz truck delivering the fruit or whatever was going anywhere interesting you could hitch a ride. You could plan your trip based upon <i>successful hitchhiking</i> because everyone thumbed everywhere. That was the Start Up Nation that Israel calls itself today. People hitched rides to get to appointments. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">As a kibbutz volunteer you got the chance to see another culture up close—eating with, working with and sleeping with the locals. My turn came in late ‘76, money running low while backpacking in North Africa after dropping out of UCLA. To set the scene. Someone told me about the kibbutz movement and after that my trek to <i>Eretz Israel</i> was like thousands of others before me. It was like we were First World refugees, laying on the deck of the ferry from Greece to Haifa and catching some rays, chatting up each other in various languages and listening on transistor radios to “Dancing Queen,” which had just come out. We were all going to do seasonal work in the Middle East. Which sounds totally dodgy today but was what you did if you were a <i>twentysomething</i> on the road, backpacking in Europe back in the day. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">It was a two-day trip from Greece across the Med, all of Israel’s land borders were closed and the only way in or out was by ferry or by plane, at a time when airplane tickets were still extraordinarily expensive. Followed by a short train trip to Tel Aviv—it’s a small country. This is my memory of the logistics. A bus to the Jewish Agency where an old man pointed at a map on the wall and told me that my new job was as an agricultural worker in the Jordan Valley. To set the scene finally. This was almost exactly half a century ago. The Jewish State then was still getting good press as an underdog in an area of the world where peril lurked and always has. Israel’s rep as a bully with a big uncle hadn’t yet been earned. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Would you like another round? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">My worklife on kibbutz included picking bananas and avocados in the Galilee and weeding row crops near Jerusalem. Worked for a while with chickens, which are mean, hateful animals, and turkeys which are, like, so <i>dumb </i>it’s hard to describe. Working in the turkey shed, hundreds of birds around my feet, it was possible to believe the reports of these guys looking up in a rain storm and drowning, not that that’s important here. It was a wonderful time, actually, the Israelis were completely cool, never saw any <i>racial</i> prejudice on kibbutz or in the outside community, unlike at home. Except one time. Which is the subject of my second anecdote, my second best bar story left to tell. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">So, like, where the Israelis <i>did</i> draw a distinction though, in my experience, was between who was Jewish and who was not. That was the racial line, like color in the U.S., you might say. The Izzies really seemed to believe “the chosen people” thing too, which is not a big conversation starter with those of us from other cultures. You feel me? And which is anathema to black people in general who believe in the equality of all peeps and that no group is better than any other. But it was the Izzies' home and my upbringing was that you don’t criticize your host in his/her own crib. And there’s just not enough time til closing to get into all that here.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">My first kibbutz—there would be four, through the years. The other three were all in the Galilee near the border of Lebanon and were populated by <i>sabras</i>, Israel-born Jews who knew the Arabs better than the new arrivals, it seemed, and called them “the cousins.” Most of the time. That’s a stereotype but it was kind of true of my experience.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">My first kibbutz, on the other hand, was full of young American Jews who had come to the Middle East on a mission. This is where my second anecdote really begins. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">So, like, it’s a bad idea to try to generalize so long after the fact but stereotyping <i>can</i> still be a useful exercise. A shortcut to understanding, you might say. The Jewish kids at my first kibbutz were earnest and armed to the teeth—a fire in their eyes and all that—not that there’s anything wrong with that. Not to exaggerate, either. This assessment comes from what we know <i>now</i>, much more than any sudden recognition on my part at the time. But they were basically the kind of people, in hindsight, who are settlers in the West Bank today. It was that mindset, is that fair? Probably yeah. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Although you didn’t know that at the time because you were a kid mostly looking to get laid and Gaza as we know it today hadn’t happened yet. Or was in its early stages of happening? The guys and girls on my first kibbutz were zealots—Zionists, although that noun wasn’t part of my vocabulary at the time. They were Southern California-born white kids who had probably been in some of my classes back in Westwood and who were now building a country. On somebody else's land? Seeing through the lens of a Hollywood screenplay is also possible—and that’s still popular both in Israel and in the U.S. today. The hero of that plot is the quintessential Israeli cowboy. These guys and girls see themselves as settlers on a frontier populated not by Native Americans but by Muslims. Who are the <i>hostiles</i>, would that be an oversimplification? It's not Winchesters anymore, it's M-4s. Not much has really changed thru the years in terms of the narrative. Flawed though it may be. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">My arrival in the Holy Land was purely based upon needing a place to crash for winter. But all in all, my stays on kibbutzim would total more than two years. Being a volunteer on a kibbutz full of young people turned out to be <i>fun</i>. You could be riding to work on a tractor in the morning and sitting next to you was a member of the Swedish Bikini Team. Or an ex-Japanese paratrooper just out of the army and also seeing the world. One winter the granddaughter of a former British prime minister worked with me in the communal kitchen of a leftist-led kibbutz in the Galilee. She was smoking hot, btw, the product of being <i>fine thru generations</i> of wealthy well-bred white women. There were radical intellectual Jewish chicks filling out IDF uniforms and carrying matching accessory assault rifle. There's just something about a Palestinian woman who looks like she knows her way around an AK-47, wouldn't you agree? Israel exposed me to a world that was beyond my imagination in terms of the variety of chicks alone.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Not to sound superficial but in Israel the chicks were always hot.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Sex—not drugs or alcohol—was the social lubricant. On the kibbutzim where money was not the means of exchange, often pussy and dick were. In the Jordan Valley with the American kids for example there was a squad of soldiers assigned for security, who walked around in work clothes and looked like ordinary kibbutzniks but were there to protect a settlement in Indian Country, so to speak, if the Southern California cowboys couldn't handle it. To set the scene. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">So, like, one day a couple of totally hot little <i>Jewish girls from New Jersey</i> arrived as “volunteers” and instead of having to work in the fields like the rest of us, they stayed in their rooms, with a line of soldiers going in one at a time. Pulling an IDF train was their way of supporting the State of Israel. How cool is that? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">That is <i>not </i>the second of my last two important bar stories, btw. We’re getting closer. The girls from New Jersey would not actually even be in my <i>top ten list of best bar stories</i> from a life <i>widely</i> <i>not necessarily well</i>-lived. The Jersey girls are mentioned only to set the scene. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The kibbutz was close to Jerusalem. You know who the Bedouins are, right? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">So, like, they are an Arab peep—not being an expert myself and basically pulling this from my ass or from <i>Wikipedia. </i>And having gotten it wrong before. But the relationship of the Bedouins with their neighbors the Palestinians has been fraught. To say the least. Because everyone’s relationship with everyone else in the Middle East has been fraught?</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Is that fair? </span><span style="background: repeat white; color: #202122; font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">“A widely quoted Bedouin [saying],” </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">according to <i>Wikipedia</i>, </span><span style="background: repeat white; color: #202122; font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">“‘I am against my brother, my brother and I are against my cousin, my cousin and I are against the stranger,’" sometimes quoted as, "I and my brother are against my cousin, I and my cousin are against the stranger."</span><span style="background: repeat white; color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="background: repeat white; color: #202122; font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">That’s all the background you need. Take another sip, we’re almost there. This will be a whole lot better than Miss Jones of Normandie Avenue School.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">So, like, my contact with the Bedouins was limited to their service in the Border Police. You’d see the border cops in the kibbutz fields because the kibbutz was near Jordan and was on land that had been a “depopulated” Palestinian settlement, whatever that means. And because Israel is a small country. You’re always near a border. Or, later, at my next kibbutz, near Lebanon—you’d see B.P. for the same reason—you were next to a dodgy international frontier. Walking through the second kibbutz’s banana plantation, in the Western Galilee, you came around a tree at 6 o’clock in the morning and a Bedouin in a Border Police uniform was just standing there, staring at you. Silent and stealthy—not shifty, that’s not my intent. The Bedouins are known as <i>great trackers</i> actually, and that is what the Israelis employ them to do in the Border Police. In the Western movie narrative that the Izzies like so much—to describe their struggle with the Palis—the Bedouins are the “Indian scouts” who work for the cavalry that is led by Ariel Sharon or Bibi Netanyahu but previously John Wayne or Henry Fonda? That’s not a completely accurate analogy but it works. The Border Police also <i>patrol Jerusalem</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">So, like, my first kibbutz was close to the aforementioned J’town. We worked until noon or early afternoon and were free for the rest of the day and some afternoons were spent in the city, after hitchhiking in or taking a <i>sherut</i>, the big Mercedes touring cars that served as taxis, that the Germans sent to Israel as reparations for the Holocaust? Not that that’s important here. So, like, me walking down the street in Jerusalem one day, minding my own black business the way the Constitution says a man has a right to do? Guess what happened. This is worth the price of a damn drink.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">The Border Police stopped me! No lie. They jacked me up just like pigs back home in the U.S. do. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">And you know what they said when they realized their mistake? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">“Sorry. <i>We thought you were Palestinian</i>.”</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">That is my last best bar story and you have to admit it’s pretty damn good. It’s totally superior to the New Jersey girls who came to the Holy Land to pull a train. And is only told now because weed has replaced alcohol in my diet and in case fate makes today my last on earth—that kind of thinking, you know? Not to get all gloomy as an oldster.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Like, if God asked me, “Do you have anything else to say before I pull the celestial plug?” my reply would be, “Can I tell you first about what happened to me in Jerusalem?”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">It had to be told. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">And if people notice a certain similarity between Black Lives Matter and the struggle of the Palis against the Izzies, that’s because there <i>is</i> a certain similarity. It’s also why African Americans want nothing to do with attempts to seek our support for the wrong side in the quarrel. Black people know oppression when we see it. This refusal on our part seems to upset American Jews inordinately, who say that black people <i>owe </i>the Jewish community for support during the civil rights struggle. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">That’s an incomplete narrative, actually. Over seven hundred black GIs died in combat during the Second World War, fighting to liberate Jews from the Nazis. We’ve already paid a lot. We owe American Jews money but they owe us <i>blood</i>. We’re in each other’s debt in other words and black people won’t be silenced. The Bombing of Gaza needs to stop. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p></div>Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-20590923038298619142023-12-19T11:06:00.000-08:002024-01-30T12:39:49.876-08:00Notes from the Texas Gulag <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyfNim39cmI3rvz_eeFDi1n-paAWJ20HW7FFovv98crp6MtedSisBAJE4BszdK3Mkhgu6Cdd3Lj5j3I-PKDRBGrAA_GnNs59_zATJZksu2mAzCxG6EBTUyadzbaK59XTXhyphenhyphenU_SnbXnpU-4Z9R4ESxoJaHyh7H_bHYGx4xgM3SCp51c6ZwKdd81ADHLSt0/s4032/891474CF-C41D-483B-A8A6-2651A00A0603.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyfNim39cmI3rvz_eeFDi1n-paAWJ20HW7FFovv98crp6MtedSisBAJE4BszdK3Mkhgu6Cdd3Lj5j3I-PKDRBGrAA_GnNs59_zATJZksu2mAzCxG6EBTUyadzbaK59XTXhyphenhyphenU_SnbXnpU-4Z9R4ESxoJaHyh7H_bHYGx4xgM3SCp51c6ZwKdd81ADHLSt0/w413-h320/891474CF-C41D-483B-A8A6-2651A00A0603.jpeg" width="413" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 22pt;">i)<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">You may ask, like, how did you first know you were in an alternate universe of health care? The answer is one word. Actually <i>two</i> words—an acute medical condition. Jaw fracture. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Having worked adult trauma at the county hospital in Austin back in the day and having seen a couple of jaw fractures in my time, not to sound all cocky—but that’s guys in nursing, isn’t it? We call it the way we see it and don’t sugarcoat like the chicks do. A lot of boy-nurses like to lean in with our testicles, instead of pushing nuts aside, you feel me? It’s like that working in a prison hospital too. This is a pretty tough crowd on both sides of the nurses station glass. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">At Hospital Galveston the number of prisoners with broken jaws seemed, well, extraordinarily <i>high</i>. According to my estimate as a nurse who has done trauma before. <i>Inordinate</i>, isn’t that the word? As in IFH—<i>inordinately fucking high</i>. Like really fucking way high, bro, as one might say to a colleague while waiting for a turn at n the narcotics cabinet but <i>not</i> write in a learned nursing journal. Taking report from the ER nurse or from the day nurse on my own unit—at change of shift, at Hospital Galveston, on Galveston Island, home to Texas prison system health care. To set the scene. The cause of the broken jaws always seems to be the same thing, that the prisoner “slipped in his cell” and hit his face on the metal sink. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The report from the ER nurse is on the phone but report from the prior shift about the patient who is now my responsibility for the next twelve hours is in <i>person</i> at the nurse’s station, or even better standing next to the bed and looking at the patient in the hospital bed. Night shift starts at 7 p.m. So, like, “jaw fracture,” the day shift nurse described the cause of the prisoner’s injury as “hit the sink,” while the day nurse giving report raised the index and middle fingers of both hands in the air—and said it, you know while wiggling those fingers. Like making quotation marks, “slipped and fell,” like, <i>sure</i>. Wiggling his fingers to emphasize doubt because the guy had almost certainly broken his jaw while getting the shit kicked out of him in prison. <i>Hello</i>! Not to sound all cynical or anything. Later, doing a physical assessment of the same guy—the prisoner with the broken jaw—he looked me full in the eye and mumbled very convincingly that he had indeed slipped or fell. That was “the mechanism of injury” like the ED doc would call it. Hard surface instead of blunt force or whatever when three guys got you alone in the shower. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">A good nurse doesn’t always need to know what caused an injury in order to know how to take care of the patient. An Officer explained to me, btw, the only thing worse than getting the shit kicked out of you in TDCJ is being labelled a <i>snitch</i>, which can be fatal. Whereas a broken jaw is only <i>painful</i>. Until you come to come to Galveston Island to have the fracture set. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Another nurse who used to be a guard gave me a critical insight regarding prison health and all these broken jaws. The real mechanism of injury is machismo. Testosterone is another drug that flows freely in Lone Star prisons, in addition to weed and meth. In this dangerous environment the risk is not a small cell with a metal sink but a lot of young guys who are trying to establish their rank in a hierarchy. Or who may have big mouths and say the wrong thing to the wrong peeps. You know? Most of these broken jaw guys are young —young to me—in my experience some of them do indeed have a mouth on them. But how is the black male caregiver—culturally humble and conscious of his own biases—to act? Is it my place to judge, as Florence Nightingale might ask. What should one think of the way my brown brother from Laredo or from Eagle Pass, who got caught robbing a supermarket, expresses his pain? Is that really my place? To determine if he’s a bitch or not? Is that really the RN’s call? A lot of Hospital Galveston patients just want to take a painkiller and watch TV.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> The broken jaw guys are mostly Latinos, not to stereotype. A nurse from Galveston County Jail which is on the other end of the island told me that at her lockup it’s black eyes. “I’ll ask them,” she said, “how’d you get a black eye and they’ll say that they fell. It’s always the young guys.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">On a 1 to 10 scale the pain is always 10, that’s been my experience too, civilian broken jaws and the prison kind too. Until the swelling goes down. When they’re first out of surgery the broken jaw guys kind of look like chipmunks and can only mumble, usually to ask for more meds. So, like, that’s an introduction to Hospital Galveston. It’s a shithole, basically, the Texas Gulag—like the Black Hole of Calcutta without the hole. It’s a job to me. Outside the prison hospital, the island’s main moneymakers are tourism and health care/research at University of Texas Medical Branch, which is the name of the academic medical center that has the contract to care for the state’s prisoners, not to repeat myself, who get shipped in from across the Lone Star State. By ambulance and by bus. That’s the system. Medical Branch is my employer but the Texas Department of Criminal Justice—aka the state prison system, TDCJ as it is fondly know —did my pre-employment security check and had to okay the hire. In the past, Galveston’s employers were not so picky about using black labor. The city’s original business was cotton—not corrections. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The textile was produced by slaves up in the Brazos River Valley where my Daddy’s family is from actually, and was exported from the Port of Galveston, behind campus, where my <i>maternal</i> great grandfather worked on the docks. To set the scene. This is where Juneteenth was declared, also up the street from campus, you probably know that already if you’ve heard of Galveston before. At the end of the Civil War. That Act of Liberation freed Daddy’s family from life on an East Texas plantation, while Mother’s people arrived from the Caribbean as what she called “monkey-chasers from Jamaica.” Her language, not mine. Who came to Galveston after Emancipation as free men to work on the docks. Or so we were told. To set the scene again. Galveston is my ancestral home. Here or Brenham in the Brazos Valley where Father’s family was from. My belief is that my mother was born in the same hospital that now employs me, but on the maternity department’s black side. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The local history center says there was an African American hospital built on the island just after the Great Hurricane of 1900, but pushback from white residents shut it down. Again, Galveston Island is Old South and some vestiges of plantation life and the cotton economy remained years later and remain still. There’s supposed to be a photograph in the Galveston archives from the days immediately after the 1900 storm showing white men holding guns on Black People and forcing them to clean up the debris and bodies after the storm. Not having seen the photo myself. Medical Branch is also my <i>alma mater</i>, btw, where my <i>Highest Honors</i> graduation in the Science of Nursing took place two decades ago, not to brag. My nursing job back then, back in the day, was nights in the Children’s Hospital, now it’s nights on the prison side taking care of old men and old women who may be on their last ride in Texas, off into the sunset. The similarities between pediatric nursing and prison nursing are that both begin with the letter p and both involve substances that <i>begin with</i> <i>p</i>. Like pee. And poop. To set the scene yet again. This may be way too much information but did you know that a newborn’s pee can be odorless? And a baby’s poop can be almost fragrant up to, oh, about a couple of weeks after birth or so? That’s my experience working in a hospital nursery and having changed more than the <i>average</i> <i>black</i> <i>man</i>’s share of baby bottoms. Not like you would want to dab a little baby poop behind your ear before going out on a date or anything but <i>relatively</i> <i>speaki</i>ng, as seen thru the caregiving lens. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">A few months into a baby’s life the stink starts to attach, for whatever reason, while the poop of a 60-year-old—like some of these old prisoners at Hospital Galveston, in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the aforementioned TDCJ? Some of the shit here emits an aroma that is positively fucking deadly <i>all the time</i>. Not to be graphic, but opening the diaper of an old inmate—like many of Hospital Galveston’s patients, not to repeat myself—can be like taking a hit of poison gas in the trenches of World War I. You know, back back <i>back </i>in the day? Not having been there personally but having read the history. My old job at Medical Branch included changing diapers on a lot of babies and lately it’s been changing diapers on a lot of old men who the Texas prison system will not release even if the inmate is too feeble to use the urinal or to turn himself in bed. Prisoners like these remain dangerous, officially. The State of Texas and Governor Abbott are making a big <i>policy mistake</i> regarding these ill inmates, it seems to me as someone on the front lines of health care, which is a phrase that nurses started using liberally during the COVID pandemic and that some would say applies here. The bureaucratic error by the State of Texas does <i>not </i>involve keeping a lot of apparently harmless old men behind bars, long after they are no longer a danger to society. There may actually be a <i>good reason</i> to do that, they may not have anywhere else to go. Bad care might be better than none at all. Some of these folks on Unit 7C of Hospital Galveston, which is my home unit btw, have nowhere else to receive care. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Like the cancer patients who want oncology treatment and will commit a crime to get it? Instead this time it’s a different dynamic entirely and is driven by <i>land</i>, actually, like everything else in Texas. The sheer fucking size of the state. The size of the Lone Star State has to be figured into every public policy decision and that didn’t happen here, with TDCJ, and the results have been murderous. Someone just forgot—most likely a Democrat, back in the day when the D’s were still in power. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, Texas is a big place and that’s a big problem for prison health care because inmates have to be <i>transported</i> to receive care. From dozens of lost pissspot locales across the state, where the last generation of prisons was built. Which was a Texas-sized bad policy decision by state government, mostly the fault of Yellow Dog Democrats, liberal by allegiance, but without much common sense, not so much evil Republicans like you would normally expect. Evil is also afoot today at Medical Branch and at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which are the euphemistic titles of the Gulag that employs me. This diary of working nights on 7C—this healthcare confession—is <i>Hospital Galveston Confidential</i>. It chronicles my last patient care job, nights in correctional health care, looking out from a prison tower on the sunny Gulf Coast. The Island is a major vacation spot too but my patients never see to the beach. Galveston is known for humid days, balmy nights, mosquitos the size of sparrows—with global warming the little fuckers never die off. The beach water is cloudy all the time because the Mississippi mixes with the Atlantic here. That’s all the geography you need to know. The history is that Galveston used to be the richest and most important city in Texas but isn’t anymore. It's still kinda Old South—in good and bad ways. There used to be a slave market downtown actually, not to sound all medieval. The island has kind of a New Orleans corrupt/sinful feel but the music and the food aren’t as good as in N.O. and the corruption not as palpable. Galveston is where hurricanes hit directly, right? Climate isn’t my best subject, while New Orleans is inland and doesn’t get as much flooding? So, like, every decade or so a big storm hits Galveston Island and washes away the sin, you could say. The prison bus brings it back again. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">You probably want to know the most depressing aspect of prison health care, people generally want to know to the worst first. Who was my scariest patient and what were the most freaky or macabre crimes? If you’re a sentimentalist like me, you would probably agree about a really heartbreaking young guy during my time working the floor. He was a black stick-up artist from South Texas—maybe 22 or 23 years old. He was a good looking kid who probably got more than his share of pussy in the Free World, not that that’s important here. So, like, he had <i>breast cancer</i>. Yes, men <i>do</i> get breast cancer but it’s rarer obviously than with women. There was an opportunistic infection spread everywhere across his chest too, oncology is not my area either, like an alien microbe? Like something escaped from the National Lab, which is just down the street on campus, actually, Biosecurity Level 4, or whatever—Wuhan-on-the Gulf, as it might be called. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">That is Galveston Island. That’s the Medical Branch campus. To set the scene again. The far end of the island includes the freaks and ghouls who live on the water along the causeway leading to Houston. The near end is Medical Branch and all these doctors and scientists. And the prison hospital in an undisclosed location on campus. So, like, this black kid with breast cancer was in a lot of pain but he was always polite and reasonable about any delay with his meds. He knew he was dying and he died with dignity. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Another nurse told me that this particular Black Gunslinger—Texas produces too many, although their storylines can be surprisingly uplifting. He was waiting for his grandmother to visit him before letting go, seen through the lens of the lone Black Cowboy narrative. Before setting off on his last lonely ride? That’s what happened, actually. His grandmother came to see him and he died down in ICU. Mostly there <i>doesn’t </i>seem to be a lot of tearjerking drama, or none that anyone is talking about at the nurses station, where it’s my practice to listen in. This is a busy med-surg unit, you feel me, with guards on the door. Some of these patients are precisely the mean mofos that the State of Texas says they are but others are probably <i>entirely innocent</i>, that’s my professional view, as seen through an injustice lens. And that includes the women, there are some super scary ladies on the unit, call me so <i>not-a-gentleman</i> if you will. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">There were two old ladies in a room a little while ago, one was my patient and one not—one black and one white. To set the scene. The black prisoner had whacked her mother back in the day and the white lady distributed parts of her significant other over a number of West Texas counties. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. She wanted to <i>spread the love</i>. Some people might call it romantic. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The two of them got along like peas in a pod, at night they didn’t seem to sleep, you’d go into the room in the middle of the night to give meds or on rounds or whatever, it’s the middle of the fucking night and they’re lying there in bed in the dark chattering like teenagers after lights out. Just a couple of old ladies who had a shared history of homicide of loved ones. Or.it was like they’re chatting on the porch back of the nursing home, back home in Pisspot, in the pineywoods this side of the Louisiana state line? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Hospital beds are supposed to be kept low to the ground, to avoid falls, but the black murderess—the lady who whacked her mom? She asked me to raise her all the way up and leave her high, against the rules. The risk being me getting a write-up—disciplined, which the prudent nurse tries not to do. Until she explained that being high gave her a view through the security window looking out on the Port of Galveston, ships coming and going and all that. And my heart melted. It was the kind of scene she probably hadn’t seen in 20 years and would never see again. She was very sweet and she had <i>good veins</i> which is unusually important to nurses. Because this prison is part of a major research institution—Medical Branch, my employer and <i>alma mater</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">There are a lot of labs to be collected. A lot of blood taken and given. So, like, any R.N.—me or any of my co-workers, we might say about one of the patients, the two old ladies in the room or anyone else, “Oh yeah, he killed a family of five. But he has good veins if you need to stick him.” We say good veins like it’s a positive personality trait. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Killing a family of five is actually pertinent to any discussion of Hospital Galveston, btw, which is what this healthcare facility is officially called—Texas prison healthcare central, run by the University of Texas Medical Branch. Aka the Lone Star Gulag. Where sick inmates of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice are cared for or come to die. To set the scene again. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">You will recall from the news last year that a convicted murderer—a man named Lopez—escaped TDCJ medical transport. Offender Lopez—<i>those people</i>, what can you say? Not to sound all racist or anything but American blacks have tried to show Latinos that crime is <i>not the way</i>! The Latino community has been maddeningly slow to take our advice and good counsel. But we digress. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, Offender Lopez escaped from a TDCJ bus on his way to the TDCJ hospital in Huntsville and while on the run he killed a grandfather and four kids at the family vacation home somewhere up near Waco? Does that sound familiar? It was all over the news last year, for a while. Texas produces more than its share of mass killers and sometimes it’s hard to sort them out. Late last year? Before being killed himself in a gunfight with police, down near S.A., isn’t that right? Wasn’t that the chain of events? So, like, the escape of Gustavo Artemio Lopez has produced a lot of handwringing by officials at the Texas Capitol and for good reason, the barbarity of the crime was shocking. A family on an isolated ranch slaughtered. But it’s actually just the latest TDCJ-related bloodletting. Because at all hours of the day and night, sick and allegedly-sick prisoners—the maimed and the dying—guys with broken jaws—are traveling on Texas highways going to and from Hospital Galveston or Texas Tech, in the West Texas prairie, which also takes care of Long Star State prisoners. To set the scene yet again. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, this guy who killed the family was on his way from his prison unit to a non-emergency medical appointment in Huntsville when he escaped. That’s what Jolie McCulloch of the <i>Texas Tribune</i> reported right off. Let’s start there. This chain of events was confirmed when the State of Texas issued a much-anticipated public report—a white paper full of alleged facts about Offender Lopez‘s slaughter of the innocents and what may have been his unleashed anger at his unlawful detainment, depending on the lens used. There was just a single word redacted from the state report on the first paragraph—regarding what kind of appointment the killer was on his way to, when he got away and started to whack people. A big hint is that the word that was blacked-out has seven letters and begins with <i>m</i>, like “medical.” Or six letters and begins with h, like “health.” And we know that because the rest of the 20-odd pages goes into great detail about the difficulties and risks of transporting patients from prison units across the state to hospitals in Lubbock and in Huntsville and on Galveston Island on the balmy Gulf Coast. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">TDCJ, the state prison system, is a keep-the-lid-on-a-problem kind of state agency, not the get-ahead-of-the-curve kind which is less common in Lone Star government. Conservative means liking things the way they are both in Huntsville, where the prisons historically have been headquartered, and at the State Capitol. We’re going to do some of the heavy lifting for TDCJ here and explain what the risks are for keeping state prison inmates healthy in Texas. It’s an important subject—and don’t forget why. The Big Picture is appalling, courtesy of Big Data. The U.S. imprisons more people than any other country in the world. And <i>Texas</i> really loves to lock people up and follows only the federal government and the State of California in number of people behind bars. At TDCJ’s 100 or so units or prisons. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">An oncology nurse at Hospital Galveston told me the other day about sitting down beside an inmate with cancer, in order to start an IV to give the guy chemotherapy. The inmate said to her, “I could grab that needle and stick it in your eye before you could do anything about it.” Naturally the oncology lady was taken aback and distracted from completing her task and she called her supervisor to come and try to start the line to give the guy his chemo. Because sometimes, for whatever reason, there needs to be a different nurse. But the supervisor came and was also frightened and declined to treat and the prisoner was returned to his home unit, in Shitville, Texas, which is just a little past Ft. Worth. Without receiving the care that he had come to Medical Branch to receive. There’s not much patience for behaviors by patients, btw, that’s my impression working here, the hospital is run by the University of Texas, btw, as mentioned above. Any prisoner who refuses care or who threatens/commits violence will almost inevitably be sent back to serve out the sentence without treatment, because there’s always another prisoner who <i>does</i> want care and who will cooperate and not endanger healthcare workers. That’s the theory and it appears fair in practice, no? Something else that the oncology nurse said is also pertinent.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Some of TDCJ’s inmates with cancer diagnoses who have served their sentences, and been released, will commit another crime on the outside—in the so-called Free World. Can you guess why? Because TDCJ is one of only two sources of free cancer care in the Lone Star State. To set the scene again. The inmate wants to come back to prison for free chemo, so he does another crime and gets caught—or whatever—is that how it works? Or do you call Capitol Hill and threaten your congressman because prosecution will be federal and the health care is better in federal prison? How is that for fucked-up incentives? Hospital Galveston is kind of a weird environment, yeah, for a couple of reasons not related to its exceptional patient population.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">There may be questionable incentives in prison health care too, just like in the Free World. Especially if your prior experience is Free World health where health care is also fucked up but fucked up in a different way. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 22pt;">ii)<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">TDCJ buses are all white, you can’t miss them on the causeway to the island. This is Texas’s Devils Island, just like French Guiana off the damn coast of South America. The prisoners’ uniforms are all white too. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The buses are going to and from the Gulag, not to repeat myself, on the way to medical appointments, riding hundreds of miles to see a provider at a hospital in Galveston or in Lubbock or Huntsville. It’s a logistics nightmare and dangerous as can be. To set the scene. So, like, the kid with breast cancer who was waiting for his grandmother to visit so that he could die? You wouldn’t believe it coming from Hollywood but it’s Hospital Galveston on a micro level. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">There’s also the macro view, during the pandemic the number of state prisoners dropped because courthouses were closed and there were few new arrivals on the bus from the county jail. Now the courts are up and running again and people are being locked up, which is the way we like our jurisprudence in the Lone Star State. There’s no better remedy for wrongdoing than twenty years in TDCJ, that’s what a lot of Texas juries believe. Or until you get the ultimate treatment—the injection that cures all ills, like riding Old Lightning did back in the day. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Hospital Galveston which is what the prison hospital at Medical Branch is officially called—my employer—serves inmates in state prisons in about eighty percent of the state, an area roughly the size of France. Patients from units like Rosharon, Coffield and Gatesville, where the ladies stay, all east of the Pecos River, all come to Medical Branch. While sick inmates west of the Pecos, like Montford, Mechler, or Clements are seen by providers in Lubbock, at Texas Tech. Where my advanced study in nursing is now taking place, at the Health Sciences Center. To set the scene again. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">My graduate advisor was actually working in Tech’s ED in Lubbock back in the day, that day—like early 2000s: A TDCJ prisoner who had been brought in for treatment tricked a guard and escaped and raped two Tech nurses. That’s the considerable. downside of the job. After being hired at UTMB for 7a to 7p, the dreaded night shift—my orientation included a lecture on safety for new employees, given by an Officer, which is how the TDCJ guards are called.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, this Officer—she was kind of hot, actually, not that that’s important here. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">She told us in this security orientation about the wily ways of prisoners who will want to seduce us or trick us. You feel me? And that got my attention big time, especially when she said, “<i>TDCJ does not negotiate</i>.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> In case of hostage-taking, like what happened to the two nurses in Texas Tech’s ED, who were held hostage and assaulted? The hot Officer said that prisoners have been known to trap the nurse or nurse’s aide in a room and push the bed in front of the door, to bar entry and exit and—presumably—then start issuing demands. That TDCJ, headquartered in Huntsville, in the pineywoods of East Texas, will ignore. Just so you know. Not so sound all brave or anything. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">In fact there’s a bloody history of hostage taking at TDCJ, at a unit in Huntsville actually, amongst the drooping moss and concertina wire of East Texas, that did not end well for the hostages. You have to understand and approve of TDCJ’s non-negotiation policy <i>theoretically</i>—on a macro level, on a macho level if you will. That is completely laudable. But on a micro level it’s <i>my ass</i> as mentioned above. It got my attention big time, you know, when the Officer told us that. To set the scene again. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The other thing the TDCJ lady said was to treat all the prisoners the same. She meant in the sense of considering all of these folks to be potentially dangerous, without wondering <i>why</i> a particular individual is in custody of the State of Texas. This was probably good advice but if you’re curious—and like to know details—TDCJ assigns a <i>risk level </i>to each inmate that has as much or more to do with their behavior in prison than whatever evil or alleged evil that got the person behind bars in the first place. Assuming that the inmate really is a villain and not merely a <i>political prisoner </i>of the Lone Star State. Who do exist, in great number, most of whom having two things in common, they are black and locked up. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">A Black Man or even one of my Latino Brothers who has refused to bow down to The Man and shot it out with the pigs instead? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Couldn’t that be the <i>real backstory</i> on the guy under my care right now in Bed 3? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, the TDCJ lady at our new hire in-service said <i>not to worry why</i> the inmate was sentenced to prison, unless he or she is completely a mad fiend, my words not hers. In that case you may want to know. Like, again my words not hers. If the patient has a free-world history of strangling people you may not want to expose your neck when leaning over to listen to the heart, right? That would be my take on proper patient assessment. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">But what’s most important is <i>behavior behind bars </i>not what he or she allegedly did before the prison gate closed, so to speak, that’s what the Officers all say. That advice actually jibes with Nursing’s Prime Directive that everyone should be treated equally. And as a practical matter you’re too busy on a busy hospital unit to look up a patient’s <i>alleged</i> crimes and misdemeanors because, as the Officer said, it doesn’t really matter. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Cellulitis on a guy who hacked up and barbecued Aunt Lucy looks just like cellulitis on a bank robber or a member of the Mexican Mafia. <i>Hello</i>! Or a member of the Black Liberation Army who has been wrongfully accused, you feel me? The guilty and the innocent are indistinguishable in the nursing context, and everyone deserves to be pitied in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, whoever the patient is and whatever they’ve done, for the love of God. Not to sound all noble but as an experienced RN. Having said that, TDCJ <i>is</i> a shithole. If you’re asking my professional opinion. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, that’s been the trend during my brief time at Hospital Galveston, having been quickly involved in the care of a lot of people. Not to bitch or anything but they said at the hiring fair that the ratio of patients on med-surg was 5 to 1 for nurses on nights but really it’s always six. Not to be all disappointed or anything because all hospitals lie about nurse staffing levels, in my modest opinion. It’s six <i>on days</i> too, btw, at 7C, which is especially hard to do on <i>day shift</i> with all the doctors getting in the way and asking for shit and the procedures and studies, or whatever. The night charge nurse also gets six, which makes me sad, to tell you the truth. Not to bitch about work or patient ratios or anything, but Hospital Galveston is a busy place. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">There <i>are </i>times after a patient interaction when you may just want to know, you know, whether it’s useful knowledge or not to the primary mission of caregiving.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">“<i>What is this guy in for</i>?” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Because the patient is really strange or a pain or threatening or whatever. So, like, my curiosity about a patient has only been piqued a few times—and luckily, TDCJ offers a way to satisfy my interest. With its “Inmate Search” app that tells you what unit a prisoner is on—across the hundred TDCJ units in the great expanse of the Lone Star State. What crime he or she was sentenced for. Length of sentence and in what county the trial took place. The Internet is the next step from there and you’ve got your guy or girl and can read up. Sometimes it does help to learn what you can on what may turn out to be a challenging patient. To cut to the chase, of those patients who got me wondering, probably eighty percent were men and about half of those were convicted of sex offenses, often involving kids. Of the other half, half of the half (25% for those who are math-challenged like me) were your average murderers and armed robbery-types, gunslingers of some kind or another, and the rest were drug offenses, dealing not so much possession like you might expect. Surprisingly few drug crimes overall actually, which is good, although another nurse told me of a recent admission to our ICU for a drug overdose, this guy coming from one of the units in deep East Texas where he had obviously taken some bad shit or taken too much of the good shit and almost killed himself? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">White collar criminals have been, like, totally missing among my patients. My preference would be at least one or two fraudsters, because they’re always white guys or Asians and will help even out the disparities in incarceration. Not to sound all racist. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">As a black person who does <i>not </i>entirely believe that the Texas criminal justice system is <i>colorblind</i>, thru that lens? My impression of Hospital Galveston is that the races are pretty evenly distributed, with blacks, whites and Hispanics in more or less equal proportion, a one-third, one-third, one-third kind of ratio. Which is of interest only because blacks make up only about 13% of the population of the state. Is that a law enforcement outcome discrepancy or a healthcare discrepancy? You tell me. It might make a good Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) paper for a nursing journal. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Regarding black inmates specifically, speaking as an advocate, speaking as part of a long tradition of nursing advocacy? My <i>natural inclination</i>—looking across the wards of Hospital Galveston—is to follow the one-third, one-third, one-third view of guilt. 1/3 of the African Americans prisoners in Hospital Galveston did exactly what they were charged with. That’s my best guess. Another 1/3 are in prison because they got caught in a law enforcement net even though they were not technically guilty of whatever they were sentenced for. Call it karma, call it civil rights violation, call it what you will. Which actually has an analog in my own childhood because in black family life the belief in<i> crime and punishment</i> is absolute. My mother had a wicked backhand that she didn’t use for tennis. You were being slapped not for what you did this time but also for what she never had a chance to slap you for before. Does that make sense? That’s TDCJ too. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Something like that logic is at work in the state’s prisons. He or she may not have done the <i>exact same illegal and/or violent</i> shit that got him or her locked up in the first place but did do a lot of other similarly illegal shit, without getting popped by the pigs. It’s a kind of guilt by association but only involves one person and that person ends up behind bars. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Another 1/3 of these brothers and sisters who are my patients—this is said even though we, the patient and me, bond as black people in a white racist world. The second 1/3 of these brothers and sisters are guilty as a motherfucker. So, finally and most crucially, the last third 1/3 of black patients in Hospital Galveston were just the closest African-Americans at hand when <i>white police</i> decided to make an arrest. That scenario is especially likely if the arrest was made anywhere among the pineywoods of East Texas, near Pisspot where there’s a prison conveniently located, called the Pisspot Unit. The white bus doesn’t have far to go from the courthouse to prison in a county where Jim Crow still lives. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">For example, there was a sister among my patients recently, completely <i>smoking hot</i>and oh, maybe 35 years old? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">She was locked up for repeated drunk driving. Like she was “going to kill somebody,” isn’t that what the judge always says and maybe sometimes it’s true. But certainly not with this woman. She was too fine. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Anyone could tell just looking at her in her prison whites that she was an angel, sent down by God to test us and completely innocent of the charge of felony DWI. She was too fine to do the crime, as we say in the black community, Like, there are some chicks who are <i>too hot</i> to be held responsible for their actions even if they did exactly what was charged. This chick was one of those. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Or she already had wasted somebody—she was on her third or fourth offense? That’s what the TDCJ app said! And somehow the knowledge of what she was in for made taking care of her easier. She was not a hardened felon. She was a beautiful woman who had come to a bad end. Courtesy of the State of Texas.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Obviously she was sentenced on false charges, that would be my whole point. She was probably set up by a white female cop who was, like, jealous? It’s totally possible. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">With Latinos my guess is that there’s about a 3-to-1 split, 75% in prison based upon some kind of <i>genuine illegal activity</i>, and a quarter completely innocent like the aforementioned one-third of black guys and black girls and the especially fine sister who got the DWI. This is a kind of back-of-the-envelope calculation based upon my time on Galveston Island. Wrongdoing here is always a <i>relative thing</i> because there’s always been so much sin. It’s an island tradition. The white prisoners are <i>all presumed guilty</i> or mostly guilty, by definition, not to sound racist. But in a criminal justice system that favors white people and that whites c<i>ontrol</i> it seems less likely that white inmates got swept up innocently when mostly white cops were arresting people without real evidence. Does that make sense? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The point is that on the wards, doing your rounds, you have to treat everyone well because that’s what nurses do and because <i>you don’t know</i> if the patient really is a felon. Most of the time you don’t know what they’re behind bars for at all, unless you consult TDCJ’s handy “Inmate Search.” That is part of the moral burden of a prison nurse. To check the app or not? Mostly not. Btw, among my patients at Hospital Galveston so far have been only two Asians—both Vietnamese guys. This is said with utmost respect and affection for the noble Vietnamese people. And in recognition of their struggle and ultimate victory over the White Man. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">And no attempt to stereotype. All apologies in advamce, but <i>Vietnamese guys </i>have just as short a fuse as black people! How cool is that? The Viets are almost as bad as Latinos—who kind of take the cake. According to my calculations. How cool is that? We’re all the same, after all, because race is just a <i>societal construct</i>, in other words something that somebody made up. At least that’s what they teach in nursing school. So, like, this is a true story. There’s a historical document somewhere in the Texas Archives to back it up. Immediately after the Civil War a Union officer arrived by horse from New Orleans, after the Rebels in Texas had surrendered. To set the scene. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">He visited a Texas prison, apparently in Huntsville, and reported to D.C. that he believed the Lone Star government was using the<i> prisons as a means of controlling the black population</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">You think? Is that even possible? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Twenty years later, after the report to D.C., my great-grandfather was sentenced to life in Huntsville, for a murder committed in Washington County actually, which is not far from Huntsville, so he didn’t have far to go. To set the scene again. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Because instead of waiting for dark like anybody else, anyone with sense, he shot somebody <i>in the middle of the afternoon </i>on <i>a busy street</i> with plenty of witnesses! If you were wondering—you know—what 1/3 of prisoners je fit into?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Geographically TDCJ is a system of units, originally around Huntsville and in East Texas, and now spread across the state, about, what 100 unit total? Housing over one hundred thousand men and women. Having set foot in an actual unit only twice in my life, long before Florence Nightingale entered my life, both times back in the day in Huntsville, which is still the administrative home of TDCJ and where Daddy’s Daddy’s Daddy did his time. So, like, there’s a connection. Both my visits were to the Ellis Unit which still exists and where condemned men used to wait to get whacked back in the day, if my memory is correct. Or was where they were held just prior to getting whacked? My first visit to Huntsville back in the day was late ‘70s or maybe the spring of 1980. The prisoner was a white guy who was condemned to die and he looked at me through the glass partition the way tigers look at little kids through the glass at a zoo. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Have you ever noticed that hungry look?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> This white guy seemed to be completely predatory and sociopathic. Those people, what can you say? Not to sound all racist. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">You knew what Caucasians were like back then, the 1970s, that was a time before there were any black or Latino serial killers. Like nine times out of ten, the picture in the newspaper of the Mad Fiend was a white guy. And this predatory-looking white guy in the Ellis Unit visitation room was the one they decided to let out. He was released on a technicality, killed again and was killed himself—if memory serves true. He was shot in a gunfight with pigs<i> </i>somewhere in the Hill Country. The other guy who brought me to Huntsville was a black inmate who was the Lone Star State’s most prominent political prisoner back in the day. For however long he was locked up. Lee Otis Johnson was his name. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Lee Otis was a Righteous Brother who was sentenced to <i>17 years</i> by a Houston judge for a joint, in a less cannabis-friendly America than we live in today. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The point is that Democrats complain that the Republican conquest of Texas was somehow unfairly accomplished—nefarious. But the Texas Democratic Party was running on fumes when the change came. The D’s had made some pretty bad decisions—including harsher sentences, like the Imprisonment of Lee Otis Johnson—and prison locations, which was maybe <i>numero uno</i> on a long list of bad policy decisions by the last Democrats to be governor. The D’s rolled the dice and the State of Texas lost. Where to lock people up? That was the question and the state didn’t get it right. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Where to place the next generation of prisons? The decisionmakers did not consider an aging prisoner population or mandatory sentences or availability of healthcare facilities in Pisspot, Texas, next to Shithole, in Shithole County. Which is where the new prison got built. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">It was a bad decision made in Austin to provide economic stimulation to a dying ranch town somewhere in the Panhandle, in a county with a total population of 12. In order to keep the county in the Democratic Party. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The D’s failed to predict the effect of mandatory sentences, which means elderly inmates staying in prison longer, and new prisons holding a lot of old men—and old women. Like some of these guys lying in beds now in Hospital Galveston with no hope for release. Who can’t even toilet themselves. Mixed with rising healthcare costs and the lack of healthcare facilities in the far corners of the state where the new prisons were built. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The consequence of which has been a lot of white buses and ambulances on the road to Galveston, which is Texas’s original Sin City, on the sunny Gulf Coast. It would make a good paper for the Health Sciences Center actually, where my studies are coming to a felicitous end. How has the distribution of prisons in the state guaranteed bad care for its prisoners? No one really listens to nurses though. Until it’s too late. So, like, early one morning when the routine labs were being drawn, the patients are stuck like every fucking morning, to set the scene.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Usually at 4 a.m., in time for the results to be ready when the residents arrive on daily rounds. To set the scene again. At midnight the nurses can start drawing blood, actually. That way, doing it early, the physicians already know what they want to order when they arrive, not to repeat myself, because they have access to results on their phone. That morning with my needle already in this inmate’s arm, he looked up at me and spoke. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">“You know, to be honest,” he told me, “I don ‘t really like black guys.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">My reply, “You know, to be honest, black guys don’t really like you, motherfucker,” began to form on my lips. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">You have to be able to talk a little shit to do this job and sometimes you may need to be direct. Profanity is never called for unless it’s called for, that’s my rule in other domains of my life too. It hadn’t happened to me yet, my interactions with the prisoners were all cordial up to that point. But you like to keep your options open with this patient population, even the grannies. She could have whacked somebody back in the day. Only utmost professionalism and Florence Nightingale—the Lady with the Lamp whose caregiving spirit infuses my black soul—kept me from going off. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Only Florence, whispering in my ear, stopped me from telling this patient where to go and what to do when he got there. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The prisoner was a little used-up looking Latino guy, probably mid-50s and probably looked the same way since he was 35. A lot of the inmates look surprisingly <i>okay</i>, their skin for example, if you look past the tattoos. Because they’ve been in prison so long and there are <i>theoretically</i> no drugs or alcohol or pussy/dick in TDCJ—or whatever may have afflicted you in the Free World—that is missing behind bars. Theoretically.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The quantity of white bread alone that the prisoners eat could be fatal, that’s a sure cause of ill health—starch. But the guys and girls <i>do</i> get plenty of time to sleep. It’s an almost monastic experience, what they describe, if a monastery had bad food and gun towers and was noisy like a bitch. It’s a <i>no smoking</i> environment, fyi, again in theory, for both guards and inmates. But not this guy—the Latino who didn’t like black guys. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">He didn’t look particularly healthy, no. This guy was not like he was going to the great beyond anytime soon, either. Pasty, which was a concern but nothing acute. His feet looked okay, which is my quick way of assessing someone’s overall health. He just looked kind of old and vulnerable and used up, not to repeat myself. By way of explanation of his rude comment about black men, he said that he went to a mostly-black high school where some of the brothers apparently made him feel like a punk. Is that right? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">That was my question to him. As long as he was talking about his insecurities, even vis-à-vis the Black Race, he wasn’t complaining about the needle. He had absolutely no veins, not to cry like a punk myself. He wasn’t pulling his arm away, nothing like that, you know, which was cool. As a patient he had a right to refuse labs but he did not. He could say whatever he wanted to say within reason, that was my attitude, you have to keep an open mind in correctional health care because everyone has a lot of issues, including the staff. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Everybody has a story to tell too, you have to be cool and accepting of whatever it may be. It’s <i>their</i> story, not yours. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">But in prison there are also overriding dynamics, like safety. And Hospital Galveston is a particularly <i>chaotic </i>environment, because it’s where two super-chaotic forces meet, health care and incarceration. On this little island. <i>Three</i> chaotic systems if you include the Texas highway system, that also affects which patients come to the Island of Sin and when. To set the scene.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 22pt;">iii)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Had “the talk” with the night nurses, who are mostly female. If anything security-related happens on the unit, they <i>cannot </i>rely on me. Because Lucius is out of here. Like, <i>gone</i>. If a colleague needs help passing meds or an extra pair of hands picking up a patient who has fallen, sure thing. But help subduing a violent and/or crazy patient? That’s not part of my job description. If things get really ugly, and getting out of the building entirely becomes necessary, you know those bedsheets that everyone likes to tie together to escape with? It’ll work for a nurse as well as a prisoner. That’s my belief.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, ou probably think that working this job the nurses will be rude or dismissive of the inmates under care. That is oh-so <i>not</i> the case on 7C. Not in my experience. Even in the glassed-in privacy of the nurses station, on my home unit—even as we refer to the senior surgical resident as an <i>asshole</i> and wonder how an especially clueless intern got into or out of medical school? The <i>patients </i>are still shown respect. No shit, yeah, not to sound all noble but it’s true. It’s weird and wonderful and a maybe beautiful thing that you can find respect and dignity in the oddest places, including the Texas Gulag, TDCJ for short. In Hospital Galveston it’s Mr. So-and-So, or bed number so-and-so if we don’t remember the name. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Respect for the patient is beat into you in nursing school and anyone who has worked practically any amount of time knows that patients—whoever they are—are <i>vulnerable </i>and they rely on the RNs and mostly trust us and we mostly reciprocate the trust. <i>Mostly</i>. Without knowing or caring who the inmate killed or raped or ripped off or even if he or she actually did any of those things or is merely a pawn of the nefarious <i>State of Texas</i>. Aka the White Man. Which is my view most of the time frankly, that it’s racial perfidy in the American South. This view is that the heart and soul of institutional evil in the Lone Star State is TDCJ, not to sound all judgmental. And, besides, the real enemy—every nurse soon realizes—is the <i>doctor</i>. Even if you have to watch your ass with patients sometimes too. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">During that post-hiring in-service with TDCJ when the guard lady talked about what not to do? She especially warned us about not getting too close to these guys or girls—the hospitalized inmates. Or believing their shit. Like, he’s really going to marry you or whatever when he gets out of prison if you just smuggle a phone or some weed to him now? <i>Please</i>! That’s what the lady from TDCJ asked us in the security in-service before we went to work on our individual departments. She asked us and we shook our heads. No! That was the <i>rhetorical</i> question from the Officer. You don’t want to reciprocate to that level, no, that was her message. My nursing unit manager when she hired me said the same thing, she warned me, you know? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">She said that my job was to render care but not get involved. Don’t get too close. Which was kind of an unnecessary warning, me being at Hospital Galveston mostly for the paycheck, UTMB pays nurses pretty well. Not being here on the Island of Sin looking for friends or potential soul mates, you know? Although some of the guards are hot and are technically <i>fair game</i>. But any closeness with a patient means <i>jail time</i> and is a sure 100% nursing <i>license-killer</i>. My co-workers warned me specifically that the female inmates are dangerous, with their mouths, because they will make up shit about nurses, especially guys. When there are a lot of female patients—ours is a coed facility, you’ll be happy to know, just no mixing in the rooms. When there are a lot of female patients the drama level is <i>PFH</i>, pretty fucking high to use the n0n-technical term. Women are a growth trend in American prisons, btw, and they need to <i>behave</i> <i>better</i> or <i>not get caught</i>, the same rules as for guys, that’s my belief. It’s only fair. We won’t get into that here. The point is that you have to treat people like people and leave at home any bad attitude or prejudices you may have. Rudeness is not called for in Hospital Galveston until it’s called for. The only exceptions to this rule in health care overall are paramedics and ER nurses, some people say corrections HCWs too, because you have to deal with crazy people or the highly intoxicated or dangerous or all three. To say nothing of the crazy <i>and</i> dangerous. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">On the wards at Hospital Galveston it’s not necessary to go off on anybody, usually. In my experience. The patients are there because they are <i>sick</i>, that call has already been made. If the prisoner gives you too much shit you just call the Officer, you feel me, who are always there. And even the TDCJ guards—the “Officers” as they definitely prefer to be called—are mostly cool. Especially the older black women. They’re like my mother, may she R.I.P. Who had a terrible backhand but would usually <i>listen</i> first? Before letting fly with that hand. The guards have pepper spray instead. One thing about the pepper spray, or so the Officers tell me, don’t let it impress you too much. The guards say that most of the guys who they’re <i>even thinking of using pepper spray</i> <i>on</i> have already been sprayed so much at their home units they think it’s perfume. Not to disappoint. If there’s really going to be trouble you’ll hear a call overhead for guards to go to a particular location. They <i>swarm</i> the inmate in question, just like cops swarm a nigger out on the street, prior to shooting him. Whereas in TDCJ a beat down would be more likely than a shooting. A guy will end up with a broken jaw for instance.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> So, like, TDCJ guards are overwhelmingly minority and predominately black. A lot of women. Sometimes the Officers call the inmate “Mister” or “Miss,” just like the nurses do. “Now Mr. Johnson,” you’ll hear an older black woman’s voice ask a patient somewhere down the hall, she’s standing at the entrance to a room and addressing someone thru the doorway, “do you really want to do that?” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">And Mr. Johnson really does want to do that, whatever that is, because that’s why he was trying to do it in the first place, when he got caught. But hearing the lady Officer’s question he lays back down on the bed without anyone having to wrestle him to the ground or whatever. Because the black lady was <i>cool</i>. Courtesy really helps with this patient population, if you’re thinking that you may one day do this kind of work one day. Precisely because these guys and girls have been treated like shit on their individual units or in jail or by the police or whoever. Or by <i>life</i>, that’s my feeling, not to go all psychosocial on you. But an apology at Hospital Galveston is golden. Unless the guy has already lost it, you know, which is when you may want to shout “Help” instead and run for a secure door. Don’t ever lie. That’s what they warned us in pediatrics back in the day, not to lie because “the kids lose all trust in adults.” So, like, taking care of kids, it seems to me, you <i>had to lie</i>, by telling what they used to call summer camp lies. Like when adults tell the children to get on the bus we’re going to the beach when really they’re going to the library? That kind of thing. Like, dude, this isn’t medicine—it’s a special candy syrup! At Hospital Galveston they won’t believe you. Even if you’re telling the truth. So, like, these guys and girls are super <i>suspicious</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">With prisoners you really are sorry about their conditions or circumstances, locked up like damn animals, cooking in the damn cells back on the units. But you can’t get into that on a 12-hour shift. There’s too much other shit. At least the <i>black prisoners</i> should be pitied, as mentioned before, empathy and sympathy both—according to my calculations. A surprisingly high percentage of black prisoners are <i>innocent</i> of the crime. Or of <i>this</i> <i>particular crime</i>, the one they got locked up for. A third of these brothers and sisters are not even guilty at all, unlike white guys who are almost certainly genuine perps. An example is illustrative. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, there was this brother doing time for something sex-related, statutory rape, like, he was a 16-will-get-you-20 guy, as the inmates say. To set the scene. The girl was too young. So, like, this inmate was giving me shit during a medication run one night with him and two other guys on acute—7C—my home unit. The patient room had three electric hospital beds, used to be only two, a metal sink mounted on the wall. An open bathroom with a toilet and a partially-closed shower. Privacy none or very very little, a TV up on the wall. Can you picture that? If you’re a patient in the Free World or anywhere else, you don’t fuck with a nurse on med pass because we have to pay attention in order to get it right. In the modern American hospital the patients are taking something for fucking <i>everything</i> including the time of day. There are a lot of pills, a lot of shots and lot of IV sticks, and a lot of IV meds. In Hospital Galveston it’s not that it’s so many meds, really, it’s that there are so many patients, a lot of surprisingly heavy patients, people who need shit done. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, this 16-will-get-you-20 brother was showing off in front of the two other guys in the room by hassling me. Which the patients don’t normally do because they like being in the prison hospital more than they like being in the prison, wherever it is, in the scrubland of South Texas, or the Oil Country of the southeast coastal plain, or the pineywoods of East Texas, and they don’t want to get sent back right away. And everybody likes nurses, right? Hospital Galveston has better food than wherever they’re coming from and there’s air conditioning they don’t have on their home unit. What’s not to like? With the TV overhead these guys control their own <i>channel selection</i>, that’s a form of empowerment, right? Just like in the Free World. There are <i>painkillers </i>too. Who could ask for anything more? So, like, it turned out this guy who was ragging me at bedside had something contagious and he got moved to a room by himself, that’s not important here. But in addition to whatever illness placed him in isolation, he had an ugly leg wound that had gotten nasty. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">A lot of prisoners have leg wounds because the Texas prisons in addition to being very hot are very <i>dirty</i>, by all accounts. Not to be judgmental of Governor Abbott and the Republican wrecking crew at the State Legislature. To set the scene. You see a lot of leg and foot-related conditions that should not be there, except the prisons are shitholes. Which is what the public wants, shitty conditions for shitty people, or so we are told. And it’s probably true, the Texas public is bloodthirsty and wants its pound of flesh or a maximum sentence for what are often very bloody crimes. Even if you didn’t really do it, somebody has to pay. As seen thru an Amnesty Project lens. But heat and filth and lack of circulation are a potent combination to promote infection. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, one night after changing this guy’s foot dressing, we got into an argument, me and the 16-will-get-you-20 guy who was black and from a semi-rural county near S.A. To set the scene again. He wanted me to bring him some ice cream. No shit. Which wasn’t going to happen in this lifetime. You know those little institutional cups of ice cream you get when you’re a patient in the Free World? Hospital Galveston has those too but they <i>are reserved for cancer patients</i> who need extra calories. There are protocols to follow on 7C. And my preference is not to start breaking rules at work until my probationary period is over, you feel me? So, like, we kind of got into it—me and this black guy, the 16-will-get-you-20 guy. Talking shit to each other. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">He said he had a “right” to ice cream. <i>Those people</i>, what can you say? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">What was that word that Caucasians used to use about niggers, back, back in the day? When Ronald Reagan was President and somebody invented “Welfare Queen”? “Entitled,” that’s it. Close neighbor to entitlements, which is not a bad word in Black English, btw. African Americans feel we’re owed something, yeah. Like we think we deserve something without working for it? Well, yeah, except we did work for it, during slavery, we built the country, we just didn’t get paid. We won’t get into that here. The issue was ice cream. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Those people</span></i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">, really! <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, it was me telling him he didn’t have a right to shit without saying the shit part. So, like, a lot of the prisoners at Hospital Galveston really get into asking for snacks and drinks, crackers and chocolate pudding and all that, orange juice in little containers at 3 a.m., you know? It’s their right as patients to get snacks. Which the guards say that these guys/girls would have to <i>buy</i> on their home units in the prison commissary but are given free of charge to our patients. Not to generalize but sometimes the inmate asks the nurse or the nurse’s aide for shit and then don’t drink it. It’s like that in the Free World too. There reaches a point of privilege and expectation on the part of a patient in a hospital—prison or Free World—that makes him or her pretty fucking insufferable actually. The nurses reach a consensus in conference at the nurses station at 2 a.m. In a Free World hospital it’s the middle of the night and everybody is talking about Miss Jones in Room 109 who “needs to go home now,” whether she’s cured or not. Because she thinks this is a hotel. After a few days some of the inmates start to think that too, like they’re at Hotel Galveston, which is down the beach about a mile towards Houston, not Hospital Galveston which is where you really are, bro. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Sometimes you have to explain the facts of life. Some of these guys and girls are testing bounds, just like kids, what-can-I-get-away-with-here-with-this-here-motherfucker? And they will ask for stuff they aren’t even going to consume, just because they saw another prisoner get it. Or they start hoarding shit like they’re back in their cell, in Pisspot, on the Pisspot Unit, or wherever, in the semi-damned indignity of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. This particular brother’s bedside table was already full of shit he hadn’t eaten. But he was fixated on ice cream and my fixation was on telling him no. There we were, two strong black men going at it—about ice cream. Voices raised at two a.m. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Then it struck me like a lightning bolt—straight to my heart. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">M<i>aybe he didn’t do the crime</i> and instead of being his caregiver that made me <i>part of his oppression</i>. Which was an awful feeling, really, really, really bad, a feeling deep in the pit of the stomach which is where my moral pain localizes. No lie. Nelson Mandela who did a lot of time in a cell before becoming Liberator of South Africa, and all, before becoming our collective consciousness—Mandela liked to say that you can judge a society by how it cares for prisoners. You can judge a nurse that way too. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">“You’re shouting at me just because I asked for something!” this brother told me. Words to that effect. Which was right, actually. He got an injured vibe going, it was pretty persuasive actually. Like he was Mother Teresa and someone just pinched his ass? This prisoner was pretty convincing, actually, never underestimate an inmate’s mouth. That’s the message here. It can be a pretty formidable thing. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">These guys and girls have nothing to do all day but <i>talk</i>, for years on end—guilty or not. Some of them develop potent verbal skills and that’s coming from somebody who has talked a little shit in his time. Most of these guys are way over my head in terms of self-righteous rap. And they can go on for hours—just talking shit—like those famous Negro men of old who said they could stay in the pussy for a <i>full hour</i> without busting the nut? Like the legendary Sixty Minute Men—but talking not fucking. These guys are found in abundance in TDCJ. They have nothing else to occupy themselves, for years at a time, so they talk shit. But suddenly, my caring, nurturing side as a RN came forward and filled my breast with compassion. My inner Florence Nightingale spoke up, even though Florence was a white chick. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">“The ice cream is a non-starter. You’re just not going to get it. But I shouldn’t have raised my voice. I apologize if I offended you.” Hearing myself say it and not quite believing it either, but it was a start!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Having apologized maybe ten times total in my entire time working with adult patients, not to sound all macho or obtuse or anything, and eight of those were, like, <i>totally insincere</i>. But this was coming from my heart and soul, <i>corazon y alma</i> and all that. Like a fine Spanish chick will tell you and you believe it, because she’s fine, even though she’s also <i>mentirosa</i>? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">And this 16-will-get-you-20 guy looked at me and blinked. In a confrontation the first one to blink is the loser, you know that’s what President Kennedy said after he went toe to toe with the Soviets over nuclear missiles in Cuba, back in the day. Here the issue was vanilla or chocolate. The patient made it sound just as important. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">He kept talking about what he wanted but by now you could see that the wind was out of his sails. And instead of me being only <i>kind of sincere</i> in my last apology to a patient, a few years ago at another facility, my apology this time was almost wholly sincere! Like, that’s progress, right, in my ethical development. And it’s like, so, <i>not</i> the first impression people have of me, sincerity. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, looking back over my shoulder, feeling like there was someone else there, besides me and the 16-will-get-you-20 guy. It was the Lieutenant, the supervisor of the guards, standing behind me in the room. She was a hot black chick, actually, maybe half my age. There’s just something about women in uniform, wouldn’t you agree? Especially when they carry handcuffs? Someone must have called her because of the raised voices and now she stepped forward to the bedside. The prisoner was still bitching, but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it. “The nurse already apologized,” the Lieutenant said. “What more do you want?” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">“I want ice cream. I feel I have a right to it.” <i>Those people</i>! And instead of me saying, “No, you don’t, mofo,” there was just a noble silence on my part. Like Denzel Washington after he has capped all the white people in the room? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Me gathering up my wound dressing shit—gauze and saline, bandage scissors and all—and leaving, with the Lieutenant still there and listening but planning to do <i>absolutely nothing</i> because that’s what supervisors do, absolutely fuck all. That’s how you get promoted in the first place in Huntsville, where TDCJ is headquartered, the less you do the higher you go. The Lieutenants listen well but do <i>fuck all</i>. Not to generalize. They just appear from nowhere when things start to get hot. Anyway a couple of days later, the same thing—another black guy—this time behind bars for murder and he wouldn’t let me draw blood and me threatening to tell the doctors, around 4 a.m. and my whole plan was to get out on time and start drinking at like 7:30 in the morning? To set the scene. “What they goina do,” he asked, “send me to prison? I been locked up for 33 years.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Actually he had been <i>locked up for 37 years</i>, not to be stickler for detail, according to the TDCJ app. Some of these guys who are never-going-to-get-out lose track of time. It’s like all the heavy lighting overhead in the ICU, a patient gets disoriented about time because there may be no cues to night and day. There’s so much light all the time, it’s always daytime. In prison it’s like that too, the time just passes in a continuous blur. Not to sound all transcendental. So, like, the pressure had been building between me and this guy over a couple of days, there was a little machismo in the room, my balls can be pretty big too. He had a real attitude. Probably based upon the fact he would never get out. Except in a box. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, he was talking shit to me now at, like, four o’clock when my patience is at its lowest. So, like, we got into it pretty good, once again two proud black men going <i>mano a mano</i> with our mouths—when we <i>should</i> have been fucking with white people instead, right? That’s one way to see it. hru a Black Revolutionary lens. And then, suddenly, a noble spirit came over me at this guy’s bedside, just like before with the ice cream guy. Like Florence Nightingale but with a penis, you could call it. “Listen dude, let’s start over,” me basically saying to him, “I’m sorry if I was rude to you.” There was at least a one-third chance that he <i>never did the deed</i>, after all. And me turning to look behind me, once again there was a hot black Lieutenant, just standing there, listening therapeutically or getting ready for a take-down. She had long, painted nails, like what good was she going to be if it got physical? How did she intend to save my ass with those fingers? Sometimes even sisters act dumb like white chicks—what they do in the name of fashion. But that’s why guys make better nurses. We’re ruthlessly practical. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, the Lieutenant stepped forward to the alleged murderer’s bedside to do some therapeutic listening but he was adult enough to have already moved on. Jesus, he had beautiful veins too, not to get all sentimental, black men usually have the best veins, that’s been my observation through the years. <i>Unless</i> they’re drug users and they’ve used up all their intravenous access, which is a big <i>bummer</i> at four o’clock in the morning with a needle in your hand. If you’re just learning about it for the first time because it’s been busy and you haven’t had a chance to do a full assessment yet? Hello! He was a beautiful guy too actually, like a model or athlete—tall and built like a NBA guard. Not a big guy but big enough to hit some three-pointers. He probably got more than his share when he was back in the Free World, it was amazing that he could look so good after all these years behind lock and key. He was the Beautiful Prisoner, not to go all literary on you.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">His hair was in graying corn rolls, he had a big, healthy smile, and he was slim overall but well-muscled without being showy like guys who hang out in the gym. He just had a hip replacement so not everything was going well but he still looked good for his age which was <i>our age</i> actually, he was maybe five years younger than me. He liked to try to chat up the Officers too, he was exactly the kind of guy they warned us about in security orientation, really. When the TDCJ lady talked about manipulators, remember? He was in for like, he had nothing to lose.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The female Officers rolled their eyes at him like he was full of shit, him telling her that he had missed her since the last lockdown, or since last time she pepper-sprayed him. Or whatever, what can you say? You could tell that the Officer liked what she heard. The weaker sex and all that. Women are vulnerable in a way that a noble Black Man can never allow himself to be. Based upon my experience at nurses stations, listening to the chatter, women do have a weakness for good bullshit, that is almost as strong as men’s attraction to tits and asses. A lot of chicks like a guy who has a rap even when she knows it’s b.s., she still wants to hear it, that’s pathological, right? Even when women know it’s bullshit they still want to know what it sounds like, in order to judge a guy’s game and compare notes with other chicks later, not to repeat myself but having had the discussion multiple times on nightshift at hospital nurses stations across this great country, at 3 a.m. when women give up their secrets. But we digress. So, like, the guy who got my second apology was the lady killer or presumed lady-killer. In fact that may have been why he was in prison in the first place, he killed a lady. My policy is never to ask anybody why they’re doing time because it’s not like you’re going to get the truth, right? And life is too short. These guys live to talk. It’s <i>how they pass time</i>, not to repeat myself, an anecdote that one of these guys is telling may never end. You ask a guy at Hospital Galveston how his arrest for bank robbery in Midland went down back in 2013 and he starts with his father losing his job in the Oklahoma oil patch back in ‘83. An hour later he’s still talking and he hasn’t gotten to Texas yet. <i>Please.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">Overhearing is always an option though, and if things are slow—Sunday night for example. Listening at a prisoner’s door can help pass time. Catching parts of the conversation, especially if you’re doing a task that takes a little while, like a dressing change. Or fucking with an IV, and you can ask directed questions like they told us in nursing school is so important for success in patient assessment? Human assessment, too.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">And if his rap is not entertaining you just tell him you have to go do something else. Which is always true. If it’s not interesting you can break off the interlude and say you have to chart. Or just walk away like you weren’t listening in the first place. That’s kind of why the wards attract me, life on the infamous med-surg unit. It can be entirely cool if you aren’t taken hostage and if you use a filter.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">If you’re working in the ER, on the other hand, you’re only seeing people for a short time and the explanation of what happened has to be really succinct. If you work in the ICU—the patients are out of it. Or they’re in too much pain to talk. Or they can’t talk even if they want to, because there’s a tube down their throat. But on the wards the patients can effectively narrate their condition in life and if it’s not interesting or it’s obvious bullshit—you just say you have to go do something and walk away. My weakness is not wanting to walk away frankly. Being interested in the Human Condition and all that. Even when you have another patient to see. Once back in the day, working trauma for the county hospital in Austin, going into a room to do a dressing on a patient who was hit by a shotgun blast to his stomach? To set the scene. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">His lower belly was a mess. There was a bag to collect poop, soiled gauze and blood and drainage—he talked me through the dressing change, it was my first time with this particular patient and he knew how to change the dressing better than the nurses did. Because he’d seen it done so many times. So, like, we’re talking about other shit too and he told me how he was shot. His <i>wife</i> did it. His old lady. How wrong is that?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">She found out he was <i>cheating </i>and she met him coming home—getting out of his car in their own driveway in Austin. She was apparently aiming for the offending anatomy but missed a tad high. You know what he said were the last words he heard, after being shot but before passing out? “Children, go inside,” his wife said to their kids. “I’ve shot your father.” Isn’t that moving? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">That’s what kind of got me started listening in hospitals. Moments of truth in the continuing drama of health care, not to go all transcendental on you or sound like Dalai Lama. That guy’s wife who pulled the trigger? She may be one of my patients right now at Hospital Galveston, if she hasn’t finished her sentence yet. How special is that? Another time on adult trauma, also in Austin, it was a black guy who was a player—he liked the married ladies. Like the white guy who got shot by his wife? But this black guy got <i>shot by the husband</i> who was being cheated on. The cuckold, you know? Just to mix it up. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">And the brother who was shot with his dick out was <i>paralyzed</i>. In Austin people always say that your downfall is karma and that’s my belief to, here on the Island of Sin. Austin is a very karma-heavy town, while Galveston is more <i>Biblical</i> as in <i>original sin</i>, you feel me? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, that black guy was literally climbing out a bedroom window when the bullet hit him in the lower back, hit the spinal cord or whatever and he was suddenly a paraplegic. Here’s the zinger. He was unable to use his bone after that, is that karma or what? Was God looking down and pronouncing judgment or what? Black people are a people of faith. And this partially-paralyzed patient—even though he could not back it up—was still talking some pretty smooth shit to the female nurses! He would have been getting all kinds of pussy with a rap like that if he had a bone that worked That’s what is meant by the indomitable human spirit. The hospital in Austin was my first job as a nurse and adult trauma prepared me for other aspects of care at Hospital Galveston, which is likely to be my last patient care job, btw, not to repeat myself. The first concern at Hospital Galveston frankly is not illness, it’s escape. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">We also had a couple of escapes from adult trauma, back in the day, which should be mentioned in the corrections health care context. Escape—elopement whatever you want to call it, <i>doing a runner</i> is a danger at any hospital, even if it’s the Free World. During my early training in Austin, back back in the day, there were two escapes which guide my views today at Medical Branch regarding the escaping patient population. A big issue in prison medicine is who is trying to get out the window and how? Not <i>why</i>, which we already know, he’s a prisoner of TDCJ, but <i>how</i>. The first two times for me were at the hospital in downtown Austin also apply as background to escape from the Texas Alcatraz, Medical Branch’s campus on Galveston Island. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, one patient on trauma was a head injury who somehow got away from supervision at our nurses station, where we had him sitting in his wheelchair so that we could <i>watch him</i>. He ended up rolling down Congress Avenue, in front of the Capitol, still in his wheelchair. The cops called us and said he was wearing our hospital gown. That is technically an elopement, not an escapeThe second guy was a real prisoner, also on adult trauma, don’t know what he was in County Jail for but he came over with a deputy and was handcuffed to the bed in a room for a few days, on the end of the floor, nearest the Capitol. To set the scene. His window kind of looked out on a little hillside that leads up to the Senate side of the building, from Red River Street, in the middle of River City. To set the scene again. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The deputies on watch in the hospital room get bored with that duty pretty damn quick and were prone to fall asleep in a chair in the corner of the room. But this inmate made a lot of noise, groaning and all from the time of his arrival, which probably made it hard for the deputy to take a nap. The prisoner moaning about pain and how bad he felt, you know? <i>It was an act</i>! It was totally an act. He was trying to put the guard off his guard. How cool is that? Those people! He was Latino, yeah, makes you wish he was black. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, it happened on my day off which is disappointing to report because it would’ve been cool to be there and get his autograph before he went out the window. Anyway the moaning inmate somehow managed to get out of his handcuffs and jumped down onto the roof of a lower building next door and was, like, <i>gone</i>. He was <i>lucky</i> because that was an era when hospital windows still opened, unlike now you’re sealed in and breathing recycled air all shift. At Hospital Galveston the escapees somehow go through the wall, that’s my understanding, at least that’s what people tell me, not having been here long enough to see an escape yet but kind of hoping, you know, just for the experience?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">A former Lieutenant who is now retired said he walked into a bathroom in Hospital Galveston back in the day, and there was just a hole in the wall and a rope of bedsheets. He ran and got his pistol, he said, but that guy was gone too, just like my guy back in the World Capital of Live Music. Which was somehow reassuring because one likes to think bedsheets are still used for escapees. Even in the high tech world in which we live, there are some ways of doing things that never change. And the TDCJ security response to an escape was still the Lieutenant running to get his pistol, just like in a movie? The more things change the more they stay the same, <i>no</i>? Prison health care is not primarily about health. The biggest priority is preventing escape. Once you accept that reality, giving care gets easier. The ex-Lieutenant couldn’t remember if the escaped guy when he had to grab his pistol was the same inmate who later whacked someone up near Dallas. A nurse who helped orient me said he was doing patient care one day and went home and on the eleven o’clock news they were talking about an inmate who had just escaped and the nurse recognized the guy’s name because he had been taking care of the guy earlier that day. What a coincide, that’s Hospital Galveston too. Like, how cool is that? Escapees can be dangerous and all but the social worker in me likes to see people at least <i>making an effort</i> to change their life’s circumstances. Even if that means going out a window. Especially because approximately one-third of the black inmates aren’t guilty in the first place, again according to my calculations. And escape is an important consideration because TDCJ doesn’t negotiate. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">In TDCJ’s hierarchy of crime, in the prison corridors, high up are bank robbers and murders, low as you can go are sexual predators, but above all are inmates who have escaped prison, even if they were caught later. Just the act of successfully escaping a major prison can heap kudos on an inmate’s criminal career. An Officer was talking to me the other day about a prisoner on another unit of Hospital Galveston who escaped <i>twice</i>. Even the Officer talked about the guy like he was a rock star. That guy who escaped at Texas Tech E.R. and raped those two nurses? He was a brother, sad to say, and he must have been part of that one-third of Negro inmates who actually did the deed, whatever crime they were charged with in the first place. He was a mean nigger and all that. Some do exist, but a lesser percentage than the White Man claims, as seen thru a psychosocial nursing lens, and less than guilty white inmates, that’s my whole point really. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">So, like, the Texas Tech black guy was already serving a 140-year sentence for rape and other shit when he was taken to the emergency room in Lubbock. <i>Prison Legal News</i>takes up the account from there. This short tells you everything you need to know about escaping prisoners in the health care context, at Hospital Galveston and anywhere else, actually. “A Texas prisoner used a fake gun to back down an armed guard and hold an entire SWAT team at bay for over an hour. Dekenya Nelson used a hairbrush, soap, a deodorant bottle, and pages from the Bible to make a convincingly real-looking weapon,” <i>Prison Legal News</i> reported. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">“For almost 90 minutes Nelson also held two University Medical Center nurses hostage. During that time he is alleged to have sexually assaulted both women. Nelson was a prisoner at the Smith Unit in Lamesa TX when he was transported to University Medical Center for treatment of internal bleeding caused by swallowing a can opener. He was placed in a room with a prison guard and an armed guard was stationed outside the door. When Nelson complained of the cold, he was given a blanket.” To set the scene. Under cover of the blanket Nelson used a hidden key to remove his handcuffs. “Once freed, he produced the fake gun he had hidden in his jump suit. The guard in the room swung his nightstick at Nelson and missed.” It gets worse, kind of like a <i>Saturday Night Live</i> skit, but this was real. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;">The State of Texas added another 175 years to Nelson’s sentence, if you consult the TDCJ app it doesn’t even bother saying when he's eligible for release or whatever because he’ll never see the Free World again. Inmate Nelson is in Huntsville, btw, at the venerable Ellis Unit, and has become quite an accomplished writ writer. He even sued <i>Medical Branch </i>over care at Hospital Galveston once. How cool is that? There is compassion at TDCJ, to give the Gulag the credit it deserves, but it’s rare. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p> </p>Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-44278996973372425932023-07-27T10:48:00.040-07:002023-10-08T19:59:34.596-07:00A Nigger at Harvard<p> <span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">My brother was one of the first African-Americans accepted when Harvard began affirmative-action back in the day. He graduated high school in 1971, in Oakland, two years ahead of me in L.A. It’s not clear that desegregation entered into the great university’s decision—my big bro was always a good student—but that was the era. In his case, however he came to be admitted as a black student on the world’s foremost white campus—it was an experiment that did not turn out well. He floundered over the next few years, poor grades, in and out of school until he was invited not to return. This is the kind of anecdote that’s supposed to give credence to the idea that has been proposed recently—by a lot of Jewish academics and Asian would-be Harvard graduates who feel they’ve been denied their rightful place in the Ivy League—that African Americans should content ourselves with public state-sponsored universities, and perhaps the second rank of those. This is an idea that is actually familiar to black people from history, separate but unequal, and seems unlikely to be accepted today, despite whatever ruling soon emerges from the Supreme Court.</span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"> My brother failed in Cambridge not because he was African-American but because he was an idiot. That is said with unconditional love and affection. He was equal parts pompous ass and shrinking violet, depending on the hour and season, believe me, this is coming from someone who knows. Any of his five siblings could have told the admissions committee but we were not consulted. He applied in secret and failed to note on his application that he had poor social skills (black nerd, actually, in an era before that was even a concept) in an environment, of reluctant integration on The Yard in Boston, or wherever, that despite the university’s best intentions still required the ability to dance and weave socially.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"> And sometimes shuck and jive, one assumes.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"> My own education at UCLA also came to a sudden end, not because of bad grades but after the racist Los Angeles police arrested me, a black undergraduate trying to better myself, coming out of someone’s house with property not my own. Oh well. However, it’s more instructive to look at what Harvard did to my brother, without granting a degree. “I shall be home for summer,” he wrote from his dorm room one year. It wasn’t completely his fault, he got puffed up on the East Coast and deflated back home. He was also, as un-PC as this term may seem today, a momma’s boy, like me—we all were, me and both my older brothers. We lived in a fatherless household. Our mother was a single mom who wanted the men at home (the oldest had left years before, to attend a historically black college in the South, and never returned) and contributing in some capacity to the household. Any idea of the possible benefits of a diploma from what might be the best university in the world—doors that might open—was overshadowed by Mother’s always more pressing needs. But we digress. My choice for college was easy because UCLA, which was then considered merely a commuter school, without the international reputation it now enjoys, was cheap. My preferred way of viewing higher education is practical, like a bus that takes you where you want to go. The idea that black people are suddenly going to give up our seats, or get off entirely, as is being suggested, doesn’t seem likely. But that the effort to re-segregate is being made at all is still instructive about race in America. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"> This most recent challenge of affirmative action began with a Jewish guy named Blum, a former unsuccessful candidate for Congress from Houston who previously challenged affirmative action at the University of Texas’ flagship campus, </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">across the street from my crib in Austin </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">(where my master’s in Information Studies was awarded last year, actually, although my dean, Eric Meyer, said that he and the Asian and white instructors were not much impressed by my analytic skills, something that white instructors have told me before.) So, like, this cat Blum was unsuccessful in court in Texas just as he was unsuccessful at the polling place. His latest gamble at Harvard—with Asian plaintiffs substituted for the white one in Texas—and a private university instead of a public one—has better luck. Better, based upon a very persuasive argument: everyone knows what good students Asian kids are. And because, when the suit was filed Mr. Blum’s principal ally was the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education, under a Jewish assistant secretary, Kenneth Marcus. To deal with the former argument first, just how good Chinese students are cannot even be measured. Even a bad student in mainland China can make a good white or black American kid look lame. That is coming from someone who has lived and worked among the Chinese. There are, potentially, a few bad Asian-American kids out there, but they haven’t spent enough time around black people, frankly, to know what they’re doing. So, like, it’s a fair argument. Awesome students. The OCR connection isn't so convincing. Still, on the affirmative action front, it seems like a good time for black people to move on.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"> We need to up our game.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-43073913087134122982023-07-13T13:31:00.152-07:002023-08-20T19:29:40.261-07:00Barbie and the Cult of Toxic Feminity<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSX_V-srrfcEoh5qPz9BjXXtwDuZoTKPUT1aPIXdhyYq4ypT6WtWvEISIyflkNxZJwmAZgPY37jQUorZa7Q9SAlml7vDIvzweeUpQQ41aYN52kzyhw8Rfwn8CIJyJuJ5lHfIQRlleLzIjuxTRg79JK8yhxt7VMM_BQCTDvWpVUvwOXq8MgwQx2Dy8mKtk/s300/Unknown.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSX_V-srrfcEoh5qPz9BjXXtwDuZoTKPUT1aPIXdhyYq4ypT6WtWvEISIyflkNxZJwmAZgPY37jQUorZa7Q9SAlml7vDIvzweeUpQQ41aYN52kzyhw8Rfwn8CIJyJuJ5lHfIQRlleLzIjuxTRg79JK8yhxt7VMM_BQCTDvWpVUvwOXq8MgwQx2Dy8mKtk/s1600/Unknown.jpeg" width="300" /></a></div><br /> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Who speaks for Ken?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Let me try.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>More than a decade ago, on a train carrying me from St. Paul to Chicago, a young woman boarded wearing very short athletic shorts. Emblazoned in the back, across her ass, was a single word: <i>Pink! </i>It was a challenge to the world, a call to battle even, little did she know that men and women view pink differently.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Once, walking with a male friend, after we had just received verbal abuse from a feminist, which was doubtless earned, my friend bemoaned our sinking status as men. We were sure then and are still sure today that women are superior. Increasingly they don’t need us, even for procreation. But, finally he smiled ruefully. “At least,” he told me, “we don’t have to wear makeup.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> No less an authority than the <i>Washington Post </i>recently pointed out that men are lost in today’s society. This is a new mantra and, basically, it's true. Violence, drug abuse/alcoholism, education levels, employment—whatever the measure, we’re either too high or too low, compared to chicks. The <i>New Yorker</i> just ran a painful story about men, who are less well-endowed than me for example, who allow themselves to be butchered by doctors in order to enhance their hang. All in service of a yawning great, unsatisfiable and pitiless vagina. Not to raise a male call to arms or anything, but again many men—not including me—find themselves inadequate when it comes time to satisfy the unsatisfiable Barbie. But suppose for a moment we take a second look at women, not what women see in the mirror, but what men see face to face. Through Ken’s eyes, so to speak. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> It isn’t pretty.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> What about makeup? Why would a sentient human being spread petroleum-based products across her cheeks in the present more enlightened era? Women will tell you without hesitation that they do not dress or apply makeup just for men, indeed women say that they do not have to explain their choices to men at all, “Our bodies, ourselves,” again a feminist call to arms. But <i>who</i> is it for? If women can decry wanton and frivolous behavior by men, isn’t turnabout fair play? Aren’t health issues fair game? Paying a surgeon to slice open your breasts, or your ass, and implant bags of saline, to give you more bounce walking down the street, isn’t there something pathological about that? Especially if you don’t care what men think.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Austin is my home and despite some recent dips in the quality of life in the Lone Star capitol, due to heat and congestion, the female population is outstanding and impressive. Health is beauty in River City. People of both sexes hit the gym, or the trails, or go swimming in Barton Springs. Recently however a work contract has taken me to another part of the state and what women do to themselves, in parts of Texas, with no apparent prompting by men—because it’s hard to believe that guys find these practices “attractive.” It's mind-boggling. False acrylic nails, half-an-inch or more, making women move their hands carefully, almost futilely, like ancient Chinese mandarins. False eyelashes, again half-an-inch long, must interfere with driving, no? And every other manual task, right? <i>Hello</i>! How much money goes to a cosmetic and fashion industry that uses laboratory animals for testing and requires petrochemicals for production? Who wants to wear all that shit, in this heat? That's Ken's question. Especially when the heat index is enough to kill? Women do. <i>Pink! </i>What exactly does that mean? Who cares if you have the latest fashion or just spent two hours at the hairdresser’s. Get your hair cut and move on. Yes, like a guy. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> You have to have respect for Barbie nonetheless. During my childhood in the Sixties little black girls played with Barbie, if their families could afford her. Barbie was not black but dolls were not black and you played with what you had. The ease of playing with Barbie apparently had a liberating effect on little girls.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> And she was impressive, she could pose to fit any narrative, much more than G.I. Joe, who is long buried now and forgotten. In terms of feminism Barbie knew what she wanted and when her boyfriend showed up she had him right away by the nuts. But shouldn’t we have more sympathy for Ken, who has to kiss that painted cheek? Is he a victim? Isn't that a cry for understanding that we see forming on his speechless plastic lips, as he rides in the passenger seat of Barbie's convertible? Later, he is posed at the restaurant</span><span style="font-size: 18.66666603088379px;">—</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">while he's paying for dinner</span><span style="font-size: 18.66666603088379px;">—</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">together with a hefty tip, in order to show that he would be a good provider. While Barbie is away in the Ladies Room "powdering her nose" and "freshening her makeup," what are we to make of Ken's scribbled note on the check, directed at the wait person: "Help! Call the police! I'm being exploited!" He may be dumb, because he’s not going to college like Barbie, but he knows theirs is not a healthy relationship.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Why doesn’t she? <o:p></o:p></span></p>Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-68697557968804128372023-01-13T10:46:00.036-08:002024-03-28T15:53:08.315-07:00A Longhorn Primer (2-Day Read)<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgFL61n00VPoWlfLscTVs7QmyIrQgceHgUqNFfyJWwkx_N7pQ4-YktRcDauRjDJ_VM0TSilOdlOYzE7I48RKwVGYOc9Kc2Yt0y5-7P7Dghx5n_x0M911vP8Con_-nVOYAYtHrjd1SSkeDYS63W08jhBpU98MYK3RefC1CPtxCHniIfL4_tyEqGpZX5" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="165" data-original-width="306" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgFL61n00VPoWlfLscTVs7QmyIrQgceHgUqNFfyJWwkx_N7pQ4-YktRcDauRjDJ_VM0TSilOdlOYzE7I48RKwVGYOc9Kc2Yt0y5-7P7Dghx5n_x0M911vP8Con_-nVOYAYtHrjd1SSkeDYS63W08jhBpU98MYK3RefC1CPtxCHniIfL4_tyEqGpZX5=w519-h257" width="519" /></a></span></div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"><br /> </span><div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"> Elliott Hauser is a peckerwood with a PhD. This comes from a credible source—me—having just completed a Python programming course at the School of Information taught by the good Dr. Hauser who is a relatively new assistant prof at the University of Texas’s flagship campus. You’ve heard of critical race theory or CRT? Dr. Hauser’s specialty is CCT, Critical Cracker Theory, not to be unfair. UT is in rough seas right now—there’s a lot of pressure from the State Capitol, very much related to the iSchool where Dr. Hauser teaches and where my graduate studies are coming to a blessed end, Master’s of Science in Information Studies almost in hand. MSIS, whatever that really means. Not a day too fucking soon either, frankly, for me <i>or </i>for faculty, maybe them more than me.</span></div><div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The Deans want to see me in their rear-view mirror and it’s hard to blame them, actually. My hormones have been headed in the wrong direction for most of the last couple of years, not to use that tired old excuse. My mid-60s actually, coinciding with my graduate studies and clouding a normally cheerful and sunny disposition. My sincerest apologies for that. <o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Anyway, Lieutenant Governor Patrick, the man who Texas liberals most love to hate and who returns their feelings with apparent <i>gusto</i>—and Governor Greg Abbott who is not far behind Dan Patrick in liberal hearts and minds? <i>Both</i> Governors have recently voiced an unsympathetic interest in <i>tenure</i> practices at the University of Texas at Austin. It could get ugly and probably will. The question of tenure has been billed as the next epic struggle for civil rights at the Texas Legislature, which comes to town in January and where R’s may kick a little liberal ass yet again but maybe this time for good reason. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">We’ve waited a long time for Republican leadership to be right about an education issue and tenure may be it. Certainly seems like a death sentence for this faculty privilege at Forty Acres, if both the Governors have doubts. The Speaker of the House of Representatives could back the university, he’s a Longhorn by education but so is Governor Abbott and that may not mean shit. To set the scene. Presumably the Governors want to beat up notoriously-liberal Forty Acres in this notoriously conservative state. Republican leadership’s antipathy towards the liberal intelligentsia at Forty Acres is unrivaled, for conservatives, Forty Acres is the original source of all liberal inequity in the Lone Star State, which may be pretty accurate, actually. UT has been, through decades, the heart and soul and minor league of the Democratic Party in the Lone Star State. The Governors know that and smell blood. But it’s my theory that minorities on campus may want to get on board with this particular Republican witch hunt and bring home some fresh white meat, even if it is cut from liberal backsides. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, not to repeat myself, Dan Patrick’s interest in tenure traces back to the iSchool actually where Elliott Hauser teaches, but focuses instead on a different instructor—a cool young black scientist named Angela Smith. To set the scene again. Dr. Smith was hired recently, like Dr. Hauser, as a tenure-track assistant professor. Angela Smith’s area of interest is human-computer interaction (HCI) and she is also something of an expert on the new field of critical race theory in high tech—yes, the dreaded CRT. But as it applies in artificial intelligence, CRT in A.I. being the acronym of interest. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Believe me, having taken her course too, Dr. Smith’s first class at the iSchool actually, the same semester as Dr. Hauser’s course, her work is some heavy-duty dialectic shit. C.R.T. in A.I. is about how the online world is being constructed, and her aim is to make sure that the virtual world does not show the same racial and other biases as the real one. In order that algorithms do not favor one group or another, in outcomes or in worldview, that’s apparently Dr. Smith’s thing. Which is also apparently what rubbed the Governors the wrong way and led to calls to eliminate tenure for teaching it—and could be lethal to this young black scientist’s career. That is Dr. Smith, unlike Dr. Hauser who is pretty much a complete cracker, not to be judgmental, and is completely safe. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The Governors are upset about CRT, which is Dr. Smith’s thing, but not about Critical Cracker Theory which is Professor Hauser’s specialty and allows him to dictate what black men think. Elliott Hauser earns $101,000 a year, btw. Again, to set the scene, and because everyone likes to know what other people earn. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Not long ago a tenured professor at the iSchool was telling another student (it was my pleasure to overhear, which should not be undervalued as a source of information, listening in) that a <i>tenure-track faculty opening</i> at the University of Texas School of Information, presumably like the kind recently awarded to Professor Smith and Professor Hauser, can draw <i>300 applicants</i>. “Ninety-percent of whom,” this tenured prof said, “are qualified.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">What this professor didn’t say was how that choice among applicants is made, which is our subject here. It helps to be a white guy, apparently, at least at the School of Information. Not to be critical, but just looking at the numbers. Anyway, enter the noble black man, who has seen the iSchool from the inside and out. Having taken classes from both Professor Smith and Professor Hauser, it’s <i>my hypothesis</i> that minorities should get behind the Governors’s efforts to review and possibly change and/or eliminate tenure. My belief is bipartisan, rooted in taking a course from the clueless white guy as well as from the clued-in black woman, which is a good description of Professor Smith. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">To be completely honest at the start, Professor Hauser <i>failed</i> me in the Python course, not that it has anything to do with my views of him as a peckerwood. It is one but <i>not the only</i> reason to consider him an <i>asswipe, </i>actually. To be perfectly upfront and transparent my grade was D-. This was <i>so clearly</i> an attack on my <i>black manhood</i>, as you will soon learn. But before that—before we talk about the problems of race, racism, tenure and corruption at the University of Texas at Austin, aka Forty Acres, or my own preferred nomenclature, the Longhorn Nation—which is a <i>long fucking story</i>, actually, like the Bible but without the flood? And is a subject that apparently interests Governors Abbott and Patrick too, before getting down and dirty about life at Forty Acres, first let me say, heading for the door—getting the old sheepskin and all that, <i>it’s been a wonderful education</i>. That comes from the bottom of my heart. It’s a great honor to graduate from the University of Texas, in the Year of the Plague, 2022, and get the fuck out of Forty Acres, not because it's a bad place but because it’s been a hard ride and it’s time for this black cowboy to mosey on to greener pastures. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The iSchool has been <i>worth every penny </i>of tuition. As someone who needs to communicate information effectively, especially data, the last two years couldn’t have been more valuable. And it is precisely the value of this education provided by the State of Texas, theoretically to <i>all </i>citizens, that puts into sharp relief the bullshit that can still take place on campus, from the crackers who still roam these hallowed halls. But which is apparently better than the shit that happens at the University of North Carolina where the peckerwood-in-question got his PhD. Overall, with a couple of notable exceptions, the iSchool instructors taught me how to get my shit together <i>critically</i>, as in “critical thinking.” Which is a phrase we use a lot in nursing too, in my worklife, when we are told tor example, “Put your big girl panties on,” even if you’re a guy. You feel me? If a patient is in danger for example, or something really really really needs to get done right now. But instead, in this case, in the field of Information Science. The iSchool instructors helped me to develop the skills, actually, to form a <i>critical race dialectic</i> that is now being used to beat faculty over the head. How cool is that? How's that for using one's schooling?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">There <i>is</i> still a reason to take out all those loans and invest in higher education, even at an advanced age, you might say, although that would not be my choice of words. UT has a lot of issues but it’s also a very good university and it’s important to keep that in mind before moving forward and ripping to shreds the behavior of the good Assistant Professor Hauser, which is what’s next. As a mostly unsentimental black man regarding <i>white institutions in the South</i> like this university, especially colleges called “Forty Acres,” a name that is oddly reminiscent of the plantation where my ancestors worked in East Texas, you feel me? Something <i>magical</i> has nonetheless happened during my studies at the School of Information. Under the care and condescending guidance of Dean Eric Meyer, as clueless about race and privilege as he is, coming from Oxford University and all. To set the scene again. Something magical happened at Forty Acres for me and many other people as well, in other departments, thru the years. One day you wake up and you find—despite making absolutely <i>no effort</i> in this regard—you’re a<i> Longhorn</i>. Although that collective identity has limits, which is also the subject here. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, Professor Hauser’s class was <i>Introduction to Programming</i>. We were learning <i>Python</i> which is very useful in science/industry and, equally important, <i>easier to learn </i>than other computer languages. Or so it is said, not being an expert myself and wanting to improve my coding, which is an equalizer in modern society, especially here on the Silicon Prairie. Like knowing how to use a six-shooter was back in the day? Personally, having begun my college education at the University of California in 1973—this was a big jump for me half a century later, to Python, and me working with a reduced complement of brain cells, bad knees and all that. So, like, there were 30+ students in Professor Hauser’s class, mostly Asian or Asian-American, three of us black, me and two young sisters who both knew their technical shit very well. While my interactions with Professor Hauser took the form of the usual white-black dynamic we are all familiar with, especially in the American South, ours was <i>not</i> the only racial/political and/or ethnic divide in class. You couldn’t help but notice for example that the Chinese kids from Taiwan and those from the People’s Republic didn’t seem to interact much. That may only have been my imagination but seemed real. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Some American universities, fyi, are considered particularly Taiwanese-friendly, a Chinese-born academic in Austin told me this a few years ago, and other schools are more People’s Republic-oriented you could say. In part based upon who is teaching Mandarin in the foreign languages department, native-Taiwanese or native-mainlanders. In that respect UT is considered a Taiwanese school or so it is said. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">That’s only mentioned because the usual black-white dynamic is not the only racial or ethnic issue on campus. UT administrators are juggling a lot of issues right now regarding diversity and fairness—lower pay for female instructors for instance, which is unfair and has been going on forever. There’s a lot of shit hitting the proverbial fan at Forty Acres today, some thrown by conservatives who feel they are unheard on campus just like blacks and Latinos. The old Forty Acres which historically has been white, male, and liberal, is already changing markedly. Just a few days ago in the Perry-Castenada Library for example, me up on a top floor trying to do my classwork like a good student? To set the scene. There was a lot of noise nearby, like chanting. Some <i>fuckhead undergraduates had been playing frisbee</i> the week before across the first floor reading room, and as you can imagine, upstairs that afternoon my patience was low. But the sound turned out to be some Muslim kids doing their afternoon prayers in a study room, that was the low chanting, and <i>power to them</i> for keeping their culture. So, like, diversity on campus cannot only be measured by black people, that would be my whole point, actually. Republicans, Latinos and Muslims also have to have a safe place on campus. But in a state that was once slaveholding like Texas, Negroes have a spot at the front of the line, that would be my feeling too, you know? Others may disagree. Including the Lieutenant Governor.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">In one of my first official interactions at the School of Information, which was a Zoom meeting of the diversity committee during first semester, a white administrator identified herself as the “queer recruiter” for the School of Information. Yet there was no “black recruiter” or “Latino recruiter,” the iSchool in fact had no Latino faculty as my studies began, in Fall '20, at the beginning of the COVID plague, in a state that is, what, 40% Latino? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. And the only two black faculty were un-tenured assistant professors, one being the new Dr. Smith and the other a well-behaved Negro, not to be judgmental again. This wasn’t 1960, btw, it was only two years ago when my program started. Pardon me therefore—with numbers like those—for looking for crackers in every classroom. And finding one. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, the last president of UT, Greg Fenves, was Jewish and suddenly during <i>his</i>administration a number of Jewish academics were promoted to dean. But waiting until African Americans or Latinos or Asians have the presidency of the University of Texas does <i>not </i>seem like a particularly effective way to improve diversity at Forty Acres. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Nor does a case by case approach, like my conflict with this white prof, Dr. Dickwad, not with 50,000 students in attendance. Forty Acres is a mid-sized city. The President and the Provost and the Dean can’t be in class watching instructors, it’s a system based upon qualifications and upon <i>trust</i>, and training, but that aren’t always enough to ensure <i>equity</i>, which is our subject here. So, like, something occurred in <i>Introduction to Programming </i>that needs to be addressed. My feeling as a black person in Texas is that it’s best to call out whites for <i>every racial transgression,</i> whether intended or not, and even <i>profile</i> crackers from time to time by calling them out on shit that they may not have even meant to be discriminatory. Although this was discriminatory, and intentionally so, and not just ordinary Texas evil, which is hard to get upset about because it’s so common. You can’t give a cracker an even break in other words because he or she will merely take advantage of the opportunity to keep being a cracker, you feel me? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Professor Hauser was new, like in his second or third semester, he came from the University of North Carolina, in other words the <i>Deep</i> South, not that there’s anything wrong with that. He had a beard and looked like an old photograph of Jeb Stuart, late of the Army of Northern Virginia, if you know the American Civil War. Spiritually, if not in fact. To set the scene. Me and a white female friend were talking a while ago about Austin’s recent population growth, this is pertinent, and of the guys you meet now on the streets of bucolic River City, she said, “If I see one more beard I’ll scream!” Professor Hauser looked like <i>one of those people</i>, you know, not to sound bigoted or extreme. A bro-grammer, someone tech-related who thinks he's cool and is anything but.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">My friend was describing what are colloquially called tech bros and who others <i>may</i>call “tech assholes,” that would not be my choice of words, because my preference is not to typecast this kind of mostly-white, often-bearded, tech-related white guy in any way. So, like, long story short, Professor Hauser seemed to be one of the many tech-related newcomers who are now in town, a hipster/coder type, from N.C. not S.F. He said in his bio online that in his spare time, when he’s not scholastically-engaged? He’s a <i>philosopher</i>. His bachelor’s is from Duke, in <i>art history</i>, oh my God stop me from throwing up right now! </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, to cut to the proverbial chase, something happened outside of class one day that led me to the conclusion that the new assistant prof is <i>a cracker</i>, again,<i> </i>not that there’s anything wrong with that. Because <i>crackers are a species</i> that really does flourish in Texas, btw, even in River City, here along the banks of the mighty Colorado. Unlike jackalopes which do not exist. You still see crackers every day on the streets of the Live Music Capital of the World actually, although you may not recognize them at first. Crackers are part of human <i>diversity</i> and have a limited role in the social ecosystem, that would be my theory, not to get all heavier-than-thou or be a philosopher in my spare time. So, like, coming to the School of Information one day, early in the semester, me whistling a tune from Beyonce and minding my own black business like the Constitution says a man has a right to do? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Something happened, not to get all dramatic. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, Professor Hauser was outside the front door taking delivery of some equipment, and attempting to greet him, <i>the motherfucker turned his back </i>on me. No shit. Again, not to be judgmental. Like we were in high school and he was Boopsie the Cheerleader who was pissed off? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">As a noble black man, great-grandson of slaves and grandson of a Buffalo Soldier, it didn’t even occur to me to reply, to call him out, to say “What’s up bitch” or whatever. <i>That</i> would come later. My only thought at the time was yeah, well, that’s strange—maybe he’s having a bad day. In other words, cut the white man some slack, call me noble if you will. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">But a couple of days later it happened again, in the lobby of our piece-of-shit University of Texas building that houses the excellent iSchool where my studies are coming to a blessed end. That time it was once again me saluting Professor Hauser and him turning his back, just like a ho, no disrespect to hos intended. So, like, he turned his back not to talk to someone else, there was nobody else there. He was acting just like Boopsie the cheerleader again, who’s angry and you’re supposed to guess why. And, you know, as a person of a certain ethnic persuasion and <i>a certain age</i>, this was not the first time that someone had refused to return my greeting. At my age you kind of wish it happened more often, you wouldn’t have to go through all the formalities of asking how someone is doing when you really don’t give a shit, you know? You could use the wasted breath for something more important to a senior citizen, like breathing. Not to sound grumpy. It was different though with Professor Peckerwood at the iSchool, in the literature of racism turning one's back on someone is called a “microaggression” and it’s used on campuses and at other public institutions, and perhaps free-enterprise venues as well, like in the coding world presumably. It’s used where there is a <i>hierarchy</i> which means just about everywhere, actually, to demean someone. Who is often a member of a minority group or a woman, especially a woman of color. But in this case a noble black man, me.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"> So, like, the knowledge of Assistant Professor Hauser’s control of the gradebook was a little unsettling, even for an African American warrior. Because this was not just a random interaction on the sidewalk with Bubba or Thad who have just come into town from Pisspot, Texas, in Pisspot County, in their pickup. Bubba is still a flourishing species in Texas and he is to be feared if he’s been drinking or doing meth, or has control of an automobile or a weapon. But this particular interaction was with The White Man in his own preferred professional setting where <i>he</i> wields power over the <i>darker-skinned other</i>, if one looks thru the CRT lens that Governor Patrick does not like but seems pretty fucking useful here. This was not an encounter with the Proud Boys up in Palo Pinto County either, or even with the Austin pigs downtown, near the iSchool, that you could film and have objective evidence. Dr. Dickwad on the other hand, the cracker in question, could <i>fuck</i> my education, not to sound ignorant, and get away with it. There would be nothing to do. Basically he had my nuts in his hands, which you don’t want with crackers because they like to squeeze. Is that too much information? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Is that <i>TMI</i>? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, you’re allowed <i>two fails</i> at the School of Information and anything less than a B is considered a failing grade. To set the scene. So, like, it was best to have a meeting with the good professor <i>and </i>a supervisor, someone higher in the faculty, it seemed to me. Like one of the deans, to find out what was the instructor’s trip and to remind him that he wasn’t in North Carolina anymore. Here in the Live Music Capital of the World crackers aren’t allowed to hunt the Negro, in other words. Does that sound wise, mature and all that? Befitting the wisdom of my age and my noble sub-Saharan heritage? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Meeting with a village elder as intermediary, that was my idea, that’s how we handled conflict back on the <i>Dark Continent</i> where my ancestors hunted gazelle and wildebeest by day and talked issues out at night, sitting around the campfire. That’s how it works in my understanding of the modern university too, you have a meeting. His response—also by email, like my request—was that he would not arrange a meeting nor participate in one. No shit. So, like, life is <i>short</i>. That’s my lesson to the young, speaking as a village elder. And you don’t want to make it any shorter by stressing out. That’s also good advice from health care, btw, avoid red meat & alcohol, and if you’re a guy don’t neglect your bone or your prostate health, and don’t stress out, practical wisdom from the hospital bedside. Suck it up and move on can be a <i>completely legitimate defense mechanism</i> instead of, you know, letting the testosterone flow. Especially if you’re short of that particular hormone, at an age when you may still have the <i>desire</i> to fuck somebody up but your dick just doesn’t get that hard anymore. Or doesn’t <i>stay</i> hard. Is that TMI too? So, like, the object of school—wherever it is, it seems to me now, whatever the curriculum—med school or cosmetology college, and whatever your age—the object is to get to the <i>end of the semester</i>. Right?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, after writing an email to the administration and making the Provost aware of the incidents, my plan was to call it a day. Just as, the semester before, it was necessary to make the administration aware that security guards at the front door of the iSchool were asking me to show i.d. to enter the building but not the white and Asian kids who are also students. The guards were confused because black men were something new in this faculty. So, like, exit the black man and enter the black woman. Her name is Wilhemina Delco and it was her advice, you could call it, her wise counsel, given years <i>before </i>my fateful encounter with Dr. Hauser at the iSchool, that got me through. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">“Ms. Delco” as she is universally called—there’s only one in River City.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">She helped me to navigate what would become a very dicey situation at Forty Acres. Not to sound all dramatic or anything. But her advice allowed me to shrink down my struggle at Forty Acres to something bite-sized and relegate it, after all these years living in the South, to the round file. “Just Another Cracker,” in other words. Her sage wisdom, and it was sage, <i>wise</i> and all that, was the key to survival until graduation and finally becoming a member of the Longhorn Nation. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">WHAT MS. DELCO SAID </span></i></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">You may not have heard of Wilhemina Delco, especially if you are new to town as so many are. Ms. Delco is originally from Chicago like Barack Obama whose portrait adorned her East Austin living room the last time we visited, a few years pre-pandemic. Ms. Delco is married to Dr. Exalton Delco who is a retired biology professor (specialty, snakes) at the black school across town, Huston-Tillotson University, a HBCU. So, like, Wilhemina Delco was the first African American elected to public office in Austin <i>since Reconstruction</i> or—depending on the record you’re viewing—<i>first in history.</i>She is a Lone Star black liberation figure in her own right. And a very good person, who is down to earth, whose opinions are to be trusted.<b><i><o:p></o:p></i></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, she told me once, we were sitting in that living room with her and Barack smiling down from the wall? She said that the only reason she was elected to the Austin school board back in the day, where she eventually became Board President, is that the election happened just after MLK was assassinated and the white power structure in the Live Music Capital of the World was afraid that if changes were not made, our bucolic River City would burn. <i>She</i> became that change. Ms. Delco was later elected to the Texas House of Representatives and served ten terms representing East Austin when it was still black, B.G., before gentrification and before the recent arrival of the tech locusts. To set the scene. Importantly for discussion of what it means to be a member of the Longhorn Nation, Ms. Delco has special authority. She served as <i>chair of the Texas Legislature’s Higher Education Committee</i>. In other words she knows public education, she knows the State of Texas and she knows UT<i>.</i> And she is one of the extraordinary people who left the State Capitol the same way she entered 20 years earlier, with complete credibility. Which is not easy to do, especially in Austin because the temptations are so many. And you know what she said about UT that afternoon in her living room? This is my <i>second best UT anecdote</i>, by the way—of 6—about our own Forty Acres. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, me and Ms. Delco were just chatting, minding our own black business the way the Constitution says we have a right to do, after she had retired from public life. Although even today in their golden years the Delcos are still seen out and about, because they are swimmers like so many in River City. To set the scene again. In her living room Ms. Delco was talking about corruption in the Lone Star State, something that she learned about during those twenty years at the Capitol. She told me something shocking. The public always thinks the worst scandals in Texas public affairs, Ms. Delco said—and there have been many through the years, many scandals that is—most uninformed people think that the worst corruption comes out of the Legislature during the legislative session but that’s not true. The worst malfeasance in public affairs in the Lone Star State she said, as a former Higher Education chair, don’t come out of the pineywoods of East Texas or Houston’s Fifth Ward or anywhere in the Big D. Not South Texas even though that’s what you might expect, because that’s where LBJ found those “missing” ballots back in the day that made him U.S. Senator. No, she said. Instead Ms. Delco told me that the worst public scandals in the Lone Star State always come out of the University of Texas at Austin. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">No shit. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Not</span></i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"> UT System, she said, not the umbrella organization that manages the 13 component institutions. Not the Regents either, although shit happens on the Board of Regents often enough, you may never hear about it, mostly regarding admissions or the huge university endowment, a subject that we’ll be studying shortly. Not the other individual campuses either, Ms. Delco said, not UT Dallas or UT Arlington or my alma mater Medical Branch, although bad shit happens in Galveston too, like at all academic medical institutions. You probably don’t want to know details. But specifically Ms. Delco said she was talking about the <i>Austin campus</i>, our very own Forty Acres, isn’t that cool? Which is soon to be my alma mater. “True that!” as Indian students at the iSchool like to say. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Just a few weeks ago for instance—there’s always <i>something</i> dodgy going on at UT, you kind of get used to shit happening, but paying too much attention distracts from study time, you know? But just to dish <i>a little Longhorn dirt</i>, for teaching purposes only, a few weeks ago a Law School maintenance supervisor pled guilty in state court to ripping off $1.2 million, including salary that he was paid when he was actually in Cozumel soaking up some rays. To set the scene. It’s not really surprising, is it, UT is a city with a population to match and it’s not news that there’s occasional abuse of a big budget or a complicated operating system. Literally millions of moving parts and thousands of employees, the surprise is that you don’t hear about more. There’s a reason for that, actually, that you may not hear about it, the press’s nuts are in Longhorn hands, is that TMI?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"> So, like, the vastly more important court case for the University of Texas was happening about the same time the Law School guy was getting probation, down the street <i>in federal court</i> where UT was losing a <i>$3 million judgment</i> in a lawsuit brought by a female engineering professor. Who was <i>denied tenure</i>. There’s that word again. Because she was pregnant, that was her claim and the jury agreed. There’s always something interesting happening at UT and you may not want to know what. Great scholarship and also occasional sin. Or underhanded dealing. My take-home, headed for the door? <i>All </i>university campuses are breeding grounds for intrigue because everyone thinks they’re smarter than everyone else. And when you’re doing things in new or novel ways, that may not turn out to be totally legit, or have not yet been vetted, problems can arise. My favorite Longhorn anecdote—#1 on my Forty Acres hit parade—is about students searching for skills in unaccustomed ways and is 20 years old, maybe more, and says everything that needs to be said about this wonderful institution. So, like, this was turn-of-century Texas or turn-of-the-millennium actually, when George W. Bush was governor. My memory is cloudy but it’s not an important detail <i>when</i> exactly, because Bush was not involved. But it was <i>his era in Texas</i> which was like a tornado, actually. So, like, this happened in a large lecture hall on campus, in a chemistry class. This is eyewitness testimony not of the facts of the crime but the story that was told about those facts. To set the scene again. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Have you ever taken organic chemistry? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">If the answer is yes, this may reawaken some traumatic memories but is a <i>useful exercise</i> not for understanding OCHEM, the worst class in the world—Semester I <i>or</i>Semester II. But is critical to understanding UT’s culture which can be a minefield. So, like, me sitting there in class one day, still kind of in shock after the explanation of a painful chemical mechanism, and looking around me—clearly there were some other broken spirits and hurting heads. There’s a lot of debate on university campuses even today about which class is actually worse, Organic Chemistry 1 or Organic Chemistry 2? My personal belief is that the first is worse because there comes a terrible point in the course—Week 3 or Week 4, a moment that is <i>not </i>mentioned on the syllabus, btw. Which had just taken place in our lecture hall at Forty Acres, in OCHEM 1, when the student realizes that there are <i>two full whole semesters of this shit</i>. It can be pretty fucking dispiriting, really. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, the instructor was a Jewish guy and pretty cool, actually, he had a big heart. He seemed to realize we were hurting after the last reaction mechanism and he segued into a kind of <i>stand-up routine</i>, you could call it, which is not at all unknown in university lecture halls from time to time, even in the hard sciences. Usually the prof thinks he’s more entertaining than he really is but this particular OCHEM guy had comedic game. So, like, he started to tell us about <i>chemistry-in-action</i> at none other than our own campus. So, like, out of the blue he said that a few years earlier the teaching assistants were in the habit of cooking speed in the chemistry lab. Not the filthy addictive shit that we know today, that kills people, that speeds up pulses and ruins lives. Something <i>more refined</i> but equally illegal, it seems. To set the scene. Don’t you love UT? It would turn out later that this same guy, the guy lecturing us in class that day, had lied about being a PhD-trained organic chemist, he only had a master’s and when UT found out they kicked him to the curb and he began teaching at the community college. We won’t get into that here but the point is that there are no lies at Forty Acres, there are only gradations of the truth. Actually it’s not just UT, UC is a lot worse, as regards ethics, state schools can be worse than state prisons, that would be my thinking if this were a reflection for class, at the private schools like Johns Hopkins people just care about money and fame, but we won’t get into that here either. Anyway, that’s what it can mean to be a Longhorn, actually, that’s my whole point, cooking speed in the basement of the chemistry building. This was long before the television show <i>Breaking Bad</i>, btw, it wasn’t derivative of Hollywood in other words. So, like, the exact chemical composition of the crank was not revealed in lecture, you’ll be happy to know, but the instructor said that this was not a once or twice thing, instead it was a <i>custom of the T.A.s</i>over the years. Hey, let’s cook<i> a </i>little crank! <i>Not</i> in order to corner the illicit trade for crystal in the Live Music Capital of the World, no way, there’s probably a pretty established market for that and there might be consequences for trying to move in on the action. But instead for the most elusive of all illegal drug activity, “personal use.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">To help at study time or with exams or whatever. And completely <i>justifiable</i>, btw, in my modest opinion, if restricted to those <i>particular uses</i>, not just to be an animal for a day or whatever which is what some people use crank for. Anyway, that’s what the lecturer told us that day in OCHEM 1. And, the instructor asked us, do you know what happened next? And of course we didn’t know what happened next. But personally, as someone who up until that point had been struggling with organic chemistry and who just a few minutes earlier was sitting in lecture and considering slitting my own wrists, suddenly the <i>useful</i>possibilities of the academic discipline of chemistry were suddenly being revealed before my eyes in class. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">For the first and last time that semester the instructor had me on the edge of my seat. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, you may ask, what happened in the speed lab on campus? He told us that one day a couple of guys from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the dreaded D.E.A., arrived on campus. They showed up at the office of the department chair, actually, to have <i>a little chat</i>. At this point the instructor was still standing at the podium, telling us about how crystal was made back in the day at Forty Acres, instead of explaining to us how fragrant molecules approach each other and bond in order to create the taste of strawberries or oranges or whatever. Like the artificial flavor in a stick of chewing gum? Which is what OCHEM professors usually talk about, having taken the class a couple of times before snagging an A and never before having heard how to cook crystal to <i>snort like a drug fiend</i>. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We were discussing <i>meth</i><i>production </i>in lecture<i> </i>which was fine with me personally, not to repeat myself, but was the kind of activity that could get a Negro or God forbid even a white man sentenced to 10 years in prison in the Lone star State. Yet was being made as part of an extended lab experiment at Forty Acres. Doesn’t that make you proud to be a Longhorn? It does me.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">And our instructor said that the DEA guys told the chemistry department chairman that they were aware of this particular <i>extracurricular activity</i> and the DEA guys weren’t going to arrest anyone <i>at the moment</i> but if they had to return to campus, someone in handcuffs would be leaving with them. Isn’t that a beautiful Forty Acres anecdote? Not to get all sentimental or anything. And this was long before <i>Breaking Bad</i>, not to repeat myself, and before Hollywood adopted that particular plot device. Longhorns are such groundbreakers, that would be my whole point, actually. That’s my #1 UT story, btw, having been around campus all these years. And, like, it was true because—checking later with another organic chemistry instructor, she said yeah, like it wasn’t a big deal, that’s what happened. It makes me kind of <i>proud</i> now, at this point in my education, so close to my final goal as a proto-Longhorn or a Longhorn-in-training or whatever. Moving forward to become an alum. <i>Cooking crank in the Chemistry Building basement</i>! Exactly the kind of endeavor that attracted me to this great institution in the first place, not because it’s illegal but because it’s <i>daring</i> and kind of cool. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">And the chemistry T.A.s were not greedy, that’s my whole point actually, they didn’t act like <i>total hoodlums</i> and get greedy and start selling <i>wholesale</i> or even <i>retail</i>. That wouldn’t be an example of Longhorn virtue. Instead, they were cooking <i>just enough</i> for themselves and maybe a few friends. It’s altruism combined with the search for knowledge that made me want to be part of the Longhorn Nation, actually. And that’s also what Ms. Delco meant, the best scandals come out of UT. It makes you proud, because Forty Acres is full of a lot of very bright and very aggressive intellects whose ethics may be trailing their accomplishments by <i>just a tad</i>. Like Professor Hauser, not to be judgmental. A high percentage of people on campus think they are smarter than everyone else, though, just like Dr. Dickwad, not that there’s anything wrong with that, either. <i>Not everybody</i> can be smarter than everybody else, right? It’s kind of like the Longhorn football team’s search for a good defense, that would be my best analogy, actually. It’s an imperfect comparison, but Longhorns know how to put points on the scoreboard, <i>we just don’t know how to defend</i>. Does that work? Maybe not. So, like, right now the big issues at Forty Acres are race, research and intellectual property. Which is where tenure comes in, yet again. Tenure features large in race, research <i>and</i> IP, it seems. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">About the same time the Law School employee, who is a white guy, was getting probation from Judge Kocurek in state court—Judge Kocurek likes to send black people to prison, fyi, that’s her reputation in the black community, surpassed only by Judges Kennedy and Brown who are black and like to send black people to prison too, in order to please white voters. But we digress. About the same time the white guy was getting probation in state court, down the street in <i>federal court</i> before Judge Pitman, who has a degree in Human Rights, btw, from Oxford—speaking of higher education. In the courtroom of Judge Pittman, some of the same issues that UT now faces got hashed out and examined. The jury didn’t like how tenure is handled on campus. Let’s take a look. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The key witness in the civil trial was UT’s #2, Provost Sharon Wood who is an engineer by trade and was promoted from Dean of the School of Engineering. Dr. Wood appeared on both witness lists, for the plaintiff and for the defense, because before her promotion<i> </i>she recommended <i>denying tenure</i> for the pregnant assistant professor. To set the scene. Although the final decision belonged to then-UT President Greg Fenves, now at Emory University. Who left Austin with a little push from the Regents, basically for his handling of sexual harassment at Forty Acres. To set the scene again. So, like, Dr. Fenves who is a chemist by trade has largely escaped blame for the no-tenure decision that <i>he</i>made, while the good Dr. Wood has taken the fall, basically, not because she’s a woman but because she’s <i>the Provost.</i> That’s part of a university Provost’s job description, btw, to take the fall for the president if necessary. But we digress. The jurors apparently liked Dr. Wood’s testimony for the plaintiff more than her testimony in defense of tenure at Forty Acres. Of the damages awarded—$3 million—$2.5 million was punitive. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">In the pre-trial documentation that it was my pleasure to review in the federal court clerk’s office, the other day, the pregnant professor’s attorney gave notice that he intended to introduce evidence that <i>women discriminate against other women</i>. Which should not be that much of a surprise, frankly, in this day and age. Not every aspiring chick has every other aspiring chick’s back, feminism and sisterhood notwithstanding. Whether that notion was actually proven in Judge Pitman’s court isn’t so important, this is still a subject that black people know pretty well. Blacks have been known to discriminate against other black people, like Judges Kennedy and Brown, or seek favor by selling out to The Man, or The Woman, <i>a la</i> Uncle Toms. Or turn into complete rightwing whackjobs like U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, not that there’s anything wrong with that. In order to succeed, as the first of “their kind” in a field, or whatever, like in academia for instance, the “First Black” to become So-and-So. Or like Justice Thomas who has risen to be the White Right’s <i>principal flunky</i>, together with his whackjob old lady. But we digress again. Anyway, the point being that the first black may not help the second black or the third. This was apparently the direction that the plaintiff’s attorney was headed before trial, that Dr. Wood discriminated against another woman, but the lawyer for the preggers professor is not talking now, having beat UT. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">After a few online interactions with Provost Wood during the course of my studies at the iSchool, my feeling is that she has a very demanding job and cannot make decisions based upon <i>sisterhood</i>, especially regarding tenure. Just as she could not grant every wish of mine as a student of color in the School of Information, dealing with a cracker prof. Unless there’s some really really really fucked up shit going on, grave individual wrongdoing, like Ms. Delco alluded to. Because there’s <i>always</i> a lot of shit flying at Forty Acres, sometimes you have to do some ducking, the basic idea is not to be around when the shit comes down. This campus is a huge complicated environment with a lot of moving parts. To set the scene again. My classwork at the iSchool prevented me from attending trial, btw, my theory of school has always been that you may not correctly complete all the homework and you certainly won’t have time to do all the reading, but never never never miss class, you know? It’s my argument, again not having attended the trial—either the Law School guy’s sentencing in state court or the pregnant professor’s case in the federal courthouse. It’s my argument that the federal hearing was actually a trial of our very Longhorn Nation. We didn’t come up short either, regardless of the big punitive verdict. This is basically being pulled straight out of my ass—but <i>may</i> be true. It’s my argument that what the jury <i>really</i> did not like and what led to a few mil in damages against us was not how the plaintiff’s tenure application was handled but instead tenure in academia. It can be pretty ugly, actually. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Anyway, as an informaticist, or informatician, whatever my degree means, one likes the idea that researchers at the iSchool are studying what is going on with the tech bros/assholes. Whether people identify as UX or whatever, whether the profs are CRT folks like Professor Smith or Cracker Theory guys like Professor Hauser. Hopefully in Big Tech’s rush for faster internet speeds and billions in revenues, someone from the outside, at the School of Information actually, is taking a skeptical look and holding the bros/assholes to account. Even if the people holding the tech bros/assholes to account are tech bros or tech assholes themselves. Academia is supposed to be about best practices and new ideas and that’s part of the argument in favor of tenure, sure. But there is no system besides police traffic stops in Southern states that is potentially more contentious and more likely to lead to decisions that are capricious or based upon race or gender than tenure, and are not at all related to merit. But are supposed to be all about merit. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The pregnant plaintiff’s evidence included a list of ten <i>male</i> instructors in the College of Engineering, that’s my memory of scanning the file in the clerk’s office, each of the 10 guys who was promoted was an assistant professor like the plaintiff and, for that matter, like Professors Smith and Hauser who were recently my instructors in the iSchool and must be headed to their own tenure votes soon. To set the scene again. The presumed quest for all tenure-track assistant professors is <i>tenure</i>, right, which represents prestige but can come at a cost. So, like, the 10 examples from the College of Engineering used in federal court were all guys and they were all given tenure and promoted to <i>associate professor</i>, apparently with then-Dean Wood’s recommendation to President Fenves who made the final call. The plaintiff’s ace in the hole was a <i>female</i> assistant engineering professor whose circumstances were similar to those of the plaintiff but who was <i>not</i> pregnant and who got tenure like the 10 guys. It would seem like an open and shut case, right? But there’s a more important factor that is <i>not</i> gender-based or pregnancy-related and may have had more influence in President Fenves’ decision, money. <i>Hello!</i> How much research funding that a member of faculty brings to the university, from industry or government or whoever. To study a particular topic or scientific process or whatever. Or to pursue “pure research,” whatever that may mean. In the case of the female assistant engineering professor who got tenure, unlike the pregnant Dr. Nikolova, also of the School of Engineering, who did not. The successful female researcher apparently had <i>more funding</i>, from commercial sources or whatever, it’s unclear from the paperwork in the U.S. Courthouse and her lawyer isn’t talking, not to repeat myself. The pregnant professor whose $ was less, had more $ from <i>old school</i> sources too, is that possible? That was my impression looking at the file. Also entered as evidence was a tool used by President Fenves when evaluating assistant professors for tenure, a numbered list of the most important factors for the then-President who is a science guy btw, a chemist, not to repeat myself again. To assist him in his deliberations. Number 1 was <i>research dollars</i> that the assistant professor was bringing to Forty Acres, from the federal government or private industry or whoever. <i>Number 2</i> was the assistant prof’s teaching skill. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">You do the math. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Which brings us back to Assistant Professor Hauser who failed me in coding. His value to the University of Texas is not that he’s a good teacher. In my experience Elliott Hauser had an okay-at-best didactic thing going on and in person was pretty fucking self-obsessed but that’s tech people in general, right, not to stereotype or be a bigot. He’ll fit right in, in Austin, <i>shit.</i> More important to the University of Texas is that Professor Hauser has the potential to bring money to campus and that, believe me, is a good thing. That we in the Longhorn Nation should all be willing to sacrifice for, some of us more than others, not to sound self-sacrificing or anything. That’s<i> </i>reason to cut him some slack even though he’s a cracker from North Carolina or Virginia or wherever, which is the Cracker South actually, unlike Texas which is the Cracker South<i>west</i>. If this were for example an essay for class, that would be my analysis. And Elliott Hauser actually makes UT look good in one respect. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">His bullshit, the microaggressions and all that, he must have learned at UNC at Wherever because he hasn’t been at Forty Acres long enough to pick up bad habits. <i>Crackers are raised not born</i>, that would be my whole hypothesis, actually, as seen through a critical race lens. This guy didn’t learn to be a peckerwood at Forty Acres because it’s hard to believe that any tenure-track faculty member in touchy-feely Austin, Texas, would believe they could get away with it. River City isn’t perfect but at least our crackers know how to camouflage and are better at blending in. After class one day one of the other students alerted me that Dr. Hauser had also attached links on his <i>private website</i> to iSchool homework that some of us had turned in, with our names on the links and without asking students for permission. <i>Hello!</i> You can’t do that. So, like, looking at his website he even <i>had my work</i> on it, even though he failed me as a substandard student, his private website showing my work and my first name and everyone else’s <i>full names</i>. “I didn’t give permission for that,” said the guy who told me, whose work was also posted online by Dr. Dickwad. True that.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Like we were recommending Elliott Hauser as an instructor, or whatever, like a customer testimonial. Which for me—recommending this professor would be a not-in-this-lifetime event, actually. But nobody is that dumb. No faculty member at a major American university doesn’t know about student privacy rights, especially someone who has spent years on major campuses to get a PhD. Especially a guy whose specialty is <i>information science</i>, Jesus, where you have to do privacy training. So, like, this guy is a <i>hustler</i>, not that there’s anything wrong with that, as well as a whanker as the Brits like to say, suffice it to say that Dr. Dickwad is a dick. That was my big takeaway from <i>Introduction to Programming</i> with Professor Elliott Hauser actually, we won’t get into it here. Anyway, it’s my argument that even without ethics Elliott Hauser is still an important addition to our Longhorn Nation. Dr. Hauser’s value is not research money per se but it’s twin, intellectual property, IP, patents that UT will own and that generate an income stream in the future. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">In the case of Professor Assbite that moneymaker is his flawed but potentially <i>oh-so-valuable</i> platform for teaching Python, <i>trinket</i>, which is actually a clever idea, POS that it may be in practice. If not for that possibility, that <i>trinket </i>can be made to work correctly, my attitude would be kick his cracker ass to the curb, as an act of Longhorn justice. But suppose <i>trinket</i> just needs fine-tuning? Further work, you might say. And, frankly, UT has bigger issues than race. Like money. Professor Hauser may get a lot out of it, potentially, although he may already have signed over his patents or whatever to UT. All these graduate students—me included—troubleshooting his invention. For a good cause actually, the platform<i> </i>may be a good thing even if Elliott Hauser is a cockbite, that is my whole argument really. Grad students are like lab rats in that respect at a major research school where we are invaluable overall but on an individual level totally powerless. Especially the kids from Asia who are paying <i>a lot of money</i> to be here and who are generally very good students. And who will put in the hours that maybe Texas kids, urban-grown, or country-raised young people, from Pisspot, Texas or wherever—from Shithole, in Shithole County, up in the Panhandle, will not.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">After graduating from Shithole High, back in the day, some kids may prefer to spend the night drinking on 6<sup>th</sup> Street or in the sack trying positions with Courtney, or Colt, as the case may be. But the graduate students, who very often from overseas, are different. Whether the foreign student is from India, the People’s Republic or Turkmenistan, he or she can be a valuable addition to Forty Acres because they’ll <i>do the work</i>. And pay high tuition. My guess, you can’t really quantify this but just, you know, walking around campus? Just running the numbers in a back-of-the-envelope calculation? Just moving across Forty Acres on foot one day, developing my Longhorn walk and all that, taking an owner’s view of the real estate, so to speak. no matter how little my piece of UT may be. No longer just a visitor but now a full-fledged member of the Longhorn Nation? Others may disagree but <i>my guess</i> is that Asians provide about one-quarter of the brain power on campus, maybe one-third. Just looking around and pulling a number out of my ass, you know? Asians have practically <i>no power</i> on campus. There are no Asian deans for example. So, like, it’s not all about brain power, it’s about <i>money </i>too and that can have a big influence on teaching. And on tenure.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">A professor at the iSchool told me that some of the major private research schools in the U.S., including the usual Ivy League suspects, out on the East Coast, require faculty members to have a certain number of <i>thousands of dollars of research funding for each square foot of the professor’s office</i> space. It’s not just publish or perish anymore. Bring in research money or you may not get tenure or you won’t keep it. This is not new but it’s an expanding practice and may need to expand more here at Forty Acres. Good Longhorns need to be all about funding, actually. That would be my whole point.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">THE WARRANT OFFICER’S WIFE</span></i></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"> And frankly there may have been good reason for <i>trinket</i> being a piece of shit, Professor Hauser was creating something, to give him the credit he deserves. He was building a business and a platform to teach coding, piece of shit though it may be, not to repeat myself or to show malice. Patience is especially a virtue in coding unlike in health care where we prefer speed of response. In tech even more than in other spheres of endeavor, the idea may not work the first time, or even the 33<sup>rd</sup> time, there’s a lot of problem-solving and many iterations. So, like, Professor Hauser suggested that the required <i>matplotlib</i> would perform better on the <i>proprietary</i> version of <i>trinket</i>, in other words by me paying a few dollars for a more sophisticated version of his program, not the free one used in class. During these last weeks of the semester paying a few dollars a month for a subscription to <i>trinket-plus</i> or whatever seemed like the route of least resistance. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The<i> proprietary </i>version didn’t work any better with <i>matplotlib </i>than the free one. Proprietary <i>trinket</i> also crashed when any attempt was made to add the required menu of choices. Professor Hauser could have been fucking with me intentionally, of course, not to sound all bigoted or anything but going by <i>history</i>, you know, and being analytical, as an informatician. There’s no reason to believe white people are playing any straighter post-Reconstruction than pre-Appomattox, you feel me, that’s my take on history and as someone who went to segregated history as a child. Professor Hauser knew that the subject of my project was race at UT and sabotaged it was one possibility, remember what Ms. Delco said? Far-fetched but not impossible. The more likely reason was error in his code. The platform didn’t work properly. Regardless, it was suddenly the end of the semester, you feel me, having given the old college try, and all, my decision was to write Python for the project as if it did work on <i>trinket,</i> which it did not, and which at that point was not my problem anymore. Eventually, after 16 weeks, turn-your-work-in-and-call-it-a-semester becomes my mantra. My tuition at UT is reasonable but it’s still a lot of money and it is not my responsibility to fix technology for class. If the syllabus says that you can do this or that on the platform, you need to be able to do this or that. And it was at that point, at that critical moment in my education, a <i>mistake in judgment</i> may have been made, by me. My only excuse is that it was a whole lotta fun. If there is such a thing as undergraduate humor, there’s also <i>graduate student humor</i> which is higher level and more refined, right? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Not necessarily. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, in a video presentation that was also required for the final project in Professor Hauser’s class, honesty was called for and that included criticism of <i>trinket </i>as a platform for data presentations. Saying that it didn’t work as advertised, motherfucker, without the motherfucker part. Saying that <i>trinket</i> was a piece of shit without saying the piece of shit part. That was the gist of my presentation, yeah. You couldn’t make a good pie chart and <i>nursing loves pie charts</i>. Hello! What brought me to the School of Information in the first place, actually, was <i>data presentation</i>, so it was a big deal, yeah. Indeed in my humble heading-to-the-door opinion, if a platform can’t do that, it’s no good to me or maybe anyone else. At some point in my presentation the words “fucked up” or “fuck up” <i>may</i> <i>have been uttered</i>, as non-collegial as that may sound. Professor Hauser’s name was <i>not</i> used in vain, rest assured, even though he seemed like kind of a cockbite tech bro asshole, you know? Not to be judgmental. My “fucked-up” was directed at the <i>Cosmos </i>generally and at <i>trinket</i> specifically but not at its Creator. That’s part of the complexity of being a Longhorn actually, at Forty Acres one can be a cracker <i>and </i>a Creator, a perp and a visionary, not to go all metaphysical. The iSchool would have my back on this one, too, that was my feeling at the time of the final presentation. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">“You’re allowed one f-bomb per semester,” an instructor had told us during first semester at the School of Information. He said it on Zoom at the height of the pandemic when temperatures were running high, so to speak. The prof said that as graduate students we got one free f-bomb per course and the rule has not been rescinded to my knowledge or if it has, nobody told me. And it’s largely been my experience in the iSchool, actually, personally letting loose once in a while over these four semesters but careful not to repeat it in the same class. And never directed at people, instead at issues or unfortunate facts. Call me noble if you will. Describing <i>trinket </i>as a POS, not Elliott Hauser as a peckerwood. Personally, speaking as a black man who has reached a certain age in the American South and attained a certain level of wisdom, an elder of the African American tribe you could say, all my differences with white people involve <i>issues not personalities</i>. This was not about crackers per se because in Austin there’s not enough time in the day to go down that well-trodden path. It was about my education which is very very very important, if only to me.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, returning from Christmas vacation, after soaking up some needed rays on Mexican sand? Pacific side not Cozumel like the Law School guy who got probation, not that that’s important here. Dean Meyer’s office sent me an official notice. It turned out that Professor Hauser had dropped a f-bomb of his own, as in a failing grade. Which suddenly put my degree at risk, not to go all dramatic like an undergraduate. In grad school you’re expected to have <i>some life skills</i> and not turn into a complete sniveling punk just because something bad happens to you, like a F in class. A fairly high percentage of my classmates may own cats, and between classes they may like to talk about knitting or crocheting or whatever, and are hoping for jobs as children’s librarians, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have big ovaries and haven’t seen some shit in their day. Before they decided to go to Library School. To set the scene. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, at first Dean Meyer told me that he had no authority to override an instructor’s grade, it was another aspect of faculty privilege or whatever, like tenure one supposes. Which was not true but did not upset me because there’s a lot of lying of campus, it’s like in summer camp back as a kid, if your parents had the money to send you to camp, which mine did not but white kids told me about later, and the camp staff told you that you were going to do one thing, to get you on the bus, and it turned out you were going to do something completely different? The iSchool offered to let me redo my final project on a platform other than <i>trinket</i>, meaning that Professor Hauser’s invention did not work properly, an offer which was rejected by me. As a matter of practicality alone, it didn’t seem like a good idea to begin my last semester working on a project from the <i>prior semester</i>, especially when the issue was that the university’s software did not worked properly the first time. Next Dean Meyer offered me a <i>C+</i> which he knew was still a failing grade, that he thought was unknown to me. It was an opening bid of a hand of poker and he bluffed, there’s actually a lot of negotiation in academia but my fundamental policy is not to trust white people and that gets me past most opening moves. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">My theory of the education offered by UT is that there is actually a certain amount of administrative bullshit included <i>intentionally </i>in the program, as part of the master’s or PhD or whatever. The question being asked by the University of Texas Regents is, so to speak, can this student successfully navigate a complex system like the School of Information? Which is a completely valid question, it seems to me, even as a student, in higher education we are there to learn to deal with people unlike ourselves. That’s part of the curriculum whether it’s on the syllabus or not. It would be a lot more useful piece of information if that was pointed out at the beginning of studies rather than last semester, be that as it may. In any case a student is only allowed to fail two classes and remain in the program, in other words iSchool at Forty Acres is a <i>two-strike</i> environment. Anything less that a B is a F, not to repeat myself, and you only get two of those over the whole two years or you’re out <i>The black man bites the dust</i>, in other words, not to sound overly dramatic. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Professor Hauser gave me a D- which was kind of overkill in my modest opinion. A C+ would have meant the same thing, and would have been less suspicious. If one were a suspicious Negro, unlike me. In any case that’s where it got interesting. What pulled me through was Ms. Delco’s warning. Also, having dealt with white people in the past, like my entire life actually, back to segregated schooling as a child. Race & color is a minefield everywhere in America but it’s more of a minefield where it has not been addressed, a category that includes the University of Texas at Austin although Forty Acres has gotten a lot better. That would be my thesis if this were a reflection for class. My feeling is that racism is not about skin color, btw, it’s about corruption—and unmerited advancement. Those are the real issues and include tenure promotions at public universities that only go to white people, which is a kind of cheating too. In that regard, looking over the record of my grades in Professor Hauser’s class, over four months, a couple of things stood out, not having paid any attention earlier, actually, because my coding was competent and my opinions are my own. My interest in my grades came only after being informed of the F. To set the scene. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Two-thirds of the points that the instructor took from me during those 16 weeks were from <i>reflections</i> not writing code. This was a class to learn <i>Python</i>, not to repeat myself, but the white instructor, late of the University of North Carolina at Wherever, and Duke University before that, didn’t like my world view or my impressions of the class or my concerns about race in high tech, which is Austin’s principal business, actually, let me tell you what it’s like. You can be minding your own black business, in the Live Music Capital of the World, humming a tune from Beyonce and walking a trail downtown, along the banks of the mighty Colorado, and who should you meet? A <i>cracker</i>. Or a tech bro which can be the same thing. That’s life in River City and has been for a while. If you asked me for my back of the envelope calculation, as an informaticist or informatician or whatever, in Austin one-third of the population are obligate crackers, one-third are opportunistic crackers, depending on the circumstances, and one-third of the white population is mostly okay but are mostly found out on the lake.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">If you don’t have an opinion on the tech industry in ATX it’s because you don’t have a pulse. That is said as someone who has some feelings about tech assholes, to be honest, but who has way too much sense to write the words tech asshole in a paper that is going to be <i>graded by a tech asshole</i>. Give me some credit, please. At one point early in the semester Dr. Hauser asked for 300 to 500 word about how the class was progressing. My feeling was that things seemed disorganized. This “reflection,” as it’s called at the iSchool, included a suggestion that the instructor receive diversity training, after our encounters in the building. Both observations were my call because <i>it was my reflection</i>, not his. On another level, the instructor also needed to know that this wasn’t Duke anymore, or UNC at Wherever. At Forty Acres there is a tradition of speaking up. Although that was not explicitly part of my paper either, it was my subliminal message. Things at UT are different than in Virginia or N.C., or wherever, where they may still lash niggers, who knows, you’re not in North Carolina anymore motherfucker, without writing the “motherfucker” part. Call me noble if you will. Forty Acres is not perfect but it’s better than that. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">And paying these tens of thousands of dollars for my coursework, which has been worth every dollar, btw, it was still my right to point out shortcomings in the course construction, so to speak. Especially if that’s what the instructor has just asked the class to do, to offer a critique. You may ask, well, were you trying to provoke this guy? Perish the thought. Elliott Hauser PhD wouldn’t even be on my list of<i> people worth provoking</i>. My provocation preference, living in ATX, is APD. And the occasional Department of Public Safety trooper if the opportunity presents itself but the DPS guys and girls are better-trained than the local pigs and harder to bait. If you asked me, “Who do you most like fucking with?” Elliott Hauser wouldn’t even be ranked. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">But the rule among my people, taught during my upbringing at least, as kids back in the day, was to hold white people’s feet to the fire. My first NAACP membership was age five. <i>Don’t let Caucasians get away with anything </i>was my mother’s mantra. Anyway, he graded me 5 points out of 20 for that, the reflection that mentioned diversity training, me trying to pull his chain maybe just a little but not, like, <i>big time</i>, or not like he deserved. Again, call me noble if you will. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">On another reflection, worth 50 points, he asked for our thoughts about potential diversity challenges in the coding world. Grading my response, Dr. Dickwad wrote on the grading rubric that my life experience in an industry—health care—<i>full of racial inequalities</i>, well, he wrote that my fear that the coding world would be similar was misplaced. “Coding while black” <i>was </i>in my paper, too, about the possible dangers in the white world of high tech being probably not very different from any other sphere of employment in the U.S., actually. It was my argument that there was no reason to believe that the coding world is any different than anywhere else, and was probably worse in terms of diversity. Which is what the stats indicate, btw. Professor Hauser didn’t have to believe it but he did have to <i>respect</i> a different view than his own. Which he did not. For this reflection, me <i>not </i>pulling his chain even a <i>little</i>, although he deserved it, he gave me 30 points out of 50—a D which, as mentioned above, is a F in the School of Information. Grading my thoughts as wrong, literally. That’s what you call a cracker in my world, although my mother taught me to use cracker and peckerwood interchangeably. This peckerwood failed me for not sharing a white instructor’s view of the world. You couldn’t make it up. He wrote in the margin that my personal experience of racism was “irrelevant” to viewing the coding world, that’s what he put on the grading rubric, “Irrelevant.” If you don’t want to know what students think, <i>don’t ask</i>. That would be my suggestion, it’s grad school not high school. So, like, this was not an isolated instance either, not to carry tales from Forty Acres, not to talk out of school, but apparently some instructors value their own <i>academic freedom </i>more than they value freedom for the student. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">In another class, “Data Storytelling,” taken that same Semester From Hell, my third at the iSchool, my experience went further south, as in Antebellum South. Whereas the present term, barreling toward graduation, is the <i>Semester of Liberati</i>on. UT is about to let me loose on the world. My anti-racist toolkit now includes a lot of moves learned at the iSchool actually, thank you, Dean Meyer. So, like, in <i>Data Storytelling</i> we were learning how to make charts and graphs, just like for my final project in Professor Hauser’s class but in <i>Data Storytelling</i> we were using a desktop platform called <i>Tableau</i> instead of code. To set the scene. You may know Tableau, it’s kind of cool. Anyway, this was so <i>not</i> a provocation on my part. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">My preference working with data is finding good datasets and making the correct analysis, not so much what the presentation looks like, not like the pretty graphs that interest the kids in class more than what the graphs themselves show. My take as an older and more experienced student is that what your presentation looks like <i>is</i> important but what’s more important is what the data shows. Substance versus appearance, in other words. So, like, for our <i>midterm</i> project in <i>Data Storytelling</i> we had been told to find a dataset that we felt “passionate about,” literally, that’s what the syllabus said. As “a low-risk opportunity,” that was also what the syllabus said, to give us an opportunity to run with our idea. And this was coming from a young white chick who was the instructor, or at least young to me, herself an iSchool grad. To set the scene. Whose day job was in the oil industry in Houston which meant she was totally <i>sus</i>, as in suspect, like the Brits say, from the start, not to be judgmental but if viewed clearly through a racial justice lens. Which includes environmental racism that her employer, Exxon Mobil or whoever, is probably up to its corporate neck in. To set the scene again. Because blacks and Latinos are on the receiving end of pollution more often than whites who make the mess in the first place. Not to generalize or anything. So, like, my datasets for the midterm project in this class, <i>Data Storytelling</i>, were all obtained from the City of Austin and consisted of a file of police traffic stops and profiling numbers by race, actually. Humming a tune from Beyonce, working the data up into a nice little PowerPoint, something that reflected my passions as a Negro, you could say. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Complete with a voiceover that pointed out the large number of stops in which the officer “forgot” to record the race of the driver stopped. Which is a common problem with APD <i>puercos</i>, without calling them <i>puercos</i>, but describing them subliminally as <i>puercos</i>based upon their behavior, because between you and me these pigs “forget” a lot to submit complete data on traffic stops, that was my whole point in the PowerPoint. So, like, the voiceover sounded good <i>to me</i>, as a member of the colored peoples of the earth. But the <i>Data Storytelling </i>instructor, the white chick mentioned above, she <i>emailed me</i> that she did not like my “use of color” in the presentation and she demanded a meeting to change my presentation or, she told me, this is no shit, she would give me—these were her exact words, “a poor grade.” Because of my “use of color,” no shit, not to repeat myself. Not so much of a low-risk opportunity after all, huh? That’s Forty Acres. There are still crackers and crackerettes on campus, even at the highly-ranked School of Information, and you may have to navigate rough seas as a minority student. The Lone Star State is still the South, just like the Carolinas or Virginia, as a black student you forget that fact only at <i>great risk </i>to your academic success. <i>Danger may lurk in the gradebook</i>. This was my administrative handicap, imposed by the UT Regents, so to speak, included as part of my education, a hoop to jump through, in order to make me better prepared to survive in the “real world,” wherever that may be. It did make me stronger but suppose it hadn’t? Luckily for me, having pulled on my big girl panties once or twice before, Professor Hauser’s bullshit and the bullshit of the <i>Data Storytelling</i> instructor wasn’t a big deal. But there are no half measures for black people. You have to get on crackers like a hound dog at hunting time, as Uncle Jed used to say in <i>The Beverly Hillbillies</i>, back in the day, on black and white television. But if you’re a kid who has come to the School of Information just out of your bachelor’s program for example, it could be traumatic, no? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">My final reflection for Professor Hauser was supposed to be a “cultural immersion” assignment, about diversity, we had to go to an online meet-up of new coders and write about the experience. So far, so good. With an eye towards diversity, actually, the professor said. He did not grade that assignment at all, as in zero. That was my grade, zero. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">It was Professor Hauser’s loss anyway if one looks thru the lens of <i>karma</i>, which is a big part of life here in the Live Music Capital of the World. One likes to stay on the right side of the dope-smoking angels, you feel me, in River City. So, like, this final reflection for Professor Dickwad included my only good comments about <i>Introduction to Programming,</i>actually, beside Python itself. Which is a wonderful thing and a beautiful invention, not to go all nerdy or anything. So, like, you don’t have to be friends with people who are in your class, that would be my whole point. Even the instructor. You don’t have to like him or her. You can still <i>learn to code</i> because that’s what Python allows you to do. It’s <i>easy</i>, which is incredibly powerful. So, like, the meet-up for my last reflection was online, maybe 15 people, most of them in Austin or S.A., and all coders. To set the scene.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, a half dozen were women, which surprised me, a black guy and a black chick were included in the group. A couple of Latinos and Asians but the majority white guys, from young striving middle class to retired engineering types looking for a second career. Predominantly but <i>not exclusively</i> Caucasian, as you might expect in the coding world. It was more diverse, actually, than my expectation. My earlier reflection about coding-while-black was wrong in this case or kind of wrong in this case. <i>Potentially wrong</i>, let’s say, because the statistics for the tech world are not good. These were mostly entry-level programmers, like me, maybe a little more advanced, many of them still learning Python or Javascript or whatever and liking it and chatting in breakout rooms one Saturday morning about the profession and the booming Austin tech market. The Silicon Prairie and all that. How to learn to code and how to get a job. That’s what people were talking about. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">There was a white chick, btw, who was a waitress in San Antonio before she went to a UT coding camp or wherever and who saw programming as a way into the middle class. That’s what a skill can do for you, btw, her story was moving actually and that’s coming from one of the least sentimental people in the world. She was literally <i>bettering herself</i> at Forty Acres, or wherever, just as a lot of us are trying to do. In one of my break-out rooms there was also a Brit, an older guy, not as old as me but old enough, maybe mid-40s, he was old enough to have the experience to generalize about the high tech world that the rest of us were trying to enter. He was participating in the meetup as a facilitator, not a beginner This older guy had worked in the Midwest somewhere and was now in ATX, he was apparently a well-established programmer, in other words, at least that’s how he seemed on Zoom, believe what you will. He was a tech guy who knew some of the ins and outs of the software world. Not a tech bro exactly, more a “tech daddy,” if there is such an expression, because he was there to help. He said that coding <i>is</i> a meritocracy, which is what you hear from a lot of coders too. You can either write the code or you cannot, it’s either an efficient program or it’s not, there’s a lot of <i>machismo</i> actually, even from the chicks. To set the scene again. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">But <i>getting the job</i> is all about <i>who you know</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">That’s what this experienced Brit said. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">That may also be why minorities fail or fall behind the curve in technology. You have to be part of what is basically a White Network to get the gig, as seen through the CRT lens that the Governors don’t like but seems super useful to me. Your skill set is meaningless if you don’t get a chance to use it, because you’re dealing with tech bros or tech assholes, as the case may be. The Brit engineer didn’t say the tech bros part, that was me, but he might as well. For that reflection, my account of the importance of the meetup, what Professor Hauser called in the syllabus “Cultural Immersion,” he gave me <i>zero</i>, thank you very much. And this was <i>before </i>he graded my final project which reached the conclusion that <i>trinket</i>was kind of a POS and certainly did not perform as advertised. Not to sound overly sensitive but as someone who has lived to a gray age with my <i>huevos</i> unbroken, and who knows Massah’s ways and should not have been surprised. For the project he graded me 16 out of 60, not to unduly rag the professor or accuse him of unfairness or mention that hateful word—just as bad as nigger, actually. But a word that somehow falls so softly upon my ear? <i>Cracker.</i> Throughout this racial ordeal at Forty Acres,however, my composure remained intact and my cool was cool, like, well, a Black Martyr? Never said the c-word directly to the c-word but thought it in lecture, over the course of 16 weeks, maybe a couple of times. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">If you wonder why some minority students may not have good outcomes, unlike many whites, that is <i>part </i>of the reason, if one looks once again through the lens of critical race theory. One has to account for crackers. Not for revenge because it’s my responsibility as an information scientist, not to sugar coat but to call faux-liberal white guys and white girls out <i>scientifically</i>. Like, motherfucker, your data is bad, or motherfucker your code does not work, without saying the motherfucker part. A white instructor can undermine a student of color subtly, not on multiple choice tests or objective measures, but on <i>subjective</i> content like reflections. Where there’s no right answer and he or she—the white guy or white girl teaching the class, in this case Assistant Professor Elliott Hauser, late of the University of North Carolina at Wherever, and Duke before that, and now tenure-track faculty of the School of Information at Forty Acres. He can just say he didn’t like your work. Even if it’s a coding class. Or he doesn’t agree with the student’s opinion, literally, even if that’s not what the class is about or it’s not his field. It’s completely subjective. It is whatever the cracker instructor says it is. She doesn’t like your “use of color,” for example, even though the syllabus says you’re free to do what you want. That’s faculty privilege too. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, my bachelor’s is from Medical Branch and having worked in <i>a few hospitals</i>over the years and talked to <i>a lot of nursing students</i> in this white-female dominated profession, not that there’s anything wrong with that. The greatest fear of being washed out of any kind of nursing program may not be theory but instead <i>performing skills</i>. For a minority student the danger is not always in the classroom. In class, grading is mostly objective—you either picked the right answer, generally on a multiple-choice test, or you did not. In nursing education, btw, at least back in the day. It was often some version of the <i>same</i> <i>question</i>. What patient would you see first? You’re given some facts about the conditions of Patients A, B, C & D, or whoever, you’re starting your shift, and which patient do you see first? That kind of thing. In the hospital where you do your <i>clinical practice</i>, however, under the instructor’s watchful eye, it’s a different kind of evaluation altogether and almost purely subjective. The instructor can just say, “I didn’t like the way you took care of that patient,” and you’re toast. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">There may be nothing you can do, just as with Professor Hauser. Or the instructor can find a thread to pick at and the result is the unraveling of your healthcare career. A nursing instructor can set standards that a given student cannot pass, even if Florence Nightingale couldn’t pass either. Or the instructor can say, “You just don’t have the right stuff,” in other words you’re washed out in <i>clinicals</i> not the classroom. A Nigerian-American nursing student at Forty Acres—an African American female in other words—gave me an example a few years ago of what this subjective standard means in practice and this is my <i>third best Longhorn story</i>, just to alert you ahead of time. This Nigerian-American shared with me <i>her experience</i> of UT <i>as a black woman</i>. It’s ugly. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">But it’s funny too. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, first let me say that this young woman was no bomb-thrower or radical. She wasn’t looking for trouble. Her husband was a U.S. Army helicopter pilot, a warrant officer like a lot of the guys who fly choppers, stationed up the road at Ft. Hood, actually. While she studied nursing at Forty Acres. To set the scene. We met at a nursing home that employed us both for a while on weekends, here in this bucolic River City, south of the river although that’s not important here. Both she and her husband bought into the whole American dream <i>big time. </i>And power to them if that’s what they wanted, which it apparently was. White people should embrace recently-arrived black people more, from the Caribbean and from Africa, because they still believe things about America that slave descendants like my family stopped believing when the chains came out. Nigerians especially, this is a stereotype but it’s stereotypically true—<i>in my experience</i>. Nigerians are just like Chinese in one important respect. They’re all about the education. An attitude that the <i>rest of us</i> could learn from, actually. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, this Nigerian-American chick was a Longhorn-in-training you could say, close to the end of her studies like me now, and wanted to work NICU, not that that’s important here either. One quiet night at the nurses station, at the nursing home, with a faint aroma of pee in the air, not because the patients were poorly cared-for but because not everyone always made it to the toilet in time. To set the scene. So, like, this Nigerian chick and me had <i>wiped booties together</i> which is a particularly <i>strong bond </i>between nurses and she trusted me. So, like, she was the one who first told me about a big difference between how white and how black female nursing students were treated at Forty Acres, at the clinical site for school, which was a local hospital. This is ugly, not to repeat myself and it’s really funny too. Or <i>you</i> would have laughed if you were there when this black lady Longhorn was talking.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, she said that during a messy procedure or surgery or whatever, at the hospital that was the clinical site for her class, a white female nursing student went into a big dramatic <i>fainting scene</i>, back of her hand to her forehead and all that, like Miss Ann, as my mother used to say. Or like Miss Scarlet or whoever in <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, you know? That level of drama, slumping to the floor, or whatever, unconscious or <i>presumably unconscious</i>, like, yes, a damn drama queen. She did not say that but that is the biggest part of the drama queen population, fyi, white girls, in my opinion, speaking as a budding data guy who is surrounded by white women at work and who has run a few back-of-the-envelope calculations, so to speak. At the nursing station my Nigerian-American colleague did a pantomime of a delicate fainting white girl, it was pretty good actually and is beyond my ability to mimic here. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, they gave the white lady Longhorn who fainted smelling salts, or whatever, to revive her delicate ass, or whatever, but that was only the <i>lead-in</i> to this black chick’s Forty Acres tale. After the fainting scene, the now-revived white girl got hugs and kisses and pats on the back from the instructor and from the other students. Which seemed to piss off this Nigerian-American chick just a tad, you know why? Because a <i>black female nursing student</i> who became ill during a procedure got a write-up and a threat of a failing grade. That was what it was like with Professor Hauser. That’s how you sabotage a minority student’s education, actually. Passing a course is not only about what questions you answered correctly on the test or even code that works. In a coding<i> </i>class he failed me over my view of the world. As a black man <i>twice his age, </i>not that there’s anything wrong with that, you’re penalized for having a different view of how the world works than the Elliott Hausers who <i>run</i> the world, actually, if one looks through a CRT lens, not to repeat myself. <i>Fuck this peckerwood</i> was my gut reaction to the failing grade but as an information scientist there was <i>more research to do</i> before making a final call if he was a cracker or not. The F grade was not because of my code, just to repeat, it was because of my reflections. So, like, almost exactly 100 of 150 points that the motherfucker subtracted over the course of the semester were related to my views of the world. In a subjective grading environment or on a subjective assignment an instructor can do pretty much what the fuck he or she wants to do. That’s academic privilege too, like tenure, apparently. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Still, as a Longhorn, as an almost-official member of the <i>UT community</i>, the Longhorn Nation and all that, like the Freemasons or La Cosa Nostra, not to be judgmental. One likes to <i>forgive</i> Longhorn sins and focus instead on Longhorn virtue and <i>Longhorn lore</i>. If one can. To find a realm other than microaggressions or meth production, which seemed okay to me at the time, not to repeat myself, the meth part. Forty Acres is a wonderful school that, at the same time, is capable of some pretty grievous shit, to individuals and to society. As a Longhorn it’s important to keep that risk in mind, the danger of sin as well as the glory of achievement. Just as much as the great research is the potential for <i>great wrong</i>, not to go all Biblical or anything. But you don’t want to ignore the risk of things <i>going south </i>at Forty Acres, for any number of reasons, even while one basks in the aura of being a new Longhorn. Remember what Ms. Delco said, that would be my whole point. And all’s well that ends well, right? All three of my professors this semester, my last, are white guys, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Each of them has been completely cool and intellectually honest. And, God forbid at the iSchool, helpful.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">This semester’s instructors view their role as helping me to articulate my rap, or my experience, not telling me what to say. One of my classes is in the Law School and the instructor, Bryan Jones, is a former Longhorn swimmer and he’s a guy who probably has far different views of the world than my own. He has insisted in rigor in my opinions but has not told me what to say. That’s not his call and he knows it, without us getting into a confrontation. Bryan Jones is College of Engineering too, btw, like some of the bad guys, yet he’s been completely cool, a lot of white Longhorn athletes are cool, even the ones with engineering degrees are not <i>all bad</i> but as a matter of environmental justice, and environmental survival, a lot of these guys and girls will be smoking their last cigarette come the revolution. Not to be judgmental.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Not Professor Jones. He is <i>electrical</i> engineering anyway, who rank high my esteem because they’re not usually whackjobs like the mechanical guys or girls or the petroleum/chemical people. The electrical engineers invented the cell phone technology that allows us to catch bad cops on camera, actually. To set the scene. Not everybody in the College of Engineering deserves a blindfold and a last cigarette, or joint, but a pretty high percentage, yeah. If you want to know my whole big Longhorn College of Engineering theory, the electrical guys and girls are all right but it’s downhill from there. Having met, like, five or six cool white guys in Austin in the last half century, not to sound racist, one is Bryan Jones and another is Lance Hayden, from the School of Information actually, who is one of the readers of my Master’s Report and has also been perfectly okay. Anyway, the mechanical engineering guys and girls are generally not at all introspective, they’re only concerned with torque, or friction or whatever, not to generalize. The civil engineers need to be <i>watched especially closely</i> because they view any big ambitious projects that “tame nature” as good, even when nature doesn’t need to be tamed. That includes the Provost, Dr. Wood, who is reportedly a civil engineer, can’t be bothered to look up her training, frankly. The engineering chick who got tenure when the pregnant Dr. Nikolova did not? She was <i>petroleum </i>engineering, btw, that’s what they don’t tell you at new student orientation, UT is all about petroleum engineering. That’s something they may not have discussed in the federal court trial. At the College of Engineering there are the petroleum guys and girls and then there’s everybody else. What can you say, that’s Forty Acres. It’s scary, actually. Longhorns helped create the petroleum industry, and helped to create our petroleum-based way of life. Not to sound like a wild-eyed graduate student.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">In another one of my classes this semester, <i>Data Wrangling</i>, my instructor is Professor Howison, who is British or Australian by birth, somewhere in the Commonwealth, you know? Completely okay, for a white guy, not to sound racist or condescending. So, like, one day he came into class all excited because he told us that he had just received U.S. citizenship. To set the scene. And my thought at the time was, “<i>You’ll be sor-r-r-y-y-y</i>,” because the black experience of the American dream is different from white people’s, you feel me? If this had been a reflection in Professor Peckerwood’s class, that would have been another failing grade because, in the best tradition of crackers. Dr. Dickhead wants to dictate what black people think. Which is not what brought me to Forty Acres, actually, and which my instructors have <i>mostly</i> understood and respected. The black man’s search is for skills not someone else’s ideology, if one looks through a CRT lens. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">FORTY ACRES</span></i></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"> The institution that is <i>role model</i> for the University of Texas is the University of California. Ten campuses, from UC San Diego to UC Berkeley, research fame <i>and</i> fortune, $46 billion budget, UC used to develop nuclear weapons and actually helped give birth to the Hiroshima bomb, not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s where former Longhorn president Dr. Fenves came from (Berkeley) and where UT System’s old leader, Mark Yudof, went as top dog, to University of California Office of the President (UCOP) in Oakland, called UCOP the same way that CIA is called CIA. To set the scene. </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Mark Yudof was brought to Oakland from Austin by U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein’s </span><i style="font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">husband</i><span style="font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">, who was the longtime chair of the UC Board of Regents. Dianne Feinstein’s </span><i style="font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">father</i><span style="font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> is said to have been one of if not the first Jewish surgeon to receive tenure at UCSF. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Both these guys, Gregg Fenves & Mark Yudof are <i>all about the money</i> which is a good thing in the present context. A lot of money, which the University of Texas actually does have—both at the moment and historically. Ours is the second biggest endowment in the United States and about to be #1, actually. Or so says <i>Bloomberg </i>news. That wealth traces in large part to petrochemical leases, not to repeat myself. Which have allowed UTIMCO to grow rich. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">UT needs <i>more money </i>still, more than the gobs of black gold the university already has<i>, </i>in order to retool and get out<i> </i>of the oil & gas business actually. It’ll be ugly, changing direction, and expensive too. The Lone Star State’s trademark industry, not ranching or whatever, is a dirty business indeed. And UT has known that for a long time. Even decades ago, at the Board for Lease of University Lands, which controls energy exploitation for UT and Texas A&M, out on the range or whatever in West Texas <i>twenty years ago there were already widespread reports of pollution </i>by abandoned wells on UT lands. Indeed, there are two great Texas-sized public health lies that UT has had a share in promoting and that are <i>shameful </i>or <i>mostly shameful</i>, depending on if you’re a Longhorn or not. And both relate to the energy industry. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="line-height: 37.3333px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: medium;">#1 is about what </span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">Texas Monthly </i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: medium;">long ago dubbed “Cancer Alley,” or the “Cancerbelt,” the stretch of Texas beginning with the chemical plants of Victoria or thereabouts, up thru Houston and east to the refinery towns of Texas's Golden Triangle, Beaumont, Port Arthur & Orange, shitholes all, except maybe Beaumont on a good day. May you never have to go. All the way to the border of Louisiana, actually. The State of Texas has promoted the fiction that a high number of cancer cases are just an </span><i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: medium;">aggregated number of individual cases</span></i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: medium;"> that have nothing to do with our defining industry, oil & gas. </span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">Hello!</i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: medium;"> A more realistic take is that there’s a good reason for UT’s Houston campus being a center of oncology excellence, because there’s a lot of cancer around that part of the world. To set the scene. Although UT researchers mostly stop short of condemning our trademark business like they do cigarettes or gun violence. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="line-height: 37.3333px;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: medium;">The second lie hits particularly close to home for us in the Longhorn Nation and is about the same industry but in </span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">West Texas</i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: medium;">. Where there's a lot of fouled water and where there are a lot of damaged natural habitats, btw, our guilt as Longhorns even more striking because water resources have been polluted to pay for our lifestyle at Forty Acres, so to speak. We kind of invented the modern petrochemical industry, right? Not to be judgmental of ourselves.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Or perfected it. Energy extraction. And made a whole hell of a lot of money doing it. Longhorns did. Our role model the University of California claims to have quit its fossil-fuel investment portfolio entirely, while what UT is or is not doing about oil & gas is harder to parse. The press generally won’t tell the truth about UT’s money because oil & gas is a source of media funding too. Which is something we’ll get to shortly, in the information science context. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Anyway, the University of California patented the kind of academic healthcare research institution that UT’s new Dell Medical School wants to be, and make a lot of money doing it, which is actually crucial for Forty Acres to do and should warm Longhorn hearts. Forty Acres needs a lot of money from a non-fossil source and it looks like the Regents have chosen health care to do that, for UT to be a big provider in Texas the same way UC is a big healthcare provider in California. To set the scene again. The good news is that the health care industry doesn’t involve <i>drilling </i>or <i>refining</i>. A good example of the kind of business we want here at Forty Acres comes from UC’s main healthcare campus, in San Francisco, UCSF, where the research is mostly paid for. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">UCSF is Dell Medical School’s role model, not to repeat myself, and is where a lot of Dell faculty come from actually and has been the largest public recipient of National Institutes of Health dollars for, like, the last decade. In part because of good research and in part because Nancy Pelosi is UCSF’s Congressional representative, not that there’s anything wrong with that, a good member of Congress brings home the bacon for his or her district. That's the nature of the job. At UCSF’s Mount Parnassus they could be doing water torture or burning witches at the stake and the NIH would still be providing funding, for UCSF but not for Dell, that is, not yet. While Johns Hopkins is #1 among private schools. To set the scene again. It’s not all about good medicine. UCSF’s researchers get <i>slices of contracts</i> too, teaching is a secondary priority after the “bench-to-bedside” medical innovations and processes that can be worth gold. At Mount Parnassus, which is the name of the original UCSF campus, as is true of <i>some </i>departments at Forty Acres also, the students are there to learn but the professors are not necessarily there to teach. Not that there’s anything wrong with that either, actually. A lot of researchers come to campus to make a buck, in San Francisco & now in Austin, especially thru patents—not patients—and Intellectual Property, like Professor Dickwad at the School of Information. That’s the modern medical research university model, in a nutshell, public or private, the business of medicine you can call it in the Longhorn context. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">One UCSF patent—not a <i>patient</i>—of the kind that UT Dell would <i>love to have</i>—is for a Hepatitis B vaccine, licensed by the University of California back in the day and apparently still making bank today. Because all healthcare workers in the U.S. are required to be vaccinated against Hep B, it’s been worth millions to the UC Regents, good medicine that is good business for the university, that’s the idea but not always the practice. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">UC watchers say that UC <i>claims </i>to have gotten out of fossil fuel investments entirely and moved into tech and health care but is lying and has merely transferred that bucket of investments to <i>private equity firms</i> that continue to invest in non-renewables. <i>Quien sabe</i>? That particular lie is of course also a possibility at the University of Texas Investment Management Company, in the state where the modern oil & gas industry was born and where we are reluctant to stop sucking on the Big Oil titty. UTIMCO says that it’s doing a great job for the Longhorn endowment in non-renewable energy, or whatever, but actually is probably doing something that's about as green as napalm. UTIMCO’s CEO and his deputy made <i>$3 million</i> and <i>$2 million</i>, respectively, in <i>bonuses</i> alone last year, during a time of high oil prices, just like now. What do you think these two guys really want to invest in? Big pay days will be at risk if there’s a switch to an investment strategy that downplays oil & gas. Nobody in Texas wants to endanger this particular <i>money stream</i>, UT is just faking it in other words, because for us in the Longhorn Nation the petrochemical industry is this great <i>big-fat juicy titty</i> to stop sucking on, you know? Not to be crude or profane. Which is where Professor Hauser and tenure comes in yet again. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, my first impression of the iSchool two years ago, being out of the university mix for a while, was that the instructors don’t really teach as much today as back in the day, not to repeat myself. At Forty Acres it soon became clear why. Faculty have demanding responsibilities for research and for bringing in all-important <i>research funding</i>. Even for low-ranking people like assistant professors, teaching may not be a primary goal. So, like, for that reason, arriving at the iSchool during full pandemic, for me this was a big change in <i>instructional pedagogy</i>. The new higher education culture and all that. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">My undergraduate education began at UCLA in <i>1973</i> when slide rules were just going out of style and, equally archaically, students could make big claims on the professor’s time. Today it’s just not like that, at least not at the School of Information. So, like, at the iSchool students are a <i>distraction</i> from the researcher’s other responsibilities. Or so one imagines. Not that there’s anything wrong with that because research is a <i>big deal</i>. On the other hand, at UCLA back in the day the instructors were delighted if you dropped by their offices, even unexpectedly, because it was an indication that you might one day come to class! Today going to see an instructor even during office hours can be like arriving at someone’s house when they’re eating dinner. They don’t want to be interrupted.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Even the low-level guys like Dr. Dickwad of the iSchool. And in this case it’s not the instructor’s fault nor even the university’s. It isn’t Provost Wood’s lack of attention or President Fenves’ mercenary approach to tenure. Or the Regents “just playing games.” What UT provides now at the iSchool and presumably across campus are <i>tools </i>and “road maps” to a graduate education but the students are <i>teaching themselves</i> or teaching <i>each other</i>. Which is pretty cool, actually. An improvement in the learning dynamic from back in the day, when we were <i>taught</i>, not to sound like a dinosaur, considered really Old School, when the student was <i>recipient </i>of an education. There’s been a change in the higher ed playbook in other words that requires more of the student, in a good way. At UT it feels more now as if we’re teaching ourselves, which is kind of empowering, actually, as seen thru a Black Liberation lens. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">It’s no longer possible to complain either, “They’re not teaching me what I want to learn.” At least not in the iSchool because they’re not teaching you so much anymore at all and what you’re learning is what you‘ve chosen to learn. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">At UCLA back in the day we didn’t have the technology except <i>books</i> and an <i>overhead projector</i>, which didn’t always work, not to sound all ancient and Neanderthal or sound deprived, either. Remember chalkboards with white dust all over the professor’s hands? Those were the old days. That’s mostly gone now, except the lonely squeak of dry-erase markers. The hands are still mostly white though. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Today students can find all the resources they need online, or so it is said. That was my impression as a first-year at the School of Information at Forty Acres, in the Year of Our Lord 2020, which was not necessarily a bad thing as long as everyone was on the same page. We’re teaching ourselves. So, like, it was kind of my fault as a non-traditional student, actually, not to blame myself when it’s so much easier to blame someone else? Arriving at Forty Acres after the rules had changed and not knowing about the new instructional plan, you know? Zoom is what exactly, that was my question at the time. We'll teach ourselves or teach each other, really? My first assignment in Applied Statistics was to fix the software that the iSchool was using. And with my learning curve made worse by pandemic. It was all a bit disconcerting, not to cry like a sniveling little bitch.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">In nursing school the instructors were on our asses 24-7, btw, back in the day and presumably still today, instead of ignoring us, only because in health sciences the instructors need to make sure students don’t kill patients. If the patient dies at a student nurse’s hands, for example, that can really spoil the student’s clinical experience. There’s a story you used to hear in the Austin children’s hospital, back in the day, about a Longhorn nursing student, a guy. This would be, like, my #3 or #4 best Longhorn story but there’s a good reason to disqualify it from consideration. But tell it anyway. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, this male nursing student pushed a couple of ounces of <i>tube feeding</i>, thick and gooey stuff like oil, actually, that is intended to go thru a tube into the stomach, where the fluid is broken down by stomach acid? So, like, this idiot Longhorn nursing student put the feeding into a sick kid’s <i>central line</i>, which is like an IV straight into the heart, used for meds, and the patient died. My memory is of hearing that <i>cautionary tale</i> at least a couple of times at work, and told it maybe three or four times myself, you know, shooting the shit at the nurses station on a quiet shift. Maybe the students were coming in the morning and the message we were formulating to give the day nurses if the UT students were coming was watch out? Although as it turned out the story was <i>not true</i> and was apparently invented by graduates of another nursing school who were <i>jealous of the Longhorn Nation</i>. Ain’t that a bitch? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The anecdote almost made it into my top Longhorn stories, the only reason to hold back being that it wasn’t true. Not to be a purist or anything. There are a total of 5 or 6 stories in my repertoire of great UT anecdotes. And Number Five involves Jeffery Hildebrand, the Governor’s money guy. Number Six involves Jenna Bush, daughter of the president. But those come later.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, it wasn’t that way at the School of Information. There was no one showing any particular interest in our academic progress, certainly not Dean Meyer. You couldn’t even get him to stop the security guard from asking black men to show identification to enter the building. No one cared whether you succeeded or not. No one told me starting class during pandemic that we were now expected to learn for ourselves, not to repeat myself. Or better <i>learn</i> <i>among ourselves</i>. Which may not be a bad thing, actually, not to repeat myself, but does need to be a fairly-managed process. Which brings us back to tenure. This is a wonderful opportunity for minorities at Forty Acres and the <i>Republican</i> <i>leadership </i>to bond. Lieutenant Governor Patrick is not the only person to have doubts about faculty privilege and who is getting tenure. Both of two <i>incredibly diverse</i> demographics (black people on one side, and hardcore Republican governors on the other) may actually agree it’s time to send some white liberals to the showers, as seen through a <i>Longhorn team</i> lens. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">A good guess is that the tenure profile at Forty Acres, if anyone bothered to look, includes a high number of white guys who claim to be liberals—radicals even, and are growing beards to prove it. Or tech bros like Dr. Dickless of the iSchool, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Followed closely by white chicks who also claim to be liberals but who mostly want the same things the white guys got before, does that sound racist or misogynistic? The worst thing the Governors can do to undermine The Left in Austin is to look at UT’s system of tenure and report the <i>numbers</i> by race and gender, at this <i>liberal institution</i>, our very own Forty Acres. Dr. Hauser for example may now be getting close to his own tenure vote, to determine if he should be promoted to associate professor or not. While Professor Smith has been threatened with losing her job if she teaches CRT. To set the scene. In other words the white guy’s career progresses while the black female is at risk. That’s a screenplay we’ve all seen before in Hollywood and in life. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Did you know that Governor Patrick is <i>not a Longhorn</i>? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">That makes him a rarity in state government and it’s a good thing. He’s not a member of the Longhorn Nation at all and that may be fortunate. Because the Lieutenant Governor may be <i>right</i> questioning this particular faculty privilege, and not because Critical Race Theory is being taught. Getting rid of some white West Austin Liberal deadwood may be a good thing for blacks, Asians and Latinos, like “thinning the herd” as they called it during pandemic? Surprisingly, if tenure does survive, Professor Hauser is a <i>good candidate</i> for promotion, even though he’s a cracker, late of Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Wherever before that. Professor Smith is also a <i>good candidate</i> because she knows her shit and because her area of interest is race in the algorithms that now rule our lives. Whether you call it critical theory or anything else. But Governor Abbott has yet another take. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Greg Abbott who you could call a <i>lapsed Longhorn</i>, actually, said that tenure should be <i>studied</i> which is potentially even deadlier to liberals than Governor Patrick’s ultimatum. Because we’ll get the number, get the stats on tenure at UT. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Nor can you believe the minorities who do have tenure at Forty Acres when they are called upon to defend the privilege, as they will certainly be called upon to do. These black and brown guys and girls have a <i>vested interest</i> in a system in which they have advanced. That doesn’t mean it’s good for the people of Texas or even good for the university or for minorities overall. The operative question is does tenure help UT to <i>make money</i>, and that never gets asked in public, actually. That’s Austin. It’s a really pretty mercenary place, even if the music is good. Liberals talk a great game but there’s a high b.s. content and sometimes you have to hold your nose because there’s so much stink. Like when Bevo takes a shit? Which is something else they don’t warn you about at new student orientation. With that background, back to Professor Hauser’s class and see how the semester played out. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">In each of my classes there’s been an end-of-semester project designed to put to use everything from the prior 16 weeks. To set the scene. The School of Information is what used to be the School of Library Science, archives and all that—Dewey Decimal and now Mister Google. Archives are still important but databases and UX are probably bigger to this particular faculty, that's my impression as a student. It may be all about data in every faculty everywhere now. Anyway, after almost two years at the iSchool talking to the other students, online at first and lately in person, as pandemic has abated, my classmates are mostly in their twenties or early thirties and there are a lot of white women—plus a lot of overseas Chinese. Folks from South Asia too. The greatest number of my sister and fellow students identified not as black or white or Asian or Native American but as <i>UX, </i>that's what they say when you meet them, "I'm UX." Like it’s a nationality. <i>Hello</i>! The UX abbreviation was literally <i>unknown</i> to me, as in unknown <i>in life</i>, until my first semester at the iSchool. Not to sound backward or ignorant. UX ambitions notwithstanding, many of the students whatever their specialty wanted to learn coding. Like me. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, Professor Hauser offered two choices for our final project for class. We could create a game using Python or alternatively do a <i>data presentation</i> with tables or charts or whatever. The platform for both choices was actually the professor’s own creation—that he in fact <i>owns</i> or part-owns called “trinket” and that is <i>supposed</i> to allow students to run Python and see the output immediately. To set the scene. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">We had used <i>trinket</i> for practice in class and for homework during the second half of the semester and it<i> </i>worked okay but had a few bugs, yeah. <i>trinket </i>was kind of cool but limited. You kind of felt in class, from the prof’s comments, and all, that he preferred that we create an animated <i>game</i> for our final project, which the platform apparently handles well enough. The game was some version of two turtles chasing each other across a computer screen. At the bottom of the syllabus there were links to videos that the instructor himself helped to create and was selling on the subject of—<i>surprise</i>—how to create games using <i>trinket</i>. Which at first seemed kind of dodgy to me, as in <i>unethical</i>, but college instructors require their classes to buy textbooks written by the professor him- or herself all the time, right? That's one of the benefits of advanced age, like mine, you have experience to draw upon. So, like, what’s the difference? What is for sale by the prof is no longer a textbook, like back in the day. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Bottom line there were glitches in <i>trinket</i>, software that did not quite work, and not to be judgmental Professor Hauser copped kind of a “tech bro’” attitude with me. Which got old <i>PDQ</i> which is an Old School expression that means pretty damn quick, that you don’t hear so much anymore. So, like, in <i>Introduction to Programming </i>we were also assigned a few “reflections” that are very popular right now at the School of Information. If you enter the master’s program which in my opinion is a very good program, be prepared to write, even if you’re a UX guy or girl. Maybe a few hundred or 1000 words on assigned topics, what you think about this or that, even in <i>coding</i> class. The student is asked about something being studied, a process or an idea or whatever. Or a problem. My first reflection for Professor Hauser reflected my belief that coding is difficult to learn in part because of the people who teach it. Not writing it in a snarky way at all, the snarkiness would come later in the semester, like Week 10 or Week 11? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">My thesis in that first reflection was that a lot of programmers don't have the best interpersonal skills and may not communicate well. Because they’re in front of a computer screen a lot, one supposes, as in their <i>whole fucking life</i>, without the “whole fucking life” part in my reflection. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">That was <i>my impression</i> of coders, anyway, as prejudiced and ignorant as it may sound here, and as limited as my prior experience in programming, which was little—but not nil. Before enrolling in Dr. Dickhead’s class. Being in Austin you’re in the environment kind of, more and more every day, actually. The population is heavily techie and you have to know how to navigate <i>The Matrix</i> some days in River City, especially at Forty Acres. If you don’t have electronic game the bots will get you. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">But not being suicidal, you feel me, my every effort in this first reflection was to make clear that it was <i>not </i>my belief about this class, <i>Introduction to Programming</i> with Dr. Elliott Hauser, late of the University of North Carolina at Wherever and now a tenure-track assistant professor in the iSchool. Because it wasn’t at that point. <i>That</i> would come later, not to repeat myself. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The professor gave me full credit but my suspicion was that he didn’t like the viewpoint<i> </i>and that was what led to the back-turning bullshit, not to sound all paranoid or anything. This is said as an African American who at that point in my life, as the Fall Semester of 2021 was unfolding in the midst of the pandemic—having lived to the ripe old age 65, actually, people will soon be giving up their seats to me on the bus. The important fact is that my <i>huevos are unbroken</i>, not to brag or anything. And having crumbled a few crackers into my soup through the years, so to speak? And having faked out a few fake liberals too, their heads mounted on my wall to prove the kill. Partly due to <i>successfully reading white people’s body language</i> which is still a must-have skill for people of color in a southern state like this one. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Designing a game for my final project just didn’t interest me. Programming is a tool, a weapon even, in the struggle for Black Liberation. It’s <i>not a game</i>. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">As a healthcare worker my interest, too, what led me to graduate school in the first place and was only reinforced by the pandemic, and what is causing me right now to miss my afternoon nap at <i>age 66</i>, while finishing a Master’s Report that no one will ever read, in order to get the fuck out of here, my love is—<i>data analysis</i>. Data is cool. Writing code to allow two cartoon turtles to move across a fucking computer screen is not. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">And as an African American warrior always on the lookout for a new spear to stick crackers, Professor Hauser unknowingly offered me just that, a second <i>non-gaming option</i> for the final project. We could do a <i>data presentation </i>he said. Mine was going to be about race at the University of Texas, actually, to display Forty Acres’ demographics in a series of charts using Python. The instructor signed off. But <i>trinket, </i>piece of shit that it turned out to be<i>,</i> didn’t work the way that was described in the syllabus. <i>Au contraire, mon ami</i>. To set the scene.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">And it had nothing to do with an instructor who wrote the software fucking with my interface to his creation, oh no, that could not be true. A suspicious Negro <i>might </i>believe that my problems with the platform were created intentionally by a cracker, late of the University of North Carolina, but that would not be me, either. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">There’s a lot of sneaky shit that is done in the tech world because that’s what it means to show people you’re smarter than they are, by trickery. Not to be judgmental. To give Dr. Assbite the benefit of the doubt the real problem was that <i>his invention </i>didn’t work properly. The code was bad, in other words. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, apparently only me and a handful of other students wanted to do data, including the two sisters in class who were really really really smart. They’re Nigerian-American and they certainly showed this noble slave-descendant a technological thing or two. My belief as a black man is that one’s technological game needs to be just as tight as one’s game on the court. Or one’s game <i>in the boudoir, </i>one’s ability to hit <i>three-pointers </i>in the sheets so to speak, which at my age is a skill that is fast declining. But we digress. That was my reason for applying to the iSchool in the first place, to become a well-rounded Negro and a useful member of a diverse Texas society. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Mine was apparently the <i>only</i> project that required downloading the popular chart-drawing program <i>matplotlib</i> that the syllabus said could be used to draw graphs in <i>trinket</i>. But <i>matplotlib</i> did not work properly with <i>trinket </i>or at least <i>not on my interface</i>, not to sound all conspiratorial. It’s just that, you know, knowing crackers and all, as black people do, and viewing life through a historical lens as we like to say in Information Studies, you can’t trust someone like Professor Hauser as far as you can throw him. One can be totally forgiven for being suspicious. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">There were a lot more crackers in the past, certainly, than live among us today, but it’s a species that is at no risk of extinction and there are occasional sightings even on the creek at Forty Acres. You are completely surprised on campus to find who's a cracker and who is not, btw. Anyway, in <i>trinket</i> you could draw a single chart but the other requirements of the project like creating a menu of choices caused a<i> </i>crash. This was not the first problem with technology at the iSchool, btw, graduate students are like guinea pigs or lab rats in that respect, used to problem solve the instructor’s invention or process or whatever. Or do the calculations. Or write the code. Or do the fucking experiment, actually, not that there’s anything wrong with that.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">That is in fact how students <i>learn</i>, even if it means cooking crank in the Chemistry Building basement, or wherever, experimentation is a <i>good thing</i>, maybe not the meth part. You’re there <i>to work</i>. But that has limits. </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">So, like, as we approached the end of the semester of Introduction to Programming there was a poor performance by the instructional technology at the School of Information. </span><i style="font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">trinket</i><span style="font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> sucked. Even though just down the street from the iSchool is one of the most highly-ranked computer science departments in the nation? But </span><i style="font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">oh noooo</i><span style="font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> we couldn’t do that, we couldn’t get help from other experts on campus. Even in order to make sure that didactic shit works for students. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">This is what’s called, at the University of California which is our role model, <i>working in silos</i>, at UC it’s anathema but apparently it's okay at UT. Or at the iSchool. It means that people on campus aren’t collaborating so much across disciplines. Or maybe not even talking. And there’s not much you can do about it.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Generally-speaking when UT investigates UT nothing happened or the generic Professor Dickwad is found to have done nothing wrong. That’s what happens whenever any big institution investigates itself actually, let’s be fair, the Longhorn Nation is not alone in this respect. The University of California for example that is our role model uses a two-report system for investigations in which one report invariably informs the reader that the university did nothing wrong and goes to the complainant and a second version of the <i>real events</i> goes to the Board of Regents or whoever at UCOP and tells the truth about what happened. Which is often ugly because, not to repeat myself, there are a lot of smart people at the University of California who are trying to outsmart each other <i>and/or</i> the public. UT System’s ethics framework was based upon UC’s, a scary thought in itself, actually, because the University of California is worse than the fucking CIA. Equal parts opaque and evil, especially the healthcare operations, UC is one of the major medical providers in the State of California. Like #2 or #3 in the state. UCSF is a bad example to base your healthcare enterprise upon, as UT is doing at Dell. So is Johns Hopkins, the KKK has had a better record on race than Hopkins does in Baltimore. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">UT’s administration has never come to terms with race<i>, or</i> oil, that would be my whole point actually, but neither has anyone else. Luckily racial injustice usually <i>only affects blacks and Latinos</i>, which in an odd way may be a good thing because you don’t want more victims than we already have. The usual controls like press vigilance don’t work here, in River City. A good example is something that just happened, UT spent $280K for a weekend recruiting visit to the Four Seasons Hotel downtown by a quarterback with a good arm, and a few of his friends. It was national news, reported in the <i>NY Times</i>, but not published by the Austin <i>American-Statesman</i> or the Texas <i>Tribune</i>. UT literally has the <i>Statesman</i>’s balls in its hand and the <i>Tribune </i>isn’t much better off. Petrochemical money compromises everybody in the Lone Star State sooner or later, including reporters, <i>especially</i> reporters. Not to be judgmental.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">GREENPEACE TOP 10 MOST WANTED </span></i></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, this is somewhere in my longterm memory from back in the day, maybe ten years ago. It’s not included in my outstanding Longhorn lore because the paperwork has been lost, but someone once gave me a UT document showing Longhorn football players getting <i>$300 a day</i> food allowance. That’s $100 a meal, they could eat steak-and-lobster for breakfast, lunch and dinner and still not spend it all. Longhorn linemen are big boys but nobody is <i>that</i> big. It was a way of <i>paying players</i> which is a good thing, actually, God knows football has made enough money for the University of Texas through the years. And probably it was something that other major university athletic programs were doing too. But you will never read those details in Texas media. Even though slipping a little cash to the players, in retrospect, makes Forty Acres look good today. Speaking of UT athletics, btw, black students have complained about the song “Eyes of Texas” being played at games because of the music’s white-superiority beat. To set the scene.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The university administration has demurred, which means they’ve blown off the black students, under pressure from wealthy boosters, or so the Texas <i>Tribune </i>reported. But in the Live Music Capital of the World what band is playing—who’s singing, or who’s blowing the horn—what genre of songs are all important issues. We learned about the <i>power component</i> of culture in the iSchool, actually, what books are on library shelves for example. Who’s getting published and who is not, whose point of view is expressed and whose is not, whose voice is heard too often and whose is never heard. Whose narrative gets told and who tells it are issues that we examined. So, like, the black students were right, music is important at Forty Acres, as is the power component of college sports, don’t get me started, the political and financial role of Longhorn football can be incredible. Especially as an adjunct to the larger Lone Star narrative, which is a load of crap basically, something that we <i>didn’t learn</i> at the iSchool but some of us knew going in. To set the scene. Luckily, the boosters in Dallas and in Houston and especially in San Antonio, who like things on campus the way they are, and who like “The Eyes of Texas” as it is, will die off like the dinosaurs they are. Dying with them will be that fight song, one hopes. The problems of race on campus will persist, however, related to money, actually. Which the <i>Tribune</i> did not report.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Both Latinos (through the League of United Latin American Citizens) and blacks (the NAACP for example) have joined together to ask for an audit of how UT has spent indigent care tax monies, an issue that may turn out to be an incredibly inconvenient truth to us as new Longhorns. We may have fucked up <i>collectively</i> even if we <i>personally</i> didn’t know at the time that we were fucking up, you feel me? The tax money was approved for collection by open-hearted Austin voters, for care of the poor, and apparently totaling tens of millions of dollars. But instead of being used to pay for indigent care, as was approved by the voters, the money was given instead to our new Dell medical school for administration, is that possible? <i>Diverted</i> in other words, an ugly word that should not even be in the Forty Acres lexicon, have we in the Longhorn Nation really stooped so low? Funds that were intended to pay for care that Dell has shown little evidence of providing, actually. Instead, the money was used to operate an almost-exclusively white medical school, a narrative that does not put us in a good light. So, like, this<i> </i>is potentially layers-deep shit, and it smells just like Bevo taking a crap. There are two issues, actually, the whiteness of faculty at Dell medical school, which was founded by researchers from the University of California San Francisco actually, if that’s not enough to scare you, it does me. UCSF is, actually, where they <i>kicked me out of my nurse practitioner program</i> for raising the issue of all-white faculty in a clinic taking care of all minority kids, btw. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The other issue is the overwhelming whiteness of the Dell student body, like the University of California San Francisco, which is historically a white institution. You’ve heard of HBUC, historically-black, there’s also historically-white and that’s UCSF and Johns Hopkins. It’s interesting that Dellmed is a Caucasian-privilege environment while the general campus, Forty Acres, is getting darker and more diverse. Which is a good thing actually and something that the UT Regents deserve credit for. Still,<i> the Case of the Indigent Care Funds</i>, you could call it, involves <i>evil</i> or <i>semi-evil</i>, even as measured on our normally-tolerant let’s-cook-a-little-crank-in-lab Longhorn ethical scale. So, like, it’s a potential double wrong and could be a triple wrong if whatever care Dell does deliver or has been delivering to the poor and minorities is <i>second rate</i> compared to care given to whites, which is something that happens in academic medicine too, like at UCSF and some of the usual suspects on the East Coast too like the famed Johns Hopkins, which is located in the hood in Baltimore, where there’s wall-to-wall black people off-campus but on campus you don’t see many people of color as academics or students. Just like at UCSF and now Dell, not to repeat myself. It’s a fine line where indigent care becomes indigent exploitation, actually, whether in Baltimore or in Austin. Or in San Francisco. UCSF has just admitted to experimenting on mostly black prison inmates back in the day, including injecting them with pesticides, you couldn’t make this up. Or there’s direct genetic theft, <i>a la</i> Henrietta Lacks, which Johns Hopkins really did do, stealing a black patient’s DNA and selling it for millions. That is the big danger on those health-related campuses that make money from medical <i>research</i> like JHU and, now, Dell, our own Longhorn medical school. And there is a clear Longhorn link to this bad narrative. We have a pair of Longhorn villains in fact, villainesses actually. <i>And</i> the issue of tenure yet again. It’s white people exploiting the rest of us.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">A few years ago LBJ School of Public Affairs Professor Abigail Aiken, who is a physician, was appointed to the Travis County health board here in our own bucolic River City, together with another LBJ faculty member, Sherri Greenberg, who is a “liberal” Democratic ex-legislator from Austin. To set the scene. Professor Aiken was at the time of her appointment to the health board a tenure-track LBJ School assistant professor, actually, women’s health-related. So, like Dr. Aiken and Professor Greenberg were doing UT’s bidding at the time the money was “diverted” to Longhorn coffers, to support Dell, it’s tainted money however it came to be ours. But it still spends like the clean kind and UT needs more money to be able to afford to do the right thing, one might say. Anyway, Dr. Aiken was, surprise, rewarded with tenure after her work on the county health board. What’s interesting is that here in ATX where hypocrisy runs so deep, we have self-identified white liberals like Professor Hauser and my <i>Data Storytelling </i>instructor—the Exxon Mobil chick who tried to bust me for calling out police profiling? Abigail Aiken of the LBJ School, the physician who facilitated exploitation of minority patients by a rich institution, which is us. Liberals in Austin <i>talk </i>a good game about equity, but through the years UT has taken, taken, taken from blacks & Latinos, especially land, and now money, without giving much in return. UT has also committed a far greater sin than racism, frankly, which we’re getting to, remember what Ms. Delco said? And the press cannot be relied upon to speak the truth, because over a span of less than a decade the Austin <i>Statesman</i>’s metro editor, chief editorial writer and executive editor have all transitioned to the Forty Acres payroll and it wasn’t as a reward for their great performance as journalists that got them hired. It was a reward for what never got published. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">At Forty Acres we have <i>enormous power </i>to <i>reward</i>, nor is that unique to UT, major universities everywhere are powerful institutions. But for the press especially, not everything is about the public’s right to know, the public’s right <i>not-to-know</i> is pretty popular in American journalism too and especially if the story has anything to do with a big, rich university. A book was just published actually, about a L.A. <i>Times </i>investigation of the USC medical school dean who was <i>dealing drugs</i>, crank again apparently, meth must be so popular on campus because you can make it in a lab. To set the scene again. So, like, both UC and USC have great power in California, huge roles in the community, and huge budgets. They’re big employers also, across the Golden State, especially the University of California. UC San Francisco for example has a <i>horrible reputation</i> for sexual harassment and racism under the incumbent chancellor, Australian pediatrician Sam Hawgood, whose administration was even caught by the State Auditor <i>destroying investigative files</i> before the auditor’s visit. UCSF practices almost pure thuggery, mixed with bouts of good medicine, but you won’t read much of the university’s bad side in the Los Angeles <i>Times </i>because the newspaper doesn’t like to anger what is arguably the most important institution in the state, and perhaps the most powerful educational institution in the world, the University of California. An institution that also buys ads and that subsidizes conferences and hires you when you retire. You get more transparency out of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves than from the UC Board of Regents, btw, who make UT Regents look good—and sometimes the UT Regents really <i>are</i> on the side of the angels, even if the UT Regents aren’t angels themselves. Until relatively recently, it was even illegal to record UC Regents meetings. How is that even possible?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">UT has never been <i>that evil</i>, the University of California is kind of in a league of its own, but here in the Live Music Capital of the World things have not always been pretty either. Just a few years ago during the sudden onslaught of bad publicity about sexual harassment on campuses nationwide, that cost Dr. Fenves his job in Austin actually, UT offered up two sacrifices, a couple of black Longhorn football players who were accused by university police of rape. To set the scene. So, like, one guy was tried and found not guilty and the District Attorney dropped the second case. To set the scene yet again. The Austin newspaper’s executive editor killed a story that was supposed to look into <i>how</i> charges came to be filed in the first place. The local press could have provided an interesting exploration of black lives at Forty Acres, because at least one of the alleged victims was also African American. Debbie Hiott who was the <i>American-Statesman</i>’s executive editor made the call, the same journalist who also ignored gentrification in East Austin on her watch, because the owners of the newspaper at the time were big property holders in the city and stood to profit but rising land values. Ms. Hiott is now chief of UT’s public radio stations, presumably making bank. You can’t say she got the job because she killed a potentially-embarrassing story for UT. But you <i>can</i> say that she probably would <i>not</i> have gotten the position, overseeing the university radio stations, if she had reported what happened to these two young brothers, whatever the events turned out to be. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">My single most important take home lesson from the iSchool? This is so pertinent to the study of informatics or information systems, which is about to be my completed degree. It’s like your mother told you when you were a kid. <i>Consider the source</i>. There is the kind of disinformation that Russian bots put out, we studied that too at the iSchool, false-fact operations you could call them. But there’s also the kind of disinformation that comes from no story at all. You have to consider the source. The <i>American-Statesman’s</i> biggest moneymaker during the last two decades of bad numbers for daily newspapers? That would be Longhorn sports coverage, no? <i>And</i> high school football, but probably more UT, right? The newspaper would take a <i>big hit</i> if the university stopped giving good access to reporters in retaliation for the newspaper poking its nose where it should not poke. That’s how things work on university campuses, btw, there’s <i>always pushback</i> and because of its size and wealth the Longhorn Nation pushes harder than most. That is <i>us</i>, actually. The same dynamic is true on a different level at the Texas <i>Tribune</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, <i>TT</i> has bi<i>g donors</i> more than big advertisers and none more important than<i>the </i>founding donor, a private equity guy named John Thornton. To set the scene. Thornton has also traditionally been a big investment manager for the <i>UT endowment</i>, actually, thru the years, that’s how he has made a lot of money actually, being a private equity guy at least part of the time with Longhorn money. Through UTIMCO, actually, the sovereign wealth fund that was established by W when he was governor to manage UT’s massive investments. The money is controlled by the UTIMCO board which is controlled by the Regents. Who are controlled by the Governor, whoever that Governor may be, that’s how UT works under a Democratic administration or Republican. There’s an obscene amount of money involved—much of it generated by energy leases and decades and decades of energy-related investment returns, billions of petrodollars that have gone into Longhorn coffers over the years. There’s not much interest in Austin in stopping that flow of cash. The <i>Tribune</i> does some <i>good work</i> but problems with its business plan can’t be ignored if you’re an informaticist—or informatician, whatever the fuck this degree makes me—when influence by big advertisers is simply replaced by influence from big donors. Stories don’t get written. Or they don’t get published. You see the same thing in academia when certain research <i>doesn’t get done</i>. You have to be very suspicious of non-profit journalism, just like every other kind of media endeavor in other words, not necessarily because of what you read but because of what you don’t read. The people who donate may get a pass. It’s not about the story that runs, it’s about the stories that don’t run, the subject of UT’s money being one example, and instead of the truth we get a skewed image of <i>what’s really going on</i>. A lot of petrodollars or former petrodollars, that’s a good basic explanation of our finances at Forty Acres, that you mostly don’t read about. Until now. The exception is a recent report by <i>Bloomberg</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Stories don’t generally get written about UT’s money which is obscene but may not be obscene enough, speaking as a concerned but <i>realistic</i> new member of the Longhorn Nation. <i>Texas Monthly</i> which wrote about Cancer Alley back in the day is now owned by an energy heiress, btw. At the <i>Tribune,</i> John Thornton has been supplanted as <i>TT</i>’s top money man by a money guy and money girl from Houston named <i>John and Laura Arnold,</i> who are buying respectability after becoming billionaires from natural gas. You can’t make this up. That’s how respectability works, in Texas and probably everywhere else, first you make the money—any way you can—including fucking the environment if need be, and <i>then</i> you buy a conscience on a big scale. John Arnold is the former <i>chief trader of Enron</i>, btw, aka the <i>Crooked E</i> which it was called back in the day, a pedigree like the <i>SS</i> or <i>KKK</i> or <i>Minneapolis P.D</i>., the worst of the <i>bad</i>. Enron was an energy concern that was the single most corrupt company in the modern annals of Texas business, which is saying a lot, just about straight-up thuggery, yeah. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Back in the day, this is kind of cool, and is worth a short detour, but actually has nothing to do with UT. So, like, it can’t be on my list of best Longhorn stories, but it’s fun nonetheless. So, like, me taking a tour at the Texas Department of Public Safety crime lab in Austin, maybe 20 years ago? The lab guy showed us the suicide note of one of the Enron executives, you know, when things started to go south and this Enron guy cut his wrists or shot himself or whatever? How cool is that? There was no bloodstain on the note which would have been cooler but was still pretty cool. And the suicide note was at the DPS crime lab because the big question was whether the Enron guy had actually whacked himself or been murdered by one of his Enron colleagues, in order to shut him up. How’s that for a business plan? Another example of Texas exceptionality, actually, Enron is, as in <i>exceptionally </i>bad. The good news about Enron was that they mostly were <i>not </i>Longhorns, to my knowledge. The bad news is that oil & gas corrupts everyone. So, like, in the past UTIMCO has pulled John Thornton’s chain, Thornton pulled the <i>Tribune</i>’s, like with a dog, restraining a potentially-aggressive animal. It’s not really that bad but it’s close, you get the idea. <i>Corruption</i> of a network can obstruct the flow of information, things that the media or scientists are aware of but do not pursue, for example. At the iSchool we were taught to look for the most important data of all, the <i>missing data</i>. You have to evaluate the <i>reliability of sources</i>, too, especially anything about Forty Acres actually, and especially anything you read in the press. What you see may be factual but may be only a small part of what’s really going on at Forty Acres and it’s <i>intentionally</i> incomplete because Longhorn money doesn’t get talked about. The fifty-billion dollar gorilla in the room, literally. Stories don’t get covered just as intentionally as stories do get covered, that’s my whole point really, especially if it has anything to do with the Longhorn Nation’s finances. Just like research that doesn’t get done about cancer in the state. Because if the great UT endowment becomes the subject of scrutiny, the follow-up question will have to be asked too, how was the money made? Which is oil & gas actually, and no one wants to get into that discussion except <i>Bloomberg</i> news just now, and briefly.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The Longhorn endowment is usually not part of the story. John Thornton is not even the <i>Tribune</i>’s top money guy anymore, anyway, that would be the Arnolds who made their money in natural gas, not that there’s anything wrong with that. The <i>Tribune</i>’s next largest donor is Paul Foster, who made his money in refining. The Arnolds and Mr. Foster are trying to buy respectability through nonprofit journalism, not that there’s anything wrong with that, because it’s better that John Arnold and his old lady, who went to Harvard btw, and whose endowment is obscene, it’s better that the Arnolds are trying to make amends than that they aren’t, right? Who do you think is funding all the new journalism? People who are reputation-washing, which is kind of like money laundering but is not illegal and does some good, one hopes, down the road. Neither John nor Laura Arnold is a Longhorn, btw, so it’s okay to trash them. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">None of this is new in terms of conflict of interest in the Lone Star State. It’s often about the energy industry and the subject is so important that you never read about it in the press. That’s how the light bill gets paid at Forty Acres, actually. Oil & gas powers UT, energy sales power the Republican Party and the non-profit press too, everybody has that much in common. It was all about King Cotton at one time but now it’s all about Mother Oil, or natural gas, that’s not my original thought, it was actually in the <i>Tribune</i> itself, not in reference to UT however, and still bears repeating. UT can’t police itself either, it doesn’t matter who is President of the University or who is Provost, or who the Regents are. The money is just too much. That’s why Longhorns should welcome the Governors on campus, especially if a legislative committee comes too, courtesy of the Speaker of the House or whoever. Everyone has conflicts but you hope that if there’s enough interest, something will get done. Synergy may work. It may help to drain the creek. <i>Bloomberg</i> for example which does follow UT’s investments published in its report on the growth of our endowment, the report was, historically—for the reputation of the Longhorn Nation—pretty ugly. The endowment’s size is due to oil & natural gas, basically. Our endowment may soon exceed Harvard’s as the largest in the country, fyi, that’s also per <i>Bloomberg</i>. The day after the <i>Bloomberg</i> story ran in fact, state leadership was feeling the heat, clearly, but officially they still do not believe in global warming. To set the scene. The State Comptroller, backed by the Governors, made threats against anyone who tries to marginalize our trademark industry. Like with tenure, the public just needs to know the numbers. The Governors have staked out hardcore position on just about every topic imaginable, from abortions to gun rights, for ideological or political reasons, but their position on oil & gas is all about <i>money</i>. Energy sales fund the Republican Party in Texas, not just here in fact, and any examination of UT’s pot of black gold and any questioning of oil & gas exploitation might endanger political fortunes. But it still might happen. UT, the <i>Tribune</i>, the Republican Party and <i>Texas Monthly</i> have all been funded by oil & gas, basically, in the case of the first three the money coming through UTIMCO, actually. And UTIMCO means one guy, Jeffery Hildebrand, who is a good candidate for the #1 oil & gas guy in the State of Texas and is actually a Republican fundraiser and, you guessed it, a <i>Longhorn</i>. He’s one of us. To set the scene again.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Jeffery Hildebrand is known for a couple of things, one being that he’s a big UT money guy like Scott Caven of Caven-Clark intramural field on campus, except Scott Caven was an investments guy and Hildebrand is oil & gas. He wants to drill on the Arctic floor, btw, or so it’s said, not that there’s anything wrong with that. What’s a little more pollution if there’s money to be made, isn’t that the Longhorn petroleum engineering mantra? If Greenpeace had a 10 Most Wanted List, Hildebrand would be, like, in the top 5, that’s my guess. He’s a former UT Regent actually, and has both a bachelor’s and a master’s from Forty Acres, College of Engineering, the master’s in, you guessed it, petroleum engineering. Hildebrand started out as a money guy for Governor Perry and got grandfathered into Governor Abbott’s operation, it seems, what’s super-scary about this fracker, or <i>motherfracker</i>, from an environmental standpoint, is that he’s also on the board of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department that controls <i>drilling on state park lands</i>, which Jeffery Hildebrand would presumably have a big say on, like, since that’s why he’s on the TPWD board in the first place, right? Not because he likes hunting whitetail or bass fishing, or whatever, although he may well be an outdoorsman, but because he’s a gubernatorial money guy and there’s money to be made from energy leases on state land. Not to sound cynical about a fellow Longhorn. This guy’s presence on the TPWD board is <i>not </i>a good omen for nature in the Lone Star State, but what is? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The apocalypse may already be upon us but Texas is <i>big</i> and has abundant natural resources and Mother Nature—like the human body—can sometimes heal. The downside is that UT is probably already responsible for significant pollution to water tables and aquifers across West Texas, in order to maintain our lifestyle here at Forty Acres, not to make anyone feel guilty. Because <i>oil & gas pays for research</i> too and there’s the rub. The people who are most to blame, though, for our continued dependence on oil include a lot of Longhorn scientists and engineers, through the years back to Spindletop, or whenever, and also chemists like Dr. Fenves who have created some incredibly thoughtless petroleum-based shit in the lab, like non-biodegradable plastics. And engineers like Dr. Wood who have “conquered” Mother Nature or whatever. Not to forget the petroleum guys like Jeffery Hildebrand who have been, like, UT College of Engineering’s most important graduates for decades. At Forty Acres we are up to our elbows in a <i>hot &</i> <i>oily mess</i> and as members of the Longhorn Nation we can only take comfort that we didn’t know what our scientists were doing when they invented so many noxious processes. Now we <i>do</i> know and the question is what are we going to do? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, me coming back from Christmas break earlier this year, actually, from Mexico actually, just after the worst of pandemic? Humming a tune from Beyonce and sitting at the back of the Greyhound bus, which a lot of black people like to do, sit at the back because you have a better view, not out the window but of what’s coming down the aisle. To set the scene. So, like, this time it was the view out the window. So, like, coming up into Texas, soon to be informed of my failing grade from Professor Assbite, not to play upon your sympathies. You know what was my first view along I-35 after the Laredo bridge? There’s not much there, the ranchland of South Texas and all that, it begins right after the town, actually, it’s suddenly desolate and <i>rural</i> north of Laredo’s sprawl. The first really attention-grabbing scene through the bus window was an oil well not far from the road, where gas was being flared. There was just this big knife of flame up in the eastern sky, maybe twenty feet tall, it’s hard to judge height from the distance but, gee, however big it was it didn’t look particularly healthy, or good for the environment. Releasing unwanted benzene or whatever up into the air, and the leaseholder had just lit a match to get rid of it. Might even have been a UT lease although most Longhorn holdings are west not south. Or so it is said again. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Is Jeffrey Hildebrand a fracker even a motherfracker? Apparently so. What we know for sure is that up until a few months ago he was for seven years chairman of the university’s investment company UTIMCO, that is our huge sovereign development fund and has been involved in some sketchy shit thru history but that also <i>pays UT’s bills</i>. There’s the rub. Former Regent Hildebrand is interesting because he may be exactly at the inflection point where UT stops making people do good things and starts making us do bad, that would be my whole argument actually. Hildebrand <i>could</i> be in the never-did-anything-good category of Longhorns which is a quite small cadre of alumni. Unlike John and Laura Arnold who are not Longhorns at all and who are presently washing their reputations in non-profit endeavors, Hildebrand may never have had that come-to-Jesus moment, actually, he’s probably still a <i>drill-baby-drill</i> kind of guy. Any inventory of pollution in the State of Texas needs to closely examine state park leases to be sure that petrochemical extraction is not damaging nature, which it probably is. Like, by definition, the only question being how bad? But there may be Longhorn salvation. There are a lot of very smart people at Forty Acres and if there’s money for research they’re automatically interested, you could say. It would be kind of cool fixing a problem that Longhorns helped to create. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The School of Engineering could pay for its sins, actually, by figuring out how to remediate the damage. UT could also investigate how badly the Texas environment has been harmed, by means of an honest look that includes the cancer-belt, or wherever, a grand survey of pollution in the Lone Star State in other words. That’s a lot more pressing than what music the Longhorn band is playing at halftime. This is a higher level view than even President Hartzell has, btw, our Longhorn-in-Chief who just spends the money from UTIMCO but doesn’t get to decide how it’s made. Which brings us back to tenure, that word again. Trump-era Republicans used a phrase in public debate that is descriptive in the Longhorn context today. “Draining the swamp,” and it is, you know, kind of beautiful because it’s so evocative. Even though mostly Republican whackjobs say it, it’s still kind of cool. Let’s call it <i>drain the creek</i>, like the creek on campus? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, every so often outsiders have to come to Forty Acres and do what Longhorns can’t do for ourselves and that the press won’t do. Like those DEA guys visiting the Chemistry Department, you know? UT is a wonderful institution but sometimes the police need to be called. Remember what Ms. Delco said? And that’s exactly what the Governors have proposed in the next legislative session, actually, taking a close look at tenure, giving a good sniff, which is completely fine with me. Supposedly we will learn who faculty privilege really serves. A preliminary guess is not the students. What the Lieutenant Governor has threatened is a good idea even if it was proposed for <i>the wrong reasons</i>. My view, as an aging African American, having lived so long, knocking on Heaven’s door and all that? My belief is that if you start questioning people’s motives for doing the right thing, <i>no one gets to Heaven</i>. That would be my whole point, really, in the Longhorn context. And it doesn’t mean UT is evil or racist or whatever. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">My School of Information degree is as important to me now, as a black Texan, as if it were awarded by Harvard or Oxford, which is where Dean Meyer arrived from, btw, the Oxford Internet Institute or whatever, he’s a nerd of some note in Information Science circles. In fact my pride is all the greater, because Texas is where my family was enslaved and it’s evidence that we have moved on. Risen up from slavery and all that, like the great black educator Booker T. Washington talked about back, back in the day. Booker T didn’t live to see it but my generation of African Americans did, laying Jim Crow to rest and all that—two shots to the back of his head, actually. And it’s <i>about fucking time</i>, right? Achieving closure on slavery has meant dealing with a lot of crackers, through the years. So, like, dealing with Professor Peckerwood, late of the University of North Carolina at Wherever, pissed me off only moderately, having seen his ilk before and knowing that Forty Acres is a better place now than it was just a few years ago. But as Longhorns we ignore the possibility of our own wrongdoing, even by accident, at great peril. This university is not like our mascot <i>Bevo</i> at all, actually. Send Bevo back to the ranch. The Longhorn mascot should be an <i>elephant</i>, that crushes things and people without even trying. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">It also eats a lot and pees a river. And when it shits you don’t want to be downwind.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">BLACKLAND</span></i></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"> My dentist is 73 y.o. and attended the <i>old</i> Austin High just after President Johnson’s daughters, LBJ’s girls were a couple of classes ahead, how many people in this town have those kinds of roots? He went to UT in the 1960s and he told me something interesting the other day, to add to my stock of Longhorn lore. Did you know that there’s a network of tunnels that completely covers campus? There’s a whole little world down there, under Forty Acres. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, being in town all these years, on campus literally hundreds of times, living in the neighborhood and all—on and off for decades. My connection back in the 1980s, before the Lord came into my life, lived in West Campus and that was my first real exposure to UT, looking for something to smoke. But finding out that there is a system of tunnels more than thirty years later was a bit embarrassing. My dentist said that back in the day when it was raining or whatever that was how you got from one end of the university to the other, <i>underground</i>. Everyone used the tunnels all the time. A campus maintenance guy told me just a day or two ago though, while he was doing some remediation at this piece of shit iSchool building, that these days only workers who draw the short straw go down into the bowels of Forty Acres, so to speak. To work on power lines or AC or whatever. Those unlucky workers have to share space with feral cats and possibly-rabid raccoons. UT has some <i>totally radical</i> coons by the way, rabid or not, you should know that if you’re going to be on campus. Especially near the creek, you feel me, that’s where they like to hang out. <i>Watch your ass</i>. The raccoons are so totally thugs. My best advice is if you get into a confrontation, on the creek for example, give up your groceries or your Snickers bar or whatever the coon is interested in. It’s just not worth it. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Equally apropos of nothing, did you know that there’s <i>another hidden tunnel system </i>downtown? Close to campus too in fact, near the iSchool, actually. Or so we are told. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">A patient of mine who worked for the State of Texas back in the day was facilities <i>management </i>not politics or policy or anything paper-related. He was someone who knew the buildings of state government but not the people who work in them. He was not one of the many gun-toting Lone Star types either, not a Ranger or even someone security-related at all. The tunnel he described is just a few blocks from campus, actually, and is short, it crosses West Eleventh Street between the Governor’s Mansion and the State Capitol. Or so this guy said. You’ve probably driven over it without knowing, even if you’re new to River City as so many are, that’s a major chokepoint downtown actually. The last person to tell me he had <i>direct knowledge </i>of this not-so-secret passageway was a member of Governor Richards’ staff, back back in the day, who said that the tunnel was uncared for and unused during her administration. Today in the bold times in which we live—with all the whackjobs, mostly on the right? So, like, the antifas don’t have the military training to take on state troopers, not to give anyone any ideas, while some of the Oath Keeper-types maybe <i>do </i>have the skills. But we digress. So, like, my guess is that the secret passageway is mined and/or boobytrapped up the yinyang these days and both entrances covered by a .50 cal with a trooper’s finger on the trigger. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The point is that one ignores the <i>physical locale</i> and the engineering or architecture—UT has a highly ranked School of Architecture btw, if that’s what your child wants to study. But you ignore the <i>physical environment</i> of an institution like Forty Acres only at great risk of not knowing what’s really going on inside. My soon-to-be ex-iSchool for example is not on campus at all but it is in the neighborhood, downtown, only a couple of blocks from my crib, actually. The school is housed in a building that once belonged to Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, one of the Baby Bells that belonged to that big mother AT&T. To set the scene. Today the iSchool building is run down and kind of a piece of shit compared to the wonderfully solid institutional architecture on campus, or the steel-and-glass majesty of the new Travis County Courthouse that has just opened across the street from our school. The only thing that’s cool about the iSchool’s POS building is that there’s a plaque just inside the door, from a prior political generation, when the Regents appropriated the space or dedicated the building or whatever. That plaque tells you everything you need to know about the University of Texas today. Knowing the people on the School of Information wall is all you need to be an informed Longhorn. The names on the plaque give you some of the granularity of what Ms. Delco talked about and some of the majesty of the Longhorn Nation, which can be pretty sketchy but is wholly cool. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, the governor at the time was Rick Perry whose name is at the top of the plaque. Perry started his political life as a Democrat but ended up a hardcore Republican and even served as a member of President Trump’s cabinet. You guessed it, as Energy Secretary. Rick Perry is from Paint Rock, Texas, no shit, a pisspot/shithole somewhere in the reaches of West Texas, between Here and There, basically, closer to There, may you never have to go. Anyway, according to my calculations Governor Perry was the best leader regarding race in the post-Reconstruction history of the Lone Star State, partly because he had a genuine diversity game, unlike the governors before, and that included a very simple rule. Also, because most of the period since the Civil War in Texas has been the era of Jim Crow, which was due to the Democrats, btw, not to point out inconvenient history, and being good on race wasn’t that hard. To set the scene again. But the thing to know about Rick Perry is that he remained a small-d democrat even after he became a big-R Republican. He was kind of populist. He didn’t care if you were black or white—AAPI or Latino. As long as you were <i>Republican</i>. In any case, about that plaque on the iSchool wall, everyone in power in Texas has ties to this university which is about to be my alma mater. So did Perry, through his selections to the Board of Regents, although personally he was an Aggie. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. And it’s important because ties to UT show how power really works in the Lone Star State. It was all about cotton. Now it’s mostly about oil.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The first name down from Governor Perry on the School of Information wall was the then-chairman of the Regents, in ’08, a white guy named H. Scott Caven. He is the Caven of Clark-Caven field on campus, btw, where my afternoon jog takes place. Caven’s day job at the time of the engraving was as a Goldman Sachs executive in Houston but his real responsibility was as Governor Perry’s campaign treasurer and <i>principal money guy</i>. Every governor of Texas has a main money guy and a main security guy and both of Governor Perry’s—his main money guy and his main security guy, who was actually a girl—are on that plaque at our iSchool. Which made me feel special studying there, running with the big dogs and all that, kind of like learning that they used to cook crank in the Chemistry Department? Knowing, almost instinctively, that this was the best place for me to study? Sadly, Caven’s son—this is my memory of a time, 20 years ago, plus. Scott Caven’s son was a Longhorn too and was with a group of other students going to a football game in College Station. When the car flipped, or whatever. That is my memory of the incident as it was reported in the press. The point is not to repeat tragic events but to underscore the depth of some people’s ties to Forty Acres. Ties that may be financial, political, sports-related or even <i>educational</i>. To say nothing of emotional. The chair of the UT Regents literally bled orange, in other words, not to be disrespectful of his loss. There were equally deep ties to Forty Acres for practically <i>all </i>the Regents on the iSchool plaque. This is how UT functions, btw. It’s not necessarily always about education, at the iSchool or anywhere else on campus. So, like, next below Scott Caven’s name was James Huffines of the powerful rightwing whackjob Huffines Family of Dallas, for example. You hear the name Huffines in Texas and your first thought is probably not college curricula or didactive content, you feel me?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The Huffineses are big money that started in car sales in the Big D, again if my memory is correct. There are a lot of Huffineses and it’s hard to keep track who is who, especially if you don’t care, but former <i>Regent Huffines’s brother—</i>if my understanding of the family tree is correct. Regent Huffines’s brother just ran unsuccessfully against Greg Abbott in the Republican primary. Is that correct? By getting on Governor Abbott’s <i>right side</i>, which is hard to do, because it’s a really tight squeeze between Greg Abbott’s right flank and the wall, recently. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, either.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The next Regent listed on the plaque is billionaire Robert Rowling, longtime chairman of the Omni Hotel chain, or whatever, a Dallas or Houston guy, can’t be bothered to check. He’s a big UT donor who the new business building at Forty Acres is named after, Rowling Hall or whatever. Presumably because he donated the money to build it, that’s cool, that’s totally cool, even if a self-effacing and noble Negro would not want his name on a building or to be honored in any way. Across the street from my crib, actually, Rowling Hall is. Robert Rowling was/is an Old School Republican or what counts for Old School now, after the insanity of President Trump. After Regent Rowling on the iSchool plaque is John Barnhill who was v.p. of Blue Bell Ice Cream, in Brenham, Washington County, <i>where my family was enslaved</i>, actually. How is that for serendipity? Maybe his ancestors even lashed mine. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">What a small world in which we live. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">BLACKLAND 2 </span></i></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Next on the iSchool plaque is James Dannenbaum who has ties to oil & gas and is old as dirt and who—this is just so embarrassing if you’re a member of the <i>Longhorn Nation</i>! First, a little background about Regent Dannenbaum’s role as a Longhorn through the decades, before the bad news.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">From 1960 to 1961 he was vice president of the Student Association at Forty Acres, that was when Dwight Eisenhower was still in the White House, btw, in other words a long fucking time ago. Former Regent Dannenbaum is an old school Texas rightwing nutjob unlike the new wave Trump-affiliated rightwing Texas nutjobs we’re seeing now, not to overuse that distinction but it <i>is</i> important. People think that Trump influenced Texas but my feeling is that Texas influenced Trump. Anyway, despite that caveat, that he’s Old School rightwing crazy, former Regent Dannebaum pled guilty just before pandemic to federal charges of campaign finance violations and is presumably now in a nursing home with bars on the windows, remember what Ms. Delco said? What’s cool about former Regent Dannenbaum is that he was already like 75 y.o., older than my dentist who almost went to school with LBJ’s daughters, when former Regent Dannenbaum committed the crimes for which he pled guilty just before pandemic. That means that age may not a barrier to a determined Longhorn. That’s <i>my</i> hope at least. There’s at least a decade left for me to do something really daring or perhaps highly repugnant and/or illegal.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Next down on the list there’s Robert Estrada who is a Dallas bond guy, a pretty decent guy actually or as decent as you can be working in municipal securities. We talked once on the telephone, actually, a landline if that gives you any idea how long ago. He’s an old style Republican moderate, he can have a discussion about politics without turning red or reaching for an assault rifle, he’s a Bush guy, either Bush #1 or Bush #2, or <i>both</i>. His Longhorn history is that he’s famous for helping to bring Bob Woodward’s Watergate archives to Forty Acres. And we’re almost done. Next is oil & gas again, the third to the last Regent on the iSchool plaque is Paul Foster who you met before funding the <i>Tribune</i>, you know Foster’s name if you know West Texas. Regent Foster made his money <i>refining </i>oil as opposed to <i>drilling</i> for it. Paul Foster kind of owns El Paso, actually, or so it is said. He’s also a <i>Longhorn traitor</i> because he recently gave $50 million to help build a <i>Texas Tech</i>medical school on the border. He’s another energy executive who polluted his way to wealth and paid penance with a checkbook later, not there’s anything wrong with that. This kind of penance often includes funding academic medical institutions that cure conditions which may have been caused by the industry that makes the money in the first place, not to be judgmental. <i>Cancer is a business</i> in Texas, btw, as seen thru a mercenary lens, just like oil & gas. After Paul Foster on the plaque it’s Printice Gary, a lowkey real estate guy who was the first and is still the <i>only African American</i> ever to serve on the University of Texas Board of Regents, btw, again if my memory is correct. Also appointed by Governor Perry who wasn’t bad on race, not to repeat myself. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The last name on the plaque is Colleen McHugh, about five feet tall and all muscle. She is a killer, literally, or <i>was a killer, as </i>the designated civilian shot-caller for the State of Texas back in the day, at the Department of Public Safety. A kind of hit girl, actually, for W and for Governor Perry both, you could call her, although Ms. McHugh never pulled the trigger herself obviously. But he may have given the okay once or twice, that’s my point, like in the Spielberg movie <i>Sugarland </i>with Goldie Hawn? Have you seen that? You know, in hostage situations? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Ms. McHugh was the Governor’s security girl for a while, before she became <i>Regent</i>McHugh. She was chair of the powerful Public Safety Commission that oversees the state police including the Highway Patrol and Texas Rangers. And Capitol Police. To set the scene. She’s old as dirt now too, like former Regent Dannenbaum, because she was at DPS like 20 years ago and she was no spring chicken then, either, not to be disrespectful of her service to the state. Her responsibilities at the Public Safety Commission for example would have included agreeing on fields of fire covering that tunnel between the Governor’s Mansion and the State Capitol. But not positioning the weapon herself because she’s a lady. Or giving the final okay for placement of landmines? She didn’t even attend UT, Chairman McHugh was an SMU girl, but she’s part of the Longhorn Nation now, and taken all in all it can be a pretty fucking scary group of people who lead us at Forty Acres, you feel me? But oil & gas still mostly controls the university which is a little surprising in an era of global warming. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">If you talked to Ms. McHugh back in the day, btw, when she was still at DPS she was a completely decent person, like somebody’s Aunt Jen, but also a complete Republican enforcer. Not that there’s anything wrong with that because there are Democratic enforcers too. Governor Richards had an enforcer also, who was a former U.S. Attorney who went around scaring people on Democrats’ behalf as the Democratic majority in the state slipped away, not that that’s important here. Anyway, that would be my description of Ms. McHugh—a killer, again not to be disrespectful. She’s the kind of person who made me want to be a Longhorn, actually. It’s said at the State Capitol that the single most important appointment a Governor of Texas can make is the chair of the Public Safety Commission, to ensure that the thousands of state troopers are doing what the governor wants done, like right now on the banks of the mighty Rio Grande, putting immigrant families on the bus to New York City and to D.C. or wherever. Ms. McHugh wouldn’t have batted an eye. She was Governor Perry’s girl in that regard, “Security” writ large, she was chosen for her balls not her compassion. She had Perry’s back the same way DPS Colonel McCraw has Governor Abbott’s back now. It’s said that Ms. McHugh still has a law office on <i>Ocean Drive</i> in Corpus Christi where she still shows up for work, another senior Longhorn who still has game, like James Dannenbaum, for those of us who are about to graduate and are already long in the tooth. These folks whose names are on the wall of my soon-to-be-ex iSchool do not <i>currently</i> run the University of Texas but they are <i>the kind of people</i> who run the University of Texas all the time, you know? Not every decision made is about tuition or best practices in the classroom, nor about something that just appeared in <i>The Chronicle of Higher Education</i> either, but instead is about power and money and, at Forty Acres, <i>oil</i>. My big overall Longhorn theory, as an informatician or informaticist or whatever? UT makes good people do bad things, like President Hartzell <i>maybe </i>and Dean Meyer certainly. But the corollary is that <i>UT makes bad people do good</i>, like the Regents a lot of the time. Not to go all Biblical but it’s important as new Longhorns not to wear rose-colored glasses on this campus. Two excellent examples of the former, good people doing bad—or good people who are <i>going to do bad</i> or—more charitably, good people who <i>may </i>do bad—or good people who have already done bad—are Dean Meyer, not to repeat myself, and Jay Hartzell who is President and Longhorn-in-Chief. Again, not to be judgmental. To set the scene.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Dean Meyer for instance is gifted at <i>whitesplaining</i>, which means justifying the white man’s view of the world. In order to review and judge my failing grade from Professor Hauser, the dean formed a committee of four iSchool faculty members: A woman from South Korea, a woman from the People’s Republic of China, and a guy from Mexico City, all chaired by Eric Meyer himself who is the white guy, not to repeat myself, originally from Indiana, and who has spent the last few years at Oxford. To set the scene again. The three black members of School of Information faculty were not consulted. The dean wrote me a long letter after the review, explaining that my meetup reflection that Professor Hauser first ignored completely and refused to grade, had finally been graded by a committee member, and failed, 30 out of 50 points. Leaving me once again with a failing grade in the Python course, the same C+ actually that Dean Meyer had offered me the prior semester before review. What a coincidence! The exact same grade, after the dean did the numbers this time. Not because of my coding, mind you, in a coding course, but because of my view of the world. The dean said that what was expressed in my reflections were “beliefs” and “feelings” not rational thought or analysis. That is whitesplaining, btw, in case you haven’t heard the expression before.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">If the dean had been in this country in the prior decade, or had ever lived in the South, or if he had any cultural competence, he would have known that comments like that are racist tropes and are the intellectual equivalent of the white police officer’s “I-thought-he-was-reaching-for-something.” White people think, while blacks feel, according to Dean Meyer’s view, and it’s a convenient and often-used way of failing black students. Again, it allows an instructor to grade down a black student in a subjective grading exercise. Interesting also that in my Python class, the vast majority of the students were not from Texas, were not even from the U.S., and had limited knowledge of American tech culture and did not speak or write English as a first language, but <i>their views of race in technology</i>in America were expressed appropriately, according to Dean Meyer’s grading, and were acceptable to the School of Information, but mine were not. This was the latest effort at the iSchool to undermine my education, btw, not to be judgmental, starting with security asking me to identify myself to enter the building but not asking the same of white or Asian students, and my data instructor, the white chick from Exxon Mobil or wherever, threatening to fail me for doing a midterm project critical of police profiling because of my “use of color.” In a follow-up email Dean Meyer assured me that he had checked with the Registrar’s Office and my failing grade in programming would <i>not </i>affect my ability to graduate. Isn’t that white of him? That’s what my mother used to say, back in the day, when someone did something noble, “That’s very white of you!” Anyway, if you are a veteran of segregated schooling in the South, like me, you’re not surprised. Separate was not equal back in the day, and subjective grading is not objective today. It’s still a way to deny minority students the benefits of an education. It happens still at UT but one likes to think less frequently than before. Interestingly, the UT Regents have just been sued by a young black doctor who was forced out of her medical residency at my alma mater, UT Medical Branch, when her evaluator described her as “unprofessional.” There’s a much higher rate of black doctors in training being kicked out of their residencies and the explanation is often “unprofessionalism.” Again, a subjective determination by an instructor that’s hard to counter. The Regents recently fired the Medical Branch president, btw, it’s unclear why, and he has been replaced with a black interim leader, and there’s a new diversity officer for the medical campus in Galveston. Apparently the UT Regents know the world has changed, even if that fact is only slowly filtering through the individual campuses. Anyway.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Dean Meyer may not completely understand racism-in-action at the School of Information, or his role in that dynamic, but he was personally generous to me. Remember the really bone-breaking <i>cold</i> winter a year or so ago? COVID-19 wasn’t bad enough but Texas also had a deadly ice-and-snow storm. So, like, my electricity was <i>not</i> cut. One of the benefits of living on the same grid as the State Capitol is that the rolling blackout never rolls by you. Forty Acres produces its own electricity, btw, you didn’t know that, right? And is its own grid, or so it is said. But there’s <i>no wifi </i>at my apartment building, even living across the street from the university and willing to steal signal, and the Starbucks were all closed. Bummer. Or <i>bummerooski</i> if you talk like a UT frat boy back in the day. But the Dean had my UT i.d. modified to allow me <i>access to classrooms</i> on the first floor of the architecturally-crappy iSchool building, giving me a warm study environment and, more importantly, good Internet service. Isn’t giving someone bandwidth today like loaves and fishes back in the day? Another anecdote about UT administration, this one about President Hartzell, along the same lines—from that same time, the awful winter a year or two ago that left hundreds dead and millions without power. This tells you what kind of guy <i>Jay Hartzell</i> really is. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, this was as the storm was just ending, me suffering from cabin fever big time at that point and needing to get outside, as many of us did. To breathe some fresh air. To set the scene. My plan was to <i>walk</i> to Clark-Caven intramural field actually and at least do a lap, carefully, just walking. At my age you don’t want to lose mobility because you’ll never get it back, you know? So, like, on my way to the track, passing a big dormitory building behind a parking garage, you would recognize the place if you know campus at all, east of the museum and set back a little? You know who walked out of the front door of one of the big dorms? It certainly <i>looked like</i> President Hartzell, in jeans and boots. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">No entourage, no cameras, he’s a striking guy, he was apparently just checking on the kids. Jay Hartzell is <i>not a bad person</i>. But that doesn’t mean he won’t <i>do bad shit</i>. Longhorns have a reputation for doing good things but sometimes using dodgy methods. That’s a corollary of life at Forty Acres, btw, the yin and the damn yang, not to get all philosophical like Professor Peckerwood of the School of Information in his spare time. The two sides of the coin that new Longhorns need to know, actually, it’s part of the risk we all run at Forty Acres. That’s because <i>UT can make good people do bad things</i>, that would be my whole point, actually. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">And if you’re doing something dodgy as a Longhorn you feel it’s okay when it’s part of a bigger cause, illuminating knowledge and all that, to say nothing of the betterment of the Longhorn Nation. Or to increase the endowment which is super important too. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, that’s kind of the Longhorn motto. So, like, the possibility of wrongdoing must be considered. For instance President Hartzell comes from the <i>Business School</i>, that’s my understanding and, frankly, me being too lazy to check, let’s say that’s true. His research specialty is apparently <i>real estate</i> or <i>real estate investments</i>? Is that right? Dig this. So, like, <i>that</i> is why the Regents chose him to be president in the first place, actually, that would be my guess. Not to get all <i>conspiratorial </i>about the Board of Regents or anything but UT is maybe getting ready to <i>acquire land</i> for growth. In East Austin probably. Because that’s where everybody else in bucolic River City likes to find property, on the eastside, even if somebody else is already living there. UT’s master plan for growth points east and always has. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">North and west of campus are affluent <i>white neighborhoods</i> which never get targeted for eminent domain. That’s what black people and Latinos were invented for, btw, to be victimized by government if someone has to be bent over for the greater good. That, like Jim Crow, has been the <i>Democratic</i> way of doing business in Austin, not anything done by “the terrible Republicans,” instead it’s the terrible Travis County Democratic Party. Anyway, south of campus is the Capitol complex, there’s no room for growth there. That leaves only one direction, east. Historically UT’s nemesis in East Austin—the lone entity that has held back the manifest destiny of the Longhorn Nation—has been the <i>Blackland neighborhood group</i>, just the other side of I-35 from campus. The Blackland group has battled the university successfully for decades, blocking but not stopping Forty Acres’ relentless growth. If your point of reference is the Russo-Ukrainian war, which is about real estate too, the Russians aren’t the only people with territorial ambitions and who don’t care what they do to get land. UT can be like that too. Blackland has been Ukraine through the decades, fighting back, mostly giving better than they got, just like in Eastern Europe. But there may be an inevitability to this struggle. Let’s hope so, for the betterment of the Longhorn Nation and because it may be <i>the right thing</i>. This invader <i>is</i> relentless<i> </i>and powerful, and it’s us frankly, because what happens in Blackland can also be seen through a <i>fairness</i> lens. Blackland, btw, is part of what was Ms. Delco’s legislative district, B.G., before gentrification.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, Machiavelli said—if you’ve read the classics, not to get all snooty and full of myself as a master’s-trained informaticist, or informatician, whatever my degree really means. Machiavelli said that if a Prince must hurt someone or hurt a group of people, in order for the Prince to achieve a great aim or to win a war for example, it’s better to do all the hurting in one big blow rather than a series of little cuts. That would be my suggestion here, actually. If UT is getting ready to do evil in East Austin, my suggestion is no half-measures. Because—and this is what’s so fascinating—it’s evil to <i>white people</i> this time! Which means it won’t be evil, actually, instead it will be <i>fairness</i>, because for once Caucasians will get screwed just like minorities have been screwed over housing in Austin through the decades. There are so few minorities left in East Austin to fuck over, really, that we have to start using white people. And if that happens, if UT makes a land grab, President Hartzell will be doing the Lord’s work, really. He will be showing that whites and minorities actually are treated equally in the Live Music Capital of the World. Which has never happened before but there’s always a first time.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The present border between the belligerents, UT & the Blackland neighborhood folks, is just east of I-35 at Salinas Street, at the UT girls softball field? Know the neighborhood? Once again, you’ve probably driven by. The ballpark has been sort of the <i>demilitarized zone</i>, like between North and South Korea, there’s been some sniping but no outright combat in recent years. To set the scene again. Keep in mind that both the <i>LBJ Presidential Library</i> and<i> LBJ School of Public Affairs</i>, the two national institutions at Forty Acres both were built on land that <i>used to be black people’s homes</i>, not to point out inconvenient history or to put the lie to Austin’s liberal pretensions. That particular black land was transformed by a process that the government called “urban renewal” and African Americans called <i>urban</i> <i>removal, </i>to make room for LBJ’s tomb. In the past UT has also paid <i>Uncle Toms</i> and <i>Race Traitors</i>, not that there’s anything wrong with that, to buy homes from fellow black people who would not sell to the hated White University. At a time when blacks ourselves could not <i>attend</i> UT, btw, because it was a segregated institution, does any of this sound familiar? So, like, if one looks through the lens of a critical race dialectic it’s been a pretty wretched scene. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Now, however, <i>post-</i>gentrification, P.G., the battle to preserve black and Latino homes has already been lost, because most of the <i>people </i>in <i>East Austin are white</i> and in a way that is somehow reassuring because we won’t get screwed again, to paraphrase the British musical group <i>The Who</i>. We don’t have to worry anymore that something bad is going to happen because it already did! And somehow that’s totally reassuring, in my modest opinion.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Black people don’t have a dog in this hunt, as Governor Richards used to like to say, back in the day. And with my blood pressure as high as it is, my feeling is why get upset about white folks who arrived as part of a wave of gentrification in the past who are now maybe going to <i>lose their homes</i> to eminent domain or whatever, you know? Why worry about palefaces who spoke with forked tongue back in the day who are now going to get scalped, as seen thru a Native American lens? Especially if they may get swallowed up by my new love, the University of Texas at Austin. So, like, does a noble black man really give a shit? That’s the question and the answer is <i>no</i>. Especially if the aforesaid white people are being screwed for a good cause, like a growing University of Texas. Where black students are now welcomed. That’s <i>my</i> Longhorn creed, actually. You have to buy in and accept that the Longhorn Nation does good <i>overall</i>, even though our means may, from time to time, be just a tad <i>iffy</i>. There’s nowhere else for UT to grow, actually. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">There was a photo the other day on the Blackland neighborhood website showing the executive director of the neighborhood association being hugged by Mayor Adler, btw. That’s the developer’s kiss of death in this town, my brother. You know how, like, in the movies, <i>mafiosos kiss each</i> other on the mouth before somebody gets whacked? In River City it’s a sympathetic hug and it usually happens just before you get redeveloped. My feeling is that at City Hall they’re not really much more <i>genuinely </i>sympathetic than La Cosa Nostra, but the hug is <i>more seemly</i> than a big smack on the lips. If Mayor Adler hugs you, that means the bulldozers arrive at seven the next morning. Losing Blackland doesn’t bother me half as much now as it once did, because it will no longer be exploitation or targeting of blacks or Latinos or AAPI. It’s just an earlier generation of white gentrifiers <i>getting gentrified</i>, kind of, and that has cost me<i> </i>no sleep whatsoever. Blackland is <i>no longer black</i>, not to repeat myself. Someone ought to put that on a billboard overlooking I-35.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">And with no skin in the game, literally, one’s opinion of Forty Acres’ needs changes dramatically. The fate of Blackland becomes an academic question, literally, or a polite debate, something for blacks and Latinos to discuss over a glass of white wine at a dinner party. Like, with oodles of the same empathy that blacks and Latinos have gotten through the years from white liberals? Unless there’s also destruction of habitat because in the Lone Star dialectic, Mother Nature is a nigger too and we all need to be concerned about that. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, my guess about how UT will one day move students and instructors across the interstate to the new east campus, after Blackland is conquered and made part of the Longhorn Nation? My guess about how students and faculty will go back and forth when Blackland is just another part of Forty Acres? How future generations of Longhorns will cross I-35? Again, this is a guess—tunnels. You heard it here first. But it may not happen. White people aren’t into <i>the victim thing</i> so much, not like blacks and Latinos. Caucasian homeowners may actually <i>hire lawyers</i> and <i>sue UT</i> and <i>potentially win</i>. But, like, heading to graduation—headed to the door of the iSchool’s shitty building, thank you very much, that’s not my concern anymore. The land that <i>does</i> worry me is the land UT already owns, those 2.1 million acres in West Texas, or wherever, that formed the original basis of the endowment. <i>All those oil & gas wells</i>. All that flaring, heating up an already hot atmosphere, literally cooking the climate and us with it. All that pollution. My #5 and #6 best Longhorn stories are both about the environment, btw, kind of.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">#5: So, like, this was four or five years pre-pandemic, more or less. A sudden spirit of civic mindedness led me, one day, to the quarterly board meeting of the University of Texas Investment Management Company, UTIMCO, in downtown Austin. The conferences are open to the public but rarely attended by anyone who is not a money managers. At the time, having cleared security downstairs at UT System offices, home to the Board of Regents and the Chancellor, making my way upstairs to the conference room, a couple of guys already at the meeting spooked me. Among the board members and people in $2000-suits, who were mostly money people, there were also a couple of guys who looked like what Humphrey Bogart called “cheap gunsels” in <i>The Maltese Falcon</i>. Have you seen that movie? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, there were these two guys in ill-fitting suits, who were clearly armed, that telltale bulge under their jackets, and who were non-too discretely checking out the people coming into the conference room, me included, one gunslinger at the door and the other seated in the front row of the gallery. And my thought at the time was that UT is hiring its muscle <i>down market</i> because, being someone who is familiar with university security, from my trips to Regents’ meetings, the usual UT cops are at least nominally professional, and outwardly nonthreatening. A lot of UT police are ex-APD, actually, they at least look like professional law enforcement even in their behavior may betray that impression. To set the scene. But these two goons at the UTIMCO meeting, they looked like they may have been cops at one time, like they were ex-Ft. Worth police detectives who got fired for beating prisoners? Not to speculate or anything. That level of professionalism, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But what was interesting was that as the meeting progressed, it became clear that these guys were not UT security at all. They were apparently the personal security guys of the UTIMCO vice-chairman at the time, who was Jeffery Hildebrand, actually. He was there for the meeting, a completely nondescript white guy, not like <i>Mister Big</i> the financier or anything, he was not very talkative during the meeting either, he just sat there and listened. Anyway, his bodyguards looked like the kind of guys who you could call over and whisper in their ears, tellingf them to go whack somebody and their only question would be how you wanted it done? My feeling is that <i>choice of bodyguards is a reflection of the person who is being protected</i>. Unless the person being guarded is a chick, an actress or singer or whatever who have been known to choose their bodyguards for aesthetic reasons too, like an accessory to their clothes or makeup, while a money guy like Jeffery Hildebrand is probably choosing his people for more concrete skills than how they look, you know? Not to speculate again. That UTIMCO meeting began with a long presentation by staff on investments in the Chinese market. The UTIMCO CEO’s introduction to the consultant’s report on China included a short prologue about how terrible communism is and then a much longer presentation of how much money could be made from more Longhorn investment in the People’s Republic. No lie. That’s what it means to be a Longhorn too. We have a relationship with the People’s Republic that has been profitable and we should keep that in mind because it takes money to do good. That would be my whole point, actually.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, my last UT anecdote took place at the same time as my first anecdote, about cooking crank, when W was in office. But this time President Bush not W as governor. And this time the anecdote <i>did directly involve</i> George W. Bush. So, like, at the children’s hospital that employed me at that time we had a student volunteer who was a Longhorn sorority girl and whose sorority sister just happened to be the then-president’s daughter, Jenna Bush or Jenna Bush Hager as she is now known. Kappa Kappa Whatever, whatever sorority on West Campus that Jenna was a member of, it’s not pertinent now.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">So, like, this volunteer came to the hospital one weekend, all pumped-up and excited, she told us she had gotten her sorority sister Jenna to sign a petition against Jenna’s father’s own environmental policies. How cool is that? W wanted to open Alaska to more drilling, or whatever, and this volunteer sorority-chick said she got Jenna to signal her opposition to her own father by not telling Jenna the details of the petition and just shoving it under Jenna’s nose at the sorority, Kappa Kappa Whatever. She said that Jenna signed without even looking what she was signing. The upshot of the comment was that Jenna was ignorant of her own old man’s policies in the White House and signed what was put in front of her by a sorority sister. That’s not my take though. Both Jenna and her sister Barbara, who went to Yale, btw, were under no illusions about Daddy. Whether the subject was the War in Iraq or the environment. But if he’s your own father, what do you do? Oh-No-Daddy-is-going-to-start-a-war, instead of Oh-No-Daddy-is-going-to-start-a-fight like with most fathers. You might even think he’s a war criminal but he’s your dad too. And this recalls my dictum, if someone does the right thing, like signing a petition to stop oil drilling, <i>it doesn’t matter why</i>. If you start questioning people who do the right thing, why they did it or whatever, no one gets to Heaven. You heard it here first. Jenna did the right thing. Whether she knew she was doing it or not.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">The environment now trumps race as an issue at Forty Acres and everywhere else too, that’s my whole point actually. All those abandoned wells in West Texas? Some belong to the Longhorn Nation actually, and that’s us. All that contaminated groundwater. All those fouled habitats, belonging to animals and humans alike. The whole cancerbelt thing on the Gulf Coast. The real cause of illnesses that the Texas medical establishment ignores because oil & gas pays for research in the Lone Star State. All the global warming that <i>some people</i> said was bad science but is happening before our eyes. The Longhorn Nation’s real skeleton in the closet is not race, although it is black. It’s <i>oil</i>. That’s more important than Professor Hauser shaving points in the gradebook. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">If Dr. Dickwad can get his piece-of-shit <i>trinket</i> to <i>really work</i> and make a few <i>clean</i>bucks for UT, in a very clever endeavor that <i>doesn’t</i> involve fossil fuels, you know what? All is forgiven and we’ll be BFF. Call me noble if you will. Besides conservative Republican UT, where the Regents have ties to oil & gas, is better than the Democratic and holier-than-thou University of California, where the Regents are Hollywood types and super-liberal, and where Senator Feinstein’s husband was chairman of the board when they kicked me out of nursing school for speaking up about race on campus. At least at UT the Regents adopted the Chicago Statement regarding freedom of speech on campus. At UC the Regents just lie. Guess where my loyalty now lies? With the Longhorn Nation, where mistakes may get made but they <i>may</i> get corrected. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Elliott Hauser would be my hero at the iSchool actually, in certain circumstances, for example if he gets <i>trinket</i> to work, cracker though he may be. People like Professor Hauser are Forty Acres’ future as scary as that may sound. Things <i>might</i> just turn out okay if we can cap the wells before they kill us all and <i>still make big money</i>, through clean technology or environmental remediation, not to sound like a wild-eyed grad student. As long as the money is made some other way than drilling. Of course if Dr. Dickbite can’t get <i>trinket </i>to work, kick his cracker ass to the curb, call me mean-spirited if you will. Better, call me an idealist with a <i>practical spirit</i>, that’s what it means to be a Longhorn actually, white or black. Bevo may one day graze in Blackland and that’s perfectly cool with me too, because my allegiance has shifted to the Longhorn Nation, flawed though we may sometimes be. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">But if you think the Governors are <i>pissed</i> <i>off </i>now about the teaching of critical theory, or whatever? Wait til someone proposes prying UT loose from the Big Oil titty and all that sweet green milk she gives. There <i>will</i> <i>be blood</i>. It still has to be done. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">Go ‘Horns</span></i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 37.3333px;">. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
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Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-65709609365069064762022-10-30T12:21:00.176-07:002024-03-28T19:55:22.900-07:00Bell Canyon<p> <b style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"> </span></i></b><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">Roots as a reporter were planted during my undergraduate years doing burglaries in suburban L.A. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>Monday, Wednesday and Friday were lecture days when you would’ve seen me toting a backpack on campus, probably near Bunche Hall, home of the Economics Department. Tuesday and Thursday were off days when you wouldn’t have seen me at all, practicing my new vocation. After a rocky start, good grades got me on the Dean’s List and kept me there until LAPD ended a promising academic career. It’s strange as you age what you remember most of the old days, before the fall or falls as the case may be. What impressed me about UCLA was not ivy-covered buildings, not intellectual rigor nor the healthy environment for debate. Not my first attempts at problem-solving or learning the discipline of putting one’s thoughts on paper instead of up in somebody’s face. </span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span> </span>It was not seeing the tall lanky figures of the basketball stars walking between classes, or my morning commute past cool houses in Westwood. Mostly it was the pussy. Being completely honest here. There were some really fine mamas in attendance, then as presumably now, Southern California may be superficial—that was the rap you heard for the difference between going to UCLA or USC in SoCal instead of the Bay Area schools Berkeley and Stanford. Southern California was home of the lightweights, that’s what we heard on campus even though the Internet was being invented at UCLA at the time it was being said. Whatever their intellectual failings the SoCal schools had </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">other assets</i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">. There were fine chicks everywhere, shorts and halter tops being the school uniform those days, the early 1970s,Vietnam winding down and Watergate heating up. When some kind of mildly-infectious social bug was the only danger of hooking up. The rumor was that chicks at Berkeley didn’t shave under their arms. At UCLA they shaved all the way down to their toenails. If you were a guy where would you choose to study? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">My journalistic epiphany did not take place on campus but instead in Bell Canyon, an exclusive housing development in Ventura County, about an hour west of L.A. Bell Canyon was a </span><i style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">gated community </i><span style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">but had no fence. To set the scene. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">There were no man-made barriers with the exception of a <i>front gate</i>, the rough countryside was like a wall that surrounded the exclusive homes, </span><i style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">if </i><span style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">one wished to view white people’s wealth through the lens of a race & power dialectic. Studying economics was giving me some pretty good problem-solving skills and my solution to getting into Bell Canyon was to park short of the guard post and hike in through the hills. The inhospitable landscape would delude these folks into thinking that their shit was secure, if one viewed through the lens of thuggery. Choosing a target was also a rational exercise thanks to California’s system of higher education. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">In economics classes we did some rudimentary gaming to model the choices made by consumers. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">SoCal being built like Texas on the edifice of the automobile, my plan was to pick the first house in Bell Canyon that had no cars in the driveway on the assumption that in a mobile culture, where even kids had their own vehicles, if there were no cars present that meant nobody was home. Not brilliant but workmanlike and the kind of thinking that put to use the education my family was paying for. Later, that ability to <i>think like a thug</i> would pay dividends as a reporter in our bucolic River City, Austin, Texas, the World Capital of Live Music. You have to have a plan but it doesn't have to be original, only effective, UCLA taught me that. Assigned readings were very helpful. That was my understanding of history too, whatever worked worked, whatever didn’t didn’t. What my professors beat into us was that the simplest solution is usually the best, over-intellectualizing is as dangerous as being rash. You tend to overestimate the risks of action, that’s what rational decision-making said, intellectual training is</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">—</span><span style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">it seems to me now, after Bell Canyon. It's </span><span style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">as much about balls as brains. You want to be just analytical enough to consider the risks—and dumb enough to do it anyhow. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Timing was in my favor. In that age before technology brought the home alarm system into practically every householder’s financial reach, there were no circuits to short or cameras to dodge. No access code to obtain or password to guess. In an exclusive community with a guard post a mile away, at the front gate, duped into a sense of security, not everyone locked their doors. <i>Nice. </i></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">So, like, the first house with no automobiles parked outside and an unlocked back door became my target. An apology at the start. Burglary is a trade not an art. But it was also a political act, it seems to me even now, separating the white man and white women from their ill-gotten gains and the ill-gotten fruits of slavery, not to sound noble or revolutionary or anything. My business plan in Bell Canyon was to expropriate, ideologically-speaking, to take back from The White Man what he had taken from us. You <i>can</i> call it wealth-sharing </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">if </i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">one considers the historical imperative of The Black Peep, not to repeat myself. To answer the ethical question at the start—before we go inside the house, so to speak?</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">How can you justify entering another person’s home uninvited? That’s what a Scandinavian friend once asked me, hearing about my college years. <span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">This</span> and all that other shit that had to be done as part of my early black manhood. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">My friend was big-titty and blonde, not that that’s important, although it kind of was. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">She was entirely hot but totally <i>clueless</i> about the societal pressures that might drive an African American warrior male, like yours truly? You feel me? Who grew up in the 'hood where everyday was a <i>struggle just to survive</i>. The gritty ghetto reality of my upbringing meant that by the time you're watching somebody’s house you were already past the particular concerns of my hot Norwegian friend.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">If you’re already checking the frequency of police patrols you really didn’t care so much that you didn't get a RSVP. Her question only confused me at the time because there didn’t seem to me to be anything wrong with breaking & entering, in my undergraduate understanding of ethics, if you didn’t get caught. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">In lecture my philosophy professor mentioned Socrates or one of those medieval bitches who speculated that <i>wrong </i>is <i>contextual</i>, not absolute. That was my view in Bell Canyon. My bad, call that a moral failing on my part, a missing gene for honesty or whatever, but to answer my Norwegian friend’s question completely let’s use an analogy that isn't about sex. My feeling that day in Ventura County, to set the record straight, was that if someone left their house unlocked they must want a nigger to go inside. Which is what this one did. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">The house was split-level, modern, painted gray and would have cost about 100K at the time, which was a whole lotta money then. The back door led into the kitchen which was also modernist and high-tech for the age, like the kitchens of homes you see in architectural magazines with everything impossibly, perfectly stacked or put away. A long butcher block table down the center with forever-unused shiny copper-bottom pots hanging overhead. It was a scene not a kitchen. In my memory the home is more affluent, more opulent than it probably really was, but these people were still loaded to my innocent black eyes. My feeling was, frankly, they needed to share. From a revolutionary perspective of course, merely to recoup what had been taken from us by slavery and by Jim Crow. The whole house was a museum, actually. Clean, orderly and amazing to <i>me</i> a a Negro coming from a home where disorder was the only rule. In Bell Canyon <i>everything was in its place</i>. To a young brother or sister that could be mildly disorienting and it was. The family must have a maid and it must have been her day off. Again, lucky for me. My <i>modus operandi</i> at the time was no jewelry, no artwork, no stereo systems, just cash. Today you couldn't make a living doing cash-only burglaries but not back then, in Bell Canyon. People still used cash.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">A lot of bad boys today head straight for the bathroom, that’s my observation of crime in the modern era. In English class they taught us about comparing and contrasting, for example what it was like being a young thug back in the day compared to now? The medicine cabinet is more important today—or so they say. Painkillers can sell for twenty dollars a pill on the street today, more if it’s anything with genuine addiction potential like Oxycontin. Decades ago a thug didn't think like that. It was another era, a different time. A Negro was taking his life in his hands just being in an exclusive neighborhood, much less looking in white people's medicine cabinets. Which, even today, tells you everything you need to know about most of us, what meds we’re taking. Personally as a still-immature member of the black revolutionary movement, booze and drugs were off limits to me. Pussy was okay, if you could get some, girls didn't just give it away like they do now. Call it the healthy West Coast lifestyle, my ethos was living right—macrobiotics and good karma—in tune with nature and all that. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">No chemicals—no thank you—just cash.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Teenagers lived upstairs in matching bedrooms on the split part of the split-level, a boy and a girl from the look of the clothing. They yielded most of the money, actually. It was their saved allowances or whatever. Christmas gifts or birthday presents from Aunt Jen, you feel me, an amount that was really pretty hefty for kids. In my modest opinion. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Call me old-fashioned but they were thrifty children and you had to give the parents credit for teaching good values. But as would also be true later, busting balls and breaking news in our bucolic Austin, Texas, looking for that rich seam of corruption that runs through Travis County, from the Governor’s Office to the Travis County Jail. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">The <i>search</i> was more rewarding than the results. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Call me kinky—call me a <i>freak</i>. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">There was just something orgasmic about being in a stranger's home—going through personal papers and personal belongings unbeknownst to the owners. Or <i>known</i> to them, as long as they didn’t get home in time. It took a while certainly. It was not so much thoroughness on my part as curiosity. Insurance documents, photo albums, electronics warranties, they had two TVs and <i>both</i> were color, we had just gone color at my house too but there was only one that we all had to share. My class resentment rose and peaked. It was an affront to my black dignity, actually, this unearned largesse for The White Man. But as a professional you just had to knuckle down and do the job and look for the money, like a pro.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">There was personal correspondence—people still wrote letters and kept them in the envelopes they arrived in, in desk drawers. Where a stash of cash might also be hidden, not to sound all mercenary but this was business. In a search like that you don’t necessarily want to be detailed and thorough, like an artist or a scientist, B&E is more a <i>practical endeavor</i> and much constrained by time. Basically in this environment you were looking for the color green. For this purpose, that day in Bell Canyon, my mother had unknowingly given me a hint about how to proceed. "If you ever want to hide anything from a black man," she once told me, spinning old Negro wisdom, "put it in a book. He'll never look there." Forewarned, my host family's library got a good going-over. <i>Nothing</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">The search for money took me everywhere in the house but especially into drawers and cabinets and boxes of documents where a bank envelope might be hidden. Today most everything in the modern home of the same socio-economic class would be computerized but back then people still had a lot of paper and containers to hold it. My timing, as it turned out, assisted but also <i>hampered efforts</i> to execute a successful job. Society was just moving to credit cards and this was the beginning of the era when people began to cut back on cash on hand. Even economics training had not prepared me for the possibility that this family, that was the subject of my present efforts in Bell Canyon, was wealthy but didn't keep much money at home. That blew my mind. It would make a great economics paper. One learns through trial and error—by breaking, in this case, and entering. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">The kids had their own passports, that was a motherfucker, did that mean they could<i> </i>leave<i> </i>this bitch? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">On their own? That was my dream—getting away to anywhere that wasn't <i>amerika</i>. Like everything else in this <i>white household </i>the kids' rooms were perfectly ordered, beds made and bedcovers smooth. No one is that neat, at least no child, even an adolescent—<i>especially not</i> an adolescent. Again good for me. You didn’t have to hunt blind, shit was <i>where it was supposed to be</i>, like in drawers and with labels. On some level you have to love white people. Was this how they came to rule the world, by putting things back where they belong? Or by B&E too, we never had that discussion in class. Burglary is a very intimate crime, it seems now, looking fondly back, much more personal than most of the so-called “crimes against persons” that cops focus on now, mugging for example even if there’s bloodshed. Or carjacking—or homicide. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Unless of course it’s a professional hit that’s up close and personal. But how much emotion does it really take to pull a trigger? You can text and get it done. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Not to be old-fashioned or anything but you have to be respectful in your host’s absence, when the owner is at work or vacationing or whatever, if you're doing B&E. Don’t throw shit on the floor is the first rule. And remember you can bust a nut on curiosity as well as cash. That's what my visit to Bell Canyon taught me. That fact alone would spark my later efforts as a reporter.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Coincidence played a big part that afternoon. There was a little metal box with a combination lock that the family used for important documents and shit, instead of a safe. To set the scene. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">The <i>locked box </i>had a roll of three tumblers side by side that you could set to any combination you liked and the coincidence was that <i>my older brother</i>, in a doomed-from-the-start effort to keep his private life out of my reach, had bought one just like it. <i>Score</i>! </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">So, like, while my big bro’ was away at college, big helpings of time and patience (which would serve me so well in Lone Star State, working in the Fourth Estate) taught me how to hold one tumbler at a time stationary and roll though all the possible combinations with relative ease. It worked in Bell Canyon too. That was the first hint of the felonious serendipity that marked my career later here, along the banks of the Mighty Colorado. The secretary is away from her desk for instance. The mere absence of someone from their desk fueled my reporting career on more than one occasion in Austin. Or the drawer is <i>unlocked</i>, that kind of thing, in the room where you’ve told to wait for someone from the State of Texas to come and lie to you? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Or the lock can be easily forced, although that's crude and noisy and is something you probably want to do only at night. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">One of my happiest memories as a teenager was picking the lock on a desk. With a paper clip like in a movie, you know, a sense of achievement, it really worked, but it took a lotta time and a lot of patience, not to brag or anything. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">In Bell Canyon there was no cash or diamonds in the box but it was one of my first times taking a skill learned in one area and applying it in a totally different field, almost as gratifying as finding a stack of freshly-minted twenty-dollar bills. A kind of <i>crossover,</i> if you like, and the sort of <i>aha moment</i> that my professors talked about in lecture, which made it doubly cool, being a striving undergraduate and al that. Mostly though, what got me off that day was the search. Not to sound like a <i>freak</i>, not to repeat myself. But that's how it was later, in journalism. As a reporter you have to choose your method. Basically back in my day as a reporter in River City, you were either an interview person or a documents guy or girl. Although interviews are <i>always necessary</i>, especially when wrapping up, today you have to consider the most dominant documentary evidence to be video. There are great journalists who just specialize in getting the film. But my thing, going back to my apprenticeship in Bell Canyon, was getting <i>the paperwork</i>. Seeing something in print and getting it into the newspaper. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">There’s something so undeniable about having a state official's signature on the bottom of the page, no matter how you got it. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">A signature can be a thing of beauty when you’re trying to burn the State of Texas, as intrinsically important in my system of values as primo weed or a chick who’s shown a willingness to go down. Why not both? Why not all three? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Interviews, even for juicy shit off the record are so wishy-washy. What people say now they can deny later or say they <i>misspoke</i>. A lot of motherfuckers as City Hall like to misspeak. If the target has any sense whatsoever he’s watching what he says anyway, especially if he or she is press-savvy like a public official or professionally wary like a prosecutor or a pig. So, like, unless you’re doing a magazine interview or writing a book and there are multiple sessions and hours of tape to review later in a search for subtleties and nuance—or unless you’re a hot chick and can show a little leg or boob in order to speed disclosure? Don’t go there. Just don't go there. It’s like Southern California, you know, it’s just so <i>superficial</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">For me, documents have mostly been the way to go. Since Bell Canyon. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">That trip to the countryside revealed for me the intrinsic beauty of knowing somebody’s else business—of being <i>in </i>somebody’s business. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">For a greater cause of course, in this case, Black Liberation. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">For me that has just always had a certain <i>je ne sais quoi, </i>not to get all sentimental. For me, running traps in River City, the State of Texas was like that white family in Bell Canyon. The State wasn’t home either. And the white people in power, instead of them serving on my jury, it was me judging them. Is this a great country or what?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></p>Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-64508883099970993532022-03-11T12:50:01.300-08:002022-11-07T10:50:26.540-08:00Molly Ivins Liked to Screw<p> </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvUcoTqvp-I_K32bWeDCLwvmhgoiC1OyH0XNZihUGCTlcRv3LPPWVIGsQgzdFF3W-soErC8DeSXH249iByN3EJYt4rW-qiIlu10_dlgQIdjcRSUoyQWjMk_w551RmnPXp95ly4eiBCes0W_wszkXd5FyDVKdyN_925hFe6QIGkVedQ7feabVkAET4q/s259/download.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" height="361" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvUcoTqvp-I_K32bWeDCLwvmhgoiC1OyH0XNZihUGCTlcRv3LPPWVIGsQgzdFF3W-soErC8DeSXH249iByN3EJYt4rW-qiIlu10_dlgQIdjcRSUoyQWjMk_w551RmnPXp95ly4eiBCes0W_wszkXd5FyDVKdyN_925hFe6QIGkVedQ7feabVkAET4q/w443-h361/download.jpg" width="443" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Jordan Smith is a veteran reporter at<i> The Intercept </i>and before that the Austin<i> Chronicle</i> where she chronicled shootings and beatings and goings-on-about-town involving the Austin Police Department for fifteen years, more or less. She’s Caucasian not that there’s anything wrong with that. If my memory is correct Jordan is the daughter of a well-regarded reporter for one of the Dallas daily newspapers back in the day. Our relationship—me and her—we’re not talking right now or we won’t be when she reads this. So, like, Jordan Smith is a good person, we were teammates at the <i>Chronicle</i> for exactly one year and the only quarrel we might have would be about how well she performed her duties in the Live Music Capital of the World. <i>The</i> <i>Intercept</i> describes Jordan on its webpage, btw and to be fair to her, as “</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">one of the best investigative reporters in Texas.” Jordan would probably give herself an A or A- for her work on the local pigs <i>alone</i>, which led to her being hired at <i>The Intercept</i> one supposes. Speaking as a noble black man and as a former colleague of Jordan’s and as someone who knows the police as only the American Negro male can, and as someone who knows the Austin P.D. specifically as an organization and as a threat to life and liberty. <i>My </i>evaluation of Jordan’s performance is that she deserves a C- or a D. And therein lies a tale.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">Jordan is the author of about 3,000 articles, some on the subject of women’s health but the majority of her work on the subject of policing and the courts and much of that published back when the <i>Chronicle </i>was still a good newspaper, an old-fashioned hard-punching counterculture rag, under editor Louis Black. And almost as important—had a big news hole in print. It is precisely because the <i>Chronicle</i> was so successful in guerrilla journalism that Jordan Smith now has such a large oeuvre to parse. Her work about one of the most racially-challenged police forces in the American South—APD—also known by its gang moniker, River City Pigs. You may say, well, it’s unfair to single out Jordan Smith for criticism. There have been mistakes made in coverage of race everywhere in the country—the principal mistake being believing the police. But forgiveness is something that a white colleague would more likely grant Jordan than a Negro. This is about <i>accountability</i>. In a cracker state. In a white hipster city. In a highly non-diverse profession—not policing but journalism.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">If Jordan Smith wanted to be a pig reporter she should have done a better job and that meant nailing APD for murder, that would be my storyline here. She never sealed the deal, you could say, Jordan never caught the cops red-handed. With blood on their hands—over 15 years—even though clearly there was a lot of bloodshed in this capital city. A lot of ass-kicking and beaucoup—beaucoup—unrighteous busts. <i>Beaucoup</i>. It’s hard to describe the history of the Austin Police Department in mere words—there’s suddenly the realization now that something is wrong in Austin just like in Minneapolis. One APD officer has been charged with <i>two</i> murders, another porker with one. A much longer list includes what <i>hasn’t </i>led to arrest, among past cases that the Grand Jury did not vote to indict including a white officer who chased down and killed a black man over loud music. Literally. Here in the Live Music Capital of the World. It wasn’t just the evil white people who fucked up, either. Black people have lent a hand in our own oppression, along the banks of the mighty Colorado. Barack Obama carries blame as well. During his administration, this is more or less correct, some guesswork but offering the best scenario about why the White House did not pursue bad cops in Austin, Texas. The U.S. Attorney in Austin at the time was Robert Pitman—a good guy even if he is white. He is now U.S. <i>District Judge</i> Pitman, sitting in Austin where he has recently been much in the news. To set the scene.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">So, like, Judge Pitman has a master’s degree in human rights, or some such, from Oxford, or somewhere—not to get all la di da. But he knows his shit and was endorsed by both of Texas’ Republican Senators, John Cornyn and, at the time, Kay Bailey Hutchison, aka "The Cheerleader," who was on the squad back in the day at UT. Apparently, then-U.S. Attorney Pitman recommended to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder—presumably through the Department of Justice’s civil rights chief—that was Thomas Perez at the time, but who is lately a big Democratic Party money guy. Politically astute, you could call him. General Holder is a black man of course, like the president himself. Our U.S. Attorney in Austin wanted to open a larger investigation of APD, like the kind that Attorney General Garland just ordered in Minneapolis for the good officers of MPD. But U.S. Attorney Pitman was overruled by—there’s no direct evidence, this is a whisper that reached my ears—the president’s political people who didn’t want to anger blue Austin in red Texas. You feel me? It gets worse. There was also a <i>race traitor</i> working as a mole for The White Man! In our innocent black midst! This traitorous nigger helped to skew results to allow white oppression to continue—in a kind of black-on-black political betrayal, worse even than what the damn police did and do. This black cat was formerly one of District Attorney Ronnie Earle’s assistants, back in the day.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">The backstabbing brother, named Brown, was <i>police monitor </i>for five years—and was supposed to keep an eye on the pigs but did not, and later got endorsed by the police union for the state judgeship he holds today. Betrayal pays well in Austin. That means the judge is a <i>Tom</i>, as in Uncle Tom, something Jordan Smith couldn’t say or wouldn’t know how to say as a white reporter but a reporter of color would recognize and get on the judge’s ass. Professionally speaking. That’s another reason for avoiding white journalists—guys or chicks—covering cops. In this post-George Floyd era, may he rest in peace, any changes we’re seeing are not the work of a hot-shot Pulitzer Prize winner, either. The real hero is a nameless electrical engineer at Samsung or wherever who first had the idea to put a camera in a cell phone. If not for technology, the white press would be just as clueless today or just as unmotivated as always. So, like, you may ask, where specifically did Jordan fuck up? The critical fact that Jordan failed to wrestle to the ground, not to be judgmental, and was revealed by the black man—me—not to beat my own black drum, but as part of this critical race dialectic. This journalistic coup came with a big assist by the <i>Times </i>and concerned the Austin <i>district attorney</i> not the pigs themselves. This was to write the nut paragraph by the way—you feel me? To bring down the police union and the D.A., wrap it up pretty and put a bow on it just like a gift from Black Santa. To set the scene.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">So, like, the D.A. during most of Jordan’s time in the saddle was a Democrat—Ronnie Earle, who was the local prosecutor in ATX for more than three decades. Ronnie was a Yellow Dog Democrat, which is not always a good thing, he was in office so long that the <i>Chronicle</i> once referred to him as the “District Eternity.” To set the scene. And throughout those decades—across dozens of police shootings—Ronnie Earle’s response was always the same. “I’ll take it to the grand jury,” or words to that effect, and the grand jury never charged the pig. So, like, enter—and exit—Eric Garner, in a coffin, in the Year of Our Lord 2014—suffocated by NYPD on a sidewalk on Staten Island, and all of it on tape. After Garner (“I can’t breathe”) and after Ronnie Earle’s retirement as D.A. (pushed out the door by the local NAACP, or so it is rumored) and around the time Jordan pulled the plug at the <i>Chronk</i>, that is loosely the timeframe we’re talking. So, like, after Mr. Garner’s death the <i>Times</i> ran a report about why police shootings so seldom lead to charges against officers. One important reason being that prosecutors make a presentation to grand jurors on police shooting cases <i>without making a recommendatio</i>n to charge or not to charge, as they did and do in all other cases. Simply dropping the case file on the table, in other words, and walking out of the Grand Jury Room or wherever—leaving to the jurors themselves to sort out the facts and decide if the <i>puerco </i>committed murder, or not, or if <i>este cochino</i> was really a mad dog killer which he very often was, in my modest opinion. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Why would Ronnie want to do that? Why would he want to protect the pigs and why would he be so overall pork-friendly? Because the police union—APA—was becoming the most powerful organized labor group in Austin and always endorsed Ronnie for reelection, our Yellow-Dog D.A.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"> To set the scene. Jordan Smith played and plays in the big leagues of journalism. There’s no doubt. You can talk about foreign correspondents or talk about writers of great opinion pieces but my belief is that the real elites of journalism are on the telephone asking the medical examiner was it one bullet or two? That’s just my view having done the job, lo these many years. So, like, armed with this knowledge about the Grand Jury—courtesy of the New York <i>Times</i>—a public bus carried me one sweaty afternoon to the home of a judge in a northeast neighborhood in our bucolic River City. This jurist of color answered his own door.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">This was a cold call—catching the judge by surprise. It wasn’t so much that times had changed but the dynamic at the Travis County Courthouse had changed too. Jordan and Ronnie were both gone. Suddenly it was a black reporter knocking on the door of a black judge (not the Uncle Tom mentioned above) who knew the truth and who spilled the beans as soon as he was asked. Like he had been waiting for the question. And he could trust me because we shared the culture and shared the concern. “Ronnie never made a recommendation,” he said. In the case of a police shooting—Ronnie never told the Grand Jury his opinion as D.A., whether it was a good shooting or not. There was just a file left on the table metaphorically and maybe physically too. Leading grand jurors to believe that Ronnie Earle felt the case was weak. And the ploy worked year after year—decade after decade—because the grand jurors turned over every few months and a new group could be misled the same way the old one was. A simple but effective system used to disenfranchise blacks and Latinos and keep the affection of the Austin Police Association, which is like the damn Mafia in this bucolic River City. And just to be sure—as a noble black journalist—just to be sure and not unduly trash white chicks like Jordan for not sealing the deal—for not bringing home the bacon——or white guys like Ronnie Earle for being corrupt—an interview was conducted with the executive director of the Texas District & County Attorneys Association. Who was a good guy—an honest white guy of which there are one or two—the fingers of one hand are enough for the count in this town, btw, here along the banks of the Colorado River. The worst part is what happened next, in this black narrative that is actually recorded by an African American, not a white reporter who has race as a beat.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">So, like, a charitable view is that Jordan didn’t understand what it all meant. But it is my thesis that the biggest problem with these white chicks is that they are <i>not cut out </i>for the work, actually. They lack the cultural skills and white privilege means there’s no urgency in the task—subliminally they don’t want to eliminate police violence because it’s a <i>good beat</i>, covering racism and all—not living it—a reliable source of woe that wins prestigious jobs and Pulitzer Prizes. Not to be Old School or anything. There are all these people going into journalism today, not to be a scold, because they think it’s prestigious. They think it’s <i>cool</i>. They’ve seen the movie, like Kim Jones over at the <i>Chronicle </i>now, not to dish dirt or anything. She started out as a <i>movie reviewer</i>, not that there’s anything wrong with that. No shit. And became editor in chief of the <i>Chronicle</i> without any journalism training or experience to interrupt her ascent. These white chicks think that the way it works is you get an anonymous call at midnight about a plot in Texas government. First thing a good reporter needs to know in Austin is that there are always two or three plots brewing at the State Capitol and you have to pick and choose. Or these inexperienced white chicks think that someone mails you a thumb drive with all the files and that's how you break the story. What really happens is you have to <i>talk</i> to people and people have to feel comfortable talking to you, like me and the black judge. It’s called cultural competence—you have to understand what you’re hearing from others, and know what questions to ask. Which is usually a whole lot easier if you share the culture. Hello! </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">As for police violence—white reporters don’t have skin in the game. Literally. Not the white guys and especially not the chicks. A white cop who just shot a black man could be her boyfriend or brother or father. What’s she likely to feel? How might that influence her storyline? And why do we have so many white women covering cops and the courts anyway? Which predominantly affect minority men? Where brothers and c<i>hulos</i> got such profound experience, you know? And God forbid that the white chick on the beat is <i>frightened of black men</i> or desires our robust manhood, you feel me, as part of a social-professional-sexual dialectic? Or she holds racist views herself—just like big bro or her daddy? Is that possible? Are white chicks saints? How exactly does peeing sitting down make you a better person? That’s my question, actually. The people most affected by police violence—men of color—don’t get the job. Whites do. These white chicks, you got to shut them down early before their nose is all up in the air and they start acting like the sun shine out of their damn vagina. <i>Maybe</i> it do—if she’s really really really hot. That would be my whole point, actually. You may ask why are you taking all these shots at people? My answer is instead offending white people one at a time, like in the past, why not offend <i>everybody all at once</i> and call it a day?</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">The criminal justice reporter for the <i>Texas Tribune</i> is Jolie McCullough, who covers the executions for which Texas is famous and which again disproportionately affect minority men. So, like, she wrote in <i>Medium </i>about viewing her first execution. “As the drugs began to flow, there was an uneasy sense of calm. Garcia stopped speaking and let out a big, comfortable yawn. His eyes drooped slightly. He looked relaxed, not scared. I, meanwhile, had begun to sweat. My vision was tightening. I bent my knees to keep them from locking and tried to take deep, discreet breaths. ‘Losing vision,’ I scrawled, almost illegibly, before losing consciousness.” For real? In one sense, yes, because race relations in this country are always viewed through a white lens, even in death. In this example this guy is getting whacked by the State of Texas, not an infrequent occurrence—that is men of color getting the needle. But the execution is somehow all about Jolie McCullough. White girls are famous for that shit, btw, ask any sister or Latina. In an earlier draft that was also published on <i>Medium</i> she wrote that her pulse only started beating again when the condemned man’s stopped. <i>Please.</i> Do your fucking job, lady. It’s not bad enough that the guy is being whacked, for something that he may or may not have done, his execution has to serve as grist for a white reporter’s novel. Bet you any amount of money that Jolie tells friends/family, “I have to go witness an execution tomorrow,” expecting sympathy. Just another privileged white woman, that would be my estimation, as part of a psycho-social-gender dialectic. White chicks are all damn drama queens, not to generalize or anything. This one is another white woman among the many making a living as a white savior journalist. As for social justice, we’ve gone from white guys to white chicks, not to repeat myself, with nothing in between.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><i>The Marshall Project</i>—named after former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was black, btw—covers criminal justice and policing exclusively but the staff has almost exclusively been white and, specifically, <i>Jewish </i>women. How does that work? Isn’t that theft of someone else’s narrative? How many Jewish homies are wearing stripes and swinging scythes on East Texas prison farms? That would be my question in the journalistic context. Or on Death Row waiting for their turn with the needle? How many are Jews? The editor of <i>Marshall</i>, Susan Chira who is white of course, she's a former <i>NYT</i> chick, had to be harangued over the course of two <i>years</i> to finally desegregate her staff, in order to empower men of color regarding our own narrative. <i>Hello</i>. To cover a subject that disproportionately affects black and Latino men. <i>Hello</i>? After a protracted recent search for a police reporter, Ms. Chira announced the hire—you guessed it—of a white woman. Who is Jewish and has a Pulitzer Prize, as if that ends all debate on her qualifications as a pig reporter. How do we know she’s not just another white tourist in the hood? Bottom line in American journalism—the take-home from my rap—before it was white guys—now it’s <i>white girls</i>. That doesn’t mean that the white chick got the job because she brought home the bacon, either.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">Ditto at <i>Pro Publica</i>. Which is on everyone else’s ass about doing the right thing, right? Race stories at <i>Pro Publica</i> are good stories, which is how Molly Ivins liked to call them too, good stories, back in the day at the <i>Observer</i>. They usually involve a killing, at least in Texas. They win Pulitzers. White journalists—previously white men but now a lot of white women—these white chicks see the subject of race as key to success in the newsroom. Whereas reporters of color see racism as something that needs to be eradicated. Who has the better narrative?</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">Imperious Tex</span></i></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"> In a way Jordan was a victim of her own success. Early in her career she nailed the D.A. on a trumped-up murder case involving black teenager Lacresha Murray, who was charged with the death of a child. Jordan’s work was picked up by the <i>Times.</i> It was a particularly ugly case in a courthouse known for ugly cases, often involving colored defendants. But Lacresha’s story was one that any <i>black</i>reporter would have pursued also—it doesn’t take a white woman to save black people, that would be my point. This was Jordan’s responsibility, too, and didn’t make her a savior of African Americans or anything. In the course of her reportage, D.A. Ronnie Earle was embarrassed publicly. So he froze Jordan out—no more access to the D.A.’s Office, basically Jordan had fucked Ronnie once and he made sure that she did not fuck him again. Which in terms of tradecraft points to the importance of having a beat reporter who is different from the investigative guy or girl, if possible. But if not—be sure that the beat guy or beat girl has a new beat lined up because he or she will be denied access after the story runs, at least in the Travis County Courthouse, and probably everywhere else too. If the D.A. gives you the evil eye, so to speak.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">The <i>Chronicle</i> didn’t have the kind of staffing to work around an impediment like that. Louis Black and publisher Nick Barbaro had limited resources, Jordan was it—for both the pigs and for the courts—women’s health too—and Louis and Nick were lucky to have her. So, like, some might argue that Jordan did the best she could. She didn’t have access to the big guy in the courthouse who turned out to be the heavy in this motion picture. The district attorney. As one might say in a critical race dialectic. Jordan has game as a journalist, no doubt, she did some good work on the structure of the pig pen—the scaffolding and the concrete—but less on the feeding trough and the latrine, metaphorically-speaking. She never brought home the bacon, to be blunt. She never served no damn pork on a plate. That would be my whole point, really. You have to know how an institution like a police department is constructed before you can tear it down—her work was valuable in that respect. Jordan wrote about Chief Acevedo’s tenuous relationship with the union, for example, as APA became the most powerful political force in the city. After the real estate lobby of course—let’s be honest here, this is Austin—developers own the whole fucking political establishment. Even more powerful than the police are developers, not to repeat myself. Anyway, despite its inherent evil, the Austin Police Association still had its own narrative at the time, which was just as good as anyone else’s frankly, and better than most. This is really cool, just alerting you ahead. APA—the union of <i>cochinos</i>, this herd of sowbellies—became powerful because they were at risk and there was safety in numbers. To set the scene.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">Austin has a lot of important people and big shots and/or bigwigs at the Capitol who may drink and drive—or drink and snort—and who one night, under the influence, may think that the garden hose is a boa constrictor. It’s happened before. There’s also a lot of sketchy shit that happens “out at the lake,” being Lake Travis. Some pretty weird and horrific shit happens not just downtown, in the high-rises and hotels, but anywhere the responding pigs get fucked for doing their jobs. To be honest and to give the motherfuckers their due. And back in the day—tired of being rat-fucked for doing their job—the Austin Police Association was formed for protection. The index case—that explains the origins of </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">police unions everywhere in America, not just in the Live Music Capital of the World, took</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"> place in 1980 across the street from the Texas statehouse, actually, on Congress Avenue where the building that houses the Texas <i>Tribune</i> now stands. To set the scene. This is one of my favorite anecdotes, actually, the kind of thing that if you bought me a beer or we shared a spliff back in the day, you would have heard during my <i>brief </i>period of innocence as a cub reporter. This was long before the horror of the Bush years. So, like, back in the day in the Continental Bus Station, on the site of today’s <i>Tribune</i>—in the men’s room of the station—the Austin Police Association was born. Not just in a metaphorical sense, but in reality.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">So, like, that afternoon a middle-aged white guy was arrested in that men’s room for trying to “touch the penis” of the guy next to him, who happened to be an undercover Austin vice cop. That’s basically all the background you need to know. The charge was colloquially known at the time as “weeny-wagging” although the alleged illegal action may not have actually involved wagging. No effort will be made to defend the statute—regarding what would normally be consensual behavior between consenting adults—but at the time it was an offense in the penal code. For the record. And the middle-aged guy who got arrested—a cat named Killinger—just happened to be the chairman of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. To set the scene.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">Chairman Killinger had a lot of friends in high places, including at the pig pen. The next time the two vice cops who busted Mr. Killinger made a work-related appearance on Congress Avenue, after the big arrest, it was a very short time later, actually—this is my eyewitness testimony in fact, they were back in uniform, riding three-wheelers and passing out parking tickets. Not far from the Continental Bus Station in fact. One of those two ex-vice cops—a cat named Lummus—actually a cool white guy <i>and</i> a cop—it’s hard to believe—there are a few—<i>very</i> few. Anyway Mike Lummus became president of the nascent Austin Police Association. So, like, everyone has a narrative—that is what President Obama said just after he was elected, btw, his best speech in my modest opinion, early in his administration. It was delivered in Cairo, the guy was beautiful, that was before the drones were yet airborne, btw. <i>Everyone</i> has a narrative, the President said. Even the Austin Police Association. And it may be a very powerful narrative, like APA’s. The problem arises when the narrative gets rewritten—or people lose their way. People can go <i>astray</i> which is a surprisingly frequent storyline here in the Live Music Capital of the World. That’s what happened to Jordan Smith actually. She went astray. Or that’s my theory. She lost her way, or at least that’s my way of seeing it. The pigs felt they could talk to Jordan, you could say that for her, which <i>is </i>important, but Jordan’s primary role should have been more confrontational, you feel me? Jordan was trying to <i>understand</i> the cops while my approach or the approach of another noble black journalist would have been to fry up some bacon. Because black people already understood everything we needed to know about pigs. We just wanted a stop to police killings. Jordan should have brought home the bacon to the black community but she did not. So, like, one day after the <i>Chronicle</i> weekly editorial meeting—it was clear to me at that point that Jordan was <i>not</i> going to make headway busting po-po’s balls. This was not my call to make in the editorial hierarchy of the newspaper, but it was my call to make as a black man. So, like, my suggestion to her as a friend was, after that meeting, headed for the door at the end of my brief tenure at the <i>Chronicle</i>—kind of like my brief tenure everywhere else but maybe briefer. My suggestion to her was that maybe she wanted to try another beat?</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">Which was met with an astonishing reply from Jordan. “I’m quite satisfied,” she said, “with my”—Jordan was looking for the right word—“fiefdom.”</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">What the fuck did that mean? It wasn’t her fiefdom, It was our <i>ass</i>, you feel me? Jordan went astray, not to get all dramatic. She lost her way, that was my take. This town, what can you say?</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">So, like, the <i>American-Statesman</i> did a statistical analysis of police encounters with minorities and Jordan went on a rampage literally. She was jealous. Black men don’t do that so much, btw, we don’t usually engage in the green-eyed thing, especially not if the chick we might want to criticize is hot or she’s actually bringing home the bacon. “According to the daily,” Jordan wrote, “Hispanics are 25% more likely to have force used against them, and African Americans are 100% more likely to have force used against them, than whites. These are inflammatory, even shocking, statistics. Unfortunately for the city, the APD, and most especially the Statesman, they appear to be dramatically exaggerated—indeed, almost entirely untrue.”</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">Oh really?</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"> Instead of accepting the daily newspaper’s statistical analysis—which has turned out to be pretty fucking accurate, by the way—she attacked the methodology. Who won that debate? Which narrative has turned out to be closer to the truth? Colonel Cox’s family-owned Chamber-of-Commerce-friendly daily newspaper or the left-leaning liberal weekly alternative? The <i>Statesman</i>’s team was multi-ethnic, btw, that would be my argument. The <i>daily’s </i>team knew what they were looking for because they knew the pigs’ reputations in their own communities—although they didn’t use that word, “pig” or the adjective porcine, which is one of my favorites, not that that’s pertinent here. Jordan got some criticism for her criticism of the daily, some pushback you could say, so much that her news editor—a white guy named Michael King who was previously <i>my</i> editor at the <i>Observer</i>—he devoted a column to defending her in the <i>Chronicle</i>.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">“So we do not apologize for publishing a strongly skeptical analysis of the <i>Statesman</i> series, and for strongly questioning its principal conclusion.” Oh really? He continued, “The real problem, for the <i>Statesman</i>, is that those comparisons do not show the radical degree of racial disparity that generates alarmist numbers like ‘African Americans are 100% more likely to be met with force,’ and sensational headlines like ‘Blacks bear the brunt when police use force.’ Even on the <i>Statesman</i>’s own terms, the latter headline, which opened the series on Jan. 25, is so misleading as to be untrue—for in plain English it says that ‘On those occasions when police use force, African Americans are treated worse.”</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">How could you be more wrong? That would be my question. Michael knew better—he was editor of the <i>Observer </i>when “The Color of Justice,” about pigs in Tulia, was published. But it was more important to rag the competition than publish the truth. It’s unlikely that a black editor would have defended Jordan, as hers did, no matter how good a person she is, and Jordan Smith is a good person. But she was wrong here. White people do not understand race at the best of times and cannot be trusted to responsibly cover a problem that they are <i>responsible</i> for causing in the first place. That would be my point, actually. In this case in order to discredit the competition, a statistical study that should have been welcomed was discredited. Pro-pig propaganda instead appeared in the <i>Chronk</i>. Which is why white people have dubious value covering cops. That would be my whole argument, practically. They have no skin in the game. It’s just a beat. And speaking for myself—the least judgmental and least racist person in the whole world—some of these white chicks get on my last damn nerve. They’re just as bad as the guys—that’s a late dispatch from the trenches of the race wars, btw. Unless she’s really hot and a dispensation for hotness can be made. Does that sound sexist? Like on television—if she has aesthetic game even if she can’t report for shit? That sometimes happens with white reporters while sisters or Latinas or Asian chicks—or any minority whatsoever—is almost guaranteed to have journalistic game, hot or not. Does that sound racist?</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">The bottom line is that you can’t let white people moderate the debate on race in this country. That’s like asking a rapist to define consent. The <i>best </i>you can say about the average white reporter—male or female—white guy or white girl—is that it’s about their careers not our lives. Race is “a good story,” especially if the narrative features wild pigs and leaves behind a body or two, like Molly Ivins of the Texas <i>Observer</i> used to say, back in the day. Molly herself is a good example of a white savior, btw—far more that type of journalist than Jordan Smith who, whatever her faults, has never been a self-promoter. Molly covered cops for the <i>Star Tribune</i> in Minneapolis too, btw, and quit, these are her own words, because the newspaper wouldn’t allow her to do first-person stories about how bad that racism made her feel. Molly was completely crazy and self-obsessed—totally Molly-centric—all the time—not that there’s anything wrong with that. Everyone in Texas journalism was obsessed with her at one point, actually, and that was her goal, fame, especially when W was president and he was committing, you know—how can one say this—war crimes? Molly tried to warn us, to give her credit.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">Technically-speaking Molly Ivins was my supervisor at the <i>Observer </i>when one of the greatest pieces of white savior journalism was published—a zenith achievement among my generation of reporters. Not at the <i>Chronicle </i>actually but at the <i>Observer, </i>at the turn of the last century. One story was everything that Jordan Smith’s work was not. My presence was entirely incidental to the reportage, btw, let me say that at the start. And Molly, who was Big Mama at the <i>Observer</i> at the time, was just following the magazine’s principal storyline since the beginning of the publication, when founding editor Ronnie Dugger wrote about racism and about the liberation of black people in the Lone Star State. But didn’t actually have any in his editorial department.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Cultivo una Rosa Negra </span></i></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">My first crib in Austin was on the third floor of the Alamo Hotel between the not-yet-extant Elephant Room, which is my current bar, and the original location of Whole Foods, which hadn’t yet been built. Not because the two sites, the original Whole Foods and the Elephant Room, are related somehow but because they were my primary references points downtown when W was in office, beside the Capitol and the Travis County Courthouse. The Elephant Room would become my <i>personal</i> bar like the Cedar Door was my <i>professional </i>bar, back in the day, as the principal place where the <i>Statesman</i> staff did their heavy drinking, after putting the newspaper to bed. Long before the origins of Whole Foods, actually, which began later, as a funky little organic grocery store on Lamar Boulevard, where only white people went and <i>not yet</i> become a nationwide symbol of conspicuous consumption, Whole Foods that is. To set the scene geographically. Everything for me was within a 30-minute walk downtown. </span><span style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">The Alamo was a residence hotel full of pensioners and transient musicians and people who couldn’t put together first and last month’s rent for a real apartment—people like me. The Alamo had a barbershop and restaurant on the first floor but you probably didn’t want to get your hair cut there and you definitely didn’t want to eat the food. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">My room in the Alamo had a four-poster bed, half-bathroom, hot plate and windows that opened out over Guadalupe at Sixth Street, who could ask for anything more? For a year that was my home and the hotel still has a special place in my heart, not to go all sentimental, because my first and most enduring drug addiction was nurtured there, in that tiny little room on the 3<sup>rd</sup> floor. The hotel’s most famous guest, living downstairs, was Sam Houston Johnson, former President Johnson’s little brother. No lie—me living that close to Texas Royalty! This particular member of the Johnson family was already in his sixties at the time, some ancient age like that, like me now btw, and was alleged to be involved in a wide variety of improprieties and illegal shit and <i>not a favorite</i> with the rest of the dead president’s family, hence his chosen location, the Alamo Hotel. A kind of exile, sure, but still on the ranch, so to speak. So, like, he dies one day—Sam Houston we’re talking about because the great Lyndon had already gone to the last round-up, like, five years before my arrival in River City. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Hearing one day in the newsroom of Sam Houston’s demise my first instinct was to run home and check out his room and see if he left behind anything incriminating. But the door was locked and had probably already been cleaned out by the U.S. Secret Service or whoever takes care of those matters. The Johnson Family never produced any really good material for me. My memory is of, decades later, wasting a lot of time trying to run down the rumor that when LBJ died, out on the ranch, his heart attack or whatever happened, happened when he was in the saddle with the ranch foreman’s wife. That was the extremely juicy rumor and half of me still thinks it’s true. But you couldn’t track it down for the same reason, you couldn’t see the <i>evidence</i>, because the U.S. Army wouldn’t give up a copy of the autopsy report. The point is that this town may be the “World Capital of Live Music,” or whatever, but it’s still a highly-charged <i>political environment</i> ,and at one time the Johnson Family ruled as far as the eye could see. Then everything became <i>Bushland</i>—except in about a five-mile radius around the Elephant Room, or equivalently around the State Capitol. <i>Around</i> the State Capitol but not in it, btw, where a non-partisan black man like me has largely been able to walk the streets unmolested, this last half-century or so. Having gotten away with shit that would have gotten a nigger lynched in a prior generation, mind you. Point is—if you have your music—in my case jazz—and a bottle to go along with it, and maybe <i>a little herb</i> to go along with that, who’s in the Governor’s Mansion or who occupies the White House is a lesser consideration. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">But as a newbie reporter you had to pay attention to shit, because there was a lot going on. For me, covering the courts meant dealing with the alphabet agencies too, FBI, DEA, ATF, IRS as well as the Secret Service which had a big presidential detail in town to cover LBJ’s family and the LBJ Ranch, where the former president rode off into the sunset a few years before my arrival at the City Desk, not to repeat myself, instead to set the scene at the time. While this may all sound very impressive, cool and important for a young reporter, especially a member of the Black Press who was, basically, working in the heart of the Old Confederacy. The opportunities to poke a finger in the eye of the Confederacy were beaucoup and there were scores to settle, not to sound vengeful but because white people needed a comeuppance. Public debate in the circulation area of the <i>American-Statesman</i> concerned a single issue played out day after day in the newspaper’s pages—on radio and on TV and which was <i>not</i> part of my beat. Growth versus no-growth. The question was whether a small Southern town with some artistic charm and considerable natural resources would become home to hundreds of thousands of new residents. Midwesterners escaping a newly-oxidized Rustbelt, Easterners and Californians tired of their own over-developed seashores and coming to the Third Coast too. The question before the public, to repeat, was whether ours would remain a sleepy state capital with some quaint Old South racial practices, like shooting niggers, and home to a huge state university and surrounded by a town with a reputation for the best live music on the planet. To set the scene. We now know how the debate turned out but at the time the issue was still in doubt. The best metaphor seems to be a young girl with her virginity still intact trying to decide whether to sleep with her boyfriend. She ends up turning tricks. For this bucolic River City the jump was from innocent to jaded with only a “For Sale” sign in between. City fathers and mothers went for the money, an inevitable decision one supposes now but that no one expected at the time. Austin was still innocent—still cherry, you might say. It didn’t last. This town. People lose their way. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">For my reporting the setting was more important than the actors themselves. Trying to acquaint myself with the city, learning its ways and the geography most of my landmarks were water, btw. My life and work almost never took me south of the Colorado River, to South Austin, no farther than Deep Eddy Pool in the heart of white West Austin or east of Montopolis Dam—and only then to score a baggie. On the north end of town my effective reporting range, riding trail here in Austin, Texas, the Live Music Capital of the World, was the UT campus or the alphabet avenues just beyond campus, to interview a minor drug dealer or a disgruntled graduate student cooking crystal on Avenue F. Today people would call the area inscribed by these borders downtown but back in the day it was the <i>whole</i> town and for me it meant running into important people on the sidewalks <i>downtown</i>, a few blocks from my crib, on Congress Avenue for example, those blocks between the south face of the Capitol and the Congress Avenue Bridge. The South Congress restaurant Guero’s, just across the river, where the beautiful people like to be seen these days? It was a feed store. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">There were social limits in River City, borders you could call them and they were not crossed. The capital city took its racial demarcations seriously as a respectable Southern town. Nice girls, for example University of Texas co-eds and especially sorority girls, sweethearts of Kappa Phi or whatever, didn’t drive east of the interstate because black people and “dirty Mexicans” lived there. It just wasn’t done. Unless it was for music or sex or drugs or all three. But their boyfriends drove on to the eastside all the time—perhaps even to rent the charms of the legendary Titty Mama, a sister with an existential rack who, it was said, introduced a generation of white fraternity boys to the wonders of coitus, in car backseats, parked off Twelfth Street in East Austin. To set the scene. Titty Mama would have been fucking guys from all over the State of Texas, here to attend UT, her fame must have spread that way to faraway, otherwise-pissant Panhandle counties and to the Coastal Bend. On the eastside, searching for pussy or weed you met white boys, the races mingled, yeah, and even Boopsie came east when she wanted good lovin’ or when she wanted to dance the boogie woogie, everyone was brought together by the most fundamental human need, pleasure. To bust a nut. Professionally, for me, everything was in reach and almost as welcoming as Titty Mama. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Downtown, you might see the Lieutenant Governor walking to work because he used his apartment in the statehouse as a guesthouse. Years later it was W, when he was still in Austin and beginning his campaign for president. Bush made a habit of walking from the Mansion down Congress Avenue to an office building next door to the Elephant Room, where his presidential campaign was headquartered, not to repeat myself. My guy, my source on W’s walk is a lawyer who worked in the same building where Bush’s campaign was and said that W made a big deal in the afternoon of walking from the State Capitol down to his national campaign headquarters, near the banks of the mighty Colorado. And this lawyer said that in the early days when W entered his campaign office, you know who would follow him and enter the campaign office a short time later? Walking in from the street, just like the governor, and going into the Bush national campaign office? Michael Dell, the computer guy. Dell was one of W’s early money guys. This town. People lose their way. And if you were a reporter, it could happen to you too, so sudden, one day you were breaking good stories and the next thing you knew you were selling your ass on Congress Avenue, just like a damn ho.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Austin</span></i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">! That was all the coroner needed to write on the report.</span><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">We saw it all the time back in the day. You started out so high, literally—good weather, good vibes, good music. There was Lake Travis, fine pussy and all that—dick if it’s your thing. After that it was just so easy to spiral down or spin out of control. If you've lived in this bucolic River City, and everyone has at one time or another, you know it's true. Which is why chasing public officials became my bread-and-butter, my meal ticket, so to speak, like Ronnie’s was niggers. With politicians you don’t get so attached. Wrongdoing in public life is a pretty good assignment in this town. At the beginning, for me, public corruption was only a <i>passing</i> interest. Negroes were my principal beat. That led me to on the slime trail to the police because there were so many police interactions. But my primary responsibility in the <i>American-Statesman</i> newsroom was never black people per se but there were only two people of color working on the City Desk at the time, in a newsroom with a couple of dozen reporters, and there was all of East Austin to cover. It was an era when people still subscribed to the daily newspaper, delivered to their home and still believed what they read in it, more or less. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Because black reporters knew our own culture and would do a better job than a white guy or girl, me and the other brother did a lot of eastside coverage for the City Desk as well, including <i>los puercos</i> from time to time, not to repeat myself, back before racial justice was as popular a reporter’s beat as it is now. Sometimes it was just a form of translation. Like, white people had a lot of curiosity about African-Americans even then and sometimes your job was merely to interpret the culture, to translate for those who didn’t understand jive, so to speak. And occasionally to let white people know when they were treading on dangerous ground. Like, no, you don't want to go there, bro’, although we didn’t say bro’. Or no, you don’t want to say that or you’re going to get your ass kicked. So, like, the advice that most was a part of my repertoire with white people at the time, even if he or she was really really angry with a black man or black woman, never raise the subject of a black person’s mother, upon possible pain of death. Or, like, telling a white colleague, “That over there, my friend, that's <i>the jungle</i>. Keep the fuck out.” The job also meant writing about a lot of firsts, first black this, first black that, as White Society tried to make Negroes believe we were being integrated into the Chamber of Commerce culture of this bucolic River City. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">And of course the aftermaths of police shootings, then as now, listening to a grieving mother ask why they had to shoot him six times, you know, if he was unarmed? It was always SOS, the same old shit, the <i>same old story</i> from APD, just as it is today. Someone still has to write it. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">It was particularly frustrating covering the police because local pigs, APD, were determined to make all the same mistakes dealing with niggers that every other police force in the South had already made. The last cop to be killed in the Live Music Capital of the World, btw, a year or two before my arrival on the scene, was a Latino who was machine-gunned by a white drug-dealer. There didn’t seem to be any racial animus involved, <i>in pace requiescat </i>for both guys because the killer was the last person to be executed from Austin. But the pig who got snuffed before that was a white guy who started hassling a Black Muslim selling the in-house organ of the Nation of Islam, <i>Muhammad Speaks. </i>In other words a soul brother, a strong black male like me, who apparently didn’t take shit from white people, also like me, but in this particular case <i>un</i><i>puerco blanco</i>. Couldn’t have helped the guy who got taken out by the AK-47—when somebody empties a machine-gun into your chest it’s a karma moment, God is telling you to lie down and stop breathing. But having completed my City Desk internship covering cops in Atlanta, the so-called Black Mecca, and knowing a little bit about the Nation of Islam, more apparently that did the Austin police. If anybody had bothered to ask me, which they did not, my advice would have been <i>don’t fuck with the Nation</i>. Cop or no—magnum on your hip or venerable .38 revolver—you may not live long enough to use it. Which turned out to be what happened to the pig in question on Congress Avenue. Those Muslim brothers don’t play around. If you mess with them or disrespect their religion, someone may end up bleeding out. <i>Oh well</i>. The message got passed on directly, not by me, just a little late to help the aforementioned officer of the law. So, like, there was like some racial polarization in River City, yes, you could say that. As well as geographic division. Interstate 35, which separated white West Austin from black and brown East Austin.</span><span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Despite its reputation as progressive, whatever that means, the People’s Republic of Austin was like so many small towns in the South, divided by a road, just as train tracks had been the black-white division before the highway. Blacks lived east of the line, wherever that line was. White people generally had to have a <i>good reason</i> to be on the eastside, often to buy drugs or rent pussy or in the case of the white cops, to prevent same.</span><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">So, like, you could talk about who was getting busted or which neighborhoods had the poorest infrastructure or why the kids in the black elementary schools in Austin wore heavy coats in winter—the boilers were out of service. But not at the white school across town where classrooms were warm and toasty. The best explanation, the most revealing detail to describe this bucolic River City <i>racially</i>, at the time, as a member of the Black Press, involved the criminal justice system. Which was technically my beat—the pigpen in other words, the police, the courts and His Honor the District Attorney. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">At night, if you listened to the police scanner, which you had to do if you were covering cops, even as a weekend fill-in like me. On the scanner a common call was an acronym, “B.I.W.A.,” pronounced <i>bee-wah</i>. This was used well into the ‘90s, a Travis County prosecutor told me. That’s all the pig would say, “B.I.W.A.” He would say he was pulling over a car, maybe give the license number, and of course the location. But the reason for the stop was just “B.I.W.A,” and the dispatcher or sergeant listening knew exactly what the first pig meant. B.I.W.A. stands for “<i>Black in White Area</i>.” That was River City, Texas. Some say it still is. Which is what this is mostly about. It’s about <i>B.I.W.A.</i> And Ronnie Earle. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><b><i>Last Night a BJ Saved My Life </i></b></span><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Readers of the daily newspaper talked about a vast rightwing conspiracy to dumb down the left-leaning residents of River City. They talked conspiracy, they talked </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">cabal</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">. But you were closer to the truth if you talked good herb, cold beer, sun and the lake. Pussy. </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Dick. </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Warm weather for the two to meet. There were simply a lot better things to do than dig through records in the Travis County Courthouse or rewrite copy. The location attracted good reporters, sure, that's part of the appeal of the Live Music Capital of the World. But almost immediately after people hit town the lifestyle started to affect you in unexpected ways. You just stopped wanting to work. It had nothing to do with slackers per se, it was a rational decision, there was so much better shit to do and that wasn’t just true for reporters. </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">Ronnie Earle once helped to recruit a new police chief. This is a true story, or mostly true, Ronnie told me in a </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">tête-à-têtes </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">in his office one day as he was approaching the last roundup, finally hunted down by the NAACP. To set the scene. The new chief of police was from Small Town, California and only took the job reluctantly because he didn’t really approve of ATX. He thought the city was </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">degenerate </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">in some sense and called the residents “hippies.” Then, a year or two after coming to town—or so Ronnie said—the chief bought a couple of acres out in the Hill Country and was talking about retiring to the ranch to raise a few head. It was that way for reporters too. They might arrive all fired-up with ambition but people get comfortable in Austin, they start spending time on the water, learning how to jet ski or whatever or just soaking up some rays on a spring day. Followed by a few drinks and listening to the house band on the patio at Scholz’s. They start sampling local produce—there’s always been good herb in this town and in </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">certain circles, </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">including my circle of friends, that’s important. There were moments of brilliance in the newsroom even during the time of my short tenure, back in the day, but no one could be bothered to put out a decent newspaper day after day. That would be too much </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">like work</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">. Good enough was good enough, you feel me, ATX was laidback then and maybe that’s disappearing now with the arrival of the tech vultures but at the time relaxation was a religion. You could go to Barton Springs in the morning and there were a bunch of Druid chicks. We weren’t journalists then for the record, we were </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">reporters</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">, a job description that was not entirely kosher, not like now that journalism is fashionable and everybody wants to break big stories. To set the scene. People doing the job now are better-educated but more inexperienced in the ways of the world. Back then it was the reverse, we were </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">too </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">experienced but not well-enough schooled to make sense of what we saw. Or know how to express it on paper. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">The principal day cop reporter during my stay on the City Desk was Jim Berry who had a high school education and had been City Editor at the <i>AAS </i>previously. Before that he was a desk man for one of the wire services in Pakistan and he had to drink mouthwash while he was in Lahore or wherever, because there was no alcohol allowed. That was what it was like back in the day. Those were the kind of people you met. We the reporters were a lot like the cops we covered, a questionable formal education, skills almost entirely acquired on the job. We had our own bars and our own bulls/bitches and a well-deserved reputation for not being good in polite society. A lot of drinking, in this bucolic River City—a lot of drinking and a lot of screwing actually, not that there's anything wrong with that. And a lot of divorces. In the newsroom if you had any sense you were looking for a way up or out. The questionable influence actually started at the very top, Editor Ray Mariotti's major reputation outside work was as a bar-fighter. Literally, Ray was best known as the guy who you wanted to have your back if things got nasty when you went out at night to get drunk, or hook up, after putting the newspaper to bed. A colleague told me once about watching the editor-in-chief rabbit punch some poor motherfucker in an alley behind a downtown watering hole. This was the guy </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">writing the editorials</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">, mind you, telling the Legislature about public policy, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Ray also fucked anything that moved which kind of made him a role model for the young guys like me. Ray Mariotti’s command of the five W’s and his understanding of the inverted pyramid was impeccable but not teachable. Ray had learned his trade in Miami Beach. His day job was for Cox Newspapers, while he spent his afternoons at the dog track. He made a living at the track after journalism too, what does that tell you about our skillsets in the newsroom? Mariotti’s weekly poker game included the FBI supervisory agent in Austin, not to be confused with the agent-in-charge who is always in San Antonio, the same government guy who would be lying to me during the day, during a call for comment. So, like, the thing about us being uneducated, maybe that was not entirely true, sitting to my right in the newsroom a couple of desks over were two Stanford graduates, Glenn Garvin who did investigations and Linda Anthony who was an incredibly hot young thing who wrote an </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">expose </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">on massage parlors by working as a masseuse. How cool is that? To set the scene. Linda studied Chinese in Palo Alto, that was the word that reached my ear one day, she was probably the only masseuse working in America who had studied Mandarin at a top-tier private university. Truth be known Linda kind of </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">owned the newspaper</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">, or a big part of it, the name she didn’t use was Cox, Linda Anthony Cox, something like that, Linda Cox Anthony, the Cox part being “Cox Enterprises,” or “Cox Media,” or “Cox Communications,” or “Cox Newspapers,” not sure what corporate logo was on my paycheck at the time. The Cox Family was owner of the Austin and Waco newspapers, dailies in Palm Beach and in Miami Beach, and Dayton, Ohio where the founding publisher Colonel Cox of the Union Army was also Governor of Ohio back back back in the day. The Cox Family was also owners and publishers of Atlanta Newspapers where my journalism apprenticeship had taken place, covering the pig pen actually. The Coxes were also owners of a couple of ad-filled throwaways in California that were probably more profitable than the Austin and Atlanta newspapers combined.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">With certain notable exceptions like our rock critic Ed Ward who arrived on the bus from </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Rolling Stone </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">a few days after my bus from Atlanta, and Bill Cryer who was Garvin’s partner and also first rate, and Linda who was a good journalist and had, not surprisingly considering her station in life, good weed. We were still mostly in the Mariotti mode. Can’t speak for </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">everybody </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">but my guess is that, if not working in the newspaper business, many of us would have been at the track with Ray or in the sack with whoever or smoking a big fat doobie, if shit was available. It wasn't just a class thing but you could explain that way as well as any other. Because we weren’t entirely acceptable in society, that didn’t mean we didn’t have power or stand close to power. Just after my arrival at the </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Statesman </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">the guy sitting at the desk in front of me was tapped by the new Republican governor as Press Secretary. The Texas Democratic Party was in freefall at that moment, actually, at the time my bus pulled into the Continental station, the D’s in shock because a rightwing Republican oilman, from rightwing Dallas, was moving into the Mansion for the first time since Reconstruction. That was what it was like at the time of my arrival. A sense of shock and of liberal horror, like the Antichrist had arrived, like, yes, the election of Donald Trump. Democrats in Texas were dead men walking but didn’t know it yet. My idea, this may sound crazy, was to create a new kind of journalism. Call me a dreamer, call me an </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">innovator</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">. Call me a </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">thug</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">. My idea was to tap that sweet spot between journalism and crime. Getting the story by any means possible, which everybody was already doing anyway, including fucking their sources, if need be. Sometimes even if </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">wasn’t necessary</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">, merely to bust the nut. That was easy at the State Capitol, finding somebody to screw. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">My idea </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">was actually to ease infinitely close to the proverbial line, between smart reporting and prosecutable criminality. Not to sound like a villain. That was, like, </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">my goal </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">as a reporter. But not get caught. Because only amateurs get caught which is what had prematurely ended my promising career in Southern California home-breaking as an undergraduate. This new approach, if it worked, offered whole new vistas for </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">getting the story</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">, not to sound noble or anything. For example, my buddy Gimo who was one of the </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Statesman</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">’s investigative types went to federal court once to look at a file. To set the scene. So, like, Gimo got the file mixed up with his own papers and left the courthouse with </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">documentation </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">belonging to the clerk of the U.S. Western District of Texas, lost among his own papers, not that there’s anything wrong with that, in my professional opinion as a working reporter. It was purely accidental in an age when you were dealing with a lot of paper because computers were not yet widespread. To set the scene again. So, like, Linda Anthony Cox or Linda Cox Anthony who was City Editor by that point in time, well, she kind of got a call from the presiding federal judge in Austin, a white guy named Nowlin, appointed to the bench by none other than President Reagan, and all, and who lived near Linda, in West Austin or out on the lake, wherever Linda lived. And apparently the judge </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">knew </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">Linda, like, he knew Linda Anthony socially? Is that possible? It’s a small town, what can you say? </span><o:p></o:p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">So, like, it was a courtesy call from the judge to Linda, yeah, a courtesy let’s call it. The judge tells her, like, Guillermo can bring the file back to the U.S. Courthouse, “Or I can send the marshals out to collect it.” Words to that effect—the unspoken understanding being that if the U.S. Marshal Service has to be sent to the </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">American- Statesman </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">newsroom they will collect my friend Gimo while they're there. So, like, this was an error on Guillermo’s part. He forgot to return the file. But my idea, well, and in all modesty it’s </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">pretty fucking revolutionary</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">. But suppose you wanted to do shit like that </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">on purpose</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">? Instead of suppressing thug-like tendencies as a reporter, suppose a brother plays to his strengths? That was my notion, call it prosecutable if you will. Anyone who is dishonest when honesty is easier is </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">fucked up</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">, that’s true. But what if you’re dishonest when it’s more <i>difficult</i>, yet more rewarding? When the price is right so to speak? What if you show a willingness to go where no thug has gone before? You will be a man, my son, like Rudyard Kipling said even though he was a cracker, too. You’re someone to be reckoned with, in that case, someone to be looked up to or even feared. </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">That </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">became my goal. To be good in a bad way or bad in a good way. But if you have to choose—just plain </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">bad </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">will do. Stealth as a rule—and as a philosophy of life. And this approach yielded some early results although success was, frankly, disappointing because security is tight in River City and always has been. With some notable exceptions, like one night going through state troopers’ trash behind the State Capitol? To set the scene again.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">So, like, me walking downtown late, just minding my own black business like the Constitution says a man got a right to do, passing the </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">DPS barracks </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">tucked away between the north entrance of the Capitol and the beginning of Forty Acres. There was one of those easily-tipped-over wheeled plastic dumpsters out back, that belonged to the pigs inside. To set the scene again. In the trash, like, it wasn’t that dirty really, even coming from damn </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">puercos</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">, not like that time going thru the sheriff’s trash at his home and finding those medicine bottles? He was taking a lot of shit. Out behind DPS there was a fresh take-out pizza box for example on top. And below the box some schedules for undercover troopers, no shit, who were following the Texas Attorney General of the time, as in </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">surveillance logs </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">of some kind, not security. With the target’s name. Which may have been justified in this case because this particular Democratic politician, who should be finishing his sentence about now in federal prison, btw, was eventually convicted of a horrible act of public corruption. So, like, DPS following him may have been totally legit. This was information obtained by non-traditional means but was perfectly worthless if you didn’t know more, like the context. As a reporter one does not want to just throw information out there and rely on sensation. A major responsibility is to provide context, not to sound Old School, to allow the citizenry to reach an informed decision. During my time at the </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">American-Statesman</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">, actually, with my colleagues sitting on our barstools after deadline, there were two on-going debates, although the same questions had probably been asked and answered many times before, everywhere that newspaper people sat down to drink and talk. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">In the Live Music Capital of the World the setting of the debate was usually a bar after work, somewhere near Congress Avenue, and after one drink too many. To get most reporters of my acquaintance to focus on anything other than deadline, pussy, dick, weed or alcohol, required a little of the last two, cannabis and ETOH in order to loosen tongues and channel inhibitions. Both was twice as effective. The reporters in my circle were unusually unintrospective. It’s as if every story occurred in isolation from every other one, until we were high or drunk and then it was somehow </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">all connected</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">. The question of the moment in my drinking circle was whether whatever injustice we were presently seeing at the State Capitol, whatever scandal or selling short of the public trust just exposed, or would be exposed in the morning edition, was </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">real evil</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">, mere </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">bad intentions</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">, or that most exclusive and sought-after wrongdoing for reporters, a genuine </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">effort to screw the people </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">of the State of Texas?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">Or just another innocent fuck-up in a system that no one really knew how to control? </span><o:p></o:p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">Those were the questions that got asked on the bar stools around me. Certainly the cover-ups were intentional, everyone agreed on that at our table or at the bar, even the “public affairs specialists“ in state employ or the ad-agency people who came to drink with us and had been reporters in their first careers, or prior lives, before they went for the money or the security of a big paycheck. Government employees do nothing better than cover their own asses, that was our consensus. The first sign of trouble or </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">any hint </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">of interest by the press, or by a legislative committee, or by the Travis County District Attorney, which meant Ronnie. The first sign of trouble the rule was shovel high and fast. If the first victim of war is truth, the first victim of scandal is </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">responsibility</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">. No one wants to have the finger leveled at him- or herself, least of all the people who actually gave the orders. But the original mistake, the original act or omission that required the cover-up in the first place, we believed to be a mistake or human error. That was the opinion in my circle of reporters. The Republicans, who were suddenly everywhere, were right, it seemed. That’s what we told each other at our end of the bar. Error is built into government and the more government there is, the bigger the mistake. Those who have the most at risk, the stakeholders in a given government office for example, a regulatory agency, are the same people who are specifically monitored by the state and who are barred from running it, as much as they would like to. Error is designed into the system. It’s as if someone can control the movements of your car but if there’s a crash, that person is unhurt. While you’re injured or left holding the repair bill. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">There are a lot of errors—a lot of accidents. There are a lot of injuries but generally not to the people who have their hands on the steering wheel, that’s how government worked. Whoever got caught still needed to take the fall. That was the rule in River City, at least, it’s not so true anymore. Someone </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">always</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">needed to take the fall, that was the way things happened at the time. That’s what separates us from failed states where public officials are </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">not </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">called to account. Especially in Austin you needed to have a fall guy. The people of ATX like everything tied up in a nice pretty bow. If there’s a black person available he or she can usually relied upon for a guilty plea, but if not a Negro or a Latino, </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">somebody </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">has to step up. At the State Capitol too, someone always paid a price but not necessarily the person responsible. This town wasn’t built for tragedy, Austin gets bigger but stays shallow, you feel me, people here make a show and try to sing the blues. They try to be </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">deep </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">but the superficial keeps bubbling up to the surface, you know? Within a few miles of Lake Travis or the Entertainment District at least. The wail of grief comes out sounding like progressive country. Or watered-down rock. Even when people in River City genuinely try to be </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">bad</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">—speaking as someone who has made the effort—the result is timid. Unlike the genuine rat-fucking <i>evil </i>you might see in a </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">real </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">metropolis, Rome for example, or London, or New York City. In this town we’re just not at that level often enough to have the same kind of back-alley rep as Shanghai. Still we try. That’s why a fall guy or fall girl has turned out to be </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">so important </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">here along the banks of the mighty Colorado. There needs to be someone who can take the guilt of the community on his or her shoulders and allow the good people of ATX to shrug off the odious weight and move forward in the sunny promise of life in the Hill Country. That was the way it was, back in the day, before a </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">crusading black reporter </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">stepped forward and demanded accountability. By calling a ho a ho. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">Adding support to this radical view, expressed at my bar back in the day, when we were drunk or stoned or merely </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">working towards intoxication</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">, we mostly agreed. Drinking our drinks and shooting the shit, scratching our balls or vulvas as the case may be. Bellied up literally, at the Cedar Door or later at the Texas Chili Parlor which was my waterhole when George W. Bush was governor and later during the attack on Iraq. Whatever the error that the state was trying to hide at the moment, it was always much worse than whatever appeared in the newspaper the next morning. Months later, sometimes years later you might hear the awful truth and whatever really happened was astonishing only because </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">what you had heard </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">or reported was never the whole story. Not even close. Even with Watergate still in our long-term memories, even after two or three long tokes in the alley behind the bar, a shot of tequila as chaser. Or with a blowjob on the agenda or having just been given, pussy already eaten or soon to be, at a time when you’d think a </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">working reporter </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">would be more susceptible to persuasion about </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">life’s possibilities</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">. No sale. It didn't end there though. Call me a dreamer—better yet, call me a thug. Even in the realm of public affairs, sometimes it takes a thug to spot a thug. </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Especially </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">in the realm of public affairs. Sometimes it takes a wrongdoer to recognize a wrong. My opening question in most interviews with public officials, it sounds rather crass now in today’s PC world, was, “Hi, how are you? So, like, what’s the dirt?” </span><o:p></o:p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">Called Ann Richards not long after she made the jump from the County Courthouse to the State Treasury. Her new gig was an artless elected position which has since then been put out of its misery by the voters but was considered, back in the day, a stepping stone to higher office. That was apparently how Ann viewed it too. At the time of my call she was doing a few years at the State Treasury while they got the Governor's Mansion ready for her. One of Ann’s now-numerous aides transferred me to speak to The Woman with the knowledge that she could not refuse my call. The legislature was still majority Democratic, back when Ann Richards was making her move, and Democrats are more susceptible to sins of the flesh, that’s what the Republicans have always said. While R’s are more likely to go for $, or so Democrats like to say. To set the scene. But everybody fucks and everybody talks about fucking, that's been my </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">long-held view</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">, sex is often an entrée, a lead-in to the real story in our bucolic River City. In retrospect of all the politicians who passed through Austin in recent decades Ann Richards was most a slave to convention. She was a revolutionary but she was also a lady. There was a way to do things that she had learned growing up in Waco or wherever—whatever small-town Texas shithole produced her, and produced Ronnie Earle too, in that great populist wasteland up around Ft. Worth, once Democratic and now diabolically Republican, almost, oh my God, </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Waco</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">That was the scene of Ann’s upbringing. Foremost of what she learned as a child was courtesy. And how to disarm with humor, just like Molly. Ann could be rowdy and she could have a sharp tongue but that mostly came out with Republicans or after she’d had a few, back when she was still drinking. The press loved her because she was a strong woman and made for good stories. Mostly she loved the press. Except me. But she </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">knew </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">me because we had worked together, so to speak, at the Travis County Courthouse, and she couldn’t blow me off, that was my theory at least, when she was told of my call to the Treasury. She would have to take it. She </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">knew </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">me, not to repeat myself, and in Ann Richards’ world that meant something. We were on good speaking terms even if she didn’t want to speak to me. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">Not sure now, so many years have passed, so much good weed has gone up in smoke, literally, Oaxacan gold and all that, not to brag. It’s </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">hard to remember </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">somethings today, meetings and interviews, or if my trademark question “What’s the dirt?” got out of my mouth or not. After our greeting, Ann’s response to my approach— whatever my approach was—still rings in my ears as if it was this morning. Her voice full of condemnation and disapproval. It had taken a while to get here but after a few years she had finally made a judgment about me. “Lucius,” she said early during the call, “I think you’re unfair.” She didn’t mean at that instant although the telephone call was presumably included. The telephone conversation was just the trigger, you might say. She meant my approach to my doing my job—my emphasis on the negative as a reporter. That was fair criticism. But what Ann said was so sudden and she spoke with such force that it occurred to me that she was being coached by one of her aides, whispering in her ear or listening on another extension. It was not a fortuitous response however she came to say it. Ann Richards’ career was beginning to take off and she was even less likely to be concerned with wrongdoing in other offices of the State of Texas than she had been with other precincts of Travis County than her own, back in the day. She wanted allies, not enemies. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;"> Whatever Ann Richards had to say about someone she would say to his or her face, not whisper to a reporter, which made her a rarity in public affairs, a straight- shooter. She was right about me of course, in a superficial way. But before accepting her see-no-evil take on state government, look at it from my point of view as a suspicious Negro. Ann’s predecessor as State Treasurer left office in handcuffs, in the back seat of a patrol car driven by Ronnie Earle. That's how Ann got the job—her predecessor was arrested. Unknown to me at the time of our telephone conversation but still in retrospect and knowing what we know today, Ann’s </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">successor </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">as State Treasurer, Kay Bailey Hutchison, aka “The Cheerleader” because Kay held </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">that </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">position earlier, as an undergraduate at UT, back in the day, and was later a television journalist which is almost like a cheerleader, not to sound Old School or anything. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">Kay Bailey was indicted for her time at the State Treasury too. The last two Speakers of the Texas House of Representatives had been indicted by the time Ann Richards jumped my shit, one by the feds, although not convicted, one by Ronnie, Ronnie’s guy pled to a misdemeanor for accepting a trip paid for by lobbyists, that was the dirt of the day, and was the kind of shit you were always on the lookout for. At least one of Ann’s fellow Travis County commissioners ended up posing for a mugshot. So, like, it seems to me in retrospect it was not only a fair question (“What’s the dirt?”), it was the </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">only </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">question you needed to ask in River City. Ann Richards didn’t think so and you had to respect her opinion. We didn’t speak again until our last meeting decades later, completely by chance, not long before she died. In express checkout at Whole Foods actually, which is where everyone who is anyone in this town meets, sooner or later, or at Cisco’s Bakery, if you’re Old School like me. Governor Richards’ comment only wounded me at the time because even if you’re fundamentally dishonest like me you still have to be able to justify to yourself what you do to make a living. You have to be able to tell yourself as you walk into an interview that this person or that one deserves to be rat-fucked because they are rat- fuckers themselves and what goes around comes around, in an Austin-cosmic sense, or hopefully even, in Ronnie Earle’s preferred terminology, when he was talking about a bad guy, a “pig-fucker,” as in So-and-So the state rep, asking Ronnie what the guy was like and Ronnie saying “He’s a pick-fucker” in response. And it had been simple for me up until the Ann Richards telephone call. Working in Texas and justifying my methods was easy, for the longest time, because it only took about three minutes every morning, five minutes on Sunday instead of two hours going to church. The calculus was </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">brief </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">sitting down to interview another white person in power, or an Uncle Tom. In a legislator's office for example, deciding as you took your seat how you were going to treat the motherfucker across the big desk. And most often you treated him or her like a motherfucker if you could, as a matter of general principles. But Ann’s comment put my whole game in doubt. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">It wasn’t so much the logic of her criticism which was flawed but </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">who was saying it</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">. Like your mother told you, consider the source. This source was Dorothy Ann Willis Richards, former teacher at Fulmore Middle School of South Congress Avenue, former West Side civic leader and the ultimate </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">white liberal</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">. To begin, Ann was honest which is bad enough. You can never trust honest people at the Travis County Courthouse, because in the back of your mind you're wondering what they have to gain? As a reporter it’s especially hard to trust someone honest because you don’t know, like, what they’re doing at the Texas statehouse? Lost? Make a wrong turn leaving church or synagogue? Here to proselytize or to convert? Ann Richards was a </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">white woman</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">, an ethnicity and a gender in that day and age that was unusually important to Negro men, like me, aka the black man. To set the scene. White women and black men were supposed to be kindred souls because we both were trying to put white guys on ice. And especially, like, if the white chick showed her solidarity by giving it up. Not that that’s important here. Not that there was any chance of that with Ann. That was never my relationship with her, anyway. We were only allies of convenience, you might say, she wasn’t my type and clearly, well, clearly she didn’t think much of me. What </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">she did </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">though was make me doubt my whole game—and sometimes that’s all a nigger’s got, his game. Even reporters can’t do their work without some kind of rules, you feel me, hard as one may try to be a law unto oneself. You still need some kind of ethics, some kind of </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">belief </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">in what you’re doing— unless you work for television news. Put it this way, how can you climb through the window of a state office building late at night if you doubt yourself or your cause? </span><o:p></o:p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">Karma is everything in this town. You can’t inherit it. You can’t smoke it. You can’t find it on the organics aisle at Whole Foods. </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">You have to grow your own</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">. Not to sound Old School all over again. If your karma is compromised in the World Capital of Live Music, or if you lose it altogether in River City, you’re sure to get caught </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">no matter how </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">infrequently state troopers are rounding. That’s my view, having done the job. It’s been my </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">nightmare</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">. Luckily, an assignment came my way that allowed me to dispel all doubt about my methods, to set aside the entire white guilt head trip that Ann had laid on me, back in the day, what was offered was a way to structure my approach to right and wrong into a kind of </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">formula </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">or </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">protocol </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">that could be applied in deciding whether to rat-fuck a public official or not. What gave me this equanimity was actually, of all things, an interview for a puff piece. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;"> </span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">If you’ve never heard the name Barbara Jordan you’re not dumb, you’re just young. Barbara Jordan was Barack Obama back in the day, the difference being that the country was not yet ready for a sister in power or for the righteousness of her rap. To set the scene. The former Congresswoman and star of the Watergate hearings was in quasi-retirement at the time of our encounter, she was living in modest surroundings in downtown Austin and teaching at the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs next to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library on campus. The city magazine was planning an issue on all the people who made Austin "special," whatever that meant, and my assignment included three profiles. One was a former federal prosecutor who sent away a lot of local traffickers, the second a land developer who was in the process of buying the City Council—and Barbara Jordan. She wasn’t from River City but she was a former member of the Texas Senate and hers was too large a presence to ignore in such a small town. We didn’t have any black people in the issue either and that made her a natural choice. Journalism is a business and you have to think about those things, yeah, even diversity has a price, or appearing to be diverse which even then could add extra value in a liberal town, what can you say? You want to welcome everyone into the shop. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">Professor Jordan’s office was surprisingly unimpressive for a woman who helped slay a giant. There were no heads on the walls even though like Ronnie and me, she was a hunter. Congresswoman Jordan had helped to slay a giant, in her case she was a predator not by profession but by circumstance, yet no less deadly. She'd been part of the pack that brought down the rogue Republican elephant Richard Nixon. The afternoon of our chat she sat in a big chair behind a modest desk, she was overweight as always and looking as if her health was declining and she was using her time left, as many great people do, to pass on what she had learned to students. To set the scene. Ann Richards was not mentioned specifically but Ann’s comment was still ringing in my ears, “unfair,” the word no reporter wants to hear. Worse even than “inaccurate,” and it seemed that Barbara Jordan, who had already forgotten more than most of us will ever know about how the world really works, was a perfect foil for my insecurity. As a way of exploring the Ann Richards worldview we approached a subject who Professor Jordan knew better, President Lyndon Johnson, the great Texan who had preceded Nixon in the White House and made Barbara Jordan's career possible. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">Lyndon Johnson spent his entire public life enriching himself illicitly and my question to the Professor was how that could be true—whether the two goals were reconcilable? Doing good for yourself and doing good for the people who elected you?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">Oh yes, she said. Everyone is in politics to do for themselves, she said. </span>I<span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">f you don’t start out that way, it kind of gets thrown at you. She made clear that she herself had profited from public life. The question, she said, was one of </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">degree</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">. How much featherbedding, how much exploitation of the position? If LBJ had done things to get power and done things for himself and his family after he achieved power those “things,” even though potentially prosecutable, had to be measured against the good he did, like helping black people and Latinos get the vote. An archivist at the LBJ Library would tell me later that the great man kept $10,000 in cash in his desk when he was Senate Majority Leader. Only after he fucked up in Vietnam was there reason to revisit the issue of sleaze, Barbara Jordan said, without saying the fucked up or “sleaze” parts. This was excellent. For me, it was the wisdom of the ages coming from a black person with complete<br />credibility. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">Fuck Ann’s opinion, in other words. But not fuck Ann. Like Jordan and Molly, she was just wrong. The Black Warrior—after sitting at the feet of a tribal elder and </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">listening</span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">— chose a different path from that dictated by the white woman, who spoke with forked tongue. You feel me? The young brother took up the spear again—against the White Man </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">and </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">White Woman. And felt good doing it. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">The teachings of Professor Jordan helped me to enter a Pollyanna-free zone as an African American reporter where the opinions of white liberals in Travis County, Texas, even white female liberals like Governor Richards, had no more meaning to me than the opinion of anyone else, who you didn’t necessarily believe either. What Professor Jordan said eventually allowed me to develop an organized system for evaluating targets, a kind of “Jordanometer” of corruption you could say. It was no longer a question of someone being absolutely bad or absolutely good because if you went by those standards you had to rat-fuck everybody in public life. It wasn’t a black-and-white issue either with the man in black being the good guy. In Austin no one, not even Barbara Jordan, got to heaven if you were too literal-minded or if you looked at the </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">reasons for </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">doing good rather than just accepting the good. </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Instead </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">the question was, “How good?” Or more likely at the State Capitol, “How bad?” </span><o:p></o:p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">My formula for evaluating targets developed into something like this: So, like, the vast majority of average politicians are just average, right? They score around 50%, an equal mix of self-interest and doing good for the public. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">Anyone who reaches 60% positive—unless the unfortunate 40% involves touching a child inappropriately or practically anything caught on camera or on tape—that candidate deserves re-election. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">Barbara Jordan herself would have scored about 70 or 75%, that was my back of the envelope estimate. She wasn't a saint. BJ had served in both the Texas Legislature and U.S. House of Representatives which meant making certain ethical sacrifices from the start. But she also broke color barriers and helped to overthrow a tyrant. Toward the end of her life she was living modestly in our bucolic River City and practically the only thing of value to show for her time in office was the respect of the public and her professorship at the University of Texas. After her death, Professor Jordan's FBI file, or a redacted version of her FBI file, was released to me and included her bank statements. She was not rich. Governor Richards would have scored about a 55 or 60%, that was my back of the envelope calculation for Ann, 65% max. </span>Ann Richards<span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;"> was honest, yes, and she had some good policies but Ann was heavily into self-promotion, the good ol’ girl routine that made her famous but for which her administration suffered. No one, not even Jesus of Nazareth scores above 90 percent. Barbara Jordan knew about the tradeoffs, in other words, and the risks, she knew about corruption because she had seen it up close, at the Watergate hearings, and she knew that wrongdoing had to be confronted. But she also knew about accommodation because it was the story of her life. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">My sweet spot, developed after time and considerable thought—after Barbara Jordan’s wise counsel, listening to her and the righteousness of her rap. My sweet spot after balancing pluses and minuses—trying to be a mean nigger but a </span><i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">fair </span></i><span style="color: #212121; font-family: ArialMT, serif;">one, not wanting to do to white people what they did to us, that is, be <i>unjust</i>. But still wanting a little payback, yeah, just to help even the score. My decision was that anyone who came in with less than 50% was fair game. That became my rule, in fact. That’s cool, right? Fifty percent is the definition of fair. Less than fifty means you're ethically challenged, that’s reasonable too, don't you think? A score less than 25%, it seemed to me, required a trip to the courthouse for whoever was the subject. Single digits meant calling ahead for a cell. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b style="background-color: white;"><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">To Bust a Nut</span></i></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"> This was when Molly took over the <i>Observer</i> for the second time—our paths crossed for the second time too, although not in person. This was after she covered pigs for the <i>Star-Tribune</i> or whatever and was Rocky Mountain bureau chief or whatever for the <i>Times</i>. To set the scene. The story told in the <i>Observer</i> editorial offices during my stay was that Molly left the <i>NYT</i> because the Gray Lady would not make her a columnist. Later, one of Molly’s friends told me that the <i>Times</i>’ owners, the Sulzberger family or whoever, got tired of Molly paddling around the most prestigious newsroom in the world in bare feet, and banished her to the Denver bureau or wherever. Later there was a complete parting of the ways, Molly couldn’t tell the truth if her life depended on it but that was different from her writing which was pure and beautiful, kind of, at least regarding the American Antichrist, George W. Bush. From the very start she pegged W as bad news.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"> </span><span style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #111111; text-indent: 0.5in;">So, like, our second meeting—although we never saw each other in the flesh—was at the end of Ann Richards’ governorship and during George W. Bush‘s time in Austin after W defeated Richards but before he moved to D.C. Just before the turn of the 21</span><sup style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #111111; text-indent: 0.5in;">st</sup><span style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #111111; text-indent: 0.5in;"> Century, actually, to set the scene again. It was then that the index case of racist policing in America was exposed by a white savior journalist—in Tulia, Texas, a High Plains shithole somewhere outside godforsaken Lubbock. What happened in that shit-shoveling farm town in the Texas Heartland told you everything you needed to know about a racist criminal justice system and American journalism both. This was the single best example of pig reporting—in my modest opinion—or that has come to my attention as a pig reporter. That opinion is coming from an aficionado of the form as well as a pro. So, like, basically, the Tulia story began with Molly, that’s my best guess. Everything that happened at the <i>Observer</i> during my stay, roughly five years, began with Molly Ivins, and often it was at the back of our minds working, or at least the back of my mind, what would Molly think? Because she was the Big Girl in charge. Every reporter in Texas of a certain age has a Molly Ivins story, btw, and in my random memory there are three pertinent anecdotes about her, each more amusing than the other. Regarding this white chick star-journalist—not to be jealous or anything. Men don’t get jealous so much, that’s more a chick thing. Or at least that’s been my observation during these long years in the saddle, here on the Silicon Prairie.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">These three incidents tell you everything you need to know about Molly and about white saviors and about white savior journalism and about people who still want to bust a nut just like everybody else, even if they're reporters. And about Texas, the Lone Star State. In another age and another era. People often ask me why shit always happens in Texas and my belief is based in science, actually. The reason has something to do with <i>magnetic fields</i> that run between the Red River and the Rio Grande, there’s an authoritative source, we have plenty of data points already, somebody just needs to sit down and do the math. So, like, my first anecdote is vintage Molly.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">A sister journalist, literally—a former member of the Black Press, who was a good friend of mine but is no longer—after a disagreement over Molly, basically. That’s the role the Big Girl plays in people’s lives even still. Some black women worshipped Molly, not for her empowerment of black people, which was pretty lame, but for her empowerment of women which was outstanding. Anyway, this sister was telling me about coming out of the New York subway one day with Molly Ivins, back in the day, this would have been the Seventies when Molly was still walking barefoot at the <i>Times, </i>one supposes. And my friend said that she and Molly came out of the subway and passed a street guy who made a grossly crude and sexually-suggestive remark to Molly and Molly stopped and turned back to the guy and said something even more grossly inappropriate and crude back to him. That was the Molly Ivins you had to love. Even if she was a crazy fucking bitch which she was, btw, a crazy fucking narcissistic bitch—not that there’s anything wrong with that in American journalism, because she was merely supplanting the narcissistic white guys who proceeded here. So, like, our only meeting—me and the Big Girl—actually more or less the same time of what can be called Molly Ivins’ Subway Incident—happened in 1979 in Seadrift, a southeast Texas shithole on San Antonio Bay where there had just been what Molly would call a <i>good murder</i>. To set the scene. So, like, this was an early case of stand-your-ground in which the good guy was the shooter. To set the scene again.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">A Vietnamese immigrant killed a white Texan, apparently over shrimping grounds or nets, or whatever, as part of a dispute with racist overtones. My memory is of literally tearing the story off the Associated Press wire because we weren’t computerized yet at the <i>American-Statesman</i> news desk, back back in the day. This was an era when things moved more slowly than today. Two days later it was basically just me and the Calhoun County sheriff, chatting in his office, after my stagecoach arrived from Austin. The sheriff was a bayou-bred presumed-cracker and Yellow Dog Democrat because that was a time when cracker sheriffs in Texas were whack-job Democrats not yet whack-job Republicans like today. Not to generalize. So, like, this guy was pleased as punch to talk to a reporter from the capital city daily newspaper. To be interviewed about his thoughts on the killing, and all. The sheriff was eating out of my damn hand. When suddenly a shadow passed over us where we sat, me and the cracker sheriff, and we both looked up at the same time to find this Amazonian-sized white chick standing over us.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">She stuck out her hand to the sheriff—her arm straight out but bent down at the wrist, like a society matron, or a debutante, and said, “I’m Molly Ivins from the New York Times.” No shit. When Molly spoke—you couldn‘t help but notice—the accent was on Molly Ivins not on the New York Times. That was the end of my interview with the sheriff and the beginning of Molly’s, not that there’s anything wrong with that because the story had an especially joyous ending. The Vietnamese shrimper was found not guilty, because the guy he shot was apparently a confirmed cracker. My takeaway from Seadrift as a young reporter? <i>Don’t fuck with the Vietnamese</i>. First the French, then the U.S. Army and now this Calhoun County cracker who had just been capped by the noble AAPI shrimper. That was the possible storyline developing in my head, going back to Austin, but it didn’t explicitly get into the newspaper that way.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">As a noble black man—and a gentleman—it never occurred to me to complain about Molly taking the peckerwood sheriff away from me. Ending my interview, as viewed through a racial lens, and beginning her own. It was just like white people to steal from POC, btw. This was just another episode of white privilege, which had not been explicitly named at that point but was known by other appellations. It never occurred to me to say, for example, “Bitch, this is my interview.” Molly could lay on the East Coast thing, btw, when it suited her—talking high-and-mighty to the peckerwood sheriff, whereas when she talked to national TV news years later about George W. Bush—to warn the world about the rise of W—if only we had listened! On TV she tried to sound like an old girl and all country and that she knew W was dangerous because of some kind of ranch-bred wisdom. <i>Please</i>. Molly went to <i>Smith College</i> and spent a <i>semester in Paris</i> after graduation. She was about as country as a plate of filet mignon. She was full of shit but sometimes shit has uses in journalism. Whatever it takes to get the story is my mantra, you have to be prepared to be at least as evil as the people you are stalking. And certainly as full of shit, until it comes time to write and then the sun shines through the poop? Molly’s mantra on the other hand was whatever it takes to communicate the story. If people needed to believe she roped cows in her youth, so be it. Anyway that was the first, last and only time me and Molly ever met. Although she was technically my supervisor over the course of those later years at the <i>Observer</i>—my time in the saddle at the magazine. In an office the size of a matchbox, btw. My occasional question, at the time of those visits to editorial, to drop off a manuscript or whatever, was, “Hey, where’s Molly?” Not really giving a shit, frankly, it was just kind of weird that she was never there. More curious than concerned, you could say.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">Especially because the answer was always the same from the editors, “She’s at home writing.” Writing—screwing and drinking—was my guess about Molly’s home life, not that that there’s anything wrong with any of that. The meeting in Seadrift is my second Molly Ivins story, btw. My third Molly-related anecdote involves sex and it’s the best of the three because there’s a hint of mystery. This actually preceded the other two. No objective evidence exists that what you’re about to hear really happened. Both the people directly involved are dead. No video or any independent acknowledgement exists whatsoever. But the details fit Molly and fit the era—which was during her first tenure at the <i>Observer</i>, maybe mid-70s or whenever she was there, before she left for the <i>NYT</i>. It's a terrible story and as a reporter, of course, it gives me extraordinary joy to recount. So, like, Molly needed to drive to Houston and somehow the news got out. That’s all the background we have.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">Molly’s planned trip to the Bayou City somehow came to the ears of a Democratic politician named Bob Bullock—later lieutenant governor to both Ann Richards and George W. Bush and a brilliant guy in his own right. A complete thug who one day would threaten to <i>kill me</i>, not that there's anything wrong with that, and who once threatened to shoot Sam Kinch of the <i>Dallas Morning News </i>Austin Bureau and actually reached into his desk drawer and pulled out the gun and showed it to Kinch which he never did with me. But we digress. In his personal life Bullock liked to screw, what a small world, just like Molly. So, like not to dish dirt or anything—that’s not me—but Bullock’s sexual activity was not merely for pleasure, not merely to bust the proverbial nut like your average black guy. But also to keep tally as a woman-killer, or whatever, or so it is said. Bob Bullock was a little guy who got off to conquests, not to go all Freudian or anything. So, like, Bullock convinced Molly to give him a ride to Houston, because he needed to go too, or so he told her. And Molly agreed.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">So, like, they’re off the road somewhere—let’s say Fayette County, in La Grange, you may have heard of the home of the Chicken Ranch bordello run by the widow Mrs. Swine? To set the scene. La Grange is a shithole about halfway between Austin and Houston. So, like, they’re in the back seat of Molly’s car which was a VW Bug? Suppose. But—this is the kicker to the story—Molly was too big to get in the appropriate position to achieve liftoff. And you’re going to say that is a crude and inappropriate thing to say, about a respected and influential woman, and is only intended to diminish her historical standing. My reply would be that in an age of female liberation one can be just as crude and inappropriate about women as about guys, right? What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, what's liberation for one is liberation for the other. The real question, was it true, and there are a number of reasons to think it was, speaking as an experienced reporter, somebody accustomed to making tough calls about veracity. Did thus-and-so-happen or did it not. What are facts? First, Molly Ivins like to screw, as did Bullock and as do we all. So, like, it passes the sniff test, so to speak, as something not completely beyond the realm of possibility.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">And Molly is said to have driven a VW during her hippie days as hard-hitting leader of the <i>Observer</i> for the first time, before we met. And Molly was a big girl and it’s hard to imagine that she could fit into the backseat of a Bug and successfully bust a nut although Bullock, who was a little guy, could. Those are the details as they are known today, after the fact. And Molly was screwing someone she should have been covering, not to get all holier-than-thou. If one respects the traditions of Old School journalism, that is, as a member of the Black Press, what Molly did was wrong. Sexual activity between reporters and the people they cover is something that one hears about even today in Austin, actually, and probably in New York and D.C. too. Everywhere in fact, in a word it’s shameful, there are no boundaries anymore. In Austin there is a club of white journalists—and mostly Democratic politicians—and high-level State of Texas bureaucrats—and tech people—who drink together and socialize and screw. It’s disgraceful, frankly. A noble black man would never step across that line. Unless the story was really really really important or the chick was <i>really really really fine</i>. That is the so-called Aesthetic Exemption for sleeping with the people who you cover. Especially when there are obvious workarounds available. You can sleep with the person and <i>then</i> really screw him or her in print, not to sound cold-hearted or unromantic or anything, merely practical.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">The <i>Observer</i> has always had a small editorial department, half a dozen reporters and editors, if that many. Which was fine back in the day because the space was small and people didn't work so much from home except the Big Girl. Molly obviously was working at home, at least part of the time, because she was prolific. The best way to see her, my colleagues told me, was at Molly’s famous soirees where heavy alcohol would presumably be imbibed. This was against my training, actually. In my journeyman days at the now-defunct Houston <i>Post</i>, they put me at a desk in the newsroom across from the only other black staff member, a sister, who was far more experienced than me. This was the same chick, actually, who told me about coming out of the subway with Molly.</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"> </span><span style="background-color: #fafafa; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #111111;">So, like, one day, sitting across from each other, my respectful question to her as a senior sister—with more experience dealing with potential crackers in the newsroom than me—my question was how to survive in an almost-all-white environment and, transitively, how to survive in a world still ruled by white people? And at the time you as a <span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">Youngblood</span> one listened to black women more than black guys because what black guys told you would get you killed or arrested. And the sister leaned forward and whispered one of her coping secrets about dealing successfully with members of the Caucasian race. My expectation was for something pithy and meaningful. She leaned closer. “<i>I don’t eat with them</i>,” she said.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">My take is slightly different: “I don’t drink with them.” Weed is different of course because herb brings people together and breaks down the white man’s and white woman’s natural defensiveness, and natural aggressivity. My experience of drinking with white colleagues for example, over the years, is almost uniformly bad. If you’re really out to get seriously intoxicated. Drunk white liberals are almost always maudlin and in the end they invariably want to know if they know you well enough to use the word nigger, which they do not. My experience of drunk white Texas Republicans is that they are a lot <i>more fun</i> and usually <i>begin by calling you nigger</i>, and then spend the rest of the evening trying to apologize. Unless you run into a real Bubba or Karen and then all bets are off. But we digress. The first inkling of the Tulia story for me came from opening the magazine and reading the story, actually. Apparently it had been completely need-to-know in the <i>Observer</i> office and nobody else needed to know except Nate and the editors, until the bomb dropped. Which it did. It hit journalism and policing with explosive force. ”The Color of Justice” was written by a white guy named Nate Blakeslee and was, simply, brilliant.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">What Tulia represented can be described as multiple storylines and led to criminal charges, which is the gold standard for reporters. Those cracker cops were using fake charges as a way to depopulate a black community. You couldn’t make this up. Read it yourself but the bottom line is that Tulia changed policing and changed police reporting and is a fundamental work of American history, in my modest view. But Nate’s work and Nate Blakeslee the guy are two different things. Nate is a cracker. That’s coming from someone who has worked with crackers during all of my professional life and is expert on the form. Me and Nate worked on and off together in that cramped old Masonic building that housed the <i>Observer</i>, back in the day, turn of the century, in a Masonic building catercorner to what is now the Austin History Center but what was then Central Library, for a few years. At first we were competing for a job that Nate won and deservedly so. Later he was my editor. But Nate Blakeslee didn’t care any more about black people than he cared about the man on the moon. Nate cares about Nate—just like Molly cared about Molly. Indeed Nate and Molly’s self-absorption and self-promotion were in stark contrast to my own self-effacement and humility. It may be tribal with me, going back to the African motherland—where the men were strong but silent hunters—and unflinching warriors against colonial invaders, too. But we digress again. Nate was a full-blown cock-bite, in my experience, not to rag him unmercifully or anything. In terms of self-obsession he made Molly look like Mother Teresa. Yet Nate is <i>one hell of a reporter</i>. And you have to respect that. His recent book about wolves is even more important than his work on wild pigs in Tulia was, because Mother Nature is the nigger now. Nate’s cracker-centric outlook was absolutely indispensable to understanding racism in policing, up in the High Plains shithole of Tulia, and maybe everywhere else in America too.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">Tulia was a story that could never have been written by someone like me, for example. My problem was still having faith in the American criminal justice system, as some Negroes still inexplicably do. Maybe not faith in the outcomes but in the ideal? Which “The Color of Justice” stripped clean fucking away. Nate was able to figure it all out because Nate is a cracker and sometimes it takes a cracker to spot a cracker, you feel me—it takes a con to spot a con—it takes a pimp to spot a ho, that’s my dictum, it takes a noble black man to say it out loud. Ditto with Molly who was born into the petroleum-burning Texas aristocracy and found the primary target for her journalism there. Molly Ivins was a great journalist who deserved all the praise she received, and more, for one reason only. She knew one great thing. She recognized George W. Bush early on for what he was—a potentially-existential threat to humanity, <i>Vladimir Putin on the Prairie</i>, so to speak.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">The rise of W was Molly’s Tulia, kind of. So, like, in both cases—Molly and Nate—the people at the <i>Observer</i> didn’t care about blacks or Latinos or the Iraqis or Palestinians or whoever, not particularly. But they loved our narratives. They coveted our stories, especially black Texan stories. Whites like Nate and Molly and founding editor Ronnie Dugger just wanted to be the narrators, to tell important stories, sure, and also to make themselves look good as white saviors. That’s what it means to be a white savior, actually. To add to this dialectic there was the geographical context—the scene of the crime so to speak—Texas and, later with Jordan, this very River City. Jim Shahin is a retired professor of journalism at Syracuse University who was once political editor of the Austin <i>Chronicle</i> and is a good reporter—Old School like me. So, like, he remarked recently that the Live Music Capital of the World’s much-promoted reputation for liberalism has always been about the <i>environment</i>, not about race. Even today when liberal whites in Austin need to throw somebody under the bus—whether in the realm of housing—crime and punishment—or more recently health care—black people and Mexicans still get picked. You may say, well, so, like, you want to throw Jordan Smith under the bus now? <i>Exactly</i>. She wanted to go for a ride in a black neighborhood, nobody forced her. She took the risk—that’s my view. No one told her that she had to cover cops but if she did, she needed to do the job properly and bring home the bacon, like Nate did. That’s what a black man or black woman would have done as well. It doesn’t take white skin to do the job. Or ovaries, necessarily. But you do need a hard heart. A former Austin police monitor, btw—who was responsible for policing the pigs—told me, recalling her time in office, “You can’t be people’s friends if you really want to change things.” Exactly. Whoever gets hired has to understand that—if not, they need to get out of the way. You got to bring home some dome bacon, in this existential view. Jordan was trying to understand the pigs while what she really needed to do was hang 'em up by their little feet and start slicing. Nate did and power to him for that. Even if he is a cracker, which he is, not to repeat myself. In addition, the institutional barriers to non-racist reportage can be worse than any peckerwood, actually. Danielle Kilgo—who is an African-American professor of journalism in Minneapolis—and who got her PhD in Austin—this Texas-born black academic has an awesome rap about how hard it is to get race right in American journalism, at the best of times. And it’s a problem, she says, that is not limited to the tyranny of breaking news.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">The first person the reporter hears back from will be the public affairs guy or girl calling from the pig pen. That’s what she says. Who is almost certain to mischaracterize the shooting, or the arrest, to make it sound more reasonable than it really was. Putting lipstick on the pig you could say—although Professor Kilgo did not use those words. Basically, to recap, back in the day white guys were writing the stories and now it’s white chicks and nothing much has changed. For example the absolutely same story that Jordan missed about our D.A. fixing outcomes at the Travis County Grand Jury was pitched next—after Kimberley Jones, editor-in-chief of the Austin <i>Chronicle</i>, said “I’ll pass.” This very same important-to-black-people story was pitched to <i>Emily Ramshaw</i>, the white chick who was editor-in-chief of the Texas <i>Tribune</i> at the time. She didn’t even respond. Ms. Ramshaw is now president of the <i>The 19<sup>th</sup></i>, btw, devoted to, well—basically, long story short—white chicks and white chickdom. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, not to sound jealous or anything, because strong black men rarely get jealous, it’s just not in our DNA.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">Ms. Ramshaw btw also hands out awards as a member of the Pulitzer Prize board, what a small world in which we live. So, like, also the guy at <i>Pro Publica</i>, Stephen Engelberg who is on the board of the Pulitzers too and had a wretched record on diversity in his own fucking newsroom, until a noble black man stepped forward and got on his ass. The <i>Pro Publica</i> trick to maintain a white news operation is by not advertising positions and instead hiring among the existing journalists' network, which is also white. Ditto, <i>The New Yorker </i>which somehow never manages to post writing jobs on its website. Gee, isn't that the kind of racism/corruption that we write about as journalists? But we digress. Because the object of today’s exercise is to rag white chicks not white guys. Ragging white guys is so <i>yesterday</i>, in today’s critical race dialectic. The only difference between Ms. Ramshaw and white guys like Mr. Engelberg at <i>Pro Publica</i> is the plumbing, that would be my argument, basically. In the continuing debate over cancel culture there’s an idea that should also be considered: accountability.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">The best example of a lack of accountability, actually, regarding white reporting of racist policing, is Nancy Barnes, head of National Public Radio. She’s a member of the Pulitzer Prize board too, let’s get that out of the way. My basic mantra is to be totally non-judgmental but some things just cry out to be said. So, like, let me dish on Nancy. Before NPR, Nancy was editor of the Houston <i>Chronicle</i> and before that she was editor of the <i>Star Tribune</i> in Minneapolis—what a small fucking world—for nearly a decade. Her successor in Houston began a hiring initiative to bring non-whites into the newsroom, which means that Ms. Barnes apparently did not, and ditto at the <i>Star Tribune</i> which has historically been a super-white newsroom and still mostly is. The Minneapolis newspaper won a Pulitzer for breaking news for coverage of the murder of George Floyd but the real issue is its pig reporting before Floyd. That's a question for Ms. Barnes. At the <i>Star-Tribune</i> there’s now the disquieting internal debate about how the newspaper misread the violent intentions of the Minneapolis Police Department for so long? Long before George Floyd was murdered, actually. And even today during this time of self-reflection—in Minneapolis and across the nation—the reporter in charge of the <i>Star Tribune</i>’s public safety coverage is—you guessed it—a white chick. Because they’ve done so well in the past? What Ms. Barnes now of NPR did and didn’t do over all those years in Minneapolis is important today, because Nancy and her mostly white subordinates believed the police and accepted the official version of the facts, which was a lie btw, just like here in Austin. To set the scene. That’s the best spin you can put on the <i>Star-Tribune</i>’s reporting performance, while the worst would be racism in the newsroom. Let’s run with that thread, and it involves recent presidential aspirant, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota who was the chief prosecutor in Minneapolis for part of the time that Ms. Barnes was editor. Like three or four years of their tenures coincided.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">Yet Hennepin County Attorney Klobuchar received no real scrutiny from the newspaper on the subject of the comportment of police. Because her father was a longtime columnist for the newspaper? My bet is no, that was not the reason. Because the <i>Star Tribune</i>’s newsroom never reached the level of consciousness required to have those kinds of qualms. That’s my view. Ms. Barnes never brought home the bacon either, btw, just like Jordan. But unlike Jordan Smith, Nancy Barnes never even saw the pig. At least Jordan knew Hogzilla existed even if she never got the big porker in her sights, in an allegorical sense, you feel me? Nancy Barnes believed the white guy or white girl in uniform. In Minneapolis there was no reason for the newspaper to question the actions of the prosecutor if the cops were telling the truth, which they actually were not. It’s like membership in a club—Amy Klobuchar and her dad belonged—together with the good Ms. Barnes—while the people who got shot or beaten by <i>los puercos</i> did not, if one views the facts through a black liberation lens. Nancy Barnes’ major investigation in Minneapolis, btw, that won a Pulitzer Prize btw, was about deaths in day care. Her position now on the Pulitzer Board—is that, like, a reward for the good work she has done on the most important subject of her generation of journalists? In Minneapolis she even had time to write a book about a rustic white girlhood in turn-of-the-century Colorado, or wherever, but she didn’t have time to take down P.D.? NPR won its first and so far only Pulitzer during her tenure at her present gig, certainly it had NOTHING TO DO with Nancy being on the prize committee. Journalism is just as corrupt and racist as any other industry in America, not to repeat myself.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">My time in the saddle is almost over. Let my words ring out. Almost half a century has passed since my initiation into the Black Press, in Atlanta and here in the Live Music Capital of the World. There are a lessons that must be passed on to youngbloods, not just my warning about white chicks—they cannot be trusted with our narrative any more than white guys could, not to repeat myself. For me—saddling up Old Black one last time to ride off into the sunset—people have asked me about the old days at the <i>Observer</i>, which coincided with the magazine’s golden age. People want to know who the best writer was, and that’s easy, it wasn’t me. The best reporter was Nate and the best reported piece was “The Color of Justice,” no doubt about that during my time in the saddle for <i>T.O</i>. The best writer was actually not Nate or Molly or me, it was—in my modest opinion—<i>Karen Olsson</i>, who never got her due. A white chick actually, not that there's anything wrong with that. One of my clearest memories, back back in the day, going into the office to deliver a manuscript and looking across the room. There was this young white woman, maybe mid or late-20s. The editor who was looking at my piece i.d.’d the newbie for me as our new reporter.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Practicing my growl—coming from the hard-bitten veteran—my question to the editor was, like, <i>can she write</i>? And he looked up from my work and said over his glasses, “Oh there’s no doubt.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Karen had studied maths or something technical like that at Harvard and her work was pretty fucking surgical. She was a new reporter and still a kid but seemed to know already the possibilities of the medium, which was magazine journalism. Busting a nut literally, in print. What was best about Karen from the point of view of black liberation, which was important to me, she knew her own limitations. Karen didn’t see herself as a white savior like Nate and Molly did, like Ronnie Dugger and all the other <i>Observer</i> libs. She knew what she didn’t know and that ignorance informed her work. Molly was jealous—that’s a big chick thing, btw, let me tell you. With me headed out the door and willing to tell some uncomfortable truths, the jealousy thing, it’s not just a stereotype, and frankly it’s deplorable—black men don’t have green eyes like jealous white chicks, believe what you will. Anyway, the best journalist of that golden age was Molly Ivins, that’s a 100% fucking certainty too. Hands down, thumbs up and no doubt. That crazy bitch—no disrespect to women intended, or even to bitches. That crazy fucking white bitch, not to be racist or anything, not that there’s anything wrong with it either, being a crazy fucking white bitch, some of my best friends are, you know? Molly was a completely narcissistic white woman, but she also understood what it meant to be a journalist better than any of the guys. In fact Molly was the latest, new improved model of the white male writers who preceded her. Not only a reporter of the news but someone who influenced the news or interpreted it. Estrogen-filled instead of testosterone-loaded, although she had a quite a pair of balls too. Often Molly did this through humor. If she hadn’t done journalism, she should have done stand-up.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">A movie came out about Molly a couple of years ago, it was terrible. A complete blowjob—hagiography in the extreme. Don’t be lazy, look the word up. You could’ve used the celluloid to wipe your ass for all the honesty there was. But there is an illuminating scene when Molly’s sister or somebody close to her is talking about coming home once and finding a black guy with Molly up in her room. This probably would have been when she was studying at St. Johns? So, like, that’s supposed to be a sign of Molly’s early civil rights work, one supposes. What Sis doesn’t say in the documentary is what they were doing up in Molly’s room and my guess is that they were screwing, because that was what Molly liked to do. Also mentioned in the docu is that Molly allowed a black person to swim in the family pool, early on before it was common among her wealthy white neighbors. Is that right? And how bad that racism made Molly feel. Oh really? The filmmakers make it sound like she had marched hand-in-hand with Dr. King, it’s laid on pretty thick. If Molly tried to use black people in order to push her writing or publicize herself, which she did, that’s hardly news. And it’s certainly not worth the price of a movie download. You may ask if Molly was such a bad person—which is not the point of my criticism, actually, because she was a great woman. But you may ask why was she the best journalist? Because it had nothing to do with race, a subject on which Molly Ivins was as clueless as her white colleagues. Her reputation hinged entirely on the war criminal George W. Bush. To set the scene.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">So, like, Molly went after W early and often—it was both beautiful and extreme. She harped on him before many reporters, including me, even understood why. At first it seemed like Molly was angry at George W. Bush for defeating Molly’s close friend Ann Richards. That wasn’t it at all—Molly Ivins recognized George W. Bush for what Molly herself was—a member of Texas’ petroleum-burning elites. On race, she was a cracker. On the dangers of the Texas rich she was a fucking prophet.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"> In Texas there’s been an effort recently, after the Trump Presidency, to say that W wasn’t really that bad. Oh yes he was. He just did his evil overseas. At the same time at the <i>Observer</i></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">, back in the day, W's day actually, Molly became hostile to me. My lone noble attempt to communicate with her—she never responded. Recently an old friend of hers, agreeing that Molly harbored a certain <i>testiness</i> with black men, told me, “Molly had a difficult relationship with her father.” But what the fuck does that mean? What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Who gives a fuck about Molly’s relationship with her fucking father? Was Molly's daddy black? Although there were almost certainly a few black daddies in Molly’s life, like the Negro up in her room in Houston, but . . . . <i>no</i>. What a load of bullshit, in other words. At the <i>Observe</i>r you heard—and probably still do—a bunch of Freudian crap about Molly Ivin’s relationships. <i>Please</i>. It was hard for me to keep a straight face even then.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">So, like, fuck Molly’s relationships and fuck Molly too, not to sound ignorant. Fuck Molly and the horse she ride in on, to adopt a Western motif. That woman was queen of making herself the center of the conversation. If you were to ask me, forcefully, if you were to twist my arm for a reply—me being totally not interested in getting into Molly’s personal business. My belief is nonetheless that, on the personal side—sexuality—having no factual evidence whatsoever, only an experienced reporter’s instincts—my belief is that by the time our paths crossed the second and last time, at the <i>Observer</i>—Molly was already eating at the Y. There, it’s said. At that point she was getting a lot more pussy than she was getting dick, in other words, at least after W went to Washington, to put it in a timeframe of national politics. That would have been my conjecture—if anyone asked. Drinking at the Texas Chili Parlor with another reporter of color, for example. Which was my watering hole back in the day, the Chili Parlor—where a noble black journalist could discuss issues with colleagues, with absolutely no facts to back him up. Because, like, it wasn't going in a newspaper, right? Probably it was hard for Molly to find any man strong enough to be her mate, that would have been my view at the bar or at a back table. You may find that condescending. On some level it probably is. But it was also important to speculate—not gossip—about sex because my best takeaway for young reporters even today—after all these years riding the range, so to speak, me and Old Black—and getting ready now to saddle up for the last time. Sex is a critical part of getting the story. So, like, who's fucking whom—man, woman, gerbil or plastic doll? You may need to know that as a good reporter. But you don’t have to use it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Take Kyrsten Sinema. The Democratic senator from Arizona? This chick practically oozes sexuality, not that there’s anything wrong with that. My radar goes off whenever she’s on the screen, just looking at her. If she were on my beat, her relationships would be fair game. Mos def, you feel me, mos def. As a thorough reporter you’d have to give her a good look over, because a chick like that—if she’s your type, her style is kind of cool, gotta say that. Although she does little for me personally because my personal preference is Latinas. Or Chinese chicks. My feeling is, you may not agree, that chicks from mainland China are far hotter than Taiwanese, btw, which says something for Communism after all. The point is that Senator Sinema is probably not going out with a mail carrier or a plumber but instead someone who is also powerful—also in the game. That means there’s a chance for mischief. Which is what one hopes to find as a reporter, something amiss that'll get your piece on the front page. Not who is gay or straight, who cares anymore about sex except as it applies to politics? Especially in Austin, Jesus. Who likes to play rough for example, that <i>could</i> be interesting, in the boudoir or on the House floor. The operative question is who is fucking whom? This is often an important consideration, at least in the State Capitol. A white Democratic female legislator is said to have done the nasty with a black lobbyist in front of the Speaker's podium, back in the day, of the Texas House of Representatives. Late late at night, of course, not while bills were being considered or anything. On the floor, literally. Now, <i>that's a story</i>, the only way it could be better is if the chick was Republican. That’s why Molly made a mistake with Bullock actually, trying to bust a nut with a guy she should have been covering, not to get all holier-than-thou again. The black man is not a prude. The point is just that —looking nobly back, as a black reporter who is ready to ride off into the sunset—it’s a big problem with reporters in the Live Music Capital of the World. They’re screwing somebody physically who they should be screwing in print, you feel me? Not to go all Old School but there has to be a professional standard. If you were asking my view—through a black revolutionary lens and as part of a psychosexual dialectic. A fundamental factor in public affairs in this town is, subliminally, white puddy.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">The struggle for mating access to white women, actually, through a straight black male lens and as part of <i>white lesbian</i> reasoning. Fundamentally—it’s my well-founded belief—Molly’s hostility to me arose from a white lesbian fear of the power of black dick. That’s one way of looking at it. Black men have taken down beaucoup white booty, beaucoup, to the displeasure of white lesbians worldwide who also want white pussy. It’s really quite simple. There’s a lot of penis envy out there, people, take my word for it—and brothers take the brunt of the anger because we have or we <i>are</i> the biggest dicks. It’s all about pussy, not to repeat myself. That’s my final thumb-sucker—my last think-piece—this cop reporter’s swan song, from someone who likes to think that he brought home more than his share of </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">bacon, some pork sausage and even fatback ribs.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><br /><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Whole Foods</span></i></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"> So, like, Whole Foods has these awesome muffins, outrageously over-priced like everything else in the store and, like, only one good deal, one reasonably-priced item in the whole fucking store, back in the day you could buy stone cold allegedly-from-Italy mineral water in a big glass bottle, a liter, for a dollar, and carry it around in your backpack and survive downtown in summer when even a strong African-American warrior like me, whose ancestors ran barefoot on the savannah—hunting gazelle and zebra—and whose more recent ancestors worked in East Texas cotton fields, hoeing a tough row. It takes a lot to make my people sweat. So, like, at the time the Whole Foods mothership downtown used state troopers for security. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">The store had a Texas Department of Public Safety guy at the door, in uniform, as people came and went, probably more for appearances than anything else, but who you never saw inside. Never saw a trooper wrestle anybody to the ground at WF but it was a good choice using DPS instead of the local pigs because you’d have to worry more about merchandise losses with A.P.D. than from the damn customers, you know? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">It was once my common practice, while shopping at Whole Foods back in the day, to eat from one end of the store to the other, but that’s just human nature, right, not a real crime. Grazing at WF made up for the high prices on the days you actually made a purchase, right, because it was all such an outrageous rip-off? Stop me if you've heard that before. So, like, the trooper’s instinct to stop me one afternoon was right on, at the door of the store, but his luck was bad because there was a receipt in my pocket. Maybe not my receipt but a receipt nonetheless and it’s not like he was going to go item by item through my bag to be sure. Which emboldened me in the coming interaction. And so, like, instead of going off on this particular pig and asking what are you stopping me for, motherfucker—me being the only person of color leaving the fucking store, because Whole Foods at the time, under its original management, was a white store, not the way it is now under new guy Jeff Bezos, who just wants your money, the original ownership was not Negro-friendly. So, like, Whole Foods has always been expensive, then and now, but the store was previously an environment where the colored peoples of the earth were not a presence, as customers and especially not as staff. So, like, back in the day if that state trooper stopped me, which he was about to do, my question to him was going to be why don’t you look in that little white-bitch blond soccer mom’s bag over there, the one leaving the store ahead of me? You know, the one pushing the baby carriage? She could be walking out with a pound of truffles or new potatoes. Literally. Which she could. Literally. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">But the pig picked a brother to roust instead, that's nothing new when you’re a proud black man, here in River City where the Confederacy still lives. The white man and white woman are always challenging our legitimacy and saying, “You don’t belong.” At least the state troopers are usually polite even when they’re profiling, which this one was, but he was Latino which gave him points in my book, like, me sharing his pain as a member of a minority group in the Lone Star State. Although unlike me he could shoot a white guy if the opportunity arose and get away with it. Suffice it to say that this DPS puerco got me on a good day. My medication was working. So, like, this was not long after me and Ronnie Earle ran into each other in front of BookPeople, which is next door to REI now, but was next door to the Whole Foods mothership back then. To set the scene, back in the day. BookPeople is the center of non music-related White Culture in Austin, which means pretty much for the whole fucking town, btw, and has historically had little literary interest in niggers or Mexicans, except as subjects of white people’s narratives. It’s been like Austin policing but instead of a gun, whites have used a pen. But we digress. So, like, this time the trooper on duty signaled me to stop at the exit to the WF parking lot. He didn't really stop me but he was going to, so my preemptive move was to approach him, save him trouble because most pigs are lazy, you know? Not to generalize or anything. He didn’t draw his gun or pull out the cuffs or anything like that, if that’s what you’re wondering. That’s not where this is going. He was cooler about his suspicions about me, which the state troopers usually are, they're really polite too, it’s a performance measure for the Texas Department of Public Safety, they can be fired for being rude, unlike APD for whom rudeness is what, like, a job requirement? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Before the trooper signaled me to stop, through his demeanor not anything he said, he was looking at the bag of goodies hanging from my shoulder but looking in a discreet way because WF is an upscale expensive trendy store where wealthy white people, Democrats and Republicans shop there, the cool and the not-so-cool, and security didn’t want to make a big scene or put off a liberal enjoying his or her foie gras, or champagne, by clubbing Negroes to the ground during store hours. In the parking late at night after lights out, maybe, the troopers could lay down a beating then, one supposes, but not while customers were still enjoying the Whole Foods shopping experience. WF then was a white store that had two fences up to keep minorities out, the prices, that are still high, and the store environment. Blacks and browns did not shop there much and the staff was heavy-hipster, not that there’s anything wrong with that, the cool and the want-to-be cool. So, like, after his professional curiosity was satisfied me and this Lone Star Puerco who was Latino, btw, at the WF door we got to talking and somehow the conversation turned to W, who at that time was President Bush and it turned out this pig, this state trooper trying to catch me shoplifting, wasn’t an ordinary trooper. He was not Highway Patrol or a mere driver’s license examiner. He was not one of the guys who stops overloaded trucks leaking oil on the road to Laredo. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">He was Capitol Police and he was working store security as an extra gig. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">He said that on U.S. Election Day ‘00 he was actually on duty at the Texas Governor’s Mansion and W was home. Yeah, that's what this pig said. And that's where it got interesting. We’re still standing at the door of Whole Foods. People feel comfortable talking to me, what can you say, it’s part of the psychic freight one carries as a noble black man. We feel too much. Some of us also have the gift of bullshit but many do not. So, like, W came out early that morning, Election Day 2000, onto the front lawn of the Mansion, in his robe and slippers or whatever, to collect his morning newspaper, this pig said, still standing at the door of Whole Foods. He was half talking to me and half watching the exceptionally fine puddy coming and going from the store. Latino guys are often like that, but black men know when and where is appropriate. Which is one of my major reasons as a black man for shopping there too, not the organic yams, although they areexceptional. It’s more the melons and watermelons, you feel me? There’s so much talent at Whole Foods, even on a bad day you see women who make you want to cry because they are so fine. So, like, W was trying to act like an ordinary guy on his front grass in case the media was watching or whatever, which they were that morning, in 2000, at the Texas Governor’s Mansion. The pig at Whole Foods was there, or so he said, working that day on the Mansion grass. There were like a zillion news vans and reporters already camped out and the number only grew until the Supreme Court ruled. This was my neighborhood, by the way, and walking past, you just felt numb, not that that’s important here. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">So, like, my question to the DPS guy was, like, stop right there. Stop right there. Stop! This is completely professional. What newspaper? What did W subscribe to? What was he picking up on the lawn that morning, the day of the 2000 election? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">And the trooper said, actually, that W subscribed to two newspapers, that were delivered every morning to the front door of the Mansion, for the lord of the manor and of the state. The <i>Wall Street Journal </i>and the Houston <i>Chronicle</i>. So, like, not the <i>American-Statesman</i>, which meant Bush was actually smarter than he looked. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">That’s a joke, actually.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"> But it’s true, or that’s what this puerco said, the <i>Chronicle</i> and the <i>WSJ.</i> So, like, the trooper continued, we’re still standing in the WF doorway, just far enough outside not to trigger the electronic sensor that opens the door. He’s still checking out the customers, discreetly, but no niggers or Mexicans coming or going, so no one with probable cause to stop, you know? He continued with his rap. And he said him and the other puerco on duty that morning, on the front lawn of the Governor’s Mansion, at the risk of repeating myself. The troopers said to W that morning, on Election Day of the new fucking Millennium, “Hey Governor, how’s it going?” And Bush, who was always nice to the help, pretty cool one-on-one—so they say—he rolled his eyes and smiled that good-old-boy aw-shucks Yale-educated peckerwood smile, and replied, half-joking, “It’s going to be one of those days.” Which it was, actually.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"> It was "one of those days" for like the next month or so, until the Supreme Court ruled that those votes in Florida didn't count. Or, like, for the next few years, actually. Through Hurricane Katrina, certainly. Until the surge started working in Iraq, that would be my feeling, professionally, as a reporter. Throughout the Bush Presidency, actually. If you consider all the available evidence. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Never met the Big Guy in person, W that is, but everybody told me, both D’s and R’s, he was very charming, very personable up close, both in Austin and in D.C. The First Lady turned into Queen Anne in the White House by W himself remained down to earth one-on-one. They also said he was always the smartest guy in the room, at the State Capitol, which seems dubious now, in light of later events in D.C., and in Baghdad and in Fallujah. But that’s what people said who met him when he was working on Congress Avenue. The smartest guy in the room, no shit. And this one chick, a friend of mine, an acquaintance, who was a hot little Chilean abnormal psychologist and briefly the subject of my non-professional interest—this is absolutely true. She asked me once about W, while he was in office. That was what she wanted to know most about the United States. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Knowing that Texas is my home, what is he really like, she asked, what was President Bush really like? Who? W, she said. And my response was, well, he’s very personable one-on-one, because that's what everybody had told me. And she looked at me and answered, completely seriously, this is absolutely true, “They said the same thing about Hitler.” So, like, after that—after our discussion that evening in Antofagasta, Chile, nowadays when people ask me about W, as a trained observer with strong analytical skills, my response is to skip straight to the chase and say that he’s a fucking Nazi. No lie. For me, mostly though the truth was found in documents. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Spent a few weeks, back in the day, at the Center for American History, when W was governor, looking at Ann Richard’s official correspondence from her four years in the Mansion that preceded his. It was a complete waste of time from the standpoint of a story to write or a deadline to meet but there were three pieces of paper that fixed my attention and made worthwhile all the time spent going through blue-ribbon proclamations and drafts of forgotten speeches. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">One was a letter from the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, a Republican who had just sworn Richards as Governor. In the letter, handwritten and angry, the chief justice accused Governor Richards of sending her political enforcer to his chambers, to persuade the judge to resign. It was a kind of hardball you wouldn’t have associated with the ladylike governor and the judge wrote to Ann to call her bluff. The correspondence was helpful for what it revealed about the governor more than the Chief Justice. Richards’ political instincts had taken her so far but would not carry her to re-election. Democrats not Republicans were the endangered species at the Texas statehouse and she didn’t have a clue. The other correspondence was vintage Ann, in the form of two thank you notes. Her father died just after her loss and in her correspondence file, at the Center for American History, from like the month after W won and right before she ceded office, there was a handwritten condolence from George W. Bush and a copy of Ann’s thank you note in return. No mention of the election which had been dirty—not particularly dirty by Texas standards but dirty enough to shock and offend, which is the kind of thing the Lone Star electorate likes. Reading the exchange of letters from the old governor and the new one, W, taught me something that my own parents should have, but did not. That there are some things you can never let go of—courtesy and respect for family loss being among them. This was old Texas. Even after a statewide pissing match like a general election. Ann Richards was still a lady even when she played hardball. W, despite many faults, becoming a war criminal is one, was a gentleman, whatever that means. A stormtrooper, ultimately, but a well-bred one. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">In terms of the reporter’s tradecraft, technology not politics nor good manners were becoming the arbiter of this time of great change. Computers, certainly. God created snoops but the Internet made us dangerous. Email was coming. Mostly for me it was about a way of reporting not the story. That’s what sent me out day after day, to ride trail on white people in this Hill Country heartland, not to sound all noble or anything. The principal of newspaper work was that everybody is equal. Black, white, brown or yellow. Yellow Dog Democrat, Klansman or Black Panther, we’re all equal. Anybody can take a fall. That’s what makes this country great. We all fall down, we all disappoint, we try to get back to our feet, some do, some don’t, the only difference is who’s there to put it in the newspaper the next morning. For a time that was me. A thuggish little nigger from nowhere, instead of doing time in prison after another bust—that would have been my future if not for the Fourth Estate. Society gave me a chance to fuck with people who were, like, way above my social level. Can you believe that shit? People who might otherwise be sitting on my jury. Is there an Allah or what? Instead of them passing judgment on me, it was me judging them. Ours is a society where one can rise above humble origins, and go from street nigger to Black Avenger in one long jump. That’s what journalism gave me, not to get sentimental or anything.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">My last Whole Foods encounter was among the high prices and beautiful people, but in check-out, not on the bulk aisle where my favorite pastime was grazing, as part of my own efforts at “mini-reparations,” as seen through the lens of a black liberation dialectic. In the WF mothership’s express checkout one afternoon there was a striking older white lady one or two customers ahead of me. Somehow she looked familiar. Don’t know what she was buying although it was too expensive whatever it was, we were in Whole Foods, not to repeat myself. WF doesn’t do cheap, not to beat a dead horse. This lady looked like she could afford it though. Not Michael Dell-rich, not like she could buy the whole fucking store, just whatever she wanted in it. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">What struck me most were her clothes. Her apparel. She was not dressed for the rodeo, unless it was Rodeo Drive or somewhere else in Beverly Hill. She was rich enough to be understated which in Texas means wealthy indeed. She wore fashionably broken-in jeans, almost chic, like someone had worn them for her to soften high-priced denim up. A sheer expensive maybe silk blouse and a thin gold bracelet on her wrist, not at all like the ingots that ordinary Texas rich women wear. But this wasn’t oil money or cattle wealth. It was political gold which means respectability as well as cash. Her hair, kind of golden, actually, was perfect. A helmet but perfect. She looked well-cared for. It was Ann Richards. We chatted for a moment. It had been twenty years, longer, since she’d been at Precinct 1 in the Travis County Courthouse, and we hadn’t seen each other since. We had talked on the telephone once during a time long ago but that conversation was also in an Austin that no longer exists. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Ann’s rap after she got beat for reelection by W was that she never looked back. That’s what she told interviewers if anyone asked. What happened happened, she lost, W won—that was that and she moved on. Which meant going to New York or wherever and working as a political consultant, a commentator or strategist or whatever, making big bank. That’s what she said. That’s what a lot of ex-politicians do. That's what she did and there's documentary evidence to prove it. But by the time we ran into each other at Whole Foods, her version of history was no longer holding up. What had happened in the meantime was Iraq. W had four years in D.C. at that point, as the most powerful man in the world, when Ann and me met in express checkout. This was like September or October, at the end of the Bush first term in the White House and a lot of people were dead who otherwise might not be. Iraq was in ashes. The metrics, the numbers, described it all, particularly the body count. And you could kind of see that on Ann’s face. She had fucked up and she knew it. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">She didn't say anything, Governor Richards was far too smart a woman for that, too experienced after four years in the Mansion. She certainly wasn't going to say anything to a reporter and not this reporter who she didn't trust. Her features were harder to control, though. Nothing was said but nothing needed to be, it was all written on her face. You might think she was ill but the cancer hadn’t been diagnosed yet. This was something different, regret. Me not being an abnormal psychologist or anything, not like my Chilean friend, my bet was still that Ann felt responsible. She felt guilty for unleashing W on an unsuspecting world. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">The election wasn’t just about her, contrary to what she believed at the time. Contrary to what she told the press. As the pundits like to say, elections have consequences, mostly for people other than the candidates, which is something the pundits don't say often enough. Ann didn’t do what was needed to do to win. She didn’t play dirty enough, frankly. The trouble was, and this may have been Ann’s thinking, when you bring in somebody to go dumpster-diving you can’t always be sure whose dumpster it’s going to be. That may have been what she feared. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">She tried desperately at the end of the campaign, when she finally recognized the danger that W represented. She ratcheted up the executions, in order to appeal to the mob. Which in Texas is a completely legitimate political move. She tried to be a pistol-packing mama and all that, taking a course on the FBI gun range, posing with a handgun for the cameras, but it was all too late. It’s always amazing that people who never knew her talk about what a saint Ann Richards was. If she was a saint, the Governor’s Mansion was the wrong place for her to be. She didn't like “What’s the dirt?”, but it still seems like a pretty fair question, even today, long after Ann has left the scene. Fair in Austin at least, here in this bucolic River City. Somehow it seems to get more pertinent every day. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Who a leader nurtures—who a leader praises—are important and Ann did a good job of that, encouraging women to join the political process and all, being a mentor you would call it, or better, a role model. But just as important as whose career you start is whose career you end. She should have strangled W in the crib, you feel me? It would have saved a lot of blood later. Anyway we shook hands outside Whole Foods and she walked away. She was living around the corner in some condos, someone told me later, whose other principal resident was one of President Johnson's daughters. Can’t remember if it was Lynda Bird or Luci Bird, whichever one of the LBJ’s girls lives in town. Watching Governor Richards walk away at Whole Foods, she had no security, no assistant, nothing except the purchases in her hand. In this town that's what it always comes down to, no matter how you start out, one day you end up carrying your own groceries out of Whole Foods. It can be a lonely walk through the parking lot. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Anyway that day, back inside, collecting my shit—and a receipt—saying to the checker, like, “Do you know who that was? That was Ann Richards.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">The cashier was a hipster, probably a glass-blower or mixed-media artist, just working the cash register to pay for the herb that gave him inspiration. If you asked me to guess. Beside the plastic arts he was also certainly a member of a band. Everybody in Austin is in a band. This guy was completely unimpressed. “I just saw,” the checker told me, “Sandra Bullock in produce.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><b><i>Con los Pobres de la Tierra</i></b> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">Let me ask you a question, it may seem incongruous, you ever ride the Number 1? If you want to get a quick and dirty view of what River City has become during my time in the saddle, you need to take the Number 1 bus. It’s not pretty. The route starts somewhere south, almost the fucking Alamo, comes up Congress Avenue past new and trendy shops, restaurants, saloons and crosses the river—passes the Capitol—past the Governor’s Mansion, past the Travis County Courthouse, the University of Texas and the State Hospital. You roll by the headquarters of the Texas Rangers too, look for the DPS building with antennae sticking up, creepy and loathsome like a slimy bug. The #1 covers many of the social services stops in town, if you're unemployed or “at risk” or just out of your fucking mind, which is a surprisingly significant demographic in ATX. The head-jobs and druggies mostly come out at night but my most formative experience on the #1 actually took place</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">during the day</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">and </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">south</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;"> of the river where there’s usually less chance of mischief, not north </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">So, like, it was a Saturday, late morning, me coming back from Big Stacy Pool on the southern edge of Travis Heights, to catch the #1 headed north toward downtown. To set the scene. Molly lived in Travis Heights, btw, someone told me later, not that that’s important here, and so does Jim Hightower who was also <i>Observer</i> editor back in the day. This has always been a liberal neighborhood in other words, if you can say that, and cracker sightings have been rare even when there were more crackers per capita in Travis County than now. So, like, you walk up the hill from Stacy Pool to South Congress and there’s this little park on the corner, across from what <i>was</i> an X-rated theater and is now a tech startup? Remember what it was like? On the other side of the street from that nursing home—you know, if there’s a breeze you can smell the pee drying as you walk by? So, like, homeless folks have always used the little park across from the nursing home as a place to hang out during the day, especially when it’s hot. Pigs are usually not far away, waiting for a chance to bust some balls or break some heads. If memory serves me correctly, this was, like, right around the corner from where that Texas senator—Nixon was his name, same party but no relation to the former President. Where Senator Nixon got busted as a John back in the day. <i>Now </i>you remember? He picked up what he thought was a working girl but she had a silver badge in her panties. That may have been before your time, if like so many you’re new to River City. So, like, a lot of hookers work or worked this part of South Austin after East Austin started getting gentrified and became just another part of Hipsterland. So, like, this was the turn of the century, turn of the millennium, 2000, Y2K or maybe a few years before, W was governor. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">My preference is always to sit up front on buses, to watch the road, sometimes chat with the driver if he’s got anything to say. Some of the Capitol Metro drivers just sit there, it’s all they can do to handle the traffic on Congress Avenue, but other drivers got a decent rap, you have to <i>talk</i> to the motherfucker to find out because there's no other way. And sitting up front with me that day was this couple, looked like small town folk, Ma and Pa Peckerwood from Giddings or maybe Milam County or some <i>East Texas shithole</i> like Bastrop County before Bastrop became suburban Austin and started sprouting fern bars and cafes. To replace the feed stores and Western wear shops, you know, like Bastrop when Nig Hoskins was still sheriff. They called him Nig because he killed a black man. But we digress.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">So, like, there were a couple of black guys in that little park where the bus stops, up the hill from the pool, two Negroes just chillin', minding their own black business like the Texas Constitution says we have a right to do. Maybe getting high too, which is cool, each to his own herb—indulge or not—that's the mantra in this town, it may even be codified. So, like, this was sacred ground to me geographically, this intersection next to the park because on one of my prior visits to Stacy Pool, which was then <i>my pool</i>, btw, <i>my swimming hole</i> that eventually changed to Deep Eddy and then Barton Springs. But was then Big Stacy in South Austin, and me one day walking by that nursing home across from the park and there was a <i>fifty-dollar bill</i> on the sidewalk. That was me going to the pool. But this was me coming back from the pool, walking to the bus stop in front of the park where there was the two brothers just chillin’. To set the scene. So, like, that day was one of the last times Austin felt real to me, boarding the bus with Ma and Pa Peckerwood from Giddings. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">It wasn’t <i>the</i> last day or anything, wasn’t the <i>beginning of the end</i> like Winston Churchill talked about during the second World War but it was the <i>end of the beginning</i> like the great man also said. In the beginning, for me, River City was fucked up but it was largely a holistic experience. It was the kind of place you could work on your karma. Weed was cheap. Pussy was free or reasonably priced, $35 on east 12<sup>th</sup>Street for a half-n-half actually, although you had to check before you climbed on board that it really was a she. At the time of my arrival a black man could still run his game with enough intimidation and white guilt to get away with murder. <i>Almost</i>. That was the <i>old</i> Austin, for me, it was kind of beautiful back in the day and it lasted like that for a while. But RIP, motherfucker, because that bitch is dead and gone now. If you asked me to put a date on when the world changed for the worse that would be kind of hard to say but it was an era—a political era, a social climate you could call it. Basically when George W. Bush was in the Governor's Mansion. At first the Live Music Capital of the World was still easy-come easy-go, even after George and Laura Bush hit town. The black man did not feel that his freedom was curtailed except in interactions with the pigs, before W got here. You could walk by the back gate of the Mansion and see the parties on the grounds, back in the day, there wasn’t barbed wire or machine guns yet, you didn't feel like snipers were tracking your every move, either. Not like now. Before the Bushes came to town, and when Ann Richards lived there and you walked by at night you could swear you heard women's laughter and you probably did. At the Bush parties, during those fall and summer afternoons, the women wore big sun hats and were holding drinks. Even if W himself was on the wagon, born again and all that, no alcohol, it turned out he only drank blood. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Sometimes, also in the late afternoon, if you visited Central Library just down the street from the Mansion, which was one of my favorite haunts, btw, because it was across the street from the <i>Observer</i>. In the library there were sometimes reports that the Bush twins were up on the 3<sup>rd</sup> floor studying, they’d walked over after class at Austin High. That was part of my Austin too. It was a small town. If it was a weekday you could stand on Congress Avenue and look up at the front of the Capitol and if it was anytime, say, after 10 a.m. but before four in the afternoon there was a silver Continental parked out front like the owner was home. That was W's car. He was <i>in</i>. Today of course all you'd would need to do is look at the surveillance tape. There are more cameras covering Congress now than in Hollywood, which is another change the black man is not entirely comfortable with, but that’s what we call progress in high-tech River City. Point is that you knew shit, even deep shit, without having to work hard, back in the day. The lazy man’s way to investigative reporting, you just had to hang out on Congress Avenue to do the job. At the time you were still seeing people downtown or you knew people who were seeing the people you needed to see downtown, in about a six-blood radius of the State Capitol. My boss came into the office one day during those years, the Bush years, and said, like, he just saw former Governor White at a wine store on West 6th Street, which blew his mind. “Mark White buys bad wine just like me!” he said literally. A small town, yeah. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Ran into Ronnie Earle another time, about this same time, the W years, on the steps leading to the second floor of the Capitol. He was showing his father around, and showing his dad where Ronnie worked meant taking his father to the legislature not to the courthouse. Probably took him both places, the House and the courthouse actually. Saw Ronnie again a year or two later, the last time we met actually, outside Whole Foods which was pretty much the center of my social existence at the time. No longer hanging out at my dealer’s apartment up near the university Drag, which had been Ground Zero for me back in the day. Not at the Central Library anymore either, with the Bush twins, library management didn't like too many Negroes in the downtown location, they kind of made their feelings known. Suddenly my principal hang-out was Whole Foods. Not the current store, at 5<sup>th</sup> & Lamar, not the national mothership but the prior one, next door to BookPeople, across the street basically. Don’t know if Ronnie was coming out of Whole Foods or going into Book People but we stopped and chatted. He was still D.A., a quarter century after we first met. You know what he told me that day outside BookPeople, as advice? “Write what you <i>know</i>.” He even did a recommendation for me to UT, to complete my unfinished degree. Look how he has been repaid. But we digress. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">So, like, anyway, the bus, the #1, was stopped at that corner next to the park, up from Big Stacy Pool, waiting for a red light to turn green and proceed down Congress Avenue toward the Capitol and the guy from Bastrop looked out the window at the two brothers in the park and this cracker said to his old lady sitting next to him, straight up like they’re still in Crackerville, East Texas, or wherever, not like he was actually in <i>Trendyville</i>, the Third Coast, the Live Music Capital of the World. Where he really was. “There’s two kinds of coon," he said to his wife. She looked at him expectantly. "Them that walk on four legs,” Bubba pointed his finger out the window, indicating the two brothers just chillin’ in the park, “and them that walk on two.” His wife chuckled. He slapped his thigh and had a good laugh and smiled big. With both teeth. And then he looked my way, me sitting on the other side of the bus aisle but still pretty close and this cracker realized that he had spoken loud enough for one that walked on two legs to hear. And he stopped smiling. So, like, if this was Chicago or even L.A. the motherfucker would have been dead right there, boom boom boom, at least two in the chest, his old lady too. Meet my friend Mr. Nine Mil, you feel me? But this was <i>River City</i>, Texas, the <i>old Austin</i> where we always tried to be user-friendly, where we tried to be u<i>nderstanding </i>even of rednecks like our challenged brothers and sisters from the pineywoods of East Texas, or wherever. Although this is a problem that is <i>not limited</i> to that part of the Lone Star State. And actually it didn’t really bother me, you know? Because Bubba was up front about it. You knew what you were dealing with until relatively recently, you knew Billy Bob because you knew what he looked like. He looked like this motherfucker sitting at the front of the bus with his old lady. He looked like poor white trash or just trash, irrespective of color. Nowadays, the dentition is better but the sentiments are pretty much the same. Hipsters have totally replaced hillbillies. They just don’t say dumb shit, sitting in the seat next to you, most of the time, not without looking around first. They don’t usually use the bus much either. They ride on Treks or drive hybrids, not to induce class envy or anything. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">The Man in the White Hat</span></i></b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"> </span></i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Interesting that the major fault line at the <i>Observer </i>did not involve black people or Latinos but instead Palestinians and Jews. That was my contribution actually. Mine, both in fact and in deed.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">So, like, the major donor to the <i>Observer</i> over decades has been the Rapoport family of Waco, a Russian-Jewish-Texan family who owned liquor stores in Waco in the early 1900s and moved into insurance, and now traffic in journalism as one might say. There was a time back in the day when the family patriarch—Bernie Rapoport of American Income Life Insurance—was one of only two liberal money guys in all the whole Lone Star State. So it was said. And to give him the credit he deserves Bernie was a liberal white guy who employed black people in good jobs in the relative shithole of Waco, Texas, not to repeat myself—even when other whites would not. Because the rest of the people with money in the state were conservative or ultra-conservative nutjob white guys, even if many of them were Yellow Dogs too. If you were a good Democrat and had a good Democratic cause you could call Mr. Rapaport and he might write a check for $5,000 to make it happen. Texas conservatives always have dozens of wealthy boosters—Democrats only had one or two, Bernie Rapaport being the number one guy. The problem was that Bernie Rapaport was also a plant-a-tree-in-Israel nutjob American Jew, pardon me for saying that. Of which there were more then than now—thank you, very much. And he believed that the Palestine Liberation Organization then was like Islamic State is today, along those lines. Although the PLO’s violence was all right, in my modest opinion as a natural-born black man, because everyone else in the Middle East is violent too. Enter my mother—may she rest in peace. Who also believed in violence and was part of Bernie Rappaport’s generation of Texan, but the other end of the spectrum politically, born in Galveston during Jim Crow and becoming kind of hardcore. And who was a big fan of the PLO, for the simple reason that the Palestinian struggle is like the African American one. And in order to please my mother—like any good son wants to do—and for no other reason—a devious plot was concocted by one conspirator, me. Involving Bernie Rapaport of American Income Life Insurance. May shame be heaped upon my black soul.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">So, like, this is going to sound terrible. Just to warn you. After writing an account of my time working on a kibbutz in Israel—back, back in the day—before my arrival in the Fourth Estate—my service to the Jewish State and all that you could call it, as an agricultural worker. Back to the plantation, you could even say, that was kind of the whole vibe of the piece. It was a wonderful time to be in the Holy Land btw, the Israelis were cool—the chicks were hot—there’s some amazing talent in the Holy Land, let me tell you, Arab and Jew—this was roughly the era right before the right-wing whackjob Likud began to take over, to put the period in historical perspective. </span><span style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">So, like, after pitching this tale of my time on kibbutz to the <i>Observer</i> as a novel-in-progress—it was accepted for publication. Can you believe that shit? Even though the story had absolutely fuck all to do with Texas, you feel me, which was suspicious right there, completely <i>sus</i> in fact. And the magazine didn’t really run fiction either. But my W.I.P; was accepted and ran, no shit. And prominent in this alleged novel-in-progress was reference to a bird—colored black, white and green—and called a tafara. Which got into the magazine too as part of this extremely dodgy work of literature. Again to my great surprise—and at a time in my life that not even half of my far-fetched writer’s traps caught anything. Apparently the story ran because Bernie Rapaport liked it or would like it and he was writing the checks. So, like, tafara is “Arafat” spelled backwards—as in Yassir Arafat who was chairman of the PLO. Something that the editors didn’t notice before publication. And black, white and green happen to be the Palestinian colors. You may say, wow, that was really juvenile and it certainly was, in the bright light of day and with benefit of hindsight, those would be my only caveats. But it was also a whole lotta fun. And if you’re going to blacklist me about anything—which the <i>Observer </i>did after that—after the Rapaports presumably got scraped off the ceiling of their presumably palatial home in Waco. If you’re going to blacklist me for any single reason, Palestine would be my second choice after Mother Africa—to risk all for. Not to sound noble or anything.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Someone told me recently that in the <i>Observer</i>’s papers, which were donated to the University of Texas and are being cataloged by UT archivists as we speak, there’s an angry letter from founding editor Ronnie Dugger to Bernie Rapoport. Apparently referencing an argument over Palestine. In this alleged document Ronnie tells Bernie that Bernie is not going to dictate editorial policy and that Bernie can take the Rapaport money and shove it, basically. Or so it is said. Not having seen the correspondence myself but as it has been described to me. That does not mean that Ronnie Dugger defended me tho. <i>Au contraire</i>, mon ami. He cut the black man loose—as has happened so often in Texan history if one looks thru the lens of a critical race dialectic.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Ronnie Dugger and Molly and Nate considered me an uppity nigger, btw—or so it was said because they didn't say it to me. In any case after the tafara incident my goose was well and truly cooked. Through, again—you know—if you look at the Tafara Affair as it has come to be known, if you look dispassionately, it was through minimal fault of my own. It wasn’t even me actually at all, if you want to be technical. My <i>mother</i> was responsible, for teaching me that the Palestinians are an oppressed people. There were severe professional consequences for the appearance of the bird in print, you could call it, but if history has taught us anything about the noble black man it is that he must do what he must do, in order to liberate the oppressed everywhere. At that point in my life Old Black had taken me to Minneapolis, btw, where everyone in Austin ends up. The towns are similar, yeah, with similar populations, a lot of liberal white people who are not quite as liberal as they think. Both Minneapolis and Austin are great places to be when it’s not a full moon and when P.D. isn’t on the hunt. To set the scene. </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">So, like, my memory is of being in the Twin Cities and receiving a copy of the </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Observer</i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">’s collection of best stories—freshly-printed. The collection was from the first 50 years of the magazine—a period of time that included my tenure as a Contributing Writer. So, like, there were like 90+ stories but none by black writers and apparently only one piece authored by a black person—a note to the Democratic faithful about “boll weevils,” conservative Democrats who vote like Republicans. a phrase you never hear anymore sadly, boll weevil, because it’s so descriptive and means basically traitor. The warning was written by a Congressman-of-color, back back in the day. My own writing was not included, not that there’s anything wrong with that. The magazine's lone black writer was not included. You may ask, did Molly know? Molly did it, she chose the pieces to include in the <span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">collection. </span>Karen had only one story and it was not her best work. Ronnie Dugger had eleven bylines—not that we’re counting, generally-speaking black men do not get jealous. We are known for our ability to look at facts dispassionately, not like white chicks for example. Anyway, this was out of 94 pieces in the collection, or whatever. One of Ronnie Dugger’s stories was about the killing of a child in Shithole, East Texas, back in the day, the kind of reportage that made the <i>Observer</i>’s reputation before Tulia or George W. Bush. Molly’s major contribution was her realization—over the years and in print—that W—future Butcher of Baghdad, as one could call George W. Bush—so-called Fiend of Fallujah—was a danger to humanity, not just Texas. Certainly i</span></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">t’s great that Ronnie Dugger wrote the child’s story but it was his job and didn’t make him an emancipator of the black peeps, or whatever, which is how he likes to be viewed, a la retraite, as our savior.“He has an ego,” one of Ronnie’s friends told me recently, and that comment is so unlike the black man who is practically egoless. Molly was like that too—a personality the size of the Trans Pecos. She had four stories in the collection and Nate had three, actually, including the Tulia piece which as mentioned was awesome. Fifty Years of the <i>Observer</i> was white people’s views of the State of Texas and specifically white people’s views of race. White views of race, politics and culture actually—with a little—very little—Tejano thrown in. Mostly you had to be a liberal white guy or girl to appear in the collection’s pages, it was mostly white guys and a few white chicks. It was like literary segregation, or like a white club. It was a white club, for journalists. Nate was picked to be the voice of black people. He’s a white boy, lest we forget, from the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">An interesting anecdote about how far the magazine has deceived about its own history, this is recounted only to help, comes from a writer of color at the <i>Observer</i> before me. He is Latino and was hired by Ronnie Dugger back in the day, the late ‘70s, but who eventually left journalism and went to law school. He said that he was invited a few years ago to one of the magazine’s social events, a fundraiser or awards banquet or whatever, and the editors insisted on introducing him to the audience as a Latino former editor of the magazine. As the <i>Observer</i> tries now to atone for a non-diverse past. “I told them,” he said, “I was never editor.” To no avail.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">The Rapoports basically own the magazine, Bernie’s son and granddaughter lead the board, which has traditionally consisted of liberal white West Austin do-gooders and now has a couple of diverse do-gooders but the Rapaports still call the shots because they’re writing checks just like Bernie used to do. According to the family foundation the Rapaports give about $100K or $150K yearly, roughly, out of the Observer’s budget of $1 million-plus-change. The Rapaport money comes from their foundation not out of the family’s own pockets, fyi. But they had to make the money first—to give the Rapaport family credit they deserve—selling insurance or whatever, in order to pay taxes later. Still it’s money that otherwise would have gone to Uncle Sam, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Not to point out the obvious. Basically the magazine is at the family’s orders—impoverished, financially although not editorially—under Rapaport control because they in effect make up the difference in the budget every year. It’s a good deal for Abby and her father Ron but maybe not as good a deal for Texas journalism. Abby has—backed by Daddy—fired an editor or publisher—or two—or so it is said. In the journalism world she is recognized as “owner” of the <i>Observer</i>, which she kind of is, actually. Fewer than 40,000 subscribers in a state with 30 million people. Influential in some circles, but with a highly underpowered engine, you could say, whose only real moneymaking endeavor, according to the magazine’s non-profit disclosure form, is The Molly journalism awards banquet. “Those tables are not cheap,” said a Democratic mover-and-shaker who has attended, which means that the expense prohibits the same people who the <i>Observer</i> is supposed to be working for, from going to the banquet. Not to get all nose-up-in-the-air about hypocrisy. The banquet pulls in about 100K a year and The Molly is usually awarded to a Jewish writer on the liberal journalism circuit. A couple of years ago the prize was awarded to one of the judges, which seems kind of dodgy but is no longer the concern of this <i>black cowboy</i>. That doesn’t mean that the Rapaport family has not given a lot to the magazine—the Rapaports have been very generous—but so have many others, including the writers. My own work for the <i>Observer</i> was all paid at the same rate whatever the story: $20-per-piece. Regardless of how long it took to report and write, not to sound like a victim. In fact the magazine still owes me for my last story, not to sound bitter or aggrieved.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Where the <i>Observer</i> shines and needs more resources is not race but environmental coverage. That’s not my problem anymore, saddling up Old Black for the long ride home. There really is such a thing as a reporter’s instinct—mine tells me that what we’re going through now with the pandemic is the beginning of something not the end. You heard that here first—end times but instead of God’s wrath it’s Mother Nature’s. Kiss your ass goodbye, not to get all negative, but things can get worse and probably will. Which is another reason to ride off into the sunset while there’s still a sunset to ride into, my plan is to enjoy life before the apocalypse. Meanwhile, let’s all do ourselves a favor—if you know a reporter who covers the environment, buy him or her a drink. Or share your stash or give up a little pussy or dick as the case may be. Because that beat is now the cutting edge of journalism. Otherwise, basically—if you ask me, considering my experience as a reporter—we’re all fucked. Although bad news does make for some great stories, as Molly Ivins liked to say. Looking around this Hill Country one last time—as Old Black hooves the ground to signal he’s ready to go—if you ask me about good journalism—if you ask me about the craft of reporting—there has been only one enduring institution during my time on the range. <i>The Times</i>. The Gray Lady still brings home the bacon.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">If anyone else wins a Pulitzer you should be suspicious—the Pulitzer Board is just another white club after all, where relationships are everything. The Pulitzers are about power and influence not necessarily good journalism. The prizes are about connections and friends, whose turn at the trough, that sort of thing, not to sound jaded. Who has the stroke to win, in other words—who knows whom. But if the <i>Times</i> is the winner—in news or business reporting for example—or any kind of investigation—you can almost guarantee that the <i>Times</i> people earned it. Not for arts coverage—no way—especially not at the <i>NYT</i>. In that case you need to be highly suspicious. Or the opinion page which is wired so tight that the editor must squeak when she walks, another white chick, btw, not that there’s anything wrong with that, who took over from a white guy. Like the <i>New Yorker</i>, in fact, a great magazine back in the day which seems to get more clubby all the time. A club that few of us belong to. Is it possible that American journalism has had a rough ride recently because the industry is so corrupt? As well as racist? Just a random thought. The <i>Times</i> ran an opinion piece a few months ago—this one was actually pretty good. Something to the effect that voting for the Academy Awards is based upon relationships not merit. That was my guess, looking at the title. Not having actually read the piece myself—life is too short—but after spending a few seconds studying the headline. When one reaches a higher level of journalism consciousness, one does not even have to read a story to know what it's about. In any case the same thing can be said of the Pulitzers, <i>n’est-ce pas</i>? That would be my view as a retiring black practitioner of the profession. Racism exists in American journalism just like in policing, health care, Hollywood and every other fucking aspect of our culture.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">After the <i>Observer</i> crossed me off the list, <i>Texas Monthly</i>, the <i>Texas Tribune</i> and <i>ProPublica</i> followed suit, all taking their cue from Bernie Rappaport, for the crime of dissing Israel. At the <i>Tribune</i> that call was made by Corrie Maclaggan, managing editor, and the editor in chief—the excellent Ms. Ramshaw now of The 19<sup>th</sup>—not to name names, both Jewish journalists, not to go ethnic or religious. At the <i>Observer</i> the editors even went online and inserted code in one of my stories to make it read like gibberish. But not the novel-in-progress in which the tafara flew, so to speak. You may say, well, Lucius—maybe they’re not racists—they just didn’t like <i>you?</i> Which is a fair question to ask, actually. The problem is though—if they just didn’t like me—why didn’t they find <i>another Negro</i>? In my entire time in the saddle—almost half the last fucking century, not to repeat myself, since finishing my internship at the Atlanta Constitution, in 1977, and being sent by Cox Newspapers to Austin to work as a reporter on the City Desk of the <i>American-Statesman</i>—besides me, there has been just one black male reporter at any of these Texas publications. And only a handful of black women. At the <i>Statesman</i> for instance, despite groundbreaking coverage of the pigs, that you have to give the daily newspaper credit for, over the years, frying a lot of bacon, there have only been half a dozen blacks since my departure in 1980. A local black civic leader recently described the <i>Statesman</i> newsroom as historically inhospitable to black men. The only blacks at the <i>Tribune</i> have said the same thing about <i>TT</i>’s editorial offices, under white chicks Emily Ramshaw and Corrie Maclaggan, not to repeat myself, a hostile atmosphere for black journalists. It’s called racism, people. You don’t get a pass because you publish stories about race. The only reason not to mention <i>Texas Monthly</i> is that the <i>Monthly</i> avoids these problems altogether by not hiring African Americans in the first place. Before the problem was attributable to white guys and now it’s white chicks, that would be my whole point, actually. It bears repeating.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">As for the Gray Lady, she’s still kinda hot. What’s cool about her is that you can reverse-engineer the coverage—it’s that good. That deep. Sometimes there’s some really multidimensional shit, not to sound ignorant, that can lead the reader to extra value in the reportage. During MeToo for example, for which <i>NYT</i> won a Pulitzer and deservedly so, the <i>Times</i> ran a list of a bunch of big guys in arts and in the media who were major suspects with women. What was surprising about this blacklist—which pleased me, btw, a lot more than the other kind, that kept me out of work as a journalist during the best years of a noble black life—was the high percentage of Jewish men. Not because Jewish guys are the biggest dogs with women. There’s a lot of competition for that dubious honor, from Latinos and from black men. But because there are so many Jews in positions of power and MeToo is about power not sex. That was my take-home lesson from reverse-reading the <i>Times</i>. The newspaper is something else, in a good way, and has resources which are just as important as sources. Some publications can put together a team of three or four reporters once in a while—"for a project”—<i>NYT</i> is doing that shit all the damn time. <i>Times</i> reporters uncovered what was happening in the Travis County District Attorney’s office in Austin, Texas without ever coming to the Lone Star State. That’s the power of good journalism. The Gray Lady may not be as good as she once was but she’s still better than everybody else. Not on the arts, however, which is what’s important to me now, pulling tight the stirrups on my ride. Because art imitates life.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">In Austin the music plays a huge role, we all know that. To the point where the gig assumes critical importance. If you asked me about my experience of that scene—lo these many years riding fences on the Silicon Prairie. Living through traumatic eras of history, having seen black bodies on the ground after police shootings, the mother wanting to know why they had to shoot her son eight times? And having heard the music playing in the background during mucho mucho mayhem—you might ask what was the most powerful protest song or who was the most powerful protest singer during my time on the range? That’s easy. It wasn’t James Brown or the Temptations. Not Queen B or Marvin Gaye. The song is not “Cop Killer” either—by Body Count—although the title does have a melodious ring. The best protest song of my generation is “Sweet Home Alabama,” that would be my opinion. In which crackers took charge of their own narrative and decided it was okay to be peckerwood. Lynyrd Skynyrd was the bomb—that got dropped on the rest of us. The song makes me almost—almost—want to spend time with white boys and has had the greatest social impact during my time in the saddle, that would be my call. You cannot ignore the role of the arts in revolution, even if it’s not your revolution. If you asked me what was the most poignant time for me, personally—as a black man and a black journalist—during the last half century? What was the most emotionally and spiritually impressionante time ever, in Austin that was also an artistic experience. My memory is clear, before the drugs and booze took a toll. This was in a movie theater in what was then far North Austin but is now considered downtown. So, like, this was music-related like so much that happens here, not to repeat myself. After dropping a tab of acid—you know, the cheap kind that was more speed than LSD? Back in the day, if you were around back then and if you were a drug fiend like me. To set the scene. Never used acid at work, btw—if that’s your concern. But at the City Desk, the clerk was a brother named Marvin—who had a twin sister named Marvina—who sold vials of crystal speed for $10, if you needed a quick pick me up at deadline.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">So, like, at the theater, me stoned out of my mind but still agitated due to the speed in the tab? To set the scene. The movie was <i>Apocalypse Now</i>. Which had premiered. And it was like the helicopters were coming straight into the theater, not to get all dramatic or anything. Me whimpering like a a bitch, sunk down in my seat. The music was cataclysmic too, The Doors. That may just be classic rock now but was scary shit at the time. In the Live Music Capital of the World it’s always about the music, btw, that would be my whole point, actually. My best memory of live music is Junior Walker singing “Shotgun” at Antone’s, also back in the day. Junior wore a cape over his shoulders and everything, an attendant removed the cape when Junior got too hot from his music, you know? The kind of routine patented by James Brown the Godfather of Soul, but was still pretty common among black singers, not that that’s pertinent here. Everything in this town comes back to the gig—the music—the song or the band—not so much the written word. My theory? The East Coast is literary, the West Coast is cinematic, but the Third Coast is all about the music. Unless there’s a tafara flying through and they won’t let you forget what was just basically <i>a little indiscretion</i>. You may say, well, you sound like a bigot. Kind of. But that’s what it means to be American, right? The U.S. was built on bigotry. It’s just our turn now. Let me say in all candor: Some of these white chicks get on my last damn nerve. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">So, like, there are even one or two decent white guys. In my modest opinion, other black people may disagree. Doyne Bailey is a white guy of my acquaintance or formerly of my acquaintance because we haven’t see each other for many years. He’s a pig—or a proto-pig because he became Sheriff of Travis County or, actually now, a <i>retired</i> pig. To set the scene. Later Doyne was also Governor Richard’s main criminal justice guy. But the day we're talking about he was a homicide sergeant for APD looking at the untimely death of a white guy in a black neighborhood.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">So, like, Doyne is an unrepentant porker but he’s one with wide knowledge and a certain style. He ran the state liquor board for a while too, if memory serves. And before all that—he was president of the APA and helped to establish the organization that eventually turned into the KKK we know it today. To come full circle, because we started with <i>puercos</i>, didn’t we? And he’s a great guy—Doyne—as hard as that may be to believe, being a pig and all that. Luckily black men hold very little real racial prejudice. So, like, my first Doyne Bailey encounter was over this white guy's dead body and that was music-related too,btw. So, like, me and Doyne met in 1978—maybe ‘79—in East Austin, around the time Molly and me crossed paths in Seadrift but not at the same exact time, obviously. My guess now, lo these many years later, is that the dead white guy in East Austin preceded the dead white guy in Seadrift but both events seemed to be relatively felicitous, because it was nice to go to cover a shooting and the victim wasn’t black. To set the scene. Back then, back in the day, white people didn’t go to East Austin. If you were a white guy or God-forbid a <i>white chick</i> east of I-35, at that time, you weren’t looking for a fixer-upper, your needs were more immediate, more pressing, you feel me? The reason was sex, drugs or boogie woogie, not to stereotype or anything. Where me and Doyne hooked up that day—where we met on the sidewalk—was Austin’s black neighborhood, B.G., before gentrification. So, like, me and then-homicide Sergeant Bailey—you’re not going to believe this, but this is how karma plays out in our bucolic River City.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Sgt. Bailey was on foot with his partner going house to house—canvassing the neighborhood, just across the Interstate from the State Capitol, where this late white guy had been found dead, only a few blocks away from the Governor’s Office actually, between the interstate that marked the border and the black cemetery, another world entirely. Enter the black man. The American-Statesman staff car pulled up with me at the wheel. The dead guy was the wrong color in a segregated neighborhood, in one of the little houses that real estate agents now call high end cottages, the kind of house that cost $35,000 then, maybe, and maybe $500,000 now, if we wish to view history thru the lens of home affordability.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Doyne’s partner went on to the next house while Doyne, as the senior detective, stayed on the sidewalk to deal with me, the dreaded press. We got along okay actually—it surprised me as much as it did him. Asking the usual questions, peppering him with <i>mis perguntas</i>, as a member of the Black Press, Doyne deftly turned the interview around. “What do <i>you</i> know?” he asked. Which meant that P.D. didn’t know shit and was desperate for leads. You know what he also told me, that day on the street near the dead guy’s last known address? Not to sound jaded at age 22 or whatever. You know what the pig—Sergeant Bailey, a good guy, actually, as hard as that may be to believe. A white guy <i>and</i> a pig, not to repeat myself. Do you know what Doyne said was the only thing missing from the victim’s house? A <i>guitar</i>, actually. This town. People lose their way. That’s my whole point, really. That, and don’t trust white chicks any more than you trust white guys. Not to sound jaded again, at age 65. It doesn’t mean that you can ignore white chicks, that's all. If—for example—you asked me who was the most important public figure of my age in Texas it was a woman, Ann Richards. Not because she was a great governor. Ann made the mistake that Molly never did, btw. Governor Richards underestimated George W. Bush.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Early on, Ann Richards was involved in all the important relationships during the formative years of my career. She was the center of my professional sphere, you could call it. Ann was my county commissioner back, back in the day, and a big part of my first beat—the County Courthouse, the courts and county government. Later Ann lost the struggle between good and evil at the Capitol, which was also on my watch at the <i>Observer</i>. Before she left office she took some of those checks that Bernie wrote and made Bernie chair of the Board of Regents. Which is perfectly cool—that’s what governors do. Ann was Molly’s bosom buddy—some said best friend—others said lover. Probably not, it's said that Ann liked tall, powerful rich men. It’s not up to me now to make that call now, but it was pertinent, not to get on my high horse or anything. Ann Richards, btw, drove Bob Bullock—who Molly wanted to screw—to rehab. That’s a fact. Or a factoid actually, because my memory is not clear. Who was the driver and who was the passenger? Maybe it was Bullock who drove Ann. <i>That’s it</i>. Because that’s how you define friendship at the Texas Capitol, who is there to intervene and drive you to New Mexico, to the spa, to dry out. You know Sara Weddington, btw, the lawyer who successfully argued the big abortion case Roe vs. Wade? She died recently and feminists made a big deal, rightfully so. After Roe, she became a state representative and you know who her legislative director was? Ann. She was everywhere in Texas at one time or another, she knew everybody and that was the source of her power. With guys it’s whose ass you kicked that gets your power, with chicks it’s who you bond with, not to go all philosophical. Gender trumps race, btw. My belief is that guys are going to end up like bee drones, only used for mating and then you die. Sounds okay to me.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">If you asked me what is the one most sinister and karma-filled place in the state—it sure as shit isn’t the Alamo. A noble black man or black woman should never set foot inside, btw, you have to draw a line somewhere and call bullshit. But there is a single location—combining history and happenstance—bad karma and ill Lone Star will—all in one place. After almost five decades riding trail—and having seen some serious shit—there is still a single location capable of invoking a kind of primordial dread in my soul. It’s not the Capitol. It’s not in Austin at all. </span><span style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">My stomach begins to tighten and sweat erupts on my brow at the mention of the name of a high school—St. Johns in Houston. It's across the street from St. John the Divine but with the school there’s no affiliation to Christ in deed or in fact. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">St. John’s was Molly’s alma mater and also the high school of America’s favorite fraudster—Elizabeth Holmes. Liz is one of those Texas white girls gone bad, that would be my take, but she’s not alone, that would be my argument too. Think of St. John’s like a finishing school for privileged female gangbangers. Speaking as the least judgmental and least racist person in the whole world, some of these white chicks get on my last nerve. They act like the sun shines out of their damn vagina when the fact is they’re as bad as white guys. Unless one formally invokes the S.H.E. protocol, also known as the Smoking Hot Exception. You know, when the chick is so fine that you don’t care if in her spare time she’s an ax-murderess? It’s rare, during my time in the saddle only happened twice and only once was there an opportunity to hit the booty, not that that was important to forming my professional judgment as a journalist. The other time it was just worship from afar, you feel me, not to sound noble or anything. My observation is that most often the hot evil-doing chick is a white woman because women of color rarely get into a powerful or affluent enough position to do genuine certifiable evil like white girls do. White chicks are increasingly villains. That’s my theory. White chicks are just as rapacious as the guys but they look better doing it. Believe what you will.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Yet another proud St. John’s grad is Katie “I-almost-burned-down-the-Capitol-on-Spring-Break” Hobby, daughter of Texas’s then-lieutenant governor. Katie brought the party back from the Driskill Hotel, on Congress Avenue, to Daddy’s place of work, also on Congress, you could describe the night that way. And left two dead and $200 million in damages, you would want to have that in the story too, not to be judgmental. All three—Molly, Elizabeth and Katie—they’re St. Johns girls. That high school produces bad girls, not to generalize or anything, the last few years bad girls have been my favorite prey, actually. As a general rule, white girls are just as sketchy as white guys, unless she’s really really really hot and you invoke S.H.E. If you asked me—looking back across the broad expanse of my time in the saddle—as Old Black scratches the ground now with his hooves, telling me it’s time to go. You probably want to know the most important story that got away? This would be the story where the black man did not bring home the bacon, or not much and certainly not the whole damn pig? To set the scene. If you asked me—if you twisted my arm. And—not to totally slime somebody without proof—but based on mere suspicion. Let’s do it anyhow. The bad guy—the Man in the White Hat? That would be Michael Dell of Dell Computers. Who is my favorite candidate for Mister Big, the guy moving all the pieces around in the background, here on the Silicon Prairie. Not to get all conspiratorial but if the facts fit, yeah, right on, motherfucker. And they do.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">So, like, you can complain about Big Pharma. You can bitch about the military-industrial complex. Or berate the petrochemical industry that made Molly’s family affluent and created the monster George W. Bush. But the most certifiably evil stories? In my experience they all come from real estate. <i>Land</i>. That’s how Native Americans got fucked first on the fruited plain, right? The Pilgrims wanted their land, if we look through the lens of a critical race dialectic, that has not been a particularly popular storyline in American journalism. The Mexicans too, right? Whites wanted Texas and California, the whole fucking Southwest in fact, if you look at the facts on a macro level. That was about real estate too.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">On a micro level, gentrification in Austin—the tech industry wants land for techie housing and has pushed out blacks and Latinos to get it. Stop me if you’ve heard this before. My belief—the Big Picture you could call it—is that there has been a <i>Mister Big</i> in this not-very-complex weave of racism and corruption. Other high tech guys and biopharma types have been involved too of course—but mostly it’s been our favorite PC maker. Michael Dell is</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"> a bad guy—in other words—in the view of this noble black cowboy. Who has seen a lot of bad guys during his time in the saddle—from evil crackers to mean niggers to the inscrutable damn Chinese, not to be ignorant or anything. Because a lot of Chinese chicks are actually <i>super-hot</i>, btw, which can be a sign of evil. But we digress. It is PURELY COINCIDENCE that East Austin is just south of the Dell campus—the housing stock was already there, so to speak. The only thing left to do was push out the niggers and the Mexicans. Mission accomplished. Michael Dell will still be a bad guy when me and Old Black disappear over the horizon, that’s just the way it is, goodness does not always triumph, like in <i>Apocalypse Now</i> when the General sends Captain Willard to kill Marlon Brando. You remember that scene? The black reporter does not always shoot straight, either. There have been misses during my career. Not so much choosing the wrong targets but not choosing a big enough gun. Or not tracking the beast back to its lair and giving a wounded animal the coup de grace. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">This is a true story. It’s a little hazy. So, like, this was when W was governor—during my time running traps for the <i>Observer</i> which calls itself, “A Journal of Free Voices,” unless you're saying something that white people don't want to hear.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">So, like, after making a request for disclosure from the Governor’s Office, guess what happened? There were some peculiar notations in the file that arrived—which was real paper, at the time, not a file attachment, and came in the U.S. mail. These documents from the State of Texas involved operations of the Governor’s Office, although it’s been a while and it's hard to cite the details. This was my self-appointed beat, W’s administrative side, state government, while Molly or whoever did politics. To set the scene.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">And reviewing the released documents—there was a long series of abbreviations—each the same, actually. On several contracts, or whatever. “MSD,” “MSD,” “MSD”….”MSD”. And not knowing what MSD meant at the time—because this was a pre-Internet age or pre <i>my exposure</i> to the Internet—and me being naturally too lazy to walk over to the Secretary of State’s office to look at the business entity lists.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">But hearing—years later—that MSD stands for Michael S. Dell, the computer guy, it’s his private business-making entity, apparently. MSD as opposed to his public computer company or his foundation, MSD being what he uses to do private deals? Michael Dell helped to create W btw, as much as the State of Texas under W helped to build Dell Computers, through contracts. Anyway, currently, that new Taj Mahal-sized Google headquarters downtown, next to Central Library? If you look at the paperwork on the City of Austin website, the financing was provided by “MSD”. Does Google really need Michael Dell’s money to build a big building? One supposes not—it may just be something for the accountants. But Michael Dell the computer guy is my candidate for Mister Big, He’s always been in the background of turning Austin into a tech mecca, no matter the cost to other people. Even if it means anyone who gets in the way or anyone who can’t pay the higher rent gets pushed out. Whatever the cost may be to P.O.C. or the poor, for example, not to get all judgmental and call Michael Dell a bad guy although he apparently is. One of my best sources is a big Jewish business guy and he won’t even talk about Dell <i>off the record </i>because he’s afraid, not physically, but do you really want to take the guy on in Austin, Texas? “You’ve got the wrong cowboy,” he said of himself, meaning that he would not discuss MSD even on background. My original plan was to do a big MSD expose—you feel me—you know, what the daily newspaper is afraid to do? Follow the trail of deal-making and all that, and see what’s what. That is part of my skillset, actually, developed over decades of chasing white guys. The will is still there but the flesh is weak. Old Black is tired now—he’s getting old and wants to spend some quiet time in pasture, maybe jump a mare or two. So, like, this is my last Michael Dell anecdote and it involves the <i>Observer</i>. So, like, these are the details that came to my ears. My estimate of the probability this really happened is 70%, maybe 75. A preponderance of the evidence, like they say in the Travis County Courthouse, enough to get a big financial settlement but not enough to get a criminal conviction. It’s like Molly in the back seat of the Volkswagen. It certainly <i>sounds</i> true.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">So, like, this is a couple of years pre-pandemic, maybe five years back. A freelance writer is said to have submitted a piece to the <i>Observer </i>that—basically—alleged that Michael Dell’s people reach out and get stories about him killed. Coverage of Dell Computers’ share price or a new Dell product line—or the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation’s charitable works which are many—that’s okay but anything more revelatory gets spiked. As we said back in the day, btw, when there really were spikes on the City Desk where copies of stories that were not going to run for any number of reasons, including pressure from big advertisers, got impaled. Not to be all sentimental about the old days of newspaper work. And you know what happened to the proposed <i>Observer</i> story about Michael Dell getting stories killed? It got killed. Or so it is said. In Austin people lose their way—that would be my whole fucking point, actually. Maybe you start out doing good reporting, running your traps, and then one day you’re sleeping with the people you should be writing about or you just start to sell your ass on the street just like a damn ho. No disrespect to hos intended. The <i>Observer</i> editor at the time of this particular sell-out is said to have been Nate’s protégé, btw, it gives me extraordinary schadenfreudlich pleasure to say that. Because he’s a ho. He’s a corncob-smoking backwoods cracker and all-around-peckerwood named Forrest. Who, when last we looked, was news & politics editor at Texas <i>Monthly</i>. To set the stage. So, like, the president of the <i>Observer</i>’s board at the time the Dell story allegedly got killed was Abby Rapaport—Bernie’s granddaughter. Which she still is, btw, board president and apparently leader of the Rapaport clan.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">Abby's father is the real asswipe, sources tell me, Ron Rapaport is a former professor who wants what he wants to appear in the magazine. With Abby it’s different, she was a reporter not long ago, it’s said that she couldn’t accept editing and got all dramatic about her sterling prose. What does that tell you? A noble black journalist, for example, who is professional in all things reportorial, respects his editors. Unless they’re just plain fucking idiots or unless they’re fucking with his copy <i>intentionally</i> in order to subvert the black man’s rap and he has to snatch the fucking manuscript off the desk and walk out. But we digress. Abby is also longtime president of the board of Shalom Austin at the Dell Community Center although that had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with spiking the story about Michael Dell getting stories spiked. To set the scene.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;">We’ll never know what happened, one supposes, Dell’s media people, who have been asked before, said that they will have nothing more to say. And MSD is not granting interviews to the Black Press, of course. Abby and Forrest and the <i>Observer</i>’s publisher—the perfectly sleazy Mike Kanin, again not to be judgmental—have all declined comment, btw. Which can be considered suspicious, <i>n'est-ce pas</i>? We digress again. There’s something about Michael Dell that chafes my scrotum, frankly. If you really want to know. A couple of times through the years people have told me that they’ve run into Mister Big personally. Austin is still a small town, in some ways, or it was until the last few wagon trains from California arrived, and you still used to run into big wigs in parking lots. Especially walking across the lot at Whole Foods. They were usually driving a SUV or whatever. And my sources said—that Michael Dell is a asswipe behind the wheel. Again, not having run into him myself, not having a driver’s license actually, and relying instead on third-party reports. How you drive—isn’t that a sign of what kind of person you really are? Again, not having a driver’s license of my own. Old Black is my ride and is saddled up now, ready to go. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">You may say, well, MSD aside, you’ve criticized all these Caucasian chicks. Does that mean it’s impossible for a white female journalist to do the job? To bring home the bacon? Are white women really no better than white guys?</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">The answers are no and no and no—and probably not—they’re not any better than white guys really. That’s pretty much 100% fucking certain, in fact. But there is, right here the World Capital of Live Music, a culturally-competent white practitioner of pig reporting who manages to do what all these white chicks can’t. He slices off big pieces and puts that pork on a plate.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><br /><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">OLD BLACK</span></i></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"> So, like, police beatings—suffocation of the suspect—overuse of the old reliable forty cal, you name it, Tony Plohetski has reported it. Use of incentives by a suburban sheriff for violent arrests, in order to provide better video for a live cop show, you couldn’t make this up. The outrage would be greater except Tulia kind of took away our capacity for outrage. Still, you name it, as a journalist of major impact Tony Plohetski has been there and done that. His depth is basically everything that Jordan Smith didn’t do in Austin and Molly and Nancy didn’t do in Minneapolis. To set the scene.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">Tony Plohetski alone is responsible for any credibility the <i>American-Statesman</i> has in the black community, for years. There’s a video in Plohetski’s oeuvre from a few years ago that burns in my own memory—of a black woman—an elementary school teacher actually—being taken down by an Austin cop in a parking lot, basically for talking back to a white man. Just like that state trooper and Sandra Bland, btw. The police union has never forgiven Tony P. for what sounds like a wonderful story about nightlife on Sixth Street, long ago, there may not be a link. This was pre pre pre-pandemic, Plohetski profiled not bars—not prolific nor cinematic Austin drunks, nor Texas literary scoundrels—instead the most dangerous cops on the beat. A black man gotta love that. My favorite Tony Plohetski story—it’s a hard call—what makes him a professional crush is not, actually, pig-related or in any way porcine. This comes from the COVID-19 worsening. We’re getting really sick and trying to stick to the guidelines? He broke the story that our mayor was filming his stay-at-home warning from a condo in Cabo. Forget the Pulitzer—just to have a piece of a story like that would be a wet dream for any reporter. Tony Plohestki? This guy has sources.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">So, like, one theory that explains Plohestki’s success is that he’s gay. He has championed the under-represented or those who are discriminated against because he is member of a minority group himself. So, like, that’s also true of Judge Pitman who apparently did not think that APD passed the smell test. Judge Pitman is another good white guy, btw, there aren’t enough—he is said to be gay. Austin has always had a strong LGBQ community, in any case, some of them are shits like the city manager and good guys like the judge, gay power as opposed to gay bashing, like at the State Capitol. Judge Pitman also ruled against Texas’s new abortion restrictions—you may have heard. Even though he was overturned by the Supremes. Anyway, Plohetski’s husband is a lobbyist at the Capitol, which also means knowledge of how things operate in River City, and it’s not pretty. There are people who may not have disclosed their orientation but still push a social justice agenda.</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"> </span><span style="background-color: #fafafa; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #111111;">So, like, my theory with absolutely no facts to back it up, except it sounds cool, that is the foundation of Plohetski’s success. He is plugged into his own community. APD has a gay association of officers, btw, just like the association for blacks and the one for Latinos, but there are also a number of gay cops who are not out and who feed Tony P. information. That’s my theory. If one wished to speculate. But the guy is so dangerous as a reporter because he has </span><i style="color: #111111; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">empathy</i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #111111;">. And he knows how to get the video. So, like, this is my best Tony Plohetski story and after this, it’s bedtime for Bonzo, we’ll call it a night. It shows what’s necessary to get the real story—not that press release version that you checked a little with the media guy or media girl from the state agency you're <span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">trying</span> to screw, but the real story, like a real pro. It requires a little set-up. So, like, to set the scene.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">We were in my favorite Starbucks, a few blocks from the Capitol—me sitting there with a full view of the premises, pre-pandemic maybe by two or three years. My back was to the wall, the way Wild Bill Hickok's should have been we got killed in that saloon in Deadwood, and accompanied by my old friend, Bill Cryer. Who was press secretary to Governor Richards back in the day and who was my supervisor on the City Desk before that, back back back in the day, at the daily rag, here in the Live Music Capital of the World. Cryer actually trained me as a reporter. He taught me how to dig. To set the scene again.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">So, like, Bill has been around the block multiple times—he was president of Planned Parenthood at one point, he just told me that a little while ago—what the fuck. He's a good guy—one of those rare good white guys, there aren’t many, not to belabor the point. You know it’s kind of like saying “my white friend,” the way white people are always mentioning their black friend? But we digress. Bill basically taught me how to report, back in the day, and taught me the ethical guidelines of the profession, which sounds worse than it was, when he was the assistant City Editor who supervised me. So, like, who should walk in the Starbucks door while me and Bill were sitting there chewing the fat and reminiscing? Tony Plohetski.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">This is so cool and so admirable on Tony's part. He was easy to recognize, btw, from his TV gig.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">So, like, Plohetski got his cappuccino or whatever—and paid—and he was conscious of his environment and all like a good reporter needs to be and he looked around and he must have spotted Bill. Who was a player, back in the day, and a good reporter before that, and is still in the know. Not because Cryer knows <i>the details</i> but because he’s seen the same shit happen multiple times here in our bucolic River City, you feel me? The facts may change but the storylines do not, except now it’s the evil Republicans and before it was corrupt Yellow Dogs, like Ronnie Earle. So, like, you know how you get your cappuccino or whatever and then you go over to one of the counters where there are plastic stirrers or whatever and napkins, or whatever, to make it the way you like? There was one of those counters next to where Plohetski was standing but he came all the way over to a counter across the room, next to where me and Cryer were chatting.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">Bill didn’t know Tony P. But Tony P. apparently knew Bill. And me and Cryer were just shooting the shit—literally—bitching—two old men talking about the old days, such as they were, at the daily rag, such as it was. Who was a good reporter and who was not. Who’s got Parkinson’s now and who has already gone on to the great newsroom in the sky. And Tony Plohetski who works for the daily rag now but who didn’t know that—that all me and Cryer were talking about was just old men’s bullshit—nothing newsworthy. You could tell as he was stirring his cappuccino or whatever he was trying to overhear our conversation. Isn’t that <i>beautiful</i>? It almost makes me want to cry. He was trying to <i>eavesdrop</i>. To learn the subject of the conversation, which was our prostates, actually. You know what you call that? A reporter. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 12pt 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #fafafa; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">Not one of those damn media bitches—no disrespect to women. Not like Nancy at NPR or Kimberley over at the <i>Chronk</i>. Because Tony Plohetski isn’t waiting for a call from an anonymous source in the middle of the night. Although he probably gets those too. He’s not waiting for somebody to send him a thumb drive with everything in black and white. He goes out to get the story and we can all thank God that he does.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"> </span><span style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #111111; text-indent: 0.5in;">Anyway, the time has come for this cowboy to ride on. Giddy up, Old Black, giddy up.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p>Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-48331235500320379012022-02-21T13:30:00.916-08:002024-03-28T20:23:39.172-07:00An Open Letter to the Cop Who Shoots Me<p style="text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg__Q8fX1sQWDAllQBkl3Ij1b6CokTUJo8FPRn-OOrxmPhkXRwGi4OD1WI3G3ikNP0nu7oOJbF2FH7cd_hX6RGZoUebUB1pMjq7_xujgao2kvt_mYbDmNz5KwIr1i4-5H25d3iUJIATK2RU5D7FvSSLWP7yqhcai3kFrqP3b5uNxEHBJptKsYKIlW1j=s4032" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg__Q8fX1sQWDAllQBkl3Ij1b6CokTUJo8FPRn-OOrxmPhkXRwGi4OD1WI3G3ikNP0nu7oOJbF2FH7cd_hX6RGZoUebUB1pMjq7_xujgao2kvt_mYbDmNz5KwIr1i4-5H25d3iUJIATK2RU5D7FvSSLWP7yqhcai3kFrqP3b5uNxEHBJptKsYKIlW1j=s320" width="240" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> My favorite premonition of a sudden death is on the city streets, getting caught in a crossfire between rival gangs. That has dramatic possibilities </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a la Denzel</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Memorable last words (“What you shooting at, bitch?”) and no worries about in-hospital costs. You may say, wow, that’s really depressing and fucked-up, to even consider shit like that. But in the age of pandemic we need to re-define what constitutes fucked up. </span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> My Negritude has made me aware of some of the myriad possibilities of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fucking with the police.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> There’s not a whole lot that pigs can do other than kill you, right, and they're trying to do that anyway. That’s what my hoodlum muse tells me. It’s kind of refreshing and also frees my scope of action as a liberated black man in the People’s Republic of Austin, so-called World Capital of Live Music. It's </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">meant throwing off the unseen chain that has bound African Americans since Emancipation—fear of the police. </span></p><p style="text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>For me it's become a new game, "Fucking with the Po-Po”</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-indent: 48px; white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">more colloquially</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-indent: 48px; white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pin the Tail on the Pig</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The object is to bring a cop <i>just </i>to the point where he </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">wants </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to shoot you. But no further. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do not try this at home</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Do it out on the street where there are witnesses. If you miscalculate, at least your family gets a settlement. </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-1845a980-7fff-db96-d11b-2b8ad86f2b6d"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My grandfather killed a Texas Ranger, btw, not to brag or anything. Or so we were told. It’s a heartwarming African American family tradition—involving a white woman and Grandfather’s escape to California in an open car, in the early 1920s, the kind of family lore that you are unlikely to see at Christmastime on the Hallmark Channel. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The tale of the Ranger’s demise was passed down to my siblings and me, back in the day, in order to teach black children the role that the police and white women play in black lives. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My own ambitions have never been bloody—not wanting to see a dead pig, no. But a humbled one, oh yeah, big time. And there are a few ways it seems to me to do that. Speaking</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as someone who </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">knows pigs</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">—domestic and international varieties—with tusks and without, again not to brag or anything. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The point is that a police stop itself is not necessarily bad. Like a lot of other shit in life, it is what you make of it. Those were the modest beginning of my new game, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Pig</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.Knowing police as an institution. M</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">y adult experience includes being beaten and robbed by Romanian railroad cops on the Bulgarian border, how many non-Romanians can say that? This was during my young black manhood, post my perilous black childhood, the interesting part is being able to remember most of the details </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">except </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what brought me to Romania in the first place and what was in Bulgaria for me. The Romanian pigs searched me down to my underwear and took half my money—it was the best professional pat-down in my long experience, and was better, actually, than a stop at the airport in Hong Kong when a cop put a gloved finger up my ass in a search for drugs. My experience as an African American male is particularly rich in police encounters, not to brag. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, like, this is absolutely true</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the coolest police stop of my life</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. S</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tepping off the Trans-Siberian with a friend, in 1991, at the station in Beijing. To await a train to the southern city of Guangzhou. When suddenly the People’s Armed Police arrived to do a sweep through the train station and expel Western hippies who were camping out.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, like, Beijing was just beginning to appear on the ambitious backpacker’s bucket list of the time and some Western young people were trying to get a desert nomad kind of thing going on in the Beijing station, sleeping on the floor and all that, and the Party was having none of it. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And me explaining to the People’s Armed Police, who were getting frisky and were ready to kick me and my friend out of the station too—explaining in what was pretty serviceable Mandarin at the time—that we just got off one train and were waiting for another. We had tickets and that, subliminally, we were not a danger to the state. Which we were not. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because Chinese cops are not American cops and, to paraphrase Muhammad Ali when he refused service in the Vietnam War, no Chinese cop ever called me nigger. In other words there was no obvious reason to disrespect the People’s Armed Police, me and my friend being guests in the country and all, unlike in the U.S.A. where disrespect is my point of departure during interactions with pigs</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The takeaway on the Beijing P.D. for someone like me who studies po-po? Many Americans think the Chinese are all diminutive but some of those northern Han guys, like from Heilongjiang—up there, bordering Russia—the kind of guys who seemed to be common among the ranks of Beijing P.D.—are the size of damn refrigerators. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just like cornfed East Texas cracker deputy sheriffs who you can’t believe that human beings grow that big? </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Based upon wide experience with<i> puercos</i>, it’s my thesis that the changes that we’ve seen recently in public attitudes toward the police did not begin with the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis or even the murder of Eric Garner in New York before that. The first cellphone videos were already coming out before those cases, as technology developed, making clear that the police version of events is doubtful. Something that black people already knew, historically, but white people have needed to learn repeatedly. In my own experience closer to home, in the World Capital of Live Music, there have been two police encounters, one with a high-ranking officer and one with a killer cop that have led—you could say—to the refinement of my game, playing Pin the Tail</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Think of it like Russian Roulette but someone else is holding the gun. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Art Acevedo is a CNN commentator on all things porcine but he is also former police chief of Austin, Houston and very briefly, Miami</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">where he fell afoul of intense politics in the Cuban-American community. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">He was longest here in River City, almost a decade. Acevedo is my <i>second</i> favorite Austin police chief in River City, btw, after Frank Dyson who was in office back in the Seventies and Eighties, a white guy and pure Texas cracker who was chief in Dallas before being chased out by the police association, that called him anti-cop. To set the scene. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Austin the troops called him “Days-Off Dyson” because of his proclivity for meeting complaints against officers with suspensions. Which was music to my ears, actually, back in the day, Days-Off Dyson was originally from Rotan, Texas—wherever the fuck that is—and he was the first chief to put female officers in patrol cars in Dallas, back, back in the day, and even though he was a cracker down to his very DNA. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chief Dyson realized—even back in the day—that there are problems with policing in this country. As does Chief Acevedo. My favorite easy listening, btw</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">soul or R&B</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">is not the Temps or Beyonce but a recording from late in Acevedo’s tenure in Austin, apparently at police show-up, in the proverbial pig pen, down the street from my crib. In the recording he is reaming a group of officers, basically calling them thugs, music to my ears, actually. It was recorded surreptitiously and leaked with the thought that it would get Acevedo fired, but what it really did was make him a hero to black people. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, like, one afternoon here in our bucolic River City, me and Chief Acevedo just chilling, up in his office in the pig pen, not to repeat myself, because in California Chief Acevedo knew my sister, back back back in the day, while Acevedo was Highway Patrol internal affairs. To set the scene again. My question to him</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">person of color to person of color</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">black man to—well, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">jefe de los puercos</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">W</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">hat would you call it? My query was what to do if one feels in danger in an encounter with a cop? </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Acevedo who is a thoughtful guy—for a <i>cochino</i>—said, and this may sound like common sense but is common sense that has not been heeded often enough, “Ask to speak to a supervisor.” Which was something that had not actually <i>occurred to me</i> up until that point, a decade or so ago, despite my extensive experience with pigs. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ask to speak to a supervisor sooner rather that later, yeah, that would be my advice. If you're <i>already</i> doing the chicken because the pig has you by the windpipe, or you're bleeding out, you may as well forget the request to talk to a sergeant entirely and save as much breath as you can until the ambulance arrives. Although Chief Acevedo didn’t say any of that either. What he did say, apparently as an afterthought, lest he get me killed, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">obey all lawful orders</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Which is where me and the chief parted ways, as a black man l</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">iking the ask-for-a-supervisor part but not liking the obey-all-orders part because that’s the whole fucking issue, bro'. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a nutshell, isn't it, for the noble black man? Do you allow the illegal search or the rough handling—or the profiling that the whole stop is based upon—because it’s a “lawful” command by a <i>pig</i>? What the order really is—is an illegal act, intended to demean one's <i>black manhood</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>if</i> one looks through a revolutionary lens. It's a crime committed, by white cops, under color of authority. You may be asking yourself, is he crazy, words to that effect. Because non-Negroes still don’t understand that a black man (black women less so, sisters are more practical, like, someone has to be alive and have a job and pay rent.) An African American warrior will </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">die for some principles. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">W</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ith the single caveat, mentioned above—that we take one or two crackers with us. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, like, it seemed to me leaving Chief Acevedo’s office that there has to be a better way than following lawful orders by cracker cops. Because not everything that comes out of a pig’s mouth is legitimate, you know? This was the genesis actually of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Pig</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It only takes two to play. And my first game was won by the team in black and was played with a killer-cop. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, like, downtown Austin is my neighborhood. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Roughly north from the Colorado River to the far side of the University of Texas campus, that is my 'hood, from my actual crib on Lavaca Street east to Interstate 35 and west to the MoPac expressway. More or less. To set the scene. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The far side of MoPac is the serious-money and politically influential </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">West Austin</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, where the white people who run the city mostly live, unless they're farther west, out on the lake. Or out on the ranch. To set the scene. That’s all the geography you need to know. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, like, my crib is right in the center of that rectangle, on Lavaca, up near campus. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Which happens to be the most patrolled sector of River City!</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> You dig? You name the infraction, in my neighborhood we have multiple law enforcement agencies ready to arrest you for it. We got APD, UTPD, and state troopers, pigs up the yin-yang, because Governor Abbott and the members of the Legislature are my very close neighbors, too close if you ask me. They attract so much damn heat. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Right behind my crib runs Guadalupe Street which leads, just a few blocks away, to the Travis Count Courthouse and jail, that means Guadalupe is traveled by the sheriff’s people and by "jurisdiction"s who are dropping off prisoners, even the FBIs keep their peoples there. Anytime you look up practically there’s a </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">puerco</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> driving by my crib, which makes me nervous, actually. Recently—this is so invasive—state troopers on bicycles riding through the alley behind my building. So, like, it was on Guadalupe Street behind my crib where the killer-p</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">uerco </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">appeared. This was a year or two pre-pandemic at a time when marijuana </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">may</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> have played a part in my life. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The circumstances were not a drug deal but a drug </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">delivery</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which all reasonable people can agree is a different thing. To set the scene. So, like there’s a convenience store on Guadalupe at Martin Luther King, behind my building, the Peach Tree Apartments, older than dirt but a cool place to live back in the day. You’ll see the apartments if you’re in the hood and the bulldozer hasn't arrived yet. So, like, one afternoon, me leaning against a railing in the <i>parking lot</i> of the pizza joint next to the 7-11, minding my own black business like the Constitution says a man has a right to do. Waiting for a delivery that was not pepperoni. To set the scene again. So, like, the pizza joint manager came out and told me to leave his premises. My first thought as an often-profiled black man in America—would he be saying that to a white chick with blond hair and big tits leaning against the railing in the shitty little parking lot, instead of a proud Black Man? And the answer was clearly no. My measured, reasonable response was to tell him to go fuck himself. And he went back inside. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unbeknownst to me, the white guy went back in his business establishment and called 911 to say that he suspected a <i>drug deal</i> was going down. How racist is that? What a fucking <i>Karen with a dick</i>! Merely because a black male was waiting in his parking lot, that he <i>only shares</i> with 7-11, how discriminatory is that? Let me tell you why he was wrong. This was not a drug deal, it was a drug </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">delivery</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">See the difference?</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This shit had already been paid for, like a week earlier in fact. It’s my belief, call me naïve if you will, that what makes a drug deal unwholesome and dirty as in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a dirty drug deal,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">”</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that cops like to talk about, is not the weed but the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">money</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> And by separating the herb from the payment this became merely a delivery, literally as if the herb just appeared, like from Amazon, or like manna from heaven, not to get all holy. So, like, leaving the parking lot shared by the convenience store, to return to my crib, at the aforementioned Peach Tree Apartments, out of the corner of my eye came two police cars. Two </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">puercos </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">got out</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, one Chinese guy and one white chick, and—stashing my shit in a bush at the law office next door—my feet turned back, almost by instinct, to do battle with the forces of American racism. Call me noble if you will. My reasons were actually more practical than pure. A source of good, reasonably-priced weed in this town has to be protected <i>at all cost</i>. No matter the sacrifice. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, like, the female piglet got out of her car pulling on blue latex gloves and went straight at </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a black family</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in a minivan who were in the parking lot of the 7-11 next to the pizza place. How is<i> that</i> for profiling? </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fact of the matter is that the black family in the minivan <i>did</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">deliver the weed to me, but the little piglet didn’t know that, did she? And the pizza guy couldn’t have known either because the minivan was parked out of sight of his business, around the far side of the convenience store. Again, merely to set the scene in an unbiased and non-judgmental manner. Clearly this was profiling. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The piglet had heard on the radio there was a drug deal and she walked up to the closest black people, pulling on her gloves as she approached, ready to rumble. That is </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">so</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> inappropriate and is part of the centuries-long</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">intimidation of the black peeps by <i>los puercos</i>. Would she do that in white West Austin with some fucking Caucasian soccer-mom-bitch, with coke in her yoga bag, not spirituality-cleansing weed preferred by noble black peeps, that would be my question, actually. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, like, walking up to the Chinese cop and saying, “It’s me you’re looking for,” something noble like that, because one will go to great lengths to protect a good reasonably-priced source of weed in Austin, Texas, not to repeat myself, with all the rich <b>fucking hipsters</b> and <b>high tech</b> assholes coming to town and driving up prices. Don’t get me started on the <i>human cost of gentrification </i>that is not just rents and mortgages. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, like, the pigs at the 7-Eleven kicked loose the minivan family and concentrated on me. That was the whole purpose of my noble effort, to save a good connection for weed, The little piglet went off to talk to the pizza guy while the Chinese cop stayed with me—me feeling pretty good, actually, because the shit was not on me, it was in the bushes of the law office next door, unbeknownst to </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">los puercos. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> fact which significantly widened my scope of action as a revolution-minded Black Male, ready to play <i>Pin the Tail on the Pig </i>in River City. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Chinese cop talked on the radio to his partner and then he asked me to step over to the pizza place with him, but forewarned is forearmed, you feel me? </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What they were getting ready to do was serve me with a civil trespassing citation which doesn’t get you arrested now, it gets you arrested later</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, after you’ve been warned off the premises and told not to return by the owner. But APD’s protocol requires bringing the trespasser face to face the property owner, in this case the pizza guy, who would tell me with the pigs as witnesses, even though they're really pigs, not to come on his property again. Following the protocol would require my cooperation which would not be forthcoming, me refusing to step back on the pizza joint premises, that is. And my response to the Chinese-American </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">puerco </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">was, “I’m not going anywhere,” said like a proud Black Man, actually, And then my finest moment that afternoon, working up a plan to rag this Asian cop, not that there's anything wrong with that, and starting by telling him, “Get your supervisor.” And him looking down and hesitating but he had obviously been </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">trained</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which is not something that you can say of many River City Pigs, and he turned away and spoke into his radio. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Long story short, the piglet returned from the pizza joint and asked me for identification, and me telling her, “I don’t have any,” even though my i.d. was hanging on a chain from my neck in clear view. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now it was my turn to ask for i.d. Asking for full names, the Chinese pig refused but the piglet was already looking nervous and she complied with this lawful order from the Black Man. Score one for the Black Race. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Both these </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">puercos</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> were already on my short list for Asshole of the Year, the chick because of the gloves thing with the black family, who drove miles out of their way to drop off my weed, without a surcharge, and the Chinese guy because of my suspicion that even though he was probably U.S.-born, his family was </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Taiwanese</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, for the simple reason that mainland Chinese don‘t come to America to join the Austin police force. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Standing there waiting for the supervisor to arrive, complaining about how long it was taking and trying to think of a way to work the phrase, “Taiwan is merely a province of mainland China” into the conversation in order to piss the guy off?</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> And then—hope of hopes—get the chance to call him a "capitalist running dog” like Mao used to say about the Taiwanese, the People’s Armed Police would have my back on that. In a showdown with a pig, when you're playing Pin the Tail, it’s no holds barred, you feel me, down to what the pig’s sister looks like and is an ugly ho. Whether you’ve seen her or not. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, like, long story short again, the supervisor arrived, a corporal—and the name of the corporal was “Coffey,” which pushed every button on my personal console. And, like, tact having never been one of my strong points, me blurting out: “You killed Sophia King!” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sophia was a mentally-disturbed young black woman who was shot dead by APD, indeed by the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">puerco-</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">supervisor standing in front of me right now, almost two decades earlier he capped her in the backyard of the Rosewood housing project in East Austin when East Austin was still mostly black. Sophia was holding a knife at the time, getting ready <i>presumably</i> to attack the white landlord, when Corporal Coffey who was then Officer Coffey hit her once with his forty cal. He said later that he attempted to shoot her in the shoulder of the hand holding the knife, but he missed and took out a ventricle of her heart instead. To set the scene. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Still standing in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven, Corporal Coffey looked like it had been a rough couple of decades for him too. He was promoted to corporal right after the killing, as APD circled the wagons, but it was interesting that he was still a corporal now, although a “senior” one. The only practical effect of the Sophia King killing on Coffey’s career was that he was transferred out of black-and-Latino East Austin into the central district where my crib is located and where he had apparently been ever since trimming Sophia's sails. Sending Corporal Coffey to sort out a profiling/racism complaint like mine was like dropping napalm on a brush fire. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And you have to know something about black male culture. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You can be in the middle of some kind of really dodgy or dangerous behavior and instead of common sense whispering in your ear, or what Lincoln called the better angels of our mercy, it’s your inner Bad Nigger telling you to keep going or fire off a few caps instead. The message is to keep on keeping on. That was what it was like for me too in the parking-lot of the 7-11 with these three </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">puercos</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, me trying to draw out the stop and punk these bitches if possible, ragging them about racism and profiling or whatever.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It got good to me</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because (1) clearly they weren’t going to shoot and (2) everybody was wholly uncomfortable after my indiscreet mention of Sophia King. A few minutes later we were done, they wanted to be gone, they said there were no charges and kicked me loose. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Waiting discreetly until their cars were gone, and making my way to the lawyers office’s bushes and picking up my shit. It had been a day well spent and would end with a few well-deserved tokes. You know how you feel when you’ve had a constructive time or, like in my case, done </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">my laundry, or gone to the gym and had a good sweat? A sense of calm and accomplishment suffuses one's being. And that’s where, if you had to name a place and a time, that’s when </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Pig</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was born.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Almost as much fun as Monopoly but not everybody can play. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, like, through trial and error, the cop who will shoot me has been identified, at least in terms of his law enforcement agency. He is almost guaranteed to be a state trooper. The reasons are three. The Austin pigs, they </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">do</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> have a long history of violence as noted above. And their training has historically been poor. Austin </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">puercos </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are said to be the best-educated in the state, meaning that a higher percentage have some college or a college degree than in, let’s say, Waxahatchie. But education is not the same as training and traditionally the guys and girls of our local p.d. have been my greatest fear—although the black man fears nothing. But because they are so quick on the trigger. That has changed in the last year or two—post George Floyd, if my interaction with the bluesuits is any guide. Because now that they know they’re actively disliked by the general public, if not genuinely feared, and they seem to realize that a bad shooting is not likely to lead to a promotion anymore, a la Corporal Coffey. Traditionally my belief has been that state troopers, employees of the Texas Department of Public Safety, btw, or just DPS as the agency is called, were the least likely to put a bullet in me—that has changed. Historically the troopers have had much lesser educations than APD—a lot of high school graduates and a lot of good old boys and a few good old girls from Shithole, Texas, filled the department’s ranks. But the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">training</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> has been much better than the local pigs. If you watch the troopers do a traffic stop, the first thing you notice is turning his or her gun side away from the driver, good form so to speak, in order to avoid having his Glock grabbed and used on him or her by a mean-spirited driver. Also, the troopers are courteous because at the Department of Public Safety being rude to the public can get a trooper suspended while with APD being rude has been a requirement. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My concern ratchets up with a white officer, naturally, it ratchets down with a Latino who—call me a dreamer, but it is my belief—Latinos may not like white guys any more than black people do and the Latino guy or girl has only taken the job as a stepping stone into the middle class. That’s a lot to bet your life on but in my experience it’s largely true. A Latino cop </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">will </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">shoot a black person, it seems to me, but only because of real fear, or it’s been a really bad day, but not to enforce a system of racism or of privilege. Unless the guy that the Latino cop stops is Latino too and all bets are off. You have to know the pigs, you see, as only an African American can. We know what they’re really like, because we’ve had the interaction, we've been the suspects at the stop. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, like, for a lot of reasons it’s likely to be a state trooper who cancels my ticket. There are so many of them around here these days in my hood—my feeling is that my privacy is being invaded actually although we won’t go into that here. Because of fear at the state level, the speaker and governor for example, that the nutjobs who took over the U.S. capitol will try the same thing in Austin, there are now troopers everywhere downtown and it’s theirs to patrol because the “capitol district,” is the few blocks on all four sides on the Capitol, my neighborhood actually, although it is shared with a lot of Republicans, is under the governor’s control—technically—not City Hall. The local pigs are coming and going all the time too, along with the UTPD idiots, many of whom are former APD idiots, btw. And if you’re accustomed to going into the Capitol and you see black or brown state troopers—or a lot of women troopers—let me guess the season, it’s </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">legislative</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> session and the Department of Public Safety creates the illusion, because the Department of Public Safety is almost exclusively an old white boys club. The Colonel orders what few minorities and women are in the ranks to Austin, the Live Music Capital of the World, to make DPS appear more diverse—to lawmakers who are writing the appropriations—than is really the case. But now with the surge on the border, any trooper who speaks Spanish is likely to be deployed to the banks of the mighty Rio Grande, arresting “I.A.s,” illegal aliens or what the rest of the world calls refugees. There’s been a kind of natural selection that is evolving among the state troopers stationed in Austin, they’re almost all crackers now, small-town white guys from some shithole county in East or West Texas, not that there’s anything wrong with that. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It <i>does</i> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">raise </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the chances of me losing a game of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Pig</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, though. Which is why you need to be very careful playing, especially outside the People’s Republic of Austin, because if you’re in an East Texas shithole like Navarro County, for example, home to Corsicana—and home of the Texas Klan—and where that deputy sheriff who stopped you is both poorly-educated </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> poorly-trained—a complete knuckle-dragging Neanderthal—you could lose the game before you’ve had any fun at all. Which is what happened to me, trying to get a pick-up game of Pin the Tail going with three state troopers a few weeks ago, just down the street from my crib, actually. You be the judge.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, like, late afternoon, me coming around a corner onto Lavaca Street at 16</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 0.6em; vertical-align: super;">th</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, between Twins Liquor and El Mercado restaurant which just got closed and sold to be condos? Walking north, towards my crib, which is about to be razed for condos, and across the street from me there were three black and white SUVs and three troopers. The first pig had stopped a car and him and a black motorist were out on the traffic side of the street, talking, more like a lecture by the pig, that would be my guess. Another two DPS idiots were out of their cars and hanging back at a bus stop, maybe 15 yards away, apparently backup for the first idiot talking to the black driver. To set the scene. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The sight chapped my scrotum big-time, actually. Living in this neighborhood you see a lot of troopers’ traffic stops because they’re all over the fucking place, the Governor’s Mansion is just down the street, the Capitol complex around the corner, not to repeat myself—and the trip to Department of Public Safety headquarters from the Capitol involves driving up Lavaca headed north, past my crib, actually, which we’ll consider Ground Zero for this discussion. So, like, this is <i>my neighborhood</i>, a block or block and a half from my crib. To repeat and to set the stage, for you to determine if my actions were provocative. And what’s super-interesting is that this </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not a black neighborhood</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, in fact there are very few blacks in the area, a few students coming and going from UT, families arriving from whatever Texas shithole to see their kids, or drop them off, people who work at UT or whatever. Yet half of the trooper stops seen—by me—it's a black driver. Isn’t that a coincidence? </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is absolutely true. So, like, one morning walking from my crib down to Clark-Caven field, on campus near the stadium, maybe five years ago—it was at least a couple of years pre-pandemic or P.P. And that day there was a state trooper on a motorcycle who had stopped a black family on MLK across from the Blanton Museum on campus. Went to the field—did my run—came back the same way and this very same moto-pig had a different black driver pulled over. Isn't that a coincidence? This is purely circumstantial—maybe it was just cracker chance—but maybe that trooper was a East Texas peckerwood and he was doing what East Texas cracker cops know how to do, harass black people. Not to be judgmental. So, like, seeing these three</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> puercos </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">now, across the street from El Mercado restaurant, more or less, it <i>didn’t </i>start to get good to me, instead it started bad and stayed that way, you feel me? Like at the 7-Eleven with Corporal Coffey. Because the black man feels injustice so deeply, sometimes he</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> almost</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> loses his cool. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Walking over without a plan was not a good idea. The question in my mind was what verbal mayhem to perpetrate on these white guys except my feeling was, instinctively, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to rag the trooper with the black driver, who looked like he was lecturing the brother, in what was obviously an overt attempt to demasculinate a black male. You didn’t want to approach them because you can’t “interfere” in police business even if the business is nothing more than harassing black people. They can bust you for dat. Or cite you. Or focus their attention on </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">instead of the other poor unfortunate brother or sister. So, like, the first pig had these two wingmen who were just standing there chatting, like they had the other guy’s back with the dangerous African American male but not really. So, like, going up to these two idiots, the first words out of my mouth were, “Get your supervisor!” No please or thank you, actually, no kiss, no dinner, no nothing—just straight off to trying to fuck these guys. And they both looked at me, like where is this coming from? And then they kind of knew. This is Austin—the People’s Republic that they had been warned about by granddad when he went to UT, back, back in the day. Or the troopers themselves had heard when they got transferred here from whatever shithole is their home county, where they like to hunt coons. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the troopers looked harmless but the other guy, with the name “Maier” on his uniform, looked like he was starting to get pissed off which was my goal, actually. One’s hope is that the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">cochino </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">will go through all the stages of anger before reaching for the Taser or the old reliable .40 cal and you just stop him short of anything physical. Me walking over and preparing some shit to talk—on the fly, not really having my act together actually—my first idea was to tell Trooper Maier, who looked like a small-town Texan, which DPS is full of, actually, “You’re not in Potter County now, motherfucker.” Or words to that effect, something welcoming like that. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Didn’t know if he really was from Potter County of course—county seat Amarillo, btw, up near the Panhandle, for those who are new to Texas. Mostly just to make sure that he knew that he was a cracker wherever he was from. But you need to be careful about profanity because it can be against the law, if it’s really grossly inappropriate like motherfucker. My main concern was trying to think how to casually call the guy an “asshole” instead of motherfucker. Again, the object of the game is to make the trooper <i>want</i> to shoot you—but </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">make any overt movement in that direction. You know what happened?</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Out of the corner of my eye it seemed like the first idiot, who had stopped the innocent black driver, was cutting the guy loose and as this same pig walked back to his car he shouted at me, “Get out of the street.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Which was inappropriate—me not him. My feet </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">were</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> off the sidewalk during my attempted ragging of the two backup idiots. First rule of ragging cops is take your act to the sidewalk so that they cannot cite you for blocking traffic. And that was a lawful order, we could all agree, just like Chief Acevedo said, the result being me stepping up onto the sidewalk to continue to try to provoke the other two idiots. So, like, the black man’s game is tight. The object is to rag the pig, not to jaywalk, not to get killed or arrested, and not to get punked myself. Although “provoke” would be a misnomer. My preference was to call it social justice in action.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trooper Maier said no he would not call a supervisor even after my warning to him that “the colonel”—the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety—told me that a trooper is required to get a supervisor if a member of the public asks. Which was true, the old Director told me the same thing that Chief Acevedo did. That is what they’re taught at the DPS academy too, btw. Trooper Maier said he wasn’t calling anybody and he told me to go online to complain on the Department’s complaint portal. Trying to formulate provocative things to say on such short notice is always a challenge. That is my only excuse for a poor performance in this game. You always think of what you should have said </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">after </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the encounter. Not having planned my rap in advance, it was especially difficult because all three idiots were already on the move back to their cars really fast. One flash of inspiration was to tell this last idiot, “Welcome to Austin, motherfucker.” Or, “You’re not in Abilene now, asswipe.” Which had alliterative appeal because It kind of rhymes. What’s he going to do, shoot me? Unless it really is against the law to curse a bitch out, but if that’s true there’s a bunch of women who need to be in jail. We digress again. The last opportunity to score was as Trooper Maier and his girlfriend, the other trooper, were going back to their cars. With a spring to their step, a certain alacrity even. The game suddenly was ending without a victory and it was time for football's "hail Mary" pass. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Took out my cellphone and started to film. Got one good photo of Trooper Maier, which is good for purposes of study, because the shot caught him with the look on his face when he is approaching wanting to shoot me but his training is still overruling innate cracker desire. Which is what the game is all about, actually. And this is absolutely true, just as my camera was sweeping across these three idiots, a fourth DPS car—unmarked—appeared at the curb behind the black-and-whites, with a black pig in civilian clothes getting out, who had apparently been attracted to all the activity at the bus stop. Or he smelled the shit, like pigs do. He was coming towards us and as my camera swept out an arc that started to include him, he ducked and turned like he playing football himself and got back in his unmarked car and was, like, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">gone</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. He did in a car what a number of brothers are known to do on foot on the football field—just disappeared. The brother was there one second and gone the next. All four</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> puercos</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> were gone within like one minute of my phone coming out of my pocket. Luckily they didn't shoot me for reaching for something, which is a pig's favorite excuse for capping a nigger. Not to brag or anything, not to claim to be the Tupac of cellphones or anything. Which is something that Chief Acevedo did not tell me, take out your phone, and is almost as good as asking to speak to a supervisor. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">The only aspect of my near-death experience at the bus stop, not to be dramatic or anything, what really pissed me off was this last brother, the alleged-Negro state trooper, another running dog person of color like the Taiwanese APD idiot at the 7-Eleven. Come the black revolution, these two race traitors will be smoking last cigarettes, let me tell you that, after trial by a Revolutionary Court. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 36pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">You may say, well, as a practical matter it’s easy to make an error playing pin the tail. You could go too far, you know? If that happens despite my best calculations, you have to listen to the cop’s testimony and hang him with his own damn words. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If he says, “Oh, he was reaching for something,” that is a lie. Or if he says, “I feared for my life,” that’s bullshit too. If he says, on the other hand, “That guy had a mouth on him. That’s when I shot him,” yeah, that would be true.</span></p><br /><br /></span>Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-50396214892268432772022-01-13T17:12:00.225-08:002023-09-16T20:25:42.209-07:00My Critical Race Theory Professor<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;"> My critical race theory professor is Angela Smith, a sister from the Midwest who’s an expert in human-computer interactions (HCI) and is now a tenure-track assistant professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas in Austin. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span> <span> <span> <span> </span></span></span></span></span>Her exact title is assistant professor of social justice informatics. It was my honor to be in her first seminar at the iSchool, last semester—INF 385T Special Populations. The fact is that we never quite heard her views on critical race theory because it wasn’t on the syllabus. Even though Professor Smith was advertised before her arrival at UT as a CRT expert. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>Nonetheless my preference now, in casual conversation, is to begin sentences, “Well, my critical race theory professor says ….” even though she didn’t say anything in that regard, it still sounds cool and might make headway with a liberal chick who you’re trying to charm, and would give state leadership a coronary if they heard you say it. In fact it would justify every fear the Board of Regents probably already has about what really goes on at this end of Guadalupe Street, at Forty Acres. And because, as the descendant of slaves in Texas, my feeling is that it’s time for a little CRT on campus even if it’s not on the syllabus. Long story short, white people including white academics need to worry about Professor Smith but not for the reasons they think. You feel me?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">Basically my takeaways from her class, sixteen long motherfucking weeks, not to sound ignorant, were two. In research—the readings showed, and our discussions concurred—there needs to be a greater effort to provide information on the researcher’s <i>positionality: </i>who he or she is, in other words, because even in the case of scientific research, <i>who</i> is crunching the numbers has a lot to do with what the results turn out to be. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">Takeaway #2 is also imperative and requires participatory design in the study’s architecture—especially in the case of vulnerable populations. That means not just circling back to tell the people whose data you collected what the results were, but getting the subjects of the study involved in study design in the first place. To avoid exploitation. This is a hard sell even in academia because it means taking power from researchers and giving it to the people being researched.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;"> If you’re wondering what is an instance of a special population—Governor Abbott would be a good example. He uses a wheelchair. Although Professor Smith didn’t speak explicitly about the governor, white people like Greg Abbott who are part of the majority demographic can also be members of special populations, as Professor Smith taught in class. Other examples that we considered included people who have regularly been screwed in the past—like Native Americans—prisoners used in research—people who have a disability, as mentioned above—and immigrants. Black people were not the focus of Professor Smith’s class, which was more about <i>anyone</i> who is vulnerable to researchers and to society-at-large. Democrats and Republicans were never mentioned in class or in the readings—at least not in those read by me—but the powerful and powerless were mentioned in different contexts. This couldn’t even be considered Marx Lite but there’s almost certainly someone in the State Capitol who would call Professor Smith a Commie. In Texas common sense need not apply. In 385-T, btw, we had Dr. Smith and eight students. Two Taiwanese chicks, one Chinese American, one tech-type originally from Nepal, two white women who were into other cultures, one Latina. Me and Dr. Smith were the only bloods. Only one male—yours truly—which made me a <i>special</i> population too, you feel me? </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">My experience as a black man in America is that PhD-earning sisters like Dr. Smith can make short work of un-highly-educated brothers like me, therefore my decision early in class was to establish <i>my own positionality</i>. What real estate the black man decided to defend, you could call it, in an academic setting. As it turned out Dr. Smith was completely cool, there was no male-bashing, but a black man can never be too careful. Our first assignment was actually a short paper to describe our own positionality. My paper was part-<i>territoriality</i>—in an effort to fend off any possible feminist in class, not to repeat myself. Part of my effort in class was also to develop the “toolbox” that they keep telling us about in graduate school, that we need to get hired after we have a diploma. My positionality was like a lion defining his territory, not to sound Old School, peeing on rocks and bushes in order to let others know that this is where not to tread, as part of a psycho-social-gender dialectic. So, like, as defined for 385T: Growing up in a single-parent African American household of the 1960s, heavily “influenced” by my strong mother and three older sisters, sometimes with a backhand across the mouth. Attended segregated schooling. Today working in a profession—nursing—where women have been on my ass almost non-stop, for a quarter-century. <i>That</i> is my positionality, yeah. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">Throughout the semester Professor Smith kept a poker-face. Once, answering a question that all the other students had already replied to, and parsing my response, my feeling was that Professor Smith’s bullshit meter was going off, like a bomb, as she listened to me, but she didn’t call me out. She encouraged us to speak more than her telling us what to think. You may ask what does all of this—positionality/territoriality and critical race theory—have to do with the School of Information at the flagship university in <i>blood-red Texas?</i> Which was a prime mover of the Confederacy and where Jim Crow has never quite died? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">Those are good questions. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">The iSchool is what was formerly the <i>School of Library Science</i> and while some of the students still follow a tract that will lead to work in libraries or in archives—the current curriculum is much more <i>digital</i>, including data sets, and even programming. A Taiwanese chick told me in Starbucks one day, like a couple of years before my application to the program, that a lot of foreign-bred Asian kids apply to the iSchool at UT because they think it’s computer science. Which it is not, although it’s getting closer. A.I. for Health Care was one of my earlier classes, taught by Professor Ying Ding who is from Beijing and is one of the best instructors in my entire history of public education, since 1960. Another class was Data Storytelling which was problematic but useful. Everything regarding information is being redefined, including the definition of information itself. That is where critical race theory and Professor Smith come in. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">During the first semester my instructor for Principles of information, which is the single required course in the master’s program—the other ten or so all electives—he told us there is still a lot of debate among informaticists about even a definition of the word “information,” which is not a good sign for my new career. This guy said that by the time we graduate we should have developed a definition of our own—not one that will satisfy other informaticists everywhere, but to satisfy ourselves. This is the beginning of my last semester and a definition of information still eludes me, as we look toward the iSchool exit. My inclination is to borrow from thermodynamics and say that information involves a change in state. Something was something and becomes something else and the difference between the two states is information. Not all the details on my theory have been worked out. A more practical plan is to use my degree to help sort out some of the data tsunami from the pandemic. Critical race theory is important to me not to beat white people over the head, although that can be fun. Overall, my view is that racism is kind of a losing proposition for whites as well as for blacks. It’s kind of like being on a treadmill that you can never get off. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">Nonetheless many American public libraries have collections that are skewed by centuries of white ethno-centricity and that still need to be addressed and where else to do that than in the former School of Library Science? White writers, white editors, white professors—not to forget Ms. Jones, the nice white lady who chose books when we were kids and set up expositions in the local public library for so many years. All these people made a lot of mistakes. Based upon their unexamined positionality. That would be my whole critical thesis, you feel me? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">My sense of Professor Smith—although we have not discussed her views on CRT—is that she is less concerned about the past and more concerned about the future, especially regarding human computer interactions, which is her thing. We spent a lot of time in class going over bad A.I. algorithms, for example, that can be just as racist as Huck Finn but more pertinent than the trip down the river, at least to me. Angela Smith’s bio page at Northwestern, btw, whence she came, when they were asking her what books are at her bedside, lists, <i>The Wonder Weeks</i> by Frans X. Plooij and Hetty van de Rijt; <i>Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life</i> edited by Ruha Benjamin, <i>How Long ‘til Black Future Month?</i> by N. K. Jemisin; <i>Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need</i> by Sasha Costanza-Chock; <i>She Begat This: 20 Years of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill</i> by Joan Morgan. If you can’t even understand the title, that must be some high-level shit. Take note that there’s no <i>Autobiography of Malcolm X</i> or <i>The Color Purple</i> to make the lieutenant governor lose his lunch. The <i>Autobiography of Malcolm X</i>, btw, was actually written by Alex Haley, btw, who also wrote <i>Roots</i> and kind of started the ball rolling that led to critical race theory, in my humble view, although <i>Roots</i> was clearly fiction<i>. </i>The <i>Autobiography of Malcolm X </i>is a great book in the same way that Malcolm X was a great man but you don’t see it as much on campuses and in libraries—as a foundational work of American literature, which it is. Unlike <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i> which is everywhere all the time because white professors and white librarians and white readers like it. <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i> is a white savior novel, which is kind of a bullshit genre, actually, that still sells a lot of books. That’s CRT, probably, although we didn’t go into that in class either, only bad A.I. and bad participatory design. We digress. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">The School of Information needs a little CRT of its own because its record on diversity is horrible. If you look on the University of Texas’s diversity website, the demographics for the iSchool are worse than anywhere else on campus <i>except </i>the medical school, which is run like a plantation. Overall, on campus, blacks represent one-half of one percent of instructors and one-half of one percent of students. In the iSchool there are like 9 blacks total out of about 350 students and my personal experience is, during both of my first two semesters here, of being <i>followed into the building and asked to show identification</i> to establish my right to be there, when Asian and whites were coming and going at will. When will we be free? My programming instructor, who is a white Southerner, has practiced microaggressions in our interactions outside class. Among iSchool faculty there are now two blacks, Dr. Smith and another female tenure-track assistant professor, and a handful of Asian women, which is good because the Asian women and the sisters know their business. Or they wouldn’t be there. Although you can’t always say that about white people, because privilege has influenced their success, as part of a critical race dialectic and seen through an equity lens. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">Among the students two-thirds are female, mostly white or Asian. The high number of foreign (primarily Pacific Rim) students is good, actually, in a different kind of race dialectic, because they’re great students—which helps to improve the games of American students. Even a bad Chinese student is better than a good American one—and they pay higher tuitions—which is important to the university, in effect subsidizing the rest of us. What’s missing from the iSchool and universities across the country now are <i>men </i>and specifically men of color. But that lesson has yet to be learned at UT, although we have a new president and a new provost who appear to be prioritizing change. The iSchool dean btw is a research guy named Eric Meyer who came to us from Oxford and who has had the job for three years which is long enough to have done better but he <i>did</i> hire the excellent Professor Smith. Even knowing what her theory was and that it is controversial in a Southern state, which is a very good thing. You may say, well, the only reason you’re praising Dr. Smith is because she’s black but that’s not true. It’s not about skin color. It’s about adherence to a revolutionary <i>dialectic</i>, which has been around a long, long time.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">During breaks in class, or when we were arriving and settling in—as one of the only two Negroes present—my remarks to her were, like, what did she think about so-and-so—Dave Chappelle being an ass, for example—or the latest voting outrage coming out of the Capitol. She never answered. It wasn’t me trying to set her up, either. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">Three hours a week for sixteen weeks, that’s a long time in the Year of the Plague, there <i>are </i>breaks, there was chit chat but not much. It didn’t seem like she was being coy, either. Or that she was trying to be politically astute in order to avoid problems later, when her tenure vote comes up for example. She was just focused, and reserved. In fact we students were told nothing about her personally, except that she has a little boy and she considers Austin hot compared to wherever she came from. Her page at Northwestern says that Professor Smith’s profile became more prominent based upon a paper that she and colleagues wrote, called “Critical Race Theory in Human Computer Interactions.” Which is how academia works, one supposes, you write something timely or astute and people start to pay attention. My point would be that Professor Smith is potentially dangerous to white privilege, as a revolutionary might say, not because she’s spouting dogma, but because she has judgment and knows—not just what to say—but when not to speak. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">When it’s not on the syllabus or she hasn’t seen the data. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">These PhD-holding sisters are very impressive and enormously useful to African American liberation, as long as you can get them pointed in the right direction, which is in any direction away from studying black men. She gets my tenure vote, therefore, not that anyone has asked. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">And the positionality thing—that could be invaluable. You could be at a party, for example, if people after COVID go back to being socially <i>intime</i>, and somebody is being completely clueless or talking about shit of which they clearly have not the least fucking idea. Or they’re hiding their own personal interest in the subject, because a declaration of positionality works for undisclosed self-interest too. You know what you do? You turn to him or her—even if he or she is not talking directly to you, and you say, really casually, “So, what’s your positionality?” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">The words come out, in translation, do you know what you’re talking about or are you hiding some critical conflict that influences your opinion? Many times it shuts his or her shit down right there. That was a big takeaway for me from Informatics 385T, taught by Professor Angela Smith, in the Fall Semester of 2021, in the second year of The Plague. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-38714087102605847372021-09-18T11:09:00.316-07:002023-09-04T17:13:06.805-07:00Guess Who's Coming to Dinner at Governor Abbott's House<p> <span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Guess who’s coming to
dinner at the Governor’s Mansion. That’s all you can do—guess—because Governor
Abbott refuses to respond to open records requests about his visitors, for
dinner or for sleepovers, even though the food and electricity are provided by taxpayers. And even though his predecessors have recognized the request as
legitimate and released the information in the past. As he prepares to
run for the White House, our governor is reluctant to disclose
who he’s seeing away from the office, across the street at the official
residence, understandably. Although he was like that before too. A request
three years ago for the very same information of who’s
coming to the Mansion, also during Greg Abbott’s residence there, led to
release of a list of names of hundreds of individuals who had </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">toured</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> the
Mansion—even though that was <i>not </i>what was asked for. This time, </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">nada</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">.
As in nothing</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">. This time the course of this information request through
his General Counsel’s office is interesting because it tells us something about
the governor and who he is breaking bread with and why.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Speaking of the
Governor’s Mansion. Back in the day by the way—this is so, like, not shameless
gossip, not mere grist for the rumor mill in the State Capitol. Before the millennium, before Y2K,
during the tenure of Governor George W. Bush, the guest list came back from the
Mansion and the only name of the dinner invitees that was surprising to my innocent eyes—among the Bush clan and
proto-Bushites and wannabe Bushes who were visiting the future President and
come to kiss his ring—was Rich Oppel, then editor of the Austin daily newspaper. To set the scene. This was well into W’s governorship, by the
way, when he had already signed off on a hundred or so executions and had cut
social services in state government—to polish his conservative credentials. And
Oppel seeing the governor privately when the newspaper was criticizing him
publicly, or not—isn’t that, like—isn’t that <i>dining with the enemy</i>? Or
schmoozing with the enemy? At least Rich Oppel wasn’t sleeping with the enemy because his name did not appear among the guests who spent the night, at the time
of my records request. So, like, you aren’t going to believe this. What you’re
about to hear will sound completely far-fetched and mind-blowing in the
extreme. But it was a different age, remember that. Among the documentation
related to housekeeping accounts and work done at the Governor’s Mansion that
was released by W’s lawyers was a short memo. It seemed that, during the
Bush Family’s tenure in the Big House, there was a guest who slipped in and
spent a night in the Mansion without Governor Bush’s knowledge or approval. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Recall that W had twin
daughters attending Austin High School, at the time, Jenna and Barbara, both
wonderful young women, good students too, who also enjoyed a margarita or three
and were soon to be sweethearts of Sigma Chi or whatever? To set the scene again. This was, to repeat, just
before the millennium. This is my memory of the affair. There was a memo in some of the documentation that was
released, by Governor Bush lo a quarter century or more ago, written by Mansion
staff who were pissed off, actually, because unbeknownst to staff or security,
or apparently the Governor and First Lady either, a teenaged <i>boy</i>, also
from Austin High, spent the night in the Mansion and the staff only heard about
it after the fact. You can call the episode, “Jenna’s Excellent Sleepover” or
“Barbara’s Best Night In,” depending upon your suspicions, because the memo did
not identify whom the young man was visiting. And at the time it seemed to me
that this was a <i>private</i> matter, not mere grist for the Capitol’s deplorable gossip mill, although it was a close call at the
time. But with Governor Abbott, nothing like that could happen, no unwanted
guests, because security practically has searchlights and machinegun towers around the Mansion. Besides if there’s an indiscretion this time, it’s
financial not an affair of the heart or a tryst for young lovers. If you’re
thinking that Governor Abbott does not want to reveal his guests at the Mansion
(the equivalent of the White House’s Lincoln Bedroom is the Sam Houston
Bedroom in Austin) because they include rightwing politicians or nutjobs—the Governor had lunch with the Proud Boys or whoever—the Grand
Dragon slept there. The kind of people Greg Abbott <i>needs </i>to
be seen with publicly in order to burnish conservative credentials. Former
President Trump has been here and done that with the Governor already. There is a hint
from the general counsel’s most recent missive of what concerns the
governor regarding releasing his guest list. It’s not political. It's financial.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My request was made
almost exactly two months ago. The governor’s response was that fulfilling the
search and providing the list of names would require staff time amounting to
$225.90, which sounded reasonable. Any request on my part for a media discount,
which the law allows, or a cheaper means of disclosure, which the law also
allows for—the letter from the governor said explicitly that neither of those
options would be possible in this case. A big bill is not a particularly original ploy to avoid disclosure, but fulfilling public information requests d<i>oes</i> take
time and charging money seems fair. Usually a bill of this magnitude works like a charm with me personally and scares me
off but, for a reason that remains unclear—even to me—my decision was to pay my money and takes my chances. Although $225 is a lot of money in my world. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">In any
case—there are </span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">two </i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">governor’s offices
in Austin, both on the Capitol grounds, the second on the east
grounds, home to the big guy’s lawyers. Trekking there to pay for disclosure
of the guest list, which now had the significance of a state secret, me passing state troopers with automatic weapons mounting a non-static defense of the State Capitol grounds—no fixed posts and the lawdogs moving unexpectedly, in cars and on foot, which can be a worrisome sight for black men like me. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Anyway the
governor’s office accepted my check and acknowledged same through email and
cashed it a few days later. Two hundred and twenty-five dollars and
ninety cents, not to repeat myself, a lot of money to me, not to repeat myself again. So, like, imagine my surprise</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14.6667px; text-indent: 0.5in;">—</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">again, a
couple of weeks after Greg Abbott banked my check. Another letter arrived from
his general counsel saying the governor would not release the list of names of people
who have been to the Mansion without first receiving permission from me to redact names at the governor's discretion. Or his lawyers would seek an attorney general’s ruling, which the Texas
Public Information Act does permit, within ten days not two months later. Be
that as it may. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Specifically the
letter mentioned that Governor Abbott would like to redact names for two
reasons, security being one—which was bullshit, since my original request was for guests
not bodyguards. </span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">And</i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> for commercial reasons. That is what the
letter said and that is what apparently really worries Greg Abbott. Who the Office of the Governor of Texas is doing business with. And in that regard, in this instance, regarding who has
been visiting the Abbotts at the Mansion. There <i>is</i> a change in the usual
dynamic of a powerful politician not wanting to reveal his or her guests, for
fear of embarrassing the politician. In this instance it’s apparently for fear
of embarrassing businesspeople socializing with this governor right now. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Right off, three
names come to mind as certainties for people who have been to the Governor’s
Mansion recently and probably don’t want it known, whether they’ve done a sleepover or
not. Elon Musk of Tesla fame and Space X fortune for sure is one. During the
early bad reaction to the latest anti-abortion legislation, not to mention the new voting restrictions which were also laid down, and which will disenfranchise minorities, uneasiness has also been reported among some businesspeople,
especially those with plans to move to Texas. The world’s richest man refused to criticize the abortion law or the governor in this regard—Musk saying that he’s “not political,”
words to that effect. Another very likely guest is Jeff Bezos, the
world’s second richest person. Amazon has huge interests in the Lone Star State and Bezos
grew up in South Texas and the probability is very good that he has had a
drink, or two, or a meal with the governor, whoever that governor may be. #3</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;">, and this is another</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> absolute certainty—Michael Dell, of Dell Computers, who is said to be two steps
to the right of Attila the Hun’s grandmother and who has had a close
working relationship with both the prior Republican governors, W and Rick
Perry. Michael Dell is merely the world’s 25</span><sup style="color: #222222; text-indent: 0.5in;">th</sup><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> richest person,
a pauper compared to Musk or Bezos, and for Dell the connection to the governor of
Texas has historically been very important. Dell Computers was built in part on
State of Texas business, when Bush was governor, and W himself has said that
Michael Dell liked to come by the State Capitol to show the Governor Bush how to work his PC.
Michael Dell likely knows Greg Abbott well enough to stop by with takeout. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">On
the political front, on the same logic, not wanting to be seen with the
governor right now, there is Chief Justice Nathan Hecht and the
guys and girls on the Texas Supreme Court, where Greg Abbott served for five years, btw. Supreme Court justices and powerful politicians socialize
all the time, including at the White House, but Governor Abbott’s recent
political activity seems to be under constant appeal to the state’s highest
court and the idea that Governor Abbott is dining with or having drinks with the people
deciding those cases, in cozy evenings at the Mansion, would not look good and
would lead people to believe the governor and the justices discuss cases, which
they almost certainly do and probably always have done, in every state. Mostly though, as in
everything else at the Capitol, it's about money. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The commercial
interests that the governor cited in his letter involve flows of money that go
both ways. Greg Abbott is looking for political contributions but he also gives
away a lot of state money, which has been problematic in the past. Governor Abbott’s
predecessor Rick Perry was in constant hot water regarding dispersals from the
state’s Emerging Technology Fund. Greg Abbott disbanded that high tech moneypot but he still makes loans for business
development, through almost a dozen different programs, including one for
spaceport development. The governor’s press office refuses to say who is
getting state dollars as incentives and it’s hard to imagine that Elon Musk
needs money from the State of Texas, but you can’t find out for sure because
Greg Abbott is not telling, just like he's not saying who's going to dinner at the Mansion. You have to guess. Maybe the real issue is not money or politics but
transparency? Is that possible? No recent governor has been worse in that
regard than Greg Abbott is now. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A requestor can sue but that is expensive and time-consuming (and the case may end up
with Chief Justice Hecht and his colleagues, which is another reason to want to
know who’s hanging out with Greg at the Mansion.) There's a criminal provision in
the open records law, actually, which led to an interesting exchange recently with the local prosecutor who would have jurisdiction, Travis County Attorney Delia
Garza. Her office wouldn’t even <i>listen</i> to a complaint about the
governor’s compliance with the Texas Public Information Act and her staff told
me to take the matter to the Austin police or to the Sheriff. Does
that mean flag down a patrol car? What goes unsaid here is that violating transparency laws is in every
political leader’s best interests. Ms. Garza was until this year a member of
the Austin City Council, the only people with a worse history of open
government than Governor Abbott. Last year, months into the pandemic, Austin’s
City Attorney answered an open records request for Mayor Steve Adler’s email on
COVID-19 by saying that no documentation exists. That he had, in other words,
written no messages on the subject. There are, basically, two ways to thwart
open records requests in Texas. A politician or political entity can lie and
say no documentation exists, like the City of Austin, or tell the truth and
refuse to give it up, like Greg Abbott. Somehow Governor Abbott’s approach
seems more honest. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<!--EndFragment-->Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-17109309302307811642021-08-24T10:35:00.268-07:002023-09-20T18:37:56.634-07:00The Nightingale Project<p> </p><div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div><div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-indent: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvKYnHxuw-FzzZ3-avi3nohTg53nQmhqzVTsFNk-SuL9LQ_GYWAZb3dbk7dEieSdf5rZNfXk18LZB9-jJL-w9fHUV_-nEeUrSOIRc8dM0l_4mEBtSE0xCtxO4ENzJYhXfAmQRwX7HimGCTZiPxi8i9R_o5Mxkibqb2cdHe_BKpkfWt9sXpwWYOy1l-/s400/jbJA7h3k_400x400.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="400" height="370" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvKYnHxuw-FzzZ3-avi3nohTg53nQmhqzVTsFNk-SuL9LQ_GYWAZb3dbk7dEieSdf5rZNfXk18LZB9-jJL-w9fHUV_-nEeUrSOIRc8dM0l_4mEBtSE0xCtxO4ENzJYhXfAmQRwX7HimGCTZiPxi8i9R_o5Mxkibqb2cdHe_BKpkfWt9sXpwWYOy1l-/w475-h370/jbJA7h3k_400x400.jpg" width="475" /></a></div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div><div style="text-indent: 0px;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-indent: 0px;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> Clay Johnston is a
businessman and physician and was the first dean of the Dell Medical School at
the University of Texas, the position from which he retired a few weeks
ago. The custom of heaping praise on a departing high-ranking academic can be
skipped entirely in Dr. Johnston’s case, if you’re a member of a minority group
in Texas—because outcomes have </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">not</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> been good. </span></div><div style="text-indent: 0px;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-indent: 0px;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>When Dean Johnston started out he made no promises in that regard, actually. In an interview as he </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">took</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> the
position of Dell dean five years ago, Dr. Johnston refused to be held to any
firm numbers regarding diversity in the student body. And a good thing too,
because he did a poor job on this crucial front of minority access to health
care, on both ends, as patients and as practitioners. He and his right hand Vice
Dean Mini Kahlon have been absolutely M.I.A. on race during their tenure in
Austin. At the conclusion of last semester the Dell website announced that the
proportion of minorities in class was </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">17 percent</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">. In a state that
is more than half black and brown. Shame, and shame again.</span></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Interestingly,
however, at the time of the interview when Dr. Johnston refused to
commit, so to speak, lo those five years ago, he criticized the diversity
profile of the institution he had just left, the University of California San
Francisco, the most prominent health-related public university in the world.
“I’m certainly not going to defend UCSF and its track record,” he said, rather
huffily, at the time of is hiring at UT. “We both know it needs to be better.”
It <i>is</i> better, actually—better than Dell’s. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Dean Johnston promised
to create in Austin a new and <i>fairer</i> way of choosing
students—through greater emphasis on interviews and on non-traditional
backgrounds. That hasn’t happened. Upper middle-class white male has long been
the norm in American medical schools, previously it was white guys but now at
Dell it’s a lot of white girls. As incoming dean, Dr. Johnston also promised to
evaluate potential students’ problem-solving skills instead of relying merely
on test scores and grades. But the faculty members who judge the students
for admission are still white, as is two-thirds of Dell faculty (black
and brown faculty membership is 12 percent), including a key administrator
who is a <i>white South African physician</i>, an odd choice to assure
increased diversity for blacks and Latinos in health care in the Lone Star State. That means
the same old outcomes are achieved as previously, or worse. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Of Dell Medical
School’s 14 department chairs, under the good Dr. Johnston, 11 are white and
three are Asian, again in a state that is more than half black and Latino and,
the U.S. Census just reported, is getting blacker and browner every day. The
context of Dr. Johnston’s time at Dell has to be considered as well, if one is
interested in these poor outcomes for minorities in admissions. He came on board (as
dean and as UT vice president of medical affairs, at a salary of $750,000 a
year) at a time when the university was reeling from an admissions scandal, an issue that may be particularly pertinent here. The then-university
president was found to have offered places to unworthy undergraduates who were
politically-connected to Texas elites.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A <i>second</i> admissions
scandal erupted three years into Dean Johnston’s tenure—code-named “Operation
Varsity Blues” by the FBI—involving eight major higher education
institutions, across the country, including UT but not the medical school. A
corollary question arises therefore, given this history, and given what should
be higher numbers of minorities at Dell Medical School. What are the chances
that these very prestigious and very sought-after places, at Dell Med, have
been awarded <i>in some cases</i> to the well-connected, as has happened in the
past at UT <i>and</i> at UCSF also, btw, whence Dean Johnston came? It’s
not beyond the realm of possibility. Considering the university’s non-diverse
past, you might say.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Although former Dean Johnston criticized his
ex-employer the University of California, a lot of faculty at Dell are actually
ex-UCSF, including the above mentioned Associate Dean Kahlon. Before and during the
pandemic there’s been an exodus from San Francisco to Austin and also from UCSF
to Dell. The danger here is that while people flow from the University of
California, so does the culture in Baghdad by the Bay, which is not good. An <i>NPR</i> report recently quoted
a former UCSF medical student saying that he was still hearing black patients
referred to as niggers on rounds there just a few years ago. There’s also
a lot of UC propaganda in cyberspace, which is a sign that administrators know
there’s a problem but are trying to hide it. For example the University of
California’s common practice is to show photos of happy-looking isolated black
students on its website, to make the student body appear more diverse than it really is—a
practice that has been adopted wholeheartedly by Dell. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Bad behavior has
flowed from Texas to the Bay Area also. UC System’s Executive Vice President
for Medical Affairs, Dr. John Stobo was fired for sexual harassment of an assistant
just last year. He arrived at UC from UT Medical Branch on Galveston Island where
he was president (John Stobo’s signature is on my nursing diploma from Medical
Branch, btw, for the record.) And then there’s Dr. Johnston himself, who has shown a
particular talent for</span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> ethical</i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> not sexual compromise.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">While still at UCSF, the
Dell ex-dean authored a paper arguing the novel position that prices for
medicines are <i>not high enough</i> and he co-authored another in
which he bemoaned conflict of interest accusations against medical researchers. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That is Dr. Johnston's legacy, you could call it, at the University of California San
Francisco. His favorite business case, btw, when he's presenting papers or giving talks, is the growth of the American
railroad industry, back in the day, during the Industrial Revolution or
whenever, and he likens that history to American medicine today. Here in the
Live Music Capital of the World, among his first efforts was the unsuccessful
attempt to lure pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to the city in order to harvest healthcare
data from minorities. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Traditionally one of
the biggest holes in Big Pharma’s data resources involves blacks, Latinos and
Asians, while whites are overrepresented. To design treatments and meds,
companies like Pfizer need as much representative data as possible, and that
means minorities need to be in the mix. And it is there that Dean Johnston’s
reputation and his legacy at Dell Medical School may have just been rescued by history. Pfizer took
a lot of heat and eventually dropped plans for a hub here but was soon replaced
in the enterprise by Google Health and its Nightingale Project. With an assist
by Dell Medical School and the good Dr. Johnston, who has done what he was
brought in to do, basically, to create a Big Medicine-UT axis, which may help
to save all of our lives one day, actually, whether Dean Johnston is a good guy
or not. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He was brought in to
do a job—to establish the university’s business ties with Big Pharma or Google, or whoever, as the case may be, like back in the day with the railroads and the Robber
Barons and all that—and let’s all hope he got it right. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Specifically, Dell Medical
School and its partner Ascension Seton, which is a Catholic non-profit and
operates a dozen hospitals in the Austin area, have teamed up with Google to
transfer information on patients. Everything from zip code to hemoglobin level,
for Big Data analysis. Before the pandemic this agreement was made public—revealed by the <i>Wall
Street Journal </i>just before Covid broke out, to widespread horror on the part of privacy
activists. This Big Data agreement was considered yet another Big Tech invasion and an attempt to profit
from patient information. Which it was, in another era. But since the pandemic
the ground has shifted under everyone’s feet. As we enter the second wave of
Covid-19, one can only hope that data is flowing like the Mississippi, from hospitals and labs.
The danger of the dreaded Big Tech-Big Medicine hookup, facilitated by
academics like Clay Johnston—the Nightingale Project, as the endeavor is called
by Google, or by any other name—pales in comparison to the danger of
the next virus, which could feature a more virulent strain or a faster-moving
outbreak. Big Pharma (Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and others,
companies synonymous with the vaccine makers) have actually performed <i>well</i> in
the COVID-19 crisis. You have to give the devil his or her due. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A lecture delivered
last semester at UT by a Big Pharma scientist revealed that the Moderna vaccine
was designed in <i>a day-and-a-half</i>—with the succeeding months, before
rollout, spent on testing, production, and regulatory approval. The Nightingale
Project preceded the pandemic, and was a bad idea then, but it’s a great one
now, hopefully Dr. Johnston took care of business, like the professional he is.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There <i>is</i> a risk that Google or whoever will
become even more powerful, through access to raw patient data, much of it from
minorities—who are being denied access to seats in the Dell Medical School, by
the way, not that there's anything wrong with that. But that risk can be
lessened by de-identifying healthcare data and making it a public good, free to
everyone. The fear of medical data release—like the fear of masking and of vaccination—is real and may be just as deadly. </span></p>
<!--EndFragment--></div>Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-47976515851686475382021-08-10T11:05:00.222-07:002023-08-30T14:39:26.412-07:00Throwing out DaBaby with da Bath Water<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div> <p></p><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheX1XwfvDo-6LsfZoxWb2xrNbsKGkDgW5ibcNfHAdgSW51N_EYSk_Ofu8JP6sPH0CG09BLxXPV8D9uTJaquXLNGrJoSmxPoKdvE5eK2WfggEm0p0RU7y9jId01IeQydafXacPyzaBkAQyZCSYQEhHTT3xAVN7EcrQsQhnIX_WrGKFTjcS-brrRFPoA/s340/Clapton_is_God.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="294" data-original-width="340" height="331" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheX1XwfvDo-6LsfZoxWb2xrNbsKGkDgW5ibcNfHAdgSW51N_EYSk_Ofu8JP6sPH0CG09BLxXPV8D9uTJaquXLNGrJoSmxPoKdvE5eK2WfggEm0p0RU7y9jId01IeQydafXacPyzaBkAQyZCSYQEhHTT3xAVN7EcrQsQhnIX_WrGKFTjcS-brrRFPoA/w489-h331/Clapton_is_God.jpg" width="489" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><p></p>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="envelope address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="envelope return"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="footnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="line number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="page number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="table of authorities"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="macro"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="toa heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Plain Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="E-mail Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Top of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal (Web)"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Acronym"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Cite"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Code"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Definition"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Keyboard"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Preformatted"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Typewriter"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal Table"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Elegant"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Balloon Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" QFormat="true"
Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">What about Eric
Clapton? That would probably be DaBaby’s question if anyone asked. DaBaby—a rap
artist whose music is happily unknown to me—was cancelled last week, literally,
when concert impresarios C3 Presents struck his name from the famed Austin City
Limits festival in October. Stop me if you’ve heard this before—for homophobic
and highly ignorant comments. And justifiably so. But Eric Clapton who is white
and is rock ‘n roll royalty has said a lot worse and will still be performing in Austin this September at the University of Texas’s Special Events Center. There’s been no call to cancel his visit, by promoters or by fans. In
fact a good argument can be made that Clapton’s comments (“Stop Britain from
being a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons
out. Keep Britain white . . . .”, </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">hmmm</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">), which led to the Rock
Against Racism movement, actually, are worse, because they were directed
against the very black people to whom Eric Clapton owes his music. There’s a
silver lining to this episode, however, because DaBaby's time-out presents such a rich environment for puns—and also shines a long overdue light
on the murky world of concert promotion in Austin, Texas, the World Capital of Live Music. </span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">C3 Presents is da baby
of Charlie Jones, Charles Attal and Charlie Walker—the 3 original C’s—and was
born in this burgeoning River City fifteen years ago. An early backer of the company was said to be
cyclist Lance Armstrong. His longtime agent, Bill Stapleton, who is a former Longhorn swimmer and Olympian is somewhere in the early C3 mix too. Connection
to Lance Armstrong is not necessarily a good thing, considering the famed athlete’s recent troubles, but we won’t get into that here. Indeed C3 has some
very impressive credentials. Because the company also puts on the Lollapalooza
festival in Chicago, and came to the attention of the Obama clan, C3 was picked
later to put on events at the White House. My source who has worked as a
contractor for C3 said that regarding the company’s use by President Obama,
“They did everything for him from rallies to his acceptance speech in Grant
Park and Easter egg hunts at the White House.” C3 is described as highly
non-diverse (and declined to respond with its minority employment
breakdown.) What’s interesting is that the company that cancelled DaBaby—and
rightfully so—and also puts on a lot of shows in casinos—was bought out by Live
Nation which previously merged with Ticketmaster. (It was the Obama administration, btw, that allowed Live Nation to take over C3, despite antitrust fears.) Live Nation’s former chairman
is music mogul Irving Azoff, the former manager of the supergroup The Eagles. Azoff is also
former CEO of Ticketmaster, and is founder, together with Tim Leiweke, former
CEO of AEG—the largest sports promoter in the world—of “Oak View Group” which
together with Live Nation has a $338 million contract to build and manage the
new Moody Center in Austin to replace the old University of Texas Special Events
Center where Eric Clapton will play next month. If it sounds like a small world, it is,
and it gets smaller. The Moody Center will be home of Longhorn men and
women’s basketball and music events. Enter Matthew McConaughey. Per
<i>Musicrow.com</i>: “McConaughey, University of Texas at Austin professor,
Distinguished Alumnus (BS ’93) and Academy Award-winning actor, has signed on
as Minister of Culture of the Moody Center and will work on ideas including but
not limited to suite designs, bar placement, color schemes, and other concepts,
to create a symbiotic relationship between the arena, the city, and the
university.” You couldn’t make this up.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In addition C3
Presents has the contract for the Moody Amphitheater in the newly reopened
Waterloo Park, smack center of downtown Austin, a couple of blocks from Irving Azoff’s new
special events center on campus and a stone’s throw from the state Capitol and
Greg Abbott’s crib. If the governor opens his windows he can probably hear the music. Interesting that these deals, which have led to Mr. Azoff
becoming the single most important guy in music in Austin, in a very short
time, through public-private partnerships, were done without apparent bidding or
public scrutiny? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Mayor Steve Adler
who will soon preside over the reopening of Waterloo Park has declined requests
to explain what the public is getting out of all these music industry machinations. It’s like the privatization scandals of a prior Republican era,
except instead of prisons it’s music. This template (creation of a new music venue at a public park, and handing over management of the venue to a non-profit that does not have to explain its contracting process or answer open records requests) will soon be applied to Zilker Park. That is corruption City of Austin style. The UT deal was executed, btw, by former
university President Greg Fenves, in consultation with Mayor Adler, among others.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">However everything
shakes out, this is likely to be a big payday and another increase in power for Irving Azoff who is a legend in the music business and who has also been accused of a
monopoly-like control in the industry in the past. Not that there’s anything
wrong with that, either. (Mr. Azoff would not comment.) The music industry may have
made the correct call with DaBaby but it’s weird that what is right or wrong or
not permissible, regarding race or culture, in live music in Waterloo Park is now in
the hands of a bunch of white guys, mostly living in L.A., who have made no
effort to diversify a very Caucasian group of music industry businesses. Back to
DaBaby, who is presently in time-out. It’s been noted elsewhere that his recent gay-bashing was not his first
offense and that the LGBTQ community is trying to make a stand against longtime
prejudice in the music industry. How gays do that is a gay rights call and
should be supported by the black community, because it ill-behooves blacks to complain about use of a social revolt playbook that <i>we wrote</i>. You feel me?
What one would like however is more consistency in how sanctions are applied. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Unfortunately, Eric
Clapton may not be the best artist to start with. First, his comments were made
almost half a century ago, during a time in which he has described himself as
“semi-racist,” whatever that means. Even if you drop the semi—and add
his recent anti-vaccination comments, he is simply, on one level, an unrepentant
old white guy, age 76, who happens to be a CBE, courtesy of Her Majesty the Queen who is also dotty. Be that as it may. As for DaBaby, he needs a
spanking now—that’s the best argument—while it may have an effect on future
behavior. Which is unlikely to be the case with Clapton. Now we can address the
<i>real</i> determinant of forgiveness and punishment in the culture wars, Eric Clapton’s
artistry. “Layla,” “Cocaine,” “Lay Down Sally,</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.6667px;">”</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> the Yardbirds, Cream, Derek and
the Dominoes among his former associations. DaBaby may have a biography like
that too one day but Eric Clapton already does. This is Slowhand himself, people. There are fans who would push their own grandmother out of the way to get the ticket. He’s not God but he plays electric guitar like Him or Her. Anybody who can see Clapton play now—live—should.</span></p>
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<!--EndFragment-->Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-7068860931885240392021-08-04T09:15:00.112-07:002024-03-15T18:26:53.323-07:00George Clooney's Diversity Vehicle<p> <span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">Everyone has a favorite movie but how many
people have a favorite movie <i>scene</i>, as in all-time, in the history of
cinema or cinema that you’ve seen? Not many of us can narrow it down. People have lists but not <i>one single favorite,</i> the single scene that you would absolutely want
to be marooned with? But<i> mine</i> is unique. It’s from Steven Soderbergh’s 1998 film <i>Out of Sight</i>, starring
George Clooney, and does not have Clooney in it even
though he was star of the movie. And it’s short, there’s no time for
over-acting, instead it's a couple of minutes in a Detroit rowhouse between Isaiah
Washington—who is from Texas btw, not that that’s important here—and Jennifer
Lopez who is from the Bronx. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">Also featured but not seen is Tuffy who is Isaiah
Washington’s character’s dog, or was until he got run over, we are informed. Before that Tuffy liked “a good bone,” which is what Isaiah Washington is trying
to interest JLo in too. Washington’s character calls his The Monster and
he plans to introduce JLo whether she wants it or not. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">The difference in performing style between
these two actors, who are both underrated as actors btw, is also unique. Washington plays the
scene like in a theater—delivering a eulogy for Tuffy not Caesar—and then
talking about boxing, which JLo also knows a bit about. She tells him
that she’s a flyweight. Washington’s character <i>was</i> a boxer—until his
retina “got detached two time”—and he gestures at his own eye so that the back
row of the theater can see. The critics would call it a “certain physicality,”
like a black Brando, you feel me</span><span style="font-size: 14.666667px;">—something</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> like that. JLo on the other hand
plays her role like an actor who has grown up in movies. In this scene she is a
woman who’s not interested in a brother’s come-on and who shows a certain
fear, yes—while also being fearless. Her empowerment as a female in modern cinema
comes from the knowledge that she has a collapsible baton and a Glock in her
shoulder bag. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The reason the scene appeals to me is that it is in one of
the rare major theatrical releases, back in the day, just before the
millennium, in which two minority actors got time to go at it and talk real
shit, without the mediation or interference of the white star.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">White stars generally want to be in the scene
with a Negro or Mexican in order to show that the white guy or white girl is cool and
can hang with the oppressed peoples of the earth and all that. Clooney didn’t
do that here, presumably because he’s not that insecure (he hangs these days,
we are told in the popular press, with Barack Obama) and besides he already had
some good scenes earlier in the film with Don Cheadle and with JLo herself who is
Clooney’s love interest when he’s not robbing banks. It says everything that
needs to be said about the confrontation in Detroit that it is <i>my favorite
scene of all time in the movies</i>, not to repeat myself. As judged #1, by me, for each of the last
few years. The scene actually begins with a lead-in by <i>Viola Davis</i> who
plays Moselle and who is Isaiah Washington’s presumable squeeze or sister or
something and who he has just sent out to get some chicken so that he can be
alone with JLo and introduce her to The Monster. That’s all the background you
need. Viola Davis is on screen just long enough to open her eyes wide,
in foreboding, a beautiful thing to see, and my point is that if the cast is so
strong that Ms. Davis is just the set-up, that means it must be a great scene,
which it is. You have to see it. Probably the JLo-Isaiah Washington showdown
won’t affect you the way it did me, but it might.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">If you ask me for my
<i>second</i> all-time favorite scene it would be the meeting in the board room
in <i>Margin Call</i>, from 2011. Everyone is good and it’s smart moviemaking,
explaining an idea not a corpse on the ground. It’s believable in the sense
that a bunch of mostly white actors pretending to do wholesale generalized
evil—well, these actors are right on the money: Jeremy Irons, Zachary Pinto,
Kevin Spacey, Simon Baker, Demi Moore, Aasif Mandvi, they're all about to pull out The
Monster, too, but it’s a different one than Isaiah Washington has in <i>Out of Sight</i>. What about the whole
movie, you may ask? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">Why not watch it? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">The answer is about <i>not having the
patience</i> to sit still for two hours anymore, the length of the average
Hollywood release, that can happen as you get older, especially the more movies
you’ve seen. Watching a script unfold that—even before it starts—you know how
it’s going to end? Not to be a purist, or puritanical, not to be Old School or anything. There
was a word that critics used to use a lot, “derivative,” as in one work is derived
from another? We’re so far past derivative now, what’s the point? The
unsurprising exception is anything with another actor named Washington—Denzel. With Denzel, you have to see the whole film. Literally, he can read the ingredients on a
cereal box and it’s watchable, but my favorite is when he’s racking up the body
count, especially if he’s doing white guys, not to be mean-spited or anything. The vibe he always gives off is justice. Killing can be beautiful art, especially when it's deserved. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">Historically the two movie scenes that have
stayed with me through the decades, since my childhood, are the “I-could-have-been-a-contender”
cab ride with Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger in <i>On the Waterfront</i> and the
final shoot-out in the saloon in <i>Shane</i> (1953). There’s a dog in the saloon and the animal steals the scene from Alan Ladd and Jack Palance. In terms
of sheer cinematic beauty there is the escape across the snow to Switzerland,
at the end of <i>La Grande Illusion, </i>which has a brisk and beautiful
narrative,<i> </i>not to sound artsy or anything but it really is a cool example of moviemaking. Being
an action fan myself and seeing my share of war movies, one must consider the Ride
of the Valkyries in <i>Apocalypse Now </i>of course. But each of these moments in
cinema was picked at a time when the <i>whole </i>movie experience was
important to me. Now it’s just scenes on <i>YouTube</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">Maybe it’s age, young viewers don’t know that
the new movie is derivative of a prior film because they never saw the old one,
you know? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">For me, it means no new favorite movies. It’s like a video diet, actually, and the results have been surprising. Revising my number one or number two
scene is <i>occasionally</i> required but not as often as you might think. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">Right now a revision of number two <i>is</i> being <i>considered</i> based
upon my number of viewings online. The challenger to <i>Margin Call</i>’s board room drama is a scene that also came my way entirely by
way of <i>YouTube</i>, from a movie that very likely will never be on my list
to see. There is just this one scene, it’s in a meeting room too, like <i>Margin
Call</i>, but instead of being a real ensemble work it features a soliloquy,
more or less, by none other than Sean Puffy Combs. Instead of the late lamented
Tuffy of <i>Out of Sight</i> the animals here are cockatoos. The film is <i>Get
Him to the Greek</i>, about the music business, a subject that does not
interest me in the least. Again, as in the case of Isaiah Washington, the scene is basically a brother talking shit, there ought to be an Academy Award for
a particular scene like this, different from the award for the whole movie. My sincere wish is to
thank George Clooney for backing off in <i>Out of Sight</i> and sipping his
bottle of water, or whatever, behind the camera, and letting the supporting actors get in some quality
time in front. You have to thank the director or whoever who let a good black
actor and a Latina star show their stuff and didn’t leave the film on the
cutting room floor. And lastly of course you have to thank the <i>writer. </i>It
was Elmore Leonard, what can you say? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">Leonard also wrote <i>Get Shorty</i>, btw, which has a few good scenes too. In a career spanning decades. Leonard first wrote
Westerns—<i>Last Stand at Sabre River </i>and <i>Valdez is
Coming,</i> to name a few, with the great Burt Lancaster in the latter. When Leonard's books were filmed in urban settings, Miami or Detroit for
example, he has a better ear for multi-ethnic urban dialogue than anybody
in the business. Which is what JLo and Isaiah Washington were doing, btw, having a
dialogue. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
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</span>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
<!--EndFragment-->Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-86999148663959925642021-07-13T15:37:00.540-07:002023-09-08T18:15:27.161-07:0010 Things to Know about Governor Greg Abbott
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1. Greg Abbott is a very
good lawyer. That should be kept in the back of your mind when discussing his
agenda. Especially, obviously, any issue regarding <i>Texas</i> law. A
lot of governors decide on a policy and check its legality while Governor
Abbott has reverse-engineered the process and figures out what’s legal and then
decides what to do. A good bet is that he has already role-played a case before
the Supreme Court on arresting lawmakers or for curtailing minority voting
rights and in those mock courts the governor believes that he wins. He may
be right. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2. Speaking of the Supreme Court: A former high-ranking Texas official, who is in a position to
know, said that Justice Abbott was first viewed with suspicion by his
Republican colleagues on the Texas Supreme Court, where Greg Abbott served
until 2002 (first appointed by W.) Other Republicans on the court thought he
was not conservative enough. Those were the exact words used, “not conservative
enough.” Abbott’s moderate reputation continued through his first term as
attorney general. Then, per this source, Abbott went to campaign school—which
apparently does not actually involve going anywhere, the consultants come to
you. He became more outspoken and, frankly, more arrogant. His third term as
attorney general was apparently the period of his famous quote about his
typical workday, a one-liner that was actually pretty funny, going to the
office, suing the Obama Administration, and going home. He was the
longest-serving attorney general in the state's history. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">3. His later period as AG
was the beginning of a gradual assault on open records enforcement, fyi. This was in contrast to Abbott’s predecessor as attorney general
(and as Supreme Court Justice) incumbent U.S. Senator John Cornyn, who
respected the unspoken understanding between Democratic and Republican
lawmakers regarding the integrity of the Texas Public Information Act. Abbott began
the lax enforcement and questionable opinions that has reached its depths under
incumbent AG Ken Paxton. Interestingly, two of Abbott's open records abuses involve his own office. Newspapers in the state have tried unsuccessfully to find out how much the governor spends on security, not the actual security measures or displacements but a dollar amount. Denied. Also, a request for who the governor has invited to the Governor's Mansion and who has spent the night there was met by a release of hundreds of names of tourists who have visited the Governor Mansion, not the people who Greg Abbott invited. My source above said that legislators are largely
indifferent to attacks like these on the Public Information Act because it’s not in their interests, either,
that governmental processes be transparent. Don't you love Austin? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">4. Governor Abbott faces
little scrutiny because, for one reason among many—W and Rick Perry and now
Greg Abbott have turned the historically weak Texas governor’s office into one
of the most powerful state offices in the country. And there has not been a
State Auditor in Austin since the last one resigned five years ago. The <i>Office </i>of the State Auditor still exists, overseen by an
assistant auditor, but the appointed head has not been appointed. If this
sounds like it gives the governor extraordinary power, it does. The first
inquiry of a truly independent auditor might be, for example, scrutiny of a
wall on the Rio Grande or its funding. Traditionally in Texas, in the spirit of
separation of powers, the State Auditor has been a big player at the Capitol, a
thorn in the side of Democrats and Republicans alike, said my guy above, and no one
in the Legislature is speaking out now, demanding an appointment to the post of State Auditor, because neither
party particularly wants independent scrutiny of state government. Love Austin
again.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">5. The demanding and
impatient Greg Abbott that you see on television may be heavily influenced by
stagecraft. The guy obviously has a sense of humor and his in-laws are an
awesome family, btw, the Phalens of San Antonio and before that, of Mexico.
Even people who can’t stand Greg Abbott adore his wife Cecilia, who has been a great First Lady and her sister, who is a well-regarded internist in the Live Music Capital of the World. Someone loves Greg Abbott, therefore, even if that someone is
not in the Democratic Party.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">6. Governor Abbott needs
to act now. Demographics may lose him his base. If it is reasonable to assume
that a lot of people moving into the state are<i> not</i> more
conservative than the average <i>current </i>Texas voter—who is
pretty fucking conservative—the red will eventually be diluted by blue. Or so that is the hope. There
may be a long lag before Democrats become competitive in Texas but that delay won’t last
forever, in Democratic theorizing. According to this theory, if Greg Abbott is ever going to live in the White House he needs to make the move soon. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">7. He may or may not have
made a big mistake in the handling of the pandemic, the research hasn’t been
done yet. Governor Abbott made his calls regarding closings and masking and one
day researchers will say if he was right or wrong but they were apparently his
calls to make. He does have a logical inconsistency in how he views local
power, btw, what cities and counties can do. He is all for local control until
somebody is doing something he doesn’t like and then it becomes a state prerogative. Probably not a fatal flaw to his
aspirations. Whether Democrats like it or not, Greg Abbott is member of a
minority group, people with physical disabilities. It makes him an attractive
candidate because voters want to show acceptance. He's an interesting guy but whether he would be a good
president—let's just say that the constituency he most needs to win over is the
Republican Party's right wing, a disquieting number who live in Texas.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">8. Whenever Governor
Abbott is addressing the cameras regarding the border, you’ll see standing
beside him a taciturn-looking white guy in accountant’s glasses and tan
uniform. That is Colonel Steve McCraw, commander of the Texas Department of
Public Safety that includes the Rangers, Highway Patrol and all the other lawdogs who have been sent to stop refugees crossing the mighty Rio Grande.
Colonel McCraw is the quiet enforcer behind the Abbott administration. A former
Democratic sheriff who knows the Colonel says that the description
“conservative Republican” does not do the DPS commander justice, but this old
sheriff adds that McCraw was always a straight-shooter with him. The Colonel is
from the West Texas shithole of Marathon, near Alpine, in the God-forsaken Trans
Pecos, and he served as a trooper before joining the FBI and then coming home
to Texas as Governor Rick Perry’s criminal justice advisor. There are two
interesting stories about Colonel McCraw, in the Greg Abbott context, one that
is scurrilous and may not be true and another that may be true and is
definitely funny. We’ll tackle the latter here. According to a very good law
enforcement source, a top guy who knows the Colonel but did not get the story
from him, when Agent McCraw was in the FBI he served for a time on the organized
crime squad in New York where he became familiar with none other than a young Donald
Trump, who at the time was a wannabe wiseguy. (The ex-president could not be
reached for comment.) Apparently, per my source, “Everyone in the New York office knew Trump,” which helps to explain why the ex-president was so anti-FBI
even <i>before</i> things turned to shit for him in D.C. How cool an
anecdote is that? It could even be true. My question is if, when the former
president comes to Texas, and there’s a moment when Governor Abbott is tied up with something else—or they’re all kicking back on the DPS plane, on the way
to the border, do Colonel McCraw and the ex-president talk about goombahs they
knew back in the day? It’s a cool story, even if it’s not true, but my source,
who is very good, says it is true, from a time when Donald Trump wanted to be Don
Donald, apparently, or was running with a Mafia or Mafia-like crowd. DPS refuses, btw, to discuss Colonel
McCraw's past postings. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">9. There were actually two
surges of state troopers ordered by Governor Abbott, one to the Rio Grande and
one to Austin. The governor talks a lot about helping law enforcement in the
capital city and occasionally you <i>do </i>see troopers on the hike/bike
trails downtown—but they are most visible at the Governor’s Mansion and on the Capitol
grounds, naturally. There's been a lockdown ordered by the Governor's Office, through Colonel McCraw. The Capitol
used to be open 24-7 but is now closed 7pm to 7am, including the grounds. The governor advantage of the Black Lives Matter protests last year, around
the Capitol, and around the Governor’s Mansion frankly, to restrict access to
what Ann Richards liked to call the People’s House. The Mansion today looks
like Fort Apache, no disrespect to Native Americans intended. For example a few
blocks from the Abbott crib, the same night of the most recent and deadly Sixth Street
shooting, in which one person was killed and a dozen wounded, that night around the
Governor's Mansion there were troopers everywhere, hours <i>before</i> the shootings. In unmarked cars, for instance, shining search lights on pedestrians, another trooper out
on foot to check pedestrians out personally if they approached the Big House. My source on DPS, who is none of the
guys mentioned above and who is in well-regarded in the Republican establishment,
said that troopers were on “high alert” at the Mansion that night but would not say
why. Greg Abbott was apparently home, if that's what you're wondering, and it’s important to remember this <i>is</i>
his home, but it’s also important to remember what the Mansion used to be like. When
Ann Richards lived there you could walk by at night and, literally, hear
women’s laughter. When W was governor, there was still a sidewalk at the back, on Lavaca Street, and you could walk by on a summer afternoon
and peek through the fence and see the fashionable parties and barbecues, the Bush family and various Bushites. When Rick
Perry became governor all that changed. The sidewalk was removed. There were a
lot of people who hated Perry, to be honest, but it was also that times had changed, crazies
had upped their game and a couple of troopers with handguns was no longer adequate defense. There was the famous incident when Governor Perry himself was out
jogging, on a trail somewhere here in our bucolic River City, and carrying a pistol under his shirt, or his shorts or whatever, he
said, “for coyotes,” you remember that? A good guess today is that DPS drones are over the
Capitol day <i>and</i> night, it is what it is,
security is the governor's call both at his home and up to a point on the border. But who
does Greg Abbott fear more? Not the antifas or whoever on the left, but the kind of
nutjobs who wanted to take over the U.S. Capitol. In other words what
Governor Abbott most fears is his own right wing. Which is also a metaphor for
his life politically. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">10. It is now against the
rules to film or take photos in the Legislative Reference Library in the State Capitol. No shit, a library. Which is kind of scary actually, what’s next, you can’t turn the pages? Or are we going to have a good old-fashioned book-burning, out on the South Lawn? Arrangements like these are made by the State Preservation Board
(consisting of the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Speaker of the House and a
handful of public members.) The Preservation Board controls the grounds—the Capitol <i>and</i> the Mansion, the
whole state complex, actually. There's an actual public meeting of the board, or supposed to be, and
used to take place a few times a year but no longer. Like the State Auditor’s Office,
the Preservation Board is now run out of the Governor’s Office, like everything
else in state government. Not to be
judgmental. Preservation Board meetings were, actually, great moments of
transparency in Lone Star government, from a time when the Governor was less powerful
than today and the Speaker and Lieutenant Governor had bigger balls, both physically
and politically. The three men would all sit down and talk about the grounds of the Capitol, exhibits in the state buildings, and remodelings of the Mansion, or whatever, and these were the three
most important people in the state, with big egos, and you see could see how
our leaders interacted among themselves, as they talked about the Capitol or Capitol grounds. You could tell who was a big dog, who
was a little dog, who was a bitch and who had a big dick, frankly, not to sound all macho. And the public knew or could ascertain who was a big
dick, in a metaphorical way. These days, whenever you see the three
together, the Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Speaker of the House,
Greg Abbott is the one doing the talking. Speaker Phelan who is said to be a decent guy who just made a wrong turn somewhere in the Republican Party, looks squirmy like a kid in church. Lt. Gov. Patrick nods like the good lieutenant he is. It's Greg Abbott’s state and the
rest of us just live in it. </span></p>
<!--EndFragment-->Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-49846690863633267442021-07-04T16:22:00.179-07:002023-09-24T21:25:50.868-07:00The Lubbock Singularity
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In nursing school you
get these assignments, they’re more like projects really and usually involve
working in groups of two or three students, maybe more. My teammate last
semester was Veronica, who is a labor & delivery nurse on the Gulf Coast
and our assignment for Population Health was to look at a county in Texas—there
are 254 to choose from. And examine outcomes in light of the pandemic. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It's
easier read in a syllabus than done, let me and Veronica tell you. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We chose Galveston County
for a couple of reasons, one being that we are both graduates of Medical
Branch, on Galveston Island, the state’s oldest School of Nursing, btw. Also Medical Branch takes care of health needs for the vast majority of the nearly
150,000 inmates in the state prison system, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice
as it is euphemistically called, or just plain TDCJ. Where COVID-19 was said to be running rampant
at the time, last semester. So, like—long story short—Veronica told me one
day in March that there were about 250 deaths, at that point, on the Galveston
County COVID-19 dashboard. Which is run by the Galveston County Health District. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Which struck us as
strange actually. Because in order to judge our stats, we had been instructed
by our Professor to make a <i>comparison</i> to another county in the
state and we’d chosen Lubbock, on the High Plains. And there were a couple of
good reasons to choose Lubbock, actually—or so we thought. There were similarities to
Galveston and differences as well. One, Lubbock is the other side of the state, the High Plains versus the Gulf Coast, polar
opposites and all that. Whatever might influence healthcare outcomes during the
pandemic in one county might not be important in the other, across the humongous Lone Star State. It was a roll of
the dice but our idea was that Galveston and Lubbock would serve as
experimental controls for each other.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The two counties are also very close in
population, like Numbers 13 and 14 on the Lone Star list of counties, both just
over 300,000 inhabitants, so it seemed fair, whether it made scientific sense
or not. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We were instructed to check a University of Wisconsin website that
tracks health data in counties across the country and it showed that Lubbock
and Galveston were very close in terms of healthcare resources and outcomes,
with a slight edge maybe to Lubbock. Both counties are home to large academic
healthcare institutions, btw, Medical Branch and Texas Tech Health Science Center in
Lubbock, respectively—the latter institution where our schoolwork was taking
place. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So, like, long story short, both
hospitals take care of state prisoners, although Medical Branch cares for
eighty percent of inmates in the state while Texas Tech handles the remainder.
Anyway—long story short again—at the same time that Galveston County was reporting
about 250 deaths from COVID-19 (a figure which included any prisoners who died at Medical Branch), Lubbock County was
reporting <i>750</i> deaths from COVID-19 (including state prisoners), three
times as many, which seemed a lot, in our not-yet-scientific view. For two similarly sized counties. And it didn’t
make sense. A few percentage points, sure—between two equally-populated places—but two hundred percent seemed a tad <i>extreme</i>, in our graduate student
view. According to our limited understanding of statistical probability, p-values and all that. Informing our instructor of
these numbers, of these data, she wrote back, ironically, that maybe it
was the cotton gins around Lubbock. On the heavily-agricultural High Plains, an
area that runs from the Panhandle to the Pecos River. There had to be something in the
air, you might say. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lubbock is famous for
dust storms. This would be something carrying COVID instead. As compared to the
briny ocean air of Galveston County, down on the Gulf of Mexico. Our instructor
pushed us to inquire further. The Lubbock County health authority did not
respond to our queries, nor the City of Lubbock Health Department which
apparently handles the local public health operation and runs the dashboard.
Where we were getting our information. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A further dive into the data pointed to
a gross healthcare outcome discrepancy, actually. Between Lubbock County and
the state prison system. If you were looking to do that comparison. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At the same
time that Galveston was reporting about 250 deaths (the numbers change,
obviously, every day, but that was the level when this was happening, about
halfway thru last semester, in my unscientific recollection) the state prison
system was also reporting 250 deaths from COVID-19. That figure has to be
normalized because the total number of inmates in Texas prisons hovers around
150,000, half the population of Galveston or Lubbock County. So. Like, if the
prisons were the same size as the two counties, the number of dead prisoners
(and one supposes guards) who died would be closer to 500. To set the scene. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In sum, we had three
rates of COVID-19 deaths in Texas: about 250 for Galveston County, from start of
pandemic, about 500 for TDCJ and about 750
for Lubbock County. If there's something wrong with that math let us know, but that meant to us, to misquote <i>Apollo 13</i>, “Lubbock, we
have a problem.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s just a snapshot
in time, of course, what the dashboards were showing that day, but the picture
is not good, if accurate. And the extreme nature of the Lubbock figure, higher
even than for the state prisons, was more pronounced when you consider that
state inmates are housed cheek by jowl and did not have quick access to vaccines, for example, and they couldn’t self-distance, as a
free-world population can. Lubbock’s death rate was higher than in prison
cells, really? </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;">That’s a scary thought. And certainly didn’t sound hygienic. And,
btw, the Health Authority for the state prisons, where one-fifth of the inmates
go to Lubbock if they need to be hospitalized, and the rest go to Galveston? He
said TDCJ’s infection numbers in the Lubbock sector were not particularly high
and were not the reason for any possible high incidence of COVID-19 deaths on
the High Plains. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">One’s first
inclination is to blame poor adherence to guidelines, such as mask-wearing—and not to
blame cotton gins or “something in the air,” the famous Lubbock dust, or whatever. As nurses we can educate the public but we have to respect cultures
and if people in Lubbock County are really really really opposed to masks, for example, and willing to die for it (as
students we don’t know the full extent of the danger, because we haven’t seen the data) but a lot of people in Lubbock County apparently are like that, according to news reports. Just as in many other parts of the
country.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> Or if the people of Lubbock are very conservative socially, as
evidenced by the city’s recent official rejection of abortion, is it really our role as
caregivers to object? You just take care of people and answer any questions they may ask. You can teach but you can't lecture.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">You may say, well,
some of the 750 people who died—if they died because of the community’s poor
masking for example, what then? They themselves may not have rejected masking and died only because others did. In other words they were infected by someone whose healthcare practices were different from their own. Healthcare outcomes are not always fair, it seems.
Local standards are <i>local</i>. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Choices made by a cultural group—or a population, as in our just completed class Population Health—may well influence the welfare of individuals who do
not agree with the choice. That’s what we learned by doing our project for the School of Nursing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<!--EndFragment--><p> </p>
<!--EndFragment-->Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-48780704315579589512021-05-31T11:29:00.642-07:002023-08-17T15:48:32.988-07:00Chief Chacon's Written Reprimand<p> <span style="font-size: 11pt;">There’s one question that can
be used to narrow down the pool of candidates for our new police chief. Imagine
a scene, like at a Congressional hearing in years past, a witness is being asked
about his association with the Communist Party or the Mafia or even the Ku Klux
Klan. If it helps, imagine the witness wearing a mask or hood to disguise his
identity. The first and most important question to ask him or her—the </span><i style="font-size: 11pt;">only</i><span style="font-size: 11pt;">
question to ask, some might argue—in order to shorten the police chief candidate list, would be similar to asking about KKK or fellow-traveler connections, “Are
you now—or have you ever been—a member of the Austin Police Association?” If
the answer is yes, strike that name from the list. Of course that would not work in present circumstances, in the case of Acting Chief
Joseph Chacon who is getting a tryout in the top job and deservedly so. Chief
Chacon has almost certainly been a member of the Police Association at some
time or another but declines to say when or if he resigned. Be that as it may.
Chacon’s appointment to the permanent job still presents a troubling dynamic for
the people of the Live Music Capital of the World. The Acting Chief rose to power
in an organization that has a violent and racist and/or misogynistic present </span><i style="font-size: 11pt;">and</i><span style="font-size: 11pt;">
past, yet he himself is a member of a minority group and may not have spoken
out. Or did not speak much. Because he wouldn’t have lasted, frankly, or
prospered in this organization, as he has. </span></p><p><i style="font-size: 11pt;"> Unless</i><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> his is one of those redacted names of assistant chiefs—in last year’s investigatory bomb about
racism on the force, authored by former San Antonio prosecutor Lisa Tatum, who is a
sister, btw, and who went through the Austin Police Department like shit through
the proverbial goose. The Tatum report found that p.d. leadership—including the
infamous fifth floor of the pig pen—the offices of the assistant
chiefs, a group that for the last six years has included Joseph
Chacon—was aware of bad behavior but took a long, long time
for anyone to speak up. In fact, much of the bad behavior was </span><i style="font-size: 11pt;">on</i><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> the
fifth floor, not to be judgmental. Before moving to condemn these high-ranking police officers,
it’s best to give the Acting Chief his chance at the microphone—and that was actually
just done, on </span><i style="font-size: 11pt;">KVUE</i><span style="font-size: 11pt;">, in a very savvy interview by morning anchor Yvonne Nava, who
is hot and smart in equal measure.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Ms.
Nava shares her interviewee’s ethnicity and she threw Chief Chacon some
softballs, sure, but in a <i>long</i> interview—this was half an hour—apparently that was exactly the correct approach. The chief began to relax and talk
about himself. Unlike interviewing former Chief Art Acevedo—whose mere presence
fills a room and who is believed to have political ambitions, and who has just
become Police Chief of Miami after a rocky few years in Houston and a decade
here in River City before that</span><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">—</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Acting Chief Chacon seemed more professorial. Even meek. A
former high-ranking local officer, who is minority but not Latino, said that
Chacon, whom he met years ago, made no particular impression on him—and that
regardless of Chief Chacon’s management chops, which are considerable, and his
knowledge of facts on the ground, which may be unmatched, City Hall
needs to hire an outsider to lead this Police Department. That is how my guy
couched the choice, not choosing between Joseph Chacon and someone
else, but picking an insider or an outsider. City Hall could certainly do a lot
worse in a Chief of Police and already has, on a number of occasions.
The question is do you really want to hire a guy or girl to reform a system
that he or she is a product of?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">There
is a reason for diversity, in journalism as in policework, and Ms. Nava, who is
from Laredo, already knew something about her subject before she sat down to talk
to him. The upshot of the interview was that Joseph Chacon is a good guy, he
may not be chief material—we’ll have to wait and see, just like with anyone
else—but if he were white he would probably already have the position. And
that’s the test, isn’t it? Isn’t that the new standard in public affairs—no
more white privilege, everybody gets treated the same? Minorities don’t have to
walk on water in order to get the same job that a more flawed white guy or white girl? Not to be judgmental, again. So, like, to cut to the chase Chief Chacon seems actually to <i>merit</i>
the position. He’s very smart—not just in the sense that former
Chief Acevedo is smart—it was Acevedo, btw, who elevated Chacon to the fifth
floor where the assistant chiefs have their lair. But <i>well-educated </i>too. What Acevedo seemed to know instinctively,
Chacon has learned in a classroom, in a trajectory from El Paso
P.D. to Austin P.D. His training transcript, on file with the Texas Commission
on Law Enforcement, reads like <i>War and Peace</i> and is almost as long. His
story overall—as it is currently being pushed at City Hall and as was revealed
in Ms. Nava’s excellent interview—is a little too good to be true but not a deal-breaker
by any means. This is a guy who was Austin P.D.’s intelligence chief,
responsible for liaison with the FBI, and also a supervisor on the Homicide Detail,
so the idea that Chief Chacon has spent his career helping little old ladies to
cross Congress Avenue may not be an accurate description of his history with the
department. He told Ms. Nava that his most fulfilling time was as
a detective. That may turn out to be a liability. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">He
was, again btw, on the Homicide Detail when Areli Escobar was convicted of
murder and sentenced to death. There’s a commendation for then-Lieutenant
Chacon’s handling of the case, in his record released by City Hall. Areli Escobar—who
is on Death Row—has just been recommended for retrial, after issues of
misconduct. That may present problems down the road for the Acting Chief but the
misconduct was apparently lab-related and <i>prosecutorial,</i> in the office
of hapless then-D.A. Rosemary Lehmberg. History can come back to bite you, as Chief Chacon may discover, but he’s not alone. Both our
city manager and deputy manager, who will choose the next chief of the Austin Police Department, btw, served in similar positions in Minneapolis, the Bad Policing
Capital of the World. The new U.S. Attorney General has ordered review of the
Minneapolis force whose practices the present Austin city manager and deputy manager were almost certainly
aware of, or should have been aware, whether they directly supervised the department or not in Minneapolis, as they do here in Texas. Which means a probable visit from a Special Agent, or two, if just for a chat—what didn’t you know in the Twin Cities, for example, and when didn’t you know it? In the case of Austin’s skeletons, all those people killed in recent years by APD, circumstances may actually work in Chief Chacon’s favor. There is the very real
possibility that APD officers have committed murder on the job, not just those recently charged by the new D.A. An outsider might stumble upon
something, while an insider would know where not to look.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">That’s
why it's a little worrisome, Chief Chacon’s role as a minority in a racist environment.
Did he shuck and jive his way through the ranks like some of the high-ranking black officers or did he speak up? Probably
both. It’s a question of <i>degree</i> for a minority officer in heavily white-led
and white-populated police departments, like our own, said my guy above. My guy
also did the job as a high-ranking law enforcement official who is not white. Getting
there is harder for blacks and Asians but Latinos and Latinas also face a lot of soul-searching
about how much crap to take from white people, especially supervisors, in order
to advance their careers. There’s no particular evidence in Chief Chacon’s
record that he spoke up—because the file that was released about him, by Human Resources,
had obviously been sanitized with bleach. In other words—selling
out la raza, or whatever one might wish to call it—the chances that he is a mole for the
Police Association do not seem high.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">In his personnel file he is described while still a patrolman as a “hot dog,” literally, which
is not particularly encouraging, and later working as a detective as being energetic, whatever that meant. He was a civil service advancement up to the
rank of commander when Chief Acevedo elevated him to assistant chief. And something
changed, frankly, around that time in the Austin Police Department. Art Acevedo arrived from Cali, he had made
his bones in the Highway Patrol, at one point as a headhunter, and
was kind of macho, yeah, but in a good way, and he was unwilling to get down on all
fours for the Police Association, as was the local custom at the time. Because up until that time the Chief had mostly been APA’s
bitch. Choosing the new chief will also be a major political decision at City Hall. Latinos say
it’s their turn, Chief Acevedo didn’t count, he was Cuban not Tejano. </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">And
blacks have written ourselves out of contention, in this horse race, by selling out in the past. The city manager showed surprisingly bad judgment, just recently, in that regard. For the committee responsible for “re-imagining” the
Austin police force, the manager picked a black former assistant chief
named Michael McDonald who has been the police department’s official Uncle Tom since, oh, the turn of
the century. McDonald who also served as deputy city manager, was the guy
you would see standing behind former Mayor Leffingwell at a press conference,
after a bad police shooting, to make it seem that blacks were on board with the
department’s version of the facts. It's said that even as deputy city manager he liked to be called "Chief." <i>Shit.</i> He'll have to be really good at re-imagining, since Chief McDonald helped to imagine what we have now. McDonald is the mole for APA, if anyone is, on the Re-Imagination Committee. If there
were a Nuremberg trial for APD, instead of re-imagination, Chief McDonald
would be locked up, but he is said to be liked by incumbent Mayor
Steve Adler, who is a ho too.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">With
this background in mind, in order to see where Joseph Chacon is coming from,
look at two other former APD higher-ups, both members of minority groups. In
the Tatum report, there’s a reference to an unnamed black assistant chief being
described derisively by a white colleague, “He may be a nigger, but he’s our
nigger.” Words to that effect. That’s a reference to Frank Dixon who left Austin p.d. almost three years ago to become chief in Denton, outside Dallas. In an email
exchange last year, after Ms. Tatum released her report, Chief Dixon
acknowledged that the reference was to him, but denied that he sold out his
peeps for the braid on his cap, or that he ignored racism and intolerance in
order to advance his own career. “That’s ridiculous,” he wrote. “There is no
way I would or have stood by and watched anything of the sort. I have always
done the right thing, and my career has not been the driving force behind any
decisions I’ve made.” Which sounds completely insincere, actually, for a couple
of reasons. First there’s the Stalinist argument—you know, the <i>mere suspicion</i>
that could still get you a bullet from a revolutionary tribunal? Just the fact that anyone would say that about you, that Frank Dixon is “our
nigger,” not a good sign. There’s more. A different former high-ranking
law enforcement official, not my guy mentioned above, but another outstanding
officer, who knew Assistant Chief Dixon, and who is white, said that was
exactly what Dixon did do, play the role of House Negro at APD headquarters. Not that
there’s anything wrong with that. There’s more. This
is, like, the <i>bomb</i>. Literally the only proof you need to vote thumbs down on Chief Dixon as a candidate to lead our department. After Dixon left for Denton, and as Acevedo
was leaving for Houston, and the Police Association was pushing for the
appointment of Acevedo’s number two guy, Brian Manley, the white guy who was chief
of staff, to get the top job, which he did, and just retired from, after a little <i>push</i> by City Council—Police Association President Ken Casaday said that if it
weren’t for Manley, who APA was supporting, the Association would have backed Frank Dixon for the top
job. Which is, like, <i>all you need to know</i> about Chief Dixon’s
suitability for office. Without even asking are you now or have you ever been,
you feel me? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">A
second former APD assistant chief, Jessica Robledo, who is a gay Latina, was
described by my #2 guy above in the same breath with Frank Dixon, as someone who
used her identity as a way up the chain of command. Without much
concern for what was going on around her. (Chief Robledo, who was just fired in a suburban Austin community for supposedly creating a “toxic” atmosphere in her department,
could not be reached to ask if she sold out.) And this is, again, in
the Stalinist model—which may not seem fair but <i>does</i> have a certain
logic—because of one fundamental question. How can you rise as a minority officer
in a racist and sexist organization like the Austin Police Department (which
has been responsible for dozens of <i>killings</i> of minorities through the
years, mostly black men but Latinos as well) unless you’re
turning a blind eye? Lucky for us here in the Live Music Capital of the World, there’s a good chance that Chief Chacon is made of
different stuff. And that times have changed, especially since his appointment
as assistant chief, when he first got that office on the fifth floor.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The
same high-level former officer first mentioned above, My Guy #1 we can call
him, even though he is not a supporter of Acting Chief Chacon—and believes Joseph Chacon should <i>not</i> get the job permanently, because there needs to be an
outsider to come in and clean out the stables. My</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> GUY #2 still urged caution in
believing any last-minute bombshells about the Acting Chief. “Because once you get
to that level, [people] are looking for shit to throw at you, to see what
sticks.” Don’t you love this town? Also, he said, after a quarter century at the pig pen, no matter how studious his manner Chief Chacon has pissed off </span><i style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">a lot
of people </i><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">who might like nothing better than to torpedo his career. And
there’s just the ordinary random chance that he has stepped in shit, doing his job, in
Homicide or in Intelligence, maybe out on date night with the FBI, who aren’t
helping your grandmother to cross the street either. Or there’s something he saw or heard
on the fifth floor. Chief Acevedo once said in an interview on the </span><i style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">eighth</i><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
floor, btw, because that’s where the big guy or big girl has his or her office,
that it was his job to know the city’s secrets. Acting Chief Chacon already knows
whatever it is that City Hall hides from the public, security measures, wrongdoing by the silicon elites, or by the cops themselves. Chief Chacon knows all that already, whether he gets the permanent title or not. And as a way to smear him, someone might point at the white officer
who supervised Joseph Chacon on the Homicide Detail, a guy named Spangler, who was later
in charge of training at the police academy where a lot of the racism in the
department has apparently originated. Can you hold that against Acting Chief Chacon?
No. That would be </span><i style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">guilt by association</i><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">, which is where the Stalinist
model breaks down. Unless it's the </span><i style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Police</i><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> Association, that would be one association you<i> </i></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><i>can</i> condemn. With a cop, you mostly want to look at his or
her record. The Acting Chief’s is impressive enough.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">There is actually proof that Joseph Chacon <i>has</i> gotten in trouble before,
as a young officer, btw, which makes him human and is somehow reassuring. The
incident comes from a time before he arrived in Austin, when he was a patrolman
in his hometown of El Paso, back, back in the day. We’re talking 1995, a quarter-century ago, more. So, like,
he has a letter of written reprimand in his file at El Paso P.D. How cool is
that? And it’s a beautiful thing, not to get all sentimental or anything. The Chief
of Police who actually wrote the letter to young Patrolman Chacon was <i>muy</i>
pissed off, you might say. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">This
was not one paragraph, don’t do it again. It was half a page, you fucked up big time.
So, like, the circumstances were that Officer Chacon had restrained a prisoner in a patrol car but not tightly enough to stop the guy from kicking out a window, breaking glass that cut Chacon’s partner. Imagine how different that
scenario would be in Austin. The complaint would be that the officer kicked the
shit out of the prisoner, or slammed his head into the hood of the patrol car.
Or shot an unarmed suspect running away. Or shot an unarmed suspect standing still. Officer Chacon’s error was <i>not using enough</i> force instead of too
much. That could mean difficult days ahead on the fifth floor.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p></p>
<iframe height="480" src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o19ZRz0hg5CrpX9Zlf66UMI4YTxfcs_A/preview" width="640"></iframe>Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-85737096434413421232021-05-18T14:28:00.828-07:002023-09-07T17:22:22.389-07:00The Uvalde Negro Trap<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTg1MCvzRmMQpYIQKyYqgrRMK5eFHMiWHmN2MKnHmrIQRQSLsFx9Ui09zuTgkxh85MlG_ptRIxIS18kK-ldsRLQmy5PO10QqUBjF9xIOpw_IIumSOCfV37wPaXJJFCYBIsXZ-BfRXnzZt01Yox3WnwwnuP4A0wRq1kii-bnoDFuXbrX21wGsqryr2F/s680/uvalde-county-map-2016.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="618" data-original-width="680" height="361" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTg1MCvzRmMQpYIQKyYqgrRMK5eFHMiWHmN2MKnHmrIQRQSLsFx9Ui09zuTgkxh85MlG_ptRIxIS18kK-ldsRLQmy5PO10QqUBjF9xIOpw_IIumSOCfV37wPaXJJFCYBIsXZ-BfRXnzZt01Yox3WnwwnuP4A0wRq1kii-bnoDFuXbrX21wGsqryr2F/w454-h361/uvalde-county-map-2016.jpg" width="454" /></a></div> <p></p><p> <span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The daughter of a
friend of mine was stopped and searched for marijuana on her way to or from Garner
State Park, the most popular Lone Star camping site. A short time later another
friend also en route to Garner had a scary interaction with a state trooper in Leakey (pronounced “lakey”) in Real County (pronounced “re-al”) that borders
Uvalde. Some small communities have mala fama for being speed traps, generating
municipal revenue from fines for bogus tickets after bogus stops, including the
infamous Mustang Ridge outside Austin. Doesn’t seem a far stretch that speed
traps have been replaced by weed traps in which small town cops, recognizing
that traffic is coming from our fair capital city—which has a reputation for a
liberal attitude towards the sacred herb—might decide to push the limits of
probable cause in order to make a bust. Or a seizure.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My first call was to Real County Sheriff Nathan Johnson and he pretty much put an end to that speculation. Sheriff Johnson runs a small shop, himself and four
deputies, and he said that his primary concern is protecting life and property
and the last time he even charged anyone with possession of pot, the individual
was arrested for something else and the weed became an add-on. Looking
at Sheriff Johnson's training transcript, on file with the State of Texas,
he has a certificate in hypnotism—take that for what it’s worth. He said
that the only way to know that a vehicle is not from his county is not by looking at
the plate from behind but looking instead at the vehicle head on, and close, to
see the inspection sticker, which can be difficult to do at a high closing
speed like two cars approaching on a farm to market road. Which was not totally convincing because
anyone who has ever lived in a small town knows that local cops know which
vehicles they pass on the road belong to locals and which do not because they
know the vehicles themselves. Be that as
it may. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The sheriff seemed
like a decent guy, he had used grant money, he said, to equip his officers with
body cameras, something there has been, one presumes, no rush to do in much of small-town
Texas. He said that tourism is a big part of Real County’s economy with cabins
that rent out along the bucolic Frio River—a body of water that also attracts
campers to Garner State Park. Although he has a responsibility to enforce the
law, Sheriff Johnson would not be a very popular elected official </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">if he started
arresting people coming to relax and spend money. During a
pandemic. And this was crucial: he said that his seized asset account, which
has made law enforcement a lot of money recently, again, especially in
small-town Texas, is only about $6000, unchanged over the last few years.
Besides that, Real County is literally an outlier, you might say—if you’re
going to Garner State Park. Never having been there myself. Sheriff Johnson’s jurisdiction is on
the </span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">scenic </i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">route to Garner State Park from Austin, along U.S.
83 through Fredricksburg and Johnson City, where LBJ graduated high school, btw, then Junction and south to Leakey and finally Uvalde County. You don’t have to
enter the city of Uvalde if you’re going to the park although many visitors do,
to buy supplies. Most people going to the park don’t use this long route
and, instead, just take I-35 south to San Antonio and U.S. 90 west to Uvalde.
Before talking further to the local authorities, about the possibility of a weed trap,
it seemed prudent to check </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">police</span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> profiling data</i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> regarding
who is being stopped in that area of the State of Texas.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Legislature has
mandated that reports be submitted every year by sheriffs and police
departments. Real County’s numbers were completely uninteresting but the
jurisdiction that stopped my friend’s daughter, Uvalde P.D., showed a single
incredible statistic. The profiling report released by the
Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, which is custodian of the data, showed
that in the years 2019 and 2020, Uvalde police stopped over 11,000 African
American drivers total, more than whites <i>or</i> Latinos, in a part
of South Texas, hard by the banks of the mighty Rio Grande, that is by far and away
majority-Latino and where black people are few and far between. 11,188 to be exact. <i>Hmmm</i>.
My next call was to Ruben Nolasco, just elected Sheriff of Uvalde, Texas, by 60
votes. First his numbers: Sheriff Nolasco said that his county includes all of Garner State Park and has a population of about
26,000—90 percent are Latino, about 9 percent white and less than 1 percent
black. He is especially familiar with the last demographic, he said, because
his daughter is married to a black guy and the sheriff himself is Latino in a
county where white men have long held sway over their brown brothers and sisters. Although
Sheriff Nolasco, who is Republican, did not say that about white men holding
sway. Nor did he say that he served as a deputy sheriff before being elected to
the top job, but he did—he's from South Texas and he is unaware of any
profiling in his jurisdiction and considers it unlikely for a couple of reasons, first being, as
mentioned by the Real County sheriff, stopping people who are coming to spend
money in your county would not be much liked by local businesspeople. He
said that there<i> is</i> a problem on the roads of Uvalde but
he described that as “I.A.’s” or illegal aliens who have crossed the border
with the help of traffickers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The sheriff said for example,
during our chat, that a chase of a suspected trafficker had just been called
off in Uvalde for fear of endangering the public or the people in the vehicle.
His counterpart in Real County also mentioned this dynamic and said that state
troopers, from the Texas Department of Public Safety, who are normally assigned
to counties across the state, like his own, have been “pushed” to the
Rio Grande to deal with the immigrant surge, leaving areas that don’t directly border
Mexico understaffed by troopers. Putting pressure on understaffed sheriff
offices. Some of Governor Abbott’s complaints about chaos at the border are
valid, in other words, although Sheriff Nolasco didn’t say that either, but presumably
would have, if asked. “Some people believe,” he told me, without indicating if he
is one of some people, “that the I.A.’s are being allowed into Texas to
vote for one particular party.” That aside he seemed like a decent
guy too, like Sheriff Johnson, and his assertion that there is a lot going on
in South Texas right now for law enforcement that does <i>not</i> involve
black people seems, you know, </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.3333px;">credible</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There’s in fact<i> </i>too much going on in South Texas or
Southwest Texas, or Proto-West Texas, wherever the fuck Uvalde is, and the idea
that law enforcement is taking time out to stop black motorists, by the
thousands, on U.S. Highway 90, seems far-fetched but<i> not impossible</i>. This is a Southern state.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Talking to NAACP officials is always helpful
for context, if the subject involves Negritude. These guys and girls
know the culture and the law, especially policing. Gary Bledsoe, president of
the Texas NAACP, said that he had not heard of problems for black motorists in
the Garner State Park area but he also recalled for me the case of the San
Jacinto County Sheriff, in East Texas, back in the not too distant day, who was
arrested by the FBI for stopping motorists on U.S. 59 and scamming them or
filing false charges. Houston NAACP President James Douglas, who is a law
professor, recalled his own experience in an East Texas speed trap where the
posted highway speed suddenly changed to a lower residential one and “they give
you about thirty yards to slow down.” He had not heard, he said, of any
problems in the western part of the state although he noted that I-10, which
goes through Houston, parallels U.S. 90 near Uvalde, and is often used by black
families going to California to visit relatives. Richard Watkins, a former
prison warden from East Texas who also served as president of the NAACP in
Huntsville, home of the state prison system, years ago raised a warning about a particular problem in his own Walker County and its pineywoods
surroundings that may also be a concern now in the scrubland of Uvalde. The
problem, per Warden Watkins, is that a major highway passes through Huntsville,
something that speed traps often have in common. A highway is the setting
for the crime, not the backwoods cracker-sheriff action you see in movies. He said that in many of the cases of minorities who are
illegally pulled over on highways, you never hear about the bad stop because
the drivers keep going and do not stay or spend the night to complain in the
morning. Cops know that, that's the theory at least. It may be borne out by
research as well. “The only hard and fast rule—don’t look at census data as a
denominator. The people who drive in an area,” said Professor Geoffrey Alpert,
who studies police profiling at the University of South Carolina’s Department
of Criminology, “are not the ones who live there, except in small towns.” Which
is Uvalde too. A small town. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Richard Watkins, the
former prison warden, said that he used to hunt in Uvalde County, near the huge Briscoe Ranch, back in the day, and some of the worst racist rhetoric he
has ever heard comes now from that part of the state, from native-born or native-bred Latinos bitching about refugees. The part of bigot was previously played
by powerful white men in South Texas and the targets of their abuse were also Latinos.
In fact, one of the last great patrónes in Lone Star history was from Uvalde, Dolph Briscoe, among the last Democrats to be governor before the Republican flood, you could call it, nearly half a century ago—except
Ann Richards’ brief term in office. Governor Briscoe’s ranch in Uvalde is far far far bigger than Garner State Park, btw. Actually, Uvalde has a pretty piss poor reputation for civil rights, not to be judgmental, due to men like Dolph Briscoe, we won’t go into that here, but mostly
due to white oppression & white exploitation. Call it white privilege. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The park itself is named after Cactus Jack Garner, who started his political career as Uvalde County Judge and rose to be Vice President of the United States under FDR. Cactus Jack was a previous generation's Big Daddy in South Texas, like Dolph Briscoe. The incumbent Big Daddy <i>appears </i>to be a white guy named Bill Mitchell who is Uvalde County Judge and who has held the position since <i>1987</i>, almost four decades, and just announced his plans to run for reelection in 2022. You couldn't make it up. This time, with Uvalde P.D., it would be Latinos trying to
take advantage of the noble black man and noble black woman, however. Which would be hurtful if true. My feeling, knowing the
police as only an African American male can, studying them from my earliest
days of grade school cognition, during both wanted and unwanted interactions—cops,
especially small town cops? Stopping black people systematically seems too much like work. Especially for Latinos which is a description of
most of Uvalde P.D. Again not to stereotype or anything. Black cops might do the same thing but only if the money was really really really good.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">White cops, no, you
couldn’t say that because police work can be an extension of white privilege,
not to go all Critical Theory on you or anything.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Latinos—except when
dealing with other Latinos, for example people coming across the Rio Grande without
papers—are not into brown privilege or whatever, generically-speaking. Usually. Unless there’s
something in it for the police department or for the individual officer, like a
shakedown of some kind, which is not beyond the realm of possibility in Uvalde
or anywhere else. There’s another reason to be careful about accepting the accuracy of a high number of black stops. Dr. Gregory Hudspeth, president of
the San Antonio chapter of the NAACP said that it’s prudent first to review
the Uvalde data for the possibility of <i>software/data entry errors</i>.
He also said that I-10, on which many families—many African American as well as every other kind of family—journey
to or from California, as mentioned by the Houston NAACP president, and
which also passes through other heavily black communities like New Orleans and
Tallahassee: Dr. Hudspeth said, well, “I just take I-10.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Because taking U.S. 90
out of San Antonio instead of I-10, choosing in other words to pass through
Uvalde, it’s a <i>scenic</i> route too, whether you’re going to
Cali or to Houston, and not much used by black people. This is going to
sound totally racist but actually has grounding in other stats. Not the police
profiling kind. According to figures from the Texas Parks and Wildlife
Department, which operates Garner State Park, blacks are the least likely ethnic
group to use the campsites, at Garner apparently or anywhere else. You
may say, well, U.S. 90 is still a more scenic way to go west, to Cali, but the problem with that theory is that 90 leads to </span><i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial italic",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Marfa</span></i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
where, having been there and not seen another black face</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.3333px;">—</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;">and Big Bend National Park which is just as unlikely to be popular with black people as Garner State Park</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.3333px; text-indent: 0.5in;">—</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">it’s just not a big attraction to the black peeps,
you feel me? The scenic route as defined by white people.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Black people don't drive to Marfa to see the Marfa lights. Black families don't just suddenly wake up on Saturday morning and decide to go camping either, it's a decision that would have to be discussed and voted upon in family councils months if not years in advance. Not the way white or Latino families apparently do, not to stereotype or anything. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My doubt about
Uvalde’s profiling numbers is therefore fundamental—not just doubting
that Uvalde P.D. stopped 11,000 black motorists in the last two years but also
questioning whether there have even been 11,000 black motorists passing through
Uvalde to stop, on their way to or from Marfa or Garner State Park or Big Bend. My
view—and, again this may sound totally racist, but only to the uninitiated. My
view is that given our history of agricultural labor out-of-doors, and in the
heat of day, back in the day, today the average black Texan would much prefer to spend his or her leisure time inside
with the AC on. And if we’re going to Cali by car, we’re on I-10 because it’s
faster and fuck Marfa and fuck the Marfa Lights. That means, coincidentally,
giving Uvalde a miss too. My friend whose daughter was searched for weed is white, btw, and you know that because if she were black her daughter wouldn't be going camping at Garner. “I can guarantee you that it’s a data entry
error,” said Mike Hernandez, who is former Uvalde P.D., presently a school cop
and was the Democrat who lost to Ruben Nolasco for Uvalde County Sheriff by those 60 votes. Lieutenant
Hernandez said there’s a lot of other police action going on in South Texas right now that
does not involve stopping black motorists. But it’s hard to ignore
the numbers, especially since the Uvalde <i>puercos</i>, given opportunities
to disavow the stats, did not.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<br />
<!--EndFragment--><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtBbjxI-v02O5lfNxfK-DpsdYGB2my_P9DHzdXrwHpdE-_vgKW8HfmgUjg83amwgxOyQfqCvbFUP9Oe3nKutZj0T5u8QZrREXqDu5zj9x_PEWbbo8T40pOcxJTVJJ57aVcqNYBrUq_7lU/s2000/Texas_Outdoor_Recreation_Participation_TORP2017_FINAL+%2528dragged%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="2000" height="368" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtBbjxI-v02O5lfNxfK-DpsdYGB2my_P9DHzdXrwHpdE-_vgKW8HfmgUjg83amwgxOyQfqCvbFUP9Oe3nKutZj0T5u8QZrREXqDu5zj9x_PEWbbo8T40pOcxJTVJJ57aVcqNYBrUq_7lU/w400-h368/Texas_Outdoor_Recreation_Participation_TORP2017_FINAL+%2528dragged%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-41449485829959824192021-03-09T17:25:00.269-08:002023-09-10T21:01:15.767-07:00Exile on Lavaca Street<p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif"> <o:p></o:p></span>From my perch on Lavaca Street, across the street from the University of Texas campus, the pandemic is playing out on the sidewalk. There are all these middle-aged black men coming around the corner of my block, from a church and presumably a hot meal. They're wearing backpacks or carrying duffel bags. They don’t look healthy and the number of these gentlemen is growing. This perch or this window is an isolated view of downtown but revealing nonetheless. It has been occupied, by me, in the late afternoon, maybe three days a week for the past ten weeks. Almost exactly since the lockdown began. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in;"> This is not at all a scientific survey but my guess is that the number of destitute African-American men is growing. No women, or not many, and not to buttress City Hall’s denial that there is a problem, some of these brothers look like they could be small town folks, from Bastrop or even Milam County, somewhere rural. They're walking the big city sidewalk by circumstance not desire unless there is a part of old black East Austin that continued to resist, until recently, the onslaught of white Hipsters. Black people from an older era you might call them, when Afro-Texans had one foot in town and another in the country. A way of life that may have suddenly come to an end with the arrival of COVID-19 but was already disappearing due to gentrification. Anyway, seeing the homeless, it’s a hard decision to know who to give money to actually. Most of these brothers appear equally needy and are, more or less, the age group of 40 to 65 and black male, a description that includes me. So, like, a white homeless guy asked me for money a couple of days ago. And my answer was no. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">The guy was kind of a jerk really, he got insistent, cracker privlidge, standing in front of <i>my</i> perch, you know how white people can be. He said that everyone he had asked that day for money lied and said they didn’t have any when clearly they did. He said my denial was a lie too which it was. He said that you can tell who has money and who doesn’t, he kind of got into a poor white revolutionary dialectic after that, which was kind of cool actually although he was not. This guy looked like a country boy too, btw, who had fucked up everything he touched in his entire life but it was always somebody else’s fault.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">With an attitude too, not to be judgmental on my part. This white boy was maybe from some small-town East Texas pisspot, like the brothers on the sidewalk maybe were too. But the brothers were noble in their demeanor while he was not. Maybe people in pandemic are blowing west, like during the Dust Bowel, onward to Cali like the Great Depression or some historic shit like that? </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">There must be a migration going on because it’s always different guys blowing by, at least on Lavaca Street, here in this bucolic River City. They're mostly black and my age group which is doubly concerning, you know? So, like, regarding charity, my feeling as an African American is that if my budget allows five dollars that day as a direct donation to the poor, or the dispossessed, it’s not going to a white guy from Butt Fucking Texas, B.F.T., the five dollars is going to the black guy or black girl from B.F.T. Call that racist if you will. Because the white guying me a liar was born to privilege, you might say, no matter how hard his life may have been since then. White women are my second least likely awardees after white guys, to be honest although she gets extra points for being a woman because it's harder to be a woman, especially homeless. Most of my giving is to people of color, men as well as women. That's my revolutionary dialectic, actually. But the white homeless guy had a point too. Times have changed. So, like, feeling guilty about what he said, even if he suffered from white privilege—a few days later—just after sitting down on my perch, actually—well, a homeless brother came by, across the street, carrying all his shit, all his worldly goods, or whatever, on a pack on his back. Me running after him and calling out, “Do you need help?” like he was on fire? Which was not cool. And he was startled and turned around and said sure, yeah, and he got $6, all ones and gave me a smile.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in;"> During the next ten minutes there were like seven or eight <i>more</i> brothers, coming from the direction of the church, and two stragglers, a white lady and a white guy, but the vast majority black men of a certain age. Which was not a good sign, frankly, from my point of view. And it’s the last of these brothers who will be called to your attention now. He was on my side of the sidewalk and moving south towards the river. To set the scene. He looked literally like death incarnate, worn-out and in a non-sustainable state, actually. Like, all you would have to do is close his eyes and he’d be gone. But he was still trucking along, with his shit, moving at a pretty good pace, actually, they all are, like they’re on their way somewhere important, just came to the university for the food. And he smiled and he said hello to me. Whatever’s going on, however hard times are, you have to have reverence for human spirit. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in;"> But there also need to be consequences, you feel me, not for the guys on the street but for the people who put them there. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in;"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>Someone needs to take responsibility for what has happened and is happening to African-Americans in this city during the pandemic. My favorite candidate is Spencer Cronk and he’s the city manager, actually. Mr. Cronk's pigeons need to come home to roost, you feel me?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">He came from Minneapolis, a city recently much in the news and in a bad way, that has a strong-mayor system of government, unlike our own that has a strong city manager. To set the scene again. And since arriving on the scene here in the Live Music Capital of the World, Mr. Cronk has struggled to establish better outcomes for minorities, especially regarding the police and use of violence against the black and brown communities. More recently in the fight against COVID his efforts towards equity have also fallen short and the result is worse healthcare outcomes for black people—especially Latinos, in this enlightened capital city of the Lone Star State. Spencer Cronk has been at City Hall for two years now, which is long enough to own what happens here. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">Yet according to the City Attorney’s office, in that time the city manager has not received a performance evaluation. <span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">So, like, it’s interesting that of the two most problematic public officials for black people in Austin, Texas, the two guys most responsible for minority disenfranchisement in River City, although there's competition for that honor—best in minority endangerment, you could call it. Are the police chief and his boss, the city manager. Neither has had a performance evaluation in two years, according to Anne Morgan, the City Attorney. There's nothing on paper in other words. But it’s likely that, just in the last few weeks, the city manager has actually killed more people of color through inaction and through incompetence, than Police Chief Brian Manley’s troops have shot, actually, in ten years. This is not a new issue by any means. According to the </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Times</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">, 60% of the victims of Minneapolis police shootings, in the last ten years, a period that includes Spencer Cronk’s three-year tenure in Minneapolis as City Coordinator—as Minneapolis’ chief administrative officer, in other words. 60% were black victims in a municipality that is only 20% black. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Unless he was deaf and </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">blind Mr. Cronk was aware of bad practices during his time in the Midwest, both the police force’s reputation and the deadly reality. Indeed in an interview at the time of his hiring in Minneapolis, in 2014, describing his duties as city coordinator in Minneapolis, he said, speaking of the city fathers, “They were intentional about that word ‘coordinator’ because they really wanted to allow somebody to work with the different city department heads — police, health, civil rights—to coordinate their efforts.” Police, health and civil rights, those are the three areas he has been least successful in Austin too </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">In health care, to continue, regarding the coming of the virus, Spencer Cronk had time that other leaders did not. He saw what was happening on the coasts of the United States at the beginning of the pandemic and did nothing to prepare for an eventuality that he was supposed to know would affect minorities most. Our health is already worse than whites' in this city and nationwide. He's been here two years, in a big, rich, increasingly wired (not weird) metropolis, where the minority population has not received equitable treatment in the past, including health care, schools and infrastructure. To say nothing of the courts and the pigs.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">Yet warnings about the lack of COVID testing in poor and minority neighborhoods are unheeded. Warnings that data on differential effects of the pandemic on the poor and minorities in Austin were not tracked or the results were buried. Warnings about especially worse outcomes in black and Latino communities were not provided to the public until relatively recently, after dozens of deaths and thousands of cases. In other words the city manager has a record, whether his performance has been evaluated by the mayor and City Council or not. Spencer Cronk knew in Minneapolis what was really happening with police, just as he knows what's really happening here in public health. And what are the chances he's going to make any more of a difference in Austin than he did in Minneapolis?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in;"> He is used to seeing minorities in a dependent and disadvantaged position, in other words. Whether from police actions, land use rewrites or even in the realm of health care. And he does nothing. He is a white male, this would be my sociological argument, as seen thru a psychosocial lens, who was brought up in circumstances of white male privilege and who lacks empathy for those unlike himself. He also lacks the cognitive ability to serve the poor. Every time those gentleman pass my perch, on Lavaca Street. Reaching in my pocket for a few bills, my anger turns on Mr. Cronk and what he has not done and is not doing.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0in;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<!--EndFragment-->Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-64943375121661924012020-08-13T13:53:01.306-07:002023-09-24T20:29:01.494-07:00Talking Black and Sleeping White<p> <span face="calibri, sans-serif" lang="" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> Christine Nix is a criminal justice professor but in another life she was the first black female Texas Ranger. In that position as a member of Company F </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">stationed </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">in Waco—she did a variety of investigations. F</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">rom old-fashioned murder to political corruption to God-knows-what-else. She also served the State of Texas as a de facto Uncle Tom, not to be judgmental</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> of her or her record</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">. Accommodation in some way or shape or form—to the white power structure</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> in Texas and elsewhere in these United States</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">—aka, The Man—is a given of everyday life for black people. The question is not if,<i> </i>but how much? </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">No matter how you slice it, Ranger Nix stepped over a proverbial line and became a “Tom”—although Uncle Tom is not actually the proper term for a black woman who allies herself with The Man. Males are Toms—not to be politically correct or anything, but </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">officially </i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">and in precise terms of black liberation dogma, not to be dogmatic. Ranger Nix was a badge-and-gun carrying <i>Aunt Jemima</i>, for the State of Texas, up in God’s country, McLennan County, Waco, Texas. </span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> During</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> a radio interview with <i>In Black America </i>a few years ago, for example, Ranger Nix claimed that she was never treated with anything but respect by her peers</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">. </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><i>Please. </i>There are two things to know about that. The Associated Press reported, years before the radio interview, that two white male Rangers were disciplined for calling her a bitch and a nigger and for criticizing her marriage to a white man. If Ranger Nix didn’t know about any of that, she was the worst detective in the world. Second, the two white men in question continued in the Ranger Service, <i>no problema</i>, that's the kind of people the Rangers are. Not to be judgmental. She said the highest praise another officer had given her was his willingness to go through a door, to serve a warrant, with her because he would know Christine Nix had his back. </span></p><p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><span> <span> </span></span>There were also her own efforts to brand herself as a traitor to the race and the overall goal of black liberation, however. Not to be judgmental again. She spoke to</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><i> In Black America</i> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">about her pride in having attempted, back, years before</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> in Company F, to get a black male suspect sentenced to death, not because he was black but because he was <i>guilty. </i>His color in a racially-challenged Southern court system being, apparently, immaterial to her consideration of his crime. She recalled in the interview that she was unsuccessful in “getting him the needle,” as Ranger Nix</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> so quaintly put it. </span></p><p><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">It was in Ranger Nix's best interests after her service to the State of Texas to protect </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">the institution of the Texas Rangers</i><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">, who have traditionally been the Lone Star race police, not just hunters and killers of Bonnie and Clyde but also of niggers and Mexicans. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>The Rangers were the ones who did the State of Texas’s killing, especially of Native Americans, not that that’s an issue here. The Rangers are, actually, the North American continent’s oldest and most racially-challenged police agency, Christine Nix served 10 years among the same group of almost exclusively white men that used to shoot across the border at Mexican civilians just for the hell of it and has, rhetorically-speaking, killed almost as many black people as fried food. Nix’s identity as a Texas Ranger—the first black female, lest we forget—became more important to who she is today than her identity as a black woman in the South has been. Ditto the first black male Ranger who also claimed that he never experienced any racial animus in the agency and who, critically, later worked as a private investigator in Dallas, in his post-Ranger career, trading heavily on his identity as an elite detective and cowboy, not no ordinary nigger. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><span><span><span><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span> </span></span></span>More recently there is David Armstrong—with Company B, outside Dallas. Company D is the most sketchy of the Ranger units, by the way. Each Company has its own personality, its own profile so to speak, its own rap sheet also. Company B in Garland, these were the guys—operating out of Garland then as today—running Jack Ruby, as a snitch, before the Kennedy assassination, and are considered more diabolical even than the guys in Headquarters Company of the Texas Rangers that covers Austin and keeps a protective eye on the Legislature and Governor. Anyway, Sergeant Armstrong of Company B is called in after controversial shootings of black people by police agencies, as an internal affairs service the Rangers provide to local law enforcement. As if David Armstrong’s presence at the scene assures a fair investigation from the State of Texas which it most certainly does not. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">“I don’t believe that [the shooting] was reckless or criminally negligent,”Ranger Armstrong, following in Christine Nix's footsteps as the Ranger's house nigger, famously testified last year at the trial of white Dallas Police Officer Amber Guyger. W</span></span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">ho shot dead an African-American man in his own home after she entered the wrong apartment and was surprised to find a Negro living there. Remember now? “Based on the totality of the investigation and the circumstances and facts,” Ranger Armstrong explained to the court, hoping to get Amber Guyger a walk. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">In other words, not to be rude but to be descriptive, he’s a Tom</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">—</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">because the State of Texas keeps Toms on the payroll, often wearing Ranger’s stars</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">—</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">in case of emergency. In the historical perspective, then, who is an Uncle Tom </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">and who is not is particularly pertinent today, in these times of open revolt, post the murder of George Floyd. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">There is the officially designated other team, in this case The White Man and his mate, the recently-identified Karen, who has roamed amongst us unidentified </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">lo these many years. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Most to be feared are </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">our own nominal allies, the race traitors </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">who may look exactly like us but are pushing The Man's Agenda. Not to go all Critical Theory on you or anything.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> T</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">hese Uncle Toms and Aunt Jemimas undermine positive change because it’s in their best personal interests to do so</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> not because it's the right thing to do. As one might explain as part of a critical race dialectic. As a practical matter these Uncle Toms can be just as dangerous as the damn Klan. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Ra</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">ce traitors—Fifth Columnists, as they were called in the Spanish Civil War, are the Tio Tacos and Jemimas today. You can also say banana, if you are of a mind to, yellow on the outside & white on the inside, don’t forget the damn bananas, that's my view. In this most recent conflict, terminology is as important as ideology. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> Uncle Tom has been known by a number of names throughout post-Civil War history, including the unisex handkerchief head which is not much used </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">today </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">but is unusually descriptive. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">One assumes that the first Toms were descended from house niggers during actual slavery but there's no need to go there. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">House nigger technically—in </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">contemporary </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">revolutionary usage, in my modest view as a liberated black man—describes a different dynamic altogether. The term Tom arose <i>after</i> Emancipation and can be used by the uninitiated for a unisex handkerchief head-like condemnation. We are not picky as a </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">race</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">. There’s also <i>oreo</i>—like the cookie but not capitalized, please. Whose usage relates to the popular cookie’s </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">famous </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">structure—black on the outside and white on the inside. But y</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">ou already knew that.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> Minority police officers like Ranger Nix and Ranger </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Armstrong are particularly prone to becoming Toms, that seems clear</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">. That’s a premise of mine actually, that black cops easily rationalize their betrayal—because they don’t think they’re sleeping with the enemy, “sleeping white” in the vernacular, they think they’re sleeping <i>blue</i>, you feel me? We digress.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> S</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">ome of these pigs have transformed their primary identity as black men and black women into primarily being cops, you know? One also hear the more colloquial </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 18.6667px;">“</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">pig,</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 18.6667px;">”</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> a term that it is my thesis is <i>not really pejorative</i> or not nearly </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">pejorative enough. With ideology and terminology accounted for, we can now turn to what, it also seems clear, is actually the most salient factor in race betrayal today—sex—love and marriage. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">F</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">irst, we must dispose of perhaps the oldest and most racist trope in American history, that of the “pussyhound” black male, obsessed with bedding white women. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> We <i>are</i> occupied with bedding white women, that's true, but only for revolutionary reasons, clearly. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Not merely to bust the proverbial nut, so to speak, instead </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">in aid of </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">genuine revolutionary purpose. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> The truth can now be told. T</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">hrough this more accurate lens, heroic African-American men have risked their lives to take down white <i>chicks</i> as well as white men. As part of a critical race dialectic. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> These brothers can now be celebrated for their willingness to attack The Man—who controls the police, the army <i>and</i> the political process, who has most of the money and all of the Ivy League and most of American academia at his command. To attack the man on the only front where white guys have been vulnerable, for the longest time</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 18.6667px;">—</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">in the <i>boudoir</i>. Instead of being Uncle Toms, bowing before the superiority of white pussy</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 18.6667px;">—these so-called 60-Minute Men have been</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> called “unfaithful” or faithless by our their fine black women. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> But now the African-American player can be recognized by history for what he has done to white women in bed</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 18.6667px;">—</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">endowed with a big dick <i>and </i>revolutionary purpose</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: medium;">. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">60 Minute Men have managed so successfully to alienate many white female affections from white men, denying The Man a chance to spread his seed. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">This heightened sexual response to white women, much maligned even by our own sisters—has <i>never</i> been about mere sexual gratification. Perish the fucking thought, you feel me? Instead it can now be revealed as <i>part of an effort</i></span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><i> to</i></span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><i> bind white DNA</i> in order to deny procreative resources to Caucasian men. That is the ideological rationale in the mind of the liberated black male during a booty call with a white chick, married or unmarried, it’s like a reverse boycott and basically involves </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">moving your hips</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">. Far from being Uncle Toms</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 18.6667px;">—</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">talking black and sleeping white in the revolutionary vernacular</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 18.6667px;">—</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">African-American men have actually used BBC to strike a blow for equality. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> This leads, however, in terms of revolutionary orthodoxy and in the interests of gender equality, women's liberation being </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">part of</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> our struggle for civil rights, to an examination of what appears to be a growing tendency of black <i>women </i>to partner with white men. Like the aforementioned Ranger Nix of Company F. Are these sisters merely Aunt Jemimas? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> Are they race traitors too, just as so many faithless brothers have been accused?</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> In the case of mixed couples in which the woman is black </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">a <i>revolutionary lens can</i> be used that allows us to identify the unfaithful, such as they are, just as women have said of black men, not to repeat myself. Not to say the word <i>hypocrisy</i>. Those </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">who are more interested in achieving success by marrying it than in the progress of the black peeps, through The Struggle. Not to lay a guilt trip on anyone but these Toms and Jemimas must be identified and opprobrium heaped. What's s</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">auce for the gander i</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">s</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> sauce for the goose</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">. The best example is taken from today’s headlines. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Of the three black women who were seen as primary candidates for Vice President Joe Biden’s running mate, to be elected the next Vice President of the United States, none of the three chose to pair with a black man in her personal life. Which requires an examination of ideology, in the black liberation context, just as African-American men have undergone examination in the past for hitting all that white booty. Not to repeat myself.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> Would Barack Obama have been the Barack Obama we know if his wife was not Michelle Obama and instead a white </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">chick? </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">My premise is no. But </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Barack </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Obama </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">belongs to</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> a prior generation, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">though he is still a young man he’s kind of </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><i>Old School</i>, really, in this respect, what worked with him may not work now. Senator Kamala Harris and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice both married white men. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Nothing in the professional history of the good Dr. Rice, whose ancestry is Caribbean, like Harris's</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 18.6667px;">—</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">not slave descendants like Dr. King or Malcolm X</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> or like me. Yet n</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 18.6667px;">o evidence </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">leads to an accusation of race betrayal. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> In the case of Senator </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Harris</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> her history as a prosecutor combined with her choice for the marriage bed <i>might </i>lead to further scrutiny, come the revolution. Pairing with Caucasians is not a single all-powerful consideration in </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">black </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">revolutionary ideology but must be viewed in a wider context, through various lenses. Sometimes it takes a cracker, like the white male Rangers who criticized Ranger Nix, to point it out. Biology also plays a part. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> While noble black men like myself have been willing to risk the threats of white fathers, and even white husbands, in order to bind DNA from multiple white chicks—black women are often choosing <i>one</i> attractive white male candidate, to marry, and thus deny one or more Karens access to potential breeding stock. As part of a critical race dialectic of course. W</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">hether intended or not</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">. Whether this stratagem is in the best interests of civil rights remains to be seen. Which brings us back to the noble black man. Among the top of the ticket candidates, there is Kanye West, who is also married to a Caucasian but he has publicly expressed regret for his choice of a white wife. The assumption that he is ill does not mean he doesn't feel used by the corporation, Kardashian Inc. Nor can he be accused of talking black and sleeping white, which might be said, wrongly, of Senator Harris. The conservative Kanye is in fact <i>talking </i>white and</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> sleeping white too. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> Of the two greatest race traitors in American history, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, neither was talking black and sleeping white that we know. But the enormity of their crimes (</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">General </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Powell for buying false intelligence and </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Secretary </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Rice for selling it) led to the deaths of tens of thousands of colored people and eclipsed anything except slavery that ordinary Toms have done here in the USA. It’s been policing however that has offered some of the most illustrative accusations of exploitation of people of color, by the pigs, in exchange for advancement. But “talking black and sleeping white” is certainly not only a law and order phenomenon, or a recent one, in historical terms. I</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">n summary </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">while </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">the revolution must be a school of unfettered thought, as Fidel Castro told us, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">it cannot be </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">a school of unfettered action. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">There must be consequences. Cancel culture is a good thing. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Because one has to take responsibility for one’s shit and keep one’s shit clean and aboveboard, or one might get cancelled tomorrow</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">, </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">if you’ve behaved as a counter-revolutionary</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> or a racist running dog, to paraphrase Mao, or a Uncle Tom or Aunt Jemima or Tio Taco to quote everybody else</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">. Self-criticism is always called for. Why did you sell out and <i>what did you get out of it</i> are legitimate questions, in the correct dialectic. What we’ve seen the last few months is just the warmup for what must come</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">, if viewed t</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">hrough a revolutionary lens.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> Come the revolution—if the revolution comes—there must be revolutionary justice</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Cancel Culture on steroids</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">, you could say. T</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">rials and sentences, perhaps time to spend in re-education in the countryside a la the Cultural Revolution or in Siberia a la Joe Stalin. You're not cancelling people for what they've done, you're outing them to make sure they don't do it again. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Making sure that everyone knows they are responsible for their own shit, not to repeat myself. "</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Talking black and sleeping white." Should a defendant face such a serious charge before a revolutionary tribunal—we will allow </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">an affirmative defense, a possible out. Those who are suspected of infidelity to the cause can claim radical purpose for sleeping with the enemy. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span face="calibri, sans-serif" lang="" style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p><span face="calibri, sans-serif" lang="" style="font-size: 14pt;"><span> <span> <span> <span> </span></span></span></span></span></p>Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-23858040578898349312020-07-16T15:06:01.265-07:002023-10-14T17:24:41.108-07:00The Auto-Obituary of Lucius X<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang=""><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">During a decades-long
career, noted black revolutionary Lucius X traveled the American South and was
proudest of his service as a newspaper correspondent for the McAllen <i>Monitor</i> in a pisspot town up river from McAllen, Texas, on the Mexican border, called Rio Grande City. It was an experience that X later described as frustrating at the time, only
because the locals thought that he was a narc, who was sent there to report back to pigs in D.C.<i> </i>on the flourishing U.S.-Mexico drug trade.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Rio was a major trans-shipment
point, money going one way and drugs the other, I was actually trying to score some weed for myself most of the time I was there,” he reminisced years later of his time
on the big river. "I asked a trafficker I knew to just let me sweep up the barn after the next load, you know? I knew the mother lode was in reach but no one would
sell to me. That has turned out to be a metaphor for my life.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The only really newsworthy event during his stay in Rio was a shipment of white powder that arrived on the Mexican side of the river and traffickers paid $100 to every man, woman and child in the
village, to carry product from trucks to boats, so that no one could go to the <i>federales</i> later and tell tales. Even <i>abuelita </i>was a mule that day, X recalled fondly. The intrepid young X wrote a human interest story about how people planned to spend the $100 they had earned.
He was 67 at the time of his passing, in Puerto Angel, Oaxaca. He is survived by daughter China
Bates of Salvador da Bahia, and Florianopolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil. His lone
offspring was the result of a brief hook-up in Porto Alegre during the period of X's world travels. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Genetically-unique
from birth Lucius X was <i>tri-testone positive</i>, a rare autosomal-dominant
condition in which a Black Man-Child is born with three large testicles and
inordinate courage. Only six in 14 billion male babies have three big ones. Of
those six, only two will live to mate. Lucius X was <i>one of those</i> <i>Negroes</i>.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This extraordinary
condition has been associated thruout history with African kings. Hannibal, Ramses
II, Shaka Zulu as well as African-American revolutionaries Nat
Turner—Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">All were tri-testonia positive. “I was born
with three and I’ll die with three,” Lucius X told his doctors as a
teenager, when the </span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">medicos</i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> wanted to surgically remove one nut in order to bring him to heel. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This was Lucius X's first refusal to be de-masculated by the White State. </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;">It would not be his last. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;">Without the extra
virility accompanied by a third nut, Lucius X would never
have dared to question the status quo, </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">commentators and doctors agree</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;">. </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;">Efforts by this X-Man
to bring race to the forefront of international dialogue translated into various literary endeavors as well. His one-act play <i>The Pool Man
Cometh, </i>about a black family entering the middle class, just
celebrated its 1,000th performance, in Stockholm after being shunned at home, where X was blacklisted by The Man and The Man's media. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">If one looks thru a race-critical lens.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;">“In schools
black children are the most heavily disciplined, and expelled, so the wounding
starts early and continues until the police give the coup de grace on the street. You feel me? That’s why black men are in such a hurry to have relations with women,” X wrote
in a personal reflection for <i>Esquire.</i> “Not just to bust the
proverbial nut, not for <i>pleasure </i>nor for fame, not to make a cream pie. Not to carve another notch in my gun so to speak, either. But in order to pass on our genetic inheritance before we die </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">in a
hail of gunfire from the pigs.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">On the scientific
front Lucius X predicted the end of skin color as a social distinction within
decades, as optimists have hoped, but its quick replacement by DNA. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">“There are two things a black man can’t allow anybody else to do
for him,” he wrote to his unborn child in the </span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">New Yorker</i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">, “his
fucking and his fighting.”</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> The classic X essay “Dick Don’t Lie” explores the
Black Man’s spiritual relationship with his bone and includes his
famous warning for black men to avoid Caucasian women, as much as possible, if there is other puddy available, because, “White pussy has
killed more niggers than gunfire.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">His </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">“Electric Negro”
speaks to the African-American and technology and was first published in the
U.K. as “The Black Man and the Internet,” in which the prominent social theorist Lucius X predicted the </span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Fall of the White Race </i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">through the unfiltered
protest of the unchained African-American male. He said he wasn't a sexist, "just a realist." </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Lucius X believed that, historically, most oppressors have created the means of their own destruction—in the
case of The White Man, Lucius X believed that Achilles heel is the World Wide Web. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">“Hills Like Black Elephants,” one of his most beloved stories, chronicles two days in the life of a young brother being asked to
deny paternity of his girlfriend’s baby, and is a soliloquy of meditations by this would-be young father, and appears in most credible
anthologies of World Fiction. He liked to read women’s magazines, X famously said, “to know what the enemy is planning.</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">”</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> He saw women fundamentally as competitors. Unless she's really really fine. </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">“</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The fundamental conflict is not
racial,” he wrote in the <i>Times</i>, “it’s sexual and I’m not at all sanguine about men’s
chances. My sense is that women are plotting all the time.” The series of works that best illustrate X's theme was completed late in his life, during his so-called Black Period, and is called by critics and historians, </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.666666984558105px; text-indent: 0.5in;">“The </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Fall of Man.</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.666666984558105px; text-indent: 0.5in;">”</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> The scene of the narrative is deep space, where unfolds X's most
controversial work, the post-Modernist science fiction trilogy, </span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Planet
of the Hos</i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Unfinished at the time
of his death, <i>POH</i> recounts the struggle of a Black Admiral in command of a Federation Star Fleet chasing pirates, who are raiding robot cargo vessels in an outer nebula. To set the scene. The Black Admiral follows stolen cargo to the far outskirts of
the Federation itself—to a planet called Ho, run by women, where men are merely reproductive and used like bee drones, only in service to an
all-powerful Black Queen. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The <i>Times of London </i>has called <i>Planet
of the Hos, </i>“the ultimate work on race and gender in Deep Space.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">X's oeuvre includes the black man's account of his Final Confrontation with white women who want to de-masculinate him, by draining his seed. “The medium is the message but more importantly,” Lucius X wrote in his autobiographic </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><i>Electric Negro Plus</i>, </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.666666984558105px; text-indent: 0.5in;">“t</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">he writer is the story.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Throughout
his career, Lucius X tried to create an authentic Portrait of the Black Male, </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">“</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;">etched in charcoal,</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">”</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;"> as he described his vision, </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.666666984558105px; text-indent: 0.5in;">“</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;">and
painted Black.</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">”</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;"> In terms of his literary oeuvre, Lucius X
is probably best known as author of what many critics consider the greatest
single work of Black Literature—a unique story of human redemption that has
served to light a fuse for an entire generation's struggle. </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nigger on the Run</span></i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;"> is the story of the small-town thug
Flood, the mythic Every Nigger, a petty gangbanger who escapes arrest in
Mississippi, where he’s been robbing supermarkets after parole, and goes to
West Africa and discovers his own Promised Land. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;">To set the scene.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;">Like the author, Flood
has three balls. But unlike the real Lucius X, the antihero Flood lacks the discipline
to deal with the waves of sudden masculinity that eventually destroy him. Only his African experience allows Flood to rise above baser
instincts that he was born with and the sociopathic urges caused by having <i>three big ones</i>. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;">But when he returns to the source of his dysfunction,
Mississippi, Flood is doomed. In this short work Lucius X portrays a
brother </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">“</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;">who achieves Black Liberation not <i>in</i> America
but <i>from</i> America,</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.666666984558105px; text-indent: 0.5in;">”</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;"> according to the <i>Times</i>. Denzel Washington, who has portrayed Flood on stage, describes </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nigger on the Run</span></i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;"> as the most difficult role in the <i>Black Oeuvre</i>. </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.666666984558105px; text-indent: 0.5in;">“</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;">Like Hamlet
but deeper,</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.666666984558105px; text-indent: 0.5in;">”</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> Washington told BBC last year, after a performance at the Old Vic</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lucius X was always attentive to stagecraft.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">His one-man
show <i>Black Rage</i> features a Negro male alone,
sitting in a chair with a bright light in his eyes, like during a police
interrogation. But instead of turning rat and accepting the plea deal he begins rapping to the unseen pigs about his experience as a Black Man in America. The Negro turns
the chair around, to sit astride it, still discoursing about Black
Masculinity to the white <i>puercos</i>. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Rejecting the historical role of the Negro as “victim” of the
nefarious White Man, and White Woman, instead this revolutionary Negro chose to
be a </span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Black Avenger</i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">. Thus was the Black Circle closed. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The X-Man
claimed to believe in so-called “reparations-on-the-go” in which black people take from white society, in small chunks, compensation for past wrongs. Often
when no one is looking, like on the Bulk Aisle at Whole Foods. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In an interview last year, asked to sum up his own life Lucius X said that he attempted to “reach
the other side,” he called it, in which he could express his Black Manhood not
without fear of retaliation by the so-called “white bitches,” male and female, black and white. That was something that he doubted would be possible during his lifetime. But, instead, without the
retaliation having any effect. That was the goal of his life, he said, not Fame nor Fortune, not the most pussy or the best herb, “but the coherence of my rap,” he
told the <i>Post </i>three weeks before he put a gun to his own
damn head. To set the scene one last time.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> While in an inner tube a quarter mile offshore from Zipolite, in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, in order to feed the damn fishes and renew the Black Circle, that is what he planned to do, he told the Black Press before he pulled the trigger. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The frequent criticism leveled against X's work, that he turned
whites into “stick figures,” was never true, Lucius X said. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">“</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;">We <i>know</i> white
people. How could we not, working in their homes and kitchens and driving them
around? Taking care of their spoiled little fuckhead kids? But <i>they don’t
know us</i> because when they go to the hood they’re always just
tourists, you dig? We are in white homes,</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">”</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;"> he lamented spiritually, </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 14.666666984558105px; text-indent: 0.5in;">“</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">in order to clean up messes they’ve
made.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">In lieu of flowers X asked everyone to fire up
a fat one and put on some funk. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He suggested, “You Dropped a Bomb on Me”
by the Gap Band. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
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Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-43300500263546034092020-07-01T10:27:00.159-07:002023-09-23T18:55:38.804-07:00Governor Abbott's Sister-in-Law the MD<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> Governor Abbott’s sister-in-law is a physician in Austin. She’s internal medicine, works with a group that visits a few hospitals around town, or she did two or three years ago when our paths last crossed. Her name doesn’t matter. Not knowing her on a personal level but having taken orders from her as a nurse, on a couple of occasions, and still not being an expert on her practice or anything but having seen her do her job—talking about her job performance is useful in the context of judging how well the governor himself is doing his, handling pandemic in the state. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> We had a revealing interaction once a few years ago, not me and the governor but me and his sister-in-law, at my prior hospital or the one before that. So, like, she reminded me, at that time, that we had actually interacted years earlier too—me calling her in the middle of the night to get orders. My first name is not common and she remembered it and remarked this time, in person, about putting a face to the name and all that. Anyway this time in person she was behind the nurses station doing some charting and the reason for approaching her was that my patient—our patient—was going south. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> So, like, it wasn’t like TV or a movie, people running here and there—no code was called, that was my call actually and there was no reason to make it. Calling the rapid response team as a precaution <i>might </i>have been appropriate, in hindsight, that won’t be debated here. The problem was developing slowly, the patient wasn’t critical and we had time. It was a problem beyond my training to resolve or fully understand. The patient was African-American, not that that’s important here, a former University of Texas football player, again not that that’s important. His blood pressure was dropping, <i>that</i> was important. An IV was started, he’d gotten a whole bag of fluids and his pressure was still going down. So, like, the physician who happens to be the governor’s sister-in-law looked up at me, listened to my explanation of what was going on and after that it was pretty much textbook all the way. She checked her computer for prior vital signs, checked his labs and looked at her notes, a handful of folded sheets of paper taken from her white coat pocket. She picked up her stethoscope and went to the bedside and did a head to toe examination. As it turned out this guy had an internal bleed.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> The thing about the governor’s sister-in-law is that she’s a good doctor. That’s said with 20 years experience as a RN, having taken a lot of orders, having seen a lot of MDs—the good, the bad and the scary. It’s also said given that nurses like to rag doctors. Working with physicians, taking their orders</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">—not only </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">listen</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">ing </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">to the </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">decisions being made</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">,</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> but having to carry them out—you get to be a pretty good judge of physician foibles and competency. The governor’s sister-in-law more than passed muster. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> Most of my experience has been in pediatrics and my occasional practice, for whatever reason, is to imagine people as they were when they were kids. Hearing about this lady doctor’s powerful brother-in-law—and checking her out later, out of the corner of my eye—in my mind’s eye she was a kid back in middle school, sitting at a table alone doing her work. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> A little introverted, and quiet, good at math and maybe science or drawing, she kept her own counsel except maybe mom. And kept on trucking through medical school, graduated about ten or fifteen ago, during a less diverse time, not at all easy, especially coming from a family of modest means, American-born descendants from Mexico, <i>Wikipedia</i> tells us. And the way nurses judge physicians, it comes down to a basic question: Would you want that doctor taking care of you or would you want him or her writing orders on your child? My answer is most definitely yes. Because, me standing there telling her about the patient going bad, what was important about this physician's response was what she didn’t do as much as what she did. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> She didn’t keep on charting. She stopped typing at my approach. She didn’t tell me to send blood to the lab. She didn’t say, “I’ll put him on my list.” She didn’t tell me to do the head to toe myself. She stopped what she was doing, made eye contact and got up to examine the patient. She’s a good doctor and a good person too. She is probably also under considerable pressure not to fuck up, as the governor’s sister-in-law, and all, the same way the governor is under pressure not to fuck up because he’s the governor. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">Anyway, no code got called. The governor's sister-in-law took care of the problem before it became an emergency. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">The thing that nursing teaches you, and taught me, is that the best way to deal with an emergency is not to have it in the first place. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> Get to the patient early, like the governor’s sister-in-law did with the ex-Longhorn. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">With kids especially there’s nothing you can say as explanation to a mother or father who has lost a child and the best way to handle that conversation is not to have to have it, which is an impossible standard but one to keep in mind with COVID-19. The best way to deal with a viral outbreak is to lock down—extreme measures are called for</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 18.6667px;">—</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">call the code—or better yet, don't have the outbreak in the first place. The learning curve can be steep. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> An example of how everyone was so caught by surprise involves, once again, the governor's sister in law, the MD. M</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">any physicians, internists like our lady doctor, are part of </span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">private</i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> practices, of maybe a dozen MDs, or advanced practice nurses, mostly internists, who have contracts to see patients at different hospitals around town and must travel between those sites. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> Ditto some of the specialists and many, many surgeons. They travel between campuses. And just because you have a medical degree, you know, or a nursing license, and no matter how well you scrub your hands, you can still be a disease vector, and despite the gowns and gloves—and the masks—you can be a carrier. And had people thought of that beforehand, maybe, but maybe not, because what we’re seeing now is unlike anything we’ve seen before. This is some dystopian shit. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> So, like, that's why it's good to know there are good doctors out there. It’s important because it really is like your mother told you back in the day. You can be</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;"> judged you by the company you keep. And the governor is presumably keeping good company, with the First Lady and her sister. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 14pt;">And let's hope he's listening to their advice.</span></p>
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Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-27668741950833746222020-06-15T14:49:00.256-07:002023-10-08T19:57:08.133-07:00The Queen of Big Pharma Talks the Covid-19 Vaccine<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0px;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><i style="font-family: "times new roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </i><span face="calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">There’s been a pissing match
between President Trump and the world’s second-richest man, Bill Gates, and
Gates’ wife Melinda, who is from Dallas btw, about the president’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis and
for good reason. We won’t go there. Instead what’s interesting is how the
individuals involved, none of who is a doctor or has any kind of healthcare
training or research cred, has been so sure of what they’re talking
about. At the heights of power or wealth you can hire experts. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0px;"><span face="calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0px;"><span face="calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>In fact the president has been widely
criticized for doing just that, hiring Big Pharma ex-executive Moncef Slaoui—former head of
drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccine division—to lead the U.S. government’s push
for a COVID-19 vaccine. In the early days of the pandemic the Gates
Foundation had its own veteran of Big Pharma leading vaccine efforts too. Her
name is Susan Desmond-Hellmann—everyone calls her Sue. You can bet Sue was
where the Gateses got their information to challenge the president. She's produced a few medicins herself. Then she
stepped down from the Gates foundation, perhaps because it’s hard to criticize
the president when your science guy, or girl in this case, has worse ethics than his does. Sue
has returned to her first love, Big Pharma, as a director of Pfizer. She
has just made her own pronouncements on a COVID vaccine and it’s especially scary coming from this scary lady doctor.</span></div>
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Name="endnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Preformatted"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="List Table 1 Light"/>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> Dr.
Desmond-Hellmann served as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s CEO for
almost six years and is an oncologist by training. Described
as über-competent and very focused—the way Atilla was—she is a
former chancellor of the University of California’s healthcare campus in San
Francisco and before that was president of product development at drugmaker Genentech
(now owned by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche.) While concerns have been
raised about the possibility of ethical embroilments for Professor Slaoui,
being a Big Pharma alum and all that, and working for President Trump, in the
case of Dr. Desmond-Hellmann ethical compromise is not a mere possibility. She’s a full-fledged
bio thug. Which may make her a good person to have around in the present pandemic environment. She recently expressed a few thoughts on the
search for a COVID-19 vaccine, specifically, and her insights are valuable
because the one thing we know about Dr. Desmond-Hellmann is that she doesn’t
let sentiment get in the way of creating pharmaceuticals. But, as your mother
told you, you still have to consider the source. So, like, a few more words about
Sue.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">We
pick up her background in a passage from <i>A Nigger in Nursing</i>, about
the culture of racism and corruption at the University of California’s San
Francisco campus, where a young Dr. Desmond-Hellmann served first as chief
resident and a couple of decades later returned as chancellor. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">“Her
back story was easy to outline because Sue talked a lot about herself: If you
spent any time on the university website you got a general idea of her career
trajectory without even trying. Medical school in Las Vegas, a very successful
residency in oncology and then teaching in San Francisco followed by
two years in Uganda doing research that she portrayed as—and well may have
been—a genuine effort to help. But which may also have been a first step in
another career entirely, Big Pharma, making really big bucks might have been on her radar even in Africa,” <i>Nigger </i>tells
us. “Upon return to the U.S. she and her husband, also
a physician, worked in practice for a time in her chosen field, in the
South, and then she went for the money, first at Bristol Myers Squibb in New
Jersey and later at Genentech in South San Francisco. When she came back to
UCSF as chancellor in 2010 she had just cashed in her Genentech stock
and received $30 million, per press reports. Her husband was already
independently wealthy, Hollywood money. Suddenly, Nicholas Hellmann and Susan Desmond-Hellmann
were a S.F. power couple with the spotlight on her.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Or the <i>Wikipedia</i> version: “</span><span style="color: #202122; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Returning to clinical research,
Desmond-Hellmann became associate director of clinical cancer research at
Bristol-Myers Squib Pharmaceutical Research Institute. While there, she
was the project team leader for Taxol. In 1995 she joined Genentech
as a clinical scientist; she was named chief medical officer the following
year, and in 1999 became executive vice president of development and product
operations. From March 2004 through April 2009 she was chief of product
development, playing a role in the development of two of the first
gene-targeted therapies for cancer, Avastin and Herceptin.” </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Susan
Desmond-Hellmann is not a person who thinks of what you can’t do, like a
lawyer—what is or is not permitted by law or by custom. She thinks
of what you </span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">can </i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">do, physically, like an engineer or the scientist she is.
That’s the source of her success, she has a wider view of possibilities than most
people. That’s the source of her genius and is probably what attracted Bill
Gates to her in the first place. It’s also what gets Sue into trouble.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> Ethical troubles began almost immediately after assuming office as chancellor
of UCSF, on the imposing Mount Parnassus, in Outer Sunset, in Baghdad by the
Bay. To set the scene.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>The New York <i>Times </i>reported that her University of
California financial disclosure form for 2010, while Sue was serving as leader of the
preeminent public healthcare university in the world—that includes a
well-regarded, cutting edge cancer research operation, and an <i>anti-tobacco
institute</i>, exclusively dedicated to digging dirt on cigarette companies. Sue’s
disclosure included major holdings of the maker of Marlboro cigarettes. She
explained to the <i>Times </i>that she had merely signed what her
investment adviser placed in front of her, yet the financial disclosure was
handwritten and her initials appeared beside corrections in the margins. An
appalled murmur arose on Mount Parnassus, in Baghdad by the Bay. That was just Sue, you might say, and it was
just the beginning. Also on her watch the federal government fined UCSF
for a wide variety of inhumane conditions for lab animals. She would eventually
be sued in federal court by the African-American who served as UCSF’s diversity
coordinator, who said she fired him for speaking up about race issues at this traditionally white UC campus. When she was called on her ties to industry she
wrote and published a paper in a scientific journal in which she and UCSF’s
then head of commercialization, neurologist Clay Johnston—now dean of the
University of Texas Dell School of Medicine in Austin—said that there
were <i>not enough </i>ties between academia and Big Pharma. In other
words she doubled down.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> There’s
a classic Sue story, told by former UC President Mark Yudof, who actually hired
her to lead UCSF. No moral giant himself, Yudof nonetheless marveled over the
audacity and impropriety of her management proposals, in an oral
history given to a UC Berkeley researcher in 2018. You have to imagine the
scene. It’s 2012 at a UC Regents meeting. In San Francisco, Chancellor Desmond-Hellmann
is planning to ram through construction of a new campus in Mission
Bay—including a Genentech Hall for Regents’ meetings—displacing a formerly
minority neighborhood in the process and God knows how many low-income
residents. But we digress. President Yudof picks up the narrative from there.
Press reports were that the Regents’ response to her new idea was icy but It
wasn’t gentrification that upset them. Sue had decided she wanted to privatize
the whole San Francisco campus.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">“One
thing I’ve discovered in life,” Yudof told the Berkeley historian, “is you can
spend a lot of time trying to move around the black boxes and get nowhere by
saying the answer to our problems is in a restructuring of governance. [But]
it’s in the [California] constitution, the governance of the University of
California. You’ve got the speaker of the Assembly; you’ve got
the California superintendent of public instruction; you’ve got the
lieutenant governor on the board; you’ve got regents that are there. We’re not
going to turn the world upside down and establish a new board for UCSF. If we
were on a blank slate, maybe there could be movement in that direction. And
we’re not a private university. Even though they’re only paying 5 percent of
the bills, the taxpayers say, ‘Wait a minute, we built this place over all
these years,’ and now you want to be free of what I call public
accountability? So it just was not to be. Sue made some governance
changes, which I think were all good, but at the end of the day — to be honest
with you, I didn’t make many phone calls," Yudof said. </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 13.333333015441895px;">“</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">It was going nowhere. I told her that
— the structural stuff. Everything else she was doing was really first-class,
but I just couldn’t see how it would work. Every time someone says, ‘Let’s
take one of our campuses private,’ I don’t know what that means. The
taxpayers built a lot of the buildings; they built it over 100 years, 150
years. The legislature’s not going to do it. The people are going to vote for a
constitutional amendment to set a campus free? I wasn’t going to waste a lot of
time, but I also wasn’t going to campaign against it because I knew it would
never happen.” That’s Sue again. In the end her academic career was done in by
another media report, much like the one about her investment choices,
this time in the Washington </span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Post</i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; text-indent: 35.4pt;"><span lang="FR" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The story was about two Genentech drugs—Avastin and
Lucentis—one that costs $50 and the other $2,000 a dose and both of which do
the same job in preventing blindness from macular degeneration. So, like, the
story was about Sue’s time as Genentech's head of product development, the five
years right before she came to UCSF as chancellor, basically, and as the<i> Post </i>recalled,
the extreme efforts she took to push the more expensive drug by misrepresenting
the cheaper one.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; text-indent: 35.4pt;"><span lang="FR" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">“’When Lucentis did go on sale,’” the <i>Post</i> reported,
“'Genentech’s blockbuster drug already had a competitor [Genentech’s already
existing and cheaper cancer drug, Avastin, which works just as well for macular
degeneration]. How could the company convince doctors and hospitals that
Lucentis had any major advantage over Avastin? Over and over again [The
Company] sought to discourage use of Avastin by raising concerns about its
safety. They told doctors that Avastin was not approved by the FDA for use in
the eye—Lucentis was. They reminded doctors that if the repackaging firms
cutting Avastin into smaller doses were careless, infection could be
introduced. And despite the lack of conclusive evidence on the point, they said
that Avastin patients might suffer more side effects than Lucentis patients.
Sometimes, senior FDA officials said, these warnings stretched the truth.’ The
named culprit in the misrepresentation in which patients facing blindness were
forced to pay $2000 a dose for a medication rather than $50 was one Susan
Desmond-Hellmann—incumbent chancellor of the University of California San
Francisco, although the authors of the <i>Post</i> story did not
appear to know that when they published. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; text-indent: 35.4pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">“</span><span lang="FR" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Genentech stopped selling Avastin to
repackaging companies that cut the med into smaller doses,</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.333333015441895px;">”</span><span lang="FR" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; text-indent: 35.4pt;"> the <i>Post</i> said,
in order to force sales of the 4000% more expensive Lucentis. On Sue's
watch. The result was that Genentech under Sue’s leadership pushed a med
that was 40 times more expensive and no more effective because that math was
better for her company.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; text-indent: 35.4pt;"> Which is Sue too. Despite being
an innovator and thinking what no one else dares to think, including massively overcharging patients, she is oh so conventional in one respect.<i> Sue likes money</i>. Actually she spoke on
that very issue, in a Zoom conference at UCSF in early June, after leaving Bill
Gates’ employ. The conference was intended to address recent shocks to the American
system of health care, the George Floyd murder and COVID—race, money and
disease, in other words. And how things might change in the future? And here,
at first, her wisdom was conventional.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; text-indent: 35.4pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">“For
me, I don’t think you can or should blow up the existing medical system,” she
said, speaking for example of the important role of academic medicine. “I think
that there are tools that one can use with existing infrastructure to drive
more productive outcomes. I actually think that UCSF or Stanford in and of
themselves are less an impediment than the number of doctors who go into
expensive specialties. I think that is an impediment if you just say we don’t
need that many surgeries of this, or interventions on that. Because if you
don’t drive medicine that way—humans do what they’re incentivized to do. If you
pay differently, people will go where the money is. So, the one thing I found
at UCSF and at Genentech, less so at Gates Foundation, because we didn’t have
that much money, <i>but the money matters</i>.” Where she really got
interesting—innovative or anti-innovative, depending on your point of
view—was the subject of vaccines and research on vaccines. Cue COVID-19. To set the scene.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> As
a Big Parma executive and research university chancellor, Sue was a big proponent of
speed in studies and speeded-up approval of drugs by the federal government. Apparently no longer. Asked
about the flood of unvetted research on the COVID virus, she said, in UCSF’s
Zoom conference, “I think it’s mostly bad. And I’m surprised to hear me say
that.” Again she referenced her time at Genentech. “One of the most important
assets that a [drug] product developer has is confidence. When I was at
Genentech, it was just, ‘Be sure about it,’" she said. “Not uncommonly we
would use more time or more [test] patients to have more confidence. What I
think is the downside to the speed that’s going on now—and you see it, you
follow Twitter, it’s the wild west, and I’m not talking about crazy people,”
she said, but instead established scientists. “The papers are coming out so fast that
people are having to change things. The latest is the hydrochloroquine study.
You do not want to have a bunch of retractions. So, I’m pretty negative about
the early publications when people haven’t seen the source data, or just going
too fast.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">But
she draws a distinction between publication and product development, where
she’s more gung ho. “I think you can go very fast but you have to have a clear
asterisk. So, it’s not uncommon in oncology and cancer medicine to say I’m
getting an accelerated approval and people who are very sick and are going to
die of cancer can get this medicine, while in parallel, we do a trial. And if
that trial is negative the drug is gone because that asterisk is on there.
There are ways with products that you can do that. Here is what I don’t know
how to do. I don’t know how to do a vaccine approval—an accelerated approval—if
three hundred and thirty million people are going to get it.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">She
returned to her favorite subject. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 13.333333015441895px;">Money</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> “So,
now, I could make a case that you could do a vaccine, because there’s so much
money. You have so many patients that you have a big big database, that you
feel good about it, or you have a small safety database and you go to small
groups of individuals who are at particularly high risk, and so you build your
safety database. But for me the two things are confidence, number one, because
once you screw up on confidence, it’s over.” Sue changed the Gateses but
apparently the foundation has changed her too. Because she said her second
concern is <i>transparency</i>, something she wasn’t known for before, on Mount Parnassus.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> “The
second thing is just clarity of communication. If this is an accelerated
approval, if it’s conditional—if this is, ‘we’re not sure yet,’ tell people
you’re not sure yet. People can go with that. But this aura of confidence,
especially when you’re not confident yet, makes me very very concerned,
especially with vaccines. I think with vaccines it has to be safe and effective
unless you’re really clear about who you give the vaccine and then those people
know how much you know about it.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> On
the subject of a COVID 19 vaccine, presumably including the one being developed
by her own Pfizer, “I think it’s great they’re going as fast as they are. This
vaccine speed is truly unprecedented. And not being done sloppy, not being done
bad, but when it’s ready for approval, just think, okay, you’re in charge of
the vaccine program, you start Phase 3 [trials] in July, you go to December,
you have six months of data, and the wrap-up of the patients in the trials, and
in January you’re going to treat two hundred million patients with your
vaccine? You’ve got to make sure you know enough.” Which turned out to be the
case.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> “Here’s
the thing,” Sue said during her Zoom comments at the Covid end-of-the-world conference on the Mount. “So, this is for most product developers. This is binary. If you had
a cure for COVID 19, have at it—have a human challenge model. If you don’t have
a cure—if you’re 25, if you’re 40, if you’re 15—I’m not going to challenge
somebody when I don’t have a remedy for what I’m challenging them with. There’s
a human challenge model for malaria, but we have drugs for malaria. My own
belief is that the enthusiasm for a human challenge [model for COVID 19] kind
of went up, and then it went away. And it may be because of that, because
there’s just no cure.” She was asked on Zoom, by Dr. Robert
Wachter, head of the Department of Medicine at UCSF—an institution where money
is used as a reward, a tool <i>and</i> a cudgel—medicine can be a dirty business. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>Dr. Wachter asked her </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">about just paying test participants for taking the COVID-19 vaccine</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.333333015441895px;">—</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">for the danger incurred by being guinea pigs, and all. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> “You
could make the argument, and you could pay them,” Sue said, “and make sure they
really volunteered and all that. I don’t think it’s crazy that—let me be
clear—I don’t think it’s crazy. I don’t think it’s crazy at all—and I [also]
understand why people are avoiding it.” Sue's other recent gig has been Facebook, where she resigned from the board last year. For most of the last decade she's been the lead independent Facebook director which meant she was responsible for keeping Mark Zuckerberg & company on the straight and narrow path of ethics. We know how that turned out. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span> <span> <span> </span></span></span>The point is that Sue has the moral development of a nematode and if she's concerned about the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, even by her own company Pfizer, how should that make the rest of us feel? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<!--EndFragment--><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: -webkit-standard;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><br /></div>
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Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-57566403712808978802020-03-29T18:19:00.377-07:002023-09-03T17:53:44.547-07:00Cat Mountain<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 32px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">If you were a certain kind of newspaper reporter at the Texas Capitol you knew in your heart of hearts that there was a shortcut to the front page. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">If for example you didn’t want to spend time looking at airplane flight logs, to see if a public official like Comptroller of Public Accounts Bob Bullock was using state-owned aircraft for campaign purposes, which is illegal, or if you didn't want to look at Mr. Bullock’s campaign expense accounts or try to turn his aides and get them to rat out the Big Guy—which was impossible without the threat of jail—which was impossible even with the threat of jail, because that’s what the District Attorney had tried and none of Bullock’s people rolled over. To set the scene.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">There was another way that was faster, cheaper and sexier to get your byline on the front page. Not that that’s important—but maybe a blowjob later, during a night out drinking, after putting the newspaper to bed, which is. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">My idea was to f</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">ind the target of the D.A.'s investigation and try to sweat him. Or her. In other words in this example to give Mr. Bullock the third degree. It made so much sense to me at the time that the only surprise was nobody thought of it before. Too late it became clear why nobody else tried. The science was good, certainly. The theory was <i>excellent</i>. The practice was just a tad iffy. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">There is a preliminary question to answer. Do you know why cops are such assholes</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">? W</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">hy they’re so obnoxious? Not because only assholes go into police work although that’s a good guess. But because the police <i>want </i>to piss you off intentionally when they’re talking to you. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">They want to see which way you jump—to see if you’ll make a mistake, to see if you “act guilty,” whatever that means to a white guy with a badge and gun. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">They do it by holding onto your driver’s license or passport for a couple of </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">minute</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">s longer than necessary or by acting like they don’t believe your answer whatever your answer may be. They do it by pursuing a line of inquiry past a logical end, in other words by being pricks. For </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">most c</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">ops it's a kind of a job requirement, really. Sometimes you just have to make people sweat. <i>My</i> idea was that a reporter can achieve good results if he or she has a similar technique. It only takes <i>practice</i>. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">My idea which seemed like a good idea at the time was to intimidate the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, aka the Taxman. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">To g</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">et Mr. Bullock alone, at his house, sweat him a little, make it sound like the District Attorney’s investigation was coming to a head whether it was or not and see which way Mr. Bullock jumped. Not <i>lie</i> to him exactly because that would be unethical but somehow lead him to believe the noose was tightening. Get him to comment on his own indictment before the indictment was filed, that kind of thing. Not technically unethical but close enough to be fun.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">It would give me a piece of the story and get me into print where my presence was so far lacking. This was technically a courthouse story because there was the possibility of criminal charges—my beat, my backyard, my hunting ground, you feel me? Key was D.A. Ronnie Earle and the key question to put to him was this, </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; text-indent: 36pt;">“</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">Where does Bullock live?" </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">The Comptroller’s home wasn’t in the </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">telephone directory</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">. You weren’t going to find him under Corrupt State Officials or </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; text-indent: 36pt;">“</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">Targets of the </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; text-indent: 36pt;">“</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">Travis County Grand Jury</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; text-indent: 36pt;">”</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">The word at the courthouse was that Bob Bullock, who made paranoia look like a reasonable state of mind even when nobody was after him, moved around a lot. He was married to a real estate agent which helped. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">D.A. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">Ronnie Earle would know where he bedded down though. Or Ronnie’s people would know. The D.A. kept on staff a couple of ex-police detectives who served as muscle and who did </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">most of </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">the legwork of the inquir</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">ies</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">. Those guys would know. That was my theory. Ronnie’s people would've checked out Mr. Bullock’s house for signs of ill-gotten gain, maybe even served a search warrant, or two, just to rattle the big man, which was my idea too, to frighten Mr. Bullock and see which way he jumped. The D.A.'s people weren’t going to tell me where Bullock lived but Ronnie <i>might</i>, if it was done right, with the subtlety and style that had already, at that point in time, become the hallmarks of this member of the Black Press. My level of anxiety about running a trap on the D.A., you may ask? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">Zero</span></i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">Ronnie had pulled my strings often enough. It was time to make him dance.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">First and foremost in order to keep his or her credibility the reporter of color has to show independence from "the authorities</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; text-indent: 36pt;">”</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; text-indent: 36pt;"> </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">—that we’re not mere pawns of The White Man. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">So, like, one day me and the Honorable Ronald Earle, Esq. were chatting in his office in the Travis County Courthouse about something entirely different and just, you know, real casual like, you know—my question to him was, like—like it was something just occurred to me </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">and </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">not the whole fucking purpose for calling his secretary </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">in the first place</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">. My question to Ronnie was something</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">, </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">like, “Hey, by the way, where does Bullock live?” And Ronnie replied, equally casually, like he wasn’t paying attention which he wasn’t. “Up on Cat Mountain,” he said. Didn’t raise that right index finger, either, to signal something in our conversation that couldn’t be used. Ronnie didn’t know the address—and he wasn’t going to call his chief investigator to find out. There was nothing to do but go look for myself. Which was cool, a little legwork, you feel me, sometimes that’s the nature of the job, actually, like tracking gazelle on the savannah used to be for my hunter-gatherer ancestors, on the Dark Continent, back in the day. This was instinctive for me. Sometimes you have to track your prey.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><i>Ambush</i> is better. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">Still, not yet being that well-acquainted with River City and this being outside my usual sector of operations, which was mostly downtown, near the </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">State </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">Capitol, near the triangle formed by the Governor's Mansion, the Capitol and Courthouse where me and Ronnie were talking. My first thought was that Cat Mountain must be a real mountain, at least a hill. But it was also a street, a dead-end street, north, northwest, not exactly B.F.E. but pretty damn close, up there in the beginnings of the white suburban wasteland, almost—oh my God—<i>Williamson County! </i>Driving there,<i> a</i> sense of primordial dread filled my soul. This was a part of the White Homeland where only Caucasians ventured, not at all the kind of place where a black man or a Mexican wanted to be seen after dark. This occasion warranted an exception. Went to check it out, boots on the ground and all that</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">, not to sound noble or anything</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">. As the </span><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">American</span></i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">-</span><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">Statesman</span></i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"> staff car rolled into The Man's backyard the only comforting thought was that anyone encountered in this neighborhood would be fair game. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">And m</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">y luck held. There, in the fading light, parked in front of an inconspicuous house that did not signify wealth or power was a car that did both. A shiny white Cadillac with “State Official” license plates. Mrs. Bullock answered the door. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">This was wife number one, or two, who later did time as wife three or four, can’t remember which, Bullock got around with the ladies and actually married this one, named Amelia, twice. She was in real estate not that there’s anything wrong with that. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">Mrs. Bullock was a petite attractive woman with a cute haircut and a nice rack who looked at me, read my business card or whatever and gave me a </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">last </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">apprehensive glance before going to get her husband. In different circumstances we could have been friends. She didn’t warn me off explicitly although you could tell she wanted to say <i>something</i>. Left me standing in the doorway, actually, and in light of later events what she was doing could have been interpreted as offering a last chance for escape. Her </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">facial expression as she stepped away </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">was a sign saying “Trouble Ahead.” A moment later Mrs. Bullock returned to the door. Mr. Bullock was following. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">Bob Bullock was a little guy, trim, </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">built wiry </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">like a young Sinatra. The statue in the State History Museum that bears his name, down the street from the Capitol, is a pretty good likeness in proportion if not in detail. That night he smelled of booze which was also true to reputation, it was late enough that he had his first few after coming home from running the State of Texas, that part of my plan was working, yeah. My belief even at a tender age as a cub reporter was that you always have to have a plan so that later you have something or someone to blame later, other than yourself. You didn’t fuck up personally</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">. T</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">he plan was just no good. Not appropriate to the circumstances or the circumstances changed. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">Bullock's eyes were red, on a 1 to 10 </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.3333px; text-indent: 36pt;">redness scale </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">his were like 11, maybe 12. We didn’t shake hands. There was nothing to do but introduce myself, give him my rap and start trying to pull his chain. Luckily fucking with public officials came to me pretty naturally from the very beginning of my career. The higher up they were the more natural it felt. And this guy was white, not to repeat myself, they all were white at the State Capitol at that time and mostly still are. But we digress. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">The weird thing, the only aspect of Mr. Bullock's</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;"> demeanor </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">that worried me inordinately, standing there in his doorway, not having been invited in, he never looked directly at me. Those red eyes were focused about shoulder-level and just to my left side. He interrupted me half-way through my rap about District Attorney Ronnie Earle and the Travis County Grand Jury. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">“Lucius,” Mr. Bullock said, kind of slow, but without any noticeable slurring or impediment to clear speech, “if you ever come to my house again I’ll shoot you.” </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">What struck me at once was that it was an awkward moment socially. A death threat from your host stops so many conversations. There was no slurring, no drool, no hesitation, to his credit he didn’t shout or anything, Mr. Bullock just said “I'll shoot you” the same way he would have said, “No comment,” or “Pleased to meet you.” Or the way Willie Nelson greeted me once so graciously at his door</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">. S</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">omething that custom called for. The way he still wasn’t looking me in the eye was pretty spooky, though, yeah, got to admit that. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">My options at that point were limited. My balls got a little tight and may have moved up an inch, or two, closer to the top of my scrotum. So they wouldn’t be in the way, like, if it came to a sprint</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">. That's only natural when you have big balls like mine</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">,</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"> you have to get them out of the way in case of emergency, cleared for action so to speak. Fear had nothing to do with it actually. It was more <i>surprise</i>. Did the most powerful official in state government just threaten to </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">shoot </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">me? But my reaction was purely analytical—not emotional at all—</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">not to beat my own drum or anything</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">The math, the mental calculus, did not look good.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">Bob Bullock was known to be a gun nut so if he didn't have a piece under his shirt, there was certainly one in the house. He was under the stress of a criminal investigation and he was also the single most important public official in the Lone Star State, <i>including</i> the governor. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">He controlled the state’s purse strings with an iron fist. Mr. Bullock</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"> was also famous for doing the unexpected. That was </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">his</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"> trademark. He had just threatened to shoot a black </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">reporter </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">after warning the aforesaid Negro to leave. The word at the Capitol was that Mr. Bullock himself did not hold racial animus, at least no more than any other Texas-born cracker-Democrat of his generation. He was a <i>populist </i>not a racist. But at that particular point in time, in bucolic River City, black people were still niggers in the original sense of the word. That was just a given at the Capitol, not considered real prejudice, not by anyone in power. If Mr. Bullock did shoot a nigger—under the right circumstances—he might be elected governor. Which was what he wanted most. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">So, like, a minute later the </span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">American-Statesman</i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;"> staff</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;"> car was rolling, at a pretty decent speed, down Cat Mountain, which is a street and maybe a hill, up in B.F.E. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">Over the years the story of my encounter with Mr. Bullock has gone through a few changes. Like, in bars, you have to jazz it up a little, especially if you want to make </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">it </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">good enough for somebody to buy the next round. The major alterations have been two additions to the narrative: The slow closing of my reporter’s notebook, completely unhurried—handing Mr. Bullock my business card and telling him to give me a call if he wanted to talk. That was one. And saying, real cool-like, “Thank you, Mr. Bullock, for your time.” None of which actually happened. Nothing else was </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">actually </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">said. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">The next sounds were my heels on his driveway</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">and the </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">car </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">engine starting up. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">The better part of valor, and all that. But also the realization that the ploy hadn’t worked. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 19.8pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">Bob Bullock wasn’t the deputy commissioner of the Texas Department of fucking Health. He wasn’t the assistant executive director at some screwed-up state agency. He ate those people for breakfast. This was <i>el patron,</i> who ran the State of Texas by controlling its finances. Mr. Bullock knew more about pulling people’s chains than my entire newsroom</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">. He saw me coming a mile away, even with his bloodshot eyes. There's something else</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;">.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"> Even thugs have a code. That's the takeaway lesson for the young reporter here. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; text-indent: 36pt;">My plan was to go to Cat Mountain to push Mr. Bullock's buttons. Instead he pushed mine. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 24pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt;"><br /><i>Lucius X</i><o:p></o:p></span></p></div>
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Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7330469709653795086.post-74229385140298937752019-03-24T11:53:00.367-07:002023-09-08T18:39:59.541-07:00A Piece of the Pie<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="calibri, sans-serif"><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: -webkit-standard; text-indent: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Working nights in a hospital the noise level can be surprisingly
high. My preferred patient population is babies which means a lot of crying but
the shrieks can usually be managed by a bottle of formula or the intervention
of a boob. Lately my patients have all been adults in moderately bad shape
and what they talk about at midnight and beyond—past the hour when most
hospitals will give out sleeping pills, which is 2 a.m. The conversation in the patient's room can be pretty
wide-ranging and informative. Or not. Some things you don’t really want to hear, but other subjects are more entertaining. Had a lady a little while ago
with breast cancer which had gone away and come back. She
said that her history teacher back in the day at Fulmore Middle School was
future Governor Ann Richards. “She was really funny,” this lady
said, the only time the patient smiled in our interactions over the course of
one very long weekend. Otherwise she had a flat affect and wouldn’t take any
pain medication which can be a bad sign, even refusing the kind of pills that
usually cheer people up. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Another patient about the same time who had a stroke mentioned
his roots in Texas went back to revolutionary days and included slaveholders.
You hear a lot of family history in a hospital because there may not be much
future for the people talking or they think not and also because—one
supposes—some folks, seeing the end, whether it’s looming or not, are
trying to come to terms with their forbearers. In order to figure out their own
place in the parade of life. It was the second patient more than the first who
helped me to come to terms with my lineage as an African American in this
Southern state. My people or my father’s people come from Washington
County, county seat Brenham, in the Brazos River valley, on the road between
Houston and Austin. My great-grandfather was also named Lucius and was born a
slave in Austin County next door to Washington County where he was sold or
moved and was later sentenced to prison for murder, twenty years after
Emancipation. That's all the background you need. My grandfather and
father—Lucius II and Lucius III, respectively—were born in Brenham and in
Houston, respectively, but not in any kind of bondage and were not
destined to do fieldwork. Everyone on my father’s side of the family turned to
crime, actually, a step up from slavery, actually. My own preference today would
be to say that they were “economic freedom fighters” or “proprietary
insurgents against The Man,” something like that, in the modern context of the
civil rights struggle, which includes discussion of money and lately
reparations. They were in it for the money. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In their own way my ancestors did not accept white privilege, to
use the terminology of our present more enlightened debate. My family
history as slaves doesn’t obsess me or anything but every time the name Brenham
pops up, my ears prick up. Antebellum Texas was a long time ago and most of my
day today is more concerned with what white people are up to now. Which you do
have to continue to watch out for, here in the Lone Star State. Because
Caucasians seem to have been caught once or twice but not stopped trying, you
feel me? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Through the years however, half-attentively—the members of my
family have collected quite a little dossier on Brenham, our former hometown,
and the content of the file is not good. It has nothing to do with the
high prices at the bed-and-breakfasts, in picturesque Washington-on-the-Brazos,
or even the recent listeria scare at Blue Bell Ice Cream which is manufactured
there and that Brenham is best known for today. Not to be a hypocrite either.
Dutch Chocolate and the occasional spoonful of Rocky Road have passed my
lips. There will be no suggestion of BDS (boycott, divestiture and
sanction, like in the Middle East) but there’s no product endorsement
of anything that comes out of Washington County either. Anyway this
guy—the patient with the stroke—added to my understanding of Brenham’s pre-ice
cream economy and also explained something from a book of the period that had
perplexed me back in the day. He said that the Brazos River valley was
cotton country, the original Texas plantation economy, and what made the
state part of Dixie so to speak. Don’t know if that’s totally true but it
makes a certain sense, being fertile river bottom land and all.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Tenting on the Plains</i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> was written by</span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Libby Custer—wife of
George Armstrong Custer, who at the time of Libby's writing had just had his
fateful final encounter with the Sioux. General Custer was military governor in Texas
immediately after the Civil War and Libby wrote that Union officers arriving
in Texas for occupation duty after the Civil War usually landed at
Galveston, by steamboat from New Orleans, and took a train to Brenham, where
the tracks ended, and were met by a string of horses for the ride to Austin.
That’s because apparently there was only one rail line at the time west of
the Mississippi, the one between Galveston and Brenham. That’s the story we are
told. And it carried cotton from the plantations to the port to be shipped. Not
that there’s anything wrong with that. The economy was what it was, its best-known
product was called King Cotton for a reason. Mother’s family was from Galveston,
by the way. She was born during Jim Crow, her grandfather arrived from Jamaica
to work on the docks a little after the Custers arrived with another aim, in
post-bellum Texas, to make a better life. Cotton endured even if the Confederacy did not. So, like, it
was almost as if the most famous agricultural product of the South brought
together the two sides of a black family—in the sheets, presumably fine
Texas cotton—and on the docks. My belief is that slavery and Jim Crow and
even discrimination today has never been about skin color. It’s all about
money. My feeling about Galveston is that it’s a great town. My forbearers
were </span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">paid</i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> for their labor on the dock, however little that may
have been, and my attitude is kind of, like, “Brenham bad, Galveston
good,” which is not a very sophisticated view but there it is. The
University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston awarded my degree which is also
a big plus on the Galveston side because it relates to a paycheck, our subject
here. During the time of my studies the only prejudice was
Galveston’s B.O.I. vs. not B.O.I. distinction—"Born on the Island,” or not.
Which people </span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">do </i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">hold against you if you weren’t born on the
right end of the Houston causeway. But has nothing to do with skin color.
Whereas Brenham—you couldn’t pay me to spend the night, so we’ll never know. Or
you could </span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">pay </i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">me which is what this is about. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Years ago a famous Galveston resident named Schwartz, who was
state senator, and Jewish, and B.O.I., said that all modern relationships on
Galveston Island are based upon who your family sheltered with during the 1900
hurricane, that killed at least 6,000 people, still the largest single natural
disaster in American history. During the storm you stayed with whoever had
a house with strong walls or a foundation above waterline, again, irrespective
of race. Brenham’s great disaster on the other hand was a fire, and it was set
intentionally, not an act of nature or an act of God although one likes to
think the Supreme Being, looking down, was smiling. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1866 right after the Civil War and Yankee troops of
the army of occupation got drunk one night and torched the town. The
Washington County Historical Society or whoever makes a big deal about the fire.
Personally though this fire—or the fact that there was a fire—which took out
the whole town or most of the town—is totally okay with me. My view of the
state’s history is that there wasn’t enough burning, actually, either
during the Civil War or immediately thereafter. How can you reconstruct—as in
Reconstruction—if things haven’t been destroyed in the first place? Fire <i>cleanses,</i> not
to be puritanical or anything. A little more flame and ash would have
been a good thing for the state, actually, that’s my unsolicited professional opinion
now. But in Texas only Brenham got the full cure. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Washington County State Bank was the oldest ongoing financial
concern in Texas until a few years ago when it was bought by a holding
company. If my ancestors’ wages, that they never received as slaves, had been invested
at even 2 percent, my nights now would not be spent changing diapers
or wiping drool on babies or adults. Not that there’s anything
wrong with that, it’s honorable work, you hear some interesting things as
you slather on the butt cream. But there are better ways to spend one’s
evenings than wiping front to back. That is my point. Btw, Brenham has always
had, one way or another—using slave labor or, today, selling ice cream—a pretty
vibrant little economy. “Despite a brief reign of terror by the Ku Klux Klan in
the 1920s,” the <i>Handbook of Texas </i>informs us, “merchandising,
marketing, and processing industries enabled the town to preserve its position
as a regional economic center between 1910 and the 1950s.” Happily today
in its post-Klan incarnation Brenham continues to make a buck. Anytime
events leave me down and depressed—opening Libby Custer’s book and reading
about the Union Army crossing the Sabine River cheers me up. Were the Union troops
carrying torches? One would think so, but apparently not. Happily still there
was a price for being on the wrong side of human rights. Even if you got a
county or a school named after you later. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A footnote: General John Bell Hood for example was the most prominent
of the Lone Star rebel commanders and namesake of what was Fort Hood and Hood County, Texas. George Custer fell into conversation with the defeated
Confederate on the boat to New Orleans just after the Civil War ended, they
were both West Point men it seems. Old college ties and all that, there was no hostility between the two, Libby noted
in her journal that General Hood was a poor sight to see, all shot to hell—he had
lost an arm—and even worse he had lost the battle for Atlanta and his reputation was in
tatters. As a rule, Texans don’t care how you win but you do have to win and General Hood had not. He got his comeuppance, in other words, not to be
puritanical, just as George Custer would get his comeuppance in Dakota at the hands of the Sioux. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Both white men making the wrong choice about white privilege,
you could say. So, like—everybody gets taken care of eventually, by history or
by life. The disputes about people’s reputations only elicit a big yawn from
me. Especially at four o’clock in the morning, making rounds with a package of Pull-Ups. The Rebels all got the cure we all get eventually. They were proven
wrong by a change in values or by the unending irrelevancy of being dead. But
the land, especially </span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">this </i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">land, that’s another thing. Texas
never got the full cure. Except Brenham. And there, like my lady who never
smiled in the hospital, the cancer came back. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Brenham is about 25 miles from Hempstead in Waller County where
Sandra Bland just hanged herself in a jail cell. Waller County borders
Washington County, my ancestral home. The state trooper who arrested Sandra
Bland for, basically, being black and talking back to a white man, was a newbie
with the Texas Department of Public Safety. His prior job was as an
“ingredients supervisor” at Blue Bell ice cream factory in picturesque Brenham,
not that there’s anything wrong with that either. My favorite flavor is Cookies n’
Cream, btw, and my theory of race relations is kind of like one of those pints of
ice cream, dark chunks of rich chocolate in what otherwise would be plain
vanilla? Apply any heat whatsoever and there’s a meltdown. Instead of delicious
dark sweetener, some people get treated like bacteria in the vat, which is
what happened to Sandra Bland. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Of course that doesn’t account for all the other people of color in
Texas, there are other flavors, so to speak. My theory has not completely been
worked out, you have to give me a little latitude here, regarding Brenham
however the facts are incontrovertible—there's absolutely no fucking
doubt. There’s just </span><i style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">something </i><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">about the town. You may say
that you can’t stereotype an entire geographic area of a huge state like Texas
but if you could, Washington County would be the place to start. That would be
my whole point, actually. </span></p></div></span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="calibri, sans-serif"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="calibri, sans-serif"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></div>
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Nigger on the Runhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00464747282725778897noreply@blogger.com0