I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE-“Killing the Name” (1991).

I was living in Boston when this song came out.  It was an electrifying shot across the bow of institutional racism–thirty years before that terms was on everyone’s lips.

This song was amazingly catchy and very vulgar.

It had few lyrics, but they were repeated over and over–a chant, a call to action.

Some of those that work forces
Are the same that burn crosses…
Well now you do what they told ya…
Those who died are justified
For wearing the badge
They’re the chosen whites
You justify those that died
By wearing the badge
They’re the chosen whites…

The song begins with a staccato opening, then some thumping bass and drums.  A cow bell and off goes the riff.  It’s as jagged and aggressive as angry as the lyrics.

The bridge is a pounding three note blast as the sections repeat.

Then comes a guitar solo.  One thing I remember distinctly when this album came out was that most of the talk was of Tom Morello’s guitar playing.  The album stated in the liner notes “no samples, keyboards or synthesizers used in the making of this record.”  It was an odd disclaimer, but with the bizarre sounds that Morello made, it was fascinating to wonder how he did it all.

The solo came at the four minute mark and, if radio wanted to play the song, they could fade it right there (that’s still plenty long for the radio).  But if they didn’t, then the chaos began, with crashing drums, and a slow build as Zach de la Rocha started quietly and got louder the simple but effective refrain

Fuck you. I won’t do what you tell me.

A band anda  room full of people chanting that song might just frighten the authorities a bit.

And that’s why in 2020, that song is being played a lot.

[READ: October 15, 2020] “On Defense”

A quote attributed to Dostoyevsky (who evidently never said it) is”

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

This quote is in the visitor center of the Manhattan Detention Complex (known as The Tombs). De La Pava says The Tombs is “one of the most hideous places on earth.”

I have really enjoyed Sergio De La Pava’s fiction.  I knew that he was involved in the New York City court system (his novels were too detailed about the system for him not to be).  This essay is a non-fiction account of his time as a public defender (he is still in the system, and is now the legal director of New York County Defender Services).

It seems like the public defender is not always appreciated–he or she stands in the way of putting criminals behind bars.  But De La Pava’s experience (along with many of the accused) shows that he has the really hard but important task of keeping innocent people from unfair punishment.

He started in the mid-Nineties and says he was met with pity from those around him.  This was a time when New York made activities which New Yorkers grudgingly bore.  “Quality of life” issues–squeegee window guys, people who held open doors looking for change–and criminalized it.  They promised it wasn’t profiling a group–just following the signs.

De la Pava recalls a few defendants that he helped (or didn’t) to navigate the system.  He says that police

seemed to respond to emergencies far less often than they consud ted quasi-military operations featuring what I’m sure they thought was badass nomenclature like Special Ops and Tactical Narcotics Team (TNT).

They went about busting drug dealers with a buy-and-bust in which an undercover cop pretends to buy dope from someone (with marked bills).  Then they recover the money and the drugs.  Observation sales were similar except they simply watched from afar and radioed in the details of those involved.

He says that many street sellers are also users.  In other words, they are not making money dealing drugs, they are keeping themselves in the habit.  All risk and no reward.  But this is who the police went after, rather than the higher ups.

Most of those arrested were offered a sentence less than the minimum (4-9 years). If they rejected it, there was a trial with a risk of a higher sentence.  Most people took the deal, but this particular client did not.  He wasn’t protesting his innocence, he was being defiant from chronic defeat. That was fine with De La Pava–he rather enjoyed it).  His client lost and got 7-14 years.

He told another person he was defending that he was essentially a target–that he needed to watch his back because they were all after him.  He nodded as if he would do something about it.  But he was arrested again two days later.

However you defined these arrests, what it was was a diaspora

black and brown people torn from their homes and thrown into cages.

De La Pava wants to highlight that there was no violence in any of these crimes.  With a violent crime there is a victim.  Who is the victim in a drug deal–mutually motivated parties voluntarily exchanging money for substances.  It was a public-health issue that somehow transmuted into an explicitly declared war.

Violent crime is on a decades-long and precipitous decline (it dropped nearly 50 percent between 1990 and 2018).

So if we are safer, why are the police bulking up?

It begins to look like a cure in search of a disease.

He talks a bit more about the New York system and how it seemed especially punitive.  Judges could see what was wrong with much of the sentencing but they seemed to turn a blind eye to it all.

But you have to play with the system because if you wait for it to be leveled, it will move on without you.

His next big case was armed robbery.  He was defending the accused. De La Pava had video evidence of the man’s innocence.  The man was released. But what if there had been no video evidence. What could he have done for the man who was clearly innocent?

He says that public defenders have begun working together to make systemic changes to benefit defendants.

Community anger paired with law degrees to cow legislators afraid of voters.

They raised the age of criminal responsibility to eighteen; drug and mental health treatments were expanded, they stopped stop-and-frisk; records of police misconduct were unsealed.

The change is trickling through the country, where signs like Demilitarize Police, or Communities Are Not The Enemy [it seems to me that Demilitarize The Police might be a better slogan than Defund The Police]

But as protests in New York grew larger, the police defaulted to their usual response–arrests and alarmist rhetoric.  Protest were called “riots” and protesters were called “looters.’

Then in April, New York found a way to roll back many of those reforms.

Must the system be always against us?