[Preview] June 22, 2021 – Deregulation of the Texas Power Sector – Arsenal For Democracy Ep. 385

Full episode on Patreon: The isolated and deregulated Texas power grid keeps failing its customers. Bill and Rachel look back at the history.

Nov 13, 2018 – Arsenal For Democracy Ep. 248

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Topic: Part one of our recap of the 2018 US elections (focusing primarily on Texas). People: Bill, Nate, and Texas political journalist Chris Hooks. Recorded: Nov 11th, 2018.

Episode 248 (28 min):
AFD 248

Related links

AFD 248 Links and Notes (PDF)

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Music by friend of the show Stunt Bird.

Sept 4, 2018 – Arsenal For Democracy Ep. 240

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Topic: Texas radicalism from Civil War Germans to railroad strikes to student organizing for education funding equity. People: Bill, Rachel, Nate. Recorded: Sept 2nd, 2018.

Episode 240 (29 min):
AFD 240

Related links

AFD 240 Links (PDF)

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Music by friend of the show Stunt Bird.

April 3, 2018 – Arsenal for Democracy Ep. 220

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Topics: Radical unions and liberal conservationists in Idaho history; Voting reforms in Washington and felon disenfranchisement in Texas. People: Bill, Rachel. Produced: April 1st, 2018.

Episode 220 (53 min):
AFD 220

Related links

AFD 220 Links (PDF)

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Music by friend of the show Stunt Bird.

July 29, 2015 – Arsenal For Democracy 136

Posted by Bill on behalf of the team.

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Topics: Nicki Minaj, Sandra Bland, Misogynoir; No Child Left Behind, Illegal Immigration, Prison Reform. People: Bill, Kelley, De Ana, and Guest Maria. Produced: July 26th, 2015.

Discussion Points:

– Why it’s ok to talk about both Nicki Minaj and Sandra Bland in the same week (and how the two stories relate to each other).
– What Pres. Obama is doing on prison reform. Can Congress find a compromise on No Child Left Behind? Texas isn’t handling illegal immigration very well.

Episode 136 (52 min):
AFD 136

Related Links

AFD: De Ana: Policing Black Women’s Emotions and Opinions
AFD: Maria: What Happened to Sandra Bland?
AFD: Bill: Utah’s Homicide by Police Epidemic
AFD: Kelley: President Obama stands up for second chances
AFD: Kelley: 8 years late, Congress ready to revisit No Child Left Behind
AFD: Kelley: 3 Dem Senators say NCLB reforms don’t go far enough
AFD: Kelley: Texas abandons the 14th Amendment
AFD: Kelley: Mass graves of immigrants in Texas elicit little response

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And don’t forget to check out The Digitized Ramblings of an 8-Bit Animal, the video blog of our announcer, Justin.

Mass graves of immigrants in Texas elicit little response

Since 2009, remains of over 400 immigrants have been found in Brooks County, Texas — a fact that came to light in an investigative documentary, The Real Death Valley, by the Weather Channel, Telemundo, and the Investigative Fund.  You can read the report here.

Many of the bodies were buried with haste and carelessness, in conditions that can only be described as mass graves. With hundreds more to go, 118 bodies have been exhumed by researchers at Baylor University, who hope to identify the remains and return them to their families. Reporter John Carlos Frey, author of The Real Death Valley writes:

The analysis shows that 51 of the 118 sets of human remains were not buried in coffins. Fourteen of the remains were placed in red biohazard bags; four in what appeared to be grocery store trash bags. Five were covered only in plastic wrap and packing tape. One set of remains was buried in a milk crate, while another was simply wrapped in clothing.

 
The story has now moved from one of a horrifying discovery to one of a horrifying and negligent response.

Last year, on June 25, 2014 the Texas Rangers Division of the Department of Public Safety launched a preliminary investigation on the grave sites, promising that charges would be filed if any wrongdoing was found. Just two days later, on June 27, 2014, Lt. Corey Lain, the primary investigator, announced in a four-and-a-half-page report that there was no evidence that any laws were violated. Lain concluded:

“It is my opinion that sufficient information and evidence does not exist to support the initiation of a formal criminal investigation.”

 
Frey, who recently published a follow-up report titled Graves of Shame, concludes that, in fact, there were many law violations. The most egregious violations may not be those regarding the burial of human remains – although regulations regarding the depth of burial and type of burial container do appear to have been violated – but the violations which prevent the identification of the remains and their reunification with their family.  You can read the complete report here.

For example, despite a county law that a DNA sample must be taken from all unidentified remains and sent to the lab at the University of North Texas (UNT), it appears that DNA samples were rarely even collected and never sent to UNT.

Additionally, in Texas, the clerk’s office are required by law to retain all death records for a minimum of 10 years. However, despite the fact that the sheriff’s office was able to turn over 361 crime scene reports regarding the discovery of human remains, they were able to produce records for only 121 remains regarding the retrieval and burial of the remains; two-thirds of the bodies were unaccounted for, making it nearly impossible for their loved ones to ever know the fate of these immigrants.

In the 13 months since the Texas Rangers reached their conclusion, only one law has been passed by Texan legislators regarding the remains of immigrants. The law states that after one year the death certificate of unidentified remains becomes public. That is hardly comforting to the hundreds of unknowing families of those buried unceremoniously in Brooks County, Texas.

Dr. Lori Baker, a forensic anthropologist from Baylor University working to identify the remains of those in mass graves sums up the story in a hauntingly true statement:

“Nobody cares about dead immigrants. They’re invisible when they’re alive, and they’re even more invisible when they’re dead.”

 

What Happened to Sandra Bland?

Sandra Bland’s life ended when she met a wall of misogynistic racism centuries in the making. Guest post by Maria Jackson.

Sandra Bland was making her way through Texas, having just accepted a position at her Alma Mater, Prairie View A&M University, when she was pulled over, supposedly for changing lanes without signaling. Detecting that she was less than pleased, Trooper Encinia asked Bland what was “wrong”. After Bland responded in a very clear manner, Encinia described Bland as “combative and uncooperative”.

As if Bland should have greeted his traffic stop with smiles and handshakes. As if being irritable and not prostrate is a crime. When she declined to extinguish her cigarette and leave her vehicle, Encinia threatened to pull her out of the car and “light [her] up” with his taser.
After making a phone call and eventually being able to post bail, Bland was found dead in her cell.

What happened to Sandra Bland is something that has been happening for a long time, continues to happen, and will happen again.

However, this is more than a matter of the long history of suspicious deaths and sketchy police stops. There’s another context that makes it easy to get away with doing those things — especially to Black women in America.

It takes bricks to build a wall. Dozens and dozens of hardened clay pieces fitting together precisely. These bricks don’t mean much independently, but when affixed to another the walls they build can protect, defend, or deter. These walls can stand — impenetrable — for multiple generations, through hundreds of years, in near permanence.

Sandra Bland was, in part, the victim of a culture that, brick by brick, had assembled stereotypes of Black women as angry, aggressive, threatening — something to be contained forcibly. It is that wall, part of the foundation underlying Anti-Blackness, that continues to dominate our daily lives — and daily deaths.

Each week, in the news, even in “pop culture,” you can see the bricks being laid and the wall growing ever higher, even in a supposedly post-racial society.

When actress Amandla Stenberg was accused of “attacking” Kylie Jenner and being an “angry black woman”, that was a recent brick. Another brick was set in place when Nicki Minaj correctly called out the racist preferences of MTV and the VMAs but various media outlets instead depicted her as an angry, ungrateful, attacking bully (see AFD essay➚).

There are so many bricks being produced to support American racism and misogynoir against Black women, that there are even some left over to hurl. Like all stonings, those bricks are meant to silence. Ever since Sandra Bland’s murder, the same old bricks have been thrown at her corpse, attempting to bruise and sully her name to make her humanity unrecognizable.

Yesterday, Bland’s death was ruled ‘suicide by hanging’. The announcement of these findings were coupled with toxicology reports of marijuana found in her blood. However, without results that speak to how long ago Bland smoked or ingested the drug, Warren Diepraam, the first assistant district attorney of Waller County, felt free to hypothesize (rather implausibly) that it was “possible that it could have been smoked in the jail.”

Brick, flung.

Like me, Bland was searching for meaning. Like me, Bland had reportedly suffered from joblessness. Like me, Bland was was sick and tired institutional and systemic racism. Like me, Bland was a Black American Millennial. She was connected to a community of like minds who support #BlackLivesMatter. Bland made videos expressing her frustration with racism and gave voice to the movement.

The bricks that build the walls that divide us, crush us. Bland and I used the same hashtags and technology to talk about the sorrow and rage felt at the deaths of black men and women at the hands of those (supposedly) sworn to serve and protect. No one wakes up expecting to become a hashtag at the end of the day, but now we #SayHerName too: Sandra Bland.

Guest essayist Maria Jackson is a thirty-something, 4th generation Georgia Peach who writes for Shakefire.com and can be heard trading opinions and laughter on the Nerdgasm Noire podcast, with Arsenal For Democracy columnist De Ana and others. Co-owner and full time fatshionista for luvfattax.com.