States of Mind

Through the first two episodes of Ava DuVemay's quite disturbing retelling of the Central Park Five, When They See Us, I kept thinking what a much more comfortable story it would be for my East Coast sensibilities if the story took place in Texas rather than New York. By the series' end I realized New York and Texas had a lot more in common than stereotyping would normally allow, so I made this chart below to remind myself of that. 
New YorkTexasEmpire StateLone Star StateIf you can make it here, you can make it anywhereDon’t mess with TexasAl D’AmatoTed CruzStop & friskOpen CarrySon of SamCharles WhitmanBernard GoetzPatrick CrusiusPizzaChiliNever forget 9/11Remember the AlamoRatsRattlesnakesNew JerseyMexicoNew York YankeesDallas CowboysDonald TrumpGeorge W. BushBroadwayRodeosCentral Park FiveDeath RowToo Many SheepleToo Many Sheeple
I wish I had more to offer than a glib, superficial reaction to When They See Us, but every time I attempted to write something more substantial and reflective, I was overwhelmed by so many troubling details that contributed to making this one of the most controversial criminal cases in America for three decades. In the end, I decided to simply link to two of the most comprehensive and revealing articles I read on the Central Park Five...one is fairly soft on the prosecution of five black teenagers for the rape of a white jogger and the other does a nice job of contextualizing the case. Here's a rundown of just a few of the things I learned about the case from reading both: Liberal icon Pete Hamill writing in the New York Post as well as the two most prominent African American newspapers in New York accepted the NYPD's view of the case and helped contribute to the city's hysteria about "wilding" youth.The head of the Manhattan DA's sex crimes unit Linda Fairstein, who is portrayed in When They See Us with Cruella DeVille wickedness, has had a fairly reputable career as a crusader for sexually abused women...up to her recent advocacy for Christine Blassy Ford against Brett Kavanugh. She was even under consideration by Bill Clinton as his Attorney General, but was undone by Elizabeth Lederer, her nemesis in the Manhattan DA's office and the one who was ultimately brought in to right the wrongs of the Central Park Five case. One of the cops alleged to have coerced false confessions from the boys faced numerous lawsuits from other people he had helped wrongly incarcerate.On the night of the rape of the white jogger in Central Park, a black woman in the black Bedford-Stuyvesant area of New York, was attacked at knifepoint by two men who took her up to a rooftop, raped her and tossed her over the side. It was an incident that caused hardly a blip in the news while the Central Park Five case became a national sensation. It was the mishandling...almost indifference...to DNA that contributed greatly to the NYPD's fixation on the five boys while overlooking the logical and eventual guilty party. This would be a few short years before a Los Angeles jury would ignore DNA evidence to convict O.J. Simpson of a double homicide. 
Yesterday was the anniversary of the executions of Sacco and Venzetti...as I've said before injustice is color blind.