Austin, Texas, Superb-looking out Voted to Stop the Drug War

“On day one, we are succesful of dwell the prosecution of low-stage drug offenses here in Travis County,” launched district authorized skilled candidate José Garza, at a February discussion board on prison justice reform in Austin. “We will dwell the prosecution of possession and sale offenses of a gram or much less.”

That will perchance moreover possess sounded to a number of adore a brave assertion, however Garza argued it became once the rational response to a “damaged device.”

On Tuesday night time, voters within the speak capital of Texas and the encompassing county agreed. Garza, a dilapidated federal public defender, immigrant rights activist, and govt director of the Texas Workers Defense Conducting–Proyecto Defensa Laboral, swept to victory over Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore in a carefully watched Democratic important runoff election. And the worthwhile challenger signaled that he’s prepared to behave. “We know that 60-percent of all of us arrested and charged with drug possession thru traffic stops are of us of color,” he told reporters. “So, it’s time to dwell the war on medicine in this community to initiate to unwind the racial disparities in our prison justice device.”

Garza obtained 68 percent of the vote to 32 percent for Moore, who, as The Austin Account famed earlier this year, had been “below fire on many fronts for her perceived inadequate commitment to lawful justice, seriously for girls folk survivors of sexual assault.” The Account urged Garza as a candidate who would stammer to the gap of job “a demonstrable commitment to equity.”

With the celebration nomination secured in an overwhelmingly Democratic county, Garza is positioned to extra uncover that commitment as with out a doubt one of the most important high-profile contributors of the rising class of county prosecutors who’re prepared to upend usual ways of regulation enforcement and the success of justice. He’ll join Chicago’s Kim Foxx, Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, and San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin as fragment of a plod to rework how cities and countries across the nation deal with public safety disorders. “The plod is rising!” observed Boudin, as he renowned the victory by Garza, who ran with solid make stronger from unions, Austin Democratic Socialists of The united states, the Working Households Celebration, and Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

The Texan summed up the taking into consideration of the plod at some level of the direction of a marketing campaign in which he told voters, “Our device doesn’t must be damaged. Now we possess the energy to repair this. And we possess a true and a responsibility to position a matter to that it be fastened.”

What fundamental Garza is his choice to pass rapid and decisively to remove on the gravest injustices.

Grab his response to questions about capital punishment. “The Dying Penalty is morally and ethically disagreeable, does now not lend a hand as a deterrent, has confirmed to be applied arbitrarily at simplest, and is derived at big financial expenses,” the candidate’s platform states. “As District Attorney, I will now not survey a loss of life sentence. I will moreover review all post-conviction loss of life penalty cases to guarantee that there are no forensic, evidentiary, or accurate disorders that ought to trigger the conviction to be known as into quiz.”

Or his response to questions about police violence. “Prosecutors must play a key role in maintaining police accountable and guaranteeing that officers who commit misconduct are now not allowed to constantly harm communities,” asserts Garza, who started his list of commitments on the scenario by promising, “We obtained’t ever remove donations from police organizations. We deserve a DA unbought by these they are liable for maintaining accountable.”

Or his response to questions about prosecuting the highly effective—alongside side corporate CEOS. “No one could possess to serene be above the regulation, no topic how rich they are or staunch thanks to their job title. We will whisper our sources to research and prosecute the highly effective actors in Travis County who possess harmed the public—landlords who exploit immigrants, cops accused of misconduct, and company heads who remove money from the unfortunate will now not possess a free lunge in Travis County,” reads his platform. “As an different, the Travis County District Attorney Place of job will actively investigate and prosecute highly effective actors who possess abused their positions.”

Garza’s imaginative and prescient of the DA’s space of job as a platform for pursuing economic, social, and racial justice became once especially profound when it came to stopping the shatter carried out by a war on medicine that for too lengthy has been facilitated by Democratic and Republican prosecutors.

In a dwelling of commitments for the methodology he would dawdle the DA’s space of job in a county where the population is nearing 1.3 million, Garza defined:

The revolving door of justice for folk with substance abuse disorders is a kill of time, money, and prosecution sources. The most up-to-date medical research on addiction suggests that treating drug whisper as a public smartly being scenario, as in opposition to a prison justice scenario, is a extra functional contrivance to reducing harm and promoting public safety. On the opposite hand, our jails and prisons are stuffed with of us that possess carried out nothing extra than undergo from addiction.

As a result, this space of job will survey to pursue policies that decrease the choice of of us in jails and prisons for drug-related offenses. We moreover possess a responsibility to prevent deaths—accurate injection websites and harm good deal functions are key to maintaining our most inclined alive.

Unless there’s proof that a individual poses a danger to the community, I will now not prosecute sale or possession of a gram or much less of narcotics. For possession or sale of bigger portions of narcotics, my space of job will remove into anecdote all appropriate diversion functions so that individual could moreover steer clear of a conviction within the event that they scheme now not seem to be a danger to the community.

For a few years, politicians of both events and their amen corners within the media fostered the anecdote that filling prisons would originate communities accurate. Elected prosecutors mounted reelection campaigns that highlighted their conviction rates and their willingness to pursue the harshest sentences.

Even as proof of policing abuses, prosecutorial misconduct, systemic racism, and the absolute failure of mass incarceration mounted, too many prosecutors in too many locations replied with incremental reforms that changed little.

Too many prosecutors refused to replace direction and acknowledge that the device is now not working.

Garza knows there’s one thing disagreeable with a device in which “the bulk of our sources are spent locking-up of us combating substance abuse and our DA’s space of job has now not diminished the choice of of us we ship to penal complex.” And he knows there are orderly picks. “The research is positive: prisons scheme now not decrease recidivism,” says the candidate Travis County voters has staunch nominated. “Actually, rehabilitation functions dawdle originate air of prisons consistently outperform these dawdle in penal complex by methodology of maintaining of us out of jail.”