Literary Journalism II, January 2006

Literary Journalism II,

January 2006

By Mark Bryant

Justice: "Just Us"

The state of Texas incarcerates more citizens than any other state in the United States. It is by far the most draconian legal and punitive system in America, putting to death more of its' citizens than any other government in the world- over 280 in the last dozen-and-change years.

In the last decade, Texas has killed more people under the guise of state law than 43 other countries and the rest of the United States combined. In his last year as governor, while campaigning for the presidency, George W. Bush allowed 40 men to be executed.

The indignities suffered by many prisoners inside the Texas jails and prisons or on probation or parole are far too lengthy to list and document here. Suffice it to say that the system leaves a lot to be desired and that the Lone Star State is about the last place you would want to so much as stealing a candy bar, or run afoul of the law.

With so much glee and zealotry at imprisoning and sequestering them inside small rooms with bars on them, little thought is given to the fact that sometimes Loan Star's finest and the legal system do make mistakes. On rare occasions, God forbid, the wrong man in wrongly put in jail and even sentenced to die at the hands of glorious "Texas Justice".

Which brings us to the cautionary, sad, but nonetheless uplifting tale of Randall Dale Adams. He was arrested for a murder in 1977 and ultimately condemned to die for a grisly murder of a Texas cop that the eventual confessed killer, David Ray Harris, eventually admitted to. Finally, after more than 12 years of incarceration, Adams was freed.

No small contributor to his cause was the 1988 movie The Thin Blue Line, which suggested that the police altered, fabricated, suppressed and omitted evidence to convict the person they wanted guilty, rather than the actual guilty party (The real killer went on to kill again before he was brought down.) This movie was directed by Errol Morris, a noted documentary director. Because it was the only conviction he could get, he prosecuted an innocent man (Adams) while using the guilty man's (Harris) false testimony.

The practice of knowingly prosecuting the wrong person burying the evidence by executing him is chillingly common in our courthouses and venues of the law. Prosecutors can literally get away with murder, using the state to murder innocent defendants, especially poor underrepresented defendants with little or no advocacy support.

Chronicling this attempt to expose the crooked long arm of the law is Mark Singer in "Predilections."

AIDS in Africa

Denial is commonplace in the ravaging epidemic of AIDS in Africa. Women are beaten by their husbands savagely for insisting they wear condoms or so much as questioning the husband's health. AIDS is a shameful disease that is claiming untold lives of Africans every day, wounding a land beyond repair and yet little is done to stop the bleeding, other than the occasion goodwill visit or conference.

The ultimate tragedy is that people don't know-or don't want to know-what is happening to them and the lives of people close to them (i.e. the ones they sleep with). This disease thrives in a stagnant pool of shame and stigma and ignorance (i.e. the widespread myth that AIDS can be cured by sleeping with a virgin).

It also feeds off poverty and sexual violence (men often force women to have unprotected sex, if not outright rape, which causes women to play Russian roulette with their lives every time they hop into bed with a man) and double standards of promiscuity (men sleep around with impunity, but in some cultures it's an executable offence for women).

Ted Conover chronicles these travails of the African people in "The Road is Very Unfair: Trucking Across Africa in the Age of AIDS." He travels across East African Kenya through Mombasa and Nairobi and encounters hopelessness, wives' tales and predatory acts by "sex workers," who often contaminate unsuspecting victims looking for a warm body to sleep with on the road.

Of the 14 million people with HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) worldwide, more than eight million reside in sub-Saharan Africa.

Louisiana's Purchase

In 1987, John McPhee wrote a piece of literary nonfiction on the Army Corps of Engineers' attempts to tame the waters of Louisiana. "Atchafalaya" is the opening chapter of his 1989 book The Control of Nature. The plan by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' is to divert the flow of the Mississippi River into the Atchafalaya tributary; this goes for naught.

This is the heartland of Cajun/French Acadiana. Many people made their livings, however meager they were, along and beside the Louisiana waters.

With the devastating effect of Hurricane Karina, one central tragedy is that the continued vitality of this region-or any return a reasonable sense of normalcy anytime soon-is highly in doubt.

Before Katrina, the fishing industry in Louisiana was on the brink of death. The number of people who could make their living in fishing has been declining. This will have a crushing blow on the industry. People of Cajun ancestry often make light of their reputation as resourceful underdogs who speak a fractured Franco-English dialect unique to their colorful culture.

Cajuns took to fishing, trapping and subsistence farming after arriving in Louisiana. However, they have often been looked down upon as poor, unsophisticated country bumpkins. The culture had been in decline even before the hurricane, as many families have stopped teaching their children the dialect of French that their parents spoke.

It would have been very interesting if "Atchafalaya" had been written in the present day, if nothing else, but to see the impact of a natural disaster on a gritty, blue-collar, often indigent people. It is my hope that McPhee sees fit to provide an updated version of his story.