Remember crack?

I don't.  Born into a well-off, white family in the Connecticut suburbs in 1981, I had no idea what was happening a few minutes away in Hartford and Newington. 

Before I learned about crack I heard the KRS-One, Last Emperor, Zack de la Rocha song "CIA" and wondered what Kris meant when he said, "I want all my daughters to be like Maxine Waters."  Later on I figured it out.

Download zach de la rocha, last emperor, krs-one: CIA.mp3

Waters was (and is) the Congresswoman for south central LA.  When crack first really went down, it went down in her neighborhood.  She also wrote the forward for the book Dark Alliance by Gary Webb, which I read in college.

That’s who this post is about.  Dark Alliance was the result of some incredible research done by Webb that basically proved that the Reagan government was responsible for importing tremendous amounts of cocaine from Nicaragua to LA at first, and then elsewhere. The money from the sale of it of course went to fund the heinous Contras who were fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

Dark Alliance originally came out as an expose in the San Jose Mercury News (apparently at some point the Merc actually published decent articles). It caused such an uproar that, although factually accurate, the Merc issued an apology and fired Webb. Since then, he had enormous trouble finding work. A few days ago I learned that he committed suicide at his residence in Sacramento county. He was a fine journalist who paid a tremendous price to do what journalists are supposed to do, tell the truth.

Some tributes:

Guerilla News Network

Narcosphere

Democracy Now!