Author: Gary Webb File Type: pdf Dark Alliance is a book that should be fiction, whose characters seem to come straight out of central casting the international drug lord, Norwin Meneses the Contra cocaine broker with an MBA in marketing, Danilo Blandon and the illiterate teenager from the inner city who rises to become the king of crack, Freeway Ricky Ross. But unfortunately, these characters are real and their stories are true.In August 1996, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb stunned the world with a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News reporting the results of his year-long investigation into the roots of the crack cocaine epidemic in America, specifically in Los Angeles. The series, titled Dark Alliance, revealed that for the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to Los Angeles street gangs and funneled millions in drug profits to the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras.Now Gary Webb has pushed his investigation even further in his book, Dark Alliance The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Drawing from recently declassified documents, undercover DEA audio and videotapes that have never been publicly released, federal court testimony, and interviews, Webb demonstrates how our government knowingly allowed massive amounts of drugs and money to change hands at the expense of our communities. Congressional inquiries into these allegations are ongoing results of the internal investigations by both the CIA and the Justice Department are pending. In August 1996, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb stunned the world with a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News reporting the results of his year-long investigation into the roots of the crack cocaine epidemic in America, specifically in Los Angeles. The series, titled Dark Alliance, revealed that for the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to Los Angeles street gangs and funneled millions in drug profits to the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras.Gary Webb pushed his investigation even further in his book,Dark Alliance The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Drawing from then newly declassified documents, undercover DEA audio and videotapes that had never been publicly released, federal court testimony, and interviews, Webb demonstrates how our government knowingly allowed massive amounts of drugs and money to change hands at the expense of our communities.Webbs own stranger-than-fiction experience is also woven into the book. His excoriation by the medianot because of any wrongdoing on his part, but by an insidious process of innuendo and suggestion that in effect blamed Webb for the implications of the storyhad been all but predicted. Webb was warned off doing a CIA expose by a former Associated Press journalist who lost his job when, years before, he had stumbled onto the germ of the Dark Alliance story. And though Internal investigations by both the CIA and the Justice Department eventually vindicated Webb, he had by then been pushed out of theMercury Newsand gone to work for the California State Legislature Task Force on Government Oversight. He died in 2004.

Author: Angela Jones File Type: pdf While legal recognition of marriage has met the needs of a segment of the LGBTQ population, many still face daily struggles with issues around housing, education, healthcare, policing and incarceration, and immigration. These are issues that were largely eclipsed in national arenas by the fight for marriage equality. In reaction to this, The Unfinished Queer Agenda After Marriage Equality examines the institutional failings and overlapping systems of injustice that continue to dehumanize queer and trans people and deprive them of basic human rights. Building on a major conference held in 2016 entitled After Marriage The Future of LGBTQ Politics and Scholarship, the editors have collected academic papers, edited transcripts of selected conference sessions, and interviews with activists. Drawing from this source material, the book argues that any queer agenda should be informed by an understanding that the issues facing queer and trans people come from the combined influence of neo-liberal capitalism, global white supremacy, and heterosexism. The authors argue that these modes of oppression continue to be especially damaging for poor people, undocumented people, people of color, non-binary, trans, and queer people. By taking an in-depth look at the myriad social issues that continue to affect LGBTQ communities, and by exposing systemic prejudices and inequality as the root cause, this title is an important intervention for students and researchers engaged with queer and trans activism, beyond the fight for marriage equality. **Review The Unfinished Queer Agenda after Marriage Equality is a much-needed corrective to contemporary declarations of LGBT equality that cover up the struggles of queer and trans people facing poverty, criminalization, and immigration enforcement. This book is an important resource for anyone who wants to understand the fight for queer and trans liberation. Dean Spade, Associate Professor of Law, Seattle University, USA The Unfinished Queer Agenda after Marriage Equality analyzes remaining injustices for disenfranchised groups within the LGBTQ community, such as the young and immigrants, and argues that equality involves transforming economic, political and social structures that are untouched by marriage rights. This accessible, engaging book provides a clear direction for LGBTQ activism. Amy L. Stone, Associate Professor, Trinity University, USA About the Author hr Angela Jones is Associate Professor of Sociology at Farmingdale State College, SUNY, USA. Her research interests include African American political thought and protest, gender, and sexuality. Jones is the author of four books and numerous scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals. hr Joseph Nicholas DeFilippis is the founder and former Executive Director of Queers for Economic Justice and worked as an activist for over two decades. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Seattle University, USA and has written about queer social movements, poverty, and marriage politics. hr Michael W. Yarbrough is an interdisciplinary social scientist whose work explores the intersection of law, culture, and family. He is Assistant Professor of Lawand Society in the Political Science Department of John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) USA, and Research Associate in the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities, at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.