#punitive justice that i grew up not questioning due to being raised in a family with high level military officers in every generation.

[se-ono-waise-ilia]

Training the Perranth City Guard

Training the Perranth City Guard

Summary: After about year of rebuilding, Perranth starts to recruit and train the City Guard.  Lorcan and Elide are invited to attend their orientation, and Lorcan has some thoughts on the role of the City Guard in Perranth. (Takes places about a year after end of KoA)

Genre: Social Justice, Community, Family, some cute Elorcan fluff at the end.

This story was inspired by current events, which calls to make major change in police training, funding, and more.  This is not a perfect story intended to capture all components of the movement.  It’s more of a nod to some of its important values.

—-

Elide wasn’t impressed with the City Guard orientation meeting, nor was she disappointed.  It all seemed standard procedure - the patrols, schedule, laws that the Guard had to follow, actions by citizens that warranted punitive measures, and such.  Elide understood this organization was necessary to the city, but it left her feeling uncomfortable.

She grew up in a place where total control was enforced by guards.  Obviously not like the guards in her up-and-coming Perranth, but with similar duties.  The Valg guards in Morath had almost the same responsibilities as this City Guard, but Perranth was supposed to be the opposite of Morath: peaceful, free, inclusive, an all-around good place to live.  So why did the duties of the Perranth City Guard remind her so much of the guards of Morath?

As she contemplated her unsettled feelings, she glanced at her husband.  She immediately noticed the subtle tells that he was also in a state of contemplation.  First of all, he was sitting beside her.  Normally, he stood behind her or off to the right - more so a warrior than lord, which was a powerful statement to her colleagues in court.  But sitting beside her, she could tell he was being intentional about his choice. There was a reason he didn’t want to come across as an intimidating warrior.

He was also hunched forward, forearms on his knees, and hands clasped together.  As though he wanted to take action, but was intentionally holding back and strategizing.

But more than his position and body posture, the expression in his eyes struck Elide.  It was the expression Lorcan used when he was contemplating one of his fundamental values. An expression he used to direct at her when he was trying to atone for past actions.

Elide no longer felt unnerved, but intrigued.  She could sense Lorcan was about to do something significant, but she didn’t know what.  She had a feeling she would agree with it and play along.

Lorcan sensed her thoughtful gaze, and made eye contact with her.  He didn’t change his facial expression. Then his eye travelled to her slightly pregnant belly.  

He continued to stare at her as the facilitator of the training continued on.  His name was Captain Chase.  He had a very text-book look and character for the leader of a City Guard: experienced, confident, strategic, no-nonsense, efficient above all else.  Lorcan didn’t seem impressed with him either, as Elide could tell he was lost in thought and barely listening to the man.

Elide tuned back in to the training, “…These patrols will be directed to these parts of the city in particular, so we have a constant presence where crime is most likely to occur,” Both Elide and Lorcan looked at the map to see where Captain Chase was indicating, and it was the part of Perranth were the impoverished population of new immigrants were struggling to find secure housing.  It was something the council of Perranth had been discussing, but no action had been taken as of yet.

Lorcan’s face shifted to disapproval at Captain Chase’s strategy, and he looked to Elide for permission.  Elide didn’t know what her husband was thinking, but she trusted him to say and do what he felt needed to be done.  She nodded.

“Stop.” Lorcan stated.

Captain Chases stopped mid-sentence, his body frozen.  Although the attendees had been quietly listening and writing notes, Elide could feel the room stop moving and breathing altogether.  The presence her husband had…she couldn’t help but sigh internally.

Lorcan slowly stood up, and walked to the front of the room.  He turned to face the City Guard.  Captain Chase went to stand to the side, understanding that his lord had everyone’s undivided attention.  

Lorcan stood with his arms crossed, and he stared at no one in particular.  Elide could sense he intended to be careful with his words to make a point.  Lorcan did not have the charisma of Queen Aelin for inspiring speeches, but he understood how to make an effective counterargument.

Elide also held her breath, but at last her husband spoke, “You know who I am.  You know my experiences.  So you know I’ve been present in cities…at various stages of…existence.”

The attendees in the room gave a slight nod, while looking intently at her husband.  It went without saying, the stories of when Lorcan was a key part in demolishing some cities.

Lorcan continued, “I’ve see many variations of a City Guard, most of which have similar roles to which Captain Chase was instructing.”

Captain Chase did not respond with words or body language. Elide could tell the Captain was uncertain of what Lorcan was about to say, as was she.

Lorcan paused for another moment, “The Captain said there should be a heavier patrol presence in the part of our city that is struggling the most.  As if it is expected that there will be more crime in that neighborhood.”

The room, if possible, felt even more silent and still.  Captain Chase tensed up slightly at the implied critique.  

“I have a question for you all,” Lorcan nodded to himself, as if he approved of his strategy, “Why is it expected for crime to occur in this neighborhood?”

Nobody answered or raised their hand. 

Elide shook her head and said, “They may not feel safe, and they may not have choices for survival that are law abiding.”  Her answer came from her experience lying her way into a job, and breaking many other laws at a significant moment of her life.  And Lorcan’s life.

Lorcan nodded at his wife, “Other thoughts?” He challenged the crowd. 

Soon, participants began to call out:

“Insecure housing.”

“They are hungry.”

“The don’t have productive ways to spend time, like a job or school.”

There were some more answers, and then Captain Chase spoke, “They feel that their dignity has been taken away from them, due to circumstances out of their control.”

Lorcan stared at the Captain.  The Captain stared back.  Lorcan nodded in approval, and Elide swore she could see the Captain’s body relax ever so subtly.

Lorcan stared back into the crowd, “Do you think extra patrols are going to help these people feel safe and supported?”

There were shakes of heads and murmurings that gave the consensus: no.

“Although City Guard patrols are necessary to an extent, the City Guard should also spend their time supporting our community in a way that truly makes the people feel safe and supported.”

The room paused again, but with awe rather than uncertainty.  Elide beamed at her husband and lord of Perranth.

“What exactly are you suggesting, lord Lochan?” Captain Chase prompted.

Lorcan looked to the table next to time, retrieved paper and a writing utensil, and handed the materials to a random attendee in the front row, “What’s your name?”

“Gal,” the attendee responded.

“Can you record the following?”  Elide again beamed at her husband.  He had been working on asking people to do tasks rather than barking at them.  With lots of reminders from her, she might add.

The man nodded and readied the writing utensil.

Lorcan looked to the crowd, “I ask for you to call out a problem or crime, but then call out a preventative solution that would likely prevent that problem or crime.  For example, if the problem is insecure housing, the preventative solution would be constructing residential buildings.” He nodded to Gal, who wrote it down.

After a moment, people called out:

“People are hungry even though we don’t have a food shortage.  Provide more areas in the city to get food, perhaps at no little or no cost to specific populations.”

“People need a way to earn money and contribute.  Perhaps there could be a resource to help people find jobs in Perranth.”

“Some are traumatized in a variety of ways from the war and even before then.  There should be a place that helps them recover and hopefully heal.”  There were additional sounds of agreement to this point.  Elide would very much like for Perranth to have healers.  Not just to help her figure out her newly healed ankle, but also someone therapeutic to talk to.

“People need may need new skills to find work.  Apprenticeships from current businesses could help with that.”

“Some do not speak the same languages, which can escalate emotions.  Offering translators with common services could decrease frustrating misunderstandings.”

Elide spoke again, “Some people may not have had educational opportunities to learn how to read and write,” her voice trembled in insecurity, and Lorcan looked upon her lovingly.  This look gave her strength, “Perranth not only needs places to learn, but it should be the right for every person in this city to learn at no cost or sacrifice.”

She could feel loving gazes from others, in addition to that of her husband.  Upon taking up the mantle as Lady of Perranth, she tried desperately to hide her illiteracy.  But after a while, it felt like she was deceiving the council and lying to her people.  Her guilt overruled her insecurity.

With no small amount of anxiety, she began to ask people other than Lorcan for help with reading and writing.  She expected humiliation, but instead received unending kindness and support.  Not only were the people of Perranth respectful of her illiteracy, but they were overly eager to take it upon themselves to teach her.  Everywhere she went, and every conversation she had; her citizens would point out letters, numbers, and words to her and explain their meaning.

It became a bonding experience for her and her people.  The love she had felt since being open about her insecurity was incompatible to anything she had every felt.  It was such a different kind of love than the romance she shared with her husband, and she treasured the feeling.  She still had a lot to learn, but she was now able to read very simple texts and write basic prose.

So when she felt the room’s eyes on her, she felt nothing but support and admiration.  Then she winked at Lorcan, and he smiled at her.  

She didn’t know if it was her earnest participation, Lorcan’s rare display of endearing facial expressions, or the momentum gained from the powerful conversation, but answers from many more attendees come flooding out into the conversation.

An attendee next to Gal got him more paper, and many others in the room were also processing the conversation by writing down thoughts. Elide’s eyes lined with silver at the thought of her City Guard being more than just enforcers of law and justice.  

After about 15 minutes of whole group conversation and writing, Captain Chase interrupted, “Forgive me lord and lady,” the room shifted their attention on the Captain, “I recognize the value of the City Guard contributing the the welfare of the community, but these ideas seem more like philanthropic work.  Isn’t this the work of others, not the City Guard?”

Lorcan stared at the Captain, and this time the Captain showed difficulty in staring back, and eventually averted his eyes.  Elide could tell the Captain was experiencing internal conflict.  He wasn’t opposed to the community work, but Elide could tell he was also set in his traditional mindset of the responsibilities of a City Guard.

Elide understood this was her moment to lead.  She stood, and walked to stand beside her husband.  She could feel the room straightening up, even Lorcan adjusted his posture.  She first looked to the Captain, “Yes, this work is not the sole responsibility of the City Guard.  And the traditional work of the City Guard will still be respected and done,” she paused, “but on a much smaller scale.”

She then looked to the attendees in the room, “Lord Lochan and I desire the City Guard to have a presence of community support, more than a presence of law and order.

This conversation is only the beginning.  Gal, could you please recruit someone sitting near you to help write a copy of everything you just recorded?” Gal nodded, “I will bring this copy to the council.  And we will get to work on organizing departments to focus on these issues and solutions if they don’t already exist.  The expectation is that the City Guard will use their hours of work to contribute to these causes however appropriate: manual labor, administrative labor, community outreach, and such.”

The Captain boldly countered, “Forgive me my lady, but won’t that send a message to the people that the City Guard is…” he searched for the word, but Elide could tell he was trying not to say something controversial.  

She understood his intention, and silenced him with a hand, “Yes, this City Guard will not be like those of other cities.  It will not have the tone of intimidation and ultimate authority.”

An attendee stood up.  He was almost the size of Lorcan, and almost matched his intimidating presence. Elide had not observed him participating in the conversation until this point, “But if people do not feel the intimidation and authority of those in charge, why would they obey the laws?” Elide noticed this question was directed at Lorcan, not her.  She huffed internally.

She analyzed the man for a moment, and saw someone who had used fear as a tool of control.  Elide looked to her husband.

For a moment, the man and Lorcan were having a stand off in eye contact, “What’s your name?”

“Key,” he responded.  Key was looking to Lorcan for agreement, but it was clear Lorcan was using this moment as a time to think about how to spin the question.

At last, “Everyone stand up.”  Everyone did right away.  

Lorcan looked towards Elide, “My lady,” he offered his hand.  She took it.  He led to to one side of the room.  Then he let go, and positioned himself on the other side of the room, near the Captain.  Everyone remained standing.

“If you have chosen to be a peaceful and law-abiding citizen of Perranth because you know how dangerous I am, and you fear me; stand on this side of the room.” Nobody dared to move, not even Key.

“But…if you have chose to be a peaceful and law-abiding citizen of Perranth because you love and cherish your home and community, stand on the side of the room with lady Lochan.”

After a moment, the people began to move.  Elide observed the vast majority, including all of the many women, move to stand near her.  Key, and six other men who looked just as menacing and eager for a fight, moved to stand near Lorcan.  Elide looked to the Captain, and the Captain was the final person to choose his place.  

He crossed the room to stand next to Elide.

There was a moment of quiet as she felt the attendees of the room consider why they chose their place.  Elide felt an incredible sense of purpose and pride at the fact that most attendees essentially agreed to the point that they were motivated by love, not fear.

She moved to the center of the room and said, “We want the citizens of Perranth to love and cherish the City Guard as you love and cherish them.  But to do that, you need to earn their love through being of service by helping the city in the ways that matter most.”

Lorcan moved to stand next to her, “Your original squad assignments are now invalid.  At our next meeting, we will have sign up sheets for all of the causes we listed here today, and maybe some more that we have yet to think of.  Your new squad will be the people who sign up for the same cause as you.”

Before the Captain could speak up again, Lorcan continued, “We will still have a number of squads participate in traditional duties of the City Guard.  They will alternate every week, such that every squad is mostly doing community work, and sometimes doing traditional work.”

The he stared at the Captain, “And this traditional City Guard work will not explicitly focus on specific populations.  They will be fair and just in how they patrol and manage challenging situations.  I will personally observe and hold our guards accountable.” Her husband looked more serious than usual at that statement, and the Captain nodded with agreement and respect.

Elide kept the conversation on track, “Captain Chase will be in charge of the functions of traditional City Guard duties under the supervision of lord Lochan.  We will need someone in charge of City Guard community support project management, who will attend council meetings and be under my supervision.

Does anyone here have experience managing large groups of people and multiple projects?”

A woman came forward, “My name is Dominique.  I used to be in charge of a school in Perranth before… I have significant experience connecting with children, leading teachers, and managing school logistics simultaneously.”

Elide nodded with approval at the woman, “Would anyone else like to submit their candidacy?”  No one did, “Very well.  Captain Dominique, you will be in charge of the document Gal has written, meet with me, and attend tomorrow’s council meeting with me.”

Elide and Dominique smiled at each other.

Dominique nodded and went to Gal.  Elide looked to Lorcan.  Her husband addressed the room, “That is all for today.  You will be contacted when Captain Dominique announces the second orientation.”

He then turned to the group of men who stood on his side of the room, “I see you men, and I understand you.  But if you’re looking for a fight, you are not to be a part of the City Guard,” the men looked outraged, and Lorcan continued, “instead, you will be the guards of our personal estate, and get to fight me on a regular basis as sparring partners.”

The outrage on their faces simmered down as they contemplated this new offer.  Lorcan elaborated, “Your duties will include full time grounds patrol, and discretely guarding lady Lochan.  When our child is born, you will extend your duties to support the well being of our heir.

I am offering you the job you want, but the only violence you will receive is training with me,” he smiled grimly at them, and Elide noticed them begin to grin back, “Otherwise, you will act essentially as peaceful shields to our home and family.  What say you?”

The looked at each other, then took a knee.  Key stated, “We serve our lord and lady.”  The others repeated Key.  

Elide wouldn’t have known what to do with such characters longing for violence in a time for peace.  Lorcan apparently thought giving the offer the fight him was a solution…and perhaps Lorcan needed a violent outlet as much as these men did.

Lorcan looked satisfied, “Report to me at dawn tomorrow on the sparring field outside my estate.”

Elide could sense a hint of excitement from her husband.  Lorcan couldn’t really be himself around anyone but Elide, as he didn’t want Perranth to fear him.  Even though Lorcan clearly didn’t want these aggressive men patrolling a peaceful Perranth, she thought it was possible that Lorcan wanted some like-minded warriors to give him a sense of companionship.  Lorcan could likely be his true warrior-self around Key and these men.  Elide wondered what nickname Aelin would name this group…

He then looked to the City Guard, “If you notice others will an unquenchable thirst for violence, send them my way immediately.  Otherwise, dismissed.”

Every attendee showed some sign of respect to them with a bow, nod of the head, wave, some even asked for a handshake.  Including Captain Chase.  Gal gave a copy of the records to Captain Dominique, and the other to Elide.  

Lorcan pressed a gentle hand again Elide’s back, and she accepted his escort to their next meeting.  As they walked, she spoke, “Well that was an unexpected but welcome turn of events.”

Lorcan gave her a proud look, “Our home has a unique opportunity to start fresh in times of peace and plenty.”

She stopped to look at him knowingly, “And your intention was purely for the good of society?”

He stopped with her, and let his gaze wander to her belly.  With one hand, he caressed the place where their child grew, and he used his other hand to gently press his wife against him.  He looked down into her eyes, and she saw the tiniest glimmer of guilt.

“I realize that in the past, prioritizing the one I love without thought for others had devastating consequences,” he took a breath, “and I regret the narrow focus I once had.”

She put her hands on his face and lovingly caressed his cheeks with her thumbs.  He continued, “This is the time for me to love more than just you.  To love our city, so it will thrive.  And be a safe and happy place for our child to grow up, knowing that love.”

He leaned down as she pressed up, and they met in the middle for a chaste kiss.

When she pulled away, she chuckled with the thought of a silly but possibly wonderful idea.

“What is it?” Her husband questioned her as they once again began walking, his hand still on her back.

“Well, arts programming is a service that will provide jobs and entertainment, which will help sustain peace and community.”

He looked at her to continue.

She smiled up at him, “Perhaps you could train your new lackeys in flaming sword throwing, and your could start a Perranth circus,” she couldn’t help but burst out in giggles.

Lorcan’s eyes lit up and he chuckled.  They rounded a corner and he pressed Elide into a wall as she continued to giggle, “And will there be a beautiful oracle with red lips oggling me in the crowd?”

Elide quelled her giggles, “Always.”

The kissing to follow was anything but chaste.

[antoine-roquentin]

Andrew Cockburn’s new article discusses why Harris County in Texas elected a clean slate of Democratic officials for the first time ever, despite a Republican victory in the overall election. They did it by running Democrats who fit the social democratic mold, who promised material benefits to voters and have track records of delivering. The article in particular focuses on the Texas Organizing Project, an organization created by a bunch of Stanford graduates that ran a very typical Social Democratic-style get out the vote operation on a shoestring budget:

Digging deep into voter files and other databases, Zermeno confirmed that Texas contained a “wealth of non-voting people of color.” Most of them were registered, but seldom (if ever) turned up at the polls. The problem, she noted, was especially acute with Latinos, only 15 percent of whom were regular voters. In her detailed report, she calculated precisely how many extra voters needed to turn out to elect someone who would represent the interests of all Texans: a minimum of 1.1 million. Fortuitously, these reluctant voters were concentrated in just nine big urban counties, led by Harris.

Ever since the era of Ann Richards, Democrats had been focusing their efforts (without success) on winning back white swing voters outside the big cities. But Zermeno realized that there was no reason “to beat our heads against the wall for that group of people anymore, not when we’ve got a million-voter gap and as many as four million non-voting people of color in the big cities, who are likely Democrats.” By relentlessly appealing to that shadow electorate, and gradually turning them into habitual voters, TOP could whittle down and eliminate the Republican advantage in elections for statewide offices such as governor and lieutenant governor, not to mention the state’s thirty-eight votes in the presidential Electoral College. In other words, since the existing Texas electorate was never going to generate a satisfactory result, TOP was going to have to grow a new one.

There was, however, still another question to answer. Why were those 4 million people declining to vote? TOP embarked on a series of intensive focus groups, which were largely financed by Amber and Steve Mostyn, a pair of progressive Houston claims attorneys. (Their string of lucrative settlements included some with insurance companies who had balked at paying claims for Ike-related house damage.) Year after year, the Mostyns had loyally stumped up hefty donations to middle-of-the-road Democrats who doggedly pursued existing voters while ignoring the multitude who sat out elections all or most of the time. When TOP asked these reluctant voters about their abstention, the answer was almost always the same: “When I have voted for Democrats in the past, nothing has changed, so it’s not worth my time.” There was one telling exception: in San Antonio, voters said that the only Texas Democrat they trusted was Julián Castro, who ran for mayor in 2009 on a platform of bringing universal pre-K to the city, and delivered on his promise when he won.

“There’s this misunderstanding that people don’t care, that people are apathetic,” Goldman told me. “It’s so not true. People are mad and they want to do something about it. People want fighters that will deliver real change for them. That’s why year-round community organizing is so critical. People see that you can deliver real impact, and that you need the right candidates in office to do it, and connect it back to the importance of voting. It’s the ongoing cycle. We see winning the election as only the first step toward the real win, which is changing the policies that are going to make people’s lives better.”

Beginning with the 2012 election, TOP canvassers — volunteers and paid employees working their own neighborhoods — were trained to open a doorstep interview not with statements about a candidate but with a question: “What issue do you care about?” The answer, whether it was the minimum wage or schools or potholes, shaped the conversation as the canvasser explained that TOP had endorsed a particular candidate (after an intensive screening) because of his or her position on those very issues. These were not hit-and-run encounters. Potential voters were talked to “pretty much nonstop for about eight to ten weeks leading to the election,” according to Goldman. “They got their doors knocked three to five times. They got called five to seven times. They signed a postcard saying, ‘I pledge to vote.’ They circled which day they were going to vote on a little calendar on the postcard, and we mailed those postcards back to them. We offered them free rides to the polls. We answered all of their questions, gave them all the information they needed, until they cast a ballot. And what we saw was that the Latino vote grew by five percentage points in Harris County in 2012.”

Two years later, Texas Democrats nominated Wendy Davis, a state senator, as their candidate for governor following her filibuster against further restrictions on abortion rights. Her stand brought her national attention, a flood of campaign money, and the arrival of out-of-state Obama operatives who vowed to boost minority registration. Yet she lost by 20 percent to Greg Abbott and scored comparatively poorly with Latinos. Meanwhile, in the same election cycle, TOP and its allies blocked a bid by business interests to privatize the public-school system in Dallas. A year later, the organization helped to elect Sylvester Turner, a black Democrat, as mayor of Houston.

Goldman, Zermeno, and Tremillo (who took over as executive director of TOP in 2016), came to their progressive politics by observing the world around them. Others active in the organization learned about society’s injustices through direct, personal, brutal experience. In 2003, Tarsha Jackson, an African-American single mother living in the dilapidated Greenspoint neighborhood, discovered that her twelve-year-old son, Marquieth, had been sentenced by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department to nine months in prison. His crime: breaking a fifty-dollar window at a neighborhood swimming pool. The boy had already spent time behind bars for various misdemeanors, such as kicking a teacher while being restrained in a special-education class. These Dickensian punishments had been sanctioned by a 1995 overhaul of Texas school discipline, which prescribed zero tolerance and immediate recourse to law enforcement for unruly children.

“My son served three and a half years for a misdemeanor as a child,” Jackson told me over lunch at Gloria’s Latin Cuisine, one of a thriving chain of Salvadoran eateries across Texas. “They kept moving him to different jails far away.” In total, Marquieth Jackson served five years as a juvenile. Appeals to the A.C.L.U. went nowhere. “They weren’t interested. So I started organizing for myself.” Founding Texas Families of Incarcerated Youth with two other mothers in similar straits, Jackson mounted an intense campaign, complete with demonstrations, media appearances, and tireless lobbying. In 2007, she succeeded in getting Texas Senate Bill 103 passed, which banned the jailing of children for minor misdemeanors, although, as she points out, “it took a white boy getting raped in jail for them to finally do it.”

By the time TOP was preparing for the 2016 election, in which numerous local offices were in play, Jackson had joined the organization as the director for Harris County. The membership, expected but not obliged to pay five dollars in monthly dues, had grown steadily since 2009. Petra Vargas, the hotel employee, recounted to me over barbecue how she had eavesdropped on a TOP conference while at work, joined on the spot, and attended her first demonstration the next day. Regular actions, such as the protest that led to a partial cleanup at the toxic CES plant, helped mobilize others. Feedback from the membership showed that there was a host of urgent issues on voters’ minds, such as low wages and poor schools. It was the death of Sandra Bland, however, that propelled criminal justice to the top of the list.

Bland, a twenty-eight-year-old African-American activist, was arrested in July 2015 in Waller County, just an hour’s drive from Houston. A state trooper pulled her over for changing lanes without a turn signal. Three days later, she was found dead in her jail cell, an alleged suicide. Bland’s arbitrary arrest and suspicious death aroused a national furor. But the reason she was still in jail after three days was all too familiar to hundreds of thousands of poor people, especially African Americans, in Houston and elsewhere across Texas: bail for this very minor traffic offense had been set at $5,000, and neither she nor her family could raise the $500 down payment demanded by the bail bondsman.

Tarsha Jackson herself had gone to jail in the 1990s thanks to traffic tickets. (“No inspection, no insurance, no child seat, I couldn’t afford it.”) Now, while launching a petition demanding an investigation into Bland’s death, she and her colleagues in the Houston TOP office sat down and built an agenda around criminal-justice reform. As she explained to me, many of TOP’s latent voters had experienced similarly punitive brushes with the legal system, which they were often reluctant to discuss. “They felt ashamed,” she told me. “Our canvassers on the doorsteps were telling them: ‘It’s okay to talk about this.’ It sucks!”

Rosie McCutcheon could cite her own experiences when discussing law enforcement with potential voters. Like Jackson, she had been picked up for driving without insurance or registration, back in 2003. She was fined $795 and consigned to the county jail, gaining release when she agreed to perform community service at an assisted-living facility. But the county lost the records of her service, and in 2008 she was arrested again — on her own porch, in front of her grandchildren.

By that time, her initial fine had ballooned to $2,100. That was largely due to the Driver Responsibility Program, introduced by the state in 2003, which had little to do with inducing responsibility and a lot to do with closing a $10 billion budget gap by adding supplements to preexisting fines. Hence McCutcheon’s spiraling debt, augmented by a payday loan at 100 percent interest to raise her original bail.

True to its threefold mission — canvassing, policy research, direct political action — TOP has taken on the bail system, whose vicious nature was most vividly revealed in a series of videos that the organization unearthed last year. One after another, inmates at the county jail file in front of a monitor showing the “TV judge”: a magistrate sitting in an office across town. In one video, the judge confronts Anthony Goffney, an elderly homeless man with dementia who had been arrested four days earlier for trespassing, and who clearly has no idea what is going on. “Bond is set at five thousand dollars!” snaps a hearing officer. (When the same officer asks Goffney whether he’s requesting a court-appointed lawyer, his answer is, “Who, me?”) In another video, the magistrate doubles a woman’s bail to $2,000 simply because she answers “Yeah” to a question instead of “Yes.”...

Harris County is by no means the only arena in which TOP and its allies scored convincingly in 2016. East Dallas County, a band of suburbs to the east and south of Dallas, comprises House District 107 in the state legislature. Despite a Latino and African-American majority, Republicans have been carrying the district for years, albeit with narrow margins. This time, however, thanks to an intense registration and organizing drive by TOP and other groups, including labor unions, Victoria Neave, the Democratic candidate, ousted her Republican opponent by 836 votes.

“The interesting thing about that race,” Amber Mostyn told me, “is that the Republicans spent around a million dollars. There was no more than three hundred and fifty thousand dollars spent on our side, and no television — the Republicans probably spent half a million dollars on TV. Our campaign was focused on getting folks to turn out, and we knew that a lot of them don’t have time to watch a bunch of TV. They’re working two jobs, they’re not engaged in the political process anyway, so if they see a commercial, it means nothing to them. But Victoria Neave was out talking to people, TOP was out talking to people, labor was out talking to people — it’s the one-on-one engagement that makes the difference.”

Cockburn has previously discussed how Bernie Sanders’ campaign used similar tactics and got farther than anybody had thought possible in the Democratic primaries. Likewise, for anybody who’s read Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”, the themes should be very familiar. Frank discusses Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius, a pro-gun control, pro-abortion, anti-death penalty Democrat who won re-election by an even bigger margin than her first win. Her campaign likewise was a very typical Social Democratic one, eschewing cultural issues to focus on increased funding for education and a drug importation program that would bring direct, immediate, and universal benefits to people across the state. What happened to her? The Obama regime offered her a job as Secretary of Health and Human Services, which she quit her governorship to become. Democrats lost the next Kansas election to Sam Brownback, possibly the most right wing governor in the entire country, after running an uninspiring tech sector CEO against him. The lesson here clearly isn’t new. So why haven’t Democrats learned it? Why do they enjoy losing so much?

Because losing is profitable. In the world of late capitalism, the traditions of our system are breaking down. No longer are the world’s richest companies the ones that own, produce, or deliver the products they sell. Uber owns no cars. Google, Amazon, and Valve offer to sell you other people’s things and take a cut of the profits. Aetna and Kaiser sell you health insurance, then throw you off their plans when you actually need to use them by employing a vast legal department to ensure they don’t actually have to deliver. The Democratic Party is a little behind the Republicans in coming to this truth, but they’ve reached it nonetheless. When your candidate loses, your voters are outraged and terrified. They flood your pockets with donations. Hillary Clinton’s $1.2 billion campaign operation enriched an entire coterie of consultants and PR men for 2 years, despite none of them actually being able to do what they promised. Winning, on the other hand, means you have to pay the piper, so to speak, and betray at least one of the competing interest groups that donated to you and dooming you from being re-elected. Really, the choice is clear. The Republican campaign apparatus has been in disarray from the moment things became clear on election night, realizing that they’re the ones who now have to govern and trying to come up with random pieces of red meat they can throw to people to make them happy. They’re going to pieces over figuring out what exactly they’re going to do with the health care law they spent the last 4 elections running against. Democrats realize that if they got into power, they’d have the same dilemma balancing the bankers and the tech sector with the unions and the poor people. Much easier to just take money from all of them and not even bother with the whole election thing, until somebody fucks up and they win again.