Austin, Texas, Just Voted to End the Drug War | The Nation
▻https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/jose-garza-texas-drugs-election
“On day one, we will end the prosecution of low-level drug offenses here in Travis County,” announced district attorney candidate José Garza, at a February forum on criminal justice reform in Austin. “We will end the prosecution of possession and sale offenses of a gram or less.”
That may have sounded to some like a bold statement, but Garza argued it was the rational response to a “broken system.”
On Tuesday night, voters in the state capital of Texas and the surrounding county agreed. Garza, a former federal public defender, immigrant rights activist, and executive director of the Texas Workers Defense Project–Proyecto Defensa Laboral, swept to victory over Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore in a closely watched Democratic primary runoff election. And the successful challenger signaled that he is ready to act. “We know that 60-percent of all people arrested and charged with drug possession through traffic stops are people of color,” he told reporters. “So, it is time to end the war on drugs in this community to begin to unwind the racial disparities in our criminal justice system.”
