Tag: waller county
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64 Hours for Sandra Bland: The First Night
“You’re going to be arrested tomorrow,” my neighbor said to me solemnly. Sitting on the front stoop of his house, the street was silent. The laughter and mariachi music from the birthday party down the block had long since morphed into a pile of tables and chairs awaiting pick-up. Only a few neighborhood dogs walking their patrol kept…
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White Fear & the Hate Next Door
Recently a Facebook Group was brought to my attention by a friend. Before I could read the title, I was struck by the images of my face photoshopped. The photo of me reading scripture at the celebration service of Bishop Sandra Steiner Ball, her Bishop’s crook carefully photoshopped out and my nose elongated as a reference…
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‘The Next Generation of Waller County’
Tomorrow marks the first day of a new month, and it could be the first day of a new chapter in Waller County’s history. That will only come to pass, however, if the people of Waller County want it. Primary elections for both the Democratic and Republican parties will be held on March 1st, and…
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Sandra Bland: Justice Delayed, Not Denied
Sitting in Judge Hitner’s Courtroom in the Bob E. Casey Federal Courthouse in Houston, Texas on February 18th, you would quickly realize that the level of transparency and honesty that each lawyer was willing to offer could be measured by the size of their smile. For those of you who have read about the past…
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The Postmortem Prosecution of Sandra Bland
On February 2, 2016, the world finally got to hear some of the “investigation” interviews concerning the death of Sandra Bland. In audio obtained from the state of Texas and released by the Bland family and their attorneys, an investigator asks inmates who had been in cells close to Sandra nothing of substance beyond repeated…
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The Eyes Behind Us: Final Day of Sandra Bland Grand Jury
*This is the blog you write when your writing pen and your phone are your only form of defense while walking amongst armed men and women, and you hope that somehow those tools can make the people you care about safer. In the third floor Courtroom of the Waller County Courthouse, the Grand Jury finished their discussion…
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The Whistling Sheriff: Sandra Bland Grand Jury
“It wasn’t me. It was her! It was her!,” Sheriff R. Glenn Smith joked, pointing at Officer L. Watts, a female, African American Officer on his force. It was individuals like Officer Watts that Sheriff Smith had referred to repeatedly in the media when arguing that there could not have been any racial component in…
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Why You’ve Never Heard Me Say Sandra Bland Was Murdered
You’ve never heard me say that Sandra Bland was murdered. Words are precious to me. I handle them with care. I work with poets who shuffle them around like puzzle pieces on a table until they find just the right fit. I was raised by a man who took the half-page permission slips that my…
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The Creeping Fear of Waller County
There are few vehicles in the world that I am more familiar with than the Waller County Sheriff’s truck. In the 80 consecutive days that we sat in vigil for Sandra Bland outside the Waller County Jail, I lost count of how many times we saw it parked around the side of the building for…
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Open Letter To the Sheriff of Waller County
Dear sir, Last night, for the first time, I looked at one of the articles that was written after you told me to “go back to the Church of Satan that you run.” At the time, I’ll be honest, I was aware that there was a good deal of media taking place around your comments…
Hannah Adair Bonner 