A pocket of moonbattery in otherwise conservative Texas.
Via Law and Crime:
The Blue Wave caught a rose-colored tinge as it washed upon the shores of Harris County, Texas. On Election Day, Houston elected its first ever Democratic Socialist.
Franklin Bynum is a 35-year-old former public defender and defense attorney most recently in private practice. He’s also a member of the Houston Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as well as an avowed opponent of the standard prosecutorial bureaucracy.
In an interview with left-leaning magazine Jacobin earlier this year, Bynum took aim at the side of law and order that’s celebrated more often than not. In no uncertain terms, he said:
A prosecutor in the United States is operating one of the largest, most oppressive punishment bureaucracies in the world. I have always been acutely aware of this when I was growing up in Harris County, Texas, which sent dozens of people to their deaths every year. It’s prosecutors seeking those sentences. When I say that I’ve never been a prosecutor, what I mean is that I’ve never made that compromise.
And now Bynum, a political newcomer though not quite what you’d call a political novice, is the judge-elect who will oversee Harris County Criminal Court at Law Number 8.
In an interview with the Texas Observer, Bynum continued his systemic critique of the legal system but also offered some insight into what a socialist would do differently.
“Who are these courts being operated for?” Bynum asked out loud. “Right now, it’s the police, the bondsmen and the prosecutors, and people are just the raw material to be chewed up. A democratic socialist judge would make the courts work for the people.”