23 lines
2 KiB
Markdown
23 lines
2 KiB
Markdown
---
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category: "City"
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tags:
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- geography
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- u.s.-city
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- contra-war
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summary: San Jose, California was the home of the San Jose Mercury News, which published the Dark Alliance series, and a secondary market for Contra-connected cocaine distribution.
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---
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San Jose, [[California]] was the home of the [[San Jose Mercury News]], which published the [[Dark Alliance]] series, and a secondary market for Contra-connected [[Cocaine]] distribution. The city appeared in the story both as a base for [[Gary Webb]]'s newspaper and as one of the communities affected by the Contra-drug pipeline.[^1]
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### Cocaine Distribution
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[[Danilo Blandon|Danilo Blandón]]'s Contra-connected cocaine network distributed drugs in San Jose in addition to [[Los Angeles]] and [[San Francisco]]. Gary Webb wrote that the fact a government-connected drug ring was dumping tons of cocaine into black neighborhoods in L.A., "and to a lesser extent in San Jose, Oakland, San Francisco, Portland, Houston, [[Oklahoma City]], Alabama and [[New Orleans]]," explained why crack developed such deep roots in the black community. "It's where the seed was planted."[^2]
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### Dark Alliance Publication
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The San Jose Mercury News, based in San Jose, published the Dark Alliance series on August 18, 1996. The paper's Web site became a sensation, recording over one million hits in a single day. After the media counterattack, Mercury News executive editor [[Jerry Ceppos]] published his apology column and ordered the Web site's Dark Alliance materials destroyed. Thousands of reprints were gathered up and burned, and a CD-ROM version was destroyed.[^3]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 27.
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[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 27.
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[^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 27.
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