Query: The Political Economy of the Beeper

alec ramsdell a_ramsdell at hotmail.com
Fri Aug 21 23:04:52 PDT 1998


Now, example (3) is turning out to be
>tricky for me. This is the beeper and the gangsta. I'm looking at
>the role of beepers in the drug trade. Unfortunately, this is the main
>focus of the paper. Now, I think I can do a bit on beepers (and
>underground economies) and flexible accumulation. I can do a bit on
>employment opportunities in inner cities leading to involvment in the
>drug trade. I can do a bit on beepers as surveillance--police perhaps
>looking more closely (i think this might be more of an historical
point)
>at young black men with beepers than without.
>
Also, does anyone know anything about the political
>economy of the US urban drug trade? I haven't been able to locate
anything
>on drug-dealing and wireless technologies--don't think it exists so i'm
>probably going to have to qualify that section with "popular
>perception..."
>Does this even make sense? At the very least, I have a good title.

I've been thinking about this, and I've been thinking that my help may be a bit too anecdotal, and maybe nothing new. Rather than try to condense and abstract, I'll just relate it as follows. Forgive the superfluous details.

My dealers in Chicago, a family from Puerto Rico, were very pleasant and accomodating people. With me for obvious reasons, yes, but I'm being serious, too. I took advantage of them more often than they did of me. But they always had me back (again, go figure). I won't go into the infrastructure of their business. But I respect them more as businesspeople than say those assholes as Price Waterhouse, where I temped once. It's laughable that anyone should fear or demonize such a family and such a venture. Are they not just following the guidance of the invisible hand? Speaking with no drugged self-delusion, they were great business friends.

We communicated via beeper. I'd call the beeper number, the number would be changed periodically, but not as often as one might think. Payphones were used, and the year-and-a-half I was in Chicago I pretty much used the same phones and went to the same places, with no interference from the police. Once I got a call-back to cop (score) from one of the family, from a pay-phone at a police station, where he was picking up his cousin. My experience with all of this didn't give me much new insights into police surveillance of "underground" economies via beeper. But then when one is involved the way I was, such a term "underground" starts to lose significance. I mean there are police sanctioned, or at least maintained, "underground" economies. It's a market, after all. Both at street-level and institutional-systemic level.

But my experience in SF gave me a wider street-level scope. I used to cop over in the Mission, and there, boy, talk about an open secret. There were often more runners on the block than passers-by. A runner is usually a young junky, who deals dope to support his or her habit. There were older players too. Many of them dealt in order to eat and/or to support their habits and hotel rooms. Much prostitution as well, for the same reasons. A lethal combination for the women involved (there were some murders of prostitutes in this area recently, reportedly at the hands of pimps).

The Mission is a good example of the pyramid drug-economy, Amway but with a different pep incentive. The runners were expendable, and they were the ones who would get the very routine bust.

I learned quickly that Tuesday and Thursday were the days the narcs would come. I was down there again recently, saw some of my old comrades, and learned that the narc days of the week had changed. Those crafty cops. You know, those burly white guys wearing flannel, with that strong well-fed junky look. On these days operations move up a block or so. Everyone on both sides knows about the game, it's just the careless junky that gets the token bust. Arresting a runner or a junky won't do much to stop business though.

The political economy of the scene where I was demanded a fast turn-over of players. The dope is always there, but it changes hands, and I don't see many of the people there now that were there when I was using. However, African-Americans who live in the projects a block away are at a disadvantage to the young mostly white mobile punks who came and went. The blacks live in the projects (recently adorned with a new lovely square-steel-pole fence, a creamy beige, maybe 10' high) and so they get the brunt of the busts, since they can't just leave.

Hmm. That's about it I guess. Beepers were a part of it in SF, between runners and dealers. But again, I'm not sure about specific police surveillance strategies. Whatever they are, they didn't seem to be using them on the block where I was. And the dope just keeps on coming.

If there's anything I've written that would interest you in more detail, or anything that suggests another angle that maybe I havn't taken, let me know. I guess I've scratched the surface of drug-dealing, but havn't done much with wireless technologies. What do you think? What's your take so far on beepers and gangstas?

-Alec

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