S20 Ep63: Bear Witness: The Pursuit Of Justice In A Violent Land w/Ross Halperin

True Crime Tuesday Presents: Bear Witness: The Pursuit Of Justice In A Violent Land with Journalist/ Author, Ross Halperin!As young men, Kurt Ver Beek, an American sociologist, and Carlos Hernández, a Honduran schoolteacher, devoted their lives to helping the poor. But it wasn’t until they moved to Nueva Suyapa— an extraordinarily dangerous neighborhood in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa—that they came to a radical conclusion: The charity world was combating poverty incorrectly.In gripping prose, journalist Ross Halperin chronicles how these two best friends became quasi vigilantes and charged into a series of life-and-death battles through their grassroots organization, The Association for a More Just Society (ASJ): first with the gang that terrorized their community, then with a notorious tycoon who commanded about a thousand-armed men, and finally with a police force whose corruption and brutality defied credulity. Their efforts made some of the most violent neighborhoods on earth safer and arguably improved the functioning of a national government, but in the process of pulling that off, they compromised their principles, precipitated collateral damage, and acquired their share of outraged critics.On today's program, we talk with Ross about how a program like ASJ could work in the inner cities here in America, how it was offered to Chicago almost two decades ago, the positives of community involvement and how much quicker things could get done, and the drawbacks that the American justice system could provide considering the success that ASJ had was in a third world country....Get your copy of "Bear Witness..."  here:  https://bit.ly/3FlNFnEThere are new and different (and really cool) items all the time in the Darkness Radio Online store at our website! . check out the Darkness Radio Store!   https://www.darknessradioshow.com/store/#crime #truecrime #truecrimepodcasts #truecrimetuesday #rosshalperin #bearwitness #thepursuitofjusticeinaviolentland #kurtverbeek #carloshernandez #honduras #nuevasuyapa #tegucigalpa #asj #associationforamorejustsociety  #murder #gangs #drugtrafficking #governmentcorruption #policecorruption #citizenjustice