New podcast documents the aftermath of Adelanto and his attempt to legalize cannabis

What happened in Adelanto, California is in many ways a quintessential American story: A failing prison town, looking to transform itself into a place of prosperity, turned to another of the country’s greatest commodities: marijuana. In other respects, however, the story of Adelanto is unique, full of unexpected twists and full of people defying their self-curated stereotypes.

In Crooked Media’s new podcast series, Dreamtown: Adelanto, reporter David Weinberg delves into the events when a newcomer to the local council helped the city legalize cannabis production and documents the aftermath that followed.

In the middle of the Mojave Desert, on land that is home to the Vanyume tribe, lies the small town of Adelanto. The name comes from Spanish and means “advanced”. About 32,000 people live here. That was fitting for many years – the town was founded in 1915 by Earl Homes Richardson, inventor of the Hotpoint iron. Surrounded by magnificent orchards fed by the nearby Mojave River, Adelanto was designed as a retreat for war veterans’ recreation, a place of growth and abundance.

However, it turned out that the vets didn’t want to live so far out in the desert, and the river began to dry up, leaving Adelanto less fertile and less desirable than ever. As the Great Depression hit and further decimated the city, it attempted its first significant changes, which in many ways foreshadowed the story at the heart of Dreamtown. There was a military base there, and in the 1980s, California took advantage of the War on Drugs by building numerous prisons across the state. As of 2008, Adelanto had three such facilities, one of which later became the state’s largest immigration detention center.

This kept the town alive for a while, but it didn’t do much more than that, and people were getting fed up. So in 2014 someone decided to do something about it. A whimsical character named John “Bug” Woodward, a long-haired, mustachioed man who wears a MAGA hat on his Twitter profile picture, ran for city council on a promise to legalize marijuana in the city. He won, and Adelanto was actually the first city in Southern California to legalize weed.

David Weinberg became interested in this new development and went to Adelanto to write some short stories. “I interviewed all of these city council members … and then within a year some of the people I interviewed were arrested,” he says.

At first everything seemed to be going well – as soon as the law passed, tinted Bentleys could be seen cruising around town in search of potential assets and celebrity investors including Bob Marley’s son Ky-Mani Marley, B-Real and Tommy Chong others expressed interest . Land was cheap, profit margins enormous, and the city’s prosperity seemed to be reaching unprecedented heights.

All of this glamor was offset, however, by the rudimentary and often childish nature of Adelanto’s city council meetings. In a podcast episode, we hear elected officials arguing with a man in full clown getup. This is not an isolated case; He attends every council meeting in the same outfit. The councilman starts berating him, saying he can’t take him seriously. It seems to be a justified criticism, but then a member also says sincerely: “If a man comes in here in a cowboy outfit, I can buy it.” But not a clown.” There is audible agreement on this, then the discussion breaks out as to whether it would be fair to enact a dress code that discriminates against a professional clown coming to a meeting after a day’s honest work.

It’s these comedic moments that break up an otherwise serious tale of misguided authority and power. Embedded in his stories, these moments guide our understanding of small town politics and the startling nature of local government. With this, Weinberg creates the perfect backdrop for the amazing story of corruption that follows.

Courtesy of Dreamtown: Adelanto

After the initial upswing in investment prospects in Adelanto, everything collapsed. Suspected cases of corruption were raised almost immediately. They referred to council members who appeared to have accepted bribes to pass bills legalizing marijuana that would benefit specific individuals and companies. In November 2017, following an undercover operation, the FBI arrested council member and Rev. Jermaine Wright on charges of bribery and attempted arson. He was found guilty after a trial in June 2022 and was sentenced to five years in federal prison.

Of all the people involved, his case is the most extraordinary: he ended up practically giving himself away to an FBI whistleblower after being caught attempting to commit insurance fraud and, oddly enough, asking to be himself to be beaten to the point of amnesia so he didn’t have to appear in court. However, early in the series, we hear Wright speaking of his moral struggle to vote for the legalization of weed because of his family background and role as a pastor, in footage taken before his arrest. He sounds sincere, calm, measured. That he then morphs into the central character, which Weinberg describes as “a plot from the pages of a Cohen brothers’ film,” is an ironic stroke of genius.

Wright wasn’t the only officer arrested. In 2021, the FBI arrested former Adelanto Mayor Richard Allen Kerr on bribery and wire fraud charges. The podcast features guest weed reporter Amanda Chicago Lewis. When asked if what happened in Adelanto was unique, one weed-growing expert answered simply: No, this kind of corruption happens everywhere and all the time. She concluded that the difference was that they got caught. “In Adelanto, it was tremendously stupid people who were responsible for the corruption.”

Part of the reason why corruption occurs in the first place is because weed growing is federally illegal. Weinberg explains that if you went to the city council to apply for a permit to open a business and were offered to bribe the city council, you could reasonably report this to the FBI. But when it comes to weed, nobody wants to involve the FBI. “It’s ripe for this kind of corruption,” he says, “and city leaders know it.”

His assumption about what was happening in Adelanto is that the city manager most likely had a conscience, saw what was happening around him and tipped off the police. “You need these whistleblowers in local government because this city manager could have taken a cut, but he did what was right and then ended up getting fired,” says Weinberg.

Although “Dreamtown” is about political corruption, this podcast also tells the story of someone else, someone we meet early on, without realizing for a few episodes that she is the true star of the show. After Wright was arrested and automatically lost his seat on the council, longtime Adelanto resident Stevevonna Evans decided to run for his seat.

She was already suspicious of power, as her children had twice been unlawfully taken away from her by the Child and Family Welfare Office. It was a traumatizing moment in her life, but it also shook her up. “She stopped trusting the institutions around her,” says Weinberg, and that distrust has encouraged rather than disempowered her. After sensing that something shady was going on in the council, she was determined to root out corruption and ensure better representation for the people of Adelanto. She won the seat in 2018 and in many ways this podcast is her story of trying to fix a broken system.

At the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, where “Dreamtown” premiered in the audio section, Evans spoke candidly about her take on the city she calls home and the people who guide her, as she does on the podcast does. She’s funny, sharp, outspoken and will make you want to be her best friend instantly. In a world where politicians rarely represent the best interests of their constituents, and particularly against corruption in Adelanto, Evans stands out as an honest and single-minded force dedicated to improving the lives of her community. This is a podcast about what happened when a city councilman took on the legal marijuana industry and burned it, but it’s also a story about hope for a better future and how we can all help make that happen.

Dreamtown: Adelanto is available to listen to on all podcast platforms.