#drug policy reform

[ivygorgon]

AN OPEN LETTER to THE PRESIDENT & U.S. CONGRESS; STATE GOVERNORS & LEGISLATURES

Support Marijuana Decriminalization for a more Equitable USA

4 so far! Help us get to 5 signers!

I am writing to express my strong support for the decriminalization of marijuana at both the federal and state levels. The current approach to cannabis, rooted in policies dating back to 1971, requires urgent reconsideration given evolving social norms and scientific understanding.

The revelation by President Richard Nixon's domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, that the war on drugs was designed to target Black communities underscores the urgent need to rectify the injustices perpetuated by decades of punitive drug policies. The disproportionate impact of these policies on communities of color has fueled systemic inequities in our criminal justice system.

Decriminalization of marijuana would shift our focus from ineffective punitive measures to evidence-based public health strategies, emphasizing harm reduction and regulated use, whether medicinal or recreational. It's crucial to differentiate between decriminalization and unregulated use, prioritizing public health and equitable access.

I urge you to champion legislation that decriminalizes marijuana and addresses the racial disparities entrenched by outdated drug policies. By investing in research and public health initiatives related to cannabis, we can develop policies that protect public health while respecting individual freedoms.

In conclusion, federal and state-level decriminalization of marijuana is imperative to rectify the failures of past policies and promote equitable, evidence-based drug reform. I urge you to seize this opportunity to advance sensible, ethical drug policy reforms that reflect our evolving understanding of cannabis regulation.

Thank you for considering my perspective on this critical matter. I look forward to your leadership in championing meaningful drug policy reform.

📱 Text SIGN PWUITK to 50409

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💘 Q'u lach' shughu deshni da. 🏹 "What I say is true" in Dena'ina Qenaga

[eternalistic]

BREAKING: President Biden PARDONS EVERYONE Convicted of Simple Marijuana Possession President Biden announced today historic new reforms to federal marijuana policy. The President announced that he is issuing full and unconditional pardons of all prior federal offensives for simple marijuana possession by U.S. citizens and lawful residents, urging all Governors to follow his lead, and is instructing the Secretary of HHS and the Attorney General to begin the administrative process of reviewing how marijuana is scheduled under federal law.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The White House tried to flip the script on border security politics, accusing House Republicans of “staging political stunts” and undermining border security ahead of a House Oversight Committee hearing Tuesday that probed the Biden administration’s handling of the US southern border.

In a memo obtained by CNN, the White House counsel’s office spokesman Ian Sams credited a series of new immigration and border security actions by the administration with reducing southern border crossings last month and slammed House Republicans for voting against the omnibus spending bill last year that included billions of dollars in border security funding and accused them of “pushing an agenda that would make border security worse.”

“It is clear that House Republicans are more interested in staging political stunts than on rolling up their sleeves to work with President Biden and Democrats in Congress on legislation to strengthen border security and fix our immigration system that has needed repair for decades,” Sams wrote in the memo. “But beyond their refusal to work constructively to pursue concrete solutions, they and their allies in the states are actually pushing an agenda that would make things worse at the border.”

The memo was distributed Tuesday morning to Democrats on Capitol Hill and other allies, just hours before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee held a hearing with two chief patrol agents of the US Border Patrol.

The committee’s chairman, Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, has accused the Biden administration of igniting “the worst border crisis in American history.”

“Starting on day one in office, President Biden and his administration rolled back deterrent focused policies, halted the construction of the border wall, gutted interior enforcement, pushed amnesty for illegal immigrants – all of which have made it difficult for US Border Patrol agents to secure the border,” Comer said in a statement announcing Tuesday’s hearing, vowing to hold the administration accountable.

Southern border crossings have hit record levels under Biden, making the issue a key political vulnerability that the newly empowered House Republican majority is eager to exploit. But Biden administration officials saw progress last month as daily migrant encounters dropped by more than half on the heels of new policies enacted by the administration.

During that hearing, Republicans slammed the Biden administration over its handling of the US southern border, claiming that the administration is to blame for the uptick in fentanyl being smuggled into the country and doubling down on their intentions to investigate.

“We will investigate. We will reveal the truth. And we will force accountability,” said Republican Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana.

The back and forth between Republicans and Democrats over fentanyl in the over three-hour hearing underscored the highly political nature of the border, including over drug smuggling.

GOP lawmakers repeatedly cited so-called “gotaways” – migrants who evade capture – arguing that the thousands of known “gotaways” are evidence of what lawmakers described as an “open border” policy despite the Department of Homeland Security continuing to rely on a Trump-era border restriction that allows authorities to turn migrants away.

Democratic lawmakers on the committee, meanwhile, frequently cited data that shows fentanyl primarily comes in and is stopped at ports of entry. Republicans pushed back, saying that it’s unclear how many individuals may be carrying drugs into the United States.

“All we’re doing in this hearing is politicizing another issue in this country that doesn’t need to be politicized. We all agree that fentanyl is a problem,” said Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida.

DHS has said it’s false that migrants seeking asylum between ports of entry are bringing fentanyl, which is instead often smuggled via vehicles through ports of entry.

The White House is also putting the spotlight back on GOP state officials who are suing to end Biden administration immigration policies, including most recently a lawsuit by 20 Republican-led states to block the expansion of a program that will allow up to 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Haiti to enter the US each month. Ending those policies “would lead to more unlawful border crossings,” the White House said.

“Why won’t House Republicans stand up to Republican state attorneys general who are trying to create more unlawful border crossings by ending President Biden’s new measures for border enforcement and safe, orderly migration?” Sams asked in the memo.

“House Republicans should join the President in pursuing real solutions, not political stunts – and they should answer for their opposition to funding for border security and their refusal to stand up to Republican officials trying to create more unlawful border crossings,” he added.

[boreal-sea]

Look.

I have made you a chart. A very simple chart.

People say "You have to draw the line somewhere, and Biden has crossed it-" and my response is "Trump has crossed way more lines than Biden".

These categories are based off of actual policy enacted by both of these men while they were in office.

If the ONLY LINE YOU CARE ABOUT is line 12, you have an incredible amount of privilege, AND YOU DO NOT CARE ABOUT PALESTINIANS. You obviously have nothing to fear from a Trump presidency, and you do not give a fuck if a ceasefire actually occurs. You are obviously fine if your queer, disabled, and marginalized loved ones are hurt. You clearly don't care about the status of American democracy, which Trump has openly stated he plans to destroy on day 1 he is in office.

EDIT:

Ok fine, I spent 3 hours compiling sources for all of these, you can find that below the cut.

I'll give at least one link per subject area. There are of course many more sources to be read on these subject areas and no post could possibly give someone a full education on these subjects.

Biden and trans rights: https://www.hrc.org/resources/president-bidens-pro-lgbtq-timeline

Trump and trans rights: https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/trump-on-lgbtq-rights-rolling-back-protections-and-criminalizing-gender-nonconformity

The two sources above show how Biden has done a lot of work to promote trans rights, and how Trump did a lot of work to hurt trans rights.

Biden on abortion access: https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/08/politics/what-is-in-biden-abortion-executive-order/index.html

Trump on abortion access: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-trump-republican-presidential-election-2024-585faf025a1416d13d2fbc23da8d8637

Biden openly supports access to abortion and has taken steps to protect those rights at a federal level even after Roe v Wade was overturned. Trump, on the other hand, was the man who appointed the judges who helped overturn Roe v Wade and he openly brags about how proud he is of that decision. He also states that he believes individual states should have the final say in whether or not abortion is legal, and that he trusts them to "do the right thing", meaning he supports stronger abortion bans.

Biden on environmental reform: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/10/07/fact-sheet-president-biden-restores-protections-for-three-national-monuments-and-renews-american-leadership-to-steward-lands-waters-and-cultural-resources/

Trump on environmental reform: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks-list.html

Biden has made major steps forward for environmental reform. He has restored protections that Trump rolled back. He has enacted many executive orders and more to promote environmental protections, including rejoining the Paris Accords, which Trump withdrew the USA from. Trump is also well known for spreading conspiracy theories and lies about global climate change, calling it a "Chinese hoax".

Biden on healthcare and prescription reform: https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/06/09/biden-administration-announces-savings-43-prescription-drugs-part-cost-saving-measures-president-bidens-inflation-reduction-act.html

Trump on healthcare reform: https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/07/politics/obamacare-health-insurance-ending-trump/index.html

I'm rolling healthcare and prescriptions and vaccines and public health all into one category here since they are related. Biden has lowered drug costs, expanded access to medicaid, and ACA enrollment has risen during his presidency. He has also made it so medical debt no longer applies to a person's credit score. He signed many executive orders during his first few weeks in office in order to get a handle on Trump's grievous mishandling of the COVID pandemic. Trump also wants to end the ACA. Trump is well known for refusing to wear a mask during the pandemic, encouraging the use of hydroxylchloroquine to "treat" COVID, and being openly anti-vaxx.

Biden on student loan forgiveness: https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/biden-harris-administration-announces-additional-77-billion-approved-student-debt-relief-160000-borrowers

Trump on student loan forgiveness: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamminsky/2024/06/20/trump-knocks-bidens-vile-student-loan-forgiveness-plans-suggests-reversal/

Trump wants to reverse the student loan forgiveness plans Biden has enacted. Biden has already forgiven billions of dollars in loans and continues to work towards forgiving more.

Infrastructure funding:

I'm putting these links next together because they are all about infrastructure.

In general, Trump's "achievements" for infrastructure were to destroy environmental protections to speed up projects. Many of his plans were ineffective due to the fact that he did not clearly outline where the money was going to come from, and he was unwilling to raise taxes to pay for the projects. He was unable (and unwilling) to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill during his 4 years in office. He did sign a few disaster relief bills. He did not enthusiastically promote renewable energy infrastructure. He created "Infrastructure Weeks" that the federal government then failed to fund. Trump did not do nothing for infrastructure, but his no-tax stance and his dislike for renewable energy means the contributions he made to American infrastructure were not as much as he claimed they were, nor as much as they could have been. Basically, he made a lot of promises, and delivered on very few of them. He is not "against" infrastructure, but he's certainly against funding it.

Biden was able to pass that bipartisan bill after taking office. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan that Trump tried to prevent from passing during Biden's term contains concrete funding sources and step by step plans to rebuild America's infrastructure. If you want to read the plan, you can find it here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/build/guidebook/. Biden has done far more for American infrastructure than Trump did, most notably by actually getting the bipartisan bill through congress.

Biden on Racial Equity: https://www.npr.org/sections/president-biden-takes-office/2021/01/26/960725707/biden-aims-to-advance-racial-equity-with-executive-actions

Trump on Racial Equity: https://www.axios.com/2024/04/01/trump-reverse-racism-civil-rights https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-37230916

Trump's racist policies are loud and clear for everyone to hear. We all heard him call Mexicans "Drug dealers, criminals, rapists". We all watched as he enacted travel bans on people from majority-Muslim nations. Biden, on the other hand, has done quite a lot during his term to attempt to reconcile racism in this country, including reversing Trump's "Muslim ban" the first day he was in office.

Biden on DEI: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/06/25/executive-order-on-diversity-equity-inclusion-and-accessibility-in-the-federal-workforce/

Trump on DEI: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-tried-to-crush-the-dei-revolution-heres-how-he-might-finish-the-job/ar-BB1jg3gz

Biden supports DEI and has signed executive orders and passed laws that support DEI on the federal level. Trump absolutely hates DEI and wants to eradicate it.

Biden on criminal justice reform: https://time.com/6155084/biden-criminal-justice-reform/

Trump on criminal justice reform: https://www.vox.com/2020-presidential-election/21418911/donald-trump-crime-criminal-justice-policy-record https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/05/trumps-extreme-plans-crime/678502/

From pardons for non-violent marijuana convictions to reducing the federal government's reliance on private prisons, Biden has done a lot in four years to reform our criminal justice system on the federal level. Meanwhile, Trump has described himself as "tough on crime". He advocates for more policing, including "stop and frisk" activities. Ironically it's actually quite difficult to find sources about what Trump thinks about crime, because almost all of the search results are about his own crimes.

Biden on military support for Israel: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/biden-obama-divide-closely-support-israel-rcna127107

Trump on military support for Israel: https://www.vox.com/politics/353037/trump-gaza-israel-protests-biden-election-2024

Biden supports Israel financially and militarily and promotes holding Israel close. So did Trump. Trump was also very pro-Israel during his time in office and even moved the embassy to Jerusalem and declared Jerusalem the capitol of Israel, a move that inflamed attitudes in the region.

Biden on a ceasefire: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2024/06/05/gaza-israel-hamas-cease-fire-plan-biden/73967659007/

Trump on a ceasefire: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-israel-gaza-finish-problem-rcna141905

Trump has tried to be quiet on the issue but recently said he wants Israel to "finish the problem". He of course claims he could have prevented the whole problem. Trump also openly stated after Oct 7th that he would bar immigrants who support Hamas from the country and send in officers to American protests to arrest anyone supporting Hamas.

Biden meanwhile has been quietly urging Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire deal for months, including the most recent announcement earlier in June, though it seems as though that deal has finally fallen through as well.

[anarchywoofwoof]

the funny thing is that i don't think younger people - and i mean those under the age of 40 - really have a grasp on how many of today's issues can be tied back to a disastrous reagan policy:

war on drugs: reagan's aggressive escalation of the war on drugs was a catastrophic policy, primarily targeting minority communities and fueling mass incarceration. the crusade against drugs was more about controlling the Black, Latino and Native communities than addressing the actual problems of drug abuse, leading to a legacy of broken families and systemic racism within the criminal justice system.

deregulation and economic policies: reaganomics was an absolute disaster for the working class. reagan's policies of aggressive tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, and slashing social programs were nothing less than class warfare, deepening income inequality and entrenching corporate greed. these types of policies were a clear message that reagan's america was only for the wealthy elite and a loud "fuck you" to working americans.

environmental policies: despite his reputation being whitewashed thanks to the recovery of the ozone layer, reagan's environmental record was an unmitigated disaster. his administration gutted critical environmental protections and institutions like the EPA, turning a blind eye to pollution and corporate exploitation of natural resources. this blatant disregard for the planet was a clear sign of prioritizing short-term corporate profits over the future of the environment.

AIDS crisis: reagan's gross neglect of the aids crisis was nothing short of criminal and this doesn't even begin to touch on his wife's involvement. his administration's indifference to the plight of the lgbtq+ community during this devastating epidemic revealed a deep-seated bigotry and a complete failure of moral leadership.

mental health: reagan's dismantling of mental health institutions under the guise of 'reform' led directly to a surge in homelessness and a lack of support for those with mental health issues. his policies were cruel and inhumane and showed a personality-defining callous disregard for the most vulnerable in society.

labor and unions: reagan's attack on labor unions, exemplified by his handling of the patco strike, was a blatant assault on workers' rights. his actions emboldened corporations to suppress union activities, leading to a significant erosion of workers' power and rights in the workplace. he was colloquially known as "Ronnie the Union Buster Reagan"

foreign policy and military interventions: reagan's foreign policy, particularly in latin america, was imperialist and ruthless. his administration's support for dictatorships and right-wing death squads under the guise of fighting "communism" showed a complete disregard for human rights and self-determination of other nations.

public health: yes, reagan's agricultural policies actually facilitated the rise of high fructose corn syrup, once again prioritizing corporate profits over public health. this shift in the food industry has had lasting negative impacts on health, contributing to the obesity epidemic and other health issues.

privatization: reagan's push for privatization was a systematic dismantling of public services, transferring wealth and power to private corporations and further eroding the public's access to essential services.

education policies: his approach to education was more of an attack on public education than anything else, gutting funding and promoting policies that undermined equal access to quality education. this was, again, part of a broader agenda to maintain a status quo where the privileged remain in power.

this is just what i could come up with in a relatively short time and i did not even live under this man's presidency. the level at which ronald reagan has broken the united states truly can't be overstated.

[antiprohibit]

Is Drug Prohibition Compatible with American Ideals?

The American Flag is a symbol of the efforts of the people to form a more perfect union with their government. Drug prohibition, the legislative effort to outlaw the production, distribution, possession, and consumption of certain substances, stands in stark contrast to many core Western and American ideals. As the West prides itself on values such as personal freedom, limited government…

[harriswalz4usabybr]

Speech Vice President Harris gave at a donor dinner in Baltimore, MD!

~BR~

[darthfoil]

"Can any one set of policy changes fix inequality? Of course not, but there are some policy changes that can make a big difference in a lot of people's lives. And in the criminal system we see that every day. Bail reform is a perfect example. We fight over bail reform and we are disappointed that the uptake hasn't been better and that there is push back, but all along the way, there are people who were released who would not have been released [if there hadn't been a fight]. Those victories [matter], every human being who experiences Liberty a little longer, every young person who gets caught with a small amount of drugs and isn't pressured into becoming an informant and risking their lives, matter. "I like hanging out at the largest levels of policy and reform and change as much as the next person, but I also think, in the criminal system, every change we make: helps a life, helps a human, preserves liberty, helps that family. And so of course the changes that I recommend at the end of the book are partial, all policy reforms are partial, but they are also part of a conversation that we are having in this country ... policy conversations are a way we get to talk about our priorities. About how we want our criminal system to be less racist, how we want it to be less violent. ... Each of those [conversations about the use of informants, the use of police force against unarmed civilians, our analysis on the war on drugs, or mass incarceration] is a way for us to change our priorities. "

Source: Alexandra Natapoff in Stop Snitching with Alexandra Natapoff - FACTUALLY

[reasonsforhope]

Article | Paywall Free

"Maryland Gov. Wes Moore issued a mass pardon of more than 175,000 marijuana convictions Monday morning [June 17, 2024], one of the nation’s most sweeping acts of clemency involving a drug now in widespread recreational use.

The pardons forgive low-level marijuana possession charges for an estimated 100,000 people in what the Democratic governor said is a step to heal decades of social and economic injustice that disproportionately harms Black and Brown people. Moore noted criminal records have been used to deny housing, employment and education, holding people and their families back long after their sentences have been served.

[Note: If you're wondering how 175,000 convictions were pardoned but only 100,000 people are benefiting, it's because there are often multiple convictions per person.]

A Sweeping Act

“We aren’t nibbling around the edges. We are taking actions that are intentional, that are sweeping and unapologetic,” Moore said at an Annapolis event interrupted three times by standing ovations. “Policymaking is powerful. And if you look at the past, you see how policies have been intentionally deployed to hold back entire communities.”

Moore called the scope of his pardons “the most far-reaching and aggressive” executive action among officials nationwide who have sought to unwind criminal justice inequities with the growing legalization of marijuana. Nine other states and multiple cities have pardoned hundreds of thousands of old marijuana convictions in recent years, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Legalized marijuana markets reap billions in revenue for state governments each year, and polls show public sentiment on the drug has also turned — with more people both embracing cannabis use and repudiating racial disparities exacerbated by the War on Drugs.

The pardons, timed to coincide with Wednesday’s Juneteenth holiday, a day that has come to symbolize the end of slavery in the United States, come from a rising star in the Democratic Party and the lone Black governor of a U.S. state whose ascent is built on the promise to “leave no one behind.”

The Pardons and Demographics

Derek Liggins, 57, will be among those pardoned Monday, more than 16 years after his last day in prison for possessing and dealing marijuana in the late 1990s. Despite working hard to build a new life after serving time, Liggins said he still loses out on job opportunities and potential income.

“You can’t hold people accountable for possession of marijuana when you’ve got a dispensary on almost every corner,” he said.

Nationwide, according to the ACLU, Black people were more than three times more likely than White people to be arrested for marijuana possession. President Biden in 2022 issued a mass pardon of federal marijuana convictions — a reprieve for roughly 6,500 people — and urged governors to follow suit in states, where the vast majority of marijuana prosecutions take place.

Maryland’s pardon action rivals only Massachusetts, where the governor and an executive council together issued a blanket pardon in March expected to affect hundreds of thousands of people.

But Moore’s pardons appear to stand alone in the impact to communities of color in a state known for having one of the nation’s worst records for disproportionately incarcerating Black people for any crimes. More than 70 percent of the state’s male incarcerated population is Black, according to state data, more than double their proportion in society.

In announcing the pardons, he directly addressed how policies in Maryland and nationwide have systematically held back people of color — through incarceration and restricted access to jobs and housing...

Maryland, the most diverse state on the East Coast, has a dramatically higher concentration of Black people compared with other states that have issued broad pardons for marijuana: 33 percent of Maryland’s population is Black, while the next highest is Illinois, with 15 percent...

Reducing the state’s mass incarceration disparity has been a chief goal of Moore, Brown and Maryland Public Defender Natasha Dartigue, who are all the first Black people to hold their offices in the state. Brown and Dartigue have launched a prosecutor-defender partnership to study the “the entire continuum of the criminal system,” from stops with law enforcement to reentry, trying to detect all junctures where discretion or bias could influence how justice is applied, and ultimately reform it.

How It Will Work

Maryland officials said the pardons, which would also apply to people who are dead, will not result in releasing anyone from incarceration because none are imprisoned. Misdemeanor cannabis charges yield short sentences and prosecutions for misdemeanor criminal possession have stopped, as possessing small amounts of the drug is legal statewide.

Moore’s pardon action will automatically forgive every misdemeanor marijuana possession charge the Maryland judiciary could locate in the state’s electronic court records system, along with every misdemeanor paraphernalia charge tied to use or possession of marijuana. Maryland is the only state to pardon such paraphernalia charges, state officials said...

People who benefit from the mass pardon will see the charges marked in state court records within two weeks, and they will be eliminated from criminal background check databases within 10 months."

-via The Washington Post, June 17, 2024. Headings added by me.

[decolonize-the-everything]

If only 1/3 of voters of vote and only half of those voters are democrats why do people care when democrats say "nobody else would vote a 3rd party"?

You mean Democrats wouldn't, right? They represent barely half of 1/3 of voters. They absolutely do Not speak for everyone. There is still 80% of the fucking country remaining.

I'm not talking to democrats about my candidate or asking for their opinion anymore than democrats ask for approval from Republicans. Why have the rest of us given them the power to speak over us?

So if you are a Democrat, this post is not for you

"It's splitting the vote" when I try appealing to the 80% of the country that doesn't vote? Then why don't dems yell at Trump about splitting the vote?

Cuz they know those are Republicans™ and have fundamentally different beliefs than them. It's useless. The people voting for Republicans would have no interest in Democrats, right? There's no point.

Interesting 2/3 of the country doesn't vote in that context.

It's interesting that 2/3 of voters said they would vote for a 3rd party in that context.

The country does not support democratic politics anymore. Accept it. Democrats are not entitled to anyone's vote and other candidates are not required to step down just to let them win.

You know what I mean?

3rd parties absolutely have a shot is what I'm saying.

Democrats don't listen to Republicans who tell them how Biden is a pedophile and shouldn't get elected do they? Why the fuck do people who support 3rd parties listen to what democrats think about them??

Reminder Trump won the electoral college vote in 2016 with 304 votes. Clinton had 227. 7 people voted for someone else. 227+7=234. Less than 304 still. And Clinton won the popular vote by millions.

Clinton didn't lose because of 3rd party voters or non-voters. The election was not that close. She lost because Trump was more appealing than she was to voters.

So again, why are we letting the 16.5% of America that doesn't even like their own candidate tell 3rd parties that giving Americans another option is useless and "swaying the vote?"

Non-voters need to be motivated to the ballot box or they simply won't show up like they've been doing. And Clinton wasn't as motivating to voters as Trump was.

She lost because she did Not have any 3rd party/non-voter appeal and could not sway people from Trump's camp. She needed to do one or the other to win the election and she did neither.

Just like Kamala is doing because she also is a centrist democrat. And she too statistically appeals to way less people than Trump does.

You know what I think? It's time to tell democrats to get fucking stuffed.

Sorry but if Dem candidates can't get the support of the half the country and even their own party hates their candidates, why the fuck should anyone let democrats tell them how elections work?

"it's not realistic" oh but it's realistic for 16% of the country to hold the rest of us all hostage to stop Trump instead? Gtfoh.

Anyway

This is who I plan to vote for because fuck Biden and Trump. The remaining 2/3 of us need someone who's up to our standards and stands to actually motivate people to the ballot box.

This person motivates me.

Jasmine Sherman is doing a 24 hr live on tik tok right now (July 27, 2024) if you have any questions about their policy. They're also streaming it on twitch too if you'd like to tune in without using tiktok (links at the bottom). They'll be there until 10pm EST.

Some things they support:

Abolish police

Free Palestine, Free Sudan, Free DRC

Landback

Guaranteed housing

Reparations

Trans rights

Universal healthcare & healthcare reform

Universal basic income

Disability Rights

COVID regulations

Decriminalizing drugs & sw

And way way more!!

Tik tok live link: fatblacksocialist

If you are someone who usually doesn't vote and/or refuses to vote for genocide, please reblog this

[zvaigzdelasas]

President Biden fought on Friday to save a bipartisan immigration deal from collapse in Congress, vowing to shut down the border if the plan became law even as the Republican speaker pronounced it dead on arrival in the House.

In a written statement that came as Senate negotiators scrambled to finalize a deal that former President Donald J. Trump is pressuring Republicans to oppose, Mr. Biden used his most stringent language yet about the border, declaring it “broken” and in “crisis” and promising to halt migration immediately if Congress sends him the proposal.

“What’s been negotiated would — if passed into law — be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country,” he said. “It would give me, as president, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law."[...]

Under the emerging deal, the administration would be required to shut down the border to migrants attempting to enter without prior authorization if encounters rise above 5,000 on any given day[...]

As the immigration plan teeters on Capitol Hill, the fate of additional aid for Ukraine also hangs in the balance[...]

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, told fellow Republicans behind closed doors this week that Mr. Trump’s hostility to the plan and his growing dominance in the primary had put them “in a quandary.”

Mr. McConnell, a chief Republican proponent of sending more aid to Ukraine, has been a vocal supporter of the border deal that members of his party have insisted upon as the price of their backing for continued assistance for Kyiv.[...]

The bipartisan team of senators that has been working for months to strike a compromise to crack down on [...] migration and drug trafficking across the southern border with Mexico has come to an agreement in recent days on a set of policy changes. They include measures to make it more difficult to secure asylum, increase detention facilities, and force the administration to turn away migrants without visas if more than 5,000 people attempt to cross into the country unlawfully on any given day.

26 Jan 24

[truth4ourfreedom]

GEORGE SOROS SPENT $117M TO ELECT AND CONTROL LEFTIST DAs AND PROSECUTERS!!!

From: Judicial Watch

Augusta 14, 2024

Soros Spends $117 Million to Elect, Control Leftist County Prosecutors Throughout U.S.

In a scheme to promote a radical leftwing overhaul of the U.S. justice system, billionaire George Soros has spent about $117 million in the last few years to elect then control dozens of liberal county prosecutors throughout the nation, a new report reveals. Once elected the prosecutors, typically known as district attorneys who represent the government in criminal cases, meet regularly with representatives from Soros-funded nonprofits that coordinate and manage the chief officials responsible for upholding and enforcing the law in their respective districts. The Soros machine orders prosecutors to practice leftist policies that are soft on crime, target police and political opponents. The district attorneys are also directed not to enforce certain laws such as those protecting children from chemical castration and genital mutilation, procedures justified by the left as “life-saving gender-affirming” for transgender individuals.

The extraordinary details of the robust Soros effort to overhaul the nation’s justice system by embedding leftist prosecutors throughout the country were uncovered during a year-long investigation by the Media Research Center (MRS). Dedicated to documenting and combating the falsehoods and censorship of the news media, the Washington D.C.-based group examined thousands of pages of documents that show a “shocking level” of control by the Soros-funded nonprofits over many county prosecutors. “The Soros machine sets their policies and priorities, staffs their offices with hand-picked leftists, dictates media narratives, lobbies government officials and perverts the American justice system,” the MRC probe found. The investigation determined that the Soros enterprise dedicated at least $40 million to help elect 126 prosecutors and an additional $77,663,316 to the leftist nonprofits that issue their marching orders once they are in office.

MRC used public records requests to obtain 7,785 pages of internal communications from dozens of Soros-backed prosecutors and examined official files as well as electronic mail, text messages, chats, and other communications. The documents expose how the Hungarian billionaire’s groups directed the liberal prosecutors to manipulate laws involving drugs, abortion, illegal immigration, election integrity, capital punishment and even childhood sex changes. One of the key groups directing the local prosecutors is Fair and Justice Prosecution (FJP), a nonprofit committed to promoting a justice system grounded in fairness, equity and compassion. “Great strides have been made in promoting justice reforms that recognize that prior ‘tough on crime’ and incarceration-driven practices have not always resulted in safer or healthier communities,” according to FJP. The group is a sponsored project of the Tides Center, another Soros-funded conglomerate dedicated to advancing social justice. “FJP held at least 51 private meetings and published 33 formal statements and pledges that contained signatures from prosecutors within its network between 2021 and 2022 alone,” the MRC report states.

Examples include 508 communications—emails, virtual meetings, in-person conversations—between San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s office and FJP during an 18-month period, averaging at least one communication a day. Five county prosecutors in Texas worked so closely that they created a shared group chat to strategize on refusing to enforce statutes that ran afoul of their leftist political views. Combined the elected officials represent over seven million Texans and the documents reviewed by MRC show they strategized to undermine political opponents, including the state’s Republican attorney general. “At least 30 percent of the U.S. population currently lives under the boot of the Soros prosecutors who were pressured to sign pledges vowing to adhere to various Soros priorities,” the report says, adding that the “Soros machine” arranged dozens of joint statements and pledges signed by 123 of the 126 prosecutors vowing to adhere to the leftist billionaire’s priorities.

Besides embedding like-minded county prosecutors nationwide, the records obtained by MRC show that Soros also spent at least $35 million to support anti-police groups and causes in one year alone after George Floyd’s death. His beloved FJP defended the violence and racial unrest triggered by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa movements, accusing the American criminal justice system of being systemically racist. Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) also dedicated $220 million for racial justice and black empowerment in the aftermath of Floyd’s death.

[ms-hells-bells]

Because senator Kamala Harris is a prosecutor and I am a felon, I have been following her political rise, with the same focus that my younger son tracks Steph Curry threes. Before it was in vogue to criticize prosecutors, my friends and I were exchanging tales of being railroaded by them. Shackled in oversized green jail scrubs, I listened to a prosecutor in a Fairfax County, Va., courtroom tell a judge that in one night I’d single-handedly changed suburban shopping forever. Everything the prosecutor said I did was true — I carried a pistol, carjacked a man, tried to rob two women. “He needs a long penitentiary sentence,” the prosecutor told the judge. I faced life in prison for carjacking the man. I pleaded guilty to that, to having a gun, to an attempted robbery. I was 16 years old. The old heads in prison would call me lucky for walking away with only a nine-year sentence.

I’d been locked up for about 15 months when I entered Virginia’s Southampton Correctional Center in 1998, the year I should have graduated from high school. In that prison, there were probably about a dozen other teenagers. Most of us had lengthy sentences — 30, 40, 50 years — all for violent felonies. Public talk of mass incarceration has centered on the war on drugs, wrongful convictions and Kafkaesque sentences for nonviolent charges, while circumventing the robberies, home invasions, murders and rape cases that brought us to prison.

The most difficult discussion to have about criminal-justice reform has always been about violence and accountability. You could release everyone from prison who currently has a drug offense and the United States would still outpace nearly every other country when it comes to incarceration. According to the Prison Policy Institute, of the nearly 1.3 million people incarcerated in state prisons, 183,000 are incarcerated for murder; 17,000 for manslaughter; 165,000 for sexual assault; 169,000 for robbery; and 136,000 for assault. That’s more than half of the state prison population.

When Harris decided to run for president, I thought the country might take the opportunity to grapple with the injustice of mass incarceration in a way that didn’t lose sight of what violence, and the sorrow it creates, does to families and communities. Instead, many progressives tried to turn the basic fact of Harris’s profession into an indictment against her. Shorthand for her career became: “She’s a cop,” meaning, her allegiance was with a system that conspires, through prison and policing, to harm Black people in America.

In the past decade or so, we have certainly seen ample evidence of how corrupt the system can be: Michelle Alexander’s best-selling book, “The New Jim Crow,” which argues that the war on drugs marked the return of America’s racist system of segregation and legal discrimination; Ava DuVernay’s “When They See Us,” a series about the wrongful convictions of the Central Park Five, and her documentary “13th,” which delves into mass incarceration more broadly; and “Just Mercy,” a book by Bryan Stevenson, a public interest lawyer, that has also been made into a film, chronicling his pursuit of justice for a man on death row, who is eventually exonerated. All of these describe the destructive force of prosecutors, giving a lot of run to the belief that anyone who works within a system responsible for such carnage warrants public shame.

My mother had an experience that gave her a different perspective on prosecutors — though I didn’t know about it until I came home from prison on March 4, 2005, when I was 24. That day, she sat me down and said, “I need to tell you something.” We were in her bedroom in the townhouse in Suitland, Md., that had been my childhood home, where as a kid she’d call me to bring her a glass of water. I expected her to tell me that despite my years in prison, everything was good now. But instead she told me about something that happened nearly a decade earlier, just weeks after my arrest. She left for work before the sun rose, as she always did, heading to the federal agency that had employed her my entire life. She stood at a bus stop 100 feet from my high school, awaiting the bus that would take her to the train that would take her to a stop near her job in the nation’s capital. But on that morning, a man yanked her into a secluded space, placed a gun to her head and raped her. When she could escape, she ran wildly into the 6 a.m. traffic.

My mother’s words turned me into a mumbling and incoherent mess, unable to grasp how this could have happened to her. I knew she kept this secret to protect me. I turned to Google and searched the word “rape” along with my hometown and was wrecked by the violence against women that I found. My mother told me her rapist was a Black man. And I thought he should spend the rest of his years staring at the pockmarked walls of prison cells that I knew so well.

The prosecutor’s job, unlike the defense attorney’s or judge’s, is to do justice. What does that mean when you are asked by some to dole out retribution measured in years served, but blamed by others for the damage incarceration can do? The outrage at this country’s criminal-justice system is loud today, but it hasn’t led us to develop better ways of confronting my mother’s world from nearly a quarter-century ago: weekends visiting her son in a prison in Virginia; weekdays attending the trial of the man who sexually assaulted her.

We said goodbye to my grandmother in the same Baptist church that, in June 2019, Senator Kamala Harris, still pursuing the Democratic nomination for president, went to give a major speech about why she became a prosecutor. I hadn’t been inside Brookland Baptist Church for a decade, and returning reminded me of Grandma Mary and the eight years of letters she mailed to me in prison. The occasion for Harris’s speech was the annual Freedom Fund dinner of the South Carolina State Conference of the N.A.A.C.P. The evening began with the Black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and at the opening chord nearly everyone in the room stood. There to write about the senator, I had been standing already and mouthed the words of the first verse before realizing I’d never sung any further.

Each table in the banquet hall was filled with folks dressed in their Sunday best. Servers brought plates of food and pitchers of iced tea to the tables. Nearly everyone was Black. The room was too loud for me to do more than crouch beside guests at their tables and scribble notes about why they attended. Speakers talked about the chapter’s long history in the civil rights movement. One called for the current generation of young rappers to tell a different story about sacrifice. The youngest speaker of the night said he just wanted to be safe. I didn’t hear anyone mention mass incarceration. And I knew in a different decade, my grandmother might have been in that audience, taking in the same arguments about personal agency and responsibility, all the while wondering why her grandbaby was still locked away. If Harris couldn’t persuade that audience that her experiences as a Black woman in America justified her decision to become a prosecutor, I knew there were few people in this country who could be moved.

Describing her upbringing in a family of civil rights activists, Harris argued that the ongoing struggle for equality needed to include both prosecuting criminal defendants who had victimized Black people and protecting the rights of Black criminal defendants. “I was cleareyed that prosecutors were largely not people who looked like me,” she said. This mattered for Harris because of the “prosecutors that refused to seat Black jurors, refused to prosecute lynchings, disproportionately condemned young Black men to death row and looked the other way in the face of police brutality.” When she became a prosecutor in 1990, she was one of only a handful of Black people in her office. When she was elected district attorney of San Francisco in 2003, she recalled, she was one of just three Black D.A.s nationwide. And when she was elected California attorney general in 2010, there were no other Black attorneys general in the country. At these words, the crowd around me clapped. “I knew the unilateral power that prosecutors had with the stroke of a pen to make a decision about someone else’s life or death,” she said.

Harris offered a pair of stories as evidence of the importance of a Black woman’s doing this work. Once, ear hustling, she listened to colleagues discussing ways to prove criminal defendants were gang-affiliated. If a racial-profiling manual existed, their signals would certainly be included: baggy pants, the place of arrest and the rap music blaring from vehicles. She said that she’d told her colleagues: “So, you know that neighborhood you were talking about? Well, I got family members and friends who live in that neighborhood. You know the way you were talking about how folks were dressed? Well, that’s actually stylish in my community.” She continued: “You know that music you were talking about? Well, I got a tape of that music in my car right now.”

The second example was about the mothers of murdered children. She told the audience about the women who had come to her office when she was San Francisco’s D.A. — women who wanted to speak with her, and her alone, about their sons. “The mothers came, I believe, because they knew I would see them,” Harris said. “And I mean literally see them. See their grief. See their anguish.” They complained to Harris that the police were not investigating. “My son is being treated like a statistic,” they would say. Everyone in that Southern Baptist church knew that the mothers and their dead sons were Black. Harris outlined the classic dilemma of Black people in this country: being simultaneously overpoliced and underprotected. Harris told the audience that all communities deserved to be safe.

Among the guests in the room that night whom I talked to, no one had an issue with her work as a prosecutor. A lot of them seemed to believe that only people doing dirt had issues with prosecutors. I thought of myself and my friends who have served long terms, knowing that in a way, Harris was talking about Black people’s needing protection from us — from the violence we perpetrated to earn those years in a series of cells.

Harris came up as a prosecutor in the 1990s, when both the political culture and popular culture were developing a story about crime and violence that made incarceration feel like a moral response. Back then, films by Black directors — “New Jack City,” “Menace II Society,” “Boyz n the Hood” — turned Black violence into a genre where murder and crack-dealing were as ever-present as Black fathers were absent. Those were the years when Representative Charlie Rangel, a Democrat, argued that “we should not allow people to distribute this poison without fear that they might be arrested” and “go to jail for the rest of their natural life.” Those were the years when President Clinton signed legislation that ended federal parole for people with three violent crime convictions and encouraged states to essentially eliminate parole; made it more difficult for defendants to challenge their convictions in court; and made it nearly impossible to challenge prison conditions.

Back then, it felt like I was just one of an entire generation of young Black men learning the logic of count time and lockdown. With me were Anthony Winn and Terell Kelly and a dozen others, all lost to prison during those years. Terell was sentenced to 33 years for murdering a man when he was 17 — a neighborhood beef turned deadly. Home from college for two weeks, a 19-year-old Anthony robbed four convenience stores — he’d been carrying a pistol during three. After he was sentenced by four judges, he had a total of 36 years.

Most of us came into those cells with trauma, having witnessed or experienced brutality before committing our own. Prison, a factory of violence and despair, introduced us to more of the same. And though there were organizations working to get rid of the death penalty, end mandatory minimums, bring back parole and even abolish prisons, there were few ways for us to know that they existed. We suffered. And we felt alone. Because of this, sometimes I reduce my friends’ stories to the cruelty of doing time. I forget that Terell and I walked prison yards as teenagers, discussing Malcolm X and searching for mentors in the men around us. I forget that Anthony and I talked about the poetry of Sonia Sanchez the way others praised DMX. He taught me the meaning of the word “patina” and introduced me to the music of Bill Withers. There were Luke and Fats; and Juvie, who could give you the sharpest edge-up in America with just a razor and comb.

When I left prison in 2005, they all had decades left. Then I went to law school and believed I owed it to them to work on their cases and help them get out. I’ve persuaded lawyers to represent friends pro bono. Put together parole packets — basically job applications for freedom: letters of recommendation and support from family and friends; copies of certificates attesting to vocational training; the record of college credits. We always return to the crimes to provide explanation and context. We argue that today each one little resembles the teenager who pulled a gun. And I write a letter — which is less from a lawyer and more from a man remembering what it means to want to go home to his mother. I write, struggling to condense decades of life in prison into a 10-page case for freedom. Then I find my way to the parole board’s office in Richmond, Va., and try to persuade the members to let my friends see a sunrise for the first time.

Juvie and Luke have made parole; Fats, represented by the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia School of Law, was granted a conditional pardon by Virginia’s governor, Ralph Northam. All three are home now, released just as a pandemic would come to threaten the lives of so many others still inside. Now free, they’ve sent me text messages with videos of themselves hugging their mothers for the first time in decades, casting fishing lines from boats drifting along rivers they didn’t expect to see again, enjoying a cold beer that isn’t contraband.

In February, after 25 years, Virginia passed a bill making people incarcerated for at least 20 years for crimes they committed before their 18th birthdays eligible for parole. Men who imagined they would die in prison now may see daylight. Terell will be eligible. These years later, he’s the mentor we searched for, helping to organize, from the inside, community events for children, and he’s spoken publicly about learning to view his crimes through the eyes of his victim’s family. My man Anthony was 19 when he committed his crime. In the last few years, he’s organized poetry readings, book clubs and fatherhood classes. When Gregory Fairchild, a professor at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, began an entrepreneurship program at Dillwyn Correctional Center, Anthony was among the graduates, earning all three of the certificates that it offered. He worked to have me invited as the commencement speaker, and what I remember most is watching him share a meal with his parents for the first time since his arrest. But he must pray that the governor grants him a conditional pardon, as he did for Fats.

I tell myself that my friends are unique, that I wouldn’t fight so hard for just anybody. But maybe there is little particularly distinct about any of us — beyond that we’d served enough time in prison. There was a skinny light-skinned 15-year-old kid who came into prison during the years that we were there. The rumor was that he’d broken into the house of an older woman and sexually assaulted her. We all knew he had three life sentences. Someone stole his shoes. People threatened him. He’d had to break a man’s jaw with a lock in a sock to prove he’d fight if pushed. As a teenager, he was experiencing the worst of prison. And I know that had he been my cellmate, had I known him the way I know my friends, if he reached out to me today, I’d probably be arguing that he should be free.

But I know that on the other end of our prison sentences was always someone weeping. During the middle of Harris’s presidential campaign, a friend referred me to a woman with a story about Senator Harris that she felt I needed to hear. Years ago, this woman’s sister had been missing for days, and the police had done little. Happenstance gave this woman an audience with then-Attorney General Harris. A coordinated multicity search followed. The sister had been murdered; her body was found in a ravine. The woman told me that “Kamala understands the politics of victimization as well as anyone who has been in the system, which is that this kind of case — a 50-year-old Black woman gone missing or found dead — ordinarily does not get any resources put toward it.” They caught the man who murdered her sister, and he was sentenced to 131 years. I think about the man who assaulted my mother, a serial rapist, because his case makes me struggle with questions of violence and vengeance and justice. And I stop thinking about it. I am inconsistent. I want my friends out, but I know there is no one who can convince me that this man shouldn’t spend the rest of his life in prison.

My mother purchased her first single-family home just before I was released from prison. One version of this story is that she purchased the house so that I wouldn’t spend a single night more than necessary in the childhood home I walked away from in handcuffs. A truer account is that by leaving Suitland, my mother meant to burn the place from memory.

I imagined that I had singularly introduced my mother to the pain of the courts. I was wrong. The first time she missed work to attend court proceedings was to witness the prosecution of a kid the same age as I was when I robbed a man. He was probably from Suitland, and he’d attempted to rob my mother at gunpoint. The second time, my mother attended a series of court dates involving me, dressed in her best work clothes to remind the prosecutor and judge and those in the courtroom that the child facing a life sentence had a mother who loved him. The third time, my mother took off days from work to go to court alone and witness the trial of the man who raped her and two other women. A prosecutor’s subpoena forced her to testify, and her solace came from knowing that prison would prevent him from attacking others.

After my mother told me what had happened to her, we didn’t mention it to each other again for more than a decade. But then in 2018, she and I were interviewed on the podcast “Death, Sex & Money.” The host asked my mother about going to court for her son’s trial when he was facing life. “I was raped by gunpoint,” my mother said. “It happened just before he was sentenced. So when I was going to court for Dwayne, I was also going for a court trial for myself.” I hadn’t forgotten what happened, but having my mother say it aloud to a stranger made it far more devastating.

On the last day of the trial of the man who raped her, my mother told me, the judge accepted his guilty plea. She remembers only that he didn’t get enough time. She says her nose began to bleed. When I asked her what she would have wanted to happen to her attacker, she replied, “That I’d taken the deputy’s gun and shot him.”

Harris has studied crime-scene and autopsy photos of the dead. She has confronted men in court who have sexually assaulted their children, sexually assaulted the elderly, scalped their lovers. In her 2009 book, “Smart on Crime,” Harris praised the work of Sunny Schwartz — creator of the Resolve to Stop the Violence Project, the first restorative-justice program in the country to offer services to offenders and victims, which began at a jail in San Francisco. It aims to help inmates who have committed violent crimes by giving them tools to de-escalate confrontations. Harris wrote a bill with a state senator to ensure that children who witness violence can receive mental health treatment. And she argued that safety is a civil right, and that a 60-year sentence for a series of restaurant armed robberies, where some victims were bound or locked in freezers, “should tell anyone considering viciously preying on citizens and businesses that they will be caught, convicted and sent to prison — for a very long time.”

Politicians and the public acknowledge mass incarceration is a problem, but the lengthy prison sentences of men and women incarcerated during the 1990s have largely not been revisited. While the evidence of any prosecutor doing work on this front is slim, as a politician arguing for basic systemic reforms, Harris has noted the need to “unravel the decades-long effort to make sentencing guidelines excessively harsh, to the point of being inhumane”; criticized the bail system; and called for an end to private prisons and criticized the companies that charge absurd rates for phone calls and electronic-monitoring services.

In June, months into the Covid-19 pandemic, and before she was tapped as the vice-presidential nominee, I had the opportunity to interview Harris by phone. A police officer’s knee on the neck of George Floyd, choking the life out of him as he called for help, had been captured on video. Each night, thousands around the world protested. During our conversation, Harris told me that as the only Black woman in the United States Senate “in the midst of the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery,” countless people had asked for stories about her experiences with racism. Harris said that she was not about to start telling them “about my world for a number of reasons, including you should know about the issue that affects this country as part of the greatest stain on this country.” Exhausted, she no longer answered the questions. I imagined she believes, as Toni Morrison once said, that “the very serious function of racism” is “distraction. It keeps you from doing your work.”

But these days, even in the conversations that I hear my children having, race suffuses so much. I tell Harris that my 12-year-old son, Micah, told his classmates and teachers: “As you all know, my dad went to jail. Shouldn’t the police who killed Floyd go to jail?” My son wanted to know why prison seemed to be reserved for Black people and wondered whose violence demanded a prison cell.

“In the criminal-justice system,” Harris replied, “the irony, and, frankly, the hypocrisy is that whenever we use the words ‘accountability’ and ‘consequence,’ it’s always about the individual who was arrested.” Again, she began to make a case that would be familiar to any progressive about the need to make the system accountable. And while I found myself agreeing, I began to fear that the point was just to find ways to treat officers in the same brutal way that we treat everyone else. I thought about the men I’d represented in parole hearings — and the friends I’d be representing soon. And wondered out loud to Harris: How do we get to their freedom?

“We need to reimagine what public safety looks like,” the senator told me, noting that she would talk about a public health model. “Are we looking at the fact that if you focus on issues like education and preventive things, then you don’t have a system that’s reactive?” The list of those things becomes long: affordable housing, job-skills development, education funding, homeownership. She remembered how during the early 2000s, when she was the San Francisco district attorney and started Back on Track (a re-entry program that sought to reduce future incarceration by building the skills of the men facing drug charges), many people were critical. “ ‘You’re a D.A. You’re supposed to be putting people in jail, not letting them out,’” she said people told her.

It always returns to this for me — who should be in prison, and for how long? I know that American prisons do little to address violence. If anything, they exacerbate it. If my friends walk out of prison changed from the boys who walked in, it will be because they’ve fought with the system — with themselves and sometimes with the men around them — to be different. Most violent crimes go unsolved, and the pain they cause is nearly always unresolved. And those who are convicted — many, maybe all — do far too much time in prison.

And yet, I imagine what I would do if the Maryland Parole Commission contacted my mother, informing her that the man who assaulted her is eligible for parole. I’m certain I’d write a letter explaining how one morning my mother didn’t go to work because she was in a hospital; tell the board that the memory of a gun pointed at her head has never left; explain how when I came home, my mother told me the story. Some violence changes everything.

The thing that makes you suited for a conversation in America might be the very thing that precludes you from having it. Terell, Anthony, Fats, Luke and Juvie have taught me that the best indicator of whether I believe they should be free is our friendship. Learning that a Black man in the city I called home raped my mother taught me that the pain and anger for a family member can be unfathomable. It makes me wonder if parole agencies should contact me at all — if they should ever contact victims and their families.

Perhaps if Harris becomes the vice president we can have a national conversation about our contradictory impulses around crime and punishment. For three decades, as a line prosecutor, a district attorney, an attorney general and now a senator, her work has allowed her to witness many of them. Prosecutors make a convenient target. But if the system is broken, it is because our flaws more than our virtues animate it. Confronting why so many of us believe prisons must exist may force us to admit that we have no adequate response to some violence. Still, I hope that Harris reminds the country that simply acknowledging the problem of mass incarceration does not address it — any more than keeping my friends in prison is a solution to the violence and trauma that landed them there.

In light of Harris being endorsed by Biden and highly likely to be the Democratic Party candidate, I thought I would share this balanced, understanding of both sides, article in regard to Harris and her career as a prosecutor, as I know that will be something dragged out by bad actors and useful idiots (you have a bunch of people stating 'Kamala is a cop', which is completely false, and also factless and misleading statements about 'mass incarceration' under her). I'm not saying she doesn't deserve to be criticised or that there is nothing about her career that can be criticised, but it should at least be representative of the truth and understanding of the complexities of the legal system.

[quitepossiblytall]

I understand the anger and frustration that draws people to Jill Stein but she is not a good candidate, on the merits.

“Pro-choice” Jill Stein was backed by anti-abortion, pro-Trump billionaire, Bernie Marcus. Marcus has given money to the RGA, who supported anti-abortion governors Brian Kemp and Doug Mastriano.

“Pro-choice” Jill Stein has been playing cover for Trump’s attack on Roe v. Wade. She has never criticized him for it but instead blamed Biden.

“Anti-war” Jill Stein has called the continuing genocide of Ukrainians a Russian-US proxy war. Calling the Ukrainian struggle freedom a US plot to get military assets closer to Russia. She claimed that the US not the Ukrainian people installed a government hostile to Russia.

“Anti-war” Jill Stein is a longtime contributor to Russian Propaganda Network - RT. The picture of her sitting across the table for Putin is from a gala celebrating the 10th anniversary of RT. If elected, would Ukrainians qualify for military aid?

“Anti-war” Jill Stein made her millions in part because of lucrative stock holding in military contractors like Raytheon Corp., who make 90% of their profits in military contracts.

“Anti-war” Jill Stein also took money from Lockheed Martin in the 2016 election.

“Pro-worker” Jill Stein took money from Apple and Amazon in the 2016 election.

“Environmentalist” Jill Stein lies about the Biden administration’s climate change laws.

“Environmentalist” Jill Stein had $1 million dollars invested in Exxon, Toho Gas, Conoco Phillips, Duke Energy, and Chevron.

“Pro-Health Care” Jill Stein ignores and lies about the Biden administration expanding the ACA.

“Pro-Health Care” Jill Stein ignored and lies about the Biden administration’s prescription drug reform.

“Pro-Health Care” had lucrative stocks in Pfizer, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, and Allergen.

“Pro-Health Care” Jill Stein had upwards of $1 million dollars invested in big tobacco company, Phillip Morris International. They manufacture Marlboro and 17 other cigarette brands.

“Pro-Immigration” Jill Stein lies about the Biden administration’s immigration policy, claiming it’s the same as Trump’s.

“Leftist” Jill Stein is being propped up and cheered on by the right wing by people like Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon, and Megan Kelly.

Jill Stein is a millionaire playing on people’s very justified anger about the actions of the Israeli government.

Jill Stein is a millionaire worth 7 million dollars, who was able to be comfortably retired, with her lucrative investments in the very companies she claims to hate, while regulars Americans were struggling through the Great Recession.

Jill Stein rails against democrats/biden constantly on her YouTube page but there are no videos about her policy. The only time she talks about Trump is to use him as a way to disparage Biden.

The Green Party silenced her opponents within the Green Party. She refused to debate other party members for the nomination.

She is a failed politician who was only true experience as a public official was the local Lexington legislative body. She failed to get elected as Massachusetts governor twice. She failed to get elected as a Massachusetts state representative. She failed to get more than 4% of the vote in both of her presidential runs. She’s not even on the ballot in her home state of Massachusetts. If her own home state doesn’t want her, has never wanted her, why should we want her in the higher office in the country?

Jill Stein isn’t the “Greater good”, she’s a “lesser evil”.