#pardon the background

[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.

[kairennart]

And the first time that you kissed me I drank dry the river Lethe The Liffey would have been softer on my stomach all the same But you spoke some quick new music That went so far to soothe this soul As it was And ever shall be Unearth without a name

Hozier, First Time

[zelterxc]

i saw a neato outfit and it looked very Loid™

good god tho loid is deceptively hard to draw hkjgfdfg

[nabaath-areng]

As children, twin brothers Jinn and Tchigri would always run away from home to embark on their so called 'expeditions' to ancient Turali ruins. Now in their adult years, they travel together as experienced archeologists, seeking to continue their mission over at distant shores. Years spent on the field using pickaxes and sledgehammers have served to help them develop new and refined techniques with their chosen tools, setting them apart from traditional miners who primarily hunt for ore. Whether it be ancient artifacts or hidden fossils, any remnants of the past are unearthed with utmost care and precision. It is not profit that drives the twins. Indeed, they merely possess an insatiable curiousity for all which came before them. To them, there's just something so very special about those who walked before not being all that different to those who now walk after. Every ruin tells them that same story; that people have always laughed, wept and bonded over the same things, then as they do now. Jinn and Tchigri hopes to compile all their findings into literature one day. Not for the sake of established scholars, but rather to introduce everyday people to the wonder of history and archeology, and thereby encouraging them to be curious about the world around them... and the stories that lie in wait, if you just know what to look for.

First attempt at writing for the so called 'background characters' (ie characters that aren't necessarily created to be fully fledged or detailed, but rather are just made for fun for me to play around with different designs and lore ideas without feeling like I have to commit wholly). I actually made their designs and gave them their names back in 2021 (and even drew them), but I just couldn't decide what their homeland should be and so they've kinda circled around aimlessly in my brain ever since then. Only now did it finally click when I realized how fitting Tural would be! Really helped them 'make sense' for me, which meant screenshot time!

[landfilloftrash]

hello four people and a shoestring

[ploffskinpluffskin]

i couldn't tell you why exactly but i enjoy putting haru in a position where she's kind of Extending the same need to repay kindness that the cat king can be surmised to have without realizing she's playing into that circle of gratitude

she's naturally kind already, and with the events of the movie showing her just how powerful and how meaningful even her small actions can be, i do like the idea of her looking at some of the other characters who have helped her and offered her so much guidance, etc. and feeling that there must be something she can do in return for them as well

which is probably why i have a couple stories that only come about bc she sees some old hurt just covered up with a band-aid and wonders if maybe a little New Blood might be the trick to get that process going

i just like the idea of a haru who gets very determined and stubborn as she gets older, but never for the purposes of wounding someone, and not necessarily in a bull-headed or Sassy way, but just that she will see a problem that's not being dealt with and roll up her sleeves to go apply some gentle but Unending pressure lmao

she can be reasoned with of course! sometimes she doesn't understand all the nuances of what she's trying to fix. but sometimes she does manage to bring in a new perspective, i think, for problems that are Ages Old

[thetriggeredhappy]

did you guys know that i play and compose music as a hobby

well i put my stuff up on bandcamp if you wanna check it out

i'm trying to save up money and would appreciate the support! i'm planning on doing writing and drawing commissions over the holiday season as well, so be on the lookout for that. thanks again to everyone for the support and kindness over the years - it means more than a tumblr post can ever express.

keep it breezy

[pianokantzart]

I also might have wandered aimlessly into the forest today to draw trees

[grayscale-blep]

The Undertale brainrot is making me extremely silly rn

[jorvikwildhorse]

Artfight attack of Yasmine and Amman for @yasminewestbank

[sirensea14]

Could you draw more farm cuphead🥺👉🏾👈🏾

Sure👍

Lol the middle one was lookin good til i colored it and realized his hair is actually wrong 😂 but anyways there your go, you asked for it

[justarandomlambblog]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Cult of the Lamb (Video Game) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Heket & Kallamar & Leshy & The One Who Waits | Narinder & Shamura, background Leshy/Yellow Cat Characters: The One Who Waits | Narinder, Leshy (Cult of the Lamb), Heket (Cult of the Lamb), Kallamar (Cult of the Lamb), Shamura (Cult of the Lamb), The Lamb (Cult of the Lamb) Additional Tags: Implied onesided Narilamb, heed the character death warning, Angst little comfort, Sad Ending, Bittersweet Ending, Hopeful Ending, Sickness, Talks of afterlife, Reincarnation, mentions of alternative universes, pain medication addiction, fantasy pain medicine but still, No Beta, Minimal editing, Blood Summary:

Five siblings stand on a choice that will change the fate of the entire world. It all rides on the vote of the fifth.

-

One cannot be god of Death while being alive. Narinder's life is directly tied to the crown, and in sparing him the Lamb did not sever the contract. Without the crown his mortal body begins to fail, and whatever is left of his divinity struggles to keep up with repairing the damage. Narinder tries to hide this as long as he can, which isn't difficult when the Lamb avoids him just as much as he avoids them.

Then his siblings are brought in, one by one. Luckily for him, they are more interested in trying to make a new future than lingering on the past.

If only he had more time.

[banyanas]

while i intend to touch on drones not having the same nudity taboos as humans (and pretty much zero connection between what's considered se/xuality-adjacent bc they dont even have "se/xual" as an enacted concept beyond the abstract of how it is for humans) in tandem with Transed Gendered Robots and the nature of gender (assigned or otherwise) in both Copper and Terran drone societies, it IS also really funny to me for Uzi to go 'ok strip' and N has zero second thoughts about the request and just goes 'ok!'

[devilishlyellie]

The first edition to my DC figure collection, I'm pretty satisfied! 😍

[dreadfularts]

“Are you online?”

“Well, as far as I’m concerned, the internet is just another way of being rejected by women.”

You’ve Got Mail (1998)

[echoarts03]

Does Damien have any cat-like qualities like his father?

Of course he does!

Dice is usually the one to trigger the laser pointer since he's really the only one who could get away with it. Not to mention, Damien doesn't have a lot in common with his father, so his dad makes sure to give them some sort of bonding time. (Usually to Devil's annoyance)

Devil loves Damien don't get me wrong, but he's not the best with kids, and Damien is a lot more like his dad than he is his father, anyways. I promise he does try his best!

Don't steal my art, or I promise I WILL find out and I WILL break your knees.