“This is a pivotal moment for those of us who know that prisons and incarceration harm Black and Brown people rather than creating public safety. The Democratic governor of New York State, Kathy Hochul, is trying to reignite the explosion of incarceration we experienced in the 1980s and 1990s. She is attempting to insert in New York’s bail law a provision that turns bail into sheer punishment. This is a model of mass incarceration that truly belongs in sci-fi movies. Yet the threat is real. The bail laws she is trying to upend, laws passed after much community struggle, already left many people behind bars and were not enough to stop the crisis of death and suffering on Rikers, and other local jails across the state. Still, the governor has made jailing more Black and Brown people, people in poverty, people with disabilities and people with unmet needs her top priority for the state’s budget — not housing, not healthcare, not free school meals, not an expansion of the social safety net, the things that actually create safety and security — just more jailing. People across all movements must rise up to stop her and demand that lawmakers go forward, not backwards, to protect people from these deathtrap jails. And whatever. The letter of the law says, our constant struggle for freedom continues, because we know that public health and safety reside with the advances our movements make, not with police and prisons.”
