#trans-bail-fund

#trans-bail-fund

Hector Sierra, 51, was arrested for fare evasion and possession of a controlled substance. He fell ill while in custody and was taken to the hospital, where he later died.

I chose my friends poorly, and your friends have a tendency to rub off on you. And so I started making poor decisions. The next night I made a plan of how to do it, and I did it. And I didn't get caught doing it, [but] I got caught afterwards.

The case against Alexander Villa has long been contested, with troubling questions about how his conviction was secured, including confessions that were later recanted and evidence that appears shaky or missing.

That was my freshman bill. The following year, the state passed my bill to expand housing assistance vouchers from three to six months for people released from prison.

The high-ranking role comes with a $180,000 to $230,000 salary, the listing states, and "will serve as a trusted advisor to the mayor, first deputy mayor, and the administration's senior leadership on all matters related to the closing of Rikers."

The city currently gives over $8 million annually to the San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project to work with people awaiting trial outside of jail. The nonprofit has for 50 years connected people suspected of crimes to housing, employment, and medical treatment - the same services the probation department is now proposing.

At Dublin, she had been sexually harassed and verbally abused by an officer, physically assaulted by another, witnessed other officers sexually abusing women, and been subjected to retaliation. Before her arrest, Cristal had been a long-time permanent resident of the U.S. Her conviction for drugs invalidated her green card, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued a final removal order based on her felony conviction.

"Are you okay?" These were Alex Pretti's last words, said to a woman after ICE agents had tackled and pepper-sprayed her. Videos from bystanders show Pretti holding up a phone, attempting to document what was happening before he himself was pepper-sprayed, wrestled to the ground, and killed by those officers. He lost his life not for committing violence, but for documenting it, and stepping in to protect someone facing it.

The U.S.'s political landscape - and our daily lives - are increasingly shaped by repression and violence, amplified by a media cycle designed to keep us fearful in the present, uncertain about the future, and depleted. Exhaustion is not a side effect of this system. It is one of its core tools. Last year, I wrote that Donald Trump's attacks were designed to exhaust us. Over the past year, I've watched communities build movements and adapt their organizing under this reality.

Yet while "Abolish ICE" serves as a unifying chant in the streets, Democrats are once again seeking to temper and co-opt people's demands into a narrow version of reform. The demands outlined by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer could not be more toothless: requiring ICE agents to unmask, wear body cameras, and to follow a code of conduct modeled on other law enforcement agencies.

I never met my immigrant ancestors, but I know my great-grandfather, Martin Huppert, would likely have been deported under President Trump. Immigrating to America from Hungary at the age of 18 in 1900, Huppert settled in Jersey City and made his living both distilling and selling liquors. When alcohol became illegal with the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, Huppert's vocation transformed into a criminal enterprise, and thus Huppert became a bootlegger-at least until Prohibition ended in 1933 and Huppert's livelihood became legal again.

The change in the administration's tactics in Minneapolis is not a retreat. Instead, they are regrouping and planning another mode of attack, with the hopes that their repression might be met with resistance that is easier to control and contain. People who garner their relevancy and power through the dehumanization and oppression of others will do whatever it takes to cling to their soulless sense of self.