Thread by @KtownforAll

Good morning - we're here at the Convening on the Justice Guarantee in San Francisco, hosted by @Justice_Collab and organized by @ChatfieldKate.

Very excited for a day discussing criminalization, housing, and structural racism in the justice system. Stay tuned for highlights!

The convening is at Manny's, which offers a nicely curated collection of books in addition to some excellent grub.

Opening remarks from @ChatfieldKate. 2.2 million incarcerated people and hundreds of thousands of unhoused people need a Justice Guarantee rooted in dignity. "We must move away from the false narrative that jails and prisons are the answer."

Housing, healthcare, and public services have been defunded. People have "no place to close a door and be silent and comfortably alone and safe."

She ties this to our overpoliced public spaces and the everyday injustices caused by poverty.

@ChatfieldKate describes the commonality between the Trump administration and local officials who frame the problems of poverty as disorder that requires policing and aggression against the vulnerable.

"We are on the offense as well. The Justice Guarantee is our bold proclamation where we separate the wheat from the chaff."

"The powerful do not have answers for us."

Next up, USC ProfJody David Armour (@NiggaTheory) and SF DA @chesaboudin.

"A progressive prosecutor taking office was unimaginable 15 years ago."

Armour describes his father's incarceration for marijuana. Both panelists have experience losing parents to incarceration.

Armour: "The civil rights issue of our day is criminal justice."

Q: Tell us about the initiatives you're pursuing?

Boudin describes the letters he receives from incarcerated people, and how they inform his office's work. "Of course three strikes is wrong. Of course stop and frisk style policing is wrong. Just like how we now know that of course slavery is wrong."

Boudin: "People tried to blame me for homelessness even before I took office," but says he'd also like the credit for crime dropping in SF 😄

Boudin: we're announcing today two related policies that speak to the legacy of racism in our criminal justice system on the occasion of Black History Month. Acknowledges the limitations of policy in addressing the legacy of discrimination.

Armour describes policy #1, about the DA's office declining cases. The SF district attorney's office now has a presumption against filing contraband charges based on pretext stops and not probable cause.

Armour: Pretext is "a pretend reason for doing something that hides the real reason. We have told our law enforcement officers that you can use pretext against our citizens."

Boudin: I want to be real concrete and specific. What's happening in SF required us to do this. Declining cases is not easy to do as prosecutors. The Obama admin reported that SF police had a problem with stop and frisk policing. Data showed racial disparity in searches and stops

Boudin: when police do choose to search white people they have a good reason to do it, but they search black and brown people BECAUSE they're black and brown. 4 years later, and no change in police conduct - still a massive racial disparity in stops and searches.

Boudin: "We cannot and we will not allow another generation of black and brown people to live in a police state."

Armour describes the damage that discriminatory criminal justice practices do to the legitimacy of our legal system. Then asks about "consent only" searches.

Boudin: there is a category of searches based on consent. Officers report that the defendant consented, and are often deferred to when challenged. Describes how consent is often coerced or fabricated, and how officer accounts can stretch credulity.

Boudin describes the history of unjust laws, on slavery, on homosexuality, etc. Recourse to the law is not a good moral justification. The point of law is not to empower police to use loopholes, but "to do justice in a way that keeps all of us safe."

Next topic: status enhancements (such as three strikes). Armour describes a case where an 18 year old who stole a phone out of a car got 25 to life. A judge intervened, pushed for 7 years (based on a plea deal.) @LADAOffice Jackie Lacey fought to keep the 25 to life sentence.

Policy #2: any strike status enhancements will not be charged. Pending prior enhancements will be dismissed. Gang and other enhancements will be dismissed.

Armour links this policy to the LAPD Metro Division scandal about fraudulently putting names on gang lists.

Boudin: we want to hold people accountable for the crime we're charging, not for who they are, who their cousins are, etc. This is not about dismissing or refusing conduct enhancements, like use of a firearm, causing great bodily injury. We'll charge on conduct in this case.

What does this mean in your average case? Recounts a case he took as a public defender where a man stole a few items from Safeway, ends up getting beaten by employees, and is charged with 25 to life due to priors. That case didn't require that sentence.

Armour moves to homelessness. In LA, Safer Cities Initiative made Skid Row the most policed neighborhood in the country, "for their own good." Now we hear about "therapeutic policing," which he calls "coercive benevolence."

This attempts to arrest and cite people into treatment. "The velvet fist in the iron glove approach." Their diagnosis is that the problem of homelessness is not our systems, but the internal deficiencies of people themselves. "Road to hell is paved with benevolence."

Someone told Boudin to stop treating people in jail "like Rosa Parks." His response? "This is black history month. Remember, Rosa Parks was taken to jail." Our system is about social control of African Americans. Our system is unprecedented in human history in scale.

There's no cost to DA's office to incarcerate someone, paid by the state. But diversion and social services require the city to pay. System makes it easier and cheaper to punish people, while offering basically nothing to victims.

We're taking a brief break for a press conference announcing these new SFDA policies, and then our panel with Paul Boden from WRAP (@withouthousing) and moderator @alastairboone.

Next up: Addressing Housing Precarity with representatives @CalOrganize organizers, the Oakland Community Land Trust, and moderator @DarwinBondGraha. Starting with a montage of news coverage on @moms4housing.

@DarwinBondGraha begins by recounting the history of housing since the 2008 crash. "A vast commodification of housing in the United States" as corporate landlords swallowed up the housing stock.

Panelist: Many of the problems we have with housing costs are rooted in Costa-Hawkins. Our rent controlled housing stock was built before most people were born. Displacing people from rent controlled property is a money-making enterprise due to vacancy decontrol.

She describes how Wedgewood (owner of the Moms4Housing house) has bought buildings and then used the law to push out rent controlled tenants under false pretenses. Using the foreclosure process to push people out of long term tenancies.

These practices were banned by state law in what's known as the "Wedgewood Law." She describes the lack of prosecution for frequent violations that pushed people out of their homes.

Oakland lacks tenant protections and is "set up to be devoured." Rent board has been defunded. We don't have a department in charge of affordable housing, which allows illegal practices like fake "owner move-in" notices that avoid Ellis Act relocation rules.

Describes articles that provide how-to instructions for propety owners on how to evict their tenants without relocation assistance. People paid to pretend to move in as an owner in order to displace tenants.

Pabelist: We need a serious shift. We need to take the speculation out of housing, we need to decommodify housing.

Now talking about @moms4housing moving the frame on housing. "We had not planned to start a movement, we planned to bring attention to the housing crisis," not to generate international news coverage.

"It's essential that we build a mass movement" to get state and local leaders to move.

Working on AB2563, "right to housing." Legislation is just part of the fight. Leaders wouldn't be listening had we not occupied a property. The world was watching.

Moving on to discuss the Oakland Community Land Trust. How does it move us beyond defensive strategies against private capital?

Panelist: community land trust is a redistributive arm of the movement. "Produce our way out of the crisis" has given developers incentives to build lux housing with minor inclusionary zoning. This invisibilizes who controls our housing now.

The market is these companies. They are social actors extracting profit from us. All of us are just numbers on a spreadsheet to them, and they're good at Excel. How do we get property out of their hands and to the community?

Community Land Trust holds property and puts it into the hands of tenants, who govern the property. This takes out the speculative element because land is deed-restricted. Property not leveraged through market structures. Goal to rebuild wealth and ownership in the community.

Describes how ACCE tenant organizing linked up with the Community Land Trust as a dual-pronged strategy aimed at changing properties from private assets to community assets. Organizing is key, but we need a bigger strategy on how to decommodify housing.

Thanks to Carroll, Leah, Justin, and Darwin for this informative panel on housing markets and organizing for transformative change.

Now beginning a panel on prioritizing health care over policing, featuring @DocMellyMel, @HillaryRonen, Tim Black of CAHOOTS, @leslieherod, @joannhardesty, and moderator Sara Yousuf of @Justice_Collab.

First Q: how did we get to a place where police are the normal/available way to respond to people in crisis?

@DocMellyMel: this is not an accident. Prisons and systems were built to produce these outcomes. LA spends 54% of its general fund on police, who are not trained to deal with these crises. Our governments have decided to invest in police to secure the capitalist, racist state.

When BLM was birthed, it was a decision made by regular people. None of us are paid for this work, we're pulled into doing it as our sacred duty. It's all of our duty to dismantle the system that oppresses black people and communities.

Tim Black: another important reason we got to this place is that we're trained to call the cops and appeal to that authority. We don't have to sit with the repercussions of our actions, we just assume it's taken care of by authorities.

@leslieherod: as an elected official, we're dealing with the legacy of 90s "tough on crime" politics. I put criminal justice at the center of my platform and won with the highest vote margin in Colorado history, leading some of my colleagues to follow suit.

Our DAs have a lot of power in our state houses. Our law enforcement has a huge lobby that kills policing bills. That's how we got here. We get out by electing people from the community who will fight back against law enforcement murdering people in our streets.

@HillaryRonen: we haven't dealt with mental health issues, we've left it to the criminal justice system. Police can't be our main response to drug addiction.

@joannhardesty: "I ran on the platform that if people call for help they shouldn't die."

We're launching a new program in Portland. For low accuity calls (no weapons, etc) is there a better response? Now we'll send a two person team (EMT and mental health pro) to "deal with people where they are." We built on interviews with houseless folks to ground these policies.

We need to partner with community organizers and houseless people to build the policies and services that will actually address their needs. How do we help people living on the street to have a better quality of life while we try to get them housed?

@HillaryRonen: we consulted with families and people dealing with mental health issues. We asked them what systems we need to create to truly help people. We need a 24 hour medical facility that doesn't require a 5150 (forced treatment,) and that gives people access to MH care.

We need follow up care to help people coordinate the follow up to acute MH crises. We need a street crisis team with healthcare pros that will help people connect to systems of care. Even people with insurance do not get quality mental healthcare - hold insurance cos accountable.

We have a cycle from street to acute treatment back to the street which helps no one. We don't have a functional system where you can take your eye off the ball.

Tim Black discusses CAHOOTS, a model of community treatment integrated into emergency response. In 2018 we handled 20% of public safety calls using 4% of the budget police get. We're saving money on our other systems through this response.

Beyond just the money, there's the human impact of a healthcare response over a law enforcement response. We talk to people about quality of life, we treat people with respect, and treat people as the experts on their own lives. We need to listen to those experiences.

@leslieherod: we ran a ballot measure called "Caring for Denver," sales tax to fund mental health and substance abuse infrastructure. Right now it's easier to get treatment by committing a crime than by seeking treatment voluntarily.

70% of Denver voters voted for the measure, and we created a large public non-profit to protect the funding for mental health. We are now a $30m annual spend foundation funding programs that reduce incarceration and increase access to mental health services.

@DocMellyMel emphasizes that partnerships between healthcare and law enforcement are troubling. When care partners with police, communities like LA's black community become distrustful of systems of care.

Discusses Charlie Africa. "They murdered him on video." During the incident, a neighbor of Brother Africa saw them beating him. When an officer dropped his club, she picked it up. After the murder, they arrested her and @LADAOffice prosecuted her, planning to seek 25 to life.

Only community pressure got the DA's office to back down. The DA's office spends more on office supplies than on their mental health program. The answers to our crises must be about building community.

@DocMellyMel: "don't call the police on black people because they may end up dead."

@leslieherod counters that people are going to call 911, so we do need to integrate alternative responses into that system. Community is key, but we can't ignore the system response.

This was another great panel! Thanks to Sara, Melina, Tim, Leslie, Hillary, and Jo Ann for sharing their wisdom on healthcare and alternatives to law enforcement.

Last panel of the day on incarceration and structural racism, with @jamaltrulove, @NancySkinnerCA, @leslieherod (also on the last panel), @Ash_Kalra, and Manohar Raju. Moderated by John Matthews of @Justice_Collab.

First Q: what does a just system look like to you?

Trulove: "the justice system right now is very violent when you think about sentencing... Ain't no rehabilitation going on inside prison."

Skinner: "it's not a just system. That word in the context of that system is an oxymoron." Says we need a system that's colorblind and income blind. Talks about growing up in a privileged enclave, where her brother stole a car and was brought home by cops, not charged.

Herod: "I'm a little tired, because on Monday we abolished the death penalty in Colorado."

She describes the troubled history of mass shootings in Colorado. All carried out by white men. But the three men on death row at the time of abolition were black men. They all came from the same area.

She says that a just system would actually be rehabilitative. We don't have that, but legislators still think that we do. Talks about looking to systems like Norway as a model.

Kalra: A just system would actually accomplish public safety. Our system is designed to make people feel safer, but it doesn't actually make is safer collectively. "Genuine public safety is a system that actually ensures that we uplift, empower, and heal everyone."

Raju: Part of the issue when we talk about sentencing is that we need to address why people are being charged in the first place. Overcharging and coerced pleas drive incarceration.

Raju: we have to stop using terms that don't work. It's a penal system, not a justice system.

Mathews: how do we get beyond the focus on non-violent offenders that ends up harming other incaecerated people?

Herod: it's an uphill battle to convince people who don't understand their own racism and bias. Who don't understand that black men deserve forgiveness. My job is to take away the tools used to incarcerate people.

Herod: "Our system should not be based on luck, but it is right now." Small infractions and failures become the tools to keep people oppressed.

Skinner: Mercy is not easy. America is not merciful. That's not our culture. When you add structural racism on top of that, it's appalling.

We have to take the tools away, because working to tackle structural racism will take time.

Skinner: We have to eliminate things like three strikes that are going to be used in a racialized manner. Things like felony murder. Describes using sympathetic stories to fight against felony murder laws. But structural racism determines what is "sympathetic" to her colleagues.

Trulove describes waking up to the need to organize for DA elections, that we can have a better system. Talks about the history of slavery and incarceration.

Lightning round: do you support the justice guarantee?

All yes, and Skinner ads that maybe DAs shouldn't be elected. Raju says yes but it doesn't go far enough. We need cultural competency, high quality treatment, trauma informed care.

In response to an audience question, Herod discusses sexual violence committed by police officers. I passed a bill that you can't consent to sex with a prison guard. Correction officers prey on prisoners with substance abuse and domestic violence issues.

Big thanks to Jamal, Nancy, Leslie, Ash, Manohar, and John for this great final panel!

And now we'll stop spamming your feed with conference coverage. Class dismissed.