1. This country separates parents from their children and puts human beings in cages for possessing plants on a list of plants the government says you can't have.
2. This country separates parents from their children and puts human beings in cages for crossing an imaginary political boundary it created through colonial invasions.
3. This country separates parents from their children and puts human beings in cages based on whether they can access enough cash to purchase their release on bail.
4. This country does not let people hug their jailed loved ones or even speak to their parents and children who are in cages unless they can pay exorbitant rates to private for-profit companies to whom we gave monopoly telecommunications contracts. We monetized human contact.
5. All of this violence is done disproportionately on the basis of race, and much of it by an entity that calls itself the "Department of Justice" in a bureaucracy we call the "justice system."
6. For decades, in every city, county, and state, there has been a bipartisan consensus to perpetrate this race-based violence among both Democrats and Republicans. Most people have been taught not to even think about it as violence.
7. Do these facts, and many many more I could have highlighted, say anything deeper about the interests that control our political system?
8. Sometimes we over-complicate things. There are many complicated, vexing, exciting questions of policy, philosophy, and life to spend time on. But there is no reasonable argument for the vast bulk of what we do in the criminal punishment bureaucracy. It should be dismantled.
9. And yet, in 2020, we double down on the mass incarceration bureaucracy and many people celebrate its most vicious cheerleaders like @SallyQYates and @PreetBharara as some kind of resistance heroes. We must reckon with the violence they have perpetrated.
10. I explain these ideas in more depth here yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-puni…
