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6 Dec, 6 tweets, 3 min read
JUST IN: Jason Williams wins the DA race in New Orleans.

Activists mobilized to upend NoLa's mass incarceration practices, & Williams embraced & ran on a lot of their demands: no death penalty, no prosecuting pot, no 'habitual offender' sentences, no prosecuting kids as adults.
Williams will replace longtime DA Cannizzaro (who didn't run), who was very comfortable championing punitive policies (eg. arguing more kids should be jailed) even by US standards.

Read @kjfernelius's preview & what race could mean for mass incarceration: theappeal.org/politicalrepor…
But Williams is under federal indictment for tax fraud. This hang over 1st round, where some advocates endorsed a candidate who came in 3rd tho he'd been more ambivalent on some reform issues.

Williams's runoff opponent leaned more directly into doubts about reform.
Williams's win comes after heavy organizing against mass incarceration by groups that came together to influence the DA race via the "People's DA Coalition" (background: theappeal.org/politicalrepor…)

Some of these groups worked on "flipping the bench" in Nov: theappeal.org/politicalrepor….
It cannot be overstated how punitive Louisiana laws & DA practices are. We're talking about sky-high incarceration, a national record in people serving life without parole, bail problems, & more.

Why a DA-Elect & incoming judges who ran centrally on those issues is important.
Williams adds to a long string of candidates who ran & won this year on a platform centered around fighting mass incarceration.

Including Portland, Austin, Pima, & other counties in MI or CO. theappeal.org/politicalrepor…

& Los Angeles. theappeal.org/george-gascon-…

& Athens on Tuesday.

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More from @Taniel

Taniel Profile picture
8 Dec
here are just some things announced today in Los Angeles because of one DA race, one local race I harped on all year!

1) no more death penalty
2) prosecutors won't seek cash bail
3) & won't seek any sentencing enhancements
4) thousands of cases reviewed for excessive sentencing
This is a county of 10 million residents, where prosecutors have aggressively thrown ppl into terrible jails & prisons with long sentences (incl. death penalty).

Big stuff -- that'll be important to keep an eye on to see how the county's huge legal machinery implements them.
And while LA is nation's biggest county, it's also just the tip of the iceberg.

Ann Arbor's new DA also said he won't seek cash bail.

Austin's new DA said he won't criminally charge drug cases.

New Orleans's new DA opposes charging kids as adults.

(All newly elected.)
Read 4 tweets
Taniel Profile picture
6 Dec
It's Election Night in NoLa! In state with highest incarceration rate, city is electing its new DA after 10+ years after a very punitive DA.

big stakes: theappeal.org/politicalrepor…

So far, the more progressive candidate more aligned with reform demands (Williams) is up big, 60/40.
Huge gaps between precincts as compared to how the first round looked on Nov. 3rd. One has gone from Landrum 44/20 last month to Landrum 75/25 now; another has gone from Williams 39/29 last month to Williams 90/10 now.
Both candidates are Dems. Many of the precincts I'm seeing that Landrum won are precincts that went for Trump, or where Trump was considerably stronger than the citywide results. (That makes some sense given the rhetoric of some of the runoff.)
Read 6 tweets
Taniel Profile picture
2 Dec
It's Election Night! (In Georgia no less!)

Clarke (=Athens) & Oconee counties voted for their DA in a runoff, which pits a candidate who carried the criminal justice reform mantle (Deborah Gonzalez) & a candidate more skeptical of reforms (James Chafin).
Turnout will no doubt be far smaller than last month (twas was left for today even as other runoffs are on 1/5) making it harder to predict.

The mere fact that election is being held is a story, since Kemp's maneuvers briefly cancelled it. See my thread:
Right now there is a difference of... 66 votes between the two candidates out of roughly 20,000 counted!

But: Oconee County, where Chafin is up HUGE, is done. There's a way to go in Athens.

(One note: The very small time between Nov. 3 & Dec. 1 made mail-in voting harder.)
Read 4 tweets
Taniel Profile picture
1 Dec
Time for a story about a DA race in Georgia, again.

It won't top my 😮thread from June about the DA race in Muscogee (see below). Could anything? But it's still worth your time.

This time, it's about Athens.
Act 1: Deborah Gonzalez jumps in the DA race as a reformer.

Act 2 (Feb. 2020): The incumbent resigns. He'd be in office since 2001 & had already announced retirement, but he couldn't wait a few more months. His deputy becomes acting DA, a perceived advantage for Nov's election.
Act 3: Gov. Kemp keeps not appointing anyone to fill the vacancy. This triggers a law that outright *cancels* the 2020 election, leaving the acting DA in power until 2022 without facing voters.

(Sidenote: Kemp does the same for Supreme Court elections: theappeal.org/politicalrepor…)
Read 6 tweets
Taniel Profile picture
30 Nov
.@EliNSavit won the prosecutor’s race in Washtenaw Co. (Ann Arbor) on a reform platform. (theappeal.org/politicalrepor…)

And he's now appointed @VBH4Justice as his chief assistant. She's a progressive who unsuccessfully challenged Detroit’s prosecutor in the Dem primary in August.
Victoria Burton-Harris ran a strong reform campaign but lost against a longtime incumbent.

Here's @kira_lerner reporting this summer on how the issue of juvenile life without parole was a major fault line here (picture is of Burton-Harris): theappeal.org/politicalrepor…
Perhaps strongest promise Savit made during his campaign was over cash bail.

"I categorically oppose cash bail, and will not seek it in any case," he told me in July. (By my count, he'd be just the 3rd prosecutor in country to adopt such a rule if he implements it.)
Read 4 tweets
Taniel Profile picture
29 Nov
GOP has done this trick for years: introduce bills to restrict access to voting in the name of fighting the *loss of trust* caused by (their) allegations of fraud, even when they end up granting there’s no basis to them.

Pay attn to this sleight of hands now. It’s everywhere.
Here’s a Trump-era example of it from Washington State:

Here’s another from New Hampshire, a product of Trump’s lies about 2016: .
Now they’ve laid the groundwork to amp this up massively. “I said there was smoke!’

See how this sleight of hands works with Loeffler here. She has nothing to justify fraud, but she no longer needs that: “lost of faith” is all she needs for what’s next.
Read 4 tweets

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