the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house, but a blueprint and an inside man can get you a long way to planting the C4
Also, to anyone from DHS reading this: hi! I hope you enjoyed this tweet. It's based on a metaphor from Audre Lord, who you should read, but I promise you can keep letting me into federal buildings. Ok ty
*Lorde, sorry
Anyway. Let's say that you're, idk, a minor local activist who wants to criticize a local death investigation, but you don't actually know enough to know what is unusual & what isn't. That's fine! But lots of people do, is all I'm saying here. Blueprints matter. They matter a lot
Or maybe you are, hypothetically, demanding that an elected official release things she is clearly not legally allowed to release, or accusing her of releasing things which she clearly did not release. Might it not be good to know the law/procedure before making these demands?
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Suicide rates are up 100% among Black Americans; as of 7/2020 40% of LGBTQ+ youth in the U.S. had considered ending their own lives within the past year.
Suicide is very personal for me, & this story hit hard as I watched Twitter run wild w/speculation rather than confronting the significant evidence (& more to come) that this choice was hers alone. In a very real way, the conspiracy theories denied Mikayla's agency in any of this
It is neither legally possible nor socially desirable to have a publicly "transparent" investigation of something as sensitive as a juvenile death investigation, especially when that death was a suicide. The loudest voices on this absolutely know better
A "transparent" investigation would presumably require releasing:
-thousands of Mikayla Miller's *deeply* personal communications, incl many w/her gf during a breakup
-names of juveniles interviewed (and already exonerated w/hard evidence)
-name of person who found her body
Also: the autopsy report can never be made public pursuant to MA law under any circumstances.
Pretty much everyone promoting the "lynching" narrative doesn't know the first thing about how a death investigation is conducted and who these rules protect, & it truly shows
Most misdemeanors in Massachusetts can be decriminalized simply by asking that they not be treated as crimes, or even just at the whim of the judge.
It's my opening bid in most minor criminal cases--bc why wouldn't it be--and every time it works it feels like actual magic.
To name only one benefit: the difference between a criminal drug conviction and a civil drug infraction can be life-changing for US citizens, and life-*saving* for non-citizens for whom even the smallest possession case means mandatory denial of residency and deportation
This 26-yr-old statute is far from perfect. It still excludes offenses relating to sex work, operating under the influence, etc from decriminalization--and decriminalization itself is just a band-aid against so many things which shouldn't be arrestable offenses in the first place
like so many #immigrationlaw rulings before it, today's #SCOTUS decision on the "stop-time" rule in deportation proceedings (1) can't be described to someone not already familiar in fewer than 3 paragraphs, (2) will make you lol if you think about it too much, (3) will save lives
All you really need to know about this extremely-specifically-important ruling is that it gives possibly tens of thousands of families a chance to stay together in the US who wouldn't have had that chance before. That's it. That's why it matters.
So that's the good news! The bad is that the same bad law still requires applicants to show that qualifying family members (but not themselves) will suffer "exceptional & extremely unusual hardship" upon deportation--eg, substantially beyond what other close families would suffer
A lot going on rn but N.B.: these extremely damning 25-yr-old BPD records were released at pretty much the exact point at which we knew the #DerekChauvinTrial verdict was imminent