It’s Juneteenth but Slavery is STILL LEGAL. In the US, 1.5 million incarcerated people are subjected to slavery due to an exception in the 13th Amendment. Hear our voices and listen to our stories as we work to #EndTheException.

SLAVERY SHOULDNT EXIST; NO EXCEPTIONS @WorthRises This past week, @SenJeffMerkley @SenBooker @RepNikema reintroduced the Abolition Amendment in Congress to #EndTheException in the 13th Amendment that still allows slavery as punishment for a crime.

Visit endtheexception.com to tell your Congressmembers to sponsor it today!

Here’s @CNN using “botched” to hide the fact that police, prosecutors, and the judge in this case knowingly used fabricated & misleading evidence to wrongfully convict Sheldon Thomas & imprison him for 18 years. The media constantly works to cover-up systemic injustice. The identification wasn’t “botched.” The NYPD showed a photo of one Sheldon Thomas to an eye-witness but arrested a different Sheldon Thomas & lied about it. The DA & judge knew of the deception but convicted an innocent Sheldon Thomas of murder & sentenced him to 25 to life.

“Despite police, county executives and national pundits falsely labeling bail reform a disaster, in the few places like New York state that have tried it, bail reform has been a win for freedom.”

My latest with @ScottHech for @NBCNews.

#FactsNotFear 🧵 nbcnews.com/think/opinion/… 82% of Manhattan voters voted for Kathy Hochul over Lee Zeldin & his fear mongering. The idea that crime was on the ballot is absurd. In fact, NYC is safest of the 6 larger US cities. Bail reform has been a success with rearrest rates the same now as prior to its implementation.

Important @washingtonpost reporting on how Fox News is working overtime to falsely convince viewers the US is in a “crime crisis” without any data to support the claim. “Last year, and so far this year, Fox News has mentioned crime twice as often as its competitors on average.”🧵 “The lack of data is an opportunity for those who might find it useful to suggest that crime is out of control. Though it’s hard to contextualize individual acts of criminality, it’s easy to cast those individual acts as representative of broader trends.” washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/…

There’s a massive prison strike happening in Alabama right now. In protest of the inhumane conditions, incarcerated people across multiple facilities are refusing to perform prison labor. AL is 1 of only 5 states that pay incarcerated people $0 for forced labor. #ShutDownADOC2022

https://twitter.com/jaybeware/status/1574418946802982914

History: Following the Civil War, 73% of Alabama's revenue derived from convict leasing by 1898. In 1873, 25% of all Black leased convicts died. Today, Alabama remains 1 of only 5 states that pay incarcerated people nothing for their labor. Slavery still exists. #EndTheException

Who parked the car on the tracks? Who put the woman into the car? Who ran for their own safety in the face of an oncoming train, abandoning a woman they had tied up inside a cop car on the train tracks? THE COPS! THE COPS! THE COPS! THE COPS! THE COPS! THE COPS! THE COPS!!!!!!!!!

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1574262543937425409

At this point, the NYT is committing journalistic malpractice to mask police negligence, killings, misconduct, assault, and malfeasance. When it come to cops, subject-verb agreement goes out the window at the NYT. Every rule of grammar gets bent toward the exonerative voice.

Today, I’m sending a last food package to an incarcerated friend because NYSDOCCS is banning incarcerated people from receiving packages from home so private companies can then price gouge families. This exploitative policy will also severely limit access to nutritious food. In New York, incarcerated people & their families will now be charged ridiculous mark-ups to create profits for companies.

3 oz Salmon marked up 46%

$2.97 @ Walmart

$4.35 @ prison vendor

This is 76 yr old Gwen Levy who was returned to prison for not answering a call from her federal probation officer while in this computer class. They told her lawyer, “because she could have been robbing a bank, [we’re] going to treat her as if she was robbing a bank.” Gwen is one of about 4,500 people who were released from federal prisons last year to protect them from contracting the coronavirus. But she is the latest example of how systems of probation & parole perpetuate failure rather than facilitate success. washingtonpost.com/local/public-s…

I’m pissed.

I did an interview for the @LegalExaminer on Pell Restoration. The piece went to print riddled with stigmatizing & derogatory language. I reached out to @WriterElaineS requesting that the article be updated using person-first language. 1/8 legalexaminer.com/legal/new-law-… I sent her @MorganGodvin & @szarlotka’s timely article, “The words journalists use often reduce humans to the crimes they commit. But that’s changing,” as a reference. She forwarded my request to her editor @EditorRoy1. 2/8 poynter.org/reporting-edit…