In a sweeping order, a judge has ruled that the bail system in Harris County, Texas, including the city of Houston, is unconstitutional. Because of the decision, “we are on the road to eradicating the notion of wealth-base human caging,” said Alec Karakatsanis, executive director of the Washington-based Civil Rights Corps. The ruling affects defendants charged with low level offenses. “On any given night in this country there are about 450,000 human beings who are sitting in a cage because they can’t come up with a particular amount of money that’s been required for their release,” said Karakatsanis.
Unless Black people are healthy and safe then no community is healthy and safe.
Although prisons have become hot spots of the pandemic, most of the penal overseers have taken only token measures, if any, to evacuate inmates.
In the South Bronx, Dr Melissa Barber battles COVID-19, putting into practice the lessons she learned in Cuba, at the Latin American School of Medicine.
Time and again, Black radicals have pressed for an expanded scope of political and economic freedoms, for Americans at home and for people abroad.
“There’s something profoundly liberating for people who’ve been told all their lives that they ain’t shit to stand up.”
