Patrisse Cullors - The New Yorker "Will the Coronavirus Make Us Rethink Mass Incarceration?"

The New Yorker | May 25, 2020

“Since mid-March, San Francisco has reduced its jail population by nearly forty per cent, and California has made plans to release thousands of people from state prisons. In New Jersey, the State Supreme Court authorized the release of as many as a thousand detainees from county jails. Each week in April, the federal-prison population declined by around a thousand people; by May, it had reached its lowest level in two decades. In dozens of cities, cops were ordered to make fewer arrests, district attorneys dropped low-level charges, and judges vacated bench warrants for unpaid fines and other minor infractions. ‘Advocates on the ground have been challenging mass incarceration for so long—and now much of what we’ve been calling for, pre-covid-19, we’re seeing it transpire,’ Patrisse Cullors, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter, told me, from Los Angeles, where she’s been organizing for releases with Reform L.A. Jails. ‘At the local, state, and national level, this is a moment when we can collectively transform how our country relates to the most vulnerable.’”

Patrisse Cullors was interviewed for this thought-provoking article in The New Yorker. Follow the link above for more.

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