Thank you to @lastweektonight.com for focusing on the urgent need to transform the juvenile legal system and for highlighting that, "Kids should be provided access to legal counsel at every step of the system."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pya-...
We must demand better. Not Gavin Newsom, who snatches the belongings of unhoused folks and plays paddy cake with Steve Fucking Bannon. Not Rahm Emanuel, who covered up a murder, closed 50 schools, and shuttered half of Chicago's publicly funded mental health clinics. We need new and better politics.
20 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court in Roper v. Simmons held that youth must be treated differently, recognizing the science behind adolescence. Declaring the death penalty unconstitutional for children, the highest court of our land spoke to the potential of growth inherent in every single child. This landmark decision not only marks the start of a developmental jurisprudence, but it is also a testament to the collective action of the youth defense community refusing to accept the status quo. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the death penalty for youth in Stanford v. Kentucky, proclaiming that it was “absurd” to consider maturity and that “socioscientific, ethicoscientific, or even purely scientific evidence is not an available weapon.” Nonetheless, the youth defense community persisted. What held greater power than the Supreme Court’s dismissal of adolescent development was the collective action of youth defenders who kept fighting. And 16 years later, the Supreme Court ruled, “as any parent knows and as the scientific and sociological studies . . . confirm, a lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility are found in youth more often than in adults and are more understandable among the young.” As we honor the legacy of the youth defense community who fought relentlessly for courts to recognize the developmental potential of youth, we find assurance in our collective power. Now more than ever, we hold on to the words of Mariame Kaba who taught us, “So, how do we make change happen? You, as an individual, are only a tiny pebble in a vast sea. We can personally make ripples, but it takes collective action to make waves.” In this moment where uncertainty breeds fear, we remember how our once radical imaginations became reality, and we can do it again. As we look toward a new horizon, one filled with wholeness and dignity, we are committed to making waves, together, until the day every young person is free to thrive.
Honoring the youth defense community today on the 20th anniversary of Roper v. Simmon #youthdefense #ropervsimmons #adolescentdevelopment #collectiveaction #collectivepower
If you’re in the US and you’d like to know what projects and vital services federal grants currently fund in your state, you can search here: www.usaspending.gov
And you can find the contact information for your elected representatives here: www.usa.gov/elected-offi...
They need to hear from you.
“Terrible things are happening outside. Poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart. Men, women, and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.”
Diary of Anne Frank
January 13, 1943
Heads up! The @aclu.org Immigrant Rights Project has an EXCELLENT online resource available in multiple languages to walk immigrants or advocates through various scenarios of encounters with immigration officials or police. It includes contact #s for local ACLU offices.
www.aclu.org/know-your-ri...
"King's dream was a demand--for justice and the dismantling of systems built on violence and exploitation."
missouriindependent.com/2025/01/20/m...
Well you inspired me to create a Black democracy starter pack. Cause those are also overwhelmingly white.
go.bsky.app/6WTBzhX
When times are tight, do cities cut police or social service budgets more? In a 🚨new study🚨, I find revenue loss is associated with shallow, temporary cuts to policing and deep, enduring cuts to social services.
The article, in Criminology, is free, and I summarize it below.
doi.org/10.1111/1745...
Reposted by a *former federal prosecutor.* STFU
i’m gonna just watch this at least once a day and i recommend everyone do the same
