Cold hard truth: both O'Malley & Sanders released comprehensive justice plans months ago

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Shaun King ?@ShaunKing 1h1 hour ago
The cold hard truth is that both @MartinOMalley & @BernieSanders released comprehensive plans addressing issues of justice MONTHS AGO.

Shaun King ?@ShaunKing 1h1 hour ago
I'm told that @HillaryClinton will actually not be releasing her full "justice plan" today and will just mention pieces of it.

Strange.

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Martin O'Malley's Comprehensive Law Enforcement Reform Plan

A Reinvestment and Rehabilitation Framework for America’s Criminal Justice System
The full body of Governor Martin O'Malley's law enforcement reform plan

____America’s criminal justice system is badly in need of reform. For too long our justice system has reinforced our country’s cruel history of racism and economic inequality—remaining disconnected from our founding ideals of life, liberty, and equal treatment under the law.

Our country needs new leadership that will honestly assess our broken criminal justice system and put forward solutions that will:

•Ensure that justice is delivered for all Americans—regardless of race, class, or place.

•Build trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve.

•Ensure fairness and equal treatment for all people at every step within our justice system.

We must also strive to make our “corrections” facilities actually achieve rehabilitation. Almost all men and women who serve time in jail or prison return to their former communities.

BUILD TRUST IN LAW ENFORCEMENT

The causes of crime are complicated. But our fundamental values and principles as Americans are simple: that all people are created equal, and should be protected equally under the law.

Public officials especially, including police officers, must treat all communities fairly and earn their trust. The next president should work closely with law enforcement agencies to implement best practices in policing, and build cultures of transparency, accountability, and respect.

Ensure Transparency and Accountability in Law Enforcement

As President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing observed, law enforcement is at its best when officers work together with neighborhood residents to ensure public safety and promote the dignity of all people. This “guardian” ethic better protects citizens and law enforcement alike. Moreover, people have the greatest trust in law enforcement when officers’ strategies and policies reflect their own values and input, and when policing data and practices are transparent and accessible to the public.

As president, Governor O’Malley will:

Mandate and Expand Data Reporting. The FBI does not collect data on police-involved shootings. Local data is also poor and incomplete. O’Malley has called for—and will strongly support—legislation to require law enforcement agencies to report data on all police-involved shootings, custodial deaths, discourtesy complaints, and use of excessive force. This data should be centralized in a universal database and made publicly available, allowing communities to observe trends and develop policy responses when necessary.

**Establish a National Use of Force Standard**. State laws governing when police officers can use excessive force vary greatly. In order to protect citizen and officer safety, O’Malley will put forward national guidelines on the use of force, linked to the expanded mandatory reporting detailed above. He will support legislation to require states to review and amend their own use of force laws to comply with federal guidelines.

Expand Community Collaboration and Civilian Review of Police Departments. O’Malley would reward and encourage police departments to implement best practices in goal-oriented community policing, including through the eligibility criteria in federal grant programs. These include undergoing racial bias training and crisis de-escalation training; establishing internal accountability measures to track and review civilian complaints and address officer misconduct; and creating and empowering civilian review boards to independently monitor and audit policing cases.

Use Technology to Advance Transparency. Technology—including but not limited to body cameras—can improve policing and build community trust in law enforcement. But it must meet community and local law enforcement needs, without infringing on individual rights. O’Malley will work with law enforcement, advocates, and other stakeholders to establish national standards for deploying and developing technology, while protecting privacy and communities’ access to data produced by body cameras or similar tools.

Improve Access to Justice within the Criminal Justice System

To build trust in law enforcement, we must also build trust in our justice system, adopting policies and reforms that improve fairness and ensure access to justice.

As president, Governor O’Malley will:

**Encourage Independent Investigations of Policing Cases.** Local prosecutors must work closely with local police on a day-to-day basis, creating possible conflicts of interest in cases regarding police misconduct. As a result, states and cities have begun to appoint special independent prosecutors—or prosecutors from other jurisdictions—in cases where police use deadly force. O’Malley will make these measures model practices, and support legislation to encourage all states to adopt them.

**Strengthen Federal Civil Rights Protections.**Under the Obama Administration, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has successfully launched investigations into the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown. However, the Department’s ability to prosecute cases is limited because federal officials must meet a very high legal standard to bring civil rights charges. O’Malley would call on Congress to revise this standard so that the federal government can act as an effective backstop for ensuring justice.

Reform Civil Asset Forfeiture to Prioritize Public Safety. Civil forfeiture allows law enforcement to seize any property they allege is involved in a crime, even if the owner has not been charged or convicted. Originally designed as a way to cripple large criminal organizations, civil forfeiture is now rarely used to address actual crime and is too often abused. O’Malley will support bipartisan efforts in Congress to reform civil forfeiture statutes, reorienting law enforcement activity toward improving public safety and community policing.

INCREASE FAIRNESS IN SENTENCING

Skyrocketing spending on prisons and jails drains investment from schools, job creation, and community services: corrections spending at every level totals more than $80 billion a year. Racial bias remains ingrained in the justice system, and more needs to be done to reduce recidivism and expand successful reentry programs.

Ensure Fair Sentencing

Sentencing laws should treat all individuals fairly—ensuring that dangerous individuals are held accountable, setting lower penalties for less serious offenses, and providing opportunities for full rehabilitation.

As president, Governor O’Malley will:

Eliminate the Sentencing Disparity Between Crack and Powder Cocaine. This sentencing disparity has resulted in vast racial disparities within the justice system. Before Congress lowered the sentencing ratio in 2010 from 100:1 to 18:1, unjustifiably higher penalties for crack offenses led to African Americans serving roughly as much time for non-violent offenses as whites for violent offenses. O’Malley has called for and will continue to support legislation to completely eliminate this sentencing disparity.

**Declassify Marijuana as a Schedule I Drug.** O’Malley will direct the Attorney General to move to reclassify marijuana, while supporting bipartisan congressional efforts to legislatively reclassify marijuana as a Schedule II drug.

Reform Mandatory Minimum Sentencing. Over the past 30 years, mandatory minimum sentences have led to punishments that often do not fit the crime. Unnecessarily harsh sentences for non-violent offenses have not deterred crime, and have disproportionately impacted communities of color. O’Malley will support legislation that eliminates mandatory minimums for low-level drug offenses, while giving judges more flexibility to tailor sentences based on the facts of each case. He will also continue the Department of Justice’s successful Smart on Crime initiative, directing U.S. Attorneys to exercise greater discretion in their charging decisions.

Forge Consensus for Ending the Death Penalty. The death penalty is a racially biased and ineffective deterrent, and the appeals process is expensive and cruel to surviving family members. O’Malley has long opposed the death penalty as a matter of principle and as a matter of policy. As president, he will continue to oppose capital punishment and work to abolish death sentences under federal laws.

Medicalize our Response to Addiction and Mental Illness

Incarceration is an inadequate—and in most cases inappropriate—response for people in crisis. Far greater investment in community mental health and substance abuse treatment is required to provide individuals with the care and support they require, outside of the justice system.

As president, Governor O’Malley will:

Make Robust Investments in Drug Treatment. O’Malley will work to expand existing federal grants to states to support comprehensive drug treatment systems. He will call for tripling the number of states eligible for grants, as well as increasing the aid provided to each state. He will call for requiring states to make matching investments—ensuring that addiction is treated, and not ignored, at the local level. He will also support regulations and legislation to expand evidence-based treatment for addiction under Medicare and Medicaid.

Make Robust Investments in Community Mental Health Infrastructure. Although the rate of serious mental illness is two to six times higher among incarcerated populations, more than 80 percent of people with mental illness in jails and prisons do not receive care. O’Malley will invest to provide adequate mental health treatment and substance abuse treatment within correctional facilities. Additionally, he will call for community-based recovery for individuals suffering from mental illness, setting a national target for reducing the number of Americans with serious mental illness behind bars. He will work with Congress to make critically needed investments in housing, supported employment, and outpatient treatment.

Train and Equip Law Enforcement to Serve People in Crisis. Police officers have increasingly become first responders to people with mental illness or substance abuse problems, often without adequate training. O’Malley will establish federal guidelines for law enforcement on how to best serve people in crisis—including de-escalating encounters, equipping specialized staff and response teams, and intervening in partnership with civilian service providers. He will use existing federal funds to support state Crisis Intervention Training, work with Congress to make additional investments, and require states to adopt federal crisis intervention guidelines.

Address the Discriminatory and Punitive Application of Student Discipline

Underinvestment in public education has left many districts financially strapped, often unable to staff the counselors, special education teachers and social workers their students need. This has coincided with an increased reliance on suspensions, expulsions, and school resource officers to enforce school discipline—including for behavior that is far from a crime. As a result, student discipline increasingly reflects the adult criminal-justice system—with children, especially children of color, being charged, arrested, and even detained in juvenile facilities. This trend has dramatic economic implications as well: children with arrest records have a fraction of the chance of graduating compared to students without arrest records.

As president, Governor O’Malley will:

Enforce and Codify Federal Discipline Guidelines. Federal law already prohibits public school districts from administering student discipline in a discriminatory way. The Departments of Education and Justice put forward guidance last year to help schools identify, avoid, and remedy discriminatory discipline, so that all schools ensure equal educational opportunities for all students. O’Malley will enforce this guidance by bringing federal investigations or charges when necessary, and call to codify the guidance into law.

Reinvest in Other Services and Supports for Teachers and Students. Underinvestment in public education has left many schools with too little funding for counselors, special educators, teacher training, and other needs. This has sometimes created an over-reliance on law enforcement and school resource officers to enforce discipline. O’Malley will invest in federal grants to help deploy counselors and other school staff, including by reprioritizing existing federal funding currently used to place law enforcement officers in schools.

Fulfill the Constitutional Right to Counsel

The flood of misdemeanor cases for petty crimes has greatly overburdened state courts. Many poor defendants—about one in four—do not receive court-appointed legal counsel, despite their right to it. Crushing caseloads for public defenders can create an “assembly-line mentality” toward justice that contributes to individuals being unnecessarily imprisoned for minor offenses.

As president, Governor O’Malley will:

Ensure Access to Counsel and Legal Assistance. O’Malley would invest to protect every American’s constitutional right to counsel, providing funding for legal aid programs and public defenders, and ensuring their independence.

Bring Accountability, Due Process, and Immediate Relief to our Immigration System

Immigration-related cases make up more than 40 percent of federal prosecutions, more than any other type of prosecution—including drug crimes. Yet families are denied justice throughout the immigration system. Conditions at immigrant detention facilities are deplorable, due process is limited, assembly-line justice is common, and families are needlessly torn apart.

As president, Governor O’Malley will:

Use Detention Only as a Last Resort. O’Malley will direct the Department of Homeland Security to use alternatives to detention for the vast majority of people, including for all children, families, LGBT individuals, and other vulnerable individuals. This includes using the family placement and community-based supervision policies he successfully implemented in Maryland. He will also work with Congress to repeal mandatory detention and deportation laws, and to codify higher detention standards. When detention must be used, O’Malley will ensure conditions are humane and in line with our basic values as a nation.

End Operation Streamline.

Under Operation Streamline, federal attorneys criminally prosecute, in assembly-line settings, virtually all undocumented immigrants that enter the United States through the Southern border. Fast-track prosecutions and group hearings raise serious concerns regarding the violation of due process. Moreover, thousands of immigrants who try to enter or re-enter the United States are the parents of U.S. citizens attempting to reunite with their loved ones.

O’Malley will direct federal prosecutors to focus only on priority entry and reentry cases—those involving national security or serious crimes—and work with Congress to repeal the Operation Streamline program.

Disentangle Local Law Enforcement From Immigration Enforcement. Our immigration policies have fallen short of their goal to pinpoint and detain individuals who pose a clear and present danger to public safety. Instead, they have created an indiscriminate dragnet that can encourage racial profiling and undermines trust between law enforcement and New American communities. O’Malley has outlined his plan for disentangling law enforcement from immigration enforcement, including by closing loopholes in DOJ guidance that allow DHS agencies to profile Americans based on their ethnicity and religion.

Set High Standards for Customs and Border Protection (CBP). CBP is the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, and CBP officers must have the support and tools they need to do their jobs well. O’Malley will require CBP to implement the best practices in law enforcement, including equipping officers with body cameras, tracking and disclosing discourtesy and brutality complaints, providing robust training, and holding agents accountable for the use of excessive force.

Ensure Due Process. O’Malley will also implement critical reforms to expand due process protections in our detention and immigration systems, including providing counsel for immigrants in deportation proceedings, increasing the number of immigration judges and courts, ending telephonic and video hearings for detainees, and ensuring language access.

ECONOMIC INEQUALITY

Actions to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system should be accompanied by a wide range of policies that help to alleviate deeply rooted disparities in economic security and opportunity among communities of color.

Today, too many families are hurt by active discrimination. What’s more, the legacy of institutionalized discrimination—such as redlining—has amplified the disproportionate harm that the recession inflicted on communities of color. As a result, our nation has endured 30 years of worsening economic inequality.

As a nation, we must strive to remove barriers to full participation in the social, economic, and political life of our nation, once and for all. Legal equality is absolutely necessary but not sufficient – we must strive for equal opportunity and a fair shot for everyone. That means helping to ensure good jobs that provide stable incomes; universal, high-quality childcare; affordable housing and homeownership; and greater equity in our education and health care systems—for all Americans.

Governor O’Malley has already called for a number of actions that would support greater economic security and opportunity for communities of color, including:

•Raising the minimum wage to $15 dollars an hour.
•Empowering labor unions.
•Greatly expanding access to national service and job opportunities for young people.
•Ensuring young people can attend public colleges and universities debt-free.
•Passing comprehensive immigration reform.
•Investing in universal childcare.

In the coming weeks and months, Governor O’Malley will lay out comprehensive plans to address poverty and support the millions of American families striving to join the middle class, as well as put forth agendas to reform K-12 education, address homeownership and the rental crisis, and improve access to affordable healthcare.

Reduce Recidivism By Through Investments in Reentry

Up to 60 percent of individuals released from jail or prison return within three years. Programs that help people in prison or jail transition into society are saving taxpayer dollars that might otherwise be wasted on re-arrest or re-incarceration. Successful reentry options also give motivated individuals the tools and support they need to leave the criminal justice system for good, compete for a job, find stable housing, support their families, and contribute to their communities.

As president, Governor O’Malley will:

Invest in Job-Training Programs That Work. Roughly 9 million people return home from jail, and 650,000 from prison, every year. Getting and keeping a job is crucial to their ability to reenter their communities—and thus to reducing recidivism, and incarceration costs, overall. O’Malley will build on successful programs in Maryland and other states to train, place, and support those exiting the criminal justice system so they can secure employment. As president, he will work with Congress to secure additional funding for—and legislation that expands—community-based job training programs.

Support Reentry Programming. Since 2008, the bipartisan Second Chance Act has funded critical community services that help people return to their families from prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities. O’Malley will work with Congress to reauthorize and expand funding for Second Chance Act programs, and other important services that ease the transition back to the outside world. Such services include referrals for housing and benefits, substance abuse treatment, mentoring, education, and job training.

Expand Good Time Credits. O’Malley will support legislation to allow people in federal prison to earn sentence-reduction credits by completing education and reentry programs. More broadly, he will support evidence-based, cost-effective reforms that allow people in prisons or jails to earn more good time credit for greater sentence reductions than federal law currently allows.

Support Access to Higher Education in Prison. O’Malley will use existing funds and work with Congress to support multi-year educational and vocational training programs in correctional facilities, including providing funding for professional teachers and staff. He will also support legislation and take executive action to restore eligibility for Pell Grants for people in state and federal prison, which was eliminated in the 1994 crime bill. These investments will increase individuals’ chances of finding jobs once they’ve done their time, and decrease their chances of cycling back into prison later in life.

Dramatically Reduce the Use of Solitary Confinement and Ban Solitary for Juveniles.

Research shows that prisoners subjected to prolonged isolation may experience depression, rage, claustrophobia, hallucinations, and severe psychosis that can lead to random violence or suicide. Federal judges have called the long-term lack of interaction, mental stimulus, and exposure to nature “beyond what most humans can psychologically tolerate”. As president, O’Malley will reverse the runaway growth of solitary confinement, limiting its use to the most serious in-prison offenders. He will also fight to pass legislation banning the federal use of solitary confinement for juveniles nationally.

Provide Pathways to Full Restoration of Rights and Benefits

Nearly one in three Americans has a criminal record that, because of employer biases and state laws, could prevent them from even being considered for good-paying jobs. Moreover, nearly six million Americans are denied the fundamental right to vote because of regressive state laws that target people with felony convictions. This results in one out of every 13 African Americans being unable to vote.

As president, Governor O’Malley will:

Ban the Box. O’Malley will use existing federal dollars to encourage states to adopt “fair chance” policies, which direct employers to delay criminal record inquiries and individually assess job applicants based on their qualifications. He will make the federal government a model employer by adopting fair chance hiring policies for all federal contractors and agencies.

**Expunge or Seal Criminal Records.** O’Malley will also support legislation that provides paths to recourse for people with criminal records. This includes automatically expunging or sealing juvenile records, so young people have a fair chance to turn around their lives; allowing some categories of formerly incarcerated people to petition a court to seal their records; and expunging the records of arrests that did not lead to formal charges.

Restore Voting Rights to People with Felony Records. All those who served time and reentered society should be allowed to vote. O’Malley will call for and strongly support legislation restoring voting rights to individuals with felony records. He will explore and take advantage of every opportunity to use federal funds and administrative solutions to encourage states to restore voting rights.

Ensure Access to Temporary Support. O’Malley will call for and strongly support legislation that would end the drug felon ban on access to SNAP and TANF assistance. Formerly incarcerated people and their families should have access to crucial support to help them get on their feet after serving their time.

Work to Eliminate For-Profit Prisons

There are approximately 130 private prisons in the United States. They house nearly half of all immigrant detainees, in addition to six percent of the state and 16 percent of the federal prison population. These facilities earn the private prison industry $3.3 billion in annual revenue, backed by nearly $25 million in lobbying over the past 25 years. This includes industry lobbying to protect perverse incentives, the strict enforcement of sentencing and immigration laws, and contracts that require correctional facilities and immigration detention centers to remain full even when crime is falling.

As president, Governor O’Malley will:

Phase Out Federal For-Profit Prisons. This includes closing for-profit immigration detention centers, while using alternatives to detention in the immigration context whenever possible.

REINVEST TO ENSURE JUSTICE

As a nation, our divestment in education, job creation, and healthcare has resulted in some communities turning to law enforcement as a first and last resort—from providing student discipline to addressing addiction and mental illness. Reversing this trend by reinvesting in these areas will relieve our overburdened justice system, and ensure that law enforcement is able to focus on the most violent crimes.

read O'Malley's entire plan: http://t.co/b6QMEcCmrk

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Detail of Sen. Sanders 'Racial Justice' Plan

Racial Justice

We must pursue policies that transform this country into a nation that affirms the value of its people of color. That starts with addressing the four central types of violence waged against black and brown Americans: physical, political, legal and economic.

Physical Violence Perpetrated by the State

Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Samuel DuBose. We know their names. Each of them died unarmed at the hands of police officers or in police custody. The chants are growing louder. People are angry and they have a right to be angry. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that this violence only affects those whose names have appeared on TV or in the newspaper. African Americans are twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police.

Perpetrated by Extremists

We are far from eradicating racism in this country. In June, nine of our fellow Americans were murdered while praying in a historic church because of the color of their skin. This violence fills us with outrage, disgust, and a deep, deep sadness. Today in America, if you are black, you can be killed for getting a pack of Skittles during a basketball game. These hateful acts of violence amount to acts of terror. They are perpetrated by extremists who want to intimidate and terrorize black and brown people in this country.

Addressing Physical Violence

It is an outrage that in these early years of the 21st century we are seeing intolerable acts of violence being perpetuated by police, and racist terrorism by white supremacists.

A growing number of communities do not trust the police and law enforcement officers have become disconnected from the communities they are sworn to protect. Violence and brutality of any kind, particularly at the hands of the police sworn to protect and serve our communities, is unacceptable and must not be tolerated. We need a societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter, and racism cannot be accepted in a civilized country.

We must demilitarize our police forces so they don’t look and act like invading armies.
We must invest in community policing. Only when we get officers into the communities, working within neighborhoods before trouble arises, do we develop the relationships necessary to make our communities safer together. Among other things, that means increasing civilian oversight of police departments.
We need police forces that reflect the diversity of our communities.
At the federal level we need to establish a new model police training program that reorients the way we do law enforcement in this country. With input from a broad segment of the community including activists and leaders from organizations like Black Lives Matter we will reinvent how we police America.
We need to federally fund and require body cameras for law enforcement officers to make it easier to hold them accountable.
Our Justice Department must aggressively investigate and prosecute police officers who break the law and hold them accountable for their actions.
We need to require police departments and states to provide public reports on all police shootings and deaths that take place while in police custody.
We need new rules on the allowable use of force. Police officers need to be trained to de-escalate confrontations and to humanely interact with people who have mental illnesses.
States and localities that make progress in this area should get more federal justice grant money. Those that do not should get their funding slashed.
We need to make sure the federal resources are there to crack down on the illegal activities of hate groups.

Political Violence
Disenfranchisement

In the shameful days of open segregation, “literacy” laws were used to suppress minority voting. Today, through other laws and actions — such as requiring voters to show photo ID, discriminatory drawing of Congressional districts, not allowing early registration or voting, and purging voter rolls — states are taking steps which have a similar effect.

The patterns are unmistakable. An MIT paper found that African Americans waited twice as long to vote as whites. Wait times of as long as six or seven hours have been reported in some minority precincts, especially in “swing” states like Ohio and Florida. Thirteen percent of African-American men have lost the right to vote due to felony convictions.

This should offend the conscience of every American.

The fight for minority voting rights is a fight for justice. It is inseparable from the struggle for democracy itself.

We must work vigilantly to ensure that every American, regardless of skin color or national origin, is able to vote freely and easily.

Addressing Political Violence

We need to re-enfranchise the more than two million African Americans who have had their right to vote taken away by a felony conviction.
Congress must restore the Voting Rights Act’s “pre-clearance” provision, which extended protections to minority voters in states where they were clearly needed.
We must expand the Act’s scope so that every American, regardless of skin color or national origin, is able to vote freely.
We need to make Election Day a federal holiday to increase voters’ ability to participate.
We must make early voting an option for voters who work or study and need the flexibility to vote on evenings or weekends.
We must make no-fault absentee ballots an option for all Americans.
Every American over 18 must be registered to vote automatically, so that students and working people can make their voices heard at the ballot box.
We must put an end to discriminatory laws and the purging of minority-community names from voting rolls.
We need to make sure that there are sufficient polling places and poll workers to prevent long lines from forming at the polls anywhere.

Legal Violence

Millions of lives have been destroyed because people are in jail for nonviolent crimes. For decades, we have been engaged in a failed “War on Drugs” with racially-biased mandatory minimums that punish people of color unfairly.

It is an obscenity that we stigmatize so many young Americans with a criminal record for smoking marijuana, but not one major Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for causing the near collapse of our entire economy. This must change.

If current trends continue, one in four black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during their lifetime. Blacks are imprisoned at six times the rate of whites and a report by the Department of Justice found that blacks were three times more likely to be searched during a traffic stop, compared to white motorists. African-Americans are twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police. This is an unspeakable tragedy.

It is morally repugnant and a national tragedy that we have privatized prisons all over America. In my view, corporations should not be allowed to make a profit by building more jails and keeping more Americans behind bars. We have got to end the private-for-profit prison racket in America. I intend to introduce legislation that will end the private prison industry.

The measure of success for law enforcement should not be how many people get locked up. We need to invest in drug courts as well as medical and mental health interventions for people with substance abuse problems, so that people struggling with addiction do not end up in prison, they end up in treatment.

For people who have committed crimes that have landed them in jail, there needs to be a path back from prison. The federal system of parole needs to be reinstated. We need real education and real skills training for the incarcerated.

We must end the over incarceration of nonviolent young Americans who do not pose a serious threat to our society. It is an international embarrassment that we have more people locked up in jail than any other country on earth – more than even the Communist totalitarian state of China. That has got to end.

We must address the lingering unjust stereotypes that lead to the labeling of black youths as “thugs.” We know the truth that, like every community in this country, the vast majority of people of color are trying to work hard, play by the rules and raise their children. It’s time to stop demonizing minority communities.

In many cities all over our country, the incentives for policing are upside down. Departments are bringing in substantial sums of revenue by seizing the personal property of people who are suspected of criminal involvement. So-called civil asset forfeiture laws allow police to take property from people even before they are charged with a crime, much less convicted of one. Even worse, the system works in a way that make it nearly impossible for an innocent person to get her property back. We must end programs that not only permit, but actually reward officials for seizing assets without a criminal conviction or other lawful mandate. Departments and officers should not profit off of such seizures.

We must reform our criminal justice system to ensure fairness and justice for people of color.

Addressing Legal Violence

We need to ban prisons for profit, which result in an over-incentive to arrest, jail and detain, in order to keep prison beds full.
We need to turn back from the failed “War on Drugs” and eliminate mandatory minimums which result in sentencing disparities between black and white people.
We need to invest in drug courts and medical and mental health interventions for people with substance abuse problems, so that they do not end up in prison, they end up in treatment.
We need to boost investments for programs that help people who have gone to jail rebuild their lives with education and job training.
We must abolish civil asset forfeiture programs which allow police departments to seize property from people who have not been convicted of a crime and profit off of such seizures.

Economic Violence

Weeks before his death, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to a union group in New York about what he called “the other America.”

“One America is flowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of equality,” King said. “That America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies, culture and education for their minds, freedom and human dignity for their spirits. .?.?. But as we assemble here tonight, I’m sure that each of us is painfully aware of the fact that there is another America, and that other America has a daily ugliness about it that transforms the buoyancy of hope into the fatigue of despair.”

The problem was structural, King said: “This country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.”

Eight days later, speaking in Memphis, King continued the theme. “Do you know that most of the poor people in our country are working every day?” he asked striking sanitation workers. “And they are making wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation. These are facts which must be seen, and it is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis and a full-time job getting part-time income.”

King explained the shift in his focus: “Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. For we know that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?”

But what King saw in 1968 — and what we all should recognize today — is that it is necessary to try to address the rampant economic inequality while also taking on the issue of societal racism. We must simultaneously address the structural and institutional racism which exists in this country, while at the same time we vigorously attack the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality which is making the very rich much richer while everyone else – especially those in our minority communities – are becoming poorer.

In addition to the physical violence faced by too many in our country we need look at the lives of black children and address a few other difficult facts. Black children, who make up just 18 percent of preschoolers, account for 48 percent of all out-of-school suspensions before kindergarten. We are failing our black children before kindergarten. Black students were expelled at three times the rate of white students. Black girls were suspended at higher rates than all other girls and most boys. According to the Department of Education, African American students are more likely to suffer harsh punishments – suspensions and arrests – at school.

We need to take a hard look at our education system. Black students attend schools with higher concentrations of first-year teachers, compared with white students. Black students were more than three times as likely to attend schools where fewer than 60 percent of teachers meet all state certification and licensure requirements.

Communities of color also face the violence of economic deprivation. Let’s be frank: neighborhoods like those in west Baltimore, where Freddie Gray resided, suffer the most. However, the problem of economic immobility isn’t just a problem for young men like Freddie Gray. It has become a problem for millions of Americans who, despite hard-work and the will to get ahead, can spend their entire lives struggling to survive on the economic treadmill.

We live at a time when most Americans don’t have $10,000 in savings, and millions of working adults have no idea how they will ever retire in dignity. God forbid, they are confronted with an unforeseen car accident, a medical emergency, or the loss of a job. It would literally send their lives into an economic tailspin. And the problems are even more serious when we consider race.

Let us not forget: It was the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street that nearly drove the economy off of the cliff seven years ago. While millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, life savings, and ability to send their kids to college, African Americans who were steered into expensive subprime mortgages were the hardest hit.

Most black and Latino households have less than $350 in savings. The black unemployment rate has remained roughly twice as high as the white rate over the last 40 years, regardless of education. Real African American youth unemployment is over 50 percent. This is unacceptable. The American people in general want change – they want a better deal. A fairer deal. A new deal. They want an America with laws and policies that truly reward hard work with economic mobility. They want an America that affords all of its citizens with the economic security to take risks and the opportunity to realize their full potential.
Addressing Economic Violence

We need to give our children, regardless of their race or their income, a fair shot at attending college. That’s why all public universities should be made tuition free.
We must invest $5.5 billion in a federally-funded youth employment program to employ young people of color who face disproportionately high unemployment rates.
Knowing that black women earn 64 cents on the dollar compared to white men, we must pass federal legislation to establish pay equity for women.
We must prevent employers from discriminating against applicants based on criminal history.
We need to ensure access to quality affordable childcare for working families.

read: https://berniesanders.com/issues/racial-justice/

[kenfrequed]

1. It is time we did more

Our criminal justice system is broken and the rules have been written by the private prison industry.

Our police are riddled with racists and violent psychopaths that do far too much harm.

I would happily support O'Malley or Sanders on this.

[bigtree]

2. kick

[artislife]

3. Kick.

[FSogol]

4. K&R. n/t

[sabrina 1]

5. Shaun King, under the bus! n/t

[bigtree]

6. kick