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The Case for Eliminating Cash Bail

Cash Bail is inherently anti-justice, disproportionately impacting those who are already at a societal disadvantage. It's time to overhaul the bail system and focus instead on programs that will support defendants in the time between arrest/summons and trial. What is bail? Bail is a set of pre-trial conditions assigned to a person who has been arrested to ensure their compliance with the law. It is a constitutional right granted by both the United States’ and the Maine constitutions.  A cornerstone of the United States justice system is the presumption of innocence, meaning that before incarceration, a person must be convicted of a crime. However, with a cash bail system, a defendant can be required to pay a fee before release. If they cannot pay, they are jailed until they can pay, meet with a judge, or go to trial. This could be just a few days, but it could also last for years.  How is that legal? The Statutes relative to the Maine Bail Code are found in Title 15, Chapter ...
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A New Era for Politics?

Forgive the brevity of this post - in writing it, my internet cut out twice, refreshing my page without saving...so this is attempt number three.  Biden's victory speech on Saturday night gave me some hope about the future of our country - but what I worry about is that people will forget that Trump did not cause the turmoil and division in the United States. People were pushing for more progressive policies (especially in healthcare and housing) under Obama, and I don't personally consider a Biden/Harris administration to be any more progressive than when Obama was in office.  To truly change the political landscape, to embrace change that will improve society, and to eliminate the two-party system, we need to remember that going back to the status-quo we experienced before Trump took office is not a victory. Biden is our stepping stone out of the valley, but we can reach the top of the mountain without a lot more work.  Something really important to me, going forward, (...
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Reactionary Solutions for Preventable Problems

 Here in the US, the way we handle most societal issues is to wait until they become problems that can't be ignored, and then we react. In education, special education services aren't offered until a child is already struggling. Medical care isn't covered by insurance until someone is suffering. As Kathryn highlighted in her blog post, low-income parents aren't a priority for housing until they've already lost their children.  This culture that we have to "prove" need kind of brings us back to the beginning of the semester and our discussions about who is deserving. It highlights the overarching belief that people much earn their access to things like healthcare, stable housing, and even well-paying jobs. We live in a world where everything is a privilege, not a right - and we're paying for it.  The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown into stark light the myriad ways our healthcare system is failing us. While societal reactions (or lack thereof) to CDC guidel...
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COVID in the Time of Election Season

For the past week, I find myself unable to tear myself away from the rolling news cycle surrounding the president, his COVID results, and the ensuing chaos. For me, it brings up arguments of Medicare for all, Universal Basic Income, and trying to implore the government to exist for the purpose of taking care of its people, rather than the system we have now where most people are exploited so top government officials can have everything they need and much, much more.  n The Deficit Myth , Kelton essentially makes the argument that there is enough money to go around, and the issue is priority. Taking this perspective to the real world, I still don't quite understand MMT (or economics on the whole), but I do know that many other countries similar to ours in wealth and resources have figured out things like universal healthcare.  Since last Friday, I have checked the news multiple times per day looking for updates on the White House COVID situation. All lies about the president's ...
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Money & Morality

 This week's reading of The Deficit Myth got me thinking about just how abstract money is, especially when it comes to "national" debt. I'll admit I've never understood how the deficit works in this country - how can the government be in debt...to itself? Don't they create the money now? How are we in debt but affording billions in bloated military costs, Congressional salaries, and bank bailouts?  When the government sent out the CARES act stimulus package, it was touted as the BEST they could do - there is only so much money, after all, to go around. $1200 for what is now a 6+ months crisis is laughable and shows just how out of touch most of Congress is with "regular" Americans.  I then thought about the New York Times article that came out about Trumps's taxes - that he paid $750 in taxes two years in a row. In 2017, my husband and I made, jointly, about $80k and we paid almost $3k in taxes - four times as much as the president. Does Trump...
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A Post-Ruth World

 Friday, September 18th, at around 8pm, two friends were at my house for dinner. One of them looked at her phone and gasped, "Ruth Bader Ginsberg. She died."  My initial reaction was, "oh, shit." As a white woman of European descent, RBG represented to me the voice of gender equality on the Supreme Court bench, and her loss threatened to set back the many advances she supported.  But over the next couple of days, I saw many posts from WOC, Indigenous women, and BIPOC of all genders calling out the many harmful decisions RBG made or supported during her tenure. It's very hard, for me personally, to acknowledge that someone so widely regarded as symbol of progress was, in actuality, only a symbol of progress for a small part of the population.  I'm not saying RBG didn't do great things, nor am I saying no one is allowed to mourn the loss. She made her way to the Supreme Court as only the second woman ever, and the first Jewish woman. Her legacy is certainl...
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Are White People Inherently Racist?

 This week's readings, and especially "I Am Not Your Negro" (2018), have forced me to come to very honest terms with my own internalized biases in regards specifically to race.  I grew up in a small, predominantly white town and so never really thought about race. For years, I considered this to be an asset - how could I be racist if I'd never been told to hate people of color (POC)? How could I be racist when I was raised to judge people based on their character, and not on their appearance?  It wasn't until the protests in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 that I began to come to terms with the fact that my whiteness, by default, placed me in a position to not only be ignorant to racism, but to perpetuate it without even realizing. I have mostly to thank authors and activists of color for writing articles about race-based police brutality and putting the lifelong experiences of POC into terms understandable by white people.  As we move into what I keep seeing referred ...
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