"I have to let everyone in Tampa know that we are now safer... I sat in a courtroom this morning doing jail solidarity and watched the police/judge keep my community 'safe' by delivering 'justice' in the form of sentencing a young houseless man to a year in jail for stealing food worth less than ten dollars from 7-11.
This came from a judge who ten minutes earlier started shouting and had a young man arrested for his phone ringing in court. This is from the judge, "IF YOUR PHONE RINGS IN CHURCH, GOD SENDS YOU TO HELL! IN MY COURTROOM YOU GET SENT TO JAIL!"
One young man facing life in prison who wouldn't take a plea deal because he insisted upon his innocence was treated like absolute shit for it. And our friend... Navigating life with mental health issues and crushing poverty will have a year in jail to review his 'crime' of thinking that food was a human right. One might assume that the poverty driving people to steal food, and the fact that so many thousands of our community members are on the streets, food insecure, hungry and lacking adequate medical care, would be an indictment of the ciry rather than the community members themselves. Fuck jails. Fuck judges."
Dezeray Lyn
Dezeray Lyn
1 comment:
Who was the judge?
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