"The aim should be to reshape our society as a whole. We are not doing nearly enough to address the root causes of poverty, addiction, homelessness, and mental-health crises. Instead, we criminalize poverty through harsh fines and debt regulation; criminalize addiction through drug laws; criminalize homelessness by conducting sweeps of people sleeping in parks; and criminalize mental illness by turning prisons into de facto psychiatric hospitals. Why do we focus on these symptoms instead of the true diseases? ... The Black Lives Matter movement and the pandemic has taught us that we’re all in this together, opening up the opportunity to explore building a new, care-based reality. We need a vision of a future in which vital needs like housing, education, and healthcare are met, allowing people to live big, beautiful, fulfilled lives—with not a prison in sight."
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African AmericansSocial movementsSocial justiceRacism in the United StatesHuman rights in the United States
Original Language: English
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Sources
Mary Rinaldi and Ashish Prashar, Here’s how we get to a world where we don’t need prisons at all, , Fast Company (17 July 2020)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter
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Black Lives Matter
(BLM) is a decentralized, political and social movement. It advocates for non-violent civil disobedience. Its demands include the defunding of the police (demand 5). It opposed the unsuccessful Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021 (demand 6) and protests against incidents of and racially motivated violence. It holds that Kyle Rittenhouse was unfairly acquitted, citing white privilege in the American legal system.
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