We have 5,000 plus jails and prisons in the U.S. This is the most comprehensive and elaborate infrastructure of incarceration and punishment the world has known. "From slavery until today, the U.S. has built systems of mass incarceration at the cost of EVERYTHING else." 1/

“We are all carrying this illness, this disruption that has created a narrative of racial indifference, and because of that, we continue to suffer...Slavery has not ended; it’s evolved.” 2/

What we are doing is not normal; that caging humans in the manner and scale we are doing it is not normal. 3/

We operate a discriminatory AND wealth sensitive justice system where those at the margins are always in the crosshairs. This sickens our community, our state, and our nation. 4/

Too often, we focus on the pain of the individual knuckle hitting us, we miss that it's the brutal force of an entire fist that is trying to knock us out. From mayors to governors, from police brutality to prisons...it’s all connected. The entirety of it is catastrophic. 5/

Every elected person, public safety system stakeholder, and community advocate with the power to do something, including commuting death rows, should exercise that power now, without hesitation and to the fullest extent allowed under the law. 6/6