Tondalao Hall is a domestic violence survivor sentenced to 30 years behind bars under a "failure to protect" law. Tondalao was punished for not leaving her abuser quickly enough, before he could inflict physical abuse on their children. The abuser, Robert Braxton, was released back to the streets the day he was sentenced for child abuse, with only 8 years of probation to serve. He admitted to breaking the ribs, toe, and femurs of the two youngest children. Tondalao, the adult victim of his abuse and mother of his children, is now serving her 15th year behind bars. While we haven’t had much to celebrate in the quest for Tondalao’s freedom, this time is slightly different than others. Here’s how: 1. The Pardon and Parole board voted UNANIMOUSLY in a 5-0 vote to move her case to the next round. 2. Four out of five board members were appointed within the past year. 3. After years of organizing, District Attorney David Prater finally wrote a letter of “support" calling for Tondalao’s release. Oklahoma has the highest rate per capita of incarcerated women than any other place in the word. Hall is 1 of 28 women sentenced across 11 states under “Failure to Protect” laws who are serving more time than the abuser himself. Hall’s appeal for justice could have broader implications for the lives of women across experiences. ​Courts must not use Failure to Protect laws to further victimize survivors of domestic violence by scapegoating them for their batterers’ crimes. Failure to Protect laws must not hold domestic violence victims with children to an impossible standard of choosing between risking their lives (and their children's’ lives) and risking their freedom. After 13 years behind bars, Tondalao has served enough time for a crime she didn't commit. We must do better to protect and #FreeBlackMamas.

COPWATCH AMERICA INCORPORATED HAS A PRIMARY GOAL TO MINIMIZE & ELIMINATE UNJUSTIFIED DEATHS DUE TO ILLEGAL ACTIONS OF LAW ENFORCEMENT IN AMERICA AGAINST CIVILIANS. COPWATCH AMERICA INCORPORATED USES UNITED STATES/STATE LAWS, FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT, CIVILIAN COMPLIANT REVIEW COMMITTEES, POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY MONITORING PROGRAMS, AND OTHER FORMS OF RESOURCES & ACTIONS TO ESTABLISH TRANSPARENCY & ACCOUNTABILITY IN EACH AND EVERY LAW ENFORCEMENT DEPARTMENT/AGENCY IN AMERICA.

The right to privacy and due process under the law belongs to everyone. Residents, technologists, organizers, activists, artists, educators and legislators are learning the implications of police use of facial recognition technologies. Inaccuracies in the technology for darker skin tones, women, and children place many Americans at risk of having their civil and human rights violated. This is a particularly troubling situation for Detroit, where the population is over 80% Black. This would be the largest experiment on Black people in the United States, in modern times. We don't deserve a justice system regulated by faulty algorithms. We don't deserve a justice system that relies on profiling, and we can’t trust a technology that has proven time and time again that it cannot be trusted. Facial surveillance technology does not keep us safe, in fact it does the opposite. Please support Senator (R) Peter Lucido's Senate Bill 342 (SB342), co-sponsored by Senator (D) Stephanie Gray Chang. The legislation would prohibit law enforcement officials from obtaining, accessing or using any facial recognition technology, along with any information gathered from such technology. Any information obtained in violation of the law would be inadmissible in court “as if the evidence, arrest warrant, or search warrant was obtained in violation of Amendment IV of the Constitution of the United States and section 11 of Article I of the state constitution of 1963.” In effect, the passage of SB342 would impose a total ban on the use of facial recognition technology by Michigan law enforcement. State Rep (D) Isaac Robinson's House Bill 4810, which would create a five-year moratorium on the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement. HB 4810 will also prevent the use of facial recognition software to obtain warrants or otherwise enforce the law. The prohibition includes footage obtained from surveillance cameras, unmanned aircraft, body cameras, and street and traffic light cameras. The bill was co-sponsored by state Reps. Sherry Gay-Dagnogo (D-Detroit) and Jewell Jones(D-Inkster). Recently, the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners tabled a vote on the use of facial recognition technology to monitor city neighborhoods but approved the use of traffic cameras with the capacity to use the technology. Detroit Police Chief Craig recently admitted to using the technology under a standard operating procedure, through their Project Green Light Program for over a year. Until recently, there had been no public discourse around DPD's use of facial recognition technology. The Detroit Police Board of Commissioners is expected to approve the use of the technology despite public opposition. Serious concerns exist regarding the use of facial recognition technology as it has been shown to misidentify African-American faces, darker skin tones, women and children. It’s time for Michigan to show the world that we respect, and will protect our right to privacy and due process under the law. Urge your legislators to support SB342 and House Bill 4810 BYP100 - Detroit Chapter Black Out Green Light Coalition Detroit Community Technology Project Detroit Digital Justice Coalition Detroit Coalition for Peace

On December 13, 2017, Abdi was traveling home to his family in Columbus, Ohio when he was detained at JFK airport. Abdi, a legal permanent resident, had just passed through two levels of customs and immigration inspection, and his passport was stamped "admitted" when he was stopped by an officer who asked if he was from Mogadishu. CBP officers detained Abdi for fifteen hours and interrogated him without a Somali interpreter, even though he repeatedly asked for one. During his interrogation, Abdi was surrounded by armed CBP officers and threatened with years of imprisonment and deportation. Abdi was then transferred to Elizabeth Detention Center where he has been detained ever since, ten hours from his family. Due to Abdi’s unjust detention, his wife has been forced to raise their two baby daughters by herself, without his support. Despite being admitted with a green card, Abdi is now forced to fight for asylum to save his life. On November 12, 2018, three days before one of his multiple immigration hearings, Abdi was sent to a hospital in New Jersey because he was in excruciating pain, unable to get out of bed to eat, use the bathroom or see a doctor. Abdi had complained of pain in his chest to the medical staff at the detention center for eight months, but was only given pain medication and antacids. During his ten-day hospitalization, Abdi was chained to the bed by his legs and an arm, with two armed guards at the door at all times. His lungs were drained several times. Without an interpreter, he understood the doctors to be telling him he had a lung infection. He was tested and diagnosed with active TB. Had ICE doctors properly treated Abdi, they could have easily avoided this result. Instead, Abdi is now on a course of TB medications, some of which have serious side effects including fatal liver damage. None of these risks were explained to him. Abdi is back at the Elizabeth Detention Center, but his wife and attorneys are concerned that he is being held in the same place he developed his condition. He has not received the proper follow-up care as directed by the hospital. Despite the fact that the hospital recommended he get daily blood tests to check his liver function, Abdi does not know if he’s had his liver tested, and he has only had blood drawn a few times since leaving the hospital more than 125 days ago. As of now, neither ICE nor CoreCivic have been held accountable for Abdi’s lack of medical treatment. He has permanent scarring in his lungs, and still feels pain in his chest -- a pain he could live with for the rest of his life, thanks to ICE’s neglect. We’re asking that you and your organization consider signing on to our letter of support for Abdi to demand he be released to his family so that he may receive that life saving care he needs. You can sign our petition bit.ly/BringAbdiHome as an individual. If your organization is interested in supporting you can sign our statement of support bit.ly/Letter4Abdi

I, the undersigned, am aware that Therèse Patricia Okoumou was found guilty at her trial on December 17th of three federal misdemeanors: trespassing, disorderly conduct and interference with government agency functions. Despite the real prospect of spending 18 months in prison, “We stand on the right side of history. I am not discouraged,” Patricia said after being sentenced. Our Lady Liberty remains steadfast in her mission to continue campaigning against the immoral and inhumane family separation policies of the Trump administration. Since Patricia's trial, new information has revealed that the extent of the Trump Administration's outrageous “zero tolerance” policy, which it has consistently LIED to the court and the American people about, is even worse than previously known. The federal government has ripped apart tender-aged children from nursing mothers. It has flown thousands of young children across the country away from their families and placed them in cages. Some of The Children are being forcibly drugged and others sexually molested in internment camps. There have been deaths of asylum seekers, as young as 7 years old, under the care and custody of border patrol agents and Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE). As part of our basic right to protest, outlined in the constitution, Patricia climbed the Statue of Liberty to increase awareness of this injustice, and I stand in solidarity with her! When we fell low as a country, Patricia went as high as she could to raise consciousness about these atrocities.

In recent news, we have seen children separated from their families at the border and taken, sometimes shackled in tinted buses, to places across the country. In our own neighborhoods, Black people are whisked away in broad daylight in the back of police cars. Private prisons like GEO Group and CoreCivic have made billions separating people from their families for decades and we’re going to put a stop to it. This year, as politicians vie for elected office across the country, we remind them that we aren't asking for "change" or "hope," we are demanding ACTION; that our elected representatives put our families and safety before corporate profits. It’s time for all politicians to stop taking money from the for-profit imprisonment industry--responsible for separating families from the border, to Miami, New York, L.A, Baltimore, Detroit, and all over the country. On Sunday, July 1st, The Florida Democratic Party passed a resolution to refuse contributions from GEO Group, CoreCivic and their representative PACs and lobbyists after a months long campaign by Dream Defenders to have candidates sign a Freedom Pledge which declares candidates opposition to private prisons and immigrant detention facilities. We celebrate this win in Florida, and are now partnering with Color Of Change to make this a reality all over the country. No politician should gain political power by accepting money from companies that are responsible for separating our families.

California is facing an extremely serious threat to criminal justice reform. This prison tax and expansion proposal misleadingly named The Reducing Crime and Keeping California Safe Act, backed by law enforcement and the subject of an active signature-gathering operation in the field, represents a dangerous step backward for the state and a threat to future reform. This measure is essentially a tax to expand prisons, an effort to increase law enforcement budgets and defund investment in intervention and prevention. Raleys, Costco, and Ralph’s have donated to the signature gathering effort and has indicated that they will donate more if the prison package were to qualify for the ballot this year. Join us in sending a clear message to Safeway that we will boycott their stores if they do not (1) demand that their donations be returned ASAP, and (2) publicly oppose this prison expansion proposal! - - - GET THE FACTS New Ballot Measure Proposal Increases Prison Spending What is the so-called “Reducing Crime and Keeping California Safe Act of 2018?” This proposed initiative for the November 2018 ballot would do four main things: make repeat thefts with a value of $250 or more prosecuted as a felony (which would be among the very lowest felony theft thresholds in the nation), authorize law enforcement to collect a person’s DNA upon arrest for misdemeanors, make it easier to incarcerate someone for a technical violation of parole or probation, and limit the number of people in prison that can earn a parole hearing by completing rehabilitative and educational programming. All of these will increase taxpayer spending on prisons, reduce rehabilitation and drive the prison population up – at a time when California has been working to right size it’s bloated prison population and rebalance public safety spending priorities. The initiative is being pushed primarily by Sacramento Assemblyman Jim Cooper and Sacramento County District Attorney Anne-Marie Schubert, as well as key local and statewide law enforcement associations that have opposed justice reform for years, including the Association of Deputy District Attorneys for Los Angeles County and the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs. Proponents of the initiative need to secure over 365,000 valid signatures by June 1 in order to qualify the initiative for this November’s ballot and they are actively in the field collecting signatures. Myths and Facts About the Proposed Initiative MYTH: Recent criminal justice reforms have caused crime in California to skyrocket FACT: Crime rates in California are currently at historically low levels. Statewide violent crime rates have declined by nearly 50 percent since 1992, and statewide property crime rates have decreased by nearly 42 percent, despite significant increases in California’s population during the past 25 years. More recent trends also reflect the fact that crime in California is continuing to go down. Between 2010, the first year before Public Safety Realignment was effectuated, and 2016, the last year for which complete data is available, statewide property crime rates decreased by three percent, with 34 of the state’s 58 counties seeing overall property crime declines during this period. Statewide violent crime rates are essentially flat during this time period. And during the first half of 2017, a majority of California cities with populations of 100,000 or more saw overall decreases in violent and property crime when compared to the first half of 2016. MYTH: Law enforcement is now prevented from stopping low level crime. FACT: Proposition 47 maintains California state laws that provide law enforcement authority to arrest and book into custody individuals suspected of committing misdemeanor offenses. California law also authorizes detention for individuals in misdemeanor cases, including Proposition 47 offenses, when officers have probable cause to believe a suspect has committed a crime and it is in the best interest of public safety to detain. The maximum penalty for misdemeanors in California law is one year in county jail. An individual that is convicted of multiple misdemeanors may be sentenced to multiple years in jail. Additionally, judges can sentence misdemeanants to treatment, supervised misdemeanor probation, and community service among other options. Importantly – even before California’s era of justice reform – the vast majority of low-level crime is not reported or prosecuted. Thus, arrest and prosecution strategies alone cannot effectively stop the cycle of low-level crime. Innovative approaches to bring community, businesses and law enforcement together can go further to prevent and detect low-level crime problems. Law enforcement can partner with local leaders to develop diversion programs and neighborhood problem solving strategies that address the drivers of crime. MYTH: Violent and dangerous individuals are being automatically released back into the community en masse FACT: There is no automatic release under Proposition 57. Rather, an individual who completes rehabilitative and educational programming can earn eligibility for a parole hearing, at which the parole board reviews the case and must still deem that person to be a low risk to reoffend before the person can be released. If a parole board determines that someone with a qualifying non-violent offense is at risk of committing additional crimes, that person will remain incarcerated. As of January 31, 2018, 80 percent of the parole hearings held under Prop. 57 have ended with release being denied. Investments in rehabilitation support public safety by addressing the root causes of criminal behavior and reducing a person’s likelihood of reoffending. Research shows that successfully completing rehabilitation programs significantly reduces the likelihood that an individual will reoffend upon release.

On May 1st, at 5pm at City Hall, The Philadelphia Coalition for a Just District Attorney is gathering our movement under a call to end mass incarceration and reinvest in the communities most affected. For too long, “tough on crime” policies have deliberately targeted our black, brown, and working class communities -- ICE is tearing apart families, our youth are being criminalized in school and treated as adults by our overzealous criminal justice system, and the legal system's reliance on cash bail continues to overcrowd our prisons, keeping the House of Correction facility open despite its notoriety for its decrepit conditions. While District Attorney Larry Krasner has made significant progress in his mandate to challenge mass incarceration, our coalition recognizes there are other political actors who hold the power to divest from prisons and invest in people. In the upcoming months, the School District of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Police and Prison Departments, and the First Judicial District will be presenting their fiscal year budgets to City Council for approval. On May 1st, both the Police and Prison Department will be presenting their budgets. We need Philadelphia City Council to support a "People's Budget" and use these hearings to advocate for increased funding for our public school system and decreased spending on incarceration.

On June 17th, 2017, four Black queer and trans people--now known as the BlackPride4--were violently arrested while peacefully protesting the Columbus Pride Parade to draw attention to the disproportionate murder of trans women of color and the non-indictment of Philando Castile’s murderer, Minneapolis Police Officer Jeronimo Yanez. After months of widespread outrage at the police brutality against the #BlackPride4 and their subsequent arrests, three of them have gone to trial and were found guilty on February 12th, 2018 of charges ranging from disorderly conduct to resisting arrest. With a quickly approaching sentencing date of March 13th, 2018, we must continue the fight to #FreeTheBlackPride4. Their lives and futures hang in the balance, and Judge Ebner is the sole gatekeeper to their freedom. Wriply Bennet and her lawyer have suggested that folks all over continue to show their solidarity in hopes that the Judge is lenient. We really need to keep these Black trans activist home and free from any jail time -- sign the below petition to urge Judge Ebner dole out minimal sentencing to Wriply of the #BlackPride4! -- Here's the petition! Dear Honorable Judge Ebner, We write today in support of Ms. Wriply Bennet and to urge you to deliver the most minimal sentence to her. Ms. Bennet is an asset to our community. Columbus will benefit by Ms. Bennet being allowed to continue the great work she is involved in the community, and our entire community will feel the negative impact should she be required to serve jail time. Ms. Bennet is a nationally recognized artist who has organized around community service efforts for years. In addition, Ms. Bennet has acted as a consultant for local organizations (like Kaleidoscope Youth Center and the Trans/Queer Racial Justice and Transformation Network of the OSU Sexuality Studies Program and others), providing much-needed support to groups working to better our communities. We know that it would be most beneficial to our city and country if she had the opportunity to continue investing her skills and leadership directly into the community instead of serving jail time or navigating restrictive supervision. We respectfully request that you also consider that incarceration is particularly dangerous and traumatizing for Black trans women, who are already faced with the looming threat of violence in their day-to-day lives. For recent context, Ashley Diamond, a Black trans civil rights activist in Georgia, was assaulted, placed into solitary confinement, and denied her medication while incarcerated in 2015. As a direct result of the conditions she experienced, Diamond currently suffers from PTSD and other mental health issues that have hindered her integration back into her communities. We as individuals, join with numerous local and national organizations that have publicly supported Ms. Bennet. In the past eight months, groups from all over Columbus and beyond have offered vocal and material support for the #BlackPride4, from releasing public statements (Buckeye Region Anti-Violence Organization, Equality Ohio) to being present during the week of trial (including BQIC, TransOhio, People’s Justice Project, Showing Up for Racial Justice, Yes We Can Columbus, and former 2017 Stonewall Columbus Pride Planning Committee members who resigned from the Planning Committee due to Stonewall Columbus’ response to the Pride protest). This coordinated, community support demonstrates the interest that has been taken in their case, both locally and nationally, as well as in the defendants’ futures as free people. We understand that as the presiding judge in the case, you have a duty to honor the verdicts given in a court of law. We believe it is imperative that our community’s constitutional rights to peaceful assembly and free speech be protected. Our First Amendment rights enabled so many before us to call attention to social issues and spark lasting change. In light of those interests, the vast network of support for Ms. Bennet, and her history of community service, we urge you to give the absolute minimum sentencing to Ms. Bennet.

I need your help taking down the Keith Family name -- notorious prison profiteers and conservative “pay-to-play” cronies--off of a Charlotte YMCA branch. I was at Mecklenburg County Jail North when I noticed the “Keith” logo on prison staff uniforms matched the “Keith” on the YMCA where I worked as a fitness instructor. Yup, that’s right. The Keith Family YMCA in Charlotte is named for prison profiteers. Help me rename the Keith Family YMCA to honor my friend Ramona Brant who died recently, who fought tirelessly for prisoners even after she was unjustly locked up for two decades. The name of a powerful Black woman and prison abolitionist, Ramona Brant -- not the greedy prison-profiteering Keiths-- deserves to be uplifted in our community. “We are not considering a name change at this branch”. That’s President & C.E.O. of YMCA-Charlotte, Todd Tibbits response to us yesterday when Color of Change and I reached out on renaming the Keith Family YMCA. Todd doesn’t get why naming a YMCA Charlotte branch after prison-profiteers like the Keith Family and taking donations built on blood prison money is bad for Black families. Tell Todd: “The YMCA should not be uplifting people who built their wealth on Black pain and the devastation of prison industry on the Black community.” The Keiths, since 1999, have aggressively pursued private maintenance contracts in North Carolina state prisons where Black people represent 22% of the population yet make up 55% of state prison population.1 As of 2016 in Mecklenburg County where The Keith Corporation is headquartered, Black people represented 31.2% of the county population2 yet make up 67% of the Mecklenburg County jail population.3 The Keith Family has also been embroiled in controversy for political cronyism that sparked a federal investigation. The YMCA, a place where our children play, shouldn't stand for the devastation that the prison industry, and prison profit-buddies like the Keith Family. Sign now to tell YMCA Greater Charlotte to remove their affiliation with the grossly unjust prison industry. Ramona Brant. Say Her Name. Ramona Brant -- not the Keiths -- is the embodiment of the YMCA’s stated mission of transformative social change and a commitment to families and communities. Ramona, after former President Obama commuted her sentence, only knew two years of freedom after surviving two decades behind bars. In 1995, federal prosecutors unjustly sentenced Ramona to a life sentence without parole for simply being in relationship with someone who dealt drugs.4 In the end, white supremacy and the prison industrial complex took a toll on her life. But, she spent those two years as a powerful voice for change in Charlotte-- fighting for housing, living wages, jobs, and inclusion for those like her reentering society after incarceration. Black women, like Ramona Brant, are too often discarded and disrespected. It’s time we put some respeck on her name and give Ramona the love and honor she deserved when she lived. Too often the experiences of Black women being targeted and swept up by the prison industrial complex--fueled by the profit-greed of people like the Keiths--are erased. Ramona Brant’s name on a community institution that serves Black families in Charlotte does justice to her legacy and is a powerful reminder of the unwavering strength of Black women in opposing oppression. It’s time to take the Keith Family name down. Remember Ramona Brant. In her name and until justice is real for all those who are wrongly incarcerated, Patrice Funderberg

Everyday, thousands of people who haven't been convicted of a crime are separated from their families as they languish in jails just because they can't afford to pay bail. The commercial bail industry will go to any length to undermine reform and now they being implicated in an FBI bribery investigation. The news about bail-bonds industry lobbyists offering illegal bribes to Sen. Oaks and at least one other target in the state legislature underlines the corrupting influence that the industry’s money has had on the legislative process. These illegal bribes are in addition to the hundreds of thousands of dollars that the industry has spent in Maryland on campaign contributions, as detailed last year in a report by Common Cause report. All of this money - reported and under the table - is intended to reverse the progress Maryland can make under a new Judicial Rule intended to have more people released without subjecting them to the debt-trap set up by the bail industry. Maryland is one of the top states for campaign donations by the bail industry coming in behind only California and Florida. In order to get this corrupt industry out of our lives and communities, we must disrupt the dangerous relationship between the bail industry and elected officials.

Right now, the challenges our communities face are many. Imprisonment is a big one. Corporations and their politician friends have made it their life’s work to enact policies that keep our families and communities in jails. Every time someone in our neighborhoods is locked up, someone at a corporation makes money. These corporations, like Florida-based GEO and CCA, operate in the dark, away from public view and work hard to keep it that way. Their lavish vacations and retirement funds depend on it. On top of that, most people aren’t aware of how the prison industry operates and thus feel powerless to change it. We want to change that. Dream Defenders is a small, young organization with limited resources in the face of a goliath, seasoned system of paper pushers with unlimited resources. The prison system is tearing up our families, communities, and future generations. According to Miami New Times writer Jerry Ianelli: "Investigative reporters Carol Marbin Miller and Audra D.S. Burch obtained stomach-churning video of Florida juvenile offenders fighting one another after being groomed as attack mobs by state guards. Scores of surveillance videos show groups of teenage boys sucker-punching, stomping, and beating up other kids, breaking noses, eye sockets, and a host of other bones in the process. The Herald uncovered tales of rape, molestation, children beaten to death, and a justice system that let almost every guard involved walk free without consequence. The list of nightmarish allegations in the series is too long to fully recount. The Herald noted cases where staffers set up fights and bet on them; instances where the DJJ hired guards who had formerly been caught having sex with inmates; other cases where guards showed a teen pornography and watched him ‘fondle himself’; raped a transgender inmate; had sex with a child detainee in a closet; and abused one female detainee by using her head as a ‘toilet plunger.’ One Broward County youth counselor was allegedly so brazen about having sex with teen inmates she became known as the ‘cradle robber.’ The 12 juvenile deaths the Herald noted seem due to state negligence." In 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice condemning the state of juvenile detention in the country. A report of the National Institute of Justice, research arm of the Justice Department, added: “This ill-conceived and outmoded approach is a failure, with high costs and recidivism rates and institutional conditions that are often appalling… Every youth prison in the country should be closed, and replaced with a network of community-based programs and small facilities near the youths’ communities.” We agree. The Dream Defenders goal is to end the prison system's hold on our states’ policies, profits, priorities and people. We work in classrooms, communities and prisons to educate and organize to end this incredible threat to our lives. We can’t continue to watch this happening to the people in our communities, we have to act. If we can do this; if we can begin to break this massive machine by freeing our children from it's hold, then we can begin to collapse it in our lifetime. If we do not, we risk losing many more generations.