Many unhoused people work full time but earn starvation, unlivable wages. Some struggle to access mental health services or substance use treatment, making earning a consistent and stable wage nearly impossible.
Cori BushRead
We treat Black and brown kids who can't vote yet, can't join the military, can't rent a car or even buy a lottery ticket - like adults in our criminal legal system. We deprive them of their joy and their youth. Children who deserve to live rich and abundant lives.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the harsh treatment of underage individuals in the criminal justice system, suggesting they are denied a joyful childhood.
Cori Bush emphasizes the injustice faced by Black and brown youth who are not afforded the same freedoms as adults but are nonetheless treated as such within the criminal legal framework. The quote reflects on the detrimental impact this has on their youth, joy, and potential for a fulfilling life, urging a reconsideration of how society handles young people, especially those from marginalized communities.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech advocating for juvenile justice reform.
Many unhoused people work full time but earn starvation, unlivable wages. Some struggle to access mental health services or substance use treatment, making earning a consistent and stable wage nearly impossible.
The death penalty is an inhumane punishment that disproportionately violates the human rights of Black, brown, indigenous, and other marginalized people.
By expanding the legal authority of law enforcement agencies - without addressing the infiltration of white supremacy within law enforcement - we are expanding the capacity of white supremacy itself.
We don't live in a world that nurtures and cares for Black girls like me. And if the world doesn't care about a Black girl like me, then what will happen to our Black babies who grow up to become Black children and Black adults?
This stereotype that Black and brown boys and girls are dangerous or threatening has normalized systems of trauma: the cradle to prison pipeline, foster care, youth detention, and being tried and sentenced as adults. We treat trauma with more trauma.
Being unhoused in America must no longer be viewed as an individual shortcoming, but rather as an unacceptable, life-threatening policy failure.
Justice remains the tool of a few powerful interests; legal interpretations will continue to be made to suit the convenience of the oppressor powers.
All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary.
I did not learn the flaws of the criminal-justice system in law school or college or by reading about it. I grew up knowing the flaws and how it was disproportionately impacting the black community. It's not academic for me.
If I were attorney general in Kansas in 1953, I would not have defended a Kansas statute that put in place separate-but-equal facilities.
An act of justice closes the book on a misdeed; an act of vengeance writes one of its own
Trans women of color dangerously fall in between the cracks of racial justice, feminist and LGbt movements.
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