It kinda sucks that Trump got convicted of 34 felonies because now I’m seeing so many people thinking felon = bad, when in fact convicted felons are disproportionately people of color who were convicted for things that shouldn’t be crimes at all such as drugs, or based on the thinnest of evidence by strongly biased juries.
Look up Fontae Buelow for one obvious example – all white jury, the corrupt judge dismissed a dissenting juror, the same corrupt judge was appointed to the retrial, and the more you look into this case, the more obvious it is this man is not guilty.
That’s just one example. This happens all across the US, over and over again – people stripped of their rights, denied justice. I was in jail in a community that was 75% white, but nearly every person in my cell besides me was Native, Hispanic, or Black. This is typical of any jail or prison in nearly any location in the US, because our institutions were deliberately created to do this.
And yes, I’m glad Trump got at least a taste of our “justice” system, and I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade here – but the main takeaway here should NOT be that felons are bad people who are undeserving of equity. Trump is a bad person whether he’s a felon or not, and many felons are good people – and even if they’re NOT good people, they’re still people worthy of regard and basic respect, worthy to be treated as fellow humans who are equals.
I’m not at all convinced this is true. Most of the people who supposedly do belong in jail are only there because they were failed by an oppressive system, and jails serve no restorative purpose, but mostly exacerbate the problems.
As I pointed out to someone else, we have a president who’s guilty of more murder than the worst serial killer in history, yet we won’t put him in jail. If jails and prisons are supposed to help us, then we’re putting the wrong people there, not those who are most responsible for exploiting and killing us.