This is a bit of a longer email, but it’s important. Please take a few moments to read the whole thing and my request at the end.
You may have heard me talk about this on my podcast ‘The Breakdown’ last week.
For most of my life, I have actually been an extremely optimistic guy.
But right now, I have a very painful prediction for 2022 and beyond — in some ways, it’s not so much a prediction because I already see it underway.
I want to prepare you for it and help you understand it, ok?
We are about to enter a horrible new era of extreme mass incarceration that will rival the worst periods in modern American history.
If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to be in the era of mass incarceration in the late 1970s, 1980s, into the early 90s, it feels a lot like it does today.
Jails are overflowing. Prisons are getting more crowded. There are even states across this country starting to talk — again — about building NEW jails, NEW prison, for MORE people.
Here’s the thing. As author James Forman Jr. says in his book “Locking Up Our Own”, during that era of mass incarceration, Black communities were grasping for straws on how to solve a legitimate problem of widespread crime.
But when Black communities try and find the answers, the police show up and try to say they can be the solution.
The problems that Black communities face — you can’t police your way out of those problems.
Rather than solve the violent crimes they need to solve, most of policing is completely reactionary and does not intervene with the ROOT causes of crime.
They are not normally the force that stops bad things from happening. They are built to be reactionary.
And when the media starts to frenzy about ‘rising crime’, people — good people — say we need more police. All that does is destabilize Black and brown communities.
It causes more arrest, more incarceration, more poverty, more despair, which leads to more drug use, which leads to a vicious cycle of mass incarceration that is inescapable.
What we are about to see in 2022 is an exploding rate of mass incarceration — and when that happens, police brutality explodes as well.
The crisis of police brutality is about having an extreme police presence and having millions and millions of police encounters, the math just says that you will also then have hundreds or THOUSANDS of brutal police encounters. It’s a simple math problem.
So, the goal of my life has been to reduce mass incarceration which will also reduce police violence — and finally allow for some stability in Black communities.
That way, we will have our communities present without mass incarceration interfering with everything we do.
Here’s what I know. Police won’t be able to solve the crimes we need to be solved — like murders, home robberies, and sexual assaults. The rate of them solving these crimes are HORRIBLE.
When cities pour money into policing, the police will continue to bust more people for more low-level crimes — and we’ll be off the races.
SO many people are arguing for a re-funding of the police. It won’t make things better.
But listen to me. WE at Real Justice have a way to help put a stop to this. We’re depending on a surge of year-end donations to make sure we actually can, heading into 2022.
We can do it by electing DA's who will hold the police accountable, who will fight to end mass incarceration, and who will put efforts into community care — not criminalization of our people.
In the places where we have already elected good DA’s, we are succeeding in massive ways. The progress is not perfect. But it is real progress.
Those DA’s are prosecuting violent cops who never would’ve faced accountability of any kind without those DA’s in office.
Those DA’s are freeing the innocent, mostly Black men who have been wrongfully imprisoned.
Those DA’s are overhauling what true public safety actually means in their cities.
In 2022, we want to continue this work. We want to not only till the soil for future wins, but defend the progress we’ve made. District by district. City by city.
Love and appreciate you,
Shaun
Pol. Adv. Paid for by Real Justice PAC, realjusticepac.org
Not authorized by any federal, state, or local candidate or a committee controlled by a candidate.
Email us: info@realjusticepac.org
Wow.
When I sent the email late last night about my prediction for 2022 — on how we will see a huge increase in mass incarceration and how we can work to stop it — I wasn’t sure what to expect.
But since then, we saw a HUGE surge of support. This community always amazes me and the way you show up for Real Justice and the fights we take on together. Thank you.
Here’s the truth. We’re still short on our year-end goal of $530,000, and in order to make sure we can kick off our 2022 plans to fight back, we need to make sure we hit this goal.
Thank you, thank you, thank you,
Shaun
Pol. Adv. Paid for by Real Justice PAC, realjusticepac.org
Not authorized by any federal, state, or local candidate or a committee controlled by a candidate.
Email us: info@realjusticepac.org
